According to the theory, race is an artificial category invented by whites to uphold their unearned privilege over the non-white other.
Below is a You Tube clip of Louis CK, with a transcript underneath:
Sorry I’m being so negative. I’m a bummer, I don’t know I shouldn’t be I’m a very lucky guy. I got a lot going from me. I’m a healthy, I’m relatively young. I’m white; which thank God for that sh** boy. That is a huge leg up, are you kidding me? I love being white I really do. Seriously, if you’re not white you’re missing out because this sh** is pearly good. Let me be clear by the way, I’m not saying that white people are better. I’m saying that being white is clearly better, who could even argue? If it was an option I would reup ever year. Oh yeah I’ll take white again absolutely, I’ve been enjoying that, I’ll stick with white thank you. Here’s how great it is to be white, I could get in a time machine and go to any time and it would be f***** awesome when I get there. That is exclusively a white privilege. Black people can’t f*** with time machines. A black guy in a time machine is like hey anything before 1980 no thank you, I don’t want to go. But I can go to any time. The year 2, I don’t even know what was happening then but I know when I get there, welcome we have a table right here for you sir. ... thank you, it’s lovely here in the year 2. I can go to any time in the past, I don’t want to go to the future and find out what happens to white people because we’re going to pay hard for this sh**, you gotta know that ... we’re not just gonna fall from number 1 to 2. They’re going to hold us down and f*** us in the ass forever and we totally deserve it but for now wheeeee. If you’re white and you don’t admit that it’s great, you’re an asshole. It is great and I’m a man. How many advantages can one person have? I’m a white man, you can’t even hurt my feelings. What can you really call a white man that really digs deep? Hey cracker ... oh ruined my day. Boy shouldn’t have called me a cracker, bringing me back to owning land and people what a drag.
The basic message of the Louis CK rant? Whites have always been privileged at the expense of everyone else and will be justifiably harshly punished for it.
So confident is Louis CK of the theory that he even extends it through known time. Go back in a time machine, even to the year 2 A.D., and there will be whites lapping up their privilege by denying a decent life to others.
The theory explains quite a bit about the liberal attitude to white forms of identity. If you accept the theory, then it makes sense to treat whites differently and to see any expression of white identity as an assertion of supremacy. After all, if it's true that whiteness was created to oppress others, then anyone defending it must be in favour of white supremacy.
The theory, though, is rubbish. First, it's clearly nonsensical to claim that what European villagers were doing in the year 2 A.D. had any significant effect on the lives of African or Asian villagers of the same era.
Second, it simply isn't true that Europeans have always had the upper hand when it comes to conquest and colonialism. For much of history Europe itself was conquered by foreign powers and subject to colonial rule.
Think of Russia under the Tatar yoke for several centuries. Or Spain under the Moors. Or the Balkans under the Ottomans.
It's not even true that whites are the most privileged racial group in America today. That distinction clearly goes to Asians:
In the year 2000, 4.1% of America's population was Asian American, but Asian Americans were 13.6% of doctors and dentists, 13.2% of computer specialists, 9.9% of engineers, 6.1% of accountants, 8.7% of post-secondary teachers (such as uni professors) and 6.9% of architects.
Asian Americans have the highest percentage of two-parent families (73%) and the highest mean family income ($77,000). White Americans were somewhat lower on both counts (67% and $70,000).
Asian Americans, though only 4 percent of the nation's population, account for nearly 20 percent of all medical students. Forty-five percent of Berkeley's freshman class, but only 12 percent of California's populace, consists of Asian-Americans. And at UT-Austin, 18 percent of the freshman class is Asian American, compared to 3 percent for the state.
So what are white Americans being punished for? They have been singled out for the sake of a political theory.
Liberals want to make unchosen qualities like our sex and our race not matter. But this means they have to explain why these qualities mattered in the past.
Some right-liberals are content to simply explain their existence in terms of the backwardness of history which progress will finally overcome. But left-liberals generally go further than this.
Left-liberals assert, first, that categories like our sex and race are not natural entities but artificial social constructs. Why were they constructed? As an act of power. They allowed one privileged class of people to assert a dominance of will over another oppressed class of people.
So there has to be a dominant oppressor group with an artificial, supremacist identity for the theory to work. Whites got tapped on the shoulder for the role.
As a result, we get to be the ones who deserve what's coming to us.
But again, it's all theory. It all depends on a number of doubtful claims, such as that our sex and our race are social constructs, and that male identities and white identities have an essentially negative purpose and origin in oppressing others.
(For some further reading on whiteness theory, see here.)
