Talking About Ideas

On the podcast To the Point today, Warren Olney interviewed Ibram Kendi, who had an op-ed in the New York Times recently titled The Heartbeat of Racism is Denial.

I took issue with very little of what he said.  But near the end of the conversation, he made a statement reflective of a common view among my fellow leftists.

“Evidence of racial inequities (whites have more wealth, are incarcerated) are explained by: Either those disparities that are all around us are the result of black inferiorities or they’re they are the result of racist policies.... the only other explanation for all these inequalities is that our country is racist.”

This is the false dichotomy I've been decrying on this blog for years, and unfortunately informs a view shared by both the right and the left when discussing racism.  Minority disparities are either genetic or caused by racist policy. 

The right-wing response is to argue that because very few people are explicitly racist, and no explicitly racist laws are on the books, that the cause must be be black people themselves.  However, they don't want to admit to any genetic inferiority, so instead say it is "cultural".

The left wing response is to agree that no genetic inferiority exists, but that no "cultural" problem exists either.  Instead, the answer must be racism.

Now, there are at least three words that need unpacking here: racism, culture, and policies.  Because each could be interpreted different ways.

Racism could mean explicit, active racism (not hiring a black sounding name, not moving to a black neighborhood, etc.).  But it could also be passive (not supporting policies with disparate impacts, not feeling as "generous" towards minorities, developing prejudices, etc.).  But it could also be historical racism, which is not currently active, yet has previously occurred and left a mark (discriminatory hiring, policing, red-lining, etc. could have happened a generation ago yet still be impacting family members today).  Or it could be all of the above.

Culture could mean the customs and traditions of an ethnic group (music, dance, conversation, style, etc.).  But it could also mean micro-level or family or neighborhood level norms (not cleaning up trash, engaging in risky behaviors, not doing schoolwork, etc.).  The latter type of culture is trans-ethnic, meaning it is less reflective of any particular ethnic group than a segment within that group, usually relating to class or privilege.

Policies could mean explicit laws pertaining directly to skin color, enacted for racist reasons, which actively target certain ethnicities for persecution (colored bathrooms, schools, profiling, etc.).  But they could also mean policies that create implicit effects through inaction, which cause disparate impacts.  For example, if majority minority neighborhoods are located next to polluting factories, and you pass laws eliminating regulations, the law is not explicitly discriminating, but the impact will be.

Now, to use the terms racism, policy and culture loosely is to cut conversation off at the kneecap.  And yet this is exactly what we tend to do.  I would argue that most conversations on race, policy and economics involve incredibly loose use of these terms.  Even when the subject is broken down, as Kendi did in the interview, his use of the term racism and policy were too loose as to be meaningful in any deeper, more functional way.

Because if we are ever going to get anywhere in understanding the divide between right and left on racism and poverty - two fundamental problems of history itself,  and to come together in our understanding of truth, we are going to need to dig into the weeds of what these ideas mean.  As readers of this blog will note, the question of why we behave the way we do is incredibly complex from an epistemological standpoint.  And how are we ever going to get to that if we can't agree on common language?  Furthermore, how are we going to take steps to solve the problem if we don't know how to properly discuss it in an objective, orderly fashion?

Sneering Here, Sneering There

In my last post, I wrote about Kevin Drum and liberal sneering.  In the meantime, I've still been hearing  a lot about white-working class ("WWC") resentment of liberal sneering.  But I still don't seem to get it.  I did a google search and came across this post on the Blaze which was critical of Kevin Drum, and the title characterized the general framing of the piece:

"Liberal blogger admits how ‘city folks’ really feel about rural working class"

Reading through many of the comments, the basic response was that this was completely obvious.  However, it also seemed an excuse for many commenters not just to express outrage, but to reveal just how much they sneered at "city folk".  A typical example of this sneer:

Put me down as someone who sneers at city folks. Damn few of them could find their way out of the woods or survive if left alone there. By and large I dislike them. I especially dislike the ones who live in California, Oregon, Washington, and over on the northeast coast. New York? A hellhole. New Yorkers? Jerks.

I left the following comment:
I came to this post because, as a liberal, I've been trying to understand the how and why rural/less-educated voters feel sneered at by liberals.  I've always felt there was at least as much sneering going in the other direction.

Unfortunately, this thread seems to prove me right.  I actually like Kevin Drum, but disagreed with the premise of his post.  There is a difference between having different tastes or skill-sets and sneering, or looking down at someone.  If I prefer fancy beer or coffee, and dislike cheap or watered-down stuff, I guess I sneer at it, but I don't sneer at people who like it!

