Tuesday, August 30, 2016

The Culture Of The Smug White Liberal

The Huffington Post reports:
I have spent my life as a Democrat which probably isn’t that surprising considering that I am African-American. One of the things that always attracted me to the party were the ideals of equality, fighting for the little guy and our openness to differing opinions, but lately I have seen my party take a turn that makes me uncomfortable. Somewhere along the way we stopped fighting for the little guy and became the party of the smug, educated elites who look down on those with less education and deem them unable or unworthy of being able to make personal decisions for their own lives.

Over the last few years we have made incredible strides in diversity and inclusion, from the election twice of the nation’s first African-American President to the legalization of gay marriage, all things that I have loudly and happily cheered for and felt were a long time in coming. As an African-American professional from humble beginnings, I know firsthand the importance of giving everyone an equal opportunity to access the American Dream. I don’t take lightly the opportunities I have been given or the fact that many people, black and white, fought for and sometimes died for me to have these rights. I also have serious concerns about the lack of progress that I have seen for many African-Americans and I blame some of that lack of progress on ineffective liberal policies that are based upon wanting to help those in need, but in many instances end up causing more harm than good.

Although many African-Americans have made incredible strides in educational attainment we are still lagging behind in key indicators of success such as net worth, poverty rates, high incarceration rates and, as such, have some of the highest unemployment numbers. In addition we seem to be victims of a disproportionate amount violence. All of these issues are some of the most serious problems we face as a people and our culture of political correctness and liberalism has not only not solved them, but I believe has made them worse. I know many liberals who do incredible work to make the world around them better, and that’s not who I am talking about. I’m talking about the cocktail party liberals, the elites, who wear the cloak of liberalism to protect themselves from criticism and so they can keep a clear conscious.

My problem with Liberalism is that it’s more concerned with policing people’s language and thoughts without requiring them to do anything to fix the problem. White liberal college students speak of “safe spaces”, “trigger words”, “micro aggressions” and “white privilege” while not having to do anything or, more importantly, give up anything. They can’t even have a conversation with someone who sees the world differently without resorting to calling someone a racist, homophobic, misogynistic, bigot and trying to have them banned from campus, or ruin them and their reputation. They say they feel black peoples’ pain because they took a trip to Africa to help the disadvantaged, but are unwilling to go to a black neighborhood in the City in which they live. These same college students will espouse the joys of diversity, but will in the same breath assume you are only on campus because of affirmative action or that all black people grew up in poverty. My personal favorite is declaring with surprise how articulate a black classmate is despite the fact that we are attending the same institution of higher learning as they are.
You'll want to read the entire article.