Listen now (60 min) | This week, John McWhorter and I are joined by Greg Thomas, senior fellow at the Institute for Cultural Evolution and CEO of the Jazz Leadership Project, to discuss one of our perennial Big Questions: Are we ready to deracialize? As you may have gathered from
Gentlemen, I congratulate you on being on the cutting edge of what is right, true and just when it comes to addressing the going forward issues of rabbit holes that often go unexamined. Happy New Year to you all and may it filled with good health and prosperity.
Just a quick aside....Have you given any thought to bringing on Greg Foreman (YouTube Blogger) as a guest on your show? His perspective, I think, is worth your consideration.
I am not an expert on this subject, so let me lay that out up front. I’ve always respected and enjoyed my fellow Americans who celebrate their national and ethnic cultures. They are interesting of their own accord, and it’s always a pungent reminder of how diverse our society is. I would always encourage this on an individual or group level. We have so much to learn from each other, and framing some of this wisdom in ethnic or national terms - though most wisdom is in fact universal - is fine with me. But when the Government steps in to manage and measure us by skin color (it’s not “race” - we’re all the same race) or artificial ethnicity (like Hispanic, or Pacific Islander, or even “white”), and this of course extends to the institutions they support, like universities, they merely create chaos and discord. Quotas by definition can never be fair. They only divide us and delay our progress as a society. In short, people should celebrate ethnicity as they see fit, and government should be agnostic. France, which does not keep statistics based on race, recognizes this. Sure there are disagreements there as here, but the absence of government gerrymandering forces disputants to debate ideas rather than reduce disagreements to artificial racial distinctions.
I appreciate Greg Thomas's ideas. My impression is thst when we go through periods of strong black identity politics ( ie late 60's Black Panthers and now today with Marxist Racial identity) it creates a backwards and stifling atmosphere that forces blacks to pledge allegiance to their black identity. I remember in the early 70's black men in Detroit snd Chicago college campuses would not date a white woman for fear of retribution. Once the black power stuff was over black and white students coupled up like crazy. I was married to a black man with American Indian ancestory whose culture he admired. He often would say, " I can't be Indian, I have to be black". He did not like being categorized. I find Gregs ideas to be honest and liberating.
Elite white virtue-signalers who want to impose ‘identity’ on Blacks have never experienced the stinking misery of ethnicity. They get their genes done and take up ethnicity as a hobby. I come from a white working-class shithole city, Paterson, NJ, where everyone was ethnically tagged, everyone ‘took care of their own’, and the very idea that anyone should do anything for a ‘perfect stranger’—someone who wasn’t a member of their extended family or ethnic group—was incomprehensible.
_Roots_ was an attempt to make transform ‘African-American’, from a caste to a normal ethnic group comparable to ‘Italian-American’, ‘Irish-American’, and other hyphenated 'identities' replacing malignant racism with benign soft racism. Elites, who never experienced the malignant hyphenated Americanism that dominated shithole cities like my hometown didn’t get it.
When I went to college in the Midwest, where ethnicity wasn’t a thing I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. ‘Identity’ where it is REAL, not just a hobby, sucks.
I wouldn't want a really Jewish person (which is not me) to give up their Jewish identity, but the scope and content of Jewishness (or perhaps Ashenazi-ness, which is typically what we think of in the U.S.) strikes me as more analogous to, say, Gullah/Geechee, or Creole, as opposed to "Black" writ large. There are a lot of black identities in this country, as there are a lot of white ones, and the more granular culturally distinct identities seem healthier and more useful to me than the overriding racial categories.
As for naming the artist. His name was Jack Kirby. He didn’t make MCU money, and he happened to be Jewish. Movie was ok, not as good as the book. Wakanda forever.
Glenn's remarks about pride in his people stood out to me this episode. We can look at the accomplishments of black Americans and discuss how incredible they are; we can compare them to the Jews and ask why one group should abandon its identity while the other needn't; we can say that Thomas wants to take something from blacks that he wouldn't take from whites; and listening to Glenn, I completely understand his meaning. I get his desire to be part of a group. I understand that he sees African-Americans as his people. On a visceral level it all makes sense to me.
But I'm a white American. I have an Anglo surname and significant British ancestry. My ancestors came over four centuries ago. I feel no attachment whatsoever to England, or Scotland, or Ireland, or Germany. I don't feel European in the slightest. On my census forms I click 'American.' There is nowhere for me except the US. I'm an atheist, and my family have been atheists for at least 120 years. When people look at me they think 'white,' but I have little more in common with most white people than I do many, say, Chinese-Americans. I would wager, sometimes, even less. What is my 'identity?' What do I have that equates to Glenn's pride in his people?
I have ancestors who fought in the Revolution. They could have been at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The percentage of Americans who can say that is ever-dwindling. But if I did talk about how I felt pride in that ancestral link, I would probably be called a racist. If I said I felt proud for the accomplishments of my ancestors for settling the frontier, I would probably be called a white supremacist. If I said I was proud of Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Alan Poe and Elvis Presley and any number of other figures with similar ancestry to me, not because they were my countrymen as Americans but because they had my skin color, I would definitely be called a fascist white nationalist evil racist (etc.).
