Why Is It So Easy for the Right?

What I choose to characterize as the white-supremacist, anti-regulation, anti-environmentalist, theocratic Right has triumphed in the U.S. It/they own the Supreme Court. They own state legislatures and state courts and thus can pursue voter suppression (Jim Crow Lite), and they can block measures to try to fight the perils of climate change. They own the Senate and are about to own the House of Representatives. Their chances to own the presidency in 2024/25 are excellent.

(Why anyone, including the Right, would oppose addressing climate-change flummoxes me, but probably shouldn’t. Politics is often self-destructive. I assume the Right has chosen to ignore plights that will affect its children and grandchildren in exchange for re-election, white power, and an attempt to outlaw abortions and contraception. Let the planet burn.)

One key to the Right’s success is that they have mastered propaganda far better than those who are left of Right. They also support those of their ilk, no matter what. Another is that those who are left of Right seem especially inept. Part of this ineptitude, in my opinion, springs from what I’d call the Bickering Left, which sounds the alarm incessantly concerning capitalism and neoliberalism (okay, fine), but then does things that ensconce the Right (okay, not fine), such as refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton. Hillary was centrist, at best, in their few; she was neoliberal and capitalist. She also would have appointed a much different Supreme Court, to say the least, but (according to the Left), so what? Also in play is the accelerationist argument, whereby allowing the Right to win will accelerate the collapse of capitalism and the rise of a socialist society. Among my problems with this argument is that the collapse, if it were to happen, could just as easily give rise to fascism, and it could also give rise to socialism-in-name-only that turns out to be authoritarian. At any rate, the Left seems to have made it easy for the Right. Forgive me, but I hear “Make it easy on the Right,” sung to the tune of “Make It Easy on Yourself,” by Bacharach and David.

It is at this juncture that I refer to a book I haven’t read, which brings to mind (he said, free-associating) the movie Butley, a British academic satire, in which said Butley, a professor, says, “I hate to teach a book I haven’t read.”

The book in question is

The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition, by William C. Anderson. It was discussed on Goodreads by an acquaintance of mine, who quoted the following from the book:

While authoritarian leftists like this embody many of the worst aspects of the church, they do so without achieving nearly as much. Like churches that compete to grow their tithe-paying memberships, leftist organizations vie with one another for the minds and dues of devoted adherents. They fight for leadership over movements that they often did not spark and prematurely for political control of the postrevolutionary society they envision but consistently fail to materialize. However, their incessant bickering weakens movements to the point that no one can gain enough ground to topple the oppressive forces we’re up against.

This quotation intrigued me for several reasons. It points to a kind of religious zealotry that turns coalition-building and tactical compromise into heresy. “You want to work with or for President Biden? Go to Hell, sinner!” It points to self-defeating bickering and fragmentation generated by those left of Right. It tells the truth: the envisaged postrevolutionary society has failed to materialize, repeat: failed to materialize. Roberts Court. Pro-abortion ruling. Anti-environmentalist rulings. Voter suppression, particularly of African American votes. (But the white Left has a long history of, in effect, patronizing if not ignoring altogether African Americans.)

I acknowledge that the anarchy advocated by the book, in which communities build institutions and resources that make said communities “ungovernable” (self-sufficient) seems awfully idealistic, too. So be it. It’s not a horrible idea, and, in parts, it is in fact achievable, if only on a small scale. Not-for-profit healthcare insurance, community clinics, locally controlled means of addressing poverty and homelessness, and so on.

Whatever the Left, the Progressives, the Socialists, the Centrists (blah, blah, blah) are doing collectively–and, like it or not, the effect is collective, isn’t working. For accelerationists, this is fine. For me, it’s, ipso facto, messed up and destructive. I’d prefer NFL football coach and owner Al Davis’s approach: Just win, Baby. Defeat the Right, by any means necessary. Then move on to various dream scenarios. The approach has the virtue of being within the realm of the achievable, at least.

White Rhetorical Rituals

About ten days ago, Jon Stewart, on his new television show (The Problem With John Stewart), invited three guests to discuss persistent problems with white supremacy and its effects in the U.S. All of his guests were white, and he said the choice was deliberate and inspired Toni Morrison’s having once suggested that white people need to discuss racism more (more often, more deeply). His guests were Lisa Bond, Charles Gallagher, and Andrew Sullivan (the latter via Zoom or a similar platform, the others in studio. Episode available on Youtube).

The topic was “taking responsibility for systemic racism,” meaning white people’s taking such responsibility. As TV discussions go, it was good: relatively relaxed, not rushed, issue-oriented, informed (especially when Bond and Gallagher were talking), and–shocker!–adult.

My main thesis here is that way too much rhetoric from white folks, even from smart white folks like Sullivan, is too ritualistic because the person talking doesn’t care enough about white supremacy and/or is otherwise too comfortable with ossified views on this topic to let some air into their minds and admit that, yes, systemic racism remains a deep problem in the U.S., and, yes, it makes a lot of sense to get informed about it and to do what one can to push back against it. Because they think systemic racism is simply not a problem, doesn’t exist, they don’t have to try. They can walk away from it–and from Black people.

