A Reckoning

When it comes to anti white racism, I admit I’ve been pretty tolerant of it.  Mostly because anti white racism can be pretty funny so it’s hard to take seriously.  As anyone who has perused Salon, the website for white people who hate white people; can tell you, it’s sometimes hard not to get a good laugh out of it.  It’s hard to remember now, but at one time Salon used to be a legitimate and respectable magazine. But with stories like, White Men Must be Stopped, White Guys are Killing Us, America’s Angriest White Men, GOP base is still white and aging, and Time to Profile White Men; even the parody twitter account “Salon.com” has had difficulty topping the real articles and has often resorted to re-tweeting Salon’s real tweets.

Of course when real journalists do it, it’s slightly less funny, such as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, whose article, On a Welcome End to American Whiteness, cheers for the day of demographic apocalypse for white people in America.  Milbank sees the declining white population as an opportunity to redo American culture, to get rid of an “excess of individualism, short-term thinking and prioritizing of rights over duties.”

Yeah, we wouldn’t want too many rights gumming up the works.

So I suppose I do fundamentally view a major difference between the comic anti white hatred of Salon, ranting Black Nationalists on Youtube, or various SJW’s on college campuses, and legitimate journalists positing their anti white racism in the public sphere without any backlash at all.

That’s why I found myself someone shocked by the comments of New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas on Morning Joe this week. Giridharadas is one of those semi regular guests to the set of the MSNBC show that doesn’t, to my view, seem to offer anything particularly compelling in the way of opinion other than the mouthing of whatever the latest conventional wisdom is.  In the case of Giridharadas he also brings some sort of incomprehensible thing going on with his hair.  It’s like he’s stacked a couple of bird’s nests up there.  I guess that’s his gimmick.

So check out the video at this link of Giridharadas.

Or I’ll just transcribe the relevant comments.  When co-host and white male Willie Geist asked Giridharadas a question about what happens to the frustrations of the people who supported Trump post election, he responded thusly:

“I don’t want to wait for a leader to deal with this energy because I think how badly we went when we don’t deal with each other as human beings. I think every institution needs to do this. I would say to your point, this needs to be a two-way reconciliation, and here’s my suggestion for kind of each side. I think the elites we’re talking about who relate to understanding this pain, who didn’t see the roots of Trump, need to see it–need to re-engage with What American needs to understand what’s doing on.

I think the people who went that way and that Trump movement and perhaps supported things about women they don’t actually support or supported things about bashing Muslims that they don’t in their deepest of hearts support, need to think about the fact that globalization and all of that was hard on everybody. It wasn’t just hard on White guys. For some reason, women lost their jobs in globalization, Black and Brown people lost their jobs in globalization, and managed not to lash out. I think there needs to be a reckoning, frankly, with white manhood in this country.”

Geist’s reply?  “Interesting.”

Putting aside the idea that if globalization is so hard on everyone, why are we doing it, I thought the real take away was, I realized that these guys, the establishment elite types like Milbank and Giridharadas were serious.  They really do regard whites as some sort of problem, like an atavistic hold over that’s harshing everyone’s buzz.  It’s pretty blatantly racist, but it’s not a racism that anyone particularly cares about.

I’ve been writing about the increase in tribalism and identity politics for years, but it looks like it’s going for a new level.  Nothing good will come out of this of course, but now it’s not just that nothing good will come out of this in a general way, but now I feel like I’m being targeted personally.  Unfortunately Joe Scarborough recognized the rabbit hole Giridharadas was going down and sidetracked the conversation into one of “reconciliation,” I would have much rather heard Giridharadas elaborate on his point and find out just what exactly he had in mind with his reckoning “with white manhood.”

Although I think I’ll eventually find out.

 

This Election’s competing views of Immigration

I noticed on a message board today a liberal was making a loaded comment (is there any other kind?) about this election being about two differing views of immigration.  One view is that this country belongs to the white Christians who founded the country, and the other view that the country’s founding was on Universalist principles open to everyone.  Naturally it was a false choice between racism and open borders, but I took the bait and responded anyway:

I would agree that this election does waiver between two competing views of immigration, although perhaps not exactly in the way you have framed.

1. There are those who believe that there is a particular American culture, with a particular history, and want new immigrants to assimilate into that culture. American history has taught us that doesn’t happen when there is a constant flow of co-ethnics pouring into the country, reinforcing old world manners, culture, and language. Germans ( the original poster used the example of Germans who were thought to unassimilatable  at the nation’s founding), who meet your definition of being white and Christian and were established in the country from before the revolution, didn’t fully assimilate until after World War 1, and that was primarily because of severe anti German feeling at the time. Real assimilation happened after immigration was sharply reduced in the 1920’s and kept that way until the 1960’s.

2.  There are other people who don’t think there is a distinct American culture or cultural and political history, or if there is, it’s distasteful and should be eliminated. Their definition of American includes the entire world and any culture, no matter how savage or backward. They believe that whatever views occupy the zeitgeist at any particular time are universal values that everyone shares, even if they don’t know it. They don’t believe that different cultures often have ways that may be offensive to other cultures, and if they do, heh, it all comes out in the wash. They believe every community should be overwritten by another community constantly; ideas like home and hearth are offensive.

I think the real difference in this election is between:

1. Those who want immigration to serve the interests of the people of the country.

2. Those who want immigration to serve the interest of non Americans, politicians, and labor intensive corporations.

That’s the real difference, and the election gives a clear choice on that.

Naturally he called me a racist.