Critical theory and race gender and identity discussions

From: jimruttshow8596

James Lindsay, a mathematician, author, and independent thinker, discusses the postmodern roots of modern social justice movements, particularly their impact on discussions of race, gender, and identity, in his book Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody, co-authored with Helen Pluckrose [00:41:08]. The book explores how these theories, originating from postmodernism, have reshaped public discourse [00:42:26].

Liberalism as an Alternative

Lindsay and Pluckrose argue that philosophical liberalism is the primary alternative to the current, capitalized “Social Justice” movement [00:26:07]. Philosophical liberalism, as described in the book, opposes all forms of authoritarian movements—left-wing, right-wing, secular, or theocratic [00:33:53].

Lindsay emphasizes that their argument is about methods, specifically the approach to epistemology (how we know what is true) and ethics [00:17:19]. They contend that the liberal approach, which underpinned documents like the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, is the best method for sound epistemology and ethics [00:18:23].

Social justice as an ideal – a fairer, more just society – has been pursued by many societies throughout history, including the American experiment and advanced democracies [00:19:14]. The current “Social Justice” movement, however, uses a specific method: critical theory infused with postmodern epistemology and ethics [00:20:16].

Liberalism as a Conflict Resolution System

Liberalism is characterized not just as a political philosophy, but as a method for resolving conflicts between people in societies [00:20:44]. Examples include:

• Economics: With property rights enshrined, individuals can trade and work out economic arrangements, leading to capitalism as a liberal economic approach [00:20:51].
• Politics: The concept of individual votes leads to democracy as a liberal approach to political conflict resolution [00:21:16]. Constitutional rights like petitioning the government or peaceful protest are core to liberal democracy [00:21:39].
• Ideas: When differing ideas exist, liberalism proposes seeking the better, more reasoned argument or evidence, rather than prioritizing feelings or demands [00:22:07].

Progress and Imperfection

Liberalism has consistently improved, even starting from imperfect foundations. For instance, Thomas Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal” despite being a slaveholder [00:25:08]. However, the U.S. abolished the slave trade in 1808, and slavery itself was ended in 1863 after a Civil War [00:25:15]. John Stuart Mill’s mid-19th-century essay The Subjection of Women exemplified how liberalism’s principles could be applied to argue for women’s liberation, viewing patriarchy as inconsistent with liberal thought [00:25:41].

The core idea of liberalism is to start with fundamental principles of universal humanity and recognize individuals as autonomous, reasoning beings with their own minds and moral capacities [00:26:33]. This framework, through principles like secularism, allowed societies to address injustices like patriarchy, racism, slavery, and homophobia [00:27:12]. While critics argue liberalism has “failed,” they often ignore its unprecedented successes in human history [00:29:21]. Liberalism’s strength lies in its willingness to accept self-criticism and continuously improve, as seen in the appeals of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. to the nation’s founding principles to fight for civil rights [00:30:23].

The Origins of Postmodernism and Critical Theory

Postmodernism emerged in art and literature around the 1940s, challenging rigid structures and rules by inserting arbitrary elements to highlight the arbitrariness of rules themselves [00:35:42]. In the 1950s and 60s, French philosophers like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, engaged with structuralism (the idea that language structures thought and society), became interested in the interplay of language and power [00:36:51].

These thinkers aimed to show that rules are arbitrary and contain “structural oppressions” [00:37:34]. Foucault, for instance, conducted “archaeologies” and “genealogies” to dissect history, revealing how “regimes of truth” dictated thought and led to terrible outcomes [00:37:44]. The core conclusion of postmodern thought is that all knowledge and claims to truth are political, serving power dynamics rather than describing reality [00:39:17].

Core Principles of Postmodern Thought

Lindsay and Pluckrose distill postmodern thought into two core principles [00:41:04]:

1. Postmodern Knowledge Principle: Knowledge is socially constructed, generally in service of power [00:41:11]. There is no access to objective truth [00:41:33].
2. Postmodern Political Principle: Dominant groups construct knowledge to maintain their power, necessitating an ethical imperative to dismantle powerful discourses [00:41:39].

