Intelligence and Morality are Racist?

In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, an 8 page denunciation of White Supremacy written in the late 90s by Tema Okun has recently become the subject of much discussion. Okun, a White woman, was a co-founder of “Change Work,” a group devoted to informing various community based organizations across the U.S. of the insidious way in which White Supremacy is poisoning contemporary Western Culture.

On Feb. 16, The Blaze, an admittedly “conservative” website, outlined the negative impact of Okun’s “anti-racist” insistence that Western Man’s Post-Enlightenment faith in Reason and Objectivity is merely a White Bias leading to Cultural Norms which are inherently oppressive. The notion that Emotions are by definition irrational and hence destructive, she apparently finds arbitrary and obnoxious.

In response to critical articles such as that posted by The Blaze, various online sites have posted celebrations of Okun’s sensitive approach to the plight of Blacks living in Western Democracies. On Feb. 3, 2023, for example, a site entitled “Deconstructed” published the results of a 45 minute interview with her in which she had attempted to explain herself. Feeling that her point of view was being weaponized by both Blacks and Whites in ways she found objectionable, she revealed she had recently gone online in an attempt to foster a more “nuanced” version of her world-view. Her feeling, clearly, was that her “anti-racist” proclamation was responsible for neither the often criminal behavior of Blacks, or the scornful denunciations of her White critics.

At the same time, of course, Okun has been assailed by many who see her basic premise as absurd. In May of 2021, in the aftermath of Black Lives Matter’s relentless criminal assault on mainstream America, a website entitled “Slow Boring” published an article by one Matthew Yglesias which stated quite simply that Okun’s musings on White Supremacy were “dumb.” Indeed he says of her coming-out document: The craziest thing about “The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture” is that it literally has nothing to do with race.

I realize we covered the same topic in my last blog, Tema Okun being an ideological sister to Ibram X. Kendi. But the substance of her lengthy essay is particularly incriminating to the rationality of her “anti-racist” ideology. This statement, of course, is rife with irony inasmuch as “rationality” is one of the targets of her critique! And that is the problem. We are each subject to a multitude of “feelings” which clearly need to be subject to rational scrutiny, many of them, upon reflection, needing to be moderated if not cancelled. Such Rational Self-Awareness is essential to the very concept of Morality. It was obvious to Socrates 2500 years ago and was a fundamental principle of 20th C. Existentialism which saw such awareness as essential to the human quest for any semblance of genuine inner Freedom and Peace. Indeed Existentialism’s insistence that each man must courageously bear responsibility for the arc of his life is the very opposite of the self-exonerating, It’s Not My Fault, Victim Mentality that has come to dominate the woke “progressive” narrative.

A sleazy but oft used tactic of the Left is to demonize Reason as cold and heartless, as if it were not perfectly rational to distinguish those who deserve our compassion from those who do not. But Reason hardly precludes empathy for those who warrant it. Most “conservatives” are perfectly comfortable with programs designed to help people born into debilitating circumstances. Given their knowledge of Human Nature, however, they find it ludicrous that anyone should suggest “feelings” ought to supersede Reason as the arbiter of our lives. It is a recipe for moral and political anarchy, one that leads inevitably to an explosion of hateful, self-indulgent and often criminal behavior.

Muscular trans individuals with penises claim they have the right to compete with females in various athletic competitions because they “feel” they are now Women! No doubt it was their “feelings” that led the marauders of BLM to inflict over 2 billion dollars in damages on perfectly innocent Americans in 2020! No doubt it was their “feelings” that led the Indigenous of Canada to burn or otherwise devastate dozens of our churches over the last 2 or 3 years. No doubt it is “feelings” of resentment against the rich that is leading thousands to pillage retail outlets across North America to an extent that is utterly out of control !

Okun insists she in no way intended to unleash such criminality, but her bewilderment is utterly disingenuous in that the premises of her “anti-racism” serve as open invitations to blindly self-centered, irrational behavior. She is in fact racist to her very core in that she demonizes Values and Principles that are demonstrably valid simply because of the skin color of their proponents. The world she would bequeath us is one from which Intelligence and Common Sense have been banished in deference to those unwilling to submit to either. She is hardly alone, of course, in that the “woke” Left has virtually eliminated those values from its perspective, simplistically attributing all human failure to the tyranny of the successful. I repeat for the billionth time that no one is suggesting the latter have not abused their powers in the pursuit of their own self-interest. But the Left’s removal of Intelligence and Achievement from its political narrative is, in the words of Matthew Yglesias, just plain “dumb.” Sadly, the results of its degenerate world-view are evident in every aspect of our Culture, from the ever increasing level of crime in our streets, to the mindless ideological drivel that has come to dominate both Academia and the Media, to the comic book level of entertainment being offered a society that is really not interested in the complexities of the Human Condition.