Not Playing Games Anymore

The support Hendrix is receiving is an unfortunate, but necessary corrective to years of relentless persecution and vindictiveness by both the Black community and the Left over racialized incidents.

Shiloh Hendrix: Heretic? Or a woman who’s just had enough?

A few essays ago, I discussed what I thought to be the greatest division in American life today:

In the U.S., the question is, “Whose country is this? If it doesn’t belong to everyone, it belongs to no one!” Hence, you have the cosmopolitan, multicultural democratic Left saying their demands ought to be met in order to save the country. They’re willing to allow the Red-White-and-Blue to continue flying as long as it’s under their terms. Liberals don’t say they hate America; they hate Americans, they hate American history. They love what America could become, if only they had control of everything.

There are those who believe America can be made better by destroying and completely redefining its identity. Then there are those who not only want to preserve that identity, they also believe America’s greatness is reserved not for the whole world, but for Americans. This is the greatest division in contemporary American life.

With one big caveat:

In that sense, America’s problems are far more complicated. Long after immigration ceases to be a major issue, long after the Fourth Turning has played out and we establish who gets to define what America is and who it’s for, it’ll still be dealing with the problem of the Black community for generations to come. This, not immigration, is the real problem with no solution. In many ways, immigration is downstream of the Black problem in America.

Well, over the past weekend, an incident occurred which reminds us all that America’s relationship with its Black community is indeed the the most enduring division in contemporary American life. In Rochester, Minnesota, a young White mother named Shiloh Hendrix was confronted on video by a Black man of Somali descent after she purportedly called a five-year-old boy the N-word for poking around in her belongings at a playground. The video itself doesn’t show the triggering encounter, but it does show the confrontation which ensued afterwards. Hendrix doesn’t exactly confess to the transgression she’s accused of, but proceeds to call the man filming her the N-word, making crude gestures at the same time, after being provoked by the man filming her, it must be said.

I’m sometimes leery about talking about incidents just because they happen to be hot topics on social media. I’ve come to find that the general public is often not as aware of these incidents as their virality across social media might suggest. Nonetheless, it’s a hot topic on social media, which acts as our public square, and it’s worth talking about for what it says about arguably the greatest social ill in America, one of the top reasons why this country is headed for civil war. In other words, it’s time for another “talk.”

Right upfront, I don’t defend the use of racial slurs. It’s manner-less and vulgar, behavior unbecoming of dignified individuals. Free speech has no relevance in this case, either. Nobody has the right to insult anyone. However, and this is what I and many others are defending Shiloh Hendrix from, insults aren’t a crime. And no, hurling racial slurs, being racist, none of these are crimes, either. Take your emotions out of it - how is it any different from being nasty to someone in general? It’s not. It’s only in our minds, thanks to social programming, that we perceive it differently.

In fact, despite decades of attempting to do so, the U.S. has yet to establish any hate speech laws, because not only does it run afoul of the First Amendment, nobody has made a convincing argument that there’s anything unique about what we’ve come to understand to be hate speech. In other words, how is it different from any other insult? If I insult someone, it’s not because I like them. There’s no way to cleanly draw a line between an insult based on race, gender, whatever, and any other, because insults derive from a place of ill will. Other countries have implemented hate speech laws and it’s pretty obvious the laws are based on an entirely arbitrary and selective understanding of what “hate” is.

Speech isn’t crime, with the exceptions being defamation and harassment. However, insults aren’t defamatory unless they make specific claims about another party which damages their reputation. Racial slurs are bad, but there’s nothing defamatory about them. Harassment is a highly contextual crime as well. A person cannot do what do what the Somali man did to Shiloh Hendrix, confront and film her, and claim harassment because she called him racial slurs. That’s an argument, not harassment, and arguments aren’t against the law, either. Speech can become threats, but again, that’s another context-specific crime. Unless that verbal threat is accompanied with both the ability and opportunity to carry it out, it’s difficult to successfully argue that a crime has been committed.

