Thanks for writing this up. I was a bit nervous when reading the title because I was expecting that this would have been an “edgy takedown”, but it wasn’t.
I haven’t read the book, but I seen a few talks by Robin DiAngelo, and found them generally reasonable. They at least brought up several points I thought were interesting and provocative, which is a high bar for public presentations.
I then saw numerous reviews from sources I previously deemed decent that treated the book with extreme vitriol.
I found the hate leveled at this book to be frightening. There are a lot of “mediocre popular science books”, but this one was truly disdained by large communities. (Right wing ones, of course, but also some somewhat politically neutral or left crowds).
The basic ideas of “racism” being systemic in our culture, but occasionally very difficult to directly notice (especially for those in power), strike me as very similar to ones of implicit biases and similar. The Elephant in the Brain comes to mind. I think the Rationality community and similar should be well equipped to be able to discuss some of these issues.
My impression is that this book isn’t rigorous in the ways that most of us here would hope for. It doesn’t seem to have nearly as much nuance as I’d probably want, but books with nuance typically don’t become popular. It’s a bit of a pity, it is an important topic, so it would be great to work here we could trust to be fairly non-biased (either way) and thoughtful. However, I think I’m still happy that this book was written. I’m sure that Robin DiAngelo has probably faced gigantic amounts of harassment for writing it; perhaps this will lessen the burden for other people doing work in the area.
It seems like there are two big issues here:
1. Racism and power structures are systemic and deeply ingrained into our culture
2. This book presents a scientifically rigorous account of many details around the situation.
My impression is that #1 has a lot of truth to it, but #2 is lacking. In fairness, lots of books are terrible at #2, but this one might be particularly bad (given the broad claims). Unfortunately, I get the impression that a lot of reviews argue that because #2 is poor, #1 is wrong, and that seems cheap to me.
I considered writing my own review on the book on LessWrong to generate discussion, but myself was too wimpy to do so. I was very nervous about possible flame wars from doing so. (This makes me more thankful you’ve done it.)
I then saw numerous reviews from sources I previously deemed decent that treated the book with extreme vitriol.
It might be relevant to bring up near mode and far mode. In near mode, people are thinking about the prospect of being forced to attend one of her seminars and being unable to disagree at risk of losing their jobs, in far mode it is “interesting and provocative”.
I’m really not sure what you’re trying to do here, but I feel like your phrasing could be interpreted like creating a dichotomy between: 1. People who this impacts (in near mode), who will be very much hurt by this work.
2. Armchair, ivory-tower intellectuals who smirk and find the same sorts of interest in this book that they would get from the next “provocative” Game of Thrones book.
As such, the clear implication (that some readers) might take away is that I sit very much in the camp of (2), that just finds it interesting because the issues don’t actually matter much to me. So my opinion probably shouldn’t matter as much as those in (1).
It’s possible that such a criticism, if it were meant, might be justified! I’ve been wrong before, many times. But I wanted to be more clear if this is what you were intending before responding.
I’d note that far-mode being-interesting-and-provocative, as I used it, often means that for some people it will be difficult.
Previous discussions introducing athiesm/veganism/altruism also really upset a lot of people. They clearly led to a whole lot of change that was incredibly challenging or devastating to different people.
Often interesting-and-provocative could be very bad, like both extreme left-wing and extreme right-wing literature.
I think it means the reaction to the book is not really the reaction to the book itself, but rather to the political powers this book represents.
I can imagine having a talk with DiAngelo about the book; maybe it would be interesting and we would agree about many things, or maybe we would just scream at each other, dunno. But that is unlikely to happen. What is more likely to happen, is someone reading the book, and then yelling at me for not agreeing with some idea in the book. Possibly in a situation where this might get me in trouble.
I think it means the reaction to the book is not really the reaction to the book itself, but rather to the political powers this book represents.
I think it’s very likely that you’re right here. I do wish this could be said more. It’s totally fine to argue against political powers and against potential situations. Ideally this argument would be differentiated around discussion on this particular book/author.
What is more likely to happen, is someone reading the book, and then yelling at me for not agreeing with some idea in the book. Possibly in a situation where this might get me in trouble
I agree that there are lots of ideas in the book that are probably wrong. To be clear, I could also easily imagine many situations where unreasonable people would take either the wrong ideas too far, or take their own spin on this and take those ideas far too far. I imagine that in either case, the results can be highly destructive.
I hope that these sorts of fears don’t prevent us from understanding or understanding interesting/useful ideas from such material. I think they make this massively harder, but there might be some decent strategies.
I would be curious if people here have recommendations on how they would like to see these ideas getting discussed in ways that minimize the potential hazards of getting people into trouble for unreasonable reasons or creating tons of anxiety. I think that this book has generated a lot of high-anxiety discussion that’s clearly not very effective at delivering better understanding.
I was never good at convincing other people, so I am not qualified to give advice about how to talk to other people. Speaking for myself, if I am told something with a friendly voice, I am more likely to consider it seriously than if someone screams at me. Even better, if I can voice my objections or ask additional questions, and receive a reasonable response. (Reasonable doesn’t mean “totally destroyed by a clever verbal argument”. Saying “yeah, that’s complicated, and I don’t actually have all the answers, but nevertheless here are a few things I want you to consider” works fine with me.) Sometimes it takes time to process.
