In Defense of Intent

[Mlle. Zabzie]

I think that the framing of all of this as “right” and “wrong” and though the lenses developed through either the (common law) civil or criminal justice system is just the wrong frame.  It sets up a dichotomy that I’m not sure is actually helpful. 

I am humble enough to try to acknowledge that part of my humanity is that I am deeply flawed.  I am prideful enough that I wish to recognize and overcome my flaws so that to the greatest extent possible, my impact on my communities, large and small, is on balance, positive.  Sometimes that means that I have to be humble again, and accept that I have taken actions that, whether intentionally or not, cause pain or harm.  And I try to learn from those experiences going forward so that maybe I can make better choices in the future.  Or, in other cases, weigh that harm against different harms, but at least make a knowing decision.  Part of that is that I should listen to those whose frame of reference is different from mine and, with all humility, be willing to learn.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I think that the framing of all of this as “right” and “wrong” and though the lenses developed through either the (common law) civil or criminal justice system is just the wrong frame.  It sets up a dichotomy that I’m not sure is actually helpful. 

I am humble enough to try to acknowledge that part of my humanity is that I am deeply flawed.  I am prideful enough that I wish to recognize and overcome my flaws so that to the greatest extent possible, my impact on my communities, large and small, is on balance, positive.  Sometimes that means that I have to be humble again, and accept that I have taken actions that, whether intentionally or not, cause pain or harm.  And I try to learn from those experiences going forward so that maybe I can make better choices in the future.  Or, in other cases, weigh that harm against different harms, but at least make a knowing decision.  Part of that is that I should listen to those whose frame of reference is different from mine and, with all humility, be willing to learn.  

Beautifully stated.

[ants]

17 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

I’ve seen this kind of thing a few times in the thread and I’m not sure it qualifies as ‘unintentional’. By my own definition, if someone should’ve known better, then there’s intent there. If I took a gun with me everywhere I went and never bothered to learn anything about gun safety, and then an accident happened, I could plead I didn’t ‘intend’ that to happen. But I absolutely did intend to leave the house every day knowing full well I didn’t know what I was supposed to know. The risk I took was fully intentional, just not the outcome. 

So I think if you can ever apply the phrase ‘they should’ve known better’, then there’s intent; intent to continue living your life in ignorance. I don’t think you can apply that to genuine accidents (I trip and fall on a gun concealed in a bush and kill someone, say).

Generally agree with this, negligence isn't intent per se, but absolutely matters when consider culpability.  I think a key area of argument is going to be when distinguishing which of the phrases "they should've known better", "they could've known better", "they had no reason to know that" and "sorry, but you have to live with it" apply.   

The reality is that there are lots of times when people should've known better, and that should absolutely be cut out.  A good example will be many situations in the workplace, where nowadays every employer has a responsibility to ensure their employees do know the lines, the issues, and don't cross them.  Employees who do then should've known better.  I would also say the media, politics and company spokespeople are also in this situation (including twitter for celebrities/politicians).  Anyone taking a public position in these groups has an onus to know what is offensive, and to cut it out.  Protesters would also qualify; if you're shouting about blood and soil at a rally, screw context, you're being racist.  

There are times when they could've known better, but didn't.  Where something is more specific and its fair they didn't know.  A good example would be someone moving countries and not being aware that phrases in the new culture have specific meanings they don't in their own countries.  An example would be some of the anti-semitic comments brought up in the various Labour investigations, which referenced terms I'd never heard of.  Because they often reflected the history of the minority in that country or area.  In these circumstances, harm may have been caused, but it isn't really fair to expect the person to know that.  This does not however give a pass for performing actions to make sure the person isn't aware so they can't do it again in the future.   There will be times when particular phrases cause harm, but due to particular circumstances the person who uses that phrase can rightfully say "it's not reasonable to expect me to have known that".  

