by Doctor Science
Over at digby’s, Batocchio wrote a good, long analysis of the tolerance issue we’ve also been discussing. The most useful part, for me, is this chart:
The real problems with tolerance are the categories Batocchio accurately labels “Smug Hipster Assholes” and “Friendly but Misguided Authoritarians”. The FMAs are much nicer people than the SHAs, more pleasant to be around, and can be wonderfully helpful and caring when you have a direct, personal problem. In contrast, even when they’re on your side the SHAs can be so annoying you just want to punch them in the face.
Dismantling a system of intolerance means that you will, at some point, hurt the feelings of some nice FMAs — and what’s worse, some SHAs will rejoice when you do.
But I don’t think there’s any way around that. There really is such a thing as a system of intolerance or injustice. If that sounds too much like a deliberate conspiracy, think of it as a set of habits. We need habits to be able to get anything done, to save our brainpower and emotional energy for when they’re actually needed. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste — use yours sparingly”.
So changing society means changing habits, and changing a system of intolerance means changing habits that were hurting some people, and getting into the habit of doing things that hurt them less.
But this means that a bunch of FMAs are going to learn that they’ve been thoughtlessly hurting people — and because they’re nice, kind people, this will make them feel bad. Because they’re authoritarians, learning that they’ve been wrong will make them feel *especially* bad — because part of being authoritarian is that you have trouble with the idea that you (and the people you look up to) have made mistakes.
Maybe the way to persuade the FMAs to not cling to their habitual intolerance is to make it personal, to appeal to their natural niceness. Not, “you have to put up with gay marriage because society is changing, and because it’s right”, but “you’ve been hurting these people without meaning to, and now you have a chance to be nice to them instead.” “Do it because it’s kind” is more likely to appeal to kind people than “do it because it’s right”.
I’m not sure that support for an intolerant system is the defining characteristic.
One of the great current problems with our country is this. Most people (in my experience) are fairly tolerant in their interactions with others that they know. But our politics is almost exclusively intolerant.
It’s not so much support of an intolerant system as a personal intolerance of others who they don’t know as individuals, just as a class. It isn’t really that they support an intolerant system, although many do. It is that they are only willing to tolerate individual members of a group, but not the group as a whole.
That’s the way you get people like the Cheney’s, who are seriously intolerant towards lots of groups. But are still (apparently) quite accepting of a family member who is a member of one of those groups. It is why you get people who will rail about blacks as a group, while sincerely having individual blacks who they regard as friends.
In short, I suspect that the solution will come from convincing those who are group, rather than individually, intolerant to expand their existing tolerance. Expand it beyond people that they personally know to people that they haven’t actually met. Otherwise, no matter how tolerant a society we build, we will still have problem individuals — frequently trying to institutionalize their personal intolerance.
SHA is pretty much the precise category of people I incoherently tried to describe in the Ferguson thread yesterday.
Although I also agree with wj that “supports a(n in)tolerant system” is a gross oversimplification of the two edge categories’ broader relation to society.
“Dismantling a system of intolerance means that you will, at some point, hurt the feelings of some nice FMAs…”
FMAs, of all people, don’t take politics personally. Their ability to separate their public opinions from their private actions should be evidence enough of that. Indeed, public discourse would be a lot less unpleasant if the other three quadrants could emulate them.
“So changing society means changing habits, and changing a system of intolerance means changing habits that were hurting some people, and getting into the habit of doing things that hurt them less.”
There’s a deep–and fairly scary–misconception lurking in here. Habits are behaviors that spontaneously emerge from various environmental and social constraints. You can’t engineer a set of habits. You can merely proscribe the set of behaviors that you find objectionable and wait for the habits to emerge. You may or may not like the resultant system because, while the environment pushes on the habits, the habits push on the environment. It’s your standard problem with complex systems, and it’s why I’m so deeply mistrustful of social engineering. It’s not engineering if you don’t know what’s going to happen.
The other thing about “habit engineering” that I find objectionable is that it precludes the possibility of just not caring. Habits are indeed cheaper computationally than consciously weighing every single action, but they’re still not as cheap as ignoring the stimulus completely. (OK, ignoring a stimulus is a habit, too, but you have to admit that it’s the cheapest of them all…) The longer the list of behaviors in which I can’t engage, or the longer the list of groups that I have to worry about offending, the more tired I become–to say nothing of grouchy and resentful.
I have no problem with reaching a consensus about granting rights to individuals. Nor do I have a problem with denying individuals the right to engage in activities that we consider socially destructive, and therefore unlawful. But both of these ultimately come down to constraints on behavior, not the engineering of habits. Systems adapt to whatever constraints you place on them, and they’ll adapt in unpredictable ways. So you want to very, very careful about your consensus before institutionalizing the constraints that it implies.
TRM:
You can’t engineer a set of habits
huh? Of course you can, we call that “learning”.
The longer the list of behaviors in which I can’t engage, or the longer the list of groups that I have to worry about offending, the more tired I become–to say nothing of grouchy and resentful.
Honestly, what we’re talking about is really just politeness, expanding the circle of people you have to respect. And politeness isn’t necessarily that much work. In a great essay about how to be polite, self-described scruffy nerd Paul Ford talks about how an adolescence reading etiquette books helped him deal with adulthood:
Doc–
There’s a distinction between engineering the habits of the body politic and individual habits. You can obviously teach an individual, but the way you do that is to explain what’s expected of him, observe him, correct him, and repeat.
Applying that methodology to an entire society is quite another thing. We have terms for each of these steps when they’re applied to unindividuated masses of people: The explaining part is called “indoctrination” or “propaganda”. The observational part is called “surveillance”, and the correction part is called “law enforcement”. I’m not sure what we call the “repeat” part, but it sounds oppressively dreary to me.
No matter–as a practical matter, that sort of public indoctrination is impossible. The best you can do is to tell the members of the public what they can’t do, and the behaviors they adopt as a result of those constraints are beyond anyone’s control. But if they were not beyond control, I’d be genuinely frightened.
The blockquote on politeness is well-taken for an individual, but it has two serious problems when applied to the public:
1) There are a whole bunch of groups who aren’t asking to be treated exactly the same; they’re being asked to be treated with special consideration for their particular identity–sexual, racial, religious, ethnic, etc.–and, even worse, for the history behind that identity. Politeness works because the list of norms you’re expected to adhere to is short and unambiguous. When you start burdening it with exceptions, it doesn’t work so well.
2) “Not having an opinion means not having an obligation. And not being obligated is one of the sweetest of life’s riches.” Mighty fine advice for an individual at a dinner party. Applied to public policy, it has me fumbling for my Orwell.
any discussion that starts by defining Liberal as the ultimate good state is one I know I should stay away from.
Liberals are the most intolerant of all groups in our society. Only made to seem better by a few smug hipsters.
FMA’s are like the “middle class”, they are simply everyone else.
There are a whole bunch of groups who aren’t asking to be treated exactly the same; they’re being asked to be treated with special consideration for their particular identity–sexual, racial, religious, ethnic, etc.–and, even worse, for the history behind that identity
one big mistake statements like this typically contain is the implicit notion that “the history” is something that has no effect on today – as if “the history” is something frozen in amber and not something that is, in fact, still affecting us all right now.
sure, it’s easier to assume that life for these groups (who shall not be named, i guess) is exactly the same as life for everyone else. but since that’s not true – because, quite often, everyone else works to ensure that these groups are not treated as well as everyone else – it’s kindof blinkered.
Beyond what cleek said, there are some very loaded notions built into the idea of treating everyone “exactly the same” – foremost being that “exactly the same” invariably ends up being “as if they were a member of the majority/dominant sex/race/religion/ethnicity”, and somehow tends to end up being encouraging everyone to be exactly the same rather than treating them the same. Though of course, as cleek aludes to, those who can’t or won’t be “exactly the same” don’t get treated the same, because the supposed egalitarianism isn’t about encouraging equal treatment, it’s about favoring a single standard and discouraging deviance.
These are pretty basic notions in any consideration of multiculturism vs. monoculturism. The idea that individuals should make compromises to reach conformity with social norms is more egalitarian than the idea that social norms should make compromises to encompass deviation from their standards only so long most individuals in the society need to make roughly the same amount of compromises. Invariably, they do not.
“But it is. Not having an opinion means not having an obligation. And not being obligated is one of the sweetest of life’s riches.”
It’s also infantile.
Are we seriously conflating not having an opinion with being polite? That sounds like the ultimate submissive bleating of beta sheep. It’s also downright dangerous because the alpha wolves, who will always exist, definitely have an opinion are definitely going to exercise it. One such opinion is that sheep make good eats for dinner.
Politeness is probably more a matter of having an opinion, but knowing when and when not to impose it on others and how to do both -impose/not impose – tactfully, yet effectively.
The again, sometimes something/someone is just plain wrong, in one’s opinion, and wrong enough that one dispenses with tact and acts regardless of whose sensitivities may be offended. Many laws are based on this type of thinking; for example child molestation. It’s wrong to have sex with a child. Some opinions differ on that, but tough.
I do not comprehend Tolerance as an objective high value. That seems to be a secular humanist concept supposedly held by liberals – supposedly because liberals turn around and exhibit a lack of tolerance for a variety of people, thinking modalities and behavior. Even the intolerance for intolerance is intolerance. Proper Tolerance seems defined by liberals as tolerance for things and people that liberals have selected.
And therein lies the seed of the reason that so many people, myself included, are not on board with the liberal program. This is a free country and we are a free people. Many do not want to be told how they have to act and what ideas to hold. Many do not want or appreciate liberal social engineering. Many do not agree that liberals are enlightened bearers of higher social truth and many, myself included, see the liberals as wishing to gain power for their ideas and, thus, abject power over everyone. Many see liberals as being intolerant. How many liberals are tolerant or respectful of people with deeply held fundamental religious beliefs?
Now, as to tolerance for some specific groups; say blacks, since that was a recent topic here. I think most people are fine with that idea. However, I think that liberals and non-liberals have very different notions of what “tolerance” means. What many hear from liberals, myself included, is that blacks are never wrong, blacks need extra handouts, whites are evil. It’s white’s fault that blacks walk around with saggy pants, barely speaking intelligible English, dropping out of school, trashing their own neighborhoods, having children out of wedlock that they can’t support, etc. When we hear these things from liberals and, especially black mouthpieces like the radical, paranoid and often very wrong T H Coates, we react by going in the opposite direction. It is clear that we are under attack and we baton down the hatches.
You can’t social engineer by ramming propaganda lies down people’s throats. People know better. They can see with their own eyes. They don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows. We see that black on white violent crime is much higher than white on black violent crime. We see that black on black violent crime is out of control. We see that many blacks are racist against whites. We see that blacks are trying to grab power; often not in the spirit of some kind of equality, but for power’s sake itself. We see that some blacks view everything negative that happens through the lens of racism;got stopped by a white policeman? RASCISM!!! White waitress was slow to deliver a meal? RACISM!!! They don’t stop to think that maybe whites get stopped for no good reason too and that whites also experience bad service in restaurants.
When that sort of hyperbole and turning a blind eye to harsh realities becomes part and parcel for the discussion on race and other topics about tolerance, then it is fundamentally an impolite discussion from the get go. It has begun with ugly accusations of a very serious nature and demands for reparations from people that don’t see themselves as being guilty of the things they are accused of- mostly correctly- make it worse.
What many see in liberals is the intolerance and impoliteness of the self-righteous crusader.
Seriously, look at your little diagram. You’re labeling classes of people as “assholes”. Is that polite or tolerant?
You don’t have to be polite if you’re right.
That’s just a guess, but it’s based on some personal experience on both the giving and receiving end.
“But it is. Not having an opinion means not having an obligation. And not being obligated is one of the sweetest of life’s riches.”
It’s also infantile.
I think you might be under a slight misapprehension there.
The opinions and judgments referred to in the quote from the article are those one jumps to about individuals one meets; politeness as a means of deferring judgment on someone’s character.
Unless they are asking you for a job, or to go home with them, then it’s a bit of a stretch to describe deferring judgment in this manner as infantile.
I should, however, point out that “Liberal” is disclaimed by “Enlightenment sense”. Hopefully this did not go undetected.
black mouthpieces like the radical, paranoid and often very wrong T H Coates
While you quite impressively managed to avoid both not having an opinion, and being polite, you rather spoiled the effect by getting his name wrong – unless that was all part of the not being polite thing ?
“While you quite impressively managed to avoid both not having an opinion, and being polite, you rather spoiled the effect by getting his name wrong – unless that was all part of the not being polite thing ?”
I have an opinion. I despise the man and his likes. His likes would also refers to neo-nazis.
I have been in discussion with some of my dog rescue FB “friends” about Ferguson. The common ground I have with these folks is I met them through a united effort to rescue one hundred and twenty dogs from a hoarder/abuser and then continued to work with them through FB to find safe placements for the dogs. It has been an amazing year of protests, letter writing, complaints filed with the AG ( and the AG is going to prosecute!), fundraising, contacting transporting, arranging and now we are down to what is probably the last week of this effort when the last 18 dogs go to a brand new rescue.
Huge effort. That’s how I know these people.
Yet we divide on Ferguson. We divided into the people who are concerned that police act as professionals and people who assume that police actions can be justified by perceived flaws in the dead person, even if those flaws have nothing to do with the incident that resulted in a death.
I don’t think this divide is necessarily racist, although some of the stuff I have heard is definitely racist. I think that it is a divide between instinctive authoritarians and non-authoritarians. Some people just side with the police officer no matter what. They would see the dead civilian as the Other regardless of skin color because they assume the dead person is dead due to not being like them in some way that justifies getting shot by the police officer, who represents to them normality.
The non-authoritarians recognize that there are standards of professional conduct that are supposed to be met and judge the police officer by that.
Interestingly, the people who side with the Ferguson cop don’t hesitate to condemn police officers who shoot dogs.
AS for how to talk to authoritarians, in this instance I did make some head way by point out over and over and over that the issue was not one of the dead person deserving to be shot because he was an asshole (I think he probably was an asshole), but a matter of whether or not the police officer had followed proper procedures before and after the shooting. And of course he didn’t. The whole damn department behaved idiotically. They didn’t do anything right.
But in the end the authoritarians stayed within their comfort zones and quit the discussion. After that there was a spate of posts about how black Americans are racists or should behave better so they don’t get shot or the real victims of racism are white people. So I gave up trying to communicate.
“And of course he didn’t. ”
And, of course, you have no way of “knowing” this. You simply assume the worst about the cop.
Marty:
And, of course, you have no way of “knowing” this. You simply assume the worst about the cop.
I can’t be sure about what Laura knows or doesn’t, but I certainly don’t consider this proper procedures for a fatal shooting:
https://www.aclu.org/aclu-response-ferguson
Laura,”I don’t think this divide is necessarily racist, although some of the stuff I have heard is definitely racist. I think that it is a divide between instinctive authoritarians and non-authoritarians.”
From the chatter I am picking up the divide is between the knee-jerk race agitators (e.g. Sharpton) and everyone that’s heard more than enough of that already.
Pretty much everyone, white, black, yellow, red and all shades in between knows there are bad cops out there that abuse their authority and abuse the very people they are sworn to protect. Some subset of that group is racist as well and is more likely, though far from exclusively limited to, abuse minorities.
Everyone knows that. Something should be done about it. Probably nothing will be done about because a bunch of sheep – aka The People – are perennially frightened and impotent and they demand a bunch of laws be written to stop everything that they find offensive and impolite or just plain scary and that rough men with guns enforce those laws. When the laws keep getting violated they hire more cops and give them more gear.
But a lot of people are sick and tired of having the race baiters come out and foment revolution and division and then have their meek white bitches on left help carry the banner. Enough already.
The default position is to side with authority.
I don’t personally agree with it, but there it is.
If the left only knew how obnoxious it is to everyone not fervently dedicated to The Cause.
A shorter me: People are willing to accept that a cop might be no good, but they are not willing to accept the revolutionary accusatory divisive crap from Sharpton et al and the left. The latter drives them into the cops’ camp. Enemy of my enemy is my friend.
NomVide:
The idea that individuals should make compromises to reach conformity with social norms is more egalitarian than the idea that social norms should make compromises to encompass deviation from their standards only so long most individuals in the society need to make roughly the same amount of compromises.
I think I have missed your point here, which is unfortunate because you tend to make good points.
What do you mean by “more egalitarian”? My understanding of egalitarianism is that humans are equal in intrinsic worth and equal in rights. I
don’t see what it has to do with conformity.
People can wear different clothes, have different religions, talk differently, even be rude or polite, and it doesn’t influence their worth, or their rights.
Encouraging conformity isn’t “more egalitarian” to me. If anything, it is less, as it suggests the nonconformists have less rights and less worth than those that choose to conform.
But a lot of people are sick and tired of having the race baiters come out and foment revolution and division and then have their meek white bitches on left help carry the banner. Enough already.
IO, I don’t think the aperçu of misogyny is going to help you make your case. However, it is going to get you warning from this frontpager and if others currently or formerly on the frontpage agree (you know who you are, you’ll be booted the next time you veer into this area. Shorter me: Knock it off or you’ll have to find another place for your informed commentary.
Weird how discussions of race and gay rights turn into a discussion of how stupid and arrogant liberals are. It’s always like this, of course, beginning with the abolitionists. Some of them were jerks. I guess that’s a fundamental recurring problem we have all through history–smug hipster assholes. If it weren’t for them, slavery would have ended maybe a century earlier, women would have voted for President Abigail Adams, and gay marriage would have been common practice since time immemorial.
DocSci:
Perhaps I missed it in the link, but I’m confused about what you are advocating.
Are you suggesting that civil society should be encouraging these habit changes? Or are you suggesting that government should be encouraging these habit changes?
The first, I agree with, assuming “tolerance” means assuming people have intrinsic and equal value and rights.
IO:
They don’t stop to think that maybe whites get stopped for no good reason too
I think what you are missing is a sense of magnitude. I don’t think anybody is arguing (or at least I haven’t seen it) that being white is a magic never-get-hassled-by-the-cops card. I can pull up news stories showing that it isn’t pretty readily.
But blacks and hispanics, especially males, get crap thrown at them them by the police far more frequently. For example, stop and frisk.
I linked a wapo article in a recent thread that had a good infographic about stop-and-frisk. Here is the infographic directly:
http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/08/stop_frisk_outcomes.png
Blacks and hispanics were stopped far more frequently, and the ratio of stops to seizures was far higher. In other words, when NYPD had the policy of stopping people for the loosest of pretenses, they (a) stopped far more minorities, and (b) those minority stops resulted in fewer seizures on average.
Marty:
The diagram specifically says, Liberal in the Enlightenment sense — as Botaccio says, “which would include tolerant small “c” conservatives and the like, anyone who is committed in general to basic social equality.”
The Declaration of Independence is a liberal document, in this usage.
thompson:
I’m mostly talking about civil society, “the court of public opinion”, and the general sense of what is considered appropriate public behavior.
Marty: “Liberals are the most intolerant of all groups in our society.”
Oh, do go on.
Thompson, “But blacks and hispanics, especially males, get crap thrown at them them by the police far more frequently. For example, stop and frisk…….”
Maybe, maybe not. I don’t trust statistics that get pulled out of a hat without peer review for political purposes.
I do find it interesting that Gov. Cuomo (D) says that NY is the “most progressive state in the country”, yet we have the statistics you quote. So much for progressive progress I guess.
Even if true, it doesn’t erase the fact that blacks, and to a much lesser degree Hispanics, disproportionately commit violent crimes. Cops are tasked with putting violent criminals behind bars. Making a stop under whatever pretext against a black is more likely to yield to parole violation, an outstanding warrant or some other serious criminal act in progress. It isn’t whitey that causing blacks to have that profile. It’s blacks causing blacks to have that profile.
Now, I personally don’t agree with BS police stops. In fact I don’t agree with a lot of laws that are out there and especially not with a lot of LE activity (to include the NSA, Homeland Security, CIA, DEA and a bunch of other acronyms). On the other hand, we give LE a job to do and they’re going to do it as they see best; not necessarily in accordance to some ideal that people that don’t have to do the job think is attainable.
This is the problem with empowering government.
Back to you and tanahisi coates; blacks bear some responsibility for being profiles as they are. If they were disproportionately violent felons they would be pulled over disproportionately by LE.
I would like to see coates and his white liberal followers admit that in the US South there were a fairly large number of freed slaves and other free blacks and many of those owned slaves. Post civil war, many freed slaves went back to Africa, to countries like Liberia, and, guess what, they went and enslaved the indigenous population on the confederate plantation model. A couple years ago there was a civil war in Liberia and they killed each other like dogs. The black warlords regularly practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism against other blacks.
It isn’t whites causing blacks to act badly. There is a problem with black culture. White LE is reacting to that. An honest conversation about equality, tolerance and law enforcement would look at that factor. A power grab by revolutionaries would refuse the look.
Sadly, stuck in the middle of the revolutionary power grab are the decent hard working blacks and whites that are just trying to do their best. If I was black I’d be horrified by the behavior of my brothers and sisters and I’d be angry at them more so than at whitey. In fact, there are black spokespeople, like Bill Cosby, that express that very perspective. Some how such perspectives just are picked up by the MSM.
I thought Marty was joking.
No the cop didn’t follow professional procedure. He should know how to respond to minor transgressions like jaywalking without having the incident blow up into shooting at an unarmed person. Following the shooting there are procedures to follow as well. If the officer was injured, he should have gotten the injury documented because an injury would be critical information to support a claim that he had to shoot. He didn’t do that. The department should have released the basic facts immediately and should have launched an internal investigation immediately. I thought this was all obvious.
