Shownotes
In this episode we discuss:
(00:00) Introduction
(06:03) Proposition209
(09:37) Yascha Mounk
(10:42) Kenan Malik
(12:27) Ancient World
(13:33) Greeks 6th Century BCE
(19:10) Monotheism
(19:32) 16th Century
(20:56) Alasdair MacIntyre
(27:53) Identity Trap
(30:14) The Lure
(31:13) The Problem
(34:37) The Origin of Identity Synthesis
(34:49) Historically The Left Was Universalist
(37:21) Post WW2
(37:41) Foucault
(38:16) Spivak
(47:44) Derek Bell
(50:09) Crenshaw
(54:15) Mainstream Adoption
(55:28) Standpoint Theory
(01:04:32) Time Limits on Race Laws
(01:07:42) Chris Hedges
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Transcripts
Hello dear listener, we're up to episode 410 of the Iron Fist
Speaker:and the Velvet Glove podcast.
Speaker:This one's a bit different, it's just me flying solo.
Speaker:Talking about a book and the concepts that come from it.
Speaker:The book, well there's a couple of books we'll talk about but the main one will
Speaker:be The Identity Trap by Yasha Monk.
Speaker:And basically the idea of the book is looking at how over
Speaker:the last Three or four decades.
Speaker:We've adopted a thinking, particularly in the West, where people rely on
Speaker:their identity for their rights in our society and an expectation that minority
Speaker:groups will receive special treatment by our public and private institutions.
Speaker:Where laws will be written that will affect groups of people based on
Speaker:their race, gender, sexual preference, things like that, rather than universal
Speaker:laws that would apply to everybody.
Speaker:And in his book, Yasha Monk is quite critical of this movement,
Speaker:and I agree with his criticism.
Speaker:And I feel that it's very relevant to the discussion that we had
Speaker:with The Voice in this country.
Speaker:And where people like myself were arguing for universal laws that apply irrespective
Speaker:of the colour of a person's skin.
Speaker:And other people on the left were quite happy for laws to be
Speaker:written that take into account The colour of a person's skin.
Speaker:And that's led to a lot of angst by everybody.
Speaker:So, that's the nature of the book by Yasha Monk, and we'll get to that,
Speaker:but I feel that we need to just talk more generally about, um, how we think
Speaker:about morals at an individual level, as a sort of a background before we get
Speaker:into The whole issue of identities so I'll be talking a bit about a couple
Speaker:of Ken and Malick's books as well.
Speaker:So, look, that's where we're heading.
Speaker:It's all about identities, whether it's a valid approach to be drafting
Speaker:laws that give rights based on, on people's membership of groups.
Speaker:Or whether we should be writing general, universal laws that perhaps
Speaker:apply to people and give adv you know, help disadvantage people, no
Speaker:matter what the colour of their skin.
Speaker:So, just some background thoughts on that, I was only listening today, uh, there
Speaker:was a podcast on Late Night Live, where, uh, Phillip Adams was interviewing Nikki
Speaker:Sarver, and also the lady from the 7.
Speaker:30 report Laura Tingle.
Speaker:And, you know, sort of doing a bit of year in review, and Nikki Sarver
Speaker:was bemoaning the whole voice debate.
Speaker:And she did so in the context of criticising, uh, Peter Dutton
Speaker:and his approach to the debate.
Speaker:And look, in this sort of criticism that I hear from Yes Advocates, I
Speaker:really have never heard anybody talk about people like me, who are quite
Speaker:different to Peter Dutton, who've got an intellectually honest reason based
Speaker:on a, you know, a solid Enlightenment principle, and I've People like me have
Speaker:been ignored, and there's just this general insult thrown out that anyone who
Speaker:voted no was a racist, who was claiming that the proposal was divisive, and of
Speaker:course it wasn't divisive, that that was just nonsense, and you know, I just
Speaker:haven't heard honest Consideration given to, uh, what could be intellectually
Speaker:solid reasons for voting no.
Speaker:So anyway I heard that, which was frustrating.
Speaker:Another friend on the Facebook page talking about the vote, you know, used
Speaker:the word shame in relation to the no vote.
Speaker:And I know Cameron Riley on his podcast, uh, as we've mentioned before.
Speaker:Said, shame on me and he was embarrassed for me and people like me and so I find
Speaker:it frustrating that typically the people arguing for the no vote refuse to deal
Speaker:with the issues one by one that people like me raise and really I think one of
Speaker:the reasons is that they're unable to.
Speaker:And we'll get to that as part of this podcast.
Speaker:They're unable to because, well, as we mentioned before in this podcast,
Speaker:here we talk about news and politics and sex and religion, and I've
Speaker:been doing this for eight years.
Speaker:How our society works, how it should work, how it should function.
Speaker:And I'm used to talking about these things.
Speaker:Most people aren't, let's face it.
Speaker:You go to the proverbial dinner party or a group gathering and Talking in depth
Speaker:about issues like this is frowned upon, hence people are unpracticed at it.
Speaker:So that's part of the problem.
Speaker:Anyway, a ramshackle sort of bunch of ideas gonna be thrown at you.
Speaker:We'll see how we go.
Speaker:One of the things that strikes me in this conversation is how often
Speaker:people say, you know, the rest of the world will look at Australia.
Speaker:Shaking their heads, what a bunch of racists.
Speaker:It's a moment of shame for us.
Speaker:And, I came across one of the things in this book by Yascha Monk, referred
Speaker:to what happened in California in 1996 with Proposition 209, which amended the
Speaker:state constitution in California, which prohibited the state government from
Speaker:considering Race, sex, or ethnicity in the areas of public employment, public
Speaker:contracting, and public education.
Speaker:So basically, it was a change to the Californian Constitution that made it
Speaker:impossible for the California government to provide affirmative action policies.
Speaker:Based on things like race, sex or ethnicity, uh, particularly in employment.
Speaker:So they couldn't take positive action to employ more black people
Speaker:or more Hispanics or more women in particular roles where they felt that
Speaker:there wasn't already enough of them.
Speaker:And that passed in 1996 with 55 percent of Californians in
Speaker:favour, 45 percent against.
Speaker:Which basically removed any possibility of Affirmative Action.
Speaker:And Affirmative Action was, let's get it straight, it is taking into
Speaker:account race when making laws.
Speaker:Kind of what The Voice is trying to do.
Speaker:So, California would be viewed today as a deeply liberal state.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:A majority of its population is black, asian or hispanic.
Speaker:Dear listener, did you know that in 2020, when Joe Biden beat Donald Trump, 64 to
Speaker:34 in California, that was a vote, 64 in favour of Joe Biden, 34 for Donald Trump.
Speaker:At the same time, there was a Proposition 16 to repeal Proposition 209.
Speaker:So they had a crack at, at getting rid of Section 209, or Proposition 209, so
Speaker:that the Californian Government could make employment laws taking into account
Speaker:race, sex, ethnicity, affirmative action.
Speaker:It failed 57 to 42.
Speaker:So, did anybody in Australia say, shame on you, California?
Speaker:I didn't hear it.
Speaker:Bear that in mind as, as we think about the criticism that Australia faces, and,
Speaker:and think to yourself, well there's a state of America, the most liberal state.
Speaker:That said, you know what, it's not a good idea to make laws
Speaker:based on race, sex or ethnicity.
