Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
And frankly, there are some broad brushes you can paint with there to justify contempt. As a group, poor white people from the south are more likely on average to hold some pretty terrible views, including racism, science denialism, a fetish for guns, and so forth. But Cliff's point, I think, is more that there's a double-standard, because many similar such things are also true of poor blacks from the south, and it's casually acceptable to only use one of those two as a punchline.
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Feeling contempt for the losers and screw-ups in society is pretty natural. We all do it. However, we know we shouldn't. We know it's arrogant and uncharitable and demeaning. And we want to feel like we're good people.
But there's a way we can do both. If we publicly express regret and compassion and empathy for some people at the bottom of the ladder - say, black or indigenous people - then it turns out that gives us social license to express derision and contempt for some other people at the bottom of the ladder - say, uneducated whites. We get to be seen as good and compassionate people (and maybe even trick ourselves into
feeling like good and compassionate people) while also giving rein to our uglier impulses. Win-win!