The thesis seems to be that white people have a property of “whiteness” within them, and that all successful whites have exploited blacks in one way or another, and because of this the “white” lifestyle should be destroyed. It ends with this gem:
The editors meant it when they replied to a reader, “Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed—not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed.”
This just stumps me. I would Pit this, but I’m too lazy. Heh.
Hang on. This isn’t an article - it’s a book review, and the guy they happen to cite in the introduction is an ex-Harvard professor. Then they elaborate on a magazine called “Race Traitor”.
Therefore, the remarks can not be attributed to Harvard Magazine, but to an obviously inflammatory magazine.
They’re not suggesting that people who are classified as the white race have to go, just that the idea of the white race being a certain defined situation has to go. It appears to me that these guys are just trying to say that there shouldn’t be any particular behavior that is thought of as white.
Noel Ignatiev says of his book, “The aim was to chronicle and analyze the making, remaking, and unmaking of whiteness. My book on the Irish was the story of how people for whom whiteness had no meaning learned its rules and adapted their behavior to take advantage of them; Race Traitor was an attempt to run the film backwards, to explore how people who had been brought up as white might become unwhite…”
If I’m reading this right, it is working toward the goal of making race unimportant.
No offense, but that’s not how I read it, UncleBill; they’re not talking about abolishing the concept of race as a whole, but merely abolishing the concept of a white race. That doesn’t sound at all colorblind to me.
I’m all for trying to get people to understand that race is a silly concept, but I confess that I don’t understand the need to do this one “race” at a time, which I suppose I do find unnecessarily inflammatory.
Wow, evidence that getting 1500+ on your SAT and getting accepted to Harvard and having your parents spend $30,000 a year is no defense from being a total putz.
Apparently it’s because whiteness has historically conferred social advantages, and if we are to abolish the divisions of race, those who are receiving such benefits must renounce them. Hence the “traitor” part.
“[The editors of Race Traitor insist that] deeply ingrained social problems cannot be solved until the privileges of white skin are abolished. Since they define the white race as a historical rather than a natural classification, it follows that this system can be undone–but only if a noticeable segment of whites are willing to dismiss conformity to their color.”
I can only suppose that anybody else who is unfairly benefiting from racial bias would have the same responsibility. Maybe they should say that. Heck, maybe they do say that. Dang it, now I’m going to have to read the book.
That sounds fair, and a lot less inflammatory than the magazine title suggests.
But just how does one go about this?
I’m certainly “willing to dismiss conformity to my colour”, but whereas I can be all integrated and colourblind and such, the world around me might not adapt so quickly.
I’d say racial issues (say, in the US) will decline over time, but there’s no sure fire system to speed things up. It’s events that trigger change: Rosa Parks refusing to stand up on the bus, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. They made changes, not some white scientist holed up in his ivorty tower.
Wouldn’t you say the racial gap (for example in the US) is less than it was 50 years ago? Not suggesting that we’re there yet, but we’re certainly moving in the right direction.
I would agree that we are moving in the right direction, very slowly, with a long way to go. And I think it has to be that way. We’re talking about changing the thinking of millions of free individuals; that can only happen gradually.
I think the reason events such as those you mention trigger change is that they spur discussion. It’s the dialogue that gets things done.
I don’t much like the Race Traitor approach. On their website they seem to advocate a lawlessness that goes well beyond civil disobedience. Their rhetoric is way too easy to misinterpret, as seen by the reaction here and elsewhere. And yet, here we are with fresh discussion and perhaps a new idea, thanks to the inflammatory style of Ignatiev and his associates. Even if their methods are questionable, their outrageousness can be made to serve a useful purpose.
The important thing is that we remember to think, and not just react without investigating.
If I’m understanding the author’s point, the idea is not to kill everyone who’s regarded as “white” (Irish, Italians, Englishmen, Germans, Jews, whatever), it’s to get over the idea that there are superior and inferior races entirely.
Think of it this way: 300 years ago, white Englishmen regarded equally white Irishmen as the scum of the Earth. White Russians regarded equally white Jews as spawn of the Devil. White Northern Italians looked with scorn at white Southern Italians, whom they regarded as lazy, stupid and shiftless.
Yet, somehow, upon coming to America, Englishmen, Irishmen, Germans, Jews, Northern and Southern Italians all somehow became part of some generic “white” race that felt entitled to look down on darker skinned peoples.
The point is, the Irish who came to America knew first-hand what it was like to be a despised, oppressed race. But rather than fight to eliminate notions of racial superiority, the Irish who came to America struggled to become PART of the privileged class that despised them! And over time, they DID become accepted as part of that class. “No Irish Need Apply” signs are a thing of the past… but modern day Irish-Americans often see nothing wrong with discriminating against TODAY’s allegedly undesirable races.
Well, arguably the Americans had such a holiday: Lincoln’s Birthday (Feb. 12). He’s most famous for freeing the slaves and his birthday was a holiday up to 1971, when Nixon combined Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays (GW is Feb. 22) into the single “Presidents’ Day”, the third Monday in February.
Honestly, I don’t understand what it means to “abolish the White Race”. Does anyone? It apparently does not mean “kill all the white people”. I’ve read about this a bit on the web, and I saw a quote from one of the authors of that paper, comparing the abolition of the white race to the abolition of monachy…it doesn’t necessarily mean killing the entire royal family.
The way you abolish a monarchy, though, is by changing laws. But no laws established the “white race”. So how do they propose to do it?