The only real difference I can see, intellectually, is that my 'people's' history in America lacks any memory of oppression. It's the racial identity of a majority group. For that reason, because I'm just 'American,' I am simply not allowed in modern society to feel happy or grateful or proud of my ethnicity. Heritage is slightly different, but I am not permitted to have a racial identity as a person with pale skin (who isn't Jewish). It would be an enormous faux-pas.
'My people' did what Glenn accuses Thomas of asking blacks to do a long time ago--they lost their sense of group identity in favor of something more fundamentally American. My people aren't 'white people;' they're Americans. So maybe I should ask the question back. Why do blacks and Jews and the Chinese and whoever else get to have something I don't? Doesn't Glenn always say that if you keep that kind of thing up for long enough, people will start to notice?
I don't need race. I hope that every new immigrant feels as amazed by and grateful for the Founders as I do. I don't want to own anything because of my skin color. 'My people' are those who share similar beliefs about liberty and freedom and individualism; that is independent of race, and only correlated to culture. If we're trying to move forward, I think African-Americans clearly have to become more like me. The alternative is me becoming more like them--and EVERYBODY, left and right, agrees that that would be calamitous. Except maybe Kanye and Nick Fuentes.
I hope this all makes sense, I'm still not over my Christmas flu.
What I find to be interesting is that this admirably universalist American mindset no doubt born from the specific circumstances of this country’s history isn’t shared in many other parts of the world. When you read books like On China by Henry Kissinger or Has China Won by Kishore Mahbubani, one of the central themes stressed is that of Chinese particularism versus American universalism. Americans believe that the entire world can and should be like us. The Chinese believe that only they can be Chinese. The irony of Amy Wax being condemned for being anti-Asian is that in my opinion she's a lot closer to the Asian mindset when it comes to race and culture than the mainstream American norm.
I believe that this difference in mindset is the source of much contemporary geopolitical tension. By and large China avoids opining on the internal issues of other countries as long as those issues don’t directly touch upon core Chinese interests like Hong Kong or Taiwan. America on the other hand believes that ideals of human rights and freedom are universal. I would argue that American universalism has overreached in past decades, as evidenced by our recent pullout from Afghanistan and the collapse of our regime building efforts there. It’s possible that certain parts of the world don’t possess the requisite cultural capital for American style democracy.
Glenn aptly brought up the importance of nationalism in response to Kmele’s position of racial abolitionism and as a counter to the idea that only the individual matters. If in this country we’re moving past race and ethnicity and towards the idea that we’re really just Americans first and foremost, how do we grapple with the fact that transracial humanism isn’t shared in many other parts of the world and that notions of universalism might impact how we approach the most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century?
I should also point out that Samuel Huntington wasn’t even the first intellectual to predict a clash of civilizations. Racialist Lothrop Stoddard in his 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color prophesized a future where the whites and the yellows would battle for global influence. I don’t know if I would describe the current geopolitical situation as a race war, but it’s certainly a clash between two very different civilizations with very different cultural values and heritages.
Universalism is a nice sentiment, but somehow we always end up being pulled back into the muck of group conflict. As they say, blood is thicker than water.
My mother used to tell us that at one time people use to hang “Irish Need Not Apply” signs in their businesses. But I would never try to compare the ethnic prejudice faced by the Irish to that faced by African-Americans in the United States. I also try to always keep in mind that, unlike when I was a child in the 1970s and early 80s, the fact that I no longer hear people say racist things doesn't mean that racism no longer exists. When it comes to driving while Black, I have no way to know if Black drivers are still more likely to be stopped by the police than white drivers. I am certainly not going to say that doesn't happen, but I think there is almost certainly some confirmation bias involved there. Any time a Black driver is stopped, they have to wonder if they would have been stopped if they were white. I am sure many who know they were speeding will ask themselves that. Every time there is a proven, or even suspected, case of excessive force by a police officer against an African-American it is taken as further evidence of police racism. But the real question isn't whether the police use excessive force against Black people, it's whether it is more LIKELY to be used against Black people. That there are 330 million people in the U.S. means that just because we hear about one incident after another doesn't mean that the police are out of control.
My father was of Irish descent and my mother ½ Irish and ½ German. But because my mother's German father abandoned her family when she was 4, from a cultural perspective I might as well have been 100% Irish. My youngest sister moved to CA after college, married a Mexican-American man, and had 2 daughters. I am sure they probably feel closer to their Mexican heritage than their Irish one, if for no other reason than their father's family lives much closer. But while if you asked them if they were Hispanic they'd probably say yes, I am not sure how important that is to them.
My sister and brother-in-law are both engineers and do very well for themselves. I used to think my nieces would be bilingual and good at math. But while they are both really good students, they weren't exposed to much Spanish growing up. Before my older nieces 15th birthday, I asked my sister if she was going to throw her a quinceanera. She said she didn't think she wanted one because most of her friends (because of where she went to school) were Asian. My nieces are growing up in an upper middle class area of LA County. Are they really Hispanic or just white?
