You got a little triggered with Greg there, Glenn. I said out loud while making breakfast, "Let him finish, Glenn!" You do have a habit sometimes of interrupting and not letting people talk when you get a little triggered. Your viewpoint was valid and interesting, but so was Greg's, and I got what he was saying.
I'm just finishing up Shelby Steele's The Content of our Character, which I got for Christmas, and I put it on my wish list when John spoke a few months ago about how much it had influenced him. It's a wonderful book, and as insightful and relevant today as it was thirty years ago. He analyzes and dissects race-based thinking - for blacks especially, but for whites too - and makes a great case against 'identity politics' decades before the term came into use - and demonstrates there's still nothing new under the sun.
'Race' as we know it is just categories of people who evolved differently depending on where their ancestors went after they left Africa. So argue that 'race' is a human construct, and to a large extent, it is, but there are also real differences which *should* be only mildly interesting, instead of giant political points.
Greg made good points regarding the over-exaggerated victimization emphasis on the left and that was exactly what I was reading this morning before I got out of bed. Steele identifies the power dynamics in difference politics and how they play out in whites and blacks, if in slightly different ways, with their chronic anxieties (white guilt, black inferiority). Oppression and slavery and its legacy are part of the 'black experience/culture' and certainly its history, as is the role of white people who've benefited from that ugly piece of history today. But he argues, "I think universities should emphasize commonality as a higher value than "diversity" and "pluralism" - buzzwords for the politics of difference. Difference that does not rest on a clearly delineated foundation of commonality is not only inaccessible to those who are not part of the ethnic or racial group, but also antagonistic to them. Difference can enrich only the common ground."
Jonathan Haidt (I was sleeping with him just before Christmas, LOL) noted in The Righteous Mind that emphasizing differences divides us further, it doesn't unite us. The divisive identity politics of the left and right bear this out - the MAGAs and the woke don't look all that different when you observe how they emphasize differences to claim and seize power (with neither side willing to accept the responsibility that goes with real power). So yeah, I'm with Greg on this one - deracialize. It doesn't mean you have to give up 'black identity' but using 'race'/colour, whichever you are, to one-up 'the enemy' encourages 'othering' thinking and gets in the way of progress. I'm with Steele - difference MUST be rooted in common ground. I may be white and you may be black, but we're both human beings who share 99% DNA and we ALL descended from monkeys who came down from the trees. We have a fuckuva lot more in common than we don't, and I'd like to see the left recognize that, instead of 'othering' each other.
JOHN MCWHORTER: "I have biracial daughters. They are seven and ten. Of late, I'm hearing from gentle, concerned people, both white and black, that I need to pay more attention to developing their racial identity. Because they are half-white and they are half-black, and they're being raised in a kind of mongrelized upper-middle-class white world, where frankly, at their ages, color doesn't matter at all. There are some people who are worried that maybe I need to take the girls to Jack and Jill, something like that. They need to have a black identity. "
John, most Hispanics are at least part-black to various extents. Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic are essentially "mulatto" nations. I'm sure many of them look like your daughters but they don't identify with blacks. Why? We can say the same about Arabs, especially North Africans. They reject any "black" identity. Where are the evil, racist "whites" who supposedly police the "one drop rule" and keep the dreaded "Negro blood" out of the "pure white race"? Or is it really the American black and mulatto elite intelligentsia who do that? When multiracial people petitioned Congress for a "Multiracial" census option for the year 2000, their foremost opponent was the NAACP, not the KKK. We have all seen some South Asians so dark in color that the average American "mulatto" looks Nordic by comparison. Compare Vijay Singh with Tiger Woods. Who's darker and "blacker"? So I don't buy this nonsense that multiracial kids (the part-black ones who don't have the Hispanic or Arab "escape hatch") must identify with blacks in order to "save" themselves from - what exactly? I think you all know this for a fact. The great majority of "whites" will be far more respectful of mixed-race identities than blacks will.
Honestly I don’t even know what ‘race’ and ‘identity’ are anymore. Humans are the only mammals who obsess about these things. Skin pigmentation. Truthfully: Who gives a shit? More and more I think the concepts of race and identity are themselves the problem. We’re doing fine in the USA--people are intermarrying; police killings of black men are in reality very low; we’re all very lucky to be alive and American. Is it perfect? No. Of course not. Is there a nasty history of racism? Yes. Has that carried on some pockets? Sure. But c’mon. This new Woke obsession with race is pathological. Just accept people as people. You can love your heritage and history, but don’t make that your sole reason for being alive. We’re all individuals.
Racializing everything worked out so well the first time that it's hard to imagine why we would not want to rush in to do it again. I'm being a bit facetious, of course, but none of our issues are due to not enough fixation on race. If MLK were alive today, he'd be in Larry Elder black-white-supremacist territory.
Meanwhile, John takes certain things for granted: "But you know, we have to acknowledge that they're gonna be seen as black American people and discriminated against." Why must I "acknowledge" either of those things? In today's climate, being black - even part black - is more likely to weigh in their favor than against them. And their upper-class upbringing won't hurt, either. In the current environment, the girls will be privileged above poor white kids and Asians of any class.
Actually peeps resounding yes because what is being talked about here appears to be Black American heritage as opposed to different Black immigrant traditions
It's frustrating, both in the video and in the dialogue above, to see Glenn purposely misconstrue Greg's ideas when he launches into his classic Glenn Loury contrarian/antagonistic mode. Has Glenn never read Albert Murray? Or Racecraft? The idea of separating race from culture, of looking at the use of "race" as often being itself a racist act of generalization/categorization, while simultaneously celebrating black culture, black heritage, and not ignoring how black Americans have suffered, been victimized, in the USA... these are not exactly new concepts. It's annoying to read & watch someone be so mulishly pejorative to a guest, when I know that Glenn actually understands the point Greg is making. "You're busy telling blacks to stop being black" - my God, give me a fucking break. Literally not what Greg was saying.
