Loved your framing-especially this part at the end, "We shouldn’t be saddling people with our preconceptions, entering a conversation with the political equivalent of a facial recognition algorithm, trying desperately to match them to a preconceived archetype so we can decide whether or not to discard them. These are maps—let’s not confuse them with the terrain itself, especially when we’re surrounded by so much common ground."
This is truly thought-provoking, wise, and informative.
One slight critique I might offer is the characterization of "generational wealth" as being impacted by legacy systems of oppression. If, by that term, you mean per capita or per household or per worker wealth, then you might want to leave the word "generational" wealth out. If, by that term, you mean the accumulation of wealth over generations, then I would submit that until very recently (~the last 20 years) little to no wealth was transferred from one generation to the next. My family has been in the northeast since the 1630s one one side and the 1920s on the other. One side was certainly more well-off than the other, but neither parent started with any accumulated wealth from their parents. They bought a house for $12k in 1965 and did not start saving for retirement outside of pension until around 50 years of age. They were typical. The vast majority of wealth is generated by the people who hold it, not passed down. As you emphasize, it is the "human and social capital required to grow and retain wealth," that differs among groups of people. Efforts to close wealth gaps must therefore focus on human and social capital.
Thank you. I find so many of my thoughts in your article, but now expressed coherently. I've re-read and re-read, to integrate and find ways of expressing my thoughts in discussions with some of my 'woke with the crowd' friends. I wish I'd known the 'parable of the pedestrian' the other day.
As I write this I’m the heart of the Castro in San Francisco and I am watching “Gay Community” diffuse and disappear. The gay political system which emerged in the 50’s and 60’s has dismantled gay oppression, some heterosexisms, and simultaneously remove well-preserved distinctions and culture which helped with geoupnand individual survival in a previously hostile world. “Camp”, Bar Culture, intricate varieties of sexual “outlawism” are have become somewhat nostalgic or quaint, even collectible perhaps - “Mineshaft” tee-shirts are au courant with certain straight teenage boys and girls. Systemic heterosexism still exists but it’s dissipating like covid, slowly and with flare-ups in strange places.
Wokism to me is the hopeless struggle to maintain racist distinctions which helped with survival in a previously hostile world. Today, as wokeness morphs black culture into a tool to combat “white fragility” (the ultimate co-opt) instead of aiding cultural and individual flourishing, with every whine of “cultural appropriation” everyone knows original systems of oppression are over, except for bizarre flare-ups in odd places. BLM itself will be a collectible NFT perhaps, and au-courant teenagers of all backgrounds will Rap on Chinese-owned Tik-Tok. The game is over.
If we don’t look at why poor are getting poorer and rich richer, we’re not looking at the real problem.
Thank you. Very helpful. Nuanced. And I agree completely. The slogans had their uses, now let's move on to doing some real work to deal with the divide.
Why did school integration basically fail? I will address one example from personal experience. In 1968, The Claremont Colleges had a Upward Bound Program for high school students who, for one reason or another, were not prepared to attend college and thus needed some additional formal help to overcome whatever deficits they had. While there were disadvantaged Whites and Orientals (before they became Asians), over 90% were either Black or Mex Am.
Within a couple days, it was obvious that the Blacks only associated with Blacks and Mex Am only associated with each other, and animosity between the two groups was escalating. The director had been hired due to his ethnicity and was clueless, but in desperation to avoid physical violence, he did allow one staff member to run the program. His change was to reassign each student to new groups of mixed race and then to confront the groups with challenges which they had to overcome. Within a day, the students formed friendships due to the forced cooperation to achieve a common goal and the program continued to have mixed groups solve problems to provide a context for the friendships to continue. The self-imposed segregation vanished and the program was recognized as the most academic West of the Mississippi.
In other places, there was often a total laissez faire approach or students were indoctrinated into the special grievances of their own group.
The other Great Society disaster was the govt 's resort to racial quotas where merit was classified as racist and the schools and employers had to satisfy strict quotas. That was a horrible injustice to the minorities as it relegated them to an inferior education and faux evaluations so that the schools and employers could process the right number of minorities.
The switch to strict quotas had two motives: (1) The Dems wanted a national patronage system sooner rather than later, and quotas which were divorced from merit were faster, (2) people who improved their skills and advanced via merit had a harder and longer path, but once they did succeed, they would be self-reliant and not part of a solid Dem voting block. Pelosi's Identity Politics and the Wokers are heirs to this polarizing philosophy.
