New Racism

In our society being a racist is unacceptable. Now, this statement may be scoffed at by those who think that we're deeply embedded in the systems of white supremacy and who are complicit in the destruction and annihilation of black and brown bodies that are being consumed by the white cis-normative heterosexist capitalist patriarchy, but how else is one to explain the swiftness with which the accused get cast to the flames?

In my previous post I had mentioned 'anti-white bigotry'. I had done so to comment on a feature of 'hoax hate crimes' as well as other incidents, such as the Covington Catholics kids' debacle and/or the Jussie Smollet nonsense, that have involved scapegoating of white persons based on a prejudicial view of white people as racists.

I'm not getting into those issues again, as I want to focus on the word 'racism' and how I think it has been re-defined in a power-play by black feminists, critical race theorists, and other progressive thinkers and disciplines to subordinate legitimate voices from the dominant culture to their language and ideology.

Up until rather recently, the meaning of 'racism' was a term with a familiar definition: 'prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior'.

Central to the concept of racism, is the concept of 'race' which states that the larger human species can be divided into a number of smaller groups that are sufficiently distinct from one another: these are races.

Our race concept typically involves several criteria and is something like the following:

Races reflect (i) some type of biological foundation which generates discrete groupings wherein all and only all members of the group share a set of biological characteristics. This biological foundation is (ii) inherited from generation to generation, and (iii) it generates phenotypic expressions such as skin colour, hair, eye shape, et cetera. The characteristics generated by this biological foundation are (iv) identifiable by observers such that an individual can be identified with their racial grouping, and (v) this racial grouping has a genealogy can be traced to a race's geographical origin (Africa, Asia, Europe, or the Americas).

'Race', then, is a concept that describes and divides humans into racial groups (such as above), racism is the belief that one's race is superior while others are inferior in some way or other, and a racist is a person who believes a race concept (such as above), holds that their race is superior to others and discriminates against members of other races based on that concept.

So what's the problem? This seems simple enough. Well, nowadays, this definition of racism has been exploded by myriad academic disciplines to encompass an array of loosely connected phenomenon. No longer is 'racism' discrimination against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior, now 'racism' is an outgrowth of the functioning of social structures and one's position in them. This I'll call 'new racism', though it is colloquially known though the slogan of 'prejudice plus power'.

'New racism' spins the traditional definition of racism on its head. In it, 'racism' is thus defined as something like, 'the routine generation of norms and practices that confer material and/or cultural advantages on a dominant racial group whilst producing adverse outcomes for the mariginalised racial group(s)'. So, no longer is racism the prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior, but rather it is racial and social superiority that is the result of prejudice, discrimination or antagonism suffered by racial minorities - belief need not be a part of it, and one need not willfully participate in the prejudice or antagonism.

From this perspective, while members of ethnic/racial minorities may be prejudiced against members of the dominant culture, as well as towards members of other races, they lack the political and economic power to actively oppress them, and therefore are not practicing 'racism'. (This fits right in with the current zeitgeist's obsession with 'punching up' vs. 'punching down'.)

One problem with this concept is the asymmetry: members of a disadvantaged racial group cannot be racist against member of a privileged racial group - or, in North America and Europe, we're told non-white people cannot be racist against white people. They can be prejudiced against white people, they may even discriminate against white people but since they do not hold a position of power and privilege in their society, they cannot be racist against white people since white people hold the position of power in society. This hardly seems fair and accurate since there are numerous examples of white people being victims of racist attacks - most infamous being the Chicago kidnapping and torture affair. There are also examples of inter-minority racism, and there is the phenomenon wherein minorities create intense racist attitudes and behaviours towards their oppressors in order to cope with their disadvantaged position. So, in short, though whites and non-whites alike have racial prejudices, and both may actively discriminate against members of other races based on these prejudices, it is the dominant position in society that is held by whites that automatically makes their prejudices racist. In fact, this story was spun by some right-wing pundits as being related to Black Lives Matter (BLM) - the social justice activist movement for reform and/or abolition of law enforcement and incarceration. By doing so, they enabled BLM activists and their representatives in the media to pivot away from the black people engaging in a clearly racist act, and to focus on the smear campaign against them. By taking BLM to be representative of all black people or to have these black people representative of BLM and smearing it without any credible evidence we were treated with articles arguing that black people, as a group, were the real victims of a handicapped white guy getting tortured by four black people. Total trash.

That aside, from what I can tell, this 'new racism' can be applied to the behaviour of nation states and their criminal justice systems. It can be used to describe unconscious bias and overt acts of bigotry; gentrification is racist, and white flight, also. White people speaking for people of colour, as well as being silent may also be seen as racist, after all, 'white silence is violence', or so the placards tell us. Refusing loans via red-lining was racist, and giving out too many loans via sub-prime lending was also racist. Denying  one's 'whiteness' or having any pride in it: both, racist. Even denying that one is a racist is, in fact, racist. These can all be construed as racist, but the one thing it cannot be applied to is any action made by a non-white person.

Now, one could say that this is a rather parochial understanding of what's being said by the advocates of new racism, after all, there are numerous countries that have no white people and exhibit their own forms of racial discrimination. White people are not needed for there to be racism. Surely there is truth to this, but this new racism is almost never used in these contexts. New racism is mobilised almost exclusively to describe disparate interactions between white people and non-white people: from genocide to colonialism to hiring practices to under-representation in sport to unconscious bias. It's racism all the way down.

Another problem is assignment: how does one become racist? If racism is 'prejudice plus power', then how much power is needed to make prejudices become racist? If we all have racial prejudices, but only some of us have the power required to transmogrify our prejudices into racism, then wouldn't the acquisition of more and more power by people of colour make them more and more likely to become racist? By adding 'power' to the 'prejudice plus power' equation, one would be making racists. But perhaps this is nothing to worry about, since such people wouldn’t be racists. They certainly wouldn’t think of themselves as racists, and any benefit they confer to their group wouldn’t be done at the expense of others. Such a thing certainly wouldn't happen intentionally... Ah, but forgive the sarcasm, and digression.