Speaker:Anyway.
Speaker:So, we're not alone in the world if we are thinking that more
Speaker:universalist policies are appropriate.
Speaker:Even in a liberal state like California.
Speaker:So, so let's just get back to this book by Yasha Monk, and what he's saying is that,
Speaker:you know, now there's a movement where people's identities are at the centre
Speaker:of social, cultural and political life.
Speaker:It's highly influential, and, and it's, it's accepted that governments
Speaker:Can and should treat citizens differently depending on, for
Speaker:example, the colour of their skin.
Speaker:He identifies this as the identity trap.
Speaker:Now who is he?
Speaker:He's a writer, academic, public speaker known for his work on the crisis
Speaker:of democracy and for the defence of philosophically liberal values,
Speaker:born in Germany to Polish parents.
Speaker:He's got a BA in History from Trinity College, Cambridge,
Speaker:PhD in Government from Harvard.
Speaker:Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at John Hopkins University.
Speaker:Where he's got appointments in both the School of Advanced International
Speaker:Studies and SNF Agorda Institute.
Speaker:So he's an academic with plenty of qualifications there.
Speaker:I'm also going to be mentioning, as I said before, some books by Ken and
Speaker:Malik, one of which is The Quest for a Moral Compass, and another one, Not So
Speaker:Black and White, A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics.
Speaker:By the way, that particular book We discussed in episode 382.
Speaker:Now who's Kenan Malik?
Speaker:He grew up with paki bashing in the UK in the 1970s and he was a victim of racism.
Speaker:And that racism drew him into politics, but he learnt social
Speaker:justice is bigger than racism.
Speaker:And a person's skin, colour, ethnicity or culture provides no guide to the
Speaker:validity of their political beliefs.
Speaker:And he realised that shared values were more important than shared
Speaker:skin colour, ethnicity or culture.
Speaker:And the values he was drawn to were those of the Enlightenment, of
Speaker:common humanity and universal rights.
Speaker:His politics was not shackled to his identity.
Speaker:Dealing first with Kenan Malik and his book The Quest for a Moral Compass,
Speaker:I've mentioned this book multiple times on this podcast and if you haven't
Speaker:bought a copy, do so and read through it if you're interested in this topic.
Speaker:And you know, The Quest for a Moral Compass, great title.
Speaker:It's the quest by mankind.
Speaker:H how do we How do we develop a compass that points us in
Speaker:the right direction morally?
Speaker:What do we rely on as the compass for moral questions?
Speaker:And he says that in the ancient world, fate could not be avoided.
Speaker:He talks about Homer, the Iliad, the Odyssey.
Speaker:He says, for Homer, This is the tragedy of being human, to desire
Speaker:freedom and be tortured by a sense of autonomy, and yet be imprisoned
Speaker:by forces beyond our control.
Speaker:So, the Iliad gave ancient Greeks a framework to understand their lives.
Speaker:It told of the desires of man, the capriciousness of gods, and
Speaker:the implacability of fate, and how all these knitted together.
Speaker:So, you were fated into roles in the ancient world, the ancient Greeks.
Speaker:By the way, the Stoics took acceptance of fate even further.
Speaker:The philosopher Zeno was once flogging a slave who had stolen some goods.
Speaker:The slave protested, but I was fated to steal, and Zeno said,
Speaker:yes, and to be beaten as well.
Speaker:Anyway.
Speaker:The Greeks come along, 6th century B.
Speaker:C.
Speaker:E., and philosophers such as Socrates began to use the idea of humans as
Speaker:rational beings as a starting point of moral discussion, and he and others looked
Speaker:to reason as a means of finding answers.
Speaker:So, Aristotle observed that there are many things we desire.
Speaker:And different people desire different things.
Speaker:However, if our activities have some ultimate end, which we want for
Speaker:its own sake, and for the sake of which we want all the other things,
Speaker:then this must be the supreme good.
Speaker:The knowledge of this supreme good is of great importance to
Speaker:us in the conduct of our lives.
Speaker:Rival minor desires and wishes can be evaluated.
Speaker:According to how they will help us achieve that ultimate end.
Speaker:So for Aristotle, this supreme good is Udaimonia.
Speaker:It means more than happiness, it describes a state of human
Speaker:flourishing that's worth seeking, of, of living well and doing well.
Speaker:It's not just simple pleasure.
Speaker:One who possesses Eudaimonia will find pleasure in his way of life,
Speaker:but finding pleasure is not the same as possessing eudaimonia.
Speaker:So the concept of an object's function was central to Aristotle's philosophy.
Speaker:Why does an acorn become an oak?
Speaker:Because that is its purpose.
Speaker:It's telos.
Speaker:In becoming an oak, it becomes what it already was potentially.
Speaker:And it fulfills its purpose and confirms its nature.
Speaker:And Aristotle says what truly distinguishes humans
Speaker:is the possession of reason.
Speaker:Hence, the exercise of reason is the proper function of a human being.
Speaker:Happiness consists in acting in accordance with reason, or to
Speaker:be more precise, it means acting virtuously in accordance with reason.
Speaker:Dear listener, I like to think on this podcast, we try to act and
Speaker:think rationally, and a lot of the argument to do with the voice by Yes
Speaker:Advocates, in my mind, was based on feelings rather than rational thought.
Speaker:Anyway.
Speaker:For Aristotle, as for Plato, ethics was subordinate to politics.
Speaker:The primary good was the good of the community, rather than
Speaker:the good of the individual.
Speaker:Morals grew out of the structure of the community and ensured the
Speaker:maintenance of that structure.
Speaker:Presumably if you went back 5, 000 years, and geographically somewhere quite
Speaker:different, The morals grow out of the structure of the community that you're
Speaker:in, and help maintain that structure.
Speaker:They could be quite different, depending on time and place.
Speaker:The polis, P O L I S, was for Aristotle a natural phenomenon.
Speaker:Just as it was in the nature of humans to be happy, so it was in the nature of
Speaker:humans to come together in groups, capable of supporting and sustaining happiness.
Speaker:So, for Aristotle, no citizen should think that he belongs just to himself.
Speaker:Libertarianism wasn't part of the possibilities for Aristotle.
Speaker:Rather, a person must regard all citizens as belonging to the state, for each is a
Speaker:part of the state, and the responsibility for each part naturally has regard
Speaker:to the responsibility for the whole.
Speaker:So, In the journey from Homer, which was about, uh, fate, to Aristotle, you know,
Speaker:rational use of virtues bearing in mind the community and the polis, uh, the
Speaker:Greeks crafted what we call Virtue Theory.
Speaker:So on that journey were developed the ideas of virtue as a disposition
Speaker:to act according to reason.
Speaker:Of practical wisdom as a skill that inclines one to do the right thing at
Speaker:the right time to the right degree.
Speaker:Of morality as requiring one to think not of single acts,
Speaker:but of one's life as a whole.
Speaker:And the virtuous person as someone who can be judged only according to the
Speaker:needs of the community of which he is a part and to which he is subordinate.
Speaker:All sounds a little bit vague, doesn't it?
Speaker:But sometimes these things have to be Michael Sandel wrote that book and I
Speaker:remember one of the examples he gave was, you know, if a community votes and decides
Speaker:to spend money building, um, dog fighting pits and associated stadiums so that dogs
Speaker:could fight and tear themselves apart.
