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Samizdata quote of the day I stopped reading after the first sentence:
“I grew up Asian American in North Dakota, South Dakota and Idaho, some of the whitest states in this country.”
My heuristic is that anyone using race as their frame of reference has got nothing to say that isn’t vile gibberish.
– Mike Fagan
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Mike Fagan is correct.
As for the general move from the tactic of Class Conflict (Classical Marxism) to the tactic of using Race, Sex, Gender…. (Frankfurt School Marxism – and French Post Modernism, the general Collectivist “Diversity and Inclusion” Agenda) – someone like the Governor of South Dakota would reject this Collectivism with contempt, seeing BOTH tactics as the fraud they are – whereas, for example, “Central Office” would eagerly agree with the “Agenda”.
That is the difference between real Conservatives (such as the Governor of South Dakota) and fake ones (such as “Central Office” in the United Kingdom).
“Social Justice”, “Racial Justice”, “Environmental Justice” (and so on) are all Collectivist negations of actual justice (to each their own). The best that can be said of people who do not understand this (or pretend they do not understand it) is that they are sadly ignorant.
But it does convey information to say that.
I grew up as the white kid in Compton, one of the most Mexican of Los Angeles areas. That’s pretty much the same thing Fagan’s subject said, with some substitutions.
To some extent, that experience molded the person I eventually became, and affected many of my most basic societal paradigms.
I think one should intentionally avoid thinking of race as the most important aspect in a life, but the observation itself isn’t vile or meaningless. Race does alter one’s frame of reference, significantly. Race – for whatever reasons one might want to ascribe to the issue – plays a huge factor in how everyone else in the world perceives and treats you.
I’m lucky. In my own context, the statement doesn’t demand pity or special exemption. I had it good. But I do know the Dakotas and Idaho, and I would not have wanted to be the asian kid growing up there. If you don’t have the experience to know that, then maybe the statement comes off as meaningless and vile. It doesn’t to me.
The Washington Post (which gave editorial space to this “Social Justice Warrior”) was created by “white” (i.e. pinkish gray – very few people are actually “white”) people, it is mostly staffed by “white” people – and it is owned by a “white” person, Jeff Bezos.
What makes these people think that when the evil “white” people are exterminated by the “oppressed” people, they (people such as the owner of the Washington Post – Jeff Bezos) will not be exterminated?
They are like the Duke of Orleans – pushing a Revolution when everyone (apart from those who have had their Common Sense surgically removed) would understand that they would be obvious VICTIMS of that Revolution. “Citizen Equality” (the Duke of Oreleans – who had financed the Revolution and voted for the murder of his own cousin, Louis XVI) was, of course, robbed and murdered himself.
By the way – on “oppression”, “Asian Americans” have higher on-average-incomes that “white” people do.
So if Marxism (Classical or Frankfurt School Marxism) has any logic in it at all – it would declare that the “Asian Americans” are “exploiting and oppressing” the “white” people.
Of course no ethnic is really “oppressing” and “exploiting” any other ethnic group in these States – it is all total NONSENSE.
“But Paul – the Native Americans in the Indian Reservations in these States are very poor”.
The “Native Americans” are poor because of the Collectivist policies followed by their own Tribal Councils, which (for example) own the land – collectively.
In short – they are oppressing themselves.
Indeed the contrast between (for example) the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and the “white” communities is very interesting – but for very different reasons from those the Frankfurt School of Marxism “Diversity and Inclusion” (“Critical Theory”) types think it is.
Pine Ridge and so on, are actually examples of socialism – and they show that it does not work, that it does terrible harm.
And, oh yes, as in prisons (people in jail get to live socialism every day) – the “basics” are “free” in Pine Ridge and the other Reservations.
They are an example of what the left (the sort of person who wrote the piece in the Washington Post) want the entire country,indeed the entire world, to be like.
I agree with bobby b.
Your race or ethnicity is a perfectly normal component of your identity, though whether it’s a big thing or a small thing depends on circumstances. Your sex too, though that’ll struggle to be a small thing.
There are no generic humans who lack particular characteristics, some of which wil be unique and some of which will be shared by some others. Noticing such characteristics in yourself and in others is not evil. It’s normal.
