I'm not who you keep saying I am

Nothing is more essentially racist than race essentialism

Nothing is more essentially racist than race essentialism.

I’ve been saying that line a lot lately. Because so much of the activism that is branded around “End Racism!” is overtly based on race essentialism - the very base concept of racism itself. This is the curse of postmodernism. And much worse than that, it was then weaponized into all these Racecraft spells (which has now become Hatecraft-politics of all different types and flavors). I had an interaction on the Bird last night about race being such a lesser factor socially when people my age were teens. The Roaring 90s. It’s a conversation I’ve had before, one I’ve seen echoed by many others, especially those who grew up in the NE corridor as I did. Let’s take a trip back to that time, teenage years in the DC ‘burbs…

I went to a school that had been districted as a gap-filler. If you district all your schools as perfect circles of different sizes, you inevitably end up with little gaps in between. Then you make one school for all the gaps. That’s where I was assigned, a long 45min ride back and forth each way. My public-school was massive! - although I didn’t appreciate that at the time. I had over 1,100 in my class alone. I assume that means our high-school was 4k+. DC is a very diverse area. The banging radio station back then (our Hot 97) was 95.5 WAVA. The DJs would intro their segments with “95.5 The Chocolate City, baby!”. This was an era when hip-hop was roaring through the suburbs! Not just in my area, of course, but damn near nationwide. As Dr. Dre figured out how to build an empire and rap music clicked with the youth of the time, the explosion of hip-hop culture into the suburbs was incredible. It was truly transformational as it pulled in a significant % of our teenagers and 20-somethings. Where I was, it was probably the majority. And it wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan social moment fueled by MTV or something. It was a cultural change that had been brewing for a long time.

My first cassette was Run DMC’s Tougher Than Leather. This goes back way before Dr. Dre and Snoop. I listened to the pioneers as a kid. I listened to Dre when he was part of NWA. I rocked to Eazy when he was still alive. When I was mega young, maybe 11 or so I have to think, I asked for NWA’s EFIL4ZAGGIN for Christmas. I probably wrote that on my Santa list. Lol Amazingly, my pops (who was a Lt. Col. in the Army and definitely not into NWA) agreed to get it for me. I remember the day I opened it under the tree vividly. Once the gifts were all done and before I had a chance to jam it, my dad kind of calmly took that tape, an ol’ bright-yellow Walkman and some headphones, and went up the stairs and into his bedroom behind a locked door. “Oh, shit!”, I thought. I’ve always had this weird Murphy’s Law-timing that leads to strange occurrences that seem such low odds. (That’s why I started “Storytelling” on my audio side here; I have a lot of bizarre and interesting tales to tell!) I’ve listened to 100s of rap albums, but in all of them I’ve ever owned, nothing was as explicit and raunchy as that NWA album. The thought of my old man listening to “Automobile” was horrifying! But alas, it was out of my control now. I expected my dad to come out quite unpleased. Instead, he came out very calm. He handed me the tape and the Walkman, told me something along the lines of what absolute garbage he thought that was, and went on our day as if it was clear that choice was mine. It would have been anyway, but I’ve never forgotten that move by my dad. Baller. It taught me a lot about how to be a parent.

Want to know my favorite music artist growing up? Tupac Shakur. I could sing you dozens of his songs without a lead today. I consumed that man’s street hymns; I was obsessed with his poetry. His lyrics were a window into life in inner-city America.

Driven by my ambitions;

Desire higher positions, so I proceed to make G's

eternally, and my mission

is to be more than just a rap musician.

The elevation of today's generation if I can make 'em listen.

And of course that didn’t just apply to Pac. That’s what was so fascinating about this musical push, and why it had such cultural significance. We didn’t just jam to hip-hop in the ‘burbs, we were enamored with hip-hop in the ‘burbs! It became an entire culture - the most popular one in my neck of the woods - as those of you who were older in the 90’s surely remember. And this had immediate and unquestionable impact on race relations. Returning back to that large high-school I mentioned, we had so many non-white students that white/non-white just wasn’t a day-to-day thing. We had a section of the hallways that would have had more black students in it generally than not; a similar section where a lot of the Latino kids hung out. And we all mixed and mingled. We were tight as shit with groups of all different demographics. Our own group of friends was diverse; one of my inner clique boys was a black kid. Again, youth nationwide became downright enamored with black culture through the popularity of these music artists and their cultural explosion. The 90’s were an era where the dream of a colorblind society was becoming real before our eyes, especially within our youth. We had a lot of beef and tension within this world I’ve described, but other than true gang clashes, they were never based around race. The culture that formed around the rap push, and the way the suburbs embraced the culture surrounding rap, was a significant moment in American history. A significant moment in white American history.

