It saddens me to see the woke ideology taking hold across the United States. It is indeed fundamentally racist and brings us back to our most tribalistic behaviors. It's the kind of thinking we learned a long time ago to put in the past. But now it's making a resurgence. And it's spreading. But articles like [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...) and the most upvoted comments within it give me hope that the west hasn't become entirely mad. It seems the French have observed the discourse of modern American events and see how decisive and destructive the ideology is. I'll quote the top comment within this particular article.
> Yes, importing the American political correctness/woke/cancel culture will destroy France. How do I know this? Because it is already destroying the US. It fuels social division, and it distracts from the real problems, which tend to be economic and environmental. Much of the recent scholarship coming from the US, obsessed about race and gender, is completely useless and extremely ideological. It is no wonder that many of the most important books of global interest from recent years, such as Picketty's Capital in the 21st Century, do not come from the US. US universities are not free environments of vigorous intellectual debate anymore, and the faculty lives under constant fear of uttering the wrong word or phrase, and of being canceled because of their ideas. If a child of mine decided to study social sciences or a humanities field, the US would the last place I would send them to. I'm glad France is standing up against this nonsense. It gives me hope.
I think about this a lot. I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the countries lauded for their economic equity or environmental leadership are also largely homogenous societies.
I don't know what the answer is for a fundamentally multicultural country like the US but obsessing about race and "representation" surely isn't it.
I've been thinking about this a bit lately and it reminds me of the "melting pot" metaphors we learned about in middle school. Rather than having a bunch of disparate, competing identities I think America is only going to work well when we form a single united, composite identity. I'm not sure if this is nationalism or not, but if it is, it's an ethnically-inclusive nationalism which seems markedly better than the scary kinds of nationalism from the 20th century and earlier. It probably does imply some assimilation, but it's not necessarily everyone assimilating to some "white identity"; rather, everyone assimilates toward the composite "American" identity (whatever that is). I'm not sure if this is what "multicultural" refers to or if it refers to the more progressive ideal of segregated ethnic lanes competing with one another, but the last 5-10 years makes me feel like the latter is untenable.
The other part, the segregated ethnic lanes is often referred to as "patchwork quilt". The idea is there is no assimilation only people living side by side in harmony, but we're seeing exactly how those borders between identities are creating mayhem, not harmony.
Patriotism is liking your country and wanting other people to become part of it if they want to. After all, if your country and culture is the best then people should be allowed to become part of your culture and thereby become better!
Nationalism is liking your country and wanting other people to be kept separate. After all, if your country and culture is the best then anyone else is inferior and shouldn't be allowed to dilute your perfection!
The theory might not be correct
Bulworth: "Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color".
From the movie "Bulworth":
America had some really high end social technology to address this. Having freedom of religion and people who practiced many religions has, for many other countries, been very divisive, see India/Pakistan, Yugoslavia, and many others.
So the U.S. created a civic religion to ride on top of all of the other religions. The civic religion has the pledge of allegiance instead of a prayer, co-opts mostly Protestant ethics, and instead the Bible, it has the constitution, and a set of semi-mythical stories like George Washington not being able to tell a lie about chopping down the cherry tree, and Honest Abe walking 10 miles to return two cents change.
The trouble with all of this stuff getting cancelled is that it's not being replaced with anything that serves the same functional purpose of putting everyone on the same page and fostering trust among people with different backgrounds.
It's no accident. The easier it is to divide the workers against themselves, the easier it is for capital to come in and rob them all blind.
HN loves criticizing "wokeness" but it's good to understand these divisions and how they have been used against us historically to maintain economic power structures that exist to benefit wealthy property owners.
The issue is that you can't put a bandaid on this and call it a day. You won't solve anything by appointing more minorities. Until people get wise to the real game being played by capital, we'll continue to fight among ourselves for scraps based on cultural identity.
> US universities are not free environments of vigorous intellectual debate anymore
This seems like one of the most pressing dangers we are facing right now. How can this be changed? Where can people go to have honest intellectual debates?
Agreed. How on earth did the "Each race only looks out for their own kind" mentality get labeled as progressive?
Take for example anti-trust, which sought to destroy the power of big trusts in the Teddy Roosevelt era -- and was itself destroyed by the progressive Watergate Democrats in the 70s, about 60 years later. All these anti-trust rules were considered old fashioned, obsolete, and policies of a discredited generation. They were called bigoted and not with the times.
Or the social hygiene movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_hygiene_movement), another great crusading Progressive cause, that sought to make illegal prostitution, alcohol, public nudity, and other attacks on morals. Few remember that the Women's Temperance movement and the Women's Suffrage movement were part of the same movement, and the progressives of those days really wanted to build a virtuous society, in much the same way that the current crop of progressives is obsessed with virtue, or the 60s crop was also inordinately focused on being virtuous, except for them being virtuous required dismantling the laws of the previous virtue movement. All the moral purity laws from the social hygiene movement were dismantled by other progressives in the 60s-70s.