My father left his oppressive prosperous Italian family (his father was a muralist who did many municipal projects including the Pennsylvania State dome) at 18. Italian family life seen from the outside seems loving, protective, and caring but from the inside is suffocating. Despite suffering ethnic prejudice (he was born in the late 19th Century) he saw what American life could be, freedom to create yourself in any way you choose. He loved America and wanted to be an American. He married an American woman who family reached back to colonial times. Though a New Englander, her father managed the family business in Charleston, SC and experienced a great deal of "anti-Yankee" prejudice. Consequently, I grew up without an ethnic identity. Our family was and is American. My wife is black. Actually, of West Indian heritage, which is in many ways very unlike African American history and identity. Her father was a Tuskegee Airman and eventually a New York City judge. Her mother, whose father was a doctor, was a math teacher and eventually a school principal in a very white Westchester district. My wife is an executive in the entertainment industry and was a highly placed exec at several of the major networks and studios. I am a writer-producer in movies and television and have been a studio executive. She identifies as African-American. I chose her to be my wife because our respective backgrounds seemed so similar and because we had so much in common. She is convinced that she was chosen for her initial position because of affirmative action and it left a mark on her. Affirmative action leaves a stain on a black person that is impossible to erase. No matter how great her achievement it is unearned. She once almost turned down a major promotion because she felt she couldn't handle it. I had to threaten to leave her if she didn't take it. She did and she thrived. Her boss was known as one of the most difficult execs in the business and she was the only one to keep her position. All her predecessors had been fired. I think identity is a trap. One does not choose your identity, someone else chooses it for you. It is their identification of your person that dictates who you are. Why accept it. It diminishes you and limits you. And the current manifestation of "identity", CRT ,is especially pernicious. Again, it is an adaptation of a Marxist, i.e. "class" identification, a white German theory of the Frankfort School. Why adopt that as a model. If racism in America is "Systemic" there is no escape from it and you're "Systemically" black. It is a dead end. Martin Luther King's approach was the correct one. It lifted everyone, white and black, to a higher level of moral justice insisting that blacks had the same rights and duties as all Americans and were equal in every way. Acceptance of racial identity as the summation of your being is capitulation to racism, the ultimate "internalization" of slavery.
The question itself is fraught in current context - "While the biological conception of race may well be worth jettisoning, can we do so without discarding our rich inheritance as black people along with it?"
The question integrates a biological conception of race with the cultural inheritance distinct from biology, while deprioritizing race has no necessary relationship to the cultural heritage. Deprioritizing race (my interpretation of deracializing) has nothing to do with "losing" one's race or skin color. It is rejecting the drumbeat of selective biological essentialism for real, grounded, humane, culturally-embedded relationships.
Nothing prevents Irish Americans from celebrating St Patrick's Day. Nothing prevents Italian Americans (like my wife:-) from preparing and sharing her traditional cuisine. Nothing prevents my Dutch relatives in Holland Mich. or Pella, IA, from holding their wooden shoe parades. But all these folks are primarily simply Americans first with a heritage they honor as a 'secondary' identity. I agree with Greg Thomas--there is no need for deracialization to be seen as stripping the unique heritage away from black people just because their blackness is no longer held to be their 'primary' identifier but merely a pointer to their ancestry like any other hyphenated American. I really don't hear any convincing argument against this any more compelling than say, an Italian American separatist movement, which would be ridiculous. Quit focusing on race!
So, it's tough being discriminated against; is that what I'm hearing? But I'm White, so how would I know, right? Well, I'm a Trump supporter, so I know a LOT about discrimination. I've been called a racist, a White supremacist and a homophobe more times than I can count. If I commit the unpardonable crime of wearing a MAGA hat, I stand to become a national pariah, as happened to Nick Sandman. Maxine Waters (a famous black bigot) viciously encourages the harassment of Republicans in restaurants, very much along the same lines as the KKK harassed black people in restaurants in the past.
My ancestors didn't own slaves, my ancestors FREED slaves. But you won't get positive feedback from Glenn, in that regard. He appears to have the same blind spot as progressives; he can see slave owners, but he can't see abolitionists. To the extent that abolitionists are acknowledged at all, they are treated as some nearly insignificant splinter of the White "race". In fact, the abolitionists movement was powerful and motivated, long before the thirteen colonies became the USA. Slavery was THE divisive issue from the very beginning. States were formed, or not formed, based on the issue of slavery.
We can think that we are the enlightened ones. Yet we treat every White abolitionist and abolitionist descendent as if they are the "Invisible Man". Yes, I'm referencing Ralph Ellison. Think about it for a moment, and then admit that those White people of our past who fought and died to make slaves free, are persona non grata in the pity party now known as racial equity.
My great great grandfather took a bullet thru his hand at Bull Run, and lost the use of it for the rest of his life. He was relatively lucky. My wife's great great grandfather was killed at Antietam. These heroes put it on the line to free the salves. And today I have to listen to them referred to as racists and oppressors. So, next time you're feeling a little oppressed, think about being a Trump supporter and being called every name in the book, accused of every crime in the book, and having your ancestors denigrated by intellectual but ignorant snobs.
