Without denying any history of racism and ethnic hatreds both here and in every other country of the world, the current BIPOC construction, as Reihan Salam gently insinuates, is indeed a top down construct created by (mostly white) elites to manipulate and divide. Until we get beyond these superficial frontiers, many Americans will not reach their full potential. Most Latinos instinctively reject this nonsense, and anglos (whites) do not at present have the cred currency to move American cultural progress beyond a race-centric paradigm. That will have to come from the African American community, which is slowly figuring out that the faux flattery, open borders, opposition to school choice and milk bone handouts from the left are really the new plantation.
I never understand the PIPOC idea. I am your ally. Im the one who included everyone equally my whole life. My wife - one of the "POC" you court - adamantly rejects pretty much everything BIPOC. To be clear, she is "Black" and certainly not a POC. One thing i have learned from 25 years of marriage is not to assume anything based on color of skin.
Agreed. My wife is Hispanic, and she detests the "Latinx" descriptor (she calls people that use the work "pendejx", not exactly a complimentary term is border Spanish.
I'm a gringo, and some folks get wound up when I refer to our kids as "rednexican"
I think the blacks of self-imposed victimhood are now far too dependent on tax-payers and guilt-ridden elites to change their way of life. A handful will make it thanks to pity and quotas, fewer still based on their own merit. The great rest will be father-less, divorced, incarcerated or shot. Doubt me? Come to Philly and see for yourself.
Slavery as practiced in the USA was, and still is, a social institution requiring for its existence two components:
1. The self-styled "Democrat" political party
2. The slave caste, formerly known as "Negroes," and now known by a variety of designations.
It is not really about skin color, as Americans from India and Pakistan can attest; it is not really about African origin, as Americans from the Caribbean and modern Africa can attest; and it is no longer about involuntary servitude or farm labor in the cotton industry.
What it IS about is a special relationship by a special demographic with the "Democrats."
Did it end on Juneteenth?
Not at all.
Today's slaves can opt out of slavery. Examples of those who have include Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, and Ben Carson.
Those who haven't opted out include Karine Jean-Pierre, Colin Kaepernick, and Lloyd J. Austin. None of these three are known to have ever picked cotton.
In the antebellum South, "Democrats" proclaimed that they loved their slaves, and that the slaves loved them. They still claim the same thing, but they don't call them slaves any more.
I know what you're saying. Call me an optimist, but I think The AA community, with help from others who REALLY want the victims of this disfunction to do better and have great lives, can evolve out of this. It won't be easy, but neither was emancipation from slavery. Call it Emancipation number two.
Just call "progressivism" what it is....its a New Age religion for bored and / or lost (and mostly white) overfed suburbanites and the rich desperate to add some meaning and purpose to their lives. Like Scientology only far more toxic and hard to quit. Jim Jones and his utopia were just a pilot run for what the modern Democratic Party has become. No rational human being believes there are 33 genders or that men can get pregnant, and yet there are now literally millions of Americans who believe you should be destroyed financially, socially, and even physically harmed if you state the obvious.
The idea that people would be of one mind simply because they are non-white sounds a bit, well, racist. It implies a complete lack of agency among those peoples, requires total fealty to a specific set of beliefs, and leaves out that there are whites who share some of those beliefs. It's almost like human beings are individuals first, not members of an identity class. The left hates that idea. A person who can think independently is the single greatest threat to authoritarians who believe they know what's best for everyone else but seldom live by the rules they impose.
Beyond that, how many others upon hearing "people of color" noticed that it's about a half-step from 'colored people'? Actually, a black friend came up with that thought. By today's calculus, my Greek heritage makes me a person of color since I can pass for about a hundred different ethnicities but there is no special check block for the likes of me.
IMO, this discussion is insane, simply because the mass of BIPOC and white folk do NOT have the ability or the sensitivity....... or the disposition to logically sort the discussion.
The future must be entertain simple standards that most can recognize.
Standards and vocabulary and understanding must speak to the condition/perceptions of all people, regardless skin color and tribal identity. If this is impossible, as I suspect, then we should simply withdraw to our own corners of identity and prepare for eternal struggle. Logic, or even the pretense of logic, will have no role.
The street crowds are instructive examples --- why there is so little hope.
"And when that happens, new political alignments and forms of social organization may emerge that make the “BIPOC” coalition impossible to maintain. "
Ah, but there are people who have a solution to that. When "people of color" fall out of line politically, if they start expressing ideas that conflict with the interests of the race police, if they start voting in ways that the Democratic Party doesn't approve, those people of color will just be labeled white. Its already happening. Latinos and asians who don't vote for the Democratic Party are labeled "white adjacent." So, no problem with the BIPOC coalition. All the BIPOCS who aren't part of the coalition are not really BIPOCS, they are white supremacists.
