I Actually Think Your Analysis Is Simplistic

I try to avoid writing rants. Rants aren’t productive. They don’t change minds or soften hearts. Nobody comes away after reading a rant with a new perspective or a better understanding of an issue.

That said, rants are really fun.

My article A New Brand Of Woke Racism Is Upon Us is a rant based on a Washington Post piece on “multiracial whiteness”. It’s author, Cristina Beltrán, coined this term to describe people of colour who dared to think in a way that she didn’t believe they should. As punishment, she stripped them of their racial identity.

Given that this phrase is both deeply stupid and blatantly racist, I didn't imagine that I’d need to work very hard to explain the problem with it. But of course, this is the internet:

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M:

I actually think your analysis is simplistic. “Multicultural whiteness” sounds silly at first, but after I thought about it, if I were to describe an “Uncle Tom,” it would fit. So what are the riots btw?

Well, some have made it a point to stress the economic factors that contributed to the riots on the 6th. But is it, really? Things, economically speaking, were worse months ago, albeit it’s still pretty bad, and yet, no riots. Let’s dive deeper into the economic part of the argument. Generally speaking, Trump supporters (and conservatives, more generally) also have a feeling of something being wrong with the system. Whether it’s as a result of trade, globalism, etc., they feel as though it’s “Crooked.” For the most part, they’re right. But they don’t land on rational conclusions. In fact, they think voting against the elite’s interests to the benefit of their own is “socialist” or “communist” (terms they use interchangeably)

Considering that one of the defining parts of political affiliation, in America, is between the regional bifurcation of urban (liberal) or rural (conservative), compounded with the reality of the latter experiencing economic isolation for decades, we can reasonably conclude that economic pressures were not the cause of this riot. It seems to be a huge political tantrum, in the form of terrorism, at the fact that Trump lost, and not only in the fact that liberals will take control again, but also the social justice agendas that they do despise — the “coloring” of America; the fear of “white genocide” (*erasure, if I want to be more charitable by using my own word and not theirs), etc.

The riots on the 6th was an impressive display of ignorant spectacle: storming Capitol Hill with the flags of slavery, while carrying nooses and zip-ties, etc. And then, voila! — the peppering of Black and Latino rioters in the crowd. I suppose some slaves on plantations also weren’t part of the black abolitionists who wanted freedom; in fact, some conspired with the slave master to prevent (or end) uprisings. How dare we assume all black people in the antebellum south wanted to end slavery! Some may have wanted to be slaves! If you haven’t realized, for most of this paragraph, I used your line of reasoning and applied it to slavery to see how it would turn out…it seems not only silly but “simplistic” as well, huh? How things come full circle, my friend!

Anyway, I also don’t like that “woke” stuff either, and I feel like it’s often used as a shield to exercise racism and as a way to obfuscate focus away from economic issues of working-class people, regardless of color. But call a spade a spade — some non-whites being part of a crowd of confederate flag-waving Trump supporters are a display of “multicultural whiteness” in the highest of spectacle! (maybe *multicultural white racism is a better phrase. I will concede to that)

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My expectations of online racial discourse aren’t super high, but opening with a racist slur like “Uncle Tom” as justification for a different racist term, all whilst displaying a smug ignorance of the history of slavery, was a pretty clear warning that this conversation wasn’t going to be smooth sailing.

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Steve QJ:

If you haven’t realized, for most of this paragraph, I used your line of reasoning and applied it to slavery to see how it would turn out

I get that you think you've done something clever here, but you've simply demonstrated how much you've missed the point and how little you understand black history.

Some slaves didn't want to be freed. Slavery was all they'd known. They lived in an America that offered them absolutely no opportunities. They couldn't get jobs, they couldn't own property, they had no education. Many of them died. As one former slave put it "I think the white man only freed us so that we could starve to death."

Sitting in judgement of these people from our perspective hundreds of years later, only highlights how little you understand about their circumstances then. Of course the end of slavery was good for black people, but many black people suffered in new ways once slavery was over. The image of black people happily marching off the plantation into a land of opprtunity is totally ignorant.

All this to say that life is complicated. And it's hard to judge an individual's choices, even in the context of something as obviously good as the end of slavery. I'm not saying we can't disagree, I'm saying that to impugn somebody's race because they do, is racist, ignorant and offensive.

if I were to describe an “Uncle Tom,” it would fit.

Also, this would only “fit” if you accepted the idea that "whiteness" was synonymous with evil or oppression.

But then you have a problem. How do you describe white people who weren't oppressors? Do you imagine that slavery ended without the assistance of any white people? How do you describe the white poeple who fought for civil rights at the risk of their own lives? How do you reconcile that? Were the white pople who helped black people to escape the plantations "multiracially black"?

