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Aug. 6, 2018 - The Matt Walsh Show

18:45

Ep. 77 - The Left Claims Only White People Can Be Racist

The Left is defending the racist tweets of a New York Times reporter on the basis that she can't be racist because she isn't white. In the Leftist mind, only those with "institutional power" can be racist, and only white people have that kind of power. This is wrong and nonsensical on several different levels. Let's dissect the wrongness now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	You probably heard about Sarah Jong.
	She's an Asian-American reporter who was just hired by the New York Times, and she, after being hired, some old tweets of hers resurfaced.
	Lots of tweets where she is blatantly racist and sexist.
	She repeatedly insults white people and men.
	She compares white people to goblins.
	She says that she enjoys being cruel to old white men.
	She compares white people to dogs.
	She calls them all kinds of names, and on and on and on and on.
	And there are a ton of tweets like this, not just a few, but it's like quite a bit.
	And the Times is sticking by her.
	They're not going to fire her. The left has defended her tweets and her and the decision not to fire her based on the idea that she can't possibly be racist even when she is racist because she's not white and only white people can be racist.
	And we'll talk about that in a minute.
	But we must first admit that it's actually not exactly accurate to say that these tweets resurfaced.
	It's not like they were at the bottom of the ocean and they happened to float to the top and people said, oh, what are these racist tweets floating here?
	Let's take a look. No, they were more like excavated by people on the right who were looking for another head on the trophy case.
	So they went and they dug up these tweets.
	They went searching for them.
	And they were dug up by the right's own outrage mob.
	You see that both sides have an outrage mob now.
	And both outrage mobs operate the same way.
	They both are just constantly looking for reasons to be outraged, and they kind of take turns being outraged.
	It seems like it's almost planned.
	I don't know if they get together and they say, okay, it's your turn to be outraged, now it's my turn.
	I'm not sure, but they kind of take turns being outraged or pretending to be outraged by things.
	Every once in a blue moon, you'll see, and it's very inspiring to see this, Where the outrage mobs can come together and pretend to be outraged by the same thing.
	Every once in a while that happens, but usually it's a kind of back and forth thing.
	The outrage mob in modern America is very different from the classic pitchfork mob that maybe you would have seen in the 18th century or something like that, where the villagers would actually grab pitchforks because they were upset by something or other.
	A similar kind of thing happens now, but here's the difference.
	The modern outrage mob When you look at them grabbing the pitchforks and you look at the expression on their face, they're all super happy.
	They're so happy to be outraged.
	So they're grabbing the pitchforks and they're going, we're so outraged!
	Oh my gosh, we're outraged!
	Hey everybody, let's be outraged!
	We have a reason to be outraged! We found a reason!
	Another one! Yes, we're outraged!
	So that's what they're doing. They're so happy to be outraged.
	They're not actually outraged at all.
	It's almost kind of sweet, really.
	I wish that I could ever be as happy about something as the outrage mob is about their reasons to be outraged.
	Outrage makes them so happy.
	And I think this is part of the reason why the New York Times has decided not to fire Sarah Jong, because they realize that all the people who are pretending to be upset aren't really upset, so there's no reason to take them seriously.
	And also probably 95% of them are not New York Times subscribers, so they have nothing to really hold over your head.
	They can't do anything to you.
	And, um, this is what I say to, you know, anytime this happens where, uh, Someone is an employee of a company, is the target of the outrage mob, and the outrage mob tries to get them fired from the company.
	I always say to the company, whoever the company is, there's no reason to respond to this.
	These people are not really upset.
	They're not. They don't actually care at all about this.
	They're really happy, actually.
	So there's no reason to take their outrage seriously.
	Obviously, these tweets are 100% completely racist.
	But I'm not a fan of this thing that we're doing now where both sides are only interested in personally destroying members of the other side.
	And I'm especially not a fan of it because it's so disingenuous and everyone knows it.
	We're all taking part in like this game and we all know it's a game.
	We all know that no one cares about any of this stuff really.
	Yeah, Sarah Jong is definitely racist, but I don't care.
	Do you really care about that?
	No one cares. I didn't know who she was up until three days ago, and now we're all supposed to care.
	Oh my gosh, this random person said racist things.
	I'm so upset. No, I'm not upset.
	Neither are you. Nobody cares.
	No one cares. I think as conservatives, we really have to decide if we want to be right.
	Not just on the right. Do we want to be right?
	Or do we want to score points in this weird, bizarre game that we're playing?
	And if we want to be right, then we can't behave exactly as the left behaves.
	The problem is that now when the leftist outrage mob comes for someone, the right can no longer sermonize about how the left hates free speech and it weaponizes outrage and so on and so on and so on.
	Because the right does exactly the same thing.
	And you want to talk about scoring points.
	It used to be the outrage mob thing up until, I don't know, the last couple of years.
