Now and then, a story comes along which perfectly illustrates how badly racial discourse has lost its way. The Rittenhouse trial was one such story.
Somehow, the shooting of three white men by a white boy became an argument about racism. The media was in such a hurry to do some race-baiting, that they made numerous inaccurate reports that the men Rittenhouse shot were black. And Rittenhouse’s acquittal was widely portrayed as a victory for white supremacy, even though there was widespread video evidence of him acting in self-defence.
In my article, “What If White Supremacy Isn’t The Problem?”, I argue that this infuriating trend of describing every issue as white supremacy has gone too far. Not only does it make problems that have nothing to do with white supremacy (like why it’s legal for a minor to run through the streets with a semi-automatic rifle) harder to understand, it makes genuine white supremacy harder to identify.
Drav doesn’t think it’s gone far enough.
Drav:
You are wrong. White supremacy is not some toothless redneck running around with an AR-15 or some skinhead Nazi saying bad things about Jews. White supremacy is the entire rotten stinking system where westerners (essentially the white race) have been terrorizing the rest of humanity for the last 500 years. This terror is well recorded in actual history books like New Age of Empire by Kehinde Andrews, and not in the whitewashed western propaganda versions we have shoved down our throats. Our civilizations were doing fine until the white man showed up. He has stunted the growth of almost every civilization on earth and replaced it with what author Michael Bradley calls the the dreary anti-human monoculture that is western “civilization”. Now that unbridled greed, exploitation and monoculture has led us to climate change. So white supremacy and western hegemony (one and the same thing) has a lot to answer for. Quit the gaslighting.
This comment contains two of my pet hates. The first is the use of the word “gaslighting” when what he really means is, “quit making points that I can’t refute which conflict with my belief system,” and the second is the hypocrisy of talking about “westerners” as if he isn’t one.
A common feature of the “woke” is a desire to separate themselves from the evils they rail against. White “progressives” talk about white people as if they aren’t white. Racist anti-racists talk about racism as if they aren’t racist (try saying that three times fast). And here, Drav talks about westerners as if he isn’t a westerner.
We in the West, regardless of the colour of our skin, benefit enormously from unjust systems that are destroying the planet and keeping many other nations poor. We can criticise those systems, of course. We didn’t build them. But none of us has the right to talk as if we have nothing to do with them.
Steve QJ:
White supremacy is the entire rotten stinking system where westerners (essentially the white race) have been terrorizing the rest of humanity for the last 500 years.
White supremacy is everything the west has done for the past 500 years? Okay, so what's the solution? How do we fix that? Are black people only living authentically if we go back to pre-industrial societies? Is that how we fix the evil of white supremacy? Are you ready to give up your iPhone and your central heating? (the central heating furnace was invented by a black woman by the way.)
Let's be absolutely clear that if you want to talk about greed and climate change and the culture of exploitation that sees millions across the world living in poverty, you are, whatever colour you are, every bit as complicit as most of the white people around you. You are, worst case, in the top 20% of wealth in the world. And you enjoy that position precisely because people all over the world do work you don't want to do for wages you wouldn't accept.
It's ever so easy to find somebody to point a finger at. There's always somebody more guilty than you. But make no mistake, billions of people could point their finger at you. So the only meaningful question is; what do we do to fix it? Not who do we blame?
Drav:
How do we fix that?
Your brain is so colonized that you can’t see through the BS and fuckery of western “civilization”. You consider owning an iPhone as the height of civilization? Civilization means being humane to other humans and to the Planet. The statistics prove you wrong — the west is responsible for the most carbon emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. Over 90% of the goods manufactured in China is consumed in the west, they have even outsourced carbon emmissions to China, how clever.
Western countries have been at war since Biblical times. The western empire maintains 800 military bases in the world, why is this? Who is refusing to share covid vaccine technology right now in the name of corporate profits? A Credit Suisse report shows that 60% of the world’s wealth and resources is owned and controlled by western countries — they make up around 15% of the world’s population. That is criminal and fucked up. Guess how most of that wealth was acquired — from pillaging BIPOC countries and genociding people.
The British stole $45 trillion from India during its occupation of India. Before colonization, India was a world leader in trade, accounting for 27% of the world’s GDP at the time, they were not colonizing the world, simply trading with it. Africa was a hub of trade, there were great civilizations in Africa — the Mali, the Nubians, the list goes on. Read up on the history of our great Motherland, you will be surprised to learn that great cities existed there before the white man. Now look at Africa and India after colonialism. I wonder who is responsible? Space aliens? Ever heard of the Berlin Conference where the white man carved up Africa like a pie they would greedily go on to consume?
