
Thinking Critically About Social Justice - ThomPete
http://quillette.com/2018/02/17/thinking-critically-social-justice/
======
stcredzero
_There’s something missing from the social justice narrative though,
demonstrated by the situation in Silicon Valley and those other fields I
mentioned: it doesn’t take into account the power and oppression it exerts
itself. In a society where social justice advocates are outside the dominant
power structure—as was the case when these ideas were originally
articulated—this doesn’t matter much, since their power is negligible. That’s
increasingly no longer the case, as social justice advocates have come to
exert major influence over central areas of society, and consequently have
also gained substantial power over society as a whole. Clearly, an accurate
model of societal power must include social justice ideology and its
advocates._

I grew up in a part of the country that voted Trump in 2016. When I was a
child, we had to drive almost 50 miles to visit friends who were also "brown
people" of vaguely the same ethnic group.

In what I've seen of Social Justice advocates both online, and in my various
run-ins with them in person, I've noted the eerie similarity between them and
the bigoted people who used to racially bash me and my sister when we were
children. There's a sort of "seeking" going on. There's far too much "witch-
hunting" and threatening conformity in it. There's a hatred, and a glee in
being superior. There's a similar clinging to image and a similar rejection of
logic.

I was once an ally of Social Justice, and would be still, but I've seen the
underlying morality of it play out both online and in my face and in person.
Unless Social Justice starts loudly calling out the injustice done in its
name, then my "lived experience" of it speaks loudly that today's Social
Justice is malevolent.

Please Listen and Believe.

(Another data point: This thoughtful and well considered Quillette link was
flagged and had to be unflagged. Ask yourself who is behaving in a censorious
fashion and trying to suppress real discourse. That side is generally not the
"good guys" as much as they might try to convince themselves otherwise.)

~~~
qbaqbaqba
>When I was a child, we had to drive almost 50 miles to visit friends who were
also "brown people" of vaguely the same ethnic group.

Excuse my ignorance (I'm European and don't know the American perspective) but
what is the context of this sentence? You had no friends with different skin
colour or heritage?

~~~
stcredzero
_You had no friends with different skin colour or heritage?_

Actually, I had a number of childhood friends and playmates who would fall
into the politically incorrect category of "white trash" \-- even though my
father was a physician and would supposedly have high status. Not being white
automatically reduced our status by a significant amount. My parents were
refused membership to the local country club for quite a long time. I also had
middle class friends who were of Finnish, Polish, and Irish heritage.

~~~
Mithaldu
Another european here: Everytime i've heard any american talk about country
clubs they were utterly awful places full of awful and ignorant people role-
playing what they believe to be high status life in a very boring manner.

Why did your family care about not getting in there?

~~~
stcredzero
_Everytime i 've heard any american talk about country clubs they were utterly
awful places full of awful and ignorant people role-playing what they believe
to be high status life in a very boring manner._

Thanks for trading in stereotypes and rendering judgements on that basis. My
sister and I went there to use the pool in the summertime, and though he went
for decades being the doctor who works so much, he never played golf, my
father very much got into golf in his 60's. He even eventually became awarded
as the most improved and developed a circle of good friends there. At one
point, he did some social justice activism and shamed his friends for saying
bigoted things, and at that point he was respected enough that they listened
to him.

I think a bit of golf was well deserved by my father, as an immigrant who
worked hard to accomplish the American Dream, and as a man who was once a
child who lived through both the horrors of war and the horrors of foreign
occupation.

As for why it's important to gain access to the places of high status: This is
something which is regarded as important across many Asian cultures. Just who
are you, precisely, to judge my culture? Also, stopping the exclusion of
people from clubs on the basis of ethnicity was a result of Social Justice in
decades past. Look up accounts of Jewish people being excluded from
"restricted" clubs. This is also the present pursuit of social justice:
gaining entrance for qualified people who were otherwise excluded on the basis
of irrelevant immutable characteristics. So long as there is _equality of
opportunity_ on the basis of merit, this is a worthy goal.

~~~
Mithaldu
> Thanks for trading in stereotypes and rendering judgements on that basis.

I can understand why you'd feel that way, but uh, next time keep that stuff
for when the person you're responding to isn't asking, but only making claims.
I gave you the views i had been given (and it's not like i can go personally
to verify) so you'd have something to contrast on while answering my question,
instead of having nothing.

And, thanks for the details. They are educational.

