I hope what I have to say is not as controversial as I fear, but I don't think that individual racist beliefs are as big a problem as we have been told. To look at somebody and consciously judge them to be inferior based on their skin color is so outdated and obsolete, that those who do so are fringe members of society who are typically elderly and either changing their mindset or dying out. We elected a black president in a landslide victory for God's sake. Twice!
No, what is harmful is the vindictive, hyper-vigilant collectivist attitude that persists in a ham-handed attempt at "leveling the playing field." The idea that certain groups of people (blacks, women, gays, etc) need compulsory protection at the expense of other groups (white males), induces a sort of resentment as a response to what is perceived to be a witch hunt. For example, certain events - such as the destruction of Paula Dean for admitting to saying the word "nigger" in the past, or Brendan Eich's dismissal as CEO for his donations against gay marriage - and certain policies - such as affirmative action or the greatly lopsided outcomes of most child custody battles - evoke an understandable, but completely irrational, feeling of resentment towards those groups as a backlash for perceived unfair treatment. It's this "us vs. them" victim mentality that's the problem in mainstream America. That's where the real racist attitudes come from, not some sort of widespread, conscious conclusion that certain groups are intrinsically inferior to others.
The answer is not collectivist protections or more anti-racism vigilance, it is to look beyond our superficial differences and to consider all people as individuals with an equal capacity to love and to be loved. Racism is an outdated idea. Let it die on its own.
Equality of opportunity is a good thing - equality of outcomes is exactly the sort of creeping socialism that our Founding Fathers warned us against.
A lot of the cultural Marxist agendas being promoted in recent years are based on bad data and slanted measurements (e.g. the "pay gap" between men and women, which disappears when you control for hours worked, age, and other important variables). Such agendas are explicitly aimed at going well beyond mere "fairness" (i.e. equality of opportunity) and are aimed at seizing power from disfavored groups, and reallocating it to favored groups.
By "cultural marxist", I'm referring to the pastiche of identity politics, political correctness, and emergent legislation that has been driving a lot of the social change in recent years. Driving out the Judeo-Christian roots of Western society and replacing it with a pastiche of socialism and enforced multiculturalism.
A cultural Marxist is a person who supports such developments.
> By "cultural marxist", I'm referring to the pastiche of identity politics, political correctness, and emergent legislation that has been driving a lot of the social change in recent years. Driving out the Judeo-Christian roots of Western society and replacing it with a pastiche of socialism and enforced multiculturalism.
Now I'm going to need to see a lot of sources about this, because multiple societies have been announcing that multiculturalism Just Doesn't Work for them, and there has not been even a pastiche of socialism around since the '90s or so.
The term is really just a shorthand reference to the kind of social, political, and ideological ideas that a "progressive" university student absorbs (or is expected to absorb) during the course of his or her 4+ years in a contemporary American university.
I explicitly asked for sources that are not on the far-right. The thing about the far-right versus academia is that I've got a fairly decent prior on the far-right rationalizing its ideological views, and a fairly decent prior on academia publishing things based on epistemic rigor rather than ideology.
And no, the Frankfurt School are not "cultural Marxists". This is a term nobody has ever applied to himself.
You aren't going to find that term used by the people to whom it's typically applied. They will probably use a more specific term like "Critical Race Theory", or "radical feminism", or "social justice".
But there's a continuum of thought between these otherwise distinct concepts, which is where the "cultural Marxism" name comes in, as a unifying tag.
Racism may be an outdated 'idea', but in practice and many people's daily lives, it is reality. The American society is built on systemized racism (colonialism and slavery), and the existence and lack thereof of privilege within different groups of people is a direct result of this, and it needs to be changed, because the playing field is not level. Recommended reading:
Racism's trajectory is such that it is quickly disappearing. That is the case even in the deep south where I'm from (this is fairly profound considering our civil war defeat is still a big deal in the minds of many), but rather the racism you do encounter is in response to perceived injustices such as those I listed. Thus the hyper-vigilance perpetuated by the media does more to harm racism's disappearance than to hasten it's natural death.
Edit: Also, because racism is illogical. Irrational ideas tend to be replaced by good ones in the "free market" of ideas. There is no reason to beat tolerance into people, simply show show them the compassion and unity that equality leads to, and contrast that with the ridiculous KKK guys in goofy white cone hats and piss-stained bed sheets and let them make up their own mind.
I would laugh if this wasn't such dangerous, self-serving sophistry. I guess it's easy for a certain type of person to say racism is over, let's not worry about it, while all through Europe, and even here in the UK, far right-wing, racist anti-immigration parties gather even more support.