Additionally, is racism a choice? As stated previously, prejudice and power are individually necessary and jointly sufficient elements of racism, but power, as it is being spoken of in this context, isn't a matter of individual choice. White people don't choose to be born white; to be born into a system that apparently privileges them. To be charitable to the new racist thinkers: being born into privilege (power) is something that just happens. But this hardly makes any sense. A white guy, in Appalachia, who is suffering from a meth addiction is hardly in a position of power or privilege, and yet that person could very well be racist. Perhaps one could interrogate his drug supply and find that it is linked to the war on drugs or something...

To my mind, the racist-making property is vague at best, and strikes me as fairly occult. Like intersectionality - the so-called comprehensive theory of oppression that states that individuals exist in a social matrix wherein vectors of oppression and privilege intersect within individuals who contain numerous identities which, themselves, are products of and/or beneficiaries of those oppressive systems - in short, the theory that states that intersectional identities intersect -  new racism operates in a realm of magic wherein thinking something tightly corresponds with consequences in the world. Hence their rabid focus on speech and beliefs.

Finally, I will close up with what I think is so dishonest about 'new racism': it's that the definition of racism has been switched from a more individualistic and intentional model to a institutional and abstract model without adequately shifting the connotation of 'racism'.

It is a manipulation to use a term like 'racism' or 'white supremacy' which is charged with visceral images of lynchings, eugenics, the Holocaust, the genocide of the indigenous North American tribes, cross burning, swastikas, police brutality, and all sorts of other sordid events when, in fact, one is talking about 'unconscious bias' and 'microaggressions'. 

This, however, is what is being banked on by the users of the term; they're piggybacking on that long chain of racist acts and allowing them to colour the perception of the term. They're smuggling in the weight of past racism alongside the clarity of historical knowledge to make their claims have impact, and control conversation and behaviour.

So, it is not that people are more racist now than in previous years, but rather activists and progressive thinkers are weaponising the language of racism in order to effectively label opponents as 'racists'.

As stated at the outset: being a racist is unacceptable in our society. What better way to turn opponents into pariahs than to scapegoat them as racists?

Are 'Hoax Hate Crimes' Hate Crimes?

Though the legal definition of 'hate crime' may differ across jurisdictions, the common core is 'a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin, et cetera' (National Institute of Justice, USA).

More specifically, a hate crime is an independent criminal offense such as assault, theft, vandalism, et cetera that is: 

• Motivated by bias/hate/prejudice, and;
• Caused/explained by bias/hate/prejudice

It involves:

• A discriminatory selection of victims, and,
• Expressions of bias/hate/prejudice towards the victim's group

And has the intended effect of either:

• Causing/risking additional harm of a particular sort, and/or
• Causing a certain harm/have a certain effect more generally (i.  e. incite fear).

Alongside deliberate offences of this nature, there has been a storied history of racial hoax crimes that involved either:

1. Someone fabricating a crime and blaming it on another person because of that person's race/ethnicity or,
2. Someone committing an actual crime and blaming it on someone because of their race/ethnicity.

In these cases, the intent is to divert investigative attention to an innocent person by means of scapegoating someone based on  racial stereotypes. Historically these hoaxes were often used by white people against black people, and commonly used rape as the crime. These cases ended up perpetuating and amplifying the stereotype of the 'black rapist'.

What I'm interested in is a type of hoax crime that differs slightly from the above descriptions. These other hoax crimes I will call 'hoax hate crimes'.

In a hoax hate crime, a member of a ostensibly disadvantaged group fabricates a crime wherein they are the victim of an attack motivated by malice towards their identity as a member of their disadvantaged group. Such hoax hate crimes are a combination between the hate crime and the racial hoax, but the 'victim' in these cases has fabricated a crime committed against them and/or their community, and the real victim would the be the person who is blamed for the fake crime. So, the true offense committed by a hoax hate crime is the fabrication of a fake crime as well as the framing of an innocent person based on that person's perceived racial stereotypes.

There have been numerous examples of these hoax hate crimes in recent years - particularly in the so-called Trump era that has been said to have ushered in a new atmosphere of racism and bigotry that has 'emboldened' bigots to commit crimes that they would have wanted to commit but couldn't under previous administrations.

Examples of hoax hate crimes involve vandalisation of property with hateful slogans or symbols, claims of physical attack and/or verbal assault, death threats, and even church arson. These hoaxes have been seen all over the place from college campuses and the US Air Force, and committed by everyone from poor people to celebrities.

The reasons for perpetrating such a hoax are numerous: 

1. Gains in social capital from victim status, 
2. Monetary gain (GoFundMe campaigns are almost a dead give-away), 
3. Enflaming racial/societal tensions, and/or;
4. Attempt to distract from one's own misconduct.

In these cases of hoax hate crimes, the crime that is fabricated is often one wherein a racist symbol or action is made against a person of colour. The perpetrator is often said to be a Trump supporter and is almost always a white man, and that makes the person a white nationalist in the eyes of the media. There are exceptions, but the trend is apparent.

It is apparent that perpetrators of hoax hate crimes are attempting to take advantage of the charged political climate and the anti-Trump bias in the media and culture at large. 

So, let us take the now-infamous hoax hate case involving Jussie Smollet. 

To reiterate his case: Smollet first received a threatening letter with a stick-figure of a man hanging from a tree alongside the words 'You will die black ni**er.' The letter was also laced with a white powder that was later determined to be Tylenol. About a week later, Smollet was walking home from a Subway at night when he was jumped by two assailants who tied a 'rope' around his neck, poured bleach on him and yelled racist and homophobic epithets whilst exclaiming 'this is MAGA [Make America Great Again] country!'. Smollet reported this to the police and maintained that his story was true in interviews only to have the investigation come back around to him and find him to be suspect in fabricating the crime.  

