Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 102
- 2
What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I read them both during the big racial politics dust-up of 2020 and 2021, and my feeling was basically:
White Fragility is pretty much nonsense. There's very little in it that constitutes any form of argument. Most of it is accounts of DiAngelo's training sessions interleved with radical assertions. I have very little to say about it. What's most striking about it to me is how non-constructive it is. It contains zero actual proposals for how to combat racism, or fight for equality, or improve society - there is no praxis or theory of action. There isn't even any discernible interest in those questions. There's a single passage where she describes responding to someone who asked her "what to do about racism and white fragility?", and her answer is to suggest that the problem is that the questioner doesn't already know, and to exhort the questioner to "take the initiative and find out on your own". DiAngelo passes the buck! White Fragility is not a book interested in solutions. It is a book interested in deepening one's sense that there is a problem, but that's all.
How to be an Anti-Racist, on the other hand, is a book with exactly one idea. That idea is roughly: all races are equal, any inequities or differences in outcome between racial groups are therefore the products of racist policies, and as such any inequities or differences in outcome between racial groups must be remediated by anti-racist policies. There's a bit more to this than I would quibble (in particular his definition of race, "a power construct of collected or merged difference that lives socially", is far too broad; by Kendi's definition, genders are races, civic nationalities are races, being a member of a golf club is a race!), but that's the core idea. Different outcomes between racial groups is definitionally racist. Anti-racism is equalising outcomes between racial groups. Then the rest of HtbaAR is extraordinarily padded - a combination of Kendi describing his own (not very interesting) life story, and then Kendi repeating his definition over and over in increasingly tedious ways (biological racism, behavioural racism, colourism, class racism, space racism, gended racism, queer racism, etc.). His definition of racism is "a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalises racial inequities", and then he just replays it over and over.
(I don't think his definition is circular, for what it's worth. The above definitions of 'race' and 'racist' make that clear. A 'race' is "a power construct of collected or merged difference that lives socially", a 'racist policy' is "any measure that produces or sustains inequity between racial groups", and a 'racist idea' is "any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another in any way". 'Racism' is adequately defined in these terms. The problematic definition is that of 'race' itself, which as noted I think is way too broad. In practice Kendi states that there are six races in the US - Latinx, Asian, African/Black, European/White, Indigenous, and Middle Eastern - and never considers that his definition might apply to more than these groups, or that you could slice the pie in many other ways.)
The frustrating thing about HtbaAR for me was the way that this idea is only ever asserted, never really discussed or argued for. Kendi never, for instance, says, "Some people might be doubtful of this definition, but here's why I think this definition best captures what we mean by racism and is the best basis for further work to produce justice in society." There are any number of obvious questions we might ask about his definition (have overachieving groups done some kind of injustice? if so, how? if racist policies are those that increase inequities between groups and anti-racist policies decrease inequities, doesn't that mean that it might often be impossible to judge whether a policy is racist or anti-racist before implementing it? if intent is irrelevant, does it mean that a benevolently-intended policy might be racist, and a malevolently-intended policy might be anti-racist?), but he never attempts to answer any such question, even the most obvious.
Ultimately I think my take is that DiAngelo is an opportunistic grifter, and Kendi is a well-meaning but unfortunately not very clever academic. If I were a professor and Kendi were one of my undergraduates, I'd commend his passion but tell him he has a lot more work to do to precisify his thinking.
More options
Context Copy link