Last weekend I wrote a diary , "Why Obama Lies About Race", which sought to provide a context for Obama's denial of the racism that Jimmy Carter had heroically spoken out about. I'll be writing a followup later this weekend. But before doing that, I want to address the issue of fallacious reasoning which appeared to influence a number of the critical responses, particularly those from one self-identified black commentator. illlaw , whose argument was deeply rooted in the genetic fallacy. As I'll explain in this diary, most, if not all fallacies can be thought of as stemming from intellectual laziness, most commonly from employing a valid heuristic--a rule-of-thumb or first approximation--as an iron-clad rule,.and not checking to see if the rule of thumb is valid in this particular case. (Of course, they can also result from deliberate deception. But the deception works because there are more innocent reasons that we are susceptible.) In this diary, I want to do 4 things: (1) give some examples fleshing out this characterization, (2) show how it applies to the genetic fallacy, (3) show how the valid heuristic vs. the genetic fallacy apply generally to issues involving identity politics, and (4) show they apply to this particular case. The fallacious reasoning here was not nearly as overwhelming and unvarnished as I have seen it many times before. Nor was it laced with invective. But in a sense that makes it all the more opportune an occasion to get a handle on what's going on here.
First, let's take a few of the best-known fallacies and show how my characterization applies. Let's begin with the so-called "rooster fallacy," also known as post hoc, ergo proctor hoc (after the thing, therefore because of the thing.) It's called the rooster fallacy because one can imagine a rooster engaging in it: the rooster crows, the Sun rises, the rooster takes credit for the new day. There's an obvious valid heuristic here: in our universe, causes generally precede effects,.and quite often noticeably so. So it you want to know what caused something, start by looking at what happened just before it. That's a valid heuristic. But, of course, one thing can precede another very regularly without being the cause of what follows. They can both have a common cause, but one result can show up before the other. That's why it's only a valid heuristic, and why it's a fallacy to simply assume that the causal relationship is simply established by order.
Two other common fallacies are also a result of laziness, but in a somewhat more subtle way. These are the closely-related red herring and strawman fallacies. The red herring refers to an irrelevant and misleading argument that distracts from actual argument at hand. The strawman refers to a mischaracterization of the actual argument at hand. In their innocent forms, both these fallacies derive from the valid heuristic of modeling an argument you trying to understand.
The valid use of this argument modeling goes something like this: "Okay, let me see if I've got this right. The argument here is A, B and C, therefore D. Is that right?" In the red-herring fallacy, some irrelevant model is seized on, and not checked, but simply assumed to be pertinent to the discussion. It more often refers to a general topic of discussion. In the straw-man fallacy , the model is assumed to describe the particular argument that one participant has advanced.
Now consider the genetic fallacy. The basic heuristic is fine: "consider the source." Generally speaking one tries to know a reliable source when seeking out information, and one tries to avoid unreliable sources. This a perfectly natural rule of thumb. But if one simply assumes that something is true or false because of the source of the information, without bothering to check, then that is a fallacious assumption-the genetic fallacy. Of course, many times it may not really be necessary to check. You don't really need to go to France after every class with your high school French teacher, just to verify the accuracy of the lesson. But that standard involved here is not that of a logical argument, and it doesn't really have to be.
The genetic fallacy and its underlying heuristic are both applicable to identity politics. There really is no substitute for first-hand knowledge, so it's heuristically valid to say that no person outside of a given group is likely to understand that group the way that insiders do. But obviously this isn't strictly true. Neophyte group members may know far less than long-time outside students of a group. Moreover, we depend on the fact that we can communicate across groups boundaries, however imperfect much of that communication may be. We know that a great artist is defined in part precisely by their ability to cross those boundaries. Reading James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison isn't going to make you black, but it is going to give you some understanding. The more one exposed oneself to people outside one's own group, the better chance one has of making valid observations that group members will confirm as such. Furthermore, one can be a member of two or more groups. Members of the same profession may share a good deal in common, despite coming from different groups. Cross-cultural artistic exchange is a universal testament to this.
Of course, there's another factor to be considered, and that's the issue of relative group power. Members of a subordinate group are always justly suspicious of members of a dominant group because problems of understanding don't just come from lack of experience, but from histories of exploitation and privilege-and these histories are commonly not even very well known by members of the dominant group. That lack of knowledge is one of the forms that privilege takes. Members of subordinate groups cannot generally afford the luxury of such ignorance.
With all that said, we're now ready to look at the example from last weekend's diary discussion.
illlaw took the position that I was a white person talking about what Obama needed to do about race, and that made what I said automatically illegitimate-which is even worse than simply being wrong:
cut and I'll just say as a black person I find it offensive and really shows your white privilege.
Obama isn't lying about anything. He acknowledges the existence of racism, racists, and the effects of racism on our country and us black folks.
(Of course I was writing about a specific incident in which Obama did deny the very prominent role that racism is playing in the attacks on him and his agenda, including health care reform, which Jimmy Carter had courageously highlighted. The fact that Obama has acknowledged racism when forced to talk about it against his will is entirely beside the point of the argument I'm making in the diary, although I am trying to elucidate the framework in which he operates, and would have welcomed a thoughtful, incident-specific discussion from Illlaw, or anyone else.)
A white person telling a black person what he should to do fix/change/end white racism is a very confused person with a lot of privilege issues.
A white person who feels the need to tell anyone to do anything about racism should tell white people to stop being racist.
It's actually that simple.
A white person telling a black person what he should to do fix/change/end white racism is a very confused person with a lot of privilege issues.
Always a potential problem that needs to be considered after the substantive issues raised have been addressed. Otherwise it's simply an example of the genetic fallacy.
(2)
A white person who feels the need to tell anyone to do anything about racism should tell white people to stop being racist.
Which I have done repeatedly, and will continue doing repeatedly in the future. And I catch a lot of shit for it, too.
All I'm asking for here is that my President stop working for the other team. By denying the existence and the role of such racism, he is playing for the other team.
It's actually that simple.
Now, I want to be clear. There are fragmentary attempts to deal with issues I've raised. But none of them are carried out with any rigor before the genetic fallacy rears its head and puts an end to them. Note what I said in my response above.When illlaw wrote:
A white person telling a black person what he should to do fix/change/end white racism is a very confused person with a lot of privilege issues.
I responded:
Always a potential problem that needs to be considered after the substantive issues raised have been addressed. Otherwise it's simply an example of the genetic fallacy.
And that's the key point here. We can't and shouldn't ignore the possibility that someone's identity is influencing their argument to the extent that the argument is invalid--even disingenuous. But we have to actually examine that argument first, in order to know if that possibility has been realized. And this is what illlaw failed to do.
STATE BLOGS
