The Coretta Scott King Book Awards for children's books has celebrated its 50th anniversary. Black authors & illustrators. Buy these books for children you know. Steady, steady over 50 years. Quiet but powerful. https://olos.ala.org/csk/
I agree, deeply, with this post. And yet, I want to challenge you on one thing that I keep seeing you repeat: "many have been sprinting towards an affective vision of racism in recent years out of fear and out of social and professional ambition"
Let's pick that apart for a moment: I think this vision short-changes the fact that a lot of people are acting not out of fear or ambition but out of a desire to do right by people of color. I'll speak for myself for a moment: I've been caught up in identity politics at times, not out of fear or ambition but because 50-70% of my friends at any given time have been people of color who espouse such ideas to some degree or another, and I've genuinely wanted to understand their point of view. And whatever my feelings about their POV is, the fact is that I've never experienced the kind of discrimination or hatred that most of them have.
Anyway, all I'm saying is I find your analysis a bit dismissive—and particularly so to people of color who might be reading this and have very different motivations for the politics they've arrived at then simply "fear" or "ambition." Unpacking why people land at a certain set of identity politics seems, to me, important work for moving toward actual change.
I agree with people arriving at this type of politics in different ways, but I also know several people of color who have gone all-in this stuff, and it's hard for me to understand where they're coming from. People who will say that they've never experienced any racism but based on the news other people of color do and this makes them furious. People who are children of professional class immigrants with lifetime history of elite education obsessed with an ambiguous possible microagression from six months ago, and next you know they're really upset about colonialism and talking shit about white people constantly. I do think a lot of people latch on to this stuff for psychological reasons. It's very similar to white people who love the fact that their great grandfather came to Ellis island in a box or something, but in this case it gets massive social validation and you get to imagine you're part of a giant 500 year struggle and there's an omni-present evil called "white supremacy" that can explain anything possible that goes wrong in your life, even if on paper your life is totally fine. You also get to feel powerful and morally superior to all the white people you interact with. It's really kind of like a drug and I don't think everyone who comes at it is doing so purely from personal experience.
It's the stolen valor (or at times, stolen victimhood) of identity politics. You're a member of a group, and so you are _every_ member of that group, and thus every one of that group's accomplishments is your personal accomplishment, and every slight against that group is a slight against you personally.
The obvious question is, what are the material conditions of your group of friends? Were they educated at selective institutions? Do they hold professional jobs or advanced degrees? Because at this point that’s the biggest tell for how people feel about this stuff
Hmm. A very large number of them were not born in the United States and don't have the type of background you and Murat are describing, but the vast majority hold at least a BA. I get your point, I just don't see it in such simple terms.
But these trends exist in urban Europe too, including amongst transplants/expat communities (both white and PoC). I think that gets missed by a lot of American commentators.
I like the fact that you seem to be answering this honestly. There's actually a big movement on Twitter & places like Clubhouse who argue that the experiences of BIPOC people from other cultures and nations is very different than the experiences of "ADOS" people (American Descendants of Slavery, or as we said until recently 'African Americans'). And while I don't agree with all or even most of the ADOS views, they *are* right about this. That the American "Black" experience is most likely very different than other minorities. Even if both experience racism. (Systemic or personal.)
My bigger point is this. I don't think Freddie is being "dismissive" of these personal "lived" experiences. He's just saying focusing on those anecdotal experiences, ADOS or not, and more specifically how you or me as "white" people respond to or feel about those anecdotes does literally next to nothing to actually help real live disenfranchised people. (I use quotes for "white" because in the long term I find all racial identification to in fact be racist, but that's another conversation.)
I don't agree with everything Freddie says in this piece. I don't think we need the "black" community to be able to eventually fend for themselves. As I just said I think racial categories need to be eventually abolished. But in the meantime what I think about race or what you think about race doesn't fee anyone. It doesn't pay anyone's rent. It doesn't reduce the chance of incarceration, poverty, drug addiction, etc. etc. And on that narrow point I agree with Freddie 100%. I've yet to hear an argument that refutes that point.
I hear you. And I definitely deeply agree with this post as well. I've thought about this more today and I think maybe what's grating on me a bit is how these posts all seem to assume that the reader, or the ID politics defender, is white. And if the arguments toward a more material view of racism aren't convincing to certain POC I think it's worth investigating why.
Well, if you haven't identified as "white" then I apologize for assuming you were. (Again, I don't care either way). But I think it's fair to say that many of the online spaces that defend the current identity orthodoxy are rarely as diverse as their utopian visions would wish. ("Black" people are still just 13% of the US population, so it's not surprising.)
Anyway, I do agree that some POC might have good reason to adopt these world views. But again, wether they do or don't is immaterial to wether or not these views and the spreading of them actually help people in need. I don't think they do. Freddie doesn't seem to either.
This is fair and probably accurate. There are Black commentators who are speaking to this, and perhaps one of the pitfalls of current politics is its more than uncouth for a white commentator to give any proscriptive ideas to Black people. For Black commentators (who are often branded as conservative or at least more conservative than they are because they don’t toe the ID politics line) I would recommend John McWhorter, Colman Hughes, and this essay by Danielle Allen. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/danielle-allen-constitution/615481/
I think that is a critical distinction - class. BIPOC college graduates have different life experiences and world views than BIPOC people who are not college graduates. When I incorporated some CRT-type language in my BIPOC classes in East New York years ago my, students thought it was annoying and rather intelligently schooled me about what they wanted to focus on.
"Anyway, all I'm saying is I find your analysis a bit dismissive—and particularly so to people of color who might be reading this and have very different motivations for the politics they've arrived at then simply "fear" or "ambition.""
'Ethnic chauvinism' and 'prestige' would be two other major ones. There's not a single other group in this country sitting around worrying about being racist themselves. They're worried about making sure they get the biggest piece of the pie possible.
I think it’s good to listen to your friends and care about their experiences. For me, the problem comes when non-material concerns suck up all the oxygen because elites dominate political discourse.
For example, what happened after George Floyd. A man was KILLED by police, and people used that moment to talk about diversity on sociology panels (coincidentally benefiting themselves) Elites seem to be incapable of sustained focus on the concerns of working class Black people.
I mean yes, but there's a point where there experiences are "This person said this thing to me at a party 6 months ago, ugh I fucking hate white people, America is such a racist shithole".
Jiji, I have a question... do you mean that your BIPOC friends follow the line of thinking of Kendi and Diangelo in terms of how to combat racism, i.e. language, microagressions, identity, unpacking the many levels of White racism and the innerpsychology of white racists and that this focus is the most important in improving the lives of BIPOC people? Or do you mean that they have valid experiences and witness day-to-day racism and systemic racism that deserve to be acknowledged? I think most liberal-minded people acknowledge the latter, although the different paths in regard to how to improve the lives of BIPOC people and what we should be focusing on is the question. I don't think Freddie is saying to ignore the racism that BIPOC people experience or that it's not important.
I can't speak for all of them and am not sure they've read Kendi specifically, but sometime around 2015-16 the conversation in my circles around anti-racism shifted toward identity politics—intersectionality, white privilege, a shift in language. It felt all-consuming during the Trump years, and has lessened/shifted again to a certain degree, though some friends seem to be deeply mired in id politics. The argument that I hear the most is probably around representation - most of my friends are in their late 30s/early 40s and feel strongly about raising their kids with more media representation of their race/gender/whatever than they had. I can see where they're coming from, and while material change obviously matters a lot more, I don't think the representation arguments are for naught.
I don't think Freddie is saying that their experiences of racism don't matter either but a lot of the posts on this topic feel like they're written for white liberals, and don't speak so much to people of color and their experiences, or why they came to these politics.
Yes, I agree with the representation part. I think the visual representation aspect is critical for the psychology of BIPOC people, regardless their class. I have BIPOC family members who survived a 70's, 80's childhood and I witnessed the psychological abuse that occurs when you are erased from media/ history, literature, etc. CRT goes way beyond representation but this is one area that I feel very strongly about. Representation matters.
