“Race” is Like Astrology

The concept of using "race"--physical appearance--as a proxy for character is as absurd as astrology. I'm well aware that people look different from each other, but the concept of "race" is scientifically baseless. The concept of "race" embraces the logic of astrology: shoving individual people (each of whom is complex) into a handful of simplistic superficial categories and then drawing conclusions that are evidence-free (or often, contrary to evidence) based upon these unwarranted simplistic cartoon-like categorizations. The concept of "race" should be constantly ridiculed the same way that intelligent people ridicule astrology. Any attempt to classify another human being by "race" or birthdate is a lazy ham-handed anti-scientific and pernicious claim that one knows what it is impossible to know--the complexity of that human being--without investing time and effort to get to known them. That is the point of Morgan Freeman:

This enormous flaw with the modern use of the concept of "race" is a conceptual hole so vast that one could easily drive a truck through it. Yet the concept of "race" is rarely attacked at the root.  The first racist act is categorizing people by dividing them into simplistic categories such as white or Black. Without this first move, racism would be impossible.  What is especially distressing is that this widespread exuberant willingness to mis-categorize people into simplistic categories is embraced by both White Supremacists and those who claim to be seeking social justice by embracing critical race theory. These two groups are now in complete agreement that we can somehow know people merely by looking at their physical appearance.

There is only one way to get to know a person, and that is to take the time to learn about them, one by one, by talking with them, getting to know what they've done with their lives, reading about them or watching them interact with others. Complicating things, people change over time, so getting to know who they are requires non-stop effort.  Getting to know someone else requires careful consideration of real world facts and this takes considerable and concerted effort. Taking the time to get to really know other people before casting judgment on who they are is incompatible with making snap judgments but, as we are increasingly being tuned by social media, we are increasingly people who insist on making snap judgments.

Every day, "race" arguments wildly launch off into a thousand directions like fireworks. The basic premise of most of these arguments is the incoherent concept of "race," a concept so completely and irrevocably broken that most of these discussions are a waste of time before the discussion even begins. Imagine the time we could save--time we could redirect to working on solving the immense social problems that are very real indeed (many of them correlated to the physical appearance of groups of people)--if only we cut off most discussions of "race" at the root by calling out the invalidity of the concept of "race."

I will be writing more on this emotionally-charged topic in coming months. At this point I should make two things clear.

A) As I hope I've made clear, "race" is a irretrievably flawed pernicious concept. I believe that the concept of "race" should be thrown in the dustbin of history and we should all enter a new post-racial era. Unfortunately, other people continue to believe in the reality of "race." This idiotic willingness to divide complex people into simple colors makes racism possible. For this reason, I fully acknowledge the existence and destructiveness of racism. Many people mistreat others based upon physical appearance. To do this is unfair. It hurts people, sometimes badly, sometimes leading to deaths. Racism oppresses entire groups of people and has done so systematically over long stretches of time, through the entire history of the United States and many other places. Wherever we encounter racism, we should attack it vigorously in two ways: socially (by calling it out publicly and condemning those who mistreat other people in this way) and through the use of the legal system (e.g., through civil rights laws).

B) The concept of "race" itself is bad science, and this problem needs to be pointed out whenever discussing racism. Every single time.  Even young children know that "race" makes no sense but we socialize them to think otherwise. To fail to point out the absurdity of the concept of "race" whenever discussing racism will lead to more of the same. We will never be able to solve the "race" problem as long as we assume that there is such a thing as "race." One way to do this is to consistently put the word "race" in scare quotes, which is now my habit.  Every time we discuss "race," we need to call out that the the casual, unthinking idea that there is such a thing as "race" is reckless and dangerous. We need to constantly call out that it is impossible and destructive to judge other people by the use of immutable physical appearance. It is, indeed, as insane as believing in astrology, phrenology or palm reading. The unthinking use of the word "race" is utterly unscientific and destructive, even when used by well-intentioned people. The concept of "race" is a mental virus that hurts people and most of those who are infected are unable to see that they are infected. To use "race" uncritically (or "critically," as is de rigeour among the Woke) is to succumb to the banality of evil--unthinking destructive acquiescence to bad ideas.

