Life gets a lot easier when you realize you simply don't have to give a shit about what publications like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, or NPR think. They're a little like vampires in that you have to invite them into your home in order for them to do anything to you. They derive most of their power from dictating who is and isn't one of the good ones, you deny them this and they have nothing.
Another big part of the punk ethos was saying a big fuck you to the mainstream music press, and it was there for a reason. The most cynical part of this whole mess is that these publications don't really give a shit about social justice politics, it's just how you gain clout in popular culture these days. These issues will be put out on the curb next to the trash the minute it is no longer convenient too.
"They're a little like vampires in that you have to invite them into your home in order for them to do anything to you." Stealing that metaphor.
For the last 5+ years, people I love have chosen to bring vampires into my home (literally nearly every day). And these are vampires they *hate*! But they keep getting invited. "I hate Trump, I can't stand that guy. He's so evil." "That's strange, because you've invited him to dinner every day for the past 2 weeks..."
Remember the Pitchfork that published "I had never seen a shooting star before"? It used to have a fuck you attitude. It was small and cool and definitely not mainstream.
The current top story is "DaBaby Deletes Instagram Apology Statement to LGBTQ+ Community" lol.
Given that I haven't invited these vampires into my home, my only exposure to music trends is self-curated material on YouTube, where I happened upon the cottage industry of black YouTubers listening to old songs by white men with guitars, and generally enjoying themselves and appreciating the content. These are regular, everyday people, without an agenda, and they're not all pissed off about white men with guitars, but go out of their way to discover them. The funniest are those where they're watching the original video of Stayin' Alive and laughing their asses off to learn that the singers are 1. white, and 2. men. There are lots of people dusting off material from the 60s-80s, and none of them seem to give a damn about what the vampires are saying.
I think you’ve written before about how a lot of the white participants in these social justice-y communities implicitly tend to assume that whatever dismissive or mean comments they make about white people just don’t apply to them.
The white people making these comments about how much white people suck on some level understand that what they’re engaging in is insincere posturing and should not be taken very seriously. The white guys who log on for the first time and see these ideas/posts unfortunately don’t understand yet that they shouldn’t be taking a lot of it literally or seriously. It would be easier if these hypothetical white Twitter users had an understanding of social context on the Internet such that they would realize that if a white guy online is talking shit about white people, it has little to do with reality, and much to do with that guy’s desire to advance socially, and he probably doesn’t actually believe in any of it. Alas. You have to spend years online to fully get any of this, and even then, it’s still annoying.
Fair enough. I certainly think, for example, if a radical feminist makes a comment about men being inherently violent, she probably means it quite literally. But like, if Will Wilkinson or whatever is going “lol white people” then idk, I have more trouble taking that too seriously.
I think it's an outgrowth of the weird Democratic quirk of not viewing themselves as "American", following the Iraq War and the mostly successful Republican strategy of draping themselves in the "real America" label. When they say "white people" they don't mean "people of primarily European descent who have pale skin and often pale hair and eyes". They mean, basically, "conservatives". This is explicit in some critical theory.
This is how you can get people like Nicole Hannah-Jones calling people "politically white", or how you can get Biden claiming black people who don't vote for him "aren't black".
Sweet Jesus. That last paragraph. I'm so glad to be only Sorta-Online if it means I avoided stumbling onto either of those jaw-dropping landmines. That is completely insane.
I actually recently wrote something in my own blog about why I’m a liberal and also against teaching it even applying CRT in k-12 schools (ErinKEtheridge.com) and spend a couple paragraphs on Nikole Hannah-Jones. She went on CBS this morning to “discuss” her UNC tenure scandal and essentially said a rich conservative White dude cock blocked her and also “because of my gender and my race.” Gayle King didn’t ask any sort of follow up question about that.
The university itself stated that the donor, for whom the journalism school is named, has concerns about being bound to the controversial 1619 Project.
But that’s beside the point. What the point is, is that NHJ is black and the donor is white.
SJWs lost me when I was thinking to myself “okay, I get it now. So what should I do?” and I kept hearing “wanting to do something or fix things is white supremacist.” That’s when I realized the only thing I’m meant to do is feel bad and continually “do the work” of not having ideas or thoughts or questions.
Yeah, I remember even in the Tumblr days when I was a teen getting frustrated by this. You'd ask "but what can I do?" and get told you needed to "reimagine" and "radicalize" and "decolonize" and a bunch of other $25 words that mean "sit on your ass and do nothing".
I'm not sure whether the current answer of "venmo me money, you racist" is an improvement or not.
That's what I was going to say. These days, the answer is to venmo money to Black strangers. Of course, you don't know anything about the recipients, starting with whether they're really Black or using a stolen photo to scam people. But you owe them money. Weird that it hasn't caught on.
Erin, can I quote you either by name or anonymously in a piece I'm working on about my frustrations with the "White Supremacy Culture" rubric that's trending?
Thanks, Erin. (I'm sure Brene Brown would be proud of your bravery though I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to take it on:-) I'm not sure if I'll ever publish or even finish it, I've been ruminating on it for months. But, if I do finish it, how would you like me to identify you? You can respond here or, if you prefer, through my website ericaetelson.com.
"Wanting to do something or fix things is white supremacy."
That's so bizarre. I believe you when you say that people in SJW circles say it, but I also have no idea what the thought process is that could lead to something like that.
