It’s been pointed out numerous times, by various people, that some of today’s “anti-racist” efforts have swung all the way back around into outright racism. Whether it’s the bigotry of low expectations, the return of racial segregation, or the new breed of race essentialism, racial discourse is in bad shape. The thing is, at least in some cases, these misguided people really do have good intentions. And in others, they’re being given so many conflicting messages that they don’t know where to turn.
"...a world where the colour of a person's skin is no more important than the colour of their eyes or their hair." This is exactly it. I'm mixed race (Pakistani/Caucasian) and my wife is full Chinese. I tell my kids their "race" is "the future."
Whenever I talk to anyone, of any background, about race, I encourage them to envision a future where, no matter who you encounter, you don't load up pre-conceived biases, judgements and stereotypes. As a tribal species, that may be almost impossible. But we should still strive for it.
"As a tribal species, that may be almost impossible. But we should still strive for it."
I agree. Even if it's impossible, I think we should be striving to get as close as we can. But I also really don't believe it's impossible. Speaking for myself, I'd say I actually can be fairly judgemental 😅 but I can honestly say that those judgements are based on the behaviour of the person in front of me and not on a prejudgement of their "race," gender, sexuality etc.
I look for kindness, critical thinking, honesty, (or a lack of these qualities) as markers of a "tribe" that I'm interested in. And I strive to be somebody who is worthy of membership in that tribe.
Also, absolutely love that, "your race is the future," line.
I'm with you 100%. It's how I try to approach everyone as well. It takes work, especially to deconstruct existing stereotypes that are pervasive in the culture. I hope more and more people realize that and embrace it.
Feel free to steal that line! I'll look out for it in a future post. :-)
It’s a strange topsy-turvy moment we’re in. Instead of dismantling stereotypes, progressives are leaning into them. It comes up across multiple spheres. My daughter is asked about her pronouns after cutting her hair, as though short hair is somehow incompatible with femininity. Instead of expanding what’s possible as a girl, we’ve firmed up the old boxes and just let people move between them.
It’s somehow now ok (even funny) to dismiss any white woman we don’t want to listen to as a Karen. We didn’t stop racial name-calling. We just broadened it.
The “progressive” position for the first year+ of the pandemic was to keep the schools closed for, believe it or not, the benefit of marginalized people who, the narrative went, did not wish to return to school because of racism, etc.
I feel like the world has turned upside down. I want to be a progressive again in the world right-side-up.
"My daughter is asked about her pronouns after cutting her hair, as though short hair is somehow incompatible with femininity."
I wrote about this phenomena recently. Absolutely mind-boggling that progressives have become so regressive! It's happened so quickly and to such an extreme too! Just a complete surrender to the stereotypes we've been trying to abandon. And yes, as you say, it's happening across multiple spheres.
"My daughter is asked about her pronouns after cutting her hair, as though short hair is somehow incompatible with femininity. Instead of expanding what’s possible as a girl, we’ve firmed up the old boxes and just let people move between them. "
This sums it up well, Erin. Instead of joining forces and continuing to push against all gender stereotypes, it seems the "progressives" are more interested in adding more labels and enforcing the old stereotypes (as Steve has so eloquently written about). As an older women who has spent my life pushing hard against gender stereotypes that I do not agree with nor it into, it feels as though the current progressive behavior and narrative has set us back 10 years. I fear the right-wing extremism we see today has in large part been driven by backlash against what has become very prominent left-wing extremism.
I like diversity. Not just in appearance, but in sub/cultural differences. I'll call sub/culture tribes for the rest of this comment. For the world that I want to live in to be a thing with that is that we must stop looking for and assuming the worst about the other tribes (race, gender, worldview, orientation).
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” -Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It
We are usually most comfortable within the tribal norms we are accustomed to. It is too common to find things we don't like that are norms withing another tribe. The thing is, I have found it better for me to notice the things that are beyond good, they are wonderful in other tribes.
