I think most people agree racism exists and is bad.
The central conceit of this article, and all the other ones about socially deleterious movements, is the assumption that the author is objective enough to identify those movements - which in this case concerns identification of racism going, in their mind, across the line which they see so clearly. I'm always curious about what qualifications or experience they have that makes their vision so clear.
Even if I assume for a moment that they see where that line is so clearly compared to others, I have to ask myself if they're identifying a genuine social movement - or if they might be mistaking the ability of the internet to now allow people to say what they think instantly to others, with some kind of new social ill.
> I think most people agree racism exists and is bad.
Sure, by the definition of racism that you and I would use. But not by the one that's been weaponised in these purity spirals. By their definition, as explained by the academic interviewed in the podcast, it is literally impossible for someone raised in modern society NOT to be racist. Taking offense at being called a racist is more evidence of racism. Trying to explain how you aren't racist is more evidence of racism.
It is like Original sin, but without any path to redemption.
Its really not rocket science. If you say hurtful things when you don't mean to, that's one thing. Denying the other party's feelings are valid and continuing to say hurtful things for really no reason other than to be stubborn makes you a jerk.
> "If you say hurtful things when you don't mean to, that's one thing. Denying the other party's feelings are valid and continuing to say hurtful things for really no reason other than to be stubborn makes you a jerk."
I note that this says nothing about the original speaker's feelings and opinions. If the other party denies the validity of the speaker's feelings and opinions, are they not also jerks?
Telling people you aren't a racist and didn't mean the thing they consider to be racist in a racist way is in no way denying the other party's feelings are valid.
Ok, but which authority gets to objectively identify when accusations of racism have been weaponised? How do we distinguish between "weaponised" accusations of racism, and legitimate ones?
This was brought up right at the end in the BBC podcast. The academic said something like "you don't get to distinguish. That accusations were made means that something was done to warrant some reaction". I feel the academic agreed that it could be weaponised but saw that its not possible to distinguish and that there would always be some justification.
The presenter suggested that the solution would be to not believe in the ideology. "The best way to get rid of witchfinders is to get rid of the belief in witches"
So who gets to identify objectively when a purity spiral exists? Almost all people in a "purity spiral" have the impression they're applying the appropriate amount of "purity".
Are you trying to assert that there is no such thing as a purity spiral because there is no objective definition of one, and no authority that can definitively identify one?
No. I'm trying to decide whether I should trust the people that are in a "purity spiral" who say they're being reasonable, or the people gesticulating at the knitting community and saying there's a purity spiral there because they said so.
Who is more credible? How are we sure which one is?
If it was possible to objectively decide who is more credible then the world would be a much simpler place. You'll have to decide for yourself who to trust
That's honestly a very postmodern view! I think given that the article linked doesn't have any experimental or quantitative basis, I'll choose not to trust it.
There are a number of things you could do. You could look for corroborating accounts. For example (note these are a three part series written by the same person):
Ultimately I guess you have to make your own judgement of what kind of ideas and behaviour you deem 'reasonable'. The difficulty, I suppose, is if you yourself are caught up in one of these purity spiralling communities. It's hard to maintain objectivity in such a situation. Delusional people don't know that they're delusional. People caught up in a cult don't think they're in a cult.
I've seen people only come to understand how insane things are when the mob finally turns on them, but by then it's too late to get out unscathed.
> The difficulty, I suppose, is if you yourself are caught up in one of these purity spiralling communities. It's hard to maintain objectivity in such a situation. Delusional people don't know that they're delusional. People caught up in a cult don't think they're in a cult.
Is it possible that some people accuse those who believe Quillette is objective of being caught up in such a community?
It'd seem so. Now who am I to believe? Should I believe Quillette because three different articles corroborate accounts of purity spirals? Or should I believe the editors of this other page when they say Quillette isn't objective.
Should I infer from comments on the internet some social malady that needs a remedy?
Why trust the authors of rationalwiki over the author of those Quillette articles? As you yourself asked: Who is more credible? How are we sure which one is? Perhaps nothing is knowable, and you should never believe anyone about anything ever.
