There is an often overlooked fact in the discussion of the advancement of minorities over the past 100 years. No single group has done more to “level the playing field” bring about “social justice” or move our nation towards equality than the white male.
Unless I’m missing something, I don’t recall the Women’s Suffrage Revolt of 1920 where armed women stormed the Capitol, beheaded president Harding and declared their right to vote. I also must have missed it when Martin Luther King Jr. unleashed suicide bombers on D.C. until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
No. Great men and women brought the nation together and increased awareness of social and political injustices. The great service of Martin Luther King, Fredrick Douglas, Susan B. Anthony and others was to expose injustice and let the powers that be know that the Constitution should and does apply to all people.
Power, they say, is taken and not given. Except, of course, in the United States.
All of these changes have come to pass because enlightened white men, who held power in this country, saw and appreciated the injustice. Sure, many of them opposed change, but in the end, wiser heads prevailed and the status quo was changed.
In 2008, 95% of black voters voted for Obama. Imagine if white men truly were the racist, power clinging, exploiters that many would have you believe we are and voted the exact same way. Obama would have lost by a landslide. In fact, white men make up a larger voter block than all minorities combined. Yet, we don’t vote as a group. We have varied political views. White men will vote for and work towards policies that are directly counter-intuitive to their own financial and social standing, simply because they believe it is the right thing to do.
So when someone claims that a “wise Latina” would make a better decision than a white man in terms of social justice, I call foul. A little friend of mine called History says something different.
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