If you haven't had enough…
The kerfuffle surrounding the recent canning of CHE blogger Naomi Schaefer Riley has once again made obvious the inherent racism deeply entrenched in our public discourse. Just because you don't mean to be racist does not mean that you aren't. On the other hand, if someone points out that you are a racist, that does not then ipso facto make them an apparatchik for the PC police. These points should be obvious, but we find people repeatedly failing to understand them and continuing to advance poor arguments that rest on racist assumptions. Riley should be fired because what she wrote was racist. What she wrote was also stupid, and that is another legitimate reason to fire her. But to deny that what she wrote indicates her racially motivated biases is dumb.
Unfortunately many people (on the right, of course!) have argued that the reason for NSR's firing was due to the outcry from the liberal PC academic mob rather than her racist comments. Here are a few examples:
This is plainly a politically correct response to a thug's veto and should be owned up to as such. (Reason)
All those hoodie-wearing academics exercising their veto powers.
The reason they gave Naomi the boot wasn’t because of anything she wrote, but rather the effect her writing had on their readers, who generally reacted as though they were suffering from a case of the vapors. (Weekly Standard)
I wonder if they have fainting couches in those ivory towers?
Ms. Riley wasn’t fired because her argument lacked sufficient intellectual vigor. She was fired because a sufficient number of people had their feelings hurt and deemed her ouster — as opposed to a rebuttal of her arguments — the more reasonable course of action. (FrontPage)
Yes, exactly! Her argument had no intellectual rigor. Hence, no rebuttal. Except for all the rebuttals.
And finally, the money shot:
The great irony, of course, is that the whining and gnashing of teeth from the “Black Studies” crowd only reinforces Naomi’s point about the “discipline.” You’d never see chemists or physicists or mathematicians worked into a hysterical mob by a critical blog post. Because they study actual fields of knowledge—and don't simply tend the garden of their own feelings. (Weekly Standard)
You would never see these folks worked into a hysterical mob because there are no critical blog posts attacking the legitimacy of their very existence. The irony.
Now, this is a point that people fail to grasp whenever they accuse someone of demanding racial justice Politcal Correctness: Sometimes people have hurt feelings because an injustice was done. And sometimes the correct response to injustice is to work yourself up into a hysterical mob and…write a petition.
I came late to this story, but it really is appalling, most of all the defenses of Riley's behavior (including her retort). She haughtily declared that she didn't actually need to read the papers in question. Why were people demanding evidence and support for her statements? The gall! Freddie DeBoer over at Balloon Juice has also written a few posts on the whole affair, and picked up on the same angle at Reason you identify here. It seems to be an article of faith among conservatives that a liberal arts degree, and especially the humanities and arts, are completely useless and everybody just knows it. The attitude reminds me of the Sandra Fluke affair, as described in one of best posts I saw on it – the critics don't know what the hell they're talking about, but the key point is that they're belligerantly insisting that they don't need to know what they're talking about. There's little actual thought in their critiques, and certainly no commitment to truth, discussion, nuance, etc. It's just bullying – and then, like many bullies, they whine when they're challenged.
Her retort really is the most appalling — and revealing — part of all this. Then they go on the attack and accuse people who are outraged by this of being outraged for no good reason.
The recent debate among philosophers and physicists regarding the significance of philosophy in the sciences is another example of the lack of respect for the Liberal Arts in our culture (not just among conservatives). The irony is, they wouldn't be making such bad arguments if they had just paid attention in their philosophy classes.
Sadly, Jem, I have to disagre with you. Some of the most attentive students of fallacies, for instance, are people who are quick to employ them. It's a moral failing as well as an intellectual one.
Of course, I forgot about virtue.
On a related note, I actually saw an example of illicit conversion from a comment on some other blog today.
Jem,
I haven't read her column so I could be wrong; however, is it possible that the outrage stems less from racist content then from the resentment toward outside criticism of a field of expertise? In my experience experts often times resent outsider criticism and see it as uninformed and a waste of their time. I'm not sure I like the precedent that is being established here.
-Ben
Okay so I read it. I think her basic thesis is: The topics of these dissertations are irrelevant or partisan.
Her criticism may be ill informed and wrong, but she is attacking dissertations (which she didn't read), not a race of people. Dissertations aren't races.
Hey Ben,
She was justifiably criticized for a baseless attack on African American studies. The fact-free and prejudicial tone of her attack, as well as her insistence that she doesn't need to bother knowing anything about the views in question lead many, with some significant justification, to the conclusion that her criticism was racist.
