I followed your link in the comments to Matt Yglesias' excellent take-down of Tema Okun, and I think it's a wonderful piece. I engage with people who subscribe to varying degrees to this new philosophy all the time, and I think you did a great job laying out some pathways out of it. For me, one of the ways to point the path out is just keep the focus of the conversation on things that might actually help reduce racial inequalities. Also, the idea that white people should abandon their own moral and ethnical judgments in favor of heeding the supposed "lived experience" of people of color is I hope offensive to the basic dignity and worth of anyone who confronts it, and in my opinion, is incredibly dangerous in that it removes the barriers to the kind of genocidal tribalism that is unfortunataly a normal part of the human experience and psyche.
Our human tendencies to align ourselves to teams is a big part of this debate. I also found it helpful to read "Why We're Polarized" by Ezra Klein https://www.amazon.com/Why-Were-Polarized-Ezra-Klein/dp/147670032X to understand the nature and history of polarization from a US standpoint.
I've always been rather oblivious to sports, and while I definitely consider myself to be aligned with "Team Liberal", many times I have struggled to see why, we, on Team Earth aren't all working together towards 'better'. As humans we are masters of creating categorical classification structures and reading "Gods of the Upper Air" by Charles King and "Why Fish Don't Exist" by Lulu Miller helped me to recognize how arbitrary these systems often are, and how they can mislead us. https://www.amazon.com/Why-Fish-Dont-Exist-Hidden/dp/1501160273
When it comes to understanding how the relative economic status can divide us or create differences, I found "The Broken Ladder" by Keith Payne to be very enlightening. Ultimately, when we feel disadvantaged it can significantly change our attitudes toward risk and impact our logical reasoning. I really highly recommend this book! https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Ladder-Inequality-Affects-Think/dp/0525429816
I liked Why We're Polarized because it gave some good historical context for the evolution of the two parties and how people aligned themselves over time, as well as the effect of media (for example how he pointed out that politics and news media are effectively a hobby, competing with anything else you could do with your time). My one objection to his overall thesis is that he also seemed uncritically bought in to the idea that racism ("racial resentment") is a major driving force of polarization for the right, as opposed to it being a reaction to the left's approach to the topic. It left him shrugging and saying, "Welp it's polarization or racism, so I guess polarization is good!" Clearly, I disagree :)
I am super interested in Broken Ladder, I'll have to add it to the list!
There's so much in this post! While I've read many of the authors mentioned, I know I'll be referring to it to see who else I may read to continue to expand my understanding, particularly of racism and anti-racism. Once again, I am very thankful that you started your own blog!
What seems to be the case for me and other people in my orbit- mostly white, middle-class, educated- but not "overly" so (assorted bachelor's and master's degrees- all state schools) is that we approach authors like Kendi or Coates or anyone else in the supposed "wokesphere" differently than seems to be true for many pundits, opinion-writers, educators, etc. who write on these matters. That is to say, we read their books, columns or articles, then take what seems to make sense to us and leave the rest. Sometimes, for example, as with DiAngelo's "White Fragility", there's not much to take. Other times- Kendi's "How to be an Anti-Racist"- there's more that rings true. This might seem like a trite point, as in "isn't that what everybody does?" but the more I read articles from the anti-anti-racism folks, the more they appear to me to be disproportionately critical and just plain way too worked up about the anti-racism folks. In short, there's no way that one writer is going to espouse the entire "unified theory" of race, even if we limit the time and space to the history of the United States. Most people I know are just trying to take in some new perspectives and knowledge, and at least in my case, "woke" writers have helped. I still need to do my own work, and I don't ask any writer to have the complete truth on anything.
It's true that in the wake of the recent killings of black people at the hands of the police, the woke world put a megaphone to the issue of racism. Without that, though, I think a lot of white America would have simply said, "oh, that's too bad" and would have just moved on with their lives. Something changed after George Floyd for many white Americans, and it needed to change. I'm pleased and proud that people in my family and friend circles acknowledged that we need to do more. We are getting informed, sharing what we're learning and getting involved. All the while, we're assessing what we are reading within a framework of other learning and experiences, not adopting anything wholesale.
