Find victims or create them. Feign concern and look “woke.” Such is politics in the 21st century.
Consider opponents of Georgia’s new election law, who insist it will suppress “the black vote.” For Major League Baseball, this was so important that the organization pulled its 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta and moved it to Denver.
To share this concern for black voters, one must believe a person with nonwhite skin has a perpetual problem with society’s rules. Or, society’s rules have a problem with people who are black.
To see minorities as “victims” of the election tuneup, one must accept a baseless premise that black people have less of an ability than white people to obtain and reference photo IDs when voting by mail.
Georgia issues more IDs to black people than to any other demographic in Atlanta. Yet, with brazen irrationality, these cool-hipster executives say it is racist to ask for IDs. By that logic, maybe it is “racist” to search bags and screen for weapons at baseball games. At least some attendees ejected for weapons are black, so this practice must be racist.
Complaining about modern victimology could be viewed as “racist” by faux intellectuals trying to feel woke. After all, to express concerns about this ugly phenomenon challenges years of effort to make losing look good and winning seem unfair.
If losing is good, minorities should thank corporate America. Executives at MLB, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, and a growing list of other corporations seem hellbent on keeping people down if they are not white, simultaneously feigning concern for minorities.
The All-Star Game move comes at a substantially disproportionate cost to black business owners, Uber drivers, waiters, and service personnel of all kinds. They and their children will feel it when summer comes and goes and they did not have the benefit of a major sporting event to generate economic activity estimated at more than $100 million. The children of a hot dog vendor may not get a weekend vacation and certainly won’t see the All-Star Game, but this move will have no effect on the families of MLB executives. It’s so easy being woke.
Victimologists have a special knack for creating victims rather than helping people overcome adversity.
Consider the plight of Danny Moore. A black man, he applied for and received an appointment to Colorado’s commission charged with congressional redistricting. When news broke about his past social media posts supporting former President Donald Trump and questioning the results of the 2020 election, Moore’s colleagues instantly ousted him from his chairmanship. Though seen as a victory in the Left’s crusade against Trump, whom it calls “racist,” it was nothing other than removing a black man from authority because he did not toe the line for liberals. Another woke victory, another black person’s loss.
As victim status increasingly becomes false currency, we can expect more people to lose.
Leading up to the late 20th century, parents, schools, the media, and big entertainment advocated success and defiance of hardship. This improved life for people and communities like nothing else. Under the old ethic, social justice warriors would rightly tell Atlanta to fight like hell to keep the All-Stars Game. If economic activity is good for mostly white Denver, it is good for mostly black Atlanta.
Victors, not victims and their self-aggrandizing sympathizers, made this country better for minorities throughout the Civil War, abolition, and the civil rights movement. That’s why we consider former slave Harriet Tubman a victor and the antithesis of a victim. By refusing to accept victimization, she smuggled slaves to freedom. A handful of black neighbors in Kansas ended school segregation by refusing to accept victim status and fighting to win Brown v. Board of Education. We can thank countless victors, people who overcame adversity, for reducing world hunger, disease, and human rights atrocities.
Fair or not, history proves that victors have the best homes, food, transportation, education, healthcare, and more — globally and under most systems of governance. This should be clear to MLB, which rewards successful players with millions more in pay, without regard for ethnic identity, than their journeyman teammates. Victors have never resulted from powerful white men in the corporate suite trying to save minorities.
“Black politicians, civil rights leaders, and white liberals have peddled victimhood to black people, teaching them that racism is pervasive and no amount of individual effort can overcome racist barriers,” wrote legendary economist Walter Williams, who died in December.
Call it racism of the 21st century. The Left calls it woke.
Wayne Laugesen writes from Colorado.
