“Whiteness” as quasi-religious dogma in the New Anti-Racism Church
Commenter “mkent” writes:
“White” isn’t a color or a race (they call it a race, but it’s not — not in the way they use it), it’s a class.
Thus John Kerry, Al Gore, and Joe Biden are not “white” or “male”, they’re “elite” — a whole different class entirely. Elites are not responsible for the sins of white males, and thus the anti-white and anti-male dictates of the ruling elite don’t apply to them.
I’ve noticed for years that the left loves jargon and often doesn’t use words in the way they’ve been ordinarily used. So I will add that the left often likes to speak of white people, but lately is very fond of speaking of “whiteness” instead (see, for example, the field of “whiteness studies”).
“Whiteness” as a word seems to have a function for the left, and my guess is that its function is to introduce a means by which the left can deny that it is being racist against white people, and instead is railing against a concept that white people supposedly have or supposedly represent, which is “whiteness.”
It also reminds me of Moby Dick and Melville’s discourse on the whiteness of the whale:
Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be naught…
This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or shark.
More – a great deal more – at the link.
Whether the left is talking about white people or whiteness, it’s speaking about a race plus a list of ethnicities from which some groups who are members of that race (for example, Palestinians and Pakistanis) are excluded and are considered by the left to have earned the designation brown (i.e. oppressed), and it is also (as mkent points out) a class, primarily but not entirely. For example, elite white people on the right are certainly included in the horrors of whiteness and may in fact be the worst exemplars of the concept for the left if those elite people are on the right politically. Elites on the left, on the other hand, can set themselves apart from and get dispensation from the terrible stain and sin of whiteness – to a certain degree anyway – by acknowledging their evil nature.
So confession is the first step towards at least partial absolution.
“Whiteness” is a sort of original sin in the dogma to the woke “anti-racist” left and the “anti-racism” cult which functions as a quasi-religion. In this respect, it both fills the religious gap left by the abandonment of religion by atheists and also supplements the religious belief systems of those in current-day “woke” religious denominations.
Wokeness – kompulsory Kool Aid konsumption. Jonestown for an entire country.
Jim Jones for Justice!
Through my fault,
through my fault,
through my most grievous fault…
According to the “woke” left, whiteness, however it is defined, represents an original sin which can never be expiated and for which there is never any real redemption; privileged billionaires and “woke” multinationals (as well as ordinary SJWs and comfortably entitled “progressive commissars”) can, nonetheless, purchase indulgences in the hope of appeasing at least some of the “social justice” grifters running the various BLM/CRT/1619 and “diversity consulting” rackets”, while drawing a clear distinction between themselves (“noble and virtuous”) and the kulaks of flyover-land who are, of course, deplorable and completely irredeemable.
IMO, this is not about whiteness and blackness per se. The Marxists have chosen race as a way to divide us into oppressors and the oppressed. When you think of it in those terms you can see what they’re aiming at. Examine the Chinese Cultural Revolution. All the same skin color, but divided by classes – oppressor and oppressed. The goal is for the oppressors to give way to the oppressed and create EQUITY. (A Marxist government) Whenever you hear CRT, racial equity, or Diversity Inclusion and Equity (DIE) know that you are being indoctrinated to accept the revolution. It’s a clever ploy and a lot of people don’t see what’s behind it. It ain’t about race. “The issue is never the issue. The revolution is always the real issue.”
I’ve mentioned before Dennis Prager has a saying that ‘when people stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing they believe in anything’.
Humans have a deep need to believe in some higher power or just a purpose for it all. The Judeo-Christian belief system has been the best most productive set of beliefs in human history but it wasn’t the first and won’t be the last.
I read mkent’s comment a few times.
I was only slightly surprised to discover that the mostly useless COVID statistics for my county included the racial categories “white Hispanic” and “other Hispanic.” That is particularly nifty because people in both groups can be applauded for supporting “my people,” meaning Hispanics; whereas people belonging to the first group can also be pilloried or denigrated because of their whiteness, if they step out of line. Think George Zimmerman.
I agree with J.J., but would put it this way: Whiteness = Successful. Or better yet, whiteness is the illegitimate route to success.