My other sister has a 5-year-old son whose father is from Ireland. My nephew is in Ireland right now spending the week with his grandparents and cousins. I have been to Ireland once in my life, when I was 30-years-old. My nephew is 5 and already there for the 4th time. It would have been at least 6 if not for Covid. Somehow I think his Irish heritage is going to be a bit more important to him than to my nieces. Actually, it will almost certainly be more important to him than it is to me.
I am reminded of something that happened when I was teaching in the South Bronx. A Black Hispanic girl whose skin was about as dark as any Black person I've known got very upset when another student said something about her being Black. “I'm not Black I am HISPANIC” she yelled. What I told them about the issue of their race was that it only mattered under 2 conditions. First, if it mattered to them, for example as a matter of cultural pride. Second, if someone was going to treat them differently because of it. Except for those 2 circumstances, the only difference my race versus that girls made was that I was going to be much more likely to get sunburned at the beach than she would. Silver linings, right? Personally, I look forward to the day when race really is irrelevant. Imagine a day when I could go to the beach and not have to apply sunscreen because science will have developed sunscreen that only has to be applied once and never washes off. Oh and an end to racism would be good too.
Race and culture have been highly correlated historically. It’s hard to separate ethnicity from culture. I agree that cultural innovations that arise among a specific group quickly become the province of mankind, but we lose something when we downplay or ignore the social and historical circumstances from which those innovations arose.
The major argument for de-racialization among some Black intellectuals seems to be that Black identity is often used in this country to embrace a victimization complex rather than foster a positive sense of race-esteem. But to push for de-racialization as a response to this tendency seems to me to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
To echo Glenn’s observation, other ethnic groups aren’t taught the same message that their own racial heritage is a fiction. Given recent geopolitical trends, The Clash of Civilizations as posited by Samuel Huntington is coming across as increasingly prescient compared to The End of History. The notion that humanity can be reduced primarily to homogenous atomic units untethered to larger cultural or racial identities is not only ahistorical and unscientific, it’s also inadequate for grappling with the forces governing the 21st century.
I readily concede that my vision can't "just happen", as it were. But it's very hard for me to believe that it will *never* happen. Our world keeps getting smaller as our ability to reach out and touch one another is increasingly facilitated. The abolition of "race" strikes me as almost inevitable at some point.
That said, I can hardly deny what you're pointing out. One could argue that Glenn is a perfect example of it. He does not have a *twisted* view of race, but it does obviously hold some importance to him. At the same time one could argue that his take on race is healthy, but at the end of the day I just cannot go there.
Yes, the concept of race is so ingrained in the modern world that many people equate or approximate race with culture, something we all take seriously on some level. But I continue to see race as a profound mistake the world bought into 500 or so years ago. The nebulousness of the concept alone is enough to persuade me.
"race is 400 years old" is an absurd claim made by "academics" desperate to have some sort of "insight" so they appear like smart people when they really don't.
Hippocrates wrote in his treatise On Airs, Waters, and Places:
And there are in Europe other tribes, differing from one another in stature, shape, and courage: the differences are those I formerly mentioned, and will now explain more clearly.
Such as inhabit a country which is mountainous, rugged, elevated, and well watered, and where
the changes of the seasons are very great, are likely to have great variety of shapes among them, and to be naturally of an enterprising and warlike disposition; and such persons are apt to have no little
of the savage and ferocious in their nature; but such as dwell in places which are low-lying, abounding in meadows and ill ventilated, and who have a larger proportion of hot than of cold winds, and who make use of warm waters- these are not likely to be of large stature nor well proportioned, but are of a broad make, fleshy, and have black hair; and they are rather of a dark than of a light complexion, and
are less likely to be phlegmatic than bilious; courage and laborious enterprise are not naturally in them, but may be engendered in them by means of their institutions. And if there be rivers in the country which carry off the stagnant and rain water from it, these may be wholesome and clear; but if there be no rivers, but the inhabitants drink the waters of fountains, and such as are stagnant and marshy, they must necessarily have prominent bellies and enlarged spleens.
But such as inhabit a high country, and one that is level, windy, and well-watered, will be large of stature, and like to one another; but their minds will be rather unmanly and gentle. Those who live
on thin, ill-watered, and bare soils, and not well attempered in the changes of the seasons, in such a country they are likely to be in their persons rather hard and well braced, rather of a blond than
a dark complexion, and in disposition and passions haughty and self-willed. For, where the changes of the seasons are most frequent, and where they differ most from one another, there you will find their forms, dispositions, and nature the most varied. These are the strongest of the natural causes of difference, and next the country in which one lives, and the waters; for, in general, you will find the forms and dispositions of mankind to correspond with the nature of the country; for where the land is fertile, soft, and well-watered, and supplied with waters from very elevated situations, so as to be hot in summer and cold in winter, and where the seasons are fine, there the men are fleshy, have ill-formed joints, and are of a humid temperament; they are not disposed to endure labor, and, for the most part, are base in spirit; indolence and sluggishness are visible in them, and to the arts they are dull, and not clever nor acute. When the country is bare, not fenced, and rugged, blasted by the winter and scorched by the sun, there you may see the hardy, hardy, slender, with well-shaped joints, well-braced, and shaggy; sharp, industry and vigilance accompany such a constitution; in morals and passions they are haughty and opinionative, inclining rather to the fierce than to the mild; and you will find them acute and ingenious as regards the arts, and excelling in military affairs; and likewise all the other productions of the earth corresponding to the earth itself. Thus it is with regard to the most opposite natures and shapes; drawing conclusions from them, you may judge of the rest
without any risk of error.