In sum, racism exists because millions of misguided people believe in the incoherent and unsubstantiated notion of "race."  It will take great effort to break this bad habit because many well-meaning people who are (oftentimes heroically) fighting racism refuse to jettison the concept of "race."  Until large vocal swaths of society simultaneously and consciously embrace both A and B (above), racism will tear us apart.  I'm not optimistic.

Continue Reading“Race” is Like Astrology

Life in a Woke Upscale Progressive Private School

How are things going in one upscale private progressive school in NY for the children of a Jewish woman and her Black husband?  This is an excerpt from "My Kids and Their Elite Education in Racism: How Rye Country Day School reflects the madness of our times," by Naomi Schaefer Riley:

I fear that the message currently emanating from teachers and administrators and politicians and pundits will harm [ ] relationships. The new anti-racism, with its endless cycles of victimization and demands for reparations—as opposed to the model of teaching people to aspire to colorblindness and providing everyone with equal opportunity—requires all of us (and children in particular) to see race all the time. This new model will turn what would otherwise be ordinary, healthy relationships—friendships, even—into dramas with racially defined roles for all the characters.

The good people of my community and others around the country are told that no matter how welcoming they are, how well they treat others, there is nothing they can do to make up for systemic racism. Will they begin to fret over every interaction, fearing that they could say or do the wrong thing? . . .

I worry that the message is already trickling down. Advice columns in recent years have featured parents asking whether it’s okay for them to adopt children of another race, or whether people can ever truly understand someone of another race enough to marry that person, or whether it wouldn’t be easier for same-sex couples to use the white partner’s egg so as not to have the insurmountable task of handling a black child. Could white supremacists of 50 years ago have dared to dream of such attitudes among people who call themselves liberals?

Continue ReadingLife in a Woke Upscale Progressive Private School

Implicit Bias Efficacy Meta-Analysis

Here's the link to the journal article.  The abstract:

Using a novel technique known as network meta-analysis, we synthesized evidence from 492 studies (87,418 participants) to investigate the effectiveness of procedures in changing implicit measures, which we define as response biases on implicit tasks. We also evaluated these procedures' effects on explicit and behavioral measures. We found that implicit measures can be changed, but effects are often relatively weak (|ds| < .30). Most studies focused on producing short-term changes with brief, single-session manipulations. Procedures that associate sets of concepts, invoke goals or motivations, or tax mental resources changed implicit measures the most, whereas procedures that induced threat, affirmation, or specific moods/emotions changed implicit measures the least. Bias tests suggested that implicit effects could be inflated relative to their true population values. Procedures changed explicit measures less consistently and to a smaller degree than implicit measures and generally produced trivial changes in behavior. Finally, changes in implicit measures did not mediate changes in explicit measures or behavior. Our findings suggest that changes in implicit measures are possible, but those changes do not necessarily translate into changes in explicit measures or behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Continue ReadingImplicit Bias Efficacy Meta-Analysis

Government-Enforced Racial Pseudo-Education and Compelled Speech at Sandia National Laboratories

Compelled speech is increasingly being portrayed as "education." A recent illustration has come to light. Last year, Sandia National Laboratories sent its executives to reeducation camp: The training materials and the context for the training were reported by Christopher Rufo, a filmmaker, writer, and policy researcher. On his website, Rufo states (and I agree):

It’s time to expose this taxpayer-funded pseudoscience and rally the White House and legislators to stop these deeply divisive training sessions. My goal is simple: we must pass legislation to “abolish critical race theory” in the federal government. Let’s push as far as we can.
Under economic threat (the potential threat to employment that would be felt by any employee asked to attend), this camp required the employees to listen to, and in many cases publicly acknowledge, racist and sexist absurdities, including the following:

Continue ReadingGovernment-Enforced Racial Pseudo-Education and Compelled Speech at Sandia National Laboratories

Jonathan Haidt Discusses Two Versions of Identity Politics: “Common Enemy Politics” and “Common Humanity”

I've followed Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt closely for many years (as you can see by searching for his name at DI). He is the author of several excellent books, including The Happiness Hypothesis, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion and The Coddling of the American Mind. Haidt's thought process crosscuts the prevailing two wings of political thought in the United States. In this extended interview with Joe Rogan, Haidt dissects many topics, including identity politics. He urges that this phrase encompasses two separate approaches, "Common Enemy Politics" and "Common Humanity."