Thinking over this fascinating commentary -- from the discussion to the comments -- I'd like to add my 2 cents. Something to hold onto where facts, perceptions, and culture collide. So, what is interracial marriage creating? We went from 41 states with laws against it to zero in 1967. Attitudes went along with that change from about 4% approving in the early Gallup polling around the early 1960s to now over 90%+ approving. Actual intermarriage has also dramatically increased. That's why multiracial individuals wanted their own census box. The ethnic organizations were not happy since that would affect government funding formulae. The point is is that "deracialization" can mean different things and many are opting into a kaleidoscopic version of new identity, leaving the hard edged boundary of race to essential issues and those in need of government dollars. The paths are diverging and converging as we move through history. Last year, I took up the challenge of the race essentialists and "interrogated" myself. I wrote a book about it. We should all write our own books as we are all forging a new American (and British as well) framework. Best music to reflect on this runs from Rag'n'Bone Man's Human to Yuna's Crush.
'Deracialization' means that American Blacks are becoming another ethnic group, with a shared culture and heritage born out of the slave/Jim Crow/civil rights movement experience. (Which makes today's black immigrants a different ethnic group than Blacks whose ancestors were brought here as slaves).
Your concerns about losing that culture and heritage are no different than the concerns of parents in every other ethnic group in the US - Jews, South Asians, East Asians, etc. (Consider the dilemma faced by Tevya the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof).
Beyond ethnic groups, it's the concern of rural parents when their children leave home for higher education - the kids are unlikely to return home to share their parents' way of life, perhaps their customs and values.
And it's a universal concern - parents everywhere are concerned that their children will not share their culture. A sub-story in Jorge Amado's beautiful 'Tent of Miracles' involves a son who leaves poor community where he was raised to go to law school. All of the adults who helped raise him and thrilled for him, but their joy is bittersweet - they know he is never coming back.
However, unless you live in a totalitarian religious state, the parents only have a loose influence as to the culture the children create for themselves.
Last time I checked, the intermarriage rates among most American ethnic communities is close to 40% - they are sharing parts of their culture and losing other parts.
My understanding is that intermarriage among the American Black community is not quite as high as other ethnic groups, but it's growing. I recall an article in Ebony decades ago that objected to black-white dating in the same terms my parents used to object to Jewish-Christian dating. But today, anyone wandering around Old Town Alexandria is accustomed to seeing mixed race couples (just as today, American synagogues are adjusting to mixed marriage families.)
Part of the experience of 'modernity' is that culture evolves. And there is little parents can do about it. You can take your daughters to Jack and Jill, but they will be creating their own variation of the culture they learned from you.
"Our" race? Please define same. Though we all are descended from sub-Saharan West African territories, there are likely countless cultures (not to mention lost languages) lumped into one category. There is no unbroken cultural tradition, but rather bits and pieces, if that, combined yet unidentifiable no matter whether we use that as a starting point, or invent some Kwanzaa assumption of a common starting point, which, in all practical terms, is embarking on a fool's errand.
This attempt would of course be further complicated by acknowledging other units among the African diaspora, such as Puerto Rican, Haitian, Cuban, Jamaican, Mozambican peoples scattered about, so variegated that finding a common thread beyond skincolor and facial features would be impossible. Not even African religions survived the transplantation and reordering that slavery imposed.
Apart from characteristics imposed by DNA, what about the differing cultural imperatives developed over that timespan? In the USA alone, such traditions separate groups culturally and by manner of tradition and amalgamation with white society. Blacks born and reared in Boston may be visually the same as blacks from Birmingham or New Orleans, and have suffered most of the same societal handicaps, but the similarity pretty much ends there, though we are united in our common struggle for equality, respect and opportunity. What do blacks in East St. Louis have in common with the blacks on Carolinas' outer banks, who comprise the Gullah speech patterns and habits? Time, distance and external influences work against the sort of unity the question seemingly seeks to establish; a noble idea nullified by history as lived.
Is this pouring cold water on a well-meant idea? Or simply facing facts? Blacks in the New World form a charming crazy quilt of cultures and outlooks, but commonality sufficient to gratify any quest such as the one envisioned is bound to founder on the shores of reality. Unless my personal vision is so befuddled by noticing the incongruities and differences of time and place that my perspective is inapplicable to the central question. I leave that to the originators of this "Losing Our Race" idea to decide. While doing this (if it is possible), consider a parallel quest: Taking stock of the myriad cultural and appearance differences visible among whites, from Moscow to London to Paris, to Madrid to Ukraine. Guard against navel gazing. Broaden your scope. Prepare to be awed by what you find. Then adjust the parameters of your proposition and re-state it, or narrow it, or somehow make it an attainable quest.
And avoid assumtions of racial purity of any sort. "Our" DNA is spread far and wide, even among those who do not take us into account when speaking of their ancestry. And vice versa. You may not see the task as undoing a Gordian Knot, but that's what it actually is. Behold the two strains of the Thomas Jefferson family, one claiming to be wholly white, the other to be a blend of white & black, thanks to the bond between Thomas and Sally Hemings. This is seen on many Tuesday evenings when "Finding Your Roots" is telecast, to the surprise of many of the show's guests who learn more about themselves and their family lineages than they arrived prepared to understand.
Which reminds me of a magazine article I read in 1949 in a popular magazine raising an alarm with the headline, "20,000 Negroes Disappear Annually," or words to that effect. Statistics showed they did not die or emigrate, yet were no longer around to count their presence. Explanation: They were blacks who simply stepped across the color line (being white-looking enough to succeed at it), and never looked back. Their black genes, though overwhelmed by white genes, course through the veins of many whites without their knowing it. Lines blur. Fate confounds us, and carried to the ultimate of searching, must be disregarded, or the entire quest founders. Face it: Race is an ephemeral construct invented to explain away evident biological and political truths. Hardly a basis on which to set forth any such study that assumes a rational, scientific starting point. I await your findings. which presumably are the basis for your quest.
