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Concepts like "structural racism" and "intersectionality" have drifted far from what was essentially a reasonable concept. Weaponized in the culture wars, terms like this now signal tribal allegiance more than explanatory power.
First and foremost, there must be an understanding that structure and hierarchy are part of society and cannot be eliminated. This, combined with human nature, ingroup/outgroup dynamics etc. means that competition and group conflict are inevitable and ineradicable. But, these forces can be channeled into less destructive arenas, sometimes even turned on themselves to produce positive outcomes.
On the concept of structural racism, perhaps it can help to think of it in slightly shifted terms. What if, instead of the structure itself being a product of evil thoughts, the structure produces the racism (such as it is). Any leftist worth their salt should be able to grok the concept that groups in conflict with one another for economic or status reasons will develop ideologies to support that conflict. If one desires a multicultural society in which each group maintains a distinct culture, this basically guarantees group conflict at an ethnic or racial level. This in turn will absolutely produce ethnic/racial tensions and resentments, which will inevitably produce some amount of racism (for a relatively broad definition of that term). This is a fundamental tension of human society. Multiculturalism by its very nature and existence produces cultural conflict, which will usually map onto ethnic or racial lines.
The conflict cannot be avoided, but it can be moved by social policy to other arenas. If through base facts or policy, a political state maintains a racial or ethnic monoculture, the conflicts will simply happen along other axes, economics, class, nationalism, religion etc.
If we already have a multicultural society, then our work must be to mitigate ethnic and racial disputes rather than eliminate them. By our structure, it is inevitable. The good news is, we're pretty good at suppressing these conflicts, but going maximalist on the issue of personal racism makes the perfect the enemy of the good. Racism cannot be eliminated for the same reason greed or anger cannot be eliminated. Utopianism is a youthful error. No one who expects to "eliminate racism" can be thought of as remotely politically serious.
Right now, the energy of the left seems to be pushing ever further into the concept that government should not be a neutral broker between groups, but an advocate and rebalancer for the underprivileged. Attempting to precisely fix cherry-picked historical wrongs only exacerbates teh current disputes going on, and it corrupts any attempt for honest reform, as it has structuralized the inequality.
Using the government as a vehicle to rectify ethnic injustices inevitably is captured by powerful interests and used in ways that do not benefit the purported beneficiaries. See things like affirmative action, which privileges a few rich immigrant kids to "diversify" the ruling class without diversifying its class structure or political culture. Harvard has an endowment the size of Croatia's GDP. It is not going to be the vehicle of proletarian change.
This is where intersectionality and the concept of race as a construct is perhaps useful. Rather than monoliths, ethnic minorities have their own status structures and hierarchies. They do not lose those entirely when coming to another country or culture. "Diversity" cannot be purely a skin color thing, an honest understanding of intersectionality must also account for class, sex, sexual preference, attractiveness, physical ability, intelligence etc. etc. These complicated structures of identity interact with each other in ways so complex as to defy human comprehension. We can generalize but not understand fully. What we cannot logically or morally do is assign a morally hierarchical ideology to such a dense topic, much less produce good policy from such an absurd undertaking.
So long as "diversity" just means non-white-male, it is useless and counterproductive. So long as "structural racism" just means an absurd accusation of racism with no basis in reality, it is useless and counterproductive. If thought of with honesty and good faith, these concepts can be useful, and inform progressive politics in more positive directions than it is currently headed.
To some. It's very useful to others, including the people who receive preferential treatment in hiring/placement because of it, and to the white people who can deploy it as a costly signal of virtue to other white people (who are the only ones who don't have strong pro-ingroup preferences). So actually, it's extremely useful and productive to most of the population, hence its meteoric rise and widespread adoption.
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For what it’s worth, this was what I thought it meant before being corrected on this by social reality.
I thought this was part of the dictionary definition of intersectionality, the one that’s not used like a flag?
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But the blue tribe has long abandoned the goal of eliminating racism. Their motto now is, in accordance to the teachings of the CRT prophet Kendi, that a lot of present racism is necessary to correct the past racism - and will be needed indefinitely, or at least until all poorly defined goals of "equity" are reached. If we take the gender equality as a guide, we can easily see that the fact that women now outnumber men in higher education institutions, often substantially, has never been taken as the sign that "the patriarchy" is vanquished, let alone that special measures need to be taken to ensure males are not discriminated against. Consequently, there would be no practical outcome that would make racial corrective discrimination ever unnecessary.
We can also observe, that the blue tribe is completely fine - in fact, insists on - segregation, appropriating the same "separate but equal" veil, which they full know is bullshit since the whole point is that it won't be equal. That's why they want it, in fact - so the better part would go to the people that deserve it.
Thus, there's no point in preaching about small racist sinners - who will surely exist, but they aren't even close to being the problem. The problem is billion-dollar companies, academia heavy hitters and humongous political machine, all working in concert to keep racism going. Because now that they are doing it, it's good racism. They are not utopians. They are cynical operators that use it to cement their power.
And yet, this is exactly the premise of the identity politics - and the blue tribe has embraced it completely.
Nobody is interested in that, at least among people who think "progressive politics" is a good thing, and frankly I don't see how they could be useful if we ever find such unicorns.
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