I'm one of those horrible white women. I don't care what they call me. I don't believe men are all oppressive. I believe they are needed more than ever. I don't appropriately react to bullying (I dig my heels in). I deal with people on an individual basis, no matter what their race or gender. And, no matter who is being ganged up on, I try to see their side and the other side. All that to say, I stay away from large public gatherings.
Every ideology that is derivative of Marxism says you have no intrinsic value and are simply a product of your political identity. No wonder they end up killing everyone in the end.
Wokism is not Marxism. Conflating the two is a disingenuous way for conservatives to pander to their paranoid base. It's just repackaged McCarthyist paranoia.
No there are real reasons for blaming Marxism, not the least of which some of the people proposing these theories are, by their own admission, trained Marxists! Please don’t make random generalizations without a little research first. I don’t believe Brandy, or the 15 other people who liked her statement are latent Mcarthyists. I for one am neither Republican nor Democrat, and certainly not a Mcarthy supporter. You have not supported your statement with any evidence. I appreciate discussion and debate; please supply a better argument.
Why don't you provide some evidence? "Trained Marxists?" Is that a joke? It's certainly not an educated statement. "Marxism" is deployed as a buzzword by paranoid cranks seeking to discredit arguments they feel are "liberal." It's little more than a button to press to shut people down. Your condescension and arrogance are a little misplaced here, seeing as you are rushing to defend a statement that is so grammatically incorrect it's gibberish. I could care less about your claimed identities--or lack thereof. Your disavowal of McCarthy is disingenuous in the extreme. If you support his tactics and his ignorant paranoia, then you ARE McCarthyistic, whether your beef is with "dirty Commies" or "dirty liberals." Conservatives call everything they dislike "Marxist" without having a clue what it means. It should be classified as a form of Tourette's. Do you want to lecture me some more, or do you just want to stamp your feet and tell me some more positions you don't identify with?
I also grew up during the Cold War and unfortunately remember it quite well so yes I do remember Marxism in practice. Also I read and liked the books Grey Is The Color Of Hope by Irina Ratishinskaya and Nein Cheng’s Life and Death in Shanghai. I suggest you go read both of those. They are similar to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. That should give you plenty of material to get an idea of Marist-Leninist-Maoism in practice.
Then read who P. Calours said trained her and at what University in the link to the article i previously provided. It literally only took me a minute to find the article about the BLM co-founder and there were several more who reported the same thing - in her own words! Here are some more references for you;
I don't need any schooling professor. Sorry I won't be able to stroke your ego, but I read the Gulag Archipelago when I was 15. I also "lived through the Cold War" so those irrelevant credentials are secure too...but they're meaningless. You're just another conservative troll who responds to Marxism as a trigger word. I could care less. If you had time to read other books besides the ones that feed your confirmation bias, you might know that Russian communism is not the only type of applied Marxism that exists, but because it's the most widely known and loathed, of course that's the definitive example for you. I've done this dance before, sir. You are far from the only crank who selectively cherry picks the worst examples of whatever the cause of the moment is. You can keep your mindless conformity and slavish adherence to the party line. You can keep your worn out tropes as well as your condescension. I could give a damn about whatever nonsense BLM is spewing. They represent my thoughts and beliefs about Marxism about as well as Neo Nazis represent conservatives. Kick at your straw target all you want, but since BLM and CRT have nothing to do with real Marxism as it has been and continues to be applied elsewhere, you know as well as I do that your arguments are disingenuous. Now please, stop wasting your time and mine, and go harass the next person who dares to use your trigger word.
Ah, finally read through your entire diatribe: I didn’t want to make assumptions or jump to conclusions about you but you just confirmed in your own words that you are a Marxist. And you mustn’t have read all through my posts or you would have realized Nein Cheng’s biography was about her trying to find justice for her daughter who was murdered by the Red Guards during Mao’s cultural revolution. Why don’t people who talk about triggers see their own triggers?? (Rhetorical question .) since we obviously won’t be having an interesting discussion back and forth, good night and goodbye.
