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White Fear, “Cancel Culture,” and the Trump SPAC Clown Car

Happy Monday and thanks for reading The Daily Courant, your afternoon guidebook to the most newsworthy and thought-provoking reportage available at Puck.

Today, we direct your attention to the second installment of Baratunde Thurston's ongoing series on race and democracy in America. It's a complex, sophisticated treatise on the divisions that ail us—and a necessary corrective to the some of the predominant narratives about addressing racial justice.

Plus, below the fold, Matt Belloni reports on how Netflix's defense of Dave Chappelle is reverberating elsewhere in Hollywood. And William D. Cohan explains why Donald Trump's vaporware media company may be the ultimate meme stock.

After the Tide, Part 2: Breaking White Fear

In a country struggling with racial progress, we cannot condemn potential allies for their mistakes, but we can’t coddle them either. Instead we must acknowledge the complexity in educating the people most invested in our oppression.

I used to imagine Nazis, white supremacists and other white power activists were all minted in a grimy factory crammed with KKK paraphernalia, Hitler newsreels and spoiled beer, plus some personal hangups that had been weaponized into group grievance. But it’s not that simple. In fact, sometimes those of us who profess to be anti-racist end up alienating potential allies—and even help to create racists. Years ago, in fact, a friend told me the sad and unintended origin story of a racist, and I’ve held to it as a lesson ever since.

My friend was very active on a popular video site at the time, the kind of place that people visited to feel better about the world. No, it wasn’t YouTube. But one day someone posted a video about white privilege, and the comments section lit up. A commenter with an earnest and friendly persona shared a thought that went something like, “Hey, I’m white. Can someone explain this white privilege thing to me? I’ve been poor all my life. My family is poor, and I don’t feel all that privileged or better than anybody else. What exactly does this mean?” I’m paraphrasing, but you get the gist.

In response, others swarmed this commenter; they attacked him for not knowing the answer to the question he posed. They wrote things like, “You should know!” and “Look it up!” and “I can’t believe you’re asking such a stupid question.” It was a real pile-on of shame, very Game of Thrones. 

As the dust settled, someone else stepped forward to offer an alternative view: Of course the mob wasn’t interested in answering the commenter’s question; instead, they only cared about airing their own views and making him look stupid. This person also told him, notably, that these attackers were actually racist themselves for having shunned him and rejected his question without the least bit of empathy. 

This person was persuasive, and they found a vulnerable and willing pupil. Over months they slowly opened that commenter’s mind to some of the ugliest, most hateful, and false propaganda online and converted him into the very thing that the people who shamed him said they are against. In a period of months, that original commenter went from a person genuinely curious about racism to a racist, himself...

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FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT