The Misguided Fixation on Racial Disparities - Adolph Reed & Walter Benn Michaels 

Now that would win more understanding and cooperation

Here's to a more evenly-distributed inequality. : )

What?

@@jamesmurphy9105 what Spielberg was quoted saying there was a summary of his version of a liberal stance, something he opposes in favor of socialist ideals. So he did a bad job in convincing you?

@@ronmackinnon9374 heh-heh that could apply in different ways to either side rather well

I thought it was T Dog The Artist

I swear the only reason people click on videos anymore is to make dumb jokes.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤘👍😎 legit laughed out loud. Mad lad

@Dince91 looks like there's a video by Contrapoints on 'Envy' that you might benefit from watching... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aPhrTOg1RUk.html ... you're welcome.

@Dince91 ALSO... forgive me sir, "cheap comment(s)" are all this economy has afforded me as of late. I one day aspire to have the means by which to aquire raconteurisms of the highest pedigree. Please accept my sincerest apologies if I have offended your academic sensibilities by defiling this comment section with such... proletarian sentiments. I shall henceforth withdraw myself from these esteemed records of intellectual prowess... Scuttling back into the darkened silence befitting my station as a lowly unscholarly spectator.

Perhaps a backchannel where people share access. Like Sci-hub does, but for theory.

Capitalism always wins.

THIS

Exaaactly. There might be some small traits of racial oppression that are not caused by capitalism, and that can be changed. But in 80% of the situation is as you say.

You comment had more clarity than this segment.

Well fking said.

@@MrWhiskeycricket Are you saying that because white people are poorer in Appalachia that that negates centuries of nationwide oppression of black people?

@@MrWhiskeycricket Racial oppression is integral to capitalism (as are poverty and war). Capitalism is *about* enforced hierarchies -- oppression and exploitation won't be eliminated while capitalism exists.

Typical white ppl comment

Total control. Power. Disguised in 'social (in)justice'. There's a LOT of excellent minds and videos addressing/analyzing what you're referring to.

I think about this often, about my own alienation poisoning my socialized tendencies.

Socialists have implemented solutions to this over time. Public/co-op housing, public transportation, support of unionization and other collectivist orgs act as breeding grounds for promoting more socialization thru sheer contact and common goals. These aren't the only solutions, but are a few that create the environment for socialization to occur

@@amialal4510 Why don't this way of thinking reach the masses of people? This is why I mentioned culture. Does this analysis you speak of examine culture? Youth/adolescent/consumer/pop-culture, is the opiate of the masses that Marx saw religion as. There is no concerted effort, by the Left, to foster the values inherent in socialism. This is a must, in face capitalist/pop/culture's highly individualist/narcissistic values, that capture the minds of so many of us.

Truth is that socialism is much more than just public ownership of wealth or organizing the macro economy on a basis of class equality of universal material security of condition. It's an alternative parallel culture to capitalist incoherent fragmentation elitism and anti egalitarianism and competition.

Yea I don’t think titles like these are helpful. While Adolf & Walter are nuanced & rational in their analyses, some white people take what they’re saying, and titles like this, as cope to merely reinforce what they already believed.

To what extent are those who suffer still births actual "patients"? Healthcare is a "for-profit" thing now, the disparity is due to class, if anything.

Do you really think this stat is a result of health care workers actually not valuing the lives of black patients? Maybe I'm not cynical enough but I can't imagine that's true, not the mention the majority of health care workers I've had are POC. I think, as they point out, these disparities are largely due to income inequality which means poor black people are less likely to have access to health care services like prenatal care, not due to racist healthcare workers not valuing black lives.

@@cheapimitation2242 I certainly stated my question wrongly. Of course other factors matter.

​​​@@cheapimitation2242 It's not due to income inequality. There have been studies and reports on medical racism. There are actual doctors, nurses, and med students that believe that black people have tougher skin than compared to others. There are reports of doctors performing unnecessary surgeries on black, indigenous, latines solely for experimental purposes. Removal of uteruses, breasts, etc. If this were able to be reduce to the long-dated label "class" you would see the same proportion of harm between poor black and poor white patients. Or better yet, there wouldn't be a disparity between college educated black people and poor white people in favour of the latter.

He does want all inequalities to be removed.

@@Windsofchange99 Yes, but with a blindfold on

@@Jake-fw5te racism has been the key obstacle in passing anything that improves life for the poor throughout US history. Half or more of this country still hisses at the mention of "welfare queens." There can be no reinvention of our political system while half the country thinks this way.

