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Friday, April 28
View Article  David Duke and the University: The Wisdom of John Stuart Mill
by Laurence Thomas on Fri 28 Apr 2006 03:56 PM CEST

I

know of course that Mr. David Duke is persona non gratae on college campuses.  Still, I have a pretty good imagination; and I have always imagined a great debate between me and David Duke.  As is well known, Duke was at one point in time the personification of the idea that blacks and other minorities are intellectually inferior.  It is, obviously, a good thing that universities reject that view. 

The mistake, of course, is in supposing that the rejection of that view entails precluding all public forums at the university that might involve David Duke or, in general, a debate of that view.  Not so, however. 

I suggest that nothing would be more in keeping with the idea that all are equal than a masterful debate with David Duke or others of his persuasion.  Not because this would be tantamount to giving Duke a hearing.  But because it would give scholars the opportunity to show that David Duke’s views are utterly bankrupt.  And I maintained that seeing such a thing demonstrated through reasoned argument would be an absolutely wonderful and affirming experience for all. 

You see, I hold the very simple view that nothing beats experience.  To be sure, there is nothing to be said for experiencing some thing.  For instance, I have never had a bone in my body broken.  And, quite frankly, I am not going to do anything to help matters along in this regard.  I most certainly am not going to do so that I may understand more fully the suffering of those who have suffered a broken bone. 

Anyways, the point is not simply that nothing beats experience.  Rather, the point is that nothing beats the experience of excellence.  People can go around saying “I can do anything” or “I can be anything I want to be”.  This they can do until the cows come home, or whatever it is that cows do that makes the expression relevant here.  But such utterances are no substitute for actual instances of success.  Indeed, they become rather hallow in the absence of actual instances of success.  Nothing affirms one’s belief that one can perform an excellence like an unequivocal display of excellence on one’s part. 

This truth points to why we must be so judicious with praise.  For we deflate its value if we offer high praise for anything that a person might do.  There is, to be sure, the wrong of with holding praise where praise is due.  Alas, this wrong is not corrected by praising a person no matter what. 

Coming back to David Duke, I find that I am becoming increasingly cynical.  For instance, I am less persuaded than I used to be that people actually believe what they say.  David Duke is no dummy.  Hitler was no dummy.  Holding a morally reprehensible view does not suffice to make one intellectually bereft.

This is why I maintain that those who hold such views should be publicly debated.  That said, I want to acknowledge Mr. Brian Romm’s point. 

What I take to be appropriate is not a shouting match where, say, liberal college students drown out every word that Duke utters with their boos.  There would be nothing to be said for bringing Duke to a campus for that.  One could simply show a picture of him or a film of him speaking.  And in turn folks could boo his image to their hearts content. 

The truth, though, is that boos do not constitute an argument.  Accordingly, there really is a limit to how much satisfaction we should take in them.  Indeed, I worry when we take too much satisfaction in our booing another.  For I wonder whether our booing is masking a painfully reality, namely that we do not have in our intellectual arsenal the arguments that are necessary to show that the individual’s point of view—say, David Duke’s position—is intellectually bankrupt. 

The kernel of racism is the view that blacks are intellectually inferior.  Accordingly, what would be far more affirming of the intellectual equality of blacks than booing him is blacks marshalling or witnessing the marshalling of compelling arguments against his view. 

If this is right, then there is a most important respect in which contemporary liberalism is failing minorities.  Indeed, it may be more of the problem than not. 

We know that it is possible for parents to be over-protective.  This does not mean that the parents are not well-intentioned.  Rather, it points to the truth that their good intentions are not by themselves sufficient.  Good intentions are not sufficient in other aspects of life as well. 

I believe in equality.  And I believe that I can out argue David Duke any day of the week.  I believe that I can do so squarely and fairly.  Thus, I do not need boos from the audience as a crutch.  Not only that, I maintain that my belief in equality would be rather vapid if I were not willing to debate in a fair manner a person like David Duke. 

If I am even remotely right, then a most point truth is that college campuses have been more than a little over-protective of minorities.  Campuses have become an environment in which people pat themselves on the back for all having the same views and for vituperatively denouncing those do who do not embrace their views.  While this may feel good to others, this mindset has continuously left me feeling empty.  We all believe in equality.  And we spend next to no time earnestly presenting the other side so that its weaknesses can be revealed.

