I think most people are way more sincere in their worldview than others who disagree with them give them credit for. Race-forward advocates have as a core belief that racial disparities ARE racism, discrimination or no discrimination, and that this is our country's greatest moral failing. It is not enough to chip away at disparities unless it also comes with a moral conversion of the masses. I think a lot of us are far more attached to our underexamined core beliefs than we're willing to admit (this comic is so true: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe). The backlash to this conversation is a defense mechanism to defend the core belief that the moral rot of racism is a whites-over-blacks hierarchical thing and not a bias-and-stereotypes-about-people-based-on-race thing. By shifting the focus to class, a few uncomfortable dissonances come up for race-first thinkers. Perhaps minority elites have more in common with white elites than they do with low income minorities? Perhaps low income whites are equally worthy of empathy even if they are skeptical of racial justice issues? Perhaps the laws in our system that perpetuate disparities are really a direct function of class and only an indirect function of race? If this group acknowledges that elite minorities and their white allies have a significant amount of power as individuals and as a sub-group, it erases the idea that it's not possible for them to be "racist" about white people. That is a level of moral reckoning that group is not ready for. So studies like this touch a nerve.
I haven't read The Sum Of Us. I understand she is trying to make the "Race-Class Narrative" argument. The NYT article on this (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/opinion/biden-democrats-race-class.html) argued that a "race-class" message was a specific approach different than race, class, or the study's "class+race" approach. An example of extremely effective "race-class" messaging was this:
"No matter where we come from or what our color, most of us work hard for our families. But today, certain politicians and their greedy lobbyists hurt everyone by handing kickbacks to the rich, defunding our schools, and threatening our seniors with cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Then they turn around and point the finger for our hard times at poor families, Black people, and new immigrants. We need to join together with people from all walks of life to fight for our future, just like we won better wages, safer workplaces, and civil rights in our past."
It is obvious why messaging like this is effective. It is INCLUSIVE and inspiring. It makes "politicians and lobbyists" (who *everyone* hates) the bad guy, not white or middle-upper class people in general. Most people actually do want to help the less fortunate, they're just not all convinced the government is the most effective method to do so. And most Republicans are allergic to the idea that all Black people are dramatically "less fortunate" solely by nature of their race. They find that framing to be--wait for it--racist!
Advocates need to decide what is more important--making a material difference in people's lives or winning an ideological battle. They have assumed the battle must be won first, but the objective reality is that the battle is causing us to lose the war.
"Perhaps minority elites have more in common with white elites than they do with low income minorities? Perhaps low income whites are equally worthy of empathy even if they are skeptical of racial justice issues? Perhaps the laws in our system that perpetuate disparities are really a direct function of class and only an indirect function of race?"
Absolutely. I hate to keep coming off like the Working Class Ambassador, but I find that most of my liberal friends don't even know any poor or working class people, and media members leave me with a similar impression. I grew up poor and I ended up spending some time as a union organizer, so I obviously have some feelings about this topic.
I don't know how many times I have seen (sorry, obvious rich kid) liberals define a problem as racial, when everyone working class or below knows that it's primarily a class issue. Go to an Amazon warehouse; the floor is much more diverse than most of our workplaces. People of all backgrounds working elbow to elbow. They know that their worst problems, and they all face them together, come from a lack of money.
The rich kids (sorry) are sincere. They think they're addressing issues primarily about race; they've never been poor. I say this with nothing but sympathy: how would they know the difference between a race and a class issue? A thing that I see over and over in a variety of polls: poor people of every color feeling one way about an issue, and their stance/feeling being thoroughly unaddressed in the media that I consume.
And in the lower classes, non-white people are overrepresented relative to their proportion of the population. Every class based initiative is going to help them out of all proportion. But: it will also help some white people. There are a lot of those. And even poor and working class people who lean Republican are now fully cognizant of the fact that they're being screwed by rich people.
The only, only way to beat money and entrenched power are with large coalitions of citizens. Build a larger coalition! Do you want to win, or do you want to signal to your peer group? It really, really feels like the second thing is what's happening.
And frankly, I won't even mention most of this stuff around my (mostly white and well off) liberal friends, because I'm rarely in the mood to suffer personal abuse (getting older and taking abuse isn't a job requirement for me, as it was when I organized). For all their overuse of the word 'toxic', these are the most stridently abusive people with whom I'm familiar.
Couldn't agree more on the working-class blind-spot influential liberals have and the logic of your overall argument. Especially the media, which seems especially out of touch. It's hard for people to know they have a blind spot unless someone tells them, though, so I hope you keep fighting the good fight.
I am struck that this is the first attempt I’ve seen here to bring in a non-stereotyped understanding of white reactions to policies that are pitched as racial justice issues. Negative reaction more than a statistical fact and a regrettable limitation on doing the right thing. Leaving aside that many specific racial justice proposals are terrible and incoherent, I would argue that *no* race-specific policy appeals are ever going to work in America. The necessary things simply will not get done without a persistent appeal to unity and solidarity among all American citizens of all races. Race-specific arguments and policies do the opposite of that. They send a strong exclusionary message that at best says “your interests and values are not important anymore” and at worst says “your kind have been bad and privileged, and now you’re going to get what you deserve”. Calling the reaction to this “backlash” seems condescending to me. It is simply reading the room, and acting accordingly. We all have the strongest interest in making that dynamic come out differently. It is the *most* important thing to examine and understand, but it is treated as an afterthought, as if we already know everything about it.
This is thoughtful, thank you. I agree that "minority elites" or maybe more simply upper middle class Black and Brown people, have priveleges that some White folks don't. I think where this argument is weakest is that those "minority elites" vote for policies and politicians that are trying to implement policies that help the average white person more often than anyone else in the country.
What they experience however is how the opposition uses culture and identity to prevent that class vision from being implemented. It's been the case for a long time. I'd love to see that change, but it's very much a part of the world that we live in.
I'm all for more inclusive language, and that needs to be a part of the solution, but it feels like a jump to me, for someone to say that another person's understanding of their lived experience means that they don't empathize with someone else.
A woman saying that male violence & sexism is responsible for female disparities isn't saying that she doesn't empathize with the very male challenges of depression, undereducation, wage challenges etc.
Good point, and generalizing is always dangerous. I try to avoid cynicism but I spent many years agreeing with some fairly dismissive or downright hateful attitudes towards white conservatives based on the assumption that these white conservatives were all hateful people. When I actually engaged in conversation with real life white conservatives and took them at their word about their beliefs, I learned I was judging them very harshly and filtering their words through the idea that they were racist. Things like “I have a black friend, I voted for Obama, I want everyone to be treated equally, I strive to be colorblind, not all cops are bad” were translated into “wow what a racist jerk!” in my head. Major barrier to empathy and understanding. Once I listened with the assumption that they were no more racially biased or even naive than I was, and they genuinely meant what they said, I could see the world through their eyes more clearly. And I saw the ugliness of my past self and messages I subscribed to as they saw it. That sucked. I realized what I thought was empathy on my part was really still tinged with moral superiority. Are all these folks angels? Far from it!!! But for most of them, their sins mirrored my own. Moral superiority, negative generalizing, tribalism.
I really like that reflection. And I have had the same experience. Through a lot of different circumstances, some of the closest people in my life are very conservative, Trump-loving people, and they shout out all the talking points they hear on Fox News. But they have principles that they try to live by, and follow through in the ways that count, and mean the world to me. I don't want a world that pits me against them. I think that we should have empathy to understand why they are so frustrated / angry. Or why they find so much community in people I find to be hateful. That said, I just don't support their politics, and am very glad that their politicial vision is no longer being implemented. Some things they believe are just wrong full stop. And having moral standards and lines in the sand is OK I think. There is room for deescalation, but the path is unclear and hard.
About half of real life white conservatives are completely cool with a cop slowly pressing the life of a man over passing a bad twenty dollar bill
real life white conservatives almost uniformly worship an ignorant, would be dictator specifically because he shows maximum hostility toward people of color. The cruelty is the point. Some of us can't afford to not see these folks for who they are. They told us. Believe them.
It’s true, about half of them are so tribal they will defend an obvious murderer. The other half, which even included Trump!, condemned him. All I’m saying is I’m willing to assess each person on their own instead of assuming they’re all virulent racists as others have said. I’m willing to believe them if they say they care about black lives until they prove otherwise. But I understand why others see it differently. Certainly not everyone is trustworthy but political party alone is not a great litmus test.
Leaving aside that I never said that they are all virulent racist, it's important to note that not being a virulent racist is an incredibly low bar to clear. Perhaps because we are situated differently, I don't view support for Trump or this particular version of the Republican party to be a benign act. You, see, I, too, am willing to assess each person on their own and thus my assessment of someone who voted for the former guy is that they are quiet likely racist themselves, but are unabashedly untroubled by racism. I don't know why you would be willing to believe that they care about black people given that their actions say the opposite. Like I said, they told me who they were with that vote; I believe them.
Yeah, it was Kenneth who said that, sorry, didn't mean to suggest it was you. It's cool, I get you. I used to agree, I just changed my mind--not lightly, either. I acknowledge we are all in different situations though.
“But it’s much more important to actually help people than to avoid discomfort.” I’m genuinely afraid that this is simply not true among so-called woke, white, college-educated liberal progressives. I think that maybe being right, and being able to scold people, is what motivates them in many cases. I don’t think this is an intentional choice, or that they realize what’s going on, but when I call them (my friends) on stuff like this, the results aren’t pretty.
I think there's a mix here. No one would accuse the people you're talking about of caring more about avoiding discomfort than (whatever thing they might or might not care about). And within the movement, there's certainly a growing set of consequentialist rhetoric around "your intentions don't matter as much as your effects" (though this is more deployed in cases where someone causes disparate impact while claiming not to have intended it, rather than in cases where someone has claimed to intend improvement while not producing it).
I think the intended audience for pieces like this is more so people who are actually in campaigns, congressional offices, political consulting firms, etc. more than Rose Twitter
Racial frames allow white professionals and executives to virtue signal about equality while still benefitting from inequality. Anti-racism need not eliminate or even reduce inequality, it can “succeed” by distributing privilege more evenly across different racial groups. Creating a black professional class launders the privilege of the white professional class and isn’t much of a risk to white professionals with established careers. Having black CEOs makes obscene CEO pay less odious. Conversely, increasing the taxes on higher incomes, eliminating zoning, creating a broad wealth tax and encouraging skilled immigration would all hit white elites and professionals where it hurts. It’s hardly mysterious why anti racism has become de rigeur for Ivy-educated white professionals.
This discussion (very helpful I think, thanks Matt) reminds me of the very peculiar way that NASA has chosen to frame its Artemis program, which plans to send people back to the moon. The first sentence describing the mission on their main website says "During the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon." When that happens, I will be as supportive as anybody else, but it does strike me as a very strange way to advertise human space travel. Is the race and gender of the astronauts our main goal here? I don't think so. Why not just describe the mission for what it will be, which is a really awesome technical achievement and expansion of the human presence in the Solar System?
My slightly eccentric theory is that it's about appealing to millennials. Not just because of the feminist angle, but because the death of Christa McAuliffe in the Challenger disaster was a formative memory for older millennials and landing a woman on the moon would provide closure to that trauma. Without that emotional investment, young progressives tend to see space exploration as an expensive boondoggle.
There are just about a million news stories that follow this same cookie-cutter framing: First Black Woman to Climb Mount Everest. First Asian Man to Qualify for Olympic Bobsled. Etc etc. Some of these stories get written more out of journalistic laziness than newsworthiness and it probably isn't helpful.
Could be right, but I don't think that's what's going on at NASA. I just think it's bizarre to frame something that is already super popular and interesting for obvious reasons with race/gender.
How do you define "framing" the issue in a certain way vs simply "mentioning" that we'll have a woman/POC on the moon?
I can see how "framing" the issue in terms of race/gender equality might be foolish (or at least I can understand how it comes off as contrived.)
But it doesn't strike me as cringey/out-of-touch to "mention," "acknowledge," or even "advertise" the race/gender implications. (That is, so long as the technical objective is front and center.)
Yeah, that's a fair and kinda unanswerable question. I guess I think it's fair to call it "framing" when it's the first thing their advertising website says.
Ah. Yeah that certainly seems contrived and not a bit manipulative.
Then again, I guess we've always sold space travel with the promise of "human/national achievement."
I mean JFK didn't say "we choose to go to the moon, not because it's easy but because there are some very interesting rocks up there that we'd like to analyze."
