Thread by @jholbo1

bostonreview.net/race-politics/… This is good. Scholar-activism - CRT folks and others - is going to mean sometimes scholarship takes a backseat to activism. That's not intolerable - not even bad - but it does mean stuff should get pushed pack on, in a scholarly sense. 1/

The 'ideal scholar' is some neutral, suspended mind, just weighing evidence - some Watcher figure on the moon. Sure, but that's not life. Scholarship involves advocacy and advocacy can be one-eyed and insistent, leading it to shade the truth, or sweep stuff under the rug. 2/

That's why you have other scholars. Scholar-activism is part of academic ecology. But it can go bad and get grifty, even. So, for its own good, and everyone else's it should get considerate pushback when it goes awry. All this is very obvious, in principle. 3/

At the same time, it's equally obvious that most critics of CRT are in flagrant bad faith. It's not a very skillful sort of sleight of hand. They try to find some outrage du jour, or just something they can strawman even if it's not actually so bad. 4/

They then smear not just everyone else on the other side but the very subject matter, as raised by the other side. It's strawman-ing not just of individuals, even groups or schools, but of concepts and subjects. CRT critics are strawman-ing reality by attacking CRT. 5/

From the fact that someone, somewhere, at some time, makes an exaggerated, or even merely debatable allegation of systemic racism it does not follow there is no systemic racism, much less that 'racism' itself is racist, so 'anti-racism' is racism and liar-style nonsense. 6/

A sensible CRT critic, interested in the issue, would ask instead: is some other version of this CRT view more reasonable and defensible? Might statement X be an overheated, activist slogan to which some more sober-sided, more scholarly formulation does or could corresponds? 7/

From the fact that Rufo, Lindsay et. al. do nothing of the sort, ever, you know they are fanatics, grifters or both, not serious critics. Note that there is an asymmetry here, such that we should not say: well, maybe Rufo and Lindsay are just sloppy activists, too. Same-same. 8/

I don't really think that makes sense:
1) racism is really a serious problem and we should risk a certain distortion/exaggeration in exposing it.
2) academic-style anti-racism is really a serious problem and we should risk a certain distortion/exaggeration in exposing it. 9/

1) seems to me reasonable ... with risks. 2) just seems dishonest and pointless. Academic troubles can be handled in-house, academically. I really have trouble imagining a mind fixating on 2) except as a bad faith means to bury 1) under a pile of spun-up outrage. 10/

Racism is not an academic problem, so if some anti-racism activist academics step over the academic line sometimes - well, it is what it is. Bad academic anti-racism, by contrast? There is no need to fight it by extra-academic means, rather than good arguments. 11/

If scholar-activists are writing flakey, shoddy books & articles you should expose them eventually, considerately, reasonably. It's not some civilizational crisis in the meantime. By contrast, systemic racism is a real candidate for a problem we should all worry about. 12/

'But they are crazy! They are fanatics, these CRT'ers! They won't listen to reason!' Well, that's as may be, but strawmaning everyone - framing up everyone on the other side, even the reasonable ones, for crimes they didn't commit - is not a reasonable counter-strategy. 13/

Seriously, grant for argument's sake there are some crazy, fanatic, maybe grifty CRT'ers who aren't playing by the Hoyle rules of fair debate. Would the way to restore sanity be: to lie that everyone is like them, and must be like them? No. Obviously that makes it worse. 14/

If what you really wanted was reasonable debate, a restoration of sanity, the strategy would obviously be to cordon the alleged activist-crazies off, cultivate a space of moderate, reasonable debate free of irrational extremism and dogmatism. 15/

This should be do-able, but it is obviously the opposite of what the CRT critics are actually doing. It's obvious what they are doing. They are looking out for 'useful idiots' on the other side. Someone who mis-speaks or mis-steps, making anti-racism smearable by association. 16/

'But they have got the reasonable academics afraid to contradict them!' But YOU only encourage that result by being a smear artist - Rufo, Lindsay. No reasonable, moderate lefty is going to want to critique CRT, lest they look as shit-dipped as YOU. (I wouldn't want to.) 17/

What is the proper response? One should call bullshit on flagrant grifters and fanatics like Rufo and Lindsay, whose basic line of approach demonstrates their bad faith waaaay beyond a reasonable doubt. 18/

At the same time (grits teeth) one should not refuse to critique bad stuff, just because the likes of Rufo and Lindsay have made it nearly impossible to say anything that sounds akin to their grift, lest you be mistaken for a bad faith actor yourself. 19/

Just: be open to reasonable arguments. Just because bad people are deliberately offering bad faith bad arguments against CRT, it doesn't mean there aren't any good critiques of CRT and associated 'woke' ideas. 20/

Most annoying of all, the likes of Lindsay and Rufo - even though they are themselves truth-indifferent smear artists for profit: facts is facts - will toss up the occasional good argument. (They don't hate good arguments, just don't like them better than bad ones.) 21/

To be sane, one needs to acknowledge good arguments on the other side. But this modern life also needs a nose for bullshit. This, annoyingly, results in having to put up with maybe good arguments that fairly reek of bullshit but aren't actually bullshit. 22/

Your revulsion doesn't mean you are afflicted with Groupthink, just: your bullshit detector is going off, since it's, rightly, set to the most sensitive setting. In a world of Rufos and Lindsays, that's gotta be. Just be prepared to put up with a bit of stink due to that. 23/

Final thought. I'm a Millian, I like to think. It's hard to be a good Millian on the internet because, well, the knowledge that people are trying to take advantage of that - life's too short to give every grifter the time of day and all. 24/

I find the Heterodox Academy approach to this stuff - their 'all minus one' framing - frustratingly off. But they are trying to be good Millians! I grant that. Their hearts are in the right place! 25/ heterodoxacademy.org/library/all-mi…

The scenario in which the crowd is going one way and there is just this beautiful-souled One contrarian. It's a nice, aspirational fairy tale, but it is not sociologically typical. We need discourse advise for canny Millians that is more realistic, in a Machiavellian way. /end