Sometimes, it isn't reasonable to be expect they'd take offence.  This could be because most reasonable people (including of that persecuted group) wouldn't consider it offensive, or it is offensive due to individual history or idiosyncrasies.  The reality is there are some people who get offended because (consciously or unconsciously) they like being martyrs, or have a persecution complex.  There are people who will have bad reactions due to very individual histories (such as a particular thing being related to a childhood trauma).  Sometimes its fair that they take offence, sometimes it isn't.  But what separates out this group is that there is no fair way an individual will know what causes the offence.  

And finally, sometimes the persecuted group has to live with it.  The "OK" sign is a good example.  Yes, white supremacists use that symbol, and it sucks.  And when someone uses it in that context, call them out/punish them.  But we're not going to go and stop divers using the symbol.  We're not going to take it out of sign-language and force everyone who uses Auslan to re-learn bits.  We're not going to go and remove swastikas from ancient temples in Asia to make sure someone can't see them.  If someone encounters the symbol in these situations, unfortunately they don't have the right to even ask for people to stop. In these situations, context and intent is crucial, as the phrase/symbol has different meaning in different cultures.  

Now, in the first two we should absolutely try and improve as society, to reduce the number of "could've known better" into "should've known better" and punish those who cause harm who are in the should've known better category (and especially the category I didn't mention, did know better but did it anyway/deliberately).  But any systems we set up have to allow for what is intent, what is negligence, and where the harm caused does not justify a response.  And when we are responding to incidents where harm is caused, we should definitely be first checking/considering which of the groups above it falls into. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

Coke a cocla is forcing its employees to take online training to be less white.

Because white equals racist.

Some following calls: Be less oppressive, be less arrogant, be less apathetic.

Literally Breitbart couldn’t have conjured up better story to get people enraged and the right has been having a field day with it crying “look? We told you the elites want you to feel white guilt!” and credence to the aggressed identity politics of the right, who are hyped on the idea of whites being subjugated as is. 

This seems like the appropriate thread to leave this in.

Um the intent here perhaps may been to quell racism in the workplace. Instead all it probably did was piss people who thought they were getting talked down to personally and made to feel guilty for the color of their skin.

The YouTube commentator makes a point that individual white feeling personally guilty about something is not actually helpful. Institutionalized Racism need be combated by all people because it’s wrong. Individual white people don’t need to play into the stereotype of the white-guilt tripped liberal.

[Varysblackfyre321]

7 hours ago, ants said:

and especially the category I didn't mention, did know better but did it anyway/deliberately).

And this can happen.

And sometimes bad-faith actors will simply try to mask their intent as benign“well we can’t read their mind so we can’t 110% sure their really bigoted. Besides they say they’re not!”

I once even got into a discussion with someone who inferred it’d be unwise to label white people in the west west with 

To be clear I agree with you on Intent does matter in a lot of situations. 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

And this can happen.

And sometimes bad-faith actors will simply try to mask their intent as benign“well we can’t read their mind so we can’t 110% sure their really bigoted. Besides they say they’re not!”

I once even got into a discussion with someone who inferred it’d be unwise to label white people in the west west with 

To be clear I agree with you on Intent does matter in a lot of situations. 

 

Would you agree that being unkind is a poor choice?  Even if the unkindness isn’t intentional?

[Kalbear]

On 2/20/2021 at 6:12 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I do see that point.  

Given that implicit bias is bad, in addition to knowing which implicit bias impacts society shouldn’t we seek to reduce the impact of implicit bias overall?

As you said, this isn’t a zero sum game.

To be really really fucking clear, implicit bias isn't good or bad, it just is. Implicit bias is not particularly bad when, say, seeing a hot-looking thing and not wanting to touch it. Implicit bias is not bad when seeing a growling dog and not wanting to touch that either. There are reasons that our brain and all other mammalian brains evolved to have these shortcuts in place. 

It just so happens that where implicit bias is most problematic is in racism and sexism, and most of that bias is learned behavior that we get from places that probably aren't thinking about it too much. 

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Would you agree that being unkind is a poor choice?  Even if the unkindness isn’t intentional?