I can’t remember precisely who said it on Brene Brown’s podcast (she has a fair few SJWs on there) but it was discussed that the notion of wanting to “do something” is equivalent to wanting a checklist of behaviors, which is So White.
And I thought to myself, yeah I mean I guess doing things for “the right reasons” or out of “genuine change of heart” or whatever might be preferable, but I mean modifying your behavior for the better is still…modifying your behavior for the better.
Savalah Nolan, who on balance I quite like, recently posted or shared (can’t remember which) the idea that if white people want to do something they should give away their inherited land and wealth to minority people, and should do so repeatedly. And I’m like, yeah cool but I don’t have inherited land or wealth. Soooooo…… what should *I* do? And we’re back at asking the wrong question.
Lol at this idea of white people en masse just giving stuff away. Like, what if you're a working class white person living paycheck to paycheck? Shouldn't a mass redistribution of wealth and resources start at the top, with the richest of the rich?
Yeah I’m like uh are you speaking directly to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet? Because otherwise you’re just essentially asking other people of similar means for cash based on who is what race.
Again, a well wrought sentence contains an important insight that is ignored in much if not most discourse: "Categorical moral claims blunt the demand for individual moral responsibility."
I've never heard of these guys before, and I listened to What Makes a Man Start Fires(?) while reading the post, and I have to say thank you for the introduction. To me it sounds a lot like, "what if Rush did punk," which for some people would no doubt be the kiss of death but from me could hardly be higher praise. I've never been one for punk, much, but this is great stuff, so thanks.
I listened to Double Nickels on the Dime and Post Mersh Vol 1 incessantly in my late teens/20s, having come across Minutemen shortly after D Boon died. Freddie's description of their ethos is excellent. I'd add that musically they wring so much out of their instruments and, for me at least, it's held up to decades of listening.
Also, listen to the Steely Dan song Dr. Wu and then listen to the Minutemen cover. Fantastic.
I wouldn't mind the reinvention of old religious concepts if it was done with more care. Most of them are actually pretty useful. So far we are really lacking in everything to do with forgiveness and redemption in this current formulation.
And I guess that's to be expected. Sin is easy to formulate. Rebirth is going to take a lot more than half a decade to develop.
It is this exactly. The Christians at least have a framework for forgiveness and moving on - which is probably why they are able to maintain cohesion. These new ideologies are like the shakers - internally inconsistent and unsustainable.
If you ain’t never heard this white dude with a guitar mourn the death of labor unions through a haunting melody and a heart-wrenching narrative, today is your day.
Maybe because in the West we started with Occitanians on lutes? Looking through the substack,“Encyclopedia of World Music Genres” (George Eberhardt free substack)...https://georgemeberhart.substack.com/ it looks like it's men with what ever instrument is used in most cultures.
This deliciously nerdy comment led me to your substack & my day is now happier for it. (There should be so much more free speech discourse that references Savonarola.) Thank you!
"I promise you, most white people who aren’t already savvy extremely-online types who go on social justice Twitter will come away with the impression that they’re saying that all white people are racist. Which of course triggers the part of the brain that says “so I’ll be a racist, then.” "
Is this true?
Like, really, is this true?
I see a whole bunch of people SAY that people are making this choice, consciously or unconsciously, to align with racists or to be more racist because antiracist Twitter makes them feel like they might as well. Or that there's no point in being leftist because someone will still call you a white guy with a guitar.
But everyone says that about _other_ people. Not about themselves. Everyone assumes this is going on because all those other people don't have the agency to think for themselves and are likely to be deluded by social justice jargon to say, "Well, these IDW people really have it going on!" But I'm not sure it's actually happening--it's just a thing that writers say in order to get the social justice crowd to maybe cool it a bit.
I'm down with the goal, but I don't see any reason to actually believe the idea behind this piece, which seems to imply that if the Minutemen had grow up in this day and age they'd be a bunch of cock-rockers themselves. I just don't see actual people determining their allegiances by "SJW Twitter is nuts, so I'm going to hate on black people."
I wrote a long thin and Substack ate it, so I'm just going to copy and paste another commenter's comment, which they appear to have subsequently deleted:
"I think he's saying that white men are just going to accept that some people are always going to think they hate black people, so it's not worth it for them to do anything different to try and convince those people otherwise - not that white men are going to start hating black people just because others already think they do."
I think the much more likely outcome is to strongly influence people who might be persuaded to be on board with social justice movements to simply be "apolitical" (which is, of course, only a certain kind of passively political) instead.
By "woke" standards, I have become more "racist" because I was repelled by their views.
Here's the thing about taboos: they only work so long as the people making things taboo seem reasonable. When I thought the left was being reasonable about equality, I had no issue staying away from writers like Charles Murray. When they said he was a crackpot racist, I trusted them to make that determination. But once that trust was broken...I started looking at what their opponents were saying. Mostly, it was curiosity. I was probing at the weak spots in social justice ideology to try to find what was salvageable, as I do believe we ought to work toward a more just country where everyone is fed, homed, and given space to thrive. But I also now believe Murray is probably mostly right. I believe the science behind things like systemic racism and unconscious bias are so shaky they should not be used in the real world and that many instances of "systemic racism" are in fact based on class, not race. I believe most hate crimes that get reported on are hoaxes and that most killings of black people that get national coverage have been twisted well past truthfulness in order to generate outrage. I think "open borders" and "defund the police" are both asinine, criminally stupid ideas. Despite being a lifelong Democrat who has served in the party and started going to caucus at twelve, I voted for a Republican in a local election for the first time in 2020 because of these beliefs.
