Well that was a fascinating psychological experiment. I had to re-read the medium piece to try to see what J saw… I can see where it was just subtle enough in the intro where he might have missed that your critique was of those railing against “whiteness,” not people living in a state of being white. But shoot, your last few paragraphs m…
Well that was a fascinating psychological experiment. I had to re-read the medium piece to try to see what J saw… I can see where it was just subtle enough in the intro where he might have missed that your critique was of those railing against “whiteness,” not people living in a state of being white. But shoot, your last few paragraphs make it ridiculously clear. Your point stands: way too many people have stopped listening entirely, they’re already pegged everyone else as friend or enemy.
After I read this post, I stumbled on the NYT piece, a perfect illustration of your point if there ever was one: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/opinion/gentrification-los-angeles-little-library.html This woman reacts to her own neighbors with disgust based on nothing but their skin color and the “whiteness” they epitomize. Now, to her credit, she recognizes what she’s doing and finds it unsettling!! She realizes its the same way racist whites of Levittown reacted to their new black neighbors. But then rather than take her cognitive dissonance to its logical end, she doubles back and assures herself that her reaction is different because she lacks “cultural dominance.” This, she writes in the NYT opinion column?? What has more cultural dominance right now than anti-racism?? (Perhaps I just lack the “moral sophistication” Daniel spoke about 😉)
Sorry, I have to keep going here. The root of the problem is that a segment of society has had *genuine* underdog status (to say the least) for centuries. Being an underdog allows moral coverage to use any means necessary to fight and win. But the goal of the fight all along was to achieve equality. As you get closer to achieving equality (and I’m not claiming the fight is done!), the moral justification for “anything goes” begins to diminish. That’s good! It’s a sign of progress!!! But if the end goal is equality, then at some point you have to be willing to play by the same rules you’re holding others to. We will ALWAYS live in a world where certain groups of our ancestors were screwed over. It makes me mad too!!!! But infuriatingly, we cannot change the past, and certainly not by creating more injustice today that our descendants will have to clean up or revenge tomorrow. Let’s make the buck stop here.
To your point, from the political perspective, there is segment of society, centered in the academic left, that continues to embrace various permutations of the Marxist idea that the only solution to social inequity is to destroy the current system. This progressive left discounts the real racial progress we’ve made in the past several decades. They stoke discord and division rather than working within the current system to make incremental progress. As Steve says, it’s no wonder that eventually ordinary people start to look at them as the enemy of social stability.
"I had to re-read the medium piece to try to see what J saw… I can see where it was just subtle enough in the intro where he might have missed that your critique was of those railing against “whiteness,” not people living in a state of being white."
Yeah exactly. I think if you only read the introduction you could have been left in doubt. But even then, it certainly doesn't qualify as a hate tract. Oh well.😅
And yes! I just read that NYT piece yesterday! I felt exactly the same way. The door of self-realisation was wide open fro her to walk through...and then she does a sharp heel-turn at the last minute. Crazy that the NYT is publishing nonsense like that. But it gets clicks, so it seems they don't care.
Well that was a fascinating psychological experiment. I had to re-read the medium piece to try to see what J saw… I can see where it was just subtle enough in the intro where he might have missed that your critique was of those railing against “whiteness,” not people living in a state of being white. But shoot, your last few paragraphs make it ridiculously clear. Your point stands: way too many people have stopped listening entirely, they’re already pegged everyone else as friend or enemy.
After I read this post, I stumbled on the NYT piece, a perfect illustration of your point if there ever was one: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/opinion/gentrification-los-angeles-little-library.html This woman reacts to her own neighbors with disgust based on nothing but their skin color and the “whiteness” they epitomize. Now, to her credit, she recognizes what she’s doing and finds it unsettling!! She realizes its the same way racist whites of Levittown reacted to their new black neighbors. But then rather than take her cognitive dissonance to its logical end, she doubles back and assures herself that her reaction is different because she lacks “cultural dominance.” This, she writes in the NYT opinion column?? What has more cultural dominance right now than anti-racism?? (Perhaps I just lack the “moral sophistication” Daniel spoke about 😉)
Sorry, I have to keep going here. The root of the problem is that a segment of society has had *genuine* underdog status (to say the least) for centuries. Being an underdog allows moral coverage to use any means necessary to fight and win. But the goal of the fight all along was to achieve equality. As you get closer to achieving equality (and I’m not claiming the fight is done!), the moral justification for “anything goes” begins to diminish. That’s good! It’s a sign of progress!!! But if the end goal is equality, then at some point you have to be willing to play by the same rules you’re holding others to. We will ALWAYS live in a world where certain groups of our ancestors were screwed over. It makes me mad too!!!! But infuriatingly, we cannot change the past, and certainly not by creating more injustice today that our descendants will have to clean up or revenge tomorrow. Let’s make the buck stop here.
To your point, from the political perspective, there is segment of society, centered in the academic left, that continues to embrace various permutations of the Marxist idea that the only solution to social inequity is to destroy the current system. This progressive left discounts the real racial progress we’ve made in the past several decades. They stoke discord and division rather than working within the current system to make incremental progress. As Steve says, it’s no wonder that eventually ordinary people start to look at them as the enemy of social stability.
"I had to re-read the medium piece to try to see what J saw… I can see where it was just subtle enough in the intro where he might have missed that your critique was of those railing against “whiteness,” not people living in a state of being white."
Yeah exactly. I think if you only read the introduction you could have been left in doubt. But even then, it certainly doesn't qualify as a hate tract. Oh well.😅
And yes! I just read that NYT piece yesterday! I felt exactly the same way. The door of self-realisation was wide open fro her to walk through...and then she does a sharp heel-turn at the last minute. Crazy that the NYT is publishing nonsense like that. But it gets clicks, so it seems they don't care.