Likewise something like literature or the arts.  Sure, I have developed a good appreciation for the arts, and I guess I sneer at stuff I think is poor quality.  But not at the people who enjoy it.  What do I care.  They have other interests and can appreciate plenty of things that I can't.

I came here hoping for a better understanding but I guess I just found a lot of silly tribalism.  Can't we try to learn from one another?

Cheese and Trump

Kevin Drum writes on liberal sneering.

I'm not here to get into a fight with Krugman, but come on. Sure, the right-wing media fans the flames of this stuff, but is there really any question that liberal city folks tend to sneer at rural working-class folks? I'm not even talking about stuff like abortion and guns and gay marriage, where we disagree over major points of policy. I'm talking about lifestyle.

I think this is super important, and something I've been interested in for a long time.  What is taste?  What does "cheese" really mean.  What does it mean to sneer?  And it is a central theme of the Trump election.

On the one hand, I do sneer at cheesy things, because they are cheesy. Is this wrong? Does sneering at things imply a value judgement about the person?  If I dislike Coors beer, can I sneer at it without being said to sneer at the person who likes it?  Is it because by extension people who like cheesy things without awareness are diminished, deemed inferior? Of course we can all have preferences, but the definition of sneer does mean "to look down on".  

Knowledge is central here; awareness. Without it, you are ignorant by definition. Yet it isn't merely awareness but the status associated with certain forms of knowledge. Uneducated people have a ton of knowledge that I do not - mechanics, carpenters, businessmen, etc. Yet if they wear fannypacks, watch wrestling and buy sweatpants at Walmart they are living a cheesy lifestyle. So, the issue is cheese. 

The dictionary definition of cheesy is that it is slang for something that is of inferior quality, poorly made, or cheap.  But there is more too it.  There is a sense in which the term refers to a lack of education on specific social standards.  These are arbitrarily defined according to a critical consensus of what is valuable at a given time.  Some things, like fashion, of course change rather rapidly, and the standards evolve.  As Heidi Klum states in her tagline for the TV show Project Runway (which my wife and daughters adore), 

"One day you're in.  And one day you're out."

As long as you are a willing participant in the specific cultural practice of following fashion, and place value on what the arbitrary standards are, you accept the terms of engagement.  However, many - possibly most, people aren't so interested in fashion. Or, find it difficult to keep up with.  They just kind of go along with what they find on the rack.

But it comes down to one's personal cultural milieu.  Different social circles have different associated fashions - almost uniform-like, in a sense.  You have the butch Lesbians with their jeans and vests.  You have the preppy boys with their izods and loafers.  You have the metrosexuals with their perfectly groomed facial hair arrangements.  Rural women with modest denim blouses and blowdried bangs.  Artsy hipsters with random t-shirt advertisements and victorian mustaches.  Dockworkers with baseball caps and practical, tinted sunglasses.  There is obvious social benefit in these groups to align oneself with the mutually agreed-upon standard.  When in Rome.

But "cheesy" is something different.  It seems primarily defined by knowledge, and a value ranking.  To agree to the terms is to make a value judgement.   And in order to make this judgement, one must first accept the premise that there are specific social standards.  One can understand something to be "cheesy", and decide that it is unimportant, and embrace the cultural practice anyway.  Indeed, a common way to flout social convention is to engage in "cheesy" activities with the explicit understanding that these activities are "cheesy".  This is an especially productive move when the practice deemed "cheesy" had been placed off-limits as a low-value practice, and yet is actually quite objectively enjoyable.  I myself engage in this when I listen to Linda Rondstand and Aaron Neville during my drive to the movie theater to watch a blockbuster action film, afterwards dining on fast food before returning home to play videogames.  Of course, I "know" that this is all cheesy, and so in certain circles you have the post-modern phenomenon of embracing low-value social practices, such as the iconic Pabst beer (which tastes like piss) in Portland, OR.

Yet what once is learned can not be unlearned.  There are better beers, with more flavor.  There is better music, relying on less cliche structure and lyricism.  There are better movies which explore larger issues of human experience with innovation and craft.  There is cuisine that engages more senses than salt, sweet and fat.  There are leisure activities that enrich one's personal repertoire of experience and expression than lining up an x and y axis and flipping buttons to pumping music.

