Read on Twitter
I think you can try to understand motivation, but by listening to people & trying to see things the way they do. You might come to a conclusion that someone is selfishly motivated but because they say things that indicate this not because they prioritise class while white. https://twitter.com/roderickgraham/status/1304604325629624320
I really think this is another example of what I have been talking about with a very real moral confusion over other people's motivations. Remember, when I said this: https://twitter.com/HPluckrose/status/1304044604556222464
I am increasingly seeing people accusing others of being dishonest or insincere or ill-motivated quite casually as though this isn't a very serious accusation that should only be made when so much evidence is available that all benefit of the doubt has been exhausted
I have a hypothesis about why we are seeing this & it is to do with a shift in thinking that is exemplified by the conception of the world held by DiAngelo but also appears in a parallel cynicism on the right so isn't necessarily a direct result of accepting her kind of ideas.
So, DiAngelo tells white people that we are all racist but this isn't the same as being immoral. This is alarming in itself because, yes, it is. But she says:
So, we have this idea that we are all socialised into having horrible beliefs but this is inevitable. Then she tells us that we deny this because we want to maintain both our privilege & our sense of ourselves as good people, but it's actually more virtuous to accept it.
So we see people confessing to their racism & assuming everybody else is racist too & also, that while this is bad, it is inevitable & it's actually morally virtuous to cynically accept the self-interested prejudice to exist within all of us. You are racist but not immoral.
She wants us to stop reacting with horror to accusations of racism and rather than taking it personally as an accusation of a serious moral failing that, if true, we should be deeply ashamed of & work to overcome as a matter of urgency, accept it complacently & this is virtue.
This is a very, very bad way to think about racism. It encourages people to assume they have the beliefs, that they cannot eradicate them & that it doesn't make them a bad person. This causes people to regard having horrible beliefs quite casually as normal.
It also causes them to accuse other people of having the beliefs quite casually as normal & regard denial of this as evidence of someone being unenlightened & fragile & their problem rather than considering whether they themselves should have made such a serious accusation.
So, now we have a norm of casually accusing others of things that those of us who believe each human has both the ability & responsibility to reject beliefs in the inherent inferiority of other humans due to their immutable characteristics take very seriously indeed.
So there's a CSJ cynical acceptance that everyone is both horrible & dishonest & that's just normal coming up against the older humanist norm of assuming people to be essentially good but flawed & having a responsibility to address those flaws.
I am very much in the latter camp & so I have been reacting badly when someone casually accuses me of dishonesty or ill-motivation because to me, that is a really serious accusation that, if true, would require me to mend my ways urgently.
It's not like 'you were a bit thoughtless then' or 'actually that was quite rude.' Minor flaws you should fix but doesn't say anything terrible about your character. Dishonesty & selfish motivations do say bad things about your character.
But not to CSJ people. And this is happening more widely among people I know not to be CSJ people. Casual accusations of huge character flaws. This is also common in our political & cultural commentary. It is becoming a social norm to assume really horrible things about people.
And so people who don't perhaps have the strongest thought-through sense of their own moral character (even though they probably have strong morals) are being desensitised to this & not responding with "How dare you?' intuitions but 'meh' intuitions. This is very bad.
In stark contradiction to the DiAngelo narratives, we should feel horrified about accusations of holding horrible, self-interested prejudices about other humans. We should feel this even if it is true because this is how we maintain the commitment to not wanting to be that person
If it is true, you may be a reflective person who will work on those beliefs honestly & that's great. If you are not a reflective or self-aware person, maintaining a horror at the moral failing of racism will, at least, keep racism as a moral evil & prevent you embracing it.
I am being extremely problematic right now & the poster child of white fragility, but I think the very mindset DiAngelo & others want to deconstruct in us is the one that we need to preserve if we want to continue accepting that, yes, racism does make you a bad person.
This is liberal individualism, btw, which DiAngelo also takes explicit potshots at.
No, no, no, no, no, no. You are an individual with your own mind. You are not a representative of your racial group. You are not a pawn in an ongoing racial dynamic that takes in historical racial oppression & perpetuates it through group identity & perspective. No.
Of course, culture will affect you, but you are an individual living in a culture that contains a wide range of ideas about race. You can evaluate them morally & factually & reject some & accept or qualify others. You can be a thoughtful, ethical person who rejects racism.
You will have biases. We all do. They will have cultural influence. But you do not have to have the biases DiAngelo says you do. Do you, if white, really just naturally assume black people are inferior? Do you? Really? If you're pretty sure you don't, you're likely to be right.
And if you find yourself having a racial bias that does not meet your ethical position on racism, you can spot that better than DiAngelo can coz you developed the ethical position &you can perform your own customised bias training, not her generic one that comes from her own head
You can have a constitution of yourself & if you think it through & even write it down so you can tell if it is sliding & whether you need to make an amendment to it, that's great.
Then when someone casually says you believe something you don't, you will think 'How dare you?!" and not 'meh" because you actually have solid principles. That's a good thing.
This thread went way off track because I got quite impassioned. Anyway, don't accept the casual denigration thing & don't casually denigrate others. Assume good intent & give others reason to assume it in you & expect them to do that. The end.
