CRT, unfalsifiable claims, and Kafka-traps

[icehorse]

*raises hand sheepishly*
I tried doing exactly that. Even included her name in my searches. The closest I got to an actual legitimate citation and not just blog discussions or news folks fighting about it was this

https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116

I’m not American so I don’t really have a dog in this race. But I can’t seem to find any other legitimate sources to this claim.

Here are the first four links I found. There are many more.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/health/white-fragility-robin-diangelo-wellness/index.html

Robin DiAngelo Wants White Progressives to Look Inward

The author of “White Fragility” discusses her new book, “Nice Racism.”

www.newyorker.com

‘White Fragility’ Is Everywhere. But Does Antiracism Training Work? (Published 2020)

Robin DiAngelo’s best seller is giving white Americans a new way to talk about race. Do those conversations actually serve the cause of equality?

www.nytimes.com

'People Will Insist That They are Not Racist': Robin DiAngelo on 'White Fragility' and the Way Forward | KQED

Robin DiAngelo, the author of 'White Fragility,' has a message for white people in the Bay Area: "all white people are complicit with racism." Here, she says, is where to go from there.

www.kqed.org

 

[Orbit]

Can you summarize when it's useful? It strikes me that it can be useful from a statistical perspective but that it's often used from an individual perspective which gets us back to promoting story telling over evidence and reason.

It's useful to get students to stop thinking in a simplistic way about social location and experience. It complicates the picture, and shows that each person can have advantages and simultaneous disadvantages based on their intersecting social identities. For example, if I tell you that I am white, that only gives you one data point from which to think about my social experience. If I tell you I am a white woman, the addition of gender tells you more; add to that economic status; ability/disability etc etc. To put it in layman's terms, people's social location is a mixed bag, and someone can be relatively privileged in one way while at the same time be at a social disadvantage based on other characteristics.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

To put it in layman's terms, people's social location is a mixed bag, and someone can be relatively privileged in one way while at the same time be at a social disadvantage based on other characteristics.

I just tell them the only thing people haven't given me grief for is being white, lmao. Everything else, including hair color and length and left hand usage, there are some boneheaded bozos out there who have held it against it. Even how we talk effects things, and while I don't have a Southern accent being held against me there are some pigs who hold sounding autistic against us.

 

[SomeRandom]

Here are the first four links I found. There are many more.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/health/white-fragility-robin-diangelo-wellness/index.html

Robin DiAngelo Wants White Progressives to Look Inward

The author of “White Fragility” discusses her new book, “Nice Racism.”

www.newyorker.com

‘White Fragility’ Is Everywhere. But Does Antiracism Training Work? (Published 2020)

Robin DiAngelo’s best seller is giving white Americans a new way to talk about race. Do those conversations actually serve the cause of equality?

www.nytimes.com

'People Will Insist That They are Not Racist': Robin DiAngelo on 'White Fragility' and the Way Forward | KQED

Robin DiAngelo, the author of 'White Fragility,' has a message for white people in the Bay Area: "all white people are complicit with racism." Here, she says, is where to go from there.

www.kqed.org

Ahh so she’s claiming that all white people, as a natural consequence of the power structures designed by society, are complicit in racism. Due to them being born into such structures. Even if they’re largely unaware.

That’s honestly not the first time I’ve encountered such a thought. I remember vaguely “learning” about a similar thought process like years ago. From third wave feminist talks about racism, if I’m being honest.

Very easily a message that can be twisted to suit all sorts of political agendas. Both left and right.

But I don’t think that’s necessarily the same as saying “all white people are racist.”
It’s more like, all white people are beholden to the same societal structures as everyone else. There’s just baked in racism that said structure incorporates by default. As it was designed (in the past) by white folks who were largely racist at the time.

 

[icehorse]

Ahh so she’s claiming that all white people, as a natural consequence of the power structures designed by society, are complicit in racism. Due to them being born into such structures. Even if they’re largely unaware.

I think complicit is a good term.

So your sentence is better:

All white people, as a natural consequence of the power structures designed by society, are complicit in racism.

But it still provides easy fodder for the right, because I think complicit implies "knowingly", correct?

 

[SomeRandom]

I think complicit is a good term.

So your sentence is better:



But it still provides easy fodder for the right, because I think complicit implies "knowingly", correct?

Perhaps you’re right about that.

Unfortunately I’ve found that political propaganda doesn’t really care at the end of the day.
You could have a sentence or quote or whatever be as precise as the English language allows and it can still be twisted to fit a narrative.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

You know that LMGTFY is a sarcastic jab, right?

I don't think you know what sarcasm is.

Step back for a minute. One way we could rephrase your claim is: "DiAngelo never said that".

Step back for a minute. Another way of wording this is: "I'm going to make a strawman of your position to avoid my burden of proof and then make up something you never said and attribute it to you". Which seems to be your default strategy when you know you can't support your own presuppositions.

That's not how it works. I've made no claims about what DiAngelo has or has not said. Again, you are engaging in twisting reality to avoid the fact that your positions and claims have no basis in reality.

