Headdesk, She Replied
While we cower in the shadow of Laurie Penny’s mind, here’s another bite-size agony for our ongoing series:
The article Laurie finds so inspiring – Racism is to White People as Wind is to the Sky – can be found here. Its profundities include,
In the outpourings of grief and anger about the Zimmerman verdict, I’m asking myself and other white people: how are we reflecting on and actively transforming our own personal racism? And our collective racism? …Because white people: we are ALL racist… White people, the shame is not that these racist things come up in us – growing up in a white supremacy, it is impossible for them to not. The shame is when we deny it, refuse to do the work and therefore turn our backs on our sisters, brothers and genderqueer siblings of colour.
The standard psychodrama ensues and the ostentatious fretting gets a little knotty, as it must, not least when the subject turns to “white privilege.” Damning evidence of which includes,
The times when I have assumed people of colour and Indigenous people have drinking or substance problems when I see them drinking or using in public. I am in fact an alcoholic, yet nobody thinks that of me if I’m seen drinking in public.
And,
When I have gotten acquaintances who are people of colour confused with each other. It doesn’t matter that I also frequently can’t recognise white people who I don’t know very well – this is where context matters. In the context of a racist world that makes invisible and dehumanises people of colour, my actions are racist.
And,
When I have failed to understand the ways a police presence could impact on the participation of criminalised communities, especially Black and Indigenous communities. Any time I have invited police presence or failed to take steps to deter it, this is my ignorant racism showing up.
So remember, if you should be mugged in a part of town where lots of black people happen to live, whatever you do, don’t call the police. That would be proof of your ignorant racism and “white privilege.” And if your refusal to alert the police subsequently results in someone else being robbed by the same mugger, most likely someone who lives in one of those “Black and Indigenous communities,” at least you can take comfort in the fact that you won’t be accused of racism by one dogmatic bonehead. If this is all sounding a little odd, a little contrived, it may help if you bear in mind the unspoken motto of identity politics, grievance theatre and leftism in general: “I am better than you because I pretend to feel worse.” It’s important to understand these are not just lapses in logic or random fits of insincerity; these outpourings are displays – of class and moral elevation. It’s what egalitarians do. Laurie nods in approval of course, as a good little leftist should. As we’ve seen before, many times, some kinds of stupid have to be educated into the children. Because spanking one’s own arse is what good children do. And the most susceptible of those children, the most needy and credulous, go on to call themselves leftwing radicals.
Update via the comments,
I suppose what’s dismaying, or possibly amusing, is how readily the people above have internalised a redefinition of racism as “prejudice + power,” a formulation that doesn’t stand up to more than a moment’s questioning. This commenter, for instance, says that only white people need to “interrogate” their assumptions: “Um, cuz white people are the ones in power.”
It’s a glib reflex lifted straight from the racial grievance racketeers Shakti Butler and Jane Elliott, whose mind-blunting blather can be paraphrased like this:
Racism is exclusively a function of power, as defined by me. As a member of Designated Victim Group X, as designated by me, I do not belong to the dominant order; I do not have institutional power or the leverage of ‘normality’, therefore I cannot be racist, ever. All those who belong to the dominant group, as defined by me, participate in racism, also defined by me. They are racist because they are white. They just are, so shut up. Those who dispute this formulation are, by definition, racist and oppressive.
And so a belief that only white people need fret about their bigotry, being the only ones capable of such sin, is stated flatly, as if the matter were inarguable and utterly beyond question. Which rather makes me wonder how those who make such noises would rationalise crimes like this one. If power, as defined by them, is something that only people of pallor can have, the lone white tourist in the videos linked above – the one being punched, robbed, stripped, molested and having his teeth kicked out by a mob of ten black thieves, while others film his beating with audible amusement – he was the one with all the power. Obviously.
You also have to wonder how this unilateral definition of racism would address another incident, from March 2012, in which a 13-year-old Missouri schoolboy was followed home and attacked by two black teenagers. The teenagers told their victim, “This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy,” then doused him in petrol and set him on fire. Presumably, we should pretend that those racial overtones do not exist – cannot exist – on grounds that the perpetrators don’t belong to a “racist system” of “white hegemony.” If these examples aren’t enough to prompt some rethinking, there are more to consider. Again, are we not supposed to notice those racial motives and racial fixations? Should we just regard such behaviour as, what, righteous retaliation for some collective sin? For something other people did, at some point, somewhere, to some other people?
And those who ignore such details, or who tie themselves in rhetorical knots trying to rationalise them away, they are the “critical thinkers” on whom our “progress” depends?
“I am in fact an alcoholic, yet nobody thinks that of me if I’m seen drinking in public.”
I think anyone reading this is going to assume you wrote it during one hell of a bender.
I give up. These people are unparodyable.
So remember, if you should be mugged in a part of town where lots of black people happen to live, whatever you do, don’t call the police. That would be proof of your ignorant racism and “white privilege.”
*headdesk*
You’ll love this: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/assed-baig/malala-yousafzai-white-saviour_b_3592165.html
Its apparently racist to support education for young asian girls if you are white and male. I suppose its wrong also to appose FGM or ‘honour killings’.