I think that Mark Twain's travel quote pertained to the idea that expanding our experience with people of other tribes is that we come to see their basic humanity. We might even discover the why behind those differences and see some validity in them.
Much of the anti-this&that we see on the internet is virtue signaling our membership in a tribe that we identify ourselves in. Our place in a tribe goes back in history to our very survival, but our survival as a species my well require an acceptance of each other that can only happen with a cease fire in the current culture wars as a beginning.
I don't want to erase anyone's identity, just the negative assumptions that we see about that.
"Much of the anti-this&that we see on the internet is virtue signaling our membership in a tribe that we identify ourselves in"
Absolutely. See also the blind adherence to lies or completely illogical positions; Trump won the election, all white people are racist, trans women competing in female sport is fair. All of these are logically incoherent positions that would have been utterly rejected what? Ten years ago? Now, depending on which side of the aisle you pledge allegiance to, these are part of your orthodoxy.
And this allows us to move beyond thinking and learning and nuance, anybody who won't say the right words is on "the other side." Regardless of anything else they might say or do.
What's truly maddening is that most people, on either side, can see this. They're just too afraid of the backlash to say so. So we end up with these all-or-nothing, "with us or against us," conversations.
Steve, have you checked out Sheena Mason and her "theory of racelessness"? I think you might be into it.
The explanation for race-conscious anti-racism I'm sympathetic to is the notion that, while color blindness (or "racelessness" as Mason calls it) is a wonderful goal, in the present day there is still a lot of racism. If there are no black people, then there is, ipso facto, no racism--who's being discriminated against? If we can't classify the victims, it's hard to do anything about the discrimination. (I've always wanted to use the term ipso facto and now I have so my work here is done).
"I've always wanted to use the term ipso facto and now I have so my work here is done"
😁
Yeah, this point gets made a lot, and it's a fair one. We can't talk about racism without acknowledging that there's an idea called "race", based on the colour of people's skin, and that it affects the outcomes of people's lives. But I see this running pretty much completely in tandem with the day-to-day lives of people.
It's the difference between looking at people as demographics and looking at them as individuals. When I interact with my friends, colleagues, random people on the street, I do so as an individual. I want zero "race-consciousness" in those interactions. No white person I meet is responsible for any systemic obstacles I might have faced. I don't want them to pretend that they are. Let's just all be people together.
When trying to look at and fix racial disparities in society, a degree of race-consciousness might be necessary. But even here, what we're really looking at is the circumstances of groups.
There are disparities in wealth and home ownership and incarceration and crime and on and on between black people and white people. But Dave Chappelle and Jay-Z don't suffer from those issues, despite being black. The white single father struggling to make ends meet isn't better off in these areas than many black people. Now we need to think about causes and solutions.
There are many good reasons why some black people struggle more than they should have to. I believe passionately that these issues should be addressed. But if they're done in any kind of sensible way, maybe our white father will benefit too. That's good. And JayZ shouldn't benefit at all. That's good too.
I think we're already long past the point where "black people" need help. *Some* black people need help. And they should be helped because of the impact that racist policies had on them. Race consciousness is totally appropriate here. But we could also do a lot of good in a completely race-blind way. Let's help poor people. Let's invest in poor communities and struggling schools. These investments would disproportionately help black people, because black people were disproportionately harmed in the past. But in many cases, we'd do more good with this latter approach.
I love what you wrote here, especially about the non-racial class dimensions of wealth inequality. I tend toward universalist solutions too for pragmatic as well as ethical reasons. There's a bizarre thing happening in the US now where liberals are challenging the need for spending (i.e. Build Back Better) b/c it might, God forbid, help white men too much! It's like the inverse of what Heather McGhee talks about in The Sum of Us -- racist whites who oppose govt programs they desperately need just b/c they don't want black people to benefit. What a sad mess.