Where it goes off the tracks is if you start drawing evil conclusions, and setting off on an evil path.
“I grew up Asian American in North Dakota, South Dakota and Idaho, some of the whitest states in this country” could go on into an SJW rant. But it could just as well go on to report on the kindness, neighborliness and lack of racial prejudice of her neighbors.
By the way – I know that Jeff Bezos does not believe a word of what gets printed in his own newspaper.
That actually makes him WORSE.
He knows everything in his newspaper is nonsense – but he thinks that supporting this leftist garbage will earn him Brownie points with the left, so they will not rob and get rid of him, the instant he is no longer useful to them.
Rich fool.
Certainly Lee Moore – the article could indeed be about how kind and good people in South Dakota (and so on) are.
But the odds of the article being of this nature are low.
The odds are it is just another death-to-whitey article, in a newspaper owned by a whitey (a rich man, who like others, mistakenly thinks that only the “Rednecks” or “rural hicks” are going to get hit – that he will be left happy and secure)
In theory an episode of “Star Trek Discovery” (or any other Hollywood show or film) COULD show a straight white male as being morally good and intellectually correct – and a homosexual nonwhite female as being morally bad and intellectually in error.
That COULD happen in any of these television shows or films – but the odds are they will not be written that way, due to the Frankfurt School of Marxism (or “Critical Theory” – if people object to the term “Frankfurt School of Marxism”) political and cultural opinions of the people who dominate the media, and academia.
“Identity Politics” the whole “exploitation and oppression” “Diversity and Inclusion Agenda” is Marxist crap, or “Post Modern” crap, or “Critical Theory” crap – the point is that it is CRAP.
That is Mike Fagan’s point – and he is correct.
The title of the article is “Andrew Yang chooses to be a white people pleaser – he is wrong”.
In short Andrew Yang (a man of Asian heritage) is “wrong” not because he advocates terrible policies (such as handing out tax money to every person – just because they are alive, i.e. in return for nothing) which would bankrupt the United States.
No – Andrew Yang is “wrong”, because he tries to “please” “white” people. Instead Mr Yang (because his skin happens to be a certain colour) should concentrate (even in relation to the COVID 19 virus) on “our communities” – i.e. the communities of non “white” people.
In short it is indeed another bash-whitey article.
That is the sort of article that Jeff Bezos’ newspaper pushes.
And this is the newspaper (like the rest of the “mainstream” media) that thinks it is a good idea to back the Governor of Virginia.
Now he is actually a “white” man and he is heterosexual and not disabled. And he dressed up in KKK stuff – and does not even remember how many times he did that. It was so many times he does not remember how many times it was?
So why do they support him?
Well he supports abortion up to and AFTER birth (yes infanticide).
And he supports “Gun Control” – which works sooooo well in Mexico and Chicago.
And he supports Censorship (sorry I mean an end to “Hate Speech” – which means any speech that does not agree with the left).
And he supports shutting down (by the threat of violence) the churches.
Or rather his STAFF support all these things (and much more) because the Governor himself is a PUPPET.
In short it is fine to be “white” – as-long-as you have the political opinions of someone like “Lenin” or you are the puppet of staff who have such opinions.
Actually, i believe that the “whitest” (as Paul writes) parts of the world are the most likely to be hospitable to non-white people.
That is partly because in such places there have not been, and there could not have been, ethnic tensions; and partly because, unlike say in California, New York, or Britain, there are no votes to be gained there by stirring up ethnic tensions. And when i say “stirring up ethnic tensions”, i mean: advocating the Frankfurt-School worldview.
Snorri Godhi: “That is partly because in such places there have not been, and there could not have been, ethnic tensions”
That’ll be news to the Scottish and Welsh too.
The point of the quote is triage.
I have only so many minutes a day available so I too read a few bits and if the bullshit meter swings to red, I quit.
Identity politics is okay, but the “politics” part usually spoils it. There’s a lot to identity beyond skin color. I’m a nerd — an educated nerd. I don’t like visiting the in-laws, because Pulvers talk more rapidly and continuously than Kuhfelds, so I almost never can get a word in. I’m a writer, cartoonist, and maker. I’m transsexual, and don’t have trouble with people over it unless they’re trying to convince me I MUST vote Left. As far as I know, I’ve never killed or enslaved anyone, and I’m getting tired of the accusations just because I’m “white”. I have my very own collection of hot buttons. I’m middle-class. The list goes on and on.
