I grew up as a Catholic. Sundays were even more dreaded than Mondays. In the morning we'd be shuffled reluctantly out of the house, without breakfast, to sit and listen to some magic mantras being intoned for what seemed like an eternity.
Monday was a bit different - we'd have to sit and listen to some equally boring stuff about the Romans or trigonometry. But at least it made sense.
As I grew older, I questioned the Catholic doctrines more closely. I tried to understand something like the Trinity (which is not exclusively Catholic, it has to be said) and even read some very clever theologians try to explain it using big words and complicated sentences. Understanding and comprehension never dawned for me, because something like the Trinity is, fundamentally, nonsensical - God the Son is different from God the Father, but simultaneously the same thing.
I had lots of "could you just run that one by me again?" kind of moments.
I find myself in an almost identical position when trying to understand 'woke'.
There's a kind of "surface" reasonableness to many of the ideas, but they just fall away and vanish when examined closely. White privilege? OK - that sounds like it might be something. How do I measure it? How much of it do I have? How do I know when it no longer operates? How close are we to getting rid of it? And so on and so on.
It's the same with the word 'gender' - which I do not understand. The definitions seem to be an attempt to capture the "performative" elements expected of one's sex - but then how do we apply the definitions to understand things like non-binary, or demigirl? Both are recognized genders, but what IS gender? With a word like "tree" I have many examples of different kinds of tree - and I could tell you what a tree IS. But, even though there are many 'examples' of different genders, I can't tell you what gender IS. It's some kind of inner feeling that you are a particular gender, right? OK - what is that thing, that gender, that you're feeling? Give me a definition of gender that works for every example of gender.
What is "whiteness"? What are its properties? How much of it do I have? How much of it do I still have left to get rid of? Is it a property of society or an individual - because it seems it has been applied to both? An individual is said to be able to "enact" whiteness.
I struggle to make real sense of any of it.
During my time as a uni lecturer I used to have to explain some relatively complicated theorems to my students. So, we'd have a theorem like the parallel axis theorem which allows us to work out moments of inertia (this is a quantity that determines how much "resistance" there is to being rotated). It's quite hard to understand it when just presented with the formal theorem. So what do we do? We look at examples. We *apply* the theorem - and the students begin to see what the theorem means. If I adopt this kind of approach with a lot of "woke" terminology, I just get nowhere.
Take something like "whiteness". This is assumed to be a *thing* with a set of defined properties (which could be fuzzy). If it's a meaningful thing, then "not thing" is also a meaningful concept. Presumably, for someone like Andrews, *everything* in society, including some individuals, are entangled with this thing. The aim is to re-work society so that it is based on "not thing" rather than "thing". What are the characteristics of "not thing"? Just the logical complement of "thing"? Strictly speaking, yes, but how does one go about ensuring that everything is based on "not thing" and how do we know how much progress we have made in reducing the influence of "thing"?
There's nothing to get hold of, so to speak. There's no substance - the cloth is so fine that it looks like you're naked when you try to wear clothes made of it.
It's as frustrating as all hell, because these ideas have taken root and you can barely read any "humanities" papers without being confronted by a torrent of these vague and insubstantial terms which operate as a kind of buzzword list to demonstrate one is a member of the group of "right thinkers".
People are being classed as *legitimate* members of some group based not only on their boring and immutable characteristics (things like skin tone, eyebrow length, who they sleep with etc - the eyebrow thing was sarcasm) but also on whether they subscribe to some set of ideas based around a terminology/ideology that makes little sense when closely examined.
It's the Trinity all over again, for me.
There's nothing new in this observation at all - but it is a religion in all but name.
I love my physicists. I was suspecting you were one even before you got to the part that indicated you were. It is something about the way in which you write. When I was commissioning editor for Areo, I published several and received submissions from many more. I joked that there is a genre of cultural critique which should be called "Physicists patiently explaining why your models of society don't work, couldn't work and are constructed of concepts that ensure non-workability"
I suppose what Andrews is positing (it still doesn't work) is something akin to a defective schema in the sense used in psychology that we have all bought into about white superiority which,, because, it is false has had to be bolstered by layers and layers of extra false concepts and myths to make it internally consistent even if it bears no resemblance to external reality and we're now locked into this collective complex delusion. He is very vague about solutions though and it seems to involve a complete reset of the system and starting again but only including black people. In reality, it is he whose reasoning more closely resembles the symptoms of psychosis - joining lots of dots that don't really join to make the pattern he is trying to make. He somehow manages to make the dehumanising brutality of slavery in the US and Chinese people drinking milk all part of the same system of whiteness.
