Racism in the United States

It would be very hard to boil down the political landscape in the United States to a simple description but I want to address one characteristic that is regularly attributed to it. Everyone seems to be divided on the proposition "the United States is inherently racist". This actually seems to be one of the single most important dividing lines between "The Right" and "The Left"; if you agree with the statement you are "a leftist" and if you disagree with the statement you are "a Nazi". If you think of yourself as "someone on the left" but do not share this presupposition in all of its generality, you are deemed suspect. If you think of yourself as relatively conservative about social issues but try to have a conversation about race as a factor contributing to social disparities, you are deemed suspect. I would bargain that there are a significant amount of people who do not see this proposition as categorical; but nuanced, complex, and probably falling on a gradient; like other concepts such as corruption. 

Part of this comes from, what seems to be, an implicit redefinition of what constitutes racism. Does it have to do with actions? Or with an individuals attitude? Or is it a feature "interwoven" into the "fabric of society"? Is it strictly about "skin color"? Once you realize that people have differing conceptions of what this elusive term denotes, it is obvious that the divisiveness comes down to the fact that we no longer have a shared presupposition of basic terminology. Along with this, people have diverged on whether race should be central in all discussions on power and human interaction. There are those on the Left who claim that "color blindness" is itself, an inherently racist concept, because of the "impossibility" of this being practical. Opponents of this view will claim that "color blindness" is not meant to be taken literally, but rather as a useful mental model to help us avoid basing our interactions with someone on the basis of their perceived "race". There also seems to be a generational divide; younger people are more likely to accept this newer conceptualization of racism as being "deeply ingrained in the foundation of the United States" than a millennial. 

Some would say that we have a deep affixation with skin color in the United States. Other countries such as France and Mexico (I think) do not even have a category of their census for racial information. Would this imply that the level of "racism" in these countries is somehow less than those who report this information on their census?  I would love to see someone make this case; anecdotally if you, or someone you know, who descends from a Latin American country; you will know that the preoccupation with skin color is extremely prevalent. 

Some may argue, that we are actually infatuated with the idea of "proving the United States is racist"; so much so that they will not even consider counter-evidence that might cause them to qualify the scope of their claim. The case of Harvard Economist Roland Fryer is an excellent example of someone who opposed social justice narratives and was subsequently cancelled. 

As part of the redefinition; racism is now seen as not an outward conscious act, but an implicit bias. Not only was this implicit bias present during the initial structuring of our society (creation of laws, rules, norms etc), it persists into the modern day, manifesting itself in subtle ways that have significant impact on the distribution of wealth and resources. So you see, you are racist whether or not you decide to be. There is no escaping the plight of your ancestors and social conditioning; it is the new original sin. Naturally, we should correct the bias. If we correct the bias, then we will finally have equality. What no one seems to understand however, is that methods to correct bias have been pretty much ineffective. Does diversity training "work"? What is it trying to achieve? This is a decent article that outlines some of the problems with implicit bias training. What does implicit even mean and how do we measure it? How strong is the evidence of implicit bias? This is part of the problem; it has become a new dogma. It does not matter if this definition is untenable, many people have accepted it at face value. Questioning it gets you socially ostracized; even if you genuinely care about the topic. Falsifying the statement does not mean you are "racist". Unfortunately, this is the nature of political discourse more broadly. Since its politicization, questioning research has had implications on who your social group can be. I am not trying to debunk implicit bias research in favor of the proposition that racism does not exist. This is a common refutation; you disagree with our conceptualization therefore you are racist and conservative. You are racist because you disagree with the methodology we use to fight racism; therefore our methodology is correct and your critique comes only from your implicit bias. It is interesting that implicit bias can be used as a justification for implicit bias; this sort of circularity is common among all dogma. 

