When I saw that The New York Times was about to launch a five-part podcast serial titled “Nice White Parents”, my back went up. The line is sarcastic; the basic theme of the serial is that well-meaning white parents are why public education is not integrated and suffers from inequality. Progressives today give themselves permission to criticize white people in thoroughly racialized ways — ways that they would never, ever do to non-white people. You can speak of non-white people in racialized ways, but never to criticize them; only to speak of them in positive ways, or as the victims of white people. I deeply believe that The New York Times and other liberal-run institutions are promoting anti-white hatred.
However, I know the work of the reporter of the series, Chana Joffe-Walt, from her broadcasts on This American Life and Planet Money. She’s very good. Maybe the premise of her new series is racist, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be valuable insights in it. I’m the guy who is constantly telling his readers that it’s short-sighted and foolish to dismiss entire books and so forth because they may be morally problematic in one way. Knowing Joffe-Walt’s work in other areas, I figured that her serial would be a standard white liberal take — there’s no way the Times would have published it to their site if it in any way contradicted the acceptable left-liberal racial line — but I also figured that there would be some important insights in it.
I was right about both.