Speaker:rather than, you know, public libraries, for example.
Speaker:Just the fact that everybody voted for that wouldn't mean it's good.
Speaker:There are times when you can use practical wisdom to do the right thing
Speaker:at the right time to the right degree.
Speaker:Anyway, that was the journey from The ancient times, ancient Greeks of fate
Speaker:to trying to use reason from Aristotle.
Speaker:Along comes religion and monotheism, and what should you do?
Speaker:Well, what God wants you to do.
Speaker:However that's explained to you, whether it's in the book or how it's interpreted
Speaker:or whatever, but the roadmap, the moral compass that religion provided
Speaker:was you do what God wants you to do.
Speaker:That simplified things.
Speaker:Then, as time progresses, we get to the 16th century, and we get about four sort
Speaker:of features start to come into play.
Speaker:God is not plausible to many people.
Speaker:Traditional communities disappeared.
Speaker:That makes the polis, um, a problem.
Speaker:uSing reason Social structures could be consciously designed
Speaker:to promote human flourishing.
Speaker:So social structures were now malleable, designable, something that could be
Speaker:created and worked upon rather than the fixed social structures of previous times.
Speaker:And this period also included the rise of individual autonomy.
Speaker:So that was sort of the Enlightenment coming to the fore.
Speaker:Now, in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre wrote a book called After Virtue.
Speaker:And,
Speaker:look, it's a little bit lengthy.
Speaker:You know what, I think I've already decided this podcast is probably going
Speaker:to be split up into Of multiple episodes, so we've got Christmas coming up.
Speaker:You're gonna need something to listen to, maybe.
Speaker:So, excuse me if rather than rattling through summaries of this, you
Speaker:know, take a little bit of time.
Speaker:Enjoy the ride on some of this stuff.
Speaker:So, Alistair McIntyre, After Virtue.
Speaker:As described by Ken and Malik in his book.
Speaker:McIntyre paints a picture, sort of a post apocalyptic picture, uh, imagine,
Speaker:dear listener, a series of environmental catastrophes devastates the world
Speaker:and blame falls upon scientists.
Speaker:So there's a whole bunch of anti science riots where labs are burnt
Speaker:down scientists are lynched, books and instruments are destroyed.
Speaker:And a sort of a know nothing political movement comes to power abolishing
Speaker:the teaching of science, uh, and imprisons and executes scientists.
Speaker:Eventually there's an attempt to resurrect science.
Speaker:The trouble is that all the remains of scientific knowledge are a few fragments.
Speaker:People debate the concept of relativity, the theory of evolution,
Speaker:and the idea of dark matter.
Speaker:They learn by rote the surviving portions of the periodic table,
Speaker:and use expressions such as neutrino, mass and specific gravity.
Speaker:Nobody, however, understands the beliefs that led to those theories or expressions.
Speaker:And nobody understands that they don't understand them.
Speaker:The result is a hollowed out science.
Speaker:On the surface, everyone is acquaintance with scientific terminology.
Speaker:But no one possesses scientific knowledge.
Speaker:That's how his book begins.
Speaker:And McIntyre says that while no calamity of this sort has befall
Speaker:science, he says it's exactly what has happened to morality.
Speaker:Moral thought is in the same state as science was in his fictitious account.
Speaker:It's in a grave a state of grave disorder.
Speaker:And I agree.
Speaker:Based on the voice debate.
Speaker:So for me, the voice debate demonstrates that well meaning but
Speaker:ignorant yes advocates use words like fairness, equality, justice,
Speaker:representation, equity, human rights, racism, ought, should, freedom, self
Speaker:determination, morals, and shame, but they don't understand those words.
Speaker:Honest and knowledgeable yes advocates would have said that the proposal was
Speaker:racist and divisive, but necessary in order to overcome injustice.
Speaker:That would have required honesty and knowledge.
Speaker:They would have acknowledged that the proposal abandoned the enlightenment
Speaker:principle of universalism for the relatively recent and often disputed
Speaker:principle of critical race theory.
Speaker:I'll be getting on to Critical Race Theory.
Speaker:Intellectually honest Yes Advocates would have dealt one by one with the myriad
Speaker:of genuine objections that people like myself had, but they didn't, because they
Speaker:weren't equipped to think rationally or consistently within a solid framework
Speaker:of ethical hierarchies that allows the evaluation of competing moral claims.
Speaker:Instead, they abandoned reason and relied on feelings and groupthink
Speaker:to arrive at a position that was emotionally comfortable for them.
Speaker:Which all might be fine, but then they had to join the cheer squad,
Speaker:verify their lefty credentials by denouncing dissenters as racist.
Speaker:Anyway, I think that Alastair McIntyre It was spot on and the voice debate confirmed
Speaker:his viewpoint on the state of moral debate in the world, particularly Australia.
Speaker:Now he argued, this is Alasdair MacIntyre, that the Enlightenment rejected Aristotle.
Speaker:It rejected the notion of a virtuous life achieved by
Speaker:fulfilling one's purpose or telos.
Speaker:And it rejected it because, after the Enlightenment do what you want,
Speaker:because the individual is sovereign.
Speaker:So there's no moral anchor, and there's no way to adjudicate rival moral claims.
Speaker:If it's perfectly acceptable for an individual to do whatever they
Speaker:want, whenever they want, then there's no moral anchor and no way
Speaker:to adjudicate rival moral claims.
Speaker:McIntyre said that morality is the road map to take man as he happens
Speaker:to be, to man as he could be.
Speaker:Telos, which was, you know, the acorn growing to be an oak, the thing doing,
Speaker:uh, what it was meant to do, was the bridge, and the bridge had disappeared
Speaker:and therefore so had morality.
Speaker:That was McIntyre's view.
Speaker:Now, arguably, as telos for individuals waned, telos for society emerged.
Speaker:In the ancient world, there was little possibility of willed
Speaker:social change, but now there is.
Speaker:So we can design societies.
Speaker:With the coming of modernity.
Speaker:As the necessity of traditions gave way to the possibility of collective
Speaker:change, a new question was posed.
Speaker:People now ask themselves, not simply what moral claims are rational,
Speaker:given the social structure, but also what social structures are rational.
Speaker:What kind of society?
Speaker:What types of social institutions?
Speaker:Will best allow moral lives to flourish.
Speaker:That's A modern concept that wasn't available before.
Speaker:So, from my point of view, how are we to judge competing social
Speaker:structures, such as universal laws as opposed to identity based laws?
Speaker:If groups can do whatever they like because groups are sovereign,
Speaker:then you can't adjudicate competing moral claims because there's no
Speaker:overarching goal or objective.
Speaker:If groups don't have responsibilities towards other groups, there can
Speaker:be no moral code for groups.
Speaker:But if groups are subject to, say, the objective of promoting all human
Speaker:flourishing, then we can rationally adjudicate rival social systems
Speaker:and try to figure out if they help achieve, uh, all human flourishing.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Now we're finally on to The Identity Trap by Yasha Monk, and
Speaker:it's really in five parts where he defines it, The Identity Trap.
Speaker:He talks about the origins of this idea of identities, how it was
Speaker:adopted into the mainstream, the flaws and a defence of universal ideas.
