Category: Racism
Violent repeat offender brutally beats up elderly whites, Mexicans in racially motivated attack, officials say
A violent repeat offender brutally beat up elderly whites and Mexicans in a racially motivated attack in Arizona earlier this week, officials said.
In fact, 62-year-old Derek Kirven admitted to police he was targeting white and Mexican victims at the Escalante Multi-Generational Center in Tempe, KPNX-TV reported, citing newly filed court documents.
‘At that point, he essentially lost control. … He started to assault these people by punching them, throwing them to the ground.’
The station said Wednesday’s assault left several victims with serious injuries, including broken bones.
Tempe police said Kirven walked into a members-only area around 9 a.m. and was asked to leave because he was not a member, KPNX reported.
“He tried to come in, and he was told to leave because he was not a member, and then around 11:30 a.m., he came back,” Officer Jessica Ells told the station.
Police said that’s when Kirven snapped and began attacking people, many of whom were seated and waiting for lunch, KPNX said.
“At that point, he essentially lost control and began attacking all the members who were inside the center,” Ells added to the station.
“He started to assault these people by punching them, throwing them to the ground.”
You can view video of the attack here. A city of Tempe security guard eventually detained Kirven until police arrived, the station said.
One victim suffered a broken wrist, and another was left with a broken nose, KPNX said, citing court documents. A third victim — who has autism and suffers from seizures — was punched and knocked to the ground, the station noted.
What’s more, some victims were using walkers and had no way to defend themselves, police added to KPNX.
A fourth victim’s hearing aid, valued at $4,000, was damaged, the station said, adding that the victim was concerned the attack may have aggravated a previous open-heart surgery.
More from KPNX:
During an interview with police, Kirven said he felt staff asked him to leave because he is black, according to court documents.
He told detectives he intentionally targeted white and Mexican people and said he hoped more than one of them would die from their injuries, court documents show.
Court documents also state Kirven told police he would assault people again if given the chance.
Court papers indicate Kirven used racial slurs when referring to the victims and toward a Hispanic detective during the interview, KTVK-TV reported, adding that investigators said he called another detective names like “confederate,” “hillbilly” and “white trash.”
According to police reports, staff at the center offered Kirven a membership earlier Wednesday morning, but he did not have identification, the station said.
Kirven has an extensive criminal history in Arizona and New Mexico, KPNX said, citing court documents. The station added that he served time in New Mexico’s prison system for aggravated battery several years ago.
KPNX also said records show Kirven is a transient with felony convictions across multiple states, including kidnapping and aggravated battery, and he had two outstanding warrants at the time of his arrest.
Kirven was booked on multiple counts of aggravated assault, disorderly conduct, trespassing, and criminal damage, KTVK reported.
Kirven is now in the custody of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and is being held on $500,000 bond, KPNX said.
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The Spectator P.M. Ep. 180: The Woke Claims Jingle Bells Is Racist
Joy Reid furthered yet another woke message by reposting a video that criticized the beloved Christmas tune “Jingle Bells” as…
‘Enough white guys already’: The war on white men because of DEI in the working world exposed in damning report
Jacob Savage, a Los Angeles-based writer, looked at the phenomenon of the “vanishing white male writer” earlier this year in an eye-opening piece for Compact magazine.
He noted, for instance, that whereas the New York Times’ “Notable Fiction” list included seven white American men under the age of 43 in 2012, not a single white male Millennial made the list in either 2021 or 2022. In each of the subsequent two years, only one individual from that particular demographic made the list.
‘The phenomenon of white male dispossession strikes at the core of what’s been going on over the last decade.’
Savage stressed that the Times’ list was hardly exceptional in its exclusion of white Millennial men. Last year, nobody from that particular demographic was apparently featured in the year-end fiction lists for Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, and Vulture. Of the 53 Millennial fiction writers featured in Esquire magazine’s year-end book lists since 2020, only one was a white American man.
Savage — who concluded in March that “white male Millennials are still unable to speak directly to their own condition” and that “in some ways that inability is their condition” — is back with another damning piece about the “lost generation” and the fallout of the DEI war on meritocracy.
In response to the viral article, which was published on Monday, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairwoman Andrea Lucas stated, “This is a story chock full of unlawful discrimination. There’s no DEI exception to the bar on race and sex discrimination. We need courageous employees/applicants to speak up to help attack and remedy this misconduct.”
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon echoed Lucas’ post and wrote, “Step up!”
