Louis CK: Whites Will Pay

There’s an American comedian called Louis CK who has picked up the gist of whiteness theory.

According to the theory, race is an artificial category invented by whites to uphold their unearned privilege over the non-white other.

Below is a {snip} transcript [of a YouTube clip]:

Sorry I’m being so negative. I’m a bummer, I don’t know I shouldn’t be I’m a very lucky guy. I got a lot going from me. I’m a healthy, I’m relatively young. I’m white; which thank God for that sh** boy. That is a huge leg up, are you kidding me? I love being white I really do. Seriously, if you’re not white you’re missing out because this sh** is pearly good. Let me be clear by the way, I’m not saying that white people are better. I’m saying that being white is clearly better, who could even argue? If it was an option I would reup ever year. Oh yeah I’ll take white again absolutely, I’ve been enjoying that, I’ll stick with white thank you. Here’s how great it is to be white, I could get in a time machine and go to any time and it would be f***** awesome when I get there. That is exclusively a white privilege. Black people can’t f*** with time machines. A black guy in a time machine is like hey anything before 1980 no thank you, I don’t want to go. But I can go to any time. The year 2, I don’t even know what was happening then but I know when I get there, welcome we have a table right here for you sir . . . thank you, it’s lovely here in the year 2. I can go to any time in the past, I don’t want to go to the future and find out what happens to white people because we’re going to pay hard for this sh**, you gotta know that . . . we’re not just gonna fall from number 1 to 2. They’re going to hold us down and f*** us in the ass forever and we totally deserve it but for now wheeeee. If you’re white and you don’t admit that it’s great, you’re an a******. It is great and I’m a man. How many advantages can one person have? I’m a white man, you can’t even hurt my feelings. What can you really call a white man that really digs deep? Hey cracker . . . oh ruined my day. Boy shouldn’t have called me a cracker, bringing me back to owning land and people what a drag.

The basic message of the Louis CK rant? Whites have always been privileged at the expense of everyone else and will be justifiably harshly punished for it.

So confident is Louis CK of the theory that he even extends it through known time. Go back in a time machine, even to the year 2 A.D., and there will be whites lapping up their privilege by denying a decent life to others.

The theory explains quite a bit about the liberal attitude to white forms of identity. If you accept the theory, then it makes sense to treat whites differently and to see any expression of white identity as an assertion of supremacy. After all, if it’s true that whiteness was created to oppress others, then anyone defending it must be in favour of white supremacy.

The theory, though, is rubbish. First, it’s clearly nonsensical to claim that what European villagers were doing in the year 2 A.D. had any significant effect on the lives of African or Asian villagers of the same era.

Second, it simply isn’t true that Europeans have always had the upper hand when it comes to conquest and colonialism. For much of history Europe itself was conquered by foreign powers and subject to colonial rule.

Think of Russia under the Tatar yoke for several centuries. Or Spain under the Moors. Or the Balkans under the Ottomans.

It’s not even true that whites are the most privileged racial group in America today. That distinction clearly goes to Asians:

In the year 2000, 4.1% of America’s population was Asian American, but Asian Americans were 13.6% of doctors and dentists, 13.2% of computer specialists, 9.9% of engineers, 6.1% of accountants, 8.7% of post-secondary teachers (such as uni professors) and 6.9% of architects.

Asian Americans have the highest percentage of two-parent families (73%) and the highest mean family income ($77,000). White Americans were somewhat lower on both counts (67% and $70,000).

Asian Americans, though only 4 percent of the nation’s population, account for nearly 20 percent of all medical students. Forty-five percent of Berkeley’s freshman class, but only 12 percent of California’s populace, consists of Asian-Americans. And at UT-Austin, 18 percent of the freshman class is Asian American, compared to 3 percent for the state.

So what are white Americans being punished for? They have been singled out for the sake of a political theory.

Liberals want to make unchosen qualities like our sex and our race not matter. But this means they have to explain why these qualities mattered in the past.

Some right-liberals are content to simply explain their existence in terms of the backwardness of history which progress will finally overcome. But left-liberals generally go further than this.

Left-liberals assert, first, that categories like our sex and race are not natural entities but artificial social constructs. Why were they constructed? As an act of power. They allowed one privileged class of people to assert a dominance of will over another oppressed class of people.

So there has to be a dominant oppressor group with an artificial, supremacist identity for the theory to work. Whites got tapped on the shoulder for the role.

As a result, we get to be the ones who deserve what’s coming to us.

But again, it’s all theory. It all depends on a number of doubtful claims, such as that our sex and our race are social constructs, and that male identities and white identities have an essentially negative purpose and origin in oppressing others.