Here’s an editorial from a Texas State University student newspaper that’s all over right-wing media (ignored by the Left, of course); it’s about why white DNA is “an abomination” and why white people shouldn’t exist. I don’t want to dissect it, because it’s a racist abomination in itself, and I don’t have the spoons to enact the emotional labor, I’ll just give a bit of the background from (yep) Fox News:
The column was written by Texas State University senior Rudy Martinez, a philosophy major who said in a past article he was one of the more than 200 people who was arrested on Jan. 20 protesting “the inauguration of proto-fascist Donald Trump.”
The University Star’s Editor-in-Chief, Denise Cervantes, said in a statement issued late Tuesday the column received “widespread criticism from readers.”
“The University Star’s opinion pages are a forum for students to express and debate ideas,” she said. “While our publication does not endorse every opinion put forth by student columnists or guest contributors, as the editor I take responsibility for what is printed on our pages.”
Cervantes said the original intent of the column was to provide a commentary on the idea of race and racial identities.
“We acknowledge that the column could have been clearer in its message and that it has caused hurt within our campus community,” she said. “We apologize and hope that we can move forward to a place of productive dialogue on ways to bring our community together.”
The article has apparently been removed from the online paper. I don’t think that’s so great; after all, it’s an instantiation of free speech and while I don’t agree with it, I do think that if the editor thought it was okay, she had every right to publish it. Once published, it should stay up.
I’ve found a screenshot and enlarged it. To me it sounds remarkably similar to ISIS’s piece in its own magazine Dabiq: “Why we hate you and why we fight you“.
First, the overview, which you won’t be able to read:
And the piece itself in readable form:
I’ll leave comments to the readers as this saddens me.
“… the emotional labor”
That was satirical, right?
Yes, of course.
Whew [wipes brow]
But the spoons are real. He melts them down to set the type for posts.
Gallium spoons, I hope?
Spoons?
Spoons are the SI unit of emotional labour.
With absolute zero defined as “Can’t Even.”
“I ought to do the housework, but I can’t work up the requisite oomph”.
spoons = “requisite oomph” for the task in hand.
Oh – self discipline! Now I get ‘spoons’.
OK, what now?
Oomph = spoons
… I’m not getting this …. idiom…
And yes I’m Google searching it now…
I learnt the expression (requisite oomph) in about 1980: it seems to be doing nicely on Google.
I was wondering if it came from “mph”: meaning miles per hour, though that is only my suggestion. More likely, it is just an onomatopoeia.
Concerning “spoons” I found:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spoon
There is always:
‘Lacking “the necessary get up and go” to do something’.
pizazz
gumption. But I think it’s mainly British.
Also found ‘chutzpah’ which is Yiddish.
It’s basically just a way of visualising opportunity cost.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory
Thanks, Speaker. I had never heard of this metaphor, but it does make sense.
Spoons can be replenished under the formula:
S=FP^2
where Fluevogs (F) purchased with Patreon donations (P) are converted into Spoons (S).
Sounds a lot like having Cardiac Artery Disease. Cry me a river!!
I’m sure that Spoon Theory is a useful metaphor for many people with chronic illnesses. However, it’s overused in many contexts on the internetz, particularly by those who believe in wacky functional medicine diagnoses, or who are just plain malingering or manipulating others. In one corner of the internet that I frequent, if I had a dollar for every time someone describes having DH, DP, or DF take care of mundane household chores, or bring home take-out food, because the poster “doesn’t have the spoons today,” I could retire early. And yes, 99% of these posters are women, many don’t (can’t?) work, and most never seem to have the spoons to do things like prepare meals, clean, take out the trash, lift anything that weighs more than a couple of pounds, or go grocery shopping. DH/DP/DF takes care of all of those things. Meanwhile, the poster typically has plenty of spoons for her hobbies, and to play video games or otherwise dink around on the internetz. There are always spoons for fun things and for trips to amusement parks or comic-cons.
The only thing that annoys me as much as overuse of Spoon Theory is the incessant whingeing about being triggered. Discussions of exercise, dieting, healthy living, etc. – all triggering. Ditto spiders, snakes, moths, teeth, body parts, etc. etc.
+1
Oh, noes! Don’t you dare bring up healthy eating while I’m polishing off my hot-fudge sundae in my safe space in front of the fridge. It might make me way too “uncomfortable”.🤢🎂 And don’t even start about exercise!
( does NOT say Moi, who went to the gym 4 times this week, and who does eat pretty healthily despite the occasional giving in to the chocolate craving.)
LOL! One’s eyeballs, they cannot roll enough sometimes …
😬
Yeah, sister, Spoons. Dig it.
The article is pretty unclear, but seems to be substituting the words “white” and “whiteness” where they mean “white privilege”. Your statement that the article claims white PEOPLE shouldn’t exist is wrong. The article is calling for the death of “white privilege”, and clearly contemplates the physical survival of the actual human beings involved.
Also, it seems to me that the article title doesn’t really correspond to the article at all. The article doesn’t mention DNA, for one thing. Perhaps this is a case of the editor choosing an incendiary title?
“I hate you because you shouldn’t exist.”
