I usually go wrong when I psychoanalyze John McWhorter, as he’s a complex individual and I know him only through his writings. The last time I erred was when I predicted he’d become less anti-woke when he took up his twice-weekly column at the NYT, expecting that editorial pressure would soften his words or beliefs. I was wrong: his next column was a hilarious and decidedly anti-woke column on the “n-wordhead” rock at the University of Wisconsin.
So I’m loath to explain part of his latest column at the NYT, which is a list of things he likes about progressive antiracism. One thing I do sense about McWhorter is that he’s defensive, but that’s no vice in a black man who spends his time attacking the likes of Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. Perhaps showing us that he actually likes some stuff rather than deploring everything is meant to show us his human side. I haven’t kept up with the reviews of his new book Woke Racism, though I’ve read parts of it and will give a brief take when I’ve finished. In fact, the only one I saw was in the Washington Post, which was not only negative, but mean-spirited (also written by an African-American). That must have stung, and perhaps played a role in what we consider today.
So here we have his latest piece (click on webshot to read; if you subscribe to the NYT you can subscribe to his pieces as well):
There are four things that McWhorter admires about true progressivist changes in race and racial relations. I agree with him about 2.5 of them, and disagree with the other 1.5. The first is the one with which I disagree (McWhorter’s words are indented, and bolding in indents is his).
1.) Land acknowledgments. I find it very odd that in his previous writings, and in his new book, McWhorter properly decries “performative antiracism”: antiracism that really doesn’t accomplish anything to lift up minorities or repair racial relations. He thinks that most of these “performative” acts exist to signal the virtue of the actor, and I agree with him. But among the most conspicuous of the performative acts are the increasingly ubiquitous “land acknowledgments” that are especially obvious in woke academia. Yet McWhorter likes these, and I know that some readers do. His reasons (all bolding is McWhorter’s):
So, after the Thanksgiving holiday seems a good time to point out some other things I appreciate about our times.
One of them is land acknowledgments. There is an increasingly common practice, especially in academic circles, of prefacing public presentations or events with a ritual acknowledgment that the land the event is taking place on was originally occupied and cared for by Native Americans, with a specification of the particular Indigenous nation of that land.
I’m glad this is happening, despite the opinion of some, such as the New York Post columnist Kyle Smith, who called land acknowledgments “the latest in meaningless self-scourging progressive fashion statements.” I’ve always found it quietly dismaying that the land that America occupies was wrested from people who had lived on it for millenniums before, and that today Native Americans represent such as small percentage of our body politic, and so much has been built up on the land, that there’s no realistic way, given the magnitude of the injustice, to reverse it or even adequately redress it. I’ve often thought, “Under this parking lot, right where that subdivision is, whole lives and societies existed that are now utterly lost.” The least we can do is to regularly — yes, ritually — mention this, especially if this least is the best we’re willing to do.
We’ve discussed the flaws in these acknowledgments: that Native Americans continually displaced each other, so whose land is to be acknowledged, and sometimes the land wasn’t even “owned” by Native Americans (most of whom had no concept of owning land, but did use it). I know of one college where they decided to create a land acknowledgment and hired a historian to suss out the past usage of the land. He found that the land wasn’t used regularly by any Native Americans, but very occasionally a few of them hunted on the land. When he scheduled a talk to the school to impart this information, he was deplatformed.
But most of all, land acknowledgments are virtue signals, pure and simple. Native Americans aren’t there to hear them, so they are just liberals telling each other how good they are. And the acknowledgments do absolutely nothing to help Native Americans. If colleges wanted to actually accomplish something, they’d contribute to the welfare of the tribes whose land they “stole” by giving them money or giving back land (untenable, of course), or do something real. McWhorter is recommending these ritual invocations as history lessons, but imagine what would happen if they had these in Europe? The acknowledgments would go on for hours. If the absence of firm knowledge, the odious history of colonists’ genocide of Americans is best taught in history books where it can be described in broad sweep, not proclaimed at the beginning of every talk referring to a few acres of land.
2.) Television for kids increasingly shows black characters.
I like what I see on television. Particularly children’s television. I look over my daughters’ shoulders and see a heartening multiplicity of Black stars and characters on their favorite shows that just wasn’t there a few years ago. One that comes to mind: Netflix’s delightful baking show, “Nailed It!” is hosted to perfection by Nicole Byer, a young Black woman. No, I haven’t forgotten that the wonderfully diverse “Sesame Street” has been with us since 1969. But the sheer frequency with which today’s children’s shows (and not just the stuff of public television) are, yes, centering people of color feels different. “Sesame Street” once felt like a televised utopia; today’s fare, especially animated, commercial programming, often presents diversity as something blissfully unremarkable.
