A favorite scene in an Addams Family movie: Wednesday stands on a dock next to blond and perky Amanda, while a counselor announces that lifesaving practice demands that campers be divided into rescuers and victims. Amanda shouts, "I wanna be a victim." Wednesday observes, "All your life."
Turning the dials last night, I came across the widow of Medgar Evers, 60's civil rights martyr, talking to slushy-sounding Travish Shmiley on BET. She averred that just because Barack Obama is now president does not mean that "the struggle" is over. In fact, the Widow Evers maintains, the fight for real freedom, real justice and real equality is...ta-dah!..."just beginning."
What BS. What could that possibly mean almost 50 years later? It's like the crapola posturing of sentences like, "If only one of us remains unfree, we are all unfree." Patent BS.
What it all really means is that professional victims will never give that status up. It's the source of all their moral status and authority. And of endless excuses ("the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow") and blaming other people ("invisible underground white prejudice") for a group's own failings.
And part of the useless race game in America is that the simple possession of black skin endows the wearer with moral status. Black privilege.
Which is also BS.
Where's Wednesday when you need her?
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