Education and the New White Man’s Burden of the Left
Here’s the way the leftist mantras go:
All white people are responsible for the sins of every white person throughout time.
Unlike whites, not only are all non-white people not collectively responsible for the sins of other non-white people, but non-white people are responsible for no sins. Even the individual non-white person is not responsible for his/her own individual sins.
Instead, white people are responsible for the sins of non-white people as well. If a non-white person commits a crime, for example, it’s because he/she has been driven to it by a condition caused by white people, such as poverty, injustice, and unemployment.
I wrote the above before I saw this letter from an anonymous person self-identified as a UC Berkeley professor of history. Here’s an excerpt:
…I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department’s apparent desire to shoulder the ‘white man’s burden’ and to promote a narrative of white guilt.
If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is white supremacist”. “Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam.
These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism from our department…
The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is.
No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders. Home invaders like George Floyd. For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.
Near the end of the letter, the author – who describes him/herself as a “person of color” – writes:
The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites rather than on our own hard work is psychologically devastating. No other group in America is systematically demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children are being taught that only by begging and weeping and screaming will they get handouts from guilt-ridden whites.
No message will more surely devastate their futures, especially if whites run out of guilt, or indeed if America runs out of whites.
This is the same message Shelby Steele delivered in the video I posted previously today. It’s something various black conservative academics have been saying for quite some time now. To me, it rings true and makes psychological sense. But it’s been drowned out, for the most part. Why is that?
I believe it’s because it’s a tough-love type of message, hard to hear and even harder to act on. It is also more cerebral than the competing message, which is deeply emotional and shouted to the rooftops by the MSM and just about every cultural institution in the US today. How can the quiet message of the Shelby Steeles of the world compete?
The NY Times was clever in pushing its deeply mendacious 1619 Project to rewrite American history. Never mind that historians across the land – even historians sympathetic to the left – spoke out against it and tried to correct it. Their cries of “False!” haven’t won the day, because I’m sorry to say that there are way too many people uninterested in the facts as opposed to the emotionally satisfying narrative, and believing history is just a bunch of competing narratives anyway. Why not come up with the narrative you want to be true, and spread it around?
All one has to do is watch the statues being pulled down or defaced these days – including those of abolitionists and people such Lincoln – to understand that the “America and its history are irredeemably evil” message has won the day, at least with enough people willing to act on it and enough people supposedly in charge of our institutions willing to step aside and let them do it.
How else to explain the inclusion of the destruction of monuments to those who fought against slavery? No heroes are allowed to remain – certainly no old white heroes – in the story of America’s original sin of racism. All are collectively guilty.
The seeds of this were planted long ago – even earlier than this passage from Allan Bloom’s 1987 work The Closing of the American Mind:
Contrary to much contemporary wisdom, the United States has one of the longest uninterrupted political traditions of any nation in the world. What is more, that tradition is unambiguous; its meaning is articulated in simple, rational speech that is immediately comprehensible and powerfully persuasive to all normal human beings. America tells one story: the unbroken, ineluctable progress of freedom and equality. From its first settlers and its political foundings on, there has been no dispute that freedom and equality are the essence of justice for us. No one serious or notable has stood outside this consensus…All significant political disputes have been about the meaning of freedom and equality, not about their rightness. Nowhere else is there a tradition or a culture whose message is so distinct and unequivocal…
But the unity, grandeur and attendant folklore of the founding heritage was attacked from so many directions in the last half-century that it gradually disappeared from daily life and from textbooks. It all began to seem like Washington and the cherry tree—not the sort of thing to teach children seriously. What is influential in the higher intellectual circles always ends up in the schools. The leading ideas of the Declaration began to be understood as eighteenth-century myths or ideologies. Historicism, in Carl Becker’s version (The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, 1922) both cast doubt on the truth of the natural rights teaching and optimistically promised that it would provide a substitute. Similarly Dewey’s pragmatism—the method of science as the method of democracy, individual growth without limits, especially natural limits—saw the past as radically imperfect and regarded our history as irrelevant or as a hindrance to rational analysis of our present. Then there was Marxist debunking of the Charles Beard variety, trying to demonstrate that there was no public spirit, only private concern for property, in the Founding Fathers, thus weakening our convictions of the truth or superiority of American principles and our heroes (An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 1913). Then the Southern historians and writers avenged the victory of the antislavery Union by providing low motives for the North (incorporating European critiques of commerce and technology) and idealizing the South’s way of life. Finally, in curious harmony with the Southerners, the radicals in the civil rights movement succeeded in promoting a popular conviction that the Founding was, and the American principles are, racist…
Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.
