Incorrect. More correct would be: the dominant modern left-wing view is that there exists now in much of the world, and has historically, a systematic structural power imbalances between groups identified as “races”, that this disproportionately harms some of those groups, and that this is bad thing.
That the confluence of all those things is the proper referent of the label “racism” rather than that label referring to racial bias which is a component of all that is far more controversial even within the left.
> For example, divesting from your neighborhood out of concern for your property value when PoC start to move in does not necessarily reflect an individual racial bias. It could be a purely rational economic calculation based on other people’s biases. It’s still the bread and butter of the system of racism.
Uh, yes, because it's a product of someone's racial biases, it's still a part of systemic racism even by the simpler and more common definition of racism, because its a product of racial biases within the social system.
I don’t like the conflation of terms either. But I see a lot of people talking past each other (“racism isn’t a big deal because most people aren’t racist anymore,” and “racism is a major problem in America because of structural inequality”). Parent got close to explaining how these statements are true at the same time, and I wanted to point it out.
There are vast piles of research showing that personal racial bias manifesting through discrimination, whether or not it is conscious/intentional, is pervasive in America.
Structural racism is real, but it is not independent of personal racism—it is produced by and perpetuates personal racism.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-s...
Besides this, the left-wing view is easily confused with the popular notion of racism, which is widely considered to be immoral, and I think often the proponents of this viewpoint abuse the confusion, deliberately accusing skeptics and dissenters of "racism" without being clear that they mean the probably-benign "systemic racism" instead of the clearly immoral "racism". Further, many of these proponents also tend to consider "questioning systemic racism theory" to be an act of (systemic) "racism" because it inhibits the consensus required to combat (systemic) "racism".
TL;DR I think the marketing was deliberately obfuscatory, and this has had a huge detrimental impact on our national racial.
My suggestion is that people stop being so damn concerned about their moral status and start caring more about actually fixing things.
A system with de facto separate and unequal schools is just as bad as a system with de jure separate and unequal schools. Whether that's the result of an emergent phenomenon or explicit planning has little effect on the people stuck in the system.
If someone's fragile moral ego gets in the way of an accurate description of the problem... well, that person's ego is the problem.
FWIW you see the same problem in flailing engineering projects.
This is silly. Moral status is a necessary component of political capital. The entire reason the progressive left stuck to their confusing "systemic racism" term is because it conveniently allows them to strip dissidents and critics of the political capital necessary to implement their fixes or even advance the national discourse. Of course, we could think wishfully about a world where politics were irrelevant (as I sometimes do), but that's not productive.
The term "systemic racism" was coined and stuck because it's evocative of the actual idea, not as some sort of grand conspiracy to strip you of your honor.
But I don't care. We can call it "silly putty" if it means we can actually talk about it instead of closely defending our honor. And if you have an alternative name that is evocative of the underlying problem and doesn't offend you, I'd love to hear it.
> This is silly
It is my experience that when people disarm themselves, productive conversations are possible.
Perhaps I'm wrong. But if so, then there's no solution anyways. So we might as well try.
To be clear, I don't care much for "my honor". Like I said, I care about making good outcomes politically tenable. As for conspiracy theories, that's literally what "systemic racism" is. And we could talk about it if it weren't for all of the weasel words and slander.
If you cared about the conversation, you'd be trying to get rid of the weasel words instead of attacking the people who call them out.
You're right. Chalk it up to frustration in a different thread. My apologies.
> As for conspiracy theories, that's literally what "systemic racism" is
I mean, that's clearly hyperbolic, right? Systemic racism is a real thing -- see red lining or Jim Crow. We can at least agree that the concept is useful and refers to a real phenomenon, even if we're going to debate the severity/degree of that phenomenon in the present.
> you'd be trying to get rid of the weasel words
I don't think systemic racism is a weasel word. I think it's a well-chosen, evocative, and just damn accurate noun for the concept it represents.
Again, do you have an alternative word?
Thank you for the apology; I understand the cumulative frustration bit. Hopefully I wasn't the cause of the frustration in the other thread.
> Again, do you have an alternative word?
I would say "disparate outcomes that correlate with race" or some such. I don't object to "systemic racism" when it specifically means "disparate outcomes caused by racism" (e.g., redlining and jim crow); however, it's often used as a blanket term for any racial disparity whether or not there is evidence that it's actually part of the system and not simply the result of different choices made by different groups, or an artifact of documented historical oppression. In the latter case, its effect is to shut down any conversation about the actual cause of the disparity, because anyone who questions the systemic racism explanation is guilty of endorsing racism.
