Over-Protecting the “Vulnerable”

From what?

Jpharoahdoss
3 min readApr 6, 2022
Photo by jurien huggins on Unsplash

21st-century black spokespersons speak in their own social justice jargon. They often describe black communities as marginalized and black people as vulnerable.

For them, “the marginalized” are people with limited access to privileges enjoyed by the wider society, and “the vulnerable” are people exposed to decreasing living standards.

Since most black people don’t speak this specialized language, they might confuse the social justice definition of “vulnerable” with the dictionary definition and conclude that black people are one of two things.

1). Susceptible to emotional attack

2). In need of special care, support, or protection

This social justice jargon was mainstreamed over a decade ago. The question is, what’s the result if the unintended definition of “vulnerable” was internalized over that time span?

Two years ago, Stanley Fabian, a black 19-year-old former student of Minooka Community High School, sued the school over a racial incident that occurred during his senior year.

Here’s the whole story.

A white student brought a cookie cake to class. Fabian jokingly reached for the cookie cake and the white student replied: If you touch that cookie cake, I’ll lynch…

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Jpharoahdoss

J. Pharoah Doss is a columnist for the New Pittsburgh Courier.