Showing posts with label ethnic politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethnic politics. Show all posts
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Reading Judge Sotomayor (II)
I'm not sure about Judge Sotomayor's future as a quantitative social scientist:
That seems like a claim that differences in gender and ethnic background explain at least half the variance in decision-making, in other words to an r-sqaured of greater than .5. But she rests it on a mere finding of statistical significance in a minority of cases:
While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases.
That seems like a claim that differences in gender and ethnic background explain at least half the variance in decision-making, in other words to an r-sqaured of greater than .5. But she rests it on a mere finding of statistical significance in a minority of cases:
The Judicature Journal has at least two excellent studies on how women on the courts of appeal and state supreme courts have tended to vote more often than their male counterpart to uphold women's claims in sex discrimination cases and criminal defendants' claims in search and seizure cases.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Reading Judge Sotomayor
The full sentence is:
"Possibility" must refer only to "inherent physiological or cultural differences", because it occurs in the parenthetical phrase, and the main clause asserts that "our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
So it follows that she is *asserting* that gender and national origins make a difference, and not just a difference in plumbing or choice of bathroom, but "in our judging." She is further asserting that this is caused *at least* by differences in life experience, but possibly by other factors.
She is not asserting that this difference is caused by inherent phsyiological or cultural differences, but she is asserting that (a) it's possible and (b) she doesn't abhor or discount the possibility.
She may be limiting the possibility of "inherent physiological" differences influencing judgement to gender, while entertaining "cultural" differences in relation to national origin. This is plausible both because the prospect of inherent physiological ethnic differences affecting judges is highly politically incorrect, and because she doubtless knows that "Latina" is a cultural and not racial descriptor.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.
"Possibility" must refer only to "inherent physiological or cultural differences", because it occurs in the parenthetical phrase, and the main clause asserts that "our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
So it follows that she is *asserting* that gender and national origins make a difference, and not just a difference in plumbing or choice of bathroom, but "in our judging." She is further asserting that this is caused *at least* by differences in life experience, but possibly by other factors.
She is not asserting that this difference is caused by inherent phsyiological or cultural differences, but she is asserting that (a) it's possible and (b) she doesn't abhor or discount the possibility.
She may be limiting the possibility of "inherent physiological" differences influencing judgement to gender, while entertaining "cultural" differences in relation to national origin. This is plausible both because the prospect of inherent physiological ethnic differences affecting judges is highly politically incorrect, and because she doubtless knows that "Latina" is a cultural and not racial descriptor.
Monday, June 01, 2009
If Diversity and Feedback are good for decision making, then courts must be bad at it
Apparently, there's a vacancy on the US Supreme Court, and President Obama has nominated Judge Sotomayor of the Second Circuit to fill it.
Judge Sotomayor wants made some remarks to Berkeley law students that she hoped a "wise Latina woman" would do better than a white male at the judicial craft.
It has since been clarified that Judge Sotomayor misspoke. She was not claiming that Latina judges are in every respect better than crusty white guys, but only that diversity creates better decision making.
There's no doubt that Presidents deciding on Supreme Court justices have always considered diversity. In the nineteenth century, it was mostly just regional diversity. In the twentieth century, there developed a Catholic, a Jewish and then a black seat on the court. In Canada, we have of course always required three judges familiar with Quebec's civil code, and everyone would like to have an aboriginal nominee with passable credentials. These things are political reality, and there is no sense of "merit" such that it could always and everywhere trump it. Anyway, Judge Sotomayor seems to have the qualifications, along with a moderate and somewhat unpredictable judicial record.
So do the liberals win this argument? No, because the very point they rely on undermines the case for strong judicial review.
There is indeed some evidence that group decision-making is improved when those involved are relatively diverse, and therefore less inclined to groupthink. However, that fact isn't necessarily good for judicial liberalism, as we have come to understand it. No matter what their race and gender, appellate justices are necessarily an undiverse bunch. They have all been indoctrinated in the folk ways of a single profession. They are all in the top decile of intelligence, with extreme workaholic tendencies and bourgeois lifestyles. They live in Ottawa or Washington. They are bowed and scraped to all day by soft-spoken advocates and keener clerks. They almost never encounter the results of their decisions, with the principal feedback they get coming from other judges and law review articles written by people with less life experience than they have.
I'm not one to glamourize either politicians or voters, but they are a more diverse bunch. If diversity's so great, maybe we should leave the big decisions to them
Judge Sotomayor wants made some remarks to Berkeley law students that she hoped a "wise Latina woman" would do better than a white male at the judicial craft.
It has since been clarified that Judge Sotomayor misspoke. She was not claiming that Latina judges are in every respect better than crusty white guys, but only that diversity creates better decision making.
There's no doubt that Presidents deciding on Supreme Court justices have always considered diversity. In the nineteenth century, it was mostly just regional diversity. In the twentieth century, there developed a Catholic, a Jewish and then a black seat on the court. In Canada, we have of course always required three judges familiar with Quebec's civil code, and everyone would like to have an aboriginal nominee with passable credentials. These things are political reality, and there is no sense of "merit" such that it could always and everywhere trump it. Anyway, Judge Sotomayor seems to have the qualifications, along with a moderate and somewhat unpredictable judicial record.
So do the liberals win this argument? No, because the very point they rely on undermines the case for strong judicial review.
There is indeed some evidence that group decision-making is improved when those involved are relatively diverse, and therefore less inclined to groupthink. However, that fact isn't necessarily good for judicial liberalism, as we have come to understand it. No matter what their race and gender, appellate justices are necessarily an undiverse bunch. They have all been indoctrinated in the folk ways of a single profession. They are all in the top decile of intelligence, with extreme workaholic tendencies and bourgeois lifestyles. They live in Ottawa or Washington. They are bowed and scraped to all day by soft-spoken advocates and keener clerks. They almost never encounter the results of their decisions, with the principal feedback they get coming from other judges and law review articles written by people with less life experience than they have.
I'm not one to glamourize either politicians or voters, but they are a more diverse bunch. If diversity's so great, maybe we should leave the big decisions to them
Friday, May 23, 2008
The Census Results
Let's imagine two countries with equal populations of 100,000: Richistan and Pooritania. They have the same income distribution, except that at each point on the distribution, individuals in Richistan have twice the income of people in Pooritania. The 1000th richest person in Richistan makes twice as much as the 1000th richest person in Pooritania and the 90,000th richest person in Richistan makes twice as much as her counterpart in Pooritania.
Let us suppose that over the next 20 years, 20,000 people, randomly distributed across the income distribution, move from Pooritania to Richistan. As a result of their move, their incomes go up by 50%.
Everyone else in Pooritania and Richistan just gets an increase of 5%.
What would the statistical result be? Median wages in Richistan would stagnate, and the incomes of the lowest quintile would go down. Much like the census results. But everyone would be materially better off.
Some in Richistan might still object that it has become more unequal (or, equivalently, more diverse). These objections are not necessarily unreasonable -- there are costs as well as benefits of greater diversity. But the objections are to the presence, rather than the existence, of poor people.
Let us suppose that over the next 20 years, 20,000 people, randomly distributed across the income distribution, move from Pooritania to Richistan. As a result of their move, their incomes go up by 50%.
Everyone else in Pooritania and Richistan just gets an increase of 5%.
What would the statistical result be? Median wages in Richistan would stagnate, and the incomes of the lowest quintile would go down. Much like the census results. But everyone would be materially better off.
Some in Richistan might still object that it has become more unequal (or, equivalently, more diverse). These objections are not necessarily unreasonable -- there are costs as well as benefits of greater diversity. But the objections are to the presence, rather than the existence, of poor people.
Lots of Interesting News
But no time to write much about them.
*The Bouchard-Taylor report is released. (You can get an abridged English version here.)From the Globe account, it seems they have taken a firm cosmotarian stance, reminiscent of Taylor's old antagonist, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. They are about to find out how Lord Durham would have felt if he had cared about French Canadian opinion.
*The always-dangerous concept of fiduciary obligations by corporate officers to bondholders has, as Malcolm X or the Reverend Wright would put it if they were corporate law nerds, come home to roost. The Quebec Court of Appeal stopped the takeover of BCE by the Ontario Teahcers Pension Plan, a $35 billion transaction. BCE is trying to get to the Supremes before June 30, which would be virtually unprecedented. (The only example I can think of where the red nine tried to move that fast was the misguided decision to give leave in the Tremblay-Daigle dispute over whether a biological father can prevent an abortion.)