Now, I've come to these beliefs, somewhat ironically, by reading almost exclusively black writers. But by the standards of the woke, I am definitely racist by holding these beliefs despite being happy to go along with the social justice dogma until it just got too stupid.
I made a similar journey. I was there chuckling along with the other good liberals in the mid-2000s - we were the reality-based community! Reality had a liberal bias! And back then, amidst the wreckage of Bush's second term, well, maybe it did.
Now? There is a war on noticing and the dissident Right is in the vanguard fighting back. So too are some leftists like Freddie, of course, but they're sorely in need of more allies on the Left.
I know he's just a popular name standing in for a larger group, but isn't the case of the Woke vs Charles Murray pretty well settled by Human Accomplishment?
Also his recent publication Human Diversity, which had people fuming before they'd actually read it. Upon reading it one finds it to be sober, well-researched, and if anything, welcomingly anticlimactic.
I spent some time a few years ago reading the comments section on The American Conservative and white conservative guys (or liberals-turned-conservative) owned up to this phenomenon frequently. Some of them even said they knew they were being petty and irrational, but they couldn't help it, they just felt so antagonized by constant SJW denunciations that they slipped into what one described as the "warm bath" of alt-right BS.
As stated below, you're distorting what he's saying, but I feel like I'm one of those people he's taking about. Over the months since the election, I've bounced around reading different sources obsessively trying to find somewhere, anywhere, that people don't sound insane. I hadn't been Extremely Online the last 5-7 years or so previous (though I was before that), then I went back to get a master's with people 20 years my junior and was basically told to sign up for Twitter if I wanted to be hired, and... it's seriously like walking into a house of mirrors in a flaming dumpster.
That doesn't mean I decided, "guess I'll just be a racist now," but I *did* spend a lot of time trying to reassure myself that other thoughtful people, of various races, were also freaked out by the discourse, and certainly some of those people were probably assholes whose views only overlapped mine in a modest Venn diagram sliver, but that didn't make them wrong in their analyses.
I wish you were at this Indie Rock show in Philly I was at this weekend Freddie. There were some moments where I could only roll my eyes in the back of my head and shake my head at what was said in the name of political action... in the middle of a fucking set.
If there is anywhere that intersectionality, identity politics and a strong LBTQ presence is at... it is at an indie rock show.
Anyway one band in the middle of their set goes on to say something about... "Oh we are living in this collective trauma of the past 18 months and we must *vague handwave* come together and heal. Then, literally after the next song they played the main singer rants about "All problems we currently dealing in this country are due to one thing and one thing only - WHITE SUPREMACY. And it is up to you white people to DO THE WORK!"
I slowly looked around to make sure I wasn't at some DEI corporate training sponsored by Starbucks whose main speaker is Robinbram X. Kendi-Di'Angelo. I mean really? WHITE SUPREMACY is the reasons for all problems including Coronavirus, inequality, global climate change, and increased violence in poor neighborhoods around the country?
What heartened me, was that only about half the crowd cheered... at an indie rock show. I'll take what I can get.
I know this subject is written much about in the Substacks, but I just don't understand how people just love to revel in their guilt and feelings and bitch about what they feel... yet do nothing materially to help people they claim to want things to be better for.
It's like the one scientist (from Seattle) at my workplace complained to our leadership about how we weren't valuing and awarding enough women and minority scientists for awards/grants/etc.
Bitch! I looked at your history and not once in your 2 DECADES have you got off your ass to nominate for a grant or award for ANY minority or women scientists. All these people can fuck off.
P.S. Also, in the show the black guitarist got up to the mic and said to the crowd "Do yall fuck with Critical Race Theory. Cause I do." And then proceeds to screamo out unintelligble lyrics to the next song.
This got me thinking and clarified a strange parallel that I've been seeing for a while. It's that conservatives recruit like christians and liberals tend to recruit like Jews.
When I was a kid in Hebrew school, they taught is that it was a virtue that we don't try to convert people - people have to want it. That ideal of purity seemed good to me as a kid.
But after hearing that stuff and living in that culture for your whole life, it gets stale. As I see it, it's good and fine that Jews don't proselytize, but also, if you operate that way, you shouldn't be surprised that the Jewish population is small. More specifically, if you think that we need to replenish the Jewish population lost after the holocaust for purely demographic reasons, and that's so important that it's worth dying for, maybe try to put more effort into converting people to Judaism?
It's always seemed weird to me: I'm supposed to be upset, as a Jew, that we're dying out, but also supposed to pre-exclude the solution of converting more people to Judaism... and therefore, Jewish-American culture consists of content produced by Jews for other Jews about why it's OK that instead of growing, we're just supposed to ruthlessly defend what we have (Israel, the idea that Jews are an important group of people, and so on).
That paradox always bothered me growing up and is part of why I'm not religious anymore. When I first stopped believing, I even considered becoming Christian, briefly. Christians are out there and they want you. It seems welcoming.
Anyway, I feel like I notice a weirdly similar thing with liberalism. It's an ideology, with no history as a race or ethnicity or religion, and yet, it has the same emphasis on policing a small exclusive group (and seeing conversions as something you don't want to pursue) as a group of people who are literally clinging to an ancient religious prohibition that we're attached to because it's what we're used to.