	The outrage mob phenomenon in modern America used to be kind of an exclusively left-wing phenomenon.
	And that was a really good point that the right could make to our own benefit.
	We could say, look what they do, you know?
	They hate free speech. They don't want anyone to express their views.
	They weaponize outrage.
	They just try to personally destroy and shut people down.
	They're disingenuous.
	They're dishonest about it.
	And I think that that was a very powerful point that we could make.
	And I think it caused a lot of people, maybe not to come over to the right, but it caused a lot of people to shy away from the left and say, I don't want any part of that because that's not who I am.
	I don't want to do that. I'm not into that.
	And so it was a very powerful thing we had in our corner that now we've lost because we're doing the exact same thing.
	Look, I'll admit this, okay?
	I like being right.
	I really enjoy it.
	I'm not saying I like being on the right because I don't see much of a difference between the two sides anymore.
	I just like being right.
	I want to be right. I really do.
	I much prefer to be right.
	I hate being wrong.
	I prefer to be right. And that's why it's so sad to me that the right has decided to stop being right.
	In our effort to defeat the left, we've become just like them, which is really the opposite of defeating them.
	The whole point of the culture war is to decide whose philosophy, whose vision, whose way of doing things is going to define the culture.
	Well, clearly the left has won that battle because everybody has adopted the left's vision and method and philosophy.
	There's no competition anymore.
	Everyone's on the left.
	Now it's just a battle for control between two leftist factions.
	Between two factions of morally relativistic, ends justify the means, disingenuous people.
	Just two factions of that same type of thing.
	And to me, that's very sad.
	All right. So that's that.
	But what about the racism expressed by John?
	Well, we're told, as I said, that she can't be racist because she isn't white.
	She doesn't have institutional power, we're told.
	Therefore, she can't be racist. A Democratic operative was on CNN last night, Simone Sanders is her name.
	She was on CNN last night, and she said that Zhang is not and cannot be racist because racism is prejudice plus power.
	And that's the definition of racism that the left has been using for decades.
	Where did they get this definition from?
	Well, this was a definition of racism that was first invented out of whole cloth by an obscure leftist in 1970.
	Her name is Patricia Bedol, and she wrote a book published in 1970 titled Developing New Perspectives on Race, an Innovative Multimedia Social Studies Curriculum in Racism Awareness for the Secondary Level.
	Classic book. I'm sure we've all read it, right?
	Well, that's the first time that this definition of racism, this idea that racism is prejudice plus power, and so you can't be racist unless you also have institutional power.
	This was invented by Patricia Badal.
	So anytime a leftist uses this definition, and you ask them where they got it from, if they know what they're talking about and they're honest, they would have to say, well, Patricia Badal said it.
	That's how we know it. I mean, if Patricia Badol said it, then it must be true, right?
	Patricia Badol, I mean, she has...
	So if Patricia Badol decided to define a square as a shape with three sides, well, then geometry must change because Patricia Badol has decreed it from on high.
	It's ridiculous, of course. She made up this definition, put it in a book, and the left has ever since pretended that the meaning of the word has inherently changed because Patricia Badal said so.
	But there are a few problems with this definition.
	Okay, let's go through them one by one.
	Number one. Well, as we've covered, it's completely and totally made up.
	And that, to me, is a problem.
	The dictionary definition of racism from Webster goes like this.
	A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority or inferiority, of course, of a particular race.
	Now, there's nothing in there about power or institutions or anything because that has no bearing on the meaning of the word.
	It's irrelevant. That's what racism is.
	So you have what the dictionary says versus what some random leftist said in 1970.
	Which is the more authoritative source here?
	Number two, this definition absolves people of racism on the basis that their racism is warranted.
	So it says that a black person can't be racist, essentially because a black person has every reason to hate white people, given that he's been the victim of historical oppression and so on.
	But that just means that the left is guilty of racism, even in defining racism.
	It says that white people deserve to be hated.
	That's essentially their definition of racism, which is racist.
	So they have injected racism into the definition of racism, which is kind of interesting.
	Number three, the left's notion of racism is grounded in this really ridiculous idea of what constitutes institutional power.
	So, they have arbitrarily connected racism to institutional power and said that In order for it to be racist, it depends on this idea of institutional power.
	Now, that in itself is nonsensical, but then they take it a step further, and they have defined institutional power in a way that is also nonsensical.
	So we have two levels of nonsense to cut through here.
	They say that institutional power is by definition white, and all white people benefit from it, and all white people have more institutional power than all black people.
	This is obviously madness.
	Because it would mean that Barack Obama When he was president of the United States and the most powerful man in the world had less institutional power than me.
	It would mean that Oprah Winfrey has less institutional power than a white guy in a trailer park.
	So if Oprah Winfrey went to a trailer park and took out a megaphone and just started shouting anti-white racial slurs into it at all the people in the trailer park, it would not be racist.
