Pretense

Here is a story from the New York Post that set off a few of my pet peeves.

The co-owner of a queer Indigenous artists’ collective in Wisconsin is facing accusations of being white after claiming to hold Native American heritage, according to a report.

Kay LeClaire, who identifies as non-binary, allegedly faked their indigenous heritage and used the front to make money, according to a local outlet.

LeClaire was accused in an online forum of actually being white after claiming since 2017 they were of Metis, Oneida, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Cuban and Jewish heritage, Madison 365 reported on Tuesday.

LeClaire, also a founding member of the collective and emerging leader in the Madison Indigenous arts community, earned artist stipends, a paid residency at the University of Wisconsin, speaking gigs, and art exhibitions with the help of their Native American claim.

But LeClaire, who went by the Native American name nibiiwakamigkwe, was allegedly exposed after a hobbyist genealogist posted evidence of LeClair’s real genealogy on an online forum, Madison 365 reported. The online forum user, AdvancedSmite, told Madison 365 that questions about LeClaire’s claims led to some digging.

The user, who did not want to reveal their actual identity to the outlet, used online records and resources to connect LeClaire’s lineage to German, Swedish and French Canadian ancestors and posted the findings on a forum.

LeClaire didn’t answers questions when contacted by Madison 365, but instead sent a long statement. LeClaire reportedly said any culturally related items they had are being given back to the community and vowed not to seek new grants while taking themselves off current grants.

“I am sorry,” they reportedly wrote. “A lot of information has come to my attention since late December. I am still processing it all and do not yet know how to respond adequately. What I can do now is offer change.

“Moving forward, my efforts will be towards reducing harm by following the directions provided by Native community members and community-specified proxies. Currently, this means that I am not using the Ojibwe name given to me and am removing myself from all community spaces, positions, projects, and grants and will not seek new ones.”

I admit I am something of a grammar Nazi (Are we still allowed to say that?), so using the pronoun ‘they’ to refer to a single person really irritates me. In English, there are three singular third-person pronouns and one plural third-person pronoun. When the subject or object is masculine, we use he/him. When it is feminine, we use she/her. When it has no gender, we use it. It is almost always used for inanimate objects. The plural third-person pronoun is they/them. They can be used for a single person if the person’s gender is indeterminate, as a shorthand for he or she. They should not be used for a single individual whose gender is known unless that individual is a conjoined twin or suffers from multiple personality disorder. Judging by the picture, Ms. LeClaire is a woman. The article ought to use the pronouns she and her.

This brings me to my next peeve. There is no such thing as being of nonbinary gender. On Earth, the most complex organisms, certainly every vertebrate animal, are divided into two genders, male and female. Every human being is either male or female, except a very few persons who due to some birth defect or medical condition are intersexed. Unless you are one of the very few intersexed, you are not nonbinary. You are either male or female, and your supposed nonbinary condition is a product of your imagination. It is a free country, and you can imagine yourself to be whatever you want, but you cannot expect the rest of us to validate your delusions.

If you truly are non-binary then you are most likely an extraterrestrial. If so, welcome to Earth. You will find that there is no intelligent life here, and we are not eligible to join your Galactic Federation.

The final point I want to make is not a peeve but an observation. There is a lot of talk from the left about White privilege. Whenever I hear someone talking about White privilege, I wonder if they think Eddie Murphy’s “White Like Me” sketch is real.

 

Perhaps being White in America has its advantages, but that is far less true in 2023 than in 1923. In fact, in 1923, not all Whites were privileged. If you happened to be of southern or eastern European ancestry, then you were not quite the right sort of White. Considering all of the government affirmative action legislation and the diversity initiatives sponsored by every major corporation, one might argue that being White is a disadvantage in twenty-first-century America. In any case, the question of privilege is more complicated than many seem to think. There are many privileged Whites but also many Whites who aren’t especially privileged at all. There are many Blacks who are not privileged, but many who are privileged. This is not simply a black-and-white issue.
But, if Whites are so privileged in today’s America, then why are people like Kay LeClair pretending to be non-white. No one goes out of their way to fake being a member of an oppressed group. No one pretended to be Black when Jim Crow was in force. No one claimed Native American ancestry when the U. S. Calvery was herding the Indians into reservations. Why did Rachel Dolezal claim to be Black if Whites are so privileged? Why did Senator Elizabeth Warren pretend to have Native American ancestry? It seems that it is not so clear which precisely the privileged groups are?