Rationally, this may be a problem, but I don't think rationality is really a big concern these days. Race is following a similar path that sex/gender already has trail-blazed: transforming something that is objective into something subjective. The definition of race is becoming whatever is politically valuable to the race demagogues. If it is valuable to turn Tim Scott into an Irishman, so be it. Its not like the people who think men can turn into women by simply declaring it in their twitter bios are going to object to that -- that is, unless they don't like the political effects. And if the size of the BIPOC coalition is going to require letting in white people who "identify" as black, like Rachel Dolezal, then it shall be done. After all, isn't that what inclusion is all about?
It's fun to think of what this might look like at a later stage. Imagine that progressives stay the course, alienating more and more actual people of color who are pushed out of the movement and labeled "white". Imagine this continues to happen.
Imagine a future where the progressive BIPOC coalition is made up almost entirely of "ethnically white" liberals, while their main opposition is an ethnically diverse group of "politically white" ex-liberals. That would be great!
Great point. Most black conservatives are now labeled as "Uncle Tim's" trying to please the white man. Unfortunately, my daughter buys into this narrative as well as I found out when we were talking about Candice Owens . I was so mad and disappointed and then went on a rant about just saying that is by definition racist, as if a black person isnt capable of individual thought.
Reihan Salam makes the key point about top-down progressivism. It isn't organic and people are being forced to take positions that they don't agree with. That strategy might work for a religion because they promise you an afterlife. Not sure the same approach works in a secular setting as all they can promise you is a social benefit of membership in the collective. That isn't worth anything if you don't care about being in the collective.
The problem is the punishments imposed on those who stray from the collective. This is the ethos behind Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Chavez, Castro, the Khmer Rouge and on and on. It (rule through fear) works great, right up to the point where enough people lose their fear of the tyrant and then it goes it down fast — but unfortunately usually after wrecking countries and killing thousands or millions.
If it was that simple, they wouldn't need to promise people an afterlife. Obviously, whomever figured out the contours of how religion works understood that they needed to offer people something other than morality to get them to go along with it.
That doesn't mean that religions don't have strategies & motivations to market themselves. Especially if instances when the religion includes an evangelical aspect.
There are also personal benefits which are more concrete and individual that derive from being defined into a reified group identity. Plenty of people might not care so much about collective identity in the sense it’s promoted and might not define themselves that way first, but are going to go along because the personal benefits are enormous if you’re defined as part of a preferred group. All BIPOC really means is an implied ranking of people, with black and indigenous group members on top, who are inherently noble and worthy due to their holy group identities and who must be granted higher standing to speak and participate in society and must be promoted by wildly different standards in order to assure their collective predominance, simply because they are not white). That might be a lot of confected BS for even for people advantaged by it to swallow. But all you have to do is not rock the boat and not actively dissent, at least in public, and you get into a better school much more easily. There are whole categories of jobs now throughout the public and private sectors which are designed to give titles and money and power to people based almost entirely on how they look or which identities they can claim. There is enormous cultural caché now across myriad major institutions with great largesse and social influence merely in being identified as a member of certain groups. How many people who benefit enormously by definition are going to go hard enough against the grain in public to eschew those identity benefits out of principle? How many are going to risk being slimed on social media and risk ostracism from even close family and friend groups for being a black person who is supposedly against black group interests who will be told he is even worse a traitor to black people?
Enormous benefits? The vast majority of people who would fall into the BIPOC category don’t benefit at all. And overall the racial ideology of the Democratic Party hurts black people more than it helps. Some people benefit a little, and a few benefit enormously. And most don’t benefit at all or are harmed.
As an example--getting into a more selective school is not going to benefit a black person if they aren’t prepared and they drop out. And lowering college admission standards simply makes it easier for k-12 schools to lower education standards, which means black students are more likely to get shittier educations in public schools.
The slots for token black people in jobs are just in general a few slots, which the vast majority of black people will not get. But black people will still be in the position of working in environments in which their peers and managers may believe that they are there not on merit but on charity.
For black people, going to a selective university and graduating with honors isn’t going to mean much to hiring managers if they think that those selective universities have lower admission and graduation expectations of black people.