	Because all of those people in the trailer park have more power than a billionaire celebrity.
	That's, according to the left, that's the way it goes, which is idiotic, obviously.
	Number four, this idea of racism removes, and this is really the point, it removes all individuality and turns people into just sort of faceless representatives of their race.
	And it causes us all to kind of fade into the collective, which is always the left's aim, of course.
	And that's how you can argue that Obama has less institutional power than some random white dude.
	And Oprah has less institutional power than a guy in a trailer.
	And Eric Holder, when he was running the DOJ, had less institutional power than a beat cop in Charleston, West Virginia.
	Or even like, if you work for a Fortune 500 company, And you're an intern working in the mailroom and you're white, you have more institutional power than the black CEO of the company.
	That's the way it goes.
	Or if you're, let's say you're a white guy in prison and a black guy is the warden of the prison, you have more power in the jail cell than the guy who's running the prison.
	This is the left's idea of...
	It's an idea so crazy, so stupid, so self-evidently nonsensical that you can hardly even dissect it.
	You can hardly even debunk it because it's so insane that there's nothing.
	It's like either you realize just by looking at it how crazy this is, or there's nothing I can do for you.
	But how does this work?
	I mean, how can they draw this conclusion?
	Well, It's because they see Oprah and Eric Holder and Obama and the black prison warden and the black CEO. They see them not as individual human beings, but as black people.
	That's all. They're just black people.
	Oprah is not Oprah. She's just black.
	And the white person is not a person, not an individual.
	He's just a representative of whiteness.
	That's all. So although Oprah is a billionaire and one of the most powerful people in the world, she has less power than a guy at a trailer park because she's a non-individual.
	She's a non-human.
	From the leftist perspective, from the collectivist mentality of the left, Oprah is kind of just sort of a vessel of blackness.
	She's not a person.
	She is a vessel of blackness.
	And the white guy in the trailer park is not a person.
	He's a vessel of whiteness.
	And so when you compare the two, you don't have Jim Bob in the trailer park versus Oprah, the billionaire celebrity.
	You have a vessel of blackness versus a vessel of whiteness.
	And whiteness always is more powerful.
	And therefore, blackness can never be racist at whiteness.
	This is how the left sees all of us.
	By the way, Vessel of Whiteness would be a great name for a band.
	Or Vessel of Blackness, really.
	Either one of them. It's dehumanizing.
	It's deranged. And it's also racist in and of itself.
	Because remember that the Webster Dictionary definition of racism is to see race as the primary determinant of a person's traits and characteristics.
	And that's exactly what the left does.
	So their definition of racism and their ways of looking at race are themselves racist.
	Fifth thing, notice the circular logic here.
	So the left constantly blames white people for being racist.
	And accuses us of being the only racists in the country, while at the same time claiming that by definition, through no fault of our own, individually, we're the only ones who can be racist.
	And we're all racist just by virtue of our skin color, no matter what we think individually.
	So they say, stop being racist, and then they say, you're an inherent racist.
	So, you're inherently racist, therefore you are racist, therefore we'll cut you down and castigate you for being racist.
	But then we go back to the beginning, you have no choice but to be racist because you're inherently racist.
	So you see how the circle works here.
	Where they... On one hand, they're essentially saying it's no fault of your own that you're racist because you were born that way.
	But on the other hand, they still want to blame you for it and cut you down and use it as evidence of your lack of moral character and so on and so forth.
	So that's how it goes.
	I mean, what I'm saying is if the left took their own definition of racism seriously...
	Then they could never get mad at a racist person.
	If you're taking it serious, if that's really what you believe, you have no reason to ever be mad at a racist person.
	Because by your definition, he has no choice.
	It is not a choice that he made individually.
	It came with his skin color.
	And he has no choice in the matter.
	So by that way of thinking it, you'd almost have to feel sorry for a racist person.
	It's like a disease that he inherited.
	It's not his fault. You should feel sorry for him.
	He's a victim, really, of his own racism.
	Last point here, number six.
	I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this.
	I just think it's important to note that when we talk about institutional discrimination, for the most part, institutional discrimination is certainly not legal in the United States anymore.
	And for the most part, it doesn't exist in any legal official capacity.
	But there is one form of official and legal institutional discrimination.
	There's only one form I can think of that still exists in America, and that is affirmative action.
	That is the definition of institutional discrimination.
	It is an institutional policy to discriminate against white people, especially white men.
	So really, if institutional discrimination is the determining factor for racism, then actually, by that logic, you could argue that white people are the only ones who can't be racist, because we're the only ones who officially, legally, can still be the subject of institutional discrimination.
	So, I mean, I could give you 15 or 16 more reasons why this whole idea of racism is absurd, but I think that's enough, and we'll just leave it there.
	Thanks for watching, everybody.

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