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Nov. 15, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
34:05
The Problem with White Friends
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So I've been thinking a lot about this viral article from the New York Times called Can My Children Be Friends with White People.
This article was important for two reasons.
The first that it was published in the New York Times, which is an important and well-read publication, and second that it was written by a professor of criminal law.
So after reading the piece, a few things really stuck out to me.
The first being it's very muddled and incoherent, and the second being it's laden with emotion and rhetoric.
The lack of clarity in the op-ed makes it rather opaque to people who aren't used to dealing with emotion only, because that's honestly what this post really is.
And what this post really is, is a guilt trip to white progressives in America.
Which is why Echo Juncker's interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News was so unproductive, but we'll get to that shortly.
First, we'll have a quick look at the article.
So the article begins with Juncker inculcating his son with a fear of racism.
He says, some people hate others because they are different, to which his son replies, but I'm not different.
And like the rest of the piece, this opening paragraph is charged with emotional rhetoric.
But Juncker's excuse for doing this is that even a child's joy is not immune to this ominous political period.
So what is happening here is that the father is placing his political concerns onto his son when he is only four years old, whether rightly or wrongly.
The next paragraph is by far the most fascinating one in the entire piece.
Donald Trump's election has made it clear that I will teach my boys the lessons generations old, one that I for the most part nearly escaped.
I will teach them to be cautious, I'll teach them suspicion, I will teach them distrust.
Much sooner than I thought I would, I will have to discuss with my boys whether they can truly be friends with white people.
What Juncker is doing here is teaching him a lesson that he didn't have to learn himself.
He didn't have to be wary of white people.
Juncker seems to believe that Donald Trump's election has somehow returned the United States to a time before the civil rights movement.
And while Juncker grew up in presumably the 80s and 90s, he feels that now with the advent of Donald Trump, he now needs to return to teaching his sons the same lessons that were taught before the civil rights movement, before the end of segregation, while there was still institutional racism.
He then decides to tell us about what his opinion of what friendship is.
Meaningful friendship is not just a feeling.
It is not simply being able to share a beer.
Real friendship is impossible without the ability to trust others, without knowing that your well-being is important to them.
The desire to create, maintain or wield power over others destroys the possibility of friendship, and I suppose that the implication here, given that the article is called Can My Children Be Friends with White People, is that he believes that white people do have a desire to create, maintain and wield power over black people.
Which is why he finds himself on the opposite side of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when he says that his famous dream of black and white children holding hands was a dream precisely because he realised that in Alabama, conditions of dominance made real friendship between white and black people impossible.
I suppose it's only fair for us to infer from that that he believes that Donald Trump's election has returned the United States to a condition like pre-civil rights Alabama.
I know that sounds ridiculous, but it genuinely seems to be the crux of his argument.
Given how Juncker has already rewound the clock by 70 years, it should be no surprise that he then delves back into history.
History has provided little reason for people of colour to trust white people in this way, and these recent months have put in the starkest relief the contempt with which the country measures the value of racial minorities.
He thinks that voting for Trump is a vote against racial minorities.
His reasons for this are almost entirely rhetorical and fail to explore the underlying causes of the problems he then brings up.
He asserts that there is still robust evidence of continuing racism, such as minority underemployment, which is often couched in the language of bad choices and personal responsibility.
When systematic joblessness strikes swathes of white America, we get an entire presidential campaign centered on globalization's impact on the white working class.
What Professor Juncker is doing here is dishonestly conflating these two problems.
They do not have the same cause, and yet he is acting as if they do.
The reason that black communities are talked about in the language of personal responsibility and bad choices is because they do not seem to be taking any personal responsibility for their bad choices.
It is not white people's fault that 73% of children born to non-Hispanic blacks are born out of wedlock, but over two-thirds of non-Hispanic white children are born in households that are married.
This is the choice that people are talking about.
Having children out of wedlock makes life much more difficult for both parent and child, and puts the child on a path that's more likely to result in a life of crime and prison.
This is not something good that you do for your children, and there is nothing that can be done about it except black people making better decisions.
The white working class, specifically I think he's talking about the rust belt, which flipped to Donald Trump during the election, did not have a choice as to whether the industry that they relied upon for their income left the country or not.
That is a consequence of globalization that is outside of their control.
