In Defense of Intent

[polishgenius]

1 minute ago, Ephraim'sFruit said:

It is a bad thing to be called racist. You can get a mob angry very quickly if it suspects racism. Of course people are going to not want to be that.

 

 

Obviously it's a bad thing to be called racist. That's because being racist is bad. So when people call you out on it one should first and foremost listen to the accusation and see if there's a point to it. If there isn't then fight your corner but so many times there is.

And if we're using 'staving off the mob' as an excuse, refusing to acknowledge it is far more likely to get them riled up than going 'my bad I didn't realise/wasn't thinking I'll stop doing that from now on'.

 

[Ephraim'sFruit]

Ideally we dont want mob rule (hopefully)

The mob thing isnt an excuse its very real and very dangerous. I watched it right outside my door for 2 straight weeks this summer. 

The amount of violence and destruction i saw will haunt me for the rest of my days.

 

 

[Kalbear]

26 minutes ago, Ephraim'sFruit said:

Ideally we dont want mob rule (hopefully)

The mob thing isnt an excuse its very real and very dangerous. I watched it right outside my door for 2 straight weeks this summer. 

The amount of violence and destruction i saw will haunt me for the rest of my days.

 

 

Oh no not the haunting

[Kalbear]

Gonna go out on a limb and say the violence and destruction maybe might have had less to do with calling someone a racist and more to do with watching a police officer murder someone 

But yeah, being called a racist is super bad too

[Ephraim'sFruit]

13 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

 

But yeah, being called a racist is super bad too

It is super bad. I saw people being violently attacked over it. Its very bad. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

That Time I Dropped an N-Bomb, or Haunted by Accusations of Racism and The Inevitable Violent Following Hordes

[Mlle. Zabzie]

So, I’m kind of fascinated why this thread is still limping along.  It seems like its topic has evolved to “exactly how $hitty can I be to my fellow human being without earning social opprobrium.”  Easy answer:  don’t be $hitty.  And yeah, sometimes things happen where the story isn’t as simple as it is reported/seems.  Journalists have biases.  But, if you are trying to figure out how to be a better person, have a little empathy, listen, try to be open to criticism and not be defensive and strive, in the words of a favorite household movie, “to do the next right thing.”  Is this going to be perfect?  NO!  Are some people still going to feel hurt from time to time?  YES! Is that ok?  YES, provided that ALL involved continue to try to evolve.  Build your community.  Love your neighbor.  This isn’t that complicated.

[Heartofice]

One thing about these conversations that always stands out is that the usual characterisation is that it is someone that has said something shitty and that they didn't realise what they said was shitty, or racist or offensive, and that what needs to happen is that they just need to be educated or think a lot harder about what they say in the future.

That applies to some cases, but at the same time one of the major problems I think we have as a society is that we now how have the entire world talking to each other, and assuming that everyone has the same background, perspectives and understanding of the world as everyone else. That simply isn't the case and I think this often leads a lot of miscommunication. 

Add to this that quite often there isn't an ounce of good faith when it comes to interpretation of what people are saying, that it's much easier to jump to the worst possible interpretation than to actually try and get people to clarify and it all adds up to a lot of trauma.

I really do think intent and context matters, especially in regards to language, and I think we are moving in a direction where that is becoming less and less important, where you can take anything anyone says and remove it's context, infer your own meaning and spread it around the internet, wrecking peoples lives at the same time. 

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

One thing about these conversations that always stands out is that the usual characterisation is that it is someone that has said something shitty and that they didn't realise what they said was shitty, or racist or offensive, and that what needs to happen is that they just need to be educated or think a lot harder about what they say in the future.

That applies to some cases, but at the same time one of the major problems I think we have as a society is that we now how have the entire world talking to each other, and assuming that everyone has the same background, perspectives and understanding of the world as everyone else. That simply isn't the case and I think this often leads a lot of miscommunication. 

