Today, I created an image of a Red Starbucks cup with “Concerned Student 1950” written on it because I believe these two hot topics are closely related to what is going on in the 2016 election and are all part of a much bigger context. I’m also including the Halloween issue at Yale in all of this.

I’m trying to avoid getting mired in the nitty gritty of all of these, although I have had a little run with the red cups, and I’m trying to look at this from a much larger picture and I could easily go off on a thousand different tangents about what is going on at Yale.

It seems that Colin McEnroe tried to do something similar in his column, Yalies Whining For Protection, Not Fighting Adversity.

He says the students are “overindulged”, attempting to place all of this in the context of the sons and daughters of entitled helicopter parents. On one level, what he is saying might have a little validity, but I do worry about painting all students with such a broad brush.

Instead, I see the overindulgence and the entitled helicopter parents as yet another manifestation of the same larger underlying dynamic, the transformation of the American Dream.

Colin suggests

To recap: Most — perhaps not all — of the current uprising is the fallout from a campuswide conversation about Halloween costumes. Not Ferguson. Not Afghanistan. Not immigration. Not Planned Parenthood.

This is where I think he gets it wrong. It isn’t really about Halloween costumes. That is a gross oversimplification. It is about Ferguson. It is very much about Ferguson as I see my friends of color from colleges and universities around the country posting things like

To the students of color at Mizzou, we, Wesleyan alumni of color, stand with you in solidarity. To those who would threaten your sense of safety, we are watching. ‪#‎ConcernedStudent1950‬ ‪#‎InSolidarityWithMizzou‬‪#‎daretobeblackinamerica‬

And it is very much about immigration, and planned parenthood, and all the things that threaten the Christian White Male Hegemony.

Despite the myths of Horatio Alger and the melting pot, the American Dream, until recently has been the primary domain of white Christian men of European dissent. That is changing. America’s global dominance is slipping in this era of globalization. American Empire is heading the direction of the British Empire. We live in a country where a black man, or more accurately, a person of mixed race, has become president. We live in a country where there is a strong chance that the next president will be female. We live in a country where fewer and fewer people identify themselves as Christian; where Christians, Whites, and Men have become, or are becoming, minorities.

We can perhaps learn from the decline of the British Empire. We can perhaps even see parallels. It is little surprise that the shooter in Charleston wore insignias from Apartheid era South Africa and from Rhodesia. People resist their group losing power. They threaten, they exclude, they become violent.

Those gaining new power, may not be great at wielding it. They still carry the emotional scares of being oppressed. They seek to be treated with respect. It is sort of like when the kid who has been bullied in school finds some new allies and starts standing up to the bullies. This is illustrated nicely in the browser extension which replaces ‘politically correct’ with ‘treating people with respect’.

If you are part of the old power structure, you may complain about political correctness, or about having to start treating others with respect.

It is a difficult process. We will complain about not being able to fly confederate flags, about holiday greetings, and holiday coffee cups that don’t acknowledge the dominance, fading though it may be, of our religion. We may suffer white fragility as people of color point out how things we are saying or doing can be hurtful to others.

But all of this is part of the transition to a country, that hopefully comes a little bit closer to the myths of Horatio Alger and the melting pot. As a straight white cis Christian male of European descent who has compassion for those different from myself, all I can say is, it’s about time.