Lastly, I've noticed in my dealings with more Trump-leaning conservative folks (mainly as part of Braver Angels) what appears to me at least to be a hyper-sensitivity to any reference to racism, no matter how gently it's offered. Over and over again, I hear how we need to understand the 74 million who voted for Trump, and I agree. And I think calling them all racists is facile, incorrect and inflammatory. At the same time, I am struck by how some parts of white America always seem to need their grievances to be understood at all times. Maybe, just maybe, the 81 million who voted for Biden have something that's worthy of being listened to as well. As we move toward understanding them, might they not also make some effort to understand the lives of people not like them?
Great points. I wouldn't undersell you and your friends' ability to read a perspective, take the informative stuff, and pass on the "nonsensical" stuff. Maybe I am projecting, but I know I had a very binary approach to perspectives on race, and I think it's too common. Either this writer is a good guy or a bad guy, my team or the other team, speaking The Truth or full of shit. You're absolutely right that literally *no one* has an all-encompassingly perfect take on the issue of race. This is where nuance and appreciation of multiple perspectives is so valuable.
How are you liking Braver Angels? I've been getting the newsletters and I love a lot of the content. I signed up for their "Depolarizing Conversations About Race" event for April 17, but I'm already disappointed as it's explicitly framed as a "White-to-White conversation." https://www.eventbrite.com/e/depolarizing-conversations-about-race-national-depolarizing-conversations-registration-144791564467?keep_tld=1 They are showing their hand that this is a "blue"-led event. I absolutely agree with you though: it is very difficult to try to understand someone else's perspective when they seem unwilling to understand yours. We seem to be in a national standoff of, "no, you change first."
You seem like an awesome person. I just wanted to offer an additional perspective on your last point re: the hypersensitivity of Trump voters to discussions about racism, and your statement that "Maybe, just maybe, the 81 million who voted for Biden have something that's worthy of being listened to as well."
I think the fact that the media (with the exception of a tiny minority of Fox-type outlets) and the vast majority of cultural institutions from Hollywood to professional sports reflect the viewpoint of a typical Biden voter is a huge part of the problem. Conservatives were the dominant American culture until the Bush era but since 2008 they've steadily receded into the background of popular culture, except when they need to be trotted out as caricatures of racist hicks or other "deplorable" tropes. What was once counterculture is definitively The Man, and vice versa. I think most of them likely feel that they have the mainstream liberal Biden-ish worldview shoved down their throats at every turn, and to them that worldview includes an incessant focus on race and racism. Like Marie pointed out in her article, the issue of racism is subsumed to their tribal instinct to reject anything embraced by their outgroup, and their outgroup is by FAR the dominant force in American culture in our present era. I can hardly blame conservatives for taking refuge in their echo chambers and not feeling like they need to spend any more time listening to a set of opinions that they hear every time they turn on the TV to a station other than Fox or watch an Oscar nominated movie or a major awards ceremony or the Super Bowl or an NBA game or read a fashion magazine.
There was a fascinating study recently that showed that American conservatives are massively better than liberals at accurately describing the other side's views. Of course conservatives took it to mean that they're the ones with real empathy and intelligence but to me it seemed the obvious result of being a part of a cultural minority whose daily lives are saturated with an accurate depiction of the views of the cultural majority, while the cultural majority only sees their adversaries in crude caricature. It's also telling that in trying to dig this study up for you on google I came across myriad headlines from mainstream national news outlets to the effect of "Are Conservatives Really More Simple-Minded than Liberals?" and "Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences." Here's the best summary I could find - looks like it was conducted by Jonathan Haidt as part of his research for The Righteous Mind! https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conservatives-understand-liberals-better-than-liberals-understand-conservatives/
I agree with this sort of, but I would say the two groups in terms of numbers are roughly even, and of course there is a spectrum and such.
