The Flimsy Camouflage of the Alt-Right

Brit Bennett - Sensitivity readers are only controversial if you ignore the fact that in this diverse country, it is entirely possible to publish a book that has been selected, read, and edited by only white people

The average book will pass through a white agent, a white editor, a white publicist, a white sales team, a white cover artist, and white booksellers. And this process is considered natural and objective.



A Cultural Critic - Good writing is good writing. You are judging the perspective of a person based on skin colour alone. That is #racist. Shame on you.

Muhammad Rasheed - You're saying that as if all people are cookie cutter copies of each other with only skin color being the only difference between us. Don't ignore political and cultural biases.

A Cultural Critic - Britt is doing precisely that—ignoring individual differences between people—as the suggestion is that race is all that matters. I’ll be blunt enough to call it #racism.

Muhammad Rasheed - No. The problem is that cultural biases are built into those individuals, and reinforced among each other when one particular group with it's well known myopic viewpoint holds a monopoly of power over an industry. That's where the #racism comes in.

A Cultural Critic - So a white man is so inescapably conditioned by his #whiteness and #masculinity that he is incapable of stepping outside of his alleged privileged perspective? We then reach important conclusions about who this person is based on his race and sex alone. That’s dangerous thinking

Muhammad Rasheed - It also adds some insight to the nature of the very real systemic racism prevalent in the country, and to a degree explains why monopolies/cartels are wrong, and why anti-trust laws are necessary. No good comes from all the gatekeepers being of one group like that. None.

Unless the only "good" you wish to see in society are for more whites than any other group to pass through the gate.

Muhammad Rasheed - Anyway, yes, it's been scientifically proven that whites are inescapably conditioned to be incapable of stepping outside of their privileged perspective.

Gutsell, J. N., & Inzlicht, M. Empathy constrained: Prejudice predicts reduced mental simulation of actions during observation of outgroups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2010), doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.03.011

A Cultural Critic - I guess I should just accept my #WhitePrivilege and self-flagellate.

Muhammad Rasheed - Based on the historic record, I think it's much more dangerous to pretend an all white male cartel of gate keepers isn't problematic for anyone not a white male.

A Cultural Critic - As matter of historic record, yes. But this isn’t 1950 anymore—the social, legal, political landscape is quite different today. But to my point, you can’t obviously escape conclusion that judging another’s perspective based on skin colour is #racism. I’m not okay with that.

Muhammad Rasheed - It's not 1950, but the blunt and anti-Black attitudes publicly vomited by your parent's generation have become the coded, political talking points of the modern white conservative. The only thing that has changed is the "politically correct" dressing over top your true feelings.

You're pretending that this is only about the shallow prejudice of "skin color," while we BOTH know it's about cultural indoctrination, long-held resentments, and long-held promises with the white elite who've agreed to uphold the white race over Blacks to keep you from slavery.

A Cultural Critic - If you don’t want to engage the issue at hand, that’s fine.

Muhammad Rasheed - All of these points are indeed the "issue at hand," and exactly why that graph's revelation of the cartel of white male gatekeepers over the publishing industry comes across as ominous and insightful as it does.

A Cultural Critic - Systematic racism is real. “Cultural indoctrination [and] long-held resentments” are also real. That’s not what we are talking about. I would never judge your viewpoint on the basis of your skin colour alone. That’s textbook #racism. You haven’t explained how it’s not.

Muhammad Rasheed -

Systemic racism = REAL.Cultural indoctrination & long-held resentments = REALThe socio-economic exclusion of POC by white males because of the above = REALJudging white males solely because of "the color of their skin" = NOT REAL

A Cultural Critic - Racism is morally egregious, and we should call it out in all of its manifestations. I just wish to judge people on the content of their words and actions rather than judge people on the basis of skin colour alone.

Muhammad Rasheed - Racism is an economic system design to elevate one group at the expense of another. Any proclamations of having a zero tolerance for the tradition needs to start there and center it to be considered serious. The "judging on skin color" is just the marketing campaign support.

A Cultural Critic - Are you saying that the empirical veracity of the first three points leads you to conclude that white males can’t escape their privileged position—and so when we judge white males as white makes, we are in fact judging them on the basis of this larger edifice?