A much better book is Isabel Wilkerson's 'Caste' to explain what I think he is trying to get at.
I'm not convinced we should be putting too much faith in physicists, either. You've probably heard the old joke :
Q : what do physicists use for contraception?
A : their personalities
That being said, there is a sense in which physics is grounded in realism. You can make up whatever fanciful theorem you like, dress it up in the most arcane squiggles, but it has to pass the acid test of observation.
I first noticed something was going awry with "reality" when, in 2016, I became aware of the Yale Quad Wrangle. I was astonished at (a) the lack of respect of the students and (b) the over-dramatization on display. To have a bunch of very privileged people (attendance at Yale is a rather privileged status) claim they were fighting for their very existence over something like Halloween costumes was a version of "reality" I could find no theoretical support for.
Things have just gotten so much worse since then. I can only ascribe it to some kind of collective psychosis. You've probably read the recent article on the Heterodox STEM Substack
In it you'll find mention of a recent paper which explores “the development and interrelationship between quantum mechanics, Marxist materialism, Afro-futurism/pessimism, and postcolonial nationalism.”
Presumably the authors of this paper would be described as intelligent by any academic yardstick - they probably got very good grades etc. Yet how can such people write something so clearly deranged and demented? It has to be some kind of psychosis.
As you're well aware, there are just so many examples of this collective madness. Statements like "rooted in white supremacy" just flow freely and we're all, I suppose, just expected to nod our heads and pretend this is wisdom without trying to figure out what on earth that phrase even means.
Your recent article about the cancellation of Dr Cuthbert gives another great example. The organisers believe that we should listen when anyone says they feel unsafe. But why? Why should I listen? What, precisely, is rendering them "unsafe" and how?
I'm afraid I end up getting very frustrated and over-snarky with it all - which probably doesn't help. I have no idea how we get back to something with even a passing resemblance to sanity - we're drifting out beyond the Batshit Bonkers galactic cluster right now.
Indeed. One of my physicist writers wanted to address Fat Studies by pointing out that advice to lose weight is wrong as moving to a part of the world with lower gravitational pull would not improve health. Perhaps Fat Activists would be more receptive to advice to lose mass, he suggested. No, sir. I think not.
While working for Counterweight, I discovered distinct patterns in which people were most likely to get themselves in trouble by profession. Analytical thinkers and people whose jobs requires decisive action were most at risk. Mathematicians and physicists seldom faced disciplinary action as they mostly restrained themselves to explaining why a theory is nonsense and going quietly insane/. Engineers and computer technicians were more likely to try to fix them and get in trouble. See James Damore. Firefighters, police and paramedics were likely to lose patience and speak bluntly.
I am aware of the problems in science, yes, and am connected to a group of STEM professionals addressing it. They are mostly medics as the problem here is immediately life-threatening particularly in humanitarian aid overseas. But there are people in other disciplines too. I’ve spoken to Anna Krylov and good friends with Alan Sokal. He is still very active in defence of science and would want to be made aware of any assaults on physics.
Wow, exceptionally powerful writing Helen. I find Andrew's views truly chilling and ironically reflect the sort of rhetoric seen in true white supremacists.
Fundamentally we are all humans prone to eons old psychological traps. To put it in a Jungian frame, any ideology risks projecting one's own, and humanity's, shadow onto an exterior evil (Satan, Whiteness, The Patriarcy, The Bourgeious etc. ) such that any action, opinion or behaviour one does not like is pinned to this external evil (often invisible) entity.
I loved your comparison of Woke and Red Pilled. I often think the parable of the blind men and the elephant is so useful for understanding our differences. To take the elephant allegory further when someone "sees the light" etc. they believe what they believed before was wrong and what they believe now is the truth whereas all they have usually done is metaphorically moved from the leg of the elephant ("this is a tree") to the tail ("this is a snake") with out seeing that they are looking at the same beast from 2 different angles with many truths and many false assumptions in both.
I will quickly counter point my only tiny criticism which is I would not imply conservatism is a bad way of thinking, it depends on what values one is aiming to conserve. Some could call you Conservative by wanting to conserve enlightenment liberalism (which is admirable BTW!)
Anyway, that's my ramble you inspired. You continue to be one of the best voices of liberalism and reason out there.
