OUT ON A LIMB: Nellie Bowles: ‘It’s not healthy to tell kids that being white is bad.’

What’s happening in schools, where the “toxic trends of whiteness” are being taught to young children, is one example, and in the book Bowles writes about a four-day “toxic whiteness” workshop she attended in 2021, where she listens to various white people self-flagellate about how their very existence “perpetuates whiteness” and how shameful that is.

“Because I really don’t think it’s healthy to tell young kids that they are white, and that their whiteness has enormous [negative] meaning,” she says, citing the “white traits” that controversial critical race theorists such as Robin DiAngelo insist exist. “It’s also just so reductive, this reification of race, and I think a lot of it is very counterproductive.” Neither is it helpful “for people to be constantly reminded of their supposed ancestors’ crimes,” she points out.

Another example of small factions having an outsized impact is what is happening at her alma mater, Columbia University, right now, and campuses across the US. “It’s the soldiers of a movement who are extremely effective at public shaming and dominating the conversation,” she says. “But it’s not the majority of people at these places.”

There were always protests when Bowles was at Columbia, she says. “And I think it’s great when college kids protest. It’s awesome – in general. But these protests? They’ve obviously got out of control. You’ve had the kids trapping janitors in the buildings and it has clearly escalated beyond a simple college demonstration.” So, at this point, what should be happening? “At this point you say, ‘this crosses the line and we’re going to call the police in on this situation.’ I honestly don’t think that’s crazy! And it’s especially clear cut at public universities, like, say, UCLA. Because when you have students taking over swathes of campus and saying: ‘Jewish students can’t walk down this path anymore’ – well, that’s illegal. So you have to call the cops.”

I tell her how Rishi Sunak called the leaders of Britain’s top universities to Downing Street earlier this month and insisted a “zero tolerance” approach to anti-Semitism be taken on campus. Has Biden been clear enough on this? Bowles pulls a face. “No. I don’t think so. And it’s beyond what we’re seeing at the universities. We’re in a dark moment in that particular story.”

When she asks me whether I’ve seen more anti-Semitism in the US or the UK, I have to be honest and say that although there has obviously been a clear escalation here since Oct 7, I personally noticed a marked rise in America from the start of the pandemic.

“It’s very worrisome watching the rhetoric,” she murmurs. And it didn’t come out of nowhere. Bowles is sure of this because she didn’t ignore Antifa, even when her NYT colleagues told her it was “a nothing burger”, “a non-story”. And when she flew to Seattle where the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone group had occupied six blocks of the city, she found young men with guns on their laps guarding their “autonomous zone”; she saw looting and anarchy.

“What Antifa brought in those years was the idea that violence could be part of the conversation. That a little bit of tension in the air and the possibility of violence was a good thing for protests. Now, we’re seeing that attitude, which was so fringe, normalised in a way that is so dangerous. In these protests on college campuses, we’re seeing the threat of violence woven in proudly. Now, I think it’s fine to call for war if you want to call for war, but let’s be clear: if you’re doing this, you’re not anti-war, you’re pro-war.”

Not anti-war, just on the other side, to coin an Instaphrase.

Earlier: Look Back In Anger: Nellie Bowles’ Morning After The Revolution Documents the Insanity that was 2020.