So why engage in one activity versus another?  How ought one spend one's time?  What kind of a society does one want?  Does one believe in the arts, in innovation, in creativity, rather than cheap, inexpensively produced "popular" culture that hews tightly to well-established and low-risk endeavor?  Sweat pants at Wal Mart, slim jims and the Bachelorette are cheap and get the job done.  But what is their place in the larger scale of human history?

Donald Trump likes gold decor.  It is shiny, representative of money, and so ostensibly he believes the more of it the better.  Of course, this is an incredibly cliched and superficial standard by which to judge quality.  It demonstrates that he is unaware of the complex standards by which one might judge the value of decor.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing - many people are similarly unknowledgeable (I've chosen not to use the term ignorant to avoid its negative connotation, despite personally finding nothing wrong with being ignorant of something there is no need to be knowledgeable of.  However, I concede that is the whole point of this post).  If Trump merely had brown sofas, or had hired an interior designer, no one would notice.  But instead, he actively went out and engaged in a demonstration of what he personally finds attractive.  He thus embarrassed himself by demonstrating for all to see not just his ignorance (now the term seems to fit?), but his desire for others to see just how wealthy he is in a very obvious way, akin to wallpapering his home with hundred dollar bills.  Surely there are other ways of telegraphing wealth - rich people do it all the time.  Yet what he did, more than anything else, was actually telegraph his ignorance of social practices, of taste.

Is taste OK?  Is it OK to make value judgements on cultural practices?  To hear some, such a question is almost tasteless itself.  Of course it isn't OK!  It is snobbish, bourgeoise.  And yet this is of course ridiculous.  We all have taste.  We all have preferences.  We can all appreciate that taste is ultimately about craft, about many people over time working to develop a repertoire of cultural creation.  This can only be done by valuing certain things over others.  Anyone who has view art, watched a movie, listened to music, or picked out a pair of pants has engaged in the appreciation of taste.  Taste is about the creation of fulfilling experiences.  Like any other craft, the production of these experiences requires time and expertise.

Everyone can appreciate craft.  And here is where the taste divide might appear.  No one turns their nose up at the ability of someone to build something useful.  Its importance is immediately apparent.  Sewer pipes, bridges, walls, stairs, roads, delivering mail, fixing cars, growing food.  These are all working class endeavors.  And there is a product that is fundamentally useful to all.  A better bridge is safer, a better sewer pipe is more efficient, a better crop feeds more people.  Saying one is better than the other is self-evident.

Not so with taste.  The difference between a classical musician and a popstar, or a difficult work of art that requires a complex understanding of context and a very accurate image of someone doing something that looks fun, is not about function.  The very definition of "pop" comes from mass-appeal.  But it also almost always means somehow cheaper, less developed, and - often - more difficult to enjoy.

Whether valid or not, a certain sort of class resentment does seem at play.  A traditional definition of civilization is the ability of a society to produce enough surplus food to afford to support someone whose only job is arts and entertainment.  Class hierarchies have always bred resentment and distrust.  To the extent that one job is easier than another, or at least appears to be, it will be resented.  So much more so if the job is deemed higher-status.

The working-class, those who make their living with their hands, might indeed feel resentment towards those who make their living indoors, away from the grime, without elbow-grease.  And imagine if while these non-working class individuals were off in universities, they gained not only the ability to gain high-wage jobs, but also gained an ability as well to gain high-status tastes - art, literature, philosophy.  And more recently, notions of what is "politically correct".  And imagine them then coming back home and no longer appreciating your low-class, uneducated and low-status cultural preferences.

At this point, do they really need to "sneer" for the resentment to be felt?  I'm actually of the opinion that there isn't actually that much sneering going on.  As Drum mentions towards the end of his post, working-class can sneer too.  Isn't really just about how you treat people.  You can have preferences, but you don't need to sneer.  But there are cultural resentments, especially when it feels like you can't get ahead, even if this is isn't because of the educated, but rather an economic and social system that isn't very good at giving everyone a fair chance.

Donald Trump has nothing to offer but trickle down theory, which is cold comfort.  Instead he and his right-wing nationalist talk-radio ilk sell a narrative that the real problem is pointy-headed, educated liberal fascists (try replacing "liberal" with Jew sometime and historical resonance gets creepy).  For whatever reason it has obviously been working.  His tackiness is his credentials.  The more he attempts to gain status without knowing the difference, the more relatable he is.  He's ridden into office on a wave of resentment of the elite, a tide of Coors beer and bad TV.  He could walk out onto 5th avenue in a fanny pack and people would cheer.

