1. The Murder of Professor Schlick, by David Edmonds. It tells the tale of the Vienna Circle, a group of positivist philosophers. Edmonds describes their attempt to develop a philosophy of scientific rigor against a backdrop of reactionary anti-Semitism. One excerpt:
Jews were the most loyal of Habsburg subjects. Certainly Popper, and Circle members, saw the Habsburg era through rose-tinted, rearview glasses. After World War I they felt that the Jews stood out: in the golden age of the empire it was different: everyone stood out.
Austria was much smaller than the former empire, and whereas other minorities were prominent under the Habsburgs, in Austria it was mainly the Jews that were noticeable.
1930s Austria and contemporary America are similar in that those who favor rigorous thinking find our ideas attacked on ethnic grounds (for being Jewish then, for being white now). One difference is that back then the Vienna Circle was mostly socialist and the attacks came from the right. Today, the attacks come from the socialist left.
2. Trust in a Polarized Age, by Kevin Vallier. I agree with the substance of this book. But the manner in which it is written serves as a reminder that academia and I were not meant for one another. An excerpt:
We cannot determine which reasons are intelligible without appealing to some form of idealization. A person can have an intelligible reason even if she does not affirm the reason at present. An intelligible reason is one that an agent is rationally entitled to affirm after some amount of reasoning, which includes the collection of information, and making proper inferences based on that information.
I ascribe intelligible reasons to persons based on the reasons they would affirm as their own if they were moderately idealized. Moderately idealized agents correspond to real persons, but they have reflected enough to respond to considerations that we would hold them responsible for ignoring. In this way, moderate idealization appeals to standards of information and inference that are not perfect but that are appropriate to our practice of responsibility. This, in turn, supplies the reasons on which trust and trustworthiness may be based, since the practice of trust and trustworthiness is a practice of responsibility.
This is the sort of prose that academics are obliged to read–and to write. I feel fortunate to have “failed” in my youthful attempt at such a career.
3. The World of Patience Gromes, by Scott C. Davis. Recommended by Glenn Loury. It is a great book, and it was very inexpensive on Kindle. Davis did extensive research to describe the evolution of a black neighborhood in Richmond where Davis worked as an anti-poverty volunteer in the early 1970s.
Arnold, thanks for the three references. On your three remarks:
1 – Today left and right are not the same as in pre-WWII.
2 – The two quoted paragraphs illustrate the failure of X to become social sciences (in addition to what you said about the prose). X is anything but a pretension of science.
3 – I wonder about similar studies of black neighborhoods in other U.S. cities.
Thanks for the recommendation of the David Edmonds book Arnold. I ordered it today. I had read his earlier “Wittgenstein’s Poker” and it was superb.
>—-” One difference is that back then the Vienna Circle was mostly socialist and the attacks came from the right. Today, the attacks come from the socialist left”
Back then, attacks on the Vienna Circle came mostly from the right because they were physically located in an area being rapidly Nazified. Both the ideas and the ethnicities involved were entirely unacceptable to the Nazis.
Let’s not forget their ideas were also entirely unacceptable, both then and now, to Marxists as well. Popper’s “The Open Society and Its Enemies” is arguably the best refutation of Marxism ever written. Stalin would have murdered them all even more quickly had it been attempted as the Moscow Circle.
>—-“1930s Austria and contemporary America are similar in that those who favor rigorous thinking find our ideas attacked on ethnic grounds (for being Jewish then, for being white now).”
I thought we were supposed to be able to expect something considerably more “charitable” from you than this classic example of Godwin’s Law.
Allow me to suggest that our position as whites in America today really isn’t remotely comparable to the position of the Jews in 1930’s Austria.
Allow me to commend to you this podcast, forwarded by a reader: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vdGhlbWVneW5rZWxseXNob3c/episode/MDE4NTE4ZDgtMjdiZi0xMWViLWExZGUtODMxYTNjYThhODg1?hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwiwlcbe34ztAhUJLKwKHe0CALYQjrkEegQIDBAI&ep=6
At about one hour and 16 minutes in, one of them reads from a document from an “anti-racist” about the need to “go reform white kids. Because that’s where the problem is – with white kids raised from infancy raised to violate black bodies with no remorse or accountability.”
