January 25, 2020

"The president’s freewheeling racism, emanating year after year from the top of the American political order, has made me more hostile toward white folks and whiteness than I’ve ever been in my life."

So begins "My Piece of the American Id/Does equality in the age of Trump mean I can be irrationally angry, too?" by Erin Aubry Kaplan (in the NYT).

Kaplan, we're told, "teaches writing at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and is the author of 'Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, and Walking the Color Line' and 'I Heart Obama.'" She's a "contributing opinion writer" at the NYT and her columns are listed under the heading "Blackness and identity" (e.g., "I’m 57. Am I Grown Up?/I’m childless, still trekking the path to self-realization, and always the first one on the dance floor").

Back to the new column. I'd just recently been thinking that Trump has not given much material to the people who want to portray him as a racist, but Kaplan has him continually "emanating" racism. Whatever it is she's picking up, it's manifesting itself in her own hostility toward white people.
Despite the fact that I’ve written provocatively (so I’m told) about racial matters for years, this hostility is new — and I’m increasingly unafraid to express it.
I do think Trump is making people feel more freely expressive. I've thought that for a long time. Now, here's a college teacher openly stating that she feels race-based hostility (not hiding it from anyone, including her white students who are entitled to equal treatment).
Like all people of color, I’ve been on the receiving end of racial microaggressions for as long as I can remember, but being the perpetrator of this sort of macroaggression is a new and alarming phenomenon. It’s unsettling mostly because it is addictive, like a drug that unlocks a kind of emotional freedom I’ve never been allowed to explore before....

In this Trump age of gross unreason, meeting incivility with civility has felt small to me, and futile.... I want true equality, 2020 style — the right to claim and fully express my own well-earned piece of the American id....
The column features a single anecdote. Kaplan takes her dog to the vet, and, after she checks in, the receptionist tells her "Go sit down" in a tone of voice that sounds "flat" (and she'd just spoken to a white pet owner with "cheer and empathy"). Kaplan openly expresses anger at the receptionist. Later, Kaplan apologizes, and the woman looks away "with a kind of wince."
I don’t know if it was because I’d been a jerk, or because I’m black, or because I was more of a jerk in her eyes for being black. I walked off deeply unsatisfied for not having an answer.
If she really were getting energy from Trump, she would not worry about whether she's being a jerk.

And I doubt that Trump takes umbrage with receptionists and other service workers. He tends to go big when criticizing people who have power. He may seem to be "freewheeling" and to simply spout angry insults, but that is not what he is doing. If you take him as an example and just burst out angrily at random people who set you off, you will and should walk away "deeply unsatisfied."

121 comments:

whitney said...

Trump is known for not only treating service workers kindly but remembering their names and details of their lives. You can find endless iterations of the same story from the thousands of people that have worked for him or met him in that capacity.

Skeptical Voter said...

What can you say to a person who is feeling perpetually aggrieved? Not much.

My late sister in law had a hard family situation as a child. It affected her outlook on life such that she was often an open wound waiting to be insulted or hurt. Emotionally fragile people are difficult.

Kevin said...

Later, Kaplan apologizes, and the woman looks away "with a kind of wince."

What is the receptionist supposed to do? Give her a hug, tell her it's OK because she's black, and discuss the 1619 project?

No, she literally chose to turn the other cheek.

Perhaps instead of being unsatisfied and thinking only about everyone's color, the writer could see the larger humanity at work and seek to learn from that.

But she'd have to put down her blackness to do that.

Lucid-Ideas said...

"Microaggression" vs "macroagression"

For Kaplan, microaggression = tone, and macroagression = open hostility to white people. That's interesting.

For me, microaggression = her open hostility to white people, and macroagression = thousands of homicides and attempted murders of black people by other black people - on an almost industrial scale - year after year in this country.

She says tomato. I say potato.

Kevin said...

Emotionally fragile people are difficult.

We need signs in certain places asking them to self-identify before they interact with us.

Like we do in restaurants with food allergies.

rhhardin said...

Acting white is always a good start.

gilbar said...

