Identity politics is harmful to democracy, unless you're a white male

By GottaLaff

Today's Daily Dose of BuzzFlash:

Identity politics is harmful to democracy, unless you're a white male

Playing the "victim" card works a lot easier when you actually are the victim. [...]

Since Gingrich claims to work from history, let's dazzle him with a historical context. There have been 110 Supreme Court justices in the history of the court: of those 110, 106 of them have been white males. In case Gingrich isn't good at math, that is a healthy 96.4%. That is privilege.

There have been two women on the court for 1.8% of the court. Given that make up slightly more than half of the population, that mark falls a little short. [...]

Watching Gingrich, Limbaugh and the other social Luddites freak out isn't just about being a white male. It's about the loss of identity -- they grew up sheltered in an era where role models in a wide range of fields were white males, just like them.

They are afraid of change of any kind, whether it be gay marriage or immigrants of a different color from themselves or women in powerful roles lording over them. The chagrin of having a Latina woman sitting on the highest court of the land is almost more than they could stand. [...]

The answer is that once you've had privilege, it can be difficult to give that up. And if you have privilege based in part on discrimination, you might feel like any sort of "loss" is due to reverse discrimination.

Once again, I've butchered the original piece in order to provide excerpts. You can read the whole thing here.