If you have a hidden belief in Black inferiority
Most racism in the United States is perpetrated by people who don’t admit their racism. Because they don’t admit their racism, the reasons for their views are not discussed; if they do discuss their reasons they are dismissed as immoral. The problem with that dismissal is that it leaves their reasoning in place. I think that doing so is a bad idea.
I assume you’ve read or heard that biologists think that race is a biologically useless concept. Races don’t have clean boundaries and belonging to a given race isn’t biologically predictive of much; in fact, height produces more biological differences than race does. So racism makes no sense, right?
Except. Any observer can tell you that the Black population of the United States is doing less well on average than nearly any other American ethnic population. Not only are they doing less well but most immigrant populations that arrive poor and uneducated catch up to American averages within about two generations. The Black population hasn’t. And Black African countries in general aren’t doing as well as European and Asian countries. And then there’s that IQ study.
Granted: on average, the Black population isn’t doing as well as other populations. Why not? Are we talking about something environmental or genetic? The answer to this question is extremely important because that answer suggests what actions it makes sense to take.
What got me to understanding how to approach this came from a school assembly I attended in suburban NY in late 1969 or early 1970. The school I attended at the time as a little over half Jewish and 12-13% Black. In that community, the color line and the wealth line were in almost exactly the same place: the school was primarily made up of middle class Whites and poor Blacks. The assembly had been taken over by the students who were now speaking to the student population in turn. At one point a Jewish girl in my grade, I no longer remember her name, said something like this to the Blacks in the room:
My grandparents came over with nothing and made something of themselves. Why didn’t you?
It would be decades before I revisited that question and what I found surprised me. To answer that question I had to examine what made the Jewish immigrant population successful in the long run. I broke it down into five factors that supported Jewish success in America:
- Family. One person would come over, sponsor the next, put up family in their apartment while they looked for jobs and housing. This is what my grandfather did.
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Religion. Not only did religion give spiritual/moral support, but a religious community really helped integration.
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Education. Jews have always put a premium value on education – Torah scholarship is high status, so it comes out of religion.
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Networking. If others wouldn’t do business with us, we did business with each other, and we helped each other in business.
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Keeping a low profile. A population that resents you is a population that’s dangerous.
How does that compare to the Black immigration experience?
- Families deliberately broken up.
Religion pretty much eradicated. Slaves were monitored that closely.
it was illegal in many states to teach slaves to read and write.
Networking is difficult if you can’t travel.
Keeping a low profile is difficult when you have the functional equivalent to having a yellow star sewn to your forehead.
Every leg that Jews built on, Blacks had sawed off. It’s a wonder they got anywhere. Most immigrant groups used at least some of these.
And, of course, once slavery ended, the Black population still experienced and continue to experience more discrimination and sheer abuse than any other ethnic group with the possible exception of Native Americans, where the discrimination and abuse were and are also on a huge scale but different in nature.
I can’t outline the discrimination and abuse here. It’s way too extensive for a post. It goes from being murdered by assorted Whites to having neighborhoods destroyed – to make room for interstates in major cities or by pogrom in Tulsa – to walking into a classroom where the teacher assumes you’re lazy, stupid, and dangerous at first glance and always interacts with you based on that assumption to a Black male entering an elevator with a White woman who clutches her purse more tightly upon seeing him. If you are interested in learning about this, there are plenty of sources. I would just advise you to choose your sources wisely – people who have too little exposure to the Black population to have a clue what they go through and who have a vested interested in trivializing and belittling what Black people experience do not make good sources, any more than politicians make better sources about infectious diseases than doctors do.
One good thing that has recently helped the cause of the majority of the public getting better information about what Black people have experienced is that the majority of America’s White people, even conservative White people, have recently figured out that Black people were not lying or exaggerating about their treatment by the police. Having the Black community finally be believed about their own experiences is a significant step in the right direction. The fact that this took so long illustrates just how pervasive racism is.
Another aspect of this abuse is Black people being blamed for the obvious consequences of that abuse, compounding it. Let me give you an example: Schools in the United States are mostly locally funded, which means that poor school districts have bad schools. If you live in a neighborhood where the education isn’t good, the job opportunities are too few and those that exist don’t pay much, what do you do? You see some people in the neighborhood with wealth but they have one thing in common: they earn their money illegally. If making money illegally is the only available way to make a decent living that’s what people will do, but if we structure our schools and our economy in such a way that the only readily available decent living is illegal then it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to blame a population for reacting to the incentive system that we made inevitable. But we do. The consequences of driving a population into illegal ways of making a living include a great deal of Black on Black murder, which is largely due to turf battles over illegal markets.
