An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
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An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
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Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
#2This is how it works in European countries, e.g. France. “Race” never figures in any government documents, forms and surveys. Mentioning someone’s race considered to be somewhat rude and is regarded as a thing of the past. Not everybody is race-agnostic, but all government organizations and all businesses are required to be race-agnostic by law. This includes never asking about race, particularly in forms and surveys. Identity politics is actively _discouraged_.
I wonder why it is different in America.
Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
#3This is how it works in European countries, e.g. France. “Race” never figures in any government documents, forms and surveys. Mentioning someone’s race considered to be somewhat rude and is regarded as a thing of the past. Not everybody is race-agnostic, but all government organizations and all businesses are required to be race-agnostic by law. This includes never asking about race, particularly in forms and surveys…
America historically developed much more race-based laws (e.g. segregation laws, anti-miscegenation laws, and racially motivated immigration laws, as well as a close association between race and the institution of slavery). As a result, race has become much more entrenched as something with legal status in America than in Europe.
Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
#4This is how it works in European countries, e.g. France. “Race” never figures in any government documents, forms and surveys. Mentioning someone’s race considered to be somewhat rude and is regarded as a thing of the past. Not everybody is race-agnostic, but all government organizations and all businesses are required to be race-agnostic by law. This includes never asking about race, particularly in forms and surveys…
> how it works in European countries
some European countries
Some are ahead of the curve, some are so far behind due to fairly homogenous population, that the issue of race is not something anyone making forms thinks about. (because they never expect to meet a non-Slavic person for example)
Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
#5> the concept of ‘race’ is scientifically and socially unsupportable.
Just like the concept of "culture". See https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/12/does-race-exist-does-c... , here's the kicker:
"There were two arguments against race being a real concept: it didn’t cluster nicely, and within-group variation was greater than between group variation. And both of these are equally true of culture. Any mathematical argument considering races as clusters of genes can be used equally well considering cultures as clusters of memes, and will likely return the same results.
Yet I can’t imagine someone saying “culture doesn’t exist” or “culture isn’t real”."
Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
#6[deleted]
Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
#7This is how it works in European countries, e.g. France. “Race” never figures in any government documents, forms and surveys. Mentioning someone’s race considered to be somewhat rude and is regarded as a thing of the past. Not everybody is race-agnostic, but all government organizations and all businesses are required to be race-agnostic by law. This includes never asking about race, particularly in forms and surveys…
I've been very influenced by Isabel Wilkerson's new book to look at America as having a racial caste system that's 400 years old. The entire economic and political history and present of the United States is governed by this caste system; it's even written into the physical geography, e.g. where there is lead and where there are trees. If you don't ask about race on government forms, how are you going to measure progress on dismantling this system?
Abolishing race is a good goal, but it's going to come after we've acknowledged and reckoned with the violence and harm this country has done to so many millions of people. And we've barely even started that process.
Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
#8There seem to be some conflicting ideas here. On one hand, the concept of 'race' is what allows racism to exist and we need to remove this concept from our collective ideology in order to defeat racism -- people are just people. On the other hand, it is a fact that external biological characteristics (predominantly skin colour and facial structure) result in social clustering and discrimination, at the individual, collective and institutional levels -- racism is real.
I appreciate the principles behind race abolitionism, as I have often applied the same logic to gender, which is arguably even more socially constructed than race, since the appeal to biological characteristics is weaker for defining one's gender than one's race. However, if we remove these ideas from our collective understanding of the world, do we not make it harder to argue cases of legitimate discrimination? If the generally accepted notion is "gender does not exist" or "race does not exist", how does one make the argument "I was discriminated against because of ?" Or is the idea that once people no longer make the distinction between different groups of attributes, then individual and institutional discrimination will no longer exist? It seems to me that in order for such an approach to be successful, we would need to train ourselves to not notice external characteristics of individuals, effectively becoming colour-blind, a task which not only seems impossible due to the nature of the human mind, but also a dangerous position to take while racism still exists -- since it also blinds us to an understanding of why a person was discriminated against and what factors affected their experience --, and risks destroying our concept of cultural heritage. Perhaps race abolitionism is more suited for a post-racism world?
Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
#9This is how it works in European countries, e.g. France. “Race” never figures in any government documents, forms and surveys. Mentioning someone’s race considered to be somewhat rude and is regarded as a thing of the past. Not everybody is race-agnostic, but all government organizations and all businesses are required to be race-agnostic by law. This includes never asking about race, particularly in forms and surveys…
The argument put forth in the book Racecraft [1] is that America's founding on individual liberty juxtaposed with the economic reality of chattel slavery created a contradiction so stark that it was necessary to invent a framework to justify slavery culturally.
[1] Fields, Karen E, and Barbara J. Fields. Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. 2012.
Re: An Argument for Race Abolitionism (2020)
#10As a European, every US election season I'm always dumbfounded by how much the "black vote" is discussed. Just recently, when Kamala Harris was announced as VP, all they talk about is how she will contribute to the black vote. This makes it seem as she was only chosen because of her race, and even worse: it's an insult to black people, grouping them together as having one opinion.
I don't know why there's no backlash against this.