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Oct. 30, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
22:40
This Week in Stupid (29⧸10⧸2017)
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Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 29th of October 2017.
Sorry this one's a bit late and it's in a different format.
I'm a bit ill, so I've had to kind of return to the other format.
But I will persevere and do my very best with this episode.
Dear white people, you're never racially discriminated against, so shut up.
From a woman who looks remarkably white.
So a recent poll published in the New York Times found that over half of white people in America believe they're being discriminated against.
Yes, you read that right.
As if it isn't daily that we see a new white people, you need to do this.
White people, you need to do that.
For example, we're coming up to Halloween.
55% of white folk in the States believe they're being mistreated by society because of their skin colour.
Which obviously couldn't be the truth.
I mean, we're not going to start believing the lived experiences of white people.
You only believe the lived experiences of black people.
Because there's no racial discrimination against whites in the United States.
But the proof that our author is providing to show that white people can't possibly be discriminated against in the United States is things that happened 150 years ago.
Slavery was around 245 years, followed by over 100 years of official and unofficial segregation.
Right again, that's great.
We've got to 60 years ago.
That's really, I mean, at least we're getting closer to the modern day.
And apparently, 25% of those killed by police are black.
Despite Afro-Americans making only 13% of the population, yeah, but they make up a disproportionate percentage of the crime.
And people who fight with cops.
I don't even need to explain this, because that has no bearing on whether white people are or are not being discriminated against.
Because the mechanism for that might not be racism.
And honestly, I think it's not racism.
I don't even need to explain this.
That doesn't refute or deny that there is discrimination against white people.
That's not related to it.
34% has no connection to whether other entities in society are discriminating against white people.
And same with 34% of the prison population being black.
Or that 45% of young black children live in poverty.
There are consequences for the actions of these parents.
And honestly, you're looking at them there.
That isn't something that white people have done to black people.
Because let's be honest, that's actually what you're suggesting that this is, isn't it?
By saying that bad things are happening to black people, therefore, good things must be happening to white people.
Because it must be the white people persecuting the black people.
That's what you're saying, isn't it?
And I really don't agree that that's the case, because there seem to be entire professions constructed around being professional victims on behalf of these communities.
Not that these communities ever get better because of these professional victims that are creating propaganda like this.
It's not that they ever make things better for these communities, but they are certainly always there to publicly enrich themselves, apparently defending these communities.
How does that help anything?
To just blame white people and say, look, white people, it's your fault.
Black people are like this.
They need special treatment.
How is that helpful to black people?
Like, in what way is this actually aiding black people in general?
If these are the consequences of personal decisions, no white people can fix them.
There's not anything a white person can do about that.
Because a white person doesn't actually control the decision-making power of a black person.
That person controls their own.
So what the fuck do you think white people can do?
None of this is in any way any kind of proof that white people aren't being discriminated against in society.
I know you're thinking, yeah, but this is just a thing for the Metro, this is a shit publication, and you'd be correct.
But it just annoys me.
that it's just one of many articles I see on a regular basis.
And, you know, this just happens to be the one that this week has just, okay, fine.
Finally, we'll talk about this.
If you can't demonstrate how white people are persecuting black people, then I don't want to hear you addressing things to white people.
It's like literally saying Muslims, how about cutting back on that jihad, please?
She carries on and says, it is a country which is presided over by someone who calls neo-Nazis very fine people.
Yeah, he called communists very fine people as well.
A country which is scarred from decades and centuries of racism.
Yeah, and that will never, ever get over it with people like you in existence.
I've really been thinking about the concept of the bourgeoisie as laid down by Rousseau.
I'm going to be doing like, I'm going to write something up about this so I can make a proper argument at some point.
But I just love his idea about the bourgeoisie, where he's just talking about how they live in other people's minds.
That's how they exist, through the perceptions of other people.
And it's a really fascinating idea because that's what this is.
I don't think that they're expecting to actually get any white people to shut up with this, but I think that they are expecting sort of social justice brownie points for having written an article like this.
Because this is unbelievably lazy.
It's just dumb.
Anyone with any kind of academic understanding, and I'm not me, this is what I'm saying, right?
If I can see this, then literally anyone with half a brain can see this.
The fact that these things do not connect at all.
But that doesn't matter.
Didn't matter to her.
It didn't matter to her publishers, her editor.
It didn't matter.
And this bit's even worse, and not for the grammar.