I’m neither conservative nor a troll (nor a professor, but thanks for the compliment). I actually responded to your request for proof and provided it. You go into a long vacuous diatribe and try to make it personal, but I’m simply trying to have a conversation you claim you want (unclouded (?) sensorium(?) - at this point hardly.) while you were writing that I went back and looked at your previous comment to this article and we both seemed to basically agree AND we both felt a little humor was in order. So while you were writing/ posting this I was looking up Yakov Smirnov
I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read that Saria Rao and Regina Jackson had dedicated their book "White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better" to "all Black, Indigenous, brown, and non-white girls, women, and non-binary identifying folks who are sick and tired of white women's bullshit."
If a white author were to submit a manuscript dedicating the work to "all white people who are sick and tired of black social justice activists' bullshit," not only would the publisher reject the dedication, it would probably cancel its contract with the author, demand a refund of the advance and mount a successful cancellation campaign to destroy the writer's reputation. In fact, in today's racially polarized climate, even critiquing the dedication in these terms in, say, a book review or college assignment, might get the author in trouble.
What has happened to Americans' moral compass that so vile and racist a text was ever accepted for publication? This is nothing short of a declaration of a racial cold war. The confused white women who eat this stuff up must be suffering from internalized misogyny and racism. At the end of the day Rao, Jackson and others of their ilk must either apologize or be held accountable professionally for their transgressions.
Lay it at the feet of all those who support and promote intersectionality as a means to understand society and redress its ills, Kimberly Crenshaw and the like. Pernicious, hate-filled and bankrupt.
Good essay. There were several mentions of the online mob, honestly there's one really easy way to protect yourself from those attacks: opt out of social media. People's lives would get so much better overnight if they just stopped doomscrolling and ceased engaging in vacuous and useless online interactions.
Yes. It's largely driven by our increasingly atomized and lonely society, though. People need and are starved for interaction. Social media feeds on that need, exacerbates it and creates a dependency for those who are lacking in normal community. Worse, though, it rewards the pathological, the psychopaths whose need for community is non-existent. They are the disruptors and the trolls promoting division for their own amusement or aggrandizement.
This article is well articulated, and I think are important lessons for younger generations to consider that have been taught otherwise.
I have three granddaughters who have black fathers and white mothers. I would never teach them that they are both oppressors and oppressed. It simply is wrong and outdated. Most racism that blacks see is in their imagination as they have told themselves for generations it is so. There are so many assumptions and lack of understanding of history.
The media, educators and our government perpetuate and exaggerate the myths for power and money. It is tiresome and unhealthy.
There is one way in which things have not changed since 1959. As soon as a color consciousness activist sees one, one will be a Negro and that’s all they’ll ever want to know about you. The activist will look at a black person but not see the individual.
This article explains the reasoning behind why certain people are targeted. I remember all the Karen hate starting up and it was confusing to me why I had friends jumping on the bandwagon and making offhand disparaging comments about white people (despite being white themselves). What was mentioned in this article helps explain what was/is going on in their minds.
It boogles my mind why anyone would be presented with this ideology and go, "yes please, tell me I'm a piece of crap!" What self-esteem issues these people must have. Not even allowing them the most basic sense of self-respect. Madness.
On average, women display substantially higher levels of empathy and compassion than men. An article in the National Library of Medicine sums it up: "Much research has shown that women are more empathic than men."
Ouch. Granted, you are hiding behind the term “on average”. But, this is an awful statement. Here is something a little more realistic. I live in a wealthy suburban town. The driving force for most women accepting and spouting this stuff is status. It is also arrogance and pseudo intellectualism.
Yes, some women are lulled into accepting this stuff because they “feel bad” that they are told others feel bad. Not exactly the kind of person I want deciding policy.
How about a statement that women are just as humanly flawed as men, and social justice fundamentalism has perfected ways to capture many of them. That would be an honest, accurate balanced point of view.
Dont forget Gamification and Incentive-Driven Participation!
Some individuals, regardless of gender, might engage in specific socio-political narratives, like Inclusion and Diversity Advocacy, not necessarily due to genuine belief or passion but because it yields social, professional, or moral capital. - and likely used by those that lacked merit in the traditional sense.
