You obviously didn't read the article if you think it's a straw man. He quotes Ibrahim Kendi, funded by Jack Dorsey as an exemplar of the new faith. If Dorsey and Kendi aren't mainstream, just to start, I don't know what is.
I'm so tired of getting gaslit about this. My opinion on neoracism is the reason I am posting with a throwaway.
Thank you John Worter for helping to rebrand so-called "Antiracism" to what it really is. Neoracism.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Most commenters in this thread have done a good job—a surprisingly good job—of staying in communication with each other across this divide. Your comment here is a noticeable step into hell. Please step the other way while on this site.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. In addition to the flamewar aspect, "you obviously didn't read the article [etc.]" is explicitly against the rules.
just to be clear here, if you can sum it up in one phrase, Racism is the assumption that some racea are inferior, and antiracism holds that race is a concept that has no place in reality!?
If labeling it anti- then because it only needs mention when contradicting racism, but it can be an independent position held by anyone who simply disregards at least the name, or one of the various concepts attached. This has befuddeld me for a long time because via exposure I thought anti racism was the norm, but accademia frequently dabbles in racist topic (though without making value judgements). One reason to reject it is that drawing differences invariably leads to a sense of competition and all that follows. Vice versa, I pressume, that denying actual differences can also lead to losses (disenfrenchise) may then appear as new racism.
Branding that as racism is simply incivil, because it ascribes intent or lantent aggression where there is none. It's not all about name-calling, but abstractly speaking it is. So, please don't defend an abstract position without accurately describi g it (in case I misinterpreted anything), because that really is indistinguishable from a scarecrow.
In a proper English construction "antiracism" literally means "against racism." Note, this is not arguing that race has no "place" in perceived reality. But that racism has no place in our society. Being against racism is the norm.
The problem is with using the word "Antiracist" as a label or name. There is a movement that tries to use the word as a name, but is a case of a wolf in sheep's clothing. This movement is attempting to rewrite history. To teach that, for example, Lincoln was evil, didn't do enough, and should be erased. This is despicable and destructive. McWhorter simply, rightly, calls them wolves.
Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure why it's being downvoted, perhaps your definition is too narrow and definitely not authoritative (and why should you care).
Post mortem: Yes, I frequently neglect that sense of anti-, and rebracket such compounds differently. I could go on in the same sense of manipulation on the word level. Is an anti-anti-anti-racist position tennable?
I see 10 tenets that are extremely disagreeable posed as a mainstream ideology, and as far as I can tell, he just made them up. So he can fuck off, imo.
I don't especially like Kendi. Here's what he says about kendi in the article though.
> Ibram X. Kendi has written a book on how to raise antiracist children called Antiracist Baby.
...
That's it. He says he wrote a book called Antiracist Baby. That name drop does not do anything to strengthen his position. Unless I'm missing something there's not even a cherry picked quote out of context. It's just implied to self-evidently support his position.
At work, there are emails going around that list all of those tenets. How to apologize, how one should not speak unless one is "appropriately diverse," how one should believe in their own guilt or victim-hood.
This email (unofficial) has the title "How to Be Antiracist." The only thing McWhorter did was to reorder the bullets, putting some next to each other.
None of those are made up.
The very next sentences after your quote discusses the book. The next paragraph also says this:
> Talking of Antiracist Baby, I am especially dismayed at the idea of this indoctrination infecting my daughters’ sense of self. I can’t always be with them, and this anti-humanist ideology may seep into their school curriculum. I shudder at the thought: teachers with eyes shining at the prospect of showing their antiracism by teaching my daughters that they are poster children rather than individuals.
> This email (unofficial) has the title "How to Be Antiracist." The only thing McWhorter did was to reorder the bullets, putting some next to each other.
> None of those are made up.
By definition they are made up. The question is by whom. I cannot find these tenets by googling them. The first link to "third wave antiracist tenets" is this very article. The fact that someone sent you an email is pretty irrelevant, and frankly dubious. I'm open to being proven wrong, but if these aren't published by a noteworthy source, they're utterly irrelevant. I don't like Kendi. I think his work is opportunistic and stuck in semantics. But I don't think he's going to write dumb shit like what the author anchors everyone on baselessly. And even if he did, I feel confident that 99% of americans would say they're not accurate portrayals of their views.
edit: on a reread, it sounds like you're saying there's just a separate email with different content. Just because this author uses the words "antiracist" doesn't mean his portrayal of another person's portrayal of the word are the same, or that either are salient.
> The very next sentences after your quote discusses the book. The next paragraph also says this:
The quote you provided contains literally nothing from the book, just him doubling down that he doesn't like it.
I'm so tired of getting gaslit about this. My opinion on neoracism is the reason I am posting with a throwaway.
Thank you John Worter for helping to rebrand so-called "Antiracism" to what it really is. Neoracism.