Wow are you barking up the wrong tree in describing me. This is some strange strawman version of what some left wing people believe, not a description of my philosophy.

Did you read this on Brietbart, or in The National Review, or what?

I was not attempting to describe you, and I apologize if that's what I communicated. My response was intended to be to your opening comment:

  I've never seen anybody suggest that you can't be bigoted against a dominant group.

I am pointing out that that /is/ a current and growing worldview among many, even if you have not yet seen it yourself. Your views are your own, and I have relatively little insight into it from your post.

I would point out that it is the logical extension of what you stated in the first post in this subthread, carried to its extremes. If you don't believe those extremes should hold, I would ask you to consider: what is the limiting factor for you? Where is the line drawn? How far is too far?

I appreciate the clarification.

I don't however agree with you that that's the logical extension of what I stated. Can you explain? I don't feel it particularly relevant to take an idea and carry it to an extreme to judge it's usefulness either.

Perhaps you might instead address what I said initially on it's own terms.

The argument you'd heard basically boils down to turning all power dynamics into moral categories: those who have power reinforce their own power by building systems that make sure there's no repercussions for their own actions if they harm someone under their power. The extension comes when people make it universal instead of specific: defining all human relationships in terms of power and its abuse. Those in power are inherently immoral, and thus under power are inherently moral.

There is certainly truth to this: normally, we would call such a relationship 'corruption of power', and as the adage goes, power and corruption tend to go hand-in-hand. The argument then goes that if you are not in power, the only way to return the relationship to a morally right state is to break the rules the corrupt powerful have put in place to purportedly retain their own power. If you grant the premise of the powerful making /all laws/ and /all institutions/ solely to preserve themselves and oppress others, the conclusion must follow.

The issue in my opinion is one of 'divined intent' - there is an implicit premise, that there is either direct intent built-in to those oppressive structures, or that there is indirect intent that carries the same amount of guilt for the powerful group. But that paints with far too broad a brush, and is really unfalsifiable, since we cannot fully know the mind of those creating and participating in those structures. Yet all too often, the argument boils down to an assignment of malign intent that vindicates any and all action in response. This is usually done with a motte-and-bailey: make the sweeping case that all powerful people think something, then tip-toe around individual examples when confronted, unless it's a cherry-picked target.

There is also the issue of the universal: this holds true of many systems, but not all systems, and not all people within those systems. The argument works by making the claim apply to /any/ relationship involving power.

Lastly, there is the issue of vocabulary. It's a cute trick to redefine words to apply only to a subset of what the words originally refer to, but the goal is confusion of language. You create new words to describe subsets of phenomena, but that's not what's been done in that argument: it hijacks the original meaning to generate confusion, often with the goal of saying, for example, 'if you are against racism [original definition], you will overturn all existing systems [modified definition].' There's equivocation going on in there.

0. There's no singular leftist philosophy in a world where anarchists and socialists and moderates and centrists are all ostensibly on the same side, but there are points of agreement (nazis are bad, every human being deserves equal dignity, people should have agency over their own bodies except where that agency meaningfully harms others, etc). When I refer to leftist thought I'm trying to refer to my understanding of that overlap. Also I'll number by paragraph I'm responding to.

1. To your first paragraph I'd say that's not the usual argument that I've heard from people on the left. I mean there are kooky people out there, but I think most people would say having privilege doesn't make you inherently immoral, nor is lacking power inherently moral. Morality is based on choices, with the understanding that choosing not to act is still seen as a choice.

Having systemic power gives you a greater capacity to affect change. I do think some people will see refusing to act appropriately to change things for the better when it's easier because you have power as more immoral than if you refuse to act when you lack systemic power, so in that sense you are right, but that's only true if you don't act.

Further I just don't think guilt is really the focus for most people on the left, except to understand how we got to the current status quo; What's more important is people taking responsibility and acting, and attempting to share power so that others can also act.

