August 27, 2019

"Your great saints were child rapists. Your sacred texts are false alibis for a world-historic crime. That isn’t a hill your shining city sits upon..."

"... but the unmarked graves of men it condemned to unlived lives. The prosperity you saw as confirmation of God’s favor is actually proof of your complicity in theft; tucked beneath the bounty your fathers bequeathed you are a pile of unpaid debts. And the collective identity that gave you belonging – that freed you from the solitary confinement of your self, and commuted the death sentence that is your flesh – is a hateful lie that all non-racists are duty-bound to lay to rest. This is, ostensibly, what the typical white conservative hears when reading (or imagining what it would be like to read) the New York Times’ '1619 Project.'... But if the right’s catastrophizing response to the 1619 Project is incomprehensible in intellectual terms, it’s more understandable in psychological ones. The Times’s narrative does not delegitimize the U.S. nation-state, or American patriotism. But it very much does challenge the legitimacy of white American identity – and the secular saints and potted histories that lend that identity its substance. And for many white conservatives in the U.S., the idea of surrendering that identity is quite painful...."

From "The ‘1619 Project’ Isn’t Anti-American — It’s Anti-White Identity Politics" by Eric Levitz (New York Magazine).

242 comments:

1 – 200 of 242   Newer›   Newest»
Darrell said...

So, people, you're going to vote for these weirdos?

Let Bernie fly you back to the USSR. We'll be the lucky ones.

Tom T. said...

This is projection. "Collective identity" is a feature of life on the left, not something a white conservative envisions.

bleh said...

This garbage makes me question whether national reconciliation was the right move. I have to remind myself sometimes that the hectoring, hate-America identity politics of the Left is still a minority viewpoint in this country. Too bad it has such currency in our media and elite institutions.

Darrell said...

The new lie--White Supremacy.
So much better than the old lie--Russia!!11!!!!

Mark said...

This is, ostensibly, what the typical white conservative hears when reading (or imagining what it would be like to read) the New York Times’ '1619 Project.'

Levitz should step off his own self-centered privilege here. The typical white conservative doesn't care and hasn't read and won't care to imagine to read the New York Times’ '1619 Project.' The typical white conservative doesn't believe that the world revolves around the NYT.

whitney said...

I can hardly wait until white people are despised minority. It's going to be so much fun for us then. I can't imagine what it must be like to have white children right now knowing that that's their future

AustinRoth said...

The hate from m the Left is reaching the point of insanity.

MartyH said...

So we're sinners the hands of an angry God?

rhhardin said...

The labor theory of value, as if management and direction had no value.

Americans know what to do. One thing often is to hire people.

What was the chaplain in the POW camp, who, upon getting Red Cross packages of food and cigarettes, set about trading contents with people who wanted more of this for less of that, and ended the day with everybody better off and himself with the equivalent of two Red Cross packages.

He's a middleman, not a parasite. Middlemen take what is valueless here and move it to where it has value there. Expertise.

Shouting Thomas said...

Oh, well...

I'll still vote for Trump in 2020, even though I'm a very bad person for doing so.

I don't want to spend much time obsessing over this shit.

My life is good. If other people want to be miserable, who am I to deny them that pleasure?

Dave Begley said...

America sucked in 1619 because we didn’t have the NYT to tell us how to think.

rehajm said...

What good is the race pandering if you're going to run another sour old white woman? Seems like a waste...

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

What about white leftists? Do they get a pass?

Fernandinande said...

The NYT has a point, but it's hard to see because of the the way it combs its hair.

If only those non-white people from all over the world who moved to the US would just write back to their countries of origin about how awful it is to live in the US for everyone except cisgenderedwhitemales, everyone would be happier.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Left-wing supremacy.

Nonapod said...

If we hold our ancestors to 2019 standards, those people condemed to "live unlived lives" weren't so great either. This focus on the ancestral sins of the white men is myopic. I don't care who you are, you have ancestors who did horrific things. It's silly to judge others based on their ancestors.

rhhardin said...

If you don't know what to do, find somebody to work for that knows where your work has value.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

What color are HIllary and Warren?

Martin said...

This is all ridiculous. The leaked transcript makes it clear that the whole 1619 project is nothing more, or less, than an all-out effort to tar Trump and his supporters as racist and thereby win the 2020 election, the Mueller investigation having failed in its true purpose of producing impeachment-worthy evidence. It is weaponizing historical claims for partisan political purposes. That is all it is, and treating it as a real analysis of complex history gives it and its authors way too much legitimacy.

It is dishonest at its core, and arguing about this or that interpretation of the history and effects of slavery is really quite beside the point.

rhhardin said...

You need whites so that there are smart people.

Martin said...

That is, the leaked transcript of Baquet's staff meeting at the NYT.

SDaly said...

Liberalism is an auto-immune disorder. Liberals could launch the same attacks on every single nation and "identity," in history, but they choose to attack their own countrymen.

Gusty Winds said...

Have we forgotten how revolutionary the idea of “all men are created equal” actually was when it was written? A huge stepping stone in the Farewell to Kings saga, started with the Magna Carta. Western Civilization advanced because of the American Revolution.

The Civil War saw white guys from the 20th Maine defend the Union flank on Little Round Top on day two of Gettysburg. They did it to preserve the abstract idea written by Jefferson.

Our Judaeo-Christian founders were flawed sinners. Surprise!! That would only be misunderstood by the Godless atheists at the New York Times, and our new Orwellian social fathers in Silicon Valley.

The 1619 project is a re-write of history to control the modern era and its people; much like the Priests of the Temple of Syrinx.

traditionalguy said...

Sorry NYTs . This is a free country and has been since the Pilgrims arrived and set up their Compact to govern themselves. All the politics since then have been attempts to reverse that act of God. And if the German Drooling Idiot on the British Throne could not exterminate it in 1775-1781 or his Privy Council 1n 1812-1815 ,or in the 1840s to 1860s no matter how hard they tried,then the World Government Idiots in London cannot do it today.

Sebastian said...

"The Times’s narrative does not delegitimize the U.S. nation-state, or American patriotism."

Huh? That's the point.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

They don't hate us because we're American; they hate us because we're white. Whew!

Thanks for clearing that up, Eric Levitz.

MikeR said...

"But it very much does challenge the legitimacy of white American identity – and the secular saints and potted histories that lend that identity its substance." It is too bad that so many Americans cannot grasp that the fact that they were white is not why we respect them.

MikeR said...

@Martin. "The leaked transcript makes it clear that the whole 1619 project is nothing more, or less, than an all-out effort to tar Trump and his supporters as racist and thereby win the 2020 election, the Mueller investigation having failed" Good point. I did forget that.

sykes.1 said...

The New York Times is a Jewish publication, so it is necessarily anti-White and anti-Christian. Moreover, its owners, editors and writers suffer from an extreme Negrophilia, and they produce huge amounts of pro-Negro propaganda. At the same time, they deny the existence of races.

On the plus side, their crosswords are pretty good, especially Thursday through Sunday. Monday to Wednesday, not so much.

Shouting Thomas said...

Miserable-ism.

A term coined by James Lileks.

Ignore that we're living in peaceful, prosperous, happy times.

Stew in misery over the sins of the past. It's your obligation, unless you're stupid, right?

Night Owl said...

The goal appears to be to guilt white people into voting for democrats. I guess that's all the propagandists have. The constant anti-white rhetoric will likely only suceed in radicalizing some young white men. But then they can blame Trump. Score!

hawkeyedjb said...

Of all the imperfect societies on earth, leftists hate America and Israel most of all. Why is that?

List all the states with an official religion. Which one do you hate? Odd that there's only one.

