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Racist Doctrine in Come Follow Me Lesson Manual Already Distributed


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21 minutes ago, Dan McClellan said:

No, they don't. While it's absolutely true that distinctions of race and their boundaries have no genetic basis, the reality of the social reification of race indisputably influences how people are perceived and how they experience the world. To insist that we must ignore those realities in order for racism to go away is to facilitate and protect racism by ensuring nothing can ever be done to uproot it. It's rhetorical prophylaxis that literally insists the problem will go away if we just ignore it, and that's nonsense. 

No, that's not a mistake, you're just misrepresenting his position. He explicitly rejects the racist/anti-racist dichotomy in favor of a "racist," "not racist," and "anti-racist" framework. Race neutrality does not actually reduce or challenge racism, it just ignores it, which enables it. You're ignoring his exposition of what racism is and trying to reduce it to your own conceptual framework. This man is one of the country's foremost experts on racism (see here, for instance), so maybe don't so blithely dismiss his concerns. Also, you'd do well to do some research on what racism is. A good place to start is this paper:

https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/courses/PSYC-309-clwilkins/week14/Unzueta2008.pdf

It's not an incredible mystery why the ACA didn't deliver on promises. It was sabotaged from the beginning. For instance, while the plan originally called for $10 billion in federal grants, lobbyists and the GOP changed that to call for only $6 billion, and instead of grants, they turned them into loans. That significantly undermined the savings. 26 states also immediately sued on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, and while they lost on that claim, they were able to torpedo the provision that would have withheld Medicaid funding from states that refused to expand it, which numerous states were then free to refuse to do. That left large Medicaid gaps in numerous states, which hobbled the markets and left millions of people without coverage. To this day, 15 states have still not expanded coverage. Public policies fall somewhere along a spectrum between dismantling systemic power asymmetries and not dismantling them, and given that racism is most saliently the system that facilitates and perpetuates those power asymmetries, there's nothing particularly difficult or controversial about plotting them along that spectrum. 

Not only is that a misrepresentation of Dr. Kendi's concerns, but your criticism continues to reduce racism to simple personal prejudices, as well as this dichotomy you've imposed on his framework.  

 

You seem to be making the mistake that somehow changing perceptions on race is the same thing as ignoring racism.  Racism is real.  Racism is a problem. Racism has been a problem in the past. 

But it doesn't have to be real. Changing ones paradigm on race takes effort.

It has taken effort for me to do it. But I have seen it happen. I have lived it happening. Every day, for the last 20 years I have lived, in loved and associated with people of  a different "race."  Guess what?  The concept of race actually does disappear to the point where no one notices.

Every once in a while someone will comment while I hold my wife's hand, how dark she is compared to me or how light I am compared to her.  It's funny how often we ourselves are mildly surprised because we have forgotten the difference ourselves.  In my daily life I see more people of a different "race" than I do of my own "race".  

I know of the effects of institutionalized racism. I see it in my job on a daily basis.  I have to explain to people that the government doesn't think they deserve benefits other people get based on who they are, or who they have married. Just today I filed a petition in court to help "a person of color" fight government injustice that probably came about because of their ethnicity.  I know what social injustice is.  Just because I imagine and advocate for things to change doesn't mean I am ignoring the problems. I am fighting the problem they way I know how. I may fight it differently than you, but that doesn't mean I am not doing my best in the circumstances that I live in.   

 Living apart from the (insert whatever people are not my people) is what creates racism.  

Its only in living with, interacting with,  loving, serving, being served by those that are different than us that our prejudices melt away and we start seeing those who seem different than us as exactly the same.  We won't get there by yelling at each other or dismissing each other with useless labels.  We can't fight racism by staying separated in our own clans of race, ideology, political party or social class. We must, as Christ said, leave the 99 of our own group and seek out the one who is not us. 

In the end, we are all one race.  I just hope more people begin to see and acknowledge it. 

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54 minutes ago, Dan McClellan said:

It's not an incredible mystery why the ACA didn't deliver on promises. It was sabotaged from the beginning. For instance, while the plan originally called for $10 billion in federal grants, lobbyists and the GOP changed that to call for only $6 billion, and instead of grants, they turned them into loans. That significantly undermined the savings. 26 states also immediately sued on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, and while they lost on that claim, they were able to torpedo the provision that would have withheld Medicaid funding from states that refused to expand it, which numerous states were then free to refuse to do. That left large Medicaid gaps in numerous states, which hobbled the markets and left millions of people without coverage.