At this point I think I'm going to bow out of this conversation. Good luck on your quest for objectivity!
The journalists of Jacobin Magazine, endorsed by Noam Chomsky, also think Quillette is pretty batshit. I hope you uhhhhhh.... get out of the cult? Or is it not a cult? Hopefully there's some objective evidence that it isn't, somewhere. Maybe deeming things cults is just the objective thing to do these days?
> Perhaps nothing is knowable, and you should never believe anyone about anything ever.
Or maybe I should be sceptical of claims that some social illness is pervading internet communities when that claim is made with only anecdotal evidence.
Your line of conversation was spiraling towards the philosophical underpinning of knowledge. The parent poster cheekily pushed you off the cliff and ran away.
Appealing to the authority of Jacobin and Chomsky won't get you back. Doubly so when the question that started this whole thing is (I hope you don't find this uncharitable paraphrasing): when do claims of foo rise to the level of "genuine foobar"?
> Your line of conversation was spiraling towards the philosophical underpinning of knowledge.
Actually, this is a fundamental flaw of some counter-arguments to my line of argument. I'm pretty clearly undermining the idea that there exists an authority that can identify the social ill of "purity spirals". I'm not making any epistemological claim. But people like the commenter that "pushed me over a cliff" (lol) seem to quite often think "well, you're saying my claim that the left-wing is a cult has no objective basis, therefore you don't believe in any objective basis for anything! HA!"
The point I'm making by saying Quillette is a "cult" is that my claim it is a cult is as credible as Quillette's claim that purity spirals exist and are cults. Shove
> Appealing to the authority of Jacobin and Chomsky won't get you back.
Appealing to authority by linking Quillette articles is just as fruitless. My entire line of argument is that linking to these articles like they somehow identify an objective social malady is an appeal to authority, with no basis in actual authority.
>I'm pretty clearly undermining the idea that there exists an authority that can identify the social ill of "purity spirals".
You can't undermine a point nobody is really making. Maybe someone is making it somewhere, but tracking back up this comment chain I can't find it. 8 levels up probably_wrong explicitly says "No one" is such an authority. And further asserts that the type of claims suggest that the question is of a type where such an authority can not exist.
If I had to guess, what you actually want to do is tell people off for making and sharing personal assessments of social situations to the best of their own abilities and doing it at a lower evidentiary standard than you're comfortable with. If so, have the courage of your convictions to admit you think that either (A) nobody should do that at all, or (B) you're so much more better at it than them that they shouldn't do it. Or maybe (C) tell them to stop because you disagree but don't want to wade into such imprecise debate.
From the outside, you're not articulating your point well enough to avoid looking like epistemological flailing.
> If so, have the courage of your convictions to admit you think
Well that's not "so", so I'm not going to admit something that isn't so.
> From the outside,
How are you simultaneously discussing this with me while being outside the discussion?
> You can't undermine a point nobody is really making.
Excellent! If people are making the point, I'm undermining it, and if they don't think they're accessing objective truth in this discussion, my observations in my comments still stand. shove
It's impossible for someone raised in modern society to not be influenced by its thousands of cultural associations and tropes. That's not much of a leap; being exposed to something (anything) and it having absolutely zero effect on you is not how humans work. It's not a bad thing, since most tropes are positive or neutral. But if some of those tropes are harmful, you can refute them and act counter to them, but that doesn't mean they won't still have some influence on your thought processes.
I'm not religious, but from my understanding, it is kind of like original sin. Humans are flawed; you can't fix that but you can minimize it and you can be forgiven for it. Same goes for the specific flaw that the brain is really prone to stereotypes, as a sort of cognitive shortcut.
Edit: By the way, contrary to a claim in a link in one of my sibling replies, this is not a 'sin' specific to white people. People who are themselves members of minority races are influenced by the same tropes as everyone else.
Just the opposite: it's perfectly normal for people to classify things, people, ideas, to have all kinds of such thoughts - it's normative and healthy.
It is not sinful or flawed in any way.
That this happens among 'all kinds of people' is not hugely relevant.
