The ubiquity of slavery in ancient history should be apparent in reading any histories of the era. It existed in all state level societies. As for levels of violence in pre-state societies, the bibliography of Pinker's "Better Angles of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined," has a copious list of sources. Both modern observation of hunter gatherer societies and forensic archeology converge on extremely high rates of homicide, significantly higher than Europe even if you take 1914-1945 as your measuring period, or the nations with the highest homicide rates today (concentrated in Central America).

I mention Africa in terms of neopatrimonial political systems because SSA has the best examples of pure neopatrimonial models, and Francis Fukayama draws most of his examples from the region in his "Origins of Political Order," and "Political Order and Political Decay."

(IMO, by these two volumes are by far and away the best works on state development. Not so much because of Fukayama's own insights, although those are good, but because he cogently summarizes the insights of Weber, Machiavelli, Jared Diamond, John Mearsheimer, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, etc. while also showing the flaws in their models and creating a new synthesis. He also avoids endlessly selecting on the dependant variable, unlike "Why Nations Fail," or the Tragedy of Great Power politics.")

Anyhow, if the implication is that Africa's problems stem from problems other than its politics, you are, of course, correct, but the negative relationship between explicit neopatrimonial relationships and governance quality extends outside the region. Countries with governments set up to ensure given levels of representation by given ethnic groups, rather than open elections (e.g. Lebanon's history) are far more likely to enter a civil war and more likely to return to war if an ethnic based political system is used following a cease fire. This is a replicable finding, although obviously all IR studies deal with low N studies and lack of experimentation.

I don't know what you mean by "intentionally exploitative policies." This is obviously true, although you could argue that modern capitalism was less exploitive that the systems that preceded it. In any event, my point was specific to colonies.

It's certainly not a settled matter, but the balance of findings in historical macro economic analysis is definitely on the side of colonies being net money losers for European nations. They were pursued for prestige and strategic reasons, and had the side benefit of letting the well-connected loot the treasuries of European nations, but they were a net drain on the host nations, particularly later colonial projects during the 19th century.

This is true even if the incredibly extractive, downright genocidal Belgian Congo project.

Secondly, the nations that gained the most from colonies (analyses generally conclude Spain saw short term benefits from gold and silver inflows) were impoverished by the early 20th century and relied on "catch up growth," to grow near to the main European powers in terms of development. Even today, Spain and Portugal, with their vast, early empires are significantly poorer than France and the UK.

Meanwhile, Denmark's rise to being one of the most developed nations in Europe occured after it lost its colonies. Austria's development trajectory increased after losing its empire. Switzerland and the Nordic nations are the most developed in Europe, despite the lack of colonies. Finland and Korea were impoverished backwaters into the 1950s, and modernized via institutional reform, not colonization, meaning colonies are neither necessary, nor sufficient for development.

On the other hand, the Gulf States boast per capita GDP levels on par with Southern Europe due to natural resource wealth, yet remain authoritarian states with lower quality of life by most commonly used measures, due to lack of core institutions. In modern state development literature these institutions are normally represented as a three or four legged stool of: accountable government/some for of voting, rule of law, and a strong centralized state with a monopoly on violence. Sometimes a strong, independent, professional, merit based beaurocracy is a fourth leg, others it is rolled into the strong state definition. The risk of CRT reducing development to extraction is that it then follows that simply transferring wealth to marginalized groups will be enough to reduce violence and increase standards of living. Yet this experiment has been run, with many poor nations inheriting vast natural resource wealth, and the result has often been a small minority benefiting from said wealth.

As to immigration causing congestion effects for other immigrants, or immigration reaching a tipping point at which the host nation's populace experiences an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-welfare state sentiment, this is a finding that appears in the immigration literature over and over, and can be found on Google Scholar readily. For example:

https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781781001264/9781781001264.00013.xml

Aside from academic sources, you can also look to industry. 19th and early 20th century industrialists made no secret of their attempts to intentionally hire a diverse workforce because it reduced the risks of worker cooperation and unionization efforts. Moving to today, Amazon had a leak showing that it also pursues diversity as a means of reducing the risk of unionization efforts, using it as a key metric of risk in statistical models.

Fukayama among others, lays out the case for reduced immigration being a factor in the homogonization of America after the 1910s. Whether or not it was the main factor is, of course, nigh impossible to prove, since there is a complex relationship between immigration, support for the welfare state, and unionization. What is certain is that curtailing immigration necessarily reduced economic inequality by reducing the number of low asset, unskilled workers entering the country, while also having modest to large effects on wages, depending on how you try to measure said effects.

As to Whiteness existing outside the US in the early 20th century as a unifying concept, I submit as evidence that it wasn't the fact that Europe experienced huge waves of ethnic cleansing (Germans totally removed from large swathes of Eastern Europe they had inhabited for centuries, Armenians subject to genocide in Turkey, the Holocaust of European Jews, the genocided in the Balkans, etc.). Racial theorists of the time also posited different European groups as different races. White, as an overarching identity shows up first as a meaningful social force in the US, and has gained relevance in Europe following the Post-War integration of Europe and the introduction of large non-European populations into Europe. Certainly a form of white identity existed in Europe prior to the 20th century, but it was not the inclusive identity it became in America.


