It always amazes me what people will unwittingly reveal if you just read what they write.
Some political myths refuse to die despite all evidence [sic] the contrary. Here's another:
When White people are no longer a majority, racism will fade and the US "will never be a White country again."
I used to believe those predictions. Now I have a different conclusion:
I reviewed his writings over the past several years and found no evidence that he used to believe those predictions. To the contrary, he appears to have been much more invested in believing the notions of white privilege, supremacy, etc., but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
In any case, things have clearly changed.
Don't ever underestimate White supremacy's ability to adapt.
In other words, witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational white supremacy!
Before we move on, I should point out a grievous error Blake is unwittingly making. I suppose it's difficult to keep up with the latest development in the historical grievance industry, but by capitalizing "White" he clearly did not get the memo about upper case letters being symbols of hierarchy.
Regardless, I suspect it's not "White supremacy's ability to adapt," that is at issue here, rather it's Blake's ability to adapt to a future in which his perpetually aggrieved persona becomes little more than an anachronism.
The assumption that more racial diversity equals more racial equality is a dangerous myth. Racial diversity can function as a cloaking device, concealing the most powerful forms of White supremacy while giving the appearance of racial progress.
This deserves repeating:
Racial diversity can function as a cloaking device,...
Cloaking device? That right there is a violation of the Treaty of Algeron.
...concealing the most powerful forms of White supremacy while giving the appearance of racial progress.
This is how people like Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, and Blake himself can simply ignore the stunning progress that has been made in recent decades in terms of dismantling laws and other institutional impediments to the progress of black Americans. You see, it's all an elaborate illusion intended to conceal "the most powerful forms of White supremacy."
This is also why you aren't permitted to deny it. You can't see it, it's invisible.
But trust them, it's there.
One more point before we move on. There is no surer sign that we as a society have done a pretty good job rooting out genuine racism, than the fact that they have had to resort to fabricating this new ninja form of racism.
Racism will likely be just as entrenched in a browner America as it is now. It will still be White supremacy, with a tan.
He expands on this a bit later, but his thesis is that white people simply expand the definition to include people who are not white so as to create more white people.
Or something.
But, first:
I don't like raising such a pessimistic scenario, in part for personal reasons. I want to believe my country is on the verge of this Brown New World where there will be such a rich gumbo of skin hues, hair textures and racially ambiguous people that racism will lose its sting.
What I found so interesting about this passage is that in many respects, we are already there. I have lived and worked in very diverse environments pretty much my entire adult life including minority-white environments, at great length too, and I think the most important observation I can make about it is that I have no observation to make about it. It's just people, of all kinds of backgrounds, working and living together. That's it.
I understand there remain parts of America where that isn't true (and it's not just a one-way street) but the future he speaks of is here in many respects and broadening, and the only real threat to it is, ironically I suppose, people like Blake who serve only to divide people by creating suspicion and resentment among them.
As he mentioned above, he has a personal stake in this.
My mother is Irish; my father was Black. My wife is an immigrant from Central America with a biracial mother and a White "Ladino" father who was Jewish and Castilian. My stepmother is Chilean, and half of my siblings are Afro-Latino.
I should note he points this out about every third article he writes. It's his diamond armor and he uses it to shield himself from criticism.
After the obligatory orange-man-bad trope, he gets to the meat of his argument.
The census suggests that White Americans will be a minority by 2045, but as several commentators have already noted, that date can easily be postponed. Whiteness isn't a fixed identity; it's like taffy -- it expands to accommodate new members, if they have the right look.
In books like "How The Irish Became White" and "Working Toward Whiteness," scholars have argued that the definition of Whiteness has expanded to include Irish, Italian and Jewish people -- groups that once weren't considered fully White in the US.
And here we go.
The future of Whiteness could rest with Latinos
Interestingly, Latinos' apparent chameleon ability to be white when necessary is more a product of the left than of the right. As Blake writes,
This racial hierarchy is the foundation of White supremacy. Europeans created it around 500 years ago to justify slavery and colonialism. This hierarchy is where we get the modern conception of race -- how a person's inherent worth, intelligence or attractiveness can be determined by the pigmentation of their skin.
First, this is beyond silly. He does make the distinction of this being the "modern conception" of racial superiority, but that's no more than a fig leaf.
Slavery has been around as long as human beings have existed. Europeans did not have to create racism or the sense of the superiority of "us" vs. "them." Inter-tribal racism and slavery is an enduring fixture of human existence and was widely popular, including on the African continent, long before Europe even existed as a concept. From Wikipedia:
Slavery has historically been widespread in Africa. Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa in ancient times, as they were in much of the rest of the ancient world.[1] When the trans-Saharan slave trade, Indian Ocean slave trade and Atlantic slave trade (which started in the 16th century)[2] began, many of the pre-existing local African slave systems began supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa.[3][4] Slavery in contemporary Africa is still practised despite it being illegal.
Second, have you ever noticed that when people speak of European colonialism they conveniently leave out Spanish and Portuguese colonialism which was, at a minimum, the equal of the British and French? (And don't get me started on the Japanese.) But when it becomes convenient to the narrative of victimhood, the descendants of these same rapacious Latinos who enslaved a continent and wiped out indigenous peoples are suddenly transformed into oppressed "people of color."
Pick a lane, guys.
Regardless, Latinos are the future of white supremacy.
Wrap your head around that. Blake does.
"The data also call into question whether America is destined to become a so-called minority-majority nation, where whites represent a minority of the nation's population," said the The New York Times. "Those projections assume that Hispanics aren't white, but if Hispanics ultimately identify as white Americans, then whites will remain the majority for the foreseeable future."
Abracadabra!
It could go either way. A study suggests that Latino identity fades across successive generations as immigrant connections fade away.
This isn't a process by which people become white. It's a process by which people both adopt, and contribute to, the culture. It is the definition of the melting pot. It's a good thing, it's a thing to be celebrated. It enriches us all, with newcomers adopting the best of American traditions, and existing American culture adopting the best of the new arrivals. Endless tribalism is not the path to a strong union.
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, [is the] author of "Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America."
"The apparent blessing of 'not seeing race' will become a curse for those struggling for racial justice in years to come, Bonilla-Silva wrote.
You can no longer fight racism if everyone believes their country has moved past race.
And you can no longer claim to be a victim if you aren't one.
We can't get there, though, if we continue to underestimate the resilience of White supremacy. It is a shapeshifter that can adapt to any environment.
It survived a revolution whose leaders declared "all men are created equal," a Civil War, the civil rights movement, several "racial reckonings," and the nation's first Black president. It keeps on keeping on.
1776, the Civil War, the civil rights movment, a black president, none of it means anything. And it never will.
They. Can't. Let. It. Go.
This is "The Cult of Victimhood" as described by Harold A. Black in an essay last year of the same name.
Those who insist that slavery is the root of all evil in America and that, as a result, blacks are victims, denigrate the strength of black Americans.
Throughout my family's history we have been guided by choice and responsibility, not by victimhood. Therefore, the notion of reparations for slavery puzzles me. The answer, of course, lies in the cult of victimhood that seeks to trivialize the stunning accomplishments of our people from the day they set foot in America to their proud descendants.
No one among my relatives on either side considered himself or herself a victim.
Across the changes in economic status from my former slave great-grandparents to my grandparents to my parents and to me, a retired finance professor with a Ph.D., and my late brother, a former airline pilot with a Ph.D., I cannot find one victim. Nor can I find a victim among any of my other relatives.
But John Blake, a writer and producer at CNN since 2007 and a published author?
He's a victim, and always will be.
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