Sam says we have to get out of the identity politics game
Updating to add: I forgot to point out that the tweet is from last October.
Sam Harris is unbearable.
https://twitter.com/_Saeen_/status/924043987127857152
I recommend listening to that one-minute clip, to get the full sense of how his flat cold affectless voice combines with his smugly confident words on a subject he knows NOTHING about to create a monster of I’m Not a Racistism.
Virtually everything that’s said, in the identity politics space, about what’s happening, is at best slanted. There are Trumpian levels of dishonesty on the left around these topics, and it’s harmful. And BLM is part of that problem, and if you’re going to argue that in the aftermath of having a two-term black president, that nothing has changed with respect to race – if you’re going to be like Ta-Nehisi Coates, and endlessly beat the drum of black identity politics, as though we’re living in the first years of Reconstruction, and not acknowledge any gains that we’ve made against racism in our society…you’re delusional, and insofar as people believe what you’re saying, what you’re saying is harmful. And BLM has some of that in it, so I just think we have to get out of the identity politics game.
Says the prosperous white man.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is worth a million Sam Harrises. I always learn a lot whenever I read his work. It’s the best kind of learning, too – the kind that really gets me to think.
I mean, we can criticism Harris and all that, but that Saeen quote is grossly misrepresentative of the quoted material. Harris saying that Coates insufficiently acknowledges gains made on racism issues is not the same as Harris saying that racism doesn’t exist. I haven’t read enough Coates to say whether Harris’ point is fair (I read neither of these people), but even if its not the criticism of the quote would seem to commit the same error that Harris is making and we probably shouldn’t do that.
Who says nothing has changed since Reconstruction?
Does he have any specific examples of what’s being said by BLM or Coates that is incorrect or “at best slanted”?
Never mind. God he’s an ass.
Well, Patrick, I read Between the World and Me, and I don’t remember any claims that nothing has changed since Reconstruction. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that.
Coates talks about what’s going on in our lifetime. I wonder why Harris feels a need to handwave in the direction of The Past and remind us that things used to be worse.
Ok, but, like, Harris doesn’t have to be right about what he is saying to not be saying something else.
Patrick. Again, in English please.
Harris is saying a thing about Coates and people like Coates.
Saeen is summarizing it, but his summary is inaccurate and I said so.
Lady Mondegreen offered a kind of a non sequitor where she seems to assume that even though I already said Harris might be wrong about Coates, I must actually think he’s right or else I wouldn’t object to Saeen attributing to Harris things Harris didn’t say. And she’s trying to get me to defend the accuracy of what Harris said even though I already said I don’t know much about it. I just think its crappy to misrepresent people, and, objectively, the quote at the top of the page misrepresents the material beneath it.
Whether Harris is wrong doesn’t change the fact that Saeen is definitely wrong about what Harris did or did not say.
Patrick, you are taking a very strange stance:
“… I must actually think he’s [Harris] right” vs “I don’t know much about it [ what Harris said”.
and
“Saeen is definitely wrong about what Harris did or did not say.” Well, is Saeen wrong about what Harris did say, or about what Harris did not say? What does that mean anyway? In any event, Saeen actually provided a fair summary of Harris statement and helpfully gave us an audio recording of him saying it. It’s pretty straight forward.
It’s also weird to see a presumably prosperous white man tut tutting about BLM, while he has also been demonstrated as taking a pretty soft stance on those on the dubious right.
I’m not climbing on any high-horse here when I say that progress in eliminating racism in the US appears to have largely stalled since the 70’s/80’s. Yes, laws have been changed to eliminate most legislative direct discrimination. Yes, in polite society it is generally regarded as unacceptable to be blatantly discriminatory. However, in a million ways, major and minor, racism is still alive and well in all levels of government and in the deeply ingrained beliefs, actions and words of a significant plurality of the population. Then there’s the additional significant plurality who consider themselves to be non-racist, but unwittingly still buy in to such attitudes and behaviours. Having a black President did not end racism. If anything the backlash against Obama has brought the racism that is still alive and well in the US into sharper focus and has spurred people who are openly racist to redouble their efforts to counter progress.
All the while people of Harris ilk wring their hands about how those on the right trying to discuss race are just misunderstood, while those on the left, especially BLM are dividers who are problematic. Give me a break.
I don’t understand what’s not being communicated here.
