Robert Tulip wrote:Hello Harry, racism is a difficult and sensitive and complex topic, and I appreciate your efforts to respond to my comments.
I see now that much of our clash has been because of differences in understanding of terms, rather than deep disagreements over substance. I shall try to focus as much on clarification as on confrontation.
Robert Tulip wrote: the aim of moral reasoning is to make our instinctive responses open to explicit analysis, bringing the subconscious and unconscious emotional factors and prejudices into the open where they can be dissected. So we do have the potential for conscious access to our unconscious reactions.
In general I agree, but I think the difficulties involved make for a lot of confusion and many opportunities for inappropriate blame.
Robert Tulip wrote:But that cuts both ways. It is not valid to argue that all racism is simply irrational unconscious response, whereas all anti-racism is high-minded conscious moral reasoning. Anti-racist campaigners like to see the world in that black and white way, with anti-racism as good and racism as evil, but they can be just as guilty of playing to an emotional mass response as the racists can.
As a general matter I have already agreed with this. But I am a bit concerned about your use of "anti-racism" in this context. First, it is a term unfamiliar to me. Second, you sometimes seem to use it in a broader sense which would include what I called "Black racism" - opposition to White people, Euro culture, or in general, systems of dominance which have been used by Western powers. Russia, which is still in the thick of racism culturally, has often used "anti-racism" in this sense, not as opposition to themselves, but as a card to play in international diplomacy. I gather that (and the similar finger-pointing of a Mugabe or a Nasser) is the sort of appeal to emotions that you are citing here.
Frankly I think we are pretty capable of working out the difference between thoughtful criticism on moral grounds and incitement based on past wrongs and current frustration. One of the problems with the #BlackLivesMatter movement has been that the two were both present, and it isn't always easy to maintain the one when the other is also a factor. I saw an African-American post on FB to the effect that he was "tired of always having to be the high-minded race," and I certainly saw his point.
As I slow down a minute to ask myself what my real point here was, there are a couple. One is that "high-mindedness" is not instinctive, and an approach which takes that perspective will not be subject to the same confusion. It is what I like about reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' writing: his rage is real, but he sets it aside to make solid, substantive points.
The second is to acknowledge what I think is your point, that anti-Europeanism partakes of two instinctive processes which are also likely to confuse matters: simple racial antipathy, the same instinctive us/them judgements which operate in White racism; and the sense of injury, preferring to blame others rather than do something about a problem.
Robert Tulip wrote:What I meant by the other motives of anti-racists in calling people racist was that anti-racists are campaigning to install progressive liberal governments. They demonise conservatives as racist as a way to shut down debate on social issues and to promote the interests of their side of politics.
It took me a while to sort out why this seems so weird to me. People who want progressive liberal governments, and therefore naturally find themselves targeted by authoritarians like Putin, consider anti-racism a goal in itself, not a means to grab power. It is one of the main purposes of power.
The demonization is a by-product. Quite a bit of it is created by rhetorical excess, since the process of herding the members of the group involves attaching some social penalty to dissent. There is even some cynicism involved at times, and some of this may be "to promote the interests of their side of politics." But you would be wise to keep means and ends clear, if you wish to understand normal political processes.
Robert Tulip wrote:For example, I do not believe that it is intrinsically racist to argue that immigrants should assimilate to the country they move to. But we routinely see criticism of immigrant culture (eg sharia law) depicted as racism.
Yes, I see your point. Of course assimilation is almost impossible to avoid, and while I have no intrinsic objection to people wanting to use sharia law for divorce, inheritance, etc, I consider this to be a contract which they must consent to before it applies. Some brands of Islam attempt to impose traditional ways without that consent, and so there will be a clash of cultures.
Of course many communities in America maintain ethnic traditions and use some pressure to keep children in the tradition. German-Americans in some communities educated their children in German right up to the time of WWI, and parochial (Roman Catholic) schools have kept their tradition in some cases as transplanted resistance to the English who tried to suppress Catholicism in Ireland. Hebrew School is part of being Jewish, and many Muslim parents insist that their children learn Arabic. And then there are the Amish. All of this is part of the American experience, and I remain as bothered by people trying to selectively suppress certain cultures as by those who would impose the old ways on their family by force.
It is also true that there have been allegations of sinister plots to impose sharia on everyone, a silly bit of Islamophobia which is just scapegoating someone different. Such racism is present when women wearing the hijab are targeted, as has happened in the U.S. recently.
Robert Tulip wrote:The problem though is that some measures which work in the short term are damaging in the long term. The clearest example is in charity, where the recipient can be made dependent on the giver and can lose the potential to become an autonomous responsible person. Tough love measures of identifying what is best for people in the long run are more sustainable and effective than ‘sugar hit’ measures that look and feel good but which do damage to people’s values and capacity.
I have a strong impression that the dangers are overrated, mostly by people who don't want to pay anything to help the unfortunate. For every person who loses the potential for autonomy and responsibility due to receiving help, there are more people who are held back by their poverty from their potential to be autonomous and responsible. There are still millions of people in the world, for example, who are denied a proper education or are so damaged by hunger and ill health that they are unable to learn at a normal rate.
This is a real problem in the United States. People who have no trouble understanding the importance of good health and a good education then turn around and want to avoid paying for it if they perceive it to be for the children of "those people." The poison of housing segregation becomes most toxic in the context of local financing of schools, which is the method used on almost all of the U.S.
