Piety Through Neurosis
A concerned parent, a white Slate reader, seeks counsel from the woke hive mind:
My sons have graduated, and their closest friends are still a mix of black, Hispanic, and white kids. I have never been concerned about the kids having any issues around race.
That’s nice. However, inevitably, the sky soon begins to cloud:
But one of our sons mentioned recently how irritated he is by the form he has to fill out regarding a college roommate. He has to specify his race, and all of the profiles of potential roommates he views also include race. He says all he cares about is if they are male or female and what their interests are — he doesn’t care about race.
At which point, sharp-eyed readers may sense where this is heading.
I’m doing more reading on racism, and if I’m understanding correctly, not caring about race is almost as bad as focusing only on race. Should he care what race his friends are? Is there something we should be doing or talking to our kids about before they go to college, or is it too late? Are they just as racist as someone who only has white friends, or am I worrying about nothing?
Slate’s purveyor of progressive wisdom, Michelle Herman, knows a rube when she sees one:
Not caring about or noticing race is a privilege reserved for people who are white.
A bold, indeed sweeping, claim, evidence for which is not forthcoming, presumably on grounds that time is better spent inculcating neurosis – and habitual, exploitable insecurity – all in the name of piety:
As the sociologist Megan R. Underhill, who studies race and family, has said, “White people aren’t ‘outside’ of race—they’re at the top of the racial hierarchy.” Dismissing or downplaying this reality only perpetuates inequity and violence.
Again, the precise mechanism by which these things occur, if indeed they do, is not shared with the unenlightened. We must, it seems, take such things on trust. A kind of woke gospel. However, the expectation of fretting and psychological prostration is harder to miss. You see, by not fixating tediously on every person’s melanin levels and minor variations of physiognomy – by not endlessly categorising people by their brownness, and therefore presumed suffering, and therefore innate nobility and entitlement to favours – you are, it turns out, perpetuating violence.
Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.
Update, via the comments:
And for those morbidly curious, the end product of all this racial bean-counting and pretentious agonising – the ideal end product – can be witnessed in all its glory here. It’s quite a thing.
My kids aren’t racist – SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!
My kids aren’t racist – SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!
Well, quite. The psychological dynamic is revolting. It’s a license for malice, an urge to do harm.
’…if I’m understanding correctly…’
I’ll stop you there. You aren’t.
In other news, I now have twelve followers on Parler. It’s terribly exciting.
“White people aren’t ‘outside’ of race—they’re at the top of the racial hierarchy.”
Interesting how those “at the top of the racial hierarchy” are constantly criticized and berated. That’s not how hierarchies work.
If it’s not made up, there’s a lot of ostentatious not-noticing going on here, and I’m not sure who’s pulling the wool over whose eyes.
Feigning surprise that not everybody has black friends is a one-up game among the kinds of goodwhites who obsess about good school districts for their high-investment IVF twins, the sweet spot being something like a high-functioning Sesame Street.
Is this the story the mother tells to show off to her friends how impeccably she’s brought up her children? Is this a game the boys play because they know it pleases their mother? Is it a game the boys play to gain street cred among their private high school comrades? Is it the story they tell in their college application essays?
The thing that doesn’t quite fit for me is that ambitious parents in 2020 already know the booby traps of “some of my best friends are…”, and don’t need to write into agony aunts to know that passive non-racism and colourblindness no longer exempt you from suspicion of bad intent.
Maybe the mother fears that the twins are in for a nasty shock when start college without their diverse posse and all anyone knows is that they’re white boys from a private school.
I now have twelve followers on Parler.
Parler – French for “to speak.
French.
Interesting how those “at the top of the racial hierarchy” are constantly criticized and berated. That’s not how hierarchies work.
Again, it’s a phenomenon we’ve touched on before.
French.
[ Opens window, shakes fist across English Channel. ]
I’ll stop you there. You aren’t.
And the end result of this “self-education” – the ideal end result – is a kind of farcical neurosis. A mind come undone.
And the person in the link above, Melissa Fabello, imagines herself fit to educate others. It’s darkly comical.
Anyone else growing increasingly tired of women, mostly it’s women but yes some weakish men…but women…constantly telling us and in this manner, suggesting to us, how virtuous they are? Lately, between the virus and this BLM BS, I’ve noticed it ratcheting up even amongst women I (used to) respect.
16 followers on Parler. Tension mounts.
WTP’s comment reminded me of something.
During my misspent youth as an evangelical Christian, I would occasionally help out at the church’s Sunday school. It wasn’t called Sunday school, they tried to be cool and called it something involving the word “zone”, I don’t remember the details, but the kids were about 11 or 12. There was a very sharp gender divide. The boys looked and acted like children, they messed around and ran around and laughed a lot. The girls, on the other hand, were dressed to the nines and trying very hard to be grown-ups, but their idea of what a grown-up was was someone very serious who told kids off for messing about and didn’t laugh at anything. A very child’s-eye view of what an adult is.
