“Once you create ideology, it will hone in on minorities who are over represented.” — Konstantin Kisin, Centre for Independent Studies presentation, March 11, 2024, You Tube video 31:00 to 31:07
Woe unto the young Black privileged Americans who proclaim Blackness is Oppression. Nothing else matters! The day may come when dogma comes around and bites you in the rump. What do I mean?
In a recent presentation before the Centre for Independent Studies in Australia, commentator Konstantin Kisin talked about the aims and consequences of dogma. Dogma becomes a run away freight train in which logic and reality do not matter. What becomes paramount is social contagion. See the George Floyd moral panic of May 2020. Conformity becomes the calling card for social advancement. See the outbreak of true believers in former Harvard University President Claudine Gay. Group think becomes the known world. See family member whose brain malfunctioned when asked whether the individual existed in Blackness.
“There is a tyranny of the mind.” — Konstantin Kisin, Centre for Independent Studies presentation, March 11, 2024.
Dogma creates an ideology where the group and oppression matters. Full stop. No nuance and complexity here. No place for a Russian novelist. Rick Abrams nicely warns us of the coming train wreck for privileged Black Americans: “If your skin is light, you’re an oppressor and merit punishment, but if your skin is dark, you can do no wrong.”
The universe of black Americans is not a feature-less monolith. If there are over 40 million Black Americans, there are over 40 million life stories, experiences and perspectives. That’s logic and reality. Deny those facts at your peril. So there are many competing subgroups within the black group. There are lost fatherless children of uneducated single mothers and there are children who have grown up in generations of stable, two-parent family homes dating back to the Civil War and beyond. There are low-impulse control children who disrupt low-income public school classrooms and teenagers skilled in self-discipline attending New England boarding schools. There are young middle school students who can barely read and kids who are reading grades above grade level. There are students who attend ninety-percent black high schools and kids who are the only black students in their advanced placement classes.
There are black teenagers for whom Burger King is a special meal and others for whom The Top of the Hub restaurant in Boston is blasé.
There are over 40 million known worlds living in various subgroups of American Blackness. Call it class. Call it fortune. I call it for some black privilege.
For the Ivy League and Jack and Jill set, query what happens when dogma becomes sentient to subgroups of privilege and skin color within the faceless group of Black Americans. Woke Jews never prepared for dogma to perceive Jewish Americans as oppressors. Could generations of upper-middle class black Americans and recent black immigrants be the next perceived group of oppressors?
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As Kisin and Abrams argue, the ideology of dogma will view overrepresented groups with suspicion, constructive stand ins for the oppressor. We see this throughout the world. Jews were over successful in Germany and they become the Other. All bets were off for antisemitism and dehumanization. The question became the Jewish question. Indians were over privileged in Uganda and guess what? Idi Amin forced the Indians out of Uganda. Indians were over represented because they were privileged and powerful. This was the Indian question in Uganda. Armenians were over represented in the Ottoman Empire and they were forced out. The Ottoman Empire resolved the Armenian question. The Jewish question in Germany became the Indian question in Uganda became the Armenian question in the Ottoman empire became the Chinese question in Southeast Asia became the Igbo question in Nigeria became the Tutsi question in Rwanda and all the rest.
Dogma zeroes in on the over represented minority as the oppressor.
There is nothing new here.
During Kisin’s presentation before the Centre for Independent Studies, a 92-year-old woman from Hungary remembered times of dogma from her childhood. The Soviets would say there were oppressors and the oppressed. The solution was to flip the table. Impose a tyranny of the minority.
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Am I overthinking the fire bell in the night for privileged black Americans? Is it conceivable that Oppression dogma would circle back on the Black Elite? No one has a crystal ball. All I can do is review what has happened in other countries around the world and how dogma has dehumanized Jewish American students on American campuses.
Here are early warning signs that, ready or not, dogma will have its way with privileged Black Americans.
First, there is an incipient group, American Descendants of Slavery.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Descendants_of_Slavery (ADOS) This group takes a dim view of black immigrants to the U.S. They are opposed to reparations for American slavery benefitting immigrants who may share skin color but not ancestral trauma. ADOS can easily cast black immigrants as privileged Black Americans and thus oppressors under the dogma. Consider the first black U.S. President, the first black U.S. Vice-President, the first black White House Press Secretary, the first black President of Harvard University, the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — none of them are descendants of American slavery. It would be so so easy for an ADOS demagogue to cast black immigrants and their children as oppressors.
