A brilliant analysis of the West’s cultural moment. “Victimhood economy” is the perfect term to frame the problem. I recently wrote a couple pieces on the danger of encouraging people to view life through a racial lens, but your construction addresses the issue far more incisively (not to mention authoritatively). So well done. Thank you.
Black pain is a new luxury good. It is packaged and sold by every cultural institution in America that is not explicitly conservative (NY Times, NPR, Amazon & Netflix, every college and movie studio and museum and magazine etc), because white liberals can't get enough of it.
In one bedroom, a suburban white teenager listens through his headphones to hip hop, ie. he absorbs a performance of black pain and rage; in the next bedroom, a suburban white parent watches PBS, listens to NPR, reads the NYT, listening to black journalists and academics talk about the evil white supremacist society that has dedicated itself to destroying their bodies, ie they absorb a performance of black pain and rage.
Why do guilty whites love black pain so much? It makes them feel alive, feels much more authentic than their safe and prosperous lives, it also designates them as a chosen class, history’s new bearers of white man’s burden, except in reverse, the burden now is atonement, proselytizing the non-guilty evil whites (who they are obviously morally superior to). Most especially because it sets them apart (as smarter and more compassionate) than the evil and despised Deplorables.
There also seems to be an S&M aspect to the public performances, with the angry black person as the Dom and the guilty white as the Sub, with the former getting off (and often getting paid) on their rage and the latter finding pleasure and relief in their masochism.
One of the saddest parts of all this is that black people don't get to be flesh&blood humans, they are always first and foremost symbols, or weapons for white people to wield as the clobber each other in their perpetual struggle, or as amulets that you wear on your chest or put on the cover of your product to ward off any bigotry accusations and to signal your goodness.
As Malcolm said: “White liberals are those who have perfected the art of selling themselves to the black man as our ‘friend’ to get our sympathy, our allegiance and our minds. The white liberal attempts to use us politically against white conservatives, so that anything the black man does is never for his own good, never for his advancement, never for his own progress, he’s only a pawn in the hands of the white liberal.”
You ask: "Why do guilty whites love black pain so much?" To answer a slightly different point, I would say that we white people do need a roughing-up every now and then on our attitudes to others, including black people. A lot of people's attitudes and behaviour in that area are still pretty degenerate. So we can learn something from the list of microaggressions that CRT advocates put out - they're all true. It doesn't mean we have to get sucked into the ideological vortex of CRT but to be honest, it's easily done, I did and it took me some time to get out of it.
"...So we can learn something from the list of microaggressions that CRT advocates put out..." Minor point: The types of offence now encompassed by the term "microaggressions" in CRT (at least in my British-like culture) were always delineated and considered lacking in courtesy and sensitivity, breaches of cultural etiquette, a product of narrowmindedness or lack of education. You might be considered rude, boorish, lacking sophistication, awkward if you transgressed. The consequences might have been diverse, numerous but subtle, administered personally, privately; NOT legislated nor commodified as profitable "training" in corporate, academic, governmental settings; nor extending to sackings, harassment, public shaming, stigmatizing, doxing and trolling, cancellation. Such offences were not unnoticed or without adverse consequence, in the past. What has changed is the weighting given, the perceived gravity of such offences, the justification of extreme punishments.
Nice to see a fellow Londoner writing on this forum. Best wishes with your work.
On the issues, I'm white and lived in deep-self-pity mode for some time in my life and let me tell you, the only way that you could relate to me was to be drawn into my self-pity, which of course helped no one. So not surprisingly, I did not have a normal life and mainly associated with similarly dysfunctional people. The only hope for those deep in the CRT cult is that they reach a rock-bottom that jolts them back to normality. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to keep a safe distance.
That said, there are plenty of ways in which white British people can improve their attitudes to people from other backgrounds. So it's complicated.
Hi - thanks for writing - and maybe I am dense! - but I cannot tell what kind of thing “the victimhood economy” here refers to. Is it the social advantages and disadvantages gained on taken on by individuals and groups who assume a victim identity? Or is it the new market for victim merchandise and ads? I thought the latter might be meant, since capitalism is mentioned a few times in the piece. But if so, the piece lacks good examples of this economy. A pan-african watch does not seem like a victim status item to me, unless pan-africanism is a victim narrative - which I don’t think is the case? The link about the discriminatory hiring is a better example, but is the only example of selling victimhood in the piece. What kind of goods and services are you counting in this economy? Is it mostly intangible things that grant social status, or is it behaviors that cynically aim to make monetary profit, or both/something else?