Before being found out, Smollet was interviewed and he insisted on the racial, homophobic, and political nature of the attack. 

So, when we look at the hate crime criteria and apply them to this case what do we get? Taking the 'victim' to refer to the framed individual(s) and their identity, and the crime (the 'it') being the framing of an innocent person(s) based on race:

Was it:

• Motivated by bias/hate/prejudice? Yes.
• Caused/explained by bias/hate/prejudice? Yes, partly. There have been reports of fame-seeking/money.

Was there:

• A discriminatory selection of 'victims'? Yes.
• Expressions of bias/hate/prejudice towards the victim's group? Yes, partly.

Was it intended to:

• Cause/risk additional harm of a particular sort? Unsure. 
• Cause a certain harm/have a certain effect more generally? Unsure.

This case is slightly complicated since Smollet never came out stated that his attackers were black, white, et cetera, but the dots were connected and the media and social media went off with the narrative of two white men wearing MAGA hats. The event was made 'racially charged' as people jumped the gun and made their assumptions about the assailants. That should tell us something about the climate we find ourselves in as we had this even called a 'modern-day lynching' by prominent politicians and media personnel. 

That said, why do I say 'yes' in some cases? I answer in the affirmative because there is a clear prejudice at play in the selection of the identity of the alleged perpetrators in the hoax hate crime. There is this prejudice towards white people, particularly white Trump supporters, that holds that they are hateful of people of colour and are more likely to commit violence against them or harass. There is this idea that racism runs deeply within society: it's entrenched white supremacy, colonialism, and racial violence that has been tempered by civil rights struggles but still remains alive, if dormant, in a particular group of people: white people; particularly right-wing/conservative white people. Such a climate could incentivise people of colour to fake a hate crime against them because they think that the idea of a white person attacking a person of colour is believable. This is analogous to white people committing racial hoaxes against black men, for instance, because they think it is believable. To differentiate these examples on the basis of past racial injustices holds little water, and only seems to shed light on the psychology of a perpetrator of a hoax hate crime. 

To believe that a member of such-and-such a group is more likely to commit such-and-such an offense and to use that stereotype to frame them for an offense they didn't commit is prejudicial in the extreme and should be condemned and punished. 

What we often have in hoax hate crimes are unfounded rumours or false allegations against white people who are scapegoated for actions committed by the 'victim' of the crime. This is firmly couched in what can only be called 'anti-white bigotry'. [This is too much to get into, here, and will be a subject of a future post.] 

The problem for the hoax hate crime perpetrators as well as the media and politicians that are all-too-often jump on the bandwagon to decry society as racist is that their demand for racism isn't being met by the supply. And so people have to make stuff up. 

So to the question: are hoax hate crimes, themselves, hate crimes? Why did I answer 'somewhat' or 'unsure' to some criteria?

Well, hoax hate crimes are crimes - at the very least false reporting in most jurisdictions is a criminal offense - and they are directed at a particular group of people, but the malice present in hate crimes seems to be absent in the hoax hate crime. There is certainly a prejudice at play, or even just a belief in the efficacy of that prejudice that can be taken advantage of in the scapegoating, but there doesn't seem to be that intentional curdled malevolence that is apparent in hate crimes, proper.

Unlike many in the social justice crowd: intent does matter. Intentionally attacking someone who you believe is inferior, is a very serous matter, and watering down such things in order to cast a larger net to catch one's apparent enemies is unjustified. Intentionally framing an innocent person for a crime you think others will believe they committed because of racial stereotypes is also serious, and should be denounced and punished.

So, hoax hate crimes are not necessarily hate crimes, though perhaps they could be. Perhaps a hoax hate crime that was made to deliberately stoke up racial tension is a candidate. After all, Blood Libels against Jews would surely count, and analogous scenarios could count, also. If a Jew faked a Blood Libel and blamed a gentile because he's a gentile, and for the purpose of stoking tensions, then perhaps that could be a decent candidate for consideration. 

Even though hoax hate crimes are not as serious as actual hate crimes of course, they are not trivial either as they're motivated by prejudice and can spark unrest or ruin reputations all on the basis of racial/group stereotypes and discrimination.

Now, there are problems with the idea of a hate crime anyway, and perhaps if we could include hoax hate crimes within the rubric of hate crimes proper, we could have further criticism against the notion of hate crimes, themselves, but nonetheless I think we should want the methodology for such categorisations to pass the Goldilocks test: we don't want it to be 'too hot' (include obviously bad examples), or 'too cold' (exclude obviously appropriate examples). If it fails, so be it.

Could a hoax hate crime be seen as 'aggravating' in sentencing? Perhaps. It is an intentional misleading of the pursuit of justice, and it is the intentional scapegoating of a member of a group because of their group identity and stereotypical beliefs about that group. It ought to be taken more seriously and perpetrators ought to receive more ire from the public.

These are not to be considered victimless crimes. They are opportunistic manipulations of racial division enabled by racial disdain and cynicism. The only way to figure that out is to take the time to investigate. 

Let cooler heads prevail, and others roll.

Foucault's Concept of Governmentality

Initially formulated in Security, Territory, and Population, Michel Foucault's notion of 'governmentality' was enriched and deepened in Society must be Defended and The Birth of Biopolitics. This concept of governmentality encompasses the goals, techniques and procedures which are designed to govern the conduct of both individuals and populations at every level, and not just at the administrative or political level, and it coincides with the centralisation and increased government power which produces 'rituals of truth' from which emerge 'regimes of truth'.

Governmentality operates in and through 'discursive fields' which are characterised by a shared vocabulary, organisational techniques based on a shared understanding of ethical principles and their explanatory logic. These develop various modalities of speaking the truth (knowledge) - who can speak the truth and how in the discursive systems. 

Within these systems certain people are deemed as 'authorities', and they are designated as authorised 'truth-speakers'. Areas in which certain people can speak, and about what or whom are constructed and clarified. As a result, practices rooted in 'truths' are created, ie. the methods of shaping the behaviour of others. At his most concise, Foucault defines governmentality as 'conduct of conducts'.

