Comment by JohnMakin
6 days ago
> In 2020 we saw the biggest accelerant of all, after a white police officer ~~asphyxiated~~ a black suspect on video.
This is quite some impressive editorializing, especially when the black "suspect's" killer is currently in prison for murder. I only highlight this because it indicates a very particular viewpoint held by the author - particularly stuff like this -
> And that's the real problem — the performativeness, not the social justice.
So, he states very early the performativeness is the issue. But, inevitably, when you ask these same people what then should be done about inequality, whether it be racial or otherwise, the answer is often "nothing" or denying that a problem even exists. I don't pretend to know this author's view here, but I'm just pointing out that the sentence quoted here is kind of dishonest - the implication being that if performativeness regarding social justice is a problem, that you should then focus on real efforts around social justice. This isn't mentioned a single time in this nonsensical screed, getting close in parts like this answering the "what now?":
> In fact there's an even more ambitious goal: is there a way to prevent any similar outbreak of aggressively performative moralism in the future — not just a third outbreak political correctness, but the next thing like it? Because there will be a next thing. Prigs are prigs by nature. They need rules to obey and enforce, and now that Darwin has cut off their traditional supply of rules, they're constantly hungry for new ones. All they need is someone to meet them halfway by defining a new way to be morally pure, and we'll see the same phenomenon again.
So, this author undermines his entire "point" (if a real one existed) with stuff like this, because the obvious conclusion is that any real effort at correcting social injustice and inequality will be met by cries of "aggressive performative moralism" by people exactly like this. From my view, that's probably the point, just please don't pretend you're doing anything intellectual here.
I'll leave this, this certainly does sound very "conventionally minded" (as he uses in a derogatory manner throughout this):
> Whenever anyone tries to ban saying something that we'd previously been able to say, our initial assumption should be that they're wrong
> But, inevitably, when you ask these same people what then should be done about inequality, whether it be racial or otherwise, the answer is often "nothing" or denying that a problem even exists.
That's an assumption you're making - I don't see any evidence of that viewpoint in pg's essay. Any specifics you can point to?
I can point to a specific that seems to contradict you:
> But by the same token we should not automatically reject everything the woke believe. I'm not a Christian, but I can see that many Christian principles are good ones. It would be a mistake to discard them all just because one didn't share the religion that espoused them. It would be the sort of thing a religious zealot would do.
Inevitably, someone will chime in and say that it wasn't what he said, it's what he didn't say -- arguing from someone's purported silence. But that's exactly the kind of performative nonsense he's arguing against. It ought to be possible to speak against something without being castigated for failing to pay lip service in some way to a related topic.
This line of questioning is extremely annoying, and if I can be frank, also sounds very dishonest. You already answered your own question, knowing what it is, but I'll walk you through it -
His core "thesis" or "problem" here is the performative nature of social justice initiatives. He's correct, they often are performative. This does imply, on its face, that some efforts should be done to enact real initiatives that are not performative. I'm sure we can agree there this is what is implied by his statement.
Why then, would a serious author with this problem statement, then proceed to write thousands of words bemoaning the underlying nature of the initiatives themselves (without addressing what about them makes them performative, not even a single time in this essay) or about not being able to say "negro", rather than coming up with even a single conclusion on what must be done instead? I mean, you can just take a random sampling of the comments in this thread, which honestly shocks me it's not been flagged, to see precisely how people with his same viewpoint interpreted it. Lets please not pretend here. I can't exactly get on the phone and ask him what he thinks the answer to this question is - I can only go on a huge volume of discourse that has gone on for many, many years and make some conclusions on my own based on what he spent a very large amount of words complaining about, and shocker, none of them had to do with the ineffectiveness of social justice initiatives or "wokeness" (how he defines it), but rather how it oppresses him.
Does that help?
> Why then [...] rather than coming up with even a single conclusion on what must be done instead?
Because (a) that's not the topic at hand, and (b) in American discourse, it's rather obvious what the correct (or at least default) position is with regard to racial discrimination and injustice: Don't discriminate on the basis of skin color, national origin, or any number of other things that have nothing to do with a person's character. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's even been written into law, including an amendment to our constitution.
> sounds very dishonest
I can assure you, I am sincere and not drying to deceive. What do you think my real intent is?
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