Jill at Feministe writes a long and courteous response to my MLK Day post that attempted to detail just how racial categorizations are structured, and how—when pressured—they tend to collapse under the weight of their own logical incoherence. Some of her commenters, naturally, weren’t so courteous—I’m a faux Jew, an idiot, long-winded and hopelessly daft when it comes to appreciating differences, etc.—such responses being par for the course when what you are essentially doing is questioning the internal logic of identity politics, an article of relgious faith in the secular progressive canon, and describing how it comes to be animated and, later, institutionalized.
Jill’s post is too long to reproduce here in its entirety, so I’ll just post a few excerpts, followed by my response, which I left in the comments:
To read Jeff, one would come away with the idea that people of color have defined themselves as different since the very beginning. No. White people successfully otherized non-whites, breaking down cultural and ethnic barriers in favor of grouping them all as “black†or “native.†This has had resounding effects; now, being black in America has a particular social meaning that, biological or not, exists.
That doesn’t mean that race isn’t fluid. People who were considered “non-White†(Irish, Italian) have been able to integrate into white society, to the point where they are now considered part of the standard. But the lived reality of their non-whiteness when they were considered non-white mattered. In order to become “American,†immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe claimed to be white, and they succeeded. This is obviously a bigger problem for those people who do not appear “white.â€Â
Jeff writes about the idea of “heritage,†and that it is learned. What Jeff leaves out, though, is the fact that our collective American heritage is a racist one. There is no escaping our history of racial oppression. Regardless of our own racial background, we are raised with a common history which is premised on the idea that certain racial groups are superior to others. None of us can escape this  not the white child raised by black parents, not the black child raised by white parents, not the Asian child, not the Hispanic child, not anyone. One didn’t have to be Rosa Parks to internalize our long history of racism; one does not have to be Al Sharpton to recognize that this history continues to have very real effects on how we perceive ourselves and others. But most of us are so deeply entrenched within this system that it’s difficult to recognize the fact that our beliefs, and our ways of organizing the world, are influenced by race, or perception of race.
[…]
When Jeff writes about “race,†he writes about self-reported race, and ignores the fact that race classification operates on two levels  self-reported, and “other-ascribed.†Both versions are obviously problematic, in a variety of ways. Scientific evidence shows no basis for race. And so, race theorists argue, race is socially constructed. Jeff takes issue with this because, he says, recognizing that race is socially constructed is the same as essentializing it.
Well, no. Social construction is, by definition, different from essentialism. Those who say race is socially constructed argue that, though race has no biological basis, race has historically been used as a category to oppress some people (usually dark-skinned) and privilege others (usually lighter-skinned). But the fact that race has no biological meaning doesn’t mean that it lacks social meaning. Being constructed doesn’t mean that it isn’t lived as real. We can argue biology til the cows come home, but the fact will remain that those people who are identified/identify themselves as “black†tend to be poorer, less educated, less respected, and holding of less prestigious positions than those who are identified/identify themselves as “white.â€Â
Essentialists argue that there is some inborn characteristic to blackness or whiteness, which would exist absent social conditioning, history and context. Race theorists may argue that there is difference between people of different racial groups, but that the root of that difference is socialized and constructed through centuries of oppression, subjugation, ideology, belief, and practice. Socially constructed doesn’t mean “fake;†it simply means not innate. Jeff glazes over that fact in asserting that those who argue race is socially constructed are arguing essentialism.
Jeff ends his post with a call for “putting aside our differences.†By this, I can only assume that he means “assimilation,†as white society is not generally considered “different.†It’s those who are non-white, regardless of how the category of non-whiteness is achieved, who are expected to put aside the ways in which they differ from the white ideal.
My response (slighty edited):
[I] Was going to skip right over the ad homs and reply at length, but I think Scott [Eric Kaufman] has done an admirable job already.
Firstly, I certainly do realize racism exists. Likewise, I’m well aware of the fact that we are often more defined by how people see  and consequently categorize  us, than we are by our own self-image.
But what Jill fails to understand is that the force behind my post rests with the fact that both of these assertions are precisely true. Rather than “ignore” them, I simply note them and then reject that anything necessary follows from their being true.
Rather, I believe that the answer to the “problems†with race in this country is to force a paradigm shift in which the category of race is relegated to the dustbin of history, being, as it is, based either on lousy science, or some unintentional rehabilitation of lousy science through the backdoor of cultural studies. (To wit: in order to know which heritage or group memory to embrace, one must decide before hand what they essentially are. Or, to put it another way, I’m not asserting that social construction is “fake”; I’m saying it only ‘works’ if it is mapped onto the same kernel assumptions that animate traditional essentialist thinking).
In short: Just because we have come  incorrectly  to see race in a particular way does not mean we are forever prevented from correcting our mistaken worldviews. And one way of beginning that process is to understand the myriad problems with “race” as a category, and to expose the various efforts to keep the category alive as mere redundancies of the bad science nearly all of us now repudiate.
