Read on Twitter
I'd rather live in a society containing vestigial racism than in an aggressively antiracist one.
Hint: Only one of these choices provides a path toward less racism. It's the one that doesn't involve the justification for establishing a Race Inquisition.
The saying, "There's no room in a democratic (implied: free) society for racism," is dangerous and false. It's an ugly place, not a respectable place, hopefully a minuscule and marginalized place, but a place that must be defended, even as we hold our noses in its defense.
For the hard of reading, let me make it clear that one can hold what I said here as true alongside other beliefs (which I also have): "it would be better if no one was racist," therefore "people shouldn't exhibit racism," and "exhibiting racism should carry social consequences."
As most of you will know already, I also would rather live in a secular and religiously pluralistic society than one in which the Inquisition is an operating arm of The Church. These really are the same sentiments.
No one will read this far down in the thread, and this will accomplish nothing, but you really should check out what "antiracism" is about and the impacts it has. https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/20/the-influence-of-anti-racist-scholarship-activism-on-evergreen-college/
More on the impacts of antiracism, as it is actually meant. https://areomagazine.com/2019/03/15/teaching-to-transgress-rage-and-entitlement-at-evergreen-college/
Here's a little bit about "antiracism" from the critical education book Is Everyone Really Equal? (2012). Notice what the term really means. Notice that it says "passive antiracism" isn't possible. Main thing to do: interrogate yourself for complicity in a "lifelong commitment."
Notice that passive racism includes "lack of interest in learning about racism" and "not getting involved in any antiracist efforts or in continuing education."
"Active antiracism" includes committing yourself to a lifelong and ongoing process of finding your own complicity with the racist system critical race Theory assumes absolutely exists (until and after you find it) and being an antiracism activist. Don't do it? You're racist.
Here, from the book "Whiteness at the Table: Antiracism, Racism, and Identity in Education," we get a very struggle-session view of antiracism, together with shock that there's not enough of it. (p. viii)
Again, from Whiteness at the Table, p. 95, we can read about what it's like to take up antiracist work. This is how you effect a religious or cult conversion, for those unfamiliar with that psychological literature.
From the book Antiracism: An Introduction (pp. 5-6), you can see that the colloquial definition of "antiracism" many people thought I meant in my original tweet is not the precise technical term. That usage has been "defanged of its critical and transformative social potential."
Again from Antiracism (p. 7), we can see that the intent of antiracism is fundamentally radical politics, not merely being "against racism."
A subtle point from Antiracism (p. 27), which besides locating "antiracism" as necessarily subscribing to far-left political positions, recognizes that "racism has evolved" and (just) "younger people are becoming less *overtly* racist." There's that assumed mask again.
See if you recognize this definition of racism from Antiracism (p. 29). This is the idea you're signing up to fight under "antiracism." Imagine an "aggressively antiracist" society, aggressively fighting THIS definition of racism, which is mostly a critical theory fever dream.
Here, now rather famously, on p. 9 of How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi declares that there's no such thing as being "not racist" because being "not racist" is being "racist" because it's not being "antiracist."
Kendi gives this succinct definition (now also famously) for being antiracist (p. 13).
Kendi's definition requires further definitions. On pp. 17-18, he explains that all policies are either racist or antiracist, and you can only know them by their fruits. Let's hope failures of progressive policies are held to this standard, I suppose.
This isn't so much about antiracism as it is about white fragility, but here's an amusing anecdote from Robin DiAngelo's book White Fragility about what it looks like in practice (p. 111). Oops, your cardiac stress brought you attention, you fragile white woman!
Here, pp. 149-50, DiAngelo explains how being antiracist often involves developing a "positive white identity," then says that's impossible because there is no such thing, a white identities are inherently racist, so she strives to be "less white."
DiAngelo (p. 149) also explains what's involved in taking up an antiracist position. Continuous work, constantly identifying that "of course" we're racists, doing your best *in each moment* to disrupt our own participation in a system of racism.
Since I'm still getting a lot of (malicious) retweets on my original tweet, I'll tack on these reflections for those who make it far enough into this to have genuine curiosity about my views. https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1209127582832189445
