I am not your token.
"All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilised man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.”
― H.L. Mencken
Introduction
There is no opener I despise more than "As a person of colour...". It is designed to convey an inherent enlightenment, unattainable to those not fitting the description, at the same time as the proponent assumes the right of speaking on the behalf of everyone meeting this arbitrary portrayal.
In the past few years, I have seen a tectonic shift in the cultural zeitgeist, where self-appointed ambassadors claim to speak on my behalf and impose rules of engagement designed to castigate all dissidents as backsliding traitors. Epithets such as "Uncle Tom", "race traitor", "Oreo" (black on the outside, white on the inside) have seen a resurgence in the public vernacular, labelling any non-white person who dares to question the dominant narrative as an apostate.
The market is awash with works of people making fortunes on perpetuating one single narrative - that of black victimhood and white guilt - while assigning contrarian views to the periphery. Where Ibram X. Kendi, author of "Antiracist baby picture book" and "How to be an antiracist", and Robin diAngelo, author of "White Fragility", make fortunes in book sales and charge tens of thousands of dollars for a few hours' talk, those offering a counter-narrative often get cancelled, disinvited and shunned from mainstream platforms, as was the case with Eli and Shelby Steele's documentary "What killed Michael Brown", which was initially banned from Amazon Prime, until the company reversed its decision in the face of protestations and bad PR.
Though my hopes are that this post will function as a foundation on which to start a dialogue between my ideological opponents and myself, I am more convinced that it will only be rejected as the work of yet another “self-hating POC” (person of colour).
Victimhood is the new Black
I do not believe that racism is the main cause of underachievement in the US or Great Britain among people of colour. I do not believe that we are, by the mere shade of our complexion, victims, nor do I believe that our pigmentation determines or even predisposes our philosophical, political or moral worldviews.
In fact, I not believe race matters. I believe there has never been a less racist, more welcoming society than those in The West.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, as the polls containing demographics of voters started to be announced, it became apparent that Donald Trump had significantly increased his votes among Hispanics, blacks, LGBTs, Muslims and practically every other minority, as well as among women. In fact, the only demographic he did worse in than the previous election was white men.
It did not take long before the unelected spokespeople on all matters concerning race started expressing their disdain for the minorities who did not vote as these self-assigned moral arbiters have determined they should.
From Nikole Hannah Jones, author of the now debunked and wholly discredited 1619 Project, tweeting:
and sharing Eugene Scott's (host of the "The Next Four Years") equally denigrating convictions with the following response:
Pam Keith, Democratic candidate for Florida's 18th congressional district, went one step further, and expressed the following sentiment:
The same sentiment was expressed by hundreds of prominent personalities.
These are the ideas which make up the battle lines, the rules of conduct which are enforced on the public discourse.
What these ideas boil down to are as follows:
If you are a person of colour, you must think in one certain way, or you will be ex-communicated from your race. If you don't view yourself as a victim, and whites as oppressors, you are no different than the Kapo, the Jew who helped the Nazis.
Regardless of who holds political power, these ideas have assumed a monopoly in the cultural zeitgeist, and their inevitable consequences are detrimental to everyone, whether they adhere to such beliefs or not.
One example where I was subjected to this condescending creed comes from a recent job interview.
In the final stage of the process, the person evaluating me confirmed that they wish to move forward and offer me a role within their organisation. My excitement was quashed just as swiftly as it had been sparked, when the interviewer informed me that they are very keen on having more diversity within the company, and would see me as a great addition to the team.
Immediately, I felt that my merits were irrelevant, and I was merely a token for this company to flaunt, and show off their virtues with. I was not an individual, but a colour which they could point to and say "Look how diverse we are!"
I informed them that I was no longer interested, and ended the dialogue.
I am not anyone's token. I am not the colour of my skin, nor has pigmentation or amount of melanin any impact on my person, my thoughts, my beliefs, my strengths and weaknesses, my goals, my skills or my morals. I do not wish to be condescended to, nor succeed by charity - if I am to thrive, I only wish to do so by my efforts, not by arbitrary characteristics over which I had no say. How can anyone want for anything different?
In his prophetic book "The content of our character" (Harper Perennial, 1990), Shelby Steele expounds on how finding authority in victimhood is nothing but a false power, which we cling to due to fear of having to make it on our own. Steele writes:
"By any human standard, black Americans have endured a terrible injustice. And so, when blacks take the floor and point to their difficulties as evidence of victimisation, refutation is not easy - it feels like a continuation of the act of victimising, like blaming the victim.