Saeen said “Sam Harris attacks BLM & @tanehisicoates, calls them delusional & insists there’s no racism in America because Obama served as POTUS.”
But the Harris quote doesn’t say that.
What?
Yes it does.
“Sam Harris attacks BLM & @tanehisicoates, calls them delusional & insists there’s no racism in America because Obama served as POTUS”
There are Trumpian levels of dishonesty on the left around these topics, and it’s harmful. And BLM is part of that problem
There’s your Sam Harris attacks BLM.
if you’re going to be like Ta-Nehisi Coates, and endlessly beat the drum of black identity politics
There’s your Sam Harris attacks Ta-Nehisi Coates.
you’re delusional
There’s your calls them delusional.
as though we’re living in the first years of Reconstruction, and not acknowledge any gains that we’ve made against racism in our society
There’s your insists there’s no racism in America because Obama served as POTUS.
It’s all right there.
This: as though we’re living in the first years of Reconstruction, and not acknowledge any gains that we’ve made against racism in our society
Isn’t this: There’s your insists there’s no racism in America because Obama served as POTUS.
“And BLM is part of that problem, and if you’re going to argue that in the aftermath of having a two-term black president, that nothing has changed with respect to race – if you’re going to be like Ta-Nehisi Coates, and endlessly beat the drum of black identity politics, as though we’re living in the first years of Reconstruction, and not acknowledge any gains that we’ve made against racism in our society…you’re delusional, and insofar as people believe what you’re saying, what you’re saying is harmful.”
In this quote, in the post, the word “any” was even emphasized via italics. Furthermore, besides the incredibly obvious strawman re the phrases “nothing has changed” and “not acknowledge any gains” (both are bullshit positions not actually held by anyone) Harris has either not read or listened to Coates, or Harris has done so and is deliberately lying.
Patrick. You seem not to understand how language works. The tweet isn’t word for word what Harris said, it’s a summary. “insists there’s no racism in America because Obama served as POTUS” is a summary of “as though we’re living in the first years of Reconstruction, and not acknowledge any gains that we’ve made against racism in our society.” There’s also Harris’s if you’re going to argue that in the aftermath of having a two-term black president, that nothing has changed with respect to race – that’s the Obama part.
Saeen didn’t misrepresent what Harris said. He didn’t simply reproduce it, but that doesn’t mean he distorted it, and he didn’t. You’re talking nonsense.
… is exactly what I addressed in my comment, in response to your words:
I fail to see how I’m guilty of a non sequitur.
I never said Harris fails to acknowledge that racism exists. As a matter of fact, neither did Ophelia.
OB: I think it is not a very honest summary and having read it I would, in the future, question whether I could trust Saeed to honestly represent the opinions of people he doesn’t like.
If you want to argue that Saeed is just being hyperbolic and exaggerating a little and accusing Harris of saying that there’s “no racism in America” when what he really means is that Harris is appraising the amount of racism in America as less than it really is, that’s fine, but then we should probably interpret Harris as being similarly hyberbolic in arguing that Coates is appraising the amount of racial progress in America as less than it actually is. Its the same inference.
If I’m going to read Harris as claiming that Coates literally denies “any” progress on racism, then it would be remarkably unfair for me to interpret “insists there’s no racism in America” metaphorically.
Lady Mondegreen: “I never said Harris fails to acknowledge that racism exists. As a matter of fact, neither did Ophelia.”
Saeed’s quote.
Patrick – again, you’re being too literal. Sure, Saeen’s final example is a sarcastic summary, but so what? Twitter is probably 90% sarcasm. The clip is right there for people to listen to themselves, so I don’t think sarcasm qualifies as “grossly” misrepresenting.
Patrick:
OK, but that’s Saeed. Not me, and not Ophelia. I agree that Harris didn’t say “racism no longer exists”, and I can understand your wanting to point that out, in the spirit of the principle of charity. I can.
But in my comment, I addressed Harris’s assertion that Coates and BLM don’t acknowledge that things are better now than they were during Reconstruction. And I did not do this:
I said that I have read Coates and the accusation that he doesn’t acknowledge gains made against racism since Reconstruction doesn’t gibe with what I recall.
Frankly that was ridiculous enough that Saeed’s exaggeration barely registered with me.
