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A thread about race, racial relations, racism, institutional racism, and what should we do about it? (2 Viewers)

timschochet

Footballguy
This subject eventually jumps to the heart of the majority of all of our political discussions. Consider:

1. It was a central issue in the elections of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

2. It's central to the NFL issue.

3. It's central to the Confederate statue issue, and it dominates every historical discussion we have about this country.

4. If it's not central to the gun control issue, it certainly plays an important role.

African-Americans have never been more than 15% of the population of this country (currently its 12.7%), yet they have and continue to dominate our culture, our entertainment, our political thought. They are our national obsession. (Or, to paraphrase Nietzsche, they are our abyss, and we can't stop staring into it, and it stares back.)

I am currently reading We Were Eight Years in Power, a series of essays by Ta Nehisi Coates. This guy is one of the most thoughtful and insightful writers I have ever encountered on all aspects of this subject, and I plan on bringing up many of his ideas in this thread.

 
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The first question that I want to raise is whether or not this is a subject we can be discussing with any amount of legitimacy at all. My understanding is that the vast majority of us here are comfortable, upper middle class white guys (this would describe me adequately as well.) Can we possibly understand what it is like to be a black person in this country, especially a poor black person? Gregg Popavich, among others, has argued that we cannot, that they have experiences that we cannot relate to no matter how hard we try. Are we therefore being presumptuous and perhaps even paternalistic trying to have a conversation about this? 

 
Ta Nehisi Coates just got ripped in the Times the other day for bringing up identity politics and injecting it into everything. 

 
Ta Nehisi Coates just got ripped in the Times the other day for bringing up identity politics and injecting it into everything. 
From what I've read of him so far (and it's pretty limited,) I would agree with this assessment, but I don't necessarily see that as a criticism. We'll get into more detail about this hopefully, but in general I don't find identity politics to be a negative (depending on the identity.) 

 
 but in general I don't find identity politics to be a negative (depending on the identity.) 
The bolded is the problem the article was addressing, tim. It's inevitable you'll mobilize along identity lines if that's what you push. And Ta Nehisi Coates has advocated political violence along those lines. 

That sounds, at its logically extreme conclusion, like race war.  

 
Ok campers, rise and shine! — and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooooold out there today.

 
The bolded is the problem the article was addressing, tim. It's inevitable you'll mobilize along identity lines if that's what you push. And Ta Nehisi Coates has advocated political violence along those lines. 

That sounds, at its logically extreme conclusion, like race war.  
To your larger point: I would argue that both the black civil rights movement and the gay Rights movement in this country would have been impossible without identity politics, and therefore it is largely a force for good. What say you, rock? 

 
Neither. Both were appeals to universality of humaneness, much like W.E.B. DuBois once lamented, paraphrasing "I want to walk with Plato." That's what those movements were asking. Can we have your institutions? Why not? (Great questions, by the way) But identity politics are different. Identity politics assert differences based on arbitrariness, on the non-universality of things.  

Appeals to division are different than appeals to universality.  

 
Neither. Both were appeals to universality of humaneness, much like W.E.B. DuBois once lamented, paraphrasing "I want to walk with Plato." That's what those movements were asking. Can we have your institutions? Why not? (Great questions, by the way) But identity politics are different. Identity politics assert differences based on arbitrariness, on the non-universality of things.  

Appeals to division are different than appeals to universality.  
Only the most extreme forces of identity politics seek division, and that's usually a result of anger and friiatration that they're not getting the equality they desire (see Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X). 

But your definition is way too limited. Ross Parks, that was identity politics too- she went to a black church, identified herself as a black woman, and sought equal rights on behalf of her black community. She was identity politics all the way, yet she was not divisive. 

 
Only the most extreme forces of identity politics seek division, and that's usually a result of anger and friiatration that they're not getting the equality they desire (see Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X). 

But your definition is way too limited. Ross Parks, that was identity politics too- she went to a black church, identified herself as a black woman, and sought equal rights on behalf of her black community. She was identity politics all the way, yet she was not divisive. 
There's a difference. Saying "as a ____, I" is different than saying that as a "human being, I" 

One appeals to respect a difference, one claims universal human rights.

That's straight a Tom Wolfe-ian observation, extrapolated of course from the personal to the political. I can't claim credit for it.  

 
I should correct one thing so just wrote- that Rosa Parks was not divisive. She actually was divisive, and fair minded white conservatives made similar arguments about her that rockaction has made about identity politics in this thread- including a supposed implicit threat of violence as a result of her actions. 

It is only in retrospect, decades later, that Rosa is not perceived as a divisive threat. 

 
There's a difference. Saying "as a ____, I" is different than saying that as a "human being, I" 

One appeals to respect a difference, one claims universal human rights.

That's straight a Tom Wolfe-ian observation, extrapolated of course from the personal to the political. I can't claim credit for it.  
You are making essentially the same argument that people make against Black Lives Matter when they respond with "No, all lives matter." But it's disingenuous, because BLM never says "ONLY black lives matter"; they're trying to draw attention to the disparate fate of young black men. 

