News Flash: Being Racist Is Racist!
One of the most destructive things that we have done as a society is to have allowed disingenuous and opportunistic activists and academics to redefine words, phrases, and entire cultural movements. At no time have these redefinitions achieved any kind of benefit to the total of society. In fact, they have only served to bitterly divide us.
Just so you are up-to-speed on the latest criteria for being considered a racist, according to Time Magazine and some self-important woke activist named Natalia Mehlman-Petrzela – a multi-degreed Associate Professor of History at The New School (who evidently excels at race-baiting), physical exercise has its roots in White supremacy and, therefore, is racist.
I’ll give you a moment to clean up the coffee you just spit all over your smartphone, tablet, or computer screen, although, because coffee is brown you are obviously a racist for drinking it.
The Stretch Too Far
Everyone on the planet understands that exercise is good for you. There isn’t a physician alive – even those who graduated in the lower one percent of their classes – who would argue otherwise. In no doctor’s office has it ever been heard that in order to be healthy one should live a sedentary lifestyle.
In fact, any physician who did advocate a sedentary lifestyle for anyone considered healthy would arguably be committing malpractice for the simple fact the human body needs activity for a plethora of reasons including heart health, healthy joints, maintaining a strong and symbiotic circulatory-respiratory system, and maintaining core systemic health, among the many reasons too many to enumerate here.
But now – according to Time and Mehlman-Petrzela, if you dedicate yourself to maintaining your health through exercise you are practicing an act of White supremacy.
In the article, Mehlman-Petrzela, said:
“It was super interesting reading the reflections of fitness enthusiasts in the early 20th century. They said we should get rid of corsets, corsets are an assault on women’s form, and that women should be lifting weights and gaining strength. At first, you feel like this is so progressive.
“Then you keep reading, and they’re saying White women should start building up their strength because we need more White babies. They’re writing during an incredible amount of immigration, soon after enslaved people have been emancipated. This is totally part of a White supremacy project. So that was a real ‘holy crap’ moment as a historian, where deep archival research really reveals the contradictions of this moment.”
So, strong, healthy, White women are racist, according to Mehlman-Petrzela. This begs a question. If a woman is not White but exercises to be strong and healthy so that they can have more non-White babies what is that called? Is that promoting diversity or is it fomenting, oh I don’t know, race-based division and societal conflict?
Hate Masked As Educational Righteousness
But Mehlman-Petrzela isn’t the only race-baiter masquerading as an intellect, not by a long shot.
According to Katie Ishizuka of The Conscious Kid Library and University of California PhD student Ramón Stephens, Dr. Seuss – you know, the How the Grich Stole Christmas guy – is a racist. They authored a study that argued the works of the good Doctor are “dehumanizing and degrading” to “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and people from other marginalized groups (including Jewish people and Muslims)”. They say it is because non-White characters were illustrated in stereotypical fashions.
University of Washington Professor Holly M. Barker made the claim that the popular cartoon character Sponge Bob Square Pants is “a violent racist colonizer.”
Rochelle Gutierrez, an education professor at the University of Illinois, insists that math is racist. “On many levels,” Gutierrez said, “mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White.”
Among the many words found to be racist by the Words Matter Task Force at the University of Michigan, “picnic” and “brown bag” were deemed racist because of their origins (it didn’t matter that their determination of the origins was incorrect).
And a boulder on a University of Wisconsin campus has been deemed racist by its students because they are convinced (isn’t that cute) it is a symbol of racism due to its 1920s nickname.
But It’s Not Just Dillusional Academia
While the Critical Race Theory crowd in academia deserves to bear the brunt for instigating a renewed racial discord in American society, their disingenuous intellectual psychobabble has taken root in the mainstream.
According to a compilation of “racist things” by BlackDiamondSocialClub.com:
Being Nice: A group called Race2Dinner called for “painfully honest conversations between white women and BIWOC (Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color)” since white women’s “obsession” with “being nice” is a “tool of white supremacy.”
Charcoal Face Masks: Practicing some self-care and using a charcoal face mask to remove toxins is racist according to Twitter experts who say that “Racism is do (sp) insidious that you can promote blackface for years under the guise of ‘pore mask’ and it goes unchecked.”
Eskimo Pies: After the Aunt Jemima syrup outrage, the company that makes Eskimo Pies admitted that the name is derogatory.
Katy Perry's Shoes: Pop sensation Katy Perry entered the world of fashion design with a lead balloon. The singer released a line of shoes in 2017 that was quickly pulled from the shelves when they were said to resemble blackface.
Milk Chocolate Easter Ducks: A supermarket was forced to remove Easter candy/ducks after the dark chocolate one was packaged with a racist name.