Finally, as to: "The only way equality can be measured is by comparing outcomes," sure. The next step though, advocating for the elimination of anything that shows disparities in outcomes, is necissarily making the error of confusing correlation with causation.

CRT advocates have a real problem with doing absolute junk science, or badly misrepresenting the results of academic research, and then, when confronted with this, deflecting in an almost Freudian way with: "academia itself is a racist institution, and your disagreement is a sign of internalized racism/white fragility."

For example, the slide below is the definition of statistical error:




There are ways of measuring type I and II error in tests. There are ways of assessing their predictive power. The SAT, ACT, and GRE are not perfect predictors for academic and career success, but they are better than students grades.

Standardized tests for civil service positions were implemented with the exact goal of reducing bias in hiring. If the goal is to increase minority hires/admissions, then the solution might be to give those groups even larger preference on exams. The push to remove testing entirely isn't required to shake up admissions rates. A quota system would be the most effective means of doing that. I'd argue that tests are being jettisoned more because disparities in the test scores of those admitted/hired allow critics of affirmative action to use an easy quantitative means to critique said practices, rather than for any practical selection reason. Standardized tests allow bright students with poor grades due to poor quality, non-challenging academic settings to demonstrate their talent, which could be a boon for minority students.

My guess is you know about the First and Second Amendments. You raise an interesting issue regarding the First Amendment. Unlike so many other instances where it's claimed "free speech" is being infringed, it's clear that government action is involved in prohibiting speech related to CRT (and Socialism and Marxism, and perhaps evolution and other things as well) and so the First and Fourteenth Amendments actually apply, for once.

My guess would be that something like the time, place and manner restrictions on speech allowed in the law would be invoked. I think the argument would be that the public interest in education, of grade school and high school students, at least, is such that certain subjects be emphasized over others--e.g. reading, writing and 'rithmatic rather than political, social and moral theories and opinions, which may only detract from teaching of essential knowledge and skills. Grade school is arguably not the place for anything but "the basics." I don't know, though, what the argument would be. This must have been played out in some court or other, but I haven't looked into it. High school in this country is, of course, little more than a zoo and a place at which certain rights of passage take place in an almost ritualistic fashion.

The ubiquity of slavery in ancient history should be apparent in reading any histories of the era. It existed in all state level societies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, but slavery in the ancient world in the West was different from slavery as practiced in the U.S. and by the nations of Europe during and even after the colonial period. In the ancient world, race wasn't a determining factor. Anyone could be a slave. Slavery would often be the fate of those defeated in battle. Many slaves were white and well-educated--better educated, in fact, than their masters in some cases. Slaves were tutors, doctors, administrators, gourmet chefs as well as household workers, gladiators and laborers. The Romans regularly and quite blithely enslaved all manner of folk, not because they were considered inferior racially or intellectually; they were socially inferior-inferior in status. Many became free in the regular course of events and became quite rich, powerful and influential.

Many slaves were white and well-educated--better educated, in fact, than their masters in some cases. — Ciceronianus the White

Correct. Most slaves were white because whites were readily available. Some became slaves through debt but, increasingly, as prisoners of war.

The very word "slave"/"sclavus" comes from the Slavic tribes members of which were often captured in war. The Romans also has many slaves from Celtic and Germanic populations which all were white.

Not only that, but slavery was an accepted element of economy and culture in the ancient world, including in Africa-Egypt, the Middle East, India, China, and the Americas. It is totally wrong and unacceptable to interpret it as a white invention.

19th and early 20th century industrialists made no secret of their attempts to intentionally hire a diverse workforce because it reduced the risks of worker cooperation and unionization efforts. Moving to today, Amazon had a leak showing that it also pursues diversity as a means of reducing the risk of unionization efforts, using it as a key metric of risk in statistical models. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is very interesting. This reinforces my view that CRT and also the "Culture Wars" play well to those in power as a divide and rule -strategy to separate the middle and lower classes and being in separate groups.

White, as an overarching identity shows up first as a meaningful social force in the US, and has gained relevance in Europe following the Post-War integration of Europe and the introduction of large non-European populations into Europe. Certainly a form of white identity existed in Europe prior to the 20th century, but it was not the inclusive identity it became in America. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sharing the same skin color didn't stop racism as 20th Century Europe clearly show. To the European racists the idea of Germans, Poles and Russians all belonging to the same racial group is very new. Yet this is happening, as you said.

Now the dominance of US culture is so evident that Europe basically shares the same narrative as in the US. The stupidity is that the narrative isn't changed nearly at all, but basically has to fit the US narrative.

The ubiquity of slavery in ancient history should be apparent in reading any histories of the era. It existed in all state level societies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That we have sufficient historical evidence for. And slavery in this context is a broad category, which is sometimes difficult to distinguish between other kinds of servitude.

As for levels of violence in pre-state societies, the bibliography of Pinker's "Better Angles of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined," has a copious list of sources. Both modern observation of hunter gatherer societies and forensic archeology converge on extremely high rates of homicide, significantly higher than Europe even if you take 1914-1945 as your measuring period, or the nations with the highest homicide rates today (concentrated in Central America). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd concede the levels of violence point. What I reject is the implication that because all societies have been varying degrees of worse in the past, this makes all past behaviour of different societies roughly equivalent.

