The idea of "White Privilege" is everywhere...and it's NOT what you think.
So, let's talk about it:
A THREAD🧵
2/ The idea of white privilege has spread through society like wild fire since about 2013.
A lot of people think that the basic concept of white privilege is "white people face less racism then black people."
This is NOT what the term means
3/ The woke play a game with "white privilege" where they alternate between two positions: an extreme position they really believe and talk about openly when they won't be attacked, and a far more modest position they fall back on and defend when anyone questions them.
4/ This tactic is called a Motte and Bailey fallacy. It is named after a castle that has a motte (a small but easily defended fortress you can hide in when attacked), and a bailey (a large valley with lots of resources and treasure where all the fun takes place)
5/ In the case of white privilege, the motte is the idea that Black people face racism white people don't face, and the bailey is the idea that all white are racist and perpetuate an unjust system of racial hierarchy without knowing it:
6/ It's easy to see how this idea gains traction and how useful it is to the woke. They take a simple idea which seems right, and when everyone accepts that idea, they switch to an extreme position while using the same name.
7/ So, Lets take a look at the 'bailey' of white privilege, and show you what is actually going on.
First, you need to know that the woke carve up society according to the doctrines of "dominance" and "oppression." You could think if those as the yin and yang of wokeness.
8/ Dominance is when a group uses power to get to the top of the social pyramid, and then use that position to gain even more power to maintain their position at the top of the hierarchy. "Dominance" in woke-speak is always about taking, wielding and hoarding of social power.
9/ The social power that the dominant group has taken is then used by the dominant group rig society in their favor and oppress other groups in society. In other words, the powerful impose their ideas and interests on everyone. They do this by making sure that everything...
10/ in society is built so that in every situation the dominant group gets the maximum benefit at the expense of everyone else. This is done by making sure everything that exists in society is constructed so the ideology of the dominant group is embedded in literally everything.
11/ This means the woke think the way we think about and discuss art, law, science, math, sports, religion, architecture, and anything else in society you can think of, have had the ideology of the dominant group embedded in them. The result is that the "discourses" in society...
12/ or the way in which we talk about things and communicate, all take for granted and assume the ideology of the dominant group, and therefore preach, teach, and perpetuate the ideology of the dominant group even when the people discussing the ideas don't know it.
13/ The woke think the dominant group subtly control how everyone talks, thinks, and communicate. This "socializes" people into behaviors and ideas that benefit the dominant group. In other words, people are trained to think and act in way that benefit the people at the top...
14/ The woke think the dominant group (which the woke think is white males) use their control of how society communicates and thinks to tie the hands of other groups, and the result is anyone who isn't a white male is *oppressed* by the systems of power created by white men.
15/ Oppression is only experienced by non-dominant groups in society, not white men. White men may experience hardship or difficulty, but not oppression. Because oppression is to be disadvantaged by the systemic power of white men BECAUSE ONE IS NOT A WHITE MALE.
Read that again.
16/ According to wokeness, white men are never held down by society FOR BEING WHITE MEN. They might face prejudice, but that prejudice is never SYSTEMIC. That is, white men can only ever be victims of isolated instances of discrimination, never victims of oppression...
17/ because even when a white man is discriminated against by, for example, a woman of color, he is still discriminated against in the context of an entire society built for his benefit. So even when a white man faces prejudice, in the larger context he still has the upper hand.
18/ A good example of how the woke view privilege and oppression is a video game where white men play the game on easy mode, women play it on medium difficulty, and black disabled trans people play the game on the hardest difficulty there is.
This is how they view the world.
19/ The woke think 'white privilege' is the societal equivalent of white people are playing the game on an easier level then Black people, indigenous people, and brown people.
THAT is what the woke mean when they talk about 'white privilege.'
20/ I want you to notice how much intellectual machinery I had to first unpack just so I could then do a proper job of explaining 'white privilege.'
The reason I had to do that is that wokeness isn't just a set of ideas, it's a complete *worldview* that functions as a religion.
21/ White privilege, which we now can see is that being white grants one and unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits, and freedoms solely because they are white. In other words, white people are playing the game on easy mode. This means that...
22/ the woke think every situation a white person is in, no matter how difficult, hard, or painful, would be even more difficult, hard, and painful for Black, Indigenous, or Brown people. It doesn't even matter what the situation is, the woke think it's easier for white people.
