The reason is neither A, B, or C. The answer is D:

Because oppression needs to stop, and the method she’s taking to address it won’t work. It hasn’t worked, never has worked, and will continue to not work the same as it hasn’t worked through all of history.

Yes, the story is about a female journalist facing oppression. But the story quickly has her turning around the finger and blaming “white males.” You don’t solve an “us vs them” oppression mentality by reinforcing it.

The solution to systemic social oppression is to attack it at its root: the very idea that there is an “us” and a “them”, and the social pressures that cause humans to desire to oppress one another.

The very real danger to women and blacks from the author’s article is that people take it seriously. Because there are two ways it will most likely play out in the long run, and both of them bad.

The first is that awareness to the suffering of women and blacks is raised specifically by targeting white males. Laws and protections are put in place that restrict the activity of white males specifically in that regard. However, white males are still in power. Although those at the top of society don’t care in the slightest, those near the bottom, who are under the heel of other kinds of oppression (maybe they’re in denial and in the closet, maybe they’re poor and repressed, maybe they’re from a rural dying area). People in this situation, globally, seek scapegoats. And if they see the group they scapegoat getting ‘extra privileges’, this is not going to sit well with them. The oppression will just get worse, more violent, and more bloody. It is the sad case of human nature to act this way, as the guard side of the research of Stockholm proved. So despite the fact there is systemic help, you will start seeing more social violence.

The second is that it works. That it resoundingly works. That white men are blamed, and all white men are removed from power. Well… you now have a new power dynamic, one wOnehere black women are dominant, and white men are… still vilified. They would quickly become the scapegoat, blamed for every trouble that black women face, even when it’s not there fault, because the social momentum is behind it. We see it all the time when one religious culture supplants another as the dominant religion. The dominant culture becomes the minority, and the new dominant religion, which was all about ‘peace and love’, starts killing, threatening, and oppressing the previous dominant religion. It happens throughout history ALL THE TIME.

These are not the only two possible outcomes though. The two most successful bits of legislation at decreasing oppression against blacks weren’t hate crime laws. They were these two:

• Ending Segregation
• School grants and housing loans for the low-income.

Ending segregation forced blacks and whites to share spaces that were originally separate. It forced a lot of awkward conversations, and having to admit, “Yes, the other person is human too.” This addressed a lot of the social issues.

At the time school grants and housing loans for low income passed, blacks were disproportionately low income. However, while the law didn’t target blacks specifically, it was, by far and large, helping blacks. Yet, there wasn’t public outcry against it, racists didn’t press hard to change it, because they were left with a “Oh, if I’m down on my luck, it’ll help me too. I’m glad there’s that safety net for me.” And that helped address the systemic parts of the problem. And those two things started a trend that have been reducing oppression against blacks ever since. There’s still a lot to do, mind you, but those two things made some of the biggest impact in semi-recent history.

Those two thins are how we fight oppression:
— Shared spaces, forcing the oppressed and oppressing tgroups to enter into ‘awkward dialogue’

— Legislation that helps those disproportionately disadvantaged… not because they’re part of a disproportionately disadvantaged group, but because the group they’re in is disproportionately disadvantaged.