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Ego Tripping on the Backs of Minorities
It’s wealthy white people who tend to be the most “woke.” They see themselves as the “white savior” — as Atticus Finch. But as someone once said, if you’re going to be St. George, you first need a dragon.
To be Atticus Finch, you need a racist society that routinely lynches blacks. So, in their self-narratives, America must become that society. Atticus Finch also needs a Tom Robinson – noble, oppressed, and helpless in the face of an evil society. So, in the woke progressive’s self-narrative, minorities must be without agency, requiring white saviors to act on their behalf.
All this would be no more than a bit of harmless self-delusion if white progressives kept their self-narratives to themselves. But, to become heroes in their own eyes, they must be heroes in the eyes of the world. So, they must tell minorities that they are helpless. That the system is rigged against them and that they cannot make their lives better by their own actions. To the extent that white progressives are believed, lives are destroyed. White progressives are exploiting minorities for their own ego trips.
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Exactly. Bravo.
Kind of like “water is wet.”
Then it’s a good thing Conservatives (?) are here to tell minorities what’s true and what isn’t. Otherwise who knows what they would end up believing?
I think, @richardfulmer, you’ve stated the facts very accurately, clearly and concisely. Thank you.
It is a strange time. We have replaced success based on merit and accomplishment to success based on virtue signaling. That is insanity. It is not sustainable and it will surely end our country.
Such has been going on for as long as there have been humans, I suspect. Pharisees, Puritans, etc. I wonder if there has ever been a long-term successful meritocracy.
Perfect!
As George Orwell put it, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Also, there is overwhelming evidence that racism, while it exists and it stinks, isn’t an overwhelming feature of American life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phPXTWJhnYM
I’m not telling minorities anything; I’m asking whites to back off. I like Frederick Douglass’s recommendation:
White guilt is responsible for a lot of our society’s ills and I refuse to either partake or contribute. People of whatever color can live their own lives better than I can live them for them.
Excellent post. As one who is a little, to use the old phrase, “tetched” about Mr. Finch– he was for me, as well as many others, one of the primary reasons I went to Law School — you were spot on.
And, I must say, it is regrettable to see the comment of one of the members, who obviously had no idea what your post meant, sniffing his/her disdain at your thought. My lady and I have had quite a bit of experience with that kind of thinking (?) and we refer to those fine folks as “sniffers” as they seem to go through life sniffing at other peoples’ efforts just to be sure everyone knows how superior they are to us, dare I say it?— deplorables.
Thanks again for this great post. Jim.
Davids French is a more contemporary model.
What they don’t seem to get is that “White Saviorism” is regarded as racist.
Note, while researching White Savior films I came across the theory that The Matrix is itself a white savior film. This reminds me of one of my most useful life lessons.
All models are wrong, some models are useful.
Intersectionality lacks utility.
Oh come on snowflakes! If the OP can sniff at White Progressives I can certainly sniff at the OP and at Conservatives. (Clearly you can sniff at me too, right? Which you totally have the right to do!!)
My point is: minorities, like everybody else, can get it right or wrong by themselves. Blaming someone else when minorities get it wrong, or giving someone else credit when minorities get it right, doesn’t treat minorities like thinking adults who can form their own (right or wrong) opinions but like perpetual intellectual minors in need of perennial guidance from others. It’s quite condescending.
Zafar, the OP said “to the extent that white progressives are believed . . . .” I doubt you’d deny that they are believed to some extent.
A lot of people of all colors have bought into the lie that “the system is rigged” by the “elites” to keep the “99%” down. I seem to remember our current President saying something to that effect during the election, and a lot of people seemed to believe him. The fact is that we have agency. We can make our lives and the lives of our families better by our own actions.
I don’t think, however, that that is the message coming from our schools, our politicians, or much of the media. And when there’s a constant drumbeat telling people that they’re helpless because of “them” (the elites, the globalists, the Jews, the white males, the corporations), some people are going to believe it.
So, yes, people can get it wrong by themselves. But, the fact is, that they’re getting a lot of help to get it wrong from people who benefit by the lie.
Do you really believe that white progressives are the source of these beliefs in minority communities? Is there (for eg) a black person in America who thought the country was no longer racist until a White Progressive told them differently?
If anything white progressives may agree with some minority individuals, which is a different thing because it leaves the generation of knowledge about this where it properly belongs.
Or indeed worse – but I basically agree with your point.
I believe it’s incorrect to blame it all on [mainstream] ‘messaging’ and to completely ignore people’s individual and community experience.
Atticus Finch, call your agent. Different plot but same theme and casting. I think.
“America” is not racist. No country is racist. A country is not a sentient being with ideas that are good, bad, or indifferent. America is made up of over 300 million individuals – some of whom are racist and most of whom are not.
