The W-word, White, increasingly is used by Black progressives as a curse or epithet to describe people they hate. As the publication Spectator World noted, “use white as an epithet, and no one will notice. It is now assumed that whites will be flagellated for their race and will accept such flagellation as normal and just.”
So widespread has this tendency grown on the left that Psychology Today magazine published a critique of it. “We’ve come to a place where ‘white male’ is usually used only derogatorily: White males are the beneficiary of (unearned) privilege, oppressor of women and people of color, perpetrators of havoc, from Hitler to [Brett] Kavanaugh.”
Carroll Fife, on our own City Council, has been a notorious anti-White bigot, as I wrote here. Then there was the woman of color at the City Council meeting the other day. The Council held a public hearing on their demand for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas War, when scores of anti-Israeli demonstrators stormed the Council chambers. The woman said—I paraphrase—“Why is it that everyone who’s defended Israel at this hearing is an old White racist?”
My question: When did we reach this point where people of color can impugn White men so brazenly, even in a government hearing, without being called out for hate speech? We’re not allowed to say the N-word, but some Black people are free to insult and disparage White people. (I’ll put aside for the moment the insults of “old” people.) Why is okay for them to use the word “White” as an epithet, a dirty word? Is it simply a case of “the shoe’s on the other foot now?” Or have they always felt that way, and now they can get away with it, at least in a “progressive” town like Oakland?
It’s the elephant in the room: reverse racism. Progressives, I suppose, would reply that after 400 years of Jim Crow etc., Black people can say whatever they want about White people, and if White people don’t like it, then F*** you. But really, this is insane. If it’s wrong for White people to insult Black people by use of the N-word, then it has to be wrong for Black people to make the W-word into a expletive.
Personally, I make no apology for being a White man. But when I hear Fife, or Cat Brooks, or anyone else use “White males” as a vilification, I interpret it for what it is: an admission of abject failure. If profaning “White men” is the best a progressive can come up with, then that progressive is bereft of ideas, and has the intellectual capacity of a doorknob. I see someone who feels sorry for herself, who believes she’s been mistreated all her life by superior White males, and who thinks she’ll feel better by insulting her torturers in a public hearing. Well, maybe it makes these people feel better, but all it accomplishes in the long run is to make them look like idiots. At a time when we need racial healing, it doesn’t help anyone to resort to these childish forms of name-calling.
As for Whites “accept[ing] such flagellation as normal and just,” I say, Hell no. I accept none of that woke nonsense. It doesn’t particularly bother me—I never take anything they say seriously—but I do think we need to point out the hypocrisy and ignorance of such remarks. If wokes want to be full participants in the national conversation about race, they had better learn a little respect for their political opponents. Otherwise, they’re just impediments to progress, mindless complainers who turn more and more people off everyday, as witness the tsunami of support for recalling Madame D.A.
Incidentally, please don’t impute any particular position on the war to me, because you have no idea what I think. I’m sure that won’t stop some progressives from calling me anti-Palestinian, but who cares? Progressives in Oakland long ago ceased to have credibility about anything.
Steve Heimoff