I agree completely. I don’t watch kids’ shows, but I do watch the news and some newslike shows like “60 Minutes”, and I’ve also noticed that the commericals increasingly feature black people and black families. When I was a kid all you saw were white people. It’s very heartening to see African-Americans appearing in ads without any notice or emphasis that they are not white.
3.) Television for adults is changing the same way.
Interestingly, the same thing is happening on popular animated shows for adults: On the long-running “Family Guy,” Blackness has often been played for comedy; but on a recent episode, the main character, Peter, gets a new boss, a Black guy, whose race is incidental. He stood out not for being Black but for trying to squeeze the fun out of at-work birthday parties — you know, like a stereotypical boss. A recent episode of the also long-running “Bob’s Burgers” introduced a character as the game master of a Dungeons & Dragons-style game who was nerdy, charmingly awkward and a Black woman — i.e. a full spectrum of a human being. The hit “Ted Lasso” portrays today’s United Kingdom, where whiteness is hardly default as Black and brown people are part of the warp and woof of all levels of society. A recent “Archer” episode even jokes about today’s Britain, when Lana (voiced, as it happens, by the Black actress Aisha Tyler, who had a recurring role as Ross’s girlfriend on “Friends” back when there was a mild uproar about that show’s lack of Black friends!) wrongly assumes a Black man will stand out in a London crowd.
This is also a welcome change. Although McWhorter notes that these changes could be seen as superficial, like land acknowledgments, they are not: television shows are an important part of the fabric of American life, and we need to realize that American life is multiracial and multicultural.
4.) People are becoming increasingly aware of “systemic racism”.
The idea of systemic racism — societal inequities rooted in racism of the past or present that represent barriers, in many instances, for people of color — is now common coin to a greater extent.
Sure, I have documented my issues with the way we are taught to think about systemic racism, and to say that opinions about how to address it differ is putting it mildly. The argument for reparations, for instance, is not the utterly settled question some suppose. And controversy will continue over whether the take on systemic racism originating in, and taking a cue from, critical race theory is a useful one.
However, I welcome the increased awareness of the notion of systemic racism.
. . . an undergrad today would be much less likely to see race matters only that far. The racial reckoning of recent years; the cultural decentering of whiteness; and the airing of what is meant by systemic racism have brought about that positive evolution. The other day I heard some white kids — upper-middle-class New Yorkers — casually referring in passing to systemic racism while walking down the street from school, clearly thinking of it as an assumed concept.
But as I recall, McWhorter has previously discussed the problems with systemic racism, and not just with reparations. The problem, which he doesn’t mention but has in the past, is that “systemic racism” is now seen as racism presently built into institutions and societal structures (laws, universities, science, etc), creating present-day bias that is taken to be the cause of inequities (disproportionate representation of “majority” people and underrepresentation of minorities).
So when the white kids in McWhorter’s last paragraph casually refer to systemic racism, are they correct? For example—and I know this well—the underrepresentation of minorities in STEM fields is very often described as a result of systemic racism (or, in the case of sexes, “systemic sexism”): racism pervasive among scientists who, it is said, are biased against blacks, Hispanics, and women (consciously or not). But this is not the case: science is bending over backwards to hire and promote women and minorities, and to urge students to go into STEM. The inequities we see in STEM are simply not due to “systemic racism” in science. Yes, of course a few scientists may be racists (though I’ve never met one), but you will find that in all fields. I would describe STEM as “strongly antiracist”. The inequities are due to racism in the past that put minorities in situations where they don’t get opportunities needed to get into STEM.
You must distinguish—and McWhorter does this all the time—between present-day biases and the residuum of older biases stemming from slavery, racism of the past, and so on. And groups may also differ in their preferences. Here are medical fields which have the greatest imbalance in favor of women (data from the AMA):
- Obstetrics and gynecology—83.4%.
- Allergy and immunology—73.5%.
- Pediatrics—72.1%.
- Medical genetics and genomics—66.7%.
- Hospice and palliative medicine—66.3%.
- Dermatology—60.8%.
I refuse to believe that this is due to anti-male bias in those professions, and I suspect that a large proportion of these inequities is due to sex differences in preference, with women preferring more patient-oriented, hands-on fields than men. (Surgeons and radiologists, whose contacts with patients as humans are minimal, are overwhelmingly male.)
