Is Black Still Beautiful?

Dennis Sanders

Dennis is the pastor of a small Protestant congregation outside St. Paul, MN and also a part-time communications consultant. A native of Michigan, you can check out his writings over on Medium and subscribe to his Substack newsletter on religion and politics called Polite Company.  Dennis lives in Minneapolis with his husband Daniel.

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69 Responses

  1. Amazing piece, Dennis. Thank you for sharing it with us.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    “Black is Beautiful” was by Black people and *FOR* Black people.

    Third Wave Antiracism is by white people for white people.Report

  3. Pinky says:

    Two more traits of a moral panic: a decline in the number of acceptable true statements, and learned helplessness among the proposed victims.Report

  4. veronica d says:

    There is an important difference between saying, “There are systems in place that hinder {minority group}” and saying, “Members of said group shouldn’t even try.” Obviously if a kid came home from school and said, “I shouldn’t bother to try,” then the teacher did a bad job teaching about the systems in place that hinder.

    However, there are systems in place that hinder. They exists. Teaching truth is important.

    I think the important tool is framing. There seem to be two modes to talk about “social stuff.” They are,

    1. The sociological view, which help us understand broad trends

    2. The individual view, which help us understand our own role in the system.

    Anytime you are looking at a statistic, say black crime rates or transgenger suicide rates, you should adopt the sociological view. However, when you are dealing with an individual — including yourself — you should look at an individual view.

    Case in point, if you are talking to a young black man who lives in a high crime area, it is important to give him motivation to get out of his situation. In particular, he should avoid gang life, as much as he can. He definitely should stay in school. College should be seriously considered, if he can afford it. These things seem obvious.

    If you’re being pestered by an internet fascist who won’t shut up about black crime rates, it’s important to understand the sociological view, specifically about how members of the same ethnic group will behave differently depending on systemic conditions.

    The challenge is knowing when to switch between the viewpoints, and how to harmonize them in tricky situations where we need both the sociological and individual view. This involves careful thinking and perhaps some degree of dialectic. It is, however, hard to turn careful thinking and dialectic into simple messages that can be delivered to a broad audience.Report

  5. y10nerd says:

    I’m not going to chime in on the specific experience of the black is beautiful movement, but similar conversations were had as Latinos (though not as organized, I’d argue).

    In my talks with kids, I think the idea is less that the white man is keeping them down and they will be defeated, but that they have their own people to advance and that will include dismantling the white man. I think even in the idea of ‘twice as good’, there’s an implicit – well, why the hell should I have to do that? And also, because it seems like – well, who the hell wants to get half as much? I’ve had conversations with folks who basically argue that whatever the strategy was in the 70s and 80s and 90s, it doesn’t seem to have succeeded – it didn’t really change the material conditions on the ground.

    I think given the mass proliferation of cell phones and social media, the success of some African-Americans is counteranced with a sense of failure in many other areas.Report

    • veronica d in reply to y10nerd says:

      There are various flavors of (leftist) accelerationism that argue that the proper response to immiseration is not personal achievement, but only revolution. Personally, I’m not a revolutionary, nor properly a Marxist of any stripe, so I reject that. However, offering people “half as much for twice the work” reminds me of the ultimatum game, and violence is certainly one way to “defect” in that game.

      Anyway, as an incrementalist, I certainly see a role both for personal achievement and working for systemic change. Of course, this position is vulnerable to criticisms of “wimpy white liberalism” — and indeed! However, I think this is another area where we can apply dialectic. It’s not as if we must choose between pure individualistic liberalism and pure radical revolution. There is a lot of space in between.

      I don’t think there is one right answer.Report

  6. Chip Daniels says:

    I’m not sure what “Third Wave Antiracism” is, as opposed to plain old anti-racism.

    But I do know that there is a tremendous hunger among white people to be told that racism doesn’t exist or if it does exist it isn’t a problem, and we should just stop talking about it ok.

    And as Veronica notes, yeah, there ARE structures in place which are designed to keep black people from succeeding.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      Oh, John McWhorter wrote an essay about “Third Wave Antiracism” in the Atlantic. Dennis’s essay links to it.

      Here. I’ll link to it too.

