In June Steve Inskeep recorded an interview with Kwame Rose, who was one of the protesters against the death of Freddie Gray, a black man being transported in a police van. Excerpts:
KWAME ROSE: He called us thugs and criminals. And you don't know the
story behind each one of those individuals. I was one of the people he
called a thug and a criminal because I was out there. ...
ROSE: Yeah,
but even in a notion to differentiate peaceful - when I was there,
firsthand experiences, watching people run in the stores, I didn't
interpret it as violence. I interpreted it as a survival skills - as a
survival tactic. ...
ROSE: No. I've - I don't think the president has done enough for black people.
This shows some of the Baltimore street hustler logic also found in Ta-Nehisi Coates' white supremacy articles. For example, skid logic: "I was ... called a thug and a criminal because I was out there." (Below, there will be excerpts from Inskeep's interview in which President Obama responds to Rose's accusations.)
Kwame Rose's argument has the class warfare characteristics of:
- Justified by an overriding emergency
- Rejection of the rule of law
- Double standard — the plight of the oppressed trumps the principle of equality — see "moral primitivism" (1)
- Specific rejection of pluralism (that is, unconcern for anyone not like us)
- Disregard for the public good (those who loot and destroy a drug store in the name of racial affirmation force sick people of that same race to travel farther for medicine they need to survive)
- Rejection of the powerful just tools of liberal democracy (Obama: "You have situations in which, suddenly, friends of mine in Baltimore - their mothers, who are elderly, have to now travel across town to get their medicines because the local drug store got torn up. And making excuses for them, I think, is a mistake. There are ways of bringing about social change that are powerful and that have the ability to pull the country together and maintain the moral high ground. And there are approaches where I may understand the frustrations, but they're counterproductive. And tearing up your own neighborhood and stealing is counterproductive." (Emphasis added.)
- Specious justification of violence ("survival skills")
- Rejection of universalism ("I don't think the president has done enough for black people"; that is, a black president should show favoritism toward black people in preference to serving all equally.)
- Implied the-end-justifies-the-means logic
Steve Inskeep's follow up interview with Obama ("What I would also say, though, is that if somebody is looting, they're looting."):
Let me ask about a passionate young person that we met along the way. His name is Kwame Rose.
Yeah.
He is an activist now in Baltimore. He was active in the protests after the death of Freddie Gray ...
Right.
... who was in a police van, and died later, as you know.
And he was unhappy with a statement that you made at the time, when you were supportive of peaceful protests but also criticized what you called criminals and thugs who had looted stores.
He felt that you were being too harsh and went on to say in our interview that you were speaking from a position of privilege, his suggestion being that maybe you didn't quite get what was going on in the streets.
What would you say to him?
[Obama] Well, obviously, I don't know him personally, so we would have to have a longer conversation.
What I would say is that the Black Lives Matter movement has been hugely important in getting all of America to — to see the challenges in the criminal justice system differently. And I could not be prouder of the activism that has been involved. And it's making a difference.
You're seeing it at state and local levels, and the task force that we pulled together in the wake of Ferguson has put forward recommendations that were shaped both by the people who organized the Ferguson protests as well as police officers. And it turns out that there's common ground there, in terms of how we can be smart about crime, smart about policing, respectful to all communities and try to wring some of the racial bias that exists in the criminal justice system out of it.
What I would also say, though, is that if somebody is looting, they're looting.
-*--
(1) Moral Primitivism: An earlier post concerning Coates' fallacies argued that Coates does not see a society of equal, rights-bearing citizens,
"caught in an inescapable network of mutuality," but a polity irrevocably divided between oppressed race and oppressor race. "Once that fact is acknowledged," Kevin D. Williamson suggests "then the case for reparations is only moral primitivism: My interests are inextricably linked to my own kin group and directly rivalrous with yours, i.e., the very racism that this program is in theory intended to redress." (Emphasis added)
This is a repost of an article posted last November under another title.