For their part, the GOP are still stuck the White is Right philosophy.
>>> Let’s be serious though: what exactly do we mean by “woke”? How about “a set of political ideals centered around social justice and allyship with disadvantaged groups”?
I think this is OSTENSIBLY the concept of "woke." I believe a better definition is that the woke are "blacks and other minorities, and their white enablers, who seek political, economic, and cultural POWER." That's why there's such an emphasis on POWER, from top to bottom. What seems to have gone unnoticed is that there are less than zero institutions that aren't already owned by the woke. So the woke ARE the POWER to be reckoned with, right? In today’s culture, the people ACTUALLY disadvantaged are white males, right?
>>> “Persistent disparities between black and white Americans are caused by systems of oppression not solely found in history books, but acutely present today as well.”
See, here's the problem with that. If one is woke, and views everything revolves around POWER then, yeah, everybody can be reduced to oppressed and oppressors. That's truly ONE way to look at it and, clearly, the woke are the oppressors today. As far as "systems of oppression," I have two quibbles: One is that implies "systemic racism" which doesn't exist anymore. As far as racists currently oppressing black people, I don't think that can be denied. The problem I have in that sentence is the word "acutely" present today. You can always say I dunno what I'm talking about, because I'm white. But I can make rough estimate and take the actions of the racists and balance them out against affirmative action. ICBW, but I'm guessing they are closer to balancing each other (tho still unbalanced) to say that "acutely" present doesn't take into account the benefits derived from affirmative action, right?
Now, the carrot, Sir:
>>> Imagine instead you think the story is more tragic than that—one far too complicated to be remedied by political intervention.
I agree. And I don't hafta imagine, because I've read a little of Thomas Sowell. From what he's "said," political intervention has CAUSED a lotta the problems we see today, right?
>>> Sure, we can just give people stuff and watch disparity disappear, only to have the chasm return a decade or so later because the human and social capital required to retain and grow wealth are things we cannot endow. This isn’t a criticism of black people in particular.
No, I agree again. I'd say the same thing would happen if we just gave poor white people stuff.
>>> They didn’t exactly roll out a welcome mat for Ruby Bridges. Children know when they’re not wanted and they find ways to cope.
The initial efforts at integration didn't work out as planned, nor later efforts, AFAIK. It's a difficult proposition, because blacks are generally gonna be a minority in most integrated schools. Does that make them "outsiders?” It depends on the attitudes all the kids decide to take.
>>> On top of that we can layer a welfare system that unwittingly incentivized single parenthood by economically penalizing families with live-in fathers. ... Regardless, it wasn’t necessary for this financial aid to serve as a substitute for a breadwinner; these systems could have been designed as supplements instead.
I recall reading that LBJ promoted the welfare system as being necessary so blacks wouldn't come to DEPEND on the government for their money. Funny that. And nowadays You get all kinds-a crazy people talking about UBI. Yeah, when AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Robotics take over, we'll need UBI. But until then? We know what that will result in, right?
>>> (see James Forman, Jr.’s Locking Up Our Own).
I bought the book, but can't say if/when I'll get a chance to read it.
>>> Tragically, what comes to replace poor law enforcement policy is far worse.
Yeah, agree again. Like I've "said" before, what people need is MORE law enforcement, done by increasing the number of WOMEN in the forces. VASTLY more women. For one thing, if You wanna change the attitude of police forces, You'll need to clean house in a lotta cases. Besides that, there was a study. I don't always take much interest in studies, but this one just stands to reason. Women police officers were less likely to escalate a conflict into a physical altercation. And when they did, it was less likely to be lethal.
Doesn't that accomplish what the woke (by any name) want?
At the same, I think it bears looking at the Reality of the situation: You ask liberals how many unarmed black men were killed in a year, they'd say 1,000. Some up to 10,000. I've seen various numbers, by different people. The actual numbers are less than two dozen (24) a year. So BLM is working to get peoples cash based on a fantasy, right?
As always, ICBW.
At any rate, You can see I agree a lot more than I disagree. I still haven't read the rest of the essay a third time, but suspect my views would be similar. I'll disagree with some things, but agree on other things. Lemme know if You want them, M. Knight-Laurie.
And TYTY again for writing such a thought provoking essay. And, of course, to FBT for publishing it.