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Aristotle in Politics wrote:
About the citizen population, we said before what is its proper limit of numbers. Let us now speak [20] of what ought to be the citizens' natural character. Now this one might almost discern by looking at the famous cities of Greece and by observing how the whole inhabited world is divided up among the nations.2 The nations inhabiting the cold places and those of Europe are full of spirit but somewhat deficient in intelligence and skill, so that they continue comparatively free, but lacking in political organization and capacity to rule their neighbors. The peoples of Asia on the other hand are intelligent and skillful in temperament, but lack spirit, so that they are in continuous subjection and slavery. But the Greek race participates in both characters, just as it occupies the middle position geographically, for it is both spirited and intelligent; hence it continues to be free and to have very good political institutions, and to be capable of ruling all mankind if it attains constitutional unity. The same diversity also exists among the Greek races compared with one another: some have a one-sided nature, others are happily blended in regard to both these capacities.3 It is clear therefore that people that are to be easily guided to virtue by the lawgiver must be both intellectual and spirited in their nature. For as to what is said by certain persons about the character that should belong to their Guardians4—they should be affectionate to their friends but fierce towards strangers—it is spirit that causes affectionateness, for spirit is the capacity of the soul whereby we love.
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We are pattern-recognizing creatures. Our inclination to recognize differences between peoples is not new. We need to get real and recognize that race as we know it today is a cohort of peoples grouped based on their geographic origin and relative proximity to one another, both geographic and ancestral. It's not an accident that we consider ancient Madagascar as not part of Africa in an anthropological sense.
At 23:40 Greg Thomas says he's not talking about race transmitted through blood. That's really old school he says. What is he talking about? Is he not talking about actual ancestry (DNA) but only talking about identification?
At 19:25 Greg Thomas says that race has only been around as a concept for about 400 years (actually less, he clarifies later). I'd like to this statement explored in another discussion. A race refresher, if you will.
Fwiw, there IS a solid solution to the goal of deracialization: Literal Deracialization.
My definition: Wholesale "miscegenation"--which I now understand to be a pejorative nowadays, so please forgive me, as I have yet to find a legit synonym--for the next 100-200 years, or however many generations. Give me that and I will more or less guarantee you a deracialized society.
I am 100% down with that prescription. Who's not? A lotta people, unfortunately.
And let's not make-believe that the anti-deracialists all hail from the same "race", nationality or political persuasion. They're all over the place. Not evenly nor proportionally. But there's more than enough blame to go around.
This sense of "deracialization" that you propose, while accurate in achieving the ends you seek, namely ending the societal racial divisions, is not "deracialization" at all, but the manufacturing of a novel "race", ie ancestral lineage, that is the product of the long arc of american history. it's sadly an implicit admission that race as defined by continental place of ancestry is too great a divider for certain peoples to fully function together in the same society. there are many people of differing political factions who believe this. indeed there was a dictator of Paraguay in the 19th century who outlawed *intra*-racial marriage to achieve this.
"too great a divider for certain peoples to fully function together in the same society"
Too great a divider for certain peoples or too silly overall?
My preference is that the trend spread worldwide--organically. Because if race doesn't matter, it really doesn't matter; and ultimately I don't know of any other way to prove that it doesn't matter.
Sadly, my "test" often inadvertently reveals how much race matters to a lot of people, including some who claim otherwise.
you are absolutely correct, and your question highlights a great point. whether one feels it's a silly divider or not, it's there. and we can't compel people not to care.
There have been isolated cases of societies breaking racial divides and intermarrying en masse, forming new ethnicities founded on the meeting of distant peoples. Cabo Verde is mainly a mixed-race society, and generational Caymanians are as well are primarily mixed-race. so what you propose is obviously possible as it has occurred. But the speakers bring up a good point as well, that there may well be a cultural inheritance (which does in fact matter to some) that is contingent on race. I recall Muhammad Ali saying that he wanted a Black American woman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqiWFLsgVi4 not a Black Muslim african woman. We may well not be able to simply operate under an ideological illusion that we're all interchangeable even though we acknowledge the humanity of every individual
I readily concede that my vision can't just happen, as it were, for the modern world has certainly bought into the concept of race to the point where many people--too many, in my view--equate or at least approximate race with culture, something we all take seriously on some level.
I continue to see this as a profound mistake the world bought into 500 or so years ago. Having said that, I can hardly deny what you're calling attention to. Glenn is perhaps a quintessential example. Clearly he does not have a *twisted* view of race, but it obviously holds some importance to him based on culturally related issues. But I just cannot go there =)
More importantly, quite frankly, my vision/hope at this point strikes me as almost inevitable. As the world grows smaller and our ability to reach out and touch one another continues to expand, we might as well get ready if you ask me.