Problem is, I don’t know how much this advice can be generalized. I don’t consider myself to be a typical person. I am already a nice guy who doesn’t want to hurt anyone, so if you show me how to make the world a better place, I am happy for the info. I also care about truth, so I will reject ideas that seem wrong to me. As far as I know (I am never sure about modeling other people), not all people are like this… and I don’t know what approach would work with them. What convices those who want to hurt others, or who don’t care about reality? Sorry, I have no idea. And if you want to solve racism, I am afraid that those are the people you need to convert, somehow. Perhaps some of them respond well to threats by force; but if you use such threats indiscriminately, then you risk accidentally making enemies of people like me.
I suppose a reasonable debate requires some filtering of participants for some baseline goodness and sanity. Then, I guess, provide lots of data, both in near mode (someone’s personal experience) and in far mode (statistics). Then, allow discussion. This, unless it somehow obviously backfires, I would already consider a small victory. People will remember something, which is better than most online interactions.
(Of course, this involves the risk that you were wrong about something, and people will point it out in the debate. In such hypothetical situation, are you open to feedback? If you are seen as dogmatic, smart people will realize that all evidence you have presented so far has been filtered by a dogmatic mind, and will devalue it accordingly.)
If you want an online debate, some anonymity would probably be helpful. If you want an offline debate, it definitely should not be related to anyone’s job.
I wasn’t intending this as a criticism. I was merely trying to identify the difference in perspective.
I think the quote might make it seem that way—people often quote when they are rejecting a framing—to say that’s what they say, not me. However, I was just trying to indicate that I hadn’t come up with the phrase myself.
Thanks so much for clarifying! Sorry to have misinterpreted that.
I think this topic is particularly toxic for online writing. People can be intensely attacked for either side here. This means that people of positions feel more inclined to hint at their positions rather than directly saying them. Which correspondingly means that I’m more inclined to think that text is meant as being hints.
If you or others want to have a private video call about these topics I’d be happy to do so (send me a PM), I just hate public online discussion for topics like these.
I think from reading some of the other comments here on the LessWrong post, I’m a bit worried that this might be turning into some flame wars.
I’d note that this particular book is probably not the best one to have debates around this issue for. The book seems to be quite a bit more sensationalist, moralistic, and less scientific than I’d really like, which I think makes it very difficult to discuss. This seems like a subject that would attract lots of motte-and-bailey thinking on both sides. (the connection between more reasonable vs. outlandish claims representing the motte-and-bailey, but switched on each side).
This is clearly a highly sensitive issue. No one wants to be (publicly especially!) associated with either racism or cancel culture.
Publicly discussion is far more challenging than private discussions. For example, we simply don’t know who is watching these discussions or who might be trying to use anything posted here for antagonistic purposes. (They copy several comments from someone and post them without much context, accusing them of either racism or cancel culture).
Very sadly, public discussion of topics like these right now is thoroughly challenging for many reasons. My guess is that it’s often just not worth it.
Great question! I have some books I personally enjoyed, and also would like to encourage others to recommend texts. I’m sure that my understanding is vastly less than what I’d really want. However, there are a few books that come to mind.
I think the big challenge, for me, is “attempting to empathize and understand African Americans”. This is incredibly, ridiculously difficult! Cultures are very different from one another. I grew up in an area with a large mix of ethnic groups, and I think that was useful, but the challenge is far greater.
In pop culture, I found “Dear White People”, both the movie, and the TV show (mostly the first 2 seasons), to be pretty interesting.
I really like James Baldwin, though enjoyed his speeches more than his books, so far.
Honestly, African American Studies is just a gigantic field with lots of great work. This can be looked at as interesting to better understand African Americans, but there’s also a lot of other take-aways, like understanding severe cognitive biases and motivated reasoning and from a very different angle.
Fans of the TV show The Wire might want to check out David Simon’s earlier work The Corner. It’s not as artfully done as The Wire, but it is a direct retelling of a real family’s story from Simon’s days reporting for the Baltimore Sun, so it is as close to being a documentary as you can get without it actually being a documentary. I found both The Wire and The Corner to be quite useful for getting a visceral sense of what it’s like to grow up poor and Black in America’s inner cities.
I’ve also learned a lot about America’s racial history from reading Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, particularly the volume Master of the Senate. A brief history of the Senate itself is included in the book, and it’s striking to read about the details of how our country’s official instruments of power were used to undercut opportunities for Black people well into the 20th century. For example, I had assumed that “white supremacy” was just an academic neologism, but it turns out that Southern whites actually used this term unironically and as a call to action, including in speeches on the Senate floor. That blew my mind.
Looked briefly at “So You Want to Talk about Race” and yes, it is much better than “White Fragility”. There are specific things mentioned already at the beginning of the first chapter, which distinguish between racism and classism—both real problems with some overlap, but it’s driving me crazy how the woke left conflates them… as if the only problem with CEOs exploiting workers is that the CEOs are white males; as long as we make sure there are enough black, female, and nonbinary CEOs, the exploitation of workers will cease to be a moral problem; maybe white male workers unionizing against a black female CEO will be considered sexist and racist… oops, sorry I’m ranting...
My point is, the epistemic level of the first chapter (I haven’t read more yet) is way higher that the “I make money by telling people they are racist, and I have no clue why they feel so defensive” DiAngelo. Perhaps it helps that it is written by an actual black person who can provide specific examples, as opposed to a woke white activist offering platitudes.
I think from reading some of the other comments here on the LessWrong post, I’m a bit worried that this might be turning into some flame wars.
I’m happy that you mentioned this, because I think I agree now that you’ve pointed it out. Re-thinking some of my comments now. I won’t delete them but… I like LessWrong because there’s usually not a lot of culture war stuff.
