Grievance envy discounts the oppressed while denying them justice – Kansas Reflector

The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Mark McCormick is the former executive director of The Kansas African American Museum and a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission.

For decades, people have used the phrase playing the race card to shut down conversations about our nations racial caste system.

What they likely didnt realize was that the phrase offered a tacit admission that racial grievance, in many cases, had virtually no equal and virtually no response. Theres no trumping that card.

But in a testament to the resolve of those committed to protecting dominant-caste privilege, the what about my right to oppress you? crowd is trying. Upper-caste people with strangleholds on federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court, and most state legislatures, are simply claiming what theyve coveted grievance. Lets call it grievance envy.

Specifically, grievance envy involves upper-caste non-victims or at least non-victims in the ways America has victimized Black people asserting victim status for transgressions that, at best, qualify as annoyances or inconveniences.

Why attempt this? Simple. Political strategists have long advocated attacking your adversarys perceived greatest strength.

Chase Billingham, associate professor of Sociology at Wichita State University, said its not unlike a cynical debate strategy, an all lives matter response to Black Lives Matter.

Seeing the success of the civil rights movement and thinking, How can I emulate that, Billingham said. If I can adopt that posture, I could be successful.

So, from the throngs descending on school board meetings decrying the need for emergency public safety measures during a pandemic, to the hysteria surrounding the possibility of students learning about the ugliest details of our racial past, absurd claims continue to surface.

At a recent Wichita discussion of a proposed non-discrimination ordinance, faith-based organizations intimated that provisions for protected classes might somehow diminish religious rights as though rights were pizza. If you get more, I somehow, get less.

Conservative Christians remain one of this nations most powerful lobbies. These folks arent oppressed, and this behavior isnt exactly Christian, either. James 3:16 says, For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.

Imagine a life so comfortable, secure, and privileged that a request to wear a mask, or take a vaccine, or learn more about American history registers as an outrage.

Imagine also the emptiness of such protestations from the perspective of lower-caste Americans whove watched people like them killed for selling CDs, for selling loose cigarettes, or for passing a counterfeit bill.

After a bomb killed four little Black girls in their Birmingham, Alabama, church in 1963, for example, the mother of one of the girls arrived to identify her childs body. The mother recalled in Spike Lees documentary, Four Little Girls, that the white woman checking her in called her gal.

In her worst moment any parents nightmare the mother of a dead child couldnt be extended any kindness outside caste system norms. Most Black Americans, thankfully, have not had to endure that same tragedy, but we are reminded often, as that mother was, of our lower-caste status.

Thats grievance.

Losing a well-run election, however, isnt. That likely didnt occur to those who defecated in the Capital on Jan. 6.

Do people abuse grievance? Yes.

Is this the only kind of grievance? Of course not.

This behavior, by the way, isnt limited to upper-caste conservatives, either. Upper-caste progressives do this, too.

The so-called woke also declare standing where they have none, insinuating themselves into the culture war as advocates claiming grievance on behalf of others. Some even have the audacity to lecture Black people about racism.

Whats the answer? Justice. Theres no grievance without injustice. If we dont start addressing our deep, daunting social issues, we will continue comparing atrocities and reducing real and painful grievances to a mere commodity. All this does is expand a culture of victimhood.

Consider this the next time you hear about the war on Christmas, or see someone in a $60,000 pickup sporting a Gadsen dont tread on me flag, or when someone brings up the horrors of a previous presidential administration trying to extend health care to more Americans.

Remind them that grievance envy is having its moment, but it isnt cute, or chic, or moral.

It is lying, it is appropriation, and while it is not a card game, were all certainly losing because of it.

Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary,here.

Visit link:

Grievance envy discounts the oppressed while denying them justice - Kansas Reflector