> how much of this nuance is achieved by having discussions about issues which have real life-or-death impacts on people but without having any of those people inconveniently present
I find this comment difficult to understand. On an uncharitable reading, you would seem to be implying that non-white people are incapable of nuanced discussion about race, which I'm sure isn't what you meant. Or are you saying that what we take to be nuanced discussions about race are only considered nuanced because there are no non-white people? Or that it is impossible for white people to have a nuanced discussion about race unless there are black people present?
While not impossible, discussion on problems as they play out in practice rather than in theory (in theory we don't have racism after all), we tend to not have statistics or not the right statistics (we're not measuring the things that would show the issue). Then, the best way to be informed is first hand accounts, which white people naturally wont have. First hand accounts serve as a ground truth when statistics are insufficient, and as such, I don't see how you can have a very informed exchange without them. Now you may read up on those account, but far more often than not, I see white people point to the absence of racism in a statistic and take it as proof it does not exist, or is so uncommon it doesn't show up. That is the problem that is avoided when including (people who telling their) first hand accounts.
> I see white people point to the absence of racism in a statistic and take it as proof it does not exist
I agree, and often I see it the other way around, with statistics used as the basis to build a racist discourse. The classic example is prison population statistics, and the even more classic one is Lombroso.
Plus, it's not like white people don't rely on personal experience and prejudices. There are psychological mechanisms to isolate "otherness" out of people you witness as "bad", you will just use the easiest one to pinpoint. So if you witness a bad guy who is white but from another town, you'll form a prejudice against people from the other town; if the guy is black, the prejudice will "scale up" to skin tone. The only way to offset that problem is to ensure everyone in the room comes from significantly different experiences and can somehow balance them out.
In the legal sense I meant (it is not allowed). And very few people are intentionally of consciously discriminating. I wanted to contrast that to practice: human features that gatekeep people of color and so on. Hope its clear now.
Today's twitter row is the "cancellation" of a history broadcaster for using the phrase "so many damn blacks" in a video, which is probably not a criminal offence Mark Meechan notwithstanding, but is definitely unambiguously racism.
Employment discrimination and the set of things covered by equalities law is the _beginning_ of tackling racism, not the end.
I am pretty sure that the last of your interpretations is closest to the truth, and it is really clear exactly what the parent is saying: people who are directly affected by or involved in the issue under discussion should be involved in the discussion of the issue.
A room full of rich white people discussing problems affecting poor people of colour is doomed to fail to capture the nuance of the situation. Not because white people are inherently too stupid to understand things, but because nobody can completely understand and articulate someone else's lived experience. It's not like this is a new or mind-blowing idea - representation is a key tenet of democracy, and should cover all the ways of segmenting society that are clearly differentiating.
Uh. Excuse me. <foreigner raises hand>. How is 95% of the globe population supposed to discuss black people in America? Are we just simply not allowed to?
And to take the reductio ad absurdum even further - do we move towards a society where you need a token black person to be able to discuss certain subjects? Because, statistically, there's going to be quite a lot of rooms without one.
Like I said in another comment, this is a hell of an Isolated Demand for Rigor. We don't use this kind of strict standard for absolutely anything else. People cook without being chefs, raise children without diplomas in parenting, and make travel plans without a travel rep by their shoulder. But apparently certain subjects can't even be discussed without a representative?
> It's not like this is a new or mind-blowing idea - representation is a key tenet of democracy, and should cover all the ways of segmenting society that are clearly differentiating.
Actually, this is a very new and mind blowing idea. In two ways. First, "all the ways of segmenting a society" part is new, and I can't help but notice that the people doing the gerrymandering... sorry, I meant deciding which segments are clearly differentiating are having a hell of an advantage. Speaking of, I'm going to say that being an introvert is a pretty big thing, and I really don't feel my needs are properly represented in politics. And second, the idea that we need to take the kind of rules made for governing and apply them to citizen's everyday life. This is not a normal extension - it's a reversal. Rules made for governing have the very important purpose of curtailing the power of those in power, so that we, the citizens, have more freedom.
I'm also a foreigner to the USA. Not sure why that us being used as the reference point but OK.
It's really not hard - you actively seek out written or shared experiences, opinions and perspectives of the relevant people.
By all means people are welcome to have uninformed discussions that are doomed to trap them in an echo chamber. But if you want to have a well informed discussion and truly understand an issue then you'll try to diversify the participation and the evidence base.
That is why we have discussions and a good chunk of why we as humanity have so much literature outside of technical and entertainment reasons. Putting down your "lived experience" and conveying it so that others can understand it is very important and should be happening everywhere. There is nothing magical about "lived experience" if you articulate its effects clearly and others can understand it. People can, of course, choose to dismiss them but that is their own failing.