That sounds like blood libel to me. Of course, no analogy fits perfectly. But there are too many echoes of anti-Semitism for me to ignore.
Thanks for that podcast recommendation Arnold and thanks for leaving up my comment and engaging instead of just taking it down as many blog owners would have done. I listened to the section you recommended and the next 10 minutes and I will finish the rest later. Glenn Loury’s podcast has been a regular part of my podcast diet for a while now.
First of all, I want to agree that comment you point to is indeed pernicious and racist. We agree on that.
Note that right after this example (which was picked precisely because it was about as egregious example of extremism on the other side as could be found) Coleman says that he doesn’t believe that this trend “can go on forever and much longer.” Glenn basically agrees and points to how different private and public comments on the subject are among the people he knows (many of whom happen to be academics familiar with this stuff).
One of the best arguments against Critical Race Theory is that it is great for the most vicious, old school racists because the term is has “lost all of its meaning” in Megyn’s words due to its being applied too promiscuously. The word is rapidly losing its stigma.
Critical Race Theory is entirely counter productive in terms of actually helping black people and has been embraced far more by white academics than ordinary black people. It naturally causes a backlash in most white people and undermines black people’s belief in their own agency. Colin Kaepernick urges his followers not to vote. Even that might suggest a level of agency that would undermine their victimhood.
I was raised Catholic. (It didn’t stick.) I am struck at how much CRT shares with the Christian idea of Original Sin. In both cases, everyone in the church is guilty of being a sinner but all one needs to do to fix it is admit it, repent, believe, and go out and proselytize. It seems to me that is a far better analogy to the logic of CRT than Nazism which was explicitly calling its opponents subhuman.
I think you are vastly overestimating the chance that CRT could find anything like majority support in this country. I can understand how that looks different on college campuses but they are very different from the rest of America.
Why not just agree that it is vile racist nonsense and be done with it? Seems pretty easy, but you somehow feel the need to go so long winded to marginalize it. Why?
Can you think of a scenario where this would be ever be appropriate for a K-12 audience? In a polite society? How about in a corporate environment? How about if we switched the races around and it was the white folks leveling the ludicrous charges?
Instead, you feel the need to dismiss it with some combination of “the voters won’t accept it,” or “this is limited only to college campuses” or “this is no different than sexual harassment training at my hospice.”
Hans,
OK. I agree that this is vile racist nonsense. Was that clear enough? I don’t think it’s appropriate in K-12. I think in polite society it should be equally permissible for someone to bring it up and for others to hopefully shoot it down. I think it’s the wrong way for corporations to teach racial sensitivity but I understand why they are trying to immunize themselves against charges that a racist employee caught on a viral video actually represents company policy. I agree entirely that if we switched the races around everyone would recognize it as racism.
But why should those things be the only things it is permissible to say about it? I am not “done with it” just because that’s all you are interested in hearing about it.
I am not dismissing it. I agree we do need to push back against it and have said so many times. I am drawing the line (as you can see just above here) at the kind of hysteria that literally equates it with Nazism. Also drawing the line at commenters who predict it will sweep the country in a way that should cause us prepare for civil war.
I never said it was limited to college campuses. I did say, and still maintain, that it is in its fullest flower there and will not reach comparable popularity anywhere else.
I do maintain that it will be a big loser with the voters once most of them understand the actual content of the theory which they currently don’t. Right now, most just think it means opposing racism not having to personally confess to it.
I never said, “this is no different than sexual harassment training at my hospice.” You are making up a fake quote there, not quoting my words. I did say that we sit through many perfunctory and silly trainings there and that if a CRT training was added in it wouldn’t be taken very seriously but would be taken as more of the same.
Here you go. You equated training on how to wash one’s hands with what my wife has to endure with overtly and explicitly racist nonsense as part of her employment.