22 comments:
Mark Richardson,
I’m very interested in social statistics, where did you get your source from (2000)?
The media are constantly banging this drum. White people (particularly those in the US and especially the men) are being set up as the cause of all evil in the world.
It isn't one bit funny. I see where this is headed and it is scary.
Here is an article today http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/06/10/shapiro.wealth/index.html claiming the whites have unearned privileges that make them wealthy as opposed to the idea that they put the same opportunities to better use than other groups. The writer mentions that everyone's overall wealth has improved but since white people's wealth improved more, that is overall a bad thing. Again, the overall wealth of people in society improves to where they don't need to worry about the basics and this is bad.
Hold on tight for one heck of a bumpy ride.
Re: whites were always privileged: I recall reading a book about medieval Europe and the Crusades and running across a passage that quoted a Moslem trader on his opinion about Euros.
Basically, it was the further north you got, the more backwards, stupid, and white the people became.
So much for white always being better.
Also, I saw this yesterday, but haven't had the time to post on it. Why White Men Are Paid More. Basically, it is because white employees are seen as doing a better job from the POV of customers.
Anonymous, the statistics about Asian American advantage in employment and income come from a book by Pyong Gap Min called Asian Americans (pp.66-68). The statistics about college admission come from an article by Peter Kirsanow titled The Non-Preferred Minority.
Liesel, I read the article you mentioned in your comment.
Again we have the double standard. Whites are held to have wealth solely on the basis of inherited privilege.
And yet when Pyong Gap Min looks at Asian Americans and finds that they're doing better than everyone else, he explains it not in negative terms as unearned privilege, but in positive terms as reflecting a commitment to family and to education amongst Asians.
The other problem with all the claims about white males being privileged is that it hides an underlying trend in which the real wages of white working class men have been falling since the 1970s.
It's a double whammy: you get paid less in real terms than your father did and at the same time you're told that you should be punished for being privileged - even though there are other groups doing better than you.
"Liberals want to make unchosen qualities like our sex and our race not matter. But this means they have to explain why these qualities mattered in the past."
I like that comment. It shows you how modern liberalism is a self negating system of propositions.
I agree that he's obviously wrong but then again, he's got the excuse that he's a comedian, and he's just attempting to ingratiate himself with his crowd. Not sure that a several-paragraphs-long deconstruction of his rant is the best way to go about refuting him. It just buys into the 'conservatives are humourless' stereotype.
TimT
Yes he is wrong and yes he has an excuse, but whiteness theory is an abomination. It is the base and the essence of everything that is wrong with the liberal mind.
As such its worth a little deconstruction.
Whiteness Studies is a status game played by the globalist upper-middle class whites to put the nationalist lower-middle class whites in their place. We are seeing a hilarious example of this game being played out right now in Melbourne.
(Non-white) Indians are complaining, with some justice, that they are being victimized in a spate of racist attacks. The only problem, so far as Left-liberal whiteness lecturers are concerned, is that the racist attacker appear to be non-white or at least NESB.
This leads to surreal commentary by prominent Left-liberals like David Marr, who expended 1600 words or so in the Weekend Age denouncing the attacks on Indians as an instance of the evils of White Australia. Only to acknowledge at the death of the article that:
One observation: not all the attackers are white. Race is always a shifting, contested and complicated business.
Talk about burying the lede!
Marr is not the slightest bit of interest in actually analysing the problem. The problem is just a cue for him to drag out his clapped out post-seventies version of Left-liberalism for another gratuitous bit of exhibitionism. Mainly in an attempt to pre-emptively silence any serious criticism of this world-view. Its pretty clear that Marr also believes that AUS's ostensible post-seventies liberalism is a characteristic of the elites, not the populus, who remain closet racists:
This was change from above, more than below. The shift of values under Labor and the Coalition over the next 30 years was less than it seemed. Politics changed more than Australia.
The preening disdain for the populus is evident in Marr's express belief that anti-racism is mainly an elite pre-occupation. The populus obviously need to be kept on a short leash by political correctness, Bills of Rights and Human Rights Agencies, just in case the Third Reich decides to make a re-appearance in Balwyn or Baulkham Hills or some such.
Expect alot more Left-liberal ideological contortions as the cultural contradictions of post-modern liberalism become more apparent.
Mark,
If its possible I would like to correspond with you on these and allied matters. I am doing an Educational Psychology assignment for Dip Ed on differentiation and discrimination.
Do you have a public email? Mine is jack_strocchi@hotmail.com.
regards
Jack Strocchi
Re: Jack's point about David Marr's 'clapped out post-seventies version of Left-liberalism '.
