I recently came across an essay describing the articles of faith of the most recent incarnation of the radical left’s view of race.  What it boils down to is that white people are racist because they are white; that western culture is a system that perpetuates white male supremacy and actively, if often unconsciously, works to oppress people of color; and that this clearly immoral situation is both inescapable and uncorrectable.

Wow!  Being white is literally, not figuratively, evil, and there is no way for those of us who are white (or at least self-identify as such) to escape our evilness!  Talk about despair, at least among those with a hint of a conscience.  What more or better justification is needed for any hateful thing that’s done to us, up to and including our righteous elimination?

Well, that does it.  I’m resigning from the white race and self-identifying as Cherokee, given that I’m 1/16^th Cherokee by virtue of a full-blooded Cherokee great-grandmother.  If it’s good enough for Elizabeth Warren, it’s good enough for me.

I assume that 1/16^th is enough to be accepted as (at least an honorary) Cherokee, and that mostly-non-whites will be generous in their decision as to how little is enough.  (After all, most black Americans whose ancestors came here as slaves have some white blood, and “passing for white” used to be a thing.  My action is merely returning the compliment.)  But for those who don’t have an adequately-large amount of non-white ancestry, I can think of no more moral thing to do than to just lay down and die.

This will, of course, require careful documentation of one’s racial heritage, going back quite a few generations.  Past experience has shown this is difficult to do, though.  The last regime I’m aware of that made a serious attempt at it was South Africa under apartheid, and before that, Nazi Germany, when a single drop of Jewish blood was a matter of life or death. Then, of course, there was America’s problematic attempt at Jim Crow.  None of them proved particularly competent.  The records just aren’t that good, since most societies in the past failed to comprehend, as our newly-woke society does, just how crucial one’s race is.  Not to mention that anyone with a single drop of undesirable blood would have an understandable incentive to obtain falsified papers.  It’s good that we now have DNA testing to verify such things.

There is, in my particular case, the necessity of shedding my white identity and becoming Cherokee.  Given that the vast majority of Cherokee have acculturated and are indistinguishable from their white neighbors except (in some cases) by skin color, I’m not sure how to accomplish this; although I feel certain that a whole army of reculturation consultants will soon make themselves available for the purpose, assuming, of course, that I can certify myself as qualified for their services.  I look forward to receiving my reculturation papers, as I’m sure all other mixed-race people do.

Or most of them, anyway.  This might be a problem for mixed-race people who don’t self-identify as white; say, Tiger Woods, the son of a black father and Vietnamese mother.  Which identity shall he choose?  Perhaps the identity judged to be the more-oppressed?  Or the identity that is less-oppressed?  But won’t that still leave him at least somewhat-oppressed? (PS – don’t tell the other pro golfers, who seem to consider themselves oppressed by him, even in his somewhat-diminished state.)

And what to do with mixed-oppressed-race persons who see both parental identities as equally important to their current identity and are happy with that situation?  Or even worse, those who couldn’t care less, or don’t even know?  Shall they be forced to choose, or have the choice made for them?  And how to enforce the choice and punish those who refuse to abide by it?

There is nothing like absurdity to illustrate the absurd, and if going down the rabbit hole of identity politics isn’t absurd, I’m hard-pressed to think of anything that is.  I’ll be accused by the true believers of trivializing the situation, of course, but the reader will decide for himself.  As a practical matter, it’s doubtful that the radical left will have much success convincing the majority of the population that it is inherently and inescapably evil because of the color of its skin.

Actually, I have a hard time understanding why such thinking isn’t itself racist.

Kenneth D. Gough  © 2019