If you could think of one thing on which the future of life on Earth depended, what would it be? Access to clean water? Sufficient supplies of energy? Those are important to be sure, but according to white Alternet author Frank Joyce, it’s “bringing the 500-year rampage of the white man to a halt.”
In his article, republished by Salon, Joyce deigned to recognize that “some whites played a part in ending slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow segregation, and South African apartheid.” But now, Joyce argued, “there is surely a role whites can play in restraining other whites in this era.”
In fact, Joyce is encouraged that white people are seeing the light about racism through the odious GOP presidential candidates, bigoted Fox News and violent police unions. Yet, “this encouraging development is hardly the dominant view. To the contrary, given the possibility that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson or one of their ilk might become president, white supremacist ideology seems to be digging in harder than ever.” Um … Ben Carson is a white supremacist?
On a presidential strain, Joyce then reminisced that “once upon a time, I foolishly thought that there was no way that Ronald Reagan could get elected president. Lesson learned.” Joyce seemed to forget that Reagan instituted MLK Day as a holiday. More importantly, standards of living for black Americans improved under his administration. According to First Things author Michael Novak, under Reagan, “the economic achievements of black Americans reached all-time highs. Yet this is not the record most people have heard of through the media.” You can say that again.
Whites today have much to answer for, Joyce wrote. “Now is the time to start contingency planning for intensified resistance to mass deportations of immigrants, atrocities against Muslims and extreme danger to African Americans.” Yes, we need to make sure nobody shoots up innocent Muslims. Or beheads them. Or sets them on fire. Or sells their women into sex slavery.
After a discussion of the sanitization of history focusing on Woodrow Wilson’s “viciously racist speech and behavior,” Joyce declared that “white racism distorts how we think about virtually everything, including history itself.” He then brought up the desire of the Lakota Sioux to reclaim their sacred Black Hills from the desecration that is Mount Rushmore. In response to a reader’s questioning “Where will it all end? Will we have to destroy Mount Rushmore?” Joyce responded, “Maybe we should. Not just because it honors slave owners Jefferson and Washington, Mount Rushmore is also a powerful symbol of brutality and racism toward indigenous people.”
You know who else believes in erasing history and culture from the very mountains? The Taliban. And ISIS takes a back seat to no other medieval troglodytes when it comes to the physical manifestations of history written counter to its worldview. You know, scratch a modern liberal ...
“Of course white people can’t ‘save’ the world. That mindset is the problem not the solution,” concluded Joyce. “But we can help.”
If I were Mr. Joyce, I’d stay out of it altogether. Trying to “help” as a white man is apparently toxic to progress.
