I Refuse to be Spoken to in That Tone of Voice

So said Christopher Hitchens about an ideology that "makes very large claims for itself," and lectures those who do not share that ideology concerning what they are allowed to do.

In The Case for Reparations a once-respected national magazine, purporting to advance civil rights, adopts in disguised form the dysfunctional foregone conclusions and disproved socio-political theories of a radical failed ideology (see Hollander's Political Will and Personal Belief, which depicts the utter loss of faith of the radical left's most passionate supporters). It postures morally over the results. It sneers not only at our ways ("scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July "), but at our virtues ("the great democratizer," "And that is us as the uncomplicated, the unvarnished, the un-nuanced champion of liberty the world over. And what the question of reparations ultimately raises, is that this land of liberty, this land of freedom, was made possible by slavery, was made possible by plunder.").

We are told that Slavery Made America. We are told, illogically, that the magnitude of the Civil War represents, not a great moral commitment to ending slavery, but a demonstration of the wickedness of white folks' lust for supremacy:

I roughly understood then that the Civil War—the most lethal conflict in American history—boiled down to the right to raise an empire based on slaveholding and white supremacy.* What had not yet clicked for me was precisely how essential enslavement was to America, that its foundational nature explained the Civil War's body count.

The Liberal Founding announced the central proposition of A Dissenter's Notes: that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are representative Enlightenment documents; and that Enlightenment liberalism was and continues to be the underlying rationale of our country. It quoted eminent German-American historian Fritz Stern:

Liberalism—one of “America's noblest traditions,” I insisted, often defined as a state of mind—had “transformed the world . . . [I]ts greatest victory has been the American Revolution; its greatest pronouncement, the Declaration of Independence; its greatest bulwark, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.” It had “stood for freedom against tyranny. At its best . . . a force for change and progress, seeking the institutional defense of decency.” [...] In America's liberal premises the world had seen “the best promise of the West.”

A left critique of liberalism by professor Charles K. Rowley reads:

In 1993, in his book, Post-Liberalism, [John] Gray poked around among the rubble of classical liberal philosophy to determine what, if anything was left. He concluded that none of the four constitutive elements of doctrinal liberalism — universalism, individualism, egalitarianism and meliorism (or human flourishing) — could survive the ordeal by value pluralism and that liberalism, as a political philosophy, therefore was dead. - What Is Living and What Is Dead in Classical Liberalism

In a minute I'll talk about the profound differences between liberal and left in these matters, but first, it should be noted the Democratic Party is not a left party, despite the slovenliness of our language. A left party would not have not bailed out those monster capitalist corporations, Chrysler Corp. and General Motors, or spent much of the last presidential campaign lauding the middle class. For a surprisingly doctrinaire left perspective, look not at the Democratic party but at the academic humanities professoriate. (Books (none by conservatives) about academic radicalism: Follies of the Wise; Fashionable Nonsense**; The Reckless Mind; Literature Lost)

Universalism is illustrated in the Declaration, and in American Revolution writer Thomas Paine. The Declaration: "Having a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"; "let facts be submitted to a candid world." Paine: "I have been tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their baseness." A universalist worldview underlies the words which begin the Constitution: "We the People."

The left by contrast is particularist, from the ending of the Communist Manifesto ("Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.") to Seattle's Kshama Sawant ("Environmentalists and Workers Must Link Up to Stop Global Warming and Fight"). There is always a radical binary, Oppressed and Oppressor, the latter consigned to outer darkness. In the words of Romer v. Evans, "A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. Amendment 2 violates the Equal Protection Clause." (This is why The Atlantic's crusade is so jarring. It is such a crude violation of our inclusive values.)

Ta-Nehisi Coates' crusade in The Atlantic is not about any sort of rainbow coalition (contrast M. L. King's "God is ... interested in the freedom of brown men, yellow men, red men and black men ... He is interested in the freedom of the whole human race."). It's strictly about what professor Randall Kennedy called a "self-aggrandizing" group—Coates' own. For public-spirited citizens, Native Americans have an argument which is strongly-related to that of African-Americans, but what Coates had to say about their cause, in a video, was "if they can make the case."

Individualism: The romantic tenor inherited from the counterculture may cause us to think of individualism in terms of egotism. However, in the context of liberalism the emphasis on the individual means that civil rights are the rights of the single person: the citizen.

This may be contrasted with the tendency to think of the group as everything, a context which may demote the concerns of the person to mere selfishness. Mill's On Liberty mentions, about page 3, "social tyranny," a pressure for groupthink and conformity resulting from (in left jargon) "solidarity," "group rights," "collectivism," and "communitarianism." (Kennedy, above critiques "the notion that blackness gives rise to racial obligation and that black people should have a special, closer, more affectionate relationship with their fellow blacks than with others in America's diverse society." Emphasis added.) Justice operates at the level of the person; by working toward the civil rights of each individual it militates for the civil rights of all, and serves as a defense against social tyranny.