I mention Africa in terms of neopatrimonial political systems because SSA has the best examples of pure neopatrimonial models, and Francis Fukayama draws most of his examples from the region in his "Origins of Political Order," and "Political Order and Political Decay." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fair enough, I remember the term from Fukuyama, though not the particular example.

Countries with governments set up to ensure given levels of representation by given ethnic groups, rather than open elections (e.g. Lebanon's history) are far more likely to enter a civil war and more likely to return to war if an ethnic based political system is used following a cease fire. This is a replicable finding, although obviously all IR studies deal with low N studies and lack of experimentation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the problem here is that most of these countries have to deal with arbitrary border drawn without regard for ethnic groups, as well as with a lack of institutions to deal with the resulting conflicts. This doesn't seem to be good evidence that the quota system here is significant as a cause of the problem.

I don't know what you mean by "intentionally exploitative policies." This is obviously true, although you could argue that modern capitalism was less exploitive that the systems that preceded it. In any event, my point was specific to colonies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What I meant was that colonial administration was in almost all cases deliberately set up for the extraction of wealth to the Metropole, though in terms of the magnitude of the extraction, there are differences between the first (roughly until 1800-1850) and the second phase of colonial rule.

It's certainly not a settled matter, but the balance of findings in historical macro economic analysis is definitely on the side of colonies being net money losers for European nations. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If you include private wealth extracted? That'd be the opposite of everything I have heard on the topic.

They were pursued for prestige and strategic reasons, and had the side benefit of letting the well-connected loot the treasuries of European nations, but they were a net drain on the host nations, particularly later colonial projects during the 19th century. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Second phase colonial projects tended to be less overtly exploitative in terms of the budget balance between the colonies and the Metropole, but generally still very lucrative for private citizens of the Metropole, who had appropriated most of the resources of the colony.

Secondly, the nations that gained the most from colonies (analyses generally conclude Spain saw short term benefits from gold and silver inflows) were impoverished by the early 20th century and relied on "catch up growth," to grow near to the main European powers in terms of development. Even today, Spain and Portugal, with their vast, early empires are significantly poorer than France and the UK.

Meanwhile, Denmark's rise to being one of the most developed nations in Europe occured after it lost its colonies. Austria's development trajectory increased after losing its empire. Switzerland and the Nordic nations are the most developed in Europe, despite the lack of colonies. Finland and Korea were impoverished backwaters into the 1950s, and modernized via institutional reform, not colonization, meaning colonies are neither necessary, nor sufficient for development. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think anyone argues that colonies are a necessary or sufficient condition for development. But this does not mean that the colonies did not represent transfers of wealth to the colonisers, or that they don't have a lasting structural impact on international relations. I'm not arguing for some deterministic model of human development. Colonies can develop very rapidly after the retreat of the Metropole, and conversely having colonies isn't a guarantee for a powerful economy or technological advances. But it'd nevertheless be very hard to argue that colonisation wasn't exploitative and ultimately immoral.

The risk of CRT reducing development to extraction is that it then follows that simply transferring wealth to marginalized groups will be enough to reduce violence and increase standards of living. Yet this experiment has been run, with many poor nations inheriting vast natural resource wealth, and the result has often been a small minority benefiting from said wealth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But clearly keeping the wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority isn't really a solution either, so I'm not sure what the thrust of this argument is. Are you arguing that the approach of CRT to wealth redistribution is wrong, of that wealth redistribution is generally inefficient?

As to immigration causing congestion effects for other immigrants, or immigration reaching a tipping point at which the host nation's populace experiences an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-welfare state sentiment, this is a finding that appears in the immigration literature over and over, and can be found on Google Scholar readily. For example: — Count Timothy von Icarus

This may be true, but I'm not sure what we can conclude about the merits of immigration strategies based on such sentiments, because they're not natural occurrences but results of political and ideological conflict.

Aside from academic sources, you can also look to industry. 19th and early 20th century industrialists made no secret of their attempts to intentionally hire a diverse workforce because it reduced the risks of worker cooperation and unionization efforts. Moving to today, Amazon had a leak showing that it also pursues diversity as a means of reducing the risk of unionization efforts, using it as a key metric of risk in statistical models. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which is why the socialist movement of the 19th and early 20th century was explicitly internationalist, as many modern socialist movements are as well. But again I don't quite see the relation to the claim that reducing immigration would be an overall positive, or what the relation with CRT is (apart from an allegation that wealthy elites cynically use CRT for their own ends, which is plausible, but not really a statement on CRT itself).

As to Whiteness existing outside the US in the early 20th century as a unifying concept, I submit as evidence that it wasn't the fact that Europe experienced huge waves of ethnic cleansing (Germans totally removed from large swathes of Eastern Europe they had inhabited for centuries, Armenians subject to genocide in Turkey, the Holocaust of European Jews, the genocided in the Balkans, etc.). Racial theorists of the time also posited different European groups as different races. White, as an overarching identity shows up first as a meaningful social force in the US, and has gained relevance in Europe following the Post-War integration of Europe and the introduction of large non-European populations into Europe. Certainly a form of white identity existed in Europe prior to the 20th century, but it was not the inclusive identity it became in America. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a fair point. Though I think the level of inclusiveness of "Whiteness" in both the US and Europe prior to the 1950s was more a matter of degree. An important factor here is that the US is a unified country with a federal government and a two-party system. This necessarily structures political conflict along more "inclusive" lines. Nevertheless, Republicans could oppose segregation in the south while opposing citizenship for white immigrants in the north.