~~~
stcredzero
Whether the 1st sentence of your 1st paragraph and your 2nd paragraph are
sincere could only be judged by your further thoughts and communications based
on the "details" you just received. That is for you to know for yourself.

------
bem94
This is an excellent expression of the kinds of conversations I want to be
able to have with conservatives and liberals without being called one by the
other.

We need more nuanced discussions like this. I hope to have, hear and see more
of them.

Good luck HN.

~~~
gizmo686
Leave us liberals out of this. /s

This is one of those areas where liberal and leftist diverge. As the author
identifies, this aspect of social justice thinking is decidedly anti-liberal.

I actually think this is one of the bigger issues we are seeing with the
current debate. Historically, we have had a liberal/leftist coalition in our
culture. Now that this is starting to break apart, us liberals are having to
come to terms with our leftist allies not actually being liberals; while the
leftists are coming to terms with us liberals not actually being leftists.

Because of how inconceivable this divide is to many people, there is a lot of
strawmaning of positions. So if a leftist sees a liberal argue for the liberal
position in this debate, they see it as arguing against the leftist position;
and since leftist==liberal, they must be arguing for the right/conservative
posisition.

Since this issue is so politized, I don't think many liberals see the left as
arguing for a right/conservative posistion; but many do see them as arguing
for an authoritarian posistion, which has historically been associated with
the right. As a result, I think that many liberals are simply confused about
what is going on since, without the liberal/left distinction, all they see is
"their" side going "crazy"; when, in reality, there simply is not (and never
was) the common ground that both sides thought there was.

(Obviously, any reference to "historically" refers to the recent history. One
does not need to go back that far to find major examples of widely accepted
leftist-authoritarians, but those are more in the history books, then in the
public perception).

~~~
ytoi
I disagree. As a European "leftist", which I guess counts as the "far left"
people like to blame things on, I think almost all these issues being
discussed are right wing issues. To the point were you have to explain to
people in Europe, that have been reading US articles, that the things they are
opposing doesn't exist here. Overall European leftist doesn't want company
policies, affirmative action or even large immigration. They want powerful
unions, fair admissions to university, daycare, protection of employment and
other concrete things that the US consider socialism. This entire "social
justice" situation is because liberals in the US doesn't want to give up their
privileges of private social insurance, good schools districts, rising housing
markets, lobbying etc. So the result is the predictably a shallow shouting
match, which people are uncomfortable with after the fact.

~~~
closeparen
There are many people who identify as liberal while basking in their rising
home value and exclusive school districts, but they typically do so quietly,
not under the banner of liberalism. The closest example of people doing this
openly and proudly under a left-wing banner is San Francisco's Progressivism,
which is more closely aligned with what we're calling leftism here than what
we're calling liberalism. Overall, the various shades of the left are still
pretty aligned on concrete policy at the national level. Liberals are pretty
reliably in favor of single payer, education funding, minimum wage, family
leave, etc.

Where you start to see the fissure is around how universities should handle
controversial material in the classroom and accusations of sexual misconduct
in their student populations. The Christakis incident at Yale [0] is one of
the best test cases. In particular,

>...if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them
you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate
offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.

is one of those flash-point statements that separates liberals from leftists.
This incident has been picked up as a rallying cry by the far-right so there's
a lot of FUD flying around, but just to prove I'm not the only Democrat who
would agree wholeheartedly, here's Obama [1]:

> I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you
> disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t
> silence them by saying, "You can’t come because I'm too sensitive to hear
> what you have to say." That’s not the way we learn either.

I would call Obama and has allies "liberals" here, and the protesters and
their allies "leftists." Happy to be convinced otherwise on terminology, but
it shows that there are at least two very distinct value systems going on
here, which may be aligned on policy only by accident.

[0][https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-
per...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-
writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/)

[1][https://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9326965/obama-political-
correc...](https://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9326965/obama-political-correctness)

~~~
ytoi
I just think it is inaccurate to call that leftism. There are certainly
leftist in the US and there are also similarities between socialism and social
liberalism, but the game being played in the US isn't a leftist one. It isn't
about state intervention, union power or even legislation. That private
individuals, institutions or companies should be able to do and say whatever
they want is even a right wing positions in the first place. Just that it
originally was about teaching about god, excluding gay people and firing union
organizers. So if anything, people that want precedence for their opinions are
right of liberal and not left. The left position is that important institution
shouldn't be private (or at least not privately funded) in the first place
and/or primarily be accountable to the state rather than individuals.