For example, how does it play out in ADOS social groups to know that 77% of black doctors are Nigerian immigrants? Only around 1.6% of Black Americans are Nigerian immigrants. That structural disparity is over representation in medicine writ large. I don’t care but query whether dehumanizing oppressor dogma will allow the exclusion of ADOS Americans from medicine to exist for much longer.
And then there is skin color. Once upon a time, it was fairly common for fair skinned and light skinned black Americans to hold positions of influence. https://medium.com/truth-in-between/the-light-bright-and-almost-white-in-black-america-d8820fcc55c3 Remember the pioneer black lawyers who came in all skin colors on the color spectrum?
Here is a picture of the first black president of Howard University —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordecai_Wyatt_Johnson
Here is a picture of the first black president of Morehouse College —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hope_(educator)
Here is a picture of the first black president of the NAACP —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_White_(NAACP)
Here is a picture of the founder of Howard Law School —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mercer_Langston
Here is a picture of the leading black leader during Reconstruction in Texas —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norris_Wright_Cuney
If dogma had dictated that skin color equaled oppressor, Black Americans would have lost thousands and tens of thousands of vital leaders in our national past. One consequence of the Black is Beautiful movement was the sad effort of European-featured Black Americans to wear their hair in Afros. Conformity was a powerful social contagion and it became less and less convenient to appear European as a Black American leader. See Congressman Augustus Hawkins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Hawkins
I suspect Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. became wildly pro-Black and radical due to overcompensation for his white appearance.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Clayton_Powell_Jr.
Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
If we emphasize white skin color as bad and oppressive, we are going to see more and more radical light, bright and almost white Black Americans. But mouthing oppression dogma will not protect one from light skin color as oppressor status for long. Dogma will find a way to ease out non-conforming skin colors. I know a Black American family that appeared nearly white in the 1870s and 1880s. Descendants made a conscious choice to marry brown-skinned and dark-skinned spouses. Today, some descendants in this family enjoy skin color that matches what Black Americans are supposed to look like, according to dogma. Other descendants appear European. And some are passing for white (shout out to New Hampshire and North County).
There tends to be a wide spectrum of color within Black American families. Would dogma defining light skin color as oppressor and dark skin color as oppressed mean I must view my Dad as an oppressor and my Mom as oppressed? That dogma is humorous beyond belief. My brown-skinned Mom was no one’s oppressed person and my fair-skinned Dad lacked an oppressor personality. These two parents of me should be divided by skin color?
Not my known world.
These skin color distinctions are unserious (to use my daughter’s phrase) when applied to Black American families. My Grandma who instilled virtue and character in me was light-skinned, lighter than me. Does that mean Grandma was the oppressor and I was the oppressed grandson with brown skin color?
This dogma has public and private consequences. If over representation implies privilege and oppressor status, are we consigning Igbo and Jamaican immigrants on college campuses to the same fate now faced by oppressor Jewish students? One has to search to find ADOS students on Ivy League college campuses. The label of oppressed is waiting to be picked up by ADOS students.
I encourage those who are free of dogma to consider the divisive impact of over representation and light skin color as privilege and oppressor status on some Black Americans. It is not a healthy place to be for those over represented in medicine and other fields to garner the stigma of oppressor. But it may happen as ADOS students at Ivy League universities see less and less indigenous black students and more and more black classmates from Lagos, Kingston and London. Nor is it healthy for those who are born light-skinned and fair-skinned to feel guilt about immutable characteristics.
Conclusion: The angst of Jewish students at Harvard and UC Berkeley today could be the despair of black immigrant and fair-skinned black students at Yale and Stanford tomorrow. Beware the siren call of dogma. It is easy to conform but conformity could usher in a tyranny of the many (dark-skinned under privileged ADOS) over the few.
The coming American Soviet Mentality will not benefit the Black Privileged.
Thank you for writing this. Unfortunately most people think in the short-run…
We are definitely living in “interesting times.”