Why you should be an Anti-Antiracist
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Benigo Montoya
 March 06 2023
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    Scott Adams of Dilbert fame put his foot in it, and hit the nail on the head.

    The Rasmussen study was flawed, probably not worth extrapolating from. But when he asked Hotep Jesus, in a post-cancellation interview, what proportion of black people don’t like white people, the answer was intriguing.


    Two human beings having a conversation


    Hotep Jesus said two things: first, black people, subconsciously, really like white people. In the sense that white people are ‘centred’ culturally and everyone is taught it’s better to be white. But consciously? He then acknowledged the study was probably an accurate reflection based on his experience, adding that he himself was “raised to hate white people”.

    Now, we shouldn’t take one black man’s word for it. But maybe we should look around at the culture and see the way white people are spoken of.


    It used to be a joke. White men can’t jump. Homer Simpson. Weird Al Yankovic’s ‘White and Nerdy’. We readily satirised and made fun of the white guy. And his wife. Karen. It still happens. That’s okay, I laugh along. But I’m also worried.

    Everyone is being raised to hate white people. Including white people. (In fact, if you surveyed the same number of white people with the same question, you’d probably get an even higher number saying ‘it’s not okay to be white’.)

    Which brings me to antiracism and by corollary, critical race theory and that whole shebang.


    Antiracism is a process of actively identifying and opposing racism. It’s not enough to be a non-racist; you have to be an antiracist.

    Whatever its motivations, and they are murky, antiracism as a movement has one clear consequence: it cultivates a very negative view of white people.


    All white people are ‘less than’ due to their pathologies: white privilege, whiteness, white supremacy… Admittedly, it’s said that the latter two can be ‘caught’ by other races or ethnicities, but this is a small caveat and anyway white people started it. They are like the lab in Wuhan.


    And yes, much of the antiracist movement seems concerned with so-called racist systems and policies, not people.

    Nonetheless, white people are obviously implicated as the progenitors, continuers and beneficiaries of said systems and policies.


    Thus, much of it boils down to ‘white people are just racist’.


    Go read Robin DiAngelo or every third article on Medium if you don’t believe me. (Note: a lot of whites propound antiracism which makes them “Really Good People”.)


    Is it okay to pathologise an entire group of people?


    Cue reassuring language of various kinds: ‘racism is normal’, ‘it’s nothing personal’, ‘it’s just the culture you swim in’, and ‘non-white people can have whiteness too’. Then there’s the academic language: objective, detached, innocuous…

    Right?


    Yet reasonable questions remain — like why the term ‘white supremacy culture’ if it’s nothing to do with white people? Couldn’t that be misinterpreted by less intellectual and well meaning people than you? And if white people told you it was offensive, would you change it?


    No. That would in fact be evidence of ‘white fragility’, according to DiAngelo. As of course would be this article.

    Even in terms of this language, there is something… nasty about it. Almost as if it’s intended to inflame.

    You might ask, why would white people get on board with such ideas if they weren’t true? To which I’d say, hey, I didn’t say there wasn’t some truth to this stuff!


    It’s just that that is not what is motivating zealous white antiracists. To understand what is motivating them, you might want to consider, I don’t know, how religious it all is… How deliciously guilt-inducing, how joyously self-excoriating, to be told you’re a sinner and you must repent. Our white ancestors have been doing just that every Sunday for 2000 years! That stuff sinks in and it stay in, even when the original shell that is the old Christian faith has been shucked off.

    “The last will be first, and the first last.” (Matthew 20:16)


    To summarise, antiracism flips the high and makes it low and flips the low and makes it high. In other words, it pulls white people down and elevates everyone else. Of course, that’s all based on who is perceived as ‘high’ and ‘low’ in terms of power - and we could certainly argue about the truth of those perceptions, but we won’t, for now at least.


    Let’s next talk instead about a key doctrine from the catechism of critical race theory that serves to back all this degradation up: racism is power plus prejudice. Sometimes, power plus privilege plus prejudice.


    This means — and you see this everywhere — that (mostly) only white people can be racist. Secondly, black people cannot be racist. Prejudiced, yes, racist, no.


    I guess that means a racially-inspired murder translates to a racially- prejudiced murder if you simply swap the skin colour of the perpetrator and victim. It’s still a murder, though. And there is still hatred lurking behind the word, whatever it be.

    By this linguistic sleight of hand, antiracists and their like add yet more strength to the pejorative view of white people.

    And in this way, hatred is quietly being let off the leash.


    As Jesus (the real one) said, ‘By their fruits ye shall known them’. And the fruits of antiracism seem pretty rotten.

    Ultimately, antiracism should and can only be, a phase.


    The ultimate solution is that which seems to have been largely thrown away: the universal vision, the widening of the circle, the love thy neighbour as yourself colour blind we’re all just human beings one love let’s get together and feel alright smile on your brother each and every one of us is precious and made in the image of God vision!


    I guess we lost faith in it or something.


    antiracism race culture scott adams culture wars
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