------
hprotagonist
_Including values in our power analysis makes it clear there can be no such
thing as simply removing power, because it takes power to remove power.
Consequently, power doesn’t disappear, it redirects. In order to remove what
they perceive as oppression—say by class, or race, or gender—social justice
advocates have to erect their own power structure. They reshape morality, the
culture, the language, and the legal system to make people do what they
otherwise wouldn’t. And the more they try to eliminate those other forms of
oppression, the more tightly they have to oppress people’s values. To increase
freedom on one dimension, one must remove it on another._

One of the central paradoxes of christian doctrine is the notion of "the power
of powerlessness", though the idea exists elsewhere (and the phrase is, i
think, Havel's).

It is not a coincidence, I think, that the people who put their bodies and
lives on the line for their commitment to social justice tend to know this and
try to live it. It demands an almost inhuman level of awareness and humility.
I am thinking of historical figures like Day and King and Ghandi here, as well
as people who span generations, like John Lewis.

Breaking the cycle of power-replaces-power is basically impossible to do,
totally, but it's a windmill worth tilting at and at a minimum, the existence
of the cycle needs to be kept in mind.

------
mattzito
This article lost a lot of credibility with me when in the early framing of
the issue, Harris writes:

> Following the release of the NLRB memo, a number of scientists on Twitter
> expressed alarm at the justifications provided within the memo, _which
> appeared to relegate the discussion of sex differences outside the realm of
> constitutionally protected speech._

(emphasis mine)

The NLRB letter says nothing of the kind. It says that the memo contained both
protected and unprotected speech, and that Damore was terminated for the
unprotected form. You have very few first amendment protections in the
workplace, and employees can be fired for saying almost anything. Sex
differences, in particular, have never been a protected class of speech in a
workplace, and to claim that this letter somehow changes the landscape of the
workplace is disingenuous at best.

~~~
gizmo686
From the memo:

>The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological
differences between women and men should not be treated differently than the
types of conduct the Board found unprotected in these cases. Statements about
immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and
men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and
constituted sexual harassment, notwithstandingeffort to cloakcomments with
“scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women”
disclaimers. [0]

[0] [https://www.scribd.com/document/371689055/NLRB-Damore-v-
Goog...](https://www.scribd.com/document/371689055/NLRB-Damore-v-Google-
Advice-Memorandum-1-16-2018)

------
tomlock
The author seems to rest on "critical theory" and come to a stop. I feel like
the author is using critical theory as a ten dollar word because claiming it
is central to social justice topics is a gross oversimplification.
Additionally, references to it peaked in the 70s and have been declining
since.

~~~
stcredzero
_references to it peaked in the 70s and have been declining since._

But has it peaked as an ideological foundation of the ideologies of recent
campus activists? It doesn't seem that way to me.

~~~
tomlock
I can only speak as an ex-postgrad philosophy major and Australian left-wing
political activist, but I haven't heard anyone mention critical theory in an
activist context for years.

