Anthropology Free-For-All Politics Travel

Craving Persecution

May 15, 2022 by David 118 Comments

Or, The Minefield Of Modern Progressive Manners:

How dare you take an interest.

A thread ensues, with much rumbling about “othering,” “whiteness” and “racism.” Needless to say, Ms Vasudevan’s own website merrily tells us where she’s from. The thing we’re not allowed to take an interest in, however fleetingly. 

Being fashionably progressive, and a New York Times contributor, Ms Vasudevan has learned to use the words “white” and “whiteness” quite a lot, generally with pejorative connotations. On account of her not being racist, you see. Her interests, we’re told, are “colonialism, race, and climate change.” She also makes a point of telling us that she lives on “Arapaho and Cheyenne land,” i.e., in Denver.

Update, via the comments:

As noted before, following this somewhat related item, the people who insist on these woke protocols act as if they themselves had never had to make polite, albeit clumsy conversation, or had to get to know someone with, at least initially, some pretty simple, even dumb, questions.

A couple of years ago, I was at a family party, to which a niece had brought a Spanish exchange student who was staying with her. It was a large gathering, and the young woman looked a little daunted and left-out. Her English was fairly limited and my Spanish non-existent, so our conversation, such as it was, was fairly basic. In between offering her drinks and sandwiches, etc., and several awkward smiles, I distinctly recall asking some pretty inane questions. I like to think she understood that I was trying to make her feel welcome. Rather than just some bigot, or a dumbass with no conversational flair.

Again, as so often, the umbrage seen above is pretentious and implicitly non-reciprocal. If I were to migrate to live in, say, South Korea and Korean people sometimes asked me where I was from, even if they did this several years after my arrival, I wouldn’t think it inherently impolite or malicious. It might get a little hackneyed, a little boring, but I very much doubt that it would make me feel “sick, frustrated, and uncomfortable.” And were I to get all pissy and indignant about being asked this humdrum question, I suspect Ms Vasudevan and her peers would be ready to scold me for my “privilege” and “fragility,” my “whiteness.”  

And yet even this simple role-swapping isn’t considered – or isn’t considered an acceptable line of thought. Which possibly says something about wokeness. And the kinds of people it attracts.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.




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