What’s dismaying is how readily they’ve internalised a redefinition of racism as “prejudice + power,” a formulation that doesn’t stand up to more than a moment’s questioning. This commenter, for instance, says that only white people need to “interrogate” their assumptions: “Um, cuz white people are the ones in power.” It’s a glib reflex lifted straight from the racial grievance racketeers Shakti Butler and Jane Elliott, whose mind-blunting blather can be paraphrased like this:
And so a belief that only white people need fret about their bigotry, being the only ones capable of such sin, is stated flatly, as if the matter were inarguable and utterly beyond question. Which rather makes me wonder how those who make such noises would rationalise crimes like this one. If power, as defined by them, is something that only people of pallor can have, the lone white tourist in the videos linked above – the one being punched, robbed, stripped, molested and having his teeth kicked out by a mob of ten black thieves, while others film his beating with amusement – he was the one with all the power. Obviously.
You also have to wonder how this unilateral definition of racism would address another incident, from March 2012, in which a 13-year-old Kansas schoolboy was followed home and attacked by two black teenagers. The teenagers told their victim, “This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy,” then doused him in petrol and set him on fire. Presumably, we should pretend that those racial overtones do not exist – cannot exist – on grounds that the perpetrators don’t belong to a “racist system” of “white hegemony.” If these examples aren’t enough to prompt some rethinking, there are more to consider. Again, are we not supposed to notice the racial motive? Should we just regard such behaviour as, what, righteous retaliation for some collective sin? For something other people did, at some point, somewhere, to some other people?
As Scott Burgess once replied to such doctrinaire claptrap:
If only Mr Burgess could be tempted back to blogging.
I can (tenuously) make a link with this question….I find myself wondering whether the dear lady could envisage ‘indigenous’ status being afforded white people under any circumstances?
It would reveal an interesting mindset.
I can’t choose between *headdesk* and *facepalm*. Or *doublefacepalm*.
Sharp as usual, Mr T.
“The shame is when we deny it, refuse to do the work and therefore turn our backs on our sisters, brothers and genderqueer siblings of colour.”
Won’t somebody *please* think of the genderqueer siblings of colour?
I’m not surprised he/she/it is an alcoholic. If I thought like that I would want to get drunk every minute of the day.
The whites=power=racist thing is simply to avoid having to think. It is “Four legs good, two legs bad”. It is just a tool for the wielding of power over people.
It is intolerable for these people to have to think, so they have invented all sorts of incantations which enable them not to.
“Genderqueer sibling, can you spare a dime”?
Except these days it is taxed from you by force, many, many dimes, and showered on the genderqueer siblings and their enforcers.
You may (or may not) enjoy this http://missmarymax.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/the-stakes-of-skinnybashing-thin-privilege-in-body- image-advocacy/ from a parallel universe in which skinnybashing is not the same thing as fatphobia, no sir. Sample:
“The truth is, the pain skinnybashing causes individual people with thin privilege does not hurt less (or matter less) than the pain caused by fatphobia. But it does occur in a different context, and it has not been institutionalized to the extent that fat oppression has. And no matter how genuinely pained thin people are — and no matter how much we should be doing about that — skinnybashing claims re-direct discussions of fat oppression into terms of “body diversity,” erasing the power dynamics between body types and the continued prevelance of fat oppression. In other words, while body diversity is a laudable goal, to demand that fat-acceptance activists redirect toward “diversity” requires that they quit fighting fat oppression and embrace the false notion that thin and fat bodies are — on a societal level — policed equally.”
Are these people real?
KFell – “fat-acceptance activists”
It’s amazing how much time and effort certain types of women spend trying to convince the world to change its standard of beauty so as to include them.
If only they put that effort into not shovelling cake into their mouths.
Racism is to White People as Wind is to the Sky.
Words. Fail. Me. I am genuinely stunned.
‘In the outpourings of grief and anger about the Zimmerman verdict, I’m asking myself and other white people: how are we reflecting on and actively transforming our own personal racism? And our collective racism? …Because white people: we are ALL racist’.
For fuck’s sake.
[Grabs Drake by shoulders, shaking him]
‘ZIMM-ER-MANN IS HIS-PAN-IC YOU STUPID MOTHER-FUCKERRRRR!!!!!’
Smudger – it’s true though.
My racist day:
0800 – alarm goes off, decide to sleep in due to white privilege
0830 – racist breakfast – white bread with dollops of Marmalade with the golliwog logo, and milky tea
0900-ish – turn up at work late. Everybody smiles and high fives me because I’m a white man, so I have all the power
1030 – conference call with other white men where we discuss how to oppress genderqueer siblings of colour
Lunch – I deliberately segregate my jelly babies based on their colour and bin the black ones. Colleague offers me a Bounty bar, so I punch her in the ovaries
2.30 – Chinese dentist
Afternoon – brainstorming session on new racial slurs and how to make fat girls insecure. Followed by glass ceiling polishing.
Evening – watch a minstrel show and applaud, racistly
Nighttime – Have racist sex with my white wife, then go to sleep in my massive white bed in my big white house. White supremacy is awesome.
The worrying thing about your otherwise excellent post, Steve 2, is that if Laurie ever read it she’d automatically assume it was for real.
they have invented all sorts of incantations which enable them not to [think].
Bingo. Incantations. It’s a facsimile of thought, a placeholder. For many, it’s a way not to listen while feeling awfully pious and enlightened (and hoping their peers will notice – an audience is important). After all, they’re using their mouths to make the sounds they’ve been told they ought to make in order to conform. It’s what radical people do. Only those clutching The Stone of Grievance™ are permitted to speak. Only their words are authentic, you see. Such is their open-mindedness and humility.
Zimmerman is white when convenient, Hispanic when convenient, even Native American when convenient.
If you can suspend reality to the extent that you think “genderqueer sibling” is a serious concept, believing a Hispanic man is white is child’s play, really basic stuff.
“Are these people real?”
Unfortunately yes, and I blame a combination of the explosion in wealth in Western (Anglo Saxon) societies post-WW2, and the associated explosion in Higher Education.
Only people completely removed from the realities of poverty, working for a living and just generally having to interact with normal people can think like this. And the more virtual the world gets, the weirder they will become.
Are these people real?
Yes, but not realistic. And it’s important to remember that the dogmatic unrealism isn’t random. It isn’t arrived at by accident. It’s taught and internalised. And if a credulous student is exposed to such instruction for long enough – say, seven years, like Mr Arun Smith here – then the subsequent distortions and dishonesties can be quite revealing. In a funhouse mirror kind of way.
The times when I have assumed people of colour and Indigenous people have drinking or substance problems when I see them drinking or using in public. I am in fact an alcoholic, yet nobody thinks that of me if I’m seen drinking in public.
I don’t know anyone who assumes this. Who the hell is (s)he talking about? But if I saw someone injecting heroin in a park I’d bet they probably do have a drug problem whatever colour they are.
When I have failed to understand the ways a police presence could impact on the participation of criminalised communities, especially Black and Indigenous communities. Any time I have invited police presence or failed to take steps to deter it, this is my ignorant racism showing up.
So remember, if you should be mugged in a part of town where lots of black people happen to live, whatever you do, don’t call the police. That would be proof of your ignorant racism and “white privilege.”
Bloody hell. This is basketcase stuff. Does (s)he think the people who actually live in these ‘black and indigenous communities’ won’t mind if muggers and carjackers can just walk about freely… targeting them and their kids?
“Um, cuz white people are the ones in power.”
That should come as news to the President of the United States. If it has ever been an excuse for the reverse-racism of the Left – and that’s debatable – the ship sailed in November 2008, guys.
But here’s the thing: why is the acquittal of a mixed-race hispanic in a case where the prosecution itself rejected a black juror (on the basis that he was understood to watch Fox News) and relied almost entirely on emotionalism and innuendo a time for “white” people to confront their supposed racism? That’s why my head hit the desk. The case only came to trial because the “anti”-racism industry thought Zimmerman must be someone he isn’t. He and his family are now in hiding because the cold facts, as presented in court, didn’t fit the narrative, and the (all-female) jury wasn’t buying the prosecution’s sob-stories.
Who, in this instance, really has the power?
“Genderqueer sibling, can you spare a dime”?
You forgot “or else”. To be fair, it’s usually implied.
“Wind is to the Sky”
What does that even mean, anyway? “Wind is to the sea”, maybe, or “wind is to my arse after a plateful of organic vegan lasagne”, but “wind is to the sky”? No, I’m not having that. Wind doesn’t come from the sky unless there’s a helicopter overhead.
Does (s)he think the people who actually live in these ‘black and indigenous communities’ won’t mind if muggers and carjackers can just walk about freely… targeting them and their kids?
Well, let’s take it at face value and follow the logic, such as it is. Suppose you were walking through a part of town in which lots of Those Brown People™ live and you spot an exotically brown woman being mugged – say, by a white chap – then you should… er… Well, not call the police, certainly. And apparently you should deter anyone else from attempting to. A consequence of which would seem to be that muggers and carjackers will have a much easier time of it. Presumably while preying on that same “black and indigenous community.”
I’m sure Those Brown People™ who subsequently find themselves being mugged or carjacked will be sending thank you cards.
It all makes much more sense if you see this as a kind of DIY Maoist struggle session. The difference is that the original struggle sessions usually ended with the execution of the struggler once he had been ideologically purified. In the DIY version the result is … lots of opportunity for gleeful self-congratulation. So much nicer.
I have been reliably informed — by a PhD student in “African-American Studies,” no less — that only white people can be racist, because only whites have institutional power.
I asked him how, that being the case, he would characterize Robert Mugabe’s actions against the white farmers of Zimbabwe. I don’t remember the reply — because of my racism, no doubt — but I’m sure it was profound. PhD candidate, remember.
Sackcloth and Ashes – you don’t believe a Chinese man can be a dentist?
You’re lacist.
Exactly what kind of power was 13 month old Antonio West engaging in when he was shot in the head?
Severian – African-American Studies is a valid academic discipline. As valid as Afrology, Negrometry, and Blackonomics.
Think of all the vitally important contributions that African-American studies graduates make to the world. How else would we come up with a critical framework for studying the cultural impact of representations of genderqueer siblings of colour in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?
You, sir, are a mean old racialist. Check your privilege, it’s sinfully white.
It must be irritating to Penny to know that there are white people who feel no shame, who deny they are bigoted, who ignore the theory of white privilege, who refuse to give preferential treatment based on race or gender, who embrace their western cultural heritage, and who apologize for nothing.
Penny likely thinks such people spend their time posting racist diatribes on Storm Front.
You forgot Ebonics and Ghetto Studies, Steve.
And Conversational Geechy, as well.
Whenever I read of or hear this kind of vaporizing I chuckle and think back to my days as a criminal defense attorney in Georgia when I, a white male from the Southern United States, spent most of my time defending young Black males who had been arrested by Black males for crimes committed with other Black males, often victimizing Black people, who were being prosecuted by a Black Attorney General and, as often as not, defending the case before a Black judge and sometimes trying the case before a mostly Black jury.
Those mostly Black juries had an alarming tendency to convict Black people who had committed crimes in their community. And my Black clients, before trial, while we were striking the Jury – the more the panel filled with Black people, the antsier they got.
But to Penny and the likeminded in the U.S. I suppose I should have pitied them all, such witless pawns in the White Man’s game.
