This is a dangerous philosophy to have because it replaces what gives humans real value - accomplishments - with traits they were born with. It's very tempting to place and derive ultimate value from your traits because traits take no effort. Accomplishment does. But people who take the easy way out through life deriving value from the statistical coincidence of their mother's and father's race are doomed to fail in life as they produce nothing of value. Merely point to the color of their skin. Worse, if enough of society values their "skin color" or "gender" or made up mental illness (another chapter in How Not to Become a Millennial) nothing is produced and we all die of starvation.
Regardless, it's a much-needed take down of a cancerous philosophy where so many people think they have value because of how they were born, when in reality, they are just lazy people cowardly hiding behind their race to not only give them value in life, but demand financial support from other people. Nobody's race has any value. You included. Now get off your lazy ass and work.
But more importantly, since these strategies/choices are identical, the results are going to be the exact same as women who try to leverage favor out of society using their gender. Misery, failure, anger, and a wasted life. But whereas the female version of this translates into “age, poverty, divorce, debt, spinsterdom, and cats,” the consequences for people who pull of the same racket with race are just as dire, though with their own cultural flair.
Take for example education.
Just as Women’s Studies is a bogus field solely created to pander to women whose only value is their gender, various “Cultural Studies” degrees are created to pander to race just the same.
“African-American Studies”
“Chicano-American Studies”
“Middle Eastern Studies”
“Asian American Studies,”
Etc.
All of these fields are just as bogus and just as worthless.
However, there is an added “Uncle Tom” sort of hypocrisy to these degrees. Most of these degrees presumably are intended to be of benefit and help to the various types of races they study. Chicano American studies programs would logically be of benefit to Latinos and Chicanos. Asian American studies should do the same, but for Asians. And African American studies should do the same for blacks.
But do they really?
Like a Women’s Studies degree these degrees only harm those who major in them. They have absolutely no economic or employment value. They actually deter people from hiring you in that you are more prone to file a lawsuit or complain. And like any other degree they will at least set you back $75,000 and four years of your youth. But the real betrayal comes from the people who sold you these degrees. The professors themselves who are presumably of your same race and by the definition of the degree should have your best interests at heart. In reality these professors are just hucksters selling you a worthless piece of paper for that $75,000 + four years of your life. If any “African American Studies” or “Latino American Studies” professor was honest they would warn you never to get a degree in such worthless fields and instead major in Accounting or Actuarial Science. Perhaps studying these fields for free at your local library or online. But they would never recommend you blow $75,000 on such crap. Still, these professors value their own financial advancement over your best interests and, thusly, have no problem capitalizing off of your delusion that race has value.
Another example is race being used by Corporate America as a brand name.
An amazing amount of infrastructure has gone into programming Millennials with their political religion. But within that overarching political religion there are sub-religions tailored to individual groups. Women have their feminism and women’s empowerment. Environmentalists have their environmentalism. Health nuts have their organic and fair trade foods. And races have their racial justice/political causes. And if you think about it the schools, colleges, government, and certainly the democrat party have spent trillions over the decades making sure you have these political ideologies, even identities.
But don’t think Corporate America hasn’t noticed.
Just as the federal government spent trillions building the US interstate system, we have also spent trillions establishing a quasi-national political religion of socialism, feminism, pacifism, environmentalism, social justice, organic/free trade, etc. And just as corporations take advantage of the US interstate system to transport and sell their goods, they are also taking advantage of that political infrastructure the Millennials have been programmed with. And so instead of selling you on the merits of a product like its price or its quality, Corporate America instead panders to the identity politics/religion you’ve been programmed to have because it gives you false value.
Thus, when you sell a woman’s razor, you don’t just sell a razor. You explain how it’s going to cure women’s cancer and attach a pink ribbon to it…and charge an extra $3 over the men’s razor.
When you sell a cup of coffee, you don’t just give people their morning cup of Joe. You write “let’s have a conversation about race” on it like Starbucks did to show you how “woke” and “down with the cause” the multi-billion dollar company is.
Target doesn’t give one flying shit about fat women. But they do care about the billions of dollars they have in their pockets. Thus why you see nothing but plus-size models in their advertisements.
And Nike is “totally down with the struggle” as it has hired Colin Kapernick to be its new spokesmodel for their Air Force 1 shoes. Showing minority young men they understand you. They’re with you….just as long as you spend the $155.99 to buy their shoes.
