I will stipulate a principle, one which is somewhat obvious: those who study trees professionally have a hard time seeing the forest, just as most of those who enjoy the forest know little about it.
And those who study grievance quite generally ignore context—as one obvious example the ubiquity of slavery in all times and places outside the modern Christian West—and suffer from the added defect that, in absorbing themselves in what amounts an abstract activity, which compares an arbitrary ideal to an imposed generalized “reality”, quite often find themselves INVENTING the trees which they still fail to locate within the forests of history and place.
It seems to me that the first step in grievance studies is creating an ideal society which has NEVER EXISTED ANYWHERE, and comparing that to the present and then getting angry.
There is nothing wrong with dreaming, and nothing wrong with reform and improvement—these are, after all, Western ideals which have already worked for levels of prosperity and justice unique in human history.
Bit finding deep “oppression” in the midst of a wealth of opportunities most of humanity would have given their first born for, for most of history in most places, is ludicrous.
And to perform this exercise it is necessary to construct a golem of sorts, something neither alive nor dead, called “The Black Experience.” This is a mystical, unitary thing floating invisibly in the air, which white people cant see or feel, but which most of those interested in the topic will not shut up about.
YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE, will be spit by white people at other white people. Fair enough, is the reply, but neither do you.
And in my view, neither do most black people. The experience of an African King is different from that of a Bahian fisherman, and no doubt there are subtle shafes of difference if you grow up in the hood in Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham, England, Detroit, or Watts.
And obviously there are a lot of middle class blacks. They may protest—my life is not that bad—but the Grievanceistas will scream at them YES IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE BLACK AND SYSTEMIC RACISM. DO NOT DARE DEFY US.
There is a marvelous, witty and in my view very useful play written by Dave Harris called “Everybody Black”. It has enpugh in it that you can walk away with many messages, but I viewed it as a deconstruction in a helpful way of the notion of “Black Identity”. He breaks the fourth wall in the first scene, if memory serves—and spends the rest of the exploring black IDENTITIES, which ranged from a comical then tragic portrayal of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben (ironic foreshadowing—this was a year or two ago I saw this), to a black Oxford Professor, to a very comical ghetto rap contest.
Here is the thing: the notion of a unitary black identity, one characterized by unitary and even and demonstrable oppression, is a racist fiction. Saying “black people are oppressed” is as racist as saying “white people are racist.”
The GOAL is coherent principle, in my view, which is how we as Westerners came to critique the racisms and bigotries many thousands of years old, and came to oppose them consciously.
And the PRINCIPLE is diversity: people vary in their characters and experience all over the place, so we need to judge them as individuals, on the basis of their character, according to MLK, Jr., although each of us may in turn differ as to what most matters to us. Both the people judged vary, as do those judging.
And of course some white people ARE racist, which means they see s black face and make a whole series of assumptions about them that they thrn never question.
But many white people are curious, ask questions, learn and develop honest friendships with everyone who deserves it.