United States Politics Thread 46

[Travis B.]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ty/614146/

I'm not sure what this tendentious book review is supposed to be evidence for

It refers to the whole "white fragility" thing, which is what I was talking about at its very worst, as commented on by a major Black liberal commentator (and linguist) - as opposed to the author, Robin DiAngelo, who is a White person who attempts to speak for Black people regardless of what they may actually think - and notes that amongst other things it is actually quite condescending to real Black people and that it constructs a whole cult of guilt complete with original sin.

so I'll just point out that this bit has aged particularly badly:

An especially weird passage is where DiAngelo breezily decries the American higher-education system, in which, she says, no one ever talks about racism. “I can get through graduate school without ever discussing racism,” she writes. “I can graduate from law school without ever discussing racism. I can get through a teacher-education program without ever discussing racism.” I am mystified that DiAngelo thinks this laughably antique depiction reflects any period after roughly 1985. For example, an education-school curriculum neglecting racism in our times would be about as common as a home unwired for electricity.

That is only because of the right's attempts to stamp out the very mention of racism. It does not invalidate the rest of the article.

[Linguoboy]

It refers to the whole "white fragility" thing, which is what I was talking about at its very worst, as commented on by a major Black liberal commentator (and linguist) - as opposed to the author, Robin DiAngelo, who is a White person who attempts to speak for Black people regardless of what they may actually think - and notes that amongst other things it is actually quite condescending to real Black people and that it constructs a whole cult of guilt complete with original sin.

That's McWhorter's opinion. FWIW, Kelefa Sanneh largely agrees with him whereas Lauren Michele Jackson, despite being equally critical of DiAngelo's approach in some ways, doesn't have the same reading of the text as they do. I appreciate McWhorter's analysis, but holding him up as the chief or sole authority in these matters is always something of a red flag for me.

(The "original sin" bit is just a rhetorical flourish, one too reminiscent of how right wingers tend to speak about attempts to address systemic racism for my taste. Like Sanneh, he's trying to draw attention to how DiAngelo's work focuses too heavily on the spiritual transformation of white people at the expense of more substantial actions but at the end of the day it--like "cult"--is just a metaphor.)

That is only because of the right's attempts to stamp out the very mention of racism. It does not invalidate the rest of the article.

And who exactly makes up "the Right" in this country, Travis?

[Moose-tache]

I have no notes on the idea that "villifying Whites is dehumanizing" or "Simplistic depictions of privilege are unhelpful" or "White guilt is unproductive." I don't even care to be shown proof that these ideas exist. They don't, outside Twitter and dorm common rooms, but I don't even care about all that. Let's just assume that every leftist thinks White people are snarling monsters who all own pizza restaurants in Bed-Stuy. In that scenario, there is still one crucial piece missing.

What is the competing alternative? What active program for social change are these leftist narratives distracting from? Anytime I see people make (intelligent or moronic) rebuttal to this week's Sarkesian, the alternative is always either a) do nothing, or b) some Tankie Berniebro double-speak that amounts to doing nothing on the issue of race. What is the moderates' plan for making Congress 17% Black? What is their plan for ending police brutality? I guarantee you Matt Fucking Yglesias doesn't have one. You don't like teenage idiots on Twitter saying that mayonnaise is White Supremacy, then What is your plan to eliminate mayonnaise?!? HMMM?!?!?

[Raphael]

The main problem I have with the notion of "white fragility" is that it exoticizes and pathologizes behavior that doesn't strike me as the slightest bit exotic or pathological. The idea seems to be that, when white react badly to being constantly trash-talked, that's a special pathology of white people, rather than, say, a result of the fact that white people are human beings, and human beings generally often react badly to it when they get constantly trash-talked.

One possible retort to that would be that white people inherently deserve being constantly trash-talked. Now, first, I don't think anyone deserves being trash-talked for having been born into the wrong demographic groups. But second, even if white people really would inherently deserve being constantly trash-talked, that still wouldn't change the basic psychological dynamics at work. Human beings tend to react badly to it when they get constantly trash-talked, even if they do, in fact, deserve getting trash-talked.

**************************************

Moose-tache:

1) Yeah, so I don't have detailed worked-out plans for solving all the world's problems. So sue me.

2) "Your supposed miracle cure for Alzheimer's doesn't actually work." - "So what's your plan for curing Alzheimer's then, genius? Hm? Hm?"

