Let’s talk about the house we’re building. Or maybe, the one we’re tearing down.
There’s a strange energy in the air right now. A push, often from older, white men like myself, to roll back protections, to question the very idea of civil rights designed to shield minorities from the tyranny of the majority. It’s framed as a return to “fairness,” as an attack on “wokeness,” as a defense of a way of life that feels threatened.
I get the fear. Change is unsettling. Losing a position of perceived privilege can feel like an attack.
And now, a thought experiment we can do together.
This is about what happens after, all this?
What happens when the demographic tide inevitably shifts, as it always has throughout human history? What happens when the shoe is on the other foot? When the “old white guys,” or their children and grandchildren, find themselves no longer the default majority, no longer the ones automatically holding the levers of power?
When that 400 years of keeping a few groups down gets some time for payback or will they do the right thing and teach us a better way to be a society? Will they create an environment that shows the white guys they are worthy of their time and energy? Will self-righteous purity finally be given the “au revoir!” that it deserved long ago?
And speaking of self-righteous purity, let’s add another layer to this. A significant part of this push comes wrapped in the banner of a singular “Christian” worldview. Yet, within Christianity itself, there exist over a thousand different sects and interpretations. So, the question becomes: Which version gets to be the standard? Can those demanding conformity first come to an agreement among themselves before imposing their beliefs on the rest of us? The silence on that question is telling.
What happens when they are the ones needing protection from a new majority with different values, different priorities, maybe even different resentments? What happens when they are the ones facing discrimination in hiring, in housing, in getting a loan?
Where will they turn?
To the courts? To the Civil Rights Act? To the very institutions and laws that are being systematically weakened and discredited right now by the people who believe they will never need them?
It’s like watching a carpenter meticulously dismantle the fire escape on his own house because he doesn’t like the way it looks. He is so certain his house will never catch fire that he destroys the one of the most valuable tools that could save him when it inevitably does.
This isn’t a threat. It’s not a call for revenge. It is a simple, mechanical observation about the nature of power and the profound, almost suicidal, lack of foresight in tearing down a system of universal rights.
The protections enshrined in our Constitution, the hard-won victories of the Civil Rights movement—these were not designed just for one group. They were designed to be a universal shield, a promise that the basic dignity and rights of every citizen would be protected, regardless of who holds power at any given moment.
When you chip away at that shield because you think it only benefits someone else, you are not just harming them. You are guaranteeing that when your time of need comes, when the political winds shift and you are the one facing the storm, the shield will no longer be there for you either.
History has a funny way of teaching the same lesson over and over: the rights you deny others today are the rights you will be begging for tomorrow. It’s a difficult truth. And it’s one we are choosing to ignore at our own peril.