Hi.
I’ve been MIA for a variety of reasons lately, but I have to come back and address this bullshit.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNXMNDpqhvA[/youtube]
Recently, MTV has gotten more conscious about the marginalized groups in our society that many of its artists are part of. They’ve been trying to encourage love and respect to encourage this country to recognize the full worth and, therefore, potential of groups that are too often marginalized in this culture.
This has gotten a group of people, the “anti-SJWs,” to lead a campaign to get MTV to change and stop caring. And because they are more in number, tireless, and goaded on by YouTubers with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, they are succeeding. Which is sad, because MTV often has a good message.
In a sense, the anti-SJWs have won. You can’t get remotely prominent on YouTube as someone passionate about the most vulnerable in this country anymore without being tremendously demoralized and bullied by comments about your appearance and the all-powerful “dislike” button (and no, it doesn’t work the same the other way). And the occasional video with professional bulliers doing their best to spiral you into deep depression and laughing and punching harder anytime they feel they’ve done it. Such power has even led people I thought were my friends to instantly abandon me in the wake of attacks from prominent YouTubers, out of fear, possibly, of what would happen to their own channels.
The tables have turned. Trump is President-elect, even though he lost by 2.8 million votes. The alt-right/neo-nazis, the anti-SJWs, and the white evangelicals — most of them, anyway — have been dealing those who care about social justice and equality a strong blow. They’re the establishment now. We are the rebels. Congratulations.
I mean, in the above video, it’s gotten so bad that The Amazing Atheist gets support for rebutting the claim that “America was never great for black people” with Clara Brown’s success, because after slavery Clara Brown apparently died a wealthy woman who owned several properties. So that’s supposedly proof that America is great…except it isn’t. Clearly. To anyone who remotely looks into Clara Brown’s life, which the cheer squad of TAA and crew wouldn’t bother to do.
First of all, Clara Brown’s entire family was split up — her husband and her three children — at a slave auction after their master died, when Clara Brown was 35 years old. Maybe The Amazing Atheist didn’t know that, but now you do. That’s really sad. That doesn’t sound like something that would happen in a great country. And after Clara Brown was freed, she worked hard washing laundry for gold prospectors in the west. Getting wealthy by operating a laundry business is hard, backbreaking work. And during this time her family was lost. That’s not a sign of a Great America. That’s ugly.
Her husband and one daughter died and her son was never found — so in spite of her efforts, she never saw them again. She looked desperately for her daughter, spending funds to do so, and at 82 she finally found her daughter. Just her daughter.
I don’t know if you have sisters or brothers or a spouse, but that’s a hard life, no matter how many dirty clothes you scrub for long hours as a second-class citizen to scrape out enough money to find your place in the world. This isn’t a story about how great America is — it was an accident of circumstance that Clara Brown made money; a woman driven by her need for money to find her family found a place of gold prospectors where there was a high demand for a black washerwoman (a racist position itself, to be sure) and took advantage of it.
This program has been advocated for before by people such at Booker T. Washington, who preached that black individuals should accept the jobs that white people were willing to give them, excel in them, and thereby gain wealth and respect. But we decided, most of us, that that wasn’t good enough. We didn’t want to be limited to succeed only at the jobs we were stereotyped into; we wanted equality. And so we fought segregation and fought publicly for voting rights and fought for equality in education. Whether he realizes it or not (and I hope he doesn’t, because if he does it would be disturbing), when The Amazing Atheist talks about the late nineteenth century as a time when America was great (via the poor example of Clara Brown), and uses that time to say that black people today are not recognizing America’s current greatness adequately enough…he is indicting not only us, but the civil rights we have fought for through our strong criticism of America throughout the Civil Rights movement.
Because — I’m sorry — in my opinion, a country that allows segregation and restricts voting rights on the basis of skin tone is not great. It’s not. To the extent that people succeed in spite of segregation, that success should be credited to their hard work, their ingenuity, their determination, and a bit of luck that they had in a horrendously unjust system. I realize that for many of The Amazing Atheist’s followers this is a controversial opinion, given how many have “liked” his video. But I know that so deeply and confidently that, although you have won and may be trying to push us as far back to the nineteenth century as possible, I’m not about to just change my opinion due to the force of the majority.
….sigh…….
OK, let’s move on. He then talks about black Americans who come from wealthy families and want to lecture white America on how oppressive and racist it is.
Guys, guys, guys…you’ve got this all wrong. It’s not about white guilt. It’s not about making you feel guilty. It’s about trying to make this country successful. Because black Americans who go to college often learn (because, in spite of popular opinion, college does allow you to learn) about how much prejudice holds us back. And they need to know this (again, in spite of popular opinion) so that they can think outside of any racist stereotypes that may limit their success in their endeavors — as in who they hire, how they treat customers, who they vote for, who they support, etc. Stop feeling guilty, and stop feeling lectured — just recognize the real situation we are in, where racism is a thing, and join us in moving America past that.
I mean, honestly. Can you imagine how much more reasonable this country would be about drug policy now if it hadn’t been so racist? Can you imagine how much less stigma there would be? Same with poverty. Same with single motherhood. Same with paid maternity leave. Same with healthcare for the poor. Same with for-profit prisons. Racism’s attack on human dignity is a major creator of baked-in attitudes that make it so hard for us — black and white — to have nice things.
