Like I've mentioned precedents, the '68 NYC teacher's strike and ethnic succession in the outer boroughs, but at least that had...
Like I’ve mentioned precedents, the ‘68 NYC teacher’s strike and ethnic succession in the outer boroughs, but at least that had imaginable stakes, I’m not really clear why a Black/Jewish front of the culture war is opening up right now
I’m quite sure I haven’t written it anywhere so I can’t gloat about my predictions now, but I remember thinking back in June/July 2020 that white libs who try to maximize racial animosity are in for a rude awakening because of the amount of latent antisemitism in black communities that might get unlocked. The instigators were simply not mentally equipped to imagine that someone may answer “are Jews white” with “yes (derogatory)”.
But is it really a trend right now, or is it a series of incidents that can still be treated as isolated because they’re all actions of a single person (Ye)?
There’s been a couple of dudes like that in American pro sports in the last few years. DeSean Jackson in the NFL and (currently) Kyrie Irving in the NBA were the most prominent, and the general vibe from most other Black players was “Well, I don’t agree with all of that, but he’s got a point” or at the very least treating it as an unremarkable thing to say in Black culture, kind of like White people talking about their Racist Uncles. There were certainly almost no outright condemnations from other players.
Irving in particular is infamous for being (as far as anyone can tell) a literal flat earther, and being so antivax he left millions of dollars on the table and probably irreparably damaged his career by sitting out portions of the last few seasons. Just yesterday, he got suspended for five games for promoting the movie Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America (which is exactly the kind of movie you think it is) on his social media. This is embarrassing for obvious reasons for people who have invested emotional energy in the various dumb-evil-Whites-vs-everyone-else narratives.
This article about the whole thing fascinates me, though likely not the way the author intended. Irving is clearly deeply sincere about his ridiculous beliefs, yet the author, and the whole class of people the author represents, seems unable to conceive of him as anything other than a provocateur, an instigator, a bad-faith actor. It’s peppered with calls for Irving to apologize and stop spreading lies, but from Irving’s perspective, he’s the one speaking truth to power, and being asked to apologize for the ‘harm he’s caused’ is incoherent.
To me it represents how a certain worldview has crystalized in the minds of the media/professional/whatever class, that life is basically one big school/office, everyone already knows the right things to do and say, and if you refuse it must be because you’re deliberately trying to fuck things up, because you love chaos and hurting people. I say this not to defend Irving’s claims on the merits (he’s an idiot) but to point out how impoverished this is as a mental model, how little explanatory power it has. Like look at this quote:
There are plenty of people who want to see Kyrie reckon with what he’s done and understand its magnitude—who care enough to forgive, extend grace, learn, grow, and move on. This isn’t up to them, though.
This is not how you talk to or about a 30-year-old man. This is how you talk to an 8-year-old kid who stole from Dad’s wallet because he thought Dad wouldn’t notice.
So how do we ‘fix’ people like Irving, ‘undo the damage’ they’ve done? Well we can’t really. The thing about our knowledge-creation-and-dissemination mechanisms fracturing into a million pieces is that no one actually has the power to say “I am the Arbiter of Truth, do as I say” and actually be believed, not even well-meaning upper-class liberal businessmen and media people who think it’s their birthright. You can’t show them the light because there’s a million lights, all pointing in different directions.
The ironic thing is the big precedent of “how do we maintain a collective identity and system of Truth-seeking according to shared values when central institutions of authority collapse, yielding to many distributed local leaders?” is Jews