May 5, 2022 12:14 AM
(This post was last modified: May 5, 2022 02:04 AM by C C.)
The new definition of racism
https://www.commentary.org/articles/wilf...m-x-kendi/
EXCERPTS (Wilfred Reilly): . . . while some of the intellectual fights in question are purely theoretical, others matter quite a lot in real-world political and social terms. Perhaps the most relevant of these is the ongoing attempt, by widely read academics and public intellectuals such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, to redefine the concept of racism...
[...] For Kendi in particular, racism is properly thought of not as simple out-group bias, but rather as any system that produces disparate outcomes between or across racial and ethnic groups. He says this openly. In his book How to Be an Antiracist and again in an interview with Vox...
[...] Kendi argues that there are only two possible explanations for a measurable difference in performance between two large groups in a given undertaking—say, standardized testing. These are (1) some form of racism within a social “system,” no matter how hidden and subtle, or (2) actual (I read him as meaning genetic) “inferiority” on the part of the lower-performing of the two groups. “There’s only two causes of, you know, racial disparities,” Kendi said on a Vox podcast. “Either certain groups are better or worse than others, and that’s why they have more, or racist policy. Those are the only two options.”
Disparities, in the Kendi model, are de facto evidence of racist discrimination. Moreover, Kendi’s proposition sets a clever rhetorical trap: His logical implication is that anyone who argues against Explanation No. 1 is, by definition, agreeing with Explanation No. 2. If you don’t accept racism as the culprit in performance outcomes, you must be endorsing group inferiority. Thus, should we accept his framing, simply to argue against “anti-racism” is to identify oneself as a racist.
For the nonconfrontational—who dodge this trap by agreeing that all group gaps are either evidence of racism or the dread thing itself—Kendi proposes some social-engineering solutions to fix our racist system. These include the formation of a federal Department of Anti-racism, tasked with ensuring proper representation of all groups across all fields of American enterprise, regardless of performance.
In order to determine the value of Kendi’s proposed definition of “racism,” we must first examine the logic of his claims. [...] It is remarkable that such an easily disprovable idea has become so globally popular. The contention that the only factor that might explain group differences in performance, at any given time, is either genetic inferiority or hidden racism is simply wrong as a matter of fact...
[...] Serious social scientists ... have pointed out for decades that large human groups differ in terms of performance because of dozens of variables. Yes, these include culture (i.e., hours of study time per day). But they also include factors such as environment, region of residence, and even stochastic chance (or luck, to state it a bit more plainly).
One particularly obvious and noncontroversial example of such an “intervening independent variable” is age. According to the Pew Research Center, the most common (modal) age of black Americans is 27, and the most common age for white Americans is 58 (the median age gap, approximately a decade, is smaller). The most common age for Hispanics in the U.S.—across all regions and among both males and females—is 11. Vast differences such as these, which have nothing to do with inferiority, are certain to be reflected in measured group outcomes.
Geography is another powerful factor. Near-majorities of both American blacks and Hispanics still live in the South or Southwest, but a far smaller percentage of whites live in the same regions. This matters because test scores for all groups living in those regions have traditionally been lower than for those elsewhere in the country. Any analysis of group outcomes—from wealth and income statistics on the left to crime rates on the right—that fails to take obvious factors like these into account is dishonest or willfully ignorant.
[...] These variables explain group-performance gaps far better than “invisible racism” does. While she is sympathetic to arguments about the lingering effects of past oppression, the economist June O’Neill pointed out decades ago in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that the sizable gap in raw income between American blacks and whites shrinks to just 1 to 2 percent when adjustments are made for variables such as test scores, median age, and work experience.
[...] Real racism is evidenced not by performance gaps alone but rather by proven discrimination. And such discrimination can be measured in a multitude of ways in this era of sophisticated statistical methods. Any facially racist laws or policies that remain in place—and there may be a few—constitute unethical discrimination and demand that we rid ourselves of them.
[...] We’ve seen enough of the fashionable arguments about racism to know that they’re only detrimental to that fight. The claim that “we know significant racism exists because the thing we have defined as significant racism exists” is not serious.
If we were to accept it wholesale, it would mean, among other things, that the United States is a Korean-supremacist country. According to the proposed definition of racism, there’s no other way to interpret the outsize success of Korean Americans.
This is why words must mean something. Rather than embracing the absurd, or choosing to deny the reality of continuing residual racism, thinking liberals, centrists, and conservatives need to reclaim the classic meaning of a critical term. If not, the proposed definition will become the definition. In a haunting indication of what’s to come, Merriam-Webster revised its definition of “racism” in 2020 to include “systemic racism.”
