Facebook Argument: Aboriginal activism

Because I am some kind of exhibitionist, I've decided to start copy-pasting the delightful arguments/fights that I occasionally have with others about various 'important issues' on Facebook (and because FB's search function for your previous posts sucks, as in, they have no such function)

R (OP):

Christie Blatchford is many things, but I never thought of her as a racist. Not a 'this person is white and made a comment so I will just call them that so that the accusation will heftily speak the crime', but an honest-to-God, ribald, bigoted, racist. So whenever I refer to her, I will do so by saying "Noted racist, Christie Blatchford, today shat on humanity from on high by stating..." Because thats what you do when someone is a racist, you call them on it. Over and over and over again. 

http://www.theprovince.com/sports/Christie+Blatchford+There+stupidity+bred+hunger+strikes/7750155/story.html

Me:

Natives have the same right as white people to be called stupid by newspaper columnists

(A bunch of clarification posts)

R:

[Lorenzo], I really think you need to read the article. Replace the words 'First Nations' with Filipino, or Basque, or Uhyghur, or Black, and people would be calling for her head on a pike. Again, when it comes to the conversation about First Nation's in this country its A-OK to use explicitly racist language because of our nebulous and ill-informed understanding of 'money goin' to them' and other insane myths like 'they get free college' and 'they're just not working hard enough'.

Me:

I have read the article, and I agree with pretty much 90% of it. Her target is not Natives but Native activism in its present form (as represented by Chief Spence), which she denounces as ineffectual puffery because, in her view, it does nothing to actually address the significant problems that Natives continue to suffer under the present legal regime. Indian Act is broken? Aborginals are forced into dependency? She agrees with all that too!

I think people are failing to make a distinction between good intentions and effective advocacy. Chief Spence may mean well, but if her 'activism' only serves as an obstacle to the betterment of Aboriginal lives then others are free to criticize her in strong language. Because that's really all I see here: strong language. Yes, there was that one paragraph that made fun of common tropes associated with Native culture, but all forms of activism carry with them the risk that their most important symbols and ideas will become misused in a fit of sentimental frenzy, and that is specifically what Blatchford is denouncing.

R:

So its okay for Blatchford to be a racist because she sees the Indian Act as a bad thing. Okay. Gotcha.

Me:

If Blatchford's article is 'racism' then criticism of Native activism is impossible without being racist

R:

That's crap and you know it [Lorenzo]. Denigrating the customs of a culture, saying that a group of people give off offensive physical odors and that their cultural practices does not make them a nation and should be written off as such is racism, plain and simple. I've enjoyed our debates on many things Juan, but you're really showing that you're unwilling to accept that yes, sometimes people utilize racist language to denigrate others to make their argument seem more palpable to others. That makes you naive, and intellectually dishonest.

Again, go through this intellectual exercise by replacing 'First Nations' with 'Jewish' and 'tobacco offerings and smudging' with 'kosher meats' and 'menorah' and tell me that this would not result in Christie being brought up on hate speech charges and denounced by every sector of Canadian society.

Me:

"Denigrating the customs of a culture, saying that a group of people give off offensive physical odors and that their cultural practices does not make them a nation and should be written off as such is racism, plain and simple."

Except that she doesn't actually say all those things you say she said. Let me bring up what she actually said:

"... there is... a genuine question as to whether there’s enough of aboriginal culture that has survived to even dream of that lofty status, or if the culture isn’t irreparably damaged already. Smudging, drumming and the like do not a nation make."

OK, so she did make a mistake in lumping all Aboriginals together, since Crees are different from Algonquins, etc. But the point remains: isn't it one of the major arguments of pro-Native activists that Native culture has been, well, irreparably damaged by centuries of discrimination? I do not see how it is racist to point out uncomfortable truths. Native culture /has/ been severely damaged, what with the Indian Act, residential schools, etc. Of course, the real extent of what cultural elements survive has to discovered through other means, but to ask the very question is not 'racist' but, rather, part of the bleak task of surveying the damage that has been done to Aboriginal society.

Right, so I've given this a bit more thought.

Blatchford was probably a little insensitive when she made those comments about 'smudging and drumming', but I still believe that focusing, above all else, on the negativity that those phrases generate in some is to totally miss the point of her article. The righteousness of your cause (and Aboriginal rights are as righteous a cause if any) does not absolve you from making dumb decisions in your activism, or from exploiting your own cultural symbols to generate emotions of sympathy in a manipulative fashion.