Exasperating, isn't it? Nature's laws always outweigh man's rules and many of man's suppositions.
I think Greg, and Sheena Mason, are making the right argument. Maybe it would be a bit clearer to contrast with, as Glenn mentions, the Irish in Northern Ireland. To “de-racialize” would not be to give up being Catholic, or being the descendants of an oppressed people, or traditions like playing the bodhran or playing curling. It would be to give up the racial category of “white,” the concept of “whiteness” as being above other races (or equal to them, or less than!). It would be to give up the idea that being “white” puts you on the same “team” as an Englishman, a Russian, or an Albanian. This is what Greg says by “keep the culture and the heritage, give up the race.” Race a fake, overly broad bucket created purely for the purposes of hierarchy. Culture and heritage and ethnicity are quite real. Now, can you still be a bigot about your heritage? Is it possible to be hierarchical about one’s culture? Abso-freakin-lutely. This may be the biggest problem with a deracialization approach to anti-racism: so much of what we see and identify as “racism” is in fact an ignorant sense of cultural superiority over another group with different norms, along with a willingness to assume someone else is culturally inferior to you based on nothing but your estimation of their group membership. We can get rid of race, and we should, but the bigotry will still be there.
"Why are white people so afraid of becoming a minority? Does America treat minorities poorly or something?"
Anti-White fiends ask this question constantly like it's a rhetorical "own," like it's a lights-out mic-drop moment, like the answer isn't 100% obvious & 100% defensible.
White people, as a majority, are the most hated & discriminated against people in America. Again: as a m-a-j-o-r-i-t-y. Should we expect that to change once we're a minority?
The overwhelming majority of interracial crime is committed by minorities against Whites. Should we expect that to change once we're a minority?
Whites are officially discriminated against in hiring & academic admissions. Should we expect that to change once we're a minority?
The majority of non-Whites do not support free speech or gun rights, two foundational principles of the American nation supported by the majority of White Americans. Should we expect that to change once we're a minority?
The broader political beliefs & voting patterns of the majority of non-Whites are totally at odds with those of the majority of White Americans. Should we expect that to change once we're a minority?
Latinos & Blacks are the largest non-White population blocks. Average lifetime US budget impact for
Latino = -$588k
Black = -$751k
White = +$221k
Should we expect the US budget to improve once we're a minority?
Restate the question around places where Whites are already a minority:
Question: Why are White people so afraid of going to Detroit / Baltimore / DC / St Louis / Memphis / etc?
Answer: Because they don't want to die.
Minorities in America are the most well treated, catered to, provided for, & glorified non-majority that has ever existed anywhere. For at least two generations, minorities in America have been the beneficiaries of unambiguous privilege over the White majority.
Whites are the most altruistic group. White people have, by far, the lowest in-group preference of any race. You can make your own value judgements of these traits, but the data bears these facts out. This results in the observable pattern of Whites treating non-Whites well, while non-Whites do not reciprocate (spare me the NAXALT, we're talking about broad social patterns).
So the answer to "does America treat minorities poorly?" is an emphatic "NO." But what no one will say out loud is that minorities treat Whites, & America, poorly. Even the most bleeding-heart Whites know this, which is why they don't move to minority neighborhoods. Many minorities treat their own homogeneous areas so poorly that the minute one can afford to, they flee...
To a WHITER area.
Before any of this, though, the real question is:
Why SHOULD any people be minoritized in their own country?
There are a million reasons to reject it, but "because we don't want to" is enough.
Even though we say “culture and history”, we are saying the signifier of that culture and history is race. That culture and history is inherited by lineage not by choice. Culture and history are a product of things other people have done. It’s a result of their character and accomplishments. Can you take pride in those peoples achievements and encourage others to associate you with them due to your shared race, but then be offended when they also link you to the past sins and cultural dysfunction of your race? This is the problem we have. We believe we can keep one and get rid of the other. Have pride, but no shame. Associate me with the heroic Generals and wise leaders that founded this country. My whiteness connects me to those figures. On the topic of their record on slavery, how dare you connect me with them! I am an individual, I shouldn’t have to feel any shame. How about no racial pride or shame because they are unrelated to who I am. Their whiteness did not contribute to the accomplishments or the sins. So our shared whiteness means nothing. And I will take it even further. Just because I share American culture and history, does that make me different, in an important and special way, from citizens of other countries? Should I take pride in what other Americans have done in the past? If I truly believe we are all the same and race or ethnicity are superficial then I should believe that our histories are just a product of circumstance. My countrymen are no more courageous or intelligent than your countrymen, they were just exposed to different circumstances. This kind of pride is so integral to our being that we fail to realize it is the same instinct that makes us tribal in negative ways. Pride is relative. There has to be a “them” for me to be proud of “us”. It’s ok to believe the ideas your ancestors came up with were better, but not if you believe it was because your ancestors were better. Pride is a sign you believe the latter.
I would ask Glenn, why do you get to choose? When you tell yourself the story of blackness that brings you pride you are talking about things other people created or accomplished. Why are you related to those things and not to the things you don’t like or don’t agree with. You share skin color with people who have run the gamut from brilliant, courageous and strong to dumb, cowardly and weak. The only way to ditch the shame is to also ditch the pride and claim complete individuality. Then, as an individual, choose to keep certain traditions alive because you think they make your life better. Not because they are integral to your blackness.
Why should you not teach your daughter to treat members of her own race preferentially? Is that a real question?
