White progressives simultaneously use accusations of racism as a weapon while also saying that all white people (including them) are racist! You think that would take the sting out of the term but not really. Also we do see this in some ways on the right with groomer discourse, using a term that has particular and serious implications about child sexual abuse and then saying “by groomer we just mean a teacher who talks about non-binary at a developmentally inappropriate stage”, but their concern is protecting children rather than racial minorities
I think the real problem is that a colorblind consensus is vulnerable to groups within that consensus who choose to pursue their own racial interests. As Hanania recently argued, a lot of the friction about race in the US has been generated by the persistence of black nationalism. If everyone else is just playing as an individual, any group that starts playing as a team can seriously upset the equilibrium, and their collective presence doesn’t even need to be large to achieve this
I agree this has become an issue due to how far it's gone with many progressives but I'd argue that it stems from a reasonable and widely shared intuition about the world.
I mean what is it that makes racism so bad? I mean we have to deploy stereotypes all the time in life -- I've known people covered in body and neck tattoos who were extremely nice math grad students but if I see someone with those tattoos on a dark night I might take extra precautions. Is it particularly that it's a unchangeable characteristic? I don't think so since we tend to think that discrimination based on religious faith can be pretty similar.
I'd argue that what makes racism in America pernicious rather than something like disliking people with long hair or whatever is the concern that it's particularly pervasive and tends to result in pressure on other people to do the same thing. If individual buisness owners could just decide if they wanted to serve blacks without losing customers if they did then Jim crow wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad.
In other words it's something like a monopoly theory. We talk as if racism is some great personal moral failing but it's not. We evaluate people unfairly all the time because they are tall, pretty have curly hair whatever. At an individual moral level it's not really any worse to be prejudiced in favor of a certain race than to be prejudiced in favor of tall men or bearded men or whatever.
But when a group holds enough power and is able to effectively pressure other members of that group to comply with a certain prejudice to the extent that it creates a strong perception of being systemically locked out of the good jobs/stores/education that creates an additional harm so we adopted a moral norm of treating **that specific kind of prejudice** as being particularly unacceptable. And I think most people do share the intuition that there is something much worse about prejudice that can systemically deny opportunity than other kinds.
I think my own view is that in neither case is it necessarily racist. If I was alone, going into a bar with no one that I know, and almost everyone there was a different race, I might find it socially uncomfortable. I don't particularly like sticking out that much. But it seems to me there could absolutely be an asymmetry. If a black person was legitimately afraid for their safety, that's very different than if a white person simply didn't want to go because he viewed black people as disgusting or repulsive. I think there are definitely circumstances where a black person could be legitimately afraid. For example, a black person not wanting to go to an all-white bar in a racist area in the rural south seems perfectly reasonable to me. I think this explains the intuition most progressives have: they view the black person as being afraid of some kind of oppression, they view the white person as simply not liking black people. But, if a black person wanted to avoid a mostly white bar because he thought white people were lesser or found them repulsive in some way, that would definitely be racist.
Even if we take the statement 'black people commit more crimes' as true, what is relevant here is what crime someone might be afraid of. Most of black street level crime is against other black people, not white people. The type of crime that seems relevant here are hate crimes, and black people are far more likely to be a victim of a hate crime than a white person.
But that crime statement, at the very least, needs a giant asterisk next to it. It ignores many types of crimes: financial crimes, crimes of the police, crimes of the state, corporate crimes, etc. Some of those are not relevant to what an individual might be afraid of going into a bar, but it is relevant to the blanket statement "black people commit way more crimes." I doubt it's even close to being true when considering all crimes. And importantly, those statistics are arrests. That doesn't mean they actually committed a crime, the evidential standard for an arrest is very low. To rely on those to determine crime rates ignores systemic reasons why they might be getting arrested more. Even if we just look at conviction rates, prejudice very likely plays a role. I have a rather negative view of both police and our court system; I think nearly every aspect of it needs reform. I take any conviction with a grain of salt. But one doesn't need that view to be suspicious of the value of those crime stats. Police are not lawyers, far from it, and they don't need much to arrest someone. Even if we shift to convictions, you don't need to be a radical leftist to suspect prejudice might cause black people to get found guilty more.
I might be simplifying the issue, but wouldn't it make sense to just break up power and prejudice into 2 questions? 1) Are you racist/ prejudice? 2) How effectively can you enforce or implement your prejudice? So for example, say there's a white policy maker who has prejudice towards minorities and a social media poster who has prejudice towards white people. They are both racist, but one can actually achieve their aims through distribution of public school budgets, different rates of police enforcement among neighborhoods, etc. while the other has a small online echo chamber. And with limited bandwidth it's just more prudent to make critiques at the policy maker over small online groups, even if they are both racist.
Ok... you listed a bunch of outrageous examples of racism, and then concluded with "so colorblindness is good and we shouldn't talk about race".
I would be comfortable with saying you did in fact implicitly deny that, and are now retreating in the comments by saying that you never *explicitly* denied the proposition, even through it forms the whole thrust of your article.