Like all people of color, I’ve been on the receiving end of racial microaggressions for as long as I can remember...

after she checks in, the receptionist tells her "Go sit down" in a tone of voice that sounds "flat"


WOW! with microaggressions like THAT! No Wonder she's Angry!
I'd say, the Only microaggression WORSE,
Is when some Honky Cracker thinks they can act "pleasant" to a sister!

rehajm said...

When I was in college micro and macro were introductory economics classes...

Shouting Thomas said...

White liberals and colleges teach blacks to scapegoat whites. The huge racism industry raises money and nicks taxpayers to support this scapegoating.

I'm glad I was born to midwestern stoicism, and that my father taught me to take responsibility for myself. My Catholic education stressed self-reliance and accepting that I am a sinner responsible for my own fate.

This scapegoating and victim mentality doesn't hurt me. It hurts blacks who succumb to it.

This woman thinks she's taking revenge. She's crippling herself.

Anthony said...

Used to be the mentally ill just scribbled their ravings in dozens of notebooks.........

Kevin said...

Shorter article: Black woman hears dog whistle in veterinary clinic.

Marcus Bressler said...

She's RAAAAAACIST.

THEOLDMAN

Writing for the NYTImes disqualifies her from being taken seriously.

jaydub said...

"I want true equality, 2020 style — the right to claim and fully express my own well-earned piece of the American id...."

Says the Antioch college professor who has written several books as well as this NYT piece in which she has or had the opportunity to claim and fully express her own piece of the American id. I recognize that it's Antioch we're talking about here, but I'm so tired of elite African Americans, particularly academics and professional race warriors, whining about trivial matters without realizing that everyone, regardless of race, deals with trivial slights at times without describing it a racial cross to bear. I keep hearing that Trump is the racist who makes these people hostile to other races, but I can't recall any of them delineating the precise character of Trump's supposed racism. It's so effing ridiculous.

Lucien said...

What are the odds that Antioch College gives Aubrey the Amy Wax treatment?

Shouting Thomas said...

Did you find this at Sailer's blog, prof?

Only two blogs that I read every day, yours and Sailer's. Quite a pair, huh?

I read Volokh, Turley and The New Neo maybe once a week.

Big Mike said...

@Kevin (6:11), you summarized perfectly.

tim maguire said...

Old school anti-race thinkers were pretty clear that if you generalize from a small number of experiences (ex., if you get mugged by a black person and thereafter get nervous around black people), you were already racist and the experience merely gave you a nail to hang your racist hat on. That’s why getting mugged by a white person wouldn’t have the same effect.

Same goes here. She was always a racist, now she just has a justification that she finds satisfying. Blaming Trump for her own failures is used as a get out of jail free card.

Ann Althouse said...

"Did you find this at Sailer's blog, prof?"

I found it on the front page of the NYT.

rcocean said...

My experience with obnoxious, jerky people is they are always surprised when people push back against their behavior, and always ascribe it, when they can, to meanness, racism, sexism, stupidity, etc. IOW's, to everything except their behavior. Why should anyone get upset when I broke their silly "Rule"? Don't people understand my behavior was perfectly justified? Don't service people understand, that as CUSTOMER I have a RIGHT to berate the barista for 2 minutes over her poor service?

If they're black and they get pushback, its racism. If they're Jewish its antisemitism. If they're women, its sexism. Its never because of THEM.

Francisco D said...

Academics are in the business of writing papers or doing research. This is just another example of the trivialization of many academic fields. Unfortunately, university racial quotas have done more to harm AAs than help, as illustrated in this essay.

rcocean said...

Every Republican is racist. This is article No. 1,043 in the NYT's attempt to prove that over the last 10 years.

rcocean said...

"But Trump isn't a racist, he does blah, blah,blah". Just stop. They will never stop calling Republicans racist. EVER.

Hagar said...

When everything is racist, nothing is.

To these people a minor slight is worse than Bull Connor with dogs and firehoses.

David Begley said...

Ann:

Erin Aubrey Kaplan is a nut and the NYT just validates that nuttiness. “Go sit down?”

She’s unhappy with her “white” name. That’s the heart of the problem.

Big Mike said...

And the absolute proof of Trump’s racism is the way his economic policies have created so many jobs for black people who would otherwise be on welfare. It’s wage slavery, according to Erin Aubry Kaplan, nothing but wage slavery.

rcocean said...