I think some never grow out of it. That’s where self-righteous busybodies come from.
Astonishingly the current US #2 Amazon best selling book is “White Fragility” – an overtly racist anti-white diatribe. Its author Robin DiAngelo is a sort of photographic negative of Richard Spencer but without the charm.
How did it come to this?
White people… [are] at the top of the racial hierarchy.
And they accuse others of being “white supremacists”⁉️
Its author Robin DiAngelo is a sort of photographic negative of Richard Spencer but without the charm.
You’d think that students, supposedly being clever, might register that people who continually bang on about race, who fixate on it, who insist on shoehorning it into almost any conversation, generally have something unsavoury about them. They all seem a bit off, and in much the same way.
And yes, Dr DiAngelo’s unhappy mental habits have been noted here before.
And in case there were any doubt, these are not good people. They do not mean well.
White people… [are] at the top of the racial hierarchy.
There is an obvious parallel between old-fashioned southern racists and modern woke racists.
The former discriminated against black folk and denied that they were being racist because black people are genuinely sub-human and inferior.
The latter discriminate against white folk and deny that they are racists because white folk really are privileged and superior.
Plus ça change!
The girls, on the other hand, were dressed to the nines and trying very hard to be grown-ups, but their idea of what a grown-up was was someone very serious who told kids off for messing about and didn’t laugh at anything. A very child’s-eye view of what an adult is.
Women are herd animals. They follow the herd, and particularly the matriarch of the herd. Those girls were simply mimicking the way they see the adult women in their lives treat the boys they know.
Boys are hierarchical pack animals, and they spend a lot of time jockeying to be the alpha, which means not giving a **** what somebody’s else’s rules are.
Women are herd animals.
[ Hides breakables. ]
[ Hides breakables. ]
I’m not sure Darleen and Julia constitute a herd?
This is one of the few points on which I feel complete sympathy for Blacks. Is it even possible for them to have a White friend? Won’t there always be that niggling (yeah yeah, I denounce myself) doubt in the back of your mind? The suspicion that, as much as Chad seems to really value you as a person, he just can’t resist name-dropping you when you’re not around? “As I was saying to Tyrone the other day… you know Tyrone, of course, he’s my Black friend…”
It has to be stress-inducing.
I’ll just repeat the comment I made at Instapundit last night:
And the thing is, as you can see here, this is no longer idle speculation on my part: they admit it. Citing Orwell has become so hackneyed, but this really is doublethink: racism is the ultimate evil, and we must obsessively discriminate on the grounds of race. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Colourblindness is Racism.
Also, Patrick Brown… a lot of truth in that, I think.
Being non-racist is a threat to the entire grievance industry, and must be pulled up like the noxious weed that it is. If people stopped caring about race, entire university departments would lose their raison d’etre.
Unfortunately for them, the grievance industry is due to for a serious downturn. As intersectional politics has polluted ever more scholastic pursuits, the public demand for these degrees has fallen signicantly, and this trend will only accelerate for the next few decades due to demographics. Nor does it help that Asians — generally the most talented students — have never shown interest in activist degrees, preferring instead those fields that are actually useful. The latest insurrections might speed up the process even further.
Being non-racist is a threat to the entire grievance industry,
Again, as so often, the words that come to mind are hustler and parasite.
By way of illustration.
And further illustration.
these are not good people. They do not mean well.
That.
How does that saying go? “If you don’t come to the orgy, the orgy will come for you.”
I’ve noticed it ratcheting up even amongst women I (used to) respect.
Twenty years ago I met an interesting young lady with a troubled upbringing yet a charmingly untroubled attitude towards much the silliness that was extent at the time.
Ten years ago, during the course of a private conversation, she admitted to me that she only used “B.C.E.” in place of “B.C.” because she was an academic (classical music) and she had to go along to get along.
In the past week I have seen her (on the Book of Faces) call the CHAZ “the most American thing” she has ever seen, and post images of denouncable comments written by some poor sod while listing off the mutual “friends” they share, demanding to know how these third parties account for their association with the wrongthinker.
That.
Well, to take the two examples above, neither of these preening clowns will face the practical fallout of their own dogmatism, narcissism and chronic adolescence. By the time the real-world consequences are hard to avoid – say, when looking for employment – they, our “social justice” hustlers, will have moved on to the next batch of suckers to peddle their woke hokum all over again. And so, the students, especially minority students, will be the ones left sounding uneducated and with little useful skill, but with a brittle and chippy ego, and a ruinous debt.
Again, if you were spiteful and actually wanted to degrade the life-chances of the students you’re entrusted to educate, what, if anything, would you do differently?
Here’s an interesting article by someone claiming to be a former cop who has clearly since drunk too much koolaid. Although much of what he writes is thought-provoking, and some of which makes a lot of sense, the article does descend to a clownishly idealised police-free utopian future.
I think the current residents of CHAZ would find reasons to differ.
Not caring about or noticing race
ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
That’s the basic bad-faith assumption about people who say they are color-blind. It does NOT mean we do not notice race, it only means we don’t find it particularly important. People’s character – the sum of their principles and their behavior exhibited based on those principles – plus their personal experiences, their personal likes/dislikes, their talents and skills are all infinitely more important than their melanin level.
And, no, it is not anymore a “white privilege” than it is a Japanese privilege in Japan or a Chinese privilege in China.
Women are herd animals. They follow the herd, and particularly the matriarch of the herd.
[ Buys air tickets, mutters prayer. ]
Astonishingly the current US #2 Amazon best selling book is “White Fragility” – an overtly racist anti-white diatribe. . . . How did it come to this?
Actually, I believe the question would be How long has it been so and stay so for how few? . . . .
As in, did this utter and absolute fascination start to occur before or after C-19 kicked in?
Did this utter and absolute fascination start to occur before or after the start of A Lot of rather particular people winding up stuck in place with nothing to do and stare at, and nothing to turn to, but very monofocused, internet based, commentary feeds, with internet based commentary support such as Amazon?
Myself, I only know of this book ’cause I just read of the reference. —And I’ve been doing some particular Amazon buying ’cause of the amount of lockdown.
At the time that C-19 turned up in the headlines, I was doing a two to three year project based study of coding and computer administration Stuff. To support that, I was doing [assorted staff and company function support] at the company I worked at. That job, and most of the company, shut down the split second the lockdowns began.
Following that, I did assorted small project cleanup related to the coding studies. In turn, for a month or so did night time restocking at a local grocery store. Then I got recommended for a different job.
I’m currently back to doing a two to three year project based study of coding and computer administration Stuff. To support that, I am doing [assorted staff and company function support] at the different company I now work at. The only difference being that the new work is C-19 related stuff.
And I and my assorted coworkers have been and are quite homogeneous in focusing on our assorted aspects of our general job, but beyond that focus, from background to ancestry, that is basically the only interest and focus we have in common.
—In all of the time that C-19 has been around, with all of assorted coworkers regularly going online and being quite internet familiar, the primary focus of my coworkers has remained the general aspects of the job we’re doing. Even when doing random chatting that notes surrounding occurrences, such as during the protests and the quite different riots, a theme was that rioting looters are idiots, not protesters —And pretty much the same with what people I’m generally in touch with outside of work.
What has not been turning up is anything in the range of such a book or subject.—and all these quite varied people I’m in touch with are themselves regularly going online.
Or, better yet, what has not been turning up is anything in the range of such a book or subject that has such a totally limited monofocus.—and all these quite varied people I’m in touch with are themselves regularly going online.
the grievance industry is due to for a serious downturn. As intersectional politics has polluted ever more scholastic pursuits, the public demand for these degrees has fallen signicantly, and this trend will only accelerate for the next few decades due to demographics.
I don’t think that’s true. As we’ve seen this week, the cancer has moved beyond academia and metastasized. When statues of Teddy Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, and Don Quixote are being removed or vandalized, things have passed a point where a simple market correction in higher education will suffice (indeed, higher education has been surviving on the teat of taxpayer grants/loans/funding for decades).
You all chuckle when I talk about helicopters, but look at what’s happening in CHAZ, NYC, Minneapolis, and Atlanta (especially Atlanta). Look at how thoroughly the apparatus of government has been corrupted by these Communist revolutionaries.
If you can suggest something short of a violent tyrannical purge, I’m all ears.
Here’s neurosis and piety engaged in an epic cage match:
https://twitter.com/addisonraeduh/status/1275086163942928385
You’ve been told.
You all chuckle when I talk about helicopters, . .
‘K, since you asked.
If you can suggest something short of a violent tyrannical purge, I’m all ears.
Actually, all you’ll need are open eyes—June 22, 2020 at 09:52, if the link stays too close to the bottom of the page for sufficient scroling . . ..
See, also.
You’ve been told.
If I say
Fuck off
Fuck off
Amazon best selling book is “White Fragility” – an overtly racist anti-white diatribe
I’m going to read it because I want to know exactly what these cultists believe and propagandize. Forewarned is forearmed.
Forewarned is forearmed.
I’m with you, though I have to admit that it’s harder to get motivated to learn the enemy’s arguments when I know that all of my counterarguments will be a waste of breath, considering the usual reaction when the sophisticated, nuanced free-thinkers are confronted by facts and evidence contrary to their programming.
What’s the phrase? “Wastes my time and annoys the pig?”