Thanks, Will. The elephant metaphor is a good one. I joke that if we ever achieve a properly liberal society, I will become a conservative in my aim to conservative, but really this is a matter of personality and associated moral intuitions.. Are you familiar with Haidt’s moral foundations theory? My moral intuitions are progressive except on the “loyalty” foundation where I am more conservative than most conservatives! I am patriotic. But indeed, while my aims are progressive. I respect ethical conservatives and recognise the need for their balancing influence. My most respected person in the world, my father, was a dyed-in-the-wool Tory so I would not make the mistake of thinking conservative = bad. I just think left-wing policies are better for society and so argue and vote that way.
Hi Helen, my reply yesterday didn't seem to go through. I do love Jonathan Haidt's works and I certainly have a Liberal temperament. I must admit to having a growing appreciation for aspects of conservatism in the modern culture and a soft spot for Thomas Sowell!
That said, I think it is really hard to get away from these categories and the meanings people ascribe to them. Even when opposing some of the fallacies of those who are very identitarian in their outlook, it is hard not to fall into the same trap because we have to use the same terminology etc. I'd love for Britain to become post-racial in the sense that those who wish to have a strong identity that is based on their own idea and experience of race or ethnicity is a personal matter (that can be shared publicly of course but is never imposed on others). In my experience, it was more this way prior to 2020. But as long as it (the use of terms like race, ethnicity, minority etc) is part of political discourse (and I suppose it should be, since some people do view inequality through a racial lens), it is hard to see how we can move back toward that, or toward something even better and even less confining.
I think becoming post-racial will be hard from the position we are currently in, but I do not think it is innately psychologically hard. I am not suggesting you do. Your comment makes it clear that you too are speaking of current political discourse. But one thing I think it is really important to hold onto is that prejudice on the grounds of skin colour is new and culturally constructed and for much of history it has not existed. Unlike sex which we are hardwired to recognise & always be aware of, humans of different skin colours have not existed for long enough or been in conflict for it to be useful for the human brain to categorise people by race.
I often use the bible as a good example because it is written on the mediterranean and the individuals and groups within it are what we would be now classify as white, brown or black but the bible never sees fit to categorise them this way. We can know, for example, that the group known as the "Cushites" were black and the writers of the bible sometimes present them positively and sometimes negatively. At one point the bible informs another tribe that God loves them as much as the Cushites clearly indicating they were among the chosen people. As others, there is conflict with the Cushites on the grounds of beliefs and behaviours. Moses wife is a Cushite and God punishes Miriam and Aaron for objecting to their tribalist objection to her. The bible is full of tribal warfare but never on the grounds of race.
Also, before the 17th century, writings from Europe about people of other races regarded this aspect of them as of little significance, putting it in the same category as clothing and customs but focused on religion as the big divide. It was not even possible for white Europeans to be racist in the way we now understand it because skin colour was not understood to be hereditary until well into the early modern period. The working assumption was that people in hotter parts of the world were simply more suntanned than people in colder parts. I remember reading, as a late medievalist, what amounted to a medical conference over a rare occurrence in which a baby was born to a white mother and black father in England. There was astonishment that the baby was not white as he had been gestated and born in England and early scientists and physicians convened to discuss how this could happen, and came to the correct conclusion that skin colour was hereditary and not purely environmental. Colour based racism depends on understanding races as intrinsically different and could not really exist when it was believed that skin colour was environmental and consequently that your own child's skin colour could be significantly different to your own if you produced it in a different part of the world.
Also, at this time, references to people as 'black' or 'dark' by English people usually referred to their hair colour and was used to describe people of mediterranean complexion like mine who are now considered white. This is what led to the myth that Shakespeare's Dark Lady was the poet, Aemilia Lanyer, and that she was black and also wrote his plays. I wrote my dissertation on Lanyer and she was occasionally described as black but this is because she was of Italian Jewish descent and her hair was black. Also, her writing is distinctive and nothing like Shakespeare's.
I am rambling now, but my point is that for most of history we have automatically not categorised people by skin colour & I see no reason why we cannot do that again. Why prejudice against certain races cannot disappear the same way that prejudice against left-handed people did and we can again see skin colour as no more relevant than hair colour.
How long it could take for this to happen depends entirely on the state of cultural discourse. I disagree with people who say that centuries of prejudice will take centuries to overcome just from looking at attitudes towards women. A lot of the young women I was at university with as a mature student found it incredible that women were regarded as intellectually inferior and suited for domestic tasks only so very recently. Each individual has to learn racist and sexist beliefs that are not true and many young women today never were taught sexist ones and had to learn that they existed and try to get their head around them when reading historical literature.