Depends on the intent of the unkindness, don't it

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Karlbear said:

Depends on the intent of the unkindness, don't it

Learning to moderate our own behavior when we find out past behavior is unkind whether so that we are no longer unkind is what I’m driving at.

[Kalbear]

41 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Learning to moderate our own behavior when we find out past behavior is unkind whether so that we are no longer unkind is what I’m driving at.

Sometimes the problem is that we weren't unkind enough. 

[Alarich II]

On 2/19/2021 at 7:23 PM, Karlbear said:

No, it means that you should first in the above case focus on helping the mom who got shot. And the people who are impacted by her being shot. And then, maybe, you should focus more on how it came about that a 3 year old was able to shoot his mom. 

Okay, so maybe there's a misunderstanding - of course, in the timeline, you'll have to get help and first and foremost you have to help the victim. This is quite a non-brainer. Pointing fingers while the victim is bleeding out is not really helpful. But my post was not about what our first response to an emergency should be and I'm sorry if you understood it that way. 

My example was meant in the context of guilt, because at some point, the question who is to blame inevitably becomes important (there are a range of possible explanations as to why it is important for humans but most center around the motives of revenge, compensation and behaviour modification). And when we assess guilt, intent is important - more important than impact.

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, Alarich II said:

Okay, so maybe there's a misunderstanding - of course, in the timeline, you'll have to get help and first and foremost you have to help the victim. This is quite a non-brainer. Pointing fingers while the victim is bleeding out is not really helpful. But my post was not about what our first response to an emergency should be and I'm sorry if you understood it that way. 

My example was meant in the context of guilt, because at some point, the question who is to blame inevitably becomes important (there are a range of possible explanations as to why it is important for humans but most center around the motives of revenge, compensation and behaviour modification). And when we assess guilt, intent is important - more important than impact.

Okay. I still fundamentally disagree. Who is to blame is often not a useful question to ask, especially if you care about other people getting better. And it's certainly not a great question to ask as far as the initial conversation goes. I don't care who is to blame if someone does something racist. I care about two major things: helping the person who is harmed by that racist behavior, and secondarily helping the person who is doing this behavior to change their ways. Guilt and blame are useful constructs for things like legal issues and combining with severe harms (because it gets directly into our anger centers and is unfair when someone gets away with doing something bad), but it's not nearly as useful a framework as growing and learning.

[OldGimletEye]

On 2/19/2021 at 1:55 PM, DMC said:

Erm, no.  What we need to stop is deflecting the conversation concerning racial iniquity to some discursive navel-gazing debate between "maxims" of moral philosophy.  We can wax philosophical and even whip out the proverbial intellectual ruler all we want from Plato's virtue to Anselm's Monologion to Hume's is-ought problem to Kant's categorical imperative to J.S. Mill's enlightened utilitarianism - it's still got little to nothing to do with confronting systemic and institutional racism.

Why?  Well, first of all, Robin DiAngelo is not a moral philosopher, she's a sociologist and - more importantly - an educator.  The latter is where her work is coming from - the need to recognize and confront how we all (particularly white people) participate in perpetuating a racist system.  And then learn from it.  That's all!  The fact this is turned into a debate between the precepts of a bunch of old dead white guys would be amusing if it wasn't so sad.  DiAngelo doesn't give a shit about what these philosophers have to say not only because it's not her discipline, but because they don't have much to say about dealing with racism in the first place.  Hell, many if not most were fucking racist as all get-up if not outright white supremacists.

Moreover, DiAngelo readily admits and even emphasizes we all share implicit bias, including implicit racial bias.  As far as I can tell, she's never suggested her findings should be used as a framework for disciplinary action (let alone legal ramifications), and any "moral culpability" you feel when told your actions led to harm in perpetuating/sustaining racial iniquity should simply mean rectifying future behavior.  But instead let's take one example from her book and circle-jerk about consequentialism v intentionalism.