That people would try to classify normal behavior as examples of racism is extremist.
In some situations, said subconscious thoughts might alter decision making in small ways is something we should be aware of, but even then it's not 'sinful' and the mere suggestion is at the root of the problem.
We're not talking about actual racists here, we're talking about ladies knitting groups and the minor triflings that develop into purity wars.
> Just the opposite: it's perfectly normal for people to classify things, people, ideas, to have all kinds of such thoughts - it's normative and healthy.
Indeed, which is why I said:
> It's not a bad thing, since most tropes are positive or neutral.
However, in the specific case of tropes that are racist or have racist components, being influenced by them certainly is bad to a varying extent.
> In some situations, said subconscious thoughts might alter decision making in small ways is something we should be aware of, but even then it's not 'sinful' and the mere suggestion is at the root of the problem.
I think we’re in violent agreement. The important thing is to be aware of unconscious bias, and try to counteract it where possible.
> We're not talking about actual racists here, we're talking about ladies knitting groups and the minor triflings that develop into purity wars.
I’m referring to actual racist tropes. I cannot speak for the knitting group example: the article certainly makes it seem like the accusations of racism are crying wolf, and it is probably accurate to a significant extent, but the article also obviously has an anti-‘political-correctness’ agenda, so it may be presenting the facts in a biased manner.
(And, unsurprisingly, the website it’s published on is anti-progressive more broadly. From a skim of the current front page, in terms of concrete social issues, I see one article saying that “the inconvenient truth is that transwomen are male”, while another recounts media bias” “when I worked for a pro-life organisation”. More abstractly, I count at least 5 articles complaining about progressives and political correctness.)
A lot of the time you just get into an argument over semantics. Does someones behaviour meet the definition of the word "racism"? People just have more or less extreme defintions. Really it shouldn't matter.
I tend to agree that prejudice is part of the human condition. The response to that should be humility, but also an attempt to counteract that prejudice in ourselves. In an ideal world we would be able to call out racism without it being a taboo. It shouldn't neccessarily mean that the person is bad, but that they may be wrong.
The line is not between what is too racist (or whatever) and what is not. It's between people who are willing to entertain viewpoints different from their own yet held in good faith, and people who use personal attacks and identity-based gatekeeping criteria to shut down discussion, marginalizing their opponents, signaling their virtue to those aligned with them, and generally furthering their social goals.
Fundamentally, it's a question of motive and character. This applies as much to the right as it does to the left, etcetera.
My argument still fundamentally applies to your characterisation of the people involved.
Who is the authority that is saying these people are unwilling to entertain different viewpoints? Why does anyone feel they haven't just examined those viewpoints thoroughly and decided they aren't worth holding?
Is the motive and character of these people something quantifiable?
I don't claim to be able to look inside somebody's head. Would you claim that motive and character do not, in fact, exist?
And I don't think your argument applies to these characterizations, actually, because I'm talking about two fundamentally different approaches to discourse: in one you are interested in building up your own argument and crushing the other person's (or deciding you actually agree, or identifying subjective factors and agreeing to disagree, or whatever) and in the other you don't give a shit what they're saying, you just want to shut them up and make yourself look stronger. The motives mirror the rhetorical techniques involved.
I'd argue that actually it's fairly clear when somebody's rhetorical strategy falls into one or the other camp, but just like many other parts of the human experience it's not something we can currently express with numbers. If that's your criterion for deciding whether some part of the human experience can be reasoned about, I think you're already overextending yourself by participating in this conversation at all.
And it's fine to walk away from a conversation, or jump into the same old argument for the Nth time with no intention of changing your position, or whatever. But if you are going to attack an argument or viewpoint, you need to attack it and not the person behind it. My previous comment did not cover these bases because I wrote it on a smartphone on the bus. Sincerest apologies.
> Would you claim that motive and character do not, in fact, exist?
No. I'd claim that people aren't able to objectively access those things in other people.
> I'd argue that actually it's fairly clear when somebody's rhetorical strategy falls into one or the other camp,
I also think that the people that think they have "common sense" think that what common sense is, is fairly clear. I also think that we can easily find people that disagree on what is and isn't common sense.
