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The Culture of the Smug White Liberal

awaken

awaken

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Author is African American female, and she is straight up preaching
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikki-johnsonhuston-esq/the-culture-of-the-smug-w_b_11537306.html

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.
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Liberals are quick to be against school choice, while their kids go to private or well-regarded public schools. Leaving poor black children behind in underperforming schools and providing less opportunity to improve their lives is inconsequential to keeping true to their white liberal politics.
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For so long, as a Black American, I have been told that the problem is Conservative Republicans. While I’ll admit they may have done little to try to improve African-American lives, they also don’t promise to every election season like the liberal elites. Instead we have given our loyalty and votes to Democrats, who paternalistically tell us they want to help us, but we have little to show for it since blacks started voting Democrat back in the 1960’s.
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Suggesting that blacks stop being Democrats or Liberals would be a waste of my time, but what I am suggesting is that we require white liberals to do more than pat us on the head and tell us they know better.
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The truth is that Liberalism is about making elites feel better about themselves and their lives without requiring the underlying action of significantly improving the lives of African-Americans.
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Was that article targeted directly at this board?
 
knowell said:
Was that article targeted directly at this board?
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White liberals on this board are particularly astute about the issues of institutional discrimination with which the author says white liberals are unfamiliar.

Pretty weird "go team" response from awaken, sailor, and knowell.
 
Should you try and fail or not try at all is basically the question proposed. The answer would be always depends on the consequences.
 
This article is fighting a lot of straw men, at least in relation to the people on this board and I think the liberal culture at large.

For example:

The media lectures about intolerance of the Right, but is the first to show the mugshot of a young black suspect while showing the much more positive yearbook photo of a young white suspect. In fact the criminalization of African-Americans, especially men, has been turned into public policy in large part because of our negative portrayal in the media, which is predominantly filled with white liberal voices.
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Contrary to what the author is suggesting, liberals on here and in general have preached the irrelevance of the criminality of victims of uncalled for police violence.

how many black men are getting pulled into the prison system because of stop and frisk searches in these supposedly liberal cities? How many so called white liberals have really fought for those civil rights violations to be ended?
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A hell of a lot of them.

However, the push for criminal justice reform is coincidentally occurring parallel to the epidemic of opioid abuse in white communities. I would argue this is what is actually driving the policy shift from incarceration to treatment, because the sweeping tragedy of drug abuse that has gripped the black community for the last 30 years, is now affecting the same liberal elites that referred to our family members as predators and criminals rather than addicts deserving of compassion.
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This is so wrong I don't even know where to begin. Anyone who follows the national discourse knows that white opiate users have little, if nothing, to do with criminal justice reform.

Summary

The article appears to blame "liberal elites" because problems still exist in places where liberals have some modicum of control. Fair enough. But I think that's attributable mostly to the realities of slow political change. Not because a lot of "liberal elites" don't support the changes.
 
I think she's talking about specific pockets of liberal elites. The 1%ers, media elistists, out of touch Hollywood types, clueless politicos. There's some ugly generalizing in there and she event admits that it's based solely on her own experience.
 
I'm happy when columns like this are written. It's nice when an African-American woman can give voice to all of the concerns of the OWGs on this board. Brings us together as a people.
 
the responses to this thread read like an onion article. "This isn't about us, smug white liberals who attended a 60k a year school with the diversity of Hitler's cabinet assure themselves"
 
tintin, why do you delight in that article? It's not like the author is making an argument in favor of conservatives.
 
PhDeac said:
tintin, why do you delight in that article? It's not like the author is making an argument in favor of conservatives.
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This. Also it's just a bad article. I mean saying that criminal justice reform was sparked by white opiate users? Come on. One of the biggest successes of criminal justice reform has been reducing the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine, which disproportionally helps black people, not white people
 
Yeah. I've never heard of a political litmus test for faculty. I've never heard of a prospective faculty hire or grad student questioned formally or informally about their politics.

But when it comes to picking leadership for public institutions, conservatives surely use a litmus test.
 
Can you think of any facets of professional academia that are discouraging towards conservatives? Also, what goes on during a typical college experience that lends to more liberal (vs conservative) college students pursuing a career in academia?

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