On the Both Sides
So it happens that one side might make the obvious point, and even a bit smugly; for instance:
After this administration's bullshit DEI erasure and not "trusting" a Black pilot to fly, it's a Black man who piloted Artemis II and executed a perfect re-entry and splashdown.
(@NYPoliticalMom↱)
Thus it might occur that someone else makes the obvious fallacious retort:
So we all see you are too dumb to understand DEI and its consequences. Thanks to DEI (Didn't Earn It) literally everyone doubts the ability of minorities since they often, under such policies, are selected without consideration of merit. That's not racism, that's fact.
(@CramerMissy)
So, let's compare the two: It is important to observe there is nothing actually wrong in NY Political Mom's post; one might quibble with the adjective "bullshit", but that is not so effective an objection. If one absolutely must write the opposition's argument for them, the underlying objective might suggest some sort cherrypicking about DEI erasure and an episode about a black pilot most people would not remember amid such extraordinary political noise, and, besides, wasn't actually Donald Trump but somebody else entirely, so there.
For her part, NYPM,
a.k.a, Side-Eye Pinkie Pie↱, told Missy, "That's a lot of words for, 'I'm racist.'" And let's take a moment for Poe's Law, because
@MingoTango↱ tried explaining, "We may be racist but we are not wrong on this one", and we might wonder if the cat account with over 1300 followers somehow fails to understand how the language works.
Meanwhile, it's true: The Trump administration has attempted an erasure of diversity, and a popular conservative once expressed his doubts about black pilots, and, sure, a black man piloted the space mission. What, exactly, is Missy so upset about? Was a time when Side-Eye's line would have been something we called a joke, and in such matters timing is everything. Compared to once upon a misty water-colored memory, it reads like Missy feels just a bit burned by a joke that shouldn't be so easy.
But her angry response is, by comparison, utterly fallacious. One response, from
@harabo↱ comments on the obvious: "Literally everyone? You have no idea how stupid that phrase is. Use it in an interview sometime." Another,
@edenmccoy↱ suggests, "There's still time to delete this".
Read through it. "So we all see you are too dumb to understand", who's this "we", and how are they "all"? Or, rather, we get it, it's just an angry lash for satisfaction. "Thanks to DEI (Didn't Earn It)", relying on the joke as if it was a real thing is certainly a choice, but, "literally everyone doubts the ability of minorities", no, that's not how it goes, and, really, "they often, under such policies, are selected without consideration of merit", is the same thing racists have been saying for generations; they even teach it to their kids. Simply declaring, "That's not racism, that's fact," is no more compelling an argument today than it was fifty years ago.
And, sure, the algorithm feeds us this stuff, but sometimes it has its reasons. It most certainly had its reasons for bringing the discussion to Joyce Carol Oates' attention. And, here, something about once upon a memory;
Oates↱ recalls↱:
before DEI, only white men were even interviewed. DEI was instituted to at least make interviews possible for non-white men; & to everyone's surprise, or no one's, once the playing field was leveled women & persons of color began to be hired.
naturally, white men were miffed. not fair!
when it's sheer color-blind merit, all benefit.
T***p had to remove DEI & replace it with his own brand of DEI: T***p loyalists. that is sole requirement for advancement in T***p DarkAge
I know, many people just don't believe this. in fact, in some professions it was even more exclusive: an elder got on a phone, made a few calls, & his candidates (younger white men, protégées of his or his friends) were offered a job, without an interview. do you seriously think that, however educated & qualified, women & persons of color from outside this network had a chance? maybe literally 1 in 1,000. when I was an undergraduate, virtually no women were on university faculties anywhere except women's colleges; I did not have a single woman professor until graduate school & then just one, famed Helen White, eminent in her field.
now, things are much different, but the pull is back toward the old white-boy network again, with T***p's special brand of DEI rewarding MAGA loyalists.
Journalist David Murray (
@GypsyBoots8↱) responds with accusatory, albeit familiar, fallacy—
And your generation of progressives got a chance to do the exact same thing to white men. Congratulations, I guess that's what progressives call "justice." And you wonder why they voted for Trump.
—and refers out to an antiliberal website and an article from a
ticket scalper complaining about declining white authority↱. There are some obvious responses to such fallacy¹, and then there are even more obvious responses, such as
Oates↱ suggests:
white man miffed at having to compete on a level playing field with women & persons of color pouts, stamps little foot, votes for the nearest white-racist-fascist.
thanks for the explanation but we already knew.
Murray, for his part,
stands↱ firm↱:
Did you read the article? The playing field wasn't leveled, it was tilted the other way--in certain professions, at particular times and for certain generational cohorts. The millennials who experienced this particular unfairness were paying for previous generations' sins.
Inherited racial guilt is part of progressive orthodoxy now, a throwback to anti-humanist and anti-liberal beliefs.
Two notes go here to clarify:
• "Inherited racial guilt" is in the eye of the beholder²; it is Murray's own indictment.
• The article he provided complains, "2014 was the hinge, the year DEI became institutionalized across American life", which is something we've been hearing since 1974, at least. Apparently, the doors didn't really "close everywhere all at once", and hasn't really been happening over and over again in the interim.
These points might not be apparent
prima facie from abroad; it is easy to underestimate how simplistic and persistent traditional American supremacism can be. And, as we're
long aware↗, each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making. And, sure, that's a big part of why we have to do it all over again, and again, and again, and again until we don't.
But think about it, even prestige
Joyce Carol Oates does not warrant any better a retort from social media than we might find at a backwater board cultivating overripe sass. Even the journalist couldn't muster anything better than the sort of thoughtless fallacy long a staple of American supremacist traditionalism.
____________________
Notes:
¹ It's not always a convenient arc to click through, so there is a question of how far out to reach; author Chris Floyd (
@empireburlesque↱ replies to Murray with heavy sarcasm:
「Little mister @GypsyBoots8 is right! As a white man born in the 1950s, I can attest that neither I nor any of the many thousands of white men I have known or met were EVER offered a job. Every single job in the US went exclusively to black people and women in the past 65 years.」
² "CRT: Critical Race Theory as Bogeyman" #
2↗,
9↗ (2021):
「Consider McDonald on "anything about race unflattering to white people", or the critical-theory application to wage discrimination, in [CRT #2]↗.
Is it true that a man's salary offer is, by habit, higher than the woman who would be doing his job? In these United States, it is likely true. If it is true, does that make him feel bad? And to what degree is that bad feeling his own infliction upon himself? And does he teach it to his son? Does the history of wage discrimination make his son feel badly about being a boy?」
Savage, Jacob. "The Lost Generation". Compact. 15 December 2025. CompactMag.com. 13 April 2026. https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/