Finally, spare me any lectures about the history of this or that slur. Yes, terrible acts have been committed while these words were uttered. But many, many, more acts of violence have occurred alongside the use of slurs and epithets of a non-racial variety. Shall we criminalize the use of all expletives? Besides, if the word is so terrible as to be unspeakable, Blacks of all people shouldn’t use the word. It’s hypocritical of them, otherwise.

I didn’t want to spend so much time discussing legalities, but I feel like it needs to be made crystal clear that what Shiloh Hendrix did wasn’t a crime. If it was, then every verbal spat in public ought to be made into a crime. Countries like Singapore do go this far, in fact, and it does the job as far as keeping the peace. Yet, there’s not a single American on either end of the political spectrum who would agree to this, because we all believe in a wide latitude of free speech for ourselves, if not for others.

The biggest issue, of course, is what this incident says about race relations in the U.S. The Shiloh Hendrix incident is stirring up a hornet’s nest because it represents, according to political commentator Matt Walsh, the death of cancel culture. Consider me skeptical, though I think this incident is a long-awaited counter-attack. Much has been made of the fact Hendrix has raised over half a million dollars on the fundraising website GiveSendGo, something which would’ve been unimaginable just a few years ago. Clearly, something has changed dramatically in our culture in a short period of time. There’s no other way to explain how saying something which would’ve resulted in the total destruction of someone’s life a few years ago can now net half a million dollars.

I’m not celebrating this. Nobody should be rewarded for calling someone racial slurs, a five-year-old, no less. But this incident shouldn’t be turned into some moral panic, either. It shouldn’t be the impetus for some “national conversation” on race or whatever. We should instead recognize it for what it is: a “dirty war,” whipping up the outrage mob and mobilizing the state to go after those who commit symbolic crimes. Thousands of verbal attacks happen daily and the government doesn’t get involved (worth mentioning they tried to get charges filed against Shiloh Hendrix), nor does the incident attract public attention. But this one does, because it was effectively blasphemy - dishonoring Black people.

Race weaponization, recording social interactions gone wrong, broadcasting it across media, waging dirty war, it all needs to be strongly disincentivized. It’s terribly destabilizing, and we cannot live in peace and order if every social interaction gone wrong, even misunderstandings, turns into public outrage. It won’t stop, though, and it’s why I’m so convinced America is on the path to civil war in the near future.

However, if we are to avert catastrophe, it starts with neutralizing the potency of race. Anyone who professes to believe in what Martin Luther King, Jr. said about his dream for the country cannot also believe that race is something which can be leveraged to one person’s benefit and to another’s detriment. Rewarding Shiloh Hendrix might be going too far, but a society which cannot be honest with itself regarding race will end up finding the most inappropriate cause célèbres.

The support Hendrix is receiving is an unfortunate, but necessary corrective to years of relentless persecution and vindictiveness by both the Black community and the Left over racialized incidents. Many of the incidents that triggered moral panic in the past turned out to be more complicated than the public narrative suggested, or in many other cases, no harm or offense was actually committed. The line has to be drawn somewhere, because permitting the weaponization of race is no way to run a society, especially a multicultural one.

Deterrence, Not Compromise, Averts War

Dr. David Betz, Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, has been sounding the alarm about the imminence of civil war in Britain. Key to understanding why civil war has become so likely is because, as Betz explains, the “peasantry” of the West, which are still predominantly White people, believe the rules of the game have been changed without their consent. They were told to expect one thing, but got another. Race is a perfect of example of this bait-and-switch.

I’m simplifying things for the sake of argument, but Whites in America, since the Civil Rights era, have operated under the assumption that we live in a colorblind society, that race doesn’t matter. Even today, Whites are expected to operate under this assumption. Mostly. However, one group in particular was never expected to operate under this assumption - Blacks. All non-White groups are allowed to assert their racial identity, but Blacks have unlimited privilege in this regard.