 
I think you're missing the current nature of identity politics. It's not to appeal to universality. It's to say that as a ___, you can never understand. It's different. Anybody will tell you that culture has teeth. You can say anything you want about appeals to culture, but the whole concept is Germanic and endemic in nature. No pyrotechnics or goal-shifting will stop its ends. Appeals to identity necessarily divide. Appeals to universality succeed. 

To your previous point, I'm talking about people -- like Ta Nehisi Coates -- tthat have explicitly advocated or justified political violence, not people that sat at lunch counters or in a different bus seat. 

 
This is the second time you written this. Can you please provide evidence? 
I'll leave that for you to find. I'm not parsing Ta-Nahesi Coates for actual quotes. You want the thread. It's your job. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/the-near-certainty-of-anti-police-violence/490541/

"Last week, 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson murdered five police officers in Dallas. This abhorrent act of political extremism cannot be divorced from American history—recent or old. In black communities, the police departments have only enjoyed a kind of quasi-legitimacy. That is because wanton discrimination is definitional to the black experience, and very often it is law enforcement which implements that discrimination with violence. A community consistently subjected to violent discrimination under the law will lose respect for it, and act beyond it. When such actions stretch to mass murder it is horrific. But it is also predictable."

 
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I'll leave that for you to find. I'm not parsing Ta-Nahesi Coates for actual quotes. You want the thread. It's your job. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/the-near-certainty-of-anti-police-violence/490541/
Thanks. I've read that. He's not arguing for violence there. He's arguing that it's probably inevitable as a result of police mistreatment of black people in Baltimore. Big distinction. 

Also IMO you have failed to prove any direct connection between identity politics and political violence. 

 
Thanks. I've read that. He's not arguing for violence there. He's arguing that it's probably inevitable as a result of police mistreatment of black people in Baltimore. Big distinction. 

Also IMO you have failed to prove any direct connection between identity politics and political violence. 
advocated or justified 

 
By the way, there are plenty of political scientists and anthropologists who argue that most positive social change is not possible without violence. That's a whole different subject, and I'm not sure where I stand on it, but it's at least a legitimate POV. 

 
Look, I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole. You've got a belief, and you're going to keep arguing it. That's what you do.  

I'm going to leave you with a paraphrased quote, from the most esteemed political commenter of my day, Berkeley Breathed. He said, and this is paraphrased, "the only way you can talk about race honestly in America is in a black comedy club." 

That says a lot about this discussion, racial identity politics, and life in general. Take it as you will.  

 
Right. And you know the term "What Is To Be Done?" is so loaded and fraught with political violence that you can't help but using it. I know its origins.  

 
advocated or justified 
Calling something inevitable is not necessarily justifying it either. 

But again, I feel like that by jumping immediately to the question of violence we've gone way off topic here. it's not the source of the problem. 

 
tim, I say this respectfully. But you jumped to revolutionary violence right away with your title. I can't believe I engaged with it.  

 
Look, I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole. You've got a belief, and you're going to keep arguing it. That's what you do.  

I'm going to leave you with a paraphrased quote, from the most esteemed political commenter of my day, Berkeley Breathed. He said, and this is paraphrased, "the only way you can talk about race honestly in America is in a black comedy club." 

That says a lot about this discussion, racial identity politics, and life in general. Take it as you will.  
I have a lot of beliefs on this issue, and they're forever evolving. I'm quite happy to go down rabbit holes with you- if we don't agree, perhaps we can at least find some clarity in the source of our disagreement. We haven't come close to that yet. 

 
I have a lot of beliefs on this issue, and they're forever evolving. I'm quite happy to go down rabbit holes with you- if we don't agree, perhaps we can at least find some clarity in the source of our disagreement. We haven't come close to that yet. 
You quoted a communist revolution pamphlet in title. WTF are you talking about?  

 
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tim, I say this respectfully. But you jumped to revolutionary violence right away with your title. I can't believe I engaged with it.  
That wasn't my intent. Once you pointed out the source of the phrase I of course recognized it. But I wrote "what is to be done?" quite innocently of that connection. There's no grand conspiratorial theme here and I am certainly NOT callling for political violence. 

 
Anyhow, is like to get away from conspiratorial fears of revolutionary violence and get back to the issue at hand: 

i have been accused of not defining myself adequately on this subject. And that's fair, but it's also a difficult subject to define. Still, I'm going to try to be exact in my wording: 

Anong African-Americans in this country, there is a near universal perception that as a group they are treated differently, and unfairly by a percentage of this nation's police forces- depending on who is making the argument, that percentage is either a significant minority or a slight majority. The perception is also that this unfairness, which targets young black men more than any other subgroup, has led to almost daily harassment, abuse, and in some cases death. 

Whether or not you believe this perception is justified (I generally do) there's no question that the perception exists. What as a society should we do about it? 