List all the prosperous, peaceful, successfully integrated states. Odd that you hate the one that millions, billions even, want to move to.

A Frenchman once said to me, nobody hates their own country the way you Americans do. Some Americans, I replied, yes.

Temujin said...

Yes, well this certainly helped put things into perspective and allowed my small, insignificant brain to better understand the meaning and importance of our betters plans for the next level indoctrination. I'm all in. Let it rip.

Let's see how far you can push until the masses finally shake the blanket and send you all scurrying back into the dark places where you normally reside. Electing Trump was just the first shake of the blanket. More to come.

narciso said...

Resistance is futile?



https://www.commondreams.org/author/eric-levitz

Darrell said...

16 19 translates to PS--post Semite.
It's the new "88." Heil You-know-who.

rhhardin said...

It's all a generalized #MeToo complaint.

Look for women nagging behind it.

hawkeyedjb said...

One of the comments I remember after 9/11 was from some mullah or other in some Muslim shithole. You can build great buildings, he said, but we can tear them down. Equal achievements, in his eyes. Same mentality at the New York Times.

Enlighten-NewJersey said...

He’s a mind reader. He knows how other’s feel and why. Anyway, I found this bit about the 1819 project interesting:

“Those involved knew it was a big task, one that would require the expertise of those who have dedicated their entire lives and careers to studying the nuances of what it means to be a black person in America.

What an amazing country is the U.S.A. Apparently, some people can spend their entire lives and make a living pondering what it’s like to be black in America.

narciso said...

My last link concerned uber woke pm trudeau, soending some 7.7 million, of course in canada they are trying to block all alternative media on account of crimethink, thats what michael manns on tim ball was about.

Qwinn said...

They are desperately hoping to radicalize young white clearly conservative men into physical violence. I bet they're amazed it hasn't happened already. And when it does happen, because at this rate and with this level of gaslighting it's inevitable, it won't matter that the conservative violence was one tenth that already committed by Antifa. The Left will justify an infinite amount of additional violence on their part with it.

chuck said...

But if the right’s catastrophizing response to the 1619 Project is incomprehensible in intellectual terms

We are laughing, not catastrophizing. And I'm laughing at you too. Why don't you write something about the Amazon fires?

narciso said...

Attack on tim ball is about, of the 100 million dead mr levitz has no answer.

tim maguire said...

You know your scheme is in trouble when your first attempt at defending it is to try to pretend it's not what it it clearly is.

gilbar said...

""Your great saints were child rapists. Your sacred texts are false alibis for a world-historic crime. That isn’t a hill your shining city sits upon...""

So, how far did YOU get into that sentence, before You started thinking that it WASN'T about Islam?
I got pretty far

Darrell said...

Why don't you write something about the Amazon fires?

OK. Many are being set by Lefties butthurt over losing the election in Brazil.

Meade said...

“It's silly to judge others based on their ancestors.”

Yes, but it’s worse than silly. Judging others based on ancestry is fundamentally anti-American.

Fernandinande said...

I did the google on [numerology of 1619] and It started talking about angels - I guess we better listen!

ANGEL NUMBER 1619
Number 1619 is a combination of the energies and attributes of number 1 appearing twice, amplifying its influences, and the vibrations and qualities of number 6 and number 9.


On the other hand -

Significance & Meaning Of Angel Number 1619
Reminding you of your strength and your worth, your angels are asking you through Angel Number 1619 to move forward with your life. The appearance of this angel number suggests that you have lacked lately regarding energy.


On the other guy's other hand -

Do you see the number 1619 everywhere? Does 1619 come up in conversation? Do you notice 1619 on television? Do you hear 1619 on the radio? What does it mean when you see and hear 1619 everywhere?

According to Olga, when you see a number such as 1619 over and over again, it is an angel trying to communicate with you through numbers.


gilbar said...

So, In 1619 Who WERE the Good Countries ?
I mean, We Can ALL Agree that America was THE WORST PLACE ON EARTH
But Where was The Best Place? Where were the Good Places?
England?
Holland?
Spain?
Kenya?
China?

Someone help me out please!

DavidUW said...

So. One group of my ancestors owned slaves. Another group were slaves. How much am I supposed to hate myself.

This is stupid stuff.

Fernandinande said...

They are desperately hoping to radicalize young white clearly conservative men into physical violence

It's already working - this wild man actually had the nerve to ... point to his hat and speak!! Can you believe it?!?

"Witnesses, including the bartender, say Lenzner was the one who started it. In security footage, he can be seen pointing to his hat and saying something as he left, and witnesses say that’s what started it all."

Mike Sylwester said...

Does Eric Levitz vote in our government, which is so evil?

Why would he participate in our wicked society by voting?

Levitz should stay home on election days.

In particular, he never should vote for Joe Biden, that racist who tried to prevent Kamala Harris from attending an integrated school when she was a little Black girl.

Gahrie said...

Right now, most White Americans identify as "American" rather than "White". You really don't want that to flip. This type of shit makes that flip more likely.

Gahrie said...

Why don't you write something about the Amazon fires?

OK. Many are being set by Lefties butthurt over losing the election in Brazil.


And it's mainly farms burning, not jungle or forest.

rhhardin said...

Try to imagine what life was like when there was historical imagination.

It's a lot like thinking that today's moral absolutes aren't absolutes. That thinking is what's not allowed today.

rhhardin said...

Yuo can't have moral absolutes without mob action.

Rory said...

We have to get ready to leave these people behind us. Let them have their dozen microstates while the rest of us reestablish Liberty.

Jeff Brokaw said...

Posted without comment... hmm. How is this interesting or enlightening in any way?

Is this tossing red meat into the cage for the commentariat?

rhhardin said...

Noticing the mechanism of moral absolutes is a lot like analyzing the workings of literary effects.

Put the NO back in noticing.

Seeing Red said...

We weren’t American in 1619.

Now IF the British papers want to publish that to scold them.....

Beasts of England said...

’But if the right’s catastrophizing response to the 1619 Project is incomprehensible in intellectual terms, it’s more understandable in psychological ones.’

Or you could just admit, Eric, that you’re a pussy.

cacimbo said...

Just as with #MeToo - rich, white leftists will be the first victims of the anti-white witch hunt they are building to try and bring down Trump. Here in NYC our very woke Mayor brought in a School Chancellor who is in the process cleansing high ranking school administration of "toxic whiteness". Surprise - the white women (most jewish) fired to make way for diversifying browns do not feel their jobs are the ones that needed browning. The women are now suing claiming anti-white bias. Baffling how the left expects to be immune from the witch hunts they foment.

Anonymous said...

From "The ‘1619 Project’ Isn’t Anti-American — It’s Anti-White Identity Politics" by Eric Levitz (New York Magazine).

Looks a hell of a lot more like a pro-white-identity-politics project to me. This is the sort of stuff I'd put out if I really, really wanted white Americans to abandon civic nationalism and go all-in on constructing a "white" identity tribe.

rhhardin said...

Saints only need three miracles, at least one of which is a card trick.

cacimbo said...

@gilbar - Agree - sure started out sounding like a condemnation of Islam.

Anonymous said...

This 1619 shite is based on the same tedious premise as all "woke" historical "revisionism". It doesn't "revise" anything. It's just another round of "bet you didn't know", slapped together for the ignorant by the ignorant.

The same "I'm going to blow your mind with the historical knowledge that The Man (the patriarchy, white supremacy, Christian theocrats, whatevuh) have been hiding from you, and keeping from your children's textbooks!". Followed by trotting out mind-blowing facts that nobody didn't know.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

"Witnesses, including the bartender, say Lenzner was the one who started it. In security footage, he can be seen pointing to his hat and saying something as he left, and witnesses say that’s what started it all."