What I think is preventing us from giving up the project of race is that many people, in a society drenched in identity politics, are reluctant to give up on the categorizations “race†provides, even though they don’t wish to be associated with a school of thought that suggests, however obliquely, that we are practically different species based on something so mundane as pigmentation.
Which is to say, we don’t need to keep bolstering bad science simply because we’ve long bolstered bad science. Christ. Some of of the people objecting to this argument sound like Ptolemians.
Please also note that much of my post (as I believe I mentioned in a comment) was written back in the late 90s, and was in direct response to two things: a call by our student newspaper to “celebrate the differences†(which is why I reprise the word “differences†in the conclusion  not, as some would have it, because I am constrained by a white worldview that sees whiteness as “normalâ€Â), and a response to what was prevalent in racial theorizing at the time (and is still prevalent now). It was likwise tied into some work I was doing on interpretation theory and history, and branched off from competing discussions of identity formation in Beloved and Portnoy’s Complaint.
For the person [in the comments] who notes that Judaism is constructed around group memory (aren’t all religions in some sense?), I answer, so what? I never said group narratives don’t exist. I argued, instead, that it makes no sense to refer to these as “memories.†Monarch butterflies have constitutional memories. Humans probably do, as well, to a certain biological extent. But those genetic memories have nothing whatever to do with narratives we’ve taught ourselves. Instead, they are more likely tied to things we think of now as “instinct.â€Â
Religion is also based on a leap of faith  the faith in this case being the willingness to buy into the concept of group memory. I don’t mind that people do it  hell, I don’t even think it necessarily wrong in all contexts, just logically incoherent when conceived of as “memory†rather than “narrative† I had just hoped to point out how it works, and why it fails intellectually when pressured. Because it does, in fact, rely on the same kind of blood argument that used to motivate race theory.
What my post is doing is simply showing the underlying problems with the logic of race, not advocating that those who have been discriminated against in the past “just get over it” (if you get a chance, click through the link where I debate from the “cultural†side on this issue with Steve Sailer and other hereditary geneticists [reproduced in an update to my original post])
Go read through Jill’s entire argument, if you have the time—and read through the arguments in support offered by her commenters—and let’s see if we can’t continue this discussion in a civil way.
Spike Lee would have wanted it that way.
Or not.
Hurricane Katrina was an inside job.
Thanks for the response, Jeff. I agree that, ideally, the whole concept of race would be relegated to the dustbin of history. I think the problem comes with the fact, though, that racism today is far less overt and conscious than it was in the days of Jim Crow. I’m sure we’ve all heard people assert that they are really truly “colorblind.” That’s problematic when we live in a society where people and groups are often presumed to have certain attributes because of their race or perceived race, and where lighter-skinned people usually get the more socially valued attributes.
Point being, it’s not about bolstering bad science simply because we’ve always bolstered bad science. It’s about saying that race is not scientific, but it does hold a good amount of social meaning regardless of the fact that such meaning is in no way essential or innate. And it’s about pointing out that that social meaning is entirely created, recognizing that it has consequences, and making an attempt to deal with both of those issues: First, by taking steps to transcend the very idea that race should have social meaning, and second, dealing with the actual consequences of the fact that, here and now, race is meaningful and racism exists.
Policies like affirmative action deal with the second part of that strategy. The first part is dealt with, as you point out, by putting it out there that race isn’t biological, in pointing to all the ways in which race has been historically fluid, and in making an effort to leave race differences in the dust.
I think my argument differs from yours, then, in the idea that it’s not counter-productive to recognize the social currency of race, and to deal with it accordingly. I believe we can do that while also shifting (and obliterating) the foundations upon which ideas of race difference were built. I just think it has to be a multi-pronged strategy which recognizes the current reality and also makes an effort to change.
What I’m unclear about in your post is how, exactly, we deal with the fact that right now, skin color still matters. That people with “black-sounding” names are far less likely to be hired or even get an interview than people with “white-sounding” names, even if their credentials are identical. How do we relegate race to the dustbin of history when racism is so deeply unconscious and insidious that a great many white people will argue that they personally are in no way, shape or form racist, or will deny that they engage in any racial stereotyping? What do we do about the fact that race differences correlate with differences in wealth, education, prosperity and social mobility?
Do you think there is a difference between racism and stereotyping? Why?
And why do you limit the problem of racism to “white people”?
I agree with much of this, but I am all for taking the next step: recognizing that it has consequences, and that the consequences are often appalling, it is my desire to see the root of those consequences dug up and discarded.
Too many people keep trying to turn the weed into a rose, as far as I can tell—and too often, they do so simply by looking at the weed and deciding, against all logic, to insist it is a rose.
How we deal with the fact that right now skin color makes a difference is to remind people that it doesn’t in any ontological sense. And one way to do that is to expose the faulty thinking behind “race”—whether its being proferred by the KKK or, say, Toni Morrison.
I am for the slash and burn approach. We’ve run out of band-aids.
It’s not counterproductive to recognize the social currency of race, Jill. The problem is what happens when it’s essentialized by virtue of being institutionalized, categorized and parsed. The best way to break it down is simply to treat it scornfully, with disdain. When you begin to turn it over to legislatures, institutions and courts, then you provoke push-back and resentment, as in the case of hate-crime legislation that is always used in one direction.
