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It's outrageous that only one type of shooting by one type of shooter using one type of weapon is cause for outrage. Young black men are dying at the hands of other young black men, in droves, in every major city in America; but somehow that doesn't count.

Credentialed people, who consider themselves smarter than average, think that banning guns will stop the slaughter. If you ask them who will have the guns the day after the ban is passed and 450 million guns are magically vacuumed up they get flustered and dismiss you. If you mention that these perps and their victims come from schools with a 50% plus dropout rate and that the phony test scores have them reading at only a 3rd grade level you will be severely castigated. If you point out the absence of fathers in these neighborhoods you might need a bodyguard.

CRT does nothing for the people it presumes to speak for. It co-ops a genuine crisis to help the race baiters amass more power.

People want jobs and a chance to go to a decent school or at least a peaceful school with some structure. It's really that simple. The guns will disappear on their own as people are given access to the school of their choice. Education and skills and safety will bring jobs. This will take decades so we'd better start now.

I come from one of these neighborhoods. I am white. But black or white you feel afraid and helpless 24/7. You feel worthless. You just want the chance to go to the school of your choice not be forced into some raging hell hole that exists to provide job security to some education functionary.

Hate comes at you from all sides no matter your color in these dysfunctional places.. Hate is everywhere. It's a life sentence for the victim. You never get over the fear. I left the neighborhood at 23 and feel terrible guilt for leaving so many friends and family behind. Guilt and shame and fear make it hard to study and move ahead. I finally made it to the bottom rung of the ladder. I'm holding on for dear life. I still wake up out of breath and sweating all these years later. I'm being chased again by people who have nothing to lose - who hate me for no reason. I feel nothing but shame the rest of the day because I let it happen again. Because I ran like a coward again. Shame and fear trigger each other and consume you. It doesn't matter what color you are.

Then I go to work at a very progressive place filled with well meaning suburban white people confessing their privilege and expecting the same from me and I just want to cry.

Those of you with power and influence please help to fix these hell holes. Don't use us. Don't pit us against each other. Fucking do something - for a change!

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Well written. And timely... My company (large corporation of course) has jumped on the bandwagon of bringing light to crimes against Asians, but has leaned towards white supremacy being the problem. They linked to the Stop AAPI Hate newsletter that ONLY shared stories of racism from white perpetrators.

Being Asian myself, and in quite a fury as I had just read it before a meeting with my manager, I not so calmly explained to him how misleading it all was, and later forwarded him a different article Zaid had written.

While top brass has gone woke, I’ve been blessed with sympathetic direct managers. Ones who are fighting to see if I truly have to attend our required racial bias training. I vehemently spoke up that coming from a communist country, with family members that were sent to re-education camps—I was insulted that they posted a quote from a “civil rights leader” (known communist) on the training materials...among other things.

Having a communist country history — it provides a natural, built-in BS sensor against CRT.

Thanks Bari. Love this newsletter.

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One of the 20th Century’s most profound and succinct expressions of wisdom was this:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

There was quite a bit of bigotry in this country when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. His words were inspirational and entirely in keeping with America’s best vision of itself. Over time they surely helped reshape the outlooks of quite a large number of people.

Sadly, proponents of Critical Race Theory, which Mr. Jilani correctly describes as incoherently situational, have turned King’s aspiration upside-down. It wouldn’t overstate the case to call those proponents the neo-bigots of the 21st Century.

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founding

“I suspect that many white liberals — ridden with guilt over American history and biases that still exist among the white majority — believe they are doing minorities like me a favor by denying us the responsibility of addressing our own prejudices.”

I think the white liberals mentioned act this way because it costs them nothing personally while they accumulate a store of virtue signaling points. The irony is that their historical illiteracy blinds them from seeing their paternalistic embrace of minorities for what it is, a version of “White Man’s Burden” colonialist thinking - albeit without the need to shoulder any burden more strenuous than occasionally exercising their vocal chords or typing fingers. Then again, isn’t this the same approach long ago perfected by those who demonize Israel by infantilizing Palestinians? Same arrow, different target.

It is Jilani’s good fortune that he encountered that school principal when he did. With today’s expansion of Critical Race Theory, there is a good chance that both his teacher and administrator would face charges of islamophobia or be made to atone for the sin of belittling his culture.

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You had me until the last paragraph. It's clearly not true that "you cannot have power without responsibility." In fact, you certainly can -- as evidenced by the growing power of the CRT neoracists.

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Welcome to what we conservatives have been saying forever.

No one person and much less group is immune from the human condition .

There are no good guys—only bad guys and the bad guys who realize it and are trying to be less bad.

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When the "class struggle" fizzled, the so-called Marxists moved on to CRT. And when CRT fizzles, they'll be on to something else. The wreckage they leave in their wake is of no concern to them. Its just all "eggs and omelettes" as they lead us towards "utopia."

