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S_Melville's avatar

I am a biracial (asian and white) woman, grew up in a foreign country, moved here in my teens, and STILL was somehow blissfully unaware that I was “oppressed”, or even that my non-whiteness was supposed to be some sort of “problem”, until I went to my very expensive liberal arts college and was informed by some of my fellow woke students that I was simply “unaware” of my own oppression. When I disagreed, they told me I was, in so many words, stupid and to shut up. That is probably the first time I have ever actually felt oppressed. Not to date myself, but this was back in the 2000s, so I guess that expensive liberal arts school was just a bit ahead of the curve. Oh, and when I argued with one of them about the wisdom and appropriateness her plan to intentionally start a campus “race war” to get attention, she slapped me in the face. An actual slap, with a hand. That was also the first time I’d ever been hit. And this was not an argument about left vs. right, we were (and probably still are) all card-carrying Democrats. That division does not seem to be the salient one, with these people. It was such an odd moment that it laid bare the degree to which performative social justice is possibly a product of a society that has turned having a grievance into a form of currency, and the particular narcissism of obsessing over and nurturing one’s grievances into a virtue. And then, subsequently, social media culture took that narcissism and monetized it by essentially selling us to ourselves.

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Nathan's avatar

I'm on the free list and I can see this. Is there a mistake? Don't get me wrong --- I'd love to read it and I plan to buy the book, but I want to make sure Dr McWhorter is paid for his work.

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