Great conversation. I agree that representation matters. Think of all the people fighting against a black "Spider-Man" a few years ago. Or whats-her-name from Fox saying "Santa Claus is white!". These arguments seem silly now. And I'd even give the 'wokesters' at least partial credit for killing that silliness. (I'm fine with ALL fictional comic book characters being BIPOC. It's fiction! Make them look however the fuck you want!)
But then stuff gets so granulated that Lin Manuel Miranda, the man who basically decolonized the American Revolution, has to grovel to the Twitter mob because his all "brown" cast in The Heights wasn't "brown" enough.
Maybe they were right about it technically. (I live in Washington Heights. Indeed the spanish speaking people there come in all shades. My dad grew up in Argentina and I'm as "white" as Ted Cruz. While my Domincan neighbor is darker than most "black" people.)
But if we endlessly police these micro-problems I fear it eventually becomes the problem we were trying to eliminate. Judging people by skin color.
People mimic what they know. LMM probably chose actors that reminded him of his family, fine. I think the criticism, to a level is fair, but everything is so heightened. I don’t think he needed to apologize!
My family members are Asian, definitely not a lot of representation. People would often call my family slurs, laugh it off, pull their eyes to look squinty and then laugh that off too. Representation would have helped!
Black arguably have more representation in popular entertainment but in terms of wealth/income lag far behind everyone else. Asians have almost no representation but earn more than whites. Isn't this the exact conflict between symbolism and reality that the article is critiquing?
There have been a number of times in the US that previously-on-the-bottom ethnic groups
climbed the ladder to being prosperous, and in general they did not have representation of this kind early on. And yet, they somehow did climb that ladder. This seems inconsistent with the need for visible representation of blacks in high positions in order for black kids to succeed.
I think this is a very good point. A lot of people are in this stuff bc they want to be good people, and what does it mean to be a good person, generally? To be like what the groups you're in say it is to be good. Sure some of that comes w intimidation, pressure and fear, but much of it is simpler: people absorb values from the people around them, and try to live by them.
And more specifically, many want to be a good friend, ally, or just listener to non-white folk. They genuinely believe racism is bad and feel sympathy for those who have been affected by it. And if that's what the non-white people they know are saying, they'll listen. Or if the main ideas they hear for how to do good in this sphere are along these lines, then well, ofc they'll do that, bc it's what they know, what is closest at hand.
Good essay. However, it needs to focus more on one important point: there are a huge number of technocrats whose employment is based on racism as mysticism and feelings. It’s not just film directors and Times columnists and Joy Reid. If we changed to a materialist framework that sought more redistribution (which I agree the Left is much healthier focusing on) there is a huge swath of entrenched ersatz elites who are out of jobs. Also a lot the enthusiasm for Kendi and DiAngelo never felt real - it felt astroturfed, coming out of zombie media outlets, foundations, and corporate HR departments. No one likes this stuff and few people think it’s a good idea, so we should give more thought to why it is so prevalent.
Nice comment. Elites that feed on the ethereal world of anti-racism won’t go down without a fight and that framework provides insight into why we’re so obsessed with mystical and feeling version of anti-racism; it makes powerful people a shit load of money.
I love that paragraph about representation and the Oscars especially. It makes sense to me. And yet there are so many in Film Twitter world who have similar far-left economic views as Freddie, yet they get hopping mad when the "wrong" movies do well at the Oscars.
And if you point out that there's way bigger problems to focus on, oh boy that makes them even madder. They seem to think that if we fix all this linguistic and emotional stuff in elite, white-collar settings, it'll "trickle down" toward better antiracist policy for the average person.
I personally don't care or remember which films have won Oscars, but the outcomes of awards shows aren't *solely* symbolic navel-gazing BS -- they do have non-trivial marketing impacts, can have bonuses tied in contracts, and affect the future employment prospects of the winners/nominees. And so they probably have a non-zero impact on what kind of films studios feel comfortable bankrolling in the future -- though commercially successful films, regardless of their awards performance, still trump all of course.
I agree with this post so much, but I also feel like there’s no space for anything but politics. It worked okay when there was broad elite consensus that politics is about a debate over economics, but there doesn’t seem to be any space for I want to change the culture to be more polite that isn’t a democratic aligned interest group.
When I read conservative media links through Real Clear politics it doesn’t feel to me like any kind of live and let live deal would be on the table even if the Democratic Party took a hard materialist turn.
Correct, which is why, if you want any kind of leftward political change at all, you must strive to remove Republicans from as many positions of power as possible, as often as possible, by any means necessary (including electing center-right Democrats if that's the only viable alternative).
I’m a bit unclear on how the center right part of the ledger really helps here. Doesn’t it then create a dynamic where democrats argue amongst themselves while in power and Republicans can reach out and pass harmful backlash politics while they’re in power?
It feels a bit heads I win Tails you lose on these kind of issues that republicans have so uniformly chosen revanchist ideas.
Recent history shows the Democrats coming together unanimously (or very nearly so) on the most important votes, e.g., Obamacare and its attempted repeals, impeachment, SCOTUS appointees. Meanwhile, the Republicans are also very good at imposing party discipline on these votes (with the Obamacare repeal being the big exception, when 3 Republican Senators voted against repeal).
So in the vast majority of real-world cases, progressive goals are far more likely to be advanced by any Democrat vs any Republican.
Now you can argue that this sort of small-scale advancement (eg Obamacare instead of Medicare For All) isn't worth it, because it just maintains the capitalist status quo (or something like that). I very strongly disagree, but that's an argument that can be had.
Also, centrist Democrats don't do shit like this, from today's NYT: "Restrictions passed by the Republican-led Montana Legislature could have stark effects on Native American reservations, where voting in person can mean a two-hour drive."
Thank you for this post, and thank you for making it free so I can share it when I’m trying to explain my frustration with the current politics. I was on my way to ask when I got the second email with the shareable post.
My one quibble is that I think it does matter if Black authors are on bestseller lists (especially when broadly defined to include longer lists and smaller genres, not just the Top 10 Books per year), because this means money for the authors. Also, publishers will be more likely to pay future Black authors.
Instead, publishing Twitter obsesses over things like “own voices” (for example, who has the right to tell stories that include Black characters) which novels are problematic, and so on. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter if a naive white person writes an inauthentic but well-meaning novel featuring a Black protagonist… because there would be plenty of Black authors writing books with authentic representation and getting paid enough to live & to keep writing those stories.
You referenced Kwame Ture who has one of the best lines on this:
"If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.”
I wanted to find the source for this quote, but couldn't in a quick search. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could point me to the original speech or writing.
didn’t fred make a post not long ago about conservatives doing whataboutism bullshit with old soviet regimes whenever any reasonable critique of capitalism comes up?
from the comments section from his post on bari weiss's anti-china rant:
"This is part of my point: the endless communism-capitalism binary has given people a permanent out from ever considering problems. "Oh, capitalism results in vast inequality and permanent poverty? Well, socialism IS WORSE." Even if I thought that was true, so what? "Other systems have problems too" is not a response to identifying a legitimate problem. It's just deflection. Someday capitalism will end. It might not end in a way that leads to anything I prefer; it might end with total anarchy, who knows. But it will end. And to move intelligently into the future we have to be frank about the current system's problems, whether we have an immediate solution at hand or not. Yes, eventually you have to talk solutions. But right now the biggest impediment to having that conversation is people reflexively defending capitalism through reference to the failings of communism/socialism."
While I think it's clear that racism predates even the earliest forms of capitalism, I could make room for some fuzziness about the concept of "race" that leaves the question subject to debate.
But hoo boy, sexism? The power of SEXISM comes from capitalism? A person really has to love the stink of his own shit to commit a claim like that to paper.