The solution — I will let great writer, Indi Samarajiva have the last word. We overthrow the west.
https://indica.medium.com/its-time-to-overthrow-the-colonial-empires-again-eb5c13c5ce47
It is already happening. We are wising up, a revolution is coming. In the meantime, you can join Candace Owens in deluded ass-kissing coconut-land.
Steve QJ:
You consider owning an iPhone as the height of civilization?
😅 Please develop a sense of humour. I'm simply pointing out that your desire to absolve yourself from the evils of the West is deeply hypocritical. Just as your framing of carbon emissions is deeply misguided.
You think China is somehow being forced by white supremacy to produce goods for Western consumption? You think they use deeply inhumane labour practices, that are functionally equivalent to slavery in some cases, because of white supremacy, and not because it's the strategic lynchpin behind their rise to financial superpower status? More importantly, do you pay the extra money for everything you need, in order to avoid supporting this? Do you forgo any products where that's not possible? If so, what exactly are you typing this on?
White supremacy is such a convenient bogeyman. And of course, I'm not denying that white supremacy is a real thing. But the problems you're describing? As I said, we're all complicit in those. Fixing them will take sacrifice from all of us. And don't get me wrong. I support that. But figuring out what to do takes more brains and guts than figuring out who to point fingers at. Which is as far as you seem capable of thinking. Especially as India and China are key obstacles to fighting climate change.
As for the coconut comment, imagine my surprise that somebody who's so concerned about white supremacy and the harm done to Africa by the West resorts to racist insults. I swear, the worst thing about "wokeness" is that it allows profoundly unhappy, weak, hypocritical people to convince themselves that they're the good guys. I argue with evil "white supremacists" all the time in my comments. Not once, not one single time, have they ever resorted to an even vaguely racist insult. It's always from hypocrites like you.
Whew! That was a pretty comprehensive refutation of Drav’s points. I wonder if he’ll continue to try to educate me about how financial superpowers like China are really victims of white supremacy. I wonder if he’ll share more of his fantasies about being a revolutionary. I wonder if he has something more meaningful to offer than shaky logic and lukewarm racism.
Drav:
sense of humour
Please go back to sleep and have a nice life in whitelandia.
Ah. I guess not.
Note, none of the previous (unfounded) confidence. Not a word trying to refute anything I’ve written. No admission that he was wrong. Just this sad little attempt to claim some bizarre racial high ground.
As I said, despite all the trolls and idiots and “right-wingers” I come across in my comments, it’s only the wokest of the woke, the people who are convinced they’re “the good guys”, who do this.
Steve QJ:
whitelandia
😂 You are so clever. Do you have little notebook where you write these down? I mean, "coconut", "whitelandia"?! How do you come up with this stuff?!
As I was revisiting this conversation, I noticed that Drav has courageously hidden all of his comments, except for the first one, and blocked me (of course). Which means that this conversation will have to live on in posterity here.
Perhaps he re-read his words and he didn’t like what they said about him. Perhaps he realised that his arguments were simplistic and ill-informed. Perhaps he was just embarrassed that he’d lost a debate and shown his true colours.
Or, who knows; perhaps we should blame white supremacy.
Holy shit what a clusterfuck. A lot of modern wokeness seems to use language eerily similar to "race traitor" from the far-right when dealing with "BIPOC" (another stupid term) that don't sign on to every tenet. I've literally been called a "collabrator" because I've spoken up against wasting money on some useless DEI initiative. I have zero doubt that in a different era, the wokes would be the Girolamo Savanarolas of their towns.
This exchange precisely illustrates the key points in this anti-racism discussion. Firstly, Drav’s short recount of history has a strong kernel of truth. Reflective, liberal Westerners’ first impulse is to acknowledge the history of European domination and be open to addressing residual institutional race and class privilege. So, the rhetoric of anti-racism has space to grow into this moral panic.
The second point goes to Steve QJ’s strength, which is, ‘yeah, so everyone alive today is alive because their ancestors dominated and killed others, so, what is your plan to address that today?’ Drav’s answer is a very honest “we overthrow the West...a revolution is coming.” That is the nut of it. There is a segment of the progressive left that actually wants to overthrow current governing regimes. Use this rhetoric of revolutionary violence enough and people will start taking it seriously.
Lastly, and saddest, is the overtly racist stance toward “essentially the white race” and their “anti-human monoculture.” This belief that white people are uniquely bad is simply the psychological dehumanizing of the other tribe that has been the basis of genocidal wars forever. This is why many progressives discount the actual progress we’ve made against racism; they are more focused on hating than on progress in the current social structure.