Again, contemplate that that was published in 1987 and probably written somewhat earlier. The ground was prepared long ago, and what Bloom wrote in his book could be considered a sort of prophetic vision of things to come, but a prophecy of the logical rather than the extra-sensory variety.
Excellent post! The current totalitarian “theory of everything” can be reduced to the following three claims which are implicit in all leftist/progressive (antifa/BLM) propaganda, slavishly endorsed by the MSM: 1)All whites, and only whites, are racist; 2)racism is ubiquitous 3) racism explains everything. It is all too obvious that no amount of reason and logic, or any argument based on facts and evidence, can overcome the mental virus afflicting the wokerati.
I taught medical students for 15 years. Before that I taught surgery residents but once I retired, the residents required instructors doing surgery. Of the medical students, taught in a small group setting, usually 6 to 8 at a time, about half to a third were black. Of those, almost all were African or West Indian. I can recall two American blacks in 15 years. One flunked out and the other had psychological problems.
The African and West Indian kids did not understand the American blacks. Several tried to help the one flunking out and he repeated a year but still failed. The American blacks have this psychological burden of the race hysteria. West Indians were also descended from slaves. My wife has had two black physicians. One was African and the other is Jamaican. Maybe the fact that West Indians have been governed by other blacks in recent years helps, but I don’t know why.
I also spent about 7 years examining recruits to the US military. Blacks are a smaller group than one might expect, perhaps because many have police records. What I did see was African blacks joining the US military. They get citizenship after successful service. One kid I remember very well. He was from Uganda. He had his whole future planned. US Army, then college on GI Bill, then medical school. I wouldn’t put it past him. Great kid.
I also remember a Nigerian guy joining the Army Reserve. He had a BS in Mechanical Engineering plus an MS in Industrial Engineering. Of course he was an Ibo. He was pleased when I asked him if he was. He said in Nigeria, he had two choices, Engineering and Optometry, if he wanted college.
Sadly the conservative americans of dark complexion are in a horrible bind. They want respect and position they deserve, but all too many of their contemporaries want the world to think that all blacks are naturally criminal and that its bad to prosecute or expect more for people being their natural selves. At essence that is what black lives matter is sustaining when their is a refusal to look at the actual circumstances. you can watch some fun stuff on the recent wendys shooting by the Hoge Twins on youtube, who are conservative, and seem frustrated at this. then you can see a conversation by a pundit at home for covid, also black, who is painting a picture that the police should not have acted the way they did, and should have sent the poor drunk man to walk home… completely ignoring the felony of DUI and passing out, not sleeping. how did the car get to the wendys? a man who blew a .108 40 minutes later, and passed out in his car with the engine running at a drive through, drove through city streets in that capacity.. but the pundit was appealing to the we have all been drunk, and so on. what audacity to argue that driving drunk on public roads, inebriated to the point of passing out, is not a problem for black folk? really? he also ignores that after the person was treated nicely, and upon the moment of being hand cuffed, he went nuts… and the pundit wanted to blame it on panic of being drunk never noticing that this panic and violence under the unfluence is not a reason to excuse, but a reason to subdue as its not safe for others who may trigger said person. he also ignores the fact that one officer gets a really good punch to the face, and two of them tried their best to hold him down without hurting him… to which he takes a taser from one, technically a theft… and then tries to use it… if he succeeded, would he have walked back to the incapacitated officer and taken the more deadly weapon? neither asked the question of where was he running to and what did he expect from adding more crimes on top of the felony DUI? they knew who he was, they processed his license, he left his car… where was he going? to another country without extradition?
the message is clear in all these situations… blacks should be allowed to commit crimes and society should not ask more of them… these are not low expectations these are no expectations… and the conservative and decent black folk are then to suffer the idea of not being trusted? if such was the norm, who would trust them to hire them, bring them into their shop, let them watch kids, or be teachers, or go to them as a doctor?