Now that doesn't mean that the white working class doesn't bear any responsibility for their position either.
In fact, this graph comes from a study done by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis that suggests that it is in fact a lack of strong competition that led to the decline in the first place, and that the decline, as you can see, went on for decades and decades without any innovation taking place.
But the point is still proven.
It is not the same problem that is being addressed when people are talking about the problems with the black communities in America and the problems that the white working class find themselves with.
If the white working class were not marrying at the rate that the black communities are not marrying, it would be entirely fair to say that the differences between the way they are being approached is down to racism.
But this is not the case.
And it is from this faulty premise that Juncker draws his argument.
And it's important to note that his argument is not one of principle.
His argument is one of pragmatism.
I will teach my sons that their beautiful hue is a fault line.
Spare me platitudes of how we are all the same on the inside.
It's at this point that he dismisses the principled arguments against racism.
He says, I first have to keep my boys safe, and so I will teach them before the world shows them this particular brand of rending, violent, often fatal betrayal.
And it's really important to note that his perception of the reality of America does not match the actual data on reality in America.
He says, let me assure you that my heartbreak dwarfs my anger.
I grew up in a classic Midwestern college town.
With its American faults, it was diverse and happy childhood kind of place, slightly dull in the way that parents wish for their children.
If race showed in classlines, school cliques and being pulled over more often, our little Americana lacked the deep racial tension and mistrust that seems so hard to escape now.
Well, where is that racial tension and mistrust coming from?
Mr. Yunke, author of Can My Children Be Friends with White People.
In 2014, there was a Gallup poll released that showed that the majority of Americans vastly overestimated the amount of crime that happened in the United States.
They just had no idea.
I can only assume that Professor Juncker has fallen victim to this perception, because when he was growing up, in the dreamy Americana that he reminisces about so fondly, life was far more dangerous.
Violent crime is on the decline, and it has been for decades.
So I don't know why Professor Juncker thinks it is more dangerous now than it was before, because it is objectively, empirically not.
Honestly, it's very difficult to ascribe his perception of what's going on to anything other than Trump derangement syndrome.
He says, What's surprising is that I am heartbroken at all.
It is only for African Americans who grew up in such a place that watching Mr. Trump is so disorienting.
For many weary minorities, the ridiculous thing was thinking that friendship was possible in the first place.
It hurts only if you believed friendship could bridge the racial gorge.
If I were to hazard a guess at this point, I would believe that Professor Yunker believes that Donald Trump is a white supremacist and any white person who voted for him is also a white supremacist.
Which is why I think he says, the rise of this president has broken bonds on all sides, but for people of colour the stakes are different.
Imagining we can now be friends across this political line is asking us to ignore our safety and that of our children, to abandon personal regard and self-worth.
Only white people can cordon off Mr. Trump's political meaning, ignore the unpleasantness from a position of safety.
His election and the year that has followed have fixed the awful thought in my mind too familiar to black Americans.
You can't trust these people.
Conflating Donald Trump voters with white supremacists is the only way I can make this paragraph make sense, because otherwise it seems entirely irrational, entirely the product of echo chamber thinking from within the far left bubble.
People voting for Donald Trump was not a commentary on race.
However, I think for the far left types who voted against Donald Trump, it was.
He says, it's not Mr. Trump himself who has done this.
Were it not for our reverence for money, Mr. Trump would be easily recognised as the simple-minded, vulgar, bigoted blowhard he is.
It is certainly not the neo-Nazis marching on Charlottesville.
We've seen their type before.
Rather, what has truly broken my heart are the ranks of Mr. Trump's many allies and apologists.
Mr. Trump's supporters are practiced at purposeful blindness.
That his political life started with denying without evidence that Barack Obama is American, that this black man could truly be the legitimate president is simply ignored.
So too is his history of housing discrimination, his casual conflation of Muslims with terrorists, his reducing Mexican Americans to murderers and rapists.
All along his allies have watched racial pornography, describing black America as pathological, yet they deny there is any malice whatsoever in his words and actions, and they dismiss any attempt to recognize the danger of his wide-ranging animus as political correctness.
Most of what has been said here is not true.
He did not conflate Muslims with terrorists.
He does recognize that there is a massive amount of terrorism that comes from Muslim communities.
This is a fact.
