The Woke Darkness^[1] | Is it OK to be white?

I sincerely believe in being polite to people, especially to those who do not deserve it, to be an example to them of what they are not but could become if they bettered themselves, Sir.

Footnotes

1. ↑ America went hysterical over the killing of a putative petty felon by a racist bigot cop in Minneapolis, Minnesota by a knee to the neck, 25 May 2020. There was no mention in America of the killing of a public school teacher by a religious bigot Islamist in Paris France by complete severing of the man's neck with a knife (beheading), 16 October of the same year The felon had tried to pass a counterfeit banknote in a bodega against the law of the land. The teacher had tried to teach freedom of expression in a public school classroom per official government educational policy. Black lives matter in the red white and blue; white minds still matter in the bleu blanc et rouge. America's beloved b-movie actor President Ronald Reagan said that public tax money should not underwrite intellectual curiosity.
2. ↑ 2030; Woke America prepares for war with Mr. Xi's China. "Chief Umbooboo, how are we going to fight the enemy?" "With super poison blow gun darts, shielded with evil spells; our blow gunners will take out the enemy and they'll never know what hit them." "But, Chief UmBooBoo! These people don't follow the ritual. They don't face us with spears and a tribal dance. They do something I don't understand but something called – what is it? an 'atom bomb' falls out of the sky and wipes out the whole tribal village so no blow gunners left to dart them." "Order more pins and voodoo dolls, now!"
3. ↑ Your Comment on America Has a Free Speech Problem. The New York Times <comments@nytimes.com> Mar 18, 2022, 6:03 PM (6 hours ago). The New York Times. Your comment has been approved! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with The New York Times community. Bradford McCormick | New York The New York Times ran a story in the lower right corner of the front page of the print edition, Sunday, 27 August 2021, which I think makes it clear that intellectuals are not safe in America: "New York's Private Schools Tackle White Privilege. It Has Not Been Easy.", by Michael Powell. If you want to keep your job, recant, make reparations and attend a reeducation camp. How can scientists in the post-Galileo exact mathematical sciences of physical nature conduct experiments when objectivity is a symptom of white supremacy, per that devastating article? Shouldn't they be mumbling tribal shamans' incantations instead of smashing white supremacy particles around in white supremacy particle accelerators? I am old. If I was young I would fear to open my mouth in school (I never did in the office). It was bad enough when I was young, but at least I was mostly tolerated to be a heretic except for being required to get a haircut each two weeks to help keep America beautiful. I live about a 5 or 6 hours drive from the Canadian border where, if push comes to shove, I would hope to claim political asylum. One reason I reply to articles in The New York Times is to build a dossier to prove I have politically incorrect thoughts and therefore my life could be at risk.
4. ↑
   
