Wasn't That Obvious?

There's always a moment, when reading @AdamSerwer, when I find myself saying out loud, "GodDAMN, he's good." https://t.co/CKnZ0eH5QB pic.twitter.com/OVwyNTAbnJ

— Kaili Joy Gray (@KailiJoy) March 22, 2023

I mean, it is good; but have I just been around angry white people too long (i.e., all of my life?). I understood early on that white racial grievance was all about white people not having the authority over non-whites that they were supposed to have. 

The people Serwer refers to haven't really "adopted the inverse logic of what they decry as 'wokeness,'” because there was no such logic in the proponents of being "woke."  The latter were saying the same thing Dr. King did (less directly in his "Dream" speech, more directly almost every other time he spoke or wrote.  Which is why his "Dream" speech is so effing popular!):  that non-white people must be seen as the same people as white people.  "Wake up!," in other words.  And frankly, per the recent polls, the majority of Americans understand that.

So we don't even need to "both sides" this (which is really what Serwer is doing; reflexive journalistic "objectivity".  When is journalism going to catch up with post-modernism?).  Angry white racists have always thought they were losing something (working class and poor whites were actually right about that, but as Will Campbell* showed me, that's how the rich whites kept the poorer whites in line:  by giving them blacks to blame for it, rather than the rich guys who profited from the cheap labor all around).  This is as old as Reconstruction, and as much alive now as it was then.

The "hidden wound" is hidden from us for many reasons, mostly because we want it that way.  And yes, the racism of angry whites who think "woke" is a terrible stain on America and teaching children the truth about American history will somehow destroy the Republic (I'll be honest, I didn't learn it, either.  My first glimpse into it was books like Black Like Me and Dick Gregory's memoir, Nigger.  Well, and then Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, which made me give up on the cowboy movies I'd grown up on.  Redacting history is a step backwards, but it's largely seen as a return to status quo, since we can't put the anti-racism genie back in the bottle.  Not for want of trying, of course.).  But it's not a new "inverse logic."  It's the same old logic that stereotyped blacks and Mexicans (I'm from Texas!) as "lazy" and basically worthless except for the simplest manual labor, which they should do like rented mules. 

The problem with "woke" is not that it has a logic which angry whites have inverted.  The problem with "woke" is that angry whites know exactly what it means:  no more privileges for them.  So they have to deny their privileges even exist, and make themselves the victims ("What about what I'm losing?") because "keeping the niggers down" (Randy Newman, "Rednecks," 1974.  Yup.  After the '60's and civil rights and we "fixed" everything.) is a little too on the nose these days, and can't be said in polite company.

But I remember when a lot of things were said in "polite company" in various shades of euphemism; and in even subtler tones of wide acceptance of the status quo.  Nobody ever gives up their status quo willingly.

Even Dr. King understood that.

*If you don't know who Will Campbell was, go read a book or two, I don't have time to educate everybody! Dang kids!