Is This Racist?

Objective facts v. explosive feelings in allegations of racism.  

Fri Jul 31, 2020 Danusha V. Goska 73

BLM activists and their supporters allege that America is "systemically racist" and must undergo a cleansing purge in order that a new Utopia may be established. This Utopia will not eliminate white people's racism; their racism is "timeless and immutable." Whiteness studies, according to columnist Barbara Kay, teaches that to be white is to be "branded, literally in the flesh, with evidence of a kind of original sin … you can't eradicate it. The goal ... is to entrench permanent race consciousness in everyone – eternal victimhood for non-whites, eternal guilt for whites." The taxpayer-funded Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture offers explanatory material, and a Smithsonian poster on whiteness provides a handy summary. Bestselling race guru Robin Diangelo says that no white person should ever be allowed to say "I'm not racist." Unlike previous leftist Utopias, this post-BLM Utopia will not create a "new man," in the way that communists attempt to create a "New Socialist Man." Indeed, evidence suggests that at this very moment Communist China is brainwashing Uighurs to turn them into "New Socialist Men." Rather, the BLM Utopia will not cleanse white people, it will merely permanently blame, shame and cow them.

A bulldozer is ploughing through American history and culture and unearthing more and more "evidence" that America is "systemically racist" and must be cleansed and purged. Are objective facts being marshalled to support these charges and this purge? Or are emotions, or even mass hysteria, ruling the day? Is it the case that all non-whites agree with these charges of racism, and is it only whites, psychologically handicapped by "white privilege" and "white fragility" who disagree? Is American history being told accurately, or is it being distorted to serve a master narrative of systemic racism under every rock, behind every door, and in every white man's heart? Below I will consider three different sets of allegations of racism, and conclude with a discussion of a classroom exercise that both educated and disturbed me.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is the recipient of both a MacArthur "Genius" award and a Pulitzer Prize. America's current purge has received significant inspiration from her 1619 Project at the New York Times. Charles Kesler in the New York Post called recent riots the "1619 riots" In reply, Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted, "It would be an honor. Thank you." Hannah-Jones took credit for riots that burned cities, looted businesses, and resulted in numerous deaths, including of African Americans. The 1619 Project argues that America is founded on white supremacy and slavery. In 1995, Hannah-Jones wrote that, "the white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world." Hannah-Jones' mother, Cheryl Novotny, is of Czech and English descent, that is, Novotny is very white, as are both the owner and the CEO of the Times. "Oprah Winfrey is partnering with Lionsgate to turn The New York Times's 1619 Project into feature films and television programs," The Federalist reported on July 14, 2020. The project has already been folded into school curricula. "As of February 2020, five public school systems had adopted the 1619 Project's curriculum district-wide, and its free teaching materials had reached 3,500 classrooms," writes Prof. Carole M. Swain.
"I helped fact-check the 1619 Project. The Times ignored me," wrote historian Leslie M. Harris. A central claim of the Project, Harris writes, is that "the patriots fought the American Revolution in large part to preserve slavery in North America." Harris refuted that claim. In public statements, Hannah-Jones defied her.

Harris is not the only African American scholar publicly to take issue with the 1619 Project. 1776 Unites is an initiative by prominent African American scholars, including Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Jason D. Hill, Carol M Swain and Glenn Loury. These luminaries write that their project will "uphold our country's authentic founding virtues and values and challenge those who assert America is forever defined by its past failures, such as slavery. We seek to … celebrate the progress America has made on delivering its promise of equality and opportunity and highlight the resilience of its people … We do this in the spirit of 1776, the date of America's true founding." These African American scholars have not received a fraction of the attention, awards, or funding that the 1619 Project has.

The rewriting of American history as systemically racist extends to common household items, like cinnamon crumb cakes, previously perceived as harmless. Briones Bedell self-identifies as a "Youth human rights activist. California high school senior," and an "Intersectional Feminist for Human Rights." On July 8, 2020, Bedell tweeted, "The carefully-crafted facade of your friendly neighborhood hipster grocery store belies a darker image; one that romanticizes imperialism, fetishizes native cultures, and casually misappropriates … Trader Joe's branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures. It presents 'Joe' as the default 'normal' and the other characters falling outside of it." Calling a puttanesca sauce "Trader Giotto's" rather than "Trader Joe's" is an "insidious" "micro-aggression" that will "inevitably escalate" to violent assault, Bedell says.

An example of Bedell's version of a racist atrocity can be found in this image. A beige and white cardboard box includes a picture of cinnamon crumb coffee cake on an ornamental cake-plate. Perhaps since many associate baked goods with Mitteleuropa cities like Vienna and Prague, rather than being "Trader Joe's" cake mix, it is "Baker Josef's," that is, a version of the name "Joseph" found in Central Europe..............To Read More....