But they have power in different institutions.
So the vast majority of television and media outlets and academia are increasingly very liberal, whereas say the police and military are disproportionately conservative.
I think this partially explains why the right has leaned into an anti-establishment narrative seeing themselves as anti-authoritarians and distrust the government but support the military and police. I mean, that's always been a part of that divide but it seems the right is much more "anti-establishment" then it used to be, as you are saying- but they see the police and military as establishments that are on their side. Maybe not the senior military leadership, that gets complicated but definitely the police.
This is really really interesting. A lot of interesting reading here!
Much of what you are describing is new to me. I am from an older generation raised at time when a lot of the anti-racist ideas had not been invented yet. It has been a shock to me that the cutting edge thinking about racial progress now involves collective shame for being white, systematic demolition of our shared history, and militant demands for “centering” 14% of the population. Things that I thought were discredited in the Sixties.
I am old enough to have experienced a time when keeping black people “in their place” was accepted as routine fact, the way things just were. I observed the nature of white supremacy in the South, and even as a child I could understand what that meant. To describe what we have now, in all seriousness, as “white supremacy” seems ludicrous to me. I think a lot of people believe it, but to me it just seems like a rhetorical device, a transparent power play, and the working out of individual psychological wounds by educated people, some of them objectively quite privileged. I find it hard to have any respect for it. Indeed, in some contexts (e.g the Atlanta murders) it feels like racial incitement. It produces emotions that are a blockage to understanding.
Maybe reading will help me understand better. I can’t supply references at anything like the intellectual level that is shown here, but I can recommend Thomas Frank’s “The People, No” (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250220110). This helped me let go of my broad-brush hostility to Trump voters, which I now recognize as akin to racism in myself. And, to understand the importance of unity of purpose in the nation, and to understand how racial division is so damaging to that.
I understand the blockage to understanding; I feel it myself sometimes now even though I deeply admired the thought leaders in this space for decades. I genuinely believe the vast majority of these folks are genuine in their beliefs (in this way, I still admire them). Minorities who have achieved elite positions in society faced challenges along the way, and now that they have a platform, many feel a sense of obligation to fight on behalf of other minorities without a platform. They feel like the have the ears of white people who claim to care, and they must use this moment to change hearts and minds. And it's hard to explain just how foundational this idea is: that black people collectively suffer from the racism of white people collectively, and this racism is the overwhelming source of disparities in outcomes across the spectrum of results in life. White people not caring, or objecting to this worldview, is therefore the biggest obstacle to progress. The "primacy of identity" as Erec Smith puts it blinds everyone to the ways factors like social status and wealth have a much stronger play on personal outcomes at an individual level. This world effectively seems to value individualism only to the extent that it allows an individual to connect to a larger group; otherwise it is viewed suspiciously as a way of escaping group accountability.
It all sounds nuts but then when you realize all of the prestigious media sources, universities, and even corporations are bought in, and the only people challenging this are the people who lost all of their credibility (in the eyes of the left) by voting for Trump, you realize there's no functional way to break the groupthink except by amplifying voices like the ones above. Worth a shot, I guess!
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and meaningful response.There is much here.
The term “systemic racism” strikes me as an eloquent way to describe the predicament that black people face - of everyone’s hand against them, wherever they turn. It creates a narrow opening for understanding and compassion. But it is ultimately an abstraction, a metaphor. It is not the cause of anything. When I turn my attention to “what can we urgently do now” I see that the outcomes that disadvantage black people are caused by diverse things, some of which are the product of history, actions or situations that are complex and that in any case must affect other people, other citizens, too, with different concerns. Each needs a careful and individual approach and mindful civic cooperation.
At this point “systemic racism” simply becomes a handicap. For the term is also a vessel for anger and condemnation and fantasies of power, and rejection of our common citizenship. This is a clear message for many non-black people on an emotional level, and they respond accordingly. So I would argue we should avoid using this word, along with “white privilege” and “white supremacy” and other CRT concepts that may be acceptable in academic or private discourse but that don’t belong in the public discourse, where we are all citizens and need to work together in this special, unrepeatable moment where progress might be made.
