Tag: Racism

Dear ‘White Women’: You Are Racist

Mike Coté1 Comment

Once again, I read it so you don’t have to.

I read a racist book recently. It was one of the most virulently bigoted screeds I’ve ever read – and, for comparison’s sake, I’ve read a lot of Nazi propaganda. No, it wasn’t a dusty old tome from the 19th century; although I do love me some Victorian-era books. It wasn’t a tale of the Antebellum South, or the Jim Crow South, or South African apartheid, or Japanese internment, or the Holocaust. It wasn’t a novel or fictionalized memoir. In fact, it wasn’t even about the past at all. What it was about was WHITE WOMEN. Funnily enough, that was the title: White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better.

This 2022 work of staggering racial bias, stereotyping, and progressive nonsense crawled out of the primordial ooze after the 2020 Summer of George (Floyd). Its authors, race grifters Saira Rao – do me a favor and scroll her Twitter for a tad; you won’t be disappointed – and Regina Jackson, are the founders of the company Race2Dinner, in which they are paid thousands of dollars by woke white women to berate them for two hours for their invidious racism. (Oh, and they sell merch.) This sadomasochistic endeavor has gained the two ladies a great deal of fame on the political left, both from self-flagellating white progressives and the minorities – sorry, People of Color; sorry, BIPOC[1] – whom those whites apparently oppress. They have been treated to episodes of Dr. Phil, fawning profiles in mainstream media, and lucrative book contracts with major publishing houses. And boy, did they deliver on that book deal.

White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better (really rolls off the tongue, n’est-ce pas?) is a masterclass in absurdity, lack of self-awareness, and outright racism. It is a totally insane book that should be laughed at, not taken seriously. Honestly, it would be hard to make a better parody – it had me cackling aloud throughout. Unfortunately, the book is deadly serious. And many influential people and outlets, from comedian Chelsea Handler and actress Anna Paquin to the New York Times, have embraced it as such. So, as a reviewer, I’ll take it seriously too. (Well, at least for as long as I can stand it.)

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The New Appeasement

Mike Coté2 Comments

Prioritizing domestic audiences in foreign policy speaks of a strategy doomed to failure.

“Politics stops at the water’s edge.” This statement – on the necessity of presenting a united front with respect to key national interests – was the accepted wisdom in American foreign policy for quite a long time. There have always been dissenters and partisan infighting in America’s approach to foreign affairs, but for the most part domestic political debates have been subordinated to important international considerations when determining foreign policy. Recently, that seems to have shifted a full 180 degrees; now domestic political concerns and debates drive foreign policy, even at the expense of broad-based American interests globally. Domestic movements and debates have been internationalized and global events and geopolitics are now being viewed almost entirely through the lens of internal American issues. Gone is the single-issue organization or lobby, now replaced with groups who universalize their missions under the theory that all politics is intersectional and intrinsically linked. That’s why, for instance, we see groups ostensibly dedicated to raising awareness of police brutality against African-Americans also making strong declarations on entirely unrelated issues like the Israel-Palestinian conflict. As a result of this universalizing approach, the Biden administration has put the concerns of domestic lobbies ahead of real national interests time and time again. Nothing has made that clearer than three events which have unfolded over the past week.

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Book Review: White Fragility

Mike Coté3 Comments

Thankfully I didn’t pay for this book, and you shouldn’t either.

Those of you who know me personally may know that I am a voracious reader, especially when it comes to nonfiction. Usually I’m interested in books about history, political philosophy, military, or international affairs, but when I saw a book called White Fragility trending around the internet, sitting atop the New York Times bestseller list, and receiving mass praise, I felt it was important to read it to see what all the fuss is about. I can report back that this is easily one of the most racist, ahistorical, poorly argued, and absurd books I’ve ever read. I cannot believe that this was written in the 21st century given the paternalistic assumptions it makes about those who the author, Robin DiAngelo, considers ‘non-white’. I’ve delved deeply into the official reports and personal writings of British colonial officials in the 19th century for my academic research and I cannot understand how a modern, popular, purportedly ‘antiracist’ book mirrors and exceeds the frankly racist language of those dispatches. There is an incredible array of issues with the book (I could’ve spent ages reading this and pushing back line-by-line), but I’m going to skim the surface so as to touch on the major problems, factual errors, and faulty assumptions which underlay the author’s theory.

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