I think we were getting there with issues of race and still are to a certain extent but that this has been hindered by current anti-racist activism. As Tom Owolade writes in his new book, supporting your own experience,
In 1983 more than 50 per cent of British people would not marry someone from a different race. By 2020 more than 90 per cent would accept their child marrying someone from a different race. Nearly 80 per cent of the respondents believed it was important for immigrants to integrate into society, and this figure was highest for black people and those born outside the UK: black British people value the importance of integration. And so does the rest of the British population. According to a different Ipsos Mori poll in June 2020, 89 per cent of British people claim they would be happy for a child to marry someone from a different ethnic group (and 70 per cent strongly agree).29 In January 2009 it was 75 per cent (with only 41 per cent strongly agreeing). And 93 per cent disagree with the statement ‘to be truly British you have to be white’ (with 84 per cent strongly disagreeing). In October 2006, 82 per cent disagreed (55 per cent strongly). Ten per cent agreed with the statement; 3 per cent do now.
Owolade, Tomiwa. This is Not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter (pp. 202-203). Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.
I think racism could die fast if society does the right things to enable that because racism is learnt and based on false beliefs and not an innate instinct of humans.
I think I remember a comment from you before which agreed with my view that British citizens whose families recently lived elsewhere can perfectly ethically feel a strong cultural or national identity themselves as also say Jamaican or Indian that celebrates that aspect of themselves but that nobody else should ever give salience to or make assumptions about their identity? I wonder what you think of this thread?
I would now broaden the artistic element even further as something that legitimately unite people with heritages as diverse as Ethiopian Jews, Somali Muslims and Jamaican Christians without having any divisive element and that would be fashion and beauty. That is where things like skin colour and hair texture are genuinely salient. My mother-in-law once bought my daughter a neon pink sundress that looked absolutely awful with her pale gingery complexion but lovely on her little friend whose parents had emigrated from Nigeria. So a black fashion and beauty culture is something that would evolve organically and in a positive spirit. As would and have make-up and fashion ranges that are valuable to people from a wide range of South Asian backgrounds.
Yes, to me this is more about appearance and race as any other feature (like hair or eye colour). It isn't enough to create the sort of bond that some people would like there to be among people with darker skin tones! Incidentally, I recoil at most things premodified by "black" - but not black hair products! Here it is a genuine case of a product being designed to suit my mixed race Afro hair - and it doesn't impose any social or political meaning on me (or rather the half of my family that is black)... it just means I can manage my hair a bit better!
Thanks for your reply. I am pretty postracial myself (part of the reason for that is probably because I was brought up in a mixed-race family where “race” meant more or less the same as eye colour and hair colour – some genetic variation of little consequence). But I try to see things from different viewpoints, especially as I have some very close friends who have recently embraced racial identity.
I think I largely agree with your views on race from what I have read. The problem I wanted to highlight though is this: even those of us who want to help move society back toward a journey to postracialism have to use the language of race and racial groupings in order to discuss the topic. And that can sometimes feel counter-productive, though it is very much needed.
I read Tomiwa Owilade’s book and found it to be very refreshing. But I did not find much space for a more post-racial identity or mindset (such as my own), though he does make it clear throughout the book that he is simply sharing his own point of view - which I fully respect. My impression, particularly from Chapters 8 and 9, was that he views “black Britons” (including mixed black/white and mixed black/other ethnic groups) as a socially meaningful unit, group, or category – mixed and varied and with differing experiences, views, and ideas, yes, but nevertheless a socially meaningful unit. I don’t share that view; it feels confining and strange to me to be put into any socially meaningful category based on my skin colour – even though this one allows more variation and freedom of thought than the strongly identitarian one.
The same goes for ideas like “black autonomy”, “black agency” and (diversity among) “black voices”. Though I am supportive of most push-back to racial identity politics in the current climate, to my mind even premodifying such words with “black” (or any other racial term) seems to reinforce the idea of black (or any other race) as a confining and socially meaningful category or unit.
Not sure if I have explained myself well. I guess my own view of race is something like this: it is something used descriptively as a proxy for ancestry or lineage, as opposed to being socially, politically, culturally, or personally meaningful in any universal way.
I could not access the Twitter thread (think it might be because I am not on Twitter – which was not an issue before, but since Elon Musk took over I am not able to read things on there any more without having a log in).
Great piece. I applaud you for diving into this very nuanced and difficult subject.
I grew up as a Catholic. Sundays were even more dreaded than Mondays. In the morning we'd be shuffled reluctantly out of the house, without breakfast, to sit and listen to some magic mantras being intoned for what seemed like an eternity.
