Even if you haven’t heard of Tema Okun, you know her work. In the late 1990s, she was a consultant in the burgeoning diversity and equity training industry when she put together a short paper titled “White Supremacy Culture.” Actually, calling it a paper is a bit of a stretch. It’s eight pages long, and consists of a series of bullet points, listing out what Okun describes as characteristics of white supremacy culture, followed by antidotes to them.
DEI proponents claim reasonably that Okun’s characteristics of ‘supremacy’ are somehow exclusive to white people. It is right there in the titles of her works. It seems obvious to me that these are characteristics of people in power of any race or in any culture and need to be addressed on that basis and not on the basis of who is white. Black people are just as capable of racism, even sometimes towards their own, as any other race, though they have a lot less overt opportunity to deploy it in white-dominated society. Okun does say, though I think questionably, in the podcast and in her 2021 paper that lower classes of white people don’t seem to admit to having those characteristics or to show them, and claim that they don’t apply until they achieve higher status, which, if true, in itself indicates that the paradigm is hierarchical rather than racial. It is just most easily identified in racial terms and is a misconstruction, a red herring. Claims of racism based on these characteristics are thus self-reinforcing and so themselves engender racism. This highlights the point of intersectionality of all categories of the oppressed which is that of the powerful gaming ways of generating hierarchical structures, a product of long cultural evolution, the ingrained consequences of which Okun is struggling, I think in good faith, to find the very necessary means to contend with.
It may be that the problem with the light-skinned races is that they have created and/or wielded the most powerful tools, e.g., guns, germs(!?!), and steel, with which to create oppression while at the same time pretending (though still presumably aspiring) to inhabit the moral high ground. Everybody interested in power wants to join that club.
"I am a Jew. I am a religious Jew. I am an anti-Zionist Jew. I realize that to make this last claim is to risk that you will stop reading, as often any claim of anti-Zionism brings with it a label of traitor, anti-Semite, self-hating Jew. I hope, however, that you will give me the benefit of the doubt, at least for the few minutes that it will take you to read what I have to say."
There's no mention of Israel or Zionism on her new page
I only talk about Israel because most critics of identity politics are Zionists. I don't expect much from people but the hypocrisy in this case is racial.
BLM buppies are annoying, but that's how change works. Two powerful black women, Misha Green and C. Nicole Mason were forced out of positions apparently for treating subordinates like shit. I'm betting they were taking a little revenge. That made me laugh. Better that than white whine and earnest self-loathing.
The brown bourgeoisie is growing. Adolph Reed's arguments are predicated on the assumption that black people should be leftists. That in itself is a form of racial exceptionalism.
But between white defenders of looting and a pro gun buppie from a family of cops, I'm with the buppie. Killer Mike:
And someone should tell Okun that most Jews look like Arabs. My father could never pass. And every anti-Semitic caricature looks like Arafat. The cops who killed Tyre Nichols were black. And the IDF puts Mizrahi soldiers in the front line on the west bank. Yes it's racism.
DEI proponents claim reasonably that Okun’s characteristics of ‘supremacy’ are somehow exclusive to white people. It is right there in the titles of her works. It seems obvious to me that these are characteristics of people in power of any race or in any culture and need to be addressed on that basis and not on the basis of who is white. Black people are just as capable of racism, even sometimes towards their own, as any other race, though they have a lot less overt opportunity to deploy it in white-dominated society. Okun does say, though I think questionably, in the podcast and in her 2021 paper that lower classes of white people don’t seem to admit to having those characteristics or to show them, and claim that they don’t apply until they achieve higher status, which, if true, in itself indicates that the paradigm is hierarchical rather than racial. It is just most easily identified in racial terms and is a misconstruction, a red herring. Claims of racism based on these characteristics are thus self-reinforcing and so themselves engender racism. This highlights the point of intersectionality of all categories of the oppressed which is that of the powerful gaming ways of generating hierarchical structures, a product of long cultural evolution, the ingrained consequences of which Okun is struggling, I think in good faith, to find the very necessary means to contend with.
It may be that the problem with the light-skinned races is that they have created and/or wielded the most powerful tools, e.g., guns, germs(!?!), and steel, with which to create oppression while at the same time pretending (though still presumably aspiring) to inhabit the moral high ground. Everybody interested in power wants to join that club.
It’s an important issue. I’m reading Woke Racism by John McWorter. I recommend it.
Okun in 2009. Now it's only available because another site reproduced it. https://mondoweiss.net/2009/07/tema-okun/
"I am a Jew. I am a religious Jew. I am an anti-Zionist Jew. I realize that to make this last claim is to risk that you will stop reading, as often any claim of anti-Zionism brings with it a label of traitor, anti-Semite, self-hating Jew. I hope, however, that you will give me the benefit of the doubt, at least for the few minutes that it will take you to read what I have to say."
There's no mention of Israel or Zionism on her new page
I only talk about Israel because most critics of identity politics are Zionists. I don't expect much from people but the hypocrisy in this case is racial.
BLM buppies are annoying, but that's how change works. Two powerful black women, Misha Green and C. Nicole Mason were forced out of positions apparently for treating subordinates like shit. I'm betting they were taking a little revenge. That made me laugh. Better that than white whine and earnest self-loathing.
The brown bourgeoisie is growing. Adolph Reed's arguments are predicated on the assumption that black people should be leftists. That in itself is a form of racial exceptionalism.
But between white defenders of looting and a pro gun buppie from a family of cops, I'm with the buppie. Killer Mike:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/30/us/killer-mike-atlanta-protest-rapper-trnd/index.html
And someone should tell Okun that most Jews look like Arabs. My father could never pass. And every anti-Semitic caricature looks like Arafat. The cops who killed Tyre Nichols were black. And the IDF puts Mizrahi soldiers in the front line on the west bank. Yes it's racism.
I look forward to the transcript. Being severely hearing impaired, I cannot listen to podcasts. Thank you for providing the service.