Some black people no doubt believe that woke racial ideology is in the best interest of black people and the Democratic Party is concerned about the interests of black people. But they are mistaken. Woke racial ideology is poisonous to the general development of culture among black people and the Democratic Party is just exploiting black people; it has been since it fought a war to keep black people enslaved. The modern loyalty some black people today have toward the Democratic Party is one of the most perverse and tragic ironies in political history.
What I mean is the benefits that can be gained personally by simply passively going along the idea “yes, I am a member of BIPOC category ____, and consequently deserve ____” can be enormous. If someone gets into a top-tier law or med school that will likely provide them the credentials and contacts and status which can set them up for the rest of their lives. If someone gains a plum internship at an elite institution or is given a full-ride scholarship based on their identity and supposed level of group oppression, it can make a vast difference in his or her life. Even for people competing at a more modest level, it can mean getting into a good school with lots of aid, even with very mediocre grades and test scores. It means hiring preferences in the vast and burgeoning fields of HR and DEI consulting, university administration, and civil service (where merit exams are now largely a thing of the past). It means being passed or promoted almost no matter what. It means not having to walk on eggshells while members of less preferred groups must and it means being able to wield any tiny, innocent misstatement or misstep against anyone in your way. Entry level employees across left of center nonprofits are absolutely holding the top leadership of those organizations hostage by making ever more audacious demands for personal deference and advancement - and leadership is often caving to these demands because they’re afraid of being called certain names (see Ryan Grim’s long piece in The Intercept). As Reihan Salam mentions, the sweep of these identity privileges extends far beyond CMC class aspirants because it’s the people who ascend to those perches and the institutions they lead which set the standards for the broader society. Accepting those privileges means at least tacitly endorsing same for others defined as inherently deserving members of that construct, as well the use of “BIPOC” as a self-justifying bludgeon employed from above. Each individual who accepts the benefits and goes along with their basis is further normalizing and cementing these new rules of the game and new caste hierarchy.
So my sense is we’re talking about different things. Do I think being the recipient of major identity privileges and knowing that’s the basis for one’s elevation to an elite perch or middle class sinecure is good for personal dignity and self-respect? Not really. But do most people really care? That’s my point: when someone stands to benefit so much personally in terms of academic, career, financial and social status, it’s not hard for most people to rationalize that it’s all just desserts. And there is a whole jargon-clotted, pseudo-academic rationale which is ascendant if not entirely dominant, in universities, media, corporations, etc. which defends and justifies this new system of privilege as essential to confronting and dismantling the supposed systems of privilege that came before. So beneficiaries have all the internal and external talking points they need to quell any personal doubts and to silence most critics and skeptics. Do I think this new system of privilege is good for most black people for example, as a whole? No, again, i think patronizing head-patting and the lowering of standards for some, across the board, is generally not good for authentic self-development or community development. My sense is we’d largely agree on these latter two aspects of the discussion. I was probably somewhat vague or ambitious re: to what exactly I was referring when I said so many people will benefit personally to such a degree, based on identity alone, they will be heavily disincentivized from opting out let alone publicly repudiating these new standards. I mean enough individuals will benefit as individuals because they are members of certain groups that most will go along with this new paradigm and hierarchy. That most of these people will already be middle class and up is not lost on me. But as you know, previous efforts at so-called positive discrimination like various forms of affirmative have also largely benefited the already middle class and up. That’s not exactly a bug. The people who support and implement these standards from the inside are themselves largely of from and for the socioeconomic cohorts who will benefit most.
“Do I think being the recipient of major identity privileges and knowing that’s the basis for one’s elevation to an elite perch or middle class sinecure is good for personal dignity and self-respect? Not really.”
I don’t recall mentioning anything about “self respect.”
I don’t suspect Kamala Harris lacks “self respect. “
“That’s my point: when someone stands to benefit so much personally in terms of academic, career, financial and social status, it’s not hard for most people to rationalize that it’s all just desserts.”
And my point: black people, regardless of their class, stand to benefit much more personally in terms of academic, career, financial, and social status if woke racial ideology and it’s practices are eliminated from society compared to keeping it around or encouraging its expansion.
A black person who thinks it’s in their benefit to rely on the delusional self righteous largesse of the Party of Slavery has an erroneous belief.
Jews and Asians in general are doing much better without the same sort of political charity. One might expect in fact if they were given it, they might just do worse. Any random black youth considering an ethnic studies career would likely have a much greater chance of financial success if they ditched that notion and took on the study habits of an ivy bound asian youth(whether or not they get into an ivy school). If they publicly maligned woke racial ideology while doing so, they would still likely benefit more than if they took the route of political patronage. Personally, my financial success has not been inhibited by my public repudiation of woke racial ideology. I can only imagine I’d have been deeply harmed and stunted had I ever embraced a woke racial ideology.
