The American Narrative is Being Re-Written
Greeting cards, university departments, comedy routines and social media posts reflect a new canonical narrative. Fri Sep 25, 2020
... I'm throwing the gauntlet down. Tell me that "toothless white trash" images are any less contemptuous, hostile, and repugnant, any less saturated with the superior's hatred for the inferior, than any given image of a Mammy sugar canister. Be sure to switch off safe search so you can see the hideous porn. Sights that, once seen, can't be unseen. And then there are the captions, like "Donald Trump supporters are all toothless, inbred, white trash."
... What we are allowed to laugh at, be it Hallmark cards or Hollywood films, informs us where society draws its lines, and what groups it puts on what side of what lines. If the greeting cards on the shelf at Walgreens were as diverse as the Academy's standards, if there were also cards milking laughs from stereotypes of caricatures of people who are "Asian Hispanic/Latinx, Black/African American, Indigenous/Native American/Alaskan Native, Middle Eastern/North African, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander," there would be no red flag. But there are no such cards, and redneck Hallmarkcards, beloved of many consumers, communicate who exactly occupies the lowest rung in woke America's caste system.
... We all know about the double standard. We all step around it everyday, in our social media comments, in what we say at work; perhaps we have been so cowed that we timidly obey the double standard in our sleep, and in our dreams.
... Upper class whites and their allies on the left don't choose poor whites as their whipping boy just because doing so establishes their superiority. Leftists revile poor whites because we refuse to act out the role they assign us in their narrative. Rich white liberals like nothing more than to emote about their "white privilege." Poor whites, mindful of working minimum wage jobs, facing occasional hunger, delaying gratification, swallowing humiliations, and observing wealth in America that they have never enjoyed, hear of "white privilege" and scoff, and hide deep resentment. Poor whites have had different interactions with African Americans, and those interactions complicate the rich white liberal race narrative. For that reason, RWLs must malign and silence poor whites.
... The Civil Rights Movement was supposed to make us better people. It was indeed glorious, but it was human. Subsequent inheritors of Civil Rights heroes' legacy betrayed one of the key tenets. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Too many people in power in America have chosen to obsess on skin color in lieu of character, or anything else.
... I am not a member of the laughter police, nor am I recommending a Marxist revolution that will level all class strata. I've lived in the workers' paradise, the old Soviet Empire, and in spite of the best intentions, including those of my Communist Party card-carrying relatives, Marxism doesn't work. Capitalism does. And so does charity. When you grab the leftist megaphone, and say, "Enough about race. Let's talk class,and let's talk about charity, not about raising taxes and increasing government programs," the solution then becomes for the wealthy of all skin shades to open their pockets, and share their wealth and their status with the poor, any poor, including white ones. Perhaps James could learn from a biography of Andrew Carnegie, who became the richest man in the world, and gave it all away.
Poor whites, she went on, have faced no roadblocks, but live lives of privilege. They have no right to complain, and, unlike blacks, they deserve no sympathy or redress for their hardships. "White Trump voters have no one else to blame but themselves for their failures, for their lack of accomplishment in their own lives. They certainly could have done what I've done, with far fewer obstacles. But they chose not to. They chose to remain ignorant. And they expected this ignorance to be rewarded." She concluded, "White Trump voters feel humiliated? Cry me a river. They couldn't have lived one week in my shoes."
Take the above sentences and switch "black" for "white." I'm supposed to reach out to blacks to help win an election? These same blacks would harm me and my family if they could. These blacks don't see poor whites as their equals. These blacks have no one but themselves to blame for their failures. These blacks could have done what I did, pull myself up by my bootstraps, but they chose not to. These blacks chose to remain ignorant. Blacks could not survive one week in my shoes. Cry me a river.
**************************