Sullivan’s first move was to say that as an immigrant, he had a particularly good insight into America and multiculturalism. Problem: He’s a white British (now British American) immigrant, and he might have acknowledged that, chances are, things were easier for him (although he’s gay in a culture that’s remains homophobic) because of his ethnic status. Second, he sang the praises of a how great a country America was at accepting and assimilating immigrants and that’s why they come here. He asserted that the U.S. is the most multicultural country in the world. Obviously, America is great for some immigrants, good for others, and awful for others. And immigrants come for all sorts of reasons, many not having to do with the destination. At any rate, Sullivan started with cheerleading and flag-waving.

He resisted talk of “systemic racism.” That just made me groan. The anecdotal and data-driven evidence for continuing problems with Blacks and real estate (and banking), Blacks and policing, Blacks and voter suppression, Blacks and education (de facto segregation, unbalanced funding, bigoted teaching, suppression of curricula that addresses racism), and so on is everywhere. This part of the discussion made me think Sullivan wasn’t even trying and had gone full curmudgeon on the issue of systemic racism. C’mon, man. Like the other panelists (or so it seemed), I felt as if it just wasn’t worth the energy to argue with Sullivan. There’s nothing to argue about. Fruitful arguments lie elsewhere. Let’s move on.

Finally, he cited “culture” as the main issue with regard to Blacks’ problems in the U.S. Stewart pressed him to define what he meant, and quickly he identified “the family structure” as the culprit. This was a rehash of one part of the infamous 1965 report, The Negro Family: A Case for National Action, spearheaded by Daniel Moynihan. As the Atlantic noted in revisiting the report in 2015:

Many liberals understood the report to advocate new policies to alleviate race-based economic inequalities. But conservatives found in the report a convenient rationalization for inequality; they argued that only racial self-help could produce the necessary changes in family structure. Some even used the report to reinforce racist stereotypes about loose family morality among African Americans. Meanwhile, left-wing critics attacked Moynihan for distracting attention from ongoing systemic racism by focusing on African Americans’ family characteristics: Moynihan’s leading critic, William Ryan, famously charged him with “blaming the victim.”

In other words, Sullivan was playing one of the great golden oldies of conservatism and race. He received some mildly exasperated push-back from Stewart and the panel and then said something like, if one is white, one will forever be categorized as a racist. Nice move: he’s the victim. In hours and days following the discussion, Sullivan complained on Twitter that he had been set up, Stewart objected, blah, blah, blah. The attention had shifted to two white guys having a hissy-fit and away from taking responsibility for racism. Talk about ritual!

Viewing the discussion, I shared the fatigued exasperation of the panelists. To reduce African Americans’ chronic struggles in the U.S. to their problems with their families, period, is just lazy–not so much ignorant (though it is that) as mulishly privileged. He should have simply said he was too uninterested in the topic to speak about it, to read new things about it, to listen to Black folks (what a concept), and so on. C’mon, man (part deux).

I happened to read a comment from Sullivan on a thread on his blog a while back, and he asked, rhetorically (I paraphrase), “What’s wrong with different things being taught in different states?” Well, if we’re talking Texas history vs. California history, nothing. But if we’re talking about suppression of curricula about race in Texas and not in California, then: a lot. And the suppression is part of a wider strategy to refuse to admit to systemic racism, to turn “critical race theory” into propaganda bait, and to indulge in Jim Crow lite.

For grins, I glanced at a Pew Research data-laden report from 2015, The Changing Profile of Unmarried Parents:

The Changing Profile of Unmarried Parents

The report made plain the fact that, in general, across the ethnic and economic board, many fewer parents are getting married, and many more are not cohabitating. In other words, a big cultural shift is occurring, and it certainly complicates whatever point Sullivan was attempting to make about Black families being the sole cause (or correlation) of Black problems in the U.S. Second, this item from the Pew report:

Overall, there are significant differences in the racial and ethnic profiles of solo and cohabiting parents. Among solo parents, 42% are white and 28% are black, compared with 55% of cohabiting parents who are white and 13% who are black. These gaps are driven largely by racial differences among the large share of solo parents who are mothers. There are virtually no racial and ethnic differences in the profiles of solo and cohabiting fathers. About half of each group are white, roughly 15% are black, about one-fourth are Hispanic and a small share are Asian. Married fathers, however, are more likely than unmarried fathers to be white (61% are) and less likely to be black (8%).

If in fact solo parenting is a problem, it’s certainly a complex one ethnically, the data show. Moreover, cohabiting is not a guarantee of fine parenting, and solo parenting (meaning only one parent where the kid lives/kids live) doesn’t rule out effective dual parenting.

But my purpose here is not to dive deeply into the family/parenting issue because that would be to get distracted by Sullivan’s red herring.

Back to my thesis, which I’ll put in question(s) form: Why do even bright, otherwise well informed white guys (and gals) who aren’t even Republicans running for office choose to be so lazy, uninformed, atavistic, and mulish about systemic racism? Why do they take a rhetorically ritualized nap? Why don’t they even try? I’m not really sure. Maybe part of it is the sense that they don’t give a shit what anybody else things, they think America’s just fine as it is, so shut up about race and anything else that might complicate that view. It could be they’re racist and choose to remain in that very traditional American groove. I have no idea if Sullivan is a racist. I do have an idea of how intellectually lazy and empathetically parched he is on the systemic racism issue. A comedian-entertainer shouldn’t have to suggest to Sullivan that even if “the family” is a crucial part of African Americans’ struggles, the impact white-supremacist policies and indifference down through the decades have affected “the family.” And no one should have to point out to him that the successes and endurance of Black families deserve as much attention as the shortcomings–given the headwind into which Black families have to sail in the U.S.

