Anti-Racism

I have been wanting to say something on this topic for quite a while. But, it is a huge and complicated topic with innumerable land mines. 

There has been a rise in conversations on the topic of race for the last few years. It seems to have coincided with the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. Popular books on these topics included "White Fragility" by Robin Diangelo, and "How to be Antiracist" and "Stamped" by Ibram X. Kendi. My son was assigned "Stamped" to read in school, for example.

Many of us noticed that there was a twist in this way of talking about racism. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said,

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Most people interpret these words to mean that we should become 'colour blind'. We should treat skin colour the way that we treat eye colour, or hair colour. We should aim at being a society that doesn't judge someone on the basis of the colour of someone's skin, rather, we should judge someone on the basis of their character. Ideally, when applying for a job, the person who is most qualified and who has the best work ethic, should get the job. The colour of someone's skin shouldn't be a consideration. That has been the goal most of us have been aiming for.

This new way of talking about race felt different. Being colour blind was no longer good enough. In fact, it conceals racism. To this new way of thinking, racism is built into the very fabric of society (Hence, society is 'stamped' with racism from its very foundations). It's not good enough to be not racist, you need to become anti-racist. Racism is so subtle it manifests is innumerable unnoticed ways, that only people who are trained can see. The definition of "racism" changed from negatively judging someone on the basis of their skin colour, to "prejudice plus power". This new definition means that someone from an oppressed group (BIPOC- Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) can't be racist, by definition. Only those who are in a place of privilege and power (white people) can be racist.  To be in our society, means to be in a matrix of power that constantly creates opportunities for white people and suppresses opportunities for black people. This happens in subtle ways. (See "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack", a 1989 essay written by Peggy McIntosh.) 

I was invited to a class on the topic of Antiracism, which used the book "Me and White Supremacy" by Layla F. Saad. This course did help me to see how racism can be quite subtle, but I also found the course to be troubling in a number of ways. 

My major problem with the course what that the information didn't seem to be open to challenge, correction, or falsification. It is self-certifying. It has no need to back up its claims with evidence, or against logical challenge. Either you accepted what was being said, or your inherent racism was causing resistance within you (White Fragility). This has been identified as a Kafka Trap. Regarding racism, this is the idea that if someone denies being a racist, this is evidence that they are a racist. Only a racist would deny being a racist. It is a logical fallacy. 

I was curious about how racism compared to majority vs. minority population. If we see more white people represented in TV shows and on magazine covers, is that evidence of racism, or evidence of there being more white people than black people in the general population. If we went to Japan, and saw the media dominated by Japanese faces, is that evidence of racism? My suggestion was met with frustration and a comment that I am a white male which means I am much more likely to get hired in the job market. The frustration in our facilitator's voice in response to my comment taught me that such challenges are not welcome. 

This set off alarms in my head. I was in university for 7 years. I know how to be a student. One of the ways I learn is by challenging the ideas being presented. These ideas do not seem to welcome this kind of challenge. 

I also asked how the idea of White Privilege stands up against other privileges like attractiveness, natural intelligence, physical health, mental health, family structure (e.g. divorce in family of origin), wealth, sex, gender, sexuality, country of birth, belonging to the majority, religion (e.g. the history of antisemitism), and age. All of these factors seem to give advantage or disadvantage in different contexts. It seemed like the class was taught in such a way that the only lens we were to look through was race, and race in a North American context. It is a narrow lens, that doesn't seem to want to look at racism more broadly around the world among multiple ethic groups.  

This also made me think about how Whiteness was being considered. Is the experience of racism supposed to be considered the same in Alabama as it is in Vacouver, B.C., and rural vs urban Holland? Is whiteness expressed as embedded in a racist framework in all those places in the same way? 

From this way of thinking, one also gets the sense that there has been little to no progress regarding racism in Western society. What other society, where and when, has made the kind of progress we are hoping to see? Or where has progress been made, if not in the modern West?

   

What I learned from this course is that, if you are white, or can 'pass as white', then your task is to constantly identify racism and work to step back from places of privilege for the sake of BIPOC people. White people are to be in a constant state of repentance, but there is no reconciliation.

So, perhaps I shouldn't send my children to university because they are white, or pass as white (since their mother is ~15% West African)?  Folks like Kendi seem to be advocating a kind of prejudice against white people, for the sake of elevating BIPOC people. This is the idea behind Affirmative Action that is used in admissions in an academic setting, but he seems to want it applied to society in general. This can feel like using racism (using the classical definition of the term) to cure racism. Some academic institutions have found that finding the right formula to allow the right racial mix is fraught with danger (click for a link to an article).     

It can feel like there are Marxist undertones in this way of thinking, where the oppressed working-class proletariat are replaced by the category of BIPOC, and the oppressive capitalist bourgeoise is replaced with those who benefit from Whiteness.