But he said, "because it is hard." The technical achievement was the main point back then. Now (I think) it should be sold as a technical achievement and sweet science project. There's totally room to advertise a more diverse crew of astronauts. But it's strange to make it central I think. I'm being a curmudgeon though. The mission is a long way off. We'll see how it goes.
I mean, there are plenty of people that have noticed the fact that only white men have ever been on the moon, and complained about it being just as embarrassing as the fact that no one has been to the moon in nearly 50 years: https://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=936
It's a little strange because the achievement sounds like the ambitions in the 1950s to put the first dog or chimp into space. Or Mohammed Ali's quip about hitting Joe Frazier(?) so hard that the world will witness the first Black astronaut. The phrasing implies a lack of agency - something being done to them to fulfill a larger purpose.
I agree with 90% of what you wrote, but I don't think you've done justice to the race-class critique. I think their argument is that you start with the class narrative, but when Republicans step in racist rebuttals, like labelling the ACA reparations, you lean into pointing out that they're to sow racial discord to turn people against policies that are beneficial to them.
They claim to have empirical evidence that is more effective than a purely class narrative.
I find the intrusion of the Race Class Narrative people into this debate to be weird.
The question of how progressives should respond when conservatives engage in racist attacks or racial dog whistling is interesting and important.
The question that *I* am writing about is whether it makes sense for progressives to preemptively introduce racial themes and racial gap analysis into their own proposals. This is a real thing that, as detailed in my piece (and in the English/Kalla paper and in Marc’s previous piece) contemporary progressives do frequently. I think that they should stop doing it. Maybe RCN has all the answers for the problem it was designed for, maybe it doesn’t. I haven’t looked at it closely and don’t have a strong opinion.
I think that accusing Ian Haney Lopez of bullying was unfair given what you say here. It was clear that the media narrative on that study was that class messaging works better than race class messaging, and since he has been working to demonstrate that a particular flavor of race and class messaging is most effective at counter acting the Republican race fear based messaging, he feels that a lot is at stake just like you do. He too wants Democrats to win and getting this right matters, and the Yale folks did not test the approach he is advocating. I now really worry that counterproductive progressive race focused messaging has begun poisoning the well and it will be hard to persuade white non-college voters that a cross racial coalition is intended to benefit them as well. It felt like a gut punch when a Black Republican Senator from South Carolina said this: "When America comes together, we’ve made tremendous progress. But powerful forces want to pull us apart. A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic. And if they looked a certain way, they were inferior. Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them, and if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor. From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress at all, by doubling down on the divisions we’ve worked so hard to heal." Why is the left giving him that opening -- it's just such a self-inflicted wound. How can people be persuaded that it's the right that is trying to sow racist divisions to keep us from having nice things when some faction of the antiracist left is telling people that they need to meet in racially segregated groups and accept that to be white is to be racist?
I agree with that. I think it'd be great if you did look at RCN. They make very bold claims about huge majorities (70%+) being persuaded by their messaging. It's probably too good to be true. But if it's not, it'd be amazing. Republicans are terrible, if there's some tool that neuters one of their key weapons, that'd be awesome.
Here's the thing: First, most blacks and latinos are working/middle class, so their economic priorities would align with white workers. Whereas, if 3 out of 4 stories in the newspaper or on TV has a minority angle to it, whites will tend to skip over a lot of them, not out of malice but because it doesn't speak to their interests. Biden's speech was on point last night because it pin-pointed jobs as underlying his whole program - jobs, innovation to compete, buy American, etc. What's needed to make America great again? Everyone rises with the ship. And yet he also addressed the needs of blacks, latinos, asians, other minorities under that framework. Unfortunately, a number of progressives would be perfectly ok if there was a white party (Republican) and a minority party (Democrat). Nothing could be more destructive. White supremacy used to mean the Klan or militia or (now) the bigoted factions of Trump supporters. Now progressives are saying white people are all supremacist by virtue of being part of the majority race? Come on! Jesus, where is Marx when you need him?
I think the point we're trying to raise by bringing RCN into this is that it very well *can* be a good idea to preemptively introduce racial themes into their proposals as long as it's done in the right way (which to your point isn't being done correctly at the moment by many politicians). And that to engage on the idea of bringing race into things being bad as a whole (rather than specifically in the way it's being done now) without engaging on the Race-Class Narrative research is leaving out an important element of the discussion.
I think both you and the RCN people would agree that the current way lots of progressives pre-emptively bring racial themes into everything currently is ineffective. The solution is where you disagree.
Isn't the exactly the point - that RCN is designed to pre-empt the introduction of racial narratives by conservatives by warning people in advance that the issue is going to be racially demagoged and that they will be trying to divide the (as they would put it) middle class on a racial basis.
(ie: "this policy will benefit both white people and black people; people who oppose it because they are rich and greedy will try to tell white people it only benefits black people and black people it only benefits white people; don't believe them" is a template for how RCN works - bring race in to define the issue as a class issue and accuse your opponents of bringing race in)
The rub with studies like English / Kalla is that people don’t vote after hearing a few carefully crafted messages and decided which one they like the best. So harping on the RCN stuff seems like an understandable response when what fundamentally matters here is how to build a broad electoral coalition for these types of ambitious economic policies that will hold together over time under all manner of attack. The answer might be to “start out race neutral but be ready with a race-informed response,” or “anticipate racist backlash and acknowledge it at very start” or some other creative combo. But to frame your argument as basically, “I’m positive how the conversation should start but have no real opinion about what happens next” is honestly confusing.
The distinction between “preempting” racist dogwhistles/arguments and responding to them is thin gruel. The dog whistles are as old as the southern strategy. They are a durable feature of the political and rhetorical landscape. Any messaging strategy has to take them as a given.
It would be worth refining the English/Khalla experiment to include racialized arguments against progressive policies. Their results were pretty weak, and it’s not at all clear they would be robust to that change.
Ultimately, the utility of racial frames is a close question.
My guess is that progressives are trying to appeal to constiuencies that are trying to influence different constituencies that are trying to solve different problems. There are politicians that are focused on advancing racial equity, and framing things that way helps them understand how a particiular policy helps solve that issue. That doesn't preclude a different politician to frame it more broadly (e.g. the minimum wage). Both things are clearly true.
Tight labor markets work wonders for closing wage gaps, but it's not why you'd propose renominating Jerome Powell, but it's a great argument to a politician and activists who aren't as close to monetary policy issues / arguments.
I also am curious about your definition of "go out of their way to inject race". Policies have different dimensions and you sell them accordingly. Race is a dimension, and we are trying to make progress against that dimension. You have to sell to different constiuencies in different ways to keep the coalition together. I mean, Joe Biden has racial equity as a national priority that he campaigned on, and won on! Like... it's on the table. Including it to me feels harmless, and you can change the framing depending on the audience. It will be framed as reparations in either case by the other side. You might as well own what it does for people of color and win more support within your own coalition where it matters anyway.
It's hard to take this piece seriously when it ignores the very glaring research on Race-Class Narrative than contradicts this very point:
"Framing race-neutral issues as racial ones is not politically effective, as racial justice advocates have traditionally understood the risks of white racial backlash are high."
Would have loved the piece to actually address Race-Class Narrative rather than ignoring it altogether since if our goal is to convince people in the most effective way, and they have numerous studies showing it being more effective than talking about just class, then that's a very different argument than what Matt is arguing for in this piece.
Unfortunately instead all we got was 1 snarky tweet from Matt last night that "Real Race-Class Narrative has never been tried"
I don't know much about RCN, but the NYTimes oped about this study yesterday quoted someone from the RCN project whose critique seemed to be that race can be productive if it's used in a unifying way, like Obama's approach: "No matter where we come from or what our color, most of us work hard for our families...We need to join together with people from all walks of life to fight for our future, just like we won better wages, safer workplaces, and civil rights in our past."
The Race-Class Narrative Project, which has conducted extensive surveys and focus groups, came to the conclusion that race could effectively be addressed in carefully worded messages.
For instance: No matter where we come from or what our color, most of us work hard for our families. But today, certain politicians and their greedy lobbyists hurt everyone by handing kickbacks to the rich, defunding our schools, and threatening our seniors with cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Then they turn around and point the finger for our hard times at poor families, Black people, and new immigrants. We need to join together with people from all walks of life to fight for our future, just like we won better wages, safer workplaces, and civil rights in our past.
The race-class project also tested the efficacy of a class only message — 'We need elected leaders who will reject the divide and conquer tactics of their opponents and put the interests of working people first' — versus a race and class message that simply added the phrase 'whether we are white, Black or brown' to read:
We need elected leaders who will reject the divide and conquer tactics of their opponents and put the interests of working people first, whether we are white, Black or brown."
This doesn't seem inconsistent with what Matt is writing here and the framings they propose pretty straightforward and anodyne. And, notably, it *is* different from the "racial justice" framing, which focuses on disproportionate benefits that would accrue to a certain racial group.
So if I'm following along correctly:
1) Progressive politicians should frame their arguments in a universally appealing manner that appeals to voters' material interests;
2) Some divisive, reactionary politicians may try to undermine these policies with racist appeals;
3) If that happens, you should respond by saying, again, that your policy will benefit everyone, whether they are "from all walks of life," "white, black, or brown," or whatever.
I read the Edsall piece yesterday and had a similar conclusion. The Race-Class Narrative people are talking about using what I would call Racially Inclusive language rather than Racial Equity language. Where they go wrong is in erroneously claiming that politicians don't use the Equity language, they very obviously do. And it's very interesting that results seem to be pretty different.
What the RCN brings to a head is that negative reactions to "racial equity" framings are (mostly) not rooted in racism, they are far more a rejection of racial essentialism and divide & conquer black-v-white strategy. The race-class examples that they cite go out of their way to emphasize that all races are in it together. People find racial division odious and they want to sign up to be on team "human race." I agree, seems obvious! Give the people what they want- peace love and harmony. And justice. Have the cake and eat it too.
I swear I’m going to be pissed off if Democrats screw up Student Loan forgiveness by racializing the issue.
We maxed out my daughters student loans this year as a hedge.
In all seriousness, the biggest issue with racializing these issues is it sucks up the bandwidth to communicate the issues.
Most people are only superficially aware of the issues. They basically see the headlines and some FB commentary. If the headlines are about race, there are many people who really won’t realize that the policy helps them as well.
I think we as boring commenters forget this... or perhaps your social circle is disproportionately engaged.
Of all the people I work with, maybe 5-10% have any in-depth accurate knowledge of any given policy.
My wife never watches the news. Either do our kids.
I had a hell of a time convincing them that vaccines were safe because the only thing that broke through the bubble was those “xxx people died after being vaccinated” stories.
This is in some ways a collective action problem. No one will listen to a boring politician talk about how a higher minimum wage increases educational investment. But if a politician can say it is a racial justice issue they personally will get funding, clicks, attention etc. however, they need to know they are reducing support from 80% popular to 45% popular policy.
"While not everyone is a vegan, most people who learn enough about factory farming are upset by it. There is pretty much zero room for PETA to convert people from pro-factory-farming to anti-factory-farming, because there aren’t any radical grassroots pro-factory-farming activists to be found. Their problem isn’t lack of agreement. It’s lack of attention. PETA creates attention, but at a cost. Everybody’s talking about PETA, which is sort of like everybody talking about ethical treatment of animals, which is sort of a victory. But most of the talk is “I hate them and they make me really angry.' Some of the talk is even 'I am going to eat a lot more animals just to make PETA mad.'"
Yea and to the argument that conservatives bring up race anyway let them. they do a bad job ,and look really bad. EX Rush calling health care reparations.
If progressives fully embrace the class narrative, they'll find themselves supporting the unpalatable, unsophisticated white underclass--many of whom voted for Trump. It's easier to march alongside a biracial Ivy League classmate, whom you can actually relate to, and call it social justice.
Bernie had one thing right--he wasn't scared of including poor white people in his movement. I met more than a few people who were on the fence between Bernie and Trump, crazy as that sounds.
Yeah, a lot of white progressives see white working class folks (exp men) as the political enemy, but also as people they don't want to associate with in any social context. Progressives pick their allies the way they would choose guests for a dinner party or a backyard picnic.
I don't understand how we determine what's a race vs. and ethnicity. It's pretty clear we try to make a unique categorization for Hispanic so why does it keep getting capped an ethnicity?
What's a race versus an ethnicity, at least as we use the terms in the U.S., is entirely a socio-political construct. DNA studies tell us that the conception of solid categories of race doesn't hold up, scientifically. What's more, in the U.S. I think we say "ethnicity" because it sounds softer than saying "race."
