The Self-Imposed Infantilization of Black People

The double-edged power of victimhood

Photo by Zach Vessels on Unsplash

The universe operates according to certain unshakable laws.

If an object is acted on by a force, it will exert an equivalent force in the opposite direction. If a body is immersed in a fluid, it will experience an upward force proportional to the weight of the fluid it displaces. If a White woman gets into a verbal altercation with a person of color, she’ll be doxxed, vilified, and fired from her job.

That last one is a bit of a mixed bag.

On the one hand, there are people like Amy Cooper, who was fired last year after her infamous attempt to commit homicide-by-cop. Or Sonya Holt who lost her job for screaming racist and homophobic slurs at protesters during a Black Lives Matter Rally. There’s Hilary Mueller, who attained involuntarily unemployment when she tried to prevent a Black neighbor from entering his apartment building. And Jacqueline DeLuca, who, after seeing a Black man run a stoplight, posted a Facebook rant suggesting that somebody should “kill ’em all.”

But there are also people like children’s author Jessica Cluess, who was dropped by her agent after a heated (but not even slightly racist) quarrel with a Black writer. And Dominique Moran, who was fired for asking a group of Black…