Daniel Henninger, of the WSJ, in a pitch perfect example of Foxification of news: "In 2008's election, many Republicans and independents voted for Mr. Obama to put a final nail in the coffin of Justice O'Connor's racial anxieties. The millions of them who then cast votes against Mr. Obama in 2012 did so almost wholly because of the status of the economy after four years of his presidency. No matter. They lost in 2012 because they're "too white.""
Did non-Democrats vote for Obama in 2008 merely because he was Black? It had nothing to do with his opposition, contempt for the GOP, Obama's promise and vision, and a willingness to believe that politics (and governing) could once again be sober, rational and bipartisan?
Did anti-Obama voters pick Romney because they trusted his vision of economics (which was what?) more than Obama, and not because Obama was Black?
Henninger wants to have it both ways. Obama won in 2008 because he was Black, but being Black had nothing to do with votes against him in 2012. People who voted for him in 2008 were irrational; people who voted against him in 2012 were rational.
He also claims that, "When George W. Bush attracted 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004, there was no cry that the Republican Party was "too white." The GOP's problem with Hispanics today is a tangle of issues involving the law, labor and assimilation that is hardly reducible to the accusation that the party is too white."
Except that being 'White' correlates highly with feeling threatened by the Brown-ing of America. Hispanics voted for Bush 2 because of his immigration policies; Hispanics voted against Romney because, also, of his immigration policies. True, but Romney's policies were driven by the fearful politics of White privilege and xenophobia, inflamed by red state news' (et. al.) reporting that the "Browns" are stealing jobs of "Whites," flooding the public services and thus raising the taxes of "Whites" and the leading cause of crime and violence in otherwise calm and peaceful "White" society.
Henninger and friends are free to believe what they want and to pitch false consciousness onto their readership. That does not mean its readership needs to trust them.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
Intellectual Empathy
Matthew Lee Anderson has the right idea: "The real problem seems to be that people are uncertain about what to do with our disagreements, how to open and conduct conversations across the aisle without sacrificing our core convictions ... And if the “first things” of our framework are really at stake, then it can be easy to slip into a belligerent defense rather than entering into open inquiry ... "
His solution seems spot on: "One way to cultivate such common ground in our own local communities is through what some of called “intellectual empathy,” or the decision to enter into a person’s way of the seeing the world and look along with them ... Intellectual empathy is a form of seeing how. As in, “Oh, I see how you could think that. It’s wrong, but I can see how it might make sense.” It is an act that is aimed, first and foremost, toward the good of understanding, a good that persuasion may flow from but can never precede."
Intellectual empathy, then, requires one person to accept that the other has legitimate reasons for her beliefs, regardless of the validity the one gives to them. Giving reason, as Donald Schon described it, is the act of taking the position of the other, and recognizing that, just as each of us has (mostly) strong reasons for what we think and why we act as we do, so do others. To deny them that level of reasonableness dehumanizes; a signaling, perhaps, more to our fear of making vulnerable our ideas and beliefs.
Moreover, intellectual empathy means embracing the other's view as one's own. Until we get inside their thinking (by a process that helps us towards understanding the context and contingency of their view, the identity claims presented in their view, the normative and subjectivities involved in coming to their view), we will continue to treat their views as static and concrete, ignorant or uneducated, rather than stochastic, fluid and dependent on an overall world view and experience of living in the world view.
Problems arise when the one person implicitly devalues the other's opinions, thereby defaming her reasoning. While one can see the other as mistaken or lacking in understanding, missing some key fact or factor or just poor in analytical ability, that is a second order understanding. The first takes seriously that the other has reason for their understanding, and attempts to justify those reasons as reasonable.
His solution seems spot on: "One way to cultivate such common ground in our own local communities is through what some of called “intellectual empathy,” or the decision to enter into a person’s way of the seeing the world and look along with them ... Intellectual empathy is a form of seeing how. As in, “Oh, I see how you could think that. It’s wrong, but I can see how it might make sense.” It is an act that is aimed, first and foremost, toward the good of understanding, a good that persuasion may flow from but can never precede."
Intellectual empathy, then, requires one person to accept that the other has legitimate reasons for her beliefs, regardless of the validity the one gives to them. Giving reason, as Donald Schon described it, is the act of taking the position of the other, and recognizing that, just as each of us has (mostly) strong reasons for what we think and why we act as we do, so do others. To deny them that level of reasonableness dehumanizes; a signaling, perhaps, more to our fear of making vulnerable our ideas and beliefs.