But we send our children to schools that use textbooks, like Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States, that are little more than descriptions of every bad thing that any white American ever did to any member of any minority. Yes, a lot of Americans have done a lot of bad things, just as a lot of people of every color, nationality, and religion have done a lot of bad things. But that is not the whole story of America or of the world.
As Benjamin Franklin once pointed out, half a truth is often a great lie. Let’s stop lying to ourselves and to our children.
Which is exactly the problem with woke liberals that the OP is commenting on. They (rich woke white liberals) are quite condescending.
I didn’t blame it on the mainstream anything, that’s your word. And, yes, people learn from experience. But our memories are selective. Evolution has hardwired us so that threats go right to the top of our mental in-boxes. So, if 100 purple people walk peacefully by me but the 101st punches my lights out, that 101st purple person is going to make a much bigger impression on me (both literally and figuratively) than did the other 100. So, when I see the 102nd purple person and alarm bells go off, does that make me racist or simply human?
Because threats get our attention, bad news sells. Newspapers, magazines, cable news channels, and blog posts – all vying for our attention – have big incentives to hype bad news. As a result, we are constantly being bombarded with images of people – black, white, brown, and everything in between – doing bad things. And the images get filed away in our memories under “threats.”
So, the good news is that the world isn’t nearly as bad as the news (or our evolution-wired brains) tell us it is.
So, it’s fantasy to believe that there are people who benefit from racial tensions and who try to stir the pot?
It is also a weird situation, as virtue signalling apparently gets a person off the hook.
So if I say to you, “I regret so much all the opportunities life has afforded to me due to my white skin. Also I hope you share that regret on account of your need to apologize for your white skin.” Then when you refuse to share the regret, that is all you are doing – refusing to share some made up guilt and regret.
But for some reason, if you do that refusal, you are now considered by the Resistance of Those Who Are Awoke to be a much worse person than I am, even though I haven’t done one single thing to help another person. “I am heroic, while you are a racist.” It is a totally absurd movement, made even worse by the fact that its members refuse to see it.
Sure, but does it stop with them?
Not at all, any situation will draw out some people who try to benefit from it.
But blaming racial tensions entirely on the people who find a way to benefit from them is not accurate, is it? They’re certainly fishing in troubled waters, but focusing on them is a band aid fix.
Thing is, America in 2019 is the least racist place on the planet, except for those unirace places – so why does it matter? Because in the US in 2019 only one group of people is trumping up charges of racism and they trumpet it far and wide.
The OP is a complaint about them.
Not if there is no objective racism to be found.
By itself regret and four dollars will buy someone a cup of coffee. It’s kind of pointless.
How about:
“I regret that life hasn’t afforded you the same opportunities it has me due to the colour of your skin. (Or more accurately ethnicity.) I believe this makes us, overall, a less fair and less healthy society – so how do we address your lack opportunities (rather than my abundance of them)? Because in the long run that would benefit not just you but also me, and we want people in general to have more opportunities rather than less.”
That doesn’t presuppose your suggestions or conclusions, but it has a healthier trajectory and it also doesn’t make it about you, which a lot of racial apologetics seem to do. (Self indulgently and uselessly, imho.)
Otoh, it takes the issue seriously and it doesn’t deny the impact of ethnicity on opportunity, which is a necessary but not sufficient condition to move forward rather than get stuck in a loop of accusation and defensiveness.
It is also an approach which should be taken, imho, to similar issues flowing from class, religion and gender. (And any other such meaningful indicator of outcomes, such as [in India] caste.)
Wow. You are a fountain of straw men. I say “X happens,” and you’re response is, “It’s wrong to say that X is the only thing that ever happens and that it’s happening all the time.” Where did I “blame it all on [mainstream] ‘messaging’ and to completely ignore people’s individual and community experience”? Where did I blame “racial tensions entirely on the people who find a way to benefit from them”?
Do you actually believe that I said any of these things, or are you just pulling stuff out of the “Desperate Debaters Bag of Dirty Tricks”?
Let’s try getting rid of government programs that create and sustain poverty, including:
– Minimum wage laws
– Job licensing regulations
– Onerous regulations for starting new businesses
– Regressive sin taxes
– Marriage penalties in tax law
– Marriage penalties in welfare programs
– Programs that encourage poor people to buy houses they can’t afford
– Rent controls
– Zoning restrictions
– Urban renewal projects that destroy neighborhoods
– Restrictions on school choice
– Special privilege grants to companies, groups, and individuals
DDBODT?!!!
Um….thank you, I will take it.
How about:
Focusing on people who stir the pot rather than the underlying issues which make it possible for them to do so is focusing on a secondary rather than the primary motivator. As such, it is not likely to be effective or persuasive without context.