Let's unpack Kendi's view of your lunch. Alone in your apartment? Housing is set up to favor individualism - a White construct. If the ham in your sandwich is an expensive type, it speaks to economic inequality. And if you so rakishly choose to add lettuce or tomato, well, what a poke in the eye for those in food deserts. And that's before we get to your choice of pure, 'white' bread, mister...
This is why I reject the entire premise of antiracism. There is virtually no actual racism in this country and hasn't been for decades, ergo the above isn't even that unimaginable. The Discourse doesn't move the needle, it makes nobody's life better and makes a lot of peoples' lives worse. it is as vast distraction from class. I simply don't care anymore and if someone starts on with racism with me, the conversation is over. (You might say that I am completely and absolutely unwilling to 'do the work.' The high priestess herself would doubtless hold this as evidence of my unabashed racism. I am fine with her believing this.)
If we as a society want to talk about, for example, the risk of suicide among White people (particularly White males), the poverty of Native Americans, the incarceration rates of Black men - or the related-but-not-that-much rates of broken homes among Black families - or whatever, that is fine, as these are all material things that have societal impact and are experienced by the common person.
But the microsecond this devolves into a 'racism!!1' lament at the expense of any other explanation, I personally disengage from the conversation. It is absolutely not worth having because antiracism is a vast Saturn eating his son. The racism-industrial complex needs, aches for, yearns for white hoods and burning crosses to be behind every societal issue, and won't rest until they find Bubba lurking in the woods with a can of gasoline and a bedsheet. And if they can't find him, they'll turn on the weakest in the room and she will receive her inquisition until her microaggressions are blessed out of her.
It's the most pointless discussion imaginable, it never goes anywhere, and I believe that it is *necessarily* at the expense of the material because the material has gotten worse while the symbolism has increased. So I reject it, and I don't work with organizations that become captive to racial issues.
If nothing else, given that the entire culture is supposed to be hysterial about this stuff 24/7, I think they've got it handled without me.
Kendi is a priest who wants to be king. His sole practical policy recommendation is literally "make me and my friends kings of the United States. You can still elect a parliament, if you feel you must, but me and my friends get veto power on everything they do, and totalitarian police authority over them."
I love your sandwich "problematizing". It's something James Lindsay use to talk about. How this ideology is able to "problematize" anything. (Note: I don't follow James anymore. I find his support for Trump to be a dealbreaker. But he did and does explain this orthodoxy more clearly than its own adherents.
All that said, I'd have to push back on "There is virtually no actual racism in this country". I assume you mean "racism" in the classic sense that Freddie talks about. But even with that definition I don't think it's "virtually" naught. It's better than it was. And it was getting better up until about 2014. I think the far left's essentializing of race might move us three steps back.
But to zoom out for a second, if you're bigger point is that some of the problems with the "black" community is at least partially do to "broken homes" etc., I won't disagree with you. (That's a problem for all impoverished communities of any ethnicity). That said, the fact that the "black" community has more of these problems than others can't be totally separated from classic racism, redlining, drug laws, Jim Crow, laws etc. etc. all the way back to slavery of course.
The very fact that there are "black" communities and "white" communities is at least partially due to slavery and racism to begin with. People today should take no direct blame for this, but it's clearly a continuum that we're clearly still dealing with.
I think some of the "woke" diagnosis is valid. Wealth gap, pay gap, incarceration gab etc. But the prescription (doubling down on the myth of race craft), is a poison that will keep us in this loop indefinitely.
I wasn't even of voting age when almost all of those things happened. We've spent trillions upon trillions on the problem and the perception of it has only gotten worse. Enough. It's a massive distraction from class and I'll have none of it.
Another absolute banger, but I would encourage everyone here in the comments to go check out Adolph Reed's article on the black-white wealth gap and what is represents and what it doesn't.
"There’s a vital lesson here for liberal economic reformers as well: Reversing the great concentration of income at the top that has occurred during the last half-century not only would benefit all working- and middle-class Americans but also would be especially beneficial to African Americans hoping at long last to overcome the economic legacies of discrimination."
Bingo. This is yet another reason why it is so important to have people in as many elected and appointed positions of power as possible who are sympathetic to this goal.
And it's precisely why the ones being forcememed right now as agents of change are focused on NFL commercials and boardroom composition - precisely because it distracts from the gross wealth concentration.
I'm starting to suspect that one of the reasons some liberals resist universal weatlth redistribution policies is b/c they don't want low-income whites to benefit b/c they look down on them as stupid, racist losers who, even with their white skin privilege, failed the meritocratic rat race. Meanwhile, some low-income white people oppose universal programs that could benefit them b/c they don't want black people to benefit (a phenomenon documented in the book Dying of Whiteness).
I agree deeply, both intellectually and emotionally, with almost all of your article. One probable exception, however, concerns whether subtle emotional cues have major material consequences. If you look at the data, e.g as summarized in Robert Sapolsky's excellent "Behave", it looks like subtle sense of status does have an enormous effect on lifespan, even after controlling for more obviously material factors. This does not negate your point that those subtle cues are not accessible to the types of actions that can change bigger material conditions, and that crude attempts to address them may backfire.
The relevant chapter in Behave is called "Stratified vs Egalitarian Cultures", p293-296 in my edition. It concerns class status in general, and also concludes that reduction in inequality is crucial. But the mechanisms by which inequality works seem largely to flow through subjective feelings.
Yes, and I've also seen studies of how the cumulative stress of everyday interpersonal racism takes a toll on black people's health and increases the risk of chronic and life-threatening conditions. Still though, this doesn't answer the crucial question of what can be done and what things we can tackle that would have a broad tangible positive impact versus the preoccupations of most antiracists which don't seem to lead anywhere productive.
Regarding practical access to appropriate medical care specifically:
That feelings can't be the *metric* makes sense, but practical access to appropriate medical care requires a genuine medical problem not be dismissed as "just feelings" — and whose complaints do or don't get dismissed does seem to depend on patients' feelings, healthcare workers' feelings, healthcare workers' feelings about patients' feelings... even, arguably, on who is "centered".
I'm not confident phrases like "medical racism" or "medical sexism" can add more light than heat. As you say, even people fluent in the language of structural racism have hard time letting go of the insinuation that individuals' racial sinfulness is at least partly to blame, if only to shame the "wrong sort" of people. Worse, bureaucratic attempts to "center" patients and whatnot could lead to worse actual care, such as patronizing incorporation of placebo woo like reiki that could further sidetrack everyone (patient included) from taking a real problem seriously.
That said, I've gotten to know several people with a cheap-to-test-for (and yet hardly anyone does!) tissue disorder often dismissed for decades as "just feelings" — especially if they're women. (And, perhaps, especially *especially* if they're black.) Their "feelings" *are* evidence that something isn't right, and the (fairly easy to make) physical measurements to confirm the isn't-right-ness won't happen if those feelings are dismissed as unimportant to reality.
Of course, your saying feelings shouldn't be the metric *isn't* saying, "Ignore all feelings," or "Feelings are unimportant to reality." Still, I have more sympathy than I used to (which isn't hard, since several years ago it was practically zero) for "woke" arguments that feelings and microaggressions matter. Each discrete decision to avoid running a cheap test because the patient doesn't seem credible (a "whiny" woman, a "hysterical" minority) is arguably just a microaggression. And yet they can add up to a collective decision to not even measure something that is, in fact, measurable.
Does my particular knowledge of "medical ______-ism" regarding one niche condition generalize? Maybe not. But I'm not confident it doesn't. There's a certain self-styled hard-nose mindset that seems to delight in turning "feelings shouldn't be a metric" into "actually, yes, let's ignore feelings altogether — at least if they're not mine!" That's not you, Freddie. But I wonder if that is the mindset the "woke" (however counterproductively) think they're fighting.