Similarly, Michael Drejka assaulted Britany Jacobs by pointing at her car. And by being white.

Seeing Red said...

Here in NYC our very woke Mayor brought in a School Chancellor who is in the process cleansing high ranking school administration of "toxic whiteness". Surprise - the white women (most jewish) fired to make way for diversifying browns do not feel their jobs are the ones that needed browning. The women are now suing claiming anti-white bias. Baffling how the left expects to be immune from the witch hunts they foment.


Karma!

chickelit said...

If the nation is founded on slavery and slavery is woven into the very fabric of our society, then our society is illegitimate. The only way to overcome it is to overturn it. That would take revolution. This is the path the New York Times goes down. Once it lights this fire, it will not be able to control it. But it wants to strike the match anyway.

Charles Manson had similar thoughts.

Mike Sylwester said...

African-Americans can protest against our country's racist past by boycotting elections until they get reparations.

buwaya said...

This is a remarkably shallow look. In several dimensions of shallow.
More fundamental with being American is that you all are really Europeans.
America is a European colony, as Syracuse was a Greek one.
Moreover America, the US, has become in effect the pan-European colony, all of them, every strain and type, well-blended or just about.

That this is white by nature is an accident of nature, because that is the nature of Europe.

There is no way out of this.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Your Elders of Zion were gold loving, hook-nosed goat fuckers who ate Christian children at Passover, sought to subvert the morals of Gentiles, and control the world's news media and economies, but that doesn't mean they were bad people.

dbp said...

""And for many white conservatives in the U.S., the idea of surrendering that identity is quite painful....""

I don't think the 1619 Project is even aimed at convincing white conservatives to surrender any kind of identity. I think it is about mau-mauing white Democrats into staying with a party which is increasingly becoming (even more obviously) anti-white.

Most conservatives don't think of themselves racially but rather believe in taking each person as they come and judging them by their actions and accomplishments. Categorizing by race is a left-wing thing.

buwaya said...

As for promoting an “American” identity, the institutions of your overlords are doing quite the opposite.
This certainly isn’t what your schools are directed to do. They have been mandated to create as many mutually-hostile groups as they can sort out and identify.

Jeff Brokaw said...

I wonder, will the 1619 Project also dig into the fact that the movement to stop slavery was almost completely a Christian movement driven by William Wliberforce in England, which then spread to America?

Since we’re suddenly all about correcting the historical record, and all.

buwaya said...

Humans are social animals and will group themselves spontaneously.
This is a conservative observation.
The libertarian ideal is an inhuman fantasy.

elkh1 said...

I thought they were talking to Muslims about Islam before I got to "white conservatives".

Anonymous said...

Jeff Brokaw: Posted without comment... hmm. How is this interesting or enlightening in any way?

Is this tossing red meat into the cage for the commentariat?


Funny that you see the red meat on display here in those terms.

Don't you find it the least bit, er, interesting, why and into what waters New York magazine is tossing their chum? Think it's all aimed at people like the commenters here, to rile up right-leaning rubes to get 'em clicking? Is that New York magazine's business model and raison-d'être?

I certainly find the relentless scapegoating and demonization of a racial group by the academy, the press, and a major political party in this country to be...interesting.

Swede said...

So, no more Russians then?

This is the next thing?

Ok.

Bruce Hayden said...

“The Times’s narrative does not delegitimize the U.S. nation-state, or American patriotism. But it very much does challenge the legitimacy of white American identity – and the secular saints and potted histories that lend that identity its substance. And for many white conservatives in the U.S., the idea of surrendering that identity is quite painful...."”

This delegitimization, this challenge to the legitimacy of American identity, is precisely the goal there with the 1619 project, as well as with the reprogramming that the left has been doing in the public school systems, for the last half century. Every country has a national story, and they have been trying for a long time to destroy the story of American greatness. We talk about our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, natural rights, fighting a war to eliminate slavery, settling this country, saving Europe three times during the 20th Century with our military (WW I, WW II, USSR). Etc. They talk about the 250 years of slavery. We talk about the fight to end it, the hundreds of thousands of male, mostly white, almost entirely Christian, males who fought and died to end it 150 years ago.

And, I think that it is because America has been so great, that they have to destroy our greatness. Historically, much of this attack on American greatness came straight out of Soviet funded and designed propaganda from the Cold War. Of course, the leftists pushing this attack on American greatness ignore this. Many don’t know that the philosophy that they so avidly push on the rest of us was designed by a country that killed upwards of a hundred million people, many of them its own citizens. That is, of course because, for them, history starts anew all the time. And we have always been at war with Eastasia.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

I had a weird, and somewhat uncomfortable, conversation with a young black FedEx driver the other day. Out of the blue, he starts singing the praises of white people. How they're essential to making things work and how screwed society would be without them. He went on about it at some length, with myself replying with noncommittal monosyllables. Perhaps he could write about it. The 1492 Project or something. The thing I found so interesting about it was that it seemed like thoughts from a conversation taking place outside our (meaning white folks) hearing. Maybe all black people don't hate us. Maybe they're getting worried about all the indifferent Hispanic and Asian faces increasingly appearing in their days.

doctrev said...

Huh, I thought for sure this signal would bring JFarmer into the mix. Must be broken. Anyways! A thousand pardons, Mr. Leibitz: the founders obviously did not have the morals of Elite heroes like Jeff Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Dan Schneider, and Martin Luther King Jr.

If the New York Times thinks that fostering black supremacy can only end well for them, they're quite mistaken. Books like "The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews" are not homosexual coming-of-age stories. They empower men like Louis Farrakhan, and are much more believable to African-Americans at a local level. They'd love an excuse to dispossess the Jews of New York, and white Republicans may refuse to stand in the way, for some strange reason no one can imagine.

Bay Area Guy said...

The Get Trump squad has faltered and foundered.

So, now, it has morphed into s Get Whitey Squad.

But 1619 was a long time ago. Thank Goodness for the statute of limitations.

Bob Smith said...

Translation: “Get your wallet out Whitey”

Beasts of England said...

’And, I think that it is because America has been so great, that they have to destroy our greatness.’

People like the author have never contributed to the greatness of this nation, ergo, it has to be destroyed. To celebrate, or even acknowledge, our success only serves to magnify his inferiority.

SGT Ted said...

Collective guilt is unpatriotic. So is lumping people together by skin color to condemn them. Both are also un-American, just like modern leftism is un-American.

doctrev said...

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...
I had a weird, and somewhat uncomfortable, conversation with a young black FedEx driver the other day. Out of the blue, he starts singing the praises of white people. How they're essential to making things work and how screwed society would be without them. He went on about it at some length, with myself replying with noncommittal monosyllables. Perhaps he could write about it. The 1492 Project or something. The thing I found so interesting about it was that it seemed like thoughts from a conversation taking place outside our (meaning white folks) hearing. Maybe all black people don't hate us. Maybe they're getting worried about all the indifferent Hispanic and Asian faces increasingly appearing in their days.

8/27/19, 9:07 AM

Boondocks fans will call this "Uncle Ruckus Syndrome." Anyone from modern Africa, especially Rhodesia or South Africa, will agree most vehemently with the sentiment if not the name. Quite a few black Americans will share it, mostly because they can discern how the NYT is obviously using them as cannon fodder for the sake of moneyed interests. I find it rather pleasant, personally.

Wince said...

This is, ostensibly, what the typical white conservative hears when reading (or imagining what it would be like to read) the New York Times’ '1619 Project.'.