Anyway, what I wish to do, however, is to genuinely question whether or not this is the best way to go about alleviating some of the problems we observe in the world. I specifically recall an instance of implicit bias training while working at a prominent corporation on the East Coast. We were mandated to watch a video and discuss the implications; presumably to shed light into the indubitable claim that racism manifests itself subtly everywhere and shapes our understanding of the world. I am well aware of the philosophical assumptions behind some of this; we observe the world and its categories, learning "norms" as we grow up, some of which privilege some social groups at the expense of another. Naturally, the video tried to assert this view. It started off by demonstrating that grocery store classification and categorization of food reinforces stereotypes that certain "ethnic" foods are "different" and "other" from the "norm". This fact explains why we tend to think of immigrants from Asia as "other", because "Asian" food or "Hispanic" food is compartmentalized from the normal "white" person food. Historically, Italians were seen as "the other" which meant they got their own section, but as "Italians" were normalized, their cuisine became part of the mainstream. Immediately, I got a message from my "Latinx" coworker who said "This is so stupid, I prefer having a Hispanic section so I know exactly where to go for pupusas". If you are deeply ingrained in this ideology, this comment obvious has an explanation: they have internalized racism. The irony is that lived experience is one of the epistemological hallmarks of this ideology, but when an "oppressed" persons lived experience does not coincide with the implicit bias trainings, it is overridden by the more encompassing concept of internalized racism. Apparently, there is no way around it. As we broke off into groups, we began sharing how we have been discriminated against. Some of the stories appeared completely contrived and irrelevant. But hey, of course that's because of my white privilege. Shortly after we had a D&I person from HR come talk to us about how we can hire more POC in tech jobs. Now, for me this is a no brainer. I went to a California State University where the Latino population was approximately two thirds of the school; all first generation and non-white (should be a gold mine for HR recruiters). My graduate school was also considered a "predominately Hispanic school" even though there was less than a quarter of students with Hispanic/Mestizo descent. All over the California public university system are there non-whites for you to select from. But where does our corporate office decide to choose from instead? The Ivy League. No wonder you cannot find anyone. So naturally, stupid me brought this up: "why not target schools that are in poorer and more rural areas; people here are just as brilliant as anyone in the Ivy League" (that is my lived experience). What happened? Excuses; "they don't want to move to the east coast" can summarize it. To me; this boils down to elitism, masked with social justice. 

I was reading this paper about admissibility of implicit bias evidence in court and it raised some interesting points about the implicit association test and new dogma of implicit bias taken as the default lens in which to view the world. There is also a lot of research indicating that implicit bias training has opposite effects (see in the meta analysis); and just generally lacks reliability and predictive validity as a psychological measure. Lets first just talk about how people measure this "implicit bias". The idea is pretty straight forward. Before (in the past) psychologists used to pose questionnaires to people in order to infer internal mental states and processes of an individual. Modern tools utilize implicit measures to infer psychological states without having to explicitly probe someone for information. The idea is that our cognitive processes are mostly governed by the unconscious so even if you are not consciously being biased there still might be an effect from the "implicit" mental process. So in sum: we do not need to depend on explicit reports that mostly reflect conscious thought, we can discern unconscious bias without asking questions but through having subjects complete tasks which "serve as a rough measure" for the implicit. One thing to note just generally in psychology is the problem of measurement. How do you know the test you have created truly reflects the intended target? Imagine a physicist measuring the temperature of a body of mass. There is a technical definition that can be explicitly measured; increased kinetic activity of molecules "bouncing off" one another. Does psychology have any of this? I would argue no. Nevertheless there IS good empirical research in experimental psychology that is reliable (see kahneman and tversky). I am just questioning whether THIS particular research is at all valid. Has it just become a political slogan that is preventing us from actually solving problems? Are we so blinded by our hatred of others that we cannot critically reflect on our methods by which we diagnose the issue? If there is an implicit bias, does it actually manifest itself in significant ways? This is a good academic article explaining the difference between implicit and explicit measures. This is a good discussion on how implicit association test fails as a measure. This article explains some more problems with the research, specifically how implicit bias is not equivalent to unconscious bias. Even the Wikipedia page lists some of the criticisms of IAT as a psychometric tool.