When you talk about Ibram Kendi I wonder if we read the same book. I took his argument as materialist, that a policy is racist if the outcome has unequal outcomes by race. The wikipedia page for his book seems to say the same: "Kendi comes to define racism as any policy that creates inequitable outcomes between people of different skin colors."
Why do you think Kendi who is worried about your ham sandwich? I'm genuinely confused. (And I will say that it could me my limited reading on the topic, so you could also genuinely educate me on this.)
It's maybe the single most repeated element of his work, or certainly of his public presentation of his work - he insists again and again that there is no such thing as "not racist," that all things (all things) are racist or antiracist, that there is no space between actively advancing racism and actively opposing it. Anything that is not actively opposing it is actively advancing it. I would nominate that as the thesis of the book! Here it's laid out very plainly: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/ibram-x-kendi-says-we-are-either-being-racist-or-antiracist-there-is-no-middle-ground-1.5350278
Reading past the headline, he's clearly talking about _policy_, not sandwiches: ""There's no such thing as a 'not racist' or 'race neutral' policy," Kendi"
I'm totally with you for focusing on material outcomes. I think Kendi is too.
The people who wrote the headline? They are the media you write about. I think if you are going to criticize someone you should criticize their position, not relying on someone else's twitter/headline summary.
"To be antiracist is to see racist policies as the problem; and to see antiracist policies that create racial equity as the solution. To be antiracist is to be a part of the struggle to get rid of racist policies and institute antiracist policies."
I'll give you this. Kendi doesn't seem to say in that link what Freddie is saying. Which is that this ideology can problematize any and all actions as "racist" or
"anti-racist". It's a longstanding left wing idea that every choice we make is political. It's a stretch but there is a logic to it. (Your choice of cell phone is political, where you live, what you watch on TV and yes, what you eat.)
The problem starts when people like Kendi say that there's "no middle ground". If indeed every choice we make is political *and*, in addition, if every political action is either "racist" or "anti-racist", then indeed, Freddies ham sandwich is actually an egg that has to fall on one side of the pointed roof or the other.
(Ha! See what I did there? That came out cuter than I expected. LOL.)
Seriously, wether Kendi is saying this overtly or not, this is the takeaway from this current orthodoxy. This binary thinking about things which are actually way more complex.
Why you would ever give anything Kendi says credence is beyond me. Nothing he says is ever of any substance. It's all tautological BS. Even when he does prescribe action it's so vague that it's almost comical.
“Racism is a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas.”
I'm not at all invested in Kendi or his ideas. On the other hand I read everything that Freddie writes, and, as he said a few days ago, "accountability is a prerequisite of respect". My motivation to comment is respect for Freddie, not for Kendi.
I didn't understand why Freddie make Kendi the poster child non-materialist racial agitation, so I asked. I'm still not really seeing the evidence that Kendi cares more about items on Freddie's list #2 vs list #1. And it goes against my (dim) memory from reading Kendi's book. My memory is that Kendi would have completely endorsed the metrics that Freddie is advocating. That memory could be wrong! and I'd be happy to be corrected.
You, MarkS, and Always Adblock are saying Kendi should be discounted. That's fair enough, even if it doesn't seem responsive to the question I was asking, and not to the point of Freddie's article.
It's useful to read Kendi's prescription on "how to fix inequality":
"To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals. The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials (with “racist ideas” and “public official” clearly defined). It would establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas."
Personally I'm waiting for the "clear definition" of the "racist ideas" that will be ruthlessly suppressed by the unelected, in-power-forever Department of Antiracism.
That sounds like terrible policy. And if the post had been critical of that policy proposal I would have agreed.
My point was that Kendi is a materialist on racism. To criticize him as a non-materialist -- which was the point of the post -- seemed odd and off-base to me.
Putting aside Kendi's proposed remedies MarkS, do you see him as materialist or non-materialist as per the post? (Joke: Or should have said anti-materialist?)
I don't care one way or the other. IMO, Kendi should be ignored. His ideas (such as they are) result in nothing but divisiveness, and his actual policy proposal reads like a bad satire of 1984.
While I agree with most of what you wrote, I don't think that structural racism can be so readily divorced from individual attitudes. The regulations establishing redlining were written by people whose ideas on the creditworthiness of black people (or lack of same) were affected by prejudice. Black people tending to get longer prison sentences than white people, even for the same crimes, is a product of judges making sentencing decisions, which again, are probably colored by prejudice. At some point, the various aspects of the structural racism that black people face are due to various individual decisions that some person made.
I generally see three main problems that stem from this incoherent, spiritual version of anti-racism.
1) Ending racism is an idiotic programmatic goal. It's a great aspiration, like building for the Kingdom of God here on Earth. It's a wonderful way to live one's life. But, because it's disconnected from a goal achievable by humans, it does a really bad job if you're substituting it for tangible demands to improve society.
2) Bigotry (including racism) is a spectrum, not a binary. We have a helpful example in the astounding advancement of gay and lesbian rights in one generation. Few seem to have learned from this. There's no line which one crosses that turns them from non-bigot to bigot, like a believer to a heretic. All people have some level of bigotry, and generally it's a good idea to bring those levels down. All the things Freddie talks about can be achieved even with people still having levels of racial animus. It's not necessary for them to repent, just to sin less. In fact, almost all developments in race relations have involved people becoming less racist, not anti-racist.
3) In part because of two, there's no clear plan for how to end racism. Banning it seems fruitless considering banning things has a lifetime 0% success rate and is at best ameliorative. If people are either racist or anti-racist is the plan merely to convert the heathens? If so, what strategy are you taking for that? Most mass conversions involve excessive violence. If these people aren't converted, is the plan to completely isolate them? Seems difficult in a liberal democracy. Is the plan to let them die out? Seems like the question of how racism is born would need to be analyzed if we're discussing intergenerational transfer but I never see that discussion beyond "it just is." At a certain point you're left with burning the heretics and I'd at least respect people more if they were open about this.
If anyone could advance a legitimate plan for "ending racism" that I'd listen. Until then, Freddie's materialist based version seems like it would improve a lot more Black lives so I would like to do that.
The gay rights comparison is really interesting. I find that most people who were homophobic in the past, but are neutral or positive these days, have done nothing to repent for their previous views. They certainly don't attend workshops on internalized homophobia or purchase books about how to be a better ally.
For the most part, people just pretend the past didn't happen, or they excuse their past prejudice because times were different. There's a joke in the sitcom Home Economics where Sarah points out that her parents didn't support her same-sex marriage, and her mom waves her hand dismissively and says, "Oh, everyone was homophobic back then."
Perhaps it's not a coincidence that in much of the country, gay and straight people socialize like it's nothing. Tom's husband is just another dude at the barbecue. Gay marriage was illegal 10 years ago, and now nobody cares. It's weird. But it's good.
Race and sexuality are obviously very different, but a lot of these "check your privilege" efforts seem to work against race relations being chill and normal. Another benefit of focusing on laws, money, and power (instead of feelings) would be that interpersonal interactions would be less fraught.
The Coretta Scott King Book Awards for children's books has celebrated its 50th anniversary. Black authors & illustrators. Buy these books for children you know. Steady, steady over 50 years. Quiet but powerful. https://olos.ala.org/csk/
I agree, deeply, with this post. And yet, I want to challenge you on one thing that I keep seeing you repeat: "many have been sprinting towards an affective vision of racism in recent years out of fear and out of social and professional ambition"
Let's pick that apart for a moment: I think this vision short-changes the fact that a lot of people are acting not out of fear or ambition but out of a desire to do right by people of color. I'll speak for myself for a moment: I've been caught up in identity politics at times, not out of fear or ambition but because 50-70% of my friends at any given time have been people of color who espouse such ideas to some degree or another, and I've genuinely wanted to understand their point of view. And whatever my feelings about their POV is, the fact is that I've never experienced the kind of discrimination or hatred that most of them have.