   I (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) initially wrote a lot of bullshit here about privileged persons thinking ideas, such as dead white male physicist Niels Bohr telling his students that they should take every statement he made as a question not as an assertion. But then I realized the irony of thinking about what persons of such privilege that they could afford a liberal education might THINK and be able to do, where a junior high school teacher could be beheaded for teaaching freedom of thought and expression in a public junior high school classroom (Samuel Paty, Paris France, 16 October 2020). Or the children of privileged dead white males of the European Enlightenment, such as the Founding Fathers of The United States of Amarica, among them John Adams who wrote: "I must study war and politics so that my children shall be free to study commerce, agriculture and other practicalities, so that their children can study painting, poetry and other fine things." I should have been concerned about the struggle for the means of subsistence of persons so impoverished that they have to resort to trying to pass counterfeit $20 bills in bodegas, who may not even be able to attend a free public school to the 8th grade. Young persons whose parents' income will be nearly doubled if the minimum wage is raised to $15 per hour. Their less than lives are dark. They do not have the privilege of being concerned about individualism, the written word or objectivity. I (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) apologize to all the heads of New York's elite private schools and to the parents who can afford to pay their salaries to underwrite the cultural self-formation (Ger.: "Bildung"), or, it may be, the Wokeness of their kids. Ich bin ein Europäer. bradmcc@bmccedd.org
5. ↑ "Condoleezza Rice, the first Black female secretary of state.... When asked about the critical race theory debate, she said, 'One of the worries that I have about the way that we're talking about race' sometimes these days is that 'somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past.' She added, 'I don't think that's very productive.' Of course, as she and we know, there's more to the critical race theory debate than that. But about the strain of educational philosophy that looks to raise students' awareness of racial injustice, she said that for Black kids to be empowered, 'I don't have to make white kids feel bad for being white.' Black America likely will not overcome without some white assistance. But I'm not convinced that the way this happens is with white people's cheeks burning in shame over their complicity. Maybe they can just help." (John McWhorter, "I'm With Condoleezza Rice About White Guilt", NYT, +2021.10.29)
6. ↑ Let me suggest a different model for a "person of color": A black (or purple or polka dot or whatever hue) man, woman or other who thinks: "I am an individual. I'm not buying any of this groupthink tribal crap. I am a man (woman, other) in my own right, and I steer my own course in life. If you want to join with me as an equal individual, fine; if not, please get out of my way. I am not a 2-legged sheep like all you dumb white wokies [image here], although I'll take your money if you want to feel ashamed of yourselves."
7. ↑ Your Comment on These Republican Governors Are Delivering Results, and Many Voters Like Them for It
   The New York Times <comments@nytimes.com>
   11:44 AM (2 hours ago) [+2022.07.28]
   Your comment has been approved!
   Bradford McCormick | New York
   Why do we have the culture wars? Partly because working class whites are scared for their standard of living. Does anybody really care about foeti? But they care that the pro-abortion elite seems to be aborting their jobs. There's another part. America has long been short on respect for intellect. Why didn't intellectuals stand up to Ronnie Raygun and his wife Velveeta who had a 3 word vocabulary: "Just say 'No!'" Mr. Reagan was not stupid but he preached that stupid is good, and stupid people liked hearing they were good instead of being inspired to rise above their stupidity. He flat out said that California's public universities needed to teach basic job skills and learn to live without some "intellectual luxuries" and that public tax money should not fund "intellectual curiosity". A dagger to the heart of the life of the mind! And as if that wasn't enough, he made a joke about his pet ideology: Capitalism. What is an economist? He is man with a watch chain with a Phi Beta Kappa key on one end and no watch on the other end, i.e., a fool. [Applause] The intelligentsia did not earn its living. They (we?) did not stand up for the universalizing values of the 18th Century Enlightenment and now major universities are groveling to see who can be the most Woke to keep their endowments. In Princeton you no longer need to learn latin or greek to major in classics becaue some "persons of color found it difficult". America has been ruuning on empty far too long. Kaput!
8. ↑ My manager at Mercantile Safe Deposit and Trust Company [bank] once told a secretary who had said something to him he didn't like: "If I want any more mouth out of you, lady, I'll squeeze your head." My manager at Maryland National Bank, at work one Easter Sunday morning in the corporate data center, upon seeing a black employee enter the room to show off the place to his girfriend, spontaneously exclaimed: "A chocolate Easter egg!" Lux in tenebris.
9. ↑ Your Comment on A Princeton Student Died. Her Classmates Want to Know What Happened.
   The New York Times <comments@nytimes.com>
   3:33 PM (6 hours ago) [+2022.12.11]
   Your comment has been approved!
   Bradford McCormick | New York
   Obviously I have no idea what happened here. But there seems to be unprecedented trouble everywhere around the ivory tower. I am extremely troubled for the fate of learning in America today. I would urge everyone to read and think deeply about an article from The New York Times: 27 August 2021, "New York's Private Schools Tackle White Privilege. It Has Not Been Easy.", by Michael Powell. When I opened my print edition of the paper that Sunday morning snd saw this story in the bottom right corner of the front page, I was glad that I only had a fantasy of having picked up an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) off my driveway and it having exploded in my face.
   1 Recommend
10. ↑ More mess: "Hundreds of newspapers across the United States said they will stop publishing the cartoon 'Dilbert' after its creator Scott Adams went on what is being described as a racist rant on Youtube, last week. This comes after he called Black Americans a 'hate group' and suggested that White people should 'to get the hell away from Black people.' The comments were made in response to a poll conducted by a conservative organization's poll which supposedly showed that many African Americans do not think it's OK to be white.... 'If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people — according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll — that's a hate group', said the creator on his Youtube show 'Real Coffee with Scott Adams', on Wednesday. He added, 'I don't want to have anything to do with them ... And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people, just get the f**k away'." ("Hundreds of US newspapers drop 'Dilbert'' comic strip after creator Scott Adams' racist comments", Washington, US, Edited By: Nishtha BadgamiaUpdated: Feb 26, 2023, 11:08 PM IST, WION)
11. ↑ Your Comment on The Cynical Reason College Applications Are Surging
    The New York Times <comments@nytimes.com>
    2:51 PM (1 hour ago) [+2023.03.16]
    Your comment has been approved!
    Bradford McCormick | New York
    I graduated 1st in my class acaemically for the 4 years of high school from a 2nd tier prep school in 1964, and that was all I needed to get admitted anywhere except Harvard. Harvard was more selective: They were looking for a stellar lacrosse player, so I was not good enough. I went to Yale and #2 in my class went to MIT. Both of us were wimps with no other desirable attribute than very bright minds. I don't know about MIT, but I doubt I would get into Yale today because I am not a transexual person of color who can leap tall buildings in a single bound. I came across something a while ago which intrigued me about how things could be better. Thomas Jefferson originally envisioned The University of Virginia as a place that did not give grades or degrees but rather where responsible adults who felt they would benefit from withdrawing from active life and devoting themselves to study for a while could come and go according to the time they felt would benefit them, to then return to the public world more intellectually developed than before. And then, maybe some years later, they might come back again for a while.... The life of the mind does not submit to GPAs or degrees, and having those things does not guarantee erudition; it often just means you have been good doing assignments. One sometimes sees a flower growing through the concrete sidewalk. Anybody remember Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman philosopher? What degree did Mr. Socrates or Mr. Sun-Tzu have?
    Reply  15 Recommend (Comment: "From your telling, after prep school, you arrived at what was then male-only Yale and apparently did very well there. That tale of elite early education and male privilege is followed by 'I doubt I would get into Yale today because I am not a transexual person of color who can leap tall buildings in a single bound.' These and other contradictions reveal how privilege is inseparable from access and success.")