“To be white is to be an ancestor of … Europeans”
the article is indeed confused. It does indeed prevaricate. It’s a mess. But those quotes refute you.
They do not.
“I hate you because you shouldn’t exist.”
The author clearly implied in the previous paragraph that he does not want the death of white people. In this line, he means that “white people with privilege” shouldn’t exist.
“To be white is to be an ancestor of … Europeans”
You are misquoting the article by not including the entire quote here. The author is criticizing those who “abandon[ed] their identity in search of…stolen land.” It is not mere “European-ness” that the author is lamenting, but rather the acts of the specific “Europeans”.
You said Coyne was wrong to say white people shouldn’t exist, claiming only an idea is being attacked. But my first snippet is clearly about people not existing. Thus it refutes you. The second snippet is an example of how, despite the palaver about “ness” the people referred to as white are in fact caucasians. There are several other such references passim.
Imagine an article using “Jew” the way this one one does “white”, and then imagine someone saying “oh he really means Jewishness as a concept”. Now imagine how you react to that apologist. That’s my reaction to your shabby apologetics.
“But my first snippet is clearly about people not existing”
Yes, it is a “snippet”. And the author clearly had already implied that this is not actually what he was saying. You are taking that single line out of context. The prior paragraph makes clear that the “death” is not a physical one.
“The second snippet is an example of how, despite the palaver about “ness” the people referred to as white are in fact caucasians”
And since the article doesn’t call for their deaths, the “snippet” about descendants of Europeans really doesn’t mean much, does it?
Your argument is incoherent. If it were just an idea, and ideology, then any reference to being an ancestor would be irrelevant. You are a Marxist if you accept marxism, not because you are a genetic descendant of someone. The ancestor link only makes sense if ancestry is relevant, and then it’s not about ideology it’s about race.
Harrison has it exactly, motte and bailey.
Nope.
It’s not merely a reference to an ancestor. It’s a reference to ancestors that made a choice. This is the part of the quote you left out originally.
After the one mention of “white”s as descendants of Europeans, there is also a later line “you are estranged from yourself and, in that absence, have been instilled with an allegiance to a country that was never great.”
At the end of the article, the “death” of whiteness is seen as a step towards the “white” people becoming “something other than the oppressor”
Your second quote is a misquote (it’s ‘descendant’ not ‘ancestor’. Also, it excludes the part that demonstrates it’s not about DNA.
The quote is: “…to be a descendant of those Europeans who chose to abandon their identity in search of something new: ‘stolen land’.” The guilt is not genetic, but the actions of specific individuals: “those Europeans who chose”.
I was gonna leave off but jeez. The “abandon their identity in search of … stolen land” refers to the white people who came here from Europe. Period. So it’s coterminous with the breeding pool. But it’s more than that. It is *worse* for your argument, it’s a form of “go back to your own land”. I saw a black racist once tell a white woman she should “go back” to Ireland, her land.
Yes, I wrote ancestor for descendant. My error.
A ridiculous whitewashing of the article.
Any idea why? Or are we just making blanket statements without argument?
It is unadulterated hate. Racism in it purest state and you are trying to parse it in such a way as to make it about a worthy topic. I have no doubt -none whatsoever- that you would not try to make a similar piece about blacks appear to be so nasty.
What about my comment above makes you think I think this is a good article about white privilege? The article is poorly written and unclear. White privilege exists, but you are correct that I would not write an article that was this vehement (then again, I am white).
I never said I agreed with the tone of the article, thank you very much.
My point is that the professor is wrong to characterize the article as calling for the death of whites, and his comparison to ISIS is also wrong on that count.
If this article was written with slightly less vehemence, it would be a standard critique of white privilege.
I have to add that, in this country, a “similar piece about blacks” would not be possible (unless one were engaged in writing Neo-Confederate propaganda, I suppose).
That’s some defense, if one said it about blacks it would sound like neo-confederate propaganda.
Why are you taking it out of context? The only reason it would sound like Neo-Confederate propaganda is that “black-privilege” does not exist in this country, unlike “white privilege”. That is my point.
Since white privilege actually exists, the article’s critique of it is “possible” in the send that it is not merely propaganda.
Yep. My guess is Teh doesn’t see that.
Thanks mike, but I already explained myself to the OP.
More motte and bailey. It doesn’t just talk about “whiteness”. It talks about white people, and their ancestry, and expresses hate using a personal pronoun not an abstract one.
I quite agree with your gneral argument that if Hitler really meant “the doctrine of Jewish superiority” every time he said Jews then his minions got it wrong. But, I don’t think he meant that, and I don’t think dredging up some quotation where he said that would vitiate all the times he said and meant Jews. If Martinez meant an ideology, and just an ideology, he should have talked about the ideology, not people and their ancestry.
Why are you ignoring the fact that the article is not talking about physical death? The final few paragraphs are saying explicitly that “whiteness” is what must die.
What are the implications of saying a person shouldn’t exist? Especially when conjoined by a direct statement of hatred?
And of course you are wrong. He doesn’t write about “the death of whiteness”. He writes about “white death” which is, at best, ambiguous.
