Posted on 05/09/2018 5:19:03 AM PDT by SJackson
White racism must be everywhere for the Racism-Industrial-Complex to function
George Yancy is a black professor of philosophy at Emory University whose research interests are almost entirely racially-oriented.
Recently, he published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, “The Ugly Truth of Being a Black Professor in America.”
In response to “Dear White America,” an op-ed that Yancy had published in The New York Times and in which he implored whites—all whites—to accept that they are “racist,” Yancy claims in his most recent editorial to have been besieged by emails, letters, and phone messages filled with “racist hatred.”
On December 24, 2015, Yancy warned his white audience that being “neither a ‘good’ white person nor a liberal white person will get you off the proverbial hook” for “the ways in which you perpetuate a racist society, the ways in which you are racist.” Whites must “face” the “racist history which…has formed” their “own racism” and do “battle with” their “white self” by acknowledging “the racist poison that is inside” of them.
A few responses are in order here.
First, assuming that Yancy truthfully reproduced in his most recent essay the messages that he claims to have received in the wake of “Dear White America,” such messages must be condemned by the decent. They were indeed virulent.
Second, while it is certainly understandable that Yancy should be upset by the ugliness of the messages with which he claims to have been bombarded, he must assume responsibility for angering a good number of white people who, justifiably, take offense at his proclamation that they are all “racist.” The latter, after all, is among the most serious of charges of which a white person can be convicted today in the court of public opinion.
Third, the Yancys of the world—leftist “anti-racists” generally, black “anti-racists” specifically—most definitely do not take responsibility for the quality of either race relations or, for that matter, their own lives.
From Yancy’s vantage point, all that is wrong in black America is the fault of white people and, even when things go not so badly—like when a black man is hired to make a lucrative living teaching philosophy at a prestigious American university and writing tirelessly about the “racism” of the white majority—things could still have been better had it not been for this “racism.”
Fourth, Yancy claims to have written his open letter in a spirit of “love.” But as is known by anyone and everyone who has ever been in a loving relationship, a relationship in which one party is forever accusing the other of being, in effect, a moral inferior, of being the reason for all of the sufferings and hardships that the accuser has been made to endure, is most emphatically not a loving relationship.
It is an abusive relationship, an oppressive relationship. One could even argue that it is a hateful relationship.
Outside of politics, we have no difficulties recognizing this.
Fifth, though my suspicion is that Yancy knows all of this, I can’t be sure. To be truthful, I am more disposed to pity Professor Yancy than I am to be angry with him.
A left-leaning, white male colleague of mine said to me that no one has a right to judge Yancy on the emotions that he expresses in “The Ugly Truth of Being a Black Professor in America.” I suggested in return that perhaps we do have such a right.
Yancy, along with many others (like my colleague), look upon emotions as the products of “triggering” events. Yet while the latter certainly contribute to some extent to the production of feelings, one of the most influential psychologists of all time, Albert Ellis, is among those who insist that it is actually a person’s beliefs or thoughts about the events that bear directly upon the feelings that ensue.
Ellis’s approach is certainly not the last word. There is, though, definitely something to the idea—endorsed by, among others, the classical Stoics, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, Victor Frankl, and Cognitive Therapy founder, Aaron T. Beck—that it is our interpretations of events that are productive of the emotions that follow.
And interpretations—thoughts, beliefs—are susceptible to criticism, for they are either rational or irrational.
Professor Yancy, I submit, is at once a product and purveyor of a comprehensive narrative, an ideological creed that serves as the pretext for the Racism-Industrial-Complex (RIC), a sprawling industry, especially salient in academia, with vast psychic, material, and professional rewards for those, like Yancy, who perpetuate it.
Yancy, a black American male, must see and portray himself as a perpetual victim of White Racism. His professional life and social standing depend upon it. So, to legitimize the benefits that he reaps from assuming the persona of a victim, Yancy has imbibed an all-encompassing narrative of Black Suffering and White Supremacist Oppression, a conceptual lens through which his experiences are filtered and shaped.
Thus, Yancy sees, and has no option but to see, white “racism” everywhere: Whether it is good white “liberals” like those whom Yancy meant to address in “Dear White America,” those whites who responded angrily and offensively to the latter, or those whites who self-identify as Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi members, every white person is a “racist” to Professor Yancy.