Speaker:I'm really going to be mostly dealing with the first two parts to that,
Speaker:the definition of what it is and the origin of where it came from.
Speaker:That's what I found the most valuable out of what he had to say.
Speaker:So what is it that we're talking about with this identity trap?
Speaker:And, as he describes it, because neutral rules, like non
Speaker:discrimination laws, Are supposedly insufficient to make a difference.
Speaker:The advocates of the Identity Synthesis, as he calls it, insist that we need social
Speaker:norms and public policies that explicitly make how the state treats its citizens
Speaker:and how we all treat each other depend on the group identity to which they belong.
Speaker:Say that again.
Speaker:Because universal laws haven't worked, advocates of identity politics insist we
Speaker:need policies that explicitly make how the state treats its citizens depend on
Speaker:the identity group to which they belong.
Speaker:And if we are to overcome the long legacy of discrimination.
Speaker:then members of marginalised groups need to be treated with special consideration.
Speaker:That's what we're dealing with here.
Speaker:If we are to ensure that each ethnic, religious or sexual community enjoys
Speaker:a proportionate share of income and wealth, then our institutions Must
Speaker:make the way they treat people depend on the groups to which they belong.
Speaker:That's, that's the theory that many people ascribe to.
Speaker:The trap, as he says, has a lure.
Speaker:The lure that attracts so many people to the identity synthesis is the desire
Speaker:to overcome persistent injustice and create a society of genuine equals.
Speaker:So it comes from a good place.
Speaker:But the likely outcome of this ideology is a society with way too much emphasis
Speaker:on our differences, pitting identity groups against each other in a battle
Speaker:for resources and recognition, where we're forced to define ourselves by the
Speaker:groups that we happen to be born into.
Speaker:That's what makes the identity synthesis a trap.
Speaker:He says, and I agree, while advocates are drawn to the noble ambition
Speaker:to remedy social injustice, you can fight these injustices without
Speaker:resorting to identity synthesis.
Speaker:So what's the problem with, with this concept?
Speaker:So, yeah, dividing Dividing humans into groups is dangerous for human beings.
Speaker:Because we're great at looking after our own group, but we're often capable of
Speaker:cruelty and disregard for other groups.
Speaker:And identity politics, the advocates for it, fail to identify and
Speaker:provide a solution to this problem.
Speaker:We will have warring tribes rather than cooperating compatriots.
Speaker:And, it's this sort of policy that's going to encourage and
Speaker:legitimise far right identities.
Speaker:Kenan Malik in his book said, , many who have taken up the Black Lives
Speaker:Matter banner Like many within the race consciousness movements, conflate the
Speaker:necessity of challenging racism with the building of racial solidarity.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:That's what people have come to.
Speaker:They say that in order to challenge racism, you need
Speaker:to build racial solidarity.
Speaker:Pursuing Racial solidarity makes achieving the challenging of racism more difficult.
Speaker:So these, these people are, are saying we're being vilified racially,
Speaker:we need to build racial solidarity.
Speaker:But that whole building of racial solidarity
Speaker:is making, The Challenge of Confronting Racism More Difficult.
Speaker:We talked about this in episode 402 to some extent, I think.
Speaker:Still dealing with problems of, of this identity synthesis.
Speaker:TRue racists of the, sort of, Ku Klux Klan type.
Speaker:Or maybe Pauline Hanson type.
Speaker:See racial differences as real, inherent, hardwired character differences.
Speaker:That thinking was used to justify slavery.
Speaker:It's used today to justify inequality.
Speaker:Things like, black people don't work hard, black people don't like to save, their
Speaker:problems are inherited characteristics.
Speaker:We've spent several centuries disavowing that notion.
Speaker:Of inherited racial characteristics.
Speaker:Our DNA differences are negligible.
Speaker:Biologically we are the same, but now, via the politics of identity, the left
Speaker:wants to circle back to those differences.
Speaker:Kenan Malik says, We live in an age in which most societies there
Speaker:is a moral abhorrence of racism.
Speaker:But we also live in an age in which our thinking is saturated with racial
Speaker:ideology in the embrace of difference.
Speaker:The more we despise racial thinking, the more we cling to it.
Speaker:It's like an ideological version of Stockholm Syndrome.
Speaker:If the left thinks it's okay to accentuate racial difference for positive reasons,
Speaker:then it can hardly be surprised when the right accentuates those differences.
Speaker:Reintroducing racial profiling re opens the door to racial thinking
Speaker:and to racial discrimination.
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:That's part of the problem of what's wrong with it.
Speaker:Here's the interesting part of this book is the origins of, of this, of this
Speaker:thinking, of racial profiling in our laws.
Speaker:So Historically, the left was universalist.
Speaker:To be on the left was to believe that humans matter equally, irrespective
Speaker:of the group to which they belong.
Speaker:That we should aim for forms of political solidarity that transcend group
Speaker:identities, rooted in race or religion.
Speaker:One of the reasons I'm so big on secularism, dear listener,
Speaker:is that I just object to you.
Speaker:Kids being segregated in schools based on religion.
Speaker:I just find it abhorrent.
Speaker:I'm amazed that so many secularists are happy with racial based laws.
Speaker:Anyway, uh, still and historically the left was universalist.
Speaker:Part of that was that we can make common cause in pursuit of universal
Speaker:ideas like justice and equality.
Speaker:aNd according to Yasha Monk, that is the universalist
Speaker:leftism with which I was raised.
Speaker:It is the universalist leftism that despite my agreement with the communist
Speaker:views of my grandparents, held when they were young, continues to inspire me.
Speaker:It's no longer the dominant strain of leftism today.
Speaker:The amazing part is, dear listener, it's such an obvious, well known policy.
Speaker:Martin Luther King was all over this stuff, and if you are to hold and
Speaker:subscribe to the Universalist viewpoint, you are dismissed as a racist, because
Speaker:for the yes voters, the treating of people differently in our laws by virtue
Speaker:of race is acceptable and necessary.
Speaker:Even if you argue I could accept that people could argue that it is necessary
Speaker:because it's not working, for example.
Speaker:You at least have to acknowledge that it's not some racist crackpot
Speaker:idea to hold on to what was a well known Enlightenment principle of
Speaker:universal application of laws.
Speaker:It astounds me that people just abandon that and And hop onto their
Speaker:podcasts or Facebook page telling people they should feel ashamed for
Speaker:subscribing still to that policy.
Speaker:Anyway, um, it's no longer the dominant strain of leftism today.
Speaker:So, that was historically how the left was universalist.
Speaker:According to Yasha Monk, post World War II, intellectuals believed capitalism
Speaker:was doomed and communism was the answer.
Speaker:But you know, revelations came out about Stalin's tyrannical regime and what
Speaker:had gone on in the Soviet Union and and people then lost faith in communism.
Speaker:So This led French philosopher Foucault and others, um, to reject grand
Speaker:narratives and to distrust all ideologies.
Speaker:Because they had given up on capitalism, now they had to give up on communism.
Speaker:And it was like, well we've just got to give up on all meta
Speaker:narratives now, all grand narratives.
Speaker:Don't just, just distrust all ideologies.
Speaker:And they concluded There are no universal truths, and we can't
Speaker:progress to a better society.
