Saturday, October 23, 2021

Don’t fall for the Activist’s Fallacy

Intent is not the only thing to judge policies or theories on.





Within the expanding debate and political controversies over CRT (Critical Race Theory), the Activist’s Fallacy is regularly on display.

The Activist’s Fallacy operates as follows:
We are doing X because we are against Y.
You are against X
Therefore
You are for Y.
The Fallacy can be recast in negative terms:
We are doing X because we are for Z.
You are against X.
Therefore
You are against Z.
Either way, the Activist’s Fallacy is about making declared intent the dimension on which the entire controversy turns.

It also comes in cry-bully versions, such as:
We want to control speech to stop trans folk harming themselves.
You are against such control of speech.
Therefore
You are against stopping trans folk harming themselves.
In the case of Critical Race Theory, the Activist’s Fallacy comes in versions such as:
Critical Race Theory seeks to confront racism.
You are against Critical Race Theory.
Therefore
You are against confronting racism.
Or:
Critical Race Theory allows us to learn about racism.
You are against Critical Race Theory.
Therefore
You are against learning about racism.
The Activist’s Fallacy relies on declared intent being the only important motivational feature of whatever theory or policy is being put. With motivation being the dimension that all responses have to be graded on.

As a rhetorical and status strategy, this is highly effective. As long as everything can be construed as being first and foremost about intent, then any opposition becomes opposition to the declared intent, just as support becomes support for the declared intent.

Since the intent is, of course, going to be noble, that elevates the nobility of those pushing the theory or policy and de-legitimises any critics. They become malicious, callous, some sort of -ist or -phobe.

There is a lot of colonising of people’s decency going on. As well as people not wishing to have their status as one of the smart and good stripped from them by use of stigmatising labels against them: the submit-or-be-stigmatised choice.

So, by making intent the dimension upon which the controversy turns, motivation becomes the key grading factor. You can’t decide you are against Critical Race Theory because it is false, or because you think it has pernicious social implications. No, it is all about the declared intent of Critical Race Theory and whether you are “anti-racist” or not.

If one accepts the theory that society is a structure of oppression and domination, and that social interactions (including discussions) are all about power relations, then the Activist’s Fallacy is not merely a rhetorically useful status play, it is a natural implication of your world-view.

Which, of course, implies that there are things deeply wrong with your world-view. For the Activist’s Fallacy is still a fallacy. It is still bad reasoning, no matter how rhetorically useful it is. Nor how much of a congenial status play it is.

There are a whole lot of things wrong with Critical Race Theory, starting with it simply not being true that racism is pervasive in contemporary Western societies, or that disparities between groups are primarily the result of current racism, or that persistent disparities demonstrate systemic racism. It is a false analysis of social dynamics. Critical Race Theory’s racialisation of everything is also deeply pernicious in its effects on social dynamics and public policy.

Structural roles

Something that is very clear from the history of investing grand social meanings onto race, aided by “race” having visible physical markers, is that elite race talk is always a divide-and-dominate mechanism. And Critical Race Theory is very much elite race talk: it came out of elite universities.

We tend to over-rate the importance of conscious intent in human actions. As Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Łobaczewski (1921–2007) noted:
Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible…
Political Ponerolology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, p.163.
The over-rating of the role of conscious intent tends to be particularly likely when there are powerful social, institutional or organisational feedbacks and incentives in play. We find it very easy to tell congenial narratives about ourselves — to ourselves and to others — about beliefs (and actions) that may have other reasons to resonate with us. Especially if they also resonate with other folk in similar social positions, so that there are selection processes in favour of developing mutually congenial patterns of action and accompanying justifying narratives.

Instead of asking about conscious intent, let’s consider interests and feedbacks. Let’s instead ask the Who-Whom? question; the who benefits? question.

Who benefits if Critical Race Theory is not subject to searching critique about its factual accuracy and its social implications? Who benefits if US society is more intensely racialised? Who benefits if race-delineated divisions increase? Who gains status and career opportunities from spruiking up such racialising? Probably not workers, local residents or the general citizenry.

Those wielding the Activist’s Fallacy want to tell a noble story about their own intentions and a malicious story about the intentions of those who disagree with them. If they want to play that game, a deeper look at incentives and interests, about why certain narratives are so appealing and to whom, may not take analysis where they want to go.