@@michaelenquist3728 I'm down with this assessment. Now let's feed the people who are starving and disarm the people who are killing them for profit.

..but way more suave. Wonderful things we can do with technology these days.

...in combination with that headline, that is.

You are absolutely right. So many of these 'leftists' make it their life's work to show how systemic racism either isn't real or will be 'solved' by abolishing capitalism without studying or acknowledging its crippling effects and the realities of the global populations who are the most oppressed under capitalism (surprise surprise - they are majority non-white). Though capitalism is obviously a key structure in all this, the entirety of the problem cannot be tackled without addressing issues of race, whiteness, queerness etc. I certainly agree that POC capitalists are what the neoliberal capitalists are desperately seeking in order to seem more inclusive, but the ideas often highlighted in these spaces seem to be completely against (or hypercritical of) the idea that white supremacy or systemic racism is even a thing! They argue that the proletriat has nothing to lose if they can all recognize that they are at bottom of pole as the working class, but the white working class definitely has something to lose at the bottom of the economic hierarchy - their whiteness and white privelege. I can't remember precisely who expressed this idea, but it may have been Noel Ignatiev (a factory worker who went on to graduate from Harvard). As an additional example to the ones you provided, think about the US labor unions of the 1900's that purposefully excluded black workers (St. Louis, 1917). They could have strengthened themselves and their cause by aligning with every single race or gender of the working class, but chose to divide it along the same lines as their capitalist exploiters. These exploiters then bring in black workers, at a lower pay, to replace the striking white workers. The result is bitter resentment from working class whites towards working class blacks, leading to massacres of entire black communities. This is exactly why race, gender and class must be discussed side-by-side if your final goal is true equality for all.

Again, his or Reed's problem isn't that its a moral issue but that liberals today understand it just as a moral issue where being a good person whatever that means is determined by who much you religiously repent for prejudice which doesn't reallg help solve the problem.

This is a great idea, and a fitting way to honor “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”

Why would Jacobin, an organization founded on bringing justice and equality to the working class, dilute it's brand with... working class folk? Plus, Kasparian needs her Louboutin's and Alexander McQueen's and such... WHY AREN'T YOU ALSO DONATING TO TYT RIGHT NOW... (instead of whining about subscription prices🙄😁😉😳😫😢)?

Ironic ain’t it

I'm curious 🤔 Where does Kendi argue that racial disparity is caused by black inferiority?

@@worship568 He doesn't--he presents a logical proposition that it's either inferiority or racism and since it's NOT inferiority, it must be racism.

@@EricaEteson Or it was systemic issue pushed to keep labor wages low and keep working class divided.

@@worship568, it's the false dilemma fallacy. He presents there being only two possible options when others exist. It is also known as the black and white fallacy.

@@EricaEteson A great example is health. My health can be made "inferior" by systemic discrimination--that is, systemic discrimination may lead to a reduction in my health. Of course, the problem also comes with what is meant by "inferior" here since that term is highly value-laden. Indeed, it is due to this value-ladenness that there's a risk of racism in using the word "inferior"--it can be used to refer to people and not their circumstances or condition, and in particular to those circumstances and conditions without interrogating ethnocentric interpretation (it is necessary to take seriously what the people affected actually value, not just what some as observers happen to value). In other words, that my health is reduced is "inferior" in a socially relevant way only if unhealthiness is socially perceived as inferior and unhealthiness leads to disparate treatment, yet what kinds of things are more or less valued by society can be influenced by racial imagination, ethnocentrism, or even "neutral" institutional attempts to reduce variety (or both) for the purposes of increasing control. On the other hand, we can also expect that unhealthiness can have independent effects that may make coping with and being resilient against such disparate treatment and social stigma, in addition to more "neutral" barriers or impediments, harder, such that it renders my life more dysfunctional and "inferior" in ways that may arguably be more objective (in that, regardless of situation, some of the effects of my unhealthiness would, in isolation, reduce my standard of living or increase my efforts in living or in engaging with shared goals). So, the framing that its either racism or inferiority is a false dichotomy because the two aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, for "racism without race" to be a phenomena, it is necessary that the two are interconnected in complex ways and overlap / interact with seemingly racially neutral institutions and practices (wherein people may experience an "inferiority").

