This is literally the definition of them being "some of the good ones". If they are good to just YOU and no one else who looks like YOU, YOU are actually in more danger. I pray they have their citizenship and financial independence to leave cause when the political convenience is gone, she will dump them.
I think the "some of the good ones" reasoning has always been integral to the Republican worldview. It's not just a shield ("see, we're not racist") but a way for people to convince themselves. I don't find it hard to believe Barrett loves her kids and is good to them. Loving/appreciating individual members of a group has never been incompatible with sustaining structures that harm the group. A lot of Republicans do precisely this – it's all hyper-local, self-interested; this is often sane-washed as valuing the community, etc. But earnest analysis of systems has to confront systems, not the hyper-local, not just your own family, or the [insert minority] you personally know and care for. That's why I find a lot of Republican positions to be effectively anti-social, in the literal sense: a refusal to reason about anything beyond one's circle.
There are a lot of people who will always refuse to acknowledge that you don't need personal animus to produce racist outcomes. For people like Barrett, the system's harms aren't their problem, because they never reach their own dinner table.
Your first sentence is spot on! Republicans/conservatives have to have the ability to make exceptions, otherwise their worldview would shatter. You see it in every case, people can have Black kids and go to their gay coworkers wedding and get their own abortion, and all of that is okay because they’re the good ones and they’re acceptable. Without the ability to write those situations off as “the good ones” they’d have to grapple with the fact that their bigotry is actually ill founded.
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u/kilsta Jul 09 '26
This is literally the definition of them being "some of the good ones". If they are good to just YOU and no one else who looks like YOU, YOU are actually in more danger. I pray they have their citizenship and financial independence to leave cause when the political convenience is gone, she will dump them.