Classism: The Left’s Less Talked About Hypocrisy…

The Left often purports to be the party of egalitarianism… Anti-racist, anti sexist, the party of “tolerance” etc… etc… and yet, they have been proven time and time again to show they themselves display some of the most blatantly racist, sexist and intolerant ways of thought and action to groups they deem “less than”. However a less talked about aspect of this lies in another domain: prejudice and stereotyping based on socioeconomic status, in other words, classism.

You probably hear the Left saying how they want to dismantle social and economic inequality such as lessening the poverty gap and stopping rich elites from getting their privileges at the expense of everyone else. They may even talk about doing away with capitalism which to them, is the “enemy”! They say they are for the common man and woman, and yet, their true actions like much of what they do show through the facade of their utopic plans…

I would argue that on many counts, they are actually quite classist and demean the common man and woman and especially blue collar families. They say they want all these benefits to blue collar workers such as higher wages, more worker’s rights, more opportunities to advance, and yet, characterize them as these stupid ignoramuses! The Leftist politicians who come from wealth and privilege talk about how billionaires shouldn’t exist while raking in millions of dollars and living a lifestyle of gated communities, private jets, designer clothes, etc… and saying how they came from humble roots when in fact, they have always known privileges the common man and woman have not. Apparently this blatant hypocrisy is supposed to have gone over our heads and lead us to believe they were just like us! They treat us like low information voters, “sheeple” if you will, who will vote however they ideologically herd us.

Not to mention, they only care about the poor and blue collar they pick and choose, like the cradle to grave welfare leech who won’t work and lives off what others work to earn all their lives, or the illegal coming into the country to get those illicit votes. The Left “cares” about them, yet tells the blue collar worker earning his own wage he’s a “racist” for daring to ask why he has to earn his living and support his family when others who can work are supported through his salary. Regular blue collar folks, especially white families who are working poor or blue collar, and even middle class in some cases are seen as invisible to the supposed “benefits” the Left wants to hand out.

However the greatest example of the Left’s classist attitudes comes out when stereotyping who a conservative is. The stereotype of the average conservative in the Left’s mind is a white blue collar or middle class family. The people in what they call “Middle America” especially. Basically characterized as ignorant, backwards, uneducated hicks! Blind to their “white privilege” despite the fact they’re struggling to make ends meet, pay their bills, support their families, send their kids to college for a leg up in life etc… and dare to then question why these families are bitter over the cradle to grave welfare recipients and illegals who are getting free or subsidized healthcare, college, food, and such while they must earn everything they ever have.

There is also the incredibly insulting classist stereotype as well that these “deplorables” as Hillary called them, that can only be explained as the poorer and blue collar people having this mindset of anti-intellectualism or not wanting to better themselves socially and economically. This idea that while these families may come off as “upright” and have wholesome family values, that is rich in morals but little else, they have settled into their lot in life as lower wage workers without thinking of advancing themselves up the social ladder. While being seen as having wholesome values is a positive thing in itself, like the black people as athletic stereotype, it implies negatively that they are not smart or educated so while not directly negative, has a negative insinuation inherent in the stereotype. Using the language from a class I took once, the Left stereotypes the common man and woman as high in warmth but low in competence. Whereas I think why not see them as both? Related to the “wholesome values” stereotype, an extra-negative spin on this is that their values are actually very narrow minded and excludes others whereas the Left of course, has more tolerant and “inclusive” value systems. In essence, these common men and women are actually very narrow minded and excluding of those unlike them as well rejecting more “enlightened” values and goals of advancement.

The most stinging and hurtful stereotype to me personally at least is the one relating to anti-intellectualism. My family background is mainly blue collar. My grandparents on both sides came from poor immigrant families with nothing, who worked their way up to gain whatever social and economic capital my family has today. My grandpa was a factory worker and my grandma was a house cleaner who dropped out of high school. My other grandma was raised in the Mid West in a farming family who had to grow everything they had in the depression. However due to their sacrifices and saving, both of my parents had the chance to go to college and one to go even further to earn a master’s degree. I have been able to have an easy path to college and higher education and a comfortable middle class lifestyle because of their hard work. My family prized education and sought after it themselves. My maternal great-grandpa fought to keep my grandmother in school after 8th grade even though they told her to drop out as “she’d marry anyways”. My paternal grandpa got his college degree in his 70’s as he never had the chance in his youth but he believed it was never too late to better oneself. I have always been encouraged to prize academics and college was the default plan for me since infancy. I personally always identified as an intellectual who loves to think deeply and critically and pursue a love of the sciences from a young age of my own volition. I look up to the high powered professionals; scholars, scientists, doctors, professors,  researchers etc… I hope to be among their circles in a professional career where I use my mind everyday.