However, though we can establish that the Black population experiences more abuse than most other populations, that doesn’t necessarily mean that this abuse causes their lower average results, because correlation does not mean causation. The fact that these two things happen to the same people doesn’t mean one causes the other, sort of like childhood vaccines and the onset of autism happen at around the same time but don’t have anything to do with each other. How do we figure out if abuse is responsible for this?
To express the question slightly differently: Are the differences in median metrics between the Black and White populations attributable to environmental factors or genetic factors?
The scientific way to do that is to use a control group, a group of Black people in America who haven’t gone through several generations of being treated like absolute garbage. Fortunately, we have one: more recent Black immigrants from the West Indies, immigrants from Jamaica, Trinidad, Haiti, etc. How do they do on the comparative metrics? Quite well, it turns out. This population has higher median education level than American median, higher median income than American median, and lower crime rate than American median. In other words, they’re a Model Minority, like Jews and Asians. This population is every bit as African racially as the American slave-descended population if not more so. The big difference between the two populations is how much abuse they’ve taken. The difference between how successful the Black population and White population tend to be in the US can’t be due to genetics because when we subtract extreme abuse the difference disappears or even reverses.
What about African countries? The main answer there in recent history centers on colonization. Not only were the countries run by oppressive outsiders but when the colonizing countries left they left the national borders based on colonies, not on ethnic boundaries. That left enormous political messes. The same thing was done to the Middle East and the result there is economic growth slower than Africa’s.
Lastly we come to the IQ question. The answer to this comes in two parts.
The first is that the research in question is either impossible to do with any validity or proves exactly what it’s meant not to prove. The IQ argument is a genetic one. However, in order to do valid genetic research, we need genetic definitions of our populations. From a genetic standpoint, our populations are heavily mixed. How do we allow for that? With detailed genetic profiles of our participants? That would be enormously expensive, and it assumes that the participants all asked their grandparents enough questions to be able to provide detailed answers. We can safely assume the researchers didn’t have detailed genetic profiles if they even sought them, which is also doubtful. What did they do?
There are two possible ways to define these populations conveniently. One is by making the populations self-select and the other is by physical observation. The most reliable information to be gotten from either method is how the participants were treated, meaning in this case how much abuse they are likely to have been subjected to. A study looking to prove a genetic point instead makes an environmental point – that IQ scores can be affected by multigenerational abuse. (I haven’t seen the study. It could be too flawed to make any point.) Instead of proving that racism is justified, the study would prove that racism has even more horrendous consequences than we already knew.
The second part of the answer involves, for the sake of analysis, assuming the impossible: that the IQ study was valid. Where racism becomes most obvious and most scientifically unjustifiable is in interpreting the results. The general off-the-cuff lay interpretation is that Whites are smarter than Blacks. But that’s not what such a study would prove at all, even if valid. The result would be two bell curves barely offset such that the area they share utterly dwarfs the area they don’t. In practical terms, this means that if you have a randomly selected Black subject and a randomly selected White subject, odds are nearly even that the IQ of the Black subject is higher than that of the White subject. The odds are close enough to even that median IQ of the relative populations is not a useful variable. There are so many more useful variables when it comes to predicting aptitude or success in any given venture that relying on this one is scientifically nonsensical. The only feasible cause for relying on this variable isn’t science but bigotry. This amounts to taking science that was bad to begin with and bastardizing the results.
Conclusions positing racial inferiority are not rational because the arguments in favor of racial inferiority aren’t valid, even the arguments no one talks about in public. If you believe in racial inferiority, what you’re seeing is not caused by what you think.
Bitey
06/27/2020 @ 8:36 pm
Your conclusion is perfect. I was not entirely sure that you’d get there while poring over your composition, although my faith in your intellect and character led me to believe that you would.
There are a couple of points along the way, examining your premises, but once put together, the arguments against would be something akin to arguing about the color of the paint on a road sign rather than the accuracy of the information on it. And while the color of the paint can make a difference in how the information is seen, I concede that the information is good.
One example of a change I’d make; “Religion pretty much eradicated. Slaves were monitored that closely.“.
