-Ibram Kendi, Author of: "How To Be An Antiracist," "Be Antiracist," and "Antiracist baby."
If you ever wanted proof that wokeness is a sham and it's academics are total frauds, there it is.
So, let's talk about Antiracism
A THREAD🧵
2/ Race in America is a difficult topic, and must be dealt with carefully, rigorously, and with an eye to helping people grow, learn, and heal. Americans of all races want to put an end to racism, and doing that means getting this stuff right.
It MATTERS.
3/ Antiracism is neither careful nor rigorous.
Look at Ibram Kendi: first he says people have the ability to be antiracist, then he says no one ever becomes antiracist.
How are regular people supposed to make sense of this as they try to understand difficult racial issues?
4/ This is not going to work, people aren't going to be able to move forward when they get contradictory messages like this. So let's have a closer look at this shall we?
Kendi starts with an old trick: he redefines racism. Kendi doesn't see racism as a matter prejudice...
5/ In his book "how To Be An Antiracist," Kendi says “One either endorses the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist or racial equality as an antiracist.”
The idea here is that racism is not a state of mind, or a matter of the heart, it isn't about prejudice or intent...
6/ Kendi thinks antiracism is anything that moves toward racial equality, racism is anything that moves away from racial equality.
It doesn't matter why the inequality occurred because intentions never enter into it. Anything that creates or allows racial inequality is racist.
7/ If it is not clear by now, Kendi judges all policies by whether or not they produce equal OUTCOMES.
So ANY policy that allows unequal racial outcomes to continue is racist. Again, it makes no difference WHY the outcomes are different.
Racial inequality = racism. Period
8/ Let's use an example:
If more Asians per capita get into law school but more blacks per capita get into Physics programs, and physics makes more money, that means there is income inequality between Asians and Blacks. Kendi would say this means racism is present...
9/ It doesn't matter WHY Asians prefer law or Blacks prefer Physics, or WHY physics pays better. What matters is that there is racial inequality and therefore that system is racist and anyone that supports that system is racist.
10/ This is a demand for equality of outcome. And Kendi's solution, pictured below, is to allow an agency of un-elected people to ban policies and ideas the agency decides is racist.
He wants to BAN IDEAS.
This is utterly authoritarian.
11/ And if you think Kendi is kidding, he is not. Kendi was recently hired by Boston University and given a 10 million dollar grant by @jack to start the BU center for Antiracist Research, but his ideas about Antiracism are already showing up, and it is not good.
12/ Here you can see Boston University ( @BU_Tweets ) has a statement of academic freedom. That statement says very clearly: academics have a right to teach and learn in an atmosphere of "unfettered free inquirey," and are granted "full freedom to engage in research."
13/ Normally, such a strong policy would be enough. However, the Boston Playwrights' Theatre, which offers programs as part of the BU English Department, has already adopted Antiracist policies which violate the Boston University policy on academic freedom...
14/ This policy is in CLEAR violation of the @BU_Tweets policy on academic freedom.
Forcing professors to adopt an "Antiracist lens," and demanding quotas for which texts are used is a violation of the right of to professors decide what they will teach, and how they will teach it
15/ Here, from the same policy (source: bu.edu/bpt/about-our-…) we see a requirement that professors make a land acknowledgement at performances. This is nothing less then compelled speech, and is a clear violation of the professors right to teach what he or she sees fit.
16/ So Kendi has Just been hired, and already the woke elements of Boston University are violating the policy of academic freedom at that university. Why? because inequality is racist, and if academic freedom allows inequality to persist, then academic freedom is racist.
17/ This is the problem with Kendi's ideas about Antiracism. 1. There's no nuance about WHY outcomes occur 2. There's no consideration for peoples' intentions 3. There's no consistency; Kendi can't even make up his mind about whether you can become antiracist or not.
