#i doubt anyone asked for an essay from a white southerner about race

[headspace-hotel]

I hope I can express this properly and sensitively, but I think oftentimes people need to have Categories and Identities and to be healthily exploratory and playful and elastic about them, else they can get vulnerable to some negative things, sometimes really awful things

I wish I could remember where I read it, but there was something that wrote about whiteness in America as an abyss.

Whiteness is something that sheltered white Americans' ancestors, and at the same time devoured them. They used to have a distinct medley of heritages: Irish, German, Scottish, Italian. "Whiteness" ate it up, the languages, the cultures. There were privileges if you destroyed it, and punishments if you held onto anything that was "Other." In a white supremacist society, white people wanted to be "white" first before any other possible identity or connection they could have.

Yay! You're white. You're on top. You win...what? Turns out the prize for "winning" is just that you get to perpetrate the violence of the game instead of being on the receiving end of it.

And that's the nasty twist—there is no prize. The deeply embedded vice of "Southern pride" is not just what the Confederate flag stands for, but also why they've got to cling so hard to that symbol of traitors and losers: they need to be on top of something so bad that even a pile of shit will do. My ancestors were ultimately dirt poor, loads of them ending up in prison or breaking their bodies down doing hard labor, but they were white. Their reward, and their pride, was being stepped on by the violence of poverty only, instead of also by the violence of white supremacy.

"White pride" is all about hate because white supremacy didn't give these folks anything to be proud of. It stripped away the culture and heritage their ancestors had in favor of "whiteness." All those jokes about how white people have no culture, well, it's true isn't it? This shit is how we ended up a primarily monolingual nation. And what looks like happened is that white Americans wound up just...scavenging most of their culture from those they oppressed. Food, music, all of that stuff. Our white ancestors didn't GIVE us anything that was their own to start with.

And this is something that really strikes me about the white supremacist and fascist movements nowadays: the starvation and hollowness behind them. These folks are empty inside. They were given nothing by white supremacy except a very vague sense that they deserve something, and they see people of all different cultures celebrating and flourishing in their unique heritages and identities, and they feel like...they've been cheated.

Equality is so threatening when you're in this situation because it feels like you've got less than everyone else at the end of the day. Not just because of comparison to previous privileges, but because your whole identity was "person that gets to step on everybody else" and your whole inheritance was "shit stolen from everybody else" and in a world where all is set right, you have no identity and nothing. You are nothing.

Anyway I was looking just now at a blog that seemed really white-supremacist-leaning and it was 99% about like, Norse and Proto-Indo-European paganism and "traditionalism" and that's what got me thinking about this again.

This person had apparently done DNA tests on themselves or something, and were really fixated on figuring out their Norse and Germanic ancestors and separating out their genetic and racial identity at a level of precision that seems really pointless that far back in time. And honestly all the paganism stuff seemed like totally arbitrary speculation as well.

And how to become satisfied as a person like this? I am just as much Germanic or Norse as they are, but I don't believe that distant ancestors determine who you are to such an extent that I have some sort of innate cultural tie to Vikings or Visigoths or what have you. I know what percentage Celtic or Anglo Saxon or Norse I am—zero. I learned about those things in books the exact same way I learned about all the cultures and past kingdoms of the world that I presumably don't have ancestors from.

I feel like the experience of being a baby ally and obsessing about apologizing for being white is the same kind of thing in another direction, or another outcome of the same process. Some people seem to get really twisted up for a time over how to stop being guilty about being white.

It's part of the same thing as this guy who is trying to genetically identify his ancestors from like 3,000 years ago. It's the emptiness and meaninglessness of "white" identity apart from white supremacy.

I talk about deradicalization sometimes and I've had the notion a few times that fascism appeals to people who are hollow and starving in terms of identity, and if it wasn't for the sense of emptiness and hunger, they would be less easily radicalized. But it's also a little bit awkward to talk about the deeply unsatisfying nature of white supremacy, because...well, that is pretty low on the list of things bad about white supremacy.

I think this concept is worth talking about in general, though: People want to feel like they come from or are part of something meaningful. They are drawn toward Identities and Categories and Belonging to groups. This is something I think is commonly true about humans, I think it is normal and not a bad thing, and I think we could stand to be a little more upfront about its reality.

I think this means that wanting, and seeking, a sense of cultural identity as a white person (particularly an American) needs to have some kind of non-horrible outlet for it. Because right now, it's nothing but a way to get radicalized, and the dominant other option people take (becoming the Guilty White Person) is liked by no one and helps nothing.

And maybe it doesn't need to have anything to do with race or culture or your ancestors or any of these things that can lead a person down such terrible paths. Maybe more of us should be furries!

As just another thing to consider, I'm reading the book Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and the author of the book uses the word "cracker" not like, with the gravity of reclaiming a "slur" or something like that, but seemingly because that is just the word she most strongly identifies with, the word that best articulates who "her people" are. This feels very solid and levelheaded to me, something that comes from someone with a good sense of themselves.

