Mar 2, 2023·edited Mar 2, 2023Liked by John Carter
I have a slightly different take on the Scott Adams situation. Or more specifically, the chicanery that spawned it. The inciting poll question, like so many, seemed designed to produce a desired result (yes, it's possible that it was just incompetence, but attribution to evil seems more likely these days).
The problem lies in the statement itself's multiple valid interpretations. One of these, as you quite correctly note, is that the respondents thought the question was about whites. In other words, was it "okay" for *whites* to be white. In that formulation, it is indeed an expression of ugly, and perhaps even genocidal hatred. I know from experience that this form of black hatred of whites exists, and that it's more common than the reverse in the current era.
But there is another interpretation of "It's okay to be white" that is very commonplace, and which (bizarrely) I haven't seen anyone mention. In this interpretation, the question is whether it's okay for yourself (i.e. the black respondent) or other (black) people to "be white." As my own wife can attest to, for the question to be perceived this way by a significant fraction of black Americans isn't at all anomalous, but cuts rather to the heart of a certain (and unfortunate) socialization process that many have experienced.
In fact, even I can attest to it. I well recall the black-on-black accusations of someone "acting white" from my youth. In a sense, it was the *ultimate* insult, because it meant you were a phony, a fake. It meant that you lacked authenticity, even if your behavior was authentically a part of your particular upbringing. This was particularly the case in patterns of speech; if you didn't adopt the mannerisms and informal patois (ironically, inherited from Southern whites), you were trying to set yourself above other black people. Make of that what you will, but these were *very* strong currents to stand against.
That's not to say I didn't see some stand against them. But an unfortunate side-effect was innvoluntary segregation (if not total disownment) from other black youths. You would have white friends, because they were the only ones who wouldn't look down on you for the way you (quite naturally) presented yourself. For young people in general, that kind of limit coupled with ostracization is going to be very difficult to accept. Thus, you're going to get a significant number of scarred black adults who internalize the hard lesson that "it's not okay to be white." Meaning themselves, and perhaps their own children.
How significant? Unknown, because the question was so "poorly designed." But I think we can safely assume that the 48% figure is too high, and may be off by as much as half in my opinion. Although I'm guessing most of that reduction would come from the "somewhat agree" faction. Those who "strongly agree" are likely the sort of hypnotized racists who did the scarring in the first place.
This totemization goes WAY back. I saw it in college 40 years ago. Those of use who went to mixed race high schools were much more conservative than those who grew up in wealthy suburbs.
Excellent! I really appreciated the whole article, although I will admit a certain shameful pleasure at seeing you quietly correct Adams' incorrect summary of the poll results :) If you hadn't, I was going to have to :D
Fantastic essay! I love the running gag of "White -- sorry 'white'" juxtaposed with "black -- sorry 'Black'" ripping on the new Marxcissist grammar. Little stuff like that, of which there are dozens of similar examples, weirdly popping up all over the culture all at once, that make you see, this is not just some organic, bottom-up cultural development; this is intentional and designed, not to help black people, but to demonize and psyop non-elite white people.
Everything in this clown world is 180 degrees opposite the reality. Whites are supposedly privileged, yet blacks are the ones actively preferred by every major cultural institution while whites are actively and openly discriminated against. (All of us are equal, but equity demands that some of us be less equal than others.) Whites are taught not to take pride in all the great things that white people have invented and developed, but to take moral responsibility for all the worst sins of the worst white people throughout history (even if history has to be rewritten to highlight their sinfulness); whereas blacks are given a pass for all the bad shit black people do and have done as a group, but are told to take pride in every good thing a black person has ever done (even if some portions of history have to be rewritten to allow them to take credit). Seemed like race relations were going much better in America before we elected Obama, who had campaigned on a platform that he would unite Americans across racial and cultural lines. Yeah, that worked out real well.
On a different note, I wonder why the Left replaced Occupy Wall Street with BLM and anti[white]racist identity politics? Wonder why the biggest Wall Street hedge fund managers are all on board with ESG and DEI and all that? Wonder why the culture's biggest and most powerful institutions are lavishly paying and incessantly promoting the anti[[white]racism of Ibram Kendi? And why are the whites who support critical race theory (totally not being taught, and it's awesome that schoolkids are being taught about it) disproportionately upper class, while the whites who are discriminated against and demonized (for "equity") are disproportionately middle and lower class? And I wonder how the black people who fall for all this identity politics are stupid enough to believe that the elite whites are their friends in their struggle against all the oppression they face from those racist non-elite white Trump voters living in flyover country? Yeah, Bubba living in his double-wide trailer and driving a 20-year-old pickup truck with a MAGA bumper sticker is totally the one oppressing you with his cowboy boot on your neck, especially since Bubba controls precisely zero of America's cultural and financial institutions.
