Again. White drug addicts get sympathy. Black and brown drug addicts go to jail.
Maybe I am heartless? Or perhaps I just have a pretty good b.s. meter and little patience for people who have every life opportunity and flush it down the toilet.
I do know that I give no quarter to raging hypocrites.
New Jersey governor and Republican presidential primary candidate Chris Christie has played the "liberal media" for suckers. How? Huffington Post and Rachel Maddow both featured his now "viral" video in which he shares a story about a friend from law school who lost everything--including his life--to a pain pill addiction.
White victimology transcends the political divide. White privilege is a unifying force and not a dividing one in post civil rights Age of Obama America.
Chris Christie would not have such sympathy or empathy for a person of color. In fact, in a desperate attempt to stay relevant in the 2016 GOP human zoo primary, Christie has repeatedly told a race baiting lie that "Black Lives Matter" is waging a "war" on America's thuggish and out of control police.
His bloviating speech about a friend who died from pain pills is also a great example of how racial ideologies are reproduced in day-to-day discourse and in semi-private spaces. At no point does Christie talk about his dead friend's racial background. It is assumed that he is white. Whiteness is the universal "I" and assumption of what it means to be "normal" and "American". Chris Christie, a white man, a conservative, and talking to a majority if not exclusively white audience would not need to signal such a thing. Of course, sympathy and empathy are an assumed emotional precondition when discussing "good", "hardworking", white people in "the heartland" or "the suburbs".
"Inner city" people lack the moral certitude, courage, discipline, and "family values" to be treated in such a way. Their bodies are to be disciplined with punitive force; the bodies of "normal" white people are to be helped and nurtured with love, care, and concern for their long-term well being.
Whiteness and the many lies that come with sustaining it are so obvious. Yet, there are few voices willing to expose the truth--even when it is so glaringly obvious as in the white victimology blues about white drug addicts who need hugs and love as opposed to prison and punishment.
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