This is precisely why a debate with David Duke or someone like him is so very important in the struggle for equality.  And, of course, this applies with equal force to all aspects of that struggle: women versus men; Asians versus non-Jews.  And so on.  Mill’s point, quite simply, is that the best proof that the other side holds a mistaken view is that we can show that its best arguments are unsatisfactory.  And in order to do that precisely what we may need is our worse enemy rather than our best friend. 

The argument of this essay makes explicit a view that Mill presumably held, namely that in adequately arguing against the best views that the opposition can present we provide ourselves with a most profound measure of affirmation both morally and psychologically (or both).  This is because we are no longer merely telling ourselves that this or that view is intellectually bankrupt.  No, we have moved way beyond that; for we have then experienced the view as being intellectually bankrupt precisely because the arguments of the view’s most articulate have been shown to be inadequate right before our very eyes.  That would be a majestic moment that no amount of booing can produce, as I assume Brian Romm so nicely grasped. 

Thus, a most poignant question arises: Are we up to the task?  Once upon a time, I would have thought that the answer was obviously an affirmative one.  However, we have become a boo-based culture.  Accordingly, it is no longer clear to me that we are.

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Tuesday, April 18
View Article  Inferiority and Equality: The KKK, Liberalism, and the Charge of Racism
by Laurence Thomas on Wed 19 Apr 2006 01:46 AM CEST

Philosophy 191 at Syracuse University

 

T

here is a very profound respect in which liberalism has failed students in college, and is continuing to fail them.  This is because when it comes to matters involving race liberalism has become more than a little too content with the invoking the rhetorical force of the charge of racism when in fact there are arguments that can be presented.  And one most untoward consequence of this is that some fundamental beliefs of the American society are turning out to be no more than dead dogma rather than living beliefs—a distinction that was introduced by John Stuart Mill in his masterful essay On Liberty. 

Like any reasonable person, I understand that there have been injustices in the world; and that blacks have been the object of some of these injustices.  Injustices of this sort typically fly under the banner of racism.  From this truth, however, what does not follow is that the charge of racism is always the best explanation for an argument that purports to show that superiority of whites.  Today in lecture (18 April 2006), I presented the following argument that was presented by a member of the KKK:

1.  The list of geniuses includes, among others, the following:

Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, Kant, Hume, Rousseau, and so on.

2.  All of these individuals are an X.  Hence, none of these individuals is of the Y or Z or W or . . . whatever race except the X race.

3.  Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that as a race Xs are more intelligent than members of the Y race or the Z race or the W race . . . or any other race.

Now, as it happens, the above KKK argument does not work; and I asked my class to explain why. 

In passing, I should point out that the KKK argument is complicated by the reality that KKK folks hate Jews; yet, two Jews are on that list.  So a KKK person can say that he or she is not blind to talent even when that talent displays itself in people who are despised by KKK folks. 

Getting back to the argument: There are two kinds of responses that are immediately offered.  One I shall label the genius uplift response; the other I shall label the victim of racism response.  According, to the uplift response, there are lots of blacks that belong on that list: e.g., Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Hendrix, and George Washington Carver.  There is no denying the talent of these names.  But let us see.

I think that Elton John and Stevie Wonder are on a par with one another when it comes to musical talent.  Yet, surely Elton does not think for a moment, and rightly so, that he is on a par with Mozart or Beethoven.  So, by parity of reasoning, it follows that Stevie Wonder is not on a par with Mozart or Beethoven, and not think such a thing.  Nor, for that matter is, Aretha Franklin. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. was also mentioned as someone who should be on the.  I would place him on the same plane as Winston Churchill.  Neither, though, makes that very dis-tinguished KKK list. 

As for George Washington Carver, there is no doubt that he had considerable talent.  But he was no Darwin or Freud or Einstein.  No doubt, Carver was Nobel Prize material.  Yet, many Nobel Prize winners do not hold a candle to Darwin or Freud or Newton or Einstein.  So the uplift response proves to be rather unsuccessful.

