“Can a Democratic Community Maintain Open Borders?”

Here’s the April forum of “Ethical Issues in Our Times.”.  Feel free to share this with any people you think may be interested. 

“Can a Democratic Community Maintain Open Borders?”

There are many who claim that the United States should open its borders to all who wish to enter. Others say we should welcome those who are seeking to better their standard of living. Still others say we have a moral obligation only to those who are fleeing oppression? While there are those who insist that we should keep our borders closed until we have adequately addressed the needs of our current population. Then there are many who argue that we need more immigrants to sustain, or fuel, our economic growth, and avoid economic stagnation. And still others think that we already have enough people, with some even arguing that more people – especially if they aspire to a “decent standard of living” – will only further the destructive pressure on our environment. Join us in discussing this vital and pressing issue. 

Join us in discussing these pressing social issues, in a discussion led by Dr. David Sprintzen, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Long Island University. Please be advised: Because of recent unpleasant interruptions, our zoom will be closed at 7:10pm, and no one will be allowed to join thereafter.   

This is the April installment of “Ethical Issues in OurTimes”: a product of the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island. 

Thursday, April 6th, from 7-9pm on zoom at:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/896985586

The Abolition of ‘Women’?

A number of academics, uber-progressives, transgender activists, civil liberties organizations and medical organizations are working toward denying women their humanity, reducing them to a mix of body parts and gender stereotypes.

Even the word “women” has become verboten. Previously a commonly understood term for half the world’s population, the word had a specific meaning tied to genetics, biology, history, politics and culture. No longer. In its place are unwieldy terms like “pregnant people,” “menstruators” and “bodies with vaginas.”

Planned Parenthood, once a stalwart defender of women’s rights, omits the word “women” from its home page. NARAL Pro-Choice America has used “birthing people” in lieu of “women.” The American Civil Liberties Union, a longtime defender of women’s rights, last month tweeted its outrage over the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade as a threat to several groups: “Black, Indigenous and other people of color, the L.G.B.T.Q. community, immigrants, young people.” It left out those threatened most of all: women. Talk about a bitter way to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

The noble intent behind omitting the word “women” is to make room for the relatively tiny number of transgender men and people identifying as nonbinary who retain aspects of female biological function and can conceive, give birth or breastfeed. But despite a spirit of inclusion, the result has been to shove women to the side.

Women, of course, have been accommodating. They’ve welcomed transgender women into their organizations. They’ve learned that to propose any space just for biological women in situations where the presence of males can be threatening or unfair — rape crisis centers, domestic abuse shelters, competitive sports — is currently viewed by some as exclusionary. If there are other marginalized people to fight for, it’s assumed women will be the ones to serve other people’s agendas rather than promote their own.

But, can you blame the sisterhood for feeling a little nervous? For wincing at the presumption of acquiescence? For worrying about the broader implications? For wondering what kind of message we are sending to young girls about feeling good in their bodies, pride in their sex and the prospects of womanhood? For essentially ceding to another backlash?

Women didn’t fight this long and this hard only to be told we couldn’t call ourselves women anymore. This isn’t just a semantic issue; it’s also a question of moral harm, an affront to our very sense of ourselves.

It wasn’t so long ago — and in some places the belief persists — that women were considered a mere rib to Adam’s whole. Seeing women as their own complete entities, not just a collection of derivative parts, was an important part of the struggle for sexual equality.

But here we go again, parsing women into organs. Last year the British medical journal The Lancet patted itself on the back for a cover article on menstruation. Yet instead of mentioning the human beings who get to enjoy this monthly biological activity, the cover referred to “bodies with vaginas.” It’s almost as if the other bits and bobs — uteruses, ovaries or even something relatively gender-neutral like brains — were inconsequential. That such things tend to be wrapped together in a human package with two X sex chromosomes is apparently unmentionable.

“What are we, chopped liver?” a woman might be tempted to joke, but in this organ-centric and largely humorless atmosphere, perhaps she would be wiser not to.

Those women who do publicly express mixed emotions or opposing views are often brutally denounced for asserting themselves. (Google the word “transgender” combined with the name Martina Navratilova, J.K. Rowling or Kathleen Stock to get a withering sense.) They risk their jobs and their personal safety. They are maligned as somehow transphobic or labeled TERFs, a pejorative that may be unfamiliar to those who don’t step onto this particular Twitter battlefield. Ostensibly shorthand for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist,” which originally referred to a subgroup of the British feminist movement, “TERF” has come to denote any woman, feminist or not, who persists in believing that while transgender women should be free to live their lives with dignity and respect, they are not identical to those who were born female and who have lived their entire lives as such, with all the biological trappings, societal and cultural expectations, economic realities and safety issues that involves.

But in a world of chosen gender identities, women as a biological category don’t exist. Some might even call this kind of thing erasure.

When not defining women by body parts, misogynists on both ideological poles seem determined to reduce women to rigid gender stereotypes. The formula on the right we know well: Women are maternal and domestic — the feelers and the givers and the “Don’t mind mes.” The unanticipated newcomers to such retrograde typecasting are the supposed progressives on the fringe left. In accordance with a newly embraced gender theory, they now propose that girls — gay or straight — who do not self-identify as feminine are somehow not fully girls. Gender identity workbooks created by transgender advocacy groups for use in schools offer children helpful diagrams suggesting that certain styles or behaviors are “masculine” and others “feminine.”

Didn’t we ditch those straitened categories in the ’70s?

The women’s movement and the gay rights movement, after all, tried to free the sexes from the construct of gender, with its antiquated notions of masculinity and femininity, to accept all women for who they are, whether tomboy, girly girl or butch dyke. To undo all this is to lose hard-won ground for women — and for men, too.

Those on the right who are threatened by women’s equality have always fought fiercely to put women back in their place. What has been disheartening is that some on the fringe left have been equally dismissive, resorting to bullying, threats of violence, public shaming and other scare tactics when women try to reassert that right. The effect is to curtail discussion of women’s issues in the public sphere

But women are not the enemy here. Consider that in the real world, most violence against trans men and women is committed by men but, in the online world and in the academy, most of the ire at those who balk at this new gender ideology seems to be directed at women.

It’s heartbreaking. And it’s counterproductive.

excerpted from Pamela Paul’s article in NYT 7/3/22

“On Saving Our Democracy”

Here’s the youtube link to my 9/19/21 talk at the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island on Saving Our Democracy. It includes a link to my article on “Race In America”.

 
https://youtu.be/XyZxZlewln4

Reflections on Received Comments on Race

There is no question that the concept of race is deeply embedded in our collective consciousness, so much so that we even speak, in these responses and in the larger society, as if we are talking about a coherent reality – something that is objectively there, and which we must not fail to recognize, acknowledge, and whose consequences we must take into consideration, for example, in addressing racial inequities.

But consider, what determines a race? It can’t really be one’s color. Many people from India are darker than many American “Blacks”, for example. And so are people of other ethnicities. Is it one’s parentage, then? How many, and how far back? I know that some racists have defined people as Black who have one great great grandparent who was “Black,” but does that make any sense? For one, do we want to let such racist definitions be determinative? What makes 1/32 of one’s parentage sufficient to define one’s race? Is this because so-called genetic “blackness” is contaminating? Why not as much say that it is powerful? But why, then, let others define one’s race?

And if 1/32 makes no sense, why should 1/16th, or 1/8th, or 1/4th, or even 1/2th make sense? It would make more sense to at least define such a one as biracial, or multiracial. Or even more, in most of those cases, given the proportions of “genetic parentage”, to define the person as “white”, or whatever the other majority of their parentage was? Or then again, why not allow one to choose their preferred “race,” since the racial ascription is essentially arbitrary, when it is not actually explicitly “racist?”

