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Sunday, August 6, 2017

Does This Shirt Make Me Look . . . Racist?

The Omnivore was asked a series of questions:

  1. If someone wore a "Proud To Be White" T-Shirt, does that make them racist?
  2. Is securing the border and not hiring illegals racist?
  3. Does reverse discrimination exist?

The Omnivore can only imagine your bafflement at why he was being asked these questions. Oh, wait--no he can't: We all know. It was a white person who believes in securing the border and not hiring illegals, thinks reverse discrimination is real, and wore the shirt wanting to see if The Omnivore would call them racist.

Yep--it's exactly what you thought.


So Let's Do This

We'll go bottom up because The Omnivore asserts it'll make a little more sense that way. Pinky-Promise.


Reverse Discrimination 

Reverse discrimination is (according to Wikipedia, which is authoritative enough for our purposes) discrimination against the majority in favor of the minority. So, like, Affirmative Action seems to fit. As The Omnivore believes that Affirmative Action does, in fact, actually exist, so must Reverse Discrimination.

Next question--

Oh, what was that? You weren't quite finished? Don't let The Omnivore stop you--go ahead and say it.

"Racial discrimination is wrong, innit? No matter who it's against! If it's wrong to discriminate against blacks it must be wrong to discriminate against whites!"

Yeah--The Omnivore knew it was coming. 

Affirmative Action was created as an attempt to remediate racist non-hiring (or non-enrollment) of black people in post Civil War America. You can say: "It went too far" or you can say "Freedom of association, yo!" or you can say "I don't think I should be forced to hire or go to school with niggers."

The Omnivore knows that what you want to say is: "It was okay for it's time, maybe--but its time is past. Now it should be gone."

The Omnivore will have you know that's something a racist would say if they were trying to be cagey. You're not trying to be cagey--so of course you have some large scale economically sound facts to back up that racist hiring and admissions have dried up. Not going on any longer--right?

Right? 

Securing The Border

Is building a wall racist? Refusing to hire illegals? Nope. It isn't. The Omnivore believes in strong borders and that it's perfectly okay not to hire undocumented workers. No problems. 

Easy, right?

But--erm, wait--did that . . . did The Omnivore answer your question? No--The Omnivore did not. Not quite. See, people who want a physical wall might just be deluded into thinking it's worth the cost. That it'll keep us safe more-so than, say, other types of barriers or just doing what we've been doing (illegal immigration is on the decline without the wall, right?).

But The Omnivore is going make the case here that a bunch of the people who know the wall is a bad idea from a practicality standpoint want it anyway because it makes a statement: KEEP OUT. 

So saying that you want strong borders? Fine--no one but the radical left wants open borders. If you even want to up that a bit? The Omnivore is fine with that. The Omnivore is there for you.

But just keep in mind that calling for the wall doesn't make you racist--but a lot of racist are making calls for the wall. So the company you keep? Yeah.

Proud To Be White T-Shirt

Let The Omnivore know when the shirt makes you racist.








































A little hard to say? Maybe the first one is okay--but the last one isn't? Or maybe the percents? Here's the deal--none of these make you racist. But they're things a racist might wear. Nothing wrong with being proud of your race, right?
The fact is--in America, being a second-class citizen (either because of race, sexual orientation, or whatever) isn't something one is typically proud of. Until very recently no one made the case that you would be discriminated against in the halls of power for being white.

In that context, being proud of being black, gay, whatever--was a reaction to a societal dysfunction (something we, today, regard as a dysfunction--it was not regarded so back then).

But today, right? Today white people do get discriminated against--all the time--because of their race. Right?

Wrong.

But even if you want to try and make that case with anything other than your anecdata know this: someone got to White Pride first--and it wasn't you. You want to "reclaim it" from the hard-core racists? Be The Omnivore's guest--but just wearing that shirt around ain't gonna do it.


Conclusions

In case it wasn't painfully obvious, none of the above make you racist--but all of the above have found homes in the dialog of people who do identify as racists. That's no reason for you--you non-racist person--to engage in them. You go right ahead. Wear the White Power T-Shirt or talk about how you love your race--how proud you are to be white. 

Talk about keeping the Illegal Invaders out from the south. Spend a ton of effort making it hard to hire undocumented workers (but never call them that)--only to find that farmers really kinda want those guys for the harvest--but never mind that. Want a wall that's 10-ovens high (as the 4chan kids say)--and beautiful--on one side.

And never, ever let any discussion of policy go by without adding in your 2-cents on reverse discrimination. These are important things and if you don't do them--who will?

Oh, sure--the liberals will scream you're racist.

But we all know they'll do that anyway.


Coda

The person who asked The Omnivore these questions legitimately isn't a racist (at least not that The Omnivore can tell). As such, The Omnivore was sorely tempted to just give her a pass on all the questions--no, wearing an "I'm proud of being white" isn't the same as wearing a Waffeen SS logo.

However, the reason he didn't is because today there is a lot of for-real actual racism that is bound up in policy and politics in a way that is very hard to extricate. If the Omni-Friend in this example agreed that Stephen Miller or Steve Bannon were probably racists because of their publications, their history--their symbolism / rhetoric--that'd be one thing.

But she doesn't. There's gray-area here. Lots of it. And in The Omnivore's assessment the White Supremacists are using that to their advantage.

Bigly.

So no--not everyone who wants a wall, or voted for Trump, or wears the shirt, or whatever--not everyone who does that is a Klansman. In fact, far from it--but those people are all standing on the same side of a line with literal Nazis (Spencer) and Klansmen, and 4chan racists and all that.

And they seem pretty comfortable there. So The Omnivore is going to tell it like it is--and it's like this: You're telling yourself it's okay to stand here with them because they're immaterial. They're super-fringe. They don't amount to anything. It's really the left's fault, you think, for legitimizing them. For providing a cultural counterweight by being so whiny and lefty and disgusting and hateful.

It's alright, you tell yourself, for them to have a WIN along with you because you and they don't really agree on the big things.

The Omnivore is here to say: You might just be WRONG about that.

Then what?

3 comments:

  1. I was reading another blogger who was taking to task the identity politics of the left when it occurred to me that the right has done a remarkable job of legitimizing their insanely divisive identity politics as somehow "less offensive" than the left's "we'd all like equal treatment and respect" message.

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  2. Basically, a Jeff Foxworthy routine gone horribly, horribly wrong.

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