When it comes to interpersonal stuff, it's incredibly fraught b/c the governing anti-racist ideology says that, if a person of color says something is racist, it's racist, even if another person of color says it isn't. So, for example, if I (I'm white) compliment my black co-worker on something she wrote and say she's "articulate" (somehow that word has become a lightening rod), she might appreciate the compliment. But if another black co-worker calls me out for racism over that statement, then I'm racist, end of story. I really don't know how to handle those kinds of situations other than withholding praise for fear of it being interpreted as a microaggression.
Here's another one someone told me about: A white woman learned that her black co-worker was going to be a grandma. She congratulated her and then said, "You look too young to be a grandma." Racist.
I hadn't seen Your Medium article, Steve. Still can't get over: "But at least they didn’t expect us to be grateful for it."
ICBW, I Could Be VERY Wrong. But my sense is that You already live, to a pretty decent extent, in the world You wish to live in, don't You? Or I guess it could be just this one facet of Your life, these articles and comments. Dunno.
You've identified, perhaps, the BIGGEST obstacle to living in that kind-a world. Because the Woke Religion is also a very strong POLITICAL movement. That started with the original CRT Legal Theory, and has only gotten stronger and stronger since then. I still hope, but most if not all the "Powers that Be" are in the hands of the Woke. They aren't gonna give that kind-a power up without a fight, right?
That's why I especially appreciate Your articles, tho don't say it much, Steve.
"I Could Be VERY Wrong. But my sense is that You already live, to a pretty decent extent, in the world You wish to live in, don't You?"
Huh, this is an excellent point. Yes, I think I do. I can't remember the last time I had an interaction that felt weighed down by race or gender or anything else. I treat people as people. And they do the same for me. It's funny, it's my life we're talking about here but I hadn't really thought about it that way until you said it!😄
And, of course, I surround myself with friends who think the same way. At least on this issue. And, increasingly, a community online who also think the same way.
As you say, the issue is the political investment in keeping us focused on our differences instead of all the things we have in common. There's a lot of money to be made from storing up animosity and tribalism. But I really do see more and more people waking up. Or, more importantly, speaking up.
The more reasonable people, on both side of the aisle, denounce the craziness that the fringes on their sides are pushing, the sooner we'll be done with his madness I think.
As You say, there's a lotta money to be made. So there's a lotta reasons for the Woke to maintain our differences is about all that matters. There are differences and samenesses in anything You wanna look at, right? To always maintain the differences are all that matters is pretty short-sighted.
I don't get out much, so can only hope You're right about more people speaking up. It takes a lotta courage for You to do that, in thid day-and-age of the Cancel Culture.
I often feel that most people stopped reading the biography of Malcom X after the first two chapters. Post NOI Malcolm is a very different dude. Agree with all of your broader points - one thing I mentioned to my colleagues at work recently was the hypocrisy of "doing DEI work" for years only to sit in a meeting and (quite literally) say things like "no more fucking white males here, OK". Insanity at face value, and a billion dollar industry - DEI is not charity work.
I will never get tired of reading you. Your commentaries reveal profound things in such a simple, straightforwardly way, and that is a gift! Have you ever thought of going into teaching? :-)
Today when I dropped off a jacket for repair, the gal behind the counter (another Nicole) got to talking and at one point she asked about my background (it's okay, she was white lol) and I said half French and half Western European mutt and she laughed, saying she was Russian (both of us born in North America). I'd like to see us get back to being able to talk about background...it's just *interesting* and it demystifies our origins. Yeah people use it to pigeonhole others but some of us just think it makes it more interesting. Now we can't ask "Where are you from" Because that's RACIST but when I first moved to Canada it was a conversation starter and as soon as other immigrants realized I was one too (being white and having an accent little different from native Torontonians, it's not immediately obvious), well, then we'd start swapping immigration stories and laugh about all the stupid shit we had to do to get here, then debate which is better, multiculturalism or assimilation? Now people look at you as though you asked their favorite sexual position. It's one less way to bond with others, and an example of just how divisive the let's identity politics have gotten.