Governmentality is enacted by governments. This may seem redundant, however, it must be made clear that by 'government' Foucault does not only mean the political or administrative apparatus of the state. For Foucault, 'government' is what structures the possible field of action of others. So, there is the government of children, the government of families, communities, populations, the sick, etc.

Whereas governmentality is the set of goals and objectives, techniques and procedures, government is the  method  through which  these  aims are to be  achieved. Foucault calls this the  'disposal' of things: an arrangement  of things through which certain ends can be achieved. These things, however, are not  just objects, but rather they  are a complex amalgamation of people and things; that is, people in relation to  objects and events in  the world. 

Government is utilized to make adjustments in the relationships between people and things by enforcing laws but  it could  also  do  so  by  adjusting  taxation,  prescribing standards for education, by building an infrastructure  as well as by directing moral and religious education.

This development of governmentality does not convey a new theory as much as a new perspective and illustrates a change in Foucault's analysis of power. By introducing governmentality, Foucault shows that there is another way to view power: for if there are different ways to govern, then there are different ways in which individuals and populations become governable. This leads to a more subtle understanding of the operations of power in societies. It allows for seemingly distinct nodes of power relations to be coalesced into a constellation forming the power system in a society.

For instance, let us take the post-16th century disintegration of monarchical power. In this case, even though the absolute power of the monarch was gone, one sees that there still is government. This is to a large extent internalised by people, but there is also surveillance and reinforcement for conforming to the rules. Here we have a shift in governmentality that was made possible by the creation of specific (expert or professional) 'knowledges' as well as the construction of experts, institutions and disciplines (e.g., medicine, psychology, psychiatry) so that individuals who we think of as experts can claim the knowledge necessary to command the power of governmentality.

In his analysis of 'governmentality', Foucault stresses again that it would be an error to understand institutions such as the state as being essentially oppressive and power should not only be thought of in terms of hierarchical, top-down power of the state, as stressed in his earlier works, but also to include the forms of social control in disciplinary institutions, such as schools, hospitals, psychiatric institutions, et cetera, as well as the forms of knowledge produced therein. Power, then,  can manifest itself positively by producing knowledge and certain discourses that get internalised by individuals and guide the behaviour of populations.

This leads to more efficient forms of social control, as knowledge enables individuals to govern themselves. This development constructs a tripartite division of power: i) Juridical, ii) Disciplinary and iii) Bio-political power - which will be explored in the near future. 

MAGA Kids and Progressive Scapegoating's Religious Undercurrent

This is a little bit of a ramble, but I figured that I'd throw this out there.

It’s been a few days since the now-infamous confrontation between a group of MAGA hat-bedecked Catholic school boys and a Native American elder in Washington, D.C. Since that day, news media, pundits, celebrities, and average folks alike had jumped upon a frenzied bandwagon suggesting that the kids were engaging in hateful and intolerant behaviour towards an Indigenous man, only to have the facts set more-or-less straight and forcing them to either abandon ship or double-down – depending on how committed to facts one is.

Well, Niigaan Sinclair certainly isn’t burdened by the desire to find and assess the facts, and has come out with a pithy little piece in the Globe and Mail dumping on the kids, and by overt expression, on North American society.

Just to give a quick rundown: a group students from an all-boys Catholic high school in Kentucky went to the US capital for a Pro-Life march. There they were met with protest by a small group of Black Hebrew Israelites who believe that they're descendants of ancient Israelites. The Black Israelites taunted the students, calling them 'child molesters', stating that Trump is a 'fa**ot', and that the black students should depart from the group because 'ni**a, they're gonna steal your organs'. 

In an attempt to drown out the Black Israelites' taunts, or rather to taunt right back, the students began to engage in their high school cheers. During this, Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder, was observing the commotion and decided to intervene in an attempt to 'diffuse the situation'. 

He walked up to the students whilst drumming and singing the American Indian Movement (AIM) song. The cadence of his drumming matched the cadence of the students' chants and they, apparently, thought that he was drumming to their chants. In accordance, they continued to chant in the cadence of his drumming. 

As Phillips walked into the crowd of students, they parted, and he continued to walk until he met Nick Sandmann, a student who stood in Phillips' way. Sandmann said he did so in order to demonstrate that he didn't want any trouble - figuring that if he stood still, he wouldn't be doing anything wrong. Sadly for Sandmann, he was wearing a MAGA hat, and as soon as the video hit social media, the shit hit the fan.

That's the scenario. That's what happened. 

Now, reading through Sinclair's terse and punchy piece, one gets the impression that he didn't engage in any due diligence in attempting to understand the event, instead relying on Nathan Phillips' narrative as fact. It reads as though Sinclair listened to a CNN segment wherein Phillips shared his take on the occurrence, and that was enough for Sinclair to consider this an open-and-shut case. Racist white boys versus noble Indigenous man. Bang the gavel: the kids are done. However, there is roughly two hours of audio-video footage detailing the somewhat chaotic event, and it is precisely this evidence that debunks Sinclair's claims.

Instead of investigating the issue, as a good scholar would, Sinclair engaged in the same lazy practice as his cohorts in the media: look at some footage that has been given to you, see if it suits you ideological positions, listen, believe, and pontificate. Oh, and scapegoated the kids. 

Sinclair quotes Phillips' description of the encounter with the students as 'hate unbridled... a storm', and 'dangerous'. And yet Phillips lives to tell the tale... Sinclair also strongly suggests that the kids were 'mocking', 'belittling', and 'demeaning', and that they displayed 'blatant racism, hatred and disrespect'.

Blatant racism? Hatred? Disrespect? Really? At worst I see irreverence. I see young boys being young boys who have found themselves in a bizarre and aggressive scenario that they don't fully grasp, and being immature in the process. I saw no malice - aside from the Black Israelites yelling profanities and insults at the kids, and there was an Indigenous man with Phillips who accosted the kids saying 'Go back to Europe! This isn't your land.' 

