| > My concern is that a premise held by diversity advocates ('people of different races have different perspectives') could be used justify racist acts (e.g. not hiring a person from a given background). I don't really see how this follows without some other premises. Let me illustrate: Two people, equally qualified, differ in race. Both apply to a job. Is it racist to choose between these people based on the algorithm "pick the one who will result in the more racially diverse group"? I don't see how it is. As far as I can tell, this is the only kind of action it is reasonable to take based on the premises "different races have different perspectives" and "we value different perspectives". If you start switching the causality around and start saying that we value employees of a specific race more highly because we find their perspectives more valuable, that's problematic, but this doesn't follow. I do think it's easy to get the idea that there's extra murkiness here. For example if you need insight into a culture/race for business reasons (say you want to appeal to them more), I'd argue that having someone who has a lived experience does make them more qualified for that position. That's not the only thing that can make one qualified for such a position, but I don't think it makes sense to discount that value. That's a very particular case though, and not really generalizable. > Presumably perspectives differ in some ways which can make some more valuable than others in some contexts. Qualifying this as "in some contexts" is, I think, the undoing here. There are contexts where the perspective of someone of a specific race is more valuable. This is demonstrably true. If I'm doing a study of the experiences of people of a certain race (gathering the data), the experiences of a person of that race are contextually more valuable than the experiences of a person of another race. Now there are contexts where presuming that racial background makes one's perspective more valuable probably is racist, but just because that is true in some contexts doesn't make it true in all contexts. > You may not be suggesting this, but it often seems to be put this way, including by the comment I replied to, which stated that: I read what you quoted as something like "there is a group of experiences that is exclusive to each race". Perhaps let me make the argument more clearly: "Every member of the minority group has the experience of having lived as a minority in the united states. No member of the majority group shares that experience". When stated this way, it's pretty obviously true. You can debate whether it's useful, but I don't see how recognizing that could be racist. I think this also makes more sense if you assume that the person suggesting such things assumes that systemic inequalities exist. Then you can start to see why those experiences do differ. Even if two people experience different particular inequalities, they still experience racial systemic inequalities that the majority group doesn't. > I am not at all clear on what is shared by black people from all walks of life all over the world and not shared by white people from all walks of life all over the world When this kind of thing is discussed, it usually isn't a global thing. It's almost always black people in the US, or races in the US, or specific to a geographic region. A person in Uganda who never steps foot in the US probably doesn't have much in common with a black person who lives here. But, and this is the important bit, if that Ugandan person does ever come to the US for an extended period (and likely even if they come only briefly), they will share some experiences with Black Americans that I will not. That is, the judgement isn't based on a person's race alone, but based on the person's race interacting with the locally dominant culture. > What prior judgements can we make on those individual's perspectives based on their race? It may be the case that the white children would feel tremendous empathy with their fellow man and campaign vigorously for reparations. Similarly, the black children might come out of it thinking (like another prominant black man) that 300 years of slavery sounds like a choice. In my view, there is very little we can say in advance about the views of those children based on their race, and we should wait until we have the child in front of us so we can ask them about their perspective. While ultimately semantics, I have a problem with this. "300 years of slavery sounds like a choice" isn't a perspective. It's a conclusion. People can reach the same conclusion from different perspectives (otherwise you'd never be able to get anything done with diverse perspectives...). And even when people reach the same conclusion, the different perspectives by which they did so is useful. |
> I don't really see how this follows without some other premises
You don't see how the idea that different races have different perspectives could be used to justify racist acts?
How about this? "We don't hire black people because a black perspective would not be a good 'culture fit' at our organisation" or "we feel that a white perspective is necessary for the kind of work we do".
Typically, racist people like to seize on the suggestion that there are intrinsic differerences between people of different races to justify racist acts, so I'm surprised you see it as a stretch that a racist would readily agree that people of different races have different perspectives and use this to justify their behaviour in much the same way that white supremacists now talk about 'incompatible cultures'.
> Now there are contexts where presuming that racial background makes one's perspective more valuable probably is racist, but just because that is true in some contexts doesn't make it true in all contexts.
No-one has claimed it is true in all contexts. I said that presuming (or pre-judging) someone's perspective based on their race used to be called prejudice and was seen as a bad thing. Are you disagreeing that pre-judging someone's perspective used to be called prejudice? Or are you disagreeing that prejudice used to be seen as a bad thing?