And I do agree with Stewart (and a legion of others) that until a critical mass of white folks decide to take on white supremacy, to let themselves let go of old views and see what other views are out there, and so on, America will suffer–black Americans especially, but not exclusively. America is in deep trouble because of what’s happened to the Republican Party, and what’s happened to the Republican Party springs largely from a full-on embrace of white supremacy. Wither Sullivan’s “traditional” conservatism in today’s GOP?

C’mon, man.

“Cancel culture,” “wokeness,” “Critical Race Theory”: just more propaganda, folks

On March 22, 2022, Jennifer Rubin wrote in the Washington Post:

The GOP’s profligate use of “cancel culture”–like its use of “Critical Race Theory” and “wokeness”–has turned the phrase into an all-purpose epithet to be flung at the left. “Cancel culture” is a cry of victimhood and an accusation (the left is made up of intolerant bullies!). But it has no real meaning. It’s a way of escaping criticism for behaviors that deserve social opprobrium.

I agree with her, to some extent. Losing a gig, in the case of a professional comedian or actor, or losing a job, as in a variety of other cases, is a consequence of something you said or did. Whether it’s part of a larger pattern depends on the individual case. True, major shifts in what’s accepted and acceptable in the workplace have occurred, particularly in the area of how men behave around women, and how whites behave around people of color. But even so, the particulars matter, and if they’re dismissed simply with “cancel culture,” “wokeness,” or the more venerable “political correctness, then the dodge Rubin perceives obtains.

“Wokeness” is particularly laughable, in my opinion. I heard the term a bit when I was still teaching college, but it was used very casually, seemed to mean “stay alert” or “stay current with issues” (especially those regarding race, gender, and economic power), but in no way did it suggest some broad, organized movement–a “peril,” to use the language of the Red Scare of the 1950s. “Wokeness” as some kind of movement or philosophy is a propagandistic invention, a mirage meant to terrify and congeal a base of voters. It has been effective. The same might be said of the Antifa “threat,” so that a variety of right wingers have tried to blame the January 6 attack on the capitol on Antifa. By definition, Antifa is an unorganized, or at best barely organized, ideological grouping of anarchists. Anarchists don’t like to organize (hence the term), except perhaps temporarily, so as to show up somewhere and protest, or chat online. The January 6th mob was a stirred up fragment of a right-wing Trump-drunk cult.

I disagree with Rubin to this extent: the deployment of “politically correct,” “cancel culture,” “wokeness,” and now “Critical Race Theory” is part of a highly refined right wing use of demonizing language. It is more aggressive than simply dodging responsibility. It is part of an attack. It creates enemies, it provides shorthand communication to keep cults tightly focused, it rallies voters. Sure, Democrats have their own slogans, but let’s face it: they’re terrible at this particular political-rhetorical game. They’re hopeless, much better at slinging slogans meant to insult other Democrats. For instance, “Damn the centrists!”

The enemies these slogans keep before the eyes of right-wing voters and parents screaming in school board meetings are well known: African Americans, feminists and women who may not explicitly identify as feminists but who don’t identify as conservative Christians, media members outside the greater Fox News sphere, and so on.

But more broadly, the vicious sloganeering enable right-wing politicians to be almost completely lazy. They don’t even have to pretend to want to do anything, let alone do anything, about terrible crises: climate change and its effects; increasing and harmful economic inequity; violence against women and persons of color; and permanent poverty. Right-wing politicians are free to ignore the plight of seniors paying excessively for medication, working class whites hooked on opium, crumbling infrastructure, and longstanding poverty-rates in their states. They’re free to be lazy and uncaring because they know that by playing a few tunes on a dog whistle, they can rely on over 60% of the white working class to vote for them, as well as a vast majority of conservative Christians. I took the percentage from a recent Vanderbilt study:

https://as.vanderbilt.edu/news/2020/07/29/political-science-research-debunks-myths-about-white-working-class-support-for-trump/

It’s truly amazing how vapid and listless Republicans get to be on policy issues. Democrats, meanwhile, at least have to pretend to care–about poverty, abortion availability, infrastructure, education, the horrors of white supremacy, racist policing, and so on. Moreover, their Party is chronically split between alleged “moderates” and “progressives.” They have to show they’re trying to so some things to satisfy one group or the other–or both. They have to work on legislation that doesn’t have to do with wrecking Roe v. Wade or suppressing the vote: the major initiatives of the right wing. Democrats have to break a sweat. Republicans don’t, except perhaps in primaries, when they have to show they’re as crazy as the next candidates. But you can bet the candidates will agree on political correctness, wokeness, cancel culture, “the far left,” Critical Race Theory, doing nothing concrete about immigration, and protecting white supremacy so that it never, ever goes away. In my opinion.

But thanks to Jennifer Rubin–once (still?) a Republican, by the way, not part of the woke rabble.

On Truth: Postmodernism Isn’t the Enemy

I finally read Harry Frankfurt’s follow-up to On Bullshit, On Truth, and as far as it goes, it’s pretty good.

