[Note: there seems to be a problem today embedding tweets; this may or may not be temporary]
Afternoon music
Saturday quiz
This week brings another victory over political journalist John Rentoul, who scored 3/10; I scored 5/10, if you include my answer to question 5, which was a pure guess; apart from that, I knew the answers to questions 2, 3, 6, and 10.
From the newspapers
“More and more Americans believe it’s okay to be racist against WHITE people – and segregation is getting worse“
On the night of her election as Boston’s first Asian mayor, Michelle Wu proclaimed defiantly: ‘We are ready to become a Boston for everyone. We’re ready to become a Boston that doesn’t push people out, but welcomes all who call our city home.’
It was a rallying cry for unity and inclusion from a young, idealistic politician who was determined the capital city of New England should shed its conservative image and embrace its increasing ethnic diversity.
But two years later, Wu is in the extraordinary position of herself being accused of racism after hosting a Christmas party on Wednesday night exclusively for ‘non-white’ members of the city council.
Her decision has stoked a nationwide row over ‘reverse racism’ and exposed once again a deeply polarised American electorate that once put Donald Trump in the White House because they shared his contempt for wokeness, and may well do so again.
…it dawned on the seven white councillors that not only had they been disinvited to the bash, but they were never supposed to be there in the first place due to the colour of their skin.
…for others the hypocrisy sweeping the U.S. is no laughing matter. A country where racial discrimination is technically illegal is seeing an increasing number of schools, universities and large businesses creating ‘safe spaces’ where ethnic minorities can ‘escape white oppression’.
There have even been calls for black people to get racially-segregated ‘safe spaces’ outdoors so they can enjoy activities such as hiking and camping without suffering ‘harassment’ and ‘trauma’ from white people, while also subverting stereotypes that African-Americans don’t enjoy such pursuits.
In the words of one Boston ‘anti-racist’ academic, Ibram X Kendi, (whose work on deeply divisive ‘critical race theory’ is studied religiously in schools and colleges): ‘The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.’
In short, it’s entirely fair or ‘equitable’ that the boot is now on the other foot. It’s OK to be racist against white people.
In 2021, a school district in Wellesley, Massachusetts, reportedly excluded white students from a ‘healing space’ after shootings in which eight students — six of them Asian-Americans — were killed. The email announcing the event read: ‘*Note: This is a safe space for our Asian/Asian-American and Students of Color, *not* for students who identify only as White.’
In the same year, black mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot — under huge pressure over her city’s appalling black-on-black murder rate — announced she wouldn’t allow white journalists to interview her on the two-year anniversary of her inauguration.
South Korea-born technology writer Sarah Jeong was hired by the Left-wing New York Times as a member of its prestigious ‘editorial board’ of senior writers.
But then critics found some of her old tweets on white people and they weren’t a pretty sight. ‘Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like grovelling goblins,’ she wrote.
In another, she confided: ‘It’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.’
Others included ‘#cancelwhitepeople’, ‘f*** white women lol’ and ‘White people have stopped breeding. You’ll all go extinct soon. This was my plan all along.’
Opponents snorted with derision. Try substituting ‘whites’ in her tweets for ‘Jews’ or ‘blacks’, they said, and imagine what the famously self-important newspaper’s response would have been.
Whatever sanitised image of integration Hollywood puts out to the world, this is a country divided: across state lines, income disparities and, without doubt, by a racially-charged culture war. More and more Americans believe it’s okay to be racist against WHITE people – and segregation is getting worse.”
[Daily Mail].
“For generations, they have been as much a part of the Christmas tradition as roast turkey and mistletoe.
But this year’s school nativity plays are repackaging the birth of Jesus as reality TV shows – with names based on programmes such as The Great British Bake Off and Strictly Come Dancing.“
[Daily Mail]
Deliberately-planned reverse cultural appropriation, or cultural trashing, if you like.
Tweets seen
“They walked in daylight without shirts waving a white flag and still were shot by a sniper from a small distance 1 hostage found shelter and shouted in Hebrew help, yet he was shot.”
[Note: the tweet/embed issue continues. If it persists, there will be no point displaying tweets at all on the blog. The problem seems to be at Twitter/X, not WordPress].
Update, same day: The tweet-embed issue seems now to have been resolved.
Late tweets
My own assessment of Rory Stewart, written in 2019 (with later updates): https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/05/03/will-rory-stewart-mp-be-prime-minister/.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 