Unfortunately, merely exposing the hypocrisy is rarely enough to stop it.
In theory, we live in a meritocracy, in which a person with sufficient merit can rise to the top. In practice, we live in a world where people lucky enough to have the right parents have a genuine edge over the rest ... an edge so pronounced that they are rarely aware of what life is like for people at the bottom. This breeds contempt for the lower classes, a contempt that is being increasingly returned. This is not a good thing.
Throughout history, there is a pattern that tends to repeat itself. A very competent man, someone who climbs to the top, will be followed by a son or grandson who is foolish enough to fritter away everything his ancestor built. In Britain, for example, there was a long string of very competent monarchs being succeeded by fools or weaklings. Why would this happen? Put bluntly, the competent monarchs had to struggle to earn their power and, by the time they were secure, they understood the limits of their power. Their successors, born to power and privilege, lacked that awareness. They pushed the limits too far and often got their fingers burnt. But very few of them truly suffered for their crimes. They had ‘class privilege.’
***
This is the crux of many of our modern-day problems. On one hand, our political-financial-media-etc elites have become disconnected from the real world and consumed with a distrust, even a hatred, for those who do not share their views and the wealth that insulates them from the consequences of their own actions. On the other, society has become infected with the virus of ‘identity politics,’ which makes it impossible to put the past in the past and, perhaps more importantly, focus on what’s important. On one hand, we have a steady move towards a de facto aristocracy that cares as little for the ‘commoners’ as any of their more formal processors; on the other, we have a rise in nationalism and radicalism that could easily lead to disaster.
Why? Well, I’d like to put forward a quote that - I think - explains the growing problem.
“And when Johnny doesn’t get the job and gets frustrated and complains about it he’s told that he shouldn’t be bitter because he has all the advantages and privileges of being a white male. So here he is at age 22 or 23 wondering exactly which advantages he’s had all along here because for every major event he’s had in the last 5 years, he’s been shot down because of his race and/or sex.
“If he’d been passed over at one stage by 1 point, people like Johnny would probably shrug it off. But after a while when you see people stepping in line ahead of you at every line you go to, at some point Johnny has to start wondering when he gets to compete on even terms. But the answer to that from affirmative action advocates is “never”.
“You saw it happen once and you kind of shrugged it off which, I think is pretty normal. Would you have the same response be if that was the 30th time you’d seen it? And what would be your response if each time you saw it happen was a building block towards another future event? Isn’t that what we refer to as “systemic”?”
There are people who will say that the above quote is nonsense, that it isn’t true. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that people believe it.
If you were born in some really high-class area and you happen to be white, there’s a good chance that you have a lot of privilege. But if you happen to be born white in Hillbilly Elegy country, you might reasonably ask why you don’t have white privilege? And then you might ask why people who have never worked a day in their lives insist that you do have white privilege? And then you start thinking that these people are, at best, as ignorant and stupid as the person I mentioned above ... and, at worst, that they are racist class warriors out to destroy you.
Is it any surprise that people like that voted for Donald Trump?
The point most privilege-checkers forget, I think, is that most people are self-interested. They may not be selfish, not in the sense they will gleefully steal candy from children, but they will put their self-interests first. Why would anyone vote for policies that will make their lives harder? It’s not easy to get a job at the best of times. Why would anyone want to make it harder?
But it gets worse. The curse of identity politics is that it encourages people to think in terms of their identity - and ‘white male’ is an identity. Instead of coming together as a united human race, we are being divided into tribes and judged by our tribes. What may seem, to the people at the top, a scheme to redress historical disadvantages scans very differently to the people at the bottom. They see it as nothing more than racism. Not reverse racism, racism.
If you stack the deck against one group, for whatever reason, you are engaged in racism. Whatever excuses you use, whatever historical justifications you invent, you are engaged in racism. Instead of dampening racial tensions, you are inflaming them. You are harming the people least able to cope with it, pillorying them when they dare to protest ... and then acting all surprised when they vote against you. Drowning men will clutch at any straws!
Look, I am a student of history. I know that injustices have been perpetrated throughout history. I know that people have often gotten the short end of the stick because of things - skin colour, gender - beyond their control. But one does not redress such injustices by perpetrating them on someone else. That merely makes them worse.
As a writer, I am not scared of even competition. If a writer outsells me ... well, good for him. But if that writer has an unfair advantage that isn’t connected to writing - being black or female or whatever - it bothers me, because I can’t compete.
I’ve been told that, throughout history, writers were largely WASPs. That might be true. But it isn’t my fault, nor is it the fault of everyone else like me, and there is no reason that we should be made to pay a price for someone else’s misdeeds. And, for that matter, it is not fair on non-WASP writers to have to face the suspicion that the only reason they were published was to fill a quota. Why should they have to pay a price because someone with more power than sense thinks that quotas are a good way to rectify historical injustice?
As a historian, I am well aware that women generally got the short end of the stick throughout history. But, as the father of two boys, I don’t want programs that profess to rectify this injustice by piling injustice on my sons. Why on Earth would I want them to be at a disadvantage? And, if I have a daughter at some later date, I don’t want her to suffer a disadvantage either. And everything I know about history - and human nature - tells me that she will.
Coming to think of it, my kids are mixed-race. Do I want them to go through their lives unsure where they really belong? Or if they don’t have a tribe of their own? Or to have to waste their time calculating precisely where they stand on the indemnity politics roster?
A few years ago, I saw a marriage come to an end. And the reason it came to an end, from what I saw, was that both the husband and wife were fond of dragging up the past, from minor to major offences, and neither one could move past it and travel into the future. All relationships go through bumpy patches, but it is immensely frustrating to have the past dragged up and thrown in your face time and time again. At some point, people just stop caring. They get sick of being told that they cannot put it behind them and move on. And so they get bitter and they end up curdled.
And they start saying “why should I care about the injustice done to them when no one cares about the injustice done to me?”
We need to put quotas - and suchlike - behind us, once and for all. The past must remain in the past. We need to ensure a level playing field, with everyone having an equal shot at everything from education to jobs; we need to ensure that the laws apply to everyone; we need to prove, as best as we can, that the best person for the job got the job. I don’t say it will be easy, because it won’t be easy. But it has to be done.
I’ll let Dale Cozort have the last word:
“If you look around the world you’ll notice something. The real dead-end basket case countries and regions are usually the ones where old injustices or perceived injustice
s are most remembered and most important to people. [SNIP] None of this is to say that ignoring history is good, or even that ignoring old injustices is good. The reality though is that both the villains and the victims of history are for the most part dead, or have one foot on the banana peel ... [SNIP] ... The other reality is that dwelling on those old injustices tends to lead to situations where the guys who would normally be holding up convenience stores end up running around with AK-47s and RPGs in the service of one side or the other in the dispute.
“When that starts happening on a major scale, anyone with brains and/or money heads for the nearest exit. You end up with a downward spiral as jobs evaporate and people fight ever more bitterly over the remaining scraps of value. And of course a whole new generation of injustices are created, which will undoubtedly be used to justify the next round of victimizations. 'Get over it' isn't the perfect answer. It does have some downsides, but it does work.”
Christopher G. Nuttall
Edinburgh, 2020
The King's Man Page 39