Please tell me why I shouldn't be offended.

[nsd]

171. I'm not white and I'm offended by the argument that white guys must be excluded.

I'm offended because it elevates race as the most important thing about a person. And it implies that not being white relegates a person to an oppressed class who should hold certain views, regardless of their actual experience of life. As a brown person who was born in America and has lived all his life here, I have to say that that hasn't been my experience. Obviously other people have had different experiences, but that's my point: life is complicated and no single aspect should be dominant.

I like Joe Biden. My immigrant parents like Biden. My siblings like Biden. Lots of other people that we know in our community (brown not white) like Biden. They see in him -- the physical affection, the fatherly affect, the openness -- echoes of lots of people we know (again, brown not white). It's not about white privilege. He's not a "creepy uncle"; he's just an uncle.

Too much of the criticism of Biden has come from people who are activists, who spend too much time online, who can use the term "woke" without irony, who have a professional interest in making race central to everything.

But I have to say that the immigrant brown people I actually know don't think that way. And some of them -- my parents and family definitely -- are angered by these criticisms (ageist, racist -- yes, racist) of Biden and how he's been treated in the media this last week.