I believe a proportionate amount of black people could get into top-tier law or med schools WITHOUT racial political patronage. Unfortunately, woke racial ideology is making that more difficult by impeding the necessary changes in public education and also the culture of some black people. To your point, woke racial ideology, when internalized, probably acts as a disincentivizing influence for some black people on the perspectives and habits needed for maximal achievement. But for most it will not likely be because they “benefit personally to such a degree”, but rather because they cannot see how much more successful they can be in their life were they not restricted by an irrational fear and contempt of “whiteness”.
The issue is whether you can distribute opportunity on factors other than merit without lowering standards to the extent where you give the opportunity to people who can't do a job properly. A simple way to look at the problem is a test to become a police officer. In order to do the job properly, experts believe you should get a minimum score of X on the test. But because of competition, you need to get a score of X+5 and minorities hover around X+2. In those circumstances, I can understand using a different approach than merit. The problem occurs when the need to distribute opportunity proportionate to racial demographics means that they are accepting people who score X-3. Heather Macdonald writes about this phenomenon in her recent article on medical school admissions. If I recall correctly, the average white applicant scores 71 on the MCATs and the minority applicants 35. Admitting people at 35 will likely decrease competency. But admitting people at 55 (just to choose a number) won't have the same effect.
That's a more nuanced and fairer approach. But progressives don't like that because their goal isn't really to distribute opportunity more fairly. Their goal is to dismantle traditional power structures and by accepting a logical compromise position, they end up perpetuating those very same structures.
There isn’t any need to lower standards at all to distribute opportunity more equally. If people want more qualified black medical students they can put in more resources to prepare black students *before* they arrive at those schools.
If people want more black STEM students at Berkeley, they can help fix and dramatically improve the cities and neighborhoods in California that are failing to provide the optimal environment and resources for black students to develop their intellectual skills. It won’t be as easy as just stamping students report cards with As, but it will actually have the desired outcome so many people allegedly desire.
And California doesn’t lack the financial resources to do so, but rather it currently lacks the popular political imagination and will. And it may require primarily working around the government and not through it, since it may be hopelessly captured by corrupt unions and woke ideologues.
100% true. I call it the Oppression Olympics. I have a circle of friends who I've known for 22+ years. It wasn't until last year that i noticed the term "white people" was being used in our conversations by a non white friend. The same friend who plays CNN on her TV most of the day. That was so sad for me to hear.
My spouse is an immigrant from southeast Asia, and she views "BIPOC" politics as hostile to her interests. In particular, she is unhappy that Asians are penalized in admissions to elite schools (directly, and indirectly by getting rid of standardized tests).
The term "BIPOC" puts Asians and Latinos in their place. It says Black and Indigenous interests get top priority, and other POC come second. Maybe that would be okay if woke activists represented everyone, but many of their proposals are unpopular with ordinary people of all races.
There has always been a pecking order on the grievance ladder. Black occupies the top rung and whatever other group is convenient at the moment gets second billing and so forth. Right now for the left, the trans crowd has value, just like Latinos did a few years back. Asians have always been vexxing because it's hard to credibly paint them as victims.
Yes the Asians (considered the inconvient minority because of their personal successes) and Hispanics (generally because they keep their nose to the grindstone) are tossed aside. All one has to do is watch cable tv w commercials and you'll see which commercial actors are now getting the jobs. If it wasn't representative before (mainly white) it is even less now.
Or is it a fantasy in the minds of a small bunch of dope-smoking former grad students? Mostly white, actually, but for the few token hangers-on with fantasy African names.
It’s a fantasy — Asians, Latinos and blacks have widely divergent interests, which the left tries to sweep under the rug with its “everybody against whitey” construct. It is falling apart as we speak however, as Hispanics are breaking roughly evenly now between R’s and D’s. The “coalition of the ascendant” was always a white academic liberal fantasy, based on the white academic liberal idea that “systemic racism” is the dominant force in society (curiously ignoring somehow, for example, the fact that the five highest earning ethnic groups in America are all minorities).
Without denying any history of racism and ethnic hatreds both here and in every other country of the world, the current BIPOC construction, as Reihan Salam gently insinuates, is indeed a top down construct created by (mostly white) elites to manipulate and divide. Until we get beyond these superficial frontiers, many Americans will not reach their full potential. Most Latinos instinctively reject this nonsense, and anglos (whites) do not at present have the cred currency to move American cultural progress beyond a race-centric paradigm. That will have to come from the African American community, which is slowly figuring out that the faux flattery, open borders, opposition to school choice and milk bone handouts from the left are really the new plantation.