The question whether implicit bias "evidence" should be admissible in court is interesting given the issues with its construct validity and reliability. Suppose someone does not get a job they applied for, and they sue the employer on charges of discrimination. The employer is then subject to an implicit bias test to see whether they are racist. The test reveals a slight preference for White Europeans. Is this proof of discrimination? Does this show beyond reasonable doubt that discriminatory actions were undertaken? I imagine that if you have a very Woke jury, this may be convincing to them. Does it actually have probative force independent of other considerations? Should statistical evidence be admissible AT ALL in the court? There is significant aversion to using generalities adduced from a data set to infer guilt of a particular individual; probably because it is subject to the Fallacy of Division. Evidence scholars have wrote significantly about this topic; if you don't believe me just google "problems of using statistical evidence in court cases". This is where I think the criticisms of the test are particularly useful and show the actual impracticality of having this be our "measure of racism". The main question is: does IAT actually accurately and reliably measure the implicit bias of a person? Or is it measuring something else? The notion of statistical bias, in particular confounding (omitted variable bias), seems to be extremely applicable. It is difficult to control for (if not impossible) all of the possible explanatory factors contributing to whatever score you see. The way the test works, is that the subject (you) are shown images of Black and White faces, and a corresponding word that has a positive or negative connotation. You are instructed to group particular words or images into specified categories. Suppose the instructions are to categorize a specific image with the concept on the screen. The image is of a White face and the word is something like "Noble". Then you are shown a Black face with another positive word such as "Bravery". The time difference it takes for you to categorize the black face with the positive word versus the white face, is a measure of your bias towards categorizing white faces with positive notions. Another set of instructions might be "group black faces with the positive concepts and white faces with the negative concepts". If you mistakenly group a black face with a negative concept (make an error), this is an indication of your preferential "mental category" of whites being the preferred entity in the "good" classification. Time to classify and error rates are the main measures of implicit bias. IAT will give you various instructions, or situations, to obtain these measures. So in theory, if you show no difference in time to classify a face as good or bad, and show no error rates, then you are not a racist. So suppose the instructions are "if you see a black face or the word is bad, click left. If the face is white, and the word is good, click right". You do this clicking and get a measure of time and error. Now invert the instructions "if you see a black face and the word is good, click left. If the face is white and the word is bad, click right". You do all your clicking and compile data on the time and error. Now we compare these two scenarios; were you faster at categorizing the black faces as bad then you were classifying them as good? Did you make errors classifying white faces as good when you were instructed to classify them as bad? There is your measure of implicit bias. You can do this sort of test to measure any "implicit measure", such as your degree of gender preference and assumptions about gender roles in society. If you pair concepts such as "gross" or "immoral" more frequently with a gay person, this could indicate a homophobic bias.  Or it can measure if you are subject to Ageism; maybe you end up pairing words such as "useless" with an old face. The idea is to complete the test as fast as possible; the longer you take to complete answers the less reflective of your unconscious. The results show if you have a bias towards one group over another. Here is an article explaining how to properly administer an IAT test.

