There are some that many on both sides like to lump together and that is women and/or "feminists." Those types respond to any problem that involves a male and a female, even when it doesn't involve a sexual relationship, as male vs. female instead of a disagreement between 2 adults. While some of the MeToo allegations were silly (Anzari), the women named names (Weinstein et al.) and didn't attack "men" as a group. The meltdown over this was bizarre to watch. The same people having meltdowns over the naming of names would then turn around and say "all women are out to get men," or men are destroyed because of "feminists," while being completely oblivious of the irony.
Us humans used to live in small tribes. We're really bad at not stereotyping people, because for the majority of human existence, we only knew a few people. With mass media showing us so many people at once, our brains can't process them all, so entire groups are reduced to caricatures. This is both a right-wing and left-wing phenomenon, as it is a human phenomenon. Both sides have closed themselves off into echo chambers.
No two women are the same, no two feminists are the same. Even within feminism, I see that there are liberal feminists, radical feminists, Marxist feminists, etc. Everyone is unique, which is why I'm so opposed to CRT and other ideologies that imply group thinking.
Libs of TikTok is like “Stuff White People Like” for the 2020’s. It lampoons contemporary hipster culture. The difference is that now hipsters can’t laugh about it.
I never thought of it like that, but it makes sense demographically. If "Stuff White People Like" was around now, some entries would include "Drag Story Hour", "Black Squares on Instagram", "In This House We Believe Signs", and "Ukraine".
Well said, as usual. We watched Tucker every night and grew used to friends and acquaintances who would remark that he was a racist, misogynist, liar without ever having watched a single broadcast and came to view us as ignorant hillbillies. Good riddance to them.
It is very typical of the left to spew hate toward everybody else, and while Diangelo dresses it up in socialpsychobable, she does the same thing beginning with self-hate.
Associate with hateful people and you will learn to hate.
In my life, I've learned that there are good and bad people of any affiliation. Us humans like to imagine our political opponents as evil, but most people genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. That's why I'm very open to listening to different viewpoints and not judging others instantly. Beyond the politics, there are things that fundamentally make us human. And that's what Tucker realized.
Having grown up in the land of the Blues and moved to the land of the Reds, I can tell you that it's generally the least successful and least mature who are most partisan.
Sane Blues have a sense that at least some of the Reds want something for actual reasons and maybe should be negotiated with. And for their part, the Reds who do all right and manage their lives competently, realize that Blues are basically OK and should be reasoned with in the hopes that they might stop voting quite so Democrat in the future. In my experience hyperpartisans, the kind of intolerant, foam-at-the-mouth, unable to comprehend that anyone even might deserve to exist who doesn't agree with their norms and values, whether Red or Blue, are the kind of angry dysfunctional people who never were able to reach adulthood. I think that there's an obvious reason, too: if they could help being totally obnoxious and dogmatic about things they don't understand, they wouldn't be that way. Who would actively *choose* to be incapable of empathy, moderation, or objectivity?
May 18, 2023·edited May 18, 2023Liked by Sheluyang Peng
Anyone who ever went to a high school knows that the meanest girl is not the most popular girl, the Queen Bee. She can actually be quite pleasant, at least as long as you know your place.
The meanest girl is the Wannabe.
Of all the humans I interact with, the Wokest Of Them All is the one whose grip on PMC status is the most precarious.
"Do what does this all mean? It’s not that White people cannot define themselves, it’s that White conservatives can’t. White liberals feel free to speak for White Americans as a whole. The same is true for nonwhite groups. My last essay examined how Black liberals are often used to speak for all Black Americans. My article in Tablet examined how Asian and Jewish liberals often end up speaking for all Asian and Jewish Americans."
Once you understand that "liberal" is a stand-in for PMC, and that the PMC in turn is the hegemonic class (in the sense that PMC values are deemed normative) - then All Will Be Revealed, the Doors Of Perception cleansed.
Yeah, I have discussed the PMC in many of my articles. This is how corporations have all gone woke, as they run those institutions’ HR departments now.
Thank you for reminding us of Stuff White People Like and other satire blogs of the early 2010s. Before the culture wars took of, joking about culture was entirely possible. Educated white liberals really must have seemed like a very harmless group of people by then. Otherwise such light-hearted satire could not have been made over them.
Race doesn't exist in Sweden! Seriously, at least a few years ago, Race Does Not Exist was one of the most politically correct things white people could say. A bit like the Gender Is A Spectrum mantra in the Anglosphere today. People of color were called "raceified" (is there such a word in English?), because they had the problem that some people wrongly thought they belonged to a race.