Lots of women get upset at the TONE of the people's voices. "I didn't like the way she spoke to me" - something every husband has heard.

rcocean said...

Its Fakenews Saturday at the NYT.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Entitled people pretending they are being oppressed by a receptionist at the vet is another way you get more Trump.

David Begley said...

Just watch. Trump will get a huge percentage of the Black vote and that will only pad his margin in North Carolina.

stlcdr said...

The unfortunate thing is that there are young (black and white) children who have a growing awareness outside their bubble, and all they hear is that trump and white people are racist. They have no first hand experience, or evidence that it is true, but they believe it.

I’d call this person a worthless human being for peddling such tripe, but that, of course, would be racist.

tim maguire said...

rcocean said...Lots of women get upset at the TONE of the people's voices.

My wife and I have had far more fights over my tone than over anything I've said or done. And, yeah, what are you supposed to do with a complaint like that?

gilbar said...

Hagar said...
To these people a minor slight is worse than Bull Connor with dogs and firehoses.


You can make an argument, that The Problem Today; is that people don't have enough problems
(and NO, i'm NOT saying we need more Bull Connor)
Studies show that kids today are "More Worried" than ever before. Kids are convinced that: IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!

Back in my day, we had to worry about saber tooth tigers, and wolves; EATING US
Well, no; back in my day all we had to worry about was Operations ReForGer and Able Archer,
which was actually kinda a LOT to worry about. And you know what we did? We DIDN'T Worry about Nuclear War; we EXPECTED It.
Before that, my dad only had starvation during the depression, and then Chinese shell fire (Korea, '52-'53)to worry about... And you know what HE worried about? NOTHING
NOT A THING. He was too busy working his ass off.

I know that i'm coming across as an oldster complaining to other oldsters. But Jesus Christ! Does this Antioch College lady have to worry about drive by shootings? Not in HER neighborhood, i'll bet. And her second cousins, that ARE being shot? I bet THEY'RE not too worried about receptionists at the vet

pacwest said...

Trump, solving racism by

"unlocks a kind of emotional freedom I’ve never been allowed to explore before...."

Is there anything this man can't do?!

Leland said...

I've never liked the microaggression concept, as it is often the observers own bias being projected on the person supposedly being micro-aggressive.

BarrySanders20 said...

The Times balances its attempt to stoke retaliation against Iran by trumpeting “34 TBI’s OMG!” and staying deliberately vague about what that means or how serious it is with stories justifying overt racism by their own contributors who point to Trump to excuse their own failures.

The Times must be really disappointed that Trump — who rode the escalator OMG! — did not escalate by nuking Iran’s alleged cultural sites. And they are disappointed he is such a racist that he makes 57 year old leftist black widows mean and nasty and racist. Nice paper written by nice people for nice people. Gotta know your audience.

Amadeus 48 said...

"...I’ve been on the receiving end of racial microaggressions for as long as I can remember..."

I wonder, if true, if her attitude toward white people had anything to do with it. And how many of those racial microaggressions were purely subjective? And is she delusional? Is she a race hustler trying to create sympathy or at least guilt in white people? How many times in her life has she committed microaggressions against white people? Are white people reacting against a perceived surliness?

My observation is that most Americans are good people with a solid sense of social community and whose default setting is kindliness. I think race hustlers are losing traction outside the editorial offices of NYT and its ilk. I think people like this lady are trying to hold on to hate at a time when things are better for everyone.

This is a sad spectacle.

Tank said...

I’m 57. Am I Grown Up?/I’m childless, still trekking the path to self-realization...

She's on the cusp of old age, still a child, childless, and has no idea who she is or what she wants out of life.

A sad, pathetic person who has wasted her life and is in fact an "open wound."

Temujin said...

I guarantee you this author is more racist than Trump. Trump would never treat a receptionist like she apparently did. And if she thinks that being told to "Go sit down" at a check-in desk is rare, she's not had the pleasure of dealing with government employees at pretty much any office.

This 'Trump is racist' and 'all white people are racist' thought-pattern has been promoted through our schools and media for years (and this author has clearly been a part of this industry). But they took it to another level when Trump came around. As you know, we're all now white supremacists. How did we go from electing Obama twice to becoming a nation of white supremacists in a week back in November of 2015?