Put another way, Whites understood the rules of the game to be one thing, but Blacks understand the rules to be something else entirely. This glaring contradiction has never been pointed out, however, mostly because it was never socially permissible to do so. I think everyone knows the Black community lives by a separate set of rules. It’s just that most people accept this as a matter of course, whether they like it or not, while others see this as ridiculous and untenable, as I do, and still others see this arrangement as entirely justifiable because of historical injustices.

No matter where you fall, it’s clear that an increasing number of people aren’t willing to go along with such a two-tiered system. Why would they? Wasn’t the Civil Rights Movement about fighting against what many felt was a two-tiered system? America’s racial order has gone from nominally White supremacist to where non-Whites are quite explicitly favored over Whites, but Blacks are atop the hierarchy. It’s not a stretch to say we live in a Black supremacist society. This isn’t the arrangement America agreed upon, but it’s the one which exists. It’s biggest proponents will tell you this isn’t the way things are, but it’s good that it is. It’s the most obvious manifestation of the law of merited impossibility.

If one side isn’t playing by the rules of the game as agreed upon, then that side needs to be called out on it. Americans may have thought they were being compassionate and fixing historical injustices in not doing so, but if both sides have agreed to a certain kind of arrangement, both sides must be committed to upholding their respective ends. One side cannot deviate to a different set of rules, while demanding the other side hold to the original terms of the agreement. Otherwise, the two sides are playing different games, the agreement becomes untenable, as we see today, and the relationship becomes abusive and predatory, as we also see today. If Blacks want to say they never actually agreed to this arrangement, fine, but what are they still doing here?

Thus, to end the weaponization of race, we have to fight any and all attempts to do so. No, this doesn’t entail throwing around racial slurs. But it does entail not allowing the Black community, or any community, from turning incidents like the one involving Shiloh Hendrix into moral panics and opportunities for “national conversations” on race. The real national conversation we are long overdue in having is about the negative impacts of the Civil Rights Movement, which have never been given any due regard due to its sacrosanctness in American history, along with being honest with ourselves: racism isn’t a crime any more than being an insufferable, toxic personality is a crime.

If racism is to be a crime, as it is in places like Singapore, then the rules not only need to be ruthlessly enforced, they need to be fairly enforced. People like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, also a Somali of Minnesota, cannot be allowed to get away with saying that White men need to be feared and profiled, a statement that’s not only factually questionable, but would never be permitted to be said about any other group, Black men especially.

Source

In fact, if there’s any race which receives overwhelmingly negative treatment in the public arena, it’s Whites. Most Americans individually probably wouldn’t consider themselves anti-White if asked, but the fact is, our culture involves Whites debasing themselves, constantly participating in humiliation rituals, and patronizing Black culture while denying themselves their own. It’s the sort of thing that happens when a people are set up for destruction.

Substacker

Aly Dee

, an American of Latino descent, recently wrote about what it was like to live in a culture steeped in anti-Whiteness. Her point is that it’s quite ugly and also dangerous [emphasis original]:

Suppose you are told your entire life that your failures are because of white people. Should you be a person with a psychology trending toward anger and provocation, at some point, you’re going to be unnecessarily confrontational with a white person. You will want to make the person ruining your life pay in some capacity because that is what you believe they are doing to you. This narrative was corroborated by mainstream media for the past decade as well. I think this is why you see so much interracial violence against white Americans by Blacks and Latinos.

I thought all my problems were because of white Americans once, and it caused me deep pain, anger, and frustration, but they were never the problem. My lying, corrupted, and abusive culture was.

If you grow up in a culture of fatherlessness, criminality, molestation, physical assault, low morals, and no accountability, you will be an angry person in a lot of pain.

Imagine growing up in that context. Imagine being told the source of your pain isn’t within you, your family, or your culture. You have been informed the source of your life’s suffering is the white people around you.

Now imagine you believe that narrative.

How would you treat white Americans?

Read the entire essay; it’s an insider’s look into what animates Black and Brown culture in America. Of course, we see that Hispanics and Latinos now vote in patterns similar to that of Whites, which is a welcome development. However, for at least half of Hispanics and Latinos, along with most Blacks, anti-Whiteness still quite prominently dominates their attitudes, translating into lifestyle practices undermining peace and order not just within their own communities, but in society as a whole.