"That's metaphysically absurd, man! How can I know what you hear?"

Seeing Red said...

The Left loves Europe so much they have to Balkanize us.

Americans look forward.

Anonymous said...

buwaya: This is a remarkably shallow look. In several dimensions of shallow.
More fundamental with being American is that you all are really Europeans.
America is a European colony, as Syracuse was a Greek one.
Moreover America, the US, has become in effect the pan-European colony, all of them, every strain and type, well-blended or just about.

That this is white by nature is an accident of nature, because that is the nature of Europe.


The interesting question here is how an indisputable fact of history has become a scandal among the very classes of people entrusted with cultural transmission.

That the United States was a European diaspora nation, that it was (and self-consciously so) a member of a real thing called "Western Civilization", and should (and did) educate its children according to that self-understanding (and, moreover, that this was overall a *good* thing), was generally and calmly acknowledged within my own adult lifetime.

That this is now so hysterically disputed at its core (not just in rational acknowledgment of Americans of non-European descent) is...interesting.

Particularly in the larger context, where we note that this particular form of cultural invalidation is not at all restricted to the U.S. The usual suspects are doing their damnedest to convince the upcoming generations that European nations are not and never have been European.

MacMacConnell said...

Eric Levitz BA in creative writing, Masters in fiction writing both from John Hopkins. Christ! this guy was qualified to be a Obama security adviser.

Seeing Red said...

Via Lucianne:

Seattle Officials Can’t Agree on How to Remove Human Crap from Sidewalks – Councilman Argues Power Washers are Racist, Since Hoses Used Against Blacks in Past

Oso Negro said...

sykes.1 said...
The New York Times is a Jewish publication, so it is necessarily anti-White and anti-Christian. Moreover, its owners, editors and writers suffer from an extreme Negrophilia, and they produce huge amounts of pro-Negro propaganda. At the same time, they deny the existence of races.

On the plus side, their crosswords are pretty good, especially Thursday through Sunday. Monday to Wednesday, not so much.


It's always nice when the Russian troll farm takes notice of one's favorite blog. Sykes, I enormously enjoy Russia and Russian culture. But I just can't understand the continued effort to foment social tension - we do such a good job of it on our own. BTW, excellent use of wry witticism in the crossword comment. I give this post a 7 out of 10.

Seeing Red said...

So Blacks don’t water their lawns, landscaping or flowers because they don’t like hoses?

HoodlumDoodlum said...

. The Times’s narrative does not delegitimize the U.S. nation-state, or American patriotism.

That's false: the entire point is to delegitimize "American patriotism" as commonly understood before the enlightened writers of the 1619 project granted us their wisdom. The point of the project is to revise--they'd say correct--the historical understanding most Americans currently have by refocusing attention and promoting the use, and primacy, of the lens of slavery when evaluating US history. That is, obviously, meant to delegitimize the contrary POV and redefine what "American patriotism" is and means. The stated goal of the project is to "reframe our country's history" and place slavery "at the very center of the story." Since traditional American patriotism is not focused on our slavery sins and does not put slavery at the center of our story, that statement is a blatant lie.

Does it matter at all that much of the "scholarship" employed is just bad? The Spanish used slave labor to build forts in Georgia in the early 1500s. Africans were first enslaved in Puerto Rico around 1530 (after the local indigenous population the Spanish had enslaved began dying off). Almost no African slaves existed in South Carolina until the early 1700s--the early settlers defeated a tribal confederation of natives, enslaved them, sold them to northern colonies, and used money from that to buy African slaves (who they believed had expertise in growing rice and indigo). The assertion that the colonies revolted in part to prevent Great Britain from making slavery illegal in America is wholly unsupported.

I am more familiar with Southern history but I am sure there are many other such examples of bad scholarship. Oglethorpe banned slavery in the colony of Georgia when established (which none of the northern colonies did) and slavery was illegal in Georgia until the king took the colony over as a royal charter in the 1750s. I haven't read all of the 1619 Project; maybe that's mentioned in there somewhere.

Michael K said...

I assume the author is planning to move to one of the thriving nations of Africa.

If he should do so, he will find that educated, intelligent Africans consider American blacks inferior, the descendants of losers in the tribal wars of west Africa.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

"I had a weird, and somewhat uncomfortable, conversation with a young black FedEx driver the other day. Out of the blue, he starts singing the praises of white people"

I had the same experience with a young Muslim African-American I used to work with. He was fulll of praise for America, whites, and Western Civilization. His praise wasn't specifically race-based, but he seemed to genuinely, sincerely, like whites, and admire white culture.

I assume it's a very uncommon attitude among Blacks, and almost as uncommon among whites.

buwaya said...

Russian culture never recovered from the loss of its aristocracy.

Even the relative liberty of these days has not restored the brilliance of pre-1914.
Even the bourgeois and proletarian creators of the time seem to have depended on the social atmosphere of the ancien regime. Its quite remarkable really.

A Tsarist Russian troll farm would have been a thing of beauty.

buwaya said...

Imagine the younger Maxim Gorky as a troll.
It would work.

Anonymous said...

Cracker Emcee R: I had a weird, and somewhat uncomfortable, conversation with a young black FedEx driver the other day. Out of the blue, he starts singing the praises of white people. How they're essential to making things work and how screwed society would be without them. He went on about it at some length, with myself replying with noncommittal monosyllables.

Maybe he's just a thoughtful, rational observer. I don't have any trouble acknowledging that "people like me" (people who, say, share my sex, or my ethnic group) aren't the people who've made the great contributions to advanced civilization. That if it were up to (insert group I belong to here), we wouldn't have the nice things we do have. That doesn't make me resentful or envious. It just is.

Seeing Red said...

The jig is up because IF you really want to make a difference as a white person, you should step down.

But they don’t. They keep their big bucks job and lecture, nag, etc.

mockturtle said...

It would be interesting to see what would happen if all of us white folks up and moved to Greenland.

mockturtle said...

Seattle Officials Can’t Agree on How to Remove Human Crap from Sidewalks – Councilman Argues Power Washers are Racist, Since Hoses Used Against Blacks in Past

Seriously? This is not from The Babylon Bee?

Birkel said...

Identity politics for them.
But not for us?

All animals equal?
Some animals more equal than others?

DarkHelmet said...

Well, Mr. Levitz, even if we read your crappy project and took it seriously, it's unlikely that we'd come to the psychological place your fervid imagination projects.

Keep hyping it, though. Pretty sure this is how you get more Trump.

mockturtle said...

Further research shows that Larry Gossett, the Seattle councilman in question, was once a Black Panther member.

Amadeus 48 said...

Just to put a bit of perspective on this, slavery was abolished in this country in 1865. Slavery was abolished in most Central and South American countries by 1890. Slavery persists today in some parts of Africa and the Middle East.
About 18% of our population is hispanic, who may have issues of slavery in their historic countries of origin under Spanish and subsequent rule, but they have no part in the history of slavery in the US.
A huge percentage of black people in the US have white ancestors. Take a good, hard look at Dean Baquet and Barack Obama, Beyonce Knowles and Halle Berry.
The issues of slavery and “white supremacy” are ridiculously out of date. The Civil War settled the slavery issue. Every drop of blood drawn by the lash was recompensed by one drawn by the sword and the treasure accumulated by the bondsmen’s 250 years of unrequited toil was sunk in the Civil War. The civil rights movement and the Great Society programs (augmented by almost fifty years of “affirmative action”) were intended to take Jim Crow down and out.
So, this is a fight about nothing. White Supremacy may have been a thing in rural Alabama in 1960, but it is gone with the wind. Nobody—except for a few lunatics numbering not more than 30 thousand in a nation of 330,000,000– thinks that “this is a white man’s country”. Nobody.
However, there appear to be a lot of lunatics that think that slavery and white supremacy are still issues in the US.
They are deranged. Their ideas would fit right in as the mirror of the Afrikaner Nasionale Party in South Africa.

pacwest said...

