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John McWhorter: The Neoracists

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Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#221

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

f154hfds wrote: post #208
jfengel wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An enormous amount of "being against identity politics" is itself identity politics. The most blatant example is "all lives matter", a deliberate misunderstanding of what "black lives matter" means. It's white identity politics, predicated on the assumption that whiteness is the default for human beings, and so anything that addresses issues that don't apply to them is ipso facto racist. I interpret accusations of "i…

This assessment is very wrong. While All Lives Matter as a slogan is completely tone deaf, it does not in any way demonstrate that 'whiteness is the default for human beings'. These people want to call attention to the fact that there doesn't appear to be racial bias in lethal police shootings, there's no clear evidence that blacks are disproportionately murdered by cops than whites when armed conflict disparities be…

It's telling that your arguments ignore the history of how some black communities got so dangerous. When considering the history of how rich white people abused their status to repress black people then we must discuss reparations in terms of things like scholarships, extra funding for social services, more school funding, more resources for the poor or disabled, etc. You know, things a lot of white Americans take for granted.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#222

Post by pseudalopex »

defen wrote: post #105
stncls wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed the strawman is so huge it is tempting to translate the purported 10-tenet list into what reasonable people may actually believe. > 1. When black people say you have insulted them, apologize with profound sincerity and guilt. But don’t put black people in a position where you expect them to forgive you. Yeah, indeed if anyone feels insulted it's quite a natural first reaction to apologize. On the other hand, u…

>> 5. Show interest in multiculturalism. But do not culturally appropriate. > Oh come on. All people ask is things like: don't do blackface, it's dumb. Like dressing up as an SS. Fully legal, as it should be, but really dumb. I saw this document[1] making the rounds on twitter recently. Do you think the proposals in the document are good ones that all people should adhere to, or do you think they are completely ridic…

Making the rounds could mean endorsing it or ridiculing it. Or anything in between. Why does this document even matter?

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#223

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

watwut wrote: post #206
disposekinetics wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this US, equality means there are grants for women, black, disabled, asians, mulims, jews, blinds, deafs, natives... and pretty much none for white people. Or it's Positive Discrimination. Pretty much everyone is doing stuff for its own group, AGAINST the other groups. If you want evidence of this look at how COVID vaccines are discussed in the US media. The constant refrain isn't about getting the vaccine out t…

American minority is more likely to get covid and more likely to die from it. There are multiple reasons from that (biology, the types of jobs they have, etc).

The statistics are not indicative of need-based or even racial equity.

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-...

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#224

Post by [deleted] »

mint2 wrote: post #196

Why does the list sound like a caricatures? I don’t actually believe any of these are common or normal views. Even taking the points apart, the two halve don’t seem realistic even in isolation but more like if someone took an intentional misunderstanding of what people actually say, and then further took the misunderstanding down a slippery slope.

[deleted]

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#225

Post by dragonwriter »

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #139

Opportunistic people have realized by now that it's better to join this movement than to risk appearing to oppose it. Corporations have created new positions and new departments to seem like they're part of this movement. In our forever-online, forever-catalogued, hyperconnected world, people are smart to recognize shame as an existential threat, and movements are smart to recognize shame as the ultimate weapon. If w…

> Perhaps McWhorter can plant the seeds of this examination and sustain it before he’s swiftly vilified by those among the movement with the most to lose.

McWhorter has been making the Cosby-esque “blame American blacks for their disadvantaged condition” since at least 2001, and the natural corollary argument that antiracism advocates are to blame for racism and/or more than racists for maintaining the adverse conditions of black Americans for at least as long, though over time the latter argument seems to have taken primacy for him over the former.