Consider the results of a 2007 study out of Britain, a society whose diversity is rivaled only by the U.S.:

Source

There’s no way to call our multicultural, multiracial experiment a success if this is the outcome, if trial-by-jury becomes compromised because jurors cast their verdict along ethnic or racial lines. This wasn’t the stated objective of the Civil Rights Movement and there’s no way to blame Whites for the failure, either. It’s Whites who’ve been most committed to the success of the Civil Rights Movement, ironically enough. It’s because they exchanged White supremacy for social tranquility and the promise of a more equal social order that’d be of great benefit to all. Who’d argue against that? In the end, however, they got neither equality nor tranquility. Not only have Whites become social pariahs in countries they built and are the majority in, our societies in the West are hardly tranquil.

Singapore is probably the prime example of multiculturalism done right and it’s not because they allow their citizens to indulge in identity politics. It fiercely opposes it, in fact:

Source

This is what it takes. Listen to what the Prime Minister says at the end: identity politics fuels our worst tendencies, nobody wins, minority groups won’t get what they want because the majority pushes back, and the majority lives in an unhappy society where every issue comes down to race and religion. He’s warning Singapore, but let’s be honest: it’s a warning for America and the West as well.

In America and the West, Whites are still the majority and they live in an unhappy society whose culture buries them, using them as society’s punching bag, while Blacks are worshiped by our culture, their achievements elevated above all others, and portrayed in media in the most favorable, sympathetic light possible. Blasphemy in the form of insulting a Black person was Shiloh Hendrix’s crime. Except she apparently is a heretic. Is she the first of many more heretics to come?

The incident is a sign that we’ve reached the beginning of the end of the post-Civil Rights era order, that Americans, Whites especially, are recognizing the arrangement for what it is: a false promise. It’s not that America has suddenly become a more racist country. Most Americans still think racism is bad. Most Whites would still rather continue taking the abuse in order to maintain their status in society or just not become the next target of cancellation. Despite the status quo holding, for reasons scholars are certain to assess in the years to come, it’s also become much harder to tug the heartstrings of Americans with racial outrages than it has been in the past.

Many have warned for years that you cannot run a society where, in the words of the Singaporean Prime Minister, the majority is abused and made into pariahs, where all groups except the majority is allowed to engage in identity politics and tribalism, and where every issue, even non-political ones, are ultimately decided along racial or religious lines, without it disintegrating violently in the end. It took us a while - too long, really - to get here. But here we are.

Reminder: There’s No Solution For This. None.

Even if there was, the Black community doesn’t want it. For all their self-professed misery, Blacks benefit handsomely from the prevailing arrangement. They get to have cultural superiority, as well as a captive audience for airing all of their grievances. Whatever Blacks lack in prosperity, they most certainly compensate for with social advantages no other group has. That’s where real power lies. That’s not something money can buy.

Even with this latest incident, racism still remains the highest crime of the land. So much so, no other crime, not even murder, shocks and triggers outrage like racism does.

Consider the murder of 22-year-old Logan Federico:

Source

The greatest outrage is that her murder was entirely avoidable, a choice made time and time again by the government over a dozen years:

Court records show Dickey was involved in 40 criminal and traffic cases between 2013 and the present.

He has convictions for breaking and entering, burglary, grand larceny, strong-arm robbery, possession of a stolen vehicle, resisting arrest and more.

His most recent conviction for resisting arrest resulted in a 30-day prison sentence.

It’s just one example among thousands across America. It’s interesting how the inequitable legal system, whose real victims are Black and Brown criminals, manages to end up getting innocents avoidably killed, often at the hands of Black and Brown people. Who’s really being oppressed here? Who’s the real victim here?

