Don Lemon is a fully human Human Being, who is Black and Gay, who is Journalist, and he and many others like him are part of our American culture.
Did he really think people don’t think that?? Doubtful. But that’s what he said in a recent interview (h/t Blaze).
“I don’t think America intimately knows enough people like me. I would love America to see Black people, especially Black gay men as — and I hate this word — normal, and as human beings and as part of the culture,” he said to the Washington Post Magazine. “I don’t know if America sees Black people and especially Black gay men as fully human, and as deserving of the American Dream.”
I didn’t add American Dream to the declarations above because Marxist progressive liberals don’t WANT the actual American dream of being a responsible, mostly autonomous, free and empowered adult partaking in both the rewards and risks of capitalism and its many millions of options and choices.
But if he DID want that, or recognized that in his wealth and privilege as a top anchor in the country, I would be more than happy to say that he is as deserving of it as any other of us wretched and flawed human sinners. As a particularly wretched one, I’d rather prefer he say I’M deserving of the American Dream. Throw a little wealth around, guy. You’re a deserving fully human person. AM I?
Notice that Lemon said “deserving of” and not “entitled to” which is no small difference. If only we could believe that was an intentional and thoughtful word choice on his part. But I think y’all know it wasn’t.
Lemon and those of his political leaning will say that his “lived experience” has given him the moral necessity of, and unimpeachable microphone for using the language he used here. His “lived experience” has taught him that all people are cruel and unjust, because some people were. All people are hateful and reject him, because some people reject and are hateful to him.
That’s the same logic behind CRT. All are racist because some are. All laws are part of oppression because some people can use them to oppress.
It’s a very insidiously embedded view of how Creation functions, seeded in the American liberal mind on a person by person basis in public schools and mass media.
That’s why, in this interview that reveals what he didn’t intend and didn’t reveal what he intended, that he can say this:
We’re living in two different realities as Black and White people. We knew, as Black people, what was lurking beneath the surface. I still believe that [Trump] was the necessary wake-up for America to realize just how racist it is.
I guess we really do understand critical race theory after all don’t we? White is bad. It’s so simple! How did we miss it?
Don Lemon, a fully human and culturally engaged human being, has finally made it all clear. He’s a teacher guiding us you know.
I know. Because he told me so.
Whether we like, as Black people, being the teachers or helping to guide White people through racism — it’s uncomfortable sometimes, it’s tiring — unfortunately to some degree you have to do it, because otherwise they may take the wrong actions, and we want people to do it the right way. And the right way is by understanding and seeing our humanity.
This is what liberals love to hear. They eat this up. They spit it back out and eat it up again. They roll around in it and they touch each other with it. It’s a drug they can’t get enough of. Lash me, o ye huddled masses. Whatever we’re doing isn’t good enough, and whatever we’re not doing is even worse! Tell us how bad we are!! Just not in too much detail.
The lack of specifics are the calling card of this kind of thinking. And if you reverse the charges and demand receipts, they will cite police shootings (and he does in the interview), BLM protests, all the litany of grievances that shows like Lemon’s turn into ratings and dollars but don’t represent the LIVED EXPERIENCE of millions of Americans.
But then, maybe OUR lived experience doesn’t count. Maybe it’s not good enough, or authentic enough.
Or maybe Don Lemon just doesn’t see us as fully human. Maybe he doesn’t really think of us as human beings and doesn’t consider us part of the culture. Perhaps we are not deserving of the American dream.
Since no one will ever ask him these things, I can only conclude one thing. I guess we’re not.
Bummer.