One could say that success comes from hard work, but that violates the concept of “You didn’t build that.” Successful whiteness comes from profiteering off of other people’s labors. (See the connection? Insert rhetoric about the white power structure and systemic racism here.) It’s much better to become successful through the benevolence of your quasi-socialistic community. Then you might be free of the original sin of whiteness, as long as you promote socialist dogma and protect and promote BIPOC’s as a privileged class.
It’s a double-edged sword. They really ought not to be swinging it about like a shiny new toy. They think that they are the only ones who are discovering the joys of Forbidden Thoughts. They are not.
Rule 0 (Always): Do Not Wake People Up. Ever.
Will. Not. End. Well.
Bear in mind that BLM/CRT is just the latest New Left iteration to take power.
They tried a more conventional Marxist “Capitalism vs Proles” route with Seattle WTO riots (1999), then with Occupy Wall St (2011) to initial fanfare but little sustainable effect.
However, they went back to the racist well with BLM and magic happened. They drew in idealistic youth, Hollywood, postmodern academia and big corporations (no longer threatened by straight Marxism). Brilliant!
Make no mistake, though, all this can be traced back to the 60s New Left. Then further back, of course.
I guess I’m white hispanic. 3/4 Scots-Irish-English, 1/4 Mexican.
I haven’t seen that option (yet) on the race category questions I encounter and check “Decline to answer.”
Problem is that Race Exists. One can logic chop day and night and exhibit edge cases, but still, Race Exists.
It exists more so than any other division the Left have tried to sow.
They’ve worked through a bunch of spurious, artificial, and harder to pin down distinctions over the decades and exhausted all of those options. Class didn’t work, Pedagogies of the Opressed… Ho hum… Orientalism… Yawn…. Intersectionality is to Laugh… but Race. Race Works. Been Proven as well as anything can be proved. So they *will* push that Big Red Button. Frog, Meet Scorpion.
@Huxley:
“I guess I’m white hispanic. 3/4 Scots-Irish-English, 1/4 Mexican.”
So you’re tight with money, prone to bouts of poteen-fueled aggro, stand-offish, and disappear for a while after lunch?
I just want a census category for Mischling Misanthropes. Not much to ask for, really.
I’m 98% Celtic including Breton, and 2% Huron.
So I lie around awaiting something requiring adrenalin, would steal somebody’s cattle if I knew where to sell it, hire out to fight, try to memorize “Cattle Raid of Cooley”, and liquor really does me in.
Re: Race Exists…
Zaphod:
No argument there, at least not until enough intermarriage and we’re all olive-brown. But I suspect by then we’ll also have merged with AI technology or we’ll be pets to our AI overlords if there are enough “Thou Shalt Not Kill Humans” safeguards still in place.
So race is a great lever, but I still don’t quite understand how so many whites are buying into an effectively anti-white agenda. Do they think they can ride that tiger forever?
The Nazis were “sensible” enough to pick on a 1% minority.
@Huxley:
Lubyanka Cellars ran red with the blood of professional Tiger Riders.
I just don’t think that Humans learn well. The best we seem to be able to manage is to codify things we have learned as Traditions/Culture. And the past Century+ has been a Great Unlearning the likes of which has not been seen in the West since the 500s or 600s.
So yes, it’s insane for GoodWhites to think they can ride this tiger. But they’re going to do it anyway.
The Nazis were bonkers to pick on the Jews. Had they stuck to giving it to the Slavs and the Gypsies (find me an honest man who has encountered *them* outside of a brief passage in Smetana’s Moldau and still claims to like them), they’d rule from the Atlantic to the Urals and have a Moon Base with Lasers. Should have had their Jew Exterminating Neurons working overtime on designing and producing Hugo Boss Russian Winter Wear.
🙂
Re: Great Unlearning…
Zaphod:
George Leonard was a senior editor at “Look” magazine and credited as the third founder of Esalen, the Human Potential Movement center at Big Sur.
In the 70s Leonard gave an address to a convention of the similarly minded. At that time there was a great feeling of optimism, at least in California, which Leonard had succumbed to. He shouted to the crowd, “Fuck history!” Applause.
Leonard came to regret that moment.
Some years later he wrote a short book, titled “Mastery,” about how difficult real progress is even at the personal level. It’s still a book I refer to now and then.
