Victimization Drives the New Power Dynamic

Project 21 member Vince Ellison “feel[s] a bit sorry” for Jussie Smollett – the actor recently convicted of faking a racist attack on himself in a bid to advance his Hollywood career.

“His generation believes that for a black man, the highest form of human existence (self-awareness) can only come through victimization,” Vince wrote in a commentary for American Greatness.

He added:

Consider the adulation of the martyrs (both real and supposed) Martin Luther King, Jr., George Floyd, Trayvon Martin and Colin Kaepernick. Jussie, understandably, coveted some of that exaltation. He had it for a fleeting moment.

Jussie Smollett is rich, famous, young, and handsome. And despite being openly gay, he had become enormously successful in a nation that he and his peers believe to be irredeemably racist, misogynist and homophobic. Now convicted of orchestrating his own hate crime, he is a convicted criminal and liar.

Jussie’s group believes that one is not favorably defined by one’s relationship with one’s family, friends, God or other accomplishments. They are defined only through the suffering inflicted upon them by racist white men. Since this suffering is something these soft young black people are finding more difficult to experience organically, they must manufacture it.

“Black men are the only men in America who can brag about getting their asses kicked when they say it was done by racist white men,” Vince suggested. “In this bizarro world, black people who claim success solely on the basis of merit and hard work are deemed to be sellouts.”

As critical race theory remolds the way Americans prioritize exceptionalism, this perverse assessment of heroism changes everything:

While most of America views heroism through the lens of Yorktown, Gettysburg or Normandy, the old civil rights concept of heroism through torture and victimization are mythologized in other parts of this nation. In the black community, the Civil Rights Movement has a more heroic status than every American war combined…

Statues, movies, holidays, streets and schools named for these civil rights leaders are daily reminders that black self-actualization doesn’t come from manly pursuits but through publicly expressing fear of or publicly receiving beatings from racist white men…

And, while the old marchers speak of their heroics and reveal their scars from those days, impressionable young men like Jussie Smollett, LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Bubba Wallace hold their manhood cheap. If 100,000 black men murder another 100,000 it does not matter. To be beaten by another black man garners no status. Sadly, to be rewarded, and become a fulfilled black man, a white man must do the dirty deed.

Smollett, Vince wrote, “is a microcosm of the cowardly, narcissistic, prideful and nihilistic behavior that has permeated throughout much of the… black community.”

Click here to read all of Vince’s commentary – “Jussie Smollett and the Power of Black Male Victimization” – at the American Greatness website.



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