3) How does your approach help end systemic racism? How is an ideology that teaches that "goal-orientedness" is inherently bad supposed to help anyone achieve any kind of goals?

4) While we're at it, isn't your request for concrete plans to solve concrete problems rather "goal-oriented" itself?

5) Am I an evil moderate or an evil Bernie Bro tankie now? I doubt there's all that much overlap between those categories.

6) As a start, I try to do no harm. Telling the majority population of a number of countries that they can either be right-wing or support political movements that see them as inherently worthless because of the demographic groups they were born into does, as far as I can tell, do real harm.

Right now, what large parts of the world's anti-racist movements have to offer can basically only attract those white people who have a particular kind of kink: either a sub kink ("I'm so, so very bad, bad, bad. I must be punished, punished, punished."), or a dom kink ("All white people except me are so, so very bad, bad, bad. They must be punished, punished, punished."). Now, of course there's nothing inherently wrong with having a kink, but it doesn't make sense to be all offended when other people don't share one's own kinks.

[zompist]

Right now, what large parts of the world's anti-racist movements have to offer can basically only attract those white people who have a particular kind of kink: either a sub kink ("I'm so, so very bad, bad, bad. I must be punished, punished, punished."), or a dom kink ("All white people except me are so, so very bad, bad, bad. They must be punished, punished, punished."). Now, of course there's nothing inherently wrong with having a kink, but it doesn't make sense to be all offended when other people don't share one's own kinks.

Jeez, Raphael. What dog do you even have in this fight? When US Black people talk about white folks, here's a hint about who they are talking about: US white people.

Do you even know what "the world's anti-racist movements" have to say? Because it sounds like you're making it up. I have a whole page on privilege, which even reassuringly tells worried white people like you that making white people feel bad is not what anyone is after.

[chris_notts]

The main problem I have with the notion of "white fragility" is that it exoticizes and pathologizes behavior that doesn't strike me as the slightest bit exotic or pathological. The idea seems to be that, when white react badly to being constantly trash-talked, that's a special pathology of white people, rather than, say, a result of the fact that white people are human beings, and human beings generally often react badly to it when they get constantly trash-talked.

One possible retort to that would be that white people inherently deserve being constantly trash-talked. Now, first, I don't think anyone deserves being trash-talked for having been born into the wrong demographic groups. But second, even if white people really would inherently deserve being constantly trash-talked, that still wouldn't change the basic psychological dynamics at work. Human beings tend to react badly to it when they get constantly trash-talked, even if they do, in fact, deserve getting trash-talked.

All social justice movements seem to struggle with this. See also feminism... people seem to get mad when they write articles or tweets or whatever that, broadly summarised, amount to "men suck" and then other people reply with "not all men", but this is how every human group behaves. If you write something saying "women suck", you get at least as many people showing up to say "not all women" or even "not any woman".

And I guess the challenge of a social justice movement is to both convey the problem and demand a solution, but allow "good" members of the group you have problems with to feel like they can join your side without always being a suspect or provisional member. If you go too hard on "group X sucks and is inherently awful" then all you do is incentivise group X to consolidate and do a lot of motivated reasoning to describe why you suck instead. But since the average person likes working with broad brush stereotypes, it's really hard to avoid much of the movement just devolving into "group X is the eternal enemy and incompatible with all that's right in the world".

Another example where I personally experience the same backlash is Scottish nationalism. Officially, if you listen to the leaders of the movement, it's a civic nationalist movement, enlightened, etc. On the other hand, the vast majority of my actual observations and interactions as an Englishman on the topic with Indy supports has been something that devolved to very simplistic slogans along the lines of "The English suck and are oppressing us". The leadership can try to project a positive message, but then at the level of the average supporter you get stereotyping of an entire nation as the eternal Enemy.

This isn't meant to single out either feminism or Scottish nationalism, more to say that all large groups of people are the same. They all tend to group together the outgroup into a handy evil stereotype to simplistically hate, and in doing so provoke that outgroup to consolidate against them if it hasn't already, and form or reinforce their own stereotypes. Which then means that a set of objectively often pretty reasonable asks gets embedded as a political / culture war thing forever and most people stop actually engaging with the other side.

It'd be nice if people could avoid or reduce rhetoric that converts "X and people who do X are bad and need to be stopped" to "people vaguely associated via some intrinsic property they can't change with the people who do X are bad and need to be stopped", but that doesn't really seem to be possible for any big political movement.

