The Myopia of Whiteness: David Brooks Offers Intellectual Flatus on Ta-Nehisi Coates' New Book

Greece is being strangled by the Austerity monster. Radicalized political Islamic thugs are killing innocent people in the United States and abroad. Racist cops keeps snuffing people out.

I would rather have a good laugh than discuss such dire matters. The intellectual flatus produced by David Brooks is always a source of comedic relief. He is a national treasure; his comic timing is unmatched.

Whiteness is privilege, a type of property, invisibility, and normality.

Whiteness is a type of possessive investment that pays both a material and psychic wage to its owners and beneficiaries.

Whiteness can be renounced and denounced; the privileges of whiteness still accrue.

Whiteness is a type of myopia.

Whiteness can bend reality to suit the perspective and desires of those people deemed to be "white".

Whiteness is a lie.

Whiteness is history; Whiteness is the present.

Whiteness compromises the morality and ethics of White People.

Whiteness causes piss-poor thinking.

In keeping with the harm that Whiteness does to the thinking and intellect of White People, writing in today's New York Times, David Brooks offered up the following turd in his response to Ta-Nehisi-Coates' new book Between the World and Me:

I read this all like a slap and a revelation. I suppose the first obligation is to sit with it, to make sure the testimony is respected and sinks in. But I have to ask, Am I displaying my privilege if I disagree? Is my job just to respect your experience and accept your conclusions? Does a white person have standing to respond? 

I think you distort American history. This country, like each person in it, is a mixture of glory and shame. There’s a Lincoln for every Jefferson Davis and a Harlem Children’s Zone for every K.K.K. — and usually vastly more than one. Violence is embedded in America, but it is not close to the totality of America. 

In your anger at the tone of innocence some people adopt to describe the American dream, you reject the dream itself as flimflam. But a dream sullied is not a lie. The American dream of equal opportunity, social mobility and ever more perfect democracy cherishes the future more than the past. It abandons old wrongs and transcends old sins for the sake of a better tomorrow. 

This dream is a secular faith that has unified people across every known divide. It has unleashed ennobling energies and mobilized heroic social reform movements. By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future. 

Maybe you will find my reactions irksome. Maybe the right white response is just silence for a change. In any case, you’ve filled my ears unforgettably.

At times, one must yield to the absurd. Unfortunately, the absurdity of race, white privilege, and the color line is lethal business both in the United States and around the world. The rich white male American exceptionalism victimology hustle is a great gig if you can get it.