Can you provide specific examples of playing the PC-game?

Mrs. Nelson: Um, ok so, like we have this new program, computer software that is supposed help the students learn Spanish. We had this whole PD series, you know, professional development where all the teachers had to go so we could see how wonderful this new software is supposed to be. So I was pretty pissed. It was three different PD’s on language and I frickin teach math, so I didn’t understand why I had to be there, but the part that bothered me the most was that most of our students can’t even speak English. Why don’t we teach them what a noun and a verb is before we try to move on to another language. Now this is something I could never say. None of us could. We were all thinking it, we all wanted to say it, but I guarantee you if just one of us dared to criticize Ebonics or whatever it’s called these days, we’d all be called racists. Parents who can’t be bothered enough to show up to parent-teacher conferences or send their kid to school with clean clothes, will be all over you if you say anything remotely critical of black people or culture, you know. So, again, if you want to work, you have to play the PC- game. You put up with it or you lose your job. It sucks, but that’s where we are.

Mrs. Nelson not only spoke about her students and her students’ parents negatively, but she did so in a particularly harsh tone. She was not merely angry at what she believed to be nonsensical social policy – using software to help students learn Spanish – or even the fact that she, a math teacher, was forced to attend a professional development series that focused on language arts. For Mrs. Nelson, her frustration was rooted in the skill level of her students, the misguided priority of parents, and the politically correct school culture that prevented her or any of her white colleagues from voicing criticism of either circumstance. To do so, according to Mrs. Nelson, was to subject oneself to accusations of racism and subsequently put one’s job in jeopardy. The possibility of losing her job, all in the name of political correctness, had worn on Mrs. Nelson over the course of her career, and as a result, she developed a racialized form of resentment that was reflected in how she talked her students and their families, both in content and in form.

Political correctness, although variously defined, was always conceptualized in a way that explicitly connected it to race. More specifically, political correctness was always conceptualized in a way that positioned it as advantageous to people of color and

disadvantageous to whites. Furthermore, in the eyes of my conversational partners, political correctness was fraudulent. It was based on little more than hurt feelings and a misguided desire to see people of color succeed at all costs, even at the expense of innocent and more qualified whites. Political correctness was a form of the race card, and for some, it was the race card. In our new, collective consciousness, it was argued, political correctness is a way for people of color and their white allies to eschew personal responsibility and ignore their own culpability in the maintenance and reproduction of racial inequality. That is, political correctness punishes whites for their success, while it simultaneously ignores the failures of people of color.

At Some Point You Have To Stop Making Excuses

It’s always something, you know. We don’t have any money, my mom had to work, my dad is in jail. Oh, and racism. Racism, racism, racism. I’m not saying we don’t have problems, that racism is entirely gone, but the Civil Rights

Movement was a long time ago. At some point you have to stop making excuses. Just get it done.

Stephen Hayes, 28

Lamenting political correctness was only one of the ways my conversational partners challenged the authenticity of racial victimization. The second, and in some ways, more visceral reaction to charges of racism, was to almost reflexively accuse anyone claiming to be a victim of racial discrimination of making excuses. In fact, the word “victim” was used pejoratively in a number of my interviews. To complain about racism was to be a victim, and to believe that racial discrimination was a material barrier to personal and professional success was to harbor what many of my interviewees referred to as a “victim mentality.” Also, in most of my interviews, my

conversational partners repeatedly accused people of color, and African Americans, in particular, of “blaming the white man” or “phantom white privilege” for ongoing racial inequality. The unfortunate reality and uncomfortable truth, according to them, was that certain racial groups needed to examine their own pathological culture and personal failings when trying to ascertain the genesis of contemporary racialized disparities. Any suggestion otherwise was considered to be a counterproductive and outdated excuse. I decompose this perspective in greater detail, next.

A Victim Mentality

The teachers I interviewed were highly skeptical of any claim of racial victimization made by people of color. This was true, both, in a general sense and about the mostly nonwhite students at their respective schools. As such, their collective skepticism led most of my

conversational partners to delegitimize accusations of racism, dismissing them as mere excuse- making or indicative of a “victim mentality.” After it became readily apparent that the idea of a victim mentality was more than tangential to the discussion about racial victimization, I

incorporated specific questions about the term into my interview protocol, hoping to elicit more specific answers about how this particular term was conceptualized and eventually utilized. Although it was not applied exactly the same way every time, there was more than enough consistency across interviews to conclude that my conversational partners had the same process in mind whenever they accused a person of color of possessing a victim mentality.

A victim mentality, according to my interview respondents, is a mindset that is self- defeating, particularly because it predetermines that others are to blame for one’s own

circumstances. To complain about racism or racial discrimination is to consider oneself a victim, and to consider oneself a victim is to inherently make excuses for personal failures. Accordingly, black people and other people of color are never going to be completely successful in the United

States until they learn to reject the victim mentality and take control over – and personal responsibility for – their own lives. Alexa Boyd expressed this sentiment multiple times throughout her interview.

Q: I want to go back to this idea of a victim mentality. What exactly do you mean