Finally, as to: "The only way equality can be measured is by comparing outcomes," sure. The next step though, advocating for the elimination of anything that shows disparities in outcomes, is necissarily making the error of confusing correlation with causation.

CRT advocates have a real problem with doing absolute junk science, or badly misrepresenting the results of academic research, and then, when confronted with this, deflecting in an almost Freudian way with: "academia itself is a racist institution, and your disagreement is a sign of internalized racism/white fragility."

For example, the slide below is the definition of statistical error: — Count Timothy von Icarus

I really don't know enough about who the CRT advocates are or what position they have on specific issues to comment on those individuals. The problem here is determining to what extend there is a problem with CRT, and to what extend there is a problem with amplifying extreme voices.

Standardized tests for civil service positions were implemented with the exact goal of reducing bias in hiring. If the goal is to increase minority hires/admissions, then the solution might be to give those groups even larger preference on exams. The push to remove testing entirely isn't required to shake up admissions rates. A quota system would be the most effective means of doing that. I'd argue that tests are being jettisoned more because disparities in the test scores of those admitted/hired allow critics of affirmative action to use an easy quantitative means to critique said practices, rather than for any practical selection reason. Standardized tests allow bright students with poor grades due to poor quality, non-challenging academic settings to demonstrate their talent, which could be a boon for minority students. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Arguably, trying to get rid of standardized tests could be seen as a symptom of desperation and lack of trust in any possibility of a fair educational system. Practically, education is an area where you mostly want equality of outcome. If there are consistently unequal outcomes based on socio-economic factors, something is wrong. But if all attempts to reform the educational system on a larger scale, concerning financing, resource allocation etc. consistently fail politically, one might instead fall back on a more narrowly identitarian strategy to change the status quo.

Sure, race as a concept didn't have the same sort of relevance for ancient cultures, but certainly there were cases where it was acceptable to capture people considered "other" and to hold them and their descendants in bondage, whereas members of one's own culture could only be held for a period of time. Rome didn't allow you to go around kidnapping Tuscans to work to death in your mines, or use as sex slaves, but the same actions would be allowable for Gauls in the late Republican era. The Ottomans and Persians also tended to take slaves from other peoples, who were considered open game for enslavement due to not being subject to moral protection. Thus, Ottoman slavers raided Sub-Saharan Africa and southern Europe for slaves, not villages within the empire. Thralls taken by vikings tended to be Celts, hence Iceland being almost as much Celtic in descent as Nordic.

Educated slaves, like educated people in general, were the exception in the ancient world. There were educated slaves in Haiti as well, but it was hardly the norm.

This may be true, but I'm not sure what we can conclude about the merits of immigration strategies based on such sentiments, because they're not natural occurrences but results of political and ideological conflict.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. What would make a cross-cultural political trend natural versus unnatural?

In any event, it seems apparent that public sentiment and political conflict vis-a-vis political feasibility, are essential to public policy decisions. In general, how people do act is far more important to formulating policy than how they ought to act. If people acted how they ought, we shouldn't need armies, taxes to cover externalities such a pollution, or prisons. However, they act how people do act, necessitating things like standing armies and prisons.

As evidence of the destabilizing effects of rapidly shifting demographics in West I'd submit the rise and major electoral success of Far-Right parties, and the large shift towards minority rule and ethno-nationalism in the American Republican party. You can see this in any week's headlines. This week France's military is warning of a civil war over migration for example

This destabilization has far reaching consequences not just for the citizens of Western nations, who are protected by stable institutions and high functioning states, but more so for people living in developing nations who stand to benefit from a stable international system, particularly vis-a-vis developed nations getting thier shit together on global warming. It's not that much of a winding causal path between the destablizing effects of rapid demographic shifts on politics, the rise of the Far-Right, and the lack of progress on containing carbon emissions.

Direct migration to developing countries can only benefit a vanishingly small minority of people in developing countries. Even if the US and Europe trippled immigration rates, you still wouldn't get close to 5% of the developing world moving to developed nations. This is why, to my mind, the left should take the destablizing effects of immigration more seriously, or at the very least get rid of the fantasy that pops up fairly often (from John Oliver for example) that declining birth rates in developed nations will allow meaningful percentage of people in developed nations to act as "replacements," for the declining population. The numbers don't add up, you're talking slow decline in developed nations versus multiple billions in population growth in the developing world, primarily Sub-Saharan Africa, over the next 80 years.

People in general underestimate the scale of the shift. The major European nations, France, the UK, and Germany, will all be minority European by around 2080. This represents a more rapid demographic shift than the Americas saw after 1492. Governments need a plan for handling that shift, and CRT, with its extreme moralizing trend, is supremely unhelpful at framing the discussion.

My problem with CRT is that it generally refuses to conceive of immigration in any terms except racism. That is, any policy in favor of restricting immigration must have at its core, racist intent. This simply isn't the case. Given that immigration appears likely to be, with enviornmental issues related to pollution, the defining political issue of the next century, it's a pretty big liability to be caught up in reductive moralizing on the issue.

But clearly keeping the wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority isn't really a solution either, so I'm not sure what the thrust of this argument is. Are you arguing that the approach of CRT to wealth redistribution is wrong, of that wealth redistribution is generally inefficient?

