Comment by nvahalik
5 years ago
> The SlowToWrite examples are heavily based on the Bible.
Did you read any of his work? While he is a Christian, he writes using researched data as well as personal/theological insights.
Before you discount theological sources, just remember everyone as a religion—a set of beliefs that molds their actions and character. Just because you don't believe in someone's religion doesn't mean that you cannot learn from them or glean from them.
I read the first one you linked and skimmed the second.
Here's an example, and the start of what I saw:
"Therefore, under that vague and subjective reasoning, racial disparities—and especially, racial perceptions—are the basis for identifying systemic racism. That, however, presents several logical and theological problems.
Under that definition, black people—not God—are the authority on what constitutes as racism or systemic racism. This is why Voddie Baucham defines social justice ideology or systemic racism theory as ethnic Gnosticism."
Like, right off the bat, too. Of course I'm going to discount this, and it's the foundational point of the rest of what he's got to say. I'm going to discount it because, to me, what it's saying is that someone else's viewpoint is invalid, because Bible.
He does ask a bunch of reasonable questions at the end, all of which already have answers, so yeah, it's reasonable to me he's discounted. I don't see anything (in this example) that he's adding to the conversation.
So, honest question then, is there not an objective understanding of what racism is? Who gets to define what that is? Is it you? Someone else? Some scripture or holy text?
Everyone has an authority.
I mean, is there an objective understanding of hate? Of love? Of porn, of art, of dangerous speech, of democracy, or capitalism? There's objective elements, sure, but AFAIK the only things with complete objective definitions are those defined in code, as they have a complete definition that doesn't require (additional) human subjectivity. Whether those definitions are correct is an question on top of that.
Poetic indulgence aside, any understanding is going to complex (made up of multiple component concepts, which are likely to be complex themselves) and nuanced (without clean, precise English definitions). Some elements will be more objective, others more subjective. It's the world, it's messy, that's how there's things.
Yadda yadda, I suspect we'll get a more "objective" understanding as fairness research in neural nets continues (it's super cool and you should go check it out).
Isn't everyone's authority ultimately themselves? You either hold it yourself, or choose to invest it (whole cloth or piece wise) in something or someone else; either way, the first and last decision is yours.
That all said, there's pretty clearly a set of observed experiences (from slavery to George Floyd to red line districts and food deserts) and a theory to explain those observations (racism; personal, structural and systemic).