If I wanted to make a harsher point

 

I would say the anti CRT/1619 Project people are just perpetuating the terrorism of race based slavery, but short of being violent about it.  It always comes down to the same sick shit.  The wrong kind of white people deciding what should be the norm for the rest of us.  

I know there are some not white people in the lynch mob.  Sadly misguided folk.

Humans prefer excellence, most of the time at least.

Out of all the hypocrisies I see in the world, the elevation of the common person is, well?  It's on my list at least.  

Generally speaking, humans have a preference for the better if not the best, in who they admire.  Now yes.  There is that book out there about how the world is basically run by mediocre men.  Well if you buy into the idea that middle managers actually run the world?  Yeah.  That might thrill you.  But there are more middle management jobs than there are gifted people, and the gifted people should rise about that station, if they really are gifted.  You don't get on the cover of Forbes by being an assistant vice president in charge of the same jerk water corporate department for ten years straight.

And yes, we just got over four years of a sub mediocrity as POTUS.  Apparently millions of Americans  love him. He is the greatest outlier to my theory.  But generally?

Ten thousand years of mostly feudal sort of rule of the species is the baseline.  Beyond the invention and perpetuation of birthright rule?  People either got or got to stay in charge because they were good in battle. And if they relied too heavily on others to command in the field, they at least were good at staying alive, and staying the boss.  Remember.  Back in the old days, and most of days are the old days?  The one battle you lost was often your last.  So winners stayed in or seized power.

And in the modern age we have, as a species, learned to not only worship gods, royals, and generals.  We have learned to worship excellence, or at least accomplishment.   We did it for people in the arts first. Then we started worshiping athletes.  And I must note the related to the ex POTUS anomaly, of worshiping people for being famous.  At best that is worship of the veneer of excellence, as opposed to the actual accomplishing of anything to merit notice.

So is this newish worship of the fugazy going to eclipse worship for those who actually get shit done?   I think both trends will continue.  But it is as easy to get bored of the fugazy as the former star who isn't producing like they used to.  After all.  Fugazies and has beens  are just dead common.  Amirite?

Nikole Hannah-Jones Links Critical Race Theory Backlash To Spread Of Vot...

I am just going to call everyone who is against CRT and or 1619 Project a white supremacist. And if they happen to not be white?  Well that is their damage to figure out.  I suggest licensed psychologists, at minimum.

Oh.  And I like the way AOC said it on some clip from MSNBC.  She said that the politicians crusading against CRT (and or 1619 Project)  were against the teaching of basic history.

So that, too!

 

Don't listen to Loury or McWhorter. They don't know shit. Listen instead to Chris Rock: Who Wants To Change Places? | HBO

No Bitches! Fuck No!

 Worst anti CRT argument, courtesy of the black guys at bloggingheads.com; Loury and McWhorter.  

There are more white people in America, and if they start thinking of themselves as white you might radicalize them into being pro white radical agents, some shit.

Remember.  The premise of CRT is the deck is already stacked in favor of white people.  And the idea expressed by McWhorter that these white people are not aware of being white is the most fucking ignorant thing I have heard from an ivy league professor. But compared to what the average white Republican Racists usually say? Ok.  Not that unusual.  I have never met an adult white American who did not know they are white and actually on some level know there is status to that. I have met and know of some who deny it. But some bitches lie.  Every one knows that.

Cutting to the chase. CRT isn't going to radicalize a statistically significant number of white people to become white supremacists, by itself.  Firstly there are millions of them already. Most of the 70 more million people who voted for Bozo the second time either are white supremacists, or at least are willing to vote for a white supremacist pushing a white supremacist agenda.  And it is Fox News, and it's copy cats, and other white supremacist sources deliberately doing that.  And they were doing a bang up job of that before they got on an anti CRT bent.  And they will recycle some old talking points when they feel it.  And they might come up with new talking points, as well.

CRT is just their new favorite shirt.  Don't be a moron.  Don't buy the talking point.  Tucker Carlson and many of the other white supremacist really are more worried about replacement theory. But they get loads of shit for talking that shit. 

Use of the word, elitist, doesn't do it for me. Because anti elitists are hypocrites.

 

If you are engaged in the act of putting someone down, just do it.  Don't pretend you are not putting people down with the charge of other people being elitist.  Don't be that bullshit.

Like I said in my headline. That word does not have the desired effect on me.  I am predisposed to harshly judge the accuser.