18/ .@DrIbram created a theory that functions as a blunt instrument for creating equal outcomes. His theory lacks the nuance to avoid running roughshod over people's lives, but the theory demands we give Antiracists the right to make policy. This is a recipe for authoritarianism
19/ In light of this, we ought to avoid using woke theories of "antiracism." This is not because we are in favor of racism, it is because we need ideas that will help us get rid of racism in a way that doesn't run roughshod over people's rights.
We need liberalism.
/fin
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Indigenous displacement is an idea from postcolonial theory often used to normatively criticize western nations; often using statistical demographic change as evidence of the charge.
My question is: why this doesn't idea apply to London?
2/ The point I am trying to bring out here is related to a question asked by the philosopher Joseph Heath: "What is the difference between a settler and an immigrant?"
Concepts like "indigenous displacement" appear to be neutral descriptions but are in fact normatively loaded...
3/ And the result is that they get deployed according to the normative political considerations of the person using them.
This is why Europeans who move to the U.S. are called "settlers" but Syrian refugees get called immigrants.
"Catholics would be tolerated on the fringes of society"
This sentence is why the dissident right will fail. Trad-Caths/Catholic Integralists see protestants as an abhorration of the true faith. So there's *zero* chance they ever agree to be "tolerated at the fringe of society."
The dissident right has a Protestant wing and a catholic wing.
Protestant DR types think some form of *protestant* Christianity (usually but not always some form of Calvinism) needs to be the default religion of the public.
Trad-caths think it should be catholicism...
And the trad-caths are never, evr, going to let the protestant calvinists (whom the catholics view as a heretical abhorration of true Christianity) force catholics to be merely "tolerated at the fringes."
Likewise, protestants will *never* submit to catholic rule. Ever.
Since "noticing" appears to be a thing, I'd like to say that I "notice" things as well....And I can't help but *notice* the obsession that certain people have with Israel, even though other nations (China, India, Russia, etc) impact the U.S. far more....
I also can't help but notice that those same sorts of people are obsessed the influence of wealth Jews, but have nothing to say about the influence of money from China, Qatar, Russia, India, and so on.
The Jews are, apparantly, an item of incredibly deep concern...
For a great number of people, and I can't help but *notice* that the far greater and more pernicious influence (and subversion) coming from foreign money in other countries gets mysteriously ignored, and I *notice* that Israel is held to a higher standard than every other country
1/ Wokeness is the alloy of the political ideology and moral value framework from Critical Theory with the social constructivist worldview and epistemology of postmodernism.
As the political side of woke recedes culturally, it leaves behind the underlying postmodern worldview.
2/ The teleology of the woke project came from the moral commitments of intersectional social justice (Trans-rights, Race based activism, etc)
Those movements are being dissolved by their own incoherence and absurdity (Land acknowledgements, claiming men can become women, etc)
3/ The dissolution and exhaustion of the political movement that provided the teleology and moral value framework for wokeness leaves the entire social movement around which those things were built without any thing to serve as locus for meaning, purpose, or values.
The left has what @wesyang calls a "Vertically Integrated Messaging Apparatus." It's an apparatus of messaging distribution which is owned and operated by leftists top to bottom, and disseminates only the information which aligns with leftist moral norms and political priorities.
@wesyang The lefts messaging apparatus used to be the information distributor for all of society (we called it "mainstream media") but new media alternatives and the rollback of social media censorship regime's mean society is no longer a captive audience for the lefts messaging apparatus
For decades it was the progressive leftist worldview from which the norms of public life and the values of the common culture were derived. The at-large culture was the home of leftists, and conservative evangelicals were treated like unwanted guests.
Those days are over.
The culture is changing so quickly that people are about to get whiplash. It's no longer the case that the default values of public life are those of the social-justice left, (or of "progressives") and progressives no longer get to determine what is allowed in "polite company."
In other words, the progressives no longer get to simply assume that their goals, values, and priorities get to take center stage in the at-large culture.
The presumption of progressive leftists that they get to set the terms of the debate no longer carries any weight.