Stan Grant is a white man who is a prominent commentator on Oz’s BBC. He believes that China’s hegemonic violence is — wait for… — a manifestation Whiteness.
Understanding race and racism is essential to understanding China. Particularly, understanding whiteness is essential.
Too often, the discussion around the rise and fall of the new superpower revolves around geo-political issues, authoritarianism versus democracy, or about whether we will go into war.
Race is at the core of it all.
Stan, you may be wondering if Chinese nationalist thought in the Xi era revolves around Han Chinese superiority. How is that possible? Stan is a step ahead of you.
In some ways, Xi’s China could be considered the end of whiteness. The Chinese Communist Party, however, mirrors whiteness.
Ironically, Xi has become what he opposed. He is a Han nationalist, his idea of Chinese power being ethnic Han superiority — he persecutes non-Han, white people in his country.
Xi Jinping, if whiteness is power is its champion.
White power continues in darker skin.
David Rieff attempts to understand this in his Substack newsletter. Excerpt:
The White Supremacist construct of imperialism is therefore an imperialist power. Even if you’re not white, to be one is to be considered a white power. Grant is a master of this argument, no matter what your opinion. Xi’s China may have been the end of whiteness, he says, but “the Chinese Communist Party mirrors whiteness.” How could this be? It turns out that Xi, a Han nationalist, believes that Chinese power is ethnic Han superiority.
Grant may be right. Grant isn’t going to be questioned about his efforts to place all forms capitalism, including the Chinese and arguably all forms power, in the Procrustean Bed White Supremacy. Instead, Grant insists that Han persecution of non Han is no less than white people persecuting nonwhite people.
It is as if you have entered a lunatic asylum. Although the Han aren’t white, it is clear that they are. Grant’s world is not fringe, but he is simply expressing an emblematic figure for a wide current of opinions. Whiteness is synonymous with power. Grant sees the tragedy in Xi’s China as that it has become whiteness, which he considers historically its opponent. Grant says that Xi Xinping is its champion…the continuation and extension of white power with darker skin.
In short, whiteness is a metaphor. This metaphorization of understanding is what it is.
This isn’t something you can laugh at (“Look at these lunatic liberals!”). Move on. Rieff, a man on the Left, notes that Grant’s view does not fall on the fringe but is “a very broad current of an opinion” among Western elites, particularly white Western elites.
What direction do liberals, white or not, think this “blame whiteyy” stuff will go? It’s one thing to look at the racial dynamics of society and culture. But it’s quite another to blame an entire race for all the problems in the world as if it were a reflection of their racial identity (“whiteness”). People can be cruel about white people, and there will be no consequences. They may even be promoted in the elite system. But, nobody would dare to speak poorly of non-white peoples. This is why you see the absurd claim that Xi Jinping’s racist remarks are actually white racism.
Where do they see this going? David Brooks was stunned by the blatant anti-black racism displayed by some Latino members on the Los Angeles City Council. This tape was secretly recorded and then released.
Apart from being offended at the racist comments made to me by Los Angeles City Council members — as many others were — I was also struck and moved by their underlying worldview.
Council President Nury Martinez, who has since resigned, spoke with two colleagues, a labor ally, and discussed a variety of topics, including redistricting. However, there were two assumptions that underpinned much of their discussion. Their first assumption was that America is split into monolithic, racial blocs. They take the world as a whole to be a collection of people, but it is a world with rigid racial groups.
Martinez once mocked someone for being “with the Blacks.”
Second, it was assumed that these monolithic ethnic racial blocs are in an endless ethnic war for power. Their conversation centered on the need to redraw Council Districts to benefit Latino leaders.
One participant in the conversation stated that “it’s really simple.” “You got 100 people, right? Fivety-two are Mexicano. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel good about my chances of winning your ass.”
These two assumptions weren’t made overnight. There has been a long-running discussion in the United States about how to view racial groups. There are many people, including IbramX. Kendi, who view American society as a struggle between oppressors and oppressed. When discussing a person’s identity, they place emphasis on race and race consciousness. When minority groups use their power to resist white supremacy, justice will be done. Kendi says, “Antiracist discrimination is the only solution to racism discrimination.”
