This excerpt is from James Lindsey writing on his blog New Discourses.
Lindsey is very critical of one of the methods used to analyze our culture. Apparently correctly identifying systemic racism, and how it flows through society is a bad thing. Rather, we just need to do better and try harder with the current system and hope that one day we can reach a better place – cue unicorns and gleeful music – where society is just better. (???)
Some of the criticisms Lindsey has can be directly applied to his own prescriptions which are vague and lacking in detail as to how to proceed to the state of having a better society:
“We need to listen; we need to investigate; and we need to use the best methods available to understand and fix the problem.”
Yeah. Okay. So using the best methods available we can probably ascertain that having a police officer kneel on a person’s neck for several minutes isn’t conducive to that person continuing to live. It would seem that this sort of treatment is disproportionately handed out to people that are not white.
So, using the best investigative tools at hand and all of our listening skills we should be able to parse out a reasonable solution to the problem in our liberal society? No?
Is telling minority populations, who are still being incarcerated and extra-judicially murdered at an alarming rate “just be patient, we’re working on it” a viable solution? How many incidents of police discriminate police violence and the corresponding race riots do we need to get a ‘good data set’ to start fixing the disadvantages of being a colour other than white in society?
Go read the entire article – For me, the overall feeling came down to this – Okay, so critical race theory is pessimistic… buuuuut what do you offer to replace the way it exposes the very real and very deep fractures in our society? Like we had Rodney King in 1992 and yet, here we be in 2020 with George Floyd; I’m not seeing anything close to the epoch changing liberal progress Lindsey so tepidly puts forward. Rather, the status quo has been maintained and the system continues as it did before – systemic racism intact and going strong.
“We can do better than Critical Race Theory. We can do better than a sloppy “theoretical” approach that’s really about pushing divisive grievance politics into our society, one that treats people as props for the narrow politics that primarily, if not solely, benefit the elite grifters who know the Theory. Critical Race Theory advances them at everyone else’s expense. And we already know a lot of how to tackle these problems better than Critical Race Theory can. We already know how to be liberals, apply liberalism, judge by the content of character rather than anything to do with identity or color of skin. And we already know that liberal approaches are open to reform and improvement of the societies that employ them.
Sure, we need to listen better. When a black man, or anyone else, says “I can’t breathe,” people need to listen. When people say there are problems, we need to listen. We need to listen; we need to investigate; and we need to use the best methods available to understand and fix the problem. But we also need to see past race, not focus on it. We need to work together, talk together, adopt shared goals, hold shared vision, find shared identities. For those of us in a hurting America, we are all American. We all have a stake in this system and what it can provide, and we’ll all lose if we let these Critical Race Theory wannabe dictators tear it down or take over.
These approaches work. Working together, talking together, sharing goals together, sharing a common vision, finding common ground and common identities. We know they work. So, we should throw out the little tyrants who, with their academic theories, educational influence, and journalistic and political bully-pulpits, are going to tell our country that white people are the cause of everything bad and that black people they have to stay on script if they want to be black. We’re going to reject these race-baiting jerks and reject them just like they reject any honest attempt to help or understand. They are the problem, and their Theory is the problem. We can and will do better.”
Not convinced Mr.Lindsay.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
8 comments
June 4, 2020 at 6:27 am
tildeb
In order to have conflict, you need adversaries. You need to have sides. You need to have some means of defining Us and Them. This is exactly what critical race theory provides, a means to separate individuals from a common pool and divide them into a hierarchy of groups based on ‘race’. ML King understood this framing of people based on the colour of their skin to be the essential ingredient for racism to continue. His solution was to urge people to stop doing this, to supplant the central idea with a different one, to judge another by the quality of their character. Your criticisms here in effect call this principled approach ‘tepid’ and you are ‘not convinced’ this offers us a way forward. Well, it does.
Classical liberalism achieves exactly what you say you want, to address the problems of ongoing racism. Classical liberalism in principle puts the emphasis on the legal equality of the individual. This is where improvements have to be made, to implement this principle in practice and it is achievable over time. One only needs to examine the past 100 years in western liberal secular democracies to see this pendulum of individual rights and freedoms start to make significant inroads in law… for women, for gays, and yes, for civil rights of minorities including blacks. So we know this wider implementation of equality rights and freedoms for the individual inn law is the inevitable result of supporting classical liberal values. That sound suspiciously like a ‘solution’ to me… even if the process is too damn slow for our liking.
But what we know for sure is that ignoring ML King’s appeal and returning to the legal recognition of race (and gender and sex and sexual preference and so on) will never, EVER, produce equality between individuals; rather iit is GUARANTEED to cause further division and conflict between the members of these ‘recognized’ hierarchical groups. What we know for sure is that utilizing various group identities and intersectionalities people allows people to rationalize, excuse, cover up, and hide the quality of their character when interacting with those from these other groups.