I'm pretty much over it. I look at this as the evolving of the American Black community. It is struggling to find it's place- understandably- in the American id. The flailing I'm seeing is part of that. But it has a very ugly side (which includes massive anti-semitism) which I hope finds it's way to conclusion and peace. Their war is within themselves. It's not with me. I'm not fighting that war. I'm just trying to get through this life myself.

Fernandinande said...

This silly creature is more white than black: "NYT: "I'm a Woman of Color, So Let's All Talk About Me!"

She's a discredit to her main race.

AllenS said...

It has been my experience that black people are the most racist of all the races. It will never change is my prediction.

traditionalguy said...

Trump has had his most profound effect on people by opening their eyes to see all sides of the issues.They suddenly feel weakness because their positions have been exposed as weak positions. That damn Trump!!!!

iowan2 said...

micro aggressions. that means something that is invisible, undefinable, and impossible to define until it happens, which is also impossible to determine.

madAsHell said...

The president’s freewheeling racism, emanating year after year from the top of the American political order, has made me more hostile toward white folks and whiteness than I’ve ever been in my life.

Freewheeling!! Emanating!! Racism!! She drives a Subaru covered with bumper stickers that admonish others to be more inclusive.

Trump wins in a landslide.

Jersey Fled said...

I'm guessing the sales clerk who was rude to me at Nordstrom the other day doesn't like Italians.

Michael K said...

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. . . . After all we have been through. Just to think we can’t walk down our own streets, how humiliating.”

–-Jesse Jackson

"I am so old I remember when most racists were white."

--Thomas Sowell.

Anonymous said...

Liberals must be proud of the way the progressive project of the last half-century or so has clogged up American universities and the general public discourse with people of such shining, far-seeing intellect and deep emotional maturity.

No wonder they lock themselves in bubbles and tell each other soothing stories about how it's all those flyover working class people out there watching Faux News who are causing the idiocratization of the country. I'd probably be in pretty strong denial, too, if I had any responsibility for people like Kaplan having college teaching gigs and access to prime NYT editorial space.

Mea Sententia said...

A couple of years ago I read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It was in a book group. My white friends praised the book for its powerful message. I was mostly struck by how much this man hates white people. The worst thing a white person does to him in the book is when someone is rude to his son in a theater line. That was it. Even the key event in the book, the killing of a Howard University student by police, doesn't support the hating of white people since the police officer who killed the student was black (a fact that Coates almost doesn't mention). I really don't understand why white people praise Coates so much, since he hates them. Nor do I understand why the NYT gives a platform to this Antioch professor. There is a market for writing about the hatred of white people right now, and a lot of white people lap it all up.

SGT Ted said...

White person is rude to black woman, who then blames all white people.

"I really don't understand why white people praise Coates so much, since he hates them."

It's virtue signalling by proxy, the woke equivalent to "I have a black friend".

"Nor do I understand why the NYT gives a platform to this Antioch professor. There is a market for writing about the hatred of white people right now, and a lot of white people lap it all up. "

White Liberal Guilt is evergreen and has been given a huge boost by the purveyors of the "white privilege" guilt trip by people like the professor who wrote the article.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

"Kaplan, we're told...is the author of 'Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, and Walking the Color Line'....under the heading "Blackness and identity"...."I’m 57. Am I Grown Up?/I’m childless, still trekking the path to self-realization, and always the first one on the dance floor".

A person obsessed with race, for whom "race" is the salient character of individuals. A narcissist, to boot.

SDN said...

“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well.”
~ Booker T. Washington

This woman is Exhibit 1,000,000 of the absolute truth of that quote.

Virgil Hilts said...

I think that like a lot of middle and upper class educated whites I have been programmed from childhood to go out of my way to be friendly to any stranger POC I encounter (smiling, saying have a good day, opening doors, making friendly banter). It's a very conscious thing and I don't see anything wrong with it, even though it means I do, on a conscious (and no doubt subconscious) level, treat POC that I don't know differently that I would say a 50 year old bald white guy who I didn't know. I think of them as micro-pleasantries. I wonder if (hope that) this woman is so used to encountering micro-pleasantries from whites that when someone just treated her coldly it was off-putting.

David Begley said...

