Guilty Read Free Page B

allows them to borrow from blacks to portray themselves as victims. Throughout the 2008 campaign, white liberals issued dire warnings that the only thing that could prevent Obama from becoming the next president was racism. Writing in the liberal
Slate
magazine, Weisberg said that only if Obama won would children in America be able to “grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives.” But if Obama lost, “our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to.” 24
    Fortuitously for the liberal Weisberg, Obama also happened to bethe most left-wing person ever to run for president in the United States on a major-party ticket. If Republicans were running black Republicans Michael Steele, Ken Blackwell, or Condoleezza Rice for president, would liberals tell us that only racism could prevent them from becoming president? Say—do we need to send federal civil rights monitors into Maryland and Ohio right now, on account of the fact that Steele and Blackwell lost recent elections in those states?
    Policymaking by victim status inevitably creates real victims. For openers, being a media-certified victim does not bring out the best in people. Once you are a victim, you can do anything—lord your victim-hood over others, behave abominably, tell lies, commit crimes, slander willfully—and liberals will give you a standing ovation.
    This is why the O.J. murder trial was the best thing that ever happened to blacks in America. As it happens, the one thing even certified victims can't do is wildly cheer the acquittal of a double murderer. That is what finally ended the patience of ordinary people for liberal patronization of blacks.
    By that point, tender liberal ministrations toward the black community had nearly destroyed it. The black illegitimacy rate was through the roof and the criminal behavior that flows from such a massive social breakdown was on full display. And yet people would still listen in rapt attention to pompous liberal blowhards at dinner parties opining that the reason blacks committed crimes was white racism. Even after decades of racial quotas and set-asides, and endless rallies, sit-ins, demonstrations, and chitchat about racism in America, white people were still so guilty about how blacks had been treated by a minority of thugs three or four decades earlier most people would respond, “Gosh, that's so profound.”
    It wasn't black people's job to tell whites to stop being pussies, it was white people's job to stop being pussies.
    The O.J. verdict finally did that. At last, reasonable people began to roll their eyes when white liberals and professional blacks droned on about racism. The shocking images of law students at Howard University cheering a black man who had just gotten away with two heinous murders was the end of the infantilization of blacks in America.
    But it was a good run, which is why from college campuses, to the literary world, to public discourse, to politics—everyone wants to be a victim.
    LIBERALS LIVE IN A WORLD IN WHICH EVERYONE IS EITHER AN oppressor or a victim. In this rather extreme morality play, they control the casting: They are always the victims, and conservatives are always the oppressors. These dramatic productions are brought to you by network television, the
New York Times,
and NPR, with the Greek chorus backing them up on cable. The plots are so well known that liberals of various stripes have memorized their parts and take the stage eagerly, hoping to deliver a best-supporting actor performance, for which they might win, say, a Pulitzer, a university chair, or a Sunday morning interview with Tom Brokaw.
    The rest of us are forced to live in liberals’ fantasy lives, inasmuch as liberals command a monopoly on the writing of these morality plays. Naturally, they are irredeemably hostile to