I have a very conflicted view on the value of social media for a number of reasons, but one is that so much of human communication is only apprehended through non-verbal means making about 70% of the message lost when received by text alone. Another, is that there is so much more of it, that such communication becomes careless either by the sender or the receiver, or both. The quantity of data consumed by social media users had further become as much about sifting signal from noise, and thus actually thinking critically about a message is often lost on knee-jerk reactions, categorizing the message, and thus for expedience also all further messages from that sender, and then the sender themselves as noise. We discard thought and people for convenience. So while I see the value of not embracing Ludite conservatism, I also am continuously reminded of how poor so much social media communication can be.
Case in point... I discovered recently the page of a game designer who makes some of the coolest games in my collection. I love his stuff. But I made the mistake of commenting on one of his posts that had nothing to do with his games and was instead about an issue that he felt very sincere about, with which I happened to disagree. Being neither rude or aggressive, I merely questioned his assumptions in a polite and reasoned fashion, asking what his criteria were for his point of view. I was rebuffed instead with the statement that that was not an issue he wished to address.
The next post on his page was about this exchange with what I think he believes to be adequate evidence to prove his point. Here is what he said (italic) and my thoughts on his follow-up:
Today someone told me that they didn't believe in privilege.
What I actually did was question his assumptions about what it means vis a vis an assertion of offense he made about a game design. "Privilage" as it was used by him is a term with particular meaning in intersectional social/political theory. I know very well what intersectionalism states to be true, I have studied the philosophy underlying it, I frequently read intersectional media for insight, and I still happen to think that it is philosophically flawed at the very foundation. More on this below...
He continues:
Today, on a day when an unarmed black man waiting by his broken-down car was gunned down, murdered by police who were supposed to help him, to protect him.
This is a statement of some of the facts, and a misstatement of others in the Terence Crutcher shooting in Tulsa. Before addressing them in turn, the first big problem is that this poster quickly judged the situation without all the facts or context, and demonstrated a prejudicial preference that privileges the intersectional narrative over all others. Further facts not mentioned are these:
1) Officer Betty Shelby was en route responding to a domestic violence call when she happened upon Crutcher, not in his vehicle which was stopped in the middle of the two lane road.
2) There were some number of 911 calls just before that by people reporting Crutcher's erratic behavior, shouting that among other things his SUV was going to explode.
3) His behavior was assessed by officer Shelby as being consistent with the erratic behavior of someone on PCP (she did not know a the time but a vial was found in the SUV).
4) Crutcher was non-compliant with the demands of the officer, who then called in backup.
5) When Crutcher approached his SUV while refusing to comply with several officers, Shelby claimed she shot because he was attempting to reach inside the vehicle after having been reaching in his pockets before.
6) Video footage appears to show that at least the driver's window was closed, and possibly the rear window as well.
So without prejudiced conclusions, we can judge in light of the facts that the officer did have reason to be more suspicious of the motorist based on his behavior than usual, prompting a reasonable amount of caution which merely continued to escalate, based still on his behavior. We can also conclude that there was insufficient evidence to warrant deadly force, especially in light of the fact that one of the other officers had drawn a taser rather than a firearm, which she could have also done.
The poster also failed to note that the officer has been suspended from duty, and charged with the felony of first degree manslaughter. He also did not note that this was in the same town that a deputy that was allegedly insufficiently trained for the job was also convicted with felony manslaughter for the shooting of Eric Harris. These facts suggest if anything, that the overall tone of law enforcement in Tulsa is not institutionally racially biased against black men in Tulsa, is not protecting wicked officers, but is actually pro justice in their actions. We may speculate that there are some training issues that need addressed. The poster used the term murder rather than manslaughter, I suspect in haste. It does not prove that he is willfully deceptive, but suggests at least a moment of lazy research in his attempt to offer support for the intersectional view that he feels passionately about; but it is not excusable if his goal really is justice rather than self serving political outrage. More on this below...
Today, the day after the Republican candidate's son tweeted out a white supremacist, anti-immigrant, anti-refugee meme.
This has nothing to do with Tulsa, or with police issues in general and the questionable intersectional assertion that there is an institutional oppressive bias by police (especially white police) against black men in America. It does not bring any actual salient facts on the Tulsa issue he used as an example, it ignores or is oblivious to such facts as the research that shows statistically, white police are far less likely to shoot black suspects than Hispanic or black officers are.
But if we assume this is an attempt to provide another piece of anecdotal evidence to bolster the assertion of validity of his intersectional view, I would have to point out that the meme in question is the Skittles meme, which mostly does not support what the poster asserts it does. The meme text states, "If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful? That's our Syrian refugee problem." The poster asserts that this is white supremacist. There is no evidence of this. While the color of the Skittles in the bowl invite a snarky response, there is in fact no assertion in the meme of a preference of any kind to any race. The poster further asserts that the meme is anti-immigrant. Again, there is no statement whatsoever about immigrants in the meme, and if we reasonably assume that it is supposed to follow Trump's stated policy view on immigration, he has generally stated that he supports immigration from anywhere as long as the immigrants are vetted for security, and do so legally. Trump does say a lot of other wacky things (oh, so many!), some of which he has changed his mind on, but this is a pretty consistent policy position in a pretty sparse field of stated policy positions. The poster finally states that this is anti-refugee. To some degree it is. However, in context with everything else Trump has actually said, he has further noted that he wants all refugees to be vetted before being allowed to come onto our soil. This position is predicated on the fact that:
1) there are a good many documented posts by terrorist organizations that they are actively seeking to insert agents onto American soil under guise of refugees from Syria, and
2) it is well known that there are multiple terrorist organizations who actively seek to harm Americans, and American interests that have received support from incompetent administration channels operating in Syria.