Others, such as Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatterton Williams and Reihan Salm, argue that racial categorization can be the problem. The idea of systemic racism is based on crude racial categorization. Williams argues that America should fight racism and, over the long-term, get rid of “the categories resulting from the collision of Africa with Europe in the slave trading and the New World.”
This is done by emphasizing the commonality of all human beings and by emphasizing the complexity of each individual’s identity — which includes race, but also other aspects. Traffic in the racial essentialist categories that were displayed so prominently during the City Council meeting is not something you want to do.
This conversation shows what happens when assumptions from the former school are accepted as a fact of life. It’s not possible to fight oppression with a righteous spirit. A bunch of people assume public life is a struggle between groups, and they are likely to have derogatory views about people from other groups.
Yes, it is, but it’s too late, don’t ya think? This country has seen at least ten years of demonization and dehumanization of white people, as a group, through elite culture, including elite media culture which has amplified the outrageous, racist claims made by Robin DiAngelo and IbramX. Kendi. Woke Capitalism has enabled these radical race leaders in corporate life. It’s not uncommon to hear Europeans who work for multinationals in the United States complaining about American cultural politics being introduced into their European workplaces.
When I was working as a columnist at the Dallas Morning News fifteen years ago, I mentioned that there was a lot conflict in Dallas between Latinos and blacks. My then-colleague, a white liberal, asked our boss to spike the piece, saying that it was false and would create problems. My boss, who was more liberal than me, let the piece go because she knew it was true. However, Dallas liberals did not officially notice these things. A good friend, a raging, white liberal gay man who lived in a mixed, white-black-Latino area, wrote to me to tell me that it was true and that it must be addressed. Our elites, especially white elites, refuse to do this. They would rather live in their ideologic bubble.
Tribalism is fundamental to our human nature, it is true. The creation of the Individual by classical liberalism was a significant achievement in justice in many (but not all) aspects. Martin Luther King was adamant that black Americans in America should not be treated as monolithic groups by a white-dominated society, but as equal citizens. He was correct. Now, “justice” is defined as equality of outcomes and “equity”. This is why people of favored ethnicities are now massively favored and others heavily disfavored. It’s not based on their actual talent or performance but on their race. This is how it looks:
Similar, the insane University of Minnesota doctor’s graduation ceremony in which new doctors vowed fight against structural racism and other suspects in the profession.
Also see:
This is what you know will happen in the long-term. Encourage people to look for Asian doctors to receive the best medical care. This will reduce the belief that any physician, regardless of race, can provide quality medical care. We now know that doctors were admitted into medical school based on ideological categories, which included valuing intellectual abilities over race.
Talking about “blackness in America” the same way as we talk about whiteness would lead to endless conversations in the media about how crime is making American cities unsafe. It doesn’t matter that black victims of crime are predominantly black; these complicating factors don’t bother liberals who favor Theory over messy Reality when dealing with social issues. (Conservatives tend not to think this way about free-market economys). There is little discussion about the many factors that contribute to multigenerational poverty and which drive crime. There is little talk about the decline of the black family or the values that are embedded in any community, which make it possible for young people (and those not so young)to thrive. The media and other elites have only one acceptable answer to the culture. It is Whiteness.
I remember mentioning in this space that a Baton Rouge police officer said recently that crime has not been as bad in the capital of Louisiana, which is overwhelmingly black. He also stated that it has now become more widespread in the city and not just in certain areas. It’s terrible, but his worst comment was that he couldn’t think of anything that would make it better. There is no need for stricter policing after the Summer of Floyd. (Baton Rouge was the location where Alton Sterling took place; the Obama Justice Department investigated the killing and found that the two officers were not acting in a criminal manner. But bad feelings are everywhere. The officer said that there are no forces within the city’s black community that promote social stability. One of my white liberal friends in Baton Rouge was a depressed former juvenile court judge. He said that you can see the reasons why things are so bad in this city by going to juvenile court. He explained that the complete collapse of the black family and its social consequences were shocking and inevitable. It’s not something middle-class white professionals discuss if they have any doubts about the liberal narrative. We either don’t want it to be perceived as racist or we are genuinely curious if some of this stuff might be racist. Because their children don’t attend school with the ghetto kids and because the ghetto is far away, middle class professionals of all races have the ability to ignore this. It’s not the case anymore, at least in my old city.