He did not reduce Mexican Americans to murderers and rapists.
He specified, in clear terms, that many illegal immigrants are murderers and rapists, which presumably is one of the reasons that they're seeking to escape Mexico and can't get legal access to the United States.
The only thing here that's really true is that Trump is a birther.
That's correct.
He was wrong.
Although I don't ever recall him saying it's because he was black.
For example, I never saw him claim that Ben Carson wasn't eligible to run for the presidency because he was black, and Ben Carson was a direct opponent of his.
Personally, I wouldn't describe black America as pathological, although there are certainly a large number of activists who are also black who seek to completely absolve black people of any duty of responsibility for their own actions.
Which is precisely what the professor is doing here.
He is suggesting that it is someone else's fault that he is inculcating his children with racial fear.
It's not, and it wasn't necessary in his day, and it's not necessary because of the election of Donald Trump.
People supported Donald Trump for many different reasons, and one of these reasons for many people is to use him as a weapon against political correctness.
Because for a very long time, political correctness has been used to protect people who need to take responsibility for their own actions.
He continues with, but the deepest rift is with the apologists, the good Trump voters, the white people who understand that Mr. Trump says unfortunate things, but support him because they like what he says on jobs and taxes.
They bristle at the accusation that they supported racism.
Instead, they had to ignore Mr. Trump's ugliness.
As I said, he literally believes Donald Trump is a racist.
He is a proponent of white supremacy, and this is what he is attacking.
Relying on everyday decency as a shield, they are befuddled at the chill that now separates them from black people in their offices and social circles.
This is such a bourgeois problem.
As if working class black people who voted for Trump are now sat there going, well, I can't possibly speak to the white people who voted for Donald Trump.
Professor Yanker is clearly speaking from within his own bubble.
He is clearly speaking about the black people he knows as a professor at a university, and how they can't be friends with white people because of their own preconceived notions and bigotry.
But now it's time to make an anachronistic comparison.
I do not write this with liberal condescension or glee.
My heart is unbearably heavy when I assure you we cannot be friends.
The same is true, unfortunately, of those who hold no quarter for Mr. Trump, but insist that black people need to do the reaching out, the moderating, the accommodating.
Imagine the white friend during the civil rights era who disliked blacks being beaten to death but wished the whole thing would just settle down.
This is not only not a fair comparison, it's an absurd comparison.
Donald Trump's election has not changed the legal status of black people in the United States.
Black people currently enjoy exactly the same rights under the law that white people enjoy.
During the civil rights era, they didn't.
Calling this up is dishonest at best and malicious at worst.
But it does provide an adequate cover for ending friendships with white people who voted for Trump.
However likable, you would not describe them as a friend.
Sometimes politics makes demands on the soul.
I suppose if you've created a fictional construct of why people voted for Donald Trump and what it really means through a racialized lens, then you would feel that you're entitled to do this.
But really, this is just an expression of bigotry.
He says, don't misunderstand, white Trump supporters and people of colour can like each other, but real friendship, Mr. Trump's bruised ego invents outrageous claims of voter fraud, not caring that his rhetoric was built upon dogs and water hoses set on black children, and even today the relentless effort to silence black voices.
This is just complete nonsense.
This is empty rhetoric in order to justify his own personal bigotry against white people who voted for Trump.
His macho talk about law and order does not keep communities safe and threatens the very bodies of the little boys I love.
Again, highly emotionally charged rhetoric.
Once he set up the false assertion that Donald Trump's election means extra danger for black people, he says, It is this desperation to reap the rewards of white power without being so much as indicted that James Baldwin recognised as America's criminal innocence.
Note that James Baldwin began writing in 1953 and died in 1987.
I imagine it was a lot more true then than it is now.
And finally, we come to the white guilt trip.
For African Americans, races become a proxy not just for politics, but also for decency.
White faces are swept together, ominous anxiety behind every chance encounter at the airport, or smiling white cashier.
If they are not clearly allies, they will seem unsafe to me.
It's hard to describe this as anything other than racism, which is why Tucker Carlson, in his interview, takes him to the mat and accuses him of being a racist.
But really, what this is, is a demand to his white progressive friends.
You must show yourself to be an ally of mine, as in you must put yourself within my power.
You must assist me when I demand it.
