Being Anti-Victim Is Being Anti-Black
A renewed anti-identity/anti victim crusade has sprung up in the US over the last few years. This movement doesn’t contain any new ideas. There are no original thinkers in it, and like all such movements in the past, it is fueled by the dominant group’s fears of a restructured social order. It is further aided by members of oppressed groups who, aligning themselves with their oppressors, are falling for the sudden love of individualism and rejection of the “victim” label that the majority has adopted now that oppressed groups are speaking up and seeking community support. The aim is to shame those who seek redress of valid grievances into silence. In effect re-victimizing the victims of oppression by blaming them for the impacts of injustices committed against them by others.
Edited to add this section on 1/12/20222: Background on my perspective.
This essay was inspired by a conversation with another writer on this platform. He presents himself as being of African descent and subscribes to this flawed ideology of anti-victimhood. He further suggests that “black” people who claim victimhood damage their cause by driving their oppressors to implement new, more oppressive policies. This is an astoundingly circular argument completely lacking in awareness. In my limited experience, people who exhibit this line of reasoning are emotionally invested in casting off the “victim” label. They ignore facts and align themselves with their oppressors, eventually blaming victims for their victimization, denying the impacts of slavery followed by 100 years of Jim Crow apartheid, and participating in the shaming and character assassination of poor “black” people. They do this while at the same time stating that they are members of an “oppressed” group, but are not themselves victims!
I am a victim of racism. I neither believe that I am helpless or less capable due to my victimhood nor do I, having achieved some degree of success, suffer from the illusion that I am better than anyone else. I am a victim who comes from a long line of victims who have proudly achieved and, in this generation, lived most of the American dream despite being victimized. Not every “black” family was able to come out of the 100 years following the end of enslavement with the skills, attitudes, and resources to lift themselves out of poverty. I recognize that without my grandparents, parents, suburban childhood, education in one of the finest public school systems in the nation, attendance at university, and the benefits that accrued from all of these things, who knows what I would be doing right now? As a naïve young man, I once held a similar point of view as the victim-blamers. As an adult, experience gained both professionally and through charitable organizations has completely changed my perspective away from “Why can’t they just get a job?”
The larger conversation generalizes the topic to a “culture of victimhood”. However, within my community, there is something more specific. The complaint is that too many descendants of enslaved African people have fallen into “identity” politics and are trapped in self-made psychological prisons of victimhood. This is a regurgitation of the same “Racism is no longer a problem. If these people just dropped their victim mentality, they’d get along fine.” line of subversion that was used to undermine the civil rights movement from the 60s through the 90s. This line of thinking makes the ridiculous assertion that if poor, oppressed people living in deliberately isolated and neglected communities simply pretended that generations of oppression never happened, they would suddenly gain the education, financial capital, and social skills required to succeed in our society.
…the only place you can break the cycle is before young people develop the bad habits of mind and body that cause adult poverty and a host of other ills.
Preaching grit and individuality then charging people suffering from the lingering effects of multi-generational discrimination with playing the “victim card” is simply an attempt to discount their valid complaints and avoid offering them help. Frankly, this charge is never applicable when descendants of enslaved African people (which I will refer to going forward as “black” with quotes to differentiate from the false construct of race) are seeking justice for the impacts of systemic racism. “Black” people who speak out against injustice do not believe that they are helpless or powerless. As citizens of the United States, they are in fact taking action every time they speak out!
Start down the path of accusing people of being “false” victims or dismissing the idea of victimhood entirely and it’s a short hop to branding every person expressing outrage over a wrong or member of a marginalized group saying something you disagree with as a character deficient mental case who believes they are a helpless victim. At that point, you’ve crossed over into your own crazy town, where you decide who the real victims are based on your personal feelings about the validity of each complaint.
the bottom line is that better schools create more productive, upwardly mobile citizens, whose children become even more productive, upwardly mobile citizens.
When addressing the issue of endemic poverty, all of the evidence says that failing to educate our children is the number one problem we are facing. History shows us that the only place you can break the poverty cycle is before young people develop the bad habits of mind and body that cause adult poverty and a host of other ills. The data clearly support that position. See the study below.
This study shows that school quality and parental attainment are highly influential in life outcomes for children. They are the determinant factors. The analysis is highly technical, but the bottom line is that better schools create more productive, upwardly mobile citizens, whose children become even more productive, more upwardly mobile citizens. In other words, if we want to reduce our problems with poverty, we must fix our schools and help parents of young children provide healthy environments for children to grow up in. Any success here will create more success, which will create more success in a virtuous cycle.
…in order to help the children, who all deserve the opportunity to realize their full potential, we must get over our aversion to helping the adults who we are inclined to see as undeserving…when we dismiss a single mother advocating for better schools as having a “victim mentality” we are turning our backs on her innocent children.
As one man looking at the unique circumstances and problems that impoverished “black” students face. Our challenge is that in order to help the children, who all deserve the opportunity to realize their full potential, we must get over our aversion to helping the adults who we are inclined to see as undeserving. After all, who are the children sharing their environment with, and who are we likely to see advocating for those children? When we dismiss a single mother advocating for better schools as having a “victim mentality” we are turning our backs on her innocent children. We see the adult parent, blame her for her own circumstances (i.e. unwed, too young, etc…) and then use her “flawed character” as an excuse to refuse the things that would help her children break the cycle.
Impoverished parents produce children attending poor, failing schools which produce more low-skilled, impoverished adults who produce more children who attend poor, failing schools.
In effect, the position that many are taking regarding “victimhood” simply becomes an easy excuse for not helping, because “they (the adults) need to stop playing the victim and help themselves”. It conveniently forgets that today’s adults were also once the children who we (in the case of “black” children) intentionally, and in legally sanctioned ways, failed years ago.
we sentence the current generation of children to grow up into the next generation of adults who we will refuse to help
In today’s society, it’s no longer really a “race” thing, it’s just a set of facts. Impoverished parents produce children attending poor, failing schools which produce more low-skilled, impoverished adults who produce more children who attend poor, failing schools. This won’t stop unless we, as a society, do something different.
Being anti-victim, especially as it pertains to racial injustices, just shifts the conversation away from how society is failing our children, morphing it into one where we blame the adults who we failed as children years ago. The result is that we refuse to allocate resources to the problem, which condemns today’s children to a bleak future. In the end, we sentence the current generation of children to grow up into the next generation of adults who we will refuse to help.
When we deny the crime, we deny our obligation to provide justice.
We must acknowledge the discrimination and oppression-driven components of problems within the “black” community as victimization. Only an approach driven by justice for the children will ever get us to solutions. Until we recognize that people who are never given an honest chance to succeed are victims of an unjust system, we will continue to repeat the mistakes of the past. Without a victim, there is no crime. When we deny the crime, we deny our obligation to provide justice.