Overdose of individualism
The New Yorker on anti-anti-anti-racism. I think. I lose count after a while. It centers on a guy called Christopher Rufo.
… an employee of the city of Seattle documented an anti-bias training session and sent the evidence to a journalist named Christopher F. Rufo, who read it and recognized a political opportunity.
I’ve been an employee of the city of Seattle and I’ve attended one or two of their training sessions of that type and I have to say I found them stupid. Not too lefty but too stupid. In a way they weren’t lefty enough – they were more like self-help sessions.
When Rufo received the anti-bias documents from the city of Seattle, he knew how to spot political kindling. These days, “I’m a brawler,” Rufo told me cheerfully.
Through foia requests, Rufo turned up slideshows and curricula for the Seattle anti-racism seminars. Under the auspices of the city’s Office for Civil Rights, employees across many departments were being divided up by race for implicit-bias training. (“Welcome: Internalized Racial Superiority for White People,” read one introductory slide, over an image of the Seattle skyline.) “What do we do in white people space?” read a second slide. One bullet point suggested that the attendees would be “working through emotions that often come up for white people like sadness, shame, paralysis, confusion, denial.” Another bullet point emphasized “retraining,” learning new “ways of seeing that are hidden from us in white supremacy.” A different slide listed supposed expressions of internalized white supremacy, including perfectionism, objectivity, and individualism.
This is what I mean. It’s just stupid. It’s not left-wing, it’s therapy. The issue isn’t what every individual has in her soul, it’s how the system works. You can’t fix the system by retraining the nearest individuals.
Marooned at home, civil servants recorded and photographed their own anti-racism training sessions and sent the evidence to Rufo. Reading through these documents, and others, Rufo noticed that they tended to cite a small set of popular anti-racism books, by authors such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo.
Which is unfortunate because they both suck.
Rufo read the footnotes in those books, and found that they pointed to academic scholarship from the nineteen-nineties, by a group of legal scholars who referred to their work as critical race theory, in particular Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell. These scholars argued that the white supremacy of the past lived on in the laws and societal rules of the present.
As it does! So the point is the laws and societal rules, not the innermost thoughts of every single individual, you get a retraining and you get a retraining and you get a retraining.
As Crenshaw recently explained, critical race theory found that “the so-called American dilemma was not simply a matter of prejudice but a matter of structured disadvantages that stretched across American society.”
So it’s far more urgent to tackle the structured disadvantages than it is to have touchy-feely training sessions. Far far far more urgent.
Christopher Rufo may be a conservative Christian (ok, so nobody’s perfect), but if you look past that he’s pretty astute on CRT. Another notable critic of CRT is John McWhorter. This is good: https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/you-are-not-a-racist-to-criticize
When I sit through our anti-racist, implicit bias, anti-microaggressions training, I get sleepy. It is the same every year, and none of it addresses the problem. As Ophelia said, it’s stupid, not lefty. In fact, it does everything it can NOT to be lefty. Our training covers not only race, but religion and sexual orientation (one year, it had a passing reference to sexism). We all patiently take the test we’re required to take, and go about the rest of the year working in a town and a state that have racism built in, working for a school that does nothing more for students than give us this weak-tea training every year. This year, though, it looks like our training on microaggressions will likely center trans. I haven’t watched it yet. I’m waiting for a day when my stress level is maximum high; that way it won’t spoil a good day.
Coel – but the training nonsense described in the article isn’t Critical Race Theory. It’s more woo-woo touchy-feely self help Fix Your Soul bollocks. It needs a whole different label.
I think in fact it’s pretty much the opposite of CRT. The point of CRT is the system, not The Souls of White Folks. The training nonsense does nothing to fix the system but just concentrates on Self-Improvement. Nobody wins – except the people who do the training, who are apparently making a nice living out of it.
Individuals are much easier targets (just like women are easier targets for TAs to attack than actual male violence.) Wokewashing, or rainbowwashing, (like through Stonewall) allows organizations to apear to be progressive without having to actually change much of anything.
That’s true, isn’t it. Just calling people into a room and yammering at them, easy; undoing 150 years of structural racism in laws, education, real estate, policing, housing, voting rights, voting districts, unions, and on and on – not easy.
