Good article. One thing I would add is that it's not just concept creep, but a combination of concept creep and concept contraction. The offense becomes more expansive when it's committed by Them and narrower when it's committed by Us. An obvious example is how the definition of racism has both expanded to where whites can't possibly be innocent and contracted to where Blacks can't possibly be guilty. And if we need a reminder that it's not just one side doing it, remember how during the Bush years the definition of terrorism both expanded for Muslims and contracted for everyone else, which is why some of the most enthusiastic supporters of the "War on Terror" were also defenders of the Irgun or the IRA.
And while maybe it's a bit of concept creep on my part to think that this is the place for it, I'd like to throw my name for the illiberal leftism that's gained so much power recently out there and see what people think. As Yascha points out in The Great Experiment, we could use a new one. Woke has become too cliche. Political correctness is too old-fashioned. Nobody can agree on how to define critical race theory. Successor ideology never caught on. And progressive is hardly the word for people who deny that we have made progress, who insist that America is just as racist as it was fifty or a hundred years ago.
So my term for it is "Costanza politics", from the Seinfeld where George decides to do everything by opposites. Because its premise seems to be that is traditional hierarchies of dominance are wrong, the opposite hierarchies would have to be right.
Good points, Wayne. I find it disturbing however, that the "Costanzas" are expanding the definitions of racist, white supremacy and homo/transphobia so much that it restricts the potential for true, reasonable interactions on solutions to problems like education, crime and healthcare. It also concerns me that what was once considered patriotic sentiment such as support for the flag, law enforcement and the military are now considered "white supremacy". The definition also seems to expand to Black Conservatives of all things
What I see happening is that the right is pushing back with definition contractions of their own, which has it's own consequences. The whole process causes even more division in an already fractured society. Yet oddly, I see day to day interactions between races and ethnicities seemingly unaffected and generally civil.
Our politicians, pundits and media do a great disservice by continuing to perpetuate these expanding definitions. It's gotten so absurd that a Black politician accused a Black man of "white supremacy" for a mass killing in an Asian community.
Not disagreeing that this shit is crazy and hateful, but *it matters* that the Trumps and Carlsons have more power over their side than their equivalents on the left. I'd say the Democrats are roughly where the Republicans were in 2008: the McCain equivalents are still in charge, but they have to make concessions to the increasing power of the Palin equivalents.
Essentially all of American is controlled by 'woke' ideology. The list of takeovers is long; Hollywood, the media, K-12 education, universities, NGOs, SV, Tech, Wall Street, corporate America, the FBI, the CIA, the military, etc.
None of the terms is really going to be great. I stick with "woke" for the most part. Bottom line: those in that camp do not wish to recognize themselves as a group, so there will be no non-contentious definition forthcoming.
It does seem that perhaps, given the conclusion of the article, the answer may be to stop trying to lump a whole bunch of related things together into one convenient, but fuzzy category. Rather, address specific issues specifically.
Talk about concept creep. I’m guessing by “defenders of Irgun and the IRA,” you mean supporters of Israel and a united Ireland? Because I don’t see anyone defending the Irgun today, and only very hard Leftists backing the IRA anymore.
I think that has a lot more to do with the history of Israel than the culture war in the United States, but I could be wrong. I don’t see too many people in America who even know what the Irgun was, much less celebrate it, whereas Nakba rhetoric and Hamas are enjoying quite the renaissance on college campuses across the country.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of our politics that well before his retirement from Congress, King had been surpassed in crazy by folks in both parties and fell from the lunacy limelight. Oh, for the saner times when your worst nutjobs were Pete Kings and Jim Trafficants!
The problem with word people is that they often cannot see the forest for all the trees.
The extremists on the left are blasting flamethrowers of word absurdity at us... but instead of fighting the general absurdity, we pick apart the meaning of the words and thus give credibility to the absurdity. It then leaks into some version of new normal.
