Morning Ed: Diversity {2018.09.24.M}
[Dv1] Razib Khan points out that if you prick white people, they do in fact bleed.
[Dv2] Prajwal Kulkarni supports doubles standards when it comes to race, but only for African-Americans.
[Dv3] Annalee Newitz looks at the mark that the caste system left on Indian genomes.
[Dv4] Gustavo Arellano says that instead of splitting it up, California should be reunited. In Southern Victory the Confederacy purchases Sonora and Chihuahua and not Baja, which I always thought made for a weird map.
[Dv5] Univision had the perfect business model and they blew it.
[Dv6] There’s a project in Chicago seeking to match people from those on the north and south sides of the tracks.
[Dv7] The lamentations of the Muslim Republican.
[Dv8] James Kirchick argues that Corbyn is unintentionally making the case for a Jewish state.
[Dv9] The collapse of the center-left and the left-wing case for immigration restrictionism.
Dv1: Working class white people suffer from the marginal member of the oppressor class problem. There is a desire to strike out against real or perceived oppressors but tackling the really powerful oppressors is tough. To get around this problem, you go after the marginal members of the oppressor class. I believe that a lot of anti-Semitism from people of color comes from the same place. Jews are marginal whites, so easier target for outrage.
Dv2: There are many of people on the other side that would agree or at least do this for African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. Its why arguments on affirmative action being hard on Asian-Americans tends to be unpersuasive among many liberals.
Dv8: People on the Left would disagree. They believe that but for Israel, it would be multicultural Palestine rather than a Palestine that resembles the other states in the Middle East. They are entirely without sympathy towards the Jewish people, they do not believe we have the right to self-determination or even to fight for our collective rights like other oppressed people. They do not see the persecution we experienced in the past as being real or important.Report
Jews pose a particular threat to the social justice platform as currently arranged. Despite a history of oppression going back millennia, they one nation in which we are a majority had the bad luck of being surrounded by hostiles who just happen to come from a trendier victim group, and nobody wants to back an Oppression Olympics silver medalist when you can have the gold, even if they do throw gay people off roofs and use human shields extensively.
Then there’s the success of Jews in America, achieved at least partly by concerted efforts at assimilation (boo!) and respectability politics (hiss!). As the old neocon saw had it, Jews “earned like WASPs and voted like Puerto Ricans,” which used to be good enough for the left until the keffiyeh chic and the reflexive defense of demagogues like Farrakhan rendered them good as white as far as being an acceptable target is concenrned.
Dv2 does a good job synthesizing this. If Jews are any guide, the pan-POC solidarity set will one day wake up to their nightmare: an expanding definition of whiteness encompassing Asians and Hispanics simplifying the country’s racial fault lines once again to a mostly black/white conflict. Take away the threat of a nonwhite majority right around the corner and the whole social justice project has to re-think itself and its demands.
You don’t have to be all that old to remember when Ice Cube released “Black Korea.” Jews, always the canaries in the coal mine, have something to remind East and South Asians about the precarity of their space in the wokeosphere.Report
I’m not sure whether the definition of whiteness will expand to include Asians and Hispanics or how this will change electoral politics. The Republicans did very well with Asians and Hispanic-Americans for a long time. During the Cold War, Asian-Americans tended to prefer Republicans because they were perceived as tougher on Communism than the Democratic Party, this was especially true for the post-1965 arrivals. Other Asian-Americans tended towards apoliticism. Hispanic-Americans generally voted Democratic if they were not Cuban-American but Republican social conservatism was able to attract at least some of them. George W. Bush made a concerted effort to attract Hispanic-Americans. Muslim-Americans also preferred the Republicans because of social conservatism before 9/11 changing everything.
The Republican base seems generally uninterested in having an expansive definition of whiteness that could include Asians and Hispanics. Right now, they seem to prefer a limited definition of whiteness that means people of European descent and maybe Jews. Even if the definition of whiteness does expand, it could be likely that the Asians and Hispanics remain within the Democratic Party like the Jews rather than move to the Republicans like the ethnic whites did.Report
When did Hispanics become non-white? Last time I checked, Spain was a former European superpower. They occupied the Netherlands.Report
I think this is partially but not completely true. The story is complicated and goes back decades like pre Civil Rights movement decades. James Baldwin had an essay about where black anti-Semitism came from and he was a youth in the 1930s.