I think many white liberals join into the systemic racism framework to conceal their own whiteness to themselves under the misapprehension of allyship. They are shocked and emotional, wanting to do something now, to be on the right side of justice. But they also want darker things: to demonstrate their virtue, allocate blame, and and smite the wrongdoer. In abasing themselves they need to prove that they are not the Other, one of “those” people, the Trump people, who deserve the execration and condemnation that they visit upon themselves. I am horrified and ashamed to have seen this in myself, and I strive to work through it to the other side. This is my moral task, and it starts with a determination not to pretend to advocate for people who are better able to advocate for themselves. My job is to find honesty in myself around these issues, understanding my motivations and my interests. At the moment, this means I have some negative feelings of my own. This is not pretty, but I’m working on it.
As you note these ideas are nowhere to be found in the mainstream political discourse or the mainstream media (not in the conservative media either). So it helps to know that there are others with similar struggles.
Thanks for the comment, this sent me down a GSS rabbit hole! The article refers to the 2016 survey, but data is also available for 2018. Two interesting things came up for me: first, the full question is phrased as:
On the average (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) have worse jobs, income, and housing than white people.Do you think these differences are . . .
A. Mainly due to discrimination?
B. Because most (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) have less in-born ability to learn?
C. Because most (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) don't have the chance for education that it takes to rise out of poverty?
D. Because most (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) just don't have the motivation or will power to pull themselves up out of poverty?
My personal takeaway from Carney and Enos was that I'd let too many news articles confirm my gut feeling that conservatives were just bad, racist people without digging into the actual studies myself and reading them with a remotely critical eye. I wanted to believe they were bad people, so I did. Now, I'm skeptical of any study that refers to "racial resentment," but more than that I am sadly skeptical of a lot of academic research. The lack of ideological diversity in so many American humanities departments means they're going to have big, big blindspots- it's just human nature. Kind of a major point of the argument in favor of team diversity!
I love what you're doing here with the deep dives and nuanced analysis! Have you read The Sum of Us and /or Dying of Whiteness? If so, I'd love your take.
A very good follow-on to The Sum of Us is Merge Left which offers some good communication strategies that are more effective than the race-forward messaging that currently dominates the Left. Dying of Whiteness I also highly recommend though it's painful and depressing but Metzl too is now trying to find more effective ways to communicate with whites who are high on the racial resentment scale.
A great piece. I've had a fair amount of respect for David French for a long time, to me he is the archetypal "principled conservative" that gets treated as a mythical creature by many.
I read Quillette from time to time as well. I find it to be a mixed bag, there are some real bad pieces in there that feel like some random person with an axe to grind, but there are also some profound insights to be found from time to time.
Agreed on both. David French seems to be an example of how being willing to break with your own "tribe" can bring a lot of clarity on the nature of mankind because you can both relate to people but also see them critically. Quillette does have some thoughtful pieces but also a lot of folks who've never been humbled, never realized they had something really wrong, to have compassion for those who they think do now.
I followed your link in the comments to Matt Yglesias' excellent take-down of Tema Okun, and I think it's a wonderful piece. I engage with people who subscribe to varying degrees to this new philosophy all the time, and I think you did a great job laying out some pathways out of it. For me, one of the ways to point the path out is just keep the focus of the conversation on things that might actually help reduce racial inequalities. Also, the idea that white people should abandon their own moral and ethnical judgments in favor of heeding the supposed "lived experience" of people of color is I hope offensive to the basic dignity and worth of anyone who confronts it, and in my opinion, is incredibly dangerous in that it removes the barriers to the kind of genocidal tribalism that is unfortunataly a normal part of the human experience and psyche.