So if people want to stop empowering racism, then more of us need to put our money where our mouths are: we need to stop using race as a identifier of individuals and criticize any law that attempts to use group membership as a meaningful description for privilege and/or suppression of equality rights.
And for crying out loud, for anyone to go along with this idiocy that pretending equity of results offers us the means to judge and/or measure the effectiveness of equality rights in action is an admission of not being able to think well. Yet it remains an important means for CRT advocates to point to disparity of results as if this improves their own bankrupt philosophy. It doesn’t. It reveals the advocate neither understands the problem of racism nor has any means to improve it. And that advocacy for group identity based on race makes the problem of racism worse, not better. That’s what Lindsay is explaining.
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June 6, 2020 at 3:23 pm
The Arbourist
@Tildeb
As you say, a way forward but the glacial progress is indicative that it may not be the best way forward.
MLK was assassinated in 1968 and the extra judicial murder of black people by the state and society has continued unabated. Through Rodney King ’92, to Ferguson and Charlotte till now the denominator has been the same, being Black in the USA is dangerous to one’s continued existence.
The systemic racism in the USA (and Canada) has remained largely intact, but significantly less overt.
The introduction of cell phones with forward facing camera’s has done more than any particular piece of legislation with regards to advancing the struggle against racism.
Exposing racism and then publicly demonstrating against the racist systems in places is another way forward. Also, to be noted with limited results (which I believe is a matter of scale, as when the elites are truly fearful of the masses tearing everything down, they will make fundamental changes to the system to preserve their dominion.)
The anti-discrimation laws are firmly in place and explicitly worded. Police manuals and training demonstrate (at least in print) a solid and principled concurrence with the ideals of non racist police force and legal system.
Yet the police and a large proportion of the justice systems in our societies continue to propagate a wide differential in treatment of people, especially based on the colour of their skin.
It would seem that both approaches have limited utility when it comes to changing systemic problems in society.
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June 6, 2020 at 9:02 pm
tildeb
I think even before the latest travesty of Floyd, there has been a growing sense of anti-racism. I think the level of systemic racism has dropped significantly each decade as the law of equality rights is implemented to the point where it’s not unusual for minorities to hold any office or position. From flight captains of elite air demonstration teams to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Presidency itself we have people from minorities gaining not just widespread acceptance but popularity without any of the woke nonsense. And it is a process… just like interracial marriage is not a recipe for children born from such unions a miserable life because of systemic racism.
What is needed is for children to learn to not see race as something that places some inherited characteristic of value on every individual who shares that skin colour. That’s why police brutality and responsibility is something worth altering by legislation – not because of systemic racism but to eliminate race as a meaningful characteristic that excuses in the racist’s mind different but acceptable behaviour – so that those who continue to place characteristics by race can be removed from public trust.
This process is impeded by those who would use race as a characteristic of value in the name of eliminating racism. That’s crazy. Simply put, we cannot have it both ways. One either supports race-based policies and helps maintain racism as part of a system’s daily operation in the minds of those who have to apply different but acceptable treatment based on the colour of one’s skin or one does not. And only one choice here actually reduces racism. The choice has to be made.
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June 7, 2020 at 9:14 am
tildeb
Does not the rising power of those who call for what amounts to Struggle Sessions cause you even more concern? It should. These are the tactics of the Red Guard. Implementing and supporting these tactics in the name of ‘Justice’ and/or ‘Tolerance’ and/or Respect’ and/or being ‘progressive’ doesn’t change the totalitarian principle hard at work, a principle that is causing demonstrable systemic harm to the fundamental value of the liberal democracy experiment today. Not criticizing, not standing firm against such systemic bullying in the name of promoting the downward trend of systemic racism is nothing more and nothing less than full blown moral cowardice. Going along with it with silent approval is nothing more than aiding and abetting sedition. And participating in it’s implementation is equivalent to an act of treason against the root values of western liberal secular democracy. It is inexcusable.
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June 16, 2020 at 12:22 pm
The Arbourist
It does cause me concern when I see individuals being persecuted for holing legitimate views – see Kathleen Lowrey at the University of Alberta. It something terrible to behold a professor under siege for the crime of ‘making students feel unsafe’ at a *university* for heaven’s sake. If you are not at University to have your views challenged, you shouldn’t be there.
There are lines to be drawn here though, I think. Being able to name the problem and bring it to light and notice is in the public good. One cannot rectify problems in society through the will of law alone, people need to persuaded that the law is, in fact, just.
Professor Lowrey wrote at the Quillette about her experiences and situation at the UofA. A good article for reference, but what is disturbing are the comment left by sneery dudes essentially saying that it somehow her fault that she is being treated the way she is.
Not only for this article, but in most comment sections when it comes to articles about women or feminism, the same general poisonous rancor is present: This comment from Fantasmo:
Not particular helpful or productive. The intent is to punish those damn uppity females for analyzing the structure of society and seeing where it is giving them a raw deal. This sort of gleeful spite is often the norm (at the Quillette) when it comes to those who claim they are skeptics and committed to critical thought.
