The Racism of “Forgotten in the Flyover States”
Forgotten isn’t the word
Lest anyone forget — the United States of America is still on stolen land built by the forced hands of enslaved Africans to put money in the hands of white people through all kinds of racism.
Since this country still hasn’t provided reparations, 400 years after Africans set foot on these shores in chains, it’s a racist misnomer to call any portion of white America forgotten.
The “forgotten person” moniker that white America reserves for itself needs to expire. It started in 1876 when the Yale professor William Sumner coined “the Forgotten Man and the Forgotten Woman” in an essay.
In his essay about American life, Sumner says person A and person B get together and they pass laws to help person X. But according to Sumner, person A and person B never think about person C who has to pay for person X. Obviously, Sumner shrugs his shoulders at the fact that persons A, B, and C got their privilege, power, and money at the expense of person X.
From the beginning to the end, Sumner wasted ink for white victimhood and a white meritocracy in his essay. There’s no doubt he’s talking about working-class white people. And there’s no doubt he’s writing during the Reconstruction Era when there were new reforms for person X — Black people.
