![]() Silence, of course, was violence - and power was coalescing in new and different places. Diners at sidewalk cafes were confronted by mobs of angry protesters who refused to let them eat until or unless they raised a fist for black lives. ![]() Store owners plastered social justice slogans in their windows in the hope that their businesses would be spared if a riot broke out. And as the summer wore on, the signs started taking on a subtext: not just I’m one of you, but also please don’t hurt me. What started as legitimate outrage and demand for change was evolving into a sort of status signal, a code by which good liberals could recognise others of their kind. Here was something to believe in and an excuse to flout the stay-at-home order, and by God, we were going to take it.īut as the landscape of daily life became littered with solidarity statements and BLACK LIVES MATTER signs, the significance of these expressions began to subtly shift. The momentum of the diversity movement was unstoppable, partly because Americans were united in genuine horror over the murder of George Floyd, but also because the country had been in pandemic lockdown for months, and everyone was bored and stir crazy and absolutely desperate to do something. It’s when Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility was a bestseller in its (approximately) 53rd millionth printing when Democratic politicians took the knee wearing kente cloth when celebrities purged their white guilt in self-produced confessional videos. This was the year when the diversity industry climbed to a $7.6 billion valuation (and counting), and expensive DEI consultants flooded en masse into corporate life. Your newspaper, your cable company, your dermatologist, the company that mails pineapples to your in-laws every year as a holiday gift: all of them wanted you to know that they stood in support of social justice. It is only two years since the racial reckoning of 2020, a year when you couldn’t open your email without combing through half a dozen new corporate diversity declarations from every organisation you’d ever had contact with in your life. It’s just unfortunate for Jill Biden that her speechwriters and political aides failed to realise that this type of rhetoric has not only reached the limits of its usefulness, but has lately become akin to walking around with a sign on your back that says “cancel me”. ![]() It’s pure political strategy, a too-earnest pandering to various identity groups that has dominated the liberal discourse for the past six years. And the “tacos” line, of course, is not something she - or any normal person - would ever come up with organically. The First Lady, of course, did not write this speech herself - as evidenced by the fact that it included a word she didn’t know and couldn’t pronounce. More from this author The white privilege of BLM
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