Forced To Prove A Negative, Over And Over, On Racism
How many of us, who saw people as people first and didn't look at them per skin color, are now seeing skin color first?
Samuel Kronen writes at Areo about the "historical overcorrection" that is "modern anti-racism," the mass white-guilt-evoking movements of now.
From White Supremacy to White Guilt to Anti-RacismOn the heels of the great civil rights victories of the early 60s, which established racial equality under the law, there quickly arose an impulse to dissociate ourselves from the shames of our past in order to maintain our place on the right side of history. As Shelby Steele has written, the failure to collectively acknowledge the historic wrongs produced by racism opened up a massive void of moral legitimacy, which came to be filled by white guilt and black power politics. Society cannot recognize its wrongs without losing some of its credibility, so justifying America's continuing power in the world meant cultivating a new identity that explicitly defined itself in opposition to racial oppression.
As Steele puts it:
What is white guilt? It is not a personal sense of remorse over past wrongs. White guilt is literally a vacuum of moral authority in matters of race, equality and opportunity that comes from the association of mere white skin with America's historical racism. It is the stigmatization of whites and, more importantly, American institutions with the sin of racism. Under this stigma white individuals and American institutions must perpetually prove a negative--that they are not racist--to gain enough authority to function in matters of race, equality and opportunity. If they fail to prove the negative, they will be seen as racists. Political correctness, diversity policies and multiculturalism are forms of deference that give whites and institutions a way to prove the negative and win reprieve from the racist stigma....Ta-Nehisi Coates declared, in a debate about gun violence in predominantly black inner city communities, that "there's nothing wrong with black people that ending white supremacy won't fix."
The result of this arrangement is an exaggeration of and fixation on claims of racism in the presence of any interracial conflict. Downplaying the role of racism, on the other hand, just makes you look like an asshole. This is the perfectly natural outgrowth of an identity that is contingent on the continuing existence of racism, from which it gains its sense of innocence and therefore its power.
...As defined by bestselling author Ibram X Kendi, anti-racism involves supporting policies and ideas that level racial disparities of outcome, while racism refers to any explanation of disparity that points toward black responsibility rather than white racism. This redefinition of racism from identifiable prejudice to disparity of outcomes represents the expansion of a propriety into what Antonio Gramsci calls a cultural hegemony: a power construct that cuts reality down to size and squashes any voice that questions its moral authority. While suggesting that black Americans bear some responsibility for their own outcomes was once considered merely in poor taste, it is now considered racist and therefore utterly beyond the pale in progressive circles.
...If we are truly concerned with remedying the tragedy of racism and taking steps toward a society that views our racial identities as insignificant, we need to let the past be past. We can accept the reality of historical racism without creating an identity out of it that keeps us eternally suspicious of each other. We cannot change our past, but we can change how we make sense of it as we move towards an increasingly multi-ethnic future.
*
Comments
Welcome to your new New Democratic Party. Same old shit, different day.
Isab at July 24, 2020 4:28 AM
"White Guilt" is a tenet of the new religion, anti-racism. Like original sin, white guilt stains the souls of white folks until one is inducted into the host of the saved. However, unlike the evangelicals who behave as if the act of baptism frees them to commit even more sins with impunity, abject and near-constant penance is required of white adherents to the church of anti-racism.
And, as Matt Taibbi and others point out, white guilt is really a means of keeping the underclasses cowed and establishing the dominance of the elites through ever-changing definitions of racism and behavioral expectations.
Conan the Grammrian at July 24, 2020 6:23 AM
Inspiring more racism was the point. After you had a black president, a black attorney general, a black this, a black that, and you still had race riots because the US is an inherently racist place that can never change the cognitive dissonance became too much. Too many people woke up and said if this is still called irredeemably racist then it can't be fixed. The label had no meaning.
After Obama it is a lot harder to be a race hustler. Fewer people are buying. Which is why Jesse Jackson wanted to cut Obama's nuts off.
Ben at July 24, 2020 7:14 AM
You can grovel all you want but your whiteness can never be washed off. You can never be forgiven for slavery that ended 155 yrs ago. You are guilty for what your ancestors did. But black people are not held to be guilty for their ancestors trading slaves in Africa.
Every one of us has ancestors who murdered, who committed atrocities in war time, who beat their wife or children. It is the sad reality--but why are we not guilty of those sins?
Coates claim that there is nothing wrong with black people that ending racism won't fix lines up with the defund movement, which seems to think that blacks are only arrested because of racist police. It disallows culture as having impact. Culture matters.
cc at July 24, 2020 9:30 AM
"Anti-racism" is a very dangerous game. If the racialists lose the game, which they almost certainly will, the backlash will be severe. What happens when most whites get to the point where they just don't give a crap about being called racist because the term has lost all meaning and is just used a a bludgeon? Keep kicking a dog and it will end up biting. White folks, once motivated, have proven themselves quite adept at defending themselves. When the gloves come off, and whites collectively get off their apologetic knees, there will be hell to pay. Do we really want to get to the point where whites respond, "Black lives? Who gives a shit?!" It won't be pretty.
Jay R at July 24, 2020 10:15 AM
With a shortage of real racism, they must manufacture synthetic racism to keep up with the demand for it, which has just gone through the roof this century. This isn't even margarine racism, it is olestra racism, and we can see what it turns everything into when you have some of it.
El Verde Loco at July 24, 2020 10:27 AM
Reminds me of the time I was in a genre-shattering genius-level rock band but nobody found out about us because the man was keeping us down to protect the corporate music acts and also racism.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 24, 2020 1:54 PM
Leave a comment