RELATED: University of Minnesota faces backlash over project that seeks to cure the ‘Whiteness Pandemic’
Photo by Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images
At the outset of the article, Savage provided several indications that the world of literary fiction was not the only place where the institutionalization of DEI proved to be bad news for white men.
He noted, for instance, that white men represented 48% of lower-level TV writers in 2011 but only 11.9% last year. At Harvard, members of the same cohort held 39% of tenure-track positions in the humanities in 2014 but only 18% in 2023.
“In industry after industry, gatekeepers promised extra consideration to anyone who wasn’t a white man — and then provided just that,” wrote Savage.
While some older white men, specifically those in the Boomer and Gen X camps, may have mistakenly concluded that DEI is a relatively benign practice — especially since the “mandates to diversify” apparently tended to impact their younger fellows — Savage suggested that for white male Millennials, “DEI wasn’t a gentle rebalancing — it was a profound shift in how power and prestige were distributed.”
A man identified only as Andrew who experienced this shift firsthand in a new media environment told Savage, “With all the declarations these newsrooms had been making, the imperatives — ‘enough white guys already’ — seemed to me to be the mantra.”
An unnamed senior hiring editor at a major media outlet told Savage that “the hope was always that you were going to hire a diverse candidate,” adding that a competent black woman “would get accelerated to the New York Times or the Washington Post in short order.”
While most major media outfits such as the Times and the Post had by 2019 gone out of their way to make sure their offices were majority female, Savage noted that “in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, newsrooms tripped over themselves to stage a ‘reckoning.'”
‘It was jarring how we would talk about excluding white guys.’
Savage highlighted an apparent aversion beginning in 2020 at various companies to hiring men and whites from an American population that U.S. Census Bureau data indicated was 49.1% male and 57% non-Hispanic white.
For example, women reportedly made up 75% of the new hires in 2022 at Condé Nast — a mass media company that set a goal in 2020 to have 50% of the candidates on its hiring slates to hail from a “wide range of backgrounds and schools” — and only 49% of new hires identified as white. The following year, men and whites made up 34% and 50% of new hires at the company, respectively.
The Atlantic, another operating theater in the campaign against meritocracy, boasted in its 2024 DEI report that roughly 46% of the individuals the magazine hired between July 2023 and June 2024 were non-white and that 71% were women.
Savage indicated further that at the Los Angeles Times, only 7.7% of interns have been white men since 2020; that between 2018 and 2024, “just two or three” of the roughly 30 summer interns each year at the Washington Post have been white men; and that only 10% of the nearly 220 fellows who have participated in the New York Times’ yearlong fellowship since the program replaced the paper’s summer internship in 2018 were white men.
Various other publications including Indy Week have no white men left on their editorial staff to displace or replace.
“For a typical job we’d get a couple hundred applications, probably at least 80 from white guys,” one hiring editor told Savage in reference to this so-called racial “reckoning” championed by academics, activists, and others bad actors. “It was a given that we weren’t gonna hire the best person. … It was jarring how we would talk about excluding white guys.”
According to a November 2022 ResumeBuilder.com survey, one in six hiring managers across the United States indicated they were told to deprioritize hiring white men; 48% said they were asked to prioritize “diversity over qualifications”; and 53% said they believed their jobs were in danger if they didn’t hire enough “diverse employees.”
Andrew — who was apparently teased for months with the promise of a senior reporter position at a well-known publication only to later learn the job went to a non-white homosexual 10 years younger — said, “If you’re a white man, you gotta be the superstar.”
Savage underscored that this anti-white misandry is alive and well in the entertainment, medical, and tech industries but also in the academy, where the severity of the problem is partly hidden by the continued employment of elderly white male faculty members behind whom the doors to entry were closed.
“White men may still be 55% of Harvard’s Arts & Sciences faculty (down from 63% a decade ago), but this is a legacy of Boomer and Gen X employment patterns,” wrote Savage. “For tenure-track positions — the pipeline for future faculty — white men have gone from 49% in 2014 to 27% in 2024 (in the humanities, they’ve gone from 39% to 21%).”
The situation is similarly bleak for the cohort at other institutions, including Brown University, which has hired only three white American men as tenure-track professors in the humanities and social sciences since 2022.
“For a decade, it kept going, faster and faster. Without any actual quotas to achieve — only the constant exhortation to ‘do better’ — the diversity complex became self-radicalizing, a strange confluence of top-down and bottom-up pressure,” wrote Savage. “No one ever said what the right number of white men would be, but it was always fewer than you currently had.”
