I Finally Fucking Get It

I finally fucking get it.

I used to be one of those people who would see the meme with the Peanuts characters and it has a white kid and Franklin talking in a series of panels.

In the panels Franklin would say racism is bad or something like that and the white kid would say being called racist is bad and Franklin would say you were never judged based on the color of your skin and the white kid says I just was.

Lots of white people have posted it on their homepages or profiles as backgrounds and I just used to assume these people were all racists.

I was duped, hoodwinked, bamboozled.

I didn't understand several things. (Admittedly, I still don't)

I fell for the genetic fallacy combined with a hasty generalization or stereotype.

It is not very good critical thinking, not by a lot, the genetic fallacy of course is shifting to looking at the genesis or source of a claim rather than the claim itself and the hasty generalization or stereotype is deciding the claimant made the claim because they are racist.

That is a variation of the mind reading fallacy. I can't support the claim, not by just "knowing" the innermost thoughts, beliefs and feelings of the person. We can judge acts and character and patterns of behavior as racist but the evidence that the white person doesn't like being told that they are racist or doesn't like being constantly or frequently told all white people are racist is not good evidence that this individual is in fact racist.

I would have to either accept the claim or make it up by thinking that I know their innermost thoughts and feelings without evidence (mind reading) or address the actual claim itself, without bias.

The habit of pivoting to the genetic fallacy and deciding the person is racist or accepting the claim they are racist from others uses a powerful logical fallacy - an appeal to emotion.

Slavery is a terrible inhuman crime, racism and discrimination are awful and ugly things. Racism and racists disgust many people. (Including me)

The appeal to the emotions associated with slavery, racism, discrimination and racists makes it so the compassion one has for victims of slavery, racism and discrimination can be weaponized and used to fuel disgust. Jon Atack years ago pointed out to me that the key emotion used to get people to dehumanize others is disgust. It includes both a revulsion and willingness to destroy.

The person who says racism is worse isn't addressing the fact that the white guy never said his situation is worse or equal to slavery, Jim Crow and the discrimination black people have faced.

He never said those things, so pivoting to how bad slavery is combines the strawman fallacy regarding the claim the white guy actually did make and the hidden appeal to emotion - disgust regarding racism and racists - to get you to be disgusted by the white guy and willing to dehumanize him with a hasty generalization of racist.

And you are not addressing the actual claim made on its own merits or thinking the white guy who you now equate to indifference to slavery and racism deserves to be judged fairly because he is disgusting to you from your equating him to racism.

I don't know how many times I fell for it. Thousands?

I have said before that we hold many thousands of beliefs, each of us as individuals, and it is extremely likely that we each hold several thousand that are incorrect at any time, no matter how smart we are or how careful we try to be.

I now have given everyone a demonstration of this with my own behavior.

The thing that finally broke the camel's back was a conversation I had today. I posted an article from The Atlantic about how specific individuals have been accused of racism at their jobs and fired, even though investigations and all accounts show they are in fact innocent and wrongfully accused.

Their employers once officially involved in investigating charges of racism decided to avoid bad publicity by firing the innocent people. To them replacing one person is easier than than dealing with negative publicity.

I posted the article on Facebook and of course someone was nice enough to have disgust regarding racism rise, and they insulted and attacked me.

How convenient for me that they responded, so I could see how they feel and think.

The guy had two points. His first point was "no one is innocent."

We ended up focusing on that. He wrote "no one is completely innocent."

Very interesting choice of words.

I demonstrated that a newborn baby is completely innocent.

I pointed out he is using an equivocation fallacy. The author of the article is clearly using the definition of innocent that means "not morally responsible or blame free regarding a specific situation or act or acts" and not the definition "of perfect moral character and completely blameless."

But the disgust the guy felt regarding racism, slavery and so on in his mind justifies treating everyone remotely accused of racism as a disgusting monster and racist scum.

See the trick?

Here is what the guy did and what I have been guilty of many, many, many times in the past:

"It is okay to dehumanize racists because of how disgusting racism is and that includes giving anyone remotely associated negatively with the idea of racism no benefit of the doubt regarding anything they say or do because I have preemptively dehumanized them before hearing them out."

When you break it down like that it is obviously wrong.

The good news is I realized that is what I was doing and that it is wrong. (After doing it many thousands of times for many years, but we don't need to focus on that)

The really bad news is that the same powerful emotional appeal that turned my strong opposition to racism into the drive behind disgust and dehumanization regarding anyone who I negatively associated with racism, fairly or unfairly, is present and being used in the same exact way in millions of other people.

I don't know what we can do about that.