Yes, it is a bit of a joke. It's playing word-games with definitions and comparing racism with people looking for witches in the olden days, in a rather obvious appeal to "let us move on to the actual problem these days".

It is just that the comparison collapses rather stupidly when one realizes that the authors don't seem to acknowledge the actual history of what they are referencing. People still kill people they think are witches and people still discriminate or accept discrimination of people of different skin colour. Arguing about which word an academic should use to describe that changes very, very little.

It's fun how you think the fact that people still kill people [who are alleged to be] witches discredits anything. There is really a lot of arrogance there to just dismiss that piece as a joke because it doesn't adhere to some race-first ideology.
Nobody-- not me, not WBM, Adolph Reed, the Fields sisters, John McWhorter or any person that I've cited in this thread would deny that racism is a real thing. And not a single one of them of would say that working to alleviate racism shouldn't be a thing.
The argument from them is that the anti-racist movement as we see it is a fundamentally right-wing ideology*. It is this one which I have much quoted:

The theoretical and political conceptions promoted by this layer have absolutely nothing to do with “left” politics. Indeed, the irrationalist, anti-Enlightenment, anti-Marxist and anti-working-class perspective developed over the past half-century has brought the pseudo-left into increasing alignment with the conceptions and politics of the far-right. The obsession with race, the interpretation of history in terms of the conflict of races, the categorization of society into “white America” and “black America,” “white people” and “black people”—this is not the language of the left, of progressive social reform, let alone socialist revolution

But that you support such a race-first approach aggressively does not surprise me in the least.
*McWhorter not really on the left so his argument is slightly different.

That's a lot of social construction in one post. As for quote you especially like, I see no conflict between bringing up the US history of relations between people of different skin colour and bringing up other social conflicts. The idea that it is a binary choice is just cheap rhetoric.

As for being aggressive, calling out what is seems to be a shoddily argued and badly researched essay silly isn't aggressive, but justified.

If the only argument is that it is shoddy is that in parts of the world witches are still being killed and that the authors don't acknowledge that [which maybe they do somewhere in the book] then I think that is saying something more about you than it is about that article.
I also think it's funny that you're somehow on the look out for "social construction" in my posts [whatever that would even mean]-- as if that's not a core concept of sociology or that it's something that I'm railing against.

Avoiding white backlash is progressive policy because Democrats are on the defensive

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021...narrative.html

Well "white people are too dumb to understand neoliberalism" isn't a take I expected to see here.
I still have to read it...

There's a lot that can be said on that piece and I'll probably respond to it a few times, but one interesting factoid is that Trump actually lost white male support in 2020 relative to 2016, and gained with minorities according to exit polls.
So if there is any backlash against racialized rhetoric, it is coming from poc. 538 article here.
On the paper cited in the article, which I still need to read-- this was indeed notable

Notably, while Black voters were responsive to both race and class-inflected messages, they too found the class-only message most persuasive.

But given that 'class only' messaging does have some empirical support, it seems odd to argue that "uneducated whites" are somehow too unsophisticated to grasp it, and the article just completely glosses over the "elites are using race" argument. It was like he brought it up only to dismiss it.

Rhetoric about how the rich use racism to divide working people is too abstract and ideological to register with them; they just don’t think about politics in those terms.

This is just bullshit and presented a priori. There is no reason to assume it and populist messages are called 'populist' for a reason. But if people don't think about politics in these terms, it is because people are not taught to think about politics in these terms. To the point that Wetwork made upthread and the one that Michaels makes: now even poor white people think that they are the ones who are discriminated against, because we lack the language to think about inequality in any other way than as discrimination. The forces of neoliberalism/globalization/deindustralization etc are effaced from the conversation.* Discrimination is the only idea left. That could change pretty easily though
TD will likely think it's funny because I made a comment earlier in the thread that people are pretty are dumb, which I clarified to mean 'not good at disambiguating complex narratives'-- but that doesn't mean I don't think populist/anti-elite messages don't sell or wouldn't sell.
*And there are reasons to doubt this as well given the popularity of Sanders. Trump also used messaging like this in 2016.

I think the Fields' make a case that a lot of this still crops up in people's thinking. Just as genetics dismantles ideas of race, some people-- and not just on the political right-- use it incorrectly to prop up race and to postulate essential differences between populations.
I think your notion of racism is focused more on the discriminatory or overt right-wing style racism where you could say "ok genetics doesn't mean a thing for these people". And that's fair. But I think they're taking a broader view.

Some of it likely is natural. This article presents what i think is a pretty compelling narrative of how the Democratic party has ended up with this class vs race/identity split-- because it hasn't always been the case and can be traced historically. But while the forces that brought about the split can be somewhat organic, that doesn't mean the forces that maintain it now are.

FYP.

The left pissed off Hispanics.

(And Asians)

I posted example after example of racial discrimination ITT. From education to cardiology care, all from critical race theorist.

