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June 14, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
24:49
Black Women Need to Take Responsibility
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I do find the concept of privilege very interesting because it's very consequentialist.
It looks at the outcomes of events and systems and says these were the intentions of the systems, even if the results of these systems aren't really done by design.
And what I find really interesting is that black women in America are the people who should enjoy the least privilege and so are therefore the most oppressed.
And so the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy are victimizing these women the very most.
But when you actually get these women to explain how they arrived in the circumstances that they are in, suddenly it's very difficult to actually identify where the white privilege is.
In my opinion, this was best exemplified in an interview by Jesse Lee Peters with a black lady and a series of on-the-street interviews at a black woman's rally by a YouTuber called Nuance Bro.
Both links in the description, of course.
Does white privilege exist?
Absolutely.
She didn't even hesitate.
In her view, white privilege has to exist.
This is a conviction that she holds.
She didn't have to think about it twice.
It does.
Absolutely.
And we have to prove for that.
All around.
You know, I tell people often now, in hindsight, one of the things that I wish I would have been more cognizant of was the white privilege at UCLA that was sitting, you know, right next to me.
For black people, I believe white privilege is something to leverage.
What is it, though?
I don't see it anywhere.
What is it?
I'm not trying to laugh at her.
What I'm laughing at is the fact that she can't even conceive of a worldview without white privilege.
The idea of saying, what is white privilege, it's obvious.
What it is, is the demonstrable effect of white people being more successful than black people on average.
When she says it's all around, she means it because she's surrounded by white people and they're doing really well.
This is a consequence of her being very middle class and coming from a middle class white area.
And so she's looking at people being successful in the world and thinking, well, white people are doing great.
She's not comparing herself to people in the flyover states who are scraping out a living and suffering economic depredation.
She's thinking of the wealthy white people in her bubble.
What is it?
Well, people like me who don't see it.
How do you not see white privilege?
Because it doesn't exist.
I believe white privilege is just the ability just to be free and white and not have the same type of social, economic, and social ills as black people have to deal with.
Isn't that interesting?
They get to be white and free.
I'm calling it now.
What she's talking about is the black identity, the sort of prescriptive nature of blackness as conceived by American blacks.
And I specifically say American blacks because it doesn't seem to be something that English blacks seem to particularly hold dear to themselves.
It's only the SJW types who think of themselves like this.
And I've met plenty of people from Africa who really didn't seem to have this kind of conception either.
It seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon.
And by the way that she describes being white as synonymous with being free, it seems to me that the black identity is oppressive for black people.
I mean, there's no white racial profiling.
White people don't get pulled over by the cops just because they're white.
But I bet poor people do get pulled over by the cops just for being poor, even if they're white.
They have the ability to, you know, show emotion and love to their sons without being emasculated.
This is completely counter to the feminist narrative on masculinity, which also applies to white people.
But there's nothing unmanly about showing emotion to your sons and daughters, regardless of your race.
But maybe that's because I don't come from within one of these sort of tightly knit black communities.
Which brings us to the general point that Jesse Lee Peterson is trying to make.
Black people are doing this to themselves.
There's all kinds of examples of white privilege, absolutely.
Why don't you you black?
How come you don't believe white privilege exists?
What you see?
And there we go.
You're black.
How come you don't think this way?
How come you don't share the quote-unquote black worldview?
She is genuinely mystified that there is a black person who does not subscribe to the black identity and the ideology that comes along with it that forces black people to believe that they are oppressed.
Ignore this woman's skin tone.
Look at the way she speaks.
Look at the way she's dressed.
Look at the way she comports herself.
Look at the dignity with which she holds herself as she's sitting there.
She is very clearly the child of class privilege.
She's had a good education.
She's had a good upbringing.
And yet she still thinks she is oppressed.
Well, because I, you know, I am black in color, but I don't have that dark mentality that most black people have.
Clearly.
And Jesse Lee Peterson nails it.
Absolutely nails it right there.
He doesn't have the, quote, dark mentality.
He doesn't buy into the black identitarian groupthink, a train of logic that leads to a place that despite black people like her enjoying all the same benefits in life as her white peers, as she will say she was raised in a majority white community, she has adopted an identity that specifically rejects being a part of that community.
Because for her to be black and them to be white means that they must be separate.
I see it, she said clearly.
I see that white people have the same struggles and things that we have in that marriages work.
They have to make their children help their kids grow up in the right way so that they can earn a living and be in that house.
But they also have the majority of their fathers at home.
Sorry to cut that off in mid-sentence, but she has just demonstrated that she knows what the reason for white privilege is.
The first thing she went to there was they have the majority of their fathers at home.
Because a stable home life with a mother and a father has been demonstrated throughout all of human history in almost every culture to produce healthy, well-adjusted children of both genders.
