4 Items, One Post, I Crave French Toast
1) Jamelle tries to explain why libertarians care about state imposed constraints on freedom, but don’t care much about cultural constraints on freedom:
It seems that insofar that libertarians experience oppression or constraints on their liberty, it is through the actions of the state rather than through culture, which makes sense. Libertarians are overwhelmingly white and male, and in a culture which highly values whiteness and maleness, they will face relatively fewer overt cultural constraints on their behavior than their more marginalized fellow-travelers. Or in other words, a fair number of libertarians are operating with a good deal of unexamined privilege, and it’s this, along with the extremely small number of women and minorities who operate within the libertarian framework, which makes grappling with cultural sources of oppression really hard for libertarians. After all – socially speaking – being a white guy in the United States isn’t exactly hard and that’s doubly true if you are well off.
That seems unpersuasive to me. In the United States, black people faced constraints on liberty imposed by the state that were orders of magnitude worse than any constraint on liberty that the state imposed on whites. If being robbed of liberty by some entity resulted in libertarian views about it — which I think is the argument offered above — African Americans would be far more anti-state libertarian than whites, wouldn’t they? There must be another dynamic at play.
2) Over at True/Slant I continue my conversation with The League of Ordinary Gentlemen about dissident conservatives. (Rod Dreher has been party to it as well.) It took longer for me to write that it would take you to read!
3) Strange how folks responded to Ross Douthat’s latest. His argument is obviously that Islam and Christianity are pitted against one another in an effort to win believers and converts — and that Catholicism is now participating in that contest more aggressively. His critics imagine that he is calling on Christian denominations to unite and wage holy war on Islam. Having just articulated his views in The New York Times, Mr. Douthat is obviously unashamed about stating them publicly. Does anyone want to make a large wager on whether or not he in fact advocates a holy war against Islam? I’ve got everything in my wallet on the “he does not think that” position.
4) Perhaps the solution to the situation Freddie writes about is to describe the racial problems that exist in America with more specific terms than “that’s racist.” Being labeled a racist is getting to be like being labeled a sex offender. Did you rape a 5 year old or go skinny dipping with your 17 year old girlfriend as an 18 year old? The sex offender list won’t tell you! When Freddie calls for more accusations of racism but less opprobrium aimed at the guilty, he presumably means the term should be applied to lesser racial sins. Well how about instead we reserve racism for actually hating people of other races, or thinking they’re inferior, or using racial slurs, or committing hate crimes, preserving the well deserved stigma against these acts, and then, for example, when a manager implements hiring practices that are shown over time to disadvantage minority applicants, one could say to him, “Hey, I’m not saying you’re a racist who hates blacks and Hispanics or anything, but look at how this mechanism you’ve set up to filter the resumes you receive systematically disadvantages people of color! It’s very possible you didn’t do this intentionally, but shouldn’t you fix it?”
UPDATE: In comments and elsewhere I am seeing the argument that the real problem with Ross Douthat’s column is his assertion that Islam is incompatible with reason. The problem with that line is that he never argued it! Here is the relevant excerpt:
Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.
He is reporting on what the Pope said as an illustration of his confrontational approach, not himself asserting that Islam and Western reason are incompatible, a question on which he takes no position.
ALSO SEE this thoughtful critique.
With regard to (1), I think the picture becomes clearer when you look at how things played out in the American system. It was the state governments that created the Jim Crow laws, and it was ultimately the power of the federal government that did away with them. The only thing that could have stopped the southern Democrats of the 1890s from disenfranchising a significant percentage of their opponents’ supporters would have been the federal government, but the Supreme Court supported segregation. Not totally sure what the story was with the other branches, though I know that McKinley declined to intervene in some pretty egregious southern incidents.
As for Jamelle’s argument, I don’t think he’s talking about oppression causing libertarianism. I think he’s saying that if you’re already somewhat libertarian, you’re going to look at the things that infringe your liberty, and for fairly well-off white men, you’ll be looking primarily at economic stuff, because the cultural stuff isn’t a big blip on your personal radar. But I’m not Jamelle, so I could certainly be wrong.
