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Passion guided by reason's avatar

Steve, I see your perspective as more consistently focused on individual power and attitudes, for example as would strongly apply to an interaction between two people. Because of that consistency, it can be more logical - in assessing the individual ability to be racially discriminatory, it looks at individual power rather than shifting the focus to a different level.

Mrs C appears to me to confuse individual power with collective group power (ie: not logically consistent). If we posit that a majority population group usually has more collective power than a minority group in a society (especially in a democracy based on majority rule), does that mean that within an interaction between a member of the majority group and a member of the minority group, the former has more power? The concept she seems to believe is yes, because the overall society has their back, in turn because the majority group dominates the society.

Indeed, one can easily imagine that. Picture a white working class man in Georgia in 1947, and a black man of equal economic and class status. If they were to get into a fist fight, say, the white man might be more able to count on the authorities being substantially biased in his favor. Mrs C's experience (and/or the stories she heard when growing up which shaped her worldview) may may be conditioned on examples like that.

But in 2022, if two employees of different races were to get into a fracas, it's not clear that the company managers would be automatically biased towards the white employee (scenario 1); it could be relatively unbiased, judging based on the actual circumstances rather than assuming (scenario 2), or actually biased towards the non-white employee (scenario 3).

It's extremely hard to objectively know the statistical frequency of these three scenarios, so people mostly project whatever best reinforces their pre-existing world view, and dismiss the other scenarios as rare to non-existent. Certainly in general (with local exceptions), the white employee could not simply depend on expecting to receive unfair advantage today (which affects the power they have within the interaction - can't count on being covered so better not push things too much).

In other areas, the whole concept is very suspect. White voters comprise a numerical majority, so if the had a hive mind and voted as a block they would control all democratic political power. However, on political issues, white people are greatly divided and fragmented, such that any individual white person has no more voting power than an individual person of color.

However it's easy for the tribalized mind to (consciously or unconsciously) weave a narrative that white people DO control the democracy because they generally agree on what is in the self interest of white people and pass laws and policies to benefit them all as a group. To some degree this imagining comes from projecting their own individual and/or group identity, especially if their group is much closer to voting as a block based on their own perceived self interest, so it seems natural that other population groups are doing the same (this intuitive sense ignores the actual statistics). And to some degree this comes from the way their ideology encourages them to perceive and interpret the world, confusing individual actual power with group-level nominal collective power, as part of a narrative with which to "win" discussions and to seek power over others.

As you may notice, in this latter context, I find your approach more reasoned and generally more accurate. But I can understand the appeal and the payoffs of the hive-mind strategem.

There are aspect of understanding the real world where focusing on individuals has more intellectual traction, and there are aspects in which focusing on groups sheds more light. The trick is to really think about which is more salient for understanding (and potentially remedying) a given situation, rather than switching back and forth more as a argumentation ploy. I think neo-progressives are too often caught up in the latter, often quite unconsciously.

One of the reasons I read your work is your ability to look more clearly at such issues (in my opinion obviously).

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jen segal's avatar

I despair for Mrs C. People who suffered incredibly from the terrible stain that mars our shared history. People who view the legitimate progress made as some sort of vicious trick they must be on guard against, and treat the next generation of thinkers like you as hopelessly naive and some kind of sellout to the oppressor.

The wound may never heal. I think that has to be accepted as a cost to the way generations were treated. Yet where does that lead us? All too often to racialized battlefields where the sneers of hate are the only forms of currency.

I don’t want to live in a world that refuses to see the goodness in another heart because of the outside layer that wraps it.

Keep going Steve - people of good will believe in you and your message.

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