I’m going to read it
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. My viscera react violently after mere paragraphs.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Sadly not, I fear. If America were not sufficiently forewarned of the disastrous consequences of racist lunatics like DiAngelo being taken seriously at Evergreen University by its consequent dramatic descent into violent Stalinist farce, then I doubt anything would do the job. To the contrary, in fact, they seem determined to re-enact it.
. . . . cop who has clearly since drunk too much koolaid
Recommended reading:
Also recommended reading: 400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman
I’m going to read it because I want to know exactly what these cultists believe and propagandize. Forewarned is forearmed.
Some number of years ago I was working in a campus textbook store, and one of the customers was looking for a copy of Mein Kampf. . . . .
Women are herd animals.
Noticed when I was a wee lad. In elementary school, we’d be herded into the gym (contents: one basketball court, brick walls) where we’d play tag with a rubber ball.
And I’d wonder why the boys tended to spread out, while the girls formed a herd, as if they found safety with those of their own gender. I could still remember us running around, and the clack-clack-clack of their hard shoes on the polished wood court.
Karl: ’ I’m not sure Darleen and Julia constitute a herd?’
More of a pack… 😉
You’ve been told.
Thing is, we’ve seen what happens when only Members Of The Tribe get any say in how incredibly oppressed they are, and when Tribe A and Tribe B can’t agree on which of them is more oppressed.
That’s first-rate commentary by Kerr at 10:47 above. I’d only add that in my experience agony-aunt columns are usually wholly written in-house, the letters as well as the replies: the letters are contrived as cues for the replies; and this seems to be one of those.
. . .
I want to know what these cultists believe and propagandize
Best of luck with that, but they don’t necessarily believe anything: the ideas are just counters in a game for power
(and) Forewarned is forearmed
The (fictional?) letter-writer at top would have been forearmed by better knowing what she herself believes.
it is not anymore a “white privilege” than it is a Japanese privilege in Japan or a Chinese privilege in China
It’s as if the word ‘majority’ has been redefined as ‘supremacy’.
the ideas are just counters in a game for power
That.
That’s why marxist, socialist, communist experiments all end with body counts and bulldozers.
Thing is, we’ve seen what happens when only Members Of The Tribe get any say in how incredibly oppressed they are . . .
A helpful scorecard system.
—Certainly if the particulars are not up to date with the spasms of whatever recent half hour, the details can be updated as needed. If need be, I expect a wild card system could be added.
Meanwhile, our friends at the Groan worry if J.K. Rowling’s literary agent will be able to survive the exodus of four authors nobody has ever heard of.
One of the departing authors said: “I’m gay, I know what it’s like to be a minority, and I also know what it’s like to be in an industry where you have to be aware of your public persona and how that might affect sales.”
George Sand was unavailable for comment.
Hoarding.
There are of course two possible interpretations for every Robin DiAngelo claim:
1. All white people are racist and can be divided into those who are deny their racism and those who wish to atone for it.
2. Robin DiAngelo is a racist who believes that black people are an inferior race and seeks to denigrate all white people to hobble their supposed superiority.
I suggest 2.
Prove me wrong.
For the greater good.
Holy Shit. Dr Fauci, lead immunologist on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, proudly (proudly!) announces that he deliberately lied to the American public about the efficacy of wearing masks against Coronavirus infection, to the detriment of their health and safety, for the greater good.
@Hal, thanks for the book recommendation – downloaded!
David, just for future reference, do you get a cut of any links posted, or is it necessary to go through the links above? I *think* I did it so you get paid, but I want to make sure for future reference. Thanks!!
do you get a cut of any links posted, or is it necessary to go through the links above?
Anything bought from Amazon US via this link, or from Amazon UK via the widget top right or via this link, earns me a modest commission.
In other news, I now have twelve followers on Parler. It’s terribly exciting
How…. Biblical.
Were I you I’d avoid Romans for a while.
Heh.
In other news, I now have twelve followers on Parler. It’s terribly exciting
How…. Biblical.
Were I you I’d avoid Romans for a while.
Twelve? David, yer still missing one. Mebbe you can track down Minnow to fill in.
Someone induced me to read Hayek, “The Constitution of Liberty”. Chapter six has a lengthy discussion of the difference between value and merit and why one arises from liberty and the other prevents it.
Infections do not naturally arise throughout a population all at the same time, there is always an index case. It seems to me that protests are the same. Yet, all-police-are-racists was followed closely by all-white-people-are-racists and piss-off-the-conservative-white-people-by pulling-down-the-statues all in the period of a few days. I perceive a high degree of organization yet no one is claiming to organize. Regrettably people are killed by police every year; it seems odd that we have a high degree of organized disorder this year but not last year.
The upcoming election for US president, one third of the Senate, and all of the House has nothing to do with it, of course.