Patterico's Pontifications

7/29/2013

If I Had Seen This, I Doubt I Would Have Attempted the “Conversation”

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:35 am



Over the weekend, I published a “conversation” with a woman named Jenée ‏Desmond-Harris about her article setting forth “rules” on how to talk about race. I talked to her on Twitter after Bill Saletan from Slate publicized her article as something that would “challenge” white people. Desmond-Harris works for a web site run in part by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. about race, and her “rules” were basically things that white people need to not say to black people. I wondered aloud if there were rules on how to talk to white people about race, and since there apparently aren’t, I did a piece of my own, which you can read here.

I poked back through Desmond-Harris’s Twitter timeline a little further and realized that she has explicitly said that we don’t need a national conversation on race, so much as we need a national agenda on race in which some people (read: whites) just need to listen:

Screen Shot 2013-07-29 at 7.16.32 AM

Screen Shot 2013-07-29 at 7.16.43 AM

Screen Shot 2013-07-29 at 7.16.52 AM

“Let’s be honest, some people need to listen.” Or, as she obviously meant: “Let’s be honest, some people need to shut up and just listen.”

So she doesn’t want a national conversation, she wants a national lecture.

Hey, at least she’s honest about it.

That said, she’s not really the best person for Bill Saletan to have consulted in regards to having a “conversation.”

P.S. I also found this in her timeline:

Screen Shot 2013-07-29 at 7.17.39 AM

Screen Shot 2013-07-29 at 7.17.49 AM

Screen Shot 2013-07-29 at 7.17.59 AM

Raise your hand if, upon listening to your college-age daughter start to lecture you about how you’re wrong about how young people need to behave to succeed in life, you’d be tempted to tell her that if she knows so much, she probably knows how to pay for her own damned college education. *raise*

79 Responses to “If I Had Seen This, I Doubt I Would Have Attempted the “Conversation””

  1. Raise your hand if you think this woman is a twenty-something who went to Harvard Law and whose entire life is one giant racial grievance, even as she enjoys a life of privilege. *raise*

    Patterico (9c670f)

  2. Sociology 101

    HAhahahahha…

    Sarahw (b0e533)

  3. Raise your hand if you actually followed your father’s advice on comportment and life skills, but wretchedly scorn the very things that have made your successful life possible in an attempt to seem intellectually fashionable.

    Ingratitude. It’s worse than pride, envy, or sloth.

    Anonymous (c44c25)

  4. Forget it, Pat, It’s Chinatown.

    elissa (1aa5bd)

  5. She’s not wrong, you know. If you take into consideration her interest group. Talent, education and hard work will get some young black people what they want. But what will the rest, her group, do? Grievance and white guilt will need to do the job for them.

    nk (875f57)

  6. Wasn’t this the same line the left was using back in the 1960s — that parents and other “old” people just don’t understand what young people automatically get? I’m surprised Desmond-Harris had to wait until she took college classes to feel superior to her father, since the left has been starting this tactic with younger and younger audiences. (In education, they’re telling 1st and 2nd graders how to “help” their parents know which candidates to support, for instance.)

    It’s called flattering the ignorant and making them feel superior, in spite of the fact they aren’t. In fact, they’re still doing it: look at Rachel Jeantel, for instance.

    elaine (93972a)

  7. She’s right that some people need to listen though only there’s an ironic twist.

    Sarahw (b0e533)

  8. The field of Sociology is very varied – someone can say pretty much anything and still be a sociologist.

    Sammy Finkelman (fa9d06)

  9. I’ve had to sit through these … “conversations” in an educational setting numerous times and I can assure you that they are precisely as this woman desires them to be. That is, “white people keep your mouths shut and listen to my grievances.”

    Hube (4d0abc)

  10. Is it truly equality she wants if she thinks not everyone should speak and be heard (after all, she says others should just listen)? Or does she just want a heavy hand towards the black community for all past grievances? How progressive of her to embrace the Sharptonesque ideology that has existed for decades.

