:100:

When I hear conservative white guys railing against 'Woke-ism' and CRT by promoting how 'color blind virtuous' they are it always sounds insincere to me. — GRWelsh

And they pine for the 1950's.

The appeal of race consciousness and racial identity politics to supporters of it is that they get to retain the use of race as a heuristic in their thought, and all the perversions that necessarily arise from it. An example is on display in the criticisms above, where the race of the speakers and not their arguments are all that needs be considered, even if proponents of color-blindness are of all supposed races. The racial heuristic—used as it was in the old racism as it is today, and in the exact same fashion—serves to stop and hinder thought precisely when it is needed most. — NOS4A2

There are eight black CEO's in the Fortune 500. That's about 1.5%. Yet blacks make up 12% of the population. Their representation is off by almost an order of magnitude. Given how blacks have been treated in this country throughout it's history, don't you think racism has something to do with how few blacks there are running Fortune 500 companies?

Aside from the stupidity of using race as a taxonomy with which to order human beings into this or that category, the negative effects of racism alone should be enough to lead reasonable people to abandon it. So I find it odd and troubling that people would keep pushing to maintain it.

Aside from the stupidity of using race as a taxonomy with which to order human beings into this or that category — NOS4A2

Maybe if the racial differences were hard to notice. The racial differences between blacks and whites are very noticeable. This makes it a lot easier for whites to "other" blacks, almost to the point where blacks are considered a different species (one that is closer to apes and chimps, of course).

Critical race theory is simply an academic discipline that applies critical thought to the phenomenon of race in society. — Baden

It is important to understand how critical thought (like crt) differs from traditional critical thinking.

Critical Theory (or critical thought) is a very specialized theoretical framework that scrutinizes and criticizes the social structures and power dynamics underlying all human activity, all with the intention of fomenting radical social transformation.

In contrast, Critical Thinking is a broad cognitive skill that we use to objectively and rationally evaluate things with the intention of arriving at right judgment.

Critical thinking can be traced back to the time of Thales, while "critical thought" has been around for about a century.

CRT is merely an outgrowth of critical theory. Max Horkheimer invented critical theory, and Derrick Bell was the first to filter the issue of race through that framework. His work had a major impact in the field of critical legal studies, from which crt originates.

I think the engineered outrage is the connection to "wokeness" as that's easier to attack. — Baden

All critical theorists understand that the ultimate goal is to see theory put into practice, because that is the only way to ensure radical social transformation. Woke is merely a pejorative term for the activist wing of critical theory.

The pseudo-scientific justifications for using race have long been discredited. One does not have certain phenotypes because he belongs to some subgroup of human beings, but because his parents formed a distinctly new and unique pool of genes from which he would grow. So using the color of one’s skin or the color of someone’s eyes as a marker of something other than this is foolish.

Activist scholarship is dog shit, in my opinion. Woke corporate racism, that Diversity, Equity, Inclusion mantra, flows straight from that rotten core. The Skokal and grievance studies affairs basically prove that they peddle in nonsense. — NOS4A2

Don't insult dogshit! I would take dogshit over activist scholarship every time.

Well I don't know why it doesn't work for you, since you neatly summed up my point.

Call me a skeptic, but it seems like 'color-blindness' was only claimed as a virtue by white guys when they wanted to push back on affirmative action, reparations, Critical Race Theory, etc. They weren't promoting 'color-blindness' as a virtue when blackface was the height of comedy. — GRWelsh

You're a sceptic.

I'm a sceptic too. I don't think even colourblind people are racially colourblind. Race shows up even in black and white photography. Claim it doesn't have any meaning all you like, but don't pretend you cannot see it, unless you are actually blind.

I'm a sceptic too. I don't think even colourblind people are racially colourblind. Race shows up even in black and white photography. Claim it doesn't have any meaning all you like, but don't pretend you cannot see it, unless you are actually blind.

Here’s why such statements are an admission of guilt rather than a statement of facts. Race is a so-called “social construct”. Race cannot show up in pictures unless one approaches the picture with this construct in mind, and uses it to differentiate between two or more individual people according to it. That this construct is based on pseudoscience makes the admission all the more silly.

Yes, there's no biological basis to distinguish races. Yet people still do it on the basis of skin colour and cultural expression. Recognising the second is not pseudoscience.

No problem ever went away by ignoring it doesn't exist or changing how we speak about it. And that's really the only thing you bang on about, which doesn't solve the material conditions of people subject to prejudice in any shape, way or form. In other words: you're being useless.

Race is a so-called “social construct”. Race cannot show up in pictures unless one approaches the picture with this construct in mind, and uses it to differentiate between two or more individual people according to it. — NOS4A2

Correct. and that is what everyone in the world does, and then they use it to explain to themselves why blue men cannot sing the whites and the orientals are inscrutable and orange people are pathological liars. Money and private property are social constructs, and I bet you recognise them too, you dreadful propertist and financist.

That there is no genetic base to race does not entail that there can be no genocides.

The law is a social construct too. We're still able to determined what is legal and illegal. We're still able to be affected by the law. The law is still, practically speaking, real.

Race is a social construct, I agree. That doesn't change the fact that it is real. It is real because we believe in it. It is real because some people have expectations based to race, and those expectations are illusorily met through confirmation bias and the falsification of memories. But those expectations are also actualized (see the Pygmalion effect); this in-turn causes more people to share those expectations and the correlations between race and other properties are thusly continuously amplified. To ignore the realness of a social construct is not doing any help. But neither is adding onto the realness.