“I have volunteered with Hospice for over 20 years and in the last few, we have had to sit through a morning of idiotic training sessions every year on how to wash your hands, how to not sexually harass someone…No training yet on racism but if there was one more on that it wouldn’t be noticed much.”
Hans,
Thank you. This clearly shows that you did make up a fake quote for me. When you put quotes around words you attribute to me, you should use the actual words, not make them up. Still not sure you recognize this.
I understand that you are claiming that you accurately paraphrased me. Actually you didn’t even do that. To have “equated” (your word) something in an analogy is not to claim that it is “no different” (your words again). Indeed analogies are only analogies if there is a difference (a point Arnold makes in response to my criticism of his analogy).
Without some very real difference between the things it wouldn’t be an analogy to the thing. It would be the thing itself. The point is not that it is “no different.” The point is there is both a difference and a similarity.
My invoking of the multitudes of perfunctory Hospice trainings was in response to you wondering why a corporation would expect your wife to sit through a training on racism. I did go on to explain why I thought they did that and that did have something (not everything) in common with those other trainings – a desire to reduce future risk to the corporation if an employee went viral doing something they had been warned against in the training.
Ok got it, thanks. You clearly don’t understand the difference between anti-discrimination training under the 1964 Civil Rights Act (sessions of which both my wife and I have attended annually since at least 2004) vs. the new “trainings” that we are discussing here. The woke training is completely separate from and unrelated to the anti-discrimination training and won’t prevent any lawsuits (obviously).
I didn’t say or mean that these new trainings aren’t very different from the old anti-discrimination trainings. You keep arguing against things I’m not saying. I am against these new trainings and have said so in the plainest possible language. I just don’t think they are the kind of apocalyptic threat that most commenters here do.
I’m pretty sure that I have said that one of the goals of these trainings is to try and avoid having employees offend customers in any way that could go viral and cost them business due to lost sales. I don’t think it’s a big mystery why they do them. I think their goal is to make money, not remake society.
As to lawsuits, it’s America. Anybody can sue anybody for anything and it costs a lot to win.
You seem to be having a hard time taking yes for an answer. A little above here I agreed with a whole laundry list of points you seemed to think I would disagree with. I feel like I’m being accused of structural anti-Hansism. I feel like I’ve been accused of committing some micro-aggressions. Careful or you’ll offend me and I’ll have the upper hand.
“I feel like I’ve been accused of committing some micro-aggressions.”
Sorry for that :). My lived experience is fragile and needs to be protected from any and all micro-aggressions.
And, I appreciate your replies, so thanks.
“As to lawsuits, it’s America. Anybody can sue anybody for anything and it costs a lot to win.”
Is there any evidence that CRT or inviting Kendi to speak has provided measurable improvement in reducing the impact of lawsuits on a company. Like do we have a study showing that companies that embrace CRT save a bunch of money versus those that don’t.
If such data existed I would think the that people selling CRT would be screaming it from the rooftops. Instead I’ve never seen people offer anything other then vague unquantified notions that this is why companies do what they do.
I commented on lawsuits in response to Hans raising the issue. I think that, by far, the bigger motivation for these companies is hoping to avoid alienating their customers and losing sales for that reason due to boycotts of their products. As I said, they are motivated by a desire to make profits, not remake the world.
Of course there isn’t the kind of “data” to prove this that you demand. It’s all too recent for that and there is no reliable way to scientifically quantify the motives involved in any event.
“As I said, they are motivated by a desire to make profits, not remake the world.”
If there is no good data showing that Wokeness increases profits, then it seems unlikely to me that cynical mustache twirlers in boardrooms are just doing it for the money.
On the contrary, “go woke go broke” is a phrase precisely because knee-jerk wokeism often has a negative financial impact.
I think it’s more likely that these people simple believe in this stuff. They might get rewarded for it financially, but they don’t really know and don’t really care that much if it turns out to be a hinderance rather than boon.
The main reason there is a lot of racism in America is that there is a lot of racism all around the world.