Personally, I think the "lived experience" argument is currently being used more as a way of discounting/dismissing opinions just by virtue of who is saying them rather than the content and value that said experiences convey/express. It's equally dismissing of the "lived experience" of the other group as well because they bring a unique perspective as an outsider if the issue pertains to just one group.
Right now, the "lived experience" of white-people (and some other groups) is being dismissed and ignored. There is currently racial discrimination against white people, double-standards against pro-white opinions, all-round blaming of white people for grand historic things that they are not the sole perpetrators of, downright hatred against them that is ignored and celebrated, demonization of them expressing pride in their identity, historic slavery and oppression of white people is swept under the rug, human-rights abuses against white minority groups around the world are ignored, predominantly white nations are being demonized for racism for wanting national sovereignty, etc. These are all "lived experiences" currently affecting the white population group. So if we want to bring emotion to the discussion, then I'm all for having the "lived experience" discussion with any group, so long as all groups' experiences matter.
Side note: Another "lived-experience" affecting white people: Having to tip-toe and be afraid of voicing our opinion on racial topics such as this one.
There are obviously situations where one might have a discussion without the person being discussed being present. The point is that if the discussion might affect those people, they should be represented. That could be by the people having the discussion actively seeking out resources to genuinely learn the perspective of the people in question, but where at all possible it should involve them.
> Having to tip-toe and be afraid of voicing our opinion on racial topics such as this one.
I'm a white person and am not at all afraid of voicing my opinion on racial topics, but that's often not important to do. Far more important is to listen or actively seek out and learn from other (affected) people's perspectives. If you're afraid of voicing your opinion it's because you haven't made a good faith attempt to learn about the subject, and have formed an uninformed opinion. Learn and then think and then maybe speak. Everyone doesn't have to have their stupid opinions respected.
"Nuanced" is a description of tone; it says nothing about how well informed the participants are. Someone who comes in saying "I am part of this group, and you're completely misrepresenting me" is not nuanced.
Perhaps our misunderstanding is just one of definition then. I understood nuance to mean something like this from Merriam-Webster: "sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings (as of meaning, feeling, or value)". A nuanced discussion according to that definition would be one that takes into account the various complexities and positions involved in a topic, rather than papering over them with political rhetoric, partiality, or fallacious reasoning.
For example, I can have a nuanced understanding of how fire works, the fire code in my area, and so on. But I'm not going to be very "nuanced" when I'm trapped in a burning building and screaming for help because I'm about to burn to death.
Both meanings are relevant here.
To the parent poster's point...
Certainly, nuanced discussion is in general a good thing. We want that understanding, that openness to new ideas, the understanding of others' perspectives, the acknowledgement of complexity, the reliance upon facts and not rhetoric or emotion.
However, an insistence on nuanced discussion necessarily excludes folks who do not have the luxury of nuance. If I am trapped in a burning building, I would not have the luxury of nuance. Folks being rounded up for transport to concentration camps do not have the luxury of nuance. A person being stalked by a jealous ex-lover with a history of violence does not have the luxury of nuance.
So if we exclude those whose tone lacks nuance, we also tend to exclude those with a truly nuanced understanding of the issue at hand.
I wouldn't advocate holding any sort of discussion in a burning building or when exigent circumstances demand urgent action. Pausing for a chat while people are, at that moment and in that place, being "rounded up for transport to concentration camps" seems irresponsible. If someone interrupted a conversation to tell me they were having a heart attack, I wouldn't tell them off for lacking nuance.
But conversations don't take place in those circumstances. Those circumstances stop conversations, which can only take place when people have the space to talk or write, making and critiquing arguments, and so on.
To return to my original point: there seems to be an underlying worry that the people we should be listening to about race, who should be part of those conversations, are incapable of nuanced conversation, either nuance of tone or nuance of content, which strikes me as deeply patronizing and nakedly racist.
Either that or it's an attempt to shut down conversation in case the "nuance" tends to show one party's arguments to be false.
To return to my original point: there seems to be
an underlying worry that the people we should be
listening to about race are incapable of nuanced
conversation, either nuance of tone or nuance of
content, which strikes me as nakedly racist.
Nobody is suggesting that any group of people is intrinsically incapable of nuanced conversation. If they did, they would be profoundly (factually and morally) wrong.
What is being suggested that, yes, some individuals and groups are experiencing circumstances that -- while not as exigent as being trapped in a burning building -- are something like that.
Certainly, if I or my loved ones personally experienced police brutality, or if it was a common enough experience for people in my area who looked like me, and it was a real possibility that I faced every day... it would of course be challenging for me to discuss it in a nuanced way. I do not feel this would represent some sort of weakness intrinsic to my race.
I find this comment difficult to understand. On an uncharitable reading, you would seem to be implying that non-white people are incapable of nuanced discussion about race, which I'm sure isn't what you meant. Or are you saying that what we take to be nuanced discussions about race are only considered nuanced because there are no non-white people? Or that it is impossible for white people to have a nuanced discussion about race unless there are black people present?