Slate names 2016 as the year white liberals realized just how bad America is

Brett T. | 6:43 PM on January 02, 2017

The new year promises more of the same from progressive media outlets, although many have resolved to commit to “real reporting” in 2017 and redouble their efforts to deliver “adversarial journalism.”

Slate is certainly on board, but its editors left people wondering just how old the site’s writers are, after they asked if the country was ready for black women to rule the music charts.

Slate didn’t stop there; 2016 also distinguished itself as the year that white liberals truly came to grips with just how unjust, racist, and sexist America really is. The suspicion was always there, of course, but Election Day was the wake up call.

2016 was the year white liberals realized how unjust, racist, and sexist America is: https://t.co/jyHDTxirQD pic.twitter.com/9CbII1shzu

— Slate (@Slate) January 1, 2017

There are certainly plenty of white liberals who’ve been around the block a few times — Bernie Sanders is a handy example — who’d likely take offense at that tweet and insist they’ve known for a while just how horrible America is.

But if younger white liberals — many of whom reacted to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan by sending the #AmericaWasNeverGreat hashtag trending on Independence Day — finally have caught on, credit Trump.

Those liberals woke up to a shock Nov. 9, and as Slate’s L.V. Anderson observes, “the scales had finally fallen from our eyes, and we could at least see our unjust, racist, sexist country for what it is,” adding, “The only people who experienced disillusionment in 2016 were people who had distanced themselves from the ugliness in American society enough that they could convince themselves that we were making meaningful progress.”