Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
The fight for social justice usually includes exposing the truth to harsh light of day. The two are not competing values, but complimentary values, both important to the expansion of understanding and establishment of equitable system where all people are viewed as equals.
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The truth is contestable. And to contest it, you need an environment where challenges and research won't be denounced on ideological grounds.
Today's social justice movement is built on several ideological assumptions:
- The essential political identity of every citizen is their race, gender, or sexual orientation.
- Those identity groups are engaged in an unrelenting power struggle.
- It’s the moral obligation of every decent person to strive for the equality of outcome for those identity groups across all aspects of social, cultural, and economic life.
- The source of all disparities is systemic oppression by the dominant patriarchal, cis-gendered, white elite.
- Any suggestion of other sources of disparity are morally unconscionable, and render the person making the suggestion a party to systemic oppression.
- This issue is so vital, and the people affected by it so vulnerable, that traditional norms and values around free speech and open, challenging dialog must be abandoned.
Challenging these assumptions is not treated as intellectual debate, but as morally defective or hostile attacks.
#5 is key. In the search for truth, we uncover many aspects of human behaviour that make us uncomfortable or run contrary to our ideals - reality doesn't care how we feel. An example Haidt cites is the strong empirical correlation between single-parent homes and poverty. This truth is attacked when discussing the different outcomes of groups because A) it might make people feel bad (blaming the victim), and B) it's the kind of thing conservatives often raise. We also can't discuss the heritability of intelligence and temperament and the role they might play in intergenerational economic mobility for the same reason. And just ask James Damore how welcome we are to findings about innate population-level gender differences capability or preferences.
There are a host of other examples of empirical truths that are virtually taboo to introduce without arousing ferocious moral condemnation and accusations of oppression and malice. Which is why many observers have commented on how much today's social justice movement is like a kind of religion. It's why researchers like Steven Pinker, and the entire evolutionary psychology field, are attacked by identarian activists. Any explanation for different outcomes besides systemic oppression cannot be tolerated.