The actor Rosanna Arquette, who has become a woke activist, tweeted this out yesterday. When I went back to retrieve it, I found that she had “protected” her Twitter feed so that I couldn’t embed the tweet. Fortunately, someone took a screenshot:
Her feed now (note that “silence is complicity”):
I was a big fan of Arquette’s performances in Desperately Seeking Susan and especially as Gary Gilmore’s girlfriend in The Executioner’s Song, but this self-flagellation is shameful. What does it accomplish? Does it help people of color? I don’t think so. What it does is demonstrate Arquette’s bona fides as a Woke Person, as well as reinforcing the kind of racism that deems all white people as oppressors and “the other”. I seriously doubt that Arquette was either a racist or an oppressor, and so why is she ashamed? Is she ashamed that she has the skin color of a group that has been the oppressor? That shame accomplishes nothing, either.
Arquette’s self-flagellation does nothing save gain her attention (the wrong kind, apparently, as she’s closed her Twitter account), and flaunt her virtue. It’s the Twitter equivalent of the penatentes flailing their backs with whips until the blood runs strong, all as a way to placate God. Here she placates the Woke.
If she wanted to do something, she’d give away some of her wealth for good causes.
She should due her parents.
SUE
This would require due process. 😉
I meant: she should sue her parents.
Yeah, RA was great as the young assistant (and erstwhile inamorata) of Nick Nolte’s aging artist in Scorsese’s third of New York Stories. And as Eric Stoltz’s wife with all the piercings in Pulp Fiction, too.
Maybe Vogue will run a special sackcloth & ashes who-wore-it-better? edition.
No one should apologize for their birth, and no one is responsible for the actions of their ancestors. I guess collective guilt is back in fashion.
It is a variety of “original sin” that the catholic church promotes.
As a Neandertal-American I feel no guilt at all for who I am racially or ethnically, as I had no responsibility for that. I only accept “responsibility” for what I have, or have not, done, but then again, I am also a determinist.
Yes it is, if you do a search for ‘Healing from Toxic Whiteness’ you will find material that definitely supports the position that Racism is an ‘inherent’ trait of the White (& Jewish) Race.
The material also contains passages eerily reminiscent of religious language talking about Sin.
The reference to “original sin” is apt. This reminds me of a newspaper column I once read; it was written by a fundamentalist and contained the line, “Of course, we are all sinners who deserve to go to Hell.” I thought, “Speak for yourself.” This woke self-hatred is just old wine in a new skin, to coin a phrase.
If she applies – whatever she is applying to herself- to every one of her ancestors, I dont know how many generations it will take before she reaches the common ancestor to every living Homo sapiens – but I bet it is far fewer than intuition suggests.
She also ought not to read Jared Diamond either.
I don’t think it helps people of colour either but perhaps it does help her to secure work in a very woke Hollywood. As well as helping her to manage the demons in her head.
Rosanna Arquete might benefit from a look at (or another look at, if she has forgotten it) the “Be Black Baby” sequence from Brian de Palma’s 1970 black comedy “Hi, Mom”.
Readily available on YouTube, although I don’t seem able to get it to function here.
For some reason I was expecting Roseanne Barr. That would have been more interesting.
I think it is reasonable to assume that Rosanna Arquette is a bloomin’ idiot.
definitely
This lets me hope for future methods of gene editing to change the ethnicity of adult humans. Then, people like Mrs. Arquette could show how serious their longing for another skin colour really is (and maybe actually become happier with it, who knows?)
Biological appropriation. Next level appropriation!
Or next level blackface! You’re right, I didn’t think of that. So, alas, no bright future for white-shamers after all.
She probably loves being white and this is just a psychological ploy to cover up her secret glee. As an anti-fascist Maoist, I’m appalled this.
Idiocy like this increases the (well founded) belief that elites consider much of US population deplorable. It will get on Fox News and increase the chance of Trump being reelected.
“Resisting fascism on a daily basis”.
How much “fascism” is there in her neighbourhood, and how exactly does she “resist” it?
And what if her busy schedule causes her to accidentally miss a day’s “resisting”?
“Oh my god – what with that leaky tap and getting my hair done, I forgot to resist fascism today! But I promise I’ll make up for it by resisting twice as hard tomorrow!”
My father and two uncles also resisted fascism on a daily basis some 75 years ago. I expect their experience differed somewhat from Ms Arquette’s, though they rarely spoke of it, perhaps because, being people of pallor, they also felt her shame. Or not.
I’m obviously of the same vintage as yourself. My dad did his resisting duty in the Burmese jungle, while my mum worked her fingers the bone in a factory before spending nights sheltering in a damp cellar while German bombs fell overhead. Hearing the stories of their generation means I have no patience for the self-indulgent posturing of people like Arquette.
+1
Reportedly, Arquette has net worth of $9 million. That is not a huge amount for a celebrity, but she could give it away to poor black people and feel less shame.
I think that this very public (read exhibitionistic) breast beating and self-flagellation is done to demonstrate that she’s woke as woke can be and an ally to black people and POCs in general. Another kind of virtue signaling.
I wonder if apologizing for one’s bloodline and forebears is going to become something of a fad among woke white people, especially in those in show business.