Frankfurt, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton, insists that truth exists. Before he does so, he goes after his avowed philosophical enemies, whom he calls “postmodernists.” He doesn’t really get more specific than that, but it seems he’s talking about postmodernist humanists; in philosophy, they are sometimes called “anti-foundationalists,” who assert that there are no bedrock principles of philosophical knowledge and pay no attention to alleged religious foundations of truth.

Then Frankfurt links truth to factuality and instrumentality. So: if you want to build a bridge that works, you’d better hire experts who rely on certain truths about load-bearing, distribution of weight, gravity, construction materials, soil composition, and so on. If you want to make sure a city functions acceptably, pay attention to certain truths about garbage management, modern sewage systems, and traffic.

(Perhaps I should add that, with regard to “factual material” like steel, it’s the physicists, not the postmodernists, who are up to mischief, as they’re always changing their minds about the particles hiding inside steel, as it were, and it’s they who still abide by the indeterminacy principle.)

I appreciate Frankfurt’s appeal to common sense, something I find lacking in just about every political ideology out there. Okay, so you want to replace the current political system with one based on a different ideology. Tell me if it will work–in instrumental terms, not according to the philosophy you will impose–left, right, middle–but according to what people need to function with health and dignity in mind. How will basic functions of society actually operate?

Toward the end of his nifty volume, Frankfurt goes on a riff about Spinoza and suggests that, spiritually, search for and respecting the truth is good for us. Spinoza happens to be my favorite philosopher–and I’m so old fashioned, I can speak about having a favorite system-philosopher. But let’s just say the appeal of this part of Frankfurt’s argument will not reach a wide audience.

Frankfurt’s book, published in 2006, isn’t much help when we contemplate the attacks on truth bearing on the election in the U.S. in 2016 and much that has occurred since. –Primarily because, with regard to these political and social movements, postmodernism isn’t the enemy. Postmodernism is mainly one contestant in a squabble that takes place in academia. It’s part of a boutique conflict. But traditional academics who adore things like the classics have a genius, I’ve noticed, for distracting themselves, imagining the enemy is political correctness, cancel culture, postmodernism, etc. Say what you will about these, they don’t launch attacks on scientific consensus, they don’t deny the results of elections when white, right-wing candidates lose (and without evidence), they don’t believe in the big anti-truth of white supremacy, and so on. Cancel culture and postmodernism didn’t lead the insurrection on January 6.

Oddly enough, the antifoundational philosopher Richard Rorty suggests one good way of arriving at the best way to proceed in a given situation is to gather knowledgeable people on the topic at hand and have them work out the best solution available. In other words, Rorty’s just fine with science–with temporary, provisional truths; with expertise. By contrast, the right wing in the U.S. now wants immutable (and false) truths to guide us: white folks are superior; epidemiologists should be ignored at will; a Christian God has all the answers for society (given how many Christian denominations there, even Christians don’t agree on what these answers might be), any federal-government program equals “socialism,” and so on.

Okay, so “truth” exists in relation to facts and best-evidence. Now what? How do you get enough people to know how the scientific method and its provisional truths work? How do you pry millions away from the lethal notion of white supremacy? How do you stop parents from screaming at education-board meetings and have a rational conversation? How to you crack political cults like Trumpism and Q-Anon? How do you address, rationally, the fact that America’s hysteria about guns isn’t good for society? The answers to these questions, if there are any, do not require sparring with postmodernists or complaining about leftists on campus.

Republicans: Champion Sloganeers

. . . Speaking of politics and language–which is what this blog purports to do, although sometimes it slides elsewhere (my fault)–the Republicans seem to my untrained eyes and ears to be the longtime champs of creating slogans or boiling down grievances into one- or-two word utterances: and thereby winning elections, although of course money and voter-suppression help may do the lion’s share of the work.

Most recently, the GOP has seized on “critical race theory” (oops, 3 words) and “woke” or “wokeness” and used them metonymically to suggest a malicious wave of anti-white, anti-American (the same thing in many minds, alas) washing over the U.S. As deployed by the GOP, these words magically signify everything and nothing, inasmuch as the GOP and shouting members of its base never pause to say what they mean by the words, but at the same time, the words have the force of suggesting life or death stakes.

Here’s a pithy indirect definition of Critical Race Theory (CRT) or Critical Race Philosophy:

“In general, Critical Philosophers of Race focus on how race operates in societies, the effects of race at both the structural and phenomenological levels, and the ways in which some forms of resistance to racial systems can be recuperated into sustaining the status quo. Race as a category is subject not so much to biological debate as genealogical analysis, which makes it possible to see how, as Falguni Sheth argues, the central issue is not the fact of the division of human beings into diverse groups, but the identification of racialized peoples as unruly or a priori threats to the body politic (Sheth 2009, 35).”

[My blog-partner, Professor Haltom, knows Critical Race Legal Theory well.]

I took this from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[https://plato.stanford.edu/]. Before this paragraph appears, the writer, Linda Alcoff, takes us through a brief history that mentions such theorists as Richard Delgado, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Derrida, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, W.E.B. Du Bois, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Derek Bell–okay, I’ll stop there.

