In Which Max Boot Awakens: “2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege”
The vast majority of conservatives have obviously decided they can live with themselves as they support the malignant narcissist in the White House, but in an almost miraculous development the election of this monster has actually bashed some sense into some conservative heads.
For one, Max Boot: 2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege.
A quarter century is enough time to examine deeply held shibboleths and to see if they comport with reality. In my case, I have concluded that my beliefs were based more on faith than on a critical examination of the evidence. In the last few years, in particular, it has become impossible for me to deny the reality of discrimination, harassment, even violence that people of color and women continue to experience in modern-day America from a power structure that remains for the most part in the hands of straight, white males. People like me, in other words. Whether I realize it or not, I have benefitted from my skin color and my gender — and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.
This sounds obvious, but it wasn’t clear to me until recently. I have had my consciousness raised. Seriously.
I actually had my own awakening to the horrors of the right nearly 10 years ago, but I had the advantage of having been a liberal for most of my life, before the 9/11 attacks. Max Boot is coming to these realizations rather late — but better late than never. (To conclude with a horrendous cliché.)