At any rate, I agree with McWhorter that if you construe “systemic racism” as “equities rooted in racism of the past or present that present barriers” then yes, there’s systemic racism. But it’s vitally important, if we’re to achieve more equality or equity, that we distinguish between “present” and “past” biases. This is why I agree only 50% with this contention.
Regardless, I am still curious as to why McWhorter wrote this column. He explains it as follows, and I suppose that’s as good a take as any.
Whether you think of me as a contrarian, as I’m often labeled, or a cranky liberal, as I sometimes refer to myself, I do a lot of complaining about our supposedly brave new world: Cancel culture is real, and out of hand; wokeness frequently oversimplifies and infantilizes us; the term “woke” is broke. But believe it or not, there are things I like about our current era, including, as you know, cheering on “they” as a singular pronoun. So, after the Thanksgiving holiday seems a good time to point out some other things I appreciate about our times.
“I know of one college where they decided to create a land acknowledgment and hired a historian to suss out the past usage of the land. He found that the land wasn’t used regularly by any Native Americans, but very occasionally a few of them hunted on the land. When he scheduled a talk to the school to impart this information, he was deplatformed.”
I so badly want a source for this, not because I don’t believe you, but because I want to send it to some people…
I will do my best, but I was told that there’s unlikely to be a paper record.
Keep in mind that when you see a series of tribes in a land acknowledgement, that not infrequently those tribes could have replaced one another and were at war….which is how the land may have changed from one tribe to another.
This article may be of interest to you, and I believe Dr. Coyne wrote about it…..
https://quillette.com/2021/03/29/the-campaign-to-thwart-paleogenetic-research-into-north-americas-indigenous-peoples/
Bookmarked. Thanks.
I believe he is correct. There is a lot more effort put into adding minorities to shows and commercials in television. And in some commercials even showing black and white couples. This use to be never.
There are other ways for white Americans to deal with American natives. There are several good charities out there doing good work for Native American communitiees. Check them out – you might want to consider giving to some.
I’m surprised that McWhorter agrees with “ritually” undertaking performative land acknowledgments. And yes, even on the edge of Europe here in the UK that would take some doing so how central and eastern Europe would cope with such a thing is beyond me. I guess we need to sidestep the fact that since humans all originated in Africa, black Africans are the original colonialists…
Greater diversity in TV programming and film casting is a good thing although some awards ceremonies are getting a little too Woke (the Brit Awards are doing away with gendered categories to avoid harm to non-binary artists – even if the winners end up splitting evenly, 50% fewer women (and men) will win an award than at present). Given that winning such awards normally boosts careers and/or sales the overall impact could be negative.
White kids being aware of systemic racism could be a good thing – or they could just be channelling DiAngelo and campus wokeness; it’s hard to tell from McWhorter’s anecdote.
> 2.) Television for kids increasingly shows black characters.
I wonder if things have gone too far in that direction. Based on the 2020 Census, 12% of people living in the United States are African-American. The number of African-American actors today seem to be well above that number, which means that all other demographics, including people of West and South Asian descent are being minimized. When was the last time you saw an Indian or Pakistani-American in a commercial or on a TV program?
It’s similar in the UK.
Black, Asian-origin and other “non-whites” are about 13 percent of the UK, but secure 23% of TV on-screen roles, 26% of drama roles, and 30% of children’s TV roles.
A large fraction of writers for UK TV are woke, and so treat it as de rigueur to boost minority representation (both racial and sexual minorities).
They also do this in historical programmes, even though, prior to about 1950, the non-white fraction was about 2% or less.
Link to cite.
Jodie Turner-Smith, an English actress of Jamaican heritage, was recently chosen for the part of Anne Boleyn in a mini-series. What would be the likely reaction from the “wokesters” and the “wokerati” should a white actor or actress, in a historical drama, take the part of a real person from the past who was clearly non-white?
Anne Boleyn was beheaded. Choosing a black actor to perform her role is ridiculous. And not in any way improving the situation of POCs in any way.
I’d insist on a POC actor for Othello though.
I’d insist on the best actor who auditions for the role. The alternative allows the brilliant Adrian Lester to play a white Danish prince of Denmark, but unfairly prevents an equally talented white actor from playing Othello. (Blackface should be avoided in the latter example, though.) Of course, colour blind recruitment is obviously more difficult in the acting world than in the musical one, where blind auditions are entirely possible.