"Not exactly the kind of person I want deciding policy" but probably why women were given the vote, women, on average, have shown a tendency to lean Democratic, while men have either been more evenly split or have leaned slightly toward Republican candidates (although being a woman myself - it's been a long time since I felt democrats were being sensible and have lost being the party of the working class -
Agreed women are just as humanly flawed as men - in terms of empathy Some research suggests that hormonal differences might influence empathy and group cooperation (but since it's now unpopular to mention women actually are different biologically... well move that to the side)
Thanks for this insightful, well-written piece! Jacques Mallet du Pan, who survived the French Revolution and The Terror, said, "The revolution eats its own children." Following Ibram X Kendi's mandate to fight racism by being racist, this is where we end up. If 80% of woke's adherents are white women, then attacking them to overcome majority rule is a Machiavellian tactic to take power. But the arrogance of attacking your primary ally in the movement is beyond stupid. It is the seed of how this movement will collapse. In particular, the sheer viciousness of it and the racism underpinning it will be their downfall. The article was insightful, but I would take care around making blanket statements like, "studies show women are more empathetic than men." That sounds a bit too close to the sort of pseudoscientific nonsense espoused by evolutionary psychology and the outdated, grossly inaccurate "men are from Venus/women from Mars" mentality. If all women are "more empathetic" than all men, then it needs to be stated that this is because of culturally mitigated factors like the way women and men are socialized in Western countries, not due to some physical, epigenetic, or other immutable characteristic. Indeed, Western white women are socialized to be accommodating, to apologize, to smile, to be passive and conciliatory--but the great thing about socialization is that it can be undone with the help of awareness and insight. So far, the only real resistance to wokist fundamentalism is either political or intellectual. This stuff begs to be satirized and mocked. We need comedians, movies, books, and TV shows that make fun of this tripe. Humor is the greatest and most constructive equalizing force. Merely shouting back at these creeps and giving them a taste of their own poison only strengthens their persecution complexes, and feeds their self-pitying victimhood mentality.
Back when the Karen concept was just getting traction a cousin, who is very progressive, warned me that the term is sexist and hypocritical so thinking liberals should avoid it. She compared it to the old trend of using an ethnic name of a person to call attention to a stereotype. Would that be acceptable for Latinos, African- Americans, Asians, mIddle-Easterners?
No!
When liberals do things like that, they give ammo to the other side, which maintains that SJF are less pro-BIPOC as they are anti-White. These forms of hypocrisy motivate and strengthen the very groups they purport to fight. It makes a cynical person wonder if that is what they want: a perpetual enemy they can fight with righteous indignation.
Prioritizing inherent traits like race and gender as moral determinants can not only segregate society but also dismantle its foundational unity. The method brings awareness to systemic injustices, yes, but also presents a palpable threat by suppressing open dialogue and instigating intersectional tension.
Policy Effectiveness Evaluation:
Pros:
Amplifies social injustices, driving some initiatives forward.
Cons:
Triggers an oversimplification of identities, perpetuates stereotypes, boosts in-group bias, undermines merit, and potentially introduces a new cycle of discrimination against certain groups.
In addition, harmful mechanisms such as echo chambers and mob mentality, especially in universities and media, could solidify existing biases and obstruct alternative perspectives. Furthermore, an excessive focus on identity politics and individual actions may divert crucial resources from addressing overarching systemic issues, jeopardizing democratic and freedom-centric ideologies.
It's a tactic not designed to heal - but dismantle the west. And as such should be discontinued in favour of human centric approaches based on common humanity
it's so so so easy to be jealous of white women. ... because of the image and ideal. ... the brutal fact of white women's suffering and oppression be damned. If they have white skin and, gasp, blonde hair and blue eyes, they are the devil.
I'm one of those horrible white women. I don't care what they call me. I don't believe men are all oppressive. I believe they are needed more than ever. I don't appropriately react to bullying (I dig my heels in). I deal with people on an individual basis, no matter what their race or gender. And, no matter who is being ganged up on, I try to see their side and the other side. All that to say, I stay away from large public gatherings.
Every ideology that is derivative of Marxism says you have no intrinsic value and are simply a product of your political identity. No wonder they end up killing everyone in the end.