I’m really stunned by the suggestion that people should evaluate the job performance of a police officer who shoots someone by deciding that since they don’t like Al Sharpton, the killing must be justified.
Kind of dismissive of the dead person.
Actually, that’s kinda my whole point. Generally speaking, attempts to promote equality in a society have tended to take one of two tacts: either they strive to ensure that differences are minimized, or they strive to ensure differences are ignored. This is most obvious when you’re talking about integrating immigrants, but the integration model will have an impact on each generation.
It’s unsurprising that you find the monocultural model antithetical, because America cleaves strongly to the multicultural model. It has strengths, but it also has weaknesses. It’s divisive, and makes it easier for people to readily view subcultures as “other”, and not “real” citizens. Societies cleaving towards a monocultural integration model – France is the one I’m most familiar with – make it (theoretically) easier for immigrants or random citizens to lose themselves in the national identity, but in doing so the subculture that’s conforming to the prevailing culture has less distinction, is expected to be unobtrusive and not make waves, and non-conformists are more alien – basically the expectation is that large portions of distinct identity will be surrendered or concealed in the public sphere in exchange for being accepted as the same as everyone else.
Both have problems. Both have strengths. But they both ideally have the goal of promoting equality by avoiding being targeted for discrimination – either by providing a clear way for citizens to whitewash (and yes, I chose that term intentionally) themselves to blend into the body politic by conforming to a common standard, or to encourage the body politic to reject the notion that there can be a standard so that non-conformity is less of an issue. Neither model will ever be purely followed, and that will lead to serious contention; even in a multicultural society where all values are equal, there are those who will make some values more equal than others, and even in a monocultural society where demographic populations have sincerely sought to integrate, the body politic may reject their integration and chose to regulate them to alterity. Among (many) other problems.
All of this is broadly sweeping and gross oversimplififcations. But do you see a bit more where I was coming from with this? TRM was arguing that all people in the US are – or rather should be – “just asking to be treated exactly the same”. But they then asserted that because subcultures seek to maintain an individual identity and an awareness of that identity (and the history that shaped it), they’re refusing to be treated “exactly the same”. My point was that TRM was basically asserting that we’re a monocultural society, and we’re not. We’re multicultural. Therefore, as we have much less of a clearly defined generic cultural identity which we’re expected to adopt, calls for subcultural groups to subsume their identity into the majority identity IOT be treated “exactly the same” as everyone else is highly problematic, as their “egalitarian” suggestion that everyone should view themselves as essentially the same as everyone else is predicated on the implicit idea that certain portions of the population would be giving up far more elements of subcultural identity (and values) than others, and as is typical, those belonging to assorted majority demographics would be giving up the least (or even none). Failing to do so is being interpreted as refusing to be part of the society and demanding “special treatment”. Though we’re talking about race here, it’s perhaps more readily illustrative to consider anti-SSM rhetoric, specifically assertions that SSM is a homosexual assertion of special rights and greater privileges than “normal Americans”. TRM was essentially asserting that there is a specific cultural identity within that which requires subsuming subcultural identity into a generic “American” identity (which conveniently appears to be very similar to European Protestant bourgeois heterosexual cisgendered subcultural identity, based on TRM’s complaints about what defines a deviant), and that those who refuse to do so are grasping, selfish troublemakers.
The line you quoted was basically observing the problem with TRM’s assertion that everyone ignoring subcultural identity (and the history behind that identity) would result in everyone treating everyone “exactly the same” was that it would only do so insofar as everyone had given up the same amount of their identity and was equally deviating from their private persona IOT present a more uniform public persona. If, as they appeared to be doing, TRM was suggesting that some were expected to make no compromises while others were expected to dramatically alter their behavior and reshape their understanding of history, they were proposing a radically immoderate and thoroughly inegalitarian approach to politeness and reasonable conduct in the public sphere between citizens.
And then I rambled a bit, as I appear to have done once again. Only moreso.
I get the impression that to some people the killing of Mike Brown by a cop is…not about a cop shooting a person. NOt a question of whether or not shooting was justified within the perimeters of professional conduct. Instead it’s somehow a metaphor for how white people as symbolized by the police officer have a right to punish black people for misbehaving.
http://qz.com/257042/these-seven-charts-explain-how-ferguson-and-many-other-us-cities-wring-revenue-from-black-people-and-the-poor/
This is relevant, I think.
Ugh, and post-editing appears to have made my rambling less coherent rather than more. Commenting while very exhausted is always a good idea. No, really!
Absent “widespread social engineering” we would never have had the Industrial Revolution.
Discuss.
There is a problem with black culture.
A culture that, in many respects, has been engineered by white people. I guess that makes us pretty good at that “social engineering” thing, huh?
I think there’s a problem with white culture that is exposed when white people respond to the shooting by a cop of a black man by looking for indications that the victim corresponds to their stereotype, rather than looking for a report that shows the that shooting was justified as measured by established professional standards (usually defense of the officer’s life, or prevention of risk to bystanders).
I don’t really understand what Ferguson has to do with “the tolerance issue”, which has been centered around marriage equality, per Sebastian’s original post.
The issue I’m (trying to) talk about is how “social conservatives” feel that their personal and/or religious convictions are no longer being tolerated, or that mere “toleration” isn’t enough.
The fact that this group is called social conservatives should clue us in to the fact that they’re concerned with how society is structured (or engineered, if you prefer).
DocSci
“the court of public opinion”, and the general sense of what is considered appropriate public behavior.
Then we are in agreement, it seems. I would add, it’s not just about encouraging people to be kind, its also about encouraging people to recognize “the sameness” in other groups.
As a pure anecdote, I got far more traction during the Prop 8 campaign asking people what they thought homosexuals wanted for their children. Even fairly adamant supporters of Prop 8 would come to something along the lines of: ‘they want their children to be happy, healthy, successful, etc’. I tried to point out that, sexuality aside, we’re all human, and tend to have traits like caring for our children. Make “the other” a little more “same”.
The radical moderate: “Applying that methodology to an entire society is quite another thing. We have terms for each of these steps when they’re applied to unindividuated masses of people: The explaining part is called “indoctrination” or “propaganda”. The observational part is called “surveillance”, and the correction part is called “law enforcement”. I’m not sure what we call the “repeat” part, but it sounds oppressively dreary to me.”
I’ve seen several such things succeed brilliantly. When I was 18, smoking in restaurants and bars was the norm. Any bar you went into was hazy with smoke, and your eyes would burn. Most restaurants were the same. Most workplaces were the same.
Now, smoke is the exception.
When I was 18, drunk driving was a crime, but a common one. Now, it’s a serious crime, and IIRC the stats on accidents reflects a massive decrease.
And that’s just the start – for another example, ‘lady engineer’ is not an operative term.
“The issue I’m (trying to) talk about is how “social conservatives” feel that their personal and/or religious convictions are no longer being tolerated, or that mere “toleration” isn’t enough.”
Sorry if I caused a lateral drift. I saw Ferguson as being one of those issues that divide in an interesting way on the authoritarian/ not authoritarian discussion.
But on your issue: It seems obvious to me that social conservatives are all about social engineering since their efforts in political life have been to limit other people’s choices to conform to their notions–in other words, to influence society.
Some even go so far as to assert that they are victims of discrimination if their religious notions aren’t imposed on others or treated as sanctioned by some government agency.
(I don’t see social engineering as a bad thing. I think everyone tries to do it, except hermits)
NV:
post-editing appears to have made my rambling less coherent rather than more.
Coherent enough. Thanks for the expansion. I appreciate the background on mono vs. multi. I find it interesting that when you first said monoculture in the other thread, I first thought of France (specifically, their law against wearing religious signs in schools).
It’s unsurprising that you find the monocultural model antithetical, because America cleaves strongly to the multicultural model.
You’re right, I do find it antithetical. I like to think its more than simply being raised in the US, but perhaps I was socially engineered along with the rest.
Both have their drawbacks, and you’ve highlighted that. I personally find the drawback of highlighting non-conformists for both social and governmental targeting far more of a drawback. I also think it can retard change and cultural advancement. By suppressing deviation from the monoculture, I think you lose out on avenues to assimilate the strengths of other cultures. Further, assimilation becomes an all or nothing proposition, which would tend to sequester extremists off from the main culture, as well as moderates that assimilate.
observing the problem with TRM’s assertion that everyone ignoring subcultural identity (and the history behind that identity) would result in everyone treating everyone “exactly the same” was that it would only do so insofar as everyone had given up the same amount of their identity and was equally deviating
Yeah, which fits into the larger mono vs. multi issue (I get it now!). That is ultimately why I don’t view the monoculture model as “more egalitarian”: It would only be egalitarian if everybody made the same small sacrifice to assimilate into society. In my mind, that can not be true with the level of diversity humanity possesses.
Laura Koerbeer: “I think there’s a problem with white culture that is exposed when white people respond to the shooting by a cop of a black man by looking for indications that the victim corresponds to their stereotype, rather than looking for a report that shows the that shooting was justified as measured by established professional standards (usually defense of the officer’s life, or prevention of risk to bystanders).”
At this point it’s clear that the right *likes* the occasional random killing of black men, for the same reason as lynchings were used – actually, they are lynchings, just using more formal excuses and agents.
They’ll tell themselves otherwise, and come up with lying reason after lying reason, but frankly God is making it crystal clear what’s going on:
Bundy’s vs. Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.
Open carry events without number (or police shootings) vs. John Crawford (gunned down for holding a pellet gun, even though holding a real gun would have been legal).
FMA’s are at least as important to an oppressive system as the open oppressors, and most of them are really people who’d like to be open oppressors, but don’t have the moral courage.
Informed Observer: “Pretty much everyone, white, black, yellow, red and all shades in between knows there are bad cops out there that abuse their authority and abuse the very people they are sworn to protect. Some subset of that group is racist as well and is more likely, though far from exclusively limited to, abuse minorities.”
First, anybody who’s checked up on the Ferguson PD knows that the likely situation is that there are a few *good* officers there. And their conduct (leaving a body in the street for hours, bringing dogs in to piss on the memorial and running their cars over it, the police riot, etc.) support that 100%.
I’ve noticed that certain sayings have been badly warped for a while:
‘A stopped clock is right twice a day’ should mean ‘an unreliable source agreeing with a reliable source doesn’t discredit the reliable source’, but now means ‘use an unreliable source’.
‘Politics ain’t bean bag’ used to mean ‘if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen’; it now is a pathetic whine that one’s favored politician got caught, and will suffer for it. Real hard men know that getting caught is a crime in an of itself.
‘A few bad apples’ used to mean that even a tiny minority of bad people or items will spoil the rest; it now means that we should ignore their abuses.
Barry: you are literally correct.
IO:
Maybe, maybe not. I don’t trust statistics that get pulled out of a hat without peer review for political purposes.
Those numbers are aggregated from NYPD by CCR. While I would prefer peer-reviewed work, I can’t find much on it. Perhaps you’d like to offer up peer-reviewed data supporting your contention that minorities are stopped, detained, arrested, and killed by police at rate that is entirely consistent with their criminal history and how non-majorities are treated?
I do find it interesting that Gov. Cuomo (D) says that NY is the “most progressive state in the country”, yet we have the statistics you quote.
And a few lines later, you like the statistics, because they support your worldview. For the record, I never said being progressive was a defense against authoritarianism. It is not. You may wish to make this into an anti-progressive rant. I do not. I don’t care what letter Cuomo has after his name. I care that he is corrupt.
Even if true, it doesn’t erase the fact that blacks, and to a much lesser degree Hispanics, disproportionately commit violent crimes.
Irrelevant. No individual is a representative of their racial group.
blacks bear some responsibility for being profiles as they are.
No. Individuals bear responsibility for their crimes. Individuals bear no responsibility for what some other individual did, even if they share some characteristics. There is zero justification for profiling.
we give LE a job to do and they’re going to do it as they see best; not necessarily in accordance to some ideal that people
The “ideal” I expect them to perform to is the Constitution. And it’s not an ideal, it’s the founding legal document of this country.
Back to you and tanahisi coates; blacks bear some responsibility for being profiles as they are.
it was generous of you to put that “some” in there. i wonder, though, what percentage you think “some” represents.
am i correct in assuming it’s somewhere north of 90% ?
The issue I’m (trying to) talk about is how “social conservatives” feel that their personal and/or religious convictions are no longer being tolerated, or that mere “toleration” isn’t enough. – Dr S.
I think it is, in a sense, sheer culture shock. They are accustomed to their convictions being the general standard. They might tolerate others having other views, but it was strictly that — toleration of deviation from the generally accepted overall standard for society.
And now, they are seeing society move to where their convictions are no longer automatically the standard for everyone. While they might have been willing to tolerate the deviance of others, they are far from willing to tolerate no longer being the standard. And thoroughly unaccustomed to their convictions being tolerated by others!
While they might have been willing to tolerate the deviance of others, they are far from willing to tolerate no longer being the standard.
That’s putting it perfectly. Thank you!
I think there is a parallel phenomenon concerning race and/or ethnicity. There are people who are very willing to be tolerant of individuals of other races and ethnicities but not willing to tolerate having the US redefined as a nation where those other people share status as the normal, the standard, the image of America.
‘Politics ain’t bean bag’ used to mean ‘if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen’; it now is a pathetic whine that one’s favored politician got caught, and will suffer for it. Real hard men know that getting caught is a crime in an of itself…
It hadn’t struck me that way at all; rather, I’d noticed that the phrase is increasingly used to excuse the most extreme and/or immoral behaviour towards one’s opponents, as though such is now an acceptable norm.
Marty: “And, of course, you have no way of “knowing” this. You simply assume the worst about the cop.”
We know about the department. We know that the body was left in the street for four hours. We know that Wilson lost his prior job when *his entire force was disbanded due to being too bad to reform*.
We know that the Ferguson PD officers brought in dogs to p*ss on the memorial, and ran it over with their cars.
We know that there’s *at least* one case where Ferguson PD officers filed charges against a man for ‘destruction of property’, meaning bleeding on their uniforms, then perjured themselves in court, denying that they had filed the charges that they files. We know that the prosecutor and judge didn’t have a problem with perjury and filing what I’ll technically call ‘bullsh*t’ charges.
We know that the city of Ferguson uses the police force as a bandit force, extracting money from people at incredible rates.
wj: “I think it is, in a sense, sheer culture shock. They are accustomed to their convictions being the general standard. They might tolerate others having other views, but it was strictly that — toleration of deviation from the generally accepted overall standard for society.”
Yes – we see them define ‘oppression’ as them not having special rights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
IIRC, the people in the town where he was murdered were absolutedly flabbergasted that this became a big deal. They were used to torturing and killing blacks at will, and coulndn’t understand anybody else who mattered having a problem with it.
Me: “Politics ain’t bean bag’ used to mean ‘if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen’; it now is a pathetic whine that one’s favored politician got caught, and will suffer for it. Real hard men know that getting caught is a crime in an of itself…”
Nigel: “It hadn’t struck me that way at all; rather, I’d noticed that the phrase is increasingly used to excuse the most extreme and/or immoral behaviour towards one’s opponents, as though such is now an acceptable norm.”
It had always been used that way; I noticed that supporters of Christie and Perry were using it to complain that their guys were in trouble after being caught.
I think it is, in a sense, sheer culture shock. They are accustomed to their convictions being the general standard.
True. However, it should also be noted that when your “convictions” are the “general standard” that this empowers you and your fellow tribal members….especially when acting as a group in the social/political realm.
It is the loss of this power that grates, not the so-called “intolerance” of liberals.
So when asshole conservatives assert various racial minorities, gays, and women are asking for “special” privileges they are in a sense correct. These groups are only asking to have the same special privileges that they see the white, straight, male group currently wielding.
Conservatives to blacks, “Your poverty and crime are all your fault. Too bad for you and your defective culture. We wash our hands of you.”
Conservatives to gays, “We grudgingly admit you are barely human, so OK, but don’t ask us to recognize your ‘marriage'”.
Conservatives to women, You sluts. You are weak and feeble minded. We shall determine the rules of carrying a pregnancy to term.”
Pure. Unadulterated. Assholery.
If to call this out marks me as “intolerant” so be it.
The book Albion’s Seed had a lot to say about how the different subcultures Fischer identified viewed the idea of freedom. The idea of freedom as privilege for white males is something that was prevalent with the group he called the Cavaliers. Here is a review of that section of the book at David Neiwert’s blog (though someone else wrote the review)–
Cavaliers
Well, there’s another video out where police are filmed acting like thugs to a black man.
link
“It is the loss of this power that grates, not the so-called “intolerance” of liberals.”
You know this to be the case how exactly? Or is it that you just make stuff up to fulfill your fantasies of how the world works (or should work)?
Does it occur to you ever that their are people who just plain disagree with your position and never will and that maybe, just maybe, your position isn’t the correct one is some ultimate and/or objective sense?
As far as changing social mores, see above, but also who put a badge on your chest and a halo over your head? But yeah, go ahead with your female shaming techniques, “Ew look at those people over there. They’re intolerant!” A significant chunk of the world population just doesn’t give a damn what you think and you can’t shame them into conformity with your beliefs and perspectives.
Serious question, why should your outlook become the dominant one? And, if it does fail then why can you not accept that in the free market of ideas, your product just wasn’t competitive?
Of course, you have leave to try; just as everyone else does.
“Well, there’s another video out where police are filmed acting like thugs to a black man.”
Police beating an unarmed white man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpEmHI-Ndmc
Black men beat white man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF0sHt84Zqc
St. Louis black man convicted of beating a six year old white boy to death because, the convict says, the boy was racist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LtaAyhWBJI
This is fun Donald. We can trade videos back and forth all day proving nothing accept man’s inhumanity to man knows no racial boundaries. Accept in Al Sharpton’s TH Coates paranoid fantasies.
I’ll repeat, I think there are a lot of people who would like to discuss the abuse of authority by police – which is a real problem – but just not as a racial issue; because it isn’t a racial issue.
” But yeah, go ahead with your female shaming techniques, “Ew look at those people over there. They’re intolerant!””
I thought I’d just copy that again and let it roll across the eyeballs. Female shaming techniques. What insights you bring.
Donald, this one is worth ten.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2ULVECUrzc
People aren’t going to embrace tolerance when it isn’t reciprocated.
re; female shaming techniques – that’s what it is; very school marm-ish. Otherwise, why would any care about failing to maintain some level of “tolerance’ per some enlightened elite’s definition?
Charlie Pierce keeps pointing out that “it’s never about race” as far as some people are concerned. Informed Observer, for instance.
–TP
You know, the ‘female shaming techniques’ and ‘school marm-ish’ doesn’t cross the line, and perhaps you are just having some problems IRL, but I’d really suggest you work them out before you comment again. We’ve got a long tradition here of letting people rant and rave as long as they don’t target other commenters and try to avoid “show[ing] a consistent pattern of blatant disrespect toward groups of people (e.g., people of a given race, military status, sexual orientation, or religion)” (note that we didn’t list ‘a given gender’ cause we thought it was kinda obvious) and we usually give people enough rope to hang themselves with, but if you start from the premise that the behavior of half the world’s population exhibits behavior that impinges on you and your opinion, you’ve already started a very nice hole for yourself, regardless what sort of baggage you bring here about African-Americans or other minorities.
IO:
Serious question, why should your outlook become the dominant one?
Honestly, I would take the question a lot more seriously if it wasn’t two breaths after this: who put a badge on your chest and a halo over your head? But yeah, go ahead with your female shaming techniques
Lurker coming out to comment on IO’s “contributions”.
Why are you here, Informed Observer? Not that I’m suggesting you shouldn’t be or that you should be banned. Just wondering what your goal is. You’re apparently so pissed off by what you read here that you can’t have a constructive exchange of ideas along the lines of what other conservatives (thompson, mckinney, wj) engage in. I sincerely don’t understand what you’re after with these comments. You’re not a troll exactly but you don’t seem to be interested in anything other than telling us liberals how stupid and awful we are.
If you don’t give a damn what Doctor Science thinks, why do you read her posts?
Also, I’d like to know what “female shaming” is as distinct from all other kinds of shaming.
Never mind that last question. I see IO has answered it.
IO, buried in your usual rantings (at 5:10) you actually have raised a legitimate question: How do we decide what outlooks should be the dominant one?
The answer can be arrived at a couple of ways:
– we can merely assume that the “right” outlook is handed down from on high. From which position, there is no further discussion possible — just unhappiness that the world is not doing what it should.
– we can let people work out for themselves what the “right” outlook is. With (preferably) or without the caveat that might alone does not make right. That is, jus tbecause you can force others to do as you wish does not make what you wish right.
– we can take the patient approach, and note that an outlook is “right” if it proves over time to produce a workable society. With the observation that it is possible for a society which is willing to tolerate differences of opinion to include multiple “right” outlooks. That is, outlooks with include lots of variations, but are willing to agree that they do not necessarily have the one and only acceptable answer. (Note that, in this possibility, there may not be a single outlook which is dominant. Just one, or more, features which are common to most of them.)
blackhawk, is that you?
LJ, my thoughts exactly.
I’m getting a bit sick of listening to conservatives cite examples of black people killing white people as somehow indicative of… something related to liberal objections to cops shooting black people under questionable circumstances.
The only reason this could possibly be relevant to the conversation is if the conservative speaker views the issue as a race war where liberals are on the black people’s side, and are yelling, “BOOOO!!!” whenever white people score a point.
The idea that liberals might actually object to cops abusing their power and getting away with it, and therefore not consider a black guy killing a white guy and then going to jail relevant to the conversation, never occurs to them.
