This Week

Last Tuesday, I Just taught my last class of the semester. The final project will be a three episode podcast on black resistance. If they’re cool with it, I’ll share it. But now I’ve time to weigh in on a few things I’ve been thinking about. 

• Mamdani

• An AI Anecdote

• SF Dystopia

• American Balkanization

• Anti-blackness

Mamdani

Not that long ago Zohran Mamdani met with Donald Trump, and caught criticism from some in doing so. The meeting wasn’t as important as some suggest, but the fact that Mamdani didn’t capitulate is important. What’s far more important and interesting is the transition committee he’s assembled. Putting people like Lina Khan and Darrick Hamilton on the team signals that he’s both interested in shifting New York policy in the direction he campaigned on and that he’s interested in figuring out new ways to use government to seize power. (A friend juxtaposed Mamdani’s meeting with Trump against Washington D.C.’s Muriel Bowser’s interactions. DC is unique given its status as the nation’s capital and its relative lack of political power, but with that said I think Bowser had far more room to forcefully articulate the interests of DC residents than what she chose. She decided recently not to run for re-election, and I can’t say I’m not surprised.)

Here’s an interview with Khan on the Jon Stewart show:

And a Dig conversation with Mamdani’s campaign advisor Tascha Van Auken. Take a listen if you can—one of the reasons we are where we are is because Obama decided to demobilize his volunteer base after his 2008 election. Van Auken began her career as one of those volunteers.

An AI anecdote

I haven’t talked much about AI, leaving that terrain for my friend Hollis Robbins. But like most of my colleagues I have been struggling. Last week a student told me a story that gets at the heart of my struggles. First a bit about this student—come graduation I’m pretty sure this student will graduate with the equivalent of an A+ grade point average because the student is both brilliant and driven. Because they knew they wanted to go to law school as soon as they started school, they began prepping for the LSAT early. The first practice score they received was 160 (out of 180). After the practice score the student was comfortable enough in their law school prospects that they began to use AI as a way to be more efficient in class. A semester or two later, the student took the practice test again. They scored 144. They attributed this to AI—relying on it made the student far less sharp. I know this is anecdotal, but the reason I even know of this account is because I began my last class lecturing (hopefully not haranguing) students about what they stood to lose if they allowed AI to even summarize their readings for them. If the smartest student has that type of drop, what type of range are we looking at?  

SF and dystopian vision

The below Venn diagram has been making the rounds again.

Science fiction dystopias are often more about the time they’re written in than about the future per se. The 1973 film Soylent Green took place in the year 2022, which would now make it a work of alt-history rather than science fiction—when I tend to think about science fiction I tend to think of it as “the future” and Soylent Green is now about “the past.” Here’s what I wrote about it in 2022:

In the Venn diagram above, Soylent Green overlaps with The Handmaid’s Tale. Whereas Soylent Green’s problem was overpopulation, The Handmaid’s Tale is concerned with underpopulation—women’s rights are rendered null and void in order to deal with the problem of underpopulation. I get Venn diagrams like this. But maybe spend a bit more time thinking about them?

American Balkanization

My dear friend Ailish asked me what about Christopher Armitage’s article “Are We Headed towards American Balkanization?”  (As an aside I use Beehiiv as my newsletter engine for a reason, but I’ll be damned if sometimes I don’t think Substack has a good racket going for the way it suggests other newsletters.) Armitage suggests that we’re already in the middle of a soft secession. 

The first isn’t realistic, given how big the nation is, combined with all of the different levels of government. The second and third options are possible….but it’s the last one he thinks is more likely, particularly given the shutdown—the longest in American history. I think he’s right. But this final section makes me pause a bit.   

I think Armitage could use a primer in American history. Seems to me that America functioned for a pretty long while with wild disparities in how the law should be applied. The Deep South functioned as an authoritarian enclave for much of the nation’s history. For that reason I think we should not only take a blue state development project seriously, we should also take the possibility of democratic hardball seriously as well if that landslide comes to pass. 

Anti-Blackness

Someone I met in Detroit watched my Damon Keith Center talk. In the wake of the recent mayoral election, which saw Detroit elect Mary Sheffield (first black woman, and first black mayor in several years), I made a comment about the need to hold her accountable, in fact, to hold her to a higher standard. Given racism (and truth be told, white mediocrity) some think this is an unfair standard. To this I’d say it isn’t an unfair standard….it’s a hard standard. There’s a difference. With leadership, elected or otherwise, comes expectations. The expectations that come with leadership are and should be higher than the expectations that come from simple citizenship. 

I was then asked about the possibility of black anti-blackness. “Do you think black folks can be anti-black?”

Yes, but. 

So I don’t write about anti-blackness. In fact I did a keyword search on the newsletter just to check and I’ve only used it here to describe an event or when I’m quoting someone (directly or indirectly). I was going to write that I don’t use it because I don’t believe in it…but then I thought about it. If I believe it is possible to be “pro-black” (and I do), then why wouldn’t it be possible for someone (black) to be “anti-black?” If I think something like a “black interest” exists (and I do), and that interest can be juxtaposed against other interests, then why wouldn’t something like an “anti-black” interest exist? 

With this in mind, I’d say that if we’re talking shorthand…that is if we’re just talking or making posts on social media or the like, saying that someone is “anti-black” can be a shorthand way of talking about their tendency to support issues or ideas that go against what we believe black people are for. I don’t use it, because I don’t think it’s precise enough, even for my own shorthand. And it sounds a bit too much like “internalized racism”—something I definitely don’t believe in. 

Does this make sense? 

If not, let me know.