The politically correct bookshelf
When the Red Guards come to your home to inspect your bookshelf, be prepared:
A woke NPR writer tells us to comb through our bookshelves and make sure we have enough books authored by people of color.
So my question is: does Thomas Sowell count? If so, I’ve got plenty.
Yes, I know, I know: Sowell isn’t an actual black person, even though he grew up in the South and then Harlem when discrimination against black people really was systemic, as well as overt.
Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to read Clarence Thomas’ autobiography. Sounds excellent.
The wokerati, convinced not only of their moral rectitude but also of their cultural ascendancy, will continue with their insanity until some force stands up against the madness, and cowardly Republicans (such as “Cocaine Mitch”) are doing nothing. Just today, Sohrab Ahmari ( an immigrant from Iran, once a Marxist, more recently converted to Catholicism and conservatism) has posted a text from his wife, whose family suffered terribly in China during the time of Mao, “that all the toppling over of statues and pulling historic movies and renaming streets, etc is reminiscent of the start of the Cultural Revolution.”
It is!! And so is the latest biopic on him, “Created Equal.”
Yes, it’s not enough not to let radical causes be and read what you will without moving your lips.
This is what we saw with gay marriage. “Why do you oppose it? You won’t be affected. We just want to love who we love.”
That was true for fifteen minutes. Then cake bakers started getting sued.
Mr Sowell’s books are terrific.
And the recent Clarence Thomas NPR bio was, like, “WOW!”
Maybe the modern decluttering frenzy is about destroying the evidence? But decluttering is not for me, no sirree. If the wokerati came to my house to review my books they’d throw their hands up in despair.
I read Thomas Sowell’s early book Knowledge & Decisions and have read every other book of his that dealt with culture, philosophy & politics. An economics major in undergraduate school, I skipped over his economic tomes directed to the general public. I feel that he is the current version of the late Nobel Prize Winner, F.A. Hayek. Shelby Steele comes to mind also.
Do watch “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words”. It’s well done.
Notice that NPR doesn’t talk about books being authored by Latinos?
Even tho there are MORE Latinos in America, now, than blacks?
One of the interesting bits of the upcoming election will be the Black vs Latino hostility. I remember as a Boy Scout hike master, going on overnight hikes with different LA troops, and hearing horror stories from Black troops – about how bad the Latinos (& illegals!) were. And horror stories from Latino troops – about how bad the Blacks were.
This “racism” focus is designed to increase, not decrease, racism, tribalism, and especially identity based hatred.
It’s not clear to me that the Dems will benefit, but it’s clear they think they will benefit more with more tribalism. The Asians are still a small enough minority, and less conspicuously folk with influence, that so far they’ve mostly avoided being labeled as “bad as the Jews”. Altho Harvard’s discrimination against them is quite similar to their prior discrimination against Jews.
I recently got a trilogy of Sci-Fi books by an Asian / Chinese author, Cizin Liu, but have only read the fantastic first one.
It’s been raining a lot the last couple of weeks here, but still I have gotten a reasonable spring tan. Does being a Tan make me a “person of color”?
(Only Albinos are white, and I’m not that…)
Neo- definitely read Clarence Thomas’ autobiography My Grandfather’s Son. It’s incredibly moving and I guarantee that you’ll come away with even greater respect for the man.
After I make sure to have enough books written by people of color, am I supposed to read them, or just display they prominently?
These people are so tedious and predictable.
j e wrote “The wokerati, convinced not only of their moral rectitude but also of their cultural ascendancy, will continue with their insanity until some force stands up against the madness . . .”.
This is so true, and I don’t think well-meaning but weak minded people out there understand this. The half-century long progressive juggernaut that America voted to stop, or at least pause, with the election of Trump is most certainly doubling down with all the insanity we’re currently witnessing. It is now way too much about feelings and not enough about facts . . . and that’s what revolutions are made of.
My wife was born near the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in Beijing, where it was hottest. Her family suffered, though not as bad as others. Most thinking Chinese look back on this period as a kind of temporary (though long) insanity, and realize what it was – Mao’s power play. Which is what our situation is about.
The left feels like they have white America on its collective heels. It’s been a long time in putting them in that position, but they smell blood and that’s emboldened the movement.
