Nice piece. You might consider sharing some of that ease and comfort you have with yourself, apart from race, with poor Glenn Loury. He's in a quandary as he tries to reconcile his role as a BLACK public intellectual with his loathing of being racially typed and patronized by both the "three-named people" (with four, you're not a member of this despised group) and white liberals oozing racial guilt. On top of that, Glenn professes a great nostalgic love for "his people" and the rich culture which produced and grounded him in 1940s-1950s Chicago before his meteoric rise to (and tragic fall from) the heights of academe as an economic wunderkind as well as a unique and biting political commentator of the right, at least before "The Bell Curve" radicalized and isolated him. Glenn is at the end of his career (he recently left Brown for retirement and to write/publish/promote his autobiography) and has health problems. If anyone can help him to still the turmoil within, it's you.
I just realized that I haven't responded to this, RB. But I knew the answer right away. I think Professor Loury acts out of the same motivation as white liberal guilt. On the one hand, he has demonstrated his temptation to the attractiveness of the outlaw stereotypes of nominally black culture. He knew those people (of all the gin joints in all the towns in the word that black culture walked into his Chicago, and he fell in love). On the other hand, as a success he decided to teach the world with his genius, so he owes something to that world. So it stands to reason that he would undertake the "black man's burden" of raising the race. But he was never too stupid to realize that every black American was making choices - choices that he freely made, to embrace or reject blackified pessimism. So he decided to chastise that Chicago, and by extension, that aspect of black American life.
That is his life. And I understand why he is stuck there. He wanted to live in that Chicago. He looked for that Chicago everywhere else he wandered. He could have gone to New Mexico or California or Oxford. But he decided, and the birth of his children determined that he was a proper inheritor of that Chicago.
In my argot, Loury is a tree. Whereas I am a monkey. I refuse to stand in one place to give shelter and comfort and get mad because everyone doesn't take refuge in the shade I provide. I visit all the trees, and go beyond the horizon. Loury cannot be transplanted beyond his dark forest, but he may twist himself into an iconic shape.
Thanks so much for the response. As always, a great deal of wisdom wrapped in even more compassion and understanding. I'm just about to start Loury's long-delayed autobiography "Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative." I'll be reading it with your comments in mind.
Thank for sharing Michael. "White MIke" helped me gain a deeper understanding of the "racial challenge". In my own life I am aware of my stereotypical emotional reactions to people and situations based on external inputs, but that's quickly overridden by my interaction with every individual. It typically only takes a few minutes to discern someone's underlying MO and relational approachability. That said, I am either instantly connected with them as some base level or I decide if I have the interest, time or energy to break down some underlying lack of trust.
It’s complicated at present. Many black people find it insulting for a white person to use the word. It reopens the wound for some. And its connotation of “lesser human” is an ugly one.
I also yearn to move beyond race and consider humanity and character over immutable traits but we need to grow up a bit more before that approach becomes more widely accepted. I love Sheena Mason’s work toward this end. She has a brave voice.
"The n-word" has become the pasties of racial dialogue. For old-time strippers, pasties brought more attention to the breasts than just having the natural nipples. It has always struck me as odd that a word that is thrown around casually by blacks if uttered by someone white, even if used in literature, that person is condemned. It's not a word I would use but there are occasions it would be appropriate in context and saying "the n-word" in its place just gives more weight and power to the word.
This should become archaic and right now feels kind of ridiculous to me. I'll probably get grief for this but it almost feels juvenile, "I can say this but you can't so there." But not my call.
"Last weekend, I tried to get some [nominally white] people to break this rule [not to say 'nigger'"], even somebody who was not born in the US. Nobody bit."
I foresee a Blazing Saddles friends movie night in your future.
It is offensive to put Malcolm X and little Kendi in the same sentence. The former is a great American playing an archetypical American role (whether he realized it or not). Kendi is nothing more than a fantastically lucky grifter.
Thank you. I agree with so much of what you say. But "as a White person" I will say that few things are more terrifying than providing the racially minded among us with an excuse to brand you (falsely) as a racist. That would be death.