The point is, the likelihood of the real, the actual CRT being taught in high school is close to zero; it’s way too specialized and complex. The likelihood of it being taught in colleges is greater, but it probably appears in just a handful of classes and dominates very view. But some political wizard like Frank Luntz seized on it, turned it into a bullfighter’s red flag, and let the games begin. Parents shout about it in school board meetings, thereby teaching their sons and daughters to forget adult conversation and sensible rhetorical exchange and go for the verbal bludgeon. Candidates promise they will stamp out CRT. In terms of politics, it’s a wickedly successful move.

But even if it isn’t taught in high schools, CRT–or its specter–can be raised if anything to do with race is taught. If an enraged parent sees that slavery or Jim Crow is under discussion, he or she may cry, “No Critical Race Theory in my child’s school!”

Thus the GOP winner in the Virginia race for governor took a stand against the teaching of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved because it might give (white) children nightmares. Talk about cancel culture! If someone suggested not teaching Huckleberry Finn, however, oh the outrage over censorship and political correctness. I tell you, the Right is simply better at this game. They own it. They even have James Carville, known Democrat and political operator, whining about “wokeness.”

If possible, “woke” and “wokeness” [with their companion “cancel culture”] may be even more absurd. I heard and saw the words “woke/wokeness” almost never on a liberal arts college campus in the American West: prime Leftist territory! When I did hear or see them, they seemed simply to suggest alertness, as in paying attention to contemporary politics. True, the attention paid was not to spring from a “conservative” point of view. There was indeed bias–shocking!

What is amazing but perhaps shouldn’t be to observers of politics is that these redeployed words, emptied of previous denotation and connotation, are so effective at stirring up fear, anger, rage, hysteria, and action.

What else is amazing [but shouldn’t be, to me] is how inept or uninterested the Democrats are in fighting back in kind. Maybe we should be happy about that. I mean, the Dems engage in plenty of linguistic deception, but it’s pretty generic. They fight for middle class families, they do this, and they do that. They refer to Trump and Trumpism. They just don’t seem to take a word or phrase from the conservative vocabulary, empty or them of meaning, and redeploy it or them as clubs. Occasionally, one hears someone on the left write or speak something about “neo-Liberalism,” but sadly, the people whom they’re trying to awaken or save from neo-Liberalism probably have no idea what the term means and may get it confused with liberalism.

Apparently, the Dems are about as successful as the GOP is at politics; hence the 50/50 gridlock. Money and voter-turnout/voter suppression [on behalf of he GOP] mean a lot more. It’s so hard to parse out what goes into victory. On the other hand, the sloganeering obviously gets people stirred up, often to the point of temporary insanity. In politics, that seems to count for a lot.

The Chappelle Dust-Up

My prevailing attitude toward the dust-up over American comedian Dave Chappelle’s insistence that there are only two genders–a fact, period, says he–is that it’s one more thing to distract from immense problems like climate change, income gap, the rise of authoritarianism, the retrenchment of white supremacy, and one major party’s dedication to ignorance. This is a short list.

That said, I don’ wish to diminish how many transgender persons felt and thought when he came out, so so speak, with his ignorant bigotry. And I know it’s more than a dust-up to countless persons. I cannot imagine how hard it is to be transgender, even though I keep learning about the issue and have connections to transgender persons, often in an academic setting (students in my classes, mostly).

I do think there is something else going on here besides bigotry. Or maybe I should say the bigotry was triggered in part by the something else.

Chappelle is getting old. He’s into the curmudgeon years. He’s tired. He’s rich. He’s running out of material. He’s no longer the edgy young guy.

I looked at two segments from his comedy only. In one he says that although he has no doubt a transgender woman is a woman, her “p—y” is not really a a “p—y,” and that instead of blood coming out of it [during menstruation], beet juice comes out. That was the joke. People laughed because people who buy tickets to see Chappelle will laugh. Some folks in the front row did not laugh. I winced and shook my head.

Pardon me for over-analyzing comedy, but I do note that to reduce gender to genitalia is anachronistic, or should be. Read some books, Dave. Second, lots of women who were not previously men do not menstruate, for a variety of reasons. They’re still women.

The other clip I watched was from another show. Chappelle complains that a friend told him he shouldn’t use the word “f—-t” because it’s insulting to LGBTQ folks, just as “n—-r” is insulting (at the very least) to Black folks. His retort, “But I’m not a “n—–r.” People laughed. With that joke, Chappelle became a magician, not a comic. For he proved his friend’s point but some sleight of hand may have distracted some in his audience from that fact.

Chappelle is not a [N-word here] and thus should have the right to be uniquely horrified if the word is hurled at him. A gay person has the same unique right to object to “f—-t.” [Of course, others ought to object in solidarity.] From reading about Chappelle, I think I’m right in saying that he objects to such an equation because African American have had (and continue to have) the roughest time acquiring civil rights (etc.) in the U.S. and LGBTQ persons have had it easier by comparison. I think these kinds of comparisons are a dead end, partly because so many other factors are involved, and because I think now it’s appropriate to think in terms of what academics call “intersectionality.” Yes, I know: lots of syllables. In simplest terms it means that a gay Black man (for example) has it doubly tough, usually, and that coalitions are the way to go. At the iconic Stonewall confrontations in the New York, transgender Black persons were on the front lines, a fact not always mentioned. An example of coalition.