So if that's not a weasel word, it's something similarly nefarious and inhibitive of dialog.
I really think all parties (or at least those who aren't threatened by advancing the dialog) are better served by clear, meaningful terms, and I don't think that's what we have with "systemic racism". Insofar as it means what you say, then it's grossly and widely misused, which has the same effect as if the word were meaningless to begin with.
What about cities that were originally segregated via red-lining, but now remain extremely segregated along those same geographic lines today even after those policies have been eliminated? Is that systemic racism?
In almost all cases, systemic racism is caused by a complex mix of historical racism, contemporary racism, and rational economic choices that aren't taken with explicit racial intent but none-the-less help sustain the inertia of the system.
Disclaimer: This is mostly exploring a society where racism (as it is traditionally defined) has been completely removed. This isn't what we have (we both agree on this point), but the exercise is still useful in theory.
Assuming all such policies are removed, I would confidently say "no" for lots of reasons. Firstly, integration doesn't happen the moment racist forces are removed. Minority groups can and often do self-segregate for reasons that no reasonable person would identify as anti-minority racism (e.g., the social stability in a shared culture, hatred for people who look like historical oppressors [I guess this one is racism, but not one that is talked about under the rubric of 'systemic racism'], etc). Secondly, all else equal, a system in which wealth grows linearly would still see a growing disparity between disparate races even apart from racism; this is not desirable, but it's still not "systemic racism" in any meaningful sense. Thirdly, there are economies of scale to be had by participating in the majority culture, privileging those who've integrated over those who haven't--if you remove barriers to integration and some minority groups haven't integrated, they're at a disadvantage. Some might argue that this is systemic racism because the system privileges one group over another, but it's only related to race insofar as races tend to correlate with cultures, and also because it is a universal cultural reality completely divorced from any racist motive. Lastly, (by definition) different cultures make different decisions in different distributions--if some cultures make decisions that lead to poorer outcomes even if those cultures are the manifestation of historical oppression, it's still not systemic racism if all active forces of racism have been removed from the system.
Of course, all of this goes out the window if "the system" encompasses minority cultures and "racism" is allowed to mean "any disparity between races"; however, no one uses it in that sense, or at least every time a moderate or conservative brings up one of these "different choices -> different outcomes" possibilities, legions of university professors and other esteemed progressives shout them down, "no, it's systemic racism!" implying that "systemic racism" excludes cultures that choose their own disparities.
Of course, this whole semantic exploration is testament to the ambiguous nature of the term.
Why do you think there's a correlation between culture and race? Could it have something to do with people of color being explicitly excluded from white society as a matter of public policy until, like, 50 years ago?
My personal way of saying this is "we all do racist things, but very few of us are racist." Very often the most pragmatic choice in a situation also happens to be racist. Just own the racist things you do, and try to change the world for the better so you are no longer pushed into doing racist things.
Calling that racism is to potentially miss the root cause of much of this stuff, and it has to do with poverty. The poor of any ethnic group or race are treated badly.
That's confusing because you're using two different definitions of the word "racist" in the same sentence. At some point we should do everyone a favor and use two words when we mean two things.
Aside from the property values example someone else listed, here's another one. If a well-off community decides to impose a tax on their residents to help fund the local schools, that doesn't feel racist. Everyone is just trying to ensure a quality education for their children. But what that does is allow the underfunded public school system to remain underfunded. If everyone's children were receiving substandard educations, there would be more pressure on the state to fix the situation for everyone in the state. But when only the poor communities are underfunded thanks to the wealthier communities kicking in those extra funds, you end up with those poor, primarily PoC students having lower-quality schools.
In that way, overt racism from previous eras created a status quo that, through non-overt racism, gets perpetuated going forward.
> ...that isn't the result of a racist act...
Here, again, the words "racism" and "racist" mean two different things. I'm not sure why there's so much hesitance to just call the different things by different names.
Also, nobody has minimized anything. I don't think clarity in communication promotes injustice or ignorance. On the contrary, actually.
What am I attempting? Why shut down the conversation like that? We can be more civil and reasonable here.
I do think missing demographic goals in hiring does not deserve the same stigma as sending Jewish families to gas chambers. Both deserve distinct stigmas and should be described with distinct terms.
