I never spent a lot of time slamming white liberals because when my political agenda was anti-racism, I understood that I was there to make common ground. But I still reserved a significant amount of distrust. I'm sure I found ways to put it in words, but the incident that I seem to recall most clearly was over at Salon. It was there at the Table Talk that I encountered Sherman Alexie whose sad tale of anomie as a Native American homosexual brought the fellows in that forum to their knees and singlehandedly crushed any thread of my logical pursuits. Everything to be done with and for blacks is trumped by gay injuns. That's because racism is a black thing, and the liberation of gays has bigger bang in the narrative against the West.
The standard phrasing of my distrust is in the form of 'the commies that show up at the King Day Parade' and are never to be seen again in the 'hood until the following January.
Today I want to direct your attention to this stunning clip by Bill Whittle. Every time I entertain the notion that American society is in jeopardy of collapsing, I comfort myself with the fact that there are those like Bill Whittle around. Not that they might stop the forces of collapse, but that in a post-social-apocalyptic America, I knew the crowd I will be with to remain civilized and strong. They are Bill Whittle's Greys. If you don't know, then find out.
I had the misfortune, I think like many Asian students who, by their social marginalization *must* study math and medicine, of not understanding as a young adult what the liberal arts had to do with me and my own history. That was because as a black nationalist, "my" history had been crafted for me from the likes of Karenga. And when I tried to make sense of the arts and letters, having mastered some aspects of math and science, I found myself directed towards men with names like Adorno and Marcuse.
I read some of that, and it was old. It didn't help and it left me rather befuddled. I recognized it as the same kind of thing I read from A. Sivanandan, bell hooks, Audre Lorde and a host of other left intellectuals that I had mistaken for the only intellectuals there were. The trick I never quite mastered was to master Marx' understanding of capitalism which was said to be prodigious, without following his prescription with what to do about it.
In the end, my Left intellectuality was a matter of default, of not knowing that there were men like Oakeshott or Chesterton of only knowing about the Frankfurt School but not of the Straussians. This, it seems to me, is the story of my education into miseducation, a higher order deception than that noticed by Woodson generations ago. For I have only learned half of the story of Western Civilization, and that from those who wished to demonize and replace it. But I have been liberated from that little Left box by the Right, by both the noisy and the profound.
As 'teachable moments' go Whittle's backgrounder on the perversions of political correctness may pass unnoticed by many millions. But I know I'm on the right side. People used to ask me all the time, what do Conservatives do for the black community? I don't know. But I know what Conservative ideas do for individuals like me.
NOTE: I have always maintained the category 'Critical Theory' as a tongue-in-cheek reference to its what Whittle is talking about. It was originally for cultural criticism, like movies, film and style, but then as I broke those categories out it is for my more serious essays and open thinking.
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