Recently in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/smith-college-race.html

Quote

Student workers were not supposed to use the Tyler cafeteria, which was reserved for a summer camp program for young children. Jackie Blair, a veteran cafeteria employee, mentioned that to Ms. Kanoute when she saw her getting lunch there and then decided to drop it. Staff members dance carefully around rule enforcement for fear students will lodge complaints.

 

Quote

As for Ms. Blair, the cafeteria worker, stress exacerbated her lupus and she checked into the hospital last year.

 

Quote

Ms. Blair applied for an hourly job with a local restaurant. The manager set up a Zoom interview, she said, and asked her: “‘Aren’t you the one involved in that incident?’”

You know, I think if I had been Jackie Blair’s boss, after reviewing the facts of an independent investigation into the matter, I would have found her guilty of doing nothing wrong. And I think I would have told all the little twitter Robespierre’s calling for her head something along the lines of “go eat shit and die”. I would have stood my employee, making clear she didn’t do anything wrong.

Furthermore, I wouldn’t impose anything on her time. I wouldn’t force her to have “courageous conversation”, nor would I impose upon her any requirement to attend a “restorative justice” session, which in this case sound more like struggle session.

That’s what I would have done. And I wouldn’t give one iota of hoot damn if all the “good people” thought I acted wrongly.

I’d like to know what you would have done in that situation. How exactly would you decide what to do with Jackie Blair if she had been your employee. Would your decision depend on whether she was your friend? Would it depend on whether you were having a bad hair day? Would it depend on how you felt on a particular day? Tell us the method you would have used to decide her case.

I sure in the hell wouldn’t want to work for somebody who was inconsistent about how they judge their employees conduct.

You can try to dismiss all this stuff by stating its all about phoney “moral maxims” and the stale old musings about “dead old white guys”, but the issues raised here are not merely an academic exercise. They have real world consequences for people. And I think it rather important that we have a rather clear notion about how we go about deciding these type cases, to both serve justice to those who are victims of racial discrimination and to protect those wrongly accused.

I think we can generally dismiss comments about “dead old white guys” as being the stuff of leftwing hipsterism. The fact of the matter is that DiAngelo herself has been influenced in her thinking (and has so indicated) by people like Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Foucault. Guess what? They are all dead old white guys. So it seems to me what is at dispute here is the set of dead old white guys we should listen too. Accordingly, dismissing certain ideas by leftwing hipsters because they allegedly come from “dead old white guys” sounds about as reputable as an Amway salesman.

In her book, DiAngelo continually emphasizes impact over intent. She seemingly puts no limitations on “impact”. That leaves people like Jackie Blair in the lurch. And DiAngelo doesn’t really explain whether the “impact” only standard should be limited to a particular scope. And frankly, I haven’t heard many on left qualify articulate the proper scope for the “impact” only standard. What is sad here is the left’s generally confused thinking about this matter and lack of recognition that at least, in some context, it can lead to profound unfairness.

DiAngelo is a quack.

The suggestion here that DiAngelo is just a scholar writing within the scope of her field is a bunch of malarkey. For instance she writes:

"American wealth was built on the labor of kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their descendants."

DiAngelo is not an economic historian. Not that I really care that she hasn’t taken one formal academic course, as I’m not really a fan of credentialist bullshit. But, you know she could have at least read the relevant literature in the field. It seems that she is trying to revive the old King Cotton idea, which has little support. If she had read the relevant literature in the field, she would have distinguished between the period before America was founded and the period after. The period after the US was founded, probably not. The period before, well maybe, but for reasons that aren’t likely to immediately intuitive. (See for instance Acemoglu, Johnson, & Robinson, The Rise of Europe). I think at some point I will start a thread about this .

Economic history of course isn’t the only topic that DiAngelo expresses an opinion, that are not in the scope of her field. She gives opinions on psychology, epistemology, the Enlightenment, and the nature of capitalism. 

