A news story crashed across the fragile sense of our reality recently, and I found myself feeling rather baffled. For those not aware of the specifics, a 65-year old Filipina woman was accosted and attacked by a male assailant while two security guards in a nearby building watched – but did not intervene. According to observers from the Internet dot com, the response of these guards was absolutely unacceptable. How exactly could they not step right up and help her?

Yes, how indeed? Putting aside questions of whether they, as unarmed guards, had any prerogative to get involved in accordance with corporate policy (almost certainly not), can we not agree their guilt was absolute and unimpeachable?  Does any doubt exist?

I reckon so. See, the story proposed a nasty conundrum for those intense believers in the race-based politics of now. The victim was of Asian extraction, while our villainous perpetrator hailed from the Afro-American community.  Since the paleskin could not be blamed for her plight , at least outside the usual appeal to Trumpism creating cultural violence, leftists scrambled to blame the security guards for their supposed cowardice and misogyny. Many comments on Huffington Post declared themselves as beings absolutely prepared to break up the confrontation, in stark contrast to those “weak men.”

Leaving aside the potentially sexist implications of men being compelled to intervene on behalf of the opposite sex simply because of “muh wahmen”, how would the image of intervention look if someone more racially  unacceptable took part? What if an oppressor-appearing phenotype like Goldberg dashed to the old Filipina’s rescue…would he be justified, or  condemned to horrendous assault in the public sphere? Let’s remember that videos can be clipped, and news agencies never apologize for their incessant destruction to the individual’s reputation. I cannot say for certain my actions would be interpreted as socially justified, especially when we consider that Asians are at times included in the ranks of the pseudo-Aryans, and otherwise with oppressed POC. The world is left to choose.

If nothing else, the scenario should go far to explain the ridiculous malleability of race and identity in the political field. People become what is useful to the elites based upon a given point in history. While America established clear delineations between whites and blacks during the slavery period, Brazil’s minority European population encouraged swirling to undermine the centrality of one black identity. Today, leftists want race to be a useful token for righteousness, but only to the extent that it fits their specific agendas. Other minorities who oppress blacks are white, and black people who target other POC are misogynists or rage pillers unable to overcome white supremacy. Soon enough, the darkest soul from Central America or India will be forced into the pale cultural corner, all for politics.

So the caravan moves on.