Let's take...oh, the pro-life movement, which often gets accused of emotional exploitation (because of the pictures of aborted babies) or 'only caring about babies before they are born'. Do those accusations sting me, a pro-lifer? Yes. Do I call them out of it and complain about how offended I am? No, because despite the strong language there are legitimate points behind those criticisms. There are legitimate points in Blatchford's article, too, and I'm afraid they've been lost in this dispute.

Heck, let's go further...

Let's go further and talk about, say, Filipinos under American occupation (as they were about a hundred years ago) ((Blognote: I'm Filipino)). The Filipino activists create posters showing crying women watching as big dumb Whitey takes always her beautiful forests. They stage protests that make liberal use of traditional Filipino dances. Soon, Mark Twain (who was pro-Filipino historically) writes an article denouncing the 'shrill sentimentality of the Filipinos, who act as if their hoppity dances and their precious jungle soil are their defining cultural traits'. I would be hurt, yes...for the first few moments. But then I would realize that he has a point, because we /have/ been using our 'hoppity dances' and our 'precious jungle soil' as tools to generate sympathy.

Emotional sensitivity is less important than rudely stating the facts.

R:

See this is where you are doing a great job of lying to yourself and apologizing for racism Juan, which is really, really crappy. Reading your apologist screed for racists of old and present is not baffling, only depressing. You're cherry picking of all of the segments of the article save those which are explicitly racist and your refusal to quote them is a clear representation of your inability and/or tacit unwillingness to approach this issue on the battleground of reason. This makes three times in a row that you have ignored and been unwilling to engage in the very simple yet painfully difficult exercise I put before you. Your 'uncomfortable truths' angle is representative of most of the drivel I have to hear on a constant basis from people who have no understanding whatsoever of what has been going on in this country for the past fifty years, let alone the meat and potatoes genocide that we would all like to forget about. I expected more from someone that is so willing to champion 'moral' causes that fit in with your Christian orthodoxy. I am surprised that you can still call yourself one.

Me:

I do not apply different standards to different moral causes. They are plenty of folks who champion 'Christian orthodoxy' whom I find wholly disagreeable, but I have not been given a situation where I have had to denounce them, hence my supposed silence on that issue.

OK, let's break this down and look at the most objectionable parts of Blatchford's column, since that is what you desire.

"Now, of course, Chief Spence has parked herself on an island in the Ottawa River, is on Day 17 of a hunger strike, and all around her, the inevitable cycle of hideous puffery and horse manure that usually accompanies native protests swirls."

OK, so she says native protests are full of shit, basically. Admittedly, this is a highly insensitive thing to say, and if I had stopped reading the article there I would have come to the same conclusion as you about her 'racism'. But let's not forget the context here: she goes on to say that natives do have legitimate grievances, and that this has been going on for years and no one has done anything. In fact, I went on and on about how her whole point was that the current strategy of native protests was amounting to a bunch of nothing.

"Already, there is much talk of smudging ceremonies, tobacco offerings, the inherent aboriginal love for and superior understanding of the land, and treaties that were expected to be in place “as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the river flows.”

Derisive, definitely. This is where your argument is strongest because she actually does target actual native practices in her crosshairs. Again, context: she is talking about how those things are being used by activists as tools for public relations, and not that those practices per se are bad.

I already talked about the next honker paragraph in my previous post above.

Now, here's a few questions I have for you, R.

Do you object to the actual point of this article, or merely those offensive things she says in those few paragraphs I (and you) have highlighted? Do you think that excluding those sections from her column would drastically improve her thesis?

Do you believe that native activism, as it is, should be something we support unconditionally? Does criticism of this activism imply criticism of natives themselves, or their beliefs and traditions, or even to question their value? Should native traditions not be criticized so freely, because of the delicate nature of the issue?

I (and Blatchford, and every other normal person) have never expressed anything but genuine concern over the issue of Aboriginal rights and the poverty and depredation of Natives (especially in Reserves). Everyone who has an adequate understanding of history knows the story of Aboriginals' plight, the loss of land and dignity, the destruction (more or less) of their culture and their way of life, their continual endurance (however frail) of systemic discrimination (whether intended or not). We know all this because of the efforts of activists to bring these issues to light; and yes, I do believe that pro-native activism has had positive results.