It’s a bit intellectually dishonest to be discussing racism a lot without reference to racial differences. The NBA is “racist” only insofar as the genetic ability potential to play basketball is not equally spread between Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics.
Nobody is claiming that the NBA is racist against Hispanics and setting the standard for a non-racist NBA as Hispanics scoring about as many points as Blacks, who are actually a smaller % of the population.
NBA and most sports are meritocracies, with clear sports criteria & pretty good referees trying ensure the rules are followed.
Meritocracy, judging diverse individuals by their character – that’s more done in America than most other countries.
But the poor economic and family results of too many Black individuals is based on one or more behavior problems:
1) sex before & outside of marriage, too often with unwanted children; 2) not learning in schools enough to graduate from Hight School; 3) not keeping a job for a year or more; 4) not violating laws and getting convicted of being a criminal.
These are individual actions, and all large groups have some people who do one or more of the bad things.
In any two groups A & B, if more persons in A fail than B, group A “will be less successful.” And people in group B will notice. If the groups are races, noticing these differences can be called racist.
But the group average differences are part of reality. Of the above mistakes a person can make, the one most often made by most poor people in America is sex outside of marriage. It also feels the best.
Systemic promiscuity is a bigger problem than racism.
Greg,
Why do you think it’s at its high water mark? What evidence would you marshal for that claim?
If all the powerful people believe it, if it’s taught to the young at school and popular media, and if its client list seems poised to grow (America is becoming majority minority) why shouldn’t it grow?
There are lots of countries that have implemented Kendi style policies around the world. Based solely on examples we can see there is certainly more room to move leftward on this.
Joe Biden endorsed CRT in a national debate. Many of the people around him including his VP endorse it constantly and full throated. His supporters spent the summer burning down are cities and throwing impromptu struggle sessions in the streets. How much of a secret can CRT be at this point? Voters didn’t reject it. And don’t tell me it’s Trump, it’s not like non-Trump tickets did that much better. Without a six point small state senate bias, there is nothing holding these people back.
It just feels like someone saying “well the Great Leap Forward was nuts but I hear some pragmatists have taken power from Mao so things should get back to normal, I mean this can’t go on forever.”
asdf,
I don’t claim the ability to see the future but I am hopeful we may have seen the high water mark on CRT for a number of reasons. I think the election clearly showed its support comes much more from white academics than black voters. As you yourself have noted, the last election (both primary and general) saw a reduction in the success of racial identity voting on all sides of the racial divide. I think that having Trump as President made it easier to sell the idea that America was more racist than people thought. Without him in office it’s a harder sell.
I think the whole discussion of racism desperately needs to be put in a larger context. The main reason there is a lot of racism in America is that there is a lot of racism all around the world. There is plenty of room for improvement but America does much better than most countries and has come a long way and too many people forget that.
I once saw a Kenyan interviewed who was amazed that Obama could have been elected President in the U.S. He said that, had he been born in Kenya, Obama never could have been elected Kenyan President. Too much racism there for that. Obama’s dad was from a small minority tribe none of whose members would have had a chance.
>—” If all the powerful people believe it, if it’s taught to the young at school and popular media, and if its client list seems poised to grow (America is becoming majority minority) why shouldn’t it grow?
All the powerful people don’t believe it. Young people don’t like being told what to think. The main support from it is not even from minorities. It’s very much a white academic thing and Portland is the whitest big city in America. Whites are still the biggest racial group by far and hispanics are in the process of becoming regarded as white just like Jews and Italians and Irish did before them. Trees don’t grow forever into the sky just because that was the previous trend.
>—“There are lots of countries that have implemented Kendi style policies around the world. Based solely on examples we can see there is certainly more room to move leftward on this.”
Not sure what you are talking about here but if it’s Malaysia again they are different from America in many important ways. All politics is about delivering something of value to your base and always has been. No better example of that than Trump. But if minorities get some political power then suddenly the sky is falling.
>—-“Joe Biden endorsed CRT in a national debate. Many of the people around him including his VP endorse it constantly and full throated.”