Now, folks will say that we're guilty of carrying our biases, and that these colour our perceptions, but if that is the case, then Sinclair et al. are seeing what they want to see, and what they see isn't a child, but an enemy.

Sinclair states that:

'The video of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Sandmann went viral. Some called it a 'face-off.'
I call it America.
North America'. 

Calling Nick Sandmann 'Mr. Sandmann' enables him to speak of Sandmann not as a child, but as an adult - with all of the expectations and lack of leniency for immaturity that comes with it. (Could this be because of editorial standards? Perhaps 'Mr.' and 'Ms.' are used to refer to subjects... If so, it's inconsistently applied by the Globe and Mail).

Nonetheless, Sinclair is able to say such things because he's not seeing the MAGA kids as children. He is seeing them as representatives of an ideology he hates. Or perhaps he sees them as repositories of ideas and ideologies he hates. He's seeing this event between individuals as a microcosmic representation of the macrocosmic battle that's occurring at large.

That's Sinclair's take, but where is the undercurrent of religiosity in Progressivism?

Aside from the overt scapegoating, there is another element that I think is in play, here.

Now, I do take Niigaan Sinclair's piece to be in lockstep with many Left-wing and Progressive folks on this issue. Having read several articles, I do think that they align. Sinclair has a particularly interesting vantage point since he is an Indigenous man in Canada, but that aside, there is a remarkable amount of similarity between him and his non-Indigenous fellow travelers.

I've tried to put my finger on why this event exploded, and why the reaction was so visceral. My view, for what it is worth, is that one can see here, possibly, is a confrontation between two worlds: the ancient and resilient Indigenous world coming face-to-face with the new Era of Trump/Whiteness. To the folks who are so upset, the Indigenous people have suffered for hundreds of years at the hands of Europeans and their descendants in North America, and this is true, also these MAGA hat-wearing kids are viewed as the latest instantiation of a new generation of oppressors. They are a continuation of that hateful past they hope to get rid of. 

I interpret the event thusly: 

Nathan Phillips is the representative of his people, and the moral and spiritual weight of his traditions - the drumming and singing giving a sense of spiritual formalism to the whole thing. In his approach to the boys, drumming and singing in an attempt to diffuse the situation between the students and Black Israelites, he was bringing that weight, that profundity, to the boys. He was hoping to approach them, and pass through them with stoic reverence and song, and leave a lasting impression that would calm the situation. However, he was met by Sandmann who did not move. They met and stood, locking eyes with one another, unwilling to budge. Sandmann's unwillingness to move, and his smirk/grin (though from nervousness, perhaps, or maybe due to the ridiculousness of the whole scenario) was a sign of an abject repudiation of the moral and spiritual weight of Phillips' actions.

Now, I don't think this is what happened in the minds of the people involved. I think Sandmann was confused and nervous, but well-meaning. In fact, footage shows that he was, indeed, trying to diffuse the tension that was beginning to arise. I think Phillips was also trying to diffuse the tension between the students and the Black Israelites. What has happened is that this event occurred and people who were not there are foisting their political, racial, and social baggage onto it thereby making Phillips a hero and the kids the scapegoats.

All of this reminds me of something Richard Dawkins said in his book, The God Delusion.

A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.

In, this our Current Year, children are not just children. They are Christians, Muslims, Trump supporters, racists, xenophobes, drag queens, et cetera. Children are being viewed as representatives of things that they don't understand, and certainly as responsible for things they had no part in making.

The worst people in this whole scenario have been the adults: the Black Israelites who have somehow gotten off scot free despite them being the 'blatant racists': calling the black kids in the groups (yes, they were present) n***gas, as well as calling Phillips an 'Uncle Tomahawk';  Nathan Phillips who has insinuated malice to the kids in subsequent interviews; the chaperones of the students for letting things get out of control; the 'Blue Checkmarks' on Twitter calling for these kids and their families to be harassed, doxxed or even attacked; and commentators such as Sinclair who are riding the crest of the wave in an opportunistic fashion trying to soak in the rays of attention.

We'd like to think that these kids, as well as others, would behave better, and be respectful instead of irreverent, calm instead of rambunctious, courteous instead of uncivil. But they're kids, and we can expect that. However, alongside the kids, what we have are adults who are criticising these kids whilst being all the things they're criticising the kids for being: hateful, bigoted, disrespectful, and, I think, racist. They've taken on the worst characteristics of their perceived enemies, and have even stooped to the level of taking children to be their enemies.

The APA's Flaccid Masculinity

One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge... If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared... then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.

 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge

The onslaught continues.

Like waves crashing on the edge of the sea.

Or perhaps more like the perpetual buzzing of insects.

Masculinity has been in the sights of radical feminist culture critics since the 1970's, and now their nonsense has seeped into the wider culture; being peddled as dogma by mainstream media outlets, scientific and technological organisations, as well as massive corporations. So much for the 'radical critique' - their heuristic has been fully adopted by the zeitgeist.

Having gorged themselves on the mistaken notion that masculinity is 'hegemonic' and socially constructed within their ivory tower, these self-anointed ushers of a new Era are regurgitating it into the public, and we're witnessing the fruits of their labour.

According to a recently published American Psychological Association (APA) document on the 'Guidelines for Psychological Practice for Men and Boys', masculinity is an ideology that forms and perpetuates a '...particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.'

The idea is that such masculinity then fosters attitudes that are aimed at the domination of women by men, and of men by superior men. It is inculcated in boys throughout their lives by societal pressures and interpersonal relationships, and unjustifiably constrains male behaviour into the narrow band of aforementioned tropes. This, in turn, leads to myriad mental, biological, and psychological health disparities.

There numerous issues, here, and below I will go through a few. Here are some following reasons for rejecting the APA's Guidelines. 