But now people have gotten tired of all that. Wokeness is not fashionable anymore.
I see. So if I, an Asian person, were to go to Sweden, would they see me as Asian? Would they see me and think of me using Asian stereotypes? Do East Asians have stereotypes in Sweden like we have in America of being nerdy, uncreative, short, feminine, etc.?
Yes, Swedes see Asians as Asians. After all, we are not blind, we only pretend to be ("I don't even see race!" the most fashionable exclaimed cirka 2016). But I don't think there are as many stereotypes of Asians as in America, because there is no Asian community here. Most East Asians are South Korean adoptive kids, and such people naturally fit in very well. They literally only look different.
The fashionable thing in Sweden now us to be very, very lightly anti-immigrant and steadfastly defending Swedish society against the threat that immigrants pose. Not because we don't like them; we only want the best for them. And our society, with our values, is the best.
For example, for a few years immigrants have complained that social services take their children without any obvious reason. Everyone with a voice, mass media and politicians alike, have dismissed the families that complain as victims of an Islamist desinformation campaign run from abroad in order to destabilize Sweden. No one as much as mentions the possibility that Swedish authorities could ever make mistakes.
I see. Do most Swedes see immigrants that have assimilated into the dominant Swedish culture as "real Swedes"? As in, is Swedish identity constructed on an ethnic basis, or a cultural one? If I were to move to Sweden and learn the language and customs, can I be considered a real Swede?
Definitely, yes. We would be delighted. If you moved to Sweden, learned the language and assumed a Swedish identity, that would be yet another proof that Swedish society is superior to all other societies. Our national identity is not racially based, but state-chauvinistic. Everyone who agrees that Sweden is a great society is a real Swede. Everyone else is someone very, very suspicious. Probably part of a foreign campaign to destabilize Sweden.
All the progressive journalists who pointed to Tucker's text as his "downfall" saw their joy go down in flames and it proved nothing other than Tucker's essential humanity, compassion and deep capacity for self-reflection. The very reason why we watched him in the first place.
On the other hand, everyone knows that Jeremy Lin's game faltered because he had a "chink in his armor." OK, I couldn't help myself but remember when the sportscaster was excoriated for using that expression? Does anyone really think he was archly trying to sneak in a juvenile epithet? We've all become way too uptight. Am I offended when someone says I can't jump? Well, I can't. Or dance, either. If you can't laugh at yourself, or cut people slack for unintentional slights, you're pathetic.
I put intent above everything. If someone was deliberately trying to be racist, like sneaking in a racial slur on a news site, then that person is a racist. But if it was truly an accident, then it should be treated as such. Intent is everything, and I'm a believer in due process, so I believe people accused of racism should get to tell their side of the story. But the cancel culture people these days don't want that. Remember the Central Park birdwatching incident? The media hounded Amy Cooper without knowing the true story. https://www.thefp.com/p/the-real-story-of-the-central-park
And I enjoy racial comedy as long as it goes after everyone. If someone can dish it out but can't take a joke about themselves, then that's pathetic. Like when Chris Rock criticized the Oscars for its lack of Black representation, but then made a joke about Asians. Imagine an Asian comedian trying to make a joke about Black people? https://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11142390/chris-rock-asian-joke-oscars
Exactly. The Golden Rule. If you dish it out, you better laugh even harder at jokes that lampoon your own race, ethnicity, etc. There are ethnic jokes for a reason. Cause we all act like doofuses at times. How many times would "yeah I was being a jerk" totally diffuse a situation and make a friend out of a potential enemy? We better all be in this together because when we're overseas, you better believe that no matter our color or creed, they just see us as Americans.
The phrase "That's not how white men fight" rubbed me the wrong way, and I think it is indeed a problem. It's not that it is a generality about white men but rather that it is an implied generality about other groups. It implies that Carlson thinks that white men value fairness in fighting but that some other groups do not value fairness in fighting, otherwise he would have simply said "That's not how people fight". Or, more charitably, Tucker is saying that he knows enough about white men to make this generality about his own group, but he doesn't know enough about other groups to make the generality universal.
In either case, I would say that this text message is indeed strong evidence that Carlson sometimes has racist thoughts (he would probably not deny this). However, the whole point of the message is that Carlson has admitted that he sometimes has thoughts that are bad and wrong and that he is willing to be self reflective and try to overcome those thoughts. Rather than labeling Carlson as a bad racist man, he ought to be seen as a complex human being who is capable of change and he ought to be encouraged to overcome his worse instincts.