What all this seems to have in common, besides irritating me, is pretense. Kay Leclair and many others are pretending to be something they are not. They pretend we still live in a country where George Wallace is standing at the school door proclaiming, “Segregation forever!!“. They invent imaginary genders with strange new pronouns. They pretend to be tolerant while acting like intolerant bullies. They pretend to be victims of oppression by reimagining themselves to be members of an allegedly marginalized group in what is undoubtedly the least oppressive country and most tolerant society in history.

The pretense cannot go on forever. At some point, pretense collides with reality. There are only two genders. There are no truly oppressed groups in twenty-first-century America. The sooner we return to reality, the better.

White Supremacy

Writing that postNot Teaching English about the teacher who decided not to teach her students proper English because speaking clearly and intelligibly has something to do with reinforcing White supremacy has got me wondering about the whole subject of White supremacy.

To start with, who exactly out there is promoting White supremacy? As far as I can tell, everybody in every major institution is dead set against any manifestation of White supremacy. Yet somehow, White supremacists are lurking around every corner, threatening to hold back people of color by reinstituting Jim Crow. There is not a single politician of either major party who is openly campaigning for White supremacy. There is no Theodore G. Bilbo out there. No corporation has adopted White Supremacy as a policy. Instead, corporations are falling all over themselves to issue statements affirming their support for diversity, inclusion, and equity, even at the expense of profitability.

The woke left assures us that evil racists bent on keeping people of color down threaten the whole country, but where are these racists? Most of the hate crimes the woke produce as evidence of the omnipresent White supremacists turn out to be hoaxes. The situation reminds me not a little of Orwell’s 1984. Everyone believes that agents of the evil Goldstein are everywhere, subverting the wise rule of Big Brother. Yet, somehow no one ever encounters any actual agents of Goldstein, except for the people on the telescreen who have been tortured into confessing. Maybe that’s the whole point of the anti-racist hysteria, to provide an Emmanuel Goldstein for the masses to hate.

I wonder how Whites came to be supreme in the first place. Are Whites somehow more wicked than other races? Are Whites more ruthless, perhaps, more willing to use violence to take what they want from others? Do Whites have some insatiable need to dominate and exploit the world around them, including the natural world, as well as people of other races? That is what the logic of woke anti-racism seems to suggest.
This anti-racist idea that Whites and whiteness are somehow evil seems more than a little racist itself. It is reminiscent of Nazi ideology concerning the Jews. If the Aryans were the master race, how was it that the Jews tended to be more successful? Well, the Jews must be cheating. They are parasites who rip off the efforts of the noble Aryans. If all races are equal, how did White Europeans come to dominate the world through colonialism? Whites must be more vicious.

If it were true that Whites are inherently racist villains bent on oppression, then there can only be one solution to the problem of White supremacy, a final solution, if you will. It will not be enough to continue teaching Whites to revile their own history of racist oppression. Sooner or later, the White instinct to dominate and oppress will come to the fore. The only way to ensure the end of White supremacy is to end the White race. That is far from a mainstream position even among the wokest left, but the logic is quite clear.

But are White Europeans really more violent and ruthless than other races and cultures? An honest review of world history: real history, not what the Marxist professors are teaching, shows that there is plenty of wickedness evident among every race and culture in every corner of the world. The sins that the woke attribute to Western civilization, slavery, and colonialism, are the sins of the whole human race. The colonial powers who conquered the Americas and ruled most of Africa and Asia may have been oppressive. Still, they were no worse than the indigenous rulers who preceded them. Indeed, in some respects, colonial rule was an improvement.

If Whites are no worse than other races, perhaps they are better. Maybe they are better. Maybe the reason that Whites became supreme is that they are, in fact, superior to other races, particularly those Whites from nations that became colonial powers. If this is the case, why should anyone be against White supremacy? If Whites have superior traits that have allowed them to rule most of the world, then Whites should be supreme for the good of everyone, especially the inferior races who may not be able to govern themselves.