When I first left the DC area to go away for college, I’m not bullshitting when I tell you I typically had more in common from a ‘shoot the shit’-perspective with the average black male I ran into than the average white one. I too had been enamored with black culture and emulated much of it throughout my teens. I didn’t have much in common with the Florida guy in the pickup truck with a camo hat who loves country tunes. I got along with him fine too, but we just simply didn’t have all that much to draw from. To be honest with you, the demo I got the most shit from as a teenager on an identity-basis was that one. I was a rap kid, and it showed. The same was true with the mega rich boys from the NY area, which we had a ton of on my campus as well. Sure, we could kick it and we did, but they wouldn’t have ran with my crew back home. And I wouldn’t have wanted to run with theirs. Let me share another story with you, as it all fits into this pot…

It was my first or second week in the dorms. My roommate never showed and I hadn’t met a lot of people yet. Not any boys I was running with yet, anyhow. I’m chilling in my room one afternoon playing NBA Live and listening to the new Diddy album with recently-deceased Biggie drops when there’s a knock at my door. I look through the peephole and there’s a behemoth of a man filling up my whole doorframe. It was a football player from down the hall I had walked by several times now, but we had never engaged other than maybe a “What up” head-nod. I open the door and dude holds up a massive Backwood and says “Want to smoke a blunt?”. It was a blunt move, it was also like 3:30 in the afternoon, but I figured it wasn’t an opportunity that was going to come along very often, and so I said hell yeah! We went out on the fire escape and puffed his massive tree. We’d go on to become super close my freshman year. We hung out all the time. Here was this rail-thin white guy and this 305pd black dude hitting the clubs together. We were quite the duo! I had a history of a loud mouth because of big friends, and here I was again. He had a lot riding on his ability to play on Saturdays, and so he’d drag me drag down streets by the collar like the giant he was, when needs be. I loved that dude, and he loved me. We shared some awesome times together. Not just hitting South Beach or the Grove, but being buddies. I got to know that man. He came and told me to STFU and get my act together and go grab a beer with him when I was sobbing in my dorm room like an idiot about things ending with my high-school sweetheart.

One night (perhaps over some mind-benders) he told me I was the first white person he had ever hung out with in his life. He was from a small town in the plain states. Told me stories of legit KKK who still rode around in pickup trucks there. Now, don’t fool yourself, he told me equally as bad of stories of racism from his side back home towards white people. He had come from a very different world than I had in the mixed ‘burbs of the Chocolate City. I was incredibly moved by that. Heck, I still am all these years later. I’ve thought back to that a lot, pictured it from his eyes. White people hadn’t been a positive thing in his life; hell, they had often been a threat. Yet something about me grabbed at him enough he decided to engage me. And man, engage me he did! Lol I’ve thought about how bold that move was too. I’m not even sure how he knew I smoked as I had stopped for my start-over in a new town so I wouldn’t be fuzzy-brained. Not to mention big NCAA issues if they ever knew he was puffing Bobs on fire escapes! We had some wild times. He was a bit of a wild man. But he was a damn good man. Our friendship meant a lot to me, and I know my friendship meant a lot to him. He ended up becoming boys with my whole clique there, we all spent a lot of time together. He’d come and kick and it and smoke and play video games. Then we’d watch him make Sportscenter plays on Saturday. People are people, man, it didn’t matter that we had different tones of flesh. Shit, it didn’t even matter to him, after the world he had come from. Think about that. He saw the humanity in me and in us, and we quickly saw him as just his name (ok, we never really got over him being a star on the gridiron), not a black guy who had never chilled with white people before. He somehow never presented with that aura, and it never existed with us. He of course wasn’t the only black dude we rolled with… in addition to this being a mostly Latino city.

Fast forward a couple decades…

As I’ve mentioned before, I run my own law firm. Small operation, I don’t mean some ivory tower. I’ve done a decent amount of hiring over the years though, probably a dozen interns and a few less full-time staff. I have three members on my team now, one of which is a black woman. I hired her back when she was a young black woman, now she’s a mother of two. You’ll notice “black” fell off the last description, because she doesn’t register in my head based on skin-tone. I don’t give a shit about that; she doesn’t either. Her and I have grown really tight, she is an absolute gem! Gives me great hope for a generation I had lost a lot of faith in. We’re actually working on two side-businesses together, one of which she leads. If any of the balls we have in the air work out the way I’m hoping they will, her and I have plans to be together for the long-term. I go to her babies’ birthday parties, I’ve hung out with her mom and grandma. Her family is wonderful! Let’s again return to these wicked daggers like “unconscious bias” that is imposed on me by someone who doesn’t even know me, or “white fragility” if I don’t agree to relent to every command and marching order. GTFO! I’ll say this point-blank: I bet what I just described is more a tangible creation than most of these IG Activists have ever produced in their lives. But we don’t look at it that way. I didn’t do it for that reason. I don’t want anything from that toxic vein. We just hooked-up and bonded as people… but these anecdotes shatter those spells. Because Instagram and Twitter are not real-life.