Now if someone used that word on me? I would be very tempted to say,"Thanks for noticing." But the label I prefer is snob.  Just the way I roll.

False people are at least tedious to me.  Save that shit for someone who doesn't know the difference between slumming, and being a hood rat or trailer trash.

But if you really want the easy to follow version?

Without getting into theory, and all that academic stuff.  

How about the reasons CRT needed to be invented?

Ann Althouse isn't following my advice. So why should anyone follow hers?

Truly lousy argument there, I confess.  So I negate the sin by admitting it, and chalking it up to a using a literary device.  Headlines.  You can try to grab attention by making them tricksy.  Anyway . . . 

Althouse isn't following my advice to shut the fuck up about anything racial, and posted about an essay about Critical Race Theory.  She did not go long on analysis, as per usual.  So honestly, I really am not sure yet where she really falls on the issue of the validity of CRT.   All I can say is I never see her at the annual Derrick Bell lecture at her law school alma mater.  But I confess yet again.  That is not a fair metric.  And if I ever ran into her at the post lecture reception, I might spill my cup of wine a little out of the shock of seeing her there.  Although the line is there in my head, I would be presumptuous to say I could after that introduce her to Professor Bell's widow.  Because for all I know they have met already, multiple times.  I assume that she has at least met Professor Bell, as law professors run in law professor circles.  Sometimes they bring their spouses for the trip.  So let's not go there!

But here is the weird part she says:

"I challenge proponents of Critical Race Theory to speak to ordinary people in terms they can understand and explain the theory, why it's a theory, and what is meant by "critical." "

Speaking of tricksy literary devices. The challenge part is weak.  Her  merely saying it makes it as likely to cause it to happen as for me to get her to shut the fuck up about race related issues!  But I really don't expect my wise counsel to be followed.  Anyway, here is the  "critical" part.  If you were to google Critical Race Theory, or even better, plug it directly into the Youtube search bar a year ago?  Specifically  if  Youtube, your first few hits would have been academics  explaining  CRT.  Whether or not any of those academic lessons would meet her mark for sufficiently tailored for "ordinary people in terms they can understand," is a subjective value for her.  For my part, the theory is as easy to get as feudalism.  

This small group of people with state of the art weapons and combat skills had more power over the larger group who didn't have state of the art weapons and combat skills.  Class dismissed.

But if you were to type "Critical Race Theory" into Youtube now  (I will, I shall,) it turns out to be a mixed bag of hits.   Top is a clip of a news report about the Florida ban.  Next is a FNC clip of a black lady who is against CRT.  And because of the way they fold the page, you will see a vid from Education Week.  And if that vid is like the article I read on their website over the past few days, it is fair and objective.  Seems to me you will get the hit from bigoted, white supremacy loving Heritage Foundation before any actual CRT adherent.

And that leads to my point. Once the right wing, white supremacist noise machine decided to adopt the issue as part of their looney tunes culture war, the market place of ideas and multi media publication was swamped with anti CRT propaganda.  And now I reference what  the essay writer said about how most people don't really have an idea what CRT objectively is.  I am not shy about talking down "people."  And even the experts who research this shit say.  If the first someone learns about a matter or issue is bullshit or flat out false? Good luck actually changing their minds with facts!  Odds are against it. 

So Ms. Althouse. Yes it would be great if we  could distil even further the essence of CRT, even if only as a matter of housekeeping  (start a settlement, colony, nation with race based slavery and that will infect every possible nook and cranny of that society.)   But good luck changing anyone's mind who has already chosen to oppose it.  Because a large chunk of the American people are already predisposed to that kind of thinking.

And that basically, and disturbingly proves the core premise of  Critical Race Theory.  How did Professor  Bell say it? Racism is persistent if not permanent in America.  And adding my brutal nuance, swap out the word racism and insert the phrase white supremacy.

As a matter of literary tricks, I would have liked ending on that note.  But one more point.  Critics of CRT and related ideas call out the alleged circular logic.  Now on one end of the scale we have ipse dixit logic, and on the other end, essentialism; water is wet. Wetness is a quintessential quality of water.  And we CRT campers say white supremacy is still a quintessential quality of a society and nation that was founded and greatly dependent on lawfully and socially defended race based slavery.  And that still is far too greatly the case, 160 or so years after that was specifically outlawed.  It doesn't have to be though.  All we need to do is eradicate every list vestige of white supremacy.

Who's side are you on?