Monday was a bit different - we'd have to sit and listen to some equally boring stuff about the Romans or trigonometry. But at least it made sense.
As I grew older, I questioned the Catholic doctrines more closely. I tried to understand something like the Trinity (which is not exclusively Catholic, it has to be said) and even read some very clever theologians try to explain it using big words and complicated sentences. Understanding and comprehension never dawned for me, because something like the Trinity is, fundamentally, nonsensical - God the Son is different from God the Father, but simultaneously the same thing.
I had lots of "could you just run that one by me again?" kind of moments.
I find myself in an almost identical position when trying to understand 'woke'.
There's a kind of "surface" reasonableness to many of the ideas, but they just fall away and vanish when examined closely. White privilege? OK - that sounds like it might be something. How do I measure it? How much of it do I have? How do I know when it no longer operates? How close are we to getting rid of it? And so on and so on.
It's the same with the word 'gender' - which I do not understand. The definitions seem to be an attempt to capture the "performative" elements expected of one's sex - but then how do we apply the definitions to understand things like non-binary, or demigirl? Both are recognized genders, but what IS gender? With a word like "tree" I have many examples of different kinds of tree - and I could tell you what a tree IS. But, even though there are many 'examples' of different genders, I can't tell you what gender IS. It's some kind of inner feeling that you are a particular gender, right? OK - what is that thing, that gender, that you're feeling? Give me a definition of gender that works for every example of gender.
What is "whiteness"? What are its properties? How much of it do I have? How much of it do I still have left to get rid of? Is it a property of society or an individual - because it seems it has been applied to both? An individual is said to be able to "enact" whiteness.
I struggle to make real sense of any of it.
During my time as a uni lecturer I used to have to explain some relatively complicated theorems to my students. So, we'd have a theorem like the parallel axis theorem which allows us to work out moments of inertia (this is a quantity that determines how much "resistance" there is to being rotated). It's quite hard to understand it when just presented with the formal theorem. So what do we do? We look at examples. We *apply* the theorem - and the students begin to see what the theorem means. If I adopt this kind of approach with a lot of "woke" terminology, I just get nowhere.
Take something like "whiteness". This is assumed to be a *thing* with a set of defined properties (which could be fuzzy). If it's a meaningful thing, then "not thing" is also a meaningful concept. Presumably, for someone like Andrews, *everything* in society, including some individuals, are entangled with this thing. The aim is to re-work society so that it is based on "not thing" rather than "thing". What are the characteristics of "not thing"? Just the logical complement of "thing"? Strictly speaking, yes, but how does one go about ensuring that everything is based on "not thing" and how do we know how much progress we have made in reducing the influence of "thing"?
There's nothing to get hold of, so to speak. There's no substance - the cloth is so fine that it looks like you're naked when you try to wear clothes made of it.
It's as frustrating as all hell, because these ideas have taken root and you can barely read any "humanities" papers without being confronted by a torrent of these vague and insubstantial terms which operate as a kind of buzzword list to demonstrate one is a member of the group of "right thinkers".
People are being classed as *legitimate* members of some group based not only on their boring and immutable characteristics (things like skin tone, eyebrow length, who they sleep with etc - the eyebrow thing was sarcasm) but also on whether they subscribe to some set of ideas based around a terminology/ideology that makes little sense when closely examined.
It's the Trinity all over again, for me.
There's nothing new in this observation at all - but it is a religion in all but name.
I love my physicists. I was suspecting you were one even before you got to the part that indicated you were. It is something about the way in which you write. When I was commissioning editor for Areo, I published several and received submissions from many more. I joked that there is a genre of cultural critique which should be called "Physicists patiently explaining why your models of society don't work, couldn't work and are constructed of concepts that ensure non-workability"
I suppose what Andrews is positing (it still doesn't work) is something akin to a defective schema in the sense used in psychology that we have all bought into about white superiority which,, because, it is false has had to be bolstered by layers and layers of extra false concepts and myths to make it internally consistent even if it bears no resemblance to external reality and we're now locked into this collective complex delusion. He is very vague about solutions though and it seems to involve a complete reset of the system and starting again but only including black people. In reality, it is he whose reasoning more closely resembles the symptoms of psychosis - joining lots of dots that don't really join to make the pattern he is trying to make. He somehow manages to make the dehumanising brutality of slavery in the US and Chinese people drinking milk all part of the same system of whiteness.
A much better book is Isabel Wilkerson's 'Caste' to explain what I think he is trying to get at.
