I've seen it justified as every single member of the marginalized group has some life experience that no member of the majority/powerful group has. So although it's a prejudice, it's a correct one. That's different from traditional prejudices that aren't true for every individual.
Just to note, it is possible for an academic who is not part of a group to interview many members of the group, and combine other sources of information, and end up knowing more about "the experience" of that group than most individual members of that group. Because it's not a single experience.
It is even possible that, say, the black son of a black doctor, raised in a rich neighborhood, knows less about the plight of blacks in ghettos than the white son of a white janitor, raised in a ghetto with lots of blacks—even if the latter made no deliberate study. One could also consider Africans who immigrated to the United States as adults. They do have the experience of being a certain race, but that may not imply nearly as much as people seem to think. (In fact, I would hazard a guess that the members of "marginalized groups" that do get hired for the highly professional jobs that diversity advocates talk about, are very disproportionately likely to have come from well-off backgrounds, and to have no direct ghetto experience.)
> Just to note, it is possible for an academic who is not part of a group to interview many members of the group, and combine other sources of information, and end up knowing more about "the experience" of that group than most individual members of that group.
This is a common fallacy. Statistics don't substitute for qualia. (much as we say the plural of anecdote is not data, it is also not firsthand experience or even necessarily understanding)
Further, "Having experience with the ghetto" isn't what people are discussing when we discuss the importance of diversity. There are still common experiences between wealthy racial minorities and poor ones, that white Americans don't experience. Try reframing this fallacy in terms of say, women and men, or gender minorities. It doesn't work.
Nor do qualia substitute for statistics, or for different qualia. Almost every woman will have the experience of menstruation, yes, but, for example, how many of them have been sexually harassed by a man? Some of them have never had that experience, others have had it dozens of times. If you have a woman in your group and you assume she knows what it's like for women in general, you may be very wrong. Yet that assumption seems pretty common—I've seen a decent number of accounts of people who belong to some group, complaining that progressives assume they speak for everyone in that group. There's an example upthread.
I'm not saying everything can be gotten vicariously through research, but a lot of things can be. And then the question becomes, which specific things do you want, and what's the best way to get them? I think the diversity discussion rarely gets that far—and if it did, strategies would end up very different.
> for example, how many of them have been sexually harassed by a man? Some of them have never had that experience, others have had it dozens of times.
How does knowing that 80% of women will be sexually harassed in their life substitute for having had that experience? Speaking for myself, a man, I've been sexually harassed before (not in the workplace), and it's absolutely not an enjoyable experience, but my qualia, and the qualia a woman who is sexually harassed has are still going to be different.
And yes not every woman has the same experience. That's obvious. But who is more likely to have qualia that are more representative of woman's experience? A man who studies women, or a random woman? There is indeed the place for expertise (and similarly: data), but neither expertise nor diversity is a substitute for the other.
> I'm not saying everything can be gotten vicariously through research
Qualia cannot be. If you entirely discount the value that qualia have, that may not matter to you, but there are good reasons to believe that that's a bad idea.
> I've seen a decent number of accounts of people who belong to some group, complaining that progressives assume they speak for everyone in that group
Indeed, but this isn't unique to progressives. It's just a problem that minorities have to deal with. And that's absolutely not a good thing (and awareness of this is good!). But again, it's not a progressive attribute (or one caused by diversity initiatives) to assume that the "other", whatever group it is, is cohesive in ways that the groups you are familiar with aren't. (e.g. When a member of a minority group commits a crime, you have reactions and narratives that minority crime is on the rise, or that this specific minority are criminals etc.)
A great way to fix this, by the way, is to interact with various people who are members of the other group, and see them disagree and debate. This can only really happen if you have a diverse enough group that you have multiple people of whatever minority to interact with. And this is good for everyone! It broadens majority perspectives and reduces microaggressions.
> And then the question becomes, which specific things do you want, and what's the best way to get them? I think the diversity discussion rarely gets that far—and if it did, strategies would end up very different.
I'm not really sure what you're saying here. Whose goals'? The business? The employees? The minority's? To explain why I'm dubious of the whole "data can solve the problem", someone has to drive the research to gather the data. By and large, if you want this to be done reasonably, you need to have input from the group under discussion. There's tons of hilarious-if-they-weren't-horrible examples of this if you're willing to look. The ML community is full of them (Gender Shades is perhaps the seminal example).