Speaking personally, I think something like #1 is true on the grounds that I have seen many cases of white Australian people, often with considerable power, acting in excessively patronising and authoritarian ways towards Aboriginal people and I have no difficulty believing that similar things happen in the US.
However, I also do not think that racial disparities in outcomes are almost all caused by #1; in fact I think that probably less than 50% of almost any particular disparity is caused by #1. Thus, I think that outcome disparities are at best weak evidence for #1. Many people (notably Ibram X Kendi) say that in fact they are. I actually believe that the theory underlying this claim causes some of the authoritarian behaviour I observe. I think people reason something like this: - We don’t want to be racist —Differences in outcome indicate racism —We must eliminate differences in outcome —Eliminating differences in outcome requires substantial behavioural changes on the part of Aboriginal people
- Authoritarian strategies are the most reliable way we have to induce substantial behavioural changes
I think that overly authoritarian policy is often harmful.
I don’t know if DiAngelo endorses this claim—that outcome disparities are almost all caused by #1 - but claims like “being white is to know privilege” make me suspect that to some extent she is also reasoning backwards from outcome disparities to the existence of racismS. I think this is a big mistake!
I also think, with less confidence, that DiAngelo is not really popularising this theory but is rather explaining a theory that is already popular. Perhaps many people, like myself, think that this theory is flawed and that it is unfortunate that it is so popular. However, I suspect that they are making a mistake blaming DiAngelo for this. Criticism of her book could be a stand-in for criticism of this theory in general.
Maybe taking it further, I think that it’s possible that reasoning backwards from outcome disparities to racismS yields a flawed theory of what racismS is, because it’s a flawed inference to begin with. This might be why many people take issue with racismS rather than the premise (outcome disparities → racism), even though my best guess is that the premise comes first.
and power structures are systemic and deeply ingrained into our culture
Is there any culture in which power structures aren’t systemic and deeply ingrained into our culture? Even a tribe of hunter gather has it’s cultural norms that regulate the power between the individuals.
You don’t learn anything about a culture by assuming that’s true for a culture. I would expect that most people at LessWrong don’t have a problem with power structures provided they fulfill critieria like being meriocratic and a few other criteria.
Is there any culture in which power structures aren’t systemic and deeply ingrained into our culture? Even a tribe of hunter gather has it’s cultural norms that regulate the power between the individuals.
I agree. I think there’s a whole lot of stuff deeply ingrained in the culture of every group.
I would expect that most people at LessWrong don’t have a problem with power structures provided they fulfill critieria like being meriocratic and a few other criteria.
It’s hard for me to understand your argument here, I expect that this would have to be a much longer discussion. I’m not saying that there aren’t some cases where power structures aren’t justified. But I think there are pretty clearly some that almost all of us would agree were unjustified, and I think that a lot of racial/historical cases work like that.
The point is that if you want to speak about power structures, discussing whether or not power structures exists is pointless. What matter is discussing how people should be justified and the benefits and drawbacks of different ways of allocating power.
Using SAT scores for college admissions is for example a way to distribute power. Decades ago people didn’t want as many Jewish people at universities and thus introduced character assessments into the mix of what matters. Today, the group of people that is argued to be overrepresented was extended and many colleges dropped SAT scores altogether.
Back then the argument was that Jewish people had too much power and power structures should be changed so that they have less. Now, the argument is that White people have to much power and power structures should be changed so that they have less.
If you just focus on the fact that there are power structures and not the benefits of for example distributed power to intelligent people who score highly on SAT scores, you won’t get a good view of the issue to think about good policy and do things like discriminating against Jewish people.
Defending a position by pointing out that a portion (however big or small) of the critics of the position are ‘vitriolic’ isn’t actually a valid argument. If people really hate something so much so that they get emotional about it that’s still pretty good evidence that the something is bad.
I find non-responsive responses to be entirely lacking any sort of good faith and they come across as quite rude. It’s an attempt to signal you hold some sort of moral high ground, that you think you’re literally too good to even have a discussion with someone else. It’s insulting. If I don’t want to respond to a particular comment I don’t respond. I don’t say “I don’t think talking with you will be productive.”
FWIW, I generally prefer it if people give a “I am tapping out of this” comment, instead of leaving the discussion hanging. I think it helps create closure and reduces the need for people to recheck the thread on whether anything new was posted. I also generally think people should feel pretty free to tap out of discussions.
I agreed that an “I am tapping out of this” comment is helpful until I experienced it and realized that the experience is quite unpleasant. There’s something particularly stinging about being told that a discussion with you can’t be productive. I think I wouldn’t be effected at all if the non-response was “I am tapping out of this.” without any particular reason being given.
I think it has to do with Jordan Peterson’s 9th rule for life, “Assume the person you’re listening to might know something that you don’t”. That just just makes sense to me. I don’t quite understand why some people care about vitriolic comments on the internet. To me, vitriolic comments are par for the course and bringing it up is an obvious attempt to play the victim card for sympathy. But hey ozziegooen seems like a well-written dude so maybe he has a good explanation for why I should care about whether or not people have written scathing online reviews of DiAngelo’s book. Or maybe he has another insight into the topic that I couldn’t predict. Definitely his last response to me gave me a lot of information I didn’t already know so for me the interaction was a net positive.