~~~
barrkel
Do you think that, say, "cultural appropriation", as a term owes anything to
critical theory?

~~~
tomlock
I think broadly, many movements on the left and right owe some of their
language, some of their terminology - to critical theory. For example, media
scepticism and the idea of education-as-propaganda were further developed by
critical theorists.

So do I think cultural appropriation as a term owes anything to critical
theory? Yes.

Do I think a broad swathe of terms used across the political spectrum owe
anything to critical theory? Yes.

Do I think a critique of critical theory necessarily undermines any of these
other terms? No.

------
arkades
This was a very thoughtful and well-reasoned criticism of a political stance I
generally sympathize with. Kudos.

------
oneshot908
I am torn between seeing the SJWs as the emerging tea party of the left and
minding my own business because I'm an old GenX fart who needs to get out of
the way of whatever the millennials are cooking up to remake society in their
own image. I do not agree with the firing of James Damore because I believe
Google acted as an enabler here by allowing the existence of a forum entitled
"Politically Correct Considered Harmful."

James Damore's plausibly deniable implication that he had a Ph.D. OTOH alone
should have been grounds for his termination. But again, IMO the Boomers made
a mess, GenX built on the mess, and now it's up to the Millennials to decide
what they're going to do with the place.

~~~
psyc
I’m also old, and my main objection to the present “SJW” movement is their
strong preference for a fight fire with fire approach, in contrast with the
fight fire with water approach encouraged by Ghandi and King. For example,
they have reinterpreted the “respectability politics” concept to mean they can
be as rude and mean-spirited as they please. In the civil rights movement,
that term meant something quite different.

~~~
oneshot908
Agreed, they're well-intentioned, but the minute they're OK with a few
innocent victims in their pursuit of the guilty, I'm no longer on board.

~~~
psyc
It’s so absurd to me. Like, I agree with them on every actual issue, but I
want nothing to do with their activism because they appear to be raging,
absolutist jerks to everyone including other liberals.

~~~
tomlock
I think we see it through a lens of what gets upvoted and shared, and the
actual irl people involved in these movements and the activism aren't the
caricatures we see online.

~~~
stcredzero
What happened to James Damore and the surrounding events read just like other
over the top SJW shenanigans.

~~~
tomlock
Sure, but the over the top SJW shenanigans are shared and upvoted somewhere,
amirite?

Or is this all based on SJWs you know in real life?

~~~
stcredzero
_Or is this all based on SJWs you know in real life?_

This is based on what I've seen online and what has happened to me,
personally.

~~~
tomlock
What happened to you?

~~~
stcredzero
I know what it means to be _targeted_. That's what happened to me.

------
Miner49er
A true believer in absolute freedom and the free market (a libertarian)
wouldn't be against James Domore's firing. It was the free market at work. The
article says that libertarians and other conservatives are becoming oppressed,
but the means of their oppression is something they support. They are being
oppressed by the free market and by other people's free speech.

~~~
ThomPete
It's not about absolute freedom or free market it's about free speech thats a
very different thing.

Your logic is opening up for the ability for anyone to discriminate other
people alone for their opinions, that's a box I don't think benefit anyone.

~~~
Miner49er
But libertarians and true believers of free speech support the right of people
to discriminate with their speech. For example, from the article, "Anyone
doing so would be met by a unified front of academics, journalists, and
cultural figures expressing their moral outrage, wrapped up in sophisticated
words and scientific-sounding terminology like xenophobia." A true Libertarian
would support their right to do and say this. One can disagree with it, but
it's them using their freedom of speech.

~~~
ThomPete
I don't know what you mean with "discriminate with their speech" what does
that mean? The point of free speech is to get the ideas out in the open so we
can debate them.

~~~
Miner49er
The article says that SJWs are labeling holder's of certain beliefs as "bad
people". I'm saying that is them using their free speech.

~~~
ThomPete
They aren't just labeling them, they are bullying them. Calling them alt-right
to NOT have to debate them. Using Hecklers Veto tactics. That's not using free
speech that's refusing to engage different views.

~~~
Miner49er
I'm saying isn't bullying and the Heckler's veto forms of free speech/the free
market? As long as the government isn't involved in it?

~~~
stcredzero
It's a free market of propagandistic image-mongering and name-calling. It's
not a free market of _ideas_ worthy of the name.

 _As long as the government isn 't involved in it?_

No, free speech also requires people follow the spirit of the law, not just
the letter of it. What if the mafia went around a poor neighborhood and
intimidated everyone to vote for their candidate, or else, and they lied so
convincingly about being able to tell how everyone voted, basically everyone
followed their instructions? Would this be "free speech/the free market?"