Many Hispanics consider themselves to be white. The extra question allows analysts to disaggregate white people data. I assume this is helpful under some circumstances.
"Hispanic" spans a pretty broad range of hues, and of ancestries.
I guess the distinction is that going back to say, the 19th Century, no-one considered hispanic to be one of the major races like white, black african etc. (they used different terms, some now considered offensive).
I guess you could say that hispanics are a "new" race, a mix of european, native american (amerindian) and african (mostly slave-descended) genes, but with huge variation between individuals who identify as "hispanic" as to what their actual genetic ancestry is.
Isn't that true of most races, though? The whole thing is just an unspecific classification based on general ideas about what continent your ancestors are from. It's not like Asians are a homogenous group. I'm not even sure why we assume there's huge similarity among White people or Black people other than how racial hierarchies play out in the US
Yeah but we use it that way. It's an option on forms whereas those same forms ask about Hispanic as an ethnicity. What I'm asking is why we do that and maybe the answer is ,that there's not good reason
The options on those forms are somewhat culturally specific, and may or may not relate to groups within which individuals are typically more closely related to one another than they are to individuals outside of those groups.
They also just depend a bit on which groups are common in which countries.
In the US, a form might ask if you are a "Native American", whereas forms in the UK include an option for "Gypsy".
I mean, choosing to use "Asian" as a race because Asia is a continent is a choice. Anyway I always understood the term in US context to refer to East and Southeast Asians only?
Most people don't think of Arabs as Asians, though they live in Asia.
I don't see the reason to view it only through the lens of the US. Groups of human being have also interacted with one another in places other than the US and had concepts of themselves and others analogous to "races" or "ethnicities" whilst doing so.
I'd say that a race is, in practical terms, a grouping of multiple ethnicities. So "Black" comprises African-American, Black British, Xhosa, Zulu, Jamaican, Ethiopian, Ibo, Trinidadian, etc. (not naming every ethnicity in sub-Saharan Africa and the diaspora).
So do Mexican-Americans and Dominican-Americans and Puerto Ricans and Argentinian-Americans and Colombian-Americans belong together? Are the descendants of Aztecs distinct from the descendants of Lakota to the extent that the Aztec descendants belong more with the descendants of Spanish immigrants to Mexico and the descendants of black people forcibly transported from their homes to Mexico?
That doesn't mean there aren't racial dynamics within "Hispanic" that are relevant. And some white Hispanics have come to emphasise the "white" part of their identity after living in America for enough generations.
I mean, it's all subjective. I don't think Ethiopians would consider themselves in the same group as Jamaicans and even have their own internal racial/ethnic divisions.
"I'd say that a race is, in practical terms, a grouping of multiple ethnicities. So 'Black' comprises African-American, Black British, Xhosa, Zulu, Jamaican, Ethiopian, Ibo, Trinidadian, etc. "
That's not what I would call practical. Most "African-Americans" ancestry is a mix of Pan-European and from a fairly circumscribed part of West Africa. Oprah Winfrey claiming to be Zulu was ignorant and Barack Obama's genetic relationship to most African-Americans was through his white mother.
That's my point. The way that "race" is used in practice (ie in practical terms as opposed to theoretical ones) is to join a bunch of ethnicities together.
Genetics or relationships doesn't need to have anything to do with it.
It seems like race and ethnicity are both terms to describe ancestrally-based identities. They're close to synonyms, but race is a more archaic term, more closely linked to old discredited ideas that there were meaningful physical and intellectual differences between groups of people from different continents. It's hard to see what would be lost that's good if we just retired the term "race", consigned it to the history books, and only used the more term "ethnicity".
Yeah...I guess the main gripe I have is that they are both kinda fuzzy, kinda problematic categories that get at the same thing. It makes more sense to just pick one word for both
Yes agree. The discussion here trying to earnestly parse out whether an identity is a "race" or an "ethnicity" has the air of medieval theologians earnestly trying to figure out exactly how many levels of purgatory there are.
I'm not sure if in the modern usage they really are close to synonyms. Seems like people use race to refer to broader races such as "black african" or "white", and ethnicity to refer to something narrower like Slavic or Korean. Even if in the past people might have referred to the "race" of the English or the Welsh.
What I especially like are the sections noting that Hispanic has totally different meanings in Spain, Italy, Central and South America, and the US. To me, that points to it being a mostly useless product of historical efforts to categorize and group people according to elites' perceptions of their ancestry as closer (or not) to Spanish based on their use of Spanish as opposed to indigenous languages. It made its way into official documents, like the census, and became a bit cemented there.
Here's an old (2012) Pew Research piece: "Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label."
I am unsure if/how this trend has changed since then but the recent polling around the popular-with-elites "Latinx" has been similar.
So, there's a very long tradition of elite outsiders deciding what whole groups are called even though members of those groups have their own ways of identifying themselves and prefer those.
Yeah, I knew all that Wikipedia stuff already. The “MIA” in my nickname refers to Miami, where I have lived for the past five years. I also lived and/or worked in NYC for 20 years. So I have known a lot of Latinos in my life and gained some appreciation about how they tend to view themselves and other Latinos. The distinctions drawn are particularly stark in Miami - something that is amplified in the neighborhood I live in that is chock-full of professional types from Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and a handful from other countries in South America. And the occasional actual Spaniard. The amount of low-level, casual bigotry that exists among those national groups was something that I did not expect based on my experiences in NYC.
I recently heard an interesting description that may fit. In Miami - latino/hispanic is the majority so they break it down to their backgrounds. Similarly to how most whites in America don't think of themselves so much as white as Irish, Italian, Jewish, New Yorkers, Californians, Texans, etc. The majority breaks itself down into smaller identities.
On the other hand if you are a black Jamaican in Wisconsin, you might not start off identifying with the black Ethiopian, but if everyone treats you as the same, that will lead to a cultural merging. I think this is especially true for young people in schools who don't have a deep rooted culture already in place.
“The majority breaks itself down into smaller identities.”
I agree, and the “size” if the identity depends on context and is fluid. For instance: If I, a white man, ends up sitting next to, say, a black woman at an NFL game, what matters most is who are we each rooting for.
This is a good article. But you personally Matt, have a motte and bailey problem.
I’ve been reading you for close to 20 years and you’re the only Substack I ever even considered buying, so this little heel turn, which is tough to ignore since I’ m a black dude, legit makes me sad. I largely grok your reasonable, though imperfect argument about the downsides of racialized marketing of policies, even if the policies have significantly disparate racial impacts. But you have an increasingly visible hostility to / rejection of other concerns many black folks have that is entirely separate and apart from your issue with essentially policy marketing. It’s the difference between “That’s a counterproductive way to solve the problem” and “I don’t believe you when you say this is a problem” And when you get called on the latter, you jump in the motte of the former. Not asking you to think differently or anything, just pointing it out.
>But you have an increasingly visible hostility to / rejection of other concerns many black folks have that is entirely separate and apart from your issue with essentially policy marketing.
I'd be interested to hear this fleshed out more or have you point me towards these instances. I generally read this ongoing take of Matt's as the 2nd "policy marketing" part but would like to examine his/my potential blind spot.
How about this re-tweet and endorsement. It’s just bean bag for politicos on either side to stitch together cherry-picked interviews to make a pwnage, so it’s dog bites man for Daily Caller to make this one. But I think it is notable that Matt endorsed it. The video purports to illustrate that empathy with a righteous protest bleeding into rioting is a phenomenon distinctive to liberal whites and rejected by black people. This is not true. Which means, in effect, what we have here is a set of white people who hate black people lying to other white people, who may or may not hate black people, that black people are appalled by the riots of last year. We all know the reason Daily Caller is making this argument - as a way to avoid talking about the protest themselves and the specific and continual acts that brought them about. Given the Daily Callers ideological objective, this makes sense; but for someone with purported progressive views on racism, not so much. Further, just linking to a consistently white nationalist website founded by Americas pre-eminent white nationalist on a racial question is hella suspect. These aren’t anodyne, but rather purposeful choices and they have nothing at all to do with racial-neutral marketing of policy preferences. The most generous read I can come to is that this is Matt looking to troll (what people who oppose racial equality call) the “wokes.”
I can't even tell that he's endorsing it - I'd give it, like 70%? "This is a good bit" could have a sarcastic meaning; pretending that it's an attempt at comedy and not political commentary. I'm confused by MY's one-liners all-the-time and I wish he wouldn't do them.
Another example of the bailey is Matt’s quote from this very piece.
“A pet theory that I developed in the past but didn’t put into my previous piece is that we’re seeing carryover from college campus dynamics. If YOU convince an RA that a fellow student is doing something racist, the RA will probably put a stop to it, whereas simply observing that something is bad for poor people probably won’t get YOU anywhere. Connecting something to racism, in other words, can be a very powerful argument in certain contexts. But not in electoral politics." I think this is really insightful. My observations of how wokeness works in the left is primarily with it being weaponized *constantly*."
This line of thinking could have been taking directly from the black crime section of Daily Caller or to be frank, the writings of segregation opponents back in the first half of the last century. I capitalized YOU in his quote because, either black people are being written out of Matt’s universal you (which is common and problematic on its own), or if black people are included, his pet theory then is that black people are just making up the challenges that we face navigating through a society that has consistently seen us as pariah class. If the latter is true, not only does smart political marketing, but also objective fairness calls for ignoring the concerns of black people.
“Racism is not an ever-present force in the lives of black people, but rather a tool that the wily negroes wield at innocent well-meaning white people, thus we should appropriately ignore them because they’re lying” is a much more nakedly racist argument than the motte of ”we should communicate via non-racial frames when possible”. I dunno, it’s all so sad. I’m surprised this is what Matt apparently has always thought of us. So it goes…
I don't dispute that you have good reasons for hearing him that way but that's not what I'm picking up from his argument. And if we disagree on that, I guess we can at least agree that neither one of us knows for sure what's in his head.
My guess is he's viewing that argument through the very specific lens of elite college and fortune 500 company politics. That's a very small slice of american life, and not necessarily a representative one, but it's one that Matt Yglesias is probably very familiar with. If I had to guess, the ratio of truly racist incidents to examples of "weaponizing wokeism" is much different in those elite environments than it is in most of the rest of the country. I didn't read it as disputing that racism ever occurs. I went to a fairly elite college and when i read that RA college example, I didn't even picture a Black person telling the RA about a racist incident. In my mind's eye it was probably a white person and it could have been about any issue an elite school would take issue with, i.e. Trans-rights, immigrants, body-shaming etc.. I also picture that recent Teen Vogue firing of a black woman for 10 year old racist tweets, which I know Matt disagreed with and tweeted about. In those environments you will get more points in an argument for framing it in those terms than you would framing it about discrimination against poor people.
And then that leads, I thought, to his bigger point, which is that the rest of America is actually NOT always like that. Focusing on a racial dimension will help persuade your RA that you're witnessing an injustice, but it might not help you persuade voters to elect you in a presidential election (trump beat hillary). I don't think his point is that the racial framing shouldn't be believed by liberals, just that elite colleges prepare liberals to expect that framing things as social justice will persuade more people than it ultimately might
You are certainly welcome to extend to Matt the benefit of the doubt that I may have given him a year ago, but as I said, if Matt wrote that part with the assumption that black people aren’t part of the universal you, it’s problematic in its own right. We do, you know, exist after all.
And your comments about the Teen Vogue lady also come from the same place that ignores that, how, & why black people, on balance, look at that situation quite differently. Maybe we see one person fired unfairly because of intense racial sensitivity, weigh that against the literal millions of black people who have had their careers hampered by racism over the generations, and conclude that erring on the side of over sensitivity is the lesser evil, even if it leads to unfair outcomes from time to time. Maybe we stare distressed but unsurprised at how many white people are ready to go to war over the former while offering nothing more than nods and platitudes about the latter.
Anyhow, what I really want to write is that you’re doing the same motte and bailey that Matt’s doing. What you call Matt’s bigger point (which is actually much less important) - the sub-optimal marketing of policy preferences by forefronting racial impact is tangential to, but discreet from, all those baileys such as the ratio you mentioned (which we’ll get back to in a bit). You and I and Matt have no disagreement that racial frames will draw hostility from some whites, annoyance from others, and intense uncomfortability for a plurality and thus should be used very carefully. So, let’s put that aside.