CRT is fake scholarship. It is a cult-based toxic parasitic mind virus. Nothing that comes out of it is credible. The people that have adopted the cult beliefs are damaged. The debate should not be the credibility of the CRT-derived words, phrases and ideas... it should be only about the effort to rid ourselves of the entire rats nest of critical theory propaganda.
Re the concept of "punctuality" being "white supremacy": That took me back to my college years at Ohio U. A real lefty, I couldn't wait to get there to join the SDS chapter, this in the late 60s. And so, I did. Early on, the leading light in the group, a grad student who shall go unnamed here, invited me to go along on a trip to Yellow Springs, home of Antioch College, the Valhalla (at that time) of campus radicalism in Ohio. Another member was going along, and, at our scheduled time of departure, he hadn't appeared. Upon which, Marty, our "leader", explosively remarked, "Punctuality is one of the few bourgeois virtues I appreciate!" I guess "bourgeois" has now morphed into "white supremacy". But that term has become more inclusive. I am an Appalachian, by birth and lifelong residence. And "white supremacist" gets applied to the most impoverished denizen living way up a hollow, who would never have been termed "bourgeois".
Of course, the real world always takes its revenge (2 + 2 is still equal to 4 even though the 'woke' don't like it) A few measures of how things work in the real world. Singapore is dozens of times richer than Haiti, even though that is not PC.
2. One clue is to look at societies where ‘racism’ (the white kind) hasn’t existed for a very long time. The Haitian Revolution was 217 years ago. If ‘white racism’ was really such a powerful force, then Haiti should be highly successful. That does not seem to be the case.
3. The per-capita GDP of Singapore is only 34X of Haiti. The US/white role in each country has been quite small. Both countries are removed from the USA and yet show disparities even larger than found in the USA.
4. In World War II, Japanese-Americans were interned in various camps and typically lost everything. Yet, by the middle 1960s, they were more successful than whites in America. Back then, racism towards Japanese-Americans wasn’t hypothetical or limited to the internment camps. See “ALIEN LAND LAWS IN CALIFORNIA (1913 & 1920)” (https://immigrationhistory.org/item/alien-land-laws-in-california-1913-1920/).
It should be noted that the Japanese-Americans in question were hardly elite. They were brought to America as farm laborers. However, even after the Word War II camps, they were highly successful. See “"Success Story, Japanese-American Style” (New York Times (1923-Current File); Jan 9, 1966)
5. It turns out that all of the most successful ethnic groups in America are non-white. Some are wildly more successful than white. Some statistics. Median Household income for Indian Americans ($107,390), Jews ($97,500), Taiwanese ($85,566), all Asians ($74,245) is greater than Whites ($59,698). As can you see, non-white ethnic groups are at the top and Jews earn (far) more than non-Jewish whites.
These numbers are real, but have two major problems. First, Asian households tend to be larger than non-Asian households. Using personal income provides a better measure than household income. Asian personal income is also higher than non-Asian personal income. However, the positive gap is not as large as the household income gap. The second problem is the nature of the 1965 Immigration Act. The 1965 Act favored (rightfully so) highly educated immigrants over less educated immigrants. The cliché Indian-American immigrant to the US is a doctor. Of course, that is a cliché. However, it is a cliché because it has some element of truth to it.
6. It turns out the school funding is not equal across the United Sates. New York state spends the most (over $24K per-student, per-year) and Utah spends the least (around $7K per-student, per-year). However, the results almost exactly the opposite of what ‘white racism’ theory predicts. Utah has higher test scores that New York state. Of course, ‘white racism’ theory would predict the Utah would spend more than New York state. That isn’t even remotely true.
7. Police fatalities are not equally distributed by race. In 2019, just 17 Asians were killed by the police. For whites the number was 406, and blacks 259. ‘White racism’ can not possibly explain the amazingly low number of Asians shot by police. For a typical factoid, in one year, two Japanese-Americans were arrested for murder. Not 200, or 200,000. Just two.
8. The Asian incarceration rate is 74.5% lower than the white incarceration rate and 95% below the black incarceration rate. ‘White racism’ can not possibly explain these astounding differences.