Egalitarianism: Neither the left nor the right supports that foundational American principle, "all men are created equal." (See The Condition of Equality Today.) To say "white supremacy" and "white guilt," as The Atlantic's crusade does, imputes unique evil to white folks. This parallels the Manifesto's belief in the wickedness of the bourgeoisie. As for the right, Russell Kirk included in his Ten Conservative Principles:

For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality. The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at leveling must lead, at best, to social stagnation.

Meliorism: Steven Den Beste spoke of the optimistic spirit of liberal democracy: "dedication to achieving ideal outcomes." It appears in the Christian scriptures as the parable about experiencing more joy over the one sheep that had been lost, but was found, than over the ninety-nine that were never lost. Meliorism is the constructive aspect of liberalism.

I will close by quoting an earlier post, Reparations: The Worst Fallacies are Those that Trash Liberal Principles:

In his essay "Dragon Slayers,"* Jerald Walker recounts a conversation with "a man who wanted me to hate him. I should hate all whites, he felt. ... 'How about slavery,' he asked. I explained, as politely as I could, that I had not been a slave. 'But you feel its effects,' he snapped. 'Racism, discrimination, and prejudice will always be a problem for you in this country. White people,' he insisted, 'are your oppressors.' ... 'After all,' I continued, 'slaves and their immediate descendants were by and large heroic, not pathetic, or I wouldn't be standing here.'The man was outraged. 'You're absolving them of responsibility, of the obligation to atone for past and present wrongs.'"

When I saw this passage yesterday, I realized that Ta-Nehisi Coates is presenting a concealed demand for atonement in The Case for Reparations:

Black nationalists have always perceived something unmentionable about America that integrationists dare not acknowledge—that white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it. ... What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.

 I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice. And so should you.


-*--

(*) The growth of the United States should not be pychologized as "white supremacy." David Auerbach suggested (as did our previous post), that it was an effect of the processes of modernity:

From the moment the Industrial Revolution triggered the massive 200-year explosion in growth, we made a Faustian bargain. From that point on, it was pretty much a given that the motor of technological progress and economic growth would lead us to where we are today. Henry Adams called this the dynamo, embodying the dominant force and technological motor of modern human history.

(**) For an extensive background on Fashionable Nonsense, see co-author Alan Sokal's page:

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/
 
In particular, see Linda Seebach's "Scientist takes academia for a ride with parody"

Excerpt:

Physicist Alan Sokal of New York University meticulously observed all the rules of the academic game when he constructed his article on postmodern physics and submitted it to a prestigious journal of cultural studies called Social Text.

The people he cites as authorities in cultural studies are the superluminaries of the field, the quotations he uses to illustrate his argument are strictly accurate and the text is bristling with footnotes.

All the rules but one, that is: Sokal's article is a parody. Under the grandiloquent title "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," it appeared in the Spring/Summer 1996 special issue of the magazine, one entirely devoted to "the science wars," as the editors term the tension between people who actually do science and the critics who merely theorize about it.

Many scientists believe that the emperors of cultural studies have no clothes. But Sokal captured the whole royal court parading around in naked ignorance and persuaded the palace chroniclers to publish the portrait as a centerfold.

Once the article was safely in print, Sokal revealed his modest experiment. "Would a leading journal of cultural studies," he wrote in the May/June issue of Lingua Franca, "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?"

Unfortunately yes, and Sokal's deliberate nonsense is anything but subtle. Translated into plain English from the high-flown language he borrowed for the occasion, his first paragraph says that scientists "cling to the dogma" that the external world exists and its properties are independent of what human beings think.

But nobody believes that old stuff any more, right? Now we all know that physical reality is "at bottom a social and linguistic construct."

Is there a sound when a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it? Under the theory of social construction, there's not even a tree.

There are so many red flags planted throughout the paper that even non-scientists should have spotted at least one and started laughing, Sokal said Thursday (May 9). "Either this is a parody or the author is off his rocker."

The Atlantic Revives Radical Chic: Ta-Nehisi Coates and the English Language

Recently Chris Bodenner's In the Wake of Baltimore: Your Thoughts quoted Ta-Nehisi Coates:

White Supremacy is foundational to America. White Supremacy is not a bump on the road toward a better America. It is the road itself, the means by which America justified the taking of land and enslaving of humans, which is to say the means by which America came to be.

Last year TNC wrote, "I would be remiss if I did not offer two other entries into the debate." In this case, what he left out is what the Americans themselves said was foundational: "All men are created equal." While this is a principle oft more honored in the breach than the observance, particularly in the early days of the nation, TNC's sweeping assertion leaves out what is most important.

Equality—liberty and justice for all—is a hard fight. But that fight was and still is the essence of our nation. It gave the suffragists an unanswerable argument for extending the vote to women. It gave Martin Luther King the argument for persuading the nation to undertake the monumental effort to end Jim Crow.

