A rising tide lifts all boats, but not everybody sees it that way.

I’m a little late to the party here (been traveling, helping run a convention, plague year, you know) but the recent flap about that one guy and his Hot Take on how white dudes can’t compete with minorities in the book marketplace* combined with all the fuckery in the US supreme court in my head to cause… well, it’s not an epiphany, but it is a very smol rant.

(We also just read Dying of Whiteness over here and it’s a hell of a book, especially clarifying on a number of subjects.)

There's a whole thing where some dudes are convinced that they're entitled to better jobs and the reason they don't have them is because women are taking them all, so if women can't work but instead are stuck in poverty with hungry kids, the guys' lives will be better. This is, I think, linked to the thing where some white people are convinced that black people are gaming the system and getting something for nothing, and those white people are willing to literally cut off their own healthcare and education to spite their face to make sure that black people don’t get any—ignoring the fact that we are all one big interlinked community and if you’re sick, I’m either also sick, or I’m paying various social and economic prices for your sickness.