9/24/2016

So the German government calls for an active approach against racism?

De Maizière calls active approach of Facebook Against Racism 
Culture Time News from Monday, 08/29/2016 
Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU) calls for more commitment against hate comments on the net from the social network Facebook. The company should take by itself and without complaints racist content from our Web sites, de Maiziere said on August 29, 2016, following talks in Berlin Facebook office. This also applied to calls for violence or overt support of terrorist acts.
That call comes from a strange source. Home Minister de Mazière is one of the chief hate mongers in the German government. Let's leave aside for a moment that he is actually not concerned about racism as such, but that it can get a forum on FB, Twitter and such. So his agenda is a little different. It is a red herring.

Let us rather listen to Adolph L. Reed:

Adolph L. Reed
Let me be blunter than I’ve ever been in print about what I am saying: As a political strategy, exposing racism is wrongheaded and at best an utter waste of time. It is the political equivalent of an appendix: a useless vestige of an earlier evolutionary moment that’s usually innocuous but can flare up and become harmful.

There are two reasons for this judgment.

One is that the language of race and racism is too imprecise to describe effectively even how patterns of injustice and inequality are racialized in a post-Jim Crow world. “Racism” can cover everything from individual prejudice and bigotry, unself-conscious perception of racial stereotypes, concerted group action to exclude or subordinate, or the results of ostensibly neutral market forces.

It can be a one-word description and explanation of patterns of unequal distribution of income and wealth, services and opportunities, police brutality, a stockbroker’s inability to get a cab, neighborhood dislocation and gentrification, poverty, unfair criticism of black or Latino athletes, or being denied admission to a boutique.

Because the category is so porous, it doesn’t really explain anything. Indeed, it is an alternative to explanation.
Exposing racism apparently makes those who do it feel good about themselves. Doing so is cathartic, though safely so, in the same way that proclaiming one’s patriotism is in other circles.

It is a summary, concluding judgment rather than a preliminary to a concrete argument. It doesn’t allow for politically significant distinctions; in fact, as a strategy, exposing racism requires subordinating the discrete features of a political situation to the overarching goal of asserting the persistence and power of racism as an abstraction.

This leads to the second reason for my harsh judgment. Many liberals gravitate to the language of racism not simply because it makes them feel righteous but also because it doesn’t carry any political warrant beyond exhorting people not to be racist. In fact, it often is exactly the opposite of a call to action. Such formulations as “racism is our national disease” or similar pieties imply that racism is a natural condition. Further, it implies that most whites inevitably and immutably oppose blacks and therefore can’t be expected to align with them around common political goals.

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