This article by Erec Smith was first published in the Boston Globe, where you can find an archived link here, but has also been published unpaywalled by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank where author Erec Smith is a research fellow (he’s also “an associate professor of rhetoric and composition at York College of Pennsylvania, and cofounder of Free Black Thought”).
Smith’s thesis is that DEI is racist because it rests on prescribing “approved ways” that black people should behave and think, ways that he instantiates by giving two quotes. The first is a now-deleted tweet by Nikole Hannah-Jones:
And from President Biden:
“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, you ain’t Black.”
That, says Smith, is “a statement that implicitly prescribes how Black voters should think.”
Smith developed this take because as a black kid in a white school he was expected to “act black,” yet when he moved to a mostly black school he was criticized for “acting white”—speaking “white English” and so on. DEI, he avers, practices “prescriptive racism” by expecting black people to have the opinions that other “progressive” black people have, so that there is an approved and proper way of Thinking While Black promoted by DEI. Smith also criticizes right-wing racists for their past practice of criticizing “uppity Negroes” who didn’t act like black people should, though we don’t see much of that these days.
When Smith got to college and then became a faculty member, he saw this same tendency in DEI, except that the “uppity Negroes” are now those blacks who don’t conform to the prescribed progressive ideology. You can think of some “uppity” blacks, including people like John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Coleman Hughes, and Thomas Sowell, all worth reading or listening to.
Click to read:
I’ll give a few excerpts:
Unlike traditional racism — the belief that particular races are, in some way, inherently inferior to others — prescriptive racism dictates how a person should behave. That is, an identity type is prescribed to a group of people, and any individual who skirts that prescription is deemed inauthentic or even defective. President Biden displayed prescriptive racism when he said “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, you ain’t Black,” a statement that implicitly prescribes how Black voters should think.
. . .prescriptive racism casts a broader net, disadvantaging people for not abiding by a long list of things a Black person shouldn’t do. A prescriptive racist may not mind that a Black person has a master’s degree, but he may scoff at the sight of a Black man watching the Masters — especially if Tiger isn’t playing. A white prescriptive racist would look at a Black person speaking standard English the way a Black person would look at a white person wearing a dashiki. Lest you think that last statement is mere speculation, I have met several people who have voiced derision and irritation upon hearing standard English come out of my mouth. My use of language was an affront to their expectations and sensibilities.
Many prescriptive racists are often people of the same minority group. A Black person lambasting another Black person for acting in ways deemed racially inauthentic — for example, speaking in dialects coded “white” — is engaging in prescriptive racism.
And how it enters DEI:
And prescriptive racism is not just a social phenomenon; it is now being institutionalized. More and more, it is erroneously labeled diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it is winning out over initiatives more in line with the civil rights movement and classical liberal values like individuality, free speech, reason, and even equality. It is becoming policy in academia, corporate America, and even the military. To put it another way, contemporary DEI is prescriptive racism.
In academia, I’ve found, Blackness is a role, a “pre‐script,” to which Black people are expected to conform if they want to be accepted or, sometimes, acknowledged at all. A Black scholar cannot simply study and write about Plato; she has to write about Plato from a Black perspective. Nobody shows much interest in a Black graduate student drafting a dissertation on American Transcendentalism that isn’t focused on its relevance to the Black experience. In this sense, applying for graduate school or a professorship is akin to auditioning for “Black person” in some live‐action role‐playing event.
I hadn’t realized the expectations outlined in the second paragraph, but I’m sure they’re true, for nearly every black academic I know of is engaged in writing about the connection between their discipline and “blackness”. (This also applies to “studies” programs, in which white people also conform to DEI expectations by imbuing scholarship with ideology approved by DEI.) What is clear is that DEI is racist in expecting groups to behave in certain approved ways and to hold certain approved views. John McWhorter, for instance, has not done that, and he’s suffered for it. As he says, he’ll never be invited to another linguistics meeting nor get an invitation to speak about linguistics at another university. What a pity for such a smart guy! But that’s what you suffer for thinking independently—for being “heterodox.”
One more quote on “political blackness”:
Political Blackness made much more sense several decades ago. Both Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. could have been construed as politically Black. Why? Because, when these men lived, whether Black Americans were gay or straight, Islamic or Christian, working class or middle class, none of them could sit at the front of the bus in the Jim Crow South. However, in this third decade of the 21st century, the efficacy of political Blackness has waned significantly. Though things are not perfect and racist environments still exist, policy changes have afforded Black Americans opportunities and resources traditionally denied them. As a result, “the Black experience” has become so varied that the use of “the” is questionable.
