A Critique of the Term “Anti-Racism” – or, How It Is a Concept of the White People, by the White People, for the White People　④ – The Final –

Apr 13, 2021

26 min read

A Critique of the Term “Anti-Racism”

or, How It Is a Concept of the White People, by the White People, for the White People

NOTE: This piece is aporetic in nature that it will not be appealing to the reader if the reader either is incapable of entertaining a plurality of ideas, or has made up her mind already so that no reasonable arguments could ever persuade her. In other words, this piece reveals who you have decided yourself to be even before hearing the other side of the argument, and whether you are so singularly attached to your current view that only emotion can explain your position. Reader discretion is advised. This also concludes my quadripartite pieces I have written with regard to the subject in the past year.

PART I: On the Definition

I: The Job of/as a Philosopher

Let me start with the definition of the term, “anti-racism” that has become the centre of the attention from all sides of “political” parties. I say this in quotations, as it has been made clear to me over the past year that it does not have a universally agreed status. This became obvious when you compare between the recent indiscriminate attacks on the Asian people and communities, particularly, in the United States of America, and how the activists (who label themselves since the summer 2020 as “anti-racists”) have behaved with regard to this issue. Having experienced racist slurs thrown at me over the course of 20 years, as I am Asian, I came to be aware that “racism” is not a political ideology. As such, it is impossible to be used as a political tool unless one holds an ego-centric view and subverts the meaning of it in the manner that suits her whenever convenient.

The connotation of racism is deemed universally bad without qualification in the Western civilization due to the historicity the term carries with it. Fine. It is, however, not viewed as bad in the same way people say “fascism” is bad without qualification. Fascism is a political ideology in a form of authoritarian ultra-nationalism characterized by dictatorial power and forcible suppression of opposition. Racism, on the other hand, does not necessarily carry a political connotation, unless it is a systemic racism all the way through. This view may surprise many of the Westerners but there are countries, like Japan, that do not mean the same thing as it does in the West. In fact, the word “racism” is relatively new in Japanese language and it literally means “discrimination based on race” (人種差別 –Jinshu-Sabetsu). It is a concept popularized in a history class when we learn about how American/European people have treated black people or how Nazis treated Jews during the time Hitler was in charge. Since then, the term has been used, at least in Japan, to mean “to treat someone of a different racial background with hostility.” But these last phrases, “with hostility” directly come from transliterating what “(systemic) racism” means in the Western civilization. In other words, we did not (and still do not) have this concept in the same way the Westerners use it. Yes, Japanese people use the term, Jinshu Sabetsu, loosely to mean any hostile attitudes against the South Koreans or Chinese people, for instance, but to call it racism is to call Asians are being racists within the same race, which is absurd, if not confusing. It makes more sense to call it a nationalism or xenophobia, since calling it Japanese Asians are racists against Chinese Asians is not even a true statement (unless politically) but also it further obfuscates what happens if Japanese people are racists against Chinese Japanese Asians and so on. Yes, there are xenophobic people in Japan, but foreigners are usually treated with respect and hospitality. Whether you take it to mean “this is hostile” is a different matter (as there are people who dislike Japan after working in Japan for some time or due to a miscommunication caused by a language barrier). Nobody, however, has ever said or tried to make a case that it is racist for Japan to have a special coupon available only for foreigners that let them travel cheaply, nor have I ever heard a racist slur against Japanese people when they were kindly directed to the destination they wished to go to with a help of hospitability Japanese people offer. In fact, this has been one of the reasons why Japan has attracted many foreigners, even though we are discriminating foreigners from Japanese. Is that not racism? Why do these people who were helped by overt kindness they received from Japanese people not accuse us of being racists, when Japanese people would not have certainly received the same degree of hospitality? The operative word in the term Western “racism” is the sense of “hostility” – this is why a discrimination against a certain race on the basis of the race is deemed bad, while a discrimination from Japanese people on the basis of the race is not necessarily bad. It may take some time for this concept to sink in for the Western audience, who have only known one form of racism that is systemic and always has had the connotation of dehumanization. It is not the discrimination itself that is necessarily bad, but it is a discrimination combined with hostility or hatred that is unequivocally bad.