*In Khadr, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that agents of the Canadian government operating in foreign parts are only exempt from the requirements of the Charter where they are acting in accordance with Canada's international law obligations. The SCC relied on Rasul and Hamdan to conclude that Guantanomo Bay was operated contrary to the Geneva Conventions at the relevant time. (Of course, the Bush administration was loud and proud in saying that the Geneva Conventions didn't apply.) This fits with my thinking that the SCOTUS's decision would inveitably embolden the judiciaries in other Western countries to help shut down the Bushian war on terror.
Update: I wonder if someone better informed about African-American culture than myself could explain what is so threatening about chickens.
*The Bouchard-Taylor report is released. (You can get an abridged English version here.)From the Globe account, it seems they have taken a firm cosmotarian stance, reminiscent of Taylor's old antagonist, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. They are about to find out how Lord Durham would have felt if he had cared about French Canadian opinion.
*The always-dangerous concept of fiduciary obligations by corporate officers to bondholders has, as Malcolm X or the Reverend Wright would put it if they were corporate law nerds, come home to roost. The Quebec Court of Appeal stopped the takeover of BCE by the Ontario Teahcers Pension Plan, a $35 billion transaction. BCE is trying to get to the Supremes before June 30, which would be virtually unprecedented. (The only example I can think of where the red nine tried to move that fast was the misguided decision to give leave in the Tremblay-Daigle dispute over whether a biological father can prevent an abortion.)
*In Khadr, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that agents of the Canadian government operating in foreign parts are only exempt from the requirements of the Charter where they are acting in accordance with Canada's international law obligations. The SCC relied on Rasul and Hamdan to conclude that Guantanomo Bay was operated contrary to the Geneva Conventions at the relevant time. (Of course, the Bush administration was loud and proud in saying that the Geneva Conventions didn't apply.) This fits with my thinking that the SCOTUS's decision would inveitably embolden the judiciaries in other Western countries to help shut down the Bushian war on terror.
Update: I wonder if someone better informed about African-American culture than myself could explain what is so threatening about chickens.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Adventures in Speech Act Theory
Hillary Clinton said:
Leaving aside the probably-unintended implication that non-whites are not "hard working", what is the objection here? After all, what Ms. Clinton cites is a fact. She won the white vote in both states.
Similarly, it was a fact that the secession of Quebec was defeated in 1995 by the ethnic vote. But M. Parizeau was widely criticized for getting drunk and angrily pointing this out.
I'm never quite sure how sincere these questions are, but they do provide for a good illustration of how unimportant the truth sometimes is. (Another example of the unimportance of the truth, dear to the heart of the Clintons, is the deliberately misleading statement under oath. But there will be time enough to return to that.)
All utterances include the pragmatic implicature that they are relevant. For politicians, this means that you have to add to everything they say, "And that's a reason you should vote for me." So when Ms. Clinton cites the fact that she won the white vote, she claims not only that she won the white vote, but also that that constitutes a good reason that the audience of her remark should vote for her.
In this case, the audience is Democratic superdelegates. She is therefore saying that they should not pay attention to the vote totals, but to the white votes.
It will be said in defence that she is not saying that the superdelegates should do that because white votes are in principle worth more than black ones, but because the white vote is needed in the general election, while the black vote can be taken for granted. That claim might be false if the superdelegates take her advice. But further, the claim is objectionable because there is no difference between saying someone should not vote for a black candidate because other people won't then there is for any other reason. Acting negatively towards someone because of their skin colour just is the objectionable conduct, and the reasons for that conduct are irrelevant. George Wallace is just as much a segregationist because he was motivated by political ambition as he would have been if he were otherwise motivated.
Clinton is advocating an explicitly discriminatory course of action on the Democratic Party. She is in effect calling for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act and the Fifteenth Amendment. Since the former is the proudest achievement of her party in the twentieth century, she is deserving of criticism.
I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
Leaving aside the probably-unintended implication that non-whites are not "hard working", what is the objection here? After all, what Ms. Clinton cites is a fact. She won the white vote in both states.
Similarly, it was a fact that the secession of Quebec was defeated in 1995 by the ethnic vote. But M. Parizeau was widely criticized for getting drunk and angrily pointing this out.
I'm never quite sure how sincere these questions are, but they do provide for a good illustration of how unimportant the truth sometimes is. (Another example of the unimportance of the truth, dear to the heart of the Clintons, is the deliberately misleading statement under oath. But there will be time enough to return to that.)
All utterances include the pragmatic implicature that they are relevant. For politicians, this means that you have to add to everything they say, "And that's a reason you should vote for me." So when Ms. Clinton cites the fact that she won the white vote, she claims not only that she won the white vote, but also that that constitutes a good reason that the audience of her remark should vote for her.
In this case, the audience is Democratic superdelegates. She is therefore saying that they should not pay attention to the vote totals, but to the white votes.
It will be said in defence that she is not saying that the superdelegates should do that because white votes are in principle worth more than black ones, but because the white vote is needed in the general election, while the black vote can be taken for granted. That claim might be false if the superdelegates take her advice. But further, the claim is objectionable because there is no difference between saying someone should not vote for a black candidate because other people won't then there is for any other reason. Acting negatively towards someone because of their skin colour just is the objectionable conduct, and the reasons for that conduct are irrelevant. George Wallace is just as much a segregationist because he was motivated by political ambition as he would have been if he were otherwise motivated.
Clinton is advocating an explicitly discriminatory course of action on the Democratic Party. She is in effect calling for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act and the Fifteenth Amendment. Since the former is the proudest achievement of her party in the twentieth century, she is deserving of criticism.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
My "Racism" Problem and Ours
Post-modernism comes in for its share of ridicule on the Internet. And some of it is deserved: one should only read Jacques Lacan, for example, firmly understanding that most of the time he is pulling your leg. And while I am second to no one in demanding that the world recognize Mao as morally equivalent to Stalin and Hitler, when undergraduates respond to every normative or positive statement with "That's just their culture, man", I sympathize with the idea of having them spend some time doing farm labour.
But there was an important point underlying all of the bafflegab and French pseudo-profundity. While there is nothing inherently difficult about distinguishing a true proposition from a false one, propositions are made from concepts. And concepts are neither true nor false. As the pragmatists know, they are either useful or not useful. And as the pragmatists tended not to emphasize, something isn't just useful in general, it is useful for somebody who wants to do something. In other words, the process by which concepts arise and die is a political process. You don't refute a concept - you persuade people to abandon it.
Now, this persuasion can be more or less rational. For example, you could try to argue that the concept is useless and dangerous (taking for granted, of course, that your interlocutor shares some sense of what consequences are good and what are bad). Or you could get your interlocutor in a small room and start a chant, "Positivist conceptions of law are vacuous! Positivist conceptions of law are vacuous!" Other than the fact that no such persuasion exercise is one of pure logic, we can't necessarily say ahead of time what will and will not work.
All of which is prologue to the task I am going to undertake. I want to persuade you that the concept of "racism" is basically useless. That is distinct from persuading you that no one (or everyone) is or is not racist. I'm just saying that this language game no longer accomplishes what it once did, and we need to have a sounder sense of how to accomplish a civilized ethnic politics.
The trouble with "racism" as a concept is that it is an obstacle to clear thought on these matters. I also suspect that, as a concept, it will primarily be employed against the uneducated in general and disadvantaged minorities in particular. Once upon a time, racism may have been the tool of the man, but today "racism" is the tool of the man, man.
1. The first move is to point that racial/ethnic differences are profoundly important, politically and socially. This may be the most obvious thing anyone ever said, but the obvious is a good starting point when you are trying to bust the paradigm. Everywhere you go, ethnic groups entere into coalitions and struggles with each other to change the rules to their benefit.
2. And everywhere you go, ethnic groups do differently in the market (or under any set of neutral rules). That's because human capital is always built ethnically. Some may say that some ethnic groups have genetic advantages or disadvantages in building particular forms of human capital. That is unproven. What is indisputable is that different ethnic groups in fact have very different levels of human capital. Expropriate the Ismailis of Eastern Africa, force them into refugee camps, let them find a place with a halfway market economy and a generation later they will be richer than the locals. Do the same (but in a much milder way) to Australian Aborigines, and you have a perpetual nightmare. These differences may be entirely cultural, but they are nonetheless enduring and resistant to straightforward policy fixes.