BlazeTV host Lomez said of the incredible response online to Savage’s article, “6 million views on a political article is insane. The phenomenon of white male dispossession strikes at the core of what’s been going on over the last decade. Any politician, anyone with any ambition to influence, must take on this fight. The time is now.”
Gene Hamilton, the president of America First Legal who previously served as Trump White House deputy counsel, noted, “If you are a person who believes in merit and wants to restore merit to hiring/firing/admissions/etc, you must understand that it is not enough to sit quietly and hope things get better. If you know someone who has been harmed, encourage that person to take legal action now.”
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Black male stabs white male. But victim uses racial slur AFTER stabbing — and Portland jury issues ‘inconceivable’ verdict.
A black male recently admitted in court that he stabbed a white male over the summer, but a Portland jury acquitted the black male after learning the victim uttered a racial slur — and spoke the word following the stabbing.
Gary Edwards was charged with second-degree assault for knifing Gregory Howard Jr. on Northwest 5th Avenue in Portland’s Old Town neighborhood on the morning of July 7, OregonLive reported last week.
‘Beyond inconceivable.’
A conviction could have handed Edwards a sentence of five years and 10 months in state prison, OregonLive said.
However, even though Edwards admitted on the witness stand to the stabbing, he said it was self-defense due to Howard’s aggression, the outlet said.
Edwards testified that Howard yelled the racist slur as soon as he saw him, the outlet reported, adding that Howard denied the claim.
More from OregonLive:
Transit cameras showed Edwards, a fixed-blade knife clasped at his side, approaching Howard from behind as he sat on a bench. The video has no sound, but Howard springs up and pushes Edwards as soon as he sees him. The duo scuffle against a wall for a brief moment, ending with Edwards stabbing Howard in the shoulder.
Defense attorney Daniel Small said the most relevant evidence was recorded later when security officers heard the wounded man shouting the racist slur and captured it on their body cameras as he described the incident.
Small added that Edwards, 43, was just approaching Howard, also 43, and offering a simple trade: his knife for cigarettes, the outlet said.
“What other than racism could explain why Mr. Howard perceived hatred, animosity, and aggression from a complete stranger?” Small asked the jury on Oct. 30, the outlet reported.
Prosecutor Katherine Williams countered that what Howard said after the knifing was irrelevant and that Edwards was always “in control” during the altercation, OregonLive said.
“The defendant is not scared for his life. He didn’t retreat; he sauntered up — and he sauntered away after he stabbed someone,” Williams told the jury, according to the outlet. “The defendant created the situation.”
Despite the prosecutor’s argument, the jury soon acquitted Edwards, OregonLive said.
More from the outlet:
Edwards, who declined to comment through his attorney, spent about three months in custody before the trial, after prosecutors successfully argued he shouldn’t be released.
Their memo noted that Edwards was convicted of attempted second-degree assault in 2021 and was sentenced to three years in prison for another stabbing at the Skidmore Fountain MAX platform in May 2020. He was accused of fourth-degree assault for fighting with a clerk at Old Town’s Helen’s Market, but the case was dismissed in June because no public defender was available to take his case.
Howard, meanwhile, has been arrested several times in recent years and was convicted of felony rape of a child in Washington’s Kitsap County in 1997, records show. He couldn’t be reached for comment.
The New York Post’s Facebook entry about the acquittal generated well over 1,000 comments — and they’re the exact kinds of reactions you would expect. The following are a few of them:
- “Always remember if you’re shot or stabbed, you must give some type of positive affirmation to your attacker so you don’t sound hateful,” one commenter wrote. “Otherwise your attacker will be acquitted.”
- “It was probably a mostly peaceful stabbing,” another user quipped.
- “That’s wild. So let me get this right … He got attacked then said the N word, and the attacker got away with it cause he said it after he was already attacked?” another commenter asked. “That makes no sense.”
- “Beyond inconceivable,” another user stated.
- “What a funny world we live in,” another commenter observed.
- “Staying out of Portland …” another user shared.
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University of Minnesota faces backlash over project that seeks to cure the ‘Whiteness Pandemic’
The Trump administration has worked with great success over the past year to dismantle racist DEI initiatives in government and public education across the country. Nevertheless leftist identity politics continue to linger in various taxpayer-funded institutions.
The parental advocacy group Defending Education recently highlighted that the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, which received $628 million in federal research awards in the 2024 fiscal year, is harboring an anti-white research project that claims America is suffering from a “Whiteness Pandemic.”
‘Family socialization into the centuries-old culture of Whiteness — involving colorblindness, passivity, and fragility — perpetrates and perpetuates US racism.’