they are creating an untennable situation for themselves and the rest of the black community, and i feel so bad for the really great people i know who would never do any of those things… ever… who would and are stand up people i would love to have as neighbors and people i work with and friends…
there can be no good a comming from this…
Mike K, your story echos one I’ve repeated several times here about a former student who is from Senegal. Arrived in the US almost penniless, played some semi-pro soccer while in Europe and then discovered by my college’s soccer coach at a pick up game in NYC. Came to the college, became one of the top 3 students over 37 years, went to Brown; PhD in EE. Worked, (and still does) at Lincoln Labs with a high level security clearance after becoming a naturalized citizen. Then came back to the college to teach with us. The liberals and black faculty were enthralled when he arrived. They became quickly disillusioned with him after they found out his values, and to your point, his views of American blacks and their entitlement attitude.
Our situation is ripe for a preference cascade.
The question is whether conservatives, who’re naturally, uh, conservative about how they express themselves, will find the spine to become public and loud.
The prerequisite for a preference cascade is a long-simmering silent resentment of always biting one’s tongue (for fear of losing what one has) reaching a boiling-point. This often happens in countries run by oppressive leftist dictators who brutally silence opposition; e.g. Saddam’s Iraq.
The pent-up potential energy of the preference cascade is then made kinetic in a sudden pressure-release when a lot of people simultaneously look at one another and say, “What? You hate the dictator, too? I thought I was the only one!” …and find that they are numerous, strong, and ready to take action.
We are beset by oppressive leftism on all sides acting constantly to intimidate us so that we fear to express our views. They especially try to make us feel ashamed of our views, as if they were sinful, or proceeded from sinful motives.
I properly hate the ideology of leftism and all its methods. I manage — with gritted teeth and excruciating effort, sometimes — to NOT hate the leftists themselves. But I only make that effort because God commands me not to. I imagine there are plenty of people with conservative political views who are either unaware of, or ignoring, the command to not hate leftists. So, if I’m right about that, some 10-30% of the U.S. population is armed and seething with hate for another segment of the U.S. population.
Given all this, I suspect that conservatives’ habitual self-restraint, cultural inclination to lawfulness, bourgeois sensitivity to the opinions of culturally-influential people, and sometimes mere cowardice, are what prevent the Preference Cascade from occurring.
Those traits could turn out to be suicidal or not. If the Cascade were to release in the wrong way, it’d be a bloody civil war; in the right way, it could lead to conservative victory; if not at all, to a dark century of leftist dominance and oppression.
We’ll see.
RC, I think the real problem is that corporate America has decided to appease the mob. Most conservatives are gainfully employed and given the covid economy, speaking up, or even on one’s own social media can cost one their livelihood. I had tenure, but they sure as hell tried to get me fired when I spoke out. If I didn’t have tenure I would have thought twice before saying what I actually thought
Perhaps the problem can be viewed as victimhood? There are always “victims”, and they lack agency, apparently. It is never their fault for their situation. It is always something else. Poor upbringing, lack of a proper diet, fetal alcohol syndrome, no role models, etc, etc, etc. Always an excuse for why they cannot be blamed for the situation they are in. And the best thing about victimhood is that it is colour blind! White, Black, Brown, Red, Orange, no matter what your colour or background, you can always find someone else to blame your situation on.
I think this even goes right into the schools and our teachers who are looking for excuses for children as young as 6 or 7. Too rambunctious? Ritalin them up. Distracted? Maybe hungry? Poor attention span? You get the picture. Don’t blame the poor child, they are just a victim of circumstance. Don’t guide them toward self reliance and responsibility for their actions, find an excuse. And don’t forget to excuse the parents, not their fault they are “whatever”, more victims.
RC writes that I “properly hate the ideology of leftism and all its methods. I manage — with gritted teeth and excruciating effort, sometimes — to NOT hate the leftists themselves. But I only make that effort because God commands me not to.”
No, the Obama era hate of me, personally, for a merely different political opinion disabused me of controlling my hate for the Left and Leftists as people.
I hope the Constitutional Treason of June 15th starts the “preference cascade” – apres le deluge, my friends. I welcome this.
Normies versus the Ruling Class, the elites, their apologists and apparatchiks. Overdue, in fact. Past due.
@TJ:
Your statement…
If your deny that God exists, or has commanded you to love your enemies, then of course that decision on your part is entirely logical.
