Get a grip, white people. We’re not the victims.

By Max Boot
Columnist
August 6 at 11:59 AM

To understand the roots of the white rage that President Trump taps into with unerring and unconscionable precision, it helps to look at a recent news story from South Africa.

That country’s history, of course, exhibits the most extreme form of white power. The white minority denied the black majority the most rudimentary rights for decades. Then, in 1994, apartheid crumbled, and a democratically elected government took office that, remarkably and wisely, refused to exact vengeance for decades of oppression. Even today, whites occupy an economically privileged position in South Africa. Their average income is five times that of blacks. More than half of blacks live below the poverty line, compared with less than 1 percent of whites.

Yet, rather than being grateful for the forbearance of the black majority, many South African whites, especially those from the working class, smolder with resentment. Their bitterness erupted during and after an emotional confrontation in 2017 at the Johannesburg outpost of a casual restaurant chain called the Spur Steak Ranches. Videos show a white man arguing vociferously with a black woman over the behavior of her kids. As the New York Times notes, “The white man yanks the arm of a black boy, before threatening to hit the black woman and trying to overturn a table where her small children were sitting.” A few days later, the restaurant chain apologized to the woman and banned the man from entering its restaurants because of his “unacceptable actions.” Many whites were outraged at the treatment of the abusive customer and announced a boycott of the Spur restaurants. The boycott continues to the present day, hurting the restaurants’ sales in white areas.

Pretty crazy — and pretty telling. What it reveals is the sense of outrage that white people feel when they fear they are losing their privileged position to people of color. From their perspective, after having been on top for so long, any attempt to redress past wrongs or foster equal treatment feels as if they are the victims of an anti-white vendetta. A 2018 PRRI-MTV poll found that 55 percent of white respondents think that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem in the United States as discrimination against blacks and other minority groups.

Needless to say, this perception is at odds with reality. ...

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