That’s not to say their aren’t serious problems with justice as administered in many places in the United States. Boy are there!!
But people like Penny couldn’t even begin to solve them; their tedious dedication to “grievance display” prevents them from seeing people – including whichever Peoples of Color they pretend to care about – as people. It’s breathtaking, really. Every aspect of their political theater is cruel. It reduces everyone, agents of power and their victims – to nothing more than tokens, and in this script the entirety of any one person’s identity is inescapably determined by skin tone.
It’s a complete inversion of the notion than people should be judged by the content of their character rather than their appearance; it makes appearance the only meaningful gauge of character.
Penny’s politics, whatever the face vale, is just a grotesque expression of arrogance and spite for all people. I can laugh at her neurotic excrescences, but there are a lot of people who have internalized a watered down version of this sort of thinking. Can’t laugh at that.
Steve 2 – You just made me spray my cup of racist tea all over my spotlessly white desk.
I think you should be Steve No. 1
*wishing for a recommend button to give steve2’s comment the credit it deserves*
So remember, if you should be mugged in a part of town where lots of black people happen to live, whatever you do, don’t call the police. That would be proof of your ignorant racism and “white privilege.” And if your refusal to alert the police subsequently results in someone else being robbed by the same mugger, most likely someone who lives in one of those “Black and Indigenous communities,” at least you can take comfort in the fact that you won’t be accused of racism by one dogmatic bonehead.
I denounce your ableist use of the word ‘bonehead’.
I denounce your ableist use of the word ‘bonehead’.
I denounce myself, obviously.
Pass the salt. I’ll rub it into my eyes.
Send this article to everyone you know:
Black permit holder shoots white teen in self-defense, is acquitted: http://rochester.ynn.com/content/top_stories/490926/jury-finds-roderick-scott-not-guilty/
I hadn’t heard about it either. I got it from Instapundit just now.
You persist in thinking of “racism” as a moral failing similar to covetousness. It is not. It is yet another name given by socialists to their enemies. “Racist” is a status assigned by moral authorities, similar to the status of “kulak” assigned by the international socialists who once governed Russia, or “untermenchen,” assigned by the national socialists who once governed Germany, or “capitalist roader or” “bad element,” assigned by the Maoist socialists. “Racist” is assigned to anyone whose demonization may benefit socialism. And like kulak, because it is not subject to proof, facts, or evidence, nor is it bound by any philosophy or morality, it can never be shed.
“Racism” is simply what “racists” do, every day, in every action, including breathing and sleeping. Every action–especially refutation–by a racist proves the assignment correct.
* * *
BTW, I agree that Laurie Penny is one of the white racists. No doubt her self-examination (as quoted above) is in agreement with my observation. Out of simple decency, she should reftain from all public speaking or writing for twenty years. Until she does so, I will refuse to address any other cases of racism..
If one really were a racist and held the belief that all members of a race must hold certain traits, then wouldn’t the natural conclusion be that all other members of your race must feel the same as you?
FLUELLEN
Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under your
correction, there is not many of your nation–
MACMORRIS
Of my nation! What ish my nation? Who speaks of my nation
ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal.
What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation?
FLUELLEN
Look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is
meant, Captain Macmorris, peradventure I shall think
you do not use me with that affability as in
discretion you ought to use me, look you: being as
good a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of
war, and in the derivation of my birth, and in
other particularities.
MACMORRIS
I do not know you so good a man as myself: so
Chrish save me, I will cut off your head.
— Henry V, Act III
I never heard a Welsh person ever say “look you”, and I grew up there.
Shakespeare basing the character of ‘Fluellen’ on Neil Kinnock was an act of genius.
in which a 13-year-old Kansas schoolboy
There is a Kansas City in Kansas and another Kansas City across the border in Missouri. This was in Kansas City, Missouri.
The explanations that go along with the redefinition of racism also gets… interesting when more than 2 groups are involved. Do they really mean to suggest that a black guy using a racial slur against a korean (or vice versa) can’t be racist? I’m not convinced that most of these people actually believe what they say. It is a shibboleth they feel obliged to repeat lest someone assume they are on the wrong team.
Corrected, thanks.
So let’s accept the premise that we are collectively responsible for the acts of people who look like us for a minute. I’ll even accept the whole “people not in power can’t be racist” idiocy for a little bit.
Are black people collectively responsible for tribal warfare in Africa by their ancestors? Are they responsible for black slavers, or slavery practiced by African tribes against other Africans? Globally speaking the black American is in power over the African, so the African’s collective sins don’t count, but how does that excuse the black American? Are all sins excused for everyone who isn’t at the very top, globally? But then why get on whites’ case in Europe, when America is globally more dominant?
How about Detroit? Black people are in practically every level of power in Detroit. Are black people collectively responsible for all the deaths of black people and ruination of the economy there?
What’s fascinating is the idea that things that can’t be done (like erasing the past negative actions of ancestors and other people of one’s race) we must try to do, while things that are completely doable (like changing city policy and leadership in Detroit and Chicago) which would actually make things better for minorities should not even be considered. It’s sort of like going to a trash-ridden empty lot and beating one’s breast over the moral decay, the awful injustice of this poor beautiful natural spot being despoiled, making a sign and marching around it protesting what’s happened to it. No amount of caterwauling will ever be as useful as picking up a single bottle.
“In the outpourings of grief and anger about the Zimmerman verdict,”
You mean the Hispanic guy whose 1/8th black?
“how are we reflecting on and actively transforming our own personal racism…Because white people: we are ALL racist…it is impossible for them to not.”
This is why you should think the logical implications of your ravings through before showing them to anyone. If it’s impossible for every single person from group A to avoid possessing trait X, then logically, trying to avoid possessing that trait is a complete waste of time.
“genderqueer siblings of colour”
If you find yourself using phrases like this with a straight face, you’re in urgent need of being slapped round the back of the head and told to quit being such an arse.
“I am in fact an alcoholic, yet nobody thinks that of me if I’m seen drinking in public.”
What an ingenious observation. I mean, aside from the fact that you have absolutely no way of knowing what other people are thinking. And ‘nobody’ would include your genderqueer siblings of colour which would make them just as racist as white people. But aside from that; how many times have you seen a dishevelled white guy stumbling down the road at 8am with a can of Tennet’s Super in his hand and presumed he’s just having a little light refreshment on the way to his masonic lodge? Admit it; the notion that he might just have an alchohol problem never once crossed your racist minds, did it?
“When I have gotten acquaintances who are people of colour confused with each other. It doesn’t matter that I also frequently can’t recognise white people who I don’t know very well”
Having exactly the same attitudes towards ‘people of colour’ and white people and treating them equally. It means you’re a racist.
The term “white” is confusing, sometimes it’s a supremacist statement, other times a recessive gene condition. Zimmerman is apparently “white” because of one of his parents, just like Obama, who is, er, black, just like Martin, the son he never had.
It’s like genetics as told by Michael Jackson.
Oh god, check out the comments at the Sunny Drake site:
“Thank you. As a beneficiary of white privilege, this is something I needed to see.”
I guess it’s a laugh/cry thing.
their tedious dedication to “grievance display” prevents them from seeing people – including whichever Peoples of Color they pretend to care about – as people.
It turns out that idealization of a group of people (Native Americans get mawkishly deified here in the States) is just as dehumanizing as demonization. It’s all a matter of projection, whether of one’s idealized self or one’s debased, hated self.
It’s also as anti-Enlightenment as it comes. It represents a regression back to the paradigms derived from animal husbandry, wherein different breeds and bloodlines of horses or cows or dogs could be objectively described as “superior” to another.
It’s how Europeans justified African slavery and Imperialism and all manner of ill: we ARE superior; ergo, we can herd the others like cattle.
The race-baiters and their fellow-travelers aren’t stupid or misguided: they’re evil. They know better, but they want power instead of virtue, and the rest of us will pay for their rancid ambition.
::spit::
So let me get this straight. If you pick out an identifiable group and blame them for all your problems, you’re a hateful person of some sort:
“All our society’s problems are because of the jews.”
“All our society’s problems are because of the blacks.”
But if you pick out an identifiable group that you belong to and blame them for all of someone else’s problems, it becomes morally virtuous:
“All of black people’s problems are because of white people and their racism.”
I’m glad that’s clear.
Also, the bizarre article Ms. Penny is so inspired by says the “shame is when we are inactive through fear of doing the wrong thing.” It then lists wrong things the author has done at the end. Was he right to do those wrong things? Would it have been more wrong to not do the wrong things? I love the logic here: he shames people for not acting due to fear of being shamed for their actions, then he shames himself and others for their actions anyway. Brilliant.
I also enjoy the typical “if you disagree with or deny what I’m saying, it means that you don’t want to hear it because it’s true” trope. It makes me want to write a response talking about how everything isn’t white people’s fault, Asians succeed fine in these supposedly impossibly racist conditions, etc. Then at the end I can just quote him: if you’re feeling the desire to disagree with me, it can only be because it’s so true.
It’s hilarious that he has to put a big “WARNING” in all caps before a list of supposedly racist things he’s done. Is this in case minorities read the article? Does he think they’re so unable to control themselves and their emotional reactions that they can’t handle a list? Or is that for his typical readers?
He talks in such a bizarre way about minorities — like they’re abused spouses covered with bruises and broken bones, or like some sort of fragile and easily startled animals or something. We can’t expect them to help, we must do all the work for them, believe everything they say, presumably never disagree with anything or use any logic on their claims of racism, etc. He doesn’t seem to view them as normal humans like himself. No wonder he’s so weird and racist.
Given the obvious and fundamental problems with this unilateral formulation of racism, only some of which have been outlined above, you have to wonder how someone can profess their credentials, ostentatiously and at length, while not registering these things. Not registering them at all, obstinately. And all the while imagining themselves as an enlightened, compassionate and thoughtful person. A critical thinker, no less.
You’d think that level of evasion and role-play would be… exhausting. But leftism, especially the kind of leftism practiced by Laurie and co, requires continual display; it’s a non-stop performance – as the Agonies series illustrates quite well. Those of us who aren’t attracted to competitive, neurotic role-play would, I think, struggle to spend so much time and energy learning the dance steps.
“if you disagree with or deny what I’m saying, it means that you don’t want to hear it because it’s true” trope
Been used by psychologists and marriage counsolers for well over a generation now.
I was thinking about the article, and I was thinking “what a weird sort of reverse-white-man’s-burden kind of thing he has going on.” But then I thought: is it reversed? In the author’s formulation, he’s being racist if he doesn’t share all his great white-man projects with the poor minority folk. Isn’t he in many ways taking the same view as Kipling, that he (representing white people) has all this great stuff and has a duty to share it with his lessers?
The funny part is how these two fit together. If I understand correctly, he has a duty to seek out and force minority coworkers to join his projects, whether they want to or not, because if he doesn’t have any minorities involved from the beginning then he’s a racist. I think he may not be picking up on why they didn’t “happen[] to ask” him about his projects.