I don’t disagree with the information here. However, being able to look back with a historical perspective, the term “slave” makes a statement as to the essence of the individuals, when I believe it would be more accurate to refer to their condition. They were enslaved. That can not be argued, but “slave” is not who they were.
One more, slightly less significant point. I think it should not go without saying that the vast majority of people who murder White people are White people. When “Black on Black” murder is mentioned, it should always be stated that Whites do so in roughly the same manner. The “Black on Black” canard is trying to make a statement about Black people. Mathematically, it factors out that such equations are about murder, and not about who is committing them.
Thanks for the piece. You and RP are pillars of reason. I find that especially valuable and reassuring in our mad, mad, mad, mad world.
Ron Powell
06/28/2020 @ 2:29 am
@Bitey; Thanks for the vote of confidence.
koshersalaami
06/27/2020 @ 11:00 pm
Thank you for your faith.
Regarding my point about Black on Black murder:
When Rev. Al Sharpton went to Ferguson, MO in the aftermath of the Michael Brown killing, which resulted as usual in his being accused of grandstanding when in reality he was invited, I heard or read Whites complaining that Rev. Sharpton was making a big deal about White on Black killings but not Black on Black killings, as if Black people who killed other Black people were somehow less guilty than White people who killed Black people. (As you would expect, they happened to be wrong and they picked someone who made a very big deal about Black on Black killings, but those complaining would have no way of knowing that, so they just assumed.) Actually, my point is that White people are culpable in both: for White on Black killings by police because Black suspects are killed so much more readily than White suspects under equivalent circumstances and for Black on Black killings by controlling resources in a way that creates conditions conducive to these killings. As to the use of slave, I’m certainly not implying that those enslaved accepted their roles any more than prisoners accept theirs. It’s a condition, not an identity.
Ron asked me to write this when I said I was tempted to. He’s familiar with some of this content.
Ron Powell
06/28/2020 @ 2:21 am
This treatise is not suitable for ‘social media’….
Your reasoning is much too structured and much too sound even for for those who revel in formal discussions on fraught topics.
Your last paragraph should have been your opening statement, with your last assertion being the lead salvo.
Fire the shot across the bough and pique the interest and curiosity of those who want to disagree with you or learn from you because of your title.
You make your case but it’s a bit too abstract….
The average white American believes in the inferiority of black people whether they are aware of it or not…
Seems to me that a few solid examples of subliminal, unconscious, or subconscious manifestations of what you’re talking about would have been in order….
In other words help your readers see how the your assertion applies.
Some may get angry with you,and some may sing your praises but it wouldn’t be easy to ignore you.
It’s much easier to remain neutral or indifferent when the argument is cast as a formal deductive syllogistic abstraction….Which is a rhetorical error I make too frequently myself which is why I try to remind myself that at the end of the day, this is social media….
This is a good post with a food title…
.
Ron Powell
06/28/2020 @ 2:28 am
CORRECTION:
“This treatise is not suitable for ‘social media’….”
SHOULD READ:
This treatise is not suitable for ‘social media’….It’s TOO good!
This is a good post with a GOOD title…(not “food title”)
Bitey
06/28/2020 @ 7:18 am
As far as “too good” for social media, my wife and I had the same reaction. In case it wasn’t clear, that’s why I started with my view of the conclusion. It not only explains, it also demonstrates. It has a performance art aspect to it. That’s why I wanted my wife to read it, since she had less familiarity with KS as a person.
The level of emotional detachment regarding certain odious subjects is both edifying and off-putting. It is like seeing someone walking into a room toward you with a scalpel. If you know them as a surgeon, you might feel differently than if you have no knowledge about them.
That is what I like so much about the conclusion. From the beginning I thought that someone who ‘feels’ differently wont be reached. Then, you just said it.
Bitey
06/28/2020 @ 8:08 am
“…Having the Black community finally be believed about their own experiences is a significant step in the right direction. The fact that this took so long illustrates just how pervasive racism is…”
If experience has taught me anything, it is that this lesson is not final. This is a view that holds sway currently, but it will disappear from view eventually.
koshersalaami
06/28/2020 @ 9:13 am
Bitey,
The only way your wife is likely to know me is from my statement that the scarce commodity for the Black community is respect. Does she know I’m the person who said that?