And, I think your statement provides evidence for my further point about the preference cascade: Many, perhaps most, conservatives are uninterested in Jesus’ well-known command to “love your enemies.” In our religiously-ignorant modernity, how many so-called Christians can quote their own Scriptures as well as they can quote the treacly and shallow lyrics of recently-penned “worship songs?” …or, for that matter, the latest ditty from Beyonce? “There came a generation that knew not the LORD or what He had done for the people….”
Basically I figure I’m in the minority, among conservatives, when it comes to feeling any obligation to “love my enemies.”
Of course, the “love your enemy” command is easily misunderstood. Antifa is the enemy of civilization and all those who wish it maintained; but Jesus’ command doesn’t obligate me to have sex with a random leftist just because she’s wearing a mask and defacing public property. In context, “love” means to will the good of the other as other. Among other things, this might obligate me to shoot a member of Antifa before he can manage to add the murder of my family to the already-long list of sins for which he’s going to hell. Evil deeds aren’t just bad for their victims, but for their perpetrators.
Still, if a Leftist, while still operating unrepentantly under self-deception with regards to public policy, were to collapse in a gutter outside my house, I’d be obligated to love that person to the extent of pulling him out of the street and calling 911. If I held that the only morally-correct response to his hatred of me were for me to hate him, then I suppose I’d construe my moral obligation rather differently: To go crank up my car and back it over him a few times. But I’m commanded not to do that, or even to ineffectually wish for it.
One of the few insightful things Nietzsche ever said was, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” The Leftists are all at varying points in the process of becoming monsters, because evil ideologies have that effect. But I don’t want to do that. Even though I grant that the effectiveness of their tactics depends largely on exploiting our goodness, I refuse to emulate them by sacrificing righteousness for power. We’re the good guys.
Anyway, if a shooting civil war does erupt, probably the Chinese will inherit the earth. This is one reason, I suspect, that they’re (again, I suspect) putting so much money and operational training into fomenting one.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
Neo,
Looks your “Left/ Right” breading “monsters”
America’s deadliest soldier
US Activist War Veteran Vincent Emanuele ??
Jesus didn’t command us to like our enemies, only to love them. Seems to me that it’s enough to assure them their rights and equal treatment under the law.
“they are creating an untennable situation for themselves and the rest of the black community, and i feel so bad for the really great people i know who would never do any of those things… ever… who would and are stand up people i would love to have as neighbors and people i work with and friends…
there can be no good a comming from this…” – Artfldgr
So true — I was talking to some of the family about my life and experiences with black people, and all but one of them was very positive (and he was a jerk because he was a college student, not because he was black).
I don’t expect it to matter to most here, but Tony Robbins has caved to the BLM mob.
His latest YouTube is a tearful plea about the fear, anxiety, and injustice “our brothers and sisters” have been “living with forever” and how bad he feels about it and how he has no words except he keeps on talking with his voice quavering like he’s about to cry though no real tears appear.
Then his voice straightens out and he moves into his pitch which is a podcast with a group of black leaders which includes Jesse Jackson and Van Jones — but no conservatives.
It’s all very positive — “we’ve got work to do” — but it came off to me as insincere or dumb, neither of which is how I understand Tony.
The YouTube comments run around 40% “this is great, we love you Tony”, 10% “thanks for getting it” but over 50% “Tony, you are not seeing the bigger picture here.” Interesting.
I’m not unaware that Tony is a guy selling a product and he wants to keep selling it. Well over half of his customers are Democrat/Liberal and he has taken a hit these past several months because his group events were cancelled on account of Covid.
I’m past feeling embarrassed to say Tony Robbins changed my life for the better when I was near-suicidal. My mother, father, stepfather and aunt committed suicide, so this wasn’t an idle, romantic thought on my part because I was sad something didn’t work out.
Tony is human and humans can be disappointing. Tony taught me I can manage my emotional state, whatever happens. I learned it and mostly I have. So life goes on.
I’m still a bit disappointed.
“Enough Is Enough. We Have Work To Do. | Tony Robbins”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3cmpfkNQXo
I don’t expect it to matter to most here, but Tony Robbins has caved to the BLM mob.
Never heard of this guy. I look him up and I see he’s in the ‘motivational speaking’ trade.