No I've never been to Russia. I read too much spy fiction to have anything approaching a comprehensive view. As a typical well-read American I admire the literary work of Chekov, Dostoevsky and Nabokov. Also that of Koestler, Conquest and Solzhenitsyn. I do pay attention to Kasparov now and then, but I don't have much of a pressing need to dig deeper into Russia or claim any expertise about its social norms. Antagonistic as I might be to Putin, the thought experiment was not about him per se, just about the unspeakable.
Perhaps you might share with us, what you would think the average citizen in the Russia you know would consider to be unspeakable in public, lest it make those around them extremely uncomfortable. Maybe something about Pussy Riot, or relatives in Ukraine, or ... what do you think?
It is simple from my perspective. There should be zero material bias, discrimination or prejudice for anything except behavior based on standards of decency. Stop making excuses for bad behavior and solve the problem of terrible racial outcomes.
This immediately caught my attention. Didn’t even read deep into it. I routinely “poke the bear” here in Seattle. I think I have been rebelling over this insane, and highly contradictory, orthodoxy that you are highlighting. In Seattle, certain wrong speak merits unlawful treatment from the black hoodie crowd with no protection being offered by the police.
Interesting read. Everyone has their hang-ups and liberties, prejudices and epiphanies, makes their own decisions toward their own actions, and faces their own consequences.
Nice piece. You might consider sharing some of that ease and comfort you have with yourself, apart from race, with poor Glenn Loury. He's in a quandary as he tries to reconcile his role as a BLACK public intellectual with his loathing of being racially typed and patronized by both the "three-named people" (with four, you're not a member of this despised group) and white liberals oozing racial guilt. On top of that, Glenn professes a great nostalgic love for "his people" and the rich culture which produced and grounded him in 1940s-1950s Chicago before his meteoric rise to (and tragic fall from) the heights of academe as an economic wunderkind as well as a unique and biting political commentator of the right, at least before "The Bell Curve" radicalized and isolated him. Glenn is at the end of his career (he recently left Brown for retirement and to write/publish/promote his autobiography) and has health problems. If anyone can help him to still the turmoil within, it's you.
I just realized that I haven't responded to this, RB. But I knew the answer right away. I think Professor Loury acts out of the same motivation as white liberal guilt. On the one hand, he has demonstrated his temptation to the attractiveness of the outlaw stereotypes of nominally black culture. He knew those people (of all the gin joints in all the towns in the word that black culture walked into his Chicago, and he fell in love). On the other hand, as a success he decided to teach the world with his genius, so he owes something to that world. So it stands to reason that he would undertake the "black man's burden" of raising the race. But he was never too stupid to realize that every black American was making choices - choices that he freely made, to embrace or reject blackified pessimism. So he decided to chastise that Chicago, and by extension, that aspect of black American life.
That is his life. And I understand why he is stuck there. He wanted to live in that Chicago. He looked for that Chicago everywhere else he wandered. He could have gone to New Mexico or California or Oxford. But he decided, and the birth of his children determined that he was a proper inheritor of that Chicago.
In my argot, Loury is a tree. Whereas I am a monkey. I refuse to stand in one place to give shelter and comfort and get mad because everyone doesn't take refuge in the shade I provide. I visit all the trees, and go beyond the horizon. Loury cannot be transplanted beyond his dark forest, but he may twist himself into an iconic shape.
Thanks so much for the response. As always, a great deal of wisdom wrapped in even more compassion and understanding. I'm just about to start Loury's long-delayed autobiography "Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative." I'll be reading it with your comments in mind.
Thank for sharing Michael. "White MIke" helped me gain a deeper understanding of the "racial challenge". In my own life I am aware of my stereotypical emotional reactions to people and situations based on external inputs, but that's quickly overridden by my interaction with every individual. It typically only takes a few minutes to discern someone's underlying MO and relational approachability. That said, I am either instantly connected with them as some base level or I decide if I have the interest, time or energy to break down some underlying lack of trust.
It’s complicated at present. Many black people find it insulting for a white person to use the word. It reopens the wound for some. And its connotation of “lesser human” is an ugly one.