Continuation on a Theme: Ipse Dixit Logic is Bullshit.

 Ipse dixit translates from Latin to English as:   he said it himself.  It is a logical fallacy, but also is the way most humans talk about shit.  Therefore, most humans are bullshit, and not really worth paying attention to.  I could say that especially applies to the often, no smarter than a bucket of snot, Republican morons I see vomiting forth on various comment sections.  But truth be told, oftentimes the trigger for their comments is pretty much equally moronic bloggers, and opinionaters, and pretend journalists.  Even real journalists fuck this shit up!

Since I am in that zip code, I might as well mention the deliberate cheaters.  There are pretend serious writers who can write books with all kinds  of footnotes, like we were taught serious writers should, back in high school.  But the pretenders either rely on bullshit quotes from slip shod candy assed others, or misapply the data, or leap to the wrong conclusion.  And the worst of the bunch just make shit up.

But even if I haven't appeared in court as an attorney of record in years and years, there is something I like about court.  There is a judge.  And it is their job to call out bullshit.  Case in point.  This lawsuit in Texas by some anti vax hospital staffers.  The moronic lawyers filed papers with such dishonest arguments, that the judge went ballistic on them in her opinion and order:   

“Equating the injection requirement to medical experimentation in concentration camps is reprehensible,” Hughes wrote. “Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on victims that caused pain, mutilation, permanent disability, and in many cases, death.”

Judge Trashes Bullshitting Morons.

Now I am not going to argue that only Republican lawyers try to slip a stinky argument past a judge.  I think Republicans do it so much more.  Because Republicans are more likely to believe in and/or employ ipse dixit logic than fact based, objective reality.  Their over reliance on ripe, steaming bullshit isn't anything new.   But after Bozo, 45th POTUS, there seems to be no limit to it.  He took that shit to a whole new level.  And the hordes of deplorables are ready to follow.  Such as they will unflinchingly compare getting a extremely safe vaccine to being tortured by a Nazi Death Camp Dr.

Here is the part where I get to the main point.  If you exaggerate to the point of ripe, steaming bullshit stupidity, some people might still take you seriously.  No one has to, however.  There are many people in the world, not all of us lawyers, who as a default process judge people in the following way.

We can never truly know what is in the mind of other people.  All we really get for data points is what they do and what they say.  And if people are constantly communicating ripe, steaming bullshit?  The fact they get written off by others as unserious people is entirely on them.

I Confess to Being on Team West Since the Mid 1980s.

 

So when I say I never saw Loury's  A Game until this vid., I credit Prof. West for that. You can blame that opinion on my bias.  But you would be wrong to do so.  Here is a link to the vid, I mentioned in my previous post.

Professors West and Loury, and Kiros

You need to bring your A Game to Dr. West if the conversation is limited to, "You want paper or plastic?" Seriously.  Not only is Dr. West one of the scant few Americans of any ancestry who truly deserves to be called an intellectual, and is a true philosopher.  He is kind.  His decorum should be the standard the rest of us aspire to.  He will correct and reeducate you of your stupidity, politely. But he will never talk down to you, never mind snark snarl, or belittle.

Anyway.  Let me save some keystrokes and look for a summation of topics.

Glenn Loury (Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University), Cornel West (Union Theological Seminary), and Teodros Kiros (Berklee College of Music)

• Teodros’s new book, Conversations with Cornel West  0:00
• Cornel offers spiritual counsel to Glenn  1:04
• Between commercialization and democratic decay  11:06
• Glenn: “The glass is way more than half-full” for Black Americans  20:52
• The centrality of Black music to Black experience  29:26
• Cornel’s Chekhovian Christianity  36:03
• What system, if any, can replace American capitalism?  43:40
• The meaning of 1776  56:42

Admittedly, Prof. Loury has been so doctrinaire and repetitive lately in his vids that I can't stand it long.  I think he needs more time with someone agreeable who does not necessarily agree with him.  His usual partner in rhetorical crimes on line is Professor McWhorter.  They don't always agree, as McW. actually  is a Democrat.  But lately their discussions are so often within the overlap area of their Venn Diagram that for my money, ain't worth watching, listening to, much.  

Works for me

 

Even if I am not entirely sure what the cartoonist was going for.  But it seems to suggest that CRT is on the side of the righteous, and it's detractors are the bad guys.  Using the classic image of Ruby Bridges being escorted by U.S. Marshals back in the day in Little Rock, sets that up as a visual argument.  And in having the book Ruby holds emblazoned with, "Critical Race Theory,"  properly links CRT to the Civil Rights continuum. 