    I remember in high school I went to a school that tried to reach out to the black community. They offered scholarships for children in poor neighborhoods to attend. We would have unity masses to being together the student population. The funny thing is that the black kids segregated themselves and made fun of other blacks that hung out with whites (certainly. some of my black friends were victims to this taunting). By the way, I graduated high school in 2008. I once had a girl ask me if my family owned slaves. I asked her if she asked me that because I was white. She said I had a “white” last name. I pointed out how racist this line of logic was and she trotted away. Too bad for her, both sides of my family are fairly recent immigrants who changed their name to a more “American” name when arriving from Italy. The conversation is hard when one side can say racist and ignorant things. However, there are many in the black community, like Elder, fully willing to have a conversation – two-sided to boot.

    Ratbeach (f5aad4)

  11. I denounce myself in advance, but Jenee rather seems more a ‘girl’ than ‘woman’.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  12. She’s not wrong, you know. If you take into consideration her interest group. Talent, education and hard work will get some young black people what they want. But what will the rest, her group, do? Grievance and white guilt will need to do the job for them.

    Comment by nk

    Get a decent lower middle class job, live a moral life, limit your family size, then die a beloved husband and father and citizen. IOW, live like Michelle Obama’s father.

    Patricia (be0117)

  13. Raise your hand if you eat his food and sleep under his roof and live off his labor but throw his real life experience back in his face and counter with some pinhead professor’s racial grievance formula for failure – *raise*.

    harkin (576452)

  14. Statistically she’s lucky her father was at the dinner table.

    Birdbath (716828)

  15. I have come up with my own list of ground rules that I think should apply to any conversation — ‘national’ or otherwise — about race. . . .

    ICY’S GROUND RULES FOR DISCUSSING MATTERS OF RACE:
    Rule 1: When discussing race, do NOT engage in racial stereotyping.

    [I worked long and hard in formulating this list; my only hope — my wish — née MY DREAM — is that people will take my suggestions to heart.]

    Icy (f9c1e8)

  16. This is so much like radical liberals embracing public-funded welfare as the ultimate freedom: freedom from responsibility. They further argue that laziness and lack of ambition are virtues to be respected and embraced.

    Chris (654abf)

  17. Get a decent lower middle class job, live a moral life, limit your family size, then die a beloved husband and father and citizen. IOW, live like Michelle Obama’s father.

    That be old school. We be new school. My generation.

    nk (875f57)

  18. Does the number of favorites and retweets have any bearing on this woman’s level of influence?

    Chris (654abf)

  19. In honor of French seeming spelling with diacritical marks:

    http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/07/former-ecb-chief-economist-warns-ecb.html

    Le suck, le ennui.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  20. Raise your hand if you bet that Ms. Desmond-Harris’s father busted his ass in a lower middle-class job for decades and tried to instill in her the value of hard work and character, just to have her go off to college and come under the tutelage of some angry black Marxist professor who dumped his or her notions of grievance and despair into her empty mind.

    JVW (23867e)

  21. Raise your hand if you eat his food and sleep under his roof and live off his labor but throw his real life experience back in his face and counter with some pinhead professor’s racial grievance formula for failure – *raise*.

    I regrettably glossed over harkin’s comment before posting mine, but harkin pretty much nailed it.

    JVW (23867e)

  22. Hello, full and equal member of society! How was your day, considering the suffering your people have endured at the hands of white people? Gee, that George Zimmerman must be guilty of racial profiling, considering how he’s partially white and all! Isn’t it great that George Washington Carver invented the peanut? Well, I must be returning to my job which I don’t deserve because of white privilege.

    CrustyB (69f730)

  23. What that bumper sticker say?
    Hire a college student while they still know it all

    American History 101?
    Did Marcia Conyers teach that? Her rules for conversation on race are very similar

    SteveG (794291)

  24. Raise your hand if you had a dad of any color explain things to you EXACTLY like Don Lemon?

    Bugg (ba4ca9)

  25. There doesn’t appear to be a wikipedia entry for Ms. Desmond-Harris (imagine that!), but a check of her PuffHo bio says that she grew up in Mill Valley, attended Howard U then Harvard Law. According to her posts at Mulatto Diaries, she is only a Halfrican-American, just like Dear Leader. Also like Dear Leader, she has apparently carved out a career based upon nothing more than sharing her own self-reflection and narcissism with us. Congratulations to her; is her political career far behind?