To understand this new way of dealing with racism we have to understand the development of ideas that give rise to this. This way of thinking is called Critical Race Theory, which is connected to the more general Critical Social Theory.   Critical Race Theory has a near monopoly on the discussion regarding race, as if no other way of looking at Racism is considered valid. It has so taken over the conversation about race that no other way of opposing racism is acceptable. 

A podcast I listen to gave a good overview of this intellectual progression. It is called "Queen of the Sciences". You can hear it by following the link below. I'll put my notes from this podast below-   

 https://open.spotify.com/episode/7vj0ewbg6qXfvKXKKGibh0?si=lKlaNuySQoG113q8qQFMBQ

The episode is titled "Critical Social Theory" and it deals with Critical Social Theory and it's popular manifestations like "Cancel Culture", "Wokeism", "Critical Race Theory" (CRT).

It is a story about how Marxism abandoned the working classes.

Karl Marx believed that societies will progress through industrialized capitalism, into crisis, and then revolution will come about necessarily. This will lead to a worker's paradise. 

For Marx, Europe was on verge of crisis. The oppressed workers (Proletariat) will be impoverished even more. Wealth will be even more concentrated in the hands of the capitalists. The Proletariat will have nothing to lose but their chains, so will enter into revolution to overthrow the capitalist powers. The means of production will be socialized and this will usher in the worker’s paradise. Marx predicted this. 

But, it didn’t happen.

Marx’s theory was adapted by Lennin in 2 ways (in order to rescue it from being proven false). 

1) The workers needed to be led by the intelligentsia of the Communist Party. The workers weren't fully instructed in Communist theory. Due to their ignorance, they are too easily bought off by rewards for maintaining the status quo (beer and sandwiches). They go on strike and they get shorter hours, a shorter work week, vacation time, better pay, etc. So, they are appeased and the revolution never happens. This is because the workers lack the leadership of the Communist intellectuals.

2) Capitalism became international through colonialism. Raw goods extracted from 2/3 world were returned to Europe and developed into technological and economic advances. This artificially supports a capitalist society that should be entering into crisis. 

Both of these modifications postpone the revolution. 

Marx’s theory was that industrialized Capitalism was a necessary step to produce the wealth and technology to master nature. Socialism needs the scientific conquest of nature. This technology is necessary for the physical needs of the workers to be secured. 

Lennin skipped this progression in Russia and forced Russia into industrialization. Russia was a feudal society and skipped the industrialized capitalism Marx said was necessary before the revolution could take place. Interestingly, the countries that adopted communism in a serious way (similarly) skipped this part of development in Marx’s theory and were not Industrialized Capitalist societies (e.g. China, North Korea, Venezuela, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Cuba). Marx thought a country like the England of his day would have been where the revolution would start.

In Western Europe there was disillusionment regarding Communism due to suffering of the people under Stalin. Also, the working classes in Germany turned to Hitler rather than support the Communists. This was the huge disillusionment that happened to the Frankfurt School (Led by Horkheimer and Adorno). This begins an estrangement between Marxism and the working class.

Herbert Marcuse included Sigmund Freud’s theory about sexual repression in his political theory. He imagines a society where sexual repressions and standards are overthrown leading to sexual freedom to sexually express yourself without hinderance. This redirects Marxism away from the working class. Oppression is redirected to being about sexual repression.

Jacques Derrida argues that language traps us because it can never adequately represent reality. So, we can never see reality clearly. We will always have blind spots. Language constructs our social reality. Through deconstructive literary techniques, you can point out the problems and blind spots that occur in our language (which constructs our reality). This leaves us with deconstructed ruins.

Michel Foucault de-centers power. Previously there was an idea that people were oppressed because they were being held down by oppressors. Power was one directional- top down. Who has the guns? Who has the means of production? To gain power you have to struggle it away from those who have it. Foucault questions this view of power. Even the oppressed are driven by the will to power (Nietzsche). If they are weaker, then they have to use power in sneakier ways. Power is pervasive and human beings are using it to give themselves advantage- mostly unconsciously.

This thinking is what is behind ideas like Systemic Racism. It doesn’t matter how anti-racist you think you are. It doesn’t matter how welcoming you are of people of other races. That personal understanding is irrelevant. In terms of social power, we are organized in a system of power that elevates white-skinned people as superior to darker-skinned people. This is systemic racism. It has nothing to do with personal intentions. It is about the construction of a hierarchical matrix of power that we find ourselves in, where we play roles assigned to us by this constructed matrix.

Identity Politics and Critical Social Theory have walked onto the stage of public life. The theories discussed above lay behind modern academic disciplines like Queer Studies, Fat Studies, Gender Studies, and Critical Race Theory, which have now broken through the academic walls and have become a part of our common culture.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant left a gap between the subject of knowing and the object of knowledge- the known and the knower. There is a gap between the subject and the object. 

Previously, the God who created the world and the individual was the bridge between the subject and object. In Kant's thinking, he destroys this bridge. He sees it as a useful idea, but it can’t be taken seriously. The gap between the subject and object remains.