If we think we need to continue to organize people in accordance with color, in order to address individual or systemic injustice, we can, of course, do that, though the classifications will be somewhat confused – and perhaps even a bit arbitrary – as they are somewhat now, as, for example, when we speak of injustice to BIPOC groups, and even further, sometimes include Moslems, and others, such as LGBTQ, etc.

But this shows we don’t need the fabricated concept of race to address injustice. Why can we not, for example, consider the treatment given to African-Americans? To Haitian-Americans? To Latinos? To any number of ethnicities, nationalities, religions, or any other objective category that we feel the need to distinguish for understanding, appreciation, or equitability? These are all objective categories of personal identification, with which individuals are more or less free to choose to identify with, or not to identify with. But none of them are categories created to denigrate them, and with which one is identified by an essentially arbitrary determination that was established and maintained by their “racist” oppressors. I welcome further comment on these observations.

Should we abolish the category of race?

Should we abolish the category of race? If not, why not? 

Historical analysis makes a good case that the concept of races, bluntly defined by their skin color, and more abstractly by their “blood” lineage, was initially created in order to justify the brutal life-long enslavement of Africans. They were to be the perfect, entirely subordinated, effectively unlimited, labor supply for the highly profitable production first of sugar, then of tobacco, cotton, and other products of the developing new world plantation economy. 

Hence, the category of race – initially, primarily of blacks and whites – was socially constructed for the purposes of providing a pseudo-scientific justification of extreme racial exploitation and oppression. For several centuries, purportedly scientific theories were elaborated and developed, expanding racial categories, and building a hierarchical system of racial categories that inevitably placed the “white” European, or even Anglo-Saxon, as the pinnacle of human development, and the “black” African at the bottom of rung, just above the Apes or Orangutans. 

But modern the sciences of evolutionary theory, and particularly biology and its astounding advances in genetics, have shown these racist theories to be historical errors at best, ideological fabrications at worst. It is now patently clear that there is no natural scientific basis whatsoever for any such racial categories. They were created to justify the life-long enslavement and degrading treatment of the imported African workforce. And that socially created reality of race worked itself into the social institutions and individual consciousness of the citizens of the industrializing world, first in the Western world, and then spreading more widely.  

Since scientific investigation has fairly conclusively established that race is not a biologically significant category; and since it seems quite likely that the historically developed category of race was in fact created by the Europeans in the process of their settlement of the Western Hemisphere, and this was done in order to provide a justification for the complete enslavement of the African workforce, in addition also for the systematic displacement of the indigenous native population; and, further, since the very determination of what constitutes membership in a particular race results from an essentially arbitrary decision concerning the amount of pigmentation in the skin of one’s ancestors; therefore, why should we not work to abolish the very concept of race, and seek to deny it any official or legal recognition? And if not, why not? 

Is this a socially constructed category that has developed significant intrinsic value for members of some, or all, purported races? Or has it actually become politically useful for some? Or threatening to others? Has it become too historically ingrained in our minds or characters, institutions and practices, for good or ill consequences, to be completely replaced by more objectively substantive categories such as ethnicity, nationality, cultural or linguistic identity, and religion? 

I pose this as a serious question worthy of thoughtful exploration, for which I invite thoughtful comments. 

Some Reflections on Race, Racism, and Moral Responsibility

In a recent EHS Platform presentation on Anti-racism, the speaker made two central claims. First, she asserted that American society is systematically racist, with every institution having been shaped by racism; and that, therefore, the attitudes, values, and behavior of every person in our society, having been shaped by this racism, is therefore racist, whether he or she is aware of it or not. 

Second, each of us has only two possibilities. Either we are active anti-racists – purifying our attitudes and values, making amends for our past behavior, and actively challenging existing institutions; or we are racists, however well-intentioned we believe or claim to be. Our actions and interactions will be marked by racism, even at its best pervaded by racial insensitivity and micro-aggressions. It is, therefore, not morally acceptable to simply mind one’s own business, to devote one’s self to one’s career or business, attending to one’s friends and family, even if we conduct ourself in an apparently moral and normal manner. Because by so doing we are still engaging in, and thus reinforcing and reproducing structural racism, whatever our intentions or the personal quality of our daily actions.

This worldview is the perspective that undergirds the wider social movement that has also found expression in such popular best sellers as How To Be An Anti-Racist, and White Fragility. It insists that every person must make the personal choice to become an active Anti-Racist, or they are, whether by intent or avoidance, engaging in and perpetuating racism, and are there racists. Being born in this culture of pervasive structural racism, according to this view, there is no alternative. It’s an Either/Or. You can’t escape being either a racist or an anti-racist. It’s an overriding moral imperative.

That is why I posed the question for the recent April public forum: “Anti-Racism: Moral Imperative or Partisan Political Program?” Stimulated by this discussion, Arthur Dobrin developed the following general theoretical observations, followed by a series of questions as to what might actually be meant by racism, anti-racism, institutional racism and moral responsibility. Hopefully, these comments and questions will contribute to our thinking about these complex issues.    

Introduction by David Sprintzen.

Arthur Dobrin’s reflections.

The human species is highly social but individually weak thereby creating in-groups who cooperate for survival and out-groups, which are perceived as threats. The boundaries separating groups constantly shift as new alliances are formed and old ones dissolved. 

Everyone is born into an existing culture with its own history, values, assumptions and psychological pre-dispositions. Cultures define who is part of the in-group and who is not. History causes cultures to redefine themselves, as well as who is on the outside and who is now on the inside.

America is complex because it began by largely exterminating the indigenous people, then occupying the cleared land with people from different cultures either voluntarily as immigrants or with people who arrived against their will either in part or in whole, as indentured or enslaved people. 

Unlike more stable and homogeneous societies, from its very beginning America has been unstable and heterogeneous. Both major strands of America’s beginning, as a commercial enterprise in Jamestown, or as a religious retreat in New England, have both reinforced and challenged existing prejudicial norms. New York was founded as both a commercial venture and religious haven and historically it has been in the forefront of expanding the boundaries of social and religious tolerance and exhibiting some of the worst of its prejudices.

With these background sketches in mind, here are some of the things I’ve thought about after last night’s Meet Up. 

1. Does systemic racism exist?

         a. how do you define it?

         b. is racism defined only as it relates to Black people?

        c. can one group of people of color exhibit racism towards another group of people of             color?

2. If it does exist, in what way does it implicate those who are a person not of color?

         a. are all non-people of color guilty to the same degree, in the same way?

3. What is a non-people of color to do to overcome systemic racism?        

         a. is awareness sufficient?

         b. is calling it out sufficient?

         d. is acknowledging it in one’s own behavior sufficient?

4. If action is required, what should be done?

         a. where you live?

         b. where you send you children to school?

         c. where you shop?

         d. where you worship?

         e. where you recreate?

         f. where you work?

         g. who you associate with?

         h. political support?

                  1. is voting sufficient?

                  2. is letter writing/petition signing sufficient?

                  3. is lobbying sufficient?

5. how does racism rank relative to other social biases? 

         a. sexism

         b. classism

         d. LGBTQism

         e. anti-Semitism

         f. ethno-centrism

         g. ageism

         h. Abilism         

6. questions similar to #2-4 can be asked in relation to #5

Questions for further reflection.

