White privilege

Wednesday

Amber Duke

Why does the left hate white women?

All of my ladies out there who read this newsletter are probably familiar with the food blog “Half Baked Harvest.” Tieghan Gerard, the thirty-year-old founder and owner of the blog, has posted a cozy and delicious recipe nearly every single day since 2012, inspiring women everywhere to dust off their crockpots and grease their baking pans. Fellas, if the woman in your life suddenly decided to try her hand at pumpkin cinnamon rolls or made white chicken chili for game day, there’s a good chance she snagged the recipe from Half Baked Harvest. Gerard has millions of loyal followers and naturally this has led to criticism from bitter, jealous losers. The New York Times recently managed to snag an interview with Gerard (no, Tieghan, run!

white women nyt

Monday

Kenan Malik

The trouble with ‘white privilege’

This article is an excerpt from Kenan Malik's new book, Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics. In 1935, while writing his masterpiece Black Reconstruction in America, W.E.B. Du Bois pondered the question of why, in the wake of the Civil War, there had not developed working-class solidarity across racial lines. “The South, after the war,” he observed, “presented the greatest opportunity for a real national labor movement which the nation ever saw or is likely to see for many decades.” Yet, he lamented, “the labor movement, with but few exceptions, never realized the situation.

white privilege

Wednesday

John Ehrett

The Menu serves up clever and tangy social commentary

Several years ago, after I passed the bar exam, my wife and I went to dinner at Pineapple and Pearls — probably Washington, D.C.’s second swankiest restaurant. I recall eating some excellent duck, as well as imbibing a selection of craft cocktails served in ever-more exotic glasses and alembics. But what I remember most was dessert: a single gooseberry lacquered with honey. Yes, a single berry. (We ordered Domino’s when we got home.) The Menu is a lacerating bit of social commentary that doubles as a satire of this kind of fine dining — not all that surprising a blend, given the presence of Adam McKay on the production team.

Friday

Dave Seminara

Welcome to the woke World Cup

The World Cup has just begun and it’s already shaping up to be the wokest iteration of the world’s grandest sporting event in history. Twelve years ago, corrupt FIFA officials awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a Gulf state of less than three million people and about the size of Connecticut. In the intervening years, most of the criticism of this decision focused on the bribery scandal that engulfed FIFA and claims from human rights groups that some 6,000 migrant laborers died on the job during the frenzied construction of eight stadiums and other buildings for the tournament. Attacks on the host country have broadened in recent days, focusing predominantly on Qatar’s laws criminalizing homosexuality.

Monday

Bridget Phetasy

I apologize for my white baby

I’m here to apologize to my brothers and sisters of color — my white daughter’s pale skin has brought me nothing but shame. I have failed as an ally. For if whiteness is the root cause of systemic racism, then what does that make me for having a white child? How can I extol the virtues of anti-racism and dismantle white supremacy while simultaneously birthing another white person? These two seem incompatible. If I were truly honoring my commitment to decolonizing white spaces, I would have had my tubes tied or had myself euthanized and done the BIPOC community and the planet a favor. I’m such a coward. My therapists will have their work cut out for them this week. “Love is love,” unless you fall in love with a cishet white male.

white

Wednesday

Grayson Quay

Woke Twitter wonders: did Anne Frank have white privilege?

Did you spend any time on Twitter last weekend? If not, you missed a good one. Apparently Anne Frank had white privilege. Yes, that Anne Frank. The Jewish girl murdered by Nazis at the age of 15. TMZ reports that it’s “[u]nclear how this toxic discourse first started,” but the gist is that “Jews had the benefit of their skin color to go unnoticed in public, if only temporarily, during that bleak time in history,” while “POC, historically, haven't been able to do so.” Which, of course, explains why Anne Frank spent her days in Amsterdam strolling openly along the canals, playing Cupid for cancer-stricken teens and blasting Justin Bieber’s latest album through her earbuds. Oh wait. A few examples: @Ka1zoku_Qu0d: “yeah Anne Frank had white privilege.

Wednesday

Charles Murray

Identity crisis: how the politics of race will wreck America

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2021 World edition.  The American experiment is fragile. It has always been fragile and always will be fragile because it is so extremely unnatural. ‘Unnatural’ in this context means in conflict with human nature. Jonah Goldberg has described the fragility of the American system by comparing it to a garden hacked out of a tropical jungle. A garden surrounded by jungle is unnatural. The gardeners must tend it with unremitting care lest the jungle return. Treating our fellow human beings as individuals instead of treating them as members of groups is unnatural. Our brains evolved to think of people as members of groups; to trust and care for people who are like us and to be suspicious of people who are unlike us.

race

Friday

Jarvis Dupont

Jarvis’s guide to identity politics

It seems that recent events, from Black Lives Matter protests to J.K. Rowling’s transphobic Twitter rants, have given the wrong sort of people (Trump supporters) an excuse to inject their ignorant negativity like a poisonous bile into the noble veins of identity politics.But what is identity politics? Identity politics is a beautiful way in which we can bring people of all backgrounds together, before labeling them, allocating each of them demographic privilege points according to their place on the oppression hierarchy pyramid, and finally segregating them. Think of it as scratching a societal OCD itch of needing to organize the books on our shelves into alphabetical order. It’s neat. It’s tidy. It makes sense.

identity politics