Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

[Wildy]

Bull stuff. You are advocating some kind of super vulcan nonsense. Emotion and lived experience matter, rather a lot.

From what I've seen from the SJW crowd that depends on where you sit on the privilege ladder according to the SJW's. So white male feels are generally always wrong or minimised as irrelevant except in situations where it's beneficial to the SJW's argument. In every other case the feels become more right as more oppression is piled on that person, which seems to be the only reason why SJW's need categorise everyone in little boxes so they know whose opinions are right.

To pretend that only hard logic and empirical facts can be valid when discussing sociology is beyond silly. It does a tremendous disservice to the emotional beings we are and the subjective reality we must deal with. You are also making predictions with little or no data and passing off your feelings as though they are empirical fact.

While I understand that emotions and lived experiences are useful in dealing with sociological issues it shouldn't be your only frame of reference. Sometimes the reality of a situation is the complete opposite of what emotions and experiences would suggest.

I get it, you don't like the board, and apparently had a bad experience there. Now look at how that negative emotion colors every single post you make about it. (I don't recognize your name but if you want to talk about whatever got you upset I'd be happy to.)

But I thought emotion and lived experience mattered a lot? Or are you saying that some emotions and lived experiences aren't as important as others?

Why should I take your good experiences on the A+ forum as fact over someone else's bad experiences?

 

[luchog]

I've run into social justice enthusiasts in the past who were using a highly counterintuitive and non-standard definition of racism, under which a person who is genuinely, utterly indifferent to a person's race is still somehow racist.

You're not doing that, are you?

Can't speak for him; but the default SJW perspective appears to be that no one can ever be genuinely, utter indifferent to a person's race; because privilege/culture/some other factor. That's why concepts like "unconscious racism" are so beloved of the SJWs. You're being racist, you just aren't consciously aware of it, or are trying to repress/deny understanding of your racism. But never doubt that you are, in fact, racist. Unless you're not white, then you can't be racist. Or rather, you can be, but on a sliding scale that seems to be linked to how white you look. Unless you're mixed-race black. Then... it starts getting very complicated, very quickly.

The truly ironic thing that seems to escape most SJWs is how patronizingly racist most of their ideas are. The assertion that one cannot criticize actions by a "brown person" (itself a patronizing and subtly racist phrase) because of a history of racism/colonialism/imperialism/slavery/etc. is itself racist. It asserts that said "brown people" are entirely the products of their environment with limited self-determination, and therefore not entirely responsible for their actions; while only "whites" are capable of full self-determination, and therefore are entirely responsible not only for themselves, but also for those unfortunate "brown people". It "infantilizes" minorities by reducing them to the agency of children.

It's the old smug superiority of the White Man's Burden; cloaked in a thin verneer of liberal guilt.

 

[qwints]

no one can ever be genuinely, utter indifferent to a person's race; because privilege/culture/some other factor.

That's a fair description of my position. See project implicit and other studies revealing preferences for white-looking faces and white-sounding names despite participants disclaiming racial bias. It's a fairly robust effect.

none occurred

Explain this phrase further. What does it mean/look like for no racism to occur?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I don't think one's picture of the world is necessarily independent of emotional reactions.

Our picture of the world may be, but the world itself still exists independently of how we picture it.

I mean, there is a reason the black person perceived racism, even if none was intended, right? He didn't just pull some irrational assumption of an inexplicable prejudice against his skin color out of thin air.

Neither you or I know him, so neither of us can say that for sure. But I'll concede that you're likely right.

Jumping to further conclusions (or rash actions) based on that would be a mistake.

Would you count telling other people that someone had been racist to him as a "rash action"?

But you can build up a picture of the world that isn't inaccurate based on the fact that a black person could reasonably believe someone is being racist in that situation, and that it provoked an emotional reaction.

But you can't build up a picture of the world which is accurate if you take at face value a report that someone was being racist in that situation when, in actual fact, they weren't.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Squeegee, do you think someone can experience racism without another person's conscious racist intent?

Didn't I answer that question 2 posts ago? And 2 pages ago?