1. A white medical researcher dedicates him or her entire career to medical research thus producing a vaccine for Covid that will be used by our medical system which is said to be pervaded by systematic racial bias. Is he or she racist? Are his or her actions racist?

2. A intentionally acclaimed cellist — such as Yo-Yo Ma — has devoted his or her life to the mastery of that instrument in order perform classical music that for the most part is performed before classical audiences that are primarily white and of more than average income. Is that cellist racist? Is his or her actions racist? Is he or she contributing to institutional racism?   

3. A white student attends a college with very few Black students but joins the Black Student Union. Is he being anti-racist?

4. A person donates 10 percent of her income to charitable causes, for example, National Public Radio, Green Peace, the local food pantry, her church, Amnesty International and the Human Rights Campaign. Should she divert some of her contributions to an organization devoted exclusively to a Black cause?

5. If a white person volunteers for Latino justice, does this qualify as anti-racist?

6. If a person patronizes Chinese, Mexican, and Mediterranean restaurants, where there is rarely a Black customer, should she consider eating elsewhere?

7. A person is committed to buying locally but none of the shops are Black-owned. Should she consider traveling elsewhere to shop?

8. Is it anti-racist to read books that examine racism if the books are written by white people?

9. If a white person attends folk music concerts but not concerts by Black performers, is she being racist?

10. Is a white person who acknowledges systemic racism but believes that racism is best addressed by changing individuals’ attitudes and behavior racist?

11. If a white person’s hair is naturally curly, is it racist to wear it as an Afro or in dreads?

12. If a Black and a white candidate are running against each other and the Black candidate admires Clarence Thomas and other Black conservatives while the white candidate is a liberal (and there are no other choices), what should a white person do in this election?

13. If a white person chooses to move to a Black neighborhood knowing that this could be the beginning of gentrification, is this racist?

14. Is it racist if a white person seeks out a Black person to befriend?

15. A physician rarely sees a person of color or has professional affiliations with persons of color because she specializes in Tay-Sachs disease, which affects mainly people of Jewish ancestry. Is her practice racist?

16. In the classroom of a white teacher who supports BLM and also believes in open discussions, two white students get into a debate about Black Lives Matter vs. all lives matter. Is she racist if she doesn’t state her opinion?

17. A white student rejects her local high school, which has many Black students, to attend a public school that is dedicated to his interest in science that has very few Blacks but many Asians. Is he racist?

18. If a wealthy Black person makes indisputably demeaning and disparaging remarks to a white delivery man who responds in kind, is it racist for a white person to sympathize with the worker?

19. Is it racist or anti-racist for a lawyer to quote verbatim before the jury and public the racist language used by a defendant?

20. A woman walking alone on a deserted street sees a group of young Black men on the sidewalk and continues after crossing to the other side of the street. Does her race determine whether the action is racist?

21. Is it racist for a white returned Peace Corps Volunteer, who lived three years in Africa, to wear Kente cloth dress?

22. A podcast series is dropped because the white host once opposed the formation of a union that was widely supported by Black workers. Several of the writers and directors of the podcast are people of color who have also lost their jobs as ‘collateral damage.’ Were those who canceled the podcast anti-racist or racist?

23. After hearing Mavis Staples and other Black singers’ rendition of Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times,” a white entertainer covered the song. Was she racist for doing so because much of Foster’s 19th music was written for and performed in minstrel shows, although this particular song was not?

24. Is it racist for a white person to laugh at the jokes of a Black comedian whose performance, which is before a Black audience, centers around poking fun at the foibles of Black people?

25. A series of meetings “intended to give white people a space to learn about and process their awareness of, and complicity in, unjust systems without harming their friends of color” is for white people only. Is the program racist? 

26. A white person lives in a community that is more than 50% African American. Is this non-racist if the average cost of a house is $1 million-plus?

27. A white student attends an elite HBCU where tuition is about $50,000 per year. Is the student anti-racist?

“Reflections on Race in the United States”

