Thanks so much for sharing with your students! That was a huge motivation for me in writing this - that students should read as many different perspectives as possible. They can then consider all the arguments and make up their own mind.
Wanjiru- I would love to show you my previous class materials and receive feedback. You also seem like a great candidate to visit for a lecture or presentation. Please let me know if I could reach out to you directly to connect.
Fantastic piece, it was structured wonderfully which made for a good read. I don't really have much else to say because you essentially said it all. I've always thought that to achieve the strongest social cohesion which has the potential is increase equality starts at the individual level. Well rounded independently minded individuals make groups stronger, smarter, and much more effective at achieving goals that can benefit society and provide for more equality.
Thanks for reading! I agree with the link you're drawing between the individual level and society as a whole. Many people think focusing on the individual is selfish, that it means "do whatever you want and never mind anybody else" - but it's the opposite. It's forging healthy happy societies made up of healthy happy individuals. Some people think it is possible to create social cohesion by attacking individual liberty - they are wrong.
So glad this article came up in my feed. Thoughtful and clear. It will help me as I "debate" those negatively changing my local institutions of K-12 public ed and my "teachers' union." Thank you.
Thank you for this lucid piece, reminding us of the ideals of the United States. As a vet, I pledged to defend these ideals with my very life if necessary and I would gladly do so today. I think that all classical liberals need to stick together in this fight to defend Establishment values regardless of political party. This is a non-partisan fight for the core values of the country. Every experiment with collectivism that has even been tried on the planet has caused great harm to millions because concentrated power warps the human psyche in a way that is toxic and highly dysfunctional.
It requires maturity, wisdom, and much effort to knit together a fractious plurality of individuals into a cohesive whole whilst retaining individual liberty. But, when it works, it allows people to exercise agency and autonomy in a way that maximizes happiness for all.
Those who dream of top-down collectivism to achieve specific ends are impatient and wish to do an end-run around human failings—to coerce their ideals in a way that suffocates individual liberty. I understand this desire but it will never end well because humans who hold absolute power over a collective always jump the shark—almost without exception. I don't wish to live under tyrants who think it is their prerogative to decide what I may believe or say, what I may do and who I may associate with.
Thank you for this cogent reminder of our core values. Let freedom ring!
Hello Wanjiru. Good to see you on here. A clear and concise piece of writing, which should be essential reading for all students. Enjoy reading your tweets too.
Thomas Sowell doesn't own anything of significant value, like factories or financial institutions, to positively impact Black folks materially. Liberty and freedom don't mean anything if you're broke and powerless.
Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of resources for wealth and power. Europeans got the headstart with the genocide of the Indigenous, Black chattel slavery, colonization, and structural racism (apartheid & Jim Crow).
Consequently, massive generational wealth and power were mal-distributed to whites -- the power to dominate and abuse minority groups. According to PEW, it will take Blacks 250 years to catch up with whites, who are ten times wealthier than Blacks.
The Black pathologies are symptoms correlated to economics. White supremacist reasoning? Black chattel slavery and Jim Crow were reasoning for the Europeans. Lol!
Thanks for reading! That's a good question about the benefit or goal. There was never a goal of "wanting more black physicians" but a goal of ensuring that any black person who wants to be a physician, can. The idea of equal opportunities was never supposed to be a numbers game, but about ensuring there would be no barriers to progress based on race or sex (i.e. a situation where someone wishes to be a physician but can't because of her race/sex) Now it has become a numbers game of ensuring that the number of physicians reflects the proportion of black people in society (pretty much a quota system eg in London the goal is that police should be 50/50 men and women).
The key issue should not be proportionate numbers, but identifying barriers. Poverty is a key barrier, for example. Poor education, poor health, difficult family situation, etc. All the talk of "systemic racism" masks these very real barriers and that is a huge part of Williams's argument - that if we just say "the system is racist" we won't know what the barriers are, and if we can't identify the problems we can't fix them.
Thank you. As you know, the critical race theory lens has been officially adopted by the AMA. "The American Medical Association (AMA) today released an ambitious strategic plan to dismantle structural racism starting from within the organization, acknowledging that equity work requires recognition of past harms and critical examination of institutional roles upholding these structures." That's why "systemic racism" and "equity" are official policy and are not questioned. It is the same in the law schools. Probably other professional schools too.
This is not good for the fortunes of black people. This narrow lens prevents us from being free to explore the true causes of things as people of other races are able to. It is intended to "help" us, but this is not help. I like Jason Riley's book "Please Stop Helping Us". I think "critical theories" do shed light on some things, but it is never good to take a single theory as the explanation for everything, or the single lens through which everything must be understood.
Clear, incisive, beautiful writing.
Thanks so much for reading!
Agree with both commenters. Outstanding work.
Excellent! Am going to share with my students!
Thanks so much for sharing with your students! That was a huge motivation for me in writing this - that students should read as many different perspectives as possible. They can then consider all the arguments and make up their own mind.