— william randolph · Oct 28, 04:18 AM · #
Except that it’s really not. As near as I can tell, nobody gives a shit about racism anymore, to the point where a white cop can arrest a black man for breaking into his own home and nobody thinks that’s anything but a black man who got too “uppity” by virtue of being educated and well-connected. Hey, we have a black president – racism is solved! Ergo, any accusation of it must be false, must just be liberal race-baiting.
I can’t think of a single incidence in the last 2 years where being labeled as a racist had any permanent consequences whatsoever. Even Don Imus got his job back. Rush has never lost his. Sonia Sotomayor was called a racist (and dumb) every day in half the media outlets in the country, and by nearly every prominent Republican; her confirmation in the Senate was ratified by 9 Republicans and every Democrat.
The refrain by conservatives “being called ‘racist’ is a bigger problem than racism” is just a self-serving excuse to avoid examination of the very real racial injustices that have become their ideological platform. Of course, there’s the problem too where conservatives can’t tell the difference (conveniently) between the statements “that’s racist!” and “you’re a racist!” Ta-Nehisi Coates has written on this in the past, adroitly.
— Chet · Oct 28, 04:33 AM · #
Ross Douthat may not have declared war on Islam, but isn’t it embarrassing enough that he talks about Islam’s incompatibility with reason?
I was surprised and pleased to learn that the fellow who lost his job in D.C. politics for using “niggardly” was offered the change to reclaim his job at a later stage in the affair. Although he didn’t actually say anything racist, he was the first person who leapt to mind in response to Chet, despite being a decade old. So score one for Chet. On the other hand, Trent Lott lost out big.
And lastly, I don’t know if I can properly present Jamelle’s thought processes, but I seriously it was the sentence you’re attributing to him, Conor.
— Justin · Oct 28, 04:57 AM · #
“Ross Douthat may not have declared war on Islam, but isn’t it embarrassing enough that he talks about Islam’s incompatibility with reason?”
What’s embarrassing about that? Many of the highly reputed Islamic theologians in history agree with him. I take it you disagree?
— Ethan C. · Oct 28, 05:14 AM · #
“…but isn’t it embarrassing enough that he talks about Islam’s incompatibility with reason?”
I don’t know – for the New York Times, given their take on matters religious, it’s practically conventional wisdom. Could you clarify why you think it’s ‘embarrassing’ to talk about the question of whether or not Islam is compatible with reason?
— jh · Oct 28, 12:06 PM · #
“Ross Douthat may not have declared war on Islam, but isn’t it embarrassing enough that he talks about Islam’s incompatibility with reason?”
What’s embarrassing about that?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well, how about that Douthat is a devout Christian. And Christianity is incompatible with reason.
— Socrates · Oct 28, 01:04 PM · #
I can’t go into the flaws in Jamelle’s thinking here, I will do it in on my blog, but I’ll ask what is the proper libertarian response to cultural oppression — how should the libertarian “grapple” with this issue?
And I will also say that libertarian’s are familiar with oppression outside the state — it’s the liberal/progressive cultural oppression which attempts to politically marginalize libertarians by claiming they are culturally retarded due to race, gender and class. It’s funny how the rich, white guy liberal, socialist or communist can overcome gender, race and class influences to be the paragon of cultural understanding, but the libertarian is limited by these influences.
— mike farmer · Oct 28, 02:45 PM · #
libertarians are familar, not libertarian’s are..
— mike farmer · Oct 28, 02:47 PM · #
“Being labeled a racist is getting to be like being labeled a sex offender. Did you rape a 5 year old or go skinny dipping with your 17 year old girlfriend as an 18 year old? The sex offender list won’t tell you!”
No, the problem is that you can’t label someone a racist unless they get caught burning a cross on a black family’s lawn while screaming the N word at the top of your lungs. Pretty much every lesser expression of racial animosity or insensitivity gets brushed under the rug.