Now ask the question; what factors can bias the results of the test? In what ways is the test systematically measuring something else? Are you measuring "culture" or are you measuring an individuals bias. Remember, the question is "how well does this test measure what it purports to measure". Invalid Claims About the Validity of Implicit Association Tests by Prisoners of the Implicit Social-Cognition Paradigm is a nice article that explains how IAT does not measure what it intends. Another way to explain this is with the concept of Noise. If I want to measure a specific signal coming from a space station, but there are x-rays confounding the signal, I am measuring a noisy signal (I do not have a clear measure of the thing that is there). This study finds that there is a "cognitive performance" confounding variable that IAT cannot control for. One way to measure the reliability is if you give the same person the same test multiple times, the score does not change (too much to account for statistical noise). IAT differs significantly for any given individual taken the test more than once. This indicates that it cannot account for confounding factors. The idea is that the results of IAT are incredibly lacking in predictive validity. Lets go back to the "culture" confounder. Remember, we wish to measure if an individual is racist. Lets consider the fact that all cultures tell stories about themselves. "Heroes" and "Villains" and how they behave reflect and reinforce many of the values a particular culture will share. Maybe "the" culture (I quote "the" because I am skeptical as to whether culture should be conceived of as a Noun) produces movies representing heroic behavior. Suppose you grew up watching movies about Knights; almost certainly the Knight will be White if you grew up in a Northern European country in which everyone is White. When prompted by the test to classify the white face as heroic, you will almost certainly categorize this faster than the black face. As with all cultures, stereotypical faces will be recognized more rapidly. I imagine that if we administered the test in China, an ethnic Han will likely classify the "stereotypical Han" as a hero over a white face. So there will undoubtedly be a group bias but does this reflect racism or just cultural preferences? This is similar to the famous inquiry into labor market discrimination:  Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination. One of the criticisms of this was that the African American names the researcher chose indicated a certain socio-economic status viewed as undesirable. So the more general question is; are cultural stereotypes racist and would correcting (or suppressing) speech that might imply something stereotypical lead to a better society? Do stereotypes unambiguously divide society into a fractured collection of components competing for resources? If there is a cultural preference, does this lead to preferential treatment? I think the latter question is more important. Racism was traditionally seen conceptually as similar to superiority; I would argue most people take this as the default definition. If we are taking the results of IAT to "stand for" the colloquial notion or racism, it seems we are implicitly redefining racism to be equivalent to cultural bias. This has significant implications since advocating against something like affirmative action now implies racism; preventing equal representation in a particular occupation on grounds of "merit" now reduces to a form of cultural bias. As this is reclassified as racist, you inherit all of the dirty connotations with the word. I think this bad research can account partially why we see a redefinition in the "political sphere"; but at least some researchers have identified the significant flaws and are at least working on a solution. 

All of this above is not to say that racism does not exist. That would be an absolutely absurd statement to defend. My main point of contention is that our way of identifying a racist has significantly devolved almost to the point that our methods are counter-productive. We are fascinated with calling someone racist and being the savior who redeems us from our troubled history of race relations. We overlook all significant progress that we've collectively made. We focus on aggregate statistics like 12% of the total population is black but account for 25% of the total police killings. We ignore factors such as poverty which systematically cause poorer populations to encounter police more often than wealthy populations; and if we don't ignore poverty we attribute the existence of poverty to the systemic racism of capitalism. Some critics of the implicit bias research take this more radical approach to understanding race. According to them, it is not just implicit bias, but the culmination of interwoven systemic factors that explain your current privileged social position. Even if you are not overtly racist, you nevertheless are apart of a system that "disproportionately favors" one racial group over another. You simply cannot see it because you have been socially conditioned to ignore it, but it is ever lurking, like the sin cast down to us on earth as a result of Adam and Eve, our racist ancestors cast a shadow upon us. Suggesting any alternative to poverty alleviation means you are reinforcing the systemic structures that create poverty to begin with. You are reinforcing the status quo, but the status quo privilege's your current position in society. By maintaining your privileged social position, you are reinforcing the racist racist structures that produced the racism to begin with. The only way to overcome racism is to dismantle the systems of oppression that have weight down on marginalized communities for generations; since this countries origins. 

Have you ever wondered why everyone seems to want to abolish absolutely everything? Well, in their eyes they are dismantling structures that contribute to racism. This idea has been around for a while. When I was first introduced, it was through Louis Althusser in Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Shortly put, it is a Western Marxist idea that utilizes theoretical constructs from Structural Marxism. 

 Whereas the instrumentalist position is that the institutions of the state[5] are under the direct control of those members of the capitalist class in positions of state power, the structuralist position is that state institutions must function so as to ensure the viability of capitalism more generally.

This is where the notion of ideological state apparatuses has its grounding. So the main idea is that there are repressive apparatuses such as the police or military; anyone capable of using "force". If someone threatens the power of the state, they can be oppressed through these measures. But the question becomes, how does capitalism persist? If you simply oppress everyone through force, they will just refuse to work or participate in the system. This is where the notion of "reproducing the means of production" becomes apparent. By this a Marxist will mean; capitalists need to regenerate the actual factors of production such that the system can persist. In the Marxist view what is the most important determinant of output? Labor! You have to create a new generation who will willingly take part in the means of production. How can you convince them of this? Ideology. This is where the ideological state apparatuses are useful. 