The idea of an indefinite abject oppression that justifies essentialism and political Blackness does not reflect reality. The facts that roughly 80 percent of Black Americans are working class or higher and that the number of Black immigrants has skyrocketed (strongly suggesting that the United States isn’t a fundamentally anti‐Black country) are just two of many things that illustrate this. But activists who still want power must fabricate an insidious specter of oppression, and an essential victimhood has to be prescribed, whether they are homeless or Oprah Winfrey. If you are a Black American who does not abide by this prescription, be you liberal or conservative, you are seen as weakening the political power of Black Americans.
The inherent paradox of contemporary social justice is the essentialism that says “you are bad if you stereotype other people, but you are also bad if you don’t.”
Smith goes on to say that he and others have founded a new organization to combat prescriptive racism:
I and a few others have cofounded Free Black Thought, a nonprofit newsletter and podcast representing “the rich diversity of Black thought beyond the narrow spectrum of views promoted by mainstream outlets as defining ‘the Black perspective.’” We come from a classical liberal standpoint, meaning we believe people should be treated as sovereign individuals and not deindividuated members of a group. In other words, we’re sticking it to the prescriptive racists.
The “free” in Free Black Thought is both an adjective and a verb. We want to promote thought free from the tyranny of prescription, which means we publish and promote a wide array of ideological points and artistic expression, highlighting Black artists and thinkers typically neglected in mainstream media. But we also seek “to free” Black thought by offering alternatives to K‑12 curricula informed by critical social justice, like BLM in Schools and Woke Kindergarten, to let schools know that other ways to promote true DEI do exist.
Another sin laid at the door of DEI, which I’m hoping is on the way out. Note that I said “hoping”, not “predicting.”
Interesting. He also makes a larger point, by implication, that DEI is in opposition to classical liberalism, which of course it is.
Maoism with American Characteristics
“Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul […]”
-Mao Zedong / Mao Tse-Tung
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (February 27, 1957)
1st pocket ed., pp. 43-..
(Also should be on marxists dot org)
Remember also “authentic” black. And Black.
See what I did There? Now I can be made the enemy if there’s a lower-case letter)
Divide, divide, etc.
I don’t think that this is unique to DEI. I remember back in the 80s that politicians would say things that assumed blacks, for example, should think a particular (Democratic) way.
I think DEI is racist because it’s racist. DEI is a Marxian strategy premised on the Marxian belief that there are only oppressors and oppressed. DEI asserts that this oppressor/oppressed binary is centered around race. While the goal used to be equality, DEI changes this so that now the only way to not be oppressed is to become the oppressor. Once a group becomes the oppressor, it will oppress along racial lines. In fact, it must oppress along racial lines in order to prove that it is now the oppressor. Good times.
About 15/20 years ago The Daily Show introduced Larry Wilmore as their “Senior Black Correspondent”, which was a joke playing on the idea of their being a single black perspective, with also maybe a light jab at the tokenism in media/culture, where random black people would be inserted into shows/reports solely for their race.
Well, one generation’s joke is the next generation’s commandment…
Once the academic neo-Marxists introduced the class struggle into American race relations—everything is about race, every issue must be infused with race, and only bigots disagree—the “Senior Black Correspondent” has now become the Senior Black Commissar who must always have the same perspective—Amerikkka is in all ways racist—and must have a seat at every table, from publishing, movies, but especially hiring and academic admissions, with veto power based on the moral credential provided by their skin color and its unfortunate history.
DEI is simply a way to move political commissars into every aspect of society, and make it almost impossible to dislodge or even criticize them, as this is met with vehement claims of Racist!, which is the blasphemy/heresy charge of our age.
DEI is a cynical strategy to weaponize black suffering and grievance for political ends, and while it may have accrued benefits to the commissar class, it is both dishonest and socially destructive and has helped poison race relations.
The inherent paradox of contemporary social justice is the essentialism that says “you are bad if you stereotype other people, but you are also bad if you don’t.”
Sadly, all too true.
one generation’s joke is the next generation’s commandment…
Look up the old Jimmy Smits SNL skit “Enchilada” – it’s dead on. What was made fun of in that skit is now de rigueur on NPR especially.