You must come running when I request it.
And I am sure there are going to be many guilt-ridden white people on the far left who will happily come running and be thankful for the opportunity.
I'm not one of them, and neither is Tucker Carlson.
And this is an absolutely fascinating thing.
Barack Obama's farewell address encouraged us to reach across partisan lines, but there is a difference between disagreeing over taxes and negotiating one's place in America.
The bodies of your children, your humanity.
Our racial wound has undone love and families, and ignoring the depths of the gash will not cause it to heal.
Because to him, Donald Trump was white people voting against black people.
I've spoken to many Trump supporters, not all of them white, and I can honestly say from my interactions with them, this is not a feeling that is reciprocated.
If there was anything that bore any relation to the subject matter here, what Donald Trump was was a vote against far-left racialized ideology.
Not against the people themselves, but the use of the people as political weapons, which Professor Yanker seems to be happy to engage in.
Even using his own children for this.
This part is absolutely fascinating.
We can still all pretend we are friends.
If meaningful civic friendship is impossible, we can make do with mere civility, sharing drinks and watching the game.
As if there is a codified racial disparity and legal differences between blacks and whites in the United States.
That's the only way that what he's saying there makes sense, and this is manifestly not true.
Indeed, even in Donald Trump's America, I have not given up on being friends with all white people.
Which rather undermines his argument, but it's because he says, My bi-ethnic wife, my most trusted friend, understands that she is seen as a white woman, even though her brother and father are not.
Even though throughout this piece he refers to Obama as a black man when he is indeed biracial as well.
I guess you can have it both ways if you want to.
Among my dearest friends, the wedding party and godparents variety, many are white, but these are the friends who have marched in protest, rushed to airports to protest, the president's travel ban, people who have shared the risks required by strength and decency.
What he's saying here is: the white people who consent to my demands of them are acceptable.
The white people who do not consent to my demands of them are not.
And he finally finishes with, There is hope though.
Implicitly, without meaning to, Mr. Trump asks us if this is the best we can do.
It falls to us to do better.
We cannot agree on our politics, but we can declare that we stand beside one another against cheap attack and devaluation, that we live together and not simply beside one another.
In the coming years, when my boys ask again their questions about who can be their best friend, I pray for a more hopeful answer.
Well, you are the one delivering the answer, Professor Juncker.
You are the one who has decided that your white friends are acceptable because they perform as you wish them to perform.
But since you don't know the white friends of your sons, you naturally assume that they can't possibly be of the same caliber.
Really, this has very little to do with Donald Trump.
What this has to do with is your progressive bubble and the way that the progressive bubble you're in racializes everything.
Which is why you need a get-out clause to excuse the white people you know and like who are not, in fact, like the construct of what a Donald Trump supporter is that you have made up.
But more importantly, this is you using the white guilt that your friends have against them to make them even firmer allies, to make them support your emotional distress, regardless of whether it is warranted or not.
I find it quite unconscionable to do this.
I have absolutely no respect for it.
I have no respect for this professor.
I have no respect for this peace.
I have no respect for this worldview entirely.
It is destructive.
It is divisive and it is racist.
But worse than that, it's dishonest and insidious and a use of people's own good intentions against them.
And further still, it is not based on principle, which is aptly demonstrated during his interview with Tucker Carlson.
I don't understand when it became okay to generalize about racial groups.
Well, I mean, it's a, to me, a strange way to put the question.
I mean, while it's the case that we all hope that we can be judged for who we are, I think while some people have the luxury to be raised only being told to look at individual people, it should be no surprise to you that black people, in particular black men, have been taught forever that they have to be careful how they behave around white people.
Except Professor Yunker, who admitted that he wasn't taught that.
And if it's no surprise, well, of course it's not.
He's teaching his own sons that, even though the only reason he's teaching them this is because of his own personal bigotry.
His sons are in no greater danger from white people under the Trump administration than they were under the Obama administration.
And as Tucker Carlson rightly points out further on in the video, this is absolutely dwarfed by the danger from within their own black communities.
If we look at homicide victims based on race in the United States, you will find that there are more black homicide victims than white homicide victims.
This is significant because the black population of America is 13.5%, so roughly 6% of that is done by men, and the overwhelming victims of homicides are men in the United States.