Saying “we can’t have a productive discussion” in response to a two sentence reply completely goes against that 9th rule. It’s an acknowledgement that the responder is listening to me, because he responded to my comment. But he’s also stating that he thinks I have literally nothing to offer him by way of new information and vice-versa. That’s pretty low!
I am certainly more sensitive on this issue than most people here. If ozziegooen’s comment wouldn’t seem insulting to others then really the issue lies entirely with me and I’ll adapt to the style of decorum that fits most people. I don’t want to jump at conduct that the LW community thinks is fine.
On a different note, I agree with you that people should feel free to tap out of discussions. I don’t mind if someone doesn’t wish to discuss further. I’ve tapped out of many conversations myself for a variety of reasons and sometimes the reason is I don’t think the conversation will be productive.
I’m not going to respond any further after this comment because I don’t think this back-and-forth will be productive. [1]
There are >7 billion people on the planet, and likely >100 active threads on LessWrong. Your prior should strongly be against interaction with any specific person on any specific topic being the best use of your time, not for it.
I believe that operating from tell culture when interacting on LessWrong is fine. Yes, that will mean that people who are socialized in guess culture will find some things rude or unpleasant but that doesn’t justify LessWrong switching to ask culture norms.
Jordan Peterson’s rules for life are about taking responsibility for your own life. It seems like you advocate here that other people are supposed to take responsibilty for you feeling offended.
I seems to me like you are violating the rule you appear when you advocate here if you state that ozziegooen should have self censored themselves instead of truthfully expressing what he believed to be true.
My response is fine in tell culture too no? I’m stating what I believe to be true of their comment. Why is it ok for ozziegooen to speak truthfully in his comment but it’s not ok for me to reply truthfully wrt to my impression of his comment?
Mind reading (“It’s an attempt to signal you hold some sort of moral high ground”) isn’t what you do in tell culture. The idea that you are “telling the truth” when you are mind reading seems strange to me.
In contrast when ozziegooen says I do X because I expect Y then it makes sense to assume that his explanation of his own motivation is correct. Unless of course, you think he’s lying about his motivation (maybe because he would actually believe ¬Y, and has another reason).
But he’s also stating that he thinks I have literally nothing to offer him by way of new information and vice-versa. That’s pretty low!
This is definitely not how I saw it.
I’m sure everyone has a lot to learn from everyone else. The big challenge is that this learning is costly and we have extremely limited resources. There’s an endless number of discussions we could be part of, and we all have very limited time left in total (for discussions and other things). So if I try to gently leave a conversation, it’s mainly a signal of “I don’t think that this is the absolutely most high-value thing for me to be doing now”, which is a high bar!
Second, I think you might have been taking this a bit personally, like me trying to hold off conversation was a personal evaluation as you as a person.
Again, I know very little about you, and I used to know even less (when you made the original comment). This is the comment in question:
Defending a position by pointing out that a portion (however big or small) of the critics of the position are ‘vitriolic’ isn’t actually a valid argument. If people really hate something so much so that they get emotional about it that’s still pretty good evidence that the something is bad.
This really doesn’t give me much insight into your position or background. Basically all I know about you is that you wrote these two sentences here, and have written a few comments on LessWrong in the past. My prior for “person with an anonymous name on LessWrong, a few previous comments there, and so on”, doesn’t make me incredibly excited to spend a lot of time going back and forth with. I’ve been burned in the past, a few times, with people who match similar characteristics.
Often people who use anonymous accounts wind up being terrific, it’s just hard to discern which are which, early on.
About that last line; I’m fine with you replying or not replying. I wish you the best in the continuation of your intellectual journey.
Lastly, I’ll note that this “White Fragility” is a very sensitive topic that I’m not excited to chat about publicly on forums like this. (In part because my comments on this get downvoted a lot, in part because this sort of discussion can easily be used as ammunition later on by anyone interested (against either myself or any of the other commenters who responds)). My identity is clearly public, so there is real risk.
I write blog posts on LessWrong that are far less controversial, and am much more happy to publicly discuss those topics.
I’m really sorry if I hurt or offended you. I assumed that a brief description of where I was at would be preferred to not replying at all. I clearly was incorrect about that.
I disagree with some of your specific implications. I’m fairly sure though that you’d disagree with my responses. I could easily imagine that you’ve already predicted them, well enough, and wouldn’t find them very informative, particularly for what I could write in a few sentences.
This isn’t unusual for me. I try to stay out of almost all online discussion. I have things to do, I’m sure you have things to do as well. Online discussion is costly, and it’s especially costly when people know very little about each other[1], and the conversation topic (White Fragility) is as controversial as this one is.
[1]: I know almost nothing about you. I feel like I’d have a very difficult time feeling comfortable saying things in ways I can predict you’d be receptive to, or things that you wouldn’t actively attack me for. I find that I’ve had a difficult time modeling people online; particularly people who I barely know. This could easily lead to problems of several different kinds. It’s very, very possible that none of this applies to you, but it would take a fair amount of discussion for me to find that out and feel safe with my impressions of you. This also applies for all the other people I don’t know, but who might be watching this conversation or jump in at any point.
That seems like weak evidence. People frequently hate things that don’t really warrant it. For example, lenders provide a service to society, and the use of their service is voluntary. Their rates and terms are constrained by facts of money and risk management that are mostly out of their control. Yet they are still widely despised and have been for a long time.
I agree that it isn’t strong evidence. I should have made my point more explicit. My point is that Ooziegooen mentions the vitriol as if it is evidence that DiAngelo’s argument has value and should be discussed. If anything it’s evidence against that notion (however weak it may be).