Our human tendencies to align ourselves to teams is a big part of this debate. I also found it helpful to read "Why We're Polarized" by Ezra Klein https://www.amazon.com/Why-Were-Polarized-Ezra-Klein/dp/147670032X to understand the nature and history of polarization from a US standpoint.
I've always been rather oblivious to sports, and while I definitely consider myself to be aligned with "Team Liberal", many times I have struggled to see why, we, on Team Earth aren't all working together towards 'better'. As humans we are masters of creating categorical classification structures and reading "Gods of the Upper Air" by Charles King and "Why Fish Don't Exist" by Lulu Miller helped me to recognize how arbitrary these systems often are, and how they can mislead us. https://www.amazon.com/Why-Fish-Dont-Exist-Hidden/dp/1501160273
https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Upper-Air-Anthropologists-Reinvented/dp/0385542194
When it comes to understanding how the relative economic status can divide us or create differences, I found "The Broken Ladder" by Keith Payne to be very enlightening. Ultimately, when we feel disadvantaged it can significantly change our attitudes toward risk and impact our logical reasoning. I really highly recommend this book! https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Ladder-Inequality-Affects-Think/dp/0525429816
I liked Why We're Polarized because it gave some good historical context for the evolution of the two parties and how people aligned themselves over time, as well as the effect of media (for example how he pointed out that politics and news media are effectively a hobby, competing with anything else you could do with your time). My one objection to his overall thesis is that he also seemed uncritically bought in to the idea that racism ("racial resentment") is a major driving force of polarization for the right, as opposed to it being a reaction to the left's approach to the topic. It left him shrugging and saying, "Welp it's polarization or racism, so I guess polarization is good!" Clearly, I disagree :)
I am super interested in Broken Ladder, I'll have to add it to the list!
There's so much in this post! While I've read many of the authors mentioned, I know I'll be referring to it to see who else I may read to continue to expand my understanding, particularly of racism and anti-racism. Once again, I am very thankful that you started your own blog!
What seems to be the case for me and other people in my orbit- mostly white, middle-class, educated- but not "overly" so (assorted bachelor's and master's degrees- all state schools) is that we approach authors like Kendi or Coates or anyone else in the supposed "wokesphere" differently than seems to be true for many pundits, opinion-writers, educators, etc. who write on these matters. That is to say, we read their books, columns or articles, then take what seems to make sense to us and leave the rest. Sometimes, for example, as with DiAngelo's "White Fragility", there's not much to take. Other times- Kendi's "How to be an Anti-Racist"- there's more that rings true. This might seem like a trite point, as in "isn't that what everybody does?" but the more I read articles from the anti-anti-racism folks, the more they appear to me to be disproportionately critical and just plain way too worked up about the anti-racism folks. In short, there's no way that one writer is going to espouse the entire "unified theory" of race, even if we limit the time and space to the history of the United States. Most people I know are just trying to take in some new perspectives and knowledge, and at least in my case, "woke" writers have helped. I still need to do my own work, and I don't ask any writer to have the complete truth on anything.
It's true that in the wake of the recent killings of black people at the hands of the police, the woke world put a megaphone to the issue of racism. Without that, though, I think a lot of white America would have simply said, "oh, that's too bad" and would have just moved on with their lives. Something changed after George Floyd for many white Americans, and it needed to change. I'm pleased and proud that people in my family and friend circles acknowledged that we need to do more. We are getting informed, sharing what we're learning and getting involved. All the while, we're assessing what we are reading within a framework of other learning and experiences, not adopting anything wholesale.
Lastly, I've noticed in my dealings with more Trump-leaning conservative folks (mainly as part of Braver Angels) what appears to me at least to be a hyper-sensitivity to any reference to racism, no matter how gently it's offered. Over and over again, I hear how we need to understand the 74 million who voted for Trump, and I agree. And I think calling them all racists is facile, incorrect and inflammatory. At the same time, I am struck by how some parts of white America always seem to need their grievances to be understood at all times. Maybe, just maybe, the 81 million who voted for Biden have something that's worthy of being listened to as well. As we move toward understanding them, might they not also make some effort to understand the lives of people not like them?
