CRT makes some sweeping statements about the state of the world. Most of these sweeping statements are undermined by the success of model minorities. So when asked to reconcile the success of model minorities with the premises underlying crt, a lot of folks start getting pretty racist.
I think it’s too hard for some of them to admit that model minorities might be succeeding in spite of white supremacy and not because of it. Because this makes them feel like we are somehow criticizing other minority groups for not succeeding despite white supremacy.
Much of anti-semitism is the result of people trying to explain away the success of jews despite oppression and anti-semitism. Much of the anti-asian bigotry we see today is similarly a rationalization of asian success despite white supremacy.
If CRT is unable to reconcile their theory with the real world, this is a reasonable criticsm.
Maybe I’m being too reductive. Maybe when Kendi says there are only two types of policies, racist and anti-racist, what he really means is that policies that do not make racial injustice worse are in fact anti-racist. My understanding of anti-racist is something more than simply neutral in outcome.
If a racist is someone who thinks that people should be treated differently because of their race, then an anti-racist is someone who thinks people shouldn’t be treated differently because of their race. What’s the “neutral” stance in that situation?
If you examine the outcome of any policy, the outcome is going to be either equal, or unequal. There’s no middle state there - a policy is either one, or the other. If you examine a specific policy for racial inequalities, and you find some, then the policy is racist, even if it wasn’t drafted with the intent to be racist. If the policy has no outcomes that are racially unequal then the policy is anti-racist - even if it wasn’t drafted with the intent to be anti-racist.
That’s the opposite of what Kendi is saying. An anti-racist treats people differently depending on their race in order to produce equal outcomes. Treating everyone the same, being ‘race blind’, is considered racist if it produces unequal outcomes. That’s exactly the point where he differs from traditional views on racism.
I believe that’s a misrepresentation of his position, but if it makes you feel better, change it to “people should have different outcomes based on their race.” It doesn’t make a difference to my argument.
Since the 1960s, racist power has commandeered the term “racial discrimination,” transforming the act of discriminating on the basis of race into an inherently racist act. But if racial discrimination is defined as treating, considering, or making a distinction in favor or against an individual based on that person’s race, then racial discrimination is not inherently racist. The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. Someone reproducing inequity through permanently assisting an overrepresented racial group into wealth and power is entirely different than someone challenging that inequity by temporarily assisting an underrepresented racial group into relative wealth and power until equity is reached.
Kendi does not beat around the bush; he is admirably clear and direct. He is also, in my opinion, wrong.
Do you have specific cites for these generalizations? As I remarked to DemonTree back in post #447,
It’s not like the two are mutually exclusive. White supremacy has a complex relationship with so-called “good minorities”, and can benefit them in some ways while disadvantaging them in others.
So the whites are deliberately taking a knee with asians to make the blacks look bad? Or perhaps whites are deliberately losing to asians in order to justify or camoflauge their oppression of blacks?
These sounds unlikely. Perhaps I misunderstand the point you are trying to make.
So with those 104 mentions of the word japanese american, what insight has she added. What are some of the profound observations made about asians in this white supremacy by crt that was not already observed about blacks hispanics, women, lgbtq, jews or immigrants?.
I would run away from that argument too if I were you.
The black white dichotomy is the primary architecture around which crt is built. This is not illogical because this is the primary racial dynamic that has driven much of american history.
But in the process of trying to expand the theory, the instinct has been to put straight white males in the role of oppressor and everyone else in the role of oppressed. And while there is some truth to that, some proponents of the theory go on to profess that this oppression explains much more than it can reasonably explain.
And this is highlighted by crt’s inability to explain how asians and jews succeed despite this white supremacy. The CRT crowd too frequently dismisses model minority success as “white proximity” and “white adjacency” but none of these explanations are particularly satisftying outside of echo chambers. They would have us believe that somehow asians are falling into a white supremacist scheme to divide and conquer miorities by working hard, succeeding and then not giving over their success to other minorities.
Model minorities earn less per hour than equally credentialed whites in a particular locality. The only reason model minorities earn more than whites is because we are better educated, work harder and live in higher cost of living locales than average whites. It’s not falling in our laps.
CRT says in part that nothing good or bad happens to minorities unless it is in the interest of whites for that to happen. The current move against standardized tests is in the interests of whites because asians are crowding whites out of elite academic institutions. This converges with the black activists long held desire to get rid of testing. So actually it is the anti-test activists that are being tools of white supremacy. They are the ones whose interests have converged with white supremacists.
I’m curious if this is deliberate. Their theory says they can only gain when their interests converge with powerful white people, so did they go and find an issue where that was the case?
I think it is pretty clear that implying innate intellectual differences between races is not acceptable even among fairly right wing commentators. AFAICT, the arguments for black underachievement is pinned on out of wedlock birth rates and stuff like that.
To which the asian response is that if these things really drove success, why aren’t asians do a whole lot better than whites?
Whites have significantly higher:
out of wedlock birth rates,
single parent households,
divorce rates,
incarceration rates,
high school dropout rates
rates of violent crime,
rates of any crime,
etc.
Why are asians not doing significantly better (or whites doing significantly worse)?
With all due respect, Miller. It isn’t your argument - which I think I understand now - that is printed in the pages of “How to be an anti-racist”. I’m glad we’re having this conversation and I think I’ve learned something. But it does seem to me that not everyone takes away the same understanding from CRT as you.
? Besides my previously-expressed distrust of citeless generalizations about what CRT allegedly says, I’m puzzled why anyone would think that being racially classified as white isn’t a net advantage for Jews as a group in a traditionally white-supremacist society.
Sure, there’s still a lot of white-supremacist antisemitism, but there are also a lot of Jewish people benefiting from systemic white privilege because they’re widely considered white. Like I said, “favored” minorities can receive both benefits and disadvantages from white supremacism.
But the “how” of the success is relevant to the arguments presented by crt.
What do you think the model minority myth means? Because it is a phrase that some people throw around as if it explains why asians are more successful than whites.
It is not a myth that asians and jews on average are actually more successful than whites.
The myth is that all jews are successful or all asians are successful. Model minorities are more subject to stereotyping than blacks or hispanics in some ways. The inclination to dehumanize asians and see them as fungible is prevalent from both ends of the ideological spectrum.