    In any case, assuming that Ms. Desmond-Harris is in her 30s, let’s further assume that her African-American father is in his early 60s. Ms. Desmond-Harris clearly thinks he is clueless about racial realities, hence her “raise your hand” Tweets. Yep, that’s right honey: you, who grew up middle class (and seeing as how it was in Mill Valley, prehaps upper-middle class) and attended an elite HBCU school followed by an elite law school know so much more about racism than old pops, who was probably born in the early 1950s and came of age in the 1960s. Because, you know, you took “History of the African-American Struggle” and “The Sociology of Racism” your freshman year. She’s probably the type of mushmind who came home for Christmas and started telling her dad all about the Civil Rights movement (“like, we totally watched Eyes on the Prize in class”) and her loving father didn’t have the heart to interrupt her and tell her, “My dear, I lived through that era.”

    JVW (23867e)

  26. i went over to the VA to have lunch with an old Army buddy (black).

    fow whatever reason, one of his cow-orkers (black, female, older) came with us, and we had to stop at the post office for something…

    as she was getting out, she said “blah, blah, blah, your white boy friend here…”

    my immediate reply: “if you see a boy, you’d better knock him down.” put an end to *that* bullsh1t.

    redc1c4 (abd49e)

  27. That’s right, Bugg; she said it.

    And you could have her stare at what she wrote for 12 hours straight and she would never figure out what’s wrong with it.

    Icy (f9c1e8)

  28. OT
    What about yesterdays Equal Opportunity Rainbow riot in Huntington Beach after the Surfing competition?
    Blacks, whites, asians, hispanics, at one point a group of kids starts chanting Brazil all coming together to tip over porta potties (and get to walk through it barefoot) breaking windows, fighting, looting a beach cruiser. An eclectic mix of geniuses.
    About 20 years ago this got out of hand and there was great video of a cop doing ground and pound…

    SteveG (794291)

  29. listen doo wah doo
    do ya wanna know secret?
    promise not to tell?

    Colonel Haiku (aa8ee9)

  30. sometimes I am right
    I am ev’ryday people
    I should shut up now

    Colonel Haiku (146aeb)

  31. Wait. The ginger who tweeted all that nonsense claims to be black?

    Rob Crawford (e6f27f)

  32. I am a fat one
    trying to be skinny one
    I love teh bacon

    Colonel Haiku (146aeb)

  33. ‘And let’s be honest, some people need to listen.’

    Do we get to guess who ‘some people’ are? Will there be a prize for the winner?

    Fabi (4e48d5)

  34. Is this the same national agenda on race that people use to demand that people think differently of people based on skin color? A surprising move from the party that wrote the Jim Crow laws (oh wait…that’s not surprising).

    DejectedHead (017bad)

  35. how dare she be publicly disrespectful to her father.

    one thing aparently lacking in a college education is respect for your parents….

    rumcrook™ (4a9bee)

  36. she has just publicly humiliated her father and she is smug in her “knowledge” that she “knows” more than him.

    she is seriously lacking in the wisdom category tho.

    rumcrook™ (4a9bee)

  37. can some one ask her what her father did to deserve such an ugly condescending public humiliation at her daughters hands?

    respect. she aint showing any.

    cuase she’s the smartest women in the room

    rumcrook™ (4a9bee)

  38. Welcome to the tail end of the bell curve.

    jrgdds (743fe6)

  39. laughing at and using your father for the butt of your condescending jokes with a few hundred thousand close friends and strangers

    she’s all grown up dad. you can certainly beam with pride over this one…..

    rumcrook™ (4a9bee)

  40. rumcrook @ 36 – No, she did not humiliate her father. She humiliated herself but doesn’t realize it.

    butch (3cf150)

  41. She certainly knows how to write like an idiot. That college education did wonders.

    SPQR (2205c1)

  42. rumcrook @ 36 – No, she did not humiliate her father. She humiliated herself but doesn’t realize it.

