Climate protests are how white people claim victimhood

Because we live now in a victimhood culture ("Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!"), it is a matter of honor and social standing to be identified as a victim of something, somehow. It is simply an essential part of what it means to be woke.

So let's take a look at the recent children's marches against climate change. Notice anything?

These protests are extremely pale. I mean, they make NASCAR look like a melting pot! And some people are noticing:

This is an issue CNN contributor Bakari Sellers raised in an opinion piece last month. He writes: “Climate change should be a definitive issue for Black voters, but it isn’t. That is partly because environmental advocacy groups have not always looked like us, nor have they clarified what solutions mean for our communities. And few have articulated what real environmental justice looks like.”

There is a reason for this. For white progressives, climate change is a unique issue in which racial guilt plays little to no role. Other issues such as police brutality, income inequality, and even women’s rights and access to abortion are steeped in what they perceive as the racist foundation of our country. On these issues, white protesters in the post-Occupy age feel they bear no small amount of collective guilt. But on climate change, for once, they can be the victim, not just the ally.

And man, are they enjoying it. This is the moment for angry, young white people not only to be angry, but to actually be oppressed. 

But that's not all. Maybe POCs ("people of color" for you unwoke readers) are not merely uninformed, as Sellers implies. Maybe the rank and file POCs understand that climate activism is racist to its very core (also here).

Climate activism is a white-identity matter and is going to stay that way. Moreover, it is a distinctly white-privilege matter, centered in the upper-economic classes of Europe and America and their universities. Diverse it ain't, and it ain't gonna be.

This is the fight for the young white progressive, who maybe, just maybe, is feeling a little tired of having to take the backseat. On this issue, they get to move back to the front of the bus, lead, and bemoan their own oppression. Ah, to be oppressed, the golden ticket of progressive culture, the chance to shine. The moment when they can focus on themselves and accept the applause and grave approval of the progressive culture. Well, it was bound to happen. And they are truly making the most of it.

Indeed they are.

Update: Not Woke Enough: Climate Extremists ‘Extinction Rebellion’ Hit For Being Too White, Too Rich

The Guardian published an account by a young minority environmentalist that critiqued the movement for its lack of diversity, but also for its “glorification of arrest,” pointing out that upper-class, educated, white youth can be arrested and jailed and not face long-term consequences, whereas ethnic minorities may end up in jail for the rest of their lives, thanks to inequalities within the criminal justice system.

“The tactics of Extinction Rebellion are designed by and for middle-class, white Britain. Their central rhetoric about a dystopian future fails to cut through for those of us already faced with a nightmarish present, surrounded by poverty and austerity,” Athian Akec wrote, adding that “[t]he tactic of being purposely arrested strikes an uncomfortable note for many people of colour, given the adverse experiences people in my community have had with the police,” and then blames XR for failing to be as intersectional as possible — a key element of modern wokeness.