The first thing she went to was the degradation of the black family.
And over 70% of black women who have children are unmarried.
And Jesse Lee Peterson is going to nail her in a minute by asking her, how is that white people's fault?
The reason for that is starting to change somewhat now, but the reason for that is because they are taking responsibility for that.
Whereas black men and women are not taking responsibility for that as they did prior to the civil rights movement.
And this is demonstrably true, at least according to the US Bureau of the Census, which says that in 1950, 78% of black families were married couples, with only 18% being a female householder with no husband presence.
And you can compare that to 2017, where 77% of black births are to single mothers.
Black people are blaming it on their lack of self-control and self-containment.
They're blaming it on white people while white people are working hard to keep it going.
I do believe that there is a need for black people to be held more accountable.
Yeah.
Damn right there is.
Everyone needs to be held accountable.
You can't just have a demographic in society that isn't held to account for their own life choices.
Because when they start making bad life choices and don't have to bear the consequences of that themselves, suddenly it means that they can blame other people who didn't make these bad life choices.
Really, this conversation could have stopped there, but she's going to say, but and negate what she's just said.
And then she's going to start saying that it's everyone else's fault, even though deep down she knows and has admitted that black people are not being held to account for their own bad decisions.
But that doesn't mean that that doesn't excuse racism, that doesn't excuse institutionalized racism, that doesn't excuse.
But there's no such thing as that.
It's an illusion made up by black people and their leaders.
No, it's not.
That exists.
Sorry.
Where's the proof of it, though?
I mean, where's the proof of it?
There are many kids who are getting into black kids who are allowed to get into these universities around the country, right, based on affirmative action.
And because of affirmative action, based on their color.
That's discrimination based on color, and that's wrong.
And these kids are getting in, but they're not earning their way.
So when they fail, they feel less than before they were allowed to get in based on color.
By pointing out affirmative action, Jesse Lee Peterson has actually pointed out that the system is in favor of black people and will specifically make special exceptions for them because it's not a white supremacy that we live in and it's not a black supremacy either.
It's a paternal view of black people that they are not to be held account for their mistakes or their failures, that they are to be helped, that they are to be given things for free because they are black without earning them.
And as Jesse points out, that's not good for them.
I'm a proud product of affirmative action.
When I went to UCLA, it was because I was an affirmative action student.
I'm sorry to hear that.
I'm sorry to hear that.
It's exactly how I feel about this.
I would feel embarrassed to say that I was a product of affirmative action for anything that I've achieved.
Don't people who have benefited from affirmative action feel condescended to?
Don't they feel like the assumption is that they are inferior, that they are lesser and they have to be handed something?
As if being black is a disability.
And I think I turned out fantastic.
So how is it you can believe you live in a white supremacist system that gives white people unearned advantages while holding back black people, even though the system that you have participated in has given you an unearned advantage because you are black?
So a lot of my peers who are having challenges getting into some of these predominantly white institutions, the affirmative action was great.
Well, yeah, it's very beneficial in the short term to be given something you didn't earn.
My father went to Harvard.
He was one of very few black students.
Was he affirmative action?
I don't know if he was.
That was back in the late 60s.
So that being said, I still believe that affirmative action helped me get into UCLA.
That's an absolute bombshell by Peterson there.
Her father earned what he has.
He deserves it.
He didn't need to be condescended to.
And it gave me access to.
You would not have gotten in there on your own because you were not smart enough?
I don't know if I wasn't smart enough, but based on the curve and what I was competing with, with other individuals who had different educational opportunities and teachers.
I mean, I'm coming from the LA Unified School District.
I mean, so at the time, I think LAUSD was still pretty good.
But I went to all white schools from high school up to the school.
So you got a good education.
Why couldn't you get into the school based on your own talent?
This is why this interview was such an amazing thing to watch.
She's just admitted that she had all of the same advantages as her white peers.
Her father was able to earn his way into Harvard in the 60s.
And yet she failed because the people around her out-competed her.
Because either she didn't work hard enough or she just wasn't smart enough.
But either way, the result is the same.
But either way, the result was the same.
She had to use affirmative action to gain a position she did not deserve.
Jesse Lee Pietson has masterfully talked her into admitting that she's not taking responsibility for her own shortcomings.
And this is the result.
This long, uncomfortable silence.
I don't know.
Maybe because I didn't have some of the opportunity.
But you had the opportunity.
No, well, first of all, you had to see those white kids were having.
First thing she was going to go for was an excuse.
It's someone else's fault.
It's not about me.
It's about someone else.
This is exactly what he's talking about.
She's not taking responsibility.
Not necessarily.
I had different teachers.
I had different white integrated schools.
I'm talking about going into these other, into UCLA.
I still had to be able to deal with some of the issues and going to predominantly white schools.
