Saturday, October 24, 2020

Are we divided by Class or Race?

The World Socialist Web Site refutes the NY Times:
The 1619 Project has been a case study in historical ignorance and dishonesty. Silverstein’s latest exercise in self-justification continues the pattern of falsification and evasion. When the 1619 Project was criticized as poor journalism, Silverstein claimed it was history; and when it was criticized as bad history, he claimed it was mere journalism. Now, when it is proven that the 1619 Project’s central thesis is false, Silverstein announces that the argument was merely metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally.

In the end, the New York Times’ argument is a variation of a crooked politician’s age-old evasion: “We know that you think you know what we said. But what you read is not what we meant.”

A new Quillette essay is titled, What Divides Us Is Class, Not Race.

What these essays have in common is a rejection of commonly-held ideas that we are divided by race today. Apparently both Marxists and right-wingers would rather look at class than race.

They are of course correct that paying reparations will not remedy the systemic racism that killed George Floyd. There is no such systemic racism. Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose.

And surely the NY Times realizes that the 1619 Project is falee in its main premises, but promotes it anyway for ideological reasons.

I think the problem here is that eliminating racial discrimination does not eliminate racial animosity, envy, and differences.

1 comment:

MikeAdamson said...

Why not both? Mostly class at the end of the day but the Republcan strategy of vote suppression demonstrates that race is an issue.