I don't know what goes on inside Carlson's mind. My main question in this essay is, "Who gets to determine racial stereotypes?" After all, White liberals stereotype White people all the time, and they get praise for it. People of color often create stereotypes for themselves and enforce them. I've often heard people say "Black people don't do this" as a way of policing the boundaries of Blackness. So then, what's the problem with Carlson making a generalized statement? That's what I'm trying to get at.
I really don't think the main conversation about Tucker Carlson is about "who gets to determine racial stereotypes?" I did see a few crazy comments on twitter which could be seen to imply that Carlson is not qualified to determine racial stereotypes about white men (i.e. by asserting the opposite stereotype - that white men are actually inclined to join lynch mobs). But most of the tweets simply stated that Carlson is obviously racist - that he's a bad man who should not be allowed in polite society.
I'm pretty sure that most of these people are assuming that the phrase "that's not how white men fight" necessarily implies the corollary "that is how black men fight", and that _this_ is the statement that shows how racist Carlson is. (A few defenders of Carlson on twitter opined that black men _are_ more inclined than white men to start unfair fights, but I find such a premise unlikely and unhelpful even if true - most adults rarely or never start violent fights at all, regardless of race).
I think that you're quite right that NYT and CNN and many on twitter have unfairly focused on the problematic parts of Carlson's message and ignored the parts which show his human side. And you're also right that certain people are "allowed" to make broad generalizations about white people and others are punished for making such generalizations (or for making the "wrong" generalizations). But I don't think that most of the criticisms of Carlson's statement are examples of this.
There is no reverse racism, only racism. Facts and truth aren’t inherently anything but facts and truth. You can’t solve a problem without identifying it and gathering information (facts) to make a decision. The liberals don’t want to solve any minority problems because the problems are what keeps the minorities down and persuades them to vote for the liberals who vilify any conservative for speaking the truth.
Fact- Blacks are 13% of the population and commit 53% of the murders in this country. Lots of other incredibly skewed crime stats. Now we can debate why, but first you have to be able to state above facts. Which anyone who wants to be on most social media platforms, own a business, run for office, could never get away with saying out loud.
There are some that many on both sides like to lump together and that is women and/or "feminists." Those types respond to any problem that involves a male and a female, even when it doesn't involve a sexual relationship, as male vs. female instead of a disagreement between 2 adults. While some of the MeToo allegations were silly (Anzari), the women named names (Weinstein et al.) and didn't attack "men" as a group. The meltdown over this was bizarre to watch. The same people having meltdowns over the naming of names would then turn around and say "all women are out to get men," or men are destroyed because of "feminists," while being completely oblivious of the irony.
Us humans used to live in small tribes. We're really bad at not stereotyping people, because for the majority of human existence, we only knew a few people. With mass media showing us so many people at once, our brains can't process them all, so entire groups are reduced to caricatures. This is both a right-wing and left-wing phenomenon, as it is a human phenomenon. Both sides have closed themselves off into echo chambers.
No two women are the same, no two feminists are the same. Even within feminism, I see that there are liberal feminists, radical feminists, Marxist feminists, etc. Everyone is unique, which is why I'm so opposed to CRT and other ideologies that imply group thinking.
I wish you would implant your observation into every human brain.
I wish I could too. It might even create world peace.
Libs of TikTok is like “Stuff White People Like” for the 2020’s. It lampoons contemporary hipster culture. The difference is that now hipsters can’t laugh about it.
I never thought of it like that, but it makes sense demographically. If "Stuff White People Like" was around now, some entries would include "Drag Story Hour", "Black Squares on Instagram", "In This House We Believe Signs", and "Ukraine".
Also, “Oversized Beards”, “Starbucks”, and “Making Asians work harder to get into college”
Well said, as usual. We watched Tucker every night and grew used to friends and acquaintances who would remark that he was a racist, misogynist, liar without ever having watched a single broadcast and came to view us as ignorant hillbillies. Good riddance to them.
It is very typical of the left to spew hate toward everybody else, and while Diangelo dresses it up in socialpsychobable, she does the same thing beginning with self-hate.
Associate with hateful people and you will learn to hate.
In my life, I've learned that there are good and bad people of any affiliation. Us humans like to imagine our political opponents as evil, but most people genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. That's why I'm very open to listening to different viewpoints and not judging others instantly. Beyond the politics, there are things that fundamentally make us human. And that's what Tucker realized.
Having grown up in the land of the Blues and moved to the land of the Reds, I can tell you that it's generally the least successful and least mature who are most partisan.
