On Racialized/hierarchical Philosophy and Democracy

That “racial issues” may have important ramifications for “race-neutral” philosophical arguments is sometimes clear. Some of us balk at the ahistorical approach to property rights in Nozick’s celebrated Anarchy, State, and Utopia, with its virtual silence on slaves, their stolen labor, and the purported impossibility of reparations to their descendants. Nor will we be comforted by Rawls’s agenda-setting view that “we” must first complete “ideal theory” to adequately understand how to reform our non-ideal world. One needn’t be Black American for this to seem utterly implausible and impractical. Yet the lack of urgency to theorize racial justice is normal in the mainstream philosophical territory.--Lionel McPherson@Philosopher

In response to my last post on Ibn Rushd's proto-feminism and political economy, Liam Kofi Bright wrote,

This is just a variant on...the very old argument to the effect that the various ways in which women are socialised out of, and actively prevented from, participating in high prestige political and economic roles make the community worse off than it could be if only we better tapped this source of knowledge and expertise...

Why does this worry me? Well it strikes me that if people have been making this argument for centuries that probably doesn't speak very well for the rhetorical effectiveness of the argument. I had personally been attracted by the apparent hard headed realism of it. Here is a case for gender equity that makes no appeal to the sense of justice in Man that is much proclaimed but always mysteriously absent when it is needed. Rather, it seems to be an argument to the effect that by standards that can be accepted by even rather, shall we say, unenlightened men (you wanna know more stuff right?), we'd do well to have more women in science. Since, world being as it is, more often than not it is men in positions of power, they seem like the folk one wants to convince; and this seems a good way to do it.

But maybe that just gets the psychology wrong...people would in the end sooner see the out-group doing worse than suffer the indignity of a rising tide lifting all boats.--Liam Kofi Bright

Liam's remarks paused me. He notes that purportedly hard-headed arguments to enlightened self-interest (which I also tend to find attractive), does not address rhetorically a willingness to suffer economic and epistemic costs to see out-groups doing worse. Let's call this willingness a love of superiority.

An unwillingness to recognize the love of superiority in others also means one sometimes fails to understand the rationality of other people's actions and voting. Cosmopolitan (elite) types will often treat people's pursuit of such love of superiority not just as immoral, but also as irrational or ignorant.* 

While I suspect that this willingness to incur costs in order to see the out0group suffer has psychological-biological roots, this love of superiority can be re-activated or amplified within democratic life. For, I am not surprised by the possibility that people are willing to to suffer economic and epistemic costs to see out-groups doing worse; I noted its existence before [in talking about the "Jewish Problem"]; there are ongoing pressures within liberal democracies that generate enduring threats to the survival and dignity of minority groups; some of these pressures are a consequence of democracy and the intolerance or prejudices of electoral majorities. For, while the circumstances differ locally (and with different electoral systems), recurring cycles of electoral politics can generate electoral incentives to prompt the activation of love of superiority.

A realistic, liberal democratic theory does not assume away humans' tendency toward a love of superiority but either aims to (i) re-direct it (into sports, commercial life, and other areas of competitive emulation); or (ii) promotes policies that increase the cost of expressing it (via norms, taboos, taxes, and laws against allowing the political exploitation/activation of the love of superiority); or (iii) utilizes the tendency in support of the political order (e.g., patriotism or nationalism in which the out-group ends up outside the national border); or (iv) better yet, promotes dispositions that facilitate the rise of alternative ideals and aspirations which allow a better sort of minimal unity that rhetorically and emotionally displace the love of superiority, say, in the voting both and in political decision-making--this (that is (iv)), is a vital component of democratic leadership (as found in education, journalism, parenting, religion, and politics). It is clear that (iii) generates huge moral and political risks. It's obvious that some versions of (ii) may itself turn out to be illiberal (or require careful balancing). Fere I focus on (i).