It depends. If race is important to the role, as in Othello, it is absurd not to have that person appear to be of the race in question. A white actor with black makeup playing Othello is not blackface in any meaningful sense, any more than a coal miner is (it is only a matter of time before the woke come after the coal miners). It is really no different than making an actor look older, say, or crippled. In Shakespeare’s time, women’s roles were played by men or boys. I prefer them to be played by women today, and similarly Othello should be played by a black actor.
If race is not important to the role, then it shouldn’t matter too much, especially if the production is neither in Elizabethan dress nor dress of the period in which the play takes place.
One would never guess, by watching TV in the U.S., that black people make up only 13 percent of the population. They would guess much higher. But what is sadder is that Hispanics make up 17 percent of the population, but one who watches TV regularly would probably guess the number to be in the middle single digits at best. And Americans of Asian descent make up about 6 percent of the population, but our TV watcher would probably peg it at, maybe, 2 percent. And God only knows how underrepresented the indigenous people are. I guess the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Land acknowledgements may very well be virtue signaling, but it could have a salutary purpose as well. Namely, it could encourage listeners to go actually to the history books and learn what happened to the Native Americans by the actions of white Americans. There they will learn that the federal and state governments cheated, stole, and coerced the Native Americans out of millions of acres of their land. Many of these actions took place during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The so-call Trail of Tears is perhaps the most famous incident of Native American removal from their lands. Wikipedia describes it this way:
“The Trail of Tears was part of the Indian removal, a series of forced displacements and ethnic cleansing of approximately 60,000 Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. Tribal members “moved gradually, with complete migration occurring over a period of nearly a decade.” Members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations (including thousands of their black slaves[) were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated Indian Territory. The forced relocations were carried out by government authorities after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The Cherokee removal in 1838 (the last forced removal east of the Mississippi) was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears
Much of discussion about race these days deals with the treatment of African-Americans. The decimation of the Native Americans does not get nearly as much attention, but it should. The “five civilized tribes” mentioned in the Wikipedia article had developed institutions that mimicked those of white America, interestingly, and to be accurate, included the enslavement of African-Americans. This did not matter to white Americans. They particularly coveted the land in today’s southeast United States for white expansion of the plantation economy based on slavery. All these events derived from the understanding that the nation was founded as a white man’s country. I think most white Americans do not understand this and, if they do, only in the vaguest way.
As I said, this is best taught in history classes. I don’t think land acknowledgements will inspire people to pore through history books.
The best book I read about the genocide of Amerindians was Dee Brown’s ‘Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee’ moves one to tears.
The greatest threat to Amerindians were germs. When Cabeza da Vaca (Cowshead) reached the Mississippi valley, he only found deserted and abandoned towns. The diseases had preceded him. .The remnants of the population, if any, had fled the ‘cursed’ towns.
Indigenous peoples helped to spread those germs. The Assiniboine once lived on a vast area of the Plains stretching from the Assiniboine River in Manitoba to Mt. Assiniboine in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. They were wiped out by smallpox and their remnants were cleared out by migrating Cree from Ontario long before French explorers first ventured west in the 1700s. (All place names “present-day” of course.). The proximate source of the contagion, as far as the Assiniboine were concerned, was aboriginal horse traders heading north from the Spanish missions up the American Rocky Mountain front. They introduced a highly successful equine culture to the Blackfoot and their relations but at the cost of smallpox to their competitors.
As the Quillette article referenced by dd in response to #1 above say, “People move around a lot.” It wasn’t some secular Eden here before our ancestors arrived.
Smallpox was brought under control on the Canadian Plains only after the Hudson’s Bay Company began vaccinating its contract Cree workforce in the1800s to protect the viability of the fur trade.
(Daschel, Clearing the Plains)
I have vey few books on my bookshelf. The book you mentioned is one of them
When you state “Yes, of course a few scientists may be racists (though I’ve never met one)” I am shocked!
Given your status in the field, you never once interacted with James Watson? Heck, I was just a little peanut in the world of biology, and I got to hear, see. interact with Watson more than once! You, never?
Oh yes, I forgot. Yes, I met him and chatted with him once, and yes, he’s a racist. But I can’t think of anybody else. If you’re trying to imply that I’ve met a lot of racists, you’re wrong, though.
Whoops, the system didn’t let me edit. Anyway, it is fascinating to see now how many people that the proportion of African-Americans in the United States far far exceeds 12%. I’ve had conversations with African-American co-workers who refused to believe that actual numbers. Media over-representation and under-representation both have significant drawbacks, including lack of ability/tendency to interrelate and compromise.