23/ So, the next time a woke person begins to push on you the idea that you have "white privilege" your goal should be to show people the *worldview* behind wokeness. Don't let them get away with saying "white privilege is just that white people don't face the racism others do."
24/ Force them to defend their entire worldview so that people can have the opportunity to see the postmodern intellectual yeast the woke use to bake their worldview.
Don't let them play their Motte and Bailey game: force them to be clear about EXACTLY what they are arguing.
25/ You empower people to forcefully reject wokeness when you help them understand how wrong it is, and exactly why it is dangerous.
Do that, it's how we win.
/fin
PS/
This is an excellent essay about the Motte and Bailey of Social Justice/Wokeness:
1/ Today's fight shows the coalition between tech and MAGA is uneasy.
MAGA sees HB-1 visas get abused in order to drive down wages and want to end the HB-1 visa.
Tech doesn't want to lose high level talent thinks HB-1 visa's are needed.
Here's how to thread this needle...🧵
2/ For starters, MAGA doesn't trust the government or corporations on immigration
They think open borders people will game the system by handing out HB-1 visa's like candy
This concern must be addressed. To do this, the government must:
A) stop the flood of illegal immigration
3/ B) Create a robust deportation policy, rigorpusly enforced, that deports illegal immigrants (including visa over-stayers, illegal border crossers, fraudsters.....all of them)
When this is done, and is working effectively, then you can address the concerns of tech people...
Left leaning institutions (universities, think tanks, NGO's, non-profits, consulting firms, and the democratic party) are staffed by woke activists who see woke political goals as moral imperatives, not mere political preferences
2/ According to woke ideology, anyone who in not actively advocating for woke social and political objectives is "complicit" in the systemic oppression of marginalized groups. On this view, a political compromise with people who oppose wokeness is like cutting a deal with Hitler.
3/ The woke have a concept called the "unbearable searchlight of complicity." It's their term for constant, unending, hypervigilant searching for anything complicit with "systems of oppression" (racism, sexism, etc)
It's the conceptual equivalent of an all seeing eye of wokeness
1/ Congress gave The National Endowment for the Arts *207,000,000*, and then told the NEA to fund projects focused on "the history of Systemic Racism"
Let's look at what the NEA did with your money.
A thread🧵
2/ Congress has the power to fund agencies and tell them how to spend their funding, and Congress told the NEA to "Continue prioritizing diversity" and to prioritize increasing diversity among "NEA staff, the National Council of the Arts, Discipline Directors, and Peer Panelists"
3/ In 2021 the NEA said they were "centering equity and justice along the lines of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation, geography, poverty, and the infinite ways these intersect in everything we do"
1/ Much of what @GreeneMan6 said in our debate caught me off guard. If I looked unprepared it's cause I was.
For Example, I wasn't ready for claims like:
"The people will have the opinion that the state teaches them, we are talking about how the State will create public opinion"
2/ In the moment, I wasn't prepared for that, but I think I have an answer to that now.
I do no think that State has the ability to reach into the heads of people and re-arrange their thinking. The sort of brainwashing that is implied by his claim simply won't work at scale.
3/ The claim that he has is that the widespread practice of transing kids is due to everyone believing in trans cause of schools is deeply flawed. It was not that most people agree with trans ideology and in fact, trans ideology and queer theory are intensely unpopular...
1/ DEI has taken over The Department of Veteran Affairs.
The VA is using Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for "hiring and position and talent management," and also created a "Gender-affirming Program with Speech" to help people change sex.
How DEI captured the VA,
A thread🧵
2/ In September 2021 the Department of Veterans Affairs created an Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Action plan Pursuant to E.O. 13985 on racial equity.
This action plan is the Genesis for the adoption of DEI across the entirety of the VA.
3/ According to the Action Plan, the VA created "an 18-member Task Force to elevate and identify strategic opportunities across VA’s vast ecosystem of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access (I-DEA)."
The VA had *18 people* dedicated to creating a plan to DEI implementation.
2/ As "woke" dies, Leftists will abandon the woke "oppressor/oppressed" categories (white vs black, straight vs gay, queer vs normal) and will move back to the old materialist oppressor/oppressed categories (rich vs poor, capitalist vs worker, proletariat vs bourgeois, etc).
3/ This materialist focus will be paired with "sustainability politics" revolving around environmental issues (pollution, climate change, global warming, etc).
So, we will see two "mass line" formations emerging: one focused on class warfare, and one focused on "sustainability.