Will there be no end to this? Can we no longer describe another's distinguishing physical characteristiics, even in a loving manner, without being accused of racism? Is a reference to "chocolate-coloured" skin now an insult? Whatever happened to "Black is beautiful!", which I fully endorse.
Are there no self-respecting people of colour left?
Interesting book recommendations, thanks. I have read a couple of them and one of Sowell's books, too, and found all interesting, too, a much different take. One comment on Dr. Sowell. I saw him interviewed recently on Ben Shapiro and he talked about why he felt affirmative action has unforeseen negative consequences on black people/graduates-- because people/employers might view them as less qualified than others because of affirmative action programs, even if they hadn't personally benefitted from it. Okay. But then he goes on to use the example of someone who graduates first in his class in physics at Harvard as someone who might be tainted by affirmative action. I have to admit, I laughed out loud when he said that, it was so ludicrous. If you graduate first in your class from Harvard in PHYSICS no one is going to question your credentials. Dr. Sowell needs to find a better example. I'm an open-minded person willing to entertain different views on the continued usefulness of affirmative action, but his statement made me wonder about his commitment to reasonable (and well-researched) argument. No need to oversell a good idea.
"It was as if they had looked at all the possibilities Rock had to offer, and built their music out of only the best parts."
That's how Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers made music -- and that's how I'd build a country.
The Right has better ideas on some things and the Left better on others. If I wanted the latter to win the next election, but the former had a solution that would put them in the White House instead:
It would be unthinkable for me to not support it.
If you thought anything remotely like that, it would easy to explain everything I have to say. There's nothing complicated about it. You make it complicated because you refuse to see yourselves in any light other than what you perceive, truth be damned.
To clarify your number two. It should more properly be 2) Trust your emotional response, not trust your feelings. The western world, esp the US is not very clear on the difference between emotions, feeling, and feelings. they are not all the same thing. Feeling can be either a kinesthetic or non-kinesthetic sense, as in the stove is hot or, when going into a new restaurant, this place feels funny, let's leave. Feeling, re the latter aspect, is an evolutionarily developed way to determine the nature of the meanings which we encounter in different circumstances. It is a highly useful faculty that becomes even better when trained over time as a sensing tool, just as mental analysis becomes a better tool over time when trained. Emotions are merely, well, emotions such as mad, sad, scared, glad. They can be generated from a variety of things, including psychological experiences in childhood. They are just information, anger for instance is just energy to solve problems. this doesn't mean the problem actually exists, but that the person perceives a problem that frightens them or offends their sense of morality or dignity. Feelings are something else again, they are often extremely complex aggregates of emotions, feeling, memories, beliefs, and situational demands.
We in the west have become very good at identifying and articulating extremely tiny differentiations in the external world. We are terrible at our understanding of the internal world. our differentiations in that realm are extremely rudimentary, about first grade reading level.
Your analysis here is right on, but number two (there is a joke in here someplace), which we see in practice over and over again, is really just encouraging people to respond emotionally from built up resentments, repressed anger, and old psychological wounds and then insisting that these are legitimate. It is possible to see, however, how numerous people and groups are utilizing such emotions for personal gain, a common human practice.
Another way of putting this is if woke philosophy, commentary, and behavior were a restaurant, as soon as i walked in, i would go, "this place feels weird, let's leave and go someplace else. The food here is certain to be terrible."
"Without Passion or Prejudice" is a relatively short piece that captures what I've been trying to say to all of America -- and it includes my idea for how to turn the tide.
1. The 2020 riots have burned down many local stores and businesses that they either shopped at or worked at. Thereby creating the very kinds of food deserts that BLM blames on "white supremacy".
2. The police defunding efforts have led to draw downs in police presence in black communities, leading to more crime, especially murder. And unlike BLM's completely bogus claims of an epidemic of police murders of black people, the people murdering black people in horrific numbers is bad black people, who now have free reign in black neighborhoods.
3. "Anti-racism" training at jobs sites and schools has stirred up new racism where none existed before, leading to resentment towards black people from the non-black majority.
From where I'm looking, BLM and the "Anti-Racism" movement seem far more like inventions to harm and isolate US black people instead of helping them.