This makes sense since you can be anti-fascism, but you cannot be anti-racism except politically. Now, let me elaborate what I just said. If you are anti-fascism, you unequivocally condemn forcible suppression of opponents with dictatorial power. What if, then, you are anti-racism? Do you unequivocally condemn discrimination based on race? What if you are anti-war? Can you look at yourself in the mirror when you are in fact choosing which war to protest against in the world conflicts? What I mean here is that whether you are anti-fascism or anti-war, both of them are inclusively political ideology, while anti-racism is based on a moral imperative (the term is loosely/elusively used here). Many people say that they are anti-war to mean they are against violence but only use it loosely, as they will not stand up against any and every war. This point is significant as being anti-war can be both political and moral, elucidating the bridge between the concept of anti-fascism and anti-racism. People who are anti-fascism will never succumb or agree with any and every fascist rhetoric and hence are against the ideology itself, whereas people who are anti-racism do not act or react in the same way as anti-fascists do – fiercely argue and attack against any government that embraces fascism. This has been made crystal clear from simply looking at how the Americans who call themselves anti-racists have behaved in the mere one year – they act erratically when the ‘race’ is of black origin while they do not seem to care as much when the race(s) raised has to do with the Asian or Latino races. Even worse, most people do not understand which Asian community is being targeted, hence, anyone who looks like Asians are categorized in the same “race” and they become cozy with you so long as you look Asian without knowing or caring which part of Asia the very people they are trying to protect are coming from. The same behaviour is seen consistently by the racists – they attack anyone and everyone who looks like Asians. So, what is the difference in metric between those who call themselves anti-racists and those who perform racism? The concept of anti-war bears similarities seen in both anti-fascism and anti-racism but, as you will see, it reveals something important, a clear demarcation in the definition of these two -isms with regard to how these terms are used.

People are, generally speaking, anti-war whenever possible. This qualification muddies the ideology and demarcates it into a political and a moral concept. If you are anti-war politically, or ideologically, then every time when there is a war in the world, they act consistently in voicing against the heinous act of war and condemn it without qualification. A good example of this case is a prefecture in Japan. Hiroshima. The mayors of Hiroshima have written a letter of condemnation and sent them to the United Nations since World War II every single time when there is a nuclear test in the world (and it is well-documented at the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima). Now, this is somewhat different from condemning every and single war in one form or another, as it is limited to the nuclear testing and not wars, conflicts and any violence. But the point is clear. That is what it means to be anti-war (or in this case, anti-weapons of mass destruction). On the contrary, people who are anti-war morally do not necessarily speak out but criticize any wars that come to their ears without deeds – this is because it has to do with their ethical view points and they are expressing their opinions on whether or not a war can be justified conceptually, rather than ideologically. They act when they feel like it or when they are directly involved with a warlike situation. The majority of Japanese people are anti-war in this sense, that is, morally and conceptually, whereas the people in Hiroshima (I can attest to you that this is true as someone who grew up in Hiroshima) are educated to ideologically hate wars starting from the primary school education. The difference between the hate on the basis of moral and on the ideological ground is that the former tends to have a tangible agency, activity, or institution that can be associated with the concept of war as enemy, whereas the latter subscribes to the very essence of war as such. In this mindset, no tangible targets are attached but only the concept of war itself.