Why am I sharing all of this? Do I think I’m cool because I grew up listening to rap music? No. Am I trying to play the “I’m not racist because I had a black friend”-card? Surely not. I don’t give one shit if you think I’m racist. I know who I am and never gave a damn what other people’s judgment is. Sometimes I’ll work to win it, but I never allow others to be my judge and jury. I’m sharing all of this because of how starkly my own life path and my own experiences, the lens through which I have seen this world, contradicts the Racecraft of our modern civil-rights activists. The entire movement is now usurped and captured by “anti-racist” radicals. That is a specific and important term because it designates a specific and wicked ideology. One rooted in the notion of “equity”; one with specific designs of communism (or socialism, if you want to dress it up for the nicer cocktail parties). There is nothing pure left. Not within the entire DEI apparatus, one now consumed by Queer+ insanity and barely about race anyhow. “Progress”, right? Riiiiight. Revolution. But let me not stray…

“Nothing is more essentially racist than race essentialism.”

Who the hell do you think you are to tell me that you know something about me because of the color of my flesh? How dare you try and impugn your toxic notions of “unconscious bias” and “white fragility” on me? It’s surreal that these witchcraft-like dogmas progressed as far as they did. Robin DiAngelo’s little self getting paid five-figures to tell white people they’re racist. Kendi getting paid even more to make pleas for overt racial discrimination. “Moral discrimination”. People fell for this shit. How shameful. And now let’s take this piece from the reflective to the academic…

The “anti-racists” would say the following back to me: “You wax nostalgic about Tupac lyrics and friends of color you’ve had from your sheltered white life. The fact you had friends of different races hanging out doesn’t change the realities of systemic injustice that plague America!”.

Not a bad speech, eh? And while I’m being flippant (I’ve seen through the mask of “anti-racist” ideologues and I despise them), I will give the point some credence. While I believe us to be the most wonderful project this world has ever seen, and believe the tale of the tape on even our pursuit of racial equality supports that, we have further improvements to be made. America is not perfect, it’s a work in progress. But here is where these radicals turned things so wrong and wicked, and this is what motivated me to write this piece….

This revolutionary push has always ridden pretextual. Even the “Black Lives Matter” movement (a tentacle of “anti-racism”, which itself is merely a tentacle of a greater beast) never served its stated function. It drove emotion off of police brutality, raised billions, and then did next to nothing to improve the lives of black Americans, much less somehow reduce police brutality. The money largely funneled through ActBlue; entire public theatrics like the NBA's gross hysterics manifested into nothing more than a Get Out The Vote!-effort for the DNC; the activists bought mansions and held retreats in the Caribbean, sojourns to Palestine, millions and millions still unaccounted for; there were no major police reforms, no community centers or scholarship programs or schools in inner-cities; Biden got elected off those billions of course, then proceeded to announce his plans to advance Queer+ onto the Equality Act within days of taking office. Literally. And three years later we are seeing him live up to those promises. No, not promises for the black community that raised all of that money and support, but the promises to his LGBTQ+ Rainbow Guard, to the Queer+ leftist radicals. And the reason I fleshed that out so much is because it reveals the design.

The entire identity-based racial mania that burst into mainstreamed nationwide insanity in 2020 (which can fairly be described as “anti-racism”, but is really Critical Race Theory “CRT” weaponized, in methods and application and praxis) never rested on realistic discussions and viable plans for actual improvement. No no no, it was focused on one thing and one thing only: racism. Most Americans would not get on board with top-down radical reorganization of American society under the argument “systemic racism” is such a problem in modern America. The wider net to cast was “End Racism!”, and that’s precisely what they did. They deployed the Racecraft wizards country and society-wide! The spells rained down from every outlet: white supremacy, systemic racism, unconscious bias, white fragility, white privilege, cultural appropriation, and on and on and on. It wasn’t about policy anymore, it was about people. Suddenly our ‘news outlets’ were reporting the most minute incident between two Americans as if it was a front-page event. Hopefully you've seen the NYT LexisNexis searches. The entirety of the establishment-left worked to present America as the most racist nation the world has ever seen - something they struggle with still to this day as I wrote about in my “Ode To America” piece on the 4th of July. All of a sudden our children were being told en masse that they possessed inherent biases based on skin-color. We have Cartoon Networks telling them to “See Color!”. Do you see now where I am going with this all?

