A few weeks ago, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) dragged Michael Eric Dyson across a floor in the Rayburn Building by his scruffy neck. After implying she was a racist on CNN, he then took a selfie with the representative backstage. Later, he began hitting on her via X. Already on his third wife, the man certainly knows how to charm the ladies.
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For those not familiar with Dyson, he’s an African-American academic who writes books and gives interviews about race, race, and still more race. I find him to be quite unpalatable because he’s one of those guys who insults you with a smile and then “helpfully” leads you on your journey of discovery into your own intrinsic racism. You know, the racism you never even knew you had. He’s an oily car salesman.
Ick.
Anyway, following the interview, Dyson posed with Mace and then started sending her flirts on X. (Big Mistake, Nancy. Someone calls you a racist and then wants you to take a happysnap afterward? Should have called him a jackass and told him to go take a cold shower.) Regardless, Mace introduced the flirts into the Congressional Record, and shortly thereafter, Dyson scampered over to the ladies on “The View” to whimper about the injustice of being treated as The Big Black Brute (his words, not mine).
More Ick.
WATCH: Total Mayhem on CNN After Nancy Mace ‘Mispronounces’ Kamala Harris’ Name
WATCH: Nancy Mace Spices Up House Hearing With Ice-Cold Dish of Revenge Against Woke CNN Panelist
So this has been covered on RedState, and probably nothing original I could say about the actual exchange, but it got me thinking about something Dyson believes in and writes books about.
Black people cannot be racist. I began hearing of this sort of thing about ten years ago as I was dropping my daughter off at high school one morning. Her very expensive private high school that her single and unemployed dad was paying for by dining out with Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee three nights a week. It dawned on yours truly that the nuns were pushing this stuff on their students without any sufficient academic challenge to it, and it disturbed me quite a bit.
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So that’s another story. Back to Dyson. Black people cannot be racist. Hmmm. You can hear him claim this below, so it’s nothing that I made up after drinking an entire bottle of Cab, but then again, drinking an entire bottle of Cab might have kept my blood pressure in the green.
So, the exegesis of this man’s theory follows. Black people cannot be racist because:
“Racism presupposes the ability to control a significant segment of the population economically, politically, and socially by imposing law, covenant, and restriction on their lives. Black people don’t have the capacity to do that. Blacks can’t be racist.”
Sounds to me like he’s discussing communism, but he generally strokes the “historical” aspect to further cement his reasoning into the sins of slavery, thereby making this discussion a one-way street.
Now, the Oxford English Dictionary, which I consider to be the benchmark of definitions for our mother tongue, defines “racism” as: “Prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” The book has been around for 130 years. Much longer than Dyson and far longer than the tacked-on Google AI disclaimer helpfully telling us how the word “racism” is far more complex and requires much more nuance than what this simple, silly old book provides. (Thanks, 20-something Wokester CodeBoy!)
But I am under no obligation to accept Dyson’s new definition just as he is under no obligation to accept my new definition that a duck is a six-legged animal with an acuity for mathematics. So Dyson is just another guy with an opinion. I think I’ll stick with the dictionary that’s been around for a while. Maybe I’ll even go further back to Webster’s (now Merriam-Webster) est. 1828. Recognized as the first dictionary for American English, it defines racism as: a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
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Dyson, at some point, discovered neither of these prime sources encompassed the ideas that he wanted them to when crafting his hustle, so I guess he just went out and made up his own definition. And basically, this was to say that racism is power exerted by one race over the other because of the systems established since America’s founding. As whites historically exerted power over blacks, and blacks were unable to do the same historically to whites, we now have a one-way street for racism. I can slug you, but you can’t slug me back. I have a Magic Force Field. Awesome.
The Left finds that the only way to sell some of the changes they want is to first redefine words. They have their academics do that, and since those guys already run the schools, they teach the new gospel to the kids. See “mother.” See “father.” See “man.” See “woman.” See…”racism.” These terms all have new and enlightened definitions. They have to move the goalposts, or else the parts don’t fit, so to make them fit, they invent new terms like “front hole person” and “chest feeder”…..then they demand we take them seriously when the laughter dies down. Anyway…
The question is, should the goalposts be moved in the first place? Yes, if doing that will help the Left score touchdowns. And the touchdowns they want to score are ones that fracture our traditional culture to replace it with a radical one paving the way for socialism. So if you peddle the idea that racism is power by one race over the other because of the historical systems in play, you must begin with the premise that all whites are inherently racist, even if your pasty peeps didn’t get off the boat until ten minutes ago because the whites set up the whole political and economic system everyone lives by today. And if a white person got a better loan rate than a black person (never mind silly incidentals like credit rating), then he is implicitly racist because he participated in a crooked system that benefited whites but not blacks. If what we’re talking about is abuse of power and a sense of superiority over blacks, you can boil it down to ill will, from which all of Dyson’s claims spring. If you’re white and harbor ill will against a black for being black, you are a racist. If you’re black and harbor ill will against a white for being white, you are…”biased.”