And 68-year-old man from Ohio told NPR, if you apply for a job, they seem to give the blacks the first crack at it.
Basically, you know, if you want any help from the government, if you're white, you don't get it.
If you're black, you get it.
Okay, I don't know whether that's true or not.
I mean, that's just his perception, right?
But her response is, sir, is it because you have been riding on your skin colour to make up for things your entire life?
In capitals.
Do you know anything about this man?
Or are you just taking what you presume the average white person is like and applying it to this random individual?
Because you literally don't know anything about him.
You can't just look at an average number and then apply that to every single member of the group that you come to.
That would literally be prejudicial.
And then she gives us another anecdote.
When my dad visited the states back in the 90s, he said he was waiting in the bus shelter when a white down and out came around asking for loose change.
He approached the black people first, addressing them in a derogatory manner, demanding money.
When it became apparent they weren't had an on hand, he went cap in hand to the white folk.
Okay, if we are now using anecdotes and stereotypes as evidence now, then your stereotypes are about to leap out of the screen at you with how bad they are.
Okay?
This is why you call them racist and we don't use them in public life.
But if you want to go down this road, you will find yourself with a whole host of really ugly things in your comment sections and you will have been permissive of this because you put the ugly things in your columns first.
I might not have anything, but at least I have my whiteness is a real attitude.
Again, is it?
Honestly, maybe it is among social justice activists.
Maybe it is genuinely something that they think.
But listen to the way this ends.
Ethnic minorities don't want to play the victim.
They're hungry for success and opportunity.
But that doesn't mean it's the turn of the white community to start whining just because things aren't as easy as they used to be.
You mean because you're specifically victimizing them because of their ethnic heritage.
And as you say, we've had 300 years of you telling us how superior you are.
We're not listening to your bullshit now.
You know, that's you playing fucking victim, right?
You've literally just said, oh, we're not playing the victim.
Well, you fucking are.
So knock it off.
Stop thinking you are somehow, you, one of the whitest people I have ever seen, is somehow a representative of oppressed brown people from 300 years ago.
So let's see what's going on for the poor oppressed brown people of America.
Kellogg's is redesigning corn pop boxes so they're not racist.
The company said it did not intend to offend.
I'm absolutely certain these boxes are racist.
Marvel comics writer Saladin Ahmed used Twitter on Tuesday to accuse the serial company of quote teaching kids racism.
That's right, Saladin.
Yeah, Kellogg's.
They were teaching kids racism.
Deliberately.
On purpose.
Because they're run by the Klan.
Because Kellogg's was a white supremacist who wanted kids not to masturbate or something.
I don't know.
Saladin, do you think that literally anyone thinks that Kellogg's is actually teaching kids racism?
Because it was obviously incredibly petty.
He tweeted out, yes, it's a tiny thing, but when you see your kids staring over at this breakfast and realize millions of other kids are doing the same, they're all internalizing racism, that Mexicans are cleaners, I guess.
I suppose they're all being indoctrinated with racism and that they will never ever see another brown person in their lives that will also contribute to their impression of what brown people are like.
You know, maybe more like the ones in real life who are just like people.
And then maybe it won't really matter what colour any of those people on the box are.
Kellogg's, of course, naturally swiftly apologized and said they're committed to diversity and inclusion, oh master.
Please, we are so sorry.
Thousand apologies, O great master.
Please forgive us.
Do not call us racist.
We do not intend to offend.
We apologize.
The artwork's updated and will be on store soon.
Pray, pray forgive.
What the fuck?
Are you salaaming to these people?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
You can just be like, dude, that's not racist.
What are you talking about?
It's just someone on the cover.
It's just a platitude that someone who has been hired to talk about Kellogg's PR is saying.
Like, who gives a fuck what they have to say about this?
So apparently, our boy Saladin genuinely appreciated the rapid response.
And many people cheered the development.
Like, this was an accomplishment.
Like, this has really done something to improve society.
This is great.
Well done.
Bravo, everyone.
We did it.
We did it.
We got that brown person off the box of this cereal company.
Great job, guys.
You've erased the existence of a hypothetical brown corn pop.
It's so fucking petty.
Everything about your fucking activism is- oh god.
I- I can't believe that this is a Huffington Post article.
And I can't believe I'm then commenting on it.
But it's just so indicative of your fucking mindsets.
And your mindset is pervasive and damaging to society.
