The Kancel Kulture

Alexandra Duncan, an author, has canceled her own book just before publication. Duncan, an American author who happens to be white, had written a fictional tale in which there appeared scenes depicting an American who happened to be black, with Gullah heritage. She wrote the scenes from the American black’s perspective.

And that’s why she canceled her book.

My own limited worldview as a white person led me to think I could responsibly depict a character from this [Gullah] culture. …  I am deeply ashamed to have made a mistake of this magnitude.

Can’t comment on/write about/depict in fiction (or elsewhere) certain subjects unless the commenter/writer/depicter is of a particular race.

The assumption that the commented on/written about/depicted person or group is so fragile they have to be protected by the segregation of identity politics is just an extension of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Duncan should be ashamed of her own racism, not of her attempt as a writer, a condescension form of racism that also was noticed, and decried by John McWhorter, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, when he called out the author of another book on race.

The racism of Kancel Kulture is made manifest.

Public Support for the US Navy

Kate Bachelder Odell has an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which she discusses the tribulations of today’s Navy as it has gone through a series of failures in the last few years. One of her theses is the lack of public support for our Navy.

It seems an ironic thesis.

The service is trying to do too much with too little public support

goes the subheadline. Then, there’s this, from the article itself:

Capt Brett Crozier was relieved of command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt after writing a letter saying he needed to move his sailors off the aircraft carrier to arrest an outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

No, Crozier was relieved after “writing a letter saying he needed to move his sailors off the aircraft carrier to arrest an outbreak of the novel coronavirus” and transmitting it in a manner virtually guaranteeing his letter, containing classified information concerning the combat readiness of the carrier, would be leaked.

It’s instructive that Odell chose to strip the context away from her claim, a context that is critical to the import of and rationale for Crozier’s being relieved.

Odell is an example of the “too little public support” the Navy receives.