Like I said a couple posts back.   I have been part of the CRT camp for over thirty years.  And I might not have specifically said that CRT to a great extent says that we only got so far with the Civil Rights Movement, back in the day.  And we needed to change our assumptions, and our way of looking at the persistent problem of white supremacy in America.  That is pretty much the origin story, far as I can relate, with out digging up a quote or link.

Now I know some of the opponents of CRT believe they are on the side of the righteous, even if they admit to themselves, if only themselves, they are actually white supremacists.   And as well, some of the opponents of CRT believe they are on the side of the righteous, even if they they are not actually white supremacists, fully, dedicated, knowingly at least.  As a quick aside.  I was watching a very civil vid last night featuring Professors Cornel West and  Glen Loury.  At one point West goes on a tangent about internalized self loathing in the Black American community.  Although it was not a shot directly at Loury, he visibly recoiled as if hit squarely in the chest with one of those bean bag rounds. 

The reason I brought that up is I believe that no matter how sincere a black can be about opposing CRT and/or anti racism, they have to know, not all that deeply inside, that they are breaking the first rule.  Don't do or say anything that helps the usual white supremacists.  I will stop there, about that.  Instead, I will toss off a couple more points before I head for the exit.  The depth and intensity one might have for a bullshit argument/conclusion does not in any way make up for the bullshit factor.  

And with that in mind, I have already completed my reply to John McWhorter's, "Woke Racism."

It will be a book with that as the simple title, and 120 blank pages.  Because sincerely believed, factually unsupported opinion and bias in published form still is nothing more than bullshit argument, and bullshit conclusion.  It takes nothing to refute nothing, but for marking it as such.

And yes.  I am getting more critical of McWhorter as he is picking up disciples, and others are proselytizing his gospel, preaching his holy word.  And that is some reckless shit he has been selling lately.  And just to explain, I  used the religious conceit because McWhorter insists his religious conceit  is a fact, and that anti racism is a religion.  It ain't.  Even if under the widest definition of religion, just about anything can be called a religion. But it is a bullshit argument/conclusion.  It is bullshit because I know it is flat out bullshit to call something a religion and mean that disparagingly, and I am an agnostic atheist. 

Ok.  I am still technically on the books in Rome.  My age old joke is I have been dodging some monsignore with my letters excomunicant for years and years.  Truth is,  I  have failed to do anything to attract The Vatican's attention.  And I went to high school with and worked at the local Carvel store with a guy who is a Catholic Bishop. And he hasn't ratted me out. 

But I digress.  Repeating the main point.  CRT is on the side of the righteous, and it's detractors are the bad guys.  It's true because I and the cartoonist say so!

 

What You Think You See, Might Not be Real, or the Whole Story at Least.

I will try not to name names.  But I want to make a point about viewpoint bias.  And that is greatly a function of observation/information limitation.  Consider the following quote from Frank Herbert's  "Chapterhouse Dune."  I won't try to explain the series of books for those of you who don't know it.  But I will say as a formatting matter, each chapter of these books starts off with a "quote." Some are short.  Some are longer. And some set up the chapter.  And some are more universal in possible application.

Anyway:

“There was a man who sat each day looking out through a narrow vertical opening where a single board had been removed from a tall wooden fence. Each day a wild ass of the desert passed outside the fence and across the narrow opening—first the nose, then the head, the forelegs, the long brown back, the hindlegs, and lastly the tail. One day, the man leaped to his feet with the light of discovery in his eyes and he shouted for all who could hear him: “It is obvious! The nose causes the tail!”

Here is at least one of the rational conclusions.  If you have a narrow view of the thing, you likely are not really going to understand the truth of the thing.  My way of explaining that phenomena in a shorter way is to say, if you don't plug in all the necessary data, you are not going to come to the right conclusion.  And as opposed to our near the desert dweller in the quote, lots of people have access to all the necessary data.  But they deliberately toss out the parts that do not fit their desired conclusion.  And then with the same (relatively) delusional sense of certainty of our near the desert dweller, publish their erroneous conclusion as if their subjective beliefs are facts.