"...a world where the colour of a person's skin is no more important than the colour of their eyes or their hair." This is exactly it. I'm mixed race (Pakistani/Caucasian) and my wife is full Chinese. I tell my kids their "race" is "the future."
Whenever I talk to anyone, of any background, about race, I encourage them to envision a future where, no matter who you encounter, you don't load up pre-conceived biases, judgements and stereotypes. As a tribal species, that may be almost impossible. But we should still strive for it.
"As a tribal species, that may be almost impossible. But we should still strive for it."
I agree. Even if it's impossible, I think we should be striving to get as close as we can. But I also really don't believe it's impossible. Speaking for myself, I'd say I actually can be fairly judgemental 😅 but I can honestly say that those judgements are based on the behaviour of the person in front of me and not on a prejudgement of their "race," gender, sexuality etc.
I look for kindness, critical thinking, honesty, (or a lack of these qualities) as markers of a "tribe" that I'm interested in. And I strive to be somebody who is worthy of membership in that tribe.
Also, absolutely love that, "your race is the future," line.
I'm with you 100%. It's how I try to approach everyone as well. It takes work, especially to deconstruct existing stereotypes that are pervasive in the culture. I hope more and more people realize that and embrace it.
Feel free to steal that line! I'll look out for it in a future post. :-)
It’s a strange topsy-turvy moment we’re in. Instead of dismantling stereotypes, progressives are leaning into them. It comes up across multiple spheres. My daughter is asked about her pronouns after cutting her hair, as though short hair is somehow incompatible with femininity. Instead of expanding what’s possible as a girl, we’ve firmed up the old boxes and just let people move between them.
It’s somehow now ok (even funny) to dismiss any white woman we don’t want to listen to as a Karen. We didn’t stop racial name-calling. We just broadened it.
The “progressive” position for the first year+ of the pandemic was to keep the schools closed for, believe it or not, the benefit of marginalized people who, the narrative went, did not wish to return to school because of racism, etc.
I feel like the world has turned upside down. I want to be a progressive again in the world right-side-up.
"My daughter is asked about her pronouns after cutting her hair, as though short hair is somehow incompatible with femininity."
I wrote about this phenomena recently. Absolutely mind-boggling that progressives have become so regressive! It's happened so quickly and to such an extreme too! Just a complete surrender to the stereotypes we've been trying to abandon. And yes, as you say, it's happening across multiple spheres.
"My daughter is asked about her pronouns after cutting her hair, as though short hair is somehow incompatible with femininity. Instead of expanding what’s possible as a girl, we’ve firmed up the old boxes and just let people move between them. "
This sums it up well, Erin. Instead of joining forces and continuing to push against all gender stereotypes, it seems the "progressives" are more interested in adding more labels and enforcing the old stereotypes (as Steve has so eloquently written about). As an older women who has spent my life pushing hard against gender stereotypes that I do not agree with nor it into, it feels as though the current progressive behavior and narrative has set us back 10 years. I fear the right-wing extremism we see today has in large part been driven by backlash against what has become very prominent left-wing extremism.
I like diversity. Not just in appearance, but in sub/cultural differences. I'll call sub/culture tribes for the rest of this comment. For the world that I want to live in to be a thing with that is that we must stop looking for and assuming the worst about the other tribes (race, gender, worldview, orientation).
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” -Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It
We are usually most comfortable within the tribal norms we are accustomed to. It is too common to find things we don't like that are norms withing another tribe. The thing is, I have found it better for me to notice the things that are beyond good, they are wonderful in other tribes.
I think that Mark Twain's travel quote pertained to the idea that expanding our experience with people of other tribes is that we come to see their basic humanity. We might even discover the why behind those differences and see some validity in them.
Much of the anti-this&that we see on the internet is virtue signaling our membership in a tribe that we identify ourselves in. Our place in a tribe goes back in history to our very survival, but our survival as a species my well require an acceptance of each other that can only happen with a cease fire in the current culture wars as a beginning.