      Now you can read about it and get a better idea of the differences between Third Wave Antiracism and plain old anti-racism. Or, at the very least, understand what people are talking about when they make distinctions between the two things.Report

    • veronica d in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      Much is about how we tailor our messaging to produce desired motivations. To a “first degree of accuracy,” we want to motivate young people to work hard and achieve things. This is true for all young people, but it seems particularly important to young people from disadvantaged groups. At the same time, we want to motivate members of the majority to understand systemic oppression. It is very real, and while none of us are singularly responsible for its existence, we all have a role to play in mitigating its effects.

      Much comes down to the nature of responsibility, and how it is conceptually different from fault or blame.

      An example I like to use is this: if you find a baby lying on your doorstep some cold winter morning, you are certainly not at fault — you didn’t leave the baby there — but dammit you have a responsibility to do something. It doesn’t need to be much, but at least you should bring the baby inside, out of the cold, and call emergency services, and then stick around until they arrive.

      That’s the difference between responsibility and blame.

      Racists like to use the conditions of the black community as a reason to criticize the nature of black people in an essential way. They don’t want to talk about systemic issues. In fact, they want to discount them as much as possible, to the point of outright denying that they matter at all. Thus any talk about personal responsibility — which is a useful motivator — gets twisted into a sociological account.

      I think I understand why Dr. McWhorter, a professor, and Rev. Sanders, a preacher, want to talk about the personal responsibility angle. They are in the trenches, dealing with young black people. Motivation is rightly their goal.

      My worry is how racists twist their position into one that denies sociological factors. I’m certain that both are aware of that process.

      Honestly, it’s a tough needle to thread, and I don’t think anyone (except the racists) are wrong here. It requires dialectic and we won’t always get it right.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to veronica d says:

        Personally, I think that anti-racism demands that if a Black guy writes an essay in which he talks about Third Wave Antiracism and links to an essay from another Black guy that talks about Third Wave Antiracism, a white guy opening his comment on that essay with talking about how he doesn’t know what Third Wave Antiracism is would qualify as one hell of an example of a white guy proudly giving his opinion based on his own ignorance instead of taking a moment to be quiet, not say something, and actually *LISTEN* to People of Color and educate himself thereby.Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

          Excellent parody of Third Wave Anti-racism. “You aren’t allowed to speak until you’ve read things I agree with” Hah! Bravo!

          You’re right, it really is pointless. Let’s ditch it, and just focus on combating plain old racism.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            Well, in this case, Chip, it has to do with whether you read the thoughts of the person you’re actually commenting on.

            If the thoughts of Dennis are secondary to your desire to opine on racism, well.

            Please.

            I understand you think racism is bad? Do go on!

            (And it’s not “you aren’t allowed to speak until you’ve read things I agree with.” That’s the point of others in the debate. My point is, instead, “the guy wrote an essay about this crap and linked to another essay about this crap and you coming in and bragging that you haven’t read their thoughts but you’re going to start talking anyway AND OPEN WITH YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THE ESSAY IS TALKING ABOUT DESPITE IT TALKING ABOUT IT is part of the problem with Third Wave Antiracism.”)Report

          • Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.-SartreReport

        • veronica d in reply to Jaybird says:

          I’ve seen this maneuver before. If a cis person tries to speak up for trans people, some transphobic asshat will bring up a random transphobic transperson and say, “Hur dur! You can’t argue with them because you’re cis.”

          Anyway, it’s a transparent ploy.

          I do think white people should be careful when they weigh in on issue within minority communities, just as I think cis people should do the same for trans folks. However, that doesn’t imply that we can never take a side. I certainly want cis folks to reject people like Rowling, even if Rowling fans can dig up some random trans person who agrees with her.

          Regarding the specific issue: Rev. Sanders chose to post this essay on a majority-white blog community, so Chip wasn’t exactly barging in on a conversation between black people. He was commenting on a post on a blog where he is a regular member. I’m fine with that.

          Moreover, those who attack “social justice” very rarely limit themselves to one aspect. In other words, when the Quillette crowd goes after social justice activists, they target me. In turn, any position Dr. McWhorter takes will be generalized to apply to all racial activism and all gender/LGBT activism, so I have a dog in this hunt. Black issues are not identical to trans issues, but they often overlap. The systemic issues we face are different, but they are often similar. Likewise the tools used to attack us are similar. They generalize and are deployed by the same people.

          To be clear, I’m not attacking McWhorter, at least not directly. I think I understand where he is coming from. In turn, I hope that he understands that including a “no racists” proviso in an essay won’t stop racists from taking the rest out of context to attack blacks — and in turn to attack queers and women and indigenous people and basically everyone who isn’t them.