Anyway, all I'm saying is I find your analysis a bit dismissive—and particularly so to people of color who might be reading this and have very different motivations for the politics they've arrived at then simply "fear" or "ambition." Unpacking why people land at a certain set of identity politics seems, to me, important work for moving toward actual change.
I agree with people arriving at this type of politics in different ways, but I also know several people of color who have gone all-in this stuff, and it's hard for me to understand where they're coming from. People who will say that they've never experienced any racism but based on the news other people of color do and this makes them furious. People who are children of professional class immigrants with lifetime history of elite education obsessed with an ambiguous possible microagression from six months ago, and next you know they're really upset about colonialism and talking shit about white people constantly. I do think a lot of people latch on to this stuff for psychological reasons. It's very similar to white people who love the fact that their great grandfather came to Ellis island in a box or something, but in this case it gets massive social validation and you get to imagine you're part of a giant 500 year struggle and there's an omni-present evil called "white supremacy" that can explain anything possible that goes wrong in your life, even if on paper your life is totally fine. You also get to feel powerful and morally superior to all the white people you interact with. It's really kind of like a drug and I don't think everyone who comes at it is doing so purely from personal experience.
It's the stolen valor (or at times, stolen victimhood) of identity politics. You're a member of a group, and so you are _every_ member of that group, and thus every one of that group's accomplishments is your personal accomplishment, and every slight against that group is a slight against you personally.
Funny how people are way more interested in the slights than the accomplishments nowadays=)
The obvious question is, what are the material conditions of your group of friends? Were they educated at selective institutions? Do they hold professional jobs or advanced degrees? Because at this point that’s the biggest tell for how people feel about this stuff
Hmm. A very large number of them were not born in the United States and don't have the type of background you and Murat are describing, but the vast majority hold at least a BA. I get your point, I just don't see it in such simple terms.
Ah. All the people I'm talking about are American born, foreign born non-white people I know don't care about this stuff at all.
I wonder if the difference is generational <shrug>.
I think the real delimiter is whether you were born in the US or not.
But these trends exist in urban Europe too, including amongst transplants/expat communities (both white and PoC). I think that gets missed by a lot of American commentators.
I like the fact that you seem to be answering this honestly. There's actually a big movement on Twitter & places like Clubhouse who argue that the experiences of BIPOC people from other cultures and nations is very different than the experiences of "ADOS" people (American Descendants of Slavery, or as we said until recently 'African Americans'). And while I don't agree with all or even most of the ADOS views, they *are* right about this. That the American "Black" experience is most likely very different than other minorities. Even if both experience racism. (Systemic or personal.)
My bigger point is this. I don't think Freddie is being "dismissive" of these personal "lived" experiences. He's just saying focusing on those anecdotal experiences, ADOS or not, and more specifically how you or me as "white" people respond to or feel about those anecdotes does literally next to nothing to actually help real live disenfranchised people. (I use quotes for "white" because in the long term I find all racial identification to in fact be racist, but that's another conversation.)
I don't agree with everything Freddie says in this piece. I don't think we need the "black" community to be able to eventually fend for themselves. As I just said I think racial categories need to be eventually abolished. But in the meantime what I think about race or what you think about race doesn't fee anyone. It doesn't pay anyone's rent. It doesn't reduce the chance of incarceration, poverty, drug addiction, etc. etc. And on that narrow point I agree with Freddie 100%. I've yet to hear an argument that refutes that point.
I hear you. And I definitely deeply agree with this post as well. I've thought about this more today and I think maybe what's grating on me a bit is how these posts all seem to assume that the reader, or the ID politics defender, is white. And if the arguments toward a more material view of racism aren't convincing to certain POC I think it's worth investigating why.
(And as for the answering honestly, well...the discussion in the comments is why I subscribed to the newsletter in the first place!)
Me too! I find Freddie's comment section one of the most open yet civil online "spaces" around. If he gets more popular that might change.
Well, if you haven't identified as "white" then I apologize for assuming you were. (Again, I don't care either way). But I think it's fair to say that many of the online spaces that defend the current identity orthodoxy are rarely as diverse as their utopian visions would wish. ("Black" people are still just 13% of the US population, so it's not surprising.)
Anyway, I do agree that some POC might have good reason to adopt these world views. But again, wether they do or don't is immaterial to wether or not these views and the spreading of them actually help people in need. I don't think they do. Freddie doesn't seem to either.
We could both be wrong of course.
Perhaps those who aren’t in need of material changes aren’t as invested in it versus people who are in need of material changes.
This is fair and probably accurate. There are Black commentators who are speaking to this, and perhaps one of the pitfalls of current politics is its more than uncouth for a white commentator to give any proscriptive ideas to Black people. For Black commentators (who are often branded as conservative or at least more conservative than they are because they don’t toe the ID politics line) I would recommend John McWhorter, Colman Hughes, and this essay by Danielle Allen. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/danielle-allen-constitution/615481/
I think that is a critical distinction - class. BIPOC college graduates have different life experiences and world views than BIPOC people who are not college graduates. When I incorporated some CRT-type language in my BIPOC classes in East New York years ago my, students thought it was annoying and rather intelligently schooled me about what they wanted to focus on.
"Anyway, all I'm saying is I find your analysis a bit dismissive—and particularly so to people of color who might be reading this and have very different motivations for the politics they've arrived at then simply "fear" or "ambition.""
'Ethnic chauvinism' and 'prestige' would be two other major ones. There's not a single other group in this country sitting around worrying about being racist themselves. They're worried about making sure they get the biggest piece of the pie possible.
I think it’s good to listen to your friends and care about their experiences. For me, the problem comes when non-material concerns suck up all the oxygen because elites dominate political discourse.
For example, what happened after George Floyd. A man was KILLED by police, and people used that moment to talk about diversity on sociology panels (coincidentally benefiting themselves) Elites seem to be incapable of sustained focus on the concerns of working class Black people.
I mean yes, but there's a point where there experiences are "This person said this thing to me at a party 6 months ago, ugh I fucking hate white people, America is such a racist shithole".
Jiji, I have a question... do you mean that your BIPOC friends follow the line of thinking of Kendi and Diangelo in terms of how to combat racism, i.e. language, microagressions, identity, unpacking the many levels of White racism and the innerpsychology of white racists and that this focus is the most important in improving the lives of BIPOC people? Or do you mean that they have valid experiences and witness day-to-day racism and systemic racism that deserve to be acknowledged? I think most liberal-minded people acknowledge the latter, although the different paths in regard to how to improve the lives of BIPOC people and what we should be focusing on is the question. I don't think Freddie is saying to ignore the racism that BIPOC people experience or that it's not important.
I can't speak for all of them and am not sure they've read Kendi specifically, but sometime around 2015-16 the conversation in my circles around anti-racism shifted toward identity politics—intersectionality, white privilege, a shift in language. It felt all-consuming during the Trump years, and has lessened/shifted again to a certain degree, though some friends seem to be deeply mired in id politics. The argument that I hear the most is probably around representation - most of my friends are in their late 30s/early 40s and feel strongly about raising their kids with more media representation of their race/gender/whatever than they had. I can see where they're coming from, and while material change obviously matters a lot more, I don't think the representation arguments are for naught.
I don't think Freddie is saying that their experiences of racism don't matter either but a lot of the posts on this topic feel like they're written for white liberals, and don't speak so much to people of color and their experiences, or why they came to these politics.
Yes, I agree with the representation part. I think the visual representation aspect is critical for the psychology of BIPOC people, regardless their class. I have BIPOC family members who survived a 70's, 80's childhood and I witnessed the psychological abuse that occurs when you are erased from media/ history, literature, etc. CRT goes way beyond representation but this is one area that I feel very strongly about. Representation matters.
Great conversation. I agree that representation matters. Think of all the people fighting against a black "Spider-Man" a few years ago. Or whats-her-name from Fox saying "Santa Claus is white!". These arguments seem silly now. And I'd even give the 'wokesters' at least partial credit for killing that silliness. (I'm fine with ALL fictional comic book characters being BIPOC. It's fiction! Make them look however the fuck you want!)
