A fine article and argument. But there are some additional points to be made against the ideal of race consciousness. Before I state them, let me say the way it is practiced by major sections of the American Left today is not merely race consciousness, but race obsession. An article in the Washington Post about South Asian food is replete with references to racism, colonialism and imperialism. Anybody who went into a coma in 2010 and woke up today to read this article would be puzzled. Why look at EVERYTHING through that prism? The sheer one-sidedness and extremism of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a concern. There is a totalitarian element here that seeks to explain all of human history through one idea. This is similar to Communism - in Communism, all of history could be encapsulated or made intelligible through the singular framework of class struggle. CRT replaces class with race. Here are three additional reasons to be very critical of the anti-modern and anti-liberal ideology of CRT.
1. It goes against the fundamental tenet of Enlightenment Liberalism which the philosopher Isaiah Berlin called "humanitarian individualism". Morally, it is profoundly wrong to reduce people to an identity that they acquired as an accident of birth. The fact that I am a brown man tells you NOTHING important about me, it tells you nothing about my uniqueness, my individuality as a human being which is not the sum total of my ascriptive identities. I would never privilege my race/ethnicity over everything else that makes me who I am and I will reject the demand from anybody else that I see them primarily through their racial or ethnic or gender identity. A rejection of individualism is a rejection of two centuries of liberal Enlightenment philosophy and the political culture and Institutions that we have built around this concept.
2. Some people are encouraged to feel "virtuous" and "superior" solely on account of their skin color and others are encouraged to feel "guilty" in a personal sense and "inferior" on the same grounds. Every interaction of people between different races is seen through the lens of power in this ideology. This is a very unhealthy attitude. How do you know from someone's skin color that they are privileged? An upper middle class Indian professional in UK belongs to the "dominant culture" of successful professionals - he was able to achieve what he did because he was probably born into a family that emphasized human capital accumulation and other cultural habits associated with success -a working class white person is from a "subordinate culture" - he may have been born into a family that did not prepare him for achieving things in life. I may be white but I may have struggled with poverty and health issues all my life. How morally intolerable and anti-humanist it must be that we are able to make assumptions about other people based on their race without knowing a single thing about who they are as individuals and what their experiences are like.
Notice how the major religious traditions of the world and major philosophical traditions make universal claims that are not contingent on race. It is wrong to assign moral status to people based on race, it doesn't matter who does it or for what purpose. Martin Luther King wouldn't have called it "reverse racism" - he would have called it straight up racism, plain and simple.
3. CRT and its sort of totalitarian, Manichean vision is incompatible with the fundamental principles of a free society. Why should we listen to the arguments of others with whom we disagree if we believe that their opinions are not good faith efforts to reason about a complex world, but are necessarily expressions of the power of dominant groups etc? That is why the modern Left in American universities and cultural institutions is so intolerant and we are today discussing cancel culture. Good faith disagreement is not possible with this paradigm - all disagreements imply that you have the "wrong" standpoint which will perpetuate the racial status quo- there is nothing called "reason" or "logic" based on principles we all share- no universal ethical or moral principles, everything is about a contest of power between different groups. It is not that the Left doesn't believe in free speech, with this ideology, they simply can't.
I expected to be very sympathetic to this article. But I'm afraid it understates some very serious harms / disingenuous crap that's been perpetrated for 20,50,250 years by people on the Right. This phrase in the article "while some white progressives have adopted a self-flagellating attitude, many others will see this as an excuse to take pride in their membership of a socially important group. Race consciousness is as likely to reinforce white identity politics as it is to liberate racial minorities" made me think of it. I think that looking back at the "canon" you see a shit-ton of racial pride / white supremacist thinking masquerading as 'neutral celebration of wonderful ideas and cultural content.' When Pat Buchanan announces how the Western Canon (greeks with democracy, the novel, the Enlightenment - does he like the enlightenment?) is the basis of WORLD civilization... it's not a very compelling argument. Though those things are wonderful, I think there is a serious bias in there that has been shown to be a lot of crap: see recent correctives about the history of mathematics and the role of the Arab world, Chinese civilization, to name a couple of obvious ones. So while I agree that this concentration will indeed continue to divide us, we have to acknowledge we've been dealing with an avalanche of white supremacist propaganda MASQUERADING as 'morally neutral history of philosophy, science, art.'
I'm empathetic to this argument, but how do you reconcile it with the fact that past decisions have been made by race and have led to very real injustices today? I think of affirmative action as an example--if we took a "colorblindness" approach, our elite universities in the US would likely be mostly white and Asian because of historical and structural injustices that make it almost impossible for other underrepresented minorities to get in (e.g. lack of access to quality elementary/middle schools, inequitable access to social capital, etc). Is that the outcome we are hoping for? I would think not. You still need some race consciousness to ensure eventual equality of outcomes. Its fine to strive for colorblindness as an ideal (ideally, outcomes are equal so we don't have to worry about race in things like college admissions), but I disagree with completely doing away with race consciousness. To do so would just uphold the currently unequal status quo.
