I'm often critical of DEI initiatives and what passes for anti-racism today. I find the proponents for those initiatives engage repeatedly in ad hoc arguments that contradict themselves very, very often. Those proponents seem to have little inclination or desire to commit even to basic definitions.
One example is "white supremacy." Nowadays, that term seems to mean "any situation in which whites are advantaged over persons of color." Fair enough. However, it doesn't always mean that. Sometimes, it takes on the meaning it used to have: extreme racism on the order of Jim Crow laws or white nationalist hate groups. Sometimes it refers to an individual's own personal racism. Sometimes it refers to an individual's clumsy attempts to address their own racism. In that latter case, the person acknowledges their own racism, but they acknowledge it in the wrong way, or in the wrong forum, or they "make it all about them."
Sometimes the relationship between something a person calls "white supremacy" and the way racism is actually implicated is hard to discern. The person using the term often doesn't explain how racism is operating, but is stating only that the current situation is something they don't like and that white supremacy is involved.
It's almost as if "white supremacy" has come to mean everything. In that case, it means nothing.
There's no limiting principle. Or the limiting principle is insufficiently limiting. There seems to be little effort to acknowledging--let alone delimiting--what isn't white supremacy.
Those who, like me, are inclined to criticize DEI activists need to be honest about what we're asking for. It's easy to demand a definition or a more rigorous system for such terms as "white supremacy." But if someone does offer a useful definition, one that does have the type of limits I'm asking for, then we need to work with that definition and use it to understand where that person is coming from before we criticize it.
In other words, we can't and shouldn't go full bore Socrates and trick our interlocutor into contradicting themselves or show in painstaking detail the very marginal places where their definitions break down. If someone gives us an honest attempt at a definition, we should reciprocate and discuss to understand.
We should recognize that when people show their
work, they're making themselves vulnerable. Making oneself vulnerable oughtn't be a rhetorical immunity bath. But it does merit our respect.
We should also remember that very few of us have a set of values so fully developed that it could survive any and every logical challenge.