It gives me pause, as these people often claim to be free thinkers and supporters of liberal democratic values, while in actuality they are reactionaries longing for the days when they held the unquestioned, and often untrammeled leavers of power/influence.
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June 16, 2020 at 12:55 pm
tildeb
I think exposing the rancor reveals how the biased views are held by those unable to defend it rationally. That’s a good thing to expose. Holding up these discriminatory views for satire and comedy and drama allows the population time to dismantle them one biased bit at a time. This is what causes lasting change and improvement to the human condition.
These are the ways forward. That’s why the principles of classical liberalism are worth defending… as far as I can tell, these are the only cohesive set of principles that helps bring about lasting change that rectifies discriminatory reasons and policies and practices and ‘norms’ and replaces them over time with those closer to the ideals. Changing these discriminatory, de-humanizing beliefs and rectifying them through classical liberalism as a system of governance and law will happen – I say with confidence – because it has compelling historical evidence that it moving in the right direction. The evidence is overwhelming.
Quibbles about that speed of change or that problems still exist or that such changes are not yet universal doesn’t mean the process based on these values itself is therefore broken and in need of replacement with a totalitarian system guaranteed to cause regression. We just have to keep our eye on the prize and work towards it rather than away from it.
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June 17, 2020 at 9:49 am
tildeb
Dr. Hudlicky holds a prestigious Canada Research Chair and has chosen Brock University for his academic residency. (He is a recognized chemist/geneticist with an impressive number of articles and references and can quite right be considered renowned in the field.) He submitted a 4000 words essay to a prestigious chemistry journal, which passed peer review, and was published. In it he says,
“Under Diversity of Workforce: “In the last two decades many groups have been designated with “preferential status” (despite substantive increases in the recruitment of women and minorities). Preferential treatment of one group leads inexorably to disadvantages for another. Each candidate should have an equal opportunity to secure a position, regardless of personal identification/ categorization. Hiring practices that aim at equality of outcome is counter-productive if it results in discrimination against the most meritorious candidates. Such practice has also led to the emergence of mandatory “training workshops” on gender equity, inclusion, diversity, and discrimination.”
The Twitter mob contacted the editor who immediately pulled the article and apologized. Imagine the effrontery of pointing out that equity is not equality. So we can’t have that in print! The whole raison-d’etre of the Woke ideology is to impose equity as the only true measurement of increasing equality! That it achieves the opposite is true but it cannot be said! Quick… call the Twitter mob to attack!
Please note that truth and/or facts have zero place in these kinds of decisions to attack. So the decision to pull such statements of what’s true, what’s factual, what’s real are done ONLY as a cowardly response to criticism by editors and administrators and politicians without any consideration of the lack of subject matter expertise behind the attacks; the only thing that matters is that someone was offended. And, don’t forget, the offense taken by the ideologues was based on the FACT that even raising the possibility that such actions could become counterproductive IF they resulted in the exclusion of qualified candidates. Offended by facts. Seriously. Think on that.
Ever wonder why it’s called a ‘Master’s’ degree? The model is based on students submitting to a mentor, which Dr Hudlicky points out is a necessary condition for knowledge transference. His argument (supported by law in several Western countries when challenged, supported by a host of research of 100 years) is that “such a process can only be undertaken by a pupil capable of regarding his or her teacher as a true mentor, and by a mentor bent on producing a pupil more capable than him or herself, after an intensive period of training.”
Again, the Twitter mob disagreed with the practice that the student was not equal to the mentor and that this was just another discriminating kind of systemic colonialism. Dr. Greg Finn, Provost and VP Academic, for Brock University wrote a painfully cringing apologetic “open letter to the public,” claiming, of course, that Hudlicky’s opinions, if in the least controversial, “were in no possible manner representative of Brock University as a whole.”
THIS is what happens when you empower the Woke mob to direct administration to align with various ideologically based ‘critical theories’. You lose the connection with reality, discard any concern for what’s true, and couldn’t care less if all the facts don’t fit the ‘critical theory’.
So what?
We all lose. Brock loses a distinguished Chair. The chemistry department loses cutting edge research. The journal loses prestige. Students lose a mentor of the highest caliber. The entire field of genetics in chemistry loses a world renowned productive researcher… all in the name of ‘promoting’ a Marxist group-based ideology that presumes the power imbalance that causes victims and victimizers can be remedied by ‘correct’ GroupThink like critical race theory.
We’re all living on Evergreen campuses these days where the mob thinks itself virtuous tearing down and destroying everything, and invertebrates going along with the charade by apologizing for their Thought Crimes and aiding and abetting the mob’s lust for power.
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June 17, 2020 at 1:52 pm
tildeb
Sorry for the bold: it should have been closed after ‘IF’.
And here’s a really good article describing critical race theory and why it’s so destructive.
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