Some idiot also recently said that if you are doing videos from your home, you should remove pictures of your wife from the bookshelves because this tells people that heterosexual marriages should be the standard for our culture. We sure don’t want the LGBTQ…people to feel bad.
About white supremacy . . .
The white race (Europe in the 15th-16th centuries) birthed the modern world with mathematics and the scientific discovery process, which in turn gave birth to the industrial revolution which is still in process. The progress is unparalleled. This is the source of so-called white supremacy.
And, yes, whites lorded it over the world. To the point that any place that wanted to compete in any way had to learn from that Euro-centric world. Russia did, Japan did, China did. The Middle East refuses and stews.
White people are the direct inheritors of this world changing culture, though it’s open to all. White people are still the driving force behind it, though not as much as a few generations ago because of its attractive power and openness.
As a 66 year old white male, I love having access to all of this culture and, in fact, consider my being born into the English language as the most wonderful of the gifts given to me, as that gives me access to virtually all of that progress.
With ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white privilege’ the new rallying cries, I try to figure out what they’re after. So far, all I come up with is that they hate me for being the inheritor of all of this and for still liking it and perhaps that they feel that I should ‘make room’ for their culture. I don’t know.
But I do fear that it’s all taking on a ‘tone’, and that tone is what defines the narrative that’s taking hold. It’s getting very ham fisted.
In addition to works by Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas:
Works by Shelby Steele
Frederick Douglas’s autobiographies.
Jason Riley’s “Please Stop Helping Us.”
Right. Do people pass the test if they have books by black writers or intellectuals not Left leaning?
Thomas Sowell
John McWhorter [a centrist critical of the left]
Clarence Thomas
Alan Keyes
Larry Elder
Zora Neale Hurston [This one I didn’t know!]
Booker T Washington [before our current left / right divide but he is often considered conservative].
Any good liberal would say yes. But I’m guessing you could show a good many on the left these names [or possibly just photos since Clarence Thomas is known by name] and they would assume they must be Democrats.
…white supremacy…
I rather doubt the world be any better if the Asians, Muslims, Aztecs or Africans had gotten the big technological jump first.
Reading world history is scary.
“Do people pass the test if they have books by black writers or intellectuals not Left leaning?” Montage
Of course not, Joe Biden has declared them not to be real blacks.
The upshot of all this is that, naturally, it’s not about getting people to read the great or defining works of literature from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, or anywhere else. It’s about virtue signaling by having your bookcase jammed with a bunch of “woke” garbage written in the last 20 years.
Mike
Huxley, I’ve of thought about that.
My guess – and it’s only a half-educated guess. – is that Christianity might have been a governor on our worst instincts. And that it could have very well been worse under other cultures.
A couple of years ago my family took a vacation to Japan. In Kyoto is a little known place called ‘Mimizuka’ – mound of ears. I think the mound is actually noses of Koreans vanquished in the Japanese invasion of Korea in the 1590s. Noses were brought back rather than heads because of the shipping overload. If you read Japanese history, a head was always taken in battle.
So I agree with Huxley’s doubt and actually think any other culture that had such superiority as the West had would probably have been more cruel. History is indeed scary! And that’s why it’s so important to read and understand.
I want to know about other cultures, other viewpoints, and left to my own devices I’ll get to some of them (time is limited) on my own.
However, if someone puts a gun to my head because Naguib Mahfouz or whoever isn’t on my bookshelf, well forget it.
My attempts to read non-white writers hasn’t been brilliant. Toni Morrison is now a god, but you try reading “Beloved.”
OTOH, James Baldwin was a writer. Here’s the last paragraph of “Sonny’s Blues.” You don’t have to know the plot, though it will kill you too. That’s writing.
________________________________________________
Then it was over. Creole and Sonny let out their breath, both soaking wet, and grinning. There was a lot of applause and some of it was real. In the dark, the girl came by and I asked her to take drinks to the bandstand. There was a long pause, while they talked up there in the indigo light and after awhile I saw the girl put a Scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny. He didn’t seem to notice it, but just before they started playing again, he sipped from it and looked toward me, and nodded. Then he put it back on top of the piano. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother’s head like the very cup of trembling.