Most victims of a homicide are killed by someone of the same race as them, which means that the comparable numbers between blacks and whites do not account for the massive disparity in number between the total number of black people and white people in the United States.
Black homicides should be far lower than white homicides when you look at the total number of people dead.
Because on a per capita basis, there are about five times more white people than black people.
And Professor Juncker's only response to this is to appeal to bourgeois sensibilities, to say, we can't talk about this.
This is distasteful.
While it's true that, of course, people of colour face threats from other people of colour, it's also true that white people face the overwhelming threat from white people.
That is, people face threats from who they live beside.
So that's what I find.
Exactly.
But I think it's fair to point out that we oughtn't be distasteful and say things like, well, the great threat, it does feed a certain uglier narrative that we don't want.
Well, I'm afraid I'm not a big fan of narratives.
I'm a big fan of reality.
By Professor Juncker's own estimation, because white people are far more likely to be killed by black people than black people by white people, he has given the exact rationale and justification for white people to treat black people in the way that he wishes to treat white people.
As in, he believes white people should avoid black people because he doesn't know that they're trustworthy.
And until they prove themselves to be good allies to white people, that's entirely justified.
But to your core point.
Wait, wait, hold on.
Why does the truth ever feed a quote ugly narrative?
The truth is worth telling for its own sake because it's true.
You're welcome to tell the truth, but it is deeply suspicious that people are so quick to say things like, the main threat facing African Americans is other African Americans, but you never hear anybody say the main threat facing white people is white people.
Because we've already discussed the dramatic disparity in the rates at which white and black people murder one another.
What is actually suspicious here is why you won't accept the actual logical conclusion of your own arguments.
You do not have a case to treat white people as if they are all suspicious, but by your own logic, you absolutely do have a case to treat black people as if they are all suspicious.
And I just want to stress, I don't think you should treat black people as if they are all suspicious.
I am merely pointing out the backwards argument that Professor Juncker has made here.
We should be honest and not pretend that there is a phrase like white on white violence, right?
That phrase doesn't exist for a very long time.
Well, we can invent it here, but I guess the point I'm making is that you should never generalize about people on the basis of their skin colour because it reduces them to the sum total of their skin colour.
And again, that's the definition of racism.
And you're engaging in it in this piece.
And I just, I don't think it's helpful.
I think it's wrong.
Well, so I just entirely deny that what I said was that you should generalize and dislike people because of their skin colour.
Well, the good professor can deny that all he wants, but that indeed was his point.
The only caveat he provided was a white person who is being sufficiently obsequious to black people can indeed be treated as a friend, but only if they continue to be as performative as necessary.
What I do think is true is that in a world in which things have gotten ever more dangerous for people of colour, it is in fact the case that that undermines our ability to trust each other across racial bounds.
The world has not got more dangerous for people of colour.
It has actually got safer for people of colour.
It is more likely that a black person is going to shoot a white person.
So why he thinks black people should be afraid of white people shooting them instead is beyond me.
As far as I can tell, this is the product of a fictional narrative, a narrative that does not bear a resemblance to reality, a narrative that he is pushing to justify his own bigotry and frankly take advantage of the white guilt of his progressive friends, as I have already stated.
But more importantly, Professor Juncker is essentially making the same argument the alt-right make, because the alt-right have seen these statistics as well, and have also come to the conclusion that they can't trust black people, because they think black people are going to commit more crimes.
So this is something on which they essentially agree, but address from the different perspective.
And so Tucker Carlson has a real problem with this, because he's arguing on principle.
Okay, but again, you're making generalizations across racial groups.
So you say, for example, I will have to discuss my boys whether they can truly be friends with white people.
History has provided little reason for people of color to trust white people.
I have profound doubts in friendship with white people as possible.
Again, these are just, okay, but if I were to write, you know, I was mugged as a pizza delivery boy and I told my children that they should never trust anyone who looks like the people who mugged me.
That would be, I would never do that.
I think that would be immoral.
But it would be the definition of racism because I would be equating the people who mugged me with everyone else who looks like them.
I think if that's the only part of the article you read, it might sound like that.
But of course, the article has a much richer argument.
The article does not have a much richer argument, and that is your point, except for your caveat of people who suck up to you.
Tucker Carlson is entirely correct here, because he is making a principled argument that is not deformed by the circumstances surrounding it.
