Glenn asks, " As much as I want a future where our collective racial history won’t weigh so heavily on our self-understanding, I wouldn’t want a future in which we’re completely divorced from that history and the traditions it has birthed. Can we really keep those traditions alive in the private sphere without feeling their effects, however subtly, in the public sphere?"
The answer is transcendently simple: of course we can't; nor should we. We cannot separate & segregate our understanding of the world. We can only try to not allow our natural predilections, our inherent preferences, our likes and biases to significantly & unethically influence our decision making when it comes to hiring, firing, promoting, critiquing, electing, and recommending the Other.
I, as a for instance, have a special fondness for red-headed women. As a category I find myself more naturally attracted to them. In fact, I'm married to one of them. I have, as they say, 'history & traditions' with red-haired women and I absolutely plan on keeping those traditions gloriously alive in the private sphere as much as I can.
And yes, at the same time, I feel their effects even in the public sphere.
The difference is, I'm well aware of my built-in bias in that regard and I make a special effort to NOT allow that bias to dictate my decision-making. (In any way, that counts). I may favor the red-head girl's checkout line at the grocery store (because I think, quite naturally, that she's cute)....I may select a Nicole Kidman film more often than not...but when it comes to hiring, firing, promoting, or praising I'm particularly careful to separate my evaluation of a performance or a candidate from my natural leanings towards redheads. I would hope & expect that Glenn & John do the same, re: Blackness.
Glenn suggests that, "we would have to keep race in the public sphere in order to keep it out of the public sphere." But this is simply not true. In order to keep public universities from being racially biased in admissions, you don't need to track race, you simply need to stop counting it at all. Remove it from the admissions forms the same way we've removed any mention of Irish Ancestry or whether one is a Star Trek Fan. Wait...you mean Irish Ancestry & Fan Affiliation has NEVER been a box checked on admissions forms? Fancy that?!
Glenn tells us, "The question is whether or not black people are going to have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice." The answer is self-evident. Of course they will...the same way white people, brown people, red & yellow people all have an opportunity to elect a representative of THEIR choice. Whether that opportunity produces any particular victorious candidate is an entirely different question that only a total vote count answers ... but everyone who votes has that opportunity.
Glenn's actual concern is much narrower, though, as he additionally asks, "(whether) the race of the elected official matches the race of the person casting the ballot." The answer should be: who cares? I certainly don't. I've never cared whether the color, the sex, the age, the generation, the height, or the weight of the elected official matches mine in any way at all. Why should I? When we elect a representative we want them to represent OUR INTERESTS not our skin color or genital configuration. And to assume that everyone who shares a demographic marker ALSO SHARES my interests is both insane and racist/sexist. Of course they don't. I'm surprised, actually, that Glenn would even ask that question.
Mr. Hughes goes on to tell us, "I think in general in life, you should think about your privileges. You should think critically about them." But what the heck is privilege anyway?
We might say that whatever we have which is unearned is privilege, I suppose. Certainly skin color is an unearned quality. But so is height. So is beauty. So is grace. So is everything contained in the genetic luggage handed us by our parents at conception. And so is the life we walk into at birth: our parents' economic condition, our house, our brothers & sisters, the neighborhood, the church, the schools, our families, the music we listen to. None of these things WE earned; rather they were all given or made available to us. I suppose, per Mr. Hughes, we should think critically about all of that. But .... equally we might think critically about our burdens, the various crosses we all carry (that we did not earn or somehow deserve)...and then net out the good & bad and see where we end-up.
But honestly, doesn't that sounds like an immense waste of time & effort to arrive only where we began, feeling both bitter and pleased (I don't have that...but I do have this?!....grateful and envious?).
Perhaps we'd be better off if we simply made an effort to understand that every single one of us has MORE than someone else....AND every single one of us has LESS than someone different. As children we tend to celebrate the one (Yay! I'm faster, taller, prettier, stronger....) and bemoan the other (Booo! I'm slower, fatter, uglier weaker....). But as adults, isn't it time to put these childish things away?
The question is not difference / advantage. The question is: what are you going to do with what you have, whatever that is.