Good catch. There is definitely an aspect of performance art here and it is intentional. For you guys, my lead is in italics. I tell you what I’m about to do. This piece is not an attack on closet racists, it’s a trap. I want to sound almost sympathetic. If I put the conclusion in front, the closet racist reader (not that any will likely find this, but this may be useful in that it indicates an approach) will instantly get defensive and will be coming up with counter-arguments constantly. Early on I want them to think that I find their conclusions understandable, that I’m actually listening to them, that I’m not going to condemn them instantly. In outlining what their objections would be I’m kind of doing the psychological technique called Reflecting. And then I calmly walk them through the processes that justify their conclusions and dismantle them. I’m not after punishment or even condemnation, I’m after conversion. It’s way more useful. I don’t want their changing course to be humiliating, I want it to be safe, because I want there to be as few obstacles as possible to their changing course.. I want them to be able to talk to their friends and say “Yeah, I believed that for years, but it isn’t true and here’s why” and for their explanation not to have a hint of propaganda. This is the science, this is the logic. It’s not that the view I held isn’t liberal enough, it’s that it didn’t work.
06/28/2020 @ 10:54 am
P.S. There seems to be no typo edit function on this site?! I meant Ta-Nehisi Coates non-fiction–his incredible letter to his son Between the World and Me, and We Were Eight years in Power
06/28/2020 @ 1:03 pm
Never said that defending white people was something to do, I’m not interested in that. White ‘frailty’ is a thing though and there are reasons you’d recognize. The book of that title is currently at the top of NYTimes bestseller list and the audience is us.
Something else I’d add to the list is to hang out with young people. They’ve been activists for awhile, well before the present activism, just disorganized until now. You don’t need to tell them (or me) all that stuff you listed. We know. I used to sing their praises here when people would say that the youngs did not care. Ron once argued that they’d never take to the streets. Whose streets? Their streets now 🙂
There’s a special bond between GenZ and Boomers. We’ve protested. We care deeply about change. The kids are smart, fierce, motivated, have great energy and determination. Black and white people are together in the streets now because of them, not us Boomers. They’ve embraced diversity and acceptance all their lives and are more fluid regarding gender. I hope they stay that way. We will be in good hands once they’re fully onstage, politically and culturally.
I saw Ron is still here, hi Ron. I don’t seem to know anyone else. Probably won’t post here because a. I can only comment apparently, and b. I’m on sabbatical and trying to curb my online time. Also this site seems extremely hard to navigate, but today is Sunday and I had this site bookmarked and figured to see who was here.
I’m a frequent commenter at WaPo, under the avatar FormerlyBeaked. Maybe see you there. Lots of heavy hitter inetlligentsia commenters there are often more informative than the articles authors.
Ron Powell
06/28/2020 @ 6:58 pm
Ron once argued that they’d never take to the streets. Whose streets? Their streets now….
The one’s that are in the streets now are the younger brothers a d sisters of the ones that I had occasion to observe and refer to…
The public execution of George Floyd did what I was attempting to do online:
I have concluded the following:
“If social justice is to be achieved it won’t be because black and brown people persuaded or convinced conflicted and ambivalent white people of anything at all.
It will be because white people make the case to reluctant and recalcitrant white folks that a just society and more perfect union isn’t about bestowing the benefits of freedom on black and brown people at the expense of white people, it’s about “liberty and justice for all”.”
“I saw Ron is still here, hi Ron.”
Back at you! Glad to see you here!
“Probably won’t post here because a. I can only comment apparently, and b. I’m on sabbatical and trying to curb my online time. Also this site seems extremely hard to navigate.”
Make sure that you’re logged on and on board with the “cookies” thing…
Make sure that the posting checklist is complete…And that the comments permitted box is checked…
It’s a bit of a maze, but after two or three times through it the process of posting becomes familiar enough to be tolerable…
“I’m a frequent commenter at WaPo, under the avatar FormerlyBeaked.”
Would you please ‘reply’ here with a link?
There’s nothing wrong with “posting” a comment should you decide to come on board here and post….
We would all love to have you and your insightful input…
Bitey
06/28/2020 @ 3:17 pm
I got that. She got that because I explained that that was what you were doing. She had a long face while reading it, and she said off the top, “wow, he really went there.” She also said that without my saying that you could be trusted, she would have been alarmed from the beginning.
Frankly, it reveals that one can be dispassionate about such conversations in ways that many imagine that one can not.
koshersalaami
06/28/2020 @ 4:18 pm
“He really went there” is exactly what this is about. If no one ever goes there, it will never be refuted. You know there are millions of White Americans who think this crap. Racism involves practice but first it involves belief.