Mike
— MBunge · Oct 28, 03:03 PM · #
Jamelle and Howley think they are making an important point, when in fact they are simply applying emphasis to a point granted by all. Of course social norms influence choice. That’s why they exist. Every time we shun a racist we’re trying to limit and influence choice.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Almost every ethical system requires that you attempt to influence other people’s choices. In particular, you should use morally permissible means to influence people to make choices that will lead good/fourishing lives as opposed to bad/wasted lives. Political liberalism has typically focused on limiting the morally/legally permissible means for imposing/advocating your conception of the good life. Coercion no, persuasion yes. This approach also has the significant side benefit of limiting the opportunity for state oppression. This focus on process rather than content makes political liberalism compatible with various levels of value pluralism. Howley is making two points, both without much argument:
1. Libertarianism should focus more on content than on process, in effect becoming an ethical philosophy in which ‘more liberty’ is a good in itself.
2. As a consequence, libertarianism is compatible with a smaller scope of value pluralism than hitherto imagined. (it should oppose ‘liberty-limiting’ value-laden norms like sexism, homophobia, or, one imagines, opposition to non-traditional family structures and polygamy).
— Ben A · Oct 28, 03:58 PM · #
I thought libertarians were actively in favor of using social/cultural mechanisms to manage social conflict. Social norms about when and where to smoke, for example, rather than passing laws and fining people.
I don’t think anyone is naive enough to think social conflict won’t happen. Or that we don’t need police and courts to deal with violent offenses and severe property crime. The question is, once you’re beyond the most severe areas of conflict, how much do you want the state to intervene in dispute resolution? And how much do you trust people to sort things out on their own or through voluntary institutions independent of the state?
It’s a matter of balance. I do think women may have slightly more statist inclinations in domestic matters. A man’s home may be his castle, but his wife and kids still need SOME recourse if he smacks them around. Extended family, church, voluntary organizations and so on may help, but they may not be enough. And the person getting hit may choose to turn to the state well before the person doing the hitting considers it reasonable.
But that doesn’t have to mean a broad ideological commitment to state power over normal, non-extreme situations in everyday life. The battered wife may well prefer private discussion, a few choice words from the in-laws or the local pastor, or some other private mechanism to resolve even the most severe problem. The state is just the next move when the situation is dire and the voluntary options don’t work. It can be seen as a last fallback when voluntary social arrangements don’t work, rather than as a substitute for voluntary arrangements in all cases.
And of course that means the state is less necessary if cultural and voluntary mechanisms for resolving (or better yet preventing) disputes are robust and effective. If society has a strict norm against men smacking their wives, for example, and if it deals swiftly and effectively with men who violate the rule.
— M.C. · Oct 28, 04:10 PM · #
“Libertarianism should focus more on content than on process, in effect becoming an ethical philosophy in which ‘more liberty’ is a good in itself.”
Anyone who reads Tibor Machan and Jan Narverson (or my blog, wink, wink) realizes that libertarians are addressing social concerns and ethical concerns. As a matter of fact, the most innovative thinking has come from libertarians, who don’t just pass the responsibility over to the artless state for some dumb, clumsy regulation frenzy.
— mike farmer · Oct 28, 05:26 PM · #
“Well, how about that Douthat is a devout Christian. And Christianity is incompatible with reason. — Socrates”
Funny you should mention it, “Socrates.” “Muhammad or Socrates?” is the title of a Weekly Standard article by Lee Harris (author of The Suicide of Reason and no friend of Christianity, FWIW) praising the speech by Pope Benedict that Ross was referring to.
— SDG · Oct 28, 06:17 PM · #
There are plenty of shades, but Christian and Muslim theologies can be boiled down to a simple rule of thumb:
Both are right, in a way. Both are wrong in practice.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 28, 07:18 PM · #
Islam is a natural religion of the revealed God. Which makes it either (i) a higher synthesis or (ii) an insuperable contradiction or (iii) a jejune deterioration from the truth, depending on your views.
— y81 · Oct 28, 07:39 PM · #
On only the last point:
I’m not really comfortable with the “more accusations of racism, less stigma” concept at all. I think that what Mike describes — basically it has to be serious to have any currency at all, and that that’s rare — is more where you want to be, although I agree with Mike that the “seriousness” threshhold is too high. I think the good of American race policy has had to do with focusing less on extant race discrimination and more on long term ideas: looking at racial issues in terms of where we want to be in a generation and tolerating or even encouraging forms of discrimination now as necessary to get there. From that standpoint, that prescription is misaimed. Looking backwards we see generations of people who could all have been called racist, even by the worst of modern standards, but there’s not a lot of stigma attached because people were products of their time. Looking forward we’d like to see a word where accusations of racism are vanishingly rare and taken gravely seriously. So I don’t see the wisdom of the prescription.
