As non-Whites rise to positions of power, they can be just as corrupt and self-dealing as Whites who abuse their power.

Contrary to what is conveyed by critical race theory and other intellectual hogwash, all humans are inherently the same when pickled in similar circumstances and cultures, regardless of race, ethnicity, or skin color. The Seven Deadly Sins are not bounded by epidermal differences.

Likewise, history shows that as so-called victims acquire power over their so-called former oppressors, they often exhibit the same characteristics that they once railed against. The tendency of the abused to become abusers is what I call the Willis-Wade effect.

The effect is named after African Americans Fani Willis and Nathan Wade. Willis is the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney who is prosecuting Trump, and Wade is the municipal judge and Willis’s paramour, who was retained by Willis at public expense for over a half-million dollars to assist her in the prosecution. The two lovebirds were so brazen that they took cruises and trips together to expensive locales.

Despite not being the brightest bulbs in the Georgia Bar, they were able to leverage their political power into an alleged case of self-dealing, privilege, and tawdriness. That makes them like many White power brokers in American history who weren’t very bright but were ruthlessly ambitious.

If Barack Obama had done what Trump is accused of doing, would Willis have prosecuted him, or would she have given him a pass because he is a Black Democrat? I don’t know, but I do know that in keeping with the Willis-Wade effect, Blacks can be just as racial and partisan as Whites.

Chicago serves as an example of Blacks following the example of Whites. Mayor Richard J. Daley made sure that his Democrat political machine took care of his fellow Irish before other ethnic/racial groups. His son, Richard M. Daley, would later leverage his dad’s political connections to become mayor.

By the time Lori Lightfoot became the first black female mayor of Chicago in 2017, the racial situation had reversed, with a disproportionate number of Blacks in key positions, including president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, chair of the Cook County Democratic Party, city treasurer, state’s attorney for Cook County, CEO of Chicago public schools, clerk of the Cook County circuit court, president of the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners, president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District for Greater Chicago, police superintendent, fire chief, and heads of the Chicago Transit Authority, the Chicago Housing Authority, the Chicago Board of Education, and the board of Chicago City Colleges.

Are we to believe that these Black officials didn’t do what Whites had done and favored their own kind and their own family?

Incidentally, in spite of Blacks holding these key offices, and in spite of Chicago being the springboard for Barack Obama’s political career, there has been no lessening of poverty and crime in Chicago’s Black neighborhoods since I lived in the Windy City decades ago.

The Willis-Wade effect also has operated overseas and with other races.

There are many former colonies around the world that freed themselves from the injustices of European colonialism but are now ruled by despots and beset by tribal and/or religious conflict—as was the case with most of them prior to Europeans arriving.

That’s not to excuse or rationalize colonialism or imperialism.

China didn’t suffer as much from European colonialism and imperialism as some other countries, but, going back in its long history, it certainly suffered greatly from the Mongol hordes, who invaded and colonized much of China. In more recent history, imperial Japan inflicted atrocities on China, especially in its brutal colonization of Manchuria. Then, in an example of the Willis-Wade effect, the Red Chinese under Mao prevailed after the Second World War and would go on to starve and brutalize tens of millions of their fellow Chinese.

It was a similar story in Cambodia under Pol Pot. And when the Bolsheviks took over Russia, they were worse than the czars.

Or take my race/ethnicity of Italian. The Mafia was born in Sicily as a counterforce to government corruption, but when it was exported to the U.S., it became a force for corruption.

Most of the consequences of the Willis-Wade effect aren’t as egregious but are certainly divisive and hypocritical. That’s especially so for the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement, which perpetuates new discrimination in the name of ending old discrimination. The same for critical race theory, which accuses Whites of racism, oppression, privilege, and other evils while committing the very same sins.

If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, Whites should be flattered.

Fani Willis and Nathan Wade probably deserve to be disbarred if they abused their power as alleged, but they also deserve to have a pernicious effect named after them.

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Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot