Rhetorical Wheelies
Cyclists and the cycling industry must come to terms with the reality that cycling is a powerful narrator in the power of whiteness that feeds anti-Blackness.
Via Instapundit, news from the frontier of woke sports, where “the power of whiteness within cycling” is, we’re assured, a thing that exists:
It’s time for cycling to think beyond white fragility, white privilege, implicit bias, and microaggressions, and begin to think about its root cause. Cycling must reject interventions that continue to individualise anti-Black racism, and work to break down the structures that allow whiteness to retain power in the sport.
As is the custom, assertions soon pile high, albeit unsteadily, and questions are begged at a rate of knots. The “system of privileges and advantages afforded to white people” is denounced more than once, along with “the whiteness of cycling,” though, as so often, the particulars remain unobvious and unconvincing. Apparently, “white privilege” is a phenomenon to be taken as a given, always and everywhere, and in which we must believe. For instance,
In late September, many in the sport turned a blind eye when it came to light that world-champion Chloe Dygert ‘liked’ several racist and transphobic tweets.
I’m unfamiliar with Ms Dygert or her views, but the sole, supposedly damning, example of her “transphobia” is her liking of the statement “Men who identify as women are not actually women.” This does not strike me as phobic, or scandalous, or indeed inaccurate. And for a female athlete to prefer competing against other women, i.e., fairly, should not be controversial – in a sane world. As for alleged racism, the only evidence provided is the liking of a tweet that says, “White privilege doesn’t exist; good choice privilege does.” But even to dispute woke conspiracy theories is, it turns outs, itself proof of racism and a basis for “disgust,” which seems enormously convenient, for the accuser, and must save a lot of time. And so, this liking of a tweet is framed as,
an expression of the violent normality of anti-Black racism in the world.
Which is in no way hyperbolical or ludicrous, obviously.
As wokeness is fundamentally pretentious, which is to say dishonest, failing to pretend must, of course, be punished. Say, by harassing Ms Dygert’s sponsors in the hope of derailing or destroying her career. However, it turns out that this approach has not been entirely successful:
Dygert, who has since unliked the tweets, has faced no real consequences that we know of, so far… She has returned to training with Team USA ahead of the Tokyo Olympics.
A note of displeasure is hard to miss. The athlete in question having apparently escaped ruin, thanks to public scolding from her sponsors and a confession of heresy via Instagram:
Cycling should be for everyone regardless of colour, gender, sexuality or background. Like CANYON//SRAM Racing, I am committed to promoting diversity, inclusion and equality in cycling and our wider communities. I apologise to those who I offended or hurt by my conduct on social media. I am committed to keep learning and growing as an athlete and a person.
Brings a tear to the eye.
Inevitably, this narrow escape is also seized upon as proof of “white privilege.”
Such public respect and civility toward Dygert, no doubt aspects of white privilege and power, allow her and her corporate sponsors a path to redemption, a means to restore or even reshape their image, build character, and come out on top.
To come out on top, i.e., to nearly but not quite have one’s career destroyed and have years of training flushed down the toilet, due to a pretentious and vindictive mob. All for acknowledging an obvious fact and for liking a tweet that disputes the alleged ubiquity of “white privilege.”
To me, Dygert’s apology… lacks sincerity…
As almost everything does, and must, in the world of the woke, given the kinds of people involved and their most common motives.
This is followed by some convoluted rumbling about the sportswear brand Rapha, a sponsor of Ms Dygert, and which is denounced as “a global company that is conscious of its whiteness and unearned privilege” and is trying to “regain control over whiteness.” A claim for which no evidence, or coherent explanation, is offered. Nonetheless, it seems we should be hissing with disapproval.
And this is the tone throughout, the basis of so much operatic indignation. The words “white” and “whiteness” are used thirty-two times, generally with negative, pejorative connotations – of fragility and privilege, intangible aggressions – yet particulars remain nebulous or entirely absent, with the words serving chiefly as cues to disapprove, a kind of intersectional prompt, an incantation.
Vague, disjointed insinuations, and appeals to unspecified “structures,” are, however, more than sufficient for the recreationally aggrieved. The kinds of people who comb through athletes’ tweets in the hope of spotting something that can be construed, with much squinting and tilting of the head, as a basis for social damnation and the ending of their careers. Such that an implied, one-word endorsement of Donald Trump is confidently presented as “anti-Black racism” and grounds for pillory.
Woke piety, you see.
For readers still unclear on what, exactly, “the whiteness of cycling” is, we must push on to the article’s end, where we learn, belatedly,
The whiteness of cycling, in part, is the ability to reduce anti-Black racism to a misunderstanding that can simply be overcome by introspection.
Which is to say, if you even hint at doubting the pervasive, crushing presence of “white privilege” – the go-to explanation for all modern ills – and even if you publicly apologise for doing so and promise never to do it again, you are still indulging in “whiteness” and “anti-Black racism” by daring to assume that an apology will ever be enough, or that this game will ever end.
The author of the piece quoted above is P. Khalil Saucier, an associate professor of Africana Studies at Bucknell University. An educator, then. Shaping young minds.
Update, via the comments:
Several readers have noted our associate professor’s reliance on modish waffle and unearned assertions, suggesting the term “word soup.” Some have questioned whether our woke educator is unwell.
There is, it has to be said, an air of unhappy monomania. The word “whiteness” is used nine times, and “white,” the favoured pejorative, a mere twenty-three – in an article supposedly aimed at enthusiasts of cycling. And given the wildness of the assertions and the apparent disregard for evidence or any sense of proportion, it’s hard to imagine how one might have an honest and realistic discussion with such a person. Our associate professor does seem lost in his own rather unhinged, self-ratcheting ideology.
That said, if the conclusion – Bad Whitey – is inevitable and predestined, then I suppose the argument used to get there doesn’t need to be load-bearing or particularly coherent. You can invoke terribly oppressive structures and systems that are never quite defined, and for which no credible evidence is offered, and whose supposedly crushing effects are never established or even clearly articulated. Attempts at realism and clarity, even basic honesty, seem likely to hinder the process, which would explain their rarity in arguments of this kind.
And as we’ve seen many times, this is a typical standard for our intersectional clowns. This is regarded as good enough, the basis of an academic career. Because, given sufficient prompting, sufficient repetition, the students – the kinds of students who think Angry Studies is a good use of time and money – will believe it anyway. Because they’ll want to believe it. Which is to say, if your students are already invested in victimhood, in pretensions of being oppressed, then they’re unlikely to be too picky when you affirm those pretensions. Any half-baked tat will do. 
To me, Dygert’s apology… lacks sincerity…
Lefties project.
this liking of a tweet is framed as,
Which is in no way hyperbolical or ludicrous, obviously.
These people are insane.
These people are insane.
Well, there is an air of unhappy monomania. The word “whiteness” is used nine times, and “white,” the go-to pejorative, a mere twenty-three. And given the wildness of the assertions, the reliance on operatic overstatement, and the apparent disregard for any sense of proportion, it’s hard to imagine how one might have an honest and realistic discussion with such a person. Our associate professor does seem lost in his own rather demented, self-ratcheting ideology.
[ Added: ]
I suppose it’s not unlike if you’ve ever met someone who flares up with hair-trigger annoyance at the merest demurral, a behaviour that tends to repel criticism and serious engagement, and which is often deployed precisely because of that. By a certain kind of person.
In our associate professor’s case, it seems doubtful that his pronouncements meet with any serious challenge, at least not from his peers, even the few who may disagree, partly because realism and probity seem unlikely to play a significant part in any response, and instead a barrage of bald assertion would be more likely, along with the inevitable accusations of “whiteness” and so forth. It’s dishonest and tiresome, and a bitch to untangle, and if almost any testing interaction results in some variation of “You are white and therefore guilty,” then one tends to remember that life is short and there are better things to do.
Which may, of course, explain why such people flourish and multiply in their Clown Quarter fiefdom.
As almost everything does, and must, in the world of the woke, given the kinds of people involved and their most common motives.
That.
Tip jar pinged. 🙂
https://babylonbee.com/news/grizzly-bear-shatters-pro-wrestling-records-after-identifying-as-a-human
Nothing to see here then.
Tip jar pinged. 🙂
Bless you, madam. May your bathroom taps gleam at all times.
Cycling must reject interventions that continue to individualise anti-Black racism
“Individualize”. Collective guilt of all white people? If anything can turn good, decent white people into racists, it’s the conduct of “anti-racists”.
I’m unfamiliar with Ms Dygert or her views, but the sole, supposedly damning, example of her “transphobia” is her liking of the statement “Men who identify as women are not actually women.”
Also the pro-Trump tweet: Here in America, the left routinely treats support for Trump as proof of racism, transphobia, etc. (Proof of the connection is established not with evidence but merely by endlessly repeating the claim.)
P. Khalil Saucier, an associate professor of Africana Studies
In other words, a person whose contributions to civilization are negative.
At first I was encouraged by this news. Cyclists have degenerated into assholery to the point that 20 years ago, as a casual triathlete, I gave up on cycling as exercise because I didn’t want to be associated with the kind of obnoxious road behavior that was causing certain asshole drivers to run random cyclists off the road…something that I had already experienced twice.
Then I realized cyclists won’t change. And most of them have the mentality of middle class white women or are MCWW themselves, so they’re far more likely to join forces with the BLM types and become even bigger assholes. I should know and accept by now that there is no winning. I am kinda stupid that way. But I try…
One annoying consequence of lockdown has been the realisation by many cyclists of all ages that pavements are for their use, not for those annoying pedestrians. Ditto parks with “No Cycling” signs clearly posted at every entrance.
Ping!
– Just HAD to find out what that button did…
“You are white and therefore guilty,”
led me to clicky said prof’s pic.
Dude is white.
Y’all crack me up. No, really.
Just HAD to find out what that button did…
Bless you, sir. May you be spared the thrill of steering a hamster away from the electrical cable on which it had been happily gnawing.
“To me, Dygert’s apology… lacks sincerity… ”.
To me, P.’s accusations lack sincerity.
If everything’s relative, their side doesn’t get to stand on absolutes either. And this nonsense only works if they do: “white privilege” is axiomatic; denial is, ipso facto, proof of guilt. I may have said before that if I’m ever confronted with one of these “check your privilege” questionnaires, I’ll simply respond in the negative to every line then when challenged, ask if the inquisitor is questioning my “lived experience”.
Make them live by their own stupid rules.
“If anything can turn good, decent white people into racists, it’s the conduct of “anti-racists”.”
I believe that’s the idea, yes.
“May you be spared the thrill of steering a hamster away from the electrical cable on which it had been happily gnawing.”
– Impending karma; what’s not to like? 😉
The article quoted above is, I’m guessing, a taste of Professor Saucier’s forthcoming book, Black Frames: (Anti)Blackness and the Sport of Cycling, the content of which will presumably be comparable in its rigour, realism, and honesty.
“If anything can turn good, decent white people into racists, it’s the conduct of “anti-racists”.”
I believe that’s the idea, yes.
More precisely, I believe the idea is to turn whites into self-hating, submissive slaves, with the proviso that radicalizing them into hatred of blacks is almost as desirable because revolutionaries (whether they be black racists or Marxists or fascists) always seek to destroy the moderate, peaceful middle.
Most of the cyclists in a Tour de France are domestiques, water carriers and working horses who exhaust themselves every day in order for their team leaders to emerge from their slipstream and claim the glory.
It’s historically a job for stolid Flemish farmboys accustomed to a day’s physical work. But by not recruiting Africans as domestiques, we’re missing out on so many racial Conversations. The ugly racial trope of Blacks as domestic servants; white glorification built on the invisible labor of Black Bodies; the rolling turns at the front of a bunch symbolically reenacting plantation work crews, etc, etc.
For one of the ‘woke’ to say something ‘lacks sincerity’ could be seen as psychological projection if it didn’t just reek of hypocrisy.
A trait prominent in Karl Marx if reports are true.
A trait prominent in Karl Marx if reports are true.
See, for instance, the chapter on Marx in Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals. Also, if memory serves, Thomas Sowell’s essay Marx, the Man.
Does anybody know if Herr Doctor Doctor Professor Saucier can even ride a bike?
Instalanche!
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/452040/
Instalanche!
Breath mints, everyone.
Cyclist Marshall Taylor was the first Black American to win a World Championship
“I find your lack of sincerity…troubling.”
The author of the piece quoted above is P. Khalil Saucier, an associate professor of Africana Studies at Bucknell University.
So: a person I’ve never heard of, who is an associate professor of a subject I’ve never heard of at a university I’ve never heard of, has opinions. I will, of course, drop everything I was doing and pay rapt attention to whatever this person has to say.
Oh, it’s about “the power of whiteness within cycling”? I might possibly care about that if I cared at all about cycling. Guess what: I don’t. Not even a little bit. So I’m going to finish loading my dishwasher now.
Bicycling has been an awful, irrelevant rag since Rodale purchased the title. Prior to that, it was merely subpar. This reads like the last gasp of a dying business. Even money the title folds altogether within a year.
So: a person I’ve never heard of, who is an associate professor of a subject I’ve never heard of at a university I’ve never heard of, has opinions.
What I find interesting is the level of fear. It is so high that apparently any goat can waltz into a magazine, an online forum, an open source project. Bleat “Racism!” loudly and you’re given a soap box for a good struggle session. No requirements for any relevant experience, gravitas or popularity as long as the “Racism!” shouting is loud enough.
Not that it’s directly relevant to this article, but within the last 12 months another “niche sport” magazine, the 60-year old “Surfer Magazine” went bankrupt.
Their audience voted with its pocketbook after the editorial staff decided to publish article after article about how surfers were either guilty of White Privilege, were closeted homosexuals or, alternately violent homophobes, and vicious bigots.
One hopes the future of Bicycling.com follows the same trajectory, followed swiftly by our University system.
Cyclists vs black power advocates. Could they be a stronger case for ‘Can’t they both lose?’, I wonder?
a person I’ve never heard of, who is an associate professor of a subject I’ve never heard of at a university I’ve never heard of, has opinions
Which you must acknowledge, as he is properly credentialed as a member of the mandarin class, bearing patents of nobility…
*yeah, I know – I’m mixing cultures. The result however, is the same – the rise of a credentialed class, able to influence (and order) the commoners*
Professor Saucier’s forthcoming book
Assuming the professor teaches two sections with 16 students each, one estimates that sales of the new book will plateau somewhere around 25…
an open source project
The source code hosting site github recently decided to change the default branch in every single customer repository it hosts (hundreds of thousands) from ‘master’ to ‘main’. Although they stopped short of forcing this on existing repositories, this has completely hosed an entire ecosystem of tools which all assume that the default branch will be ‘master’, as it has been for over ten years.
I know of two different developers who have quit their jobs after being asked to make this change for entirely internal git repositories that no one outside their group will ever see (for those not familiar, this is a huge undertaking that can potentially mess up software delivery for months if not done perfectly the first time).
Our associate professor informs us,
Which prompts someone in the comments at Instapundit to attempt a translation:
Sounds about right. When race hustlers deploy the words “systemic” and “structural,” and indeed “whiteness,” the odds are good that what follows will be dubious, and quite often horseshit.
Bucknell? How does some whack job like this, in a whackjob major (Africana Studies?) exist in the middle of rural central Pennsylvania? Is this for the affirmative action students from the urban Philadelphia or Pittsburgh? Something without intellectual standards that will get them a diploma without undue effort or exchange of anything beyond student loan proceeds?
WTP: “Cyclists have degenerated into assholery …”
I tend to agree. I raced on the road for some 16 years, starting at a time before triathlons became the rage. The behaviour of traditional racing cyclists in training bunches was always pretty good on the road and young lads were kept in check by older riders. There were certain traditions and codes in what was, around the world, originally a sport of the working man. That didn’t stop occasional car drivers playing dangerous games by cutting off riders, especially in the US where the car is king. When triathlons became popular a different social group – affluent, ambitious middle and upper class athletes – began riding their expensive bikes. They were often very fit and aggressive, but couldn’t ride in a bunch at speed with any safety. When they joined in long Sunday morning training rides they were watched very closely because they were considered dangerous. Often the ordinary road-racing cyclists would sit well back from the triathlete lads waiting for the inevitable crash as they over-lapped wheels. The tri-boys were super competitive and often ‘half-wheeled’ when taking a pull at the front, i.e. leading the bunch. That is, they kept increasing pace when the training purpose of the bunch was to set a strong, steady pace. In short with the entry of triathletes into cycling the culture changed and all rides turned into races. Increasingly road rules were disregarded. I and other riders I knew stopped riding in popular Sunday morning training rides so as to avoid the tri boys and because we wanted to train, not race. [Usually we had raced on Saturday.] Traditional racing cycling was a minor sport with its own codes. It changed in the 1980s and triathlons were partly responsible for that change as a different class of people joined the sport and made it more popular. However there is now an aggressive attitude and an assumption by affluent, fit fools that they own the roads and can do what they want. That didn’t exist before triathlons became the rage.
Ntsog,
Take heart, there is hope yet.
I’m my area, serious cyclists got their start at Cupertino Bike Shop, first in a garage in a private home, eventually occupying a large store at a prime location, and currently relegated to a shabby building well off main street. This spanned 50 years.
Eventually I may find myself back on that front lawn with a handful of riders, waiting for the shop guy to finish his lunch.
I tend to agree. I raced on the road for some 16 years, starting at a time before triathlons became the rage…
About when did triathlons become a thing?
Thanks for the info: this is stuff I don’t know about.
Assuming the professor teaches two sections with 16 students each, one estimates that sales of the new book will plateau somewhere around 25…
Possibly, but there’s probably still a market left in people who need some virtue signaling books to put in bookcases in the background for their Zoom meetings.
Guy’s a white as I am but his name is suitably “brown” so he passes muster with the BIPOC BAME worshipping crowd.
About when did triathlons become a thing?
I had a long rambling, boomer generation and beyond damning reply to NTSOG that I probably best not post…so to say something on topic nice-ish… I became aware of the trend in the early 80’s when a cross country runner friend who had gotten into biking started asking me about swimming technique. Now that I’m typing this out and thinking…the running culture of the 70’s glorified the marathon event. So to go beyond that, in Hawaii they started an Ironman Triathlon competition in 1978. Only 15 people entered the 2.4 mike swim/112 mike bike/26.2 mile run race. As not many people who aren’t Rangers or Seals would be able to do such a thing at that time, smaller distance events (I once did a Tinman which is half those distances…then decided relays were my better option) were created that did more to popularize the concept.
Fred TF: It’s interesting that there are bike shops for buying clothes and equipment, having bikes serviced and then there are bike shops where cyclists go to meet. When I lived in Harrisonburg, Va. there were two bike shops. One was a really professional operation, but it was not the one where cyclists went to meet with other cyclists. Now I live in a large town in rural Victoria. Cycling is a serious past time and the National Road titles are held there annually. There are at least 5 bike shops in the town, but there is only one where cyclists go to meet. It’s run by an ex-pro who raced in Europe as did his son. There’s nothing wrong with the other shops; it’s just that they are not for [real] cyclists who know the sport, its culture and ride, i.e. train and race, with each other.
