You cannot on the one hand state that natural qualities should be irrelevant to people’s opinion of others and then make it the basis of special treatment.
The problems of homophobia and racism are very real, but nowhere are they more serious than in the heads of liberals, who need victims like shepherds need sheep. The last thing they want is to for the victim status afforded to certain groups to be withdrawn, because they have so much invested in it. They want to ring-fence minorities as if they’re protected species, then stand guard over them. It allows them to think of themselves as enlightened individuals in a prejudiced world – part of the thin blue line holding back all those slack-jawed hillbillies and suburban bigots, who are just itching to form a posse and run them queers and darkies out of town. Moreover, it reinforces the idea that our social problems are caused by insufficient control by the Left’s coalition of intellectuals, bureaucrats and caring professionals.
What I find most wretched about all this is that the more tolerant society becomes, the more desperate the race and gender hustlers become. In their determination to keep their pet victims from escaping the reservation, they spread resentment and division, and deny people an opportunity to be treated as equals. As for those of us who decry the creation of designated victim groups, our stock has steadily fallen over the years. As Thomas Sowell put it: “If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labelled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today.”
Read more here.
Thanks to Gerard for linking to Taylor's piece.
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