Russ Douthat on Critical Race Theory

[Szdfan]

Serious question - was Jesus' nonviolence not really nonviolence because of the violence done to him? Indeed, was his nonviolence futile or unnecessary absent the violence of the Roman system?

The strategy of baiting or inducing violence brings to mind Jesus making sure his followers were equipped with swords, so that he could be numbered with the transgressors. Perhaps there is a distinction to be made between nonviolence and nonresistance.

That's a good distinction. Martin Luther King was inspired by Jesus, but the nonviolence of the Civil Rights Movement wasn't non-resistant. I think intention matters a lot here -- did Jesus intend to induce violence in order to shame the Roman Empire or was violence an unintended consequence?

[HondurasKeiser]

Here is also what appears to be additional tweets from Jones that give more context to her statement. There's more nuance here than the original tweet suggests:

https://twtext.com/article/1266360550306525192#

I know, I know cue the predictable: "AK-shually, Ms. Hannah-Jones is making a very nuanced argument for why violence is wrong but rioting in the name of justice is understandable and perhaps even justified."

I think you're ignoring what she's actually saying. When she says that "the fact of history is non-violent protest has not been successful for blk Americans," she's focusing on white violence against black Americans. She's saying that the non-violent protests in the Civil Rights movement weren't really non-violent because of the violence that was committed by the police and other white people that was strategically used to capture the attention and conscience of the country. Non-violent protest didn't capture media attention -- kids being attacked by firehoses and police dogs did.

Jones also says that the country ignores the injustices and inequalities in poor black communities until there is a riot.

She also says that she doesn't think that the violence in Minneapolis will work to change things.

What Jones is saying is saying is that America is a violent country and violence (especially violence against black people during the Civil Rights Movement) is what America seems to understand.

She's not wrong.

That's huge difference from what you are saying about her.

SZD, you’re correct, I misread her as winking at violence. And I agree with your assessment of it when you write:

I don't agree with the sentiment here -- I think MLK's non-violent movement was extremely successful at bringing change, but it didn't solve everything and some of the inequities that are baked into the system continued.

I wonder though what you see as the extant baked-in inequities and what ought to be done about them specifically?

[temporal1]

HK:
.. I misread her as winking at violence. And I agree with your assessment of it when you write:

it only makes sense if Jesus layed out different rules for different people. strongly suggesting some are inherently more able to follow Him, others, not so able, allowed carnal violence. i don’t believe it.

murder is wrong, regardless of skin color or earthly station. lust (or murder) in one’s heart represents sin. leading others to evil is sin.

this discussion makes me think of another horror happening in the open. young children are being taught to accept abortion as normal+desireable. i see it with my own eyes.

yet.
it is long established in psychiatry that young children who harm or kill animals (or the defenseless) are possibly showing early signs of psychopathy or sociopathy (anti social personality disorder). how can this correctly be ignored?? normal, healthy children defend the vulnerable! often to great lengths. today, horrible “teachers” are tampering with this God-created gift in attempt to undo a most important part of their being. children’s books have been written to glorify abortion.

human reasoning is something to fear. left on its own, the most awful conclusions can result.

Antisocial Personality Disorder
A mental health disorder characterized by disregard for other people.
Those with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) may begin to show symptoms in childhood, but the condition can't be diagnosed until adolescence or adulthood.

i believe when so much power is gifted to those who are detached from faith, who worship human reasoning as their only god, these kinds of unreconcilable fruits will result, one after another. in such a world, highly functioning, sophisticated psychopaths flourish.

murder is murder.

to suggest violence is “their only way” is an insult, and spits in Jesus’ face. with His ultimate sacrifice, He proved the opposite.
and has been remembered for 2000+ years because of it.

i would sometimes urge my young family, before you follow anyone, try to figure out who (or what) they are following.
‘cause everyone is following someone or something. often, it’s not at all desireable. beware.

[HondurasKeiser]

Seems germaine to this discussion.

Would you mind summarizing what you think Angela Davis is saying here?

[HondurasKeiser]

HK:
.. I misread her as winking at violence. And I agree with your assessment of it when you write:

it only makes sense if Jesus layed out different rules for different people. strongly suggesting some are inherently more able to follow Him, others, not so able, allowed carnal violence. i don’t believe it.

murder is wrong, regardless of skin color or earthly station. lust (or murder) in one’s heart represents sin. leading others to evil is sin.

this discussion makes me think of another horror happening in the open. young children are being taught to accept abortion as normal+desireable. i see it with my own eyes.

yet.
it is long established in psychiatry that young children who harm or kill animals (or the defenseless) are possibly showing early signs of psychopathy or sociopathy (anti social personality disorder). how can this correctly be ignored?? normal, healthy children defend the vulnerable! often to great lengths. today, horrible “teachers” are tampering with this God-created gift in attempt to undo a most important part of their being. children’s books have been written to glorify abortion.

human reasoning is something to fear. left on its own, the most awful conclusions can result.

Antisocial Personality Disorder
A mental health disorder characterized by disregard for other people.
Those with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) may begin to show symptoms in childhood, but the condition can't be diagnosed until adolescence or adulthood.

i believe when so much power is gifted to those who are detached from faith, who worship human reasoning as their only god, these kinds of unreconcilable fruits will result, one after another. in such a world, highly functioning, sophisticated psychopaths flourish.

murder is murder.

to suggest violence is “their only way” is an insult, and spits in Jesus’ face. with His ultimate sacrifice, He proved the opposite.
and has been remembered for 2000+ years because of it.

i would sometimes urge my young family, before you follow anyone, try to figure out who (or what) they are following.
‘cause everyone is following someone or something. often, it’s not at all desireable. beware.

