Said this before but you can only understand craziness surrounding “critical race theory” etc. if you understand how absolutely committed so many white people are to a narrative of white racial goodness, from beginning to end. Challenges to that narrative are deeply unsettling.
As always, likely multiply determined. I think shifts in narrative reflect and, therefore, compound feelings of precarity & status loss among white folks. Narrative creation/maintenance are tools of the powerful. When others can generate diff narratives, feels like losing power.
@hakeemjefferson The hysteria is absurd but I suspect yours is not the only reason. Some people reject the idea that individuals are primarily summed up by their race. People slide into this so easily. I've noticed white 'anti-racism educators' do it the most. It makes anti-racism a harder sell.
@hakeemjefferson "So you're saying MY ancestors were bad?!?" Yes. Probably. It happens, let's grow from it "Or maybe you just hate all white people" Sigh.
@hakeemjefferson Unsettling is precisely the right word, in the context of decolonizing.
@hakeemjefferson Yes. And it goes with believing in white goodness and morality, and that the social order, which favors them, the way things are now, is how they should be. Kyle Rittenhouse’s fandom is steeped in that circular thinking. JD Vance’s anger and apoplexy are drawing from that well.
@hakeemjefferson Reminds me of what Chomsky has written about the understanding of the US war against Vietnam. chomsky.info/198210__/ When I was a grad student in Government at Harvard and made an appointment to visit him, he said that I was the first person from the Dept to ever talk to him.
@hakeemjefferson For years I have referred to this as the “conservative past perfect,” because white identity is dependent on self-identification as moral and righteous. Their history puts the lie to that so they suppress and rewrite it. WE as black people put the lie to that.
@hakeemjefferson Much deeper than unsettling. It’s destabilizing.