That is, with relatively few exceptions, for research to be done correctly, or in many cases, to be done at all, you need someone who is like the people being researched in important ways to be able to champion, contextualize and guide the research. Without that, a culturally unaware researcher is, if history is a guide, more likely than not to misconstrue cultural signals or make harmful and long lasting mistakes.
but on the other extreme you have a different common fallacy: Here meet Person A! Person A shares a couple of macrodemographics traits with Person B so they are automatically and authority on B's experience (and probably already friends)
something to consider is that in most demographic groups there is a similar internal diversity than the entire population. so yes there are many experiences shares mostly by only women and also by most women, but this does not mean that many will be completely alien to that experience.
in my opinion any kind of diversity effort needs to be based on our shared humanity and a belief that we can learn from each other (without treating the other neither as a saint nor an enemy)
I find that claim very implausible. I would also be very concerned as an anti-racist if I found myself sharing a premise (e.g. black people just have a different perspective to white people) with racists, no matter what the rationalisation. Particularly since it would legitimise discrimination in contexts where that perspective was seen as undesirable.
Also, the act of prejudice was seen as wrong, not particular prejudices.
They invoked experience to support a claim about perspectives.
I consider racism morally wrong and therefore people who act in a racist way are acting in a way that is morally wrong. This is a valid inference, not prejudice. Prejudice might be if my inference was not valid, e.g. that racist people are sexist. That would be wrong.
> I consider racism morally wrong and therefore people who act in a racist way are acting in a way that is morally wrong.
But note you are now projecting a belief to an act. Are you claiming that someone who believes that "people of different backgrounds will provide different perspectives" (I chose this intentionally here) will undertake racist acts 100% of the time?
Otherwise as far as I can tell, you're being equally prejudicial. You believe that there is a high likelihood that these people will act in a specific way based on a belief they hold. That's no different than believing that people will with a high likelihood act in a specific way (or more precisely, a nonspecific, but different way) based on differences in their experience.
Perhaps I misunderstand you here. Let me instead ask a different question: Why do you believe that "black people have a different perspective than white people" is a premise shared with racists?
Usually, at least from what I've seen, racism is rooted in a belief that the other group is lesser in some way, or occasionally that the group is dangerous, etc.
The idea that a white person and a black person could, theoretically, have exactly the same life experience is probably true, but do you really think it's possible for that to happen in (presumably) the United States? Can a white child and a black child come out of a class on slavery with the same perspective on it? One of those people has the perspective of "I would have been the oppressed" and one does not. Those are different. And I don't see how one can say otherwise, nor do I see how recognizing that is a concern.
> They invoked experience to support a claim about perspectives.
And? It's not possible, a-priori to construct a group of people who will have different perspectives on a problem. Selecting for diversity of experiences as a proxy seems reasonable, but I'm open to other suggestions.
To jump back a bit, I think there's a bit of a mismatch here:
> Particularly since it would legitimise discrimination in contexts where that perspective was seen as undesirable.
I'm not suggesting that there is one black perspective on things, much as there isn't one white perspective on things, that would be reductive. Perspectives are more complicated than that. So the idea that "the black perspective" could be labelled undesirable doesn't really make sense to me. I certainly would find it suspicious if someone labelled all of the minority perspectives as undesirable though.
> Perhaps I misunderstand you here. Let me instead ask a different question: Why do you believe that "black people have a different perspective than white people" is a premise shared with racists?
You've misunderstood me. My concern is that a premise held by diversity advocates ('people of different races have different perspectives') could be used justify racist acts (e.g. not hiring a person from a given background). Assuming that people who want to justify racist acts could be referred to as racists, this would mean that diversity activists share a premise with racists - which would be a concern for me. Nowhere in there is a claim that certain people will undertake racist acts 100% of the time.
> Usually, at least from what I've seen, racism is rooted in a belief that the other group is lesser in some way
If we are suggesting that different races have different perspectives, then this becomes an easy belief to support. Presumably perspectives differ in some ways which can make some more valuable than others in some contexts.
> I'm not suggesting that there is one black perspective on things, much as there isn't one white perspective on things, that would be reductive
You may not be suggesting this, but it often seems to be put this way, including by the comment I replied to, which stated that:
> every single member of the marginalized group has some life experience that no member of the majority/powerful group has. So although it's a prejudice, it's a correct one
If 'perspective' here is understood as the thing arising from the single life experience shared by a social group, then it seems like a natural reading to see it as a single thing. But part of the problem with this discussion is that the claim that 'people of x race have a different perspective' is assumed rather than argued for. I am not at all clear on what is shared by black people from all walks of life all over the world and not shared by white people from all walks of life all over the world (who have their own version of it) - and how that thing is relevant to hiring an intern at BigCorp so it would be nice to see the idea expounded on a little more.
> Can a white child and a black child come out of a class on slavery with the same perspective on it?
Possibly not, but would two white children or two black children come out of it with the same perspective on it? What prior judgements can we make on those individual's perspectives based on their race? It may be the case that the white children would feel tremendous empathy with their fellow man and campaign vigorously for reparations. Similarly, the black children might come out of it thinking (like another prominant black man) that 300 years of slavery sounds like a choice. In my view, there is very little we can say in advance about the views of those children based on their race, and we should wait until we have the child in front of us so we can ask them about their perspective. And when that child is older, and applying for a job at BigCorp, we should extend them the same courtesy.