The anti-fascists are ideologically against the concept of fascism, whereas the anti-racists are morally motivated to act. This is why they do not care about politics – the nitty-gritty of the administrative issues and the consequences of their activities are not in their mind, just so long as their voice is heard. Because it is an opinion they are expressing, and not an argument they are advancing. This is why they can decide what they wish to care about and act under the name of justice when the injustice they decided to fight for had been happening in front of them every day, oblivious to them since it had previously did not affect them much. This is also why the anti-racists can have cognitive dissonance while ignoring it whenever convenient. The very indifference to what part of Asia the person they claim they are defending comes from attests that. “You look like an Asian, I am with you. Let’s disrupt the oppressors and afterwards, politicians will do something about it.” It is this kind of irresponsibly optimistic cognitive dissonance that makes them think it is okay for Japan to have the special discount coupons available for only foreigners or special hospitality given for foreign visitors.

Now, if you can be anti-racism, furthermore, it must also be possible for you to be anti-racism against the white people. Has anybody held that view? I have yet to meet that person. In short, racism as a political concept cannot make sense – it can make sense only when it is used as a tool for political propaganda. This means if you want to be anti-racist in the meaningful way, then you must be, first, knowledgeable about races and recognize that people cannot be simply categorized and explained under an umbrella term of “race” and you need to acknowledge that there is no “The Asian Race” but rather there are Asian communities. So by definition, if you are learning about racism, you are neither racist nor anti-racist. You have not reached the summit yet, just as when you are studying for a PhD, you are neither a doctor nor non-doctor. You are in the process of change. If you believe “racism” has the only one meaning universally, then you must also believe “philosophy” only exists in line of the Western civilization and no other societies can have “philosophy” as such, since it is a Western tradition dating back to ancient Greece, and nowhere else. For those who are unfamiliar, some academics do actually believe that “philosophy” is solely and purely the Western concept and no Asians or Africans or even Indian or Chinese people can have philosophy, φιλοσοφία. In other words, you subscribe to the idea of cultural relativism – an inherently ethical concept rather than a political concept. While it is common, given the history of the Western civilization, to associate racism with systemic racism, and sometimes these words are used interchangeably due to conflation of the definition due to focusing too much on your own history, it is not necessarily the case for the other cultures. Tribalism and nationalism have existed in Japan for a long time but only as political concepts, as they should be in any culture. And when they are used as political concepts, there is no reconciliation. If a change of attitudes towards each tribe or nationality happens peacefully, it must happen with the mindset of each individual, not at a political level. The Western “racism” does not necessarily translate well into other cultures, as it always carries with it the connotation of politics. To apply and impose that same connotation to other cultural lineages is, indeed, similar in logic to racism – in the way that one’s cultural definition of a word with its own history must also apply to another’s. It is equivalent to saying whatever white people believe is right and hence should be the norm all across the world. Whoever disagrees is deemed as heretics, enemies or “against us.” It is the job of philosophers not only to untangle the obfuscation in the definitions, but also to point out inconsistencies that arise from the rhetoric that is accepted as a norm. Yes, even if people are fighting for a just cause, if their premises stand upon shaky grounds with no universal consensus as to what it means, just like convictions based on feelings, it is free to wander about and forever vulnerable to inconsistencies. An argument with false premise or inconsistencies are deemed to fail – they may be valid but they cannot ever be sound. This is what is taught in the first year of philosophy. Yet for some reason, emotion dictates and is conflating a valid argument and a sound argument. This is what philosophy is built upon and has contributed to clearer understanding, however harshly they are treated in their own time. Machiavelli was tortured, Galileo was in house-arrest, Descartes got his books banned while Spinoza was being excommunicated twice for going against the contemporary norms and so on. It is antithetical for philosophers to keep quiet even when they see inconsistencies under a noble cause, and this is why I am compelled to speak.

