Annals of race: stale grievances
Here’s an excellent article by Coleman Hughes. I’d not heard of Hughes before today, but I plan to follow his work with interest, because this article shows much common sense (of the type that has become more and more uncommon) as well as courage.
Hughes is an undergraduate philosophy major at Columbia. If that’s an underwhelming recommendation to you, just read the essay and it may restore your faith in undergraduates, philosophy majors, and/or Columbia University. He also is a Julliard-trained musician. Oh, and he’s black, which is significant given the subject matter of his piece:
…[I]n an ultimate philosophical sense, none of us can claim to be the prime movers of our own behavior. We don’t choose our genes and we don’t choose the environment into which we are born. Yet we have every reason to believe that genes and environment combine to create the psychological profile that determines our cognition and behavior in each moment. In this narrow sense, we are all products of an unchosen past. But this is true of all people, regardless of race. The white criminal is no more deeply responsible for the mixture of causes that led him to offend than his black counterpart. Why is it, then, that historical forces are only ever invoked to explain the behavior of blacks?
Though we have not consistently lived up to the principle, liberal democracies decided long ago that the individual was to be the primary unit of moral concern and responsibility…
Only a black intellectual, for instance, could write an op-ed arguing that black children should not befriend white children because “[h]istory has provided little reason for people of color to trust white people,” and get it published in the New York Times in 2017. An identical piece with the races reversed would rightly be relegated to fringe white supremacist forums. In defense of such racist drivel, it won’t suffice to repeat the platitude that ”˜black people can’t be racist,’ as if redefining a word changes the ethical status of the thing that the word signifies. Progressives ought not dodge the question: Why are blacks the only ethnic group routinely and openly encouraged to nurse stale grievances back to life?
Please read the whole thing.
I happen to be engaged in the process of re-reading Stephen Hicks’ densely-packed must-read book Explaining Postmodernism. Because of that, as I read Hughes essay I immediately thought of Hicks’ book, which details the rise to dominance of postmodernism in the academy and increasingly in the world, a postmodernism that has declared war on reason—the reason that Hughes displays so prominently—and that defines people by their group identity rather than by the individualism the Enlightenment championed (and that Hughes also emphasizes).
Here are two quotes from Hicks:
“Nasty political correctness as a tactic then makes perfect sense [to postmodernists]. Having rejected reason, we will not expect ourselves or others to behave reasonably. Having put our passions to the fore, we will act and react more crudely and range-of-the-moment. Having lost our sense of ourselves as individuals, we will seek our identities in our groups. Having little in common with different groups, we will see them as competitive enemies. Having abandoned recourse to rational and neutral standards, violent competition will seem practical. And having abandoned peaceful conflict resolution, prudence will dictate that only the most ruthless will survive.”
“The contemporary Enlightenment world prides itself on its commitment to equality and justice, its open-mindedness, its making opportunity available to all, and its achievements in science and technology. The Enlightenment world is proud, confident, and knows it is the wave of the future. This is unbearable to someone who is totally invested in an opposed and failed outlook. That pride is what such a person wants to destroy. The best target to attack is the Enlightenment’s sense of its own moral worth. Attack it as sexist and racist, intolerantly dogmatic, and cruelly exploitative. Undermine its confidence in its reason, its science and technology. The words do not even have to be true or consistent to do the necessary damage. And like Iago, postmodernism does not have to get the girl in the end. Destroying Othello is enough.”
He is, indeed, a most impressive young man, far more adept at thinking clearly and logically about matters pertaining to race than many an academician (such as the odious Dyson) or journalist (such as Coates the charlatan). The two websites that publish him, Quillette and Heterodox Academy, are excellent sources of intelligent writing within the tradition of classical liberalism, which must not be confused with what passes for “liberalism” in today’s America.
Neo, my personal recommendation on Hick’s book: you can skim through most of the philosophical underpinnings that he goes through and get the gist of what is happening in that regard. The second half of the book after he lays out his rather laborious foundation is where he really gets into the heart of the matter.
Coleman Hughes is a WOW!
in the meantime, were do we file this:
“White Mythologies: Objectivity, Meritocracy, and Other Social Constructions” is a sophomore-level course taught by Kendralin Freeman and Jason Rodriguez, who are sociology and anthropology professors, respectively.
“This course explores the history and ongoing manifestations of ‘white mythologies’–long-standing, often implicit views about the place of White, male, Euro-American subjects as the norm,” explains the course description, which adds that students will also “explore how systematic logics that position ‘the West’ and ‘whiteness’ as the ideal manifest through such social constructions as objectivity, meritocracy, and race.”
http://www.hws.edu/catalogue/pdf/catalogue_16-18.pdf
Why is it, then, that historical forces are only ever invoked to explain the behavior of blacks?
tough question with an easy answer…
add a word
Why is it, then, that historical forces are only ever invoked to explain (away) the behavior of blacks?
the rest is mostly just social mechanics antagonized by practices assumed to minimize but agonize instead.
tick tock we can act like clocks..
we dont want to believe it, but we often do
Coleman Hughes opines;
“We don’t choose our genes and we don’t choose the environment into which we are born.”