DEI is horrible. Mandatory training is now part of corporate life, and if you’re not lucky enough to be one of the “oppressed” groups (which all have their own company-sponsored discussion groups), you can at least get points for being an “ally”. We get training on allyship so that we know how to properly address the employees of the “oppressed” classes and how to properly speak on their behalf. We also track and report on “diverse” hiring. We get told to only hire the best candidate for the job, but scorecards and bonuses are based to make sure we have enough diverse people in roles. Everyone knows that diverse means non-white straight male (not sure if Jewish is part of this or not), but it’s couched in other terms. Fascinating stuff really. The good thing is that “Asian” is a diverse group here.
The funny thing is that when taking DEI at face value, the message is that if you are one of the “diverse” groups, then there is no way you can succeed unless some White master allows you to or unless rules are put in place to make sure that those same “oppressors” are removed from the decision process. Talk about removing agency! Expectation is that these groups should almost have to beg to get ahead. We are telling a whole group of people that they can’t succeed on their own unless someone else clears the way for them. Then when someone does succeed, ala McWhorter, they are criticized for not really being part of their proper identity group. It’s insane stuff.
It’s also hugely divisive in a working environment, and there’s nothing more uncomfortable than getting out of a corporate training exercise with someone from a diverse group and trying to work with them. Instead of reviewing the audit plan with Jim who’s really good at process analysis, it’s now a review of the audit plan with Jim who I should expect to be late because his parents came from Mexico even though he’s always beaten me to the start of the meeting, and with whom I can’t talk with about Mexican food because that would be racist, but at the same time I must honor the knowledge that food, family, and religion are part of Mexican-American life, but telling him that we have taco Tuesday at home would be a no-no because I’d be admitting cultural appropriation…
Smith posts on Twitter as Rhetor of York. Well worth following.
Thanks for mentioning this fellow — Erec Smith. I’d never heard of him before. He’s an interesting guy.
“A Black scholar cannot simply study and write about Plato; she has to write about Plato from a Black perspective. Nobody shows much interest in a Black graduate student drafting a dissertation on American Transcendentalism that isn’t focused on its relevance to the Black experience.”
Is that true? I for one would be far more impressed by a black scholar who was simply a scholar — whether of astrophysics or medieval French poetry — than one whose work constantly tried, narcissistically, to make their ostensible subject all about themselves.
In my opinion it is racist to expect a Black scholar to only write from a Black perspective. You have to think pretty poorly of an entire race of people if you think that none of them can think or write about a subject objectively simply because of their skin color.
Apologies for length but I think this is directly relevant (bold added):
“This is not to deny that the process of categorization is itself an exercise of power, but the story is much more complicated and nuanced than that.
First, the process of categorizing — or, in identity terms, naming — is not unilateral. Subordinated people can and do participate, sometimes even subverting the naming process in empowering ways. One need only think about the historical subversion of the category “Black” or the current transformation of “queer” to understand that categorization is not a one-way street.
Clearly, there is unequal power, but there is nonetheless some degree of
agency that people can and do exert in the politics of naming. And it is important to note that identity continues to be a site of resistance for members of different subordinated groups. We all can recognize the distinction between the claims “I am Black” and the claim “I am a person who happens to be Black.” “I am Black” takes the socially imposed identity and empowers it as an anchor of subjectivity. “I am Black” becomes not simply a statement of resistance but also a positive discourse of self-identification, intimately linked to celebratory statements like the Black nationalist “Black is beautiful.” “I am a person who happens to be Black,” on the other hand, achieves self-identification by straining for a certain universality (in effect, “I am first a person”) and for a concommitant [sic] dismissal of the imposed category (“Black”) as contingent, circumstantial, nondeterminant. There is truth in both characterizations, of course, but they function quite differently depending on the political context. At this point in history, a strong case can be made that the most critical resistance strategy for disempowered
groups is to occupy and defend a politics of social location rather than to vacate and destroy it.”
-Kimberlé Crenshaw
Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color
Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6 (Jul., 1991), pp. 1241-1299
[ easy to find a pdf]
This shows class consciousness is not enough, because once that is achieved it becomes the new status quo. Self identity brings stability and also resistance to revolution. Once attained, class must itself be transcended to attain critical consciousness of “man” as a “species-being” (Marx – imagine him on Oprah saying that) oppressed by the society as a whole.
Sorry for length but this is a foundational thinker in the critical literature, is consistent with all big writers in critical lit., and I thought it shows a clear background.