Anti-Racist Arguments Are Tearing People Apart | Hacker News Reader

Anti-Racist Arguments Are Tearing People Apart

theatlantic.com

52 pointshprotagonist36 comments

I had a girlfriend in high school that learned about feminism, and developed an annoying habit of playing "gotcha" with anything that could be spun as chauvinist. For instance anyone saying "C'mon you guys let's go eat" would get a lecture about how using the word "guys" to a mixed sex group was being oppressive. She didn't say "patriarchal" only because that word wasn't in currency yet. Years later her gotcha shtick became her profession as a college professor who taught it to a new generation, year after year.

I think the events at those meetings are more about the joy of the gotcha than anti-racism versus non-racism. It just feels good to catch someone out, to be the one who sees it first. Like most pleasures it has addictive power.

It wasn't because the anti-racists were actually racists that they were triggered by a white man bouncing a black baby on his lap. It was because they were scanning desperately for a gotcha to feed their habit. For a target that you disagree with, a behavior has a much lower threshold to become a gotcha. If it wasn't for the baby it could have been his supercilious smile or hair style.

In modern anti-racism, not only does a gotcha not need to be justified with argument, any criticism of the gotcha is another gotcha. What I have written here is just more evidence of my own racism and sexism. They've got me.

> I think the events at those meetings are more about the joy of the gotcha than anti-racism versus non-racism. It just feels good to catch someone out, to be the one who sees it first. Like most pleasures it has addictive power.

I think there's a term for that feeling: self-righteousness.

When I was six, I moved from Minnesota to Tennessee.

At one point soon after, I was walking with my brothers and female cousins and said "hey you guys...", which was a common form if addressing multiple people in Minnesota.

One if my cousins, who had probably never heard that idiom before, replied "We're not guys".

Afterwards, I switched to the common southern idiom of "y'all".

Criticizing "you guys" as a sexist term when describing a mixed gender group is a) true because there are multiple genders in the group and b) not a gotcha. She wasn't baiting you into saying sexist remarks to criticize you as a chauvinist. Her over enthusiasm may have been annoying sure, but calling it "gotcha" behavior is a way to casually dismiss anti-racists and anti-sexists without actually in their engaging arguments or even the slightest bit of self reflection.

> In modern anti-racism, not only does a gotcha not need to be justified with argument,

> would get a lecture about how using the word "guys" to a mixed sex group was being oppressive.

Sounds like you received a justified argument that you are choosing to ignore.

I ignored the argument because I could not have reasonably engaged with it and decided that I disagree?

Do you think if people consistently referred to a group of people that included you as "hey girls" you would find it....a bit strange?

I think policing wrongthink in everyday conversation is about as effective as painting the correct reflection on a mirror. Real respect is earned.

So when you refer to a group of mix gendered people as "guys", it's an indication that you don't respect the women in the group? They haven't earned if from you yet?

I think the reference is orthagonal to respect, making the correction merely rude.

Well that brings me back to my original question (which you did not answer).

Do you think if people consistently referred to a group of people that included you as "hey girls" you would find it....a bit strange?

It's quite ordinary. Particularly in all male contexts where it isn't ambiguous, like construction or sports. Also "ladies". Metonymy is weird like that.

In contexts like construction or sports referring to an all male group as "girls" or "ladies" is derisive or, at the very least, sarcastic. It's interesting to consider the implications of that.

Have you noticed a strange pattern when people talk. When someone refer to people they don't know they tend to default to their own gender, unless there is a cultural clue, in which they then default to that clue.

I find it a interesting quirk of human behavior. It not very noticeable unless you listen for it, but once you do, it is a very noticeable during a conference with a high rate of speakers that do not share your own gender.

It implies that they particularly value predominantly masculine virtues in their work, like physical strength and aggression. Which is sometimes reasonable and sometimes not.

I saw the Anti Racist author, Ibram Kendi, speak. Honestly I wasn't really impressed with what he was saying. Yes, structural racism is a real problem. But the concept of anti-racism just did not feel well defined and just begging for semantic ambiguity that distracts from the point at hand, much like how feminism suffered from allowing detractors to claim it was about females asserting supremacy. Ideological terms move the conversation away from ideas and towards meta-arguments around what the ideology is. I found this article somewhat hard to follow but it's last paragraph seems to resonate with that.

