Bad Faith

I am going to use this essay by Ibram X. Kendi in The Atlantic as a starting point for my two-cents worth on the latest panic attacks by conservative (and some liberal) pundits concerning their made-up version of Critical Race Theory (or any other anti-racist discussion).

What really got me concerned was when Ross Douthat--one conservative whom I respect as usually dealing in good faith--wrote a pretty awful op-ed in the Times in which--among other things--he compared Kendi to Rush Limbaugh, suggesting that they were comparable intellectuals on the two extremes of the debate. What a disappointing argument. The former is a recognized history professor; the latter was a hate-spewing liar. Douthat should be ashamed of himself.

Now, Ibram X. Kendi hardly needs a seventy-something white boomer like me to defend him, but here's my two-cents worth anyway.  I actually read Kendi's two recent books, Stamped fron the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist. I will say that these books, especially the first, changed the way I look at both the history of this country and its current circumstances. I am grateful to Kendi for that. But did I come away from either of these books with the impression that Kendi wants me to hate this country? No, never, nada, not once. Did he tell me to hate myself because I am white? Never.

I am used to conservatives putting words into the mouths of a person (cf. Ilhan Omar) and then using those words that the person never said to discredit her. I have never seen Douthat do that before. I am not an expert on CRT,  but am pretty sure that almost anything that, say, Ted Cruz says about it is a lie. Henceforth, I will also be wary of anything Ross Douthat writes about it.

Not Optimistic

This essay by Ezra Klein in today's Times is thoughtful and quite good. But I am afraid that Klein's optimism for our country is a little rosy-eyed . As someone points out in the piece, by any reasonable definition, the US is really a quite young democracy. A sizeable portion of its people didn't have full legal citizenship rights until at least the 1960s. This same scholar notes that young democracies are more fragile and susceptible than older democracies of which we try to claim membership. Recent years seem to bear that out to one extent or another.

On my first birthday, Jackie Robinson had been in the (white) big leagues for almost exactly one year. 70+ years later, after all those years of supposed racial "progress", I wish I could share Klein's optimism. But quite the contrary, I have never been more pessimistic about the present and future of this country.