If it is such a silly theory, why does he still have a job writing this rubbish?
The problem with those on the Right and/or Conservative side of politics is that their counter argument is just not palatable to most people/insitutions.
Remember the attacks are on Indians, they are not attacks on Whites. The Anglo-Australian's need to focus, not on defending their innocence, but on offering a solution to this problem.
BTW.... Interesting that the Balkans is now considered White.
I grew up as being a 'greasy wog' even though I have been labelled Russian, English amongst other ethnic groups.
Savvas Tzionis
Savvas Tzionis writes: "If [the clapped out post-seventies version of Left-liberalism] is such a silly theory, why does [David Marr] still have a job writing this rubbish?"
Oooo, this will open the floodgates! Any takers? LOL!
Kilroy...
Its not enough for you to say that 'The Left' is running the Mainstream Media.... bla bla bla
You happen to believe in the OPPOSITE view to Marr. And that is UNPALATABLE, as I said.
The RIGHT article in this situation would be a balanced view of the situation.
But who is going to write it?
And maybe we will never get it because as per usual, everyone is happier to deal with these issues in Black and White (pardon the pun), and the mainstream papers will cater for this.
The Telegraph/Melbourne Sun for the Right/Conservative...and the Age for the Left/Liberal.
Savvas Tzionis
... so hilarious, I am at once sapped of my strength to utter a single 'ha!'
Sheeesh! ... where do we begin ... Sometimes I encounter people with such a warped view that it just seems futile trying to explain anything to them. This is just one such occasion.
Amazing how he actually presumes that my views are 'unpalatable' ... it's probably not so unpredictable considering he thinks the Telegraph and the Melbourne Sun are 'conservative', LOL!
Reminds me of the Leninists at uni who use to denounce the Maoists and the Trots as 'nationalists' and 'conservatives'...
Anonymous, sorry but I've deleted your comment. I didn't mind your basic point that whites are too often used as an excuse for problems within black communities, but the language was too strong (e.g. "sociopathic").
Well, I guess I’d better not call anyone “sociopathic,” if I want my comment to remain.
I was wondering who was in the audience laughing at this guy? Non-sociopathic blacks? Non-sociopathic white racial socialists? Non-sociopathic paid laughers? Non-sociopathic relatives? (Strike that; my non-sociopathic relatives wouldn’t laugh at my jokes, unless you paid ‘em to, and even then, I wouldn’t count on ‘em.)
Nicholas Stix
Genocide isn't much of a privilege.
the stats are absolutely right, because Asian are hardworking and focussed, by saying this i am implying over a period of time white society has developed this culture of entitlement that they have a right but this era is of competition in which Asian societies are superior.
"The theory, though, is rubbish. First, it's clearly nonsensical to claim that what European villagers were doing in the year 2 A.D. had any significant effect on the lives of African or Asian villagers of the same era."
I'm sorry, I didn't realise Louis CK was giving a serious academic seminar on historical and cultural studies - I thought he was doing standup comedy. I also thought it was funny, but I guess that makes me one of those zany left-wingers you are always talking about.
Eurasian sensation, Louis CK's routine is as political as you can get. He is preaching a political message. It's an offensive message. He's saying whites have held everyone down and therefore deserve to be punished by everyone else.
Do you think that Louis CK just made all this up as a joke? If so, you've missed what's happening to politics in the US. Over the past five years or so there's been an academic discipline growing in influence called whiteness studies. The core ideas of whiteness studies are that whiteness is an artificial construct; whites are uniquely evil; and whiteness has to be done away with.
These are ideas with serious implications for whites, don't you think? Especially as we are reduced to minority status. They're an invitation for future maltreatment.
Not exactly something to laugh along to.
Mark, comedy or satire is all about exaggeration and sh*t-talking, even when it makes a political point. You can't hold this up to rigid academic standards as you seem to want to do.
Even so, I don't think CK is that far off the mark. The last 600 years of world history have predominantly been the story of Europeans screwing everyone else over. It wasn't Africans who wiped out so many indigenous peoples of Australia and the Americas. It wasn't the Chinese who decided they were going to take over every country in the African continent.
You can't seriously contend the Ottoman, Tatar or Moorish conquests are anywhere near what Western Europe inflicted on the world in the colonial era.
We are gradually moving into a new phase in world history where whites no longer have it all their own way, but the legacy of the colonial era can still be felt today.
It's not because whites are inherently more evil or racist than anyone else. If the Chinese or Persians had taken over the world instead of the Europeans, then they probably would have done the same things. But they didn't. White people did, and that's why this is an issue.
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