"But why, then, does enlightened America embrace the idea that where black people are concerned, living by these three tenets is cognitively healthy?"
I think I can answer that! First, "enlightened America" means well-off people who are emotionally and/or financially invested in Democrats winning elections. Second, black people vote 95 percent for Democrats. If black voters want to hear the moon is made of cheese, they are going to hear the moon is made of cheese.
Sometimes I think John is too soft, but he has one theme I hear literally no one else talking about.
"Exaggeration." I'm fascinated by the DOJ report on the Ferguson shooting. I revisit it from time to time, and now I am always reminded of John's commentary regarding exaggeration when I read about the witnesses who saw nothing whatsoever but went on cable news and told the world they saw Brown "executed." They then told FBI investigators the same thing -- until their stories fell apart under scrutiny.
One such witness was asked by the FBI, after he had recanted, why he had told them Brown was executed. He told them he had "assumed" he was executed based on "common sense" and what others "in the community" had told him.
That person who was 100 years old some years ago when you knew her, was raised in a time when Democrats were the party of anti-Black racism, so it should have been so surprise that she blamed "uppity" people like MLK for "creating problems" where there were none--that was the standard Southern Democratic trope of the 1950s and early 1960s. And, blaming "outside agitators" was a big thing among Northern Democratic mayors during the mid-1960s race riots.
McWhorter recalls: I once knew a woman of literally 100, white and wealthy, who genuinely thought that race in America had not been a problem until Martin Luther King "stirred things up." I don't know how many times I have seen people on the right claim that the races got along fine until Obama created racial divisions and problems in the country today are all HIS fault!
If you don't hold your own accountable, all that talk about responsibility and accountability — is meaningless.
Not only that, it’s counterproductive to your purpose.
I've yet to see a single supporter even attempt to consider my arguments on Thomas Sowell (they skip that and go straight to defending him).
One guy assumed that I'm out to "discredit ALL of his work." I don't even object it within his wheelhouse.
Making that assumption is a violation of Sowell’s standards — and you should know that.
But on this matter of world-altering consequence, he didn’t follow a single one of those standards — and you don’t know that.
You didn't have to read this. And if you did, you don't have to respond. But if you do -- respond with the standards you claim to hold so dear.
I'm only interested in problem solving through serious-minded discussion. It takes time and effort to digest what I have to say — and I promise you it's in your interests to do so.
If you don't wanna do that, that's fine.
If you're not interested in a healthy exchange of concerns, the least amount of courtesy you can provide is to not enter that conversation in the first place.
"So you’re saying that your plan will elevate Thomas Sowell to worldwide recognition — by holding him accountable?
That if he comes clean — he could be the catalyst to turn the tide?"
Dr McWhorter writes: "I once knew a woman of literally 100, white and wealthy, who genuinely thought that race in America had not been a problem until Martin Luther King "stirred things up" – and she was a Democrat!"
I remember when Dr King marched in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, and had bricks thrown at him. For those not familiar with the city, Bridgeport is a working-class Irish neighborhood, in which many city workers and lived - as solidly Democratic a ward as you will find anywhere in the country: trust me, the people throwing those bricks at Dr King weren't Republicans!
It does not surprise me in the slightest that a Democrat of her generation would have that attitude. This is the party, remember, of slavery; of the Klan; of Jim Crow; of tooth-and-nail opposition to black civil rights. And now it's pushing CRT. The Democratic Party is the party of racial division, then and now. The lyrics may have changed a bit, but the song remains the same.
I think of myself as a pragmatist rather than as right or left. I want peace and plenty for all. Doesn’t everyone. The thing that bothers me most about DiAngelo and the gang is that they don’t want us to talk to each other until we’ve been purified by the holy scripture of their books and have attended one or more of their seminars on correct thought and behavior. They counsel us not to question Black people about anything because they are exhausted. One must believe the lived experience.
I have lived experience as well. If I believed it was the truth I would distrust and fear Black people. (I lived in Milwaukee’s Inner Core, we were robbed, friends were physically attacked, housing values dropped to nothing, blah de dah) I got out. I got educated and met people different from myself. Black people come in all flavors just as White people do.