Isn’t it racist for a black woman to marry a white guy?

SGT Ted said...

"And how many of those racial microaggressions were purely subjective?"


The purpose of the power play tactic of "microaggressions" is to allow minorities to turn their subjective feelings into indisputable and overt racist acts, so they can play the victim yet again.

This leads to all sorts of stupidity and is really a form of racism in that the skin color of the speaker is central to the determination if conduct being a racist "microaggression".

Lurker21 said...

A vet's office is like a small town. There are people who bring their animals in every few weeks, and the people who work there get to know them well. If you're there for the first time, you can't expect the same treatment the regulars get.

Urbanites have a hurried, impatient, demanding, entitled manner that puts off small town and rural folk, and that causes the big city people to resent the treatment they get. It's the same way with professionals or academics and service personnel.

If people don't immediately warm to you as much as they seem to warm to other people there could be any number of reasons for that. If you resent and complain and let that eat away at you, you're only making more trouble for yourself.

"Intersectionality" is a myth. People in the different subgroups of the LGBTQ community, for example, really don't like each other, and people in ethnic minorities don't automatically love each other. If you are a Black woman blogging about life with your White husband, be prepared for a lot of abuse from your own community. But that is something else you could be blogging about.

Sebastian said...

"I don’t know if it was because I’d been a jerk, or because I’m black, or because I was more of a jerk in her eyes for being black. I walked off deeply unsatisfied for not having an answer."

Inching toward self-awareness: that in America being black means never having to acknowledge you are a jerk. There's always Raaacism.

Levi Starks said...

The president hasn’t patronized my racial identity, therefore hating all white people is the only logical response.

Sebastian said...

"I'd just recently been thinking that Trump has not given much material to the people who want to portray him as a racist"

Correct. The ratio of racial insults vilifying Trump to actual racist emanations from Trump is, what, 1 billion to 1?

"The column features a single anecdote"

And that's always enough, isn't it. The one time someone was raaacist, sort of, conveniently proving that whiteys are devils.

Sebastian said...

Sorry about the multiple comments.

"not hiding it from anyone, including her white students who are entitled to equal treatment"

There you go again, with your petty-bourgeois, white-supremacist color-blindness. You do know equal treatment is itself a form of Racism, don't you?

And "entitled"! It's just like you to add that white-hegemonic, super-racist twist.

Jack Klompus said...

She just sounds like a miserable cunt who knows that the only thing she has going in life is her race.

Michael K said...

I really don't understand why white people praise Coates so much, since he hates them.

I think you do but are reluctant to admit it. Those white people who read his books are self hating leftists and don't want to admit it.

wendybar said...

So in other words, he took in the words of they lying Propaganda Media instead of listening to exactly what Trump actually said. Trump is the worst RACIST I've ever seen in my lifetime. Now do Al Sharpton, who they probably praise.

CWJ said...

"I do think Trump is making people feel more freely expressive. I've thought that for a long time. Now, here's a college teacher openly stating that she feels race-based hostility (not hiding it from anyone, including her white students who are entitled to equal treatment)."

There's a lot to this. The age of Trump has unmasked an awful lot of people, and it's not pretty. Fen may be banned, but his "law" is in full force.

wendybar said...

She, not he....

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

Nobody was as freewheeling as Bob Dylan.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MST said...

@Temujin "All white people are racist" is now the preferred formulation, with the post hoc justification that society itself is unalterably, institutionally and fundamentally racist, which of course is why any non-brown person is suffering from "white privilege." This goes back to the feminazis claiming "all men are rapists, every male-female interaction is rape of some sort, it is a rape-based society." They got a lot of mileage out of that (see Title IX). Works for them!

Bob Boyd said...

I hope her dog's not a Samoyed.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Such niggering is so endearing in a darkie.

J. Farmer said...

I really don't understand why white people praise Coates so much, since he hates them.

White guilt. Susan Sontag encapsulated the idea quite nicely when she wrote, "The white race is the cancer of human history." In the film Independence Day, Bill Pullman asks the alien, "What is it you want us to do?" The alien's reply: "Die."

That about sums it up, folks.

robother said...

In olden days, a servant addressing a member of the aristocracy in a flat tone would find her head on a pike.

Darrell said...

