By the way, it is not OK to be white — why, the Australian Parliament says so, and so, obviously, does the BBC! You see, it is racist to say “it is ‘OK’ to ‘be white.’”
And the bare majority that balked at affirming this merest ‘white race’ acceptability status does not mean it thinks it is GREAT to be white. Oh, no:
Australia’s Senate has narrowly defeated a motion condemning “anti-white racism,” by just three votes.
Pauline Hanson, the leader of Australia’s far-right One Nation party, wanted backing for her motion which stated “it is OK to be white.”
It also spoke of the “deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilisation.”
Critics have dismissed it as another stunt by Ms Hanson, who last year hit the headlines for wearing a burka.
Yet a number of ruling party politicians backed the motion.
“It’s OK to be white’ bill defeated in Australian Senate,” BBC News, October 15, 2018.
You see the BBC’s implicit bias. “Yet” — despite the fact that the measure came from someone on “the far right” (obviously evil!) and that some unnamed “critics” have “dismissed” the proposed motion — “a number of” mainstream pols “backed the motion”! Horrors.
So what is implied by being scandalized by the statement?
They, the scandalized, mean either (a) they think it is bad (somehow) to be white or (b) that they think people of darker hue are too weak, witless or ‘triggered’ to be able to handle white people affirming a basic level of human acceptability. In either case, either they are racists against whites and believe that whites must be put down, as a normative matter for reasons unspecified, or they are racists against non-whites by thinking that they are so inherently inferior that only by putting whites down can non-whites achieve their own ‘OK’-or-better status.
Another possibility? These white anti-white racists are just really, really stupid . . . so lacking in any philosophical understanding of the case against racism that they become racists themselves, adopting a witless knee-jerk hyper-piety about what one may say about race and racism. Yes. They are that idiotic. That ill-educated. They are intellectual simpletons who should not be anywhere near power.
I lean to this latter explanation.
Speaking ahead of the vote, Ms Hanson said “people have a right to be proud of their cultural background, whether they are black, white or brindle.”
“If we cannot agree on this, I think it’s safe to say anti-white racism is well and truly rife in our society,” she added.
“’It’s OK to be white’ bill defeated in Australian Senate ,” BBC News, October 15, 2018.
Now, do we need to have pride in our racial or cultural backgrounds? I am dubious. But we should certainly be unashamed of what was not our responsibility and, further, that which we cannot change.
And anti-white racism is “rife.” It is understandable when coming from non-whites. Negative racism expressed outwards hardly requires much explanation. But anti-white racism by whites is exceptional. We used to resort to the ‘self-hating’ concept to explain such things, but I do not think hate is what we should focus upon. It’s about color, the color red. As in “a red” or “pinko.”
Yes, this is all about the confusions of leftists, of communists, of socialists.
These ideologues are confused. Their inherent collectivism makes them so. And their long-standing pretense of ‘being liberal’ is key to their befuddlement. You see, they think of their anti-racism as leftist. It isn’t. It hails from liberalism. And they aren’t liberals. They yearn for socialism of some sort. So they are utterly unable to articulate a case against racism that is not collectivist . . . and their collectivism inevitably reëmerges in another form, a topsy turvy racism.
And yes, it is OK to be any color or coloring of human — so long as we are talking skin color. The liberal-individualist case for human rights and ‘dignity’ [too often, admittedly, undefined in our discourse*] does not depend upon racial categories. The fact that this ‘it is OK to be white’ meme triggers anyone is a sign that liberal civilization has not passed on its basic ideas from one generation to the next.
* I have spent a lot of time thinking about rights. But dignity? Not so much.
Wirkman Comment 