1. From practically the inception of the European settlement of North America the emerging societies have been marked by racial oppression, first of the indigenous population, and then of the imported and enslaved Africans. For almost the entire history of the United States, this state of affairs was taken as normal, and quite acceptable. Only slowly, over time, did white voices begin to be raised, first against the institution of slavery, and then more basically against the treatment as second class citizens of both of these oppressed races. But never has there been official public acknowledgement of these pervasive crimes, and the appropriate assumption of collective national responsibility for them. It is certainly long past time for such action, and the reparations appropriate thereto. 
2. The challenge before us as a nation is, therefore, profound and historic. It is to build a public consciousness and consequent effective majoritarian movement for social and racial justice that will finally remedy these deep-seated and pervasive injustices.    
3. But if we are to successfully address these challenges, we need to build the widespread social support that any such profound movement of public opinion and official policy directed toward such collective national healing requires. I have been troubled by the tendency of many progressive groups to speak in simplistic and ideological terms, while creating a climate of group think in which sensitive and thoughtful discussion of values, policies, and programs are effectively suppressed. But it is vital that we think and speak with the sensitivity, care, and appropriate nuance about issues as emotionally charged as those of race, of its intimate connection to our personal and social identity as “Americans”, and of the place of each of us within the unfolding drama that is the history of the United States. It is in that spirit of mutual respect, cultural sensitivity, commitment to human dignity, appreciation of historical context and the complexities of social and institutional development, and our determined and abiding commitment to advancing that inclusive vision of social justice, that I offer the following remarks. 
4. It should be obvious that the US was founded for the most part by Europeans, primarily English, and then Scots-Irish, who effectively invaded North America – they didn’t “discover” it since it wasn’t lost, however new it was to them. They then proceeded to practically exterminate the indigenous population, and build a good part of their society on the enslaved labor of Blacks purchased from Africa. As they expanded across the continent, economic growth required a rapidly expanding population which widened the pool of primarily European Immigration, first from Great Britain and Northern Europe, then southern, and Eastern Europe. In addition, from the mid-19th Century on the US incorporated a significant number of Mexicans in the process of appropriating large areas of the now United States Southwest and Far West. Only in the later part of the 19th and early 20th centuries did the European transplanted civilization of the United States expand further to include significant numbers of people from Asia. 
5. Nothing that I have so far said is particularly controversial. It is thus quite clear that the United States (and to a large extent Canada, also), was founded, controlled, and developed primarily by Europeans. Thus it was a civilization essentially created by white people, who, in the process, imported and enslaved Africans and drove the native population into ghettos, euphemistically called reservations. It is thus understandable and completely non-surprising that, as the book White Fragility correctly asserts, the United States established “a society in which all key political, economic, social, and cultural institutions are overwhelmingly controlled by white people.” Throughout human history, the politically primary, culturally dominate, and majority population have always determined the structure of normality in the societies they controlled. Thus, there was nothing exceptional about this state of affairs, in which “white control of society became … ‘normal’ or ‘standard’” in the United States.  
6. What was probably exceptional, however, and certainly completely indefensible, was precisely the nature and extent to which the developing American society was built upon the systematic destruction of the culture of the indigenous population and the enslavement, systematic degradation and pervasive exploitation of its Black population. 
7. As Peter Nabokov comments, reviewing Jeffrey Ostler’s carefully researched study, Surviving Genocide, “For the new republic and its pioneering settlers to thrive, the aboriginal citizens had to be displaced, removed, extirpated, eliminated, exterminated….(thus) during the formative years of our republic and beyond, there was a mounting, merciless, uncoordinated but aggressively consistent crusade to eliminate the native residents of the United States from their homelands by any means necessary ….” (NYR, LXVII, #11, p. 52, “The Intent Was Genocide”, Peter Nabokov). 
8. A couple of illuminating examples of this attitude are provided by the notorious comments of two celebrated Northern Civil War Generals. Philip Sheridan’s statement that, “The only good Indians I know are dead,” was far from an unusual expression of prevailing sentiment. And similarly with General William Tecumseh Sherman’s directive that “his troops must confront the enemy Sioux ‘even to their extermination, men, women, and children.’” In short, the European invasion, conquest, and settlement of the North American continent involved the more or less explicit destruction of the civilization, and most of the people, that were native to the land. 
9. Further, white political domination produced, once again in the words of White Fragility, “centuries of history during which people of color (especially black people) were systematically enslaved, expropriated, disenfranchised, segregated, and marginalized.” While the nature of that degradation in the pre-Civil War period could vary from the gang labor plantations of South Carolina to the possibilities of domestic servitude in some northern communities, it became increasingly clear that legally, in the words of the infamous Dred Scott Decision of 1857, the Negro “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Blacks were to be treated as legal non-persons, chattel property, whose owners could do with them as they wished. And, of course, that is precisely what they all too often did. 
10. Then, after the Civil War, in spite of the legal abolition of slavery, and the constitutional guarantee of full voting citizenship for Blacks, racist attitudes continued to prevail, North and South, finding increasingly innovative and violent ways to institutionalize that racism, with Blacks treated, at best, as second-class citizens, when not further subjugated, exploited, oppressed, and even lynched. 
11. No adequate discussion of the history of the United States can fail to address these profound injustices. And no comprehensive current political programs should be developed that do not seriously attempt to address their on-going consequences. 
12. This sad history, nevertheless, should be seen as the United States’ unique development of slavery’s long history in the West. Even more, slavery is practically universal throughout all human history. It was certainly pervasive and accepted as normal in Africa long before the Europeans arrived. However, even though it is clearly approved of in both the Judeo-Christian Bible and the Islamic Koran, its racialization in early modern Europe is, to my mind, without historical precedent. With the possible exception of earlier suggestions in the development of Christian anti-Semitism, this racialization involved the claim that Africans were, somehow by nature, not only inherently inferior to whites, but not really fully human. Often, they were even identified with monkeys or orangutans, while the indigenous population of North America came to be viewed as nothing more than savages. Once you designate a group as less than, or even, non-human, it is not surprising that they can be considered as having no rights that humans need respect. Then you can feel free to treat them however you will. 
13. American racism emerged out of this historic development in early modern Christian Europe, that had its initial roots in large part in the Spanish Inquisition’s concern to insure the purity of blood of true Christians. Racial slavery and the Atlantic slave trade followed in its wake, growing with European overseas expansion, and fueling early European capitalist development, particularly with the wealth generated by the fantastically profitable sugar plantations, initially in the Caribbean, but then migrating to include rice, tobacco, and cotton plantations in North America.   
14. Here is not the place for an extensive discussion of the history of slavery and racial oppression. Rather, my concern is to understand the scope of the United States’ continuing struggle with racism, and its institutional operation, and to place it in its appropriate cultural context so that we may more adequately address its continuing significance. It is vitally important in discussions of race that we avoid falling into the trap of thinking that one race is inherently good, and another race is inherently bad. We must avoid viewing the world like the ancient Manichaeans, for whom the world was divided between the Forces of Light and the Forces of Darkness. A racialized Manichaeism of the good race and the bad race, endowing one race with intrinsic goodness or innocence, and another with intrinsic badness or evil, is just a reversed modern version of deplorable racist thinking. Such an either/or perspective is neither adequate nor constructive, but rather quite socially harmful, and in the long run politically self-defeating.
15. Perhaps nothing makes this clearer than considering some key facts concerning the early history of the Atlantic slave trade itself. As historians have now well documented, “European[s] and [the] white Americans who succeeded them did not capture and enslave people themselves. Instead they purchased slaves from African traders . . . . 
16. Sometimes African armies enslaved the inhabitants of conquered towns and villages. At other times, raiding parties captured isolated families or kidnapped individuals. As warfare spread to the interior, captives had to march for hundreds of miles to the coast where European traders awaited them. The raiders tied the captives together with rope or secured them with wooden yokes around their necks. It was a shocking experience, and many captives died from hunger, exhaustion, and exposure during the journey. Others killed themselves rather than submit to their fate, and the captors killed those who resisted….” (Hine, Hine, & Harold, The African-American Odyssey, 2ed., vol. 1, Prentice Hall, 2005, pp.27, 30)
17. African rulers “restricted the Europeans to a few points on the coast, while the kingdoms raided the interior to supply the Europeans with slaves . . . . Tribe stalked tribe, and eventually more than 20 million Africans would be kidnapped in their own homeland….” (Drescher and Engerman, Historical Guide to World Slavery, pp. 370-375) 
18. Historians estimate that ten million of these abducted Africans “‘never even made it to the slave ships. Most died on the march to the sea’—still chained, yoked, and shackled by their African captors—before they ever laid eyes on a white slave trader.” (Johnson, et al., Africans in America, pp. 69-70)   “The survivors were either purchased by European slave dealers or ‘instantly beheaded’ by the African traders ‘in sight of the [slave ship’s] captain’ if they could not be sold.” (Drescher and Engerman, p. 34)
19. In sum, “the idea of European responsibility for disrupting an Eden-like continent” rests on promoting “the false impressions that Europeans had themselves gone ashore to kidnap Africa’s people . . . . Africans had themselves captured and sold nearly all the people that Europeans had bought as slaves along the coast.” (Finkelman and Miller, Ed’s., MacMillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery, vol. 1, 1998, p. 34) Thus virtually all Africans brought forcibly to the Western Hemisphere in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been enslaved long before they left Africa. 
20. Let me reiterate, however, so that there is absolutely no misunderstanding. I do not report these facts in order to justify the role of Europeans involved in the slave trade. Nothing can justify their actions, which are outrageous, and completely morally indefensible. I only wish to underline the complicity of many communities, and particularly in this context, of the contribution of African tribes in order to make quite clear how indefensible and unjustifiable is the use of racialized categories and simple “black and white” Manichaean thinking for understanding and addressing the issues of race in America. 
21. In sum, as expert historical analysis makes quite clear, the history of the slave trade proves that everyone participated and everyone profited—whites and blacks; Christians, Muslims, and Jews; Europeans, Africans, Americans, and Latin Americans. Once we recognize the shared responsibility for sustaining and profiting from the Atlantic slave trade, we can turn our attention to what we must do together today to eradicate its corrosive legacy.
22. While it is obviously true, therefore, that it was a white European society that essentially built its American empire in significant part through the enslavement of black Africans, there is nothing in European whiteness that by nature predisposes them to oppress and subjugate, any more than there is anything that by nature predisposes black Africans to be enslaved. Clearly, there were numerous theoretical and pseudoscientific efforts developed, particularly in the West in the 19th Century, to provide a moral justification of such enslavement. Modern scientific research has, however, quite convincingly, and I believe definitively, refuted all aspects of such racialized “science.” The human race is one race, tracing its evolutionary origin to the east Africa of some two million years ago. And there are no biologically fundamental differences among humans across the globe today.
23. Nevertheless, in so far as racist attitudes continue to have a grasp on the minds and sentiments of far too many people, there remains a large receptive audience for such racialized propaganda. We have even seen it appear in the US in recent years in pseudoscientific studies of IQ and academic performance, to be used to justify racist policies. 
24. Perhaps not surprisingly, but unfortunately, there have also been counter-movements, even spurred by humanitarian sentiments, that have tended to demonize all white people as racists and oppressors, while often romanticizing oppressed blacks and native Americans. Some quite recent examples of such Manichaean “reverse racism” can be seen in such popular books as White Fragility, How To Be An Anti-Racist, and Journeys of Race, Color, & Culture. Consider a brief example – which could be in essence replicated in the others – from the latter book, which speaks of “the sin of Whiteness,” claiming that all “White People” are inescapably racist; that all have a common nature and a common way of thinking, while people of color similarly have a singular opposed narrative. But whiteness and blackness are not essential characteristics that define the natures of two distinct races, as if they were distinct species. It is neither correct nor constructive to promote such black and white racialization, however well-meaning may be the intent. 