At least we have the excuse that our culture is codified and 3000 years old.
I converted to Judaism a year after marrying my Jewish-by-birth husband, and I endorse this comment. I will never understand why so many congregations are simultaneously worried about intermarriage and proud of turning interested people away. I agree that this Puritan attitude resembles too many people on the Left.
Before we got married, my future MIL wanted to sponsor a kiddush (lunch for the whole congregation) in honor of our wedding, but was told that that wasn’t allowed, nor would her Conservative synagogue provide any acknowledgement of our marriage whatsoever. She was very angry and hurt by this exclusionary, punitive attitude. Even worse, I in fact did want to study Judaism, but the rabbi refused to even teach me about it unless I promised to strictly follow kashrut (which is easy since I’m a vegetarian), keep Shabbat (well, ok), and follow the Laws of Family Purity (hell no!).
We found a lovely Reform rabbi (amusingly named Bunny) who was willing to teach me, and I did convert a year later. But this exclusionary, purist attitude has consequences for Judaism and the Left alike: my husband is from a family of four brothers, three of whom married non-Jews. I’m the only one who converted; my Christian and Muslim SILs were too put off by the unfriendliness they encountered—in much the same way that many Left-leaning people, who could have helped us make the world a better place, are put off by the unforgiving nature of so much SJW discourse and behavior.
I say let’s be welcoming, forgiving, and open to others. We are not perfect and might well need such charity ourselves one day.
This very reminds me of the covid hesitancy discussion where the aim seems to be less to persuade than to condemn. More to the point where were my favourite band of the era (Genesis - Selling England by the Pound pure gold for me) in the scale of cock rockery? At the innocent end I hope!
The already-faithful are the easiest targets, plus, targeting them and not targeting future converts makes it feel like you've already won, which feels better than wondering if perhaps your movement needs more people (on top of the fact that trying to convert people is daunting, it also makes you think more about what your movement is and isn't, which is daunting as well).
In my life, I've abandoned (1) the strict, traditional religion that I was raised in and (2) the newly-strict, political party that I've been raised amongst. In both cases, there's a very similar process.
First, there's the Fearful Vertigo that comes from an absence of structure - of there being no rules and guide rails and training wheels. "Who will catch me if I fall?" "No one. But, to be fair, there wasn't anyone to catch you before, either. That was an illusion."
Next, there's the (in my case, muted) Kneejerk Hedonism. "If there's no [orthodoxy], then I'm going to do whatever I want," with "do whatever I want" being reflexively "explore all the things [orthodoxy] said were bad." (This is the "So I'll be a racist, then" defiant impulse that Freddie alluded to.)
Then, there's the Quiet Interrogation. Rather than continue doing "what you want," you *actually* examine what you want. In absence of an orthodoxy (whether original or reactionary), you start to listen to the only remaining guide you have remaining: your inner voice, your center, whatever you want to call it. Is that voice just a conglomeration of chance nature and nurture, of genes and memes? Sure is. But it's the only authentic thing you have, so you'd best become acquainted. This is where "educate yourself" comes into play (though not likely in the sense that many wielders of that imperative intend).
Finally, there's the Confident Centeredness. You're not arrogant, and you still have a *ton* to figure out (hopefully that'll never change), but you're now familiar with your center of gravity, and it's difficult for you to be thrown off-balance. Now it's just an ongoing dialogue between your experiences and your interior voice's reactions to them. The struggle in this phase (at least these days) is how public/vocal you are about the content and outcomes of these internal dialogues.
That Medium article you linked to as an example of "all whites are racist" is quite a piece of work, Exhibit A in the Manual of How Not to Win Friends and Influence People or Dismantle Racism.
Freddie, will you accept a gentle critique from an admiring subscriber? I think nearly all of your essays would be stronger if they were about 20 percent shorter.
And I'm not sure this piece carries the weight of part of its argument. You're making some broad generalizations. Those who care to think about such things can, and do, easily distinguish between artists who demonstrate creativity and integrity, versus the self-aggrandizing cock rockers you mention.
I like writing long, so I write long. If there's one thing that I've learned in a decade and a half of doing this, it's that you can't succeed by changing your basic nature. At this point I think it's fair to say that people are either into it or not. And a lot of people are into it. Just different tastes, different values. Trying to artificially limit the expression of the complexity that I observe just wouldn't work for me, personally.
"Trying to artificially limit the expression of the complexity that I observe..." Relate. I can't do it. Unfortunately, I find the expression of complexity, nuance, subtlety is very often most unwelcome.
Life gets a lot easier when you realize you simply don't have to give a shit about what publications like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, or NPR think. They're a little like vampires in that you have to invite them into your home in order for them to do anything to you. They derive most of their power from dictating who is and isn't one of the good ones, you deny them this and they have nothing.
Another big part of the punk ethos was saying a big fuck you to the mainstream music press, and it was there for a reason. The most cynical part of this whole mess is that these publications don't really give a shit about social justice politics, it's just how you gain clout in popular culture these days. These issues will be put out on the curb next to the trash the minute it is no longer convenient too.
"They're a little like vampires in that you have to invite them into your home in order for them to do anything to you." Stealing that metaphor.
For the last 5+ years, people I love have chosen to bring vampires into my home (literally nearly every day). And these are vampires they *hate*! But they keep getting invited. "I hate Trump, I can't stand that guy. He's so evil." "That's strange, because you've invited him to dinner every day for the past 2 weeks..."