          That’s not his fault, but scroll up and see what I said about responsibility. We’re not free until we’re all free. McWhorter must have noticed that his IDW fellow travelers are virulently transphobic.

          #####

          I’m certain there is a way to take the complaints of McWhorter (and Dennis) seriously, but in a way that doesn’t support the IDW crowd (and worser actors). In other words, it is nearly certain that the social justice crowd has blind spots and misapplied enthusiasm and various “unintended consequences” — of course we do. (Plus clout-seeking social media narcissists are a universal menace.) Thus we should learn from our critics. However, some of our critics are just terrible bigots with nothing to offer. Some arguments, even if well intended, are easily twisted into tools of bigotry — because unintended consequences run both ways.

          Telling someone they can’t criticize McWhorter is just helping the IDW build a superweapon. Don’t do that.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to veronica d says:

            “Hur dur! You can’t argue with them because you’re cis.”

            This is not my argument.

            My argument is the following:
            Saying “I’m not sure what ‘Third Wave Antiracism’ is, as opposed to plain old anti-racism” after the author wrote an essay talking about Third Wave Antiracism and linking to another essay that explained, at length, Third Wave Antiracism is announcing that you did not read the essay.”

            The implication is that announcing that one did not read the essay about Third Wave Antiracism but going on to announce that that doesn’t matter is one of the Cis-Het White Male things that, you’d think, people would see as bad in the first place.

            Because Dennis had a good essay. McWhorter had a good essay.

            Both were worth reading.

            And, get this, reading both would have cleared up that whole “I’m not sure what ‘Third Wave Antiracism’ is, as opposed to plain old anti-racism” issue.

            So when you say “Hur dur! You can’t argue with them because you’re cis”, you’re not understanding my criticism of Chip’s position.

            It’s closer to “you’re not even disagreeing with him because YOU DIDN’T READ WHAT HE EVEN SAID”. With an implied “AND THAT’S BAD”.

            I do think white people should be careful when they weigh in on issue within minority communities, just as I think cis people should do the same for trans folks. However, that doesn’t imply that we can never take a side.

            I’m not even weighing in on the issue!

            I’m saying “I read what Sanders and McWhorter said and they said SOMETHING IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO HAVE READ BEFORE COMMENTING THAT YOU DIDN’T UNDERSTAND ONE OF THE TERMS BEING USED IN THE COMMENTS TO THE POST”.

            We’re not even to the “I don’t want to say that Dennis is wrong, but white people shouldn’t agree with him, they should agree with me” part of the argument yet.

            We’re still at the “YOU SHOULD READ WHAT THE ESSAY SAID BEFORE SAYING THAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ONE OF THE TERMS BEING USED IN THE COMMENTS TO THE ESSAY”.

            Regarding the specific issue: Rev. Sanders chose to post this essay on a majority-white blog community, so Chip wasn’t exactly barging in on a conversation between black people. He was commenting on a post on a blog where he is a regular member. I’m fine with that

            My criticism of Chip was not “You’re barging in on a conversation between Black people”.

            It’s that “you didn’t listen to the Black people having the conversation before starting to talk about how you didn’t understand the term the Black people were using.”

            Telling someone they can’t criticize McWhorter is just helping the IDW build a superweapon. Don’t do that.

            I am not telling Chip that he can’t criticize McWhorter.

            I am telling Chip that he should read the essay instead of assuming that he doesn’t have to before explaining that he doesn’t understand the term it discusses.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to veronica d says:

            Also too- my point, which was studiously ignored, was that the self-empowerment messages from people like McWhorter and Dennis are usually leapt on by white people as a soothing narcotic which tells us that we white people need do nothing, that racism will be overcome by the sheer will and pluck of black people themselves.

            Like that little boy in Dennis’ story who tells his mother he wants to be a lawyer.
            Wonderful! He should be showered with messages of empowerment and achievement!

            But we also know that if he happened to be sitting on a swingset playing with a toy gun, a policeman will deliberate about 1.5 seconds before ending his little life and all his ambitions.

            That policeman’s actions are not for black people to solve.

            His actions are a problem that we white people need to confront and resolve, entirely separate and apart from whatever black people do.Report

            • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              if he happened to be sitting on a swingset playing with a toy gun, a policeman will deliberate about 1.5 seconds before ending his little life and all his ambitions.