~~~
Miner49er
Yeah that's a good point, although, that involves the threat of violence. What
the article says SJWs do is threaten moral condemnation "and when someone does
say something, they are met with a wave of sophisticated terminology backed by
academic credentials that they have no way of parsing." Those both aren't
violence, but I guess you can say the first one is bullying people into not
speaking. However, I believe the only examples that the author provided of
that was the firing of James Damore and the survey of Silicon Valley employees
that showed conservatives are afraid to be themselves and reports in the
survey that they are being purged from companies like Apple. I'd say that in a
free market you can hire and fire anyone you like at your business. So the
conservatives and libertarians that are supposedly being oppressed by SJWs are
being suppressed by a system they support.

~~~
stcredzero
_Yeah that 's a good point, although, that involves the threat of violence._

The threat of losing your job, or effectively being "un-personed" in your
career isn't so great. That's basically the level of coercion which Harvey
Weinstein stooped to.

 _What the article says SJWs do is threaten moral condemnation_

It's moral condemnation in bad faith. If there were principles at stake, then
there would be room for discourse. This isn't that. It's coercion in the
interest of power.

 _So the conservatives and libertarians that are supposedly being oppressed by
SJWs are being suppressed by a system they support._

By actors in bad faith. It's much like democracies that elect governments that
end up being totalitarian or theocratic. Short circuiting free speech itself
is fundamentally the ultimate form of bad faith in a democracy. That one side
thinks such a thing is in reach is a sign that they wish to shut down dissent
and act as authoritarians. It was true of the right in the 60's. It's true now
of the left in the 20-teens.

------
gizmo686
The NLRB memo: [https://www.scribd.com/document/371689055/NLRB-Damore-v-
Goog...](https://www.scribd.com/document/371689055/NLRB-Damore-v-Google-
Advice-Memorandum-1-16-2018)

------
zbyte64
> In those parts of society, values like equality, liberation, and
> cosmopolitanism aren’t just treated as values—organisations of society that
> different people prefer to different degrees—they’re considered moral.

So is equality a value you share or not?

~~~
stcredzero
Equality of opportunity is foundational. It's a good definition of fairness.

Equality of outcomes is insanity. The presumption that it is how things are
supposed to be has basically been used to justify anything, up to and
including rape and genocide. "Equality of outcomes" is basically Marxian
ideology dressed up as a virus to be injected into a democratic society. It
throws out meritocracy. Is it any wonder that many ideologies which espouse it
also seek to throw out logic itself?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPnUOcsjqgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPnUOcsjqgA)

~~~
asteli
Do people actually argue in favor of equality of outcomes? Can't say I've ever
seen this done, but then again I haven't seen everything.

The fundamental issue that I see addressed in social justice is that
opportunity is deeply and currently inextricably affected by your
circumstances in life. Taking steps to address this, is, as you said,
foundational.

~~~
stcredzero
_Do people actually argue in favor of equality of outcomes?_

When people presume that a 50/50 gender distribution is the goal, and that
falling short of that is evidence of discrimination, then yes, they are
arguing for equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity would allow for skews
in various fields to work themselves out naturally.

~~~
asteli
But that isn't how equality works. A heavily skewed field, tech for example,
isn't going to self-correct. Even with the diversity efforts, tech remains
hostile to underrepresented populations.

Ask a woman in tech, or a black man in tech what their experience is. Often
there's an unstated assumption that they don't belong, or that they're at a
lower level. I'm south asian, and when I visit my work's offices on the east
coast, I get pegged as an electrical technician rather than an engineer. /And
I'm in the in-group generally/.

I'd also argue that 50% is a _much_ better goal for gender diversity in
engineering than the ~10% representation women have currently, especially
considering that the gender equilibrium point for engineering is currently
unknowable due to the massive systemic discrimination/opportunity problems.

~~~
arkades
I don’t agree with you, but I am upvoting you because you are contributing
meaningfully to the conversation with earnest discussion and a valid, if IMO
incorrect, viewpoint.

