"Anti-Racism" Damages Everyone
giving language to something many have noticed
This post has a lot of pictures and is officially “too long for email” by Substack standards. If your email client gives you any trouble with it, you can simply read it at the Substack website.
Special thanks to my friend Dan Sawyer for help with the religious framing mentioned herein.
Thesis: Anti-Racism is Creating Parasocial Relationships in Real Life
I believe that one reason why racial tensions are reported to be reaching higher levels recently, garnering more governmental resources, attention, and concern is this: the paradigm taught by what is called “anti-racism” is creating parasocial relationships in real life. It is directly and specifically causing black and white people to no longer be able to interact authentically. Rather, it is causing the same performative element that is present when the persona in a parasocial relationship interacts with a non-persona (or vice versa) to be there in normal, ordinary interactions.
What Is A Parasocial Relationship?
A parasocial relationship is something first described before the era of the internet and social media, and primarily referred to actual celebrities. It describes one-sided relationships, where one person expends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is either entirely or mostly unaware of the other’s existence. The non-persona in a parasocial relationship can sometimes bring him or herself to the attention of the persona — in the past, through fan letters or attending an autograph signing in person.
In the era of social media, the phenomenon of “influencers” has created a new type of parasocial relationship. The persona is often much more aware of the non-persona’s existence. They may be Twitter mutuals, or perhaps they answer emails sent to a public address. However, the general category of a parasocial relationship still applies, because the persona is not positioned to invest emotional energy, interest, or time in the non-persona. The relationship is still one-sided, either fully or almost fully. There is a feeling of bonding and identification on the part of one party, but not the other.
Understanding Parasocial Relationships From The Persona Side
I had a busy Twitter account for a few years, with over 16,000 followers at peak. That’s a lot for a purely personal account, and it caused many parasocial relationships to develop. The parasocial relationships with good people (not the creeps, sex perverts, and stalkers, who are another story) were one of the primary reasons I left Twitter.
Having a busy, high-interaction personal account presented me with all the downsides of both huge and tiny Twitter accounts. Managing it required me to be someone I never wanted to be—someone who had to mute/block liberally just to stay sane, and who had to ignore people a lot. I have learned that many people don’t like to have friends who disagree with them even a little, but I am not one of those people. However, Twitter is set up to be the worst possible way to have difficult or challenging conversations, especially ones that require nuance.
Additionally, my Twitter account caused me to have parasocial relationships with many people who didn’t understand that they were in a parasocial relationship with me. I would sometimes get long emails of contrition about a twitter spat, and felt I couldn’t answer. The only honest answer would be cruel: Hi, thanks for your seven paragraphs of heartfelt contrition about our spat. Unfortunately, my twitter life is so crowded and busy that I have no idea who you are or what argument you’re referring to. It just didn’t register to me. Please send me your Twitter handle so I can unblock you. I’m sorry that something that made you do deep self-reflection and profoundly upset you meant nothing to me.
I never, ever, ever wanted to be someone who had this kind of relationship with even a single other human being, much less many of them. Limiting social media to responding to comments on Substack hasn’t made it go away entirely—there is still the occasional commenter who deigns to try to explain my psychology, emotions, or thoughts to me, and my revelation that they’re off-base does nothing but further convince them that they know me, someone they’ve never met, better than I know myself—but has dramatically reduced it. My paying subscribers are nearly all intelligent and thoughtful enough to understand the parasocial nature of interactions there and respond appropriately.
What Is Anti-Racism?
Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Saira Rao, Regina Jackson, and other authors and influencers in the “anti-racist” space have become extremely powerful in certain parts of American life. Besides social media, their influence extends to the legacy media, academia, and corporate HR departments, all of which are influential and powerful places to have their ideas be taken seriously.
Ibram X. Kendi is the originator of the paradigm that there is no such thing as non-racist. Everything—and he really means absolutely everything—is either racist or anti-racist. Every unequal outcome between black people and white people is evidence of racism. Every word, action, and thought either moves toward equity of outcome and is thus anti-racist, or it does not and is thus racist.
Robin DiAngelo is a flagrant, horrifying racist who wrote a book, White Fragility, wherein she reveals her belief that all white people are just as racist as she is, and insists that any white person who denies this is just, unlike her, too fragile to admit the truth. She is a highly sought-after speaker and corporate diversity trainer.
Saira Rao and Regina Jackson hold non-sexual BDSM sessions where white women pay them for the privilege of hosting them for two hours of being emotionally and verbally abused by them over dinner. Then the guests are held accountable for the sins of their ancestors, and given a path to moral purification that will expiate the guilt brought about by their white skin. They recently published a book about white women, in which they hold white women responsible for racism and all the evils of the world that flow from it. Many white women take this with the utmost seriousness and believe in it, and all white women should at least take note of it—because it’s permeated our culture sufficiently that the dynamics it inculcates turn up in workplaces now, especially any company large enough to have an HR department.