It’s not about black vs. white. It’s about all of us moving forward to make this country better, together, by mutually realizing how much racism gets in the way of that pursuit and thus ensuring that we eradicate it instead of letting it be (which has never worked, by the way — not for slavery, due to the Civil War, and not for segregation, due to a bloody Civil Rights battle).
When The Amazing Atheist insists that America is “all about” giving everyone a chance, regardless of circumstances, he ignores the fact (from all I’ve seen, it’s a fact) that people don’t seem to have equal chances. I’ve talked before about several studies that indicate black people DON’T have an equal chance, but it’s more straightforward to list the studies that support the claim that America is all about giving everyone an equal “chance” — non. Zero. And when we don’t have equal chances, that often means that the best don’t rise to the top, which hurts society as a whole.
About “Black lives matter” — the words, not the organization, which he didn’t address and which would be a separate blog post to address the nuances — The Amazing Atheist says that this is as racist as saying “White lives matter.” No, it’s not. Not in context. If I went to a funeral where a white person was killed by a black cop holding a sign that said, “Black lives matter” that would make me a rude asshole. If I held a sign that said “All lives matter” that would also make me a rude asshole. Because I’m at a fucking funeral and someone is dead. The right thing to do is show respect.
So the phrase is one of discomfort. In light of the inferior treatment Blacks tend to received from law enforcement and the government (the people of Flint STILL don’t have clean drinking water, by the way, and several children continue to be exposed to lead), many of us are beginning to wonder if our lives matter less. We’re standing at funerals and the negative effects of discrimination and saying that our lives matter. Not matter more than. Just “matters.” Not even matters equal to, necessarily. Just “matters.” And the fact that we can’t even say that without people getting upset out of their minds and doing the equivalent of holding up an “all lives matter” sign at a funeral is disturbing.
I mean, I’ve marched for Philandro Castile shouting “All Lives Matter” and gotten similarly outraged responses as when I shout “Black Lives Matter.” The chant doesn’t matter. People just don’t like the thought that the lives of black people should be respected more. If you think Black lives matter, and you know we are insecure about that based on what we see, why would you attack that by invalidating our concern instead of addressing it or affirming our insistence that black lives do actually matter?
Whether you agree that this is racist or not, it’s clearly very rude and in poor taste. Which, given what I’ve seen in comment sections, most of the anti-SJWs don’t mind. But some of us do…
Anyways…what else…he said reason means absolutely nothing to SJWs….
Right…moving on….
In response to the person who said that Judges shouldn’t prioritize the well-being of an ivy league athlete over the well-being of a woman he assaulted, TAA said that there weren’t many judges. That was his rebuttal. I mean…doesn’t he know we often vote for judges, and that the point is to influence general public opinion and by extension judges?
This is ridiculous. Really ridiculous.
And then he says that the person was “clamoring for more people in jail and harsher punishments for criminals.”
But actually, all the MTV guy said is that judges shouldn’t prioritize the well-being of an athlete over the well-being of a woman he assaulted. It didn’t say what that should entail. I mean, that seems like a relatively uncontroversial point. Do you think the judge SHOULD prioritize the well-being of an athlete over the well-being of a woman he assaulted? If it’s not prison, we should do something to make sure the woman is safe and that people are deterred from, y’know, sexually assaulting women because they think their status as an athlete is going to let them get away with it.
Kanye West…Kanye West supported Trump, vocally. And Trump is a racist. I’ve explained why before, and I’ll explain it more in the future as he does more racist shit. But yeah — endorsing Trump isn’t cool, regardless of your skin tone.
Then TAA argues in another rebuttal that “racists don’t have black friends, unless they’re black racists in which case they don’t have white friends.”
……right. I mean…does he realize that this logic is licensing all kinds of abuse of black individuals in this country? That it’s logic that has excused slavery and Jim Crow? That even Dylann Roof — that guy who went into a church and shot black people and wrote a famously neo-Nazi manifesto — has a black friend who insists he isn’t racist? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just doesn’t know. Maybe his audience just doesn’t know.
And they’ve won. They’re the establishment now. Ignorant, with terrible logic. I mean, I’VE been called “racist” a number of times by TAA and his crew, and I have a ton of white friends.
But it doesn’t matter. I’m still racist to them, because logic doesn’t matter, reason doesn’t matter, the truth doesn’t matter. What matters is the one thing that has always mattered to racists: Power.
The power to shut down MTV. To be racist and hypocritical and insulting and put tape over our mouths; to hurt us and laugh hysterically at our tears.
This is the world we live in now. They’re in charge. They’ve won. The truth hardly matters anymore. Rudeness, outright racism, and prideful hate that can’t be called out for what it is, in Trump’s America, where the KKK, the alt-right, the white evangelicals, and the libertarian atheists join together to melt the snowflakes as their march through the streets dies down, falters, and gasps.
I’m with you, though. Bring it on. We’ll be rebels in this Brave New World together. I won’t stop writing, criticizing, challenging, defending.
Thank you for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to support what I do.