Thanks for writing this up. I was a bit nervous when reading the title because I was expecting that this would have been an “edgy takedown”, but it wasn’t.
I haven’t read the book, but I seen a few talks by Robin DiAngelo, and found them generally reasonable. They at least brought up several points I thought were interesting and provocative, which is a high bar for public presentations.
I then saw numerous reviews from sources I previously deemed decent that treated the book with extreme vitriol.
I found the hate leveled at this book to be frightening. There are a lot of “mediocre popular science books”, but this one was truly disdained by large communities. (Right wing ones, of course, but also some somewhat politically neutral or left crowds).
The basic ideas of “racism” being systemic in our culture, but occasionally very difficult to directly notice (especially for those in power), strike me as very similar to ones of implicit biases and similar. The Elephant in the Brain comes to mind. I think the Rationality community and similar should be well equipped to be able to discuss some of these issues.
My impression is that this book isn’t rigorous in the ways that most of us here would hope for. It doesn’t seem to have nearly as much nuance as I’d probably want, but books with nuance typically don’t become popular. It’s a bit of a pity, it is an important topic, so it would be great to work here we could trust to be fairly non-biased (either way) and thoughtful. However, I think I’m still happy that this book was written. I’m sure that Robin DiAngelo has probably faced gigantic amounts of harassment for writing it; perhaps this will lessen the burden for other people doing work in the area.
It seems like there are two big issues here:
1. Racism and power structures are systemic and deeply ingrained into our culture
2. This book presents a scientifically rigorous account of many details around the situation.
My impression is that #1 has a lot of truth to it, but #2 is lacking. In fairness, lots of books are terrible at #2, but this one might be particularly bad (given the broad claims). Unfortunately, I get the impression that a lot of reviews argue that because #2 is poor, #1 is wrong, and that seems cheap to me.
I considered writing my own review on the book on LessWrong to generate discussion, but myself was too wimpy to do so. I was very nervous about possible flame wars from doing so. (This makes me more thankful you’ve done it.)
For examples of the vitriol I’m talking about, see the Goodreads reviews:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43708708-white-fragility?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=sSB9PhQyYt&rank=1
It might be relevant to bring up near mode and far mode. In near mode, people are thinking about the prospect of being forced to attend one of her seminars and being unable to disagree at risk of losing their jobs, in far mode it is “interesting and provocative”.
I’m really not sure what you’re trying to do here, but I feel like your phrasing could be interpreted like creating a dichotomy between:
1. People who this impacts (in near mode), who will be very much hurt by this work.
2. Armchair, ivory-tower intellectuals who smirk and find the same sorts of interest in this book that they would get from the next “provocative” Game of Thrones book.
As such, the clear implication (that some readers) might take away is that I sit very much in the camp of (2), that just finds it interesting because the issues don’t actually matter much to me. So my opinion probably shouldn’t matter as much as those in (1).
It’s possible that such a criticism, if it were meant, might be justified! I’ve been wrong before, many times. But I wanted to be more clear if this is what you were intending before responding.
I’d note that far-mode being-interesting-and-provocative, as I used it, often means that for some people it will be difficult.
Previous discussions introducing athiesm/veganism/altruism also really upset a lot of people. They clearly led to a whole lot of change that was incredibly challenging or devastating to different people.
Often interesting-and-provocative could be very bad, like both extreme left-wing and extreme right-wing literature.
I think it means the reaction to the book is not really the reaction to the book itself, but rather to the political powers this book represents.
I can imagine having a talk with DiAngelo about the book; maybe it would be interesting and we would agree about many things, or maybe we would just scream at each other, dunno. But that is unlikely to happen. What is more likely to happen, is someone reading the book, and then yelling at me for not agreeing with some idea in the book. Possibly in a situation where this might get me in trouble.
I think it’s very likely that you’re right here. I do wish this could be said more. It’s totally fine to argue against political powers and against potential situations. Ideally this argument would be differentiated around discussion on this particular book/author.
I agree that there are lots of ideas in the book that are probably wrong. To be clear, I could also easily imagine many situations where unreasonable people would take either the wrong ideas too far, or take their own spin on this and take those ideas far too far. I imagine that in either case, the results can be highly destructive.
I hope that these sorts of fears don’t prevent us from understanding or understanding interesting/useful ideas from such material. I think they make this massively harder, but there might be some decent strategies.
I would be curious if people here have recommendations on how they would like to see these ideas getting discussed in ways that minimize the potential hazards of getting people into trouble for unreasonable reasons or creating tons of anxiety. I think that this book has generated a lot of high-anxiety discussion that’s clearly not very effective at delivering better understanding.
I was never good at convincing other people, so I am not qualified to give advice about how to talk to other people. Speaking for myself, if I am told something with a friendly voice, I am more likely to consider it seriously than if someone screams at me. Even better, if I can voice my objections or ask additional questions, and receive a reasonable response. (Reasonable doesn’t mean “totally destroyed by a clever verbal argument”. Saying “yeah, that’s complicated, and I don’t actually have all the answers, but nevertheless here are a few things I want you to consider” works fine with me.) Sometimes it takes time to process.
