In Shakespeare’s time an excuse for bad behavior might be astrological: we lie or cheat or pander not because of our own weaknesses but because of an external celestial influence beyond our control. The worm of our infirmity is not in us but elsewhere, hence we are not truly, not fully, guilty of our sins. Indeed, with a little ingenuity, we can argue that our bad behavior, being instigated by something outside ourselves, makes us victims, hence deserving of pity and even, indeed, celebration.
Today, of course, we don’t find excuses for depravity in the stars but in our upbringing, our bank account, our sex, our skin color. I am habitually late for work, but it is because I grew up poor. I take drugs, but it is because I am oppressed. I burned down a police station/shot a cop/looted a store, but it was because of “systemic racism.” Or maybe it is because of “the patriarchy.” Or “heteronormativity.” Or “transphobia.”
The disease is deep. Just how deep is on view in some of Dr. Khilanani’s more piquant observations. To wit:
"This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil.
White people feel that we are bullying them when we bring up race. . . . We are asking a demented, violent predator who thinks that they are a saint or a superhero, to accept responsibility. . . . They have five holes in their brain. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall. It’s just like sort of not a good idea.
And here, at about seven minutes into the presentation, is the pièce de résistance:“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a [expletive] favor.”
Khilanani is more a symptom than a cause of the disease. She embodies, to be sure, an ugly and repellent expression of the sickness that is ravaging our elite institutions. But the cause is in the spirit that would not only allow but actually celebrate such disgusting performances as “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.” Remember, this was not at some wacko fringe grotto but at Yale University, operating in this instance as an agent for the State of Connecticut.
Dr. Aruna Khilanani is at the Yale School of Medicine’s Child Study Center.
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2022/5/pigment-problems
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