Thread by @EveKeneinan

Why Kendi-ism is terrible.

Take premises from Kendi:

K1 Every law or policy is either racist or antiracist
K1.1 Only antiracist laws or policies are permissible
K2 Every law or police that is race-neutral, that is, that does not take race into account, is racist

It unmistakably follows from K1, K1.1, and K2 that

K2.2 Any law or policy which does not take race into account, or — what is in practice the same thing — “accounts” for race by treating each race equally is racist, and therefore not permissible.

And from K2.2 we get

K2.3 In order to be a antiracist and thus permissible, any law or policy must explicitly take race into account and decide how — not whether — to favor and disfavor the various races.

Hence Kendi’s claim that EVERY law or policy is “guilty” of discrimination. There are no NON-DISCRIMINATORY laws or policies: the only question, for Kendi, is WHETHER the law or policy discriminates in a ‘racist’ or ‘antiracist’ way.

To be clear:

On Kendi-ism, it is NEVER permissible for a law or policy to treat all human beings equally, that is, justly.

On Kendi-ism, EVERY law or policy MUST engage in systemic injustice, by (a) treating persons merely as members of races and (b) treating races differently

Kendi-ism REQUIRES systemic injustice, in the name of ‘social justice’, or more explicitly ‘race justice.’

Kendiian ‘race justice’ wants to treat RACES as the subjects of justice, assigning CRIME and GUILT and PUNISHMENT and RESTITUTION to RACES for their “crimes.”

Kendi-ism fully endorse “race guilt”, “race crime” “race debt” and calls for “race punishment” and — as a natural corollary rate-hate: is one not entitled to hate the race that has ‘wronged’ one?

The evil of assigning moral blame and guilty to “the white race” for “crimes against the black race” should be obvious.

To be sure, MEMBERSHIP in “the black race” was used as a justification for doing certain evils, and in the West, typically by MEMBERS of “the white race.”

But the history of slavery in America, for example, has little bearing on most members of “the black race” in Africa

Arguments regarding diffuse “benefit” are used to implicate those members of “the white race” in America who did not take any direct part in the institution of race-based chattel slavery, in slogans such as “America was built on the backs of slaves” and so on.

The fallacy here is that slavery WAS NOT in the American case (and in general never has been, in any case) an economic BENEFIT to the POLITY.

Slavery is always a bad system — EXCEPT FOR THE SLAVEOWNING CLASS.

That is to say, in economic terms, slavery in America was bad for EVERYONE BUT the slaveowners, which were a tiny minority of Americans (and, it is to be noted, in some admittedly exceptional cases, included blacks).

Slavery was NOT a benefit for nearly all whites or blacks.

Slavery was a benefit for slaveowners, a tiny minority of whites, and an even tinier minority of blacks. Why would a black man own slaves?

BECAUSE IT WAS IN HIS SELF-INTEREST, of course.

But slavery was a parasitic institution, benefiting those engaged in it, but no one else.

To speak of “benefits” of slavery, the wealth created by slavery in America, is to make the basic economic error:

One looks at e.g. what was accomplished by slavery, but fails to see WHAT WAS NOT ACCOMPLISHED as a result of such a stupid and inefficient institution.

It is the same error as is made by those who think no case of spending can ever be bad, because it, after all, accomplishes *something.*

This thinking neglects what the same money was NOT spent on, and what was accordingly NOT accomplished.

Whatever “benefit” non-slaveowners in America gained from slavery, the cost to them was greater. Slavery is a paradigmatic case of an institution that benefits only a tiny minority, at the expense of everyone else.

THUS it is not true that “all white people” in America “benefitted from slavery” — no more than it is true all black Americans, who have on average much higher standards of living than black Africans — “benefitted from slavery” — although both indisputably benefitted from America

It is important to note that black Americans are comparatively well-off compared to most people in the world: moreso than most black Africans or most Chinese, etc.

That black Americans are not, on average, as well-off as white Americans does not remove the fact that they are, in fact, comparatively well-off, a fact that must be attributed to America.

But if “well-off-ness” in America MUST be attributed to slavery, then so too MUST the comparative well-off-ness of black Americans be attributed to slavery.

And if this “benefit” of American prosperity entails MORAL COMPLICITY, it follows that black Americans are ALL COMPLICIT IN SLAVERY.

And it follows that all black Americans bear RACE GUILT for black slavery.

IF WE ACCEPT THE WOKE “COMPLICITY” THEORY.

IF

Black Americans are, after all, Americans, are beneficiaries of whatever prosperity America has brought about. If black Americans have benefitted LESS than white Americans, that does not mean they have not benefitted at all — and if “having benefitted” = “morally complicit” ...

But this is ALL WRONG.

If it is morally detestable to blame black Americans AS A RACIAL GROUP for slavery in America, it is also so to blame white Americans as a racial group.

“Race guilt” is a detestable idea, whether promulgated by a Nazi or a Kendi.

[Thread postponed on account of power failure.]