If a Woodchuck Could Chuck…a Racist
I have a new preoccupation that I’d like to share. I call it being “racist adjacent.” I have never had this discussion with anyone, so I am not aware how often this idea has been indulged any anyone. I assume someone has to some degree. Here’s how it works.
First, as a disclaimer of sorts, this is not necessarily about racism. I am quite tired of racism. Who isn’t, right? But, not only that, I am tired of discussing it. I am tired of thinking about it. I am quite tired of the word. Rarely is it discussed in such a way that anything is learned. And that is part of my current issue.
“On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand
Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away…”—David Gilmour
This is a portion of a Pink Floyd song about how so many of us tend to avoid dealing with the suffering of the homeless. It occurs to me that I should not allude to it without mentioning it specifically. My point here is that there is a “turning away” that happens with regard to the subject of racism. This is happening between those who are not racists, per se, but rather “racist adjacent.” And with racism such that it is, most of us are racist adjacent. We are either subject to it in some form, or we are closely associated with someone who is. My recent preoccupation is about where column “A” meets column “B” in conversation.
Let’s say there are two friends or associates across different cultural backgrounds who either work together or just enjoy one another’s company. And, within an ordinary course of events, one friend describes to the other a third association who is inarguably racist. (This is the 2020 experience). While walking into a hard, driving, cold storm of racist ideas and consequences in popular culture, the listener seeks refuge from the philosophical storm, just a respite that will allow the listener to restore some hope and lean back into the driving storm for another mile. The listener wonders, or maybe even asks, “what do/did you say to your racist associate/friend/family member when the subject was raised”? The unsettling response is when the confrontation is avoided.
This is a little like the end of a paved road for the person dealing with the ramifications of intolerance, while the dominant culture individual remains on a parallel course, but the road in their lane remains paved. We may be traveling in the same direction, but my ride will be more bumpy, and my associate’s ride will be relatively smooth, while our direction of travel implies no conflict. While riding on the put by path, one may think, can you move closer to the center of the road so that I might also be on a smoothly paved path, but that would involve some sort of confrontation. You’re not dealing with the racist in this request. You are just dealing with how that person deals with the racist, or the racism. They are…”racist adjacent.”
Part of the exhaustion of a period distilled in the 2020 experience, or perhaps in the Trump Presidency, is from how our close associates deal with truly awful, anti-social ideas. I had a fairly close friend who I knew had voted for Donald Trump in 2016. We remained friends until I discussed with him the situation at the southern border regarding the incarceration of immigrant children. He was not particularly moved by what I consider to be a human rights injustice, and I quickly lost all ability to relate to him. This disagreement on principle in another time might not have led to the dissolution of a friendship. I have friends with whom I disagree, but this time, and this concept of being racist adjacent brings exhaustion eventually. In the effort to even avoid racism, and the discussion of racism, one runs into someone reminding you of the thing you seek to turn away from.
I apologize for not having an uplifting message about this issue. Goodness knows we don’t need one more complaint. But, I am curious about this sort of fatigue. It is virtually infinite regarding various issues where sensitivity meets insensitivity. As I look out on my country, and I consider another day, about to walk into a driving storm of warring cultural insensitivity, I wonder, how are you holding up?
11/25/2020 @ 10:53 am
What’s uplifting to say?
How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?
One, but first the lightbulb has to want to change.
My favorite of the lightbulb jokes.
Uplifting? The most uplifting thing I’ve seen lately was Biden’s acceptance speech. I have never seen a politician in a format like that be so blatant about race. It would have been so easy to downplay, so easy to ignore. He acknowledged with the world watching that the Black community got him elected and that fighting racism was a high priority to him. There are politicians who might have said that in a speech before a Black audience in South Carolina but Biden said it in his acceptance speech in Delaware. Obama had to be more careful because he was trying not to let race define him and, frankly, there were times I think he had too much respect for those handcuffs. Biden has more freedom and it looks like he’s not afraid of using it.
11/25/2020 @ 12:52 pm
I agree with you about all of that. And frankly, Biden has the freedom to be openly humanitarian after his predecessor. He shouldn’t begin to give anyone pause until he starts locking up white people, and taking away white children. It’s funny how impossible that sounds/is.
Biden also got a third bite of the apple that he did not think he was going to have. If he did nothing but comb his hair and shower regularly for the next four years, his legacy would be of the man who separated us from Trump and returned us to democracy. I think he is more ambitious, and capable than that, but he has already done us a solid.
I am also rather impressed with his cabinet choices so far. And keep in mind, race is not the only issue. While selecting a son of Cuban immigrant refugees for Homeland Defense is a piece of political genius, the advance of women into various roles like Treasury is also quite progressive. By the way, you especially, Kosh, should look into Janet Yellin’s husband and the piece he wrote that earned him the Nobel prize in 1970…if you haven’t already. He’s an interesting dude.