Great points. I wouldn't undersell you and your friends' ability to read a perspective, take the informative stuff, and pass on the "nonsensical" stuff. Maybe I am projecting, but I know I had a very binary approach to perspectives on race, and I think it's too common. Either this writer is a good guy or a bad guy, my team or the other team, speaking The Truth or full of shit. You're absolutely right that literally *no one* has an all-encompassingly perfect take on the issue of race. This is where nuance and appreciation of multiple perspectives is so valuable.
How are you liking Braver Angels? I've been getting the newsletters and I love a lot of the content. I signed up for their "Depolarizing Conversations About Race" event for April 17, but I'm already disappointed as it's explicitly framed as a "White-to-White conversation." https://www.eventbrite.com/e/depolarizing-conversations-about-race-national-depolarizing-conversations-registration-144791564467?keep_tld=1 They are showing their hand that this is a "blue"-led event. I absolutely agree with you though: it is very difficult to try to understand someone else's perspective when they seem unwilling to understand yours. We seem to be in a national standoff of, "no, you change first."
You seem like an awesome person. I just wanted to offer an additional perspective on your last point re: the hypersensitivity of Trump voters to discussions about racism, and your statement that "Maybe, just maybe, the 81 million who voted for Biden have something that's worthy of being listened to as well."
I think the fact that the media (with the exception of a tiny minority of Fox-type outlets) and the vast majority of cultural institutions from Hollywood to professional sports reflect the viewpoint of a typical Biden voter is a huge part of the problem. Conservatives were the dominant American culture until the Bush era but since 2008 they've steadily receded into the background of popular culture, except when they need to be trotted out as caricatures of racist hicks or other "deplorable" tropes. What was once counterculture is definitively The Man, and vice versa. I think most of them likely feel that they have the mainstream liberal Biden-ish worldview shoved down their throats at every turn, and to them that worldview includes an incessant focus on race and racism. Like Marie pointed out in her article, the issue of racism is subsumed to their tribal instinct to reject anything embraced by their outgroup, and their outgroup is by FAR the dominant force in American culture in our present era. I can hardly blame conservatives for taking refuge in their echo chambers and not feeling like they need to spend any more time listening to a set of opinions that they hear every time they turn on the TV to a station other than Fox or watch an Oscar nominated movie or a major awards ceremony or the Super Bowl or an NBA game or read a fashion magazine.
There was a fascinating study recently that showed that American conservatives are massively better than liberals at accurately describing the other side's views. Of course conservatives took it to mean that they're the ones with real empathy and intelligence but to me it seemed the obvious result of being a part of a cultural minority whose daily lives are saturated with an accurate depiction of the views of the cultural majority, while the cultural majority only sees their adversaries in crude caricature. It's also telling that in trying to dig this study up for you on google I came across myriad headlines from mainstream national news outlets to the effect of "Are Conservatives Really More Simple-Minded than Liberals?" and "Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences." Here's the best summary I could find - looks like it was conducted by Jonathan Haidt as part of his research for The Righteous Mind! https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conservatives-understand-liberals-better-than-liberals-understand-conservatives/
I agree with this sort of, but I would say the two groups in terms of numbers are roughly even, and of course there is a spectrum and such.
But they have power in different institutions.
So the vast majority of television and media outlets and academia are increasingly very liberal, whereas say the police and military are disproportionately conservative.
I think this partially explains why the right has leaned into an anti-establishment narrative seeing themselves as anti-authoritarians and distrust the government but support the military and police. I mean, that's always been a part of that divide but it seems the right is much more "anti-establishment" then it used to be, as you are saying- but they see the police and military as establishments that are on their side. Maybe not the senior military leadership, that gets complicated but definitely the police.
This is really really interesting. A lot of interesting reading here!
