In Crenshaw’s view, this is all with the goal of transforming the “decades-long journey towards greater social justice” into what the right admonishes as “wokeness” – which is in fact the encouraging of racial justice and equity.
It’s just that the definition of what is racial justice and equity is, shall we say, under discussion. At the woke end its equal outcomes. And the MAGA end it might well be, for at least some, a more conservative desire. And the correct part of the spectrum is that which says equal opportunity.
But arguing for equal opportunity only is now denounced as actually being racist in itself.
But arguing for equal opportunity only is now denounced as actually being racist in itself.
Certainly, and this because one’s attributes -for want of a better word- at birth are not universal amongst one’s contemporaries. The corollary, then, is that each attribute and characteristic needs to be weighted to compensate or penalise every individual and fix them to some theoretical base line but in order to achieve this, institutions and the measures of success have to be debased in order to accommodate the disadvantaged.
The process is largely self-defeating: for example, Oxbridge colleges are less welcoming of white public school-educated applicants than they used to be fifty years ago but they are also rather less worth attending because of their skewed selection process.
TMB –
Obviously what is needed is a Handicapper General, as in Kurt Vonnegut’s ” Harrison Bergeron “.
Indoor plumbing is White Supremacy.
As the great Thomas Sowell pointed out, you don’t get equality of outcome in the same family, how can you expect to get it across a whole society?
BiND – ah, but isn’t that another reason why the heteropatriarchal family structure must be destroyed?
So racially privileged (black) students are disproportionately admitted to elite schools.
Result: given a choice an employer would rationally consider a white graduate as a more promising hire, because he would have succeeded in passing a more difficult entrance requirement.
We’re back to square one in the adders and ladders of anti racism.
Philip – I love this idea that what the C-suite in big corporates do has some sort of connection with the long term profitable interests of the business.
If you can find one in the CBI, I have a circular economy to sell you.
” And the MAGA end it might well be, for at least some, a more conservative desire.”
That’ll be the Trumpism that saw the greatest rise in black employment in decades I suppose? But hey, lets not helping actual black people get in the way of some virtue signalling……..
The only way to have equal outcomes in any particular area of life is for some authority to be set over it to decide who is allowed to have what. On a national scale, that means a planned economy and an authoritarian government controlling every aspect of society. So, equity is just a power grab. It’s an excuse for leftists to appoint themselves as the ones who will decide everything for everybody else.
But when you really look at it, most “woke” ideology is the same. It’s just power grabs and psychological manipulation. So, the most effective way to attack it is to point out that it’s all a fraud to get power, and it’s conning the people it claims to help as much as everybody else.
The irony is, the very discussion of “social justice” is inherently a feature of profound privilege. It’s an announcement to the world that you’ve only known economic and scientific advancement throughout your upbringing, to the point where you have spare time to invent abstract nuisances.
It’s like when Dudley Moore pontificates about how fish bathe together and must get awfully tired of seafood.
Of course, his butler correctly responds by removing his top hat and slapping him upside the head.