Gentlemen, I congratulate you on being on the cutting edge of what is right, true and just when it comes to addressing the going forward issues of rabbit holes that often go unexamined. Happy New Year to you all and may it filled with good health and prosperity.
Just a quick aside....Have you given any thought to bringing on Greg Foreman (YouTube Blogger) as a guest on your show? His perspective, I think, is worth your consideration.
I am not an expert on this subject, so let me lay that out up front. I’ve always respected and enjoyed my fellow Americans who celebrate their national and ethnic cultures. They are interesting of their own accord, and it’s always a pungent reminder of how diverse our society is. I would always encourage this on an individual or group level. We have so much to learn from each other, and framing some of this wisdom in ethnic or national terms - though most wisdom is in fact universal - is fine with me. But when the Government steps in to manage and measure us by skin color (it’s not “race” - we’re all the same race) or artificial ethnicity (like Hispanic, or Pacific Islander, or even “white”), and this of course extends to the institutions they support, like universities, they merely create chaos and discord. Quotas by definition can never be fair. They only divide us and delay our progress as a society. In short, people should celebrate ethnicity as they see fit, and government should be agnostic. France, which does not keep statistics based on race, recognizes this. Sure there are disagreements there as here, but the absence of government gerrymandering forces disputants to debate ideas rather than reduce disagreements to artificial racial distinctions.
I appreciate Greg Thomas's ideas. My impression is thst when we go through periods of strong black identity politics ( ie late 60's Black Panthers and now today with Marxist Racial identity) it creates a backwards and stifling atmosphere that forces blacks to pledge allegiance to their black identity. I remember in the early 70's black men in Detroit snd Chicago college campuses would not date a white woman for fear of retribution. Once the black power stuff was over black and white students coupled up like crazy. I was married to a black man with American Indian ancestory whose culture he admired. He often would say, " I can't be Indian, I have to be black". He did not like being categorized. I find Gregs ideas to be honest and liberating.
Elite white virtue-signalers who want to impose ‘identity’ on Blacks have never experienced the stinking misery of ethnicity. They get their genes done and take up ethnicity as a hobby. I come from a white working-class shithole city, Paterson, NJ, where everyone was ethnically tagged, everyone ‘took care of their own’, and the very idea that anyone should do anything for a ‘perfect stranger’—someone who wasn’t a member of their extended family or ethnic group—was incomprehensible.
_Roots_ was an attempt to make transform ‘African-American’, from a caste to a normal ethnic group comparable to ‘Italian-American’, ‘Irish-American’, and other hyphenated 'identities' replacing malignant racism with benign soft racism. Elites, who never experienced the malignant hyphenated Americanism that dominated shithole cities like my hometown didn’t get it.
When I went to college in the Midwest, where ethnicity wasn’t a thing I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. ‘Identity’ where it is REAL, not just a hobby, sucks.
I wouldn't want a really Jewish person (which is not me) to give up their Jewish identity, but the scope and content of Jewishness (or perhaps Ashenazi-ness, which is typically what we think of in the U.S.) strikes me as more analogous to, say, Gullah/Geechee, or Creole, as opposed to "Black" writ large. There are a lot of black identities in this country, as there are a lot of white ones, and the more granular culturally distinct identities seem healthier and more useful to me than the overriding racial categories.
As for naming the artist. His name was Jack Kirby. He didn’t make MCU money, and he happened to be Jewish. Movie was ok, not as good as the book. Wakanda forever.
O o o o that Shakespherian rag. It’s so elegant. So intelligent.
A very interesting episode and a great way to end 2022!
Glenn's remarks about pride in his people stood out to me this episode. We can look at the accomplishments of black Americans and discuss how incredible they are; we can compare them to the Jews and ask why one group should abandon its identity while the other needn't; we can say that Thomas wants to take something from blacks that he wouldn't take from whites; and listening to Glenn, I completely understand his meaning. I get his desire to be part of a group. I understand that he sees African-Americans as his people. On a visceral level it all makes sense to me.
But I'm a white American. I have an Anglo surname and significant British ancestry. My ancestors came over four centuries ago. I feel no attachment whatsoever to England, or Scotland, or Ireland, or Germany. I don't feel European in the slightest. On my census forms I click 'American.' There is nowhere for me except the US. I'm an atheist, and my family have been atheists for at least 120 years. When people look at me they think 'white,' but I have little more in common with most white people than I do many, say, Chinese-Americans. I would wager, sometimes, even less. What is my 'identity?' What do I have that equates to Glenn's pride in his people?
I have ancestors who fought in the Revolution. They could have been at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The percentage of Americans who can say that is ever-dwindling. But if I did talk about how I felt pride in that ancestral link, I would probably be called a racist. If I said I felt proud for the accomplishments of my ancestors for settling the frontier, I would probably be called a white supremacist. If I said I was proud of Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Alan Poe and Elvis Presley and any number of other figures with similar ancestry to me, not because they were my countrymen as Americans but because they had my skin color, I would definitely be called a fascist white nationalist evil racist (etc.).
The only real difference I can see, intellectually, is that my 'people's' history in America lacks any memory of oppression. It's the racial identity of a majority group. For that reason, because I'm just 'American,' I am simply not allowed in modern society to feel happy or grateful or proud of my ethnicity. Heritage is slightly different, but I am not permitted to have a racial identity as a person with pale skin (who isn't Jewish). It would be an enormous faux-pas.
