Clinton, first of all--thanks! I have appreciated the opportunity to post on Ed's wonderful blog, but my one wish is that I could have had more critical feedback. After all, I offer nothing as an ex cathedra pronouncement but only as (I hope well-substantiated) opinion.
I reread my two essays and I just cannot see where I made a blanket condemnation or dismissal of social justice as a goal or desideratum. Of course I want social justice, understood in the traditionally liberal terms of equality of opportunity, curtailment of special privileges due to wealth or status, equality or rights under the law, etc. My criticism was directed at the self-appointed and self-righteous champions of social justice who understand that term not as defined by liberalism but in terms of identity politics and "theory." For these latter, social justice is understood not in terms of equality or equity--concepts they regard as vacuous--but in terms of an inversion of power relations. After all, a la Foucault, it is all about power; there is nothing else it could be about.
I recently read someone make an excellent analogy: We all want public safety. That is, we want our police, fire, and ambulance services to function efficiently to serve the well-being of the community. That is an undisputed goal. However, we might have many criticisms of our local Department of Public Safety with respect to how it fails to adequately address these goals. Likewise, I might (and do) support diversity in the faculty of my university. This does not mean that I support all of the goals or policies of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at my university (recently disbanded by order of the Texas State Legislature). For one thing, I think that for a healthy intellectual community, diversity of outlook, ideology, or conviction is more important than diversity of race or ethnicity per se. Further, I might regard some of the policies of the office of DEI are deleterious, such as requiring a "statement" on DEI from all faculty position applicants.
I will ignore all passages where you offer personal admonishment. I never reply to any personal comments made in a public forum. For one thing, you cannot respond to such comments without sounding defensive or angry. For another thing, I just do not care. One of the great things about age is that you care a lot less about what others think of you. There are maybe, a generous estimate, two dozen sentient beings whose opinion of me matters. I care about what my family, friends, and cats think of me, but hardly anybody else.
We may define a "disability" as the diminishment or destruction of a natural faculty or function. One of my best friends in college was blind from birth. He was a brilliant scholar, captain of our college bowl team, and an outstanding musician. He clearly made great use of the gifts he had. Yet he was disabled. He could not see. Perhaps blindness prompted him to develop his intellect and talents in ways that he would not have done had he been sighted. However, this does not mean that blindness is not a disability. Similarly, I had a student in many of my classes who was on the autism spectrum. He was terrific student, making A or A- in all of the classes he took from me. He had insights and could make creative connections that none of my other students could emulate. Nevertheless, he undoubtedly had an impairment in his ability to effectively interact with people in a social situation., and this did create genuine difficulties for him.
I therefore think that it is distorting and unhelpful to insist that the disabled are merely "differently abled" or that they have no problem and the problem is that the rest of us don't respond appropriately to them. Evasion of reality is a bad thing, even if it is motivated by good intentions.
Is it a default assumption on the left that any inequality of outcome must be due to bias? Clearly, it is. How often have we heard it simply taken for granted that, for instance, any inequality in income between men and women must be due to the "glass ceiling" imposed by sexist assumptions and "good ol' boy" networks? However, the recent article by Marc Defant, "A Scientific Perspective on the Patriarchy: The Gender Pay Gap and Unequal Opportunity" in Skeptic magazine (Vol. 29, #2, pp. 60-66) provides copious evidence that the "glass ceiling" is a myth and that continued disparities in income are attributable to many other factors. One can only imagine the howls and shrieks of outrage and horror that this article would elicit from the social justice warriors.
So, thanks for the commentary. I doubt that we will settle much of anything here, but I think we can further the discussion.
I appreciate your response, and I think we are in near-complete agreement, actually. So thank you for further explaining and addressing my concerns.
We both think that the Theorists take it too far. We both agree that disabilities are real, and that they have plusses and minuses. We both agree that objective scientific truth does exist. We both agree that "power" is not what everything is about.
You may be correct that there is a default assumption on the left that racism/sexism/____-ism is the default explanation of disparities. I do it from some, but I just don't travel in those circles or spend any energy worrying about their overwrought ideologies. Because doing the work to bring about social justice is more important that quibbling about percentages.
Regarding your "personal admonishment" policy, I completely understand, and think that is a sensible approach. I only felt so bold as to comment on the issue because you are the one who raised it, in a public forum. Otherwise, like you, I just don't care.
Thanks. Far too many exchanges strain at gnats, and I appreciate you for not doing so. Allies do not have to agree on every point. To insist on agreement on everything is the stance of the fanatic, precisely the mindset you, Ed, Kevin, I and so many others here oppose.
I got some good giggles from reading Defant. No consideration of why female transit workers are less likely than male coworkers to take the overtime hours, or scratching below the fact that women are far more likely than men to leave the workforce to care for family (the secret sauce explaining overtime hours, I'd wager).
It's just that in a world in which men and women are equal women should defer to men and be more willing to stay at home, Nope, nothing to see here at all, just the natural way of things.
& can we talk more about Trump's disability? Any reasonable definition of human functioning ought to include the ability to empathize, capacity for self-reflection,ability to reason ..., between FDR and DJT who was the more disabled?
Even the much-despised Jordan Peterson admits that some of the disparity is due to sexism, but only some. The point is that complex human phenomena have complex causes. Reductionistic thinking of either the left or the right corrupts clear thinking. Uncoerced and, indeed, eminently rational choices by women do make a difference. I robustly affirm some of those choices. For instance, by choosing to go into academe, I consciously chose a career that I would find more intrinsically satisfying than one in which I would earn more money. Hence, I cannot bewail the fact that as a philosophy professor I made less than a hotshot trial lawyer (which I could have been!).