Yes, my argument is that the CRT approach to redistribution is wrong. Wrong because:

1. Historically, essentializing race as respects political representation doesn't tend to end well historically, as it results in the increased politicization of demographics. This doesn't mean race based interventions are necissarily wrong. There is a powerful case to be made for affirmative action alongside other forms of redistribution. However, I'd default towards overall redistribution in most cases. Money, access to healthcare and housing: these are relatively fungible. Access to elite schools, government posts, or mentorships are comparatively quite scarce, so in those cases race based programs make sense, since extending the benefit to everyone isn't feasible.

2. CRT fails to motivate voters. It makes voters less likely to support redistribution, even those it is intended to help most. This seems like a pretty glaring flaw for a framework that aspires to become the main paradigm for left leaning political parties world wide.

On a related note, one of the few academic studies I've seen on anti-racism training at a university had the effect of making students less likely to be friends with members of another race. That does seem like an issue, when your treatment makes you patients worse. And as much of an issue is the fact that CRT can dismiss such positivist critiques of the results of its interventions by claiming that the social sciences themselves are tools of oppression and not to be trusted, which leads to...

3. CRT's focus on moralizing and zeal, and rejection of the validity of various branches of science would appear to make it difficult for adherents to reform their efforts. If you start with the assumption that you are right, and dismiss established methods for testing your assumptions, you end up with a political doctrine that lacks internal course correction mechanisms. Essentially, you swap doctrine for dogma.

Slaves were obtained from all over the Empire, and slavery wasn't based on race; nor, I think, would it be correct to say it was based on culture in all cases. Slaves were taken from Greece, for example, and the influence and even superiority of Greek culture was acknowledged. Slavery in the Empire was very much a different thing from what slavery became.

A slave's life in most cases would be brutal, and slaves were treated as property, but there were aspects of slavery which made it a curious institution, then. For example, Roman jurisprudence considered slavery to be dominion over another person contrary to nature, which is something later proponents of slavery, especially slavery racially based, could not accept, the supposed natural inferiority of slaves being taken for granted. Slavery was considered to be contrary to natural law, but accepted in civil law and by custom. Slaves were given the right to make complaints against their masters in court during the reign of Nero. During the reign of Antoninus Pius, a master who killed a slave without just cause could be tried for murder. Slaves could become Roman citizens upon manumission. Higher status slaves could hold property and earn money, which could be used to buy their freedom.

I think there is a difference between slavery in the ancient West and slavery as it came to be, which could be significant in some cases.

For sure. Slavery in the Americas is unique in the intensity and codification of racial divisions. Law absolutely prohibited the enslavement of White citizens in the US. However it's a uniqueness in graduation as far as I'm aware, because I am aware of many cases of slavers predating foreigners primarily, because it was more acceptable.

I guess it makes sense in its own sick way. In general, if you're going to raid people and carry them off into horrors, you don't do it to your peers, both due to the way human morality tends to work, enclosing people close to one within a "moral circle" and because you risk reprisals from people living close to you. Then of course you have the state's interest in not allowing raids in its territories. So, Ottoman slavers raided non-Ottoman territories predominantly, etc. I believe Persians had a taboo of capturing Persian boys to make eunuch slaves at one points, taking foreigns instead.

However, the line wasn't as dramatic as in the US.

On a side note, I do think people overstate how cosmopolitan and open people were throughout history. You run into blatant racism in old texts fairly often. I had to set the Arabian Nights down for a second during the Prince of the Black Isles story because it sounded like something a Neo-Nazi could write. Descriptions of slavery from pre-Columbian times certainly carry plenty of racism with them.

There is an interest here, I believe (@Banno), for analytical philosophy. I hope I make a fair assessment. This is a vision of a moral world; it takes into consideration concepts of justice and fairness and freedom and rights, etc. Though it is critical of "liberalism" there is a desire for it to meet the goal of a "a rights-based approach to addressing inequality", though it is seen as failing "in ascribing special value to the property of whiteness."

The basis of a right is my claim to it. The antithesis of this is an imposition, particularly without considering me--not an agreed contract, not a punishment for one's own acts--as, say, the act of "erroneous and harmful beliefs about people of color." As summed up, "we should generally see each person for who they are, not what category they fall into."

Here I take justice to be, that: if everyone has access to their rights, we can see "who they are", which I take to mean here: what they merit, their worth. Thus, working towards a more just society, we should focus on equal rights and opportunity, and responsibility for ourselves and our actions and speech. Thus our speech should be free to be judged on its own merit.

In order for us to have justice, we should have knowledge of the Other, ("who they are"), and judge them as individuals, as a human like me, living in and subject to the same goal of a just and moral world. But Cavell points out in the Claim of Reason that the real horror in slavery was not viewing the slave as inhuman, but "seeing" them as a human, treating them as human, while they were enslaved.

So what is it that blinds us to the Other? Wittgenstein investigated our desire for knowledge that the pain of the Other is the same as our pain, instead of our facing that an expression of pain is a moral claim on us. Emerson would say character is higher than intellect--that we define our self in that moral moment. Nietzsche saw our desire for predetermined moral knowledge as a power move that striped context away allowing morality to be manufactured rather than contingent and historical.