> the human experience
Implying that this judgement of the rhetorical strategies of a group of people is an obvious part of the human experience is immediately contradicted by the observation that the humans you're judging disagree with that judgement. Clearly there is at least something non-obvious about this judgement in some cases.
So then we fall back to the same ol' question. How are we determining that the rhetorical strategies employed in "purity spirals" are an element of the human experience that can be objectively reasoned about? How are we determining that these people aren't hooked into the clarity of sight that you seem to be implying you have?
> I also think that the people that think they have "common sense" think that what common sense is, is fairly clear. I also think that we can easily find people that disagree on what is and isn't common sense.
The lack of an authority certified to definitively classify something does not imply the lack of any theoretically applicable classifications thereof.
> Implying that this judgement of the rhetorical strategies of a group of people is an obvious part of the human experience is immediately contradicted by the observation that the humans you're judging disagree with that judgement. Clearly there is at least something non-obvious about this judgement in some cases.
Do they disagree, though? If they were somehow forced to tell the truth about their motives, what would they say? If we could look inside their heads with a machine, what would we find?
And please note, I've said nowhere that people pursue either of these strategies consciously. Some people use both at different times; they seem to scratch different itches. For instance, a lot of people start with the first, and move on the the second when they start to "lose".
> How are we determining that the rhetorical strategies employed in "purity spirals" are an element of the human experience that can be objectively reasoned about?
I've identified two strategies: attacks on arguments, and attacks on the people fielding them. Do you claim that this distinction does not, in fact, exist?
You're retreating into subjectivity, relativity, and uncertainty, but I've been here all along. I'm afraid I've used far too many words to describe that simple distinction, but it's all I'm talking about, and either it exists or it doesn't. Do you agree that it exists? Can a distinction be made, in any sense, between an attack on an argument and an attack on a person?
So you think they'd agree with your statement that -
> you don't give a shit what they're saying, you just want to shut them up and make yourself look stronger. The motives mirror the rhetorical techniques involved.
- is a fair characterisation of their own tactics???
> I've identified two strategies: attacks on arguments, and attacks on the people fielding them.
Have you though? Because people seem to sometimes not see the distinction as clearly as you. Have you ever encountered someone who took what you thought was an attack on their argument as a personal attack?
Isn't it possible that some arguments made by the "purity spiral" crowd are the former but you perceive them as the latter?
> You're retreating into subjectivity, relativity, and uncertainty, but I've been here all along.
For example, does accusing me of retreating fit into the attack on argument category, or the attack on people one?
I believe that the distinction is functionally useless because it is incredibly subjective in many contexts. No authority exists that can claim with certainty what side every argument sits on in that fairly limp dichotomy.
Okay then. We have arrived at something like the terminal state I earlier called "identifying subjective factors and agreeing to disagree", and there's nothing more to talk about. But I'll answer one of your earlier questions, since I think it's an interesting one:
> So you think they'd agree with your statement that - is a fair characterisation of their own tactics???
Frankly, yes. in a lot of cases, if they were really being truthful, I think they would. I say that because I have myself followed these impulses in the past, seeking to tear someone down and make them look like a fool (and myself reciprocally stronger) rather than attack whatever argument they were peddling. In my defense, I tend only to do this when my opponent has already stopped saying meaningful things (if they ever started in the first place) and started throwing slurs, but probably not always, especially in the past.
I'm not afraid of being honest, and I have the benefit of being old enough to be able to look back on past versions of myself and somewhat clearly see all the different ways I've been a total asshole to people, many of them total strangers. So I guess my theoretical jerk-revealing machine would have a threefold approach:
1. Add ten years to the subject's age. (filled with life experience and growth; not sure how that works, but this is a thought experiment so)
2. Induce an intense reflective/introspective episode in them.
3. Force them to be honest.
Some people probably just don't have it in 'em to grapple with this aspect of themselves even with the above help, but I expect more do than one might think.
Seriously, though, if you don't think the distinction between attacks on arguments and attacks on people is at all meaningful or useful, we're 100% done here. That last bit is a bonus; feel free to read it and take what you want from it, or not.
