I posit that "racists are winning elections" precisely because of the broken race ideology that was meant to combat racism in the first place (not just in admissions and hiring, but all over our discourse). The stuff we do in the name of fighting racism looks like exactly the sort of thing one would do if they wanted to create a thoroughly racist society--get everyone to hyper-identify with their race and create separate and mete out rewards and consequences on the basis of race. Imply that fault and victimhood are racial (rather than individual) attributes. Deal only in abstractions and ignore intra-racial variance. Police people to make sure they don't explore ("appropriate") cultures outside of their own. Use "nazi" and "white supremacy" as liberally as possible--make sure those words have no power to censure actual, bonafide racists. Stuff like this.
I think that's a completely specious perspective and one that is peddled by conservative politicians as propaganda. Being antiracist is not about assigning blame or curing racism with HR policy and certainly not about curing all societal ills. It's about taking small steps to counteract injustice instead of just saying "I'm not racist" and washing your hands. Trying to teach kids accurate history of deplorable things done by some people's ancestors is just teaching accurate history. Out of control name-calling is happening in all quarters but all I'm saying that we are electing racists and we definitely are. The past president's response to the Charlottesville car attack was incredibly ambivalent and the perpetrator could be accurately described as a nazi.
> I think that's a completely specious perspective and one that is peddled by conservative politicians as propaganda.
Liberals have been talking about this long before the words “woke” or “CRT” fell upon conservative ears. “Conservatives say this” is merely the latest way to dismiss criticism.
> It's about taking small steps to counteract injustice instead of just saying "I'm not racist" and washing your hands.
The problem is that “counteracting injustice” is naively formulated. Specifically, it often means “reducing disparities between the median people of each race” which practically demands injustice: to make the average white person closer to the average black person, we have to push white people down. And which white people are going to get pushed down? The poorest (which is why we vilify poor, rural whites more so than wealthy coastal elites). Similarly, which black folks are going to get lifted up in order to raise the median? The poor or the rich (whose communities have experienced the largest post-BLM crime surges?)? Moreover, a whole shitton of violence was perpetrated (and rationalized, justified, and excused) in the name of “antiracism”, which is not what I expect from a movement about “counteracting injustice”.
Moreover, “colorblind antiracism” doesn’t imply shrugging—you can advocate for others to be more colorblind. There are approaches that don’t require tokenizing people, and I posit they’ve worked far, far better.
> Trying to teach kids accurate history of deplorable things done by some people's ancestors is just teaching accurate history.
I’m not opposed to teaching accurate history (we covered lots of civil rights stuff when I was in school, but critically I wasn’t taught to feel guilty for having white skin), but (1) that’s not what is happening (lots of historians have significant issues with the 1619 series for example) and (2) the wrongdoers weren’t the ancestors of a lot of people (e.g., lots of white people’s ancestors didn’t immigrate until after the civil war and they didn’t have any major hand in Jim Crow, etc anyway) and (3) there shouldn’t be an implication of guilt based on something your ancestors did anyway and (4) the “antiracist” perspective also seems to take issue with any non-racialized historical lens (or even one in which the US isn’t the absolute worst).
> Out of control name-calling is happening in all quarters but all I'm saying that we are electing racists and we definitely are.
I agree, I just think that’s an effect of so-called antiracism. I don’t think doubling down is going to solve the problem.
> The past president's response to the Charlottesville car attack was incredibly ambivalent and the perpetrator could be accurately described as a nazi.
I won’t argue with you here. This all seems agreeable to me. Let’s make fewer Nazis.
I'm pretty sure that everyone now living has ancestors who have done deplorable things at some time in the past. Refraining from all sorts of deplorable things, by and large, is a very recent social innovation. (Steven Pinker is especially clear on this.)
Agreed. Not only that, but there’s also a debate among historians about “presentism”—judging the past by present standards rather than by the standards of the time. For example, most (so-called) antiracists are presentists, which is why they advocate for tearing down statues of Lincoln and the like—people who were very progressive for their day, but who fell short of the standards of today (as though the people who are antiracist today would be as strident as they are if they grew up in the culture of Lincoln’s time).
I don't follow. We live in the present so presentism seems pretty practical. Besides, this isn't ancient history. Civil Rights was only like 60 years ago. Strom Thurmond served in Congress this century. Is there any point in history that it would be acceptable to have a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest on public land?
> We live in the present so presentism seems pretty practical.
Well, I live now. I’m very liberal, but am I more noble for doing fuck-all about civil rights (apart from voting) than the abolitionists who literally died to end slavery? Does the woke college student really deserve a statue more than MLK?
> Besides, this isn't ancient history.
Granted, but I don’t see the relevance. You should still judge people of the civil rights era according to the standards of their time.
> Is there any point in history that it would be acceptable to have a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest on public land?
I’m not very well-versed in Forrest, but he seems like he wasn’t progressive for his time, so the answer would be “no” irrespective of presentism.