Recognise the Activist’s Fallacy for what it is: a self-serving evasion. And don’t fall for it. Be prepared to call it out for the dishonest, self-aggrandising, rhetorical ploy it is.

[A previous version was posted on Medium.]

30 comments:

  1. You keep failing to see the mirror.

    Critical Race Theory is a thing. A very definite, well defined, academic course of study. It is only ever taught in Law School, in the US, as an advanced subject.

    It was also almost completely unknown outside that context until the US Right and its resonant echo chambers around the world started complaining about it.

    Or: Nobody would have known what CRT was until you lot started bitching and moaning at the effrontary of asking people if they thought there might be the possibility that there might be such a thing as a system which had developed in such a way that no current participant in that system would be racist, and yet the system itself could be based on racism, with racist and
    discriminatory outcomes. (The answer, in the US context is: yes, it clearly and evidently is at pretty much every scale, politically, economically, educationally, socially, and historically, and the occasional example of a black person who has succeeded despite all the above does not disprove the general systemic problems.)

    You lot keep wailing about how CRT is being talked about on every street corner, discussed on every TV channel, brought into every classroom. And it is. Now. BY YOU.

    CRT indeed came out of elite universities. And if you lot hadn't been lying about it being taught in high schools (which, you know, it never has been, except for now because high school students need to be taught what it is so they know what people like you keep complaining about), it would have stayed there.

    "There are a whole lot of things wrong with Critical Race Theory, starting with it simply not being true that racism is pervasive in contemporary Western societies, or that disparities between groups are primarily the result of current racism, or that persistent disparities demonstrate systemic racism. It is a false analysis of social dynamics."

    Dear god where to start?

    1) It was never about "Western" societies, it was developed in and about the society of the United States of America.
    2) Part of the point of it was that in the current system, you don't need anyone currently in it to be racist: the racist and discriminatory outcomes are already baked in, both in the way the system works and is applied, and in the relative starting positions for the some of the populations now in it.
    3) Can you distinguish between "systemic racism" and "a racist system"? If not, you probably shouldn't be trying to engage with CRT at its level and expect to be taken seriously, any more than if you complain about the General Theory of Relativity but only have a loose understanding of partial derivatives.
    4) It is not an analysis of *social* dynamics at all. It is an analysis of *legal* dynamics and their consequences.

    You keep talking about how The Left "want to tell a noble story about their own intentions and a malicious story about the intentions of those who disagree with them. If they want to play that game, a deeper look at incentives and interests, about why certain narratives are so appealing and to whom, may not take analysis where they want to go."

    Please, please please, apply that standard to the people who are lying to you about what CRT is and why you should hate it.

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    1. I was using CRT as an example. (Your complete failure to wrestle with the actual point of the post is striking.) The US is the largest Western societies, so probably covered by the set. For the rest, you assert a range of claims I did not make in my post. That no element of CRT has leached into any US schools is either a delusion or a lie. It is not hard to find people reporting what their kids are being taught that clearly comes from CRT. But that is not what the post is about. You have also not noticed that nowadays I don't talk much about "the Left" because many folk on the left hate and despise this stuff. And in what world are legal dynamics not also social dynamics? Much of the point of CRT is to claim that social dynamics pervasively leach into the law and any notion of legal neutrality is false because of the power of those social dynamics.

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  2. Finally there is a name for it - the activist fallacy! It is not just a fallacy, not just a self-serving evasion -- it is extremely uncivil and a violation of the principle of reciprocity because it assumes unflattering motivations for which there is no evidence.

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  3. CRT was your first and central example. That you clearly still don't know what it is doesn't help the rest of your argument.

    CRT is a legal theory which has been around since the 70's. Of course it *includes* aspects of how social dynamics feed the law and vice-versa, (because if you ignore social dynamics then you're not going to have a very good understanding of the laws) but it is fundamentally a study of *Legal* systems and their consequences. And a high level technical one at that. Take out that part of it, and what you're left with is a discussion about how there is racism in society. I hope you agree that that's a thing. And as far as that goes, yes, middle schoolers have noticed racism and talk about it in school (except in Texas, where it is now effectively illegal to talk about current racism in school).

    Sure, there is discussion of racism in school, but it's not CRT. If you disagree, then please tell me exactly which "elements of CRT" have "leached into any US schools", and feel free to include sources.