I think the biggest problem is there aren’t enough Black people to go around. There are concentrated population pockets but so much of the country has 5% or less Black citizens. We’ve got to talk to each other, work side by side, make small mistakes, correct each other and argue or laugh it off. Incorporate a little of each other’s slang, enjoy each other’s food and fashion. We can’t do that if we don’t meet and talk.
An aside: the hair touching thing. I know it’s unwanted and I would never ever do that to a Black woman. Among White women however I don’t consider a woman to be a close friend until we have touched each other’s hair. It goes something like this: “Oh I hate my hair, no body” Potential friend reaches over, touches a lock: “But it’s so silky and shiny!” Potential friend leans forward to offer a touch: “Now my hair…” Maybe it’s my social class.
Anyway I don’t think most Black people are separatists who want only stylized interactions with White people. The ones who do, and especially their advocates, are just very vocal. I have no fear, based on skin color, that I will be robbed or attacked but I do fear grievous social error. So I stand back, act stiff. I am part of the problem.
There are many competent and accomplished black men and women who should be celebrated but for the fact that they do not accept the Narrative and are thus an embarrassment to the racialists. Sowell, Thomas, Carson, Douglas come quickly to mind.
I cringe every time I read "enlightened America" in this context, because the ideology of "The Elect" or whatever this branch of elites and their followers might be called, is explicitly anti-Enlightenment. Yes, I know the sarcastic "enlightened" here is nothing to do with The Enlightenment, but it still rubs.
In this regard I would like to draw your attention to the latest UK author (Kate Clanchy) to be publicly shamed for alleged insults aimed at POC.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/10/kate-clanchy-to-rewrite-memoir-after-criticism-of-racist-and-ableist-tropes
Will there be no end to this? Can we no longer describe another's distinguishing physical characteristiics, even in a loving manner, without being accused of racism? Is a reference to "chocolate-coloured" skin now an insult? Whatever happened to "Black is beautiful!", which I fully endorse.
Are there no self-respecting people of colour left?
I am close to despair...
Interesting book recommendations, thanks. I have read a couple of them and one of Sowell's books, too, and found all interesting, too, a much different take. One comment on Dr. Sowell. I saw him interviewed recently on Ben Shapiro and he talked about why he felt affirmative action has unforeseen negative consequences on black people/graduates-- because people/employers might view them as less qualified than others because of affirmative action programs, even if they hadn't personally benefitted from it. Okay. But then he goes on to use the example of someone who graduates first in his class in physics at Harvard as someone who might be tainted by affirmative action. I have to admit, I laughed out loud when he said that, it was so ludicrous. If you graduate first in your class from Harvard in PHYSICS no one is going to question your credentials. Dr. Sowell needs to find a better example. I'm an open-minded person willing to entertain different views on the continued usefulness of affirmative action, but his statement made me wonder about his commitment to reasonable (and well-researched) argument. No need to oversell a good idea.
"It was as if they had looked at all the possibilities Rock had to offer, and built their music out of only the best parts."
That's how Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers made music -- and that's how I'd build a country.
The Right has better ideas on some things and the Left better on others. If I wanted the latter to win the next election, but the former had a solution that would put them in the White House instead:
It would be unthinkable for me to not support it.
If you thought anything remotely like that, it would easy to explain everything I have to say. There's nothing complicated about it. You make it complicated because you refuse to see yourselves in any light other than what you perceive, truth be damned.
Into the Great Wide Open:https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/08/05/into-the-great-wide-open/
To clarify your number two. It should more properly be 2) Trust your emotional response, not trust your feelings. The western world, esp the US is not very clear on the difference between emotions, feeling, and feelings. they are not all the same thing. Feeling can be either a kinesthetic or non-kinesthetic sense, as in the stove is hot or, when going into a new restaurant, this place feels funny, let's leave. Feeling, re the latter aspect, is an evolutionarily developed way to determine the nature of the meanings which we encounter in different circumstances. It is a highly useful faculty that becomes even better when trained over time as a sensing tool, just as mental analysis becomes a better tool over time when trained. Emotions are merely, well, emotions such as mad, sad, scared, glad. They can be generated from a variety of things, including psychological experiences in childhood. They are just information, anger for instance is just energy to solve problems. this doesn't mean the problem actually exists, but that the person perceives a problem that frightens them or offends their sense of morality or dignity. Feelings are something else again, they are often extremely complex aggregates of emotions, feeling, memories, beliefs, and situational demands.