But just because Aboriginals are suffering doesn't mean they get to be certified as morally pure victims. To regard Natives as an unassailable, uncriticizable group by virtue of the real suffering they have endured is highly patronizing, akin to the views of those people who think that you can't criticize Israel because of the historical suffering of Jews. In fact, I don't really believe this is about 'racism' at all but about the hurt feelings that Blatchford's article generated by virtue of her daring to attack Natives for their tactics (and only certain Natives, at that). Bad tactics and bad advocacy are bad regardless of the group or the cause, as I have said at least three times now.

You know who's making a real difference in Aboriginal advocacy? Shawn Atleo. ((blognote: current head of the Assembly of First Nations)) And, of course, you never hear Blatchford complain about him very much.

Arguing for the sake of arguing

So I decided to look over an old post over at InformationisBeautiful.net (this post) and I found this comment:

The arguments both for and against same-sex marriage are not logical arguments. Logical arguments should work from a fixed and common set of axioms and be independently verifiable, but the arguments for and against same-sex marriage are based on very variable moral judgements and values.

Wait, what?

So let me get this straight: neither side in the gay marriage debate is basing their argument on logic, only relativistic values.

In that case, there is no reason why gay marriage should or should not be allowed based solely on the number of people who happen to believe either position, i.e. sheer majority will. There is no real reason beyond the collective whims of everyone; there is no righteousness in the struggle of gays to have their relationships recognized as marriage, because 'righteousness' is a function of moral axioms, and there are no moral axioms.

I'm glad that's straightened out.

Sarcasm aside, let's break down this statement to see what's wrong with it.

Logical arguments should work from a fixed and common set of axioms and be independently verifiable.

Assuming that the word 'axiom' means what I think it means, e.g. a premise which can definitively known to be true, then so far so good. Moving on, however...

...the arguments for and against same-sex marriage are based on very variable moral judgements and values.

And here is where the trouble begins. First off, this is yet another example of presuming the truth of premises that are left undefended, because they are thought to be clearly true by reasonable people... Except they aren't, and that's why we keep having arguments about things like gay marriage or other such things.

Secondly, this statement presumes that there is some kind of separation between "logic" and "rhetoric", as if they are different species. On the contrary, there is indeed such a thing as "rhetorical logic". In the Middle Ages, the distinction was made between the "demonstrative" argument, which relied purely on syllogisms (e.g. If A is true, then B must follow) and the "rhetorical" argument, which was probabilistic (e.g. Given that A, B, and C are reasonable courses of action, I submit that B is the best, because X). The latter is the common technique used in politics, and can be perfectly valid arguments despite not being purely "logical".

I think the trouble here is that there seem to be different working definitions of what logic is in the first place. It seems that the commenter believes that what counts as "logic" would produce a proposition that cannot be denied by anyone. This is strict to an unfounded degree. There is no such thing as an argument or proposition that can compel a person to believe it beyond their capacity to deny it. People are fickle and can deny whatever they want, and even if they are open to argumentation it takes some time for someone to truly absorb, understand, and (possibly) adopt a correct argument. People have to consciously choose to accept even a totally sound proposition or argument; that is just a fact of life.

As to what the actual premises at stake are in the gay marriage debate, that will have to wait for now. I merely wanted to point out that even our ideas about what arguments are seem to, sadly, vary wildly between different people.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

I was thinking about that famous saying of Carl Sagan's. It didn't take me long to realize that...well, what the hell is that supposed to mean?

"Extraordinary claims." What makes a claim extraordinary? I'm guessing that's supposed to refer to claims about the supernatural or God, but to call such claims 'extraordinary' is to take for granted the assumption the only the physical is real, and that therefore anything that suggests otherwise must be considered 'extraordinary'. So, why is only the physical real?

"Extraordinary evidence." This is where things get out of whack. If the evidence for an 'extraordinary' claim is also 'extraordinary', then how is one supposed to obtain any such evidence? How you know what counts as 'extraordinary evidence' if the claim itself is subject to suspicion in the first place?

