Carlos Lozada writes for the Washington Post:
“Hey, fellow white guys! It’s about to be a new year. And there’s a few things we think you can do a little bit better in 2017.”
Thus began MTV News’s “2017 New Years Resolutions for White Guys,” one of the Internet’s most transcendentally awful experiments in wishful viral-video-making of the past year. In the 88-second clip, various young MTV staffers, spanning multiple ethnicities, proceed to lecture “white guys” for their offenses to liberal identity politics, such as mansplaining, suggesting that all lives matter and saying “woke.”
The video grates, both for its pedantic, generalizing message and because it was obviously created with the expectation of countless shares among knowing lefties. Instead, the mockery and backlash was such that MTV took it down less than 48 hours later.I wish they’d kept it up, owned it. Because, if 2016 was the year of rediscovering the political power of the Deplorable White Male, 2017 may become the year of attempting to sway, co-opt, educate, overanalyze or shame that class. Some attempts will backfire. (I’m looking at you, MTV News.) Another, Michael Eric Dyson’s new book, “Tears We Cannot Stop,” is more thoughtful yet far more angry, mingling insight, righteousness and harshness.