For, the previous paragraph pretends as if (i) offers the hope of a partial, Liberal solution to the political problem of the love of superiority. (It can't offer a complete solution without (iv).) But, as it happens, Liam's remarks were oriented toward the role of women in science (not democratic/economic/political life). And I encountered his remarks while I was reflecting on Lionel McPherson's post on "white supremacy" in professional philosophy and American political life. (See also DailyNous; McPherson is responding to Meena Krishnamurthy's post; [recall my own response.]) For, when love of superiority (which just means one is willing to incur some economic and epistemic costs to see the out-group suffer) finds a home within science or philosophy, there is no reason to expect that the epistemic/professional/scholarly community will do much better than larger society. And, in fact, as McPherson argues, this is what we find: "the Anglo-American philosophy profession has continued to be a proud site of white supremacy."+ That is to say, our actions reveal that people are willing to keep suffering collective, epistemic maybe even economic costs in order to keep black people (women, disabled, gays, etc.) out.

Defenders of the status quo within professional philosophy often deny that this is the right way to interpret the situation. In their most honest moments they will insist that there is a trade-off between the demands of justice (which they castigate as identity politics) and our epistemic aims. Here the argument from enlightened self-interest has no rhetorical purchase because the status quo is not seen as lacking in epistemic features: whatever epistemic progress is still possible, it is possible in the conditions of white supremacy (which gets relabeled 'merit'). It's not impossible, of course, that we live in a tragic world in which (an) out-group suffer(s) such that we can pursue the truth. As McPherson notes, it seems the majority of us within the profession "accommodate" ourselves to this possibility just fine.

But what the defenders of the status quo cannot do is to deny that something akin to the love of superiority is built into the professional DNA: we are a status hierarchy accompanied with metrics/ranking hierarchies and salary hierarchies. We routinely police boundaries between approved insiders and disapproved outsiders; we condemn whole ways of doing philosophy often without the least bit of knowledge of them (or we do so based on selective quotation and rhetorical strategies that rig the contest). My peers and elders are constantly telling me who is first class or first-rate, who is smart (boy-wonder), etc. In reality, all of those practices normalize dividing the world between approved insiders (and the hierarchy within them) and disapproved outsiders; they normalize treating some pure areas as core and, say, questions of social justice as applied; they normalize an instinctive response as treating questions of reflexivity as sociological not philosophical.

It does not follow, of course, that these practices of hierarchy enforcement are instances of the love of superiority as defined above. The defenders of the status quo insist that they are truth conducive. But leaving aside how truth conducive our practices are (there is room for doubt), it is equally plausible that these hierarchy producing practices also reinforce white supremacy--given that they originate in structures of such supremacy. The empirical record offers little reason for denying this.

Either way, deflecting the love of superiority into (non political) practices of competitive emulation runs the real risk of making these sites of hierarchy, including places where hierarchies of white supremacy flourishes. This is a problem for realistic liberal theory because it is deprived a means at redirecting the love of superiority in ways that contain even ameliorate the problem. For some this is just another reason to give up on liberalism. But there's an alternative: it makes it even  more urgent to have democratic leadership that can emotionally displace the love of superiority. There are many who think that the very idea of leadership is itself illiberal, but that's for another day.

 

 

*While the point (a willingness to suffer economic and epistemic costs to see out-groups doing worse) can be handled by a resolutely hard-nosed rational choice theory (by, anti-pathetically, putting other people's suffering as trumping reward/currency into our utility function or pay-off structure), in practice, when we apply RCT (in normative theorizing or even economic policy), we don't tend to allow this option.

+At one point McPherson writes, that ""|the makeup of the Anglo-American philosophy profession looks nearly indistinguishable from its pre-1965 profile." This is true for "Black students and professors," and several other groups (disabled, gay, etc), but less true for women and Jews.  Not all out-groups are treated equally.

Comments

[LK McPherson]

"That is to say, our actions reveal that people are willing to keep suffering collective, epistemic maybe even economic costs in order to keep black people...out."

I think this might be overly optimistic and is perhaps more of a gloss of Bright's perspective. Under white (American) supremacy, "love of superiority" combines with exceedingly low expectations for Blacks. Generally, Whites do not believe they are losing out on their boats being lifted when accommodating themselves to entrenched patterns and practices of supremacy. A lot of their racial resentment is due to the delusional belief that too much attention has been spent and resources wasted when exceedingly few Blacks have the talent and drive to be worth the trouble. See, e.g., James Watson's views: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fury-at-dna-pioneers-theory-africans-are-less-intelligent-than-westerners-394898.html .

