Racism
Racism is bad and is a problem that needs tackling; practically everyone agrees on that.
There seem to be two competing schools of thought about how best to tackle the problem of racism.
1) Judge people by the content of their character rather than by the colour of their skin[1]; treat people primarily as individuals rather than as representatives of racial groups; recognise that racial groups contain people with a variety of opinions; try to move towards a society in which skin colour is seen as just another axis of variation with no greater significance than height or hairstyle; learn from the example of children, who naturally see skin colour this way.
2) Treat race as one of the most important aspects of people's identity; treat people primarily as representatives of racial groups; treat racial groups as homogenous in their opinions and values; teach children to see race as really important; train people to look for microaggressions; see race as relevant to every interaction; in every interaction ask not whether racism happened but in what way racism happened[2].
There are... probably... arguments in favour of both views[3]. But people who hold each view seem more interested in attacking each other than in uniting against the common enemy that is actual racists. You know, the people who shout actual racist slurs at people and beat them up based openly on their race.
On one hand, I have seen far too much of people who hold view 2 attacking people who hold view 1, calling them "racist" and "white supremacist" and "bigot" and "part of the problem", and accusing them of holding their view out of self-serving bias rather than in good faith.
And on the other hand, I confess that I, as someone who holds view 1, have spent too much energy feeling angry at people who hold view 2, with their accusations of bad faith and their totalitarian unwillingness to tolerate dissent, when I should be saving that anger for the actual racists.
[1] Martin Luther King, "I Have A Dream" speech
[2] Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility
[3] I am not aware of any studies into which one is more effective. I realise this would be difficult to measure. I am also not aware of any studies into what proportion of people from each racial group favour which of the above views, which would be useful information and relatively easy to measure. But conducting such a study would involve presupposing that racial groups are not homogenous and contain a variety of opinions, so there's a bootstrapping problem.
There seem to be two competing schools of thought about how best to tackle the problem of racism.
1) Judge people by the content of their character rather than by the colour of their skin[1]; treat people primarily as individuals rather than as representatives of racial groups; recognise that racial groups contain people with a variety of opinions; try to move towards a society in which skin colour is seen as just another axis of variation with no greater significance than height or hairstyle; learn from the example of children, who naturally see skin colour this way.
2) Treat race as one of the most important aspects of people's identity; treat people primarily as representatives of racial groups; treat racial groups as homogenous in their opinions and values; teach children to see race as really important; train people to look for microaggressions; see race as relevant to every interaction; in every interaction ask not whether racism happened but in what way racism happened[2].
There are... probably... arguments in favour of both views[3]. But people who hold each view seem more interested in attacking each other than in uniting against the common enemy that is actual racists. You know, the people who shout actual racist slurs at people and beat them up based openly on their race.
On one hand, I have seen far too much of people who hold view 2 attacking people who hold view 1, calling them "racist" and "white supremacist" and "bigot" and "part of the problem", and accusing them of holding their view out of self-serving bias rather than in good faith.
And on the other hand, I confess that I, as someone who holds view 1, have spent too much energy feeling angry at people who hold view 2, with their accusations of bad faith and their totalitarian unwillingness to tolerate dissent, when I should be saving that anger for the actual racists.
[1] Martin Luther King, "I Have A Dream" speech
[2] Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility
[3] I am not aware of any studies into which one is more effective. I realise this would be difficult to measure. I am also not aware of any studies into what proportion of people from each racial group favour which of the above views, which would be useful information and relatively easy to measure. But conducting such a study would involve presupposing that racial groups are not homogenous and contain a variety of opinions, so there's a bootstrapping problem.