II: Corruptio Optimi Pessimia

Corruption of the Best is the Worst, as it is translated into English. For a while up to early 2000, liberalism as accepting a plurality of ideas certainly contributed to diversity and disseminating different perspectives and cultural understanding. The International exchange programs further helped young people to experience firsthand the global view points and it led to toleration through discussions of certain controversial issues. In other words, there was mind flexibility (coincidentally, this was the time when virtue ethics gained renewed attentions). Liberally minded people meant “open-minded people.” Are “liberals” open-minded in 2020? In early 2000, when someone mentions any controversial topics, the first thing to ask was “what do you mean by that?” In a matter of 20 years, the answer you get is a judgment, not even of an argument but an absolute condemnation of the person who hypothesizes that view. No wonder the division is far from being getting resolved. Each person is either assuming with hostility or refusing to talk at all. I ask the self-claimed 2020 liberals: why did you even become attracted to liberal ideas to begin with? A proper political liberalism has always sought to bring about a harmony, starting Immanuel Kant’s A Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). This was picked up by Winston Churchill post World War I, but having failed to realize it, people again tried to create organizations dedicated to help others, not to antagonize them. Whether or not these organizations have failed in practice aside, the ideology was inherited and motivated by the same principle. Liberalism, as a principle, established itself as a concept to care about humanitarian activities, and most importantly, humans. People who adhere to this diversity of ideas used to be called liberals. Unfortunately, the definition seems to have changed. Overt word policing and political correctness as well as cultural appropriation – essentially the job of the activists and not of philosophers or academics who are well-versed in the field. Has anyone wondered why eating sushi in the West (which completely butchered the concept of sushi itself and branded itself as “the Western sushi”) is not seen as a cultural appropriation, while people wanting to wear kimono are chastised as appropriating theJapanese culture? How about the cosplays? The criticizers of this sort always come from people who are new to the history and hence uneducated culturally, i.e. activists. They are the ones who lack the emic perspective of the world. Even those who should know better are now drawn into the current of blind obedience. This is all done in the form of performative speech to make them look like they are with you while some are commanding from the armchair. For those who kept mocking the Asian people for wearing masks, who now wear masks – do you know you are either culturally appropriating Asian wisdom or being inconsistent and hypocrites? In Japan, as it was in 2000, people are still indifferent to politics and are satisfied with being tricked into that politicians are not doing anything and they are all stupid. If this were true, why is Japan so safe to travel? Why is it clean? Why is it functioning to the point that attracts tourists from all over the world? Yet, no one talks about politics in Japan – they are indifferent or apolitical in their stance. Partly due to the attributes of Japanese people not being vocal not disliking confrontation more than those in the West. In 2000, the North America was different. People freely discussed about issues regarding gun control, abortion, and racism amongst other things historical in hopes to make things better in their society. That was the attraction, at least for me. Liberal people appeared to hold similar views as I did – but it was only about in 2013 when I began to realize the liberal people were under the influence of activists and they were gradually conditioned to act in a certain way and say what was popularized by the crowds without analysing their premises. This is equivalent to scientists approving to administer a medicine that is privately made by the lay people. In sum, the keepers of reason have succumbed to the popular rhetoric with words whose meanings are equivocal at best. The ones who see the issue and decides to speak out are constantly “jailed” figuratively speaking. Is this not the very definition of fascism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism? Just before the World War II, the academics and intellectuals fled from Germany, sensing the upcoming danger approaching to them. I am not interested in the consequentialist arguments – what I am pointing out is that it is those who have the influence and who have power to have a say, the intellectuals who have been educated for the time like this to avoid with the knowledge they have learned, always seem to take the easy way out and move out of the country before they are getting involved, ignoring and abandoning their country and people, or become completely silent being complicit with the atrocity committed against humanity. The corruption of the best brings out the worst outcome.

PART II: The Reign of Inconsistency and Hypocrisy

III: Solidarity, or Herd Satisfaction?