"Your great saints were child rapists. Your sacred texts are false alibis for a world-historic crime. That isn’t a hill your shining city sits upon...""

So this is an anti-Muslim screed then? I thought that was crimethink.

rcocean said...

You want to play defense and dance to the NYT's tune, go ahead. I'm not interested. The NYT's is stirring up racial tensions in order to defeat Trump. They're race-baiting. Conservatives want to do their usual, pathetic "Hey, America isn't racist, slavery was bad but..but..but..." and here's my 42 page memorandum of weak defense. Result: Left just comes back and calls America/white people/conservatives racist the next day.

Scott Patton said...

Articles like this always put me in mind of Jonah Goldberg's "Conservatives in the Mist" formulation. (not sure if he coined the phrase or not)
These people have no idea of the perspectives of their enemies, and there is no end to their blathering on about it.

Krumhorn said...

There is an odd parallel between the emergence of the bat-shit crazy lefties during a time of peace and prosperity and the issues we have historically seen in the garrisoned military during peacetime. During warfare, our military needs and promotes superb war-fighters. These are entirely different folks than the leaders who are needed and prized when the guns are silent. The war-fighters have no place in the ranks and are quickly drummed out of service. The back-biters and maneuverers ascend and bat-shit crazy takes over.

George Patton could never survive or thrive in a peacetime army. Chesty Puller would never be Commandant of the Marine Corps. And yet, he earned 5 Navy Crosses and the Army Cross and the odd Silver Star, Bronze Star, Air Medal and Purple Heart. He would be pariah in the Pentagon today.

It’s during a time of peace and economic prosperity that the crazies rise from their squalid, dank, filthy holes and make the peace unlivable. It almost makes one yearn for existential warfare so that sanity can prevail.

- Krumhorn

Dude1394 said...

The 1619 projects is a blatant democrat propaganda creation.

CWJ said...

"Councilman Argues Power Washers are Racist, Since Hoses Used Against Blacks in Past"

This has finally done it for me. "Racist" is the new Kevin Bacon as in the old seven degrees game. Take anything, thought, object, action, location, word, and someone will be able to explain why it's Racist - and in most cases be able to do it in far fewer than seven steps. Also works for cultural appropriation.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Wow, that's some serious hate speech right there.

Skeptical Voter said...

The left is pushing tribalism. And they should not be surprised if, having accomplished that goal, the big tribe always wins. Whatever that tribe is.

gilbar said...

Some cracker said...
Maybe all black people don't hate us. Maybe they're getting worried about all the indifferent Hispanic and Asian faces increasingly appearing in their days.


Hispanic voters will make up largest minority group by 2020 election, study says

WK said...

Matthew 16:19. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Krumhorn said...

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the likes of Eric Levitz and Dean Baquet would be fragged in early encounters.

- Krumhorn

Francisco D said...

Sit back and enjoy, folks.

We are watching the complete intellectual decline of the Left.

The emotional decline started a little earlier.

Q22 said...

We are all descendants of people who did monstrous deed in the past. That is the history of mankind. Go back far enough and you will find that everyone's heritage is the benefactor of genocides and atrocities unimaginable by today's standards.

Yes, let's recognize the failures of the past and understand that much of what we deal with today is the consequences of actions taken long ago. That is a worthy exercise. Don't throw the 1619 baby out with the bathwater. But also recognize that there is an insidious agenda at work to cast political opponents as racist and white supremacists. That will ultimately serve to tear us apart when we really need to come together.

Mike Sylwester said...

Has Eric Levitz written any denunciations of child rapists in Islamic history?

Maybe he is afraid to do so.

stevew said...

Key takeaway: everyone is racist.

chuck said...

> Even the relative liberty of these days has not restored the brilliance of pre-1914.

And when those raised before the Soviet Union came into being died out, nothing was left. It is amazing how barren the Communists left Russia.

roesch/voltaire said...

Would recommend A Primer for Forgetting:Getting Past the Past, but Lewis Hyde for clues on how to accept and understand the past history of a nation, and how and when to move beyond it

Fen said...

Yawn. This is what we get for avoiding "the talk" about racism.

Truth is, if whites didn't create Western Civ, the hacks at the NYTs would still be squatting in a hut trying to remember which hand to eat with and which one to wipe with.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck.”
- Heinlein

Fen said...

Your great saints were -

Martin Luther King's ancestors warred against neighboring African tribes for the sole purpose of capturing africans they could trade for European firearms.

This is so boring.

PM said...

The goal of "1619" is a 'national conversation' regarding reparations.

Fen said...

I can hardly wait until white people are despised minority. It's going to be so much fun for us then. I can't imagine what it must be like to have white children right now knowing that that's their future

Yuppers. The last time whites were demonized into identifying along tribal lines they decimated their enemies and relocated the rest onto reservations.

And gave them casinos.

This will not end well. I hear viking oars sweeping across the water...

Fen said...

The goal of "1619" is a 'national conversation' regarding reparations.

To who?

If your ancestors were slaves, it's very likely that your other ancestors were slavers.

Laslo Spatula said...

Butterfly Effect: if we changed only one small thing in America's Racial Past we would not have Morgan Freeman's performance in "The Shawshank Redemption."

And, most likely, no "Snakes On A Plane."

And Al Sharpton might then just be a white guy who hates Jews.

There's a lot to think about.

I am Laslo.

Steve M. Galbraith said...

The West is accused by the left of committing every sort of "sin" they can think of. Some real, many not.

But it's never condemned for creating Marxism or communism, the one ideology that has led to the direct and indirect murder of hundreds of millions of people. Of all races. On multiple continents.

For that creation the West is given a pass.

Why? The answer to that is revealing I think.

Michael K said...

this is a fight about nothing. White Supremacy may have been a thing in rural Alabama in 1960, but it is gone with the wind. Nobody—except for a few lunatics numbering not more than 30 thousand in a nation of 330,000,000– thinks that “this is a white man’s country”. Nobody.

I disagree. We have a population that has never quite made it, in spite of Affirmative Action, grade inflation, preferential treatment of violent teenagers and accommodation in many other ways. There is a group of white "Elites" who think they can stoke this racial animus and benefit from it. Their kids don't go to chaotic public schools. They have good jobs and wealth. They can imagine discrimination, like Danny Glover imagining the cab drivers, whose income is not 1% of his, are avoiding him because he is black.

They keep hiding the facts about what political party the slave owners were members of, the party that fought Reconstruction after they had lost the war and which continued Jim Crow laws until Eisenhower, a Republican president , forced desegregation of schools.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

It's all a generalized #MeToo complaint.

Look for women nagging behind it.


Amazing how you can blame the linked pile of bullshit on women. Amazing how men have no responsibility for the nonsense they spread, because a nagging woman made them do it.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Who is Eric Levitz & who gives a fuck what he thinks?

buwaya said...

This 1619 business may just be another short term propaganda theme. Just material to fling.
Unlike most of these other themes though this one is directly tied to a more strategic project, that one that has been running in your schools for decades.

Robert Cook said...

"Who is Eric Levitz & who gives a fuck what he thinks?"

For that matter, who are any of us and who gives a fuck what any of us think?

Kevin said...

Shorter NYT: We don't like the news so we're making up our own.

Sam L. said...

As I've said before, this is one reason why I despise, detest, and distrust the NYT.

buwaya said...