After victimisation has been acknowledged, as it has been in the case of blacks, it takes on an enormous authority and power. Thus, quite apart from the reality of victimisation, it becomes very seductive as a theme of recomposition. In integrated situations, where blacks may experience little or no actual victimisation, there will be a temptation to recompose that vulnerability into victimisation because our historic role as victims gives our claim such authority."
Can anyone viewing the current conversation honestly claim not to see this? Is this not how a world-renowned athlete like LeBron James, with an estimated net worth of 480 million USD, can espouse ideas such as this:
Is it not so that, by appealing to victimhood, such people find enormous powers with which to subjugate others?
And the only way this can happen is because of an all-too willing majority, pretending to self-flagellate, so they are awarded absolution from their equally imposturous, self-proclaimed secular priests?
By one group invoking victimhood and the other remorse for being a victimiser, and these being the only two available options (the exact core principles of both Ibram X Kendi and Robin diAngelo's books), we are forcing everyone to play a game none of us know the rules of.
By making everything about race, we are awakening a societal demon our predecessors gave their lives to put to rest. We are undoing the works of giants, and laughing unabashedly as we do.
Those who wish to make everything about race are the direct ideological seditionists of our great emancipators. For is it not so, that the sentence which garnered the most vociferous cheers and applause in Reverend King's immortal "I have a dream" speech was:
"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but the content of their character"?
Freedom
It's futile to ask one to imagine what it's like to hearing the sirens, and immediately running to the basement to take refuge for fear of air bombs being dropped on your house, or the fear of hearing knocks on your front door in the middle of the night, knowing that they are there to take your father away for committing thought crime.
It's completely pointless to explain the omnipresent fear of a 7 year old child, standing in assembly line in the school yard, having to "Death to America! Death to Israel!" and knowing that if you don't shout loud enough, you will get beaten.
Assembly in school in Tehran, Iran
It's impossible to relay the terror you feel, even as a small child playing on the street with your brother, that a word you uttered may have been overheard and misconstrued by someone who will report you to the authorities.
Unless you've lived it, you don't know.
But these were some of the reasons why my family escaped The Islamic Republic of Iran and arrived in Sweden as refugees on the 22nd December, 1988.
I still remember the scepticism with which I received the claim that, in this new country of ours, one could say whatever they wanted. Surely, it must be a trick?
In the 32 years since, a refugee family of five children, arriving to a foreign land with nothing but the clothes on their back, have achieved miraculous successes, thanks to all the opportunities - but mostly freedoms - their adopted home country afforded them.
From being engineers, professors and therapists to travelling across the world and earning more than majority of the domestic population, our story is all down to the generosities, kindheartednesses and anti-racism of our hosts, and the freedoms which they have offered us.
This has been my consistent experience in Westernised countries - having lived in Australia, Norway, Scotland, Spain, and for the last 13 years, The U.K.
Me any my siblings were afforded freedoms and possibilities we did not even imagine existing in our home country, which should explain why I am so repelled when seeing the cultural elite in these exact societies now wishing to erode those same freedoms.
Those who now wish to resurrect race-ism, and divide society solely based on the skin colours of its inhabitants, are actively fighting to dismantle the exact reasons why refugees like me and my family came to The West to begin with.
They are telling us that our solidarity to freedom are at best misguided, and their visions - containing all the principles which we fled from - are morally superior. Forgive us if we remain sceptical.
I am not your token
But the most obscene element of their enterprise is that they are doing it in my name. “As a person of colour” - I am whom they claim to help.
And if I refer to my heroes - Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Yasmine Mohammed, Sarah Haider, Coleman Hughes, Glenn Loury, John McWorther and so many more - I am informed of their betrayal of their race, and their shilling for “white, right wing fanatics”.
I have no personal worth for these soldiers of virtue. Thinking for myself is an unforgivable crime, as is the gratitude I feel towards my hosts.
Though they claim to speak on my behalf, I am nothing but the colour of my skin for these warriors of justice, these arbiters of morality.
I am their token, a role which I refuse to play. So, they will call me a race traitor, an Uncle Tom, an Oreo. For thinking for myself. For not capitulating and submitting to their dogma, where I have to be a victim, which they can claim to defend.
Their ideology is racist to its very core. It is essentially white supremacist, as it considers anyone who isn’t white suppressed by those who are.
They demand of me, and those like me, to fall in line and be the subject for their crusade. I won’t.
Why would you?