3. Given #2, it follows that different ethnic groups do not have the same political interests. It also follows that there are potential economic gains from trade when they interact (it's called comparative advantage, man). But however nice it is to think that people could interact economically for mutual gain, people are not going to stop using politics to promote rules that work in their favour.
4. If it were possible to have a completely ethnically homogenous polity, it might resolve the problem of ethnic politics. However, it would give rise to all sorts of other self-interested coalitions whose power would be hard to overcome, and it would be culturally sterile (here is where I lose the paleos who will start complaining about ethnic food). Those of us who do not hail from Iceland unavoidably live in a multi-ethnic polity. Human nature being what it is, that means we are going to have conflict. However, it is not beyond the realm of possibility to manage this conflict in a way that means we still gain from the possibility of ethnic competition and economic co-operation.
5. The problems faced by ethnic groups whose human capital does not get a big price on the market are not primarily caused by discrimination -- at least not in contemporary Canada and the United States. That's not to say that discrimination is non-existent or morally OK or anything. It's just to say that the big problem is the lack of human capital -- the lack of bourgeois habits, the lack of skills, etc. Since the days of the Moynihan report, it has become more or less possible to say this in the United States. Obama says it. It is still very diffilcult to say in Canada, at least if you care about your reputation.
6. But Canada has a serious problem arising in the next generation. Depending on the extent of white flight, aboriginals will be a majority or a very large minority in the Prairies very shortly. Public services for aboriginals are terrible. I live near an urban reserve. You can tell where the reserve is, because there are no sidewalks, even though the reserve borders on two arterial roads. The Building Code's writ does not run, and the addresses on the reserve's main road are not sequential. There are two schools in the area. One is diverse with kids from everywhere in the world. The other has Indian kids, and it would be considered child abuse by parents of any other ethnic group to allow your children to go there. Every day, I see sixteen year olds pushing strollers along the shoulder of the busy road, and just have to hope no one gets killed. And this is in a liberal city and undoubtedly one of the better run reserves.
7. There are no obvious answers to these problems, but if our public discourse can't get to the point the Moynihan report got to over thirty years ago, there aren't going to be any.
8. Political correctness on the subject of race is difficult to learn. You aren't going to pick it up at a reserve school where you'd be lucky to get basic arithmetic. I have no brief for David Ahenakew, but I see the Tories reaction as a harbinger of a future of right-wing political correctness (also on display in the whole Jeremiah Wright business). It will be highly insensitive and hurtful of any racial minority to advance its own interests in the political sphere. But we also won't point out how the political dynamics on the reserves are impoverishing the majority and enriching the elite.
9. It comes down to the problem with "racism" as a frame. It worked in the post-war world because it tied continuing de jure segregation to the defeated Nazis. But it ignored the reality that ethnocentrism is univeral and, in its mild forms, harmless. As long as Anglo hegemony could be taken as unthreatened, we could just say that all other groups are permitted their ethnocentrism and the burden should be given to the Anglos, since they run anything anyway. That was reasonable then, but it isn't going to continue to work.
10. To the extent the "racism" frame is taken seriously internationally, it makes sensible ethnic accommodation impossible. Malaysia worked out a decent compromise between the Malays and the Chinese by being "racist." Maybe it is time for that compromise to be rethought, but it was itself a good thing because it let a lot of people live and prosper who wouldn't otherwise have done so. The "racism" frame is completley useless in the Middle East, and has been one cause of recent Western stupidity there.
11. The better way to look at things is to accept the inevitability of ethnic politics, and then distinguish between bad negative-sum ethnic politics and good positive-sum ethnic politics.
To the extent I support Obama, it is because I think he is closer to realizing all this than most. That is the key political message of visiting Kenya in Dreams.
But there was an important point underlying all of the bafflegab and French pseudo-profundity. While there is nothing inherently difficult about distinguishing a true proposition from a false one, propositions are made from concepts. And concepts are neither true nor false. As the pragmatists know, they are either useful or not useful. And as the pragmatists tended not to emphasize, something isn't just useful in general, it is useful for somebody who wants to do something. In other words, the process by which concepts arise and die is a political process. You don't refute a concept - you persuade people to abandon it.
Now, this persuasion can be more or less rational. For example, you could try to argue that the concept is useless and dangerous (taking for granted, of course, that your interlocutor shares some sense of what consequences are good and what are bad). Or you could get your interlocutor in a small room and start a chant, "Positivist conceptions of law are vacuous! Positivist conceptions of law are vacuous!" Other than the fact that no such persuasion exercise is one of pure logic, we can't necessarily say ahead of time what will and will not work.
All of which is prologue to the task I am going to undertake. I want to persuade you that the concept of "racism" is basically useless. That is distinct from persuading you that no one (or everyone) is or is not racist. I'm just saying that this language game no longer accomplishes what it once did, and we need to have a sounder sense of how to accomplish a civilized ethnic politics.
The trouble with "racism" as a concept is that it is an obstacle to clear thought on these matters. I also suspect that, as a concept, it will primarily be employed against the uneducated in general and disadvantaged minorities in particular. Once upon a time, racism may have been the tool of the man, but today "racism" is the tool of the man, man.
1. The first move is to point that racial/ethnic differences are profoundly important, politically and socially. This may be the most obvious thing anyone ever said, but the obvious is a good starting point when you are trying to bust the paradigm. Everywhere you go, ethnic groups entere into coalitions and struggles with each other to change the rules to their benefit.
2. And everywhere you go, ethnic groups do differently in the market (or under any set of neutral rules). That's because human capital is always built ethnically. Some may say that some ethnic groups have genetic advantages or disadvantages in building particular forms of human capital. That is unproven. What is indisputable is that different ethnic groups in fact have very different levels of human capital. Expropriate the Ismailis of Eastern Africa, force them into refugee camps, let them find a place with a halfway market economy and a generation later they will be richer than the locals. Do the same (but in a much milder way) to Australian Aborigines, and you have a perpetual nightmare. These differences may be entirely cultural, but they are nonetheless enduring and resistant to straightforward policy fixes.
3. Given #2, it follows that different ethnic groups do not have the same political interests. It also follows that there are potential economic gains from trade when they interact (it's called comparative advantage, man). But however nice it is to think that people could interact economically for mutual gain, people are not going to stop using politics to promote rules that work in their favour.
4. If it were possible to have a completely ethnically homogenous polity, it might resolve the problem of ethnic politics. However, it would give rise to all sorts of other self-interested coalitions whose power would be hard to overcome, and it would be culturally sterile (here is where I lose the paleos who will start complaining about ethnic food). Those of us who do not hail from Iceland unavoidably live in a multi-ethnic polity. Human nature being what it is, that means we are going to have conflict. However, it is not beyond the realm of possibility to manage this conflict in a way that means we still gain from the possibility of ethnic competition and economic co-operation.
5. The problems faced by ethnic groups whose human capital does not get a big price on the market are not primarily caused by discrimination -- at least not in contemporary Canada and the United States. That's not to say that discrimination is non-existent or morally OK or anything. It's just to say that the big problem is the lack of human capital -- the lack of bourgeois habits, the lack of skills, etc. Since the days of the Moynihan report, it has become more or less possible to say this in the United States. Obama says it. It is still very diffilcult to say in Canada, at least if you care about your reputation.
6. But Canada has a serious problem arising in the next generation. Depending on the extent of white flight, aboriginals will be a majority or a very large minority in the Prairies very shortly. Public services for aboriginals are terrible. I live near an urban reserve. You can tell where the reserve is, because there are no sidewalks, even though the reserve borders on two arterial roads. The Building Code's writ does not run, and the addresses on the reserve's main road are not sequential. There are two schools in the area. One is diverse with kids from everywhere in the world. The other has Indian kids, and it would be considered child abuse by parents of any other ethnic group to allow your children to go there. Every day, I see sixteen year olds pushing strollers along the shoulder of the busy road, and just have to hope no one gets killed. And this is in a liberal city and undoubtedly one of the better run reserves.
7. There are no obvious answers to these problems, but if our public discourse can't get to the point the Moynihan report got to over thirty years ago, there aren't going to be any.
