Ann Coulter made headlines recently by stating “Civil rights are for blacks” and blacks alone. Oh Ann, sweet little Ann. It’s hard to imagine you were ever a child (mainly because you’re so damn old.)
The statement is part of a larger argument that gays, women, and immigrants aren’t owed the same civil rights as African-Americans because those groups were never affected by America’s “legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws.”
Backtrack 200+ years for one second.
So (insert Philosoraptor MEME) if African-Americans were never enslaved and subjected to Jim Crow Laws, it would be OK to treat them like shit simply based on the color of their skin? Oh, I see…
What about black women? Or has Coulter forgotten black women exist (well, obviously, yeah…)? Is it okay to lynch a gay teenager as long as he’s not a black gay teenager?
The argument also painfully illustrates white privilege (and even this white girl can see.) Coulter would allow blacks to have the same civil rights as white folks because, hey, we owe them.
While clearly a ludicrous argument, I can’t help but notice the very particulars of her language: “We don’t owe the homeless. We don’t owe feminists. We don’t owe women.” That’s a lot of not owing…
Ann Coulter’s central argument is that civil rights are nothing more than an IOU — a complex barter system dictating equality. And guess who is in charge of divvying up this moral currency?
This is capitalist culture, a culture of exchange and self-interest — a tit-for-a-tat, an eye for an eye (or an eye for whatever we say is owed.) It is juvenile, and nearly sadistic (I’m having visions of Darth Vader and Lando Calrissian. Pray I don’t alter your civil liberties further.)
Ann Coulter does not believe I (an immigrant and a woman) am owed the same rights as a man born in the U.S. I shouldn’t receive equal pay, I shouldn’t have access to affordable birth control, I shouldn’t be human and should just go away because The Man owes me nothing (and you know, I’m so dependent on men for everything.)
I really don’t care if I’m owed these things, I’m fighting for them. I believe in a moral truth, that all people are created equal.
At the end of the day, Coulter’s books make her serious bank. She is a hate profiteer. In her mummified freezer brain, it’s OK to spread hate and ignorance because she’s making money.
Ann Coulter is selling the same shit sandwich she’s eating.
Gross.