Trump is the only white racist to receive three racial harmony achievement awards from the Rev. Jessie Jackson.

Otto said...

Ann writes a a puff fisking post on trite anti-white anti-Trump low life. We have been inculcated with these types for years. Frankly it is boring. So why a post about another Sharpton like character. Well she cleverly is taking a dig at Trump. See if you can catch it. Hint - last paragraph.

BUMBLE BEE said...

She seems well suited to reading palms. Since no racist incidents are cited, she's prepared to supply intent. It has been my experience in life that such people are most likely unaware that they "emanate" assholery of a scale measurable at long range. Her childlessness is a blessing for the rest of us.
So ready to ascribe intent to people you don't even know. Where have we seen this recently?

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

This is so great. A woman of colour believes at least enough of the talk about Trump's victory heralding (not garnering) a new era of racism, that she thinks she has to be on the lookout for racism everywhere. To be on the safe side, it might be best if she is an asshole to every white person she meets. Frankly, she might not be any joy to be around for just about anyone. No doubt this has something to do with the history of race in America, not entirely her fault, etc., but she is barely behaving as an adult. And to blame all of this on Trump?

Maillard Reactionary said...

She's sick and she's stupid, but she'll always have an audience among the readers of the New York Times.

Sad!

mccullough said...

Erin Aubry Kaplan.

Irish first name and Jewish last name.

Sounds like she had one parent who was a mick and married a Jew.

We need more authentic people of color lecturing white people.

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

I have waaaaay too many real problems in my life to worry about the imaginary problems of some loser of a human being with delusions of relevance.

hombre said...

Her problem does not stem from Trump’s nonexistent “freewheeling racism.” She has traded on her race and probably her gender in the intellectual silos that are the academy and the NYT, those great bastions of political correctness. Her problem stems from Trump calling “bullshit” on political correctness. Who is she without political correctness?

“Blackness and Identity ... Am I grown up ... trekking the path toward self-realization”? Really? This is pap for unserious people.

“Microagressions”? Really? “Microagressions” designates neurotic, self-generated reactions to non-threatening situations thereby justifying bigoted and/or hostile feelings and/or actions toward others, usually accompanied by some self-comforting behavior, e.g., thumb-sucking, whining, etc. More intellectual silo stuff.

RonF said...

"I'm 57. Am I grown up?"

Based on the rest of the article my answer is "No."

Rory said...

Bob Newhart Show:

"Sit, Whitey."

Iman said...

The NYT continues to rot.

Back in the 70s, I had a friend who owned a Doberman that would lose his mind every time he’d see a black person. My friend would struggle to restrain him. Racist dog.

Strelnikov said...

"It's just Johnson and this damn war!"

Tom T. said...

Interesting that childlessness is so close to the surface for her. She cites it as an indicator of rootlessness, but plenty of people find purpose and structure in something other than children. It's hard not to see her as expressing regret.

J. Farmer said...

Did you find this at Sailer's blog, prof?

Sailer writes hilarious headlines. "Black Woman Gets Angry at a Becky, Blames It on Trump." Or his earlier blog item about Yale scrapping it's intro to art course: "Yale Art History Department to Stop Teaching Famous Intro Course Because White Men Painted Too Many Great Pictures."

n.n said...

What does white have to do with it? First, he's Orange-American. Second, diversity breeds adversity. Don't indulge color judgments.

wildswan said...

All my life I have been the target of sudden random insults from racists and I always will be, and it makes me angry. Lately I've taken to suddenly shouting out the deep anger I feel if I am in the least insulted (yet again) in public situations but the results aren't satisfying. I refuse to acknowledge that by shouting I have gotten a working person into more trouble than a micro-rudeness deserves - and that that's what I really to happen. In the present state of society, that's what happens in a black-white situation where there's shouting and I know it. It's what is meant by the words "race card." But even when I get them into big trouble, the white people won't shout back or even look at me. They won't engage with me. Was it racial or was I just a stranger? No matter. I've been harmed and now I've harmed, I'm just as good at it as ... as ... as anyone, if not better. And my targets are looking away, absorbing the blow silently just as I so often have done (and will have to do whatever the progress, whatever the progress, as long as I live someone will be hating me for nothing I ever did) - and why doesn't it feel good? I blame Trump.

