From the title of this post, you’re probably expecting a snarky takedown of the concept of “white privilege” and a good solid fisking of critical race theory. And while I thoroughly despise everything having to do with CRT, liberation theology, and Ibram Henry Roger’s X Kendi’s ideas of “anti-racism,” I do have one point of white privilege that I do need to confess. That is to say, I do indeed have an undue advantage because of the color of my skin.
I get to be the boogeyman.
As a straight white cisgender male conservative Christian, the woke intersectional left may mock me, attack me, or otherwise attack me rhetorically for my values, beliefs and opinions, but they do not ignore me or pretend that I do not exist. For example, if I write a blog post that criticizes the wokeness of science fiction, File 770 will often pick it up. I’m not on social media anymore, but if I were, I’m pretty sure that my anti-woke posts would similarly spark a very hot debate, and get passed around by intersectional leftists as an example of white supremacy.
If I were a straight black cisgender male conservative, all of those people would treat me as if I didn’t exist.
Their entire system of belief depends on black people fitting into a role defined by neo-Marxism, which separates everybody into racially-defined groups and declares that certain races are the oppressed, while other races are the oppressors. Black conservatives, especially black Christian conservatives, repudiate this theory by their very existence, which is why you’ll often hear people on the left claim that they aren’t “black enough.” Which of course is just another way of saying that they don’t exist.
You’ll often hear woke social justice types accuse conservatives of “denying the existence” of people who are trans, or queer, or in one of their other intersectional victim groups. This is nothing less than confession through projection. If you’re gay and you’re conservative, you aren’t really gay. If you’re trans and you’re conservative, you aren’t really trans… except, if your skin color is white, they can always chalk it up to “interalized whiteness” or some other such nonesense. But if you’re black? No such thing.
Of course, there are some black conservatives who are prominent enough that the woke types cannot ignore them. Justice Clarence Thomas comes to mind, as well as Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Candace Owens, Justin Whitlock… but here’s the thing: because these prominent conservatives are black, they get WAY more hate and vitriol from the left than white conservatives. Ridiculous amounts of hate. Larry Elder, for example, was called “the black face of white supremacy” and nearly got egged during his run for governor of California. By a leftist. Would that have happened if he weren’t black? Probably not.
Here’s the thing, though: for every black conservative who is too prominent for the woke intersectional left to ignore, there are hundreds—perhaps thousands—of small fry like me who they can effectively unperson and ignore. Which isn’t to say that every black conservative creator’s struggles are due to woke racism, but it is definitely a factor, and one that I personally don’t have to deal with because I am the great white boogeyman. Any publicity is good publicity, especially when you’re small.
Of course, there is a way to remove this white privilege and equalize the opportunities for black conservatives and white conservatives alike… and that is to remove anti-racism, CRT, liberation theology, and all of this other woke garbage from our society. If our culture were not dominated by these ideologies, I would not be privileged above black conservative creators in this way. And frankly, that’s a world I’d much rather live in.
But this does make me want to find more conservative, black authors like me who are finding it difficult to get any traction in this industry because they are black and conservative. Indie is (to my knowledge) still a pretty level playing field, but traditional publishing is not, especially with the short story markets. And of course, promo sites and newsletters are going to be a mixed bag.
So if any of you know of some black conservative authors (or if you happen to be one), please let me know! I’d like to check them out.