It isn't useful for setting some objective metric by which arguments can be judged because people commonly disagree on what category an argument falls into.
The line is frequently pretty obvious. For one thing, the "you can't be a rebel if you don't wear the right uniform" effect becomes very large; it ceases to be about the purported subject and becomes about saying the right things about the right subjects, about agreeing with the right people in the right way and more importantly about not being different in the wrong way. On the other hand, it may be very hard to see the situation from the inside; I don't know.
For another, and I believe this to be invisible from the inside, the reaction begins to be completely out of proportion to the alleged crime. Speaking as someone who decided that knitting wasn't for him because counting is hard, is racism in the knitting community really a big problem? One that requires an emotional response? I mean, I know people who in casual conversation seem to relate skin color to intelligence and common sense. I know people who seem to equate wealth or income to personal worth, or culture, religion, job, or interests with value to society. Whether someone's knitting is too insensitive is way down the list.
That line seems reasonably clear in a lot of cases, like the author's Puritans in the American colonies, various communist flaps, young adult books, and yes, knitters.
The author's spiral is pretty obvious, too: at some point, if the community doesn't disintegrate first, eventually any difference becomes intolerable (which is spectacularly ironic for a "diversity" issue), all the wheels come off, and the lack of self awareness in many if not most people comes out in all its glory.
It's even more clear: when you are not allowed to have an opinion based on something you can't control, like your race, for example, you know it's war.
'White Fragility' supporters will effectively deny the opinion of anyone who is White, because of course, 'how could they possibly know?' and 'they are guilty of perpetuating racism by virtue of their Whiteness'. This is 'race war': you are 'guilty' and you 'must apologize profusely and enduringly'.
In Scientology, anyone who is against the group is labelled as 'suppressive' - that means, among other things that they don't take the 'suppressive' person's arguments or actions at face value. Don't get into argumentation or rhetoric with a 'suppressive' - just undermine them and destroy them by any means possible.
The 'White Fragility' ideology gives people with grievances a very powerful, fascist ideology to validate their anger: "my opponents are wrong by their very nature, and their arguments can have no value". I mean, that's a pretty powerful rhetorical tool, just invalidate whatever anyone else says because of who they are.
The Guardian has an article right now about this [1] i.e. White women paying Women of Colour to tell them all the ways that they are racist. It's not without controversy even among attendees.
The thing is - most people are willing to examine racial issues on some level. 85% of Republicans believe that racism exists in America. Obviously, these things vary, some narratives are more broadly acceptable than others, but by and large, people are willing to listen at the right time and right occasions. But this kind of toxicity draws some pretty hard battle lines, upon which many otherwise 'allies' will join the other camp or ignore entirely.
I've personally become very cynical about the issue, and I believe most popular figures talking about the issue are interested mostly in how people perceive them and not much more, i.e. just enabling the ratcheting.
"People who are part of the Normative or Dominant Group may inadvertently or unconsciously think or act in a manner that may be insensitive to people in Non-Normative groups" - that's a conversation to be had.
But ... "White people are by virtue of their Whiteness guilty of propagating oppression and therefore cannot contemplate otherwise, ergo those who attempt to disagree with any of our rhetoric are 'fragile' or 'Nazis' and their arguments should be dismissed out of hand merely as further attempts to deny or oppress" - is not a conversation, it's totalitarianism.
'Purity' within groups derives systematically from the latter approach.
Is it? We've identified at least enough people in the knitting community that think it isn't obvious. How can we be sure our definitions of where the line is are consistent with even the general population?
The central conceit of this article, and all the other ones about socially deleterious movements, is the assumption that the author is objective enough to identify those movements - which in this case concerns identification of racism going, in their mind, across the line which they see so clearly. I'm always curious about what qualifications or experience they have that makes their vision so clear.
Even if I assume for a moment that they see where that line is so clearly compared to others, I have to ask myself if they're identifying a genuine social movement - or if they might be mistaking the ability of the internet to now allow people to say what they think instantly to others, with some kind of new social ill.