Haidt also distinguishes between two prevalent types of conversations, two types of "games" being played that often make conversations frustrating. Many of us insist upon playing the "truth seeking game," while others play a game that assumes a Manichean battle where A) no one gains except at the expense of someone else, B) where people are not seen as individuals but a members of groups, and C) you can tell who someone is merely by their appearance. Much of the fruitless dialogue on social media and elsewhere makes a lot more sense once we realize that these two approaches have virtually nothing in common--they serve entirely different purposes. Just because we exchange words does not mean we are, in any meaningful way, communicating.

I'm strongly in agreement with Haidt's analysis.

Haid's distinction parallels David Sloan Wilson's distinction between science-oriented "factual realism" and group-survival-oriented "practical realism."

In addition to embedding the video of the interview, I invested some time to create a transcript of several sections of this interview, from about Min. 33 - 55. I have cleaned up the wording to omit throat-clearings and false starts, but I have worked hard to be true to the substance of the conversation.

--

Haidt – Rogan Interview

33:18 JH: You have to look at different games being played. Yale was a place that taught me to think in lots of different ways and it was constantly blowing my mind when I took my first economics course. It was like wow, here's a new pair of spectacles that I can put on and suddenly I see all these prices and supply. I never learned to think that way, where I learned about Freud in psychology or sociology. A good education is one that lets you look at our complicated world through multiple perspectives. That makes you smart. That's what a liberal arts education should do. But what I see increasingly happening, especially at elite schools, is the dominance of a single story, and that single story is life is a battle between good people and evil people, or rather good groups and evil groups, and it's a zero-sum game. So if the bad groups have more, it's because they took it from the good groups, so the point of everything is to fight the bad groups. Bring them down create equality and this is a terrible way to think in a free society. That might have worked you know in biblical days when you got the Moabites killing the Jebusites or whatever, but you know we live in an era in which we've discovered that that the pie can be grown a million-fold. So to teach students to see society as a zero-sum competition between groups is primitive and destructive.

34:22 JR: In your book, you actually identify the moment where these micro aggressions made their appearance and they were initially a racist thing.

JH: Yeah. The idea of a micro aggression really becomes popular in a 2007 article by Derald Wing Sue at Teachers College. He talks about this concept of microaggressions. There are two things that are good about the concept, that are useful. One is that explicit racism has clearly gone down--by any measure explicit racism is plummeted in American across the West—but there could still be subtle or veiled a racism.

37:27 JR It's ultimately for everyone's sake, I mean, even for the sake of the people that are embroiled in all this controversy and chaos. It would be fantastic across the board if there was no more sexism, there was no more racism, there was no more any of these things. It would be wonderful. Then we could just start treating humans as just humans. Like this is just who you are you're just a person. No one cares. What a wonderful world we would live in if this was no longer an issue at all.

JH: Beautifully put.

JR: How does that get through?

38:01 JH: We were getting there, okay? That's what the twentieth century was. We were shaped by the late 20th century. The late 20th century was a time in America in which, you know, earlier on there was all kinds of prejudice. I mean, when I was born, just right before you were born, it was legal to say you can't eat here because you're Black and so that changed in 1964-65. But it used to be that we had legal differentiations by race and then those were knocked down. But we still had social [discrimination] and it used to be that if you were gay that was something humiliating. It had to be hidden. If you look at where we were in 1960 or ’63, when I was born and then you look at where we got by 2000, the progress is fantastic on every front, so that's all I mean when I say we were moving in that direction.

Continue ReadingJonathan Haidt Discusses Two Versions of Identity Politics: “Common Enemy Politics” and “Common Humanity”