Clinton, first of all--thanks! I have appreciated the opportunity to post on Ed's wonderful blog, but my one wish is that I could have had more critical feedback. After all, I offer nothing as an ex cathedra pronouncement but only as (I hope well-substantiated) opinion.
I reread my two essays and I just cannot see where I made a blanket condemnation or dismissal of social justice as a goal or desideratum. Of course I want social justice, understood in the traditionally liberal terms of equality of opportunity, curtailment of special privileges due to wealth or status, equality or rights under the law, etc. My criticism was directed at the self-appointed and self-righteous champions of social justice who understand that term not as defined by liberalism but in terms of identity politics and "theory." For these latter, social justice is understood not in terms of equality or equity--concepts they regard as vacuous--but in terms of an inversion of power relations. After all, a la Foucault, it is all about power; there is nothing else it could be about.
I recently read someone make an excellent analogy: We all want public safety. That is, we want our police, fire, and ambulance services to function efficiently to serve the well-being of the community. That is an undisputed goal. However, we might have many criticisms of our local Department of Public Safety with respect to how it fails to adequately address these goals. Likewise, I might (and do) support diversity in the faculty of my university. This does not mean that I support all of the goals or policies of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at my university (recently disbanded by order of the Texas State Legislature). For one thing, I think that for a healthy intellectual community, diversity of outlook, ideology, or conviction is more important than diversity of race or ethnicity per se. Further, I might regard some of the policies of the office of DEI are deleterious, such as requiring a "statement" on DEI from all faculty position applicants.
I will ignore all passages where you offer personal admonishment. I never reply to any personal comments made in a public forum. For one thing, you cannot respond to such comments without sounding defensive or angry. For another thing, I just do not care. One of the great things about age is that you care a lot less about what others think of you. There are maybe, a generous estimate, two dozen sentient beings whose opinion of me matters. I care about what my family, friends, and cats think of me, but hardly anybody else.
We may define a "disability" as the diminishment or destruction of a natural faculty or function. One of my best friends in college was blind from birth. He was a brilliant scholar, captain of our college bowl team, and an outstanding musician. He clearly made great use of the gifts he had. Yet he was disabled. He could not see. Perhaps blindness prompted him to develop his intellect and talents in ways that he would not have done had he been sighted. However, this does not mean that blindness is not a disability. Similarly, I had a student in many of my classes who was on the autism spectrum. He was terrific student, making A or A- in all of the classes he took from me. He had insights and could make creative connections that none of my other students could emulate. Nevertheless, he undoubtedly had an impairment in his ability to effectively interact with people in a social situation., and this did create genuine difficulties for him.
I therefore think that it is distorting and unhelpful to insist that the disabled are merely "differently abled" or that they have no problem and the problem is that the rest of us don't respond appropriately to them. Evasion of reality is a bad thing, even if it is motivated by good intentions.
Is it a default assumption on the left that any inequality of outcome must be due to bias? Clearly, it is. How often have we heard it simply taken for granted that, for instance, any inequality in income between men and women must be due to the "glass ceiling" imposed by sexist assumptions and "good ol' boy" networks? However, the recent article by Marc Defant, "A Scientific Perspective on the Patriarchy: The Gender Pay Gap and Unequal Opportunity" in Skeptic magazine (Vol. 29, #2, pp. 60-66) provides copious evidence that the "glass ceiling" is a myth and that continued disparities in income are attributable to many other factors. One can only imagine the howls and shrieks of outrage and horror that this article would elicit from the social justice warriors.
So, thanks for the commentary. I doubt that we will settle much of anything here, but I think we can further the discussion.
I appreciate your response, and I think we are in near-complete agreement, actually. So thank you for further explaining and addressing my concerns.
We both think that the Theorists take it too far. We both agree that disabilities are real, and that they have plusses and minuses. We both agree that objective scientific truth does exist. We both agree that "power" is not what everything is about.
You may be correct that there is a default assumption on the left that racism/sexism/____-ism is the default explanation of disparities. I do it from some, but I just don't travel in those circles or spend any energy worrying about their overwrought ideologies. Because doing the work to bring about social justice is more important that quibbling about percentages.
Regarding your "personal admonishment" policy, I completely understand, and think that is a sensible approach. I only felt so bold as to comment on the issue because you are the one who raised it, in a public forum. Otherwise, like you, I just don't care.
Thanks. Far too many exchanges strain at gnats, and I appreciate you for not doing so. Allies do not have to agree on every point. To insist on agreement on everything is the stance of the fanatic, precisely the mindset you, Ed, Kevin, I and so many others here oppose.
I got some good giggles from reading Defant. No consideration of why female transit workers are less likely than male coworkers to take the overtime hours, or scratching below the fact that women are far more likely than men to leave the workforce to care for family (the secret sauce explaining overtime hours, I'd wager).
It's just that in a world in which men and women are equal women should defer to men and be more willing to stay at home, Nope, nothing to see here at all, just the natural way of things.
& can we talk more about Trump's disability? Any reasonable definition of human functioning ought to include the ability to empathize, capacity for self-reflection,ability to reason ..., between FDR and DJT who was the more disabled?
Even the much-despised Jordan Peterson admits that some of the disparity is due to sexism, but only some. The point is that complex human phenomena have complex causes. Reductionistic thinking of either the left or the right corrupts clear thinking. Uncoerced and, indeed, eminently rational choices by women do make a difference. I robustly affirm some of those choices. For instance, by choosing to go into academe, I consciously chose a career that I would find more intrinsically satisfying than one in which I would earn more money. Hence, I cannot bewail the fact that as a philosophy professor I made less than a hotshot trial lawyer (which I could have been!).
I've heard that internal academic competition/politics can be just as dissatisfying as internal Big Law competition/politics.