John asks, "Suppose a white person says, “I like my people.” The answer is 'So what?' Who cares? Why does it matter? We can choose as friends anyone we wish. That can look anyway they like. Thank God the State has nothing to say about any that. Thank God we don't have DIE Friendship Mandates.....or Demographic Diversity Targets for Dating.
The problem that we're finally beginning to recognize: neither should we have them for anything else....as Mr. Hughes, I believe, understands.
Possibly in less word salad I am not claiming that Coleman Hughes does this, but often "colorblind" is code for "I will maintain all of my stupid assumptions about race but they will not be in the foreground". Unlike on Twitter/X the group of people I follow on LinkedIn is actually integrated because I am making efforts for it to be that way. Because I was willing to consider being Black as a positive about someone rather than a reason to doubt that their talent and effort got them where they are I am able to pursue colorblind goals such as taking seriously what they have to say on nonracial topics. I had a small triumph recently when a Black creator considered me harmless enough to invite me to follow her AI startup. (isoai.co--shameless plug)
The question which comes to mind: why should any of us care that the group of people you follow on LinkedIn is integrated? That's really rather meaningless isn't it?
(My own list of 100 Best Movies is also integrated....but that factoid has nothing to do with why they're on the list)
And why would you want to consider anyone's race as either positive or negative? It's just a color, isn't it?
Can you equally say that the group you follow is size-integrated? Do you have fat and thin people in that group? Beautiful & ugly people? And in order to answer any of these questions, don't you also have to be asking them to specify their demographics or send in a picture? Doesn't that seem strange and intrusive to you...and entirely irrelevant to the question: do they have something worthwhile to say?
I’m laughing thinking about Conservatives telling us to be colorblind while their dear leader DJT yells about brown immigrants taking Black jobs. This in the setting of a felon and sexual assaulter working to keep Kamala Harris from attaining her Black job as President.
He was talking about all the Scandinavians coming across the border (snark). The Scandinavians are coming across the border to take Black jobs. A Black job is any job held by a Black worker.
But my point is you are putting words in his mouth that he did not say…. And the fact is their are all races and nationalities crossing the border illegally
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
The importation of African blacks ("AAs") to the USA was evil. The political manipulation of the freed AAs by the racist Democrat Party continued the evil. The manipulation of AA political power to instantly grant black majority rule in Africa was another evil. The flow of 'evil' found its way back into the US and jaundiced the body politic. Now the evil is vested in NATO (US manufactured arms) in Ukraine. Jo shizzle my nizzle.
My prescription to ready the ship of state. (1) Continue to follow the John Rawls philosophies, and never go beyond taxation as the remedy. (2) Continue to help those "who through no fault of their own (operative words)" fall through the cracks. (3) All citizens are equal and DEI philosphy is illegal. (4) With the Constitution in mind, all judges (SCOTUS excluded) should be obliged to face an independent and transparent judicial review process tri-annually. (5). Civil servants or ostensibly deemed civil servants, found to be corrupt or exgaged in 'Party politics' should face serious prison time.
I remain VERY cranky with "Scenes of Subjection" and reserve the right not to believe anything in these last two chapters until Manisha Sinha has signed off on it. But I will throw this idea out there because I never previously thought about it. The right to be an autonomous individual can mean being the autonomous individual at the very beginning of liberal philosophy who has no history and has to be at least encouraged to sign a contract written by people who DO have history as soon as possible in order not to be a wild creature completely outside society, even if one's enlightened self-interest would tell one not to sign the contract. It is all well and good not to use race as a proxy for disadvantage but the disadvantages we are trying to remedy as citizens of a particular place didn't arise in a historical vacuum. A colorblind society might have to talk in terms of social rights like housing and education that the United States as a whole has no tradition of.
Coleman lost me right at the start. His opening statement smacks of racism. Is some white guy born in the mountains of Appalachia 'privileged'? No one is a statistic. Everyone in America can easily find a way up, and can even more easily find a way down.
To presume that all Withe people are generally advantaged, and that all black people are generally disadvantaged is nothing less than moronic. And racist as all get-out.