I might be just some ordinary, low rent lawyer.  But I have been making my money for years and years, sorting through piles of data, with one major priority;  separate the needles of possible real evidence from the piles of shit.  Greatly because of that, I  am really good at judging what is a useful fact, instead of mere argument.  Mere argument is fucking useless shit.  No matter how strongly  people may believe in their own or other's arguments?  As an objective matter, arguments are objectively fucking useless shit. 

Granted, our near the desert dweller skips the argument and jumps right to the conclusion.  But ya know?  It doesn't really matter how many words one uses to support an objectively baseless conclusion.  With out sound evidence, all you have got is an objectively baseless conclusion.  Let us never pretend otherwise.  And let us call out bitches who publish such useless, baseless bullshit, even if they get published by legitimate publishing houses, and get interviewed on real TV.

For the love of what ever you love, please just fucking stop talking about race, Ann Althouse!

 

Context.  The story about the cookies VP Kamala Harris handed out to reporters, on the plane on her trip way south of the border (instead of looking at some discrete section of the nearly 2,000 mile US/Mexico border.  Which would have been what we in the business call a photo op, instead of real work.)  Anyway, the cookies were originally given to her as a gift from some nice African American baker. The cookies sort of look like VP Harris, but with out distinct facial features.

Now beyond the oddity of fixating on the lack of distinct facial features (hint.  That is a shit load of work, to do to individual cookies, to really try to do justice to any human's face.  Most likely reason, according to Occam's Razor.  I never worked in a bake shop.  But I worked at a Carvel Ice Cream store as a teen.  I never got to doing a good enough, "Happy Birthday," on a cake to ever leave the store as a paid item. So I have some idea of the shit load of work. But I digress.)  

Here is the trigger.  She elected to post the following comment from one of her drones:

""There's actually no way to get the color "right.""

And here is her reply to that fragment, which was some kind of sorta bizarre tangent on the choice for the color of the "skin" of the cookie:

"What the graphic designer is doing — in trying to get the color right — is expressing his/her own idea of what this person's color is. It's a racial thought that get depicted. And the viewer is also expressing an idea about race in seeing the sign as making her too dark or the cookie as making her too light.

And, of course, that is the way race really works. There's no real thing out there, only ideas we have inside and that we work hard to preserve or change in other people."

Shit like that justifies why so many black and brown people are angry at some (not all, but the extremely ignorant some) of white people.

I repeat.  Whiteness is not a race, actually.  It is an invention by lying, raping, stealing, murdering European colonial exploiters, to justify as a social and legal status, their claimed "superiority" over the black and brown people they exploited under race based slavery, as a justification for that heinous crime against humanity.  And the idea of systemic racism is simply, elements of that social and legal status, regarding  "white superiority" over the black and brown people were built into American institutions, are are still part of American institutions and society, at large.

No.  No.  Fuck a duck, no!  Race is not merely ideas individuals have.  It is a social if not also legal system of oppression.  Anyone who taught Constitutional law, and has been exposed to the root and fundamental ideas behind Critical Race Theory should know this, whether or not they consider themselves part of the CRT camp (as I do.)

Again, I repeat.  What is the first rule?  Don't do anything that helps or supports the usual white supremacists!  And in mischaracterizing "the way race really works"  as just some individual bias, one supports the usual white supremacist racist bullshit.  If enough people think it is just an individual person thing, nothing more gets done to dismantle the remaining, entrenched vestiges of systemic racism, if not justifies even increasing the power balance between the knowing, deliberate white supremacists and the coat tail beneficiaries, against black and brown peoples.  

Again, this is about as basic CRT as it gets!  

I confess.  I am equally, currently frustrated with Professor McWhorter now, as I am with former Professor Althouse.  Last night I learned he has decided the title of his new book will be, "Woke Racism."  Talk about breaking the first rule!  Social distancing rules for outdoors gatherings are now relaxed.  But I know of one brudderman who either ain't getting invited to the BBQ.  Or if he is, he better expect to be getting multiple earfuls of remarks starting with, to say it politely, "Have you lost your natural mind?" 

Anyway.  Even if part of me says I should forbear discussing those people.  As a venerable veteran Monsignore in the Elect Order of the Warrior Monks of the Celestial Curia?  Non of which is a thing.  I am goofing on McWhorter for his asinine argument that antiracism is a religion. I ain't got no robes.  I ain't got no signet ring.  I have been in the service of this fictional religion for over 30 years.  All I got is two singed Derrick Bell books.  But I digress.  As a veteran anti racist, I feel obligated to track what these public folk are saying and doing.  And I report it here, time to time, for the few people who find my blog.     