Big Trouble in Little Iowa

I recently wrote at length on Trumpism viewed through a behavioral lens. I thought I'd post this as it's a more simplified, digestible version. 

What we've seen in this election, more than anything else, is the rural cultural identity of the white/Christian/heterosexual/gender-conformist reacting against the notion that they are no longer considered superior. This narrative has been playing out on the right for decades, growing in strength alongside the rise of multiculturalism, feminism, LGBT awareness and strength. To hear the mythology, one would think these different groups are somehow taking over and oppressing the WCHGCs. Yet examine the actual events and one finds no removal of rights, but rather modest requests for polite inclusion - bake a gay cake too, say happy holidays instead of Merry christmas, add a girls soccer team, build a wheelchair ramp, don't mention Jesus in your opening statement, don't bully a feminine boy, try to hire some more women and minorities. This is hardly oppression. 

As a behaviorist, I think of the term "exctinction burst". This describes the tendency for people to engage in maladaptive behaviors (anger, yelling, violence) when behaviors they have previously been reinforced for engaging in are no longer reinforced - or placed on "exctinction". It's a natural process, and ought to fade in time, as long as the reinforcement is withheld. Unfortunately, if people remain in social groups that cling to these chauvinist behaviors (we include thoughts as behaviors), they will remain reinforced, and in a perpetual state of anger. This is especially true as the cosmopolitan dominated media and academia remain dominated by progressive values that oppose chauvinism.

Blind Nobility

Radical politics is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is to be admired for its relentless enthusiasm and firm commitment to principle. When facing down a mortal enemy, it fights with a vigor and tenacity that can be profoundly constructive. But on the other hand, it can lead one blindly into the wilderness, chasing after shadows.

Barbara Ehrenreich does some of the latter in a recent article, How We Cured “the Culture of Poverty,” Not Poverty Itself. She notes correctly that in the last 50 years, America has, led by a convenient marriage of conservatism and neo-liberalism, pretended that poverty was solely the product of bankrupt culture; instead of attacking the institutions and social dynamics that perpetuate poverty, it has been sold - under the banner of a "classless society" - as a purely behavioral problem. 

By the Reagan era, the “culture of poverty” had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology: poverty was caused, not by low wages or a lack of jobs, but by bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles. The poor were dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to “defer gratification,” or possibly even set an alarm clock.

Ehrenreich is right to dismiss this right-wing narrative as simplistic, misguided and uncompassionate.  The right and neo-liberal left has mistaken symptom for underlying problem.  But in attempting to critique their over-reliance on a sort of underclass demagoguery, she wrongly denies that the symptoms even exist.  The reality is that the poor, as a class, certainly do suffer from behavioral issues that the more affluent do not.  Yet by denying this truth, she ends up missing the opportunity to take a larger perspective, and account for the causal mechanisms involved in dysfunctions that plague poor communities such as violence, substance abuse, educational failure, etc.


I've worked in poor communities all my life, and nowhere is this more evident than in poor schools. While I applaud Ms. Ms. Ehrenreich's defense of the dignity of the poor, as well as her pointing out that they are not a homogeneous class, the picture she paints can actually end up limiting our ability to deal with poverty by underestimating its complexity.

What we need to understand when thinking about poverty is that human social development requires two forms of capital: human and social. They are both dynamic, and reinforce each other in that each leverages the other to promote self-efficacy and success. A persistent lack of either among classes of citizens represents a serious threat to our core values of democracy and egalitarianism.

Unfortunately, when we assume in general that the poor have more human and social capital than they do, that they are merely poor in financial capital, we do not take seriously their plight, not the larger social dynamics at work that conspire to further marginalize and disenfranchise them. A serious, modern critique of capitalism and subsequent policy implications simply cannot be entertained without first grappling with the mechanics of human and social capital leveraging.

To truly see the dignity of the poor, we must recognize the reality of the struggles they face, trying to raise families in neighborhoods in which poverty is concentrated and capital of all kinds is in short supply.  She ends her piece with this summation:

And if we look closely enough, we’ll have to conclude that poverty is not, after all, a cultural aberration or a character flaw. Poverty is a shortage of money.

It is actually much more serious than this.  The sooner we recognize it, the better we will be able to truly help those in need.  It does not help those who are treated without dignity to pretend that their problems are not as severe as they in fact are.

The Ideological Telegraph

We've all experienced it before.  A discussion is taking place one the topic of notable television shows.  Various programs are praised or scorned.  Then someone pipes up, "I don't watch television."  This is then followed by vague denunciations of modern culture, a pining for nature, or maybe porch swings.

