THE NARRATIVE AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS


“Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.” -George Orwell

Thursday, January 2, 2014

WHITENESS: IT'S NOT EASY BEING JOAN WALSH



The other day Joan Walsh of Salon.com ended the year the way she undoubtedly began it: by demonstrating what a good white person she is by pointing fingers at those bad whites who don't agree with her politically and accusing them of being hyper-sensitive white supremacists.  

She also took pains to describe how she's been virtually martyred by other proggies because of her "moderate" stance on this issue:
I have been someone who tried to see and point out the elements of those grievances that weren't racial, but real: the genuine erosion of economic stability and opportunity for the white working and middle classes. (I wrote a book about it.) And early in 2013 I endured my own mini-backlash for suggesting, in "How to talk about white people," that sometimes Democrats and social-justice advocates talk about race in ways that are unnecessarily divisive and punishing to whites.
I was honestly unprepared for the criticism, but I understand it better now. To suggest that there's any way that the rhetoric of either "people of color" or racial liberals is to blame for white paranoia and racism seems like the essence of victim blaming. Of course that wasn't my intent; I would argue that it stemmed from a very human impulse to try to feel you have some kind of control over forces you don't. Sadly, or not, I realized this year that liberals have very little control over the way white people respond to racial change (though I will always argue that economic populism has more power to build cross-racial coalitions than the pro-Wall Street, multiracial neoliberalism practiced by too many Democrats over the last 20 years.)
Whatever would we do without the guidance of our "racial liberal" overlords?  Since she differentiates between "racial liberals" and "people of color" I can only assume that "racial liberals" is a euphemism for white people.  Apparently the key to checking one's "white privilege" is to pretend that you're not really "white" at all...because everybody knows how evil white folks are, right... RIGHT?! 


Of course, people have all kinds of racial complaints and reality is different than The Narrative pushed by proglodytes like Joan Walsh.  But I'm not really interested in talking about any of that in this post.  No, it's all about this:


Uh oh! Clearly that's no way to treat an enlightened "racial liberal" like Joan Walsh.




Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)