We in the west have become very good at identifying and articulating extremely tiny differentiations in the external world. We are terrible at our understanding of the internal world. our differentiations in that realm are extremely rudimentary, about first grade reading level.
Your analysis here is right on, but number two (there is a joke in here someplace), which we see in practice over and over again, is really just encouraging people to respond emotionally from built up resentments, repressed anger, and old psychological wounds and then insisting that these are legitimate. It is possible to see, however, how numerous people and groups are utilizing such emotions for personal gain, a common human practice.
Another way of putting this is if woke philosophy, commentary, and behavior were a restaurant, as soon as i walked in, i would go, "this place feels weird, let's leave and go someplace else. The food here is certain to be terrible."
"Without Passion or Prejudice" is a relatively short piece that captures what I've been trying to say to all of America -- and it includes my idea for how to turn the tide.
However impossible it may seem -- it can be done.
As Tom Hanks said in Apollo 13 about landing on the moon: "It's not a miracle, we just decided to go": https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/08/03/without-passion-or-prejudice/
Certainly then, BLM must be protesting daily in Richmond until Virginia Democratic governor Ralph Northam resigns!
No?
how telling
What BLM has done for Black people:
1. The 2020 riots have burned down many local stores and businesses that they either shopped at or worked at. Thereby creating the very kinds of food deserts that BLM blames on "white supremacy".
2. The police defunding efforts have led to draw downs in police presence in black communities, leading to more crime, especially murder. And unlike BLM's completely bogus claims of an epidemic of police murders of black people, the people murdering black people in horrific numbers is bad black people, who now have free reign in black neighborhoods.
3. "Anti-racism" training at jobs sites and schools has stirred up new racism where none existed before, leading to resentment towards black people from the non-black majority.
From where I'm looking, BLM and the "Anti-Racism" movement seem far more like inventions to harm and isolate US black people instead of helping them.
"But why, then, does enlightened America embrace the idea that where black people are concerned, living by these three tenets is cognitively healthy?"
I think I can answer that! First, "enlightened America" means well-off people who are emotionally and/or financially invested in Democrats winning elections. Second, black people vote 95 percent for Democrats. If black voters want to hear the moon is made of cheese, they are going to hear the moon is made of cheese.
Sometimes I think John is too soft, but he has one theme I hear literally no one else talking about.
"Exaggeration." I'm fascinated by the DOJ report on the Ferguson shooting. I revisit it from time to time, and now I am always reminded of John's commentary regarding exaggeration when I read about the witnesses who saw nothing whatsoever but went on cable news and told the world they saw Brown "executed." They then told FBI investigators the same thing -- until their stories fell apart under scrutiny.
One such witness was asked by the FBI, after he had recanted, why he had told them Brown was executed. He told them he had "assumed" he was executed based on "common sense" and what others "in the community" had told him.
That person who was 100 years old some years ago when you knew her, was raised in a time when Democrats were the party of anti-Black racism, so it should have been so surprise that she blamed "uppity" people like MLK for "creating problems" where there were none--that was the standard Southern Democratic trope of the 1950s and early 1960s. And, blaming "outside agitators" was a big thing among Northern Democratic mayors during the mid-1960s race riots.
McWhorter recalls: I once knew a woman of literally 100, white and wealthy, who genuinely thought that race in America had not been a problem until Martin Luther King "stirred things up." I don't know how many times I have seen people on the right claim that the races got along fine until Obama created racial divisions and problems in the country today are all HIS fault!
If you don't hold your own accountable, all that talk about responsibility and accountability — is meaningless.
Not only that, it’s counterproductive to your purpose.
I've yet to see a single supporter even attempt to consider my arguments on Thomas Sowell (they skip that and go straight to defending him).