Try thinking a little deeper for goodness sake.

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M:

I do hope you realize that I never said any of this. I implied that when I corrected the phrase to "multicultural white racism" and explicitly made a case against racial essentialism in my reply.

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It’s been a long time since I had this conversation so I actually went and re-read M’s original comment numerous times to see where I’d implied something he hadn’t said. I came up empty.

If you see something I don’t, feel free to let me know in the comments. I’m genuinely curious.

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Steve QJ:

You also implied the opposite when you defended the term with your Uncle Tom comparison. Also, you’re still including “white” in your updated term. How is this not racial essentialism? Maybe you didnt mean to imply this and you're just not being precise with your wording, but that's kind of on you.

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M:

Because it’s a description. It does not imply essentialism. A majority white crowd, holding confederate flags and nooses, represents American racism. Some non-white people in the crowd doesn’t erase that. Just as there were blacks on plantations who looked out for the interests of the slave masters over the interests of the slaves; this, my friend, is no different from those who were at the protests. Clearly, this is all conjecture. But it’s an empirical observation…

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Steve QJ:

American racism

So close...what's your problem with the word “racism”? Why do you feel it needs to be prefixed?

And what point are you trying to make about blacks on plantations or in crowds? If you’re saying someting valuable, please be precise, you're not making any sense.

The point I'm making, both here and in the article, is that whiteness and blackness do not describe behaviour. The very notion that they do is racist. Slaves, Trump supporters, snake charmers, flat Earthers, it doesn't matter. People don't think a certain way (or find themselves prevented from thinking a certain way) because of the colour of their skin.

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M deleted a comment here, and sadly I can’t remember what it said. It’s fairly obvious from the context of my reply that he said something about “whiteness” simply being “rhetorical hyperbole”, but he also (as will become clear a little later on) said something about CRT being racist that’s been lost to the mists of the internet.

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Steve QJ:

How would you feel if "blackness" was used as "rhetorical hyperbole" to refer to inner-city crime or single parenthood?

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M:

I get it. But this presupposes a balance in social power dynamics that don’t exist. I will say, firstly, I do not like identity politics. And like a good socialist, my focus is primarily on the working-class. Secondly, insofar as to the use of “blackness,” I accept this double-standard. But again, remember the correction I made from “whiteness” to “white racism” (the latter does not generalize all white people. Just the ones who are racist).

But if you refute that, then you should also refuse other terms like “Britishness” or “frenchness,” and so on and so on. Also, in a world where BLM is characterized as a “terrorist” organization, and yet, upon the aftermath of the terror riots, it was not framed this way from the very people who mischaracterize BLM, and this tends to correlate to one’s racial subscription. In this case, I underhand the moniker of “whiteness.”

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“this presupposes a balance in social power dynamics that don’t exist“

God, I’m so bored of this excuse. Yes, there is a difference in social power dynamics between black people and white people. On a societal scale this makes a real difference in certain situations. Nobody with half a brain would dispute this.

But to pretend that this justifies lowering or changing the standards of interpersonal behaviour for black people whenever it’s convenient is, at the very least, infuriatingly demeaning.

I absolutely cannot understand why some black people buy into it so enthusiastically.

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Steve QJ:

Oh come on! You say that CRT is racist and then use CRT 101 as your justification for adhering to its language? I do refuse terms like Britishness and Frenchness! Group-think is ALWAYS stupid!

There's no such thing as white racism or American racism or even reverse racism. Just racism.

And BLM isn't an organisation at all. It's a banner under which activists, and idiots, people doing important civil rights work and yes, terrorists, all act. The fact that some people didn't (although many did) describe those who stormed the Capitol as terrorists, even though they clearly were, doesn't justify adopting racist language. Why is this hard?

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M:

And BLM isn't an organisation at all. It's a banner under which activists, and idiots, people doing important civil rights work and yes, terrorists, all act.

…

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And that, believe it or not, was the end of our conversation. Not with a bang but with a whimper. Apparently the suggestion that the actions of some of the people acting under the banner of BLM could be classified as terrorism was a step too far.

This despite the fact that our conversation took place just a few months after the worst of the BLM riots, where some protesters were seen terrorising customers in restaurants and in the street, noisily patrolling neighbourhoods at night to keep innocent residents awake, and destroying property (in white and black neighbourhoods) indiscriminately.

If you’re going to describe the people who stormed the capitol as terrorists (and I think you can make this argument), then I don’t see how you can fail to describe these protesters in the same way.

Still, given that M didn’t know much about slavery or CRT, I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that he didn’t know that BLM doesn’t describe itself as an organisation at all, but rather a decentralised movement. After all, nobody ever said that ignorance isn’t multiracial.