Yes, of course I do.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

That's a fair description of my position. See project implicit and other studies revealing preferences for white-looking faces and white-sounding names despite participants disclaiming racial bias. It's a fairly robust effect.



Explain this phrase further. What does it mean/look like for no racism to occur?

Don't these two halves of your post both mean that this post of yours is necessarily racist?

 

[luchog]

How do you suppose she justified putting Asians at a nearly identical privilege level with whites? I recall ceepolk shutting down a discussion about the horrors of North Korea because non-whites were too underprivileged to be criticized.

But you're right. It's personal biases masquerading as universal truths.

And there is the entire problem with the whole "privilege" argument in a nutshell. It's all personal bias. There are nearly as many different hierarchies of privilege as there are SJWs; and it quickly becomes impossible to know what attitudes and actions are justified, and by how much. When does black marginalization get trumped by Schroedinger's Rapist? When is straight white cis-gendered male (WCGM) privileges trumped by mental illness marginalization? And compared to who? Does a homeless schizophrenic WCGM trump a neurotypical middle-class black female, or vice versa? Does a physically disabled black male trump an able Asian female? Does degree of disability matter? What about a blind WCGM vs. a white autistic lesbian? A gay blind WCGM? An autistic transgenderd MtF lesbian Catholic artist vs. a black Jewish female lawyer with ALS? What if the former is a Marxist/Leninist and the latter a Trotskyite? Natural citizen vs. naturalized alien? What if they're both born and raised in different Third World nations in Africa and Asia? What if one of them is "self-hating" (and who decides whether an individual is "self-hating")?

When taken to its logical conclusion, the whole hierarchy of privilege rapidly spirals into a pit of sheer absurdity.

 

[luchog]

That's a fair description of my position. See project implicit and other studies revealing preferences for white-looking faces and white-sounding names despite participants disclaiming racial bias. It's a fairly robust effect.

Links? How well did the studies control for class, cultural, and ethnic biases? How many different demographic segments were tested and what where the selection criteria? Were the results truly indicative of racial bias, or of familiarity preference (a well-documented neurological phenomenon), and how could such a study distinguish between the two?

The problem most of us have with the "unconscious racism" assertion is that it is effectively unfalsifiable. Any sub-optimal effect can be attributed to an inherent underlying racism, regardless of other confounding factors; particularly as such factors are rarely if ever taken into account when making a determination of racism.

 

[qwints]

Squeegee, I hear you saying that the delivery person in your story didn't actually experience racism ('false positive', 'mistake'). That sounds to me, given our further conversation, like you're talking about more than a mistaken perception of your friend's intent. My point is that the 'you people' comment can be racist even without racist intent.

I'm missing the logical conclusion that my post is necessarily racist, but I've certainly said and done racist things. Sometimes I realize it and sometimes other people call my attention to it. I apologize and try to change my behavior.

@Luchog,
Intersectionality^WP

 

[qwints]

Links? How well did the studies control for class, cultural, and ethnic biases? How many different demographic segments were tested and what where the selection criteria? Were the results truly indicative of racial bias, or of familiarity preference (a well-documented neurological phenomenon), and how could such a study distinguish between the two?

Implicit-association test^WP

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People

Google Scholar Search



For a discussion of the familiarity explanation, see:

Automatic Preference for White Americans: Eliminating the Familiarity Explanation

Measuring the automatic components of prejudice: Flexibility and generality of the Implicit Association Test

But also see:

How do indirect measures of evaluation work? Evaluating the inference of prejudice in the Implicit Association Test.

 

[shuttlt]

The listener's perception is real, regardless of the speaker's intent. Whether it's someone who's using a word that predates the slur it sounds like or someone who mentions an offensive stereotype they're unaware of doesn't change the listener's experience. It should inform the response, as inadvertent offense is a different kind of thing than intentional offense, but the offense is still real and still justified.

Surely this isn't specific to racism, gender or anything else. Offence is offence. Upset is upset. Sometimes it's upset over something real, sometimes it's upset over something imagined, sometimes it's upset that doesn't fit easily into either category. Presumably the upskirt guy from several threads and many thousands of posts was hurt and upset?

