Donald Trump supporter horrified at facing discrimination, sees no irony whatsoever https://t.co/H6BRvotEUN pic.twitter.com/V66shVMP72
— indy100 (@indy100) June 18, 2016
Shannon Riggs and her cousins attended a Trump rally in Richmond, Virginia, last week, and on the way home visited a Cook Out - a predominantly Southern fast food chain. But Shannon and Lauren Wolfrey were denied service when they went to place their order at their local branch in Colonial Heights. They were dressed in Trump t-shirts and “Make America Great Again” baseball caps in support of the Republican presidential front-runner. Talking to local news channel WTVR, Shannon said, “As soon as we got to the window, someone inside said ‘Hell no! I’m not serving them’,” before an uncomfortable discussion took place. Shannon and Lauren eventually managed to negotiate food, but cancelled their order after being apparently mocked by staff. The Trump fan explained that at one point an employee called that food was ready, but when her Lauren went to collect it, she was told, “Oh, not for you!”
This seems if nothing else a demonstration of the validity of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, “a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. This cognitive bias prevent stands in the way of allowing the “unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately.” In more prosaic terms, as John Cleese eloquently describes it, “[t]he problem with people like this is that they are so stupid, they have no idea how stupid they are.”
Which brings us to the intrepid Ms. Riggs and her cousins, who attended a rally for Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee whose candidacy is based on hatred, bigotry, and exclusion…and then expressed all sorts of butthurt when some of that discrimination was turned in their direction. It seemed they genuinely could not (or simply chose not) to recognize the ignorance and hypocrisy inherent in their reaction. They have no problem with supporting a candidate whose platform is predicated on advocating discrimination and exclusion…but they can’t stand it when they’re the ones targeted for treatment as “less than.”
yes lauren please tell us more about discrimination pic.twitter.com/2F3kyD31nG
— high tech dad (@andyonhere) June 17, 2016
“In order to know how good you are at something requires exactly the same skills as it does to be good at that thing in the first place,” Cleese elaborates, “which means — and this is terribly funny — that if you are absolutely no good at something at all, then you lack exactly the skills you need to know that you are absolutely no good at it.”
Recognizing that one is stupid (and/or hypocritical) requires the exact amount of intellectual candlepower that being stupid prevents them from possessing. An intellectually challenged person is too stupid to recognize that they are, in fact, stupid. And so we get Ms. Riggs, who seemed genuinely nonplussed that she was denied service at a restaurant simply for being a Trump supporter. That The Donald is peddling discrimination, bigotry, and exclusion seems not to have occurred to her. What others interpret as hatred and the desire to exclude those who aren’t White and Christian seems to Ms. Riggs to be a perfectly reasonable approach to keeping America safe, because if Trump’s campaign slogan was anything close to honest, it would be
Make American Hate Again.
What happened to Ms. Riggs should not be condoned…but neither should anyone claim to be surprised that those who may well be the targets of Trump’s discriminatory policies might themselves act out in a similar fashion. Placing yourself at the top of the food chain doesn’t mean that self-assessment will be honored by others.
On social media, some pointed out the degree of irony in Trump backers upset by ‘discrimination’. They are, of course, people who are campaigning for a billionaire who’s continually said things that are widely viewed to be racist, sexist, divisive, and discriminatory against a certain segment of society.
This criticism isn’t necessarily directed at Ms. Riggs and those who were with her, but if the shoe fits…. When you’re unable to recognize your own behavior or your support for the discriminatory behavior advocated by others, it may be sheer stupidity…or merely a profound lack of self-awareness. Whatever the case, Ms. Riggs ends up looking quite foolish and more than a wee bit hypocritical.
This sort of thing tends to define Trump supporters, who have no problem with discriminating against The Other ©- i.e., those not fortunate to be born White and Christian- but bristle with rage when the tables are turned on them. Then again, when you see being White and Christian as essentially placing you at the top of the food chain, anything running counter to that will very likely be interpreted as (the worst kind of) discrimination.
These are the same folks who don’t understand and/or refuse to recognize the validity and pervasiveness of White privilege…because they take such privilege as their due. It’s just the way things are.
I’d like to think that Ms. Riggs and those who were with her would be able to take a few lessons away from this experience, but proofs of the Dunning-Kruger Effect that they are, they seem unable (or unwilling) to recognize that they’re they problem.