Speaker:That was Foucault.
Speaker:Spivak, S P I V A K, was a female Indian scholar.
Speaker:She didn't like identity categories, because after all, identity
Speaker:categories are a type of ideology.
Speaker:They're a grand narrative, in a sense.
Speaker:So, she didn't like identity categories, but she felt disadvantaged Indians needed
Speaker:intellectuals to speak on their behalf.
Speaker:She embraced identity because it was useful in practice, even if it was
Speaker:suspect in theory, and thus was born what's called strategic essentialism.
Speaker:It's where you don't want to say that all black people like such and such, and have
Speaker:common interests and goals and desires.
Speaker:Because you know it's not true.
Speaker:But you do it because it works when arguing with people.
Speaker:People understand it.
Speaker:So, strategic essentialism.
Speaker:Faced with the problem of how to speak on behalf of the oppressed, scholars
Speaker:from a large number of disciplines followed in Spivak's footsteps.
Speaker:So they continued to wield post modernism, Foucault, to cast doubt
Speaker:on any claims invoking scientific objectivity or universal principles.
Speaker:Because remember, there is no truth, uh, there are no grand
Speaker:narratives, none of those things work.
Speaker:But at the same time they insisted they can speak on behalf of groups
Speaker:of oppressed people by invoking the tactical need for strategic essentialism.
Speaker:This attempt to square the circle is still apparent today when activists
Speaker:preface their remarks by acknowledging that race is a social construct.
Speaker:Before going on to make surprisingly essentialising claims about Black and
Speaker:brown people and what they believe.
Speaker:I'll go on to talk about, hmm, maybe I should digress now, to Marcia Langton.
Speaker:I think I will.
Speaker:Let me just go over to Marcia Langton now.
Speaker:So, this idea, dear listener, is that biologically we're, we're identical.
Speaker:That the common ideas of race Do not map biologically with,
Speaker:um, the discourse that we use.
Speaker:So, race is socially constructed, it's not biologically true.
Speaker:And by that, it's, it's cultural groupings that we've come to understand.
Speaker:That's what we mean by social, social construction.
Speaker:And so, it presents a difficulty for intellectuals like Marsha Langton and
Speaker:Noel Pearson, who know that race is not biological, it's just, it's just a
Speaker:social interpretation, but then want to.
Speaker:argue for things on behalf of, of such a group, and it gets them into trouble,
Speaker:and they end up doing all sorts of mental gymnastics to try and square
Speaker:the circle, as Yasha Monk puts it.
Speaker:We've talked about Marcia Langton before, and how her comments from
Speaker:the Melbourne Writers Festival.
Speaker:in 2012 were markedly different to the comments she was making
Speaker:in the lead up to The Voice.
Speaker:And I think that's because in 2012, um, Noel Pearson had not
Speaker:got his voice proposal up and running as he did at a later time.
Speaker:So, I'm reading now from Marsha Langton in the Melbourne Writers Festival 2012.
Speaker:She writes, and I'm paraphrasing and cutting out bits and pieces, but trust
Speaker:me, I'm not trying to mislead you as to the essence of what she's saying.
Speaker:The patrons of this podcast get the show notes and they get the full
Speaker:text and they can see the highlights for the bits that I've written.
Speaker:Okay, she writes, I want to explore in this chapter the problem
Speaker:of how to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution.
Speaker:I am arguing that defining Aboriginal people as a race, as the Constitution
Speaker:does, sets up the conditions for Indigenous people to be treated not
Speaker:just as different, but exceptional and inherently incapable of joining
Speaker:the Australian polity and society.
Speaker:It's like, it's a bad thing.
Speaker:This is because there were provisions in the constitution referring to
Speaker:Indigenous people as a race and dealing with them in certain ways.
Speaker:And she wanted Indigenous people out of the constitution as a race.
Speaker:Exceptionalist initiatives that have isolated the Aboriginal world from
Speaker:Australian economics and social life.
Speaker:In turn, many Indigenous Australians have developed a sense of entitlement.
Speaker:and adopt the mantle of the exceptional indigene, the subject of special
Speaker:treatment on the grounds of race.
Speaker:This exceptionalist status involves a degree of complicity in racism.
Speaker:Actually, I should, I paraphrase there, let me read it again.
Speaker:This exceptionalist status, to which many Aboriginal people have ascribed
Speaker:unwittingly, involves a degree of self loathing dehumanisation.
Speaker:And complicity in racism, telling people they're different, making them
Speaker:out that they're special, exceptional, according to Marcia Langton, involves
Speaker:a degree of complicity in racism.
Speaker:As the exotic, Aboriginal people are not required to be normal,
Speaker:such as attending school regularly or competing in a meritocracy.
Speaker:And she writes, it is vital that treating Aborigines as a race.
Speaker:Must be replaced with the idea of First Peoples.
Speaker:And I've read in other places where Noel Pearson has said the same thing,
Speaker:that they want the reference to be First Peoples, rather than race.
Speaker:And, but who are First Peoples?
Speaker:It is the indigenous race.
Speaker:This, there's all sorts of strange mental hoops jumped through to try and do this.
Speaker:She writes,
Speaker:Regular listeners would know that I've been arguing that we should look
Speaker:at class and disadvantage, not skin colour, because there is a burgeoning
Speaker:indigenous middle and upper class.
Speaker:There are second generation PhD holders in Indigenous communities.
Speaker:There's lots of Indigenous people going fine.
Speaker:And of course there's lots who aren't.
Speaker:The point is to help the ones who are not going well.
Speaker:And that's been my argument.
Speaker:In her writings, she says here,
Speaker:Ending the colonial commitment to race in the era of Indigenous exceptionalism,
Speaker:it also requires imagining the Australian society in which we see each
Speaker:other as individuals, each unique and with a multitude of characteristics.
Speaker:Being Aboriginal in that circumstance would not be extraordinary or
Speaker:contentious or reason for hatefulness.
Speaker:The question of how to ameliorate the conditions of the disadvantaged.
Speaker:Would be the issue.
Speaker:Not because of their presumed racial difference, but because of their
Speaker:inheritance of intergenerational historical conditions.
Speaker:I'll read that again.
Speaker:The question of how to ameliorate the conditions of the
Speaker:disadvantaged would be the issue.
Speaker:Not because of their presumed racial difference, but because of their
Speaker:inheritance of intergenerational historical conditions.
Speaker:Presumably not everybody inherits Intergenerational trauma.
Speaker:I had this argument with Cam, Cameron Reilly, and I said, he
Speaker:said, you know, have you heard of intergenerational trauma?
Speaker:I said, sure, but are you saying that it transfers to every Indigenous person?
Speaker:How can you say that?
Speaker:You can't know that.
Speaker:There should be some people who, uh, that just does not apply.
Speaker:And Marsha Langton went on to quote Morgan Freeman, the American
Speaker:actor, and we've quoted Morgan Freeman Morgan Freeman before.
Speaker:So, so yeah, that was a little diversion where we had this issue where people
Speaker:promoting identity have convoluted and difficult to understand reasoning.
Speaker:When it comes to the social construction of race, yet still wanting to use race
Speaker:in laws, um, as a determining factor.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So, we were talking about Foucault, we're talking about Spivak, and next on
Speaker:the list in the sort of origin story, Is Derek Bell, , the civil rights movement
Speaker:achieved a lot, but not enough for some.