Rhyen Staley, research director at Defending Education, said in a statement obtained by Blaze News, “This far-left programming at a major public university is another example of how ingrained DEI is in higher education and is not going away any time soon.”
The UMTC’s Culture and Family Lab, which is part of the school’s Institute of Child Development, has a page titled, “Whiteness Pandemic Resources for Parents, Educators and other Caregivers.”
The website:
- characterizes the white family as a threat, stating, “At birth, young children growing up in White families begin to be socialized into the culture of Whiteness, making the family system one of the most powerful systems involved in systemic racism”;
- tells white adults that it is their “responsibility to self-reflect, re-educate [themselves], and act” and that they need to engage “in courageous antiracist parenting/caregiving”;
- recommends white adults begin “listening to, taking seriously, and following the stories and recommendations” of the scandal-plagued Black Lives Matter organization and “humanizing victims of police brutality and racism — such as Mr. George Floyd”; and
- links to various works of agitprop for parents to “read and watch with children as part of a discussion about race, racism, white privilege, and antiracism.”
While the website references content from various radical sources, it largely focuses on a 2021 paper by the lab’s director, Gail Ferguson, titled “The Whiteness pandemic behind the racism pandemic: Familial Whiteness socialization in Minneapolis following #GeorgeFloyd’s murder.”
RELATED: Woke lecturer cries ‘white supremacy’ after MAGA-racist smear doesn’t go as planned
Photo by KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images
The paper, which was published in the journal American Psychologist and dedicated to repeat offender George Floyd, claims that “family socialization into the centuries-old culture of Whiteness — involving colorblindness, passivity, and fragility — perpetrates and perpetuates U.S. racism, reflecting an insidious Whiteness pandemic.”
While generally implying that “Whiteness” is a disease, the UMTC professor suggested that “color-evasion and power-evasion” specifically are “pathogens of the Whiteness pandemic” that “are inexorably transmitted within families, with White parents serving as carriers to their children unless they take active preventive measures rooted in antiracism and equity-promotion.”
According to Ferguson, who is black, and the paper’s other authors, one litmus test for whether a white mother is helping spread the supposed “Whiteness” disease comes down to how that mother responded to George Floyd’s death.
A mother’s apathy over the criminal’s death and her unwillingness to discuss so-called “systemic racism” with her children were treated as indicators that she approves of or is at the very least indifferent to imagined racism. Alternatively the willingness of mothers to express grief and concern over Floyd’s death and to discuss it “and Black Lives Matter with their children using color- and power-conscious parenting” were regarded as signs of a desired “antiracist” mentality.
The authors stressed that to dismantle “colorblind racial ideology,” white students should be subjected to “racism and antiracism education,” especially at a young age, and that “it will be important to go beyond how White women learn to say the right things to also consider how they learn to do the right things and actually ‘show up’ for racial justice.”
The basis for the conclusions in the paper was a survey of 392 white mothers, 51% of whom were “somewhat or very liberal,” 18% of whom were “somewhat or very conservative,” and over 91% of whom had a bachelor’s degree or higher.
The racist initiative was made possible with the help of federal funds provided by the National Institute of Mental Health during former President Joe Biden’s tenure.
When asked about the anti-white project, the UMTC told the National Review that it remains “steadfast in its commitment to the principles of academic freedom.” The NIMH reportedly did not respond to the Review’s request for comment.
“It is not only concerning that these programs appear to still be up and running, but that absurd ideas like ‘whiteness’ also gain legitimacy through dubious activist-academic ‘scholarship,'” said Staley. “Universities must end this nonsense yesterday.”
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Marvel star’s racist Tinseltown tantrum: ‘Put some asians in literally anything right now’
Actor Simu Liu is begging Hollywood studios for more race-based casting — specifically, his race.
The Chinese-born, Canada-raised Liu recently took to social media to share a collage of screenshots of some of his fellow Asian actors lamenting how hard it is to land leading roles.
“Put some asians in literally anything right now,” Liu added as commentary. “The amount of backslide in our representation onscreen is f**king appalling.”
‘We’re fighting a deeply prejudiced system. And most days it SUCKS.’
White on rice
Citing Hollywood’s apparent fear that Asian-centric films are “risky,” Lui pointed out the success of movies like his 2022 Marvel debut, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” as well as 2018’s “Crazy Rich Asians,” which grossed $174 million in 2018 against a $30 million budget.