One worry I have about this is that it feels a little like a way of saying that if something feels like it happened, then it did. Somehow it doesn't just shift the burden of proof, but removes the need for proof entirely. If you feel like something racist happened, then it did. If you feel you were sexually harassed, then you were. If you feel like your parents are unreasonable, then they are.

I'm sure that, for most people, the likelyhood is that if you feel like something racist happened, then it did. But are the two things necessarily the same? Surely there's a better definition than this?

Aren't we throwing around two definitions of racism here? Surely one or other of them needs to be hyphenated or only used in a specific domain. This reminds me of Watsons thread on drunk sex always being rape. I think there would be a lot less disagreement if everybody was using the same words to mean the same thing.

 

[Amazer]

It can be racist, with or without the intent of the speaker, if it offends the listener. Is that a straightforward enough answer? I cited this post for a reason.



I'll also point out Project Implicit.

Is there a point where a person can be to easily offended and perceive racism?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Squeegee, I hear you saying that the delivery person in your story didn't actually experience racism ('false positive', 'mistake'). That sounds to me, given our further conversation, like you're talking about more than a mistaken perception of your friend's intent.

And, as I said, in that instance intent is, I believe, the sole determining factor.

My point is that the 'you people' comment can be racist even without racist intent.

I don't think that there's anything intrinsically racist about the phrase "you people".

I'm missing the logical conclusion that my post is necessarily racist, but I've certainly said and done racist things.

If you have no idea what it looks like for no racism to occur, then there must be racism in your posting. Otherwise you'd know what it looks like for no racism to occur.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

One worry I have about this is that it feels a little like a way of saying that if something feels like it happened, then it did. Somehow it doesn't just shift the burden of proof, but removes the need for proof entirely. If you feel like something racist happened, then it did. If you feel you were sexually harassed, then you were. If you feel like your parents are unreasonable, then they are.

Exactly. And there are two problems with this. The first is that if there's one thing that the entirety of human history has taught us, it's the human beings are extremely unreliable narrators. Our senses are flawed, our memories are unreliable, and we confabulate a great deal, both consciously and unconsciously.

The other problem, of course, is if you apply the same reasoning to less palatable issues. If the white guy feels that black people aren't trustworthy, then doesn't that also make that true?

People can feel however they like about whatever they like. That's entirely valid. But if you're trying to determine what reality is actually like, then more care needs to be taken.

 

[qwints]

Squeegee, aren't feelings part of what reality is actually like?

 

[luchog]

S
@Luchog,
Intersectionality^WP

@Luchog,
Intersectionality^WP

I'm familiar with the concept of intersectionality. I'm also familiar with the fact that it is lacking in scientific support, is yet another example of anti-rational Post-Modernist subjectivism, has a strong Marxist bias, and as used by SJWs is ultimately little more than an evasion of the logical absurdity of the hierarchy of privilege.

Also, someone appears to have expunged criticism of the concept from the Wiki article. Intersectionality is subject to the same idiosyncrasy of emphasis and bias as the cultural processes its proponents claim they are combating. It creates a fairly rigid classification of marginality, resorting to monolithic categorization within which the principle is not applied. Granularity is not based on explicit principles; but on a set of purely arbitrary dividing lines. Like most Post-Modernist philosophies, it effectively invalidates itself when pushed to its logical conclusion, by dissociating and failing to acknowledge its own subjective biases. It has yet to be demonstrated to have any significant predictive ability.

Implicit-association test^WP

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People

Google Scholar Search

These really don't tell me anything about the study.

For a discussion of the familiarity explanation, see:

Automatic Preference for White Americans: Eliminating the Familiarity Explanation

However, this indicates some serious flaws with the methodology. They claim to control for familiarity; yet only control for a very small and relatively insignificant aspect of familiarity. No controls are made for imprinting and other effects of evolutionary psychology. Further, there is a demonstrated lack of consistency in results, a predominantly self-selected population. It not only lacks controls for salience factors; but proponents tend to handwave such factors away. Same with cultural factors. It also fails to correct for cognitive difficulties in association metrics. Like polygraphs, it is also demonstrably possible with a small amount of training and effort to manipulate the outcome of the test. Also like polygraphy, test construction and methodology has also been demonstrated to have a significant effect on the outcome. Followups have shown that repeated administration of the IAT reduces the effect; and a high variability between administrations for the same individual, indicating a strong situational influence.

