Winner: Ekow Yankah (racial bigotry)

Ekow Yankah isn’t sure he wants his children associating with other children or their parents that have ‘white’ skin. He has no fear about telling you this either¹.

Bigotry is a universal human condition. Depending on the time and place, bigotry has lead to great disasters for factions with the lesser power in society. The salient point is that those with the lesser power still harbour bigotry (probably including against those with the greater power), but the more-powerful faction(s) will probably inflict the greater harm.

The time and place right now is America, and in this America the more-powerful faction is the one in which people self-identify as black/brown or non-white. Another powerful faction are those that self-identity as Muslim. In these particular factions there is now an ever-growing sense that it is OK to publicize your innate bigotry. This might seem counter-intuitive when one considers population alone as a marker of power, but consider another more simple measure: those who have the power in society are those who can insult others, but cannot themselves be insulted.

Ekow Yankah is your stereotypical racist bigot, painting the incredible diversity of the humans who are labelled as ‘white’ with the same toxic brush. In his case, as with many others today, he carries himself as a victim, due to the ‘crimes‘ of his perceived oppressors. The crimes he points to revolve around the populist themes of ‘white supremacism‘, ‘white colonialism‘ and ‘white privilege‘. And populist themes they now are, such that empowered bigots like Yankah fear no punishment for their racist views. Just as the populist themes against Jews in 1930s Germany were, I suppose, ‘Jewish supremacism‘, ‘Jewish colonialism‘ and ‘Jewish privilege‘,  similar populist themes now excoriate the evil ‘whites‘.

As against our gauzy national hopes, I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship with white people is possible. When they ask, I will teach my sons that their beautiful hue is a fault line. Spare me platitudes of how we are all the same on the inside. I first have to keep my boys safe, and so I will teach them before the world shows them this particular brand of rending, violent, often fatal betrayal. [Ekow Yankah]

No – Yankah does not feel that he needs to defend his bigotry too deeply; merely mouthing the superficial populists themes and platitudes, now so common, is as deep as he needs to dig. No – he feels in fact that his so-called observations should be endorsed, and celebrated; these views should be culturally- and politically- enshrined. These populist themes are indeed already deeply enshrined within many aspects of today’s societal institutions, with the media, politicians, judiciary and academia all platitudinously and superficially propping this bigoted regime up.

¹ New York Times, Ekow Yankah; ‘Can My Children Be Friends With White People?’