    As far as not "talking about the Left", well, OK. Sure. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that you're using all the sneers and strawmen that an entire industry have been using against the Left for many years now. Maybe you just don't realise you're doing it?

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    1. https://www.routledge.com/Handbook-of-Critical-Race-Theory-in-Education/Lynn-Dixson/p/book/9781138491724
      "This handbook illustrates how education scholars employ Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework to bring attention to issues of race and racism in education. It is the first authoritative reference work to provide a truly comprehensive description and analysis of the topic, from the defining conceptual principles of CRT in Law that gave shape to its radical underpinnings to the political and social implications of the field today. It is divided into six sections, covering innovations in educational research, policy and practice in both schools and in higher education, and the increasing interdisciplinary nature of critical race research. New chapters broaden the scope of theoretical lenses to include LatCrit, AsianCrit and Critical Race Feminism, as well as coverage of Discrit Studies, Research Methods, and other recent updates to the field. This handbook remains the definitive statement on the state of critical race theory in education and on its possibilities for the future."

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    2. And then there is the re-packaging of Critical Race Theory as Culturally Responsive Teaching.
      https://www.edutopia.org/article/getting-started-culturally-responsive-teaching

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    3. "This handbook illustrates how education scholars employ Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework to bring attention to issues of race and racism in education."

      Not educators, education scholars. People who study education, not teachers.

      It's not about teaching CRT, certainly not to teaching it in anything before honours level. It's about taking CRT as developed in the faculty of Law and using it in the faculty of Education to analyse structural dynamics of race in education.

      Also, Culturally Responsive Teaching is *not* Critical Race Theory. It's acknowledging that race and culture exist in the world and have consequences in how children react to things, so you as a teacher might need to take that into account? Strangely enough, a child who is Aboriginal will have different reactions to, say, some historical events, than will a 6th-generation WASP kid, than will a 1st generation kid whose parents were refugees. Really, this should all go without saying: this kind of CRTeaching is just trying to codify it and make it more accessible.

      But sure, it has the same initials. Therefore it's a CULTURAL MARXIST PLOT or something.

      Seriously, you're better than this. All you're doing is proving that you still don't know what Critical Race Theory is.

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    4. The 2nd edition handbook explicitly says its about schools, we have lots of testimonies from parents about what their kids are being taught. Also:
      “ California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) seeks to integrate the principles of critical race theory into all aspects of school life, especially classroom instruction. ESMC is, to put it bluntly, an effort to codify Paulo Freire and pressure reluctant teachers and administrators into implementing his methods. It instructs teachers to “decolonize” their classrooms by bringing to the fore the perspectives, or “lived experiences,” of the oppressed. (“Lived experience” is a term that comes from existentialism and implies a revolt against scientific objectivity, but DEI trainers in schools tend to use it more as a form of epistemic affirmative action, implying—inconsistently—that there is no truth but also that the victim’s perspective is an objective and inarguable fact.) ESMC’s architects see themselves as disciples not of the liberal universalism of the Martin Luther King, Jr. but of the illiberal identitarianism of Malcolm X. As the preface to ESMC states, “the People of Color Power movements that emerged in the 1960s,” including the Black Power movement, “are the movements that Ethnic Studies rose from.”
      https://www.city-journal.org/the-assault-on-childrens-psyches

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    5. If you are going to require that only pure unadulterated CRT counts, then you are making a nonsense argument. The point is to repackage and influence. So, repackaging into is a better way to put it. It ideas have been incorporated in Cultural Responsive Teaching and in the Critical Pedagogy that has become intellectually dominant in Education faculties and so teacher training.
      https://archive.ph/tyOpL

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    6. "explicitly says its about schools"
      About schools, not for use in schools.

      Also, the City Journal is flat out lying to you about CRT and anything in which it mentions CRT. Also all the bullshit it's spouting about transfolk and LGBTIQA+. When it talks about urban design and civil engineering, it may well be a valid and useful source of information. When it comes to claims of "Social" engineering, it's a pure propaganda rag.

      Your self-selected media bubble is lying to you.

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    7. "If you are going to require that only pure unadulterated CRT counts, then you are making a nonsense argument."

      If you are going to claim that any mention of race as a factor in social or systemic inequality is necessarily CRT (also that CRT is necessarily a bad and wrong thing, which is also a lie), then you have disappeared down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, and you need to scrunch up your tinfoil a little tighter in case the Jewish Space Laser gets through.