11/25/2020 @ 2:07 pm
I mentioned in my brekkie article about the half-century-plus-old “round robin” (paper ‘posts’ and comments) I belong to. All white, several Jewish. Two of the participants, whom I sort of think of as conjoined, tho they are physically separate but very identical twins, (white farm-born in Alabama 80 yrs ago, if that explains anything) said some tiresome things lately, about how “black culture”, specifically “illegitimacy” and abandonment of black fatherhood, was responsible for black people’s problems. Most of the people ignored or made very “inoffensive” responses (the Flaming Liberal of the group is out of commission for the moment, undergoing cancer treatment), but I responded…with quickie run-down of traumatic history, plus persistent prejudice, and some examples of how white culture treats black fathers (the b. man in the toy store with his son looking at toy guns, shot dead, one of the recent cases where a b. man was shot dead in front of his kid(s) in the car…), plus pointing out that these days white illegitimacy is practically the norm, topping it off, I thought, by saying that my 1st husband (a jazz musician, but red-haired Irish) was a irresponsible drunk & terrible father, not legally my husband, and my kids are “illegitimate”.
He addressed none of this in his response last issue, instead saying how come Indian-Americans (the Asian variety) tho recently to the country have been so *successful*. My response, to which I await his reaction, if any (December issue), was that the black population, quite aside from specific history, comprises a complete spectrum of humanity, whereas the recently immigrating Indians are specifically highly educated and motivated, not scooped up from the slums & streets of Calcutta. As a comparison, on the west coast of Canada, where I now live, Sikhs started immigrating around 1900 as laborers, and now a number of generations later they constitute a spectrum-wide population, from my eye-surgeon to gang-bangers and addicts (with a top layer of new Indian immigrants, of the educated&ambitious kind, here as well as all over the country).
I try to address racism when I notice it, well, usually. I have a friend who “is fond of” trump (!!!), and has a lot of other ideas I strongly disagree with, but we are porcupine friends, never saying anything in front of the other that would make us confront the chasm between us. I don’t know her specific views on race (tho being fond (!!!) of trump means complicity at least), tho her ex (and still business partner) is Native and she has lots of Native friend & contacts, FWIW) – attitude toward black people in particular I don’t know (there are maybe a dozen altogether in our town – one of my *jokes* is that I almost ran over our Only Black Resident, carelessly backing out of my laneway one day, into our usually deserted little back street…he was a good sport about it, waved it off, and helpfully pointed out that my license plate was hanging on sideways by one screw…)
(Sigh – hanging on sideways by one screw describes me these days…)
11/25/2020 @ 2:21 pm
“how come Indian-Americans (the Asian variety) tho recently to the country have been so *successful*”
I read recently that the most educated immigrants are black Africans. Just a thought. (Point being that it indicates that the SES of black Americans isn’t about genetics or who black people are but culture which has largely been forced on black Americans historically.) In brief.
11/25/2020 @ 4:54 pm
No so much culture as I would say…hatred and violence.
Look, people are simple animals. Our complexity relative to other animals is somewhat solipsistic delusion. Human culture…that I am familiar with…bases much of its thinking on binaries. Black skin represents a polar opposite for baseline whiteness. While favoring the familiar, people tend to discount “the exotic.” Whether this is organic simplistic orientation or contrived political manipulation, it works well for (or against) an animal that does not like to think.
I reject the notion that Black people have not done well, educated or not. If you strike a person in the face with a baseball bat, and that person hits the ground, that is not a function of what they are doing or what they are capable of. It is a function of what was done to them.
11/26/2020 @ 8:24 am
OK then, for “SES” sub “position in our society.”
Look, from my standpoint , surviving the middle passage is well beyond anything I’d have accomplished. I’d have been the first dead body thrown overboard, if they did that. So I didn’t mean black people haven’t done well. Empirically, as a group, their SES is the lowest in our society. That is largely because, as I understand things, our culture has included extreme hatred and violence toward black people for at least 400 years.
In my personal life, black people have almost always had superior social position, been better educated, more affluent, with stronger families than I. I don’t know what that means except that it seems to fit here. I.e. I’m not making an observation from personal experience.
11/26/2020 @ 9:08 am
I didn’t assume that was from personal experience. If you’re friends with Kosher, you’re not a bigot. I’m not concerned about that.