“What are the implications of saying a person shouldn’t exist? Especially when conjoined by a direct statement of hatred?
And of course you are wrong. He doesn’t write about “the death of whiteness”. He writes about “white death” which is, at best, ambiguous.”
I am sorry to quote your entire post, but Oh My God! You are now taking something else out of context!
The “white death” is the death of white privilege, which is clear if you were to study the context. The end of that paragraph tells white folks to accept that “death” as a way to improve themselves, which would hardly be possible if they were physically dead!
I’m stopping after this, per the rules. But in your last you admit you misrepresented what he said. Then, when corrected, you executed a perfect retreat to the bailey.
“White death” is actually ambiguous. It could mean the death of an idea or it could mean what it means on the surface, the death of white people. That’s the technique.
“I’m stopping after this, per the rules. But in your last you admit you misrepresented what he said. Then, when corrected, you executed a perfect retreat to the bailey.
“White death” is actually ambiguous. It could mean the death of an idea or it could mean what it means on the surface, the death of white people. That’s the technique.”
Where did I misrepresent anything? You are the one who took the “snippets” and failed to also see the context. “White death” is not ambiguous at all when you look at the very paragraph where it appears. For about the fifth time now, I would point out that the end of that very paragraph contemplates white people not dying, but rather changing into something less oppressive. I hate to repeat myself so much, but in your case it appears required.
I agree with Teh. The op-ed calls for the death of white privilege and a form of white identity rather than the death of individual whites. Because the article is so poorly written, somewhat self-contradictory, so vague, so full of over-generalisations and dubious factual assumptions and claims, so rhetorically overblown, so vehement in tone, I initially took it as a call for literal genocide.
IMO, the worst thing about this column is that it is written by a college senior majoring in philosophy. What does this say about the quality of education at TSU?
A fig leaf. A diversion. This is a piece written by someone who hates white people and is using the rhetoric of white privilege as a smoke screen. The d*g whistles are clear even for us Olde Tymers who’ve lost that end of the auditory spectrum.
Elsewhere a commentator suggests that we should not be saddened by this article and instead have it read as far and wide as possible. I agree. There are some who will defend it as you, Teh and others do*, but a great many more will see it for what it is; a vile racist screed. Making it widely read may also serve to help, finally, kill the Regressive Left beast as more people see what we’re up against.
*you do have a point…I concede there is wiggle room…the guy could be a complete ignoramus who cannot write his way out of a paper bag and should not be in that or any school pretending to educate writers. I’m not buying it. He a brown(?) David Duke.
Indeed the test is simple: replace white with any other color and check how it sounds.
Your test, while understandable, doesn’t work in the context of arguments (on the left) about white privilege.
One can write about white privilege like this because it exists, whereas one cannot write about “black privilege” like this since it doesn’t exist. It’s kind of like the idea that black people cannot be “racist” since they don’t have power.
Not that I agree, but that is the context on the left concerning the “test” you propose.
Just the assumption that white people are all motivated/controlled/blinded/whatevered by something called “white privilege” is it self a racist assumption. Use an arbitrary term for it, ‘peldacity’, and it’s glaringly obvious. And if you wrote about blacks and their peldacity, how they are all peldacic, it would embarrass even David Duke.
Texas State University is a well known “party school”
Sounds like the same sort of motte and bailey argument employed by antisemites and “race realists.” When called out for saying something completely indefensible, pretend they MEANT something milder, but never update the language to suggest this.
It’s the reverse of a dog whistle. The real meaning is surface level.
If that was the case, why include the paragraph that shows the “death” is not physical death but rather something else?
I think you are reading a bit too much into this. This was a piece by a student who is not able to write particularly clearly. That said, if you read what the article said it is pretty clearly not about killing whitey.
You’re bending over backward to excuse this author. The article is very clearly dripping with hate, and I don’t buy that none of that hate is directed at people.
Do you at least agree with me that the author is not calling for the actual death of white people?
“When I think of all the white people I have ever encountered – whether they’ve been professors, peers, lovers, freinds, police officers, et cetera – there is {sic] perhaps only a dozen I would consider “decent.”
That’s not clear enough for you? Of the tens of thousands of white people he’s met in his life (hundreds of thousands?), only a dozen would pass the very low bar of “decent”?
He’s as racist as you please.
I didn’t say he wasn’t racist, I said he wasn’t calling for white people to die.
Do you agree with me that he is not calling for the actual, physical deaths of white people?
Yes. The editorial is certainly not “about why white DNA is ‘an abomination.'” The headline contains “DNA” and “abomination”. The editorial itself does not.
Throughout, he’s not referring to DNA, but whiteness as a social construct that enables white supremacy: “You were not born white, you became white”. He refers to “descendants of Europeans WHO CHOSE to abandon their identity” [emphasis mine].
Parts may not make much sense, but they are explicitly not referring to just genetics. See various books about how the Irish or Jews became to be considered white in the US. No changes to genes were required.
I agree, it’s poorly written. And one may have a distaste for jargon about “deconstructing” anything.
But, the goal he’s expressing, perhaps not clearly, is the death of whiteness as
a social structure enabling white supremacy, not white DNA.