Add to this that quite often there isn't an ounce of good faith when it comes to interpretation of what people are saying, that it's much easier to jump to the worst possible interpretation than to actually try and get people to clarify and it all adds up to a lot of trauma.

I really do think intent and context matters, especially in regards to language, and I think we are moving in a direction where that is becoming less and less important, where you can take anything anyone says and remove it's context, infer your own meaning and spread it around the internet, wrecking peoples lives at the same time. 

 

I would put it totally differently.  There is a difference between how something feels to someone and whether the something itself should be changed.  That is, as you say we each bring our own experiences to the table and our feelings can be valid and validated, EVEN IF THEY DO NOT AND SHOULD NOT CHANGE THE OUTCOME IN EVERY PARTICULAR CASE.  Kal’s example of an ID requirement to enter a building is a great example.  It might make someone feel uncomfortable, and we can take a hot second to validate that they might be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t and shouldn’t change the ID requirement which is (hopefully) a neutral requirement with a good reason behind it.  Confirm it is being applied neutrally and evenly and voila you are done!  Again this is all people not liking to confront the fact that they might be making someone uncomfortable.

The twitter wars are a different issue.  I will say that one thing I have learned (and is crucial in my profession) is to be thoughtful and judicious about what and how I write.  The “e” in email stands for “eternal”.

[OldGimletEye]

On 3/3/2021 at 6:21 PM, larrytheimp said:

Just because the US economy as a whole may have grown faster without slavery doesn't mean that white wealth wasn't built on the labor of the enslaved and their descendants.  You're using a very narrow interpretation of that statement.  How about black labor in the US post civil war?  Just because 100% of white wealth wasn't stolen from black people doesn't make that statement wrong, all you've demonstrated is that slavery held back the southern economy.  

The link you provided also says this : 

Re: Smith

1. If US would have been wealthier without slavery, it is rather hard to maintain that the US wealth was built on slavery.
2. At no point did DiAngelo try to qualify her statement. She didn’t use language such as “in part”, “partly”, or “to some extent”. She simply asserted that US wealth was built on slavery. No matter how she expressed it, if slavery tended to act as long term economic drag, then her statement ranges somewhere between “extremely dubious” to “outright false”.
3. Sure Southern plantation owners got rich. Nobody would deny that. We have known since 1958 that holding slaves was profitable, since Conrad & Meyer made the first empirical estimates of the returns to holding slaves. Subsequent research in the 60s and 70s confirmed Conrad’s & Meyer’s finding. Interestingly, objective quantative research showed slave holding was profitable, yet we now how a slew of left wing characters saying objectivity is bullshit (except of course when they are making claims about how the world works).

4. Between the periods of about 1870-1912 and the periods of 1947-1999, GDP per capita growth was about 2.2%. It is highly unlikely this occurred because about 87% of the population was able to increasingly exploit about 13% of the population. Moreover, discriminating against individuals and putting them in lower wage occupations, when they could be more productive is likely to be a drag on growth. And certainly, denying them human capital investments is also likely to act as a drag.

I think you are under the impression because some people get rich from some economic activity, that must mean that society as whole gets wealthier. But, that is not necessarily true. It’s like saying because some people get rich from monopolies or from rent seeking, then society as a whole is better off. But, monopolies don’t make society better off. They generally make it poorer, even though they cause some people to get wealthy. And while Conrad & Meyer found slavery to be profitable, they were careful to emphasize that didn’t mean slavery was an efficient mode of production.

And you’re distorting what Karl Smith said. Smith says:
 

Quote

“The reality is that cotton played a relatively small role in the long-term growth of the U.S. economy. The economics of slavery were probably detrimental to the rise of U.S. manufacturing and almost certainly toxic to the economy of the South. In short: The U.S. succeeded in spite of slavery, not because of it.”

 

Quote

Even more telling, after the Civil War and the loss of slave labor, U.S. production rapidly recovered.

 

On 3/3/2021 at 6:21 PM, larrytheimp said:

all you've demonstrated is that slavery held back the southern economy.  

