Posted by
Andrews on Friday, January 16, 2009 5:30:04 PM
I was reading the WSJ's
Best of the Web, when I can across the following:
'Hey, I'm Sorry About Slavery'
In addition to his other superhuman powers, Barack Obama is an
"omnipotent icebreaker," the New York Times reports. That is, the
president-elect as a topic of conversation has been helping to ease
"interracial anxiety," at least among politically correct liberals
obsessed with identity politics.
"There's a more readily accessible conduit into the conversation
about race if it begins with Barack Obama," George Rice, 45, executive
director of the Association of Public Safety Communications
Officials-International, tells the Times (which, bizarrely, raises but
does not answer the question of whether he is related to Condoleezza
Rice, the secretary of state, or Jerry Rice, the former San Francisco
49ers wide receiver--although it makes no mention of novelist Anne Rice
or erstwhile Gary Hart squeeze Donna Rice).
Here's an example of the newly uninhibited racial dialogue:
On the morning after the election, Kristin Rothballer, 36,
who lives in San Francisco, kissed her female partner goodbye on the
train while commuting to work. A black woman who sat down next to her
turned and said she was sorry that Proposition 8, the amendment to ban
gay marriage in the state, looked like it was going to pass.
"We grabbed hands," Ms. Rothballer recalled. "And I said,
'Well, I really want to congratulate you because we have a black
president and that's amazing.' "
"Our conversation then almost became about the fact that we were having the conversation," she said.
Something moved her to apologize to the black woman for slavery.
"For two strangers riding a train to Oakland to have that
conversation about race, it wouldn't have been possible if Obama hadn't
been elected," she said. "I always felt open with my colleagues, but to
say to a stranger on the train, 'Hey, I'm sorry about slavery,' that
just doesn't happen."
You learn the most amazing things from the New York Times. Before we
read this article, it never would have occurred to us that lesbians
might have been responsible for slavery.
It is quite an amusing comment, but what I find more interesting is the example of a liberal obsession, the liberal need to apologize.
Think of it this way. You are arguing with someone, you think what they said was wrong and are not shy in explaining why. A minute after the argument ends, someone else comes over and begins to apologize for your behavior. Would you not find it presumptuous of them? After all, if anyone should apologize, should it not be you? It is not the job of one person to take it on themselves to express regrets for another.
And yet that is precisely what lies at the root of the liberal need to constantly apologize. They see themselves as exemplars of the best among white people, as slightly better morally then their kind, and so they feel the need to step up and apologize on behalf of their less enlightened brethren.
In short, their apologies are not sincere expressions of regret at all, but rather an effort to appear morally elevated and to put down everyone else who does not feel compelled to join in their expression of vicarious regret.
POSTSCRIPT
This is hardly a unique expression of liberal arrogance. As I have written many times, much of what liberals do betrays their belief that they are just a bit smarter, just a bit more moral, generally just a little better than the rest of us.
I have touched on this many times, but here are a few of the articles which explain my thoughts best:
Our View of Our Fellow Citizens
Those Other People
Seeing People As Stupid
The Virtue of Humility
Lying Politicians and "Other People"
Two Kinds of Liberal
The Citizen Dichotomy
Inescapable Logic
Smaller Government , Fair Weather Friends and Special Cases
Eurocentrism? Racism? Liberal Traits All
A Passing Thought
Following the links contained in these posts should help those interested in reading more to find the other articles I have written on the same topic.