…Which is a fancy way of saying, if you cite this as evidence of… …something you never explain… in the midst of these debates, I automatically and justifiably conclude that you’re a racist.
LJ, chmatl: the IP evidence is suggestive but not proof.
I don’t know if there’s a distinction in IO’s mind between “female shaming” and the kind of politeness Paul Ford talks about. It’s difficult for me not to laugh at IO’s language, but I’m not sure that’s an excuse for putting up with it.
Of course, you have leave to try; just as everyone else does.
From all of us whose humble opinions don’t mean a shit to somebody, somewhere, at some time, we thank you for these magnanimous and kind words, and the forgiving generous spirit in which they were obviously written.
I’ll repeat, I think there are a lot of people who would like to discuss the abuse of authority by police – which is a real problem – but just not as a racial issue; because it isn’t a racial issue.
except when it is. but we can’t talk about that because you don’t like Al Sharpton.
I am very willing to talk about abuse by those in authority, including the police. And it is often not about race. But it often is.
The presence of general abuse by police is not an argument against racial discrimination by police.
Jon Stewart had an amusing section on this. Or it would be amusing, if it wasn’t so sad.
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/ufqeuz/race-off
It always depresses me when I see a few people here bash Ta Nehisi Coates. In a small way it suggests that some white people are unreachable. Anyway, I thought his latest post was a thing of beauty–
Link
The Distress of the Privileged.
Donald Johnson – My god that Coates piece is gorgeous. Wonderful to read, and causes fireworks to go off in one’s head.
“My god that Coates piece is gorgeous”
If your intent was to induce nausea, point given. I especially like (not) the last lines where he says he wants to tear down our current society. Yeah, beautiful, and replace it with what? A welfare sucking cracked out ghetto with rap “music” blasting from stolen cars as they drive by spraying rounds? Something resembling Liberia or Somalia? I can’t wait.
Thinking more about “tolerance”. The missing ingredient in understanding how it could be established is “value”. People are often times quite rational in their outlooks. They tend to assign value, or relative worth, to the options they encounter. They do this when they are faced with different cultures. If they see something of value in a culture they will be more tolerant and respectful of it even if it is quite different from their own.
I suspect this is why Asians have, in recent times, enjoyed much greater acceptance than blacks. Whites see that Asians have successful strategies and the results cannot be denied. Blacks do not bring success to the table (quite the opposite, actually) and therefore tolerance is less. Tolerance decreases when further when an unsuccessful “other” has spokespeople like Coates who openly state a desire to destroy the existing order *without offering any evidence that the new order wouldn’t be a disaster*.
Coates reminds me of Wolfowitz/Clinton(s)/Bush and the other neo-liberals believing that tearing down the existing structure in Iraq (as well as Egypt, Syria, Lybia) would result in a glorious dawn of democracy and freedom, peace and prosperity in the Middle East. Revolutionaries without a clue.
I digress. Main point = tolerance does not occur as an isolated mind set. Rather it arises from observed behaviors and value judgments assigned to what is observed. The more positive the value judgment, the more likely that tolerance will be the end result.
Secondary point = value judgments are NOT merely based on a random and ultimately meaningless perspectives. Society requires stable proven processes. That which is not proven will be slow to be assimilated, if at all, until proven. That which is proven to not be effective will be rejected (not tolerated).
Illustration; albeit extreme = do we tolerate the Islamic State (formerly ISIS and ISIL), it’s members and it’s values? Do we tolerate child molesters?
If the answer is “no”, then we have to start walking back to determine at what level we simply tolerate – for tolerance sake – anything else because, clearly then there are lines to be drawn beyond which tolerance doesn’t make sense.
I now return to my question of who gets to make those distinctions? Why? How? How does all of that impact Constitutional rights?
Yawn.
Yeah, obviously Coates wants a violent revolution and sees Somalia as the ideal for which we should be striving.
the irony of being lectured on tolerance by an idiotic racist is just too much.
A welfare sucking cracked out ghetto with rap “music” blasting from stolen cars as they drive by spraying rounds?
and
Blacks do not bring success to the table (quite the opposite, actually) and therefore tolerance is less.
crosses the line. Will watch for your next appearance, if the list hasn’t shrivelled up and disappeared in the interim. TTFN
Thank you, lj.
Second.
Lots of us here have strong opinions – differing strong opinions. But the bigotry from this guy has gotten really excessive.
For most of American history, it has been national policy to plunder the capital accumulated by black people—social or otherwise.
One aim of American policy, historically, has been to insure that the “right people” are rarely black. Segregation then ensures that these rare exceptions are spread thin, and that the rest of us have no access to other “right people.”
the myth of “black on black crime”
a country rooted in white supremacy
A person like TNC resonates because of shared assumptions about American society. Historical facts such as the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, decades of supreme court decisions and multiple sea changes in prevailing attitudes about race–and more recently, SSM–do not produce second thoughts in those for whom these assumptions are set in granite.
And here, we conflate tolerance for those of other races with tolerance for pronunciamentos handed down by members of select races. As if race confers an outlook or mindset on account of skin pigmentation.
Is black on black crime really a myth?
Does white supremacy drive all, really?
Aren’t there statistics that indicate at least some support for the notion that crime rates are higher in African American communities and that the victims are disproportionately black? How is it that this assertion goes unexamined by people who routinely, and rightly, expect people like me to back their arguments with evidence?
Doesn’t the history of this country, particularly since 1950, indicate a pattern of redress and reform of a formerly racist regime?
Doc S’ original link focused on SSM. It rightly pointed out that SSM was simply recognizing in others a right the rest of us recognize in ourselves. No new rights are being proposed or created, simply an existing right being extended to all adults. Hard to argue against that.
TNC doesn’t call for that kind of tolerance and his adherents don’t either. He and they are not tolerant. He and they propose an upending of a culture that was the first in history to effectively recognize and impose a society based on the liberty and rights of the individual. A culture, that over time and by consensus, has continuously self-examined and improved itself.
Inventing concepts such as ‘social capital’ and ‘privilege’ to mask or justify displacing liberal democracy and free enterprise with some sort of undefined yet intrinsically superior regime is not something I or any other sane human will be shamed into accepting, regardless of the labels TNC et al invent.
These labels are designed to inhibit if not censor debate. Disagreement means bigotry. Disagreement means white supremacy.
TNC sees but does not comprehend why some students do better than others–stable families with common, promoted values of hard work, focus, education, respect for the law, respect for others. Missing from his narrative are any reports of mistreatment or exclusion. He was welcomed and aided by his fellow students.
Because the vast majority of his fellow students are white, he resorts to ad hoc invention of a conscious, all-white combination of engineering a scheme by which whites prosper and blacks, by design, are held down. He cannot bring himself to face the reality of elements of the African American community–young, uneducated single women are poor role models poorly equipped to rear children in a way that gives them a reasonable opportunity to advance.
TNC uses race far more invidiously than IO–he just chooses his words more carefully. Tolerance? Not so much.
He and they propose an upending of a culture that was the first in history to effectively recognize and impose a society based on the liberty and rights of the individual.
nope. he’s proposing that the US live up to its proclaimed ideals. it currently isn’t. and evidence of that is everywhere.
He cannot bring himself to face the reality of elements of the African American community–young, uneducated single women are poor role models poorly equipped to rear children in a way that gives them a reasonable opportunity to advance.
is something that nobody who has actually read what he writes could think.
and again, there’s never a single f’ing ounce of blame to be put on the larger society. it’s all, always about how lacking the blacks are. white society remains blameless. always.
“conservatism” never changes.
McT, the question is not whether TNC is tolerant (though, by virtue of the skin he lives in, the fact that the sh*t he puts up with every day doesn’t have him do what any of us would probably do makes him more tolerant by a long shot) and by making this, as IO would have us do, a question of whether TNC is ‘tolerant’ is usual game of the majority getting to define what the minority can and can’t do. link
Of course, between IO and Coates McT sees Coates as the truly intolerant one.
Coates writes to break down white stereotypes about black people, and in response, some whites cling to their stereotypes and invent new ones. Though I heard people say that blacks were the real racists back when I lived in Memphis in the 70’s, so it’s not that new.
A culture, that over time and by consensus, has continuously self-examined and improved itself.
despite the howling protests of conservatism every step of the way.
he’s proposing that the US live up to its proclaimed ideals. it currently isn’t. and evidence of that is everywhere.
Where does he make that proposal? Seriously. When he demanded reparations? He is welcome to make any argument or claim he wishes. I plan to treat him as an adult and call him out when he is wrong. Which he demonstrably is. I quoted directly from the piece DJ found so moving. National policy to dispossess blacks and ensure their subordination to whites? Really? People can say this and be taken seriously?
is something that nobody who has actually read what he writes could think.
Well, not in his usual audience, which takes his every word uncritically. Otherwise, someone would call him out on the four quotes I listed at the beginning of my comment. Anyone who wants to is free to defend those quotes. Good luck doing so factually.
and again, there’s never a single f’ing ounce of blame to be put on the larger society. it’s all, always about how lacking the blacks are. white society remains blameless. always.
This is a solid example of the progressive dialectic at work: race drives thought and therefore outcome. White = bad, nonwhite = good. Call it benign racism. In previous threads on this topic, I’ve made clear that any child born of a young, uneducated mother with no husband faces the same difficulties. The fact that this pathology is even more widespread in the African American community speaks to other causes, some race and fault neutral, some not. On the not side, since the late 60’s, one undercurrent of left’ish thinking was that blacks should see themselves part of the black community. This line of thought continues today, and TNC is a leading exponent. TNC isn’t the first messenger to say “Blacks are victims of white racism, they’ve been robbed by whites and its national policy”. Not exactly bridge building. Nothing much to say, that I’ve seen, and if he’s said it, he hasn’t said it enough, about serial single parenthood and lack of widespread, community regard for education, acquiring job skills, and making a better life. It takes zero courage for a black intellectual (see LJ’s link rehashing facts that are mostly older than I am and then trying to link all of that to modern times, all of which amounts to Jim Crow wearing a different suit–nothing new here) to write, as TNC does, to a receptive audience. A black intellectual with any real horsepower would dig hard into the hard facts about today’s young black adults and their children and come up with something a bit more concrete as a plan going forward than reparations. For instance, vigorously advocating a widespread and sustained campaign actively discouraging early sex and single motherhood, promoting marriage as the first step before becoming a parent and encouraging after school employment and steady, applied school attendance would be a fresh and brave voice for a left-leaning African American. He/she would have to overcome the internal criticism–and it would be fierce–of blaming blacks for their circumstances.
I am aware of Jim Crow. I attended high school in Millington TN from 1968 to 1970. I know what racists look and act like and I saw and was part of people of good will on both side trying to get past that as my mostly white high school was integrated with an all black high school. There were institutional problems/barriers/etc then. If they exist today, they exist in many communities governed by blacks and/or Democrats: Detroit, DC, Chicago, and for those who can appreciate irony, St. Louis. To name a few.
a question of whether TNC is ‘tolerant’ is usual game of the majority getting to define what the minority can and can’t do.
And, matching tit for tat, yours is the usual game of not responding substantively and, rather, offering a dismissive “see, that’s what white people do” rejoinder. LJ, is black on black crime a myth? Is it US policy to plunder black capital?
Coates writes to break down white stereotypes about black people, and in response, some whites cling to their stereotypes and invent new ones.
And in what way, using what words, does TNC break down any stereotypes in this article or in his demand for reparations? I submit, DJ, that whites not buying into TNC’s program are, by definition, not-so-bright white supremacists. They lack subtlety, don’t articulate their points and, instead, make broad, sweeping generalizations about those they disagree with. And they don’t engage in conversation with people of opposing views.
despite the howling protests of conservatism every step of the way.
Actually, check who voted for the Civil Rights Act and who did not. Bill Clinton’s mentor voted ‘no’. The much beloved Sen. Byrd of WVA for another. Al Gore’s father, for another.
Change is opposed by entrenched interests, some racially motivated, some economically motivated. Talk about changing Social Security, and see who shouts the loudest.
Not every change is good. Not every idea has merit. Lots of ideas are bad ideas. The courts were needed to effect changes back in the day. That didn’t make every court order wise. It was correct to require that every school open its doors to blacks. Whether it was correct to order forced integration–which did happen, at least to some extent–is a separate question. One can be fine with equal protection and minority outreach without signing on to mandatory set asides.
“Actually, check who voted for the Civil Rights Act and who did not. Bill Clinton’s mentor voted ‘no’. The much beloved Sen. Byrd of WVA for another. Al Gore’s father, for another.”
and you know what mckinneytexas, many of those southern democrats who voted no became republicans within a decade of the vote and most of those southern districts in the house with democratic reps who voted no had become republican strongholds over that same period because the republican party decided they would dump the racially progressive parts of their legacy and pursue the angry white southerner vote. all the while the northern republicans gradually shifted over into the democratic camp.
i take all of this very personally because i have two biracial grandsons whose lives are going to be much more difficult because they look a hell of a lot more like trayvon martin or michael brown than they do ethan couch or joseph houseman. in my life i have seen race contaminate almost any issue of local, state, national, or international import. i am a white man in my 50s and my white skin has kept me out of troubles with a warning or less that could have gotten me killed or imprisoned if i were a black man. your reading of mr. coates oeuvre seems very peculiar and misleading. it’s as if you were predisposed to reject everything he wrote before you even read it. by describing his article from earlier this year as a “demand for reparations” it is overwhelmingly obvious you didn’t read that essay at all. i, on the other hand, read it closely and found it to be remarkably modest in its suggestions, certainly more modest than i would probably be if my life had been the one of a black man of my age.
it seems to me that you are perfectly willing to be tolerant of other groups so long as they don’t presume to be entitled to the same level of privilege which you have. it seems a thin and meager form of tolerance to me.
And, matching tit for tat, yours is the usual game of not responding substantively
I think you misunderstand why I comment in the way I do and are taking it personally. I am happy to respond substantially, but I’ve been told enough times that I often go far past the tldr horizon that I try to keep it short. I’m also aware that I am a front pager, so there is an asymmetry, so I am more trying to register my opinion without trying to gang up on you, which is a problem whenever we have a distribution of opinions that where you are holding out against everyone else. You also probably forget (as is easy to do) that I am responding from the other side of the globe, which has me alter my responses to fit what I think is appropriate. Perhaps you feel I should write more, perhaps I should not write at all because it is unfair to have to answer to so many critics. But given that there is no, nor could there ever be, an agreed upon format, there’s not a lot we can do.
At any rate, since I was the one who banned IO, I felt I should respond to you, but writing a long comment as a front pager seems a bit unfair. If you feel my response was simply snark, my apologies. You can either take my explanation as representing what I think or you can believe that I’m just doing this because I can’t stand up to the relentless logic of your comment
To answer your questions, I’m in Japan, so black on black crime is not something I’ve got direct evidence of, so I have to rely on reports. From TNC (a number of links at the original)
More importantly Robinson’s claim is demonstrably false. The notion that violence within the black community is “background noise” is not supported by the historical record—or by Google. I have said this before. It’s almost as if Stop The Violence never happened, or The Interruptors never happened, or Kendrick Lamar never happened. The call issued by Erica Ford at the end of this Do The Right Thing retrospective is so common as to be ritual. It is not “black on black crime” that is background noise in America, but the pleas of black people.
There is a pattern here, but it isn’t the one Eugene Robinson (for whom I have a great respect) thinks. The pattern is the transmutation of black protest into moral hectoring of black people. Don Imus profanely insults a group of black women. But the real problem is gangsta rap. Trayvon Martin is killed. This becomes a conversation about how black men are bad fathers. Jonathan Martin is bullied mercilessly. This proves that black people have an unfortunate sense of irony.
The politics of respectability are, at their root, the politics of changing the subject—the last resort for those who can not bear the agony of looking their country in the eye. The policy of America has been, for most of its history, white supremacy. The high rates of violence in black neighborhoods do not exist outside of these facts—they evidence them.
That ‘politics of changing the subject’ is precisely what IO has accomplished here, in a perverse way. We talk about tolerance for SSM in the OP and somehow, it becomes analysizing how a single writer is ‘tolerant’, with no quotes from him and his name misspelled.
Your claim that I am ‘denying’ black on black crime (and I don’t think I have ever written about it, I merely pointed out that IO’s way of expressing it crosses the line we have in this blog) is something you have inferred. Your thinking seems to be I oppose IO, so I therefore deny rather than affirm the existence of black on black crime. I hope you can see that when it is laid out like this, it is pretty weak argumentation.
As for US policy to plunder, I’ve commented several times about policy towards Native Americans, where the evidence is overwhelming that this is the case. If this is the case for African-Americans is only something I’ve thought about through TNC’s reparations discussion, but it’s clear to me that there is a powerful antecedent for this kind of policy. This, from LGM points to how labor is ‘erased’. Is it ‘US policy’? I’d say no, it’s built into the foundations of capitalism.
If IO had wanted to discuss these points without resorting to phrases like ‘meek white bitches’ and ‘welfare sucking cracked out ghetto with rap “music” blasting from stolen cars as they drive by spraying rounds’, we might have had that discussion, but if he’s going to use those, it ain’t gonna happen. If I were to try the McT rhetoric, I’d wonder why you feel that this kind of language should be sanctioned by this blog and the people who have some responsibility for the content, but I’m assuming that you don’t agree with that language. I hope I’m not going out on a limb.
Of course, as I said, the question is not whether TNC is tolerant or intolerant. I suspect that he might say he is intolerant, especially when certain questions come up, and this is where I part from the OP. I think that tolerance should be related to the lines you draw in terms of the actions that you think are acceptable to create change. Tolerant people don’t think of challenging federal officers to a shoot out, a la Clive Bundy, they don’t traffic in stereotypes and then refuse to defend themselves with an actual explanation of how they got there.
And in what way, using what words, does TNC break down any stereotypes in this article or in his demand for reparations?
The prime example, and probably the most pernicious one, is that intelligence has to do with genetics. He points out, using himself as an example, the web of culture and upbringing that helps a person make the most of education. He does this without pity, not saying that he was prevented from doing this, but that there are these interconnected cultural practices that foster success in something that he has only come to lately realize is important.
When confronted with that (making the huge and probably unfounded assumption that IO actually read the article), IO unleashes phrases that seek to associate TNC with the basest of black stereotypes, stereotypes that make it clear that IO considers blacks unredeemable and permanently flawed, along with stereotypes that have people who argue for tolerance in some way to be supporting ISIS and child molesters.
The key word is ‘break down’. You seem to take that as ‘refute’, but I view it as ‘reduce it to its basic components’ and when he writes, as the article about learning French and this article (one of many) point out, about how structural conditions in the AA community are also contributing to this stereotype, it really supports DJ’s point.
I thought about all of this yesterday while reading this Times’ piece on return of the culture of poverty. When we talk “culture,” as it relates to African-Americans, we assume a kind of exclusivity and suspension of logic. Stats are whipped out (70 percent of black babies born out of wedlock) and then claims are tossed around cavalierly, (black culture doesn’t value marriage.) The problem isn’t that “culture” doesn’t exist, nor is it that elements of that “culture” might impair upward mobility.
It defies logic to think that any group, in a generationaly entrenched position, would not develop codes and mores for how to survive in that position. African-Americans, themselves, from poor to bourgeois, are the harshest critics of the street mentality. Of course, most white people only pay attention when Bill Cosby or Barack Obama are making that criticism. The problem is that rarely do such critiques ask why anyone would embrace such values. Moreover, they tend to assume that there’s something uniquely “black” about those values, and their the embrace.
If you are a young person living in an environment where violence is frequent and random, the willingness to meet any hint of violence with yet more violence is a shield. Some people take to this lesson easier than others. As a kid, I hated fighting–not simply the incurring of pain, but the actual dishing it out. (If you follow my style of argument, you can actually see that that’s still true.) But once I learned the lesson, once I was acculturated to the notion that often the quickest way to forestall more fighting, is to fight, I was a believer. And maybe it’s wrong to say this, but it made my the rest of my time in Baltimore a lot easier, because the willingness to fight isn’t just about yourself, it’s a signal to your peer group.
In the same way, this is a signal to the peer group here that I’m happy to discuss these things.
So, McKinney, you call for some kind of program to teach young blacks how to behave. That is mighty generous of you. Tell us, after they have partaken of this wisdom, what are they to do with it? Black youth unemployment is at disastrous levels (nearly 30%-double white youth unemployment).
There are simply no jobs for them (To infer, as you apparently do, that they simply “do not want them” is astounding in its absurdity).
Lacking capital, they cannot move out of their environment. This lack of capital, and how such a state came to be, is something TNC has analyzed repeatedly.
You apparently ignore this.
This absence of resources coupled with ongoing white racism is at the heart of the problem.
Your “concrete plan” amounts to little more than hectoring. This form of white hectoring has changed little since the time of slavery. The fact that centuries of this form of “help” has not raised the black community to equality should tell you something.
Therefore, the time is well past for us to consider other policy alternatives. If it takes “set-asides”, then so be it. The era of “set-asides” for whites has not yet even ended. Why can’t blacks benefit from such policies as well?
That’s the real “tit for tat” that is required.
I do hope you continue to read TNC, if not to just try and pick him apart. Perhaps some of that wisdom he conveys will rub off.
One can only hope.
And LJ: Well said
Perhaps we just need a determined program to teach blacks to obey traffic laws.
Since this is piling-on time, apparently, but I don’t want to spend the effort that LJ and others have invested in deconstructing McKT’s argument and defending TNC, let me focus on one particular word that seems to be problematic here: the word “policy.”