Simply put, you (and Bright) seem to be assuming that "the community" would be better off if it "tapped [Blacks as an additional] source of knowledge and expertise" -- and that most Whites share this assumption but are addicted to a love of superiority that would have the "out-group" (viz., Blacks) suffer instead. I wish you were right: prospects for real progress would be greater as the costs for many Whites continue to rise.

[Liam Kofi Bright]

Thanks for the reply Dr. McPherson! I guess first things first: I was responding to the situation of women in science, so I wasn't really saying anything about what White folk think of Black folk at all. But, ok, setting that aside, because of course it could be that a similar thing goes there -- the men are so convinced of their own superiority that they think they can do perfectly well, even better, without worrying about recruiting women. But even then I wasn't just thinking about men in general; I was thinking about people responding to particular argument, where (perhaps wrongly) my impression is that those who heard it and who were not initially disposed to agree anyway have not been convinced by this argument upon encountering it. My question was then: why is this argument not as rhetorically effective as I initially thought it would be?

Now, my explanation is: many men think to themselves that even if all the stuff about women making science better is true the men hearing this should still prefer not to have to suffer the indignity of women doing better. By analogy this would be people thinking: even if more Black folk would be good for philosophy as a profession, I'd still sooner not work with them if it means they'd get uppity -- or something of that sort. The point just being that people grant the premises but do not feel they are of the right sort to motivate any sort of pro-diversity conclusion, because they are not speaking to people's real concerns about women and science. A person may just dislike the Out Group and not want them to have nice things, so if you want to convince them that it'd be a good thing to have more Out Group People in science you really have to convince them either to like the Out Group more or that being in science is not so nice a thing.

Now I go through all that just to highlight that this is quite compatible with people *also* thinking that in any case it turns out we don't need the Out Group to do good work. That would just be a case of thinking that an argument is bad because even if I grant the premises I need not grant the conclusion, while also thinking that additionally the premises are false. In fact, I want to now go further -- I agree with what you say there! I suspect a great many folk really do just think that the Superior Type people are just so good that, well, they can do perfectly fine on there own thank you very much, all this diversity stuff is just a distraction, an inherent trade off from Quality, which would mean 99% Superior Type folk forever. So I did not mean to be saying anything incompatible with what you say there... well I guess but for the end where you say you are disagreeing with me -- I mean to be saying something incompatible with that, for fear of a liar paradox!

[LK McPherson]

Liam (and Eric): I understood the argument, and I find your presentation of it interesting and subtle. I wasn't expressing any disagreement about its quality as an argument or its possibility. Rather, I was questioning its applicability re white (American) supremacy. Maybe I lack real comprehension of what it would be like for members of some large In Group to "just dislike [an] Out Group and not want them to have nice things," namely, to such an extent that many members of the In Group would prefer to incur substantial costs to their own well-being for the sake of feeling somehow superior.

[Eric Schliesser]

Dear Lionel, I agree with everything that Liam and you are saying (except, perhaps, the part where you say I am too optimistic). I thought I recognized your point, too, that most whites don't think they are *are losing out on their boats being lifted when accommodating themselves to entrenched patterns and practices of supremacy* when in the paragraph on the defenders of the status quo, I allowed that some defenders of the quote do not see it as "lacking in epistemic features: whatever epistemic progress is still possible, it is possible in the conditions of white supremacy (which gets relabeled 'merit')." Perhaps, on re-reading my post, I could have expressed your point more clearly.

[Liam Kofi Bright]

Ah interesting; maybe it does not apply here! Indeed it seems Eric means things to be compatible with the idea that generally this is not what is going on. To be honest, it was not my first thought either; after all, I expected the initial appeal to Platonic feminism to work. And in the case of White supremacy, I have not really lived here long enough nor looked into the matter in enough detail to have any confident opinion.

I suppose, mind you, that something like this thesis seems to cohere well with theories of the psychological wages descendent from Du Bois' work, where people argue that what made poor Southern Whites acquiesce to a system that seems to be after all just awful for them is that they gained some psychological benefit from knowing that the Blacks had it worse. This, I suppose, seems to be an at least somewhat related psycho-racial hypothesis?

But, yes, I do not mean to assert anything confidently in this area, I am rather unsure myself and only mean to be tentative.