8. Political correctness on the subject of race is difficult to learn. You aren't going to pick it up at a reserve school where you'd be lucky to get basic arithmetic. I have no brief for David Ahenakew, but I see the Tories reaction as a harbinger of a future of right-wing political correctness (also on display in the whole Jeremiah Wright business). It will be highly insensitive and hurtful of any racial minority to advance its own interests in the political sphere. But we also won't point out how the political dynamics on the reserves are impoverishing the majority and enriching the elite.
9. It comes down to the problem with "racism" as a frame. It worked in the post-war world because it tied continuing de jure segregation to the defeated Nazis. But it ignored the reality that ethnocentrism is univeral and, in its mild forms, harmless. As long as Anglo hegemony could be taken as unthreatened, we could just say that all other groups are permitted their ethnocentrism and the burden should be given to the Anglos, since they run anything anyway. That was reasonable then, but it isn't going to continue to work.
10. To the extent the "racism" frame is taken seriously internationally, it makes sensible ethnic accommodation impossible. Malaysia worked out a decent compromise between the Malays and the Chinese by being "racist." Maybe it is time for that compromise to be rethought, but it was itself a good thing because it let a lot of people live and prosper who wouldn't otherwise have done so. The "racism" frame is completley useless in the Middle East, and has been one cause of recent Western stupidity there.
11. The better way to look at things is to accept the inevitability of ethnic politics, and then distinguish between bad negative-sum ethnic politics and good positive-sum ethnic politics.
To the extent I support Obama, it is because I think he is closer to realizing all this than most. That is the key political message of visiting Kenya in Dreams.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
The Coveted Pith & Substance Non-Endorsement
In addition to asking some interesting questions in my comment box, Steve Sailer also gave me a link and called me "Obama's most sophisticated defender."
I appreciate it, but I'm not sure I can quite accept. As one of Her Majesty's loyal subjects, it really is no business of mine who the Great Republic chooses as their chief executive. Whether it is McCain or Obama, I'm sure we will continue to do fine. Like most of my countrypersons, I react negatively to the younger Mr. Bush, and will be happy to see him go no matter what, but it really isn't any of my concern what health plan the US federal government enacts or what flavour of Supreme Court justice is appointed.
I do think that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars raise issues of larger significance. And here I think the way Obama thinks will be more helpful than the way McCain thinks. Not because I hope that the Muslim world will react with such gratitude to a President whose middle name is "Hussein" that they will drop all their sectarian and tribalist craziness and become Belgians with loose clothing made of natural fibres. But because Iraq is precisely the sort of problem where victory/defeat is a useless frame and how-do-we-minimize-our-losses-while-letting-everyone-save-face is the way to go.
Perhaps I could also note that we in the Commonwealth are aware that even the blandest of centre-left politicians (and not infrequently the sternest of conservative ones) typically have some radical friends from their twenties. To explain what Gordon Brown and David Miliband were up to when they were young and foolish would require an extremely boring dissertation in micro-left groups with three-letter acronyms. This is not to say that genuinely right-wing people should vote for them, but it is no big deal either.
I appreciate it, but I'm not sure I can quite accept. As one of Her Majesty's loyal subjects, it really is no business of mine who the Great Republic chooses as their chief executive. Whether it is McCain or Obama, I'm sure we will continue to do fine. Like most of my countrypersons, I react negatively to the younger Mr. Bush, and will be happy to see him go no matter what, but it really isn't any of my concern what health plan the US federal government enacts or what flavour of Supreme Court justice is appointed.
I do think that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars raise issues of larger significance. And here I think the way Obama thinks will be more helpful than the way McCain thinks. Not because I hope that the Muslim world will react with such gratitude to a President whose middle name is "Hussein" that they will drop all their sectarian and tribalist craziness and become Belgians with loose clothing made of natural fibres. But because Iraq is precisely the sort of problem where victory/defeat is a useless frame and how-do-we-minimize-our-losses-while-letting-everyone-save-face is the way to go.
Perhaps I could also note that we in the Commonwealth are aware that even the blandest of centre-left politicians (and not infrequently the sternest of conservative ones) typically have some radical friends from their twenties. To explain what Gordon Brown and David Miliband were up to when they were young and foolish would require an extremely boring dissertation in micro-left groups with three-letter acronyms. This is not to say that genuinely right-wing people should vote for them, but it is no big deal either.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Unified Field Theory of Obama: Response to the Critics
In this thread, Steve Sailer asks two good questions. First, what the hell does "incompletely theorized common ground across more comprehensive narratives" mean? And, second, where do Barack Hussein Obama's loyalties lie?
I am a little reluctant to get into a discussion of Rawls in light of the fact that I know one of my occasional readers is a genuine expert on the subject. I just read Political Liberalism once, and tried to make it through A Theory of Justice. Rawls actually refers to "comprehensive conceptions of the good" and I foisted the po-mo "narratives" on him. But basically, the idea is that the liberal state brackets the more fundamental questions of meaning and morality, and instead tries to find essentially procedural rules that allows everyone to more-or-less do their own thing without stepping on anyone else's toes too much. In contrast to the ancient ideal, the modern liberal state relegates the pursuit of virtue or perfection to civil society and excludes it from politics. It accepts that its citizens will tell themselves different stories about who they are and what is important in life, and just makes sure that they all drive on the same side of the road and don't make left turns without signalling.
But for Rawls (or for Trudeau), this compromise has to be a principled one. Anyone who comes to the modern state with a story about how his ancestors were treated gets told that we can only be just in our time. Deal. The state can't recognize your identity - that's civil society's job.
Like Mulroney, Obama thinks this isn't going to work. Just because everyone would be better off just letting the past go doesn't mean that it can happen. On the other hand, Obama, like Mulroney, has considerable confidence in his own ability to recognize the source of each side's cussedness look enough for everyone to realize the mutual gains from resolving their non-zero-sum conflict. So the basis for the compromise comes from somehow framing each side's version as part of a single story, and the compromise itself turns out not to be principled liberalism, but something genuinely contingent.
Obama's not a "technocrat" at all, except maybe by comparison with recent Republican nominees for President, because he tends to think the finding the mutual gains is the easy part.
Now we Canadians know that Mulroney's confidence didn't quite pan out. He was indeed a talented man, and IMHO, a great prime minister, but he couldn't quite figure out how to compromise issues of identity. (Compromising issues of interest is relatively easy.) Hence, the Meech Lake fiasco. In the end, the Anglos -- and even more, the relocated market-dominant minorities that make up the leadership of the New Canadians -- were too invested in the liberal, procedural compromise to accept that the "distinct society" clause was a pretty minor concession in the scheme of things.
As for Obama's loyalties, I have no doubt he considers himself attached to the black population of the South Side of Chicago, albeit by adoption, not birth. That's only a problem if you think that blacks and whites have opposing interests in the US, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't. Of course, all politicians -- especially "transformative" ones -- must first be loyal to their own star, and I have no doubt that Obama is no exception to that principle.
I am a little reluctant to get into a discussion of Rawls in light of the fact that I know one of my occasional readers is a genuine expert on the subject. I just read Political Liberalism once, and tried to make it through A Theory of Justice. Rawls actually refers to "comprehensive conceptions of the good" and I foisted the po-mo "narratives" on him. But basically, the idea is that the liberal state brackets the more fundamental questions of meaning and morality, and instead tries to find essentially procedural rules that allows everyone to more-or-less do their own thing without stepping on anyone else's toes too much. In contrast to the ancient ideal, the modern liberal state relegates the pursuit of virtue or perfection to civil society and excludes it from politics. It accepts that its citizens will tell themselves different stories about who they are and what is important in life, and just makes sure that they all drive on the same side of the road and don't make left turns without signalling.
But for Rawls (or for Trudeau), this compromise has to be a principled one. Anyone who comes to the modern state with a story about how his ancestors were treated gets told that we can only be just in our time. Deal. The state can't recognize your identity - that's civil society's job.
Like Mulroney, Obama thinks this isn't going to work. Just because everyone would be better off just letting the past go doesn't mean that it can happen. On the other hand, Obama, like Mulroney, has considerable confidence in his own ability to recognize the source of each side's cussedness look enough for everyone to realize the mutual gains from resolving their non-zero-sum conflict. So the basis for the compromise comes from somehow framing each side's version as part of a single story, and the compromise itself turns out not to be principled liberalism, but something genuinely contingent.
