Continued from here. (Or you can start at the beginning.)
Communication:
- The "King's English" rules
Back in the 18th century, the language of international diplomacy was French. Anyone who wanted to represent his country in the courts of Europe had to conduct his business in that language regardless of his own native tongue. Granted, this was a way that France asserted its dominance as a colonial power -- but there's no denying that the existence of a lingua franca increased efficiency in communication between foreign powers.
The same is true of the "King's English" in the United States. That there is a commonly accepted grammar in which we conduct cross-subgroup communication allows us to understand each other more easily. This doesn't mean, of course, that we should denigrate local dialects as somehow inferior or indicative of a lesser intelligence. But if we jettison any standardization in our academic/public writing, the result will likely be frustrating and confusing for all participants in our discourse.
(Notice, reader, that the people who created this infographic did in fact use the "King's English" to convey their nonsense ideas. If the "King's English" is so oppressive and has no practical use whatsoever, then why didn't these folks write this in AAVE or some other woke-favored dialect instead? Yeah: don't hold your breath waiting for a straight answer.)
The hidden "issue" this bullet addresses is code-switching. Code-switching refers to the fact that Americans who speak non-standard dialects must learn and use the aforementioned "King's English" in order to participate in wider society. These activists erroneously believe that code-switching is something only speakers of AAVE have to do -- that the code-switching expectation therefore uniquely oppresses black people. But of course, white people who speak deep Southern or Appalachian dialects also discover they must code-switch to be taken seriously. My AP US History teacher back in nineteen-mumble-mumble, for example, spoke the "King's English" while at the lectern -- but, he told us, every time he went back home to rural West Virginia, the way he spoke radically changed. "Here, I'm Mike. Back home, I'm Maaaahk."
No: the "King's English" thing is not racism. It might be classism. But it might also be a necessary evil in a complex, pluralistic society.
- Written tradition
Well, yeah? Western culture has had writing for thousands of years, so we're naturally going to have a written tradition. I think that's true of every society that has ever developed writing, white or no.
This bullet, of course, comes from the activists' conviction that oral tradition has been unfairly ignored in favor of documentary proof. The problem, though, is that - at least as far as I know - they have yet to present a case in which the conclusions of an oral tradition were more reliable than those of our written one. I do know of cases in which oral tradition has aided our understanding of more tangible evidence -- which is why it shouldn't be completely dismissed out of hand. But I suspect the reason why these people champion oral tradition and decry the written is that the former is far more protean than words on parchment -- which suits their history-erasing agenda most beautifully.
Writing is a technology like other technology. Just as gas-powered vehicles essentially superseded horse-drawn carriages, writing superseded the oral wherever it appeared. This is not a sign of some nefarious racist conspiracy; it simply happened because the peoples who adopted writing took note of its numerous advantages.
Quick question: are we now to cancel to cancel Sequoyah because he invented a written language for the Cherokee Nation? Or should we, in fact, recognize the truth? Sequoyah was a Native American patriot who thought "talking leaves" would actually help his people and advance their interests. He was no more a "white supremacist" than the Chinese who invented kanji -- or the Korean emperor who invented the hangul alphabet.
- Avoid conflict, intimacy
- Don't show emotion
- Don't discuss personal life
But wait: wasn't extroversion also a sign of "white supremacy"? Like I suggested in the previous post, these people are so stupid, they don't even realize when they're straight-up contradicting themselves. It would be hilarious if they weren't so powerful and so unbelievably threatening.
- Be polite
Yep. There it is. The mask is off. These radical leftists want the freedom to bully others without being called on it. But of course, being "polite" is not the same as being a pushover. You can be very firm in defending your rights and your beliefs without resorting to online or street harassment. Bringing about a more just world does not require you hound people in restaurants and intimidate them into raising black power fists. It does not require that you dog-pile people on Twitter, call them filthy names, and attempt to drive them to destitution or suicide for saying the "wrong" thing.
Politeness is the glue that holds all societies together. Demanding it is not plot to suppress the "marginalized."
Whew! At last, I'm finished with this monster!
So what's the BLATE, as my late father used to write? These activists are uneducated, parochial hooligans who know nothing of world history, human evolution, or normal patterns of technological development but are nonetheless very, very certain that things like time-keeping are white plots to keep the black man down. They are also condescending gits who, fundamentally, think black people are somehow unable to learn math, science, and academic English grammar and therefore need to have separate spaces in which none of that knowledge is required for advancement. And in the end, they are losers who wish to justify their rudeness, their failure, and their laziness by dressing it up in the language of social progress -- while also denying simultaneously that forward-thinking is beneficial and that progress is possible.
They are, in short, evil, brain-dead grifters who should be dismissed with extreme prejudice -- and mockery.
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