Just about anybody could make a list like that. But if I were to put myself in some identity group it would be “middle-class nerd”. My race is far behind that.
They tend to be fairly white in terms of snow, I think. Still behind some of the Great Lakes states, and of course Alaska.
What is wrong about such a way of talking is the Maoist desire to make identity an argument – to privilege the diversity of a viewpoint over the sense or lack of it in whatever it might say.
On the one hand, teachers demanding that the whites in the class be silent while encouraging the others to ‘speak bitterness’, or native american spokesmen writing books with titles like “We Talk, You Listen” are following a standard Maoist playbook. As FredZ says, the OP is just about filtering out time-wasters in a world where they can write it far faster than we can read it (as the OP says, it is a heuristic), but beyond that, this Maoist tactic is evil and even its starter form of “As an X, I should be given power to talk more and be more listened to than you” is a danger sign.
On the other hand, “as a Scot” 🙂 , I can sometimes provide personal and family testimony – for what such finite data is worth – on some claim about Scots. If the natz tell you that the English have been mean to the Scots, I can provide two generations of testimony that English people were consistently and strongly prejudiced in Scots’ favour until very recently, and even now are but merely and occasionally irritated by natz whining. Likewise, Frederick Douglass’ writings have a certain information value that add usefully to any third-person abolitionist’s observations. Like any witness of a particular scene, such testimony can have a specific value not because of anyone’s identity but because they chanced to be there.
This second point may be part of what bobby b and Lee Moore had in mind in their comments.
“I was born a poor black child. I am not a bum. I’m a jerk. I once had wealth, power, and the love of a beautiful woman.”
The opening lines of The Jerk, starring Steve Martin, is a strong test of Mike Fagan’s thesis, and I believe his thesis fails this test.
Similarly with Warren Buffet, Bill Gates (well, maybe he believes his own petards), and others. They’ve seen that they are big flashing targets for dem shakedowns. The DoJ went after MSFT 20 years ago. It was the Bush administration’s DoJ, but it was career staffers, the kind that form the invariably pro-dem deep state. Before that, big tech was utterly oblivious to lobbying and government issues. After that Silicon Valley became one of, if not the biggest lobbying group in the U.S.
It’s obviously just protection money.
But it’s not just the lobbying. The dems demand loyalty. That requires eg that Buffet make displays of anger at being taxed so little, knowing full well that without a wealth tax (which even the dems know all to well not to go for) he’ll never pay much in taxes — he has to actually mouth off the things they want, he has to virtue signal. And it’s not just protection he gets to buy, but also things like the (Obama) administration refusing to allow oil and gas pipelines to be built, which then spills more oil and gas transportation into rail (which Buffet owns).
If you were a billionaire… you’d be vulnerable, very very vulnerable. You might be interested in buying protection.
Running a democratic party mouthpiece as a major newspaper == all the brownie points you need to keep them from going after you.
It takes real guts to put it all on the line. It’s not just special taxes and regulations they’ll use against you. They’ll make up criminal cases if need be to get you. They’ll make an example of you if need be.
Bezos knows this. Whether he believes what his newspaper publishes doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that the dems will leave him alone. If he has to believe the garbage he publishes, he’ll do that too.
Perhaps there is a way to fix this. There is a shakedown party, and a party that takes it all lying down. To fix this you need the other party to also be a shakedown party. Fight fire with fire. Boris has the stonking majority needed to make that happen, but, as usual, the Tories are a bunch of ninnies, so it won’t.
There’s only so many years of this state of affairs that a Republic or democracy can stand before finally and fully capitulating to the hostage takers / pyromaniacs we call parties like the Democrats and Labour. Apres ça, le déluge.
Sometimes I think: if we’d given the dems and labour what they wanted -a one-party state- long ago, they might govern reasonably. After all, the dems kinda did between the end of WWII and 1994. But then, there’s no guarantee that they won’t give in to their crazies.