Obama's not a "technocrat" at all, except maybe by comparison with recent Republican nominees for President, because he tends to think the finding the mutual gains is the easy part.
Now we Canadians know that Mulroney's confidence didn't quite pan out. He was indeed a talented man, and IMHO, a great prime minister, but he couldn't quite figure out how to compromise issues of identity. (Compromising issues of interest is relatively easy.) Hence, the Meech Lake fiasco. In the end, the Anglos -- and even more, the relocated market-dominant minorities that make up the leadership of the New Canadians -- were too invested in the liberal, procedural compromise to accept that the "distinct society" clause was a pretty minor concession in the scheme of things.
As for Obama's loyalties, I have no doubt he considers himself attached to the black population of the South Side of Chicago, albeit by adoption, not birth. That's only a problem if you think that blacks and whites have opposing interests in the US, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't. Of course, all politicians -- especially "transformative" ones -- must first be loyal to their own star, and I have no doubt that Obama is no exception to that principle.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Obama's Grand Unified Theory
So what does the "race speech" tell us about how Obama thinks? How does it fit in with the unity-mongering and meeting-with-foreign-dictators stuff?
At bottom, I think Obama's basic theoretical framework is in dispute resolution. The worldview is sometimes attributed to his experience as an organizer, but it could also be that of a corporate litigator. He thinks of the world as filled with non-zero-sum games, in which the win-win alternative of making a deal and dividing the surplus isn't taken because each side is gripped with a narrative that makes rationally self-interested compromise difficult or impossible. The intellectual problem is to look at the interests coolly and dispassionately and see where the surplus-maximizing position lies. But the harder problem is to be sensitive enough to how the identity-constituting stories keep both sides from doing that. It's Harvard Negotiation project stuff, but it also works with who he thinks he is.
Obama doesn't particularly claim to come from nowhere or have no loyalties. He is instinctively cosmopolitan, on-the-left and tied to his adopted black American Protestant identity. But I think he recognizes that to advance the interests he is loyal to requires figuring out what other people's loyalties are, "recognize" them and then figure out how to get to the best possible resolution of the bargaining problem they represent.
Obama loves to put things dialectically. In this, the successful politician he most resembles is Tony Blair. His central rhetorical trick is restating positions he is arguing attractively and strongly, but in such a way that they obviously have limitations he hints at transcending. Dreams From My Father is hardly a black nationalist book -- but it engages very sympathetically with black nationalism, not unlike the way in which Audacity of Hope engages sympathetically but critically with fusionist conservatism. In Dreams, black nationalism is twinned not with white racism, but with the white romantic liberalism of the family he grew up with. The good thing about that liberalism is that it tries to transcend tribalism -- the bad part is that tribalism is too central to the human condition to be transcended. In fact, much of what is most admirable about liberalism comes from the folkways of Northern European Protestants -- not that there's anything wrong with that.
Obama thinks he solves the dilemma by making the same move Rawls made in Political Liberalism towards incompletely theorized common ground across more comprehensive narratives. The master discourse though is narrative negotiation, not procedural justice.
Interestingly, I think McCain also represents a reaction to the dilemma of a universalist liberalism rooted in particularist traditions it is unable to defend. But he responds differently.
Pithier Version for Canadians: Obama isn't Trudeau. He's Mulroney.
At bottom, I think Obama's basic theoretical framework is in dispute resolution. The worldview is sometimes attributed to his experience as an organizer, but it could also be that of a corporate litigator. He thinks of the world as filled with non-zero-sum games, in which the win-win alternative of making a deal and dividing the surplus isn't taken because each side is gripped with a narrative that makes rationally self-interested compromise difficult or impossible. The intellectual problem is to look at the interests coolly and dispassionately and see where the surplus-maximizing position lies. But the harder problem is to be sensitive enough to how the identity-constituting stories keep both sides from doing that. It's Harvard Negotiation project stuff, but it also works with who he thinks he is.
Obama doesn't particularly claim to come from nowhere or have no loyalties. He is instinctively cosmopolitan, on-the-left and tied to his adopted black American Protestant identity. But I think he recognizes that to advance the interests he is loyal to requires figuring out what other people's loyalties are, "recognize" them and then figure out how to get to the best possible resolution of the bargaining problem they represent.
Obama loves to put things dialectically. In this, the successful politician he most resembles is Tony Blair. His central rhetorical trick is restating positions he is arguing attractively and strongly, but in such a way that they obviously have limitations he hints at transcending. Dreams From My Father is hardly a black nationalist book -- but it engages very sympathetically with black nationalism, not unlike the way in which Audacity of Hope engages sympathetically but critically with fusionist conservatism. In Dreams, black nationalism is twinned not with white racism, but with the white romantic liberalism of the family he grew up with. The good thing about that liberalism is that it tries to transcend tribalism -- the bad part is that tribalism is too central to the human condition to be transcended. In fact, much of what is most admirable about liberalism comes from the folkways of Northern European Protestants -- not that there's anything wrong with that.
Obama thinks he solves the dilemma by making the same move Rawls made in Political Liberalism towards incompletely theorized common ground across more comprehensive narratives. The master discourse though is narrative negotiation, not procedural justice.
Interestingly, I think McCain also represents a reaction to the dilemma of a universalist liberalism rooted in particularist traditions it is unable to defend. But he responds differently.
Pithier Version for Canadians: Obama isn't Trudeau. He's Mulroney.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
That's One Big Tent
Charles Murray, of all people, thinks Obama's speech on race was the best of any American politician ever.
The Pithlord agrees.
The Pithlord agrees.
Sympathy for the Devil, Part II: The Case for the Reverend Jeremiah Wright
The only way to make this case is in the geekiest possible manner.
Let A represent the existence of the Reverend.
Let p represent the probability of serious bodily harm to a white person walking in the streets of South Chicago for one hour.
(p,A)<(p,~A)
If we look at matters purely from the point-of-view of white America, the basic problem black America presents is not politicization. It's lumpenization. If Reverend Wright takes a gangbanger and makes him a church-going married guy who thinks the US government planned AIDS, white America is better off. (Black America is too, of course, but I'm trying to be hard headed here.)
I get off the "conservative" bus whenever I hear complaints about identity politics. There just isn't any other kind of politics. If an issue of public policy does not seriously intersect with identity, then it isn't a political issue. If there is any merit to democracy at all, it is that it provides a framework in which identity groups can be mobilized and then compromise.
(It isn't directly relevant to this post, but where I get off the "progressive" bus is when I hear complaints about how heinous it is that groups they are opposed to engage in identity politics. Dude, if the Cree can do it, then the white Baptists can do it.)
Identity politics can either be responsible or irresponsible. There is always a bit of a dilemma here, of course. If an identity politician is too responsible, then he or she may no longer be able to represent and mobilize the base. If an identity politician isn't responsible enough, then he or she won't be able to get concessions for said base.
What is the art of statecraft? Finding ways to make the incentives to be responsible better than the incentives to be irresponsible.
Let A represent the existence of the Reverend.
Let p represent the probability of serious bodily harm to a white person walking in the streets of South Chicago for one hour.
(p,A)<(p,~A)
If we look at matters purely from the point-of-view of white America, the basic problem black America presents is not politicization. It's lumpenization. If Reverend Wright takes a gangbanger and makes him a church-going married guy who thinks the US government planned AIDS, white America is better off. (Black America is too, of course, but I'm trying to be hard headed here.)
I get off the "conservative" bus whenever I hear complaints about identity politics. There just isn't any other kind of politics. If an issue of public policy does not seriously intersect with identity, then it isn't a political issue. If there is any merit to democracy at all, it is that it provides a framework in which identity groups can be mobilized and then compromise.
(It isn't directly relevant to this post, but where I get off the "progressive" bus is when I hear complaints about how heinous it is that groups they are opposed to engage in identity politics. Dude, if the Cree can do it, then the white Baptists can do it.)
Identity politics can either be responsible or irresponsible. There is always a bit of a dilemma here, of course. If an identity politician is too responsible, then he or she may no longer be able to represent and mobilize the base. If an identity politician isn't responsible enough, then he or she won't be able to get concessions for said base.