I’m not sure what you think you are arguing here. Indeed, on its face it seems that this supports my argument. In order to make your point here serviceable, from your point of  view, I’ll have to add an assumption. I’ll assume that what you mean here is something like “southern losses were simply made up by northern gains”. Or in other words, if the south had developed differently, without slavery, then northern gains would have been completely offset by Southern gains, leaving he net result around 0. But, this is dubious line of reasoning, akin to Trump’s theories of free trade, which asserts that if two countries engage in trade, then it must be the case that one countries gains are another countries losses. That is generally just not true. Both countries can benefit, largely because of increasing specialization by both countries.
If slavery had been eliminated at the start, it is probably true that certain industries that were located in the North, might have developed in the South. The industries that would have developed in each region would have depended on each regions comparative advantage or relative factor endowments. That does not imply that one region’s gains would be another region’s losses. Each region would have become a bit more specialized and the net gain for both regions would have increased.

Finally, if slavery is the engine of economic growth of leftist imaginations, then they have a number of historical and empirical phenomena they need to be explain, like:
1. Why was sustained economic growth per capita a relatively recent phenomenon? Slavery was around for a long time before we observe sustained GDP per capita growth.
2. Why didn’t US GDP growth just fall of a cliff, after the Civil War?
3. Why didn’t Brazil end up richer than the US?
 

On 3/3/2021 at 6:21 PM, larrytheimp said:

How would you have handled Jackie Blair's situation?  I am genuinely curious.  It's pretty easy to see what Smith did poorly.  What should have happened?

In a prior post, I thought I unequivocally and unapologetically expressed what I would have done in the situation. But, I will go through it again.

There is a certain sort of person that things they can do the old Texas two step around the issue by belching out a word salad of all the right buzzwords. This sort of person, evidently, thinks that by saying all the right buzzwords they can maintain an appearance of being a “good” person, when in fact they are nothing but a sniveling two-faced coward looking to save their own hide, at the expense of their employees. This person is great at spouting off buzzwords, but terrible at making specific judgements about individual acts. This chicken shit sort of person is unfit to sit in judgement of others.

If my employees do something wrong, I will correct it. If they did nothing wrong, then I will stand by them, come hell or high water.

Under the facts, of the Smith case, I would be quite clear that the employees did not thing wrong. I would make public statements to that effect. I would not require them to attend any sort of “restorative justice” session or impose any requirement on their time. I would require them to do nothing that might appear that they were just “a little bit guilty”. I wouldn’t give a damn what leftist knuckleheads had to say about the matter, excepting of course the “numerous leftist in the Niagra Falls area” that objected to the employees treatment. Any negotiation with an ACLU lawyer would be considered dead upon arrival if such negotiation did not make quite clear the employees were not at fault.

The only concession I might make is that if there is any blame to be had, it is mine and mine alone and it is not the responsibility of the employees. The employees followed university procedures, which I would consider being tantamount to following directions from me. Only a chickenshit coward would give his employees an order or direction, and then when the employees followed it and things didn’t pan out the way envisioned, would turn around and try to blame the employee. I would not try to slime my way out of the situation by taking about “reconciliation and healing”, like that sorry ass university president did.
 

[Larry of the Lawn]

Ok, if you want to be absolute and completely pedantic about the slavery statement, sure, she's wrong.  

I'm not arguing, and have not been arguing, that anything you said about the economics of slavery is incorrect.  I'm saying you're fighting a strawman.  DiAngelo isn't arguing about some Gordon Wood shit.  She's talking about white privilege and white fragility.  She's saying that slavery and it's after effects created an economy that has always favored white people.

I think we both realize, and any reasonable person reading it, that it's in the context of white privilege and that American wealth is a stand-in for "white wealth"- the whole point being white people are better of than black people economically because of slavery.  

Only a very narrow reading devoid of context would interpret that statement the way you have.  Why would she be talking about the size of the US economy and growth as a whole?

