Congratulations to Suey Park for creating the most easily disproved social justice crusade in recent years, and reminding us all why online social justice warriors are heavily mocked by non-bigots.
The Comedy Central television network runs a Twitter account for the Stephen Colbert show, while Colbert himself and his writers have their own Twitter account. The network account posted a purposely-racist post this week mocking the owner of the Washington Redskins by using the goofy right wing Colbert character to say:
That drew the attention of professional victim Suey Park, who used the hashtag #CancelColbert to try to squeeze some kind of groveling apology out of Colbert (Who had nothing to do with the offending remark.)
I want to give Park the benefit of the doubt here and say she doesn't actually want Colbert's show canceled. What she said on Josh Zepp's Huffington Post Live broadcast was that her demands were purposely unreasonable to get attention. In particular, she said:
Our demands aren't really met unless we have really serious asks or we generate these larger conversations. Unfortunatly, people usually don't listen to us when we're being reasonable
So Park is saying that she purposely exaggerates what she wants to get cheap attention. That's not a good way to start any conversation, or to assert oneself as a serious person to learn from.
The conversation ended pretty quickly when Park tried to use a cheap privilege shaming tactic to steamroll Zepp, and he didn't let it happen.
As Tim Molloy wrote on this kerfuffle, "I'm so non-racist I even think non-racists are racist." This is like protesting Roots for having racist characters.
Park is trying to make a living off of perpetual victimhood, and while most of the attention this is generating paints her as a fool, she's getting enough positive reinforcement to gain some clout among the people who might book her for speaking engagements or buy her writings.
I really don't know how sincere her beliefs are on this issue. I'll grant her that she cares about racism and social justice, but it's hard not to look at her responses to questions about the nature of satire and think she's playing a role for personal profit.
Thinking Park is completely sincere insults her intelligence. It's much kinder to say she's a faker willing to eat her own allies.
Watching that clip was like seeing a car crash, in slow motion, where the drivers of the cars are 7-year olds.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I think she's being entirely sincere. Something similar to "It isn't the work of the underprivileged and marginalized to educate the privileged and non-marginalized about their privilege." is pretty common, in my experience. I've heard this stance from countless social justice warriors who have absolutely no chance of profiting from it. And, I see their point...to a point. But objective reality and physics don't care about fairness and sometimes extra work is required.
ReplyDeleteSocial justice warrior culture really feels no obligation to explain why it thinks what it thinks. That would just be more work forced upon them by white, Christian, straight men. And, that only exacerbates the problem, right?
Unfortunately, whether fair or not, it doesn't help their situation or our understanding. It just divides our cultures and frustrates everyone and wastes airspace (as you've shown). And then this interviewer was a dick and called her opinion stupid because she wouldn't explain it. Good move, asshole.
People of all socioeconomic situations really need to internalize that life just fucks us...often. And, we end up having to dig ourselves out of a shitty situation. And that's not fair. Get over it.
I thought the whole point of social justice activism was to teach people about "flaws" in their thinking, so why not seize the opportunity when asked?
ReplyDelete