You can come down on the side of the knower, or on the side of the known. 

If you come down on the side of the knower, as the continental philosophical tradition does, you are philosophically, an Idealist. 

If you come down on the side of the known, you are philosophically a critical realist (Naturalism, Empiricism).

From an Idealist point of view, because we live in this matrix of language, we never have true knowledge of objects. Everything is language. Everything is socially constructed through language. From this language matrix is constructed a hierarchy of power.

Critical Social Theory uses Foucault (in terms of an understanding of the dynamics of power) and Derrida (in terms of the social construction by language). Modern Identity Politics is a way of talking about how power hierarchies are coded in language by social groups. The pursuit of political emancipation comes as the oppressed attain self-conscious awareness of their membership in an oppressed identity (This emphasizes the social group over individual identity).

The obsession with politically corrected language is in line with this understanding of language and power. Power (and hierarchy) is asserted through language.

Intersectionality (originally from the split between Feminism and Womanism) is hearing the oppressed speak about their oppression from their own perspective, who should not be oppressed by those higher up the power hierarchy. So, white feminists should grant the floor to black feminists (Womanist) because white feminists are higher up the social power hierarchy due to their white skin.  This can lead to the collision of oppressed groups, which can enter into a kind of contest regarding who is more oppressed. If you are higher up on the society hierarchy of power, then your only job is to shut up and listen.

Book recommendations by Paul Hinlicky in relation to this topic:

J. Cameron Carter, “Race: A Theological Account”.

Joshua Mitchel, “American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of our Time”.

More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com

So, ultimately, this way of looking at racism rests on a Marxist, then Postmodern (Critical Theory) views of reality. It is based on a particular understanding of a construction of reality using language (where we don't really have access to understanding the real world) which produces a hierarchy with some having more power than others. This way of understanding race through the lenses of power and social construction might be helpful for deconstruction, but I don't think it leaves us with something we can build a society on. It weaves a tighter and tighter knot of complicated dynamics between oppressed and oppressor. The "experts" trained in Theory are constantly finding new ways to identify oppression.  

Not too long ago an Anglican Journal article raised concerns about the use of "light and dark" in the Bible, as if it supported racism. In anthropology class I was taught this was fairly universal among all cultures due to the dangers present to human beings from wild animals at night, and the comfort of the warm sunlight that forced nocturnal predators to return to their hiding places until night returned. To suggest that light and dark metaphors are somehow racist is to do serious damage to important metaphors that ultimately have nothing to do with race. To challenge the suggestion smacks of "White Fragility" and therefore can be dismissed by those who seek evidence of racism in such things.      

 

Using this lens to look at the world will see a white person selling burritos as cultural appropriation because they aren't Mexican. Tanning to make the skin darker is a kind of appropriation. Where does this leave the practice of martial arts? Can only Japanese people practice Karate? Is Eminem appropriating black culture? Someone interviewed on CBC said that if you don't like Drake's music you are a racist.

People who care, who just want to do what is right and good, are easily drawn into Critical Social Theory without knowing that is what they are being drawn into. They just want to be helpful. They don't want to be racist. They want to be good citizens to their neighbours. But, I don't think most of them understand the complexity of what is under these assumptions regarding Antiracism. 

I'm concerned that this way of addressing racism is actually going to make things worse. If everyone adopts this way of thinking, in 50 years what do we imagine the world looking like? What is the perfect percentage of representation in each category (race, gender, attractiveness, sexuality, etc.) for every part of society? How do we equal out the resources so everyone is treated equally? Perhaps we need to liquidate everyone's equity and redistribute it based on the hierarchy of oppression. Those who are more oppressed get more. 

White silence is violence, we are told, but getting involved in fighting racism in the wrong way is white saviourism.

I think this way of thinking undermines our ability to talk this out, because we are focused so much on power that that's all we begin hearing. Math and logic have even been accused of being racist as they are considered to be historically emphasized by White European males as a superior way of knowing, over and against other cultures' traditional ways of knowing.  Any argument, therefore, can be dismissed as supportive of the matrix of power. Ultimately, this way of looking at race is not livable and isn't able to help us build a society together. 

If Critical Race Theory is going to be useful, I believe it needs to have some boundaries placed on it. 

A few resources to consider:

Bret Weinstein's experience at Evergreen State College. Bret was a professor who refused to leave the campus when they were asking for all white people to leave the campus for the day-
https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk?si=wZ77yi3YpQyv9saG

The ethicist Nigel Biggar has written a book called "Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning" where he attempts to look at the history of the British empire and assess it ethically. This is an important book to include in conversations around colonialism and slavery. The British Empire is often viewed as being equal to Naziism in its racism.

Here is an interview with Biggar-

 https://c2cjournal.ca/2023/04/reckoning-with-canadas-colonial-past-in-conversation-with-nigel-biggar/ 

I also found the book "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay to be an interesting analysis of these movements. 

Also, "Springtime for Snowflakes" by Michael Rectenwald