25. Further, if we are to successfully address and redress this sad history of oppression, we need to maintain an historical perspective, one that does not simply demonize Western civilization, but also appreciates its accomplishments, particularly its continually expanding efforts on behalf of human rights and social justice. For example, it remains true, in spite of, and to some extent even because of, the indefensible exploitation of oppressed minorities, (even including at different times and places, Hispanics, Asians, and diverse Europeans) which I have described, that American society has been able to produce one of the wealthiest, most powerful societies, with one of the highest standards of living the world has ever seen. And that is true for practically all of its citizens, however unequally those benefits have been distributed. Using only one measure of that success, average life expectancy has essentially doubled since the founding of the United States. Currently that life expectancy, even for its generally and often systematically disadvantaged African-Americans, is significantly greater than that for the vast majority of people in today’s “Third World,” including sub-Saharan Africans. And I have said nothing of the effective institutions of representative government and official commitment to human rights, however flawed both of those are in their actual execution. I have further said nothing about the advances contributed by Eurasian civilization to: the scientific revolution, technological advances made possible by the quantum revolution in the natural sciences, as in communication and transportation, advances in industrial and food production, modern medicine, public health, and in the creative arts.
26. In short, Eurasian civilization, and particularly its “American” offshoot, has contributed unprecedented and truly astounding advances in the quality of life of the human species. And yes, this has been primarily the work of “privileged white people.” Unfortunately, however, this development has a tortured legacy, as I have clearly said and continually underscored, involving completely indefensible subjugation and exploitation, most particularly of many non-European peoples, and non more heinous than the indefensible enslavement and oppression of the ancestors of our current African-American citizens. The consequences of that legacy are, of course, still with us, in both personal and institutional forms. Those unacceptable consequences are the legitimate target of today’s mass protests, on behalf of Black lives, the rights of indigenous peoples, on behalf of gender diversity, and in numerous, diverse, and contested efforts to insure the effective implementation of equal and fair treatment for all people, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or gender identification. 
27. But it is important to note, however, that these struggles are undertaken in the effort to realize ideals and values which are themselves, for the most part, the product of that very same Eurasian civilization that gave birth to this United States in the first place. Those ideals were the product of centuries of political, social, economic, religious, and philosophical struggles. Struggles pursued by people of many nationalities, ethnicities, races, and religions, but who for the vast majority were also white people. However painful be our civilization’s legacy of indefensible historical oppression, its legacy of internal struggles against all forms of human enslavement, and for these higher ideals of human rights and equal justice before the law is truly unprecedented in the human history of all peoples. In what other civilization do you have such material advances in the quality of human life joined with such sustained and increasingly effective campaigns on behalf of the human rights and dignity of people of all races, religions, and ethnicities? 
28. One of the greatest of all Americans, and a particular hero of mine, was Frederick Douglass. I will not repeat his astounding career, a self-educated escaped slave who became a brilliant advocate for American blacks. I know of no more brilliant and chilling indictment of American racism than Douglass’ 1852 address “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” And yet, through all his years of struggle, he never lost his faith in that promise of America, of its ideals, of what he called in an 1883 address “making the nation’s life consistent with the nation’s creed.” And he maintained his faith and trust in, and commitment to, the numerous forces and people in the US working with him for social justice to the end of his life. 
29. We, residents of the US who were born in the late 20th or early 21st Centuries, are the inheritors of that complex and scarred tradition. We are responsible neither for its successes nor its failures, no more than are we responsible for who our parents were, nor for their economic and social position, nor for our genetic endowment, including the color of our skin. But as we mature, we do become increasingly responsible for what we do with the particular historical condition into which we find ourselves to have been “thrown,” to use the suggestive Existentialist expression. 
30. Being so born, we are all among the truly privileged, in comparison with most all people that have ever lived, as well as with the vast majority of those alive today. And that is basically true for the vast majority of people living in the United States today, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or system of belief. But, of course, those privileges are not shared equally – far from it!! And that leaves much for all of us to do: to address and correct those continuing injustices, and to make real and significant progress toward the equitable realization of those ennobling American ideals. 
31. But let me take a moment to talk about this notion of privilege, and particularly the increasingly popular discussions of “white privilege,” and the related notions of “white fragility” and “white supremacy.” Privilege means unearned benefit. Is there only one kind of unearned benefit in the world? Or many? For example, I feel blessed that I do not suffer from any debilitating inherited disease, from which many others unfortunately do suffer. There is nothing I did to earn that benefit, that privilege? What about you? Are you similarly privileged? Or are you one of the unfortunate in this matter? And if you are healthy, and black, are we entitled to say you are similarly privileged?
32. But, of course, one can benefit from many privileges, and also many disadvantages at the same time. For example, I had the misfortune to have a father who died when I was six years old, a mother who was certified paranoid-schizophrenic, and ultimately institutionalized. I had no significant supportive extended family, and, around the age of ten, experienced being evicted from the house, and displaced from the community, in which I had grown up. In these matters, I was clearly disadvantaged, to say the least. But certainly, there are many, even in the US, who have had it far worse. And certainly many, of all races, who were more fortunate. I do not mention these events to bemoan my fate, but only to point out that privileges and disadvantages come in many forms, and are not simply aligned in accord with the color of one’s skin, however significant that certainly is in many contexts. 
33. For example, is an unskilled white worker born and raised in an economically devastated former coal mining town in West Virginia, living amid the ruins of abandoned hills of coal slag, suffering the “deaths of despair” ravaging his community, privileged in comparison with an educated middle class black professional living in New York City? Does it make sense and is it humanely sensitive and personally respectful to claim that he benefits from “white privilege”? Of course, in most circumstances, all things being equal, even less qualified whites are likely to be treated better than more qualified blacks. That has certainly been true, even to this day, for example, in purchasing a house, in encountering the police, in dealing with the criminal justice system, in applying for a job – except perhaps in those few situations in which affirmative action requirements are at work. And all such examples of systemic racism must be brought to light and effectively remedied. But such wide spread and indefensible injustices do not exhaust, or simply define, American society. There are important counter movements, multi-racial and multi-ethnic, committed to rectify these injustices, and many social situations and groups in which all people are treated with respect and dignity.  
34. Let me offer a simple – and possibly trivial – thought experiment on privilege in America, if only to suggest the diversity of its manifestations. Who is more privileged, a black Christian or a white Atheist? Of course, it may depend where in America you live, and who your neighbors are. But, can you imagine the Supreme Court upholding the right of Atheists to deny service to a religious Christian? Or, can you imagine America electing a white atheist as President? Or even a black Christian? But wait a minute, didn’t they just do that? What should we make of that? Who even thought a few years ago that that might be possible?
35. As for the more recent views of White Fragility, they are still more dubious, making completely unsubstantiated claims about what all “white people believe.” The author claims “White people, … derive enormous material and psychological advantages from this racist organization of society—whether they believe they do or not.” I’ll leave you to apply this claim to the unemployed ex-coal miner possibly suffering from black lung disease, that I have described above. But the author further claims that “White beliefs in objectivity are closely related to the myth of individualism. Because white people believe that they are unique individuals unshaped by history or society, they also come to believe that their views of the world are entirely objective.” That claim is not only an example of that simplistic racialized thinking of which I have spoken, but actually reveals remarkable ignorance of some of the most obvious facts of American intellectual history. To quite briefly explain: 1) By all accounts, the premier philosophical movement in America is Pragmatism, and the foremost exponents of that movement, particularly C.S.Peirce, John Dewey and G.H.Mead, directed the brunt of their critical analyses against that very doctrine of Individualism. More to the current point, in a book I published more than a decade ago, I devoted an entire chapter to a critique of Individualism. No, all white people are not devotees to Individualism. 2) Concerning her claim that “objectivity” is the ideology of white “individualists,” we can observe that numerous complex and subtle inquiries have been undertaken over the last several hundred years to understand the possibilities and limitations of the intellectual ideal or goal of scientific objectivity. Increasingly, more and more thinkers (regardless of race) have come to understand the perspectival limitations built into every inquiry, while valuing objectivity as an ideal to pursue in the service of truth. Does the author of White Fragility, when she claims that objectivity is simply a white man’s ideal, not mean us to understand that what she is saying is objectively true because it describes the real situation of white people, or should we see it as simply her partisan perspective and personal racial stigmatization? Thus, 3) To claim that she knows what all “White People” believe, and that they have to believe what she says they do because they are “White People,” is to attribute to each and every “White Person” a fixed nature and a label, regardless of what they say or do. How does that differ in principle from what the Nazis said about Jewish nature, or what Racists or Eugenicists said about Black nature? No, it is pure and simple racism, even if coming from the ‘other side” of the political debate, and meant to be sympathetic to the condition of oppressed minorities. And no less faulty, and socially reprehensible for that. 
36. The incoherence of the Manichaean reasoning of White Fragility was nicely pointed out by Carlos Lozada, the Washington Post’s nonfiction book critic, who noted that with Robin DiAngelo’s circular reasoning “any alternative perspective or counterargument is defeated by the concept itself. Either white people admit their inherent and unending racism and vow to work on their white fragility, in which case DiAngelo was correct in her assessment, or they resist such categorizations or question the interpretation of a particular incident, in which case they are only proving her point.”
37. Then there’s the issue of “white supremacy.” Clearly there are racists who actively subscribe to that belief. And many who have joined in organized movements to promote their beliefs, and, if possible, to impose them on American society. But there are also many Americans, hopefully, including a significant majority of white people, who do not share those beliefs. Many of them are even deeply and personally offended by such beliefs, and have actively organized and mobilized in opposition to all forms of white supremacy. In fact, I personally know many individuals and organizations that are continuing to devote much time, effort, and emotion to this struggle. So it is both incorrect, even offensive, and certainly not politically effective, to claim that “white supremacy” defines American society. Further, it is wrong and self-destructive to say that white supremacy is in “the DNA” of America. DNA refers to the inherited nature of a person, or people. It would be racist to claim that that is the essential nature of all white Americans. But I think it is clear from what I have said, that such a description of an essential “white” human nature is false, and further, that we can, and many have been struggling for many years effectively to, change the prevailing patterns of race relations in America. The problem is not in our supposed DNA – where science has well established the essential biological unity of the human species – rather, the problem, and the possibilities for constructive change, are in our confrontation with our historic practice in the light of our historic ideals.  
38. Turning, finally, to more practical political concerns. We have heard quite recently many claim that the 99% of Americans have been victimized by the 1%, that “Main Street” is being taken advantage of by “Wall Street.” That suggests a stark class divide in the US, in which a small quite wealthy few individuals and corporations have been “calling the shots” at the expense of the vast majority. That majority is quite diverse, racially, ethnically, religiously, even regionally and culturally. Clearly some are more privileged than others in many different ways. Yet all are seriously disadvantaged compared to the 1%, not to speak of the 1/10th of 1%. If the 99% are to effectively correct this situation, it will require the effective unification and mobilization of a significant majority of the 99%, not their racial division.
39. There is no question that as a nation we have serious and often systematic injustices that have lasted far too long, and it is well past time for sustained efforts to rectify them. They must be recognized, publicly acknowledged, and wide public support generated on behalf of movements for systemic change. But we must, at the same time, not unnecessarily alienate and offend the broad public whose support is vital if our efforts are to succeed. We should appreciate and treasure those hard fought historic accomplishments and noble ideals that have made possible the profound enhancements of human living that have also been the result of European, and particularly of American, civilization. If we are to build that movement for deep and sustained progressive social change, we need to avoid all forms of racist, Manichaean, black and white thinking, and the denigration of people of any race, so many of whom can be, if they are not already, actually committed to working on behalf of the equitable enhancement of human living for everyone.   