Wanjiru- I would love to show you my previous class materials and receive feedback. You also seem like a great candidate to visit for a lecture or presentation. Please let me know if I could reach out to you directly to connect.
Fantastic piece, it was structured wonderfully which made for a good read. I don't really have much else to say because you essentially said it all. I've always thought that to achieve the strongest social cohesion which has the potential is increase equality starts at the individual level. Well rounded independently minded individuals make groups stronger, smarter, and much more effective at achieving goals that can benefit society and provide for more equality.
Thanks for reading! I agree with the link you're drawing between the individual level and society as a whole. Many people think focusing on the individual is selfish, that it means "do whatever you want and never mind anybody else" - but it's the opposite. It's forging healthy happy societies made up of healthy happy individuals. Some people think it is possible to create social cohesion by attacking individual liberty - they are wrong.
Brilliant article, thank you. Shared.
Thank you for reading, and for sharing!
Superbly written. Tour-de-force. Made my day.
Wonderful writing with sourced, insightful views! This is the birth of great debate - fine minds winning ideological wars with well-reasoned words.
Thanks for the great comment, and for reading!
So glad this article came up in my feed. Thoughtful and clear. It will help me as I "debate" those negatively changing my local institutions of K-12 public ed and my "teachers' union." Thank you.
Glad you liked it, and wish you the best in debating your colleagues
Thank you for this lucid piece, reminding us of the ideals of the United States. As a vet, I pledged to defend these ideals with my very life if necessary and I would gladly do so today. I think that all classical liberals need to stick together in this fight to defend Establishment values regardless of political party. This is a non-partisan fight for the core values of the country. Every experiment with collectivism that has even been tried on the planet has caused great harm to millions because concentrated power warps the human psyche in a way that is toxic and highly dysfunctional.
It requires maturity, wisdom, and much effort to knit together a fractious plurality of individuals into a cohesive whole whilst retaining individual liberty. But, when it works, it allows people to exercise agency and autonomy in a way that maximizes happiness for all.
Those who dream of top-down collectivism to achieve specific ends are impatient and wish to do an end-run around human failings—to coerce their ideals in a way that suffocates individual liberty. I understand this desire but it will never end well because humans who hold absolute power over a collective always jump the shark—almost without exception. I don't wish to live under tyrants who think it is their prerogative to decide what I may believe or say, what I may do and who I may associate with.
Thank you for this cogent reminder of our core values. Let freedom ring!
Hello Wanjiru. Good to see you on here. A clear and concise piece of writing, which should be essential reading for all students. Enjoy reading your tweets too.
Thomas Sowell doesn't own anything of significant value, like factories or financial institutions, to positively impact Black folks materially. Liberty and freedom don't mean anything if you're broke and powerless.
Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of resources for wealth and power. Europeans got the headstart with the genocide of the Indigenous, Black chattel slavery, colonization, and structural racism (apartheid & Jim Crow).
Consequently, massive generational wealth and power were mal-distributed to whites -- the power to dominate and abuse minority groups. According to PEW, it will take Blacks 250 years to catch up with whites, who are ten times wealthier than Blacks.
The Black pathologies are symptoms correlated to economics. White supremacist reasoning? Black chattel slavery and Jim Crow were reasoning for the Europeans. Lol!
Thanks for reading! That's a good question about the benefit or goal. There was never a goal of "wanting more black physicians" but a goal of ensuring that any black person who wants to be a physician, can. The idea of equal opportunities was never supposed to be a numbers game, but about ensuring there would be no barriers to progress based on race or sex (i.e. a situation where someone wishes to be a physician but can't because of her race/sex) Now it has become a numbers game of ensuring that the number of physicians reflects the proportion of black people in society (pretty much a quota system eg in London the goal is that police should be 50/50 men and women).
The key issue should not be proportionate numbers, but identifying barriers. Poverty is a key barrier, for example. Poor education, poor health, difficult family situation, etc. All the talk of "systemic racism" masks these very real barriers and that is a huge part of Williams's argument - that if we just say "the system is racist" we won't know what the barriers are, and if we can't identify the problems we can't fix them.
Thank you. As you know, the critical race theory lens has been officially adopted by the AMA. "The American Medical Association (AMA) today released an ambitious strategic plan to dismantle structural racism starting from within the organization, acknowledging that equity work requires recognition of past harms and critical examination of institutional roles upholding these structures." That's why "systemic racism" and "equity" are official policy and are not questioned. It is the same in the law schools. Probably other professional schools too.
This is not good for the fortunes of black people. This narrow lens prevents us from being free to explore the true causes of things as people of other races are able to. It is intended to "help" us, but this is not help. I like Jason Riley's book "Please Stop Helping Us". I think "critical theories" do shed light on some things, but it is never good to take a single theory as the explanation for everything, or the single lens through which everything must be understood.