Comment by bsanr2
6 years ago
My point was not necessarily that white fragility exists, but that the mere suggestion of it existing provokes hostility. Thanks for proving said point.
6 years ago
My point was not necessarily that white fragility exists, but that the mere suggestion of it existing provokes hostility. Thanks for proving said point.
The parent is clearly not being "hostile". At least I don't know of any definition of the word that includes calmly pointing out bad faith argumentation.
It is possible - in text, probable - to present a hostile front in a civil manner. What is objectionable about hostility is the bald-faced rejection of a premise. To accuse someone of not "caring about the standards of intellectual argument" based on the utterance of a single phrase is hostile.
This is not a matter of reasoned skepticism, it's knee-jerk ego defense; the above poster recognizes white fragility as a probable truth that traps him in a state of cognitive dissonance, and it makes him so uncomfortable that he has no choice but to respond. However, the response that truly rejects my initial premise would have been no response at all; the fact that he responded lends credence to that premise because its core holding was that it would elicit a response.
> ... the fact that he responded lends credence to that premise because its core holding was that it would elicit a response.
My point is precisely that "the fact that X responds, i.e. objects to premise Y lends credence to that premise because its core holding was that it would elicit a response" is a pointless and, indeed, content-less rhetorical trick, not an intellectually honest argument; moreover, that there are good reasons to be aware of this trick being played on you. You can call that "reasoned skepticism" or "knee-jerk ego defense", but that's not so important; indeed, I am quite willing to admit my "hostility" and "bald-faced rejection" of any such pointless tricks, no matter what their surrounding context might be.
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> To accuse someone of not "caring about the standards of intellectual argument" based on the utterance of a single phrase is hostile.
"white fragility" is inherently bad faith (both because it's inherently racist but also because "fragility" is a kafka trap as previously discussed), and you immediately clarified that you were, in fact, using it in bad faith: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23634713.
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