@Huxley:
He really ought to have known better by the age of ~50 in 1970. Still, I guess they were Heady Times, when everything seemed possible, or so I’ve heard. My earliest distinct memories are from that year and mainly concern a large chocolate Easter Egg. Alas no Madeleines and Tea. I come of peasant stock. Much consciousness development was occurring even sans hot tub with a view.
Unpopular opinion around here, perhaps, but I believe that even petty bigotries and hatreds are evolved prophylactic societal habits and ought to be curated and husbanded. Note, I did not say apply liquid fertilizer and force with grow lamps. We suppress them and then get all surprised when the Bigger Badder Horrors they inoculate against arise. Ask a Bosniak. Chesterton’s Fence isn’t necessarily a White Picket Fence — sometimes it’s a thorny hedge.. or could be Razor Wire and mined.
Leonard was certainly right that Personal Development is Hard. So much more then Societal Development.
Some people we should welcome into the Whiteness Caucus.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/06/rep-byron-donalds-to-cnn-as-a-black-man-in-america-im-allowed-to-have-my-own-thoughts/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/stand_up_and_cheer_for_mark_robinsons_viral_gop_speech.html
PS A note to those who are in the active political ranks (thinking of Spartacus particularly): the North Carolina GOP put up what someone or group thought was a nifty logo, but because of the positioning of the center diamond, it “reads” as NO GOP rather than NC GOP.
@Richard Aubrey:
I’ve got a very annoying ex-colleague who paid mega silly money for a hair transplant. Be much obliged if your 2% could 100% scalp the @#$%er.
Still, I guess they were Heady Times, when everything seemed possible, or so I’ve heard.
Zaphod:
They were indeed. I still say psychedelics played a larger part than they are credited.
The Mad Acid Chemists weren’t entirely wrong in their strategy to change the world by dosing as many millions as possible. (“The Sunshine Makers” is an excellent doco on two of these chemists.)
The Jordan Peterson / Roland Griffiths interview I mentioned yesterday about current psychedelic research was remarkable in the way Peterson became more excited than I’ve ever seen him.
Usually, he is fighting the very necessary rearguard battle in the current culture wars and rather grim. In this interview he was seeing a path forward to creating experiences of lasting transformation via psychedelics in Griffiths’ psilocybin resarch at Johns Hopkins, and quite excited.
Of course, Peterson and Griffiths wish to avoid the mistakes of the 60s psychedelic movement. Though it’s hard to miss a similar optimism.
Whether psychedelics can deliver on such promises remains to be seen. My point is that they do raise such hopes that “this time it’s different.”
Fuck history, the man said.
@Huxley:
It’s been argued that recreational drugs and increasingly nootropics have played a much larger role in Hedge Funds and Big Tech than is generally acknowledged, too:
https://www.newser.com/story/165490/meet-the-drug-thats-powering-wall-street.html
The most successful man I ever worked for was big on MDMA plus occasional other recreational drugs and spent a good deal of his time juggling uppers and downers and generally self-medicating. Unbeliever would say he got into a vicious circle. A more positive view would be that he was constantly monitoring self-state and this is more than can be said of most of us.
As for the Psychedelic Question. Sure lets run the experiment, but can I watch from Mars Base?
Jordan Peterson is smart enough to be worried by what he’s become and what people are projecting onto him. A transcendent Stranger in a Strange Land ending might work well (just not for him).
Zaphod:
I’m sure the next Voyeur probe can drop you at Mars Base…
I hadn’t heard of Modfanil, though I love the film, “Limitless.”
From what I hear microdosing LSD is big in Silicon Valley. Or at least was a couple years ago. Hot/Not?
I read a fun book on microdosing by a lawyer-turned-journalist who testified that her family much preferred Microdosing Mom over Psycho Mom.
Paul Erdos was one of the most prolific mathematicians of his time. He was also a very disciplined user of amphetamines.
Zaphod:
Jordan Peterson is in some dangerous crosshairs and he does know it. I wouldn’t say he’s at an MLK level. Still, he’s a brave man.
Wow! Elevated to the front page on the best thinking-man’s blog on the internet. I’m truly honored.
One problem for the “religion of woke and/or the left” is that it is a religion where “heaven” is to be achieved on Earth and there is no afterlife. That means you have to get heaven going before you die. And that is why they often get “in a hurry” and and come out boldly too soon.
