Notes for a White Kid in University: An Introduction to the Blindingly Obvious, by Fred Reed.
If you are a white student in college, you doubtless hear daily that white people are evil, the principal cause of everything wrong with the world. Whiteness is bad, white people are bad. We are to blame for everything.
If you believe this, you are being gamed. What you are being told is nonsense. If you have the intelligence and self-respect to think for yourself, ask:
“What have other races and ethnic groups accomplished in the world compared to what we white people have?”
This question will be shocking to you because you have been carefully programmed not to think such things. But ask. I think you will find that the groups who complain the most have accomplished the least. Check for yourself.
A white man’s stick hut. Whites began building these things in 1137.
Look around you. Can you find anything with a moving part that was not invented by whites? Anything electronic? Cars, telephones, computers, aircraft, antibiotics, on and on — all sprang from the minds of white people. You are not supposed to say such things, and could be run out of a university for it — but ask yourself, if you have the courage: Is it true? Do not think that because things are commonplace or easy to use that they are not products of fields of extraordinary difficulty. …
If you talk about these things on campus, you will be called a “white supremacist.” This is silly. But calling you a racist is an effective way of making you shut up. Do you want to be supreme over anyone? I do not. Yet other races are proud of their achievements. Why should you not be? …
You hear from your professors that white people were guilty of colonization, slavery, and oppression. This is true. What your professors will not point out is that such behavior was, and is, universal. Human beings are a sorry species, given to murder, torture, genocide, thievery, looting, conquest, and slavery. This has been, and is, true of Africans, American Indians, Latin Americans, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Japanese, Chinese, and Europeans. …
When some team pulls the cancer rabbit out of the hat, it will very likely be a team of white people. The second best guess, and an increasingly good bet, is the Chinese. Third? Japanese or Koreans, but this is not likely. After them, nobody is in the running. …
People are playing politics, seeking advantage for themselves by making whiteness out to be “bad”;
As a man of appalling age, I have lived in Thailand, Taiwan, Mexico, Vietnam, and Cambodia, traveled in a great many other countries, and both like and respect their peoples. They are not stupid. May they flourish. And yet for whatever reason — the reasons are not clear — they have not approached the accomplishments of the whiter race. There you have it.
It is chiefly in the United States that those who can’t, haven’t, and aren’t likely to, constantly attack those who can and have. Note that while they rail and fume and grouse, they depend utterly on a world created by the people about whom they rail and grouse. To them you might reasonably say, “Come back and talk to me when you have done something worth talking about.” A great silence would follow.