9. It turns out that schools discipline rates are tracked by race. See Figure 15.3 of “Indicator 15: Retention, Suspension, and Expulsion” (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rda.asp). ‘White racism’ can not possibly explain these astounding differences.
10. That statistics for SAT scores, college enrollment/completion, arrests, etc. are all readily available by race. You can even find COVID-19 vaccination statistics by race. Invariably, you will find racial disparities and invariably Asians will be on top. So much for the mythology of ‘white racism’.
11. It turns out that other groups are almost as unsuccessful in American life as blacks. Of course, these groups have no history of slavery, Red-Lining, Jim Crow, etc. Why are these groups almost as unsuccessful as blacks? The traditional excuses don’t come close to explaining the disparities. For example, according to Pew median family income for the Hmong (in 2015) was just $48,000 vs. $71,300 for white (Pew, 2014). The rather large differences in family income amount Asians are used to claim that the “model minority” status is a “myth”. Its not a myth, but what people sometimes call a fact. Pew (2014) found that average household for Asians was $77,900.
12. The Jussie Smollett case provides yet another proof that ‘systematic racism’ doesn’t exist (at least in the US). If ‘systematic racism’ was real, criminals such as Jussie Smollett wouldn’t need to go around inventing hate crimes, because they would have plenty of actual material to use. The fact that people like Jussie Smollett invent hate crimes is one indication of how rare such things are. Of course, some types of hate crimes do occur. No one talks about them because they aren’t PC.
Good article. One thing I would add is that it's not just concept creep, but a combination of concept creep and concept contraction. The offense becomes more expansive when it's committed by Them and narrower when it's committed by Us. An obvious example is how the definition of racism has both expanded to where whites can't possibly be innocent and contracted to where Blacks can't possibly be guilty. And if we need a reminder that it's not just one side doing it, remember how during the Bush years the definition of terrorism both expanded for Muslims and contracted for everyone else, which is why some of the most enthusiastic supporters of the "War on Terror" were also defenders of the Irgun or the IRA.
And while maybe it's a bit of concept creep on my part to think that this is the place for it, I'd like to throw my name for the illiberal leftism that's gained so much power recently out there and see what people think. As Yascha points out in The Great Experiment, we could use a new one. Woke has become too cliche. Political correctness is too old-fashioned. Nobody can agree on how to define critical race theory. Successor ideology never caught on. And progressive is hardly the word for people who deny that we have made progress, who insist that America is just as racist as it was fifty or a hundred years ago.
So my term for it is "Costanza politics", from the Seinfeld where George decides to do everything by opposites. Because its premise seems to be that is traditional hierarchies of dominance are wrong, the opposite hierarchies would have to be right.
Good points, Wayne. I find it disturbing however, that the "Costanzas" are expanding the definitions of racist, white supremacy and homo/transphobia so much that it restricts the potential for true, reasonable interactions on solutions to problems like education, crime and healthcare. It also concerns me that what was once considered patriotic sentiment such as support for the flag, law enforcement and the military are now considered "white supremacy". The definition also seems to expand to Black Conservatives of all things
What I see happening is that the right is pushing back with definition contractions of their own, which has it's own consequences. The whole process causes even more division in an already fractured society. Yet oddly, I see day to day interactions between races and ethnicities seemingly unaffected and generally civil.
Our politicians, pundits and media do a great disservice by continuing to perpetuate these expanding definitions. It's gotten so absurd that a Black politician accused a Black man of "white supremacy" for a mass killing in an Asian community.
Not disagreeing that this shit is crazy and hateful, but *it matters* that the Trumps and Carlsons have more power over their side than their equivalents on the left. I'd say the Democrats are roughly where the Republicans were in 2008: the McCain equivalents are still in charge, but they have to make concessions to the increasing power of the Palin equivalents.
Essentially all of American is controlled by 'woke' ideology. The list of takeovers is long; Hollywood, the media, K-12 education, universities, NGOs, SV, Tech, Wall Street, corporate America, the FBI, the CIA, the military, etc.
