| >> 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 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? |