Wise was clearly upset by Republican gains in the mid-term elections. So he wrote an open letter to American whites, in which he takes comfort in the impending demise of white people:
You need to drink up.
And quickly.
And heavily.
Because your time is limited.
Real damned limited.
So party while you can, but mind the increasingly loud clock ticking away in the corners of your consciousness.
The clock that reminds you how little time you and yours have left.
Already there are two big questions to be asked here. One is why Tim Wise hates whites so much. The second is why he thinks that the Republican Party is devoted to the defence of whites.
But, first, here are some more of the charmless thoughts of Tim Wise:
you will lose...
It is coming, and soon.
This isn’t hubris. It isn’t ideology. It is not wishful thinking.
It is math...
The kind of math that proves how your kind -- mostly older white folks beholden to an absurd, inaccurate, nostalgic fantasy of what America used to be like -- are dying.
You’re like the bad guy in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot five times, or stabbed ten, or blown up twice, and who will eventually pass -- even if it takes four sequels to make it happen -- but who in the meantime keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were finally dead this time.
Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends.
Our ankles survive.
You do not.
So on to the first question. Why does Tim Wise hate whites?
I think the answer has to do with how left-liberals explain the existence of inequality. Liberals believe that inherited group characteristics, such as our sex, our race or our sexuality, should not matter when it comes to our life outcomes.
That means that liberals take it very seriously if one group appears to be advantaged in any way (in liberal-speak "privileged").
Inevitably, such advantage does exist. So liberals have to explain why advantage exists and how it can be overcome.
To answer that it exists because of differences between groups in talents or interests is not accepted by liberals. Liberals generally assume that talents and interests are spread evenly amongst different groups. To answer that advantage exists because one group forms an historic majority is also considered illegitimate.
The answer generally given by liberals is that group advantage exists because of discrimination by one group against another, motivated perhaps by prejudice or bigotry. Right liberals tend to believe that all groups are capable of such bigotry but that progress and enlightenment will overcome historic injustice.
But there are left liberals who spin the theory a bit further. They hold that one dominant group (men, whites) deliberately created a system of discrimination to uphold an unearned privilege at the expense of the excluded "other".
So the dominant group becomes the barrier to the historic achievement of justice and equality. It becomes the "cosmic enemy" of humanity. So to overcome oppression and inequality you have to set about undermining the dominant group, deconstructing it, bringing it down.
Don't believe me? Listen, then, as Tim Wise continues his rant:
in the pantheon of American history, conservative old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.
Fine, keep it up. It doesn't matter.
Because you’re on the endangered list.
And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving.
Most leftists don't express the "cosmic enemy" idea as strongly as Tim Wise does. Some do not express it at all (e.g. some of the left-liberals in the men's rights movement). But the beliefs I described above are not that uncommon on the left. They are to be found, for instance, in the whiteness studies courses to be found in dozens of universities. And they explain, too, the more general feeling to be found in modern Western politics that it is somehow progressive for established white communities to be broken up (I've had two principals apologise to me in job interviews for the number of white students at their schools).
As a typical example of the "whites as cosmic enemy" theme, there is the article "Privileged whites" penned by Jennifer Clarke, a teacher at the Australian National University. In this article, Clarke describes Australia as a "regionally anomalous white enclave run largely by white people to our own advantage", in which anti-discrimination laws should be applied more effectively so that "a majority of Australians would no longer be of northern European ethnic heritage".
Tim Wise wants the same sort of solution for the US. He doesn't want an armed pogrom against whites. He just wants them to die out and be replaced by other races:
It's OK. Because in about forty years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it...
Do whatever you gotta do, but remember that those who are the victims of your greed and indifference take the long view.
They know, but you do not, that justice is not for the sprinters, but rather for the long distance runners who will be hitting their second wind, right about the time that you collapse from exhaustion...
Because those who have lived on the margins, who have been abused, maligned, targeted by austerity measures and budget cuts, subjected to racism, classism, sexism, straight supremacy and every other form of oppression always know more about their abusers than the abusers know about their victims...
And they know how to regroup, and plot, and plan, and they are planning even now -- we are -- your destruction.
And I do not mean by that your physical destruction...
We just have to be patient.
And wait for you to pass into that good night, first politically, and then, well...
Do you hear it?
The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?
Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.
Which brings me to the second question. Wise assumes that the Republicans are a pro-white group. But this isn't obviously true. The Republican leadership has been keen to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and the party has done little to stem the demographic transformation of the US.
But the left-liberal theory assumes that the system is run in the interests of the dominant group. The theory works better if the Republicans are assumed to be acting in the interests of the white majority (even if there is little evidence that this is so). Therefore Wise portrays a Republican victory as a victory for those who want to keep America as a majority white country.
And what about our response to Tim Wise? First, we have to recognise that Wise is correct about the demographic transformation of the US and its long-term consequences. So we need to continue to build up opposition to open borders in the US and elsewhere.
Second, we need to criticise the liberal assumptions about equality that lead on to hostility against whites. It's utterly wrong for liberals to try to make race and sex not matter in a society. They do matter and should matter.
If, for instance, the Danes are the historic majority in Denmark then of course they will be the "dominant" group. Yes, they will have the "advantage" when it comes to representing the cultural norms of that society or filling most of the positions of power and influence in that society. But that doesn't represent an illegitimate, immoral privilege. It's a normal aspect of a nation of people maintaining its own existence.
Yes, whites in America have been the "dominant" group in the above sense. Perhaps that does confer an advantage on whites in America in the sense of representing cultural norms or occupying a large number of public offices. But that is a perfectly normal and proper kind of advantage, one that occurs in every living nation, including those in Asia and Africa. What is improper is for liberals, with their abstract, ideological approach to equality, to seek to undermine this kind of "advantage".
Are white Americans privileged in other ways? Yes and no. In terms of income, education and family outcomes, Asian Americans do better than white Americans. It's true that white Americans tend to do better than hispanics and blacks. Liberals assume that talent and interests are spread evenly across groups and that such unequal outcomes must therefore be due to discrimination. But if the problem is discrimination by white Americans toward the excluded other, why then do Asians do so well? Why do they do even better than whites?
We need a better, non-liberal approach to equality. The current one delivers us the absurdity of Tim Wise, an "anti-racist" who treats one particular race as a cosmic enemy and who will not rest until the historic majority is no more.
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