Anti-racism enjoyed a massive surge of popularity in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, penetrating American society to astonishing depths. Even people I know in rural Mississippi were finding “White Fragility” turning up as the recommended book in things like the parents’ group at a dance studio.
These ideas are everywhere, particularly in schools.
Parasocial Relationships Through Twitter and Other Social Media
When people put a great deal of their thoughts and feelings online, it can be easy to conclude that you know a lot about them. This is not the case. People are organic, complex, and 3-D creatures. To use a metaphor given me by a famous friend: the people who are most authentically themselves online are presenting an unedited but cropped photo of themselves. It is unedited, yes. But it is still cropped, and it is still just a photo. Every photo has composition, lighting, and an overall effect that influences the view of its subjects, no matter how fully the photographer intends to reveal truth and reality.
How Anti-Racism and Parasocial Relationships Combine
The anti-racism paradigm and the phenomenon of parasocial relationships, in my view, come together in how black Americans, particularly black women, are regarded by white leftists.
Consider how corporate and academic diversity trainers teach “cultural competency” — anything characterized as non-white is regarded as more evolved, humane, and virtuous. These charts from the Smithsonian illustrate this point:
Notice that white people want their children to have their own rooms and be independent, focus on soulless careerism, and define themselves by money — all of this in contrast to the values of people of color, who want their children with them, who define themselves by deeper and more important criteria than money and success.
February, the month that wrapped up a few days ago as I write this, saw many social media discussions of how schools and other institutions handled Black History Month. This thread is a good example:
Notice the separation here. The black students were treated as special, worthy of applause simply for an immutable characteristic over which they hold no control, and quite literally applauded for this by their peers. Kids are impressionable. How can black kids who are treated this way, as special simply for existing, not be influenced by this? White kids see their peers treated as a special kind of being that white children can never become. How can they not be influenced by this?
How can these same kids go off and interact authentically? Kids who are raised with these sorts of experiences are being trained to have parasocial relationships, black people as the persona and white people as the non-persona.
On the left, there exists also a common theme in many social media discussions of black women, in particular. A good representation of this phenomenon can be seen in this thread:
Nothing in the two pictured tweets about the gynecologist’s office is objectionable. Trauma-informed care, of all kinds, is good. I remember how long it took me to be able to sit in a classroom with my back to the door and pay attention. If I ever teach in a classroom, I will allow my students to choose their own seats: a trauma-informed choice for an authority to make.
What is interesting in that thread is the worshipful tone, the way that black women are presumed to hold a special, elevated status with intuitive knowledge of healing others’ wounds, both physical and psychic:
In each election year, the reliability of black women voters as Democratic strongholds is regularly characterized as black women “saving America”. Examples here, here, and here.
Leftist podcasts, of which I listen to several in order to keep my own biases in check and in my own view, frequently discuss the need to always “center” women of color. In any troubling situation, in any desperate need, follow the women of color! They will lead you the right way.
Where This Comes From, In Part
American thought is so strongly influenced by nineteenth century Protestantism that this too roughly corresponds to a religious framework from that time: sorting people into three buckets. There are those who deserve reverence (black people), those who deserve mercy (white people who are humbly subjugating themselves and doing the work), and those who deserve damnation (white people who arrogantly refuse to join the second group).
Parasocial Relationships in the Cluster B Range
Some of you are thinking about parasocial relationships like those that lead to assassination attempts or stalking, and wondering if what I describe is simply a milder version of that phenomenon. Not precisely, but the two are closely related. Depending on the nature of one’s platform, the parasocial relationships can take on pathology quite quickly. As I write about my trauma history, sick men are often attracted to what I write. Some are seeking literal masturbation material. Others are seeking metaphorical masturbation material.
Since I developed a “platform,” these pathetic creatures have cycled through. I generally have one or at most two at a time, though sometimes I get lucky and have none for awhile. (This is very common; I have had many conversations with female content creators on this topic, and my count of cyberstalkers is actually much lower than average.)