You got a little triggered with Greg there, Glenn. I said out loud while making breakfast, "Let him finish, Glenn!" You do have a habit sometimes of interrupting and not letting people talk when you get a little triggered. Your viewpoint was valid and interesting, but so was Greg's, and I got what he was saying.
I'm just finishing up Shelby Steele's The Content of our Character, which I got for Christmas, and I put it on my wish list when John spoke a few months ago about how much it had influenced him. It's a wonderful book, and as insightful and relevant today as it was thirty years ago. He analyzes and dissects race-based thinking - for blacks especially, but for whites too - and makes a great case against 'identity politics' decades before the term came into use - and demonstrates there's still nothing new under the sun.
'Race' as we know it is just categories of people who evolved differently depending on where their ancestors went after they left Africa. So argue that 'race' is a human construct, and to a large extent, it is, but there are also real differences which *should* be only mildly interesting, instead of giant political points.
Greg made good points regarding the over-exaggerated victimization emphasis on the left and that was exactly what I was reading this morning before I got out of bed. Steele identifies the power dynamics in difference politics and how they play out in whites and blacks, if in slightly different ways, with their chronic anxieties (white guilt, black inferiority). Oppression and slavery and its legacy are part of the 'black experience/culture' and certainly its history, as is the role of white people who've benefited from that ugly piece of history today. But he argues, "I think universities should emphasize commonality as a higher value than "diversity" and "pluralism" - buzzwords for the politics of difference. Difference that does not rest on a clearly delineated foundation of commonality is not only inaccessible to those who are not part of the ethnic or racial group, but also antagonistic to them. Difference can enrich only the common ground."
Jonathan Haidt (I was sleeping with him just before Christmas, LOL) noted in The Righteous Mind that emphasizing differences divides us further, it doesn't unite us. The divisive identity politics of the left and right bear this out - the MAGAs and the woke don't look all that different when you observe how they emphasize differences to claim and seize power (with neither side willing to accept the responsibility that goes with real power). So yeah, I'm with Greg on this one - deracialize. It doesn't mean you have to give up 'black identity' but using 'race'/colour, whichever you are, to one-up 'the enemy' encourages 'othering' thinking and gets in the way of progress. I'm with Steele - difference MUST be rooted in common ground. I may be white and you may be black, but we're both human beings who share 99% DNA and we ALL descended from monkeys who came down from the trees. We have a fuckuva lot more in common than we don't, and I'd like to see the left recognize that, instead of 'othering' each other.
JOHN MCWHORTER: "I have biracial daughters. They are seven and ten. Of late, I'm hearing from gentle, concerned people, both white and black, that I need to pay more attention to developing their racial identity. Because they are half-white and they are half-black, and they're being raised in a kind of mongrelized upper-middle-class white world, where frankly, at their ages, color doesn't matter at all. There are some people who are worried that maybe I need to take the girls to Jack and Jill, something like that. They need to have a black identity. "
John, most Hispanics are at least part-black to various extents. Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic are essentially "mulatto" nations. I'm sure many of them look like your daughters but they don't identify with blacks. Why? We can say the same about Arabs, especially North Africans. They reject any "black" identity. Where are the evil, racist "whites" who supposedly police the "one drop rule" and keep the dreaded "Negro blood" out of the "pure white race"? Or is it really the American black and mulatto elite intelligentsia who do that? When multiracial people petitioned Congress for a "Multiracial" census option for the year 2000, their foremost opponent was the NAACP, not the KKK. We have all seen some South Asians so dark in color that the average American "mulatto" looks Nordic by comparison. Compare Vijay Singh with Tiger Woods. Who's darker and "blacker"? So I don't buy this nonsense that multiracial kids (the part-black ones who don't have the Hispanic or Arab "escape hatch") must identify with blacks in order to "save" themselves from - what exactly? I think you all know this for a fact. The great majority of "whites" will be far more respectful of mixed-race identities than blacks will.
Honestly I don’t even know what ‘race’ and ‘identity’ are anymore. Humans are the only mammals who obsess about these things. Skin pigmentation. Truthfully: Who gives a shit? More and more I think the concepts of race and identity are themselves the problem. We’re doing fine in the USA--people are intermarrying; police killings of black men are in reality very low; we’re all very lucky to be alive and American. Is it perfect? No. Of course not. Is there a nasty history of racism? Yes. Has that carried on some pockets? Sure. But c’mon. This new Woke obsession with race is pathological. Just accept people as people. You can love your heritage and history, but don’t make that your sole reason for being alive. We’re all individuals.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Racializing everything worked out so well the first time that it's hard to imagine why we would not want to rush in to do it again. I'm being a bit facetious, of course, but none of our issues are due to not enough fixation on race. If MLK were alive today, he'd be in Larry Elder black-white-supremacist territory.
Meanwhile, John takes certain things for granted: "But you know, we have to acknowledge that they're gonna be seen as black American people and discriminated against." Why must I "acknowledge" either of those things? In today's climate, being black - even part black - is more likely to weigh in their favor than against them. And their upper-class upbringing won't hurt, either. In the current environment, the girls will be privileged above poor white kids and Asians of any class.
Actually peeps resounding yes because what is being talked about here appears to be Black American heritage as opposed to different Black immigrant traditions
It's frustrating, both in the video and in the dialogue above, to see Glenn purposely misconstrue Greg's ideas when he launches into his classic Glenn Loury contrarian/antagonistic mode. Has Glenn never read Albert Murray? Or Racecraft? The idea of separating race from culture, of looking at the use of "race" as often being itself a racist act of generalization/categorization, while simultaneously celebrating black culture, black heritage, and not ignoring how black Americans have suffered, been victimized, in the USA... these are not exactly new concepts. It's annoying to read & watch someone be so mulishly pejorative to a guest, when I know that Glenn actually understands the point Greg is making. "You're busy telling blacks to stop being black" - my God, give me a fucking break. Literally not what Greg was saying.
