Identity Politics Criticism

I worry that (some of) my criticism of identity politics is (getting) conflated.

A lot of what I criticize of identity politics is not its policy and personal behavior/treatment/practice conclusions.  

It is not my position that we ought not to or can not (not in terms of possibility/ability) lessen the tilt against, and even positively tilt things towards, the marginalized, like in recognizing that “neutral” policy is best thought of/called “facially-neutral” and may indeed still be unfair and need changing, and in recognizing that some explicit advantages for the marginalized in treatment, like affirmative action or exceptions to free speech, may indeed to justified or even obligatory restore justice after countless examples of other phenomenon going to other way, reverse the effects of those that are in the past and those still persisting with us.

Instead, what I am criticizing of identity politics is the idea that we must even do so (engage in this retilting/rebalancing) in the debate itself on the question of whether or not to do so. 

There's also a problem of self-reference here too, among other things.

Some Links: Ideological Diversity

Nick Kristof on ideological diversity: A Confession of Liberal Intolerance

Nick Kristof follow-up on ideological diversity: The Liberal Blind Spot

Response to Nick Kristof on ideological diversity: What Nicholas Kristof gets wrong (and right) about conservatives in academia

From earlier, Arthur Brooks on ideological diversity: Academia’s Rejection of Diversity

Equality and Democracy and Myth of the Medals

Oberlin radicals' and other student activists' proposing to eliminate grades below Cs, for instance, are perfect examples for Platonists to point to in order to show how some political proposals to promote equality and democracy (which are the same thing, since the political equality of each person would preclude any from having more power than another, a condition with which only equal votes for all--democracy--can be consistent) could hurt/injure the polity:

Allowing the silver and bronze to rise above their stations, including into the ruling gold and thereby undermining the quality of governance, as well as wasting some potential ability in roles it isn't needed.

It's overall a great illustration of what the Ancients and the Founders feared with regard to rule of the mob.  

Suicide vs. Homicide, Locus of Control, and Race

Check out this cool episode: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519?mt=2&i=371674148

In this podcast, one scholar who is interviewed on why the suicide rate is so much higher for whites than blacks, and why the homicide rate is so much higher for blacks than whites, suggests the explanation that many of these homicides in the black community might "really be" suicides, resulting from when a person is so down that they put themselves into a situation in which they're likely to be killed.  This difference is hypothesized to relate to the greater tendency of blacks to believe in an external locus of control, and for whites to believe in an internal locus of control.  

Could this be related to campus and race-related activism?

Purely Malicious Expression and the Limits of Free Speech?

Does free speech and 1st amendment protect purely retaliatory claims-speech and legal actions?

Retaliation Charges Menace Freedom of Speech

According to this link, the courts mostly say yes, but some new opinions may differ. 

That this apparent consensus gives way to the newer interpretation would accord with some of my thinking elsewhere that, (following) from the falsity of the speech-action distinction (without a difference), free speech cannot justify intentionally (and purely?) malicious hurtful speech. 

"Not assigning Professor Pogge's work because of evidence of his misconduct towards women?"

The consensus expressed on this page that the assignment of Pogge's work should not in principle be disallowed/precluded due to his personal moral lapses seems to me to accord with the idea that the work of, for instance, Hume and Locke and Kant should not be thought of as "white philosophy": both embody the idea that people and their views, arguments, and accounts can be separated.

Does Speech Have a Regulable Effect on an Unconsenting Audience?

All this time, I have/we've been arguing that homosexuality is OK and should be treated the same as heterosexuality, and so should not be criminally punished or criminal he singled out/prohibited, even in a purely expressive way, at all, because it doesn't affect anyone other than the willing consenters:

But arguing this implies that receiving into one's mind/mental experience  information/sights/sounds/accounts of it don't count as affecting.

Now, some parts of the left want to argue that sights and sounds and words and ideas can count as affecting. So which is it?

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Next step in the homosexuality dialectic discourse: 

I rely on my argument about if you don’t/didn't know about it, then it doesn't/couldn't have been affecting you. 

And nobody is suggesting legalizing it in a way that you would receive experiential information about it: like in public.

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The response, I imagine, the only one possible: 

Even just knowing about it, without experiencing/seeing or hearing it, it affects me, it's mere existence of affects me.

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And we who were pro gay rights, remember we were arguing over its mere legality/legal existence less than 15 years ago during Lawrence movie Texas, and who must continue to advocate for gay rights and freedom of homosexuality in the US and--importantly--internationally, must/must have rejected all these concerns of social conservatives, and rejected the idea that not only sight and sound button mere knowledge of X/homosexuality affects unconsenting participants.