But we all know nobody cares. Murder is just another day in the multiracial democratic paradise, while saying the N-word stops us all in our tracks. Quite succinctly,

Scott Greer

explains the only way Federico’s murder would’ve sparked any widespread public outrage:

The real outrage would’ve been if she used the n-word

He’s not wrong. These more recent incidents cannot be divorced from the greater context created by the killing of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at the hands of 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony, who also raised almost half a million dollars via crowdsource funding for his legal defense. No matter what anyone says, the incident is about race, because Anthony and his legion of supporters, nearly all Black, see Metcalf’s killing as justifiable because he dared to tell a Black kid, a modern-day Rosa Parks, what to do. It stands to reason that the only way anyone would care about Logan Federico’s murder is if she used the N-word, and it’s quite obvious the Black community would line up in support behind her killer.

Then there’s the Black community’s newest hero, Rodney Hinton, who ran down a sheriff’s deputy after his son was shot by police for pulling a gun on them during a foot pursuit:

Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich said a man who "targeted and killed" a sheriff's deputy May 2 near the University of Cincinnati's campus will face the death penalty.

Pillich said Rodney Hinton Jr. drove his car into Deputy Larry Henderson as Henderson was operating a traffic control device “because he was a law enforcement officer.”

“It was (Hinton’s) specific purpose to kill a law enforcement officer,” Pillich said at a May 8 news conference announcing that a grand jury had indicted Hinton on multiple counts including aggravated murder. The grand jury’s indictment includes the possibility that Hinton, if convicted, would face the death penalty.

Hinton was “upset” and “agitated” that day, according to a detective’s testimony, because Cincinnati police had shown him and other family members bodycam video of his son being fatally shot by an officer the previous day.

There’s now a crowdsource funding campaign for Hinton, too. Again, I’m always skeptical of using social media as a measure for public sentiment, but from what I’ve seen, there’s tremendous support for Hinton and Blacks view his actions as entirely justifiable, even though the officer he killed wasn’t even involved in his son’s death.

The Black community lives in a civilization, yet it lives by the rules of the jungle. Are we really stuck with this?

I’ve become an advocate for separation as a solution to America’s race problem. Call it segregation if you’d like, but history shows that separation, which isn’t the same as apartheid, is the one thing that stops conflicts. It’s the reason why Bosnia and Herzegovina has been at peace for 30 years now, after fighting the most horrific civil war in Europe during the post-World War II era. Forcing people at odds with one another to live together never brings about peace. Not everything is reconcilable. Nor is it always worth it to try.

The problem with separation, though, is that it requires both sides committed to making it work. Even if Blacks were to agree to the arrangement, they would need to be willing to respect the boundaries of others as much as others respect theirs. There’s nothing to suggest any such willingness on their part to do so, because the essence of what it means to be Black in America is that they built everything, and therefore, they own everything, and everyone owes them a lifetime’s debt.

Speaking of money, that won’t fix the problem either:

Source

It throws cold water on the conventional wisdom that the Black community’s biggest problem is socioeconomic. Yet too many of us still cannot put childish thoughts away.

Even if, by some miracle, we agreed to a separation, Blacks would remain dependent on the rest of America for sustenance. Dysfunction is so endemic in the Black community, they cannot build and maintain the institutions that make civilization work. There’s no need to look as far as Africa; Haiti is a perfect example within spitting distance of the U.S. A Black nation state within America’s borders would turn into our own Gaza. I don’t think anyone wants that, either.

Absurd as it may seem to consider, imagine that we bequeathed this entire country to the Black community, while the rest of us left for elsewhere. What would become of this country? To make a long story short, Blacks themselves would end up trying to leave America and head to where all the White people went, because they not only want what they have, but they’d also need someone to blame their failures on, since the gospel of our times says Blacks cannot fail, they can only be failed. The cycle repeats.

We can’t live together, but we can’t separate, either. So, what’s left to do? Only war remains as a remedy, which the Black community is more than primed for. It’s the rest of America who isn’t. It’s the rest of America who naively continues to hold on to hope that the proverbial “dream” can be realized one day, even as Blacks themselves have moved past it. Until this fundamental dynamic changes, we are forever living at the mercy of the Black community’s initiative.

