If you want to fight the Woke...if you want to defeat racism...
Stop talking about it.
Like Morgan Freeman says..."I'm gonna stop calling you a white man, and I'm gonna ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace; you know me as Morgan Freeman"
"Black history month is American History month....when's Jewish History Month? Do you want one?"
And, I agree. We're not black men and white men and brown men. We're not even men and women.
...Practitioners of the new argument bolster their rationalist veneer with constant appeals to forms of authority that come in equal parts from biology and elite credentialing. Have you noticed how many people, especially online, start their statements by telling you their profession or their identity group: As a privileged white woman; as a doctoral student in applied linguistics; as a progressive Jewish BIPOC paleontologist—and so on? These are military salutes, which are used to establish rank between fellow “az-uhs” while distinguishing them as a class from the civilian population. You must always listen to the experts, the new form of argument insists, and to the science. Anything else would be invalid; science denialism; not rational; immoral.
Because of the way it toggles back and forth between rationalism and religiosity, switching categories by taking recourse to one when the other is questioned, the new form of argument-commandment, rather than invalidating itself or foundering on its own contradictions, becomes, somehow, rhetorically invincible—through the demonstration of power relations that the arguer denies exist, but are plainly manifest in the progress of the argument....
I'm a Citizen. That's all the identity I need.
I'm also many other things. Pilot, scuba diver, motor cycle & pro motor vehicle driver, life guard, history buff, retired cliche. ETc. Etc.
Increasingly, I am told some talking point of the Rich White Elite Democrats, then when I disagree, am told they don't want to listen. No argument allowed. Only the Will of Landru.
Aesquire, I'm sorry, but you very often preface your comments with your qualifications. For example in another thread you recently opened by stating that you had studied various martial arts for years. I think it's often appropriate because it illustrates the perspective you are writing from. That's important because, if you did not, the 1st response to your post would be, "Who are you to opine about XYZ?" Then you would have to clarify by replying with your qualifications. But if you couldn't edit the post, then that would be separated from the original, making page after page of disagreement that could have been avoided by simply including the relevant qualification to begin with.
I perceive that differently than tribal identities. Perhaps wrongly?
I'm from the pale blue Northern peoples of western Europe.
But my skin, selected to pass faint sunlight through to produce Vitamin D in a cloudy, cold environment with short daylight hours in winter, isn't my core identity. It's back story.
Just like Barry Soetoro has Kenyan ancestors, but isn't Kenyan in any social, educational, or practical way. He's 'Murican, like me. I'm no Irish Rebel or Viking, likewise.
I have studied the lives of my ancestors from a thousand years ago, ( don't know if Barry studied anything about history at all beyond Marxist theology ) But that's a hobby.
My identity is what I do. Not my tribe. Others? That's choice.
Another resident, Mitchell Erickson, said he regretted calling 911 when two black teenagers cornered him a block away from his home, held a gun to his chest and demanded his car keys. Erickson said he mistakenly handed over his house keys, and the frustrated teens left him only to steal another car a few blocks away.
“Been thinking more about it,” Erickson said in a text message to a reporter. “I regret calling the police. It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.”
Makes Watergate seem like polite opposition research. ( since the Nixon administration never did blackmail the rich donors who were rewarded by a prostitute by the DNC. If they had succeeded in pressure tactics instead of being caught at burglary, it would be different. )