So you can guess why then it is a very personal thing to me to be stereotyped as seen as an anti-intellectual or of some mindset to not go above my social class because of my family’s middle class and blue collar roots and especially as a conservative. My family is made up of common men and women who are not rich elitists and value common sense and street smarts as well as prize education and opportunity for advancement up the social ladder. And they also are conservative. The most shocking thing is though, even more middle class intellectuals and people with higher degrees from a more humble background are starting to think of people from similar backgrounds with that snobbery and disdain as well! For example a professor I once had came from a blue collar working conservative family but had nothing but disdain for Trump supporting conservatives and his blue collar gun-owning father once he got a PhD and entered academic circles. Maybe it’s like the Left’s internalized prejudice concept where the oppressed group internalizes the message they’re inferior.

It’s incredibly alienating to feel that my future colleagues if they knew I’m conservative would characterize me as some backwards anti-intellectual ignoramus! Or to think if I chose a career in the sciences they would think me anti-science because they also stereotype conservatives as anti-science. Or because of the fact I embrace reality instead of “your reality” that means I’d be cold and insensitive as a psychologist. Or because I do think some cultures have more backward values that I believe ours should not embrace or let in the country I’d make a lousy anthropologist. Or because some conservatives don’t accept the theory of evolution they think I wouldn’t either. Or even in the intellectual secular community them not able to reconcile the fact I can indeed be a conservative without religion.

Many conservatives are great academics, smart, intellectual and critical thinkers, they just don’t get the chance to shine among their radical Leftist colleagues. Many are from blue collar working class backgrounds but are far from anti-intellectual ignorant hicks or of a closed mindset in terms of bettering themselves and their children. Intellect can be made of many dimensions, book smart being just one. Common sense goes a long way too and you don’t need letters after your name to:

Want your country and its people to be put first by its leader.

Want your children to be in safe neighborhoods instead of sanctuary cities overrun by criminals and leeches.

Want to raise your daughter to be a lady and son to be a traditional man.

Want to be proactive about the dangers in life, and live in the world as it is, not just what it should be like.

Want real protection in the hands of the common man and woman to protect against the next mass tragedy.

Want to stand up for your heritage and culture and not let everyone else erase and smother the values that give the country its reputation in the free world.

Want your hard work rewarded and others to earn their way as you had to.

Want the truth, not “fake news” and propaganda and lies assuming you are a low information voter.

Want to be known as something more than a “deplorable”.

Amazing it took what many would consider a rich elitist to keep the promises America wanted, really speak to the common man and woman, and help make the country great again…

“I’m Just One Person”: The Response to Collective Guilt Demanded by The Left

A concept the Left likes to tout around and try to enforce is the idea that so called “privileged” individuals benefit from a wider system that is made for them, to the exclusion and oppression of others. The most common examples being race and gender, which I will focus on mainly as there is much to say on them. This “system” of oppression over women and racial minorities is the explanation for why they can’t seem to achieve in life or have that “American Dream” of hard work and related to that, why whites, men and especially white men, can’t actually take credit for their achievements! In other words, anything they achieve in life is not due to their own personal efforts, but to the wider “system”.

However, paradoxically, it seems to the Left, this “system” can also only work one way. For example, any criticism of minority communities is unjust because the larger forces, “the system” at work, is to blame, not individual choices. However why then is it the individual’s fault when talking about white people? The argument white people are complicit in a system of racial oppression and are each personally racist simply for having more privilege is just like arguing that poverty in minority communities is their personal fault despite a biased system outside any individual’s control. Or look at how men are told too, that they are responsible for benefiting from a system designed to put them on top and women second class citizens. However one cannot help being born male! Just because historically men as a group may have enacted systems barring women from achieving more, each individual man born in this era had zero personal part to play in the history of women’s oppression.