In 2024, the concept of colorblindness as proposed by Coleman Hughes and raceless antiracism as suggested by Sheena Michele Mason are dead on arrival. The current open bias of society is the barrier. When a door fell off a Boeing aircraft, the first cry from Conservatives was DEI. Attempts to create a colorblind or raceless society will be met with deaf ears because there is no trust that the process will not be biased. In other words, those who craft the bill will be found in the crowd yelling DEI at the drop of a hat.
If you are hired because you are black rather than because you are qualified for the job, and that is a widespread policy, and bad things begin to happen, why should the correlation not be pointed out? This is a 40+ year old problem. It was obvious when I joined the professional workforce that long ago. It is a cancer on everyone.
Please continue to whine about DEI every time something goes wrong in the workplace, assembly line, etc. Make it always be DEI when a ship hits a bridge. Ignore the fact that Blacks encounter tons of unqualified people who have low levels of melanin. If Trump is the top of the line, Blacks can feel pretty confident.
Your monthly Q&A would be much more worthwhile if Mr. Hughes were to replace McWhorter. JMcW no longer has any credibility as a thoughtful and intelligent conversation partner, while Mr. Hughes does.
Why does John have no credibility? Because of his public wish on this program that someone would kill Trump… just a couple weeks before Trump got shot; because of his belief that it is ok to weaponize the judicial system to prevent Trump from winning; because John’s obvious recent intellectual dishonesty when approaching subjects in critique of the left politically. He has put on soft pillow gloves as of late because he knows that speaking the truth against the political left would help the republicans win and that is something he can’t stand because he thinks most republicans and the followers are simplistic morons. Just to name a few reasons
Glenn asks, " As much as I want a future where our collective racial history won’t weigh so heavily on our self-understanding, I wouldn’t want a future in which we’re completely divorced from that history and the traditions it has birthed. Can we really keep those traditions alive in the private sphere without feeling their effects, however subtly, in the public sphere?"
The answer is transcendently simple: of course we can't; nor should we. We cannot separate & segregate our understanding of the world. We can only try to not allow our natural predilections, our inherent preferences, our likes and biases to significantly & unethically influence our decision making when it comes to hiring, firing, promoting, critiquing, electing, and recommending the Other.
I, as a for instance, have a special fondness for red-headed women. As a category I find myself more naturally attracted to them. In fact, I'm married to one of them. I have, as they say, 'history & traditions' with red-haired women and I absolutely plan on keeping those traditions gloriously alive in the private sphere as much as I can.
And yes, at the same time, I feel their effects even in the public sphere.
The difference is, I'm well aware of my built-in bias in that regard and I make a special effort to NOT allow that bias to dictate my decision-making. (In any way, that counts). I may favor the red-head girl's checkout line at the grocery store (because I think, quite naturally, that she's cute)....I may select a Nicole Kidman film more often than not...but when it comes to hiring, firing, promoting, or praising I'm particularly careful to separate my evaluation of a performance or a candidate from my natural leanings towards redheads. I would hope & expect that Glenn & John do the same, re: Blackness.
Glenn suggests that, "we would have to keep race in the public sphere in order to keep it out of the public sphere." But this is simply not true. In order to keep public universities from being racially biased in admissions, you don't need to track race, you simply need to stop counting it at all. Remove it from the admissions forms the same way we've removed any mention of Irish Ancestry or whether one is a Star Trek Fan. Wait...you mean Irish Ancestry & Fan Affiliation has NEVER been a box checked on admissions forms? Fancy that?!
Glenn tells us, "The question is whether or not black people are going to have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice." The answer is self-evident. Of course they will...the same way white people, brown people, red & yellow people all have an opportunity to elect a representative of THEIR choice. Whether that opportunity produces any particular victorious candidate is an entirely different question that only a total vote count answers ... but everyone who votes has that opportunity.
Glenn's actual concern is much narrower, though, as he additionally asks, "(whether) the race of the elected official matches the race of the person casting the ballot." The answer should be: who cares? I certainly don't. I've never cared whether the color, the sex, the age, the generation, the height, or the weight of the elected official matches mine in any way at all. Why should I? When we elect a representative we want them to represent OUR INTERESTS not our skin color or genital configuration. And to assume that everyone who shares a demographic marker ALSO SHARES my interests is both insane and racist/sexist. Of course they don't. I'm surprised, actually, that Glenn would even ask that question.
