One of my reactive traits comes into play when someone says You Can't Say That or You Can't Think That or You Shouldn't Feel That.
I don't know why, but for as long as I can remember, and had the words, my internal reaction is, Fuck You. Perhaps it's just my Five-ish share of my mother Eve's transgressive instinct. When you tell a human being that you can eat from any tree in the whole garden except for that one, that one becomes the only interesting tree in the garden. Everyone knows that. (God knew that, of course, which is why the Avoid The Tree of Knowledge thing was bait for a set-up. But I digress.)
And then, after my FU riposte, I become curious. Curious about why that word, thought or feeling is so unsettling to the person or persons who are kindly telling me to shut up.
These same people are also likely to want to steer me in a direction of their choosing. One they may even believe is simple a matter of seeing what's there. But the combo of Look Here, Not There and Say This and Never Say That only produces in me a kind of rebellion. I'm free, White and 21, so I'll look where I want.
The Tray-von/Zimmerman show and the Derbyshire Deluge encapsulate a lot of it. The MSM and the Obama "He Looks Like My Son"* regime want us to focus all our energy and attention on a single killing, one which they figured would fit The Grand Narrative of White Racism and Black Suffering. Then, oops, slight script change, Senor Zimmerman had to be made "a White Hispanic". (By the same logic, Obama is a White African). And cute little Tray turned out to be something of a wannabe thug. But the Race Juggernaut rolls on. Look here, not there.
The background to this single encounter lies in Derbyshire's Talk To My Children. As he said in an interview today, he believed all the optimistic social engineering of the 60's, but a half century later, the failure is all around us, plain as day, but strictly forbidden to notice. He wants his kids to face reality. Parts of it ain't pretty. And because it threatens The Grand Narrative, he and it must be silenced. Lay the sins on the scapegoat and drive him out into the desert.
The facts are that certain racial and ethnic groups have manifest and empirical strengths of genetics and culture which make them, as a group, consistently better performers than others. I am thinking here of East Asians and Jews. Combine very high average IQs, strong families, and cultures which reward delayed gratification, learning and competitive accomplishment in high-income fields and it's no surprise that, as groups, they have higher measures of success than (for Asians) Whites or (for Jews) other Whites.
No one is going to deny this outright, even if it makes them uncomfortable. Even "positive stereotypes"** are dangerous, they say, because they inspire envy and the resentment of invidious comparisons. Or suddenly, in a breathtaking pirouette away from group-based obsessions like privilege, reparations, level playing fields, legacies of this and that, disparate impact and affirmative action, Only Individuals Count. But because they can smell where the argument is going, many people of a certain type will really be itching for the Shut Up button. There is an implication that groups are not equal. And this violates the Prime Directive of contemporary progressive, enlightened and forward-thinking post-racial society.
The real manure hits the cooling device when you look at Blacks as a group. Need I say more?
Well, of course not, Ex C. Just shut up.
**I recall sitting in a meeting during my gay community nonprofit days and having to listen politely to some Chinese guy whine about Asians being tagged as "the model minority" because they approximated White Middle Class values. All the others, mostly White, nodded sympathetically and knowingly. It may have been at that moment that I thought, "I am so over this shit."
I don't know why, but for as long as I can remember, and had the words, my internal reaction is, Fuck You. Perhaps it's just my Five-ish share of my mother Eve's transgressive instinct. When you tell a human being that you can eat from any tree in the whole garden except for that one, that one becomes the only interesting tree in the garden. Everyone knows that. (God knew that, of course, which is why the Avoid The Tree of Knowledge thing was bait for a set-up. But I digress.)
And then, after my FU riposte, I become curious. Curious about why that word, thought or feeling is so unsettling to the person or persons who are kindly telling me to shut up.
These same people are also likely to want to steer me in a direction of their choosing. One they may even believe is simple a matter of seeing what's there. But the combo of Look Here, Not There and Say This and Never Say That only produces in me a kind of rebellion. I'm free, White and 21, so I'll look where I want.
The Tray-von/Zimmerman show and the Derbyshire Deluge encapsulate a lot of it. The MSM and the Obama "He Looks Like My Son"* regime want us to focus all our energy and attention on a single killing, one which they figured would fit The Grand Narrative of White Racism and Black Suffering. Then, oops, slight script change, Senor Zimmerman had to be made "a White Hispanic". (By the same logic, Obama is a White African). And cute little Tray turned out to be something of a wannabe thug. But the Race Juggernaut rolls on. Look here, not there.
The background to this single encounter lies in Derbyshire's Talk To My Children. As he said in an interview today, he believed all the optimistic social engineering of the 60's, but a half century later, the failure is all around us, plain as day, but strictly forbidden to notice. He wants his kids to face reality. Parts of it ain't pretty. And because it threatens The Grand Narrative, he and it must be silenced. Lay the sins on the scapegoat and drive him out into the desert.
The facts are that certain racial and ethnic groups have manifest and empirical strengths of genetics and culture which make them, as a group, consistently better performers than others. I am thinking here of East Asians and Jews. Combine very high average IQs, strong families, and cultures which reward delayed gratification, learning and competitive accomplishment in high-income fields and it's no surprise that, as groups, they have higher measures of success than (for Asians) Whites or (for Jews) other Whites.
No one is going to deny this outright, even if it makes them uncomfortable. Even "positive stereotypes"** are dangerous, they say, because they inspire envy and the resentment of invidious comparisons. Or suddenly, in a breathtaking pirouette away from group-based obsessions like privilege, reparations, level playing fields, legacies of this and that, disparate impact and affirmative action, Only Individuals Count. But because they can smell where the argument is going, many people of a certain type will really be itching for the Shut Up button. There is an implication that groups are not equal. And this violates the Prime Directive of contemporary progressive, enlightened and forward-thinking post-racial society.
The real manure hits the cooling device when you look at Blacks as a group. Need I say more?
Well, of course not, Ex C. Just shut up.
**I recall sitting in a meeting during my gay community nonprofit days and having to listen politely to some Chinese guy whine about Asians being tagged as "the model minority" because they approximated White Middle Class values. All the others, mostly White, nodded sympathetically and knowingly. It may have been at that moment that I thought, "I am so over this shit."
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