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Big Idea of the Day: Leveling the Playing Field [1]
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Date: 2025-05-11
Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC had Scott Galloway on as a guest this last week. He said some great things and I agreed with what he had to say more often than not. There was one quote that I had to think on for a bit before writing about.
Galloway said, “If you go to the DNC website, it explicitly says, ‘Who we serve,’ and it lists 16 demographic groups, ranging from Asian Pacific Islanders to Black Americans to the disabled to veterans. I added it up, it’s 74% of the population. And, when the Democratic party explicity says it’s advantaging 74% of the population, it’s not advantaging them. It’s disadvantaging the other 26%.”
The title of the show was ‘Empathy is not a zero-sum game.’ Yes, empathy is not a zero-sum game. But, Galloway is speaking from a position of privilege and entitlement. He acknowledges this earlier in the interview. So, I cut him some slack and got back to the overall message he was trying to get at, which is that we need to have an all-of-population approach. I agree with that.
What I don’t agree with is that the 26% of the population Galloway references has been disadvantaged in any way, shape or form simply because 74% of the population got a shout-out on a political party’s website.
Instead, Galloway’s ‘disadvantaged 26%’ no longer has the privilege and entitlement that his generation and previous generations relied upon to perpetuate a stranglehold on political power, economic power and social power over the 74%. It’s about leveling the playing field for everyone. It’s about perspective. It’s about language.
Rather than sitting on a hill, looking down on the 74%, the 26% have to play by the rules they set up to maintain their previous entitlement and privilege. And, they don’t like the inherent inequalities they imposed on 74%. Good. It’s about time they learned how to play by their own rules rather than just making up new ones in a generational Calvin Ball game every time the 74% figured out how to succeed in the 26%’s artificial entitlement and privilege.
I think that instead of Galloway’s fear of having men not be able to evolve to the new life and times of today’s society, we should focus on merit. Men of privilege and entitlement are not as numerous as they were: they are unevolved and got by on their maleness rather than what the other 74% got by on, the idea of humanity including everyone.
What all the civil rights laws, acts, bills, statements and movements have said over the course of history is that a member of the 26% cannot discriminate against someone based on race, nation of origin, sex, gender identity, or any of the other artificial differences the 26% imposed on the rest of humanity to exclude the 74% from the privileges and entitlements afforded to the 26% by the 26%.
The fact that Galloway’s 26% are just now realizing how much they disadvantaged the 74% means that the history they taught themselves may not have been accurate or precise. The 26% are realizing that merit based on common humanity is much more egalitarian and just than the system set up to protect the 26%. The language used by the 26% to describe the 26% needs to also change to match this more egalitarian and just system that includes the other 74%.
Language matters.
If the 26% insist on being both the victors and the martyrs, if they fail to evolve their language surrounding their own mythology, they will not evolve to meet the challenges of societal evolution.
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