And it's fucking everywhere.
But anyway, what else are we extracting white men from?
What's this?
Teaching?
Oh, that's a good idea.
We need to decolonize it.
Because white men building what?
Cambridge University?
Yeah, that's colonization.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, originally built on Aboriginal land or something, I imagine, right?
How the fuck can you call Cambridge University colonized?
So something's very wrong when a simple request from a large number of students that their reading list be broadened slightly to include some black and ethnic minority writers becomes the basis of a manufactured racial row.
Well, you're asking for it to be removed, the white parts to be removed.
And they weren't put in because they're the white parts.
So two British newspapers saw fit to turn an open letter from Cambridge English students into a trumped up existential crisis for white male writers.
Decolonising, getting rid of them because they're white male, is an existential crisis for white males.
That's what they're saying here.
That's how they perceive it.
The real danger is the substantive issues at stake that concern us all, not just ethnic minorities, become obscured in this facile attempt at stroking a keyboard race war with real life consequences at a time when hate crime's on the rise.
Yeah, okay, but how does that change the fact that Pythagoras was white?
What I love about this is it's the tying together of things that simply have no relevance to each other.
What the fuck does William Shakespeare have to do with hate crimes?
What the fuck does this have to do with anything?
There are hate crimes on the rise.
Okay, well, decolonise education.
What's the connection?
Do you think that because they have to read Descartes or something, that that's like, well, that's contributing to white supremacy?
Because we have to now talk about Aristotle.
That's white supremacy.
They say a decolonised curriculum would bring questions of class, caste, race, gender, ability, and sexuality into dialogue with one another instead of pretending that there is some kind of generic identity we all share.
The demonstration that we have had so far is that it will be an attack on these things.
The thing is, there's no reason to even really do this because these things vary on an individual basis.
An individual who is black, who is in a white neighborhood, experiences racism, doesn't need you to tell me about the racism that he personally has experienced.
And the thing that you're saying that is the generic identity that we all share, that's being an individual.
That's what you're talking about there.
As if there's some kind of generic identity.
No, we're not saying that.
We're saying that everyone has their own identity.
Like their own collection, their own unique interpretations.
There's no point categorizing anyone, really, because they'll tell you the most important things about themselves.
By the way, the things that they care about, what things they do in their lives.
And they'll tell you personally what they value.
And that's called getting to know someone.
It's called being a human being, you fucking robots.
And the example that they give is, surely Sultana's Dream, the early 20th century fantasy story by someone Hussein, where men stayed home or only women went out, has relevance for our understanding of Muslim women's long and rich history of writing and debate.
Yes, it exists.
Listen, right, if this was like a Rajyard Kipling story that was a fantasy about men staying home while only women went out, that gave us understanding for our Muslim women's long and rich history of writings and debate, yes, it exists.
I would be exactly so like, listen, I don't think we should put this in as much prominence as something that's more relevant.
You know, we're not going to start decolonizing physics because Rajard Kipling wrote a fucking story.
Why would we do it for a non-white person who wrote a story?
Another example of white people you won't be discriminated against is a teacher at the University of Pennsylvania who won't call them white male students because they're white males.
So this lecturer tweeted out, I will always call my black women students first.
Other people of colour get second tier priority.
White women come next and if I have to, white men.
Isn't that amazing?
She's actually using a caste system in a university based on race.
And she's put white men at the bottom because she perceives them to be the most successful people in society when in reality they're actually not.
They're just some of the most numerous in the workforce.
And she's literally just saying, right, well, I think you're at the top.
Therefore, I'm just going to put you at the bottom because of spite.
This is textbook bigotry to do this to just a group of people.
Imagine if it was just black men.
I just take, but it's white men first, black men, black women last.
Why?
Because they're black women.
Shit, you would pitch a fit.
But at this point, there is absolutely no moral difference between us.
So at least you're not going to sit there and say, well, it's wrong for you to do that.
I'll be like, well, no, it's not.
Because you're doing exactly the same.
So it's not wrong at all by your standards.
It really is amazing to me watching the sort of bravado with which they tweet this sort of thing out.
They're just totally proud of it.
If I have to ask white men the last, it's just like, dude, look at this.
Like, why the fuck would she even say that in public?
Can't she tell that that's like a massive amount of bigotry on display from her ideology, completely permitted by her ideology, as part of her ideology, to create a racial and gendered caste system.