My father left his oppressive prosperous Italian family (his father was a muralist who did many municipal projects including the Pennsylvania State dome) at 18. Italian family life seen from the outside seems loving, protective, and caring but from the inside is suffocating. Despite suffering ethnic prejudice (he was born in the late 19th Century) he saw what American life could be, freedom to create yourself in any way you choose. He loved America and wanted to be an American. He married an American woman who family reached back to colonial times. Though a New Englander, her father managed the family business in Charleston, SC and experienced a great deal of "anti-Yankee" prejudice. Consequently, I grew up without an ethnic identity. Our family was and is American. My wife is black. Actually, of West Indian heritage, which is in many ways very unlike African American history and identity. Her father was a Tuskegee Airman and eventually a New York City judge. Her mother, whose father was a doctor, was a math teacher and eventually a school principal in a very white Westchester district. My wife is an executive in the entertainment industry and was a highly placed exec at several of the major networks and studios. I am a writer-producer in movies and television and have been a studio executive. She identifies as African-American. I chose her to be my wife because our respective backgrounds seemed so similar and because we had so much in common. She is convinced that she was chosen for her initial position because of affirmative action and it left a mark on her. Affirmative action leaves a stain on a black person that is impossible to erase. No matter how great her achievement it is unearned. She once almost turned down a major promotion because she felt she couldn't handle it. I had to threaten to leave her if she didn't take it. She did and she thrived. Her boss was known as one of the most difficult execs in the business and she was the only one to keep her position. All her predecessors had been fired. I think identity is a trap. One does not choose your identity, someone else chooses it for you. It is their identification of your person that dictates who you are. Why accept it. It diminishes you and limits you. And the current manifestation of "identity", CRT ,is especially pernicious. Again, it is an adaptation of a Marxist, i.e. "class" identification, a white German theory of the Frankfort School. Why adopt that as a model. If racism in America is "Systemic" there is no escape from it and you're "Systemically" black. It is a dead end. Martin Luther King's approach was the correct one. It lifted everyone, white and black, to a higher level of moral justice insisting that blacks had the same rights and duties as all Americans and were equal in every way. Acceptance of racial identity as the summation of your being is capitulation to racism, the ultimate "internalization" of slavery.
The question itself is fraught in current context - "While the biological conception of race may well be worth jettisoning, can we do so without discarding our rich inheritance as black people along with it?"
The question integrates a biological conception of race with the cultural inheritance distinct from biology, while deprioritizing race has no necessary relationship to the cultural heritage. Deprioritizing race (my interpretation of deracializing) has nothing to do with "losing" one's race or skin color. It is rejecting the drumbeat of selective biological essentialism for real, grounded, humane, culturally-embedded relationships.
Nothing prevents Irish Americans from celebrating St Patrick's Day. Nothing prevents Italian Americans (like my wife:-) from preparing and sharing her traditional cuisine. Nothing prevents my Dutch relatives in Holland Mich. or Pella, IA, from holding their wooden shoe parades. But all these folks are primarily simply Americans first with a heritage they honor as a 'secondary' identity. I agree with Greg Thomas--there is no need for deracialization to be seen as stripping the unique heritage away from black people just because their blackness is no longer held to be their 'primary' identifier but merely a pointer to their ancestry like any other hyphenated American. I really don't hear any convincing argument against this any more compelling than say, an Italian American separatist movement, which would be ridiculous. Quit focusing on race!
So, it's tough being discriminated against; is that what I'm hearing? But I'm White, so how would I know, right? Well, I'm a Trump supporter, so I know a LOT about discrimination. I've been called a racist, a White supremacist and a homophobe more times than I can count. If I commit the unpardonable crime of wearing a MAGA hat, I stand to become a national pariah, as happened to Nick Sandman. Maxine Waters (a famous black bigot) viciously encourages the harassment of Republicans in restaurants, very much along the same lines as the KKK harassed black people in restaurants in the past.
My ancestors didn't own slaves, my ancestors FREED slaves. But you won't get positive feedback from Glenn, in that regard. He appears to have the same blind spot as progressives; he can see slave owners, but he can't see abolitionists. To the extent that abolitionists are acknowledged at all, they are treated as some nearly insignificant splinter of the White "race". In fact, the abolitionists movement was powerful and motivated, long before the thirteen colonies became the USA. Slavery was THE divisive issue from the very beginning. States were formed, or not formed, based on the issue of slavery.
We can think that we are the enlightened ones. Yet we treat every White abolitionist and abolitionist descendent as if they are the "Invisible Man". Yes, I'm referencing Ralph Ellison. Think about it for a moment, and then admit that those White people of our past who fought and died to make slaves free, are persona non grata in the pity party now known as racial equity.
My great great grandfather took a bullet thru his hand at Bull Run, and lost the use of it for the rest of his life. He was relatively lucky. My wife's great great grandfather was killed at Antietam. These heroes put it on the line to free the salves. And today I have to listen to them referred to as racists and oppressors. So, next time you're feeling a little oppressed, think about being a Trump supporter and being called every name in the book, accused of every crime in the book, and having your ancestors denigrated by intellectual but ignorant snobs.