Does DiAngelo know that slavery was a net negative for the US economy?  Maybe, maybe not, but it doesn't even matter, because it's not pertinent to the topic.  She's talking about white privilege, and why black people don't start out on equal footing with white people in America.  Do the the economics of slavery and Jim Crow have anything to do with that?  Of course they do!  But yes, literally, and beyond this topic, you're right.  

re:Smith

Yeah, the school did a very shitty job once the administration got involved.  They should have made it more clear that Blair did nothing wrong, and wasn't even involved.  

Again, though, it's not like Blair was ever accused of anything, or punished for anything.  An incident she was present in the building for was investigated.  The worst thing that happened to her was an accusation that turned out to not be true- and if you read the actual statements, the student (who was also an employee, btw) never accused Blair of calling the cops on her.  She posted her name and picture and said Blair probably knows what happened and who called.  That's sucks, but it's not Robin DiAngelo's fault.  The school completely fucked up.  

What's worse, calling the cops on a student / employee for eating their lunch and hanging out or being assumed by the public to have maybe done something racist?

I'm just not seeing the connection between your reading of DiAngelo and what happened at Smith.

 

 

 

 

[DMC]

5 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

If US would have been wealthier without slavery, it is rather hard to maintain that the US wealth was built on slavery.

Er..what?  This is absurd logic.  To try to take the politics out of it, this is like saying Pepsi may have made a lot of money off their cola formula, but since they would have made more money if they had Coke's formula, you can't maintain they made money off their own.  Exploring counterfactuals doesn't change the fact that the southern plantation economy - and the wealth accrued therein - was obviously built on slavery.

As for her not qualifying her statement, this is rather obviously making a mountain out of a molehill.  Moreover, as larry said, you're clearly taking her statement out of context and applying it to an argument she never was making.  I mean, if I contend Beta 1 caused y, no constructive criticism is going to attack my credibility because I didn't qualify the statement that y is also caused by other factors like Beta 2, 3, and 4.  Unless the critic has an axe to grind, which clearly seems to be the case here.

I don't know much about DiAngelo and am not really interested in defending her credentials.  However, I do know Maya Sen.  She certainly is not a quack and her methods are inarguably well founded, plus she's an all-around awesome person.  Here's what she has to say about the legacy of slavery - which seems to be much closer to DiAngelo's point concerning the economic effect of slavery:

Quote

To explain our results, we instead propose a theory of the historical persistence of political attitudes.  The evidence suggests that regional differences in contemporary white attitudes in part trace their origins to the late slave period and the time period after its collapse, with prior work suggesting that the fall of slavery was a cataclysmic event that undermined Southern whites’ political and economic power.  For example, Du Bois (1935), Foner (2011), and Key (1949), among others, have argued that the sudden enfranchisement of blacks was politically threatening to whites, who for centuries had enjoyed exclusive political power.  In addition, the emancipation of Southern slaves undermined whites’ economic power by abruptly increasing black wages, raising labor costs, and threatening the viability of the Southern plantation economy (Alston and Ferrie 1993; Ransom and Sutch 2001).  Taken in tandem with massive preexisting racial hostility throughout the South, these political and economic changes gave Southern Black Belt elites an incentive to further promote existing anti-black sentiment in their local communities by encouraging violence toward blacks and racist attitudes and policies (Roithmayr 2010).  This amplified the differences in white racial hostility between former slaveholding areas and non-slaveholding areas and intensified racially conservative political attitudes within the Black Belt.  These have been passed down locally, one generation to the next.

We provide empirical support for this mechanism by showing that areas of the South that were the earliest to eliminate the political and economic incentives for anti-black violence—for example, by adopting new technologies, such as tractors, that reduced the demand for black farm labor— are also the areas in which slavery’s long-term effects have most attenuated.  [622, emphasis mine.]

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 2/21/2021 at 9:20 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

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

I think you’d need to define kindness and even then perhaps it’d matter what is the context.