These realities are easily escaped by those who don’t have the burden of facing these difficult facts and by liberal elites that manage the Narrative. It would be a strange thought to think that history would have taught us how terrible it is to make people look bad for their race or religion. Yet, here’s our liberals doing it as a routine — even to the extent of blaming Chinese racism for white people. How does this mentality differ from the letter that Martin Latsis, head in Ukraine of Soviet secret police, sent to his agents explaining how Lenin’s Red Terror campaign can be carried out?
You don’t need to look at the incriminating evidence file to find out if the accused fought against the Soviets with words or arms. Instead, ask him which class he is, what his education and profession are. These questions will decide the fate of the accused. This is the essence and meaning of the Red Terror.
We’ve seen the Soviet Union do it. In Nazi Germany. Also in the segregated South. In Rwanda. In Rwanda. And in Europe. It is essential to social groups. Tribalism is difficult to distinguish from racism. It is part of our nature. It’s not something we can change. Los Angeles’s Latino and anti-black tribalism is a typical example of how the rest of the world operates. Liberalism’s de-tribalization is one of its greatest achievements. (The downside is the loss in social solidarity. But that’s another topic.
Yet, the Left and its Establishment Right allies have destroyed it all. They believe only white people can be racist and that we must contain and suppress white people, who infuse their whiteness with the polluting seed of racism, to create a racial utopia. It is shocking for them to hear Latino politicians speak in open, racial terms behind closed doors. They don’t think black pols in L.A. are doing the same thing. Do they not believe that Latino voters, and black voters, outside of polite middle-class settings, think and speak the same way as Latino voters? This is what working-class whites believe. This is how the world works. This is the achievement of civilization. It’s important to recognize that all people are morally equally and to treat them accordingly, even if it causes conflict with tribal loyalties. Harper Lee’s fictional white small town lawyer, Atticus Finch was a symbol of classical liberal tradition. He stood up for his tribe in order to defend a Jim Crow Southern man. According to black law professors, Atticus has been called a “white hero” and a dangerous myth because of the notion of justice he represents.
Liberals today see justice differently from Atticus Finch. They see it as Karl Marx. They expect all white Americans to act in the same way as they do on campus: with guilt-ridden docility. It’s unlikely that it will go down this way, even if there is serious economic collapse. For years, I have been ranting about how leftist identity politics invariably calls up demons among the white population that they will not be able control. Carl Trueman gave a lecture last week about the erotic draw of Evil. He also mentioned the Nazis as absolute masters in aesthetics. As I sat in the audience, my thoughts turned to how wakingness has not been able to realize its full potential as a totalitarian ideology. They haven’t yet found a way that makes it sexy. We could be in serious trouble if the white tribalists and radical Right ever master aesthetics.
What I find most disturbing about this Stan Grant moronic piece is the message it conveys about the need to have intellectual classes, media, academic, and scientific. — to not see the world as it really is but instead interpret it in a way that comforts their prejudices. A system that lies about its reality will eventually collapse. Stan Grant’s column is not a serious analysis of contemporary China or its ambitions. However, David Rieff points out that Grant’s way of understanding reality is very common among his peers. This is how these people see the world. Spend enough time with them and you will see that there are whole areas of human experience they don’t want you to know about because it violates their inner model. This makes it clear that society is fragile because its leaders live by therapeutic lies.
Sign up today
Receive weekly emails to your inbox
It will all be blood for everyone when that social order collapses. This is due in large part to postliberal American Left. They did so much to raise awareness of racial identity and make it the most prominent political characteristic of American life today. It is inexcusable that they did this in a diverse society where there are many of us who want peace and harmony.
Hannah Arendt wrote in 1951 her book The Origins Of Totalitarianism, that one common characteristic of pre-totalitarian liberal elites both in Russia and Germany was a carefree willingness of them to tear down pillars of civilisation. This was simply to enjoy watching others who were unjustly excluded from the past rush to take their place. The history of our civilization’s fall and decline will include the Western elites. These are not all leftists.
Stan Grant’s idea of equating whiteness with power is stupid and ideological. Stan Grant is a major Australian celebrity. David Rieff stated that Grant’s outlook towards the world is a common one, at least among the ruling classes. Grant has a lot of power over the Narrative that will guide our understanding of the world. It is important to realize that they are not trustworthy.
