Living by the Race Card with Rajiv Sethi : Glenn Loury
https://glennloury.substack.com/p/living-by-the-race-card?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
In recent conversations, John McWhorter and I have noted that some of the less reputable initiatives put forward by progressive educators, administrators, and elected officials in the name of social justice seem to be losing traction. There is a concerted pushback among parents to reinstate blind admissions testing in elite public schools and banish CRT-type programs from K-12 education, among voters living in cities run by district attorneys who favor overly lax sentencing for felons, and among ordinary people who feel like their ordinary political views can no longer be uttered in polite society.
“Resistance” is one word that describes this trend. “Backlash” is another. In the following excerpt from my conversation with my friend the economist Rajiv Sethi, he worries that this backlash is harming people who did nothing to deserve the ire of those who are fed up with the progressive line on race. I have no doubt there are such innocent victims, and that is regrettable. But we shouldn’t be surprised that the backlash has its excesses; the progressive insistence on injecting race into seemingly every facet of public life is itself excessive. As I say below, you live by the race card, you die by the race card.
When our policy decisions and political movements are premised on the notion that we as human beings are reducible to our race, that our responsibilities and experiences begin and end in race, we are in deep, deep trouble. I hope that those who are resisting the progressive race hustle in the schools and on the ballot are successful, and that those defeats can ratchet down the atmosphere of division and grievance we’re living in now. If not, I fear the backlash will continue, and that a few wrongfully terminated teachers will be the least of our problems.
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