Or, for another example, let’s take the issue of abortion. I am against unnecessary abortion, and necessary abortion is a very small percentage of those perpetrated. Do I want it banned? No. Why? Because I believe that this is an issue that is fundamentally moral in nature, and it ought to be addressed on moral bases. Further, I believe that it involves an exercise of free will.
Does Massachusetts’ courts’ attempt to bench-legislate gay marriage promote the cause of gay marriage? Does the legislature’s attempt to circumvent the state constitution do so? No. It’s about winning hearts and minds, don’t you think, rather than promulgation of categories and rules that have a tendency, willy-nilly, to become reified.
And why do you limit the problem of racism to “white people�
I won’t speak for Jill, but one reason to limit racism to white people in a conversation which touches on issues of class and social justice is because racism against white people has a statistically insignificant effect on, say, access to higher education, job placement rates, &c. The same can’t be said of your vice versa.
Many blacks persistently otherise themselves today. A lot of people in a lot of groups otherise themselves for a variety of reasons, from Asian immigrant communities that provide an opportunity to make what must be an enormous cultural leap to various grievance based groups that find that exist to right what they perceive as wrongs.
This is not to say that it has not historically happened from the other direction in America, but as Jeff noted, that doesn’t make it necessarily so today.
Right. My heritage is mostly Irish/Portuguese, and I’m third generation on one count, fourth on the other. There are no slaveholders in my family tree, and it really wouldn’t matter to me if it were. That was a long, long time ago, and while looking back is instructive, feeling genetic historical pain today is foolish and counterproductive. You need look no farther than the millions of blacks who have successfully integrated themselves in to all facets of society from medicine to government to academia to entertainment. You can’t find a field in which you can’t find a black person at the top of it. Slavery ended 150 years ago. Everyone involved in it is long dead. Millions of non-blacks immigrants have added themselves to this crazy American stew well after the days when there was slavery here. Let’s get over it already.
Anyone who chooses to wear the scarlet letter of oppression derived black inferiority does so in their own disinterest. If you’re going to live like Whitey is out to get you, you’re likely to get a result that approximates it. Those who kick that crap to the curb and trust in themselves and depend on their own abilities and initiative do just fine.
Similarly, Scott, much of the effect “race” has on access to hire education, job placement rates, etc., isn’t causal.
You’ve probably read America in Black and White. What did you think of it?
And where are my books?
Jeff sees it as a plant, but I figure racism is more like a knot, roughly the size of your fist, in a peice of twine. Sure there’s an underlying cause, the first half-hitch or overhand that started the knot; but it was compounded on by an innumerable list of additional half-hitches and overhands (e.g. affirmative action, identity politics, white guilt, minstrelsy, pop culture, counter culture, etc). It’s impossible to just decide to untie the racism knot without backing your way out, that is to say; untying the knot from the outside in. We can’t unravel the knot without identifying all the resulting BS and eradicating it from the way we (all of us, black white, whatever) live.
How in the hell we do that, I don’t know. That’s why I usually just sit back and read.
Scott, you’re in academia, so perhaps you’ll know this. What is the statistical significance of the effect of having a strike against you when you go to apply to higher education because you don’t qualify for the preferential treatment given certain minorities by affirmative action policies? Are there any numbers on that?
That is why it’s best to toss it to a teething puppy, and see whether he can just gnarr through it.
The main meaning I find within our society concerning race is that constructed by Faux Liberals, quite possibly on the basis of their own psychologic projections, perhaps thus indicating their own racism or at least some rather desperate need for “race” categorization – along with the myriad others they seem to be addicted to as they flail about searching for self-meaning, mainly by blaming someone else for perceived intra-schema sins.
The rest is a pseudo-debate, imo. I don’t buy “Liberal” mantra, such as the idea of “group memories”, for example, or some kind of unconscious affliction as “white privilege”.
I just don’t buy into the whole amazingly myopic and needful oppressor-victim-savior schema.
We who? You and Jeff? The US government? Citizens of the World?
Wait. The teething puppy. That’s us, right? The discussion we’re having? The analogy is getting deep in here.
Slavery ended 150 years ago.
And yet, the long-term economic effects of it still haven’t been adequately addressed, be they of the rural Mississippi, itinerant farmer variety or the urbanization of the formerly rural poor and the subsequent white (and capital) flight.
Anyone who chooses to wear the scarlet letter of oppression derived black inferiority does so in their own disinterest. If you’re going to live like Whitey is out to get you, you’re likely to get a result that approximates it. Those who kick that crap to the curb and trust in themselves and depend on their own abilities and initiative do just fine.
I appreciate the beauty of the standard libertarian line, but here, as always, it lacks a foundation in history or economy. Institutional racism—be it in the form of glass ceilings or the more subtle, invidious sort, like federal government’s washing its hands of the urban poor—still exists. If you think a fair and equitable society is one in which someone lucky enough to be born wealthy and white can coast into retirement after a lifetime of mediocrity, whereas that person’s poor, black equivalent couldn’t even achieve mediocrity in the only school system available to him—if you think that is the way society should be, then I’m not sure what to say.