Promoting a Progressive Strategy in the Presidential Campaign

Promoting a Progressive Strategy in the Presidential Campaign

With his incompetent response to the virus and its disastrous economic consequences finally undermining important segments of his previously impregnable political base, Trump is becoming increasingly desperate facing what seems to be a looming electoral disaster. Further, he has shown absolutely no appreciation for, or sympathy with, the growing protests against racial oppression that has so powerfully emerged in the aftermath of the video showing the police murder of George Floyd.

Rather, his response has increasingly been to focus his election strategy on seeking to mobilize fear of growing social lawlessness purportedly driven by radical leftists. His particular target has become suburban whites, who are to be made fearful of increasingly violent protests, purportedly led by inner city black and brown people.

These protests are themselves the long overdue efforts, initiated by the Black Lives Matter movement, to mobilize America to finally come to terms with its history of racial oppression. They have been particularly remarkable by their cultural and geographical reach, their multi—racial constitution, and their remarkably non-violent character.

Trump has, of course, no sympathy for efforts to address racial injustice, to counter its institutional forms, and to address its human consequences. Rather he sees these protests as offering him an opportunity to re-focus his floundering campaign, by stoking any and all forms of latent white racial resentments. To do this he needs to create a violent reality that can be used as public propaganda in support of the fear mongering political narrative that is to drive his campaign.

To do this he is sending official militarized personnel into Democratically-run urban centers, under the claim of protecting federal property and preserving law and order. These Trumpian troopers then provoke the protesters (perhaps even seeding these protests with a handful of right-wing provocateurs). The aim is to create the violent conditions that play into his political narrative, in order to retrospectively justify the claim that Democratically-led urban centers are out of control, having been taken over by dangerous and violent radical mobs.

This being Trump’s key electoral strategy, it is vital that protestors themselves, mostly youth-led and multi-racial, not play into this Trumpian Trap. This is a truly remarkable moment in American history, with great possibilities for beginning to seriously address a profound historical injustice. For the first time there are real signs of a truly national awakening to the nature, extent, and ongoing consequences of America’s racial history. And there is remarkable wide-spread popular support for this national movement.

Such popular support further undermines Trump’s policies, programs, and narrow political base. It thus constitutes a significant additional impediment to his re-election. If he is to regain the political momentum, he needs to undermine this popular support, while mobilizing white resentment, and turning public attention away from the disasters of his economy and his response to the virus. For it is clearly far too late for him to constructively address the virus before the election. And without a real solution to the virus, there is little hope for any real economic improvement. Hence, mobilizing racism may well be his only electoral hope.