      Seriously, you don't know what it is, and that's why you see it everywhere. You are being lied to, and you're soaking it up.

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    8. If you embracing the siloing, of course everyone who disagrees must be lying.
      https://medium.com/unfiltered-vision/no-crt-isnt-just-teaching-history-9245d66ec0ab

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    9. Form a friendly discussion of the above book
      “ The emergence of Critical Race Theory marked an important point in the history of racial politics in the legal academy and the broader conversation about race and racism in the United States. More recently, CRT has proven an important analytic tool in the field of education, offering critical perspectives on race, and the causes, consequences and manifestations of race, racism, inequity, and the dynamics of power and privilege in schooling. This groundbreaking anthology is the first to pull together both the foundational writings in the field and more recent scholarship on the cultural and racial politics of schooling. A comprehensive introduction provides an overview of the history and tenets of CRT in education. Each section then seeks to explicate ideological contestation of race in education and to create new, alternative accounts. In so doing, this landmark publication not only documents the progress to date of the CRT movement, it acts to further spur developments in education.”
      It is not as if the proponents have hidden the intent or the actions, until it became politically inconvenient.

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    10. It is typically “I am of the virtuous and the good” nonsense being served up: if you say CRT is in schools you are uninformed deluded fool while those who say it is not are moral and informed. The notion that activism “in education” and TO education somehow virtuously excludes schools is nonsense on stilts.
      https://medium.com/unfiltered-vision/you-dont-understand-crt-1552c6a4b7f8

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    11. “ I asked my uncomfortable questions in the “self-care” meeting because I felt a duty to my students. I wanted to be a voice for the many students of different backgrounds who have approached me over the course of the past several years to express their frustration with indoctrination at our school, but are afraid to speak up.

      They report that, in their classes and other discussions, they must never challenge any of the premises of our “antiracist” teachings, which are deeply informed by Critical Race Theory. These concerns are confirmed for me when I attend grade-level and all-school meetings about race or gender issues. There, I witness student after student sticking to a narrow script of acceptable responses. Teachers praise insights when they articulate the existing framework or expand it to apply to novel domains. Meantime, it is common for teachers to exhort students who remain silent that “we really need to hear from you.” ”
      https://www.commonsense.news/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-my-students

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    12. Then there are parents at elite schools being intimidated by this self-righteous indoctrination coming out of schools from teachers educated into this stuff: the result of decades of CRT being pushed to educators.
      https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-miseducation-of-americas-elites

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    13. From a liberal lawyer twice elected to her local School Board.
      “Perhaps the most outlandish aspect of all is the NSBA’s risible complaint that parents are spreading lies about Critical Race Theory being taught in school. The letter states: “This propaganda continues despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class.”

      Are you kidding me?

      I read the classic Critical Race Theory textbook in law school. I would much prefer to have my children read that impenetrable tome than be subjected to the ideological grooming that takes place in their classrooms — a phenomenon that I and parents across the country witnessed over Zoom this past year-and-a-half. Why should our children — in class, in front of their peers — be required to discuss their sexual orientation? Give their pronouns? Renounce their “privilege”? Plumbing children for this kind of personal information is grotesque and inappropriate, and it has everything to do with the worldview of Critical Race Theory. Anyone who denies as much is lying.”
      https://www.commonsense.news/p/why-are-moms-like-me-being-called

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    14. And then a whole series of reports from parents. You have schools whose policies openly say they are using Critical Race Theory.
      https://www.commonsense.news/p/spirit-murder-neo-segregation-and

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    15. The URL for quote about the Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education.
      https://philpapers.org/rec/TAYFOC

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    16. Critical Race Theory is a high level, technical discussion of systemic issues of discrimination which have been built in to (originally) the legal system. Clearly, people are extending this to study of the education system.

      To say it is being "taught in schools" is like saying that Quantum Thermodynamics is fundamental to how chemistry works, therefore whenever students are taught to make a baking-soda volcano, they are being taught Quantum Theory.

      Also I have yet to hear exactly what it is about such a study that makes it so evil. Moreover, I have yet to hear what is so wrong about children being taught that racism exists and has effects. They're not being told to 'Renounce their "privilege"', they're being taught that such a thing exists, and is more complicated than the bullshit caricature you keep railing against. (You are privileged as a white man with a prestige accent. If you spoke with a bogan accent, or if you were a woman, or if you were a different ethnicity, you would have had more impediments than you have had. You have less privilege for not being straight, and have had more difficulties than you would otherwise have had from that. Both things are true. I am privileged in many ways, except for my neurodivergence. And so on.)