Speaker:Derek Bell was a lawyer who argued that universalism was ineffective
Speaker:and that there was a need for race based rights to achieve racial equity.
Speaker:KEn Amalek talks about Derrick Bell.
Speaker:He says, few people have heard of Derrick Bell, but he is the
Speaker:godfather of critical rights theory.
Speaker:Bell came to believe that racism is permanent.
Speaker:Few who were inspired by Bell's work tumbled as far as he
Speaker:did into the well of despair.
Speaker:Yet challenging racism, while believing it to be ineradicable, has inevitably
Speaker:shaped the character of anti racism.
Speaker:So you've got to get in your head here, Derrick Bell thought it was hopeless, that
Speaker:universal laws weren't doing it enough to make change, there had to be specific
Speaker:race based laws to achieve racial equity.
Speaker:So this movement has prompted a shift from campaigns for material change
Speaker:to campaigns for symbolic gestures.
Speaker:and Representational Fairness.
Speaker:According to Malik, um, these people have given up on eradicating racism
Speaker:and are now, uh, they honestly think it cannot be eradicated.
Speaker:So they're just looking now for symbolic gestures and representational fairness.
Speaker:After all, if racism is permanent, an attempt to eliminate it are futile.
Speaker:then anti racism becomes reduced to little more than a kind of public performance.
Speaker:That's Ken and Malik.
Speaker:So, Derek Bell, one of the well, the godfather of critical race theory.
Speaker:The idea that universal laws are ineffective.
Speaker:There needs to be race based rights.
Speaker:To achieve racial equity.
Speaker:Now he was lecturing and at a university, he got promoted to another university,
Speaker:Harvard, he was lecturing at Harvard, and they hired a veteran lawyer to
Speaker:teach a more traditional course.
Speaker:But the students rebelled, and under the leadership of an outspoken first year
Speaker:student called Kimberly Crenshaw, Um, that's who they were rebelling with.
Speaker:She went on to become a leader in the movement.
Speaker:Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality for the ways different forms of
Speaker:discrimination can reinforce each other.
Speaker:So an example of this was when General Motors began retrenching workers on the
Speaker:basis of the most recent persons hired.
Speaker:were to be the first people to be retrenched.
Speaker:And at that point in history, black women had only recently managed to
Speaker:gain employment in General Motors.
Speaker:So, the policy resulted in a disproportionate number of
Speaker:black women being retrenched.
Speaker:And, according to the judge's logic, the plaintiffs needed to prove that
Speaker:General Motors discriminated against its employees on the basis of a protected
Speaker:characteristic that was explicitly listed in the law, such as that of
Speaker:being black, Or that of being a woman.
Speaker:Because the company had treated both black men and white women fairly, the special
Speaker:burden suffered by black women was not legally relevant, and Crenshaw argued
Speaker:that this created a legal blind spot.
Speaker:So, under this view, black women are protected only to the extent that
Speaker:their experiences coincide with those of either white women or black men.
Speaker:wHere their experiences are distinct, black women will not get protection.
Speaker:So, another example was when Crenshaw was invited to a
Speaker:private club with a black friend.
Speaker:And the club had changed its rules to allow black men to
Speaker:enter via the normal entrance.
Speaker:However, the rule had not been changed for women.
Speaker:So, Crenshaw was forced to use the back door.
Speaker:So, intersectionality, in its meaning, evolved to the point where
Speaker:it meant that each person exists at an intersection of identities, i.
Speaker:e.
Speaker:your identity is perhaps black and being a woman.
Speaker:And outsiders, people who do not have that particular combination,
Speaker:can never truly understand them or yeah, can never truly understand them.
Speaker:So, that's a big part of intersectionality, is that outsiders who
Speaker:don't have those characteristics can never truly understand that person's position.
Speaker:And additionally, intersectionality came to mean that to be committed
Speaker:to eradicating one form of injustice requires activists to be committed to
Speaker:eradicating all other forms of injustice.
Speaker:The Sierra Club is an environmentalist group.
Speaker:That's historically seen it as its mission to promote the responsible use
Speaker:of the Earth's ecosystem and resources.
Speaker:But the organisation now issues statements on a bewildering range of different
Speaker:topics, from demanding that the Biden administration tear down the wall, to
Speaker:joining calls to defund the police.
Speaker:So we've got an environmental group on migration policy and defunding the
Speaker:police, because with intersectionality you have to acknowledge that To properly
Speaker:achieve justice, there's a multitude of identities outside of your particular
Speaker:group who may be marginalised and disadvantaged, and you need to, if you
Speaker:are a true justice warrior, um, be on their side for their issues as well.
Speaker:So, that was intersectionality.
Speaker:I'm going to talk about standpoint theory in a moment, but, uh, this sort of
Speaker:critical race theory, intersectionality, uh, identity thinking, really took over.
Speaker:After the fall of the Soviet Union, the class struggle fell out of fashion, and
Speaker:the left was vulnerable to a takeover.
Speaker:One of the key drivers, according to Yasha Monk, uh, that enabled this identity
Speaker:synthesis to take the place take the place of class thinking was the fact
Speaker:that Facebook, Twitter, other media, the articles most likely to be shared
Speaker:spoke directly to the interests and experiences of particular identity groups.
Speaker:So you've got to remember, dear listener, people are doing it tough.
Speaker:Unions have disappeared, uh, no one seems to be looking out for the working
Speaker:poor anymore, but there are identity groups out there, and so it makes sense
Speaker:that people would be drawn to these identity groups as a means of trying to
Speaker:achieve some improvement in their lives.
Speaker:pEople gave up on achieving justice for the working class and resorted to
Speaker:their minor identity group and hoping to achieve something for their group because
Speaker:they had given up on the class struggle.
Speaker:One of the key aspects of identity synthesis is Standpoint Theory.
Speaker:So Standpoint Theory has four interlocking claims.
Speaker:There is a set of significant experiences that virtually all members
Speaker:of particular oppressed groups share.
Speaker:Their experiences give members of the group special insight into
Speaker:the nature of their oppression and other socially relevant things.
Speaker:Members of the group cannot fully communicate those experiences to
Speaker:outsiders, and when an oppressed group makes political demands based
Speaker:on the identity its members share, outsiders should defer to them.
Speaker:So, I think all of those features of standpoint theory were mentioned
Speaker:a lot in the voice debate, looking at Indigenous people.
Speaker:Do you think you heard these sorts of concepts flying around?
Speaker:There's a significant experience, sorry, there is a set of significant
Speaker:experiences that virtually all members of particular oppressed groups share.
Speaker:For example, the feeling of having been subject to racism.
Speaker:Their experiences give members of the group special insight into
Speaker:the nature of their oppression and other socially relevant facts.
Speaker:You wouldn't know what it's like to be racially vilified.
Speaker:Only members of the group have special insight into what that feels like.
Speaker:Members of the group cannot fully communicate those
Speaker:experiences to outsiders.
Speaker:So no matter how much I talk to you as an Indigenous person, I
Speaker:can't convey to you fully what it means to be racially vilified.
Speaker:And fourthly, when an oppressed group makes political demands based
Speaker:on the identity its members share, outsiders should defer to them.