I am disheartened to see your post greying out.

~~~
gizmo686
Sometimes people do not downvote individual comments, but rather a sequence of
comments. More specifically, there might be behavior that is only apparent
when looking at multiple comments that justifies the downvoting, even if the
actual downvote happens to be applied to an individual comment.

In this case, in the span of two comments, the poster went from:

>Do people actually argue in favor of equality of outcomes? Can't say I've
ever seen this done, but then again I haven't seen everything.

to arguing in favor of equality of outcomes.

Individually, both of these posts are fine; but together are problematic.

~~~
stcredzero
_Individually, both of these posts are fine; but together are problematic._

So either this is a troll, or it's an example of someone so "ideologically
possessed" they think they're justified to lie in pursuit of their goals.

~~~
asteli
I'm disappointed that you've marked me as someone with an ulterior motive. If
I have a logical inconsistency, feel free to point that out without making
assumptions about my intentions.

~~~
stcredzero
Okay, sorry, I left out the possibility that you're just mistaken. So you're
mistaken. There, fixed it for people who actually read carefully.

~~~
sctb
We need you to dial back the thorniness, please. These tit-for-tats are
unfortunately activating for the (very few) participants and noise for
everyone else.

------
maxerickson
Could a better student of communist Russia go ahead and assure me that the
authoritarianism was not an accident of their power analysis?

Thanks.

------
pmoriarty
It's unfortunate that this article provides an analysis and critique of the
roots of left-leaning "social justice" but absolutely zero analysis or
critique of the roots of right-leaning conservatism or libertarianism.

The latter have a long history of their own victimization rhetoric, which they
use for political ends, and an adherence to many conspiracy theories. Neither
is even indirectly alluded to, much less analyzed or critiqued despite being
directly relevant to the views expressed in the article.

~~~
Slansitartop
> It's unfortunate that this article provides an analysis and critique of the
> roots of left-leaning "social justice" but absolutely zero analysis or
> critique of the roots of right-leaning conservatism or libertarianism.

Why would an article about social justice ideology do that? It would be
rightly viewed as a digression that should be edited out or turned into an
independent article.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" Why would an article about social justice ideology do that?"_

Because it provides context for the very conservative complaints the article
provides a platform for.

~~~
Slansitartop
But what you were asking for wasn't context, it was:

> analysis or critique of the roots of right-leaning conservatism or
> libertarianism

That's a full article in itself.

Basically, it seems you are unhappy about the article's topic and focus, and
wish an article about something else that's more tailored to your
predilections. I'm sure you can find want you want elsewhere, given the
current political climate and the fact that conservatism and libertarianism
are far older and have been widespread for far longer than the relatively
novel "social justice ideology" discussed here.

------
sklivvz1971
A mish-mash of good ideas, uninspiring references to Marxism and clearly
xenophobic traits--who according to the author can't be said because it's
discriminatory, ye ye ye.

I mean, he totally lost me when he started saying "immigration raises crime
rates" and other xenophobic propaganda, which is clearly, pardon my French,
bovine excrement that people should feel ashamed of.

~~~
lerno
Except for the fact that he was talking in context of Europe where this is -
unfortunately - verifiably true.

------
dgudkov
>Some of the most explicitly social justice-oriented societies ever to exist
were the communist regimes of the 20th century.

This is exactly my sentiment. SJWs are the new bolsheviks.

------
skookumchuck
The more forcefully and loudly people try to suppress certain ideas, the more
they are afraid those ideas might be right.

For example, nobody is trying to suppress astrology, because nobody is afraid
it might be true. The same goes for phrenology, ancient astronauts, flat
earthers, 9/11 conspiracies, etc.

~~~
asteli
What ideas are being suppressed because of fear that they could be correct? To
be US centric for a moment, I can see examples of attempted suppression of
ideas by conservatives - defunding climate change research and the refusal to
allow CDC research into gun control, for example.

I'm racking my brain trying to think of counterexamples of suppression from
the left. Suppression of white supremacist thought? Anti-gay sentiment? The
value of diversity? Who on the left is genuinely (if secretly) afraid that
whites are the master race, or that the gays are destroying family values?

~~~
skookumchuck
Nobody would actually admit they are afraid that the ideas may be correct.

Free speech kills bad ideas. The nazis, for example, have free speech in the
US. They get nowhere.