Now, let’s see if I can put my thought into words. This experience (my personal perspective) in this society, is like being surrounded by concepts which discount your (my) value. Our language, our practices, even names for things not related directly to the issue in question, when they are raised have the taint of discrimination. Black for evil and white for purity, we’re all familiar with it. We all grew up with it. Mostly, I shrugged it off. My assumption about people was that they were smart enough and ethical enough to recognize those metaphors for what they are and observe and measure reality independently. Over time, I have come to believe that people are not so aware of how those things operate within their minds. I think it functions as a sort of coding. SO…when I see it presented somewhere, I give the challenge that it deserves. And I challenge my own unexplored coding that may be captive to such notions. One example is a statement like, “ “how come Indian-Americans (the Asian variety) tho recently to the country have been so *successful*””
I recognize that it is quotes, and that you challenged it with what followed. I just have a more strenuous objection to the premise. I now exist to challenge such premises, where I shrugged them off previously, allowing that the average person was more aware, or egalitarian, or humanitarian.
Now, you can contrast my view, or my practice to what some call “political correctness.” I have never been a strong proponent of that because it hides bad ideas from challenges. I do agree that it is a useful guide to awareness before the fact, but it assumes perfection on the part of the communicator. It removes opportunities for correction. I basically support it, but it has these flaws. My view says, say what you think or feel. And be prepared to support it or learn about its flaws.
I challenge everything from placing North at the top of a globe to white Jesus. No, I don’t go turning globes upside down, but I am likely to say that the positioning is arbitrary if some premise seems unexplored. The inferiority of Black people is such a notion that I personally believe deserves more strenuous challenges. Too much of what and how we communicate is coded with that as a premise…for my taste.
11/26/2020 @ 1:39 pm
We can flip the globe and Australians can start referring to where they live as Up Over. But of course there is no up or down in space. Down is determined by the closest dominant gravity source.
“I have never been a strong proponent of that because it hides bad ideas from challenges.” I couldn’t agree more.
Concerning language, particularly Black and White, I agree. It not only implies impurity but, perhaps worse, opposition, and also symmetry. Opposition is an obvious problem, symmetry less so, particularly when we break the question down further into ethnicity, which clarifies things considerably but is rarely done.
11/26/2020 @ 7:17 pm
“The inferiority of Black people is such a notion that I personally believe deserves more strenuous challenges. Too much of what and how we communicate is coded with that as a premise…for my taste.”
In my view the ‘coding’ you reference includes the false and erroneous presumption that White people are inherently superior and should be challenged no less vigorously.
11/26/2020 @ 7:38 pm
To Ron:
I do that quite a bit. The funny thing about that is that depending on what the subject is, the correction or challenge can get lost. For example, if you say “white Jesus”, you are thought to be attacking Christianity, or whiteness, or maybe even Jesus. It can take quite a few go rounds to get at the fact that Jesus can’t be white, and is generally depicted that way in our part of the world. People hate it.
I had some cousins who had a Santa with a brown face. They lived on Long Island. The Santa was pretty controversial. There is a weird apostasy that attaches to being Black in America if you don’t define yourself as qualified by the degree to which you are separate from whiteness.
11/26/2020 @ 9:41 pm
@Bitey;
The message that is repeatedly transmitted is that the ‘inherent superiority of white people’ is an element of a ‘divine plan’ or scheme of creation….
This ‘message’ has been, and is, encoded and embedded in virtually every aspect of mass communication, not as a ‘dog whistle’, but the underlying assumption upon which human interaction in Western Civilization is predicated…
From genesis to the nightly news, and all the literature authored by white people in between, the message that white people are superior and entitled is repeated incessantly….
It’s been going on for more than 900 years….
11/26/2020 @ 10:55 pm
To Ron:
So, that being the case, what does one do?
11/26/2020 @ 11:50 pm
Perhaps approach what is accepted but isn’t said. This is why I wrote the belief in Black inferiority post. I will repeat myself here:
It is way more important to address people’s assumptions than their questions.
This is exactly why we talk about White Privilege. Most people who have White Privilege don’t acknowledge it, they just assume they have the privileges. They also mainly assume that the privileges aren’t privileges, just rights. They’re often not conscious of the fact that you don’t have them.
Most of the population – well, most of the male population – has absolutely no experience of being a minority. They’ve never experienced these limitations. They’ve never experienced these threats. They’ve never experienced a whole set of pernicious myths about themselves. I doubt they believe that if they experienced what you experience that they’d even find it threatening or debilitating. They don’t walk into a job the first time with people around them believing that they were hired for their minority status and probably aren’t qualified to be there. They don’t get the idea of having strikes against them, particularly strikes that matter. There are so many kinds of crap they’re never going to get, and when they get milder versions of any of it a lot of them totally flip out, not understanding that they’re experiencing something that doesn’t even qualify as a shadow of what you experience.