((Sight and sound versus knowledge of X, homosexuality in this case, comes into play in both/all the free speech cases/scenarios because the organizers of the controversial speech/presentation on campus are confining their speech to a single location a single time and publicizing the nature of its content and those facts about setting, and thereby allowing people to choose/control/determine whether they admit this controversial content into their mental experience, and attempting to restrict the scope/reach of their content/speech to only those who affirmatively choose to experience it/opt in--this means making sure the audience/recipients of your speech/content have consented to do so and not only that people who have affirmatively rejected/refused to consent to receiving/experiencing it, but also that people who have not consented or refuse/projected receiving/experiencing it are prevented from receiving/experiencing it; no one can receive/experience it accidentally, Without their knowledge or explicit consent--(doing this by restricting their speech to a certain place and time, and publicizing it)

((publicizing the speech deserves some consideration, because if the warning of the events content includes any of the controversial content itself, then it does no good and compounds the problem. This is exactly the problem with

(((At least part of peoples problems with sights and sounds and ideas and information and speech about it, it is for the effect this will have on kids slash their kids/teach them about it/ruin their ignorance on the existence of this.)))

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So student activists/protesters can and do argue that: we are still not satisfied that the speech is confined to a single space and a single time that is announced in advance in a way that does not include/communicate/express any of the controversial content, and actually purely safe trigger warning ((Im imagining if the term trigger warning were explicitly attached, and perhaps looks like they were agreed to reluctantly by the controversial speaker and the controversial organization that invited them to use the term trigger warning, then confining the speech to one place and time and announcing those facts in advance would probably suffice)). In other words, we are not satisfied that the speech is regulated enough such that only people who affirmatively consent to receive/hear/experience/see it in fact do so.

Just knowing that that speech is going on on this campus, and maybe additionally that there are people who wanted to go hear it, and agree with and like it, on this campus is enough. It's enough to make me not feel safe knowing the mere existence of it.

Are we sure we want to set this standard/principle about what speech may be regulated legitimately/justifiably?

(((especially because the speech on campus does not cause those views in the people on campus who chose to go to it and or agree with hand or like it; preventing the speech will not do anything about those views that may be/may have been said to be part of the reason for opposing the speech/wanting to prevent the speech from happening. But maybe the speech happening will foment those forces/the people with those views, and connect them with one another and lead to an increase in it, either in their intensity and possible action derived from it, and or the growth of it through the conversion of undecideds/New believers. If that's what they're trying to prevent, send that might be legitimate/has a prima facie case for legitimacy/being right, but we would need empirical information that this causal relationship occurs. To the contrary, I think my views on persuasion--how to do it and what does it in people--all right, and they are incompatible with this possibility.

… In general, at the most basic level, I just want to argue for value neutrality/content neutral free-speech/speech regulation policy. 

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Why do I want it so badly? Because we need something in common, if we're going to have a polity together at all with people we disagree with, and that's the only candidate for a possible compromise for policy here on this issue.

If the center doesn't hold, there will just be war/majority/force/numbers.

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(((((((oh my God, all of the schools having all of these slightly different but largely similar protest movements/student activism/demands provides me a great/perfect opportunity/the perfect opportunity to illustrate all the iterations in thought experiments on free speech questions, and are perfect examples for many of the theoretical ideas ideas I've previously analyze only theoretically and because it makes them easier to see for others and makes it easier to communicate them with others))))))

Ideological Diversity and Discrimination Against Some Participants vs. Against Some Participation

Promoting ideological diversity to improve/increase the representation of conservatives, for instance, in academia and other fields is criticized as/can be portrayed as promoting inclusion of false/wrong views. It is diversity and discrimination and exclusion/inclusion of content, not participant identity type.

Those who support promoting diversity of/for identity type but oppose it for ideology can frame/attempts to define their view in support of one and an opposition to the other on this ground, content versus participants, to defend their distinction/position against charges of inconsistently/hypocrisy.

But that would mean that they need to only support diversity measures that operate through participants identity and not through content in all contexts/cases.

This would mean of course that they (cannot support diversity measures/need to find other grounds to support diversity measures that) attempt to improve diverse city by pushing the deliberate/calculated/designed inclusion of content, like supporting changing Academic philosophy rather than just newly-admitting previously excluded people to the existing, unaffected/unchanged activity, or by pushing the exclusion of certain content, like male sidewalk entitlement/aggression or "boys will be boys" language in the technology world.

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Diversity of content versus diversity of participants:

-measures to promote diversity can affect content in two ways: bringing about the deliberate/ad hoc inclusion of previously absent content (types), and bringing him about the deliberate cessation of (initially/originally) existing content for the reason that it is said to perpetuate exclusion/discrimination.