It can be hard for someone who believes in a concept to ever see that a concept can be badly implemented.  I only assume you are in favor of the ACA as written because you do not have experience implementing it as it was written.  It is a very messy and poorly written law. As written. With contradictions and consequences that I can only assume were unintended.  From very poor people who were heavily fined, to ridiculous scenarios where 1 dollar difference in income can change tax owed by over 15,000.00.  There is a section of the ACA that I know about that the IRS (under the previous president) acknowledged was insane and just told everyone (through an official notice) that they just won't enforce it.

That being said.  It has done a lot of good for a lot of people as well and I can understand why people support it (the Idea of it anyway, cant see how anyone who has gone through the details would think it well written)

But it is very messy. As one who's job it is to look into the details, I know the messiness of it first hand.  

 

My point isn't to say its bad or good, just that it is possible that one can oppose a policy like this legitimately on grounds other than racism.

Also it isn't very healthy to have race relations be the only lens through which one view policy. 

 

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57 minutes ago, Dan McClellan said:

Our entire country was built on those labels and functions on them to this very day. Just pretending not to see race does absolutely nothing to dismantle their embeddedness throughout the foundations of this country's institutions, and therefore nothing to eliminate their effects. If you want to not have any manner of "ites," you first have to dismantle the systems that rely on and perpetuate them. Only then can people actually start mitigating their implicit biases. 

Our entire country was built on many things some of which were those labels and some things that were not about those labels. People tend to see what they look for.  When one only looks for racism that is all they tend to see.  

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3 minutes ago, Danzo said:

Our entire country was built on many things some of which were those labels and some things that were not about those labels. People tend to see what they look for.  When one only looks for racism that is all they tend to see.  

Can you provide any actual evidence that racism is all just an illusion, or are you really just going to use a silly little proverb to blithely rationalize your staunch refusal to acknowledge generations of data?

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14 minutes ago, Danzo said:

It can be hard for someone who believes in a concept to ever see that a concept can be badly implemented.  I only assume you are in favor of the ACA as written because you do not have experience implementing it as it was written.  It is a very messy and poorly written law. As written. With contradictions and consequences that I can only assume were unintended.  From very poor people who were heavily fined, to ridiculous scenarios where 1 dollar difference in income can change tax owed by over 15,000.00.  There is a section of the ACA that I know about that the IRS (under the previous president) acknowledged was insane and just told everyone (through an official notice) that they just won't enforce it.

That being said.  It has done a lot of good for a lot of people as well and I can understand why people support it (the Idea of it anyway, cant see how anyone who has gone through the details would think it well written)

But it is very messy. As one who's job it is to look into the details, I know the messiness of it first hand.  

My point isn't to say its bad or good, just that it is possible that one can oppose a policy like this legitimately on grounds other than racism.

Nobody said there were no legitimate grounds for opposing policy other than racism.

Quote

Also it isn't very healthy to have race relations be the only lens through which one view policy. 

Please provide some evidence that I or Dr. Kendi view this policy entirely and exclusively through the lens of race relations.

Edited by Dan McClellan
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27 minutes ago, Danzo said:

You seem to be making the mistake that somehow changing perceptions on race is the same thing as ignoring racism.  Racism is real.  Racism is a problem. Racism has been a problem in the past. 

But it doesn't have to be real. Changing ones paradigm on race takes effort.

It has taken effort for me to do it. But I have seen it happen. I have lived it happening. Every day, for the last 20 years I have lived, in loved and associated with people of  a different "race."  Guess what?  The concept of race actually does disappear to the point where no one notices.

Every once in a while someone will comment while I hold my wife's hand, how dark she is compared to me or how light I am compared to her.  It's funny how often we ourselves are mildly surprised because we have forgotten the difference ourselves.  In my daily life I see more people of a different "race" than I do of my own "race".  

I know of the effects of institutionalized racism. I see it in my job on a daily basis.  I have to explain to people that the government doesn't think they deserve benefits other people get based on who they are, or who they have married. Just today I filed a petition in court to help "a person of color" fight government injustice that probably came about because of their ethnicity.  I know what social injustice is.  Just because I imagine and advocate for things to change doesn't mean I am ignoring the problems. I am fighting the problem they way I know how. I may fight it differently than you, but that doesn't mean I am not doing my best in the circumstances that I live in.   