Or the union rights movement which was triumphant during the FDRs period, but was systematically destroyed primarily by Democrats in the 1970s-1990s (Clinton putting the last nail in the coffin). Unions were viewed as bigoted, old fashioned, and not with the times.
Similarly the civil rights movement of the 60s is being systematically dismantled by the culture warriors of the present era, who view color-blind policies as the legacies of a discredited generation, of bigotry, and not being with the times.
The good news is that if our current pro-racism movement triumphs and the nation re-segregates, there is a good chance that grandchildren of the current generation will themselves dismantle that system as being old-fashioned and not-with-the-times.
In either case, Progressivism needs to be viewed as an act of rebellion first, and the policies are whatever they need to be in order to rally the most people to the moral revolution.
To point out making this claim, while also noting that what people consider 'virtue' changes, is implicitly treating relativist ethics as valid; Leaving this assumption unchallenged is a key part in enabling counter-productive 'inclusion' when it occurs; Similarly, it allows one group to define it's ideology as 'virtue' simply by being 'new' or 'modern' without needing to define 'why' it is virtue...
(to note: This is not at all the same as, and I'm absolutely not saying that 'inclusion' is implictly counter-productive)
This part very interesting:
>The good news is that if our current pro-racism movement triumphs and the nation re-segregates, there is a good chance that grandchildren of the current generation will themselves dismantle that system as being old-fashioned and not-with-the-times.
Combine this with the ongoing "Great Sort" where people are more and more moving into areas that best conform to their value systems, it's possible that the country will break apart into smaller pieces before there's an opportunity for a future generation to reject the current obsession with identity labels. It's interesting to see how quickly a large share of the population has adopted the primacy of label collecting when for most of my life the phrase "I'm a person, not a label" was common, especially in progressive circles.
This used to be a role filled by states, when federal policies were kept limited in scope.
It's the same thing with "white male privileges", when you start fighting literal "white males" in general and not "the system which is biased against females/people of color" you already lost, no matter how much energy you put in the fight. I'd even say the more energy you put in the fight the more you'll lose, both politically and humanly
People at the bottom of the ladder are equally fucked no matter if they're white, black, &c. while the people at the top are thriving like never before and doing everything they can to stay in charge. There is an insane amount of hate in a lot of people these days, hate generated by decades, if not centuries, of abusive systems, it should be redirected toward meaningful goals instead of these meaningless token achievements. Reading and learning about modern progressivism feels like a parody of previous civil right movements.
People have all the reasons to be upset, some people more than other, that being said the fight should be vertical, right now it is mostly horizontal. We have to think in term of classes, not races, otherwise we're heading towards self destruction
> "looking out for your own kind" is not racist
If "your own kind" is based on """race""" [0], it is, no matter who's doing it. Words have meaning, either they apply to everyone or they don't apply at all.
[0] aka ethnicity, skin color, &c. because "races" don't exist anywhere on earth other than in the US
> because "races" don't exist anywhere on earth other than in the US
Race doesn't exist, except when it does for BIPOC or when talking about the concept of Blackness or whiteness. You're probably thinking, those aren't races those are ethnicities! But what does it matter? These are terms used to separate people into groups and even if you switch the words the concept remains.
If you're saying I'm using Race/Ethnicity incorrectly just know that on every form I have ever filled out about demographics race was a choice from "African, Asian, Caucasian, etc." and Ethnicity was only two options, "Hispanic/Latino or Non Hispanic/Latino".
Not even one sentence in and we already in a "left vs right" argument... Newspeak isn't a leftist thing, it's a "people who know the power of words" thing
> Remember when ICE was running "concentration camps"?
It's just as despicable when it's coming from one or the other, and that why you shouldn't side with either
> But on every form I have ever filled out race was a choice from "African, Asian, Caucasian, etc."
And this is exactly why we should reappropriate words and their meaning, and not fall into the trap of complete deconstruction of language(s)
To be honest, this captures my frustration perfectly. I have a concept I am trying to communicate but I'm essentially being told "no, you're not using the right term". If I were to go back and change "people on the left" to "Newspeak users" it wouldn't substantially change what I'm trying to get across. And I feel like all we are doing is bickering about word-choice.
> I no longer subscribe to the "words matter" philosophy,
This is your point
> considering how fast and loose people on the left
this is your argument to support your point
Either keep the political side out or use example of both sides. Otherwise people will think you're trying to charge one side for the issue
I won't comment on what's fair (who am I but a drop?). But I think that's the viewpoint.
My "own kind" includes people of all races, religions, genders, and ethnicities. If you separate people based on their race, don't trust people based on their race, etc, you're a racist.
What you would hear from the KKK is that the school board would be 100% white Christian males, and they don't want anyone who isn't one of them.
