Everything you wanted to know about “multiracial whiteness” but were too intelligent to ask
I’m tempted to begin and end this essay about what “multiracial whiteness” is, with the word “stupid”. But given that my New Year’s resolution for 2021 is to be more charitable, let’s look a little deeper.
I first heard the term a few days ago, when a friend sent me this article entitled “To Understand Trump’s Support, We Must Think in Terms of Multiracial Whiteness” (I swear she only sends me these things because she enjoys seeing the little vein in my temple throb).
Written by Cristina Beltrán, an associate professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, the piece attempts to explain why people of colour chose to take part in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The question baffles me too. Understanding why people of colour voted for somebody like Trump is difficult enough, but why they might stage a coup on his behalf is truly a mystery. …
Here’s why that’s not the point
The more I read about the events which led to last week’s attack on the Capitol, the more I’m reminded of one of my favourite 90s movies, Falling Down. The story follows a man, named William Foster, through a series of increasingly violent events.
When he gets into a petty argument over his change in a convenience store, the owner pulls out a baseball bat. William wrestles the bat away from him, smashes up the store, takes the change (and a Coke), and leaves.
As he sits quietly drinking his Coke, two gang members pull out a knife and try to rob him. William uses the baseball bat to chase them off and slips the knife into his pocket. …
Politics
It’s time to rethink free speech
The day after Donald Trump’s cheerleading encouraged a troupe of YMCA rejects to storm the Capitol and prompted Twitter and Facebook to suspend his accounts, New York Times columnist, Aaron Ross Sorkin, made the following observation:
So Trump has access to the nuclear codes but he can’t Tweet or post to Facebook.
He has a point. It seems like a strange failure of priorities to allow a man who we’ve deemed too irresponsible to use social media to retain control over weapons which could end all life on the planet. …
This is what happens when we don’t share reality
The chain of events which led to yesterday’s attack on the Capitol began with the pettiest of lies. Donald Trump, his ego bruised by the fact that the crowds at his inauguration were (far) smaller than Barack Obama’s, encouraged the then press secretary, Sean Spicer, to say that Trump’s swearing-in, had drawn “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration.”
When reporters challenged this trivially falsifiable claim, Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s senior counsellor, argued that Spicer had merely presented “alternative facts”. Many commentators were quick to laugh at this ridiculous attack on our shared reality. …
Everybody talks about it, and nothing happens
One of the most memorable characters from my school was a boy named Shaun Jones. The boy was a cheating savant. Whenever we had a big exam, he’d manage to get a copy of the questions ahead of time. He paid the smartest kids from the year above us to write essays for him. He invented elaborate methods to sneak cheat sheets into exam halls. The teachers suspected he was up to no good, but they couldn’t catch him.
Even worse, Shaun had the kind of parents who wouldn’t hear a word against him. He was a good actor, he’d never been in any serious trouble, he knew how to turn on the charm when he needed to. As long as his grades stayed up (which they did, of course), his parents didn’t seem too interested in how he was getting them. …
It’s finally time to look to the future.
Let’s not sugarcoat it; 2020 was pretty brutal. A worldwide pandemic, bubbling racial tensions, record levels of unemployment, and an attempted coup, taught us how quickly life can change. And also, how quickly an intolerable situation can start to feel normal.
The past twelve months taught us how resilient we can be, but they also forced us to adopt certain survival mindsets to keep us sane. You might not have noticed them seeping into your thinking as you grappled with 2020’s endless challenges, but now that we can look back, it’s much easier to notice them and let them go.
Hindsight is 2020 after all. …
This year isn’t done with us yet
“That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. I’ve spent a large part of the past twelve months repeating that phrase to myself. In fact, if we define “strength” as a level of emotional numbness so profound that it feels as if nothing will disappoint, surprise, or spark a glimmer of joy within me ever again, I may now be the strongest man alive.
My capacity for despair has been so blunted by COVID-19, months of racial unrest, catastrophic economic collapse, and a literal plague of locusts, that when I heard that Donald Trump had won this year’s Gallup poll for “Most Admired Man”, honestly, I didn’t even flinch. …
The art of making people feel seen
I’ve never felt proud of the fact that I’m black. Don’t get me wrong, I love the colour of my skin, I love the fact that I’ve never been sunburnt, I love that I get to do “The Nod”.
When I say I’ve never felt proud of being black, I don’t mean that I’m ashamed in any way, just that “proud” isn’t the word I’d use to describe the way my glorious perma-tan makes me feel. To me, being black is like being tall or being right-handed or being a native English speaker. …
There’s a lot that writers can learn from the world’s most successful company
I’m currently writing this on my 13 inch MacBook Pro. Although I had the idea while I was out for a walk, so I jotted down the outline on my iPhone. To help me focus, I’m listening to an Apple Music playlist on my AirPods. Later, I’ll probably go for a run, which I’ll track on my Apple Watch.
If Apple made a smart-toilet, I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t buy one.
Every word that I’ve published in the past year has been written on an Apple device, but it’s not just their gadgets that have driven my work, I’ve taken inspiration from their work ethos too. Apple is a company of ruthless perfectionism, and the approach that fuels their success can be applied to any field, including writing. …
What would happen if you gave up your free will?
Algorithms control more of our experiences than ever before. What we watch on Netflix, what we listen to on Spotify, what gets recommended to us on Instagram, all of these choices are governed by software designed to learn our preferences and feed us more of what we want. But what if those algorithms didn’t care what we wanted? What would life be like if we truly had no idea what was coming next? That’s the question Max Hawkins set out to answer a few years ago. This is his story.
It was already getting dark by the time the car pulled up outside Max Hawkins’ apartment. His phone buzzed as a notification told him the details of its make, model, and registration number. The car had been ordered from his own Uber account, which wouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy if he’d been the one who requested it. Or if he had any idea where it was supposed to be taking him. …
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