Problem is, I don’t know how much this advice can be generalized. I don’t consider myself to be a typical person. I am already a nice guy who doesn’t want to hurt anyone, so if you show me how to make the world a better place, I am happy for the info. I also care about truth, so I will reject ideas that seem wrong to me. As far as I know (I am never sure about modeling other people), not all people are like this… and I don’t know what approach would work with them. What convices those who want to hurt others, or who don’t care about reality? Sorry, I have no idea. And if you want to solve racism, I am afraid that those are the people you need to convert, somehow. Perhaps some of them respond well to threats by force; but if you use such threats indiscriminately, then you risk accidentally making enemies of people like me.
I suppose a reasonable debate requires some filtering of participants for some baseline goodness and sanity. Then, I guess, provide lots of data, both in near mode (someone’s personal experience) and in far mode (statistics). Then, allow discussion. This, unless it somehow obviously backfires, I would already consider a small victory. People will remember something, which is better than most online interactions.
(Of course, this involves the risk that you were wrong about something, and people will point it out in the debate. In such hypothetical situation, are you open to feedback? If you are seen as dogmatic, smart people will realize that all evidence you have presented so far has been filtered by a dogmatic mind, and will devalue it accordingly.)
If you want an online debate, some anonymity would probably be helpful. If you want an offline debate, it definitely should not be related to anyone’s job.
I wasn’t intending this as a criticism. I was merely trying to identify the difference in perspective.
I think the quote might make it seem that way—people often quote when they are rejecting a framing—to say that’s what they say, not me. However, I was just trying to indicate that I hadn’t come up with the phrase myself.
Thanks so much for clarifying! Sorry to have misinterpreted that.
I think this topic is particularly toxic for online writing. People can be intensely attacked for either side here. This means that people of positions feel more inclined to hint at their positions rather than directly saying them. Which correspondingly means that I’m more inclined to think that text is meant as being hints.
If you or others want to have a private video call about these topics I’d be happy to do so (send me a PM), I just hate public online discussion for topics like these.
I think from reading some of the other comments here on the LessWrong post, I’m a bit worried that this might be turning into some flame wars.
I’d note that this particular book is probably not the best one to have debates around this issue for. The book seems to be quite a bit more sensationalist, moralistic, and less scientific than I’d really like, which I think makes it very difficult to discuss. This seems like a subject that would attract lots of motte-and-bailey thinking on both sides. (the connection between more reasonable vs. outlandish claims representing the motte-and-bailey, but switched on each side).
This is clearly a highly sensitive issue. No one wants to be (publicly especially!) associated with either racism or cancel culture.
Publicly discussion is far more challenging than private discussions. For example, we simply don’t know who is watching these discussions or who might be trying to use anything posted here for antagonistic purposes. (They copy several comments from someone and post them without much context, accusing them of either racism or cancel culture).
Very sadly, public discussion of topics like these right now is thoroughly challenging for many reasons. My guess is that it’s often just not worth it.
Is there another book you have in mind that you could recommend instead?
Great question! I have some books I personally enjoyed, and also would like to encourage others to recommend texts. I’m sure that my understanding is vastly less than what I’d really want. However, there are a few books that come to mind.
I think the big challenge, for me, is “attempting to empathize and understand African Americans”. This is incredibly, ridiculously difficult! Cultures are very different from one another. I grew up in an area with a large mix of ethnic groups, and I think that was useful, but the challenge is far greater.
I really liked “So You Want to Talk about Race”, a few years ago.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35099718-so-you-want-to-talk-about-race?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Q2Zay18Jca&rank=1
I thought Black Like Me was great, though it’s by a white author, and he doesn’t have as good an understanding (though he comes from a similar place to many white readers)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42603.Black_Like_Me?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=qI4fgVu3E5&rank=1
In pop culture, I found “Dear White People”, both the movie, and the TV show (mostly the first 2 seasons), to be pretty interesting.
I really like James Baldwin, though enjoyed his speeches more than his books, so far.
Honestly, African American Studies is just a gigantic field with lots of great work. This can be looked at as interesting to better understand African Americans, but there’s also a lot of other take-aways, like understanding severe cognitive biases and motivated reasoning and from a very different angle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_studies
Of course, many of these resources are somewhat specific to American problems.
Fans of the TV show The Wire might want to check out David Simon’s earlier work The Corner. It’s not as artfully done as The Wire, but it is a direct retelling of a real family’s story from Simon’s days reporting for the Baltimore Sun, so it is as close to being a documentary as you can get without it actually being a documentary. I found both The Wire and The Corner to be quite useful for getting a visceral sense of what it’s like to grow up poor and Black in America’s inner cities.
I’ve also learned a lot about America’s racial history from reading Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, particularly the volume Master of the Senate. A brief history of the Senate itself is included in the book, and it’s striking to read about the details of how our country’s official instruments of power were used to undercut opportunities for Black people well into the 20th century. For example, I had assumed that “white supremacy” was just an academic neologism, but it turns out that Southern whites actually used this term unironically and as a call to action, including in speeches on the Senate floor. That blew my mind.
Looked briefly at “So You Want to Talk about Race” and yes, it is much better than “White Fragility”. There are specific things mentioned already at the beginning of the first chapter, which distinguish between racism and classism—both real problems with some overlap, but it’s driving me crazy how the woke left conflates them… as if the only problem with CEOs exploiting workers is that the CEOs are white males; as long as we make sure there are enough black, female, and nonbinary CEOs, the exploitation of workers will cease to be a moral problem; maybe white male workers unionizing against a black female CEO will be considered sexist and racist… oops, sorry I’m ranting...
My point is, the epistemic level of the first chapter (I haven’t read more yet) is way higher that the “I make money by telling people they are racist, and I have no clue why they feel so defensive” DiAngelo. Perhaps it helps that it is written by an actual black person who can provide specific examples, as opposed to a woke white activist offering platitudes.