But I still had to be able to compete.
Like what?
What do you mean, like what?
Some of the issues going to a predominant union.
I went to, when I went to, I would graduate from University High School and at the time they didn't have an African-American student union.
An African-American student union at the school.
That's a good thing.
They didn't have one.
That's a good thing.
What I love about Jesse Lee Pietson is that he's just Jesse Lee Petson.
In the same way Kanye West is just Kanye West.
He doesn't think that it's a good idea to have segregated, divided up student unions for each interest group.
Because as soon as you start playing the game of identity politics, you are playing the game of victimhood.
How am I being held down without any fault of my own?
How can I avoid taking responsibility for my own failures?
Why?
Why do you need something like that?
But they have Asian student unions.
They have Jewish student unions.
They have all kind of different things.
Did they have white student union?
They need student unions.
They own the whole school.
There are a massive set of presuppositions based in identity politics that result in someone saying they own the whole school.
A, they didn't.
She was a black student at this school.
They didn't have a student union.
They weren't playing identity politics.
But if you view the world in terms of these groups clashing against one another, in her opinion, anything that she can take from the white people is justified.
This is why she's proud of affirmative action.
She viewed the white people as a monolithic block acting against her.
Whereas Jesse Lee Petson doesn't view white people like that at all.
He views them as individuals much like himself who are just trying to get along in the world, facing the same obstacles.
But the kids are going to own the school.
But I'm saying there's nothing, I don't think there's nothing wrong with having a segregated population of students who just want to study together, work together, or to be able to.
Would you be in support of a white student union?
Yeah, of course.
She's got no choice.
But what kind of white person is going to want a white student union?
It's going to be someone from the alt-right.
She can't argue against the principles that she's setting out because otherwise she'll be a hypocrite.
So now she's just advocated for neo-Nazi student unions in these schools.
It would be okay with you?
Yeah, why not?
For the same reason, it's bad to have any other kind of identitarian racial student unions.
It's going to attract people who feel aggrieved on the basis of identity and who fundamentally resent other races.
And it's going to allow them to coalesce into a political force that will exert influence over the university.
I don't really want universities to be influenced by racial interest groups that have resentment against the other races.
That's a bad idea, in my opinion.
I think that's going to damage social cohesion within our societies.
That's why not.
But most blacks don't feel that way.
I think all cultures should be able to segregate and to be able to work within their cultures and network within their own cultures.
Absolutely.
Bring back segregation from the mouth of the university-educated black identitarian woman.
That's the logical conclusion of viewing yourself as the victim of other racial groups.
That's the only place that this can go.
It's either segregation or domination.
Choose one, but you don't have any other options.
Does racism exist?
I believe racism does exist.
And where's the proof of that?
You just see it all over in the country, with proof of it.
What do I see?
It's just disproportionate in the economics with black people.
To a person who hasn't been indoctrinated in social justice, racism is prejudice against another person or group based on their race.
So it's entirely possible for people to be racist.
But the lady here, and Jesse Lee Peterson understands this, is talking specifically in the realm of systems and structures.
And now she's going to appeal to the consequences of these systems to declare that the way people interface differently with these systems means that the different outcomes that they produce is a form of racism in and of itself.
But that has nothing to do with racism.
It does.
Racism is about power.
It's about who's in control.
And black people can't be racist because we're not in control.
We're not in control of the educational system, some of the social organizations and things that run this country.
We're not in control.
Racism is about power.
But you would race.
But you're not in control of your own life if you had good parents, if they taught you how to be independent, if they taught you how to build, how to take care of.
This is a perfect example of individualist thinking from Jesse Lee Peterson and collectivist thinking from this lady.
She can't take responsibility for herself.
Therefore, she must externalize this.
It must be everything all around her.
It must be the white racial group operating against the black racial group of which she is a part.
Jesse Lee Peterson is having none of this and again, masterfully cuts through it.
I've noticed that the reason I left where I lived over there in the Creshaw district is that once the white people left, because once I moved there, when I first moved there, it was mostly whites.
But once they left, as they did in Gary, Indiana, and other places, the blacks turned it into a ghetto.
A beautiful area went to hell in a handbasket, so I got out.
But if blacks had more character and they were taking care of themselves and being responsible and buying land and teaching their children.
That has to be taught.
Right, so that has to do with racism.
But that has to, of course, that has to be taught.
So it's not racist.
It's not white people's fault that you're not teaching your children to do that.
No, but it's not.
The parents don't know.
But that's not white people's fault.
That was such an amazing exchange, in my opinion.
And Peterson absolutely nails it at the end.
That's not white people's fault.
And she knows this because she said...
But they also have the majority of their fathers at home.
Right.
The black communities are failing themselves because they are not educating their own children.
