Thursday, October 27, 2011

Ignant


ig·no·rant/ˈignərənt/


Adjective:
  1. Lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated.

I vaguely recall one evening, in a high school geometry class, something that still bothers me to this day. One of my peers, after arguing with the teacher over her failing grade, turned away from the teacher's desk and said, "Man, he ignant." Hilarious irony aside, I've noticed a trend of using the word 'ignorant' to describe somebody who holds politically incorrect opinions.

We all remember the James Watson brouhaha, where one of the guys responsible for discovering DNA was called ignorant by people who could hardly understand the word, let alone his work. Whether or not the liberal arts collective that descended upon Watson truly believe that he is some kind of idiot, this clever re-branding of ignorance is just another form of moral posturing. After all, what's better than being able to assert unquestionable moral and intellectual superiority over one of the 21st century's great minds?

But that's just the introduction for today's real topic--this is a blog (loosely) about Flint, dammit. A few days go, Rush Limbaugh had this to say about the city:

"If there is any dilapidation taking place, it's in the inner cities, and it's in cities run by Democrats for generations. Do I need to name names? Detroit, I hate to pick on 'em, Flint, Michigan, New Orleans. You go wherever Democrats have run the show for generations and you are gonna find big-time deterioration almost without exception."

To be perfectly honest, all I know about Limbaugh is that he's got a cool first name and my liberal friends/relatives hate his guts. I'm sure he has his faults, but he's got my support on this one for sure. Detroit, Flint, 'Nawlins and the like are all heavily liberal, black cities. Ignoring the latter, which happens to be the larger catalyst of dilapidation, Limbaugh has said nothing factually incorrect. Flint's mayor, Dayne Walling, fired back this morning.

"Communities across the state of Michigan all have the common challenge of rebuilding their infrastructure. That has nothing to do with party politics ... I see it as his responsibility to educate himself on the issues he speaks about ... "

Adding annoyance to aggravation, the article reports Dayne as having described Limbaugh's statements using the word of the hour: ignorant. I have to wonder what exactly he means by "educate himself on the issues he speaks about." Is flint suddenly not deteriorating? That would be strange, considering the blocks upon blocks of boarded up or torn down houses I see with my own two eyes, every single day...

"Stop saying true things."

Ignorant is stupid, is racist, is antisemitic, is sexist, is ageist, is evil. Dayne, like most liberals, uses the word as a placeholder for more inflammatory terms like those listed above. Because Limbaugh implicated democrats, Dayne couldn't just haul off and call him a homophobicracistnazibabykiller, so he went for the next best thing.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Moral Posturing, Part I



As will be the case with a great many of my posts, sleep is going to have to take the back seat for my rage. Take a look at this photo from the tumblr of one Alexis Marie, self-described poet/actress/black woman/writer/human. Her protest sign reads:

"13% of the population (Black people) have always known how fucked up the system is, 86% just learned this… together we are the 99%"

For the type of SWPLs who comprise the OWS crowds, as with any other facet of their lives, the name of the game is moral posturing. As a running definition, we'll call moral posturing the device by which one liberal asserts a kind of passive-aggressive superiority over another. Since it is potentially racist, sexist, or some other -ist to assert superiority by tangible means, moral posturing is the primary dominance tool in most political discussion.

For whites, the moral superiority ceiling stops at holding all the right opinions. This is not the case for our protester, pictured above. Being both black and a woman, she holds something whites can never have: tangible moral authority. Where whites can improve their moral stature by taking on positions of vehement anti-racism, she's its victim.

So even though she's at a protest which demands economic equality, there's still the nagging desire to let everyone know that she's more equal. Never mind the hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually on affirmative action programs--forget about the whole 'black' president thing--until black people have no crime or poverty, some form of institutionalized racism is still at work.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Ever the victim...

I was on campus the other day, reading some Gucci, when a man walked into the area and said, "We're having a student discussion in the community room. Free pizza and pop." Never one to turn down a slice of 'za, I decided to check it out. What awaited me was a student discussion on whether black organizations (NAACP, Urban League, etc.) were still relevant, or really needed.

Leading the discussion was a panel of faculty members: a husky black woman, husky black man, and the obligatory pear-shaped white woman--because most true believers of the white woman persuasion take after fruit of some sort. As can be expected of the kind of white woman you see at a black organizing event, she was the most outspoken and hostile towards the racist, misogynistic, patriarchal, male establishment. But not in those words--these ones:

  • "Now, more than ever, we need black organizations. Racism/classism is embedded in our language today."
  • "The seat of power hasn't shifted ... We need equality for women and minorities ... White men have the power."
Essentially, blacks are a smaller part of the whole; a whole which needs to rise up and seize power from evil white men. This is to be expected of the white-woman-diversity-professor type, because they know the root of all evil is white men. What I didn't expect was just how far into insanity this discussion would delve. Not to disappoint, the black woman panelist spoke:

  • "America is NOT post-racial. People like to think it is, because of Obama's election, but it's not. We still have poverty in our community, and we still have crime." 
Let's analyze what was just said: Electing a president for the sole purpose of proving we're not racist just doesn't seem to be enough to prove that there isn't some racist conspiracy. She told this to a room full of students paying for classes with money the were given just for being black. I like to think of it as 'letting them in on the entitlement racket' more than 'letting them know they're oppressed,' in any case. In their heart of hearts, even most true believers know the truth.