When I see Chris Rufo (who is, beyond his invaluable muckrating and exposure of damning primary evidence, actually as much of a conservative culture warrior as he is an Enlightenment liberal) being giddily dared by Marc Lamont Hill to say anything positive about his heritage, I don't think of race or racial pride. I think of my family. Specific people who usually didn't have it so easy and who struggled to keep it together and sacrificed personally to make good choices for their kids and pass on some model of integrity to the following generations. That's what i'm proud of. It's just laughable - an obvious provocation - to say Americans of Italian or Russian or Irish heritage have no heritage, no ethnic inheritances, no culture. What we were busy doing was trying to share an American culture and one which belongs to and is enriched by all of us. None of this demonization of skin color people have no control over makes me want to elevate my own skin color or race, nor does it make me more hostile to anyone with a different complexion. But I do now call out this neo-racist toxicity to friends. A few years ago, it was hard to find a movie which had attracted more universal, lavish critical praise than Get Out. It's got something silly like a 100% positive critical response on Rotten Tomatoes. I was sure there had to be more to it. It couldn't all be based on just one supposedly satirical but obviously openly racist, hateful hook, a one trick conceit. But while staying with an ailing parent, I turned on cable TV and watched the last thirty or so minutes of it. Yep: all white people are sadistically murderous, enslaving, horror movie monsters - and the ones who act nice are even worse. Umm...fuck you? A friend recently mentioned that movie to briefly praise it. And I was equally brief but honest in reply: it's the shallowest of one trick ponies, and is based on pure racial hatred and scapegoating. Jordan Peele, whatever his talents, and his wife notwithstanding, appears to have a major personal problem with white people. That movie isn't satire. It isn't boldly countercultural. It's raining down group hatred from the commanding heights of pop culture. It's only deeper trick and i'm sure a very conscious one, is to get large numbers of younger people, particularly well-meaning white people to show up and laugh and cheer at all the inherently evil white people being - what's the term the left has become besotted with? - *held accountable* for their evil. The great catharsis of young black men running over and blowing up white people of all ages, sexes, *because we know they're all irredeemably bad*. That's literally all the movie is. But the reply of course would be: why are you so fragile? It's just a movie, can't you take a joke? Four hundred years of brutal oppression (as if I'm comparing the two) and this man wants to complain about a movie!
I wasn't gonna comment, because this I'm so late to the party. But this was really good. I made it all the Way through because-a that.
"All PoC ar noble strivers with both proud and distinctive traditions and an even brighter, almost inevitably victorious future (perhaps because that outcome was to be gradually mandated and engineered, and enforced?)"
Would just remove the question mark.
"To the extent any of that argument is true, a large part of it is simply based on growing up as part of a large majority."
This is something I wondered about, but dunno much about. There's always gonna be a tension between a large majority and a large minority, right? Dunno Korea, but assume that was Your point. But I don't see *anybody* trying to figure that out, and see how it can be ameliorated.
I agree with Substack Reader below, that it boils down to political strategy, in the end. And couldn't help but notice those at the very top-a the food chain (KenDiAngelo, Hannah-Jones and Coates, to name a few)... Well, they all cashed their chips in for fame and (mostly) fortune.
But I don't think it pays to overlook the Marxist aspect to this. The original Critical Race Theory outta the 80s. And up to the present time. There are people who wanna "dismantle the institutions" because-a their "systemic racism." Since "systemic racism" is a hoax, AFAIK, their ultimate motive is to tear down the society however they can and replace it with dreams.
Or, I should say, that's one motivation for destroying society, but not necessarily the only one.
You make some interesting points, but you need to throw in some paragraph breaks! I didn't make it all the way through because of eyestrain. The parts I got through were interesting, though.
Anyway, I think a lot of it is a deliberate political strategy. People will do just about anything for power and/or money, long term consequences be damned.
When I see Chris Rufo (who is, beyond his invaluable muckrating and exposure of damning primary evidence, actually as much of a conservative culture warrior as he is an Enlightenment liberal) being giddily dared by Marc Lamont Hill to say anything positive about his heritage, I don't think of race or racial pride. I think of my family. Specific people who usually didn't have it so easy and who struggled to keep it together and sacrificed personally to make good choices for their kids and pass on some model of integrity to the following generations. That's what i'm proud of. It's just laughable - an obvious provocation - to say Americans of Italian or Russian or Irish heritage have no heritage, no ethnic inheritances, no culture. What we were busy doing was trying to share an American culture and one which belongs to and is enriched by all of us. None of this demonization of skin color people have no control over makes me want to elevate my own skin color or race, nor does it make me more hostile to anyone with a different complexion. But I do now call out this neo-racist toxicity to friends. A few years ago, it was hard to find a movie which had attracted more universal, lavish critical praise than Get Out. It's got something silly like a 100% positive critical response on Rotten Tomatoes. I was sure there had to be more to it. It couldn't all be based on just one supposedly satirical but obviously openly racist, hateful hook, a one trick conceit. But while staying with an ailing parent, I turned on cable TV and watched the last thirty or so minutes of it. Yep: all white people are sadistically murderous, enslaving, horror movie monsters - and the ones who act nice are even worse. Umm...fuck you? A friend recently mentioned that movie to briefly praise it. And I was equally brief but honest in reply: it's the shallowest of one trick ponies, and is based on pure racial hatred and scapegoating. Jordan Peele, whatever his talents, and his wife notwithstanding, appears to have a major personal problem with white people. That movie isn't satire. It isn't boldly countercultural. It's raining down group hatred from the commanding heights of pop culture. It's only deeper trick and i'm sure a very conscious one, is to get large numbers of younger people, particularly well-meaning white people to show up and laugh and cheer at all the inherently evil white people being - what's the term the left has become besotted with? - *held accountable* for their evil. The great catharsis of young black men running over and blowing up white people of all ages, sexes, *because we know they're all irredeemably bad*. That's literally all the movie is. But the reply of course would be: why are you so fragile? It's just a movie, can't you take a joke? Four hundred years of brutal oppression (as if I'm comparing the two) and this man wants to complain about a movie!
I wasn't gonna comment, because this I'm so late to the party. But this was really good. I made it all the Way through because-a that.
"All PoC ar noble strivers with both proud and distinctive traditions and an even brighter, almost inevitably victorious future (perhaps because that outcome was to be gradually mandated and engineered, and enforced?)"
Would just remove the question mark.
"To the extent any of that argument is true, a large part of it is simply based on growing up as part of a large majority."
This is something I wondered about, but dunno much about. There's always gonna be a tension between a large majority and a large minority, right? Dunno Korea, but assume that was Your point. But I don't see *anybody* trying to figure that out, and see how it can be ameliorated.
I agree with Substack Reader below, that it boils down to political strategy, in the end. And couldn't help but notice those at the very top-a the food chain (KenDiAngelo, Hannah-Jones and Coates, to name a few)... Well, they all cashed their chips in for fame and (mostly) fortune.
But I don't think it pays to overlook the Marxist aspect to this. The original Critical Race Theory outta the 80s. And up to the present time. There are people who wanna "dismantle the institutions" because-a their "systemic racism." Since "systemic racism" is a hoax, AFAIK, their ultimate motive is to tear down the society however they can and replace it with dreams.
Or, I should say, that's one motivation for destroying society, but not necessarily the only one.
You make some interesting points, but you need to throw in some paragraph breaks! I didn't make it all the way through because of eyestrain. The parts I got through were interesting, though.
Anyway, I think a lot of it is a deliberate political strategy. People will do just about anything for power and/or money, long term consequences be damned.