When they say “black lives matter” they simply mean that too often blacks have been treated as though their lives didn’t matter. When they say “structural racism” they just mean it’s always been harder to make it growing up black than white in America. They certainly don’t mean that all white people are racist and should confess and repent as CRT insists.
>—” His supporters spent the summer burning down are cities and throwing impromptu struggle sessions in the streets. ”
Nonsense. Those weren’t his supporters. Riots and looting did nothing but hurt him politically by creating a backlash and he did nothing but denounce them.
>—“How much of a secret can CRT be at this point? Voters didn’t reject it. And don’t tell me it’s Trump, it’s not like non-Trump tickets did that much better.”
CRT is convoluted and illogical. I doubt I have a friend or relative who could begin to explain it accurately. Voters didn’t reject it because it wasn’t on the ballot. Non-Trump Republicans only did much better than Trump if you think that winning elections is much better than losing them.
>—“It just feels like someone saying “well the Great Leap Forward was nuts but I hear some pragmatists have taken power from Mao so things should get back to normal, I mean this can’t go on forever.”
Now you are fully into Poe’s Law territory. No one could satirize your views better than you did yourself right there.
“As you yourself have noted, the last election (both primary and general) saw a reduction in the success of racial identity voting on all sides of the racial divide.”
I don’t think this is true. I would say Obama and Clinton were probably engaged in less racial ‘identity politics;’ granted for Clinton that’s partly because gender was a more salient variable for her.
And whether young people like being told what to think or not, polls consistently show them being more receptive to ‘wokeness’ than others. I’m also not quite convinced that your innocuous explanations for how people interpret BLM or CRT are so ubiquitous. Admittedly this is hard to gauge with surveys due to framing effects, but unfortunately most people’s views are somewhat unstable. Talk to an old-fashioned white racist in a friendly, accommodating tone and he will likely tell you his attitudes on race mirror those of MLK. That doesn’t mean a few hours later he won’t be ranting about Mexicans ruining the country (and voting in accord with the latter rather than the former view). Most black people polled (and most hispanics who expressed an opinion) support cash reparations for slavery, as just one example of a policy more consistent with actual racial identity politics than with a version of it that’s just about equality. Finally, I think a lot of people are making too much of Trump’s unusual success among black/hispanic males. He is the first Republican since Nixon to take a pro-entitlement position. It may say less about identity politics than the fact that people disproportionately eligible for entitlements prioritize economic self interest over rhetoric.
Trump won an all time high of…26 percent of minorities. If we just talk the all important growing basket of Hispanics he is in the 30s. No Republican has ever won over 50% of Hispanics or been close to it.
You do not win elections by increasing demographics that you get less than 50% of the vote in.
“All the powerful people don’t believe it.”
Immediately after the post I made I turned to my work email and I had just received the latest from the Chief Diversity Officer of my company literally telling everyone that ideas and actions don’t matter but only how people feel. I mean I just got told to reject the Enlightenment by my employer but whatever.
“Young people don’t like being told what to think.”
Young people DEFINITELY like being told what to think. Why the hell do you think they call people “influencers”. Teenagers don’t like being told what to do by their parents and other “lame” people. They definitely want to be told what to do by cool high status people. They are slavish to it. Woke is very popular amongst the young.
“The main support from it is not even from minorities.”
Whites just voted for Trump and non-whites against him. The ratios are overwhelming. This matches every single contest with every single candidate for the parties.
“hispanics are in the process of becoming regarded as white just like Jews and Italians and Irish did before them.”
Jews vote overwhelmingly D and don’t consider themselves white, so I guess that’s a bad example.
Irish and Italians have white genetics and thus could become white. Hispanics don’t and thus never will. The GOP does best amongst “white Hispanics” i.e. pail skins with mostly European DNA such as Cubans. But new Hispanics are mostly darker skinned with non-European DNA and lower IQs. The GOP just general gets something like 20-40% of that vote because there are only so many “white Hispanics”. Whenever you match up the demographic basket to eliminate all other factors, the GOP does dramatically worse with Hispanics than equivalent whites.
