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.

"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.

Colorblindness in Action and Policy

I can’t help but view colorblindness as the ideal.  

This does not mean that I favor instituting colorblindness right now, either in policy or my personal actions (although I do think the standard for overriding the presumption of colorblindness in my personal actions is/should be/is and should be higher than that in policy).  

Any questions about the effectiveness of affirmative action in redressing/rectifying institutional/structural racism, I would oppose ending affirmative action on the grounds of colorblindness.  

I support slavery reparations (again, everything else being equal and thus strategic and priority considerations aside).

I don’t think having double standards for the establishment of black groups and spaces and white groups and spaces is wrong or racist or even really inconsistent.  The same goes for such cases that arise in our individual lives, like the use of language like insults, stereotypes and racial jokes.

Why I have these views and their rightness is best demonstrated, I think, with the example of slavery reparations.

I support reparations as restitution for harm done.  The fact that we recognize and grant intergenerational property rights through inheritance law makes the case for reparations almost incontestable.  The labor and wealth stolen from slaves should be paid back to their ancestors just as much as inheritance should be passed down to make the victims of slavery whole again.   

But the injury of slavery is more than just the value stolen from slaves.  Like restitution in almost any case involves not only the victim being made whole again, it also involves compensation for pain and suffering, the magnitude of which in the case of slavery must surely imply an immense level of compensation.  To those who may grant that reparations ought to made for the value of stolen labor, but contest that it ought to include compensation for the pain and suffering of slaves since it is being paid not to those who endured it but their descendants, there are two responses*: first, the descendants also experience pain and suffering derived from the same original crime of slavery and, second, had the sums for compensation for pain and suffering been paid to the victims of the original generation, the slaves, their descendants would have received it in some form anyway.  

So current generation’s descendants should receive, in addition to the value of unpaid labor of slaves plus interest accrued, reparations must also include the difference in value between the wages earned by the non-slave descendants and the wages they would have earned if not subject to disadvantaged participation the US labor market due to their starting point without accumulated financial capital, and their unequal treatment in society at large, plus interest.  Some measure of compensation must also be included for their deficit of other types of capital, cultural, social, etc.  

And even this does not fully answer the question, since only the crime of slavery has been addressed, and not the subsequent crimes of Jim Crow, segregation, and more.

   

But this particular view in support of reparations accords with my holding colorblindness as the ideal (and with the reasoning of the US Supreme Court that it is legitimate for the state to interfere with and prohibit private discrimination because it is still a delayed result of original government policy; “badges of inferiority”) in that I am justifying non-colorblind policy and action on the grounds that it is to reverse the effects of earlier non-colorblind action that was harmful; i.e., to the extent that today’s poverty and marginalization of black people is the result of slavery, government can combat it with non-colorblind policy.  The end of slavery in the law does not mean that the harm from it is over if its effects persists over generations.

All this is to say that I still can’t help but hold racial colorblindness as the ideal, a la MLK’s quote about “not color of skin but content of character” that is so often naively invoked by those who oppose racial justice, and that such an ideal is still compatible with, nay still even obligates reparations, affirmative action, and more non-colorblind and progressive policy.

As for how to implement this ideal then given all these conditions I’ve laid out?  One might say that as soon as racism is over, all the debts paid back and all the socialization by media and culture undone, then policy should revert to colorblindness.  But there are strong reasons to suppose that, not only will this never be the case (because the means necessary to achieve it will never be politically possible), but it cannot be the case.  After all, as rational beings we automatically conceptualize and categorize; as biologically descended beings through a process of evolution, we are hard-wired groups and parcel out trust accordingly.  If this is the case, might it be right, either permissible or (more likely) even obligatory, to still establish some permanent and pervasive means of providing some small advantage to black people to counteract this disadvantage, even after all the discrete debts like reparations have been paid?

The demographic change of the country would of course make this worth evaluating again.  

*Although this is a good question that I am not certain on as a legal principle: should restitution for past crimes paid to the descendants of the crimes’ victims, now deceased, include compensation for pain and suffering in addition to being made whole again?  

Does this question conceive of payments for the purpose of restitution and for the purpose of pain and suffering as separate?  

What about payments to compensate what it took to be made whole again with regard to the harm of the original crime?  For this question, it seems that we shouldn’t conceive these separately since to be made whole again with regard to the original crime, one must endure the further burden of engaging the process to do so.

Discrimination vs. Boycott in Commerce

Commerce is the collective endeavor at collective survival; for that reason, it an important question whether people should be free to not do commerce with people they don’t want to.

If you were on a desert island with 5 or so other survivors of the plane crash that stranded you there, and one of those people was an anti-gay bigot or anti-black racist/white supremacist; is it ok to refuse to collaborate in survival with him?  It’s not actively harming him, it’s just choosing not to positively help someone because of their dislike and disrespect of you. 

If it is, but discrimination is not ok against anti-gay christians in commerce today, why this difference?  Could it be only for the same reason that regulation is now ok, there are no more commons left for natural appropriation?  