Our
Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes
among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal
before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law
regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his
color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land
are involved. - Justice Harlan, Plessy v. Ferguson
Class Warfare:
- Against political democracy, which by definition includes all the people. Proposes rule by the oppressed rather than government (not rule) by the people.
- Rejects
equality. The oppressed class and the oppressor class do not consist of
people who are equal but, in the latter case, are in error and need to
be corrected. Class warfare considers the wrongness of the oppressor
class to be existential, and in that sense, a wickedness which is
incorrigible and cannot be corrected.
- Rejects
the rule of law. Class warfare regards the supposed protections and
rights of the existing body of law as hypocritical, benefiting only
members of the oppressor class. After all, the justice system and its
laws allow the existing system of oppression, don't they?
- Arrogates
to itself two things belonging to the justice system in civilized
societies: Determination of guilt; and administration of punishment (Example: “Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.”).*
- Is
inherently ad hominem. The narratives produced by members of oppressed
groups are considered true because to recognize the true state of
things—one is oppressed and not a member of a free democratic society—confers authenticity lacked by membership in an oppressor group.**
- Employs
a double standard in many areas. For example, members of oppressor
groups do not have the same rights as the oppressed. Discrimination by
the oppressed against oppressors is approved, but oppressors are accused
of discriminatory attitude and conduct.
- Is
anti-intellectual (see 5). There are no "neutral" intellectual
positions, free from constraints and considerations extraneous to pure
intellectual matters. There is no justification for socially constructed
intellectual propositions which are blithely ignorant of the plight of
the oppressed (see "state of emergency," below). It is the duty of
faculty members to use their platform to unmask oppression and advocate
change.
- Rejects normative concepts of civility, decency, and nonviolence as contributing to structural oppression. (Cf. "repressive tolerance")
When modern democratic states give the police and the National Guard a
monopoly on legitimate violence, they seek to render the oppressed
powerless to fight for justice.
- Can
only achieve its objective through revolution, not by leveraging the
structures (elected representatives, the justice system) of the existing
oppressive society.
- State
of emergency which overrides all other considerations. Until the
present existing state of monstrous injustice is rectified, no one has
the right to pursue their own selfish interests. Everyone must be
involved in the struggle. "Your silence will not save you."
Remarks by Kate W. to The Atlantic's Chris Bodenner illustrate class warfare influences in current publications. He begins:
Next is a blistering
critique from Kate W., who doesn’t want to use her last name “because I
work in professional circles (the arts and news media) where
anti-Coatesism is frowned upon big time”
What
she means is that Ta-Nehisi Coates, who began playing the race card
when he leveled the charge of "white supremacy" against the mainstream,
is the beneficiary of the oppressor group member double standard. Who he
is, according to class warfare dogma, trumps [her] critique of his
articles. (5 and 6, above)
She says,
2. Mr. Coates claims that the death of Prince Jones is his political “origin story.”
He writes, “After Prince, I fully accepted the laws of gravity.” You
see, Mr. Coates is the Reluctant Warrior. This as a very old gimmick but
apparently still packs a rhetorical punch for some people. Mr. Coates
didn’t want to be in a rage with “White America”! He was just minding
his own business when Prince Jones (a friendly acquaintance) was killed
by a racist policeman (who happens to be black, but that fact is
irrelevant for his purposes) and then Mr. Coates found his worldview
rocked. He was now radicalized and fully awake to the horrors of the
racist country he lived in.
I’m
sorry, but given the fact that Mr. Coates was raised by two political
activists—one of whom is a former Black Panther—I am not buying this.
Mr. Coates comes by his “radicalness” honestly. It did not take the
death of Prince Jones to turn Mr. Coates into a Black Nationalist
author. He was raised with these ideas, and based on what I have heard
him say in current interviews, he is also raising his son the same way
(this is a shame).
But
let’s take him at his word that this one event changed him. Please
allow me a point of personal privilege here: I have a good friend (a
white person) who is a quadriplegic as a result of being shot during a
robbery by black men. I was also personally robbed at gunpoint by black
men (in a separate incident) but was more lucky than my friend and lost
only money.
