thefederalist | There is a misconception that political correctness was responsible
for the breakdown of the racial détente. This is incorrect. Political
correctness, as loose a term as it is, was the means by which we
continually renegotiated the terms of the deal. After all, the primary
rules for whites had exactly to do with what was acceptable to say.
Privilege
theory and the concept of systemic racism dealt the death blow to the
détente. In embracing these theories, minorities and progressives broke
their essential rule, which was to not run around calling everyone a
racist. As these theories took hold, every white person became a racist
who must confess that racism and actively make amends. Yet if the white
woman who teaches gender studies at Barnard with the Ben Shahn drawings
in her office is a racist, what chance do the rest of have?
Within
the past few years, as privilege theory took hold, many whites began to
think that no matter what they did they would be called racist,
because, in fact, that was happening. Previously there were rules. They
shifted at times, but if adhered to they largely protected one from the
charge of racism. It’s like the Morrissey lyric: “is evil just something
you are, or something you do.” Under the détente, racism was something
you did; under privilege theory it is something you are.
That
shift, from carefully directed accusations of racism for direct actions
to more general charges of unconscious racism, took away the carrot for
whites. Worse, it led to a defensiveness and feeling of victimization
that make today’s whites in many ways much more tribal than they were 30
years ago. White people are constantly told to examine their whiteness,
not to think of themselves as racially neutral. That they did, but the
result was not introspection that led to reconciliation, it was a
decision that white people have just as much right to think of
themselves as a special interest group as anyone else.
Blame and Destroy Whitey
The
unfortunate place where we now find ourselves is one in which blatant
attacks on white people, often from white people, are driving them
further into a tribal cocoon. Samantha Bee’s awful and irresponsible berating of white women
as the evil force behind Trump’s victory, while condescendingly
describing magical people of color as the only ones who can save us, is a
clear example of where white defensiveness and victimization are coming
from.
Furthermore, the ever-present drumbeat from the Left that
every conservative victory is the death throes of bad, old white people
who are about to be swept away by waves of brown immigration is making
many whites dig in. On a certain level, how can you blame them? They are
explicitly being told that their values and way of life are under the
sword. How do we expect them to react?
The détente was far from
perfect. It often allowed quieter racism to lurk unchallenged. In some
ways, it was a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. But Band-Aids have a role to
play in treating bullet wounds—the body heals itself better when the
wound is clean and free from infection. This is true of discourse’s
ability to heal our body politic, as well. Under the détente, there was
still racism, but Steve Bannon, whose publication Breitbart has traded
in vile explicit racism, could never have been considered for White
House chief of staff.
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