It is thus vital that the “movement for Black lives,” and the on-going and necessary nation-wide protests not fall into the Trumpian Trap by engaging in, approving of, or failing to inhibit violent confrontations with Trump’s occupying forces. It should be clear by now that Trump is only sending these troops into Democratically-run urban centers in order precisely to instigate the violent unrest that his campaign so desperately needs to seem to be quelling in order to regain the political momentum. Protesters must not lend any credence to this Trumpian narrative. Rather, strict adherence to, and active and public promotion of, non-violent confrontation must be the order of the day.

Op-Ed: U.S. leaders knew we didn’t have to drop atomic bombs on Japan to win the war. We did it anyway

Op-Ed: U.S. leaders knew we didn’t have to drop atomic bombs on Japan to win the war. We did it anyway
By GAR ALPEROVITZ AND MARTIN J. SHERWIN
(published by LA Times, on August 5, 2020. I thought it with being reproduced.)

At a time when Americans are reassessing so many painful aspects of our nation’s past, it is an opportune moment to have an honest national conversation about our use of nuclear weapons on Japanese cities in August 1945. The fateful decision to inaugurate the nuclear age fundamentally changed the course of modern history, and it continues to threaten our survival. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock warns us, the world is now closer to nuclear annihilation than at any time since 1947.

The accepted wisdom in the United States for the last 75 years has been that dropping the bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and on Nagasaki three days later was the only way to end the World War II without an invasion that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American and perhaps millions of Japanese lives. Not only did the bombs end the war, the logic goes, they did so in the most humane way possible.

However, the overwhelming historical evidence from American and Japanese archives indicates that Japan would have surrendered that August, even if atomic bombs had not been used — and documents prove that President Truman and his closest advisors knew it.

The allied demand for unconditional surrender led the Japanese to fear that the emperor, who many considered a deity, would be tried as a war criminal and executed. A study by Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Command compared the emperor’s execution to “the crucifixion of Christ to us.”

“Unconditional Surrender is the only obstacle to peace,” Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired Ambassador Naotake Sato, who was in Moscow on July 12, 1945, trying to enlist the Soviet Union to mediate acceptable surrender terms on Japan’s behalf.

But the Soviet Union’s entry into the war on Aug. 8 changed everything for Japan’s leaders, who privately acknowledged the need to surrender promptly.

Allied intelligence had been reporting for months that Soviet entry would force the Japanese to capitulate. As early as April 11, 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Joint Intelligence Staff had predicted: “If at any time the USSR should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable.”

Truman knew that the Japanese were searching for a way to end the war; he had referred to Togo’s intercepted July 12 cable as the “telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace.”

Truman also knew that the Soviet invasion would knock Japan out of the war. At the summit in Potsdam, Germany, on July 17, following Stalin’s assurance that the Soviets were coming in on schedule, Truman wrote in his diary, “He’ll be in the Jap War on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about.” The next day, he assured his wife, “We’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed!”

The Soviets invaded Japanese-held Manchuria at midnight on Aug. 8 and quickly destroyed the vaunted Kwantung Army. As predicted, the attack traumatized Japan’s leaders. They could not fight a two-front war, and the threat of a communist takeover of Japanese territory was their worst nightmare.

Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki explained on Aug. 13 that Japan had to surrender quickly because “the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, but also Hokkaido. This would destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war when we can deal with the United States.”

While a majority of Americans may not be familiar with this history, the National Museum of the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., states unambiguously on a plaque with its atomic bomb exhibit: “The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria … changed their minds.” But online the wording has been modified to put the atomic bombings in a more positive light — once again showing how myths can overwhelm historical evidence.

Seven of the United States’ eight five-star Army and Navy officers in 1945 agreed with the Navy’s vitriolic assessment. Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, and William Halsey are on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both.

No one was more impassioned in his condemnation than Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff. He wrote in his memoir “that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender …. In being the first to use it we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

MacArthur thought the use of atomic bombs was inexcusable. He later wrote to former President Hoover that if Truman had followed Hoover’s “wise and statesmanlike” advice to modify its surrender terms and tell the Japanese they could keep their emperor, “the Japanese would have accepted it and gladly I have no doubt.”
Before the bombings, Eisenhower had urged at Potsdam, “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

The evidence shows he was right, and the advancing Doomsday Clock is a reminder that the violent inauguration of the nuclear age has yet to be confined to the past.

Gar Alperovitz, author of “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” is a principal of the Democracy Collaborative and a former fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Martin J. Sherwin is a professor of history at George Mason University and author of the forthcoming “Gambling With Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette From Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis.” Historians Kai Bird and Peter Kuznick contributed to this article.

A comprehensive strategy for progressives

The attached summary of an excellent recently published book, Merge Left, contains what I have been arguing for several years ought to be the strategy for progressives. It’s worth careful attention. Unfortunately, too many on the “Left” have lost sight in recent years of the comprehensive vision of a unified progressive strategy that is required if we are to be successful in the long run.

MERGE LEFT
Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America
By Ian Haney López
“With great clarity and thoughtfulness, Ian F. Haney López shows why the path to a truly just society lies in a multi-racial coalition of poor, working and middle-class Americans. . . . Powerful, urgent, and timely.”
—Robert B. Reich
From presidential hopefuls to engaged voters to journalists to activists, people across the country are grappling with how to think and talk about racism in American politics. Ian Haney López, a distinguished UC Berkeley professor and the acclaimed author of Dog Whistle Politics, offers clear insights and a way forward in his highly anticipated new book. Endorsed by Robert Reich, Van Jones, Jane Fonda, and the leaders of the AFL-CIO, SEIU, Voto Latino, Color of Change, Equal Justice Society, ROC United, and more, MERGE LEFT: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (October 1, 2019; $26.99) offers a powerful, truly original, and even hopeful new strategy for defeating the Right’s racial fearmongering and achieving bold progressive goals.
In 2014, Haney López in Dog Whistle Politics named and explained the coded racial appeals exploited by right-wing politicians over the last half century—and thereby anticipated the 2016 presidential election. Now, the country is heading into one of the most consequential elections ever, with the Right gearing up to again exploit racial fearmongering to divide and distract. Meanwhile, the Left is splintered. Some want to confront the Right’s racism head-on; others insist that a race-silent emphasis on class avoids alienating white voters. Can either approach—challenging white racism or going colorblind—build the progressive supermajorities necessary to break political gridlock and fundamentally change the country’s direction?
After the 2016 election, Haney López co-founded the Race-Class Narrative Research Project. With the Right utilizing focus groups, polling, and careful message testing to hone their dog whistles, Haney López and his collaborators—including union activists, racial justice leaders, pollsters, and communications specialists—set out to use the same tools against them. Based on conversations, interviews, and surveys with thousands of people all over the country, the team found a way forward. By reframing racism as a weapon of the rich, the race-class approach shifts people’s conception regarding whom to view as their allies and enemies—and thereby builds greater enthusiasm for racial justice, economic populism, and the cross-racial solidarity needed to win elections.

