A middle-aged black man in a battered old truck stops his car by the sidewalk in a beautiful all-white suburb. Big shiny SUVs and sedans filled with white people also stop. Now the movement is blocked in both directions. White pedestrians stop to stare.
“I apologize, is this the right way to Walmart?” the black driver asks leaning out of the window.
The white drivers and pedestrians remain completely silent. Nobody moves.
“Am I going in the right direction?” the black man asks again and again. His voice becomes pleading. “Is this how I go to Walmart? Please? Does anybody know?”
The drivers and the pedestrians stare straight ahead. Nobody moves. Now the black driver looks like a scared bird trapped in his truck.
“I just wanted to. . . Am I in the right. . .” his voice trails off. After a few moments of complete silence, he drives off.
The movement and the chatter of a warm sunny day that just happens to be a holiday resumes.
Clarissa's Blog 
As long as this is still happening right at home in the US, people will still be ranting against 19 and 20 C colonialism and how superlatively evil it was. People love the combination of projection and deflection, black and white thinking and exaggerated notions of the evil-doing of others.
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I hate the discussions of the 19th-century colonialism because they are always reductive, useless and conducted in very infantile terms. People who can’t manage a nuanced discussion of the subject should abstain from talking about it altogether.
I was very into post-colonial studies at some point but I got profoundly disillusioned by the emptiness and the repetitiveness of discussions.
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As I never tire of repeating, just because it is so important, the attitude to the colonialism that started in the 19C is what DEFINES the Western character. All of his or her neuroses and fundamental fear of the self are stored here. If Westerners (those who fear this colonial aspect of themselves more than anything else) were able to process this component part of their psyches that they fear so much, they would become healthier in leaps and bounds. They would internalize the meaning of history and develop an understanding that individual humans are neither good or evil, but are enmeshed in history in necessary and interesting ways. Instead, they are so deeply troubled by who they fear they are that they live in a fantasy, swallowing gollops of Fox News and raving incoherently about the evils of the past and the supposed dividing line between the past and the present (the past was evil, 100 per cent, but the present is 100 per cent pure and beyond all that).
The reactions to the books I have written about war and colonialism always reveal people’s deep-seated neuroses and inability to grapple with historical issues.
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I love it when people downvote what is true about them. It shows I am pushing all the right buttons. How many times have I experienced USayers point their fingers at British colonialism as a way to take the heat off themselves. And when you point this out to them, you get, “This is not the traditional style of barbecue flavored chicken nuggets I am used to! you must be wrong! Go back and cook them again!”
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You seem to be an enlightened person. Why the fuck does someone downvoting you on the internet get under your skin so badly?
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You are projecting your own emotions and assuming that the only reason someone would pay attention is that something gets under their skin. That seems naive!
I am happy to address any intellectual questions you have, but not this naive projection, because it has nothing to do with me.
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Okay, I’ll bite. Not really sure I get your point. How does colonialism define “western culture”, at least particularly in the 19th century. I mean Europe had colonialism (I am willing for you to give a definition, but I am basically defining colonialism as a central state using military power to control a “foreign people”) since Rome 2000+ years. Every nation in the history of the world (open to counter examples) has tried to use military power to get direct benefit and monopolization of resource from other groups of people. The real mark of the west is technological innovation (do you contest that the west led on this 100%?) and democratic institutions that over time have evolved PAST dictatorial rule and colonialism / “conquering foreign lands for their own good. I don’t doubt colonialism, I mean in varying forms its prima facie obvious fact. But isn’t the impressive thing that the west developed a political system and technological innovations that have made it be PRIMARILY no longer colonial. I mean nothing is100% but just so I know where you are coming from now do you argue the west is still practices “colonialism” or pretty its over? I can buy that there are still lingering effects of it (which there are), and thenwe can debate how to get over them…
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What I am saying, specifically, is that the Western character structure is notable because of its shrillness and paranoia regarding earlier centuries colonialism, and that you can only expect black and white (good and evil) thinking and defensiveness of the most excrutiating sort if you try to openly discuss the topic. I can discuss it with Japanese because they do not see themselves as implicated, but Western people are either passively hostile (hence the downvoting without articulated intellectual commentary) or indeed very, very shrill.
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To be fair I don’t think I was either right? 🙂 My point being not everyone honestly. And frankly I think it is a matter of education (I know sounds arrogant), and also a matter that usually when people are talking about colonialism they are using it to say how terrible the “west” or the “US” still is, which I think you even admit we have made huge progress. Most don’t object to the fact of our past sins, or t the fact that we still have issues, but when people deny progress (which is patentely obvious that has occurred), people will then get very stiff to defend that we are indeed are a “great nation which has made a ton of progress, very arguably the most in history”. Which is true. So some may be gruff or shrill, but unless you contest the west and specifically the US has made the world a better place (which you can if you want, but I think you are wrong) then you are justcomplaining on style, not substance. Basically, the west has moved the world forward, and “compared to our current enemies” the west DOES have a moral high ground to stand on, and that is what the US and its citizens very vigorously are defending.
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Matt, I know it will be hard for you to believe this but people who think they “have a moral high ground” either individually or collectively are universally hated and despised by everybody. I’d drop this argument altogether.
I’d also drop the argument that the US “made the world a better place” because it makes you sound a lot more foolish than you are. This statement can only have value if it’s made by non-Americans. And non-Americans are not making it. This complete deafness yo everybody but yourself that you personally are consistently demonstrating might be to blame for that.