Ideological state apparatuses (ISA), according to Althusser, use methods other than physical violence to achieve the same objectives as RSA. They may include educational institutions (e.g. schools), media outlets, churches, social and sports clubs and the family. These formations are ostensibly apolitical and part of civil society, rather than a formal part of the state (i.e. as is the case in an RSA). In terms of psychology they could be described as psychosocial, because they aim to inculcate ways of seeing and evaluating things, events and class relations. Instead of expressing and imposing order, through violent repression, ISA disseminate ideologies that reinforce the control of a dominant class. People tend to be co-opted by fear of social rejection, e.g. ostracisation, ridicule and isolation. In Althusser's view, a social class cannot hold state power unless, and until, it simultaneously exercises hegemony (domination) over and through ISA.

Educational ISA, in particular, assume a dominant role in a capitalist economy, and conceal and mask the ideology of the ruling class behind the "liberating qualities" of education, so that the hidden agendas of the ruling class are inconspicuous to most teachers, students, parents and other interested members of society.[2]: 1493–1496  Althusser said that the school has supplanted the church as the crucial ISA for indoctrination, which augments the reproduction of the relations of production (i.e. the capitalist relations of exploitation) by training the students to become sources of labour power, who work for and under capitalists.

 Althusser provides a description of how "structural" features of society, reproduce the means to ensure capitalisms survival. The educational ISA is a façade, it really is an indoctrination tool used to pump out laborers for the capitalists to retain their power. And what is capitalism you ask? Capitalism is the system that produces inequities; racial inequities. And since racial inequities on any measure are the key indicator of racism; we can see that systemic racism is ever present. We cannot simply "not be racist"; we have to subvert the system and the ISA's that reinforce the means of production.

This is but a hint of the type of thinking characterizing someone adhering to radical definitions of racism. This way of thinking has its roots earlier in Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks in which he elaborates on the concept of cultural hegemony. Where do we get our bourgeois values? These values are what maintain the capitalist state. This way of thinking was taken up by people like Michel Foucault who was extremely influential in his analysis of Power, but went beyond the "structuralist" interpretation; known as post-structuralism. These thinkers were preoccupied by the effect of language and how we conceptualize the world. I don't want to go down this rabbit hole but this is where you have thinkers like Derrida who propose radical solutions to textual interpretation such as Deconstruction. I do not think they were Marxists but were nevertheless influenced by such thinkers. I bring them up because their concepts were influential on people like Judith Butler who has undoubtedly been extremely influential in the writings on gender. Other writers such as Kimberle Crenshaw have leveraged concepts from discourse analysis and western Marxist ideas to come up with the notion of intersectionality in her book Mapping the Margin. I am pretty sure she was schooled in critical legal studies which derives from critical theory; espoused and reinforced by people such as Derrick Bell.

Anyway, this is how you need to conceptualize this "strong view" of racism by leftists. Their world view is rooted in critical theory; which loosely comes from various schools of Marxist thought and structuralism/post-structuralism. They argue among themselves but the key to understand them is that inequities are systemic and need to be addressed radically. 

 One way to express the structuralist idea is that what happens in the minds of individuals, including their biases, is the product of social inequities rather than an explanation for them. Structuralists then tend to argue that our efforts to combat discrimination and inequity ought to focus on changing social structures themselves, rather than trying to change individual’s biases directly.

This is the reason why there seems to be an explosion in Woke ideas originating from the university: See the outline of critical theory. For me, the term Woke refers to any one of these radical ideas that have their origins in post structuralist or western Marxist thought. All of the solutions to problems revolve around radical transformation of society, radical reconceptualizations of concepts like racism, and a default world view that is rooted in things like historical determinism. Engaging with this view of racism is engaging with a battle of world-view; not a simple disagreement about facts. Racism is not simply a way one acts towards another, or a feature of some societies; but rather a fundamental force that determines all things in and about society. You cannot argue or reason with people like this unless you first adopt their world view, but there are a few ways to probe into some of the assumptions governing their system. 