“Those of us who aren’t attracted to competitive, neurotic role-play would, I think, struggle to spend so much time and energy learning the dance steps.”
For most of us, even if we were attracted to neurotic role play, there simply isn’t the time. Holding down a job, trying to make ends meet when the government takes half of everything earned, helping out family, friends and neighbours who might need a bit of support. These are just some of the things that keep grown-ups awake at night. So perhaps we can be cut a little slack if we happen not to indulge in “outpourings of grief and anger” all that often.
I agree that it is a “non-stop performance” but I suspect that it arises from the irrelevance of the “radical” left. The far left has virtually no support in Britain today and the vast majority of the public would laugh at Penny’s views if they were even aware that she existed. They have no public support, no realistic political programme and no idea how to create one. They are trapped in a tiny online echo chamber with no audience except each other. L’enfer, c’est les autres.
As for “learning the dance steps”, just follow these simple rules.
I am better than you because I pretend to feel worse
It hits the nail on the head. To take it a step further, it also cleverly excuses the utterer of his own failings: “I choose to be a failure because I choose not to live by your inherently racist rules.” We’ve seen how many times these same people will lay claim to their deserved cut of government spoils; we OWE it to them because they refuse to participate in normal society.
I never heard a Welsh person ever say “look you”, and I grew up there.
Posted by: Rob | July 17, 2013 at 19:41
Aye same here on both counts.
Nor have I never actually heard of a girl called blodwen getting married when not pregnant and being thought of as posh accordingly….but it is a very funny stereotype though…
I must practise taking offence at things….
P.S. Steve’s chinese dentist crack is one of the funniest I have ever heard….
Andrew,
I agree that it is a “non-stop performance” but I suspect that it arises from the irrelevance of the “radical” left. The far left has virtually no support in Britain today
True, it’s essentially a few busloads of throwbacks, narcissists and professional misfits. Clowns like this. And yet Laurie and Owen Jones are regulars on national television. The BBC seems to have them on speed-dial. Clearly they have fans in the halls of our state broadcaster.
As for “learning the dance steps”, just follow these simple rules.
Heh. Consider yourself blogrolled. I particularly like Rule Nine: “Acts of hatred or violence committed by Victims are a natural reaction to their oppression and are therefore the fault of the Oppressors. Acts of hatred or violence committed by Oppressors are proof of their innate evil.” The assumption of which we were discussing only a couple of days ago.
Though we have noted the phenomenon before. More than once. And when you see so many, quite striking illustrations appearing in the same “progressive” paper month after month, announced piously and obliviously, the license for malice is pretty hard to miss. You really do get a flavour of the psychological dynamics.
Horace,
For most of us, even if we were attracted to neurotic role play, there simply isn’t the time. Holding down a job, trying to make ends meet when the government takes half of everything earned, helping out family, friends and neighbours who might need a bit of support.
Which may explain why so much of the unhinged left is made up of students, often of disreputable subjects; unemployed former students of disreputable subjects; lecturers of disreputable subjects; and media commentators. Many of whom were at one time students of disreputable subjects.
Comment on Heartiste’s blog-
“How to destroy a Cathedral feminist’s brain with two simple questions:
1. Doesn’t it suck that racist white people, any time they see a black person walking the streets late at night, automatically fear that person because they think black people are more likely to be thugs? Obvious manifestation of white privilege.
2. Doesn’t it suck that sexist women, any time they see a man walking the streets late at night, automatically fear that person because they think men are more likely to be rapists? Obvious manifestation of female privilege.
Inspired by a facebook friend who literally wrote a post stating that white privilege is the reason white people often fear black people.”
The second para. might make poor Laurie’s head blow right off.
David
“Which may explain why so much of the unhinged left is made up of students, often of disreputable subjects; unemployed former students of disreputable subjects; lecturers of disreputable subjects”
Well, quite. Think of the Guardian’s readership, the vast majority of whom could stop whatever it is they do for a living today and the change would go largely unnoticed in the outside world. Someone once remarked – possibly on these very pages – that one of the reasons that non-leftists don’t take part in street protests much is because they are holding down jobs, and have responsibilities. It’s a massive generalisation of course but it seems to me to hold a goodly amount of truth. Unfortunately our lords and masters have seen fit to transfer large amounts of wealth from those of us who work productively to the self-important non-entities of the hard left. There is a power imbalance somewhere, but I’m not sure it’s quite where Laurie Penny and her whiny commentariat chums would place it.
Horace,
If you peruse the bios of Laurie’s Twitter groupies you’ll find a remarkable number of them describe themselves as students or former students (or “theorists” or “activists” who are, or were, students), often of something with little if any commercial value. If you’ve wasted several years and thousands of pounds (generally of someone else’s money) studying “critical theory” and such then it’s quite likely you’ll end up unemployed and feeling resentful. There are very few careers that require a proficiency in Marxoid boilerplate and class war pretentiousness. Though I suppose that if such people direct their umbrage at the world at large and free markets in particular, this may spare them any uncomfortable reflection on their own choices.
[ Added: ]
Nonetheless, year after year, debt upon debt, there are students who seem to believe that “critical theory” courses like this one will be a sound investment in their future and make them irresistible to employers. Here’s a brief taste from the course outline:
And now juxtapose that with the term job market.
It’s a fine balancing act.
How does one appear distraught over white privilege, roaming the streets in sack cloth wailing one’s guilt, all the while enjoying a life of prosperity and indulgence well away from the unwashed?