If you're going to assert that affecting content is justifiable for the sake of diversity/inclusion and may even be necessary to that end, you can't then oppose promoting ideological diversity on the grounds that it is diverse city of content rather than slash and not just diverse city of participants' (identities/identity types).

Free vs. Regulated Speech and Campus Protests, Platforms, and Heckler's Veto

The people who's slogan is in favor of free speech in the recent campus protests to shut down a speaker or presentation is actually a position in favor of regulated speech, totally free speech waiting include the heckler.

These groups trying to give talks book for a specific space and the specific time in advance, and publicize about it including at the entrance, to allow people control/free choice/freedom in whether they experience it. And they favor using coercion forced to shut down other people speech, in that space at the same time, to preserve the existence/integrity of their own speech. So they are not pro free-speech as far as meaning anarchy and no legislation on speech at all, but are pro regulated speech to enable/promote/protect a difference, deeper, more important type of free speech, one in which the individual with a unique opinion can be heard and the diversity of speech/of views/of expressed views this condition entails.

This is just like the Lockean notion of restricting some freedom, to some property that is legitimately taxed away, to the right to catch and punish wrongdoers/rights violators, and certain other things, to secure liberty in other areas and make them more reliable, which must be a more valuable type of liberty.

So these are both examples of the principle that it can be legitimate to sacrifice some liberty of a smaller amounts or less or type for the sake of a greater or deeper liberty.

Socialists want to take this one step further, and say it's legitimate to sacrifice further on liberty so conceived when it comes to taxes and regulation, property rights in general, in order to secure a deeper freedom, positive freedom that is, for everyone.

Diversifying the curriculum: representation and 'Cosmopolitan ideal'

If it's true that the protesters are wrong that they are only reading dead white dudes, and are instead of reading also Confucius and Lao Tzu, etc.:

Then I would think a few things:

-I would ask the protesters who think this if they have personally looked at every classes syllabus and or done a systematic analysis of all the syllabi/curricula in all the academic departments at the whole school?

-More fundamentally, I avoid remark that if they are reading authors who are not white men and not recognizing that, including on issues of poverty, like maybe William Julius Wilson and so not realizing that he's black--that they're reading a black scholar on poverty arguing against the neoclassical/individualist view--

maybe it's because he's writing on poverty, and in particular black poverty, and not on blackness or being black or from the perspective of being black (and or) such that it's only accessible to people with the same experience.

That would demonstrate that they only want to diversity of identity/participants and not of content.

It also shows that she not only wants the inclusion of/favor city of certain types of people, like certain racial and ethnic minority members, but ones who speak in a certain way and to scholarship and research and production is of a certain sore and on a certain topic and in a certain style.

Also, if they've been reading them the whole time without being aware of it, then it proves that the identity characteristics of the writers/scholars is a relevant/of peoples ideas are irrelevant.

...

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/too-many-dead-white-dudes-seattle-u-students-protest-programs-curriculum/

Diversifying the Canon of Philosophy: Representation, 'Me Studies', & 'Cosmopolitan ideal'

http://induecourse.ca/the-problem-of-me-studies/

I do a better job of explaining this at DailyNous but also professor Yap points this out as well: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2015/06/guest-post-on-what-is-the-real-problem-of-me-studies.html

The problem is that any study is the study of someone’s experience. Since the history of philosophy has been dominated by white males then the history of philosophy is very much a question of white male experiences. This is less obvious because those experiences have been treated as universal. As to the specific question of calculus, yes, I suppose you would be studying white people when you study calculus since mathematics is just another way of interpreting and measuring the world.I guess it depends on whether you think mathematicals are real or not. Now, you aren’t exclusively studying white men since other cultural views were part of the formation of calculus such as the concept of the zero which has its origins in Arab thought.

This would mean then, continuing the analogy, that instead of teaching mathematics as is, you need to diversify and teach other kinds of math; participation vs content for discrimination/diversity.

Does this go so far as to require diversity/inclusion of the false?

'The Canon' and Diversity

‘The Canon’ is what it is because it’s the body of thought that has affected our institutions, what the people who came before us—those who designed and contributed to our current systems and its institutions—studied themselves in an intergenerational descent. 

That is, in this sense of what ‘the Canon’ is, the basis for what it is comprised of is the set of historical facts that can not be changed. 

However, as people more and more on their own choose to read things outside ‘the Canon’, and the proportion of that two people in history grows, until the former overtakes the latter, then ‘the Canon’ changes; but it does so naturally and organically, and therefore rightly.