This x 1,000,000. I know some liberals who fixate on Trump endlessly, even though he's gone and banned from social media.
They're letting the man live rent-free in their heads.
Remember the Pitchfork that published "I had never seen a shooting star before"? It used to have a fuck you attitude. It was small and cool and definitely not mainstream.
The current top story is "DaBaby Deletes Instagram Apology Statement to LGBTQ+ Community" lol.
Given that I haven't invited these vampires into my home, my only exposure to music trends is self-curated material on YouTube, where I happened upon the cottage industry of black YouTubers listening to old songs by white men with guitars, and generally enjoying themselves and appreciating the content. These are regular, everyday people, without an agenda, and they're not all pissed off about white men with guitars, but go out of their way to discover them. The funniest are those where they're watching the original video of Stayin' Alive and laughing their asses off to learn that the singers are 1. white, and 2. men. There are lots of people dusting off material from the 60s-80s, and none of them seem to give a damn about what the vampires are saying.
I think you’ve written before about how a lot of the white participants in these social justice-y communities implicitly tend to assume that whatever dismissive or mean comments they make about white people just don’t apply to them.
The white people making these comments about how much white people suck on some level understand that what they’re engaging in is insincere posturing and should not be taken very seriously. The white guys who log on for the first time and see these ideas/posts unfortunately don’t understand yet that they shouldn’t be taking a lot of it literally or seriously. It would be easier if these hypothetical white Twitter users had an understanding of social context on the Internet such that they would realize that if a white guy online is talking shit about white people, it has little to do with reality, and much to do with that guy’s desire to advance socially, and he probably doesn’t actually believe in any of it. Alas. You have to spend years online to fully get any of this, and even then, it’s still annoying.
I think most people saying this garbage really do think they mean it. Most people aren’t very self aware.
Fair enough. I certainly think, for example, if a radical feminist makes a comment about men being inherently violent, she probably means it quite literally. But like, if Will Wilkinson or whatever is going “lol white people” then idk, I have more trouble taking that too seriously.
I think it's an outgrowth of the weird Democratic quirk of not viewing themselves as "American", following the Iraq War and the mostly successful Republican strategy of draping themselves in the "real America" label. When they say "white people" they don't mean "people of primarily European descent who have pale skin and often pale hair and eyes". They mean, basically, "conservatives". This is explicit in some critical theory.
This is how you can get people like Nicole Hannah-Jones calling people "politically white", or how you can get Biden claiming black people who don't vote for him "aren't black".
Sweet Jesus. That last paragraph. I'm so glad to be only Sorta-Online if it means I avoided stumbling onto either of those jaw-dropping landmines. That is completely insane.
Yes. It is kind of mind boggling.
I actually recently wrote something in my own blog about why I’m a liberal and also against teaching it even applying CRT in k-12 schools (ErinKEtheridge.com) and spend a couple paragraphs on Nikole Hannah-Jones. She went on CBS this morning to “discuss” her UNC tenure scandal and essentially said a rich conservative White dude cock blocked her and also “because of my gender and my race.” Gayle King didn’t ask any sort of follow up question about that.
The university itself stated that the donor, for whom the journalism school is named, has concerns about being bound to the controversial 1619 Project.
But that’s beside the point. What the point is, is that NHJ is black and the donor is white.
Someone's read "I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup".
Also fair enough.
SJWs lost me when I was thinking to myself “okay, I get it now. So what should I do?” and I kept hearing “wanting to do something or fix things is white supremacist.” That’s when I realized the only thing I’m meant to do is feel bad and continually “do the work” of not having ideas or thoughts or questions.
Yeah, I remember even in the Tumblr days when I was a teen getting frustrated by this. You'd ask "but what can I do?" and get told you needed to "reimagine" and "radicalize" and "decolonize" and a bunch of other $25 words that mean "sit on your ass and do nothing".
I'm not sure whether the current answer of "venmo me money, you racist" is an improvement or not.
That's what I was going to say. These days, the answer is to venmo money to Black strangers. Of course, you don't know anything about the recipients, starting with whether they're really Black or using a stolen photo to scam people. But you owe them money. Weird that it hasn't caught on.
Oh contraire! You’re supposed to put up one of those multi-colored signs that start out with “in this house we believe…. <pieties 1-10>“
You're doing what you're supposed to be doing which is giving them attention.
Erin, can I quote you either by name or anonymously in a piece I'm working on about my frustrations with the "White Supremacy Culture" rubric that's trending?
Sure! For a moment I felt a flash of fear but I by chance just read Freddie’s old piece on the backchannel and now I’m feeling brave again.
Thanks, Erin. (I'm sure Brene Brown would be proud of your bravery though I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to take it on:-) I'm not sure if I'll ever publish or even finish it, I've been ruminating on it for months. But, if I do finish it, how would you like me to identify you? You can respond here or, if you prefer, through my website ericaetelson.com.
Probably Her Ladyship, Erin Etheridge would be fine. :)
"Wanting to do something or fix things is white supremacy."
That's so bizarre. I believe you when you say that people in SJW circles say it, but I also have no idea what the thought process is that could lead to something like that.