It's not someone else's responsibility to teach your child the life skills it's going to need going forward in its own life and getting along in the world.
That's your responsibility.
But black women, and I presume black men, but unfortunately there are very few of these kind of interviews, are externalizing that responsibility and saying, well, no, this is white people's fault.
No, it's fucking not.
It's your fault.
Take responsibility.
But if they go into some of these institutions, these predominantly white institutions, they are targeted.
They don't have the same opportunities because of their color.
Listen to the way she's saying this.
It's pre-scripted, pre-rehearsed.
This is her falling back on her ideology.
Despite the fact she's already demonstrated, she had all of the same opportunities as her white peers.
She's making excuses.
It's true.
I mean, I don't know.
So then why go in there and then why not go to all black school if you're not?
Some people do choose to do that.
I'm sorry.
Some people do choose to do that.
You see a lot of these black kids going to these white universities and then they force their way in by saying, I need affirmative action.
Once they get in, now they cry on racism.
Why do you want to force your way in with the people you say are your enemies and you're still complaining once you get there?
I don't think people are forcing their way.
I don't think people are forcing their way in.
Not, I don't think white people are our enemies.
That's the mindset of the identitarian right there.
The other people are the enemy.
The question is, what can you take from them?
And if you can't take something from them, you can blame something on them.
That's the mindset.
Jesse Lee Peterson doesn't see white people as his enemies.
He doesn't think that they're holding him back.
And lo and behold, he is a successful man because of it.
And she can't even defend affirmative action.
Does affirmative action even exist?
But does affirmative action even exist?
Are people getting in based on affirmative action?
Yes.
You did.
And you're proud of it.
You said, I am a proud product of affirmative action.
I wonder why they wouldn't beat her.
The way Trump has it now, he's just leveled the playing field.
So it is going to have to be more about being able to be competitive.
Hallelujah.
That was one of my favorite clips of all time.
And I'm going to show you some of the interviews that Nuance Bro did with the ladies protesting at a black identitarian movement and his conversations with them, which again were just equally as illuminating.
So obviously there's a lot of external things coming towards the black community.
There's like you can go through a whole litany of things.
Do you think there's anything from within the black community that they can improve?
Like whether it's black culture or anything?
What do you think some people think so?
Education, more prominent influence from males, positive males influence, you know?
There's so much we can do that we need to do.
So I'm glad we have stuff like this.
But unity like this is what starts that.
You know, you come together and you see that you have people that support you.
And that needs to translate.
I mean, honestly, it starts with the children, right?
So starting with younger generations and educating them on their history, being proud of who they are, and also embracing the positive within the community and not focusing on the negative.
Now, that came at a point after about 10 minutes of conversation, and as you can see by the way he introduced it, of them explaining how it was everyone else's fault that the black community was failing and that this is why they needed something like this movement in order to try and counteract that.
Whereas as soon as you get past that and say, okay, so what can the black community itself do better?
They can list the problems that they're having that are causing the consequences that they are experiencing.
They know that they have to fix their own communities because no one can do this for them.
But in the very next breath, they return to the identitarian mindset of blaming everyone else.
But that's media in itself.
For example, you're foreigner.
You come from foreign heritage, right?
I'm not a foreigner.
I was born here.
Okay.
But when I was a fan of the family, I feel racially profiled against.
Let me ask you a serious question, though.
When they depict your country or your ancestors' country on TV, majority do they depict the positive, or do they depict the poor areas, the negative, and things of that nature?
And answer that, honestly.
And I ask you this because I'm a foreigner myself.
I'm from Nigeria.
Well, it's Iran, so not a lot of good press from there.
Exactly.
But is there a lot of good?
Have your people done a lot of good?
Not recently.
You're being in the past.
I'm being biased, and I know you're trying to stick to a side.
I don't like the government there.
Usually when they speak about the people, they speak about them in.
I'm talking about government.
Government is corrupt no matter where you are.
I'm talking about your people.
Some governments are better than others.
They've done what they've contributed.
No, but usually when they talk about the people, I've heard very positive things.
They talk about the historical culture.
They talk about the Persian Empire and things like that.
But when they talk about media, or do they depict the bad people?
Well, no, because in contemporary times, what really matters is, you know, government relations between people.
My point that I'm trying to make, which you're strategically trying to avoid, is a fact that the media will always depict the negative as opposed to the positive.
I absolutely agree.
And they do the same for your people.
So we should obviously focus on some of the positives that are happening also within the black community.
And if more people were educated on the positive, they would have more proud and more be prouder of who they are and embrace that.
It's everyone else's fault.
And she had to try and drag his identity into it, even though Nuance Bro is clearly a proud, freedom-loving American.
Because as we've already seen, if someone is responsible for the way that the black community and black children are being educated, 77% of the time, that's black women.
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