Parochial Wokeness

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Clarissa

August 17, 2021

The woke books we are being forced to read are incredibly parochial. What they mean when they say “white people” are white, native-born Americans, which are a tiny percentage of the world’s white people. What they mean when they say “black people” are African Americans, which are a tiny percentage of the world’s black people.

I was reading this passage about how whites always smile and use polite expressions, thereby oppressing the non-whites. This makes zero sense if you meet white people from my part of the world. Smiley and polite we are definitely not. The text makes absolutely no sense unless you add “Americans” to every statement.

It always strikes me as funny that the diversity and inclusion crowd is so utterly oblivious to anything even a tiny bit different from their narrow and boring life experience.

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9 responses to “Parochial Wokeness”

David Bellamy

August 17, 2021

Response to “Parochial Wokeness”

A lawyer friend says that the university is just desperately trying to protect itself from lawsuits. The court system apparently can be counted on to have biases similar to American culture at large, and being able to present evidence, if necessary, that they have proactively worked at providing a non-racist environment may help.

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 17, 2021
  
  This is just an excuse and a pretty silly one, at that. The goal is to humiliate and alienate the workers so that they never organize and present any demands.
  
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cliff arroyo

August 17, 2021

“always smile and use polite expressions, thereby oppressing the non-whites”

What is the mechanism behind this?

And what are you supposed to do, snarl and insult people?

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1. methylethyl
  
  August 17, 2021
  
  I’m not sure snarling and insults are enough. We probably need to carry a bullwhip and crack it at passers-by just to let them know they’re equal to us, in an affirmative, non-passive way.
  
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2. cliff arroyo
  
  August 17, 2021
  
  “snarl and insult people?”
  
  Because if that’s the case you just have to imagine yourself as a store clerk back in Kharkiv… (or a bus driver, or a waiter, or some random person on the sidewalk….)
  
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3. Clarissa
  
  August 17, 2021
  
  There’s nothing you can do. You were born with an unwashable stain of evil. Anything you do just makes it worse. That’s why we need to celebrate that white people are disappearing in the US. Because the history of proclaiming people of a certain race evil and in need of going extinct has given such great results.
  
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random reader

August 17, 2021

LOL at polite white people, this is so true! This reminds me of a time I went to a small family-owned restaurant in an unspecified European country with my brother in law and his son. He ordered some food and asked for pickles to go with it. The owner became really upset – “Why are you asking me for pickles? They do not go with this food! Are you crazy? Here are some hot peppers instead!” Of course, my brother in law ended up happily eating (and paying for) whatever the owner served, no complaints…

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Avi

August 17, 2021

Not to mention the insane implied suggestion that non-white people are rude and uncouth.

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old summer sandal forgotten in the closet

November 2, 2021

Frustrating thing about this kind of discourse is that by being unclear about this assumption, conflating the culture of people of (insert some kind of descent) in the US with people of that descent all over the world, and conflating culture and race in general, it misleads people to think skin tone/physical appearance is a good predictor of culture.

So as to assume a blonde Scots-Irish descent Appalachian shares a lot of culture with a Russian in Vladivostok, or an African American Chicagoan shares a lot with a rural Nigerian, or an Asian-descent Californian surfer dude with family roots from the Gold Rush with a North Korean peasant. It’s tiring to guess if “white, black, Asian” etc. means “white American, black American, Asian American” or “people of that race anywhere” and a little disingenuous of authors to purposefully conflate them.

Obviously it’s clear that many Americans share a lot of common cultural features that people in the “old country” don’t, let alone people from the continent of origin not even from the same country of origin that just superficially look like them. It’s a cliche, but American ethnic minority/diasporas going to travel to the old country and realizing how American they are is still a big thing.

Even if you think the idea of one single culture of a nation-state is dated (all Spanish citizens in Spain share one culture, all Chinese in China share one culture etc.), how much more progressive, or well backward, is it to assume people of a race (not even a nation-state, but people of a common physical appearance) share a culture?

I mean I understand there were (and are) ideas about how racial minority (or “nonwhite”) diasporas have common cause (e.g. African Americans and Pan-Africanism or the Asian American movement in the 60s uniting all non-whites together in “third world solidarity” and other examples even before then) together as “non-westerners” for inspiration/rhetoric, but many of these ideas were mostly symbolic and had little influence “on the ground”. For instance, as the unfortunate situation with Liberia showed.

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