Or the updated version: people are discussing cell phones - plans, apps, etc.  Someone comments, "I hate the things."  They invariably then hold up their own cell phone, highlighting in stark contrast its exquisite antiquity.

This sort of behavior has always seemed to be so tiresome.  But why?  For decades now, people have been bemoaning television.  Do they really think they are saying anything new when they decide to inform everyone present of their cultural fundamentalism?  What does a critique of overtechnologized society (if that's what the heck they're going on about) have to do with a group of people commenting on the ways in which they obviously enjoy the technology?

I think that what seems so annoying is the sense that they are less expressing genuine feelings, than telegraphing their ideological adherence to a particular issue.  Because, of course, people don't really dislike cell phones.  Or TVs.  We've all had the experience of having a TV-denialist over to our house when a TV happened to be on and seen them glued to it like rats on cocaine. 

A frequent trope of the denialist is that they simply "don't have time".  This, after they get finished telling you about this or that group, hobby, or other fancy of theirs.  They have the time, they just choose to spend it differently.  Yet in dishonestly saying they don't "have time" to watch television, they are able to get their dig in; they get to diminish it as a worthless activity - one you and others just happen to enjoy.  Not only have they now been dishonest in describing their daily schedule, they have been dishonest in making a value judgement of your interest without saying it clearly, by being passive aggressive. 

Of course, historically the road to ideological purity has always been littered with the wreckage of personal integrity.  One thinks of monks squirreling away candy bars.  Or pedophilic priests.  Or closeted gay homophobic politicians.  Ideological sacrifice is not easy.  Otherwise, perhaps it would not be called sacrifice.  However the sacrifice should not include honesty and personal integrity.

No, they like it.  But they don't want to like it.  And this is a principled enough position.  The Amish do great work here.  But they ought not pretend that they have somehow reached a higher plane of existence, after having rappelled the cliffs of self-sacrifice and, prostrate on the mountain-top of truth through the freezing rain, somehow having thus exercised that particular human demon - the one the rest of us apparently trod before like harnessed mules, otherwise known as enjoyment of television.

I understand that it must feel awkward to take the hard path of ideological sacrifice in the company of "outsiders".  But there comes a point when we must all accept the fact that we all have our own battles to fight, and we each choose which swords to fall upon.  I have known my share of non-TV watching vegans who were complete assholes.  Apparently carefully avoiding the siren of televised programming was more important to them than avoiding the siren of selfish arrogance.  Likewise, I've known perfectly wonderful and compassionate people who would consider barbeque ribs and an episode of CSI to be a night well spent.

This is not a call for relativism.   Too much television really is a bad thing.  Cell phones can become magnets of self-absorption.  But neither let us pretend that we can begin to judge others so harshly.  Maybe one man's vice to to watch a bit more television, or buy the latest cell phone, but only because his virtue lies elsewhere, in the way he kisses his children before he tucks them in at night, or the way he smiles at the bored cashier. 

These may be no less of sacrifices to him - when he could choose in such moments to give in to selfishness.  Yet does he get to speak of it, to lord it over others in conversation?  Maybe.  But likely he does not.  He merely goes about his day, in his humble way, making the world every bit as pleasant a place.

Making Culture

 From the Wikipedia entry Culture Industry:

Culture industry is a term coined by critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), who argued in the final chapter of their book Dialectic of Enlightenment, 'The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception' ; that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods – through film, radio and magazines – to manipulate the masses into passivity; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture make people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances.

Adorno and Horkheimer saw this mass-produced culture as a danger to the more difficult high arts. Culture industries may cultivate false needs; that is, needs created and satisfied by capitalism. True needs, in contrast, are freedom, creativity, or genuine happiness. This was reference to an earlier demarcation in needs by Herbert Marcuse (see Eros and Civilization (1955))

I'm not sure if I'm so skeptical of these lines of reasoning because I misunderstand them, or because they are very flawed. I certainly haven't them, so that's that. But it does strike me as part of a much older leftist story that is kind of right, but feels really ham-fisted and often plain wrong.

What first occurred to me that it is rather puritanical. I mean, replace "freedom, creativity, or genuine happiness" with something more religious and you've got a paraphrasing of Islamist cultural critique.

Yet there is an obvious truth to it. No matter why they are doing it, much of American behavior and attitudes are terrible. The question is kind of chicken/egg: do we buy it because we want it or because we've been told to want it? And how much of this is a feedback loop anyway? You've got those in power positions leveraging this stuff, and so their hand is at least partly behind the wheel. But they're also often "following the money".

