Trendy but
I think Kendi needs to get around more. He’s very parochial. “Whiteness” just isn’t the root of all injustice in the world. Racism is not just white USians v everyone; there is racism among and between people of all hues. There is also rivalry, hostility, aggression, competition, war, oppression, exploitation among groups of every kind you can think of. Humans are very good at seeking out differences, no matter how slight, in order to create ingroups and outgroups. Believe it or not, at some times, in some places in the world, the people on top had darker skin than the people on the bottom. It happens.
In short “whiteness” isn’t as interesting as he thinks it is.
I honestly do not understand how this kind of grift doesn’t simply collapse under the weight of its own contradiction. If Kendi’s thesis were in any vicinity of correct, he would not have been allowed on the stage; he would not have been allowed into the Netflix offices in the first place, and his books would not have been lauded in the halls of cultural and political power. The fact that his work has been so lauded, and that he has made such a tidy profit from parasitically stoking the guilt of the largely-white petit bourgeoisie, refutes that which he attempts to demonstrate.
Wow, I didn’t realize how white I was, or how oblivious of that I was. Thanks professor, I’m hoping to reclaim my humanity soon.
The appetite of white middle-class US liberals to be told how bad and racist they are seems limitless.
It explains the financial success of figures like Ibram X. Kendi and Saira Rao:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/03/race-to-dinner-party-racism-women
So should I stop using sunscreen? I’d be going from fish-belly white to boiled-lobster red, with added possible skin cancer. Would that be an improvement?
Sure, we’re all horrible, ask any antiracist guru. Let them point out how racist all white people are by promoting the idea that we don’t even know how racist we are. I wonder if Kendi has ever been to Atlanta, and if he has, how he didn’t see how we all get along here. We in fact do. It’s hard to get a grip on what’s really the case in society at large when you have your head up your cognitive biased, agenda driven, bigoted ass. Yes, we know how racist we are — not very. Sure, there’s economic, systemic, and cultural problems that need to be worked out, and there are white people in positions of power that are racists, look no further than POTUS 45, but these assholes, thankfully, are in the minority. Hopefully bigoted black people, such as Kendi, who criticise all white people, and make these kind of broad racial divisions, are also in the minority.
Mostly Cloudy: let’s face it, if you’re going to get people to pay you for telling them how shit they are, the set-up costs are lower than equipping a sex dungeon, and no body fluids to mop up after.
Kendi is not very bright and a one-trick pony and all he can do is spout his ideological line. And his hyper-racialised analysis leads nowhere, however:
@twiliter:
It is indeed only a small minority who would agree with him. But, unfortunately, his ideology is now dominant in universities owing to the large number of DEI administrators who now enforce it. We have a weird situation where an ideology is believed by few, but no-one speaks against it out of fear for their job.
To illustrate the mis-match, just about the entire administrator class in universities considers that the Supreme Court ruling preventing “affirmative action” (aka racial discrimination) was a disaster that they now need to get around however they can. Only a court stuffed with “hard right” Trump appointees would be opposed to “affirmative action”.
And yet, the populace of left-leaning, progressive California voted 57:43 against affirmative action, even though their university system was then implementing it (and still does, simply ignoring the law on this).
Or another example: in the US there are big disparities in educational achievement between racial groups. But if you suggest that any degree of responsibility for that rests with the racial group themselves, then your job would be in peril (cf. Amy Wax); the only acceptable opinion is that 100% of the responsibility for that situation rests with whites.
I’m so sick of all this. Genderism, antiracism, and the rest of the Social Justice League have gone so far that merely describing just one thing they say or do makes normal, uninformed people think you’re being hyperbolic and alarmist, most likely because you’ve been exposed to too much right-wing propaganda. It’s so frustrating and demoralizing to see people looking at you like you’re the crazy relative who believes in UFOs and lizard people.
Nullius, are you saying I’m crazy because I believe in lizard people? You are a lizardist bigot! /s
That being said, I do believe in UFOs. I just don’t believe they’re being piloted by aliens. Just like I believe there is racism, but do not believe (1) every white person is a hard core racist; or (2) only white people are racists.
I have been rather unwell, so I have not been commenting, but here’s a link to a Youtube video that is worth watching. It is a debate between Stephen Fry, Jordan Peterson, Michael Dyson & Michelle Goldberg on political correctness – in particular where it involves race. I am not normally an admirer of Peterson, but here he speaks very well and cogently; Fry is of course very good; as for Dyson & Goldberg, words fail me.
https://youtu.be/GxYimeaoea0?si=a-dj0_J74swTI-M9
I hope that works!
I hope you mend soon and don’t feel too horrible now!
Thank you, Ophelia; it’s been dogging me since this unbearable (Japanese) summer, and became suddenly worse some weeks ago. It turns out that it is nothing serious, as it might have been, though it is bloody unpleasant. But I am feeling rather more perky today!
The great trouble with the scope of Kendi’s claims, and Michael Dyson’s much more crude and far-reaching claims in the Youtube debate I have linked to above, is that by seeing everything through the prism of race, they make any possibility of a society where race does not play an important part unthinkable and, perhaps, unattainable. It is unsurprising to me that they are academics (of a sort) and not practical and realistic people, like James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, and John Lewis. That said, there are plenty of ‘white people’ (if we have to think in these crude racial categories all the time) who do think in the terms that Kendi decries, and the ideas and activities of those people, and those alone, do need to be criticised severely. Also, by couching the matter in such far-reaching terms, Kendi & Dyson encourage and strengthen that ‘white’ sense of victimhood which is so much a feature of the extreme right. and which is also very much part and parcel of the identity politics (which exists both on the left and the right – though the right tries to pretend that theirs is not really identity politics) that is so destructive in our present politics.
I have been rather unfair to Michelle Goldberg (see video link above). It is Dyson alone who is wholly destructive in what he says, and who as a result throws the outcome of the debate (a poll of the numbers who agree and disagree with the proposition that is the subject of the debate) to his opponents.