That may well be true, none of us know whether we had a choice prior to being born.
“Yet we have every reason to believe that genes and environment combine to create the psychological profile that determines our cognition and behavior in each moment.”
Not true unless one wishes to argue that free will does not exist. In which case, a decision as to whether to have for dessert ‘rocky road’ or pistachio ice cream is preordained…
“The white criminal is no more deeply responsible for the mixture of causes that led him to offend than his black counterpart.”
“led him to offend” Again, no free will? “The devil made me do it!” defense? BTW, if so, why do not all the poor and ‘disadvantaged’ offend? Why are they not “led” to offend?
Hicks opining on the postmodernist left;
“Having rejected reason, we will not expect ourselves or others to behave reasonably. Having put our passions to the fore, we will act and react more crudely and range-of-the-moment. Having lost our sense of ourselves as individuals, we will seek our identities in our groups. Having little in common with different groups, we will see them as competitive enemies. Having abandoned recourse to rational and neutral standards, violent competition will seem practical. And having abandoned peaceful conflict resolution, prudence will dictate that only the most ruthless will survive.”
There’s much truth in Hicks analysis of the Left, they’ve been “calling the tune” but when payment comes due, they won’t want to pay the piper.
“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire, by people who don’t even know that fire is hot…” George Orwell
America is not made up of Russia’s 1917 peasants and China’s impoverished, illiterate multitudes… and only the ideologically blind fail to grasp that reality.
If the government quit dividing people into groups of all kinds then these problems would gradually go away because no one could be sure to which groups they,or anyone else, might belong. At what shade would blackness start and end? This question of the requirements for a group identity holds true for all the other groups that government divides people into as well.
All it would take would be to remove every discriminating category except citizen and non-citizen from the census and all laws. Then everyone would have to be judged by their character and their actions rather than some arbitrary group identifier.
When you think about it, isn’t that what the Constitution really requires in order to be fully implemented?
Do all black people have P.T.S.D from racism, as the Grammy and Emmy award-winning artist Donald Glover recently claimed?
–Coleman Hughes
I try not to eavesdrop in cafes but sometimes it’s hard not to. Last year in my usual cafe I used to see a black guy dressed in ceremonial vestments and hat, talking to other blacks. I haven’t seen him lately.
Anyway one time I noticed him a few tables over counseling a young black woman and I heard him hit a high laughing note, “We are all suffering from Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder!“
Neo, I will second physicsguy. If you are unfamiliar with Kant and those who expanded on his deception leading up to the postmodernists, then it is a challenge to wade through Hick’s detailed account. I ordered Explaining Postmodernism after your last series of posts on the subject and immediately read it. Then I set it aside, and like you only recently started to reread it. Thank God for Encyclopedia Britannica and the internet!
I haven’t read the book by Hicks yet. I’m curious as to how much he talks about Michel Foucault, who was the most influential thinker in the postmodern takeover of Western academia and, by extension, the intelligentsia. I read a great deal of Foucault back in the 80s, when he was especially “hot,” and I have a number of thoughts about him as a result.
I am a simple man. Many in the black community are leeches sucking blood on the of the Great Society and its current manifestation. It was a choice Frederick Dougla and MLK or Jesse and Al. Too many made the wrong choice. They made choice, welcome to the ash heap.
Speaking of “Othello”: an all-girl production is set to hit the boards in New York City.
With a December production of Othello, the Women’s Shakespeare Company (WSC) continues its mission to give women the opportunity to play roles they are not usually able to play by presenting the Bard’s works with all-female casts.
Sidney Fortner directs Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of jealousy and revenge which runs Dec. 2 – 19 at The Trilogy Theater.
The WSC, which was founded by artistic director Kelly Ann Sharman, said this production is not about “issues of sexuality…the women will play male roles as men, just as men played women’s roles in Elizabethan times.”
Hmm. Could be interesting. Sarah Bernhardt would approve. 😉
Ooops, that was from 1999. I would have gone to see it.
OFF-TOPIC FOR NEO:
Neo, you’re missing the big news happening in EU right now that nobody (in mainstream media) is talking about. It’s the biggest threat to free speech in Europe in years:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180525/10072939912/forget-gdpr-eus-new-copyright-proposal-will-be-complete-utter-disaster-internet.shtml
or
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/eus-copyright-proposal-extremely-bad-news-everyone-even-especially-wikipedia
Long story short, it will force websites to check every comment, image, sound and video posted against copyright databases. That can be terribly expensive… which means that only mainstream media would be able to have comments. Blog comments and forums, say goodbye… or maybe not, but it would be a weapon to target whatever blog, forum or website they want to take down. And we all know where that path goes.
GB,
Yes we have free will, but we need to have the ability to perceive our options. If we are not too smart and our raised in an environment that only gives us limited options, then we probably stick with our tribe. The best way to correct this is for society to present us with more options via education.
I just started reading The First American by HW Brands, a book about Ben Franklin. It is fascinating how he started questioning at a very early age and how he decided to challenge rather than attack those he disagreed with. He also recognized the importance of social norms without wanting to impose them to suppress free inquiry. Franklin had the brains to use his free will, but he was definitely shaped by his social environment. Ultimately he chose where to exercise his free will and where to go along with the realities of the 18th century.
