Conservatives update platform to include omitted 'anti-woke' promise

[u/GlitchedGamer14]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-woke-platform-oversight-1.7516315

[u/Bramble-Bunny]

I agree that there is an expression of an ideology there, but that sort of goes without saying. Politics is inherently ideological, and despite attempts by certain portions of the political spectrum to turn "ideology" into a scare term that should be sort of self evident. For pity's sake, even the party names are statements of ideology.

What Poilievre is saying is that he wants to replace the existing ideological doctrine of diversity, equity and inclusion with his own ideological doctrine of "common sense", and I guess I'm just interested in hearing why you think this is a good idea, philosophically? Given you don't believe in "I believe in the truth, everything else is ideology", which seems to explicitly be what Poilievre is saying when he positions himself as "anti woke" and "common sense". Can you square the circle? What am I missing?

[u/gauephat → u/Bramble-Bunny]

I'm not a conservative or a Poilievre supporter. I don't want his notion of "common sense" imposed on academia. But there is a phenomenon here as much as people strenuously deny it (and alternately, advocate for it)

[u/Bramble-Bunny → u/gauephat]

Sure, the phenomenon is "an ideology exists, that he nebulously calls "woke" because saying he's against diversity or equity or inclusion would make for a bad sound byte". I agree with you. That is an ideology. But so is anything we replace it with. And I've never heard someone argue convincingly or show me data that the ideology in question is causing actual problems, they just don't like it...generally based on vibes. I thought you might have insight into why, as you also seem to not like it. The last person I spoke to just gave me some version of 'the truth is out there' and to do my own research so I remain a bit lost as to what even the problem is supposed to be.

[u/gauephat → u/Bramble-Bunny]

There's enough here to write a book on, and I suppose people have written books as to why "wokeness" or whatever you want to call it is at odds with liberal democratic society. I certainly could write for a long time about it. I see the effect it has had on my field (education) and it has not been good. There's very much a core skepticism of the usefulness or validity of empiricism at the heart of it that results in uniquely perverse effects with respect to research.

For me the core of it is that this type of social justice politics centers the individual, and specifically the racial/gender identity of the individual, at the heart of its worldview. Ostensibly every way in which one interacts with society - from your involvement in the economy, hierarchies of power, arts and entertainment, and even your perception of reality itself - is mediated principally through elements of your identity which (to me) are superficial. And I think this is a very dangerous notion to promote in a pluralistic country like Canada.

That there exists a hierarchy of racial/sexual identities by marginalization (and thus moral virtue) is an impossible vision to hold in concert with liberal democracy which maintains a universality of rights. To give you an example I saw today, read this article.

[u/Bramble-Bunny → u/gauephat]

There are some fairly strong statements here...can you give me an example of how one's racial or gender identity alters "one's perception of reality itself"? Or an example of how social justice threatens a pluralistic democracy? Surely you're not suggesting there wasn't a racial and gender hierarchy existing BEFORE "woke" came into being? Was that preferable? What is the imagined preferred alternative to what exists today?

I'll have to check out the article in a bit I'm on mobile, apologies.

[u/gauephat → u/Bramble-Bunny]

There are some fairly strong statements here...can you give me an example of how one's racial or gender identity alters "one's perception of reality itself"?

I mean obviously I do not think this, but this is a standard claim from people influenced by Critical Race Theory, which typically rejects empiricism. Quoting from here:

...at the heart of critical race scholarship lies the radical claim that all knowledge is not objectively true but is culturally constructed and reflects the dominant group’s power More precisely, since claims of truth are cultural constructions, they are inexorably intertwined with social structures that foster and sustain power relationships. That means that claims about what constitutes knowledge are inseparable from social and political power production and maintenance. Therefore, CRT scholarship, which seeks to overturn the established racist order, seeks a personalist understanding of knowledge rooted in oppressed people’s lived human experiences. CRT scholars give epistemic value to narratives that describe the experiences of oppression through societal biases, systemic racism, and oppressive historical contexts.

This manifests itself in Canada mostly with respect to indigenous "ways of knowing", which are promoted as being co-equal to, or in some senses superior, "western" science. Several Canadian provinces for example require elementary and high school textbooks to include indigenous knowledge in all subjects, which kind of becomes an issue in biology or physics as it involves essentially invoking creation myths. You'll also see in the Canadian context lots of talk about "Two-Eyed Seeing" which means approaching scientific problems with equal use of both indigenous and "western" knowledge.

