Saturday, April 30, 2005

Guilt me, Baby

Oh, those poor white people!

"White children are often installed with guilt and a feeling of being ashamed because of the way that whites have dealt with minorities in the past, such as black slavery and the killing of Indians," McGuire said in a telephone interview. "Past discrimination should not result in present-day reverse discrimination against white kids."


Is educating - and let's face it, shaming - whites for the sins of our predecessors in power (you know, those who built this nation on the backs of African slaves and Chinese coolies and Mexicano peons and anyone else not white and not the right flavor of Christianity - Catholics, for example) is that reverse discrimination?

No, "reverse discrimination against white kids" is more than making you feel bad about what other white people did with their power.

"Reverse discrimination" would be refusing to let white men run for Congress for the next 200 years.

"Reverse discrimination" would be "Johnny Gull" laws that keep whites from voting or buying homes in non-white neighborhoods, a la Jim Crow. Put the whites in the tatty, poorly kept train car, not the nice one.

"Reverse discrimination" would replace the white Republican upper-class monied types with brown or red people, and women, and those "inscrutable" types with their slanty eyes.

"Reverse discrimination" would mean white men earned $.60-.80 for every dollar a woman did.

That's reverse discrimination. Reversed. Discrimination.

This? This shaming? That's called teaching history, my friends. And history ain't always pretty. But you have to learn it, or risk repeating it.

From Shakespeare's Sister.

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