I think you’re under the impression that DiAngelo is the type of social scientist that formulates theories and then test those theories against experiment. She doesn’t do that. She makes no attempt to test her theory of “White Fragility”. It is all based on her “personal experience”.

She disclaims the idea of objectivity, but then proceeds to make strong objective claims about how the world works. She isn’t the only leftist that does this. How people do this and don’t see the irony and contradictions in their own assertions is beyond me. At this juncture, I’m surprised that rightest haven’t started to dismiss the notion of objectivity for their own ends. They could proclaim for instance the Civil War was fought for other reasons than slavery and then proclaim it doesn’t matter what the evidence is, but that is their “own personal truth” and then throw in for good measure their “lived experiences” to support their case.

The hilarious thing about this whole situation is that DiAngelo and her followers want to piss on the scientific method, but then claim they are the “Party of Science”. Here shortly, the “Party of Science” is going to earn itself about as much mockery as the “Party of Business”.

DiAngelo can observe that unconscious bias exists. I believe that to be true. But, what she cannot state is who has implicit bias and even if they do when or how often that implicit bias manifest itself in a prejudicial act. Nobody knows at this juncture. That pretty much leaves us judging each case on its own particular facts. We have no idea whether people like Jackie Blair acted with prejudice until we examine the particular facts closely.
DiAngelo’s book might have been helpful if it summarized the state of knowledge from psychology and social psychology about implicit bias and in/out group bias. What we get instead is largely a bunch of horseshit theorizing derived from the Frankfurt Critical School (All dead white guys) and Foucault (another dead white guy).

Finally, she presents about zero evidence that her methods work. Remember, she doesn’t do quantative analysis of her own theories. About the only thing we can say about her methods is that they are highly successful in making DiAngelo rich, as she charges about 30,000 per hour. She claims capitalism is inherently racists, though its not clear to me how socialism wouldn’t be racist if unconscious bias exist. By her own theories, she has no problem getting rich from racism, the hypocrite.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

@OldGimletEye

I do see what you are saying but aren’t many generalist examinations of history done via anicdote to appeal to wider audiences?  Getting bogged down in statistics can turn off many readers who are not academics.

[OldGimletEye]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

@OldGimletEye

I do see what you are saying but aren’t many generalist examinations of history done via anicdote to appeal to wider audiences?  Getting bogged down in statistics can turn off many readers who are not academics.

I don't require a general history to give details about cliometrics or econometrics. I would expect, however, the statement to be accurate and give the proper context.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I don't require a general history to give details about cliometrics or econometrics. I would expect, however, the statement to be accurate and give the proper context.

I do see that.  What I’m inquiring about is the criticism of “personal experience” aka anicdote.  For example I’m reading Simon Winchester’s book Land: How The Desire For Ownership Shaped The Modern World.  It is ment for general readership.  It is not a scholarly work.  

While it does offer some statistical information Winchester relies primarily on anicdote and storytelling to keep the reader engaged.  Is that problematic if a book is intended for general readership as I presume White Fragility is?

 

[OldGimletEye]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I do see that.  What I’m inquiring about is the criticism of “personal experience” aka anicdote.  For example I’m reading Simon Winchester’s book Land: How The Desire For Ownership Shaped The Modern World.  It is ment for general readership.  It is not a scholarly work.  

While it does offer some statistical information Winchester relies primarily on anicdote and storytelling to keep the reader engaged.  Is that problematic if a book is intended for general readership as I presume White Fragility is?

 

It depends on whether the idea being asserted is a theory that purports to explain a social phenomena, I think.

[Larry of the Lawn]

explain to me how this is wrong:

Quote

American wealth was built on the labor of kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their descendants

especially since she says "descendants".  

[Larry of the Lawn]

also kind of hilarious that you use the Smith college example because from what I've seen most leftists don't support what happened at Smith at all.  

[OldGimletEye]

3 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

also kind of hilarious that you use the Smith college example because from what I've seen most leftists don't support what happened at Smith at all.  

Of course not. Except when they are demanding Jackie Blair's head.