              Trying to use beyond lottery level rare events to explain vast sociological trends seems wrong.

              His actions are a problem that we white people need to confront and resolve, entirely separate and apart from whatever black people do.

              We fire all cops who are idiots (maybe replacing them with robots); Does eliminating a lot of these lotteries change things much?

              My intuition says no. I’d love to hear reasons on why that’s wrong, but it seems like a different issue.Report

              • Brandon Berg in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Steve Hsu had a great blog post several years ago about what he called the “High V, Low M” pattern, where someone has verbal skills sufficient to speak or write in a way that superficially seems erudite, but who lacks the math skills needed to reason about the world in a quantitative, data-driven manner. One example he gave was Stephen Jay Gould; most journalists and politicians also fall into this category. Such people are dangerous because they sound to laymen like they know what they’re talking about, even as their heads are filled with nonsense.

                This just popped into my mind for no reason whatsoever while I was reading this subthread.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Brandon Berg says:

                Using math alone to explain vast sociological events is itself poor reasoning.

                If you don’t believe me, apply statistical analysis to the so-called “cancel culture” and you will find that it exists only at beyond lottery level occurrences, i.e., it doesn’t exist.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                So it’d be poor reasoning to use math alone to explain the existence of cancel culture and expanding our explanations of it beyond statistical analysis would be fruitful?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Yes, for example, if there were hundreds or thousands of personal testimonies about injustice, like there are with racial injustice, that would be illuminating.

                Or maybe descriptions of structural illiberalism which oppress conservatives and keep them out of positions of power, that would be helpful. Things like laws and institutions which seem ostensibly neutral, but favor one and marginalize the other.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Fascinating.

                Anyway, I’m going to drop this thread because a comment in which ten personal testimony links strikes me as likely to get a response of “I asked for hundreds. You’re about 190 short!” and that’s a lot less interesting than the stuff that Dennis wrote (that referenced an article that McWhorter wrote).

                Did you read the McWhorter essay yet?

                It might help you with some of the concepts that Dennis talked about in his essay, which is also worth talking about and meditating upon.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Don’t the two subjects connect directly though?

                For instance, doesn’t Third Wave Conservatism (AKA “Trumpism”) primarily focus itself on a self-crippling tale of persecution, leading to conservatives valuing failure and defeat rather than empowerment?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I will answer your question.

                “No, not really.”

                Please answer mine:

                Did you read the McWhorter essay yet?

                It might help you with some of the concepts that Dennis talked about in his essay, which is worth talking about and meditating upon.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                The McWhorter essay is a good read, and directly applies to my analysis of conservatism.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                So you read Dennis’s essay and McWhorter’s essay and then, instead of thinking about what they were talking about, you started whatabouting?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                The culture of defeatism within the black community isn’t something I have strong opinions on, but as I have said repeatedly, there is a tendency among white people to use those arguments as a soothing narcotic.

                Do you think this is true?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                An interesting question! I did my best to answer it below.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Beyond lottery level =/= doesn’t exist.

                It means that as a problem, it’s rare enough that significant system level changes to deal with it is taking a sledgehammer to kill a fly.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                But doesn’t this assume that the problem only exists for that one person who “won” the lottery? How many people adjust their behavior because those lottery-level events exist? We could look at the math and say, “It’s irrational! The odds are astronomical!” But do you want to be the one to tell Black kids that it is irrational for them to think twice before leaving the house with a toy gun?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Kazzy says:

                Sure, but adjusting personal behavior because humans are bad at risk assessment is not the same as implementing significant system level changes.

                If you are bad at parallel parking a car, which makes more sense: changing your behavior to avoid parallel parking, or buying an expensive Tesla that can parallel park for you?Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                I think it depends on the system-level changes being discussed.
                One person dies.
                100 people live in fear.
                Is there a system level change that can address both those problems?Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Kazzy says:

                It’s more like one person dies, tens of millions live in fear.

                The number of people unjustly killed by the police may be roughly the same as the number of people killed by lightning.

                Would it be possible to restructure society so no one would be killed by lightning? Yes it would.

                However that would require a significant amount of resources and collective action.

                The collective action part would be the hardest part because lots of people wouldn’t view it as worth it, they have other priorities.Report

              • InMD in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Back on one of Sam’s posts a million years ago Stillwater had the following comment, quoted in part:

                On the other hand, if the analysis is that cops are too prone to use lethal force in general, and that the (unendingly) visible outliers of that predisposition are unarmed black males (cuz racism) then perhaps we should think about reining in cops reflexive tendency to use lethal force as a general procedural disposition.