“Malaysia”
There are other examples. Basically every country with a successful minority group tends to get persecuted for their success. It could be whites in South Africa, Chinese in Malaysia, caste in India, etc.
“But if minorities get some political power then suddenly the sky is falling.”
Ask Detroit or Baltimore what things are like when minorities get some political power…or ask Venezuelans.
“Nonsense. Those weren’t his supporters. ”
I can say with 100% confidence that Biden won a firm majority of the rioter vote.
“and he did nothing but denounce them.”
He endorses the ideas that led to the rioting. “I support the logic of your actions but not your actions!”
The bottom line is back in the white moral majority days The GOP won landslides in response to riots and now Democrats can win in spite of them.
“Non-Trump Republicans only did much better than Trump if you think that winning elections is much better than losing them.”
Not by much actually. 1% maybe. In say Michigan the Rep Senator got 48.2% of the vote and Trump 47.8%. In North Carolina Trump got 50.1% of the vote and the GOP senator got 48.7%, so reversed in that swing state. Not exactly an earth shattering difference.
It’s unclear if the extra turnout for Trump this year would have shown up down ballot for another Republican.
There just isn’t a ton of evidence for a huge #Nevertrump segment of the country.
“Now you are fully into Poe’s Law territory.”
Literally nobody saw the Cultural Revolution coming until it happened. Mao really did get sidelined in the party by moderate pragmatists like Dang Xiaoping after the failure of the Great Leap Forward. It was looking as if China might have done then what it ended up doing much later, but then it happened. If you asked someone in the early/mid 60s if the Cultural Revolution was about to happen, and that it would be driven by young radicals despite opposition from the Party and military, they would think you were nuts.
asdf,
>—“Immediately after the post I made I turned to my work email and I had just received the latest from the Chief Diversity Officer of my company literally telling everyone that ideas and actions don’t matter but only how people feel. I mean I just got told to reject the Enlightenment by my employer but whatever.”
Your logic is a parody of the enlightenment rationality you claim to be championing. You don’t get to just assume that every vote for Biden is someone understanding the philosophy of CRT and endorsing the notion that “ideas and actions don’t matter but only how people feel.”
I recently read “Cynical Theories” by Pluckrose and Lindsay on Arnold’s recommendation. I was shocked at the actual content of these theories which are indeed anti-Enlightenment and explicitly rejecting empiricism and logic.
Like most people, I had just assumed that “anti-racism” simply meant being opposed to racism, that “structural racism” simply meant that it is, and always has been, harder to grow up black than white in America, and that “black lives matter” simply meant that, too often, black people have been treated as though their lives didn’t matter.
Those are still the majority understandings of those terms outside of college campuses but there is now an ongoing and pernicious attempt to redefine their conventional meanings.
Here’s an idea: The real energy behind this movement doesn’t come from exotic and illogical academic theories. It comes form the ubiquitous presence of cell phone videos regularly showing up displaying real and disturbing police brutality against black people. Some of these are misleading. Some are simply appalling to any civilized person. ALL are something quite new in the sense that it is only relatively recently that everyone has been walking around with a video recorder in their pocket. I suspect there is actually much less police brutality than there used to be. But there is no dispute that due to technology, we SEE much more of it and seeing it produces a revulsion and desire to do something about it that is not caused by CRT. Rather the desire to combat racism is driven by these videos. We don’t really have to wonder about this. The streets fill within hours of each new video.
There are plenty of videos out there of white people having brutal encounters with the police and there are no riots. There aren’t even riots over Hispanic or Asians having bad encounters with the police.
It’s the framing of how these videos are discussed that leads to these outcomes, not the videos themselves. We had race riots long before cell phones.
It’s not just an incident, it’s the belief that the incident is an example of the systematic racism leading to poor black outcomes across the board in our society.
“imply meant that it is, and always has been, harder to grow up black than white in America”
But why is growing up black harder? What does harder even mean?