One guy assumed that I'm out to "discredit ALL of his work." I don't even object it within his wheelhouse.
Making that assumption is a violation of Sowell’s standards — and you should know that.
But on this matter of world-altering consequence, he didn’t follow a single one of those standards — and you don’t know that.
You didn't have to read this. And if you did, you don't have to respond. But if you do -- respond with the standards you claim to hold so dear.
I'm only interested in problem solving through serious-minded discussion. It takes time and effort to digest what I have to say — and I promise you it's in your interests to do so.
If you don't wanna do that, that's fine.
If you're not interested in a healthy exchange of concerns, the least amount of courtesy you can provide is to not enter that conversation in the first place.
"So you’re saying that your plan will elevate Thomas Sowell to worldwide recognition — by holding him accountable?
That if he comes clean — he could be the catalyst to turn the tide?"
That’s exactly what I’m saying:
https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/07/28/echo-chamber-of-affirmation/
In case you're concerned about the .life domain -- this is a WordPress site:
https://onevoicebecametwo.wordpress.com/2021/07/28/echo-chamber-of-affirmation/
Dr McWhorter writes: "I once knew a woman of literally 100, white and wealthy, who genuinely thought that race in America had not been a problem until Martin Luther King "stirred things up" – and she was a Democrat!"
I remember when Dr King marched in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, and had bricks thrown at him. For those not familiar with the city, Bridgeport is a working-class Irish neighborhood, in which many city workers and lived - as solidly Democratic a ward as you will find anywhere in the country: trust me, the people throwing those bricks at Dr King weren't Republicans!
It does not surprise me in the slightest that a Democrat of her generation would have that attitude. This is the party, remember, of slavery; of the Klan; of Jim Crow; of tooth-and-nail opposition to black civil rights. And now it's pushing CRT. The Democratic Party is the party of racial division, then and now. The lyrics may have changed a bit, but the song remains the same.
I think of myself as a pragmatist rather than as right or left. I want peace and plenty for all. Doesn’t everyone. The thing that bothers me most about DiAngelo and the gang is that they don’t want us to talk to each other until we’ve been purified by the holy scripture of their books and have attended one or more of their seminars on correct thought and behavior. They counsel us not to question Black people about anything because they are exhausted. One must believe the lived experience.
I have lived experience as well. If I believed it was the truth I would distrust and fear Black people. (I lived in Milwaukee’s Inner Core, we were robbed, friends were physically attacked, housing values dropped to nothing, blah de dah) I got out. I got educated and met people different from myself. Black people come in all flavors just as White people do.
I think the biggest problem is there aren’t enough Black people to go around. There are concentrated population pockets but so much of the country has 5% or less Black citizens. We’ve got to talk to each other, work side by side, make small mistakes, correct each other and argue or laugh it off. Incorporate a little of each other’s slang, enjoy each other’s food and fashion. We can’t do that if we don’t meet and talk.
An aside: the hair touching thing. I know it’s unwanted and I would never ever do that to a Black woman. Among White women however I don’t consider a woman to be a close friend until we have touched each other’s hair. It goes something like this: “Oh I hate my hair, no body” Potential friend reaches over, touches a lock: “But it’s so silky and shiny!” Potential friend leans forward to offer a touch: “Now my hair…” Maybe it’s my social class.
Anyway I don’t think most Black people are separatists who want only stylized interactions with White people. The ones who do, and especially their advocates, are just very vocal. I have no fear, based on skin color, that I will be robbed or attacked but I do fear grievous social error. So I stand back, act stiff. I am part of the problem.
There are many competent and accomplished black men and women who should be celebrated but for the fact that they do not accept the Narrative and are thus an embarrassment to the racialists. Sowell, Thomas, Carson, Douglas come quickly to mind.
LOL @ "recreational angst" - I love it.
I cringe every time I read "enlightened America" in this context, because the ideology of "The Elect" or whatever this branch of elites and their followers might be called, is explicitly anti-Enlightenment. Yes, I know the sarcastic "enlightened" here is nothing to do with The Enlightenment, but it still rubs.