Circularity

The APA tumbled over the first hurdle when it adopted the concept of 'hegemonic masculinity' (HM) which begins by accepting as proven that which has yet to be investigated. This can be shown by using one of the APA's own examples: men delaying seeking medical care.

For instances wherein men delay seeking medical care, the Hegemon thinkers state that such delays are performed because visiting a doctor would (a) indicate weakness on the one hand, (b) constitute seeking help on the other, and these are no-no's when it comes to any attempt to embody the hegemonic male ideal.

From the APA, '[t]raditional masculinity ideology can be viewed as the dominant (referred to as "hegemonic") form of masculinity that strongly influences what members of a culture take to be normative.' Hegemonic Masculinity (HM) is defined, in part, as the eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and going to the doctor is an example of the appearance of weakness. So a hegemonically masculine man would be expected to delay going to the doctor, if at all. But, where does this eschewal of the appearance of weakness come from? It comes from men's preoccupations with hegemonic masculinity.

So, HM is offered as the explanation as to why men delay in seeking help, but also  it is suggested that such behaviour provides the evidence that men are attempting to align with the expectations of HM. Such an alignment becomes both the claimed explanation for the delay in consulting a doctor and the proposed outcome of the delay. 

Duplicity 

Throughout the APA's document, the authors make use of 'masculinities' insisting that 'the various conceptions of masculine gender roles associated with an intersection of multiple identities (e.g., rural, working-class, adult, White masculinities may take a different form than urban, teenage, Mexican American masculinities'. However this multiplicity of masculine identities seems to quickly coagulate into one hegemonic form since even though what 'counts' as masculine ebbs and flows over history and across cultures, there is a 'privileged' form that persists and predominates. The privileged form is associated with 'success, power and competition... restrictive emotionality... and restrictive affectionate behavior between men.'  Effectively, despite the gestures at the multiplicity of masculinity in particular, but gender more generally, what emerges from the discussion is a rather fixed and stable set of characteristics that are superficially augmented by socio-cultural inflections.

Hegemonic masculinity, it seems, is a way for the authors to speak substantively about masculinity, whilst preserving their fashionable reluctance (read: cowardice) to speak of gender identities as fixed or tied to sex. Unfortunately for the authors the use of HM does not allow them to perform the latter as the behaviours and characteristics they index with the term are very similar to the simplistic stereotypes that they'd caution us from using.

What we're left with an oscillation between two conflicting positions: (i) that masculinity is entirely contingent, and (ii) that there is one identifiable and dominant masculine identity. 

Arbitrariness & Bad Faith 

The use of the word 'constellation' is somewhat humourous since a constellation is 'a group of stars that forms an imaginary outline or pattern...' These arbitrary symbols are made up of stars that are nowhere near one another, and have no effect on anything on earth. So, how much of the APA's definition is imaginary, arbitrary, or real?

This constellation could have been otherwise. It certainly could have been less bloated by moralism. We could have: Duty, Honour, Courage, Strength, Competence, and Industriousness instead of Anti-femininity, Achievement, Eschewal of the appearance of Weakness, Adventure, Risk, and Violence. This is a difference that makes a difference since the former stresses the productive, whereas the latter stresses the prohibitive. Even though 'achievement', 'adventure', and 'risk' are not, in-and-of themselves bad according to most folks, and 'violence' and 'emotional control' are also appropriate in cases, these characteristics are seen as being employed at the expense of something else - at the expense of one's physical and/or emotional health.

The APA also describes masculinity as a 'set of descriptive, prescriptive, and proscriptive of cognitions about boys and men [sic]', but it never tells us what elements are descriptive, prescriptive, and/or proscriptive. Is 'Violence' descriptive or prescriptive? Likewise with the 'Eschewal of the appearance of Weakness'. This sloppiness enables the APA to move goal-posts and be rather sloppy in its categorisations of masculine traits and their subsequent 'treatment'.

There is a tendency for hegemonic masculinity to be associated solely with negative characteristics that depict men as unemotional, self-reliant, aggressive, and dispassionate which are seen as causes of criminal behavior. Given this tendency, all the objectionable things done by men such as: assault, rape, environmental degradation, cut-throat business behaviour, hell, let's throw in dick pics, cat-calling, mansplaining, manspreading, using Axe body spray, et cetera - can be lumped into the bag of  'hegemonic masculinity'. And the more extreme this image becomes, the less accurately it portrays the majority of men.

One can look at men with good will or bad will. Given the emphasis on the negative aspects of masculinity as a system of dominance rather than as a code of conduct focused on developing and improving that which is regarded as appropriate and valuable for men to be, the APA and their ilk appear to be engaging in the latter. If one chooses to look at men with bad will, then one chooses to hate men. 

Ambiguity 

If hegemonic masculinity (HM) is the constellation of anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence, and it is also 'the dominant form of masculinity that strongly influences what members of a culture take to be normative', then how are we to assess forms of masculinity that are culturally dominant, and yet lack some characteristic or other of HM?

If:

1) HM is the constellation of anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence, and;

2) HM is the dominant form of masculinity that strongly influences what members of a culture take to be normative, then;

3) HM influences members of its culture to take anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence as normative.

Given this, how is one to identify a hegemonically masculine man? Is it the well-dressed aristocratic lawmaker or is the rough-around-the-edges dock worker who bare-knuckle boxes to make ends meet? Say a man is his family's breadwinner, his wife stays at home to look after the kids, he is a rock-climber for a hobby, and his career is that of a pediatrician: how masculine is he according to HM?

Is a man who is complicit in HM more or less masculine than one who resists HM?

I think these are bothersome questions for the HM idea because its theorists have taken effects and made them causes - but since their argument is circular anyway, they can just play around with it until it makes them feel better. 

Impotence 

Lastly, hegemonic masculinity is impotent in its attempts to explain the behaviours of individual men.

