The NAACP claims I posted a racist image and has called me out for it. The accusation has made the news. Now bloggers have weighed it. So am I a racist?
I guess I am if you think that being a racist means not recognizing the claims of people of color for special treatment on account of their unique history in the United States.
I guess I am also a misogynist if you think that means I don’t recognize the claims of women for special treatment based on their unique history. But the broader truth is that I am a misanthrope.
I don’t trust folks of all races, genders, or gender identities. I don’t trust them when they claim that my status as white male means I possess a “privilege.” These claims are usually cast as calls for distributive justice. “Give me more,” the claimants say, because I or my ancestors have had less. I am certainly not a white supremacist. I firmly believed all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
If you are reading this, you are probably aware that the NAACP “condemned” me, according to the headlines in newspapers, for posting a “racist” image on Facebook. The image was of three Coors beer cans wearing hoods gathered around a brown beer bottle in a noose. Ku Klux Coors, I called it.
Racism, said the Klan.
Facebook censored the material, a factor that led me to quit Facebook.
Why would I post such a thing? I think identity politics is a cancer. I am a white heterosexual male. I don’t owe people of color, women, transgenders or others a thing on account of my status. I’ll spare no effort to poke at those who think I do. That’s because I am a misanthrope, and believe there is little more dangerous than a self-righteous mob.
So why Ku Klux Coors? Because when the living claim that because “their” history reflects lynchings decades and generations ago the living are entitled to some special solicitude, I cry “bullshit.”
History is littered with the injuries humankind have done to one another. Claims of special status today because of yesteryear’s injustice is simply a way of playing spin the bottle with history.
I was wondered what kind of reception I’d receive in courts after the NAACP attack on me. Some folks avoided me. But a surprising number of folks approached me to thank me for calling out unctuous race pandering. “Things are getting out of hand,” one white man told me. I won’t mention what sort of uniform he wore. He was worried that if I identified him, he’d suffer repercussions. I had the same sort of conversation with a judge, with a radio personality and with others.
In the PC wars waging around us today folks are suddenly afraid of their shadows -- and the color of their skin. God forbid we offend a woman by not believing her. God forbid we don’t show solicitude to the descendant of slaves. God forbid that we don’t celebrate diversity for diversity’s sake. Suddenly, it’s suspect to be a white male.
Forgive if I decline to cower.
Sadly, I’ve seen young millennials express mockery over white male victimhood. Slowly, and by imperceptible degree, its becoming the new normal to regard white males as the possessors of privilege they must be compelled to yield. I call bullshit.
Martin Luther King transfixed a nation by speaking of a nation in which people were judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Our new identity politicians are taking the cowards way out. Blame the white dude – we’ve kept women down, oppressed people of color, and so forth. Is that your hand in my pocket?
Several years ago, I spoke at a public forum. After I spoke, a black politician told the largely African-American audience that “white people need to shut up and listen.” I was stunned. Had a white man said that to people of color it would cause a scandal. When the politico spoke, however, he appealed to a dawning sense of racial entitlement. I am not buying it.
I represent people of color, even though I don’t trust black race panderers. I represent Moslems, even though I am an Islamophobe and believe that the Islam and Western liberalism don’t mix. I represent women, even though I don’t believe them just because of their gender.
No one is entitled to solicitude on account of their identity. That’s a subtle form of idolatry, of the pot saying to the potter, why maketh me so?
I am a misanthrope afraid of self-righteous mobs. The mobs that scare me most now are the mobs of identity politicians. Politics is now pathos, with a new victim crowned as often as possible. Does that make me a racist? If you insist.
But if that is your claim, you are little more than a race-, gender-, diversity-panderer. I’ll mock your pretensions every time.
And that, my friends, is why I though Ku Klux Coors was well-worth posting, even if I won't be posting it, or anything else, on Facebook.