They also identify four core themes [00:42:01]:

1. Blurring of Boundaries: Efforts to dissolve distinctions between categories like man/woman or knowledge/storytelling [00:42:09].
2. Almighty Power of Language: An exaggerated belief that words function as “magic spells” to structure society [00:42:25].
3. Cultural Relativism: The idea that one cannot judge the ethics or knowledge systems of one culture from the perspective of another (e.g., science versus witchcraft) [00:42:35].
4. Dissolution of Universal Humanity and Autonomous Individual: People are products of their social groups, and there’s no universal human nature, making genuine understanding between groups impossible [00:43:14].

This postmodern rejection of objective knowledge and truth, particularly concerning science, is seen as deeply problematic [00:39:41]. Lindsay explains that proponents cherry-pick instances of scientific failure or social issues within science to argue against its validity, ignoring its self-correcting mechanisms [00:30:50]. They believe that if problems exist in the sociology of science (e.g., sexism), it must stem from the “discourses” of science itself, justifying the “deconstruction” of scientific language [00:39:07].

The Applied Turn

By the late 1980s and 1990s, postmodernism underwent an “applied turn” [00:45:30]. Radical activists from the 1960s and 70s, including critical theorists and radical feminists, combined postmodern tools with their activism. They set aside the idea of universal deconstruction, arguing that “the experience of oppression is real” and only those with privilege could deconstruct it [00:46:11]. This led to a simplified version of postmodernism focused on deconstructing “powers that create oppression,” while exempting oppression itself from deconstruction [00:46:47]. This shift explicitly brought identity politics to the forefront, making identity categories central to postmodern principles [00:46:58].

Post-Colonial Theory and Strategic Essentialism

Post-colonial theory introduces the concept of “strategic essentialism” [00:47:51]. Defined by Gayatri Spivak in the mid-1980s, this means adopting negative stereotypes imposed by a powerful group in a self-aware, ironic way to use them as a “weapon of resistance” [00:48:20]. Spivak characterized it as preserving existing power hierarchies but reversing their direction, making the previously subjugated dominant [00:49:57]. This is why some social justice activists appear to “get everything backwards” [00:51:03].

Decolonizing Fields

In the context of “decolonizing fields,” this theory views concepts like reason and science as “properties” of the cultures that developed them, primarily white, Western societies [00:52:52]. Therefore, teaching science or reason to non-Western cultures is seen as a “colonial act,” an imposition of “white and Western things” [00:54:02]. This perspective is seen as “conservative” in a regressive sense, advocating for societies to remain in a pre-modern state rather than adopting useful advancements [00:57:49].

Research Justice

A prominent manifestation of this is “research justice,” the idea that research has systematically excluded certain ideas and voices due to historical biases from “white Western men” [01:06:06]. To “fix” this, proponents advocate for:

• Minimizing citations of white Western men [01:07:04].
• Prioritizing citations of black women and other marginalized voices [01:07:07].
• Replacing white Western curricula with materials from other contexts [01:07:17].

This turns identity into a criterion for academic validity, overtly “cooking the books” to benefit activists with certain identity markers [01:07:56]. This logic has even seeped into mathematics education, with calls to make math “less individualistic” and questioning objective truths like “two plus two equals four” [01:11:17].

Queer Theory

Queer theory radically rejects anything “normal” or “normative,” viewing it as constraining and oppressive [01:19:22]. For example, it opposed gay marriage because making it legal would make being gay “more normative,” thus removing its “radical divergent” power [01:19:32]. It seeks to destabilize all categories, asserting that “everybody is a person and everybody can do whatever they want” [01:20:25].

A particularly “insane view” within queer theory is the claim that biological sex itself is not real, but as “culturally constructed as gender” [01:21:01]. This extends the idea of gender roles being socially constructed, then gender itself, and finally argues for the social construction of biological sex to dismantle any “normative categories” [01:22:31].

Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality

Critical race theory (CRT) begins with the claim that modern notions of race were invented in the late 16th century specifically to facilitate racism, slavery, and colonialism [01:26:50]. While the idea of race gained social significance through these historical processes, liberalism has historically worked to reduce this social significance, moving towards “color blindness” where racial identity does not determine one’s life trajectory [01:27:39].

However, movements like Black Power and later, Kimberly Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality, asserted that an “identity-first” approach is more powerful [01:28:50]. Crenshaw specifically linked this to postmodern theory to “deconstruct the power that’s oppressing black people” [01:29:17]. This approach aims to re-insert social significance into racial categories, contrasting sharply with Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of being judged by character, not skin color [01:28:10].

CRT defines black culture in opposition to white culture, claiming white culture is intrinsically anti-black [01:32:51]. This leads to absurd claims that values like productivity, reliability, loyalty, and punctuality, along with science and reason, are “white supremacy” [01:33:09].

Psychological Impact

This perspective, by asserting that the “whole world is against you” and that “every fine structure of reality is there to you over in a fairly permanent way,” is psychologically devastating for the groups it claims to advocate for [01:36:34]. It’s described as “reverse cognitive behavioral therapy,” increasing paranoia, cynicism, pessimism, and nihilism [01:38:21]. Lindsay argues that even if their diagnoses of societal problems were correct, their prescriptions are “100 percent backwards” [01:39:18].

The Hermetically Sealed Nature of Social Justice Theories

The current “Social Justice” (capitalized as a term of art) movement operates as a “hermetically sealed” system of theories and arguments [01:02:34]. It actively ignores and represses historical analysis, empirical facts, and data [01:02:55]. This resembles medieval scholasticism, where doubt or evidence was considered sinful [01:03:07].

This worldview possesses a “completely different epistemology” (relationship to knowledge) and ethics [01:04:24]. Truth and falsity are irrelevant; instead, ideas are judged by whether they are “problematic” or align with “somebody’s lived experience” of occupying an “oppressed social position” [01:04:40]. Their ethics are defined by the belief that “some cultures have been systemically oppressed, others have been unfairly advantaged, and we have to flip those over” [01:05:02].

Belief and Cynicism

Lindsay suggests that most core scholars and activists within this movement genuinely believe these theories, often being “painfully sincere” and lacking a sense of humor [01:15:01]. However, many others who “support” it fall into categories of fear (pretending belief to keep their jobs), misinformation (uncritically following hashtags), or excessive charity (reinterpreting radical claims as more sensible) [01:16:05]. These movements openly call for “revolution” against the existing “system” [01:17:16].

What Can Be Done?

To counter this tide, Lindsay offers several suggestions:

1. Listen Better: The only thing these theories get “99.9% correct” is the call to listen more [01:41:21].
2. Assert Liberalism: Actively remind people about liberal systems and principles, as civics education has been lacking [01:41:49].
3. Show Up: Activists are often few in number but are highly present in bureaucratic and local settings. Counter this by showing up at meetings and participating [01:42:37].
4. Get Informed: Understand their “jibber jabber” and the liberal alternatives [01:43:01]. Understand the value of rule of law, due process, scientific methods, and objective standards [01:43:15].
5. Don’t Back Down: Resist intimidation tactics like name-calling (e.g., being called “racist” for advocating “color blindness”) [01:44:52]. They use word games and new definitions to accuse [01:45:52].
6. Speak Up: Overcome fear and speak up, as silence allows the problem to worsen [01:46:27]. Liberals hold the “moral high ground” and “epistemological high ground” due to their belief in science and universal benefit [01:46:47]. Their opponents often exhibit “misused empathy” that becomes cruel, having “left the path of wisdom” [01:47:11].

Lindsay concludes by asserting that it’s time to “grow a backbone” and “stand up to these people” [01:46:42].