White progressives simultaneously use accusations of racism as a weapon while also saying that all white people (including them) are racist! You think that would take the sting out of the term but not really. Also we do see this in some ways on the right with groomer discourse, using a term that has particular and serious implications about child sexual abuse and then saying “by groomer we just mean a teacher who talks about non-binary at a developmentally inappropriate stage”, but their concern is protecting children rather than racial minorities
I think the real problem is that a colorblind consensus is vulnerable to groups within that consensus who choose to pursue their own racial interests. As Hanania recently argued, a lot of the friction about race in the US has been generated by the persistence of black nationalism. If everyone else is just playing as an individual, any group that starts playing as a team can seriously upset the equilibrium, and their collective presence doesn’t even need to be large to achieve this
I agree this has become an issue due to how far it's gone with many progressives but I'd argue that it stems from a reasonable and widely shared intuition about the world.
I mean what is it that makes racism so bad? I mean we have to deploy stereotypes all the time in life -- I've known people covered in body and neck tattoos who were extremely nice math grad students but if I see someone with those tattoos on a dark night I might take extra precautions. Is it particularly that it's a unchangeable characteristic? I don't think so since we tend to think that discrimination based on religious faith can be pretty similar.
I'd argue that what makes racism in America pernicious rather than something like disliking people with long hair or whatever is the concern that it's particularly pervasive and tends to result in pressure on other people to do the same thing. If individual buisness owners could just decide if they wanted to serve blacks without losing customers if they did then Jim crow wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad.
In other words it's something like a monopoly theory. We talk as if racism is some great personal moral failing but it's not. We evaluate people unfairly all the time because they are tall, pretty have curly hair whatever. At an individual moral level it's not really any worse to be prejudiced in favor of a certain race than to be prejudiced in favor of tall men or bearded men or whatever.
But when a group holds enough power and is able to effectively pressure other members of that group to comply with a certain prejudice to the extent that it creates a strong perception of being systemically locked out of the good jobs/stores/education that creates an additional harm so we adopted a moral norm of treating **that specific kind of prejudice** as being particularly unacceptable. And I think most people do share the intuition that there is something much worse about prejudice that can systemically deny opportunity than other kinds.
I think my own view is that in neither case is it necessarily racist. If I was alone, going into a bar with no one that I know, and almost everyone there was a different race, I might find it socially uncomfortable. I don't particularly like sticking out that much. But it seems to me there could absolutely be an asymmetry. If a black person was legitimately afraid for their safety, that's very different than if a white person simply didn't want to go because he viewed black people as disgusting or repulsive. I think there are definitely circumstances where a black person could be legitimately afraid. For example, a black person not wanting to go to an all-white bar in a racist area in the rural south seems perfectly reasonable to me. I think this explains the intuition most progressives have: they view the black person as being afraid of some kind of oppression, they view the white person as simply not liking black people. But, if a black person wanted to avoid a mostly white bar because he thought white people were lesser or found them repulsive in some way, that would definitely be racist.
Even if we take the statement 'black people commit more crimes' as true, what is relevant here is what crime someone might be afraid of. Most of black street level crime is against other black people, not white people. The type of crime that seems relevant here are hate crimes, and black people are far more likely to be a victim of a hate crime than a white person.
But that crime statement, at the very least, needs a giant asterisk next to it. It ignores many types of crimes: financial crimes, crimes of the police, crimes of the state, corporate crimes, etc. Some of those are not relevant to what an individual might be afraid of going into a bar, but it is relevant to the blanket statement "black people commit way more crimes." I doubt it's even close to being true when considering all crimes. And importantly, those statistics are arrests. That doesn't mean they actually committed a crime, the evidential standard for an arrest is very low. To rely on those to determine crime rates ignores systemic reasons why they might be getting arrested more. Even if we just look at conviction rates, prejudice very likely plays a role. I have a rather negative view of both police and our court system; I think nearly every aspect of it needs reform. I take any conviction with a grain of salt. But one doesn't need that view to be suspicious of the value of those crime stats. Police are not lawyers, far from it, and they don't need much to arrest someone. Even if we shift to convictions, you don't need to be a radical leftist to suspect prejudice might cause black people to get found guilty more.
I might be simplifying the issue, but wouldn't it make sense to just break up power and prejudice into 2 questions? 1) Are you racist/ prejudice? 2) How effectively can you enforce or implement your prejudice? So for example, say there's a white policy maker who has prejudice towards minorities and a social media poster who has prejudice towards white people. They are both racist, but one can actually achieve their aims through distribution of public school budgets, different rates of police enforcement among neighborhoods, etc. while the other has a small online echo chamber. And with limited bandwidth it's just more prudent to make critiques at the policy maker over small online groups, even if they are both racist.
“Literally everyone in the class except me agreed that that wouldn’t be racist and in fact would be perfectly okay.”
Did you say anything? If so, what was the reaction? If not, it’s likely that others agreed with you too but stayed silent.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/10/craig-foster-apologises-to-sam-kerr-after-arguing-her-alleged-remark-to-uk-police-officer-was-racist
This is currently a huge debate in Australia
Your post is a false dichotomy. There are in fact positions between “black people cannot be racist” and “we should ban all diversity programs”.
I never denied that, obviously
Ok... you listed a bunch of outrageous examples of racism, and then concluded with "so colorblindness is good and we shouldn't talk about race".
I would be comfortable with saying you did in fact implicitly deny that, and are now retreating in the comments by saying that you never *explicitly* denied the proposition, even through it forms the whole thrust of your article.
I was making 2 different points