The best middle way is to acknowledge the actualities but also their root, thus realizing it doesn't need to be this way (because race is not intrinsically correlated with anything). Now, how may we walk this middle way? Is saying that one is/ought to be colorblind helpful to this end? I don't know, the above was merely my way of framing the issue.

One cannot determine who has or has not been subject to prejudice by perpetuating pseudoscience or noticing the color of someone’s epidermis, and one certainly cannot solve any of the material conditions by doing so. You’re being both useless and unjust, which is not a great combo.

I’ve never doubted that people have categorized human beings according to this false taxonomy.

One cannot determine who has or has not been subject to prejudice by perpetuating pseudoscience or noticing the color of someone’s epidermis, and one certainly cannot solve any of the material conditions by doing so. You’re being both useless and unjust, which is not a great combo. — NOS4A2

A statement weened from historical fact. The lives of blacks and minorities has improved in the past decades in western countries because they held people and institutions to account by talking about it. But I understand how a change in the status quo feels like an injustice to you because you're a racist little git but just don't realise it yet.

You look at someone’s skin color, and since someone who looks like him may have been subject to prejudice in the past, he is the subject of prejudice today. That’s the logic of racism, as stupid and unjust as it is.

That's not even a logical argument. I get why you get confused if you think that passes for it. Here's the actual argument:

If you're black then you're 95% likely to be discriminated against at some point in your life based on your skin colour.
That person is black.
Therefore, he will most likely be discriminated against.

My solution: we need to talk about not discriminating against black people.
Your solution: we need to stop talking about black people.

I’ve never doubted that people have categorized human beings according to this false taxonomy. — NOS4A2

Sure, but by using this false taxonomy, it becomes less and less false, and must thus be contended with to some degree. That's my point. Regardless of how false it is on its own, we humans actualize it. So, how do we deal with it?

You will predict based on skin colors who is likelier to be discriminated against based on their skin colors. At what point on the color spectrum does this figure no longer apply? Do you use the same color distinctions, as specious as they are, for statistics in crime, or just the ones that tend to paint arbitrary groupings of people as victims? I thought Europe no longer collects such statistics, for what I thought were obvious reasons. Do you use any other phenotypes, or just the one?

I propose we stop actualizing it. See these abstract, pseudoscientific concepts for what they are and abandon them in both thought and use.

I propose we stop actualizing it. See these abstract, pseudoscientific concepts for what they are and abandon them in both thought and use. — NOS4A2

So why haven't you?

I never use the concept at all. Give it a try sometime.

I never use the concept at all. Give it a try sometime. — NOS4A2

Yes you do. you're using it right now to argue with me. You know exactly what is being talked about and for a free speech absolutist you're more than a tad prescriptive about what people should talk about. Unfortunately for you one cannot forbid talk without breaking the prohibition.

I’m talking about the concept, sure. But I don’t use it in the manner you use it, or in the manner I’ve been criticizing this whole time.

I’ve explained why one out not to use racial categories. I’ve never prohibited nor been prescriptive yours or anyone else’s speech.

Some weird leaps occurring here.

Some weird leaps occurring here. — NOS4A2

Amen to that.

There are eight black CEO's in the Fortune 500. That's about 1.5%. Yet blacks make up 12% of the population. Their representation is off by almost an order of magnitude. — RogueAI

Just to point out:

There's 53 women CEO's running Fortune 500 companies. That's 10,6%. Women make up 50% of the population.

I propose we stop actualizing it. — NOS4A2

Yeah, that's what I am saying too. But the question is, how do we stop actualizing it? As many have pointed out, ignoring something does not make it go away. So, what is the middle way between not feeding into the delusion but also acknowledging the current actualization of the delusion? Exactly what do we need to do to walk that middle way?

It’s a simple matter of organizing our own thoughts. The only thing someone might have to ignore is the knee-jerk and lazy urge of social categorization:

Social categorization is the process by which people categorize themselves and others into differentiated groups. Categorization simplifies perception and cognition related to the social world by detecting inherent similarity relationships or by imposing structure on it (or both). The main adaptive function of social categorization is that it permits and constrains otherwise chaotic inductive inferences. People attribute group features to individuals (stereotyping) and they—less strongly—generalize individual features to the group. The strength of these two kinds of inductive inferences depends on a priori assumptions about the homogeneity of the group. To the extent that social categories rest on detected patterns of feature similarity, their coherence is a matter of family resemblance. Family resemblance categories comprise members of varying typicality, they have fuzzy boundaries (and thus tend to overlap), and the features they contain tend to be correlated with one another. Some social categories are ‘thin,’ however, as their coherence rests solely on arbitrary or socially constructed labels. Both types of categories (family resemblance and social construction) give rise to two common, and socially problematic, biases: (a) ingroup favoritism and (b) perceptions of outgroup homogeneity.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B0080430767017514?via%3Dihub

Avoid thinking in racial terms and “racializing” people.

Omni and Winant define racialization as the process of attaching racial meaning and value to individuals and groups [17]. Racialization is considered the beginning step in the process of racism [18, 19]. It has been argued that it is the socially-assigned race of an individual, the imposed classification of race by others, that results in racial discrimination more so than how one self-identifies [10, 20].

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7011480/#CR18

It follows that we stop imposing the classification of race on others. To avoid social categorization, treat others as individuals, each with their own lives, and learn from them rather than make assumptions based on the colors of their skins. All of that being said, it beggars belief that people cannot understand judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Maybe there is something more pathological in the racist’s being that does not allow what I thought would be a simple principle.