I mean you are moving the goal posts into the parking lot right now. The initial question was whether or not there was value in taking incremental steps to combat racism and you're saying we shouldn't build statues to the keyboard warriors of Twitter. Nobody ever suggested that. And while we can absolutely evaluate historical figures on their cultural context that doesn't mean we should lionize them on public property. Forrest was the Confederate general who founded the KKK and was honored with a ridiculous statue on public property in Nashville.
I'm not moving goalposts, I think you've completely misunderstood the argument. Specifically, my point isn't that we shouldn't build statues for keyboard warriors, it's that the logic of presentism defies sensibility--presentists would say that woke college students are more moral because they adhere to the moral standards of the present than the imperfect-by-present-standards abolitionists of yesteryear.
> Nobody ever suggested that.
This is exactly what presentists believe.
> And while we can absolutely evaluate historical figures on their cultural context that doesn't mean we should lionize them on public property.
Well, if you believe that admirable people should be lionized on public property (about which presentism doesn't have an opinion), and if you believe that history has admirable figures (which presentism effectively denies), then it makes sense that you would lionize those figures on public property.
> Forrest was the Confederate general who founded the KKK and was honored with a ridiculous statue on public property in Nashville.
Right, but as he fails the moral standards of his own day as well as the present, he oughtn't be venerated either way.
"presentists would say that woke college students are more moral because they adhere to the moral standards of the present than the imperfect-by-present-standards abolitionists of yesteryear."
No they don't. Idk who even talks about this kind of thing. Certainly nobody in office that I've ever seen. I'm sure you could find a few people who think this, but it's nowhere near the state of the actual public debate.
"Right, but as he fails the moral standards of his own day as well as the present, he oughtn't be venerated either way."
Right, this is currently a position held by liberals and strongly opposed by a lot of conservatives who want to preserve monuments to things that were despicable even 150 years ago. Mind you, the infamous Forrest statue was erected in 1998, not 1870! It's not just a matter of reevaluating in present day, there are people evaluating the Confederacy in present day terms and still calling it great and getting support from elected officials. Those are the people in in power who are sending the signal that explicit racism is still very much prevalent in the halls of power and require explicit counteractions like DEI.
> No they don't. Idk who even talks about this kind of thing.
It's pretty commonly talked about whenever woke people want to tear down statues of historical progressives or when they want classrooms to stop teaching "dead white men" and so on. The whole claim is that these historical progressives fail to live up to today's rapidly-changing left-wing morals and thus they oughtn't be celebrated or taught (e.g., tearing down a Lincoln statue because Lincoln didn't accomplish more than abolition).
> Right, this is currently a position held by liberals and strongly opposed by a lot of conservatives who want to preserve monuments to things that were despicable even 150 years ago.
Yes (for some value of "a lot of conservatives"), but again I don't know why you keep bringing conservatives up when we're talking about woke progressives and liberals. Similarly, I don't know why you're bringing Forrest up when we're talking about presentism.
> Those are the people in in power who are sending the signal that explicit racism is still very much prevalent in the halls of power and require explicit counteractions like DEI.
DEI doesn't actually work though[0][1][2][3][4], and woke progressive politics are driving the resurgence in right-wing identity politics, as liberals predicted roughly a decade ago ("fixating incessantly on everyone's racial identity is going to strengthen right-wing white racial identity", "left wing illiberalism is going to legitimize right wing illiberalism", etc). In addition to increasing the amount and intensity of anti-minority racists, woke progressive politics on things like policing have driven crime rates (especially violent crime rates) through the roof disproportionately affecting minority communities.
If you want to minimize right-wing racism, you have to minimize all racism--in other words, you want liberalism, not left-wing illiberalism.
Completely irrelevant. The point is to improve the world we live in. To redress mistakes we're presently feeling the effects of. Not to punish every historical error.
Steven Pinker makes a way better argument in his latest two books than I could in a HN comment about why this stuff is nowhere near "completely irrelevant" if you genuinely care about bettering the world and resolving secular wrongs. By and large, squabbling about what this or that minority ethnicity might have suffered at some time in the past is very much part of the problem, not the solution.
The parent is responding to context that you set yourself:
> Trying to teach kids accurate history of deplorable things done by some people's ancestors is just teaching accurate history.
Specifically, the parent is noting that “the DEI folks” (or whatever descriptor you might prefer) are only interested in teaching about the dark history of “some people”, but there are atrocities committed among every sufficiently large people group.
That's not true and and it's not relevant. Teaching history is teaching history. The DEI camp want to improve the world in which we currently live. That it's due to historical injustice is beside the point. The two things are unrelated.
Feel free to support your claim. In the meanwhile, it's both true and relevant.
> Teaching history is teaching history
Yes, but 1619 != history.
> The DEI camp want to improve the world in which we currently live.
Perhaps their intent is noble, but they seem to have been counterproductive. First of all, DEI programs don't actually work, and this is pretty widely accepted[0][1][2][3][4]. Secondly, broader woke identity politics are not merely ineffective at reducing right-wing identity politics, they are driving them. Since left-wing identity politics became mainstream, right-wing identity politics moved from the fringe to a mainstream position. Right-wing identity politics moved from the margins in 2010 to a pretty popular position among Republicans. Right-wing hate groups have increased in number and brazenness. And by the way, liberals were sounding the alarm that this would be the consequence of going all-in on left-wing illiberalism--there was obviously no way that reducing everyone to their skin color was ever going to do anything other than increasing a right-wing white identity.
