Dark Racism

Why Some Find Ben Carson Is So Offensive

Racism can run really, really deep in the human soul.  It can have many manifestations.  Some represent what we would call Dark Racism, a phrase used in the sense, not of skin colour, but in the same sense as the phrases "Dark Web" and "Dark State".  In other words, Dark Racism refers to a form of racism so institutionalised and well covered that it is reflexively tolerated by society, the large majority being unaware of its existence.

We grant that we are on dangerous turf at this point.  We despise the modern preoccupation to see all events, all crimes, all judicial actions--and virtually every social action--as racist.  When a white policeman shoots a black person, it is automatically and reflexively categorised as racist oppression by the police.  When a non-Caucasian person shoots a white cop, it is automatically and reflexively legitimised as understandable, given what non-Caucasian people suffer.   And so on.

How, then, should we understand and interpret the peculiar phenomenon of some successful black people being pilloried by members of the black Commentariat in the United States, and by the liberal, Progressive set?
  When Clarence Thomas became the second black justice to sit on the Supreme Court he was figuratively spat at by many establishment blacks and the media and Progressive politicians.  What was the problem?  Well, Thomas was successful, but his personal narrative and his ideological commitments were not kosher.  He was very much a family-made and self-made man; he did not owe his success to the "system" or the establishment.  Therefore, by his very success, he threatened the Progressive and establishment narrative that blacks in the United States are oppressed and cannot succeed without "helping hands" from the government and the system.

The first African American to sit on the Supreme Court--Thurgood Marshall--was not similarly vilified.  Why?  Doubtless in part because he was himself a Progressive and subscribed to the Establishment narrative that racism was so entrenched in the United States, African Americans could only advance if they had the helping hand of society in general and government in particular.  Marshall, therefore, was one of the "good ol' boys". 

Envy is a particularly debilitating sin when it becomes institutionalised.  It represents a capital breach of the Ninth Commandment--"Thou shalt not covet."  Envy is so extreme it would rather see a benefit or success enjoyed by some to be obliterated simply because others do not share in it. Better none at all, than some.  Envy tolerates only those who have succeeded in the "orthodox" way. 

Dr Ben Carson, running to be nominated as the Republican candidate for President,  is a family-made and self-made successful African American.  He appears to believe strongly in the ethics of self-improvement and self-effort.  He, therefore, represents a significant threat to the Establishment narrative that non-whites can only succeed in America if the privilege of whites is checked and society forcibly lifts up those who are deemed less equal.

Jerome Hudson writes in Breitbart News about the "flogging" Carson is beginning to experience at the hands of blacks and the Establishment:

More pointedly, Ben Carson rebukes that bitter ethos and the victim-focused racial identity it breeds. And now that–as a national figure running for president–he has chosen not to be a mindless minstrel puppet, tap dancing, performing, like a good boy, for his white liberal media gatekeepers, he is being whipped, strung up, and left to hang.

For all the Left’s pseudo-social science drivel about how white America “otherizes” blacks–mercilessly demeaning their humanity, transforming them to subhuman status–one would assume there would be more influential African Americans defending Ben Carson from abhorrent attacks like being called a “coon” by an Ivy League professor.  I dare you to imagine a GQ headline that read, “F***k Barack Obama.”  You can’t.

He concludes:

Dr. Ben Carson is the rare black American, free from The Liberal Thought Plantation, unwillingly to dance for his liberal betters or apologize for America while portraying himself as a sufferer. Dr. Ben Carson is an existential threat to the Democrat Media Complex. For this, he must be destroyed.

The Dark Racism of the Establishment in the United States lies in this belief: blacks can only advance if society organises to lift them up.  Colonel Nathan Jessup in A Few Good Men argued that society deep down really wanted corrupt military commanders such as himself, because "you want me on that wall; you need me on that wall".  Many establishment Progressives run the same narrative with respect to African Americans and Hispanics and other people of colour: without us, you will not, you cannot succeed.  You want us on that wall.  You need us on that wall.

Any person of colour who dares think, or (worse), say otherwise will be cut down as a traitor to the cause.  Behold Dark Racism at work.  No "uppity negros" allowed.