“No asian actor has ever lost a studio even close to 100 million dollars,” Liu ranted. “But a white dude will lose 200 million TWICE and roll right into the next tentpole lead. We’re fighting a deeply prejudiced system. And most days it SUCKS.”
RELATED: ‘The Acolyte’ star: Asians need a Tom Cruise of their own
Chinese checkers
Liu’s cries of systemic discrimination did not receive the eager welcome they might have just a few years ago.
On X, investigative journalist Robby Starbuck noted that the film industry in Liu’s native China largely employs Chinese actors.
“Almost none are White. Is that some kind of unfair prejudice too?” he asked. “No, it’s not.”
As Fandom Pulse reported, others mocked Liu’s apparent recycling of “woke talking points from 2018.”
Another reader stated, “Speaking as an asian: representation does not matter. Good stories matter. The right casting for the roles matter. Good acting matters.”
Asian persuasion
Back on Threads, however, Liu received a plethora of support from women who agreed that more Asian men should be in lead roles.
“The stories of Asians in the US go deep … the stories deserve to be told,” wrote Karen Johnstone.
While Jayne Nelson added, “I swear it’s slipping back to ‘third henchman from the left in a big fight scene’ and COME ON. It’s not the 1980s anymore.”
One of the actors cited in the original post Liu shared was “The Good Place” star Manny Jacinto, who complained about being cut out of a Tom Cruise movie in 2024.
“It’s up to us — Asian-Americans, people of color — to be that [for ourselves],” Jacinto said at the time. “We can’t wait for somebody else to do it. If we want bigger stories out there, we have to make them for ourselves.”
The other actors cited as making remarks were John Cho (“Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle”), and Daniel Dae Kim (“Lost”).
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Throwback: 15 utterly UNHINGED things libs labeled ‘racist’
“Every facet of the coffee industry, in fact, is rooted in racism. From the moment the whites viciously stole coffee from black and brown people to the present-day Karen sipping her morning cup of white supremacy, whites have been able to drink the fruits of our labor and our culture with impunity.”
What you just read is an actual quote from an article published in 2023 — back when literally everything was labeled racist by the woke mafia.
In this throwback Allie Beth Stuckey piece, we remember some of the most ridiculous things the critical race theory-obsessed left has used to label white people racists over the years. And sadly, coffee isn’t even close to the most absurd one on the list.
Picnics
A 2020 article from the Philadelphia Inquirer posited that “picnics” were racist because there was once a time when “Southern white people made lynchings a regular occurrence at picnics.”
If you are going to continue using the word “picnic,” then you need to make sure “that history is being talked about,” author Elizabeth Wellington wrote.
“That’s not what people think of when they’re thinking of going out to a park, laying a blanket down, and eating some sandwiches,” scoffed Allie.
Brain pairings (like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches)
Speaking of sandwiches, PB&Js are apparently the perfect metaphor for “implicit bias” against black males in America, according to a video released by the New York Times in 2016.
Social psychologist and management professor at the New York University Stern School of Business Dolly Chugh argued, “I somehow know that if you say peanut butter, I’m gonna say jelly. That’s an association that’s been ingrained in me. … In many forms of media, there’s an overrepresentation of black men and violent crime being paired together.”
Dairy
In 2022, a KFF Health News article reported that 28 civil rights and child advocacy groups — including one led by Al Sharpton — sent a letter to the USDA accusing the National School Lunch Program of “dietary racism.”
Their reasoning? Offering only cow’s milk, ignoring non-dairy alternatives, was racist because children of color apparently have higher rates of lactose intolerance.
Bicycling
A 2021 article from the Washington Post argued that American cycling is racist because a really long time ago, black people were excluded from bicycling clubs.
And then, of course, there’s the issue of racist white cops. “For black Southerners, the cost, dangers and white policing of cycling mobility combined with the weakening of its middle‑class status, meant that the popularity of the bicycle declined within the black community,” author Nathan Cardon wrote.
Equestrianism
If a piece of equipment doesn’t fit you properly, the designers are obviously racist against you. At least that’s the position the New York Times took in a front-page article from 2023 titled “Black equestrians want to be safe. But they can’t find helmets.”
In it, author McKenna Oxenden condemned racist manufacturers of equestrian equipment for not making helmets that accommodate certain black hairstyles, like dreadlocks.
“Is a helmet going to be safe if it’s like six inches off of your skull? No, it’s not. I don’t think it has anything to do with you being black,” Allie retorted.
Recreational running
In 2020, Medium published an article titled “Running is too white. It doesn’t need to be,” in which author Ryan Fan complained that America’s recreational running community is “too white.”