Yann,
This BS is what happens when your brain is fried in Brussels. Although I subscribe to my hometown newspaper online, it is not available to me in Germany because papers are finding compliance with the tne anti-Zuckerberg rules too onerous. The early notices I got when calling up the page asked for comments. I said that Zuckerberg should have to pay to send me the print copy every day via FedEx overnight express. I haven’t gotten a copy yet. The Silicon Valley nerds are just as ridiculous and greedy as the Brussels bureaucrats. A pox on all of them.
This is not about greediness (though it happens). This is about political control. The sites that are threatening the current political agenda in Europe (and US) are small sites, sites with almost resources. GatesofVienna.net, for example, it’s a site handled by one guy with a home webserver. If they’re targeted with this law, they won’t be able to handle the cost and should close the comment section.
People are starting to look for alternatives to twitter and youtube, each and every day more controlled. This is a weapon to take down any free alternative.
I find it difficult to understand how someone could read this excellent essay and come away with the notion that the author fails to appreciate the role of free will.
In a certain sense, the whole thing is *about* free will:
“…it is in fact perfectly valid to ask why black people can get away with behavior that white people can’t.”
In other words, people are responsible for their actions.
“Many black progressives use the myth of collective, intergenerational transfers of suffering to exempt themselves from the rules of civil discourse.”
In other words, people are responsible for their words.
“‘Viewed through this historical filter, blacks cease to be agents, instead becoming “puppets at the end of a string…dangling there…waiting to be made whole,'”
He argues that this is wrong, that people have agency. In other words, free will.
And even the sentence cited on genes is clearly in the context of the importance of free will:
“In this narrow sense, we are all products of an unchosen past.”
Narrow because of course we also have free will.
“…liberal democracies decided long ago that the individual was to be the primary unit of moral concern and responsibility.”
Individuals are responsible for their actions. Since we have free will.
The Other Chuck, yes I had to rely on my 44 year old undergrad course in Philosophy of Religion which highlighted Kant quite a bit. Amazing how that one course taken to satisfy a Gen Ed requirement became a cornerstone for me. I think it was important for Hicks to go through the foundations, but I think he got a bit repetitive and could have shown his case much more succinctly. But, as I said, the second half of the book is well worth the price of admission.
miklos000rosza, Yes, Foucault definitely takes center stage after Hicks shows how his work follows from Kant, Marx, etc.
To answer one of Neo’s implied objections, it would depend upon the content of the philosophy degree. If it was based upon the race and gendered grievance essays of small minds I’ve never heard of, and I was making the hiring decision, no thanks. If we are talking about the classical study of philosophy, the love of knowledge, it’s a plus.
I’d have to quiz the applicant, but my default position would be I’m dealing with a garbage mind whose highest and best use is cleaning the feces and hypodermic needles out of the Starbucks homeless shelters.
But occasionally amidst the manure you find a gem.
@Geoffrey Britain:gain, no free will? “The devil made me do it!” defense? BTW, if so, why do not all the poor and ‘disadvantaged’ offend? Why are they not “led” to offend?
Coleman Hughes does not necessarily hold these opinions himself.
He is showing the Left that even if we accept their premises that their narratives about African Americans and whites are inconsistent with those premises.
You will not get anywhere convincing anyone unless you share some premises with them at the beginning. Hughes is approaching this argument in the only way that might make any headway with his audience.
The free-will/determinism argument was still tied in the fourth quarter, last I heard.
My own feeling is that while everything we do and think may be “determined” by the past, in practice human beings are so complicated that they might as well have free will. There’s not and never will be math that can predict an individual human’s behavior–there’s not and never will be math that can predict the behavior of much, much simpler systems.
Normally I would respond to you by saying the author’s skin color is irrelevant, but Mr. Coleman is saying things I that have been saying for years. My words are, however, dismissed immediately because of my skin color, so I’m hopeful that Mr. Coleman’s words will not be dismissed because of his skin color. It’s so sad that legitimate arguments are heeded or dismissed based on the arguer’s skin color.
There, might be where a kind of primordial moral choice for the individual lies: between the ordering of one’s moral world based on social “resentment”, and an ordering based on optimism and hope.
A black conservative blog from some years ago, “Issues and Views”. Elizabeth Wright has apparently passed away. But her work can be found on the Way back machine. http://web.archive.org/web/20080827184820/http://issues-views.com/
RIP Elizabeth
The choice for black people was not between Douglass and MLK and Jesse and Al, it was between W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. DuBois thought blacks should strive for political and social power, and white society would grant them entry. The much wiser Washington, probably observing the success of immigrant groups, argued that blacks should develop their economic power first, which would inevitably lead to political and social power. Guess which one blacks followed, and guess which one was right.
@ Frederick (& GB) – I think that’s a good distinction, and suspect Coleman, and perhaps even Hicks would agree with: he is arguing from within the world-view that declares African-Americans are overdetermined for their behavior, showing in simplest fashion that if so, they cannot be the only ones.
I would like to see Coleman Hughes and Candace Owens on a program together.