Protect Yourself

Let’s talk preparedness. Unfortunately, racial tensions are set to worsen in the coming years, and so are relations between strangers in general. The civil war may still be years down the road, but we’re already a society at war with itself, and we all need to be prepared to deal with people looking for trouble, those seeking to leverage their skin color to their advantage and to your expense.

My first piece of advice is very simple: don’t use racial slurs. In fact, don’t insult people, period! I realize it’s often tempting to fire verbal shots across the bow when embroiled in a heated dispute, but it’s not only an escalatory act, it won’t help resolve the situation. The more insults are exchanged, the less likely anyone involved wants to resolve the dispute peacefully. Walk away in silence if you can; there’s literally no cost to simply disengaging. Yes, there are times this might not be a realistic option, but if that’s the case, your actual safety is probably at risk and it’s time to consider taking defensive measures, along with getting the authorities involved. Either way, insults aren’t going to help you get out of a tight spot.

I spoke out earlier against recording such encounters and using them to wage war against the other party. The caveat is that a recording is quite often necessary to corroborate your side of the story. Therefore, I’m not against recording such encounters and I’ve said in the past you’ll likely need to do so in order to protect yourself and document your accounting of events. What matters is how these recordings are used. They’re perfectly fine as evidence towards building a legitimate civil or criminal case against the other party. It’s not okay to use them to “cancel” and dox them, blasting their actions and identity for all the world to see. That’s not justice and I wouldn’t even call that righteous vengeance. That’s just plain maliciousness.

If you need to record an incident, do so, secure it, then let it sit. Don’t broadcast it on social media immediately or send it to your local news station the same day. As a matter of fact, sleep on it, then a day or so later, review the recording after you’ve allowed your fight-or-flight response to dissipate from your system. When your survival instincts are triggered, the world appears very different. Everything looks and sounds like a threat to you. It’s not in this state of mind you should be reviewing footage of a contentious social encounter you were directly involved in.

Think about how many times you felt self-righteous about the way you conducted yourself in a confrontation with someone, only to second-guess your actions later, perhaps even feeling a bit embarrassed about it. It’s not necessarily because your actions were wrong, but because looking at the same scenario with a calm, cool head and rested eyes isn’t the same as looking at it while stressed out, your emotions high, and adrenaline pumping through your bloodstream.

As preppers and responsible members of society, we understand that there are profound consequences involved in publicly airing our grievances. This is why caution is so important. It’s not about protecting the other party, it’s about protecting yourself. Remember: you may think you were right, but once you make it public, society casts the final verdict.

Don’t start a war. You may not be able to finish it.

I Don’t Know What To Do. Do You?

The outrage stemming from the Shiloh Hendrix case seems to be dying down. That’s a good thing, but make no mistake: racial tensions are rising. I’m less optimistic than many that any kind of real “vibe shift” has occurred in our culture. Yes, our society is less sensitive to racial outrage, which is a welcome development. But it’s also possible that views on both sides are becoming more entrenched, leading to something of a Mexican stand-off. Everyone’s pointing guns at each other, but nobody wants to pull the trigger. When that trigger is pulled, however, all hell breaks loose. That’s where we are right now, I fear.

The success of the movie Sinners has me thinking that there’s still a market for racial outrage and that attitudes are hardening. There’s more of a pushback this time around, but resistance often breeds defensiveness. 50-plus years of “anti-racism” and anti-White sentiment isn’t going to be undone just because a White woman decided she wasn’t going to play the game anymore. If you asked me, America’s been embroiled in an undeclared war for some time now, but it’s been mostly one-sided thus far. Now that the other side is signalling a willingness to fire back, what typically follows isn’t rapproachement, but escalation.

Let’s talk about it. What’s your reaction to the Shiloh Hendrix incident? Is she a defensible figure? What’s your take on race relations today, specifically concerning the Black community? Is there any solution to our problems? Or do you share my view that war is the only way out of this?

I anticipate a provocative debate in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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