What is anti-racism? Is it:

* taking proactive steps to combat racism rather than trying to avoid taking part in it?

* asserting more power to minority communities that have been harmed by structural racism?

* a means to justify breaking down dominantly white structures even if there's not obviously malicious racial actions at play?

Which of these are good? Which of these are obviously good without nuanced discussion? If it's something like the third one, does it seem like a good idea to call that model "anti-racist" in a way that clearly antagonizes the other party merely for existing?

I was politically active on the left over 10 years ago and I still remember how a loud minority seemed obsessed with factions and seeding discord. It was a really effective tactic, made me wonder if it was active sabotage at times. Not much has changed.

I'm still active on the left and very much into social & economic justice, but I often notice how much division these anti-sexist and anti-racist tactics create inside the left political spectrum. I don't think a lot of these tactics are friendly, engaging, and a lot are destined to generate more negative outcomes and thoughts about left policy, structural racism & sexism in my opinion. As Fred Hampton once said, you don't fight fire with fire, you fight fire with water.

I agree that it almost seems like active sabotage.

I agree with you, and would like to add my thoughts. I realize that the people on the left who engage in such toxic tactics are a minority, but I feel the need to say something: Several people in my friends/family circle lean very much to the right, and they don't seem to really understand that the left-extremists are the minority; and extremists on the right are clutching onto these rare demonstrations and telling their conservative base that this is "all leftists". I personally know several people who equate a vote for Biden as a vote to bring exactly this type of toxic behavior mainstream - they have told me exactly that. These sorts of extreme tactics on the left push many right-leaning people into the far-right-extremes. There are a lot of legitimate points on both sides of the aisle, and it's not my intent to downplay either side here, but I do mean to say that these sorts of tactics are more than mere self-sabotage by the people employing them -- they're actively divisive.

I want to start by saying that I generally agree with everything you’ve said.

I think this tendency to conflate the most extreme faction with the whole is a new, modern problem. People have always done this to some degree, the extremism of modern media (and social media) allow for regular exposure to fringe views that would otherwise be invisible to most people. And, the effect is twofold: 1) people tend to conflate the worst part of a faction with the whole faction, and 2) having witnessed the same phenomenon on the other side, people are more ready to either ignore or integrate extremism from their own side. It is also likely that this extremism of their own side is easily ignored because they know from personal experience that it’s not representative.

I think we’re living in an age where radicalism is mainstream.

I followed the primaries closely, and based on the uniformly left political positions folks were taking, it seemed to me at the time that the supposed minority was very powerful. Consider the near-universal use of the term “LatinX.” Apparently, 76% of Hispanic people have never even heard the term. Out of those who have heard it, 2/3 object to it being used to describe Hispanics. Only 3% use the term themselves. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...

One under appreciated aspect of all this is that these folks, while a minority overall, are highly overrepresented among people with power. Democrat voters might not use “LatinX.” But the college-educated “wonks” who will actually be turning the gears of the Biden administration may well do so.

Note that the person who actually won the primaries, overwhelmingly, both does not use the term "latinx" and did not support most of the "uniformly left political positions folks were taking".

It's almost as if interesting but implausible left political positions are attention-grabbing and commandeer the news cycle out of proportion to their actual importance. Or that Twitter isn't real life.

I agree. (I have to admit being a bit sheepish at being surprised how conventional Biden's speech was.) I was referring to what it seemed like to me at the time, based on what I was seeing on the news/on social media. My point is that OP's "friends/family circle" don't necessarily have the information to put what they see on TV or read on Twitter in context.

I do think that these folks may have more institutional pull than people realize. People here in the D.C. halo are increasingly insulated from what the folks they claim to be speaking for really want (or talk like or think like).

The House majority, the margin of which Pelosi built out of ~30 suburban districts, pulls strongly against that. I think what remains --- in particular, the racial justice focus (less the fringe "defund the police" stuff that Biden actively runs against) --- are genuine positions held by the majority of the party.

> I personally know several people who equate a vote for Biden as a vote to bring exactly this type of toxic behavior mainstream - they have told me exactly that. These sorts of extreme tactics on the left push many right-leaning people into the far-right-extremes.