Along the lines of the old saying “What if they had a war and nobody came?”…What if everyone was racist and nobody cared?
It’s hilarious that he has to put a big “WARNING” in all caps before a list of supposedly racist things he’s done. Is this in case minorities read the article? Does he think they’re so unable to control themselves and their emotional reactions that they can’t handle a list? Or is that for his typical readers?
He’s striking the lintel and posts of his door with lamb’s blood.
He’s striking the lintel and posts of his door with lamb’s blood.
That’s a great idea! We should start celebrating Racism Passover, when the great Demon of Racism went out door to door smiting the households of the white men — but the households that nailed their minority/women’s studies degree to their doorframe and smeared authentic vegan ethnic food on the door were spared.
The times when I have tokenised people of colour by thinking “shit, my project is really white, I should ask some people of colour to be a part of it”
I’m guessing this person isn’t in engineering school.
“It’s time for all white people to interrogate our own racism.”
Somebody should buy Ms Penny the Mattel Home Self-Interrogation Kit for Christmas.
“The scarcity of women film directors and the prevalence of female new media writers and artists seems to lend credence to N. Katherine Hayles’ theory that cyberspace functions as a material metaphor for time travel as we hop from screen to screen. The new media just might therefore have created a new space for new kinds of feminist engagements with the temporal dimension. Theories around the concept of mastery and the gendering of temporal manipulation will be explored.”
And now juxtapose that with the term job market.
Ba-dumTISH!
If one were to propose that Caucasians are, on average, the least racist of all the races, do you think Penny’s head would explode? I certainly think it’s worth a test.
Leftist political thinking seems to have now reached the stage of “as long as your Twitter buddies fall over each other to agree with you, say what you like”
Seen in that way, it’s part of the noble tradition of time-wasting games on social networking sites. Or perhaps the study of tribalism in religious cults. Take your pick 🙂
I could give a FLYING FUCK if anyone is the “victim” of this kind of alleged “racism.” If you are so incapable of dealing with some jerk who slights you based on your race that you need help from Penny are her pinhead friends, you DESERVE to suffer.
I mean, really. Could you be a bigger wuss? Is there a clearer indication that you are a mentally enfeebled idiot who needs to be institutionalized? I think not. Get a life. Move. Grow up. Excel in school. Do something to insulate yourself from jerks. Whatever it takes. But sitting around and waiting for help from the very same people whom you claim are irredeemably racist, is not just stupid, it’s transparently obvious that you are more interested in whinging than you are in improving your life.
Is interrogating our own racism like waterboarding? Surely that’s wrong and probably hard to do on yourself. If it is like waterboarding can we go on hunger strike? I think the saintly Penny should tell us what to do here.
She knows everything.
You should always Check Your Privilege. I forgot the other day and I was half-way to work before I realised I’d left it on charge in the kitchen. Had to go back for it.
The vilification of Caucasians for simply being Caucasians is reaching terrifying heights. Time to push back against these race-baiting bigots.
naz,
Ba-dumTISH!
Oh, there’s tons of this stuff – it’s where much of the expansion of academia has happened in my lifetime. Courses that are intellectually thin, economically useless and clotted with leftist, often far-leftist dogma.
I just browsed the website of a nearby university. Students can spend their money – or, more likely, someone else’s money – on courses in Critical Theory, in which they’ll be introduced to “the key trends and texts of critical theory” (i.e., Marxist theory and pseudo-theory) with an emphasis on “Marxism, feminism and deconstruction.” There’s French Gender Studies, and Gender Studies in Europe, which “address theoretical gender discourses,” critically, of course – i.e., through a tendentious Marxoid filter. Or there’s a course called Interpret the Brutes: The Animal in Postcolonial Writing, which coos over the blather of Gayatri Spivak, another comedy Marxist. Or you could get into debt with a course titled White Like Me: Reading Whiteness in American Literature, which offers a “deep engagement with questions of race and identity” and the “theoretical design of whiteness” – again, with lots of Marxoid race-class-gender boilerplate.
It would, I think, be marginally more useful to get into debt studying Latin or ancient Greek.
“If one were to propose that Caucasians are, on average, the least racist of all the races, do you think Penny’s head would explode?”
If one were to propose such a thing, one need look no further at Sunny Drake’s own article to prove your point.
His “concrete examples of racism” are the most embarrassingly feeble series of “racist” incidents imaginable.
If you’re compiling a list of racist incidents committed by whites and are reduced to saying things like “I have over-identified with the struggles of transwomen of colour as if they were my own experiences” and “I have minimised the feedback of people of colour e.g. this time when a friend of colour lovingly and publicly questioned how I presented the race of my green and purple”, then white racism really isn’t an issue.
I mean, puppets? In all seriousness, minimising the feedback about green and purple puppets? The Kristallnacht of the 21st century this is not.
I could give a FLYING FUCK if anyone is the “victim” of this kind of alleged “racism.” If you are so incapable of dealing with some jerk who slights you based on your race that you need help from Penny are her pinhead friends, you DESERVE to suffer.
I’m fairly sure that black folks sometimes get the stink-eye from non-black folks, and that such experiences range from annoying to humiliating.
I’m also fairly sure that the following folks get the stink-eye as well: short men, tall women, the blind, the deaf, the wheelchair-bound, little people, stutterers, people with port-wine stains on their faces, those with cerebral palsy, albinos, the obese…
…and pinheads.
Last I checked, the stink-eye can’t keep you from studying hard, staying off drugs and/or out of jail, or from avoiding bearing children until after (or near) marriage.