And how much of this is really "false contentment"? I'm reminded of the old TV vs. non-TV watchers debate. Although, let's be honest, it's mainly the non-TV guys standing there with their noses in the air, trying to absorb as much of the erudition and sophisticate status as possible, almost as if applying salve to their wounds-of-penance, lying on their uncomfortable futons, drinking bitter wine and cursing reality television. But there are obviously incredibly redeeming qualities to mass culture, often ones that far surpass what careless observers might consider "higher art".

I'm entirely open to being disabused of my notions. But as it stands, this sort of thinking can get tendentious rather quick.

The Fightin' Mexicans

A lot of people talk about their desire to see a post-racial, non-multicultural America in which everyone is assimilated into one big nebulous mass that is American.  The obvious problem with this is that America was first founded by relatively recent immigrants, and then took on as its narrative the concept of embracing people from all over the globe's aspirations for a better life.  What this inevitably led to was a diverse range of ethnic populations and communities - from Irish to German to Mexican to Vietnamese, Jewish, etc.  You can then add to this dynamic the Native Americans that were already here and nearly wiped out, and the African Americans that were brought here as slaves.  Multiculturalism isn't just an abstract concept - it is who we are.

It is hard then to find a better explanation for the insistence of the part of so many that all must assimilate to one standard and narrow cultural form than an ugly and selfish impulse to ethnocentrism - that is, white, Christian pride.  This sentiment is on display in the frequent opposition to any celebration of most forms of non-white or non-Christian cultural heritage.  From naming streets after Martin Luther King or Cesar Chavez, to requiring equality-minded mandates on religious expression in public institutions, gay pride parades or multicultural advocacy curriculum in schools.

Defenders of assimilationism argue that "identity politics" - the celebration of and reflection on ethnic differences - ultimately has a negative effect because it is fundamentally divisive.  Yet ironically, the only divisions it really seems to have brought out is between the assimilationist white Christians and everyone else.

However, this claim may be a red-herring to begin with if the real reason behind the opposition comes down to simple ethnic bigotry.  Evidence towards this is the fact that there appears to be little opposition to celebrations of ethnic pride among historically marginalized communities who are white and Christian.  For instance, no one seems concerned when Italian or Irish heritage is trumpeted.  Jews for the most part, although obviously not Christian, have seemed to have escaped assimilationist wrath (although many fundamentalist Christians of course actually view Jews as an integral part of their own apocalyptic scenario). 

Here's a view of Notre Dame's "Fightin' Irish".  Maybe the University of Arizona ought to change their team from the Wildcats to the "Fightin' Mexicans".

Cultural Expression, Oppression, and Transcendance

Will Willkinson talks to Andrew Potter about his book, The Authenticity Hoax on Bloggingheads.  The discussion is fascinating, until Potter wanders into some really stupid commentary on race.  Potter, in trying to parse what "black authenticity" might be - a very valid discussion -  makes the nebulous claim that

this idea of black authenticity, if one connects it up with the slave heritage has some really pernicious social effects.

Both Wilkinson and Potter are clearly out of their depth here - as am I. Race is a difficult subject that requires a lot of heavy lifting.  But I think it is exactly right that "black authenticity" isn't connected to the slave heritage. Actually, I should say *necessarily*, because the legacy of discrimination certainly is.

The main problem is that it defines black ethnicity down, which is actually a larger racist notion (let me be clear that I think racism is a part of all our consciousnesses, black and white). Potter literally says that you can "decode" the way black men walk and dress by assuming that "they are trying to signal one of three things: that they don't have a job, they've been to jail, or that they deal drugs".

Yet how is this different than the essence of "cool"? Certainly there are a disproportionate number of black men in prison, dealing drugs, etc. And this is part of a legacy of discrimination that has its roots in slavery. But black culture is so much more complex than this! "Blackness" is many things: it is a healthy organic culture, it is a dysfunctional culture from oppression, and it is an epic culture of transcendence.

And each of these things are in every ethnic culture to varying degrees. The only reason we seem them so strongly in black culture is because the history has been so powerfully direct. As an example of a powerful, yet lesser historical force, there are elements of femininity that are the product of a legacy of misogyny. When a woman doesn't speak up enough in class, she is under this influence. Yet, like black culture, there is transcendence in femininity, as when the same woman in class might work harder at her notes or listen more intently to the speaker.