If you want to win and actually make the world better for your group, you generally need to leave the door open to a wider coalition without making anyone from the outside who joins up "one of the few good ones" (i.e. the exception to the rule that the group they come from inherently sucks). So excessive stereotyping or collective sin is not just bad, it's bad politics. In a perfect world, bad and alienating rhetoric wouldn't affect the chance of quickly achieving justice, but we don't really live in that world, and it's very hard for most people to consider themselves allies to a group whose majority openly seems to despise them regardless of whether they've done specific set of bad things or not.

[Raphael]

Jeez, Raphael. What dog do you even have in this fight? When US Black people talk about white folks, here's a hint about who they are talking about: US white people.

First of all, I don't need to have a dog in a fight to care about it. There are some ideas that are fairly important to me, and one of those is the idea that people shouldn't be assigned roles, rights, or amounts of moral value at birth based on which demographic groups they were born into.

Second, all kinds of political movements from all over the political spectrum are effectively acting globally these days, with their followers saying similar things in many different places.

Third, I'd prefer it if one of the three most powerful countries on the planet where I live would not end up being even more taken over by fascists than it already has been, so I'd prefer it if people there wouldn't play into the hands of fascists.

Do you even know what "the world's anti-racist movements" have to say? Because it sounds like you're making it up. I have a whole page on privilege, which even reassuringly tells worried white people like you that making white people feel bad is not what anyone is after.

I was talking about large parts of those movements, not all of them. My impression of what they're saying comes to a large extent from what I've seen on the web, mostly, but not only, on social media. Starting about 12 years ago, I spent a lot of time online hanging out with various followers of the various anti-oppression movements on Twitter. I was never a full-fledged follower myself, but I gradually moved closer to those movements and their ideas. And, well, after a while, I started getting the impression that I was slowly being drawn into a cult. Some of the standard warning signs were there, such as the insistence on interpreting everything that happens through the lens of the cult's core ideas, and a growing feeling that the outside world and much of what was coming from it were being presented as inherently evil, so that followers would have to stick to the inside of the group because nothing on the inside could ever be as bad as the outside.

And well, I withdrew more and more from that subculture the more I saw people post stuff in the general vein of what I described here. Of course I didn't collect all the statements that irritated me somewhere.

[Travis B.]

In addition to everything that has been said here, which I will not repeat, I should emphasize that these aspects of social justice movements actually play into the hands of the fascists. There is a reason why the right has managed to completely take "woke" and like and turn it into propaganda for themselves. And this is that there are enough people in social justice movements that behave in the fashions described that it is easy for the right to use that to paint all opposition to oppression as being anti-White, anti-men, etc. etc. etc. specifically because people overall do not like being painted as being morally bad due to being born into some category, so when you go ahead and do just that it is easy for the wrong people to exploit how people naturally react to such things.

[chris_notts]

In addition to everything that has been said here, which I will not repeat, I should emphasize that these aspects of social justice movements actually play into the hands of the fascists. There is a reason why the right has managed to completely take "woke" and like and turn it into propaganda for themselves. And this is that there are enough people in social justice movements that behave in the fashions described that it is easy for the right to use that to paint all opposition to oppression as being anti-White, anti-men, etc. etc. etc. specifically because people overall do not like being painted as being morally bad due to being born into some category, so when you go ahead and do just that it is easy for the wrong people to exploit how people naturally react to such things.

Yes. All sides are hobbled by the fact that even if the leadership has a balanced view and sees shades of gray, your average supporter is going to dumb down the message, make it as absolute as possible with as little thought required to identify the "bad guys" as possible, and thereby sabotage the progress of the movement. And if you're really unlucky, the dumb stereotypes of the base then lobotomise the thought leaders in turn.

This definitely happens with the "woke" side, but it also happens with the anti-woke side, who rapidly went from opposing a specific set of policies to opposing entire broad cultural groupings. The enemy became cosmopolitans, the entire political class, and a load of other groups who were only somewhat correlated with the positions the anti-woke people were opposing. And because of democratic politics, you then get a doom loop where unhinged voters drive an increasingly unhinged corresponding political class.

It's not a specific issue, it's a general issue with how people tend to behave when they organise politically.