This disgusting level of corporate virtue signaling should not only annoy everybody, but it should downright piss off minorities for its blatant pandering. Taking issues, that are of no light matter, and issues you may care deeply about, and trivially capitalizing off of them for profit is an insult. And when you take a look at what corporations are really trying to do via their sanctimonious virtue signaling, it’s nothing but simple marketing. They don’t care about your cause. They care about the money you will spend if they say they’re down with your cause. Like your “Asian American Studies” professors, they will tell you whatever you want to hear, just as long as you give them your money.
Unfortunately, this marketing works. Women fork over all their money to become “strong, independent, empowered, bankrupt, women” in college. Snobby, elitist, upper income liberals pay $7 per cup of organic coffee so they can imagine they’re helping “the poor brown people” overseas and aren’t racist. Rich white dudes buy Teslas thinking they’re saving the environment and it will consequently get them laid. Obese people shop at Target thinking they’re promoting diabetes “body positivity.” And young minority men must have thought they were really sticking it to the man, because the Kapernick Air Force 1’s sold out in just one day…netting Nike aka “The Man” at least a cool $1 billion in sales. Imagine if all that money went to STEM degrees instead.
And then there is the psychological toll that obsessing about race takes.
Larry Gossett is an individual I like to highlight because so much can be learned from this man. He is black, a current city council member of Seattle, and former member of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panthers. And while he has a long and lengthy career in civil rights, he is most famous for claiming that spraying Seattle sidewalks free of human feces could be racist as it would remind elderly black people of when they were sprayed with firehoses in the 60’s and 70’s protests.
This man is 74 years old. He has at most another 10 years left in him. And his entire life has been nothing but obsessing and fretting about race. So much so he has lost all connection with reality and now sees race and racism in everything. And in having race infect and infest everything in his life, he has in fact ruined his life.
When he wakes up in the morning it is guaranteed he wonders if adding cream to his coffee doesn’t have some racial undertones of white men mixing races with black women.
When talking about the physics of “black holes” he probably actually thinks there’s an element of racism in the vernacular.
The word “niggardly” perhaps angers him greatly even though it has nothing to do with race.
And one truly wonders while his kids were opening Christmas gifts or he was having a romantic dinner with his wife if he let his obsession with race take away from those precious experiences with drifting thoughts of racism.
This isn’t to say that you should tolerate genuine racism or true injustice. Nor is it to say you shouldn’t work towards the ideal of a racism-free world. But in putting your race first and foremost in life, you will ruin your life in the process. All one has to do is look at your average Women’s Studies professor or your committed Baby Boomer feminist. Do any of them look happy? Do you not see the anger in all of their faces? Do you not see how obsessing over their gender made their life not only miserable, but pointless? When Mr. Gossett dies he will have suffered the same fate. A life where he let “whitey” live rent free in his brain for 75 years. No matter how much your teachers and professors pressure you, do not put the trait of race at the core of your being. At least have the self-respect and wisdom to avoid the fate of Mr. Gossett.
We could go on with other examples, but the larger point is this - just like gender, there are corporate, political, and educational interests that want your money, your vote, and your tuition dollars. And they will gladly lie to you based on your race to get those things, even if it destroys your life. Big Education will gladly sell you $200,000 in debt for a master’s degree in a field that has no value. Corporations will placate you and tell you whatever you want to hear about how oppressed you are and that they’re so pro-diversity it hurts…as long as you spend the $29.95 on their “Diversity Awareness Special Edition Blender.” And the democrat party has absolutely no problems enslaving entire races of Americans through victimhood politics, keeping them dead last in society, as long as you give them your vote in exchange for them to tell you “it’s somebody else’s fault.”
Therefore, young people of any race need to ask the same two questions women needed to ask themselves. One philosophical, the other practical.
Philosophically, does your race have any intrinsic value? Does the color of your skin mean anything? Additionally, does your race determine your destination? Are you pigeonholed in life because of the color of your parents? Or would you like to be judged by the caliber of your character and your abilities? Would you like your actions, not your traits, to determine your success and destination in life?
And practically, where has pursuing race either as a value or a racket gotten people in the past? Unless you’re a professional huckster like Jesse Jackson or a rich politician like Barack Obama, your rank and file minority individual cannot make a living at “race.” You’re much better off becoming an engineer, a doctor, or an accountant. And even if you were to have a modicum of success making a profession in “race,” it’s likely to consume you like Mr. Gossett, ruining your life in the process.