On the desert island then, would it make a difference how big or small the island was, so that independent survival is possible without collaboration with others?  

Isn’t this just a restatement of the condition of active harming the person vs just opting to not positively help him: if the island is too small such there is no unappropriated land left and so individual survival is not possible, then refusing to collaborate with him is actively harming him by excluding him from access to the means of survival?  But if there is enough island that there is enough resources for him to survive on his own, then not collaborating with him is not actively harming him but just declining to actively help him.    

Diversity and Discrimination: Under (Facially-)Neutral Rules? Of Participants' Identity vs. Content of Participation?

Pretty much everyone agrees that discrimination against participants in an activity or place or institution is wrong but the question about discrimination of participants' dissipation is more controversial.

On the one hand, discrimination against/of the content of participants' participation can just be a means intended to discriminate against participants without looking like that's what it's doing: for example, school dress code's that prohibit items that are typically used by African-Americans.

This is reflected in some legal ideas: "in its majestic equality, the law forbids both the poor and the rich to sleep under bridges" is a statement that a universally applied and facially neutral law can in fact be unjust in its effect on a particular group. 

Similarly, the constitutionally accepted idea that disparate treatment is not necessary for unjust discrimination, which can instead manifest in disparate outcomes from facially neutral treatment or regulation, reflects this as well.

So there are some reasons to think that non-discrimination/inclusion either can or must require nondiscrimination of the content of participants' participation. 

On the other hand, there are also reasons to think that discrimination by/of the content of participants' participation in a contested space/institution is fine, and is not unjust discrimination like that against participants' identities. 

This view is demonstrated in cases like, for one example of very very many, the discussion on versifying and inclusion in academic philosophy as playing out on Brian Leiter's blog and others who are discussing with him: while others hold that upholding in enforcing certain standards of philosophy and preferring certain styles (i.e. analytic) is wrongful discrimination that upholds the majority white western male character of academic philosophy, lighter and others argue that such discrimination of content is legitimate as discrimination of participants could never be.

On yet another hand, when considering the promotion of diversity, those who hold that discrimination of participants' participation in the contested spaces and the content thereof is illegitimate exclusion and wrongful discrimination only favor measures to deliberately increased adversity of participants and their identities rather than of the content of their participation at all. 

in more concrete terms, this means that while they support diverse city of all possible identity types, they do not support increasing ideological diversity (and ignore for now the possibility that ideology is not a choice but innate, immutable, and the result of brain biology), and often portray the idea of doing so as intentionally and deliberately including falsity and or wrong; for example, in this line of thought, taking measures intended to increase ideological/content diversity in biology and zoology and the communities that study them could arguably include the deliberate inclusion of creationists. 

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Apply Antonin Scalia's reasoning from the PGA (golf) discrimination case: is discriminating against the use of a golf cart discriminating against participants or (the nature of) their participation? Does requiring they admit the use of golf carts change just who is admitted into playing the game or does it change the game itself? What is golf and what is a game?

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(Below is pasted a lightly edited version of the above text:)

Pretty much everyone agrees that discrimination against participants in an activity or place or institution is wrong but the question about discrimination of participants' dissipation is more controversial.

On the one hand, discrimination against/of the content of participants' participation can just be a means intended to discriminate against participants without looking like that's what it's doing: for example, school dress code's that prohibit items that are typically used by African-Americans.

This is reflected in some legal ideas: "in its majestic equality, the law forbids both the poor and the rich to sleep under bridges" is a statement that a universally applied and facially neutral law can in fact be unjust in its effect on a particular group. 

Similarly, the constitutionally accepted idea that disparate treatment is not necessary for unjust discrimination, which can instead manifest in disparate outcomes from facially neutral treatment or regulation, reflects this as well.

So there are some reasons to think that non-discrimination/inclusion either can or must require nondiscrimination of the content of participants' participation. 

On the other hand, there are also reasons to think that discrimination by/of the content of participants' participation in a contested space/institution is fine, and is not unjust discrimination like that against participants' identities. 

This view is demonstrated in cases like, for one example of very very many, the discussion on diversifying and inclusion in academic philosophy as playing out on Brian Leiter's blog and others who are discussing with him: while others hold that upholding in enforcing certain standards of philosophy and preferring certain styles (i.e. analytic) is wrongful discrimination that upholds the majority white western male character of academic philosophy, Leiter and others argue that such discrimination of content is legitimate as discrimination of participants could never be.

On yet another hand, when considering the promotion of diversity, those who hold that discrimination of participants' participation in the contested spaces and the content thereof is illegitimate exclusion and wrongful discrimination only favor measures to deliberately increase diversity of participants and their identities rather than of the content of their participation at all. 

in more concrete terms, this means that while they support diversity of all possible identity types, they do not support increasing ideological diversity (and ignore for now the possibility that ideology is not a choice but innate, immutable, and the result of brain biology), and often portray the idea of doing so as intentionally and deliberately including falsity and or wrong; for example, in this line of thought, taking measures intended to increase ideological/content diversity in biology and zoology and the communities that study them could arguably include the deliberate inclusion of creationists.