 Living apart from the (insert whatever people are not my people) is what creates racism.  

Its only in living with, interacting with,  loving, serving, being served by those that are different than us that our prejudices melt away and we start seeing those who seem different than us as exactly the same.  We won't get there by yelling at each other or dismissing each other with useless labels.  We can't fight racism by staying separated in our own clans of race, ideology, political party or social class. We must, as Christ said, leave the 99 of our own group and seek out the one who is not us. 

In the end, we are all one race.  I just hope more people begin to see and acknowledge it. 

Absolutely agreed that we need to be more integrated, but it's not just personal prejudices alone that perpetuates that. The system itself is built to keep us segregated, and no matter how much people let their prejudices melt away, the system won't change unless it is dismantled and rebuilt. That's not a question of personal prejudices or their absence, it's a question of systems, and refusing to acknowledge how systems facilitate things like segregation and the school-to-prison pipeline only reinforces their entrenchment. 

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7 minutes ago, Dan McClellan said:

Can you provide any actual evidence that racism is all just an illusion, or are you really just going to use a silly little proverb to blithely rationalize your staunch refusal to acknowledge generations of data?

Did you read my post above?

I believe you mischaracterize my position. I don't think racism is an illusion. Its effects are real.

Its not some hypothetical research paper for me and my family.   Its real.  

My point is that it doesn't have to be. 

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Dan McClellan said:

Absolutely agreed that we need to be more integrated, but it's not just personal prejudices alone that perpetuates that. The system itself is built to keep us segregated, and no matter how much people let their prejudices melt away, the system won't change unless it is dismantled and rebuilt. That's not a question of personal prejudices or their absence, it's a question of systems, and refusing to acknowledge how systems facilitate things like segregation and the school-to-prison pipeline only reinforces their entrenchment. 

What system would you dismantle?

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17 minutes ago, Dan McClellan said:

Absolutely agreed that we need to be more integrated, but it's not just personal prejudices alone that perpetuates that. The system itself is built to keep us segregated, and no matter how much people let their prejudices melt away, the system won't change unless it is dismantled and rebuilt. That's not a question of personal prejudices or their absence, it's a question of systems, and refusing to acknowledge how systems facilitate things like segregation and the school-to-prison pipeline only reinforces their entrenchment. 

Just exactly what systems do you want to dismantle?

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7 minutes ago, Danzo said:

What system would you dismantle?

Personally, I would start with the public school system. 

Today, knowledge is one of the biggest sources of wealth.  

Public schools have a horrible record of teaching minorities.  I know my wife was told by a high school counselor that she didn't need to enroll in any serious subject since all she would probably just end up doing is cleaning houses. 

Edited by Danzo
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3 hours ago, Dan McClellan said:

Well, you can't really forfeit privilege, and doing the calculus of figuring out who has benefited and how much isn't feasible. As long as we acknowledge and work to dismantle it, we're really not being asked to apologize for it. 

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

One interesting question is whether the concept of "white privilege" has found any purchase in the U.S. legal system.  That is, has a dispassionate court found that such a thing exists?  That it is or can be defined in any coherent, legally cognizable way?

Or is it, like the mysterious "wage gap," just a rhetorical gimmick that does not withstand any real scrutiny?

Thanks,

-Smac

I avoided using "white privilege" and opted for "forfeiting gains and benefits" for this reason. Similarly, "restitution" in the doctrinal sense (repentance) would be used as an extention of my hypothetical instead of "reparations" in a legal sense. And having already suggested that quantification would be imprecise and the "calculus" as you put it would be more an attitudinal gesture, I'm still wondering what the response might be to someone who suggests that they forfeit whatever they gained from racism (whatever it might be that they are able to determine by their own conscience and soul-searching, and even quantify if they have the skills) to the cause of eradicating it systemically as part of the process of acknowledging it and the benefits and advantages gained from it. It will take a good deal of resources, both material and intangible, to "fix it."

I understand why the Church neither apologizes nor seeks apologies, and I agree with the good reasoning, and so my hypothetical suggestion excluded an apology. I don't think the anti-Nephi-Lehies ever apologized, but they did feel sorrow for what they had done in ignorance/tradition, and forfeited their weapons once they changed their ways. This was a group effort of course, but very much individually motivated.

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54 minutes ago, Danzo said:

Personally, I would start with the public school system. 

Today, knowledge is one of the biggest sources of wealth.  