“I know that the readers truly committed to racial equality will join me on this journey of interrogating and shedding our racist ideas,” Ibram Kendi embarks in his book, Stamped from the Beginning, “[b]ut if there is anything I have learned during my research, it’s that the principal producers and defenders of racist ideas will not join us. And no logic or fact or history book can change them, because logic and facts and scholarship have little to do with why they are expressing racist ideas in the first place. Stamped from the Beginning is about these closed-minded, cunning, cultivating of racist ideas. But it is not for them.” Let me unpack what he is saying here, as this is a dangerously binary distinction he is making. He is first synthesizing his politically motivated thesis with personally felt moral revenge. A supremely dangerous notion, as we will see later. Not only is he saying you are either with us or against us, but also he is at the same time proposing the idea that ‘if you don’t understand what I am saying, you are against me.’ This is exactly the mindset of racists who see the “others” as incapable of understanding what racists are seeing. Further, how can he claim, while writing a scholarly book himself, that “no logic or fact or history book can change them”? But that is rather a frivolous point – what is interesting here is the idea he is trying to implant in us that ‘some people will never understand and hence do not belong to us, but rather, they are the enemies of us that need to be liquidated; only we, the readers of this book, understand Truth and Justice, and it is our job to dismantle the political systemic racism.’ Division. For why would you even try to talk to them if you have already decided that they would not understand you? It is much simpler and easier to eliminate them – furthermore, it is much easier for us not to bother thinking about anyone who may raise a concern under any circumstances against our movement. Like Kendi says, “[this book] is not for them” because they do not have the capacity to understand it. How much could it be more obvious than what he openly says that his rhetoric is nothing but exclusive and divisive? He frankly admits in his book. In fact, he went on talking about Aristotle believed black people were inherently inferior that no number of books, facts, and scholarship could educate them, is he not doing the same thing? Nonetheless, people see no reason that this is sawing further divisions ideologically, whereas it should be an ethical problem. The fact that the politicizing ethics is supremely dangerous was abundantly made clear – the most recent one being WWII, where a certain group of people are used as a political tool, thus exempting from people’s mind that they are essentially moral issues. I have made the distinction between the ideology and ethics enough, and I understand that once politicized, it becomes harder to extricate an ethical problem from the political problem. What I want to focus on here is rather the inconsistencies the white liberals are tamed by, as anyone with a privileged status in a society can afford to have that kind of inconsistency. Let me illustrate what I mean by using the most recent example of racial inequality that motivated me to write this piece.

On March 16^th, 2020, Asian sex workers were shot and killed. The killer’s motif clearly shows a hypocritical view on at least two accounts: sexism and racism. He claims he had to kill the temptations he had, and it was not his fault but it was the fault of the ones who sexually aroused him. Second, racism. He targeted Asian sex workers for whatever reasons, but the circumstance makes it clear that his attacks were racially motivated. Now, I did not say his actions reveal his own hypocritical views. What is at issue here is that the way he thinks is permeated through the North America. I have dealt with a sexism issue in Asia elsewhere, and while I did not discuss about the Christian belief that temptation – the arousers – are the ones to be blamed in the West, this is too obviously false that I do not believe anyone would disagree with me on this. Besides, what I am talking about is not about sexism but about the inconsistencies and hypocrisies surrounding this je ne sais pas quoi notion of anti-racism. As discussed earlier, the anti-racist protests in the summer of 2020 happened during the worldwide once-in-a-century pandemic. This itself is a proof that the protesters did not care about those whom they claimed to fight for, as their very act at least has a sizable possibility that the virus must have been infested to other, if not the vulnerable, i.e black people, for instance. On top of that, they had no clear objectives normally associated with serious protests. Without the terms of conditions, the protests would go on ad infinitum, until people get tired of screaming their frustration, whatever that may be. As I have written in my earlier piece on this subject matter, in February, 2020, I discussed the efficacy of wearing masks with a white person, who treated me as simpleton by telling me “it is scientifically proven that masks do not work.” – the phrase Asians are told over and over again for decades. I asked him for the scientific proof, to which he sent me a medical article with regard to the efficacy of wearing masks as the proof. Excited as I was, I read through the article, only to find out that it was an article comparing 9 different types of masks and which masks are most effective and which are least effective. In other words, the article was written with a presumption that masks do work even if you use the least effective one. I asked him back, saying this is hardly a proof but rather it proves my point that scientists knew masks work and they were just clarifying which type of masks work the best depending on the situation. He never got back to me. In April, 2020, the conservatives, particularly those who listened to Trump’s tweets, kept pressuring each state to lift the stay-at-home order. These people would show up in a rather mediocre size of groups and claimed that the government could not tell us what to wear – it is an infringement of the constitution. Like all sane people, I was criticizing them for not caring about others by not wearing masks and openly having parties with a specific purpose of defying the state orders. How childish, I thought. Yet, the danger was real and immanent that I kept speaking out against them to leave home unless necessary for the fear of further spreading the viruses – even outside the world by infecting people who needed to fly to other countries for work, say, pilots and flight attendants? In June, however, the tone and the attitude the liberals took shifted 180 degrees. They were encouraging people to go out! Why? This was due to the tragic death of George Floyd, the video of which was captured and went viral, inciting even the people who had not cared about racial injustice to participate. This time, their claim was “we are fine, because we wear masks.” Now, let us take a moment here. The protesters were teargassed, compelled to cough constantly, they were sticking together with no 6 feet apart. The police were not wearing masks. There were many by-passers around who had nothing to do with the protests, but simply going home from work or from school. There was not even a single person counting who showed up at which rallies and who may have had COVID like symptoms afterwards. In fact, some cities, like NY, specifically instructed the contact tracers who performed the COVID test not to ask the people if they had been to protests (for this, see my previously published piece). This cannot be an isolated incident, given the pressures and atmosphere during the protests. To hear this from people who had never believed masks until 4 months prior and had actively argued against the efficacy of masks cannot be called anything but hypocrisy.