If we are genetically hard-wired to instantly and continuously differentiate among other human beings based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, etc., then a "blind" approach really is only for angels. Better to accept that everybody responds to race and a great many other stimuli, and help everyone manage this tendency better.
I appreciated the author's points in this article, much of it is in line with my own thinking. I often find myself thinking of race of late, imagine that, and find myself as a successful white 50 caucasian male having confused thoughts and feelings. Mind you I am not a silver spoon baby, but instead, the son of a single mom who suffered from mental health issues, who grew up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood, has dyslexia, and who suffered for much of his younger life of drug addiction spending much of my youth all my twenties and early thirties incarcerated behind bars. I grew up with African Americans (along with whites and Mexicans) had two best friends that were, at different times of my life, and the best man at my wedding was an African American, for some context. I was not handed anything and had to overcome much (much of it arguably of my own making) but I have become successful. I give back too, for further context, going into the county jail 4 times a month to share my story and offer suggestions to my brothers in there, oftentimes African American. The context is for those who would find it convenient to discount me as some type of racist. I have always considered myself color blind to a large degree, understanding none of us are ever free of racism totally (not even the self-righteous please spare me). My point or points. Is one I am not special yet I succeeded at least financially (can always use help spiritually and mentally, God save me) and I don't account it to being white like I had some type of pass. I resent the suggestion and find it offensive, but get over it quickly not carrying it around like a banner. And if I feel this way do other whites too? I tend to think so because I am just an average joe. Is this race consciousness working to irradicate racism? I would venture no. I at the same time know something must be done to fix the system so African Americans are not killed at such an alarming rate, have a higher rate of unemployment, and an extremely higher rate of incarceration. I still feel I am being pushed to be more tribal, a natural tendency of all humans when they feel they are being attacked. I am not looking for pity for God's sake, but I don't feel like I can share my thoughts, being a successful white male, as I am here, openly in the liberal vacuum without being shamed, which makes me feel like I am being attacked, my space in life at risk. Some more context, to interrupt the liberal prosecutors' train of thought, I love President Obama (I would argue a moderate with left-leanings like my own and some right ones too)and Michelle I love even more (God bless them both) and in regards to Trump, well traitors should be hung. I am not educated dropped out in 9th grade so what do I know. I know I can learn much and should be open to suggestions. May one love prevail.
There must be some role for tracking and reporting phenomena by race, if only to audit if people and organizations are effective in their attempted colornlindness and provide feedback and tske corrective steps if not. e.g. Noting the race of the driver during traffic stops to see if there are any concerning patterns. Or, would you disagree?
This sort of "race consciousness" seems different in character from what you're arguing against, and not incompatible with commitment to equal treatment and procedural neutrality by or regardless of race.
How would you distinguish the "race consciousness" i just described from that you are arguing against in your thoughtful essay?
I am left-leaning and occasionally read scholarly articles about social justice. My understanding of race consciousness is that it is about understanding how the history of race in America has organized our lives and shaped our culture and ways of thinking, that our brains are powerful habit makers (of bodily actions but also of thoughts) and that our brains tend to filter out evidence that doesn't comport with our world view. Thus, race has already shaped how we make judgements; we aren't starting with a blank slate. Race consciousness facilitates colorblindness by pointing to ways of thinking that might reveal to us when we aren't being colorblind (even when we might think we are).
So I was taken aback when I read Matt Lutz's description that race consciousness tells us to "treat members of different racial groups differently." I wondered where that came from. Does it hint at affirmative action? Is it a misunderstanding of race consciousness? Do anti-racism activists them selves misunderstand it? Could they be accessing scholarship while interpreting it shallowly? I have a sense of that with other social justice topics: intersectionality has a decades-long history in legal scholarship, but to hear activists invoke the term it sounds like something different. If activists are misconstruing these ideas, I am in favor of correcting that with deeper explanation. I oppose misrepresenting the ideas and throwing them out.
I have heard plenty of criticism of the anti-racist movement, but this is an entirely original argument. I appreciate that. I definitely think advocates of an anti-racist approach have unrealistic, positive expectations of how people will use their heightened awareness of race.