This is partly because people judge by what they see around them. In the neighborhoods where many African-Americans live, the fraction who are African-American would indeed be way higher than 12%.
Land Acknowledgment coming soon at a UK University:
“We acknowlege that this conference takes place on land that the Norman invaders stole from the Vikings who stole it from the Anglo Saxons who stole it from the Celts who stole it from the Beaker People who stole it from whoever it was before them …”.
Virtue signalling is a worthless distraction that in my opinion tells me the virtue signaller probably has nothing real to offer but words. If you want to make a difference, shop at Black and Indigenous owned businesses. Read their books. Watch some on ytube. There is real power in this, and a chance to learn different ways of perceiving the world. What you will find is a lot of commonality, and thats what kills racism and bigotry more effectively than pretty words.
I can agree with Prof. McWhorter that “wokeness” started out from some defensible, in fact admirable, goals. But in arriving at the present set of clichés and knee-jerk reflexes, it has over-reached to a ludicrous degree. This is just another example of Sturgeon’s Law, as promulgated by sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon. When taxed with the fact that 95% of science-fiction is bullshit, Sturgeon explained that 95% of everything is bullshit.
I would add a corollary to Sturgeon’s Law. When anything has arrived at the 95% bullshit stage in the USA, it is already diffusing briskly into the rest of the Anglosphere, but notably less briskly into the pop
culture of other societies. The epidemiology of bullshit transmission seem to follow language lines.
“When anything has arrived at the 95% bullshit stage in the USA, it is already diffusing briskly into the rest of the Anglosphere . . . .”
Am reminded of George Carlin words to-the-effect reflecting on the foibles of the human race, and that in the U.S. one has a front-row seat.
Jeez, I dunno, I find it kinda touching that ol’ McWhorter turns out to be a bit of a softy.
That isn’t the case in the PNW- the tribes are very much around to hear them. As far as ceremonial starts to meetings, I much prefer a land acknowledgement to prayer.
Land acknowledgements are harmless and pointless, like rattling a Rosary, if you are absolutely sure that your doing so does not comfort or energize a movement that seeks to take the land back. It is also easy to acknowledge, performatively, land that you the speaker do not own personally. No one gives a land acknowledgement when they sit down for dinner in their own home. Perhaps they should, since that is land that the speaker could actually with the stroke of a pen convey, gratis, back to the original “owner” and right that historic wrong is his little corner. A few Canadians do, in fact. (I’m assuming their heirs have no Gianni Schicchi to call on.)
If returning the land to indigenous people is truly “untenable”, as our host says, then there is no harm in giving lip service to history. But beware that some indigenous activists do not think the idea is untenable. “Decolonization” means “desettlement” as voiced in the slogans like “1492Landback” and “Take it all back” . You see this on graffiti and T-shirts not just at protests but at actual seizure of private property by Native activists flying foreign flags, all backed up by threats of violence that the civil authorities seem not to want to contemplate.
Land acknowledgements submitted for input from the local Native band in the spirit of reconciliation often contain such language as “guests of the Blackfoot”, “unceded land”, “acknowledge broken covenants”, “original caretakers from time immemorial”. These unscientific phrases have the effect of undermining the title enjoyed by the current landowner which descends from the Crown. Oral tradition governs Native understanding of law because they had no writing. If every hockey game played by the Edmonton Oilers begins with a land acknowledgement of the traditional owners, how long before a Court eventually decides the Oilers no longer own that land in Edmonton?…or the Oilers have to pay millions of dollars to the band to make the lawsuit go away. Some activists claim almost all the current province of British Columbia is not under Canada’s sovereignty and that the only applicable law is that of overlapping and competing Native traditional territorial claims.
McWhorter is behind the curve here. Activist Native sentiment in Canada has moved on. The loud view now is that land acknowledgements (which they urged on us as one of the 94 “calls to action” from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission) are insufficient, being performative and insincere — of course they are!—and not as conducive to rent extraction as their promoters had hoped. They want talk replaced by (more) “action”.
The past is the past. Think about the consequences for the future.
In Australia we have land acknowledgements all the time for just about everything including the news on tv. I find it irritating and patronising and does not improve anybody lives at all. As useful as having a prayer warrior imho!!!
Australia is likely a “Preview of Coming Attractions” in Canada and the US. The temptation to wallow in white guilt is too high for the oikophobic intelligentsia in anglophone ex-colonies.
Bit like when Princeton declared themselves “racist” and the Trump administration took them at their word, asked them for details, and launched an enquiry. Woke virtue-signalling can have consequences.
