The Daily Telegraph - Features
If I’m related to Pocahontas, does this make me a victim of white tyranny?
In the world today, there is nothing more prestigious than pain, even when it is unfounded. A few days ago, I received a letter from a genealogist which claimed I was a collateral descendant of Pocahontas, and in light of this, suggested that I reconsider my opposition to reparations.
My part descent from a Native American, it was argued, made me yet another victim of white tyranny. (In which case, should I be paying reparations to myself?) After conducting my own research, I concluded that my correspondent’s claims were baloney of a kind that no respectable New York deli would dream of peddling. But what price truth, when potential victimhood is involved? Invention, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable, but it is becoming a national compulsion.
Consider Queen Charlotte. The Charlotte myth, which began with the Netflix series Bridgerton casting a black actress as the German princess, has emerged once more, with the Royal Museums Greenwich informing visitors that the wife of George III was “a person of colour”. Socialmedia users are now suggesting the queen was a victim of racism. She may have been, if any of this were true, but these are falsehoods based on a German diplomat remarking that Queen Charlotte resembled a “mulatto” at birth. Gib mir eine break, as Charlotte might have said. Is this how history is conducted these days? She was as Teutonic as Bratwurst. So why do allegedly rational people engage in such a false, exhausting vocation as culture wars? What keeps them from deserting this type of warfare for occupations that are less onerous and far more honest? One reason, I believe, is that the culture warrior is a person in whom the normal vanity of the rest of us is so vastly exaggerated that they find it impossible to hold it in.
Their overpowering impulse is to gyrate naked before us, flapping their wings and emitting defiant, lunatic yells. This is still – only just – forbidden by the police, so they take it out on paper or social media. Such is the thing called exhibitionism. In the confidences of the culture warriors, of course, it is depicted as something more worthy. Either they argue that they are moved by a yearning to spread enlightenment and thereby save the world, or they allege that what steams them is their painridden desire for justice.
Both theories are quickly disposed of by the facts. The stuff written by nine out of 10 of these “good soldiers”, including my letter-writing friend, has as little to do with spreading the truth and alleviating suffering as the tall tales of a psychotic mythomaniac. The impulse to do good is almost completely absent from their makeup. If it shows itself at all, it comes as a sort of afterthought. Far ahead of it comes the yearning to make money. And after that comes the desire to be noticed. Feel my pain? I’ll take a raincheck.