Is there a non-Christopher Rufo link on the Southlake controversy? Not that I'm steeped in CRT incident research but the only place I've seen it referenced is here. I'd like to read up on this incident before accepting the scenario as relayed here.
I haven't read any Kendi books but in the short-form interviews I've seen/heard him on PBS/NPR and a podcast or 2 he didn't come off as the militant he's being portrayed here. Extremist, yes but totalitarian? From my perspective he's an activist. Activists have a long history of taking more extreme positions to both get attention and with a goal of simply moving the needle of public policy in their direction. That's what I take from his Department of Anti-Racism proposal. I also concur with some of his critics that his arguments often tend to be facile.
The reason memes hit home is because they take a thread of reality and hyperbolize it. Yes, there is absolutely more upward mobility now than medieval Europe. I'd argue that current economic policy has us moving in the wrong direction of upward mobility. "Trickle Down" economics is a farce. You need only look at the ever widening income gap as an example and that is what will be the downfall of our economic system if we don't take more aggressive stances to reconcile it.
"Hard work" has been a mantra to my kids since a young age. As a said previously, Bill Gates maximized the advantages he was given. Of course, the advantages I'm talking about are only economic. Preston, Gates and Ellis was pivotal in Microsoft's early stages in legal fights with IBM, Apple and others. These are what I'd call systemic advantages. Bill Gates had a built-in rolodex for outstanding legal advice as well as a host of other guidance. Gate is NOT at fault but he also went to a secondary school that admitted it's first AA while he was there. These systemic advantages aren't as pronounced as they once were but still exist. I coached an AA young man in football who Dad (VP of Diversity at a large Pharm company) chose to pay for his son to go to Lakeside rather than our local public HS (which is ranked in the top 25 in the nation per USNWR). His son lasted 2 years there because as wealthy as this father was it wasn't commensurate with the Lakeside students, most of which were picked up in towncars driven by hired drivers. Meanwhile, his son was taking an hour long ride on the public bus to get to school each morning.
You're right. Measuring oneself against Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg hardly seems fair. Of course, if you were to take Bill Gates and that young boy who attended Lakeside (who was smart and a hard worker) you'd be hardpressed to win an argument that they had equal opportunity to achieve what Bill Gates achieved. This is not a slam on Bill Gate but rather the generations before him that set him up with advantages. It will be generations into the future until there are more AA versions of Bill Gates. In the entire history of the US only 2 AA have ever been CEO's of Fortune 500 companies (actually a 3rd was recently hired). Why? First, you need to recognize that AA's only make up ~14% of the population while White's are ~50-60%. So, you'd expect a much lower % of AA. Still...2-3...total since 1929, when the Fortune 500 was first introduced. A difference is that the AA community didn't have many individuals start with Bill Gate's advantages. That's changing but takes time. These are generational changes. From my perspective Kendi and others are simply tired of waiting for these generations to pass.
Hard work is a fundamental characteristic of the American ethos. It's what makes our nation the best nation in the world. It has a ceiling though. It also can have a floor. That ceiling and floor or established for most at birth. Yes, it's possible to circumvent your limitations but that's the exception rather than the rule. If you're Donald Trump and you start with $100M then you can easily overcome a string of bankruptcies, divorces, affairs, lawsuits and become POTUS! That ceiling was unlimited despite crappy grades, questionable business ethics and rampant mysogyny. He failed up in nearly every way imaginable. If his name was DeAntrey Washington starting with nothing that ceiling is much lower and the floor is prison. That's where the prior generational wealth and advantages are still impacting minorities (and some whites) today.
The solution is not reparations. There really isn't an easy solution. Starting with understanding our own racial biases seems to be to be a solid starting point. The move to cast any diversity training as CRT or some abhorrent mechanism towards totalitarianism or reverse racism against "whites" is not helpful, IMHO. The diversity training I've participated wasn't any "look at our views of blacks" training but rather looking at your views of anyone not like you...from your own background, from your own economic class, traditional and/or non-traditional family structures.
Last edited: Jun 25, 2021