I think a lot of Internet commentators tend to really over estimate the size, power, and influence of the Antifa left. It is true that the Democratic Party has moved to the left but I see very scant evidence that the primary nominations are the foreshadowing of President Sarsor or a similar figure. Antifa does seem to be mainly a bogeyman for various middle-aged white guys though like rough uses of “socialism.”
The overwhelming number of American Jews still vote Democratic and identify as liberal. I think this is going to stay the same especially because it isn’t a surprise that the most ardent #NeverTrump Republicans are all Jewish-Americans. Some of whom seem to be returning to the Democratic fold like Jennifer Rubin. Rubin went from Romney fanwoman to the GOP is a cesspool of shit very quickly.
Coalition politics are hard and as the Democratic Party becomes the “not insane” party, their coalitions are going to contain more fragility and tensions and contradictions. Even if we look at the economic front, you need to come up with a policy platform that can get working class union activists on board and people who hope for a partnership at Bain Capital. Or maybe even have partnerships at Bain Capital!Report
It appears to me that the confusion over Israel/ Palestine among my leftist brethren is a warning sign to the “demography as destiny” argument, the street level vulgar version of which is that once brown people take over, liberalism will reign supreme.
Of course this argument is just a positive spin on the racial essentialist concept where Jewish or brown people only come in one flavor, that being social democrats.
Its part of that wider universe of Manichean thinking where the FBI can only be a tool of left wing social justice warriors, or right wing racism, but it can’t possibly be both or neither.Report
Its an updated version of the class based argument that the Democratic Socialists of the 19th and early 20th century believed in. They focused on achieving a true universal suffrage rather than socialism via revolutionary means because they believed the majority of working class and poor voters would obviously vote for socialism because it was in their interest. This turned out not to be the case. There are factions on the Left that believe the same today.Report
You’re right that the size of the woke corner of the Democratic party is smaller than the amount of time spent talking about them would seem to indicate. But what can we learn from UK Labour? Doing OK electorally because they are the “sane” party, but institutional capture is near-total, so the Hamas-hugger, hooknosed-pervert-conspiracy set is within range of gaining actual power.
We don’t even have to go across the pond for troubling examples. Just look at the Muslim Republican article linked above: naked white nationalism was an annoying strain in the institutional GOP until it became the GOP. The money men complained a bit, but settled in once it was clear they didn’t threaten deregulation, anti-choice salami tactics and military spending. Can we count on Tester, Warren or Harris to tell the anti-semites, many of whom have ample identity cover protecting them from people who care about that sort of thing, that they don’t belong? I’m not so sure.
In any case, it will be interesting to see how the Harvard affirmative action case shakes out w/r/t pan-POC solidarity. The conclusion by SCOTUS is still years away, but even now I can picture the campus activists wildly overplaying their hand in attacking Asian-American campus institutions that were not sufficiently deferential to the existing system.
The current intersetional solidarity model – nonwhites centering black issues and feeling sated by being on the right side of history a few nods to not liking being assumed a foreigner – can’t hold given the diversity of interests in their ranks.Report
New York City’s ferocious debate on admissions to elite high schools is something of a preview. Currently, admission to the elite magnet schools in New York City is by a single entrance examination. The student body is majority South and East Asian with a white plurality. African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans are really underrepresented percentage wise.
De Blasio wanted to change the system so that the top students of every middle school get admitted into the elite high schools rather than having it all done by entrance examination. The Asian-American parents are simply not having it. They protested vehemently. It doesn’t help DeBlasio that many of them come from countries that really rely on entrance examinations.Report
That’s another very good example. It’s worth keeping in mind that the Asian population in NYC has skyrocketed as the black and white shares of the population have both remained generally steady. Asian-American New Yorkers have real power now, and DeBlasio crosses them at his peril.