By August, merely 2 months later from the protests led by mainly white people with no proper education, people who chanted how they could not forgive themselves for not having acted against the systemic racism issue for over 400 years pointed fingers at anyone except for themselves for their own negligence. Furthermore, liberals claimed it is those who were not wearing masks and dining out or hanging out outside who is the cause of the surge in COVID. In other words, they essentially said they were exempted from catching or spreading the virus because they were fighting for a cause! How essentially the same the “argument” if we can call it that, offered by the Trump rally goers, who claimed they were exempted from catching or infecting the virus – first because the virus does not exist – because they were under the grace of Donald J. Trump. It was around this time people who literally had said earlier on social media they were willing to die for this cause to became silent and stopped posting any articles on the protest. What happened to them? Did they actually die? We don’t know. They were so hyped up to talk about BLM and call anyone racists freely just over a month before, but now they said they were tired of talking about it or they were “busy” – whatever happened to “the 400 years of racism must stop NOW or else…”? They were consistently unable to answer my questions, one of which is: what exactly is it that the protesters want and how do they plan to achieve that goal? This is a pretty significant question to be settled before even a protest breaks out. Otherwise, what the heck are they protesting against? At the same time, a different protest was happening in Hong Kong and they shut down the airport so as not to spread the virus, and most importantly, they had clear demands: 1) A full withdrawal from the extradition bill, 2) the retraction of the characterization of the June 12^th, 2019 protests as riots, 3), a release and exoneration of the arrested protesters, 4) an establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into police behaviour, and finally 5) Resignation of Carrie Lam and universal suffrage for the legislative council and the chief executive elections. What did BLM protesters demand in the midst of a pandemic in the country most irresponsibly acted about containing the virus? 1) defund the police, 2) don’t kill us (“us” is supposed to be black people, according to the white people, though said by the white people loudly), and 3) do something! … these are hardly called demands – what exactly did they want and did they actually see the end of the protest, which is important not only during the pandemic but especially so during a pandemic. Because the longer the protest prolongs, the more likely (using their terminology, as if such a thing exists) the people would be at risk of contracting the virus and perish. Any agitators and anyone involved in that protest after the first weekend should have planned or understood what it means to protest – it is not to simply act, but to bring it to the table of legislation. Did anyone of the protesters think through such a process? Their demand is summed up in one of the shouts (which I take it to be a demand, since nowhere can I find any manifesto or a set of demands, even on the official website of BLM, to which I was directed to, only to find nothing), “do something, someone, anyone!” Does that even fair well to the 400 years of systemic racism? Is going out shouting, teargassed, amidst the global pandemic whose mechanism we had and still have no idea not insulting to the people they say they were crusading for? Yes, anti-racism is without a doubt a political, convenient slogan made for the white/privileged people, by the white/privileged people, and of the white/privileged people. As I quoted Ibram Kendi at the beginning of the chapter, he is one of the privileged by definition, who perpetuates and introduces into politics a historically dangerous binary distinction of “you are either with us or against us.” Is this what solidarity looked like when women fought for the universal suffrage in the early 20^th century? Is this what solidarity looked like when Martin Luther King Jr. gave the famous speech? Is this what solidarity looked like when women in work force demanded equal treatment as their male colleagues? Not according to the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir or Betty Friedan or Naomi Wolf. What Ibram Kendi is doing is creating a herd immunity against scrutiny, creating a “safe space” where no one can attack what they believe to be the Truth, and where everyone who is not in tune gets labelled as sub-human. This indeed is the definition of fascism. Academia did not used to be like this, or at least I would hope so.

