You're arranging a dinner for friends and neighbors. The majority of you can and do eat anything. But one has a shellfish allergy and you're using your grandmother's old seafood recipe. What do you do?
Take a vote? If ten out of eleven people say they're OK with shrimp, what's the plan? Tell your friend (who will to go into shock or die if he eats it) to stop being a crybaby? Or do you simply substitute something for the shrimp?
And what's your cutoff number, anyway? One? Three? If six out of eleven guests love shrimp, do you insist on making the other five sick? Do you call your allergic friends crybabies and disinvite them to dinner?
This is a ridiculous scenario that simply boggles the mind. Any normal person would make an accommodation for even one person if it meant keeping them from being sick or uncomfortable. The same goes when someone doesn't eat pork, can’t drink alcohol, or when you find out your kid has invited a friend over who has a peanut allergy. You just substitute.
Yet somehow this simple kindness, this most human of responses, has an exception when it comes to race. The dominant race feels comfortable -- at times perversely justified -- in rubbing its majority privilege in everybody else's face. If you're Black, gay, Jewish, Muslim, Asian, indigenous, you know what I’m talking about. You endure aggressions from people who insult you -- who then tell you earnestly that they're not really insulting you. But if you really feel that way, well, that's on you, so stop being a crybaby.
The Dartmouth mascot controversy is a perfect example of this. Unlike you, however, the Dartmouth Town fathers have decided to call a vote on the mascot and tell anyone offended by the toxic stew the Town is serving up: too damn bad.
Because, somehow, grandma's old recipe is simply more important than the people who have to eat it.