Given the shift in numbers, lack of interest in traditional black local-gov interests (criminal justice reform, public housing) and the zero sum conflict of entry-by-test high school admissions, it looks like cross-POC solidarity will be more of an academic elite affectation than an on-the-ground reality sooner rather than later.Report
DeBlassio also handled this issue in the most ham-fisted way possible. Rather than address the concerns of the Asian-American parents, they dismissed them entirely.
From what I can tell, Asian-Americans are reliable Democratic voters but everything else is up for grabs. There are Asian-American activists/academics that eagerly side with the Social Justice movement. There are plenty of others that aren’t really having it.Report
Being a “reliable democratic voter” in NYC just means that you have access to the party primary where the election is decided.
It’s always been a ridiculous pipe dream among Republicans that familial orientation plus small business equals Republican. It’s a comforting notion that the GOP will have to change absolutely nothing to manage demographic change.
That said, the equally wishful flipside posits that non-white = Democrat. The fungibility of whiteness and zero-sum choices like these threaten that conception as well.Report
Not just “underrepresented”: NYC has the most segregated schools in the country.Report
Is there a case to be made that there is an “oppressor class” problem on Israel’s part when it comes to Palestine?Report
I’m not sure I follow?Report
Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
Given Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, does that make Israelis an oppressor class? If so, does that create a problem? (If it creates a problem, does it create a problem that needs to be addressed?)Report
OK, I think I did get your meaning.
I think the problem is that, while you can make a strong case that Israeli Jews are an oppressor class (even without considering the occupied territories) the way that fact is projected onto Jews outside of Israel is very fraught and often veers into subtle and even not-at-all subtle anti-semitism.Report
So let me repeat my question:
Is there a case to be made that there is an “oppressor class” problem on Israel’s part when it comes to Palestine?Report
Yes and no. The problem with the Israel/Palestine conflict is that both sides are correct depending on what facts you emphasize. On the Palestinian Part, they can point out that the Muslims and Christians of Palestine were an absolute majority all the way up to 1948 even if there was a very large Jewish minority. They could argue that all those Jewish immigrants turned up without being wanted, that as the majority of that particular area it is they who have the right to self-determination, and that the Zionist movement more closely resembles what the left likes to call settler colonialism rather than immigration.
Jews/Israelis can point out that Jews have a history of persecution, that other nations demonstrated they have no intent of incorporating the Jewish minority into the national body politic, and that non-Muslims haven’t faired well in Muslim majority countries after World War II. Furthermore, they can argue that the plural or majority opinion among Palestinians seems to remain “No Israel, No Jews” as the only just solution, making negotiations impractical and occupation the least bad option from the Israeli standpoint.Report
The problem with the Israel/Palestine conflict is that both sides are correct depending on what facts you emphasize.
Is this true for other conflicts? Is this one of those things where the emphasis of facts changes who is right for those as well?Report
It is true and not true. The difference between Israel/Palestine is that you need to be really disingenuous to argue that Jews aren’t an oppressed people. The Chinese have historical arguments for why they are in Tibet, it was part of the Chinese Empire since the Yuan Dynasty, etc., but you can’t connect the Chinese presence in Tibet with the treaty-ports of the 19th century.
You can connect Zionism with the persecution the Jews received though. Its why anti-Zionist arguments spend a lot of time ignoring Jewish history and try to link Zionism to European imperialism instead.Report
It is true and not true.
When I was a kid, this was the point where we declared “reductio ad absurdum” and knew we had a bad premise somewhere.Report
At the risk of repeating my answer, yes.Report
Well, if that concept makes it into the mainstream left, there’s the risk of it becoming a litmus test.
If that happens at the same rallies that people are talking about racism with regards to undocumented dreamers who only want better lives for themselves and their families coming into the US, pointing out that people who want consistency in their attitudes toward oppressor class countries are being antisemitic won’t be an argument that carries a whole lot of moral authority.Report
This is also true (and a genuine pitfall/flaw in a lot of the charges of anti-semitism directed at the anti-Israel Left).Report
Yeah, use of the term “oppressor class” is where I get off the bus.