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As for the attempt to conflate the US and the West, that is entirely ahistorical. The US has existed for two seconds, historically. Whether it manages to live up to the West’s truly enormous achievements remains to be seen. But your “we have the moral high ground, we have done good to the world ” is profoundly anti-Western. You try to express support for the West while throwing aside its legacy. The great Western civilization deserves being studied in a little bit more depth. You are not doing it any favors by presenting it as a collective of self-satisfied, tone-death, blustering igniramuses. I know you can do better.
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Yeah, but this is like me saying “the constitution of plantain bananas is moisture contents 61.3%, protein contents 3.15%, ash contents 6%, fat contents1.2%, crude fibre 1.11%, sugar contents 12.8%, carbohydrate 27.24%, and total solid 38.7g / 100g. while the following results were obtained for unripe plantain flour; moisture contents 38.5%, protein contents 2.8%, ash contents 3.8%, fat contents 0.2%, crude fibre 0.7%, sugar contents 5.53%, carbohydrate 54% , and total solid 61.5g/100g.
Any you saying, “It’s no wonder people get upset if you are suggesting that rainforest animals cannot benefit from eating plantains! Plantains have all sorts of benefits!
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And once again (since I have by no means been understood) let me state that the problem with the Western personality is colonial guilt and that this defines the Western personality today. I mean it is the basic trauma that knits the overall orientation toward self and others together in a general attitude of self-abasement (not to mention infantile splitting and projection whenever I, a genuine colonial, am around).
An Internal pal says it much better than I in terms of his employment (deployment? 🙂 ) of effective rhetoric:
Phillip Mark McGough
7 hrs ·
Sir John Sawers, late of MI6:
“There is a requirement for restraint from those of us in the West. I rather agree with the Pope that, of course, the recent Islamist attacks in Paris were completely unacceptable and cannot be justified on any basis whatsoever, but I think respect for other people’s religion is also an important part of this. If you show disrespect for others’ core values then you are going to provoke an angry response. That doesn’t justify anything, but I think we just need to bear it in mind.”
That’s nice and clear. Policy both domestic and foreign is to be determined by fear of trespass against the limitless grievances of an illiberal, tyrannical, hyper-reactionary, imperialistic, psychopathic, misogynistic, homophobic, blood-drunk credal wave which would happily and noisily kill us all. But instead of defiance- yet more genuflection. “There is a requirement for restraint from those of us in the west…respect for other people’s religion is an important part of this.” No restraint or respect required from the enemy, however (meanwhile in France, “restraint” and “respect” for Islam translates into Jewish children being shepherded to school under the supervision of soldiers). Our predicament is morally symmetrical to the worst days of 1930s appeasement. We’re knee-deep if not deeper in a swamp of self-abasement, and sinking fast. Voltaire’s “I may disagree with what you have to say [etc]” has been iterated and reiterated to the point of banality lately. It’s worth remembering that Voltaire also said: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize”
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US was started way before 19C as colony and so was slavery there.
To the post: tragic.
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“To the post: tragic.”
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It would not be very likely to happen in Aus, but somehow it happens in the USA. Aus does have other problems, like death in police custody.
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To understand the US, one needs to get a profound understanding of two things: religion and race. Unless you get this brand of religion and this concept of race, you won’t get the country. Took me years to get a feel for it.
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Rode through a poorer neighborhood than usual today and decided that the “America” I remember is in Black culture. There were groups of kids and teenagers playing outside, a full on basketball game happening with parents and friends as audience, a neighborhood barbecue, people walking and biking to each others’ houses, etc.
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There is definitely a lot less terror of human interaction in the African-American culture. I also experienced it today at a coffee-shop where black people came to celebrate the MLK day. No immigrant could wish for a greater openness on the part of the locals than the kind I got there.
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A movie called American Sniper breaks all box office records on MLK day weekend. I’m sure there’s a joke to be made here, haha.
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The post is an example of what people call micro-aggressions, with some nicer politer sundown town tactics. They won’t run you out of town, but they’ll surround you and pointedly ignore you until you leave. Was the man just confused or was he scared as well? It’s a much scarier version of when clerks greet me when I come in as an anti-shoplifting measure (it’s not friendly by any means) and then pointedly ignore me when I’m looking for something.
As for musteryou’s comments, there’s a curious dance Americans do to avoid labeling any annexation of territory or taking over another country’s government imperialistic. If you tell people the United States had colonies, you get blank stares (link is a list of colonial possessions). Also in 1914, a list of non European colonialist countries. This is true even of the interventionists who like to use military force.
Clarissa: And here I thought telling people that I’m an amalgam of international colonialism was reductionist. 🙂
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Interesting article. Since there is no source citation, perhaps you have personal, or at least second hand, knowledge of where the incident occurred. Will you enlighten us?
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It probably occurred right here: http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2015/01/brands-exploiting-mlk-day-not-just-the-most-horrible-offenders-but-why/
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“Policy both domestic and foreign is to be determined by fear of trespass against the limitless grievances of an illiberal, tyrannical, hyper-reactionary, imperialistic, psychopathic, misogynistic, homophobic, blood-drunk credal wave which would happily and noisily kill us all. But instead of defiance- yet more genuflection. “There is a requirement for restraint from those of us in the west…respect for other people’s religion is an important part of this.” No restraint or respect required from the enemy”
That’s a great way to put it.
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