Moreover, intellectual empathy means embracing the other's view as one's own. Until we get inside their thinking (by a process that helps us towards understanding the context and contingency of their view, the identity claims presented in their view, the normative and subjectivities involved in coming to their view), we will continue to treat their views as static and concrete, ignorant or uneducated, rather than stochastic, fluid and dependent on an overall world view and experience of living in the world view.
Problems arise when the one person implicitly devalues the other's opinions, thereby defaming her reasoning. While one can see the other as mistaken or lacking in understanding, missing some key fact or factor or just poor in analytical ability, that is a second order understanding. The first takes seriously that the other has reason for their understanding, and attempts to justify those reasons as reasonable.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Evolution and the Creationismists
Adam Laats, in an essay online at Chronicle of Higher Ed, writes this helpful description:
"As it stands, scientists' blundering hostility toward creationism actually encourages creationist belief. By offering a stark division between religious faith and scientific belief, evolutionary scientists have pushed creationists away from embracing evolutionary ideas. And, by assuming that only ignorance could explain creationist beliefs, scientists have unwittingly fostered bitter resentment among the creationists, the very people with whom they should be hoping to connect."
This paragraph gains traction by highlighting the dichotomous thinking involved between evolution and creationism. For one to to be valid, the other must be invalid. Truth is a kind of mercantilism reality, an either/or confrontation with what is. Except, in this case, that very dichotomy is the problem.
One of the stronger arguments against teaching Creationism (or its variants, like I.D.) in science classrooms is that Creationism is not scientific. Evolution is. Creationism could be a topic in a Social Studies class, even a literature class. Not science because ... it is not scientific. Making the choice one of either believing in Creationism or believing in evolution obviates that strength. It all but forces a science teacher to incorporate Creationism into the curriculum; the dichotomy needs to be resolved. Science v. Creationism.
For the moment, ignore the implications of believing one or the other. Creationism, then, could be understood as a cosmology, not the process after cosmogenics. Evolution, on the other hand, could be understood as the process after cosmogenics, not a theory of cosmology. One narrates the beginning; the other, what happens next. While I do not find much credence in Creationism, I can not impeach the theory. It is un-impeachable, another trait that removes it from the scientific. While I can not prove evolution, I can attempt to impeach it (in theory I could, had I enough background and methodology), its virtue of being scientific.
Laats makes a good point about taking seriously the reasoning behind those who back Creationism. But because the belief is not science, and thus not open to rebuke, Creationismists should never be engaged in a battle of right v. wrong. As Stephen Jay Gould wrote, treating them as "non-overlapping magesteria" is not a abdication of either. It is, rather, a recognition that they are non-comparable.
"As it stands, scientists' blundering hostility toward creationism actually encourages creationist belief. By offering a stark division between religious faith and scientific belief, evolutionary scientists have pushed creationists away from embracing evolutionary ideas. And, by assuming that only ignorance could explain creationist beliefs, scientists have unwittingly fostered bitter resentment among the creationists, the very people with whom they should be hoping to connect."
This paragraph gains traction by highlighting the dichotomous thinking involved between evolution and creationism. For one to to be valid, the other must be invalid. Truth is a kind of mercantilism reality, an either/or confrontation with what is. Except, in this case, that very dichotomy is the problem.
One of the stronger arguments against teaching Creationism (or its variants, like I.D.) in science classrooms is that Creationism is not scientific. Evolution is. Creationism could be a topic in a Social Studies class, even a literature class. Not science because ... it is not scientific. Making the choice one of either believing in Creationism or believing in evolution obviates that strength. It all but forces a science teacher to incorporate Creationism into the curriculum; the dichotomy needs to be resolved. Science v. Creationism.
For the moment, ignore the implications of believing one or the other. Creationism, then, could be understood as a cosmology, not the process after cosmogenics. Evolution, on the other hand, could be understood as the process after cosmogenics, not a theory of cosmology. One narrates the beginning; the other, what happens next. While I do not find much credence in Creationism, I can not impeach the theory. It is un-impeachable, another trait that removes it from the scientific. While I can not prove evolution, I can attempt to impeach it (in theory I could, had I enough background and methodology), its virtue of being scientific.
Laats makes a good point about taking seriously the reasoning behind those who back Creationism. But because the belief is not science, and thus not open to rebuke, Creationismists should never be engaged in a battle of right v. wrong. As Stephen Jay Gould wrote, treating them as "non-overlapping magesteria" is not a abdication of either. It is, rather, a recognition that they are non-comparable.
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