There is a notion that when someone speaks up about sexism, racism, transphobia, etc. they are trafficking in victimhood. But this makes no sense, as naming and addressing these things is in effect *asserting* one's agency.

Let me take you back to 1990's South Carolina.

(1/15)

I remember growing up in a small southern town, and no one said much about the wealth and income gap between black and white folk.

We said nothing about how the white kids never worked in the tobacco fields and warehouses in the summer (as I did).

(2/15)

We said nothing about how most wealthy white families put their kids in a private school starting in the 70's to avoid race-mixing.

We said nothing about the residential segregation and the clear aesthetic differences between the "black side" and "white side" of town.

(3/15)

Getting older black folk to talk about the grinding poverty or racial insults they endured was like pulling teeth. They drank their pain, I guess.

We said nothing about how 95% of the authority figures in the town were white.

(4/15)

We said nothing about how the history and social studies books talked only in passing about slavery. We knew more about "carpetbaggers and scalawags" who came from the north and took advantage of whites, than about the slave system or slave economy.

(5/15)

We said nothing about how little money we had in our pockets when going to college and how our parents would have nothing to pass down to us (we were not aware that even the poorest white families had more wealth than us).

(6/15)

Unlike now, where things are interconnected and a writer or scholar can share their ideas so easily, we were in the dark and punished for being dark.

We couldn't explain these sociological and economic patterns. And most white folks have no incentive to talk about them.

(7/15)

We had no access to ideas like racist/anti-racist, systemic racism, white privilege, white fragility, and so on.

I know some white folks find this trend uncomfortable. And I get it. The term "divisive" and "counterproductive" is often thrown around.

(8/15)

Really, I get it.

A term like white fragility does not paint white folks in the flattering or morally neutral terms they are used to.

Ideas like racist/anti-racist or systemic racism underpin potential policy changes that threaten their way of living.

(9/15)

Concepts like "whiteness" and "white privilege" are attacks on the myth that their race had nothing to do with their success (as this would then imply race had something to do with the lack of success of black folk).

(10/15)

The 1619 project is a threat to the triumphalist American story they grew up on - one of sharing turkey with happy indigenous folk, Lincoln freeing the slaves, and FDR saving the world from communism.

(11/15)

Critical theory, and critical race theory specifically, is so hated *precisely* because it is primarily critical of them. This area of academia is a major threat and it must be debunked.

(12/15)

In an ironic twist, because people are so ready to talk about race and racism, it is actually some *white* folks who are claiming victimhood status. *They* are the ones put upon.

(13/15)

They are forced to sit in degrading diversity trainings. Forced to watch black parents cry on TV about their sons getting shot by the police. They must *endure* people like Kendi talk about the horror of "anti-racism".

Yes, they are the victims now.

(14/15)

So, if you want to call the ignorance of my childhood "strength" and the current trend to talk openly about race and its impacts "victimhood" then go right ahead. You can even play the victim yourself.

I can say for me, I have never felt so empowered.

(15/15)