Thanks Helen,
I'm not convinced we should be putting too much faith in physicists, either. You've probably heard the old joke :
Q : what do physicists use for contraception?
A : their personalities
That being said, there is a sense in which physics is grounded in realism. You can make up whatever fanciful theorem you like, dress it up in the most arcane squiggles, but it has to pass the acid test of observation.
I first noticed something was going awry with "reality" when, in 2016, I became aware of the Yale Quad Wrangle. I was astonished at (a) the lack of respect of the students and (b) the over-dramatization on display. To have a bunch of very privileged people (attendance at Yale is a rather privileged status) claim they were fighting for their very existence over something like Halloween costumes was a version of "reality" I could find no theoretical support for.
Things have just gotten so much worse since then. I can only ascribe it to some kind of collective psychosis. You've probably read the recent article on the Heterodox STEM Substack
https://hxstem.substack.com/p/fighting-the-good-fight-in-an-age
In it you'll find mention of a recent paper which explores “the development and interrelationship between quantum mechanics, Marxist materialism, Afro-futurism/pessimism, and postcolonial nationalism.”
Presumably the authors of this paper would be described as intelligent by any academic yardstick - they probably got very good grades etc. Yet how can such people write something so clearly deranged and demented? It has to be some kind of psychosis.
As you're well aware, there are just so many examples of this collective madness. Statements like "rooted in white supremacy" just flow freely and we're all, I suppose, just expected to nod our heads and pretend this is wisdom without trying to figure out what on earth that phrase even means.
Your recent article about the cancellation of Dr Cuthbert gives another great example. The organisers believe that we should listen when anyone says they feel unsafe. But why? Why should I listen? What, precisely, is rendering them "unsafe" and how?
I'm afraid I end up getting very frustrated and over-snarky with it all - which probably doesn't help. I have no idea how we get back to something with even a passing resemblance to sanity - we're drifting out beyond the Batshit Bonkers galactic cluster right now.
Indeed. One of my physicist writers wanted to address Fat Studies by pointing out that advice to lose weight is wrong as moving to a part of the world with lower gravitational pull would not improve health. Perhaps Fat Activists would be more receptive to advice to lose mass, he suggested. No, sir. I think not.
While working for Counterweight, I discovered distinct patterns in which people were most likely to get themselves in trouble by profession. Analytical thinkers and people whose jobs requires decisive action were most at risk. Mathematicians and physicists seldom faced disciplinary action as they mostly restrained themselves to explaining why a theory is nonsense and going quietly insane/. Engineers and computer technicians were more likely to try to fix them and get in trouble. See James Damore. Firefighters, police and paramedics were likely to lose patience and speak bluntly.
I am aware of the problems in science, yes, and am connected to a group of STEM professionals addressing it. They are mostly medics as the problem here is immediately life-threatening particularly in humanitarian aid overseas. But there are people in other disciplines too. I’ve spoken to Anna Krylov and good friends with Alan Sokal. He is still very active in defence of science and would want to be made aware of any assaults on physics.
Helen, your voice and perspective are calm, even, and clear. Thank the Higher Power(s) that we have you in this conversation!
Wow, exceptionally powerful writing Helen. I find Andrew's views truly chilling and ironically reflect the sort of rhetoric seen in true white supremacists.
Fundamentally we are all humans prone to eons old psychological traps. To put it in a Jungian frame, any ideology risks projecting one's own, and humanity's, shadow onto an exterior evil (Satan, Whiteness, The Patriarcy, The Bourgeious etc. ) such that any action, opinion or behaviour one does not like is pinned to this external evil (often invisible) entity.
I loved your comparison of Woke and Red Pilled. I often think the parable of the blind men and the elephant is so useful for understanding our differences. To take the elephant allegory further when someone "sees the light" etc. they believe what they believed before was wrong and what they believe now is the truth whereas all they have usually done is metaphorically moved from the leg of the elephant ("this is a tree") to the tail ("this is a snake") with out seeing that they are looking at the same beast from 2 different angles with many truths and many false assumptions in both.
I will quickly counter point my only tiny criticism which is I would not imply conservatism is a bad way of thinking, it depends on what values one is aiming to conserve. Some could call you Conservative by wanting to conserve enlightenment liberalism (which is admirable BTW!)
Anyway, that's my ramble you inspired. You continue to be one of the best voices of liberalism and reason out there.