Ibram X. Kendi was born Ibram Henry Rogers. It is time we left Mr. Rogers’s intellectual neighborhood and got back to consensus reality before the real meaning of the word becomes a cultural artifact... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.commentary.org/articles/wilf...m-x-kendi/
EXCERPTS (Wilfred Reilly): . . . while some of the intellectual fights in question are purely theoretical, others matter quite a lot in real-world political and social terms. Perhaps the most relevant of these is the ongoing attempt, by widely read academics and public intellectuals such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, to redefine the concept of racism...
[...] For Kendi in particular, racism is properly thought of not as simple out-group bias, but rather as any system that produces disparate outcomes between or across racial and ethnic groups. He says this openly. In his book How to Be an Antiracist and again in an interview with Vox...
[...] Kendi argues that there are only two possible explanations for a measurable difference in performance between two large groups in a given undertaking—say, standardized testing. These are (1) some form of racism within a social “system,” no matter how hidden and subtle, or (2) actual (I read him as meaning genetic) “inferiority” on the part of the lower-performing of the two groups. “There’s only two causes of, you know, racial disparities,” Kendi said on a Vox podcast. “Either certain groups are better or worse than others, and that’s why they have more, or racist policy. Those are the only two options.”
Disparities, in the Kendi model, are de facto evidence of racist discrimination. Moreover, Kendi’s proposition sets a clever rhetorical trap: His logical implication is that anyone who argues against Explanation No. 1 is, by definition, agreeing with Explanation No. 2. If you don’t accept racism as the culprit in performance outcomes, you must be endorsing group inferiority. Thus, should we accept his framing, simply to argue against “anti-racism” is to identify oneself as a racist.
For the nonconfrontational—who dodge this trap by agreeing that all group gaps are either evidence of racism or the dread thing itself—Kendi proposes some social-engineering solutions to fix our racist system. These include the formation of a federal Department of Anti-racism, tasked with ensuring proper representation of all groups across all fields of American enterprise, regardless of performance.
In order to determine the value of Kendi’s proposed definition of “racism,” we must first examine the logic of his claims. [...] It is remarkable that such an easily disprovable idea has become so globally popular. The contention that the only factor that might explain group differences in performance, at any given time, is either genetic inferiority or hidden racism is simply wrong as a matter of fact...
[...] Serious social scientists ... have pointed out for decades that large human groups differ in terms of performance because of dozens of variables. Yes, these include culture (i.e., hours of study time per day). But they also include factors such as environment, region of residence, and even stochastic chance (or luck, to state it a bit more plainly).
One particularly obvious and noncontroversial example of such an “intervening independent variable” is age. According to the Pew Research Center, the most common (modal) age of black Americans is 27, and the most common age for white Americans is 58 (the median age gap, approximately a decade, is smaller). The most common age for Hispanics in the U.S.—across all regions and among both males and females—is 11. Vast differences such as these, which have nothing to do with inferiority, are certain to be reflected in measured group outcomes.
Geography is another powerful factor. Near-majorities of both American blacks and Hispanics still live in the South or Southwest, but a far smaller percentage of whites live in the same regions. This matters because test scores for all groups living in those regions have traditionally been lower than for those elsewhere in the country. Any analysis of group outcomes—from wealth and income statistics on the left to crime rates on the right—that fails to take obvious factors like these into account is dishonest or willfully ignorant.
[...] These variables explain group-performance gaps far better than “invisible racism” does. While she is sympathetic to arguments about the lingering effects of past oppression, the economist June O’Neill pointed out decades ago in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that the sizable gap in raw income between American blacks and whites shrinks to just 1 to 2 percent when adjustments are made for variables such as test scores, median age, and work experience.
[...] Real racism is evidenced not by performance gaps alone but rather by proven discrimination. And such discrimination can be measured in a multitude of ways in this era of sophisticated statistical methods. Any facially racist laws or policies that remain in place—and there may be a few—constitute unethical discrimination and demand that we rid ourselves of them.
[...] We’ve seen enough of the fashionable arguments about racism to know that they’re only detrimental to that fight. The claim that “we know significant racism exists because the thing we have defined as significant racism exists” is not serious.
If we were to accept it wholesale, it would mean, among other things, that the United States is a Korean-supremacist country. According to the proposed definition of racism, there’s no other way to interpret the outsize success of Korean Americans.
This is why words must mean something. Rather than embracing the absurd, or choosing to deny the reality of continuing residual racism, thinking liberals, centrists, and conservatives need to reclaim the classic meaning of a critical term. If not, the proposed definition will become the definition. In a haunting indication of what’s to come, Merriam-Webster revised its definition of “racism” in 2020 to include “systemic racism.”
Ibram X. Kendi was born Ibram Henry Rogers. It is time we left Mr. Rogers’s intellectual neighborhood and got back to consensus reality before the real meaning of the word becomes a cultural artifact... (MORE - missing details)