Loved your framing-especially this part at the end, "We shouldn’t be saddling people with our preconceptions, entering a conversation with the political equivalent of a facial recognition algorithm, trying desperately to match them to a preconceived archetype so we can decide whether or not to discard them. These are maps—let’s not confuse them with the terrain itself, especially when we’re surrounded by so much common ground."
Beautifully written!
This is truly thought-provoking, wise, and informative.
One slight critique I might offer is the characterization of "generational wealth" as being impacted by legacy systems of oppression. If, by that term, you mean per capita or per household or per worker wealth, then you might want to leave the word "generational" wealth out. If, by that term, you mean the accumulation of wealth over generations, then I would submit that until very recently (~the last 20 years) little to no wealth was transferred from one generation to the next. My family has been in the northeast since the 1630s one one side and the 1920s on the other. One side was certainly more well-off than the other, but neither parent started with any accumulated wealth from their parents. They bought a house for $12k in 1965 and did not start saving for retirement outside of pension until around 50 years of age. They were typical. The vast majority of wealth is generated by the people who hold it, not passed down. As you emphasize, it is the "human and social capital required to grow and retain wealth," that differs among groups of people. Efforts to close wealth gaps must therefore focus on human and social capital.
Thank you. I find so many of my thoughts in your article, but now expressed coherently. I've re-read and re-read, to integrate and find ways of expressing my thoughts in discussions with some of my 'woke with the crowd' friends. I wish I'd known the 'parable of the pedestrian' the other day.
As I write this I’m the heart of the Castro in San Francisco and I am watching “Gay Community” diffuse and disappear. The gay political system which emerged in the 50’s and 60’s has dismantled gay oppression, some heterosexisms, and simultaneously remove well-preserved distinctions and culture which helped with geoupnand individual survival in a previously hostile world. “Camp”, Bar Culture, intricate varieties of sexual “outlawism” are have become somewhat nostalgic or quaint, even collectible perhaps - “Mineshaft” tee-shirts are au courant with certain straight teenage boys and girls. Systemic heterosexism still exists but it’s dissipating like covid, slowly and with flare-ups in strange places.
Wokism to me is the hopeless struggle to maintain racist distinctions which helped with survival in a previously hostile world. Today, as wokeness morphs black culture into a tool to combat “white fragility” (the ultimate co-opt) instead of aiding cultural and individual flourishing, with every whine of “cultural appropriation” everyone knows original systems of oppression are over, except for bizarre flare-ups in odd places. BLM itself will be a collectible NFT perhaps, and au-courant teenagers of all backgrounds will Rap on Chinese-owned Tik-Tok. The game is over.
If we don’t look at why poor are getting poorer and rich richer, we’re not looking at the real problem.
Thank you. Very helpful. Nuanced. And I agree completely. The slogans had their uses, now let's move on to doing some real work to deal with the divide.
Nuanced. TYTY. Don't quite agree, but that's a long story.
Substantial, reasoned food for thought here. I've been needing a new way of looking at the issue. Thanks.
Solid piece
Why did school integration basically fail? I will address one example from personal experience. In 1968, The Claremont Colleges had a Upward Bound Program for high school students who, for one reason or another, were not prepared to attend college and thus needed some additional formal help to overcome whatever deficits they had. While there were disadvantaged Whites and Orientals (before they became Asians), over 90% were either Black or Mex Am.
Within a couple days, it was obvious that the Blacks only associated with Blacks and Mex Am only associated with each other, and animosity between the two groups was escalating. The director had been hired due to his ethnicity and was clueless, but in desperation to avoid physical violence, he did allow one staff member to run the program. His change was to reassign each student to new groups of mixed race and then to confront the groups with challenges which they had to overcome. Within a day, the students formed friendships due to the forced cooperation to achieve a common goal and the program continued to have mixed groups solve problems to provide a context for the friendships to continue. The self-imposed segregation vanished and the program was recognized as the most academic West of the Mississippi.
In other places, there was often a total laissez faire approach or students were indoctrinated into the special grievances of their own group.
The other Great Society disaster was the govt 's resort to racial quotas where merit was classified as racist and the schools and employers had to satisfy strict quotas. That was a horrible injustice to the minorities as it relegated them to an inferior education and faux evaluations so that the schools and employers could process the right number of minorities.
The switch to strict quotas had two motives: (1) The Dems wanted a national patronage system sooner rather than later, and quotas which were divorced from merit were faster, (2) people who improved their skills and advanced via merit had a harder and longer path, but once they did succeed, they would be self-reliant and not part of a solid Dem voting block. Pelosi's Identity Politics and the Wokers are heirs to this polarizing philosophy.
