A few years ago, I read a book called Everyday Racism, a thoroughly unscientific although commercially published book about a "study" that a professor did with black college students. She asked them to tell her what the three most racist things that had ever happened to them were, and then she took their stories and wrote this book around them.
Reading it, I noticed two things: first of all, the vast majority of these students' three worst victimizing racist incidents were in fact not all that bad. Not really surprising, since both professor and students are from some college which I haven't bothered to remember the name of, that has a certain amount of Privilege attached to it.
The second thing I noticed is that very similar things have happened to me and my family. And not just a few times; quite regularly. And where they don't happen regularly, it's because I've been avoiding returning to the places where they did happen--shopping malls, for example.
I started listing these incidents out, and so far I am at 93 and counting. Ninety-three little sob stories that would be marketable today, if only I were of some other race.
Well, that's not an insurmountable obstacle. If the Black Like Me guy could travel around the South and "pass", I should be able (with a little work) to pass well enough for a couple of virtual book tours on Zoom over the next two or three years; everyone knows that COVID-19 is racist, just like everything else is....
The elite method, demonstrated so brilliantly by Christine Blasey-Ford, who didn't even need to resort to blackface, is to specifically blame whoever the Establishment is in need of demonizing at the moment, and to not worry too much about who was really present or not. As long as the "feels" of the story are told in vivid enough detail that even the fictional elements are "brought to life", the hard facts of the matter can be left so hazy and nebulous that no one can disprove the story for certain.
The only real obstacle to this scheme is that I have a hard time writing in other styles without lapsing into parodying them. But Sokal and others have blazed the trail there... I think the secret must be in the set of one's eyebrows; a sanctimonious posture must be a necessary precondition for sanctimonious writing.
Oh, and I better run my profile picture through MS Paint and add some Color.
Are you allowed to pick your color?
ReplyDeleteYes, but picking an Asian color doesn't get you very much from the progressives.
ReplyDelete