“ATTENTION WHITE ACTIVISTS: take notice of this great tactic to help uplift other voices,” tweeted white, leftist activist Ethan Wright alongside a video of him passing a microphone to someone else. White people, he suggested, should shut up and let non-white people speak. The tweet amassed over 16,000 retweets, 90,000 likes, and 1.6 million views in less than two days.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand made much the same muddled point on last week’s Democratic presidential debate stage in Detroit. “I don’t believe that it’s the responsibility of Cory and Kamala to be the only voice that takes on these issues of institutional racism,” she declared. “As a white woman of privilege who is a U.S. Senator, it is also my responsibility to lift up those voices.” Who better to “lift up” black voices than a blonde white woman?
Former presidential candidate Eric Swalwell volunteered for the job. “A white guy who doesn’t see other identities or understand other experiences should not be president,” he explained. “I do. And where there would be gaps in my knowledge or my experience, I will pass the mic to people who do have that experience.” Swalwell ultimately did pass the mic, but only after his campaign ran out of money and support.
None of these woke, white leftists seriously wants to elevate any voice above his own. If Ethan Wright believed whites should shut up, he would have simply passed that microphone. Instead, he broadcast his mic-passing moment of false modesty as a viral performance of his own virtue. If Kirsten Gillibrand wanted to “lift up” non-white voices, she would drop out of the 2020 presidential race and endorse either Kamala Harris or Cory Booker. If Eric Swalwell had really wanted to “pass the mic” on occasions of gaps in his knowledge, he never would have run for president in the first place.
Ironically, the cynical performance of white guilt assumes several racist premises. Wright, Gillibrand, Swalwell, and the other woke whites take their non-white audience for fools, pretending to listen while never ceasing to speak themselves. They presume that non-whites could never voice their own opinions without the aide of gracious white benefactors who deign to “pass the mic.” Worst of all, they insist on the bigoted lie that race determines one’s political opinions — but only among non-whites, who these leftists imply lack the faculties of reason that account for diversity of thought among whites.
Actions speak louder than words. Those who give voice to absurd racial pathologies could do us all a favor and follow their ideas to their logical conclusion: silence.