Your assumption that the ratio of truly racist incidents to examples of "weaponizing wokeism" is much different in elite environments than elsewhere would face hostility from the overwhelming majority of the black people who travel in those circles. I say this as a member of that cohort who has for a lifetime consorted socially and professionally within that group. Now, many of us would be extremely reticent to make a public claim of racism, even in the face of some truly oppressive shit, because all of us know how career limiting it is to make white people uncomfortable about such things. Indeed a core competency of a modern corporate negro is the marrow-deep awareness that many white people believe as you seem to that racism is something that happens amongst the lesser classes and thus any grievances we might have are likely at best in our heads, or at worse are as you put it, weaponized wokeism.
Your explicit argument is that at least in elite circles racism is not an ever-present force in the lives of black people, but rather a tool that the wily negroes wield at innocent well-meaning white people, thus should be appropriately ignored because the negroes are lying.
I understand the folly of trying to explain all of the ways that’s a terrible thing to believe, so believe what you like. My point, again, is that it is a separate argument from the” market policy preference better” argument. And if you are of the belief that black people, even in elite circles, are just making it all up, own that. Say it with your chest and don’t go running back to the motte.
You seem to be putting a lot of words in my mouth and assuming a lot of thoughts in my head. (i took lifted weaponized wokeism from your earlier comment, for example) i'm mostly trying to point out the perspective that I think Yglesias has, in response to your interpretation of the same. The point wasn't to communicate my own beliefs, although it sounds like we do all 3 agree on realpolitick political messaging part. And I'm fairly certain I didn't say black people are usually lying about racism or anything like that.
But yes, with respect to elite vs lower-class environments, I do really think that racial issues play out differently. I say this as someone who grew up in a blue-collar, non-elite community and family, but works with Ivy league elite types now and for much of my adult life. The two have differences in just about every aspect of communication, behavior, conflict resolution, rates of interracial marriage, etc.. I'd be amazed if someone could convince me that racism was the one thing that was exactly the same.
And the reception that framing a message in "social justice" terms gets is yet another difference between those communities, so consequently you see social and racial justice framings much more in elite circles, and much less in blue collar ones.
Again, I don't usually think you or anyone else (or at least rarely anyone else) is lying about experiences like racism. In fact, I take what you said, a random internet stranger, into account as I formulate my perception of the world, I'm thinking "is there a lot more anti-black racism among elite ivy league types than I thought, what am I failing to notice, what do various Black people I worked with think, etc..." I'd like to hear more. The worst I ever usually assume is the kind of perspective-ignorance that we all have, since it's thoroughly impossible to walk a mile in the shoes of every other category of person on the planet
I have no particular insight into what’s going on in your or Matt’s head; I’m responding to very specific things that you both have written. When Matt writes, “my observations of how wokeness works in the left is primarily with it being weaponized *constantly*." and when you write, “If I had to guess, the ratio of truly racist incidents to examples of ‘weaponizing wokeism’ is much different in those elite environments”, I take you at your word that you mean these things.
And when I read the quote, “I'd be amazed if someone could convince me that racism was the one thing that was exactly the same.” How can I understand that as anything other than agreement with my earlier hard-learned observation that it would be folly for me to attempt to convince you that the racism black people experience, in this case corporate black people, actual exists. You’re explicitly forefronting your resistance to accepting the idea. Fwiw, no one is saying it’s exactly the same; it’s actually incredibly different, but that doesn’t mean there is any less of it.
But let’s back up. The whole objective of Matt’s piece is to advocate that Democrats avoid racialized marketing of policies when possible given the political downsides. I agree with this. One of the key places that it gets push back is from black people and our allies who fear the removal of anti-racist signals and frames indicates as a retreat from commitments to anti-racism in general. That Democrats loudly court and count on black votes and then don’t advocate for black causes and concerns at nearly the same volume is a common perception in black communities. So for an advocate of non-race-framing policy marketing, part of gaining purchase for that idea is mitigating the concerns of black voters (and allies) that it really is just about effective policy marketing and not a rejection of efforts to diminish racism and/or racial disparities. Thus, Matt linking favorably to the Daily Caller and carving out a lane as America’s most preeminent anti-anti-racist liberal does damage to his own cause. In a neat bit of irony, Matt has a marketing problem for his non-race-framing policy marketing argument and would be better off if he jettisoned all the anti-anti-racism bullshit clogging up the bailey.
If you ask me, your concerns seem to stem from this mindset: "if you're not 100% with me, then you're 100% against me."
If a person has beliefs which are largely anti-racist, but sees some anti-racist ideas as clearly illogical, how is that person supposed to behave? Is it possible to question *aspects* of anti-racism without being labelled an "anti-anti-racist?"
If so, how? (Not a rhetorical question--I think it's important to suss this out. I bet we agree that criticizing aspects of anti-racism should be allowed and encouraged.)
In this Matt Y. piece on Ibram X. Kendi, he criticizes one aspect of anti-racist thought. This excerpt serves as a summary of his thesis: "Identifying a racial gap and declaring it to be racist is often insufficient. Such an approach impedes actually thinking about problems — particularly in media, academic and nonprofit circles, where the accusation of racism can carry severe consequences. And so to avoid controversy, people avoid important debates rather than risking offense."
Maybe you disagree, but is the opinion expressed here so unreasonable that we can write him off as engaging in bad faith?
If it's not unreasonable enough to accuse him of racism or bad faith, but it still makes you uncomfortable, then how could he have stated his opinion in a way that would not result in this discomfort?
If you ask me, your concern seems to stem from the fact that you aren't engaging with what I've written and have instead decided to attribute Ibram X Kendi's views to me and then express your disagreement with those views. I mean, Knock yourself out. I never said that you, Matt or anyone else couldn't critique Kendi or anyone else. But Matt's article isn't about that and thus my response to his article is not about that.
I agree with that, and I think it's worth underlining that this article was pretty good.
My sense if that Matt is generally sharp, but often a bit glib and dismissive towards the positions that he's arguing against, and I appreciated that this post took seriously some of the criticisms that he's received, acknowledged that there are complicated issues at play, and wrote a clear version of his position.
Incidentally, I'm saying that to myself as much as to you. I don't comment much here, and I realized that I was more likely to comment when I wanted to object to something, and that I want to show support as well.
Frankly, the results of this study don't loom very strong and most people should ignore it. Confidence intervals are really wide in most spots and magnitude of effect looks tiny (.1 ish on 7 pt scale). From a bayesian viewpoint, people disregarding this study are being rational if they have even a moderate prior that framing these kinds issues by race is persuasive. It should take much stronger evidence to unseat current beliefs.
Not to say we should be p-value obsessed, if we had absolutely no preconception of what was correct then it's reasonable to go with a low powered study. But if you have some idea of what's right and an empirical study with very little power says something else you basically should ignore it.
We need to market smart, broadly appealing policy in the most winning way. It’s that simple folks. You can’t win every battle by charging to the front, waving the flag and swinging the saber wildly. It’s is an annoying facet of democracy but one we cannot ignore or we will lose on the politics and eventually lose our democracy.
I really appreciated your inclusion of the bullet points. In so much of what I read the author seems to equate racism with using the wrong words. That’s not the problem. It’s teachers, cops and hiring managers believing, in many cases subconsciously, the things you mentioned.
Another way of framing this is about equalizing opportunity versus equalizing outcomes, either based on racial or class categories. Making up for past racial discrimination is equalizing outcomes in reparation for that. Universal economic programs have the primary purpose of equalizing opportunity for everyone who today is economically disadvantaged, regardless of race, but won't create equal opportunity for all unless racial discrimination also stops.
Equality of opportunity is an incoherent concept. What does it mean? It can’t mean that all people have equal opportunities, I’m never going to be a famous athlete or a beautiful actress and someone with an IQ of 80 is unlikely to get professional credentials.
No, it simply means that's both A) historical structures and, C) the inherent inequality of nature, guarantee widely disparate outcomes if no intervening action is taken. Which I realize to a some people seems fine. But most of us don't like it when some Americans live in mansions and others live in the streets. Do you really think Denmark is an unjust society?
It's not incoherent. It's about making it sure everyone has the opportunity to make the most of their talents, without being held back by arbitrary barriers and happenstance of birth, such as classifications by race or sex or being born to rich or poor parents.
We can't erase the fact that people have different abilities, energy and ambition. But we should try to create a society where everyone has the potential to realize the gifts they were endowed with. That's what equal opportunity means.
Abilities, energy, and ambition are just as arbitrary as race and parental income. Equality of opportunity, if it means anything, leads to some variety of Rawlsianism or luck egalitarianism that’s far more radical than the Dem platform. A lot of people like equality of opportunity framing though even though they use it in an internally incoherent way.
I like that program, but I also like using words accurately. What you propose is not equality of opportunity, it is the improvement of workers’ choice environments
Seems like we're saying the same thing. Don't want get caught up in semantics, but I do think in the American political context, equal opportunity is a phrase that ties together a lot of rhetorical traditions and ideas and resonates better with our culture and history.
I think it means people have access to the same resources. You may never be a scientist but people in you neighborhood shouldn't be denied a good science education and the opportunity to decide if it's the right path for them
So equal opportunity means doing things like distributing good teachers more evenly between communities?
That may be good policy, but it would hardly equalize opportunity. The kid whose mom drank during pregnancy will, other things constant, get much less benefit from those science classes than the kid whose mom avoided alcohol. The kid whose parents tell her education is important, read to her, enrich her vocabulary and help her study will get much more pop out of good schooling than a kid whose parents neglect her.
Pursuing less unequal outcomes is laudable, pursuing “equal opportunity” is incoherent.
I think it would mean hiring and training more teachers. In any case, I think we should try harder to help kids who are at a disadvantage and not just give up on them. The whole point of this is to recognize that people might have different natural talents but we should make sure that no one falls behind b/c we didn't try to help them. We might be saying more or less the same thing.
I think that there is a problem that at our current state of knowledge we don't seem to really know how to "fix" disadvantaged kids, at scale. We can "help" them by investing money in them, but this is just a matter of equal inputs, which do not seem to produce corresponding outputs. Not that we should stop trying, but we can't necessarily expect to move the needle in the way we want it to.
Pursuing equal outcomes is perhaps a simpler idea, I'll give you that - it doesn't take a lot of thought or understanding. Just pay everyone the same regardless of individual performance or effort, or the value of their chosen activities. But it's a not a realistic or remotely sensible way to organize a society.
Complete equality is both a pipe dream and a straw man. No society has seriously pursued it, even communist countries had party members.
The goal should be maximizing human achievement, eg smart kid shouldn’t be prevented from joining the professions just because he is black and the economy should be structured so that the mass of workers have security and leisure.
So 100% equalizing the wealth of every single parent, so no parent has more money or resources (time, loving family, connections, geographical proximity to good things, etc) than any other parent?
That seems like such a historically unprecedented redistribution of, uh, everything as to make "equality of opportunity" almost nonsensical.
No, of course not. There's no perfect solution but we can recognize that people need help and do what we can. Improve schools, provide nutrition assistance, health care. Things like that that we know will help and have the capacity to do
I think most people are way more sincere in their worldview than others who disagree with them give them credit for. Race-forward advocates have as a core belief that racial disparities ARE racism, discrimination or no discrimination, and that this is our country's greatest moral failing. It is not enough to chip away at disparities unless it also comes with a moral conversion of the masses. I think a lot of us are far more attached to our underexamined core beliefs than we're willing to admit (this comic is so true: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe). The backlash to this conversation is a defense mechanism to defend the core belief that the moral rot of racism is a whites-over-blacks hierarchical thing and not a bias-and-stereotypes-about-people-based-on-race thing. By shifting the focus to class, a few uncomfortable dissonances come up for race-first thinkers. Perhaps minority elites have more in common with white elites than they do with low income minorities? Perhaps low income whites are equally worthy of empathy even if they are skeptical of racial justice issues? Perhaps the laws in our system that perpetuate disparities are really a direct function of class and only an indirect function of race? If this group acknowledges that elite minorities and their white allies have a significant amount of power as individuals and as a sub-group, it erases the idea that it's not possible for them to be "racist" about white people. That is a level of moral reckoning that group is not ready for. So studies like this touch a nerve.
I haven't read The Sum Of Us. I understand she is trying to make the "Race-Class Narrative" argument. The NYT article on this (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/opinion/biden-democrats-race-class.html) argued that a "race-class" message was a specific approach different than race, class, or the study's "class+race" approach. An example of extremely effective "race-class" messaging was this:
"No matter where we come from or what our color, most of us work hard for our families. But today, certain politicians and their greedy lobbyists hurt everyone by handing kickbacks to the rich, defunding our schools, and threatening our seniors with cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Then they turn around and point the finger for our hard times at poor families, Black people, and new immigrants. We need to join together with people from all walks of life to fight for our future, just like we won better wages, safer workplaces, and civil rights in our past."
