That was as smug and condescending as it was inconsistent. Race doesn’t matter, except when it does. Personal experience doesn’t matter, except when it does. And this notion that we would be better off if people would be ‘emotionally disinterested regarding the facts’ is real easy to say when you’re Sam Harris, well-to-do intellectual gadfly, as opposed to, say, someone whose child’s death constitutes one of the ‘facts’ in question.
Further, this notion that ‘facts’ are all that matters is all well and good, except that we (people in general) do not all have access to all the relevant facts. For example, I do not have access to the facts arising by dint of living life as a black person in America. Further, I can’t have direct access to those facts–they are simply unavailable to me, and always will be. Of course, I could try to surmount this obstacle by listening to what a black person has to say about what it’s like to live in America–but that would be IP, the Thing We Must Avoid.
What’s your take on Critical Race Theory? Is it part of what you guys have called “IP extremism”? Is this Op Ed unfair? Proponents of IP based theories like CRT and Inetersectionality are writing our text books and dominating the faculties in areas like Gender Studies, classes on Diversity and Race, and Multicultural Education.
He is indeed a little smug; he is certainly not stupid. What he is is irrelevant, on several counts. One, he immigrated as an adult, so he did not grow up having the American legacy of slavery and Jim Crow burned into his psyche. Two, as an extremely bright individual, he had an extraordinary set of tools with which to make something of himself. This combination–the lack of inculcation in American racial issues, coupled with a very strong intellect–allowed him to succeed in America. That’s great for him. But he is hardly representative of the typical AA. And it is unreasonable (to put it mildly) to hold him up as an example of what AAs ‘should and could do’–much less to imply that his story is some sort of disproof of the idea that being black in America is an impediment to success.
This right here. When you have the IP movement telling children from infancy that they can’t succeed because this country is evil, the evil white men are holding them down etc… then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The legacy isn’t “burned into his psyche” so much as it is brow beaten in by the bleating of Sharpton and Jackson et al. Good old “mind forged manacles”. I’d bet the number of people in the general population who can describe what Jim Crow even was is less than those who can name the three branches of government (above).
Transplant hardworking Africans/Hispanics/Indians (“Brown people”) into the country and they are run away successes. Somebody forgot to tell them this country is unfair and they can’t succeed.
I guess someone forgot to tell Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama about the enduring legacy of Jim Crow.
Certainly, drumming a sense of victimhood into a child’s head can have that effect. But it is also true, don’t you agree, that AAs growing up in America are bombarded by societal messages indicating they are inferior in multiple ways–unintelligent, lazy, irrelevant, less important, criminal, dangerous. If you don’t think these sorts of messages are delivered to our AA children…Well, I’m afraid we (you and I) don’t have much to talk about on this subject.
Perhaps, but that is utterly irrelevant. The question is, how many of the AA population have personally experienced slights of the sort that send the messages I described above? I would venture that number approaches 100%.
On occasion, yes. But this is strong evidence in favor of my position. As I indicated in response to @anon71262119’s Commentary link, one cannot generalize from the experiences of dark-skinned individuals who immigrated as adults to the experience of AAs. And to the extent such immigrants succeed at higher rates than do AAs, their success is evidence of the corrosive, debilitating effect of growing up black in America.
The success of the hypertalented few has no bearing on the point at hand. If every black person was as intelligent and ambitious as Oprah and Obama, the AA community would be at the pinnacle of American society. But the fact of the matter is this: Not only are Oprahs and Obamas vanishingly rare in the AA community (or any other, for that matter), but fully half of AAs are of below-average intelligence and drive. In short, not everyone is Superman, and it is patently unfair to expect the (vast) majority of us who aren’t to perform like the (tiny) few of us who are.
Not sure. I’ve never seen him be openly racist outside of WV and that one family vacation to SC when I was younger. Caveat being I’ve never been in the same room with him save for WV and that one family vacation to SC.
Then again I only see him in person every couple years at this point. Most of what I see of him these days are his facebook posts.
Edit: And if I’m being honest, there’s absolutely no way he’s friends with minorities on FB, so they’re probably not seeing that either.
Age alone, I think I would have to go with young people. As we evolve and separate from slavery and Jim Crow, I think it’s a natural progression as well as us parents drilling it into our kids. And there is a delicate balance between ‘don’t discriminate’ and ‘don’t go walking into South-Central LA gang territory’ and thinking your going to walk out safely. Further there is the issue, where you may not bare hate, but people may hate you for no reason other than skin color or natural origin or religion. It’s a lot of nuance for little brains to absorb and make sense of in a pragmatic way.
It’s still murky as there is no lack of hate and angst in the younger generation.
It seems both contribute and each feed the monster of the other. Which is the greater problem is where I am not certain.
I can see where racism can be just deflating. I had a black friend in high school and we were visiting another friend. As we were walking into the toward the house, some asshole is yelling ‘hey nigger’ nigger this, blah, blah blah’ I shouted back ‘fuck you!’ he said nothing. When we got into the house, I told him I was ‘so sorry’. I felt responsible for putting him in that position even though I didn’t really do anything and actually defended him.
He told me, “It’s ok, I am used to it.” I could see in his face it wasn’t ok, it really bothered him as it did me. Not to claim I felt as he did, just that I was bothered by it.
That was the first time I have ever seen ‘it’, I mean really seen it. I can see deep seated hate developing quickly out of not too many experiences like that. Fortunately, my friend was smart and well grounded. He was a paramedic last I saw him.
I think the moral of the story is that it doesn’t take much to divide us. Some idiot teenager yelling out the window can sow seeds of desperation and foster a hate I cannot say is totally unfounded. It takes a lot more to mend then it does to divide. The formula seems to be it takes 10 acts of goodness or kindness to undo one act of meanness. For some reason, the negative sticks way better than the positive.
Here’s an interesting anecdote that is relevant to this discussion.
Do you know how Jews who stayed on post WW2 behind the Iron Curtain adapted to communism? By forgetting.
This didn’t mean forgetting the Holocaust and family members that have perished, but by deliberately blocking out the economic ramifications of WW2 and the subsequent establishment of communist regimes. If you dwell on the past and injustices inflicted on your ancestors, you’re bound to go crazy.
You see, those that have survived the camps (and often gulags immediately afterwards) realized that their offspring have to be free from the burden of victimhood in order to be able to function normally in the new communist society. That’s how pogroms throughout the centuries were handled - you remember the victims but try to forget the effect it has on you. In other words, the game is rigged, get over it.
Since communism pretty much reset the Jews to nothing (being both Jewish and usually bourgeois to boot) the elders realized they cannot speak about the past socio-economic status without embittering the next generation and preventing them from participating in society with their former oppressors.
In other words, in order to mentally and physically survive and even prosper living in such a repressive system you couldn’t lament about the past and how without the Nazis or the Communists you would have been a millionaire and cavorted with the world’s rich and famous.
Incidentally, 70 years after WW2 in many countries of Eastern Europe the descendants of those people that were left with virtually nothing again came out top on the social and economic ladder.
No, I’m just saying that, regardless whether they’re true or not, you cannot realize your potential in a society by dwelling on past societal injustices from 50, 100,150 years ago and their perceived economic effects on you personally.
