“This is crazy,” says Reardon Sullivan, former chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Party.
He means the way Montgomery County has been selling vendor space at a comics convention, MoComCon, being held January 20. The county is charging vendors in a way that has nothing to do with what is being sold but that county officials call “inclusive” (having learned that this adjective transmutes any evil).
If you belong to a favored group, you get a special rate. Nonindigenous straight white males pay $275 per table or, with electricity, $325. But if you’re a woman or favored minority, the price per table is $225 or $250.
Sullivan says that as a black person who grew up in Montgomery County, he finds it “truly insulting to say that a seller who’s black or BIPOC is disadvantaged. All we ever want is a level playing field.” (“BIPOC” is kitchen-sink code for “black, indigenous, and people of color.”)
Sullivan has the right spirit but errs in suggesting that the only thing members of currently favored groups (“we”) want is a level playing field.
One can hope that this is true of most members of these groups.
But if white guilt or white male guilt were the only impetus propelling affirmative action and other forms of race-based or sex-based preferential treatment — if, like Sullivan, all intended beneficiaries regarded such policies as condescending, destructive lunacy — these policies would be dead and buried by now.
As they should be.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney/PicFinder/Firefly
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)