It is obvious why messaging like this is effective. It is INCLUSIVE and inspiring. It makes "politicians and lobbyists" (who *everyone* hates) the bad guy, not white or middle-upper class people in general. Most people actually do want to help the less fortunate, they're just not all convinced the government is the most effective method to do so. And most Republicans are allergic to the idea that all Black people are dramatically "less fortunate" solely by nature of their race. They find that framing to be--wait for it--racist!
Advocates need to decide what is more important--making a material difference in people's lives or winning an ideological battle. They have assumed the battle must be won first, but the objective reality is that the battle is causing us to lose the war.
"Perhaps minority elites have more in common with white elites than they do with low income minorities? Perhaps low income whites are equally worthy of empathy even if they are skeptical of racial justice issues? Perhaps the laws in our system that perpetuate disparities are really a direct function of class and only an indirect function of race?"
Absolutely. I hate to keep coming off like the Working Class Ambassador, but I find that most of my liberal friends don't even know any poor or working class people, and media members leave me with a similar impression. I grew up poor and I ended up spending some time as a union organizer, so I obviously have some feelings about this topic.
I don't know how many times I have seen (sorry, obvious rich kid) liberals define a problem as racial, when everyone working class or below knows that it's primarily a class issue. Go to an Amazon warehouse; the floor is much more diverse than most of our workplaces. People of all backgrounds working elbow to elbow. They know that their worst problems, and they all face them together, come from a lack of money.
The rich kids (sorry) are sincere. They think they're addressing issues primarily about race; they've never been poor. I say this with nothing but sympathy: how would they know the difference between a race and a class issue? A thing that I see over and over in a variety of polls: poor people of every color feeling one way about an issue, and their stance/feeling being thoroughly unaddressed in the media that I consume.
And in the lower classes, non-white people are overrepresented relative to their proportion of the population. Every class based initiative is going to help them out of all proportion. But: it will also help some white people. There are a lot of those. And even poor and working class people who lean Republican are now fully cognizant of the fact that they're being screwed by rich people.
The only, only way to beat money and entrenched power are with large coalitions of citizens. Build a larger coalition! Do you want to win, or do you want to signal to your peer group? It really, really feels like the second thing is what's happening.
And frankly, I won't even mention most of this stuff around my (mostly white and well off) liberal friends, because I'm rarely in the mood to suffer personal abuse (getting older and taking abuse isn't a job requirement for me, as it was when I organized). For all their overuse of the word 'toxic', these are the most stridently abusive people with whom I'm familiar.
Couldn't agree more on the working-class blind-spot influential liberals have and the logic of your overall argument. Especially the media, which seems especially out of touch. It's hard for people to know they have a blind spot unless someone tells them, though, so I hope you keep fighting the good fight.
I am struck that this is the first attempt I’ve seen here to bring in a non-stereotyped understanding of white reactions to policies that are pitched as racial justice issues. Negative reaction more than a statistical fact and a regrettable limitation on doing the right thing. Leaving aside that many specific racial justice proposals are terrible and incoherent, I would argue that *no* race-specific policy appeals are ever going to work in America. The necessary things simply will not get done without a persistent appeal to unity and solidarity among all American citizens of all races. Race-specific arguments and policies do the opposite of that. They send a strong exclusionary message that at best says “your interests and values are not important anymore” and at worst says “your kind have been bad and privileged, and now you’re going to get what you deserve”. Calling the reaction to this “backlash” seems condescending to me. It is simply reading the room, and acting accordingly. We all have the strongest interest in making that dynamic come out differently. It is the *most* important thing to examine and understand, but it is treated as an afterthought, as if we already know everything about it.
This is thoughtful, thank you. I agree that "minority elites" or maybe more simply upper middle class Black and Brown people, have priveleges that some White folks don't. I think where this argument is weakest is that those "minority elites" vote for policies and politicians that are trying to implement policies that help the average white person more often than anyone else in the country.
What they experience however is how the opposition uses culture and identity to prevent that class vision from being implemented. It's been the case for a long time. I'd love to see that change, but it's very much a part of the world that we live in.
I'm all for more inclusive language, and that needs to be a part of the solution, but it feels like a jump to me, for someone to say that another person's understanding of their lived experience means that they don't empathize with someone else.
A woman saying that male violence & sexism is responsible for female disparities isn't saying that she doesn't empathize with the very male challenges of depression, undereducation, wage challenges etc.
Good point, and generalizing is always dangerous. I try to avoid cynicism but I spent many years agreeing with some fairly dismissive or downright hateful attitudes towards white conservatives based on the assumption that these white conservatives were all hateful people. When I actually engaged in conversation with real life white conservatives and took them at their word about their beliefs, I learned I was judging them very harshly and filtering their words through the idea that they were racist. Things like “I have a black friend, I voted for Obama, I want everyone to be treated equally, I strive to be colorblind, not all cops are bad” were translated into “wow what a racist jerk!” in my head. Major barrier to empathy and understanding. Once I listened with the assumption that they were no more racially biased or even naive than I was, and they genuinely meant what they said, I could see the world through their eyes more clearly. And I saw the ugliness of my past self and messages I subscribed to as they saw it. That sucked. I realized what I thought was empathy on my part was really still tinged with moral superiority. Are all these folks angels? Far from it!!! But for most of them, their sins mirrored my own. Moral superiority, negative generalizing, tribalism.
I really like that reflection. And I have had the same experience. Through a lot of different circumstances, some of the closest people in my life are very conservative, Trump-loving people, and they shout out all the talking points they hear on Fox News. But they have principles that they try to live by, and follow through in the ways that count, and mean the world to me. I don't want a world that pits me against them. I think that we should have empathy to understand why they are so frustrated / angry. Or why they find so much community in people I find to be hateful. That said, I just don't support their politics, and am very glad that their politicial vision is no longer being implemented. Some things they believe are just wrong full stop. And having moral standards and lines in the sand is OK I think. There is room for deescalation, but the path is unclear and hard.
Same!! All Im trying to live by now is, try to treat them the way I want them to treat people I love.
That's a really well-put description of some smart self-reflection and positive growth. It's the kind of empathy we should always be aiming for.
About half of real life white conservatives are completely cool with a cop slowly pressing the life of a man over passing a bad twenty dollar bill
real life white conservatives almost uniformly worship an ignorant, would be dictator specifically because he shows maximum hostility toward people of color. The cruelty is the point. Some of us can't afford to not see these folks for who they are. They told us. Believe them.
It’s true, about half of them are so tribal they will defend an obvious murderer. The other half, which even included Trump!, condemned him. All I’m saying is I’m willing to assess each person on their own instead of assuming they’re all virulent racists as others have said. I’m willing to believe them if they say they care about black lives until they prove otherwise. But I understand why others see it differently. Certainly not everyone is trustworthy but political party alone is not a great litmus test.
Leaving aside that I never said that they are all virulent racist, it's important to note that not being a virulent racist is an incredibly low bar to clear. Perhaps because we are situated differently, I don't view support for Trump or this particular version of the Republican party to be a benign act. You, see, I, too, am willing to assess each person on their own and thus my assessment of someone who voted for the former guy is that they are quiet likely racist themselves, but are unabashedly untroubled by racism. I don't know why you would be willing to believe that they care about black people given that their actions say the opposite. Like I said, they told me who they were with that vote; I believe them.
Yeah, it was Kenneth who said that, sorry, didn't mean to suggest it was you. It's cool, I get you. I used to agree, I just changed my mind--not lightly, either. I acknowledge we are all in different situations though.
“But it’s much more important to actually help people than to avoid discomfort.” I’m genuinely afraid that this is simply not true among so-called woke, white, college-educated liberal progressives. I think that maybe being right, and being able to scold people, is what motivates them in many cases. I don’t think this is an intentional choice, or that they realize what’s going on, but when I call them (my friends) on stuff like this, the results aren’t pretty.
I think there's a mix here. No one would accuse the people you're talking about of caring more about avoiding discomfort than (whatever thing they might or might not care about). And within the movement, there's certainly a growing set of consequentialist rhetoric around "your intentions don't matter as much as your effects" (though this is more deployed in cases where someone causes disparate impact while claiming not to have intended it, rather than in cases where someone has claimed to intend improvement while not producing it).
I think the intended audience for pieces like this is more so people who are actually in campaigns, congressional offices, political consulting firms, etc. more than Rose Twitter
Racial frames allow white professionals and executives to virtue signal about equality while still benefitting from inequality. Anti-racism need not eliminate or even reduce inequality, it can “succeed” by distributing privilege more evenly across different racial groups. Creating a black professional class launders the privilege of the white professional class and isn’t much of a risk to white professionals with established careers. Having black CEOs makes obscene CEO pay less odious. Conversely, increasing the taxes on higher incomes, eliminating zoning, creating a broad wealth tax and encouraging skilled immigration would all hit white elites and professionals where it hurts. It’s hardly mysterious why anti racism has become de rigeur for Ivy-educated white professionals.
"I don’t want to be a tedious bore on this subject, but I really do think it’s important to try to drill down..."
I'm trying to avoid boring, but boring is important, says Mr. Slow Boring.
Either you're just trolling us now, or we need to task Marc to edit your metaphors, too.
Trolling
I bore with it when he was being a bore, but should he become a boor about it, I won't bear it.
I'm bearish about his chances of going full on boor, but I'm bullish about his chances of being full of bull.
When in doubt, assume trolling.
This discussion (very helpful I think, thanks Matt) reminds me of the very peculiar way that NASA has chosen to frame its Artemis program, which plans to send people back to the moon. The first sentence describing the mission on their main website says "During the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon." When that happens, I will be as supportive as anybody else, but it does strike me as a very strange way to advertise human space travel. Is the race and gender of the astronauts our main goal here? I don't think so. Why not just describe the mission for what it will be, which is a really awesome technical achievement and expansion of the human presence in the Solar System?
The Artemis website: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/
My slightly eccentric theory is that it's about appealing to millennials. Not just because of the feminist angle, but because the death of Christa McAuliffe in the Challenger disaster was a formative memory for older millennials and landing a woman on the moon would provide closure to that trauma. Without that emotional investment, young progressives tend to see space exploration as an expensive boondoggle.
That's interesting. I'm not old enough to remember Challenger myself.
There are just about a million news stories that follow this same cookie-cutter framing: First Black Woman to Climb Mount Everest. First Asian Man to Qualify for Olympic Bobsled. Etc etc. Some of these stories get written more out of journalistic laziness than newsworthiness and it probably isn't helpful.
Could be right, but I don't think that's what's going on at NASA. I just think it's bizarre to frame something that is already super popular and interesting for obvious reasons with race/gender.
How do you define "framing" the issue in a certain way vs simply "mentioning" that we'll have a woman/POC on the moon?
I can see how "framing" the issue in terms of race/gender equality might be foolish (or at least I can understand how it comes off as contrived.)
But it doesn't strike me as cringey/out-of-touch to "mention," "acknowledge," or even "advertise" the race/gender implications. (That is, so long as the technical objective is front and center.)
Yeah, that's a fair and kinda unanswerable question. I guess I think it's fair to call it "framing" when it's the first thing their advertising website says.
Ah. Yeah that certainly seems contrived and not a bit manipulative.
Then again, I guess we've always sold space travel with the promise of "human/national achievement."
I mean JFK didn't say "we choose to go to the moon, not because it's easy but because there are some very interesting rocks up there that we'd like to analyze."
But he said, "because it is hard." The technical achievement was the main point back then. Now (I think) it should be sold as a technical achievement and sweet science project. There's totally room to advertise a more diverse crew of astronauts. But it's strange to make it central I think. I'm being a curmudgeon though. The mission is a long way off. We'll see how it goes.
Why are we going to the Moon again? Big question, but I don't think the answer is primarily to put women/POC there.
I mean, there are plenty of people that have noticed the fact that only white men have ever been on the moon, and complained about it being just as embarrassing as the fact that no one has been to the moon in nearly 50 years: https://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=936
https://orthonormal.substack.com/p/artemis-was-a-woman
It's a little strange because the achievement sounds like the ambitions in the 1950s to put the first dog or chimp into space. Or Mohammed Ali's quip about hitting Joe Frazier(?) so hard that the world will witness the first Black astronaut. The phrasing implies a lack of agency - something being done to them to fulfill a larger purpose.