 There are a variety of ways to speak with people who are fundamentalist in nature. Much of the time discussion is just a means to an end, rather than a dialogue aimed at truth. When engaging with someone deeply immersed in ideology they will likely have a few critical defenses they fall back on to defend themselves. The main point is to make sure they do not feel attacked, so pointing lumping their opinion with the monolithic opinion of the group they belong to should be advised against because no one really wants to feel like a caricature. Most of the time, people are just doing what they feel is right, compassionate, or morally correct. That is at least the way I see the leftist type who feel compelled to align with systems like this. 

To start, you can try to show that you are aligned in objectives, but hold different assumptions about the root cause. Depending on the level of extreme you are dealing with, sharing experiences in a genuine manner can break the ice. Much of the discourse that characterizes both the left and the right, is that of the narrative or standpoint. 

Standpoint theory, or standpoint epistemology,[1] is a theory for analyzing inter-subjective discourses. Standpoint theory proposes that authority is rooted in individuals' personal knowledge and perspectives and the power that such authority exerts.

Standpoint theory's central concept is that an individual's perspectives are shaped by their social and political experiences. The amalgamation of a person's experiences forms a standpoint—a point of view—through which that individual sees and understands the world. In response to critiques that early standpoint theory treated social perspectives as monolithic or essentialized, social theorists understand standpoints as multifaceted rather than unvarying or absolute.[2] For example, while Hispanic women may generally share some perspectives, particularly with regard to ethnicity and gender, they are not defined solely by these viewpoints; despite some common features, there is no essentially Hispanic female identity.

Standpoint theorists emphasize the utility of a naturalistic, or everyday experiential, concept of knowing (i.e., epistemology). One's standpoint (whether reflexively considered or not) shapes which concepts are intelligible, which claims are heard and understood by whom, which features of the world are perceptually salient, which reasons are understood to be relevant and forceful, and which conclusions credible.[3]

If you encounter someone on the left who has already categorized your "positionality" as privileged, they will likely dismiss your experience because speaking "across the hierarchy" so to speak is just another form of domination. If that is the case, you probably wouldn't want to do this. The advantage of engaging with someone at this level, is that you are speaking to them in terms they are familiar with. If you argue from an "objective" standpoint, they will likely dismiss you. This is similar to how you might engage with someone who is religiously devote. The idea is to find some sort of commonality despite perceived differences and start from there. You have to do this before you probe into deeper questions such as the epistemological foundations for their set of beliefs otherwise they will be defensive. By doing this, you can get a sense of how strongly they believe in the proposition and their willingness to update their beliefs. If you can show that your lived experience is highly analogous to your interlocutor, but supports the alternative conclusion, it is possible they will begin to revision. This has to be done in a completely respectful way; and non artificial. They will likely have questions about your stance. Following up with facts and figures will be irrelevant in early stages. Showering someone with a barrage of statistics does not help them understand HOW you have CONNECTED the data to your alternative conclusion. This is truly how you help someone see the alternatives; you show them the path and they can begin to reason down it for themselves. 

Here is a real example of my personal experience. I was speaking with a group of people on what I believe to be gross misrepresentations of the people who criticize social justice movements. It is commonly held that the reason people oppose any sort of social justice policy is due to internalized racism and illiteracy of some sort. They tend to characterize opponents as monolithic; and fundamentally ignorant. The moment you put a face and story on your opponent, the more difficult it is to demonize them. I have a close family friend who is half Mexican and half white. Their parents married young and really did not have much money. They had three children; one married a black man, another married a Mexican man, and the last married a Cambodian. In this family, I have perceived nothing but love and acceptance. They have been nothing but good to me and my non-white friends. They are conservative. So the question becomes: how can the stereotype of conservative white monolith be true when I personally have experienced this? There are many other examples, but the key is to share them in an open way so people understand where you are coming from. This is how some leftists literally communicate and form their beliefs. If you engage with someone who claims they have been subject to a racial hate crime, would it be wise to cite the hate crime hoaxes to diminish what they felt they have experienced? At that point, you are just assuming something about them. Likewise, if they diminish your story, they are just assuming something about you. 