It stands to reason, if we are going to divide society, oppressed/oppressors, then you can be one or the other, and if the oppressors willingly become oppressed, the oppressed will willing become oppressors.
Better not reject just sick ideas. Love yourself, be good and kind to people.
Mar 2, 2023·edited Mar 2, 2023Liked by John Carter
I have a more nuanced view of anti-white whites, as I'm Eastern European.
As it turns out, in Western Europe, there's an even better target than the founding stock's rubes when someone wants to feel superior to a group "legally": Eastern Europeans. They are barbarians, but also white, so it's fine to kick them around.
A lot of white self loathing comes from the restricted targets that one's allowed to attack. Hegemonic Liberals are not self-loathing, they, in their minds, are superior to their targets, even if those include their very own - publicly disawoved - family members.
I have a question for all you Gen Xers. Were things better in the 80s and 90s? Looking back at the music and other cultural artifacts of the time, I get the impression that people were much less concerned about race than they are now.
Very good article. And I can't help but think that this was aimed at a particular person (I think you know who) as well as a general audience. Good job!
Re the "It's OK to be white" controversy: Tarnell Brown, a black economist, explains that it's not the statement at face value that bothers many blacks, but the "white genocide" baggage it carries. Same way "Black lives matter" isn't controversial, on its own, to many whites, but rather for the perceived Marxist orientations of the namesake organization's now-wealthy founders.
Not sure I'm representing Tarnell's views correctly, but that's my take on them.
I'm a "victim" of self-hatred. Also most of my fellow Spanish people are victims of self-hatred.
This is very characteristic of Spanish people. Envy and self-hatred. I think this is the product of a political psyop that started around the year 1700, when the Bourbon family of France decided to take over Spanish Monarchy in a war with the Austrian Monarchy.
The French won and decided to destroy the soul and self-respect of the Spanish people.
What do you call a 300 years long psyop? A Cultural Tradition.
Sorry for that pessimistic joke.
That is how I interpret the History of Spain and why my country is in the sorry state it is at the moment. Extreme demoralization and pessimism, ugliness everywhere, injustice rampant.
Planned Chaos, John.
Victim-mentality is bad on its own. Extrapolated to the collective unconscious is worse than runaway psychosis.
I think studying anything helps resolve anxiety and hatred. I wish my compatriots would destroy their TVs and study more.
I am trying to help, you know. It is so difficult to help people addicted to fear and self-hatred. A very depressing task, like cleaning the Augean stables.
Did one ever stop to think what diversity may have brought to the table?
Accidents, big accidents. Like train derailments, moronic government edicts, stupid politicians, dumb media and the dreaded self loathes.
If you hire someone based on their competence, you expect competence. If you hire someone based on anything other than competence you can expect a disaster.
If you hire a moronic brother, disaster.
The problem with the self haters, is they are afraid of excellence. They are afraid of brave people. So they resort to name calling when confronted with logic.
So when someone calls me a racist, I laugh.
I currently live in a country that is mostly brown, speak Spanish and i get along, ok.
Mar 2, 2023·edited Mar 2, 2023Liked by John Carter
The side effect of AA is that it has made people race realists. It's quite apparent someone that has only been boosted by their skin colour, gender, or both. Perpetuating the idea that all races are created equal and it being only a matter of socioeconomic reasons holding some minority group back is straight out of Hollywood. With AA, I assume 95%+ of blacks and women programmers are useless and of course I am right. I can only imagine being the exception, the Ben Carson types, how I rather be judged based on my work instead of being treated like some 3rd world savage that needs to be tended to by some barren HR cat lady who needs to direct her maternal instincts somewhere.
You can call me Mr. QuizMe, but unless you're Elizabeth Warren or some other equally politically opportunistic buffoon... Since when is anyone able to "choose" their ethnicity?
As a white person, most of whose family is black, living in a geographical region in which 90% are black, I chuckled my way through that brilliant essay. I have encountered that entire range of perceptions for most of the past half-century.
Few people appear to identify the absurdities. Skin colour denotes melanin and precious little else. Differences are actually in culture but, in the US, such differences have become imperceptible in recent decades. What we are talking about are media creations and fabrications designed to create confusion and conflict; or more significantly, prevent unity. Good ol' divide and rule tactics.
If one group should be singled out for condemnation, in my opinion, it is academics, who had the opportunity for clarity of perception but, instead, have chosen to embrace woke insanity with a feverishness that actually does not surprise me. These are truly stupid people.
As a person who has worked in transcultural projects for many decades, and in multilingual environments, I have concluded that the least racist identifiable group could loosely be described as white, and the most racist are the marginal admixtures. I have a fair idea why this is so but on this I will keep my lips zipped. My observations would only unleash more unhelpful diatribes.
