continued, or to be continued

It's always interesting, which posts get more angry pushback in comments and which get more angry emails. (I tend to get a lot of both.) Yesterday's post arguing that gun control, while inevitably going to be enforced in a racially unequal way, could be of a net benefit to both black people (who are the victims of gun crimes far out of proportion with their numbers) and society alike was one of the latter.

When it comes to a theoretical gun control regime, I don't see any conflict between what's good for black people and good for society overall. Yes, in a deeply racist society, some of the negative consequences of any major legislation will be unfairly borne by black people. But we can make a good faith assessment that the net gain for black people and society at large would make the legislation worth it. I could be wrong on that score, but it's worth having a conversation on that question itself, about the net material benefits or drawbacks.

Now, for me to take critical emails seriously, two things need to occur. First, you need to accurately portray what I'm saying. I said before, as I would say at any time, that black people face totally unique discrimination in this country, that our criminal justice system is deeply and intractably racist, and that we need to be cognizant of the certainty of discriminatory enforcement when we discuss any law. If you're suggesting that I'm not acknowledging institutional racism, you're just lying. Second, if you want to yell at me, you have to be able to say on which issues you and I actually disagree. That's not me restricting the world of argument to "policy prescriptions." There are plenty of theoretical things we can disagree about. But you have to actually name something that you specifically disagree with me about. When people sputter on, accusing me of being a bad person without being able to articulate a coherent disagreement with anything I've actually said, it suggests that they feel indicted by the criticisms I'm making.

Social liberalism is very sick, in my opinion, despite the advancements we've had on issues like gay marriage. (To be clear, I'm talking about social liberalism writ large, including the left wing, socialists, etc.) It's sick because so many of its white advocates have developed a profound comfort with the inequalities they say they hate. And that comfort arises from the social value they see in portraying themselves as more enlightened than their peers, their social competition. That dynamic has led to a situation where people are endlessly able to define who is unenlightened and broadly unable to explain what progress would look like, to speak of "this is betters" rather than "you are bad."I am not in any sense a political pragmatist, and I don't need people to articulate a strategy for immediate change to take their critiques seriously. Philosophy and rhetoric matter. But if you're interested in actual critical practice, you do no one any favors when you limit your critique to the people involved.

I didn't, at all, bring up the issue of white poverty yesterday, and yet it has gotten inserted into the conversation. I suppose my interlocuters bring it up because they believe it offers them an argumentative advantage. I am glad that it's been brought up, though, because it's a topic which shows the ways in which ostensible anti-racism really advances the logic that underpins traditional racism. I'll tell you, as someone who has been around liberals and leftists for my entire life, it's my perception that there are a lot of white left-wing people who deeply hate the white poor. They often can barely contain their revulsion with them. They'll speak against classism, as pure theory. But in their day-to-day lives, when they see poor white people at the convenience store or on street, there's quiet contempt.

Why? Not because of anti-whiteness, but because of the core assumption of anti-blackness. The reason many white, affluent social liberals do not want to be talked to about white poverty is not that they want to show greater concern for poor racial minorities, but because they identify with the white poor, and in that identification comes judgment: you are like me and yet are worse off than I am. Why aren't you doing more with what you have? Poor minorities, meanwhile, are not subject to this same judgment, because nothing more is expected of them. They judge the minority poor, but not according to the standards by which they hold white people. They are, in the minds of those self-same white social liberals who claim to want the best for them, in their natural state. They don't judge them because they don't consider them to be fair targets of judgment, because they don't see them as fully human. They have accepted the basic assumption of anti-blackness.

A commenter on the post yesterday said, referencing a discussion about white people in poverty, "It's that same privilege that took a post explicitly about social hierarchy and moaned about the lack of consideration for the people highest on it." But the people we were discussing were in poverty; how could they be perceived as being on the top of the social hierarchy? No one who has lived in an area with both affluent and poor white people should mistake poor white people as being on the top of the social hierarchy. Hatred of the "white trash" is too deeply ingrained into such cultures for anyone to believe that. So where does the sense of superiority for such people come? It comes, naturally, from the belief that white people are superior. The perception that a dirt-poor white person is on the top of anything only can exist if you think that whiteness is inherently so much more valuable than blackness that the status of being white transcends material powerlessness and need. A person who asserts that poverty-stricken white people are at the top of the social hierarchy is simply stating classically racist tropes: the superiority of white people. It's merely wrapped in the language of undergraduate cultural studies. This commenter thinks s/he's saying "white people are the bearers of privilege!" I think s/he's saying "what a privilege it is, to be white!"

Part of my point here has always been that we have reduced antagonism to a shell, and in so doing deny the right to true rejection, to true refusal. Far too many of the social liberals who express that social liberalism as apology nonetheless expect that stance to protect them. No political stance that operates from the position of apology can advance the cause of true social criticism, because apology is a way to avoid the indictment from which criticism springs. To say "forgive me, and teach me how to not oppress you" is mere avoidance.

In an undergraduate existentialism class that discussed race throughout the semester, one of my white classmates solemnly informed the class that, had she been born in the right era, she would have been a Black Panther. The next semester, I was chatting with the professor (one of the best) and mentioned that it bothered me. She told me to try and take the statement on its intent, rather than its unfortunate execution. And then she said (paraphrasing), "She would reduce a political movement that angrily defies white power to a vehicle for ameliorating white guilt. And she only imagines that she has the right to do so because her culture tells her that she has the right to everything." There's wisdom in that.