Racist Extremism Is Wrong, No Matter Its Color

Let’s ask a rhetorical question. Can you imagine the Washington Post publishing a piece by a prominent white poet, activist, and performer that contains a gem such as “could it be that black folks are . . . completely full of it”? Would the Post publish a piece that advises white people to “simply disengage with black America in discussions about race altogether, adding: “Let them have their little Black Panther chats in the . . . comment sections”? Would it be pleased to print the thoughts of a white nationalist who said that “most black people . . . [come] from a place of perpetual obtuseness and indifference”?

By now you’ve guessed that I’m quoting a piece in the Post, just flipping the races. Yes, to exactly no one’s shock or surprise, a mainstream American paper–one of the most prestigious news outlets in the world–has published a radical black screed in which the writer, Zach Linly, declares that black Americans need to let white people “cry,” while black people “sit [their] intellectual selves back and enjoy it.” The author revels in a “bottomless open bar of white tears” and advocates “completely disengaging from white America.”

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The irony of course is that many of the people who are most furious, who seethe with rage at the overpowering white supremacy of our hateful land are people who enjoy world-historical levels of privilege. Indeed, their rage and unreason is itself a path to power and respectability–just ask National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates. And yet they seethe exactly at the time when people of color from across the world are sometimes literally dying in their efforts to reach America, this alleged hellscape of white supremacy.

{snip} In the last few weeks, writers left and right have leveled their guns at the alt-right, and deservedly so. It’s a vile movement that’s one part white nationalist, one part malicious trolling, and one part Russian disruption operation. It deserves every syllable of the condemnation it receives. But how is it remotely right and proper to condemn racism on one side while coddling and even encouraging the same level of race-hate from the left?

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{snip} Fashionable hate is still hate, and it is ripping our nation apart.