Speaker:So we, the leaders of Indigenous people, demand XYZ, and you as an outsider
Speaker:should simply defer to our demands.
Speaker:That's sort of the four interlocking claims in standpoint theory.
Speaker:And dealing with some of those ideas, here's a good story.
Speaker:In 1967, the producers of a surprise Broadway hit took their show to a
Speaker:faraway country for the first time.
Speaker:They were nervous about how it would be received.
Speaker:Fiddler on the Roof focuses on the life of an Orthodox Jewish family
Speaker:in a Central European country.
Speaker:Stettle, at the turn of the 20th century.
Speaker:Would theatregoers in Tokyo be able to relate to the internal struggle of the
Speaker:show's protagonist, a devout Jew who has come to terms with his three daughters
Speaker:choosing deeply unsuitable husbands?
Speaker:Would the Japanese get that Jewish story?
Speaker:They need not have worried.
Speaker:As Joseph Stein, who wrote the musical's book, recalls, I got there
Speaker:just during the rehearsal period, and the Japanese producer asked me, Do
Speaker:they understand this show in America?
Speaker:And I said, Of course!
Speaker:We wrote it for America, why do you ask?
Speaker:The Japanese producer said, Because it is so Japanese.
Speaker:Dear listener, Empathy with the plight of others may take hard
Speaker:work, but it remains both possible and politically indispensable.
Speaker:To know what it feels like to eat a blueberry, you need
Speaker:to have tasted a blueberry.
Speaker:The same does not apply to what philosophers call propositional knowledge.
Speaker:So here's an example, so in the, I'm quoting here from the book and
Speaker:he's talking about some academics.
Speaker:Fraser is one of the academics.
Speaker:And I think Juno Mack and Molly Smith.
Speaker:Anyway, Fraser gives a striking example of how this distinction between
Speaker:experiential and propositional knowledge becomes relevant in debates about
Speaker:important questions of public policy.
Speaker:For example, many feminists favour restrictions on the sale of sexual
Speaker:services, but worry that laws that criminalise sex workers Will
Speaker:stigmatise them in dangerous ways.
Speaker:So for that reason, they favour the so called Nordic model, which makes it legal
Speaker:for sex workers to offer their services, but illegal for clients to buy them.
Speaker:This seems like an elegant solution.
Speaker:Discouraging sex work without marginalising the vulnerable
Speaker:women who engage in it.
Speaker:But of late, Juno Mack and Molly Smith have put forward strong
Speaker:arguments against the Nordic model.
Speaker:Based on their own experiences as sex workers, they claim that these laws
Speaker:are likely to do significant harm.
Speaker:Where sex work is outlawed, potential clients have a strong reason to solicit
Speaker:prostitutes in hidden or remote places.
Speaker:They are also in a stronger negotiating position, because the
Speaker:fear of being punished drives down the number of potential customers.
Speaker:Due to these mechanisms, which most feminists had overlooked, the Nordic model
Speaker:puts sex workers at greater risk of harm.
Speaker:Now Fraser points out that Mack and Smith would have been unlikely
Speaker:to come up with these insights if they had never been sex workers.
Speaker:But she also insists that the politically relevant implications of those insights
Speaker:can easily be grasped by people who haven't worked as sex workers.
Speaker:While you and I may not share their experiential knowledge, we are able to
Speaker:understand and act on the propositional knowledge they derived from it.
Speaker:The role of experience in politics should not be overstated.
Speaker:Who we are will shape what we learn about the world, but it
Speaker:need not constrain our ability to communicate those insights to others.
Speaker:I reckon that's a great example.
Speaker:Now, some of you are going to say, but Trevor, see, you had to be a sex
Speaker:worker to get that knowledge, and so with The Voice, it was about getting
Speaker:feedback from Indigenous people about what it's like to be Indigenous.
Speaker:And my answer to that is, it was more than consulting, we
Speaker:already consult Indigenous people.
Speaker:If you look at the myriad of reports about various issues, you will be usually highly
Speaker:impressed by the level of consultation.
Speaker:We asked people what they want, asked them what they know.
Speaker:So yes, of course you need to consult with stakeholders, which includes.
Speaker:It's the marginalised group that you're trying to help, the members of it,
Speaker:for their own personal experience.
Speaker:But, it is then quite possible to take away from that this propositional
Speaker:knowledge and understand the problem that's been caused and then be
Speaker:able to come up with solutions.
Speaker:And of course, the people who are oppressed and in the minority.
Speaker:Are not going to know everything about how the world works, none of us do.
Speaker:We need a wide variety of experts in various fields to help us understand.
Speaker:So at that point, multitudes of people from all walks of life
Speaker:provide input to create solutions.
Speaker:Right, it goes on in this book.
Speaker:Embracing a vision of political solidarity based on thoughtless
Speaker:deference rather than hard won empathy.
Speaker:Makes it harder to bring about real political progress.
Speaker:We do not, as a matter of course, see or know the obstacles faced
Speaker:by most of our fellow citizens.
Speaker:In important ways, our experience of the world really is mediated by our identity.
Speaker:This gives all of us moral obligation to listen to each other, with
Speaker:full attention and an open mind.
Speaker:But the point of this hard work is communication, not deference.
Speaker:As long as we put in the work We can come to understand each other's
Speaker:experiences, especially insofar as they are politically relevant.
Speaker:When our fellow citizens tell us about the genuine injustices they face, we
Speaker:are perfectly capable of empathising with their experience and of recognising
Speaker:the way in which they violate our own aspirations for the kind of society.
Speaker:We want to live in.
Speaker:Huh?
Speaker:Where are we?
Speaker:Up to?
Speaker:An hour and 15.
Speaker:Maybe it's, it is only one episode.
Speaker:One of the issues in this book as well that I just came across was about
Speaker:time limits with race sensitive laws.
Speaker:So there was a 2003 Supreme Court decision in the US which upheld
Speaker:race sensitive admission policies at the University of Michigan.
Speaker:The judgment decision was written by Sandra Day O'Connor.
Speaker:And joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Speaker:And it explained in the decision that racial classifications, however compelling
Speaker:their goals are, they're potentially so dangerous they may be employed no
Speaker:more broadly than the interest demands.
Speaker:And all government use of race must have a logical end point.
Speaker:And O'Connor and Ginsberg expected that 25 years from now the use of racial
Speaker:preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.
Speaker:So, they thought it was important that if you are going to have a race based
Speaker:law, it's so dangerous you need to have an end point in there and recognise
Speaker:it's only a short term solution.
Speaker:And, um, Marcia Langton said that Noel Pearson was aware of this, and
Speaker:in that same essay for the Melbourne Writers Festival 2012, she wrote,
Speaker:there was one problem that Noel Pearson raised, the problem of how to gauge
Speaker:the progress in removing disadvantage.
Speaker:And therefore, and thereby remove from legislation, the special
Speaker:measures designed to address them once the goals were achieved.
Speaker:She writes, This is an absolutely necessary part of
Speaker:the puzzle I have outlined here.
Speaker:We must address this problem, the problem of, of a time limit, in
Speaker:order to remove the scourge of racism from the constitutional
Speaker:wheels of our social machine.
Speaker:It is a part of human rights practice to allow for special
Speaker:measures that discriminate in favour of a disadvantaged group.