Racism isn't close to being over. Maybe go talk to some people who aren't white and see what they think?
I don't believe you are giving nearly enough credit to the civil rights movement or its ongoing efforts. Racism existed in various forms for hundreds (thousands, if we go back to Aristotle) of years. It is a human institution, like slavery or marriage, both of which have taken concerted effort and time to end or change.
The "free market of ideas" only works if you assume everyone is a rational actor judging ideas on their direct merits. That simply is not the case.
Also, because racism is illogical. Irrational ideas tend to be replaced by good ones in the "free market" of ideas.
This is a rather optimistic statement. It's actually quite hard to get people thinking critically, and to push rationalist and scientific points of view in the public mind.
I disagree with your argument. Here are my thoughts why.
We have been 'looking beyond our superficial differences' for a while and it hasn't done anything. I actually think 'not seeing race' is itself a form of racism, because a lot of our racism is subconscious, or cultural.
We don't have a racism of segregation anymore. It's a racism of omission. Instead there are pay gaps, unfair justice, stereotypes and erasure. EG: It's not that we censor out black music on the radio, we just prefer it when a white person sings it (macklemore, iggy azalea, eminem, miley, etc).
It works the same way as telling woman: "oh I don't see you as a woman in the workplace. I don't expect you to get pregnant or have health issues different from men. I expect you to have someone at home who takes care of your kids (like a wife would). And then I will subconsciously expect you to be more caring and nice than your male coworkers (if you disagree with anything I say I will call you a frigid bitch)". The roles we put women in are gendered, like EG: we don't expect a secretary to be a woman but if she is, she'll get very different treatment from a male secretary (who is more likely to be called Operations, won't have to pick up everybody's laundry and order lunch, etc. This happens for real).
Back to racism. Racism is still a _big_ problem for a lot of people. Police can strangle black people _on camera_ and get away without even a trial. Cops drove up to a black child with a toy gun, shot him, then did not even call an ambulance or provide emergency CPR.
Police officers barged into a house and shot a 7 year old black girl while she was sleeping. (They said they had the wrong house). No repercussions. Not a settlement, not an apology, no reaction.
Young black men are 21 more times more likely to be shot by a police officer than their white counterparts.
When you tell someone 'I don't see you black' what you are saying is "I am ignoring the struggles you face on a daily basis and also will continue to subconsciously treat you negatively". Ask a black person how many times they get called Bro, homie, or 'my nigga' by people 'who don't see them as black'. And in the public consciousness, black people are seen as demons, monsters, thugs.
(further reading: the blue eye brown eye experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZKWkhnSb5k)
> The idea that certain groups of people (blacks, women, gays, etc) need compulsory protection at the expense of other groups (white males), induces a sort of resentment as a response to what is perceived to be a witch hunt.
White males have been oppressing these marginalized groups for millennia. White male culture is homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, and racist too. If you would like examples I can give plenty. If you want stats I can give those too.
Brendan Eich's dismissal isn't irrational. A group of people decided that they didn't want a homophobic CEO.
I think the reason these events might seen incoherent is because they look like small, one time things that bring up a large public reaction, one person's slip-up here or a wrong sentence uttered here. But:
1) The things said reflect a deep hatred of the group they are against. You have really hate black people to nigger like Paula Dean did. Eich is clearly homophobic if he donates to anti gay marriage groups.
2) They might seem like one group is targeted out of the blue, but to the oppressed group these events are another thing on the long list of violence done against them. For example, if you were a woman at a tech conference and heard a thousand different dongle jokes, POSIX forking references, images of naked women, etc, on the thousand and oneth dongle joke you might get angry too. That might be seen as irrational, because hey, it's just a joke... It's not. Culture is the sum total of our collective experiences, it's made of a gajillion little things put together. People have the right to complain about these little things, like t-shirts that don't fit women at conferences. If everywhere you looked you found 'little' examples of people like you getting the short end of the stick, you wouldn't be too happy either.
3) Sometimes these things might seem out of the blue because of the way collective consciousness works. Recently twitter directed a lot of attention at a company called Strange Fruit PR. The words Strange Fruit refer to a song about lynchings, where trees in the South 'bear strange fruit', aka dead black men. If we saw a PR company called Holocaust PR or something like "arbeit macht frei" PR (a common sign posted in nazi concentration camps that said "work makes you free") we'd also freak out. Strange Fruit is two years old and it just came to twitter's attention, so it seems out of the blue, but it's just happened now because a critical mass of people found out about it recently. Sometimes it takes a while to build the political momentum to have a conversation on something.
