One way to describe the excesses of woke politicians is the extremes they go to in order to assuage what they perceive as the collective guilt of Americans. We see this in several forms. For example, the wokes view American history as one of repression of people of color, and so the Oakland City Council developed their own form of “reparations” when they voted to give “Black and Indigenous families and people of color” $500 per month.
We saw this also when the same City Council decided to give a portion of Joaquin Miller Park “back to Native people” as a way to “reimagine what [the land] might have looked like.” Such actions no doubt are prompted by the best of intentions. But one has to wonder if collective guilt is the ideal way to determine public policy. For the majority of citizens who are not given such awards, feelings of resentment, arbitrariness and unfairness might easily arise which, although not necessarily uttered publicly, can cause real damage to the social fabric.
There’s another danger that arises from such sentimental policy: it inspires anyone with a grievance to act out. This “politics of grievance” now has America in its grip. “Victimization” infects both the Right and the Left: the former, who feel that their flyover “red” states are disrespected, their “Christian” religion demonized,” while the latter find racism and sexism everywhere. This isn’t the way for a country to flourish, when everyone is accusing everyone else of the most hateful, despicable behavior.
In my neighborhood around Lake Merritt, it’s common to see the words “Stolen Land” inscribed as graffiti on sidewalks. This obviously refers to the notion that much of Oakland used to be Ohlone land, which was taken over by White European settlers. (The same is true of the entire country: it was all Native-Indigenous before the Europeans colonized the continent.) With the advent of the politics of grievance, anyone who considers herself a “victim” may well feel justified in carrying out outrageous behavior. For example, last weekend, an unidentified woman was caught on video taking down the flags of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and other countries that had been flying outside a school in East Oakland. In the video, the woman could be heard screaming, “This is Mexico.” She was, presumably, Mexican, or sympathized with Mexico, and was protesting in her way what she regarded as the theft of local land from her indigenous forbears.
No one will dispute that harms were done by White European settlers in the founding of the North American continent. On the other hand, much as I regret those harms, it seems to me that we can’t forever be settling scores in order to ease our guilt. How far can that go? Shall I, as a Jew, demand that Egypt pay me reparations for having enslaved my ancestors? Shall the British people sue France for the Norman Invasion? The long, troubled history of the human race is one of enslavement, invasion, genocide, the crushing of minorities and the theft of land. What we ought to be doing, in view of this sorry tale, is making sure that such evil behavior is consigned worldwide to the dustbin of history. As long as we obsess on getting “justice” for every perceived wrong done against us, we will merely prolong this “us versus them” stalemate which has resulted in the division and ill feeling we see in Oakland today—feelings a misguided City Council uses to impose crazy policies on the rest of us.
Steve Heimoff