Public ideas
If you are not a “person of colour” you’re a racist. Q.E.D.
Welcome to “critical race theory”, or “Third Wave Antiracism”, an illiberal and divisive idea that has infected American universities and media, and that was given social license by Peter Dutton in his campaign against the Voice.
John McWhorter, Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, does his best to explain “Third Wave Antiracism” in an article The neoracists on the Persuasion site.
I say “does his best” because it’s hard for any disciplined thinker such as McWhorter, to describe a movement whose ideas are internally contradictory and incapable of refutation. Within that constraint he describes the movement, its ideas, and its consequences when it guides public policy. It generally works against the interests of those minorities it claims to support.
The weirdest aspect of critical race theory is that while it accepts that “race” is a social construct, its belief and action system is built on race.
The idea of “race” has no basis in genetics, people’s physical characteristics, or observed patterns of behaviour. The “third wave antiracist” movement acknowledges that race is a social construct. To that extent they are aligned with the liberal “left”. But the movement goes on to build a whole set of beliefs with “race” at the core, designating some people to be “Black” (note the capitalization), or “people of color”, without any clarification of what those terms mean. Somehow, however, they are imbued with insights and knowledge beyond the reach of “whites”, who are racist because Western societies are structurally racist.
McWhorter is not mounting some right-wing attack on the “woke” left. He is well-known for his thoughtful contributions to The Atlantic, written from a left-liberal perspective. Rather it’s an analysis of a belief held by some who claim to be on the “left”, in the same way that some who adhere to a faith system rooted in bigotry, hate and selfishness claim to be “Christian”. Those believers will not be persuaded by logic or evidence.
McWhorter draws his examples from the USA, but lest we think we are immune from this idiocy, we should reflect on last year’s campaign against the Voice. The Voice was about aboriginality – the rights of the people who lived on and owned this land before it was brutally colonized in 1788. It had nothing to do with “race”.
That is, until Peter Dutton, using the same illogical construction as the critical race theorists, decided to define the Voice in terms of “race”.
As Stan Grant writes in The Saturday Paper -- A scream no one can hear – “race” is a term people define for their own convenience:
The African–American scholars and sisters Barbara and Karen Fields coined the phrase “racecraft”. Race is not “real”, they argue: like witchcraft, its power comes from our willingness to believe in it.
Racism, they say, is the parent of race, not the other way around.
Critical race theory is one specific offshoot of the whole identity movement, described and analyzed in Yascha Mounk’s 2013 book The identity trap, a story of ideas and power in our time. Like McWhorter, Mounk’s “left” credentials are well-established: he has a solid record of speaking out against populist right wing movements.
We are used to right-wing shock jocks preaching against the “woke left” from their bully pulpits, as if identity politics is confined to the “left”, and as if everyone on the “left”, from social democrats through to hardline Marxists, subscribes to the movement. In fact, as Mounk points out, identity politics has no place in social-democracy, which is firmly rooted in liberalism and a concern for universal rights, nor in Marxism, which is rooted in the idea that people can be liberated from class-based economic conditions. Identity politics, Mounk points out, stems from the ideas of postmodernism, a movement that rejects any idea of an objective truth and which, almost by definition, is anti-universalism.
A Minnesota Lutheran on conspicuous consumption
Many readers will be familiar with the work of Thorstein Veblen, through his 1899 book The theory of the leisure class, an analysis of the ostentatious behaviour of the ultra-rich whose material fortunes blossomed in the Gilded Age.
The robber barons of Veblen’s time made their money from growth industries of the late industrial revolution. The industries have changed – information technology and pharmaceuticals have replaced railroads, shipping and steel – but their methods of accumulating financial wealth haven’t changed. Monopolization, suppression of organized labour, and manipulation of government remain the chosen means of today’s robber barons.
Nor has the behaviour of the ultra-rich changed. Although Veblen’s famous work carries the title “the leisure class”, the class about which he wrote weren’t the idle rich: the idle rich were in the Old World of inherited status, not in America. Rather he writes about those parvenus who seek to establish their position in society through conspicuous consumption, and who work hard to sustain their positions.
That much is probably well-known to those who have read his Theory of the leisure class.[1] Our understanding of Veblen is enriched in a 42-minute podcast on the BBC’s In our time program, where the presenter, Melvyn Bragg, discusses Veblen’s work with three economic and historical scholars. They explain his formative experiences, particularly the observations of a young man, born in Norway and growing up in a frugal Midwest farming family, exposed to the conspicuously vulgar behaviour of the rich.
They remind us that The theory of the leisure class is just one of his five books on economics, that his ideas were influential in shaping FD Roosevelt’s New Deal, and that they have been echoed in works by JK Galbraith and other liberal economists. Veblen was critical of the then-emerging (but now dominant) idea that if only we let markets sort themselves out and achieve equilibrium (the marginalist idea), we could live in the Panglossian best of all worlds.
They also point out that The theory of the leisure class success as a best seller took Veblen as a surprise. He could have enjoyed a life of real leisure himself. But, ever the Nordic Lutheran, he saw economics as a moral venture, which is why his work, while based on observation, does not pretend to be non-judgmental. There is something askew in a society where people consume the world’s scarce resources, not for their own comfort, but in order to show off and hold their place in the pecking order.
Veblen was a serious academic, but that didn’t constrain him from writing in a style accessible to a wide audience, and which 125 years later is still the sort of book one may take on a holiday. Such a reaching to the public, although unrewarded by universities, is crucial if citizens in a democracy are to make wise choices at the ballot box, and not be misguided by the simplistic economic messages of right-wing populists.
1. If people have given away their copy, it is available free on several websites, but I have linked the Penguin site – those who keep ideas in circulation should be paid for their efforts. ↩
Stan Grant on the media
Stan Grant has come back into the public domain with the first of what will be a fortnightly contribution in the Saturday Paper. His first article A scream no one can hear is about his relationship with the media. He explains his withdrawal:
Contrary to public perception, I did not step away from media because of racism but because of media. Media – and by extension myself – are complicit in promoting and exacerbating racism. I said in my sign-off from Q+A that I do not believe the media has the language or the love to deal with our gentle spirits.
It’s a difficult comeback, and Schwartz media may provide the vehicle for Grant, who defines himself more as a philosopher and theologian rather than as a journalist, to contribute to our public life. It’s hard for such thinkers to find a place in a world where “language is no longer about communication but expression”.
The Saturday Paper article is paywalled (which is why you might think about a subscription), or if you prefer to hear Stan Grant, he explains his views on the media’s failings on Schwartz Media’s 7am podcast. It starts with his comments on Sam Kerr’s incident in the UK, and on some disgusting behaviour by Australian footballers, before moving on to his general ideas on the media and the public forum.