Brief pettiness: Back in grad school, when I expressed an interest in philosophy of race, folks began inviting me to convos/conferences about "implicit bias" and such. I stared blankly and kept reading about lynchings, strikes, mass caging. Some were confused then. Are you still?

Like everyone else I have no earthly idea where this ends. But like everyone else who has studied racial capitalism, I know that we have been here before. quite often in fact. I also know that this is - so far - *less* violent than many periods of racist fascism in this country

no one's done a survey of the crowd, but the reporting I've seen has shown plenty of representation from professional classes. These are lawyers, accountants, car dealership + food franchise owners. The kinds of people empowered by dollar and law to run their own little fiefdoms

They are, also, the "harmless" friends and neighbors many of you grew up with. understand this.

they aren't marginal people on the "fringes" of American society. They *are* American society. Many, many, many people have long understood this to be true and the durability of delusions to the contrary in philosophy (and academia more generally) is an indictment of how we learn

do you understand where you live now? You don't need to answer this for me, obviously. but you do need to answer this for yourself, and for your students, and for your current neighbors

/rant