I read Between the World and Me—and even though I have significiant disagreement with the author—I really did think it was a work of art.
I’m happy that you mentioned this, because I think I agree now that you’ve pointed it out. Re-thinking some of my comments now. I won’t delete them but… I like LessWrong because there’s usually not a lot of culture war stuff.
Speaking personally, I think something like #1 is true on the grounds that I have seen many cases of white Australian people, often with considerable power, acting in excessively patronising and authoritarian ways towards Aboriginal people and I have no difficulty believing that similar things happen in the US.
However, I also do not think that racial disparities in outcomes are almost all caused by #1; in fact I think that probably less than 50% of almost any particular disparity is caused by #1. Thus, I think that outcome disparities are at best weak evidence for #1. Many people (notably Ibram X Kendi) say that in fact they are. I actually believe that the theory underlying this claim causes some of the authoritarian behaviour I observe. I think people reason something like this:
- We don’t want to be racist
—Differences in outcome indicate racism
—We must eliminate differences in outcome
—Eliminating differences in outcome requires substantial behavioural changes on the part of Aboriginal people
- Authoritarian strategies are the most reliable way we have to induce substantial behavioural changes
I think that overly authoritarian policy is often harmful.
I don’t know if DiAngelo endorses this claim—that outcome disparities are almost all caused by #1 - but claims like “being white is to know privilege” make me suspect that to some extent she is also reasoning backwards from outcome disparities to the existence of racismS. I think this is a big mistake!
I also think, with less confidence, that DiAngelo is not really popularising this theory but is rather explaining a theory that is already popular. Perhaps many people, like myself, think that this theory is flawed and that it is unfortunate that it is so popular. However, I suspect that they are making a mistake blaming DiAngelo for this. Criticism of her book could be a stand-in for criticism of this theory in general.
Maybe taking it further, I think that it’s possible that reasoning backwards from outcome disparities to racismS yields a flawed theory of what racismS is, because it’s a flawed inference to begin with. This might be why many people take issue with racismS rather than the premise (outcome disparities → racism), even though my best guess is that the premise comes first.
Is there any culture in which power structures aren’t systemic and deeply ingrained into our culture? Even a tribe of hunter gather has it’s cultural norms that regulate the power between the individuals.
You don’t learn anything about a culture by assuming that’s true for a culture. I would expect that most people at LessWrong don’t have a problem with power structures provided they fulfill critieria like being meriocratic and a few other criteria.
I agree. I think there’s a whole lot of stuff deeply ingrained in the culture of every group.
It’s hard for me to understand your argument here, I expect that this would have to be a much longer discussion. I’m not saying that there aren’t some cases where power structures aren’t justified. But I think there are pretty clearly some that almost all of us would agree were unjustified, and I think that a lot of racial/historical cases work like that.
The point is that if you want to speak about power structures, discussing whether or not power structures exists is pointless. What matter is discussing how people should be justified and the benefits and drawbacks of different ways of allocating power.
Using SAT scores for college admissions is for example a way to distribute power. Decades ago people didn’t want as many Jewish people at universities and thus introduced character assessments into the mix of what matters. Today, the group of people that is argued to be overrepresented was extended and many colleges dropped SAT scores altogether.
Back then the argument was that Jewish people had too much power and power structures should be changed so that they have less. Now, the argument is that White people have to much power and power structures should be changed so that they have less.
If you just focus on the fact that there are power structures and not the benefits of for example distributed power to intelligent people who score highly on SAT scores, you won’t get a good view of the issue to think about good policy and do things like discriminating against Jewish people.
Defending a position by pointing out that a portion (however big or small) of the critics of the position are ‘vitriolic’ isn’t actually a valid argument. If people really hate something so much so that they get emotional about it that’s still pretty good evidence that the something is bad.
Position noted, but I don’t feel like more back-and-forth here will be productive
I find non-responsive responses to be entirely lacking any sort of good faith and they come across as quite rude. It’s an attempt to signal you hold some sort of moral high ground, that you think you’re literally too good to even have a discussion with someone else. It’s insulting. If I don’t want to respond to a particular comment I don’t respond. I don’t say “I don’t think talking with you will be productive.”
FWIW, I generally prefer it if people give a “I am tapping out of this” comment, instead of leaving the discussion hanging. I think it helps create closure and reduces the need for people to recheck the thread on whether anything new was posted. I also generally think people should feel pretty free to tap out of discussions.
I agreed that an “I am tapping out of this” comment is helpful until I experienced it and realized that the experience is quite unpleasant. There’s something particularly stinging about being told that a discussion with you can’t be productive. I think I wouldn’t be effected at all if the non-response was “I am tapping out of this.” without any particular reason being given.
I think it has to do with Jordan Peterson’s 9th rule for life, “Assume the person you’re listening to might know something that you don’t”. That just just makes sense to me. I don’t quite understand why some people care about vitriolic comments on the internet. To me, vitriolic comments are par for the course and bringing it up is an obvious attempt to play the victim card for sympathy. But hey ozziegooen seems like a well-written dude so maybe he has a good explanation for why I should care about whether or not people have written scathing online reviews of DiAngelo’s book. Or maybe he has another insight into the topic that I couldn’t predict. Definitely his last response to me gave me a lot of information I didn’t already know so for me the interaction was a net positive.