Thinking over this fascinating commentary -- from the discussion to the comments -- I'd like to add my 2 cents. Something to hold onto where facts, perceptions, and culture collide. So, what is interracial marriage creating? We went from 41 states with laws against it to zero in 1967. Attitudes went along with that change from about 4% approving in the early Gallup polling around the early 1960s to now over 90%+ approving. Actual intermarriage has also dramatically increased. That's why multiracial individuals wanted their own census box. The ethnic organizations were not happy since that would affect government funding formulae. The point is is that "deracialization" can mean different things and many are opting into a kaleidoscopic version of new identity, leaving the hard edged boundary of race to essential issues and those in need of government dollars. The paths are diverging and converging as we move through history. Last year, I took up the challenge of the race essentialists and "interrogated" myself. I wrote a book about it. We should all write our own books as we are all forging a new American (and British as well) framework. Best music to reflect on this runs from Rag'n'Bone Man's Human to Yuna's Crush.
'Deracialization' means that American Blacks are becoming another ethnic group, with a shared culture and heritage born out of the slave/Jim Crow/civil rights movement experience. (Which makes today's black immigrants a different ethnic group than Blacks whose ancestors were brought here as slaves).
Your concerns about losing that culture and heritage are no different than the concerns of parents in every other ethnic group in the US - Jews, South Asians, East Asians, etc. (Consider the dilemma faced by Tevya the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof).
Beyond ethnic groups, it's the concern of rural parents when their children leave home for higher education - the kids are unlikely to return home to share their parents' way of life, perhaps their customs and values.
And it's a universal concern - parents everywhere are concerned that their children will not share their culture. A sub-story in Jorge Amado's beautiful 'Tent of Miracles' involves a son who leaves poor community where he was raised to go to law school. All of the adults who helped raise him and thrilled for him, but their joy is bittersweet - they know he is never coming back.
However, unless you live in a totalitarian religious state, the parents only have a loose influence as to the culture the children create for themselves.
Last time I checked, the intermarriage rates among most American ethnic communities is close to 40% - they are sharing parts of their culture and losing other parts.
My understanding is that intermarriage among the American Black community is not quite as high as other ethnic groups, but it's growing. I recall an article in Ebony decades ago that objected to black-white dating in the same terms my parents used to object to Jewish-Christian dating. But today, anyone wandering around Old Town Alexandria is accustomed to seeing mixed race couples (just as today, American synagogues are adjusting to mixed marriage families.)
Part of the experience of 'modernity' is that culture evolves. And there is little parents can do about it. You can take your daughters to Jack and Jill, but they will be creating their own variation of the culture they learned from you.
"Our" race? Please define same. Though we all are descended from sub-Saharan West African territories, there are likely countless cultures (not to mention lost languages) lumped into one category. There is no unbroken cultural tradition, but rather bits and pieces, if that, combined yet unidentifiable no matter whether we use that as a starting point, or invent some Kwanzaa assumption of a common starting point, which, in all practical terms, is embarking on a fool's errand.
This attempt would of course be further complicated by acknowledging other units among the African diaspora, such as Puerto Rican, Haitian, Cuban, Jamaican, Mozambican peoples scattered about, so variegated that finding a common thread beyond skincolor and facial features would be impossible. Not even African religions survived the transplantation and reordering that slavery imposed.
Apart from characteristics imposed by DNA, what about the differing cultural imperatives developed over that timespan? In the USA alone, such traditions separate groups culturally and by manner of tradition and amalgamation with white society. Blacks born and reared in Boston may be visually the same as blacks from Birmingham or New Orleans, and have suffered most of the same societal handicaps, but the similarity pretty much ends there, though we are united in our common struggle for equality, respect and opportunity. What do blacks in East St. Louis have in common with the blacks on Carolinas' outer banks, who comprise the Gullah speech patterns and habits? Time, distance and external influences work against the sort of unity the question seemingly seeks to establish; a noble idea nullified by history as lived.
Is this pouring cold water on a well-meant idea? Or simply facing facts? Blacks in the New World form a charming crazy quilt of cultures and outlooks, but commonality sufficient to gratify any quest such as the one envisioned is bound to founder on the shores of reality. Unless my personal vision is so befuddled by noticing the incongruities and differences of time and place that my perspective is inapplicable to the central question. I leave that to the originators of this "Losing Our Race" idea to decide. While doing this (if it is possible), consider a parallel quest: Taking stock of the myriad cultural and appearance differences visible among whites, from Moscow to London to Paris, to Madrid to Ukraine. Guard against navel gazing. Broaden your scope. Prepare to be awed by what you find. Then adjust the parameters of your proposition and re-state it, or narrow it, or somehow make it an attainable quest.
And avoid assumtions of racial purity of any sort. "Our" DNA is spread far and wide, even among those who do not take us into account when speaking of their ancestry. And vice versa. You may not see the task as undoing a Gordian Knot, but that's what it actually is. Behold the two strains of the Thomas Jefferson family, one claiming to be wholly white, the other to be a blend of white & black, thanks to the bond between Thomas and Sally Hemings. This is seen on many Tuesday evenings when "Finding Your Roots" is telecast, to the surprise of many of the show's guests who learn more about themselves and their family lineages than they arrived prepared to understand.
Which reminds me of a magazine article I read in 1949 in a popular magazine raising an alarm with the headline, "20,000 Negroes Disappear Annually," or words to that effect. Statistics showed they did not die or emigrate, yet were no longer around to count their presence. Explanation: They were blacks who simply stepped across the color line (being white-looking enough to succeed at it), and never looked back. Their black genes, though overwhelmed by white genes, course through the veins of many whites without their knowing it. Lines blur. Fate confounds us, and carried to the ultimate of searching, must be disregarded, or the entire quest founders. Face it: Race is an ephemeral construct invented to explain away evident biological and political truths. Hardly a basis on which to set forth any such study that assumes a rational, scientific starting point. I await your findings. which presumably are the basis for your quest.