I agree with 90% of what you wrote, but I don't think you've done justice to the race-class critique. I think their argument is that you start with the class narrative, but when Republicans step in racist rebuttals, like labelling the ACA reparations, you lean into pointing out that they're to sow racial discord to turn people against policies that are beneficial to them.
They claim to have empirical evidence that is more effective than a purely class narrative.
I find the intrusion of the Race Class Narrative people into this debate to be weird.
The question of how progressives should respond when conservatives engage in racist attacks or racial dog whistling is interesting and important.
The question that *I* am writing about is whether it makes sense for progressives to preemptively introduce racial themes and racial gap analysis into their own proposals. This is a real thing that, as detailed in my piece (and in the English/Kalla paper and in Marc’s previous piece) contemporary progressives do frequently. I think that they should stop doing it. Maybe RCN has all the answers for the problem it was designed for, maybe it doesn’t. I haven’t looked at it closely and don’t have a strong opinion.
I think that accusing Ian Haney Lopez of bullying was unfair given what you say here. It was clear that the media narrative on that study was that class messaging works better than race class messaging, and since he has been working to demonstrate that a particular flavor of race and class messaging is most effective at counter acting the Republican race fear based messaging, he feels that a lot is at stake just like you do. He too wants Democrats to win and getting this right matters, and the Yale folks did not test the approach he is advocating. I now really worry that counterproductive progressive race focused messaging has begun poisoning the well and it will be hard to persuade white non-college voters that a cross racial coalition is intended to benefit them as well. It felt like a gut punch when a Black Republican Senator from South Carolina said this: "When America comes together, we’ve made tremendous progress. But powerful forces want to pull us apart. A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic. And if they looked a certain way, they were inferior. Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them, and if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor. From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress at all, by doubling down on the divisions we’ve worked so hard to heal." Why is the left giving him that opening -- it's just such a self-inflicted wound. How can people be persuaded that it's the right that is trying to sow racist divisions to keep us from having nice things when some faction of the antiracist left is telling people that they need to meet in racially segregated groups and accept that to be white is to be racist?
I agree with that. I think it'd be great if you did look at RCN. They make very bold claims about huge majorities (70%+) being persuaded by their messaging. It's probably too good to be true. But if it's not, it'd be amazing. Republicans are terrible, if there's some tool that neuters one of their key weapons, that'd be awesome.
Here's the thing: First, most blacks and latinos are working/middle class, so their economic priorities would align with white workers. Whereas, if 3 out of 4 stories in the newspaper or on TV has a minority angle to it, whites will tend to skip over a lot of them, not out of malice but because it doesn't speak to their interests. Biden's speech was on point last night because it pin-pointed jobs as underlying his whole program - jobs, innovation to compete, buy American, etc. What's needed to make America great again? Everyone rises with the ship. And yet he also addressed the needs of blacks, latinos, asians, other minorities under that framework. Unfortunately, a number of progressives would be perfectly ok if there was a white party (Republican) and a minority party (Democrat). Nothing could be more destructive. White supremacy used to mean the Klan or militia or (now) the bigoted factions of Trump supporters. Now progressives are saying white people are all supremacist by virtue of being part of the majority race? Come on! Jesus, where is Marx when you need him?
I think the point we're trying to raise by bringing RCN into this is that it very well *can* be a good idea to preemptively introduce racial themes into their proposals as long as it's done in the right way (which to your point isn't being done correctly at the moment by many politicians). And that to engage on the idea of bringing race into things being bad as a whole (rather than specifically in the way it's being done now) without engaging on the Race-Class Narrative research is leaving out an important element of the discussion.
I think both you and the RCN people would agree that the current way lots of progressives pre-emptively bring racial themes into everything currently is ineffective. The solution is where you disagree.
Isn't the exactly the point - that RCN is designed to pre-empt the introduction of racial narratives by conservatives by warning people in advance that the issue is going to be racially demagoged and that they will be trying to divide the (as they would put it) middle class on a racial basis.
(ie: "this policy will benefit both white people and black people; people who oppose it because they are rich and greedy will try to tell white people it only benefits black people and black people it only benefits white people; don't believe them" is a template for how RCN works - bring race in to define the issue as a class issue and accuse your opponents of bringing race in)
The rub with studies like English / Kalla is that people don’t vote after hearing a few carefully crafted messages and decided which one they like the best. So harping on the RCN stuff seems like an understandable response when what fundamentally matters here is how to build a broad electoral coalition for these types of ambitious economic policies that will hold together over time under all manner of attack. The answer might be to “start out race neutral but be ready with a race-informed response,” or “anticipate racist backlash and acknowledge it at very start” or some other creative combo. But to frame your argument as basically, “I’m positive how the conversation should start but have no real opinion about what happens next” is honestly confusing.
The distinction between “preempting” racist dogwhistles/arguments and responding to them is thin gruel. The dog whistles are as old as the southern strategy. They are a durable feature of the political and rhetorical landscape. Any messaging strategy has to take them as a given.
It would be worth refining the English/Khalla experiment to include racialized arguments against progressive policies. Their results were pretty weak, and it’s not at all clear they would be robust to that change.
Ultimately, the utility of racial frames is a close question.
My guess is that progressives are trying to appeal to constiuencies that are trying to influence different constituencies that are trying to solve different problems. There are politicians that are focused on advancing racial equity, and framing things that way helps them understand how a particiular policy helps solve that issue. That doesn't preclude a different politician to frame it more broadly (e.g. the minimum wage). Both things are clearly true.
Tight labor markets work wonders for closing wage gaps, but it's not why you'd propose renominating Jerome Powell, but it's a great argument to a politician and activists who aren't as close to monetary policy issues / arguments.
I also am curious about your definition of "go out of their way to inject race". Policies have different dimensions and you sell them accordingly. Race is a dimension, and we are trying to make progress against that dimension. You have to sell to different constiuencies in different ways to keep the coalition together. I mean, Joe Biden has racial equity as a national priority that he campaigned on, and won on! Like... it's on the table. Including it to me feels harmless, and you can change the framing depending on the audience. It will be framed as reparations in either case by the other side. You might as well own what it does for people of color and win more support within your own coalition where it matters anyway.
It's hard to take this piece seriously when it ignores the very glaring research on Race-Class Narrative than contradicts this very point:
"Framing race-neutral issues as racial ones is not politically effective, as racial justice advocates have traditionally understood the risks of white racial backlash are high."
Would have loved the piece to actually address Race-Class Narrative rather than ignoring it altogether since if our goal is to convince people in the most effective way, and they have numerous studies showing it being more effective than talking about just class, then that's a very different argument than what Matt is arguing for in this piece.
Unfortunately instead all we got was 1 snarky tweet from Matt last night that "Real Race-Class Narrative has never been tried"
Do you mind sharing links to those studies?
There's a bunch of data here: https://www.demos.org/campaign/race-class-narrative-project
I don't know much about RCN, but the NYTimes oped about this study yesterday quoted someone from the RCN project whose critique seemed to be that race can be productive if it's used in a unifying way, like Obama's approach: "No matter where we come from or what our color, most of us work hard for our families...We need to join together with people from all walks of life to fight for our future, just like we won better wages, safer workplaces, and civil rights in our past."
What's weird about the "race-class" framing is that the actual "racial" framing they use is pretty anodyne, Obama '04 convention speech kind of stuff. For example, from this Thomas Edsall piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/opinion/biden-democrats-race-class.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage):
The Race-Class Narrative Project, which has conducted extensive surveys and focus groups, came to the conclusion that race could effectively be addressed in carefully worded messages.
For instance: No matter where we come from or what our color, most of us work hard for our families. But today, certain politicians and their greedy lobbyists hurt everyone by handing kickbacks to the rich, defunding our schools, and threatening our seniors with cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Then they turn around and point the finger for our hard times at poor families, Black people, and new immigrants. We need to join together with people from all walks of life to fight for our future, just like we won better wages, safer workplaces, and civil rights in our past.
The race-class project also tested the efficacy of a class only message — 'We need elected leaders who will reject the divide and conquer tactics of their opponents and put the interests of working people first' — versus a race and class message that simply added the phrase 'whether we are white, Black or brown' to read:
We need elected leaders who will reject the divide and conquer tactics of their opponents and put the interests of working people first, whether we are white, Black or brown."
This doesn't seem inconsistent with what Matt is writing here and the framings they propose pretty straightforward and anodyne. And, notably, it *is* different from the "racial justice" framing, which focuses on disproportionate benefits that would accrue to a certain racial group.
So if I'm following along correctly:
1) Progressive politicians should frame their arguments in a universally appealing manner that appeals to voters' material interests;
2) Some divisive, reactionary politicians may try to undermine these policies with racist appeals;
3) If that happens, you should respond by saying, again, that your policy will benefit everyone, whether they are "from all walks of life," "white, black, or brown," or whatever.
This seems really obvious?
I read the Edsall piece yesterday and had a similar conclusion. The Race-Class Narrative people are talking about using what I would call Racially Inclusive language rather than Racial Equity language. Where they go wrong is in erroneously claiming that politicians don't use the Equity language, they very obviously do. And it's very interesting that results seem to be pretty different.
What the RCN brings to a head is that negative reactions to "racial equity" framings are (mostly) not rooted in racism, they are far more a rejection of racial essentialism and divide & conquer black-v-white strategy. The race-class examples that they cite go out of their way to emphasize that all races are in it together. People find racial division odious and they want to sign up to be on team "human race." I agree, seems obvious! Give the people what they want- peace love and harmony. And justice. Have the cake and eat it too.
I would note that capitalizing "Black" in between "white" and "brown" spins up the racial point in ways that undermine the statement.
I swear I’m going to be pissed off if Democrats screw up Student Loan forgiveness by racializing the issue.
We maxed out my daughters student loans this year as a hedge.
In all seriousness, the biggest issue with racializing these issues is it sucks up the bandwidth to communicate the issues.
Most people are only superficially aware of the issues. They basically see the headlines and some FB commentary. If the headlines are about race, there are many people who really won’t realize that the policy helps them as well.
I think we as boring commenters forget this... or perhaps your social circle is disproportionately engaged.
Of all the people I work with, maybe 5-10% have any in-depth accurate knowledge of any given policy.
My wife never watches the news. Either do our kids.
I had a hell of a time convincing them that vaccines were safe because the only thing that broke through the bubble was those “xxx people died after being vaccinated” stories.
This is in some ways a collective action problem. No one will listen to a boring politician talk about how a higher minimum wage increases educational investment. But if a politician can say it is a racial justice issue they personally will get funding, clicks, attention etc. however, they need to know they are reducing support from 80% popular to 45% popular policy.
Reminds me of the slatestarcodex "Toxoplasma of Rage" article: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
"While not everyone is a vegan, most people who learn enough about factory farming are upset by it. There is pretty much zero room for PETA to convert people from pro-factory-farming to anti-factory-farming, because there aren’t any radical grassroots pro-factory-farming activists to be found. Their problem isn’t lack of agreement. It’s lack of attention. PETA creates attention, but at a cost. Everybody’s talking about PETA, which is sort of like everybody talking about ethical treatment of animals, which is sort of a victory. But most of the talk is “I hate them and they make me really angry.' Some of the talk is even 'I am going to eat a lot more animals just to make PETA mad.'"
Yea and to the argument that conservatives bring up race anyway let them. they do a bad job ,and look really bad. EX Rush calling health care reparations.
If progressives fully embrace the class narrative, they'll find themselves supporting the unpalatable, unsophisticated white underclass--many of whom voted for Trump. It's easier to march alongside a biracial Ivy League classmate, whom you can actually relate to, and call it social justice.
Bernie had one thing right--he wasn't scared of including poor white people in his movement. I met more than a few people who were on the fence between Bernie and Trump, crazy as that sounds.
Yeah, a lot of white progressives see white working class folks (exp men) as the political enemy, but also as people they don't want to associate with in any social context. Progressives pick their allies the way they would choose guests for a dinner party or a backyard picnic.
Oh, is Hispanic a race now? Or only at Yale?
I don't understand how we determine what's a race vs. and ethnicity. It's pretty clear we try to make a unique categorization for Hispanic so why does it keep getting capped an ethnicity?
What's a race versus an ethnicity, at least as we use the terms in the U.S., is entirely a socio-political construct. DNA studies tell us that the conception of solid categories of race doesn't hold up, scientifically. What's more, in the U.S. I think we say "ethnicity" because it sounds softer than saying "race."