I also yearn to move beyond race and consider humanity and character over immutable traits but we need to grow up a bit more before that approach becomes more widely accepted. I love Sheena Mason’s work toward this end. She has a brave voice.
Also, to finish what you started:
“You don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Jim.” Thank you!
Race is a fiction and we are its authors.
What other fiction can be detected just by looking at your bones?
Good question! In your view, is race equivalent to genetics?
Race is as distant from genetics as palm reading is from psychiatry. I'll be writing something about that soon.
Which is why 23 and Me can tell where your ancestry is from. You people are absolute lunatics.
That's my view as well. Race is "outside in" and genetics is “inside out." Simplistic but mostly accurate.
Your phrasing makes no sense. Try asking again with clearer wording.
"The n-word" has become the pasties of racial dialogue. For old-time strippers, pasties brought more attention to the breasts than just having the natural nipples. It has always struck me as odd that a word that is thrown around casually by blacks if uttered by someone white, even if used in literature, that person is condemned. It's not a word I would use but there are occasions it would be appropriate in context and saying "the n-word" in its place just gives more weight and power to the word.
This should become archaic and right now feels kind of ridiculous to me. I'll probably get grief for this but it almost feels juvenile, "I can say this but you can't so there." But not my call.
"Last weekend, I tried to get some [nominally white] people to break this rule [not to say 'nigger'"], even somebody who was not born in the US. Nobody bit."
I foresee a Blazing Saddles friends movie night in your future.
It is offensive to put Malcolm X and little Kendi in the same sentence. The former is a great American playing an archetypical American role (whether he realized it or not). Kendi is nothing more than a fantastically lucky grifter.
I give Kendi benefit of the doubt. Malcolm X in his youth was as ignorant as Kendi is now. If he can wise up, then there’s hope for the worst of us.
I hope you are right. It is a far better perspective. I need to think more positively.
Thank you. I agree with so much of what you say. But "as a White person" I will say that few things are more terrifying than providing the racially minded among us with an excuse to brand you (falsely) as a racist. That would be death.
Except yiy can freely say what you want abiut Putin in Russia, and mostly noone cares.
Mostly the FSB cares. Ask Evan Gershkovich.
So you never been to Russia, right.
Just asked Gershkovich, rigt?
No I've never been to Russia. I read too much spy fiction to have anything approaching a comprehensive view. As a typical well-read American I admire the literary work of Chekov, Dostoevsky and Nabokov. Also that of Koestler, Conquest and Solzhenitsyn. I do pay attention to Kasparov now and then, but I don't have much of a pressing need to dig deeper into Russia or claim any expertise about its social norms. Antagonistic as I might be to Putin, the thought experiment was not about him per se, just about the unspeakable.
Perhaps you might share with us, what you would think the average citizen in the Russia you know would consider to be unspeakable in public, lest it make those around them extremely uncomfortable. Maybe something about Pussy Riot, or relatives in Ukraine, or ... what do you think?
So. You just eat kasparov's shit, right.
Azerbaydjany half jew, half armenian living in NY.
Somehow he is an expert on Russia. Ok. I have no mire questions.
It is simple from my perspective. There should be zero material bias, discrimination or prejudice for anything except behavior based on standards of decency. Stop making excuses for bad behavior and solve the problem of terrible racial outcomes.
Lenny Bruce was SO ahead of his time!
Fuck you niggah. 😔😔😏😘
I've always thought that people who couldn't stand to hear anything in an educational context had lost the point of education.
This immediately caught my attention. Didn’t even read deep into it. I routinely “poke the bear” here in Seattle. I think I have been rebelling over this insane, and highly contradictory, orthodoxy that you are highlighting. In Seattle, certain wrong speak merits unlawful treatment from the black hoodie crowd with no protection being offered by the police.
How come all the young women in the AI pic have really great boobs? I mean, I’m not complaining…🤣
Interesting read. Everyone has their hang-ups and liberties, prejudices and epiphanies, makes their own decisions toward their own actions, and faces their own consequences.