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[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Pun intended?



I hear you. Thanks for taking up the challenge here.



I don't disagree at all.



Ditto.



OK.



Hey, I tried to say that there were things about the article that I liked and things I disagreed with. I'm not arguing about the message -- I'm just surprised that you would say it's the best thing you've read on racism since college, because that sounds like a pretty high bar. So here were my criticisms, with some more explanation:

"how society is set up"

No one "set up" society. Racism is the product of a whole bunch of individuals actions and choices. While it is helpful to get people to realize that racism is systematic and pervasive, talking at this level of generality can become a substitute for illustrating the subject in a concrete way. (Maybe this is just the reviewer's gloss on a book that does the letter.) I want to hear more specifics about how and why people do and think what they do and think. Hearing that society is set up to be racist is about as helpful as Sebby explaining that we are all responsible for the rise of Trump.

"white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color"

I don't think it's true. As I was saying to GGG, I think white progressives can be maddening, because one expects more help and less resistance, but I think Trump voters do more daily damage. For example, Trump voters and the officials they elected are splitting up refugee families. Obama was far from perfect, but he was better on that score.

white racism as "a pathogen that seeks to replicate itself"

From a history of ideas perspective, I'm interested in the way that beliefs evolve. But. If the central problem addressed by the book and the review is that white liberals are in denial about their racism, then talking about racism as a sort of independent agent that goes around infecting people is just another way of letting them off the hooks for their choices, actions and beliefs. To my mind, I prefer the approach of Gordon Allport's Prejudice, which talks about prejudice (or racism, if you will) as thoughts and beliefs that the result of the way everyone thinks.

I wrote my college thesis about racism and the way that it did and did not affect government policy in a particular case, so I guess I am repeating ideas that I have worked over a lot in the last many years.

I'll have to respond tomorrow. I gotta run to a meeting.

TM