It’s particularly unpleasant when one looks, I think, at that next generation. Reading your comment I thought about a young man in a group I mentored some 15 years ago (odd to think he’s very much an adult now). I was involved in a large group that was doing mentoring work for underprivileged kids — in the event almost all black — in Boston, and on that day we were bussing out to Western Mass for a science/engineering event mostly attended by kids from more wealthy neighborhoods. The mentors were generally younger than I and all white. One of the black kids, who was that day in a group being supervised by another person, had developed a thoroughly annoying laugh line. He would protest everything, with increasing volume and drama, with “That’s racist!” Performace they didn’t like? “That’s racist!” Mentor says he can’t order more soda when we stop for lunch? “That’s racist! She racist!” Stoplight for the bus? “That’s racist!” All to uproarious laughter from the other kids and twitters from the mentors, and occasionally in public — at the event, at the lunch stop, etc. I asked his group’s mentor to tell him to knock it off, and she half-heartedly did so, and he kept doing it. So at last I let him have it, pushing the agreement I had with that group to let me go ahead and use foul language, and dressed the kids down, and it ended, full stop. Because it was bullshit: that was a group of kids where some of them would very surely encounter important discrimination issues, and this ass, usually a good kid, was fucking it up for all of them.
Which gets to two reasons why I think you’re pushing terrible ideas. I think the knock-on effects on the next generation of Americans will lead you somewhere you really, really don’t want to be: you try to innovate in in ways they pick up first, but they come up in a context not shaped by those innovations: it seems set up to screw them. I also think this idea is sort of like Millman on education reform: it’s coming out of an idea of what racism is and how it works among polite white educated class folks that isn’t necessarily reflective of what you want to do and what matters in the broader American context.
Race has also grown substantially in complexity in America now and as a result I think dragging out criticism of the small bads is insanely complicated and won’t generally be fruitful. Hell, it’s hard to do with the big bads. A couple years back at Cal I wandered into the lab and none of the Ph.D. students were around. Turned out they were in the conference room because one of ‘em, who was kind of that way, had brought in a whole mess of DVDs from some late night cable TV show written and starring a black comic. I walked in during a sketch on Prince and basketball which was, admittedly, truly awesome. But the humor went south fast and it was as solidly racist as any material I’d seen: stuff that was basically based around the presise of, it’s funny because blacks are lazy or drug-addled or promiscuous. My, “guys, what the fuck is wrong with you?” was met with, “c’mon, this guy’s black, it’s fine.” But it clearly wasn’t, and it was pretty much the worst stuff I could imagine being on TV in this decade (so I took off and got back to the lab). The whole thing was particularly nasty because of course we’re surrounded at Cal by this huge poor African-American population but the school itself: well, thinking back over eight years there, I can think of no black phyics grad students, four black chem ones (two, oddly, in a black prof’s lab, doing molecular models) out of maybe 200 Ph. D.s in that time, one 1st gen Ethiopian in biophysics. If you can’t call stuff grossly racist in that setting, then good luck trying to somehow modulate stigma “appropriately.”
It’s also gotten complicated by intergroup dynamics and rivalries. For example, affirmative action in California got killed on the backs of East Asian-Americans, who had suffered mighty discrimination but now were seeing affirmative action discriminate against their kids in favor of Latino and African-American students. Similarly Obama’s inspiration of massive turnout among African-Americans in California probably contributed to the passage of an anti-gay-rights measure. Again it’s going to be hard, digging extensively in the weeds of small bads.