There was only one possible explanation for that, said Fan: systemic inaccessibility and exclusion. All those white runners just make people of color feel unsafe and unwelcome.
“We can do better. We have to,” he pleaded.
“Agree. I don’t like running, so running is too white. And it is because I am an ally that I choose not to,” Allie joked.
National parks
In 2020, ABC published a melodramatic article titled “America’s national parks face existential crisis over race.” In it, authors Stephanie Ebbs and Devin Dwyer reported that national park visitors were “overwhelmingly white” — 77% compared to 23% of non-whites.
The piece quoted then-Associate Director of the Sierra Club Joel Pannell, who fretted that this racial disparity in park visitors spelled doom for the country’s national parks (many of which have been going strong for over a century).
“If we don’t address this … then we’re going to risk losing everything,” he lamented.
“Not enough black people are going outside, so that’s the problem,” Allie mocked.
STD names
In 2022, NPR published an article titled “Critics say ‘monkeypox’ is a racist name. But it’s not going away anytime soon.” In the piece, author Bill Chappell quoted several critics upset about the name monkeypox, as it apparently stigmatizes the black and LGBTQ+ communities.
“There is a long history of referring to blacks as monkeys. Therefore, ‘monkeypox’ is racist and stigmatizes black people,” said global health advocate Ifeanyi Nsofor, ignoring the fact that the virus’ name was coined after it was originally discovered in lab monkeys in 1958.
Energy
Yes, energy — the stuff that powers the world — is “inherently racist,” suggested a 2022 article from Utility Dive.
Author Robert Walton reported that environmental justice advocates were up in arms because the U.S. energy sector is supposedly structurally racist due to historical policies like redlining and discriminatory infrastructure, which have disproportionately burdened low-income and communities of color with high costs and pollution.
Highways
In 2021, the Washington Times published a piece titled “When highways are racist,” in which author Cheryl Chumley lambasted Biden’s Department of Transportation for weaponizing civil rights laws to block a Houston highway project under the absurd pretext that infrastructure can be racist.
Ballet
A 2021 article from Marie Claire bemoaned the art of ballet as structurally white supremacist. Author Chloe Angyal argued that ballet — its aesthetics, history, and culture — is inherently racist because it reinforces a narrow, European ideal that marginalizes dancers of color.
“Ballet is not just white. It is white on purpose,” Angyal complained.
“There’s just not enough black people going up on their tiptoes,” Allie jeered.
Camping
Pitching a tent and roasting some marshmallows under the stars isn’t as innocent as it sounds, said Fast Company writer Elizabath Segran in a 2021 article called “The unbearable whiteness of camping.”
The monopoly white people apparently have on the outdoors all goes back to our colonial roots when colonizers took Indigenous land and turned it into “wilderness” for white recreation, she argued. Those mean ol’ white settlers romanticized themselves as “pioneers” while condemning Native people as “savages” for living out in nature, only to turn around and make nature an element of white culture.
Fast-forward a few hundred years and that same stigma still keeps non-whites from venturing outdoors. Patagonia jackets are too expensive; REI ads are too pale; and black people are apparently disproportionally targeted when they brave the elements.
Philosophy
Much of the genius that came from some of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment and German Idealist philosophy has bias baked into it, argued Aeon writer Avram Alpert in a 2021 piece titled “Philosophy’s systemic racism.” Ideas from the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel must be “decolonized,” meaning we must expose how their core logic secretly ranks non-Europeans as irrational “savages” who need white reason to evolve, then flip the script to affirm that people of color already have their own internal progress — no European “uplift” required.
Organized pantries
Those little spice jars with the labels and the matching containers for your pasta and rice? Yeah well, they’re racist, said Associate Professor of Marketing at Loyola University Jenna Drenten.
Dubbing the trend of having aesthetically pleasing cupboards “pantry porn,” Drenten wrote, “Cleanliness has historically been used as a cultural gatekeeping mechanism to reinforce status distinctions based on a vague understanding of ‘niceness’: nice people, with nice yards, in nice houses, make for nice neighbors. What lies beneath the surface of this anti-messiness, pro-niceness stance is a history of classist, racist, and sexist social structures.”
“So you hear that black people? This professor doesn’t think that you can organize your pantry; you need to make it messy in order to really be pro-black and anti-racist,” laughed Allie.
This throwback to the peak-woke era — when coffee was cultural theft and PB&J pairings were microaggressions — proves one thing: The fever has broken, but the receipts still make us laugh.
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