In this second clip, Chappelle says that the main thing to learn from he and his friend’s disagreement is that comedians are burdened by always insulting someone. It’s a short trip from this assertion, of course, to complaining about political correctness, cancel culture, yadda. People who assert this rarely define “political correctness” and “cancel culture” is a hopelessly broad slogan. Note that Chappelle’s Netflix special went on the air, and he got paid. He will continue to thrive. Also, the main thing to learn from the encounter is not that comedians (so sad!) are burdened by insulting people.

Some overarching problems with Chappelle’s jokes arise: Problem one: these jokes aren’t up to his standards. Second, he’s making fun of people who still aren’t very powerful, as a group. In essence, he’s bullying for laughs–and doing so when we need highly visible comics to take on some real menacing targets. Get some jokes going on authoritarians and white supremacists in power. Satire is supposed to mock folly and vice. Go after vice.

George Carlin made a similar point long ago in an interview with Larry King:

I think somebody “moved Chappelle’s cheese” [a business book took that title in reference to rapidly changing maze of business culture]. From his point of view, gender used to be really simple. There were men, and there were women. He didn’t have to think about it. Now he does, and he doesn’t like it, and he wants these people off his lawn.

Unfortunately, culture changes all the time, and in relation to excluded groups, it often changes because it ought to. The changes bring changes in concepts and language. Why do I have to use LGBTQ? Why do “they” keep adding letters? [Because culture and language are in transition. They’ll probably settle elsewhere, and more simply, later. It just keeps rolling along. ] Why must I change?! Back in the day, white folks resented moving from the (at the time) polite term “Negro” to Black or African American. And: you don’t have to change. You should just consider doing so.

I’m white, and I was born in the middle of the last century, and I grew up in a micro-town in the Sierra Nevada. You can imagine, maybe, the adaptations I’ve gone through. Far from complaining, I’m grateful. Although I embraced the civil rights movement at a very young age and thought (and think) writers like James Baldwin were the absolute best, and were highly moral writers, I still had to keep learning. My efforts to change things racially in academia were often clumsy, to say the least, and they embarrass me, even though I was “on the right side.” Same goes for feminism. I had no trouble “getting” the basic concepts. But I still had to learn and adapt, or I should say was given the opportunity to learn and adapt. Thanks for that, persons, culture, and language. It’s called growth.

I should add that I don’t know whether Chappelle’s being a Muslim affects his views on gender, but if it does, I wouldn’t be surprised, and I’ll leave it at that.

My advice to people of any age but especially those past 40: easy does it. Just observe and consider. Don’t go immediately to the “react” button. See what’s up. Read and listen. If you don’t have the time or energy, I get it. I’ve given up on knowing who younger movie stars are or even learning their names. Who cares? New film stars and other performers have always been in the pipeline. For me, at my age, it’s too tiring to keep. A trivial example. But the point is, being tired doesn’t have to translate into bigotry–and yes, I known I’m assuming Chappelle’s dust-up sprang in part from bigotry.

So Much for Diversity on the Supreme Court

As only nine persons decide crucial legal questions on the U.S. Supreme Court, should we want more diversity of background?

Six of the justices are Catholic, two are Jewish, and one is Episcopalian, although he (Gorsuch) was raised in the Catholic faith. On questions of legal abortion, should the Catholics recuse themselves, since their Faith–officially, at least–believes abortion should be illegal (but also believes contraception should not be used–go figure)?

Six of the justices graduated from Harvard’s School of Law, two from Yale, and one from Notre Dame.

One is African American but, curiously, seems indifferent to the long and continuing tradition of Jim Crow that expresses itself in a new initiative of voter-suppression.

One is Latina.

Seven are white.

Apparently, when it comes to the highest court in the land, this is who “we” are. Same goes for the large percentage of citizens and Republicans who think the violent attack on Congress–designed to overturn a presidential election–was just fine.

America, still crazy (white supremacist and reactionary), after all these years (thanks Paul Simon).

Mass Hysteria, Chapter 3 Million

I see where former child star and current loon Rick Schroeder is among the latest to accost a store worker about masks. He yelled around at a Costco employee for asking him to wear a mask, owing to local laws and Costco’s wish to remain prudent during a pandemic. Schroeder likened the authorities to “kings,” who were ruining the country.

It’s hard to keep track of the self-contradictions. Champion of freedom Rick Shroeder might want to consider that while yelling at the employee, he was standing on private property, a key concept in our allegedly free-enterprise society he values so much. Also, the health laws are, in theory, part of a bureaucracy overseen by duly elected/appointed officials. Hey, we all have our issues with the system, which certainly can be authoritarian, but it’s hardly a royal one, as he implies, and (an additional irony) Trump was the most authoritarian-enamored president in recent memory. Third, what is more royal than a Hollywood star yelling at an employee who makes minimum wage (or slightly more, given that it’s Costco)?

And fourth, what exactly is “the government,” via Costco in this instance, asking of King Richard? To control his mucous during an epidemic advanced chiefly by spittle. That’s it, that’s all. Costco and your government ask of you to be prudent and practical during a pandemic. Otherwise, go about your business, buying a boat load of toilet paper and a nifty new big screen TV to watch reruns of your old shows.

The hysterical mind does not see it that way. It sees murky, nefarious forces everywhere, a proliferation of slippery slopes, and a Manhattan real estate hustler as champion of . . . what, exactly?

