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October 17, 2009

Are You A New-Age White Racist?

By Jed Gladstein

Okay … so the title of this blog is alarming, right? Well, yeah! Nobody in this country takes the charge of racist lightly – especially white Americans. That’s because white Americans have had the charge of racism beaten into their consciousness for more than six decades, now. [1]

But, incredible as it may seem, just as soon as one charge of racism is laid to rest with the election of the first so-called post-racial President, another charge of racism rises to take its place. This time, we are told, the racists are those who believe that the Mayan culture teaches that the year 2012 will inaugurate a cataclysmic apocalypse. Really … I’m not making this up!

This damning indictment comes from none other than Maggie Koerth-Baker, a self-described writer and editor whose areas of interest include anthropology. In a recent article , Maggie had this to say about members of the New Age community who think the year 2012 is associated with Mayan end-time prophecy:

“(T)he idea of a countdown to cataclysmic apocalypse is a Western, not Mayan idea … (and) money (is) being raked in by woo-woo charlatans … who are all capitalizing off what amounts to willful misinterpretations of Mayan legends, traditions and science.”

Apparently, Maggie once took a class in anthropology at Kansas University, and she considers her former college professor’s views to be authoritative. He would like:

 “… to see more of the revenue from the hyping of 2012 mythology …go directly to the living descendants of the ancient Maya whose cultural heritage and intellectual property is being appropriated without their knowledge or consent for the financial benefit of non-Maya hucksters.”

Maggie confesses that she doesn’t quite “know the best way to handle” the wealth expropriation scheme advocated by her former professor, but there is one thing about which she is absolutely clear in her own mind:

“I personally see a lot of racism at play in this story. Not the white hood sort of racism, sure. But I don't think I have a better word for what happens when the largely white and wealthy American New Age community co-opts and exoticises (sic) the traditions of a marginalized native people and then ignores those people when they say, ‘That's not what our traditions mean. Please stop misrepresenting us.’"

So, for all the New Age White Racists out there who have the temerity to believe in a Mayan end-time prophecy, they had better watch out, because Maggie and her band of cultural Marxists [2] are on the prowl and looking to redistribute their ill-gotten gains!

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[1] For a little insight into some of the effects that this drumbeat of criticism has had on the last two generations of white Americans, take a look at a recent article by a Berkeley therapist.

[2] Cultural Marxism is a phenomenon that we know better by the pseudonym “political correctness.” Its influence in America, especially academia, has now reached pandemic proportions.

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