pst314: If my aging memory is correct triathlons started to become popular first in the USA with the Ironman in Hawaii in the late 1970s and that popularity was given a boost by the exploits of John Howard who was an Olympic racer, won the 1981 Ironman and set a cycling land speed [motor paced] record of 152.2 mph. Howard’s exploits were widely reported and I believe he helped promote the triathlon ‘movement’ around the world. As I suggested in my first post there was antipathy towards triathletes coming into traditional road cycling circles. For example I was out training one evening and caught up with an older rider of about 50 who was a professional racer. This was in about 1983 when there were still amateurs and professionals racing in separate series. At one point during our ride he commented that I was obviously a real cyclist. I asked what he meant. He stated I didn’t dress like those ‘flash” triathletes with their expensive bikes and fancy lycra jerseys. I was wearing an old woolen jersey and woolen cycling shorts – lycra was very new and most of us still wore woolen cycling clothing. [In fact there were holes in my jersey from a crash a few months previously and I did not look at all ‘flash’ or upmarket.] As I said cycling, historically, was a blue collar or working man’s sport in England, Europe and around the world.
Bicycling went left long ago. Didn’t renew my subscription, told them why.
It’s time for cycling to think beyond white fragility, white privilege, implicit bias, and microaggressions
Let’s see, remind me, which race is always whining about not being successful, and constantly needing help for even the most basic things (such as feeding their own children)? That sounds like fragility to me. Which race gets its way by threatening to riot if it doesn’t? That sounds like privilege to me. Which race asserts that all members of the other race are intrinsically evil? That sounds like implicit bias to me. And for which race is the leading cause of death amongst males 15-35 homicide by other members of the same race? Homicide sounds to me like a rather large microaggression.
I denounce myself, of course.
WTP: “Cyclists have degenerated into assholery …”
Most definitely. I have a road bike I used to love to ride bike touring. I don’t ride it anymore, because I don’t want to be taken for a cycling asshole, a demographic that is all too common here in SoCal, where cyclists routinely blow through stop signs, red lights, etc. and get pissed (American sense) when motorists don’t defer to them.
@ J. G. : “… where cyclists routinely blow through stop signs, red lights, etc. and get pissed (American sense) when motorists don’t defer to them.”
It’s the same in many places where arrogant groups of aggressive fools acting in a totally uncivil manner wreck cycling for the rest of us. In Melbourne [Victoria] the Police have been known to pull over and book whole groups of such louts for traffic offences – as they should.
In Melbourne [Victoria] the Police have been known to pull over and book whole groups of such louts for traffic offences – as they should.
The university town I grew up in had quite a collection of militant leftist cyclists who would occasionally get it into their heads that cyclists were quite oppressed, and decide to mob ride slowly from the university to city hall, occupying the main north-south interior road.
What usually happens is the cops show up while they’re still gathering in the university parking lot, and make it painfully clear that the second any bicycle touches a public road, the rider will be ticketed for every single violation of the Highway Traffic Act presented. Given that the HTA requires a functioning bell, rearview mirrors and multiple types of lights – each representing a $75 fine if not present – the protest usually stops before it begins.
Khalil Saucier: “The whiteness of cycling, in part, is the ability to reduce anti-Black racism to a misunderstanding that can simply be overcome by introspection.”
Word soup? In my time teaching primary English Expression I read and corrected some interesting collections of words lumped together by students hoping that they would pass muster as English. I don’t think I ever received an essay including such a ‘sentence’ from a grade 6 child. To read such waffle from a man who claims to be a university professor begs belief, but I do note his PhD is in sociology.
Word soup?
If the conclusion – Bad Whitey – is inevitable and predestined, then I suppose the argument used to get there doesn’t need to be load-bearing or particularly coherent. You can invoke terribly oppressive structures and systems that are never quite defined, and for which no credible evidence is offered, and whose supposedly crushing effects are never established or even clearly articulated. Attempts at realism and clarity, even basic honesty, seem likely to hinder the process, which would explain their rarity in arguments of this kind.
And this is the typical standard for our intersectional clowns. This is regarded as good enough, the basis of an academic career. Because, given sufficient prompting, sufficient repetition, the students – the kinds of students who think Angry Studies is a good use of time and money – will believe it anyway. Because they’ll want to believe it. Which is to say, if your students are already invested in victimhood, in pretensions of being oppressed, then they’re unlikely to be too picky when you affirm those pretensions. Any half-baked tat will do.