Aren't the full episodes on the Jacobin YT channel or am I missing something?

@@luwkrabbit They recently switched to a paywall/subscription model for seeing the videos live and having access to the full videos. However, they still plan on releasing the videos in parts the way they always have.

Well good sir, I nominate you for the mantle: *Supreme Complainer for the Jacobin Magazine Subscription Fees* I nominate myself for the 'Deputy Supreme Complainer for the Jacobin Magazine Subscription Fees' position. I could use the resume fluff anyways.

@@bootstraphan6204 Just to be clear - I'm not complaining about the subscription fees or the decision to essentially have a subscription model for full videos. I think these make sense, and that those that are complaining about them _may_ be inconsistent.

@@ErikChristianson I haven't complained (yet), but I could imagine some people might feel like $60/yr for YT content seems a little dear compared to $25/yr for paper magazines... at least, I would naively assume that printing and mailing magazines costs more than posting videos... but I am glad Jacobin does both!

“Grift is good.” -Marx

Don’t speak for blk ppl

Yeah Kendi's work, as did the work of the Black revolutionaries in the 70's, got absorbed into liberal framework. I don't think anything he does is new content-wise, but its presented in a way your average American will easily understand.

I think kendi knows the basis of his ideology..his world view.

Hardly. I haven't read his books in full but he definitely criticises capitalism for its role in creating and perpetuating inequality. He's asleep spoken very kindly about Angela Davis, who herself identifies as a communist. I have a feeling he's further left than he lets on, but must recognise that for now he needs to work within a capitalist framework to fight racial inequities. At least that's my interpretation.

I don't even agree with kendi on every issue but he's made it clear in his Democracy Now interview that he believes capitalism and racism are two heads of the same dragon. He is not a "race reductionist" but he is an expert on race so that's where his focus is. These types in the video will make it seem like he's a neoliberal or something... Such dishonesty

@@AP-pk6mk kendi is know liberal. Most race reductionist and race concious people are agaisnt liberalism.

@@AP-pk6mk I read his books there's a part where he lists out every race (which how did he even decide on those categories as if they were objective) and pairs them with a class (defined by income) and says each race class pair has distinct ways in which they are oppressed. If everyone's interest are particular and we have nothing in common there is no way to build mass politics from that, his ontology necessarily precludes the unity necessary to ever achieve anything

@@armand9199 race isn't objective but it is a social category that exists and by census data anyone can easily pair up how people identity and their respective incomes. Idk if that was his methodology but it isn't a stretch at all. And yes, different classes possess different interests... What people don't want to recognize is that in the US we have a racialized class system. For better or for worse different races tend to occupy different classes, in both the Marxist sense (although less so) and definitely in the colloquial sense of the word "class". You unite by recognizing commonalities and going after the bourgeoisie but that solidarity doesn't mean ignore legitimate grievances along racial lines. Black reparations or restoring native lands to their rightful owners or releasing undocumented immigrants from border camps doesn't conflict with a larger class solidarity at all and it's actually counterproductive to act like these issues aren't real and don't matter bc some deem them "divisive"

The literal definition of neoliberalism. Google is not far away.

@@againstorthodoxy4212 Wouldn't that be the orthodox way of doing things?

@@againstorthodoxy4212 I thought it was implied I wanted their literal definitions. How would a metaphorical definition clarify anything?

@@markstuber4731 wtf you talking about. How does the dictionary definition mean metaphorical definition? Seems like somebody wishes to be a debate lord to me LOLOLOLOL

@@dylanlinzer6734 I didn't say a dictionary definition is a metaphorical definition.

PREACH. I hear alot of straw manning here

I don’t know if Kendi would actually come on. I’ve heard that a few people have asked him on to their semi popular platforms and he’s refused.

@@WinstonSmithGPT ^check Steven’s comments everyone. We can be materialist-focused & anti-neoliberal weaponization of idpol, while recognizing coping white reactionaries that just happen to like the confirmation bias of their opinions being validated, underlying nuance/materialist analysis be damned.

@@WinstonSmithGPT lmao

We'll be releasing more of the interview in subsequent clips in the near future. If you'd like to hear the whole thing in one go, you can become a Jacobin youtube member here: ru-vid.com/show-UCzGUT9PjV3SMBwjWXUYh4HAjoin

@@JacobinMag I asked the dumb question after only watching this for 2 minutes. When I see Adolph Reed I pay attention! You got a new member

@@JacobinMag paywalling the good stuff for the pmc, tut tut!

