From Tim Wise on Facebook about rise of Trump and white nationalism, and blaming "identity politics"
For those seeking to blame leftist "identity politics" for the rise of Trump and white nationalism, please read some history. As Emory University professor Carol Anderson explains in her brilliant book White Rage, every time white hegemony has felt threatened, a backlash like this happens. During Reconstruction, the Great Migration, desegregation, the civil rights movement, and now the Obama Administration combined with widespread cultural and demographic shifts, whitelash has occurred. It isn't new, and it isn't the fault of the left or those of us who challenge whiteness. It is the predictable by-product of the struggle for equality. When you've grown accustomed to power and the ability to define yourself as the norm -- to set the very boundaries of American-ness itself -- any challenge to that prerogative feels like the end of the world.
Bottom line: white resentment and rage is the inevitable side-effect of the drug called justice. As such, we're just gonna have to muscle through it, because the medicine itself is too valuable...
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