Angry Black Lady has a post up about a recent study that seems to indicate that for a lot of white people, race relations is a zero-sum game: as more and more progress is made to achieve race equality in American society, a not insignificant number of whites apparently feel that any gain by black Americans comes at the expense of whites.
As ABL points out, this seems quite insane on its face. The fact that black people aren’t facing as wide-spread discrimination as they have before doesn’t mean that white people are now being discriminated against, no more than allowing same-sex marriage has any impact on heterosexual marriage.
Except, y’know . . . while I agree with this statement I think it is incomplete. Specifically, I think ABL’s quick post ignores something very basic about the way humans view themselves and their society. It ignores the very important but non-material question of relative status.