White supremacy is a thing, it exists.

Or better put you should call it European supremacy.

Europe conquered the world. We do not directly credit this because the Europeans that went out and conquered whatever they ran across (and was easy to grab at any given time) did not belong to a single polity but were a group of wrangling nations and proto-nations. And the conquest took a few hundred years.

There isn't one persons face to put on all this, there was no European Genghis Khan. The only "face" that can be put on it all is - a white face, the anonymous conqueror, the generic colonialist.

The consequences of it all were global, and deep.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"For that matter, who are any of us and who gives a fuck what any of us think?"

Levitz is not an anonymous commenter on a blog. He is a far-left political writer with no known expertise in anything but being a far-left political writer.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Perform the following thought experiment: suppose I defended an anti-semetic screed by saying that Jews should get over it, their identity as Jews was being attacked, true, but isn't their identity as human beings more important? And while the screed may have been wrong about some important facts, the problem is not anti-Semitism, it is the foolish adherence of Jews to Jewish identity.
Or you can substitute Blacks for Jews in the example.
Would that be just innocent commentary?

Skippy Tisdale said...

"Let Bernie fly you back to the USSR. We'll be the lucky ones."

You know, a video of Soviet atrocities and Bernie's honeymoon, backed with the Beatles' song BACK in the USSR might be pretty fun to watch.

StephenFearby said...

The creators of the 1619 project conveniently neglect to place slavery in its proper historical context:

History of slavery (Wikipedia)

"...Slavery was known in civilizations as old as Sumer, as well as in almost every other ancient civilization, including Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Babylonia, Ancient Iran, Ancient Greece, Ancient India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Islamic Caliphate and Sultanate, Nubia and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.[19] Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.[20]"

"...Slavery became common within much of Europe during the Dark Ages and it continued into the Middle Ages. The Byzantine–Ottoman wars (1265–1479) and the Ottoman wars in Europe (14th to 20th centuries) resulted in the capture of large numbers of Christian slaves. The Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, British, Arabs and a number of West African kingdoms played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade, especially after 1600. David P. Forsythe[6] wrote: "The fact remained that at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom."[7] The Republic of Ragusa became the first European country to ban the slave trade – in 1416. In modern times Denmark-Norway abolished the trade in 1802.

Although slavery is no longer legal anywhere in the world (with the exception of penal labour),[8] human trafficking remains an international problem and an estimated 25-40 million people were enslaved as of 2013, the majority in Asia.[9] During the 1983–2005 Second Sudanese Civil War people were taken into slavery.[10] Evidence emerged in the late 1990s of systematic child-slavery and -trafficking on cacao plantations in West Africa.[11] Slavery continues into the 21st century. Although Mauritania criminalized slavery in August 2007,[12] an estimated up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population of Mauritania, are currently enslaved, many of them used as bonded labor.[13] Slavery in 21st-century Islamism continues, and Islamist quasi-states such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Boko Haram have abducted and enslaved women and children (often to serve as sex slaves).[14][15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery


Instead of placing slavery in its proper historical context, the NYT attempts to weaponize the word to advance a partisan political objective.

Just another example of New York Times, AKA American Pravda, agitprop.

Darrell said...

Here's the obligatory "Fuck You, Cookie!"

mockturtle said...

Early Americans like my own ancestors who settled New England colonies were, by and large, not slave owners. And I refuse to pay any reparations or apologize for anything to do with slavery. You can send me the bill but I won't pay it.

PhilD said...

"What about white leftists? Do they get a pass?"

Of course, without the white moron man/woman vote the Left would be nowhere. So the PC-correct white women at least are mainly safe for now. White males too if they are 'woke' enough.

n.n said...

It's an anti-American hunt prosecuted by rabid diversitists.

Sebastian said...

"what the typical white conservative hears when reading"

Actually, what we hear is malicious, ignorant BS, maneuver #3899 in the culture war.

The routine prog arrogance and condescension, the stereotypical stereotyping by people who otherwise disparage stereotypes, the blithe assumption of moral superiority are not surprising. It's who they are, it's what they do.

But I do wonder about their actual ignorance about us deplorables. Of course, perhaps we should not raise the issue in public, since their ignorance is our strength, so far. But why would they not even try? Is it their supreme confidence that they are on the right side of history, that the climate will turn "chilly" soon enough, that they can crush us before long, so that they can afford not to bother? Or does progressivism somehow require the blinders, the stereotypes, the Othering? Or is it a combination -- mindless Othering as prelude to repression, ala the Vendee, the Kulaks, the Cultural Revolution?

mockturtle said...

Believe it or not, there is a real world out here where people of all colors and ethnicities are working together and getting along just fine. In spite of the MSM.

n.n said...

No diversity (e.g. racist) politics. No genocide (i.e. culture, abortion). No sex and gender chauvinism and political congruence. No redistributive and retributive change. No Nazis, fascists, Maoists, Stalinists, Mandela lynch mobs, Mugabe abortion clans, and other left-wing progressions. No witch hunts and warlock trials. No human sacrificial rites.

Seeing Red said...

Or better put you should call it European supremacy.

As Eddie Izzard said, “Do you have a flag?”

n.n said...

of all colors and ethnicities are working together and getting along just fine

It's actually quite easy unless there is an effort to indulge diversity (i.e. color judgments), including skin color, ethnicity, sex, and other low information attributes. We are conceived with a color bias, but it requires social progress to normalize prejudice.

Milwaukie guy said...

I like the term Kulaks. The white working and middle classes are today's Kulaks. They must be crushed.

Note: the Kulaks were the successful farmers, the best farmers, who grew the most for market. They were the yeoman of Russia.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Actually, Milwaukee guy, a kulak was whatever the state said a kulak was. Quite the racket they had going on. Make kulaks enemies of the state, and give the state the power to declare anyone it chose to be a kulak, a kulak.

Ken B said...

I look forward to reading Taibbi's Hate Inc.

As Thomas Sowell points out, really no one in history objected to slavery until some white men in the 17th and 18th century did. They are the ones singled out for demonization.

PhilD said...

"that the movement to stop slavery was almost completely a Christian movement driven by William Wliberforce in England, which then spread to America?"

Slavery had already disappeared in ( Western) Europe during the so-called 'Dark Ages' but ironically was reintroduced after 1492 in the new colonies but not in Europe proper.
One might say that English America re slavery compares bad to Europe (yeah, I know, I'm writing heresy) but since that 'Europe' in question was 'white' where does that leave the anti-white 'Duranty' Times?

Btw, "Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom" ("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom") does a good job in noting who did what when. Notice for instance Saudi-Arabia: Slavery abolished 1962.

Lewis Wetzel said...

There seems to be confusion about what "reparations for slavery" will look like.
It will not be a one-time lump payment to American Blacks by American Whites.
It will instead be something like the Indian Reservation system, carve-outs of the federal budget handed over to bureaucrats and community leaders who will spend the money on Black communities.

CWJ said...

Buwaya wrote -

"Europe conquered the world. We do not directly credit this because the Europeans that went out and conquered whatever they ran across (and was easy to grab at any given time) did not belong to a single polity but were a group of wrangling nations and proto-nations."

I'm surprised you styled the conquerors as nations and proto-nations. My impression is that the impulse to conquest was led by private adventurers whose national authority amounted to letters of marque or their equivalent. Formal on the ground national involvement came after the adventurers had kicked the door open. You yourself have made this argument multiple times. Hence my surprise.

Lewis Wetzel said...

It was white Americans and Europeans who ended the practice of slavery. Where's the gratitude? Where is my money?

