Comment by lilactown
5 years ago
I do actually agree with you. It is very easy to be radical in your beliefs (in either direction) when you don't need to interact with the people that they effect. There are plenty of "ivory tower" leftists. The difference is that I do believe that those leftists are seeking to find solidarity with the oppressed, though not always successfully. Sometimes they miss the mark, and there are plenty examples of shitty behavior, but I think that they're heading in the right direction.
I also think that it's unfortunate it's so easy to mistake a critique like that as an attack of the left as a whole. Leftist policy should always have the goal of materially making peoples lives better. We should ruthlessly measure and criticize whether we are in fact succeeding in that, both by the numbers and by the lived experience of the people they effect.
The current form of discourse in America is so hyper-partisan as to make that sort of critique almost impossible to do in public, as it comes off as a show of weakness rather than an opportunity for evolution. It's painful.
I think folks on the left are well-meaning, but I’m not sure if they’re “headed in the right direction.” I’ve been rattled after this happened at my law school alma mater recently: https://www.thecollegefix.com/northwestern-law-faculty-refus...
The ivory tower leftists are now pushing a narrative of pervasive “white supremacy,” pitting whites versus non-whites. And again, the ivory tower folks are being tone deaf. The NYT recently ran an article where self-described “liberal pollsters” asked about the views of Latino people. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote...
> Progressives commonly categorize Latinos as people of color, no doubt partly because progressive Latinos see the group that way and encourage others to do so as well. Certainly, we both once took that perspective for granted. Yet in our survey, only one in four Hispanics saw the group as people of color.
> In contrast, the majority rejected this designation. They preferred to see Hispanics as a group integrating into the American mainstream, one not overly bound by racial constraints but instead able to get ahead through hard work.
What the article describes as the views of the overwhelming majority of Hispanics reflects my own views as an immigrant. By contrast, the approach taken by these ivory tower folks is in my opinion unworkable and threatens to blow up something that works about America: our ability to assimilate and lift up immigrant groups. If you look at the data, all immigrant groups are on a path to reaching economic parity with white people. Asians are already there, and Latinos achieve parity within a few generations: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/3/1567/5741707
Ivory tower leftists are leading these chants, amplifying people like Linda Sarsour who call assimilation “racist,” etc. And I think that ends in disaster. Nowadays, I have to keep an eye out to make sure my half-white daughter isn’t being exposed to this stuff. And frankly, I’m a pretty liberal person so this is distressing. I don’t like the direction Trump has gone by alienating immigrants. But there is a good chance that Nikki Hailey is the future of the GOP. Meanwhile, who comes after Biden? Elizabeth Warren, who talks about all of us non-white people as a progressive bloc, constantly assailed by white people? AOC? Ilhan Omar?
You get that Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Elizabeth Warren don't represent the majority of people left of the American center, right? "Squad" politics get trounced outside of hyper-left noncompetitive districts. There's a pretty significant media bias feeding into this analysis you're providing. If you're going to cite Elizabeth Warren, for instance, you might want to factor in the fact that she quite literally embarrassed herself in the 2020 Democratic primary.
I recognize they’re not representative. I said that “I’m not sure” that the left is “heading in the right direction.” What’s the direction? After Biden won the nomination I thought I had overreacted and things were going back to normal. Then I opened up Twitter to see the most completely normal Midwestern people at my alma mater declare they are “gatekeepers of white supremacy” on a Zoom conference with hundreds of students. The feminist academic Dean I watched get installed just a couple of years ago was cancelled for not acquiescing to similar declarations. My dad says it’s just academia, and not to worry about “so long as it’s confined to the campus.” But he’s also 70! He’s not going to be around forever to keep things in line.
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