Curriculum Suppression

Should students study the facts and effects of racism and white supremacy in the U.S.? Should they learn the hard facts of slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching, etc.? Should they have a chance in school/college to connect current issues with violent policing to a history of violence against Black folks (and other ethnic minorities)?

There seems to be some consensus among Conservatives and the GOP that the presence of such topics in curricula is inappropriate because it is “divisive” and excessively critical.

The “divisive” line of argument is a nice bit of ju-jitzu, inasmuch as the U.S. has always been divided–legally, economically, culturally–by ethnicity. We all know about the Constitution’s turning African Americans (in effect) into 3/5ths of a human being. We all know about Jim Crow and the exclusion of African Americans from popular culture (movies and TV, e.g.). Discussing divisiveness becomes “divisive” in the argument because, what?, such discrimination no longer exists? Because white folks are unduly burdened by such discussion?

The push-back against teaching about racism has been rather fierce. As the American Bar Association has noted, “President Trump issued and executive order excluding from federal contracts any diversity and inclusion training interpreted as containing “Divisive Concepts,” “Race or Sex Stereotyping,” and “Race or Sex Scapegoating.” Among the content considered “divisive” is Critical Race Theory (CRT).” (See “A Lesson in Critical Race Theory” by Janel George on the ABA site.) The Idaho state legislature passed legislation to ban the teaching of critical race theory.)

What should we make of such curriculum suppression? We might argue that it’s an authoritarian move, for sure, not exactly Stalinist but heading toward that region. We might ask of such politicians and their followers, “Why does this curriculum scare, threaten, or trouble you?” Or we might ask, “What specific parts of the curriculum to you wish to refute? What is inaccurate?” Or we might ask, “What do you hope to accomplish?” To the latter question, the politicians’ truthful answer might be “We’re looking for campaign money, a riled up base, and votes.”

And we might ask, “Is it possible to suppress such information in the digital age?”

At the university where I taught, I saw a bit of animosity toward “critical race theory.” Some faculty seemed to regard it as an example of “political correctness,” but for me, it was hard to discern what they meant by that. Did they mean “trendy”? Maybe. For me, that goes all the way back to the 1960s and 1970s, when traditional professors objected to the idea of a curriculum’s being “relevant.” –Relevant to the Viet Nam War and what it represented, relevant to racism and feminism, relevant to environmentalist (the term then would have been “ecological”) concerns. On the face of it, such opposition amused me (mere me, a student) because it was so easily satirized. “We must hold firm in our defense of an irrelevant curriculum!” More broadly, the opposition was part of a defense of “the canon” in literature, of teaching great events and great men (few women) in history, of teaching stuff that “had always been taught.” Of course, not much of it had always been taught. I learned this most vividly early on by looking at poetry anthologies from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A majority of the poems and poets were no longer taught, even before the 1960s “relevance” debate occurred. “The canon” really never existed in static form; it was always changing. Just as what science classes teach is always changing (because that’s the nature of science).

What exactly is “critical race theory,” and why might faculties and others oppose it? Let’s take a look. I rather like Janel George’s crisp summary. Its features, she writes are chiefly four-fold:

First, it “Recognition that race is not biologically real but is socially constructed and socially significant. It recognizes that science (as demonstrated in the Human Genome Project) refutes the idea of biological racial differences.” This point seems hard to refute. Curiously, though, it can be twisted. One prominent progressive (a white man) on my campus argued that because “race” was not biological, we should not teach topics related to racism. He wanted to boil everything down to social class. Oh great, I thought, another excuse to ignore racism. Clever! I see what you did there!

Second, CRT acknowledges “that racism is a normal feature of society and is embedded within systems and institutions, like the legal system, that replicate racial inequality.” This is one FOX News and its legions of followers hate. Structural racism doesn’t exist! There may be a few racists out there, but I’m not one, and anyway, it’s no big deal! Senator Kennedy from Louisiana loves to take this tack when questioning nominees. I’ve lost count of the times he has asked, “Does that make me a racist?” It’s a false trail. Yes, you probably align yourself with racist views to appeal to your constituents, senator, but who cares? It’s not about you, my narcissistic friend. And stop the clueless hick act: You went to Oxford.

If you don’t think racism and white supremacy are systemic, there probably is no argument or load of data I can offer to change your mind. Agree to disagree.

Third, CRT rejects “popular understandings about racism, such as arguments that confine racism to a few ‘bad apples.'” We might see this as an outgrowth of Feature Two. Yes, individual racists can be a problem, but it’s more urgent and productive to look at how institutions perpetuate bias, prejudice, invisibility, etc. The “invisibility” part was a big deal on my campus, as the progressive and others argued for “color-blindness.” Hey, just pretend you don’t notice ethnicity, and all will be well! Uh, no, it’s important to notice ethnicity, to learn about it, to respect it, but also to approach it with sophistication and subtlety. No need to go up to a Black student and say, “Hey, I notice you’re Black!” BUT, it might be good if professors were alert, for example, to “the move” whereby white students (and professors!) turn to the only Black student in class and ask, “What to Black people think?” The “native informant” move. I have seen it in mortifying action.

Fourth, CRT includes the “recognition of the relevance of people’s everyday lives to scholarship. This includes embracing the lived experiences of people of color, including those preserved through storytelling, and rejecting deficit-informed research that excludes the epistemologies of people of color.”

