The author isn’t doing any of the things you’re claiming.
He agrees that racism has changed form and supports the goals of 3rd wave anti-racists, and understands why they do what they do.
He just argues that the tactics they use are self-defeating.
He agrees that racism has changed form and supports the goals of 3rd wave anti-racists, and understands why they do what they do.
He just argues that the tactics they use are self-defeating.
The issue here is very simple; the author sees the tactics as self defeating because he doesn't agree with them, or because they don't want to accomplish his own aims - because they challenge the liberal orthodoxy, which he defends by mentioning several policies. To him, only policies can be challenged, and anything other than a policy doesn't count for institutional racism at all. The only exceptions he's willing to make are when racism is so bad that liberal approaches don't work so well - in Dr. King's instance. But I would contend that racism (and indeed sexism and classism) manifests itself in a much more overt and discreet way, but this only makes them categorically worse, just as the workplace example I used.
I'm not entirely convinced he does understand what they want to do, having opted to go for a standard "they just want to control what we think" line rather than addressing their issues with the process as it actually stands. It's a bizarre article which hasn't looked into the history of the movement as it exists, and what its strengths and shortcomings are.
No doubt, any amount of racism is more than what is ideal. But to criticize the article for, "implying that the racism of today is less pernicious, and leaving no scope for it to be equally as pernicious" strikes me as non-sensical, since the overwhelming majority of people would agree that it is less pernicious.
In some sense, it's trivially true that legal equality means things are "better", but there's plenty of empirical evidence that suggests that material gains won by the civil rights movement have regressed significantly.
For example, in many places, schools are more segregated than they've been since the 60s [1]. Further, the housing crisis erased gains in black wealth back to levels of the 80s and 90s [2].
This is too large a subject to get into in an HN comment, but if you're curious, I'd highly suggest reading Michelle Alexander's excellent book The New Jim Crow[3], which focuses particularly on incarceration.
[1]: https://www.vox.com/2018/3/5/17080218/school-segregation-get... [2]: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017... [3]: https://www.vanderbilt.edu/ctp/The_New_Jim_Crow.pdf
He says nothing about the tactics not accomplishing his own aims, or that only policies can be challenged.
He simply criticizes the way the attempt to change people’s psychology is being done as resembling a religious structure.
Attempting to change people’s attitudes and psychology is fine.
It’s also obvious that there is more than one approach to doing it, and that it’s likely that many approaches to a problem like this will be self defeating.