The more we talk about it, the angrier people get. That's truly the only reason to even have a conversation about my ancestors I never met owning your ancestors you never met. Things have gotten substantially worse in the last 16 years, not better, and that's because we've been using a spotlight to point out how different everyone is from each other. It's literally counterintuitive.
> The more we talk about it, the angrier people get. That's truly the only reason to even have a conversation about my ancestors I never met owning your ancestors you never met.
Maybe the "statute of limitations" for these things should be long - not to mention the idea that racism wasn't magically fixed by ending slavery and the "owning" you mention. You don't think anyone was actively racist and causing harm 10 years ago? 20 years ago? 50? So if person Y's grandparent was harmed by, say, person X's racist grandparent in the 1950s, and that caused person Y's family to suffer for generations compared to what likely would've happened otherwise, and that's leading to ongoing societal harms, it could be legitimate public policy interest to try to even out opportunity.
Of course, this hasn't actually changed in the last few decades - terms like "equal opportunity" and "affirimative action" have those words in their very name.
But certain interests have made very successful pushes in the past few decades to brand policies under those umbrellas as "actually the real racism", or paint everyone supporting them as "actually trying to guarantee equality of outcome," while continuing to beat the very-old drum of "people being worse off implies worse ability, it's just science" which couples oh-so-very-nicely with the more active forms of denying people opportunity that hardly ended in the 1960s.
The last time slaves were held in the US was by Native Americans in 1865. The country was founded in 1776. That means in a country that is nearly 250 years old, we haven't owned slaves for more than 160 years, well over half the nation's entire existence. No, we do not need a statute of limitations that encompasses generations for the sins of their fathers.
In fact, how far back do you even take this? Should we also hold the people of the modern-day Republic of Benin responsible for what their ancestors, the Kingdom of Dahomey, did, which was abducting and selling their African brothers for a bit of cash?
To address your other point, if my grandfather did something to hurt your grandfather in the 1950s, and it's been 70+ years and the only thing your family has figured out how to do since then is complain about how some guy was mean to your ancestor that one time, and that life is so unfair and you're so oppressed because of it, the issue may not be my grandfather, it may just be your family and their victimhood mindset. It feels good to "be oppressed" and have personal responsibility taken away, because when it's always someone else's fault, it can never be yours.
> I was giving a lecture on genealogy and reparations in Amite, Louisiana, when I met Mae Louise Walls Miller. Mae walked in after the lecture was over, demanding to speak with me. She walked up, looked me in the eye, and stated, “I didn’t get my freedom until 1963.”
That's awful that happened to those people, but this doesn't really serve the point imo, as this was already illegal by then. They even said that people hearing their story suggested they should've gone to the police for help, but the land was too large for them to escape.
Even today, there's plenty of forced labor and sex slaves that exist in the USA. That doesn't mean it's an active systemic issue of oppression, it just means that bad people do bad things when they can get away with it, in spite of a system to stop it.
We shouldn't hold people who didn't do bad things accountable for the actions of people who have done bad things. I don't think that's a radical idea.
The problem comes when it’s the ONLY topic of discussion. Inflation is only relevant in how it impacts minorities. COVID is only relevant as it impacts minorities. Climate change is only relevant as it impacts minorities. Quality of schools is only relevant as it impacts minorities.
When it’s your only lens, it can distort your views, and in the case of NPR, caused them to get some stories wrong. Which then destroys your credibility which is really the only currency a journalist has.
On one of my other comment threads someone told me how the world is "so much better then any point in history" :). I'm not sure I believe that.
I think in general being able to have these conversations means that we can progress slowly. It's tough recently, cause we've definitely regressed a lot. It would definitely help if the internet weren't effective at telling us only what we want to hear. I guess, in general I think the problem is we aren't actually able to progress discussions.
So my original wording "pick up where we left off" was wrong. We can already do that, we just can't move on from there. I think if we can figure out how to do that without hitting each other then maybe the problems would get fixed.
By focusing less on race and other identity issues, and working to remove racist policies across the board regardless of which group they benefit or harm. The 20th century saw immense improvements for almost all underserved groups, without any talking heads bickering about intersectionality or identity. Now that kind of coverage is everywhere and progress has stalled or even reversed in many areas.
My impression is that a huge portion of identity politics and coverage is more about picking fights where each side can feel smug and superior, rather than actually changing things for the better.
Maybe. Despite the number of times I've heard about CRT and how bad it is, and how good it is, I still don't have the foggiest idea what it is. One time, I tried to look it up on the internet. Signal to noise was so bad, I still don't know. I've written off the possibility of ever knowing what it is or understanding anyone who's talking about it.
As with any field, there's a number of detractors and charlatans. With CRT in the political spotlight, I completely understand how it becomes a mess to make heads-or-tails of.
Broadly speaking, it's the study of how law and media impacts society's view and treatment of others through the lens of race.
As for my opinion on it:
I generally support it because it advocates for another mechanism to study the impact of law.
I think most legislation should be regularly studied for impact, effectiveness, and fairness. For example, stimulus bills ought to be reviewed for economic impact, regulation ought to be reviewed for effectiveness/relevance, laws with social impact ought to be reviewed to ensure it doesn't harm the people.
A number of scholars seem to adopt a blameless mentality to figure out how laws (even unintentionally) have negative impact, and use that to propose solutions. I admire this approach to legislative critique.
While I think a few ideas some scholars advocate for are infeasible to implement, the broader field has a lot of merit.
I think it's a question of measure. When things are talked about fairly and equally then progress is made - there are serious pressing issues right not and they're not only about identity/race/gender, that these things are ignored is a big problem. When things turn full on on one direction they don't accelerate any progress, it may actually do more harm than good.
Sure.. but.. does it lead to problems actually being fixed?