The slap in context.
The civil rights movement has been dubbed “the second Reconstruction”, atoning for the first, the failure of which convention attributes entirely to southern white racism. And while the civil rights movement is deemed by that same convention as an unqualified success (that is nonetheless never-ending and always incomplete), the insane histrionics that go as civil rights now are due at least in half to the wild expectations those histrionics cultivate in black Americans. Those expectations are that they should live as royalty.
As a racist, I see those expectations as originating ultimately in the black American character, not in the propaganda that flatters it. Even modern full-spectrum propaganda has to choose its seed for the given soil.
As the civil rights movement/second reconstruction failed to close racial disparities and release all that dammed-up black genius (one of the movement’s early promises was to bring online all that “underutilized” talent) its narrative adapted to keep the movement–now an industry and state religion–going. The racial looting of “equity” displaces the meritocracy of “equality” and the least appreciated racial disparity is between how whites lean (equality; fairness) and how blacks lean (equity; gibs).
For blacks, equality-as-equity is not just equal distribution but the settling of historical scores. It’s been said the average slave in the south thought that liberation meant he would henceforth live a life of leisure, like his erstwhile masters; this is understandable as his world didn’t go beyond the plantation. Black people, fed a steady diet of demagogy from the cradle, and like most people, view equality in the way of the poor woman in the story about the French Revolution: I suppose we’ll all be equal now, a lady asks her; yes, she replies, from now on I’ll wear finery and you’ll go about in rags. Critical race theory holds American whites lived as a sort of royalty on the backs of blacks, until the civil rights movement–the Second Reconstruction–set things right–not equal, but right.
But there’s more: black people are naturally more dominant, more prone to megalomania and sociopathy, and more reverential of brute power. Black society reflects that, in, among other things, raising up thousands of little tyrants, especially in entertainment. Black entertainers now are to black Americans as British royalty is to Britons–except with a far higher level of genuine admiration.
The unique circumstance of black overrepresentation in culture, in sports and entertainment where black charisma has–disastrously I say–seduced the nation, contributes to black feelings of superiority. This, combined with the gaslighting convention that black mediocrity everywhere else is a result of white malice, gives, understandably, blacks (and duller whites) the impression that blacks are a sort of master race–equal at least where they are not obviously superior. A chosen people–chosen by the Chosen, but that’s a longer story.
It’s almost inconceivable to the conventional thinker (what with all the propaganda) that not only might blacks be less predisposed toward liberalism and democracy, they might be predisposed toward their opposites–that is blacks might be predisposed to the way they are.
Black America now is not the product of oppression but of indulgence. This indulgence is taken by blacks as more confirmation of their royal status. In modern black lore every black woman is a queen and every black descended from royalty. Nearly every hip hop artist is a self-styled tyrant king–America is littered with aspiring Big Men in the African style.
Black people keep telling us but we refuse to listen: they are kings, not democrats.
Volunteer brigades of acolytes on social media combine with the mainstream press to defend black public figures from a sort of lèse-majesté that is invoked whenever we are prompted to outrage because so-and-so dared criticize black so-and-so(!). Those forces rallied to defend Will Smith for slapping Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars–a ceremony I and the few people I talked about it with did not know had occurred until Will’s slap hit the news.
The ceremony had been handed over to a black producer, in keeping with the current “racial reckoning”. The show was to be a celebration of black royalty. Will Smith was escorted to his place of privilege near the stage (conveniently enough) with his wife Jada looking like a Chinese dowager empress, sitting erect and imperious in a gown with a massive train, communicating with her icy glare we are not amused by the tepid joke of court jester Chris Rock. Smith was put on the spot, as a black American royal with black America’s expectations beaming through the dead-eyed glare of the Bond villain looking creature he would have to take home later.
It’s not just irony that the young Smith went as the “Fresh Prince”; the title was a good-natured sendup, when such was still possible, of the same black regal culture that produces murder and exploitation. Smith has made the journey along with the movement; he’s real royalty now and royalty is a sort of confinement of expectations and limits. The Fresh Prince is dead, long live the new Prince. (Let us not forget the juvenile aesthetic of Prince, and his royal purple.)
Who can blame blacks for thinking they are a class of royalty? Who can blame them for thinking it’s their country? From the composition of advertisements on television and the internet now one would get the impression America was peopled mostly by blacks–and this is not new, foreigners have long vastly overestimated the black American population because of overrepresentation on television. I saw a banner ad for sun-block online recently–of course the model was black. And the cliche is true: these television blacks are amazing: intelligent, kind, generous, oh-so-patient with the hapless whites they encounter.
Now it’s funny, and you should laugh; but it’s also a sin, and you should wish those behind it a humiliation equal to ours. And I’m not talking about black people.
Smith was handed the Oscar for his lead role in, wouldn’t you know it, “King Richard”. The standing ovation sanctioned his actions.
I have no idea if his acting was any good. But an amateur performance is worth noting here. Just as the Oscars were handed over to black America (and comically fell apart) a seat on the Supreme Court is being handed over to a black woman in recognition of her noble birth. Cory Booker’s paean is something to behold, as he deplores the “shocking” treatment of being questioned, like a mere commoner.
Black Lady Judge is a queen.
untethered 