“DNA studies tell us that the conception of solid categories of race doesn't hold up, scientifically”
That idea is belied by the fact that you can get a cheap DNA test that tells you where in the world your ancestors lived.
Many Hispanics consider themselves to be white. The extra question allows analysts to disaggregate white people data. I assume this is helpful under some circumstances.
"Hispanic" spans a pretty broad range of hues, and of ancestries.
I guess the distinction is that going back to say, the 19th Century, no-one considered hispanic to be one of the major races like white, black african etc. (they used different terms, some now considered offensive).
I guess you could say that hispanics are a "new" race, a mix of european, native american (amerindian) and african (mostly slave-descended) genes, but with huge variation between individuals who identify as "hispanic" as to what their actual genetic ancestry is.
Isn't that true of most races, though? The whole thing is just an unspecific classification based on general ideas about what continent your ancestors are from. It's not like Asians are a homogenous group. I'm not even sure why we assume there's huge similarity among White people or Black people other than how racial hierarchies play out in the US
"Isn't that true of most races, though?"
No.
"It's not like Asians are a homogenous group."
And "Asian" is not a race by any reasonable definition of the term.
Yeah but we use it that way. It's an option on forms whereas those same forms ask about Hispanic as an ethnicity. What I'm asking is why we do that and maybe the answer is ,that there's not good reason
The options on those forms are somewhat culturally specific, and may or may not relate to groups within which individuals are typically more closely related to one another than they are to individuals outside of those groups.
They also just depend a bit on which groups are common in which countries.
In the US, a form might ask if you are a "Native American", whereas forms in the UK include an option for "Gypsy".
"Yeah but we use it that way."
Maybe you do. But if I saw a Tamil standing next to a Korean I don't think "same race."
I mean, choosing to use "Asian" as a race because Asia is a continent is a choice. Anyway I always understood the term in US context to refer to East and Southeast Asians only?
Most people don't think of Arabs as Asians, though they live in Asia.
I don't see the reason to view it only through the lens of the US. Groups of human being have also interacted with one another in places other than the US and had concepts of themselves and others analogous to "races" or "ethnicities" whilst doing so.
I'd say that a race is, in practical terms, a grouping of multiple ethnicities. So "Black" comprises African-American, Black British, Xhosa, Zulu, Jamaican, Ethiopian, Ibo, Trinidadian, etc. (not naming every ethnicity in sub-Saharan Africa and the diaspora).
So do Mexican-Americans and Dominican-Americans and Puerto Ricans and Argentinian-Americans and Colombian-Americans belong together? Are the descendants of Aztecs distinct from the descendants of Lakota to the extent that the Aztec descendants belong more with the descendants of Spanish immigrants to Mexico and the descendants of black people forcibly transported from their homes to Mexico?
That doesn't mean there aren't racial dynamics within "Hispanic" that are relevant. And some white Hispanics have come to emphasise the "white" part of their identity after living in America for enough generations.
I mean, it's all subjective. I don't think Ethiopians would consider themselves in the same group as Jamaicans and even have their own internal racial/ethnic divisions.
"I'd say that a race is, in practical terms, a grouping of multiple ethnicities. So 'Black' comprises African-American, Black British, Xhosa, Zulu, Jamaican, Ethiopian, Ibo, Trinidadian, etc. "
That's not what I would call practical. Most "African-Americans" ancestry is a mix of Pan-European and from a fairly circumscribed part of West Africa. Oprah Winfrey claiming to be Zulu was ignorant and Barack Obama's genetic relationship to most African-Americans was through his white mother.
That's my point. The way that "race" is used in practice (ie in practical terms as opposed to theoretical ones) is to join a bunch of ethnicities together.
Genetics or relationships doesn't need to have anything to do with it.
It seems like race and ethnicity are both terms to describe ancestrally-based identities. They're close to synonyms, but race is a more archaic term, more closely linked to old discredited ideas that there were meaningful physical and intellectual differences between groups of people from different continents. It's hard to see what would be lost that's good if we just retired the term "race", consigned it to the history books, and only used the more term "ethnicity".
Yeah...I guess the main gripe I have is that they are both kinda fuzzy, kinda problematic categories that get at the same thing. It makes more sense to just pick one word for both
Yes agree. The discussion here trying to earnestly parse out whether an identity is a "race" or an "ethnicity" has the air of medieval theologians earnestly trying to figure out exactly how many levels of purgatory there are.
Ha, I like that analogy
I'm not sure if in the modern usage they really are close to synonyms. Seems like people use race to refer to broader races such as "black african" or "white", and ethnicity to refer to something narrower like Slavic or Korean. Even if in the past people might have referred to the "race" of the English or the Welsh.
The wikipedia entry is helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic
What I especially like are the sections noting that Hispanic has totally different meanings in Spain, Italy, Central and South America, and the US. To me, that points to it being a mostly useless product of historical efforts to categorize and group people according to elites' perceptions of their ancestry as closer (or not) to Spanish based on their use of Spanish as opposed to indigenous languages. It made its way into official documents, like the census, and became a bit cemented there.
Here's an old (2012) Pew Research piece: "Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label."
https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2012/04/04/when-labels-dont-fit-hispanics-and-their-views-of-identity/
I am unsure if/how this trend has changed since then but the recent polling around the popular-with-elites "Latinx" has been similar.
So, there's a very long tradition of elite outsiders deciding what whole groups are called even though members of those groups have their own ways of identifying themselves and prefer those.
Yeah, I knew all that Wikipedia stuff already. The “MIA” in my nickname refers to Miami, where I have lived for the past five years. I also lived and/or worked in NYC for 20 years. So I have known a lot of Latinos in my life and gained some appreciation about how they tend to view themselves and other Latinos. The distinctions drawn are particularly stark in Miami - something that is amplified in the neighborhood I live in that is chock-full of professional types from Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and a handful from other countries in South America. And the occasional actual Spaniard. The amount of low-level, casual bigotry that exists among those national groups was something that I did not expect based on my experiences in NYC.
I recently heard an interesting description that may fit. In Miami - latino/hispanic is the majority so they break it down to their backgrounds. Similarly to how most whites in America don't think of themselves so much as white as Irish, Italian, Jewish, New Yorkers, Californians, Texans, etc. The majority breaks itself down into smaller identities.
On the other hand if you are a black Jamaican in Wisconsin, you might not start off identifying with the black Ethiopian, but if everyone treats you as the same, that will lead to a cultural merging. I think this is especially true for young people in schools who don't have a deep rooted culture already in place.
“The majority breaks itself down into smaller identities.”
I agree, and the “size” if the identity depends on context and is fluid. For instance: If I, a white man, ends up sitting next to, say, a black woman at an NFL game, what matters most is who are we each rooting for.
I kinda figured that was the case based on your comments in previous threads.
People like their tribes.
I like other tribes.
This is a good article. But you personally Matt, have a motte and bailey problem.
I’ve been reading you for close to 20 years and you’re the only Substack I ever even considered buying, so this little heel turn, which is tough to ignore since I’ m a black dude, legit makes me sad. I largely grok your reasonable, though imperfect argument about the downsides of racialized marketing of policies, even if the policies have significantly disparate racial impacts. But you have an increasingly visible hostility to / rejection of other concerns many black folks have that is entirely separate and apart from your issue with essentially policy marketing. It’s the difference between “That’s a counterproductive way to solve the problem” and “I don’t believe you when you say this is a problem” And when you get called on the latter, you jump in the motte of the former. Not asking you to think differently or anything, just pointing it out.
>But you have an increasingly visible hostility to / rejection of other concerns many black folks have that is entirely separate and apart from your issue with essentially policy marketing.
I'd be interested to hear this fleshed out more or have you point me towards these instances. I generally read this ongoing take of Matt's as the 2nd "policy marketing" part but would like to examine his/my potential blind spot.
How about this re-tweet and endorsement. It’s just bean bag for politicos on either side to stitch together cherry-picked interviews to make a pwnage, so it’s dog bites man for Daily Caller to make this one. But I think it is notable that Matt endorsed it. The video purports to illustrate that empathy with a righteous protest bleeding into rioting is a phenomenon distinctive to liberal whites and rejected by black people. This is not true. Which means, in effect, what we have here is a set of white people who hate black people lying to other white people, who may or may not hate black people, that black people are appalled by the riots of last year. We all know the reason Daily Caller is making this argument - as a way to avoid talking about the protest themselves and the specific and continual acts that brought them about. Given the Daily Callers ideological objective, this makes sense; but for someone with purported progressive views on racism, not so much. Further, just linking to a consistently white nationalist website founded by Americas pre-eminent white nationalist on a racial question is hella suspect. These aren’t anodyne, but rather purposeful choices and they have nothing at all to do with racial-neutral marketing of policy preferences. The most generous read I can come to is that this is Matt looking to troll (what people who oppose racial equality call) the “wokes.”
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1387136463977033735
I can't even tell that he's endorsing it - I'd give it, like 70%? "This is a good bit" could have a sarcastic meaning; pretending that it's an attempt at comedy and not political commentary. I'm confused by MY's one-liners all-the-time and I wish he wouldn't do them.
Thanks for the reply and context.
Another example of the bailey is Matt’s quote from this very piece.
“A pet theory that I developed in the past but didn’t put into my previous piece is that we’re seeing carryover from college campus dynamics. If YOU convince an RA that a fellow student is doing something racist, the RA will probably put a stop to it, whereas simply observing that something is bad for poor people probably won’t get YOU anywhere. Connecting something to racism, in other words, can be a very powerful argument in certain contexts. But not in electoral politics." I think this is really insightful. My observations of how wokeness works in the left is primarily with it being weaponized *constantly*."
This line of thinking could have been taking directly from the black crime section of Daily Caller or to be frank, the writings of segregation opponents back in the first half of the last century. I capitalized YOU in his quote because, either black people are being written out of Matt’s universal you (which is common and problematic on its own), or if black people are included, his pet theory then is that black people are just making up the challenges that we face navigating through a society that has consistently seen us as pariah class. If the latter is true, not only does smart political marketing, but also objective fairness calls for ignoring the concerns of black people.
“Racism is not an ever-present force in the lives of black people, but rather a tool that the wily negroes wield at innocent well-meaning white people, thus we should appropriately ignore them because they’re lying” is a much more nakedly racist argument than the motte of ”we should communicate via non-racial frames when possible”. I dunno, it’s all so sad. I’m surprised this is what Matt apparently has always thought of us. So it goes…
I don't dispute that you have good reasons for hearing him that way but that's not what I'm picking up from his argument. And if we disagree on that, I guess we can at least agree that neither one of us knows for sure what's in his head.
My guess is he's viewing that argument through the very specific lens of elite college and fortune 500 company politics. That's a very small slice of american life, and not necessarily a representative one, but it's one that Matt Yglesias is probably very familiar with. If I had to guess, the ratio of truly racist incidents to examples of "weaponizing wokeism" is much different in those elite environments than it is in most of the rest of the country. I didn't read it as disputing that racism ever occurs. I went to a fairly elite college and when i read that RA college example, I didn't even picture a Black person telling the RA about a racist incident. In my mind's eye it was probably a white person and it could have been about any issue an elite school would take issue with, i.e. Trans-rights, immigrants, body-shaming etc.. I also picture that recent Teen Vogue firing of a black woman for 10 year old racist tweets, which I know Matt disagreed with and tweeted about. In those environments you will get more points in an argument for framing it in those terms than you would framing it about discrimination against poor people.
And then that leads, I thought, to his bigger point, which is that the rest of America is actually NOT always like that. Focusing on a racial dimension will help persuade your RA that you're witnessing an injustice, but it might not help you persuade voters to elect you in a presidential election (trump beat hillary). I don't think his point is that the racial framing shouldn't be believed by liberals, just that elite colleges prepare liberals to expect that framing things as social justice will persuade more people than it ultimately might
You are certainly welcome to extend to Matt the benefit of the doubt that I may have given him a year ago, but as I said, if Matt wrote that part with the assumption that black people aren’t part of the universal you, it’s problematic in its own right. We do, you know, exist after all.
And your comments about the Teen Vogue lady also come from the same place that ignores that, how, & why black people, on balance, look at that situation quite differently. Maybe we see one person fired unfairly because of intense racial sensitivity, weigh that against the literal millions of black people who have had their careers hampered by racism over the generations, and conclude that erring on the side of over sensitivity is the lesser evil, even if it leads to unfair outcomes from time to time. Maybe we stare distressed but unsurprised at how many white people are ready to go to war over the former while offering nothing more than nods and platitudes about the latter.
