Tag Archives: focal point
Response to AngryBlackLady
I have made a fan over at angryblacklady.com. She has written a response to my commenting on the Kymberly Wimberly story.
First there are some things that need to be cleared up. AngryBlackLady acts as if one of my main arguing points was that the superintendent was black. It seems like she is determined to fit me into her preconceived notion of a racism denier, who often make arguments along the lines of “I’m not racist, I have a black friend,” or “it can’t be racism, there is a black person in authority.” But the superintendent being black was never what convinced me that racism was not the likely explanation. It was one of the many things that contributed to my skepticism initially, and one of the many things that simply convinced me to at least wait to hear the whole story. Blacks are less likely to discriminate against blacks than whites are. I don’t know why this was such a focal point for AngryBlackLady.
The Social Virtue of Talking About Race
Among those who are waging a war against colorblindness, it has become a social virtue to talk about race. This is especially true on college campuses where race awareness clubs are formed, and racialist events are held. If you find yourself in one of these events, you will most likely listen to a guest speaker or sit around in a circle and discuss race in America in very abstract terms. Not everything will be abstract; they will give hard facts about disparities between races, (all of which will be either wrong or misleading) and they will make clear accusations against white America, but in terms of solutions, things will become vague. The whole time there will be a sense that those who choose to come to these events are the select few with the courage to talk about race. This makes talking about race a kind of virtue in and of itself. There are two main problems with this: 1. People become so pleased with themselves for talking about race that they convince themselves they’ve actually done something 2. Most of the issues they attribute to race (which is nearly every issue), don’t in fact have to do with race.