As a South Asian I’m in a funny place. Right now we’re a comparatively comfortable minority in America, although among ourselves we are so diverse that it’s not helpful to say that. On the other hand, growing up in the 70s and 80s before the big immigration waves from India, things got kind of tough: my parents got legal hassles that still make me fume, I got beaten up pretty badly a couple times (and like to think I hospitalized a couple guys myself) because then as now I didn’t much give a fuck where I was supposed to be, and so on. After September 11 we were in a pretty bad place, and while I think we get a lot less racial opprobrium than blacks do, I think we get a lot more cultural/religious issues: hell, we just completed a nice new temple near here and it was two days before the asshole vandals came on out. So again I don’t quite know how my small bads, or some white dude’s small bads, or some black dude’s small bads, can easily be metricked: easier to say, if it’s egregious, we unleash the big gun, whoever you are. Freddie of course just chimed in with his own asinine lack-of-interest-in-knowing-the-culture-but-I’ll-go-ahead-with-my-stereotype moment: that’s a consequence of the fact, I suppose, to some people we don’t “count,” on which more in a sec.
I’m irritated by making the issue liberal/conservative. I think outside of the political classes racism is pretty widespread. Republicans certainly made a play for racists as part of their coalition, and you know it’s bad when they so lost black voters for the guy who beat Jimmy Carter. But out of the educated classes I don’t quite believe racism is ideological. Right now I live in as conservative a part of the country as I ever have (or ever hope to) and yet my wife and I comment to each other all the time that as far as we can tell, interracial marriage is the rule out here: there’s just so much of it here that our Cambridge/Berkeley eyes are happily surprised. And groups in bars and the like are more racially mixed than I’ve ever seen. So go figure.
But just to ram this point home: Barack Obama is a politician and a damn smart, damn good one. He is not above indulging bigotry (e.g. against gays) to get things done, and the belief that he isn’t ignores a lot. (Mind you, pointing that out isn’t helped by loons making the obviously goofy case that Obama is some kind of anti-white racist). Let me explore that.
Obama backed his party when they led the charge saying it was OK for US ports to be operated by a foreign company, but not an Arab one. After a South Korean-born student killed a bunch of VT students, he drew a comparison between that act and outsourcing US labor — which, wow. Then he famously launched his primary campaign on a fabulously racist note, suggesting that there was something wrong with getting money from American citizens of Indian descent: when called on it he gave a wonderful politician’s non-apology. Most recently he passed a policy that is not going to help American jobs nor help American consumers, and is is ridiculously unwise given the global trading environment, essentially as a sop to a constituency that’s just plain anti-Chinese. That stuff is in fact racist. It ain’t Jim Crow, but it sucks. Obama doesn’t get called on it becasue we are, understandably and perhaps rightly, reluctant to call this president out on this stuff — and because, for a lot of folks, it doesn’t “count.” So in terms of more widely pointing this stuff out, I’d say, careful what you wish for.
— Sanjay · Oct 28, 07:58 PM · #
Re Chappelle:
How is that bad? Blacks aren’t made worse off; they’re arguably made better by releasing the tension (laughing) caused by 1) recognizing the caricature but 2) rejecting the stereotype. Also, sharing common cultural artifacts within your group is a time-tested team builder; volleying funny quotes from a favorite show song or movie is the modern way of doing it. And then you have the hedonic benefits of laughing once a day.
And I’m not sure that whites are made more racist by watching Chappelle. Chappelle made light of black idiosyncrasies, and presented some hilarious caricatures of black culture. But whites really got it, when they were present at all. Old school whites were characterized as evil racist idiots with penis envy, while new school whites were invariably castrated poseurs or evil racist idiots. Coming to grips with that caricature is good for whites, too. And dumb racist whites, the ones who could plausibly become more racist by watching Chappelle, aren’t in the main rushing to watch Chappelle.
Personally, I think we need to laugh more at each other and way more at ourselves. Thus, when your racially charged comedy makes both sides laugh, in my book you’ve done something smart and right.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 28, 08:55 PM · #
For some reason part of a sentence got removed. New school whiteguys were also characterized as uptight prudes, sexual naifs, and social wimps. Whitegirls were usually fleeing their metro-emasculated menfolk for the unabridged carnal pleasures of the Big Down and Dirty.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 28, 09:05 PM · #
The difficulty is that readers don’t know what Douthat means by the incompatibility with Western concept of reason; Greenwald immediately thinks of the political irrationality of Muslim extremists rather than philosophical and theological disputes over whether and in what sense God is bound by reason (and of course points to areas where the church disagrees with Greenwald’s own beliefs as prima facia proof that Catholicism is hostile to reason.)
