Leftists value victimhood over skills
Iwas raised on the likes of Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Michael Harrington — and Karl Marx. I was a leftist, and still am. Yes, it should be as Marx said: “from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs.”
Today, a lot of Americans on the left do not seem aware of the difference between having abilities and having needs. Today’s leftists, usually calling themselves “progressives,” think being a victim infuses ability. They believe that being in need of such things as food, clothing and shelter qualifies a person to be rewarded with the kind of means that usually go to a person with productive abilities.
Progressives don’t like the term “political correctness.” But political correctness is what they want to practice. It is a weighty point in the dogma of progressives that underdogs in our society should be shown special consideration. Anyone who has had to struggle or been the victim of injustice is by definition a better person than someone who has not.
People who know hardship or persecution certainly should be given more than empathy and compassion, but should they also receive the rewards that usually go to persons with genuine abilities? It is a kind of sentimentalism to believe that victims are more worthy of occupying positions of responsibility than are people who have led softer lives.
For example, the heads of many colleges and schools in our country believe special efforts should be made to recruit members of victimized groups as both students and faculty. Almost every educator who has been on a search committee for faculty or students is aware of the pressure put on the committee to give special consideration to people who will make the place more diverse: people born with two X chromosomes or dark skin. The pressure for diversity has become much stronger than pressure to find the most qualified.
As chairman of a college English department in Connecticut for 17 years, I was involved in numerous hiring decisions, both part-time and full-time. Three cases from that time quickly come to mind. A white male whom all the members of the hiring committee knew as very qualified from his time with us as a part-timer lost his bid to become a full-timer because he was a white male. A white male whohad worked several years in an English coal mine was an almost unanimous choice for a full-time position with us because he had endured the hardships of being a coal miner. A woman who had served us well as a part-timer sued the university for discrimination when she did not get an open full-time position. The man who got the job had the doctoral degree required for the position; the woman did not.
Sometimes it is argued that white students have an unfair advantage because most of their families are relatively well off, and they can afford to attend private, after-school classes that will prepare them to do well on the big tests. Such after-school, test-prep classes should be available, without charge, to all students who need help. The benefits some students get in preparing their admissions essay can be mitigated by changing the conditions under which admissions essays are written. If every student wrote an essay under the same conditions and had the same amount of time and unbiased proctoring, students with a coach would have less of an advantage.
Helping the needy and persecuted jump to the head of the line will do great harm to our country. Yet almost all people calling themselves progressives favor doing just that. In the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s support of identity politics was a significant cause of Donald Trump’s victory in the Electoral College. The majority of voters in the elections in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin were fed up with all they heard of the importance of giving breaks to the needy and persecuted. They were fed up with all the political correctness. If progressives do not abstain from using the vocabulary of political correctness, the results of this year’s congressional elections will be very disappointing.
We have great hopes of winning Democratic seats in both the Senate and the House. But if voters are made to feel that the issues of the needy and persecuted are more important than their own, they are likely to vote for Republican candidates, and we will be faced with six more years of Donald Trump’s presence in our lives. Nothing is more important to our future than getting rid of Donald Trump’s ignorance and lying.