Related to the previous concern, though HM is what men are socialised into, '... [for] some men, this dominant ideology of masculinity has inherent conflicts', and that 'dominant masculinity is generally unattainable for most men'. This focus on the unachievable leads to the neglect of what men actually are doing, and how they 'navigate' and 'negotiate' the world around them.

The disconnect between the theory and practice illustrates the abstract nature of the intellectual pursuit. Theorists are imposing their constructions of masculinity on their male subjects, rather than attempting to understand them. At best, HM is a new theoretical framework for feminist-minded theorists to talk about men.

It is stated by '[the] endorsement of sexist male roles is related to men’s fear of intimacy and discomfort with physical affection with other men'. Intimacy is seen as feminine, and HM is anti-feminine. But is this really the case?

Male bonding surely exists but it takes on forms different from female bonding. Men bond through sports, the gym, barbershops, being in bands, playing video games, as well as hunting and fishing trips, to name a few. These are cases wherein masculinity finds its expression of intimacy, and yet HM theorists fail to recognise this. In fact, some HM theorists argue that such expressions of intimacy are 'simulated' since these practices are not really about intimacy but rather about 'control', 'dominance' and 'achievement'. After all, intimacy is feminine, and masculinity is anti-feminine. The very essentialism they purport to reject is operating in full force.

This is but another attempt by the elite to impose their manners on the masses. It's about re-educating, reshaping, and reforming conduct that they, at worst, disdain or, at best, don't understand.

Don't believe me? Well the APA argues that, 'awareness of privilege and the harmful impacts of beliefs and behaviors that maintain patriarchal power have been shown to reduce sexist attitudes in men... and have been linked to participation in social justice activities.'

                   Convenient.

Standpoint Epistemology's Cul-de-sac

Standpoint Epistemology (SE) is an increasingly popular feminist epistemological framework that argues that one's position in a social system, and it's resultant hierarchy, determines one's knowledge of the world. Additionally,  this claim is accompanied by the notion of 'strong objectivity' with states that marginalised people possess a standpoint that is more objective than those who possess the dominant standpoint because the marginalised can observe the dominant standpoint without possessing it themselves. They are said to have 'double-vision' that enables them to both see the world from their perspective whilst also seeing truths that the dominant standpoint holders are unable or unwilling to see. For example, bell hooks, an African-American feminist thinker writes: 

Living as we did—on the edge—we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out...we understood both. 

This provides a challenge to the traditional account of knowledge (TAK) that attempts to provide 

abstract and universal descriptions of knowledge that are applicable to all.

TAK states that in order for one to have knowledge of a particular proposition three conditions must be satisfied: the proposition must be true, one must believe the proposition, and one must have justification for believing the proposition. In short, knowledge is justified true belief, and who you are, what era you are in, or where you are situated in the social hierarchy are all irrelevant to truth-value of one's knowledge claims.

SE rejects the claim that social and historical factors are irrelevant to questions of knowledge, and emphasise the empiricist commitments to experience and observation in the pursuit of knowledge. In addition, following Quine and his criticisms of analytic/synthetic distinction, they also stress that observation is theory-laden and that those theories themselves are artifacts of our making.

According to SE, there is no neutral vantage point from which one can 'get at' the world in an unbaised way. Given that bias is inherent to epistemology, the marginalised are said to be epistemically privileged since they are equipped with the aforementioned 'double-vision', and this privilege is said to accrue to those who exist at the margins of society - becoming something akin to 'expert testimony'. For instance, a middle-class Black man would see the world from a different standpoint than a middle-class White man, and a middle-class Black woman would see the world differently, still. Given that the Black woman is Black and a woman, and that black people and women are marginalised, the Black woman would be equipped with a more objective standpoint than her counterparts.

There are numerous criticisms of SE. First, it is claimed that it results in relativism of the worst sort since the political commitment to feminism, or femininity itself, is incompatible with scientific objectivity because the scientific enterprise is defined as masculine, rational, and unemotional. Relatedly, though SE attempts to thwart claims of essentialism, it, in fact, traffics in essentialism as it automatically groups women together under the rubric of 'strong objectivity' just because they are women. Finally, that the notions of non-neutral standpoints and epistemic privilege are in tension with one another. If there is no neutral standpoint, then one is left with a mish-mash of 'multiple and incompatible knowledge positions'.

There is another issue: ontological subjectivity.

SE makes the mistake of asserting that particular epistemological values accrue to particular ontological subjectivities. However, ontological subjectivity does not necessarily entail any particular epistemological value. This demarcation is illustrated in the following quote from John Searle in 'The Construction of Social Reality':

"I now have a pain in my lower back." That statement is completely objective in the sense that it is made true by the existence of an actual fact and is not dependent on any stance, attitudes, or opinions of observers. However, the phenomenon itself, the actual pain itself, has a subjective mode of existence, and it is in that sense which I am saying that consciousness is subjective.

In order for pain to exist, it must be someone's pain. This is because pain is a state of consciousness, and consciousness, by virtue of being ontologically subjective, is always a consciousness of something to someone.

The problem with SE's insistence on experience is that it has been known for centuries how experience, and our interpretations of it, can lead us astray and can be a rather unreliable vehicle in the search for truth. Just as one’s experiences with pain do not necessarily entail that one can provide epistemically objective propositions about the physiological, let alone the political or cultural aspects of the pain, one’s experiences of acting with a sort of 'double-vision' within an oppressive society does not necessarily entail that one can provide epistemically objective propositions about the political or cultural arrangements of that society. What it can provide is ontologically subjective knowledge with political import: identifying and making explicit the essence of a group's shared experience can raise consciousness, and validate one's socio-political project, however, this would rely on some form of essentialism (strategic or otherwise), and that bullet may just have to be bitten for the SE theorist or activist. 

At best, SE points out that myriad points of view ought to be considered in social and political analysis, but it is wrong when it mistakes such points of view as 'expert testimony' and holds that they're anything more than data points that must be further evaluated.

