Billiejeens
Diamond Member
- Jun 27, 2019
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President Donald Trump’s political brand is based on convincing unexceptional people that they are better than they actually are, but one critic says he's doing so at the expense of exceptional people who happen to belong to marginalized communities.
“Donald Trump is literally hypnotizing mediocre people into thinking that they are meritocratic geniuses, while telling highly accomplished Black, Brown, and Asian people that they are nothing — that everything they have was given to them by those same mediocre people,” liberal commentator Joy-Ann Reid said on Tuesday in an episode of “The Left Hook with Wajahat Ali and Joy-Ann Reid.” The pundit elaborated that Trump and his administration promote the idea that white men do not need to prove their merit because, by virtue of being white men, they are already exceptional.
“They're literally seeing a deficit of white men even trying to go to college now, because they're being told: you don't have to do anything, you just have to be,” Reid said. “You just have to exist as a white man and you're qualified to do anything. You can be a neurosurgeon — just walk in there, use your brilliant European brain, and start operating on people. You're fine. You don't need to know anything. But Black people, according to the late Charlie Kirk, can't even be a pilot — even after going to school to become one. If they're sitting behind the wheel of a Cessna, the claim is they don't know how to do it, that they were just pulled off the street and thrown into the chair.”
Not only do these arguments hurt ordinary people by encouraging discrimination, Reid argued; they also hurt the American economy and do damage to the government when second-rate leaders inevitably stumble at their jobs.
BJ
This is actually an Alternet piece.
Never posted an Alternet piece before, but this was simply to delicious to pass up.
“Donald Trump is literally hypnotizing mediocre people into thinking that they are meritocratic geniuses, while telling highly accomplished Black, Brown, and Asian people that they are nothing — that everything they have was given to them by those same mediocre people,” liberal commentator Joy-Ann Reid said on Tuesday in an episode of “The Left Hook with Wajahat Ali and Joy-Ann Reid.” The pundit elaborated that Trump and his administration promote the idea that white men do not need to prove their merit because, by virtue of being white men, they are already exceptional.
“They're literally seeing a deficit of white men even trying to go to college now, because they're being told: you don't have to do anything, you just have to be,” Reid said. “You just have to exist as a white man and you're qualified to do anything. You can be a neurosurgeon — just walk in there, use your brilliant European brain, and start operating on people. You're fine. You don't need to know anything. But Black people, according to the late Charlie Kirk, can't even be a pilot — even after going to school to become one. If they're sitting behind the wheel of a Cessna, the claim is they don't know how to do it, that they were just pulled off the street and thrown into the chair.”
Not only do these arguments hurt ordinary people by encouraging discrimination, Reid argued; they also hurt the American economy and do damage to the government when second-rate leaders inevitably stumble at their jobs.
BJ
This is actually an Alternet piece.
Never posted an Alternet piece before, but this was simply to delicious to pass up.