If he were to be “vilified” for those arguments in a way which reduces the reach of his messages, it won’t have been a swift rejection.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#226

Post by JohnCohorn »

beaner wrote: post #8
lisper wrote: post #2

It is important to note that this article was written by a black man, a contributing editor to The Atlantic. John McWhorter is not a MAGA hack. That being said... This article is the very definition of a straw man. Absolutely no one subscribes to the position it critiques. On the other hand, a fair number of people (including myself) subscribe to the position that, although things are not nearly as bad as they have b…

Surely statistics might help us resolve to what extent things like public torture and killing of black people by authorities is a problem (as distinct from police brutality against all people generally). What do the statistics say? Edit: This comment went from +7 to -1 in a matter of a page refresh. HN should be cognizant of brigading on threads like this. But moreso, the people doing it should also ask themselves wh…

How has no one noticed that the parent commenter’s username is a derogatory term for Mexicans? Speaking of racism...

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#227

Post by ardy42 »

dolni wrote: post #219
ardy42 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There seems to be a belief kicking around that if we could just help minorities in the right way, racism would go away faster. > I don't think this is so. Time after time in US history, the government has tried to institute "helpful" social programs to lift black people up. Time after time, those efforts have failed. Any time that blacks start to build some wealth for themselves, the government comes in to "help" a…

> One problem with this line of argument is that it is often advanced in bad faith by people whose actual goal is to avoid addressing the problem at all. Why does the intent of the person making the argument matter? The argument stands on its own merits or it doesn't. > Another problem with the "do nothing and let it work itself on its own" approach is that it goes against many conceptions of justice. Firstly, nobody…

> Why does the intent of the person making the argument matter? The argument stands on its own merits or it doesn't.

That attitude might work for arguments like mathematical proofs, but we're talking about social policy here. It's too complex for that kind of certainty, so trust and good faith matter.

Also your argument was essentially like this: the Soviet Mars 2 probe failed to land on Mars. So did the Soviet Mars 2, 3, 6, and 7 probes. Therefore, NASA shouldn't try to land Viking 1 on Mars, since governments have been shown to not be able to do that kind of thing successfully.

> OK, let's run with your example....

> That's essentially what's happening. Nobody alive in the US today owns a slave, nor were they a slave. You can spend literally forever talking in circles about the effects of history on people of present day. Yes, things like slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining had bad impacts on black communities. Do we spend forever talking about it? No. And who gets to decide when the wrong has been "righted", anyway?

That is not in fact what's happening today, which is why the response consists of social policies like affirmative action instead of stuff like garnishing the wages of the descendants of slaveholders to repay the descendants of slaves. I even alluded to that.

Another way to look at it is the wrong wasn't solely committed by the individuals involved (e.g. slaveholders), but by the government and other institutions that enacted policies like slavery and Jim Crow. The government and those institutions still exist, and have the responsibility and ability to take corrective action.

Running with examples is like running with scissors; they're both bad ideas that can turn to serious errors.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#228

Post by wilsocr88 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #216
wilsocr88 wrote: post #41

The angle nobody ever mentions on this issue is that nothing mass-produces racism and extremist political views more than treating an entire generation of young men as though they are automatically racist, regardless of their actions, or lack of action. Most people under 40 right now were raised to be completely ready to forget about race and treat it like a non-issue. In response, a lot of well-intentioned and non-b…

> nothing mass-produces racism and extremist political views more than treating an entire generation of young men as though they are automatically racist, regardless of their actions, or lack of action. To the extent the hypothetical condition here describes something that actually happened anywhere recently and not a pure counterfactual irrelevancy, I think it's pretty clearly not true, because no recent generation…

You and I have been assigned opposite worldviews by the failed communications apparatus we are both subjected to. We cannot begin to have a conversation. Thank you for taking the time to reply.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#229

Post by wilsocr88 »

dandersh wrote: post #152
wilsocr88 wrote: post #41

The angle nobody ever mentions on this issue is that nothing mass-produces racism and extremist political views more than treating an entire generation of young men as though they are automatically racist, regardless of their actions, or lack of action. Most people under 40 right now were raised to be completely ready to forget about race and treat it like a non-issue. In response, a lot of well-intentioned and non-b…

They don't mention it because it's not true and an obvious rationalization for already existing behavior. Sorry but throwing the N word around and casual racism existed before social media. The "I'm not the racist you are" is childish and unfortunately par for the course in online discourse now.

You are associating something unrelated with what I was saying.
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