There is a good and revealing passage in Carles L. Glenn’s well-written and insighful post at Glenn Loury’s site:
Have I abandoned my youthful convictions and become complacent about racial and other injustices? Not at all; I believe I am as passionate as ever about these continuing problems, but that I have learned from experience and from my own mistakes to advocate for more effective remedies.
We were right about one big thing in our pursuit of justice in the ‘70s and wrong about another. The irony is that both what I held to then (and hold to still) and what I changed my mind about put me in basic conflict with the current “social justice†orthodoxy.
The one big thing we were right about is that racial and social class integration can be a very good thing, both for how and what children learn and for the quality of the education provided to poor children. But there is nothing magic about integration and, done poorly, it makes things worse. We found that two qualities were essential to the success of integration: ample opportunities for students to work together on projects and a climate of mutual respect.
The purpose of creating contexts in which white students worked together with black and other “minority†students (as we then called Hispanic and Asian American students) was to encourage them to focus on the common task or discovery rather than on racial and ethnic differences. Through these shared efforts they came to respect, to trust, and often even to like one another.
That is of course the direct opposite of what McWhorter calls “Third Wave Antiracism,†the new orthodoxy in progressive circles, which “teaches that because racism is baked into the structure of society, whites’ ‘complicity’ in living within it constitutes racism itself, while for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them, including a suspension of standards of achievement and conduct.â€
The working-out of this divisive ideology in schools, as has been reported from across the country, involves heightening racial self-consciousness in ways large and small, persuading some children that they are inevitably victims and others that they are inevitably oppressors. The focus is no longer on shared projects but on divisive grievances.
Read the whole thing.
Glenn is confused and delusional.
A substantial majority of White people are tired of the whole racial thingy, and no longer pay it any attention. Blacks have clearly repudiated Martin Luther King, and Bobby Seale, the Black Panthers (still very active), Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan have carried the day. No one, as in no one, wants integration, most especially Black people. Farrakhan is the most important Black leader by far.
Affirmative action has benefitted the Black upper and middle classes, who can now circulate in the larger society at will. They often choose segregation. The Black underclass has not benefitted from the civil rights movement, and are worse off than before it, now living on White charity and crime. The Black underclass is as isolated from the larger society as ever, and they don’t really care.
Hispanics and Asians could not care less about the whole Black/White dispute, they have no part in it, and they want both Whites and Blacks to shut up. On the whole, Asians and Hispanics despise native Blacks, as do many Black immigrants. Whenever they get the upper hand, Hispanics systematically cleanse their and adjacent neighborhoods of Black people.
Black hatred of Whites will never end, and the simmering race war at the center of our culture will continue forever.
In addition Caribbean blacks and sub-Saharan African blacks have benefited disproportionately from affirmative action.
The focus on grievances is a travesty. Period.
On your point, I would prefer the notion that non-US blacks have taken advantage of the opportunities rather than simply benefitted. It may be a subtle difference, but in my opinion an important one and one of culture. I’ve previously relayed my daughter’s experience with her Nigerian star pupils vs some who come from single parent and/or other social maladies.