The defining characteristic of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was the rtual of self-criticism.  There was a process in which the individual, while prescriptively condemning himself in public, would theoretically achieve some measure of rehabilitation because he had humbled himself before his peers and showed "rehabilitated" modes of thinking.

The self-criticism is alive and well on the left.  Yesterday was National Geographic's turn.  National Geographic, it seems, just discovered that it used to be racist and wants everyone to know that.

National Geographic acknowledged on Monday that it covered the world through a racist lens for generations, with its magazine portrayals of bare-breasted women and naive brown-skinned tribesmen as savage, unsophisticated and unintelligent.

I don't know about the intelligence claim.  But calling naked people who live in the jungle unsophisticated?  That sounds pretty accurate to me.

National Geographic first published its magazine in 1888.  An investigation conducted last fall by University of Virginia photography historian John Edwin Mason showed that until the 1970s, it virtually ignored people of color in the United States who were not domestics or laborers ...

Today, of course, the rule is the opposite, at least in television and film: minorities are only judges, doctors, engineers, and scientists in front of the camera.

... and it reinforced repeatedly the idea that people of color from foreign lands were "exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages – every type of cliché."

Exotic: "originating in or characteristic of a distant foreign country."  That's correct.

Frequently unclothed.  Also correct.

Happy hunters?  Perhaps at times they were sad and felt slandered as a result.

In addition, National Geographic perpetuated the cliche of native people fascinated by technology and overloaded the magazine with pictures of beautiful Pacific island women.

Do you see how far the wheel has turned?  It is now a crime to show photos of beautiful women.  Beauty is now a harmful stereotype imposed on Pacific island women.

In National Geographic's April issue, Goldberg, who identified herself as National Geographic's first woman [sic] and first Jewish editor, wrote a letter titled "For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist.  To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It."

Wait a minute.  Goldberg "identified herself" as a woman?  Is this code for a guy in a dress?

"The coverage wasn't right before because it was told from an elite, white American point of view, and I think it speaks to exactly why we needed a diversity of storytellers," Goldberg said.  "So we need photographers who are African-American and Native American because they are going to capture a different truth and maybe a more accurate story."

See Goldberg's racism?  She (or is it he?) says there is a single "white" point of view.  Really?  Is that the Bernie Sanders point of view or the Mike Lee point of view?  Then Goldberg calls the "white" point of view "elitist" and says minorities make for better journalists.  It's racial supremacy all over again: how many years will pass before Goldberg's distant successors apologize for National Geographic's anti-white racism?

In the picture above, National Geographic called these naked Aborigines "savages" just because they didn't wear clothes, had no cities, had no technology, and lived in the forest.  In reality, they were superior to white people.

I'm glad we've moved on from cultural equivalence to cultural superiority, for non-white cultures, because the true colors of liberals are showing.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.

Image: brownpau via Flickr.