Systematic Racism proposes that it’s harder because blacks are being held down.
But we know that the main thing holding blacks down is their poor overall genetic profile, followed by their communities terrible standards of behavior. This has been decisively proven with data, so why are we still going on about “systematic racism”?
The reason is that if there is “systematic racism”, then it’s OK to be systematically racist in the other direction to balance it out. Hence the DIE industry, affirmative action, minority giveaways, and the welfare state.
People lie about why blacks perform poorly so that they can justify actions that would otherwise be considered reprehensible.
“black people have been treated as though their lives didn’t matter.”
It doesn’t appear to me that black people as black people have their lives treated like they don’t matter anymore than the rest of us do. There isn’t any evidence of that. Underclass criminal lives of all races tend to matter less, and there are a lot of black underclass criminals, but that isn’t because of racism, systematic or otherwise.
“You don’t get to just assume that every vote for Biden is someone understanding the philosophy of CRT and endorsing the notion”
Bottom line is that when asked in a national debate about CRT Biden defended it. The people in his campaign like Harris explicitly endorsed the CRT concept of Equity over Equality.
Trump banned it and Biden endorsed it.
People who vote Democrat are generally in line with the notions of CRT when polled on their beliefs.
asdf,
>—-“It doesn’t appear to me that black people as black people have their lives treated like they don’t matter anymore than the rest of us do. There isn’t any evidence of that. ”
I could cite a laundry list of historical injustices that have brought things to where they are today.
Instead, I am just going to point out that you yourself have described people with skin too dark for your taste as “worthless” in this very comment section based on knowing nothing more about them as individuals than their skin color. And many people agree with you on that.
Is there some important difference I am unaware of between being worthless and not mattering?
“I could cite a laundry list of historical injustices that have brought things to where they are today.”
Lots of groups that are very successful have had it worse than American blacks. For instance, all of East Asia clearly had it worse than American blacks, it’s not even a close call.
I believe there is enough evidence to say that black failure is due to blacks, either their nature and/or their free actions, and that it is simply factually incorrect to keep blaming other factors as substantial causes.
I do indeed think it’s possible to say that someone who contributes less to society than they take out is “worthless” by that metric. If the source of that mathematical fact is largely unchangeable (such as genetics) then they are likely to go on being worthless for the foreseeable future. If we are judging the “worthiness” of a group by the net contributions of its constituent members added together, then it’s possible to say some groups are worth more than others and some groups will have a negative worth on net.
This isn’t due to “skin color”, but important things like productivity and social value. If blacks contributed the way Asians do it would be incorrect to say that as a group they are worthless, even if their skin was black. If you don’t want to be considered worthless, start contributing some worth!
It’s clear that the goal of CRT is not to increase the perceived worthiness of all people. “All Lives Matter” is considered hate speech. And CRTs primary effect isn’t to increase sympathy for blacks but to reduce sympathy for poor whites. You can’t even sell this as a desire to increase the perceived worthiness of all. It’s pure zero/negative sum hostility.
Personally, I don’t think people have moral “worth” simply by existing. You’re contributing or you’re not.
If the free loaders are small enough in number and/or not too destructive politically or culturally then it’s a rounding error and you show some sympathy “by the grace of God go I”.
If there are too many of them and they are trying to rip your society apart out of spite than you’ve got to get real about just what they are.
That is some breathtaking moving of the goalposts.
First you claim there is no reason at all for black people to feel like they are treated as if they don’t matter.
Then you justify THAT by arguing that you SHOULD treat them as if they are “worthless.”
This should get some kind of Gold Medal in the Unintentional Irony Olympics.
Greg G, I hope you are right. But I can’t help thinking of “temperance”. In the late 1800s, the United States had a significant problem with alcohol. Too many people drank to excess, beat their spouses, couldn’t hold a job or take care of a family, and generally made the world a worse place while ruining their own lives. One proposed remedy was to be temperate in one’s drinking. Do not drink to the point where it becomes a problem. Respectable people supported temperance.