Jim Crow laws genuinely kept black people down; however, it kept them ALL down equally. Given that racism can’t keep a black man out of the White House anymore, I’d say that the force of whatever racism still exists isn’t preventing any pigmenty people from escaping poverty.
dicentra,
“…I’m also fairly sure that the following folks get the stink-eye as well:…”
As a short man, I thank you for acknowledging my pain & suffering. I’m half Welsh too – double jeopardy.
‘I’m half Welsh too’
That’ll be the short bit.
I’m half Welsh too – double jeopardy.
In the States, Welsh blood doesn’t mean jack. I’ve got tons of Welsh ancestry and nobody gives a rip.
It’s the cankles what get me the stink-eye, and I’m about to bust a cap in someone’s anatomy over it.
It occurs to me that it’s a true shame to waste so much of these folks’ time and energy on this nonsense.
It’s likely that a good number of these whinging fools are really trying to do the right thing as best they understand it. What a waste of their potential, to send them into this endless, pointless labyrinth. Many of these people are conscious of guilt and desire absolution. If they were to learn from the great moral teachers of human history, they could use these feelings to cultivate virtue and become good citizens, exerting a positive influence on our society.
How sad that they have been cut off by historically ignorant sophists from that well of knowledge, while they are dying of thirst. Who can blame them for drinking so deeply from a dirty, stagnant pond? They don’t know where the clean water can be found, or even that it exists.
“That’ll be the short bit.”
Actually the Lancastrian maternal side is vertically challenged too. Didn’t stand a chance!
Even though the missus is both un-Welsh and rather taller than me, our 7 year old daughter currently still wears clothes reputed to be made for 5 year olds. I have to keep reassuring her that being a small girl is really no bad thing to little avail – even at 7 she is already feeling ‘oppressed’. I hope we don’t have another little Laurie on our hands!
dicentra – what’s a cankle?
dicentra – what’s a cankle?
I guess they don’t have Google in Wales, so here ya go: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cankle
Morning all.
[ Sips coffee. Peers at comments, slightly baffled. ]
It’s the cankles what get me the stink-eye, and I’m about to bust a cap in someone’s anatomy over it.
Apparently the solution is to avoid capri pants. And wear knee-high boots. Round the clock, even in bed. Especially in bed.
What?
Today’s outfit: sandals and shorts
Same as yesterday, tomorrow, and until the snow falls, when I switch to long pants.
And the sandals?
Year round. They’re my personal heat-sinks.
Need more coffee…
[ Hoists trousers at knee to glance at ankle. ]
It’s funny how pretentious guilt often goes hand-in-hand with a kind of megalomania. He’s “speaking for all white people,” you see.
T.K. Tortch | July 17, 2013 at 16:03:
my days as a criminal defense attorney… when I… spent most of my time defending young Black males…
My late father’s close friend Ron was a lawyer here in Chicago, and defended many acccused black criminals. Ron once beat a murder rap for Jeff Fort, then head of the Blackstone Rangers (the #1 south side street gang, later the El Rukns). (The case collapsed after the prosecution’s top witness got himself killed in an attempted armed robbery.)
I heard him and some other lawyer friends discuss defending black criminals. They all agreed that when these clients saw a black man on the bench, they’d say “Get me a honky judge.”
“a 13-year-old Missouri schoolboy was followed home and attacked by two black teenagers. The teenagers told their victim, “This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy,””
For realz?
http://opnateye.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Coon-Final.pdf
EB,
For realz?
Thanks for that. Looks like there’s more (or less) to the reported story. Either way, the point I made stands. The given example could be replaced with one of many others. Evidently some racist overtones are to be filtered out to suit a preferred narrative and a bizarre definition of bigotry.
These lunatics define “Whiteness” as being both false and oppressive. They believe that oppression is so integral with “whiteness” that the only way to destroy “oppression” is to destroy “whiteness.”
They then associate the mores, values, &c. of Western Civilization with being “white” (as opposed to universal inalienable truths), and seek to destroy that. Once destroyed, they believe they will be able to reconstruct society in the mind-addled utopian visions they have.
Sadly, they are succeeding.
This will not end well.
David,
Do any of the people you scalp (Penny Dreadful, Sunny Drake, etc) ever comment here to defend their reputations?
osis,
Do any of the people you scalp (Penny Dreadful, Sunny Drake, etc) ever comment here to defend their reputations?
I’d guess that some of the people we snigger at will notice the sniggering at some point, thanks to traffic stats and the wonders of Google, etc. Though it seems those who do visit maintain a, um, dignified silence. The only recent reputation-defending that comes to mind is this rather sniffy exchange with the artist Stef Elrick, who took exception to being ribbed even briefly, and whose own subsequent comments revealed more than I imagine she intended.
That said, I doubt I have much effect on such people’s reputations. For instance, if Laurie Penny’s own pronouncements don’t jar with readers, I doubt my additional comments will suddenly make those readers sceptical. Presumably, Laurie’s fans are by and large sympathetic to her worldview and various unearned conclusions. I’d imagine they like her attitudinising, which is basically what she does, and perhaps they indulge in something similar themselves. For many admirers of such people, reasoning and evidence may not be decisive factors – and so mockery and correction probably won’t be decisive factors either. Assuming, that is, they’re even aware of it.
Evidently some racist overtones are to be filtered out to suit a preferred narrative and a bizarre definition of bigotry.
Nail on head, David.
http://theothermccain.com/2013/09/12/post-trayvon-wave-of-anti-white-terrorist-violence-continues-every-day/