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.
Labels: ann althouse, cult of white right wing victim hood, john mcwhorter, Racism 2.0
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