Wokism is not Marxism. Conflating the two is a disingenuous way for conservatives to pander to their paranoid base. It's just repackaged McCarthyist paranoia.
No there are real reasons for blaming Marxism, not the least of which some of the people proposing these theories are, by their own admission, trained Marxists! Please don’t make random generalizations without a little research first. I don’t believe Brandy, or the 15 other people who liked her statement are latent Mcarthyists. I for one am neither Republican nor Democrat, and certainly not a Mcarthy supporter. You have not supported your statement with any evidence. I appreciate discussion and debate; please supply a better argument.
https://youtu.be/Wv_0_Lu_Iyo?si=sD-_LvOssPbPfPaJ
😂😂
Why don't you provide some evidence? "Trained Marxists?" Is that a joke? It's certainly not an educated statement. "Marxism" is deployed as a buzzword by paranoid cranks seeking to discredit arguments they feel are "liberal." It's little more than a button to press to shut people down. Your condescension and arrogance are a little misplaced here, seeing as you are rushing to defend a statement that is so grammatically incorrect it's gibberish. I could care less about your claimed identities--or lack thereof. Your disavowal of McCarthy is disingenuous in the extreme. If you support his tactics and his ignorant paranoia, then you ARE McCarthyistic, whether your beef is with "dirty Commies" or "dirty liberals." Conservatives call everything they dislike "Marxist" without having a clue what it means. It should be classified as a form of Tourette's. Do you want to lecture me some more, or do you just want to stamp your feet and tell me some more positions you don't identify with?
I also grew up during the Cold War and unfortunately remember it quite well so yes I do remember Marxism in practice. Also I read and liked the books Grey Is The Color Of Hope by Irina Ratishinskaya and Nein Cheng’s Life and Death in Shanghai. I suggest you go read both of those. They are similar to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. That should give you plenty of material to get an idea of Marist-Leninist-Maoism in practice.
Then read who P. Calours said trained her and at what University in the link to the article i previously provided. It literally only took me a minute to find the article about the BLM co-founder and there were several more who reported the same thing - in her own words! Here are some more references for you;
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/48273/did-a-founder-of-the-black-lives-matter-global-network-organization-claim-to-be/48274#48274
https://www.city-journal.org/article/an-fbi-history-of-howard-zinn
Howard Zinn History is A Weapon website
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon2/whatradicalizedyou2020.html
https://gvwire.com/2020/07/06/black-lives-matter-co-founder-describes-herself-as-trained-marxist/?amp=1
I don't need any schooling professor. Sorry I won't be able to stroke your ego, but I read the Gulag Archipelago when I was 15. I also "lived through the Cold War" so those irrelevant credentials are secure too...but they're meaningless. You're just another conservative troll who responds to Marxism as a trigger word. I could care less. If you had time to read other books besides the ones that feed your confirmation bias, you might know that Russian communism is not the only type of applied Marxism that exists, but because it's the most widely known and loathed, of course that's the definitive example for you. I've done this dance before, sir. You are far from the only crank who selectively cherry picks the worst examples of whatever the cause of the moment is. You can keep your mindless conformity and slavish adherence to the party line. You can keep your worn out tropes as well as your condescension. I could give a damn about whatever nonsense BLM is spewing. They represent my thoughts and beliefs about Marxism about as well as Neo Nazis represent conservatives. Kick at your straw target all you want, but since BLM and CRT have nothing to do with real Marxism as it has been and continues to be applied elsewhere, you know as well as I do that your arguments are disingenuous. Now please, stop wasting your time and mine, and go harass the next person who dares to use your trigger word.
Ah, finally read through your entire diatribe: I didn’t want to make assumptions or jump to conclusions about you but you just confirmed in your own words that you are a Marxist. And you mustn’t have read all through my posts or you would have realized Nein Cheng’s biography was about her trying to find justice for her daughter who was murdered by the Red Guards during Mao’s cultural revolution. Why don’t people who talk about triggers see their own triggers?? (Rhetorical question .) since we obviously won’t be having an interesting discussion back and forth, good night and goodbye.