Sane Blues have a sense that at least some of the Reds want something for actual reasons and maybe should be negotiated with. And for their part, the Reds who do all right and manage their lives competently, realize that Blues are basically OK and should be reasoned with in the hopes that they might stop voting quite so Democrat in the future. In my experience hyperpartisans, the kind of intolerant, foam-at-the-mouth, unable to comprehend that anyone even might deserve to exist who doesn't agree with their norms and values, whether Red or Blue, are the kind of angry dysfunctional people who never were able to reach adulthood. I think that there's an obvious reason, too: if they could help being totally obnoxious and dogmatic about things they don't understand, they wouldn't be that way. Who would actively *choose* to be incapable of empathy, moderation, or objectivity?
Anyone who ever went to a high school knows that the meanest girl is not the most popular girl, the Queen Bee. She can actually be quite pleasant, at least as long as you know your place.
The meanest girl is the Wannabe.
Of all the humans I interact with, the Wokest Of Them All is the one whose grip on PMC status is the most precarious.
Definitely. The ones at the very top are secure in their social station. The insecure ones will try to climb.
"Do what does this all mean? It’s not that White people cannot define themselves, it’s that White conservatives can’t. White liberals feel free to speak for White Americans as a whole. The same is true for nonwhite groups. My last essay examined how Black liberals are often used to speak for all Black Americans. My article in Tablet examined how Asian and Jewish liberals often end up speaking for all Asian and Jewish Americans."
Once you understand that "liberal" is a stand-in for PMC, and that the PMC in turn is the hegemonic class (in the sense that PMC values are deemed normative) - then All Will Be Revealed, the Doors Of Perception cleansed.
Yeah, I have discussed the PMC in many of my articles. This is how corporations have all gone woke, as they run those institutions’ HR departments now.
Thank you for reminding us of Stuff White People Like and other satire blogs of the early 2010s. Before the culture wars took of, joking about culture was entirely possible. Educated white liberals really must have seemed like a very harmless group of people by then. Otherwise such light-hearted satire could not have been made over them.
I've been wondering, what is the racial discourse like in Sweden? Do you have "SWPL" people there as well?
Race doesn't exist in Sweden! Seriously, at least a few years ago, Race Does Not Exist was one of the most politically correct things white people could say. A bit like the Gender Is A Spectrum mantra in the Anglosphere today. People of color were called "raceified" (is there such a word in English?), because they had the problem that some people wrongly thought they belonged to a race.
But now people have gotten tired of all that. Wokeness is not fashionable anymore.
I see. So if I, an Asian person, were to go to Sweden, would they see me as Asian? Would they see me and think of me using Asian stereotypes? Do East Asians have stereotypes in Sweden like we have in America of being nerdy, uncreative, short, feminine, etc.?
And what is the fashionable thing in Sweden now?
Yes, Swedes see Asians as Asians. After all, we are not blind, we only pretend to be ("I don't even see race!" the most fashionable exclaimed cirka 2016). But I don't think there are as many stereotypes of Asians as in America, because there is no Asian community here. Most East Asians are South Korean adoptive kids, and such people naturally fit in very well. They literally only look different.
The fashionable thing in Sweden now us to be very, very lightly anti-immigrant and steadfastly defending Swedish society against the threat that immigrants pose. Not because we don't like them; we only want the best for them. And our society, with our values, is the best.
For example, for a few years immigrants have complained that social services take their children without any obvious reason. Everyone with a voice, mass media and politicians alike, have dismissed the families that complain as victims of an Islamist desinformation campaign run from abroad in order to destabilize Sweden. No one as much as mentions the possibility that Swedish authorities could ever make mistakes.
I see. Do most Swedes see immigrants that have assimilated into the dominant Swedish culture as "real Swedes"? As in, is Swedish identity constructed on an ethnic basis, or a cultural one? If I were to move to Sweden and learn the language and customs, can I be considered a real Swede?
Definitely, yes. We would be delighted. If you moved to Sweden, learned the language and assumed a Swedish identity, that would be yet another proof that Swedish society is superior to all other societies. Our national identity is not racially based, but state-chauvinistic. Everyone who agrees that Sweden is a great society is a real Swede. Everyone else is someone very, very suspicious. Probably part of a foreign campaign to destabilize Sweden.
I did not think they were harmless. After a few times being directly harmed, even dopey forgiving nice guys catch on.
All the progressive journalists who pointed to Tucker's text as his "downfall" saw their joy go down in flames and it proved nothing other than Tucker's essential humanity, compassion and deep capacity for self-reflection. The very reason why we watched him in the first place.
On the other hand, everyone knows that Jeremy Lin's game faltered because he had a "chink in his armor." OK, I couldn't help myself but remember when the sportscaster was excoriated for using that expression? Does anyone really think he was archly trying to sneak in a juvenile epithet? We've all become way too uptight. Am I offended when someone says I can't jump? Well, I can't. Or dance, either. If you can't laugh at yourself, or cut people slack for unintentional slights, you're pathetic.