TNC uses it twice in the four phrases that McKT most objects to, and the latter responds by accusing him of the “ad hoc invention of a conscious, all-white combination of engineering a scheme by which whites prosper and blacks, by design, are held down.”
If this was what TNC was doing – if this is what TNC means by “policy” – then McKT’s outrage would be justified. But I don’t think it is, because McKT has supplied an adjective – “conscious” – that was not in the original, and was probably not meant.
In the study of history we encounter both conscious and openly articulated policies (“No Child Left Behind” – “Just Say No”) and less-than-conscious tendencies that, taken over time, may be judged to be equivalent to unspoken “policies.” The creation of the British Empire in its Victorian magnificence is very much a case of the latter. There is no evidence that any particular group of (white, of course) men (of course) sat down at the beginning of the 19th century and said “Let’s build an empire on which the sun never sets, and ensure that our successors carry out this [secret] policy,” and indeed such a conspiracy is extremely unlikely. Nevertheless, Empire emerged.
One can interpret this as happenstance: “Britain acquired an empire in a fit of absentmindedness,” they say. Or one can look at a long series of events all around the globe over the course of more than a century and think it foolish to regard what happened as just a series of happy coincidences (from London’s perspective). It is obvious that there was a policy, in the broader sense of the term, that led directly to all this territorial acquisition, accompanied by “indirect rule” and protectorates and the like.
I am not one of those who believes that there is only one Correct Definition of terms (teaching a course on “Imperialism” would cure you of that fallacy if you ever entertained it!), so I’m by no means suggesting that McKT’s usage is wrong.
But I believe that he is wrong in attributing his own usage to TNC, and then attacking him for saying what he (McKT) thinks he (TNC) is alleging. I’m hoping that this reflects just a lack of awareness — we all tend to miss it when someone else uses words in ways unfamiliar to us — rather than the lawyerly trick of grabbing a witness’s words and giving them the most hostile interpretation possible, even when it’s clear to the dispassionate observer that this is not what was intended.
So, McKT, would this make a difference to you? If TNC intended – and I should make it clear I don’t speak for him or claim to know what he’s thinking – to use “policy” to mean NOT “a conscious decision by those in power to act” but something like “a consistent pattern of actions over time,” would that assuage your anger? (You might still grumble at his lexical usage – I often do when folks use words “wrong” – but that’s a different point, I trust.)
Once the supposed/alleged conscious conspiracy is off the table, can we proceed with discussing what TNC actually says?
Following dr ngo’s point, my use of policy in
As for US policy to plunder, I’ve commented several times about policy towards Native Americans, where the evidence is overwhelming that this is the case. If this is the case for African-Americans is only something I’ve thought about through TNC’s reparations discussion, but it’s clear to me that there is a powerful antecedent for this kind of policy. This, from LGM points to how labor is ‘erased’. Is it ‘US policy’? I’d say no, it’s built into the foundations of capitalism. suffers from a lack of a clear notion or definition of policy and my own statement would have benefitted from explicitly equating policy with “a consistent pattern over time”.
One more small point that I hope it isn’t too polemic, it seems to me that the speed with which SSM has taken place is probably a great example of white privilege. Would anyone believe that SSM would have taken place with the speed it has had it been something that could be categorized as a ‘black’ thing? This doesn’t mean that it is wrong, or that it should have waited until racial inequities were first addressed, I just want to suggest that social change comes a lot easier when those who want it are spread out in all levels of society, not confined to the lower segments.
This is a solid example of the progressive dialectic at work: race drives thought and therefore outcome. White = bad, nonwhite = good.
perfect.
you absolutely will not place a single microgram of blame of the people who control society. and suggesting that you might is equal to this “White = bad” idiocy. innocent black kids get killed and it’s the fault of black culture. banks prey on black communities, it’s the fault of black culture. blacks are stopped more often, convicted more often and to longer sentences than any other group for identical crimes, and it’s the fault of black culture.
it simply cannot be that institutionalized (formally or otherwise) racism exists, that whites get the better deal on everything from mortgages to police interactions. it simply must be the blacks’ fault. why? hand waves, that’s why.
Actually, check who voted for the Civil Rights Act and who did not. Bill Clinton’s mentor voted ‘no’. The much beloved Sen. Byrd of WVA for another. Al Gore’s father, for another.
and surely you know what happened after that. surely you are not unaware of the shift that occurred in the Democratic party in the 50s and 60s? surely you don’t expect us to not know?
and surely, you aren’t trying to blame the sins of the fathers on their sons? surely not.
because, whatever the party label, it was conservatives who protested civil rights legislation the loudest. and they still do. any time there’s a move bring another group fully into full equality, it’s conservatives who protest the loudest.
that is your legacy.
McKinneyTexas: “Not every change is good. Not every idea has merit. Lots of ideas are bad ideas. The courts were needed to effect changes back in the day. That didn’t make every court order wise. It was correct to require that every school open its doors to blacks. Whether it was correct to order forced integration–which did happen, at least to some extent–is a separate question. One can be fine with equal protection and minority outreach without signing on to mandatory set asides.”
When you say that in the context of civil rights, where your side was 100% bad, you’re on thin ice.
I just want to suggest that social change comes a lot easier when those who want it are spread out in all levels of society, not confined to the lower segments.
LJ, I would say that the difference isn’t so much the levels of society involved. It’s that, for gay marriage (and once it became easier for homosexuals to come out), lots of people discovered that it would positively impact members of their own families. Not to mention that they had friends and co-workers who they already knew, liked, and respected who would be impacted. It’s a lot easier to persuade people to change something when they already care about those who are being hurt.
WJ, that’s a good point, and I shouldn’t have implied that there was some white privilege agenda driving the move to support SSM. Though I do think it underlines the gulf we have between African Americans and the rest of society, which is also a product of our peculiar history of separate but equal, something that did not simply disappear with Brown v. Board of Education.
Thinking of it in terms of dr ngo’s point about ‘policy’, there was a liberal ‘policy’ that slowly integrating African-Americans into the mainstream of society would slowly but surely involve more levels of society so that people from all walks of life would realize that people they ‘knew, liked and respected’ are impacted and we (as a society) would hopefully stop doing it. You say “It’s a lot easier to persuade people to change something when they already care about those who are being hurt.” and, given that probably no one on this board (as an semi-representative slice of society) knew the stuff in bobbyp’s 11:30 PM link to the WaPo, it is easy to see why one change easily happens while another seems to be impossible.
Hmm
Stop doing it=stop discriminating, not stop integrating.
You forgot some of the softer stuff. E.g., black job applicants can’t get an interview because their name sounds too black, it’s the fault of black culture. Or black job applicants can’t get an interview because they attached a picture of them being black to their resume, it’s the fault of black culture. Or black job applicants can’t get jobs despite having done neither of the above because they just had to go and bring their melanin with them to the interview, it’s the fault of black culture.
This Black Culture person is starting to sound as evil and nefarious as The Left or You Progressives.
In short, NV, stereotypes continue to impact the way that people get treated. And not always for the worse. Witness the folks who get hired for jobs where they have marginal skills at best — just because it’s a technical job and they come with an epicanthic fold, and so are assumed to be good at math and science.
The only way to get rid of stereotypes like that, in my experience, is prolonged exposure to enough members of whatever group that they break down. Which, I suspect, is the one positive that reverse discrimination (which I don’t otherwise have much use for) is likely to actually produce. See the impact of integration of the military — both on attitudes in the military and on civil society (at least until the disappearance of the draft allowed more people to avoid interacting with blacks).
By way of Andrew Sullivan’s “The Dish”, an article in the Boston Globe on the long term economic impact of slavery–
link
I’m sure it’s just an excuse to avoid criticizing black culture.
The only way to get rid of stereotypes like that, in my experience, is prolonged exposure to enough members of whatever group that they break down.
Sensible. Now put this observation in the current context of housing segregation and ongoing job and social discrimination. Take that observation into the policy sphere. What should we, as the white public, do about this?
Babbling on about “equality of opportunity” leaves me a bit flat.
As long as these constraints persist the racial divides we observe shall hold. One can easily understand the cries of outrage at “reverse discrimination”. Believe me, I can empathize. But what I cannot understand, and what simply enrages me, is the common white held belief that we have now set the table to allow “equality of opportunity and our job is done” when in fact, that is simply not true on an aggregate basis.
Simply put, the wished for outcomes are not manifest. Blaming it on a recent fad to wear one’s pants low seems rather silly, no? If that were true, disco should have marked the permanent end of white ascendancy.
Perhaps, in the spirit of McKinney, we should have a national “you be the f*cking doormat” week where whites and blacks reverse roles. All white people are rounded up and herded into the worst decaying parts of our urban areas. All the great jobs, university placements, best housing and schools are parceled out to blacks. Blacks constitute the majority of voters and hold the overwhelming portion of our common financial assets. Whites are commonly stopped and frisked for no apparent reason.
To you-“reverse discrimination”? How about “justice” or “how does it feel, asshat”?
And what if some force from outer space made this arrangement permanent? What public policies would you propose to reverse it?
Lecturing white people about their “culture”?
I dare say the “pathology of white culture” would not take long to rear its ugly visage under such circumstances.
And it’s still a bit ugly in any event.
As to the social impact of slavery on the world today, I agree, it exists.
Let’s also agree that poor non-African-American people also have legacies that contribute to their circumstances.
Race is an issue. Class is an issue. Poverty is an issue. Specific personal problems, such as mental illness, are an issue. These issues are not at odds, and what we don’t want to do is pit poor people against each other.
A solution is a safety net. Jobs programs. Education. Health care. Housing. Nondiscrimination by law. We know all of this. What’s the problem with making it happen?
Liberals are the most intolerant of all groups in our society. Only made to seem better by a few smug hipsters
FMA’s are like the “middle class”, they are simply everyone else.
And there is no group in this nation more in love with their own self-pity and aggrieved sense of having been historically wronged than your average tea-partier.
Extra credit if you wave the stars and bars while wearing your stupid tri-corner hat – or even better, faux cowboy hat – with the teabag stapled to it.
There are a whole bunch of groups who aren’t asking to be treated exactly the same; they’re being asked to be treated with special consideration for their particular identity–sexual, racial, religious, ethnic, etc.–and, even worse, for the history behind that identity
Kindly see my immediately previous comment.
Tolerance means you recognize and accept the existence of people who aren’t like you, and acknowledge that there is some legitimacy to their point of view, even if you share not one speck of it.
My issue with Batocchio’s chart is that the four groups include liberals who are assholes and liberals who are right, and conservatives who are assholes and conservatives who are wrong.
That seems somewhat one-sided.
But a lot of people are sick and tired of having the race baiters come out and foment revolution and division and then have their meek white bitches on left help carry the banner.
“Meek white bitches”? Seriously?
Somebody’s channeling their inner Norman Mailer.
“Race is an issue. Class is an issue. Poverty is an issue. Specific personal problems, such as mental illness, are an issue. These issues are not at odds, and what we don’t want to do is pit poor people against each other.”
I don’t think “we” (meaning people left of center in general) are pitting poor people against each other. It’s certain elements of the right that do this. Then some poor whites willingly side with the far right, some people on the left insult them, and so maybe in that sense the left could do better, but I don’t think it starts with the left.
Some of my best friends are racists.
That should prove to the likes of McKinney, even in his most enthusiastic leftie-bashing moments, that there is at least one tolerant liberal in this sad world.
–TP
Still playing catch-up…
TNC sees but does not comprehend why some students do better than others–stable families with common, promoted values of hard work, focus, education, respect for the law, respect for others.
Actually, I think TNC holds out his own family and personal history as, precisely, an example of this.
What he is apparently discovering, in mid-life, at Middlebury are the typical habits of, specifically, *academic* success.
Apparently, instead of spending his school days boning up for exams, he spent his time reading, widely and voraciously.
He wanted to be a writer. He was learning his craft.
The man is an editor at the Atlantic. I think he has demonstrated an understanding of how to excel at what he has chosen to do in life.
He cannot bring himself to face the reality of elements of the African American community–young, uneducated single women are poor role models poorly equipped to rear children in a way that gives them a reasonable opportunity to advance.
It boggles my mind that you could have even the most passing familiarity with his work and make this statement.
The question TNC asks, which apparently doesn’t occur to you, is why social dysfunction appears to be so prevalent in the black community in the first place.
“It boggles my mind that you could have even the most passing familiarity with his work and make this statement.”
I have that feeling about most of the criticism of TNC that I see. I’m not talking about criticisms of his proposed remedies–reparations, for instance. I’m talking about the contemptuous dismissal by people who don’t seem to he reading anything he writes in good faith.
“The question TNC asks, which apparently doesn’t occur to you, is why social dysfunction appears to be so prevalent in the black community in the first place.”
We are less than two generations from the welfare society that Clinton attempted to fix. Too early to say.
“The man is an editor at the Atlantic. I think he has demonstrated an understanding of how to excel at what he has chosen to do in life.”
You can be an excellent writer with nothing of value to say.
You can be an excellent writer with nothing of value to say.
Yes, and you can also go through life with your head up your @ss.
I leave it to one and all to draw whatever conclusions they wish to draw.
that was unnecessary
that was unnecessary
Look, here are some simple facts.
Black people – people who are ethnically African – have been here, in English-speaking North America, for 400 years.
For almost the entire span of that time, they have been at a disadvantage, legally, socially, economically, any way you care to mention. And, that disadvantage has been enforced by law, and by violence.
For the last 50 years of that time, and not one moment longer, they have nominally not been at a disadvantage by force of law. That, not the period since “Bill Clinton tried to fix welfare”, is the “two generations” you refer to, and it’s barely that.
Coates writes about his own experience. His experience as a black person, and about the things that he, himself, has found in the historical record, from his own research.
He has apparently come to believe – which is not what he started out believing – that racism is bred in the American bone. My understanding of his writing is that he has come to believe that an instinctive belief in white supremacy is an indelible part of the American legacy, and persists to this day.
You can agree with that, disagree with that, as you wish. But the factual basis that informs his point of view is solid. It’s stuff he has personally lived, and/or stuff that comes from his own homework. And, he shows his work, consistently and thoroughly.
I don’t much care if folks like Coates or not, agree with him or not, or even read him or not. Defending Ta-Nehisi Coates is not my life’s ambition, nor is it something he’s in need of.
But if you want to engage with the reality of life in the United States, you have to deal with issues he raises.
If they don’t make sense to you, maybe it’s because you’re not black. Maybe the experience of being a black person in this country *is not the same* as being a person who is not black, full stop.
If that’s not a proposition you’re willing to entertain, then IMVHO you’re living in cloud cuckoo land.
My question for people who think Coates is full of crap is basically this:
For 400 years, right up until today, blacks have failed to achieve in this society to a level comparable to other ethnic groups.
Why is that? Is there something magic about black skin that makes them chronically incompetent irresponsible criminally-inclined f***-ups?
Or are other factors involved?
You tell me which.
And if you want to tell me it’s all because of those stupid Great Society welfare programs, you have the 350 years of history before 1964, and the not quite 20 years of history since Bill Clinton fixed it all, to explain.
So have at it. Explain to me why Coates is full of crap when he says that racism is alive and well in the US.
What a lot of people seem to do, when speaking about Coates and others like him, is to conflate his current, privileged, circumstances with his childhood, definitely not privileged, circumstances. And then argue that he has no complaint about his childhood circumstances because he has done so well.
I would take their position to its logical extreme (which most of them would not embrace, I know): Frederick Douglass’ accomplishments did not demonstrate that there was nothing about slavery which handicapped those who grew up in it.
No matter what the handicaps, a few people will manage to succeed in spite of them. But the question we should actually ask is, what happens to most of the people in those circumstances?
I’ve been on the road, but will comment when time–and it will require quite a bit of time–permits.
You did a great job of explaining it Russell. As far as having a head up something:
Nobody alive lived 400 years ago, if that mattered j would be dirt poor in some other country
Multiple groups of people have arrived in the US since the black population was set free by generation 3 they were integrated into society
There should be, by your reasoning some enclave of middle class and more successful black people somewhere in the us of some size where they have been given a more equal chance
Before you go there. Yes, they need to integrate into society. That’s the word that’s been used for at least 50 years as the goal.
Lastly, and really the only one that is important, the very nature of societies dismissal of any white person as someone a black person might emulate is the problem in black society. Why can’t Kennedy be a hero or example for a black child every bit as much as
Obama? Why are only black people heroes to black people? Because they are taught by their parents that they are different. That being black means being different. Not by society, by their parents. When TNC writes something about the self segregation and self diminishment of a whole race e that has assumed the role of martyr, send that to me. Until then every succeeding generation of black children will be raised to be less, encouraged only by the success of 1% of 12%. That’s an unnecessarily small, infinitesimal set of role models. Add the propogated few of authority and most black children don’t stand a chance.
Few/view
In last sentnve
Marty, unfortunately, your comment is almost incomprehensible. Forgive me if I’m misinterpreting, but I’m taking from it that you don’t think that African-Americans have taken the opportunity to integrate themselves into American culture.
In fact, what African-Americans have faced is rejection by virtue of their dark skin. So, while Italian-Americans were able to “act like the others” and assimilate, African-Americans faced greater difficulty because their skin gave them away first minute.
The more powerful African-American people we have in government, in corporate life, in education, etc., the more likely we will knock racism. Having an African-American POTUS was an excellent move, but not checkmate, against racism.
On the other hand, some people will be racists forever, because racism is part of their identity (neoconfederates).
There should be, by your reasoning some enclave of middle class and more successful black people somewhere in the us of some size where they have been given a more equal chance
You may want to study your history. Harlem Renaissance, Birdland. You may also want to note that Russell works in a field where you can’t imagine it even existing without the contributions of African-Americans.
Lastly, and really the only one that is important, the very nature of societies dismissal of any white person as someone a black person might emulate is the problem in black society.
Here is what Coates says, from that essay that all us fuzzy headed liberals here find achingly beautiful:
Now, in America, invocations of culture are mostly an exercise in awarding power an air of legitimacy. You can see this in the recent remarks by the president, where he turned a question about preserving Native American culture into a lecture on how we (blacks and Native Americans) should be more like the Jews and Asian Americans, who refrain from criticizing the intellectuals in their midst of “acting white.” The entire charge rests on shaky social science and the obliteration of history. When Asian Americans and Jewish Americans—on American soil—endure the full brunt of white supremacist assault, perhaps a comparison might be in order.
But probably not. That is because fences are an essential element of human communities. The people who patrol these fences are generally unkind to those they find in violation. The phrase “getting above your raising” is little more than anxious working-class border patrolling. The term “white trash” is little more than anxious ruling-class border patrolling. I am neither an expert in the culture of Jewish Americans nor Asian Americans, but I would be shocked if they too were immune. Some years ago I profiled the rapper Jin. As the first Asian-American rapper to secure a major label contract, he often found himself enduring racist cracks from black rappers abroad and the prodding of fence-patrollers at home. “’Yo, what is this? You really think you’re black, Jin?” he recalled his parents saying. “Bottom line—you’re not black, Jin.’”
Pretending that black people are unique—or more ardent—in their fence-patrolling, and thus more parochial and anti-intellectual, serves to justify the current uses of American power. The American citizen is free to say, “Look at them, they criticize each other for reading!” and then go about his business. In that sense it is little different than raising the myth of “black on black crime” when asked about Ferguson.
So what you are pointing out is something that Coates specifically challenges. But the problems seems to be that Coates can’t just stop there.
You wonder ‘why can’t black people be more like white people?’ To try and put this in a form that doesn’t leave anyone with feelings hurt, they can’t because they don’t have access to the tools that white people have. Don’t call them ‘opportunities’, cause that implies that they just didn’t take the chance, call them tools. More TNC
There have been young people fighting outside my window for as long as I can remember. I was no older than five sitting on the steps of my parents’ home on Woodbrook Avenue watching the older boys knock shoulders in the street—”bucking” as we called it then—daring each other to fire off. From that point on I knew that among my people fisticuffs had their own ritual and script. The script was in effect that evening: show cause (some niggas jumped me in the park), mouth off (I ain’t no punk), escalate (wait right her son, I’m bout to get my shit).
My wife wanted to know what she should do. She was not worried about her own safety—boys like this are primarily a threat to each other. What my wife wanted was someone who could save them young men from themselves, some power which would disperse the boys in a fashion that would not escalate things. No such power exists. I told my wife to stay inside and do nothing. I did not tell her to call the police. If you have watched the events of this past week, you may have some idea why.
Among the many relevant facts for any African-American negotiating their relationship with the police the following stands out: The police departments of America are endowed by the state with dominion over your body. This summer in Ferguson and Staten Island we have seen that dominion employed to the maximum ends—destruction of the body. This is neither new nor extraordinary. It does not matter if the destruction of your body was an overreaction. It does not matter if the destruction of your body resulted from a misunderstanding. It does not matter if the destruction of your body springs from foolish policy. Sell cigarettes without proper authority and your body can be destroyed. Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be be destroyed. Protect the home of your mother and your body can be destroyed. Visit the home of your young daughter and your body will be destroyed. The destroyers of your body will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions.
By virtue of the way American society is structured, African Americans cannot call on the police to keep order except in circumstances that are dire and even then, they risk being taken as the bad guys. And that’s just one tool that has been taken out of their hands.
This article talks about the court system in Ferguson. Now think of what it took to reveal that to the national public. How many other pitfalls, barriers, traps are lurking out there for African Americans that we don’t know about? And thinking about the possible existence of those pitfalls, are you still willing to blithely insist that it is because black people don’t make white people their role models that blacks are not more successful?