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Wait, what?
Biased. That’s what they call it. They can’t call it racism because blacks cannot be racist, but we do know that they can lay down a good lick of hate against anyone of any color and as well as anybody else, so how do you answer for that? Well, you can use the word “bias.” It might not be complementary exactly, but it sounds a lot more benign than the word “racist,” and so it politely excuses racist behaviors on the part of one group toward the other.
Again, it’s all about the verbiage.
But even though Dyson sounds like a common fool, I wondered what would happen if he actually were an uncommon fool, and I took his definition seriously. What if I played by his own rules? How well would that game out?
Well, a couple of things occurred to me. First, he’s a Baptist minister and has been for 40 years. He might be a minister, but he’s no theologian. To say that black people cannot be racist makes an astounding claim. Racism is most certainly a sin, but for a sin to occur, there must be intent. As I was taught in Catholic grade school, It’s a sin. You know it’s a sin. You do it anyway. If the same holds true for Baptists — and why would it not? — implicit racism (like, you commit an act of racism while unaware it was an act of racism) can’t be a sin if there’s no intent. But apparently, to Dyson, racism can be a sin and not a sin at the same time because it depends on the color of the trespasser. Ah, okay…
But a much bigger deal is the ridiculous notion that God, in His infinite wisdom, saw fit to create an entire race of Super People who can never commit one of the greatest sins available to human weakness? Racism? They’re immune from committing the sin of racism? Like, they’re bulletproof?They can rob, cheat, and steal like any other human being on the planet, but they can’t commit the sin of racism?
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Wow, I wonder what superpowers God gave me? Apparently, it’s x-ray vision because I can see through Michael Eric Dyson’s crap.
So anyway, this is nonsense. It’s like saying that Catholic priests can never commit child rape because they’re holy men of the cloth. Sure, a rape occurred, but we’re just going to call it “pastoral care.” Or maybe “pastoral bias.”
Next, Dyson’s claim rests on historical power. Blacks were abused. Slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, etc. They had no power historically, so they just don’t have the capacity to be racist now. Well, it sure looks like they have lots of power today. And it appears they’ve finally located their capacity.
Blacks comprise 12.6 percent of the U.S. population, but in Congress, they make up 16 percent of its members. Their representation in the federal workforce is 18 percent. Their makeup in the NBA is 78 percent. Everybody in commercials is suddenly black. Oscars So White. They have plenty of support in the media as Joy Reid can get on the national airwaves every night of the week and criticize “old white men” for being old white men without blowback. Hollywood and the music industry? Same, same. BLM can burn, loot, pillage, and steamroll over everybody without repercussions. News outlets now make it a very common practice to identify destructive mobs and large-scale flash thefts of and by blacks as generic “teen violence.” DEI has changed our traditional merit system to accommodate workplace performers whose advancement or placement is based on pigment. This is rampant in corporations as well as collegiate acceptance quotas.
Perhaps the most insulting of all, however, are the government and corporate mandates existent today for training programs dedicated to the eradication of Whiteness. I’m not even going to get started, but could you imagine doing something similar for the eradication of Blackness? No, because not only would it be unthinkable, it would be wrong. Singling people out for an immutable characteristic, assigning blanket assumptions about them for their immutable characteristic, and then condemning them for those assumptions (made by their accusers) is the real sin, in my opinion.
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So, finally, I guess my takeaway is that Dyson’s Rules for Racists has sort of made his own brand of racism obsolete. It no longer works as intended, forcing him to jump up and down on the rake.
Smack!
Smack!
Smack!
Such a wonderful sound, but I don’t think he’s astute enough to realize it yet. See, blacks do have power today. In academia, media, entertainment (even Cinderella is now black), and in the workforce. Some might argue the military as well. And that power has transformed into a movement that “presupposes the ability to control a significant segment of the population economically, politically, and socially by imposing law, covenant, and restriction on their lives.”
If you are facing DEI restrictions in your job, if you are not being promoted on merit because color is more meritorious, if you are not getting accepted into college or university because of racial quotas aligned with this new dynamic, if you are apologetic for being white, if you are being leveraged at your job for your whiteness, if you’re a West Pointer and you have to take a class on CRT or face reprimand, if it’s being explained to that you have “white privilege,” if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has to testify about “white rage” before Congress, if the book “White Fragility” can make it to #1 on the NYT Bestseller list, or if the new AI masters can give you black George Washingtons…then it is safe to say that Dyson’s power dynamic and its intended purpose has already shifted, broken down, and flipped around.
Time to reject the product and take it back to that oily car salesman because his new definition is now all-inclusive. Unintentionally too effective, it now makes room for everybody.