None of the terms is really going to be great. I stick with "woke" for the most part. Bottom line: those in that camp do not wish to recognize themselves as a group, so there will be no non-contentious definition forthcoming.
It does seem that perhaps, given the conclusion of the article, the answer may be to stop trying to lump a whole bunch of related things together into one convenient, but fuzzy category. Rather, address specific issues specifically.
That's the problem. The activist wings don't care about facts. Everything they are for or against i gathered together as a whole and dumbed down
Otherwise, I wholeheartedly agree with your comment.
Talk about concept creep. I’m guessing by “defenders of Irgun and the IRA,” you mean supporters of Israel and a united Ireland? Because I don’t see anyone defending the Irgun today, and only very hard Leftists backing the IRA anymore.
Note also that as recently as 2006, a plaque was unveiled at the King David Hotel celebrating the 1946 bombing.
I think that has a lot more to do with the history of Israel than the culture war in the United States, but I could be wrong. I don’t see too many people in America who even know what the Irgun was, much less celebrate it, whereas Nakba rhetoric and Hamas are enjoying quite the renaissance on college campuses across the country.
For the IRA I was thinking of Peter King, for the Irgun I was thinking of the fact that its leader was the founder of Likud.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of our politics that well before his retirement from Congress, King had been surpassed in crazy by folks in both parties and fell from the lunacy limelight. Oh, for the saner times when your worst nutjobs were Pete Kings and Jim Trafficants!
He was my congressman for years.
I’m sorry. I had to suffer through two terms of Dave Brat. I can only imagine.
Concept creep has also overtaken the word "literally" to muddy the waters even further. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
The problem with word people is that they often cannot see the forest for all the trees.
The extremists on the left are blasting flamethrowers of word absurdity at us... but instead of fighting the general absurdity, we pick apart the meaning of the words and thus give credibility to the absurdity. It then leaks into some version of new normal.
CRT is fake scholarship. It is a cult-based toxic parasitic mind virus. Nothing that comes out of it is credible. The people that have adopted the cult beliefs are damaged. The debate should not be the credibility of the CRT-derived words, phrases and ideas... it should be only about the effort to rid ourselves of the entire rats nest of critical theory propaganda.
Re the concept of "punctuality" being "white supremacy": That took me back to my college years at Ohio U. A real lefty, I couldn't wait to get there to join the SDS chapter, this in the late 60s. And so, I did. Early on, the leading light in the group, a grad student who shall go unnamed here, invited me to go along on a trip to Yellow Springs, home of Antioch College, the Valhalla (at that time) of campus radicalism in Ohio. Another member was going along, and, at our scheduled time of departure, he hadn't appeared. Upon which, Marty, our "leader", explosively remarked, "Punctuality is one of the few bourgeois virtues I appreciate!" I guess "bourgeois" has now morphed into "white supremacy". But that term has become more inclusive. I am an Appalachian, by birth and lifelong residence. And "white supremacist" gets applied to the most impoverished denizen living way up a hollow, who would never have been termed "bourgeois".
These days 'objectivity' is claimed to be another form of racism. Type 'objectivity racism' into Google and you will see what I mean.
Of course, the real world always takes its revenge (2 + 2 is still equal to 4 even though the 'woke' don't like it) A few measures of how things work in the real world. Singapore is dozens of times richer than Haiti, even though that is not PC.
Is America (the United States) systematically racist? There are a number of ways of looking at this, but they all yield the same answer. No.
1. The US and Canada have very different racial histories. However, the black/white income gap is remarkably similar. See “Black Canadians and Black Americans: Racial income inequality in comparative perspective” (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233008532_Black_Canadians_and_Black_Americans_Racial_income_inequality_in_comparative_perspective).
2. One clue is to look at societies where ‘racism’ (the white kind) hasn’t existed for a very long time. The Haitian Revolution was 217 years ago. If ‘white racism’ was really such a powerful force, then Haiti should be highly successful. That does not seem to be the case.