The one with them in charge.

Of course.

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Brilliant. All communities carry their own racist belief system but are often told you can't be racist if you come from a racialized community. Jilani is 100% correct and it's a testament to his own character that he was able, at such an impressionable time in his life, to hear what that administrator was saying. We are all for the better because of it. Thank you.

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Excellent article. It is important that we treat people as individuals. Identity politics is doing a lot of damage to this country. Keep sounding the alarm!

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It's a strange aspect of internet commenting that someone can read an authors words and still not really "see" what they're saying and too boot, go on to assert the opposite of writers explanation. For example, Zaid said the following:

"The most important thing he impressed on me, calmly and without shaming me, was that my classmate, like me, was an individual. He wasn’t an avatar of some kind of monolithic group. And neither was I."

"Critical Race Theory sees people not as individuals, but more like the Borg from Star Trek. It insists that white people are inevitably oppressors and that African-Americans are inherently oppressed. And everyone else, like Schrödinger’s cat, exist in a kind of liminal position, playing the role of victims or victimizers depending on the situation."

"So why are so many self-described liberals embracing an ideology that seems to insist that white racism is the only kind of racism? That bigotry only counts when the perpetrator comes from a “powerful” group? That denies that the same person can be both a victim and a victimizer?"

"I suspect that many white liberals — ridden with guilt over American history and biases that still exist among the white majority — believe they are doing minorities like me a favor by denying us the responsibility of addressing our own prejudices. Critical race theorists often argue that the true definition of racism should be prejudice plus power, implying that only whites can be racist But hidden within that construction is the assumption that minorities can never be powerful."

And yet in a comment to this piece we get this:

"We want America to be a place where minorities feel as if this is their country too, where they don't feel persecuted for the way they were born. I think Heather McGhee's new book The Sum of Us explains a big part of the problem well. Americans (especially white Americans) need to understand how people of color are systematically disadvantaged, and how this current system actually hurts all of us.

This is a big part of why CRT ideology makes it difficult to have an honest conversation without treating people like avatars. One person says, "minorities are not disempowered and we all have different perspectives on how we feel about the state of race relations" And in response we get, essentially, "oh yes you are disempowered, persecuted and disadvantaged, and whites better think so and feel sorry for you."

Note the "we" that began the comment. We (whites) are a monolith. We want minorities (who are also a monolith) to feel the way we want them to. And we think minorities can be helped by our benevolent "understanding" or we're all doomed.

Now I'm absolutely sure this commenter means well. Perhaps in a way this person has been programmed to respond in such a knee-jerk fashion to a minority saying he is not suffering from racists around every corner. Maybe he honestly believes, in spite of Zaid's point about POC being able to be racist, that the only way to eliminate race based hate is for whites to read books by the right people, repeat things said by the right people, and to do "the work." Apparently part of this "work" is to remind brown folks that they can't take care of themselves even after they say they can and do just fine without help from the white anointed.

This talking past each other may be a bigger problem than the racism we all abhor. If we can't even listen, take time to reflect, and ask questions of each other, how can we move past the narratives of minorities being victims only and whites being our only hope for racial reckoning? Pointing and calling someone racist does the same thing. We can't talk to someone and say, "why do you feel this way?" and actually pause for the answer.

Listening and curiosity will help us understand each other a lot more than deciding how "we" want "them" to feel. Great piece!

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Good essay, Zaid. Thank you for your clear thinking and commitment to human flourishing.

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Keep up the good work, Bari!! Common Sense is truly a breath of fresh air. I am trying to spread the word.

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This is such an important narrative. We are none of us "avatars of a monolithic group" but each independent, free-thinking and sometimes contradictory beings with unique life experiences and perspectives. We marginalize people of all races when we try to put them into neat conforming boxes like this. Indeed, it is a very taboo subject to publicly point out that the majority of anti-Asian hate crimes have been perpetrated by Black men because it flies in the face of the woke narrative that only whites can be racist oppressors, and that the historically oppressed can never be faulted for the bad actions their disadvantaged status has "caused" them to take. Please let us regard one another rightly as individuals and not as caricatures propagated by radical progressives, who would divide us all.

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Wonderful article, and so timely. Maybe immigrants will remind us of our true values; I despair for my beloved Democratic Party! How did they ever become enamored with ethnic identity politics and Critical Race theory???

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I subscribed to comment.

I was very critical of you from your appearance on Joe Rogan, particularly your lack of knowledge about Tulsi Gabbard and how quick you were to jump to the mainstream narrative about her, but I continued to follow and read your work because I appreciate another voice in the fight against the excesses of a leftwing ideology that has become illiberal.

This article in which you chose to show true character in the promotion of someone you once had major criticisms has earned my support in monetary value.

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Great essay! Invite him back again.

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