@@smith6752 Right? Lol.

“The only inequalities you are left with are caused by... something else, about which you don’t need to think” *mic drop* He really is spittin

They aren't. They are using 'liberalism' in the original European way, which opposes it to aristocratic/clerical conservatism on the one hand and to socialism on the other. It advocates maximal political and economic 'liberty', which means no official, politically imposed inequalities, but also few to no measures against economic inequality - basically giving capitalism a free rein.

What solutions is Kendi bringing? Teach people to stop being racist?

Interestingly, John McWhorter put the same point across regarding Kendi, arguing that with all the thousands of talks Kendi has given over the years, surely if his arguments had the validity that he claims, the effects of those talks would be more visible.

how? he’s an english professor at uic

At this point, I would personally like to hear less about racial wealth disparities... and more about how he made those dinosaurs look so real in those movies.🍿👍

@@kazimierzmalewicz3604 That's just what (star) professors (can) get paid there -- although he's nowhere near the highest paid at UIC. I know this is a cheap shot and that we should think about the source of the ideas to determine their accuracy, but I wonder how this argument would sound if we foregrounded that it comes from a PMC top-2%-er. And this especially comes home after the last WBM Jacobin interview, where Michaels basically ends by saying that he has no ideas of what we can do to get to the world he wants. That said, as much as I agree with his ideas, I really don't know what WBM does on his own time to better the world politically or economically. I do know that literary theory and the occasional nonsite article isn't it.

@@bootstraphan6204 "I don't require a historical account of how these dinosaurs died or the inequities of their extinction, as long as I'm committed to their immediate revival..."

@@litcrit1624 WBM actually taught a literary criticism class that I took at UIC last year. I remember he missed like a week of class because he went to California to do some kind of debate/public speaking thing. He told the whole class about it before he left and spent almost an hour talking about diversity at schools, the cost of education, and how schools being racially diverse mostly applies to rich people . He would talk a lot about this kind of stuff, which was pretty refreshing most professors never question diversity or emphasize the role of class rather than just identity. Anyways, it’s funny how people love to say that colleges are full of Marxist professors when they’re usually just liberals. WBM is the only openly socialist professor I’ve ever had who encouraged students to think about class and diversity a little bit differently.

Did you even watch the video?

I think you misspelled "the left in general"; Jacobin actually critiques idpol bigtime - especially Adolph and Walter - that's pretty much their jam.

You are right.

You might be the only one here who called it out.

Of other people's time, energy and bodies, and trying to get something for nothing.

What is Kendi doing to end discrimination from poor whites against poor minorities? How does a racial focus unite them, rather than say, a class analysis that puts them all on the same team against a larger enemy? I don't think this near religious exercise of looking inside yourself and "doing the work" is going to eliminate racism more than anything that's come before. I think it's futile to expect that we can even expect to eliminate racism. It will always exist. The only thing we can do is to either limit the ways minorities suffer from racism in this system, or overhaul the system to the point that it can't be utilized by racists to inflict harm.

@@seanheller3335 kendi created initiatives to help people to be anti racism so don’t contribute to racism. Just saying I’m not racist is not enough.

@@beyondaboundary6034 Do you want a paywall bypasser or a way to illicitly obtain research articles? I can help with either!

@@WinstonSmithGPT it simple it means be against racism. What you think it means?

@@WinstonSmithGPT that’s right wing definition. You don’t have to agree with Ibram kendi to be anti racism.

Kendi surely has access to this video (and probably has seen it). He can freely address it in a RU-vid video, twitter, or a press piece....but he's busy grifting

Yeah good luck selling that to anyone but lumpen and professional class blacks. Go post about it it’ll make you feel better

In another stream, someone in a chat asked Reed if he was familiar w/ Cedric Robinson's work. Reed dismissed Robinson's work, saying it was worthless. He wouldn't even explain why he disagrees with the concept of "racial capitalism".

@@Locke3OOO Are you saying you disagree with racial capitalism as a framework for analysis, or as a strategy for organizing? These are two different things.

@Locke3OOO don’t get upset I am longtime subscriber to Jacobin magazine and RU-vid channel. We just have a difference of opinion which I will share on this platform take care.

@JohnC yes, so again, another example of Reeds narrow class only analysis. Thanks for sharing this JohnC.

@@michaelenquist3728 incorrect.