It's not "nuance" to use the same word in different ways in the same sentence. The problem with the word "racism" is that it clouds nuance, so if communicating nuance is your goal, better descriptive language should be attractive.
I was merely pointing out that it's not wrong to do that, it's just less precise, and often intentionally so. But often times readers demand extra precision under the guise of avoiding terms that are rightly stigmatized. Your "missing demographic goals" obviously can't be equated with the holocaust...that's nonsensical. But by avoiding any connection with the word racism, it doesn't validate the employment discrimination that's felt by PoC. Just because that discrimination may start years earlier during the education process doesn't change the fact that it's still experienced. In fact it may be completely legitimate and entirely not the fault of the business choosing not to hire (or even interview) the diversity candidate. The last link in the chain doesn't have to, on its own, be wrong.
And that's a great example of the original point. Not hiring an under-qualified candidate doesn't feel wrong to most reasonable people. But the fact that that under-qualified candidate didn't have access to the schooling necessary to become qualified can still represent a system that is, overall, discriminatory against PoC. Hence my original statement, "a PoC can be negatively affected by racism that isn't the result of a racist act." The act of not hiring them wasn't discriminatory and yet they still experienced systemic discrimination.
The overall point is that there are a lot of people that want to minimize the effects that PoC feel from racism (generic term encompassing all forms) because either they don't like feeling like racists or they actually are racist. What I think the original poster was trying to get at and what I tried to rephrase was that just because PoC feel those effects is not an indication that anyone is personally responsible. You can validate those experiences without there needing to be someone to blame. And we'll have more productive discussions on how to move forward and diminish the effects of racism if people aren't worried about being blamed.
Not saying there aren’t racists out there (lol tiki torches), but most people don’t fall into that category.
Two words for two concepts would decrease the stakes of the conversation and perhaps make room for some actual understanding and progress.
Are communist Americans also capitalist because they part of systemic structural capitalism?
Economy and class are so central the Marx's philosophy that saying "Just s/<insert anything here>/class" doesn't make any sense. You can't just go into Capital and s/<insert anything here>/class and end up with anything that makes any sense. The entire analysis needs restructuring.
At some point, if Marxism is defined that way, you might as well just call any materialist philosophy "basically Marxist". Which is silly.
Tangentially, I've seen a lot of "so basically (cultural) Marxism" type comments lately about anything and everything left-leaning in the US. Something memetic is going on there.
You have groups vying for power, with one group systemically oppressing another, and the morality of the situation adjudicated at that granulatiry. How does that not work? Can you reply with a specific?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjNJX64cBOE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGRVhsNX5Ao
Tangentially, I've seen a lot of "so basically (cultural) Marxism" type comments lately about anything and everything left-leaning in the US. Something memetic is going on there.
The memes (in the academic Richard Dawkins sense) which stick around are often the ones which have the strength of truth behind them.
You've just described thousands of years of history prior to Marx and hundreds of years of history after Marx across every single axis of the political spectrum.
This is more a description of "effective political messaging" than a description of "Marxism".
Has there ever been a great politician -- good or evil -- who didn't believe they had the weight of morality on their side? Who didn't tap into feelings of oppression, real or perceived?
Even Hitler cast his politics in terms of an oppressed people with a moral right to rise up. And if Mein Kampf is Marxist then you've got one hell of a definition of Marxism.
> The memes (in the academic Richard Dawkins sense) which stick around are often the ones which have the strength of truth behind them.
Well, anything popular taps into some truth, usually about the audience with whom the popular thing resonates.
But tapping into some truth and actually being true are two very different things.
Interpreted any other way, your claim is silly. Mutually exclusive ideas achieve this sort of memetic status (with different subpopulations) all the time.
Which is precisely what Marx claims to do, with essentially the model which Marx claims does so.
Well, anything popular taps into some truth
It's pretty obvious that Postmodernism is homomorphic to Marxism. It's also well documented that Postmodernism has intellectual roots in Marxism. Marxism is also outwardly and openly claimed by many in the current day political left in the US, in particular, the part which originates and most vigorously promotes Intersectionality.
Again, no. Marx's characterization is much more concrete than that, and really cannot be separated from notions of class and capital and commodity-form without rendering the term "Marxist" nearly meaningless. Or at least synonymous with much less politically-charged ideas like "materialism" or even just "politics". Separating Marx from those things is like separating Jesus from Christianity.