Personally I've thought a long time that more people should reclaim "redneck." Not in the sense of reclaiming a slur exactly, but in the sense of putting it in neutral usage among the folks it always referred to, instead of letting it increasingly be associated with any Southerner (regardless of working class background) that is the sort to wave a Confederate flag around. The very idea of gatekeeping "redneck" away from racists is just absolutely hilarious to me, I won't lie.

[benrleeusa]

[David Bernstein] Georg Vanberg: Democracy in Chains and James M. Buchanan on school integration

Students at UCLA. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images, file)

Georg Vanberg, professor of political science and law at Duke University, asked me to post the short essay below on his behalf.

Much ink has been spilled over Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains,” a book that places Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan at the center of a right-wing conspiracy to undermine American democracy. Central to MacLean’s argument – indeed, part of the dramatic opening story of the book, and the focus of the fourth chapter – is the insinuation that Buchanan’s academic work was animated by racial animus and, in particular, opposition to the integration of Southern schools following the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Importantly – and this is why I call it an insinuation – Professor MacLean offers no evidence in support of this rather serious charge.

Of course, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It turns out, however, that there exist documents that relate to James Buchanan’s views on education and school segregation. And this evidence directly contradicts Professor MacLean’s characterization, and suggests that Buchanan strongly opposed segregation, and supported diversity in education. It comes from two of Buchanan’s letters (available here and here). (I was alerted to these letters by Professor Jeremy Shearmur of Australian National University, who came across them while conducting research at the Hoover Institution. The location of the letters at Hoover is in the IEA archive, Box 162.2. Professor MacLean lists this archive among the archival collections she consulted for her book.)

In 1984, Buchanan was asked to contribute to an essay collection on school vouchers, edited by Arthur Seldon. In two letters, Buchanan politely declined to participate. And then, Buchanan offers a brief comment on his views on education and school vouchers. Critically, he voices reservations about the introduction of vouchers. Why? Because, as he writes, he is concerned “somehow, to avoid the evils of race-class-cultural segregation that an unregulated voucher scheme might introduce.” Buchanan then goes on to express support for introducing competition in the provision of education, but notes that this should be done in a way that serves “at the same time, to secure the potential benefits of commonly shared experiences, including exposure to other races, classes, and cultures.” In short, though brief, Buchanan’s letter eloquently expresses a vision of education that champions the value of diversity, explicitly condemns “the evils of race-class-cultural segregation,” and notes his reservations about school vouchers if they threaten these values. This is powerful evidence: Buchanan is writing a private letter to a person who is sympathetic to his academic approach and supports voucher systems. There is little reason to doubt that the statement expresses anything other than Buchanan’s sincere views.

It is unfortunate that Professor MacLean appears to have missed these critical documents in her research in the Buchanan and IEA archives. This is not a minor oversight. The central rhetorical strategy of Professor MacLean’s book is the insinuation that Buchanan (and others working in the public choice tradition) were motivated by racial animus, and a desire to maintain the dominant position of a privileged, white, male elite. According to MacLean, this led them to develop a particular approach to thinking about politics, and to advocate for institutional and constitutional rules that, according to Professor MacLean, institutionalize (among other ills) racist practices. Buchanan’s letters to Seldon directly contradict this unsubstantiated characterization of Buchanan’s motivations and views. More importantly, the attitudes that Buchanan expresses in his letters are entirely consistent with what I take to be the foundation of Buchanan’s academic work, and his contractarian political philosophy: a fundamental commitment to the equal treatment of all individuals, and opposition to institutionalized privilege for anyone (for more detail, see here and here).

[nancyedimick]

Georg Vanberg: Democracy in Chains and James M. Buchanan on school integration

Students at UCLA. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images, file)

Georg Vanberg, professor of political science and law at Duke University, asked me to post the short essay below on his behalf.

Much ink has been spilled over Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains,” a book that places Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan at the center of a right-wing conspiracy to undermine American democracy. Central to MacLean’s argument – indeed, part of the dramatic opening story of the book, and the focus of the fourth chapter – is the insinuation that Buchanan’s academic work was animated by racial animus and, in particular, opposition to the integration of Southern schools following the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Importantly – and this is why I call it an insinuation – Professor MacLean offers no evidence in support of this rather serious charge.

Of course, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It turns out, however, that there exist documents that relate to James Buchanan’s views on education and school segregation. And this evidence directly contradicts Professor MacLean’s characterization, and suggests that Buchanan strongly opposed segregation, and supported diversity in education. It comes from two of Buchanan’s letters (available here and here). (I was alerted to these letters by Professor Jeremy Shearmur of Australian National University, who came across them while conducting research at the Hoover Institution. The location of the letters at Hoover is in the IEA archive, Box 162.2. Professor MacLean lists this archive among the archival collections she consulted for her book.)