If you get to a point where you begin discussing reasons beyond personal experience, you may encounter someone who has all of the available facts and are eager to let you have it. One common way to deal with this is not call them "biased for reporting only facts favorable to their case" because they can simply say the same about you. Nor should you call them out on confirmation bias (unless its obvious) because they can just do the same to you. These rebuttal tactics are useless unless used at the right time. What you should be doing, is probing into the HOW they have come to their conclusions and WHY. Facts do not stand for themselves. It is a well known fact that 12% of the population is black but 25% of police killings are of blacks. This is a fact of disproportionality. You could say things like "well the cops are patrolling in high crime areas" which you will get the response "person X did not die in a high crime area". These sorts of back and forth are useless. The main conclusion after citing the disproportionality is that blacks are being systematically targeted by police and this proves systemic racism. In fact, the disproportionality can apply to any argument in which there are differences in outcomes relative to population share. The question you must ask is: why is a disproportionality evidence in favor of your assertion? This is the Warrant, the glue connecting your claim to the facts. Why is it that these statistics are ipso facto evidence supporting your position? Depending on who you are speaking to, you will get different answers. But what you can do is simply postulate a thought experiment to demonstrate why the assumption is suspect. Suppose you live in a society with 1,000,000 people. You can equally divide the population demographics into four: white, black, Asian, Latino. Last year, there was a total of 10 police killings. Of which, 6 of them were black, 3 2 white, one asian, and one latino. This yields a significant disproportionality against blacks. At face value, according to the assumption of disproportionality, this is a very racist society. Now consider the same society but there were 10,000 police killings, all of which were in equal proportions. What scenario is better? The one with 1000 times more police killings but in equal proportions, or the one with 1/1000 the level of killing but disproportionately. If the rule is valid, society with more police killings is better. This is absurd. This rule can't possibly be applicable; the level of police killing and circumstances must matter when evaluating these two hypothetical societies. 

The point of the thought experiment is to probe into the reliability of the underlying assumptions someone has when connecting data to conclusion. Again, this also depends on the type of person you are talking to. Conversational strategies will vary from context to context. Some people are literally surprised to find that half of the police shootings are on whites. Others find this fact irrelevant. What they deem relevant will be a function of their immersion in the ideology. An analysis like this concluding no evidence of some of the claims about police targeting blacks might completely be ignored by someone who believes the masters tools can never dismantle the masters house. If your interlocutor assumes that statistical methods are rooted in historical racism, they will dismiss all of your evidence outright. Some people might engage with the analysis and even present some data of their own. This is a good start. But it is possible it is a smoke screen; they simply hold the belief regardless of contra-evidence and only look for something when its deemed favorable for their position. 

Anyway, my point with this ramble is that I think it is ridiculous to lump all people who disagree with social justice policies as "racism deniers", equating them with Holocaust deniers and reactionaries you can find on the the right of the political aisle. I think it is absolutely dangerous to characterize all opposition to your social justice movement as reactionary because then you miss out on crucial blind spots that could be illuminated during a critical discussion. If criticizing obvious holes in a set of policies is equivalent to hate speech then I am not sure where to go from here. Writers like Herbert Marcuse have contributed to the polarization with books such as Repressive Tolerance, in which any political intolerance originating from the left should be permitted, and any political movement coming from the right (and center) should not be tolerated. It's ideology like this that denigrates the democracy. In addition, attacks on liberal democracy such as the book Dialectic of Enlightenment calls into question the legitimacy of reason itself and classical liberal principles. This is the sort of conversation that characterizes much of the debate we see today; it is governed by an ideology founded on some of these texts. No one reads classical texts anymore such as the Platonic dialogues because they have been tarred and feathered as misogynistic. You can't find anywhere in many universities someone studying CS Peirce, Hume, Bentham, John Pollock, Stephen Toulmin, Ian Hacking, Kenneth Burke, Confucius, Epictetus, or literally anyone. All you get is critical theory. And I can already see someone reading this and saying "well what about all the shit the conservatives do and atrocities from the right"; Tu quoque? I am aware of all their BS and have plenty to say about that. Why can't I also sh*t on people on the Left?