John,
I have to say I disagree. If you are arguing that the content of her article is racist, that's simply false. She wrote about a collection of academic research papers, she didn't write about blacks as a race. If you want to argue that her article was motivated by racism, that seems extremely unlikely in light of her personal life and what racists actually believe. I find it highly improbable that someone who views blacks as biologically inferior would marry one, and have children with them.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/05/how-defend-racist-article-someone-else-wrote/52055/
In general accusations of racism come in two type's;
1. Non-Fallacious: That's racist and here's why.
2. Fallacious: That's racist and therefore you are wrong.
The second form assumes what it aims to prove and therefore "begs the question." By definition if something is racist it is false, so if you call something racist without providing support than you're argument is circular.
Ben,
First, the fact NSR is married to a black man does not automatically indemnify her from racism. Second, racism doesn't have to be equated with holding views about the biological inferiority of another race; it can come in the form of wittingly or unwittingly reinforcing societal norms that are oppressive to a particular race of people. Third, your distinction between the two types of accusations of racism is vacuous. In general there are fallacious and non-fallacious arguments. Begging the question is one kind of fallacy…
Many people have already offered arguments about NSR's racist comments that are non-fallacious in your sense. See:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/faculty-respond-to-riley-post-on-african-american-studies/46436
and
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/grad-students-respond-to-riley-post-on-african-american-studies/46421
The graduate students themselves have already offered a solid analysis of what exactly was wrong with NSR's post. You should read their statement and respond to that, as I have nothing more to add to their argument.
Jem,
I said that it is very unlikely that a white racist would marry a black person and have kids, I didn't say it was impossible (but very unlikely). As for whether the substance of her article is racist, it's not. She criticized black studies, not blacks as a race.
'Third, your distinction between the two types of accusations of racism is vacuous. In general there are fallacious and non-fallacious arguments. Begging the question is one kind of fallacy…'
I'm not making a categorical statement, I'm making a generalization based on my experience. When people attack a particular argument as racist the attacks generally fall into those two categories.
Incidentally I'm not referring to the attacks on NSR's article, those attacks commit a different sort of fallacy.
I just read you're two links, and there is no meat in that sandwich (my apologies vegans). The first article calls NSR's attacks 'amatuerish,' and 'uninformed.' It doesn't actually provide any support for this claim. The second article is almost as thin. The sole support for her thesis the second author provides is, "For the past 40 years, black studies has been instrumental in transforming higher education into a more inclusive, competitive, and rigorous intellectual enterprise."
That is a bald claim with no actually supporting evidence. I'm not asking for a term paper, but this is just lazy. She doesn't even list a single specific example of how black studies have transformed higher education "into a more inclusive, competitive, and rigorous intellectual enterprise."
The tone of both pieces was exactly what I feared, "how dare you lowly peons criticize our expertise, I have a phd and you don't.'
Hey Ben,
The burden was on NSR to prove that black studies is a bunch of conspiracy theory-driven claptrap, as she alleged in virtue of reading non-existent dissertations. She characterized the entire fielf of black studies on this basis. The authors counter that this is not the case, and that the evidence for this is self-evident (it is). But even if it were not, what is at issue is NSR's absymally reasoned piece. See previous posts for more on that if you just cannot figure this out.
And you're smoking crack if you think the second piece did not demonstrate the many failings of NSR's work. Since you can't read, here's a slice:
"So imagine our surprise when almost two weeks after The Chronicle’s original article appeared, The Chronicle’s Web site published a lazy and vitriolic hit piece by blogger Naomi Schaefer Riley that summarily dismisses our academic work while debasing us as something less than “legitimate scholars.” Riley then holds up our research as the reason African American Studies as a discipline should be “eliminated.”
Instead of taking her own advice given to her readers to “just read the dissertations,” Riley displays breathtaking arrogance and gutless anti-intellectualism by drawing such severe conclusions about our work and African-American studies as a whole based on four or five sentence synopses of our dissertation projects. In fact, Riley has never read our dissertations, as they are in process. Nor has she read a chapter or even an abstract of our work, but that does not stop her from a full throttle attack on our scholarship and credibility."
The tone you imagine to be there is not, for in the second case at least, the authors don't have PhDs.
John,
I never said she made a good argument, I just said I didn't think it was racist. To criticize black studies is not in itself racist, can everyone agree on that?
"The burden was on NSR to prove that black studies is a bunch of conspiracy theory-driven claptrap, as she alleged in virtue of reading non-existent dissertations…….And you're smoking crack if you think the second piece did not demonstrate the many failings of NSR's work."