I guess a ‘training’ would be worthwhile if it were about how racism and other ‘isms’ permeate our physical and psychological landscape. Is film racist? Yes, it is. Is the snow plowing schedule sexist? Yes, it is. I’ve had so many ‘mind blown’ moments since I started really being exposed to the extent that these oppressions are baked into our social, institutional and even physical structures, and how completely unaware we generally are of this. (Here’s the most recent one for me by the way:
https://dorothyabrown.com/whiteness-of-wealth/ )
The result of this kind of training should, or could, be a better appreciation of what marginalised and othered people go through on a daily basis and the deep disadvantages we/they have experienced all our/their lives, with, I’d like to think, an accompanying empathy and appreciation of our/their strengths and abilities to make as far as we/they did. That could be a useful, and potentially beneficial, outcome.
I remember experiencing a training that did begin to edge toward that kind of understanding–one of the exercises was for people to stand in various places in the room and move to other places in the room if they could answer ‘yes’ to a series of questions. One of them was ‘have you ever taken into consideration the number of people of your type in an organisation before accepting a job or position at an educational institution?’ I said something about looking at the number of women in leadership positions when considering a job offer and the men in the room did seem to be startled by that.
Another thing that seems like it might be effective is for people to tell their individual stories; a woman in my company told a group of senior managers about how she was attacked, and how the experience has continued to have life-changing effects, and it seems to have made some difference in how we as a company work on helping women stay safe.
But the “training nonsense” is inspired by CRT and is what CRT turns into when implemented in schools. It is what those who say they are against CRT are against, and it is what various laws are being passed to prevent.
Very few people are opposed merely to the claim that some structures and institutions serve different groups unequally (and hardly anyone is opposed to the claim that they certainly did so in the past, with results of that still being important).
As for whether the training is “left”, well, it is being promoted primarily by people who regard themselves as far-left activists (and who certainly are left wing in most of their opinions), though of course *other* left-wing activists might disagree with it.
One of the problems here is that the “sensible” left is being largely cowed and silenced by the “woke” left. It’s the same as with “gender theory” and trans issues.
No, I really don’t think that’s right. Critical Race Theory is just the currently vogueish label for “kinds of anti-racism I don’t like.” Some training may get some tips from Robin DiAngelo’s nonsense, I don’t know, but DiAngelo doesn’t represent Critical Race Theory, she just represents what a stupid but successful opportunist can use it for.
I have just sent the following e-mail to Andrew Sullivan after his latest piece on the subject of race on his blog ‘The Dish’. He rightly takes issue with some horrid examples of what has happened in some schools, but…
Dear Mr Sullivan,
Well, this on Critical Race Theory was rather better than your ready inclusion of ‘systemic racism’ as one of the horrible, ambiguous un-Orwellian terms in your last piece, although I think that as usual you exaggerate things. I agree with much of what you say, particularly with respect to those examples from schools, but was — I am sorry — amused by your comparing these examples unfavourably to the things taught in Catholic Sunday schools. It does seem to me that if you don’t like the one kind of inculcation, you should at the very least find the other very dubious. They do not seem to me to be fundamentally different, though you seem to find the one better than the other since you believe that Christianity is about ‘love, compassion, sin, forgiveness, dignity, God, Heaven’ (I rather admire your positioning of ‘sin’, followed by that quick ‘forgiveness’) — or, rather, that children should be taught this so that they may be primed to accept the more unsavoury aspects of Christianity later on. My irreligiousness was prompted at a very young age as a result of being subjected to such platitudes in (Anglican) Sunday school, as well as by the sense one had that behind these nice, comforting, sentimental things were lurking absolute power, fear, and punishment, not to mention Hell, for children hear of Hell about the same time they hear of Heaven. I do not really see that Christianity, whether of the Catholic variety or not, particularly as presented to impressionable children, is superior, in terms of morality or truth, to the platitudes about race trotted out in the examples you provide.
But, regarding ‘systemic racism’, I would say that Macpherson’s original term, ‘institutional racism’, is better than ‘systemic racism’ since it makes it clear these are faults of actual and reasonably clearly defined institutions, whereas ‘systemic racism’ is vague, and so allows abuse. You speak of ‘The legacy of this country’s profound racism, the deep and abiding shame of its genocidal slavocracy, the atrocities, such as Tulsa, which have been white-washed, the appalling record of lynchings and beatings…’ You might add to this gerrymandering and other on-going attempts by the Republican Party, particularly since the election of Biden, to suppress the African-American vote, the long sentences handed out to African-Americans for trivial offences, the constitutional allowance (Article 13) that ‘slavery’ and ‘involuntary servitude’ is permitted in the case of those who ‘have been duly convicted’ of a crime (an Irish friend of mine who travelled in the States in the last century was appalled to see chain-gangs working on the roads in certain areas), the destruction of African-American neighbourhoods by routing freeways through them, etc, etc.