I’m not you, but when I worship on a holiday there’s a police presence outside my Temple. In Greensboro, where the congregation was much bigger, we had an armed guard for Friday night and Saturday services every week. For high holidays we had cruisers at the entrances to our parking lot. When we worship in numbers we have to consider the possibility that someone will walk in and try to kill a bunch of us. We need the deterrent. That’s life as a minority and that isn’t a fraction of what you experience.
11/27/2020 @ 6:46 am
@Bitey;
“So, that being the case, what does one do?”
I’m not sure that I can respond adequately….
There might not be an adequate response…
That being said, I am certain that:
Social justice cannot be achieved through maintenance of the status quo;
Social justice cannot be achieved through compromise with the oppressor;
There is no common ground that supercedes universal acknowledgement and appreciation of our common humanity;
We cannot find common ground while so many white people continue to deny or ignore our common and shared humanity….
I my post at https://bindlesnitch.com/how-do-we-change-this/ asks what is essentially the same question:
“How do we change this…”
If you revisit the post you may have a different take if you read it within the context of this thread. ..
11/27/2020 @ 8:47 am
CORRECTION!!!
Anyone and everyone who is familiar with me knows that I would sooner delete a comment or a post than to hit the publish button with this haptic error unedited:
‘Their might not be an adequate response…”
Must read:
“There might not be an adequate response…”
Oh, that we could edit our responses post publication…
11/27/2020 @ 9:01 am
To Ron:
I see what you mean now. If you’ll pardon the criticism, I think it was poorly stated previously. There are to closely related ideas, which share some elements, but they are very different. Your post seems to attack religion as a cause of racism. When confronted about it, you did deny that, but you did not simply explain the difference in what you were trying to say.
Now it appears that you were saying white skin is treated as though it were a religion. I share that view, but it is rather metaphorical. In your post, you have actual bible verses which you cite as fundamentally part of the problem. That is a direct connection, not a structural comparison. Yes, you did have a photo of Taylor as Cleopatra, but it is lost behind the cannon shot of bible verses.
11/27/2020 @ 10:32 am
@Bitey;
‘I think it was poorly stated previously.”
Agreed…
Your development of the discussion around the “challenging of the coding” brings my post into sharper focus.
The religious element of my presentation appears to be an assault on religious beliefs rather than a challenge of the ‘coding’ contained in religious imagery. E.G.
God as white. .
Adam and Eve as White…
Jesus as White erc…
The commentary here provided me with an opportunity to clarify that which was poorly stated in my post…
Thanks
11/28/2020 @ 12:02 pm
There are different answers to What does one do? I gave one, but the answer is multi-pronged. A parallel – Not exclusive, parallel – approach is the Sanders approach: Concentrate on policies that disproportionately help Black people. Like redistribution, like public education. Take advantage of the shifting view of opioid addiction now that it’s White people getting addicted. (I lost a 27 year old nephew to that of heart failure a year after he stopped using. He lived near Dayton.) It doesn’t have to be race-based to be race-relevant.
Again, parallel, not exclusive. The one thing I can’t agree with about this approach is the suggestion that we exclusively go in that direction because that suggestion amounts to telling Black people to get to the back of the line one more time. No one should have enough nerve to ask that.
11/28/2020 @ 4:05 pm
To Kosher…and all:
My question, “what does one do” is a little bit different. I gather that I may not have been as clear as the question requires to explain the questioning of one’s life choices.
I put myself through the process of becoming a Marine. Not to brag about it, but unless you have some connection with it, you can probably not comprehend how difficult a process it is. As difficult as it was physically, the physical hurdle isn’t the highest. It is the psychological hurdle that you must clear to make it. It is to such an extent that during the process, I imagine that those who don’t make it suffer serious damage. There is not much repairing offered to those who wash out. And a good part of the reservoir of emotional strength required is based upon the belief in doing the right thing.
Upon completion, a Marine may go on to do great things or ordinary things and be perfectly comfortable with the reason for his choices. But, in the time since I was 21, I have come to believe that the nation to which I dedicated myself does not have the reservoir of understanding that it takes to maintain a democracy. I don’t believe that it ever did have it, although it did make an effort that kept it ahead of its challenges. We have also had plenty of failures that many today don’t view as failures because we remain a hegemonic power since WWII.
And that is part of the problem. We measure our correctness based upon our power. While we have advanced mightily, largely in part due to curated technologies from Europe during WWII, we have made few advances in justice. One might argue that we started going backwards in justice when Reagan made his campaign announcement under the banner of “state’s rights”. That was a seduction of power, and a rejection of justice, and we have remained in that direction ever since.