It never leads anywhere good.Report
It was John Bolton’s best subject.Report
So nice of you to clear up what I believe for me. I had misunderstood my own beliefs until now.Report
I apologize, that was unnecessarily peevish of me. You did say “people on the left” not “the left as a whole” or “most on the left”.
I’m sure the perspective you describe exists somewhere on the left. I don’t know how significant or influential it is, given both major parties have pretty strong allergic reactions to appearance of antisemitism among candidates.Report
Based on what I’ve seen and read, it seems to be a practical argument of faith. From the pro-Israel point of view, many discussion on Israel-Palestine in non-friendly territory can be like your arguing against Fantasy Palestine. Since no Palestinian state exists, everybody gets to project their values on what a Palestinian would be rather than extrapolating from nearby examples. So Islamists imagine Palestine as the perfect Muslim country.Report
I’ll stipulate that there are people who believe that.
I spend a certain amount of time in sensible-through-nutty leftist circles. Everything from ‘we need less militarized drug prohibition and more harm reduction’ to ‘chemtrails are are a (((Bilderberg group)))-funded NWO plot to weaken our minds so we are submissive to the lizard people’s takeover’. And I have never met anyone who thought Palestine would be a feminist multicultural wonderland if only Israel would leave them to it. I’ll stipulate that they exist but I can’t accept that they are numerous.
The impression I’ve gotten is more to the effect that the common belief is, were it not for Israel’s regularly mowing the lawn, Palestine would not be a bombed-out hellhole, fewer people would be dying of dysentery, hospitals wouldn’t have holes in the roof, there would probably be electricity and safe drinking water most places most of the time, and while lots of people might entirely reasonably want to emigrate from Palestine to some place where e.g. their daughters have career prospects, as they often do from Egypt or Tajikistan, they would mostly be emigrants glad to be free of the stifling ways of the old country, not traumatized refugees.
From there a distressing percentage of folks veer off into anti-Semitism.Report
The middle paragraph is all well and good but it avoids asking why Israel is in the West Bank and Gaza to begin with, which is the inability of the Israelis and Palestinians/wider Muslim world to come to an agreement. Who is at fault for this depends on your political priors and sympathies. It also really misrepresents the actual standard of living in the West Bank and Gaza but that is another matter. But that again, depends on your priors and sympathies.Report
The West Bank is pretty good, I understand. It’s Gaza that is the… we can’t say “shithole” anymore… it’s Gaza that is the… Oooh! “underprivileged”.Report
I’m not saying they’re right or that their view is based on an accurate understanding of Middle Eastern history – just that that’s what they believe. And, specifically in response to your earlier post, that I’ve never met anyone who seemed to believe what you appeared to be presenting as a widespread belief on the left.
My experience does support what you and Jaybird have mentioned, for example, that there is a widespread belief that the images we see of the conditions in Gaza, are perceived to affect a far greater percentage of Palestinians than they actually do.Report
This was true at one point in the past, but the ongoing construction and expansion of settlements really undermines that argument.Report
I don’t think it does undermine the argument though, does it.
Some percentage of Israelis can’t agree that any part of Israel/Palestine should remain a home for Palestinian people and not subject to invasion at their whim, and the Israeli government isn’t willing or able to rein them in.
Some percentage of Palestinians can’t agree that any part of Israel/Palestine should remain a home for Israeli people and not subject to invasion at their whim, and the Palestinian government isn’t willing or able to rein them in.
Any agreement anyone manages to get both sides to briefly pay lip service to, is not something either side is seemingly able to actually adhere to for more than a month or two, and blood is once again shed.
Neither side is able to come to and abide by any agreement the other side would ever realistically be able to accept. Hurt people hurt people, traumatized people traumatize people.Report
And I have never met anyone who thought Palestine would be a feminist multicultural wonderland if only Israel would leave them to it. I’ll stipulate that they exist but I can’t accept that they are numerous.