Saying “we can’t have a productive discussion” in response to a two sentence reply completely goes against that 9th rule. It’s an acknowledgement that the responder is listening to me, because he responded to my comment. But he’s also stating that he thinks I have literally nothing to offer him by way of new information and vice-versa. That’s pretty low!
I am certainly more sensitive on this issue than most people here. If ozziegooen’s comment wouldn’t seem insulting to others then really the issue lies entirely with me and I’ll adapt to the style of decorum that fits most people. I don’t want to jump at conduct that the LW community thinks is fine.
On a different note, I agree with you that people should feel free to tap out of discussions. I don’t mind if someone doesn’t wish to discuss further. I’ve tapped out of many conversations myself for a variety of reasons and sometimes the reason is I don’t think the conversation will be productive.
I’m not going to respond any further after this comment because I don’t think this back-and-forth will be productive. [1]
I’m just saying this to give you the experience. I don’t mean it at all. But even then I feel bad saying it because it sounds so rude to me!
There are >7 billion people on the planet, and likely >100 active threads on LessWrong. Your prior should strongly be against interaction with any specific person on any specific topic being the best use of your time, not for it.
I believe that operating from tell culture when interacting on LessWrong is fine. Yes, that will mean that people who are socialized in guess culture will find some things rude or unpleasant but that doesn’t justify LessWrong switching to ask culture norms.
Jordan Peterson’s rules for life are about taking responsibility for your own life. It seems like you advocate here that other people are supposed to take responsibilty for you feeling offended.
I seems to me like you are violating the rule you appear when you advocate here if you state that ozziegooen should have self censored themselves instead of truthfully expressing what he believed to be true.
My response is fine in tell culture too no? I’m stating what I believe to be true of their comment. Why is it ok for ozziegooen to speak truthfully in his comment but it’s not ok for me to reply truthfully wrt to my impression of his comment?
Mind reading (“It’s an attempt to signal you hold some sort of moral high ground”) isn’t what you do in tell culture. The idea that you are “telling the truth” when you are mind reading seems strange to me.
In contrast when ozziegooen says I do X because I expect Y then it makes sense to assume that his explanation of his own motivation is correct. Unless of course, you think he’s lying about his motivation (maybe because he would actually believe ¬Y, and has another reason).
You know, I wrote a whole reply but your comment isn’t worth responding to.
Thanks for the longer comments here!
Quick thoughts, on my end:
This is definitely not how I saw it.
I’m sure everyone has a lot to learn from everyone else. The big challenge is that this learning is costly and we have extremely limited resources. There’s an endless number of discussions we could be part of, and we all have very limited time left in total (for discussions and other things). So if I try to gently leave a conversation, it’s mainly a signal of “I don’t think that this is the absolutely most high-value thing for me to be doing now”, which is a high bar!
Second, I think you might have been taking this a bit personally, like me trying to hold off conversation was a personal evaluation as you as a person.
Again, I know very little about you, and I used to know even less (when you made the original comment). This is the comment in question:
This really doesn’t give me much insight into your position or background. Basically all I know about you is that you wrote these two sentences here, and have written a few comments on LessWrong in the past. My prior for “person with an anonymous name on LessWrong, a few previous comments there, and so on”, doesn’t make me incredibly excited to spend a lot of time going back and forth with. I’ve been burned in the past, a few times, with people who match similar characteristics.
Often people who use anonymous accounts wind up being terrific, it’s just hard to discern which are which, early on.
About that last line; I’m fine with you replying or not replying. I wish you the best in the continuation of your intellectual journey.
Lastly, I’ll note that this “White Fragility” is a very sensitive topic that I’m not excited to chat about publicly on forums like this. (In part because my comments on this get downvoted a lot, in part because this sort of discussion can easily be used as ammunition later on by anyone interested (against either myself or any of the other commenters who responds)). My identity is clearly public, so there is real risk.
I write blog posts on LessWrong that are far less controversial, and am much more happy to publicly discuss those topics.
I’m really sorry if I hurt or offended you. I assumed that a brief description of where I was at would be preferred to not replying at all. I clearly was incorrect about that.
I disagree with some of your specific implications. I’m fairly sure though that you’d disagree with my responses. I could easily imagine that you’ve already predicted them, well enough, and wouldn’t find them very informative, particularly for what I could write in a few sentences.
This isn’t unusual for me. I try to stay out of almost all online discussion. I have things to do, I’m sure you have things to do as well. Online discussion is costly, and it’s especially costly when people know very little about each other[1], and the conversation topic (White Fragility) is as controversial as this one is.
[1]: I know almost nothing about you. I feel like I’d have a very difficult time feeling comfortable saying things in ways I can predict you’d be receptive to, or things that you wouldn’t actively attack me for. I find that I’ve had a difficult time modeling people online; particularly people who I barely know. This could easily lead to problems of several different kinds. It’s very, very possible that none of this applies to you, but it would take a fair amount of discussion for me to find that out and feel safe with my impressions of you. This also applies for all the other people I don’t know, but who might be watching this conversation or jump in at any point.
That seems like weak evidence. People frequently hate things that don’t really warrant it. For example, lenders provide a service to society, and the use of their service is voluntary. Their rates and terms are constrained by facts of money and risk management that are mostly out of their control. Yet they are still widely despised and have been for a long time.
I agree that it isn’t strong evidence. I should have made my point more explicit. My point is that Ooziegooen mentions the vitriol as if it is evidence that DiAngelo’s argument has value and should be discussed. If anything it’s evidence against that notion (however weak it may be).