Here’s what their research brought to light:
• Most white people hold contradictory views about race
Against the prevalent assumptions of many progressives, they found that most whites hold egalitarian views on race—although they also swing back and forth to deeply internalized racist beliefs. This is relatively good news, Haney López says, because it means that the Left does not need to tear down a mountain of white racism. Instead, the task is to help the majority of whites connect their economic self-interest to the antiracist values most already hold.
• Voters of color also accept messages about “undeserving” people Again contra the conventional wisdom, the majority of Black and Latinx voters find large parts of the Right’s coded rhetoric convincing—the use of terms like “criminals” and “welfare cheats” resonates powerfully within communities of color. This means that neutralizing the Right’s narratives of racial fear and resentment is key when addressing white voters and communities of color.
• The political “middle” toggles between progressive and reactionary The Left’s base, roughly one-fifth of all voters, embrace racial equality, believe circumstances more than individual effort explain wealth inequalities, and want government to regulate the market. Opposite them and just slightly fewer in number, the Right’s core supporters resent people of color, credit hard work for economic success, and want government out of the way. That leaves three-fifths of Americans—including a majority of people of color—in between. They agree with and bounce between both progressive and reactionary views, largely without noticing the tensions between them.
• The persuadable majority gives more credence to messages of racial fear than to color-blind language or to challenges to white racism
The persuadable middle finds messages promoting economic populism that ignore racial issues less convincing than the Right’s racial fear message. And the other main progressive response—calling for racial justice in ways that implicitly condemn white racism—is even less popular, including with people of color. In other words: With the crucial persuadable middle, neither of the Left’s two principal responses defeats Trump’s racial fearmongering.
• Retelling the story of America in terms of class war waged through racial division is more convincing than racial fear messages
The good news is that the Right’s racial fear message loses decisively to a narrative condemning fearmongering by greedy elites and calling for cross-racial unity. Explicitly urging voters to distrust economic elites sowing racial division and to join together across racial lines to demand that government promote racial and economic justice beats dog whistling. This race-class message consistently proved more convincing—to whites as well as people of color—than the Right’s racial fear story.

Haney López MERGE LEFT summary 3
HOW THE RACE-CLASS STRATEGY WORKS
The GOP shifts attention from economic to racial concerns
As early as 1963, Republicans recognized they could win votes by fashioning a new identity for themselves as the defenders of white America. There would be no open references to maintaining white dominance. They would use dog whistles. But even so, the GOP’s basic strategy would be to shift attention from class to race by encouraging voters to focus their social and economic resentments on nonwhite groups rather than on concentrated wealth. This con, writes Haney López, “fits Trump to a fake-gold T.”
Typical Democratic and progressive messages fail
With racial conflict as the core threat narrative promoted by the GOP and right-wing media, the two dominant progressive responses struggle. One, a race-silent emphasis on class, leaves messages of racial fear and fundamental racial division operating without challenge. The other, attacking Trump as a racist, actually helps him—it deepens the panic that the country is splintering into racial sides.
Fusing race to class shifts voters’ sense of the source of danger in their lives
The race-class approach transforms voters’ sense of the root conflict in society. Dog whistling implies the fundamental conflict pits whites against nonwhites. The race-class narrative says it those sowing division against the rest of us, whether we are Black, brown, or white, native or newcomer. The race-class approach shifts the conflict from whites versus nonwhites to a racially-divisive 1 percent against a race-conscious 99 percent. It specifically names whites as beneficiaries of cross-racial solidarity.
Economic inequality threatens everyone, but racial division is the key
The race-class strategy is not a “class more than race” frame. Yes, it says that class war threatens almost every family. But it insists that racial division is the principal weapon and must be directly addressed rather than pushed to the back burner. The race-class approach is not colorblind but instead race-forward.
Ending state violence against people of color requires cross-racial solidarity
The single greatest driver of state violence against nonwhite communities is dog whistle politics. When politicians campaign by demonizing “thugs,” “illegals,” and “terrorists,” they govern through mass incarceration, mass deportation, and mass surveillance. This makes cross-racial coalitions to defeat dog whistle politics an indispensable step toward racial justice.
Connecting race and class in our narratives and politics is a must
Many progressives understand that racial as well as class injustices should be addressed. The race-class approach makes clear that in fact “should” is “must.” The race-class strategy starts by recognizing that race and class in the United States are welded together by history as well as current politics. Haney López argues that the Left can prevail only by turning this fusion to progressive advantage. He maintains that the Left must not only pursue racial and economic justice simultaneously, but must consistently link the two in voters’ minds in order to make big gains on either front.

Haney López MERGE LEFT summary 4
THE RACE-CLASS STRATEGY AND TODAY’S POLITICS
MERGE LEFT places the findings of the race-class narrative project in a larger political and racial context, offering practical insights into the most troubling dilemmas and explosive elements of today’s politics, such as:
The evolution of dog whistling
• Attacks against Latinx and Muslim communities accelerated during the Obama era to become today’s most pervasive forms of racial fearmongering.
• Trump won through dog whistling and has NOT shifted to a bullhorn of white supremacy, at least as far as the vast majority of his supporters are concerned.
• Racial fearmongering has destroyed moderation within the Republican Party but they cannot walk away from it. Every GOP candidate knows that in the primaries the most racially reactionary candidate will have a leg up.
Flaws in the Democratic response to dog whistling
• Democratic party leaders for five decades and counting distance themselves from racial justice arguments, hoping dog whistling will fade on its own.
• The Clintons’ responded to dog whistling by imitating it in the 1990s, and it came back to bite Hillary in the 2016 election, even though she adopted strong racial justice positions in that campaign.
• Economic populists like Bernie Sanders and Robert Reich rely on impoverished accounts of race when they take a “class first” approach.
Centering and mobilizing communities of color
• Dog whistling is at the root of most state violence against communities of color.
• Among activists, there’s a strong demand that racism be directly challenged—but in the larger community many people struggle with concepts like pervasive white
supremacy and structural racism.
• A narrative of strategic racism resonates within communities of color: divide-
and-conquer is easier to understand than structural accounts, and also raises the prospect that whites have their own interests in fighting racial division.
Dangerous trends among whites
• Trump draws on and also accelerates dangerous new trends in white identity.
• The Left already competes effectively among white voters who are not evangelical
Christians, coming close with the working class and winning big among women.
• The Left must promote racial solidarity even among whites in the Democratic
base, because white liberals remain susceptible to racial fear.
• Moral suasion, while it can be genuine and galvanizing, by itself will not move
most white voters to actively support racial justice. They must also see that their
own interests are served by it.
• Explicitly naming whites as beneficiaries of cross-racial solidarity significantly
boosts support among both whites and people of color.

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EVERY PROGRESSIVE GOAL REQUIRES CROSS-RACIAL SOLIDARITY
Today, Haney López maintains, every bold progressive vision depends on building cross-racial solidarity first. This is obviously important to assembling broad support for racial justice initiatives like abolishing mass incarceration and creating a humane immigration system. But it is also pivotal to enacting progressive legislation seemingly distant from racial issues, such as publicly funded child and elder care, affordable and excellent healthcare, or a Green New Deal. Only a sense of linked fate across color lines will foster the supermajorities necessary to sweep away the politicians who dog whistle on behalf of rule by the rich. The best response to divide-and-conquer, Haney López says, is unite-and-build.
“Our fates have always been bound together,” Haney López writes. “For centuries, our greatest heroes—radicals like W. E. B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and César Chávez—have insisted that American salvation requires cross-racial alliances. Repeatedly, this insight has been suppressed, forgotten, and abandoned. Today, some of the wealthiest, most powerful forces in this country bend their will and money toward driving us apart so they can tighten their grip on government and the economy. Yet the very wreckage they have created—and the president they helped elect—open up another opportunity to build a broad cross-racial movement with the will and the political power to promote racial reform and shared economic prosperity. This book explains the good evidence that cross-racial solidarity for racial and economic justice is possible, today.”
In this lively, provocative, and often surprising narrative, MERGE LEFT draws on important new research to explain where the Right’s racial strategy came from, how it works, and how it can be beaten in the coming election and beyond.