Neo, I am finally, after all these years, reading Closing of the American Mind. I was too busy with job and children to read it back when it came out, and later on figured it might not have the significance that it did at the time. Wrong. It is as good as you and many others have said.
physicsguy, about that guy with the PhD in EE: as a software guy I once spent several years working closely with double-Es. As far as I’m concerned even a BA in that subject is the equivalent of a badge that says “Unusually Smart Person.”
Art Deco: Yes. Tony Robbins is a motivational speaker. His infomercials ran nearly non-stop on cable channels in the 90s. Consequently, a lot of people have heard of him. A number of CEOs, Bill Clinton, and other top performers have consulted with him.
Tony is worth around $600 mil these days. He’s managed to sidestep most of the landmines of such a position. IMO because he’s smart and deep down he is a good guy. He could easily have become a nightmare cult leader but he didn’t.
I was quite active in the Tony world, first as a participant, then as one of the volunteers behind the scenes from 1998-2005. Tony isn’t perfect, but I have no regrets about my time spent in his world.
When it comes to finances, Tony is conservative. A few years after the 2008 meltdown he did a stern YouTube on the national debt, even quoting IowaHawk. Which is part of the reason I have trouble with his cave-in to BLM.
–“The National Debt and Federal Budget Deficit Deconstructed – Tony Robbins”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jboTeS9Okak&t=487s
Mac,
Completely agree about the EE Unusually Smart Person thing.
One of my son’s best friends has masters in EE and Physics. AND he worked with the green mice guy at UH! Smartest kid I ever met.
They met in preschool having just turned three years old and hit it off in spite of one only speaking English and the other only Japanese.
Three years later they were the best readers in their first grade class. Not surprising for my son – we are a family of readers – but amazing for a kid who didn’t even speak the language a few years before.
Not long ago I made a wondering remark to my daughter about the two boys becoming such friends when neither spoke the other’s language. My daughter laughed out loud and said; “Wrong again, Mom. They both spoke Nerd!’
Mike K
Plasticsguy
SEE: Black Rednecks, and White Liberals” -Thomas Sowell
May help shed some light on your quandaries.
R. C., Art Deco, Huxley?
Much to cogitate. But not germane to the courage the present moment requires. Think of our warring Founders. They fought and killed, in uniform or out. They survived, and many or even most thrived.
What one man can do, another can learn to do, if needed.
There’s no need to over think what must be done in your own defense. Learn what’s needed. Gather the courage and do it.
If our forebears could do what had to be done, no matter how ruthless and
bloody, then you and I and we can, too.
For those seeking something to explain our riots, the Left’s Big Lies from “Russia” to “Racism” and Riots, and Trump’s appeal and counter elite effectiveness, then share this 25 minute interview with “The Case for Trump,” Victor Davis Hanson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON5Cl0l8xz8
It’s fast paced and VDH at his most illuminating and brilliant!
I listened to this week or two old interview twice – immediately.
So effective I’m going to share with Leftists and Trump doubters
in my family because nothing has put our present moment
more perfectly.
Wow.
huxley – Robbins learned his lesson previously, it would appear.
From Wikipedia –
If our forebears could do what had to be done, no matter how ruthless and
bloody, then you and I and we can, too.
By the time any of you wake up to the existence of this war, it will already be over. 2020 is basically Reconstruction or post WW2, where defeat is negotiated and public trials are held.
Basically I figure I’m in the minority, among conservatives, when it comes to feeling any obligation to “love my enemies.”
Humans do not comprehend what love means. THe US Constitution has a bit about pleading the 5th. Does that mean people are commanded to plead the 5th? No. God has not commanded lmodern people to do anything, least of all those not in the chain of command.
History is history. Even if it is a Constitution taken as law and basically a figure of holy worship iconography.
You are at least trying to comprehend such matters, RC. Which means you will likely graduate, if you can make it to 2021.
https://youtu.be/2q3HPRBUdks
Here’s omething to aid on your journey. Like a 3 day survival bug out bag.
I don’t expect it to matter to most here, but Tony Robbins has caved to the BLM mob
You are right, it does not matter to me. But I can pick up your emotions easily enough, to see why it disappoints you to see someone who helped you, fall into this state. And not being able to help him as he helped you.
Oh, did I forget to tell people here I can read their emotions, especially the negative and positive ones directed towards me, no matter how much or how little they write?
Mind as big as a planet but no one worships it. How sad.