Known Unknown said...

"..I’ve been on the receiving end of racial microaggressions for as long as I can remember..."

And yet I will not detail any of them, except for one time at the vet I interpreted a woman as being rude to me.

Jupiter said...

I am trying to visualize this encounter. Woman comes in, says "I'm EAK and my dog is not feeling well."

"OK, go sit down."

"What? How dare you, you racist fucking bitch! I oughta slap your racist face, you privileged fucking cracker whore!"

"??????"

"Sorry, Trump makes me hate white people."

"Oh, that's OK. Lotta that goin' around. We get used to it."

Jupiter said...

You do have to wonder whether she actually frequently hears Trump say things that she regards as racist, or she just understands that when America is great again, people like her won't be getting paid to teach.

Rick said...

here's a college teacher openly stating that she feels race-based hostility

It's revealing what type of institutions people feel comfortable openly expressing their racism. In 25 + years of working I've heard exactly one racist comment. But somehow people in academia not only make them routinely but publicize them. So what is it about these institutions which attracts or creates so many racists?

Narayanan said...

Tom T. said...
Interesting that childlessness is so close to the surface for her. She cites it as an indicator of rootlessness, but plenty of people find purpose and structure in something other than children. It's hard not to see her as expressing regret.
_____&&&&+±+++
Her abortions must be haunting her.

LA_Bob said...

Never occurred to me until now, but all those people (whether of color or not) talking and writing about all the racism in American life. I wondered why I wasn't seeing it. Now, I know. They are drowning in their own racism, and they are talking about themselves.

Wince said...

Later, Kaplan apologizes, and the woman looks away "with a kind of wince."

"I have always relied on the kindness of Winces."

Ruprecht said...

Trump is so racist he made lefties put on black-face in the 80s and support policies that cause massive damage to blacks.

Moondawggie said...

Reminds me of an old rule for analyzing human behavior:

If you wake up, go about your business, and every once in a while encounter a jerk, then you're a normal person who unfortunately ran into a couple of jerks.

If you wake up, go about your business, and all through the day you run into jerk after jerk after jerk, then you're the jerk.

So who's the jerk, Kaplan?

Marc in Eugene said...

I've been watching the television series Chicago P.D. since Christmas-- most days, an epiosde or two-- which I'd never heard of until I noticed it in amongst the weeds that Prime offers. It is a minimally amusing diversion, although I won't make it through the second season, I imagine. Anyway, in the Guardian today is an article by a Kenyan writer in DC whose argument goes, more or less,

“The crime genre glorifies, justifies and normalizes the systematic violence and injustice meted out by police, making heroes out of police and prosecutors who engage in abuse, particularly against people of color”....

I don't know of course; the protagonist in Chicago P.D. seems to me to "engage in abuse" very much without any concern for skin color etc, and doesn't do microaggressions etc, either.

mtrobertslaw said...

If this women honored honesty and fairness, she would inform the Antioch University that she has deep hostile feelings against white people and that she should be allowed to teach only non-whites. If the University refuses, then she should resign. If she does not do this and the University does not fire her, then it has a duty to publicly inform all students that if they are white, they cannot expect to be treated fairly by this professor.

Scott Patton said...

She should go to lunch with Uncle Leo.

Michael said...

I was in a bookstore near Columbia University and all of a sudden there was a commotion near the front; a black woman was protesting having to check her bag on the way in because it was obvious racism and did you know that she teaches at Brandeis University?

Of course, EVERYBODY had checked their bags, but it was racist to treat her the same. I wonder if it was her...

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Moondawggie said...

If you wake up, go about your business, and every once in a while encounter a jerk, then you're a normal person who unfortunately ran into a couple of jerks.

If you wake up, go about your business, and all through the day you run into jerk after jerk after jerk, then you're the jerk.


Best bit of advice I ever got was; If everywhere you go you smell dog shit, it's time to check the bottoms of your shoes.

Yancey Ward said...

Hard to believe she could get to 57 years of age and still act like a child.

Seeing Red said...

No responsibility.

Jim at said...

When everybody else is the jerk? Guess what ....

svlc said...

This writer is begging for attention. She acts just like a child.

Mea Sententia said...

