Of course it’s even worse than this. It’s not just that the bias narrative is all one is permitted to cite no matter how ridiculously, aggressively convoluted and implausible in certain instances or in adequate in explaining certain phenomenon. Think of “‘white supremacy’ is wholly responsible for vicious bias attacks by people who aren’t white against vulnerable Americans of Asian ethnicity”. Or, consider the always execrable Michael Harriott, just out with “Why Firing White Teachers Is a Great Idea”.
The bias narrative must now also often be accompanied by grinning, gloating attacks on people who are white, simply for being white. It’s increasingly clear that if you want to be tolerated at all as a white person in some of these circles your only real value is in internalizing and echoing that everything is indeed your fault and you’re deeply sorry - to give confirmation to the narrative and carte blanche to the agenda. How else does a teachers’ union ostensibly there to represent and protect all its members instead agree to layoffs and rehiring based on skin color?
I haven’t related this before I think because I didn’t want it to overshadow all of the many, many good conversations I had. But in doing at times sweaty, grueling organizing work to help elect a (reasonable) reform DA in Brooklyn several years ago, I had the following experience. It didn’t take place in Red Hook Houses or Albany Houses, or Farragut Houses, or at the very southern edge of Ft. Greene Park, across from Walt Whitman Houses, where the residents were at times blunt and funny but were virtually always gracious and often quite warm and kind. It took place closer to the top of Ft. Greene Park and my interlocutors were two very preppie, well-dressed, by all appearances young and fairly affluent professional couples. In that job, I simply approached everybody. Some conversations were much more meaningful and productive than others. The core goal was to let Brooklyn voters know that after a couple decades of a dominant incumbent they had a choice. I wanted residents of public housing to know their and their neighbors’ experiences and thoughts mattered and to hear what was on their minds re: how and what crimes were prosecuted in Brooklyn.
About a minute into speaking with the aforementioned couples, one of the men, a tall, attractive guy far better dressed than I was, tried the following: “Did you just say ______?!!”
You all know the word. I was so genuinely, innocently startled I looked up and scanned everyone’s faces, and simply said “no, I didn’t say that word. I didn’t say anything that remotely sounded like that word.” The second guy joined in: “Are you sure you didn’t just say _____?!”
If it hadn’t been for the two women, who were visibly embarrassed, I could have been in real trouble. For daring to try and help elect a non-white reform DA while being white. One of the women said “he didn’t say that”. The other shook her head and sort of shrugged “I didn’t hear that”. They weren’t going to call out their boyfriends for trying to pull that stunt, at least in front of me. But they weren’t going to stand there and say nothing, and let the accusation go unchallenged. For that, I’m truly grateful. All there was to do at that point was to wrap up the conversation as quickly and smoothly as possible in an attempt to turn the focus back to…you know, we’ve got a chance to elect a reform DA.
When a conversation goes that far sideways, out of nowhere, the best thing to do after just walking and breathing a bit, is to talk with someone else. Like the aging tough guys at the bottom of the park who sized me up a little and challenged me with a bit of mostly friendly banter - before engaging with me about some of the issues and (two out of four) putting their names down in support. I’ve wondered now and again what could have motivated young men more apparently fashionable and successful than myself to, utterly out of the blue, accuse me of using the single ugliest word in English and the one most associated with racial hatred, abuse, and dehumanization. Was it that I’d dared to approach them and engage with not only them but their girlfriends? Was it that this white guy was out sweating in the park, working to elect a reform DA while they weren’t involved and were instead out for a leisurely stroll?
Some human beings, whatever their color, or ethnicity, will push the envelope as far they think they can get away with it. They’ll be as cynical and dishonest and use anything at their disposal to try and demonize or scapegoat others, as long as they can tell themselves and others tell them it’s somehow justified. Maybe those men were insecure or easily threatened. Maybe they knew they talked a certain talk but generally couldn’t be bothered to back it up with positive action. Organizing work pays crap wages, often with no benefits let alone job security, and anyone you approach can casually - or rudely - tell you to get lost. It’s not very cool. It’s earnest but grinding work and what makes it worthwhile are the positive conversations you do have, especially those which recover from an awkward start or defy superficial expectations.