                I think it’s relevant here in the way the conflation of outlier events with the middle of the bell curve plus the the conflation of ‘rare’ with ‘inevitable’ results in some pretty bad conclusions. One of those is the ‘why do anything to address statistical anomalies’ as though these can be isolated from the larger problem of overly aggressive and abusive policing. The other of course is what you see here, i.e. encouraging people to walk around in terror over highly improbable events and/or treating the worst case scenario as the problem, as opposed to what it is, that being an outlier resulting from incredibly lax standards of accountability writ large.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to InMD says:

                @Kazzy @InMD
                Perhaps there is, and that needs to be part of the CBA that we do.

                My initial comment was not a value position, it was countering the claim that low probability events are equivalent to events that don’t happen.

                Kids with toy guns getting killed by police is a low probability event. Innocent people getting wrecked by cancel culture is a low probability event. The fact that they are low probability doesn’t mean they don’t happen, it only means that we should remember that when considering how to fix it. Is it something that requires a targeted fix (firing an officer, repairing the damaged reputation of the innocent person), or a systemic one (reforming police culture, going after CC mobs that are careless with who they target).

                Now, if I want to expand a bit (& I do), when it comes to police killing a kid with a toy gun, one could argue that it’s a “Never Event”, but one could also argue that it’s more appropriately a tail end event of a larger issue regarding police use of force and incentives (i.e. the bulk of the problem with police is not dead kids with toy guns, but dead kids with toy guns is a data point that helps define the problem with policing in the US, even if it’s a bit of an outlying data point).

                Ergo, we have a large, systemic problem with policing that does demand a significant system approach to correct.

                I’m not willing to say something similar with regards to CC.Report

              • InMD in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                I was agreeing with you but seem to have misthreaded my response.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to InMD says:

                Yep.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      Third Wave Antiracism seems to be interested in treating things as being systematic problems that require total society change than the First or Second Wave Antiracism. First wave antiracism was about defeating the slave power and incorporating African-Americans as citizens. That didn’t work in the long run and Jim Crow came about. Second wave antiracism was about getting rid of segregation, Jim Crow, and personal animus towards African-Americans and other non-Whites. Surely we could achieve utopia once that happened. Being openly racist was beyond the pale for decades but nothing changed. Third wave sees personal animus as being irrelevant. The entire system needs to be changed.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to LeeEsq says:

        OK, but trying to categorize the struggles for justice into packages can confuse as much as illuminate.

        For example, even during slavery, there were a multitude of voices for how to combat it, which also tied it to the broader struggle against economic injustice for example.
        And in the second wave, likewise, there was a wide spectrum of ideas that connected racism to structural problems like capitalism or imperialism.

        I think its best to leave those sorts of debates to academics, because what confronts and connects all of us here on this blog is the plain old garden variety racism, where white people consider black people to be lesser beings.

        We white people experience this, live this, breathe it every moment of our waking lives. We’ve all talked on this very blog about how even ostensibly liberal people live racism by sending their kids to private segregated schools or choose all white neighborhoods, etc.

        We don’t need to make racism into some exotic academic concept and drown it in dense jargon and esoterica.

        Like in that NYT article I linked, real racism is raw and immanent in our daily lives.Report

        • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          “We white people experience this, live this, breathe it every moment of our waking lives.”

          I have nothing to say about that comment that I haven’t said a hundred times before, but I don’t want it to go by unnoticed.Report

        • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          We’ve all talked on this very blog about how even ostensibly liberal people live racism by sending their kids to private segregated schools or choose all white neighborhoods, etc.

          If we asked them we’d find out they have reasons other than race for doing what they’re doing.

          Teaching children they can’t succeed is heinous.

          Refusing to send your child into a school where that’s taught? That’s good parenting.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

            We are just back to asking, “Why are white people teaching black children they can’t succeed?”

            One answer is that white people prefer to inculcate failure into black children.

            Another is that there is (at least some) truth to the teaching.

            Either way, doesn’t it seem reasonable that white people should have a serious discussion amongst themselves about why we are behaving this way, and how to stop it?Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              Maybe they need to learn what “Third Wave Antiracism” is, as opposed to plain old anti-racism.Report

              • InMD in reply to Jaybird says:

                Why do that when they can kneel before a random black guy on his way to work and beg forgiveness? But even that isn’t enough, because the exercise of white privilege has made him too late to stop for coffee.