So what are these White traits that have led Whites to colonize most of the world in centuries past? Perhaps we should look at the notorious chart issued by the Smithsonian Institute to see what it means to be White.

 

The curious thing about this chart is that many of the supposedly White traits, a strong work ethic, desire for competition, scientific and rational thinking, using correct language, and others are not uniquely White at all. There are many cultures all over the world that prize some or all of these traits; while there are many White cultures that do not. Individuals and cultures that value these “White” traits are successful. People and cultures that do not value these traits, no matter the color of their skin, tend not to be very successful. This assault on White supremacy is really an assault on the qualities that lead to success. These are values that should be encouraged in every young American, whatever their race or ethnicity.

This leads me to my final question. Why do people like that woke teacher want minority children to fail? By teaching them that working hard, being on time, and speaking proper English are examples of White supremacy, to be avoided at all costs by people of color, they are setting their students up for failure. As long as they fail, they will always need anti-racist White leftists to protect them. Woke anti-racism is about really affluent White Progressives holding power over people of every race by dividing us to rule over us.

 

New Year’s Day

I think that New Year’s Day must be my least favorite holiday. The problem is the date, January 1. This has to be the worst time to start off the new year. It is only a week after Christmas. All the excitement of the Christmas season has dissipated and there is a general impression of anti-climax. The holidays are over and it is time to go back to the general routine of everyday life. In addition, January is the coldest, dreariest month of the year and January 1 is right in the middle of winter. I know that winter officially begins on the winter solstice, December 21 or 22, but in midwestern North America, the cold weather begins about a month or more before the solstice. It is possible to forget the dreariness of winter during the Christmas season, but by January, it feels that winter has been here forever and will never end.

It seems to me that it would be better to start the new year at the transition between one season and the next, preferably when winter becomes spring. What would be more appropriate than to start the new year at the beginning of Spring, when the cycle of nature is renewed and new life springs up? Spring is a time of new hopes and beginnings, so why not start the new year at the vernal equinox, March 21? If starting the new year at the beginning of a month seems weird, why not start the new year on March 1 or April 1? Well, maybe starting the new year on April Fool’s Day is not such a good idea. Why do we start the new year on January 1 anyway?

We have the Romans to thank for the date of New Year’s Day. as well as for our calendar, which is derived from the ancient Roman calendar. Originally, the Roman calendar did have March as the first month of the year. According to Roman legend, Rome’s founder Romulus established a ten-month calendar, beginning in March and extending to December. This is why our ninth through twelfth months, September to December have names meaning seventh through tenth months. Obviously, this ten-month calendar didn’t work out at all, so Romulus’s successor, Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, added the months of January and February.

It is not clear how true these legends are, but the twelve-month calendar attributed to Numa was used until Julius Caesar reformed the calendar in 46 BC. At first, the year continued to start in March, but during the republic, new consuls began their terms of office on the kalends, or first day, of January, named for Janus the double-headed god of new beginnings. The Romans did not number their years forward from a past year, as we do, Instead, they named each year after the consuls who served for that year. So, instead of a particular year being 132 since whatever, it would be the year Titus Maximus and Gaius Flavius were consuls. For this reason, it seemed to make sense to start the new year with the beginning of the consuls’ terms, and January first gradually became accepted as the first day of the new year, and when Julius Caesar introduced his Julian calendar, the first of January was officially established as the new year.

 

The Roman god Janus

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, New Year’s Day began to be seen as a holdover from Rome’s pagan past, and a variety of dates were used as New Year’s Day, including Christmas, March 1, and March 25. Calendars still began with January, however, leaving the actual date the new year began up to whoever had the calendar. January 1 was restored as New Year’s Day when Pope Gregory XIII promulgated the Gregorian Calendar in 1582. As the Gregorian Calendar became established as the most widely used calendar in the world, January 1 became the first day of the year worldwide. This means thanks to the Romans and Pope Gregory XIII we are stuck with the new year starting in the dead of winter, instead of spring, and there is nothing I can do about it.