Culture author says social justice movement has ‘paralyzed’ victimization narratives

Political and culture commentator Noah Rothman told Hill.TV in an interview that aired Tuesday on “Rising” that the social justice movement is “paralyzing victimization narratives” by promoting “more bigotry.”

His comments come ahead of a federal court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which claims that the Ivy League institution is discriminating against Asian Americans.

“They’re paralyzing victimization narratives. The cure for the ills of bigotry is not more bigotry, and that’s increasingly what the social justice movement has embraced,” Rothman, author of “Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America,” told host Buck Sexton earlier this month. 

The case zeroes in on whether Harvard infringed on the Civil Rights Act. The Trump administration has backed the plaintiffs. 

The court’s decision could impact whether race will still legally be considered a factor in the admissions process.

“That case regarding Asian Americans is particularly informative,” Rothman told Sexton. 

“When you see people defend this conduct in the New York Times opinion page for example, they appeal to negative stereotypes in order to justify this program,” he continued. 

“They say that Asian Americans come from stable homes, and they have a good work ethic, and as a result, they’re overrepresented in these institutions.” 

Rothman goes on to say that he thinks affirmative action is “positive discrimination,” but modern activists have shifted more toward a focus of “negative discrimination.”

“I don’t think it [affirmative action] has necessarily hurt the nation because it comes from a place of a philosophical idea about positive discrimination, about lifting individuals up and taking their individual, extenuating circumstances into account when doing that,” he said. 

“The modern social justice movement, in the hands of its activists, has sort of abandoned the notion that positive discrimination is the objective. Negative discrimination is now the ideal, that certain classes based on stereotypes related to accidents of birth need to have a comeuppance,”  he said. 

— Julia Manchester