All are Cluster B of some flavor. This refers to the set of personality/character disorders you probably know best by terms like pathological narcissism or sociopathy. People with Cluster B psychology are often emotionally and/or physically dangerous. The ones most lacking in intelligence and self-awareness tend to be sociopaths who cannot help but reveal themselves as such. The present one is revelatory for how to tell the difference between the pathological and the purely pathetic. He has been banned from my Substack, though in classic “women don’t get to tell me no” fashion, he has tried again to pay for a subscription and re-claim access to my comment section. He is so excited by forcing people (particularly women) to have non-consensual interactions with him that he follows me around Substack, leaving comments in reply to my attempts to interact with others’ work. The first half a sentence will have some slight relevance to the essay I comment on, and then he will pivot to commenting on things I’ve previously written, laying out his views as if anyone cares. The opportunity to non-consensually have my attention for even a few seconds is irresistible. (I no longer read them, but even scanning to scroll by shows links to my previous work figuring prominently.)
A purely parasocial relationship that you ignore will fizzle out. His emails are filtered before I can see them, though I keep them in the event that law enforcement ever has to get involved, as has happened before with some of these guys.
A pathological parasocial relationship will not fizzle out. Why? A normally healthy ego doesn’t continue to interact in these circumstances. A narcissist, particularly one with sociopathic tendencies, will escalate in ways that demonstrate the pathology. In this case: he glories in the non-consensual nature of the interaction, and he’s wholly unaware of the extent to which other people experience secondhand embarrassment on his behalf.
What all of these pathological males have in common is the (parasocial-relationship-based) belief that they don’t just know me, they understand me.
There really are people who think that an edited highlight reel gives them much more knowledge of the internal experience of playing the game than the people actually playing. Narcissists cannot be reasoned out of this belief, just as normal human standards of dignity prevent non-narcissists from embarrassing themselves by invading an unrelated Substack comment section and lecturing other commenters on the narcissist’s view of what that other commenter has written elsewhere.
Understanding the Difference From The Non-Persona Side
Three of my dearest friendships started as parasocial relationships.
Viewers of the DarkHorse podcast know that I am friends with Dr. Heather Heying and Dr. Bret Weinstein. We met on Twitter and eventually became friends in real life.
People often ask me what they’re like in real life, and my usual answer gets a laugh (because it’s true). I always say, totally deadpan: “F-bombs.”
When the person either laughs or gives me a “Seriously?” look, I follow up: “I’m totally serious. In private, they both swear more—especially Heather. But that’s really it. They are shockingly the same off-camera. They both really are exactly and precisely who they seem to be.”
Bret and I had a conversation once over lunch, memorable for many reasons beyond it being my first experience eating goat, in which we discussed this. How he and I were both the same in real life as we were online, “only more so.” He gave me the “unedited but cropped photo” metaphor, which I think works brilliantly because it’s precisely accurate.
Josh Slocum is the on-air personality of the Disaffected Podcast. We are neighbors, by Vermont standards, and spend time together in person regularly. We too met on Twitter and then moved from an internet-based parasocial relationship to a real-life friendship. His show persona is both accurate and performative, an exaggerated version of his real self elucidating his real views. It took me awhile to stop expecting Show Josh to show up in person, in part because Show Josh is intimidatingly funny, persuasive, and verbally acute. My friend Josh can be all of those things, but mostly is an interesting, thoughtful, kind, and soothing presence, and perhaps the best listener I’ve ever met.
I’ve read social media discussions of all three of these people. The extent to which people do laughably inaccurate mind-reading, attributing beliefs and motives to them that are not just beliefs and motives that these people don’t hold, but in many cases are the precise opposite of beliefs and motives that each of these people has passionately expressed in both public and private—it’s been astonishing on more than one occasion.
The Venn diagram between who these people are, in my experience as someone who knows them all pretty well, and what their social media detractors think they see, is two gigantic, wholly separate circles.
People make, and cling to, all sorts of decisions and judgments using heuristics based on parasocial understandings of people they do not know.
The anti-racist paradigm is teaching Americans that doing this sort of unwarranted extrapolation on the basis of race, and clinging to it with tenacity no matter how much evidence to the contrary is presented, is an important—the MOST important—measure of virtue.
How Parasocial Relationships Without Awareness Hurt Everyone
Before I understood that Twitter had become a place where many others had parasocial relationships with me, I took things that were said to and about me there much, much too seriously. The gaslighting experiences of my abusive childhood paved the way for this. I was quite accustomed to being harshly judged and criticized for thoughts I didn’t have and saying things I’d never said.
Likewise, I know that there were people who were hurt by a spat that led to their being blocked or muted. One person who had answered one email question, one time, when I was in school and had a coding question brought it up on Twitter a dozen times. What an ungrateful brat I was! Why, he had helped me with my assignment! The amount of time he spent emoting about his block compared to the time he spent answering one email several years ago is so lopsided that it really shows the depth to which he was emotionally wounded. And anytime a link to something I’ve written is going around Twitter, I will inevitably get at least one email. So-and-so on Twitter saw the link and said he would never read anything I wrote because I was such a hypocrite. Why, I claim to believe in free speech and yet I had blocked him! He would have a detailed memory and still be obviously hurt by this. The emailer will suggest I reach out to this person.