Spoil-sport Biden cancelled the investigation. I was so looking forward to what their reply would have been.
Apparently Princeton is not so guilt-ridden that it does not conduct its own investigation.
I have a NYT subscription, but I can’t find how to subscribe to an opinion column? Anyone know?
1.) Land acknowledgments.
Ridiculous, for the reason Jerry noted, but there’s more. Natives were affected by the diseases brought over from Europe, resulting in large emptied lands. The settlers or “colonialists” were themselves often religious and political refugees, or escaped famines and persection. Europeans were often poor “Third Estate” at the time, too, themselves serfs and servants. Hardly privileged people. Americans today often aren’t “pure” either. A lot happened over centuries. Perhaps, the DNA of the audience could be sampled, and compared with detailled charts to determine who must apologise to whom. This would properly emphasise the Nazi-esque ideology at work there. The woke ideology at best essentialises groups based on superficial criteria today, and imposes that anachronistically onto the past.
2.) Television for kids increasingly shows black characters.
If you were a kid in Europe, you could swear there was the “Cosby Show” that ran on nonstop syndication. Will Smith was the “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” on omnipresent rotation. Later, he was the go-to Hollywood blockbuster actor. These weren’t the first or only big actors, either. Samuel Jackson was hugely popular. I think he went stratosphere with his role in Pulp Fiction (1994). I’d say, he was easily one of the top most iconic actors. Then there’s Denzel Washington who played in every second top thriller. What about Whoopie Goldbergs comedy career, and did they forgot about Eddy Murphy — wasn’t he a superstar in the 1980s and 1990s? Also, forget about “Black Panther”. The first big Marvel Superhero hit was “Blade” (1998) with Wesley Snipes — huge hype, too. If it isn’t amnesia afflicting the woke (who also insist there weren’t any popular female action heroes), they haven’t laid out their methodoly by which they measure representation.
When polish creators wanted to tell their fantasied-up stories, as with the “Witcher”, they were accused of not having enough dark skin pigment in their games. Here we have one time where polish people have their spotlight, and instantly Americans impose themselves with their race-obsessed garbage. The TV show thus looks nothing like the eastern/central European fantasy as it was written. It was americanised. It doesn’t bother me per se, but I hate that blatant cultural imperialism and gatekeeping is sold as this “left wing” thing. The whole scheme is designed so that Americans can publish their material, but Europeans (in particular former East Bloc) can’t, since there are often not many Blacks around to meet the diversity quota, and they can’t ask their Black neighbour for a “cultural appropriation licence card” in case they are tempted to include them anyway. My thoughts on this unprintable.
Overall
The best “achievements” of the woke are their prevention of the old, white male Bernie Sanders, and their help with electing Donald Trump. Another top “achievement” is their reintroduction of race stuff into Europe, and — as by design (Kendi, Delgado, DiAngelo etc) — the racialising of “Whites” again, who had no reason to use skin colours as an identity marker. It’s somewhat meaningless when, say, “white” Poles face xenophobia in Britiain. But forcing people to see themselves as “Whites” has the effect that it creates a shared framework with Generation Identity, who can pick up some people from there, as they did. Woke people also utterly failed to show how this conception is not reintroducing “big races” again, where “Whites” are the mythical “Caucasian Race”. Epic Fail.
Perhaps, the DNA of the audience could be sampled, and compared with detailed charts to determine who must apologise to whom.
Would love to see that happen. My neighborhood has many interracially married couples with kids. One parent is “oppressor” white, the other “victimized” black, so what’s a biracial kid to do?
Blacks make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population. Someone arriving from Mars and doing nothing but watching U.S. television would think that somewhere in the area of 30 percent or more of the country is black. But that’s not the sad thing. The sad thing is that Hispanics make up about 17 percent of the U.S. population, but our Martian friend would probably plug it at less than 10 percent. Also sad is that people of Asian descent make up about 6 percent of our population, but our Martian friend would probably plug it at, maybe, 2 percent. And he probably wouldn’t even know there are indigenous people. I guess the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
I apologize for posting basically the same thing twice. This is my first time on this site and I didn’t realize how long it took for a post to show up (this is not a criticism). When my first post (the one numbered 16) didn’t show up for a while, I figured that maybe I had done something wrong. Maybe I had failed to click on the arrow and the word “Reply.” So I went back to near the beginning of this thread and posted basically the same thing again after first hitting that arrow and “Reply.” Now the post is in two places – not my intent.
Anyway, I once again say that I am sorry for my mistake.