Matt Taibbi: Robin DiAngelo Has Published a New (Old) Book

Matt Taibbi somehow convinced himself to read race-grifter Robin DiAngelo's new book, Nice racism. I can't muster the necessary masochism to join him in this effort, especially after I forced myself to trudge through DiAngelo's first book, White Fragility. According to Taibbi, DiAngelo's sequel is a regurgitation of her first book and nothing more. The title of Taibbi's review is "Our Endless Dinner With Robin DiAngelo Suburban America's self-proclaimed racial oracle returns with a monumentally oblivious sequel to "White Fragility." Here's an excerpt of Taibbi's review:

Nice Racism’s central message is that it’s a necessity to stop white people from seeing themselves as distinct people. “Insisting that each white person is different from every other white person,” DiAngelo writes, “enables us to distance ourselves from the actions of other white people.” She doesn’t see, or maybe she does, where this logic leads. If you tell people to abandon their individual identities and think of themselves as a group, they sooner or later will start to behave as a group. Short of something like selling anthrax spores or encouraging people to explore sexual feelings toward nine year-olds, is there a worse idea than suggesting — demanding — that people get in touch with their white identity?

If DiAngelo’s insistence that “I don’t feel guilty about racism,” reveling in scenes of making people experience and re-experience racial discomfort, and weird puffery in introducing herself by saying things like, “I am Robin and I am white” feel familiar, it’s because she’s hitting all the themes favored by Klansmen and identitarian loons of yore. Read a book like David Duke’s My Awakening (if you can stand it, you can find excerpts here) and you’ll encounter the same types of passages present in Nice Racism.

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Don’t Get Lured Off the Trail by Hyper-Technical Definitions of “Critical Race Theory”

It's a mistake to argue whether the poisonous divisive and dishonest ideas being preached in many schools is "Critical Race Theory" (even though it is clear that much of it is very much like CRT). Instead, look at the types of things that are being taught in many schools, things that sound so much like CRT that they are reasonably being referred to as a modern version of CRT. Then simply ask yourself whether it is a good thing to preach this sort of divisive and dishonest drivel to children and teenagers. Just point to the things that are being embraced by schools, such as the recent episode at Julliard, and then ask yourself whether good, healthy school environments like this lead to human flourishing. That avoids intentional obfuscation such as this disingenuous conversation by Joy Reid and Ibram X. Kendi (as pointed out by Wokal Distance).

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Two Worlds

When I first heard about the irresolvable blue dress versus brown dress dispute, I assumed it was an outlier. I didn't realize that it was the template for every social issue going forward.

We now have a world where many of us see decades of commendable racial progress based on MLK's urge that we treat each other based on content of character, not color of skin. On the other side are many other people who consider themselves to be "white" who claim to have experienced an epiphany over the past year. They see themselves as drenched in guilt because they have been blindly perpetuating the mentality of slave-holders. Is there any possible way to bridge this gap?

I believe that Thomas Chatterton Williams has nailed it: Speak only for yourself based only on your own life, your own choices and your own experience. If you've been a lifelong closet racist, such as Robin DiAngelo, then, yes, it's time to come clean. I suspect there are more than a few such people But don't pretend that you can speak for anyone else. Don't pretend that it has been impossible to treat everyone else as individuals.Don't pretend that it is a rare thing. Don't pretend that everyone else inevitably sees people as "colors" and treats them in stereotypical ways. If you recently had a revelation that you are a racist, go fix yourself and quit projecting your dysfunctional mindset onto everyone else. As part of your healing process, you might want to read Thomas Chatterton Williams' excellent book: Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race.

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Wide Open Classroom Discussion

A professor at Duke has convinced his students to open up classroom discussions. The project could not happen in the absence of trust. An excerpt from the WSJ:

To get students to stop self-censoring, a few agreed-on classroom principles are necessary. On the first day, I tell students that no one will be canceled, meaning no social or professional penalties for students resulting from things they say inside the class. If you believe in policing your fellow students, I say, you’re in the wrong room. I insist that goodwill should always be assumed, and that all opinions can be voiced, provided they are offered in the spirit of humility and charity. I give students a chance to talk about the fact that they can no longer talk. I let them share their anxieties about being socially or professionally penalized for dissenting. What students discover is that they are not alone in their misgivings.

Having now run the experiment with 300 undergraduates, I no longer wonder what would happen if students felt safe enough to come out of their shells. They flourish. In one class, my students had a serious but respectful discussion of critical race theory. Some thought it harmfully implied that blacks can’t get ahead on their own. Others pushed back.

My students had an honest conversation about race, but only because they had earned each other’s trust by making themselves vulnerable. On a different day, they spoke up for all positions on abortion. When a liberal student mentioned this to a friend outside class, she was met with disbelief.

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The Modern Woke Version of the Need for Endless War

Glenn Greenwald analyzes the recent comments of Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Greenwald places Milley's over-the-top concerns with white supremacy on a long historical arc of U.S. militarism. We must always have a villain and if we don't actually have one, we will concoct one. According to Greenwald, the motivation sprouted in WWII PTSD and continues today, turbo-charged by the collective power of the military-industrial complex. Here is an excerpt:

The post-WW2 military posture of the U.S. has been endless war. To enable that, there must always be an existential threat, a new and fresh enemy that can scare a large enough portion of the population with sufficient intensity to make them accept, even plead for, greater military spending, surveillance powers, and continuation of permanent war footing. Starring in that war-justifying role of villain have been the Communists, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Russia, and an assortment of other fleeting foreign threats.

According to the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence community, and President Joe Biden, none of those is the greatest national security threat to the United States any longer. Instead, they all say explicitly and in unison, the gravest menace to American national security is now domestic in nature. Specifically, it is "domestic extremists” in general — and far-right white supremacist groups in particular — that now pose the greatest threat to the safety of the homeland and to the people who reside in it.

In other words, to justify the current domestic War on Terror that has already provoked billions more in military spending and intensified domestic surveillance, the Pentagon must ratify the narrative that those they are fighting, those against whom they are fighting to defend the homeland, are white supremacist domestic terrorists. That will not work if white supremacists are small in number or weak and isolated in their organizing capabilities. To serve the war machine's agenda, they must pose a grave, pervasive and systemic threat.

Chris Hedges, who sees all forms of nationalism as a symphony of lies, wrote this about war:

The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war’s appeal. Many of us, restless and unfulfilled, see no supreme worth in our lives. We want more out of life. And war, at least, gives a sense that we can rise above our smallness and divisiveness.

George Orwell saw this too: “War had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war…. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil.”

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