Poetic Justice , is an advice column that offers better counsel to proposals at various papers whose guidance has failed the audience.
An anxious communist wrote in to The New York Times this year worried about their self-image as an suitable “antiracist”.
” I’m a immediately bright dude and recent college graduate who has very progressive views and is looking for a committed lover who, in time, can equally raise a family with me”, the anonymous writer said, adding particularly,” I want to prioritize dating women of color”.
” Despite my well-meaning antiracist principles, is this preference ( as friends have suggested ) wrong, insensitive or somehow itself racist”? they asked the New York Times ‘ supposed “ethicist”. ” I am dedicated to educating myself on problems of prejudice, discrimination and other types of kyriarchy while also learning from marginalized people. For me, rules lead the way to destinations”.
More than rationally explain how fetishizing antiracism is a ridiculous and bad plan to prove one’s dedication to id politics, the New York Times ‘ advice “ethicist” characterized the strategy as “impressive”.
” You’d be using your erotic ecumenism to level up. Where your shallower classmates have hookups, your dates would be teach-ins.’ Do the work,’ the slogan urges, and you’re rolling up your sleeves”, wrote Kwame Anthony Appiah. ” Your devotion to self-improvement is impressive. Like a dish of quinoa and kale that you may once have forced down and now actively enjoy, a woman of color could, you think, raise your game, supplying something like antiracist roughage”.
To his credit, Appiah offered a “few cautions” to the reader, though none of them suggested the anonymous author completely give up the narcissistic crusade of dating for the sole purpose of relieving some supposed white guilt.
” Although you’re not objectifying your hypothetical partner, you are, just a little, instrumentalizing her. That’s not to say you aren’t entitled to pursue this campaign of strenuous self-optimizing … Just be transparent about your box-checking ambitions”, Appiah wrote. ” Perhaps some prospects will be grateful for your offer to put your privileges at their disposal while you embark on your journey of uplift”.
Is it really uplifting, however, to choose a romantic partner based on a self-imposed racial insecurity? How miserable are these people baptized so faithfully into the cult of identity politics that even their wedding vows are taken on the bible of wokeism? A better response for the anonymous reader who wrote in to The New York Times would have been simply to man up over whatever implication they think there might be in two white people getting married, lest they write off half the dating pool.
It’s one thing to have a dating preference for a particular race based on physical attraction, and another to have one merely out of a dedication to prove something about racism to themselves.