Of the four, this one may have been (might be) the one mostly likely to stick in the craw of academics. I heard a colleague in Communication say, for example, that he was simply not interested in hearing students “emote” in class. He was all about hard data and texts (and not texts of students’ stories). I thought his recoiling at the thought of a student relating an anecdote was, well, an example of emoting.

In short, Item Four threatens those who see themselves as dedicated to empiricism. And it’s easy to grasp why. If you teach in a data-heavy discipline, how are you supposed to incorporate students’ stories? If you teach in the sciences, especially, where is there space for “lived experiences”? Valid questions. I think, too often, those who advocate for critical race theory don’t take the time to note that they’re talking mostly about courses in the humanities and perhaps don’t anticipate how their audience, if that audience includes scientists and social scientists, might react to their arguments.

But there probably opportunities outside humanities to discuss such things as confirmation bias when people work with data. Or maybe to discuss misuse of data, as in the notorious book, The Bell Curve. Or maybe to acknowledge the invisibility of African Americans (for example), historically, in social sciences, the sciences, legal studies, and so on. It’s incumbent upon those advocating critical race theory to consider whether and how to approach those who have reason not to “get,” automatically, what they’re advocating, not because of prejudice, per se, but because of disciplinary barriers. In part, it goes back to the old rhetorical questions: Who’s in my audience? How might what I’m saying initially alarm part of the audience–for acceptable reasons? How might I bridge the gap?

I taught literature and writing, so, of course, I wasn’t threatened by Item Four because I was all about stories (and poems). While teaching African American literature, I often thought a student’s anecdote about her own example of “double-consciousness” (Du Bois’s venerable concept) was useful–for example. Not that we had to turn the whole session into anecdote telling, but concrete examples (my form of empiricism) were, I thought, useful. Particular and vivid = good! I think Item Four is debatable, but not rejectable. That is, I think faculty and students ought to find a way to discuss it soberly, without getting all riled up. Okay, so if I were to incorporate students’ “lived experience” into what I teach, what might that look like? Is it really as viral or bacterial as I fear it is? Must it always be seen as a threat to the way I see the world or how I teach? Keep calm and carry on.

Much of Critical Race Theory, in my view, is not all that theoretical (in an abstract sense) but is based instead on the Fact of America. Racism and white supremacy are everywhere you look in our history and present. Taking over Native American lands, maintaining slaves, relying on cheap oppressed labor from Asian- and Latino Americans, the Dixiecrats getting absorbed into the GOP, segregation multiplied a million times, the over-reaction to Obama’s election, racist “dog whistles” in politics, blatant white supremacy in Trump’s base (and his insurrection), and on and on. It’s who we are, folks, so yes, study it. How to study it? Sure, debate that. Listen and learn. Talk and adjust. Read and ponder. But suppress curricula? Well, if you try, your are, in a sense, conceding the arguments of CRT.

Forget Left, Right, Woke, Politically Correct, and Cancel Culture; Just Remember Your Manners

An hysteria has gripped the land. People have been over-reacting to the slightest change in social decorum, the merest request to be called a certain name, and a publisher’s decision to cancel a contract (for example).

Toward the beginning of the pandemic, news reports and Youtube videos featured innumerable persons visiting a grocery store or a restaurant, being greeted by the expected request to wear a mask, and then going quite mad. Shouting in the face of a worker. Pushing and shoving. Breaking things. I saw a video of one fellow shouting at a store worker, “What about MY RIGHTS?” Indeed, sir, what about your rights? The grocery store has the right to follow directives from the health department, you are standing on someone else’s private property, and you have the right to not to shop at the store. You may even order your groceries online.

Who among us does not recall being told, “Cover your moth when you cough!” by a parent, grandparent, or grammar school teacher. It’s about blocking mucous. It’s about manners.

A day or so ago, a fellow in a public meeting (online) continuously refused to address an African American woman by her preferred title of “Dr.” Because of his rudeness, he had to resign. Manners. You meet people, they tell you their name (perhaps including a title), you call them by that name.

An author of a biography seems to have sexually harassed and even raped former students of his. The publisher of the book decided to cancel the contract, choosing to end a business relationship with someone whose behavior they found objectionable. The same thing happened to Woody Allen. He found another publisher. It’s not Woody and the other fellow had their book contract cancelled because of their ethnicity, or because of what was in the book.

Forget the nonsense about “wokeness,” “cancel culture,” “Leftists,” and “political correctness.” Respect reasonable requests made by persons or businesses in public. Or, if submitting to the requests truly offends you, then remove yourself from the public situation. Shop elsewhere. Leave the meeting, or resign your post.

In most instances, what’s going on is that people imagine they have expansive special privilege that exempts them from following customs and guidelines. Almost a century ago–okay, not quite–I observed men (and women) rankling at having to call someone “Ms.” Smith instead of “Mrs.” or “Miss” Smith. Feminism rattled them. Solution? In conversation or letters to editors, object to feminism. In the meantime, mind your manners and address people as they wish to be addressed. (Amusingly, it turned out that, some years later, “Ms.” happened for a while to be a practical solution to the problem to the problem of not knowing how to address someone whose marital status you did not know.)

None of this should be that hard. Check your hubris, reserve your outrage, libertarianism, or nostalgia for other venues. Be practical. Cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough. Okay? Are we good?