Me? I want the brightest people to get the best education, irrespective of race. I don’t want the cure for cancer to hang on the off-chance that the one person with raw-processing power enough to discover it has parents who live in the right school district.
Intelligentist!
Jill,
Some questions,
Not trying to be snarky, but…
Isn’t that kind of a Eurocentric way to think of it?
Look at the Japanese for example, aren’t all others gaijin? Or what of Native Americans calling themselves “the people” and describing all others as barbarians, the Egyptians did it too.
Could that be a cultural and not a race issue?
After all Whites are no longer the most prosperous race in the US
Do people with asian last names get higher-paying jobs than people with white-sounding names? Why is that?
Could there be an issue with the popular perception of “black” culture that makes a hiring manager, who by law is not allowed to discriminate based on race, discriminate on the basis of something else?
Is there ever a good reason to use race as a justification for well, anything?
Do you think that it’s possible that racial issues could be becoming less of an issue than a non-assimilated culture with different norms?
Oh, come now, Scott. What would S. Knapp say about your tying race to long-term economic effects?
I bet you know.
How many billions of Federal dollars have we washed our hands with, Scott? How many billions have we had to pour into blue-collar suburbia to prop that up? This liberal view lacks a foundation in common sense and accounting.
As someone noted on a previous thread, whose projects are those?
yuck. who gives a crap. because I identify myself as an Irish-American Papist simply means I enjoy doing the opposite of caring about what others think of me. I don’t give a f*** what others say about me, take from me, assume about me, or anything else they might throw my way.
now, I am not a black guy, but knowing me the way I do, if I were black, I’m pretty sure I would feel the same way.
again, there is some satisfaction in being the victim “other”.
Matt, I don’t know how to break this to you gently, but, well . . . you ARE black.
Of all the things I expected to see today, polite disagreement wasn’t one of them.
I should just hang it up, go home and have a Scotch or 3.
Nice friggin’ attitude, Slartibart. Yeah, go on home.
I like to throw the curveball in a fastball count, Slart.
I’m edgy that way.
It’s kind of like that obfuscatory thing he does with sentence cadence. You are growing sleepy . . .
Meaning that they really are racist and stereotyping?
Speak only for yourself, please. That’s really what is going on here: projection.
Dan – real nice… wait until I am convinced I am the man… and then drop this nuke on me? and you expected a Christmas card? up yours!
So you support school vouchers to get poor blacks out of failed public schools?
Slavery ended 150 years ago.
And Jim Crow was still in effect in my lifetime. If you’re going to start the clock ticking for when African-Americans are supposed to “get over it already,” at least start it when they no longer had barriers actually written into law against them.
Well, Matt, I wouldn’t want you to start a terrible precedent by lying about yourself on the Intarwebs.
Lynn – in that case, I would like to request reparations for the oppression my recent ancestors suffered at the hands of the Know-Nothings and the Protestants, who in their Christian Charity posted Irish Need Not Apply signs in their display windows.
Add to that the Catholic-bashing that goes on everywhere in every way (as, you see, I am very attuned to it being a part of this down-trodden class) and it ought to be a hefty sum.
At the very least you could judge me on my heritage rather than the content of my character and make it easier for me to get a govt contract or artificially raise the test scores of my disenfranchised children when the time comes for them to apply for admission to university.
Please advise.
I took a different approach, myself. It seemed to work out pretty well…
I have noticed this also, the police blotter in most towns is likely to have alot of “black-sounding” names, while the black folk I work with tend to have more “white-sounding” names. But do you really think the name is the cause? Or is it another effect, indicating the root cause may be different attitudes and work ethics in two black sub-cultures?
I don’t see any “polite disagreement” here.
I see Jeff–and I hate when he does this–ignoring that he’s being repeatedly (and merely) insulted by the only two pseudo-arguants here who are meaningfully part of “white society,” in the feigned rejection–or displacement–of which they’re deeply, self-interestedly invested, materially and psychologically.
There’s no argument. As ever.
Again, I am not asking Blacks (and why is this only about Blacks, by the way?) to “get over it”. This is a strawman argument—one I already dealt with over at Jill’s and linked to in this post.
Do you honestly think the best way to get past Jim Crow is to keep using it as a bludgeon to insist that we need to deploy similar race-based governmental measures now?
Because I strongly disagree.
What do we say about the fact that these correlations are decreasing in force? And in spite of….
Well, the Pruit Igo Project worked so well in St. Louis that it became a magnifier for crime, indolence, and hopelessness and had to be completely torn down.
I think it’s terrible the way straw men and women are treated on the internet. It’s genocide, if you ask me.
I’m sure the UN will get right on that.
What are you talking about? They’re everywhere! One just moved in next to my mother.
Back to this.
I’d just like to say that the 3 Duke Lax players probably don’t feel better at being labeled ‘statistically insignificant’.