So…I was reading about the cancellation of Queen Elizabeth II as democratically decided by a Common Room of the Magdalen College of Oxford, which was (surprise) initiated by a Woke American and carried by the vote of the many international students, and that seemed like a good example of Quasi Religious Dogma.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15217727/amercian-student-led-motion-remove-portrait-queen-oxford-2/
It’s also very worrying when the people born in that part of the world are enabling and colluding with them, as we’ve seen in America.
Somehow my reading today led to this post by Heather Mac Donald.
https://www.city-journal.org/tulsa-opera-daniel-bernard-roumain
The relevance is how the story became part of this Woke Composer’s litany of oppression, and how the Woke Hierarchy of Victimhood allows in-fighting among the Woke – because of Whiteness.
As with many other instances of “oppression” that have hit the news, the actual incident would draw zero notice if it hadn’t occurred to some Official Victim.
That’s the background. Heather details Roumain’s career as a Woke Composer, and points to some criticism of the piece itself as being not quite top caliber.
But the Woke Composer had never been told “no” before.
So it’s all the fault of Whiteness in the Opera.
The commentary on Mac Donald’s post included exchanges with their resident Marxist (what has happened to Manju and Montage??) and ended with him linking a post at New Republic (where else?), which I include as an example of the genre long noted by Neo, where the choice of emphasis and “alternative facts” creates a narrative that is very convincing on the surface, if you don’t need a lot of convincing to have your biases confirmed (yes, we can cite examples on the Right, but this one is germane to the topic).
https://newrepublic.com/article/162472/white-men-wanted-victims-culture-wars-joseph-darda-review
That would be due to the grandstanding of Brave Sir Kerry and his ilk, a charge which may have some merit.
That is, PTSD was just a way of “effacing difficult questions of accountability and guilt in “a dehistoricized trauma culture in which all could claim the status of survivor,” Darda said.”
Let me just say, I can’t even.
“Woke American”
Katzman Kills it with the Kulture of Kritique.
Tsk Tsk.
Please stop doing itttttttt. Pretty Please!
Race seems a red herring to me, because I recognise Whiteness as synomynous with the old term Bourgeois. The supposed faults found in Whiteness (punctuality, fidelity to spouses, settling debts etc.) are exactly what used to be called, contemptously, Bourgeois. This is Cultural Marxism: the claim that the dominant Class impose their values on the rest of us, and these values are alien to us.
True there are plenty of cultural nuances to Race in America to be drawn on, but this is, at core, a switching of labels. They haven’t bothered to update the brand in any other way.
Whiteness is Americanness is because pickup trucks with flags.
https://notthebee.com/article/new-york-times-columnist-really-disturbed-to-see-pickup-trucks-and-american-flags-on-long-island-and-im-starting-to-think-she-doesnt-get-out-of-the-city-much
Don’t miss the rest of the fisking.
I agree that woke dogma is religious in nature. What I found interesting is your conjecture that it is filling a hole left by Atheism.
After some consideration, I fear that you may be right. I think that there may be two sorts of atheist. One is the conscious person that actually went through the thought process before rejecting religion. The other is the unconscious type that simply was not exposed to religion or is atheist because their family or friends are.
But, unfortunately, most people are sheep and to not think for themselves. And, right now, a lot of people are being herded into wokism.
The Katzman creep is begging to be stuffed into a locker somewhere.
The whole story is another indicator that the younger generation among the professional-managerial types (and aspirants in the universities) is unworthy of the benefits of living in the country that others have built and maintained.
Roy Nathanson on June 12, 2021 at 7:13 am: “[1] One is the conscious person that actually went through the thought process before rejecting religion. [2] The other is the unconscious type that simply was not exposed to religion or is atheist because their family or friends are.”
It is certainly possible that both apply. To both liberal (or Leftist) and conservative non-believers alike.
Larry Arnhart postulates that humans have at last 20 evolved natural desires, one of which is for transcendence. I can’t prove it, but I suspect this desire exists on a spectrum of psychological force such that some people can face the reality of a cold dark cosmos with greater equanimity than others. The latter seek solace in a variety of belief systems; and as you suggest, wokeness could well be one of them.
And we might note that Heather MacDonald used to blog at http://secularright.org. She is still listed as a contributor but I believe she has moved on to other venues. The site is no longer what it was initially.