If
I were to follow Mr. Coates’s example, I would paint all black
Americans with this brush. I would become “radicalized” and henceforth
say that all black people are dangerous criminals. Does this make any
sense, intellectually or morally? I hope not.
But
when Mr. Coates tells this story, Charlie Rose, David Brooks, David
Remnick and Jon Stewart fall over each other to fawn over him. Why are
the two examples different? Why is bigotry against white people
acceptable when bigotry against blacks is anything but?
As
K.W. describes Coates' narrative, he is using anecdotal argument. One
bad experience justifies global guilt and punishment. A larger issue is
that our democracy asks us to exhibit what the Founders called
toleration. The double standard (6) and the emergency (10) allow Coates
to violate standards of decency (8).
It's actually worse than that As a commentator relates:
He writes of the police and firefighters who died running into the
burning buildings [the twin towers on 911] in a forlorn effort to save all the people whose
bodies were about to be obliterated into dust, “They were not human to
me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were
the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification —
shatter my body.” (Emphasis added)
Generalizing
from one black policeman to the firefighters who lost their lives
trying to save strangers in burning skyscrapers is beyond excuse.
Firefighters don't carry guns, carry out arrests, or in any other way
commit violence. Coates' extremism should have resulted in a national
uproar. The fact that it didn't shows how completely class warfare dogma
has corrupted our thinking and eroded our sense of human decency.
K.W. describes ways in which the double standard (6) even applies to cause and effect:
4. The book’s thesis is perhaps the most troubling part but certainly the most hyperbolic:
“Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is
traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.” Here is where the
circular logic comes into play. When it is pointed out that the vast
majority of black people who are murdered are murdered at the hands of
other black people, Mr. Coates conveniently blames even this on White
Supremacy.
For
him, it’s as simple as this: there is literally nothing a black person
can do wrong that is their fault, in a cosmic sense. Every moral,
ethical or legal crime is caused by the effects of White Supremacy. Some
people, including myself, characterize this as racism. Denying that
black people are capable of being agents of their own life or destiny is
the ultimate kind of bigotry.
K.W. describes Coates' abundant false accusation:
5. The white-shaming throughout the book.
Mr. Coates seems to think it’s OK to insult all white people in the
gravest ways possible. All white people exist on a spectrum that has
“benign neglect” and “free rider” on one end and “violent torture
murderer” and “slave master” on the other end. All white Americans are
guilty; it is only a matter of determining where they fit on that guilt
spectrum.
In
Mr. Coates’ world, to wake up white is to wake up a guilty person. This
acts as a kind of mirror image to his view of black people, who have no
responsibility for anything in Mr. Coates' world.
In
a free, democratic society, it is a very serious thing to bear false
witness and level false accusations. To repeat, in our politics the
determination of guilt, let alone punishment, belongs to the justice
system and to the justice system alone (3, 4). Historically, the class
warfare ideology has played fast and loose in applying the label, class
enemy. For Marx, it was the commercial culture of the emerging modern
world. In our contemporary class warfare culture, who is guilty is
dependent on your vested interest. If you're a feminist, the oppressor
is men. All of them. If you're a minority, it is white folks. All of
them. Rules of evidence, due process, and the constraint of applicable
law are nowhere on the horizon.
(*) As such, class warfare veers toward mob rule. Here are the constraints which proper justice has and class warfare lacks:
- Due process
- Rules of evidence
- A controlling body of law developed over centuries, which the court must not violate
(**) We're employing an expanded conception of the argumentum ad hominem.
Ad hominem usually refers to a demonstration or argument which purports
to discredit a proposition by discrediting its author, as in Hitler's
dismissal of theories of relativity as "Jewish science." In the larger
sense, ad hominem is held to be a fallacy because a person cannot be an
argument, either to discredit or to validate. For example, the belief
that political democracy is discredited because a great thinker such as
Plato said so, is a form of ad hominem. A person is not an argument.