Sometimes it also means economically as in cash money. Reference was made to affirmative action. Would also note that M. Patricia Cullors, founder of BLM, bought a couple $1M properties in Atlanta, I think. Then this year she bought a $1.4M property in California. Believe it was reported to be in the whitest zipcode in America. She stepped down from BLM not too awful long after that "to pursue other interests." You see, she'd lined up multi-media and book deals worth an additional ton.
The authors of books and articles? The journalists. *The DEI consultants.* I think I read somewhere that it's a billion-dollar industry. Hard for ME to believe but, then, maybe not.
I take the meaning of "economy" here to be a little different to the more common one. I take it to mean that "victimhood" is a commodity that has value in this system. It's an academic usage of the term.
Yeah.. that’s reasonable. But then we lose the link to capitalism, I think? Since social currency is important in all economic systems (and not even necessarily related to the economic system).
I agree that the idea of "economy" is usually linked to money changing hands, but not here - it's just that the original meaning of "economy" is wider and more abstract. To be honest, not many people can use the term correctly outside the financial context but this writer has the academic background to do so.
I thought the most interesting statements in FINE essay were these:
"These people (dare I say it) almost need hardship—or at least some kind of obstacle—to be able to function. To progress in life and to be seen as standing up for yourself is to remove elements of the ‘struggle’, and therefore, by extension, to remove elements of your identity. This can be threatening, and thus some black people require special organisations to make a show of ‘fighting for social justice’ in order to feel that they matter in the world.
:
:
"The feeling of validation one gets from the world for being seen as fighting injustice is addictive, and satisfies one’s own narcissism."
Absolutely bloody Brilliant! You found the right words to articulate the deep and diverse (unconscious?) psychological motivations in parts of the social justice movement: in Black activism, in which the specter of racism and its alleged effects are exaggerated to deflect criticism of a sub-culture and to avoid the ultimate burden of personal responsibility - and among so-called allies who, in becoming self-appointed Black saviors, attempt to compensate for self inflicted (and unnecessary) guilt and insecurity. Glen Loury speaks of the "commodification of Blackness." Another good use of semantics to imply that economic interests are served by the "racism industry."
A brilliant analysis of the West’s cultural moment. “Victimhood economy” is the perfect term to frame the problem. I recently wrote a couple pieces on the danger of encouraging people to view life through a racial lens, but your construction addresses the issue far more incisively (not to mention authoritatively). So well done. Thank you.
As I've been saying for many years:
"Victimhood is the currency of socialism".
Black pain is a new luxury good. It is packaged and sold by every cultural institution in America that is not explicitly conservative (NY Times, NPR, Amazon & Netflix, every college and movie studio and museum and magazine etc), because white liberals can't get enough of it.
In one bedroom, a suburban white teenager listens through his headphones to hip hop, ie. he absorbs a performance of black pain and rage; in the next bedroom, a suburban white parent watches PBS, listens to NPR, reads the NYT, listening to black journalists and academics talk about the evil white supremacist society that has dedicated itself to destroying their bodies, ie they absorb a performance of black pain and rage.
Why do guilty whites love black pain so much? It makes them feel alive, feels much more authentic than their safe and prosperous lives, it also designates them as a chosen class, history’s new bearers of white man’s burden, except in reverse, the burden now is atonement, proselytizing the non-guilty evil whites (who they are obviously morally superior to). Most especially because it sets them apart (as smarter and more compassionate) than the evil and despised Deplorables.
There also seems to be an S&M aspect to the public performances, with the angry black person as the Dom and the guilty white as the Sub, with the former getting off (and often getting paid) on their rage and the latter finding pleasure and relief in their masochism.
One of the saddest parts of all this is that black people don't get to be flesh&blood humans, they are always first and foremost symbols, or weapons for white people to wield as the clobber each other in their perpetual struggle, or as amulets that you wear on your chest or put on the cover of your product to ward off any bigotry accusations and to signal your goodness.
As Malcolm said: “White liberals are those who have perfected the art of selling themselves to the black man as our ‘friend’ to get our sympathy, our allegiance and our minds. The white liberal attempts to use us politically against white conservatives, so that anything the black man does is never for his own good, never for his advancement, never for his own progress, he’s only a pawn in the hands of the white liberal.”
You ask: "Why do guilty whites love black pain so much?" To answer a slightly different point, I would say that we white people do need a roughing-up every now and then on our attitudes to others, including black people. A lot of people's attitudes and behaviour in that area are still pretty degenerate. So we can learn something from the list of microaggressions that CRT advocates put out - they're all true. It doesn't mean we have to get sucked into the ideological vortex of CRT but to be honest, it's easily done, I did and it took me some time to get out of it.
