The conversation on race has always been one to provoke controversy and strong emotions. Unfortunately, the “conversation” is now no longer a conversation at all. Instead, it consists of our political, cultural, and social institutions being kowtowed by a small, yet seemingly relentless mob of activists, ideologues, and pseudo-academics.
Their finger-wagging lectures on anti-racism, predicated upon the ironically regressive teachings of critical race theory, directed solely at white people, are endured by the general population due to our institutional leaders’ reluctance to act.
These lectures cover anything from white privilege to ‘anti-racist training’, or even more recently, how white people and “whiteness” are the problem. Such was the case when Yale University recently hosted a seminar entitled “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind” by psychiatrist Aruna Khilanani.
The talk was later posted on the Substack of former Wall Street Journal and New York Times op-ed editor, Bari Weiss.
Throughout the talk, Dr. Khilanani made a series of stunning comments regarding how she really felt about white people:
“This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil.” (Time stamp: 6:45)
“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a f**king favor.” (Time stamp: 7:17)
“We need to remember that directly talking about race to white people is useless, because they are at the wrong level of conversation. Addressing racism assumes that white people can see and process what we are talking about. They can’t. That’s why they sound demented. They don’t even know they have a mask on. White people think it’s their actual face. We need to get to know the mask.” (Time stamp 17:54).
Aruna Khilanani, as previously stated, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. In other words, she is exactly the type of person who one would expect to be able to properly identify true instances of psychopathy. Unfortunately, for Dr. Khilanani, the only psychopathic tendencies exemplified here are her own, revealed by her thoughts and statements towards white people.
Psychopathy is typically defined as a personality disorder, characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy, and remorse, and having egotistical traits. I am certainly no psychiatrist, but in using the definition of psychopathy as our guide, Dr. Khilanani stating that she has had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person, and then walking away with no guilt or remorse, certainly doesn’t bode well for her argument regarding the “psychopathic problem of the white mind”.
Dr. Khilanani is a perfect example of America’s new ‘activist class’, made up of the college educated pseudo-academics mentioned earlier. She hides behind the prestige and glamour of her degree, title, and profession, hoping that her words will appear more valid coming out of the mouth of an “educated person”.
Unfortunately for Dr. Khilanani, any reasonable person would understand that her hateful rhetoric is just that, hateful rhetoric. It is no different from the hatred spewed by those on the alt-right or white nationalists.
Khilanani’s beliefs are predicated upon critical race theory, an ideology that, much like the white supremacy they claim to be fighting against, insists that the American identity ought to be consciously centered around one’s race.
It has already been observed by many that critical race theory is simply de-facto racism rebranded, sweetening the package by necessitating and weaponizing activism in an attempt to justify its implementation in academia and the workplace, and to lighten up its connotation. However, Dr. Khilanani’s comments indicate a darker, more sinister interpretation of the theory, as if it wasn’t already radical enough. There are plenty of poor souls who have had their good intentions manipulated by the left and have as such been compelled to swear their allegiance to such a regressive ideology. Dr. Khilanani’s message, however, is simply based on her hatred of white people.
Unfortunately, it would appear that our mainstream media has, unsurprisingly, given Dr. Khilanani a pass. If a white nationalist were caught on tape ranting in the same manner as Dr. Khilanani about non-whites or minorities, the media would surely react in a frenzy. MSNBC’s Joy Reid and CNN’s Chris Cuomo would give yet another lecture to their viewers that America is filled to the brim with white supremacists, and that they are the greatest threat to our national security. Not to mention the “experts” that would be given almost unlimited airtime, teaching Americans about the dangers of “right-winged radicalization”.
Radicalization towards the far-right is certainly an outcome that should be discouraged for all people. Unfortunately, our failure to recognize the dangerous and radical tendencies of both sides of the political aisle has allowed people like Aruna Khilanani to rant and rave about her hatred for white people at a prestigious academic institution like Yale University completely unpunished.
The right side of the aisle has been given a clear set of parameters that define what is acceptable in modern society, and what isn’t. Being a conservative is acceptable, but once those beliefs begin to center around identity politics, such as America’s identity being centered around the white race, where non-white and non-Christian minorities are a threat to such identity, is an extreme that officially becomes societally unacceptable, and rightfully so.
It has been much more difficult, of course, to define and isolate the dangerous radicalization of the left due the widely accepted notion that it can only stem from the alt-right or white nationalists. The rhetoric of Dr. Khilanani hardly even begins to exhaust the reservoir of examples within the past year alone. The left recently paralleled with the alt-right in the midst of the recent resurgence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Widespread advocacy for Palestine throughout the left was almost immediately laced with antisemitism directed against Jews, with calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and people. In one instance Palestinian protestors were caught spitting on and assaulting a Jewish couple at a New York City diner.
In another instance of white hatred, Radical activists from the Black Panther party marching as an armed militia in Tulsa, Oklahoma as part of the black separatist movement, stating in a news release that read “Because that time will come when there’s a rat-a-tat-tat… black Americans will kill everything white in sight,” also seemingly went unnoticed by the mainstream media.
For years, Americans have had to endure the left’s takeover of academia. From college all the way down to elementary school, parents have sent their children to school only to find out that instead of them learning about mathematics, reading, or science, they are instead completing exercises that require them to rank themselves “according to their power and privilege”.
The teaching of critical race theory has ramped up ever since the resurgence of Black Lives Matter in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and is now often taught as indisputably true, as opposed to simply being introduced as a different point of view. Nevertheless, minority students have been taught by their teachers and professors that they are eternal victims of a system that is built to keep them down, something that they will never overcome, and that every time they step outside their home, the specter of “white supremacy” and “systemic racism” will always loom over them.
Furthermore, white students are now being taught that they are privileged simply because of the color of their skin, and that they are societally predisposed to harbor implicit biases against non-whites, no matter how hard they try to treat people equally. Such a blanket assumption about an entire group of people would surely be considered racist under the conventional definition of racism.
And herein lies the truly dangerous thing about critical race theory, (which ultimately leads to the radicalization shown by Dr. Khilanani): Its tendency to completely redefine conventional definitions of commonly understood words by almost everyone on the political spectrum for the purpose of political expediency.
Suddenly, racism is no longer simply discrimination on the basis of skin color, but a ‘power structure’ that exists to explicitly serve the needs and wants of white people, while denying the humanity of everyone else.
Racism, under this definition, oversimplifies the various societal issues in minority communities, and completely absolves minorities of any wrongdoing they are surely capable of committing as human beings. If every group doesn’t finish the race at the exact same time, it is racism (hence the current emphasis on ‘equity’ as opposed to equality). As a result, under the guise of “liberation”, minorities are promptly stripped of their agency, something Martin Luther King so valiantly fought for.
It is this twisted worldview that cultivates an “us versus them” paradigm and promotes tribalism between races and ethnic groups – a toxic socio-cultural environment that the very white supremacists they claim to be fighting against, wind up thriving in.
American academia’s demise is therefore, at this point, guaranteed. Its wholesale endorsement of ‘woke’ ideologies such as critical race theory, has pitted students of different skin colors and races against each other, and has seemingly allowed academics such as Dr. Khilanani to make blatantly racist remarks at prestigious institutions with little to no consequences.