What’s frustrating is that so often it’s the actually privileged people, the people who have professional or even more so media platforms, who seem determined to frame every public policy issue, every social issue, through the most totalizing, racially reifying, essentializing, and divisive, even scapegoating lens. However he tries to rationalize it, you can tell that, for the Michael Harriotts of the world (and they’re all over the dominant left of center media these days) simply making teachers suffer for being white, without knowing or caring anything else about them - how passionately and effectively they engage with their students, how much they sacrifice their own pleasures to buy classroom supplies - is the very point. It’s the goal. Maligning and mistreating people based on their skin color and not only being able to get away with it, but actually being celebrated as bold and serious thought leaders, based on spewing the lowest kind of bigotry and seeking to condemn and immiserate people by race, is almost palpably thrilling. It’s incentivized. And those incentives - total impunity for open bigotry and discrimination , if not praise and promotion - combine with broader social assumptions gaining public currency and institutional teeth by the day: anything (really anyone) white is bad and the only way we can really “confront” and “dismantle” racism in whatever forms it’s said to be responsible for any shortcomings public or personal is to openly and unapologetically demean and discriminate against white people. Most regular people have far too much decency and character to fall for or engage in the worst of this. But, again, so often it seems like a higher proportion of the people who have the loudest megaphones and loftiest platforms see it as their personal just desserts and the means by which their group goals will be achieved.
"Some human beings, whatever their color, or ethnicity, will push the envelope as far they think they can get away with it. They’ll be as cynical and dishonest and use anything at their disposal to try and demonize or scapegoat others, as long as they can tell themselves and others tell them it’s somehow justified."
This is some real wisdom everyone needs to keep in mind.
Every movement, every public or political issue, no matter how righteous or necessary, will always attract its share of scammers, liars, opportunists, crooks and (especially) sadists.
Of course it’s even worse than this. It’s not just that the bias narrative is all one is permitted to cite no matter how ridiculously, aggressively convoluted and implausible in certain instances or in adequate in explaining certain phenomenon. Think of “‘white supremacy’ is wholly responsible for vicious bias attacks by people who aren’t white against vulnerable Americans of Asian ethnicity”. Or, consider the always execrable Michael Harriott, just out with “Why Firing White Teachers Is a Great Idea”.
The bias narrative must now also often be accompanied by grinning, gloating attacks on people who are white, simply for being white. It’s increasingly clear that if you want to be tolerated at all as a white person in some of these circles your only real value is in internalizing and echoing that everything is indeed your fault and you’re deeply sorry - to give confirmation to the narrative and carte blanche to the agenda. How else does a teachers’ union ostensibly there to represent and protect all its members instead agree to layoffs and rehiring based on skin color?
I haven’t related this before I think because I didn’t want it to overshadow all of the many, many good conversations I had. But in doing at times sweaty, grueling organizing work to help elect a (reasonable) reform DA in Brooklyn several years ago, I had the following experience. It didn’t take place in Red Hook Houses or Albany Houses, or Farragut Houses, or at the very southern edge of Ft. Greene Park, across from Walt Whitman Houses, where the residents were at times blunt and funny but were virtually always gracious and often quite warm and kind. It took place closer to the top of Ft. Greene Park and my interlocutors were two very preppie, well-dressed, by all appearances young and fairly affluent professional couples. In that job, I simply approached everybody. Some conversations were much more meaningful and productive than others. The core goal was to let Brooklyn voters know that after a couple decades of a dominant incumbent they had a choice. I wanted residents of public housing to know their and their neighbors’ experiences and thoughts mattered and to hear what was on their minds re: how and what crimes were prosecuted in Brooklyn.
About a minute into speaking with the aforementioned couples, one of the men, a tall, attractive guy far better dressed than I was, tried the following: “Did you just say ______?!!”