Seeing Red said...

here seems to be confusion about what "reparations for slavery" will look like.
It will not be a one-time lump payment to American Blacks by American Whites.
It will instead be something like the Indian Reservation system, carve-outs of the federal budget handed over to bureaucrats and community leaders who will spend the money on Black communities.


OF Course they will.

Krumhorn said...

Believe it or not, there is a real world out here where people of all colors and ethnicities are working together and getting along just fine. In spite of the MSM.

Exactly! However, the millennials in my circle pretty much absorb any piece of nonsense that dribbles onto their phones through their social feeds, and they get an entirely different message. Their social feeds are pretty much dominated by the lefties, including the batshit crazy lefties.

But I repeat myself.

- Krumhorn

Calypso Facto said...

"It will instead be something like the Indian Reservation system, carve-outs of the federal budget handed over to bureaucrats and community leaders who will spend the money"

Because THAT's worked out so great ...

traditionalguy said...

The diatribe is a psyops disguised as history intended to spray us with White Guilt now that MLKs day’s have faded away.

Trouble is guilt is not working where Calvinist religions prevail.They read the Book. Destroying Christian Faith is necessary before this fools anyone.

buwaya said...

"My impression is that the impulse to conquest was led by private adventurers whose national authority amounted to letters of marque or their equivalent."

The conquerors themselves very often were such, semi-pirates with what amounted to letters of marque. An ancestor of ours actually was one of these characters. However they were quickly followed by formal, or at least centrally sanctioned governance - my ancestor did not long enjoy his conquest, but was quickly ejected and replaced by a military governor (who was another ancestor).

The history of Spanish conquest has this pattern. Viceroys, governors, and sometimes the monarchs themselves issued "conquistadors licenses" in effect. The clearest example was that of Peru, where Pizarro actually had a royal license he obtained in person.

Very few of these pirates held on to their gains - the Brookes of Sarawak (the white rajahs) may be the only ones that held on into modern times.

There were also entirely official expeditions. Legaspi's expedition of 1564 for instance, was organized by the Viceroy of New Spain and the Audencia.

SDaly said...

Believe it or not, there is a real world out here where people of all colors and ethnicities are working together and getting along just fine. In spite of the MSM.

That's what they said about Yugoslavia, but that did not withstand the pressure of forced tribal divisions by those who sought power. The fault lines are here as well, and the pressure is building.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Eric Levitz buys into Coates' notion that there is no such thing as a white race. "Whiteness" is a fraud used by bad, non-Blacks solely to oppress non-whites (and only Blacks are authentcally non-white) .
Wy would a person choose to believe this? It's not a thing that can be true or false. It is a narrative that serves a purpose, not a recognition of a common reality.

buwaya said...

"Note: the Kulaks were the successful farmers, the best farmers, who grew the most for market. They were the yeoman of Russia."

In part the kulaks were the more modern sort of freeholder typical of southern Russia/Ukraine, outside the zone of ancient peasant settlement. Russia proper was saddled with the Slavic communal village structure, where land was held in common - even as the village itself was the property of some nobleman, and the inhabitants were his serfs. Both the land and the people belonged to the village, and who tilled what strip was up to the commune. This was largely so even after the serfs were freed. A landowner, owning villages, was not free to reorganize the land.

Land as the individual property of the man who worked it, or even land as a plantation, a corporate asset worked by the owners employees, these were innovations, present mainly on the fringes of old Russia.

The whole business, and its implications, are well explained by Orlando Figes in "A Peoples Tragedy".

SDaly said...

Here's what I've learned: whiteness is the most powerful drug on the planet. And if you, yourself, don't want to wean yourself off of whiteness, it can't and won't happen.
You have to not just want to wean yourself, you have to *desperately* want to wean yourself.

I was a white feminist until 2016. I was deeply self-loathing and internally oppressed. Nearly all my closest friends were white women. These women were in my wedding, and I in theirs. They cradled me when I wept for my dead mother. They would have done anything for me.

EXCEPT GIVE UP WHITENESS.
...

This is no different than the KKK. Instead of robes, they coalesce around brunch, weddings, spin classes.


This is where we are now. A "fist generation Indian American" feels it appropriate to lecture friends -- women who welcomed her an treated her equally as friend -- about the sins of "whiteness" and compares them to the KKK when they take a pass.

In another post, she wants to lecture Americans about their history of slavery an oppression (let's just ignore India's racial caste system, okay).

Sad twitter thread, here.

Bilwick said...

Didja ever notice (as Andy Rooney might have said) that the people who today are most vocal and the most worked up about slavery also tend to be the most anti-liberty?

Howard said...

Trumpsters tagline: "I've gotten over slavery and Jim Crow, why can't the blacks?"

Bilwick said...

Like Howard?

CWJ said...

Buwaya,

Good stuff. But how long the adventurers kept their gains is not the point. It's that the personal, private, semi-private interests led the way. And it wasn't always a matter of keeping gains. For example, my understanding is that Britain ended up ruling India in no small part because of coming to the East India Compamy's rescue.

buwaya said...

As far as American history goes -

The United States that conquered the world, or most of it, in 1945, when it became the leading power on Earth, and imposed the Pax Americana over most of it, was a white nation, nearly 90% white. The sources of its power were in its industrial capacity, which was owned and directed and technically designed by white men, and the labor force in it was also nearly entirely white.

Pretty much everything you are now was created by those who directed or contributed to your part of the Industrial Revolution, roughly between 1840 and 1910. Everything else is marginal, and this includes the entire US South.

buwaya said...

" For example, my understanding is that Britain ended up ruling India in no small part because of coming to the East India Compamy's rescue."

The East India company was already a semi-quasi-government entity by the end of the 18th century - 1773 to be exact, when a Governor General was appointed. The thing was one of those organic, semi-unofficial things the British love, or used to love, that make no sense without understanding how they came to be. The facts may not match the names. Confucius would have been appalled. The reorganization after the mutiny of 1857 was more a Confucian matter of rectification of names.

And before that British government effectively maintained garrisons of Royal troops, and more importantly, bases for the Royal Navy, from the mid-18th century. And the East India Company was never not a qango (quasi-non-government organization) anyway.

Amadeus 48 said...

You know, this whole conversation, though civil and informative, is too willing to discuss things in terms of racial categories.

For the love of God, treat other people as individuals. Anything else, including “diversity” goals and affirmative action, is not only divisive and counter-productive, it is insane.

Clyde said...

The New York Times' 1619 Project is not worthy of being used to line a birdcage, since it would probably insult the bird's intelligence to the point that it would refuse to shit on it.

n.n said...

For the love of God, treat other people as individuals.

Yes, diversity blocs are color judgments based on low information attributes (e.g. color, sex, gender, girth). The only legitimate clustering of individuals occurs when there is principled alignment. And uniform action within a frame of reference.

mockturtle said...

Krumhorn observes: Their social feeds are pretty much dominated by the lefties, including the batshit crazy lefties.

I consider social media part of the MSM. They are controlled by the same forces.

Ralph L said...

Everything else is marginal, and this includes the entire US South.

Them's fightin' words, even if true.
We kept the rest of the country and much of Europe in clothes and nicotine. Try ruling the world without them.

buwaya said...

"For the love of God, treat other people as individuals. Anything else, including “diversity” goals and affirmative action, is not only divisive and counter-productive, it is insane."

Its not insane, it is human. We are not a species of individuals, but a social species. There is a collective component to us. If we don't have that - well, we are done.

Jeff said...

So. One group of my ancestors owned slaves. Another group were slaves. How much am I supposed to hate myself.
And slavery was so common in centuries past that if you go back far enough, this is true of almost everyone, including American blacks. The stupidity of it all is, well, stupendous.