Now this will seem ironic, as here the worry is exactly that a quality is being imposed on us. But it is as if the individual were internalizing society. As perhaps, if I make myself the target of judgment, then the justice of our society is saved by my sacrifice, before it is "torn down". I can be responsible and defend myself, not having to acknowledge the fear of the unknown, the future, the overwhelming, the Other---the state of nature that makes us cling to the social contract which both saves us, and compromises us. In order that the world not break my heart, I cut off the thing-in-itself first, and project my good into the Other. Thus we see ourselves before society, as intending meaning, as individually special. Or maybe there is another cause of our refusal to see that our culture, our language, our institutions, pre-date our coming into the world, and that they are external of our intention and theory and morality. Marx's means of production are the means of the production of our self. Our speech is bound in language--expression only being human (not hearsay) with our ability to stand for it (not anonymously).

We should not "ascribe special value to the property of whiteness". This is a statement of principal, standing alone, much as the isolated traditional philosophical terms that Wittgenstein wanted to bring back to their ordinary context and mechanics. The context of justice is the state of our world, its history, its institutions, the mechanics of judgement, interest, and what is valued. The structure that we are too scared to face was there before us--the mechanics of that structure were imperceptibly (and overtly) affected over time so that now they value whiteness, inherently, internally, as it were, systematically. Getting by is just easier for white people; they are gifted more merit; entitled to their rights; entirely seen. Not this person, or, by that person--but, by the structure of our society. Is it really just a blindness to anything that does not have an impact on us? A fear of the unknown? A lack of imagination of the Other's pain? We can not know them as we know ourselves; their body makes them opaque. But in trying to solve the skeptical problem of the Other with knowledge and morality, we black out our eyes and turn our back on the world.

This is a fun thread. So far the only person who has actually cited a single line of anything remotely resembling CRT has been @ssu - from an essay written 30 years ago, before he or anyone who can't stop talking about CRT even knew the term - even though he could not even paraphrase what was said in a grammatically coherent manner. Robin DiAngelo has been mentioned too, but she's a corporate grifter exploiting the self-serving guilt of white liberals who milk catharsis from having their 'guilty feelings' recognized and acknowledged so they can feel like they have a part to play in combating racism - so that she can sell diversity workshops to companies that will still pay poverty wages to workers in the global south.

Literally everything else, of course, has been made up on the spot. Nice to see the imagination at work.

I have wanted to provide counter examples in favor of Critical Race Theory, but unfortunately also know nothing about it.

There's no need. No one here is actually talking about CRT - they're using the name of CRT to talk about a loose association of 'discussions around race' absorbed from the general atmosphere - mostly from social media - and then imputed to an entity called 'CRT' so as to have some kind of foil for discussion. David Theo Goldberg, in the article I cited, put it best:

"It is true that anti-racism today has been turned into something of an industry. But “diversity training,” “racial equity,” “systemic” and “institutional” racism, and indeed “anti-racism” itself are not the inventions of CRT; all but diversity training predate it. Like “diversity” over the past decade and “multiculturalism” before that, critical race theory is being made the bag now carrying the load long critical of racism. The foolishness sometimes said and done in its name—including some genuinely wince-worthy—is being used as a sledgehammer to bash any effort to discuss and remedy racial injustice. Attempts to turn these into a manual, largely by those looking to advance personal, professional, or pecuniary standing, are doomed to ridicule, which in turn unleashes the conservative caricatures."

Most of the discussion seems to have turned to a rather abstract philosophical exposition on slavery. I was told that people who study Philosophy are like this, but I never quite believed for that to be the case until now.

This is what happens when people have nothing to say on the topic at hand, because entirely unfamiliar - it spirals into adjacent effloresces. I wouldn't pin this on philosophy, considering most of this is amateur discussion.

The assumption that I think that most people make about people who study Philosophy is that they are prone to off-topic theoretical abstraction and lacking in self-awareness. As there's a certain Western patriarchy inherent to the field, I'd say that it just comes with the territory.

And of course, nobody actually has defended CRT by correcting the views presented (or then I've missed that, which can happen). Only few smirk about that "people have it wrong" and leave it there. (Which is typical.)

David Theo Goldberg, in the article I cited, put it best:

"It is true that anti-racism today has been turned into something of an industry. But “diversity training,” “racial equity,” “systemic” and “institutional” racism, and indeed “anti-racism” itself are not the inventions of CRT — StreetlightX

This likely is so, but it's that "industry" and it's effects that people are talking about. A theorist can simply deny his or her influence in anything (that is negative), yet it's the influence that typically is important. When ideas and theories are implemented to the real world, the outcomes can be far from what the thinker had in mind. In a similar fashion one could for example deny that the neoclassical "Chicago School of economics" has nothing to do with the current economic system and it's failures (or successes). Surely the economy and the financial system existed well before the economics department got it's first successful and notable neoclassical economist.

Robin DiAngelo has been mentioned too, but she's a corporate grifter exploiting the self-serving guilt of white liberals who milk catharsis from having their 'guilty feelings' recognized and acknowledged so they can feel like they have a part to play in combating racism — StreetlightX

Yet that is the phenomenon. And it's the corporate grifters that do take the important role. Or perhaps it's the powerful PR-people (and timid CEO's) in the corporate structure trying to keep the corporate brand totally spotless by hiring Robin DiAngelo and "going woke".

nobody actually has defended CRT by correcting the views presented — ssu

No one is under any obligation to 'correct' views which are pulled out of nowhere. Otherwise, perhaps you can tell me when you stopped beating your wife?

