Couldn't continue on Twitter so: Of course you would challenge anyone calling Charlie a racist, as would I challenge anyone attempting to excuse/distract/minimize what I regard as examples of Charlie 'doing another racism'... We're absolutely not going to agree on this forum as to whether he was or not.
In my opinion, if he wasn't, he certainly gathered for himself a lot of video clips of him making arguments that could easily be misconstrued to be either in support/perpetuation of or defence/denial of a perspective grounded in racism and ethnonationalism with a side-order
of religious bigotry, and that's why I find it challenging to even pull together examples - I'm disinclined to spend my time watching/listening/reading someone who I have to 'give the benefit of the doubt' to as often as I have to in order to be able to 'hear him'.
I'm less likely to get to the point at which I'm hearing him "intelligently arguing about whether 'a broader policy that allows persons who would be barred from consideration from a particular role or position due to their skin color or some other attribute or skill that may
not have been subject to an equitable level of development to their peers because of the effects of historical biases related to their skin color' is compatible with widely-shared and entirely uncontroversial ideals of America as a pure meritocracy" if I first have to get past
the suggestion that he considered the roles that Ketanji Brown-Jackson, Joy Reid, Michelle Obama and Rep Sheila Jackson had attained to be "white person's slots" and that they, who all coincidentally happened to be prominent _non-white women_ also in his opinion do "not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously".
Whereas, you don't think that he was, and were therefore inclined to 'give him the benefit of the doubt' as he laid down his arguments and therefore perhaps you are more likely to pick up on the more nuanced points you believe he intended to make. However, I would argue that that's because you have likely never personally experienced racism to anywhere near the same degree as someone who did dismiss him as 'an intelligent, savvy, young guy with a microphone, who got paid by conservatives to bully young, impressionable right-leaning minds' (because left-leaning minds were less likely give him the aforementioned benefit of the doubt) into normalizing controversial stances.'
As a young black male, my parents drilled into me that in order not to be dismissed and lose opportunities in this world because of my skin color I had to work twice as hard as my white contemporaries at school and at life, a fact that ~35 years of climbing various ladders in various real-world business environments has only underscored, in order to achieve an equitable outcome.
So, that hypothetical pilot that Charlie Kirk mentioned playfully during his "Thought crime" experiment, would likely have had to put in double the effort and score much higher on his flight-simulator trials in order to secure the same promotion to Captain as his hypothetical counterpart "with the right stuff and the square jaw". https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-black-pilots/ and while I agree it would be churlish of me to adjudge Kirk racist for engaging with that 'thought experiment' at all, particularly as he immediately said "that's not who I am, That's not what I believe", it does smack of at least racial insensitivity to think of all of that extra effort to get the promotion, to be in the position to be able to be immediately considered NOT to be "the right stuff" purely on the basis of that hypothetical pilot being Black and it is deeply and personally gauling in a way that I don't expect anyone without personal experience of racism to understand but again, that is another 'context' that you have claimed to have represented fully in this article without .
Great rundown. Lays out the facts clearly. Exactly the kind of piece people should read before parroting the usual talking points.
Thank you!
Couldn't continue on Twitter so: Of course you would challenge anyone calling Charlie a racist, as would I challenge anyone attempting to excuse/distract/minimize what I regard as examples of Charlie 'doing another racism'... We're absolutely not going to agree on this forum as to whether he was or not.
In my opinion, if he wasn't, he certainly gathered for himself a lot of video clips of him making arguments that could easily be misconstrued to be either in support/perpetuation of or defence/denial of a perspective grounded in racism and ethnonationalism with a side-order
of religious bigotry, and that's why I find it challenging to even pull together examples - I'm disinclined to spend my time watching/listening/reading someone who I have to 'give the benefit of the doubt' to as often as I have to in order to be able to 'hear him'.
I'm less likely to get to the point at which I'm hearing him "intelligently arguing about whether 'a broader policy that allows persons who would be barred from consideration from a particular role or position due to their skin color or some other attribute or skill that may
not have been subject to an equitable level of development to their peers because of the effects of historical biases related to their skin color' is compatible with widely-shared and entirely uncontroversial ideals of America as a pure meritocracy" if I first have to get past
the suggestion that he considered the roles that Ketanji Brown-Jackson, Joy Reid, Michelle Obama and Rep Sheila Jackson had attained to be "white person's slots" and that they, who all coincidentally happened to be prominent _non-white women_ also in his opinion do "not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously".
Whereas, you don't think that he was, and were therefore inclined to 'give him the benefit of the doubt' as he laid down his arguments and therefore perhaps you are more likely to pick up on the more nuanced points you believe he intended to make. However, I would argue that that's because you have likely never personally experienced racism to anywhere near the same degree as someone who did dismiss him as 'an intelligent, savvy, young guy with a microphone, who got paid by conservatives to bully young, impressionable right-leaning minds' (because left-leaning minds were less likely give him the aforementioned benefit of the doubt) into normalizing controversial stances.'
As a young black male, my parents drilled into me that in order not to be dismissed and lose opportunities in this world because of my skin color I had to work twice as hard as my white contemporaries at school and at life, a fact that ~35 years of climbing various ladders in various real-world business environments has only underscored, in order to achieve an equitable outcome.
So, that hypothetical pilot that Charlie Kirk mentioned playfully during his "Thought crime" experiment, would likely have had to put in double the effort and score much higher on his flight-simulator trials in order to secure the same promotion to Captain as his hypothetical counterpart "with the right stuff and the square jaw". https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-black-pilots/ and while I agree it would be churlish of me to adjudge Kirk racist for engaging with that 'thought experiment' at all, particularly as he immediately said "that's not who I am, That's not what I believe", it does smack of at least racial insensitivity to think of all of that extra effort to get the promotion, to be in the position to be able to be immediately considered NOT to be "the right stuff" purely on the basis of that hypothetical pilot being Black and it is deeply and personally gauling in a way that I don't expect anyone without personal experience of racism to understand but again, that is another 'context' that you have claimed to have represented fully in this article without .