The Universal Insult cuts both ways. In maybe the most boneheaded move since July 3, 1863, the Smithsonian published whiteness chart, from Washington Examiner [1]:
The topic went viral online, and the museum quickly acted. “Since yesterday, certain content in the ‘Talking About Race’ portal has been the subject of questions that we have taken seriously,” the museum wrote in a statement Thursday. “We have listened to public sentiment and have removed a chart that does not contribute to the productive discussion we had intended.”
The Smithsonian publishes a chart [2] which divides the population in to two parts. Then lists several good habits, but calls one group racist, and implies that the other group is either too stupid or too lazy to adopt these habits. The Smithsonian acts stunned that their racist ploy went over like a fart in church.
Hint for the Smithsonian, outside of the late Bobby Byrd and maybe David Duke, nobody describes themselves as white. Only racist describe people as white.
Does the Smithsonian want people to give up good habits like punctuality to further racial unity? If so, why?
The Universal Insult cuts in the other direction, from Power Line [3] Steve Hayward excerpts John McWhorter’s article in The Atlantic out today attacking the whole “white fragility” narrative:
I have learned that one of America’s favorite advice books of the moment is actually a racist tract. Despite the sincere intentions of its author, the book diminishes Black people in the name of dignifying us. This is unintentional, of course, like the racism DiAngelo sees in all whites. Still, the book is pernicious because of the authority that its author has been granted over the way innocent readers think. . .
DiAngelo’s book is replete with claims that are either plain wrong or bizarrely disconnected from reality. . .
An especially weird passage is where DiAngelo breezily decries the American higher-education system, in which, she says, no one ever talks about racism. “I can get through graduate school without ever discussing racism,” she writes. “I can graduate from law school without ever discussing racism. I can get through a teacher-education program without ever discussing racism.” I am mystified that DiAngelo thinks this laughably antique depiction reflects any period after roughly 1985. . .
A corollary question is why Black people need to be treated the way DiAngelo assumes we do. The very assumption is deeply condescending to all proud Black people. In my life, racism has affected me now and then at the margins, in very occasional social ways, but has had no effect on my access to societal resources; if anything, it has made them more available to me than they would have been otherwise. Nor should anyone dismiss me as a rara avis. Being middle class, upwardly mobile, and Black has been quite common during my existence since the mid-1960s, and to deny this is to assert that affirmative action for Black people did not work.
White Fragility is, in the end, a book about how to make certain educated white readers feel better about themselves. DiAngelo’s outlook rests upon a depiction of Black people as endlessly delicate poster children within this self-gratifying fantasy about how white America needs to think—or, better, stop thinking. Her answer to white fragility, in other words, entails an elaborate and pitilessly dehumanizing condescension toward Black people. The sad truth is that anyone falling under the sway of this blinkered, self-satisfied, punitive stunt of a primer has been taught, by a well-intentioned but tragically misguided pastor, how to be racist in a whole new way.
IF the Smithsonian was willing to argue one culture can be superior/inferior to another, it must admit that the old mantra that all cultures are(somehow) equal, is flat out wrong.