It's the same old fight.  All my damn life.  And getting this shit might come easier for me because I come from a tribe that only came to exist because of white European colonial exploitation of West African peoples.  The story of the reality of this is in my bones and genes.  But honestly? Ya don't need to be a descendant of slaves to get this shit. Not the fuck at all.  All you got to do is understand the fucking obvious, superficial truth about colonization, and the lingering effects of race based slavery in the Americas.  You don't have to read Derrick Bell's books for that (but I encourage that.)  All you have to do is watch a decent documentary about Caribbean pirates.  And if you prefer dramatization, I suggest the series, "Black Sails."  There are four seasons of it though.  Well done, I say. 

Anti Intellectualism is Winning. Sad to say

 I am not going down the rabbit hole topic of a certain blogger who is extremely guilty of promoting idiocy, by the comments she curates and publishes on her blog.  Because she is only one example of the blight.  Stupidity is winning.  Stupidity sells.  It motivates.  It is popular!

But here is the chicken or egg style question.  Do we have more stupidity because of conspiracy theories, or do we have more of them because a world awash in stupidity really has no standards?  

One of my annoyance news stories of late is the Covid lab leak theory.  In short, I find it maddening that so many people are acting like they know for sure it was a leak, if not deliberate, no matter the total lack of evidence.  There is as much evidence to support the lab leak theory as the Lizard People Overlord theory.  Meaning none.  But you are not going to see an editorial in the Wall Street Journal raising the alarm about lizard people.  

Understanding the difference between probable and possible is the distinction between rational people and fucking morons. 

A world that allows for such foul stupidity to have even the lowest of shelf space in the marketplace of ideas need to be more discriminating.  We need standards, not more sloppy assed, moronic output.  At least be clear about probable vs possible.  

I can't say that the world is doomed. I can't even say the species is doomed.  The species has been rather brutish, ignorant, selfish, and narcissistic all this time.  It is just disheartening that we are collectively still swimming in that shit.

Follow Up Re Althouse's Reckless Race Blogging

Reckless, because she proves the point.  Too many white people are so lost in their privilege and fragility and ignorance about race, they should just leave the topic alone.  As a sidebar, CRT promotes people getting literacy in race issues.  Because, when white people who don't get it, yet vomit forth about race issues, that just prove the point about being thoughtless and ignorant about such things.

Anyway the way her comment section is set up now, people email their often racist, usually generally thoughtless bullshit to her, and then she individually posts the bullshit.  To be fair, I won't say her selections equal total agreement with the bullshit.  But she clearly has to find something attractive enough about the bullshit to post it, even if she is just trolling.  But the kindest comment she selected for viewing?

Slightly shortened, but:  

" I began to think that maybe in her practice she's had to listen to too many neurotic white liberal NYC patients stress about how woke or antiracist they are, and wouldn't that drive just about anyone over the edge? LOL""

The writer's use of LOL on her own thoughts says a lot about how deep a thinker she is.  In any case, not funny as much as mean.  Oddly racist too, as the writer makes the boogey man white liberal New Yorker the cause of the psychiatrist's too.  She used the word white.  I quote her true. But other posters were less passive aggressive in calling the psychiatrist crazy and or a racist.

Yup.  to some people, criticizing white folk for not getting they don't know enough abut issues of race is itself racist.  Being black or brown skinned and frustrated with white people privilege and ignorance and fragility is itself racist.  But this tired old game is yes tired and old.  Shame on anyone who plays along with it.

What do I say is the first rule?  Don't help the usual white supremacist.  But at this point in time  we know the GOP is pretty much white supremacist, and they will call anyone who fights against white supremacy a racist because  that makes sense to a white supremacist. 

An Exercise in White Privilege and Fragility?

I want to be fair.  But Ann Althouse has posted about the story with the sensational remarks made by a Psychiatrist during a video lecture for Yale Med School.  The topic was itself sensational for those suffering from white fragility.  Psychopathy of the White Mind.  And among the sensational parts was where the Indian American Psychiatrist expresses her cumulative frustration at dealing with white people about racial issues.  

She dared go there.  She dared express the frustration so many of us not white people have over that shit.  She actually expressed a "fantasy" of unloading a gun in the face of a white person.

Get out the smelling salts and fainting couches.