Robert Tulip wrote: I take the view that free market capitalism should be the foundation of politics, and that the Republicans are better at that strategic vision than the Democrats. A well regulated free market is the best way to provide opportunities based on merit and justice, more powerful than state intervention.
Free market capitalism is the foundation of U.S. politics. Only a small portion of Sanders backers would prefer any other economic organization. The issue is usually over how regulated or unregulated that capitalism is to be.
There was a time when one could make a case that Republicans are better at implementing free-market capitalism. That time has past. They are so thoroughly in the grip of special interests, and have based so much of their strategy on exploiting ignorance, that there is no longer any room for a thoughtful, coherent candidate like Jack Kemp or Bob Dole. What has passed for strategy on the Republican side for the last six years has been "make people afraid, because when they are afraid, they prefer conservatives."
Robert Tulip wrote:But the problem was about bringing people from the stone age into the space age, to use an exaggerated cliché from Papua New Guinea which I know much better than Africa. I have worked for Australia’s overseas aid program for nearly thirty years, so these questions of what works, what doesn’t and why, to use David Dollar’s celebrated book title, have been central to my thinking.
I am a development economist myself, and agree that the problem is complex. Maintaining realistic ideas about the pace of development is as important as fending off corruption and dependency.
Robert Tulip wrote:With the shift of manufacturing to Asia in recent times, we see that people are generally better off being exploited than not being exploited. Exploitation may produce obvious suffering, and outrages, but in the long run offers pathways from poverty that are better than subsistence stagnation.
Indeed. If people take jobs they know are bad, then it follows that their alternatives were even worse. This is basic, and I have no patience with people who argue against, for example, multinationals investing in poor countries because it "exploits their poverty." That doesn't mean they can't use labor standards with some fairness to them.
In China there have been cases of workers being forcibly brought back to factories where they no longer want to work (including Korean factories, prominently), which makes them slaves. I normally limit my use of the term "exploitation" to cases in which ordinary norms of justice are set aside in a relationship that is one-sided in terms of ability to use force.
Robert Tulip wrote:Harry, you are spinning a slanted story here. Justifying Mugabe for his false blaming of Britain for Zimbabwe’s economic collapse is the sort of line that is singularly unhelpful in putting African countries on a good track.
I did not mean to justify Mugabe's behavior, only to observe that Blair's efforts to force him to allow compensation (much of it paid for by the U.K.) played into his unscrupulous hands.
Robert Tulip wrote:Yes, white farmers were slow to allow expropriation, but the Marxist idea that they themselves were expropriators of Zimbabwe fails to see that they brought technical skills, trade contacts and governance values which in the long run could have lifted Zimbabwe to middle income status and prevented its collapse into destitution.
In South Africa post-apartheid, there has been a gradual process of admitting Black workers to skilled jobs, which they were excluded from under apartheid. The same thing could have happened in Zimbabwe, if White settlers had not been intent on maintaining their superior status as a group. Namibia and Botswana have seen much progress in opening up their economies, and while they are incredibly unequal, they are not stratified by force. I am not so much interested in assigning blame (those who seek mainly to punish past crimes are usually either utopian fools or cynical demagogues) as in seeing the technical skills, etc. be actually brought to the people of the country, not just to "the land."
Robert Tulip wrote:It rankles to put up with inequality, but unfortunately that is necessary to achieve progress.
It rankles with some people, but I am not one of them. The point is to avoid letting inequality set up systems in which those who start out behind are held back from catching up, on purpose. As good jobs have gone more and more to people who serve in unpaid internships first, for example, it is impossible to miss the implication that only those whose parents can support them in these internships will be admitted to the investment banking opportunities, the consulting firms, and the executive ranks of thepillar companies of a region. This is not what was meant by "success based on merit."
Robert Tulip wrote: Harry Marks wrote:The White Africans had the good jobs, the factories, the education, the sanitation, the food, etc. to be more productive.
I am using economic policy as a proxy for all those things.
Sorry, but admitting people based on qualifications rather than ethnicity will not cause an economy to tank. If the reins of power are seized by kleptocrats who think their friends can do as well as the skilled people who were there before, then there will be poor performance. But there is a big territory of meritocracy in between.
In the U.S. in the 19th century, a system known as "agricultural extension" grew up, in which the land grant universities had paid agents go around to the farmers and demonstrate the effectiveness of improved methods such as contour plowing, crop rotation, intensive fertilizer use, etc. Not all farmers took the risk of change, but those who did generally prospered, the others could see it, and so the methods spread. This is not rocket science: demonstrate better methods, and people will take it on board.
Robert Tulip wrote:But that transplanting is exactly what Mugabe and his ilk have pretended is possible, by portraying your argument here as a racist plot. A typical ploy for anti-racist schemers such as Mugabe is to portray wealth transfer as a simple matter, ignoring the deep cultural values which enable the creation of wealth in modern societies.
The countries who have been patient about development have mainly not gone in for expropriation. There is something to be said for land reform: Japan, Korea and Taiwan all had land reform programs early in their development. But public education counts for more, and it was the denial of opportunities such as a good public education which created much of the rage which then turned to expropriation in countries like Zimbabwe and Uganda.
I am currently living in a relatively advanced country in West Africa, and I understand the frustrations of management, coordination, communication, and so forth. It would be good if White people understood how much their expectations are based on a fairly uniformly high standard of living (including education and high-markup sales) in their home countries, but never mind. They figure it out quickly enough. The problem of building stable social structures remains. I would say it is doing reasonably well, but it may be decades before we can really say.