Now, granted, the statement itself isn't necessarily /bad/ per se, it only presumes a number of premises that may or may not be true. Sadly, it seems a lot of people aren't even aware that there are premises to be held beforehand; the statement becomes a bald assertion masquerading as an argument.

"Skeptics" who act like skeptics!

They do exist! A refreshing example courtesy of a commenter at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog:

First let me say that climate change is absolutely real, that’s not what I’m ranting about.

I get a little annoyed at the so called skepticism of organized skeptics. Most of the people that post here are skeptical only about religion, an area that is easy to be skeptical about and that really doesn’t matter much. It is pretty much immune to the skepticism of others, as are most of it’s adherents. As for all the attacks on the anti-vax clowns, that’s not skepticism, that’s just common sense attacking idiots for fun. Ranting about that here does nothing as none of them are reading this, or really any other intelligent blog.

Let’s apply skepticism where it belongs. Science. Science is skepticism, or at least it’s supposed to be. In the case of this report, like everything in science, it should be looked at skeptically. Certainly the global climate is changing, and certainly it is in some large part driven by human activity. there’s really no doubt about that. However, there is still a lot of room for skepticism.

He then goes on to apply this principle to the topic of discussion, namely global warming/climate change, by pointing out how the uncertainties of climate science should leave us room for pause as opposed to the hyper-active panic promoted by our sound-bite media culture. Instead of automatically painting the entire "denier" side as a bunch of jibber-jibber right-wing nuts, maybe you should consider that actual scientists have also been having doubts about the "consensus" for some time now.

It's easy to say that you're skeptical about this or that thing that you've concluded is wrong, but how did you come to that conclusion in the first place? Did you actually thinking it over or did you come to that position from social pressure? The most important kind of skepticism, I believe, is self-skepticism, is asking yourself "Am I really right or did I make a mistake somewhere?" Humility, unfortunately, is a hard virtue to cultivate especially if you happen to be even moderately intellectual. As another commenter notes:

I’ve been beating that drum for years WRT ideology, Vince. You won’t get far. I’m one of the few people I know who also applies skepticism to politics. It’s why I don’t hang with many other skeptics. Too many of them have gobbled up one ideology or another to the point of nearly cultist-like responses if you dare question them.

And so it is with many so-called "skeptics" or "free-thinkers", who supposedly adhere only to their own reason but in reality use these as cover to unabashedly advocate highly partisan positions, or make fun of religion (often times both). That's not skepticism; that's not even reason. That's just tribalism with a lab coat.

Of course, these two guys are pretty much ignored for the rest of the thread. Sad, but expected.

Not busy anymore, so...

Time for some more blogging! This time, a blurb on a scientist who's stirred up trouble lately:

What [E.O.] Wilson is trying to do, late in his influential career, is nothing less than overturn a central plank of established evolutionary theory: the origins of altruism. His position is provoking ferocious criticism from other scientists. Last month, the leading scientific journal Nature published five strongly worded letters saying, more or less, that Wilson has misunderstood the theory of evolution and generally doesn’t know what he’s talking about. One of these carried the signatures of an eye-popping 137 scientists, including two of Wilson’s colleagues at Harvard.

Personally I'm rather open to the idea that at least a small portion of human altruism might be driven towards gene preservation. After all, humans are, at the very least, biological. Of course, if dubious mathematics was the only issue here I doubt this topic would be generating as much controversy as it is.

Something I have always suspected is that much of the objection has an ideological rather than a scientific basis, that evolutionary theory must, in the eyes of some, remain a certain way so that it can best uphold, beneath a thin veneer of scientific prestige, their personal beliefs on the nature of the human person. Kin selection theory, if one is not careful (and many aren't!), can easily lead to the implication that human free will is illusory, that human decisions are driven primarily by unconscious biological impulse rather than a deliberate desire to conform to some normative standard.

And Wilson doesn't even seem to be trying to get rid of biological explanations of altruism altogether, since he's trying to promote group selection as an alternative to kin selection. Of course, that doesn't seem to matter to some people. The orthodoxy must be defended, lest their personal beliefs (horrors!) be forced to change with the science. Some scientists they are!

Meanwhile, there's this whole idea of sociobiology trying to explain social structure through wholly natural explanations, as if human culture was somehow a by-product of selection, but I'll talk about that next time.