–James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YvGkXIwfAE3hfer8QDc2TJnoi91tFt-t1RYsi0Mn998/edit
Christianity might have been a governor on our worst instincts. And that it could have very well been worse under other cultures.
M Williams: Likewise. For all Christianity’s faults I believe it made a big contribution in moderating the West’s will to power.
Tom Grey
Notice that NPR doesn’t talk about books being authored by Latinos?
Even tho there are MORE Latinos in America, now, than blacks?
In a job interview, I was asked, “Of the books you read, which one left the greatest impression on you?” Without hesitation, my reply was Del Buen Salvaje al Buen Revolucionario, by Venezuelan journalist Carlos Rangel. I purchased it while working in Venezuela. (From the Good Savage to the Good Revolutionary; the title in English translation is “The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States.” Available in Google Books.) While Rangel was of the left, the book is a put-down of the Allende-Castro left.
Meemsie (formerly Susanamantha) on June 10, 2020 at 5:42 pm said:
After I make sure to have enough books written by people of color, am I supposed to read them, or just display they prominently?
* * *
You’re such a kidder!
Besides, BLM / Antifa are more into burning books than reading them.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/01/minneapolis-rioters-burned-one-of-americas-most-beloved-independent-bookstores-to-the-ground/
Montage had a pretty good list, but Frederick Douglass also belongs on there.
We could add Candace Owens and Coleman Hughes also.
There are a lot of conservative black bloggers now, but I don’t know if they have books.
If this lady writes one, put me on the pre-order list!
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/06/blm-is-a-joke.php
M Williams states the Truth: modern Western Europe gives us nearly all our science (96%?), and some 60% of important creators (Charles Murray, “Human Accomplishment,” precise figures not available to me just now) of progress.
But to refute the White Privileged lie, it’s worth pointing out that modern Western Europe was the achievement of a district minority of White people.
The irony! This group of four nations and parts of six to eight usually smaller nations.
Even to this day, about a near majority of white nation close to Western Europe still struggle to master economic growth, popular government, and science and technology: nations like Turkey, the Balkans,Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Iran, and North Africa (including Egypt).
Modernism and Western tradition are not easy to emulate by other whites. Japan, for example, has borrowed selectively and achieved more than any of these “White peoples” laggards!
Put the Marxist racists to the test and SHOW others that they are liars! It ain’t White that makes the West the Best. Only a minority of whites.
The patterns that made Western European achievement possible are quite complex and still mysterious to economists and historians. Here’s one attempt to summarise some the the multi-faceted dimensions of the explanations
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/big-summary-post-on-the-hajnal-line/
Last late fall or early winter, a piece by scholars was published at science mag showing that the Church’s ability to enforce laws against incest marriage among Aristocrats was important for increasing IQs in the West, compared to Eastern Europe.
Here’s one version of the story, “Western Individualism Arose From Incest Taboo”: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/western-individualism-arose-from-incest-taboo/
I’m yet to add this story to the comments there, at hbd chick’s Big Summary post. There’s still much more to be learned from the Western achievement.
Three Musketeers… Dumas was black… He was the first person of color in the French military to become brigadier general, divisional general and general-in-chief of a French army
Yes, but Nestride Yumga doesn’t count, because she’s an African-immigrant-American rather than an African-American! She obviously believes in family, hard work, education, law and order, which you can certainly understand, considering she comes from a continent of unrelenting lawlessness, violence, and corruption. Naturally the SBLM (Some Black Lives Matter) mob would tell her to shut up, just as the Cornell Black Students Association (sic) demanded that African-African-Americans be excluded from the benefits given to African-American students. BLM and their ilk would, in unselfconscious irony, call Ms. Yumga an “Oreo.”
I would happily pay reparations to any member of BLM, but only if they surrendered their citizenship and moved to Africa. Where is Marcus Garvey now that we need him?
Some black authors of fiction include:
Chester Himes
Ishmael Reed
John Williams
Jamaica Kincaid
Walter Mosley
Octavia Butler
James Sallis
That’s a varied list, but all are well worth reading. I’m leaving out, obviously, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. I’ve never forgiven Morrison for when she didn’t get a National Book Award she was after, she got Henry Louis Gates, Cornel West and others to post a public letter in complaint. So then she was quickly given the next Pulitzer to shut her up. It was ugly.