Babygate: Where People Allow Skin Color to Interfere with Basic Human Kindness

Have you heard about "Babygate"? The crux of the problem is that a white man affectionately held a Black friend's Black baby on his lap, at the friends's request during a meeting of the NYC Community Education Council. Members of the Council complained, indicating that this was "harmful" and that it "hurts people." The formal written accusation contained the following:

The letter characterized the lap incident as harmful: “Imagine the insult and emotional injury any thinking person, especially a person of color, suffered when they witnessed this scene and heard that comment,” it stated, calling them “shocking, disgusting, offensive, and racially incendiary.” It demanded that Wrocklage resign, claiming that allowing such incidents to continue without consequences “will only further empower the perpetuation of similar racist behaviors.

When the man who held the baby was called out, he challenged the accusers to state why this was racist. The accusers could not explain why this was racist. They told him that he needed to read Robin DiAngelo. This incident illustrates how crazed we are getting. "Anti-racist" ideology is has successfully turned innocent human kindness into a bad thing.

This recent incident and its aftermath were described in detail, then analyzed by Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic in an article titled "Anti-racist Arguments Are Tearing People Apart: What a viral story reveals about contemporary leftist discourse." An excerpt:

Folks who have different ideas about how to combat racism should engage one another. They might even attempt a reciprocal book exchange, in which everyone works to understand how others see the world. A more inclusive anti-racist canon would include Bayard Rustin, Albert Murray, Henry Louis Gates, Zadie Smith, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Danielle Allen, Randall Kennedy, Stephen Carter, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Barbara and Karen Fields, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Adolph Reed, Kmele Foster, Coleman Hughes, and others.

As long as sharp disagreements persist about what causes racial inequality and how best to remedy it, deliberations rooted in the specific costs and benefits of discrete policies will provide a better foundation for actual progress than meta-arguments about what “anti-racism” demands.

Continue ReadingBabygate: Where People Allow Skin Color to Interfere with Basic Human Kindness

Private Thought, Public Talk

Tweet from Bo Winegard:

This public/private divide in honest communications is ubiquitous in the outside world too. If only we could force everyone to install devices on their heads that would, at random times throughout the day, broadcast their actual thoughts. We would take extra pains to make all people wear these devices in churches, political gatherings and wherever people feel pressure to please their in-groups.  Doing this would be revolutionary in our hypocrisy-permeated world. Mind-blowingly revolutionary. If we made people wear these devices for even a month this would train us to say what we are actually thinking and to clearly admit when we don't actually know things.

OK, yes. It this would also cause serious chaos as our hidden romantic/sexual secrets are made public at inopportune random times. This thought experiment is a work in progress . . .

Continue ReadingPrivate Thought, Public Talk

Meanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, Violence Continues

Violence on the street every night in Portland, Oregon, despite the departure of federal law enforcement two weeks ago. The senseless destruction and violence is described in detail by the Washington Post. Here's an excerpt:

The weeks of destruction and intense clashes with police following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May have spurred angry backlash from Portland officials and some residents. Tensions have risen in recent weeks following a period of relative calm after federal law enforcement left Portland last month. . . . Tuesday night’s fire damaged important county resources that have nothing to do with policing, officials said, including the county’s Office of Community Involvement, which aims to engage historically marginalized communities in local political decisions about social services and the distribution of public resources.

“The lobby where the first same-sex marriage in Oregon took place, and where millions of pieces of personal protective equipment are being distributed to help our community battle covid-19, was damaged,” Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury said in a statement.

Total silence from the New York Times for two weeks. Nothing from NPR for the past 10 days. It's like Portland doesn't exist . . . or perhaps these stories don't fit the official narrative.

Continue ReadingMeanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, Violence Continues