Here’s the thing: I’ve watched loads of liberals trying to talk to conservatives – I realize “conservatives” doesn’t intrinsically mean “racists” but these days I’d say more racism is there than here, which is not to say there isn’t a ton of racism among liberals – and the main thing they want to do is shove guilt, because that’s what works on liberals. But that only works if the people you’re talking to have the same standards as to what to feel guilt about and on the other side of the political spectrum they generally don’t. And so the liberal gets dismissed, as does the conservative.
I don’t compromise my liberalism, but when I’ve been frequently on blog sites where there are multiple conservatives or even mostly conservatives, I end up being respected by conservatives because I try to speak their language. They may not agree with me but they don’t think I’m an idiot and they don’t think I’m knee-jerk. You’ve probably noticed that when I wrote economic posts I did not concentrate on liberal values. No assumptions of the superior morality of egalitarianism. Actually, the same is true when I talk to conservatives about race, though not in this post because that’s not what this post is about. I don’t talk about egalitarianism. I don’t talk about what anyone deserves. I talk about how expensive a permanent underclass is for the country. I talk about how tax cuts for the rich doesn’t help our economy but more money for the poor does. I tell them the status quo is costing them a fortune, both in actual money and in opportunity costs. I tell them that a permanent underclass means bigger Federal deficits in the long run. I tell them the stuff they care about.
06/28/2020 @ 4:45 pm
Bitey, that’s a great suggestion about church. I know you are right. A friend’s mother dragged me to her church once, it’s been many years, but my take aways, after my own agnostic churchless godless upbringing, were black church is cool and that I was embarrassingly under-dressed. I’ve been the only white person in the room enough times to understand a little bit about how awkward that feels, trying not to do or say a wrong thing.
This spring, I had to learn how to teach online in three days, and I’m a technology peasant, so this nearly killed me. What was eye-opening was meeting my students inside their homes, rather than our classroom. Approx. a third of my students are of color, so it felt like I was sitting in black and brown kitchens, parlor nooks, and bedrooms while siblings and parents walked around in our ‘class’. Everyone was significantly self-conscious the first two weeks or so, trying to acclimate to the format, as well as the unfamiliar intimacy of being weekly guests in one another’s homes. Eventually we began to have the kinds of fun we could not have in a classroom–looked at everyone’s pets, took snack breaks together, toured childhood art works framed by moms, one time we made funny hats to wear. Students did not get as much curriculum for their tuition dollars this spring, we were all just trying to stay sane, but we also got to know one another in an unexpected way that was also an education. Maybe church feels a little like that too.
Re: Ali. I’m 65, so I remember when Ali’s media image was of a
Muslim communist anarchist draft resistor. I was protesting the war and thinking Angela Davis was cool, so these aspects seemed like attributes to me.
06/28/2020 @ 10:47 am
Long time, no see. I tried to make this a post, but the software apparently won’t allow.
I used to say at the old place that no matter how well intentioned, it isn’t helpful when white people speak or argue with black people about black experience. White privilege can lead a white person to think everyone cares about their opinions. We need to learn to do less of that, and to listen more.
I do think it’s okay for white people to talk to white people about their roles/obligations/beliefs regarding race though, so my comment is addressed to white people, whoever is still here and reading.
Here are few things that make a contribution beyond social media posting. You can figure out more I’m sure. Post them here if you do.
Read. There is a vast body of incredibly great fiction and non-fiction available at present. Ta-Nehisi Coates, both his fiction and his amazing first novel. Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad. The Nickel Boys. Toni Morrison: everything Ibram X. Kendi: How to be an Antiracist. Also read black journalism, e.g. The Root. Lurk around in the comment section. You’ll see how black people really talk about white people. Ron is far too polite. We owe black people our open undefended attention and to absorb their honest perspectives.
Donate: put your money down. Patronize black owned businesses. Donate to black causes. Make provisions in your will. Mine is in an estate trust with beneficiaries including the Obama Foundation, the Malala Fund, a local after school program for children of color, and six former students who are out doing good things in their communities.
Listen. Vow to be silent and resist the urge to argue and defend yourself or some white people or all white people. If you don’t know any people of color to listen to, that’s a sign that you have a serious problem and need to step out into more diverse experiences. Be vulnerable. Expect that listening will be painful. Feel defended but put it aside, and determine to keep listening. Expect and allow anger. Anger is often seen in a negative light, especially for women, but some things require anger in order to be experienced fully.
