“What mighty contests rise from trivial things,” wrote poet Alexander Pope. This could come to mind when considering a claim, made with straight faces, that soap dispensers prove there’s “systemic racism.” Yet ridiculous though it is, the charge reflects something deeper in American life — something very dark and dangerous.
If you think the soap dispenser rationale involves the idea that soap is usually white, no, that’s not it. Rather, as the College Fix’s Sullivan Israel explains:
According to a recent online debate on “systemic racism” put on by the Bruin Republicans that I attended, soap dispensers are proof that white people are systemically racist against black people, according to some of my peers.
But it’s not just any dispensers, mind you. It’s those high-tech automatic ones. The reason is simple. As one UCLA student claimed during the debate, automatic soap dispensers “don’t see her hands” due to the dark pigment of her skin. As another student reiterated, soap dispensers are racist because they force “black and brown bodies” to show their palms — “the only light areas of the skin” — in order to get soap out.
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Though perhaps unnecessary, Sullivan debunks this claim, writing that the dispensers “work using a simple device called PIR sensor that recognizes infrared light, which is emitted by all people, regardless of color (as long as they’re not dead).”
(In fairness, this does then exclude a goodly number of Democrat voters.)
But as Israel points out, this isn’t about soap dispensers. It’s about an attitude. Why, if the dispensers weren’t called systemically racist, something else would be — and everything now is. As he writes:
This, and other claims like it, were not unique perspectives shared by one lone student, but rather a world-view that was reiterated and supported by the over 80 students who attended, or more accurately zoom-bombed, the debate.
Wild dispenser-eque claims abounded: from the argument that “white people fed black babies to crocodiles” to “I had a racist teacher who was racist because she asked me where I was from.”
The scary thing about these claims aren’t [sic] the ideas themselves, but rather the world-view that informs them: that systemic racism and white supremacy is all around us, and in everyone, and everything, a person encounters.
…For them, racism is … a secret force that exists everywhere, permeates all things, and wields power over society. Sound familiar? That’s because it has a name: conspiracy theory.
Israel points out that the cultural revolutionaries in question blame all their woes, every little misfortune, on white supremacy and systemic racism. Yet he doesn’t quite get at the darker, more damning truth here, which I’ll introduce with a story.
When I was 12 and an aspiring tennis player, I practiced at a city park in the Bronx. Well, one day it got back to me that a certain black fellow (an adult) who also frequented the courts had told someone, “Selwyn doesn’t like black people.”
I was shocked. I’d never really thought about the guy one way or the other, and my friends had always been racially mixed, given the neighborhood in which I lived. The only thing I could figure was that I’d probably been in a funk one day (my play at the time often did that to me!) and perhaps — this is all a guess — didn’t notice it and respond when the man said hello. Whatever the case, his perception was all in his head.
But paranoia will do that. When you’re hung-up — on race, for example — you assume others have the same hang-up. After all, you’ll rarely think you’re obsessed with the thing in question because you’re crazy or out of touch with reality; rather, there must be a good, objective reason for your emphasis on that thing, you suppose. And if this reason exists, others have also perceived it, and then they also should have the same focus.
Moreover, if someone is out to get you or is fatally biased, then it makes sense that he’ll be conspiring against you. It’s as when a woman in a bad marriage has an axe to grind with her husband. Whereas little missteps — forgetting to pick up milk, leaving the cap off the toothpaste, etc. — might otherwise be perceived as innocent mistakes, the thinking instead can be, “That’s just the kind of thing he would do! Anything to irritate me and make my life harder!”
So it is here: When all you have is a Critical Race Theory hammer, everything looks like a systemically racist nail. And here’s what’s unsaid:
These “soap dispenser-esque” accusers are the racists.
What are, after all, complaints about “whiteness”? What’s being said when you assume that A, our society was shaped and is still controlled by white people; and B, that our society is systemically racist against non-whites? Would you have “whiteness” without white people? And doesn’t the “systemic racism” charge imply that whites themselves are systemically racist? Of course, the Critical Race Theory hustlers have already said as much.
Every “soap dispenser” accusation reflects anti-white racism. The idea is, “That’s just the kind of thing they would do!” It’s paranoia — and it’s hateful.
And this is why it’s dark and dangerous. If you believe a group is inherently racist and has been undermining you, what may you consider the necessary remedy? It’s no wonder that BLM-supporting leftist radicals have essentially said that white people need to be killed (video below).
This is why the soap dispenser story is anything but trivial. Racial and ethnic strife has killed millions of innocents throughout history. And if our race-hustlers have their way, it will kill millions more.
