Thread by @JuliusGoat

Finally someone is thinking of the poor forgotten white boy.

Forced to face a world where everyone doesn’t automatically presume white boys are the best, poor Pinnochio is in danger of turning back into wood.

Many mornings he has only energy enough to put on one shoe.

To be clear, what's creating this fellow's social angst (such as it is) isn't that he is no longer the special default center of everyone's world. That's something called "everybody else's life always."

What's creating this fellow's social angst (such as it is) is that so much of society still insists he must be the special default center of everyone's world, and the world isn't cooperating quite as much as it used to.

Living in that conflict probably is confusing, and it probably does create challenges and conflict and social angst.

But the source of these struggles are the entities telling the lie, not the ones telling the truth.

And the lie is "you should be the special default center."

And Esquire should know that and it certainly should know better. Anyone rightly pointing out this guy is only a kid and shouldn't be subject to national scrutiny had better begin and end with the national magazine that decided to make him the lone face of a cultural pity-party.

And also realize that, if you put Trayvon Martin's face w/the same expression onto this pic, roughly 40% of America immediately switches from sympathy to dread, and uses their fear as proof that the scary kid deserved the death he got.

Since we're talking about American boys.

And if this were a profile of American girls, this picture could be used in a date rape investigation and would make at least 40% of Americans believe it was proof that she consented to sex.

But we were talking about how scary it is out there for American boys.

And if this American boy were named Ahmed (as many American boys are) then it would make 40% of the country feel justified in wearing red hats and going to rallies and chanting about travel bans and ignoring the white boys who plot to build bombs.

Since we're talking boys.

The tragedy of not being the center anymore is not a tragedy, it's an escape.

It feels like tragedy because of the choir of voices insisting it should be as it was.

Or an Esquire of voices.

Because they weren't really talking about American boys.

They might not even know it.

coda: reading the piece (well-written, little editorializing), I find it difficult to determine authorial intent, which is why I focus on Esquire rather than the author.

Because the editorial intent is super super clear.

Echo chamber on both sides is bad.

Huh.

Well an echo chamber is, I think the same as that dread media beast "the bubble."

On both sides, huh?

That would be where you only understand your own perspective, the echo chamber.

I can see it applying to those whose sympathy is reserved for those only like themselves, whose reactions to the anger of those different from them is just an incurious bemusement.

It's a funny charge to level against a group that includes people of many cultural backgrounds, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities, and countries of origin, who all advocate for the essential humanity of one another despite these significant political differences.

And yes, all of those differences are political differences. Race and gender and sexual orientation and countries of origin are political constructs.

The divide between right and left is less a political difference and an argument about who is human, and which humans matter.

Let me say that I don't think you can arrive at a place where all humans matter, despite political differences, while existing in an echo chamber.

So much for your "both sides," This Guy.