I never understand the PIPOC idea. I am your ally. Im the one who included everyone equally my whole life. My wife - one of the "POC" you court - adamantly rejects pretty much everything BIPOC. To be clear, she is "Black" and certainly not a POC. One thing i have learned from 25 years of marriage is not to assume anything based on color of skin.
Agreed. My wife is Hispanic, and she detests the "Latinx" descriptor (she calls people that use the work "pendejx", not exactly a complimentary term is border Spanish.
I'm a gringo, and some folks get wound up when I refer to our kids as "rednexican"
I think the blacks of self-imposed victimhood are now far too dependent on tax-payers and guilt-ridden elites to change their way of life. A handful will make it thanks to pity and quotas, fewer still based on their own merit. The great rest will be father-less, divorced, incarcerated or shot. Doubt me? Come to Philly and see for yourself.
Slavery as practiced in the USA was, and still is, a social institution requiring for its existence two components:
1. The self-styled "Democrat" political party
2. The slave caste, formerly known as "Negroes," and now known by a variety of designations.
It is not really about skin color, as Americans from India and Pakistan can attest; it is not really about African origin, as Americans from the Caribbean and modern Africa can attest; and it is no longer about involuntary servitude or farm labor in the cotton industry.
What it IS about is a special relationship by a special demographic with the "Democrats."
Did it end on Juneteenth?
Not at all.
Today's slaves can opt out of slavery. Examples of those who have include Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, and Ben Carson.
Those who haven't opted out include Karine Jean-Pierre, Colin Kaepernick, and Lloyd J. Austin. None of these three are known to have ever picked cotton.
In the antebellum South, "Democrats" proclaimed that they loved their slaves, and that the slaves loved them. They still claim the same thing, but they don't call them slaves any more.
I know what you're saying. Call me an optimist, but I think The AA community, with help from others who REALLY want the victims of this disfunction to do better and have great lives, can evolve out of this. It won't be easy, but neither was emancipation from slavery. Call it Emancipation number two.
Just call "progressivism" what it is....its a New Age religion for bored and / or lost (and mostly white) overfed suburbanites and the rich desperate to add some meaning and purpose to their lives. Like Scientology only far more toxic and hard to quit. Jim Jones and his utopia were just a pilot run for what the modern Democratic Party has become. No rational human being believes there are 33 genders or that men can get pregnant, and yet there are now literally millions of Americans who believe you should be destroyed financially, socially, and even physically harmed if you state the obvious.
The idea that people would be of one mind simply because they are non-white sounds a bit, well, racist. It implies a complete lack of agency among those peoples, requires total fealty to a specific set of beliefs, and leaves out that there are whites who share some of those beliefs. It's almost like human beings are individuals first, not members of an identity class. The left hates that idea. A person who can think independently is the single greatest threat to authoritarians who believe they know what's best for everyone else but seldom live by the rules they impose.
Beyond that, how many others upon hearing "people of color" noticed that it's about a half-step from 'colored people'? Actually, a black friend came up with that thought. By today's calculus, my Greek heritage makes me a person of color since I can pass for about a hundred different ethnicities but there is no special check block for the likes of me.
IMO, this discussion is insane, simply because the mass of BIPOC and white folk do NOT have the ability or the sensitivity....... or the disposition to logically sort the discussion.
The future must be entertain simple standards that most can recognize.
Standards and vocabulary and understanding must speak to the condition/perceptions of all people, regardless skin color and tribal identity. If this is impossible, as I suspect, then we should simply withdraw to our own corners of identity and prepare for eternal struggle. Logic, or even the pretense of logic, will have no role.
The street crowds are instructive examples --- why there is so little hope.
"And when that happens, new political alignments and forms of social organization may emerge that make the “BIPOC” coalition impossible to maintain. "
Ah, but there are people who have a solution to that. When "people of color" fall out of line politically, if they start expressing ideas that conflict with the interests of the race police, if they start voting in ways that the Democratic Party doesn't approve, those people of color will just be labeled white. Its already happening. Latinos and asians who don't vote for the Democratic Party are labeled "white adjacent." So, no problem with the BIPOC coalition. All the BIPOCS who aren't part of the coalition are not really BIPOCS, they are white supremacists.