Mr. Hughes goes on to tell us, "I think in general in life, you should think about your privileges. You should think critically about them." But what the heck is privilege anyway?
We might say that whatever we have which is unearned is privilege, I suppose. Certainly skin color is an unearned quality. But so is height. So is beauty. So is grace. So is everything contained in the genetic luggage handed us by our parents at conception. And so is the life we walk into at birth: our parents' economic condition, our house, our brothers & sisters, the neighborhood, the church, the schools, our families, the music we listen to. None of these things WE earned; rather they were all given or made available to us. I suppose, per Mr. Hughes, we should think critically about all of that. But .... equally we might think critically about our burdens, the various crosses we all carry (that we did not earn or somehow deserve)...and then net out the good & bad and see where we end-up.
But honestly, doesn't that sounds like an immense waste of time & effort to arrive only where we began, feeling both bitter and pleased (I don't have that...but I do have this?!....grateful and envious?).
Perhaps we'd be better off if we simply made an effort to understand that every single one of us has MORE than someone else....AND every single one of us has LESS than someone different. As children we tend to celebrate the one (Yay! I'm faster, taller, prettier, stronger....) and bemoan the other (Booo! I'm slower, fatter, uglier weaker....). But as adults, isn't it time to put these childish things away?
The question is not difference / advantage. The question is: what are you going to do with what you have, whatever that is.
John asks, "Suppose a white person says, “I like my people.” The answer is 'So what?' Who cares? Why does it matter? We can choose as friends anyone we wish. That can look anyway they like. Thank God the State has nothing to say about any that. Thank God we don't have DIE Friendship Mandates.....or Demographic Diversity Targets for Dating.
The problem that we're finally beginning to recognize: neither should we have them for anything else....as Mr. Hughes, I believe, understands.
Possibly in less word salad I am not claiming that Coleman Hughes does this, but often "colorblind" is code for "I will maintain all of my stupid assumptions about race but they will not be in the foreground". Unlike on Twitter/X the group of people I follow on LinkedIn is actually integrated because I am making efforts for it to be that way. Because I was willing to consider being Black as a positive about someone rather than a reason to doubt that their talent and effort got them where they are I am able to pursue colorblind goals such as taking seriously what they have to say on nonracial topics. I had a small triumph recently when a Black creator considered me harmless enough to invite me to follow her AI startup. (isoai.co--shameless plug)
The question which comes to mind: why should any of us care that the group of people you follow on LinkedIn is integrated? That's really rather meaningless isn't it?
(My own list of 100 Best Movies is also integrated....but that factoid has nothing to do with why they're on the list)
And why would you want to consider anyone's race as either positive or negative? It's just a color, isn't it?
Can you equally say that the group you follow is size-integrated? Do you have fat and thin people in that group? Beautiful & ugly people? And in order to answer any of these questions, don't you also have to be asking them to specify their demographics or send in a picture? Doesn't that seem strange and intrusive to you...and entirely irrelevant to the question: do they have something worthwhile to say?
I’m laughing thinking about Conservatives telling us to be colorblind while their dear leader DJT yells about brown immigrants taking Black jobs. This in the setting of a felon and sexual assaulter working to keep Kamala Harris from attaining her Black job as President.
https://youtube.com/shorts/yFtdSV80qds?feature=shared
Did he say “brown immigrants” or did he say and mean illegal immigrants? I haven’t watched
He was talking about all the Scandinavians coming across the border (snark). The Scandinavians are coming across the border to take Black jobs. A Black job is any job held by a Black worker.
But my point is you are putting words in his mouth that he did not say…. And the fact is their are all races and nationalities crossing the border illegally
C’mon man
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Donald J Trump.
The importation of African blacks ("AAs") to the USA was evil. The political manipulation of the freed AAs by the racist Democrat Party continued the evil. The manipulation of AA political power to instantly grant black majority rule in Africa was another evil. The flow of 'evil' found its way back into the US and jaundiced the body politic. Now the evil is vested in NATO (US manufactured arms) in Ukraine. Jo shizzle my nizzle.
