General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Wypipo Poll [View all]EffieBlack
(14,249 posts)It's a long-established pattern. The white majority has, for centuries, put into place mechanisms and practices that ensure the maintenance of white superiority over blacks and other minorities. When blacks complain, we're told that we are mistaken, being overly-sensitive, "race-baiting," etc.
And then, when we employ our own mechanisms designed, not to subjugate whites but to push back or defend or to remedy or sometimes just get comic relief from the continuing onslaught, that effort is not just stomped on, but it is turned around on us as some of the white majority pretends suddenly to be victims of US and their own bad behavior is "downgraded" to the level of and treated as the equivalent of the harmless pushback (or vice versa - the small remedy is elevated to the level of the brutal and egregious behavior we're pushing back against).
We see it everywhere. For example, that's how the conservative courts have managed to turn the 14th Amendment on its head where it is now used to invalidate the civil rights remedies and as a shield protecting the very behavior it was enacted to defend against - now civil rights remedies designed to overcome discrimination and segregation are "reverse discrimination" that is scrutinized much more harshly by the courts than the actual discrimination they're intended to overcome. White men and women are now victims of civil rights remedies while blacks and other minorities are treated as unworthy beneficiaries of wrongful "preferences.""
People who understand these dynamics - black and brown folk and a whole lot of woke white folk - see right through this little game. But it doesn't make it any less pervasive or sickening.