There is some demonstrated psychometric predictive value; but so far only in very limited areas, and only in generalities. As a demonstration or predictor of individual biases, it's still far from a useful tool.

 

[shuttlt]

Squeegee, aren't feelings part of what reality is actually like?

Surely there has to be some kind of loosely socially agreed range of how one may feel about a situation and still be held to be being reasonable? Beyond that range, surely the agreement is that it's the persons feelings/reactions that are the problem, not the rest of the world?

 

[Amadanb]

Would you count telling other people that someone had been racist to him as a "rash action"?

Well, definitely premature, though I wouldn't really blame him for making the assumption. Now if he proceeded to take action against the presumed racist individual - threatening lawsuits, trying to get him fired, publicly excoriating him on the Internet, etc. - then certainly I would fault him for not trying to establish intent first.

But you can't build up a picture of the world which is accurate if you take at face value a report that someone was being racist in that situation when, in actual fact, they weren't.

This is kind of like the point above - there are different levels of skepticism necessary depending on the situation, I think. I mean, if a black person comes to me and says "I was in the store today and this guy was being totally racist!" I am not going to demand that he provide every detail and then go over all the possible non-racist explanations unless he can absolutely prove to me that he did in fact experience racism. I will generally take someone's word for what they experienced, unless I've got good reason not to. Now if he's saying he wants me to join him in protesting the store, or I find myself on a jury or something, my standard for evidence would become a lot higher.

When taken to its logical conclusion, the whole hierarchy of privilege rapidly spirals into a pit of sheer absurdity.

"Hierarchy" is the problem.

The concept of "privilege" is not a non-useful one. You can't entirely know what it's like to not have the advantages you have, and it makes sense to assume that someone's experience as a black/female/disabled/gay/etc. person probably makes them a lot more informed about that particular status than you.

But instead of using it as a useful illustrative construct, a lot of SJ advocates have (1) turned it into a binary state (you either have the privilege, in which case shut up because your opinion can't possibly be relevant, or you don't, in which case all non-privileged people must defer to you period); and (2) despite denouncing "oppression olympics," they do exactly this. So whenever there is a disagreement about anything, instead of considering who might actually be most knowledgeable or have the most life experience, they start tallying up privileges and compete for who is least privileged and thus most entitled to speak.

 

[luchog]

Squeegee, aren't feelings part of what reality is actually like?

Erm, no. Feelings are individual idiosyncratic reactions to outside stimuli; and are conditioned by cultural and individual influences, and strongly affected by transient physiological states. They are highly complex, irrational, and are not accurately representative of objective reality.

In fact, the entire point of science and skepticism is to reduce, if not eliminate, the effect of human subjectivity on observation and description of phenomena, to the maximum degree possible with the tools available. Some areas of scientific research lend themselves better to elimination of subjectivity, which is only done with great difficulty and limited degrees of success in others; but that does not eliminate the need to compensate for subjectivism in all observations, to keep them from unduly influencing one's conclusions. Nothing justifies enshrining subjectivism as equal to rational objectivity as an investigative methodology. It simply does not work that way.

 

[luchog]

The concept of "privilege" is not a non-useful one. You can't entirely know what it's like to not have the advantages you have, and it makes sense to assume that someone's experience as a black/female/disabled/gay/etc. person probably makes them a lot more informed about that particular status than you.

In other words, only I can know what it's like to be me, and only you can know what its like to be you. That's a truism that's not worth dwelling on.

The problem with the concept of privilege and intersectionality is it's sheer arbitrariness. There are no objective criteria for rating and forming relationships. It's valid only as a vague generalization, applied to populations, and has no useful individual predictive value.