It comes from this: https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/one-right-way.html
I can’t remember precisely who said it on Brene Brown’s podcast (she has a fair few SJWs on there) but it was discussed that the notion of wanting to “do something” is equivalent to wanting a checklist of behaviors, which is So White.
And I thought to myself, yeah I mean I guess doing things for “the right reasons” or out of “genuine change of heart” or whatever might be preferable, but I mean modifying your behavior for the better is still…modifying your behavior for the better.
Savalah Nolan, who on balance I quite like, recently posted or shared (can’t remember which) the idea that if white people want to do something they should give away their inherited land and wealth to minority people, and should do so repeatedly. And I’m like, yeah cool but I don’t have inherited land or wealth. Soooooo…… what should *I* do? And we’re back at asking the wrong question.
Lol at this idea of white people en masse just giving stuff away. Like, what if you're a working class white person living paycheck to paycheck? Shouldn't a mass redistribution of wealth and resources start at the top, with the richest of the rich?
Yeah I’m like uh are you speaking directly to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet? Because otherwise you’re just essentially asking other people of similar means for cash based on who is what race.
Again, a well wrought sentence contains an important insight that is ignored in much if not most discourse: "Categorical moral claims blunt the demand for individual moral responsibility."
I've never heard of these guys before, and I listened to What Makes a Man Start Fires(?) while reading the post, and I have to say thank you for the introduction. To me it sounds a lot like, "what if Rush did punk," which for some people would no doubt be the kiss of death but from me could hardly be higher praise. I've never been one for punk, much, but this is great stuff, so thanks.
I listened to Double Nickels on the Dime and Post Mersh Vol 1 incessantly in my late teens/20s, having come across Minutemen shortly after D Boon died. Freddie's description of their ethos is excellent. I'd add that musically they wring so much out of their instruments and, for me at least, it's held up to decades of listening.
Also, listen to the Steely Dan song Dr. Wu and then listen to the Minutemen cover. Fantastic.
My sniff test is, if you’ve come up with a galaxy-brained way of reinventing the concept of Original Sin, I probably don’t want in on your ideology.
I wouldn't mind the reinvention of old religious concepts if it was done with more care. Most of them are actually pretty useful. So far we are really lacking in everything to do with forgiveness and redemption in this current formulation.
And I guess that's to be expected. Sin is easy to formulate. Rebirth is going to take a lot more than half a decade to develop.
That’s a wise distinction - in old ideologies, forgiveness is the whole point.
It is this exactly. The Christians at least have a framework for forgiveness and moving on - which is probably why they are able to maintain cohesion. These new ideologies are like the shakers - internally inconsistent and unsustainable.
“White men with guitars” also covers a pretty broad swathe beyond just rock ‘n’ rollers.
https://youtu.be/xzYILJnaf9o
If you ain’t never heard this white dude with a guitar mourn the death of labor unions through a haunting melody and a heart-wrenching narrative, today is your day.
Maybe because in the West we started with Occitanians on lutes? Looking through the substack,“Encyclopedia of World Music Genres” (George Eberhardt free substack)...https://georgemeberhart.substack.com/ it looks like it's men with what ever instrument is used in most cultures.
This deliciously nerdy comment led me to your substack & my day is now happier for it. (There should be so much more free speech discourse that references Savonarola.) Thank you!
"I promise you, most white people who aren’t already savvy extremely-online types who go on social justice Twitter will come away with the impression that they’re saying that all white people are racist. Which of course triggers the part of the brain that says “so I’ll be a racist, then.” "
Is this true?
Like, really, is this true?
I see a whole bunch of people SAY that people are making this choice, consciously or unconsciously, to align with racists or to be more racist because antiracist Twitter makes them feel like they might as well. Or that there's no point in being leftist because someone will still call you a white guy with a guitar.
But everyone says that about _other_ people. Not about themselves. Everyone assumes this is going on because all those other people don't have the agency to think for themselves and are likely to be deluded by social justice jargon to say, "Well, these IDW people really have it going on!" But I'm not sure it's actually happening--it's just a thing that writers say in order to get the social justice crowd to maybe cool it a bit.
I'm down with the goal, but I don't see any reason to actually believe the idea behind this piece, which seems to imply that if the Minutemen had grow up in this day and age they'd be a bunch of cock-rockers themselves. I just don't see actual people determining their allegiances by "SJW Twitter is nuts, so I'm going to hate on black people."
Well that's a profoundly caricatured version of what I'm saying.
I'm not TRYING to do that. Care to explain the sentence I quoted in a way that doesn't imply that?
I wrote a long thin and Substack ate it, so I'm just going to copy and paste another commenter's comment, which they appear to have subsequently deleted:
"I think he's saying that white men are just going to accept that some people are always going to think they hate black people, so it's not worth it for them to do anything different to try and convince those people otherwise - not that white men are going to start hating black people just because others already think they do."
I think the much more likely outcome is to strongly influence people who might be persuaded to be on board with social justice movements to simply be "apolitical" (which is, of course, only a certain kind of passively political) instead.
Yes. This I would definitely agree with.
By "woke" standards, I have become more "racist" because I was repelled by their views.