Fantastic rational take, glad I subscribed! And not only is racism clearly baked into humanity as our tribalism illustrates, based on lots of what we know about immunology its likely baked into our genome at least as far as diseases go as well:
A fine article and argument. But there are some additional points to be made against the ideal of race consciousness. Before I state them, let me say the way it is practiced by major sections of the American Left today is not merely race consciousness, but race obsession. An article in the Washington Post about South Asian food is replete with references to racism, colonialism and imperialism. Anybody who went into a coma in 2010 and woke up today to read this article would be puzzled. Why look at EVERYTHING through that prism? The sheer one-sidedness and extremism of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a concern. There is a totalitarian element here that seeks to explain all of human history through one idea. This is similar to Communism - in Communism, all of history could be encapsulated or made intelligible through the singular framework of class struggle. CRT replaces class with race. Here are three additional reasons to be very critical of the anti-modern and anti-liberal ideology of CRT.
1. It goes against the fundamental tenet of Enlightenment Liberalism which the philosopher Isaiah Berlin called "humanitarian individualism". Morally, it is profoundly wrong to reduce people to an identity that they acquired as an accident of birth. The fact that I am a brown man tells you NOTHING important about me, it tells you nothing about my uniqueness, my individuality as a human being which is not the sum total of my ascriptive identities. I would never privilege my race/ethnicity over everything else that makes me who I am and I will reject the demand from anybody else that I see them primarily through their racial or ethnic or gender identity. A rejection of individualism is a rejection of two centuries of liberal Enlightenment philosophy and the political culture and Institutions that we have built around this concept.
2. Some people are encouraged to feel "virtuous" and "superior" solely on account of their skin color and others are encouraged to feel "guilty" in a personal sense and "inferior" on the same grounds. Every interaction of people between different races is seen through the lens of power in this ideology. This is a very unhealthy attitude. How do you know from someone's skin color that they are privileged? An upper middle class Indian professional in UK belongs to the "dominant culture" of successful professionals - he was able to achieve what he did because he was probably born into a family that emphasized human capital accumulation and other cultural habits associated with success -a working class white person is from a "subordinate culture" - he may have been born into a family that did not prepare him for achieving things in life. I may be white but I may have struggled with poverty and health issues all my life. How morally intolerable and anti-humanist it must be that we are able to make assumptions about other people based on their race without knowing a single thing about who they are as individuals and what their experiences are like.
Notice how the major religious traditions of the world and major philosophical traditions make universal claims that are not contingent on race. It is wrong to assign moral status to people based on race, it doesn't matter who does it or for what purpose. Martin Luther King wouldn't have called it "reverse racism" - he would have called it straight up racism, plain and simple.
3. CRT and its sort of totalitarian, Manichean vision is incompatible with the fundamental principles of a free society. Why should we listen to the arguments of others with whom we disagree if we believe that their opinions are not good faith efforts to reason about a complex world, but are necessarily expressions of the power of dominant groups etc? That is why the modern Left in American universities and cultural institutions is so intolerant and we are today discussing cancel culture. Good faith disagreement is not possible with this paradigm - all disagreements imply that you have the "wrong" standpoint which will perpetuate the racial status quo- there is nothing called "reason" or "logic" based on principles we all share- no universal ethical or moral principles, everything is about a contest of power between different groups. It is not that the Left doesn't believe in free speech, with this ideology, they simply can't.
I expected to be very sympathetic to this article. But I'm afraid it understates some very serious harms / disingenuous crap that's been perpetrated for 20,50,250 years by people on the Right. This phrase in the article "while some white progressives have adopted a self-flagellating attitude, many others will see this as an excuse to take pride in their membership of a socially important group. Race consciousness is as likely to reinforce white identity politics as it is to liberate racial minorities" made me think of it. I think that looking back at the "canon" you see a shit-ton of racial pride / white supremacist thinking masquerading as 'neutral celebration of wonderful ideas and cultural content.' When Pat Buchanan announces how the Western Canon (greeks with democracy, the novel, the Enlightenment - does he like the enlightenment?) is the basis of WORLD civilization... it's not a very compelling argument. Though those things are wonderful, I think there is a serious bias in there that has been shown to be a lot of crap: see recent correctives about the history of mathematics and the role of the Arab world, Chinese civilization, to name a couple of obvious ones. So while I agree that this concentration will indeed continue to divide us, we have to acknowledge we've been dealing with an avalanche of white supremacist propaganda MASQUERADING as 'morally neutral history of philosophy, science, art.'
I'm empathetic to this argument, but how do you reconcile it with the fact that past decisions have been made by race and have led to very real injustices today? I think of affirmative action as an example--if we took a "colorblindness" approach, our elite universities in the US would likely be mostly white and Asian because of historical and structural injustices that make it almost impossible for other underrepresented minorities to get in (e.g. lack of access to quality elementary/middle schools, inequitable access to social capital, etc). Is that the outcome we are hoping for? I would think not. You still need some race consciousness to ensure eventual equality of outcomes. Its fine to strive for colorblindness as an ideal (ideally, outcomes are equal so we don't have to worry about race in things like college admissions), but I disagree with completely doing away with race consciousness. To do so would just uphold the currently unequal status quo.