Rationally, this may be a problem, but I don't think rationality is really a big concern these days. Race is following a similar path that sex/gender already has trail-blazed: transforming something that is objective into something subjective. The definition of race is becoming whatever is politically valuable to the race demagogues. If it is valuable to turn Tim Scott into an Irishman, so be it. Its not like the people who think men can turn into women by simply declaring it in their twitter bios are going to object to that -- that is, unless they don't like the political effects. And if the size of the BIPOC coalition is going to require letting in white people who "identify" as black, like Rachel Dolezal, then it shall be done. After all, isn't that what inclusion is all about?
It's fun to think of what this might look like at a later stage. Imagine that progressives stay the course, alienating more and more actual people of color who are pushed out of the movement and labeled "white". Imagine this continues to happen.
Imagine a future where the progressive BIPOC coalition is made up almost entirely of "ethnically white" liberals, while their main opposition is an ethnically diverse group of "politically white" ex-liberals. That would be great!
Great point. Most black conservatives are now labeled as "Uncle Tim's" trying to please the white man. Unfortunately, my daughter buys into this narrative as well as I found out when we were talking about Candice Owens . I was so mad and disappointed and then went on a rant about just saying that is by definition racist, as if a black person isnt capable of individual thought.
Your daughter has been brainwashed. This will take some time.
Reihan Salam makes the key point about top-down progressivism. It isn't organic and people are being forced to take positions that they don't agree with. That strategy might work for a religion because they promise you an afterlife. Not sure the same approach works in a secular setting as all they can promise you is a social benefit of membership in the collective. That isn't worth anything if you don't care about being in the collective.
The problem is the punishments imposed on those who stray from the collective. This is the ethos behind Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Chavez, Castro, the Khmer Rouge and on and on. It (rule through fear) works great, right up to the point where enough people lose their fear of the tyrant and then it goes it down fast — but unfortunately usually after wrecking countries and killing thousands or millions.
Top down progressivism has a very “Animal Farm” feel to it IMO
Religion is not meant to be questioned rather to embrace the faith and just knowing there is a reward is good enough
If it was that simple, they wouldn't need to promise people an afterlife. Obviously, whomever figured out the contours of how religion works understood that they needed to offer people something other than morality to get them to go along with it.
For a lot of us, religion is not a marketing strategy developed by humans but instead is a set of practices given to us by a Divinity.
That doesn't mean that religions don't have strategies & motivations to market themselves. Especially if instances when the religion includes an evangelical aspect.
There are also personal benefits which are more concrete and individual that derive from being defined into a reified group identity. Plenty of people might not care so much about collective identity in the sense it’s promoted and might not define themselves that way first, but are going to go along because the personal benefits are enormous if you’re defined as part of a preferred group. All BIPOC really means is an implied ranking of people, with black and indigenous group members on top, who are inherently noble and worthy due to their holy group identities and who must be granted higher standing to speak and participate in society and must be promoted by wildly different standards in order to assure their collective predominance, simply because they are not white). That might be a lot of confected BS for even for people advantaged by it to swallow. But all you have to do is not rock the boat and not actively dissent, at least in public, and you get into a better school much more easily. There are whole categories of jobs now throughout the public and private sectors which are designed to give titles and money and power to people based almost entirely on how they look or which identities they can claim. There is enormous cultural caché now across myriad major institutions with great largesse and social influence merely in being identified as a member of certain groups. How many people who benefit enormously by definition are going to go hard enough against the grain in public to eschew those identity benefits out of principle? How many are going to risk being slimed on social media and risk ostracism from even close family and friend groups for being a black person who is supposedly against black group interests who will be told he is even worse a traitor to black people?
Enormous benefits? The vast majority of people who would fall into the BIPOC category don’t benefit at all. And overall the racial ideology of the Democratic Party hurts black people more than it helps. Some people benefit a little, and a few benefit enormously. And most don’t benefit at all or are harmed.
As an example--getting into a more selective school is not going to benefit a black person if they aren’t prepared and they drop out. And lowering college admission standards simply makes it easier for k-12 schools to lower education standards, which means black students are more likely to get shittier educations in public schools.
The slots for token black people in jobs are just in general a few slots, which the vast majority of black people will not get. But black people will still be in the position of working in environments in which their peers and managers may believe that they are there not on merit but on charity.
For black people, going to a selective university and graduating with honors isn’t going to mean much to hiring managers if they think that those selective universities have lower admission and graduation expectations of black people.
