We're All Delusional Truffle Pigs Now

I couldn't help but think of truffle pigs when I stumbled across Loyola University's policies on Anti-racism and White Accountability. Here's the key snippets.

The Counseling Center recognizes that Loyola University Maryland is a predominantly white institution within the context of Baltimore, Maryland. It has a history steeped in structural racism and racial injustice towards Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), especially Black and African American individuals. We feel it is important to highlight the need for white individuals to take an anti-racist stand and hold each other accountable towards working to change the systems that impact the BIPOC community in oppressive ways...

Anti-racism is an active process of seeing and being in the world with the intention of working to identify, challenge, and change the values, structures and behaviors that perpetuate structural racism. This highlights the idea that racism occurs at all levels of society and manifests itself in both individual attitudes and behaviors as well as formal and unspoken policies and practices within institutions...

Ultimately, it is for People of Color to decide if one is actually behaving in anti-racist ways. When one finds that they are out of alignment, they need to do what is necessary and try to repair the situation.

Emphasis mine.

What a racket! Everyone is incentivized to see racism all around them. The more racism they find, the more rewards they get. Blacks* get rewarded with adoration and perks as a way to make up for their suffering and whites get praise for having discovered and rooted out racism on campus.

Not only are their no rewards for completely eliminating racism, there are actual disincentives for it. The moment the university says we're all equal and we're all individuals made in the image of God, the blacks' gravy train comes to an end and the whites have to go back to real accomplishments. Ick! We like gravy! We like party-game scavenger hunts where we get praised for finding little odds and ends!

Loyola isn't alone in this. Anti-racism is everywhere around us and the same incentive structure is built into every corporation, every TV show, every movie, every classroom and every political campaign. Woe betide the person that says racism isn't a big deal any more!

We're all truffle pigs now.

Good piggy, you found some racism! Here's a treat!

This is how you end up with madness like Racism In The Great Outdoors: Oregon’s Natural Spaces Feel Off Limits To Black People.

(N)ot everyone has the same access to green spaces. Tara Cooper, like many Black people, felt excluded and unwelcomed from a hike in the forests, well before this spring’s closures that were ordered to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Cooper moved to Portland from the San Francisco Bay Area more than eight years ago. She said she fell in love with Oregon’s lush green forests and what seemed like never-ending opportunities to enjoy nature.

But once she arrived, things changed.

“I quickly realized that may not be for me and my son,” Cooper said. “I would love to have been able to go camping more or do more nature things and even do some off the grid camping if the opportunity came up, but I would never do that in Oregon.”

Good Lord, it's hiking in the woods. Drive to the park, get out and take a walk. How hard is that? Very hard, it turns out. Just going for a walk requires the black person to overcome systemic racism. They need more perks to be able to do it. The white people who see the racism in the woods get rewarded with praise for having been in tune with the hardships of being black.

The key feature is that there is no racism in the woods at all. We're not just truffle pigs, we're delusional truffle pigs. We're getting rewarded for finding fantasy truffles. 

Since the truffles come from our imaginations, there's no limit to the number we can find and with each discovery, everyone involved gets a treat.

What a racket!

Special Bonus Take

This was my favorite sentence from the Loyola web page:

Ultimately, it is for People of Color to decide if one is actually behaving in anti-racist ways.

The people on the gravy train are uniquely wise and discerning. Only they can tell you when they've had enough gravy and must return to being normal people, equal to everyone else around them. 

Who in the world is going to do that? If some of them become embarrassed by the fraud or do their own research and discover they've been turned into mewling, self-absorbed losers, the rest cast them into the outer darkness where there is great wailing and grinding of teeth. Don't derail the gravy train, you idiots! We've got a good thing going on here!

That's how we end up with every black conservative being told they're not really black. Meanwhile, the BIPOC end up like everyone who is a mewling, self-absorbed, self-pitying wiener. They end up as failures. Oof.

* - If you think I'm going to type "People of Color" over and over again, you've got another thing coming. "Blacks" will do just fine as a stand-in.