Flashback: NYT Columnist on Why He Hates White Women

What must it be like to be empowered to say whatever you like in the pages of The New York Times?

For most people–including most NYT columnists–there would be some boundaries that may not be crossed. But Charles Blow, a respected Black columnist for the Times, was allowed to let his freak flag fly in the wake of George Floyd’s death and an incident in Central Park where a Black man and a White woman had an argument about a dog. 

So why am I writing about this now? Isn’t this all water under the bridge, over the dam, or whatever other metaphor you want to use for something no longer relevant?

No. Not at all. We are still living amid a racialist revolution that is reversing years of racial progress and threatening our society. And Charles Blow’s piece is a great example of that to which I am referring. It is worth a second look. 

Read my column, “How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror,” and let me know what you think. https://t.co/GA6hJ5Qcvl

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) May 28, 2020

The thrust of the piece is an attack on White women, in particular, who have used their status to terrorize Black men by playing the victim. You may recall the story of the “Central Park Karen,” in which a White woman was playing with an unleashed dog and a Black male birdwatcher scolded her for doing so. 

Things escalated as they do, and the police were called. 

In a rational world, this would not have borne notice, but we live in social media land, and a firestorm erupted. That firestorm was soon eclipsed by the death of George Floyd, but Blow’s outrage was focused on this woman. 

At a time of so much death and suffering in this country and around the world from the Covid-19 pandemic, it can be easy, I suppose, to take any incidents that don’t result in death as minor occurrences.

But they aren’t. The continued public assault on black people, particularly black men, by the white public and by the police predates the pandemic and will outlast it. This racial street theater against black people is an endemic, primal feature of the Republic.

Specifically, I am enraged by white women weaponizing racial anxiety, using their white femininity to activate systems of white terror against black men. This has long been a power white women realized they had and that they exerted.

This was again evident when a white woman in New York’s Central Park told a black man, a bird-watcher, that she was going to call the police and tell them that he was threatening her life.

This was not innocent nor benign nor divorced from historical context. Throughout history, white women have used the violence of white men and the institutions these men control as their own muscle.

The bolded paragraph is the central part of his thesis: White women use their femininity to commit terrorism by proxy against Black men. 

What is striking about this piece, though, is not the two-bit critical race theory history of America but rather the fact that Blow is handed over prime real estate to go on a long rant about how evil White women are. 

Historically speaking, it is true that there have been hideous, shameful incidents of racially motivated violence that have been inspired by White women accusing Black men of crimes. These incidents, though, are not created by “White women” as a class but by particular people in particular circumstances at particular times. Blaming all White women makes as much sense as blaming Charles Blow for the actions of Black gang members. 

This practice, this exercise in racial extremism, has been dragged into the modern era through the weaponizing of 911, often by white women, to invoke the power and force of the police who they are fully aware are hostile to black men.

In a disturbing number of the recent cases of the police being called on black people for doing everyday, mundane things, the calls have been initiated by white women.

And understand this: Black people view calling the police on them as an act of terror, one that could threaten their lives, and this fear is not without merit.

There are too many noosed necks, charred bodies and drowned souls for these white women not to know precisely what they are doing: They are using their white femininity as an instrument of terror against black men.

This is absurd on its face. If we were to take Blow seriously, calling the police when feeling threatened by a Black man is terrorism. 

Perhaps that would make sense if no Black men committed crimes, but the evidence before us suggests that this isn’t true. You can ask Black people about that if you don’t want to believe me. With the exception of BLM activists, few actual Black people wanted the police defunded, and they were pissed off when some cities did it. 

But in a sense, this is beside the point. Blow, and by extension, The New York Times is engaging in its own intimidation campaign. In modern America, few accusations carry as much cultural baggage and potential to destroy your life as “racism,” and this piece is about softening up the opposition. 

It is inconceivable that you could write anything similar about various other classes of people. In 2020, there was an uproar in the media about the xenophobic practice of naming COVID-19 after China or Wuhan–something that was standard practice until the Elite decided it was racist. 

It is only White people to whom this can be done, and everybody knows it. 

White people…

Would you do this? pic.twitter.com/RcOijx3pxD

— Xaviaer DuRousseau (@XAVIAERD) February 7, 2024

If I wrote a piece about the horrible nature of Black men or Hispanic women, I would get, metaphorically, lynched by the Charles Blows of the world. 

I have been expecting an unsavory backlash to this, and I sense that it is here. I see more and more people willing to say things that are racist or racist-adjacent about Blacks and other minorities, but especially Blacks. I think the gloves are coming off, as many people are done with trying to get along. 

A lot of people think it’s pointless. Like Scott Adams:

This real or deep fake? pic.twitter.com/coDrYJcHEo

— Ryan Dawson (@RyLiberty) February 23, 2023

This is, of course, horrible for society. Social trust plummets and things get worse for everyone. It also creates absolutely false expectations–or expectations that used to be false, at least–that people from races other than one’s own are threats to oneself. 

But the sad fact is that racism is back, and it is going to get worse. This sort of thing is now taught in medical schools:

.@UCSF invited Dante King to speak on “Diagnosing Whiteness.”

He claims that “whites are psychopaths” and that white people “have it written in the law you can rape black women.” He also makes excuses for black teenagers who commit violent crimes.

This is the modern university. pic.twitter.com/EzVlliZPR9

— YAF (@yaf) February 9, 2024

We got here for a simple reason: powerful people in the cultural elite made it happen for whatever reason. I suspect that for a lot of them, it began as a performance- virtue signaling- and snowballed as they invited radicals into their circle who would attack them if they didn’t get even more extreme. 

But now, the radicals are the people in power and want the conflict to continue and worsen. Individual Blacks and Whites will be able to get along, but as classes of people, the divide will widen, I am afraid. 

Am I too pessimistic?