The Mainstream Rise of the Anti Anti-Racist
They actively manipulate situations to destroy people’s lives for their own gain
Why does everything have to be about race?
It’s a perfectly reasonable question, a privileged one, but a reasonable one nonetheless. The social construction around what race actually means isn’t anything new. And plotting a graph of everything from the transatlantic slave trade, to an office microaggression, also doesn’t achieve much in terms of helping us understand the scale and meaning of racial discrimination. Of course one of those experiences is notably worse than the other, but to many of us that go through the latter day to day, we get caught in a slightly surreal loop of being pressured to feel grateful for this milder form of prejudice. Call it racism: the omicron variant. A version that should enable us to get on with the rest of our lives and has been mutated so far from its dominant strain, that it should really cease to exist as a public health hazard.
This at least is what we are told by the anti anti-racism guy in their assessment of race relations. To them, anti-racism as a movement has so little space left to operate, in a world that has so little racism left to expose, it has obscured its true mission statement. It is now just another form of toxic identity politics, propagated by bad actors who care about nothing more than their own platform rather than the cause they champion. To the anti anti-racist, racial politics are feel bad politics, used to divide us, catch us out and create an environment where reasonable white people feel forever bad and people of colour feel forever victimised. Nobody wins in this world, except the anti-racism activist playing gatekeeper for what it is that we can and do say, and what we can and do feel.
We’ll get to the anti-racism activist persona shortly, but before that let’s start with a slightly more obvious question:
Isn’t an anti anti-racist just a racist?
No they are not. The anti anti-racist is far more sophisticated than that. They are very careful in their language to never align themselves with actual racism. You will never see them carrying torches at a Charlottesville rally. They do not own anti-sematic hoodies and you will never catch them using a racial epithet publicly or privately. The anti anti-racist does not identify as a person of racial bias in any way and resents the implication quite vigorously.
But here’s the rub. They are never on the side of people of colour in a race related incident, no matter how extreme this may be. They will have a readily resourced collection of material on hand to highlight why race was not the primary factor in each situation. They have probably been quite vocal about Jesse Smollett in the last few weeks, and they have a detailed breakdown of the unsustainable economic components of Marxism anytime somebody even whispers the words “Black Lives Matter.”
It’s professional “whataboutism” and not something to be tried at home. Get it ever so slightly wrong and you will just look like a good old fashioned racist.
In situations where the racism is so overwhelmingly obvious, and even the offenders in question concede that their actions and motivations were based on racial bias; the typical response of the anti anti-racist is silence. They know a losing hand when they see one. However, to condemn the racism would be dangerous to them as it would contradict their world view on the prevalence of such. Yet to attempt to tackle such incidents head on leave them in equal danger of being branded a racist. Something they are very careful to make sure they do not leave themselves open to.
So how exactly did it become “ok” and relatively mainstream to be a critic of anti-racism movements? Most reasonable people agree that racism is a bad thing, right? So how are the vocal critics of anti racism activism able to operate?
There are a couple of reasons here.
One is relatively straightforward, the other a bit more uncomfortable. The first straightforward explanation is that for a lot of people that are used to privilege: equality feels like discrimination. Imagine taking a long ride on an empty train. You’re free to stretch your legs, kick back and place your bag on the unoccupied seat next to you. Your laptop, coffee and snacks are spread out on both ends of the table in front. You can even play music through the speakers of your phone, safe in the knowledge you won’t be bothering anyone.
Then, midway through your journey, just as you’re getting comfortable, the train starts to fill up. Suddenly you can’t stretch your legs anymore. More people jump on at the next stop, and now your bag has to come off the seat. It’s currently scrunched up between your feet. Finally, just as you’ve sort of come to terms with this, a few more people get on and now your coffee and laptop can barely fit on the table. Your phone is back on mute, and you’d put it back in your bag — if you could actually reach it.
Chances are as that last person asks “is this seat taken?” you feel quite defensive about the fact that the comfortable experience you’d enjoyed is now gone. Probably for good. Even though the amount of space you have is an equal amount, you feel cheated.
Loss of privilege, earned or not, doesn’t feel great for anyone, and the rise of the anti anti-racist is quite heavily supported by a feeling of “How much of this shit do we actually have to give up to make it fair?” Make America Great Again, was the first mainstream injection to this ideology that didn’t directly reference race. But what the anti anti-racist is often trying to say is that they’ve had enough of sharing the good stuff. They don’t care how they got it. It’s theirs. You can’t have this seat. Nothing personal. By acknowledging the profound generational impact that centuries of racial prejudice still have on people of colour, there is also a required next step of putting that right. And for the anti anti-racist if they prove the correction has already taken place it absolves them of any future action. They can keep the extra seat, and they don’t need to feel bad about it either.
So what is the second, more uncomfortable reason for the rise of the mainstream anti anti-racist? Well I guess this is only uncomfortable for liberal anti-racism bloggers like myself. And that’s anti-racism activism at times can be very messy and inconsistent. There are without question so called anti-racism activists who are not looking to find a solution to removing racial discrimination from society. They are simply looking for a never ending platform of “one-ups” on everyone else. They are solely in search of grandstanding moments that they need to be at the centre of. They will kick white students out of parts of college for no reason other than for being White. They actively manipulate situations to destroy people’s lives for their own gain. They will bully, and gaslight people of colour who do not align exactly to their world view. They are extremely proficient at weaponizing unconscious bias and much like unscrupulous healthcare companies profiteering from the Covid-19 pandemic; they are profiteering from racial discrimination. These people exist, some less intentionally than others, but they are here and they can be from any race. They are a food source for the anti anti-racist. The anti anti-racist makes a point of cherry picking all of their worst takes, and is able to present their views as a representation of what anti-racism activism actually now is. “Don’t you see. There is no real racism left, so this is all these people have left to complain about to avoid accountability? They are insane.” This becomes an attractive recruiting tool for people sitting on the fence over whether racism is as systematic a problem in global society as anti-racism activists suggest. The net result is people don’t want to talk about it anymore, and all of those real experiences that those of us that have no choice but to do “race” every single day become discredited.
Not everything has to be about race. But if you can pick and choose when you don’t want it to be, you’re a lucky son of a gun. If there is a “race card” to be played in life it would probably be the two of clubs. It’s not going to get you a royal or straight flush, but at best might let you fold with some dignity. We cannot allow a an unchecked culture where racism is dismissed as circumstantial, or simply just class related. And we should not feel intimidated by an array of pre packaged statistics that tell us that even if it did happen, it just doesn’t happen very much anymore.
If you are actively going into every situation of racism that you hear believing that it was something else, then you ought to ask yourself what your real end game actually is. A world where we don’t see colour, or one where we don’t see prejudice. One of those things makes you a good old fashioned racist after all.