The victim response insists that were it not for the vicious racism that blacks have suffered down through the years, then there would be blacks on the list.  I presume that this is true.  And as one student observed, it may very well be that Shakespeare did really do all that writing, but some blacks instead.

The victim argument may very well have more weight in the minds of my students than the uplift argument.  The problem with the victim argument is that it still leaves one empty-handed.  It is rather like saying that one would have earned a Ph.D. had one gone to graduate school.  Unless one has done something that makes this claim manifestly obvious, there is a respect in which the claim rings hollow.  That blacks would have been on the list had things been otherwise is no substitute for being on the list.  I do not think that any genuine satisfaction derives from running around saying “I could have been on that list”. 

You see, the problem with the victim argument is that it still privileges the list in a way that requires an explanation for why blacks are not on it.  Accordingly, I think that those who spend so much time advocating the uplift argument miss a marvelous opportunity to advance a much more im-portant argument.  A far better strategy would be to show that, in the relevant respects, not much turns on not being on the list.  I presented that argument in lecture today. 

What does the KKK argument show about the intelligence of Xs?  It most certainly does not show that any random X chosen is apt to be more talented than any random non-X chosen.  That is to say, from the fact that only Xs are on the list, what does not follow at all is that only Xs are gifted or likely to be gifted.  After all, only human beings are on the list, too.  Less flippantly, from the fact that only Xs are on the list does not show that there is a strong correlation between being an X and being on the list.  There could not possibly be. 

Why?  Because there are millions upon millions of Xs who are manifestly and unambiguously not on the list.  Likewise for millions and millions of Ys or Ws or whatever.  No X can look at himself and think that it was just as likely that he or the other person would be on the list as not.  For if anything is true it is true that it notoriously unlikely that anyone would be on that list; and it does not matter whether the person is an X or a non-X.   But then it follows from all of this that with regard to intelligence Xs as such and Ys as such and Ws as such are all on the same plane. 

The probability of being on the list is painfully small and equally small whether one is an X or a Y or a W or what-ever race.  9 or so people on the list out of millions and millions of people of one racial group is statistically the same as 0 people on the list out of millions and millions of people from another racial group. 

This argument does not in any way downplay the extraordi-nary contributions of the people who are intellectual giants.  It merely points out that nothing of any signi-ficance follows with regard to one race or the other given the simple fact that all on the list turn out to be white. 

This argument thus diffuses the standing of the list.  So no non-X need find the list in any way threatening because non-Xs are not on the list. 

Returning back to Mill’s distinction between living beliefs and dead dogma, I trust that the class can see that I have done something extremely important.  Without in any way resorting to either the uplift or the victim argument, I have completely diffused the argument pre-sented by the KKK person.  And it seems to me that, prior to lecture, way too many of this class could not even envision this possibility. 

Worse, it seems to me that one of the deep and painful shortcomings of political correctness is that it is much too willing to avail itself of the charge of racism rather than look for what in fact would be a far effective and devastating argument.  The uplift argu-ment cheapens the intellectual contributions of a Darwin or a Freud or a Mozart.  In this regard, the victim argument is a better argument.

On the other hand, there is a straightforward sense in which advocates of the victim argu-ment are held hostage by the very ideology that they eschew.  That blacks or members of any other group are not on the list is problematic only if not being on the list represents something nega-tive about the intellectual wherewithal of blacks or others as a race. 

Showing that this is not the case is actually better than making the charge of racism.  Thus, it seems to me that for some invoking the charge of racism is rather like a drug to which one is addicted.  And the proof of this is that some continued appealing to the victim argument even after I had given the argument that I gave regarding the fact no significance at all, regarding the matter of intelligence between the races, attaches to the fact that all the members of the list are white, since the racial composition of the list does not show that Xs as a group are in any way more likely to be more intelligent than non-Xs. 

The power of the argument that I have given, if the argu-ment is sound, is that it renders otiose both the uplift and the victim arguments—not by denying the reality of racism, but by drawing attention to the truth that the best explanation for apparent differences be-tween races may have noth-ing at all to do with race precisely because the ap-parent differences turn out to be just that: merely apparent rather than real.

© Laurence Thomas 2006

 
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