I agree. The title would make much more sense if “DNA” was in quotation marks, and the body included a segment on how “white supremacy” is part of the “DNA” of society, or something catchy like that.
Yes, your argument would be stronger if the article didn’t say what it said. Funny that.
Now you are just trying to be rude.
Just because the article is poorly written doesn’t mean it is saying white people must die. It is pretty clear (to me, at least) that it is not calling for the death of white people, but rather the death of white privilege.
No. I am implying the prevarication and conflation of “white” and “whiteness” are deliberate.
Well, I guess there is no way to argue against the idea that the author is an evil genius bent on subtley implying that white people must physically die.
Well, except for the fact that the article is very poorly written and is not at all clear on first read-through.
Honestly, does Occam’s Razor really lead you to the conclusion that the author wants to kill whitey?
It leads me to the conclusion he hates white people.
The author took the quote, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” and replaced “death” with “white”. The article features a cartoon, modifying John Lennon’s quote, “War is over, If you want it,” by replacing “war” with “white”. The author is hardly subtle in his vitriolic appeals to ending “whiteness” and his admission that he hates white people based solely on his position that white people should not exist. There is no requirement that the author meet your arbitrarily high standard of “evil genius” in order to subtly imply that ending “whiteness” just might be easily conflated with ending white people. The author seems to have done just that with little more than mildly clever word swaps. Clearly “white” is equated with death and war, and hardly any of these whites even meet a basic level of decency according to the authors personal judgement of all the white people he has ever encountered. Are you suggesting that the author cares about the lives of those he believes are the purveyors of death, war, and indecency? You know, anti-Jewish propaganda never explicitly called for the death of Jews. It only implied that they were dirty colluding rats, functioning as a collective with the goal of oppressing the rest of Germany. Kind of like the idea of white privilege and the complete rewriting of the history of colonialism that actively denies the positive contributions from people who happened to be white while magnifying all of the negative contributions from people who also happened to be white. The idea of identity-based “privilege” is a concept that is fully dynamic and non-static as its emergence is determined when social conditions meet certain criteria and thus any identity-based privilege emerges or dissolves based on the specific social context of every social encounter between any number of individuals. To suggest that “white privilege” exists as an absolute and that “black privilege” does not completely undermines the entire social framework that “privilege-theory”, it “intersecrionality” is based on. White privilege does not even exist in every social encounter involving white people. I for one do not experience any privilege for being white among a group of self-loathing white guilt-riddled social justice activists. I have male genitalia which I do no publicly display but I am visibly male in appearance, and I do not vocally disavow myself from identifying as a person with male genitalia, and if it comes up in discussion I may bring up an anectdote involving a girlfriend or ex-girlfriend. From this my identity as a straight, white male is negotiated through social cues and physical appearance and behaviors. If anything my gender identity, my biological sex and my personal sexual preferences are held up against the white backdrop of my racialized persona and there is no white privilege granted to me. In fact other white people will gladly pile on our shared skin pigmentation because being white is only one aspect of intersectionality. However, when viewed in the context of the intersection of my white skin, my cis-gender identity, my heterosexuality, and my male biological sex, there is a magnifying effect that places greater scrutiny on every aspect of my identity, my white skin not excluded. If this is your definition of a privilege then I would prefer to be oppressed and catered to, however infantilizing and disempowering that is. It is however very empowering to tell white people they are all privileged while constantly being scrutinized and criticized for having such privilege. I would rather treat all people as individuals, but social justice seems intent on creating strong resilient white males and highly sensitive, poorly adjusted, fragile infants out of everyone else.
Yes, the editorial is so badly written. And a wonderful demonstration of why using student editorials in a junior college newspaper is a terrible way to demonstrate anything.
I will admit it’s hard for me to be sure how I would take the editorial if I hadn’t been long aware of whiteness as social construct. Or if I hadn’t read and thought a lot about whiteness and white studies.
Without that background, I might not have been able to see through the bad writing to get at the intended message.
Again, a great reason to to use bad student writing as an example of anything other than bad writing.
I agree with you, Teh, that in many places “white” means “whiteness” here. But one of the opening sentences: “… of all the white people I’ve ever encountered… there is perhaps only a dozen I would consider ‘decent'” implies that he pretty much hates white people, not just ‘whiteness’.
And certainly an article written in much the same way – or even a much milder way – but with “black” replacing “white” would be excoriated by pretty much everyone as grossly racist and expressing hatred.
“of all the white people I’ve ever encountered… there is perhaps only a dozen I would consider ‘decent’” implies that he pretty much hates white people, not just ‘whiteness’.”
Or it implies that he has met lots of white people who are still unaware of “white privilege”.
The whole article is about “white” people (that is, those who have not “seen the light” so to speak) killing their “whiteness” in order to become better people.
The article should probably be re-written to be more clear on this point.
White Privilege™ is a load of crap. This punk is privileged as he’s attending university. He’s doubly privileged as he’s presumably getting passing grades despite being incapable of formulating a coherent train of thought.
+100
Really? Is there really no discrimination against non-whites in this country?
That’s your definition of White Privilege™?
I think it implies he really needs to get out more, and also that his level of prejudice is up there with the best white supremacists.