[Torco]

I don't know, man... it may be the case that there's no way to not "play into the hands of fascists". like sure, if you defend your ideas, they'll make waves and waves of anti-that propaganda: but then, what, is the correct course of action? nothing? is that not, ultimately, also playing into the hands of the fascists? It's like what happened to the chilean constitutional convention: the fash used the seats they won in it to turn it into a circus, and then go "see? it's a circus!". not necessarily the fascists, but the burgeois control the TV (and, more broadly, media, but let's just call all of that TV for fun's sake), so the TV is going to be negative towards you no matter what: maybe you either operate within that framework or don't operate at all.

Like, sure, maybe they go "protests are annoying", but then what, we don't protest so that they're not right? maybe the fascists go "look, these people call us fascists! aren't they hysterical" but, what, does that mean we don't call them fascists? maybe the TV starts talking in a few years about "the corporate media conspiracy theory", "the dangerous extremist fake news of class warfare" and the fash start calling us all conspiracy theorists... so what, we stop saying that the corporate media and the owner class have a common interest and agenda?

[Travis B.]

I don't know, man... it may be the case that there's no way to not "play into the hands of fascists". like sure, if you defend your ideas, they'll make waves and waves of anti-that propaganda: but then, what, is the correct course of action? nothing? is that not, ultimately, also playing into the hands of the fascists? It's like what happened to the chilean constitutional convention: the fash used the seats they won in it to turn it into a circus, and then go "see? it's a circus!". not necessarily the fascists, but the burgeois control the TV (and, more broadly, media, but let's just call all of that TV for fun's sake), so the TV is going to be negative towards you no matter what: maybe you either operate within that framework or don't operate at all.

Like, sure, maybe they go "protests are annoying", but then what, we don't protest so that they're not right? maybe the fascists go "look, these people call us fascists! aren't they hysterical" but, what, does that mean we don't call them fascists? maybe the TV starts talking in a few years about "the corporate media conspiracy theory", "the dangerous extremist fake news of class warfare" and the fash start calling us all conspiracy theorists... so what, we stop saying that the corporate media and the owner class have a common interest and agenda?

Sure, the fascists will always try to twist what you say against you. But even then you should not help them! Calling people as morally bad simply for being born into category X is the perfect way to alienate people against you, and the fascists will certainly exploit said alienation to their own advantage.

[Travis B.]

Yes. All sides are hobbled by the fact that even if the leadership has a balanced view and sees shades of gray, your average supporter is going to dumb down the message, make it as absolute as possible with as little thought required to identify the "bad guys" as possible, and thereby sabotage the progress of the movement. And if you're really unlucky, the dumb stereotypes of the base then lobotomise the thought leaders in turn.

This definitely happens with the "woke" side, but it also happens with the anti-woke side, who rapidly went from opposing a specific set of policies to opposing entire broad cultural groupings. The enemy became cosmopolitans, the entire political class, and a load of other groups who were only somewhat correlated with the positions the anti-woke people were opposing. And because of democratic politics, you then get a doom loop where unhinged voters drive an increasingly unhinged corresponding political class.

It's not a specific issue, it's a general issue with how people tend to behave when they organise politically.

Yes. However, in the case of the "anti-woke" side, the leadership intends on painting their political enemies with a broad brush - they do not really sincerely care about "woke" itself. Rather, they seek to rile up their base against anything from the center to the left, and "woke" is something that is just very convenient for doing so.

[Torco]

Sure, the fascists will always try to twist what you say against you. But even then you should not help them! Calling people as morally bad simply for being born into category X is the perfect way to alienate people against you, and the fascists will certainly exploit said alienation to their own advantage.

true... it remains the case that bad theory is bad... but not because of optics, primarily. progressive movements, some more than others, have a very real problem with misandry and/or anti-white stuff, for example, but that's just bad in general.

[Ares Land]

A few thoughts:

Twitter is not representative of the real world, thank <deity of your choice>. The character limit isn't conducive to nuance, plus the whole network functions as a permanent framework. I don't think anyone, on any political side comes across as anything but mean and trollish on Twitter.

More generally, unless you're deeply involved in political activism of some sort... All we hear about the Left in a general sense comes to us filtered either through social media or conservative media. Both kinds of media come -- with different dynamics -- with a heavy conservative filter. So of course it feels like all leftists these days are morons or tyrannical or abusive or any combination of those three. Repeating for emphasis: almost of the information we get goes through a right-wing filter. How about serious left-of-center newspaper like Le Monde, The Guardian, the New York Times? They're not that bad... but they're still run and managed by middle-aged, well-established people who don't want to rock the boat too much, so the same caveat applies.