So, George Yancy is not entitled to emote as he does about being a black professor in America, for his emotions are rooted in (and, in turn, reinforce) beliefs regarding race relations and his own station in life that, in addition to serving his professional, economic, and psychic interests, are rationally unwarranted.
His place in the Racism-Industrial-Complex secured, though, I suspect that Yancy will continue to find “racism” in every nook and cranny of the cosmos.
“Ellis’s approach is certainly not the last word.”
Actually, it pretty much is.
If you’re a hammer...everything looks like a nail.
“He’s a Black guy living in Atlanta. He’s got no problems. He needs to shut up.”
Well...there is the Atlanta traffic. Maybe a Special Lane could be built for him.
Which means that less than all of his emails, letters, and phone messages have been effusive in their agreement with and adulation of the professor. Racialists interpret everything that way. If you don't love them and shower them with praise you necessarily are trying to kill them. It is a matter of malleable political definition as words have no intrinsic concrete meaning and are useful only for their supposed emotional effect.
PROFESSOR: All white people are racist.
ME: Color is a construct of the human mind. Therefore, white only exists in your head. You may actually be white in someone else's mind. Is a zebra black with white stripes or white with black stripes?
LOL, it would be like telling him to find the corner in a circular room!
I read this article along with the 2 associated articles written by George Yancy. He is obsessed with the belief that all whites are racists, all men (including himself) are sexist opressors of women, and that blacks are victims. He believes that American society was built for whites and is essentially a sea of “whiteness” that oppresses anyone of color. Pretty typical.
As a philosopher I was surprised he apparently hadn’t given any thought about why Europeans (whites) would build a society around their values. Is that really surprising? Should we condemn the Japanese for building a society for the Japanese, or the Chinese building a society around Chinese values? Who should they build a society for, the Ugandans? If you are a white man growing up in Japan and go out of your way to reject it’s cultural, moral traditions and values, is it racism when you dont succeed and feel like an outcast?
He is preaching that Whites are innately evil by virtue of being Whites.
So is this “philosophy” professor teaching Wittgenstein or the poems of Maya Angelou?
Oh dear, boo frikkin’ hoo.
There are few people more coddled than those in academia, especially since he’s in a protected class. Amazing benefits, can’t be fired; I bet if he teaches at all it’s no more than one class in the total school year.
Please, someone rescue this man!
Wouldn’t it be racial prejudice to assume that all white people are racists?
Sadly, if the professor really believes what he says then it is he who believes he is inferior, and therefore a victim of circumstances he can't control. Teaching that view of life to his students does them a great disservice.
Exactly. Truth is personal and subjective these days. You may see me as male but I see myself as female. My truth is my reality.
So you can remove racism by removing “white” as a personal truth.
Of course, and the very logic behind the idea, namely that a group of people defined solely by skin color have some set of attributes that they uniformly share other than their skin color, is just factually wrong. That type of thinking is what leads to stereotypical views of groups of people, and the resulting prejudice against or favor for individuals in various groups.
The whole logic behind leftist identity politics is poisonous to a civil society. People should be viewed as individuals, with whatever attributes they personally have, not as members of some arbitrary group that is assumed to have some set of beliefs and behaviors.
He is a self-fulfilling prophecy and doesn’t know it. Those people that have a huge chip in their shoulder, walking around with an attitude as though “everyone hates them”, end up being the person nobody likes...then they believe it validates their perspective.
Go to hell, Yancy.
Yeah, The Good Dr could attack whites with impunity
Whatta opportunity to Get-Even
Actually, given that the number of blacks who voted dropped 7% from 2012 to 2016, while no other demographic did, we can honestly say that Obama won and Hillary didn't because white women will vote for a black man, but black men won't vote for a white woman. So let's be glad they were too racist to vote for Hillary, because if they'd turned out for her like they did for Obama...
Am I the first white boy to point out that the esteemed professor works in Atlanta, a city that is 53% Black!
The last seven mayors of Atlanta were Black, and Atlanta has had only one Republican mayor in the last 170 years, and that was during Reconstruction.
—every white person is a “racist” to Professor Yancy.
Ergo, Professor Yancy is a racist.
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