What is the art of statecraft? Finding ways to make the incentives to be responsible better than the incentives to be irresponsible.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Against National Self-Determination
In the wake of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of indepence, I get into an argument with libertarian Brian Moore about the merits of a "right of national self-determination."
Sunday, January 20, 2008
George Grant on Sixties Southern Resistance: "Last Ditch Stand of a Local Culture"
It's worth noting that Canada's own favourite paleoconservative, George Grant, occasionally expressed sympathy for the South's resistance to racial integration. From Lament for a Nation:
The classes that opposed Roosevelt were spent forces by 1965. The leaders of the new capitalism supported Johnson. Goldwater's cry for limited government seemed as antediluvian to the leaders of the corporations as Diefenbaker's nationalism seemed to the same elements in Canada. Johnson was supported not only by such obvious groups as Negroes and labour but also by the new managerial bourgeoisie of the suburbs. The farmers, who were supposed to be the last bastion of individualism, were not slow in voting for the continuation of subsidies. Four of Goldwater's five states were in the South. This was the last ditch stand of a local culture. But it is doomed to disappear as much as an indigenous French Canada.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Managing Ethnic Cleansing
Pith & Substance endorses Fred Kaplan's plan for Iraq. The most useful thing the US military could do while it is waiting for the inevitable order to withdraw would be to help Sunnis in Shi'ite-majority areas move to Sunni-majority areas. And vice versa and mutatis mutandis. If it cares either about morality or its future influence, America ought also to do something about the security of those stupid enough to cooperate with it: Kurdistan gets its borders guaranteed and all the translators and so on currently hiding out in Jordan or Syria get green cards.
Not going to happen so long as the Republicans control the White House. The only hope for relatively humane ethnic cleansing lies in the party of Jefferson and Jackson.
Not going to happen so long as the Republicans control the White House. The only hope for relatively humane ethnic cleansing lies in the party of Jefferson and Jackson.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
A More Appealing Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism can mean many things. It is unappealing to think that a country must have its institutions purged of their cultural inheritance to make newcomers feel more welcome. It is pointless to hope that all subcultures will have equal status and authority.
But the idea of a political nationality distinct from an ethnic or cultural nationality is a different proposition. It is true that such a thing will inevitably involve a lot of unedifying ethnic brokerage. Communication and trust will be more difficult than in more homogenous societies -- there is a reason that efficient welfare states are ethnically homgenous And there always lurks the nightmare of violent breakdown -- one has to trust pretty firmly in habits of civilization to make it work.
On the other hand, the very fact that ethnic nationalities are different creates a potential for gains from trade, and for breaking up the kinds of political cartels Mancur Olson went on about. The very fact that one's loyalty to the state cuts against one's pre-political ethnic affinities may make it harder to romanticize it, reducing the risk of tyranny.
This kind of liberal multiculturalism isn't just a wet late twentieth century invention. Here is Cartier's speech on February 7, 1865 to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada:
Now, when we were united together, if union were attained, we would form a political nationality with which neither national origin, nor the religion of any individual, would interfere. It was lamented by some that we had this diversity of races, and hopes were expressed that this distinctive feature would cease. The idea of unity of races was utopian -- it was impossible. Distinctions of this kind would always exist. Dissimilarity, in fact, appeared to be the order of the physical world and of the moral world, as well as the political world. But with regard to the objection based on this fact, to the effect that a great nation could not be formed because Lower Canada was in great part French and Catholic, and Upper Canada was British and Protestant, and the Lower Provinces were mixed, it was futile and worthless in the extreme. Look, for instance, at the United Kingdom, inhabited as it was by three great races. (Hear, hear.) Had the diversity of race impeded the glory, the progress, the wealth of England? Had they not rather each contributed their share to the greatness of the Empire? Of the glories of the senate, the field, and the ocean, of the successes of trade and commerce, how much was contributed by the combined talents, energy and courage of the three races together? (Cheers.) In our own Federation we should have Catholic and Protestant, English, French, Irish and Scotch, and each by his efforts and his success would increase the prosperity and glory of the new Confederacy. (Hear, hear) [I view] the diversity of races in British North America in this way: we were of different races, not for the purpose of warring against each other, but in order to compete and emulate for the general welfare. (Cheers) We could not do away with the distinctions of race. We could not legislate for the disappearance of the French Canadians from American soil, but British and French Canadians alike could appreciate and understand their position relative to each other.
Image of George-Étienne Cartier property of the Manitoba Archives
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Tyler Cowen and the Anti-Parizeau Fallacy
Tyler Cowen's favourite choses québécoises include Oscar Peterson, William Shatner, Rufus Wainright, Charles Taylor,* Saul Bellow, Steven Pinker and Mack Sennett. Hmmm... Premier Charest notwithstanding, I don't think Professor Cowen quite gets what that word means.
*Half point for Taylor.
*Half point for Taylor.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Why Did Obama Want to be Black?
Kevin Drum asks a simultaneously naive and interesting question:
For those not familiar with Barack Obama's memoir, he grew up with his white liberal mother and maternal grandparents. As a child, he accepted their ideal of color-blind universalism. As he emphasizes (in his thirty-something authorial voice), his life as a teenager in Hawaii in the seventies was as close to racially-idyllic as anywhere is ever likely to be. The incidents which lead to his racial consciousness -- a necessity in this type of memoir -- are totally lame, particularly when compared with slave narratives or even The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The authorial Obama is perfectly aware of this lameness, and draws it out well. (I disagree with Drum that the language is florid and overwrought. I also disagree with the target of his post, Steve Sailer, that Obama shows no sense of humor. Rather, he shows a Prairie-WASP sense of humor, dry to the extreme.)
The question is naive because it implictly imports the liberal assumption that racial consciousness is caused by oppression, an assumption Obama almost breaks free from. What Obama's story shows is that racial/ethnic consciousness is natural. The sixties liberal/nineties neoconservative desire to destroy it is about as likely to succeed as any other attempt to extirpate natural emotions. As a thoughtful person, Obama recognizes that black racial consciousness, like any other form of nationalism, can be destructive and intellectually limiting.* He hopes that it might -- tied to Christianity -- link the black bourgeoisie with the black underclass, to the benefit of both. But the principal point that leads him away from a post-ethnic liberal universalism of the Trudeau type is that it fails to meet a deep human need.
Obama's position even allows him to celebrate Midwestern WASP identity and values, something few white writers would be able to do -- at least in ethnic terms. I've already quoted his perfect observation of his liberal anthropologist mother's horrified reaction when Obama-the-boy starts to assimilate Indonesian fatalism and cynicism. Maybe there is some hope for the "left" here. The right seems to have completely accepted the left's traditional dislike of particularist loyalties. The left are more willing to accept such things, but only for the "oppressed," but the logic of their position may bring them to be the "side" better able to acknowledge this part of human nature.
*In my own humble opinion, the real problem with Sailer's review, is that it fails to acknowledge the complexity of Obama's thoughts about black nationalism. It still has many points of sharp observation.
None of which is to say that Obama wasn't confused and uncomfortable with his racial identity for much of his first three decades. In fact, that's the whole point of the book. What's more — and this is the part of Dreams [From My Father] I found most peculiar — it's never really clear why. In language that's often florid and overwrought, but also oddly artificial, he tells us how he feels, but the circumstances of his life are never drawn starkly enough to make it clear why he feels the way he does.
For those not familiar with Barack Obama's memoir, he grew up with his white liberal mother and maternal grandparents. As a child, he accepted their ideal of color-blind universalism. As he emphasizes (in his thirty-something authorial voice), his life as a teenager in Hawaii in the seventies was as close to racially-idyllic as anywhere is ever likely to be. The incidents which lead to his racial consciousness -- a necessity in this type of memoir -- are totally lame, particularly when compared with slave narratives or even The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The authorial Obama is perfectly aware of this lameness, and draws it out well. (I disagree with Drum that the language is florid and overwrought. I also disagree with the target of his post, Steve Sailer, that Obama shows no sense of humor. Rather, he shows a Prairie-WASP sense of humor, dry to the extreme.)
