WNBA basketball player Brittney Griner is coming back home after being imprisoned in Russia since February. As you can imagine, the reactions to the news that the athlete had been released were the type of spectacle we can expect from such a development. But Randi Weingarten, who heads one of the largest teachers’ unions in the country, gave a response that inadvertently summed up everything that is destructive about far-leftist ideology.
President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that Griner was “on her way home” after his administration cut a prisoner-swap deal with the Kremlin. In exchange for the basketball player, America turned over arms dealer Viktor Bout. Weingarten, in response to his tweet, wrote:
What a great relief!!! Extraordinary news, a basketball star, but also a gay, black woman is released. And yes of course we want other prisoners like Paul Whelan released.
What a great relief!!! Extraordinary news, a basketball star, but also a gay, black woman is released. And yes of course we want other prisoners like Paul Whelan released.
— Randi Weingarten 🇺🇦🇺🇸💪🏿👩🎓 (@rweingarten) December 8, 2022
Weingarten’s tweet received the ridicule it deserved. Other users took her to task for her narrow-minded wokeism-influenced take:
WHAT. I guess Paul Whelan should try being a lesbian next time? This is unhinged. https://t.co/ryf5qYsqX7
— Angela Morabito (@AngelaLMorabito) December 8, 2022
"If you want us to care about getting you released, maybe try checking more diversity boxes, Paul." https://t.co/f0UEw9LtVt
— Meara (@MillennialOther) December 8, 2022
The mindset of the head of the country’s largest teacher’s union in less than 280 characters… https://t.co/jqiXwBTO0l
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) December 8, 2022
Concha nailed it. But this isn’t only Weingarten’s mindset, it is exactly how the rest of her contemporaries think as well.
Woke progressive types view people only by certain characteristics they believe relegate them to marginalized status. When they look at folks like Griner, they see only a black lesbian woman – nothing more. They do not care about her as a person – but as a set of attributes they can exploit to further their political agenda.
In Weingarten’s case, it was an opportunity for her to signal her virtue to the Twitterati. Indeed, the wording of her tweet suggests that Whelan, who has been imprisoned in Russia for longer than Griner, was merely an afterthought because of his skin color and sexual orientation. It is the typical type of response one can expect from white progressive elitists.
Obviously, this is a disgusting lens through which to view the world. In a situation like this, the idea that one’s immutable characteristics should be relevant when an American citizen is being imprisoned in a hostile country is abhorrent. U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who has been trapped in the country for years longer than Griner, deserves his freedom just as much as the athlete, regardless of his ethnicity and sexuality.
But this attitude also is not fair to Griner herself – whether she supports this line of thinking or not. As I said earlier, Weingarten and her ilk do not view Griner or any other “marginalized” group as human beings. They see “people of color” as poor, oppressed creatures that need rescuing. Indeed, we are nothing to these people other than a means by which they can make themselves feel like heroes.
This is but one of millions of reasons why we can’t let people like this amass more power. It is already troubling enough that they have control over America’s most powerful institutions. With this type of worldview, these people will wreak more destruction than they already have if they are given more influence over society.