I have a slightly different take on the Scott Adams situation. Or more specifically, the chicanery that spawned it. The inciting poll question, like so many, seemed designed to produce a desired result (yes, it's possible that it was just incompetence, but attribution to evil seems more likely these days).
The problem lies in the statement itself's multiple valid interpretations. One of these, as you quite correctly note, is that the respondents thought the question was about whites. In other words, was it "okay" for *whites* to be white. In that formulation, it is indeed an expression of ugly, and perhaps even genocidal hatred. I know from experience that this form of black hatred of whites exists, and that it's more common than the reverse in the current era.
But there is another interpretation of "It's okay to be white" that is very commonplace, and which (bizarrely) I haven't seen anyone mention. In this interpretation, the question is whether it's okay for yourself (i.e. the black respondent) or other (black) people to "be white." As my own wife can attest to, for the question to be perceived this way by a significant fraction of black Americans isn't at all anomalous, but cuts rather to the heart of a certain (and unfortunate) socialization process that many have experienced.
In fact, even I can attest to it. I well recall the black-on-black accusations of someone "acting white" from my youth. In a sense, it was the *ultimate* insult, because it meant you were a phony, a fake. It meant that you lacked authenticity, even if your behavior was authentically a part of your particular upbringing. This was particularly the case in patterns of speech; if you didn't adopt the mannerisms and informal patois (ironically, inherited from Southern whites), you were trying to set yourself above other black people. Make of that what you will, but these were *very* strong currents to stand against.
That's not to say I didn't see some stand against them. But an unfortunate side-effect was innvoluntary segregation (if not total disownment) from other black youths. You would have white friends, because they were the only ones who wouldn't look down on you for the way you (quite naturally) presented yourself. For young people in general, that kind of limit coupled with ostracization is going to be very difficult to accept. Thus, you're going to get a significant number of scarred black adults who internalize the hard lesson that "it's not okay to be white." Meaning themselves, and perhaps their own children.
How significant? Unknown, because the question was so "poorly designed." But I think we can safely assume that the 48% figure is too high, and may be off by as much as half in my opinion. Although I'm guessing most of that reduction would come from the "somewhat agree" faction. Those who "strongly agree" are likely the sort of hypnotized racists who did the scarring in the first place.
This totemization goes WAY back. I saw it in college 40 years ago. Those of use who went to mixed race high schools were much more conservative than those who grew up in wealthy suburbs.
Excellent! I really appreciated the whole article, although I will admit a certain shameful pleasure at seeing you quietly correct Adams' incorrect summary of the poll results :) If you hadn't, I was going to have to :D
Fantastic essay! I love the running gag of "White -- sorry 'white'" juxtaposed with "black -- sorry 'Black'" ripping on the new Marxcissist grammar. Little stuff like that, of which there are dozens of similar examples, weirdly popping up all over the culture all at once, that make you see, this is not just some organic, bottom-up cultural development; this is intentional and designed, not to help black people, but to demonize and psyop non-elite white people.
Everything in this clown world is 180 degrees opposite the reality. Whites are supposedly privileged, yet blacks are the ones actively preferred by every major cultural institution while whites are actively and openly discriminated against. (All of us are equal, but equity demands that some of us be less equal than others.) Whites are taught not to take pride in all the great things that white people have invented and developed, but to take moral responsibility for all the worst sins of the worst white people throughout history (even if history has to be rewritten to highlight their sinfulness); whereas blacks are given a pass for all the bad shit black people do and have done as a group, but are told to take pride in every good thing a black person has ever done (even if some portions of history have to be rewritten to allow them to take credit). Seemed like race relations were going much better in America before we elected Obama, who had campaigned on a platform that he would unite Americans across racial and cultural lines. Yeah, that worked out real well.
On a different note, I wonder why the Left replaced Occupy Wall Street with BLM and anti[white]racist identity politics? Wonder why the biggest Wall Street hedge fund managers are all on board with ESG and DEI and all that? Wonder why the culture's biggest and most powerful institutions are lavishly paying and incessantly promoting the anti[[white]racism of Ibram Kendi? And why are the whites who support critical race theory (totally not being taught, and it's awesome that schoolkids are being taught about it) disproportionately upper class, while the whites who are discriminated against and demonized (for "equity") are disproportionately middle and lower class? And I wonder how the black people who fall for all this identity politics are stupid enough to believe that the elite whites are their friends in their struggle against all the oppression they face from those racist non-elite white Trump voters living in flyover country? Yeah, Bubba living in his double-wide trailer and driving a 20-year-old pickup truck with a MAGA bumper sticker is totally the one oppressing you with his cowboy boot on your neck, especially since Bubba controls precisely zero of America's cultural and financial institutions.
I like my white self. SorrA, not sorry...
It stands to reason, if we are going to divide society, oppressed/oppressors, then you can be one or the other, and if the oppressors willingly become oppressed, the oppressed will willing become oppressors.