'My people' did what Glenn accuses Thomas of asking blacks to do a long time ago--they lost their sense of group identity in favor of something more fundamentally American. My people aren't 'white people;' they're Americans. So maybe I should ask the question back. Why do blacks and Jews and the Chinese and whoever else get to have something I don't? Doesn't Glenn always say that if you keep that kind of thing up for long enough, people will start to notice?
I don't need race. I hope that every new immigrant feels as amazed by and grateful for the Founders as I do. I don't want to own anything because of my skin color. 'My people' are those who share similar beliefs about liberty and freedom and individualism; that is independent of race, and only correlated to culture. If we're trying to move forward, I think African-Americans clearly have to become more like me. The alternative is me becoming more like them--and EVERYBODY, left and right, agrees that that would be calamitous. Except maybe Kanye and Nick Fuentes.
I hope this all makes sense, I'm still not over my Christmas flu.
What I find to be interesting is that this admirably universalist American mindset no doubt born from the specific circumstances of this country’s history isn’t shared in many other parts of the world. When you read books like On China by Henry Kissinger or Has China Won by Kishore Mahbubani, one of the central themes stressed is that of Chinese particularism versus American universalism. Americans believe that the entire world can and should be like us. The Chinese believe that only they can be Chinese. The irony of Amy Wax being condemned for being anti-Asian is that in my opinion she's a lot closer to the Asian mindset when it comes to race and culture than the mainstream American norm.
I believe that this difference in mindset is the source of much contemporary geopolitical tension. By and large China avoids opining on the internal issues of other countries as long as those issues don’t directly touch upon core Chinese interests like Hong Kong or Taiwan. America on the other hand believes that ideals of human rights and freedom are universal. I would argue that American universalism has overreached in past decades, as evidenced by our recent pullout from Afghanistan and the collapse of our regime building efforts there. It’s possible that certain parts of the world don’t possess the requisite cultural capital for American style democracy.
Glenn aptly brought up the importance of nationalism in response to Kmele’s position of racial abolitionism and as a counter to the idea that only the individual matters. If in this country we’re moving past race and ethnicity and towards the idea that we’re really just Americans first and foremost, how do we grapple with the fact that transracial humanism isn’t shared in many other parts of the world and that notions of universalism might impact how we approach the most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century?
I should also point out that Samuel Huntington wasn’t even the first intellectual to predict a clash of civilizations. Racialist Lothrop Stoddard in his 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color prophesized a future where the whites and the yellows would battle for global influence. I don’t know if I would describe the current geopolitical situation as a race war, but it’s certainly a clash between two very different civilizations with very different cultural values and heritages.
Universalism is a nice sentiment, but somehow we always end up being pulled back into the muck of group conflict. As they say, blood is thicker than water.
I hear you loud and clear, my American brother!
My mother used to tell us that at one time people use to hang “Irish Need Not Apply” signs in their businesses. But I would never try to compare the ethnic prejudice faced by the Irish to that faced by African-Americans in the United States. I also try to always keep in mind that, unlike when I was a child in the 1970s and early 80s, the fact that I no longer hear people say racist things doesn't mean that racism no longer exists. When it comes to driving while Black, I have no way to know if Black drivers are still more likely to be stopped by the police than white drivers. I am certainly not going to say that doesn't happen, but I think there is almost certainly some confirmation bias involved there. Any time a Black driver is stopped, they have to wonder if they would have been stopped if they were white. I am sure many who know they were speeding will ask themselves that. Every time there is a proven, or even suspected, case of excessive force by a police officer against an African-American it is taken as further evidence of police racism. But the real question isn't whether the police use excessive force against Black people, it's whether it is more LIKELY to be used against Black people. That there are 330 million people in the U.S. means that just because we hear about one incident after another doesn't mean that the police are out of control.
My father was of Irish descent and my mother ½ Irish and ½ German. But because my mother's German father abandoned her family when she was 4, from a cultural perspective I might as well have been 100% Irish. My youngest sister moved to CA after college, married a Mexican-American man, and had 2 daughters. I am sure they probably feel closer to their Mexican heritage than their Irish one, if for no other reason than their father's family lives much closer. But while if you asked them if they were Hispanic they'd probably say yes, I am not sure how important that is to them.
My sister and brother-in-law are both engineers and do very well for themselves. I used to think my nieces would be bilingual and good at math. But while they are both really good students, they weren't exposed to much Spanish growing up. Before my older nieces 15th birthday, I asked my sister if she was going to throw her a quinceanera. She said she didn't think she wanted one because most of her friends (because of where she went to school) were Asian. My nieces are growing up in an upper middle class area of LA County. Are they really Hispanic or just white?
My other sister has a 5-year-old son whose father is from Ireland. My nephew is in Ireland right now spending the week with his grandparents and cousins. I have been to Ireland once in my life, when I was 30-years-old. My nephew is 5 and already there for the 4th time. It would have been at least 6 if not for Covid. Somehow I think his Irish heritage is going to be a bit more important to him than to my nieces. Actually, it will almost certainly be more important to him than it is to me.