I don't want to erase anyone's identity, just the negative assumptions that we see about that.
"Much of the anti-this&that we see on the internet is virtue signaling our membership in a tribe that we identify ourselves in"
Absolutely. See also the blind adherence to lies or completely illogical positions; Trump won the election, all white people are racist, trans women competing in female sport is fair. All of these are logically incoherent positions that would have been utterly rejected what? Ten years ago? Now, depending on which side of the aisle you pledge allegiance to, these are part of your orthodoxy.
And this allows us to move beyond thinking and learning and nuance, anybody who won't say the right words is on "the other side." Regardless of anything else they might say or do.
What's truly maddening is that most people, on either side, can see this. They're just too afraid of the backlash to say so. So we end up with these all-or-nothing, "with us or against us," conversations.
The question I use to guide me is “what world do I want to live in?”
YES! And thanks for reminding us about Malcolm X's most inspiring experience!
Steve, have you checked out Sheena Mason and her "theory of racelessness"? I think you might be into it.
The explanation for race-conscious anti-racism I'm sympathetic to is the notion that, while color blindness (or "racelessness" as Mason calls it) is a wonderful goal, in the present day there is still a lot of racism. If there are no black people, then there is, ipso facto, no racism--who's being discriminated against? If we can't classify the victims, it's hard to do anything about the discrimination. (I've always wanted to use the term ipso facto and now I have so my work here is done).
"I've always wanted to use the term ipso facto and now I have so my work here is done"
😁
Yeah, this point gets made a lot, and it's a fair one. We can't talk about racism without acknowledging that there's an idea called "race", based on the colour of people's skin, and that it affects the outcomes of people's lives. But I see this running pretty much completely in tandem with the day-to-day lives of people.
It's the difference between looking at people as demographics and looking at them as individuals. When I interact with my friends, colleagues, random people on the street, I do so as an individual. I want zero "race-consciousness" in those interactions. No white person I meet is responsible for any systemic obstacles I might have faced. I don't want them to pretend that they are. Let's just all be people together.
When trying to look at and fix racial disparities in society, a degree of race-consciousness might be necessary. But even here, what we're really looking at is the circumstances of groups.
There are disparities in wealth and home ownership and incarceration and crime and on and on between black people and white people. But Dave Chappelle and Jay-Z don't suffer from those issues, despite being black. The white single father struggling to make ends meet isn't better off in these areas than many black people. Now we need to think about causes and solutions.
There are many good reasons why some black people struggle more than they should have to. I believe passionately that these issues should be addressed. But if they're done in any kind of sensible way, maybe our white father will benefit too. That's good. And JayZ shouldn't benefit at all. That's good too.
I think we're already long past the point where "black people" need help. *Some* black people need help. And they should be helped because of the impact that racist policies had on them. Race consciousness is totally appropriate here. But we could also do a lot of good in a completely race-blind way. Let's help poor people. Let's invest in poor communities and struggling schools. These investments would disproportionately help black people, because black people were disproportionately harmed in the past. But in many cases, we'd do more good with this latter approach.
I love what you wrote here, especially about the non-racial class dimensions of wealth inequality. I tend toward universalist solutions too for pragmatic as well as ethical reasons. There's a bizarre thing happening in the US now where liberals are challenging the need for spending (i.e. Build Back Better) b/c it might, God forbid, help white men too much! It's like the inverse of what Heather McGhee talks about in The Sum of Us -- racist whites who oppose govt programs they desperately need just b/c they don't want black people to benefit. What a sad mess.
When it comes to interpersonal stuff, it's incredibly fraught b/c the governing anti-racist ideology says that, if a person of color says something is racist, it's racist, even if another person of color says it isn't. So, for example, if I (I'm white) compliment my black co-worker on something she wrote and say she's "articulate" (somehow that word has become a lightening rod), she might appreciate the compliment. But if another black co-worker calls me out for racism over that statement, then I'm racist, end of story. I really don't know how to handle those kinds of situations other than withholding praise for fear of it being interpreted as a microaggression.