And I’m still not sure (based not just on this article but on numerous, mostly contempt-laden SJW pieces) what I am supposed to think “whiteness” is.
Taking a look at Martinez’ defense of his piece, he says it was to initiate discussion. But I can’t think of a better way to kill it.
The doctrine of “white privilege” is part of a particular belief system. I don’t think someone who believes in a particular moral ideology can insist that someone else unfamiliar with their beliefs needs to just accept them as facts. I feel no more obligation to accept their imposition of their belief system on me than if a Catholic insisted I had “original sin”. If they came up with a good consistent definition of white privilege and made compelling arguments for it then I could be persuaded, but that hasn’t happened yet.
I am a humanist and believe in the doctrine that all humans have intrinsic dignity. Also, I am very reluctant to assign “sinfulness” to anyone just for being born into a particular category. Most of the time I think people should be judged for their own actions so I am pretty skeptical of most of the forms of “white privilege” I have heard. I think class, wealth, and education level are usually more important than race and gender in calculating someone’s level of privilege (even though I still consider them factors). I am sure there are a few versions that are compatible with humanism, but they don’t appear to be the ones most often promulgated.
It’s Critical Race Theory, a subset of Critical Theory, which is just reworked marxism. Instead of Proletariat vs. Bourgeoisie, we now have POC vs. White; Queer vs. CisHet; Female vs. Male; etc.
The game is the same: all members of a certain class are Good; the others, Evil. Jockey for position in a class that’s Good relative to others. If that fails, score some points by self-criticizing and viciously attacking others of your Evil class who refuse to — thus carving out for yourself a semi-Good class of ‘woke’.
Haven’t actually read much Marx, now, have you?
I bet you have, comrade.
I have, indeed — as have any number of conservative intellectuals with whom I’ve discussed his theories. A solid comprehension of the works of Karl Marx is a prerequisite to any intelligent discussion of political economics.
This indeed comes from Critical Race Theory, or to be precise, it’s a mutated social media version of it. And that’s important, too. It dropped the economic part (class etc) almost entirely, and lost other elements that gives the academic precursor some seriousness.
What critics overhype is the role of Marx or Critical Theory. Marx is not that important or central as it is often made out to be to these people. They take only base and superstructure, vaguely, but already depart by wanting to change superstructure to change the base (change media, whiteness, science, video games etc). Which is what is commonly viewed as an authoritarian move. Marx, of course, proposed the exact opposite; that workers unite (the base) to change the superstructure.
Marx’ influence can be compared a bit to Darwin, in one sense. He wrote a lot of influential stuff that deeply affected several disciplines. But the current Marx Scare sound analogous to creationists who view Darwin’s influence as a secret conspiracy. Social Darwinism has been pinned on him, in the same way Stalinism has been on Marx so that his legitimate work is seen as something sinster, too. But Marx contribution to humanities, economics etc is not Stalinism, or Communism, in much the same way as Darwin’s contribution isn’t Social Darwinism or euthanasia or some other feverish fear.
Also, Frankfurt School or Critical Theory proper play no important role to these people. I’ve yet to come across anything by this neo intersectionalists that actually has some academic merit.
These are “social justice” meme warriors with weaponzed ideas, but which are adequately shallow to travel quickly on social media. Little is behind their rhetoric, and what sounds plausible is trivially true and hardly disputed by educated individuals.
I should add that the opposite is also false, that Marx plays no role whatsoever. Of course, he does, to some degree. It’s just not literally (Neo) Marxism.
Calling for the death of “white privilege” is just a dog-whistle.
C’mon, you must surely know this by now.
Perhaps to people who cannot comprehend subtlety, sure. The author clearly contemplates that white people are not going to die.
I mean, you could just say it’s a “dog whistle”, but you would be ignoring half the article.
The article doesn’t actually use the word “DNA” but it does assert “you were not born white”. This is, of course, in contradiction to the title which was likely not written by the article author.
The poor lad is mentally ill.
I think he’s just too stupid and poorly educated to understand the difference between whiteness and technology, between design and historical accident.
I don’t think this should sadden you, really I don’t. The Regressive Left must be beaten and this is the Regressive Left in full flower. No better way to beat it than to have it proclaim itself. Testimony on the record. Nothing disinfects like sunlight.
I think it should have been left up. I think in fact it should be widely read.
As I read the article I checked the date. I fully expected to see it was April 1st!
Black? White? Bit of a grey area!
Maybe this is what happens to Philosophy student in San Marcos, Texas. The only thing missing is a plan to ship all the whites to another country. Everyone will have to get their DNA checked.
“…the void in which all other cultures, upon meeting you, die.”
So white people are like the Borg in Star Trek, assimilating all other cultures into themselves? Funny, because last time I looked, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Arab, and countless other non-white cultures were all doing rather well for themselves. I don’t see the myriad cultures of black Africa disappearing any time soon, either.
If anything, it’s the traditional white cultures of Europe and North America that are in danger of dying, or rather of being profoundly changed (often enriched) by the massive infusion of music, fashion, art, religion, forms of speech and a million other things derived from black and Asian roots. I bet the average white teenager is far better acquainted with rap lyrics than with Shakespeare.
