In response to a video version of the first D&D and racism essay I did, a viewer posted “yet another racist feeling guilt trying to project their racism onto others, but this one attempting to use logic and his “appeal to superiority” with his college knowledge…” I do not know whether this was a sincere criticism or mere trolling, but the tactics employed are common enough to be worth addressing critically.
There is a lot going on in that single sentence, which is itself a rhetorical tactic analogous to throwing matches in a dry forest. Throwing the matches is quick and easy; putting out the small fires they start takes time and effort. But if they are not addressed, the “match thrower” can claim they have scored points. This creates a nasty dilemma: if you take time to respond to these tossed matches, you are using way more time than the attacker, so even if you “win” you “win” little because they have invested so little in the attacks. If you do not respond, then they can claim victory. This would also be an error on their part: a lack of response does not prove that a claim is correct.
The references to using logic and college knowledge seem to be an attempt at a common tactic I have addressed before, which is the “argument against expertise.” It occurs when a person rejects a claim because it is made by an authority/expert and has the following form:
Premise 1: Authority/expert A makes claim C.
Conclusion: Claim C is false.
While experts can be wrong, to infer that an expert is wrong because they are an expert is obviously absurd and an error in reasoning. This can be illustrated by a person concluding that there must be nothing wrong with their car solely because an expert mechanic said it had an engine issue. That would clearly be bad reasoning.
The person is also using an ad hominem and a straw man attack. In the video I explicitly note that I am giving my credentials to establish credibility and also note that I should not be believed simply because I am an expert in philosophy and gaming: my arguments stand or fall on their own merit. As such, the “appeal to superiority” is utterly unfounded—but does provide an excellent example of combining a straw man with an ad hominem. These are common bad faith tactics and it is wise to know them for what they are. I now turn to the focus of this essay, which is the tactic of accusing critics of racism of being the real racists. This tactic is a common one—and a go-to tactic of President Trump whenever he does racist things.
The easy part to address is the reference to guilt arising from being racist—even if a person is motivated by guilt, this is irrelevant to the truth of their claims: it is just another ad hominem attack. As far projecting racism, this is just part of the claim that the critic of racism must be racist. While the accusation of racism can be seen as a mere rhetorical device, there does seem to be an implied argument behind it—and some people do take the time to develop a full argument for their accusation of racism. Let us look at some versions of this argument:
Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of racism or racist R.
Conclusion: Person A is a racist because of C.
While not a specific named fallacy, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Consider the same sort of logic, which is obviously flawed:
Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or corrupt person.
Conclusion: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.
Being critical of corruption or a corrupt person does not make you corrupt. While a corrupt person could be critical of corruption or another corrupt person, their criticism is not evidence of corruption. Two other bad arguments are as follows:
Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about aspect of racism or racist R.
Premise 2: Person A is a racist because of C.
Conclusion: Criticism C is false.
This is obviously just an ad hominem attack: even if A was a racist, this has no bearing on the truth of C. Consider an argument with the same sort of reasoning:
Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or corrupt person R.
Premise: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.
Conclusion: Criticism C is false.
This is quite evidently bad logic; otherwise anyone who criticized corruption would always be wrong.
A variant version, equally bad, is this:
Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about aspect of racism or racist R.
Premise 2: Person A is a racist because of C.
Conclusion: R is not racist.
While not a specific named fallacy, it is still bad logic: even if person A were a racist, it would not follow that R is not. Once again, consider the analogy with corruption:
Premise 1: Person A makes criticism C about an aspect of corruption or corrupt person R.
Conclusion: Person A is a corrupt person because of C.
Conclusion: R is not corrupt.
Again, the badness of this reasoning is evident: if it were good logic, any accusation of corruption would be automatically false. At this point it can be said that while these bad arguments are really used, perhaps there are good arguments that prove that being critical of racism or racists makes a person a racist or proves their criticism is false.
I do agree that there are cases in which critics of certain types of racism are racists. The most easy and obvious example would be the Nation of Islam: they assert, on theological grounds, that blacks are innately superior to whites. Someone who believes this could be critical of racism against blacks and they would thus be a racist criticizing racism (of a specific type). But it is not their criticism of racism that makes them racist—it is their racism that makes them racist. Even if everyone who was critical of racism happened to be racist, it would not follow that their criticism makes them racist. It is their racism that makes them racist.
What is needed is an argument showing that it is being critical of racism or a racist makes one racist not that one happens to be a racist criticizing racism. That is, if the only information you had about any person was the full text of their criticism you would be able to reliably infer from the criticism that they are racist. Obviously enough, if the criticism contained racism (like a Nation of Islam member criticizing white racism because of their view that blacks are inherently superior to whites) one could do this easily but to assume that every criticism of racism or racists must contain racism because it is a criticism of racism would beg the question. Also, pointing to racists who make a criticism of racism and inferring that all critics who make that same criticism are thus racists would be to fall into the guilt by association fallacy. And, of course, even if a critic were racist, it would be an ad hominem to infer their criticism is thus false.
While the “ideal” argument would show that all criticisms of racism make one racist (and, even “better”, disprove the criticism) such an argument would seem suspiciously powerful: it would show that every critic of racism is a racist and perhaps even automatically disprove any criticisms about racism. Probably the best way to argue for such an argument is to focus on showing that being critical of racism requires criticizing people based on their race and then making a case for why this is racist. The idea seems to be that being critical of racism requires accepting race and using it against other races (or one’s own), thus being racist. But this seems absurd if one considers the following analogy.
Imagine, if you will, a world even more absurd than our own. In this world, no one developed the idea of race. Instead, people were divided up by their earlobes. Broadly speaking, humans have two types of earlobes. One is the free earlobe—the lobe hangs beyond the attachment point of the ear to the head. The other is the attached earlobe: it attaches directly to the head. In this absurd world, the free lobed were lauded as better in important ways than the attached lobed—free lobed scientists and writers asserted that the free lobed are smarter, more civilized, less prone to crime and so on for all the virtues. In contrast, the attached lobed were presented as bestial, savage, criminal, stupid and immoral. And thus lobism was born. The attached lobed were enslaved for a long period of time, then freed. After that, there were systematic efforts to oppress the attached lobed—though progress could not be denied. For example, a person with partially attached lobes was elected President. But there are still many problems attributed to lobism.
In this weird world some people are critical of lobism and argue that aside from the appearance of the ear lobes, there is no biological difference between the groups. Would it make sense to infer that their criticism of lobism entails that they are lobists? That is, that they have prejudice against the free lobed, discriminate against them and so on? Does it entail that they believe that lobist claims are real: that the lobes determine all these other factors such as morality, intelligence and so on? Well, if critics of racism must be racists, then critics of lobism must be lobist. If one of us went to that world and were critical of lobism, then we would be lobists. This seems absurd: one can obviously be critical of lobism or racism without being a lobist or racist.
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