Antiracism is a religion

Black professor John McWhorter writes about antiracism:

My main aims will be:

to argue that this new ideology is actually a religion in all but name;
to argue that to understand it as a religion is to see coherence in what may seem like a welter of “crazy” or overblown behaviors;
to explore why this religion is so attractive to so many people;
to show that this religion is actively harmful to black people despite being intended as unprecedentedly “antiracist”;
to show that a pragmatic, effective, liberal and even Democratic-friendly agenda for rescuing black America need not be founded on the tenets of this new religion;
to suggest ways to lessen the grip of this new religion on our public culture.

I hope my observations will serve as one of many contributions to our debate over what constitutes “social justice.”

And this:

Modern “antiracism” is neither a philosophy nor a political program: it is a religious creed, complete with priests, Original Sin, heresy, evangelism, and millenialism (although it hasn’t quite gotten to forgiveness yet).

Another Black scholar writes:

I had yet to properly process just how much the death of George Floyd had changed America. When America exploded after the terrible video of Floyd’s last moments emerged, a collective guilt raged through our land. Millions of Americans, many of whom had never thought very much about race, were suddenly demanding justice and scrambling for any kind of moral absolution they could find. Corporations noticed this violent shift in public consciousness and threw themselves behind the movement for racial justice, eager to reassure their customers that if “silence is violence” then they would be happy to declare their allegiance to the cause. ...

The progressive narrative of race derives its authority from academic theories which hold that we live in a nation designed by white people who thrived by excluding other races from power. This version of history has accumulated tremendous power and influence in recent years. ...

What gives these theorists their enormous reservoir of moral power is the quasi-Marxist belief that the United States can be neatly divided into two discrete categories: racists and antiracists. In a white world plagued by inequality, it is the antiracist’s duty to proactively fight these injustices, even if that means employing racial discrimination to achieve racial equity. And since there is no greater sin than that of racism, moral power lies with the antiracist.

This is refreshing to read, as the current progressive line on systemic racism and antiracism is all a big hoax.

I have read all the stuff about Trayvon Martin, Ferguson Missouri, George Floyd, and all the other big cases in the news. I have read dozens of essays by American Blacks with anecdotes how they have been mistreated because of their skin color.

And yet I have yet to see a single example of someone mistreated for being Black.

Yes, some say that store clerks were rude to them, or cops stopped them unnecessarily, or bureaucrats seemed to make things difficult for them. But all these things have happened to me, and I can tell more egregious stories. And that is just me. I have no doubt that other White Americans have more seemingly-outragious stories.

The more I hear these stupid stories, the more it convinces me that systemic racism is all a big hoax.

As I write this, I am watching a stupid new movie I'm Your Woman. The title character is a White woman married to a Black man. It is set in the 1970s, so of course they have a run-in with a racist cop who is unnecessarily suspicious of the Black man, and tries to protect the White woman.

Except that he is not racist enough, as he should have followed thru on his suspicions. The White woman is holding a White baby at the same time she tells the cop that the very dark-skinned Black man is her husband. He should have figured that she was lying, because he was obviously not the father. The baby was stolen. The cop should have arrested both of them, and turned the baby over to social services for a legitimate adoption.

Sometimes I think these interracial sex movies are made to legitimate White women being deflowered by Black men. White girls are supposed to watch them and think that it is perfectly normal to date Black men. But this movie portrays it as a disaster. The Black man is a no-good criminal who treats her poorly. The White woman is mixed-up, but might have had a less miserable and criminal life if she had married a decent man.