There’s also a cult of public apology that renders genuine apologies valueless, and that may have something to do with all this. However, perhaps my sensibilities have been corrupted because I rarely fail to listen to Harry Shearer’s “Apologies of the week.”
A couple of weeks ago Beto O’Rourke publicly proclaimed that he’s a descendent of slave owners. To my knowledge this was the first public apology for being white by a notable person but I’d wager that it stems from white anti-racist groups that advocate this sort of thing (as a way to atone for one’s racial sins)rather like AA advises people to apologize to those they’ve wronged in some way. At the time, I just figured that he would do anything for a vote and so indulged in this desperate pandering — as if black people care about any of this BS.
Doing shit like this in no way helps “POC.” It’s all for her and her community of “woke” “activists.”
I box a lot, so I go to a boxing gym where there’s rarely a couple of other white people there. So, most of my acquaintances are black. We often have really deep and interesting philosophical discussions after we train.
“A couple of weeks ago Beto O’Rourke publicly proclaimed that he’s a descendent of slave owners.”
One theme that has come up several times when I talk to my boxing partners: most of them wish white people would just shut the fuck up about this already. The other, connected themes are that white people (1) didn’t somehow come up with slavery, and (2) the African kingdoms that enslaved and sold their people were just as culpable.
If any white people who are descendants of slave owners should have to publicly admit to and flagellate themselves for it, anyone who is the descendant of someone who was involved with the slave trade on the other side should as well. But, in the end, nobody should have to do any of this because nobody is responsible for the sins of their ancestors, especially ancestors from 150 or more years ago. They also shouldn’t have to do this because it is in no way helpful to the people they claim allyship with, nor to society in general. Unless you’re a billionaire whose money was amassed through your ancestors’ slavery dealings and passed down to you through the generations, you have zero reason to feel guilty.
And I’m not saying this for myself. I’m Jewish and my great grandparents came here to escape persecution during the Bolshevik Revolution, so I have no ties to this issue. It’s just something that ticks me off generally.
Indeed. Does Beto “white people are the problem and I understand if you don’t want to vote for me” O’Rourke really think this kind of self-flagellation will get blacks to like him and vote for him? Nobody likes a weakling who’s constantly apologizing for himself.
OMG you’re Rocky!
Lol to be honest I suck. I have heavy hands and…that’s all. I’m terrible at everything else. Hey, I guess that is like Rocky! If you watch Rocky 4, all they do is get hit with every. single. punch. It’s the funniest shit ever. And someone did an analysis and found that 4 is 33% montage. Sounds right to me!
“One theme that has come up several times when I talk to my [African American] boxing partners: most of them wish white people would just shut the fuck up about this already.”
I wonder just who is the audience these woke folk think they’re playing to, surely not (most) African Americans and other POCs. They’re simply virtue signaling to themselves, transforming themselves into victims of their genes and culture, and this demonstrates just how pitifully ignorant and out of touch they are with respect to the very people they claim to be woke to and allies with.
Oh, sheet: here’s Marianne Williamson directing white people to “offer a prayer of apology to African Americans, which the author and spiritual adviser says was intended to be a ‘spiritual act of racial reconciliation.'” https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/07/21/marianne-williamson-white-people-prayer-of-apology-nr-vpx.cnn. The video is absolutely stomach-turning. Interesting that she says she would not advocate such a thing in a political context; it was, she says, a spiritual thing. I find that this idea that white people should apologize to blacks for slavery and for their whiteness goes back a long way, well before Williamson.
“I wonder just who is the audience these woke folk think they’re playing to, surely not (most) African Americans and other POCs”
Well, to take three examples:
When it comes to actors like Arquette, she’s signalling to her fellow Hollywood elite that she’s jumped on the woke train with them.
When it comes to students and activists, they’re signalling to their fellow students and activists. It’s the whole “woker than thou” thing. You have to engage in every new and more extreme woke challenge, and then new challenges will be provided. If you want to stay in the woke crowd, you have to engage in each and every one, lest you be left behind as a racist/whatever-ist or -phobic.
And when it comes to academics, it’s for their students (so they don’t get embroiled in situations like the Christakises and Weinsteins), the administration/diversity and equity officers, and their fellow academics, so they can stay part of the woke crowd and have a long publishing list comprised of BS papers like “The Unbearable Whiteness of Pumpkins.”
I sometimes wish The Unbearable Lightness of Being was written just so we wouldn’t have to see so many stupid titles and tweets based on it.
It is almost certain that a majority of African Americans descend from slave owners.
Throughout history, slave owners have ‘taken advantage’ of their female slaves.
My father insisted that his ancestors came over on the Mayflower. But he also insisted he was Pocahontas in a past life. Never really believed either or cared.
“And I feel so much shame.”
Really? And the tw**t is proof of this shame? I don’t buy it. I at least need to see her wearing a sandwich board proclaiming her shame to the shoppers on Rodeo drive.
Maybe she walk naked the length of Broadway preceded by a bell.
Shame! (ding, ding). I love saying this at work. GOT has added lovely metaphors for me to use.