Soot-Covered Coal Miners: A group of coal miners went out for a drink after work and someone snapped a picture, which was hanging on the pub wall. The photo rubbed a few patrons the wrong way when they said it was blackface.
Supporting a White Basketball Player: Back in August 2019, NBA player Kyle Korver apologized for his “white privilege” and told his fans that they are racist for supporting him.
Grading Homework: A book called “Grading for Equity" argues that actually grading a student’s homework is racist since it creates “inequity.” The author sells the book for $30 and offers a 3-month crash course on racism for $139. Among the lectures included is one that argues IQ tests are racist.
Trader Joe’s Food Packaging: According to complainers, when the supermarket chain labels things with ethnic-sounding names like “Trader Giotto’s” or “Trader Ming’s” or “Trader José” to refer to Italian, Chinese or Mexican products, it’s racist.
Sleep: Yep, that thing that we all need but never get enough of is racist. According to Teen Vogue, Black people have had shorter lives than Whites because they were not permitted to sleep enough. To make amends for this, mainstream media suggests reparations in the form of time off of work.
Bernie Sanders’ Mittens: The Senator has been the subject of many a meme ever since he appeared at the Biden inauguration sporting a unique “grumpy chic” style. But one writer for the San Francisco Chronicle argues that Bernie’s mittens are a sign of White Supremacy.
Knuckle Cracking: A Mexican-American guy was fired from his job after a do-gooder followed him and captured a photo. The pic supposedly showed the worker displaying a White supremacist hand sign as his arm hung out the window of his truck. The guy says he was just cracking his knuckles.
Mugshots: The San Francisco PD has decided to stop releasing mugshots, you know the photos that help catch criminals since they reinforce stereotypes. The reason why people of color are the ones most often appearing in mugshots is a whole other article.
Laws Against Saggy Pants: A city in Florida voted to repeal a law against saggy pants and displaying undergarments in public, stating that it unfairly targeted African Americans. The law had been on the books for 13 years. The ACLU backed the decision.
Nativity Scenes: Claremont United Methodist Church in California decided that they could help raise awareness about White Supremacy and racism by creating a nativity scene featuring the Holy Family in front of a painting of BLM protestors.
The Cracker Barrel Logo: in this stretch of the imagination, a Twitter user said of Cracker Barrel “the brand screams white people” and argues that the logo implies slavery.
Then, Matt Rooney at SaveJeresy.com offers this list (in part) of things that are now considered racist:
Classical music
Facial recognition technology
The White House
Peanut butter and jelly
The Christmas Song
The movie Star Wars and the character Darth Vader
Peanut galleries
Ketchup
The Disney movie classic Dumbo
The entirety of the English language
Chopsticks
The movie Animal House
Standardized testing
Gucci & Prada
City bicycle rentals
Dress codes
Self-driving cars
Kellogg’s Corn Pops
Fast food
The Disney movie classic Peter Pan
The Disney movie classic The Jungle Book
Liquor stores in minority neighborhoods
Tipping
The expression “no can do”
The Food Pyramid
Ridesharing
This Disingenuous Lunacy Must End
Those of us who grew up during the Civil Rights Movement grew up understanding one basic and un-morphable fact: racism was predicating your decisions and judgments about people and their actions on the color of their skin. An object like a rock couldn’t be racist. A food option couldn’t be racist. Condiments couldn’t be racist. Music genres couldn’t be racist.
But since the intellectual pollution of our society to believe in the false notion of systemic victimhood by activists and activist academia (and activist academia has nothing to do with facilitating an elevated ability to think critically), racism has been redefined to preferentially discriminate, divide, and destroy societal cohesiveness.
Those of us who grew up during the Civil Rights Movement embraced the clear-eyed intellectual honesty of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he professed, in part:
“So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today…”
It is obvious that today’s race activists and academia spit on the preaching of Dr. King because their actions and speech constantly seek out new ways to flame the fires of racial hatred; to seek out new ways to demonize the present for the sins of the past; to seek out new ways to turn innocence into controversy and to point the finger of blame toward anything and everything but their incendiary actions and speech.
No, exercise is not racist, no matter what an elitist, race-baiting academic wannabe says, just like tipping a good waitress or waiter isn’t racist and just like Dr. Seuss’ fictional creatures aren’t racist. As much as race-baiting opportunists like Mehlman-Petrzela, Ibram X Kendi, and Robin DiAngelo want to find racism in all things, the truth is this. They need to see racism in everything because they make their lucrative livings off of fanning the fires of racial hatred.
A great first step toward getting back to the healing that occurred before Dr. King’s death would be to – as former University of California Regent Ward Connerly used to say – erase race. Start judging people – if, in fact, they need to be judged – by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
It would be racist to do otherwise and that – and only that – is the true measure of racism.