There are times when it's not acceptable to make a principled argument, when reality on the ground is going to override your desire to adhere to a certain set of principles.
However, in the case of the United States under Donald Trump, this is not the case.
So indeed, it does sound like that, because that's the argument he's making.
And the argument I make is, look, in a country where it turns out that when the most vulnerable people of color are under threat, those who they count on are nowhere to be seen, or at least for some group of people.
And I speak explicitly about the political moment we're in today, right?
So if we have a president who marshals forces of hatred and anger and divisiveness and frankly, just danger, quite aside from who he is, I'm not particularly interested in who he is.
Except your entire argument is predicated on Donald Trump being Donald Trump, or at least your construct of what you believe Donald Trump to be.
So again, this is just entirely dishonest.
But again, Tucker brings it back to the point of principle, because this is what he's concerned about.
Is it wrong to say you can't be friends with white people?
Is it wrong to say you can't be friends with black people?
And the answer is, of course, yes.
They're not all the same.
They don't all think the same.
They're not all a danger.
You should judge people as individuals in the circumstance that you're in.
You shouldn't just make these kind of blanket assertions.
If one of my daughters was mugged by someone of a certain color, I would never say to my daughter, that's more evidence you can never trust anyone who looks like that, because I would be inculcating race hatred in my children as you are.
So what I, well, I mean, obviously I deny that.
Well, obviously you deny that because that sounds bad, even though you've written an entire article doing exactly that.
But what's weirder to me is that you don't simply do that in your own home and keep it to yourself, even though you know that what you're doing is distasteful.
For some reason, you felt the need to write an op-ed that went in the New York Times.
That's weird.
That takes this situation to a whole level above just having that bigoted opinion.
Will you teach your girls to be cautious around men until they prove that they are men that can be trusted?
Men, but not men of a certain race.
Because I don't think that the races are as different as you think they are.
You think one is good and one is evil.
That's what you said in your piece.
I didn't at all say that in piece, and if you can cite that, I'd be very happy to see it.
But you can't trust them.
I did say that.
No, I did say that.
So you admit that Tucker Carlson is right.
You think that one race is good and one race is bad.
And the only way for the bad race to prove that they're actually good is to do exactly as you say, exactly when you say it.
And really, that's not aimed at Tucker Carlson, is it?
It's not aimed at white people who don't already buy into this.
It's aimed at a certain kind of white person, isn't it?
But in this world, it is up to our white friends and allies to be sure to stand up for those who are under attack.
If I want to prove that I'm the kind of person who can be your friend, that means that when something is actually threatening you, I actually have to be there for you.
If the people who call themselves your friends are not going to push back against that, then maybe you can tell me why it is I should trust those people.
When those who count themselves as your friend see that others put you in danger, it is their opportunity to prove they're your friend.
So, I mean, you keep saying the same thing and I keep trying to say- Because I can't get past it.
Apparently.
So what I've said over and over is, look, what matters when people are in danger, if you're going to say that you're the kind of person they can trust as a friend, is you have to step up.
And when it's the case that these friendship lines break down on racial lines, then it's your turn to step up because of these racial lines.
So if I know that in my school, there's a tense point because everybody hates the Filipino student.
When the Filipino student walks into my area, I'm going to make sure that he knows I'm an ally.
I'm not going to disappear when he's in danger.
And then placate myself by saying I'm his friend.
Well, I've got no interest in being your friend.
You seem insufferable, you seem abusive, and you seem absolutely unaware of what you're doing.
Friendship is a two-way street.
And as you said at the beginning of this, friendship requires a certain amount of respect, and that goes both ways.
And you certainly don't demonstrate it the other way.
You think it's all for one and none for the other.
Not the kind of friendship I would ever get involved in.
But I mean, I would never call myself a quote-unquote ally because that's coded language.
Ally to progressives is a word that is loaded with extra connotations about being woke on the class struggle between blacks and whites and to support blacks wherever they are because they're definitely being held down by the white man.
And I don't agree that's the case.
And I think you're perfect evidence of this.
You are a black professor who grew up without the fear of racism hanging over his head, who has got woke and is now inculcating his children into this new intersectional belief.
I think it's dangerous, and I think you are doing your own children a disservice.
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