You have no right to impose this bullshit on me. Cast your leftist spells all you want, but that’s all they are. You think you understand me when you walk by my on the street because you see I’m white? You don’t know the first damn thing about me. “Race essentialism”, and they can’t let it go. Of course they can’t, because the entire revolutionary machine depends on it. That’s yet another Orwell irony, another example of Propaganda 101, those who have wrapped themselves in the moniker “anti-racism” are literally demanding we advance race essentialism. It is as insane as what is happening on the gender front (not unrelated). Just this week on The View, we had Sonny projecting some of the most vile race essentialism I’ve ever seen. That’s the largest daytime audience in America. I locked horns with this self-righteous idiot, Johnathan “Jay” Perkins, who is an “anti-racist higher ed lawyer” previously for UCLA and Harvard who many of us saw last week because of his hard and embarrassing race-baiting online. Nasty stuff! Know what I found out the next day? He staged a fake hate crime in college and tried to frame police. He admitted to it, said it was to “bring attention” to his important causes. What do you think this dude’s “anti-racist work” looks like on our college campuses? My god. Visa runs commercials during the Olympics analogizing black skin as a disability synonymous with amputation and cancer. Real-life; I’m not making that up. The NCAA pumps ads into my living room when I’m sitting with my wife and young kids watching the NCAA tournament showing protest hands with signs that say “Silence is Violence” and “You’re either anti-racist or you’re complicit”. WTF! They need these evil notions to continue swirling, otherwise what they’re selling makes no sense. And that’s because what they’re selling doesn’t make any sense. Race essentialism is toxic and empty.

Take a white kid from Appalachia. Born into a family of generational poverty. Not a single person in their family tree has ever been to college. Now take a kid born in Boston to two black Ivy league parents, one a doctor and the other an engineer. What are you setting the odds of life success at for these two kids? I’ve got one likely going to Duke or Yale and becoming a doctor or a lawyer themselves. He’ll likely live a sweet life, barring he doesn’t mess it up. The other’s cards aren’t looking so strong. I doubt he’ll end up at an Ivy (or college at all), barring he doesn't get lucky. And these paths won’t be determined by the color of their flesh. But billionaire Oprah still has the audacity to broadcast to her audience that “No matter where they are in the ladder of life, they’ll always have their whiteness”. Right, Oprah. Why don’t you have your chauffeur load you up in your Rolls and go tell the moms at the nearest trailer-park about their wonderful “whiteness”. This dogma is so gross and destructive. It’s meant to be destructive. It’s what gave birth to the Racecraft Frankenstein known as Colin Kaepernick. The washed up quarterback who got benched for a journeyman and then decided to brand himself as our generation’s civil-rights hero (of “anti-racist” design). He began an act, one funded by Nike, one awarded an Emmy award, one that generated over SIX BILLION in revenue for Phil Knight. What was the campaign? That these NFL athletes are the equivalent of chattel slavery. Yes, chattel slavery. Lamar Jackson lives in a $12 million mansion! Have you ever seen it? It looks like a palace in Versailles. They travel in luxury with hydro-spas and personal dieticians. But this propaganda machine, these Racecraft wizards, were able to convince much of America that oppression and slavery live on amongst the multi-millionaire NFL royalty. The level of detachment from reality this requires, my goodness. Six billion. Black Lives Matter! But let's get back to the racism…