So, the country that I grew up believing in was turning from that which I thought was most important right about the same time I started making my contributions as an adult. It is so different from the United States of my childhood that even the current president has become the full manifestation of George Washington’s farewell speech warning where a party’s interest are taken in direct conflict with the nation’s. As disenchanted with my country as I am currently, I am infinitely more loyal to it than the President himself. Justice is at a low ebb. “What does one do with that”? The president turned his back on Marines in a war zone. The party supported taking children from families with no concern for returning them. What to do about that? The President just allowed a viral pandemic to make citizens, friends, and family members lethal enemies to one another. What of that? The profession of policing is arguably a casual death squad for people of color, and the less wealthy. Would you dedicate yourself to that?
My choice was made decades ago, and all that is available to me is voting. I wont break the law to bring change the way some infamous individuals from history have done answering such questions. Seeking a violent solution only makes me a criminal, and I respect the way I have handled myself all of my life too much for that. My question is more like, having contributed much, there are still many who would just as soon have me shot at a traffic stop, or prove with documents my right to be where I was born to be. My choices have made me comfortable in all ways except for in spirit. Remove a variable or two, and I would be considerably less secure. One of those variables is luck. I could be one of those kids at the border, or one of the parents. I could be a shopper at an El Paso Walmart. I could be Trayvon Martin, Brionna Taylor or George Floyd. The way this country works, that I dedicated myself to, brought their ends, and seeks no correction from that. They were not in the wrong places or doing anyone wrong. My country’s weakness ended them. If I were 21, I’d choose differently. What now?
11/28/2020 @ 6:58 pm
@Bitey; “The profession of policing is arguably a casual death squad for people of color, and the less wealthy.
….there are still many who would just as soon have me shot at a traffic stop, or prove with documents my right to be where I was born to be.
…I could be Trayvon Martin, Brionna Taylor or George Floyd. The way this country works, that I dedicated myself to, brought their ends, and seeks no correction from that.”
And yet, Koshersalaami speaker of relevant racism as though there is racism that is irrelevant or that there is an area of the lives or experiences of black people in which race has no relevance….
Bitey, you have described the condition of black people in this country in a manner that is consistent with the stark reality and unvarnished truth…
My response to your summary is a simple and heartfelt….
AMEN!
What now, indeed?
11/28/2020 @ 7:07 pm
@Koshersalaami;
“”It doesn’t have to be race-based to be race-relevant.”
I sincerely hope that you don’t believe this bullshit….
11/28/2020 @ 7:36 pm
To Ron:
I’m not sure what I stepped in regarding “relevant racism”. I don’t know the context, so I don’t know what it means exactly.
While my post and my comments are more about questioning my life choices, I find that I learn more from Kosher than I can teach him. Our paths are all different.
When I discuss racism, I am circumspect about the implication that it covers all discrimination. I can’t determine myself if the evils perpetrated against Black people in America exceeds what goes on against women. It isn’t an easy comparison. Native Americans are yet another measure. I mention my experience being Black because I dont have the experience with other forms. I don’t mean to imply by omission that they do not exist.
11/28/2020 @ 9:54 pm
@Bitey;
Here’s your context in response to your question:
“What does one do?”
“…the Sanders approach: Concentrate on policies that disproportionately help Black people. Like redistribution, like public education….”
“”It doesn’t have to be race-based to be race-relevant.”
My reaction was: “When is race not relevant in the lives and experiences of black people?”
Since when does public education in this country “disproportionately help black people”?
11/28/2020 @ 11:22 pm
To Ron:
I see. Yes, I agree with you. I don’t think those measures come close to addressing the situation. Also, I am thinking of it on a different level. Maybe some guidance can be found in how former colonials dealt with dealing with colonial powers. As far as I see it, we have a similar dynamic.
11/29/2020 @ 1:04 am
Ron,
I said nothing about relevant racism. There is obviously no such thing as irrelevant racism. When is race not relevant to Black people? Wrong question if you’re addressing what I said. The question is: When do ostensibly non race-based structural fixes help a lot of the Black population? For example, eliminating voter ID laws. There’s nothing about race in the language but it has race ramifications. Public education is mainly funded locally, leaving poor neighborhoods with inadequate schools. Because of structural racism, median Black wealth is nothing like median White wealth, so more funding for underfunded public schools has a disproportionate benefit to the Black population. Anti Gerrymandering laws help the Black population because that population is so targeted by Gerrymandering. Do you think it’s an accident that Rev. William Barber started Moral Monday?
Making the Black community richer will not end racism but it will reduce it. This is why I talk about this approach as a parallel strategem.
11/29/2020 @ 7:07 am
Well, that certainly makes sense, and I thank you, Kosh, for contributing it,
11/29/2020 @ 9:12 am
@Koshersalaami;
“For example, eliminating voter ID laws. There’s nothing about race in the language but it has race ramifications.”
The target population of voter ID laws is, and has been, the black and brown populations of heavily Democratic urban areas.