White individuals living today had absolutely no part to play in the racist atrocities of our past. They did not personally own slaves. Personally attend lynch mobs. Personally take land away from indigenous peoples or exploit them. Personally vote for segregation or internment camps as those living now would have not been born or of voting age. These events happened decades, several generations, even centuries before they were born. Before their grandparents were even born for some historical events! The vast majority of men around now had absolutely no part to play in barring women from entering the workforce or achieving outside the home. Many men raise their daughters to be strong independent women and treat their wives as their equals. Certainly none alive today barred women from getting the vote!

The “system” is supposedly some uncontrolled force of its own impacting both the oppressed and benefiting the oppressors outside any one individual’s control to stop or change it. So why does it seem like the onus for changing this almost all powerful system on people who were simply born into it themselves? Just because white men are the “oppressors” benefiting from this alleged system, doesn’t mean they have the power to control it on an individual scale! It’s not often thought of this way, but one has as much control over being born white or male as one does being born an oppressed minority or a woman. Being born into a legacy of being the historical oppressor does not make one an oppressor by default! At least not in terms of moral responsibility. Yes, any part of an oppressive unfair system in society needs change, but to demand someone change it simply because they were born as its beneficiary is as unfair as making someone live under its thumb simply for who they were born as. The people who should be changing it are not one group. If we want change as a society, the whole society must be a part of that change. Our leaders. The people who are affected by it and have a stake in the issue such as the “oppressed” groups. Those who benefit but repudiate the unfairness of it. Plenty of whites have fought for racial equality side by side with minorities. Plenty of men fight for equality for women. There is no issue with that at all.

The problem is in the idea that the onus to change the system is on someone simply because they were born a certain race or gender but have not actually done anything tangible to oppress anyone else on a personal level. Put more simply, just because something unfair was done overall by a wider group, doesn’t mean one single individual is morally responsible for that wrongdoing. The moral onus to stop unfairness is on those being unfair. For example, it can easily be argued former slave owners morally owe reparations to those they enslaved. However does any non-slave owner owe reparations for slavery a distant ancestor, or even more broadly someone of their race was a part of 200 years ago?

A man who never personally oppressed women, stopped women from moving up in their careers, never treated a woman poorly or abused one, or stole an opportunity that was rightfully a woman’s has no moral responsibility for men who do and men who did. A white person who never treated another person as less than, oppressed them, stole any opportunity from them, or thought they were less of a human being deserving of respect and dignity due to race is not morally responsible for any wider systems of racism in society. Now the Left would come back and say, “but these issues are not about individuals and their actions but wider systematic issues.” and yeah, I can understand what they are trying to argue but they made it about individuals when they decided white people and men need to take moral responsibility for the privileges they were simply born into but never actually stole from anyone through their own actions.

These ideas about personal moral responsibility for a wider system sadly have taken hold on many white people and men who are genuinely not racist or sexist people and reject their unearned privileges and even actively fight alongside others against the alleged “system” benefiting them in the name of greater moral good. This leads to an idea akin to Original Sin where being born a white or male is cause for some form of collective guilt for inheriting privilege and a legacy of being designated as an oppressor. However, my response to that is: But I’m only one person. 

As an individual, I have no control over a wider social system. I only am able to control my own actions. So the questions I need to ask myself are not “How have I benefited from privileges I didn’t earn?” or “How am I complicit in a system I can’t control?” but “How have I treated those around me?” “How do I make sure I’m being fair and equitable?”, “How do I treat those who look different than me?” That’s all I can control! How I act. How I treat others.

You are not a racist for simply being white in (an alleged) system geared for whites and passively benefiting simply due to your race at birth. Your actions make you racist or not, not your whiteness. You are not a misogynist for simply being born a man in a society (allegedly) geared towards men in a similar light. The onus can’t be just on one person to change an entire society! And certainly one individual can’t be asked to feel moral guilt over something they were never personally a part of creating!

Not to mention, we all have unearned privileges in life. Why is “privilege” such a dirty word? Even if it’s not racial or gender privileges, having a good family, friends, SES, health, etc… are privileges that can be unearned but given to us through our lot in life. I also believe while we should take a moment to reflect on them and be thankful and not take them for granted, we shouldn’t feel guilt simply for having better luck than the next guy. We can’t “do it all” so to speak.

So while I would love to have the power to take away all the inequality, racism, sexism, injustice etc… in the world, the Left needs to remember:

I am just one person!