By October, no one posted rarely anything that has to do with the protests and their attention was shifted to the vaccines and their position reverted back to what they had been saying until late May. But they would not just change their view in private – they still had to accuse people for the surge on COVID. As the protests subsided, the more apparent it started to become that their next target was Asian Americans. They attacked, claimed how dare Asians brought the virus (which they freely spread during the summer), and as if they remembered, “Yes, the reason why we, the privileged, are suffering economically is because of COVID, and where did it originate from? Somewhere called China in Asia. They did this while at the same time, travelling across the United States for the holiday seasons up until New Year’s, blaming people of Asian descents whenever something inconvenient happened. To be fair, this part of the “racism” had been happening since the COVID, lurking under the BLM protests and remained under-reported. This makes me even more sceptical by what they mean when liberals say “I am willing to die for the cause against racial injustice” – I am sorry, I did not think you can pick and choose which race to care for more aggressively. Once again, my point that anti-racism is not an inherently political concept in many parts of the world. On the contrary, Kendi uses the term in a political sense – this is why he does not care about the colour of your skin just so long as you join the movement, but instead, he forces you to pick a side – a necessarily political move. Yet the followers of people like Kendi, as Kendi himself must have envisioned them to, interpret it as a moral dictum and acts as such. Just like the disciplines of Jesus Christ willfully misinterpreted the scripture and used it for their own benefit. Since nobody has yet to answer my question raised above, if they do not want to be misunderstood, I suggest that you respond with rational, consistent and clear examples – or else, you do not even have the right to accuse a person.

IV: Anti-Racism is relative, subjective and cares about only what is attention-grabbing