Again, proving a negative is - in general - an extremely difficult proposition.

Good thing I never claimed one, then.

So I've given you a search phrase so that you can see that your extraordinary claim is false.

You've yet to provide a single instance of her saying it.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Stop worrying about me and worry about the millions of MAGA types who are being brain washed. (ffs)

The question is who is more responsible for brainwashing them? The left, for engaging with ideas that - if interpreted in poor faith and with little regard to facts - can be twisted to generate fear among easily-manipulated, media-illiterate people that the right are currently very invested in keeping easily manipulated and media-illiterate? Or should we perhaps blame the right, because they are the ones doing the manipulating, keeping people media-illiterate, and producing these incredibly elaborate and vast misinformation campaigns?

The best thing to do is the thing we are doing in this thread: explaining to you that your understanding is flawed and you have been fed misinformation. Why should we blame the people producing and exploring these ideas for your misunderstanding of them that is a direct consequence of the right's misinformation campaign?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I think complicit is a good term.

So your sentence is better:



But it still provides easy fodder for the right, because I think complicit implies "knowingly", correct?

Here is the problem in one sense. If you harm another human, but you don't know that, are you then off the hook?
The overall norm for behaviour is that you are responsible for your behaviour.

So if someone tells me, I am part of racism, I don't dismiss it. I try to check that and learn from the claim. And yes, for society in the broad sense that is never just black or white. It is complex and even black and white can be racist.

Now I can unpack that, but if you demand single factor explanation down to the single individual as for observable true, you won't get it, because that is not how it works for the soical world.

 

[icehorse]

I don't think you know what sarcasm is.

I don't think either of us can gain anything by furthering our debate, have yourself a fine day.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I don't think either of us can gain anything by furthering our debate, have yourself a fine day.

There was no debate. It was me educating you.

 

[icehorse]

There was no debate. It was me educating you.

Oh please, carry on with your virtue signalling...

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Oh please, carry on with your virtue signalling...

I'm not sure you know what "virtue signalling" is, either.

Should I teach you about that, too?

 

[icehorse]

Perhaps you’re right about that.

Unfortunately I’ve found that political propaganda doesn’t really care at the end of the day.
You could have a sentence or quote or whatever be as precise as the English language allows and it can still be twisted to fit a narrative.

Agreed. That said, some claims are more incendiary than others. Should we fight racism? Of course!

But should we make sweeping claims about how everyone is complicit? Probably not, not if we want to win hearts and minds.

We need to make it a little harder for the propagandists to twist our words.

 

[icehorse]

I'm not sure you know what "virtue signalling" is, either.

Should I teach you about that, too?

Yours is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Yours is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put

You think it's "pedantry" to understand what a term means?

I'll add that to the list of terms you don't seem to understand. I'll be happy to run through the list with you some time.

 

[icehorse]

Here is the problem in one sense. If you harn another human, but you don't know that, are you then off the hook?
The overall norm for behaviour is that you are responsible for your behaviour.

So if someone tells me, I am part of racism, I don't dismiss it. I try to check that and learn from the claim. And yes, for society in the broad sense that is never just black or white. It is complex and even black and white can be racist.

Now I can unpack that, but if you demand single factor explanation down to the single individual as for observable true, you won't get it, because that is not how it works for the soical world.

On this forum, you and I might largely agree. My concern is giving easy fodder to right wing propagandists.

We can see in the news that such propaganda is happening, and it's actually making racism worse, not better

 

[SkepticThinker]

Agreed. That said, some claims are more incendiary than others. Should we fight racism? Of course!

But should we make sweeping claims about how everyone is complicit? Probably not, not if we want to win hearts and minds.

We need to make it a little harder for the propagandists to twist our words.

Do you think law students in grad school aren't capable of grasping these sorts of concepts at that point in their education? That's where this stuff is taught.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

On this forum, you and I might largely agree. My concern is giving easy fodder to right wing propagandists.

We can see in the news that such propaganda is happening, and it's actually making racism worse, not better

The problem is that you can't stop proganda, even if you are silent. You have to speak up, or you make it in the end worse.

 

[Orbit]

Agreed. That said, some claims are more incendiary than others. Should we fight racism? Of course!

But should we make sweeping claims about how everyone is complicit? Probably not, not if we want to win hearts and minds.

We need to make it a little harder for the propagandists to twist our words.

If we take this argument to its logical extension, then the Holocaust, with its Anti-Semitism, was a Jewish problem, because the Jews didn't have good enough PR.

Academics are too busy teaching and doing research to be full time propagandists; and propaganda isn't our job or our aim.
And besides-- it is true that we are all complicit by living in a problematic system that we are not actively trying to change. Or at least it's a debate that can be had.

But by creating a strawman and then whipping up outrage against the strawman, the political operatives on the right disrupt any attempt to calm the villagers who become a torch-carrying mob. You can't reason with that, just like you couldn't reason with Kristallnacht.

Appeasing the right wing mobs by catering to their prejudices and dumbing down the debate shouldn't be the strategy here; instilling critical thinking and teaching people to see when they are being manipulated should be the issue.