I said "conservative politicians" not "conservatives". The loudest crazies on both side don't generally represent the mainstream, but conservative politicians are actively appealing to the crazies. Absolutely nobody is being taught in schools to feel guilty for being white. That's an outright lie concocted by conservative politicians. Your perspectives of the liberal view is based on the worst caricature of liberal views you might find in the depths of Twitter while your perspective on the conservative view is based on the narrowest reading of stated policy. The 1619 Project was immaculately researched whole mainstream conservatives can't even figure out what happened in 2020.
> I said "conservative politicians" not "conservatives". The loudest crazies on both side don't generally represent the mainstream, but conservative politicians are actively appealing to the crazies.
Fair enough, but my point stands. Conservative politicians merely adopted criticizing CRT. Liberals were born in it. ;)
> Absolutely nobody is being taught in schools to feel guilty for being white. That's an outright lie concocted by conservative politicians
Again, this gets the timeline wrong because conservative politicians weren’t even aware of this stuff at the time. Moreover, I’ve heard from parents first-hand, including photos of children’s homework. One high school student was given an assignment to reflect on ways “white people can cultivate a positive racial identity” or some such.
> Your perspectives of the liberal view is based on the worst caricature of liberal views you might find in the depths of Twitter while your perspective on the conservative view is based on the narrowest reading of stated policy.
I am a liberal, “antiracists” are deeply (and often proudly) illiberal. I also engage regularly with these identity progressives precisely because I wanted to understand their point of view.
> The 1619 Project was immaculately researched whole mainstream conservatives can't even figure out what happened in 2020.
For fuck’s sake, even the socialists think it was shoddy. Are they actually conservatives too? https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/21/bynu-d22.html Moreover, I’ll never understand why identity progressives always clap back to liberals with some variation of “oh yeah? conservatives are dumb [mic drop]”.
"Fair enough, but my point stands. Conservative politicians merely adopted criticizing CRT. Liberals were born in it. ;)"
No, that point doesn't stand. I'm not sure where you even argued this. CRT is not taught in any public schools. It's grad school level. CRT mania is, again, conservative propaganda. If you want anecdote, I have two kids in big city public schools and they have read Stamped and done anti-racist lessons and Ibram Kendi did a talk for us. Believe it or not, they learned the right lessons. No one was insulted or made to feel bad about themselves at all. Conservatives are framing this kind of education not just as ineffective, but a grave and dire threat to America. Most liberals had never even heard of this kind of thing until conservatives started screaming about it.
WSWS is also just not credible. I doubt any policy makers of any stripe trust what they print.
First sentence of my earlier post: 'Liberals have been talking about this long before the words “woke” or “CRT” fell upon conservative ears.'
> CRT is not taught in any public schools. It's grad school level. CRT mania is, again, conservative propaganda.
CRT inspires a lot of public school education. There's clearly a lot of ideas that orbit CRT, and people use "CRT" as a shorthand to talk about them even though they aren't exactly part of the narrowest-definition of CRT. Conservatives often badly articulate and misunderstand these ideas and the ways they're problematic, and they pick problematic solutions for countering them (speech codes); however, criticizing CRT and related ideas isn't "conservative propaganda". For the third time now, liberals were criticizing this stuff long before conservatives knew what was happening.
> If you want anecdote, I have two kids in big city public schools and they have read Stamped and done anti-racist lessons and Ibram Kendi did a talk for us. Believe it or not, they learned the right lessons. No one was insulted or made to feel bad about themselves at all.
You claimed that no schools are teaching white guilt. You can't support that with an anecdote about a school that didn't teach white guilt. To be perfectly clear, I'm not arguing that every single school teaches white guilt all the time (not even the zaniest conservatives are making this argument).
> Conservatives are framing this kind of education not just as ineffective, but a grave and dire threat to America.
Why are you fixating on conservatives when neither of us are conservatives?
> Most liberals had never even heard of this kind of thing until conservatives started screaming about it.
Of course. Most liberals are normies who aren't paying close attention (same with most conservatives). But among the folks who were paying attention, loads of liberals were talking about this long before it entered the conservative mainstream. Folks like Jonathan Haidt have been examining this stuff since at least 2011.
> WSWS is also just not credible. I doubt any policy makers of any stripe trust what they print.
How can I take you seriously when you say that a professional historian, author, and emerita professor of history at Texas State University is "not credible" and when you refer to her as "a policy maker"? Come on. Moreover, I offered the WSWS version because your entire argument hinges on "only conservatives criticize 1619" and this is an example of socialists (pretty far removed from conservatives) objecting to 1619's pseudo-history.
> Absolutely nobody is being taught in schools to feel guilty for being white.
Now, that's a rather strong statement. I think quite a few moderate liberals would agree that there are real concerns with this kind of teaching, and that we should not turn history or social studies class into an occasion for grievance mongering and 'two minutes hate' of the supposedly dominating groups.
