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Whatever Happened to ‘the Content of Your Character?’
On Facebook, I have seen the following celebratory post making the rounds:
WE ARE WITNESSING HISTORY
- First Somali-American elected to Congress.
- First openly gay man to win a gubernatorial
- First Muslim woman EVER elected to Congress.
- First Black women ever elected to Congress from Connecticut & Massachusetts
- Youngest woman EVER elected to Congress
What’s missing from that list? Any mention whatsoever of these candidates’ qualifications, beliefs, policy positions, experience, or really anything at all that speaks to competence.
Apparently none of that matters. The only things that matter are your race, gender, and sexual preference. Merely to exist as a member of one of these special groups is a matter of pride. To elect such a person to office, apparently, is a triumph, regardless of any other criterion.
Tell me again who the bigots are?
Published in General
President Trump is in a particularly strong position on this issue. He may disrupt the alleged emerging Democratic permanent majority coalition of identity groups by demonstrating through actions, not just works, real care for the people shoe-horned into the groups.
The urban revival, not by chasing people out but by elevating the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods, is a life-time passion of this president.
Imagine Attorney General Janice Rogers Brown, and Secretary Ben Carson, going after the gangs, both on the streets and in city halls, in the name of the grandparents, the mothers, the children, while the whole of government comes to bear on economic and educational liberation for communities stuck in multi-generational poverty.
Lighten up! Lots of stuff floats around, don’t get worked up about it. Firsts are a little interesting, so just let it go.
I live in Tennessee and I didn’t even know that factoid about Blackburn. And guess what, I don’t care. I have been sick of the first whatever for years.
IF they’re to make racist lists they should also include republicans, like Young Kim, the first Korean woman to be elected to congress. or Denis Hof the first dead pimp to be elected to congress. Or to misquote the “West Wing” – “The voters have decided that being wrong on the issues is more important than being dead” …
Sorry, no. The current obsession with identity politics is, in my opinion, one of the most dangerous and evil forces at work in our society. It is not just a nuisance.
And “firsts” of this sort are not interesting to me, not even a little bit. I could not care less.
Violas move with stealth in their takeover of the House, Senate, and Supreme Court.
Uh, no. Haley’s not stupid.
Maybe you’re right, I don’t know.
Guinness Book of World Records firsts these days are marginally interesting, if you’re bored and are wondering about, say, just who it was who stuck the most pencils in a ceiling tile without missing.
But these racial/gender/sexual orientation firsts are pernicious. These people whom the Left keeps insisting on cheering about were only able to win because we now live in a time when there’s no reason why they shouldn’t; a time when most of us – on the Right at least – are over dividing by race and all that. We have progressed. For us it is not worthy of remark that a [insert race/gender/sexual orientation] person has been named to something, or won something, or has achieved something. Why not, what’s the big deal?
If someone from one of these once-oppressed groups had achieved something back then in the face of that oppression, then it would be worthy of remark, and great celebration. Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Jackie Robinson, many others. But today we all (everybody who matters) accept these things without notice – we are post-notice. In fact, to notice now is to be kind of racist/sexist.
“Oh, isn’t it nice that a woman can be a mortgage analyst? Oh, we’ve come so far.”
Mortgage analyst, rolling eyes: “Can you please go eff yourself, I have work to do.”
There is obviously a great deal of innate nobility in not being born white.
Perhaps noted elsewhere in comments I’ve not seen, but yes, there is a glaring omission: the first Korean American woman elected to the U.S. House, Young Kim, replacing retiring Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA).
I have a pretty good guess as to why she wasn’t mentioned. She’s a Republican.