You all know the word. I was so genuinely, innocently startled I looked up and scanned everyone’s faces, and simply said “no, I didn’t say that word. I didn’t say anything that remotely sounded like that word.” The second guy joined in: “Are you sure you didn’t just say _____?!”
If it hadn’t been for the two women, who were visibly embarrassed, I could have been in real trouble. For daring to try and help elect a non-white reform DA while being white. One of the women said “he didn’t say that”. The other shook her head and sort of shrugged “I didn’t hear that”. They weren’t going to call out their boyfriends for trying to pull that stunt, at least in front of me. But they weren’t going to stand there and say nothing, and let the accusation go unchallenged. For that, I’m truly grateful. All there was to do at that point was to wrap up the conversation as quickly and smoothly as possible in an attempt to turn the focus back to…you know, we’ve got a chance to elect a reform DA.
When a conversation goes that far sideways, out of nowhere, the best thing to do after just walking and breathing a bit, is to talk with someone else. Like the aging tough guys at the bottom of the park who sized me up a little and challenged me with a bit of mostly friendly banter - before engaging with me about some of the issues and (two out of four) putting their names down in support. I’ve wondered now and again what could have motivated young men more apparently fashionable and successful than myself to, utterly out of the blue, accuse me of using the single ugliest word in English and the one most associated with racial hatred, abuse, and dehumanization. Was it that I’d dared to approach them and engage with not only them but their girlfriends? Was it that this white guy was out sweating in the park, working to elect a reform DA while they weren’t involved and were instead out for a leisurely stroll?
Some human beings, whatever their color, or ethnicity, will push the envelope as far they think they can get away with it. They’ll be as cynical and dishonest and use anything at their disposal to try and demonize or scapegoat others, as long as they can tell themselves and others tell them it’s somehow justified. Maybe those men were insecure or easily threatened. Maybe they knew they talked a certain talk but generally couldn’t be bothered to back it up with positive action. Organizing work pays crap wages, often with no benefits let alone job security, and anyone you approach can casually - or rudely - tell you to get lost. It’s not very cool. It’s earnest but grinding work and what makes it worthwhile are the positive conversations you do have, especially those which recover from an awkward start or defy superficial expectations.
What’s frustrating is that so often it’s the actually privileged people, the people who have professional or even more so media platforms, who seem determined to frame every public policy issue, every social issue, through the most totalizing, racially reifying, essentializing, and divisive, even scapegoating lens. However he tries to rationalize it, you can tell that, for the Michael Harriotts of the world (and they’re all over the dominant left of center media these days) simply making teachers suffer for being white, without knowing or caring anything else about them - how passionately and effectively they engage with their students, how much they sacrifice their own pleasures to buy classroom supplies - is the very point. It’s the goal. Maligning and mistreating people based on their skin color and not only being able to get away with it, but actually being celebrated as bold and serious thought leaders, based on spewing the lowest kind of bigotry and seeking to condemn and immiserate people by race, is almost palpably thrilling. It’s incentivized. And those incentives - total impunity for open bigotry and discrimination , if not praise and promotion - combine with broader social assumptions gaining public currency and institutional teeth by the day: anything (really anyone) white is bad and the only way we can really “confront” and “dismantle” racism in whatever forms it’s said to be responsible for any shortcomings public or personal is to openly and unapologetically demean and discriminate against white people. Most regular people have far too much decency and character to fall for or engage in the worst of this. But, again, so often it seems like a higher proportion of the people who have the loudest megaphones and loftiest platforms see it as their personal just desserts and the means by which their group goals will be achieved.
Well said.
"Some human beings, whatever their color, or ethnicity, will push the envelope as far they think they can get away with it. They’ll be as cynical and dishonest and use anything at their disposal to try and demonize or scapegoat others, as long as they can tell themselves and others tell them it’s somehow justified."
This is some real wisdom everyone needs to keep in mind.
Every movement, every public or political issue, no matter how righteous or necessary, will always attract its share of scammers, liars, opportunists, crooks and (especially) sadists.