Amadeus 48 said...

But we cannot go through life saying this person is white, so they think this and that person is black, so they think that and they behave this way. As n.n. says, clustering people by color or girth or sex is based on very low information attributes. Can we really assume that Malia Obama got into Harvard because she is black? Isn’t there a lot more to it than that?And shouldn’t that be true of every individual? Isn’t the plea of every Individual, see me as I am?

The brain surgeon who saved my wife’s life was an African American. I never had a moment’s doubt of his skill, and I will be grateful to him as long as I live. His least important attribute was his race.

The people who are willing to dismiss large swathes of our population because of their appearance are making a huge mistake. If I am going to cluster with any group, put me with people who are honest, kindly, and skillful.

mockturtle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mockturtle said...

Its not insane, it is human. We are not a species of individuals, but a social species. There is a collective component to us. If we don't have that - well, we are done.

This 'tribalism' seems to be your hobby horse, buwaya. And I, for one, think you give it more importance than it deserves. Maybe I'm not normal but I've never been drawn to people of my own race any more than to those of other races. My parents had some friends who were black and also some of Japanese and Mexican descent. People really are individuals and the sooner we quit playing identity politics, the better off we all will be.

narciso said...

it's not merely ethnic tribalism, but other affinities, of a cultural political bent, with the times you have jeong who is Asian, Kristof and Krugman, who are jewish, blow who is African American and bruni who is Italian, but they have much the same view,

Jeff said...

For that matter, who are any of us and who gives a fuck what any of us think?
So why are you reading these comments?

Jeff said...

@Lewis Wetzel
I've disagreed with you on other topics, but your comment above at 12:00 pm is right on. Well said!

Anonymous said...

Amadeus: For the love of God, treat other people as individuals.

I'm always baffled when this gets thrown into discussions like this. (And it always is, by somebody.) It's entirely missing the point. What is it supposed to even mean, in this context of bigoted fanatical assholes like Levitz regularly being given space in the country's prestige press to demonize whites? It's not as if the people who want to discuss this post have some deficiency in the ability or desire to treat their fellow men as individuals, relative to the people who'd rather we not notice the rancid racial animosity on display in this article.

Unless you were directing your plea at Levitz and his like, in which case it would still be baffling, just baffling in its naïveté.

MB said...

I'm curious where that opening diatribe comes from. Is he paraphrasing stuff enraged conservatives have said to him? Or is it what he would like to shout at conservatives, and is using this occasion to say in a plausibly deniable way?

buwaya said...

You need a tribe, no matter what.

You had a tribe, the American tribe, way back when. This was a conglomerate of "Europe" that pretty much had all agreed to adopt the important parts of the prevailing culture they entered. Not without friction.

An interesting example from an odd direction maybe - I am reading Wilkie Collins' "The Woman in White" (1859). He has a character in it that is perhaps ahead of his time - Professor Pesca, an Italian immigrant to Britain, who is ridiculously eager to be English. The poor fellow takes up fox-hunting and ocean-bathing and every sort of linguistic Britishism of the day, with odd results. But that is what one must do - to join the tribe one must be this eager, this dedicated.

What you are getting now is not a tribe, but a bunch of disparate bits that are far less digestible and much less interested in being you, in totality. Worse, the people whose job it is to turn these people into you, are dedicated to doing the opposite.

Unfortunately there is no way to create a tribe out of disparate bits while keeping the details of each bit.

As for rejection and its results - my own bit of history carries a telling lesson. Back in the 19th century, the Philippine upper class, natives, which the Spanish had permitted to remain landowners and de-facto chieftains of their people, had been turning themselves into Europeans. They were educated in Europe, spoke European languages by default (indeed, many did not speak their own with any facility), dressed and danced and played music as Europeans; became scholars and created European art in European ways -

Juan Luna La Vie Parisienne

And not least, acquired European mistresses.

But Spain rejected them, in general, and would not, in their homeland, acknowledge them as Europeans. Ultimately it is this rejection that caused them to revolt. Never underestimate the role of pride. What would have happened otherwise is an interesting speculation.

So what have you got? A confused state of affairs. You cannot reject those who want to be you, but somehow you must ensure that you remain yourselves.

Anonymous said...

mock: This 'tribalism' seems to be your hobby horse, buwaya. And I, for one, think you give it more importance than it deserves. Maybe I'm not normal but I've never been drawn to people of my own race any more than to those of other races. My parents had some friends who were black and also some of Japanese and Mexican descent. People really are individuals and the sooner we quit playing identity politics, the better off we all will be.

He's merely pointing out general truths about human behavior, human identity, and human social organization. Truths that are not falsified by anecdotes illustrating people behaving non-tribally under some circumstances, or noting that the tenacity and strength of tribal feeling isn't uniform.

These tendencies aren't conjured into being by people observing them and talking about them, and they won't disappear because a small minority of human beings think human beings shouldn't act that way, or because that same small minority decides not to notice or talk about them.

Amadeus 48 said...

Angle-Dyne—I was observing that from 7:49 am to 2:57 pm a lot of people on this thread had a lot to say about the group characteristics of white people and others, thereby ignoring one of the fundamental beliefs that I think a lot of commenters on this blog, including you, share, namely, that identity politics is idiotic and dangerous.

The good guys might win the identity politics wars, but it will a lot of wasted effort. It is better to expose the shortcomings of low information identity classifications today, tomorrow, and forever.

If you believe in individualism, stand up for individuals.

mockturtle said...

Maybe you are tribal, Angle-Dyne, but I am decidedly not. And I refuse to be sucked into believing I should be.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"Tribalism" is much more real than social class. This is the essential difference between fascism and communism.
Say, why isn't Levitz' desire to eliminate "whiteness" recognized as a genocidal impulse? His thesis is flawed because white people do not identify themselves as oppressors. They do not even identify think of themselves as white people, for the most part, they think of themselves as Americans. You can find entire communities of white people living hundreds of miles from the nearest black person. In the absence of the oppressed black class they don't cease being white people

Anonymous said...

Amadeus 48: The people who are willing to dismiss large swathes of our population because of their appearance are making a huge mistake.

Nobody here is doing that. Nobody here is talking about doing that. Nobody here is advocating "dismiss[ing] large swathes of our population because of their appearance". And I will bet good money that nobody here would decline the services of an excellent surgeon because of his race. So why do you keep babbling on about it?

People are talking about what the incessant publication of articles like this one signifies, and the human tendency toward tribalism.

Francisco D said...

For that matter, who are any of us and who gives a fuck what any of us think?

I find it interesting, Cookie. I bet you do as well or you would not be here.

Anonymous said...

mock: Maybe you are tribal, Angle-Dyne, but I am decidedly not. And I refuse to be sucked into believing I should be.

What you or I feel, or want to believe about the universal human tendency toward tribalism, is irrelevant.

And you are too intelligent to be interpreting anything either I or buwaya said as some kind of moral argument in favor of tribalism, instead of an argument about its existence as an objective fact of human nature.

mockturtle said...

If it's in our DNA, then why does my family lack this trait?

mockturtle said...

And I quote buwaya as saying: You need a tribe, no matter what.

The Godfather said...

In 1619, slavery was an accepted institution all over the world, not just in the newly-planted English colony of Virginia in North America. And it had been an accepted institution for all of known history. Why must we, modern-day citizens of the United States, more than six generations after the end of slavery, accept guilt for it? If any country that occupies territory in which slavery existed in 1619 is to be condemned as a slave society, then what country escapes that condemnation?

buwaya said...

You still have the American tribe.
For now. For most of us, who are old, it may outlive us.

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