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############################Thanks to Gregg for sharing the link to my letter exchange with Vince Horn, and for placing the actual discourse within the frame of TOK.
Thanks to you also, Bradley, for your comments. It is to you that I address my response:
I'm not sure in your framing whether you are specifically referring to my perspective as represented in the letter exchange or to the anti-racism ideologues I critique. If by "efforts to equate "whiteness" (an immutable characteristic of individuals) to "racist" (a mutable characteristic) are intended to shame individuals who disagree with a particular social agenda of the groups and individuals making the equation" you mean "anti-racist" activists/ideologues, then yes I agree . . . mostly.
Mostly, because whether or not one views "whiteness" as an immutable characteristic of individuals depends on the definition of whiteness. If you mean the common racial characterization of phenotype and skin color, yes, that is immutable for individuals. Yet, as I say in the letter exchange, "whiteness" has also served as a meme and ideology. In that sense, whiteness is mutable.
Certainly anti-racist ideologues desire to shame individuals who disagree with their stance(s). I'd add blame and guilt too. They indeed desire to influence and "dominate the 12th floor social organizational schema."
And this stance does serve the interests of certain "blue church" media elites of what you call the Legacy Modern Authoritarian system in your "Current Social Systems Reorganization" post. Among liberal, progressive media, "anti-racist" ideology serves their interests in social conflict to sell papers, magazines, and generate clicks and virality . . . and the "anti-anti-racist" ideologies of conservative media serves the same ends on their side of the political spectrum.
This is not theory or conspiracy to me; I know some of those editors and they know of me and my work, but as my perspective serves neither side of the political industrial complex, the two-party duopoly, they, for the most part, have not allowed my byline to appear in their publications to counter faulty positions that I saw were rising dangerously in the public discourse. Now that discourse has become a tidal wave.
But in the Digital Distributed system you relay and relate, Bradley, there is more room for exercising cultural agency, being a content entrepreneur, building alliances and one's own following, etc. Thank goodness for that, because I've long since stopped trying to get my byline into the media of the Blue Church, as they die an increasingly rapid death. The social discord that they are not only covering but enabling is evidence of the death rattle of a dying system. I have no doubt that the folks here and in similar private groups in favor of the developmental advance of consciousness, culture, and society are seeding the needed new and shaping its vision and horizons of aspiration.
Now back to the discussion of race and related issues. I'd appreciate you being clearer about a few items. Who specifically do you see enacting the guile to present "racist" and "racism" as having two different meanings for the purpose of social domination? I tend toward autonomy in the Influence Matrix also, but am not clear who you mean as enacting the guile and who the dupes (the targeted populations) are.
Which leads me to your penultimate para:
The entirety of the discussion about these terms is intended to influence the social structures, indeed, that is what words themselves are for. It is the redefinition of those words to adjust the targeting of the instruments of social oppression that can be the only intention for uttering them. This is how "social transformation" (is intended to take) place by these individuals (who utter such phrases). This can only be an intentional act.
While I agree with the use of Gramsci's hegemony in relation to the anti-racist ideology, I also--in my individual autonomy--resist an overly 3rd-person, structural analysis. I think an Integral approach to relating reality incorporates 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person in the framing, as much as possible and appropriate.
So in case you are specifically alluding to me and my words as presented in the letters as having the intent of "adjust[ing] the targeting of the instruments of social oppression" for the sake of "social transformation" I would say this:
I am not so arrogant and presumptive to think that my stance of a "non-racial" identity will bring social transformation. I present it to clarify my own stance and to give another frame for others to consider, others who have the critical intelligence to make up their own minds. In the course I'm teaching on Cultural Intelligence, I make it clear that I'm not after indoctrination. (That's one reason I resist anti-racist ideology.) I am after people becoming more aware of the very process of racialization, which is how race became a category that's now socially embedded as part of what John Vervaeke calls the "cultural cognitive grammar."
Once people see and understand that process, they can decide for themselves whether they want to continue buying into the popular conception of race, which I argue has done far, far more harm than good, and is an idea we can better do without in what some might call an Integral or Metamodern stage of development.
I'm presenting ideas in a marketplace of ideas in which my position is in a clear minority--no pun intended. While I'd hope my position would achieve a critical mass/tipping point, I certainly am not belaboring under any illusion of this happening anytime soon.
But I for damn sure can exercise my agency as a multi-generation Black American citizen to strive for it--as an ancestral imperative.
Best,Greg Thomas
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I certainly appreciated that treatment of the topic, which inspired me to a certain extent.
It appears that efforts to equate "whiteness" (an immutable characteristic of individuals) to "racist" (a mutable characteristic) are intended to shame individuals who disagree with a particular social agenda of the groups and individuals making the equation.
In terms of TOK, specifically the Influence Matrix, people generating this narrative are seeking submission of those (dare I say) "whites" who dare disagree with the social designs by using this narrative to generate shame (on the 11th floor) and submission (on the 11th floor and on the 12th floor) to dominate the 12th floor social organizational schema.
There is a suggestion in the writing to which I am responsive that this is somehow "incidental" or "accidental" that the words "racist" and "racism" should be "coincidentally" having two different meanings. I would argue that this is a product of guile, and intentional action to achieve social domination, and subjugation of a targeted population. This would be a confession of my personal bias, of course, which trends strongly towards "autonomy" in the Influence Matrix.