To put it another way: are the sins of whites’ ancestors so grievous they must be punished by instituting a new system of racial preferences?
And how does focusing on the color of skin help, say, a white kid from a backwood holler in southern Kentucky? His family’s poor, the local school is bad, but he’s unbelievably bright. Shouldn’t he get as much consideration as an equally bright poor black kid from Watts? And more than the children of a black professional?
Assigned racism surely requires a racist cure, no? It’s only fair.
My apologies to the offended.
Aaah, the ol’ “rejecting the premise” gambit.
Tends to make people mad.
Try suggesting that there are “underlying problems” with the idea that America can impose democracy on another country by force sometime…
It’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s like trying to convince a leftard that some people actually like the responsibility of making their own decisions.
If you are looking for ESA protection for them, Dan, they’ll have to get in line behind the Polar Bears, and perhaps soon, the MSM.
What are you prattling on about, alphie?
Not being Scott, I don’t know. Can I use Sens. Biden and Clinton as my lifelines?
It certainly can’t work any better than freeing the Slaves did, eh what, alphie?
Native?
Well, they wouldn’t be ‘otherized’ as native if they had gotten in their Great Oak-ribbed Ships of Exploration and ‘discovered’ us. Then we would be the ‘natives’.
What? They didn’t have thr Great Oak-ribbed Ships of Exploration?
Who was oppressing them before we could get there and oppress them here?
I’ll figure that out right after I finish writing “The Wheel in the Precolumbian Americas” and “The Horse in Sub-Saharan Africa”.
Ok, there, I’m done.
What chaps me about this debate, such as it is, is the insistence (from one side) that no matter my behavior, even despite my own conscious convictions, I’m harboring the serpent of racism in my bosom. How, oh how do I root it out and cast it from me??
Ans.: I can’t. I’m white; therefore I’ve inculcated this societal racist paradigm, now cleverly disguised as my firm belief in equality of opportunity-cum-rejection of mandated equality of outcome. No matter what I do, no matter what I say, no matter what I think, I must be racist, because our society once participated in racism at all levels – regardless of the fact that, today, racism at any level is considered not just wrong but a sign of stupidity. I think I could throw myself on the next person of African ancestry I saw, sign over to him or her all my worldly goods in reparation for wrongs my family wasn’t even in the country to commit (and was too poor, in its own country, to commit there), take out a full-page ad in the NYT pronouncing my own inherited(?) culpability and my commitment to work for the rest of my days to help to lift up the downtrodden of that subset of society – and I’d still be racist at the core, just acting out my “white guilt.”
Frustrating. Like arguing with my nine-year-old.
Just trying to point out that in many government, corporate or even personal endeavors,
There are those who accept the given course of action and argue for the best way to implement it.
And then there are those who stand back a just say the whole thing is doomed to fail no matter how it is implemented.
Your stand on the solution to racism is the same stand that people who are against our continued involvement in Iraq take…
This is all well and good; but what I want to know is where do MC Serch and the contestants of VH1’s White Rapper Show figure into all of this?
I caught an episode of this last week and I’ve never seen any group of people struggle harder not to be white. The insistence that every character be “street” was strangely racist and disturbing.
That said, I still kick it to “Steppin’ To The AM” now and again. Serch and Pete Nice had skills.
Lynn Gazis-Sax,
Yeah, and Africans are still being enslaved today, not that America’s grievance mongering race baiters give a damn.
As for me, I was born and raised in New England, where my ancestors landed around the turn of the 20th century, where there was no Jim Crow and where my people were treated like just as much shit as black people were. What is it you’d like me to feel about things that are relegated to history again? Why should I feel it?
Pablo:
Negligible, but I don’t have the numbers handy. Remember, affirmative action programs still involve rather high standards—higher than many of the school systems impoverished African-Americans attend can provide—so the students who are being “squeezed” out of their first- or second-choice institutions have plenty of other available options.
Still, all things considered, I prefer a class-based preference system. The few poor people who can make it to college have loans at their disposal; the wealthy don’t need them; the lower-middle and middle-class students, however, lack the funds to go it alone but their parents are too wealthy for them to qualify for loans. I’d rather have poor whites given the opportunity to be the first person in their family to ever graduate from college than support an African-American upper-middle class which is doing fine on its own, thank you very much.
Jeff:
That’s another conversation altogether, one I don’t have time to get into today. Needless to say, the numbers they compile are interesting, but their conclusions—the book is a product of its time, of a particular backlash, and I really don’t have time to dig out my notes on it and Myrdal today.
“Books?” he asks, sheepishly. “What books?”
J. Peden:
Check out the managerial class in, say, the Louisiana restaurant industry. Then try to tell me you don’t see abundant evidence of a white privilege which exists outside of applicable criteria like experience, seniority, qualifications, talent, &c.