If you’re giving lodging to a neo-nazi because you like his rhetoric, you’re being kind to a nazi but I’d see you acting repugnantly.

If you save a neo-nazi’s life because they’re a person then I can see that as a good choice.

[Altherion]

On 3/4/2021 at 12:16 AM, polishgenius said:

And if we're using 'staving off the mob' as an excuse, refusing to acknowledge it is far more likely to get them riled up than going 'my bad I didn't realise/wasn't thinking I'll stop doing that from now on'.

You would think so, but from fairly extensive personal experience as well as observations, this is simply not the case with the politically correct. I am by nature extremely non-confrontational. That is, I would much rather apologize even when it's not obvious to me what I did wrong so as to avoid a fight. However, with the politically correct, the overwhelmingly likely reaction to "My bad" is "Aha! I knew you were up to no good and now I have proof. And furthermore..." In other words, they will keep attacking you until you either run or fight.

This is why about a decade ago, I decided that I will consciously resist apologizing unless I'm sure I did something I consider wrong. This way, if there's a fight, at least it will be on the ground of my choosing.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Altherion said:

You would think so, but from fairly extensive personal experience as well as observations, this is simply not the case with the politically correct. I am by nature extremely non-confrontational. That is, I would much rather apologize even when it's not obvious to me what I did wrong so as to avoid a fight. However, with the politically correct, the overwhelmingly likely reaction to "My bad" is "Aha! I knew you were up to no good and now I have proof. And furthermore..." In other words, they will keep attacking you until you either run or fight.

If you're getting into disagreements where others ask/expect you to apologize with such frequency, I'd suggest that's a you problem.

[Ephraim'sFruit]

5 hours ago, Altherion said:

You would think so, but from fairly extensive personal experience as well as observations, this is simply not the case with the politically correct. I am by nature extremely non-confrontational. That is, I would much rather apologize even when it's not obvious to me what I did wrong so as to avoid a fight. However, with the politically correct, the overwhelmingly likely reaction to "My bad" is "Aha! I knew you were up to no good and now I have proof. And furthermore..." In other words, they will keep attacking you until you either run or fight.

This is why about a decade ago, I decided that I will consciously resist apologizing unless I'm sure I did something I consider wrong. This way, if there's a fight, at least it will be on the ground of my choosing.

i was specifically talking about the riots last summer. What im talking about is seeing multiple instances of peoples heads being kicked into concrete at the mere accusation of racism. With the only justification being stuff like "the system is racist" and "he probably said the n-word".

There was no "asking for apologies". These were violent goons looking for something that might could possibly seem racist so they could attack it.

These are not good people, in fact very terrible people and I wouldnt trust a single one of them or their cheerleaders to assess how much of a problem I or anybody else is.

 

[Kalbear]

12 minutes ago, Ephraim'sFruit said:

i was specifically talking about the riots last summer. What im talking about is seeing multiple instances of peoples heads being kicked into concrete at the mere accusation of racism. With the only justification being stuff like "the system is racist" and "he probably said the n-word".

There was no "asking for apologies". These were violent goons looking for something that might could possibly seem racist so they could attack it.

These are not good people, in fact very terrible people and I wouldnt trust a single one of them or their cheerleaders to assess how much of a problem I or anybody else is.

 

Well yeah, we all watched the police last year. I don't know if I'd call those police violent goons - that seems pretty harsh - but yeah, the police REALLY got out of hand

 

[Altherion]

5 hours ago, DMC said:

If you're getting into disagreements where others ask/expect you to apologize with such frequency, I'd suggest that's a you problem.

The frequency is actually not very large; that's why the sample size has to be over a period of a couple of decades.

[Larry of the Lawn]

10 hours ago, Ephraim'sFruit said:

i was specifically talking about the riots last summer. What im talking about is seeing multiple instances of peoples heads being kicked into concrete at the mere accusation of racism. With the only justification being stuff like "the system is racist" and "he probably said the n-word".

There was no "asking for apologies". These were violent goons looking for something that might could possibly seem racist so they could attack it.