Russell’s comment should also be seen in light of the fact that what he does (play percussion) is not imaginable if you take away the contributions of African Americans. Of course, with other achievements of minorities, they are waved away. Black folks ‘have rhythm’. I’m surprised (though not really) that Russell put it so mildly
You may not choose to give this any credence, in the same way many choose to dismiss TNC without actually trying to take what he says on board. Several people here have noted, with frustration, that there is a refusal to try and read TNC with any sympathy at all. As Russell points out, there is nothing we can do about that, and you are free to make the understandings of TNC that you want to. But to defend that refusal to even address the points he makes with comments like the one that set Russell off, or this notion that if black folks just had white heroes, everything would be alright, you should not be surprised if you get pushback.
Multiple groups of people have arrived in the US since the black population was set free by generation 3 they were integrated into society
Marty, you might want to reconsider your timeline here. The relevant date wouldn’t be the Emancipation Proclamation. It would, at most, be the Civil Rights Act — so early 1960s.
That would be roughly 50 years ago. Let’s think about that a moment. The equivalent time span for, for example, Japanese Americans would have been about the time they were being herded into relocation camps. Not what I, at least, would consider “integrated into society.”
Admittedly, that might be more like 2 generations than 3. But then, as sapient notes, the discrimination against them was never a part of the majority’s cultural identity. Even in parts of the country (e.g. California) where anti-Asian prejudice was worst, it wasn’t part of how whites saw themselves. As contrasted to the situation in the South for blacks.
McT, thanks for the message, I was worried I had run you off. If you would like the poisoned chalice of a guest post, go for it, Use the mail contact under the kitty
Lj, I have read, because I had something to say, what you quote. I don’t expect black people to be more like white people, they ARE more like white people. His descriptions of black kids outside the window are little different than the window my mom stood by. She did t want to call the cops either. For the same reasons. African American s can call the cops just like everyone else in America.
And he is, again, just wrong. The reasons young black men get shot does matter. Especially when it is because they have been taught that it WILL happen. When their attitude is created by being told cops are bad and WILL harass them needlessly. So the arrogance of youth is spent proving they aren’t afraid of the man. These lessons are fruitless, teaching actual respect is different than teaching them to fear. He spends a whole paragraph on this.
You reference the court system in Ferguson, true or not it played absolutely no role in the actions and reactions on that day in Ferguson. The slightest respect, for drivers trying to use the street and then the police, the most minimal respect, would have avoided that death. Any other discussion is academic and perhaps will get full circle to, he was taught to not respect the cops. Any cop.
I’m writing this on my phone, so that’s a lot. But he is not right, he is an excellent writer, tells a grew story, is very convincing but he’s wrong.
I also am not ever surprised at the pushback. I respect russells intentions, and his percussion interests. But from what I can tell he works in an industry. In a town, that is as white as it gets. Not a criticism. Or whatever, but I have as much intellectual right to my opinion of TNC as he does.
The slightest respect, for drivers trying to use the street and then the police, the most minimal respect, would have avoided that death.
And for that he deserved to die?
wj, if we take your timeline, and I have thought about it, then one or two more generations should do it.
Bobbyp, it isn’t zero sum. He died because he did something wrong, the cop wasn’t wrong. That doesn’t mean he deserved to die. Its a tragedy that could have been averted.
Multiple groups of people have arrived in the US since the black population was set free by generation 3 they were integrated into society…
They were white. They were white. They were white. Sure, it took a while for the Irish, the Catholics, the Italians, etc., to be accepted by the majority white protestant assholes, but they finally made it into the tribe.
For some reason blacks were excluded from this process. Could you enlighten us as to why?
Not trying to catch you out here, but you started off by saying someone could be an excellent writer but not have anything to say. Now, he’s an excellent writer but he’s wrong in what he says. So it seems that the first comment was just to dismiss what Russell said (which is probably why he pushed back so hard) and now that I’ve challenged you, you’ve gone back and read it. That’s cool, and I’m pleased you took the time.
However, I think you are absolutely wrong about your assertions and you’ve taken onboard a lot of the lies and smears that have surfaced to undercut Michael Brown and support the officer. I don’t knowPhrases like ‘these lessons are fruitless’ and ‘he was taught not to respect the cops’ suggest that you really haven’t examined your base assumptions at all. He got shot because he wasn’t sufficiently respectful of authority. It is really hard to separate this from Emmit Till being lynched for whistling at a white woman. You will argue that this is hyperbolic, but when you assert, as you do, that Michael Brown had it coming because he didn’t respect authority (Something that is hard to imagine a white person getting shot for if they did it, and it seems like they do it), I find it hard not to see the connection.
With our libertarian go-to (thankfully) gone, I’ve kind of lost track, but as has been pointed out, all those people who supported Cliven Bundy don’t seem to be saying much about Michael Brown. That silence speaks volumes.
When their attitude is created by being told cops are bad and WILL harass them needlessly. So the arrogance of youth is spent proving they aren’t afraid of the man.
Horseshit. You are asserting that somebody ‘teaches’ them that cops will harass them, so they take this ‘knowledge’ and go out and provoke the police into doing exactly that to “prove their manhood” or something like that and that cops are then too stupid to understand the social and psychological dynamics in play and needlessly harass them…just because.
That is simply off the charts inchoherent.
Bobbyp, it isn’t zero sum. He died because he did something wrong, the cop wasn’t wrong. That doesn’t mean he deserved to die. Its a tragedy that could have been averted.
It could have been averted by the officer in any number of ways that did not result in a public execution of a person standing in the street with his hands up.
The finality of death tends to make things zero sum.
marty, if you won’t take it from tnc then please take it from a middle-aged white man from texas with two biracial grandsons. i fear for them, not because their parents are on welfare, not because they have low expectations, not because they’ve been inculcated with some theoretical black culture but because they look black and are treated differently because of that. when their mother shows up at school for a parent conference the teachers call her by her first name and treat her with condescencion and tut-tutting about setting the right priorities, when my son shows up he gets called “Mr.” and sir and his suggestions are taken into consideration almost as soon as he states them. i have been teaching school in texas for 20 years now and i have seen the results of a racist society unfolding in front of my eyes. i treat all the people i deal with, adults and children, with the respect that is their due as human beings, something most of the white teachers i know give only to whites and the occasional child of a teacher who might be hispanic or black.
i know my grandchildren will always be at a disadvantage in their dealings with white authority because of the racism of our society. based on my observations over the course of my life and my reading of history it is my considered opinion that our history of slavery drove us mad and instead of recovering from it we have blamed the slaves and their ancestors for our madness ever since. your willful blindness, along with all too many others just like you, to the reality of the oppressiveness of our society is why i fear for the safety of my grandsons. i can only hope someday the sleepers shall awake and the blind can be made to see.
Well I said cliven Bundy was a crook. And Michael Brown was no Emmett Till. Sufficiently respectful means not fighting with the cop. Sort of intuitive. The misdirection in this case comes from making it into this discussion.
And yes you are trying to catch me out. Sort of irritating but that’s just you.
wj, if we take your timeline, and I have thought about it, then one or two more generations should do it.
You’ve thought about it? Really? Look at these charts and explain how they do not blow your “theory” totally out of the water.
There is something going on here, and you simply and willfully refuse to see it.
if you won’t take it from tnc then please take it from a middle-aged white man from texas with two biracial grandsons. i fear for them,
You know what, navarro? I fear for children, period. But what you have is something really wonderful: Your children, and grandchildren, they’re changing the world. Don’t fear for them: be grateful for them every day. They obviously exist with the full support of their ancestors (you!), and will continue to make the world better.
Sometimes I lose hope, but with navarro’s kids as a focus point? Why not hope? They’re fighting, struggling, winning.
Respect and Trust is asking for too much. Those must be earned.
We would have a lot less trouble if we would/could just use a minimum of common courtesy when initiating intercourse with each other. IMHO
Actually Navarro I have twin biracial grandsons. And I fear for them in much the same way I fear for my other 4 grandchildren. I find it interesting that you feel you are the exception in the school system, I find that you would be the norm and the tut tutters the exception.
then one or two more generations should do it.
No, Marty, then one or two more generations is the earliest we could expect it to happen. Except that, as noted, blacks also face the hurdle of having a substantial part of the population which is heavily culturally invested in keeping them out.
That portion is declining. But it is declining very slowly. And if you want an index of how large it still is, a first estimate would be the number of “birthers” out there. They get worked up about a black man who, they say, shouldn’t be President because he wasn’t born here (except he was). But are utterly silent about a couple of white men (McCain and Cruz) who might be President and who definitively were not born here. (And yes, because their parents were American citizens, they are eligible. Just as Obama would be, regardless of where he was born.) People can oppose Obama for lots of reason. But they are birthers for racist reasons, nothing more. And until those numbers drop, the integration of blacks will be on hold in large parts of the country.
@sapient–
i appreciate your thoughts. most days i celebrate those amazing bundles of possibilities that are my grandsons but when things like what happened to trayvon martin or michael brown come along i worry for them because they resemble those guys more than they do ethan couch or joseph houseman and i know that life carries more dangers for them than they did for me or my sons because of the color of their skin.
In reverse order
And yes you are trying to catch me out. Sort of irritating but that’s just you
Marty, I can only go by what you write, and what you write suggests that you only went back to look at TNC after being prompted.
The misdirection in this case comes from making it into this discussion.
Also, realizing that you didn’t bring this into the discussion, don’t try and suggest that we did either. We both know who brought it in and when I bounced him, I get told by McT that IO just made the mistake of speaking more honestly than TNC (who is not here). The implication is that we tried to follow our posting rules and somehow, we are being intolerant by not permitting IO to speak his mind.
Setting aside the fact that you don’t know he was fighting with a cop (I’m trying to think of what scenario has a cop car drive up to two people in a suburban street and one of the guys walking reaches in the car to start a fight) and the question of walking down a suburban street is such a threat to the public order that a cop needs to shoot someone, if you don’t realize that phrases like
African Americans can call the cops just like everyone else in America.
These lessons are fruitless, teaching actual respect is different than teaching them to fear.
The slightest respect, for drivers trying to use the street and then the police, the most minimal respect, would have avoided that death.
Seem straight out racist. Just because you attribute it to ‘black culture’ (without the slightest acknowledgement of how ‘white culture’ helped create ‘black culture’ with the war on drugs, defunding inner city education, and white flight) doesn’t make the racism go away.
A small aside, I’m headed to Kyrgyzstan for 10 days from tomorrow morning, so I won’t be able to provide my usual tit for tat. Apologies in advance.
McT, thanks for the message, I was worried I had run you off. If you would like the poisoned chalice of a guest post, go for it, Use the mail contact under the kitty
Not a chance. These colors don’t run, baby! It’s the damn day job. You’d think I’d get to slow down a bit in my dotage, but apparently not. A guest post might be fun–same topic? Inflammatory!
I am not certain, lj, what you could possibly find in those three sentences that approaches racism. I did run across this quote in reading from another thread that I think fits here:
“In one sense [Stephen Jay] Gould has been proved right, though not in the way he would have wanted. His distortion of Morton’s data reveals how strongly held ideological beliefs – in this case not racism but anti-racism – can persuade one to see what one wants to see among the thicket of facts.” —Kenan Malik, “The Science of Seeing What You Want To See”
Your confirmation bias on this topic is extraordinarily well developed.
Lastly, and really the only one that is important, the very nature of societies dismissal of any white person as someone a black person might emulate is the problem in black society. Why can’t Kennedy be a hero or example for a black child every bit as much as
Obama? Why are only black people heroes to black people? Because they are taught by their parents that they are different. That being black means being different. Not by society, by their parents
I’m not sure that being told they are different by their parents excludes being told the same by society.
And I suspect the messages have a somewhat different valence in the two cases.
Also, as a point of interest, many homes of blacks of a certain age have a portrait of Kennedy in them.
All of that said, IMO you are asking relevant questions. You’re speaking from your own experience and understanding of the situation.
Coates does the same, you apparently are simply not open to what he’s saying.
Also, for the record and FWIW, yes, I live in a very very white town, and work in a very very white industry. I also participate in an art that was created by American blacks, and through that involvement have developed an empathetic interest in their history and experience.
I’m not making any claims, whatsoever, about “speaking for the black experience”, nor am I making any claims whatsoever about having any kind of “street cred” when it comes to issues of race.
I see that Michael Brown’s body was left on the street for four hours after he was shot, and I don’t see that happening to white people. Regardless of whether they stole a cigar or not.
Multiply that by thousands of other examples, and it occurs to me that the experience of being black in this country is not the same as not being black.
And not because black parents are “sending the wrong message” to their kids. Because they simply are not treated the same by the rest of us.
As I understand his writing, Coates is not trying to solve the intractable puzzle of race in the US, and he’s not trying to understand every side and point of view. He’s trying to understand and articulate *his own* experience and point of view.
To dismiss what he has to say is to ignore the experience and perspective of a hell of a lot of folks.
“Has something of value to say” is not the same as “I agree with him”.
McT, go for it, if you dare/care/[other words that rhyme and actually fit]!
Marty, you are telling people that lessons are fruitless because they are members of black culture which judges them on their race rather than on who they are. That’s racist
You are assuming that Michael Brown’s lack of respect led to his death suggests that he wasn’t deferential enough to the powers that be. Somehow deference is what a young black person should do. That’s racist
You are assuming that African Americans have the same experience and therefore can call on the same protections of society suggests a blindness that can only come if you fail to acknowledge the different experiences of African Americans. That seems to deny all of the data that has been tossed around here, which seems racist.
You don’t think they are, but every one of those examples judges people by the color of their skin. You may think that you would feel the same if they were red or yellow or blue, so therefore you are not being racist, but that’s actually not how it works.
I’m also not sure how a quote from Kenan Malik about Stephen Jay Gould discussing Gould’s book The Mismeasure of Man is at all relevant. I suppose you will think it is par for the course, but I will point out that I really doubt you’ve read either Gould or Malik, it is just that this quote seemed to be a nice way to talk about confirmation bias, as well as get in a shot at me, without you realizing what Malik is actually pointing out. I realize that you never add links, so the link is here for those who might be interested in seeing the whole thing. You seem to have missed this
Modern day scientific racists, such as Philippe J Rushton, seized upon Michael’s paper as a stick with which to beat Gould and to proclaim the rightness of their own bizarre racial theories.
which sounds a lot like what you are doing with Malik.
And it closes with this.
What their paper reveals is that the social embeddedness of science is both a weakness and a strength. Scientists live in particular societies, and are shaped by particular cultures. The questions they ask about the world and the interpretations they place on their data are inevitably formed by cultural attitudes, needs and possibilities. Because scientific practice is socially bound, it is open to ideological corruption. But it is also the social embeddedness of science that provides the means to combat such corruption. The weapons we need to defend scientific objectivity are themselves social practices: an open society, the encouragement of free debate, a skepticism of accepting truth on authority, a willingness to question received wisdom, an acknowledgement of the political independence of scientific research.
I’m not trying to talk down to you, but it seems like you don’t understand this (or just didn’t read it, your pull quote confirming what you knew in your heart of hearts), but it’s actually a pretty telling refutation of your stance. I believe that you think that “black culture” is responsible for the state of black America, but you think that ‘black culture’ is basically a substitute for genetics. But as Malik points out, cultures are socially embedded and they can only change when they are given things like “an open society, the encouragement of free debate, a skepticism of accepting truth on authority, a willingness to question received wisdom, an acknowledgement of the political independence” Yet you refuse to accept that blacks are not given those things. Open society? Encouragement of free debate? Skepticism of accepting truth on authority? Willingness to quest received wisdom? An acknowledgement of independence? That 0 for 5. Yet somehow, it’s the black folks fault.
You feel like you pulled a gotcha on Gould and therefore me, which then somehow proves your point, but I don’t think you understand what Malik is trying to say, nor are you interested in understanding it. You are just digging up quotes and scattering them like candy from a busted piñata. Sure, you might get in a good hit or two, but it’s not from understanding what you want to say, it’s from wild flailing while you are blindfolded. As russell says, you aren’t really open to any experience that might contradict yours and you certainly aren’t going to go into details. I find it an embarrassing place to be, but it seems to be where you like to camp out.
lj, I don’t really do gotcha’s, that’s your bailiwick. I actually AM open to other peoples experience, I am NOT open to people who discount everyone else’s experience, TNC.
“Somehow deference is what a young black person should do. ”
Without a blow by blow, this represents where you are missing the point, I believe deference is what EVERY young person should do. There is no way to be less racist.
I cut lots out of the parts I quoted from Malik because I thought the wee bit was well stated as applied to you. Not that the total research supported any part of my view except your extraordinary ability to invent racism where none exists.
russell,
My view of TNC is based on the fact that at one point he was one of my 6 RSS feeds (along with Andrew Sullivan who is also no longer on the list). In between some interesting perspective occasionally he became more radicalized, what I found more racist and less open to other ideas in his writing’ and so a few years ago I quit reading him. That leaves me with limited knowledge of what he has written since then, but those things that have been linked to provide me with no reason to change my mind.
Everyone, even I, has made a premature decision on the Michael Brown case. There is lots of evidence he isn’t a great guy, there is no evidence the cop did anything wrong, but he didn’t seem to do anything worth dying over.
And then comes the “thousands of examples” of black people getting shot by cops, there are thousands of examples of white guys getting shot by cops, but that’s not news. Each of those incidents has its own story, and cant be lumped together to excuse behavior that would be unacceptable under any other circumstance.
That’s my experience. After being an outspoken advocate for Civil Rights for more than 40 years, I am looking for the white folk to continue to improve and black folk to take some responsibility. I only see half of that.
Marty, it’s fine to believe that all young people should be more deferential. All the evidence indicates that they won’t be, but believing that they should is fine. (Even tradditional.)
But the difference is in what happens when a young person is not. If he is white, chances are he gets nothing more than a slap on the wrist. At most, arrested for something — and the charges probably get dropped unless he actually injures the police officer.
But if he is black, he is far more likely to get arrested . . . and the charges do not get dropped. And his “at most” ends up like Mr Brown. Dead.
Refusing to recognizing that may not strictly fit the definition of racism. But it comes pretty darn close.
wj,
I cant even logically process the leaps in what you have said. Which isn’t meant to criticize you, its meant to point out there is NOTHING racist about having equal expectations of young men.
Mr Brown robbed a store, threatened the clerk and then walked down the middle of a street blocking traffic, then attacked a cop. No white guy gets a slap on the wrist for that, and is quite likely to be dead.
lj, I don’t really do gotcha’s, that’s your bailiwick.
Well, that whole notion of cutting out a small chunk while failing to acknowledge Malik’s point about the importance of the embeddedness of cultures seems to suggest a gotcha, but maybe you just don’t understand what Malik is saying.
your extraordinary ability to invent racism where none exists
And like Colbert’s character saying he doesn’t see race, you are going to tell us you take the Ferguson test and pass cause you are arguing for all young people to be deferent, not just blacks.
Stan’s Dad is not an I-hate-black-people kind of racist, and undoubtedly he would be offended to be described as any kind of racist at all. In most ways, he’s a fairly typical middle-class white parent. He didn’t wake up that morning thinking, “I’m going to say ‘nigger’ today, and don’t let anybody try to stop me.” He knows what attitudes and behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable in today’s society, and he does his best to pretend that his mind really works that way.
But it just doesn’t. Whatever his conscious intentions, his mental reflexes have been passed down from another era, when racism was as common as air.
Me pointing this out about you shouldn’t be taken as me claiming that I am unlike you. The only difference is that I acknowledge that the word comes to mind but you aruge that it never crosses yours. I mean, it is possible, but I just don’t believe it.
I don’t think this makes me morally superior, it just means that until you figure this out, when we get in these conversations, people are going to point out twhat you are overlooking and you are going to get your feelings hurt and say things like ‘that’s unnecessary’.
At any rate, I didn’t come into this conversation looking to call you or anyone else out. But when I try to tamp things down and you suggest that I’m kicking IO out cause I’m intolerant, it kinda puts a hole in your need to be deferent argument.
“I mean, it is possible, but I just don’t believe it. ”
Never? That would be ludicrous, but it is years between times. I am not sure what your point is, that there is simply no chance that anyone is not racist?
I have my prejudices, some are race based, I firmly believe that Mexicans work harder and complain less than blacks in warehouse work. So that’s a subset of all Mexicans and all blacks based on my direct experience working in the warehouse with them.
I suspect by that broad definition that Gary’s reference years ago to everyone’s a little racist is appropriate.
I didn’t say that there was anything racist about having equal expectations. In fact, I was trying to say that there was not. (Apologies that I was unclear.)
But regardless of the specifics of Mr Brown’s case (which are still far from certain), it is a fact that black young men do not get equal treatment for equal behavior. Sass a police officer? Definitely not going to get equal treatment. Just walking down the street? Not getting equal treatment there either. (Check out the statistics on the numbers of young, or even not so young, men stopped. And the statistics on what fraction of those stopped actually are found in violation of the law. FYI, the whites that are stopped are far more likely to have actually been engageing in something illegal.)
You might also be interested in this story from here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Do you really believe that a white firefighter, with kids in tow, would have been treated the same? Really?
i find it interesting that your long-term view of tnc is that he has become more radicalized. my long-term view is that he has become less hopeful and more realistic.
i see examples of racism in action from a position of white privilege on an almost daily basis. simply in terms of disciplinary actions i see young white men in a school setting being given numerous second chances which young black men never get. i’ve had to go to the office after incidents involving a black child and a white child in which it was the white child who initiated and escalated the incident but it was the black child who was written up so that i could to clarify to the principal or the assistant principal who was at fault in the incident and seen the black child get punished despite the intervention.
the largest difference between the two of us is that i recognize the extent of the privilege into which i have been born and i have my eyes open to the damage caused by unacknowledged privilege in the power relations between the races and the sexes. mayhap i’m wrong but it seems that you really have no clue and are impervious to any evidence anyone offers to you.