> It's this "us vs. them" victim mentality that's the problem in mainstream America.
Black people in the US have as a group been enslaved, raped, economically enslaved, lynched, raped, denied votes, denied education, denied space in the community, denied housing, denied loans (see redlining), ignored, shot by the police, etc for the entire history of America (those where random examples). I don't think it's very human to tell them to ignore the past (and ongoing racism) and that there is no longer a 'us' and a 'them'.
If you disagree I would like to know why you don't think the above applies.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I agree that human history is filled with all sorts of atrocities, and slavery and race-influenced violence is among the worst. However, within the past couple decades, we are finally reaching a point where "true" equality is attainable, and I think that the only way we're going to get there is to see people first and foremost as human beings, not as part of some arbitrary collective (race/gender/sexual orientation/etc). We can appreciate those superficial differences, but when we let those differences define us then human nature is to qualitatively favor/disfavor certain groups.
As for the justice system, yes it is heavily skewed towards punishing minorities, particularly because of the drug war. I don't know how we fix that, but I do think ending the war on drugs would go a long way.
Your post can be summarized as believing we have not made as much progress as I think we have, but I am a bit more optimistic, and we need to begin converging on a permanent state of affairs, being carful not to over correct, lest we increase racial tension and regress. The only way towards true equality is to learn from our history, but at the same time look to the future while being careful not to make the same mistakes. This means that modern individuals belonging to historically disenfranchised groups should not receive preferential treatment just because their ancestors were mistreated. We need a healing process, not pay-back. It's the quickest, most painless way we're going to eventually reach true harmony as a species.
The reason I don't want to think of everyone as human beings first is this:
Everyone is part of an arbitrary collective of traits (most of us here are white, male, American, etc) and each trait affects how we see each other. For example, women are seen as more caring, or bitchy if they have power, whatever. Those stereotypes are bad, and we can't ignore that they still happen.
The way we get rid of these biases things is by recognizing that when we think a woman is being bitchy (or, say a black man angry) it's likely to be our ingrained sexism (/racism). Seeing people as human beings first erases their identities and _removes the opportunity to fix our prejudices_. You and I are both prejudiced, we have to recognize that, and work to remove it from our minds.
Then, on the optimism/pessimism thing. Just keep on investigating the experiences of black people and I think you might become less optimistic about where we are.
It's sometimes tough to see how other people could be disadvantaged (that's called privilege). But when this list of benefits white people have over black people http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html#daily doesn't hold any more, _then_ we can get rid of black history month.
We can't overcorrect yet, because, broadly, our institutions themselves are still racist. (See http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/07/15/884649/-Why-there-s... or http://femmagazine.com/reverse-racism-and-reverse-sexism-don...) You don't punch someone in the face then repent with "I'm sorry that happened to you, but it's in the past, you need to heal". That's not true equality. True equality is you apologize, pay for their hospital bills and help them get their life back and recover from what was done to them in the past. That's a true "healing process". Some people see affirmative action as getting punched back, but it's not. Marginalized people's ancestors being mistreated puts them where they are now and we are _continuing_ to mistreat them by not helping them recover from that.
> The idea that certain groups of people (blacks, women, gays, etc) need compulsory protection at the expense of other groups (white males), induces a sort of resentment as a response to what is perceived to be a witch hunt.
The difference between this and a "witch hunt" is that real witch hunts didn't find a bunch of witches.
No, what is harmful is the vindictive, hyper-vigilant collectivist attitude that persists in a ham-handed attempt at "leveling the playing field." The idea that certain groups of people (blacks, women, gays, etc) need compulsory protection at the expense of other groups (white males), induces a sort of resentment as a response to what is perceived to be a witch hunt. For example, certain events - such as the destruction of Paula Dean for admitting to saying the word "nigger" in the past, or Brendan Eich's dismissal as CEO for his donations against gay marriage - and certain policies - such as affirmative action or the greatly lopsided outcomes of most child custody battles - evoke an understandable, but completely irrational, feeling of resentment towards those groups as a backlash for perceived unfair treatment. It's this "us vs. them" victim mentality that's the problem in mainstream America. That's where the real racist attitudes come from, not some sort of widespread, conscious conclusion that certain groups are intrinsically inferior to others.
The answer is not collectivist protections or more anti-racism vigilance, it is to look beyond our superficial differences and to consider all people as individuals with an equal capacity to love and to be loved. Racism is an outdated idea. Let it die on its own.