T1, I agree and I think SZD would agree with you as well. I think though I was wrong in my interpretation of her tweet; it seems she wasn't tacitly endorsing violence rather she was suggesting that both non-violence & violence protest are both futile in the struggle for black liberation. I disagree with her assessment but nevertheless must recognize that hers was not a call, even a subtle call, to violence.

That being said, her ambivalence about violence/non-violence notwithstanding; CRT is an extremely destructive force that gives cover for people to explore the use of violence as means to the revolutionary ends. That seems to be what Ms. Davis is suggesting in the first segment of the video that JBG posted but I will wait for his summation of her remarks.

[joshuabgood]

Seems germaine to this discussion.

Would you mind summarizing what you think Angela Davis is saying here?

It feels to me she states it pretty clearly. But I will if you will...

In short, she is astounded by the irony of pushback around possibility of violence in their movement when the entity they are pushing on has actually been the initiator of the horrific violence against children and their community many years.

[joshuabgood]

To be clear I reject violence a priori...but her point I think is worth hearing.

[Ken]

To be clear I reject violence a priori...but her point I think is worth hearing.

I think we as a country are very lucky that the civil rights movement almost completely rejected violence as a means of change. That wasn't the case in many other countries with similar repressed minority populations. The history of the 20th Century could have been far bloodier and disastrous if they had taken an opposite tack and waged guerilla war across the south against Jim Crow.

I also think the white population of this country would have been MUCH quicker to do things like form militias, take up arms, and resort to violence if the situation had been reversed.

[Bootstrap]

Request: Can people please review the OP?

Request: I would like to make this a structured discussion, using the following rules:

• This is a no-debate, no-fight thread.
• Please do not respond before reading at least one of the articles in the list below. In your response, quote or reference something that Douthat actually said and respond to it.
• Talk about what you think, not about what you think someone else might think.

I heard a podcast where liberal Ezra Klein interviews conservative Russ Douthat. Transcript and audio are available at the above link.

• What Progressives Want, and What Conservatives Are Fighting
• The Excesses of Antiracist Education
• Why a Patriotic Education Can Be Valuable

I don't agree with everything, but I thought there was a lot of wisdom in what he wrote. And he clearly has taken the time to read and understand what he is talking about, I think the people he disagrees with would have to admit that he understood what they are saying and is doing his best to represent them accurately and respectfully.

I liked this summary:

The backlash to 1619 and similar efforts has convinced progressives that the right is desperately clinging to myths of American innocence. But conservatives often see themselves as objecting to the most radical parts of progressive revisionism, not the entire project. As the historian Matthew Karp notes in a perceptive essay for Harper’s, compared with just a generation ago the position of many conservatives has shifted, becoming explicitly anti-Lost Cause, anti-Confederate flag — and, in the recent congressional voting, mostly pro-Juneteenth as well. In its contest with the new progressivism, the right is abandoning Lee and rallying to Lincoln — for its own nationalist political purposes, Karp is quick to stress, but in a way that accepts a different center for historical debate than existed even when I attended high school.

Similarly, Benjamin Wallace-Wells of The New Yorker, reporting on the Texan battle over race and education, notes how quick the Republican spokesman in the legislative debates was to make concessions to the history of racism and discrimination, the failure of the ideals of 1776 to initially extend beyond “white property-owning males.”

This means that you could imagine, out of this controversy, potential forms of synthesis — in which the progressive desire for a deeper reckoning with slavery and segregation gets embedded in a basically patriotic narrative of what the founding established, what Lincoln achieved, what America meant to people of many races, even with our sins.

[Bootstrap]

T1, I agree and I think SZD would agree with you as well. I think though I was wrong in my interpretation of her tweet; it seems she wasn't tacitly endorsing violence rather she was suggesting that both non-violence & violence protest are both futile in the struggle for black liberation. I disagree with her assessment but nevertheless must recognize that hers was not a call, even a subtle call, to violence.

I agree.

To me, the 1619 project tells a black-centric version of American history that is useful as a critique of what most of us learn in school, where black voices are essentially left out of most of history and our story is told from the perspective of elite white landowners, land speculators, and merchants - or from the perspective of wars without paying much attention to the consequences of these wars for ordinary human beings in their wake.

I'm interested in the same kind of synthesis that Douthat suggests.

Similarly, Benjamin Wallace-Wells of The New Yorker, reporting on the Texan battle over race and education, notes how quick the Republican spokesman in the legislative debates was to make concessions to the history of racism and discrimination, the failure of the ideals of 1776 to initially extend beyond “white property-owning males.”

This means that you could imagine, out of this controversy, potential forms of synthesis — in which the progressive desire for a deeper reckoning with slavery and segregation gets embedded in a basically patriotic narrative of what the founding established, what Lincoln achieved, what America meant to people of many races, even with our sins.

I actually think Jill LePore has done some useful work in that direction. Woody Holton and Ed Ayers are also voices I would want to include in that synthesis.

America needs a history that includes all Americans, telling the story from points of view that are well documented, but usually left out of the story we tell ourselves.