The laws re poll taxes and literacy tests didn’t have anything about race in the language either.
However, the racist practice of ‘selective enforcement’ ensures that the only population adversely affected is black and brown people…
De facto segregation has become entrenched in the public education system because the people who resisted desegregation were charged with the responsibility of desegregation public schools “with all deliberate speed”.
“….more funding for underfunded public schools has a disproportionate benefit to the Black population…”
No it hasn’t.
More funding of public schools in a variety of ways has not improved the comparative quality of education in the inner-city schools and school districts….
“Making the Black community richer will not end racism but it will reduce it….”
If anything, making the black community richer has the potential of increasing and intensifying ‘reactionary racism’…
White folks perceive the government enhancement of the material quality of black life happens only by taking something from ‘entitled’ white folks and giving it to ‘undeserving’ black and brown folks…
Hence, the notion of whites as victims and the mythology of the ‘forgotten white man’.
What does one do?:
Try some nonviolent militancy in confronting, challenging, and changing the racist codes and coding which requires calling it out and telling it like it is…;
Unapologetically speaking truth unto power whenever and wherever necessary….;
Persist and persevere in ridding the public discourse of the platitudes and euphemisms that tend to obfuscate, evade, and avoid white folks’ accountability for racism….
If white people don’t acknowledge and ‘own’ their racism, how can it be properly and adequately addressed, much less eliminated?
11/29/2020 @ 9:39 am
Bitey,
In spite of the fact that my answer has validity, given what you’ve said since I brought it up I don’t think I’m answering your question directly and I’m not sure I can. I’m answering a structural question but you’re asking a personal question. What do you do when an entity you’ve done so much to support betrays you? One thing you have to have noticed is that this is the first President in American history for whom service is completely irrelevant, for whom service is for suckers. This is a gut punch to someone who has served, who has really served, twice, who has placed country over self only to watch an enormous portion of the population support a man who so blatantly puts self over country.
A little while into the Trump administration I concluded that I’d rather see a military coup than the continuation of the Trump administration. Why? Because I trust the military to value American Democracy way more than I trust the President to do so. From a traditional standpoint this is so backward: a military coup being safer for Democracy – not rhetorically, literally – than an elected Administration. But it would have been. As I have said many times, Trump’s biggest lie among the enormous plethora of lies he’s told was his Oath of Office.
Ron,
I’ve been confused for quite a while by your bifurcated approach to politics. I think I get it but it’s still confusing at times. During elections when talking to supporters of third party far Left candidates you are the ultimate political pragmatist. We can’t afford to insist on an unreachable perfect when we so desperately need the protections of the good, and so that insistence results in a bad. In an awful. But that’s not how you approach racial politics. For you, racial politics is all about the screaming pain of the imperfect. My approach is the same for both. I have the luxury of not being targeted like you are and I suspect that has a lot to do with it but I know I can’t eliminate your pain so I concentrate on reducing it. That’s the most moral thing I can do.
11/29/2020 @ 9:49 am
Ron,
Now, we are getting somewhere. Let me start with your statement.
“ Try some nonviolent militancy in confronting, challenging, and changing the racist codes and coding which requires calling it out and telling it like it is…”
Now, this is why it is a bit of a conundrum. If the goal is justice, and the stumbling block is power which concedes to nothing but power, non violence wont work. Non violence has to attach to a principle of justice and morality that exists in its opponent’s structure. My WHOLE theory is that the necessary justice principle does not exist from within the oppressor’ s worldview. Appeals to justice don’t work if the object of the appeal simply rejects it.
Now, let me also be clear that I am not advocating for violence. I am just saying that at some point, one must understand that there is no magical arrangements of words that will bring a different result. Jesus said, over 2000, that the way to justice is to relinquish all power and pursuit of power, and to be the justice that you seek. The conflict between power and justice was already several thousand years old then. The same dynamic exists today, virtually unchanged. The way we understand the world is to have ownership of little pieces of it, attribute value to that which we own, derive power from the value of our ownership, and control others who seek that ‘wealth’. Power and justice stand diametrically opposed because the world is finite, life is finite, and the demand is constant. Also, power corrupts because its existence depends upon its support of itself over all things, including that which limits itself. It is corrupt in a universe that has elements of justice as principles, like truth and reason. Truth and reason can only support things consistent with nature. Entropy will neutralize any force that leans against nature. Power (political) is the capacity to work against nature.
Just like the small example of Trump refusing to concede and relinquish the White House after losing an election, he must either surrender a position of power, or power must be used to remove him. Conceding is the act of elevating justice over power. If there is not power behind the request that he leave, he wont. No amount of non violent militancy will remove him unless he either takes justice as a principle, or he fears power being leveraged against him.