Eh. I think the viewpoint that the Palestinians are the parents of the doctors who will treat your children, the parents of the teachers who will help your children with math and literature, the parents of the technicians who will repair everything from your refrigerator to your car… that viewpoint *IS* out there. And it’s not rare.
The argument that “they have a culture that isn’t compatible with ours!” is a very interesting argument and I’d be interested in exploring it. But I can totally see why it’s something that should be left implied and never openly stated.Report
I don’t think that what you’re saying makes any sense at all.
There are lots of cultures with big problems of homophobia, xenophobia, and sexism. Middle Eastern cultures have that. Latin cultures have that. Southern Baptist culture has that. Polish culture has that.
There are people from all those backgrounds living productively and healthily among us in our allegedly secular and progressive society – sometimes in the very same bodies as us.
“they have a culture that isn’t compatible with ours!” is not at all the same thing as “the country they come from has a lot of sexism/homophobia/xenophobia, and I can see why they might have wanted to leave, the more so the more of that they disagree with.” I mean, unless you want to dogwhistle your racism against whomever “they” are in this case.
Cause it’s funny we can say “there is a lot of sexism in Mormon culture” and also “my dentist is Mormon” and not be accused of cognitive dissonance because “but you just said Mormon culture is incompatible with our own.” 60 years ago we maybe couldn’t have, except “cognitive dissonance” might not have been the term du jour.Report
There are lots of cultures with big problems of homophobia, xenophobia, and sexism. Middle Eastern cultures have that. Latin cultures have that. Southern Baptist culture has that. Polish culture has that.
I’d say that this is an example of what I’m talking about.
This other culture may have problems, but *ALL* cultures have those problems, therefore we cannot say that one is better than another and therefore Israelis who are afraid of Palestinians are being bigoted.
Palestinians are the parents of the doctors who will treat your children, the parents of the teachers who will help your children with math and literature, the parents of the technicians who will repair everything from your refrigerator to your car, after all.
Sure, some of them have some problems with bigotry… but what culture doesn’t?
Look at Mormons!Report
Ah, so when you say “they have a culture that isn’t compatible with ours!” you mean, not the actual people of Middle Eastern Muslim origin and the people of European, African, Asian, or Aboriginal origin who live together in seeming relatively successful cultural compatibility in North America (including Jewish and Muslim people of Middle Eastern origin whose cultures seem to compat alright over here)? But rather the entire countries full of Middle Eastern Muslim and Middle Eastern Jewish people in the actual Middle East, and whose cultures seem to be mutually incompatible?
Seems to me the issue might be, not so much the cultures, as the fact that two different nations are trying to live in the same physical space. Invasions / occupations / colonizations / whatever you want to call them do have a way of producing apparent cultural incompatibilities that don’t necessarily remain in force on different pieces of ground, even though the cultures are the same.
Honestly sometimes it’s exhausting trying to discuss things with you because you always seem like you’re trying to get a gotcha on a person, and then you strongly imply that you did get one, but you never quite come out and say what the heck the gotcha is.Report
Let’s go on a wild speculative fiction tangent – the Middle East situation is portrayed, but it’s being retold with, instead of Mediterranean people of Jewish and Muslim faiths, British people of Catholic and Protestant faiths. We’ll call this fantasy-realm Holy Land “Ireland”, and instead of the 20th and 21st Centuries, we’ll transpose it to the 19th and 20th. For narrative simplicity we’ll remove the Holocaust from the back story.
Millions die of famine. Refugees flee the occupied territories. Some refuse to flee, but resort to terrorist tactics to drive the invaders out. “Their culture is incompatible with ours!” shout partisans of both of our made up British cultures.
And yet, oddly enough, on another continent, both cultures get along pretty well after a single generation away from their homelands – if it even takes that long.
I know, it’s silly. I could never write speculative fiction, my ideas are too far fetched.Report
Here. Let me say what I said again:
The argument that “they have a culture that isn’t compatible with ours!” is a very interesting argument and I’d be interested in exploring it.