Thanks, Will. The elephant metaphor is a good one. I joke that if we ever achieve a properly liberal society, I will become a conservative in my aim to conservative, but really this is a matter of personality and associated moral intuitions.. Are you familiar with Haidt’s moral foundations theory? My moral intuitions are progressive except on the “loyalty” foundation where I am more conservative than most conservatives! I am patriotic. But indeed, while my aims are progressive. I respect ethical conservatives and recognise the need for their balancing influence. My most respected person in the world, my father, was a dyed-in-the-wool Tory so I would not make the mistake of thinking conservative = bad. I just think left-wing policies are better for society and so argue and vote that way.
Hi Helen, my reply yesterday didn't seem to go through. I do love Jonathan Haidt's works and I certainly have a Liberal temperament. I must admit to having a growing appreciation for aspects of conservatism in the modern culture and a soft spot for Thomas Sowell!
Hear hear!
That said, I think it is really hard to get away from these categories and the meanings people ascribe to them. Even when opposing some of the fallacies of those who are very identitarian in their outlook, it is hard not to fall into the same trap because we have to use the same terminology etc. I'd love for Britain to become post-racial in the sense that those who wish to have a strong identity that is based on their own idea and experience of race or ethnicity is a personal matter (that can be shared publicly of course but is never imposed on others). In my experience, it was more this way prior to 2020. But as long as it (the use of terms like race, ethnicity, minority etc) is part of political discourse (and I suppose it should be, since some people do view inequality through a racial lens), it is hard to see how we can move back toward that, or toward something even better and even less confining.
I think becoming post-racial will be hard from the position we are currently in, but I do not think it is innately psychologically hard. I am not suggesting you do. Your comment makes it clear that you too are speaking of current political discourse. But one thing I think it is really important to hold onto is that prejudice on the grounds of skin colour is new and culturally constructed and for much of history it has not existed. Unlike sex which we are hardwired to recognise & always be aware of, humans of different skin colours have not existed for long enough or been in conflict for it to be useful for the human brain to categorise people by race.
I often use the bible as a good example because it is written on the mediterranean and the individuals and groups within it are what we would be now classify as white, brown or black but the bible never sees fit to categorise them this way. We can know, for example, that the group known as the "Cushites" were black and the writers of the bible sometimes present them positively and sometimes negatively. At one point the bible informs another tribe that God loves them as much as the Cushites clearly indicating they were among the chosen people. As others, there is conflict with the Cushites on the grounds of beliefs and behaviours. Moses wife is a Cushite and God punishes Miriam and Aaron for objecting to their tribalist objection to her. The bible is full of tribal warfare but never on the grounds of race.
Also, before the 17th century, writings from Europe about people of other races regarded this aspect of them as of little significance, putting it in the same category as clothing and customs but focused on religion as the big divide. It was not even possible for white Europeans to be racist in the way we now understand it because skin colour was not understood to be hereditary until well into the early modern period. The working assumption was that people in hotter parts of the world were simply more suntanned than people in colder parts. I remember reading, as a late medievalist, what amounted to a medical conference over a rare occurrence in which a baby was born to a white mother and black father in England. There was astonishment that the baby was not white as he had been gestated and born in England and early scientists and physicians convened to discuss how this could happen, and came to the correct conclusion that skin colour was hereditary and not purely environmental. Colour based racism depends on understanding races as intrinsically different and could not really exist when it was believed that skin colour was environmental and consequently that your own child's skin colour could be significantly different to your own if you produced it in a different part of the world.
Also, at this time, references to people as 'black' or 'dark' by English people usually referred to their hair colour and was used to describe people of mediterranean complexion like mine who are now considered white. This is what led to the myth that Shakespeare's Dark Lady was the poet, Aemilia Lanyer, and that she was black and also wrote his plays. I wrote my dissertation on Lanyer and she was occasionally described as black but this is because she was of Italian Jewish descent and her hair was black. Also, her writing is distinctive and nothing like Shakespeare's.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/amelia-bassano-william-shakespeare/
I am rambling now, but my point is that for most of history we have automatically not categorised people by skin colour & I see no reason why we cannot do that again. Why prejudice against certain races cannot disappear the same way that prejudice against left-handed people did and we can again see skin colour as no more relevant than hair colour.
How long it could take for this to happen depends entirely on the state of cultural discourse. I disagree with people who say that centuries of prejudice will take centuries to overcome just from looking at attitudes towards women. A lot of the young women I was at university with as a mature student found it incredible that women were regarded as intellectually inferior and suited for domestic tasks only so very recently. Each individual has to learn racist and sexist beliefs that are not true and many young women today never were taught sexist ones and had to learn that they existed and try to get their head around them when reading historical literature.
