Take up the White Liberal's burden

Take up the White Man’s burden—

Send forth the best ye breed—

Go send your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need
Rudyard Kipling

So Donald McClarey ran with this story.  It's about one of our fine institutions of higher learning making it easier for minorities to succeed.

It dawned on me then what might be happening.  Like most sane people, I've puzzled about this whole 'wokeness' or 'virtue signaling' or whatever for years.  I've puzzled, and puzzled till my puzzler was sore. What is it with white liberals saying whites are ipso facto Nazi racists?  What is it with American liberals saying America is the most vile and racist nation in history?  What is it with liberal men saying women should rule because women are immaculate but men are lower than dirt?  What is it with liberal heterosexuals who insist those in the LGBTQ community are better than heterosexuals in every way?  What is it with liberal Christians who say Christianity alone is the source of all evil thought in the world?

It was a mystery.  Many theories have been floated by people far smarter than me.  But then I read through the article linked to over at The American Catholic.  And that's when it hit me.

The idea of multi-cultural education arose in an attempt to offset the damage done by Western Imperialists who only studied various cultures from their own Western, and often condescending, viewpoints.  Multi-cultural education would make it right. We would learn about all these cultures from their own cultural viewpoints.  After all, one of the signs of Western racism was the contempt for other people as somehow lower than the Western white man.  And that was the justification for things like colonialism, imperialism and slavery.

But if you read that piece and read it again, what do you notice?  Apparently, the school in question takes the same low viewpoint of minorities that the burdened white men did all those years ago.  Apparently, without a helping hand (from a liberal institution), the minorities just can't cut it.  And as I read that, I thought of all the times I hear about how we - our society, schools, institutions, companies, whatever - have to make it easier for the minority, the woman, the LGTBQ individual, and on and on.  They just can't do it without help.  They're inferior alright, but were made that way.  They are inferior, unlike white liberals, of course, who are here to save the day.   The white liberal's burden.

There is a caveat to this.  Unlike the old White Man's Burden, the white liberal man isn't out to save these people from the deplorable barbarism of their own savage cultures, or help them arise from their inherent inferiority.  Nope.  The white liberals are here to save minorities from the barbaric culture of their own white heritage, their own savage male ancestors, their own American culture, that has made the various minority groups into inferior Muggles who need the white liberal man's help.

Likewise, there is a little bit of quid pro quo.  It's still the white, or man, or heterosexual, or Christian who is bestowing this beneficent help by way of destroying their own deplorable heritage, and so there are a few things that these people are going to have to accept.  For instance, abortion, which keeps the much enjoyed sexual revolution on its feet.  Or secularism, which tends to put people's attention on the here and now rather than the hereafter (and by extension, beholden to those who can make the here and now better).  Or sexual openness.  Again, can't have a sexual revolution with sexual restrictions.  No matter what your cultural approach to sex is or religion, you'll need to accept the Western, secular liberal viewpoint. After all, they did save you from the barbarity you were reduced to by the heritage of the White Christian American Male.

This seems to fit.  It just came to me when I read that piece at TAC.  I haven't really fleshed it out yet. But it seems to answer the big questions.  Why?  Because not only is the white, American, heterosexual, male liberal the hero for taking out the worst cause of evil in the world, but those who have been so lifted up from the stereotypes that they were made to be are now beholden to their saviors - the white, American, heterosexual, male liberal.

That could also be why those same white, liberal, heterosexual, Christian men have no problem dumping racist and sexist and otherwise bigoted lingo on those oppressed minorities who don't stay in their appointed path to salvation.  That's why those liberals have no problem browbeating the woman who opposes abortion or  the black who dares vote Republican.    After all, only the white liberal can save them, so they are foolishly severing themselves from their only real hope.

I dunno,  but on first glance, it seems to cover all the bases and answer the questions that have riddled observers for several decades now about woke this and virtue signalling that. Whether this will put the people in the world at the service of the white liberal male once more, or the white liberals in question are merely sawing off the branch they're sitting on remains to be seen.  But I'll have to think more about this. Colonialism redux?  The White Liberal's Burden? I might be onto something.