Muhammad Rasheed - No, I'm judging what you want me to believe regarding your expressed opinion of "skin color," as it conflicts with the truth of how white males have behaved within the last 500 years. Your credibility here is at a deficit.

A Cultural Critic - A very #Marxist view of #racism. I disagree with this diagnosis, but it’s intelligible and perhaps defensible.

Muhammad Rasheed - It's a very well-documented view of how the systemic racism you admitted to came into being and flourished into the present day. It's the very source of the West's obscene wealth, particularly that controlled by the legacy families known as the 1%.

I have little interest in Marxism, and don't care how the facts of this history align to Karl's viewpoints.

A Cultural Critic - M. Rasheed wrote: "No, I'm judging what you want me to believe [...] Your credibility here is at a deficit."

Okay, now I have no idea what you are saying.

Muhammad Rasheed - lol Try.

What do you THINK I'm saying, CC?

A Cultural Critic - I thought you were saying that it’s reasonable to judge white men quo white men because of long standing history of systematic racism, cultural indoctrination. In that sense, when you judge a white man as a white man, you aren’t judging him vacuum: you’re judging in largr context

I thought you were saying that, but you flat out rejected that claim before questioning my credibility.

Muhammad Rasheed - Okay, I interpreted your summary as saying that it's acceptable to judge whites based on shallow skin color because of things that happen outside of the individual's control.

What I was rejecting was the idea that this cartel of whites was innocent based on the nature of how systemic racism functions. Your insistence that the OP's anger at seeing the graph results was unfair makes your credibility suspect.

A Cultural Critic - I just don’t believe in judging a person’s perspective on anything other than their words and actions—not their race, cultural heritage, or historical factors outside of their control. If that makes my “credibility suspect,” so be it.

Muhammad Rasheed - Put yourself in my shoes and see it from my perspective for a minute just so you can understand the other point of view. Systemic racism has two functions:

1) To maintain a permanent bondsman class to enable the 1%'s wealth hoards to grow
2) To partner with the poor whites to save them from being at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. "Whiteness" is the racist aristocracy birthed from this partnership that today is coded as "the promise to the white working class."

The structure still functions today as it had back in 1950, it's just covered up with the smoke & mirror politically correct talk. The infamous wealth gap between the two races is by design, and cartels of white men are the gatekeepers that make sure their race is always ahead. None of this has anything to do with "skin color." It's not about "race." That talk is just the marketing campaign/justification for the true point of systemic racism, which is no less than plundering the wealth of one group to feed to the aristocracy. I'm the one being plundered, and my protests are dismissed by those doing the plundering, and the middle class and poor whites who support manage the system for the elites to make sure THEY don't become the plundered.

No matter what happens to them, they rest assured still that at least they aren't ME.

I'm fighting for my freedom still, after 150 yrs of fighting in the war that abolished chattel, yet here I still am. I cannot afford to not be suspicious of a group of white male gatekeepers.

Muhammad Rasheed - Do you understand? I am at war. I'm being deliberately prevented from building wealth over generations for my legacy. I've been politically and economically excluded from the mainstream to prevent me from escaping the exploitation trap created for me.

This is my state in the country of my birth, and you think I can afford to treat my active enemy with kind-hearted generosity without judgment, when he only EVER sees me as his prey.

Muhammad Rasheed - Before I can have that attitude that you can certainly afford to have, I will need the following conditions met:

1) Stop exploiting & plundering Black people
2) Pay them their Reparations due from generations of plunder/theft of their property
3) Stop suppressing their vote
4) Step aside and allow Blacks to do business and manage their own political affairs without hate/interference; allow them to be equal citizens of these United States of America, enjoying all the freedoms you currently take for granted.

Do this and I too will be able to live in a utopia La-La land, capable of seeing the OP's white male gatekeeper charts without instantly flinching in rage & disgust for good damn reason.

A Cultural Critic - I agree that systematic racism has some of its roots in economics (not just evolutionary tribalism) and that white males disproportionately occupy privileged societal positions, in large part, because of this structure. I disagree, however, with your fatalism about white people

Muhammad Rasheed - lol That's because you are a white person indoctrinated into worshiping yourself as the son of god, and the pinnacle of human evolution. Of course you would reject the truth of what our groups' relationship has meant to me. You've justified my status by convincing yourself that I deserved every evil thing your group does to me ("He was like a DEMON!!" ~Officer Wilson).