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Notes -
Yep. It was actually pretty great. At the start of the decade, crime was near all-time highs thanks to 2 decades of urban decay and lax law enforcement.
A tough-on-crime approach put so many murderers in jail that the murder rate fell by nearly 50%. Many major cities like New York saw even larger gains with a corresponding urban renewal that (temporarily) stemmed the white flight to the suburbs.
Had the policies of the 1990s been allowed to persist until today, the U.S. would have the lowest murder rate in 100 years, maybe ever.
Right, I don’t disagree with any of this, I’m just trying to understand what you think are the reasons for why America stopped pursuing those policies. You refer to “race baiting” and “fanning the flames”. Okay, yes, obviously fuck Al Sharpton and Cornel West. But why do you think so many people (both black and white) were susceptible to their messaging? How do we get people to stop taking them seriously?
My basic theory is that blacks in this country are always going to go through cycles of militancy and complacency, and whites are always going to react with their own cycles of hardness and softness. I’m seeing early signs that whites might be ready to shift to a period of hardness, but this will inevitably soften once the proximate causes (Floyd-style race riots, racial grifters overplaying their hand, etc.) fade from memory.
In other words, like I said, the 90’s colorblindness wasn’t bad - I’d be perfectly fine living in it indefinitely, even if it would require me to really hold my tongue at times, especially since I have been on the receiving end of black criminality multiple times in my life - but it was not built to last. The inherent tensions and historical wounds between blacks and whites will continue to recur until either real parity is achieved - perhaps through serious and targeted eugenics and gene therapy - or separation is achieved.
I know, my position is basically "let's try it again and maybe it will work this time". But that's a legitimate position I think. We touched the stove and we got burned. Maybe next time we won't touch the stove. At least until the memory starts to fade again.
I don't think "maybe" needs to be the extent of the plan, though. The transformation from the colorblind 90s to the ever-present race conflict of today didn't happen spontaneously. It was done due to people openly and explicitly pushing for this to happen. We can try again, but excise those elements this time.
Now, that's easier said than done, as it would likely require a great reformation of academia such that they all - not just the "hard" fields - actually take concepts like empiricism and logic seriously. And the forces that pushed this in the first place will continue to innovate, to come up with new, creative techniques to subvert our ability to see individuals as individuals. But having been burned once, we're at least somewhat better equipped to notice and stop these guys before it's too late.
Unfortunately, getting anything like this seems a pipe dream at this point. It'd also be working uphill, since it seems that race consciousness and racism is the human default. Which is one reason why academia had such an easy time turning their ostensibly antiracist efforts into scaffolding to support overt racism.
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