I am not sure what your point is, that there is simply no chance that anyone is not racist?
That Ferguson text link had a quote at the bottom from this essay
Where do you locate yourself in these stories? Who do you see as dangerous, and who is trustworthy? Where do you locate safety? What would safety look like for the people of Ferguson now, for instance? As a white person in the U.S., I am conditioned from birth to see whiteness as safety — white neighborhoods, white people, white authority figures. My lived experience, my conversations with people of color, and my study of history have shown me over and over that this is a wild and cruel perversion of the truth. But the cultural conditioning is strong. Unless I fight it every day, white superiority seeps into my brain in slow, almost undetectable ways.
When you say I am seeing racism where _none_ exists, you are positive? You go years without thinking of it, but how often do you work with black people. How often are you put in a situation where you would be the minority and they would be the majority? How many times to you have to defer to a black person? Given the separatedness of black and white society, I imagine not ever. You’ve come back and quoted Gary saying that everyone is a bit racist, so it seems that you are giving up on your assertion that your quotient, when talking about racial unrest in Ferguson, is none. But you spin out a story about Michael Brown that is a collage of forged xrays, anonymous leaks and ass-covering and you swallow it hook line and sinker. So while there may be a theoretical possibility that there is a American who is not racist, it ain’t me and it definitely ain’t you.
I am looking for the white folk to continue to improve and black folk to take some responsibility. I only see half of that.
yes, you speak as if you only see half of that.
I think there’s much you’re missing, on both sides of the equation.
I’m not going to try to talk you into a different point of view, that’s just mine.
i find it interesting that your long-term view of tnc is that he has become more radicalized. my long-term view is that he has become less hopeful and more realistic.
Yes, that’s my take as well.
Marty:
I’ve been trying to avoid piling on, but wanted to touch on this:
The slightest respect, for drivers trying to use the street and then the police, the most minimal respect, would have avoided that death. Any other discussion is academic and perhaps will get full circle to, he was taught to not respect the cops. Any cop.
That the respect aspect keeps being brought up bothers me. ‘Respect’ given to the officer is completely tangential to the problem. Wilson was either justified in use of lethal force or he wasn’t. There are guidelines for the use of deadly force, and being disrespected is not sufficient reason. Whether Brown was meek and deferential or a raging asshole should not enter into a decision to use deadly force.
You might argue its prudent to be polite and helpful to officers, and that that might help keep a situation from escalating. Granted. But given that it was an interaction between an unarmed teenager and an experienced officer sworn to serve and protect a community, I place more responsibility for the situation getting out of hand on the officer. As a corollary, I care very little about how respectful Brown was.
Sunil Dutta recently wrote a column charmingly titled “I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.”(http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/19/im-a-cop-if-you-dont-want-to-get-hurt-dont-challenge-me/ ).
In it, he said the following:
Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.
I can think of very similar comments coming out of the mouth of a mugger, or accompanying an ISIL video.
One of the problems with this type of thinking (Brown should have shown more respect to Wilson; do what the officer tells you, etc) is that it normalizes these questions being asked after a shooting: Why wasn’t he more respectful? Why was he in the street and not the sidewalk?
And the juxtaposition between those questions and someone being shot to death is striking to me.
But those seem to be the questions asked that lead to answers like “black culture”. A concept I am completely unconvinced by, for many reasons.
I’d ask you to consider that if “black culture” is the driving factor in the apparent racial disparity in our justice system, why is there also a racial disparity in wrongful convictions?
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/What_Wrongful_Convictions_Teach_Us_About_Racial_Inequality.php
Finally, speaking of wrongful convictions, some good news, if far to late:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/us/2-convicted-in-1983-north-carolina-murder-freed-after-dna-tests.html?hpw&rref=us&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1
Thompson, that last story does raise a question in my mind. We keep seeing convictions, especially for things like rape, getting overturned on DNA evidence. But how many other wrongful convictions are there, where DNA evidence is not available? Somehow, I am having trouble believing that cases with DNA evidence available (for after the fact checking) are the only ones where there are problems.
wj:
That is the problem: beyond our court system, we have no ways of determining guilt. If we had a rigorous method for determining guilt and innocence, I’d hope we would already be using it.
I think the good that comes out of things like the innocence project is not just that some innocents are given back (what’s left of) their lives.
But also that it points to flawed system. These men were arrested by the police, prosecuted by a DA, provided an attorney, heard by impartial judges, and still slipped through.
Every one of those is in theory a check against what happened to them. But all of those checks failed.
It should force us to reconsider how our criminal justice system works at all levels.
“And the juxtaposition between those questions and someone being shot to death is striking to me.”
Yes because you skip the part where he then attacks the cop.
It should force us to reconsider how our criminal justice system works at all levels.
As always, Dahlia Lithwick has excellent commentary on this issue.
i find it interesting that your long-term view of tnc is that he has become more radicalized. my long-term view is that he has become less hopeful and more realistic.
Yes. Realistic to the point of despondency and despair…not the characteristics of a “radical” by any means.
As I parse through the comments, it appears the disagreement boils down to this:
Marty/McKinney: We observe black poverty and social “pathologies” due to the defective nature of “black culture”. This defective culture is passed down through the generations (or from one unwed mother to another if you will). The way to alleviate the poverty and crime is to find incentives to get blacks to shed their cultural pathologies, break these generational linkages, and, given the legislative successes of the 1960’s all will be well in the near future. Any impact due to white racism is no longer a factor of any importance to explain the black community’s plight.
Bobbyp and possibly others: The observed poverty of the black communities is due to not only past white racism, but ongoing segregation (which we see), and other examples of widespread white racist behavior (also commonly documented and quantified). Segregation and economic discrimination are the major cause of the “pathologies” offered up repeatedly by white race apologists. Even the liberal New Deal policies were, in effect, affirmative action for whites. That was not that long ago, and those effects echo down to the present. This racism prevents blacks from accumulating capital, or “progressing” as some might say.
That about right?
Marty:
Yes because you skip the part where he then attacks the cop.
There are several things going on in this story, and I’m trying to pull out one thread. At the moment, I was trying to focus on the “respect” meme that has been part of the debate. I attempted to suggest that it isn’t a relevant part of the discussion.
You are correct, I glossed over some details of the incident with a single phrase:
Wilson was either justified in use of lethal force or he wasn’t.
I did that for a few reasons. It wasn’t really the point I was trying to make, for one. But I’m happy to expand on it.
First of all, we know very little about what happened. We have a police description, a witness description, and some physical evidence (autopsy, recording, etc). Neither account squares perfectly with the physical evidence, suggesting we don’t know what happened.
It is possible, Brown attacked the officer with very little provocation. It could be, fearing for his life, the officer correctly made a decision to use lethal force. I find that unlikely, for reasons we can go into if you’d like.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, Brown viciously assaulted Wilson after he was asked politely to get off the street. What’s the relevance of “respect”? What’s the relevance of him being on the street? The justification for lethal force is the assault, and Wilson’s fear of death or severe injury.
Yet the argument is frequently made, including by you, that lack of respect was an issue. In Dutta’s view, lack of cooperation.
Framing the issue like that leads to questions such as is Brown a criminal? Why is he a criminal? What is his upbringing? What kind of guy he is?
and away from questions like was force justified? Did the officer follow use of force guidelines? Why did he fear for his life or grievous harm? And, importantly, did he and his department follow appropriate standards reporting and investigating the incident?
Which gets me back to another reason I didn’t bring up the details of encounter. We don’t know them with any assurance, because Wilson and/or Ferguson PD didn’t really see fit to make a detailed report, get witness statements, etc, all the basic things you would expect with any homicide, even a justified one.
That alone is incredibly alarming to me, even in the (IMHO, unlikely) case that Wilson was fully justified in the shooting.
I hate to sound utterly apathetic, but I have reached this stage in life where I look at writers as people with opinions, some of which are shallow and ill-informed, and some not.
TNC is one of the latter. Which is not to say that I reflexively agree with the guy. It’s that he occasionally gives me something to think about. That there’s no obvious solution to many of the problems he poses is, in my opinion, not that big of an issue.
I disagree with the suggestion of reparations, for instance. But the desire for some kind of justice is one that I have some listening for. A sympathetic ear, if you will. I just don’t think every injustice can be rectified, because they can’t all be. A lot of them can’t possibly be.
Even given that, though: now what? is a question worthy of consideration.
bobbyp,
I would parse the words differently, I wouldn’t use black culture because I think the specifics can be identified, etc. But I think this:
is where we diverge. I think that white racism has and will play a role. I think black racism, or black reaction to white racism if that phraseology is more comfortable, has become an equal or greater limitation. White racism isn’t going away, it will exist, it will have a negative pov, it exists in societies centuries older than ours. We fought to make its impact illegal, we cant outlaw it, only its immediate impacts. Beyond that the consistent exercise of those protections within the bounds of appropriate behavior builds friends and will, over time, break the cycle.
Maybe even that isn’t clear enough. As a young man I was certain that all these things would be resolved in my lifetime and hope would create goodwill toward all men. Perhaps TNC is not radicalized, perhaps it is disillusioned. Maybe he is searching for a reason to hope. If that is where he is, then we are much closer than I might imagine.
Yes because you skip the part where he then attacks the cop.
For the record – if I understand the state of the issue correctly, the actual sequence of events remains unclear.
In other words, unless I misunderstand what’s known and not known as of now, whether he attacked the cop or not is unclear.
I doubt that anyone questions the right of a police officer to respond to an attack with deadly force if he or she deems it necessary.
Whether that was the situation is basically the open question in this case. The conflicting testimony of the various witnesses vs. what the cops say doesn’t help, nor does the Ferguson PD’s less-than-forthcoming handling of what information they do have.
I’m fine with letting the FBI and the DOJ sort it.
Which is not to say that I reflexively agree with the guy.
Nor I.
It’s that he occasionally gives me something to think about.
For me, it’s most times I read him.
That there’s no obvious solution to many of the problems he poses is, in my opinion, not that big of an issue.
I would go somewhat further than this and say that there’s likely no complete and comprehensive solution, obvious or otherwise, to the issues he raises, but that progress requires hearing what other folks have to say, whether we agree with it or not.
@marty–
” Perhaps TNC is not radicalized, perhaps it is disillusioned. Maybe he is searching for a reason to hope. If that is where he is, then we are much closer than I might imagine.”
with that statement you have demonstrated that you are no brett bellmore because he would never question a premise of anything he had already written and you have in many ways redeemd yourself as an interlocutor in this conversation with that remark. i know that there is much still that seperates us but there is hope for communication.
i wanted to give you an example of two things in one anecdote. at my school we are required this year to document 9 positive parent contacts per 9 weeks grading period. this is an administrative fad that crops up every 6-9 years and this is the third time i’ve come across it in my 20 year career. i’m just not the kind of person to be able to do a fake call so i’ve only been doing contacts only with those parents of children i can sincerely praise for actual reasons i can easily point to. so today i called a mother of a black child after school. when she answered the phone i asked for the mother of this particular child and immediately the voice became freighted with concern and suspicion when she said that i was peaking to her. the voice became tinged with dread when i identified myself as one of her daughter’s teachers. when i began expressing my admiration for her daughter’s leadership skills and great work ethic the woman’s voice almost broke with a mix of pleasure and surprise. as we finished the conversation she thanked me profusely saying she had never gotten a call like that from a teacher before and telling me how hard she had tried to raise her daughter right. when i ended by suggesting her daughter become involved with our student council to help her refine her leadership qualities she came right out and said that she had never talked to a white teacher who had seen those qualities in her daughter or been able to get past her girl’s very ethnic name.
my points are two-fold–
1. it’s not just the massive discrimination black americans have faced in the 150 years since slavery but also the sheer weight of all the accumulated indignities and slights built into our system that oppress them.
2. i can only control my own actions, i can only influence those with whom i communicate, and i can only vote for those candidates whose policies move most in the direction of equality and equity. one middle aged white man can’t change the world by himself but he can improve his little corner of it one piece at a time and it is through the collective actions of individuals that progress can occur. i encourage you all to let your actions match what you would claim to.
“The fact that I wanted to be a scientist, an astrophysicist was, hands down, the path of most resistance”
Neil deGrasse Tyson from the 1:01:30 mark.
Something I think is really ironic here:
We’ve had plenty of discussions here about the “disappointment” in Barack Obama. How he’s not “progressive” enough, or how he’s way too hawkish, or how he didn’t “work hard enough” (sound familiar) for single payer healthcare, or how his work with Congress to bring the country out of the recession was insufficient, too weak.
And many people here reserved their right to criticize the President, the powerful privileged President, who held all of the cards.
You know what? I have seen it as racism. Or, at least, a reluctance to support the reversal of racism. Because this African-American President has done almost everything right. [But he could have been Lyndon Johnson, dammit! He could have been Hubert Humphrey, dammit! He could have been more McGovernlike, danmmit!]
Says me, the sock puppet.
Obama could have been Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln all rolled into one. And the right would have trashed him incessently, while the left complained that he should have done lots more.
Some of those complaints would be issue based. But far far more of them (on both sides) would have been race based. Witness the reactions, also on both sides, to even those Presidents that they disagreed with, or agreed with, vigorously in the past.
“You know what? I have seen it as racism”
Good lord, you just can’t help yourself, can you? Every criticism of Obama, no matter what inspires it, ranging from racist idiots who think he’s Kenyan to people who think the drone assassination program is immoral–it’s all the same thing. Didn’t work hard enough for single payer–yeah, sure, the people who made that critique (I don’t happen to agree with it) were really using a racist trope. Leave it to you, sapient, to drag the argument into this absurd direction. Every single issue in the universe ultimately boils down to whether one is a supporter of Obama in all possible respects. Even TNC has criticized Obama. Maybe he’s a racist after all.
That’s all I’ll say–I was tempted to post a link to someone who just criticized Obama in sensible ways, but I won’t, because this thread isn’t about Obama and what sorts of criticisms one can legitimately make of his presidency.
I think you can make a case that at least some of those criticizing Obama from the left are doing so based on race. Obama, objectively, is a center-right politician. But the belief (from either end of the political spectrum) that all blacks must be liberals is clearly present. For the right, anything he does must be part of the “liberal agenda” — even when it is something that the right has been championing. For the left, any time that he fails to do something that they want, it is betrayal — because regardless of what he has been saying all along, he simply must agree with them.
“But the belief (from either end of the political spectrum) that all blacks must be liberals is clearly present.”
Among stupid people, perhaps.
“For the left, any time that he fails to do something that they want, it is betrayal — because regardless of what he has been saying all along, he simply must agree with them.”
Well, again, if you’re talking about stupid people, sure. There was a lot of absurdly heightened significance given to his election which no one could have lived up to. He himself seemed to think he was going to unify the country. But yes, with some of Obama’s critics, there were people who read his books and imagined that he was some sort of liberal demigod because his mixed racial background and history would give him insights that no other President had ever had. It should have been obvious that he wasn’t who they imagined he was, and their sense of betrayal was a self-inflicted one.
I think most of Obama’s critics on the left would be even more critical of a President Clinton if she had won, and I’m already dreading her Presidency if she wins in 2016, at least on foreign policy issues, where she is demonstrably more hawkish than Obama. This in spite of the fact that I’ll vote for her if she gets the nomination.
If you want to define those people as stupid, I can’t really disagree with you. But I would note that there seem a rather large (and vocal) number of them. (Although I suppose some of the noise could be coming from those who know better, but see a political advantage from appearing to believe nonsense.)
“Some of those complaints would be issue based. But far far more of them (on both sides) would have been race based. Witness the reactions, also on both sides, to even those Presidents that they disagreed with, or agreed with, vigorously in the past.”
I don’t get what you’re saying. The fact is that Bill Clinton also got trashed (and a little more than that–I seem to recall an impeachment) during his term and he too reached out to the right. He was vilified by the right and also by many on the left for various reasons. I know someone once rather absurdly said Clinton was our first black President, but I don’t think that’s why he was so harshly criticized. He was trashed by the right because Newt and others thought it was the way to win more power for their side. He was attacked by the left for not being very leftish. I could give you my reasons, but won’t.
People who think that the vilification of Obama is somehow unique must be forgetting things like the fact that Hillary Clinton was accused of murdering Vince Foster. The vilification of Obama has a racial edge to it on the right, but then, the vilification of Hillary had a misogynist tone to it and it really didn’t matter that much that Bill himself was a white Southern boy–the right hated him too.
I’m hoping someone swings this thread back to the original topic–clearly I don’t have the willpower to do it.
“If you want to define those people as stupid, I can’t really disagree with you. But I would note that there seem a rather large (and vocal) number of them. ”
One of my friends (now deceased) had this intense adoration of Obama in 2008–I really can’t describe it any other way. He wasn’t stupid–far from it–, so yes, I was being harsh, but his beliefs seemed to me to be like a teenager with a bad crush. A few years into Obama’s Presidency, by 2010 or 2011, he realized that Obama wasn’t in fact the embodiment of all progressive left wisdom and he became, if anything, a harsher critic of Obama than I ever was. So that was unrequited love, I suppose. It was “race based” maybe in the sense that Obama’s race is part of why people imagined him as some sort of ideal uber-politician, the man who because of his background understood the global poor and America’s divisions and agreed with everything the progressive left happened to think on a given subject.
I don’t know how many people on Obama’s left are actually like that–embittered former lovers. I think he’s good on some things, okay on others, terrible on still others. I only occasionally see people still getting into the question of whether Obama is a great hero or a great betrayer, though in fact I did just see a blogger I like revisit the whole thing. Warren is the new idol (and I’ve already beaten the rush to disillusionment, being disgusted by comments she made about Gaza. I’ll vote for her if she runs.)
Yes, Clinton got trashed from the right. But he got far, far more cooperation from the Republicans in Congress than Obama ever has. Both before and after the impeachment. They didn’t like Clinton, but the level of animosity was nothing like what Obama has faced from day one.
As for the impeachment, assume for the sake of discussion that there was some basis for it (which I don’t believe, but…). Now consider what would have happened to Obama if there had been the slightest sliver of similar behavior. (My personal opinion is that one of the greatest frustrations on the right with Obama is that his personal life is some totally lacking in anything that they can attack him for. Not to mention that his personal behavior is so much like the family values that their politicians talk so much about . . . and so often fail to exhibit themselves.)
Well, yes, if Obama ever had a Monica Lewinsky–I can’t even begin to imagine what Fox News would do with that, let alone the nastier corners of the blogosphere. Fortunately Obama really does seem to have a very strong marriage.
Changing the subject back to the subject, here’s a New Yorker piece about racial disparities in the criminal justice system, with some praise for what Eric Holder is doing to reduce them–
link
You know what? I have seen it as racism.
Some is, some isn’t. IMO.
But the belief (from either end of the political spectrum) that all blacks must be liberals is clearly present.
?!?!?
russell, if that means you don’t understand, I’m not sure why not. (At least, when I use that “?!?!?” I mean “What kind of idea is that???” Did you mean something else?)
Have you not noticed that, even when Obama does something conservatives have invented (the ACA comes to mind), he gets denounced as a socialist? Not just as too liberal, but as a socialist? (Vs when Clinton did something, there were objections, and accusations of excessive liberalism and creeping big governement. But IIRC accusations of his being a socialist didn’t happen.)
Or have you not noticed that liberals assume that Obama must be a liberal, too? Even though his statements, and his record in office, don’t really support that. Which IMHO is why they are unhappy that he didn’t go for single (government) payer in the ACA. And was late getting to support of gay marriage. And hasn’t reined in the NSA’s activities. Etc. Etc. It isn’t just that they wish he was acting more liberal, though of course they do. They appear to think that he should be more liberal himself.
And, in both cases, I submit that his race is what is driving the expectation of what his positions on the issues should be. At least, I can’t see any other obvious cause — although I am open to suggestions.
“At least, I can’t see any other obvious cause — although I am open to suggestions”
Perhaps as the titular head of the Democrat Party they expect him to be in tune with their view of what the party stands for, from both sides I think you are really stretching on both ends to assign broad based racism for people who disagree with him. Lets not forget that in the election he won the Republicans were excoriated and called all kinds of names over Iraq and torture and Abu Ghraib, tied to Cheney etc. The preceding two years they were hammered every day with negative ads. They were not going to be cooperative with Obama after that. Period. Then during his first term, he continued to leverage that “Bush” trope at every turn. At some point you need to grasp that people, especially on the right, don’t like him. It has Nothing to do with his race.
I think there was the sense on the left that he had walked the tight rope to seem more moderate to get elected, and that he would move left after the election. His history in Illinois should have led them to question that assumption. All of his elections relyed on a base of white wealthy voters who were enamored with his intellectual approach. He was certainly never a McCarthy Democrat.
At least, I can’t see any other obvious cause — although I am open to suggestions.
I think Marty’s right, it’s more that he’s a (D) president, and less that he’s black.
My ?!?!?! was just an expression of my surprise that folks would assume that black = liberal. I’ve always understood that the black community trends kind of conservative, at least as regards social issues.
They tend to vote (D) because they are not convinced the (R) public policies will work in their favor or interests.
As anyone in the commonwealth of MA can tell you, (D) does not necessarily mean liberal.
I’m not surprised that, in Massachusettes, D does not necessarily mean liberal. What I see in California is that R has come to mean reactionary, far more often than merely conservative. As a result of which, some of the Democrats here are pretty conservative — as in they would have been Republicans, even as recently as the 1980s.