2. There are certainly people who intentionally work to maintain and expand their power; wealthy people who push for lower tax rates on the wealthy come to mind. Still, a large part of feminist and anti-racist theory seems to be about creating knowledge of privilege in people who take it for granted, and then pointing out the responsibility that suggests. There are conspiracy minded folks to be sure, but I don't know that that jibes with the idea of invisible privilege. I suppose you could argue it doesn't and suggest leftist philosophy isn't perfectly coherent or in agreement though. I'll have to think about this.

3. There's a whole thing in leftist philosophy about how intent is not the same thing as impact. It doesn't matter if systems that perpetuate injustice were built for the best of intentions or the worst or are just weird historical artifacts like the electoral college, what matters is the harm done, and how it falls disproportionately on members of marginalized groups. Thus the whole emphasis on anti-racism instead of not being racist, since merely not acting to further racism doesn't mitigate the harm that exists currently, and is thus also immoral. If that's confusing, look up Good Germans.

4. I'm not sure I understood why you were saying this, but to the extent that I understood I think I agree with you that not every relationship with power is affected. I see a meaningful difference in situations where a person has significant institutional or structural power vs situations where the power comes with the approval of those over whom power is wielded directly.

5.A cute trick? So does that mean you are suggesting that racism was not historically a term mainly used to describe the Nazis and other white supremacists, and sexism a term mainly used to describe the gender inequality that women faced?

I would argue that your original definition is in fact a conservative redefinition, one that treats an unequal status quo as an entitlement of those with power by pretending they are the true victims because people are attempting to redress social injustices.

I guess in the post modern sense any viewpoint can be correct because everything is subjective and based on one's viewpoint, but I'm not a post modernist and to me that seems like BS. I think terms are regularly redefined by people on the right in order to muddy the water and generate fear.

I guess I can say, at least we agree the water is muddy?

This has been fun, not sure I'll respond more or not in this thread but you've given me some food for thought.

Certainly agreed the water is muddy, and that only the kooky fringe hold to all these, but that fringe is growing. The widely-hailed current sources for this kind of thinking are Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo; the latter, specifically, is being hired by companies nationwide to run seminars for employees to train them with this kind of worldview.

It's also pushed strongly in academia, and is quite common to hear about among young progressives as compared to older ones. For concrete examples, look into the Mike Nayna documentary on the Evergreen State College's 'Equity Council'; it's an extreme example, but you can hear the same process happening to lesser degrees elsewhere.

I've read Ibram X. Kendi's How to be an Anti-Racist and Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility and while I didn't agree with everything they said, a lot of it was thoughtful, made me think, and ultimately made sense. I do have a lot of privileges that others don't, and I feel obliged to make things better if I can, using the imperfect guides that exist.

I expect in 20 years some of what Kendi and DiAngelo will have held up, and some of it won't have. That's how doing anything new usually works.

I don't expect corporations to solve racism and sexism, or politicians or even people who run seminars.

I've actually given up any hope that my lifetime will see meaningful end of racism or sexism or even childhood hunger in America. Maybe some low hanging fruit or common cases will be better addressed.

When there is a real attempt to do something that actually makes a difference in the world, I expect it to be a bit clumsy, because they are so often trying to solve for the common case or the most costly case, not for every case. That's not illogical, I do the same thing when I code.

Sometimes they will certainly screw up or go to far; nobody said changing the status quo was easy.

Perhaps that's why conservatism has as much support as it does even when it's based on unscientific BS, or even outright lies.It's very easy to treat the status quo as the best of all possible worlds and try to defend it from the imagined horrors of change.

To me that seems such an empty hopeless way to live, and I hope more people in the world strive for something better, even if it's difficult and imperfect.

I assume the Evergreen State College doc is about Bret Weinstein, which I'm familiar with, but I'll watch the documentary. Have you heard or read about Harvard and Lorgia García Peña? https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/why-lorgi...