These are all clear examples of present institutional racism. If it were clearly recognised that these things are examples of institutional racism, and reforms were made, the wind would be taken out of the sails of those who propose such an all-encompassing account of racism that any reform seems impossible, and only race-war seems on the cards.It would also make for a juster society. But I do not find in your fulminations any recognition of this possibility — instead you merely lash out at those whom you consider your ideological enemies without coming up with any positive and pragmatic ways of overcoming the present situation.
Best wishes,
Tim Harris
Perhaps I should have added that making institutional reforms would also lead to less racist attitudes. It is not simply that institutions are racist because people are, but that institutional racism encourages overt racist attitudes in individuals.
Excellent job.
I have to say that I agree for the first time to a considerable extent with what Coel is saying, and am glad that he has reminded me again of John McWhorter, who seems very sensible and thoughtful; less glad, though, when he asserts that ‘Very few people are opposed merely to the claim that some structures and institutions serve different groups unequally (and hardly anyone is opposed to the claim that they certainly did so in the past, with results of that still being important)’, claims that he seemed rather reluctant to accept in the past. The problem is how do we deal, now, in the present, with the institutional racism that certainly does exist by reforming our institutions. On the other side from the ‘woke’ sentimentalists are, unfortunately, the many (not just a ‘very few’) who are opposed to the claim that ‘that some structures and institutions serve different groups unequally’, and who all too readily claim that since Martin Luther King won his battle for the right of African-Americans to vote, all things are open to African-Americans and so we needn’t bother about institutional racism now, however obvious it is, since it is all safely in the past. It is not. There is a muddying of the issues on both sides, and this needs to be recognised.
Ezackly.
#11:
Like when? Quote me refusing to accept such claims.
A “both sides” analysis of this issue is not appropriate. There’s a cabal of left-wing activists who have come out of universities in the last couple of decades and have too much influence and are are using it to promote harmful CRT ideology. Then there will also be some right-wing confederate-flag-waving republicans who think everything used to be perfect. But then there’s a vast middle ground, including huge numbers on the left, center and center-right, who think that CRT and its insistence on judging everyone by the color of their skin (rather than as individuals and on the content of their character) is a wrong and harmful turn, yet are not confederate-flag wavers.
Hi Ophelia,
There’s a lot more substance to the criticism of CRT than that. There’s a good thread on the issue here: “Should we call it CRT?” https://twitter.com/FreeBlckThought/status/1405443596380041221
But my point isn’t that the criticism of CRT has too little substance, it’s that you’re using it too broadly, to apply to all kinds of [radical] anti-racism.
Also…
But that ISN’T Critical Race Theory – it’s just the utterly stale slogan that people like to throw around.
How about a compromise: we could call it “Whiteness Studies.” I think that’s a better fit with what you’re talking about, and that it’s a lot more deserving of contempt than (the actual, accurately defined) Critical Race Theory is.
[…] a comment by Tim Harris on Overdose of […]
Ah, Coel, you are back to ‘individuals’ & the ‘content of their character’, which, despite your new-found recognition that ‘some structures and institutions (which ones?) serve different groups unequally’, seems to be your chosen ground for everything, and the ground for those who do not like discussing such matters as ‘institutional racism’. Except in a sort of libertarian mythology, popular on the American right (I suspect because it suggests that everything is really hunky dory and we don’t need to do anything), individuals and institutions of various kinds are inextricably intertwined, which is why I pointed out in another comment that it would be better to correct institutional biasses rather than to indulge in simplistic and sentimental training sessions for individuals. That would lead to fairer and more just society.
‘Then there will also be some right-wing confederate-flag-waving republicans who think everything used to be perfect,’ you write. How many is ‘some’? Meanwhile, Republican-held state governments throughout the USA are seeking to depress the African-American vote. It really is not a matter of a few ‘right-wing confederate-flag-waving republicans’, as it appears you would like to believe. I note that you seem to find that left-wing ‘cabal’ far more worthy of alarm than those seemingly rather harmless ‘confederate-flag-waving republicans’- that ‘happy few’. Why? And then there’s that ‘vast middle ground’ you speak of, rather as Ronald Reagan spoke glibly of the ‘silent majority’; but that ‘middle ground’ is fissured and unstable, it is not some lovely monolith of right-thinking and morally upright individuals who all respect one another whatever the colour of their skin, as you appear fondly to suppose. I note that you seem more exercised by ‘a cabal of left-wing activists’ in the universities than by the very real threat to American democracy from the right. As a matter of fact, I dislike leftist thinking of the woolly-minded and self-righteous kind as much as I dislike the fanatical right.