Exasperating, isn't it? Nature's laws always outweigh man's rules and many of man's suppositions.
Ted Manuel TedZ.Manuel@gmail.com
I think Greg, and Sheena Mason, are making the right argument. Maybe it would be a bit clearer to contrast with, as Glenn mentions, the Irish in Northern Ireland. To “de-racialize” would not be to give up being Catholic, or being the descendants of an oppressed people, or traditions like playing the bodhran or playing curling. It would be to give up the racial category of “white,” the concept of “whiteness” as being above other races (or equal to them, or less than!). It would be to give up the idea that being “white” puts you on the same “team” as an Englishman, a Russian, or an Albanian. This is what Greg says by “keep the culture and the heritage, give up the race.” Race a fake, overly broad bucket created purely for the purposes of hierarchy. Culture and heritage and ethnicity are quite real. Now, can you still be a bigot about your heritage? Is it possible to be hierarchical about one’s culture? Abso-freakin-lutely. This may be the biggest problem with a deracialization approach to anti-racism: so much of what we see and identify as “racism” is in fact an ignorant sense of cultural superiority over another group with different norms, along with a willingness to assume someone else is culturally inferior to you based on nothing but your estimation of their group membership. We can get rid of race, and we should, but the bigotry will still be there.
Let’s break through all the BS, fellas.....
"Why are white people so afraid of becoming a minority? Does America treat minorities poorly or something?"
Anti-White fiends ask this question constantly like it's a rhetorical "own," like it's a lights-out mic-drop moment, like the answer isn't 100% obvious & 100% defensible.
White people, as a majority, are the most hated & discriminated against people in America. Again: as a m-a-j-o-r-i-t-y. Should we expect that to change once we're a minority?
The overwhelming majority of interracial crime is committed by minorities against Whites. Should we expect that to change once we're a minority?
Whites are officially discriminated against in hiring & academic admissions. Should we expect that to change once we're a minority?
The majority of non-Whites do not support free speech or gun rights, two foundational principles of the American nation supported by the majority of White Americans. Should we expect that to change once we're a minority?
The broader political beliefs & voting patterns of the majority of non-Whites are totally at odds with those of the majority of White Americans. Should we expect that to change once we're a minority?
Latinos & Blacks are the largest non-White population blocks. Average lifetime US budget impact for
Latino = -$588k
Black = -$751k
White = +$221k
Should we expect the US budget to improve once we're a minority?
Restate the question around places where Whites are already a minority:
Question: Why are White people so afraid of going to Detroit / Baltimore / DC / St Louis / Memphis / etc?
Answer: Because they don't want to die.
Minorities in America are the most well treated, catered to, provided for, & glorified non-majority that has ever existed anywhere. For at least two generations, minorities in America have been the beneficiaries of unambiguous privilege over the White majority.
Whites are the most altruistic group. White people have, by far, the lowest in-group preference of any race. You can make your own value judgements of these traits, but the data bears these facts out. This results in the observable pattern of Whites treating non-Whites well, while non-Whites do not reciprocate (spare me the NAXALT, we're talking about broad social patterns).
So the answer to "does America treat minorities poorly?" is an emphatic "NO." But what no one will say out loud is that minorities treat Whites, & America, poorly. Even the most bleeding-heart Whites know this, which is why they don't move to minority neighborhoods. Many minorities treat their own homogeneous areas so poorly that the minute one can afford to, they flee...
To a WHITER area.
Before any of this, though, the real question is:
Why SHOULD any people be minoritized in their own country?
There are a million reasons to reject it, but "because we don't want to" is enough.
No race voluntarily suicides itself.
No race embraces its own genocide.
The very notion is fundamentally insane.
Even though we say “culture and history”, we are saying the signifier of that culture and history is race. That culture and history is inherited by lineage not by choice. Culture and history are a product of things other people have done. It’s a result of their character and accomplishments. Can you take pride in those peoples achievements and encourage others to associate you with them due to your shared race, but then be offended when they also link you to the past sins and cultural dysfunction of your race? This is the problem we have. We believe we can keep one and get rid of the other. Have pride, but no shame. Associate me with the heroic Generals and wise leaders that founded this country. My whiteness connects me to those figures. On the topic of their record on slavery, how dare you connect me with them! I am an individual, I shouldn’t have to feel any shame. How about no racial pride or shame because they are unrelated to who I am. Their whiteness did not contribute to the accomplishments or the sins. So our shared whiteness means nothing. And I will take it even further. Just because I share American culture and history, does that make me different, in an important and special way, from citizens of other countries? Should I take pride in what other Americans have done in the past? If I truly believe we are all the same and race or ethnicity are superficial then I should believe that our histories are just a product of circumstance. My countrymen are no more courageous or intelligent than your countrymen, they were just exposed to different circumstances. This kind of pride is so integral to our being that we fail to realize it is the same instinct that makes us tribal in negative ways. Pride is relative. There has to be a “them” for me to be proud of “us”. It’s ok to believe the ideas your ancestors came up with were better, but not if you believe it was because your ancestors were better. Pride is a sign you believe the latter.
I would ask Glenn, why do you get to choose? When you tell yourself the story of blackness that brings you pride you are talking about things other people created or accomplished. Why are you related to those things and not to the things you don’t like or don’t agree with. You share skin color with people who have run the gamut from brilliant, courageous and strong to dumb, cowardly and weak. The only way to ditch the shame is to also ditch the pride and claim complete individuality. Then, as an individual, choose to keep certain traditions alive because you think they make your life better. Not because they are integral to your blackness.
Why should you not teach your daughter to treat members of her own race preferentially? Is that a real question?