My view that a lot of liberals just assume that blacks (excepting a handful of “house blacks” of course) will be liberals too comes from two things:
– the liberals I know (and being in the San Francisco area, I know quite a few.)
– the local and state liberal politicians whose comments I get to observe.
It seems, at least here, to be far more common than not.
Note that this is separate from the fact that, as you note, the black community as a whole is actually quite conservative. But consider, for example, how often you have heard liberals muttering about how they can’t understand why blacks are so hostile to gays and gay marriage. After all, it is (or was some years ago) basically a liberal position. So why weren’t blacks on board? The liberals I know seem to find that quite confusing.
As for opposition to Obama, I don’t disagree that there are lots of people who oppose him merely because of his party. (Just as there are a lot who oppose him on some issues, regardless of party.) But I was trying to look at those who go beyond that.
People opposed Clinton on those bases. Just as people also opposed Reagan on those bases. But neither got the level of hostility, or across-the-board resistance, from their opponents that Obama has gotten from the right. And neither did Clinton (at least as I recall) get the kind of personal attacks (except for specific personal misbehavior, of course) that Obama has.
There was a lot of absurdly heightened significance given to his election which no one could have lived up to.
Since this thread has been a discussion about race, and lingering, virulent racism, the fact that an African-American president was elected in the United States despite that reality is a matter of huge significance to a lot of people. In fact, it can’t be overstated how significant it has been to some people.
wj:
Not to completely discount racism as to why Obama gets so much crap, but two other things to consider:
(1) Both parties have gotten far more polarized, even if you only consider a decade or so of time passing. You take two center-left presidents, the 2010 president is going to be further from the Ds and Rs than the 1994 president, purely because the wings of both parties have stretched out.
(2) The internet. The internet was around in Clinton’s time, sure, but its a whole lot more accessible now. I think the internet can enable extremism, and extreme pushback, in many ways. Frex, the formation of echo chambers on fairly extremist sites.
Again, not saying there is not a racist component to the pushback on Obama, but race is hardly the only factor that’s different between Obama and Clinton.
thompson, fair enough. Both have doubtless contributed.
Although in the case of polarization, I wonder how much is cause and how much effect. That is, how much of the flack Obama has gotten was due to polarization, vs how much of the increased polarization was due to Obama being black?
Probably have to do some serious sociological/psychological research to find an answer to that….
wj,
As a perspective, I dislike Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid much more than I dislike Obama. The polarization is not entirely and even may not be primarily, focused on the President. I suspect a lot of people don’t like Boehnor and McConnell and Rand Paul and Paul Ryan. Well there is lots of polarization that has nothing directly to do with Tb President.
Marty, I entirely agree that part of the polarization has to do with other actors. Just as dislike of Newt Gingrich as a person contributed to polarization in the 90s.
The question in my mind is, how much?
“Just as dislike of Newt Gingrich as a person contributed to polarization in the 90s.”
I’d put it differently–I think Newt Gingrich practically invented the polarization we see in politics today.
“And neither did Clinton (at least as I recall) get the kind of personal attacks (except for specific personal misbehavior, of course) that Obama has.”
Hillary got a lot of personal attacks–wasn’t there a Congressman from Indiana who shot a canteloupe in an attempt to figure out how HRC murdered Vince Foster? Answering my own question via the miracle of google, yes there was–Dan Burton. I think you might be forgetting just how crazy the 90’s actually were.
And Al Gore was trashed by the mainstream press–I remember believing some of the stories myself, until Bob Somerby discredited them. (Somerby having been on a one man crusade for over a decade now exposing the sheer idiocy of some of the things said about Gore.) I’ve forgotten most of the stories now, but what was weird about this was it wasn’t even the Republicans taking the lead–mainstream press figures, at least according to Somerby.
If HRC had won in 2008, she’d be on the receiving end of a great deal of criticism from both the left and the right. Some of it would have misogynist overtones. It was guaranteed that whoever the Democrat was that won in 2008, he or she would be too far to the right for many lefties, and nothing he or she did would please the Republicans.
If HRC had won in 2008, she’d be on the receiving end of a great deal of criticism from both the left and the right. Some of it would have misogynist overtones.
I actually expect there would have been more overt or nearly-overt misogyny from the left for HRC than there’s been racism for Obama, simply because misogyny is less taboo in the mainstream left than racism.
Impossible to say. But look at how polarized things were during the Clinton administration, and then during the Bush administration. It’s certainly possible that this is entirely a natural progression.
But I don’t believe that, because there are in fact racist people in the United States, and those people are now even more polarized. That’s just fact, there.
Guessing, I’d say it’s 95% natural progression and 5% racism, but it could easily be 90% and 10%. These are of course completely made-up numbers, based on nothing at all. I can say that my in-laws were already predisposed to not liking Obama’s politics, and it’s their racism that has them even more polarized than they’d otherwise be. My mother-in-law actually believes (and will tell you, even unasked) that Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya and is bent on destroying the country.
“I actually expect there would have been more overt or nearly-overt misogyny from the left for HRC”
I think so too. I saw some recently in the comment section at another blog. Some male commenter was (correctly) bashing HRC for her hawkish attitudes, but using some gender specific insults. A female commenter called him out on his language but he wouldn’t back down and seemed clueless about the problem. Someone else (also a man) jumped in on the side of misogynist insults. I should have jumped in, but frankly chickened out–I get into enough arguments online as it is, or that was my excuse.
These are of course completely made-up numbers, based on nothing at all.
Well, this is the internet 🙂
More seriously, I’d sort of agree with the numbers, although I’d also say there is no way to really be sure. I’d say there is certainly some racist pushback against Obama. I’m unconvinced it is the cause of most of the criticism, etc.
Without evidence one way or the other, of course.
I actually expect there would have been more overt or nearly-overt misogyny from the left for HRC
Clinton is going to have a lot of crap shoveled her way during campaign/presidency (yeah, I’m pretty convinced she’ll be the next president. I probably vote 3rd party, but I doubt anybody will field a serious contender, including the Rs).
To answer wj’s question:
That is, how much of the flack Obama has gotten was due to polarization, vs how much of the increased polarization was due to Obama being black?
I’d be really skeptical that there was a dramatic increase in polarization due to Obama. Polarization has been increasing for a long time, at least according to XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/1127/large/
Not saying its impossible, but I’d want to see some evidence that the trend changed dramatically when Obama was elected. Like somebody else upthread, I’d contribute more of the polarization (on the right at least) to Newt than I would to Obama’s race.
First of all, I believe in the “right-wing conspiracy” that the Clintons faced, and that some of the animosity towards Obama would be aimed at any Democrat.
But it’s Interesting to me that speaking in general terms, most people here take it as a given that racism is rampant, that an African-American’s day-to-day experience includes being treated as a second class citizen by some people, especially cops, and that African-Americans generally have a harder time than white privileged people. But, the minute somebody brings up the possibility that Obama, as an African-American, might be subject to racism, that possibility is minimized. I mean, what if it were Hillary Clinton, what would happen to her! I mean, there are tons of white women being shot in the street and being left to die for hours … etc.
I’m pretty sensitive to misogyny, and I agree that Hillary Clinton has been treated badly and unfairly based on misogyny. Further, neither Obama nor Clinton is a victim, IMO, just because their spectacular abilities, in conjunction with some extraordinary fortune, has allowed them to achieve very close to their potential (although one could, of course, argue that the country’s potential hasn’t been realized because of the racism and misogyny that has interfered with their agendas).
That said, one cannot evaluate Obama’s presidency without taking into account the symbolic importance to African-Americans of a [good, IMO brilliant] African-American president having been elected twice. But also understanding that his position vis-a-vis Congress, and his general ability to negotiate his vision for the country, is affected by his race.
Minimizing this personal drama, while championing the general cause, seems to put certain people in the SMA category, as defined in the lead post.
I do recall that Clinton faced a lot of negative comments. Including those who thought what he was doing would destroy the country. What I do not recall is any significant number of people saying that they believed that his intent was to destroy the country. Which opinion of Obama is not by any means limited to slarti’s mother-in-law.
A friend of mine recently reported attending a baseball game. When he was in line, waiting for food, a man in front of him was loudly stating that he hoped that Obama and his whole family would please go back to Africa and contract Ebola.
When he got to the food stand, he politely ordered food from the African-American server.
Just a day in the life …
Thompson, I think one of the interesting parts of that xkcd graph is how it doesn’t show the Far Right of the Democratic Party (i.e. the Dixiecrats). I wonder why that is? Did the Dixiecrats have some liberal, or at least moderate, inclinations on most issues unrelated to race that I am simply unaware of?
I’d be really skeptical that there was a dramatic increase in polarization due to Obama.
I’d say it might be closer to say that the way the polarization manifested changed with Obama. In particular, the composition of the Republican Party, as the graph shows, has shifted from mostly Right or Center Right to mostly Far Right.
But I would note that, at least as I read the graph, ALL of the Republican gains in the House, from 2010 onwards, were Far Right. On the Democrats’s side, gains have happened at least a much in the Center Left as the Far Left.
I seem to recall a LOT of pushback against e.g. Hillarycare. Granted there wasn’t a lot of “destroying this country”, but that’s language that I think came into usage during the G W Bush administration.
Swords, double-edged; see also.
Just a note that I can verify at least Mr. Limbaugh referring to the Clintons as socialists during the 1990s.
I seem to recall a LOT of pushback against e.g. Hillarycare
Very true, but some more work was done, etc. Also, people were dying for healthcare, then, but more so later.
“…. that Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya and is bent on destroying the country.”
Everybody knows that! But did you know that old MacDonald was a bad speller?
Did the Dixiecrats have some liberal, or at least moderate, inclinations on most issues unrelated to race that I am simply unaware of?
I’m still trying to figure out that graph, but yes, Dixiecrats were populists in the sense that they supported huge infrastructure and FDR-type social programs back in the day. They were racists, for sure. When the Reagan Revolution happened, they turned against Government.
wj:
But I would note that, at least as I read the graph, ALL of the Republican gains in the House, from 2010 onwards, were Far Right. On the Democrats’s side, gains have happened at least a much in the Center Left as the Far Left.
The graph is really hard to interpret, and I’m not a political scientist, so while I think its cool, I can’t vouch for it meaning much. But its based on peer-reviewed work…so its probably not too crazy.
According to the chart though, the far right has been gaining steadily (at the expense of the center right) since around Reagan. I don’t see a huge jag around 2010…but with so little data after 2008, an effect of Obama on increasing polarization could be hidden. I’d feel comfortable saying it is really unlikely there is a LARGE effect.
On the other side, the center-left has been steadily losing ground to the left since the mid-30s. Not much shift to the far-left (although some)…but this isn’t a very leftist country by most standards so I’m not surprised.
As to the center left candidates in 2006-08…they seized swing districts…then lost them in 2010 when the Rs retook the house.
I suppose you could argue the center-left swing (giving Ds control of the house) was killed by a racist response to Obama (and a tea party swing)…but I’d just as easily attribute it to anger over GWs term lending Ds support in more conservative districts. GW gone, those districts gone.
None of that is bulletproof, so you might be right. But you seem to be pointing predominantly to one answer (Obama’s race), when I see a multitude of contributing factors.
As to the Dixiecrat question, sapient has answered better than I could.
As to the Dixiecrat question, sapient has answered better than I could.
Thanks, thompson. In fact, I would be a “Dixiecrat” were it not for the racism (well, not now because they’re Republicans).
Red states still have more African-Americans than the rest of the United States. African-Americans (despite the discussion of their “conservative” values) don’t vote Republican.
Red states need Federal money for social[ist] programs that support the poor in their states. Some of the poor there are African-American, but many are not, and those who are not frequently vote against their interests because of racism.
Tragic. Because, like Guatemala, and other places, rich people are quite happy to hold a huge percentage of the wealth of their jurisdiction. When the less-well-off are pitted against each other because of race, there is nothing that they’re going to win.
Dixiecrats were populists in the sense that they supported huge infrastructure and FDR-type social programs back in the day. They were racists, for sure. When the Reagan Revolution happened, they turned against Government.
Not exactly correct WRT the particulars.
Agrarian Southern Democrats had some populist leanings from the early 1900’s, as long as the social largess was parceled out to whites only. The total traditional post civil war exclusion of Republicans from effective power in the south, coupled with the sweeping victories of FDR in ’32 and ’36 gave the Democrats huge majorities in Congress. The choke-point in Congress was the committee chairmanship tradition based on seniority. Many chairmen were thus from the south.
The went along with the social policies of the New Deal, but acted to effectively ensure that parceling out the funds was left up to “local option” and control. I’m sure you can guess where that led: Affirmative action for whites only.
With the rise of industrial unionism in northern factories, powerful southern Democrats began to get cold feet about the New Deal (cf. John Nance Garner), and the began to work with the GOP minority in Congress to actively block progressive legislation, esp. WRT unions who were seen as a racially blind force for both economic and particularly social equality…something these powerful southern politicians simply could not abide.
It was all about protecting segregation.
By the 40’s the Southern Dems had pretty much swung into opposition and joined the GOP in a legislative coalition to pass Taft-Hartley, etc.
Brown vs. Board cemented their intransigence. With their seniority, they continued to block or alter liberal legislation. Conservative Democrats, using their seniority, continued to hold sway of powerful Congressional committees as well as the circus that was the HUAC.
This holding action began to disintegrate as the civil war in the Democratic Party raged through the 50’s and 60’s. The passage of the ’64 Civil Rights Act was the watershed.
In the period ’64-80 there was the increasing turn to the GOP as many of the old segregationist warhorses died (fuck you, James O. Eastland and your ilk) or switched parties.
By the time 1980 rolled around, it was pretty much a done deal. They didn’t become Reaganites, they already were.
Guessing, I’d say it’s 95% natural progression and 5% racism, but it could easily be 90% and 10%.
Those are pretty much my seat-of-the-pants numbers also.
To be dead honest, I think the political polarization of the US at the moment is fairly accurate representation of actual polarization among the people who live here.
Maybe the various left and right wing propaganda organs have whipped that up, but it seems to me that different groups of folks in the country have different interests, different cultural and historical legacies, different understandings about almost anything you can think of when it comes to public life.
I am, frankly, hard pressed to think of what we agree about.
Coates has found his way to a kind of regretful pessimism about race in the US, I’ve found my way to a similar position on pretty much everything.
IMO Obama was more or less our best shot at something remotely approaching middle ground. He is about as middle of the road as anybody I can think of on the current landscape. The man has his faults, but to be honest I think he sincerely thought he was going to come into office, roll up his sleeves, and get a sufficient number of folks on the same page that we could actually get some things done.
Instead, it’s been six years and counting of cut-throat ankle-biting BS. Because there’s no upside for folks in Congress to try to compromise, and turn that’s because doing so would land them out of a job. I am, frankly, mostly talking about (R)’s.
Basically, IMO the country is FUBAR, because we, as a people, cannot get our sh*t together, and resolutely refuse to even try.
There are, really and truly, issues on our plate that should make us all sit straight up and pay some serious attention. Instead, we argue about the stupidest crap imaginable.
I think we’re in for a generation or so of having our butts seriously handed to us. If we are remarkably and undeservedly lucky, it will result in us sobering up and taking care of business. I’m not placing any bets.
We’re really really rich, and we have a huge (if decaying) legacy infrastructure, so we’re not headed for 3rd world status anytime soon. We still have an ocean to the left and right, and relatively friendly folks north and south, and likely more ways to blow stuff up then is or was available to all of the rest of humanity that has ever existed combined, so I’m not seeing a serious risk of military harm. But as far as a robust, functional society, dealing competently with the normal challenges of public life, it just ain’t happening, and I’m not seeing anything resembling light at the end of the tunnel.
Read ’em and weep.
“But, the minute somebody brings up the possibility that Obama, as an African-American, might be subject to racism, that possibility is minimized.”
You didn’t simply say that Obama might be subject to racism. It’s obvious Obama gets hit with racism from the far right–Slarti mentioned his mother-in-law and hell, I mentioned the Kenyan birther thing in my reply to you. That’s a given. Many people on the right (I couldn’t guess percentages, but suspect it’s fairly high) have racist attitudes towards Obama. I have a rightwing friend who told me a few weeks ago that Eric Holder was a terrible racist–I didn’t want to get into it, but googled later and apparently this is a meme sometimes employed against Holder because he doesn’t go along with this voter ID nonsense that the right pushes.
Where I objected was your suggestion that virtually all criticism of Obama from whatever direction is tainted by racism–that’s rubbish. Even what wj brought up and I elaborated on wouldn’t be racism–there were people on the left who projected their fantasy Obama onto the real Obama, imagined him to be someone who agreed with them on virtually every issue, attributed some sort of leftist perfection to him because of his background (both the racial thing and the fact that he’d been in Indonesia and goodness what else) and when it finally dawned on them that he wasn’t what they imagined, they got mad. There’s something absurd about that, but it’s not racism.
But you were saying that people who criticized him for not working hard enough to obtain single payer were employing some racist notion that he’s a black man and therefore lazy. That’s bull. People on the left who made that sort of criticism claim that Obama and many other Democrats are really just centrists, and that Obama came into office wanting to strike deals with (imaginary) centrist Republicans and that he had no use for the left and that it took him years to see that centrist Republicans were a figment of his imagination. Whether you agree with that or not, it’s not a claim that Obama is a bad President because he’s black and lazy.
I think that any Democrat elected in 2008 was doomed to be demonized by the Republicans and the far right media machine. Since Obama is black, and since racism is still alive and well in this country, racism would be part of the process. If the victor had been HRC, it’d be misogynistic. If the President were a white Southern boy, there’d be some other way to paint him as un-American.
Donald, I wonder if you don’t have a somewhat different working definition of racism than some of us here.
The view that any racist view must include blacks being lazy is simply incorrect. It is possible (and, I would argue, is in fact the case) to hold a race-based view that being black will necessarily equate to being liberal and supporting liberal goals. And that view is held both by those of the far right and the far left. The far right may add lazy, etc. to their picture of blacks, but the left’s view is just as racist. At least as I would use the term.
russell:
To be dead honest, I think the political polarization of the US at the moment is fairly accurate representation of actual polarization among the people who live here.
I wouldn’t be nearly so pessimistic. Pew did a recent study on polarization, found here (http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/ ).
There is unmistakable increases in polarization, and the polarized are more likely to be politically engaged and contribute.
But there is still a huge chunk of the voting public that is centrist, even if it has dropped somewhat. One of the findings of the study was that even if you look at measures of political activism, the ‘ideologically consistent’ are still a minority.
IMO, this centrist population has a real impact. I think Obama got a huge boost in 2008 by tapping into that centrist group. His message was pretty centrist, and he pulled in a lot of the battleground states because of it, IMO.
There is polarization in the populace, but I think there is more in both who gets elected to congress (due in part to our primary system and some other factors) and our media. I think the polarization in those is elevated compared to the population, and can readily skew people’s perceptions of the overall populace.
but the left’s view is just as racist. At least as I would use the term.
The ‘left’ may mistakenly assume black allegiance to the Democratic Party, and conflate that allegiance with support for various socially liberal causes (cf. gay equality/marriage) that turn out to be wrong, but that is not racism.
From the google machine:
rac·ism
rāˌsizəm
noun
the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.
Several commenters of ‘the right’ have mentioned that blacks are overwhelmingly socially conservative. I would agree. But to me, to hold socially conservative views is to fully be in tune with those things that conservatives say they hold dear: Tradition, respect for authority,church going, hard working, etc…..all those things that would, if they were white, be associated with ‘success’ and ‘the American Way’.
So whenever some flaming liberal points out that the vast majority of blacks do overwhelmingly try hard to achieve success and do work hard but are still behind in every conceivable measure of education and especially wealth we get the fucking lecture about “unwed mothers” and “respect for authority” and “cultural pathologies”.
Why is that?
I wouldn’t be nearly so pessimistic.
Just calling it the way I see it.
Several commenters of ‘the right’ have mentioned that blacks are overwhelmingly socially conservative.
Plus me.
I second your basic point here.
It’s interesting to me that Charles freaking Murray has finally twigged the fact that it ain’t about skin color.
A major brainwave on his part. Well done, Charles. Although, of course, when it’s blacks who are “dysfunctional”, it’s their genes, and when it’s whites, it’s onna counta society.
Baby steps, y’all.
Second class status breeds social dysfunction. Doesn’t much matter what the basis of “second class status” is.
Just calling it the way I see it.
Sure, and you’re welcome to your perspective. Perspectives can often be biased and colored, and these can be minimized by well done empirical research conducted by an experienced research group like Pew.
So, not entirely discounting how you see it, but I think Pew’s data set contradicts your perceptions to some degree.
As an aside, I’d also point out the Orman situation in Kansas. A deeply red state has an independent with some chance of winning, although a lot is still up in the air in that regard. Even if Orman doesn’t win, I do find his fundraising fairly impressive for an independent candidate. Perhaps a blip, perhaps part of a larger trend, its too soon to tell.
So, not entirely discounting how you see it, but I think Pew’s data set contradicts your perceptions to some degree.
That’s cool.
When Pew’s insights translate into us actually getting our sh*t together and engaging as a nation in constructive public action, I’ll think about revising my point of view.
Not discounting the value of Pew-style research, I’m just looking for somebody to show me real-life results.
Not discounting the value of Pew-style research, I’m just looking for somebody to show me real-life results.
Fair enough, I didn’t understand the context of your dismissal of the Pew report. I’d actually agree the real life results are minimal at this time.