I’m neither conservative nor a troll (nor a professor, but thanks for the compliment). I actually responded to your request for proof and provided it. You go into a long vacuous diatribe and try to make it personal, but I’m simply trying to have a conversation you claim you want (unclouded (?) sensorium(?) - at this point hardly.) while you were writing that I went back and looked at your previous comment to this article and we both seemed to basically agree AND we both felt a little humor was in order. So while you were writing/ posting this I was looking up Yakov Smirnov
https://youtube.com/shorts/E2NYCOYiCE4?si=bwTwNFgIiOzJHvGD
I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read that Saria Rao and Regina Jackson had dedicated their book "White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better" to "all Black, Indigenous, brown, and non-white girls, women, and non-binary identifying folks who are sick and tired of white women's bullshit."
If a white author were to submit a manuscript dedicating the work to "all white people who are sick and tired of black social justice activists' bullshit," not only would the publisher reject the dedication, it would probably cancel its contract with the author, demand a refund of the advance and mount a successful cancellation campaign to destroy the writer's reputation. In fact, in today's racially polarized climate, even critiquing the dedication in these terms in, say, a book review or college assignment, might get the author in trouble.
What has happened to Americans' moral compass that so vile and racist a text was ever accepted for publication? This is nothing short of a declaration of a racial cold war. The confused white women who eat this stuff up must be suffering from internalized misogyny and racism. At the end of the day Rao, Jackson and others of their ilk must either apologize or be held accountable professionally for their transgressions.
Lay it at the feet of all those who support and promote intersectionality as a means to understand society and redress its ills, Kimberly Crenshaw and the like. Pernicious, hate-filled and bankrupt.
Good essay. There were several mentions of the online mob, honestly there's one really easy way to protect yourself from those attacks: opt out of social media. People's lives would get so much better overnight if they just stopped doomscrolling and ceased engaging in vacuous and useless online interactions.
Yes. It's largely driven by our increasingly atomized and lonely society, though. People need and are starved for interaction. Social media feeds on that need, exacerbates it and creates a dependency for those who are lacking in normal community. Worse, though, it rewards the pathological, the psychopaths whose need for community is non-existent. They are the disruptors and the trolls promoting division for their own amusement or aggrandizement.
This article is well articulated, and I think are important lessons for younger generations to consider that have been taught otherwise.
I have three granddaughters who have black fathers and white mothers. I would never teach them that they are both oppressors and oppressed. It simply is wrong and outdated. Most racism that blacks see is in their imagination as they have told themselves for generations it is so. There are so many assumptions and lack of understanding of history.
The media, educators and our government perpetuate and exaggerate the myths for power and money. It is tiresome and unhealthy.
There is one way in which things have not changed since 1959. As soon as a color consciousness activist sees one, one will be a Negro and that’s all they’ll ever want to know about you. The activist will look at a black person but not see the individual.
It's ironic how fundamentally racist the "color consciousness activist" actually is.
This article explains the reasoning behind why certain people are targeted. I remember all the Karen hate starting up and it was confusing to me why I had friends jumping on the bandwagon and making offhand disparaging comments about white people (despite being white themselves). What was mentioned in this article helps explain what was/is going on in their minds.
It boogles my mind why anyone would be presented with this ideology and go, "yes please, tell me I'm a piece of crap!" What self-esteem issues these people must have. Not even allowing them the most basic sense of self-respect. Madness.
On average, women display substantially higher levels of empathy and compassion than men. An article in the National Library of Medicine sums it up: "Much research has shown that women are more empathic than men."
Ouch. Granted, you are hiding behind the term “on average”. But, this is an awful statement. Here is something a little more realistic. I live in a wealthy suburban town. The driving force for most women accepting and spouting this stuff is status. It is also arrogance and pseudo intellectualism.
Yes, some women are lulled into accepting this stuff because they “feel bad” that they are told others feel bad. Not exactly the kind of person I want deciding policy.
How about a statement that women are just as humanly flawed as men, and social justice fundamentalism has perfected ways to capture many of them. That would be an honest, accurate balanced point of view.
Otherwise, a very good piece.
Dont forget Gamification and Incentive-Driven Participation!