The question is naive because it implictly imports the liberal assumption that racial consciousness is caused by oppression, an assumption Obama almost breaks free from. What Obama's story shows is that racial/ethnic consciousness is natural. The sixties liberal/nineties neoconservative desire to destroy it is about as likely to succeed as any other attempt to extirpate natural emotions. As a thoughtful person, Obama recognizes that black racial consciousness, like any other form of nationalism, can be destructive and intellectually limiting.* He hopes that it might -- tied to Christianity -- link the black bourgeoisie with the black underclass, to the benefit of both. But the principal point that leads him away from a post-ethnic liberal universalism of the Trudeau type is that it fails to meet a deep human need.
Obama's position even allows him to celebrate Midwestern WASP identity and values, something few white writers would be able to do -- at least in ethnic terms. I've already quoted his perfect observation of his liberal anthropologist mother's horrified reaction when Obama-the-boy starts to assimilate Indonesian fatalism and cynicism. Maybe there is some hope for the "left" here. The right seems to have completely accepted the left's traditional dislike of particularist loyalties. The left are more willing to accept such things, but only for the "oppressed," but the logic of their position may bring them to be the "side" better able to acknowledge this part of human nature.
*In my own humble opinion, the real problem with Sailer's review, is that it fails to acknowledge the complexity of Obama's thoughts about black nationalism. It still has many points of sharp observation.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Vive l'ADQ? Vive le Québec libre!
Sweet. Thanks to the kindness of Scott Lemieux, my contentless post crowing about the Quebec election result has sparked an interesting debate in the left American blogosphere.* As an ex-pat, Scott knows the shade of pleased crimson we Canucks turn when anyone in the Great Republic notices the happenings up here.
Of course, this moment was technologically determined. As Michael Kinsley noted, "Canada: Our Troubled Neighbor [sic.] to the North" is the article more Americans want to write than read. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty good definition of what the blogopshere is all about.
To boil it down, their progressive friends find it odd that Scott and Jacob Levy would prefer the "right-wing" ADQ to the PQ, a member of the Socialist International led by an openly gay man. The suspicion that Anglo-Canadian particularist bias might have infected their apparently universalist souls might have occurred to some of the comrades. Flatteringly, Scott hoped that I would add something more congitive to the discussion. So here goes.
• The English Canadian editorials and mainline pundits (exemplefied by Jeffrey Simpson, a mind so pedestrian he makes David Broder look like Michael Kinsley) will tell you not to overestimate the significance of all this, that separatism is as potent as ever, that there is less here than meets the eye. Ignore them.
The PQ is in a terrible position. Just a few days ago, a well-placed nationalist intellectual told me confidently that the Parti would emerge with a small plurality. Mario would fade at the end, as he always has. The Liberals' vote is inefficiently distributed. Now, the PQ has come third in both the popular vote and in its seat total. It will inevitably face a battle over leadership. And with this come difficult, inevitably polarizing ideological decisions. Clearly, the vast majority of Quebecois do not want another referendum about separation -- as long as the two-party system meant that unpopularity of the PLQ necessarily benefitted them, they could afford to ignore this. But smaller parties are usually more ideological parties, and there is no one with the authority of Levesque or Bouchard to tell the party faithful to postpone their dream.
Charest is in much better shape, at least in the short term. The ADQ has always just been Dumont. He needs time to weed out his nutbars, figure out if he has anyone who is cabinet material, etc. He's not going to be in a rush. And he isn't in a position to deny Charest his new centre piece -- using the new federal money for a big tax cut. Harper's shown that you can play a minority with strength if your opponents don't want an election. Charest isn't as clever, but the way seems clear.
The English-speaking media play it pessimistic for a couple of reasons. In some cases -- such as the Globe -- it is because they were burned when they tried to sell Mulroney's strategy of burying separatism by accommodating it. But mostly because English Canadians are really culturally Scottish, and have a pagan Calvinistic sense that optimism brings the wrath of the gods.
• Everyone in the American progressive debate seems to agree that ethnic nationalism is a bad thing. Scott ascribes this sin (reasonably enough) to the PQ, and gives this as a reason for his joy. The bad news crowd point out that the ADQ contains many an ethnic nationalist.
Taking a broader view, the Left has never known exactly what to do with ethnic nationalism in general and Quebec nationalism in particular. Two broad attitudes stand out. The first is Rosa Luxemburg's view that loyalties to any contingently defined subset of humanity is precisely the poison the left exists to fight. The second -- which can be traced to Engels' writing on the 1848 revolutions -- distinguishes the nationalism of progressive peoples (good) from that of reactionary peoples (bad). Embarrasingly, Engels thought Germanic and Magyar peoples were progressive and Slavs were reactionary, but the particular valences don't matter. The key point is that progressive nationalism contains a revolutionary kernel -- its victory will ultimately help destroy all particularisms.
The trouble is that real peoples turn out not to live according to some teleological historical script. When they fight, they fight for unprogressive things like blood and soil. So they go from being progressive to reactionary to progressive depending on the coalitional needs of the moment. The Poles were the most progressive of all nationalities to nineteenth century leftists, but became black reaction personified when the Bolsheviks battled Pilsudski. The Irish are always progressive when battling the British, but somehow managed to have the most socially conservative democracy in history for sixty years. In 1948, the world's most progressive people today, the Palestinians, were -- all right-thinking people agreed -- reactionary allies of fascism. It is often difficult to keep straight which peoples are progressive and which reactionary. The reactionary nature of the Scotch Irish of the American South and Ulster Protestants would seem to be a fixture. But we have recently been told to feel bad for white Rhodesians, and who knows what the election of Jim Webb as a Democratic Senator might portend for his redneck co-ethnics?
It is perfectly true that Quebec nationalism is an ethnic nationalism, although it is the sort of truth everyone knows and no one says. Maître chez nous. Je me souviens. The first person pronoun does not refer to everyone who happens to reside in Quebec. French Canadians have no fundamental objection to people of other stock assimilating and intermarrying -- they have been happily led by three men named Johnson (from one family, but three political parties -- a fact you should bear in mind later.) Ethnic relations in Quebec -- unlike anywhere else in North America -- have long resembled the situation described by Amy Chua of the "market dominant minority." Anglophones (Scots and Jews) were basically analogous to the Chinese or the Maronites, while French Catholics were analagous to the Malays or the Druze. (Fill in your analogy.)
The Quebecois left (with the exception of the odd Bordigist** or two) has always been pretty sure that Quebec nationalism is of the progressive sort. WASP and Jewish socialists have never been as certain. (As with so many things, there were enthusiasts in the sixties, but little enthusiasm remains now that those who experienced it are in their sixties.) Not having access to history's telos, I am unable to resolve the controversy. I acknowledge Levy's point about Quebecois hypocrisy to the national aspirations of the Cree, although they in turn may prove disappointing.
I would, however, reject Rosa Luxemburg's solution. It turns out that it is really Capital that has no country. Ethnic loyalties are a universal part of human nature, and it is in fact one of the objections to the society of contract that it suppresses them. Obviously, the last century has many examples of dangerous and extreme forms of ethnic nationalism, but the record of universalism is not any better. To take parochial (and mild) examples, it was the cosmopolitan Trudeau, not the nationalist Levesque, who declared martial law after two kidnappings and convinced the Supreme Court that double digit inflation represented an "emergency" sufficient to suspend the ordinary constitution. No important Canadian politician, before or since, has been so doctrinaire or so sympathetic to totalitarianism. Perhaps what we want is moderation both in our particularists and in our universalists.
The trouble with the PQ is not that they have been ethnic nationalists. There have always been parties and politicians representing the French interest in Canada, and no doubt will always be as long as Canada exists as a binational country. And those politicians were right about important things like World War I. Part of the trouble is precisely that the PQ have been shamefaced ethnic nationalists. The post-sixties territorial definition of "Quebecois" -- supposedly a great improvement -- clearly excludes a million French Canadians living outside Quebec without really including the million non-francophones living within its borders. It is (provincial) state-centric.
The ADQ undoubtedly has a few nuts. The last representatives of a conservative tradition in Quebec, Caouette's creédistes, were completely loopy. But, sensitive as the relationship between the survivance and contemporary Canadian immigration patterns may be, issues of demographic change should be addressed by mainstream parties.
• Even though I disagree with him on the merits of ethnic nationalism, Scott is exactly right that the "left-wing" domestic politics of the PQ has a different meaning in the Quebec context than they would in contemporary America.