                When, after 400 years, will we ever learn?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                White people you mean?

                White people should learn about “Third Wave Anti-Racism” and its conclusion that white people are wrong to teach helplessness to black children?

                I’m cool with that. Up with empowerment! Amer-I-Can!

                Would it be fair to admit that there is some truth to the teaching, though? That in fact, there are ingrained structural impediments making it harder or black people to achieve?

                And that while white people are discussing John McWhorter’s essay, they can also discuss how NIMBY land use laws, drug laws, “tough on crime” laws, and restrictions on voting, all act to impede racial progress?

                And most importantly, maybe white people can admit how deeply ingrained racism is, to the point where even the most liberal communities have yet to overcome it.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                White people should learn about “Third Wave Anti-Racism” and its conclusion that white people are wrong to teach helplessness to black children?

                If they look at “Third Wave Anti-Racism” and say “huh… this seems to be pretty different from plain old anti-racism and the differences seem to be worse where they’re not a toss-up”, that’s a good start.

                Heck, maybe they could move back to plain old anti-racism.

                Would it be fair to admit that there is some truth to the teaching, though?

                If the teaching is doing harm, perhaps the teaching could wait until the children are older.

                “It may be doing harm, but it’s *TRUE*!” is a great way to keep doing harm to People of Color under the guise of being loyal to some higher ideal, I guess.

                That in fact, there are ingrained structural impediments making it harder or black people to achieve?

                If I had limited resources to change things, I’d probably put more effort into eliminating ingrained structural impediments than to making sure that Black kids are made painfully aware of them beforehand.

                Especially if the feedback I’m getting is that making sure that Black kids are made painfully aware of them beforehand is doing harm.

                I mean, it’s a vulgar utilitarian calculus, but I’m willing to defend it.

                And that while white people are discussing John McWhorter’s essay, they can also discuss how NIMBY land use laws, drug laws, “tough on crime” laws, and restrictions on voting, all act to impede racial progress?

                Sure.

                I just think that putting more effort into something as simple as rescheduling weed would have more bang-for-the-buck than changing school curricula. I mean, given the feedback that I’ve seen.

                And most importantly, maybe white people can admit how deeply ingrained racism is, to the point where even the most liberal communities have yet to overcome it.

                That would be a better place to be than one in which the go-to response is yelling “WELL WHATABOUT TRUMP!”

                It’s not a good stopping place, mind… but I do think that it’s a place that even the most liberal communities have to go through on the way to where they ought to be.Report

            • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              We are just back to asking, “Why are white people teaching black children they can’t succeed?”

              The anti-racism movement is run by white people? Black people aren’t involved?

              As for “why”, I’d suggest because the “structural impediments” come down to things like “marriage rates” and other stuff that if identified look a lot more like culture (including telling children they can’t succeed and it’s not their fault) than anything the “racists” can control.

              Look at that picture on the “Whiteness Culture” from “Talking about Race” from the National Museum of African American History and Culture (Dennis’ link up top) https://twitter.com/turtleman73/status/1283868435051577344/photo/1

              There’s a lot of seriously functional behavior in that pic which SHOULD be viewed as “desirable for all” and not “acting White”.

              One of McWhorter’s links up top points out just how much more successful African-American immigrants from Africa are here.Report

  7. Chip Daniels says:

    Related:
    Fears of White People Losing Out Permeate Capitol Rioters’ Towns, Study Finds
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/politics/capitol-riot-study.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

    Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed, that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture.

    Racism isn’t a “black problem”; Racism is a problem for white people to understand and confront, for white people to change their own behavior and attitudes and culture.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      And perhaps talking about that kind of racism with white people so they can understand and confront it is not the best way to talk about racism with black people who have to live it.Report

  8. Jaybird says:

    Chip says:

    The culture of defeatism within the black community isn’t something I have strong opinions on, but as I have said repeatedly, there is a tendency among white people to use those arguments as a soothing narcotic.

    Do you think this is true?

    Well, first off, I don’t agree with the framing of the question. But let’s pick the question apart and see if we can’t answer it honestly.

    The culture of defeatism within the black community

    Well, right off the bat, I’d have to say that there is no singular “culture” and so referring to “the culture of defeatism” is a misframing of the situation.

