Danger of Identitarian Deference: After its Cause Wins, Does it Reverse its Position?

Having a rule of identitarian deference or other standard of identity politics under which some people's view is given more weight than others in accordance with who has the least power is dangerous because, once the disadvantaged cause in question that righteous/virtuous people are fighting for and for the purpose of fighting for which identitarian deference is established/practiced gains support and power and begins to win and becomes dominant, then it wouldn't lose the benefit vantage of identity, and opposition what in fact. 

In concrete terms, for example, Emma Sulkowicz has more power in some ways than Paul Nungesser; after all, one was supported by a multitude including elected officials and the other was not. Similarly, racial minorities have more social power and white supremacists and the KKK do at this time in this country. 

Should the arguments between these camps then really be settled by, or addressed by giving any (argumentative/discursive) benefit/advantage to, privileging the side with less power?

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.

Reasonable Person Statutes and Identitarian Deference

One example of identitarian deference already established and recognized in the law--rightly, in my opinion--is the clarification to "reasonable person" statutes, like those requiring that in order for a genuine belief in the necessity of a violent act to defend oneself from imminent physical harm to rightly claim 'perfect self-defense' and fully exonerate one from criminal charges, that the standard of "reasonableness" must take into account the totality of the defendant's circumstances.

In People v Humphrey, the CA Supreme Court found that expert testimony concerning the effects of battered woman syndrome are relevant, and thus admissible, to determining whether the belief in the necessity of violent self-defense was objectively reasonable because the standard is defined as "what a reasonable person would do in her situation", i.e. as a long-term victim of battering and suffering of battered woman syndrome.

Hence there is an identitarian deference here, and assertion of an unbridgeable gap in the understandings of those who have been battered women and those who have not.

"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.

Liberal Universalism or Identity Politics: Empty the Categories of All Social Significance or Not?

Imagine if we have gender-neutral policy, based on a commitment to classical/political liberalism with its universalism that seeks to divorce the significance of socially-arbitrary/irrelevant social categories, and thus do not use the concept of gender in any legislation or regulation/policy, and don’t acknowledge/look at/notice/document gender when researching outcomes and policy problems and solutions.  Thus, when we looked at income distribution and income inequality, to investigate its legitimacy/whether its ok or not/how it’s caused/etc., we would simply see women’s incomes alongside men’s/the rest of the population’s/the general population’s, and would not be able to see/recognize their disparity as a class, as something they experience for similar reasons and in a common way.  Thus, we wouldn’t be able to analyze it for its nature, justification/legitimacy, its causes and solutions.

—So this looks like my ending thought about gender critical feminism and the abolition of gender: 

-we can reject and end the use and maintenance of the categories/social classes of gender…RRC may want to abolish gender as a social class, abolish all social classes based on biology/sex, but she is sure to create the category again to discuss the material problems that all vagina-having people share. 

-we may try to implement Liberal Universalism all the way and fully empty the arbitrary/morally-irrelevant categories of people of all social significance//practical implications/significance, but that will blind us to/can potentially blind us to possible ways that people can be oppressed for their identities.  

(((**This sounds like the question that Butler was addressing in Gender Trouble: can you do feminism without a concept of woman?  If the concept is the means of oppression, can you abolish it without losing the ability to recognize and analyze the systemic oppression that affects all similar people in the same way because of the same causes?** [http://lauragonzalez.com/TC/BUTLER_gender_trouble.pdf])))

—In this way, emptying these arbitrary categories of social signifiance/practicel implications is a CAP—which is just what Noah Smith observed before of being colorblind in action/treatment/policy.

Either we can be non-(gender-neutral/colorblind) and allow for and accept/tolerate racially unequal outcomes that result from certain contingent facts 

One option is we can be (gender-neutral/colorblind) and allow for and accept/tolerate racially unequal outcomes that result from certain contingent facts operating within our neutral system.  

The other option is we can recognize these empirical facts that disadvantage certain people (physical differences like in terms of reproductive role for the subjection of women; psychological facts with some socialized, but at least some innate; for example, categorization, likeness and in-/-outgroup dynamics, bias, cross-race identification, etc.) and realize that they would result under a regime of gender-neutral/colorblind policy in an unjust outcome.

A large class of people with a common characteristic, an arbitrary, morally-irrelevant fact about their identity that they did not choose and do not control, are experiencing life outcomes worse than they otherwise would/could be through no fault of their own.

Even if it’s not dependent solely on the facially neutral system, but in fact requires also the other facts—and in fact would not exist under the same (facially) neutral system if these empirical facts were otherwise—once you know about the outcome(s) and why and accept it, you are responsible for the outcome yourself.    

So, instead of the neutral system, you craft one recognizing and taking into account those empirical facts, and craft it to avoid those potential injustices.  The outcome is more just.

But you have also crafted policy that presupposes and depends on certain empirical facts, including people being racist.  

(This is like what XXX argued to me when I suggested that maybe a “punch up, not down” rule could account for the rationality/reasonableness/plausibility of/coherence of/internal inconsistency of/consistency of a certain social phenomenon he accused of hypocrisy: adopting this rule would require defining which groups are up and which are down, which literally requires defining a hierarchy of classes).

     ——

But if I’m right here in identifying the value of identity politics, there is no identitarian deference called for.

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.

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.

--

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).

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.