3. The per-capita GDP of Singapore is only 34X of Haiti. The US/white role in each country has been quite small. Both countries are removed from the USA and yet show disparities even larger than found in the USA.
4. In World War II, Japanese-Americans were interned in various camps and typically lost everything. Yet, by the middle 1960s, they were more successful than whites in America. Back then, racism towards Japanese-Americans wasn’t hypothetical or limited to the internment camps. See “ALIEN LAND LAWS IN CALIFORNIA (1913 & 1920)” (https://immigrationhistory.org/item/alien-land-laws-in-california-1913-1920/).
It should be noted that the Japanese-Americans in question were hardly elite. They were brought to America as farm laborers. However, even after the Word War II camps, they were highly successful. See “"Success Story, Japanese-American Style” (New York Times (1923-Current File); Jan 9, 1966)
5. It turns out that all of the most successful ethnic groups in America are non-white. Some are wildly more successful than white. Some statistics. Median Household income for Indian Americans ($107,390), Jews ($97,500), Taiwanese ($85,566), all Asians ($74,245) is greater than Whites ($59,698). As can you see, non-white ethnic groups are at the top and Jews earn (far) more than non-Jewish whites.
These numbers are real, but have two major problems. First, Asian households tend to be larger than non-Asian households. Using personal income provides a better measure than household income. Asian personal income is also higher than non-Asian personal income. However, the positive gap is not as large as the household income gap. The second problem is the nature of the 1965 Immigration Act. The 1965 Act favored (rightfully so) highly educated immigrants over less educated immigrants. The cliché Indian-American immigrant to the US is a doctor. Of course, that is a cliché. However, it is a cliché because it has some element of truth to it.
6. It turns out the school funding is not equal across the United Sates. New York state spends the most (over $24K per-student, per-year) and Utah spends the least (around $7K per-student, per-year). However, the results almost exactly the opposite of what ‘white racism’ theory predicts. Utah has higher test scores that New York state. Of course, ‘white racism’ theory would predict the Utah would spend more than New York state. That isn’t even remotely true.
7. Police fatalities are not equally distributed by race. In 2019, just 17 Asians were killed by the police. For whites the number was 406, and blacks 259. ‘White racism’ can not possibly explain the amazingly low number of Asians shot by police. For a typical factoid, in one year, two Japanese-Americans were arrested for murder. Not 200, or 200,000. Just two.
8. The Asian incarceration rate is 74.5% lower than the white incarceration rate and 95% below the black incarceration rate. ‘White racism’ can not possibly explain these astounding differences.
9. It turns out that schools discipline rates are tracked by race. See Figure 15.3 of “Indicator 15: Retention, Suspension, and Expulsion” (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rda.asp). ‘White racism’ can not possibly explain these astounding differences.
10. That statistics for SAT scores, college enrollment/completion, arrests, etc. are all readily available by race. You can even find COVID-19 vaccination statistics by race. Invariably, you will find racial disparities and invariably Asians will be on top. So much for the mythology of ‘white racism’.
11. It turns out that other groups are almost as unsuccessful in American life as blacks. Of course, these groups have no history of slavery, Red-Lining, Jim Crow, etc. Why are these groups almost as unsuccessful as blacks? The traditional excuses don’t come close to explaining the disparities. For example, according to Pew median family income for the Hmong (in 2015) was just $48,000 vs. $71,300 for white (Pew, 2014). The rather large differences in family income amount Asians are used to claim that the “model minority” status is a “myth”. Its not a myth, but what people sometimes call a fact. Pew (2014) found that average household for Asians was $77,900.
12. The Jussie Smollett case provides yet another proof that ‘systematic racism’ doesn’t exist (at least in the US). If ‘systematic racism’ was real, criminals such as Jussie Smollett wouldn’t need to go around inventing hate crimes, because they would have plenty of actual material to use. The fact that people like Jussie Smollett invent hate crimes is one indication of how rare such things are. Of course, some types of hate crimes do occur. No one talks about them because they aren’t PC.