Anti-blackness and racial hatred are increasingly becoming a rite of passage for white people, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.
I thought about how every few months, like clockwork, some public figure's old racist messages suddenly become new again. More recently, leaders of Young Republican chapters across the country have been arrested for their racist and anti-Semitic texts, including declaring “I love Hitler— in their group chats, but they're not the only ones. I don't even mean second Leaked racist messages in a Republican group chat sent by a Trump appointee and potential head of the Office of Special Counsel Paul Ingrassia. I'm thinking of Ethel Kane, an independent singer-songwriter whose racist social media from eight years ago the messages reappeared a few months ago. Cain, who happens to be transgender and who is a self-described “anti-war, anti-patriotic fake pop song.” ended up on Obama's Recommended 2022 Playlist – And the Republicans in these group chats seem to have nothing in common except a youthful indiscretion involving the use of racism and ironic bigotry. But that's my point of view. Anti-blackness and racial hatred more broadly seem to me increasingly to be a rite of passage for white people, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.
I know I have to acknowledge here that Cain apologized, a silent demand that I both resent and understand is necessary. be fair-I admit it despite myself. She noted that she “young” when she published these posts and that they were intentional “provocative and controversial” To “do [her] friends laughing“; she also admitted that it was “deeply shameful and it's awkward to see it being dug back out” And no, her misdeeds were not as troubling as those of young Republicans, many of whom were adults representing one of our major political parties, who apparently believed that blatant racism was appropriate in the workplace. Still: her insult and her apology take this all-too-familiar form. No shade, but I'm used to and tired of these apologies – partly because they follow the same recognizable semantic pattern, just as they follow the emergence of racist posts by every white person who ever went through a Nazi phase, which, again, all of them seemed to have. In fact, this is probably true for all non-black people. A few years ago, when Latin pop music singer Camila Cabellothis is racist Posts on Tumblr, complete with n-wordreappeared, her apology also noted that the messages were from her – quote – “younger” days, but that she now “deeply ashamed” And “deeply embarrassedI could probably put them together myself if I wanted a second career in celebrity crisis management.
I hate the suggestion that those of us who have suffered from these acts of racism should simply accept this apology. In the same way, we must accept that the person who publicly humiliated and denigrated us for the sake of nastiness is no longer a racist and therefore owed forgiveness. That even after the thousandth cut we must show compassion for someone whose own words prove that they are incapable of generating sympathy for us. I think it's to her credit that Cain herself didn't demand that anyone accept it or suggest that we “learn to take the joke.” (And to add some credit, I note that she actually bothered to write“I'm white, so while I can take responsibility for my actions, I don't have the ability to fully understand what it's like to be a victim of them…Any opinion you have about me moving forward is fair.”) But her fans—who are overwhelmingly white and therefore were not the target of her remarks, but who clearly felt they should have the power to control the feelings of black people—certainly did.
The most visible and influential fan of the Young Republicans did much the same thing, but even more openly. fuck you flair. Vice President J.D. Vance's “sorry-not-sorry” took the same semantic course but ended up in a different place. He claimed that “kids do stupid things…They tell harsh, offensive jokes. This is what kids do,” and called their insults “bullshit.” Unlike other people trying to apologize, Vance isn't just using the classic “young” defense – however misguided it may be, given that age of participants from 24 to 35 years. (Similarly, Pavel “Hitler StrickIngrasia, at 30 years oldThis is not a spring chicken.) He says – literally –This is how us white kids act and you better get used to it. And this there's a lot more where this came from.
“I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a really hurtful, stupid joke, ends up ruining their life,” Vance added, referring to screw your feelings, don't you dare create consequences that could hurt ours.
Here's the thing: on the one hand, white people keep telling me that racism doesn't exist. On the other hand, they continue to acknowledge not only that it actually exists, but that they find it so irresistible that they can't help but ride in it for years, leaving behind a messy electronic trail on social media. I don't know, man. I too was a pretty edgy teenager, into some very edgy youth subcultures, and whenever I dig through my ramshackle internet posts, I notice that there's a lot of stuff in there that's too sincerely enthusiastic about punk rock and Hello! and perhaps all sorts of Dr. Martens, but without the racist nonsense.
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So please stop asking how we got to the point where Nazism is cool and the manosphere is a form of government. Stop acting stupid white people, I'm literally begging you. It's been nearly three decades since Gavin McInness, who later founded the Proud Boys, used Vice Magazine as a means to turn the least transgressive, uncreative, and stale thing (and I mean racist here) into a pseudo-edgy aesthetic brand for white people in their 20s. Almost as much time has passed since Reddit, 4chan, 8chan and all the other digital trash heaps threw down the fences, allowing cruelty to be rebranded as humor. All this gave an ironic cover to what had always been the same old racist contempt, now hardened. Back in 2023, after another right-winger was arrested for anti-Semitic remarks, a conservative journalist Aaron wrote Sybarium“Whenever I participate in career advice for young conservatives, I advise them to avoid group chats that use the N-word or otherwise blur the line between leadership and outright bigotry.”
In other words, we're here because we've been here for decades. And once again, as with any issue related to anti-blackness, if we were honest about American history, we would realize that this is just a digital age expression of a phenomenon that goes back much further. White Americans have always been united by anti-Black humor and racist jokes – a way to turn dominance into shared laughter, reinforcing “in-group” versus “out-group” or “us” versus “them.” Moreover, these jokes are told more often and become more vicious when black progress makes whiteness more insecure and in need of reassurance. Blackface minstrelsy and coon songs were “jocular” expressions of anti-blackness by white Americans in the early 1800s. way to portray enslaved black people like stupid, lazyand hypersexual; as abolitionism grew in popularity in the 1830s, and after the civil war and emancipation era, depictions of minstrels became increasingly menacing and menacing. In his groundbreaking research American dilemma, released 1944“When the first glimmers of the civil rights movement broke out, sociologist Gunnar Myrdal noticed that white people were reluctant to discuss black people.”in official communication…[but] it enters disproportionately into all informal life. He sneaks up as soon as the white Southerner calms down and can't hold back. He's a standard joke. It is interesting to note how much pleasure white people of all classes get from these stereotypical jokes and discussions about Negroes…Negro jokes for whites further serve the function of “proof” of the Negro’s inferiority.” More recently, in 2017, as white hysteria over Obama grew and metastasized into MAGA, sociologist Raul Perez applied Plato's theory of superiority, which suggests that all humor includes an element of contempt for others, to the American racial context. He indicates that “racist humor and ridicule have long been used as a mechanism to promote social cohesion among whites at the expense of people of color” and support “the false neutrality of the white supremacist mindset.” The same.
Kane hasn't seen her career seriously damaged by her racist posts, and frankly, there's no way I'd want that for her. Some young Republicans lost their jobs, which shocked me because we as a nation no longer punish racism. Paul Ingrassia clearly agrees with me because his announcement that he is withdrawing his candidacy to lead the Office of Special Counsel says he doesn't have “enough.”Republican votes at this time“, an implicit promise that he will return someday. It's probably just a matter of time before he's appointed to a position that doesn't require a vote, and the rest of us find ourselves in even more powerful positions, older and better paid, with the same smug sense that this is the way things are. And, unfortunately, they will be right.