There is a credible threat from Syria to America, even if the choice of metaphor by Trump Jr. was grossly clumsy (and it was). But a clumsy meme does not actually prove any institutional oppression or privilege vis a vis intersectional theory... only that the analysis was clumsy, or that it was dumbed down into a straw man argument, and that some people took it seriously anyway.
I read articles like this one and I think, "How can anyone living today be paying the least bit of attention to the world and believe that privilege is imaginary?"
Because articles cited as such are very poor evidence of the validity of intersectional theory. One can believe that prejudice does occur in America (I certainly do), that oppression happens among humans (it most definitely does), and privilege exists in human societies (without doubt). One can well believe these things and still not believe that intersectional theory accurately understands any of them (I assert it does not) even if I am actually willing to respect the people who hold the views as I challenge the idea to be discussed. I just happen to find that my invitations, no matter how humble or polite, are dismissed. My experience has been either that the supporters of intersectional thinking actually want to avoid genuine discussion in favor of incredulity or outrage that fits their view, or (sadly) unproductive agreement that intersectionalism is just liberal whining, which may or may not be true, but is ultimately ad hominem and not helpful.
Football players taking a knee during the playing of a song are raked through the coals, vilified and lambasted, while police murder black men and routinely get away with it. That's privilege at work.
In the first case, while I might think Kaepernik is a twit for doing what he is (I do) I and his critics
1) also have a right to freedom of expression every bit as much as he does, and
2) predicate the opinion on the proposition that he is applying his expression with poorly thought out assumptions, and
3) am not advocating that he and members of his organization or race should be killed.
Furthermore, the poster seems to again be lazy in
1) his understanding or his use of the assertion of murder (vs. manslaughter), and
2) his misunderstanding or prevarication of the fact that officers who actually did commit a criminal breach of trust and authority have been punished.
It's time to start fixing our broken country, friends. And we can't do it with our eyes closed.
I respectfully agree with the poster on this. I likewise respectfully disagree with his diagnosis of the problem, because I question who actually has their eyes more open to the situation. Furthermore, while I am fully persuaded that he is sincere in his feelings that something is wrong, I am disturbed by what appears to be a disinterest in admitting that perhaps, just maybe, he might possibly have not grasped the situation as fully as he seems to assume, nor does he seem to feel that anyone with a challenging opinion could possibly have anything legitimate to offer to the discussion. He suggests that he has his eyes open, and that those who challenge his view do not. Where is his evidence though? I see a pretty thin thread to hang his assertion on, which I to date, have found overwhelmingly typical of intersectional doctrine...
Edit: this subject is important to me, and I take it very seriously. If you want to chime in with a clever, pithy remark, consider that doing so isn't helpful. I will delete such comments. If you want to tell me how privilege isn't real and that all this social justice malarkey is overblown, know that I consider such remarks to be actively harmful and I do not feel an obligation to give you a space to say such things. I will delete these comments too.
...and there you go, my friends. Not only does he not want to critically examine the evidence he offers, but he does not want to examine any evidence anyone else offers that does not fit his view. He is so committed to the view, that any discussion is by default assumed to be harmful and will be summarily censored. I get the principle of not feeding trolls, but I was not trolling. I did bring up the question on his public space, which I could have predicted to end thus, but gave benefit of the doubt because he is otherwise an intelligent and creative fellow from the small window I've seen through his game design discussions. Politics make people often commit to lazy thinking and bad ideas though...
It does bother me that the intersectional assumption automatically demands that I either agree, or else prove myself actively committed to oppression, racism, sexism, bigotry, and phobia; that I cannot possibly take the issues of policing, or community violence seriously or reasonably; that I can summarily be judged to be wicked because I differ on the analysis of the problem. This is bothersome further because it seems to be a view held by so many of the designers that I think are really cool and creative, who I'd love to have thoughtful creative discussions with. But I suspect, based on a pattern of behavior from some of the most forward who adhere to that view, I likely won't be allowed the opportunity because I am in the "other" camp... that group that the intersectional community is quick to accuse of the sin of "othering" others based on biases and unreasonable prejudice, yet hypocritically is so quick to condemn without bothering to even listen.
The very framework, the foundation, the skeleton of intersectional thinking, is at the end of the day, nothing more than one big, often narcissistic genetic fallacy. It serves to exacerbate grievance against others, but offers little of value to critically examine a problem, bridge the gap, and certainly not offer forgiveness and reconciliation. Considering the godless roots, it is not surprising. The cause is always more valuable than people there. Facts and respect for persons are of little consequence under this worldview. How much is lost because of that?
Privilege in the dictionary sense obviously exists in the world. It is practiced in every way possible by every human on the planet. Privilege, oppression, phobia, bigot... all of these have actual meanings, and the actual meanings are at every turn ignored and twisted by intersectional theory. The problem we have is in determining the rational criteria by which we decide that a thing is actually fair or unfair, cruel and excessive, illogically pathologically fearful, or unfairly hateful. Asking this question is flipping on the light switch at threats of the bogey man... committed intersectionalists in my experience almost always prefer the bogey man, and all too often rejoin with ad hominem attacks on the person questioning without first understanding the questioner's assumptions. This does nothing productive to solving real problems of fairness or equality toward persons.
I have a problem with that too.
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