Anyhow, what I really want to write is that you’re doing the same motte and bailey that Matt’s doing. What you call Matt’s bigger point (which is actually much less important) - the sub-optimal marketing of policy preferences by forefronting racial impact is tangential to, but discreet from, all those baileys such as the ratio you mentioned (which we’ll get back to in a bit). You and I and Matt have no disagreement that racial frames will draw hostility from some whites, annoyance from others, and intense uncomfortability for a plurality and thus should be used very carefully. So, let’s put that aside.
Your assumption that the ratio of truly racist incidents to examples of "weaponizing wokeism" is much different in elite environments than elsewhere would face hostility from the overwhelming majority of the black people who travel in those circles. I say this as a member of that cohort who has for a lifetime consorted socially and professionally within that group. Now, many of us would be extremely reticent to make a public claim of racism, even in the face of some truly oppressive shit, because all of us know how career limiting it is to make white people uncomfortable about such things. Indeed a core competency of a modern corporate negro is the marrow-deep awareness that many white people believe as you seem to that racism is something that happens amongst the lesser classes and thus any grievances we might have are likely at best in our heads, or at worse are as you put it, weaponized wokeism.
Your explicit argument is that at least in elite circles racism is not an ever-present force in the lives of black people, but rather a tool that the wily negroes wield at innocent well-meaning white people, thus should be appropriately ignored because the negroes are lying.
I understand the folly of trying to explain all of the ways that’s a terrible thing to believe, so believe what you like. My point, again, is that it is a separate argument from the” market policy preference better” argument. And if you are of the belief that black people, even in elite circles, are just making it all up, own that. Say it with your chest and don’t go running back to the motte.
You seem to be putting a lot of words in my mouth and assuming a lot of thoughts in my head. (i took lifted weaponized wokeism from your earlier comment, for example) i'm mostly trying to point out the perspective that I think Yglesias has, in response to your interpretation of the same. The point wasn't to communicate my own beliefs, although it sounds like we do all 3 agree on realpolitick political messaging part. And I'm fairly certain I didn't say black people are usually lying about racism or anything like that.
But yes, with respect to elite vs lower-class environments, I do really think that racial issues play out differently. I say this as someone who grew up in a blue-collar, non-elite community and family, but works with Ivy league elite types now and for much of my adult life. The two have differences in just about every aspect of communication, behavior, conflict resolution, rates of interracial marriage, etc.. I'd be amazed if someone could convince me that racism was the one thing that was exactly the same.
And the reception that framing a message in "social justice" terms gets is yet another difference between those communities, so consequently you see social and racial justice framings much more in elite circles, and much less in blue collar ones.
Again, I don't usually think you or anyone else (or at least rarely anyone else) is lying about experiences like racism. In fact, I take what you said, a random internet stranger, into account as I formulate my perception of the world, I'm thinking "is there a lot more anti-black racism among elite ivy league types than I thought, what am I failing to notice, what do various Black people I worked with think, etc..." I'd like to hear more. The worst I ever usually assume is the kind of perspective-ignorance that we all have, since it's thoroughly impossible to walk a mile in the shoes of every other category of person on the planet
I have no particular insight into what’s going on in your or Matt’s head; I’m responding to very specific things that you both have written. When Matt writes, “my observations of how wokeness works in the left is primarily with it being weaponized *constantly*." and when you write, “If I had to guess, the ratio of truly racist incidents to examples of ‘weaponizing wokeism’ is much different in those elite environments”, I take you at your word that you mean these things.
And when I read the quote, “I'd be amazed if someone could convince me that racism was the one thing that was exactly the same.” How can I understand that as anything other than agreement with my earlier hard-learned observation that it would be folly for me to attempt to convince you that the racism black people experience, in this case corporate black people, actual exists. You’re explicitly forefronting your resistance to accepting the idea. Fwiw, no one is saying it’s exactly the same; it’s actually incredibly different, but that doesn’t mean there is any less of it.
But let’s back up. The whole objective of Matt’s piece is to advocate that Democrats avoid racialized marketing of policies when possible given the political downsides. I agree with this. One of the key places that it gets push back is from black people and our allies who fear the removal of anti-racist signals and frames indicates as a retreat from commitments to anti-racism in general. That Democrats loudly court and count on black votes and then don’t advocate for black causes and concerns at nearly the same volume is a common perception in black communities. So for an advocate of non-race-framing policy marketing, part of gaining purchase for that idea is mitigating the concerns of black voters (and allies) that it really is just about effective policy marketing and not a rejection of efforts to diminish racism and/or racial disparities. Thus, Matt linking favorably to the Daily Caller and carving out a lane as America’s most preeminent anti-anti-racist liberal does damage to his own cause. In a neat bit of irony, Matt has a marketing problem for his non-race-framing policy marketing argument and would be better off if he jettisoned all the anti-anti-racism bullshit clogging up the bailey.
I bet we agree that criticizing aspects of anti-racism in good faith* should be allowed and encouraged
If you ask me, your concerns seem to stem from this mindset: "if you're not 100% with me, then you're 100% against me."
If a person has beliefs which are largely anti-racist, but sees some anti-racist ideas as clearly illogical, how is that person supposed to behave? Is it possible to question *aspects* of anti-racism without being labelled an "anti-anti-racist?"
If so, how? (Not a rhetorical question--I think it's important to suss this out. I bet we agree that criticizing aspects of anti-racism should be allowed and encouraged.)
For example:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/not-all-anti-racist-ideas-are-good-ones-the-left-isnt-being-honest-about-this/2021/02/22/c83d4870-7179-11eb-b8a9-b9467510f0fe_story.html
In this Matt Y. piece on Ibram X. Kendi, he criticizes one aspect of anti-racist thought. This excerpt serves as a summary of his thesis: "Identifying a racial gap and declaring it to be racist is often insufficient. Such an approach impedes actually thinking about problems — particularly in media, academic and nonprofit circles, where the accusation of racism can carry severe consequences. And so to avoid controversy, people avoid important debates rather than risking offense."
Maybe you disagree, but is the opinion expressed here so unreasonable that we can write him off as engaging in bad faith?
If it's not unreasonable enough to accuse him of racism or bad faith, but it still makes you uncomfortable, then how could he have stated his opinion in a way that would not result in this discomfort?
If you ask me, your concern seems to stem from the fact that you aren't engaging with what I've written and have instead decided to attribute Ibram X Kendi's views to me and then express your disagreement with those views. I mean, Knock yourself out. I never said that you, Matt or anyone else couldn't critique Kendi or anyone else. But Matt's article isn't about that and thus my response to his article is not about that.
I agree with that, and I think it's worth underlining that this article was pretty good.
My sense if that Matt is generally sharp, but often a bit glib and dismissive towards the positions that he's arguing against, and I appreciated that this post took seriously some of the criticisms that he's received, acknowledged that there are complicated issues at play, and wrote a clear version of his position.
Incidentally, I'm saying that to myself as much as to you. I don't comment much here, and I realized that I was more likely to comment when I wanted to object to something, and that I want to show support as well.
Frankly, the results of this study don't loom very strong and most people should ignore it. Confidence intervals are really wide in most spots and magnitude of effect looks tiny (.1 ish on 7 pt scale). From a bayesian viewpoint, people disregarding this study are being rational if they have even a moderate prior that framing these kinds issues by race is persuasive. It should take much stronger evidence to unseat current beliefs.
Not to say we should be p-value obsessed, if we had absolutely no preconception of what was correct then it's reasonable to go with a low powered study. But if you have some idea of what's right and an empirical study with very little power says something else you basically should ignore it.
*don't look
We need to market smart, broadly appealing policy in the most winning way. It’s that simple folks. You can’t win every battle by charging to the front, waving the flag and swinging the saber wildly. It’s is an annoying facet of democracy but one we cannot ignore or we will lose on the politics and eventually lose our democracy.
I really appreciated your inclusion of the bullet points. In so much of what I read the author seems to equate racism with using the wrong words. That’s not the problem. It’s teachers, cops and hiring managers believing, in many cases subconsciously, the things you mentioned.
Another way of framing this is about equalizing opportunity versus equalizing outcomes, either based on racial or class categories. Making up for past racial discrimination is equalizing outcomes in reparation for that. Universal economic programs have the primary purpose of equalizing opportunity for everyone who today is economically disadvantaged, regardless of race, but won't create equal opportunity for all unless racial discrimination also stops.
Equality of opportunity is an incoherent concept. What does it mean? It can’t mean that all people have equal opportunities, I’m never going to be a famous athlete or a beautiful actress and someone with an IQ of 80 is unlikely to get professional credentials.
"Equality of opportunity is an incoherent concept. What does it mean?"
It means, "When equality under the law doesn't yield the results that I wish to see we need to put our thumb on the scales of justice."
No, it simply means that's both A) historical structures and, C) the inherent inequality of nature, guarantee widely disparate outcomes if no intervening action is taken. Which I realize to a some people seems fine. But most of us don't like it when some Americans live in mansions and others live in the streets. Do you really think Denmark is an unjust society?
“...the inherent inequality of nature, guarantee widely disparate outcomes if no intervening action is taken.”
Without intervening, idiots do not become surgeons. That’s strikes me as a good thing.
“But most of us don't like it when some Americans live in mansions and others live in the streets.”
That’s clearly untrue. But whatever.
“Do you really think Denmark is an unjust society?”
I don’t really care about Denmark.
It's not incoherent. It's about making it sure everyone has the opportunity to make the most of their talents, without being held back by arbitrary barriers and happenstance of birth, such as classifications by race or sex or being born to rich or poor parents.
We can't erase the fact that people have different abilities, energy and ambition. But we should try to create a society where everyone has the potential to realize the gifts they were endowed with. That's what equal opportunity means.
Abilities, energy, and ambition are just as arbitrary as race and parental income. Equality of opportunity, if it means anything, leads to some variety of Rawlsianism or luck egalitarianism that’s far more radical than the Dem platform. A lot of people like equality of opportunity framing though even though they use it in an internally incoherent way.
I like that program, but I also like using words accurately. What you propose is not equality of opportunity, it is the improvement of workers’ choice environments
Seems like we're saying the same thing. Don't want get caught up in semantics, but I do think in the American political context, equal opportunity is a phrase that ties together a lot of rhetorical traditions and ideas and resonates better with our culture and history.
I think it means people have access to the same resources. You may never be a scientist but people in you neighborhood shouldn't be denied a good science education and the opportunity to decide if it's the right path for them
So equal opportunity means doing things like distributing good teachers more evenly between communities?
That may be good policy, but it would hardly equalize opportunity. The kid whose mom drank during pregnancy will, other things constant, get much less benefit from those science classes than the kid whose mom avoided alcohol. The kid whose parents tell her education is important, read to her, enrich her vocabulary and help her study will get much more pop out of good schooling than a kid whose parents neglect her.
Pursuing less unequal outcomes is laudable, pursuing “equal opportunity” is incoherent.
I think it would mean hiring and training more teachers. In any case, I think we should try harder to help kids who are at a disadvantage and not just give up on them. The whole point of this is to recognize that people might have different natural talents but we should make sure that no one falls behind b/c we didn't try to help them. We might be saying more or less the same thing.
I think that there is a problem that at our current state of knowledge we don't seem to really know how to "fix" disadvantaged kids, at scale. We can "help" them by investing money in them, but this is just a matter of equal inputs, which do not seem to produce corresponding outputs. Not that we should stop trying, but we can't necessarily expect to move the needle in the way we want it to.
That's life. We should try and also accept that we don't have perfect solutions
Pursuing equal outcomes is perhaps a simpler idea, I'll give you that - it doesn't take a lot of thought or understanding. Just pay everyone the same regardless of individual performance or effort, or the value of their chosen activities. But it's a not a realistic or remotely sensible way to organize a society.
Complete equality is both a pipe dream and a straw man. No society has seriously pursued it, even communist countries had party members.
The goal should be maximizing human achievement, eg smart kid shouldn’t be prevented from joining the professions just because he is black and the economy should be structured so that the mass of workers have security and leisure.
So 100% equalizing the wealth of every single parent, so no parent has more money or resources (time, loving family, connections, geographical proximity to good things, etc) than any other parent?
That seems like such a historically unprecedented redistribution of, uh, everything as to make "equality of opportunity" almost nonsensical.
No, of course not. There's no perfect solution but we can recognize that people need help and do what we can. Improve schools, provide nutrition assistance, health care. Things like that that we know will help and have the capacity to do
This is a good post, but I think Heather McGhee and the race-class narrative deserve more than the brief nod that is here. Hopefully in a future post?