Occasionally, I receive a message from someone who’s angry with me. This happened again yesterday. There’s no need to share her identity, although you can find her and others in the comments.
I’ll let you read her words for yourself: “All white. All men. All western. Read well? Yeh. No.”
She’s attacking me on several accounts here. As you can tell, I’m apparently guilty of only discussing white books from men in the Western school of thought. I asked her how she came to such a grim assessment of my work (to which she hasn’t responded), given that I’ve spent enormous amounts of time speaking about some of my favorite authors, including Virginia Woolf, Hannah Arendt, Maya Angelou, Frederick Douglas, and Gabriel García Márquez. In fact, next week, I’m excited to announce that Yasmine Mohammed will be a guest on my podcast. We’ll be speaking about her book, Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam.
Here’s the thing. I’m not upset with the woman who thought she understood my content and tried to smear me. I’m upset that she didn’t take the time to do her homework before doing so. I’m all ears if you have a problem with my work, but please have some reasoning behind it. Yes, I’m a white male. And yes, I love Western philosophy enough to have gone back to school for it. But no, the color of my skin does not automatically make me an “all white, all men, all western” advocate. I’m capable of loving and supporting everyone.
Alright, my rant is over. I’ll be back tomorrow to speak about books as always.
Until then, read slowly – take notes – apply the ideas.
-Eddy
My word! Doing actual homework/research and exhibiting a lack of restraint seems to be the norm. Sometimes a good rant is necessary, and I am glad you did it. But it was more than a rant, I think. It was a call to correct and to take responsibility, rather than making rash and unfounded comments. Certainly, we have enough of that in our world. I am new to your work, so I look forward to hearing/seeing more!
Warmly, Don