Who can be in defense of this?
I'm honestly just like my wit's ends.
Like, how can anyone defend this bullshit?
It's insane in every way, in my opinion.
This is just such a monumentally regressive and backwards ideology.
It's horrific, completely disempowering.
As well, that's another thing that really pisses me off about it.
It's all about innovation.
It's the socialism of like personal philosophies.
It's literally like ruin everything.
Stop trying.
Blame other people.
Never achieve again.
Spend all of your time and energy whining that someone else is keeping you down and wonder why you have succeeded in nothing.
It's amazing.
But maybe if you're racist enough, maybe if you're sexist enough, the people on the other end will think that maybe they're the ones who have done something wrong here.
And you will get your way.
Maybe if you're lucky.
You know, I can't say this is not going to work because it seems to be working for you.
That's the thing that really scares me.
This is a fucking university lecturer.
Is it any wonder that we've had like reports of segregation from progressives in universities?
Literally white people and black people retreats.
Where the white people can be taught about their privilege and the black people can be taught how much their lives suck and how aggrieved at the white people they should be.
It's crazy that these things are permitted to exist, in my opinion.
I can't believe a government isn't banning this.
What are you doing?
Well, we're segregating them racially and then indoctrinating them to hate each other.
Just okay.
Why are we allowing that?
So predictably, this blatant exercise in race and sex-based discrimination is being defended by fellow progressives who reject individualism.
I feel like that's a biased sentence, but everything said there is literally true.
And I was thinking about this.
The amount of times they call people far right or right-wing.
It's like, okay.
But when I'm looking at the regressive left, what am I actually looking at?
I am looking at the farthest left philosophy I can even imagine.
I love the example inside higher ed have here.
This is like, it's the privilege that they, by their own standards, would have that they can't seem to overlook.
If I have a class of 40 students, since Hunter is predominantly women, the university, I may have four or five young men in class, said Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City of University New York professor, Jesse Daniels.
There's still implicit bias where we value men's voices more than women's voices.
So literally men are a tiny minority of this classroom and they're being targeted by the professor here because they're white men.
Wouldn't that be considered to be oppression by social justice standards?
You are contextually a minority.
You are being targeted by the power structure on behalf of the majority.
What the hell?
Do you think you are doing?
Then saying, well, you know what?
I've got an implicit bias towards these people.
Yeah, everyone loves a fucking underdog.
That's why.
You know that, right?
Everyone looks at that and thinks, right, okay, you're not the one with the power.
So you're the one who's probably being aggrieved.
So you're the one who has something to overcome.
And so it's impressive when those people do overcome it.
Because this is what you're describing.
And you're literally describing the fact that there are more women going to university because of institutional bias in favor of women.
And you are still persecuting what few white men you have remaining in your classes.
And I swear to God, I'm just seeing the worst arguments for literally every regressive talking point everywhere now.
Can we talk about the gender pay gap?
The answer being no, Washington Post.
You can get fucked.
There is no gender pay gap.
You get exactly what you fucking earn.
The median salary for women working full-time is about 80% of men's.
So fucking what?
So fucking what?
That means nothing.
That's, okay, you're saying women are lazy.
I understand, Washington Post.
I think that's a really unfair characterization.
I don't think it's a fucking competition, but you've made it one.
But let's see, that gap put in other terms means that women are working for free 10 weeks a year.
No, they're fucking not.
They're not earning as much as men.
Because they're working less a lot of the time and because they work in jobs that aren't as dangerous and so don't pay as much or don't require as much technical expertise and therefore don't pay as much.
And that's an acceptable life choice.
Holy shit.
Again, like men are the ones who are becoming like persecuted minorities in certain areas and just sat there like, yeah, you know what?
Men are still earning too much.
They earned it.
You've got no right to take it away from them.
And if you didn't earn that much, it's okay.
It's not a competition.
But they say you started working for free on October the 26th.
Well, that's a little blunt and bullshit.
Absolutely.
I mean, literally, like, anyone could do that with anyone else.
And just have it so that, right, okay, well, I'm earning 80% of your salary.
Therefore, on October the 26th, I was working for free in comparison to you.
Like, it doesn't mean anything.
It's not done that way.
It's just, it's just ridiculously.
And this is the Washington Post.
Democracy dies in darkness.
But by the way, I'm working for free after October the 26th because the gender wage gap.
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