Here's the thing about taboos: they only work so long as the people making things taboo seem reasonable. When I thought the left was being reasonable about equality, I had no issue staying away from writers like Charles Murray. When they said he was a crackpot racist, I trusted them to make that determination. But once that trust was broken...I started looking at what their opponents were saying. Mostly, it was curiosity. I was probing at the weak spots in social justice ideology to try to find what was salvageable, as I do believe we ought to work toward a more just country where everyone is fed, homed, and given space to thrive. But I also now believe Murray is probably mostly right. I believe the science behind things like systemic racism and unconscious bias are so shaky they should not be used in the real world and that many instances of "systemic racism" are in fact based on class, not race. I believe most hate crimes that get reported on are hoaxes and that most killings of black people that get national coverage have been twisted well past truthfulness in order to generate outrage. I think "open borders" and "defund the police" are both asinine, criminally stupid ideas. Despite being a lifelong Democrat who has served in the party and started going to caucus at twelve, I voted for a Republican in a local election for the first time in 2020 because of these beliefs.
Now, I've come to these beliefs, somewhat ironically, by reading almost exclusively black writers. But by the standards of the woke, I am definitely racist by holding these beliefs despite being happy to go along with the social justice dogma until it just got too stupid.
I made a similar journey. I was there chuckling along with the other good liberals in the mid-2000s - we were the reality-based community! Reality had a liberal bias! And back then, amidst the wreckage of Bush's second term, well, maybe it did.
Now? There is a war on noticing and the dissident Right is in the vanguard fighting back. So too are some leftists like Freddie, of course, but they're sorely in need of more allies on the Left.
I know he's just a popular name standing in for a larger group, but isn't the case of the Woke vs Charles Murray pretty well settled by Human Accomplishment?
Also his recent publication Human Diversity, which had people fuming before they'd actually read it. Upon reading it one finds it to be sober, well-researched, and if anything, welcomingly anticlimactic.
I spent some time a few years ago reading the comments section on The American Conservative and white conservative guys (or liberals-turned-conservative) owned up to this phenomenon frequently. Some of them even said they knew they were being petty and irrational, but they couldn't help it, they just felt so antagonized by constant SJW denunciations that they slipped into what one described as the "warm bath" of alt-right BS.
As stated below, you're distorting what he's saying, but I feel like I'm one of those people he's taking about. Over the months since the election, I've bounced around reading different sources obsessively trying to find somewhere, anywhere, that people don't sound insane. I hadn't been Extremely Online the last 5-7 years or so previous (though I was before that), then I went back to get a master's with people 20 years my junior and was basically told to sign up for Twitter if I wanted to be hired, and... it's seriously like walking into a house of mirrors in a flaming dumpster.
That doesn't mean I decided, "guess I'll just be a racist now," but I *did* spend a lot of time trying to reassure myself that other thoughtful people, of various races, were also freaked out by the discourse, and certainly some of those people were probably assholes whose views only overlapped mine in a modest Venn diagram sliver, but that didn't make them wrong in their analyses.
I wish you were at this Indie Rock show in Philly I was at this weekend Freddie. There were some moments where I could only roll my eyes in the back of my head and shake my head at what was said in the name of political action... in the middle of a fucking set.
If there is anywhere that intersectionality, identity politics and a strong LBTQ presence is at... it is at an indie rock show.
Anyway one band in the middle of their set goes on to say something about... "Oh we are living in this collective trauma of the past 18 months and we must *vague handwave* come together and heal. Then, literally after the next song they played the main singer rants about "All problems we currently dealing in this country are due to one thing and one thing only - WHITE SUPREMACY. And it is up to you white people to DO THE WORK!"
I slowly looked around to make sure I wasn't at some DEI corporate training sponsored by Starbucks whose main speaker is Robinbram X. Kendi-Di'Angelo. I mean really? WHITE SUPREMACY is the reasons for all problems including Coronavirus, inequality, global climate change, and increased violence in poor neighborhoods around the country?
What heartened me, was that only about half the crowd cheered... at an indie rock show. I'll take what I can get.
I know this subject is written much about in the Substacks, but I just don't understand how people just love to revel in their guilt and feelings and bitch about what they feel... yet do nothing materially to help people they claim to want things to be better for.
It's like the one scientist (from Seattle) at my workplace complained to our leadership about how we weren't valuing and awarding enough women and minority scientists for awards/grants/etc.
Bitch! I looked at your history and not once in your 2 DECADES have you got off your ass to nominate for a grant or award for ANY minority or women scientists. All these people can fuck off.
P.S. Also, in the show the black guitarist got up to the mic and said to the crowd "Do yall fuck with Critical Race Theory. Cause I do." And then proceeds to screamo out unintelligble lyrics to the next song.
This got me thinking and clarified a strange parallel that I've been seeing for a while. It's that conservatives recruit like christians and liberals tend to recruit like Jews.
When I was a kid in Hebrew school, they taught is that it was a virtue that we don't try to convert people - people have to want it. That ideal of purity seemed good to me as a kid.
But after hearing that stuff and living in that culture for your whole life, it gets stale. As I see it, it's good and fine that Jews don't proselytize, but also, if you operate that way, you shouldn't be surprised that the Jewish population is small. More specifically, if you think that we need to replenish the Jewish population lost after the holocaust for purely demographic reasons, and that's so important that it's worth dying for, maybe try to put more effort into converting people to Judaism?
It's always seemed weird to me: I'm supposed to be upset, as a Jew, that we're dying out, but also supposed to pre-exclude the solution of converting more people to Judaism... and therefore, Jewish-American culture consists of content produced by Jews for other Jews about why it's OK that instead of growing, we're just supposed to ruthlessly defend what we have (Israel, the idea that Jews are an important group of people, and so on).
