Rethinking Race

The Equiano Project - Towards the Common Good

It’s the quiet. The quiet that survives all the small things. It’s the stone and concrete, the iron and lead glass. It’s the steam and pipe, the waterworks and lawns. They are substance.

These are the opening words to the diary and notes I kept at Emmanuel and Kings Colleges in Cambridge recently where I attended the Equiano Project’s conference on rethinking race in the 21st century. I must say that it is a strange pleasure to have found myself there among several of the most outstanding minds I have discovered on the subject. It was even a greater pleasure to find my own writing on the subject recognized by one of those most influential individuals.

I think there can be no better summation of the situation we find ourselves in than that which was given by Richard Bourke on the morning of the second day in the JM Keynes room at Kings. I hope one day to get a copy. In the meantime, allow me to abstract and emphasize among those which I found to be the most memorable and compelling statements and arguments of the conference.

Arif Ahmed, the philosopher on the UK Human Rights Commission, not speaking for that institution, reminded us that de-liberalization is entropic. What we should not do is marvel that the world hate, but pay more attention to the relatively short period in human history in which we thought our way beyond the barbarity of our nature and institutionalized the evolution of thought. If we fail for any reason to defend and replicate that process, then our doom is as certain as our biology. It is a relative doom we will biologically survive, but we will look back with regret to the once Golden Age which now seems to be eclipsing. He referred to how the statements of value led to the politicization of academic institutions from the perspective of decision theory. I’m pretty sure I want to get back to him on that.

Coleman Hughes, reminded us that elite spaces should be the focus of our action. The truth is being told, but we must win the arguments in those particular places with the understanding that :

1. Consensus of elites is often wrong. (viz “Hands up Don’t Shoot” - Eric Holder found out the hard way)

2. We don’t have all of the answers.

Along with a lot of gender stuff that I rather tuned out, Sonia Sodha reminded us that the UK sucks a lot of wack ideology from the USA. She also underscored something I mentioned a few weeks back, that Twitter is the chatting class and like all social media it feeds on and exacerbates narcissism. Driven by the need to be Twitter famous, business and institutions are ethically captured by social media. That needs to be reversed.

Of the many young people in attendance, I was quite impressed by Ayishat Akanbi. Aside from that fact of being she is possessed with the kind of vocal presence that is often absent in young people of her generation, she understands how people feel a sense of insecurity of speaking out. This fear attracts odd allies, and suddenly you realized you’re associated with people and ideas that are not actually close to your heart.

Glenn Loury, ever the elder statesman probably understands the fate of living in truth against the fictions of race better than anyone alive. He is profoundly right when he says that the black American problem is freedom. We are ill-prepared to deal with the space we have been given and instead shrink inside the social and emotional ghettoes of a defeated people. It is because of this lack of confidence that we accept racial lies as ‘our’ reality. Disparities are not discriminations, but we accept racial explanations that they are. Equity is not equality, but we accept a racial theory that says it is.

Of the Brits I met, I was very pleased to come to meet and talk with Lord Tony Sewell, who while previously unknown to me is likely the most treasured black Brit there is. He was recently appointed lifelong member of the House of Lords. Among many of the shared ideas, he underscored that of agency. His understanding of the character of national initiatives into which ‘minorities’ invest time and effort makes clear the difference between real achievement and racialized ‘inherent’ advantages.

Paul Johnson came with some interesting statistics that characterized the swiftness with which demographic change has swept the UK. Within 20 years the Indian and Asian populations have gone from 30% to close to 0% unemployment.

Every child deserves to experience just once that one perfect teacher that can make all the difference. The kind and wise eyes of Katherine Birbalsingh signal just that character instantaneously. As soon as she started speaking, I felt that I had known her my entire life, but I still didn’t recognize who she actually was, then boom. I recalled her as Ms Snuffy, the headmistress of the strictest school in the UK. She reminded us of something quite simple but profound. Social mobility is different than wealth gaps. Focusing on the latter, the abstracted and meaningless realm of gini coefficients blinds us to the fact that so-called minorities have amply demonstrated the former.

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This was just a taste of the mindsets and messages brought forth in this gathering. I can say that it was categorically upbeat. From the strenuous defenses of educational freedoms put forth by Ian Rowe, to the characterizations of waves of racial politics described by John McWhorter, to the brilliant & humorous wit on display in the descriptions of Stephen Bush.

Few things spoke to the fictions of race like the broad participation of West Africans in attendance at the conference. It compels one to think of the great variety of backgrounds of people who participate in the continuation and evolution of Western thought as spoken in English.

I expect that I will be coming back to the insights I gathered from this event. You should most definitely follow the folks at the Equiano Project and watch their videos as they publish them.

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For myself, I think it is a turning point. Aside from having the opportunity to connect with these crisp thinkers, it signals to me that the discussion of race is not so self-interested as it would seem to be. Once one recognizes that the social dynamics of race are highly transient, and as I am convinced principally unsustainable, you see how real changes are political and cultural, not merely demographic. The Equaino cohort are, like me, engaged in mocking, undermining and combatting the myths of race as they distort and mislead the public. This is an integral to the prospects for liberty which is the exception in our human history. Race is an ignorant superstition which retards justice - it can only be dispersed by superior logic, patient explanation and genuine empathy to all people.

The consensus is that we focus on:

1. How elite thinking has gone wrong and work to correct it.

2. The agency of so-called minorities and the tools that support that agency.

3. Identification of active racialization & essentialism.

4. Where criticism of Enlightenment principles runs off the rails.

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The trip across the pond will always be suffused with my impressions of Cambridge and how being inside the walls of Kings College made me think about the way institutions are maintained steadfastly while thought changes immensely. A great deal was said about how social media has played an enormous role in the promulgation of racial myths, shallow populism, lowbrow culture and retrograde politics. The cyber creeps into the cracks in the pillars of society and civilization. I have high expectations for this medium to fix what it has broken. You are part of that process in support of this evolution of online discourse. Thank you for your support and participation.