Jeff again:
I’m not sure, never having worked with him and having had, shall we say, a difficult time with Literary Interest. That said, what I know about the economic development of the postbellum South—the resistance to mechinization, the hiring of freemen, the sudden adoption of mechinization, the mass firing of freemen, the exodus of freemen to the urban, industrial North in the ‘20s and ‘30s, and I could continue—points to race being a key factor in the current plight of the urban poor. Did the changing economic climate in the South affect the lives of poor whites, too? Of course, but in the 1890s and 1900s, poor whites didn’t have to compete with blacks for jobs in large swaths of the service industry.
N. O’Brain:
Not in the least. Public schools have “failed” for a wide variety of reasons—but they’re still preferable to charter schools, whose “promise,” such that it is, has more to do with potential than results. Restructure the public school system along rational lines, pay teachers just compensation, and the need for charter schools evaporates.
Ryan:
Stop watching the news. They are statistically insignificant, no matter how they feel.
Robert:
This is, I believe, the general argument I’ve offered here—class matters more than race. But do you think eliminating current affirmative action programs will help either student get into college? Not likely. For the time being, I’ll settle for one—and if doing so helps to mitigate the economic reprecussions of slavery, I’m fine with that.
B Moe:
Agreed. If people are so irresponsible as to not be born wealthy, well, they deserve a lifetime of working harder, longer and for less pay.
Gray:
Said a Hauptscharführer to a Oberscharführer: “Of course we have the moral highground. They’ve been liquidating Untermenschen in these parts long before we arrived.”
Jamie:
You don’t have to tell me twice. You, personally, have had it so tough. Because all this? It’s about you, personally, and your personal culpability, not some larger socio-economic debate.
Jeff, it is because other people “of color” don’t fit this victim mold to be honest. Asian and Indian (Asians again I grant you) do not fit in to this argument so they are left out of it. My wife is second generation Chinese and she could give you a rant about this, a view held by many Asians. They aren’t included in many discussions of minorities because they don’t fit that victim mold. My Chinese in-laws came to this country not knowing the language, and poor. They worked their way through college, opened their own business and raised three kids who also went to collge and now are raising families of their own. They lived the American dream and continue to do so with a refreshing belief that the US is a great country of opportunity. I believe it’s their culture that elevates them above the superficialities of skin color. They refused to quit or wallow in self pitty. I couldn’t be more proud to have a second Mom and Dad.
Why is it only about Blacks? Perhaps a more important question hasn’t been asked in this whole discussion. It’s the elephant in the room but it appears no one wants to address it.
Why should I feel it?
Why is everyone suddenly talking about their feelings?
Because we’re talking about guilt based social programming.
I, for one, reject it, especially as I have no connection to the guilty. But at the same time, I refuse to derive guilt from my apparent whiteness. Mostly because I’m not a racist.
Well, screw them too! Where do they get off not giving back to the community from which they came? Uppity Asians… they’re all the same… next thing they’ll say is any poor immigrant who can’t speak the language can do the same thing… and that, besides being untrue, simply nutures the myth that if you work hard enough you can get ahead. And for those among us who can’t get ahead, one begins to get the impression that we’re being singled out for not working hard enough.
It’s bad enough Whitey goes on and on about this… but now the Chinese, too? Give me a break.
Because we’re talking about guilt based social programming.
No, we’re not. We’re talking about social equity-based social programs.
I refuse to derive guilt from my apparent whiteness. Mostly because I’m not a racist.
Who wants you to? I haven’t been white for too long—about six years now, since I moved to California from Louisiana—but in my short time as a white person, I’ve never been asked to feel personally responsible for economic inequality. Sure, I recognize the role of race in American economic history, and I understand that certain contemporary inequalities can’t be divorced from that history; but I’ve never been asked to feel responsible for it.
I think all you “white-lifers” have developed some sort of complex.
Let me help with that, if I can. For every student who made it into a program by a margin equal or less than that which was granted them because of their “ethinicity”, one student who didn’t have that benefit was denied.
Do you really believe that to be negligible, Scott? Because if it is, there’s really no point in doing such calculations, and we’d do well to stop it. If it isn’t, we’ve institutionalized racism to a statistically significant degree.
And why are we talking about them? Guilt.
It’s the same thing, Scott.
I’m just an American. Please don’t think poorly of me for that.
In Louisiana I have just seen the effect of one shit-load of Liberal Democrat privilege, which appears to be conscious. I would suspect that the managerial class exhibits the same phenomenon. But that should be illegal by now, right?
“Unconscious”
My comment was a response to alphies nonsensical blathering about “forcing democracy” on people, not the main topic. Good luck on getting everyone what they deserve, though, I can’t wait.
I am missing a toe. Could the government find some way to steal it from someone who was fortunate enough to have been born with 11 toes, cut of theirs off, and then pay for a doctor to attach it to my disenfranchised foot?
Sorry, been distracted by a new bout with an old nemesis. Some things never change.
Scott is a social activist for the left side of the political spectrum (and one who owes me some books!) Given that, his responses are perfectly in keeping with his political philosophy. And, at the very least, he should be congratulated for recognizing that there are no essential ties between race and culture.