 
African-Americans have never been more than 15% of the population of this country (currently its 12.7%), yet they have and continue to dominate our culture, our entertainment, our political thought. They are our national obsession. (Or, to paraphrase Nietzsche, they are our abyss, and we can't stop staring into it, and it stares back.)
You have never been more than 0.1% of the population of this forum (currently you are 0.05%), yet you have and continue to dominate the posts here, both in thread creation and responses. This forum is your overwhelming obsession. (Or, to paraphrase Christiane Amanpour, but to be self-obsessed is simply not o.k. for the most important country in the world, the United States, which affects every other country in the world.)

 
You have never been more than 0.1% of the population of this forum (currently you are 0.05%), yet you have and continue to dominate the posts here, both in thread creation and responses. This forum is your overwhelming obsession. (Or, to paraphrase Christiane Amanpour, but to be self-obsessed is simply not o.k. for the most important country in the world, the United States, which affects every other country in the world.)
:lmao:  Well done. It's not quite accurate, since I don't focus on myself as the topic of conversation, but I do enjoy smart alecky responses. 

 
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Can you unpack this?  I don't see how race has much to do with gun control but maybe I'm missing something obvious.
Sure. An argument that is forever made in those debates is that most gun violence takes place in the inner cities, like Chicago. There's a subtext here: it's not the guns that are the problem, or law abiding white, rural gun owners. You know who the problem is. 

 
Sure. An argument that is forever made in those debates is that most gun violence takes place in the inner cities, like Chicago. There's a subtext here: it's not the guns that are the problem, or law abiding white, rural gun owners. You know who the problem is. 
Got it - I don't hear that argument much myself so I guess if/when I do I dismiss it out of hand.  

 
The thing about gun control and racism is a huge stretch.  I can't even completely decide on which side tim thinks is racist.  (I know the answer to that because I know the tim playbook, but neither approach really makes any sense, and both are laughably uncharitable).

 
Got it - I don't hear that argument much myself so I guess if/when I do I dismiss it out of hand.  
If we cannot discuss basic firearms statistics without making the data out to be racist it’s really no wonder the country can’t move towards anything productive in this arena.

 
tim, you started a goldarned Russian History thread. Are you kidding you didn't know that phrase.  
I know the phrase but I wasn't thinking about it when I wrote that. I am not in favor of revolutionary violence (or any other kind of violence.)  Can we move on now?

 
The thing about gun control and racism is a huge stretch.  I can't even completely decide on which side tim thinks is racist.  (I know the answer to that because I know the tim playbook, but neither approach really makes any sense, and both are laughably uncharitable).
Actually, it's not an argument that I'm pushing, or really interested in discussing. I only mentioned it in the OP because so many issues seem to have some kind of racial element to them.

 
timschochet said:
Sure. An argument that is forever made in those debates is that most gun violence takes place in the inner cities, like Chicago. There's a subtext here: it's not the guns that are the problem, or law abiding white, rural gun owners. You know who the problem is. 
Do the stats back up those claims?

 
Here is a passage from the introduction to Coates' book:

One strain of African American thought holds that it is a violent black recklessness- the black gangster, the black rioter- that strikes the ultimate terror in White America. Perhaps it does, in the most individual sense. But in the collective sense, what this country really fears is black respectability, Good Negro Government. It applauds, even celebrates, Good Negro Government in the unthreatening abstract- The Cosby Show, for instance. When when it becomes clear that Good Negro Government might, in any way, empower actual Negroes over actual whites, then the fear sets in, the affirmative action charges begin, and birtherism emerges. And this is because, at its core, those American myths have never been colorless. They cannot be extricated from the "whole theory of slavery," which holds that an entire class of people carry peonage in their blood. That peon class provided the foundation on which all those myths and conceptions were built. And as much as we can theoretically imagine a seamless black integration into the American myth, the white part of this country remembers the myth as it was conceived.

I think the old fear of Good Negro Government has much explanatory power for what might seem a shocking turn- the election of Donald Trump. It has been said that the first black presidency was mostly "symbolic," a dismissal that deeply underestimates the power of symbols. Symbols don't just represent reality but can become tools to change it. The symbolic power of Barack Obama's presidency- that whiteness was no longer strong enough to prevent peons from taking up residence in the castle- assaulted the most deeply rooted notions of white supremacy and instilled fear in its adherents and beneficiaries. And it was that fear that gave the symbols Donald Trump employed- the symbols of racism- enough potency to make him president, and thus put him in position to injure the world.

There's a lot to unpack here- so many interesting ideas in two short paragraphs. But I'm wondering if people agree with his central theme, which is that Obama threatened white supremacy and therefore Trump?

 
I just wanted a good definition of 'institutional racism' so we know what the hell people are talking about.  The examples given are simply an unequal outcome without any connection to racism by the institution.  How can we discuss something if we can not even define it.  Do unequal outcome means there is institutional racism?

 
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