As I said above, I am down (as I believe most of America would be) in any reasonable conversation about real-world problems and viable plans. This isn't a statement that all race issues in America are resolved. But importantly, they never fully will be. The term “End Racism” is so empty. Human nature is not something that can be cast aside, and bigotries and prejudices are part of human nature. That’s part of the trick of these amorphous boogeymen; hence, the endless activism, with wizards on top who fly private jet. We’re seeing the failure of trying to legislate morality play out before the entire west. It leads to attempts at ideological dominance, and as a long track record of human history has shown, a vehicle for revolution. We always have to ask what we are comparing ourselves to here, what's the standard. In this history of our species, there haven't been too many societies who have made the level of legitimate progress than we have. Are there are any? But see, that perspective (reality) puts out the revolutionary fire. It's also why “anti-racism” never had mainstream support, only inorganic legs. And the American people are not interested in campus dogma, identity-based spells, and equity-driven communist policy. This isn't our vision, it's not reflective of the sentiment of our people. That's why it requires this perpetual hysteria and targeted rage (Hatecraft). Most importantly, it's simply vile that we've allowed these notions of race essentialism to be weaponized for political gain. I mean, Nancy Armour, who is one of the most decorated sports journalists of all time, wrote a piece for USA Today in 2020 where she exclaimed “How mighty white of him!” about Tom Brady. What was Tom's crime? He wore a hat in a locker room. Lebron James is launching threats at cops to 100s of millions (even cops saving black girls' lives) and there is no “How mighty…” piece about his political abhorrence. Because that's all that was, bare politics. She was caught up in using race as a political weapon. Learned it from Nikole Hannah-Jones who proudly created “politically black”. Now it's “Queer as political”. All The Same Thing.

The way race has been weaponized, reflected most grotesquely in the way black conservatives are openly spoken to even in media (that's real racism!), is despicable. It's largely collapsing now, thank goodness. But the fact this disgusting dogma was ever allowed to progress this far is a deep stain on the nation. The way it was turned personal in order for it to be harvested for the political is something I will never forgive. They even had a slogan for it: “The personal IS political”. Blue wave! Solidarity! We had people bragging online for disinviting their ‘racist’ relatives from Holiday gatherings. “Racist” of course just being the opposite of “solidarity”. We were openly branded “white supremacists” in 2020 by much of the DNC base, mainstream media outlets, and the establishment-left itself for casting a vote in a bipartisan election. Exercising our most essential American right. That's what “politically black” was always about. It was a herding technique, a tool of politics, one rooted in bare-bones racism. Vile! How dare you paint me a racist to satisfy your selfish gain. Every human is imperfect. The idea someone can cast such a negative judgment upon me for no reason other than my skin-color is the most overtly racist concept I've encountered. The ideologues would fire back “Like how that feels!?!”, because this “anti-racist” dogma has always been fueled by vengeance. It's time to end this Racecraft. Civil society needs to simply disallow it. And that's going to come at great political cost for the left… which is why this is more a hope than a prediction. This has spiraled deeply out of control. “Moral racism” from those wrapping themselves around the term “anti-racism”. Right out of a sci-fi novel… or a cult… or in this case, a revolution.

Of course, these maniacal ideologues pull out magic wands with those kind of quotes too. They try and argue “whiteness” doesn’t actually mean white people. Riiiiight. That’s what we’ve seen play out over these last few years. That’s the same straddling nonsense as always. What that really is, is the concepts of the policy/the nuts-and-bolts and the personal clashing together. They get caught by their own dogma, and then spin away with spell-craft… as always.

I'm not who you keep saying I am. I’m not who you keep trying so hard to paint me as. I'm not who you so desperately need me to be. The vast majority of Americans are good people, not racists. It’s time to call the real ones out and put an end to this attempted dismantling of our culture through inflaming societal tensions. You want to talk about policy and tangibles? Then let’s do it. But we as a people must end the mainstream push of this Racecraft at whatever the cost. If we don’t, it’s going to tear our nation apart. That’s precisely what it’s designed to do. Turn over any “anti-racist” and even DEI rock these days and you’ll find anti-capitalism. How ‘bout that! How would you destroy a nation made as a quilt of the world? You’d riddle it with identity-obsession (intersectionality), chop that melting pot back into solids and tribes, enhance the differences between them while walling-off exchange of the same (cultural appropriation). It’s rather obvious what is taking place in our nation. I know for certain most of my countrymen share a vision and a worldview much more like mine than the toxicity you see above, and the evil of mandating race essentialism. To push this back once and for all, it’s going to take a lot more people standing up in a bold manner and speaking their mind like this. We hear every day who they want you to be, who they need you to be. It’s time to tell your own story. Show the world who you really are. Because once they lose the sense of intimidation, the fear of the name-calling, the impact of the spells, it’s over. This “anti-racist” racist push ends as soon as a critical-mass simply says “no”. It is way past time.

. . .

Between the time I started writing this and the day I posted it, I opened a Spaces discussion on Twitter about policies of “Equity”. We had a fantastic conversation that went on for 3+hrs. It only ended because my phone died. The brain trust in the room that night was incredible! I was honored to be part of it. We recorded the talk and it’s available in the link below. If this topic grabs you at all, I encourage you to check it out. I believe this to be one of the most important topics in the nation right now.

https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1lPKqBBQdAPGb?s=20

---

---