> My concern is that a premise held by diversity advocates ('people of different races have different perspectives') could be used justify racist acts (e.g. not hiring a person from a given background).
I don't really see how this follows without some other premises. Let me illustrate:
Two people, equally qualified, differ in race. Both apply to a job. Is it racist to choose between these people based on the algorithm "pick the one who will result in the more racially diverse group"? I don't see how it is. As far as I can tell, this is the only kind of action it is reasonable to take based on the premises "different races have different perspectives" and "we value different perspectives".
If you start switching the causality around and start saying that we value employees of a specific race more highly because we find their perspectives more valuable, that's problematic, but this doesn't follow. I do think it's easy to get the idea that there's extra murkiness here. For example if you need insight into a culture/race for business reasons (say you want to appeal to them more), I'd argue that having someone who has a lived experience does make them more qualified for that position. That's not the only thing that can make one qualified for such a position, but I don't think it makes sense to discount that value. That's a very particular case though, and not really generalizable.
> Presumably perspectives differ in some ways which can make some more valuable than others in some contexts.
Qualifying this as "in some contexts" is, I think, the undoing here. There are contexts where the perspective of someone of a specific race is more valuable. This is demonstrably true. If I'm doing a study of the experiences of people of a certain race (gathering the data), the experiences of a person of that race are contextually more valuable than the experiences of a person of another race.
Now there are contexts where presuming that racial background makes one's perspective more valuable probably is racist, but just because that is true in some contexts doesn't make it true in all contexts.
> You may not be suggesting this, but it often seems to be put this way, including by the comment I replied to, which stated that:
I read what you quoted as something like "there is a group of experiences that is exclusive to each race". Perhaps let me make the argument more clearly: "Every member of the minority group has the experience of having lived as a minority in the united states. No member of the majority group shares that experience". When stated this way, it's pretty obviously true. You can debate whether it's useful, but I don't see how recognizing that could be racist. I think this also makes more sense if you assume that the person suggesting such things assumes that systemic inequalities exist. Then you can start to see why those experiences do differ.
Even if two people experience different particular inequalities, they still experience racial systemic inequalities that the majority group doesn't.
> I am not at all clear on what is shared by black people from all walks of life all over the world and not shared by white people from all walks of life all over the world
When this kind of thing is discussed, it usually isn't a global thing. It's almost always black people in the US, or races in the US, or specific to a geographic region. A person in Uganda who never steps foot in the US probably doesn't have much in common with a black person who lives here. But, and this is the important bit, if that Ugandan person does ever come to the US for an extended period (and likely even if they come only briefly), they will share some experiences with Black Americans that I will not.
That is, the judgement isn't based on a person's race alone, but based on the person's race interacting with the locally dominant culture.
> What prior judgements can we make on those individual's perspectives based on their race? It may be the case that the white children would feel tremendous empathy with their fellow man and campaign vigorously for reparations. Similarly, the black children might come out of it thinking (like another prominant black man) that 300 years of slavery sounds like a choice. In my view, there is very little we can say in advance about the views of those children based on their race, and we should wait until we have the child in front of us so we can ask them about their perspective.
While ultimately semantics, I have a problem with this. "300 years of slavery sounds like a choice" isn't a perspective. It's a conclusion. People can reach the same conclusion from different perspectives (otherwise you'd never be able to get anything done with diverse perspectives...). And even when people reach the same conclusion, the different perspectives by which they did so is useful.
>> My concern is that a premise held by diversity advocates ('people of different races have different perspectives') could be used justify racist acts (e.g. not hiring a person from a given background).
> I don't really see how this follows without some other premises
You don't see how the idea that different races have different perspectives could be used to justify racist acts?
How about this? "We don't hire black people because a black perspective would not be a good 'culture fit' at our organisation" or "we feel that a white perspective is necessary for the kind of work we do".
Typically, racist people like to seize on the suggestion that there are intrinsic differerences between people of different races to justify racist acts, so I'm surprised you see it as a stretch that a racist would readily agree that people of different races have different perspectives and use this to justify their behaviour in much the same way that white supremacists now talk about 'incompatible cultures'.
> Now there are contexts where presuming that racial background makes one's perspective more valuable probably is racist, but just because that is true in some contexts doesn't make it true in all contexts.
No-one has claimed it is true in all contexts. I said that presuming (or pre-judging) someone's perspective based on their race used to be called prejudice and was seen as a bad thing. Are you disagreeing that pre-judging someone's perspective used to be called prejudice? Or are you disagreeing that prejudice used to be seen as a bad thing?