The next two criticism are more tangential and obvious, but hopefully more illustrative of the problem with the way you're trying to re-define Marxism
1. A capitalist operating as Marx would predict is not himself a Marxist, so your statement is especially confusing for more than one reason.
2. Plenty of non-Marxist -- even conservative economists -- tap into various Marxist ideas. And even more tap into the same ideas that Marx was himself building on (e.g., the effectiveness of providing moral justifications on the basis of oppression... not a Marxist innovation!). So drawing any tangential connection to Marx and labeling anything connected by that tangent as "Marxist" implicates 100% of economists. Which, again, makes the label "Marxist" kind of silly and pointless.
If you strip Marxism of Marx's actual core ideas, then "Marxism" ceases to mean anything. And class is a central component of those ideas.
At some point referring to something as "Just Marxism s/.../class" begins to occupy the "you are an idiot" box in on the PG argument hierarchy.
> It's pretty obvious that Postmodernism is homomorphic to Marxism
This seems mostly off-topic... you'll have to draw out the connection for me. (edit: Obviously, plenty of postmodernists critique closeparen's post and plenty of non-postmodernists would agree with closeparent's post. Are you sure you mean postmodernism?)
The Intersectional claim is basically that inherent markers like race have become a functionally like a marker of class.
Separating Marx from those things is like separating Jesus from Christianity.
You just keep on asserting this without specifying why -- probably because you find it particularly embarrassing. So you're saying there's something magically special about the very specific formulation? Many atheists have noted that Jesus has many similarities to many other religious/mythical figures. The principles are usefully generalized. As is the with religion, the fact that there are these patterns is significant in itself.
"Marxism" in such broad-brush terms is certainly not meaningless in any case. Use "collectivist" if you like. Anyone who throws individual rights under the bus in favor of the interests of the group and says phrases like "By any means necessary" or "all power comes from the end of a gun" is a party to ideologies which have played out in the deaths of tens of thousands to tens of millions of people, across different cultures, in different times, again and again throughout history.
Hm. Unless closeparen edited their comment, I've very confused, because that's not at all the claim that closeparen made.
In fact, the "all racism is really just a form of classism" is more common in conservative circles than leftist circles.
> So you're saying there's something magically special about the very specific formulation?
No, not at all. It's just one more idea. And it has a name. That name is Marxism. Use each name for the thing that it refers to, and nothing else.
> "Marxism" in such broad-brush terms is certainly not meaningless in any case.
Not really. Marxism refers to the political philosophy laid out in Capital and popularized in texts like the Manifesto. It refers to Marx's synthesis of a bunch of specific ideas -- Hegel's dialectics, materialism, the labor theory of value, commodity form, class warfare, markets, etc. -- some of which were unique to Marx and some of which pre-dated him by centuries. Marxism refers to, you know, Marx's system of thought.
I submit that whatever alternative definition you're proposing is silly and confusing.
> Anyone who throws individual rights under the bus in favor of the interests of the group
It's all fine and well that you're a traditional liberal, but calling everything that's "not you" a Marxist is pretty lazy.
I wasn't specifically referring to closeparen's comment at that point. What are you trying to pull?
And it has a name. That name is Marxism.
Sounds like your intoning some kind of quasi-religious exceptionalism.
Marxism refers to, you know, Marx's system of thought.
Which historically results in one group of people violently seizing stuff from another group of people using some collectivist morality because individual rights means nothing to them. Nothing confusing about that.
calling everything that's "not you" a Marxist is pretty lazy.
I'm calling everything collectivist that has resulted in the above Marxist. Historically, most everything collectivist that has gained control of a society has resulted in the above and has called itself "Marxist."
Which is silly and does not comport how anyone serious about political economy would use the term "Marxist".
You're free to use whatever words you want, but don't expect productive dialog if you dream up crazy definitions that no one else uses.
The phrase 'cultural Marxism' only betrays how little right wing pundits who use this phrase actually understand of Marxian theory and postmodern cultural studies generally, since frankly the vaguely left wing strains of academic cultural theory spent the last 50 years _critiquing_ Marxism from the vantage point that it did not pay enough attention or have a meaningful theory to talk about these issues. Postmodernism and Marxism generally have been somewhat 'at war' within academia, though generally you'll find that the 'founding fathers' of cultural studies and postmodernism (say, Adorno, or Derrida, Foucault) themselves express admiration or sympathy for Marx himself though they rarely considered themselves Marxists per se. "Cultural Marxism" is kind of a misnomer -- they'd be better off saying "left wing postmodernists" or "liberal cultural relativists" or something, but those don't sound as boogeyman, do they?