    Comment by butch (3cf150) — 7/29/2013 @ 11:05 am

    I’d be embarrassed if I were him. She’s a bona fide race hustler despite have the advantages of a good dad and a good education.

    Dustin (303dca)

  43. I kno it’s against the Rules to stereotype but she sure does exemplify a certain stereotype.

    MostlyRight (833adb)

  44. The rule is to not stereotype when talking about race. When talking about progressivism and the politics of perpetual victimhood, feel free to go hog wild.

    Icy (f9c1e8)

  45. It’s those mill Valley values subsequently force-fed steroids at Howard and hahvahd.

    Colonel Haiku (2c2cec)

  46. Well, if they want a National Lecture on Race, they’ve got the National Lecturer in Chief.
    Now, what they really need is an effective writer for TOTUS, because so far, he’s been giving the NLC dreck to repeat.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  47. *raise*

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  48. I hope this national conversation lecture on race is not in cursive, because I don’t speak cursive. Or whatever.

    Elephant Stone (6a6f37)

  49. Patterico, I assume you found this info BEFORE you stated that she blocked you from her twitter account.

    But again,….this woman is a racist. And her methods eerily ape the Soviet Union regarding which sources are legitimate and can be used for public discussion on various issues and subjects. The fact alone that she recommends anti-white racist Tim Wise as a legitimate white expert when discussing race relations should tell us all we need to know about this millennial generation Shapton-wannabe.

    Again, she is a racist.

    Kenneth Simmons (6f8eca)

  50. 14. Statistically she’s lucky her father was at the dinner table.

    Uh…Birdbath, what makes you think he was? We don’t personally know, do we? It could be just a hypothetical example she’s making. With the actual stats we can’t really say for certain unless someone who personally knows her can comment on it.

    Kenneth Simmons (6f8eca)

  51. Two eternal truths about that great American pastime, the “national conversation on race.”

    1. The conversation lasts until the first black person claims to be offended.

    2. There is no point in having a conversation about race with racists who cling to the concept of the race traitor.

    (Or in the words of one of MSNBC’s resident race hucksters, “turn coat MoFo.” http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/07/29/MSNBC-Analyst-On-CNNs-Lemon-Turn-Coat-Mofo )

    Essentially the “national conversation on race” is like hostage negotiations, except with a group of people who aren’t holding any hostages. So they have to pretend to want to have a conversation before getting to their list of demands. The “conversation” is simply so the out-and-out minority racists can establish (in their own minds) the crypto-racism of their white opponents, ergo proof of continuing white racism as the cause of all their grievances, thus justification for all those demands.

    The exchange between Pat and this Desmond-Harris creature fits the pattern. It lasted only until she became offended. Then she blocked Pat, said “f*** the conversation,” and out came the list of demands. The first two demands usually aren’t spelled out, but they consist of the white people acknowledging all the tell-tale signs of their secret racism that only race pimps can discern, while simultaneously demanding everyone refuse to acknowledge not only the existence but the possibility of black racism.

    Which, actually, black racists are quite open about and proud of, and won’t hesitate to indulge. As when Goldie what’s-her-name calls Don Lemon a race traitor.

    You’ve got to dig up Senator Robert Byrd (D-KKK) to find a prominent white political or media figure who’d openly talk about white race traitors.

    Steve57 (a65996)

  52. KS, what she is reading from is the playbook of The Institute for Social Research aka The Frankfurt School, which was founded by, and dedicated to, the message of Marx (as amended).

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  53. Hughey Newsome, soon to be designated a race traitor by MSNBC if he hasn’t been already, on the poisonous nature of the racist rant Desmond-Harris wants America to sit through again under the guise of the “national conversation on race:”

    http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/24/in-detroit-racial-rhetoric-concealed-corruption/

    In Detroit, racial rhetoric concealed corruption

    Living in the Detroit metro area most of the last decade, I have experienced many of the events leading to its bankruptcy.