Better not reject just sick ideas. Love yourself, be good and kind to people.
I have a more nuanced view of anti-white whites, as I'm Eastern European.
As it turns out, in Western Europe, there's an even better target than the founding stock's rubes when someone wants to feel superior to a group "legally": Eastern Europeans. They are barbarians, but also white, so it's fine to kick them around.
A lot of white self loathing comes from the restricted targets that one's allowed to attack. Hegemonic Liberals are not self-loathing, they, in their minds, are superior to their targets, even if those include their very own - publicly disawoved - family members.
I call this malicious pride:
https://www.magyar.blog/p/true-cosmopolitans-love-their-own
So white self-loathing is old school malicious pride combined with a very restricted target group.
Let them go on with the self-hate.
They will fn where it leads, too late, but they all find it.
I have a question for all you Gen Xers. Were things better in the 80s and 90s? Looking back at the music and other cultural artifacts of the time, I get the impression that people were much less concerned about race than they are now.
Very good article. And I can't help but think that this was aimed at a particular person (I think you know who) as well as a general audience. Good job!
Re the "It's OK to be white" controversy: Tarnell Brown, a black economist, explains that it's not the statement at face value that bothers many blacks, but the "white genocide" baggage it carries. Same way "Black lives matter" isn't controversial, on its own, to many whites, but rather for the perceived Marxist orientations of the namesake organization's now-wealthy founders.
Not sure I'm representing Tarnell's views correctly, but that's my take on them.
I'm a "victim" of self-hatred. Also most of my fellow Spanish people are victims of self-hatred.
This is very characteristic of Spanish people. Envy and self-hatred. I think this is the product of a political psyop that started around the year 1700, when the Bourbon family of France decided to take over Spanish Monarchy in a war with the Austrian Monarchy.
The French won and decided to destroy the soul and self-respect of the Spanish people.
What do you call a 300 years long psyop? A Cultural Tradition.
Sorry for that pessimistic joke.
That is how I interpret the History of Spain and why my country is in the sorry state it is at the moment. Extreme demoralization and pessimism, ugliness everywhere, injustice rampant.
Planned Chaos, John.
Victim-mentality is bad on its own. Extrapolated to the collective unconscious is worse than runaway psychosis.
I think studying anything helps resolve anxiety and hatred. I wish my compatriots would destroy their TVs and study more.
I am trying to help, you know. It is so difficult to help people addicted to fear and self-hatred. A very depressing task, like cleaning the Augean stables.
Did one ever stop to think what diversity may have brought to the table?
Accidents, big accidents. Like train derailments, moronic government edicts, stupid politicians, dumb media and the dreaded self loathes.
If you hire someone based on their competence, you expect competence. If you hire someone based on anything other than competence you can expect a disaster.
If you hire a moronic brother, disaster.
The problem with the self haters, is they are afraid of excellence. They are afraid of brave people. So they resort to name calling when confronted with logic.
So when someone calls me a racist, I laugh.
I currently live in a country that is mostly brown, speak Spanish and i get along, ok.
I am still white.
The side effect of AA is that it has made people race realists. It's quite apparent someone that has only been boosted by their skin colour, gender, or both. Perpetuating the idea that all races are created equal and it being only a matter of socioeconomic reasons holding some minority group back is straight out of Hollywood. With AA, I assume 95%+ of blacks and women programmers are useless and of course I am right. I can only imagine being the exception, the Ben Carson types, how I rather be judged based on my work instead of being treated like some 3rd world savage that needs to be tended to by some barren HR cat lady who needs to direct her maternal instincts somewhere.
You can call me Mr. QuizMe, but unless you're Elizabeth Warren or some other equally politically opportunistic buffoon... Since when is anyone able to "choose" their ethnicity?
First art piece is so tight
As a white person, most of whose family is black, living in a geographical region in which 90% are black, I chuckled my way through that brilliant essay. I have encountered that entire range of perceptions for most of the past half-century.
Few people appear to identify the absurdities. Skin colour denotes melanin and precious little else. Differences are actually in culture but, in the US, such differences have become imperceptible in recent decades. What we are talking about are media creations and fabrications designed to create confusion and conflict; or more significantly, prevent unity. Good ol' divide and rule tactics.
If one group should be singled out for condemnation, in my opinion, it is academics, who had the opportunity for clarity of perception but, instead, have chosen to embrace woke insanity with a feverishness that actually does not surprise me. These are truly stupid people.
As a person who has worked in transcultural projects for many decades, and in multilingual environments, I have concluded that the least racist identifiable group could loosely be described as white, and the most racist are the marginal admixtures. I have a fair idea why this is so but on this I will keep my lips zipped. My observations would only unleash more unhelpful diatribes.