Life’s too short to piss it away on obsessing about your plumbing or your melanin levels. It’s too short to utter the words “as a Native-American female I just feel that…” Do not let your race, your gender, or any other trait limit your life. View yourself as an individual."
I guess all that pandering and virtue signaling Target did towards minorities and fat women didn't do them a damn bit of good did it? It certainly didn't protect them against being looted by those same people.
ReplyDeleteAaron, thanks for the wisdom and the dose of reality, but I am afraid that young people these days have been so totally subsumed by this current racial thinking (and socialist thinking, etc. etc.) that there may be no recovery from it. These people make 60's era hippies look like enlightened thinkers and they are going to hold the power in our society in a few years. Enjoy the decline indeed.
ReplyDeleteMy 24 year old son, who is a very intelligent and usually levelheaded young man, if indeed a bit stupid in the way that early twenties young men usually are, has decided I am a bigot, a racist, and a sexist.
His issue is a few offhand, very bland comments I have made over the years, mostly about hispanics being very hard working, and once opining that, thinking statistically, a white oppressor like myself should move faster to get out of he way if an AA comes down a lonely street behind me than if an Asian did the same. While I may harbor some internal stereotypes, none of it has ever affected how I treat people and I have employed and befriended people from all over the POC spectrum with almost completely positive results.
I also once said (the horror...) that most statistics show that women are not particularly happy as a group, and that polls have found that there are a surprisingly large number of women who would gladly give up the corporate rat race for becoming a mother and a wife.
I know that with some more maturity he will eventually come around because I know he has a very good mind underneath the programming, but I am truly worried about his dumber fellow travelers who are going to build their society out of this crock of bullshit.
And as a boomer, a capitalist and a successful business owner, I completely agree with you about the depravity of most corporations, colleges, and governments, large and small who will go along with practically anything to increase market share or the power and/or economic success of their stakeholders. If Nike thought it could make money from creating a pedophile shoe, it would do it, and if State U can get more students and build their endowment by teaching young people that they are fragile flowers held down by white oppressors, they will happily continue.
Please keep fighting the fight, and I hope you make a lot of money from it. Every mind you save is important.
Things like "Women's Studies" and "African American Studies" are made for two things: for intellectuals to jack off to how smart they are about minorities, and for colleges to get more money out of gullible college kids. In a society with common sense, women would learn their "women's studies" from their mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and the older women of the family/tribe. Ditto for Africans, Asians, Latinos, and people from other minorities, who would learn more about what it is like to be an African, an Asian, or a Latino from their own family or clan. But since the modern day society has so totally atomized family bonds with contraception and nuclear families (which are so horribly weak that most kids lose the values their parents tried to instill in them the moment they go to college and hook up with other kids) that these minorities now have to pay exorbitant sums to some random academics to learn what it is to be their race or gender, whereas back in the day, your own family members did it for you, teaching you about your identity, for free.
ReplyDeleteWhat really refreshes me, in my own experience, is that this stuff doesn't fly outside the colleges. Sometimes, even some college kids are smarter than the people who buy into this stuff. I know the kid I tutored back when he was in high school hates this crap, because he doesn't buy into this whole "diversity politics" scam. He's Latino, and instead of spouting some garbage regurgitated by liberals, he stands by his own family's values: the man has to provide, the man has to be loyal to God, and the man has to be, well, the man. We even went over an article that was condemning the Reagan era's support for ideologies which posited that the most fulfilling thing for a woman is to be a mother. Instead, when I asked my student about how he feels about that way of thinking, he thought it was smart.
I also saw the same with many of the newer generation who clearly have no respect for their SJW teachers. The teachers demonize Trump all the way through, but the kids don't care one bit and would rather talk about Fortnite or their recent dating habits. It was somewhat endearing, yet also troubling. The kids aren't beguiled by SJW prosletyzing, but at the same vein, they couldn't care less about the world so long as they're left in their own comfort bubbles. But then again, can we really blame them, when SJWs and rioters have made the political world in the west into such a mess? Gone are the days of Eisenhower and Reagan where you have politicians you can at least relate to or trust. At most, Trump is a troll with a fat bank account who lives off on being the sole pillar for the Right in America, as well as making SJWs cry. But make no mistake: the same people selling diversity studies to your kids are the same people who encourage race riots to go loot Mom and Pop stores run by minorities while teaching them to hate those with "privilege". They have no love for the people they pretend to serve. They just want to boast about how smart they are, and they want to virtue signal, while at the same time, walking away with people's money. They're literally getting paid to turn kids into worse people.