My friend David Gottfried made a post on race that got me thinking. Resultingly my comment was substantial enough to warrant my posting it here;
The most that can be said about race, without getting yourself axed, is that you live peacefully and harmoniously with your friends, coworkers, neighbors and countrymen...all of whom just so happen to be of races other than your own. To dare step foot into the realm of race is to open yourself to attack because you've committed the intellectual sin of generalizing.
Perhaps the best work around is to give the conversation some global perspective. America is the most racially progressive country on the planet. Our internal arguments, politics and complaints (justified or not) all exist within that context. Surely we have wings, factions and persons with insular tendencies but our laws and institutions are the benchmark for equality and justice.
If you can establish that in your argument then such assertions as America is Racist and Whiteness is Oppression are then disarmed by some measure as leftist hyperbole. It's overly strong marketing language for real underlying issues. So that's the second intellectual sin when talking about race; hyperbole.
Can I think of a third intellectual sin so that this comment seems well thought out? Hmm...there is a reality but we simplify it, distort it and...deny it. So there are people who deny these things entirely and we have to be careful about that. That's also an intellectual sin because we can't erase facts. Erasure. (which is a leftist buzzword lol) But it's also an intellectual sin.
Do I have something to say about race that's not a generalization, doesn't inflate or conflate and refrains from erasing? And to satisfy the cynics must not be aspirational or inspirational...I think life is a great confusion that takes several decades to sort itself out and by then you're already old and grumpy. To add external variables to our internal development generally demands some kind of sacrifice because altogether it's too much to handle. Either we give up the external variables and isolate ourselves in a comfortable like-minded community or we give up the internal development to be cool, but relatively shallow, with most anyone. It's the spiritual path that calls for us to seek the whole and complete realization of the realities before and within us. Realities being that each of us is born as a unique individual at odds with the collective identities that threaten to swallow us. That's what I've noticed about many people. They seem happy to be absorbed. Totally lost and forgotten from what makes them beautifully themself. There's so much pressure to fit in and race is right there in our face, first and foremost alongside gender, for how we should go about fitting in. Conformity is a beast. It threatens to rule over us. And we willingly submit ourselves to it when we cower inside our home base. I read about that recently in a book on moral psychology. It said that we're 10% insect, an aspect of us seeks to take part in a greater being, to sacrifice for the cause and work for the whole. Assume our little roles and be a good little worker bee. Then we get riled up and attack. DEFEND THE HIVE. GIVE YOUR LIFE. I think that perfectly describes the racial stew we have to wade through. We choose to behave like animals at times because it suits us. Our feelings, our instincts, our natures and our passions overwhelm us. It reminds me of those widely stereotyped white women who go haywire on fear and think they're being attacked. We're insane. We have our own minds, our own little realities inside. The most we can do is see through them as clearly and as willfully as we can. Reality is colored by the mind. Maybe race simply just is. Maybe people really just are. Maybe tragedy is mostly just tragic. And life is a great confusion that we've managed to keep sorted for this long and at such a magnitude as to create a relatively peaceful global community of human beings who temporarily and semi-regularly lose their fucking minds.
So that’s Geoffrey’s four intellectual sins;
Generalization
Distortion
Conflation
& Denial
This post is quite good. The writing is crisp and graceful, and the ideas are well-reasoned and insightful.
I looked at your post again
Who is Geoffrey. You never identified Geoffrey
My last name is Gottfried.
You said that Geoffrey was guilty of 4 intellectual sins. Do you mean that I am guilty of those sins ??????
About 2 of those sins:
GENERALIZATION: This is a very basic function of the mind. We group things together by finding that they have certain attributes in common. This is what inductive reasoning is all about. It is only a sin when it is excessive, like almost everything is detrimental if done to excess.
HYPERBOLE:
Actually, this is a sin throughout academia. For example, in 1968, Susan Sontag famously said, "The White Race is the Cancer of Human History."
I think that academia suffers from this affliction because a thesis is more apt to get attention if its is written in large and seething red letters.