    I would agree that there are corners of the culture that have this weird defeatism thing going on. For what it’s worth, I think that this defeatism is bad for a host of reasons that run the gamut from “it creates self-fulfilling prophecy” to “it’s a trick to hold those people back in the guise of helping them while maintaining the ability to lie to oneself about how helpful one is being.”

    there is a tendency among white people to use those arguments as a soothing narcotic

    I agree very much with the statement that there is this tendency. “Well, they’ve got a bad culture. What can you do?”

    Here’s the wacky thing, though: Dennis wrote an essay about how “Black is Beautiful” has evolved into some weird Third-Wave Antiracism that results in, among other things, Ndona Muboyayi being shocked at how her childrens’ school district’s anti-racism curriculum is actively *HARMING* her children.

    I’ll copy and paste this part from Dennis’s essay for emphasis:

    Conor Friedersdorf recently interviewed, Ndona Muboyayi, an African American mother of two kids in Evanston, IL. She’s been shocked at the school district’s anti-racism curriculum. She attended the Evanston schools as a kid. Moving back to town after years away she was looking forward to her children experiencing the same empowering, racially inclusive education she received as a child.

    It didn’t turn out that way. What she found was a curriculum that disempowered black kids, making it harder for them to succeed. In the interview, Mboyayi explains how this anti-racist curriculum has affected her kids:

    My children have always been so proud of who they are. Then all of a sudden they started to question themselves because of what they were taught after arriving here. My son has wanted to be a lawyer since he was 11. Then one day he came home and told me, “But Mommy, there are these systems put in place that prevent Black people from accomplishing anything.” That’s what they’re teaching Black kids: that all of this time for the past 400 years, this is what [white people have] done to you and your people. The narrative is, “You can’t get ahead.”

    Of course, I want my children to know about slavery and Jim Crow. But I want it to be balanced out with the rest of the truth. They’re not taught about Black people who accomplished things in spite of white supremacy; or about the Black people today who got ahead, built things, achieved things; and those who had opportunities that their ancestors fought for.

    I wonder how this emphasis on “we can’t get ahead” will affect other black children across the nation. Black Is Beautiful was something that forced you to be successful. You wanted to be the best and even if you didn’t get as far as you hoped, you knew you gave your best because of all those African American inventors and business people and scientists who broke barriers built pride.

    And it’s in reading this section that I see a real insight into what you’ve said:

    there is a tendency among white people to use those arguments as a soothing narcotic

    This third-wave antiracism is a soothing narcotic to a whole bunch of white people. It allows them to harm Black children and cut them off at the knees while, at the same time, making these same harmful white people feel oh-so-good about how they’re fighting racism.

    Even in the face of an essay that talks about “hey, this antiracism training is hurting Black kids”, it’s so much more comforting to embrace the stated intentions of Third-Wave Antiracism and just feel good about it. It doesn’t matter what it’s doing. It doesn’t matter what the people on the receiving end are saying about it! We can just skip over them talking about how they’re responding to it.

    And start talking about white people (presumably the wrong white people) using the arguments about the culture of defeatism within the black community as a soothing narcotic.

    I think we should, instead, not focus on the white people in this case but look at what the Black people are saying about it.

    Not, of course, that there is a singular culture. But because if we don’t look at what the people on the receiving end of it are saying about it, it’s far too easy to have our consciences salved by repeating the two mantras “my stated intentions matter” and “at least I’m not like other white people”.

    Reading what some of the people on the receiving end may not even necessarily get us to change! But maybe we’ll find ourselves fighting to find voices from the people on the receiving end saying that they agree with what we’re doing… and if it’s tough for us to find those, maybe we can reconsider whether our focusing on the wrong white people might be us focusing on the wrong group of people.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

      “I think we should, instead, not focus on the white people in this case but look at what the Black people are saying about it.”

      I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not.Report

  9. Jaybird says:

    Related:

    Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Jaybird says:

      Working as intended, isn’t it? I don’t even mean that as a burn. The whole point of CRT is that society is systematically biased against BIPXCs, who will never be able to succeed through their own efforts until all our institutions are torn down and remade in a fundamentally antiracist manner. It’s very explicitly not about individual empowerment. This is how we get those diversity training presentations with slides that say long-term planning is for white people.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Brandon Berg says:

        until all our institutions are torn down and remade in a fundamentally antiracist manner

        I know you’re quoting them, but do we/they even have a clue what this would mean in practice?Report