The New(est) American Religion

In a wonderful critique of The Coddling of the American Mind (which, by the way, I loved), writer Aaron Sibarium writes:

"Give people too much freedom, and soon they’ll come crawling back to their chains."

The more I think about it; the more I think he's right.

John McWhorter writes a wonderful column about our new American religion, Antiracism. Some call it wokeness. But I believe the most inclusive term would be Social Justice. Either way, it shares some commonality with traditional religion.

McWhorter notes:

"It is inherent to a religion that one is to accept certain suspensions of disbelief. Certain questions are not to be asked ... The Antiracism religion, then, has clergy, creed, and also even a conception of Original Sin. Note the current idea that the enlightened white person is to, I assume regularly (ritually?), 'acknowledge' that they possess White Privilege." 

It seems that in an effort to free ourselves from the restrictions of religion, liberalism has only gone on to redefine a new religion. My concern is that it's hostility to heretics is approaching (or surpassing) hostility to other races and genders in contemporary times.

In one of his most popular blog posts, Scott Alexander comments on this ideological hostility.

"Someone finally had the bright idea of doing an Implicit Association Test with political parties, and they found that people’s unconscious partisan biases were half again as strong as their unconscious racial biases. For example, if you are a white Democrat, your unconscious bias against blacks (as measured by something called a d-score) is 0.16, but your unconscious bias against Republicans will be 0.23." 

He continues:

"Iyengar and Westwood ... asked subjects to decide which of several candidates should get a scholarship (subjects were told this was a genuine decision for the university the researchers were affiliated with). Some resumes had photos of black people, others of white people. And some students listed their experience in Young Democrats of America, others in Young Republicans of America.

Once again, discrimination on the basis of party was much stronger than discrimination on the basis of race. The size of the race effect for white people was only 56-44 (and in the reverse of the expected direction); the size of the party effect was about 80-20 for Democrats and 69-31 for Republicans."

How do liberals and conservatives feel about their children marrying a different race? I'm glad you asked.

 How about marrying outside one's political party?

To recap, 1% of consistent liberals would be unhappy if their child married a different race but 23% would be unhappy if they married a Republican and 31% would be upset if they married a gun owner.

23% of consistent conservatives would be unhappy if their child married a different race but 30% would be unhappy if they marred a Democrat.

I admire my college's goal of increasing racial diversity: It better prepares students for interacting with people of different cultures. But if political ideology is a more emotionally-charged topic, it might make more sense to increase diversity of thought to better prepare students for the real world.

What's going on?

Beyond Social Justice being the raison d'etre of liberals, I think there is another reason race gets more attention than politics. We have a long, documented history of racial injustice in this country. Although things have improved dramatically, SJWs are so sensitive to any perceived racial slight—with the image of Emmet Till's face burned into our minds.

What we don't have is a long history of political discrimination on which to draw. The reason blacks were treated so poorly was because it was, for the most part, acceptable. Currently it is, for the most part, unacceptable. We'd like it to stay that way, hence the racial sensitivity.

But political discrimination is different. It is acceptable. We are not yet sensitive to it.

The next recession will be like the last one. I don't mean a housing bubble; I mean it will be something no one sees coming. I think the current political climate is like that. It won't be until decades from now that we realize how poorly we treat our ideological opponents.