Let’s not get carried away with supposed massive gains against inequality that are not actually massive gains.
Over the last week, two things have taken place in America that we have been told are historic and earth-shaking; neither thing actually is.
President-elect (presumed) Joe Biden appointed an all-female senior communications team, and we have been inundated with stories about how amazing it is that Biden did this.
Why?
Kayleigh McEnany, the current White House press secretary, is a woman.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the previous press secretary, is a woman.
Alyssa Farah, the current director of White House strategic communications, is a woman.
And, the most important member of Trump’s campaign and administration outside of Attorney General Jeff Sessions was Kellyanne Conway.
So what exactly is the big deal?
In fact, one might argue this is even less of a deal because Biden made it pretty clear that his pick for VP was going to be an affirmative action hire.
She was.
Senator Kamala Harris didn’t even meet the standards he laid out; he stated he wanted someone with “some exposure to foreign policy and national defense issues,“ and she has none.
Harris was a smart way to reach out to women and black Americans. She brought nothing else to the table, she downplayed her experience and they rarely let her do any TV interviews.
If you want to see history, let’s wait until these women are criticized for their performance and see how quickly the sexism and racism cards are played.
That will be historic.
Football allegedly broke another barrier this past weekend with the “first female kicker to play in a Power 5 conference.”
You will notice there are a lot of qualifiers there.
Sarah Fuller was not the first woman to play college football.
She won’t be the first woman to score a point in a college game.
In fact, she attempted zero field goals or extra points.
Her “playing” consisted of a squib kick before running off the field, as her team lost 41-0 to Missouri — of all things — and her coach got fired.
Her reward for this?
Patronizing tweets from every figure on the planet and an award.
Fuller was gifted the “SEC special teams co-player of the week,” simply for her reproductive organs.
The co-winner? Florida’s Kadarius Toney.
What did he do? Two squib kicks?
No, he only managed a 50-yard punt return for a touchdown in his team’s 34-10 win over Kentucky.
Does this sound like equality to you?
No, because it is not. This is life in 2020.
There is nothing wrong with these women holding any of the roles I mentioned above, but there is nothing all that historic about them either.
Equality is having equal opportunities. We have that in America, and we should celebrate that instead of trying to create fake obstacles for people to overcome just so we can praise them.
Dale Jackson is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts a talk show from 7-11 AM weekdays on WVNN.