— Aaron · Oct 28, 10:57 PM · #
If that’s the comic (and I’m not sure), then I don’t buy that, Sargent. I mean, yeah, you can be very funny playing with racial and other stereotypes and that’s a good thing (see Python, Monty). But (and I didn’t see any white dudes) I saw a few sketches before it was just too damn much, and they all played nastily on negative stereotypes of blacks. Peppering your repertoire with a few of those does what you say. When that’s all you’ve got — that’s something else, and it ain’t good.
But it seems one can be far too race-blind. This afternoon one of my bosses came into my office with pictures from a weekend picnic and told me she tried to get nice pictures of my son, but, he kept turning his head away so she had all these pictures of the back of his head — and gave ‘em to me. I said, thanks, and she left, then I flipped through the pictures. They were of a very pale-skinned, tow-headed youth (the child of a colleague). The people who worked with me laughed and laughed and laughed: “She knows you’re not white, right?”
— Sanjay · Oct 28, 11:18 PM · #
Conor: you’re right he didn’t quite say that Islam was incompatible with reason. But he did make a rather juvenile suggestion about the issue.
This has all the subtlety and charm of headlines like “Do X’s actions prove he’s a child-molesting monster? Read on for more revelations.” I’m put in the mind of Daniel’s post at Crooked Timber: Rules For Contrarians. 1.Don’t whine. That is all.
Ethan C: I rarely judge my opinions by whether highly regarded Islamic theologians agree. It’s important to note that Christianity has struggled with the question of how to reconcile faith and religion. I do not view the results of that struggle as predestined in either the case of Islam or Christianity.
jh: I roll my eyes at people who tell me religion is incompatible with reason. Religions may be false, they may be unjustified, but world history suggests that while the major religions may have occasionally traded elbows with reason, they were able to share the stage with it.
— Justin · Oct 29, 12:42 AM · #
I don’t know, Sanjay, to me it seems better than fine. Laughing at your own stereotypes, like laughing at a dictator, demystifies them, takes away their potency. Owning them comically, dilutes them. You never fear something you can laugh at.
Let’s say some white dude takes some black-presented black stereotype seriously, but it’s a stereotype that black people sit back and laugh at uproariously. In that situation, the white person is the absurdity. His racism is no longer something to be feared. Instead, it’s part of the joke.
Chappelle wants black people to laugh at their own stereotypes. In doing that, they escape the burden of fear and loathing.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 29, 12:55 AM · #
To be clear:
I really really really don’t think the way to go is to revere racial identity. Anything that subverts that reverence is good for me.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 29, 12:59 AM · #
If being robbed of liberty by some entity resulted in libertarian views about it — which I think is the argument offered above — African Americans would be far more anti-state libertarian than whites, wouldn’t they?
Of course, African Americans are far more anti-state libertarian than whites, when it comes to things like distrust of police power and opposition to racial profiling. `The state’, despite libertarian talk that often treats it as a single, monolithic entity, is anything but. If one branch of `the state’ — local police, say — has robbed you and your community of liberty for generations, while other branches — federal courts and wealth-redistribution programs, say — have done exactly the opposite, then wouldn’t it make sense for you to be fine with some aspects of `the state’, and deeply distrustful of others? (Note that, mutatis mutandis, this seems to apply just as well to wealthy, white `minimal state’ libertarians.)
— Noumena · Oct 29, 12:51 PM · #
Well said, Noumena.
— Rob in CT · Oct 29, 02:31 PM · #
Re: “If being robbed of liberty by some entity resulted in libertarian views about it — which I think is the argument offered above…”
I don’t think that is the argument. The argument is that libertarians are concerned only with encroachments on their liberty by government because, being white guys, that’s the only encroachment they experience. If they were not white guys, they would experience other, cultural encroachments on their liberty and would be more concerned about those than they are.
— john · Oct 30, 11:32 PM · #