{"id":5135,"date":"2017-10-17T16:59:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T16:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/10\/17\/andrew-sullivan-on-tribalism\/"},"modified":"2017-10-17T16:59:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-17T16:59:40","slug":"andrew-sullivan-on-tribalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/10\/17\/andrew-sullivan-on-tribalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Sullivan on Tribalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

This<\/a> is a very good article. There is plenty to disagree with, but I agree entirely with this excerpt:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Or take the current promiscuous use of the term \u201cwhite supremacist.\u201d We used to know what that meant. It meant advocates and practitioners of slavery, believers in the right of white people to rule over all others, subscribers to a theory of a master race, Jim Crow supporters, George Wallace voters. But it is now routinely used on the left to mean, simply, racism in a multicultural America, in which European-Americans are a fast-evaporating ethnic majority. It\u2019s a term that implies there is no difference in race relations between America today and America in, say, the 1830s or the 1930s. This rhetoric is not just untrue, it is dangerous. It wins no converts, and when actual white supremacists march in the streets, you have no language left to describe them as any different from, say, all Trump supporters, including the 13 percent of black men who voted for him.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Compare my Is Every Racist a White Supremacist?<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Sullivan also deserves praise for pointing out the excesses of Ta-Nehisi Coates:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

He remains a vital voice, but in more recent years, a somewhat different one. His mood has become much gloomier. He calls the Obama presidency a \u201ctragedy,\u201d and describes many Trump supporters as \u201cnot so different from those same Americans who grin back at us in lynching photos.\u201d He\u2019s written about how watching cops and firefighters enter the smoldering World Trade Center instantly reminded him of cops mistreating blacks: They \u201cwere not human to me.\u201d In his latest essay in the Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, analyzing why Donald Trump won the last election, he dismisses any notion that economic distress might have played a role as \u201cempty\u201d and ignores other factors, such as Hillary Clinton\u2019s terrible candidacy, the populist revolt against immigration that had become a potent force across the West, and the possibility that the pace of social change might have triggered a backlash among traditionalists. No, there was one meaningful explanation only: white supremacism. And those who accept, as I do, that racism was indeed a big part of the equation but also saw other factors at work were simply luxuriating in our own white privilege because we are never under \u201cracism\u2019s boot.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a very good article. There is plenty to disagree with, but I agree entirely with this excerpt: Or take the current promiscuous use of the term \u201cwhite supremacist.\u201d We used to know what that meant. It meant advocates and practitioners of slavery, believers in the right of white people to rule over all … Continue reading “Andrew Sullivan on Tribalism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}