I really was not indulging in a ‘both sides’ analysis, I was simply pointing out that the noise generated by the ‘culture wars’ distracts from what needs to be done — which is to reform institutions, rather than individuals. Of course, a certain kind of person, whether on the right or the left, prefers the distraction of that noise, since it serves their ends.
the noise generated by the ‘culture wars’ distracts from what needs to be done — which is to reform institutions, rather than individuals.
In a nutshell.
Hi Ophelia, #16:
We could, and I’d be fine with that, but wider society will decide and de facto it is being called “CRT”.
But even accurately-defined CRT is not benign. In common with many far-left ideologies, it subsumes individuals into groups and treats group identity as more important than the individual — and yet treating individuals as individuals is central to the whole liberal enlightenment.
#19
Yes, I am. That is central to everything. (And institutions that don’t treat people equally and on their individual merit, but instead treat them unfairly based on group identity, are wrong for exactly that reason.)
Newfound? I asked you to quote saying otherwise, and I note that you haven’t.
Quote me calling them “rather harmless”. Bet you can’t. Quote me calling them a “happy few”. Bet you can’t. Quote me saying they are less worthy of alarm. Bet you can’t.
And now you are insinuating that I “fondly” suppose those things — based on nothing. Your entire post is snide and dishonest, the sort of thing more commonly found on FtB.
[NB, sorry Ophelia if calling commenters “snide and dishonest” is against the rules here, but really.]
I don’t think that’s true though, at least not always or necessarily. Individuals exist in groups, and would flounder without them. I don’t think recognition of that equals not treating people as individuals.
There’s also the issue of who started it. The whole idea of race as a pretext for enslavement treats group identity as more important than the individual, so how do you know a heightened focus on how that worked and works wouldn’t be beneficial for individuals affected by it?
It’s the Thatcher idea, isn’t it – there’s no such thing as society, there are only individuals and families.
But you might just as well say there’s no such thing as family, there are only individuals.
Of course there is society, and there are groups, and we need to understand how they work. Doing that doesn’t belittle or disappear individuals.
I agree. Nothing about fairness and due process for individuals means we shouldn’t also analyse groups and societal structures, especially to ensure that they do indeed treat everyone fairly.
Agreed. And, while it took a long while, a focus on equality and individual liberties underpinned a lot of progress towards the ideal summed up by MLK’s famous statement. That goal was a society in which race didn’t matter much any more. (And that is *not* saying that one should ignore any remaining structural unfairness.)
But today’s activists don’t want that, they don’t want equality they want “equity” — identical outcomes for all groups enforced by quotas. And to enforce that they want everything to be about race, they want a society in which everyone is race conscious all the time. They don’t want a society in which race doesn’t matter any more, they want a society in which it matters all the time. Such a society would be micro-managed by an army of activists to impose equal-outcome equity.
Marxism focused on everyone having the same amount of wealth. It doesn’t work. The amount of state control needed to ensure that always goes wrong. CRT is a product of Marxism, but with the focus on wealth and class replaced by a focus on race.
Well, I know what you mean, I think, but I don’t see it as necessarily a permanent or long-term issue. (Mind you, I think in the long term climate change is going to make all that irrelevant.) The whole subject has been buried and minimized for so long that it seems to need a lot of push to make a difference.
(I also don’t think Marxism has much to do with it, but that’s too large a subject to get into.)
Most people, Coel, would, I think, recognise the ‘happy few’ as being a reference to Shakespeare’s ‘Henry V’. Perhaps its placement was ambiguous. It was in no way intended to suggest that you actually said it in reference to those ‘some confederate-flag-waving republicans’ (something that I should have thought would be obvious, and in any event something anyone on this thread could readily check if they wondered whether I was attributing it to you), but to point to the self-conceit of those who indulge in such sentimental fantasies.
What does come across in your writing, despite your disclaimers and despite what is going in the USA at the moment under your nose, is that you are far more exercised about that university ‘cabal of left-wing activists’ than about confederate-flag-waving republicans. If you do think that right-wing, racist threat is important, then you should make it rather clearer than you do, instead of appearing to reduce it to a trivial-sounding matter of ‘some confederate-flag-waving republicans’. You should learn to write better, as perhaps I should also do when I introduce quotations from Shakespeare.
I am glad to learn that your idea of the ‘middle-ground’ is rather more nuanced than at first it appeared.
Yes, I think MLK’s ideal of a society where the colour of your skin is no longer important is wholly admirable, but MLK was a highly intelligent man, well aware of how his society worked, and knew very well that the way to achieve this was to create juster institutions, and that was what he fought for.