Support black candidates for office. Not that pasty guy who’s held office for the past twenty years– he had his chance. Vote on every level; town selectmen, school board, city council, mayor, as well as congress and president. More women, people of color, and youngs are throwing their hats in the ring than ever before. Step up and campaign for them, donate to their campaigns, get your friends to do the same. Ignore white people who say but there are black Republicans supporting Trump. These are so rare that a quick google will immediately clear that up.
Watch black programming, arts, television, music, especially mainstream media productions. Enjoy black casts in non-stereotypical roles, telling stories that don’t involve white people. The best television program ever made is The Wire. Demand a black James Bond.
If you can march, march. If you can’t march, make signs and props for your friends who can. Wear your Black Lives Matter Tshirt to work. Write Mayor Bowser to thank her and tell her how much you love Black LIves Matter Plaza. Write Mayor De Blasio and tell him you support naming Fifth Ave in front of Trump Tower Black Lives Matter Avenue.
Finally, don’t ask your black friends and co-workers what you can do for the cause. Figure it out. Against my own advice on speaking for black people, many black people are on the record for finding this extremely annoying, and of course it’s not their job. Lurk in the comments at The Root. You’ll gain much insight about painful angry justified perspectives, but also learn the difference between a Becky and a Karen and why our potato salad is bad.
koshersalaami
06/28/2020 @ 12:05 pm
Hi Greenheron. Good to see you.
Most conversations on this site take place between two Black guys and one White guy, with occasional other people dropping in or passing through. Black experiences and perspectives are discussed rather often here, in addition to which these gentlemen and I have been discussing this topic (not them with each other until recently) for many years.
I never argue about the Black experience. I’m not qualified to. My primary interest is in explaining or selling concepts to people who are on the centrist side of the other side, whether the topic is race or not. In order to sell them on anything, I have to understand them. I have to know what matters to them. I have to know something about where their views come from. And then I have to be prepared to talk to them on their turf.
Defending White people isn’t the point. Reaching them is. If I claim to Ron that some of what we encounter as racism isn’t hatred, it’s apathy, I’m not saying that as an excuse or as a defense – I don’t find that apathy at all moral; I’m saying it as a diagnosis. I want to know how to address it. This disagreement isn’t about the Black experience, it’s about the White experience. This distinction may look trivial, but recent political events indicate it is anything but. The diehard racists haven’t been reached but there has recently been a radical shift in the center, a shift Republican pollster Frank Luntz says he’s never seen anything like in twenty-five years as a pollster. A majority of Republicans now support the protests, and whether or not they think the protests are violent does not have a statistically significant effect on their support. In 2016, the percentage of Republicans who thought that the difference in how the police treat Blacks and Whites was a significant problem was 33%. Now it’s well over 50%. This is a reachable population. This is a population that says that what they saw done to George Floyd is wrong. Period. Not defensible. There is no way in Hell that would have been done to me or to one of my buddies. If that’s what I thought was happening I’d have reacted a long time ago. And now traditionally centrist White people march in small towns, even during COVID. In some places, local sheriffs have joined them. If George Floyd’s killing hadn’t been televised, along with that woman in Central Park using bigotry on camera to try to get her way, the protests may never have happened, and the people who took that footage could have said “The country is too racist. What’s the use.” and not made video available.
Ron Powell
06/28/2020 @ 7:13 pm
@Koshersalaami;
“If I claim to Ron that some of what we encounter as racism isn’t hatred, it’s apathy…”
The conflation of racism and hatred is a common rhetorical error or tactic…
You needn’t experience hatred in order to manifest racism and the fact that many whites don’t ‘feel’ hatred is why they insist that they are not racists….
Bitey
06/28/2020 @ 3:12 pm
Greenheron, I have a better suggestion as a means to understand how Black people…(anything). My recommendation is to go to a Black church. Attend some services, get involved in some activities, get involved in the pre-service activities and the post service activities. Stick it out to allow for the curiosity of who you are and what you are doing there to wear off.
Now, I am an agnostic. I don’t attend religious services. I did quite often until I was a young adult. I have attended many different types of denominations, with lots of different types of congregations, in a variety of cities. One thing I have learned from that set of experiences is that groups of White people do not understand Black people. (I’m sure you’re heard that before). Since I was a child, I have always thought that White people should get to know Black people from within congregations. I’ll be 57 this Fall, and I have rarely seen people like the families within my extended family in popular culture. I certainly don’t see them on the news.
