The Myth of Marginalization

Who are the marginalized in today’s absurd society? Not those who wear the label.

We all know whom we are supposed to think of as marginalized: racial minorities, women, and homosexuals. Examples of this abound. On Wednesday, far-left Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) spoke at the Economic Security Project’s Guaranteed Income Now conference in Detroit and “was asked what her recommendations were for those in the audience doing the hard work of advocating for marginalized communities.” Everyone knew which communities were being discussed. 

On Thursday, the University of Connecticut announced that Dr. David Mahatha, the new assistant dean of Diversity, Belonging, and Community Engagement at the UConn School of Law, had previously “organized Bridge to Law programs exposing middle school students, many from marginalized communities, to law school and to the possibility that they could become lawyers.” The same day, the University of Georgia’s student publication The Red & Black reported that the Athens Pride and Queer Collective “centers its work on helping the Athens LGBTQ+ community by working with historically marginalized communities through outreach, social connection, education, and events, according to their website.”

These stories and others, however, demonstrate in themselves that “marginalized communities” aren’t really marginalized at all. Instead, they’re celebrated, coddled, praised, and handsomely remunerated. Governors expatiate on what they’re doing to help them. Academic programs and social activist groups focus on giving them all manner of aid. The real marginalized groups in American society today don’t get anything close to this kind of attention. In fact, when they aren’t being ignored altogether, they’re being vilified.

Today, being marginalized is a big business. Those who attain coveted marginalized status find that it opens the door to all manner of preferment, wealth, and plaudits. If Gretchen Whitmer and other leftist do-gooders really cared about helping genuinely “marginalized communities,” they would turn away from the left’s chosen victim groups and instead focus their efforts on aiding those who are unfairly portrayed as oppressors, including their political opponents.

A few years ago, I spoke at Stanford University for about three minutes before the students walked out in a disruption staged by the Stanford administration; in those minutes, however, I did get the chance to thank the most marginalized group on campus, the Stanford College Republicans. The hostile crowd laughed derisively, but I was serious, and what I said was true. Leftist groups were and are coddled by the administration, showcased and showered with favors, preferential treatment, and donations. Meanwhile, what is being marginalized if it isn’t having the university administration work to discredit and disrupt a campus group’s lawful activities?

Another example came Thursday, in a Voice of America hit piece on alleged “anti-Muslim hate groups.” The author, a former Afghan mujahid named Masood Farivar, claimed that “ACT for America, Jihad Watch, and the David Horowitz Freedom Center are part of what experts describe as a well-funded, close-knit anti-Muslim industry,” without giving a hint of the reality of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women as if opposition to those things were motivated solely by gratuitous racism and “Islamophobia.” 

Farivar also showed no sign of realizing the irony of being a cosseted member of the leftist elites, with a Harvard degree and a book published by Grove Atlantic, and claiming that the people he is hitting at the VOA are a sinister, well-heeled cabal. We are, in fact, the marginalized, with no opportunity for a fair hearing on the large platform he used to defame us. 

Related: Maxine Waters Calls Trump Supporters ‘Domestic Terrorists,’ Demands Action Against Them

The quintessential example of someone who has made a fortune by means of our absurd society’s obsession with the putatively marginalized is race huckster Ibram X. Kendi. His Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University was founded in May 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd riots, and attracted $45 million in donations in its first year. Kendi has been showered not just with tens of millions of dollars, but with awards and honors from all the most right-thinking leftist foundations — and all for whining about being oppressed. Kendi is an establishmentarian’s establishmentarian, celebrated everywhere for being so very marginalized.

There are actually marginalized individuals and groups in America today. Old Joe Biden identified a large group of them when he thundered in Sept. 2022 that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” When the president of the United States calls you a threat to the republic just for disagreeing with him, you’re plenty marginalized. And no one is showering these Americans with money or weighing them down with honors. The truly marginalized in America today are on their own.