It occurred to me recently that my time in Evangelicalism and subsequent journey out have a lot to do with why I find myself reactive to the spread of Woke culture among colleagues, political soulmates, and friends. Christianity takes many forms, with Evangelicalism being one of the more single-minded, dogmatic, groupish and enthusiastic among them. The Woke—meaning progressives who have “awoken” to the idea that oppression is the key concept explaining the structure of society, the flow of history, and virtually all of humanity’s woes—share these qualities.To a former Evangelical, something feels too familiar—or better said, a bunch of somethings feel too familiar.
Tarico then lays out many of the similarities in detail. The similarities include:
And now. Click on the photo for the story of this woman dining in DC, who was approached by BLM protesters, not satisfied to invade her while in a restaurant but insisting on the alleged need for compelled speech.
The woman dining in the restaurant is bravely exhibiting the correct approach when someone threatens you to make you say something you don't believe. Here is a classic photo showing how to be brave. Click on the photo for the story of the man who refused to salute Hitler.
Have you heard about "Babygate"? The crux of the problem is that a white man affectionately held a Black friend's Black baby on his lap, at the friends's request during a meeting of the NYC Community Education Council. Members of the Council complained, indicating that this was "harmful" and that it "hurts people." The formal written accusation contained the following:
The letter characterized the lap incident as harmful: “Imagine the insult and emotional injury any thinking person, especially a person of color, suffered when they witnessed this scene and heard that comment,” it stated, calling them “shocking, disgusting, offensive, and racially incendiary.” It demanded that Wrocklage resign, claiming that allowing such incidents to continue without consequences “will only further empower the perpetuation of similar racist behaviors.
When the man who held the baby was called out, he challenged the accusers to state why this was racist. The accusers could not explain why this was racist. They told him that he needed to read Robin DiAngelo. This incident illustrates how crazed we are getting. "Anti-racist" ideology is has successfully turned innocent human kindness into a bad thing.
Folks who have different ideas about how to combat racism should engage one another. They might even attempt a reciprocal book exchange, in which everyone works to understand how others see the world. A more inclusive anti-racist canon would include Bayard Rustin, Albert Murray, Henry Louis Gates, Zadie Smith, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Danielle Allen, Randall Kennedy, Stephen Carter, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Barbara and Karen Fields, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Adolph Reed, Kmele Foster, Coleman Hughes, and others.
As long as sharp disagreements persist about what causes racial inequality and how best to remedy it, deliberations rooted in the specific costs and benefits of discrete policies will provide a better foundation for actual progress than meta-arguments about what “anti-racism” demands.
People who don't know me well sometimes assume that it's easy for me to keep my weight down. This is completely untrue. I constantly watch what I eat. I constantly force myself to exercise and I make myself get on the scale several times each week. If I don't do these things I will gain 2 or 3 pounds per month. I've repeatedly and unwittingly run the experiment of not paying attention to my weight during my life. Each time I fall off the rails, I have had to call a stop to the nonsense and declare war on my fat. Over the past 30 years, this has led me to begin ever new rounds of weight loss boot camp (on my own, at home) where I've worked hard to lose 35, 20, and 20 pounds, as well as various smaller amounts of weight. I'm currently in yet another (minor) boot camp that will end when I lose 5 more pounds. This is my plight, my burden and my opportunity if I am going to maintain a body that feels good and fits my clothes. I also want to avoid risks of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, strokes and other illnesses associated with excess weight.
Whenever I find out that friends are trying to reduce their size, I encourage them and celebrate their successes with them. I silently applaud when I see obese people I don't know exercising at the park Good for them! I hope they reach their goals!
On the one hand, body positivity—the attitude associated with the movement—aims to try to help overweight and obese people (especially women—see also, fat feminism—and sometimes, when intersectionally analyzed, specifically black women) accept themselves and their overweight status as they are so that negative emotions are not tied up with it. This, of course, has the direct benefit of helping people not feel bad about themselves for a state of facts about the world (weight, BMI, body fat percentage, etc.), which can be demotivating and hinder weight loss attempts (or, which can just be mean and bullying—see also, fat shaming).
On the other hand, body positivity tends to rather aggressively deny any connection between weight status, including obesity, and health (see also, healthism). It rejects such connections as a “medicalizednarrative” (see also, regulatory fiction). This rejects mountains of medical evidence suggesting otherwise, that being overweight and especially obese correlates strongly with and causes a number of serious health issues. This view relies upon seeing body weight status and obesity ultimately as a social construction that is used to create an unjust power dynamic that discriminates against and oppresses fat people. Activism in the body-positive movement often encourages overweight people not to want to lose weight (sometimes as a means of identity politics—see also, identity-first), which is irresponsible, at best (e.g., a book in the movement is titled You Have the Right to Remain Fat).
I agree with the benefits of body positivity described above. Overweight people should not be shamed. They should not be shunned. Doing these things is cruel and destructive. We should recognize every other person to be a precious human being. It all starts with I and Thou, Martin Buber's version of the golden rule.