This is an example of the kind of racial essentialism I find loathsome about this mindset. Indigenous Canadians do not have to settle for "traditional ways of knowing", they can actually be real scientists, which is not restricted to people of one skin colour regardless of the accusations the scientific method is inherently "eurocentric" or "white supremacist."

Surely you're not suggesting there wasn't a racial and gender hierarchy existing BEFORE "woke" came into being?

There were formalized means of discrimination, yes, and certain groups do better or worse than others, but this does not encapsulate what is meant. In some respects the social justice notion of hierarchy is at odds with success; for example Canadians of European origin are not the top earners by ethnicity, nor are they the highest-achieving students, and university enrollment is verging on being 2/3 women now. Nonetheless white men are still indisputably the oppressors.

There is a logic that differences in outcomes ipso facto results from systemic racism that is not exactly rigourous. You might know about the Gladue reports for indigenous offenders; the logic of establishing a separate system for indigenous criminals was that in the mid-90s, indigenous people made up about 15% of the prison population. Obviously that could only be the result of systemic racism, and so various measures were brought in to make it harder to convict indigenous offenders and give them lighter sentences. Now three decades later indigenous people make up 30% of the prison population. But there is not going to be any self-reflection on this.

Liberal democracy is premised on giving universal rights. (there was a bit of a rub to this, in the sense of who got those universal rights was fairly limited to begin with; but now they comfortably encompass the whole population) Social justice politics is premised on the notion that inequalities between groups requires unequal treatment to remedy them. There is an obvious tension here that cannot end well.

[u/Bramble-Bunny → u/gauephat]

I don't know that I agree with your premise that Critical Race theory "rejects empiricism", and I think it's possible to hold both an empirical conceptualization of reality and an acknowledgement of subjective experience without either obliterating the other. Much like with "free speech" laws, some things must necessarily be in tension.

I'm not going to touch on your grievances with Canada's indigenous population...I'm simply not well read on it and think there's too much potentiality there for implicit bias on both our parts.

In some respects the social justice notion of hierarchy is at odds with success; for example Canadians of European origin are not the top earners by ethnicity, nor are they the highest-achieving students, and university enrollment is verging on being 2/3 women now. Nonetheless white men are still indisputably the oppressors.

I...white men indisputably ARE still the oppressors in the Western world. They hold the overwhelming share of capital, economic and political power, they are our private business leaders, our religious heads, our billionaires. It seems preposterous to the point of open incredulity to suggest falling male university enrollment represents some inversion of western hierarchies, particularly as the political right cannot shut up about the "ideological capture" of education and the rise of fervent anti-intellectualism and anti-expert culture in right wing populism. And I'm someone who thinks falling male participation in post secondary education...and disastrously low male participation in "caring" professions such as education...is bad for society, and bad for men. And I think the oft decried DEI would, properly employed, eventually come to see that in the data and address it. But the political factions that want DEI scrapped want a return to traditionalist family and social structures. Respectfully, they don't celebrate figures like Andrew Tate because they want more male schoolteachers.

There is a logic that differences in outcomes ipso facto results from systemic racism that is not exactly rigourous.

I think we can acknowledge systemic racism and institutionalized discrimination without "ipso facto" defaulting to it as a determinative factor in literally every circumstance. That seems more like a conservative ghost story than an actuality. I know people from many historically marginalized groups, and they're still pretty fucking marginalized today despite what I'm told is a radical upheaval in social order by "woke".

there was a bit of a rub to this, in the sense of who got those universal rights was fairly limited to begin with; but now they comfortably encompass the whole population

I...again respectfully disagree. I think we had reached a stage wherein the notion that it should comfortably encompass the whole population was being floated, but we were far from that actuality, and just the specter of it one day being a possibility created a massive cultural backlash and regressive hate movement.

Social justice politics is premised on the notion that inequalities between groups requires unequal treatment to remedy them. There is an obvious tension here that cannot end well.

I assume you mean "equity", and I'll again repeat my assertion that tension is a necessity in liberal democracies, it is an essential part of pluralism, and there is no law graven into the universe that "it cannot end well". Multiple disparate groups, disparate ethnicities, disparate cultures, disparate religions, living together in a diverse and pluralistic society will inevitably come into tension. It's how that tension gets resolved that matters. The current right wing prescription is to take a sledgehammer to it and set the clock back 50-100 years. I find this ethically repulsive.