Racism in America and reparations

[ionelv]

Going back to 1967/68, one can find the recommendations of the Kerner Commission (prompted by the Summer 1967 riots) as a sensible way to move forward (e.g. new jobs and housing, desegregation). LBJ promptly ignored his own commission's recommendations and hardly much has changed in Congress in 50+ years (see the history of HR40 in Congress or the traction the discussion for reparations has received). 

A more interesting recent dynamic around CRT/woke/racism is John McWhorter calling out anti-racists as demagogues and inner-focused and as damaging as racists and proposing instead of a woke culture a simple activist program (e.g.  end the war on drugs, free contraception, teach phonics, promote vocational training). In one of his recent interviews, he mentioned Randall Robinson's The Debt (chapters: intro, restitution). I must confess that The Debt (at least the two free chapters I found) is very engaging and compelling. Here is what I wrote in response to someone posting a blurb about McWhorter's most recent book "Woke Racism" and a short NPR interview:

I disagree with some of his diagnosis (that somehow woke/antiracism is "polluting" the race conversation or that is as harmful as racism itself, to use his own words) and some of his prescriptions (which I largely agree with, see list further below), but McWhorter does make some very good points (even if he overshoots the mark at times).

The NPR article is very superficial however and provides little beyond sound bites and no opposing view at all (e.g. the whole idea that some variant of CRT is "being taught in a lot of schools" and the woke cabal are denying it en gros, himself easily glossing over what "a lot of" really means, how bad is it or if it is a big enough issue to even matter beyond obvious electoral GOP divide-and-conquer stratagems for the suburban whites who fear their progeniture might get all confused about what it means to be born white in USA and start hating themselves when taught CRT topics such as the 200+ years of ongoing systemic racism or about the 1921 Tulsa "riots" or about the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010).

I learned more about his ideas from wikipedia and from a 2018 debate he had with Nikhil Singh on the topic "Has Anti-Racism Become as Harmful as Racism?". The summary of McWhorter's argument (as far as I understood it from my limited reading about his arguments and listening to him), is:

1. A lot of what we attribute to racist behavior (e.g. white cops killing blacks disproportionately) is simply attributable to poverty and its socio-economic consequences (e.g. poorer people will be more likely to commit crimes and end up in prison deservedly so regardless of the historical context). Skip to minute 17:00 of the Singh debate to hear his opening remarks that touches on this with actual data.

2. [Anti-racist/woke] intelligentsia needs to stop talking about racism and building a self-serving religion around opposing it (ONLY or MAINLY with words) and needs to stop being condescending to African Americans (by promoting victimhood), should not even try to prevent racists from speaking (so they out themselves so to speak, regardless of the downsides) and do something more immediately palpable about racism, specifically fight for and spend political capital to
* end the war on drugs,
* make contraception accessible and virtually free for poor women,
* teach phonics to the poor in schools and
* promote vocational training as an acceptable alternative to a college education.

Skip to minute 1:21:20 of the Singh debate to hear him enumerate these prescriptions.

Here is the full debate.

Comments

[ionelv.livejournal.com]

Finally, a good article on anti-anti-wokess: https://grossman.arcdigital.media/p/no-america-is-not-experiencing-a
Also a counter-view: https://cathy.arcdigital.media/p/the-woke-revolution-and-the-threat
In the counter-view, one of the commenters mentioned an "anti-passing" crusade, and I had no idea what it was referring to. Apparently, it has to do with a specific campaign in South Africa's anti-apartheid movement that called for blacks to leave home their passes and get arrested for not carrying them: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anti-pass-campaigns-1960