Experience With Oppression is a Job Requirement

Seen over at The National Post

There’s a debate among America’s left-leaning voters right now about who is qualified to be the Democratic presidential nominee. It has nothing to do with foreign policy, health care or the Green New Deal. It’s not about who has the best CV or who can knock out Trump. No. The most pressing issue for a large subset of Democrats is whether the gay South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg — who announced his exploratory committee in January and says he’ll have a major announcement to make in coming days — is oppressed enough or “just another white man.”

The potential problem, according to Slate essayist Christina Cauterucci, is that despite being gay, Buttigieg “is also white, male, upper-class, Midwestern, married, Ivy League–educated, and a man of faith.” In other words, his supposed privileges cancel out his oppression, and for many Democrats, experience with oppression is a job requirement. “Has Buttigieg faced setbacks or barriers to success because he’s gay?” asks Cauterucci. “Does he have an identity-specific worldview that would inform his work as much as, say, Harris’s experience as a black woman would inform hers?”

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