      Do you deny that such a thing is worthy of study at a high level? Are you claiming that children shouldn't be taught to see it when they see it?

      You keep quoting unreliable, known-biased, and bad faith sources. You may as well quote the Philip Morris Journal on the Health Benefits of Smoking.

      "It is typically “I am of the virtuous and the good” nonsense being served up"
      That's a beautiful cop-out. Mainly because it's so meaningless. Especially in contrast: does that mean you and the people you are quoting revel in being malevolent and evil, and that somehow makes you right? Your bloviating about "Virtue Signalling" is not just wrong (because it seems none of you own mirrors), it's not even wrong.

      I'm not saying you're wrong because anyone who disagrees with me is evil, I'm saying you're wrong because every source you have quoted has a history of being, or happily associating with racists, bigots, and worse. I am not claiming that they are wrong because they get their information from racists with a barrow to push, or that they are racist because they are wrong, I am saying that they are wrong and they knowingly associate with racists. Or maybe that's too subtle a point to make through the eternal right-wing outrage machine and projection engine.

      And I honestly, seriously, worry for you. Because when you've helped them demonise Black Americans, and against transfolk, and when they've moved on to Bi-folk and gay people, then they'll turn on you in an instant, and they won't care. The people you hang around with are not your friends.

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    17. Actually, I never said it was taught in schools. But that it has influenced schools is clearly true. As we can see, for instance, in this clear and informative discussion of CRT in schools based on her personal experience. No, she never saw it taught to kids. But it absolutely was a major element in her Teacher Education and in Personal Development sessions and has sometimes deeply influenced school policies. Given the decades-long effort put into incorporating it into Teacher Ed, and more recently teacher personal development, the chances of some of it not leaking directly into the classroom is pretty remote.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvYJgh37YvI&feature=youtu.be
      Also, try and stop being a lying shit.

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    18. I'm sorry you feel that way.

      I look forward to your denunciations of the decades-long effort to gerrymander and disenfranchise millions of Americans and explicitly set up a fundamentalist Christian theocracy, something which has actually and demonstrably happened.

      You know, the thing the people you keep cheerleading for have been doing.

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    19. I am certainly not going to stop pointing out that the surgical and hormonal mutilation and sterilisation of minors based on crap evidence is evil. Indeed, that the Transcult does lots of evil. Which is completely different from the situation of Trans folk, many of whom hate what psychopathic activists and profiteering medicos are doing in their name.
      https://twitter.com/CEJacksonLaw/status/1549827914824175616

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    20. Also, your comments about demonising African-Americans are stupid and insulting and blatant misrepresentations. Really try and stop being a lying shit.
      https://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2021/09/why-americans-are-f-ed-in-head-over-race.html

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    21. Maybe if you actually talked to some transfolk and asked them what they think, as opposed to pseudointellectuals like Peterson, you wouldn't sound quite so much like a hateful parrot who doesn't actually know anything about the words of other people you're letting flow from your keyboard.

      (Hint: surgical intervention is not done to transchildren. Hormonal blockers can be applied to children, after extensive study, and are reversible. (You just stop taking them.) You know who do get extensive and reflexive surgical intervention without consent or full disclosure? Intersex kids, from infancy. I wonder where your concern for their rights and wellbeing is.)

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    22. You do understand that you're going a long way toward proving the point of the post, don't you?

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    23. "Hormonal blockers are reversible"
      Lol. Read the studies instead of quoting them next time. Read meta-studies too.

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  4. I never said you demonise black people. The people you tend to hang around with do. Or do I misremember your support for The Bell Curve and its associated ecosystem, one of whose authors spends a lot of time associated with the Nazi-sympathising Pioneer fund and other white supremacists and neo-nazis for someone who isn't a white supremacist.

    Or do you perhaps refer to your glowing reference to Richard Rothstein and his works? You do know that Rothstein's books are used as sources in actual CRT classes, right?
    https://libguides.du.edu/c.php?g=931280&p=7096834

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    1. You are a contemptible liar and watching you try to ingratiate yourself with your condescending false concern is nauseating. You and your ilk need to be barred from all levers of power, especially access to minors, at every turn.

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