Incidentally, Mark Moffett’s thought-provoking and well-researched (if overly long) ‘The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall’ (pub. BASIC) brings out very clearly how human societies, and groups within societies, define themselves against one another, come together and break apart. The idea that ‘individuals’ are the basic units of a society is exploded, as is the idea that ‘our thoughts are ours’ (sorry to quote Shakespeare again – from ‘Hamlet’, in case anyone’s interested, though in context the Player King means something different from what I am using his words to mean). We not only imbibe prejudices with our mother’s milk, but are so constituted as to be naturally prejudicial without prompting from those around us, and for good evolutionary reasons. That is why the concept of the ‘individual’ as ideally a being that exists in some way independently of a given society and its history and institutions, wholly free to make her or his own judgements and to consort in a wholly unprejudicial way with other similar ‘individuals’, is so wrong and so obfuscating, though that does not prevent the ideologues of the libertarian right from embracing it (it is very far from true that ideologues exist only on the left). The fact that we are all prejudiced in many ways and ready to embrace new prejudices, and that no such thing as an unprejudiced individual standing somehow free of the social institutions & values that in large part constitute her or him exists, also suggests that the best way to create a society that is more just with respect to class, race and other things, is not to indulge in training programmes for individuals that are likely only (and rightly) to create resentment, but to reform its institutions in ways that will genuinely be helpful – by which I do not mean allowing the Scottish police to hunt down people who have ‘transgressed’ by asserting that trans-women are not women in private e-mails or on Twitter.
#27:
Well sure, as did I …
You’re right, you didn’t intend to suggest that I’d “actually said it” with reference to “confederate-flag-waving republicans”, but you *did* intended the snide insinuation that I *thought* it. And that’s nasty and dishonest.
And no, I don’t agree with the idea that if I criticise A I must also list all the things I regard as worse issues than A (including pandemics, climate change, cancer, Uighur genocide, et cetera et cetera) else I be interpreted as not caring about any of them. That’s just ludicrous.
As a matter of fact, I did not intend to insinuate that you thought those ‘confederate-flag-waving republicans were a ‘happy few’, and frankly wonder at your manner of reading things, but if that is what you wish to suppose, so be it. I apologise for not being clear enough, and in the process upsetting you.
I was not at all suggesting that if you criticise A, you must also list everything else in the universe that you consider to be worse. Again, I wonder at the way you read things. We are talking about a specific issue here. It was you who made the comparison between a ‘cabal of left-wing activists’ and ‘some confederate-flag-waving republicans’, which it is frankly difficult not to read as suggesting that the latter are really a rather harmless lot compared with that nasty ‘cabal’. Perhaps we both need to be clearer in what we write.
In case anyone is interested, Charlie Sykes at the Bulwark (Charlie Sykes – The Bulwark
morningshots@substack.com ) has an article about the way Critical Race Theory is being misrepresented. The Bulwark is a website started up by a group of conservatives (including William Kristol) who became disenchanted with the way the Republican Party was going, and contains a lot of thoughtful writing.
Sykes speaks of Christopher Rufo as an anti-CRT activist, and describes his and his mates’ tactics as follows:
‘They are playing a (race) card, not making an actual argument. They may not understand what it (CRT) means, but they know that this is a way for them to push back (and shut down) debates about racial injustice. Any concerns about the history of racism or police violence can be simply dismissed: “See, what you’re doing is Critical Race Theory.” I regret to inform you that this includes simply making shit up.’
Oh you didn’t?
OK then, so what exactly were you trying to insinuate by writing: “I note that you seem to find that left-wing ‘cabal’ far more worthy of alarm than those seemingly rather harmless ‘confederate-flag-waving republicans’- that ‘happy few’.”?
[And please note that this was in the midst of lots of other snide mis-attributions to me: “claims that he seemed rather reluctant to accept in the past”, “… new-found recognition”, “… seemingly rather harmless”, “… appear fondly to suppose …” — none of which are fair based on anything I’ve actually said.]
Sorry, Coel, I am done with your aggrieved responses, and I do not wish to test Opheiia’s patience any more. This is not my website or yours. I recommend that you read the Bulwark article mentioned in my previous comment, and click on ‘making shit up’ (which in the original is in red lettering): that will link you to a Washington Post story in which the tactics of Christopher Rufo and his like to are also discussed. The Bulwark article quotes Rufo as saying, ‘We have successfully frozen their brand – “critical race theory” – into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions…. and will recodify it to annex the entire range of of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.’ That’s it. Farewell.