Like I said, I’d attribute both 2008 and Orman’s chances as indicators that the middle might actually be pushing back against the extremism in functional ways.
That is purely IMHO, my perspective, without empirical support, etc etc and undoubtedly colored by my generally optimistic outlook on humanity.
The reason I brought up Pew was to contradict the point that the polarization in the political class is “fairly accurate representation” of polarization of the population.
I point that out because a polarized political class and a polarized populace are two very different problems. Neither is especially tractable, but a polarized populace is far more intractable, IMO.
But a polarized political debate that is not representative of the level of polarization in the general populace could be ameliorated by encouraging enfranchisement of the more moderate population, by voting for more moderate candidates in primaries, by funding more moderate candidates, and by changing aspects of our political process that encourage polarization (like gerrymandering, our primary system, etc).
There is a key difference between a polarized political process and a polarized population. The Pew report, IMO, indicates the population as a whole is not as polarized as our currently political class might indicate.
the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race,
What else is a belief that all members of a race are liberal? Is “liberal” not a characteristic?
And, just in case the thought arises, even people we all agree are racists don’t argue that only blacks are, for example, lazy.
the Orman situation in Kansas. A deeply red state has an independent with some chance of winning,
And if he does win, we will be up to 3 Senators who are neither Republicans nor Democrats (King, Sanders and Orman). When was the last time that happened? (Circa 1900 as far as I can tell.)
As Russell noted in a different context — baby steps.
a polarized political class and a polarized populace are two very different problems.
Gotta go with Thompson on this one. We have more than one issue currently where the population as a whole has changed position on something, but a bill to change the law can’t even get a hearing.
Not to mention the difference between what polls show of about unqualified support for Israel among the general population (significant, but substantially less than a majority on many feature of Israeli government policy), vs essentially unanimous unqualified support from the Congress.
“The view that any racist view must include blacks being lazy is simply incorrect. It is possible (and, I would argue, is in fact the case) to hold a race-based view that being black will necessarily equate to being liberal and supporting liberal goals. And that view is held both by those of the far right and the far left. The far right may add lazy, etc. to their picture of blacks, but the left’s view is just as racist.”
I wondered if someone would raise that. I agree that someone who thinks blacks must necessarily be liberal is “racist” in some sense, though a very different one from someone who thinks blacks must be lazy. But I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about people like my deceased friend, who thought in 2008 (along with many other lefties) that Obama was some dream candidate for the far left (in American political terms, that is). I think he and others based that view not on the fact that Obama was black, full stop, but because Obama came from a mixed background both racially and culturally, had visited Indonesia, had written a deeply impressive autobiography, had been a community organizer, and had attended the church of someone who (whatever else one would say about Rev Wright) was very far to the left in his views. All those things taken together led some lefties to think Obama was their dream candidate. I was frustrated with such people because you only had to read some of Obama’s speeches to see that he wasn’t the dream lefty they imagined him to be.
But no, this isn’t racism by any rational definition of the word. It was ,in my opinion, wishful thinking taken to the point of idiocy at times. But not racism. Even what you’re talking about wouldn’t quite be racism in my view. I grew up in the South–99 percent of the bigotry I heard was white directed against black. I can literally remember two occasions where someone said something anti-semitic . The second time it was when I was working in a temporary job in a warehouse and this black guy said someone was Jewish and then rubbed his fingers together indicating that this person was therefore obsessed with money. I was naively surprised–because I thought that members of oppressed groups wouldn’t have that sort of prejudice. I suppose that was a racist view on my part–certainly it was naive and stupid, but I’m not going to put my 20 year old self in the same category as someone who insists that Obama is a Muslim out to destroy the country.
” It is possible (and, I would argue, is in fact the case) to hold a race-based view that being black will necessarily equate to being liberal and supporting liberal goals.”
I also doubt that very many people on either the left or the right actually believe that. Everyone knows there are black public figures who are not on the left. Even people who are racist know this. People on the right who hate Obama do so in part because of racism in some cases, but I don’t think their thinking works quite the way you imagine. If Obama were a Republican congressional representative or worked at some think tank and bashed Muslims he’d be a regular commentator on Fox News. I believe Allen West is an example of someone like that, though I don’t know if he’s a regular on Fox News.
Thinking about my 20 year old self, what I would say is that I was ignorant. I had the notion that if you were a member of an oppressed group (blacks in the South, for example), you would know how stupid white racism was and so by extension you would know that racism and bigotry in general were stupid. So I was surprised to see a black guy who I knew to be intelligent employing anti-semitic “reasoning”. You could say that I was racist for thinking that a black man wouldn’t be a racist. I’d say that I was 20 years old and naive about human nature. I was mistaken but putting my 20 year old self in the same camp with people who imagine that Obama is trying to turn America into an Islamic theocracy seems like an analytical error to me for all sorts of reasons. For one thing, my mistaken view was easily corrected by one encounter with reality. For another, my mistake wasn’t hateful and malicious, only ignorant. Racists (as I use the term) don’t immediately alter their views given data that doesn’t fit. It seems to me that these things should matter. If you still want to use the term “racist” for all of this, then you’re going to have to deal with the fact that the term is generally used to describe a huge moral failing, and people who are merely naive and whose views can be altered rather quickly by exposure to evidence probably shouldn’t be lumped in with the Kenyan birther conspiracists.
Donald, the real problem is that racism of naiveté is probably the most damaging. The struggle for blacks would be way easier if everyone that wasn’t a birther was simply aware of their prejudice. The unintended consequences of people who are unintentional racists are the real issue. Some people really want to excuse their lack of awareness as not being racist, which in some ways makes them worse.
That’s weird–I thought I replied to marty, but it’s not there.
“The unintended consequences of people who are unintentional racists are the real issue. ”
That’s vague. I agree it’s often true, but I don’t think my 20 year old naiveté is comparable to people who think Obama is a Kenyan Muslim out to destroy the country. My sin was ignorance and it was easily cured–I heard a black guy saying something anti-semitic and after my surprise, understood that I had been unconsciously assuming that oppressed people would be naturally less likely to harbor prejudices against others. So I can’t see that my naiveté did any harm. Put another way, I don’t have a problem with honest ignorance–the key word there is honest. People have to be willing to learn from their mistakes.
Now some lefties do harbor a tendency to think that the oppressed are without sin–I spend a lot of time reading about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (where I’m more on the Palestinian side) and yes, there are lefties who seem to think like that. And that is a problem. Or could be, if people like that had enough political power, say, to sway the government to follow some policy of arming Hamas, to cite some wildly unlikely hypothetical example. (I don’t think that would be any worse than arming Israel, but it wouldn’t be any better either). As it happens, lefties who romanticize oppressed groups don’t have enough power in the US to do a lot of mischief.
There are people on the far left with other sorts of nutty beliefs–not necessarily racist, but nutty. 9/11 truthers, for instance. But they don’t have much power. If they did, they’d be a problem.
Rightwing idiots in the US have much more power than the leftwing variety. We have an entire political party which seems afraid to tell some of its own supporters that their views of Obama are over-the-top bats*** crazy. And this has real consequences. Obama came into office clearly wanting to make deals with center-right Republicans (this is why some lefties don’t like him). But he couldn’t.
We have a country which can’t have serious debates about serious topics because of it.
Actually we have a country that can’t have serious debate on serious topics because outside the topic line: Economy, war, immigration etc. We can’t agree on what problem we are trying to solve. Economy, is it unemployment, business spending, deflation, inflation, ? Immigration – stop it, bring in more qualified people, fix the undocumented problem, or is it the illegal problem? You can’t have a debate when you don’t agree on what to debate.
“We can’t agree on what problem we are trying to solve. ”
Well, that’s part of it. But the rightwing craziness contributes to the problem. And by rightwing craziness I don’t mean the policy differences–those are what the debates should be about– but the silly and often racist conspiracy theories.
You can’t have a debate when you don’t agree on what to debate.
We can, of course, agree on what to debate if people will face certain facts. When the right wing rejects today the solutions they supported yesterday, just because Democrats are trying to work with them and push something forward, that’s obstructionism and hatefulness.
The idea that non-affiliated representatives are going to save the day is a silly notion. What we need to do is kick out Republicans. Fortunately, demographics indicate that it will happen in the next decade. Thank [G]o[od]ness.
That does not mean that some housecleaining would not do the Dems some good also. And that’s not about ideological purity tests but simple moral rot caused by too much contact with moneyed special interests.
Well, there is some left-wing craziness out there, too. Their conspiracy theories may not be as obviously damaging as the right-wing ones. But we are, for example, getting close to the point where the number of nuts who refuse vaccination for their children are going to mean that childhood diseases which we once consigned to history (at least in this country) are back with us. Which may not be as big an impact overall, but will be really hard on the children involved
And that’s not about ideological purity tests but simple moral rot caused by too much contact with moneyed special interests.
Until campaign finance reform is possible (which means Democrats being elected President until a different Supreme Court exists), that’s kind of a silly notion. In addition to the fact that there are no “moneyed special interests” owning Democrats that are as malignant as the “moneyed special interests” owning Republicans. First things first.
But we are, for example, getting close to the point where the number of nuts who refuse vaccination for their children are going to mean that childhood diseases which we once consigned to history (at least in this country) are back with us
Not left-wing, wj. Libertarian.
end ital
What else is a belief that all members of a race are liberal? Is “liberal” not a characteristic?
The somewhat mistaken belief by some “liberals” that most blacks are also “liberals” instead of “political allies” is not a belief that is SPECIFIC TO THAT RACE (there are white liberals you may have noticed) and is not asserted SO AS TO DISTINGUISH IT (the other race) AS INFERIOR…TO ANOTHER RACE (the cardinal distinguishing aspect of white supremacy).
However your so-called definition of racism does play nicely to the meme of “liberals are the real racists” (used by FOX assholes and others) which I’m pretty sure is not something you feel in any way whatsoever, but there you go.
Ousting corrupt and/or insane GOPsters is one thing but if they just get replaced by equally corrupt Dems with chronic backstabbing disease, a reversal is just a matter of time. The senate supermajority Obama seemingly had was pretty useless due to it having to rely on the above. Fory any kind of system reform the non-corrupt need a real majority which will not arise as long as the less extreme party tolerates the rot on the border to the formal enemy.
I’m not sure I can wrap my head around the idea of a libertarian conspiracy nut. Lack of imagination on my part, no doubt.
But the anti-vaccine nuts display the same antipathy to science as the right- (and left-) wingnuts. Indeed, I might go so far as to say that a quick index of insanity is the determination to reject empirical evidence in favor of belief. Not, note, that faith is equivalent to insanity. Just that faith which rejects evidence is. Regardless of the political (or lack of political) inclinations of those involved.
trying again.
</i>
Not left-wing, wj. Libertarian.
I’ve seen anti-vac crap from tea-party right-wingers, and DFH leftists. I’d agree that ideological sympathy towards libertarian ideology is a common thread, but it’s definitely not restricted to those people best identified as libertarians. That rot is unfortunately more widespread than that.
Ousting corrupt and/or insane GOPsters is one thing but if they just get replaced by equally corrupt Dems with chronic backstabbing disease,
I don’t really know, hartmut, what you’re talking about. Who are the “equally corrupt Dems” with chronic backstabbing disease? There are some Democrats, not many, such as Joe Manchin, from West Virginia, who are extremely conservative (and I certainly wish he were more liberal).
Basically, this is an easy fix. Get rid of Republicans. Sure, don’t replace them with criminals, but replace them with people who represent their constituents. I live in Congressional district represented by a teaparty Republican. Nobody I know would vote for this guy. The Congressional districts were drawn in 2010, when Republicans won everything because Democrats didn’t vote in midterm elections. Democrats are dumb that way.
I tried to turn off the italics. Really I did. Bt I guess we need one of the superusers to do the trick. Sigh.
Bobby: “The somewhat mistaken belief by some “liberals” that most blacks are also “liberals” instead of “political allies” is not a belief that is SPECIFIC TO THAT RACE”
First, you can believe that something is specific to a race without believing that in is necessarily NOT a characteristic of people outside that race. Which, if I recall, I noted specifically. (In my 1:49 AM post. But perhaps you were responding to one of my later ones, where I didn’t repeat that.)
Second, there is nothing which prevents something being racism just because it does not include seeing a particular race as inferior. That may be usual, but it isn’t a requirement. All that is required is a belief, regardless of evidence, that belonging to race A means having characteristic B.
NV, actually where I’ve seen the most of the anti-vaccine nonsense is from those who could be labeled limosine liberals.
I guess that shows why anecdotal evidence is not definitive. 😉
FWIW, wj, ’twas you what killed the italics in my Firefox.
I’m not sure I can wrap my head around the idea of a libertarian conspiracy nut. Lack of imagination on my part, no doubt.
wj, anti-vac doesn’t actually need to be a conspiracy theory to work as an appealing thing for a libertarian. You can just go with rational self-interest and say “Well, better safe than sorry. I’ll not expose my special snowflake to the risk of <anti-vac flavor of the day>, the sheeple can take the risks and my kids will wisely profit from herd immunity!”. Or suchlike.
Although I’d agree that on a very superficial level conspiracy theorizing seems a weird thing to associate with libertarianism (though I suppose we have e.g. Rand’s rantings to show how such a thing could be framed). An awful lot of libertarian thought I’ve seen includes a willfully ignorant denial of the fact that people can and will work together to further an end.
(Yes, yes, still more vague anecdata. =p)
Marty @ 5:38 above…Let’s take your first item, the economy. Most would agree it needs to do better is some way or ways. So we agree there is a “problem”. That is the debate topic. There are many solutions offered to make the economy “better”….from going back on the gold standard and repealing everything going back to the Sherman Anti-trust Act to socializing all large industrial concerns.
What seems to be widespread is the belief that some kind of political dysfunction is blocking the miracle solution or “getting on with it”. Since the muddled center pretty much most major political outcomes, I feel we are in a situation where “the center in not holding”.
I’ve seen anti-vac crap from tea-party right-wingers, and DFH leftists.
But this is where “right” and “left” lose their meaning. The fact is, vaccinations that are required, or strongly suggested, by Government, are rejected by those who either 1) are suspicious of Government, or 2) are not interested in the Commonweal, or 3) think that their Internet research is better than what the medical community recommends.
I might be marginally sympathetic to people in Category 3, except that the Internet should tell them, by now, that they are wrong.
There is another phenomenon (related to 3, above), that people think they are experts at everything, including things that they haven’t spent much time studying.
Some of it is understandable. It’s difficult for people who aren’t paying close attention to figure out what they should be eating (for example). It seems, every other day, something new comes out that contradicts what was taken for granted before. Salt? No salt?
Anyway, vaccinations? Go for it! I had measles, mumps and chickenpox!
NV, actually where I’ve seen the most of the anti-vaccine nonsense is from those who could be labeled limosine liberals.
Not true. What you have “seen” does not appear to comport with the facts.
First, you can believe that something is specific to a race without believing that in is necessarily NOT a characteristic of people outside that race.
Could you please translate that into English for me? How’s this: Blacks generally have curly hair. Does that assertion make me a racist? Or is it the truthiness of the assertion that makes one a racist or not?
Second, there is nothing which prevents something being racism just because it does not include seeing a particular race as inferior.
Well, you are entitled to your opinion, but the dictionary says otherwise. Look, to wash that element out of the equation is to make the term “racism” essentially without import, an explicit goal, by the way, of racial superiority apologists.
White superiority, down through the years, has had definite social, political, and economic impact that has been, and continues to be, detrimental to blacks.
The possibly mistaken conflation of black voting patterns with “liberalism” as it may pertain to gay rights, for example, has not had that effect and cannot, by any stretch of logic or imagination be called “racism”.
Furthermore, blacks typically support the New Deal state, the overarching touchstone of modern day liberalism. To call them “liberals” in this regard is not in any way inaccurate. But again, that has nothing to do with what is or is not “racism”.
I think ‘racism’ would be the wrong label if applied to political inclination within a group. There is no ‘vote Democrat(ic)’ gene. Or one would have to assume that US blacks are a race different from ‘true’ African blacks*. The racism would be in a chain of argument leading from the premises 1)Blacks are by nature stupid, lazy thugs 2)Liberalism is the religion of the lazy thugs and 3)Only stupid people (or smart** evil ones exploiting them)would ever support liberalism => Blacks are liberal.
*often praised for their Kristian(TM) conservatism, cf. Uganda’s Kill-the-gays-law
**but that would be whites or half-breds according to 1)
From a German perspective, most anti-vaccination people over here seem to either belong to out-of-the-mainstream religious groups or are indeed a (better groomed) hippie variant. Anti-government guys play no significant role there or they belong to the first group and those beliefs are independent, i.e. they oppose vaccination per se not because the government supports it.
There are some freeloaders (profitting from herd immunity while avoiding the inconvenience) but they tend not be organized.
What unites the main opposers is the assumption that vaccination is unnatural. The religious ones consider it a (foolish) attempt to circumvent divine punishment for their sins (diseases being G#d’s favorite tool), the ‘hippies’ see especially childhood diseases as a natural and necessary part of growing up. So, avoiding them would lead to a defective personality development. Hippie-specific is the general distrust in ‘chemistry’ as artificial and distinct from nature (even if the compounds in question are identical. In esssence it’s vitalism reborn).
I despise Obama because e.g. NSA / Snowden / Manning / Drone Wars / Guantanamo / Afghanistan / Wall Street Bailouts.
I despise HRC because she is a FP hawk who e.g. threatened to “totally obliterate Iran”.
I have no idea why sapient should be allowed to call me a racist/misogynist on that basis.
What you have “seen” does not appear to comport with the facts.
Which, Bobby, is why I carefully noted that it was what I had observed, rather than claiming it represented the entire picture.
I’m guessing that the list of people that novakant despises is quite long. As such, why limit it to racial or gender categories?
Let’s just say that if there were such a list annoying, intellectually challenged trolls would be on it as well.
I’m not sure I can wrap my head around the idea of a libertarian conspiracy nut.
Let me introduce you to the Ron Paul Institute of Peace and Prosperity.
As an appetizer, that is.
Thank you . . . I think?
I know it’s generally a good thing to learn something new every day. But I really think I could have lived quite nicely without learning that.
Difficult to excerpt this piece, as pretty well all of it of it is eye opening to someone unfamiliar with how the US system works at the local level.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/how-st-louis-county-missouri-profits-from-poverty/
About 80 percent of the people in the gym tonight are black, even though blacks make up just 27 percent of the town. According to statistics compiled by Missouri’s attorney general’s office, 71 percent of the people pulled over by Florissant police in 2013 were black. The search and arrest rates for blacks were also twice as high as those rates for whites, even though whites were more likely to be found with contraband, a contradiction that has also been widely reported in Ferguson.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, blacks make up less than eight percent of the Florissant police force. The judge and both prosecutors are white. In nearly all the towns in St. Louis County, the prosecutors and judges in these courts are part-time positions, and are not elected, but appointed by the mayor, town council, or city manager. According to a recent white paper published by the ArchCity Defenders, the chief prosecutor in Florissant Municipal Court makes $56,060 per year. It’s a position that requires him to work 12 court sessions per year, at about three hours per session. The Florissant prosecutor is Ronald Brockmeyer, who also has a criminal defense practice in St. Charles County, and who is also the chief municipal prosecutor for the towns of Vinita Park and Dellwood. He is also the judge – yes, the judge — in both Ferguson and Breckenridge Hills. Brockmeyer isn’t alone: Several other attorneys serve as prosecutor in one town and judge in another. And at least one St. Louis County assistant district attorney is also a municipal court judge…
But perhaps the most gaping divide between having and not having an attorney is that many people think that if they can’t pay their fines, they’ll be arrested and jailed the moment they show up in court. So they don’t show up. In truth, you can’t be jailed if you don’t have the money to pay a fine. But you can be jailed for not showing up in court to answer a charge. So under the mistaken belief that showing up in court broke will land them in jail, people chose not to show up . . . which then lands them in jail.
“That’s probably the single biggest misunderstanding out there,” says Vatterott, the former municipal judge. “We have to do a better job of informing people. I think it should say on the notice that even if you have no money, you need to show up, and it should be made clear that you won’t be sent to jail. But when I bring that up, the prosecutors don’t like it. The arrest warrants bring more fines and make the towns more money…
Well, maybe there’s some redemption to come from the Ferguson incident.
“The [Ferguson City] Council said it would create a citizen review board to provide “oversight and guidance” to the police department, which has come under heavy criticism in the aftermath of Mr. Brown’s shooting.”
“… the Council is expected to introduce an ordinance intended to limit court fine revenues.”
and
“Another ordinance to be introduced on Tuesday will call for the repeal of the “failure to appear” offense, under which a fine is levied. Other small fines could be ended under the ordinance, including a $25 fee to cover the “cost of police personnel who arrange for the towing” of abandoned or nonfunctional vehicles.”
Which, Bobby, is why I carefully noted that it was what I had observed, rather than claiming it represented the entire picture.
Noted. Alas, I misinterpreted your subtle qualifying clause due to a debilitating case of the “What? Racism rears its ugly head again?” vapors.
I have way too many cases of reading too fast myself to fault anyone else who does it to my “pearls of prose.” 😉
Perhaps the “tolerance question” is deeply entwined with the ponzi scheme that we have adopted as a suburban growth pattern.
Another important issue raised is the interaction of public policy with “free markets”.
Comments welcome……
Respectfully,
bobbyp, flaming intolerant 9 handicap socialist asshat
Speaking of asshats, even Nicholas Kristof, a much maligned by liberals liberal gets it.
Folks, this is not ‘effing rocket science.