The Only Acceptable Racism In America
With Jeremy Carl
I had a great conversation with Jeremy Carl, a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute who focuses on nationalism, immigration, and technology. Jeremy has had a diverse career in public policy, technology, and public service.
We discussed Jeremy’s new book, The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism is Tearing America Apart. I engaged in a steelmanning exercise and presented the perspectives of the book’s ideological opponents.
Our conversation began with a discussion about racism. I defined racism as prejudice combined with power—the ability to influence, control resources, policies, practices, and narratives at an institutional level. Given this definition, I argued that racism against white individuals, for instance, isn't possible. We examined racial statistics for incoming MIT freshmen and discussed the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action, which led to changes in university admissions criteria. As a result, the number of Asian American students increased, while the number of African American students decreased.
We explored the causes of these changes, potential solutions, and what should be pursued moving forward. I enjoyed our spirited conversation and appreciated the opportunity to play devil's advocate. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Follow Jeremy on X.
Someone in the black rights movement (Stokely Carmichael?) stated that black people could not be racist because they did/do not have the power to cause significant harm to whites as a people. Whether or not we accept the premise that blacks cannot harm whites because the whites hold greater power, whites can still under this principle oppress less powerful whites on the basis of their skin color. And that is exactly what is happening. We could say this is whites oppressing other white people on the basis of socioeconomic class, but the form the oppression takes includes calling the less powerful white people "racist" against "BIPOCs" and so on. Perhaps this means that the oppressive white peoples' behavior is not real racism, but is classism covered up with a discourse about race. The manipulation involves triangulating into the discourse the entire population of "BIPOCs" so that the elite white "antiracist" people can accuse the relatively powerless white people of being "racist" towards the BIPOCS. They basically are required to do this in order to comply with their own rules about who can be said to be racist and with what consequences if they are judged to be guilty of that sin.
As they say, GIGO. When you start with an absurd definition - that racism is "prejudice combined with power" - you're going to wind up in some pretty weird and stupid places right away. Racism is a simple, and easily definable phenomenon. It is the belief that some races are superior to others. Power has zero to do with it, and never had anything to do with it until the dingbat marxists in academe, who define everything through the lens of power, got ahold of it a couple of decades ago.