On tactics and strategy: it may not be pretty, but you don't win any points for nuance or conceding points for the opposing side.
Feminism in the 90s and the 2000s was all about very careful discourse, nuanced point of views and conceding things were not that bad as they could be.
What were the results? Everyone in the West figured the problem was solved -- except of course for those unenlightened Muslims.
By contrast, "Men are Trash" as a slogan may have lacked nuance, but at least it got people thinking. Being nice is good and all, but sometimes people need a good punch in your face.

I expect most of us on this board (not all of us, but a solid majority) have no direct experience with sexism, racism, and so on as a target, and of course none of us are perpetrators. That's a good thing! but it means we have absolutely no idea how bad it can get and how pervasive it is.
Victims can get the feeling their lives suck but have no idea what is going on. That's why 'punch in the face' slogans help a lot.

[bradrn]

More generally, unless you're deeply involved in political activism of some sort... All we hear about the Left in a general sense comes to us filtered either through social media or conservative media. Both kinds of media come -- with different dynamics -- with a heavy conservative filter. So of course it feels like all leftists these days are morons or tyrannical or abusive or any combination of those three. Repeating for emphasis: almost of the information we get goes through a right-wing filter. How about serious left-of-center newspaper like Le Monde, The Guardian, the New York Times? They're not that bad... but they're still run and managed by middle-aged, well-established people who don't want to rock the boat too much, so the same caveat applies.

Funny, what I always hear people complaining about is how all kinds of media these days have a heavy leftist filter!

[Travis B.]

More generally, unless you're deeply involved in political activism of some sort... All we hear about the Left in a general sense comes to us filtered either through social media or conservative media. Both kinds of media come -- with different dynamics -- with a heavy conservative filter. So of course it feels like all leftists these days are morons or tyrannical or abusive or any combination of those three. Repeating for emphasis: almost of the information we get goes through a right-wing filter. How about serious left-of-center newspaper like Le Monde, The Guardian, the New York Times? They're not that bad... but they're still run and managed by middle-aged, well-established people who don't want to rock the boat too much, so the same caveat applies.

Funny, what I always hear people complaining about is how all kinds of media these days have a heavy leftist filter!

The thing is that is largely rightists attempting to delegitimize largely centrist media by painting it as heavily leftist and thus shift the Overton window rightwards.

(Yes, to me at least, the likes of the New York Times and The Guardian, while being some of my most preferred news sources, are still centrist rather than left-wing. It is just right-wing distortion that makes them appear to be left-wing.)

[Raphael]

For the record, I generally agree with Ares Land's latest post, which has shifted my own opinions a bit.

(Yes, to me at least, the likes of the New York Times and The Guardian, while being some of my most preferred news sources, are still centrist rather than left-wing. It is just right-wing distortion that makes them appear to be left-wing.)

Agree on the NYT; less so on the Guardian, which seems to take a "broad church left" approach and occasionally publishes opinions anywhere from straight center, err, centre, to almost tankie-ish. (Which is perhaps a smart strategy commercially speaking.)

[chris_notts]

Agree on the NYT; less so on the Guardian, which seems to take a "broad church left" approach and occasionally publishes opinions anywhere from straight center, err, centre, to almost tankie-ish. (Which is perhaps a smart strategy commercially speaking.)

The Guardian definitely has some breadth in its opinion pieces, but I think it's clear the core editorial line is centre liberal to moderate left? They endorsed the Lib Dems at least once (in the election that resulted in the Tory coalition no less), and are generally only happy to give space to further left opinions when there's no risk they might actually become policy. Most further left voices are, as you say, a smart commercial strategy present as long as they're voices in the wilderness.

[chris_notts]

I do find the Guardian the least bad of the UK newspapers on many issues, as someone vaguely on the left by many measures. But least bad is somewhat faint praise.

[Travis B.]

Agree on the NYT; less so on the Guardian, which seems to take a "broad church left" approach and occasionally publishes opinions anywhere from straight center, err, centre, to almost tankie-ish. (Which is perhaps a smart strategy commercially speaking.)

I give you that The Guardian is, overall, to the left of the NYT. However, to me it is still, on average, left-center rather than leftist per se.