The Quiet Revolution left an interlocking set of nationalist elites in business, the labour movement, the intelligentsia, the PQ, the quasi-state (the Caisse and Quebec Hydro) and the bureaucracy. It's past time to open this up. Bringing in more market forces and lowering the tax burden is not, in the Quebec context, about decimating the welfare state. Maybe Dumont would someday like to get to that point, but Quebec is a long way from that.
Update: Professor Levy has a very generous response to this post here. He's clearly as far from a simple-minded "Luxemburgian" as it is possible to be. He was writing interesting things about the relationship between federalism, liberalism and multiculturalism before he got to Canada, things I thought had special relevance to Canada when I first encountered them. It would be fascinating to see how living in Montreal has affected his thinking.
*Taking libertarian Jacob Levy as a lefty for these purposes.
** And what other kind of Bordigist is there?
Of course, this moment was technologically determined. As Michael Kinsley noted, "Canada: Our Troubled Neighbor [sic.] to the North" is the article more Americans want to write than read. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty good definition of what the blogopshere is all about.
To boil it down, their progressive friends find it odd that Scott and Jacob Levy would prefer the "right-wing" ADQ to the PQ, a member of the Socialist International led by an openly gay man. The suspicion that Anglo-Canadian particularist bias might have infected their apparently universalist souls might have occurred to some of the comrades. Flatteringly, Scott hoped that I would add something more congitive to the discussion. So here goes.
• The English Canadian editorials and mainline pundits (exemplefied by Jeffrey Simpson, a mind so pedestrian he makes David Broder look like Michael Kinsley) will tell you not to overestimate the significance of all this, that separatism is as potent as ever, that there is less here than meets the eye. Ignore them.
The PQ is in a terrible position. Just a few days ago, a well-placed nationalist intellectual told me confidently that the Parti would emerge with a small plurality. Mario would fade at the end, as he always has. The Liberals' vote is inefficiently distributed. Now, the PQ has come third in both the popular vote and in its seat total. It will inevitably face a battle over leadership. And with this come difficult, inevitably polarizing ideological decisions. Clearly, the vast majority of Quebecois do not want another referendum about separation -- as long as the two-party system meant that unpopularity of the PLQ necessarily benefitted them, they could afford to ignore this. But smaller parties are usually more ideological parties, and there is no one with the authority of Levesque or Bouchard to tell the party faithful to postpone their dream.
Charest is in much better shape, at least in the short term. The ADQ has always just been Dumont. He needs time to weed out his nutbars, figure out if he has anyone who is cabinet material, etc. He's not going to be in a rush. And he isn't in a position to deny Charest his new centre piece -- using the new federal money for a big tax cut. Harper's shown that you can play a minority with strength if your opponents don't want an election. Charest isn't as clever, but the way seems clear.
The English-speaking media play it pessimistic for a couple of reasons. In some cases -- such as the Globe -- it is because they were burned when they tried to sell Mulroney's strategy of burying separatism by accommodating it. But mostly because English Canadians are really culturally Scottish, and have a pagan Calvinistic sense that optimism brings the wrath of the gods.
• Everyone in the American progressive debate seems to agree that ethnic nationalism is a bad thing. Scott ascribes this sin (reasonably enough) to the PQ, and gives this as a reason for his joy. The bad news crowd point out that the ADQ contains many an ethnic nationalist.
Taking a broader view, the Left has never known exactly what to do with ethnic nationalism in general and Quebec nationalism in particular. Two broad attitudes stand out. The first is Rosa Luxemburg's view that loyalties to any contingently defined subset of humanity is precisely the poison the left exists to fight. The second -- which can be traced to Engels' writing on the 1848 revolutions -- distinguishes the nationalism of progressive peoples (good) from that of reactionary peoples (bad). Embarrasingly, Engels thought Germanic and Magyar peoples were progressive and Slavs were reactionary, but the particular valences don't matter. The key point is that progressive nationalism contains a revolutionary kernel -- its victory will ultimately help destroy all particularisms.
The trouble is that real peoples turn out not to live according to some teleological historical script. When they fight, they fight for unprogressive things like blood and soil. So they go from being progressive to reactionary to progressive depending on the coalitional needs of the moment. The Poles were the most progressive of all nationalities to nineteenth century leftists, but became black reaction personified when the Bolsheviks battled Pilsudski. The Irish are always progressive when battling the British, but somehow managed to have the most socially conservative democracy in history for sixty years. In 1948, the world's most progressive people today, the Palestinians, were -- all right-thinking people agreed -- reactionary allies of fascism. It is often difficult to keep straight which peoples are progressive and which reactionary. The reactionary nature of the Scotch Irish of the American South and Ulster Protestants would seem to be a fixture. But we have recently been told to feel bad for white Rhodesians, and who knows what the election of Jim Webb as a Democratic Senator might portend for his redneck co-ethnics?
It is perfectly true that Quebec nationalism is an ethnic nationalism, although it is the sort of truth everyone knows and no one says. Maître chez nous. Je me souviens. The first person pronoun does not refer to everyone who happens to reside in Quebec. French Canadians have no fundamental objection to people of other stock assimilating and intermarrying -- they have been happily led by three men named Johnson (from one family, but three political parties -- a fact you should bear in mind later.) Ethnic relations in Quebec -- unlike anywhere else in North America -- have long resembled the situation described by Amy Chua of the "market dominant minority." Anglophones (Scots and Jews) were basically analogous to the Chinese or the Maronites, while French Catholics were analagous to the Malays or the Druze. (Fill in your analogy.)
The Quebecois left (with the exception of the odd Bordigist** or two) has always been pretty sure that Quebec nationalism is of the progressive sort. WASP and Jewish socialists have never been as certain. (As with so many things, there were enthusiasts in the sixties, but little enthusiasm remains now that those who experienced it are in their sixties.) Not having access to history's telos, I am unable to resolve the controversy. I acknowledge Levy's point about Quebecois hypocrisy to the national aspirations of the Cree, although they in turn may prove disappointing.
I would, however, reject Rosa Luxemburg's solution. It turns out that it is really Capital that has no country. Ethnic loyalties are a universal part of human nature, and it is in fact one of the objections to the society of contract that it suppresses them. Obviously, the last century has many examples of dangerous and extreme forms of ethnic nationalism, but the record of universalism is not any better. To take parochial (and mild) examples, it was the cosmopolitan Trudeau, not the nationalist Levesque, who declared martial law after two kidnappings and convinced the Supreme Court that double digit inflation represented an "emergency" sufficient to suspend the ordinary constitution. No important Canadian politician, before or since, has been so doctrinaire or so sympathetic to totalitarianism. Perhaps what we want is moderation both in our particularists and in our universalists.
The trouble with the PQ is not that they have been ethnic nationalists. There have always been parties and politicians representing the French interest in Canada, and no doubt will always be as long as Canada exists as a binational country. And those politicians were right about important things like World War I. Part of the trouble is precisely that the PQ have been shamefaced ethnic nationalists. The post-sixties territorial definition of "Quebecois" -- supposedly a great improvement -- clearly excludes a million French Canadians living outside Quebec without really including the million non-francophones living within its borders. It is (provincial) state-centric.
The ADQ undoubtedly has a few nuts. The last representatives of a conservative tradition in Quebec, Caouette's creédistes, were completely loopy. But, sensitive as the relationship between the survivance and contemporary Canadian immigration patterns may be, issues of demographic change should be addressed by mainstream parties.
• Even though I disagree with him on the merits of ethnic nationalism, Scott is exactly right that the "left-wing" domestic politics of the PQ has a different meaning in the Quebec context than they would in contemporary America.
The Quiet Revolution left an interlocking set of nationalist elites in business, the labour movement, the intelligentsia, the PQ, the quasi-state (the Caisse and Quebec Hydro) and the bureaucracy. It's past time to open this up. Bringing in more market forces and lowering the tax burden is not, in the Quebec context, about decimating the welfare state. Maybe Dumont would someday like to get to that point, but Quebec is a long way from that.
Update: Professor Levy has a very generous response to this post here. He's clearly as far from a simple-minded "Luxemburgian" as it is possible to be. He was writing interesting things about the relationship between federalism, liberalism and multiculturalism before he got to Canada, things I thought had special relevance to Canada when I first encountered them. It would be fascinating to see how living in Montreal has affected his thinking.
*Taking libertarian Jacob Levy as a lefty for these purposes.
** And what other kind of Bordigist is there?
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