I still think it’s interesting.
I am still interested in exploring it.
If we’d like to discuss how to resolve the tensions that would arise if we came up with a One Country Solution and turned all of the Undocumented Israelis into Documented ones, I’d love to discuss that.
If we’d like to discuss whether the Israeli Culture as it exists today is fragile to the point where we require a two-state (or, hell, a three-state) solution in order to keep cultures distinct, I’d love to discuss that.
If we want to pivot from “I have never met anyone who thought Palestine would be a feminist multicultural wonderland if only Israel would leave them to it” to “There are lots of cultures with big problems of homophobia, xenophobia, and sexism” when we discuss various cultures that might have tension with each other… well, I’m less interested in talking about bigotry against Mormons in the 1800s to help put… whatever it is we’d be putting in context into context.
Should there be a Right Of Return for Undocumented Israelis? *THAT* is an interesting question.
Whether Palestinian homophobia is significantly different from Israeli homophobia is significantly different from Southern Babtists is not interesting to me at all.Report
OK, all I’ve got left then is that your pivot from my statement “I have never met anyone who thought Palestine would be a feminist multicultural wonderland if only Israel would leave them to it.”
… to yours “The argument that “they have a culture that isn’t compatible with ours!” is a very interesting argument and I’d be interested in exploring it.”
was not a suggestion that I was making the above argument, or responding to anyone else having made it, or claiming that anyone I knew had made it, or whatever. It was just a non sequitur.
Honestly, it’s all I’ve got.
I mean, I think the incompatible thing isn’t the cultures themselves, it’s having ANY two groups of people living so close together, where one is the occupier and the other is the occupied, and nobody feels that they can go anywhere else.
The English never lost England, so they were eventually able to back out of Ireland to whatever extent once they could swallow their pride, and allow tensions in Northern Ireland to defuse. Israelis don’t have the same option. It’s awful and it’s heartbreaking.
And I don’t think there exist two cultures on Earth that could be substituted in for Middle Eastern Muslims and the gathered Jewish diaspora, in that same situation, and have a significantly more peaceful outcome than the present one.
It’s not about the cultures – nobody does well in a prison. Nobody. Lots of people end up blaming their fellow inmates for how bad prison is, while also engaging in horrifying acts that lead their inmates to blame them right back.
So, while you think the “incompatible cultures” argument would be an interesting thing to discuss, I do not.Report
It was just a non sequitur.
No, not really. If you’re familiar with the arguments for why there cannot be a One State Solution, they have to do with the destruction of Israel’s culture if Gaza and the West Bank are immediately absorbed into Israel and all of the Undocumented Israelis made Official Ones.
Seriously, this is an argument that is out there.
And you were saying, here, let me cut and paste it:
And I have never met anyone who thought Palestine would be a feminist multicultural wonderland if only Israel would leave them to it. I’ll stipulate that they exist but I can’t accept that they are numerous.
My take on that is not that Palestine would be a feminist multicultural wonderland if only Israel would leave them to it, but that if Palestine were absorbed into Israel the question then becomes whether Israel would be a feminist multicultural wonderland.
Or, of course, whether it would become less of one.
Which immediately devolved into how Southern Babtists are homophobic too, for some reason.
So, while you think the “incompatible cultures” argument would be an interesting thing to discuss, I do not.
Fair enough.
For what it’s worth, I think the argument that you don’t think is interesting is at the very heart of what is preventing forward movement one way or the other in the tensions between Israel and Palestine.Report
I hate to be the one who points this out but Univision was doing just fine until they cancelled Sabado Gigante.Report
First and foremost, Khan is misreading the critique of the media’s focus on white people as unusually beleaguered as a general disdain for poor white people which is I think a mistaken assumption. As often as we get these “white people aren’t living on easy street” essays we get I’m struck by the lack of actual people actually saying that poor white people deserve to be immiserated or we shouldn’t be creating policy that could benefit them too. If we’re going to argue the goal of people who advocate for social justice is to punish white people then we need to support that argument beyond quoting tweets of exasperation.