You want me to show you example after example of segregated diversity training?

I had a fruit and veggie smoothie this morning. It was good.

This is fair. They use identity politics too of course.

This was about why some whites are poor though but instead of blaming things like lack of jobs/economic conditions, they are frequently blaming discrimination against them.
Also welcome back.

Maybe but Trump also picked up support with black males.
And the only group he did worse with was white males. It's really sort of amazing and I feel like it's something more people should find fascinating.
It could of course just be that white males did not like HRC but did like Biden, but that doesn't explain why Trump picked up minorities.

From a simple strategic standpoint--maybe the race issue is perceived as a fight where some real progress is actually achievable(I still think it's a bit dubious to believe simply addressing class will automatically bring race along for the ride). How can anyone look at the last ~40/50yrs on the class side of things and think that's been anything other than a complete rout on that front? And in many ways was really part of the other side of the dirty bargain in the southern strategy. It may end up being better to just let nature take its course until the very top just get consumed by their greed in the same cycle that's been repeating for ages. How's that for optimism

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...n-win-n1266102

This was a pretty flippant response, because I posted it before you had edited and added some more lines. At the time, your post didn't seem to have much relevance, until you added to it.

It doesn't really matter what I want, because that's exactly what you've been doing since the thread started (posting example after example of segregated diversity training and discrimination), and will continue to do. It's why you created this thread, and that's fine. I'm aware of that. But it doesn't change my point. There are a lot of people whose political agenda is to make white people feel like they are the victims of racism, that they are soon to be outnumbered, that their way of life is endangered. All the while these same people seem to be pretty silent about any other forms of racism.

I should add, it may have been a little unfair of me to just pick one point of one post of Luckbox's (which he was good enough to agree with rather than get annoyed with the cherry-picking). I wasn't really aiming at him; I think what struck me about that passage was that it reminded me of the video steamraise posted in the Gaetz thread today, with the quote "If you are a Republican and you want to get elected…you have to make love to Donald Trump every single day". It had really been my hope that when all the Trump nonsense died down, the Republicans would take stock and clean house a bit. And I suppose that could still happen, but it sure isn't looking promising right now. Instead, you've got a party for which Trumpian politics is what they're about, and it seems a significant number of Republican voters are good with that. More than good. It makes me sad. I live only 2.5 miles from the border, greatly enjoy my trips down south, and have many friends who live there. And of course our countries have a lot of ties. There's nothing I'd love more than for politics to improve in the US, but until the Republicans can move on from this Trumpian way of life, I don't think that's going to happen.

/off-topic rant (sorry)

Well, yeah, and thanks.

I get it. I just wanted to point out it wasn't just Trump saying it, critical race theorists were/are actually doing it (and not just to whites, to all races). I have no problem acknowledging an identitarian right, and it's actually becoming more prevalent, which speaks to the harm a race conscious view has. All the people who has a race conscious view aren't going to reach the conclusions you want them to reach. I also think the GOP lacks leadership and a vision which contributed to Trump's populism.

The GOP exists as an opposition party to the Democrats. It's their raison d'être. I don't know when this happened-- perhaps with the rise of identity politics amongst Democrats, perhaps with the advent of cable news and the sorts of things that Matt Taibbi discusses in Hate Inc.
But you're definitely right about them lacking leadership and vision. They have none. The neocon style corporate Republicans have been repudiated at the national level. Maybe Liz Cheney (who is like #3 ranking GOP in the house) will make a run for national office and prove me wrong there, but I don't think that's what grassroots Republicans are after. I don't necessarily think nativist types like Trump are "it" for them either. Trump didn't only run on nativism but on a whole host of other ideas in 2016, but it was the nativism that was amplified.
So there is room for a non-nativist Trump who keeps the economic populism/disestablishmentarianism and leaves the racist rhetoric at home. But we won't see it and instead it'll be a battle between the racists vs the corporate stooges. [And the racists are still also corporate stooges themselves of course]

I think to say they lack a vision isn't really true though. There's just a disconnect between what the rank and file/reg people think they're supposed to be doing--and what they're actually there to do--which is keep delivering for the ~1%. And on that front they've been -extremely- successful. Losing/engaging in some culture war battles grabs up a lot of the attention but for the most part I don't think they really care as long as the rivers of cash are still flowing in the right direction. And for all of trump's distractions--the number 1 priority was delivered on right off the bat basically--tax cuts(same story with Reagan as well). The other stuff like judges/hobbling fed agencies(across the board from state dept to epa etc) is expected as well--but after the real priorities are addressed anything after that is just gravy. The project doesn't -need- popular leadership to deliver because it still does regardless but having the trumps/reagans with some charisma/broader popularity just makes it a little easier to pull off and to run interference for the disconnect^.

This is a good post.
I think the first part of it works for both parties. But you're obviously correct that they're there to serve the ruling class.