You Don’t Matter

Robin DiAngelo, PhD, author of “White Fragility” and ‘White Fragility 2: Electric Boogaloo’ (actual title, “Nice Racism”), has deftly employed a cheap-trick debating trap into the cultural wedge of our time. In two words, “white fragility,” she simultaneously declares that being white makes you inherently racist and asserts that any protestations to the contrary are proof-positive of that racism.

It’s nonsense, of course, the product of someone far too deeply impressed with herself, far too validated by the mere fact of her intersectionality (woman+gay), and far too affirmed by the progressive-academic circle-jerk echo chamber. There isn’t debate here, this isn’t a measured and viable hypothesis to be tested in the court of public discourse, it’s just scolding. Worse, it’s racist scolding. It is definitionally racist: it judges people by their skin color.

Of course (again), the people who subscribe to her… to call it a hypothesis is to stretch the word past its breaking point… won’t accept that judging people by their skin color is racist. They’ve been working for a couple decades, at least, to Orwell that obvious conclusion into a black hole of vagueness (and yes indeed, the “black hole” metaphor has also been deemed racist, which make it ironically apt for this discussion) by adding conditions to the plain-as-day textbook definition.

To be racist, they tell us, requires that you have power over those who you’re judging by their skin color.

Now, pay close attention here.

The power they speak of is not individual power. It is not a group of gangbangers of whatever race or ethnicity you want to assign mugging old ladies of a less-oppressed race or ethnicity while calling her racist epithets, nor some skinhead shouting the N-word at the black mother of two. It is the purported “institutional” racism that is, we are told, apparently “proven” by disparity of outcome. If a high school admissions test results in a student demographic mix that doesn’t closely match the local populace, it’s proof of systemic racism. If a town or village in the suburbs is too “white,” it’s because of racist regulations and infrastructure, such as zoning for single-family detached homes and sizing the sewer system so that it can’t support high-density housing (regulations intended to produce disparate outcomes or unintentionally racist, depending on the wokegressive’s mood at the time). If blacks on average are poorer whites, it’s because “society” in general is racist (half a century of progressive policies that have trapped the poor in poverty have nothing to do with this, apparently).

They have not only removed the individual from their definition of racism, they actually assert that the concept of individualism itself is racist. Matt Taibbi’s recent column quotes Robin DiAngelo:

The ideology of individualism is dependent on a denial of the past as relevant to the present … Individualism denies the significance of race.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is rolling over in his grave. Indeed, were he to be around today, I’d not be surprised to hear him denounced by Twitter-turds the more-woke-than-thee crowd.

The subordination of the individual to identity politics has been a recurring call-out of mine. It is the most dangerous and destructive element of the entire modern progressive movement. That it “rhymes with” the cultural teachings of the Soviet Union and Red China is both intentional and incredibly ominous.

To be concerned about this is more than coffee-house chatter amongst libertarian wonks. Our entire society, arguably the most beneficial to humanity in history, as well as its foundational premise, are based on the premise that the individual matters. That the race warriors are in lockstep with the anti-individual ideologies of Marxism is, again, no coincidence. That the outcome, should this racist collectivism worldview emerge victorious, will be the destruction not only of our liberties, but of the living standards that the way of liberty and “the individual matters” have built over the past couple centuries is, to me, inevitable and undoubtable.

Overlaying this is another irony. Taibbi, immediately after quoting DiAngelo, quotes white-nationalist it-boy Richard Spencer: “Individualism is for f*gs” (elision by Taibbi).

Welcome to the Horseshoe Theory, and welcome to as good a reason as any to reject the far left as vociferously as you would reject the far-right.

Raw, naked identity politics. Race-based attacks and accusations. Intimidation and coercion. Tribal loyalty and hatred of “other” (‘anti-racists’ like DiAngelo as eager to show off their bona-fides as Derek Vinyard in the prison yard. Antifa goons and Proud Boys mixing it up, but in truth brothers-in-arms.

That this is being taught to an incredibly egomaniacal, social-media-steeped, “I-matter” generation where every fleeting thought is deemed worthy of global dissemination and narcissists make careers “influencing” others is an irony that would be amusing were the stakes not so high.

This destruction of the individual via the message of anti-racism propagates like a virus. The DiAngelo message is akin to special revelation and feeds the human-nature desire to bring that secret knowledge to others. DiAngelo’s missive to her fans is that they have to deliver the message “you’re a racist” to their white friends. That these messengers think they’re doing good masquerades the reality – that they’re doing this not to make things better, but to feed their egos – to feel good about themselves, their friends’ actual “content of character” being wholly irrelevant.

With individualism comes equality. The premise is that “we are all created equal,” and that therefore none of us have rights superior to others’. Again, no coincidence that equality is now a Bad Thing, and is being replaced by “equity.” Equity, being, ultimately, in the eye of the beholder, is a perfect mushy-brain idea for those who reject the primacy of the individual. They get to decide where it is lacking, and they get to decide what’s to be done about it.

Somewhere, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Marx are smiling.