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I agree. I think hard classifications in any subject where the classes created aren’t material to the discussion tend to limit the discussion while creating very fertile ground for anti-intellectual arguments and thought terminating accusations.
The truest statement I’ve ever read about racism is that accusations of bigotry are what The Last Psychiatrist called “cognitive kill switches”. No matter what the actual conversation was about, up to and including flavors of ice cream, the minute someone accuses another person of racism, the conversation is now about defending that charge of racism. If I say that vanilla ice cream is racist because it’s white, we are not going to be discussing ice cream but rather the claim that vanilla is racist. This doesn’t generate light, just heat. And further, at least as long as the discussion is about policy issues, you can’t get to the point of actually solving the problems because quite often a proposed solution will be considered racist, or the way the conversation is had is racist, thus it goes unsolved. Police brutality was probably solvable before it got mixed up with BLM. Lots of people were talking about excessive force and looking for better solutions to those problems. But, once policing became a racial issue, simply saying something like “the police are too likely to engage in violence where none is needed” meant silencing blacks. So nothing can be done about it unless it tickles the right people’s fancy.
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