Martinez has defended the article. Notable here is that he in no way disavows the headline. https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/39459/
He also says it can’t be racist as he’s not white.
Hmm, maybe he did write that headline, then. Just another example of a lack of clarity. This guy needs a bit more practice if he wants to get hired as a real journalist.
Neither clarity nor writing skill were required for fellow racist, Ta Nehise Coates, to get a job.
Ahh…. The real value of highlighting bad writing like the editorial. Using it as a cudgel to bash actual writers one disagrees with.
Why debate what Coates says when you can point to a piece of bad student writing and yell “Shame on the Regressive Lft!”
I like Coates. He’s a good writer. But he’s vulnerable to the charge of racism too and bears some responsibility for the rise of racist thought on the left. See this, if you won’t take Matt’s opinion on him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/opinion/ta-nehisi-coates-whiteness-power.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=0
oops. Sorry about the embed.
Yeah, Ta-Nehisi Coates has grown into a hell of a prose stylist. (Doesn’t mean I agree with everything he writes, but he’s always interesting to read.)
Your argument has changed from “the headline doesn’t reflect what he meant in the article” to “even if he wrote and/or does agree with the headline, it’s surely not what he means, despite it very clearly expressing an idea and leaving no room for interpretation.”
The headline does not lack clarity in any way. It is as clear as a collection of words can possibly be in what it’s expressing.
sub
Performance art?
Written by a rabid racist
I am making an assumption that Rudy Martinez is Hispanic. Possibly he and his family originated in Mexico where most people are not “pure blood” anything, but a mixture of Spanish conqueror and native Indio, and a long history of “miscegenation”. The Spanish weren’t white. They were a mixture of many peoples who conquered Spain over the centuries. The same conquering and mixing has happened almost everywhere as long as there have been people of whatever color. My guess would be that most of us are mixtures, as I am.
There are two magazine articles I want to mention that I read last night:
1. The first is from the November 2017 SN Science News Magazine titled “Big Moves: How Asian nomadic herders built new bronze age cultures.” A group from north of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea (the Yamnaya)left DNA evidence in populations west among the Corded Ware peoples and east near among the Afanasievo near the Altai Mountains. As more such DNA studies can be done, we’ll find that we all are even more mixed than we thought.
2. The second is an article called “The Teacher” in the December 2017 Scientific American. It is about a young black girl, Marley Dias, who found no books in her library about young black girls. So, She started a movement, #1000BlackGirlBooks, to get stories about black girls to populations of black girls who needed them. It was so successful, she then formed #BlackGirlBookClub. And then a list was created of 1000 Black Girl Books Online for the use of black girls in finding books about black girls. She is the change. A much better approach to fixing the world than nattering on about the death of “whiteness”.
I’m sorry, but pandering to the idea that everything has to be viewed through a racial lens is not “fixing the world”, it’s perpetuating the divisive poison that’s threatening to tear western societies apart.
Why was it of such importance that these young black girls read books about other young black girls? Girls on the pages of a book can be any colour your imagination wants them to be. Unless the story is specifically about race it isn’t even necessary to assign a colour to them. Didn’t a great man once extol “content of character” over skin colour?
Once these young girls have been inculcated with the idea that characters in stories they read have to be the same colour as them, they’re on the slippery slope to critical race theory, “white privilege” and all the other racist bullshit that schools and colleges are plagued with now.
I disagree, Dave. I’m a 76-year-old white woman, and I can remember the Dick and Jane books we read in grade school back in the mid-1940’s. I don’t know if they still have reading books like that, or if Dick and Jane now have black friends and gay neighbors…
But back in the 1940’s Dick and Jane were white middle-class children. They looked like me, or I looked like them, whichever. Their house was much like the one I lived in. They had a housewife mommy and a go-to-work daddy like mine, and while Dick and Jane had a dog while I didn’t, they had a cat just like me.
My schoolbooks were telling me that This Is How It Is. I looked and saw myself reflected in the books provided by The Authorities. As I was learning to read I was also learning that I was The Right Kind Of Person, I was how I was supposed to be. I was the right color, the right class, had the right kind of family, all of whom played the right roles.
But now imagine a little black girl learning to read from Dick and Jane. Shucks, she’s erased!! The Educational Powers That Be do not represent children like her!! Her reality doesn’t exist. She’s being shown that her life doesn’t matter and her experiences are irrelevant. She’s getting the message that White Is Right. She’s of no value, as she’s being shown by the pretty white pictures and stories of white children whose lives are so different from hers.
What few images I saw of Black people in those days were (a) few and far-between, and (b) demeaning. Black people were depicted as servants or silly stereotypes.
(Whoops! I lied! Bad as Trump! I had the privilege of seeing pictures of both Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson and listening to their records. And then they came to sing at Penn State!! And my parents took me to hear them!! I just now Googled to see if I could find a year, because I can’t remember how old I was, 4 or 5? I was very young, but I was familiar with their music and was glad to see and hear them. I only found a reference to a concert when I was a baby, not to when I was older.)
