The Victim Mentality

Whenever a person voices accusations against the establishment about the unfairness of racial discrimination people white and black want to pop out of the woodwork to admonish the accuser for having a victim mentality. The knee jerk response of saying the victim has a victim mentality is meant to minimize or, even more effective, disparage the accuser as being little more than a self serving complainer unwilling to do the work necessary or put forth the effort to get a job or an education or anything else on their own merits. The widely postulated assumption is that these black individuals are simply waiting for someone to hand them the world of opportunity on a silver platter.

Without a doubt some people do expect to be given an opportunity regardless of merit. These people exist on both sides of the color line and every shade in between. However, to slap the victim label on people who cannot help but see the perpetuation of racial disparity is the epitome of mainstream hypocrisy. Black people in an office or educational environment are regularly assumed to be the benefactor of some affirmative action program designed to give unqualified ethnicities access to undeserved opportunities. While white people are regularly given the benefit of doubt black people are assumed to be incompetent and intellectually inferior despite the lack of evidence to support such a supposition. All the black person has to do is walk through the door and the stench of inferiority permeates the establishment.

Sadly, there are professional black people who see other black professionals for the first time will be quick to hypothesize about the validity of their credentials. And yet these same black people would be offended to have someone question their qualifications. Many of the black people guilty of this behavior are the same ones who will join the dominant white culture and say black people who complain of racial discrimination are undeserving. These people are seriously thick in their pro establishment thinking patterns full of contempt for the black community.

It is a fact that the majority of people who control the opportunity gateways practice this prejudiced form of thinking. Through various forms of propaganda it has become natural to see black people as inferior to white people. And because so many institutions are controlled by racists in key positions it is no wonder that people who are sensitive to this blatant form of discrimination try to argue the merits of assuring racial diversity by taking a careful look at the opportunity distribution practices of institutions that, at least from a casual view of its population, appear far from being racially diverse. Thanks to the legitimacy that the establishment gives to this new reverse logic that says to look at the effects of potential racism is to be racist, people now have the tools necessary to continue their racism and then label as racist the people who try and bring any attention to acts of prejudice.

Honestly, can we expect anything less from a society that names a weapon of mass destruction the peacekeeper missile. A society that is willing to classify the condiment ketchup as a vegetable serving in order to minimize the cost of providing meals to school children from poor families. People are supposed to believe that all we need are five packets of ketchup to meet the suggested daily minimum of five fruits and vegetables. Can we expect anything less from a society where people who question the motives of our government representatives are classified as unpatriotic regardless of the merit of their criticism or the ethics of the officials.

People who strive for change because the system is unfair are not to be dismissed as worthless and lazy simply because people who benefit from the status quo fear loosing their status. A worthless and lazy person would be the type of individual who would be willing to sit back and watch the status quo of racial discrimination flourish instead of showing the courage to cast a critical eye and give a legitimate claim the benefit of doubt and the proper attention it requires to effect change. Black people who hear claims of racial discrimination from other people in the black community and then respond by simply turning an ignorant eye without so much as one iota of concern that maybe something could be amiss are a credit to the establishment. Despite everything that the dominating corporate culture controlled mostly by white people has done to the black community these black people are too obliged to the system to even entertain the idea that it might be able to be improved for the benefit of everyone.

Through every step in this long struggle between black people and the establishment there have always been a handful of black people willing to put their personal welfare ahead of the welfare of the black community. Back in the day if there was an uprising planned by the slaves on the plantation these so called black people would be the ones trying to warn the white community before it was too late. When black people were marching for rights in the Deep South these black people were quick to denounce the civil rights leaders as troublemakers and rebel rousers and everything would be better if we just lay back and take the subservient lack of status label.

These are the type of black people who are more likely to say, black people need to know their place and quit their bellyaching. The establishment has been good to us in the black community and we need to show our thanks by knowing our place. If the establishment thought we deserved more then we would be given more. Everybody knows that black people aren’t as good as white people. Why just the other day I saw another black person in up in the office. Lord knows the only reason he/she was there was because of that meddlesome affirmative action. If black people had what it took to be in the office they would not have needed affirmative action to get there. If they had talent or professional skills they would be hired because of their merits.

And people wonder why affirmative action is so necessary. Sometimes we need it just to get around our own kind. The victim mentality doesn’t always apply to black people who are being kept from participating in the wealth accumulation game. Many times the victim mentality label is applicable to the black people who are participating but want to keep other black people out of the game.