We are all Slave now.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

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.

You are being particularly confusing about this. You talk about how you weren't that impressed with the article and ask why I was. I tell you and I get, "Ok. I said there was some stuff I liked." I don't understand what's going on in your head. If what impresses me you agree with, but doesn't impress you, fine. But don't ask me the question and act so dismissive. Maybe this is one of those instances that would go differently if we were standing across from each other, because, at the very least, you would temper your comments based on the look on my face.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

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.

I'm not sure why you're surprised. I'm pretty sure I explained it very clearly. And given the fact that I have been working in diversity for 20 years and watched how D&I efforts have had to contort itself and struggle to make any headway at all by making white people comfortable enough in their own feelings to even consider addressing the underlying problems (that lay squarely at their own feet), it was nice to see the issue so eloquently set forth in this piece. Your continual explanation of how unimpressed you are is meaningless to me.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

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.

This is one of you dumbest comments ever.

First, society is most definitely set up. White people set it up over the course of hundreds of years and they set it up and maintain it to benefit themselves. Period. Pointing that fact out does absolutely no damage whatsoever.

And I'm so glad you told me what you want to hear. What a disingenuous, bullshit thing to say. You pull one sentence out and say it's too big a generalization while simultaneously ignoring the specifics about how and why white people shut off when it comes to any discussion of racism. I'm starting to wonder whether your entire response is a more complicated example of exactly what the author is talking about.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

"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.

I addressed this in my response to Ferrets.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

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.

The way you are characterizing the point in this piece is reductive and insulting. You have taken an analogy out of context and assigned it a meaning completely detached from the point of the article.

Racism isn't an independent agent that goes around infecting people. The fact that you can read what I read and reach a conclusion that it somehow lets people off the hook is fucking ridiculous. The problem with racism, whether whites benefit from it intentionally or simply as a byproduct of being white, is that there is very little incentive to fight those benefits if you are white. If you are born white, you automatically achieve a certain status in this country. Stating that doesn't let people off the hook. Stating that white people continue to enjoy the benefits of that status and will not act to endanger that status does the exact opposite.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

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 am not sure what your point is here or how it lies in opposition to what is in this article. It seems like you read the piece, dismissed a bunch of it, seized on little pieces and reconstituted them into something that you disagree with.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

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.

Seems like you're trying to force everything into the conclusion box of your college thesis and if it doesn't fit, you toss it aside.

TM