Some individuals, regardless of gender, might engage in specific socio-political narratives, like Inclusion and Diversity Advocacy, not necessarily due to genuine belief or passion but because it yields social, professional, or moral capital. - and likely used by those that lacked merit in the traditional sense.
"Not exactly the kind of person I want deciding policy" but probably why women were given the vote, women, on average, have shown a tendency to lean Democratic, while men have either been more evenly split or have leaned slightly toward Republican candidates (although being a woman myself - it's been a long time since I felt democrats were being sensible and have lost being the party of the working class -
Agreed women are just as humanly flawed as men - in terms of empathy Some research suggests that hormonal differences might influence empathy and group cooperation (but since it's now unpopular to mention women actually are different biologically... well move that to the side)
Thanks for this insightful, well-written piece! Jacques Mallet du Pan, who survived the French Revolution and The Terror, said, "The revolution eats its own children." Following Ibram X Kendi's mandate to fight racism by being racist, this is where we end up. If 80% of woke's adherents are white women, then attacking them to overcome majority rule is a Machiavellian tactic to take power. But the arrogance of attacking your primary ally in the movement is beyond stupid. It is the seed of how this movement will collapse. In particular, the sheer viciousness of it and the racism underpinning it will be their downfall. The article was insightful, but I would take care around making blanket statements like, "studies show women are more empathetic than men." That sounds a bit too close to the sort of pseudoscientific nonsense espoused by evolutionary psychology and the outdated, grossly inaccurate "men are from Venus/women from Mars" mentality. If all women are "more empathetic" than all men, then it needs to be stated that this is because of culturally mitigated factors like the way women and men are socialized in Western countries, not due to some physical, epigenetic, or other immutable characteristic. Indeed, Western white women are socialized to be accommodating, to apologize, to smile, to be passive and conciliatory--but the great thing about socialization is that it can be undone with the help of awareness and insight. So far, the only real resistance to wokist fundamentalism is either political or intellectual. This stuff begs to be satirized and mocked. We need comedians, movies, books, and TV shows that make fun of this tripe. Humor is the greatest and most constructive equalizing force. Merely shouting back at these creeps and giving them a taste of their own poison only strengthens their persecution complexes, and feeds their self-pitying victimhood mentality.
I agree humor is needed - in fact necessary!!
The irony saddens me at a profound level.
I thank the author for this article.
Back when the Karen concept was just getting traction a cousin, who is very progressive, warned me that the term is sexist and hypocritical so thinking liberals should avoid it. She compared it to the old trend of using an ethnic name of a person to call attention to a stereotype. Would that be acceptable for Latinos, African- Americans, Asians, mIddle-Easterners?
No!
When liberals do things like that, they give ammo to the other side, which maintains that SJF are less pro-BIPOC as they are anti-White. These forms of hypocrisy motivate and strengthen the very groups they purport to fight. It makes a cynical person wonder if that is what they want: a perpetual enemy they can fight with righteous indignation.
Prioritizing inherent traits like race and gender as moral determinants can not only segregate society but also dismantle its foundational unity. The method brings awareness to systemic injustices, yes, but also presents a palpable threat by suppressing open dialogue and instigating intersectional tension.
Policy Effectiveness Evaluation:
Pros:
Amplifies social injustices, driving some initiatives forward.
Cons:
Triggers an oversimplification of identities, perpetuates stereotypes, boosts in-group bias, undermines merit, and potentially introduces a new cycle of discrimination against certain groups.
In addition, harmful mechanisms such as echo chambers and mob mentality, especially in universities and media, could solidify existing biases and obstruct alternative perspectives. Furthermore, an excessive focus on identity politics and individual actions may divert crucial resources from addressing overarching systemic issues, jeopardizing democratic and freedom-centric ideologies.
It's a tactic not designed to heal - but dismantle the west. And as such should be discontinued in favour of human centric approaches based on common humanity
Love this - well said!! ❤️
Terrific article. Thank you.
a more straight forward explanation is: jealousy.
it's so so so easy to be jealous of white women. ... because of the image and ideal. ... the brutal fact of white women's suffering and oppression be damned. If they have white skin and, gasp, blonde hair and blue eyes, they are the devil.
it's jealousy & racism.