I will justify my interpretation a bit, for the benefit of those who are utterly appalled by my position on this:
The entirety of the discussion about these terms is intended to influence the social structures, indeed, that is what words themselves are for. It is the redefinition of those words to adjust the targeting of the instruments of social oppression that can be the only intention for uttering them. This is how "social transformation" (is intended to take) place by these individuals (who utter such phrases). This can only be an intentional act.
I thank you for the generosity of spirit for having read that.
Bradley
Bradley H. Werrell, D.O. - This email is private and copyrighted by the author.
############################On Friday, October 23, 2020, 05:43:57 AM MST, Brad Kershner <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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Thank you Gregg and Greg! I am steeped in racism/anti-racism discourse in K-12 education, and I will be on the Growing Down Podcast soon to discuss postmodern and post-postmodern/integral anti-racism, and this is exactly the kind of analysis that needs to be shared more widely! Super clear and helpful - thank you!
########################################################Hi TOK List,
I wanted to share this excellent correspondence between Greg Thomas and Vince Fakhoury Horn on the question of whether all white people are racist?:
https://letter.wiki/conversation/964.
My view on this topic is strongly aligned with Greg’s. I will offer a few thoughts and encourage folks to check it out. First, to build off the exchange that Joe started yesterday, I think it is essential to differentiate analyses that take place at the social aggregate level (12th floor) from the individual human person level (11th floor). This is particularly the case with the concept of racism, because it has (at least!) two fundamentally different meanings. One meaning is at the 11th floor level. That is, when someone either explicitly endorses the belief that race is real and that some races are inherently better than others. There are also implicit biases and prejudices whereby a person operates to favor one race over another, even as he may proclaim that he is not racist. These are individual or small group level analyses. Then there is the social aggregate level, which is the structure of society and social forces. We can clearly see that the US was founded as a racist society in that slavery was initially built into the fabric of the social arrangement. It is also the case that the founding fathers were brilliant, flawed men who were dependent on racism and by and large they recognized it--at least in its brutal form--to be inherently unjust. Greg brilliantly speaks to these issues when he asks us to reflect on which side of the founding of our country do we choose to align.
With this frame, we can now come back to the fact that the dynamics of racism are very different at the 11th floor of human person individual versus 12th floor of social structure. Think of it this way. The US was founded largely by Christians. Indeed, the founding documents highlight the Creator and to this day we have the attorney general stating that our rights (and thus American identity) derive from God. Now consider the fact that my family lineage can trace its presence in the United States back to the Revolutionary War (my Dad, a professional historian, did a family history). Given these social aggregate facts, now consider the claim: I am Christian. Now there are some ways in which it this has echoes of the truth. It is not accidental that I soaked my theory in images of the Tree of Knowledge and Garden and talk about redemption in the 21st Century. This frames my intuitive sense making far more than the plethora of Hindu gods. This is because some of the deep grammar of my sense making has been shaped by the Judeo-Christian culture that I grew up in. But does that mean that I AM a Christian in meaningful sense of the word? Of course not! I have never believed in a Christian God or that Christ is my savior who died for our sins and was then resurrected. I have never entered a church as a believer and I have never enacted any of the practices and rituals that would identify me as such. I think you would be hard pressed to find a serious Christian who would think of me as such.
Let’s apply this frame to race. I was taught very early by my socially liberal, educated parents that racism was evil. I then learned in undergraduate back in the late 1980s how to unpack my invisible knapsack (I think I read it the year it came out or the following year). It was by getting exposure to those ideas that I could see, indeed, that the structure of racism was part of my background. The echoes were clearly there and to become aware of them was powerful and enlightening (as well as guilt inducing). I had a similar set of insights pertaining to feminism. Such are the awakenings that happen when one has, as I did, an excellent mentor in social forces (Joe M was my favorite professor in undergrad)! Notice here that I grew and changed. This is, of course, something that 12th floor analyses, with their macro/aggregate view, generally fail to see. The aggregate concept “white people” fails to see both individual differences (I am quite different than the white neighbor down the street who sometimes puts out his confederate flag and plasters Trump signs on everything he owns) and differences in individuals across time (I had more implicit biases and prejudices in high school than I do now). These are analysis for the 11th floor (i.e., human psychology; many define personality as the science of individual differences).
Let me conclude this by saying my heart has long sided with the better angels of the Founding Fathers. As a citizen of the US, I am tainted by racism and it lurks in the shadows of implicit frames that, even to this day, I might be blind to. But to say I am racist is, IMO, misguided at many levels. Most obviously, it confuses the two primary meanings of the word and appropriate application. That is, it twists the meaning at the 12th floor level and then applies it to me (11th floor). The flaw can be seen in the claim I am Christian, which I think everyone would agree is largely nonsense. The bottom line is that we should not confuse the 12th floor context of our socialization with the 11th floor analysis of our individual souls.
Thank you, Greg, for your deep, rich, and nuanced views of this crucial issue.
Best,
Gregg
___________________________________________
Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Graduate Psychology
216 Johnston Hall
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
(540) 568-7857 (phone)
(540) 568-4747 (fax)
Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.Check out the Unified Theory Of Knowledge homepage at:
https://www.unifiedtheoryofknowledge.org/
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