You’re the Racist!

[image 1 (link #1)]In response to a video I did on D&D and racism2, a viewer
posted “yet another racist feeling guilt trying to project their racism onto
others, but this one attempting to use logic and his “appeal to superiority”
with his college knowledge…” I do not know whether this was sincere criticism or
trolling, but the tactics are common enough to be worth addressing.

There is a lot going on in that single sentence, which is itself a rhetorical
tactic analogous to throwing matches in a dry forest. Throwing matches is quick
and easy; putting out the fires takes time and effort. But if they are not
addressed, the “match thrower” can claim they have scored points. This creates a
nasty dilemma: if you take time to respond to these matches, you are using way
more time than the attacker, so even if you “win” you “win” little because they
have invested so little in the attacks. If you do not respond, then they can
claim victory. While this would also be an error on their part since a lack of
response does not prove that a claim is correct, it could give them a rhetorical
“victory.”

The references to using logic and “college knowledge” seem to be a tactic I have
addressed before, which is the “argument against expertise.” It occurs when a
person rejects a claim because it is made by an authority/expert and has the
following form:

Premise 1: Authority/expert A makes claim C.

Conclusion: Claim C is false.

While experts can be wrong, to infer that an expert is wrong because they are an
expert is absurd and an error in reasoning. This can be illustrated by a person
concluding that there must be nothing wrong with their car solely because an
expert mechanic said it had an engine issue. That would be bad reasoning.

The person is also using an ad hominem and a straw man attack. In the video I
explicitly note that I am giving my credentials to establish credibility and
note that I should not be believed simply because I am an expert in philosophy
and gaming: my arguments stand or fall on their own merit. As such, the “appeal
to superiority” is unfounded but provides an excellent example of combining a
straw man with an ad hominem. These are common bad faith tactics, and it is wise
to know them for what they are. I now turn to the focus of this essay, which is
the tactic of accusing critics of racism of being the real racists.3

The easy part to address is the reference to guilt arising from being racist.
Even someone is motivated by guilt, it is irrelevant to the truth of their
claims and this is just another ad hominem attack. As far as projecting racism,
this is just part of the claim that the critic of racism must be racist. While
the accusation of racism can be seen as a rhetorical device, there does seem to
be an implied argument behind it and some take the time to develop an argument
for their accusation of racism. Let us look at some versions of this argument:

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of racism or racist R.

Conclusion: Person A is a racist because of C.

While not a specific named fallacy, the conclusion does not follow from the
premise. Consider the same sort of logic, which is obviously flawed:

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or a corrupt
person.

Conclusion: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.

Being critical of corruption or a corrupt person does not make you corrupt.
While a corrupt person could be critical of corruption or another corrupt
person, their criticism is not evidence of corruption. Two other bad arguments
are as follows:

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about aspect of racism or racist R.

Premise 2: Person A is a racist because of C.

Conclusion: Criticism C is false.

This is obviously just an ad hominem attack: even if A was a racist, this has no
bearing on the truth of C. Consider an argument with the same sort of reasoning:

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or corrupt
person R.

Premise: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.

Conclusion: Criticism C is false.

This is quite evidently bad logic; otherwise, anyone who criticized corruption
would always be wrong.

A variant, equally bad, is this:

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about aspect of racism or racist R.

Premise 2: Person A is a racist because of C.

Conclusion: R is not racist.

While not a named fallacy, it is still bad logic: even if person A were a
racist, it would not follow that R is not. Once again, consider the analogy with
corruption:

Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or corrupt
person R.

Conclusion: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.

Conclusion: R is not corrupt.

Again, the badness of this reasoning is evident: if it were good logic, any
accusation of corruption would be automatically false. At this point it can be
said that while these bad arguments are really used, perhaps there are some good
arguments that prove that being critical of racism or racists makes a person a
racist or proves their criticism is false.

I do agree that there are cases in which critics of certain types of racism are
racists. An obvious example would be the Nation of Islam: they assert, on
theological grounds, that blacks are innately superior to whites. Someone who
believes this could be critical of racism against themselves and they would be a
racist criticizing racism (of a specific type). But it is not their criticism of
racism that makes them racist; it is their racism that makes them racist.

What is needed is an argument showing that being critical of racism makes
someone a racist. That is, if the only information you had about any person was
the full text of their criticism you would be able to reliably infer from the
criticism that they are racist. Obviously enough, if the criticism contained
racism (like a Nation of Islam member criticizing white racism because of their
view that blacks are inherently superior to whites) one could do this easily.
But to assume that every criticism of racism must contain racism because it is a
criticism of racism would beg the question. Also, pointing to racists who make a
criticism of racism and inferring that all critics who make that same criticism
are thus racists would be to fall into the guilt by association fallacy. And, of
course, even if a critic were racist, it would be an ad hominem to infer their
criticism is thus false. A racist can rightfully accuse another racist of
racism.

While the “ideal” argument would show that all criticisms of racism make one
racist (and, even “better”, disprove the criticism) such an argument would be
suspiciously powerful: it would show that every critic of racism is a racist and
perhaps automatically disprove any criticisms about racism. Probably the best
way to argue for such an argument is to focus on showing that being critical of
racism requires criticizing people based on their race and then making a case
for why this is racist. The idea seems to be that being critical of racism
requires accepting race and using it against other races (or one’s own), thus
being racist. But this seems absurd if one considers the following analogy.

Imagine, if you will, a world even more absurd than our own. In this world, no
one developed the idea of race. Instead, people were divided up by their
earlobes. Broadly speaking, humans have two types of earlobes4. One is the
free earlobe—the lobe hangs beyond the attachment point of the ear to the head.
The other is the attached earlobe: it attaches directly to the head. In this
absurd world, the free lobed were lauded as better than the attached lobed. Free
lobed scientists and writers asserted that the free lobed are smarter, more
civilized, less prone to crime and so on for all virtues. In contrast, the
attached lobed were presented as bestial, savage, criminal, stupid and immoral.
And thus, lobism was born. The attached lobed were enslaved for a long period of
time, then freed. After that, there were systematic efforts to oppress the
attached lobed; though progress could not be denied. For example, a person with
partially attached lobes was elected President. But there are still many
problems attributed to lobism.

In this weird world some people are critical of lobism and argue that aside from
the appearance of ear lobes, there is no biological difference between the
groups. Would it make sense to infer that their criticism of lobism entails that
they are lobists? That they have prejudice against the free lobed, discriminate
against them and so on? Does it mean that they believe lobist claims are real:
that the lobes determine all these other factors such as morality, intelligence
and so on? Well, if critics of racism must be racists, then critics of lobism
must be lobist. If one of us went into that world and were critical of lobism,
then we would be lobists. This seems absurd: one can obviously be critical of
lobism or racism without being a lobist or racist.

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