That he moves from that recognition to re-connecting race and political culture (albeit by historical anecdote, some overdetermined, some perfectly reasonable) just goes to show that there are myriad ways to keep racial divisions foregrounded.
I have no doubt Scott believes in what he says. We just disagree on the means to achieving the same end—his means being “progressive,” mine being, well, much more sensible
With so many top spots in American politics, business, punditry, entertainment, etc. now going to the rather mediocre offspring of America’s aristocracy, it hardly seems worth it to fight over who gets to the bottom rung of the ladder.
The fight over affirmative action almost seems like a ploy by America’s ruling class to divert attention away from the privileges their children enjoy.
Well, Shelby Steele has never been white.
Am I part of America’s ruling class? Or just one if its pawns?
Dario hits it on the head – Asian immigrants and their decedents don’t have a troupe of race-baiting pimps dedicated to the eternal survival of the culture of victimhood.
They determine to succeed, and many of them have done so – despite facing obstacles as great as any other group.
“Check out the managerial class in, say, the Louisiana restaurant industry”
Wow. Talk about selecting a limited baseline group. Next time let’s make it larger, say, the managerial class in the Lower East Side rest. industry?
What surprises me is the continued assumption that group identities are somehow equal to, or of even more import than individual identities.
Anyway, I’m still waiting for folks such as Scott to demonstrate their good will in person, as opposed to say, establishing a program for people of my ilk. I take checks, Paypal, and cash (but not US currency – that’d just be wrong).
J
So being apparently unfortunate enough to have been born in the early 80’s in Northern Georgia with parents of Scotch-Irish descent, I’m pretty much up shit creek as this collective guilt thing goes, right?
‘Specially what with Global Warming about to kill us all anyway!
That’d be ”Scots Irish”.
One drinks Scotch. Or Absinthe. Or whatever the ‘dillo wants.
J
I don’t know Jeff.
I posted on my rather tiny blog some thoughts on the tendency of people to fight those they think of as competitors within their own class rather than worrying about what’s going on above or below them on the ladder.
But, if you think being a meritocracy is what made America great, you probably should worry less about who is getting into which college and more about who’s running things.
One idiot son at the top can do far more harm to America than millions who get into a slightly better school than their grades deserved…
Welcome back Jeff. Thank God.
As for me, I was born and raised in New England, where my ancestors landed around the turn of the 20th century, where there was no Jim Crow and where my people were treated like just as much shit as black people were.
I’ll see your story of white innocence; half my ancestors were part of the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 20th century, and didn’t, at the time, count as any whiter than yours in the eyes of American WASPs. And I still get to check the “white” box on affirmative action forms.
I did, I’ll admit, have a slave-owning ancestor on the other side of my genealogy, but if I were to measure my ancestral guilt statistically, I still have more Ottoman Empire ancestors
.
What is it you’d like me to feel about things that are relegated to history again? Why should I feel it?
I don’t give a damn what you feel. Feel as personally guilty or innocent as you like; it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. I’m just concerned with accuracy; race didn’t, in fact, evaporate as a consideration when slavery officially ended (or even, sadly, when Jim Crow ended – though that would be at least a little closer to the mark). So it’s not in fact the case that African-Americans have spent 150 years stewing over old resentments and failing to take advantages of all their wonderful color blind opportunities.
So life is hard. Wear a helmet.
Shit happens. Once it’s cleaned up, you move on.
There is no white innocence anymore than there is white guilt. If you didn’t do it, you’re not guilty of it. If it didn’t happen to you, you’re not victimized by it. And all of the parsing in the world won’t change a jot of that.
Certainly not, as there are no 150 year old black Americans. And 25 year old black Americans who have never been within a thousand miles nor or a hundred years of slavery ought not pretend to be victims of it.
What flavor is the paste du jour?
Aren’t you glad the idiot son lost the 2004 election and went back to Massachussets?
On to the serious discussion:
I’m surprised this paragraph from Jill hasn’t caused more than a token discussion. With it, Jill basically throws out race as innate genetic heritage and shifts the whole debate to race as another word for culture. I don’t know anyone who would claim that Irish, Italians, and Slavs are not white in a genetic context, but to Jill, the white race seems to be whatever cultural mix dominates Western / American culture.
Originally, American culture was indeed dominated by Anglo-Saxon Protestants. With immigration and economic power, Catholics and Slavic immigrants overcame systemic discrimination and became an equal part of the general American culture which Jill describes as white, despite lingering traces of bigotry on the mainstream public level through the 1960s. They didn’t suddenly become white; their culture mixed with the dominant culture until the two were almost indistinguishable. Likewise with Asian immigrants today.
We can cite statistics about names and hiring as proof that discrimination still exists, but any supposition about the basis for that preference is all subjective judgement. I think those sorts of tests are rigged to produce a specific results. Question: what would the tests show if the applicants were “Martin King”, “Sunshine Moonbeam”, and “Cleetus Hogg”?
One of my liberal friends is a history professor, a specialist on Roman history. I don’t remember the whole discussion, but it came out that we’re not completely sure where in the vast empire some of the Roman emperors came from, and what ethnic origins they had. The only thing that was sure was that they were all Roman.
