But it’s not actually doing the thing, and as far as I can tell it’s not really trying to do the thing, either—not in the way that blue-tribe Americans are actually trying to do something about racism, from pushing for institutional change all the way down to individuals taking personal responsibility for aiding strangers-in-need.
Is this really what you want? The way that blue-tribe Americans are “actually trying to do something about racism” seems to have almost no chance of actually doing anything about racism, nor even to be designed or intended to have any chance of actually doing anything about racism. Mapping this dynamic to your project seems to invalidate the entirety of your post.
Yet the fact that (in the “racism” case) the stated goal, the intended goal, and the actual goal do not coincide, appears not to be an incidental or contingent fact, but rather seems to be integral to the effectiveness and persistence of the actual efforts…
Please note that this is not a nitpick. It seems to me that this point substantively undermines your thesis, and your hopes for solving the problem you describe. (Which is unfortunate, because I largely agree with your diagnosis of the problem.)
I really don’t think that this is an accurate description of what happened (and is happening), in the “racism” case. What’s more, it elides those critical aspects of the situation to which I was trying to point.
However, possibly this is a distracting avenue of discussion at this time, so I am content to let this thread end here. I will only say that I strongly recommend thinking about the analogy between these two situations in greater detail.
Personally, I found your highlighting of that paragraph in particular useful, and believe the piece is stronger now that I’ve removed it, and would not mind if you went into more detail. This is a tangent/digression, but it’s a relevant one, so as long as it’s headlined as such I don’t think it’s distracting.
(This is actually one of my private “rules of engagement” and something I’ve got an essay in the works about: changes-of-topic are exhausting when they’re not self-aware about being changes-of-topic, but if they’re clearly identified then that cost goes way down.)
Is this really what you want? The way that blue-tribe Americans are “actually trying to do something about racism” seems to have almost no chance of actually doing anything about racism, nor even to be designed or intended to have any chance of actually doing anything about racism. Mapping this dynamic to your project seems to invalidate the entirety of your post.
Yet the fact that (in the “racism” case) the stated goal, the intended goal, and the actual goal do not coincide, appears not to be an incidental or contingent fact, but rather seems to be integral to the effectiveness and persistence of the actual efforts…
Please note that this is not a nitpick. It seems to me that this point substantively undermines your thesis, and your hopes for solving the problem you describe. (Which is unfortunate, because I largely agree with your diagnosis of the problem.)
It’s possible I should change that section. The most important piece of it that I do intend is that we’ve tipped past
“Someone’s being racist in the parking lot! Oh, well, not my problem.”
to
“Someone’s being racist in the parking lot! This threatens an aspect of the fabric that I care about, that makes it my problem.”
I agree with you that a lot (most?) of what the blue tribe is doing re: racism specifically is counterproductive.
I really don’t think that this is an accurate description of what happened (and is happening), in the “racism” case. What’s more, it elides those critical aspects of the situation to which I was trying to point.
However, possibly this is a distracting avenue of discussion at this time, so I am content to let this thread end here. I will only say that I strongly recommend thinking about the analogy between these two situations in greater detail.
Personally, I found your highlighting of that paragraph in particular useful, and believe the piece is stronger now that I’ve removed it, and would not mind if you went into more detail. This is a tangent/digression, but it’s a relevant one, so as long as it’s headlined as such I don’t think it’s distracting.
(This is actually one of my private “rules of engagement” and something I’ve got an essay in the works about: changes-of-topic are exhausting when they’re not self-aware about being changes-of-topic, but if they’re clearly identified then that cost goes way down.)