    Take, for example, the 2008 State of the City address by then-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. With Detroit facing a perilous fiscal future and him facing ethics complaints, Kirkpatrick highlighted race. He sparked controversy by using the “n-word” while referencing an insult he received from some random person.

    Kirkpatrick vowed to stand strong against this attack, and asked citizens to stand by him against a “lynch mob mentality.” He essentially used that slur to leverage racial tension, inciting and dividing the mostly-black city against mostly-white suburbs.

    …Kilpatrick is not the one bad apple who destroyed Detroit. Using race to cover for failure is commonplace.

    For example, the Motor City almost lost the prized North American International Auto Show after the once-illustrious Cobo Center convention hall was allowed to deteriorate. When influential merchants sought to force the city to cede control of the building, former Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers — who later went to prison for taking a bribe — shouted that suburbanites (understood to mean whites) could not come and take the “jewels” of the black city.

    …There are many similar examples of corruption and divisiveness involving city leadership where race is has often been used to rouse and incite but – most importantly – to distract from ineptness and unethical behavior.

    Why is this dangerous?

    Barack Obama is hellbent on demonstrating the answer to that question on a national scale.

    Steve57 (a65996)

  54. Can I start my conversation with the word ‘uppity’?

    Fabi (9e7998)

  55. I think someone at Fox should wear dog whistle earrings just to rattle the victicrats.

    Simon Jester (33b67d)

  56. Comment by Kenneth Simmons (6f8eca) — 7/29/2013 @ 12:08 pm

    Maybe it was an imaginary father, Kenneth. Like an imaginary friend. Of course I was taking her word that there actually was a male parent at the table.

    Birdbath (716828)

  57. If she could survive 72 hours in the Desire housing Project – I wonder if she would be a Lemon

    EPWJ (f44e22)

  58. So what exactly is she saying here about her father’s generation? That they don’t know squat about true racism? Huh. Having fire hoses and dogs turned on you for peacefully protesting Jim Crow laws and for basic civil rights I guess just wasn’t enough. Poor dears they didn’t know how good they had it back then and little did they realize that “real” racism would rear its ugly head later on. Like everyone having to show an ID to vote, which are provided for free. Or being criticized for intentionally wearing your pants low and showing your butt crack. Yep, blacks who lived under segregation dont know squat about racism. Thats not “whitey” telling ’em that, just ask their kids apparently. Ah the myopic arrogance and self-centeredness of youth…. (Well, for some at any rate)

    JohnAGJ (283150)

  59. Maybe it was an imaginary father, Kenneth. Like an imaginary friend. Of course I was taking her word that there actually was a male parent at the table.

    Oh come on, Birdbath. As if a Halfrican-American narcissist who presumes to lecture people about racial matters would actually invent a character in a narrative in order to make the precise political points that he or she was trying to get across. That could never happen in this age in which the media closely monitors such presumption.

    JVW (23867e)

  60. She does ‘remove all doubt’

    narciso (3fec35)

  61. Offer to take teh desmondHarris out for a beer, patterico.

    Colonel Haiku (0ccd7a)

  62. Just wondering if the people who want rules for a national “conversation” on race are the same people who support this administration talking to Iran, North Korea, etc. without rules?

    WildTrillium (8ed71b)

  63. Offer to take teh desmondHarris out for a beer, dry chardonnay patterico.

    hate autocorrect

    EPWJ (f44e22)

  64. Jenee, Jenee can we have a beer or two
    At an izakaya, I’ll teach you haiku
    five seven five Jenee it’s getting late
    five seven five Jenee let’s miscegenate

    Ah, revenge!

    nk (875f57)

  65. The lefties want to have a national conversation lecture about race, but I want to have a national conversation about Benghazi, about the I.R.S., about Obama’s failure to follow the law and implement the employer mandate element of ObamaCare, and about the NSA needing everyone’s personal information despite the fact Obama tells us the war against terrorism is winding down.

    It is a full 7 1/2 months until Obama will unveil his March Madness predictions, eliciting the nation to swoon over his upset pick of Wellesley College Southwest Tennessee Tech over Georgetown Indiana Duke.