If we are genetically hard-wired to instantly and continuously differentiate among other human beings based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, etc., then a "blind" approach really is only for angels. Better to accept that everybody responds to race and a great many other stimuli, and help everyone manage this tendency better.
I appreciated the author's points in this article, much of it is in line with my own thinking. I often find myself thinking of race of late, imagine that, and find myself as a successful white 50 caucasian male having confused thoughts and feelings. Mind you I am not a silver spoon baby, but instead, the son of a single mom who suffered from mental health issues, who grew up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood, has dyslexia, and who suffered for much of his younger life of drug addiction spending much of my youth all my twenties and early thirties incarcerated behind bars. I grew up with African Americans (along with whites and Mexicans) had two best friends that were, at different times of my life, and the best man at my wedding was an African American, for some context. I was not handed anything and had to overcome much (much of it arguably of my own making) but I have become successful. I give back too, for further context, going into the county jail 4 times a month to share my story and offer suggestions to my brothers in there, oftentimes African American. The context is for those who would find it convenient to discount me as some type of racist. I have always considered myself color blind to a large degree, understanding none of us are ever free of racism totally (not even the self-righteous please spare me). My point or points. Is one I am not special yet I succeeded at least financially (can always use help spiritually and mentally, God save me) and I don't account it to being white like I had some type of pass. I resent the suggestion and find it offensive, but get over it quickly not carrying it around like a banner. And if I feel this way do other whites too? I tend to think so because I am just an average joe. Is this race consciousness working to irradicate racism? I would venture no. I at the same time know something must be done to fix the system so African Americans are not killed at such an alarming rate, have a higher rate of unemployment, and an extremely higher rate of incarceration. I still feel I am being pushed to be more tribal, a natural tendency of all humans when they feel they are being attacked. I am not looking for pity for God's sake, but I don't feel like I can share my thoughts, being a successful white male, as I am here, openly in the liberal vacuum without being shamed, which makes me feel like I am being attacked, my space in life at risk. Some more context, to interrupt the liberal prosecutors' train of thought, I love President Obama (I would argue a moderate with left-leanings like my own and some right ones too)and Michelle I love even more (God bless them both) and in regards to Trump, well traitors should be hung. I am not educated dropped out in 9th grade so what do I know. I know I can learn much and should be open to suggestions. May one love prevail.
There must be some role for tracking and reporting phenomena by race, if only to audit if people and organizations are effective in their attempted colornlindness and provide feedback and tske corrective steps if not. e.g. Noting the race of the driver during traffic stops to see if there are any concerning patterns. Or, would you disagree?
This sort of "race consciousness" seems different in character from what you're arguing against, and not incompatible with commitment to equal treatment and procedural neutrality by or regardless of race.
How would you distinguish the "race consciousness" i just described from that you are arguing against in your thoughtful essay?
I am left-leaning and occasionally read scholarly articles about social justice. My understanding of race consciousness is that it is about understanding how the history of race in America has organized our lives and shaped our culture and ways of thinking, that our brains are powerful habit makers (of bodily actions but also of thoughts) and that our brains tend to filter out evidence that doesn't comport with our world view. Thus, race has already shaped how we make judgements; we aren't starting with a blank slate. Race consciousness facilitates colorblindness by pointing to ways of thinking that might reveal to us when we aren't being colorblind (even when we might think we are).
So I was taken aback when I read Matt Lutz's description that race consciousness tells us to "treat members of different racial groups differently." I wondered where that came from. Does it hint at affirmative action? Is it a misunderstanding of race consciousness? Do anti-racism activists them selves misunderstand it? Could they be accessing scholarship while interpreting it shallowly? I have a sense of that with other social justice topics: intersectionality has a decades-long history in legal scholarship, but to hear activists invoke the term it sounds like something different. If activists are misconstruing these ideas, I am in favor of correcting that with deeper explanation. I oppose misrepresenting the ideas and throwing them out.
I have heard plenty of criticism of the anti-racist movement, but this is an entirely original argument. I appreciate that. I definitely think advocates of an anti-racist approach have unrealistic, positive expectations of how people will use their heightened awareness of race.
Fantastic rational take, glad I subscribed! And not only is racism clearly baked into humanity as our tribalism illustrates, based on lots of what we know about immunology its likely baked into our genome at least as far as diseases go as well:
https://harvard2thebighouse.substack.com/p/the-racism-instinct