But then stuff gets so granulated that Lin Manuel Miranda, the man who basically decolonized the American Revolution, has to grovel to the Twitter mob because his all "brown" cast in The Heights wasn't "brown" enough.
Maybe they were right about it technically. (I live in Washington Heights. Indeed the spanish speaking people there come in all shades. My dad grew up in Argentina and I'm as "white" as Ted Cruz. While my Domincan neighbor is darker than most "black" people.)
But if we endlessly police these micro-problems I fear it eventually becomes the problem we were trying to eliminate. Judging people by skin color.
People mimic what they know. LMM probably chose actors that reminded him of his family, fine. I think the criticism, to a level is fair, but everything is so heightened. I don’t think he needed to apologize!
Agreed.
This feels right to me. Viewing these things in binary is what feels wrong.
Were there not a ton of black people on tv in the 70's 80's though? And there were definitely a ton in the 90's. I mean roots came out in 1977.
My family members are Asian, definitely not a lot of representation. People would often call my family slurs, laugh it off, pull their eyes to look squinty and then laugh that off too. Representation would have helped!
Black arguably have more representation in popular entertainment but in terms of wealth/income lag far behind everyone else. Asians have almost no representation but earn more than whites. Isn't this the exact conflict between symbolism and reality that the article is critiquing?
There were, and then the late 90s/early 2000s came along and suddenly there weren't.
What? Are you saying there was like a 5-10 year interval with no black people on TV?
There have been a number of times in the US that previously-on-the-bottom ethnic groups
climbed the ladder to being prosperous, and in general they did not have representation of this kind early on. And yet, they somehow did climb that ladder. This seems inconsistent with the need for visible representation of blacks in high positions in order for black kids to succeed.
I think this is a very good point. A lot of people are in this stuff bc they want to be good people, and what does it mean to be a good person, generally? To be like what the groups you're in say it is to be good. Sure some of that comes w intimidation, pressure and fear, but much of it is simpler: people absorb values from the people around them, and try to live by them.
And more specifically, many want to be a good friend, ally, or just listener to non-white folk. They genuinely believe racism is bad and feel sympathy for those who have been affected by it. And if that's what the non-white people they know are saying, they'll listen. Or if the main ideas they hear for how to do good in this sphere are along these lines, then well, ofc they'll do that, bc it's what they know, what is closest at hand.
More [materialist] power to you, Freddie.
Good essay. However, it needs to focus more on one important point: there are a huge number of technocrats whose employment is based on racism as mysticism and feelings. It’s not just film directors and Times columnists and Joy Reid. If we changed to a materialist framework that sought more redistribution (which I agree the Left is much healthier focusing on) there is a huge swath of entrenched ersatz elites who are out of jobs. Also a lot the enthusiasm for Kendi and DiAngelo never felt real - it felt astroturfed, coming out of zombie media outlets, foundations, and corporate HR departments. No one likes this stuff and few people think it’s a good idea, so we should give more thought to why it is so prevalent.
Nice comment. Elites that feed on the ethereal world of anti-racism won’t go down without a fight and that framework provides insight into why we’re so obsessed with mystical and feeling version of anti-racism; it makes powerful people a shit load of money.
I love that paragraph about representation and the Oscars especially. It makes sense to me. And yet there are so many in Film Twitter world who have similar far-left economic views as Freddie, yet they get hopping mad when the "wrong" movies do well at the Oscars.
And if you point out that there's way bigger problems to focus on, oh boy that makes them even madder. They seem to think that if we fix all this linguistic and emotional stuff in elite, white-collar settings, it'll "trickle down" toward better antiracist policy for the average person.
Heh, trickle down. When has that ever worked?
I personally don't care or remember which films have won Oscars, but the outcomes of awards shows aren't *solely* symbolic navel-gazing BS -- they do have non-trivial marketing impacts, can have bonuses tied in contracts, and affect the future employment prospects of the winners/nominees. And so they probably have a non-zero impact on what kind of films studios feel comfortable bankrolling in the future -- though commercially successful films, regardless of their awards performance, still trump all of course.
I agree with this post so much, but I also feel like there’s no space for anything but politics. It worked okay when there was broad elite consensus that politics is about a debate over economics, but there doesn’t seem to be any space for I want to change the culture to be more polite that isn’t a democratic aligned interest group.
When I read conservative media links through Real Clear politics it doesn’t feel to me like any kind of live and let live deal would be on the table even if the Democratic Party took a hard materialist turn.
Correct, which is why, if you want any kind of leftward political change at all, you must strive to remove Republicans from as many positions of power as possible, as often as possible, by any means necessary (including electing center-right Democrats if that's the only viable alternative).
I’m a bit unclear on how the center right part of the ledger really helps here. Doesn’t it then create a dynamic where democrats argue amongst themselves while in power and Republicans can reach out and pass harmful backlash politics while they’re in power?
It feels a bit heads I win Tails you lose on these kind of issues that republicans have so uniformly chosen revanchist ideas.
Recent history shows the Democrats coming together unanimously (or very nearly so) on the most important votes, e.g., Obamacare and its attempted repeals, impeachment, SCOTUS appointees. Meanwhile, the Republicans are also very good at imposing party discipline on these votes (with the Obamacare repeal being the big exception, when 3 Republican Senators voted against repeal).
So in the vast majority of real-world cases, progressive goals are far more likely to be advanced by any Democrat vs any Republican.
Now you can argue that this sort of small-scale advancement (eg Obamacare instead of Medicare For All) isn't worth it, because it just maintains the capitalist status quo (or something like that). I very strongly disagree, but that's an argument that can be had.
Also, centrist Democrats don't do shit like this, from today's NYT: "Restrictions passed by the Republican-led Montana Legislature could have stark effects on Native American reservations, where voting in person can mean a two-hour drive."
Thank you for this post, and thank you for making it free so I can share it when I’m trying to explain my frustration with the current politics. I was on my way to ask when I got the second email with the shareable post.
My one quibble is that I think it does matter if Black authors are on bestseller lists (especially when broadly defined to include longer lists and smaller genres, not just the Top 10 Books per year), because this means money for the authors. Also, publishers will be more likely to pay future Black authors.
Instead, publishing Twitter obsesses over things like “own voices” (for example, who has the right to tell stories that include Black characters) which novels are problematic, and so on. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter if a naive white person writes an inauthentic but well-meaning novel featuring a Black protagonist… because there would be plenty of Black authors writing books with authentic representation and getting paid enough to live & to keep writing those stories.
You referenced Kwame Ture who has one of the best lines on this:
"If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.”
I wanted to find the source for this quote, but couldn't in a quick search. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could point me to the original speech or writing.
Right. We never see genocide in Communist countries ever. They are all paragons of racial harmony. Please. https://genocideeducation.org/resources/modern-era-genocides/
didn’t fred make a post not long ago about conservatives doing whataboutism bullshit with old soviet regimes whenever any reasonable critique of capitalism comes up?
from the comments section from his post on bari weiss's anti-china rant:
"This is part of my point: the endless communism-capitalism binary has given people a permanent out from ever considering problems. "Oh, capitalism results in vast inequality and permanent poverty? Well, socialism IS WORSE." Even if I thought that was true, so what? "Other systems have problems too" is not a response to identifying a legitimate problem. It's just deflection. Someday capitalism will end. It might not end in a way that leads to anything I prefer; it might end with total anarchy, who knows. But it will end. And to move intelligently into the future we have to be frank about the current system's problems, whether we have an immediate solution at hand or not. Yes, eventually you have to talk solutions. But right now the biggest impediment to having that conversation is people reflexively defending capitalism through reference to the failings of communism/socialism."
So communists, by definition, could not possibly be racists? History begs to differ:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union
I now notice that Jennifer said this already.
The power of sexism does not come from capitalism. Sexism is timeless and universal.