The local Libs in my small cultural-anthropological niche are about to go into a Federally funded, orchestrated “Grapes of Wrath” frenzy, to boot. Their last one involved “Farenheit 911”, ironically just after the MSM refused to publish the Cartoons.
There is no escape.
Guess we’re lucky Kerry didn’t get elected, then… right Alphie?
Keep your snarkiness under your corset, ok princess? Nobody cares about your attempts to derail.
Yes, Kerry is a child of privilege.
So is George W. Bush.
Ditto President Pelosi.
What better way is there to hide the fact that you’re eating Steak & Eggs for breakfast than to pour everyone else deliberately unequal bowls of Cheerios, then sit back and gorge while the little people squabble?
Divide and Conquer!
My grandfather was scots-irish and was orphaned at the age of 10. 3 boys and 3 girls. The family was split up by the British and my grandfather was sent off to be free labor (slavery being reserved here as the exclusive domain of african americans that are not Obama) at a lumber camp in outback Newfoundland. He became homophobic and was a brawler (go figure). He told of being being stomped by hobnail boots and of beatings for not getting enough work done on cold wet days.
He ran away when he was 16 and found his way to London, Ontario where he stumbled (literally if personal history is any guide) into his older brother who was tending bar.
They both entered the US illegally and got jobs working the factory lines at the Buick plant in Flint, Mich.
Fast forward to my dad growing up in Flint. WWII is in full swing so he enlists in the USN. Gets shipped off to Adak island and stood watch in the worlds coldest fog for the duration…. (cue Steve Earle’s Rich Man’s War).
That story is not unusual. There are other whites, like Armenians, who fled genocide and arrived here with nothing but the color of their skin (if the current white privilege argument is to be believed).
I’d agree that the white skin does provide some measure of privilege… because most white racists are too lazy to look around a room of mostly white people and try to figure out who is the jew, armenian or irish guy. It is far easier to just pick out the black guy. I know that as a reddish blond haired, blue eyed male I get better treatment at the DMV… because I speak spanish. My hispanic wife (hopefully the “others” aren’t reading this) always has claimed that people treat her much more deferentially when I show up next to her. I sometimes privately chalk it up to her accent which only I can translate… but usually I counsel her to just be kind and assume nothing racist is going on and if it is racism, their true colors will eventually jump out and we can deal with that directly. By the way, she has a deep distrust of people from the state of Guerrero, MX… evidently lazy, shiftless, petty thieving bastards all.
Well I could ramble on disjointedly forever, but I’ll sign off by saying that I answered to “white monkey” to some Burmese Army f***wad who had my passport for about two hours until someone told me what he was saying. F*** him and the chinese piece of shit bicycle he rode in on….
Get back on topic or crawl back under your seemingly superior rock, Alpo… er… Alphie.
As with the always ad hoc conspiracy theories, it’s just not possible to successfully contradict a holy narrative, is it?
Why do all the dorkiest commenters have names that start with A L P?
Yes, alphie. Another ingenious plot by the white ruling class, which as you note is currently headed up by confirmed idiot George Bush.
I think your argument divides and conquers itself, brother.
Man!! Wouldn’t steak and eggs be good right about now?
Not really, Jeff.
The “plot” is easier to carry out than one of those McDonald’s cash registers with the pictures on the keys instead of numbers.
Look at how simple it was for Bush to set the Sunnis and Shiites of Iraq at each others throats…random, unequal treatment works every time.
Easy as pie.
mmmm…pie.
If this is your way of promoting the superior foreign cultures that dislike Americans, I’d say it needs some work…
Why does the cynic in me say that the proponents of affirmative action have already got theirs. I’d maybe be willing to listen, say if Scott were to give up his position for some deserving minority. Generosity with other people’s money is the trademark of the liberal.
McDonalds then pie.
Scott – Wow, thats cold. Racism is NOT okay reguardless of which way its going, and I’d say this is a pretty damn strong example that whites don’t have a monopoly on either the racism OR the power to turn that racism into actions against those they don’t like.
So. Bush is a maniacal GENIUS! When he’s not being a stuttering chimp, that is.
It’s all so clear now…
Lynn, you might want to research your Ottoman Empire genealogy a bit when you’re totting up that ancestral guilt, because it’s not only Whites who did that slave owning thing.
And let’s face it, we’re all descended from slaveowners, (most of us on the wrong side of the blanket), and we’re all descended from slaves.
Go back far enough and we’re all descended from Eve. Either the Adam and Eve one or the hairy chick in Africa, (though she’s getting mixed press at the moment)
What I get from Jeff’s post(s) is that we’re here, now, and that enacting legislation based on race, creed or color is maybe not the optimum way of geting rid of discrimination based on race, creed or color.
Or FAIRNESS
Chimperialists!
And still Vijay Singh is not a black golfer. And like I’ve said all along, he could give Tiger 2 buckets of melanin and still give Yaphet Koto a run for his blackness. Go figure.
My brother Matt’s got serious back.
Can he dunk?
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