There is a difference between wanting representation and wanting to exclude all other representation.
There is a difference between men thinking no women deserve a seat on the board, and women demanding equal seats on the board.
Again - I won't comment on what is fair. But I will draw a line between the difference.
We already have: Race-specific clubs on Universities.[1]; Race-specific departments on Universities.[2]; Race-specific video playlists on YouTube. [3]; Race-specific filters for map apps. [4]; Race-specific brands [5]; Race-specific merchandise [6]; Race-specific professional feeds [7]; Race-specific video channels [8.1][8.2]; Race-specific graduations [9];
I could go on endlessly with this list. You see the trend. America is socially segregating itself. So the concern you raise with race-specific water fountains is valid. Though that form of segregation, specifically, may not return, but other forms will.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbsasfsu/about/ [2] https://equity.sfsu.edu/blackunitycenter [3] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbpi6ZahtOH5pZK-VXFwj... [4] https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/blac... [5] https://www.target.com/c/black-owned-or-founded-brands-at-ta... [6] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/01/apple-celebrates-blac... [7] https://www.linkedin.com/news/daily-rundown/special-edition/ [8.1] https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/81299227?so=su [8.2] https://www.hulu.com/black-stories [9] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/red-alert-politics/more-t...
Because everyone who doesn't like the consequences of their decisions will blame everyone else. They might even be right, but it could/would increase conflict. Boundaries are frequently decided via violence.
https://www.bwscampus.com/our-community/commitment-to-divers...
I think you're flipping cause and effect here.
We can see plenty of examples in the history of the US of people, when left otherwise unencumbered, either ignored the needs of others at best or put their own race first at worst. The idea of segregation isn't being introduced here, existing segregation and related behaviors are being responded to. They aren't saying "this man is unable to perform this role due to his race" in a racist-against-this-person way, they're putting additional structural checks in place as a preventative measure.
So here people are trying to make that structurally more difficult. Which is arguably a more realistic and rational choice than simply saying "things will be fine if we get better people."
> They aren't saying "this man is unable to perform this role due to his race" in a racist-against-this-person way, they're putting additional structural checks in place as a preventative measure.
Its not about the intention of the emitter, its about the receiving end of it.
It seems that if we flip this so that the receiving end is part of a minority we would all think this is utterly racist independent of the intention, how is it not?
edit: typo
Can we not agree that categorizing people by their race is going to reinforce their racial identity at the expense of a broader collective human/national identity? And can we not agree that reinforcing racial identities and weakening the collective identity is going to create competition among and animosity between the different racial groups? And can we not agree that it is this racial animosity that births all of the evils of racism? If we can agree here, then surely this does the opposite of making segregation/racism "structurally more difficult"?
> Which is arguably a more realistic and rational choice than simply saying "things will be fine if we get better people."
Desegregation isn't "things will be fine if we get better people"; it's the active dissolving of racial lanes ("dismantling racist structures" might be a good phrase if it weren't coopted to mean the exact opposite). And it has been the only thing that has worked so far, so why should we think that it's a worse choice than segregation?
I don't get how people think stuff like this is some existential threat - when we have much bigger very real problems in this country, like 30% of the population thinks the election was rigged, and armed militias are flexing their muscle taking over statehouses.
It's a very weird form of focusing on the molehill and ignoring the mountain imo. Like walk me through how this kind of nonsense is this ever going to spread to Johnson County, KS - as opposed to being contained in hyper-liberal enclaves. I can walk you through a lot of scenarios as to how the stuff I mentioned above is a real existential threat to our democracy.
I removed my original mention of downvoting. I shouldn't have had that in.
> Three Latinas
> Three white women
> Two African Americans
> One Asian American
> One Pacific Islander
> All current members of the PAC are women. Brenzel would have been the only man, and he happens to be white.
How do you even parody this?
> About 33% of SFUSD students are Asian, 28% are Latino, 15% are white and 6% are African American. The school board argued that adding a white male would tip the balance in the PAC. Whites would then become the "dominating race."
What if we didn't encourage a world in which people identified with and advocated for their own race? I.e., you have some extra white people (or whatever race) on the board but it's not really a problem because they aren't lobbying for "white interests" (whatever that means). In what world is segregating everyone to their own racial lane going to deliver more equitable outcomes for individuals? Surely this is only going to enforce antiquated, racist ideas that race is a useful predictor for anything at an individual level (i.e., "I know everything I need to know about a person from their race"). Surely this is the very essence of racism? Do these people really not understand that they're being far more racist than their broader society? Or are they aware of their racism but using terms like "anti-racism" and "equity" deceitfully?
EDIT: Looks like TFA was flagged off of the front page, which is really too bad because this seems like a very important topic and very relevant to much of this forum (considering how frequently we deal with racial employment policies in tech or the broader BLM threads over the summer or general SF/SV happenings).