Race as a real thing or as a social construct

Here is an article on one who does:

“For this we can thank the white liberal academic Robin DiAngelo, whose book “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism” — first published in 2018 by a small press — has become a textbook of liberal orthodoxy and a totem of radical chic.

DiAngelo’s thesis: All white Americans are racist…”

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I tried searching and found a few posts. I need to try again and see if I can figure out how to search topics.

I have a little background with Marxist ideology from my university days. It basically fell apart when unity and diversity are believed to be ultimately real, and the principles of fairness and desert are seen to be coequal.

It’s widely known, even overseas. The following is from a German public broadcast service (in English):

Culture Wars: Why book bans are trending in the US

Exactly! There are other factors as well. Jewish people prefer going into Law and Medicine, which tend to pay more. Jewish people prefer to live in liberal, coastal communities or at least big cities, where pay is higher. They like these areas because Judaism is a minority religion, and they like to be with their own kind, which is understandable. In these areas they are more likely to find synagogues, Jewish schools, good public schools, cultural life, etc. In public schools, they don’t want their kids to be the only Jews in the class. Also, Orthodox Jews have to walk to synagogue, so they really can’t live too far from one.

The question that prompted this subtopic had to do with outcomes among groups that are not explained by racism.

Yes, the work ethics and choices made by people of many groups affect their success in life.

The last person on earth that I would want to tell me about what Jews prefer and do not prefer is a non-Jew period.

“…they like to be with their own kind.”
Really?

10 key findings about Jewish Americans - May 11, 2021

Screenshot 2022-05-29 at 10-51-29 10 key findings about Jewish Americans

There are people who say non-whites can’t be racist because they don’t have power (referring back to the only definition any and all academics (it is said) acknowledge, that racism requires power), but everyone has power over someone sometime.

On subway car with 1 white and 30 non-whites, the white does not have power. If a non-white chooses to violate the rules by blasting music, the non-white is asserting power.

During a riot, when a white driver is in the wrong place at the wrong time, the crowd that drags him out and beats him for his whiteness is exercising power.

Vance,
I lived in S.F. from 1972 to 1986–4 years in a predominantly Black neighborhood in the southern part of the city; 10 years in a White neighborhood–and have lived in the unincorporated East Los Angeles Triangle since 1986. I was employed in Downtown L.A. during the Rodney King Riots
My point? I have seen, up-front and center, what you mention. That said, … I realize that the times when “the Others” engaged in abusive displays of power were brief and violent, or tedious, public disregard of rules of civility, which were over when I left the scene. Fortunately, I have historically enjoyed the company and genuine friendship of Others substantially more often for longer periods of time than I’ve witnessed the Others’ displays of power.

Trivia: The first time I attended school with Blacks was in 1960, when I was 12, in Nevada. Thanks be to God, three of my 7th grade classmates were females and 2 were males. They were a favorable, amicable, and memorable introduction to Blacks which paved the way forward to this day.

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I think the non-academic sense usually refers to people who actively engage in hateful, bigoted behavior. Lots of people academics might say are racist may be very nice to minorities and never overtly hateful. I think that is why people get insulted. It is hard for some people to conceive of white supremacy as something subconscious that one is encultured into, not a willful and hateful choice. But academics would say most of the racist views we have are implicit and unexamined and not chosen in the same way someone might choose to affiliate with a racist (in the sense of bigoted) group.

No, and I don’t think that is the situation. I think people are only called “a racist” when they defend institutionalized racism. For other people who are interested in addressing it, it’s more like “that attitude is racist” or “that practice is racist” and then you try to weed that stuff out and do better. I am not insulted if a minority challenges me and tells me something I think is normative is actually just white privilege talking. They have a right to call that out as a racist attitude. And of course I have some racist attitudes, I was encultured in a racist world, there is a lot of subconscious stuff I need to bring to the surface and address.

Again, you are going to misrepresent what she is claiming if you don’t let her define her terms. She doesn’t mean all white Americans are bigots.

The link to Marxism and critical theory as far as I can tell is that CRT also tends to see conflict as resulting from imbalance in power dynamics and one class oppressing another class. Looking at things through the lens of power dynamics is not exclusively Marxist, and it doesn’t take any familiarity with critical theory or Marxism to make the observations that whites have oppressed Blacks throughout American history and benefitted from an imbalance of power.

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I did not misrepresent. I quoted. And I provided a link to more detail

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The tell I remember was how the orthodox Marxists were unwilling to acknowledge how and why socialist movements were corrupted internally.

I had a neo-Marxist professor and a small group of ‘revolutionaries’ invaded our class one day. That was a fun discussion :nerd_face:

There appears to be a similar tendency in how the CRT group is slow or unwilling to acknowledge how racial disparities are not entirely determined by racial injustice.

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Being slow to realise and unwilling to acknowledge are hardly unique to (or features of) Marxism and CRT though, wouldn’t you say? More like bugs in the human system.

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Some real creepy crawlers

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I know many Jews and have worked with many Jews and have had Jewish classmates and Jewish bosses . I attend lectures by Jews and had a Jewish violin teacher. The East Coast is a Jewish area. I know what I’m talking about. I don’t have to do a quick search on the internet to get information on Jewish people.

And just because a Jew marries a gentile doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to be around his own kind!

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I think we might be getting off topic

And this is why we can’t have nice things. It seems we are moving into offensive territory so time to shut this thread down.

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