Seattle Councilman Says It's Racist to Clean Feces From Sidewalk

JEFF CHARLES

It seems that Seattle has a serious issue with sanitation – but an even bigger issue with sanity. Many leftists are incapable of looking at a situation without first putting on their racism-colored glasses –Seattle Councilman Larry Gossett included. Councilman Gossett recently opposed an effort to clean human feces from the sidewalk outside a local courthouse. Why wouldn’t the councilman want this problem solved? It’s bigotry, of course.

According to The Seattle Times, Judges Laura Inveen and Jim Rogers asked their county to power wash the sidewalks outside the courthouse on a daily basis. The streets in the area regularly “reek of urine and excrement” thanks to the homeless population. That’s a reasonable request, right? Since the sidewalk is typically covered with human waste, it makes sense that people would want the city to clean it.

Councilman Larry Gossett believes that power washing the sidewalk using hoses might constitute a microaggression against blacks. Apparently, cleaning the pavement is somehow racist. Mr. Gossett – a former activist with ties to the Black Panthers – thinks that using hoses to power wash the sidewalks could conjure images of police officers turning hoses on activists during the civil rights movement. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.

Of course, Mr. Gossett’s statement should come as no surprise – this sort of thing happens all too often. Leftists are willing to stretch as far as they can to make race an issue in almost every situation. The left has fixated on racism to such an extent that they view the world through a lens of racism. It is one of the reasons why social justice warriors are so eager to label those with whom they disagree as bigots without so much as engaging in a dialogue. At first glance, this story might seem innocuous, humorous even. Yet there’s a more dangerous element to this story.

Mr. Gosset’s statement regarding the “microaggression of power washing” is just a manifestation of the left’s efforts to push a narrative to convince the American public that racism exists in every facet of our society. Thanks to their propagandizing, many individuals see racism everywhere – especially in areas where it does not exist. This tendency to look for racism in every circumstance inflames racial tensions while provoking distrust and resentment. It is a barrier that prevents Americans of different races and backgrounds from understanding and accepting each other. While this is harmful on its own, it is not the worst part.

The left’s fixation with racism drives them to perpetuate a message of victimhood to minorities. One might be tempted to believe that Mr. Gosset’s remarks are just a silly example of virtue signaling – but his statements send a message that black Americans in Seattle cannot handle seeing hoses being used to wash a sidewalk. It is a subtle message that reinforces the lie that blacks are somehow inferior; our “blackness” and the “legacy of slavery” prevent us from being tough enough to deal with seeing hoses. Unfortunately, this message is inherent in much of what the left says about race in America. Black Americans and other minorities are not able to achieve success because of white supremacy. The message itself is fundamentally racist because it implies that minorities are not intelligent or competent enough to make better lives for ourselves. The government steps in and coddles us.

The left ignores the fact that there are plenty of successful black Americans. They downplay the fact that there significant numbers of blacks made enormous contributions to American society – even in the face of slavery and Jim Crow. These facts are not convenient for them, as they wish to persuade us that we are nothing but victims who need them to give us what we desire.

I’m not saying that Mr. Gossett was intentionally trying to promote victimhood when he made his remarks. He was likely sincere in the opinions he expressed – that’s the disturbing part of this story. Many on the left actually believe the lies their leaders tell them. The victimhood narrative is inherently deceptive – it deceives those who perpetuate it as well as those who receive it. The good news is that this lie does not have to become a reality.

The best way to counter this false belief is by exposing it as a lie while promoting the truth. When the left shows us “victims of white supremacy,” we should respond by highlighting the many achievements of minorities in the United States. Each time they tell minorities that they need the government to survive, we show them how more government involvement limits their chances of success. When they try to convince minorities that racism is everywhere, we show them how this lie negatively impacts those who believe it. When we expose the left’s deception using the truth, we will win this battle.