This is from Glen Loury. He's a (black) public intellectual who has been a long time Social Sciences professor at Brown and at age 33 was the first black Economics professor at Harvard to earn tenure. He's a brilliant man and he has changed his political leanings a couple of times and he leans more conservative (though he's not a political partisan).
Most of the discussion on this board revolves around partisan politics and who people vote for but this post of his addresses something far deeper (and not who to vote for). I don't know that I agree with him (fully) but I think brings up excellent points of discussion.
For starters, I live in a City that's 1/3 Asian and a state that's almost 1/2 Hispanic. This idea of America being only white and black is antiquated. However many parts of our country are largely white and black so there's that. But what strikes me is you can push certain thoughts underground but it doesn't necessarily mean they go away. And he's right about how we separate ourselves based on where we live and where we send our kids to school.
Is It OK to Be Scott Adams?
Why was Scott Adams canceled? The story that’s being spun out in the media is that Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist and author, went on a racist tirade in which he referred to African Americans as a “hate group” and urged white people to “get the hell away” from black people. This, the story goes, is a call for segregation, a clear indicator that Adams harbors anti-black beliefs and as such cannot be allowed to remain a part of polite society. Accordingly, his long-running comic strip must be dropped, his book deals must be voided, and he must be prevented from contaminating the culture with his noxious views.
But you could tell another story. Shocking as his statement is, it gives voice to a sentiment harbored by many, many other white people who feel similarly about African Americans as a group. Clearly, some white people feel there are reasons to “get the hell away” from black people. They don’t say it in words; they say it when they choose to move away from cities and neighborhoods where a high proportion of crimes are committed by black assailants. You can cancel as many comic strips as you want, but it’s not going to prevent white people who no longer want to live near predominately black neighborhoods from acting in what they see as their own best interests. All it will do is prevent all of us from talking about the larger forces that made Adams’s statements a cause for panic.
Abstract beliefs about race don’t make people uproot their lives, sell their houses, move to new neighborhoods, and find new schools for their kids. Material incentives do. Whacking down every outré statement made by a white person about a black person may serve the cause of “anti-racism,” but it won’t put an end to the underlying incentives that cause groups to segregate themselves. If we’re unable to discuss those incentives openly, we’ll hardly notice when more and more people start taking Scott Adams’s advice.