That starts off okay but then goes off in a random direction. Lynch mobs don't need money. We need better analyses of how power works.
While I think it's clear that racism predates even the earliest forms of capitalism, I could make room for some fuzziness about the concept of "race" that leaves the question subject to debate.
But hoo boy, sexism? The power of SEXISM comes from capitalism? A person really has to love the stink of his own shit to commit a claim like that to paper.
Right????
Let's unpack Kendi's view of your lunch. Alone in your apartment? Housing is set up to favor individualism - a White construct. If the ham in your sandwich is an expensive type, it speaks to economic inequality. And if you so rakishly choose to add lettuce or tomato, well, what a poke in the eye for those in food deserts. And that's before we get to your choice of pure, 'white' bread, mister...
This is why I reject the entire premise of antiracism. There is virtually no actual racism in this country and hasn't been for decades, ergo the above isn't even that unimaginable. The Discourse doesn't move the needle, it makes nobody's life better and makes a lot of peoples' lives worse. it is as vast distraction from class. I simply don't care anymore and if someone starts on with racism with me, the conversation is over. (You might say that I am completely and absolutely unwilling to 'do the work.' The high priestess herself would doubtless hold this as evidence of my unabashed racism. I am fine with her believing this.)
If we as a society want to talk about, for example, the risk of suicide among White people (particularly White males), the poverty of Native Americans, the incarceration rates of Black men - or the related-but-not-that-much rates of broken homes among Black families - or whatever, that is fine, as these are all material things that have societal impact and are experienced by the common person.
But the microsecond this devolves into a 'racism!!1' lament at the expense of any other explanation, I personally disengage from the conversation. It is absolutely not worth having because antiracism is a vast Saturn eating his son. The racism-industrial complex needs, aches for, yearns for white hoods and burning crosses to be behind every societal issue, and won't rest until they find Bubba lurking in the woods with a can of gasoline and a bedsheet. And if they can't find him, they'll turn on the weakest in the room and she will receive her inquisition until her microaggressions are blessed out of her.
It's the most pointless discussion imaginable, it never goes anywhere, and I believe that it is *necessarily* at the expense of the material because the material has gotten worse while the symbolism has increased. So I reject it, and I don't work with organizations that become captive to racial issues.
If nothing else, given that the entire culture is supposed to be hysterial about this stuff 24/7, I think they've got it handled without me.
Kendi is a priest who wants to be king. His sole practical policy recommendation is literally "make me and my friends kings of the United States. You can still elect a parliament, if you feel you must, but me and my friends get veto power on everything they do, and totalitarian police authority over them."
I love your sandwich "problematizing". It's something James Lindsay use to talk about. How this ideology is able to "problematize" anything. (Note: I don't follow James anymore. I find his support for Trump to be a dealbreaker. But he did and does explain this orthodoxy more clearly than its own adherents.
All that said, I'd have to push back on "There is virtually no actual racism in this country". I assume you mean "racism" in the classic sense that Freddie talks about. But even with that definition I don't think it's "virtually" naught. It's better than it was. And it was getting better up until about 2014. I think the far left's essentializing of race might move us three steps back.
But to zoom out for a second, if you're bigger point is that some of the problems with the "black" community is at least partially do to "broken homes" etc., I won't disagree with you. (That's a problem for all impoverished communities of any ethnicity). That said, the fact that the "black" community has more of these problems than others can't be totally separated from classic racism, redlining, drug laws, Jim Crow, laws etc. etc. all the way back to slavery of course.
The very fact that there are "black" communities and "white" communities is at least partially due to slavery and racism to begin with. People today should take no direct blame for this, but it's clearly a continuum that we're clearly still dealing with.
I think some of the "woke" diagnosis is valid. Wealth gap, pay gap, incarceration gab etc. But the prescription (doubling down on the myth of race craft), is a poison that will keep us in this loop indefinitely.
I wasn't even of voting age when almost all of those things happened. We've spent trillions upon trillions on the problem and the perception of it has only gotten worse. Enough. It's a massive distraction from class and I'll have none of it.
Another absolute banger, but I would encourage everyone here in the comments to go check out Adolph Reed's article on the black-white wealth gap and what is represents and what it doesn't.
https://newrepublic.com/article/158059/racial-wealth-gap-vs-racial-income-gap-modern-economic-inequality
"There’s a vital lesson here for liberal economic reformers as well: Reversing the great concentration of income at the top that has occurred during the last half-century not only would benefit all working- and middle-class Americans but also would be especially beneficial to African Americans hoping at long last to overcome the economic legacies of discrimination."
Bingo. This is yet another reason why it is so important to have people in as many elected and appointed positions of power as possible who are sympathetic to this goal.
And it's precisely why the ones being forcememed right now as agents of change are focused on NFL commercials and boardroom composition - precisely because it distracts from the gross wealth concentration.
I'm starting to suspect that one of the reasons some liberals resist universal weatlth redistribution policies is b/c they don't want low-income whites to benefit b/c they look down on them as stupid, racist losers who, even with their white skin privilege, failed the meritocratic rat race. Meanwhile, some low-income white people oppose universal programs that could benefit them b/c they don't want black people to benefit (a phenomenon documented in the book Dying of Whiteness).
Thank you!
excellent.
I agree deeply, both intellectually and emotionally, with almost all of your article. One probable exception, however, concerns whether subtle emotional cues have major material consequences. If you look at the data, e.g as summarized in Robert Sapolsky's excellent "Behave", it looks like subtle sense of status does have an enormous effect on lifespan, even after controlling for more obviously material factors. This does not negate your point that those subtle cues are not accessible to the types of actions that can change bigger material conditions, and that crude attempts to address them may backfire.
The relevant chapter in Behave is called "Stratified vs Egalitarian Cultures", p293-296 in my edition. It concerns class status in general, and also concludes that reduction in inequality is crucial. But the mechanisms by which inequality works seem largely to flow through subjective feelings.
Yes, and I've also seen studies of how the cumulative stress of everyday interpersonal racism takes a toll on black people's health and increases the risk of chronic and life-threatening conditions. Still though, this doesn't answer the crucial question of what can be done and what things we can tackle that would have a broad tangible positive impact versus the preoccupations of most antiracists which don't seem to lead anywhere productive.
Regarding practical access to appropriate medical care specifically:
That feelings can't be the *metric* makes sense, but practical access to appropriate medical care requires a genuine medical problem not be dismissed as "just feelings" — and whose complaints do or don't get dismissed does seem to depend on patients' feelings, healthcare workers' feelings, healthcare workers' feelings about patients' feelings... even, arguably, on who is "centered".
I'm not confident phrases like "medical racism" or "medical sexism" can add more light than heat. As you say, even people fluent in the language of structural racism have hard time letting go of the insinuation that individuals' racial sinfulness is at least partly to blame, if only to shame the "wrong sort" of people. Worse, bureaucratic attempts to "center" patients and whatnot could lead to worse actual care, such as patronizing incorporation of placebo woo like reiki that could further sidetrack everyone (patient included) from taking a real problem seriously.
That said, I've gotten to know several people with a cheap-to-test-for (and yet hardly anyone does!) tissue disorder often dismissed for decades as "just feelings" — especially if they're women. (And, perhaps, especially *especially* if they're black.) Their "feelings" *are* evidence that something isn't right, and the (fairly easy to make) physical measurements to confirm the isn't-right-ness won't happen if those feelings are dismissed as unimportant to reality.
Of course, your saying feelings shouldn't be the metric *isn't* saying, "Ignore all feelings," or "Feelings are unimportant to reality." Still, I have more sympathy than I used to (which isn't hard, since several years ago it was practically zero) for "woke" arguments that feelings and microaggressions matter. Each discrete decision to avoid running a cheap test because the patient doesn't seem credible (a "whiny" woman, a "hysterical" minority) is arguably just a microaggression. And yet they can add up to a collective decision to not even measure something that is, in fact, measurable.