Here's another one someone told me about: A white woman learned that her black co-worker was going to be a grandma. She congratulated her and then said, "You look too young to be a grandma." Racist.
Oh, and thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out. My reading list is monstrous though so it'll probably be a while😅
Here's a short intro on youtube. https://youtu.be/YsJ6g2mDE3I
I hadn't seen Your Medium article, Steve. Still can't get over: "But at least they didn’t expect us to be grateful for it."
ICBW, I Could Be VERY Wrong. But my sense is that You already live, to a pretty decent extent, in the world You wish to live in, don't You? Or I guess it could be just this one facet of Your life, these articles and comments. Dunno.
You've identified, perhaps, the BIGGEST obstacle to living in that kind-a world. Because the Woke Religion is also a very strong POLITICAL movement. That started with the original CRT Legal Theory, and has only gotten stronger and stronger since then. I still hope, but most if not all the "Powers that Be" are in the hands of the Woke. They aren't gonna give that kind-a power up without a fight, right?
That's why I especially appreciate Your articles, tho don't say it much, Steve.
"I Could Be VERY Wrong. But my sense is that You already live, to a pretty decent extent, in the world You wish to live in, don't You?"
Huh, this is an excellent point. Yes, I think I do. I can't remember the last time I had an interaction that felt weighed down by race or gender or anything else. I treat people as people. And they do the same for me. It's funny, it's my life we're talking about here but I hadn't really thought about it that way until you said it!😄
And, of course, I surround myself with friends who think the same way. At least on this issue. And, increasingly, a community online who also think the same way.
As you say, the issue is the political investment in keeping us focused on our differences instead of all the things we have in common. There's a lot of money to be made from storing up animosity and tribalism. But I really do see more and more people waking up. Or, more importantly, speaking up.
The more reasonable people, on both side of the aisle, denounce the craziness that the fringes on their sides are pushing, the sooner we'll be done with his madness I think.
TY for Your reply, Steve.
I'm glad You have the friends You have.
As You say, there's a lotta money to be made. So there's a lotta reasons for the Woke to maintain our differences is about all that matters. There are differences and samenesses in anything You wanna look at, right? To always maintain the differences are all that matters is pretty short-sighted.
I don't get out much, so can only hope You're right about more people speaking up. It takes a lotta courage for You to do that, in thid day-and-age of the Cancel Culture.
I often feel that most people stopped reading the biography of Malcom X after the first two chapters. Post NOI Malcolm is a very different dude. Agree with all of your broader points - one thing I mentioned to my colleagues at work recently was the hypocrisy of "doing DEI work" for years only to sit in a meeting and (quite literally) say things like "no more fucking white males here, OK". Insanity at face value, and a billion dollar industry - DEI is not charity work.
I will never get tired of reading you. Your commentaries reveal profound things in such a simple, straightforwardly way, and that is a gift! Have you ever thought of going into teaching? :-)
Today when I dropped off a jacket for repair, the gal behind the counter (another Nicole) got to talking and at one point she asked about my background (it's okay, she was white lol) and I said half French and half Western European mutt and she laughed, saying she was Russian (both of us born in North America). I'd like to see us get back to being able to talk about background...it's just *interesting* and it demystifies our origins. Yeah people use it to pigeonhole others but some of us just think it makes it more interesting. Now we can't ask "Where are you from" Because that's RACIST but when I first moved to Canada it was a conversation starter and as soon as other immigrants realized I was one too (being white and having an accent little different from native Torontonians, it's not immediately obvious), well, then we'd start swapping immigration stories and laugh about all the stupid shit we had to do to get here, then debate which is better, multiculturalism or assimilation? Now people look at you as though you asked their favorite sexual position. It's one less way to bond with others, and an example of just how divisive the let's identity politics have gotten.