My prescription to ready the ship of state. (1) Continue to follow the John Rawls philosophies, and never go beyond taxation as the remedy. (2) Continue to help those "who through no fault of their own (operative words)" fall through the cracks. (3) All citizens are equal and DEI philosphy is illegal. (4) With the Constitution in mind, all judges (SCOTUS excluded) should be obliged to face an independent and transparent judicial review process tri-annually. (5). Civil servants or ostensibly deemed civil servants, found to be corrupt or exgaged in 'Party politics' should face serious prison time.
I remain VERY cranky with "Scenes of Subjection" and reserve the right not to believe anything in these last two chapters until Manisha Sinha has signed off on it. But I will throw this idea out there because I never previously thought about it. The right to be an autonomous individual can mean being the autonomous individual at the very beginning of liberal philosophy who has no history and has to be at least encouraged to sign a contract written by people who DO have history as soon as possible in order not to be a wild creature completely outside society, even if one's enlightened self-interest would tell one not to sign the contract. It is all well and good not to use race as a proxy for disadvantage but the disadvantages we are trying to remedy as citizens of a particular place didn't arise in a historical vacuum. A colorblind society might have to talk in terms of social rights like housing and education that the United States as a whole has no tradition of.
Coleman lost me right at the start. His opening statement smacks of racism. Is some white guy born in the mountains of Appalachia 'privileged'? No one is a statistic. Everyone in America can easily find a way up, and can even more easily find a way down.
To presume that all Withe people are generally advantaged, and that all black people are generally disadvantaged is nothing less than moronic. And racist as all get-out.
While we're still blathering about privilege, we have neglected 2 of the greatest privileges. Looks and IQ.
While the IQ element can be solved with a simple medical procedure, that won the inventor, Dr. Antonio Moniz, the prestigious Nobel Prize.
I am concerned about the makeup of the future "Committee for Equal Democratic Aesthetics" being comprised of cranky old cat
ladies with an ax to grind.
The idea that the disfigurement department being run by this collaborative is scary.
Very true.
If you haven't already you should read Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron", which begins:
"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal
before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter
than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was
stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the
211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing
vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."
You can find the text here: https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron_djvu.txt
47 pounds of birdshot padlocked to his neck.
That was an absolute classic.
A DEI dream.
In 2024, the concept of colorblindness as proposed by Coleman Hughes and raceless antiracism as suggested by Sheena Michele Mason are dead on arrival. The current open bias of society is the barrier. When a door fell off a Boeing aircraft, the first cry from Conservatives was DEI. Attempts to create a colorblind or raceless society will be met with deaf ears because there is no trust that the process will not be biased. In other words, those who craft the bill will be found in the crowd yelling DEI at the drop of a hat.
If you are hired because you are black rather than because you are qualified for the job, and that is a widespread policy, and bad things begin to happen, why should the correlation not be pointed out? This is a 40+ year old problem. It was obvious when I joined the professional workforce that long ago. It is a cancer on everyone.
Please continue to whine about DEI every time something goes wrong in the workplace, assembly line, etc. Make it always be DEI when a ship hits a bridge. Ignore the fact that Blacks encounter tons of unqualified people who have low levels of melanin. If Trump is the top of the line, Blacks can feel pretty confident.
Enjoyed this discussion immensely.
I disagree with John frequently, but I appreciate his arguments as well thought and honestly spoken.
Your monthly Q&A would be much more worthwhile if Mr. Hughes were to replace McWhorter. JMcW no longer has any credibility as a thoughtful and intelligent conversation partner, while Mr. Hughes does.
Why?
Why does John have no credibility? Because of his public wish on this program that someone would kill Trump… just a couple weeks before Trump got shot; because of his belief that it is ok to weaponize the judicial system to prevent Trump from winning; because John’s obvious recent intellectual dishonesty when approaching subjects in critique of the left politically. He has put on soft pillow gloves as of late because he knows that speaking the truth against the political left would help the republicans win and that is something he can’t stand because he thinks most republicans and the followers are simplistic morons. Just to name a few reasons
Shhhh.
After the anointing of Harris, "The Useless", John's TDS will subside, and he will go back to his normal pontificating.