"...So we can learn something from the list of microaggressions that CRT advocates put out..." Minor point: The types of offence now encompassed by the term "microaggressions" in CRT (at least in my British-like culture) were always delineated and considered lacking in courtesy and sensitivity, breaches of cultural etiquette, a product of narrowmindedness or lack of education. You might be considered rude, boorish, lacking sophistication, awkward if you transgressed. The consequences might have been diverse, numerous but subtle, administered personally, privately; NOT legislated nor commodified as profitable "training" in corporate, academic, governmental settings; nor extending to sackings, harassment, public shaming, stigmatizing, doxing and trolling, cancellation. Such offences were not unnoticed or without adverse consequence, in the past. What has changed is the weighting given, the perceived gravity of such offences, the justification of extreme punishments.
Powerful writing.
Nice to see a fellow Londoner writing on this forum. Best wishes with your work.
On the issues, I'm white and lived in deep-self-pity mode for some time in my life and let me tell you, the only way that you could relate to me was to be drawn into my self-pity, which of course helped no one. So not surprisingly, I did not have a normal life and mainly associated with similarly dysfunctional people. The only hope for those deep in the CRT cult is that they reach a rock-bottom that jolts them back to normality. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to keep a safe distance.
That said, there are plenty of ways in which white British people can improve their attitudes to people from other backgrounds. So it's complicated.
Hi - thanks for writing - and maybe I am dense! - but I cannot tell what kind of thing “the victimhood economy” here refers to. Is it the social advantages and disadvantages gained on taken on by individuals and groups who assume a victim identity? Or is it the new market for victim merchandise and ads? I thought the latter might be meant, since capitalism is mentioned a few times in the piece. But if so, the piece lacks good examples of this economy. A pan-african watch does not seem like a victim status item to me, unless pan-africanism is a victim narrative - which I don’t think is the case? The link about the discriminatory hiring is a better example, but is the only example of selling victimhood in the piece. What kind of goods and services are you counting in this economy? Is it mostly intangible things that grant social status, or is it behaviors that cynically aim to make monetary profit, or both/something else?
Sometimes it also means economically as in cash money. Reference was made to affirmative action. Would also note that M. Patricia Cullors, founder of BLM, bought a couple $1M properties in Atlanta, I think. Then this year she bought a $1.4M property in California. Believe it was reported to be in the whitest zipcode in America. She stepped down from BLM not too awful long after that "to pursue other interests." You see, she'd lined up multi-media and book deals worth an additional ton.
The authors of books and articles? The journalists. *The DEI consultants.* I think I read somewhere that it's a billion-dollar industry. Hard for ME to believe but, then, maybe not.
Those are good examples! Thanks
I take the meaning of "economy" here to be a little different to the more common one. I take it to mean that "victimhood" is a commodity that has value in this system. It's an academic usage of the term.
Yeah.. that’s reasonable. But then we lose the link to capitalism, I think? Since social currency is important in all economic systems (and not even necessarily related to the economic system).
I agree that the idea of "economy" is usually linked to money changing hands, but not here - it's just that the original meaning of "economy" is wider and more abstract. To be honest, not many people can use the term correctly outside the financial context but this writer has the academic background to do so.
TY again, M. Fenton-Hewitt.
I thought the most interesting statements in FINE essay were these:
"These people (dare I say it) almost need hardship—or at least some kind of obstacle—to be able to function. To progress in life and to be seen as standing up for yourself is to remove elements of the ‘struggle’, and therefore, by extension, to remove elements of your identity. This can be threatening, and thus some black people require special organisations to make a show of ‘fighting for social justice’ in order to feel that they matter in the world.
:
:
"The feeling of validation one gets from the world for being seen as fighting injustice is addictive, and satisfies one’s own narcissism."
Blacks and whites, both, AFAIK.
TY again. :) = 😁
Absolutely bloody Brilliant! You found the right words to articulate the deep and diverse (unconscious?) psychological motivations in parts of the social justice movement: in Black activism, in which the specter of racism and its alleged effects are exaggerated to deflect criticism of a sub-culture and to avoid the ultimate burden of personal responsibility - and among so-called allies who, in becoming self-appointed Black saviors, attempt to compensate for self inflicted (and unnecessary) guilt and insecurity. Glen Loury speaks of the "commodification of Blackness." Another good use of semantics to imply that economic interests are served by the "racism industry."
https://unherd.com/2021/10/critical-race-theorys-new-disguise/
I really recommend this article to readers here. It chimes with the points in this article and the comments below
This is brilliant! Thank you for sharing, Aaron.
I really enjoy and appreciate FBT. All of the articles are fantastic, thought provoking, and inspiring.
Thank you for delving into an aspect of our current race conversations that I had not thought of before. I appreciate the new perspective and ideas.
TY (thank You), M. Fenton-Hewitt! "Wonderous."