Your point ascribes to me a sense of morality to me as a sneaky way of putting words in my mouth. "as you seem to be implying." In reality, I need no more than the Marx's subsumed sense of morality/justice in Marx's analysis for my point to stand.
"Cultural Marxism" is kind of a misnomer -- they'd be better off saying "left wing postmodernists" or "liberal cultural relativists" or something
Not a misnomer at all. Many who fall under the banner openly proclaim themselves Marxist, or subscribe to those ideas in their writings. For those who don't, there's still the matter of the homomorphisms between Marxism and Social Construction.
Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, not all mortals are Socrates.
I've not downvoted you, at least in this thread. HN doesn't let you downvote in threads you participate in.
"I can see similarities here, so I'll just call them the same thing"
Isn't that how it works, especially with ideologies and models?
Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, not all mortals are Socrates.
Yes, but I'm talking about specific principles, not just species membership. Socrates spoke greek. He lived in Athens. Not all mortals are Athenian, but Socrates surely was an Athenian. There is a specific problem when one deals with people as groups, as in race and class, in that one tends to throw individuals under the bus for not towing the line of the group. Historically, this can number in the tens of thousands or the tens of millions.
No. Ideologies are labels that have meanings, sometimes very specific meanings. And even though there are overlaps between some ideologies and others, conflating terms is still disingenuous and unhelpful.
Marx believed in profit-motive, to be sure. That doesn't make Marx a Capitalist. Calling all "collectivists" Marxists is similarly silly.
> Yes, but...
Your parent was making a comment about the flawed logic in your argument justifying your misuse of the term "Marxism", not your overall opinion on identity politics.
Your response is totally irrelevant to that criticism.
What the parent said is only the tip of the iceberg. Racism is a system to divide people so they are easier to control. So it hurts both black and white and other POC by making whites and browns fear downward mobility by making examples out of blacks and other out groups.
If you look at any of civil rights leaders who were killed (MLK, Malcom X f.e.), you will see that the worst punishment (assassination) is reserved for those who realized that it's not about just racism. It's about dividing people against each other. Trump has done this spectacularly by making whites fear P.O.C. all over again when it's his class, the plutocrats, who gain the most from sowing this division.
For a historical example, in early American colonial history it was common to have indentured and/or enslaved servants of all races, and the focus on exclusively black slavery only happened after multiracial revolts by the poor against the rich. Dividing poor white and poor blacks drastically reduced the number of revolts attempted by either group.
Belief in the existence of a fundamental conflict in some area is far from enough to make something meaningfully analogous to Marxism.
The example about divesting from a neighborhood due to concerns about property value is spot-on. In a systematically racist society, it is rational to behave in ways that produce racist outcomes even one does not personally have racist beliefs. Racism ends up being perpetuated even if most people don't think of themselves as racists or believe they are doing anything to promote unfair racial outcomes.
This follows only because academics (in relevant fields) are a strict subset of the left-wing (and generally the extreme left wing), and the relevant fields are in the middle of a reproducibility crisis largely due to their political confirmation bias. These fields are very open about their commitment to activism over objectivity (and many in these fields consider objectivity and reason to be "tools of white supremacy" or some similar nonsense). We shouldn't confuse "sociologists believe in X" with "X is true or even falsifiable".
As someone who works very closely with academics (specifically sociologists), I would love to see some evidence for this baseless mud-slinging. All of science is having a reproducibility crisis
Do you have a knowledge of the field? Or do you just disagree with their conclusions? I would be happy to be proven wrong so I can let my sociologist friends know that they are doing such a thing.
EDIT: There's also this really neat nature article detailing some of the responses to the current reproducibility crisis in all of science. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-016-0021 Based on this article, it looks like the social sciences are actually the ones spearheading the effort for more reproducible science. One of my colleagues is actually investigating how the typical formulation of ideas with the scientific method can implicitly lead to biases and errors in the science actually performed.
I would hope the social sciences are leading the charge on reproducibility. If you want to learn more on that topic read Andrew Gelman’s blog.
For example, divesting from your neighborhood out of concern for your property value when PoC start to move in does not necessarily reflect an individual racial bias. It could be a purely rational economic calculation based on other people’s biases. It’s still the bread and butter of the system of racism.
Just like discrimination that branches on culture or class and only incidentally produces outcomes along racial lines.