I think we were getting there with issues of race and still are to a certain extent but that this has been hindered by current anti-racist activism. As Tom Owolade writes in his new book, supporting your own experience,
In 1983 more than 50 per cent of British people would not marry someone from a different race. By 2020 more than 90 per cent would accept their child marrying someone from a different race. Nearly 80 per cent of the respondents believed it was important for immigrants to integrate into society, and this figure was highest for black people and those born outside the UK: black British people value the importance of integration. And so does the rest of the British population. According to a different Ipsos Mori poll in June 2020, 89 per cent of British people claim they would be happy for a child to marry someone from a different ethnic group (and 70 per cent strongly agree).29 In January 2009 it was 75 per cent (with only 41 per cent strongly agreeing). And 93 per cent disagree with the statement ‘to be truly British you have to be white’ (with 84 per cent strongly disagreeing). In October 2006, 82 per cent disagreed (55 per cent strongly). Ten per cent agreed with the statement; 3 per cent do now.
Owolade, Tomiwa. This is Not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter (pp. 202-203). Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.
I think racism could die fast if society does the right things to enable that because racism is learnt and based on false beliefs and not an innate instinct of humans.
I think I remember a comment from you before which agreed with my view that British citizens whose families recently lived elsewhere can perfectly ethically feel a strong cultural or national identity themselves as also say Jamaican or Indian that celebrates that aspect of themselves but that nobody else should ever give salience to or make assumptions about their identity? I wonder what you think of this thread?
https://twitter.com/HPluckrose/status/1702481600615723029
I would now broaden the artistic element even further as something that legitimately unite people with heritages as diverse as Ethiopian Jews, Somali Muslims and Jamaican Christians without having any divisive element and that would be fashion and beauty. That is where things like skin colour and hair texture are genuinely salient. My mother-in-law once bought my daughter a neon pink sundress that looked absolutely awful with her pale gingery complexion but lovely on her little friend whose parents had emigrated from Nigeria. So a black fashion and beauty culture is something that would evolve organically and in a positive spirit. As would and have make-up and fashion ranges that are valuable to people from a wide range of South Asian backgrounds.
Yes, to me this is more about appearance and race as any other feature (like hair or eye colour). It isn't enough to create the sort of bond that some people would like there to be among people with darker skin tones! Incidentally, I recoil at most things premodified by "black" - but not black hair products! Here it is a genuine case of a product being designed to suit my mixed race Afro hair - and it doesn't impose any social or political meaning on me (or rather the half of my family that is black)... it just means I can manage my hair a bit better!
Thanks for your reply. I am pretty postracial myself (part of the reason for that is probably because I was brought up in a mixed-race family where “race” meant more or less the same as eye colour and hair colour – some genetic variation of little consequence). But I try to see things from different viewpoints, especially as I have some very close friends who have recently embraced racial identity.
I think I largely agree with your views on race from what I have read. The problem I wanted to highlight though is this: even those of us who want to help move society back toward a journey to postracialism have to use the language of race and racial groupings in order to discuss the topic. And that can sometimes feel counter-productive, though it is very much needed.
I read Tomiwa Owilade’s book and found it to be very refreshing. But I did not find much space for a more post-racial identity or mindset (such as my own), though he does make it clear throughout the book that he is simply sharing his own point of view - which I fully respect. My impression, particularly from Chapters 8 and 9, was that he views “black Britons” (including mixed black/white and mixed black/other ethnic groups) as a socially meaningful unit, group, or category – mixed and varied and with differing experiences, views, and ideas, yes, but nevertheless a socially meaningful unit. I don’t share that view; it feels confining and strange to me to be put into any socially meaningful category based on my skin colour – even though this one allows more variation and freedom of thought than the strongly identitarian one.
The same goes for ideas like “black autonomy”, “black agency” and (diversity among) “black voices”. Though I am supportive of most push-back to racial identity politics in the current climate, to my mind even premodifying such words with “black” (or any other racial term) seems to reinforce the idea of black (or any other race) as a confining and socially meaningful category or unit.
Not sure if I have explained myself well. I guess my own view of race is something like this: it is something used descriptively as a proxy for ancestry or lineage, as opposed to being socially, politically, culturally, or personally meaningful in any universal way.
I could not access the Twitter thread (think it might be because I am not on Twitter – which was not an issue before, but since Elon Musk took over I am not able to read things on there any more without having a log in).
I very much enjoy reading your Substack!