The effort to achieve a free democratic society marshals justice to constrain the abuse of power. Our past—"the taking of land and enslaving of humans"—was a consequence of the enormous advantage of modernity relative to the native societies of North America, and Africa, at that time, which inadequate justice failed to constrain. The nation which did these things has improved since then, because contrary to TNC's misleading language, equality is a fundamental principle, beside which "supremacy" is an aberration. Example: The Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act:

In 1971, barely one million acres of land in Alaska was in private hands. ANCSA together with section 6 of Alaska Statehood Act which the act allowed to come to fruition affected ownership to about 148.5 million acres of land in Alaska once wholly controlled by the federal government. That is larger by 6 million acres than the combined areas of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. When the bill passed in 1971, it included provisions that had never been attempted in United States settlements with Native Americans. The newly passed Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act created twelve Native regional economic development corporations. Each corporation was associated with a specific region of Alaska, and the Natives who had traditionally lived there. This innovative approach to native settlements engaged the tribes in corporate capitalism. It was the idea of the AFN [Alaska Federation of Natives], who believed that the Natives would have to become a part of the capitalist system in order to survive. As stockholders in these corporations, the Natives could earn some income and stay in their traditional villages. If the corporations were managed properly, they could make profits that would enable individuals to stay, rather than having to leave Native villages to find better work. This was intended to help preserve Native culture. (Emphasis added)

TNC next critiques a commenter who 'rejects “collective responsibility” because he believes it "implicate(s) an individual’s [responsibility] based not on their actions but on their 'race.'"' One must start, TNC begins, 'by acknowledging that without "collective responsibility" we do not have a country. Perhaps the most significant form of “collective responsibility” is our tax system.'

What TNC is confusing here is legal responsibility and moral guilt. He associated "white supremacy" and guilt in The Case for Reparations:

Black nationalists have always perceived something unmentionable about America that integrationists dare not acknowledge—that white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it. ... What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.

This is a long way from the obligation to pay levied taxes, which has nothing to do with moral responsibility for the misdeeds of other people. Martin Luther King rejected the idea of judging people based on the group they supposedly belong to when he said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
 
TNC's shift in which he seems to imply that being a citizen of a nation is membership in a collective wrongly places emphasis on collective rather than individual action or identity—just what the commenter objected to. This is argument by misnaming.

The measure of TNC's extremism is the way he seizes on the most extreme term in many situations, leaves out authoritative counter-arguments, and ignores middle-ground and practical arguments. The measure of TNC's intellectual dishonesty is that he ignores the most articulate defender of American principles we have had, Abraham Lincoln. The measure of TNC's radicalism is that he ignores the most successful African American civil rights crusader we have, Martin Luther King; and disputes the practical advice of the most successful African American politician we have ever had, Barack Obama.

This is because TNC's case is weak. His real problem isn't white people and their supposed supremacism. His real problem is modernity—what V. S. Naipaul called "Our Universal Civilization"—and its tremendous effectiveness. Success in the United States, as in the rest of the first-world countries, requires what is well-known: Education, and 21st-century skills. The Alaska Federation of Natives, above, opted to "become a part of the capitalist system." Ta-Nehisi, in opting instead for a handout, promotes dependency. That's his best idea.

Recently Barack Obama, asked about Ta-Nehisi's criticism, said:

It’s true that if I’m giving a commencement at Morehouse that I will have a conversation with young black men about taking responsibility as fathers that I probably will not have with the women of Barnard. And I make no apologies for that. And the reason is, is because I am a black man who grew up without a father and I know the cost that I paid for that. And I also know that I have the capacity to break that cycle, and as a consequence, I think my daughters are better off. (Applause.)
And that is not something that—for me to have that conversation does not negate my conversation about the need for early childhood education, or the need for job training, or the need for greater investment in infrastructure, or jobs in low-income communities.

Ta-Nehisi called this "moral invective."

The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple—talk about class and hope no one notices.
This is not a “both/and.” It is a bait and switch. The moral failings of black people are directly addressed. The centuries-old failings of their local, state, and federal government, less so. (Emphasis added)

That's a radical, extremist slanting of what the first black president said, which unmistakably is a "both/and."

Previous blog posts have noted that Lincoln in numerous speeches and writings decisively refuted many of the derogatory assertions in The Atlantic's Reparations series (here, here and here, among others.) The Atlantic mentions none of them.

Wikipedia notes:

The phrase "radical chic" originated in a 1970 New York article by Tom Wolfe, titled "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's", which was later reprinted in his books Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers and The Purple Decades. In the essay, Wolfe used the term to satirize composer Leonard Bernstein and his friends for their absurdity in hosting a fundraising party for the Black Panthers—an organization whose members, activities, and goals were clearly incongruous with those of Bernstein's elite circle. Wolfe's concept of radical chic was intended to lampoon individuals (particularly social elites like the jet set) who endorsed leftist radicalism merely to affect worldliness, assuage white guilt, or garner prestige, rather than to affirm genuine political convictions. (Emphasis added)

Exactly.