A theorist can simply deny his or her influence in anything (that is negative), yet it's the influence that typically is important. — ssu

An idiot can simply make up a line of influence for anything (that is positive), yet they're still an idiot whom no one has to 'defend' anything from other than to point out they they made shit up.

Lol. Well your idea of a philosophical debate is peculiar.

An idiot can simply make up a line of influence for anything (that is positive), yet they're still an idiot whom no one has to 'defend' anything from other than to point out they they made shit up. — StreetlightX

And even easier is just to call others idiots and leave it that...

So when did you stop beating your wife?

[citation not needed, and if you ask for one, you're peculiar]

Strawman or ad hominem, never to debate the actual issue.

Woke way to go.

Says the dude who is defending people's inability to cite 'the actual issues' - or when they do, misread them so egregiously that even basic subject-object grammar goes out the window.

Moron's way to go.

So far the only person who has actually cited a single line of anything remotely resembling CRT has been ssu — StreetlightX

Rest my case.

You missed the bit where you read it so badly that you failed elementary grammar while doing so. Even the OP, who presumably read only the limited excepts you yourself quoted, had to correct you.

You would rest on that case. Or is it that you would case on that rest? More in line with your comprehension ability.

And I gave as an example an article from 30 years ago! And failed in grammar!

And oh, the best refutation, which it should be mentioned didn't come from you: the country that I'm from doesn't have a large black minority.

Great refutations of criticism towards CRT in a discussion about "Critical Race Theory, Whiteness, and Liberalism".

Thanks.

With 'arguments' so vacuous that's really all it takes.

On a side note, I do think people overstate how cosmopolitan and open people were throughout history. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You may be right. But when claims are made that slavery as it existed in the U.S. (or in European colonies) was not different from slavery as it existed in the Greco-Roman world, I think they're wrong because race was the basis of the former, but not of the latter.

I think the problem here is that most of these countries have to deal with arbitrary border drawn without regard for ethnic groups, as well as with a lack of institutions to deal with the resulting conflicts. This doesn't seem to be good evidence that the quota system here is significant as a cause of the problem.

Certainly there is support for splitting up nations by ethnic group:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09636410490945893&ved=2ahUKEwirp6Kru8TwAhXuJzQIHba7D8YQFjABegQIGhAC&usg=AOvVaw0gCJwUcrZdq4c3SxZ3YM_g

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09636410490945893&ved=2ahUKEwirp6Kru8TwAhXuJzQIHba7D8YQFjABegQIGhAC&usg=AOvVaw0gCJwUcrZdq4c3SxZ3YM_g

However, the same body of research shows that explicit ethnic power sharing agreements preform very poorly at reducing the risk of further disintegration.

Anyhow, I think it's overly pessimistic to think that multi-ethnic states are doomed to faliure by their borders. Ethnic identity is something that gains utility as other institutions and forms of identity fail. That is, ethic identity tends to be important because the state is failing moreso than the states fail due to ethnic identities.

People generally blame instability in the Middle East on its post WWI borders, but you'd be hard pressed to find any place on Earth other than China where the populations have spent more time living under consolidated empires than the Middle East, which was unified far more often than not throughout its history. Tribal antipathy wasn't an intractable problem when the Ottoman, Persian, Roman, etc. states were ascendant in the region, it became one when strong states disappeared.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. What would make a cross-cultural political trend natural versus unnatural? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The only useable definition of the word "natural" is that it refers to everything that is not in some way consciously guided by humans. Sentiments concerning immigration are very clearly consciously guided by humans, given the vastly different stances historically taken, sometimes in close proximity.

In any event, it seems apparent that public sentiment and political conflict vis-a-vis political feasibility, are essential to public policy decisions. In general, how people do act is far more important to formulating policy than how they ought to act. If people acted how they ought, we shouldn't need armies, taxes to cover externalities such a pollution, or prisons. However, they act how people do act, necessitating things like standing armies and prisons. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is an important difference, however, between accounting for the fallibility of humans and fatalistically accepting it. Obviously one must expect that political actors will seek to exploit the basic human tendency towards xenophobia. Just like you must expect that a store will have to deal with thieves. But if you preemptively structure your policy on the assumption that such behaviour is inevitably succesful, you obviously hand over political power without a fight.

As evidence of the destabilizing effects of rapidly shifting demographics in West I'd submit the rise and major electoral success of Far-Right parties, and the large shift towards minority rule and ethno-nationalism in the American Republican party. You can see this in any week's headlines. This week France's military is warning of a civil war over migration for example

This destabilization has far reaching consequences not just for the citizens of Western nations, who are protected by stable institutions and high functioning states, but more so for people living in developing nations who stand to benefit from a stable international system, particularly vis-a-vis developed nations getting thier shit together on global warming. It's not that much of a winding causal path between the destablizing effects of rapid demographic shifts on politics, the rise of the Far-Right, and the lack of progress on containing carbon emissions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is a much too narrow single-issue view of the political shifts we've been seeing across Western Europe and the US. For one, it's not particularly convincing to argue that the reason nativism has gained ground in Western Europe is too much immigration, when the size of etnic minorities in Western Europe is still tiny compared to that of the US. In this scenario we'd expect that the appeal of nativist parties is roughly proportional to the size of ethnic minorities, but that does not seem to be the case. Instead, the changes in voting patterns in both the US and Western Europe are markedly consistent, and are parts of long trends going back to the 1980s - well before ethnic minorities were a significant issue in most european countries.