Public schools have a horrible record of teaching minorities.  I know my wife was told by a high school counselor that she didn't need to enroll in any serious subject since all she would probably just end up doing is cleaning houses. 

What are you going to replace it with?

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1 hour ago, Danzo said:

Did you read my post above?

I believe you mischaracterize my position. I don't think racism is an illusion. Its effects are real.

Its not some hypothetical research paper for me and my family.   Its real.  

My point is that it doesn't have to be. 

Did someone say it has to be real?

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1 hour ago, Danzo said:

What system would you dismantle?

All the systems within government, media, education, housing, law enforcement, and business that facilitate, enable, and perpetuate systemic power asymmetries. 

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1 hour ago, Dan McClellan said:

Absolutely agreed that we need to be more integrated, but it's not just personal prejudices alone that perpetuates that. The system itself is built to keep us segregated, and no matter how much people let their prejudices melt away, the system won't change unless it is dismantled and rebuilt. That's not a question of personal prejudices or their absence, it's a question of systems, and refusing to acknowledge how systems facilitate things like segregation and the school-to-prison pipeline only reinforces their entrenchment. 

Similar to my comments above, dismantling an inherited system comes at significant cost, both material and intangible, compounded by urgency and accelerated change. What kind of "skin in the game" is required to accomplish this, or is it a relatively easy fix given the resources of those who have inherited the system and benefited from it?

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1 hour ago, Danzo said:

Personally, I would start with the public school system. 

Today, knowledge is one of the biggest sources of wealth.  

This is not true. While a good education leads to greater success than a poor or no education, the strongest predictor of success is not one's education. It's still the zip code in which they were born. The largest single contributor to wealth is still inheritance. 

Quote

Public schools have a horrible record of teaching minorities.  I know my wife was told by a high school counselor that she didn't need to enroll in any serious subject since all she would probably just end up doing is cleaning houses.  

This is accurate and abhorrent. Schools attended primarily by minorities receive tens of billions of dollars less funding than schools attended primarily by white folks. Higher education also privileges white students, both in admissions and in funding (need- and merit-based).

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1 minute ago, CV75 said:

Similar to my comments above, dismantling an inherited system comes at significant cost, both material and intangible, compounded by urgency and accelerated change. What kind of "skin in the game" is required to accomplish this, or is it a relatively easy fix given the resources of those who have inherited the system and benefited from it?

There would be plenty of phenomenally wealthy people whose wealth would not be growing nearly as rapidly, and there would be a reconfiguration of the economy, but it wouldn't result in poverty, much less the widespread and generations-long poverty and oppression of Reconstruction. 

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8 minutes ago, Dan McClellan said:

All the systems within government, media, education, housing, law enforcement, and business that facilitate, enable, and perpetuate systemic power asymmetries. 

Who gets to decide what facilitates enables and perpetuates systemic power asymmetries? 

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1 minute ago, rodheadlee said:

Who gets to decide what facilitates enables and perpetuates systemic power asymmetries? 

It's just a matter of the people in positions of power over those sociocultural domains listening to the people and making the decision. Who just decided to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department? Who just introduced legislation for police reform? Who just announced that they would stop employing armed resource officers in their schools? Who just announced they would no longer involve police for non-violent infractions at their store? 

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19 minutes ago, Dan McClellan said:

All the systems within government, media, education, housing, law enforcement, and business that facilitate, enable, and perpetuate systemic power asymmetries. 

Sounds a little vague to me, can you be a bit more specific?

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4 hours ago, Danzo said:

I think the only long term solutions is to not have any  Nephites, Lamanites, whites or any maner of "Ites"

But how do we get from here to there outside the second coming?

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1 hour ago, Dan McClellan said:

This is not true. While a good education leads to greater success than a poor or no education, the strongest predictor of success is not one's education. It's still the zip code in which they were born. 

Typical academic response, interesting, possibly even true and completely useless.

While I have seen people's wealth and socioeconomic conditions increased by education, I really have never heard of anyone's wealth being positively affected by changing the zip code where they were born.

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1 hour ago, Dan McClellan said:

It's just a matter of the people in positions of power over those sociocultural domains listening to the people and making the decision. Who just decided to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department? Who just introduced legislation for police reform? Who just announced that they would stop employing armed resource officers in their schools? Who just announced they would no longer involve police for non-violent infractions at their store? 

So City by City? At least until the next election.

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