That said, how can it possibly be bigoted when I work hard to be healthy and look better by losing weight. How can I possibly be acting out of bigotry to the extent that I encourage others to reach their weight loss goals? It's not. For background, see this article on Woke attitudes toward obesity at New Discourses. This is shut-up ("Woke") culture doing what it does best: halting important and necessary conversations under the guise of combating alleged discrimination. Today's excess is an article by CBS featuring a sociology professor who claims that concern with obesity is veiled racism.
The concept of using "race"--physical appearance--as a proxy for character is as absurd as astrology. I'm well aware that people look different from each other, but the concept of "race" is scientifically baseless. The concept of "race" embraces the logic of astrology: shoving individual people (each of whom is complex) into a handful of simplistic superficial categories and then drawing conclusions that are evidence-free (or often, contrary to evidence) based upon these unwarranted simplistic cartoon-like categorizations. The concept of "race" should be constantly ridiculed the same way that intelligent people ridicule astrology. Any attempt to classify another human being by "race" or birthdate is a lazy ham-handed anti-scientific and pernicious claim that one knows what it is impossible to know--the complexity of that human being--without investing time and effort to get to known them. That is the point of Morgan Freeman:
This enormous flaw with the modern use of the concept of "race" is a conceptual hole so vast that one could easily drive a truck through it. Yet the concept of "race" is rarely attacked at the root. The first racist act is categorizing people by dividing them into simplistic categories such as white or Black. Without this first move, racism would be impossible. What is especially distressing is that this widespread exuberant willingness to mis-categorize people into simplistic categories is embraced by both White Supremacists and those who claim to be seeking social justice by embracing critical race theory. These two groups are now in complete agreement that we can somehow know people merely by looking at their physical appearance.
There is only one way to get to know a person, and that is to take the time to learn about them, one by one, by talking with them, getting to know what they've done with their lives, reading about them or watching them interact with others. Complicating things, people change over time, so getting to know who they are requires non-stop effort. Getting to know someone else requires careful consideration of real world facts and this takes considerable and concerted effort. Taking the time to get to really know other people before casting judgment on who they are is incompatible with making snap judgments but, as we are increasingly being tuned by social media, we are increasingly people who insist on making snap judgments.
Every day, "race" arguments wildly launch off into a thousand directions like fireworks. The basic premise of most of these arguments is the incoherent concept of "race," a concept so completely and irrevocably broken that most of these discussions are a waste of time before the discussion even begins. Imagine the time we could save--time we could redirect to working on solving the immense social problems that are very real indeed (many of them correlated to the physical appearance of groups of people)--if only we cut off most discussions of "race" at the root by calling out the invalidity of the concept of "race."
I will be writing more on this emotionally-charged topic in coming months. At this point I should make two things clear.
A) As I hope I've made clear, "race" is a irretrievably flawed pernicious concept. I believe that the concept of "race" should be thrown in the dustbin of history and we should all enter a new post-racial era. Unfortunately, other people continue to believe in the reality of "race." This idiotic willingness to divide complex people into simple colors makes racism possible. For this reason, I fully acknowledge the existence and destructiveness of racism. Many people mistreat others based upon physical appearance. To do this is unfair. It hurts people, sometimes badly, sometimes leading to deaths. Racism oppresses entire groups of people and has done so systematically over long stretches of time, through the entire history of the United States and many other places. Wherever we encounter racism, we should attack it vigorously in two ways: socially (by calling it out publicly and condemning those who mistreat other people in this way) and through the use of the legal system (e.g., through civil rights laws).
B) The concept of "race" itself is bad science, and this problem needs to be pointed out whenever discussing racism. Every single time. Even young children know that "race" makes no sense but we socialize them to think otherwise. To fail to point out the absurdity of the concept of "race" whenever discussing racism will lead to more of the same. We will never be able to solve the "race" problem as long as we assume that there is such a thing as "race." One way to do this is to consistently put the word "race" in scare quotes, which is now my habit. Every time we discuss "race," we need to call out that the the casual, unthinking idea that there is such a thing as "race" is reckless and dangerous. We need to constantly call out that it is impossible and destructive to judge other people by the use of immutable physical appearance. It is, indeed, as insane as believing in astrology, phrenology or palm reading. The unthinking use of the word "race" is utterly unscientific and destructive, even when used by well-intentioned people. The concept of "race" is a mental virus that hurts people and most of those who are infected are unable to see that they are infected. To use "race" uncritically (or "critically," as is de rigeour among the Woke) is to succumb to the banality of evil--unthinking destructive acquiescence to bad ideas.
In sum, racism exists because millions of misguided people believe in the incoherent and unsubstantiated notion of "race." It will take great effort to break this bad habit because many well-meaning people who are (oftentimes heroically) fighting racism refuse to jettison the concept of "race." Until large vocal swaths of society simultaneously and consciously embrace both A and B (above), racism will tear us apart. I'm not optimistic.
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