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…
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).
"Mrs C appears to me to confuse individual power with collective group power (ie: not logically consistent)."
Yeah, I think this is the reason why discourse on so many issues has become so toxic. It's the problem with concepts like "whiteness" and "the patriarchy."
Yes, there are power differentials in society. There are instances where it's not only valid to look at demographics in society, but important. One that I've spent all weekend arguing about is males vs females. Men are overwhelmingly more likely to commit sexual violence. And women are overwhelmingly more likely to be on the receiving end of that violence. It doesn’t mean all men are rapists or all women are victims, it means that when considering policy, it's important to bear in mind this difference.
But the differences between black people and white people are not only smaller and less predictable than the differences between men and women, they're different in nature. As has been pointed out countless times, there are many instances when it would be more useful to focus on class or wealth than race when it comes to solving problems. Black people would be disproportionately helped by policies in this area because they were disproportionately harmed by them in the past. But all of this has next to nothing to do with individual interactions.
The kind of racism that Mrs C is taking about her is interpersonal. And it's very rarely different from the kind of rudeness and ignorance that all human beings face. Yes, black people face this ignorance more than white people. Yes, in the aggregate, this does have an impact on black people's path through life. But as you say, if we extend that to treating the "black experience" as a monolithic experience of oppression, we make talking about and solving these problems MORE difficult. My rejection of "collective group power" as you put it, is really just a desire to be precise and effectively solve problems.
Yes, this confusion between the individual level and the collective level perspectives is inherently somewhat tricky, but that potential confusion is strategically weaponized by certain ideologies rather than being clarified.
There are two basic models competing here, which I think I can try to describe less verbosely than I sometimes do:
Model 1: To the degree that Black people (or whatever group) is disproportionately represented at the aggregate level (for whatever reason, including but not limited to residues of slavery or Jim Crow), that population group will receive disproportionate benefits. If over time a group becomes more or less represented statistically, the aggregate benefits to members of that group will automatically go up and down.
Model 2: Consider all members of a population group to be at the same economic level. Give benefits depending on membership in a population group and at a level decided by the aggregate group means - regardless of the actual financial status of the individuals. Asian individuals would receive no benefits, because Asians in general are statistically at the top of the income hierarchy while Black (or Native American) individuals would receive the most benefits - again, not depending on their individual need or level of success.
I find the self-leveling granular approach #1 to be much more effective and to have much better outcomes for societal cohesion (versus fostering tribal political resentments which can be exploited for political gain).
The differences between the means (or medians) of income for different population groups are vastly smaller than the differences between the top and bottom decile within each group (even leaving aside the top 1 or 0.1% extremes). Sweeping the huge intra-group disparities aside to focus on the far smaller inter-group differences seems like an unwise approach in most cases.
(As an aside, by coincidence the focus on racial groups lets the economic elites - the core socio-political base of neo-progressivism - largely off the hook. Instead of one-percenters attending the ivy league facing a daunting 99%, they either get either to be part of an oppressed collective group, or if white they diffuse their highlighted 'oppressor group' into 2/3 of the population so they are not labeled as any more guilty than the Appalachian dirt farmer.)
And something similar applies to power. It too is extremely unevenly distributed within population groups and is better assessed at the individual level. In addition, even for a given individual, it varies considerably on context so no one number (equivalent to reported annual income) could describe it accurately (even conceptually).
Collective aggregates of power are relevant only to the degree that the group agrees on issues. Right handed people have an outrageous degree of control over democracies, completely controlling every election outcome from dogcatcher to president. However, that's irrelevant unless they tend to vote as a block, which they do not. I don't think racial groups today are very well modeled as nearly monolithic today either (with Black voters being the closest to that status and whites being among the furthest from political unity, in the US).
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).
"Mrs C appears to me to confuse individual power with collective group power (ie: not logically consistent)."
Yeah, I think this is the reason why discourse on so many issues has become so toxic. It's the problem with concepts like "whiteness" and "the patriarchy."
Yes, there are power differentials in society. There are instances where it's not only valid to look at demographics in society, but important. One that I've spent all weekend arguing about is males vs females. Men are overwhelmingly more likely to commit sexual violence. And women are overwhelmingly more likely to be on the receiving end of that violence. It doesn’t mean all men are rapists or all women are victims, it means that when considering policy, it's important to bear in mind this difference.
But the differences between black people and white people are not only smaller and less predictable than the differences between men and women, they're different in nature. As has been pointed out countless times, there are many instances when it would be more useful to focus on class or wealth than race when it comes to solving problems. Black people would be disproportionately helped by policies in this area because they were disproportionately harmed by them in the past. But all of this has next to nothing to do with individual interactions.
The kind of racism that Mrs C is taking about her is interpersonal. And it's very rarely different from the kind of rudeness and ignorance that all human beings face. Yes, black people face this ignorance more than white people. Yes, in the aggregate, this does have an impact on black people's path through life. But as you say, if we extend that to treating the "black experience" as a monolithic experience of oppression, we make talking about and solving these problems MORE difficult. My rejection of "collective group power" as you put it, is really just a desire to be precise and effectively solve problems.
Yes, this confusion between the individual level and the collective level perspectives is inherently somewhat tricky, but that potential confusion is strategically weaponized by certain ideologies rather than being clarified.
There are two basic models competing here, which I think I can try to describe less verbosely than I sometimes do:
Model 1: To the degree that Black people (or whatever group) is disproportionately represented at the aggregate level (for whatever reason, including but not limited to residues of slavery or Jim Crow), that population group will receive disproportionate benefits. If over time a group becomes more or less represented statistically, the aggregate benefits to members of that group will automatically go up and down.
Model 2: Consider all members of a population group to be at the same economic level. Give benefits depending on membership in a population group and at a level decided by the aggregate group means - regardless of the actual financial status of the individuals. Asian individuals would receive no benefits, because Asians in general are statistically at the top of the income hierarchy while Black (or Native American) individuals would receive the most benefits - again, not depending on their individual need or level of success.
I find the self-leveling granular approach #1 to be much more effective and to have much better outcomes for societal cohesion (versus fostering tribal political resentments which can be exploited for political gain).
The differences between the means (or medians) of income for different population groups are vastly smaller than the differences between the top and bottom decile within each group (even leaving aside the top 1 or 0.1% extremes). Sweeping the huge intra-group disparities aside to focus on the far smaller inter-group differences seems like an unwise approach in most cases.
(As an aside, by coincidence the focus on racial groups lets the economic elites - the core socio-political base of neo-progressivism - largely off the hook. Instead of one-percenters attending the ivy league facing a daunting 99%, they either get either to be part of an oppressed collective group, or if white they diffuse their highlighted 'oppressor group' into 2/3 of the population so they are not labeled as any more guilty than the Appalachian dirt farmer.)
And something similar applies to power. It too is extremely unevenly distributed within population groups and is better assessed at the individual level. In addition, even for a given individual, it varies considerably on context so no one number (equivalent to reported annual income) could describe it accurately (even conceptually).
Collective aggregates of power are relevant only to the degree that the group agrees on issues. Right handed people have an outrageous degree of control over democracies, completely controlling every election outcome from dogcatcher to president. However, that's irrelevant unless they tend to vote as a block, which they do not. I don't think racial groups today are very well modeled as nearly monolithic today either (with Black voters being the closest to that status and whites being among the furthest from political unity, in the US).