As someone who used to be more on the right who's moving leftward (because of the current administration and a building frustration with many right wing ideas and attitudes), I can testify to the repulsive effect that these kind of displays have. I know these kinds of people are a minority, but they still concern me because of the power a zealous minority can wield in a party due to their zeal.

It’s interesting (and quite frustrating) — these are the social hysterias of our time. Could you have successfully navigated the inquisition without lying about what you believe? Obviously, no one is being tortured or killed like in the inquisition, and I simply mean to compare the coerced religious zeal. No one is ever pure enough.

I often think that this is simply a mixing of impulses. Everyone has an impulse to socially judge; a tribal impulse. Most of us do not have so strong an impulse, or otherwise can easily keep it at bay. But, what happens to that tribal impulse when you think you’re fighting for good and evil? Is there anything left to temper it? Should it even be tempered? And what happens when all the fates align: and the tribal impulse, the self righteous impulse, and the attraction to power all agree on the course of action. People must be relieved from their positions of power. And you can conveniently lean on the most righteous of your motivations, while also serving your basest motivations.

It looks to me that people have lost their minds - they have turned anti racism into clear and pure racism.

This is also how we should call people like Robin Broshi - racist.

Frankly I think neither "side" in most of these arguments is clearly and consistently racist (though obviously racism is a huge problem in society regardless of these arguments), and both "sides" tend to jump to accusations of racism too quickly. I'm not putting forward a "both sides are just as bad" argument - far from it - but I'm not making that distinction right now. What I am saying is that, in cases where I do see one or both sides of one of these arguments behaving irrationally, it is almost always a too-quick jump to accusations of racism, rather than the inverse problem: Actually being racist. However, despite this being a "both sides" problem, what I think happens is that when somebody on the "anti-racism side" (or "pro-diversity side" or whatever) ends up doing something apparently racist (usually against whites), it's much more dramatic because of the opportunity to point at hypocrisy, and therefore "counts" more against them than if the other side of that argument had committed some equivalent racism against a non-white.

Robin Broshi is a special kind of racist. Perhaps even Racist with capital R.

When I see two people sitting, she sees two people of different skin color sitting.

Then she creates some construction to justify her racism.

It's the whole equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome argument all over.

Anti-racism is a contested concept that well-meaning people define and practice differently. Folks who have different ideas about how to combat racism should engage one another. They might even attempt a reciprocal book exchange, in which everyone works to understand how others see the world.

That article made my head hurt, then it made me a lot sad, then very angry.

I can't tell if these people have just lost their minds, or if they are actually racists who are posing as anti-racists in order to undermine the efforts.

I had the theory that they were trolls. To my defense, at the time it got popular in my country, there were a lot of comments under news articles against Muslims and there was a general trend to put blame on them for every ill of society. People trying to make them as a group responsible for terrorism and demanded they need to distance themselves from these acts. Some form of backward kin liability.

Then they blamed all men and white people. It would have been an awesome troll to make people question their reasoning. Problem was that they weren't trolling and pretty serious about it.

It's interesting how much this looks more like religion than anything else. Complex ideology, easily misinterpreted texts, and submission and conformity over individual critical thinking.

Then you have the even worse trend of a certain kind of 'hip/urban' non-Black belittling a conservative Black person or a Black person who doesn't represent themself along the lines of what popular culture communicates is what counts as valid Blackness , as if the 'hip' non-Black is _more_ locked in arms with Black experience than the actual Black person they're belittling (I'm looking at you Andrew Schulz!).

I found this article very interesting, and a bell went off when I was reading the bit about the backgrounds of the board members. Ms. Tanikawa seemed to be the most militant in her beliefs, but think her strong opposition to the magnet-school system deserves a second look. While the US officially classifies many different ethnicities as “Asian” that doesn’t really account for the strained relationships and bigotry that exists between different cultural and ethnic groups.Based on the location of the school district/board, it’s pretty clear that the lower and middle class immigrant families that are using the magnet school system as a means of upward mobility are mostly Chinese and Korean. If we hold Ms. Tanikawa to the same level of scrutiny that she subjected Mr. Maron to, it’s fair to say that her own biases could be informing her own position as well. I have noticed that some of the most vehement “Anti-racists” have employed this ideology to paradoxically advocate for ideas and policies that are, in the most basic and obvious way, racist.

That's the entire point. Divide and conquer.

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