That paradox always bothered me growing up and is part of why I'm not religious anymore. When I first stopped believing, I even considered becoming Christian, briefly. Christians are out there and they want you. It seems welcoming.
Anyway, I feel like I notice a weirdly similar thing with liberalism. It's an ideology, with no history as a race or ethnicity or religion, and yet, it has the same emphasis on policing a small exclusive group (and seeing conversions as something you don't want to pursue) as a group of people who are literally clinging to an ancient religious prohibition that we're attached to because it's what we're used to.
At least we have the excuse that our culture is codified and 3000 years old.
I converted to Judaism a year after marrying my Jewish-by-birth husband, and I endorse this comment. I will never understand why so many congregations are simultaneously worried about intermarriage and proud of turning interested people away. I agree that this Puritan attitude resembles too many people on the Left.
Before we got married, my future MIL wanted to sponsor a kiddush (lunch for the whole congregation) in honor of our wedding, but was told that that wasn’t allowed, nor would her Conservative synagogue provide any acknowledgement of our marriage whatsoever. She was very angry and hurt by this exclusionary, punitive attitude. Even worse, I in fact did want to study Judaism, but the rabbi refused to even teach me about it unless I promised to strictly follow kashrut (which is easy since I’m a vegetarian), keep Shabbat (well, ok), and follow the Laws of Family Purity (hell no!).
We found a lovely Reform rabbi (amusingly named Bunny) who was willing to teach me, and I did convert a year later. But this exclusionary, purist attitude has consequences for Judaism and the Left alike: my husband is from a family of four brothers, three of whom married non-Jews. I’m the only one who converted; my Christian and Muslim SILs were too put off by the unfriendliness they encountered—in much the same way that many Left-leaning people, who could have helped us make the world a better place, are put off by the unforgiving nature of so much SJW discourse and behavior.
I say let’s be welcoming, forgiving, and open to others. We are not perfect and might well need such charity ourselves one day.
This very reminds me of the covid hesitancy discussion where the aim seems to be less to persuade than to condemn. More to the point where were my favourite band of the era (Genesis - Selling England by the Pound pure gold for me) in the scale of cock rockery? At the innocent end I hope!
Far from winning converts, the social incentives point in the other direction entirely: scrambling to out-woke and ostracize the already-faithful.
The already-faithful are the easiest targets, plus, targeting them and not targeting future converts makes it feel like you've already won, which feels better than wondering if perhaps your movement needs more people (on top of the fact that trying to convert people is daunting, it also makes you think more about what your movement is and isn't, which is daunting as well).
In my life, I've abandoned (1) the strict, traditional religion that I was raised in and (2) the newly-strict, political party that I've been raised amongst. In both cases, there's a very similar process.
First, there's the Fearful Vertigo that comes from an absence of structure - of there being no rules and guide rails and training wheels. "Who will catch me if I fall?" "No one. But, to be fair, there wasn't anyone to catch you before, either. That was an illusion."
Next, there's the (in my case, muted) Kneejerk Hedonism. "If there's no [orthodoxy], then I'm going to do whatever I want," with "do whatever I want" being reflexively "explore all the things [orthodoxy] said were bad." (This is the "So I'll be a racist, then" defiant impulse that Freddie alluded to.)
Then, there's the Quiet Interrogation. Rather than continue doing "what you want," you *actually* examine what you want. In absence of an orthodoxy (whether original or reactionary), you start to listen to the only remaining guide you have remaining: your inner voice, your center, whatever you want to call it. Is that voice just a conglomeration of chance nature and nurture, of genes and memes? Sure is. But it's the only authentic thing you have, so you'd best become acquainted. This is where "educate yourself" comes into play (though not likely in the sense that many wielders of that imperative intend).
Finally, there's the Confident Centeredness. You're not arrogant, and you still have a *ton* to figure out (hopefully that'll never change), but you're now familiar with your center of gravity, and it's difficult for you to be thrown off-balance. Now it's just an ongoing dialogue between your experiences and your interior voice's reactions to them. The struggle in this phase (at least these days) is how public/vocal you are about the content and outcomes of these internal dialogues.
That Medium article you linked to as an example of "all whites are racist" is quite a piece of work, Exhibit A in the Manual of How Not to Win Friends and Influence People or Dismantle Racism.
I love her signature: "I live to make White Supremacy unhappy. Buy Merch | www.marleyisms.com/merch"
Freddie, will you accept a gentle critique from an admiring subscriber? I think nearly all of your essays would be stronger if they were about 20 percent shorter.
And I'm not sure this piece carries the weight of part of its argument. You're making some broad generalizations. Those who care to think about such things can, and do, easily distinguish between artists who demonstrate creativity and integrity, versus the self-aggrandizing cock rockers you mention.
I like writing long, so I write long. If there's one thing that I've learned in a decade and a half of doing this, it's that you can't succeed by changing your basic nature. At this point I think it's fair to say that people are either into it or not. And a lot of people are into it. Just different tastes, different values. Trying to artificially limit the expression of the complexity that I observe just wouldn't work for me, personally.
I always want more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCud8H7z7vU
This is great :)
Whatever. White guy with harpsichord.
"Trying to artificially limit the expression of the complexity that I observe..." Relate. I can't do it. Unfortunately, I find the expression of complexity, nuance, subtlety is very often most unwelcome.