Kaplan can openly express hatred for members of another race, and still keep her job. There are no consequences to racial hostility at all, provided the objects of the hatred are white.

A white person cannot express similar sentiments about persons of another race, as Kaplan does. This asymmetry of intersectionality makes me deeply suspicious of it.

Paul said...

Memo to Erin Aubry Kaplan... go F*ck a duck. I don't care what you feel. Get a grip.

If you don't like whites in the room... LEAVE. No skin off anyone else's nose. And bye bye.

And I'm not saying that cause I a raciest.. I'm saying it cause you are.

Lurker21 said...

Say what you will, but "The Freewheelin' Donald Trump" was one of his better albums. It came out during Trump's Greenwich Village phase when he was shacked up with Suze Rotolo.

daskol said...

Poor lady is suffering from TDS, show some sympathy. Here's a moving tribute to her deceased husband, which is where the Kaplan name originates in her line. Her hostility to white people is abstract, and not personal or particular--it's a matter of ideology. Here we have in the NYT a document of some clinical use to those dealing with TDS patients, showing how TDS can turn a relatively harmless ideological condition into something that turns people into insufferable assholes. Pity rather than scorn is called for here, even if she gets her shit onto the front page. Perhaps especially because her embarrassing shit is on the front page.

daskol said...

If she weren't a prominent journalist, she wouldn't be able to embarrass herself so publicly.

Paco Wové said...

"self hating leftists"

I see this idea a lot, but I don't see any evidence that these people are "self hating". They don't hate themselves. They hate other white people, those disgusting brutes who are not of their class, social status, ideological bent, tribe, etc. There is a need to see the self as a savior and protector; protecting the dear little minorities from the ignorant mob (who happen to be white people).

Tom T. said...

Now that her husband's dead at the early age of 61, I wonder if she regrets hassling him about his white privilege.

natatomic said...

I read the comments here, and it gives me hope that most of the country is full of reasonable people - people who don’t spend every second of every day dwelling on their race and people who don’t assume ever curt interaction is entirely due to racism. Ahhhh yes, as I suspected...99.9% of white people don’t give a second thought about the race of another person (because we really DON’T CARE), and this lady is just assuming the worst and she’s just a lone race-paranoid lady. Pity.

Then I click the article and read the comments there....

...shit.

Never mind. All whites are now BRAZENLY racist, that receptionist should be FIRED, and it’s all Trump’s fault.

Yeah, we’re screwed.

Kirk Parker said...

CWJ,

I do miss Fen (the pre-meltdown version, I hasten to add!) But this doesn't seem to be a case of his Law ("The left doesn't really believe in all they lecture the rest of us about"), more so than just a simple case of projection -- this woman appears to see everything through the lens of race, and just thoughtlessly assumes everybody else does the same.

Nate Whilk said...

Kevin said... "Shorter article: Black woman hears dog whistle in veterinary clinic."

Perfect.

On a tangent, when I hear "emanating", I hear it as "eemanating" because of this Peter Cook/Dudley Moore sketch (they did a shorter version on SNL). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL8_cfi-bCw&t=3m25s

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

I have had white skin since birth. I can't scrub it off. Hate it as you will.

Kirk Parker said...

Otto,

You'll have to explain why you think that is a dig against Trump--pleasant to the little people, rough to those who have power? Why isn't this a feature, not a bug? Especially in the context of this NYT piece, written by a vile pretender to "elite" status.

Caligula said...

"She was always a racist ...

But, the Church of Woke declared decades ago that only white people can be racist. Therefore, even if she were to start shooting white people for no reason other than they're white, her act would not be racist (because it could not be racist).

Dogma: sometimes it's an academic's best friend. For those times when it's just too painful to hold a mirror to your own behavior and you shouldn't have to do that anyway, because Racism.

Academia: where subjective trumps objectivity (and therefore if you say you were microaggressed against no one may dispute you); where "scholars" need not defend their scholarly work, because, dogma.

Who needs facts when you've got feelings anyway? And, y'know, isn't reason kind of a white thing anyway (and therefore it would be racist to insist that facts and reason trump emotion and "speaking as a" assertions)?

ccscientist said...

It saves so much work if you can feel Trump "emanating" racism. FFS people, try using facts.