“Hypersensitivity” and the Fighting Spirit

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3202

By http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4498

Two commenters on last week’s entry http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4880
What Do You Say[/url When Whites are Denigrated? accused me of excessive sensitivity in taking offense at a line from the film The Matrix Reloaded: “You can’t make me do anything, you old white prick!” A commenter calling himself Realist said that the insult to whites that I perceived was all in my imagination. Another commenter, B.B, said, “Reacting to racial hyper-sensitivity with more racial hyper-sensitivity doesn’t seem like a particularly productive tactic to me.” I think these two commenters are trapped in an obsolete and suicidal mindset. If whites are to survive, we’re going to have to develop a fighting spirit, and that means we have to become more sensitive to insults and learn to answer them.

Realist argued that “white” was not being used as a term of insult in the phrase I cited because it’s conventional for people to put random adjectives that have no real meaning in front of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=554 words.What Realist says may be valid in some cases, but it is clear that the Matrix movies have a point to make about whiteness that Neo is hammering home in his insult. In case any of you don’t know, the Matrix movies imagine a future in which machines have taken over and project a simulacrum of reality, the Matrix, for human beings so that the machines can exploit them for their own purposes. The movies pit the forces of the machines against those of “Zion,” the name for the humans who have realized what the machines are up to and wish to liberate the rest of mankind.

I don’t think anyone would deny that these movies have an aggressive “anti-racist” agenda. In fact, they are one of the best fictional expressions of the myth of the fascist establishment that I know of. The machines take a human form as a sinister police force and as the Architect, who explains the workings of the Matrix to Neo and against whom Neo directs the insult in question. All of the human manifestations of the machines are white. The racial diversity of the Zion resistance, however, is heavily emphasized. Essentially, the film pits a conformist, repressive, violent, secretive, and entirely white establishment against the racially diverse, individualist, and extremely sexually liberated forces of resistance. Neo’s insult stems from the underlying agenda of the movie, which is to connect whiteness with fascism. In fact, in the same scene, television screens show the images of George Bush Sr. and Jr. along with Hitler, thus implying that contemporary America is a fascist or proto-fascist state.

I also reject the assertion that my attitude towards the denigration of whites is equivalent to that of blacks and other minorities who see racial denigration where none exists. Obnoxious stereotypes about whites are ubiquitous in American culture. Among the most common stereotypes are that whites are rich spoiled brats; that we are excessively rational, controlling, unemotional, and sexually repressed; and that we take a sadistic pleasure in treating non-whites unfairly. In case you doubt me, look at the portrayal of whites in the film Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, a consummate expression of leukophobia.

Even worse, whereas well-funded and powerful minority organizations exist to respond to complain about racial stereotypes of blacks, Hispanics, and Jews, there is no organized resistance to the denigration of whites. Consequently, except in the most extreme and salient cases, such as that of Jeremiah Wright, the denigration of whites goes completely unchallenged.

The days when whites could afford to take a dismissive attitude toward racial denigration against them are gone. That attitude was appropriate when whites held an unassailed dominance over American society that could not be threatened by insults. But in a time when half of American children under 5 are non-white and when our school system and popular media are eradicating our cultural identity, whites have to learn to fight for their survival. And that means that we have to be sensitive to denigration and learn to respond to it. Moreover, it means we have to develop a spirit of racial solidarity that gives other whites the benefit of the doubt when they take offense, rather than reflexively dismissing their concerns.

http://inverted-world.com/index.php/blog/blog/hypersensitivity_and_the_fighting_spirit/

2008-06-10