I am reminded of something that happened when I was teaching in the South Bronx. A Black Hispanic girl whose skin was about as dark as any Black person I've known got very upset when another student said something about her being Black. “I'm not Black I am HISPANIC” she yelled. What I told them about the issue of their race was that it only mattered under 2 conditions. First, if it mattered to them, for example as a matter of cultural pride. Second, if someone was going to treat them differently because of it. Except for those 2 circumstances, the only difference my race versus that girls made was that I was going to be much more likely to get sunburned at the beach than she would. Silver linings, right? Personally, I look forward to the day when race really is irrelevant. Imagine a day when I could go to the beach and not have to apply sunscreen because science will have developed sunscreen that only has to be applied once and never washes off. Oh and an end to racism would be good too.
Race and culture have been highly correlated historically. It’s hard to separate ethnicity from culture. I agree that cultural innovations that arise among a specific group quickly become the province of mankind, but we lose something when we downplay or ignore the social and historical circumstances from which those innovations arose.
The major argument for de-racialization among some Black intellectuals seems to be that Black identity is often used in this country to embrace a victimization complex rather than foster a positive sense of race-esteem. But to push for de-racialization as a response to this tendency seems to me to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
To echo Glenn’s observation, other ethnic groups aren’t taught the same message that their own racial heritage is a fiction. Given recent geopolitical trends, The Clash of Civilizations as posited by Samuel Huntington is coming across as increasingly prescient compared to The End of History. The notion that humanity can be reduced primarily to homogenous atomic units untethered to larger cultural or racial identities is not only ahistorical and unscientific, it’s also inadequate for grappling with the forces governing the 21st century.
> To echo Glenn’s observation, other ethnic groups aren’t taught the same message that their own racial heritage is a fiction.
Uh, how about white people?
I readily concede that my vision can't "just happen", as it were. But it's very hard for me to believe that it will *never* happen. Our world keeps getting smaller as our ability to reach out and touch one another is increasingly facilitated. The abolition of "race" strikes me as almost inevitable at some point.
That said, I can hardly deny what you're pointing out. One could argue that Glenn is a perfect example of it. He does not have a *twisted* view of race, but it does obviously hold some importance to him. At the same time one could argue that his take on race is healthy, but at the end of the day I just cannot go there.
Yes, the concept of race is so ingrained in the modern world that many people equate or approximate race with culture, something we all take seriously on some level. But I continue to see race as a profound mistake the world bought into 500 or so years ago. The nebulousness of the concept alone is enough to persuade me.
Good chat!
"race is 400 years old" is an absurd claim made by "academics" desperate to have some sort of "insight" so they appear like smart people when they really don't.
Hippocrates wrote in his treatise On Airs, Waters, and Places:
And there are in Europe other tribes, differing from one another in stature, shape, and courage: the differences are those I formerly mentioned, and will now explain more clearly.
Such as inhabit a country which is mountainous, rugged, elevated, and well watered, and where
the changes of the seasons are very great, are likely to have great variety of shapes among them, and to be naturally of an enterprising and warlike disposition; and such persons are apt to have no little
of the savage and ferocious in their nature; but such as dwell in places which are low-lying, abounding in meadows and ill ventilated, and who have a larger proportion of hot than of cold winds, and who make use of warm waters- these are not likely to be of large stature nor well proportioned, but are of a broad make, fleshy, and have black hair; and they are rather of a dark than of a light complexion, and
are less likely to be phlegmatic than bilious; courage and laborious enterprise are not naturally in them, but may be engendered in them by means of their institutions. And if there be rivers in the country which carry off the stagnant and rain water from it, these may be wholesome and clear; but if there be no rivers, but the inhabitants drink the waters of fountains, and such as are stagnant and marshy, they must necessarily have prominent bellies and enlarged spleens.
But such as inhabit a high country, and one that is level, windy, and well-watered, will be large of stature, and like to one another; but their minds will be rather unmanly and gentle. Those who live
on thin, ill-watered, and bare soils, and not well attempered in the changes of the seasons, in such a country they are likely to be in their persons rather hard and well braced, rather of a blond than
a dark complexion, and in disposition and passions haughty and self-willed. For, where the changes of the seasons are most frequent, and where they differ most from one another, there you will find their forms, dispositions, and nature the most varied. These are the strongest of the natural causes of difference, and next the country in which one lives, and the waters; for, in general, you will find the forms and dispositions of mankind to correspond with the nature of the country; for where the land is fertile, soft, and well-watered, and supplied with waters from very elevated situations, so as to be hot in summer and cold in winter, and where the seasons are fine, there the men are fleshy, have ill-formed joints, and are of a humid temperament; they are not disposed to endure labor, and, for the most part, are base in spirit; indolence and sluggishness are visible in them, and to the arts they are dull, and not clever nor acute. When the country is bare, not fenced, and rugged, blasted by the winter and scorched by the sun, there you may see the hardy, hardy, slender, with well-shaped joints, well-braced, and shaggy; sharp, industry and vigilance accompany such a constitution; in morals and passions they are haughty and opinionative, inclining rather to the fierce than to the mild; and you will find them acute and ingenious as regards the arts, and excelling in military affairs; and likewise all the other productions of the earth corresponding to the earth itself. Thus it is with regard to the most opposite natures and shapes; drawing conclusions from them, you may judge of the rest
without any risk of error.