As a sample, imagine what you think a Black family thinks of a person like Muhammad Ali. By now, it would be almost universally positive, but it wasn’t always. Lot’s of Christian families didn’t like him when he was young. Large family discussions covered it back in the mid-to late 60s. That issue, and time would reveal the entire political spectrum, left to right. “How Black people think”…or speak about has a surprising amount of diversity. Beyond that, there is how Black people let you know that they think or speak. There are many gradations of that too. My mother had two sisters, and the three of them were teachers. They were an inner circle in my family, outside of which one was not privy to all of their ways of thinking and speaking…that included their husbands and children. You had to sneak up on it to observe it.
Subordinate culture in the US gave rise to vast diversity of expression and thought, and not unanimity.
Ron Powell
06/28/2020 @ 7:35 pm
@Greenheron; “Ron is far too polite.”
The tendency of folks to disagree with that assessment of me is legendary…
In fact Kosh still argues that I’m too confrontational and don’t express enough concession
to be “persuasive”.
My view is that it’s been my job to make the case and his job to take my case and make the converts….
Same team, but different positions etc.
koshersalaami
06/29/2020 @ 1:40 am
Ron,
It’s never about concessions. I don’t suggest concessions. Using this piece as an example, because it’s actually a good example, I don’t make a single concession. I sound patient, I acknowledge some statistical truths, and I say truthfully that I have a pretty good idea where their views come from, But I don’t say anything about their position that I don’t refute.
It depends why you confront. If you want to confront out of self-expression, that’s one thing; but if you want to confront out of persuasion, it’s quite another. You’re trained as an attorney. I’m really not telling you anything a good litigator wouldn’t tell you. What matters to me isn’t how I look on the field. What matters to me is if I score. When dealing with bigotry of any kind, including racism, I think scoring is important because scoring in the long run makes you safer. My disagreements with you have always been tactical.
06/29/2020 @ 11:17 am
Ron, I do think you are overly polite with racists and hecklers. Did you ever see any of the Key and Peele skits about Obama and Luther his anger translator? Kinda like that. Presently, black people are showing their anger and demanding what is theirs, and white people are beginning to listen at a level I’ve not seen in my lifetime of whiteness. Multiple books about race by black authors are at the top of the NYTImes bestseller list and we’re reading them. ‘White Fragility” has a six month waitlist at my local library. White people are learning what is Juneteenth and black Wall Street and the Tulsa massacre. Statues of people most white people never heard of, or heard of in a heroic light, are being destroyed and removed. The confederate flag is being disappeared. Black people have known all this all along, and are teaching white people with their anger. You want to keep teaching, time may have come for a few eff yourselfs.
Re: the Obama/Luther anger translator series of skits. Their last one, done right after Trump was elected but not yet inaugurated, is so spot on, hilarious and also angry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3gIYgSa4qw
Re: WaPo comments. I don’t think WaPo comments can be linked. Yesterday, I commented on their article about Russia paying bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops, and at that time, there were 9.5K comments. That story is still their lead this morning, so imagine how many comments there are now. You can filter for the most read comments which eliminates the Russian troll threads and two lines of snark, and are often retired DC insiders, lawyers, professors, authors. people with insight I’d not see elsewhere. Their comments are often better than the editorials.
06/29/2020 @ 11:20 am
To GREENHERON: When you say that you “tried to make your comment as a post,” what exactly went wrong. I just checked your profile and, according to your profile, you have never submitted an post of your own or at least that what shows up on the directory listing.
To turn your comment into a post, open another window, go to members and select NEW POST. Then, switch back to this window, copy your comment, and then paste it into the text area in the new window. You will need a headline which, in this case might be something like Reply to Kosher…. If you need additional help, click on INSTRUCTIONS in the MEMBERS section for a step-by-step description of the process.
06/29/2020 @ 12:10 pm
Maybe I didn’t word it clearly. I wrote what I wrote, tried to post it, and got a message box that it was rejected, so cut and pasted it into the comment box instead. That seems to work.
I’m not blogging anymore and am curtailing my online time, while enjoying that rarest of birds, a sabbatical. It is the last before I retire, so I don’t aim to spend creative energy typing online or even following news events closely enough to be informed on the level of detail required to make a decent political blog post. Nothing against bindlestitch or the mechanics. I can drop in from time to time though, as now.
Thanks for the personal note,
Greenie