That's a super-short exchange that takes place at the end of a podcast full of long-winded exchanges between Ezra Klein and Ibram X. Kendi.
In transcript form at "Ibram X. Kendi on What Conservatives — and Liberals — Get Wrong About Antiracism/A challenging discussion on the hard, and sometimes unanswerable, questions around racism and public policy" (NYT).
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6 comments:
Washington Blogger writes:
"I misread your post and thought the whole exchange was short and so I started reading it. It was still valuable reading in that I have learned a lot about Kendi's views. It would take twice as much text to fisk what he says here, but boy does it need it. I don't disagree with all of his points, but he does appear to not be anti-racist. His goal is laudable, but his premises and world view is suspect.
"Let me keep my own response short:
"If you report a problem and don't present a solution, you are just whining."
I'll say:
If you scrutinize the end, I think what you can infer is that he wants reparations.
Gary writes:
"No need to "infer" that Kendi wants reparations. He clearly says so (just before the short exchange that you quote): "... I do know of a single policy that has the potential to eliminate, if targeted and implemented correctly, has the capacity to eliminate the racial wealth gap, and that’s reparations." In your quote he is only saying that he doesn't know how to get there. He has a solution but not a methodology, although the former without the latter is to assume a can opener."
I respond:
I should have connected it up more clearly. He explicitly cites reparations as the one policy that he knows of. Then he says he doesn't know about the kind of policy that would eliminate the gap (as opposed to just filling the gap with cash payments). What I'm inferring — and I should have been more clear — is that he thinks that there is no economic policy that could work and reparations the only way.
K writes:
"You can access this interview without being blocked at https://poiticaldiplomacy.com/ibram-x-kendi-on-what-conservatives-and-liberals-get-wrong-about-antiracism/
"There's lot in this discussion. You can hear Ezra Klein correcting kendi pretty sharply on whether lack of police leads to more crime. And these two leftys come very close to saying outright that the Dems running the big cities are racist because their policies have increased racial inequalities. And they both agree that when the Dems define themselves as anti-racist without putting forward policies that reduce racial inequality then that is mere symbolism. But they can't throw over the Dems because then they'd lose elections - they say.
"But the part that interested me most began with kendi saying: "they [unspecified whose pronoun "they" is] they wouldn’t say, ... Black people are inferior genetically. They wouldn’t say that Black people are inferior culturally. But they would talk about ... the oppression inferiority thesis, ... that Black people are subjected to oppression, and that ... results in behaviors that are deficient. And those behaviors include, let’s say, violent behaviors..."
"This interested me because this is exactly what I consider to be the start of the plan of 21st century neo-eugenics. The point is to get the blacks to declare themselves inferior and in need of government "help". This is "the oppression inferiority thesis." And kendi seems to see the dangers. So does Klein who says: [Here is the] distinction that I think you’re making, ... on the one hand, you want to be able in your work to say racist policy has created differences in communities, differences in the opportunities and securities people experience, and on the other hand, [you do not want to] allow an emphasis of those differences to become ... another justification for seeing people as inferior."
"But then, when they begin to discuss policies they make what I consider to be the mistake of saying that these dangerous high-crime neighborhoods within the black community should be called "dangerous unemployed neighborhoods." (kendi even says that: "the race of the people really don’t matter ... in the way that the poverty does" whatever he means by that.) At any rate both agree that policies should work to reduce unemployment "disparities" whereas I believe that bad schooling is leading to unemployment "disparities." The worst schooling is located in the same zip codes as all the other bad outcomes. Even in the pandemic this was true. The schools that closed down in-person learning the longest, the schools which lost track of the most students, the schools which simply promoted students who had had no effective schooling for over a year, the schools which will probably close this coming fall because they are located in non-vaccination hot-spots where the Delta variant is soon to flourish - these schools are all located in the areas with high and rising crime rates and high unemployment. But that can't be said by the left because it challenges the teachers unions. So the suburbs are storming the school boards demanding better schools, the inner city and its leaders are silent about the mess in the schools of their constituents. In a generation or so they'll hold the whites responsible for the silence of kendi and Klein but here and now we can see typical left hypocrisy making a typical left mess."
Amadeus 48 writes:
"Ezra Klein lost my respect when he touted the veterans health care system as a model for how the US could deliver health care to all citizens (or was that residents?). A little research would have shown that, like Britain’s NHS, the veterans system is cursed by light work loads for staff, inefficiency, long (often terminally long) waits for consultation and treatment, lack of incentives for staff and patients, etc. Yet, here was Ezra touting a system that he obviously knew nothing about. Read it and weep: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/06/does_the_government_run_health.html
"Now he is turning his inadequate analytical powers on Ibram X. Kendi. These guys never stop, do they? If Ezra isn’t blowing up the idea that people that were never slave owners should pay people that were never slaves for something that the country resolved 156 years ago with the bloodiest war in American history, he either isn’t trying or he isn’t able. Oh, don’t like the Jim Crow elements of FDR’s New Deal? Well, we have paid trillions for the anti poverty programs launched by LBJ (with the apparent goal of getting African-Americans to vote Democratic for the next two hundred years). How is that working?
"We are letting some of the most suspect intellects in the United States dictate the public policy agenda. I’ll make it simple: Everyone likes a handout—money for nothing (see the last fifteen months). This way lies ruin."
Jack writes:
"No solution to racial inequality will be lasting without a massive improvement in the K-12 education of minorities. Just think about how you perceive educated minorities versus the products of failed public schools who can hardly read, write or speak in full sentences. They are victims of the teachers’ unions that will not permit expansion of charter schools or vouchers. Our history is filled with major contributors who had a good, but often not even through grade 12, education. Remember the high school graduation exams from the early 20th century that surpasses the knowledge of most college graduates today, even from Ivy League and other elite colleges if the student does not take a liberal education (feminist studies, race studies, etc. are not part of an undergraduate liberal education). To summarize: the racial inequality is based on racist public education policies spearheaded by teachers unions.
"Reparations is an ineffective solution. We’ve all read about lotto winners who end up broke within a few years. We’ve also seen the game theory modeling that shows a group of people starting with an equal amount of money and a few ending up with the lion’s share of money within a few years. Reparations can be seen as just another racist policy that sells hope on an emotional appeal. Democrats/leftists will not give up on manipulating blacks’ emotions. If they respected black people they would give them what most white people in the suburbs take for granted - a solid K-12 education. Give blacks and other minorities the same deal as the white deal. One has to wonder what is behind Democrats’ refusal to do that."
Washington Blogger writes:
"" If you scrutinize the end, I think what you can infer is that he wants reparations."
"Well, that IS the epitome of anti-racism. The ultimate in overcoming inequality. You make sure that the black community has 14.7% of all assets and income and make sure that all policies maintain that ratio under all circumstances and conditions and outcomes. One simple piece of legislation should cover it. As Yule Brenner would say "so let it be written, so let it be done.""
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