Norman Finkelstein On Race, Class, & Robin DiAngelo’s Fraud | ArtiFact #44

In the last few decades, political correctness has divided Americans and reduced their ability to embark on a real political project. According to Holocaust and Israel/Palestine scholar Norman Finkelstein, Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi are representatives of race-based fraud, downplaying the role of class, culture, and more in order to sell books and corporate workshops.

In ArtiFact #44, Norman Finkelstein and Alex Sheremet discuss the class-based critique formulated in Finkelstein’s latest book, “I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It”, as well as questions of criminal justice and criminal justice reform. The text covers political correctness, academic freedom, class politics, cancel culture, Roe v. Wade and other Supreme Court decisions, W.E.B. DuBois, Frederick Douglass, and more.

You can also watch this discussion on the automachination YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/csWQhC40DDM

Buy Norman Finkelstein’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Heretical-Thoughts-Identity-Politics-Academic/dp/B0BSJXB7WN/

Norman Finkelstein’s website: https://www.normanfinkelstein.com

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Timestamps:

0:00 – race, class, and the criminal justice system

1:26 – introducing Norman Finkelstein’s “I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It”; is there a biological basis for race and racism; Finkelstein explains why he rejects the salience of race and IQ; Robert Trivers and Mihalis Yannakakis; Finkelstein’s experience with his African American students

12:56 – Alex Sheremet’s experience with desegregation; ethnicity from Belarus to Brooklyn; how proximity creates understanding; Robin DiAngelo’s bait-and-switch in “White Fragility”

16:34 – “White Fragility is the worst book written on any subject ever”; Norman Finkelstein on structural racism; racial representation vs. culture; Asian representation & the Tiger Mom; Finkelstein on Ketanji Brown Jackson & the Affirmative Action decision; W.E.B. DuBois; cultural disparities are a constant; why the American legal process is grounds for revolution; class forces one into plea bargains

30:16 – racism and the criminal justice system; how class defines the criminal justice experience; Norman Finkelstein’s arrests and legal experiences

37:54 – gender disparities in male/female sentencing for identical crimes; the need for a material/cultural analysis; basketball courts are material and cultural; Norman Finkelstein wasted too much time watching television; early childhood years are fundamental for development; Frederick Douglass

44:54 – Robin DiAngelo’s authoritarian version of antiracism; liberalism & authoritarianism; the silliness of “interrupting racism”; developing a thicker skin; anti-Semitic comments directed at Norman Finkelstein; African American passivity in “White Fragility”; have classical studies been hijacked?

56:42 – Alex Sheremet and Norman Finkelstein make a series of “wild surmises” about Robin DiAngelo’s psychology; the Glenn Loury problem – personal background should make you “know better”; Robin DiAngelo as a “sick Karen”; teasing our future conversation on Ibram X. Kendi

Tags: #politics #justice #iq #normanfinkelstein #woke #race