These are not good people, in fact very terrible people and I wouldnt trust a single one of them or their cheerleaders to assess how much of a problem I or anybody else is.

 

In the absence of any evidence, this is 100% unadulterated bullshit.

[OldGimletEye]

On 3/8/2021 at 6:15 PM, DMC said:

Er..what?  This is absurd logic.  To try to take the politics out of it, this is like saying Pepsi may have made a lot of money off their cola formula, but since they would have made more money if they had Coke's formula, you can't maintain they made money off their own.  Exploring counterfactuals doesn't change the fact that the southern plantation economy - and the wealth accrued therein - was obviously built on slavery.

As for her not qualifying her statement, this is rather obviously making a mountain out of a molehill.  Moreover, as larry said, you're clearly taking her statement out of context and applying it to an argument she never was making.  I mean, if I contend Beta 1 caused y, no constructive criticism is going to attack my credibility because I didn't qualify the statement that y is also caused by other factors like Beta 2, 3, and 4.  Unless the critic has an axe to grind, which clearly seems to be the case here.

No not really. If you say , "American wealth was built on slave labor" and turns out that in reality, it was a drag on American wealth, well then that is not really an accurate statement.  At best, it is very misleading. As Karl Smith says, American economic development happened in spite of, not because of slavery.

A more apt example would be if about 70% of Pepsi Co's sales were based on the Coca-Cola formula and 30% were based on the Pepsi formula and then some Pepsi Co. executive comes out says,"Our wealth was built on the Pepsi Formula". Well, I guess that's sort of true, but really the statement is misleading. The wealth was built on soft drink sales and not specifically with soft drinks made from using the Pepsi formula.

And it is not making a mountain out of a molehill because DiAngelo's views are right in line with many on left's views about the role of slavery in American economic development. Edward Baptiste tried to make the assertion work, and then proceeded to propose on of the dumbest theories to ever come out of academia.

DiAngelo draws a lot on Critical Race Theory. And CRT people pretty much disagree with the old Marxist analysis of slavery. Where as Marxist would say, planter elites used racism as a wedge to divide the working classes, CRT people would say, well actually the white working classes were acting in their own interest. And to some extent, that is how I interpret DiAngelo's comment and believe that is what she meant. For a long time the Marxist take was probably the more common view as expressed by LBJ when he told Bill Moyer the reason for racism, which was you could rob a mind blind as long as you told him he was better than a minority. But, that view as seemingly fallen out of favor on the left.

On 3/8/2021 at 6:15 PM, DMC said:

I don't know much about DiAngelo and am not really interested in defending her credentials.  However, I do know Maya Sen.  She certainly is not a quack and her methods are inarguably well founded, plus she's an all-around awesome person.  Here's what she has to say about the legacy of slavery - which seems to be much closer to DiAngelo's point concerning the economic effect of slavery:

1. If Sen is suggesting that the end of slavery was bad economically for everyone, excepting the newly freed slaves, then she is most likely wrong about that. If you’re suggesting that is what Sen’s paper means, then you are most likely wrong about that.

2. From what we know about the long run effects of coerced labor, it results in lower public and private capital investment, harms institutional growth, and harms technological growth. These negative effects most likely will economically harm almost everyone (except the elites) in a region that practiced slavery. Frankly Sen should have distinguished between the old planter elite and everyone else.

3. Sen writes:

Quote

In addition, the emancipation of Southern slaves undermined whites’ economic power by abruptly increasing black wages, raising labor costs, and threatening the viability of the Southern plantation economy (Alston and Ferrie 1993; Ransom and Sutch 2001)

Rising black wages because of emancipation might have been economically bad for planters but it wouldn't have been bad for small famers of cotton both white and black. If slave holding planters were depressing cotton prices, fewer small farmers would have gotten into the cotton growing business. As soon the old planting class is removed, cotton prices rise. And then cotton farming looks more promising to smaller farmers. The small time farmers move in, start producing cotton, and the price begins to decrease. In fact, this what historically seems to have happened as noted by Smith. He wrote:

Quote

Even more telling, after the Civil War and the loss of slave labor, U.S. production rapidly recovered. By 1871 the U.S. had exceeded its 1859 levels of cotton exports and was just short of its 1860 record, despite competition from India.