11/29/2020 @ 10:01 am
To Kosher:
“…This is a gut punch to someone who has served, who has really served, twice, who has placed country over self only to watch an enormous portion of the population support a man who so blatantly puts self over country…”
Total agreement here. This is the dizzying question. The very definition upon which much had been decided was the idea of contribution to the greater good. The Trump administration not only demonstrated pure self interest, but revealed tens of millions who endorse it. So…the question asks, what is this place exactly? It is not what I what I understood it to be.
I agree, there probably isn’t an answer.
11/29/2020 @ 10:08 am
Ron,
When I wrote my last comment, I hadn’t yet seen your last comment. Sequencing may be important in this conversation.
The richer the Black population gets, the more like the White population it gets. When comparing the two populations we’re actually looking at two widely prevalent factors: race and class. The more the two races are of equivalent classes, the less alien, and thereby other, the Black population is to the White population.
Let me be clear, because though I shouldn’t have to reiterate this point I’m pretty sure I have to. Getting rid of a class difference doesn’t end racism, but it does reduce it. They are not completely correlated but they are related.
11/29/2020 @ 10:41 am
Bitey,
The civil rights movement wasn’t successful because of raw power (No, it wasn’t completely successful, but the difference between before and after is stark.) any more than Black people ended American slavery. In neither case did White people become Black allies for the sake of their own power. They became Black allies because to do anything else under the circumstances ultimately produced too much cognitive dissonance in that it wreaked havoc with their self image. This is still the best formula because it’s the only formula where the numbers work. The trick is in reaching the self-image. This doesn’t work on everyone but it can work on enough people to effect change.
Racism, like antisemitism, sexism, homophobia, is largely based on myths, assumptions. “They are….” fill in the blank. What are the myths? What transmits them? What happens when we break through them? We’ve broken through them twice in the past several years and both times we saw a lot of national action really fast.
Some of whom we’re up against are simply deplorables. Some just have bad information. Bad information is costly, as we can see with the pattern of mask use during COVID.
I am not saying that those who have bad information aren’t responsible for having bad information, but I am saying that some of them can be swayed when faced with good information because they can’t reconcile their behavior and stands with their own standards.
There’s a reason there’s a correlation between level of education and liberalism. Bad education is quite literally a conservative weapon. That’s why we have Betsy DeVos. She’s a conservative weapon. The more critically you can think, the less racism makes sense.
11/29/2020 @ 11:26 am
Regarding the partial success of the Civil Rights movement, I take issue with the concept of partial success as it applies to justice. I agree that there are differences between, say, Jim Crow and Donald Trump, but I no longer believe that those differences are meaningful. It is like we came to understand that separate but equal is inherently unequal, and therefor unjust. Together, but unequal is inherently unequal…and therefore unjust. We have been too willing to pat ourselves on the back for incremental change. People still lose their entire lives in this incrementally better system. You can run a 100 yard race, and lead the entire way, but if you stop at the 90 yard mark, you still lose. I do not consider it a consolation when the result can literally be life or death. There was a time when I thought that was reasonable. I no longer do. It’s like Zeno’s paradox. If you keep dividing the distance between where you are, and the goal by half, you will never reach the goal. Why must I not be allowed to reach the goal for the sake of “progress”, especially when there are others beyond the goal line?
I dont understand why this idea is so hard to grasp. If you and I went to a store, and we both bought a head of lettuce. The price of the lettuce was the same for both of us, $1.00. You pay with a $5.00 bill and get $4.00 back. Then I purchase mine. I pay with a $5.00 bill and I get $3.75 back because of who I am. I say, why can’t I get it for $1.00? You have changed the price for me. And the storekeeper says, no, the price is the same, but were it not for civil rights, you would not be able to shop here at all. I am not satisfied with that explanation. I want my full change. If I have an option, I shop elsewhere. If I do not have another option, I need a plan to get my head of lettuce and my full change. I am not paying a “civil rights” progress tax that everyone else does not pay. If that must be, then civil rights failed.
11/29/2020 @ 11:35 am
‘Nonviolent confrontational militancy’:
Creating severe psychological, and emotional conflict by challenging and attacking the self image of the powerful with reality and the truth to the point of making the ambivalence and self doubt too painful to bear…
This includes the weaponization of the pain in the internal conflict to the point where the only way to relieve the pain is to eliminate or reduce the conflict between the fantasy of self image and truth and reality….
Or, to put it in a word, ‘accountability’.
11/29/2020 @ 12:12 pm
“I am not paying a “civil rights” progress tax that everyone else does not pay.”
Another ‘Amen’ moment!
11/29/2020 @ 1:25 pm
Bitey,
Of course it’s unacceptable, but the difference between 1955 and 1975 is not incremental. It was much, much, much worse. Civil rights means you don’t get arrested for walking into the store.