Much of what you are describing is new to me. I am from an older generation raised at time when a lot of the anti-racist ideas had not been invented yet. It has been a shock to me that the cutting edge thinking about racial progress now involves collective shame for being white, systematic demolition of our shared history, and militant demands for “centering” 14% of the population. Things that I thought were discredited in the Sixties.
I am old enough to have experienced a time when keeping black people “in their place” was accepted as routine fact, the way things just were. I observed the nature of white supremacy in the South, and even as a child I could understand what that meant. To describe what we have now, in all seriousness, as “white supremacy” seems ludicrous to me. I think a lot of people believe it, but to me it just seems like a rhetorical device, a transparent power play, and the working out of individual psychological wounds by educated people, some of them objectively quite privileged. I find it hard to have any respect for it. Indeed, in some contexts (e.g the Atlanta murders) it feels like racial incitement. It produces emotions that are a blockage to understanding.
Maybe reading will help me understand better. I can’t supply references at anything like the intellectual level that is shown here, but I can recommend Thomas Frank’s “The People, No” (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250220110). This helped me let go of my broad-brush hostility to Trump voters, which I now recognize as akin to racism in myself. And, to understand the importance of unity of purpose in the nation, and to understand how racial division is so damaging to that.
I understand the blockage to understanding; I feel it myself sometimes now even though I deeply admired the thought leaders in this space for decades. I genuinely believe the vast majority of these folks are genuine in their beliefs (in this way, I still admire them). Minorities who have achieved elite positions in society faced challenges along the way, and now that they have a platform, many feel a sense of obligation to fight on behalf of other minorities without a platform. They feel like the have the ears of white people who claim to care, and they must use this moment to change hearts and minds. And it's hard to explain just how foundational this idea is: that black people collectively suffer from the racism of white people collectively, and this racism is the overwhelming source of disparities in outcomes across the spectrum of results in life. White people not caring, or objecting to this worldview, is therefore the biggest obstacle to progress. The "primacy of identity" as Erec Smith puts it blinds everyone to the ways factors like social status and wealth have a much stronger play on personal outcomes at an individual level. This world effectively seems to value individualism only to the extent that it allows an individual to connect to a larger group; otherwise it is viewed suspiciously as a way of escaping group accountability.
It all sounds nuts but then when you realize all of the prestigious media sources, universities, and even corporations are bought in, and the only people challenging this are the people who lost all of their credibility (in the eyes of the left) by voting for Trump, you realize there's no functional way to break the groupthink except by amplifying voices like the ones above. Worth a shot, I guess!
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and meaningful response.There is much here.
The term “systemic racism” strikes me as an eloquent way to describe the predicament that black people face - of everyone’s hand against them, wherever they turn. It creates a narrow opening for understanding and compassion. But it is ultimately an abstraction, a metaphor. It is not the cause of anything. When I turn my attention to “what can we urgently do now” I see that the outcomes that disadvantage black people are caused by diverse things, some of which are the product of history, actions or situations that are complex and that in any case must affect other people, other citizens, too, with different concerns. Each needs a careful and individual approach and mindful civic cooperation.
At this point “systemic racism” simply becomes a handicap. For the term is also a vessel for anger and condemnation and fantasies of power, and rejection of our common citizenship. This is a clear message for many non-black people on an emotional level, and they respond accordingly. So I would argue we should avoid using this word, along with “white privilege” and “white supremacy” and other CRT concepts that may be acceptable in academic or private discourse but that don’t belong in the public discourse, where we are all citizens and need to work together in this special, unrepeatable moment where progress might be made.
I think many white liberals join into the systemic racism framework to conceal their own whiteness to themselves under the misapprehension of allyship. They are shocked and emotional, wanting to do something now, to be on the right side of justice. But they also want darker things: to demonstrate their virtue, allocate blame, and and smite the wrongdoer. In abasing themselves they need to prove that they are not the Other, one of “those” people, the Trump people, who deserve the execration and condemnation that they visit upon themselves. I am horrified and ashamed to have seen this in myself, and I strive to work through it to the other side. This is my moral task, and it starts with a determination not to pretend to advocate for people who are better able to advocate for themselves. My job is to find honesty in myself around these issues, understanding my motivations and my interests. At the moment, this means I have some negative feelings of my own. This is not pretty, but I’m working on it.
