To follow up some things I’ve been saying before in a broader view, one thing that ISTM has to be recognized and accepted about the modern anti-racism movement—like the #MeToo anti-sexism movement that emerged a bit earlier—is that it’s bound to be messy. Some people are going to over-react to some issues while others under-react, and there are always going to be lots of arguments about whether a particular reaction has “gone too far” and what are reasonable “consequences”.
And of course conservatives are naturally going to be delighted about these divisions, just as they’re delighted when #MeToo revelations of sexual misconduct take down liberal politicians like Al Franken and Andrew Cuomo. As recently pointed out in a concurrent thread, conservatives are going all-in on melodramatically exaggerating the “dangers” of “wokeness” and “cancel culture”, in order to distract from the fact that they themselves have no governing agenda and no realistic way to appeal to majorities of the public on actual policy.
So instead, conservative idiots will try to compare anti-racism to “the inquisition, the reign of terror, or Maoism/Stalinism” and what not, and more subtle conservative propagandists will modify that rhetoric to chin-stroking concern trolling. But ultimately, as with all the conservative concern trolling about the #MeToo movement “going too far”, they’re not really worried about potential “censorship” and “tribalism” and “oppression”: that’s just what they say, as noted above, to distract attention from their own lack of any real leadership policy.
What they’re really worried about is the prospect of people taking seriously the importance of anti-bigotry principles and the reality of systemic bigotry. After all, conservative white-supremacism has done pretty well so far out of the “post-Jim Crow compromise” by making a few concessions while still retaining its near-monopoly on political and cultural power. As Republican strategist Lee Atwater noted in 1981, “By 1968 you can’t say n*****—that hurts you, backfires”. So they give up openly using the most extreme racial slurs, and accept the presence of occasional minorities and women in a few positions of power.
And in return, the overall power disparities and systemic bigotry in society remain largely unchanged so privileged groups can continue to reap the benefits of them. And nothing’s allowed to be called “racism” unless it’s openly using the n-word, or “sexism” unless it’s explicitly barring women from jobs, and so forth. Pretty sweet deal for white-supremacist conservatism, overall.
But if people actually start taking equality and anti-racism seriously, that has the potential to drastically undermine the “post-Jim Crow compromise”. If people become really unwilling to accept, for example, police officers murdering unarmed black people, and demonization of Latinx migrants, and constant harassment of women, and ubiquitous racist attitudes in the comfort of “private” environments, and massive overrepresentation of straight white men in almost all leadership positions, then white-supremacist conservatism starts to face serious challenges to its power.
So that’s the other reason that conservatives have to keep doomsquawking about the alleged totalitarian terrors of “wokeness” and “cancel culture”. Because conservatism survives largely on cultural backlash: on fears that true repudiation of systemic bigotry will constitute “going too far” and “taking our country away from us” and “destroying America” and “communism”. The more people can be intimidated into just shutting up about racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry, the more hold on power conservatism can retain.
And that, to me, is another important reason why we shouldn’t let conservatives dictate to us what we may or may not criticize, and why we should stick with anti-bigotry principles even when some of the controversies they engender get messy. Because the alternative is just staying stuck in the “post-Jim Crow compromise” that is so convenient for white-supremacist conservatism and so shitty for so many other people.