My take on race, Reid, and the politics of meaning is up now at the Guardian. Snip:
In a panic over the chance to unseat Senator Reid, the GOP is in danger of making permanent our misbegotten descent into the crackpot belief that racial symbolism is more real than our actual race relations. Inherited from deconstructionist academics whose postmodern school of thought had already become fatuous in the 1990s, the idea that inequalities of power institutionalised into our language were the key to social change has metastasized into our whole society. It is a sad, but not surprising, turn: when real change seems to become impossible, we strain to lose ourselves in the therapeutic shadowplay of change theatre. Our obsession with “changing the tone” belies our lost hopes of ever changing the substance, either of Washington politics or of race relations.
January 15th, 2010 | 4:54 pm
I think it’s time to move beyond the ideologues and go into basics, I mean by that, seeking again true wisdom through the exploration of human virtues and human sin. Only then can we truly understand who we are as human beings and only then can the possibilities of humanity start to clearly emerge. Time to get out of the darkness.
January 16th, 2010 | 12:37 am
James, This is a courageous piece in that you delve into the weird code regarding speech about race in the first place. I suppose you tell us to get over over our sensitivities, and even more, if we are going to have the “legendary” conversation on race, we may well as not be distracted from Ried’s “inartful” language as Obama put. My experience is that this is easier said than done, and i think your article points to something regarding race that we can’t speak of in our current discourse. Why is it so difficult? I wish it were better.
January 16th, 2010 | 4:08 pm
Hoo boy, “therapeutic shadowplay of change theatre”. This phrase burns white hot. Not that black hot aint hot too.
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