Some black people no doubt believe that woke racial ideology is in the best interest of black people and the Democratic Party is concerned about the interests of black people. But they are mistaken. Woke racial ideology is poisonous to the general development of culture among black people and the Democratic Party is just exploiting black people; it has been since it fought a war to keep black people enslaved. The modern loyalty some black people today have toward the Democratic Party is one of the most perverse and tragic ironies in political history.
What I mean is the benefits that can be gained personally by simply passively going along the idea “yes, I am a member of BIPOC category ____, and consequently deserve ____” can be enormous. If someone gets into a top-tier law or med school that will likely provide them the credentials and contacts and status which can set them up for the rest of their lives. If someone gains a plum internship at an elite institution or is given a full-ride scholarship based on their identity and supposed level of group oppression, it can make a vast difference in his or her life. Even for people competing at a more modest level, it can mean getting into a good school with lots of aid, even with very mediocre grades and test scores. It means hiring preferences in the vast and burgeoning fields of HR and DEI consulting, university administration, and civil service (where merit exams are now largely a thing of the past). It means being passed or promoted almost no matter what. It means not having to walk on eggshells while members of less preferred groups must and it means being able to wield any tiny, innocent misstatement or misstep against anyone in your way. Entry level employees across left of center nonprofits are absolutely holding the top leadership of those organizations hostage by making ever more audacious demands for personal deference and advancement - and leadership is often caving to these demands because they’re afraid of being called certain names (see Ryan Grim’s long piece in The Intercept). As Reihan Salam mentions, the sweep of these identity privileges extends far beyond CMC class aspirants because it’s the people who ascend to those perches and the institutions they lead which set the standards for the broader society. Accepting those privileges means at least tacitly endorsing same for others defined as inherently deserving members of that construct, as well the use of “BIPOC” as a self-justifying bludgeon employed from above. Each individual who accepts the benefits and goes along with their basis is further normalizing and cementing these new rules of the game and new caste hierarchy.
So my sense is we’re talking about different things. Do I think being the recipient of major identity privileges and knowing that’s the basis for one’s elevation to an elite perch or middle class sinecure is good for personal dignity and self-respect? Not really. But do most people really care? That’s my point: when someone stands to benefit so much personally in terms of academic, career, financial and social status, it’s not hard for most people to rationalize that it’s all just desserts. And there is a whole jargon-clotted, pseudo-academic rationale which is ascendant if not entirely dominant, in universities, media, corporations, etc. which defends and justifies this new system of privilege as essential to confronting and dismantling the supposed systems of privilege that came before. So beneficiaries have all the internal and external talking points they need to quell any personal doubts and to silence most critics and skeptics. Do I think this new system of privilege is good for most black people for example, as a whole? No, again, i think patronizing head-patting and the lowering of standards for some, across the board, is generally not good for authentic self-development or community development. My sense is we’d largely agree on these latter two aspects of the discussion. I was probably somewhat vague or ambitious re: to what exactly I was referring when I said so many people will benefit personally to such a degree, based on identity alone, they will be heavily disincentivized from opting out let alone publicly repudiating these new standards. I mean enough individuals will benefit as individuals because they are members of certain groups that most will go along with this new paradigm and hierarchy. That most of these people will already be middle class and up is not lost on me. But as you know, previous efforts at so-called positive discrimination like various forms of affirmative have also largely benefited the already middle class and up. That’s not exactly a bug. The people who support and implement these standards from the inside are themselves largely of from and for the socioeconomic cohorts who will benefit most.
“Do I think being the recipient of major identity privileges and knowing that’s the basis for one’s elevation to an elite perch or middle class sinecure is good for personal dignity and self-respect? Not really.”
I don’t recall mentioning anything about “self respect.”
I don’t suspect Kamala Harris lacks “self respect. “
“That’s my point: when someone stands to benefit so much personally in terms of academic, career, financial and social status, it’s not hard for most people to rationalize that it’s all just desserts.”
And my point: black people, regardless of their class, stand to benefit much more personally in terms of academic, career, financial, and social status if woke racial ideology and it’s practices are eliminated from society compared to keeping it around or encouraging its expansion.
A black person who thinks it’s in their benefit to rely on the delusional self righteous largesse of the Party of Slavery has an erroneous belief.
Jews and Asians in general are doing much better without the same sort of political charity. One might expect in fact if they were given it, they might just do worse. Any random black youth considering an ethnic studies career would likely have a much greater chance of financial success if they ditched that notion and took on the study habits of an ivy bound asian youth(whether or not they get into an ivy school). If they publicly maligned woke racial ideology while doing so, they would still likely benefit more than if they took the route of political patronage. Personally, my financial success has not been inhibited by my public repudiation of woke racial ideology. I can only imagine I’d have been deeply harmed and stunted had I ever embraced a woke racial ideology.