Statues, Legacy, and Sanitising the Public Square

In the summer of 2018, city councilors in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada voted 7-1 to remove a statue of John A. MacDonald -  Canada's first Prime Minister - from its city hall entrance. This has stirred up a certain amount controversy with progressives applauding the move towards full acknowledgment of plight and violence suffered by Indigenous peoples, and conservatives decrying 'political correctness run amok' and iconoclasm.

There is a growing list of controversial figures that ought to be removed from the public square, but not many arguments backed by principled stances. 

Below I'll outline two opposing positions. The position that argues for tearing down statues I'll deem the 'Removalist' (I'm sure there is a catchier name), and the contraposition, 'Preservationist'.

In both positions, statues are visible and tangible realities that are used to embody/represent some important figure/event/period or other. They serve as visible reminders of who/what is considered important by the community/society/country. 

There is a quality to the statue as it is [[[matter+shape]=statue]=memorial].

This is gives statues an ‘incarnational value’. Incarnation is a religious term - Christ was God incarnate, for instance - and though statues do not necessarily represent deities, they appear to represent the spirit of an age, and it’s the attitudes towards that representation that divides Removalists and Preservationists. 

The Case for Taking Down Statues

There are three common criticisms that are mobilised by the Removalist:

a) such statues lionise immoral and despicable behaviour by the dominant culture's ancestors,

b) such statues can sanitise past injustices committed against minority cultures, and;

c) such statues are painful reminders of past violence and injustice

These positions are utilised in the pursuit of some form of reparations for some past injustice or other, and by removing statues, one can express: 

a) a condemnation of the past injustice,

b) a repudiation of the past's underlying harmful rationale, and;

c) a commitment to preventing continuing harms in connection to the legacy represented by the statue

And we ought to be in the game of such reparations because the symbolic and material gains would significantly aid in the leveling of the playing field for the hitherto disadvantaged and marginalised peoples, as well as righting the wrongs of the past.

The Case Against Taking Down Statues

For the Preservationist, statues do represent people who may or may not have committed wrong acts or believed and expounded upon wrong beliefs, but the people of today interpret the statue via their own lights and the morals of the age.

The statues therefore provide:

a) a recognition of a community's/nation's shared history,

b) a recognition  of that lineage and tradition, and;
c) a possible challenge to a society's conception of (a) and (b)

One should be wary about removing controversial statues because:

a) The removal acts as a wiping out of history and the lessons that can be learnt from it,

b) It sets a dangerous precedent for removal, and;

c) It sanitises the public square.

On the Preservationist account, statues of historical figures act not only as an object of commemoration, and that commemoration is important, but they also act as a mechanism against the sanitising the public square.

Assessment

In all of the above cases, statues 'do' something. They are not merely objects; they are symbols, and they represent or express certain dominant ideas that are intended to be passed on from generation to generation. As such, individuals in society will often internalise the dominant discourse in the construction their own identity, and this process brings into existence an individual's 'subjectivity': how one experiences one's self in the larger scheme of society and its rules, stories, history, and destiny. This can give one a sense of superiority as one sees one's self as connected to the dominant culture and its ideas, or one can feel alienated from it.

It is crucial to note that a fundamental element in this issue is mental intermediation:  the process of psychological assessment that occurs in an audience member to an expression - be it speech or art works, which act as 'symbolic speech' - and that which leads to the mental element(s) of understanding, belief, attitude or intention which, in turn, can lead to further action.

This process can produce a harm if the mental element produced through it also produces harmful conduct. However, statues are seen as harmful in and of themselves, and so we see that as harms become less emotive, the scrutiny becomes more intense, and now harm can be produced through offense alone.

What the Removalist - as well as any censor - wants to do is erase the distinction between mental intermediation and the mental element, and draw a straight line from the 'message' of an expression to some harmful act or other. Which is why such people wish to emphasise the negative or harmful aspects of the object in question.

On this account, statues of immoral people impress upon the audience their immorality, and this can take the form of reviving the negative attitudes of the past, as well as causing trauma in others.

The former is unlikely since the operation of such a dynamic is only possible if people are convinced of the views expressed. How statues convince present-day people to adopt and exert the discriminatory views of the past goes unexplained, though it is stated that statues can function as 'reminders' of genocide, violence, and oppression. 

Such 'reminders', however, are not enough to promote racist or degrading attitudes, and to suggest that they can, even when the statues do not explicitly do so, is to say that such statues are being experienced in racist or degrading ways, and this suggestion comes from a view of how people are: racist. Such attitudes are hinted at in the contemporary moniker: 'Settler Canadian' or 'colonial' -  which attempts to reach back to the past and imbue today's European Canadians with the stain of generations long past. 

The latter seems more likely, and one should be aware of the trauma that gets passed from generation to generation (though this runs the risk of pathologising people), however, it is also said by the same people that 'we' need to learn the 'uncomfortable truths' about our history, and to learn 'what it really is'. Indeed, so why, then, should the statues come down? If 'we' are to learn of our complicated history, then having memorials of it better serves that purpose than not.

Related to this are two final issues: first if the public sphere becomes anti-sceptic, if it becomes parched, and barren of challenge, controversy, and confrontation, then one - let alone society - could lose touch with history in a generation or two.

Secondly, efforts to cleanse the public square of controversial or racist memorials can become unacceptably damaging to social cohesion and could ultimately frustrate the Removalist goals. Why? Because widespread removalism could draw attention to hitherto 'forgotten' monuments, confirm the suspicions of white separatists/nationalists that their history is being erased, and lend credence to the belief that national identity is inextricably based on white Europeans and their conquests. None of these are in the Removalist agenda, and if these are the unintended consequences of their actions, then they should really re-think their approach.

In closing, every people has its heroes, and these heroes are memorialised by any people who has developed material culture. Instead of removing controversial cultural heroes of the dominant culture, nations with racist histories could make efforts to memorialise cultural heroes of the historically oppressed groups - some of whom may be looked upon with spite much similar to that John A. MacDonald. After all, very few heroes are heroes to all.