Correcting an Obnoxious Mischaracterization

In the middle of an article that amounts to, among other things, a disgraceful apologia for the explosion in campus antisemitism, including violence, since October 7 (recharacterized as involving only commendable “Palestine solidarity”) Professor Jonathan Feingold of BU Law School and Isaac Kamola of Trinity College write:

In this MAGA mythology, student anti-discrimination trainings, LGBTQ+ resource centers, fellowships supporting Black students, and diversity-focused initiatives are indistinguishable from–or more concerning than–the actual Nazis who chanted “Jews will not replace us” on the University of Virginia’s campus in 2017.17

17 For one example of the assertion that contemporary diversity efforts are “perhaps more insidious” than white nationalist projects and antisemitic conspiracy theories, see David Bernstein, Three Bad Ideas About Race in America, 4 Am. J.L. & Liberty 121, 123 & n.9 (2024).

Here is what I actually wrote in the cited article.

There are two ideological threats to further progress. The first, from the right, is a potential return to the notion of the United States as a “white man’s” country. The potency of this threat is reflected in the increasingly popular “Great Replacement” theory. According to this theory, the powers-that-be are seeking to replace the United States’ white population with members of minority groups. These purported usurpers are mostly drawn from post-1965 immigrants, including illegal immigrants, and their descendants.⁹ While this conspiracy theory is wrongheaded and dangerous, those who adopt it fortunately hold little sway in elite and academic circles.

The second ideological threat is various racialist theories adopted by academics associated with the ideological left. These theories have spread to become something close to mainstream in some progressive circles. There is no single accepted moniker for this ideology, but many associate it with “woke,” “critical social justice,” and “critical race” theories of race and race relations. This ideology is perhaps more insidious than its counterpoint on the right; it reflects views held by people who call themselves “anti-racists” and who hold a great deal more cultural sway, especially among the American elite and in the establishment, than do right-wing racists.

That said, I didn’t write anything like the supposed “assertion that contemporary diversity efforts are ‘perhaps more insidious’ than white nationalist projects and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” In fact, I didn’t say anything about “diversity efforts,” at all, much less deem such efforts worse than “white nationalist projects.”

Rather, I critiqued three particular views common on the racialist left:

• Socioeconomic disparities among racial and ethnic groups should presumptively be attributed to present-day racism, racial hierarchy, or institutions serving the white majority, rather than to the many other cultural, historical, demographic, and economic factors that can produce group differences.
• Racial groups are collective actors with shared interests.
• White racial consciousness should be encouraged.

And if you wanted to stretch things a bit, and suggest that if I am critiquing an ideology I must be critiquing the products of that ideology, it at least should go without saying that diversity efforts are not necessarily a product of, and certainly not exclusively a product of, the ideologies noted above.

Indeed, many are not. To take the concrete examples that the authors raise, “LGBTQ+ resource centers” have no direct relationship to modern leftist racialist ideology, and fellowships for black students at predominately white colleges have existed since at least 1918, when Grinnell College sponsored them in cooperation with philanthropist Julius Rosenwald.

Academics should be careful about mischaracterizing their colleagues, perhaps especially people they disagree with, but the fault here lies also with the BU Law Review. Law reviews have a lot of disadvantages, but one advantage is supposed to be that they are supposed to check what authors say against the sources they cite. This doesn’t protect the reading public from authors that rely on poor sources, but at least it’s something, and the law review failed that basic task.

The post Correcting an Obnoxious Mischaracterization appeared first on Reason Magazine.