Beyond that, even in the argument itself, she reveals the limitations of her analysis by limiting her hypothetical interlocutor to being either a “guilty white liberal” or the progeny of a relatively privileged immigrant family.
While these folks exist I’d argue their experience is far from representative of the experience of people who are affected by racism as well as class. If we’re going to make societal wide judgments we should try and include as many aspects as possible. It is noble to advocate for a more nuanced view of racial dynamics but it rings hollow if it doesn’t account for the majority of people that are most affected by racism.Report
Good to see you, Chad!Report
Hey, good seeing you as well!Report
(And a link back to KatherineMW’s 2014 Israel/Palestine essay.)Report
(And here’s our thread on the US Embassy opening in Jerusalem.)Report
The center-left in Europe just might be boned in the short term, ala the Democrat’s nationally from the late 60’s to early 90’s due to cultural backlash. Sure, they could move right on immigration, but you lose left-wing voters to actually pro-immigration left-wing parties, ‘cosmopolitan’ voters to ‘liberal’ parties that are pro-immigration and centrist on economics, while not guaranteeing you that you’ll actually get any of the voters that are currently voting for the party that is already promising them a large welfare state with none of the people they don’t want around.
It is interesting that the most successful center-left parties are basically, those in places with a closer history with fascism. Basically, there are still people alive and relatively spry in Spain and Portugal who remember Franco and Salazar. Not so much in Poland, Germany, Austria, etc.
Quick Edit – I’d argue the Democratic and Labour move to the center in the 90’s only worked because ya’ know, they actually won. To your average German social democrat, for example, moving to the center on issues has only led to a decade of Merkel domination.Report
Its a chicken and egg issue. There are Democratic and Labour voters that believe the move to the center was entirely unnecessary because voters would eventually get tired of the Republicans and Conservatives. Others looked at the decade or longer politically shellacking they got in their respective countries and believed a move to the center was necessary to achieve any political victory.Report
Dv9 makes a good attempt to explain Anti-Identity Politics leftism. They fail to say what the alternative to progressive realism is though. We aren’t going to turn back the clock to times of more homogeneous nations despite recent attempts to do so. Even when societies were more homogeneous, there were always minorities in nearly every country. There were Jews in Europe and the Middle East, African-Americans in the United States, and other minorities elsewhere. When these minorities were not incorporated into the system, they were persecuted and oppressed.Report
Dv2 – The Federalist is making the case for reparations?Report
@kolohe That was part of my thought process as well, along with
“So this author has never heard of Native Americans, then?”
I really can’t keep up with the Federalist these days.Report
(Then I reread the essay and found the two sentences where he said they were “beyond the scope of this essay” for implausible reasons. Really dude? Rework the essay then, and maybe figure in how much the Hispanic American and Native American circles in the Venn diagram have significant overlap…)
That said, if the Federalist starts advocating that discussions of inequality in America ought to begin with “This country was founded on the backs of black slaves, the corpses of worse-than-decimated Native American tribes, the continued treatment of women as chattel, and the targeted exclusion and exploitation of immigrants” … as long as they clarify that *this is a serious problem we have* which not all of the Federalist’s writers that I’ve seen would agree to …. but as long as they were willing to do that, they might get a LOT more readers than they have now.
I’d certainly be interested in where they went with it from there.
This essay is surprisingly *close* to that.Report
I mean, the author would probably not agree that the two things are close and might complain that I am being completely inaccurate by lumping the sufferings of women and targeted immigrant groups into the list. To which I would respond that including things in a list is not the same as equating them, and that recognizing commonalities of ancestral experience across an empire, and the role of multiple factors in shaping who can rule in said empire, and who cannot, is not the same as equating everyone’s suffering in the here and now, either.
Which latter bit is my real source of disagreement with his essay.Report
Dv3 has me wondering how to even leave a comment about that lynchpin event 1500 years ago.
So, instead, I’ll link to this article about how dog breeds looked 100 years ago.
That’s, what? 700 dog years?Report