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Aristotle in Politics wrote:
About the citizen population, we said before what is its proper limit of numbers. Let us now speak [20] of what ought to be the citizens' natural character. Now this one might almost discern by looking at the famous cities of Greece and by observing how the whole inhabited world is divided up among the nations.2 The nations inhabiting the cold places and those of Europe are full of spirit but somewhat deficient in intelligence and skill, so that they continue comparatively free, but lacking in political organization and capacity to rule their neighbors. The peoples of Asia on the other hand are intelligent and skillful in temperament, but lack spirit, so that they are in continuous subjection and slavery. But the Greek race participates in both characters, just as it occupies the middle position geographically, for it is both spirited and intelligent; hence it continues to be free and to have very good political institutions, and to be capable of ruling all mankind if it attains constitutional unity. The same diversity also exists among the Greek races compared with one another: some have a one-sided nature, others are happily blended in regard to both these capacities.3 It is clear therefore that people that are to be easily guided to virtue by the lawgiver must be both intellectual and spirited in their nature. For as to what is said by certain persons about the character that should belong to their Guardians4—they should be affectionate to their friends but fierce towards strangers—it is spirit that causes affectionateness, for spirit is the capacity of the soul whereby we love.
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We are pattern-recognizing creatures. Our inclination to recognize differences between peoples is not new. We need to get real and recognize that race as we know it today is a cohort of peoples grouped based on their geographic origin and relative proximity to one another, both geographic and ancestral. It's not an accident that we consider ancient Madagascar as not part of Africa in an anthropological sense.
Bravo. Great discussion.
At 23:40 Greg Thomas says he's not talking about race transmitted through blood. That's really old school he says. What is he talking about? Is he not talking about actual ancestry (DNA) but only talking about identification?
At 19:25 Greg Thomas says that race has only been around as a concept for about 400 years (actually less, he clarifies later). I'd like to this statement explored in another discussion. A race refresher, if you will.
Halfway through. Loving it.
Fwiw, there IS a solid solution to the goal of deracialization: Literal Deracialization.
My definition: Wholesale "miscegenation"--which I now understand to be a pejorative nowadays, so please forgive me, as I have yet to find a legit synonym--for the next 100-200 years, or however many generations. Give me that and I will more or less guarantee you a deracialized society.
I am 100% down with that prescription. Who's not? A lotta people, unfortunately.
And let's not make-believe that the anti-deracialists all hail from the same "race", nationality or political persuasion. They're all over the place. Not evenly nor proportionally. But there's more than enough blame to go around.
This sense of "deracialization" that you propose, while accurate in achieving the ends you seek, namely ending the societal racial divisions, is not "deracialization" at all, but the manufacturing of a novel "race", ie ancestral lineage, that is the product of the long arc of american history. it's sadly an implicit admission that race as defined by continental place of ancestry is too great a divider for certain peoples to fully function together in the same society. there are many people of differing political factions who believe this. indeed there was a dictator of Paraguay in the 19th century who outlawed *intra*-racial marriage to achieve this.
"too great a divider for certain peoples to fully function together in the same society"
Too great a divider for certain peoples or too silly overall?
My preference is that the trend spread worldwide--organically. Because if race doesn't matter, it really doesn't matter; and ultimately I don't know of any other way to prove that it doesn't matter.
Sadly, my "test" often inadvertently reveals how much race matters to a lot of people, including some who claim otherwise.
you are absolutely correct, and your question highlights a great point. whether one feels it's a silly divider or not, it's there. and we can't compel people not to care.
There have been isolated cases of societies breaking racial divides and intermarrying en masse, forming new ethnicities founded on the meeting of distant peoples. Cabo Verde is mainly a mixed-race society, and generational Caymanians are as well are primarily mixed-race. so what you propose is obviously possible as it has occurred. But the speakers bring up a good point as well, that there may well be a cultural inheritance (which does in fact matter to some) that is contingent on race. I recall Muhammad Ali saying that he wanted a Black American woman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqiWFLsgVi4 not a Black Muslim african woman. We may well not be able to simply operate under an ideological illusion that we're all interchangeable even though we acknowledge the humanity of every individual
I readily concede that my vision can't just happen, as it were, for the modern world has certainly bought into the concept of race to the point where many people--too many, in my view--equate or at least approximate race with culture, something we all take seriously on some level.
I continue to see this as a profound mistake the world bought into 500 or so years ago. Having said that, I can hardly deny what you're calling attention to. Glenn is perhaps a quintessential example. Clearly he does not have a *twisted* view of race, but it obviously holds some importance to him based on culturally related issues. But I just cannot go there =)
More importantly, quite frankly, my vision/hope at this point strikes me as almost inevitable. As the world grows smaller and our ability to reach out and touch one another continues to expand, we might as well get ready if you ask me.
Good chat.
Yes thank you interesting thoughts