But alcohol remained a problem. So some people took it further. Drinking less was good and not drinking at all was even better. The meaning of temperance changed to reflect that. Now it meant not drinking at all. Those who supported temperance now supported prohibition, prohibiting the manufacture or sale or use of any alcoholic beverage. It was a moral necessity!
So we got the “noble experiment” of Prohibition, where lots of people who weren’t themselves prohibitionists went along with its enactment. After all, alcohol was a big problem. And the prohibitionists weren’t bad people; they really cared.
I fear that the same thing is happening with “anti-racism”.
“First you claim there is no reason at all for black people to feel like they are treated as if they don’t matter.”
Blacks argue they are treated as if they don’t matter because they are black. If they were exactly the same as they are today, but with white skin, then they would be treated like they matter.
But of course we have a white underclass, hispanic underclass, asian underclass. We have billions in third world poverty. None of them appear to be treated better simply because they don’t have black skin.
You have provided little evidence that blacks are treated worse than people of other races holding everything else constant. If your point was merely “people of all races who are unlikable aren’t liked very much” then you wouldn’t need to bring up race.
But blacks aren’t interested in “All Lives”. Only their lives, and at others expense if it comes to that. Why should anyone else act differently.
>—“But of course we have a white underclass…”
Yes we do and it is indeed idiotic to tell them they enjoy any kind of white privilege. It’s unfair to them and it’s counterproductive as a way to help black people.
>—“Blacks argue they are treated as if they don’t matter because they are black. If they were exactly the same as they are today, but with white skin, then they would be treated like they matter.”
Not by you. You claim to be able to tell they are genetically inferior at a glance. You don’t claim that same ability with the white underclass.
The absence of that bias is not a privilege for white people. But its presence is a disadvantage for black people who you feel no need to judge as individuals once you see their skin color.
Roger,
I take your point that good intentions are no guarantee of good results when implementing social reforms. Prohibition was a good example of that and any reforms based on CRT are at high risk of being another.
Interestingly, the racial politics of Prohibition were nearly opposite to those of CRT. It was rural WASP’s pushing Prohibition with vigorous opposition from urban ethnic minorities.
Yeah, some times people push a reform partly to “show those _____s (who are not as good as us)”.
Mostly I was trying to make different point. If people think a problem is bad enough, they may be willing to go along with people who are pretty extreme even if they have misgivings. So if you can convince them that “structural racism” and “white privilege” make if impossible for most blacks to succeed, then reparations or, as a more moderate step, reverse discrimination is an unfortunate but necessary remedy.
Thus does “anti-racism”, meaning no discrimination on the basis of race, turn into “anti-racism” meaning constant discrimination on the basis of race to make up for chronic injustice.
Thank you for the tip on The World of Patience Gromes. Just finished it after purchasing this morning on your recommendation. A riveting read as they say and written in non-academese too. Horatio Alger “Ragged Dick” stories are a definite guilty pleasure for me and this definitely ticked that box. Wondering why I haven’t read more novels about emancipated slaves with “Up From Slavery” sympathies.
More importantly, with respect to urban renewal the book serves as a classic cautionary tale about what happens when our betters get an insect up their bottoms and inflict their wisdom on the world. I couldn’t help thinking while I was reading this about an excellent piece Joel Kotkin has up on real clear energy ( https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2020/11/18/the_end_game_650132.html ) about Davis Man Overlord Omniscience And The Great Plan to Reset the Future and Impose Social Justice, a disaster waiting to happen extremely redolent of urban renewal, that asks the same question one is left with after reading this book: Who pays when the hubris of Our Betters fails?
Nice book. Recommended.
The Vallier writing is the sort of pseudo-professional gobbledygook that allows those in the humanities and other disciplines with no real standards to impose their preferences on reasoning while making it sound technical.
Econ writing can be bad, but mainly because it is so elaborate, not because of this game of hiding normative conclusions in bad language and stupid reasoning.
Ivar, please send me an email. Handle -at- multizionism -dot- com.