I believe a proportionate amount of black people could get into top-tier law or med schools WITHOUT racial political patronage. Unfortunately, woke racial ideology is making that more difficult by impeding the necessary changes in public education and also the culture of some black people. To your point, woke racial ideology, when internalized, probably acts as a disincentivizing influence for some black people on the perspectives and habits needed for maximal achievement. But for most it will not likely be because they “benefit personally to such a degree”, but rather because they cannot see how much more successful they can be in their life were they not restricted by an irrational fear and contempt of “whiteness”.
The issue is whether you can distribute opportunity on factors other than merit without lowering standards to the extent where you give the opportunity to people who can't do a job properly. A simple way to look at the problem is a test to become a police officer. In order to do the job properly, experts believe you should get a minimum score of X on the test. But because of competition, you need to get a score of X+5 and minorities hover around X+2. In those circumstances, I can understand using a different approach than merit. The problem occurs when the need to distribute opportunity proportionate to racial demographics means that they are accepting people who score X-3. Heather Macdonald writes about this phenomenon in her recent article on medical school admissions. If I recall correctly, the average white applicant scores 71 on the MCATs and the minority applicants 35. Admitting people at 35 will likely decrease competency. But admitting people at 55 (just to choose a number) won't have the same effect.
That's a more nuanced and fairer approach. But progressives don't like that because their goal isn't really to distribute opportunity more fairly. Their goal is to dismantle traditional power structures and by accepting a logical compromise position, they end up perpetuating those very same structures.
There isn’t any need to lower standards at all to distribute opportunity more equally. If people want more qualified black medical students they can put in more resources to prepare black students *before* they arrive at those schools.
If people want more black STEM students at Berkeley, they can help fix and dramatically improve the cities and neighborhoods in California that are failing to provide the optimal environment and resources for black students to develop their intellectual skills. It won’t be as easy as just stamping students report cards with As, but it will actually have the desired outcome so many people allegedly desire.
And California doesn’t lack the financial resources to do so, but rather it currently lacks the popular political imagination and will. And it may require primarily working around the government and not through it, since it may be hopelessly captured by corrupt unions and woke ideologues.
100% true. I call it the Oppression Olympics. I have a circle of friends who I've known for 22+ years. It wasn't until last year that i noticed the term "white people" was being used in our conversations by a non white friend. The same friend who plays CNN on her TV most of the day. That was so sad for me to hear.
My spouse is an immigrant from southeast Asia, and she views "BIPOC" politics as hostile to her interests. In particular, she is unhappy that Asians are penalized in admissions to elite schools (directly, and indirectly by getting rid of standardized tests).
The term "BIPOC" puts Asians and Latinos in their place. It says Black and Indigenous interests get top priority, and other POC come second. Maybe that would be okay if woke activists represented everyone, but many of their proposals are unpopular with ordinary people of all races.
There has always been a pecking order on the grievance ladder. Black occupies the top rung and whatever other group is convenient at the moment gets second billing and so forth. Right now for the left, the trans crowd has value, just like Latinos did a few years back. Asians have always been vexxing because it's hard to credibly paint them as victims.
Yes the Asians (considered the inconvient minority because of their personal successes) and Hispanics (generally because they keep their nose to the grindstone) are tossed aside. All one has to do is watch cable tv w commercials and you'll see which commercial actors are now getting the jobs. If it wasn't representative before (mainly white) it is even less now.
But what IS the “BIPOC” coalition?
Is there really such a thing?
Or is it a fantasy in the minds of a small bunch of dope-smoking former grad students? Mostly white, actually, but for the few token hangers-on with fantasy African names.
We will find out, probably sooner than later.
#notalldopesmokingformergradstudents
😁 certainly not.
It’s a fantasy — Asians, Latinos and blacks have widely divergent interests, which the left tries to sweep under the rug with its “everybody against whitey” construct. It is falling apart as we speak however, as Hispanics are breaking roughly evenly now between R’s and D’s. The “coalition of the ascendant” was always a white academic liberal fantasy, based on the white academic liberal idea that “systemic racism” is the dominant force in society (curiously ignoring somehow, for example, the fact that the five highest earning ethnic groups in America are all minorities).
Does Brown still have the TWC and the TWTP? This was my experience in the mid-2000s, which foreshadowed the woke revolution we are living through today: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-groom-commissars