That being said, it’s still unacceptable, but that doesn’t tell us what to do about it. Choices:
Leave
Change people
Accept status quo
Let us assume that accepting the status quo is off the table. Leaving doesn’t take further discussion – you leave or you don’t, and wherever you leave to brings its own set of problems which may or may not be worse, depending on where and your definition of worse.
That leaves changing people. How?
We can legislate some change, but legislation takes votes and a high proportion of those voting won’t necessarily favor change, and that’s putting it mildly.
What are our other choices?
Our biggest one is triggering a whole lot of cognitive dissonance. However, in order to do that we need to have an idea of what cognitive consonance looks like in their case. What makes them OK with this? What would make them not OK with this?
To answer that question, we have to understand how they think. This necessity can get nasty but we don’t have much of a choice if we want decent odds of success. The same is true of anyone in sales or litigation. Who are you talking to? How do they think? What about how they think can we use to our advantage?
This means we in essence have to sell to the enemy, or at least sell to people who are not our allies. We shouldn’t have to couch things according to their scheme of the world but we want more from them than they want from us so we have to go there.
This means carefully choosing fights we can win. Not fights about whatever bugs us, fights we can win. If we want to effect real change, we have to do this. It sucks but a whole lot of people voted for Trump and even more voted for other Republican candidates.
11/29/2020 @ 1:33 pm
To Kosher:
It’s incremental.
11/29/2020 @ 1:42 pm
To Kosher:
Let say, hypothetically, that the Third Reich ended in a negotiated settlement like Japan. And let’s say the Holocaust were negotiated instead of crushed. Within that negotiation, half of the incarcerated Jews were released. What would be the worst two things about that negotiated result?
11/29/2020 @ 6:26 pm
Bitey,
The continued suffering and the precedent.
If the remaining incarcerated Jews aren’t murdered, that isn’t incremental. It isn’t satisfactory, but it isn’t incremental.
I have to tread carefully here. As dissatisfied as I am with the status quo, and that sounds considerably more clinical and detached than I mean it, perhaps disgusted is a better word but literally I mainly mean dissatisfied as in This Is Not Acceptable, I can’t view the difference between American Apartheid and now as incremental. America was so much more draconian when I was born. I’m not sure how many of those who lived through it would share your assessment. The Black population was almost completely unprotected from the White population.
None of which means I find incrementalism acceptable. But that’s a given – we presumably agree that the status quo is unacceptable. The next question is, as you stated initially, what to do about that unacceptability. What is the task at hand?
There’s a problem with addressing this question in detail. The problem is that diagnosis comes across as clinical, even though that’s what diagnosis should do. It’s assessment. But when I diagnose, I don’t normally include my value judgments because they aren’t useful. If the question is What do we do about an unsatisfactory (speaking literally here) status quo, the fact that I find the status quo unsatisfactory is contained in the question.
So now I draw conclusions. One conclusion I draw is that the unacceptable status quo exists because people are wrong. I could mean wrong morally but, again, that’s a given. They’re racists. Of course they’re wrong morally. But they’re also wrong factually. They have a series of beliefs – and I mean beliefs about facts, not moral beliefs – that are fallacious. It is these beliefs that justify their conclusions.
We can name a lot of these beliefs:
Blacks are more dangerous than Whites (based on race, not class).
Poor Black people are poor because they’d rather draw government assistance than work. In this respect they are fundamentally different from us.
Those who talk about racism do so primarily to increase their own influence and lord it over others.
A lot of this is based on hatred of Whites, which means Whites can’t afford to agree.
We live in a meritocracy and responsibility for more disadvantaged statistical means among minorities is due to their own lack of initiative and lack of ability.
The police are basically fair.
The law is basically fair.
The courts are basically fair.
The primary reason minorities protest or object to anything is to take advantage of a majority cowed unjustifiably by liberal values.
Liberals like minorities because they use them to gain power. Minorities who favor liberals are basically pawns.
The Government has given minorities endless resources, far more resources than the government gives White people. This makes minority complaints unjustified. We wish we got what they got.
Liberals favor more immigration because immigrants tend to vote Democratic and liberals are in this case just using America’s resources to build their own political base.
COVID is a hoax used to discredit a President who, unlike anyone else in Washington, understands this list and agrees with it.
Immigrants and minorities cost us money but they don’t bring anything significant to the table.
Resources are finite and fixed and we deserve access to those resources more than they do.
There are more but that’s a good start.
11/25/2020 @ 6:05 pm
I wrote a post that encompasses the last two comments, meaning the last two as of right now. A reply could mess up the order.
11/26/2020 @ 2:59 pm
Yep, and those Australians who call it “Down Under” are probably oriented to Europe.