Picketty has therefore advanced the thesis that the rise of the nativist right can be explained much more consistently as a reaction to the transition of the traditionally social-democrat left wing parties from parties of the disadvantaged classes to parties of the intellectual elite.

Direct migration to developing countries can only benefit a vanishingly small minority of people in developing countries. Even if the US and Europe trippled immigration rates, you still wouldn't get close to 5% of the developing world moving to developed nations. This is why, to my mind, the left should take the destablizing effects of immigration more seriously, or at the very least get rid of the fantasy that pops up fairly often (from John Oliver for example) that declining birth rates in developed nations will allow meaningful percentage of people in developed nations to act as "replacements," for the declining population. The numbers don't add up, you're talking slow decline in developed nations versus multiple billions in population growth in the developing world, primarily Sub-Saharan Africa, over the next 80 years. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree with this insofar as it's important to see immigration as the symptom a problem - that of massive global inequalities, which cannot be solved simply by being more accepting of immigration. The fact that the left is unwilling to adress this dimension of the problem can be explained as a symptom of the shift of it's electorate from the disadvantaged classes towards the highly educated (who are more likely to derive benefits from globalisation and it's inegalitarian effects).

People in general underestimate the scale of the shift. The major European nations, France, the UK, and Germany, will all be minority European by around 2080. This represents a more rapid demographic shift than the Americas saw after 1492. Governments need a plan for handling that shift, and CRT, with its extreme moralizing trend, is supremely unhelpful at framing the discussion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have found no source that supports a claim that "Europeans" will be a minority in Europe by 2080. That seems like an extreme and highly questionable prediction.

My problem with CRT is that it generally refuses to conceive of immigration in any terms except racism. That is, any policy in favor of restricting immigration must have at its core, racist intent. This simply isn't the case. Given that immigration appears likely to be, with enviornmental issues related to pollution, the defining political issue of the next century, it's a pretty big liability to be caught up in reductive moralizing on the issue. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Obviously a theory concerned with race will analyze the issue of immigration in terms of race. CRT is not a theory of everything or purports to be one.

1. Historically, essentializing race as respects political representation doesn't tend to end well historically, as it results in the increased politicization of demographics. This doesn't mean race based interventions are necissarily wrong. There is a powerful case to be made for affirmative action alongside other forms of redistribution. However, I'd default towards overall redistribution in most cases. Money, access to healthcare and housing: these are relatively fungible. Access to elite schools, government posts, or mentorships are comparatively quite scarce, so in those cases race based programs make sense, since extending the benefit to everyone isn't feasible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I mostly agree with your solutions here, but I do want to point out that CRT is really a reaction to the consistent importance of race in political conflicts in the US. That clearly predates CRT.

2. CRT fails to motivate voters. It makes voters less likely to support redistribution, even those it is intended to help most. This seems like a pretty glaring flaw for a framework that aspires to become the main paradigm for left leaning political parties world wide. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As a political strategy, this is a fair point. Though I don't see many politicians openly espousing CRT.

On a related note, one of the few academic studies I've seen on anti-racism training at a university had the effect of making students less likely to be friends with members of another race. That does seem like an issue, when your treatment makes you patients worse. And as much of an issue is the fact that CRT can dismiss such positivist critiques of the results of its interventions by claiming that the social sciences themselves are tools of oppression and not to be trusted, which leads to...

3. CRT's focus on moralizing and zeal, and rejection of the validity of various branches of science would appear to make it difficult for adherents to reform their efforts. If you start with the assumption that you are right, and dismiss established methods for testing your assumptions, you end up with a political doctrine that lacks internal course correction mechanisms. Essentially, you swap doctrine for dogma. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's kind of difficult to tell how valid this is as a cirticism of CRT, given that it refers more to the public perception of CRT advocates than to anything CRT explicitly says. We'd have to discuss any specific version of the theory to tell whether it "starts with the assumption that it's right" and dismisses any kind of criticism.

Anyhow, I think it's overly pessimistic to think that multi-ethnic states are doomed to faliure by their borders. Ethnic identity is something that gains utility as other institutions and forms of identity fail. That is, ethic identity tends to be important because the state is failing moreso than the states fail due to ethnic identities. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That is probably true, but it's difficult to build effective institutions and national identities if parts of the population feel excluded. The European experience does show that cooperation can fairly rapidly defuse ethnic tensions. Though, in line with the argument of the article you linked, this happened after military victory. In any event, noone seems to have the methods at hand to repeat the success of European integration.

People generally blame instability in the Middle East on its post WWI borders, but you'd be hard pressed to find any place on Earth other than China where the populations have spent more time living under consolidated empires than the Middle East, which was unified far more often than not throughout its history. Tribal antipathy wasn't an intractable problem when the Ottoman, Persian, Roman, etc. states were ascendant in the region, it became one when strong states disappeared. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Strong states disappeared partially because of excessive european - in this case British and French, meddling though. The conflict over the middle east extends well beyond merely the Sikes-Picot agreement. Britain and France fought a veritable cold war in the middle east until the 1950s.