For their part, the GOP are still stuck the White is Right philosophy.
<All CAPS are ITALICS.>
First the stick, M. Knight-Laurie:
<Your quote prefaced by ">>>" Sir.>
>>> Let’s be serious though: what exactly do we mean by “woke”? How about “a set of political ideals centered around social justice and allyship with disadvantaged groups”?
I think this is OSTENSIBLY the concept of "woke." I believe a better definition is that the woke are "blacks and other minorities, and their white enablers, who seek political, economic, and cultural POWER." That's why there's such an emphasis on POWER, from top to bottom. What seems to have gone unnoticed is that there are less than zero institutions that aren't already owned by the woke. So the woke ARE the POWER to be reckoned with, right? In today’s culture, the people ACTUALLY disadvantaged are white males, right?
>>> “Persistent disparities between black and white Americans are caused by systems of oppression not solely found in history books, but acutely present today as well.”
See, here's the problem with that. If one is woke, and views everything revolves around POWER then, yeah, everybody can be reduced to oppressed and oppressors. That's truly ONE way to look at it and, clearly, the woke are the oppressors today. As far as "systems of oppression," I have two quibbles: One is that implies "systemic racism" which doesn't exist anymore. As far as racists currently oppressing black people, I don't think that can be denied. The problem I have in that sentence is the word "acutely" present today. You can always say I dunno what I'm talking about, because I'm white. But I can make rough estimate and take the actions of the racists and balance them out against affirmative action. ICBW, but I'm guessing they are closer to balancing each other (tho still unbalanced) to say that "acutely" present doesn't take into account the benefits derived from affirmative action, right?
Now, the carrot, Sir:
>>> Imagine instead you think the story is more tragic than that—one far too complicated to be remedied by political intervention.
I agree. And I don't hafta imagine, because I've read a little of Thomas Sowell. From what he's "said," political intervention has CAUSED a lotta the problems we see today, right?
>>> Sure, we can just give people stuff and watch disparity disappear, only to have the chasm return a decade or so later because the human and social capital required to retain and grow wealth are things we cannot endow. This isn’t a criticism of black people in particular.
No, I agree again. I'd say the same thing would happen if we just gave poor white people stuff.
>>> They didn’t exactly roll out a welcome mat for Ruby Bridges. Children know when they’re not wanted and they find ways to cope.
The initial efforts at integration didn't work out as planned, nor later efforts, AFAIK. It's a difficult proposition, because blacks are generally gonna be a minority in most integrated schools. Does that make them "outsiders?” It depends on the attitudes all the kids decide to take.
>>> On top of that we can layer a welfare system that unwittingly incentivized single parenthood by economically penalizing families with live-in fathers. ... Regardless, it wasn’t necessary for this financial aid to serve as a substitute for a breadwinner; these systems could have been designed as supplements instead.
I recall reading that LBJ promoted the welfare system as being necessary so blacks wouldn't come to DEPEND on the government for their money. Funny that. And nowadays You get all kinds-a crazy people talking about UBI. Yeah, when AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Robotics take over, we'll need UBI. But until then? We know what that will result in, right?
>>> (see James Forman, Jr.’s Locking Up Our Own).
I bought the book, but can't say if/when I'll get a chance to read it.
>>> Tragically, what comes to replace poor law enforcement policy is far worse.
Yeah, agree again. Like I've "said" before, what people need is MORE law enforcement, done by increasing the number of WOMEN in the forces. VASTLY more women. For one thing, if You wanna change the attitude of police forces, You'll need to clean house in a lotta cases. Besides that, there was a study. I don't always take much interest in studies, but this one just stands to reason. Women police officers were less likely to escalate a conflict into a physical altercation. And when they did, it was less likely to be lethal.
Doesn't that accomplish what the woke (by any name) want?
At the same, I think it bears looking at the Reality of the situation: You ask liberals how many unarmed black men were killed in a year, they'd say 1,000. Some up to 10,000. I've seen various numbers, by different people. The actual numbers are less than two dozen (24) a year. So BLM is working to get peoples cash based on a fantasy, right?
As always, ICBW.
At any rate, You can see I agree a lot more than I disagree. I still haven't read the rest of the essay a third time, but suspect my views would be similar. I'll disagree with some things, but agree on other things. Lemme know if You want them, M. Knight-Laurie.
And TYTY again for writing such a thought provoking essay. And, of course, to FBT for publishing it.