Does my particular knowledge of "medical ______-ism" regarding one niche condition generalize? Maybe not. But I'm not confident it doesn't. There's a certain self-styled hard-nose mindset that seems to delight in turning "feelings shouldn't be a metric" into "actually, yes, let's ignore feelings altogether — at least if they're not mine!" That's not you, Freddie. But I wonder if that is the mindset the "woke" (however counterproductively) think they're fighting.
When you talk about Ibram Kendi I wonder if we read the same book. I took his argument as materialist, that a policy is racist if the outcome has unequal outcomes by race. The wikipedia page for his book seems to say the same: "Kendi comes to define racism as any policy that creates inequitable outcomes between people of different skin colors."
Why do you think Kendi who is worried about your ham sandwich? I'm genuinely confused. (And I will say that it could me my limited reading on the topic, so you could also genuinely educate me on this.)
It's maybe the single most repeated element of his work, or certainly of his public presentation of his work - he insists again and again that there is no such thing as "not racist," that all things (all things) are racist or antiracist, that there is no space between actively advancing racism and actively opposing it. Anything that is not actively opposing it is actively advancing it. I would nominate that as the thesis of the book! Here it's laid out very plainly: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/ibram-x-kendi-says-we-are-either-being-racist-or-antiracist-there-is-no-middle-ground-1.5350278
Reading past the headline, he's clearly talking about _policy_, not sandwiches: ""There's no such thing as a 'not racist' or 'race neutral' policy," Kendi"
I'm totally with you for focusing on material outcomes. I think Kendi is too.
The people who wrote the headline? They are the media you write about. I think if you are going to criticize someone you should criticize their position, not relying on someone else's twitter/headline summary.
"To be antiracist is to see racist policies as the problem; and to see antiracist policies that create racial equity as the solution. To be antiracist is to be a part of the struggle to get rid of racist policies and institute antiracist policies."
I'll give you this. Kendi doesn't seem to say in that link what Freddie is saying. Which is that this ideology can problematize any and all actions as "racist" or
"anti-racist". It's a longstanding left wing idea that every choice we make is political. It's a stretch but there is a logic to it. (Your choice of cell phone is political, where you live, what you watch on TV and yes, what you eat.)
The problem starts when people like Kendi say that there's "no middle ground". If indeed every choice we make is political *and*, in addition, if every political action is either "racist" or "anti-racist", then indeed, Freddies ham sandwich is actually an egg that has to fall on one side of the pointed roof or the other.
(Ha! See what I did there? That came out cuter than I expected. LOL.)
Seriously, wether Kendi is saying this overtly or not, this is the takeaway from this current orthodoxy. This binary thinking about things which are actually way more complex.
End rant.
Why you would ever give anything Kendi says credence is beyond me. Nothing he says is ever of any substance. It's all tautological BS. Even when he does prescribe action it's so vague that it's almost comical.
“Racism is a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas.”
Really?
I'm not at all invested in Kendi or his ideas. On the other hand I read everything that Freddie writes, and, as he said a few days ago, "accountability is a prerequisite of respect". My motivation to comment is respect for Freddie, not for Kendi.
I didn't understand why Freddie make Kendi the poster child non-materialist racial agitation, so I asked. I'm still not really seeing the evidence that Kendi cares more about items on Freddie's list #2 vs list #1. And it goes against my (dim) memory from reading Kendi's book. My memory is that Kendi would have completely endorsed the metrics that Freddie is advocating. That memory could be wrong! and I'd be happy to be corrected.
You, MarkS, and Always Adblock are saying Kendi should be discounted. That's fair enough, even if it doesn't seem responsive to the question I was asking, and not to the point of Freddie's article.
“Racism is a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas.”
That had me scratching my head too. I learned in elementary school that you don't define a word with the same word.
It's useful to read Kendi's prescription on "how to fix inequality":
"To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals. The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials (with “racist ideas” and “public official” clearly defined). It would establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas."
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2019/how-to-fix-politics-in-america/inequality/pass-an-anti-racist-constitutional-amendment
"Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals."
Equals in what? Height? It's absurd on its face.
Personally I'm waiting for the "clear definition" of the "racist ideas" that will be ruthlessly suppressed by the unelected, in-power-forever Department of Antiracism.
That sounds like terrible policy. And if the post had been critical of that policy proposal I would have agreed.
My point was that Kendi is a materialist on racism. To criticize him as a non-materialist -- which was the point of the post -- seemed odd and off-base to me.
Putting aside Kendi's proposed remedies MarkS, do you see him as materialist or non-materialist as per the post? (Joke: Or should have said anti-materialist?)
"Like" for the value of building solidarity, and also the epistemic humility.
I don't care one way or the other. IMO, Kendi should be ignored. His ideas (such as they are) result in nothing but divisiveness, and his actual policy proposal reads like a bad satire of 1984.
While I agree with most of what you wrote, I don't think that structural racism can be so readily divorced from individual attitudes. The regulations establishing redlining were written by people whose ideas on the creditworthiness of black people (or lack of same) were affected by prejudice. Black people tending to get longer prison sentences than white people, even for the same crimes, is a product of judges making sentencing decisions, which again, are probably colored by prejudice. At some point, the various aspects of the structural racism that black people face are due to various individual decisions that some person made.
This is just a beautiful, brilliant article.
I generally see three main problems that stem from this incoherent, spiritual version of anti-racism.
1) Ending racism is an idiotic programmatic goal. It's a great aspiration, like building for the Kingdom of God here on Earth. It's a wonderful way to live one's life. But, because it's disconnected from a goal achievable by humans, it does a really bad job if you're substituting it for tangible demands to improve society.
2) Bigotry (including racism) is a spectrum, not a binary. We have a helpful example in the astounding advancement of gay and lesbian rights in one generation. Few seem to have learned from this. There's no line which one crosses that turns them from non-bigot to bigot, like a believer to a heretic. All people have some level of bigotry, and generally it's a good idea to bring those levels down. All the things Freddie talks about can be achieved even with people still having levels of racial animus. It's not necessary for them to repent, just to sin less. In fact, almost all developments in race relations have involved people becoming less racist, not anti-racist.
3) In part because of two, there's no clear plan for how to end racism. Banning it seems fruitless considering banning things has a lifetime 0% success rate and is at best ameliorative. If people are either racist or anti-racist is the plan merely to convert the heathens? If so, what strategy are you taking for that? Most mass conversions involve excessive violence. If these people aren't converted, is the plan to completely isolate them? Seems difficult in a liberal democracy. Is the plan to let them die out? Seems like the question of how racism is born would need to be analyzed if we're discussing intergenerational transfer but I never see that discussion beyond "it just is." At a certain point you're left with burning the heretics and I'd at least respect people more if they were open about this.
If anyone could advance a legitimate plan for "ending racism" that I'd listen. Until then, Freddie's materialist based version seems like it would improve a lot more Black lives so I would like to do that.
The gay rights comparison is really interesting. I find that most people who were homophobic in the past, but are neutral or positive these days, have done nothing to repent for their previous views. They certainly don't attend workshops on internalized homophobia or purchase books about how to be a better ally.
For the most part, people just pretend the past didn't happen, or they excuse their past prejudice because times were different. There's a joke in the sitcom Home Economics where Sarah points out that her parents didn't support her same-sex marriage, and her mom waves her hand dismissively and says, "Oh, everyone was homophobic back then."
Perhaps it's not a coincidence that in much of the country, gay and straight people socialize like it's nothing. Tom's husband is just another dude at the barbecue. Gay marriage was illegal 10 years ago, and now nobody cares. It's weird. But it's good.
Race and sexuality are obviously very different, but a lot of these "check your privilege" efforts seem to work against race relations being chill and normal. Another benefit of focusing on laws, money, and power (instead of feelings) would be that interpersonal interactions would be less fraught.