I truly get that level of frustration.  Over the past few days I tutored a couple friends, specifically that MLK was a radical progressive and fought for the elimination of white supremacy, and that the I have a dream speech was about that, not some fantasy of a color blind society that just is going to appear like magic, some day.  And a few months ago, when I tried to explain to a pretty much white friend that all black and brown folk are angry, with cause.  And her reply was then we should all get therapy.

Anyway.  Althouse focused on how awful the sensational remarks were.  But I suspect she lacked the  ability to think:

"Shit.  Is dealing with white people while not white yourself, that frustrating?" 

I say white privilege and fragility as there is privilege in just ignoring the feelings of not white folk, and fragility in reacting to someone else's feelings of deep and old and continuing frustration with a, what about me, what about my feelings, reaction?

Anyway. Instead of linking one of the versions of the reporting of the story, I will go with the Substack  writer who started the buzz.  Not because there is an audio of the lecture there.  But there is a transcript of an interview the psychiatrist, Dr. Aruna Khilanani, gave about the lecture and related  issues.

I do not agree with everything she says.  But most of it, yeah.  She is rather brilliant, and gets very deep.  I hope some day Althouse reads it.  She will learn more from her than from John McWhorter for sure.  But at least Althouse is watching her Tiktoks 

Read The Transcript

Anti Critical Race Theory Always is Pro White Supremacy.

 

That is baked into the cake.  It is the main ingredient, actually.  In mind of that, I present this on pointe essay by Elie Mystal,   

The Miseducation of White Children The attacks on critical race theory are just another attempt to prevent this country from reckoning with its racist past and present—by keeping white kids ignorant.

Great essay.  And I have been harping on and on about how the anti anti racists are either white supremacists themselves, or at least helping them defend white supremacy.

What is the rule?  Don't do anything that helps the white supremacists!

I am not saying that everyone who uses the term "woke" is a flaming racist, but . . .

 

I accuse them of intentionally belittling, and trolling folk. And even if the term can be used at people not specifically engaging in black/brown/not white advocacy, it has quickly become a stand in for the N-Word.  It  covers a lot of territory actually, not all of it racist, but pretty much all of it hateful, 

This is a good read:

Why White People Should Stop Using The Term Woke, Immediately.

" Using the term “woke” to stigmatize someone else’s perspective is immature and offensive. It feels dehumanizing…just like “the race card” because after all, for many of us racism isn’t a game."

And moving on to the idea that compelled me to post today.  What to do with black folk who are part of the anti anti racist movement?  It annoys me that some, like John McWhorter, either know they are not helping at all, or perhaps don't?  I hate to use the rhetoric of an argument I don't really usually employ.  But hey.  Sometimes I miss shit right in front of my face, too.  But  if one is a linguist, one should not distort the definition of what is racist, to take a rather mean and unfair crack at people you happen to disagree with.  Re defining a term to suit one's argument is weak, shallow, and should be a big no no, for a linguist.  But I am not an academic.  I am a lawyer. And even if I have not been before a judge in years.  I have been metaphorically slapped around by judges.  Avoiding that is what keeps most lawyers from  changing the definition of things. But in the wide world?  You can get away with sloppy assed shit, even if others can point it out.

But back to the main point.  Calling some of the antiracists  the real, or some bizarre, new kind of racist just helps the same old garden variety racists, we black and brown folk have been fighting for 500 years.  

Remember!  The cardinal rule is don't help the white supremacists!

Back to the willful distortion of  language.  White supremacists have been distorting the meaning of the word racist, or variations of it, for decades.  The do it to on the one hand, blunt the effect of it.  And on the other hand, I think it is some sick, twisted version of the rubber/glue child's taunt.  They seem to love the action of trolling more than coming up with something clever?  So if they just throw the term they more usually resemble at the other side, that is win for them.  I guess.  Dunning-Kruger in effect, I guess.

But what of the blacks who are buying into this idiotic line of argument? And I am saying idiotic not just to troll them back.   There are several legitimate definitions of racism and variants. You have the academic ones, and the legal ones.  My favorite is the UN definition of racial discrimination.  And with that in mind I say, this one, fool!  Stick to this one!  And yes.  This one takes into account the power dynamics.  One powerless asshole spewing shit in the supermarket parking lot, really isn't the poster child for the institutional racism that exists, and we reform minded people fight.  They are just one ignorant bigot.   

And one last thing.  Enough with the bullshit about what is in someone's heart.  Humans are not particularly good at  reading other human's minds.  So knock it off with that shit.  Judge people by what they say, and do, are comfortable with.