Never once did I have even a vague recollection of the incident that still plagued the Twitter commenter. That is simply the nature of Twitter if you have a high-interaction account and get 5,000+ notifications a day, with its psychologically fragmenting, rapid-fire, emotional-whiplash-inducing barrage.
These things are all regrettable, and I have, I hope, learned from them.
But I am an adult.
Imagine the situation in which American children are now being raised: the black children are being taught that they are special, uniquely regarded victims deserving of sympathy, support, and concern that their white classmates are not.
They are victims of systemic racism, and their white classmates are not just their oppressors—they are such wholly different creatures that it is literally impossible to be racist against their white contemporaries. (Other ways of describing this include beatification, canonization, sanctification.)
Persona vs Non-Persona. Important vs. Not. Special vs. Ordinary.
In diversity trainings at large corporations, people are gathered to discuss whether a glass ceiling exists for black colleagues, especially black women colleagues, and to gush about the importance of elevating their voices and centering their experiences. I saw several variations on this theme at work last month, as did several friends who, like me, work for large corporations.
How can honest, authentic collaboration occur among people with such a lopsided dynamic?
How can white people not be performative and self-conscious towards black people in these situations and settings, when everyone present has been instructed on the inherent virtue in being black and the inherent guilt in being white?
How can black people have authentic relationships with people who are performing anti-racist virtue in their working relationships and friendships—instead of just being colleagues, or friends?
How long can this insanity continue?
This is the part where I’m supposed to offer a solution or, at the very least, some hope.
I can do neither. “Anti-racism,” as a paradigm, has firmly entrenched itself in the elite universities and other institutions that wield power in American life. It’s not going away anytime soon.
Fighting “anti-racism” risks accusations of racism. The same simple-minded morons who praise AntiFa because “they are anti-fascist, so unless you’re pro-fascist you have to support them….” believe that “anti-racism” is the correct paradigm to solve our racial problems moving forward.
Even if some of them can be convinced otherwise, the courage it would take to reject “anti-racism” as such, clearly and in those terms, is not easily located these days.
So all I can offer in ending is this: if you see aspects of parasocial interaction in the interracial relationships in your world—aspects caused, fomented, and intensified by “anti-racism”—try to talk about it. Ask questions. Listen.
Raise, God help us all, awareness.
This paradigm has been deeply entrenched, and the damage it causes gets reified every day. This is going to be a long journey.
All journeys start with a single step, and we are long overdue to get started.
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Most people are unaware of the history, which is why they can repeat that canard about Antifa with a straight face. (I presume some of them *are* aware and repeat it with a straight face because they're either true believers or sociopaths.) Antifa is anti- a very *specific* definition of "Fascism".
Antifa was founded in 1932 by the German Soviet agent Ernst Thälmann as "Antifaschistische Aktion" (antifascist action) to be the counterforce against the NSDAP's "Sturmabteilung" (storm division, a.k.a. the Brownshirts) for the explicitly Stalinist Kommunistische Partei Deutschland (German Communist Party).
The "fascism" referred to in their name is the same "fascism" as that in "die Antifaschistische Schutzwand" (the antifascist protection rampart) or, as it is far more commonly known, "The Berlin Wall". Yes, the Berlin Wall was (at least according to the official truth of the East Germans) to *protect* the people of East Germany from the "fascism" of western civilization.
"Fascism", in Soviet parlance, is "anything which is not Stalinist Communism". So yes, actually, by Antifa's definition, I am *absolutely* a "fascist". And so is almost every single other person on the planet.
Modern day Antifa still uses the same *logo* as they did 90 years ago. (The two flags logo, though they've mirrored it left for right. I imagine that a modern group calling themselves "The Storm Division" and using a sauwastika while claiming no link to the Nazi SA would not be well received, and would be laughed out of the room for attempting such a blatant lie.) Anyone who claims it isn't the same group is either brutally ignorant, or lying.
Excellent analysis of the connections between parasocial relationships, Cluster B, and Anti-racism.
Do you think it’s accurate to say that this proliferation of parasocial relationships through social media is harming people’s ability to have real social relationships and friendships?
I’ve noticed that one of the things that irritates me the most about new people I meet (actually meeting them, not just interacting with them online) is the act of them informing me what I actually think about something or what motivated a particular decision I’ve made. It feels like this has become more common in the last 10 years. This seems very similar to the way you describe your interactions with the “non-personae” in parasocial relationships. Are people beginning to default to parasocial relationship strategies for all relationships?