4. I noticed Sen cited Richard Sutch. I’m familiar with his work. In his paper, The Economics of Slavery: The Cliometrics debate, Sutch wrote:

Quote

The life-cycle model not only helps explain the lack of Southern manufacturing investment, it also offers a partial explanation for the puzzling upward jump in aggregate savings rates that appeared following the Civil War. With emancipation, a significant fraction of the saleable wealth in the South evaporated. The value of slaves in 1860 was nearly 60 percent of the total capital invested in agriculture and completely overshadowed the physical capital invested in Southern manufacturing. When the wealth represented by slaves disappeared, the wealth-income relationship was catapulted far out of equilibrium. In response the savings rate accelerated. 
 

Sutch also wrote:

Quote

Simply put, the slave South did not establish the educational, social, and financial institutions upon which to promote innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic development. The South’s impulse to invest and expand the stock of wealth was satisfied by the increase in the slave population. Slavery denied the South even the potential for modern economic growth.

5. Sen interestingly cites a whole bunch of papers that generally show slavery is bad for economic development. She writes:

Quote

Dell (2010), for example, shows that a colonial forced labor system in Peru and Bolivia led to lower levels of modern-day household consumption and childhood growth. Acemoglu et al. (2012) find that the use of slaves in the colonial gold mines of Colombia predicts modern-day poverty, reduced school enrollment, and decreased vaccination rates. Nunn and Wantchekon (2011) show that Africans whose ancestors were targeted by the slave trade have higher levels of mistrust today than other Africans. Within the United States, O’Connell (2012) demonstrates that areas of the American South that had high numbers of slaves have greater economic inequality between blacks and whites today. Similarly, Lagerlöf (2005) and Nunn (2008) find a negative relationship between the prevalence of slavery and income in the American South, and Mitchener and McLean (2003) find a negative relationship between slavery and modern-day labor productivity.

I have already cited Nunn’s 2008 paper. Here is what Mitchener & Mclean have to say in their paper:

Quote

Consistent with historians’ emphasis on institutional impediments, we find that the legacy of slavery has a persistently pernicious effect on productivity levels well into the 20th century. From 1880 to 1940, slavery had a significant effect on state labor productivity; states with slave populations of 10% had productivity levels that were on average 14 to 20 percent lower than those without slaves over this period. This finding is also consistent with cross-country studies that have emphasized the role of institutions in explaining differences in incomes

6. And to quote your quote of Sen:

Quote

We provide empirical support for this mechanism by showing that areas of the South that were the earliest to eliminate the political and economic incentives for anti-black violence—for example, by adopting new technologies, such as tractors, that reduced the demand for black farm labor— are also the areas in which slavery’s long-term effects have most attenuated. 

So in other words, where labor wages aren’t suppressed, because of coercive tactics, firms are more likely to invest in capital and technology? What a shocker.

I think your trying to twist Sen's article to support DiAngelo's claim.  Sen’s article doesn’t really support the idea that slavery was economically beneficial to everyone in the South, except the enslaved, if that is what you are trying to claim. If DiAngelo's point was that slavery increased inequality between whites and blacks and harmed the descendants of the enslaved, she could have easily wrote that, and those observations wouldn't be controversial.

I also noticed that Sen proposed some theories and then went out and collected some data and tested her theories using a statistical model. Sounds like one of those “problematic epistemologies” that DiAngelo talks about. If Sen’s findings agree with DiAngelo then I guess they are good to go, but if they don’t, then evidently objectivity becomes “problematic”, maybe they are even “epistemic oppression”. 

And to be clear, DiAngelo's statements about American economic development aren't the only statements I take issue with.