In 1984, Buchanan was asked to contribute to an essay collection on school vouchers, edited by Arthur Seldon. In two letters, Buchanan politely declined to participate. And then, Buchanan offers a brief comment on his views on education and school vouchers. Critically, he voices reservations about the introduction of vouchers. Why? Because, as he writes, he is concerned “somehow, to avoid the evils of race-class-cultural segregation that an unregulated voucher scheme might introduce.” Buchanan then goes on to express support for introducing competition in the provision of education, but notes that this should be done in a way that serves “at the same time, to secure the potential benefits of commonly shared experiences, including exposure to other races, classes, and cultures.” In short, though brief, Buchanan’s letter eloquently expresses a vision of education that champions the value of diversity, explicitly condemns “the evils of race-class-cultural segregation,” and notes his reservations about school vouchers if they threaten these values. This is powerful evidence: Buchanan is writing a private letter to a person who is sympathetic to his academic approach and supports voucher systems. There is little reason to doubt that the statement expresses anything other than Buchanan’s sincere views.

It is unfortunate that Professor MacLean appears to have missed these critical documents in her research in the Buchanan and IEA archives. This is not a minor oversight. The central rhetorical strategy of Professor MacLean’s book is the insinuation that Buchanan (and others working in the public choice tradition) were motivated by racial animus, and a desire to maintain the dominant position of a privileged, white, male elite. According to MacLean, this led them to develop a particular approach to thinking about politics, and to advocate for institutional and constitutional rules that, according to Professor MacLean, institutionalize (among other ills) racist practices. Buchanan’s letters to Seldon directly contradict this unsubstantiated characterization of Buchanan’s motivations and views. More importantly, the attitudes that Buchanan expresses in his letters are entirely consistent with what I take to be the foundation of Buchanan’s academic work, and his contractarian political philosophy: a fundamental commitment to the equal treatment of all individuals, and opposition to institutionalized privilege for anyone (for more detail, see here and here).

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/09/01/georg-vanberg-democracy-in-chains-and-james-m-buchanan-on-school-integration/

[wolfandpravato]

Georg Vanberg: Democracy in Chains and James M. Buchanan on school integration

Students at UCLA. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images, file)

Georg Vanberg, professor of political science and law at Duke University, asked me to post the short essay below on his behalf.

Much ink has been spilled over Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains,” a book that places Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan at the center of a right-wing conspiracy to undermine American democracy. Central to MacLean’s argument – indeed, part of the dramatic opening story of the book, and the focus of the fourth chapter – is the insinuation that Buchanan’s academic work was animated by racial animus and, in particular, opposition to the integration of Southern schools following the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Importantly – and this is why I call it an insinuation – Professor MacLean offers no evidence in support of this rather serious charge.

Of course, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It turns out, however, that there exist documents that relate to James Buchanan’s views on education and school segregation. And this evidence directly contradicts Professor MacLean’s characterization, and suggests that Buchanan strongly opposed segregation, and supported diversity in education. It comes from two of Buchanan’s letters (available here and here). (I was alerted to these letters by Professor Jeremy Shearmur of Australian National University, who came across them while conducting research at the Hoover Institution. The location of the letters at Hoover is in the IEA archive, Box 162.2. Professor MacLean lists this archive among the archival collections she consulted for her book.)

In 1984, Buchanan was asked to contribute to an essay collection on school vouchers, edited by Arthur Seldon. In two letters, Buchanan politely declined to participate. And then, Buchanan offers a brief comment on his views on education and school vouchers. Critically, he voices reservations about the introduction of vouchers. Why? Because, as he writes, he is concerned “somehow, to avoid the evils of race-class-cultural segregation that an unregulated voucher scheme might introduce.” Buchanan then goes on to express support for introducing competition in the provision of education, but notes that this should be done in a way that serves “at the same time, to secure the potential benefits of commonly shared experiences, including exposure to other races, classes, and cultures.” In short, though brief, Buchanan’s letter eloquently expresses a vision of education that champions the value of diversity, explicitly condemns “the evils of race-class-cultural segregation,” and notes his reservations about school vouchers if they threaten these values. This is powerful evidence: Buchanan is writing a private letter to a person who is sympathetic to his academic approach and supports voucher systems. There is little reason to doubt that the statement expresses anything other than Buchanan’s sincere views.

It is unfortunate that Professor MacLean appears to have missed these critical documents in her research in the Buchanan and IEA archives. This is not a minor oversight. The central rhetorical strategy of Professor MacLean’s book is the insinuation that Buchanan (and others working in the public choice tradition) were motivated by racial animus, and a desire to maintain the dominant position of a privileged, white, male elite. According to MacLean, this led them to develop a particular approach to thinking about politics, and to advocate for institutional and constitutional rules that, according to Professor MacLean, institutionalize (among other ills) racist practices. Buchanan’s letters to Seldon directly contradict this unsubstantiated characterization of Buchanan’s motivations and views. More importantly, the attitudes that Buchanan expresses in his letters are entirely consistent with what I take to be the foundation of Buchanan’s academic work, and his contractarian political philosophy: a fundamental commitment to the equal treatment of all individuals, and opposition to institutionalized privilege for anyone (for more detail, see here and here).

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/09/01/georg-vanberg-democracy-in-chains-and-james-m-buchanan-on-school-integration/