    Certainly, there is time between now and then to talk about Benghazi, et al.

    Elephant Stone (6a6f37)

  66. I did a Google search for Channnon Christian. There were about 428,000 hits. I Googled Trayvon Martin. There were over 540,000,000.

    Anyone who doesn’t know who Channon Christian was are advised go where Google leads.

    DN (09d6b1)

  67. Speaking of that particular dialog;

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23486195

    narciso (3fec35)

  68. Kwame Kilpatrick had an imaginary composite racist call him n*****.
    It used to be a cheap way to start a fight: “that white boy called you n*****.”
    Everyone gets all noisy, riled up and the nation comes together.
    Usually used by p****** who want to manipulate someone else to do their fighting

    SteveG (794291)

  69. Ah, the “gatekeeper” struggle is alive and well I see! Funny thing though? We {teens/20/s/etc. I’m 50’s JIC you wondered} have learned not to listen to the self appointed and even elected gatekeepers anymore.

    New media, Twitter, and {gasp!} people’s real life experiences hold more weight than the dorm room bull sessions they pass off as news!

    The PC crowd can tell us how to all day long – the only ones listening are the ones that don’t want to think for themselves – those of us who have common sense know better.

    The *only* time I got caught out was when I didn’t listen to my self, and allowed PC to call the shots – let’s just say I will NEVER go through that again!

    Amy Shulkusky (676892)

  70. Kenneth – even if someone has blocked you on Twitter, you can still see their tweets (assuming their account is not protected). You can’t follow them, but you can view their Twitter page directly by going to twitter. com/[theirhandle]. In fact, you don’t need to be a Twitter subscriber to view someone’s feed.

    Nick M. (a11bb6)

  71. I’d love to give her a surprise pop-quiz in history and sociology.
    Ask her which _specific_ facts, theories and concepts from sociology and history she cited to her father.
    All she learned from those courses was smug condescension.

    gp (0c542c)

  72. Does anyone else think it’s hilarious that the deep, penetrating and comprehensive understating of American history and sociology she gained were from two “101” classes?

    I took these far back enough in time that they weren’t polluted with lefty groupthink but I mean even then these courses were designed as the briefest of overviews meant to be passable by any reasonably-smart college student.

    harkin (b84944)

  73. 72:
    I think she is aware of the simplicity of the courses – that’s why she specified “101”. She’s claiming that her dad has so little knowledge that even a semester in college is enough to destroy his arguments. The arrogance is breathtaking, but not unexpected. I work with fair number of people with a similar attitude.

    Honestly, Mr. Lemon’s advice works well for a lot of poor whites and Hispanics. It’s just solid common sense. I’m kind of impressed at how people can go to college and emerge completely bereft of common sense.

    OmegaPaladin (4ba63b)

  74. “far back enough in time that they [Soc and Hist courses] weren’t polluted with lefty groupthink” I’m going to go way out on a limb here: anything from sociology that isn’t based on quantitative empiricism with openly published raw data is pure lefty hopethink. Which was pretty much all of Soc 110 when I took it in the 1980s. A complete waste of time and effort. Still I think Jenee would fail a pop quiz.

    gp (5a38d9)

  75. Raise your hand if you think she’s an idiot.
    And raise your hand if you feel sorry for the father you probably busted his rear end so that she could get to this point and make fun of him.

    rochf (f3fbb0)

  76. Just be thankful that mooning people isn’t considered part of black culture.
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8985141/Hinewhare-Harawira-moons-elderly-crowd

    scrubone (e7e0ea)

  77. she probably knows how to pay for her own damned college education.

    *raise*

    Raise your hand if you think this woman is a twenty-something who went to Harvard Law and whose entire life is one giant racial grievance, even as she enjoys a life of privilege.

    *raise*

    Smock Puppet, Gadfy, Racist-Sexist Thug, and Bon Vivant All In One Package (a2f645)

  78. I could care less about her leftist politics/profession but it shows a lot when you see someone use thier father as foil to show how much more enlightened, smart, better and all around awsome they are.

    rumcrook™ (4a9bee)


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