Human beans are social animals, very much so, and what we see and experience from what’s happening around us does play a huge role in determining who we become.
“Girls on the pages of a book can be any colour your imagination wants them to be. Unless the story is specifically about race it isn’t even necessary to assign a colour to them.”
I disagree again. The Dick and Jane books were not about race. And yet they carried a powerful message! How destructive it is to expect a little Black girl to imagine that the secure, accepted, middle-class white people she’s learning to read from are actually Black people, and that Black people can be imagined as having the same experiences as white and living the same privileged lives as white.
So I am really glad to hear that someone is making a good effort to get books about Black girls to Black girls! Hooray for her! (And it might do white girls some good to read these books, too, and learn some vital things they otherwise would not have known.)
And I fear I’ve broken Da Roolz by writing too much. I hope Ceiling Cat will forgive me my sin.
Everything does not have to be seen through a racial lens, and that is not what a list of books about black girls suggests to me. If you are familiar with the research from the 1940s on the self image of black children and the recent updates from studies on racial bias that show some small improvement in self image in populations of black children while populations of white children still show a fairly prevalent anti-black bias, you might consider that the utopia of a color blind society might need to be reached by going through several different stages. Systematic racism damages black and white children, but by far the greater harm is to black children, and that cannot be corrected by wishing it away. Would you argue that girls do not need to see any stories of girls being powerful and adventurous as long as there are stories of boys acting thus?
Thank you Dave, Laurance and Jamie for responding to what I wrote.
Two more notes:
1. In 1963, Sylvia Ashton-Warner, a British teacher, published a book titled “Teacher” about her experiences in teaching Maori children in New Zealand. When they were expected to learn reading from
books designed for British children that conveyed British interests and customs, etc., they didn’t learn well. When she started having them tell her stories from their lives which she illustrated and provided with appropriate text, they learned to read. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
I, like Laurance, grew up with Dick and Jane readers in school. I, too, am 76. The Dick and Jane books didn’t represent my life or the the lives of all but a subset of relatively well-off white children. As with freedom of speech, I’m of the opinion that reading anything and everything that interests one is of benefit. My parents couldn’t afford to buy books for me, but Mom took me and my brother to the local library faithfully every two weeks throughout our growing years to select books of our own choices. She did the same with my children, her grandchildren. My son started out reading books of comedy at first and then selected books at the school library and regular library based on his developing interests.
2. This reminds me of a young friend from Idaho who entered the Marine Corps after graduating from high school. She was sent to the south for training. In formation early on, she was caught staring at a black person. She was asked, “Haven’t you ever seen a black person?” She answered, “No”. There are many people in the U.S. who live in places where there’s no diversity to learn from.
We aren’t all interested in the same things and don’t all learn the same way. Use whatever works. First, teach them to read and then turn them loose to follow their interests. They’ll likely become avid readers
of a broad range of topics.
Well, with the arguable exception of South and East Africa.
Oh, hang on … there was lot of movement of Bantu-group speaking pastorialists across the region around the turn of the last millennium, IIRC. I remember reading about it when I first started working in Africa. Nope, Africans have got as messy and complicated a history as everyone else.
Well, if I try to take this seriously, the first thing I would say is that everything wrong with white culture is a result of socialization, NOT of DNA!!!
A book with similar sentiments but which ultimately argues that white folk HAVE a problem, rather than BEING a problem is Thandeka’s “Learning to be White: Money, Race, and God in America”. As such, her conclusions avoid the racist implications of this article.
https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Be-White-Money-America/dp/0826412920
Yes. There is an argument made in that book. One may agree or disagree. One may take issue with certain evidence and conclusions of that argument.
The editorial, on the other hand, is bad student writing in a college newspaper. There must be an unending supply of such writing.
The editorial is good, perhaps, for getting the blood boiling, but not much else. Some Youtube comments or 4chan postings would probably be as illuminating, and demonstrate as much about the state of anything.
I ran this through a quick online OCR I found, and cleaned a few obvious errors I didn’t interpret correctly.
Your DNA is an abomination
By Rudy Martine.
Opinions Columnist
“Now I am become white, the de-stroyer of worlds.” When I think of all the white peo-ple I have ever encountered whether they’ve been professors, peers, lovers, friend, police officers, et cetera — there is perhaps only a dozen I would consider “decent.” My colleague, Tafari Robertson, in his brilliant column “Debunking the Myth of White Majority: already ex-posed whiteness in the United States as a construct used to perpetuate a system of racist power. This column functions, however, within a different definition of whiteness: to be white in the United States is to be a descendant of those Europeans who chose to abandon their identity in search of something “new” stolen land. Racial categories — white, black, brown, red, et cetera — are used to subjugate non-white people. This bending of semantics upholds a white supremacist society. As someone “white: whether you know it or not regardless of your socio-economic standing, YOU built it from privilege.
In Texas, a bizarre state I have now inhabited for four year, I continuously meet individuals that either deny the existence of white privilege or fail to do something productive with it.’ Most of you tell me, upon my insistence that whites should have an active role within activist circles, that you “didn’t choose to be white.” You were not born white, you became white. You actively remain white. You are estranged from yourself and, in that absence, have been instilled with an allegiance to a count, that was never great.