I put intent above everything. If someone was deliberately trying to be racist, like sneaking in a racial slur on a news site, then that person is a racist. But if it was truly an accident, then it should be treated as such. Intent is everything, and I'm a believer in due process, so I believe people accused of racism should get to tell their side of the story. But the cancel culture people these days don't want that. Remember the Central Park birdwatching incident? The media hounded Amy Cooper without knowing the true story. https://www.thefp.com/p/the-real-story-of-the-central-park
And I enjoy racial comedy as long as it goes after everyone. If someone can dish it out but can't take a joke about themselves, then that's pathetic. Like when Chris Rock criticized the Oscars for its lack of Black representation, but then made a joke about Asians. Imagine an Asian comedian trying to make a joke about Black people? https://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11142390/chris-rock-asian-joke-oscars
Exactly. The Golden Rule. If you dish it out, you better laugh even harder at jokes that lampoon your own race, ethnicity, etc. There are ethnic jokes for a reason. Cause we all act like doofuses at times. How many times would "yeah I was being a jerk" totally diffuse a situation and make a friend out of a potential enemy? We better all be in this together because when we're overseas, you better believe that no matter our color or creed, they just see us as Americans.
NEW RULE
Anyone who is antiwar will be cancelled.
Wait, what?
Total war is the new black.
Maybe Tucker meant to say, "No True Scotsman. . . "
The phrase "That's not how white men fight" rubbed me the wrong way, and I think it is indeed a problem. It's not that it is a generality about white men but rather that it is an implied generality about other groups. It implies that Carlson thinks that white men value fairness in fighting but that some other groups do not value fairness in fighting, otherwise he would have simply said "That's not how people fight". Or, more charitably, Tucker is saying that he knows enough about white men to make this generality about his own group, but he doesn't know enough about other groups to make the generality universal.
In either case, I would say that this text message is indeed strong evidence that Carlson sometimes has racist thoughts (he would probably not deny this). However, the whole point of the message is that Carlson has admitted that he sometimes has thoughts that are bad and wrong and that he is willing to be self reflective and try to overcome those thoughts. Rather than labeling Carlson as a bad racist man, he ought to be seen as a complex human being who is capable of change and he ought to be encouraged to overcome his worse instincts.
I don't know what goes on inside Carlson's mind. My main question in this essay is, "Who gets to determine racial stereotypes?" After all, White liberals stereotype White people all the time, and they get praise for it. People of color often create stereotypes for themselves and enforce them. I've often heard people say "Black people don't do this" as a way of policing the boundaries of Blackness. So then, what's the problem with Carlson making a generalized statement? That's what I'm trying to get at.
I really don't think the main conversation about Tucker Carlson is about "who gets to determine racial stereotypes?" I did see a few crazy comments on twitter which could be seen to imply that Carlson is not qualified to determine racial stereotypes about white men (i.e. by asserting the opposite stereotype - that white men are actually inclined to join lynch mobs). But most of the tweets simply stated that Carlson is obviously racist - that he's a bad man who should not be allowed in polite society.
I'm pretty sure that most of these people are assuming that the phrase "that's not how white men fight" necessarily implies the corollary "that is how black men fight", and that _this_ is the statement that shows how racist Carlson is. (A few defenders of Carlson on twitter opined that black men _are_ more inclined than white men to start unfair fights, but I find such a premise unlikely and unhelpful even if true - most adults rarely or never start violent fights at all, regardless of race).
I think that you're quite right that NYT and CNN and many on twitter have unfairly focused on the problematic parts of Carlson's message and ignored the parts which show his human side. And you're also right that certain people are "allowed" to make broad generalizations about white people and others are punished for making such generalizations (or for making the "wrong" generalizations). But I don't think that most of the criticisms of Carlson's statement are examples of this.
There is no reverse racism, only racism. Facts and truth aren’t inherently anything but facts and truth. You can’t solve a problem without identifying it and gathering information (facts) to make a decision. The liberals don’t want to solve any minority problems because the problems are what keeps the minorities down and persuades them to vote for the liberals who vilify any conservative for speaking the truth.
Fact- Blacks are 13% of the population and commit 53% of the murders in this country. Lots of other incredibly skewed crime stats. Now we can debate why, but first you have to be able to state above facts. Which anyone who wants to be on most social media platforms, own a business, run for office, could never get away with saying out loud.
See the pattern here? Sad isn’t it?