Yes, exactly, it is arguable, which why I’m saying that you can’t say there’s actually “good” or “bad” cherries.
Check out “postructuralism” and scholars like Derrida or Foucault. The role that language plays in our constructions and effects on things forces us to interrogate the reality of how we understand this thing to be “good” or “bad,” as it is itself subject to the systems of power we are subject to. So, it’s very hard not to reproduce the values we’re trying to challenge when we don’t address how those values are constructed.
Yes, we all know white supremacy is bad, but if it is only bad because it hurts people, then many people think that it only exists at the level of individual actions, like calling someone a slur, and not at a systemic level like how laws and knowledge are oriented around fundamentally devaluing certain groups of people; or why it is those groups of people in the first place besides “hating what’s different.” White supremacy does hurt people, and that is bad, but our understanding of how it does that changes how we understand what is needed to end it.
many people think that it only exists at the level of individual actions, like calling someone a slur, and not at a systemic level
Is this not just lack of abstract thinking?
Direct racism has a straightforward cause and effect. It is clearcut, simple to understand, and easy to place yourself in a role and distinguish right from wrong
systemic racism has multiple steps and indirect causes. There may be no clear culprit, no direct causes, or primarily historical causes. Some of us can see reality and have the empathy to distinguish what is wrong. Others can see the abstracted perpetrators or web of steps to better understand a complex situation resulting in wrongs . But some people have a harder time with abstraction, with there not being a clearly identified cause, without a specific action to blame
Well, it’s arguable that some of these religious “cherries” are worse than others, but I don’t find any of them to be crisp and delicious.
Yes, exactly, it is arguable, which why I’m saying that you can’t say there’s actually “good” or “bad” cherries.
Check out “postructuralism” and scholars like Derrida or Foucault. The role that language plays in our constructions and effects on things forces us to interrogate the reality of how we understand this thing to be “good” or “bad,” as it is itself subject to the systems of power we are subject to. So, it’s very hard not to reproduce the values we’re trying to challenge when we don’t address how those values are constructed.
Yes, we all know white supremacy is bad, but if it is only bad because it hurts people, then many people think that it only exists at the level of individual actions, like calling someone a slur, and not at a systemic level like how laws and knowledge are oriented around fundamentally devaluing certain groups of people; or why it is those groups of people in the first place besides “hating what’s different.” White supremacy does hurt people, and that is bad, but our understanding of how it does that changes how we understand what is needed to end it.
Is this not just lack of abstract thinking?
I think you think that I am failing to think. I also think you are mistaken.
I’ve read Foucault, and you’ve made a compelling argument. But I don’t get what you’re trying to say in this last comment.