One that has continuously attempted to push non-whites into non-existence through crusades that have been defended by the law.
[Pullquote] Whiteness will be over because we want it to be. And when it dies, there will be millions of cultural zombies aimlessly wandering across a vastly changed landscape.
In your whiteness, you are granted the luxury of not having to think about race daily. Your heartbeat does not speed up when you get pulled over and find yourself staring at the red-and-blue lights of the facist foot soldiers we call the police. You don’t leave your home wondering if you will ever come back. You don’t give a damn. The oppressive world you have built, through the exploitation of millions and the waging of barbaric wars against one another, is coming apart at the seams. Through the current political climate, in which a white supremacist inhabits the White House and those of his ilk would try to prove otherwise, I see white people as an aberration.
Through a constant, ideological struggle in which we aim to deconstruct “whiteness” and everything attached to it, we will win. Whiteness will be over because we want it to be. And when it dies, there will be millions of cultural zombies aimlessly wandering across a vastly changed landscape.
Ontologically speaking, white death will mean liberation for all. To you goodhearted liberals, apathetic nihilists and right-wing extremists: accept this death as the first step toward defining yourself as something other than the oppressor. — Until then, remember this: I hate you because you shouldn’t exist. You are both the dominant apparatus on the planet and the void in which all other cultures, upon meeting you, die.
The name is spelled wrong, the scribble threw it off, a Z at the end instead of the dot. I also wrote “I didn’t interpret” of course it — the OCR 😉
Nice work. Thank you Aneris. I’m looking for a good online OCR bot – did you use the Google Docs OCR bot or another?
Hi Michael,
I ran this through this one:
https://www.onlineocr.net/
Worked super, though I recommend not to use online tools for personal documents.
Thank you
My heart beat certainly does speed up when pulled over by the cops, and I am Whitey McWhiteface (although there are some African and Polynesian signatures in my mother’s genes, as determined by Ancestry).
Indeed. Mine too. This mythologizing of white privilege, making us out to be so different (and inhuman) is kind of like saying “It’s okay. Black people don’t feel pain.” Of course they do! And of course we do.
An example from my backyard
http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/29/man-says-he-was-choked-defecated-himself
The problem with saying that it’s in one group’s DNA to be the oppressor, is that it implies it’s in another group’s DNA to be the oppressed.
In Peter Medawar’s review of Teilhard de Chardin’s preposterous “The Phenomenon of Man”, he makes the observation:
“The spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought”.
Mr Martine fits this description pretty well.
I dunno, in terms of newsworthiness, “rando college kid says dumb shit” ranks up there with “dog bites man.”
Wonder what John & Yoko would make of the “War Is Over” allusion in the cartoon.
An author professes to hate whites and feels good about it. He has nothing more to say. Disgusting and extremely boring at the same time. I just would not waste my time thinking about this.
If martinez is not white maybe he should stop taking money provided mainly by whites, at a university paid for mainly by whites, taught by professors paid for mainly by whites. I mean where’s his racial pride??
Perhaps he should go to Mexico where the spanish stole everything from the natives and killed most of them. Or how about south america where the same thing happened and still happens.
Shoot, we whites of anglo-saxon descent were pikers before the spanish taught us how to rape and pillage native populations of the new world – it’s not our fault. We even invited the first nations people to dinner for thanksgiving; of course later we poisoned them at a feast we gave to talk a peace treaty but WTH? our ancestors were just ignorant barbarians who hated people different from themselves – unlike martinez…….
I must admit, that does come accross as patently racist. However, lets always make sure not to polarize this kind of crap. I agree with the author that our president is deeply prejudiced and that we should acknowledge white privilege. I just think that this article was extremely tendentious. It was a racist and ugly reaction to a real problem, but instead of providing a real solution, the author vaguely wrote about the end of whiteness with a few caviots that seemed to attempt
to cover up the racist message.
Also the author claims that the first majority white nation to elect a black leader was never great. Lets not let our nations most recent mistake (Trump) outshine our nations proudest moments. We are making progress, it just takes a damn long time. (Fact check me on the first white nation to elect a black leader, how white was south africa when mandela was elected?)
Last I checked, DNA is white. We’re all abominations! *gasp*
Are they attacking the conceptual basis of race, as a ‘western’ idea, based on ‘otherness’ from a white ‘norm’?
BUT, he’s not a racist, don’t you know.
Let’s edit this nonsense a little:
Or, how about this:
Bull Connor anyone?
This BS of “punching up” is simply a lie to give a pass to their racism, which is as overt as it could possibly be.
And their seemingly complete lack of self-awareness is stunning and frightening. Hank help us if these people ever get into power.
Dumb question:
If the writer had used “end” instead of “ death”, would we be done with this post?
People still wondering why Trump was elected. And will be re-eleected.
At least, there is something biologically healthy in the author’s worldview. He wants me and people like me destroyed so that there is more space for him and people like him. Call him as you like, but life has operated this way for billions of years, so I understand. However, I cannot understand the white readers who bend over backwards to excuse the vicious racist who publicly wishes them away. I find their opinions depressing.