Well into the 2021, Asians are more and more being targeted for the virus that became rampant enough that we might call it America-Virus at this point. In truth, people in many countries do not want American travellers to come back, as they see Americans as humanoid bio-chemical weapons with volition and a sense of entitlement. With the vaccination ongoing, that view may change. However, with the stress of getting infected loosening up, they now have time to go out safely without much else to do with the restaurants and entertainment industries still not functioning. What they thought they must do now with all the free time is none other than attack Asians and people of Asian descents. March 16^th’ Atlanta shooting is one segment of the many anti-racism against Asians (I’ve been wondering, why people call it “hate crimes against Asians” and not “Racism against Asians”, as if there is a hierarchy of races, which itself is a racist notion). This shooting is doubly shocking, as it necessarily brings about the sexism and women are being targeted and persecuted for men’s fragile feelings of guilt and arrogance, just like the witch-hunt that got accelerated in the 15^th century onwards. “I just eliminated what temped me and what led me to sin,” the shooter, a white male, Robert Aaron Long, lamented, as someone who was deeply religious, his sex addiction was to be blamed, and not him as a person. Six of the eight victims killed were of Asians descent. Surely, there must have been an uproar after a history of racism against Asians. Six people were killed on the spot – not one, not two, if I were to draw a comparison with what caused the huge uproar amidst the pandemic the year before: Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. (If you are thinking to yourself – what is this guy talking about? They were not the only black people who were killed at the hands of the police but every day in the states, unnamed black persons are continuously targeted, you are clearly missing my point. Instead of pointing fingers at others, try aplying the same logic to Asian-Americans – race is a race, and if you want to make this into a racism issue, Asian race also counts and weighs equally, right?) But as always, privileged white people have a way of excusing themselves, and guess what? No uproar barely equaling to what people were hyped up for one summer before was seen. If this is not systemic racism, I don’t know what is. It is systemic on an even social level as well. While people decide which race is worth fighting for, and once they get tired of marching, they stop. Where are they when we need them? How come do we not hear much about BLM protests anymore? How about MeToo Movement, since this shooting intersects with sexism? Should it not also be at least brought up? Instead, they are talking about gun reforms! It has everything to do with what white privileged people care about after all. Just so long as white liberals stop caring in any visible way, the movement stops. This is not activism – this is what I have been calling performative speech since the BLM protests, and by extension, a performative activism. Activism is not imposed but comes from within – what white liberals have been doing is making the popular movements into white movements. This is why only handful of those who actually care keep on going. Now, this is a positive outcome, but not under a global pandemic. Ethics is not a formula you can just follow categorically under whatever the circumstances are – unless you believe the purpose of ethics is not to make people happy or to be virtuous but make society function harmoniously at your own cost at times, as Kant adhered. I implore you, those who felt free to accuse people racists for raising a concern for a global pandemic and who acted irresponsibly under the name of freedom, most likely killing a number of innocent people, to answer this simple question: how is your anti-racist activity going? And how are you trying to compensate for the emotional injury incurred upon those who merely cared about a health concern? Freedom comes with accountability and responsibility. There is no freedom without qualification – if so, freedom you are exercising is freedom to oppress, not freedom from oppressors. Simply because your rhetoric and intimidating others to speak out against you prove that. So, please respond to me with the appropriate words and actions for the damage you infringed on multiple people who felt oppressed by the liberals to speak out, and take your responsibility for it – you are not a child anymore. I will take silence as complicit with hypocrisy, hence racism. The words like freedom and racism should not be used lightly – they have consequences. They are not magic words that you can use anytime without worrying about the consequences.

Resources:

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/04/04/dozens-rally-saturday-texas-capitol-denounce-hate-attacks-against-asian-community/7080469002/

Ohio State students protest anti-Asian violence, ask university for support at Thursday rally

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/protesters-march-against-anti-asian-racism-in-us (March 22nd, published) accessed on April 5^th.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-20/hundreds-gather-in-san-francisco-for-rally-against-anti-asian-attacks-racism

https://www.berkeleyside.com/2021/03/29/1200-marched-in-berkeley-ca-to-protest-anti-asian-hate

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/20/979542001/we-will-not-go-back-vigils-honoring-atlanta-victims-draw-mourners-across-u-s

Woman knocked out defending Chinese friend in racist ‘coronavirus’ attack

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/20/us/coronavirus-racist-attacks-against-asian-americans/index.html

Kendi, X. Ibram. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016), p.20.

See my essays on the critique of sexism at https://isseicreekphilosophy.wordpress.com/category/akb48/

https://www.thecity.nyc/coronavirus/2020/6/14/21290963/nyc-covid-19-trackers-skipping-floyd-protest-questions-even-amid-fears-of-new-wave inhttps://isseicreekphilosophy.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/democracy-and-cosmopolis-in-2020-inconsistencies-in-white-liberals-and-the-enlightened-white-supremacists-and-the-rise-of-liberal-fundamentalism/