As you note these ideas are nowhere to be found in the mainstream political discourse or the mainstream media (not in the conservative media either). So it helps to know that there are others with similar struggles.
The Carney & Enos paper is interesting but I'm not sure what exactly to draw from it. I see survey data showing that Republicans still tend to see blacks as having a poor work ethic. I think it may be true that resentment of "freeloaders" has broadened to whites as well but that co-exists with a prejudiced belief that blacks are even bigger slackers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/31/the-gap-between-republicans-and-democrats-views-of-african-americans-just-hit-a-new-high/
Thanks for the comment, this sent me down a GSS rabbit hole! The article refers to the 2016 survey, but data is also available for 2018. Two interesting things came up for me: first, the full question is phrased as:
On the average (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) have worse jobs, income, and housing than white people.Do you think these differences are . . .
A. Mainly due to discrimination?
B. Because most (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) have less in-born ability to learn?
C. Because most (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) don't have the chance for education that it takes to rise out of poverty?
D. Because most (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) just don't have the motivation or will power to pull themselves up out of poverty?
Now me, personally- I dislike all of these answers! I would go with E. Mainly due to the ripple effects of past discrimination establishing cycles of intergenerational poverty along with structural barriers for working class people in general (or something!). So maybe I'd pick C??? But I can see where a Republican would be uneasy picking any of those 4 options. Interestingly, in 2018, the % of Republicans picking D plummeted. https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/trends/Civil%20Liberties?measure=racdif4_r1&response=Yes&breakdown=Political+affiliation%C2%B0 So they are actually tracking with Democrats, but on a bit of a lag. There's also been a spike in Republicans answering "too little" in response to "Are we spending too much, too little, or about the right amount on: Improving the conditions of Blacks?" https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/trends/Current%20Affairs?measure=natrace&response=Too+little&breakdown=Political+affiliation%C2%B0
My personal takeaway from Carney and Enos was that I'd let too many news articles confirm my gut feeling that conservatives were just bad, racist people without digging into the actual studies myself and reading them with a remotely critical eye. I wanted to believe they were bad people, so I did. Now, I'm skeptical of any study that refers to "racial resentment," but more than that I am sadly skeptical of a lot of academic research. The lack of ideological diversity in so many American humanities departments means they're going to have big, big blindspots- it's just human nature. Kind of a major point of the argument in favor of team diversity!
I love what you're doing here with the deep dives and nuanced analysis! Have you read The Sum of Us and /or Dying of Whiteness? If so, I'd love your take.
I have not! I’ve been meaning to check out The Sum of Us. Will add these two to my list, along with your book which looks right up my alley!!
would love to connect Marie, I think we're on parallel journeys and it's kinda lonely
I have your email address, will email you!
A very good follow-on to The Sum of Us is Merge Left which offers some good communication strategies that are more effective than the race-forward messaging that currently dominates the Left. Dying of Whiteness I also highly recommend though it's painful and depressing but Metzl too is now trying to find more effective ways to communicate with whites who are high on the racial resentment scale.
A great piece. I've had a fair amount of respect for David French for a long time, to me he is the archetypal "principled conservative" that gets treated as a mythical creature by many.
I read Quillette from time to time as well. I find it to be a mixed bag, there are some real bad pieces in there that feel like some random person with an axe to grind, but there are also some profound insights to be found from time to time.
Agreed on both. David French seems to be an example of how being willing to break with your own "tribe" can bring a lot of clarity on the nature of mankind because you can both relate to people but also see them critically. Quillette does have some thoughtful pieces but also a lot of folks who've never been humbled, never realized they had something really wrong, to have compassion for those who they think do now.