Speaker:What she's saying there is it's critical race theory is now human rights practice.
Speaker:But she says, but these measures must be temporary, or the fabric of human
Speaker:rights law and principle is breached.
Speaker:She goes on to say there's a growing Aboriginal middle class, etc, etc.
Speaker:But she says here, the measures must be temporary.
Speaker:I don't recall any discussion on the voice.
Speaker:about a time limit for the voice.
Speaker:It seemed to be never discussed to my knowledge.
Speaker:Write to me if you heard of a time limit for the voice.
Speaker:Marcia Langton in 2012, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both thought, and Noel
Speaker:Pearson, that there should be time limits when you're using race based
Speaker:laws, but we never heard of any.
Speaker:Huh.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Maybe I'll finish with Chris Hedges.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, Chris Hedges, a lefty, travelled a lot through the Middle East, writes
Speaker:extensively about the injustices meted out by America in the Middle East.
Speaker:Former Presbyterian minister, does volunteer work in jails, um, A good
Speaker:guy, and he writes in sheer post,
Speaker:The brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by five black Memphis, Tennessee
Speaker:police officers should be enough to implode the fantasy that identity
Speaker:politics and diversity will solve.
Speaker:The social, economic and political decay that besets the United States.
Speaker:Not only are the former officers black, but the city's police department is
Speaker:headed by Sarah Lynn Davis, a black woman.
Speaker:None of this helps Nichols, another victim of modern day police lynching.
Speaker:The militarists, corporatists, oligarchs, politicians, academics
Speaker:and media conglomerates champion identity politics and diversity
Speaker:because it does nothing to address the systemic injustices or the scourge
Speaker:of permanent war that plague the US.
Speaker:It's an advertising gimmick, a brand used to mask mounting social
Speaker:inequality and imperial folly.
Speaker:It busies Liberals and the educated with a boutique activism which is not
Speaker:only ineffectual but exacerbates the divide between the privileged and a
Speaker:working class in deep economic distress.
Speaker:The haves scold the have nots for their bad manners, racism.
Speaker:Linguistic insensitivity and garishness, while ignoring the root
Speaker:causes of their economic distress.
Speaker:The oligarchs could not be happier.
Speaker:In case you didn't know, dear listener he wants class based policies
Speaker:rather than identity based policies.
Speaker:And the activism in these groups for representation, where You know, if 3
Speaker:percent of the population is Indigenous, then 3 percent of our brain surgeons must
Speaker:be Indigenous, and 3 percent of, you know, police must be Indigenous, and 3 percent
Speaker:of everything else must be Indigenous.
Speaker:Just because you get representation doesn't mean you get justice,
Speaker:as Ty Nicholls found out.
Speaker:And just because we get Indigenous representation in Parliament If there
Speaker:are right wing neoliberals, like Jacinta Price, who are going to be
Speaker:advocating for lower taxes and lower social services because of trickle down
Speaker:economics, then the fact that you've got representation isn't going to help.
Speaker:You'd be much better off with a white person.
Speaker:advocating for class policies to help the working class than a black person arguing
Speaker:for the continuation of oligarchic power.
Speaker:That's what he's getting at.
Speaker:Still talking about representation.
Speaker:Did the lives of Native Americans improve as a result of the legislation
Speaker:mandating assimilation and the revoking of tribal land titles
Speaker:pushed through by Charles Curtis.
Speaker:The first Native American Vice President, there you go, a Native American
Speaker:Vice President pushed through that.
Speaker:Are we better off with Clarence Thomas, who opposes affirmative
Speaker:action on the Supreme Court?
Speaker:Or Victoria Newland, a war hawk in the State Department?
Speaker:Is our perpetuation of permanent war more palatable because Lloyd Austin, an African
Speaker:American, is the Secretary of Defence?
Speaker:Is the military more humane because it accepts transgender soldiers is social
Speaker:inequality and the surveillance state that controls it ameliorated because
Speaker:Sonder Hai, who was born in India is the CEO of Google and Alphabet has
Speaker:the weapons industry improved because Kathy j Warden, a woman is the CEO
Speaker:of North Hop Grumman, and another woman, Phoebe Novakovic is the CEO of.
Speaker:General Dynamics.
Speaker:We live under a species of corporate colonialism.
Speaker:The engines of white supremacy, which constructed the form of institutional
Speaker:and economic racism that keep the poor poor, are obscured behind
Speaker:attractive political personalities such as Barack Obama, who Cornel West
Speaker:called a black mascot for Wall Street.
Speaker:The faces of diversity are vetted and selected by the ruling class.
Speaker:The institutions write the script.
Speaker:It's their drama.
Speaker:They choose the actors.
Speaker:Ford
Speaker:called those who promote identity politics Representationalists.
Speaker:Who want to see some black people represented in all sectors of leadership.
Speaker:In all sectors of society.
Speaker:They want black scientists.
Speaker:They want black movie stars.
Speaker:They want black scholars at Harvard.
Speaker:They want blacks on Wall Street, but it's just representation, that's it.
Speaker:Identity politics and diversity allow Liberals to wallow in
Speaker:a cloying moral superiority.
Speaker:They do not confront the institutions that orchestrate social and economic justice.
Speaker:They seek to make the ruling class more palatable.
Speaker:They are the useful idiots of the billionaire class.
Speaker:Moral crusaders who widen the divisions within society that the ruling
Speaker:oligarchs foster to maintain control.
Speaker:Diversity is important, but diversity when devoid of a political agenda
Speaker:that fights the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed is window dressing.
Speaker:It is about incorporating a tiny marginalised by society into unjust
Speaker:structures to perpetuate them.
Speaker:Diversity, when it serves the oppressed, is an asset, but a con
Speaker:when it serves the oppressors.
Speaker:There you go, that's Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.
Speaker:And I have a little thing here, reflections on his idea.
Speaker:Getting minorities into institutions is useless if they are not there
Speaker:to change the institutions.
Speaker:Putting right wing neoliberal black people into power isn't going to
Speaker:help black people impoverished by right wing neoliberal philosophy.
Speaker:It will provide a cover for the harmful activities of the institution.
Speaker:The voice runs the risk of achieving representation, but
Speaker:without a philosophy to deal with the problems of Indigenous people.
Speaker:And there we go.
Speaker:So, that's the Identity Trap, the Asher Monk, prefaced by a
Speaker:bit of Canon Malick, the Quest for a Moral Compass, interspersed
Speaker:with a few other bits and pieces.
Speaker:So more stuff for you to think about, and I think we'll be back next week with
Speaker:Scott and Joe, and then we'll probably take a break for a few weeks, so.
Speaker:If you are a patron, then you get show notes, which are great.
Speaker:If you're not a patron, what do you think of doing it?
Speaker:I've lost a couple recently.
Speaker:A few people didn't like my views, such as the ones that
Speaker:I've just espoused now and left.
Speaker:So, if you think it's worthwhile, this podcast, then that's one
Speaker:way of showing your support.
Speaker:And, um, I think that's all for the moment.
Speaker:I hope you've, if you've stayed through to the end, that's great.
Speaker:Be nice to have some feedback.
Speaker:, I hope it was entertaining enough.
Speaker:Anyway, talk to you next week.
Speaker:Bye for now.
