There is a cure for ignorance.
It is called education.
But what is the cure for educators who manufacture ignorance?
I recommend ridicule.
Meet Dr. Donald Moss, who recently published a “paper” titled “On Having Whiteness,” in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. The editor should have his head examined.
In the abstract condensing the larger work, to which I did not have access (that would cost $37.50, and while I’m white, I’m not stupid), “whiteness” is described as “a malignant, parasite-like condition,” which is incurable.
Dr. Moss is white, described by one website as “a presumed psychoanalyst from New York City.” He supposedly has written extensively on masculinity and whiteness issues. I’ll bet he has “issues” with masculinity.
I emailed him to ask if the abstract was legit, and would he agree to be interviewed?
He did not reply. I guess he was exercising “white privilege.”
For the purpose of this column, I will confess to being “white.” I do not confess to being a parasite.
I can’t pretend to be insulted, because I don’t take this worthless pig slop seriously, and I recognize Moss is trying to gain some notoriety. Maybe he’s planning to write a book, or maybe planning a transition to something else.
Like a hermaphrodite lizard.
“Parasitic Whiteness,” Moss writes, “renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples.”
As evidence of his thesis, Moss produces …. Nothing. Zero. Zilch.
Many ideologues believe merely saying something makes it true.
It does not.
“Once established,” Moss continues, “these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation.”
Ah, reparations.
Dr. Moss, what reparations have you, personally, made to Black people?
That’s a question I would have asked him, had he not been hiding beneath his desk (which I’ll bet is a very dark wood).
Dr. Dumbass concludes, “When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (‘never again’) or as temptation (‘great again’). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.”
I don’t want to go too far, because I have not seen the entire “paper,” but I’m pretty sure it’s a bucket of crap, written by another over-educated, under-sensed academic consumed by white guilt.
Or students, such as those at Brandeis University who have imagined that words such as “picnic,” “survivor,” “rule of thumb,” and “you guys” are deeply offensive and must be banned.
Moss makes the usual error of isolating the bad things individuals have done — who happen to be white — while completely ignoring the positive things done by people who happen to be white.
Like what?
Are you kidding?
Let’s start with medicine. Will you forgo vaccinations — from measles to polio — because they were developed by white people?
Most of us derive our morality from Judeo-Christian principles.
Law and democracy comes from the Romans and Greeks.
Architecture, art, opera, aviation, electricity, physics, psychiatry, photography, the Bible, radio, television, movies, philosophy, irrigation, computers, satellites. . . Enough.
Wow — white people were busy between Crusades.
I recognize some of these achievements have roots in earlier times, but the development into something usable was done by the big W — White people.
Moss has suffered some pushback from fellow academics, such as this one who tweeted questioning this “scholarship.”
It’s hard to take this Whitewash seriously, but there are some people who will. All sane people can do is face it down, beat it down with facts.
In the old days — 10 years ago — anyone making wild, negative generalizations about a race of people would be called a racist.
Now, their garbage gets published in an academic journal.
I read the abstract, too, and suspect Dr. Moss is abstracted from reality. He’d be great at The Onion or the Babylon Bee.
You ever get that feeling when you shave that maybe you should hit the beach to work on a tan so you won’t stand out so much at a Jazz Festiva?. I make note of a story in a Psychology magazine that men are becoming more feminized which the Doctor sounds in agreement with. Did he switch from Veterinary school as he sounds animalistic? In an attempt to be just a little serious a new book coming out shortly by Charles Murray of the famous Bell Curve explains how if we continue to accept everything as being racist then the America we know will no longer exist. He does so by again covering what he claims is the difference between all races in their mental credentials to contribute and compete in the world but are slowly being influenced and made believers of the current attitude of white guilt and implicit racism. If there is no pushback within the near future then America as we know it is doomed.
Soon “racism” will no longer exist, through overwork. I have pretty much stopped listening, and I know I am not alone.
I reference the boy who cried wolf. When everything is “racist,” nothing is “racist.”
HAPPY TUESDAY !!!
Stu,
SARCASM ! I am guilty as charged ! Conservative, Republican, Educated and WHITE ! A lobotomy is the only cure.
Tony
P.S.
3:10 a.m. blog notice
I couldn’t sleep last night, hence the 3:10 blog posting
Now you’re talking my field. This is pure postmodern/psychodynamic bullshit and written in such a pretentious way as to obfuscate rather than to illuminate. No one in mainstream psychiatry is going to take this seriously since psychoanalysis is to modern psychiatry as alchemy is to chemistry. These practitioners simply talk to each other. Why these psychoanalytic institutes still exist, except to cater to self indulgent navel gazers, is beyond me. It is pseudoscience at its purest and has nothing to do with science.
My hope is that parents pay attention to the classes and professors their kids receive in school.
But how do parents know what profs are saying? I guess they have to grill their kids
Have schools use zoom and let parents observe classes.
All you have to do is get the teachers unions to agree. 😄
Shame on the publishers that spend money to publish this “stuff” thereby lending credence to its content.
I read in “No Safe Spaces” (a book by Dennis Prager), in a chapter called “Academic Failure” these two paragraphs:
If you’re a college professor, it means years of education in addition to the basic twelve to sixteen suffered by everyone else.This additional schooling doesn’t necessarily make you smarter, but it does make you more educated; plus, it means you probably have some level of passion for a given field of study. For all your hard work, though, you’re sitting in front of a classroom, lecturing a roomful of kids. Half of them probably look like they don’t want to be there, and few of them will care about your subject matter even a quarter as much as you do.
When a college hires a professor, it isn’t hiring a mere instructor, either. “Professor” is not synonymous with “teacher.” A university professor must also demonstrate his or her worth through research and publications. You may have heard the old saying “publish or perish.” This means that if a professor is not getting books, research papers, and other writings in print, his job is in peril. A lecture hall of a hundred students could spend a semester becoming geniuses, but the professor’s job security doesn’t really improve because of it. The focus on publications and research tells the professor that his or her job is really to satisfy other academics.