Gee, a Sam Harris fanboy claiming that someone has taken his hero out of context, or somehow missed the subtle nuances of the great leader’s brilliant rhetoric. I’m shocked.
Patrick, as someone who has read more than you of both Coates and Harris, I can assure you that Saeed’s summary is an accurate representation of the attitude Harris exudes *every single time* he says *anything* about race issues, either in print or on his podcast. The buck always stops at ‘Consider the progress we’ve made’, and not ‘…but we should keep making progress’. It’s always that the status quo is the state of nature, that white supremacy is no longer a problem, that the number of ‘real racists’ in the US numbers at most in the low thousands (rather than the tens or hundreds of millions that exist in reality). That whatever structural inequalities between races and sexes should not be investigated sociologically, but if they are, it should be on the assumption that they now result from individual choices, or a combination of individual choices and genetics rather than the structural inequalities that have persisted essentially unchecked since those inequalities were built into the systems. And further, that those choices themselves are pretty much an uninvestigable, ineffable state of nature; that women, for example, just don’t happen to like philosophy or ethics or skepticism, and that is why they are underrepresented in his audience and in the broader disciplines and movements more generally. (And I’ve personally interacted with several of his fans who take *any* mention of the whiteness and maleness of his audience as a personal attack on the man himself, and rush to defend him by those kinds of arguments.)
Oh, sure, he always couches these sentiments in ‘I really don’t want to talk about this’ or ‘I’m vaguely suspicious about investigating IQ’, or even ‘all identity politics is detestable, but white identity politics are the most detestable of all’. But the upshot is that he thinks that zero percent of our collective energy needs to be expended addressing these questions. This conclusion is impossible not to reach if you spend any time at all listening to his podcasts, or thinking about his choice of guests, or reading what he has to say on the subjects. I was a big fan of Harris’ at one time (and still tenuously grasp onto a few threads about which he still has some interesting or thought-provoking things to say).
So, yes, the tweet did not reproduce Harris’ words exactly. But it did not mischaracterise the spirit behind them.
I’m not a Sam Harris fanboy. I’ve never listened to his podcast, and the last time I listened to him give a speech was immediately after 9/11. Since then he went on some sort of weird spirit quest or whatever and started doing philosophy, and I thought the philosophy wasn’t very good and stopped paying attention. I saw him briefly resurface after a spat with Jordan Peterson, then later a spat with Ezra Klein.
OB: If you’re going to read Saeen’s factually inaccurate summary of Harris’ comment as sarcastic exaggeration, you should probably offer Harris the same courtesy.
“So, yes, the tweet did not reproduce Harris’ words exactly. But it did not mischaracterise the spirit behind them.”
Whatever lets you sleep at night.
Patrick, either read up on Harris and what he thinks about these things or go fuck yourself.
As a matter of fact, go fuck yourself in any case.
Patrick, you were working very hard to be balanced and charitable to Harris right up to the point where a substantive challenge emerged, at which point you collapsed.
I can’t believe that you would work that hard without having some additional reason for wanting to defend Harris; Maybe you aren’t a fanboy, but it seems like you are invested in his way of thinking on race, which is not very sophisticated.
I am going to side with Patrick here. As I read Saeen’s tweet, he is giving a summary of that clip, not a summary of Harris attitude as a whole and IMO it is not a good summary of that clip.
If Saeen wanted to tell how that clip illustrates Sam’s general attitude, he should IMO have worded things differently. His message may then not have fitted within a tweet, but maybe a tweet was not the correct medium to bring this message.
If the only way your audience can see your message as accurate is when that audience knows a lot of back story, then it shouldn’t be a surprise if that message will be seen as highly inaccurate by a lot of people.
Lordy.
Ok Saeen said “Sam Harris attacks BLM & @tanehisicoates, calls them delusional & insists there’s no racism in America because Obama served as POTUS”
It would have been more accurate to say “Sam Harris attacks BLM & @tanehisicoates, calls them delusional & minimizes racism in America because Obama served as POTUS”
Change “insists there’s no” to “minimizes.”
Ok. He could have worded it that way. It would have been more exact. He indulged in that one bit of sarcastic exaggeration.
Do I care? No. The clip is right there and it’s only a minute long. Sarcasm is not unknown on Twitter. No, I don’t think this particular bit of sarcasm is a shocking dereliction or worth all this heavy breathing.