Jem used them as examples of non fallacious arguments why NSR's article is wrong and racist. Well they don't do that, not even close. Further the articles go beyond simply criticizing her article to stating that black studies is an important and productive discipline. That goes beyond criticizing her article. Once the author's went out and stated a claim I expected them to provide some examples of positive contributions made by black studies, they didn't.
If a student in one of your classes said, "philosophy is useless," and you replied, "philosophy is a highly productive and one of the most useful fields of study." The class would be correct in expecting you to explain philosophies contributions and value, because you went beyond simply challenging the student's argument to stating a claim of your own.
Ben, you have an odd idea of burden of proof. Black studies has been around for a while now. NSR alleged it was no good on the strength of "reading" non-existent dissertations. Now to use your example, the student says, "philosophy is useless," I reply by saying, "philosophy has been around for a while and is a well-established discipline." That underscorest the fact that the burden is on the student to show the uselessness of philosophy.
As for NSR's racist critique, the character of her critique was so bad, and so driven by racism-denying narratives, that one would not have been unjustified in calling it racist. Here, for instance, is her characterization of "Black Studies"
Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments. If these young scholars are the future of the discipline, I think they can just as well leave their calendars at 1963 and let some legitimate scholars find solutions to the problems of blacks in America. Solutions that don’t begin and end with blame the white man.
Total narrative-driven garbage: this is how those people think, isn't it?
The question is why NSR thinks this:
Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments.
Is it clear that these debates aren't happening in the black studies departments? NSR just sort of assumes it without offering any evidence. Just like she assumes that all black-studies "begin and end with blame the white man."
That sounds pretty racist to me.
John,
"Ben, you have an odd idea of burden of proof. "
I don't think it's useful to get into an argument about burden of proof. I agree if a student claimed philosophy was useless I would want to know why. The black studies majors went beyond simply criticizing NSR's argument or saying that their field had been around for a while and the relevant people considered it legitimate. They stated that their field is important and making valuable contributions. Fine, just provide some examples of those contributions.
If Naomi Schaefer Riley had read the thesis of 10 major papers in film studies and said they were awful and in themselves constituted an argument for eliminating the discipline, she would still have her job. People don't get fired for sloppy criticism of particular disciplines. She was fired for the crime of racism. I can guarantee you won't see a columnist at that publication criticize black studies again. And that is a loss for black studies, because if it wants to be taken seriously it has to be exposed to criticism.
Jem,
"Is it clear that these debates aren't happening in the black studies departments? NSR just sort of assumes it without offering any evidence."
According to her she discussed the matter at greater length in a book she had written before being hired at the Chronicle. I think you are the one making assumptions. You assumed that because she criticized black studies she did so because many/most of the professors are black. When in fact she had done research on the subject in the past, even though she didn't reference it in her blog.
Ben,
The stupidity of her post undermines her authority on Black Studies. Furthermore, writing a book and doing actual research does not then make her conclusion less racist. See The Bell Curve.
I did not assume that she criticized Black Studies because many/most professors are black. I think you are confused about what racism is. It is not always simply believing that a race is inferior. It is also illegitimately oppressing an entire group of people through silencing their voices and denying their autonomy and dignity, either intentionally or unintentionally. It can be part of a system that reinforces privilege while blaming the underprivileged for their lack of privilege. I suppose a Black Studies department might investigate these sorts of things as they relate to black people.
Of course Black Studies needs to be open to criticism. But not criticism about whether it ought to exist while at the same time contemptuously dismissing any views in it's defense.
Jem,
"The stupidity of her post undermines her authority on Black Studies."
It does nothing of the kind, it's one posting.
"Furthermore, writing a book and doing actual research does not then make her conclusion less racist. See The Bell Curve."
Neither of us have read her book. You said her conclusion was made without any knowledge, hence the only likely cause is racism. Well she apparently does know something about black studies.
"I did not assume that she criticized Black Studies because many/most professors are black."
On what other basis could you or anyone else consider what she wrote racist? Sense the content itself isn't racist.
"It is not always simply believing that a race is inferior. It is also illegitimately oppressing an entire group of people through silencing their voices and denying their autonomy and dignity, either intentionally or unintentionally."
So by criticizing black studies she is oppressing blacks as a race? That's absurd.
Ben,
She might still have her job, but that's only because no one would care, perhaps. Her having written a book on this doesn't matter, as she alleged in her post that "reading the dissertations" (which she didn't, then claimed she didn't need to) was sufficient evidence to eliminate the entire field.
You're also misunderstanding Jem's view on racism. He does not hold the view you allege he holds.