The Problem With Racism
If you didn’t love your kids, you wouldn’t want to talk to them.
They suck at telling stories. They‘re too young to gossip about your favourite TV shows. Their social circle is people who wet their pants and put crayons up their noses.
And worst of all, none of this stops them from thinking they’re smart enough to argue with you.
Despite their squishy, underdeveloped brains, kids feel equipped to debate bedtimes and cupcake privileges and the existence of the number 4. They don’t hesitate to weigh in on theology and where babies come from and whether it’s “Fig Newton” or “Pig Newton”. And in each case, their lack of life experience and their rudimentary grasp of numeracy has no impact on their confidence.
Talking to children is a crushing grind of negotiation and explanation and patience. It’s boring and repetitive and frustrating. But we do it anyway. Because if we want our children to grow into less annoying members of society, that’s what they need us to do.
If you didn’t care about racism, you wouldn’t want to talk about it either. Over the past few years, I’ve watched racial discourse soar to ever greater heights of hyperbole, defensiveness and outright lunacy.
And yet I still wasn’t prepared for the catastrophe that was Jon Stewart’s recent show, The Problem With White People. This twenty-minute masterclass in defensiveness, race essentialism, and virtue-signalling was so bad, that the only use I can think of for it is a case study on how not to talk about racism in 2022. Because God knows this isn’t it.
Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way first.
Now, I’m no expert, but what if, The Problem With White People, is a breathtakingly stupid name for a show designed to encourage white people to “have a conversation about race”? I mean, remember the backlash caused by shows like The Problem With Gay People, and, The Problem With Muslims, and, The Problem With Women?
No. You don’t. Because nobody in television history was stupid enough to make a show with those titles.