My job is just like GoT: I started out with so much hope and promise, and now I just feel hopeless and angry.
My job is like GOT too because I drink and know things.
Heh, your line was better than mine
Heh, it’s how I practice curbing my outward hostility and cynicism while at work.
Over a hair shirt.
Absolutely! Forgot that important detail.
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
There is ‘white privilage’, and although this is not the best term for it there does exist a stark difference in how one’s life probably turns out because of race.
I remember a study that PCC posted here many months ago, and if I recall correctly it found that your socio-economic status was overwhelmingly determined by chance. The idea that you can improve your lot if only you choose to buckle down and work hard is actually a myth. Your situation in almost all cases is determined by… (I hope I get this right!):
1. Your birth. Who your parents were, and this includes your race. Economic status tends to run in lineages, generation after generation. White people are more likely to be among the rich or among the middle class, and their children usually stay there. Poor people can be of any race and their children tend to remain poor.
2. Personal drive. But this too is a matter of chance. Those who manage to improve their lot almost always show a markedly high personal drive from childhood. Again, it’s not a choice. You are either born with it, or you are not.
3. (This is the most important thing): Receiving economic assistance that is sufficient to raise your class. This is the one item that is not intrinsic to the individual. Most importantly, it is the cornerstone of the liberal agenda (and anathema to the conservative point of view). But whether one receives such aid is largely not controlled by the one who receives the aid. So this too seems more a matter of chance.
All that is true, but surely East Asian privilege is significantly more powerful, giving higher average incomes, academic achievement, life expectancies, etc. and much lower rates of victimization, imprisonment, divorce, illegitimacy, etc. But nobody complains about that or considers it something to be ashamed of.
I just cannot disagree with this enough. Sure, some people are held back by learning disorders or behavioral issues. But the vast majority of people in the normal range can absolutely elevate themselves out of poverty or even middle class.
Yes, this usually requires that you show up, work hard, and make good choices.
Maybe it is luck to be born of parents who know the value of education and work ethic. But even those who have chosen poor life paths or suffered misfortune can teach their kids those values.
There are plenty of almost foolproof paths to raise your class. Pretty much anyone who makes an effort in high school school is likely going to be accepted to college. Oddly, the best students from crappy schools often find admission easier than if they had been second rate from a good school.
When you are accepted, major in medicine. You don’t need money, or even loans. There are plenty of scholarships available if you commit to giving back some of your time after graduation.
I think a lot of these theories of impenetrable class divisions come from Marxist/Leninist types who know that you cannot recruit revolutionaries from people who are optimistic about their own upward mobility.
This country is filled with families who came here with nothing and did well for themselves. My Dad was born a sharecropper but he and his five siblings all earned their PHDs. One generation from dirt floors and no shoes to being able to send my sisters to Wellesley and Sarah Lawrence. My mom’s story is not much different, the same goes for my wife’s family. Nobody got a grant or won the lottery. Nobody had a rich patron. It was all just hard work.
However, you inherit a lot of that gumption to get up, show up, and work hard and even the environmental factors aren’t of your choosing. If you’re born a woman in the Congo and caught up in the battles between war lords, your natural ability in math isn’t going to get you a nobel in physics, no matter how great you are at it. That’s an extreme example but it illustrates my environmental point. You can only do what you can with what you got and that isn’t guaranteed to be much sometimes.
I actually like how this article talks about it, even though I know Shermer isn’t exactly a popular person, this is a well written article.
I think you are wrong.
Studies in the UK definitely support Mark’s post. If you come from a working class background, you are automatically disadvantaged in several ways.
For example, your parents probably have less time and ability to help you with your academic work. They probably don’t have the resources to get a house in the catchment area of a good school.
When you get to college, if you have to work a job to pay for your expenses, you are at a disadvantage compared to somebody of equal ability who is being supported by their parents.
I’m sorry, but the correlation between social status academic achievement is real.
To a significant extent IQ and traits such as conscientiousness can be included in the accidents of birth category. There is a large segment of society that simply doesn’t possess the intelligence to meet the demands of the higher paid professional occupations. It has been proposed that we are seeing a form of IQ ghettoisation resulting from the fact that the economically successful tend to pair up and from the anti-intellectualism of the poor.
How is conscientiousness an IQ trait?
I gotta get out more… I thought that was satire.
I too thought it was satire when I saw it, in passing, on social media feeds yesterday. It’s only when I read it here that I realized I was wrong.
And I don’t think you should get out more – it’s crazy out here….I for one am going to start staying in more.
Only a narcissistic ass would post a tweet like that.
Your comments seem untypically and unnecessarily harsh. Her reaction might just be how she feels following recent white (Trump) racist rants. They probably don’t serve any real purpose but it’s how she felt at the time.
She might well make charitable donations, do we know otherwise?
Maybe she’s lamenting the lack of intersectional status she has in Hollywood. If only I were black, transgender, gay and disabled, then people would think what I have to say is important?
Being ashamed of one’s birth and ethnic status is rather, well, dumb. What we should be shameful about is how we live our lives and whether we made life better for others. Did we waste our time on Earth? Did we squander our gifts? Did we help others? These are questions we should be reflecting on.