Should be required reading: “Cynical Theories”

“It is bad psychology to tell people who do not believe that they are racist—who may even actively despise racism—that there is nothing they can do to stop themselves from being racist—and then ask them to help you. It is even less helpful to tell them that even their own good intentions are proof of their latent racism. Worst of all is to set up double-binds, like telling them that if they notice race it is because they are racist, but if they don’t notice race it’s because their privilege affords them the luxury of not noticing race, which is racist.”

Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody

This is the best book I’ve read that tackles the issues related to postmodernism and social justice activist politics, and it clearly expresses a lot of ideas that I’ve had myself but didn’t take the time to really research or fully articulate.

This should be required reading to graduate college. When I was in college, a lot of the courses I took relied heavily on postmodernism, identity politics, and social justice ideology, but I didn’t realize it because I didn’t have a name for it. Also, it was taught as fact and reality rather than just as a theory, or as the authors would say, as Theory, and it was part of everything from classes on sociology to government to history. At some point, I realized that things weren’t quite right, but you have to go along with what the professor is advocating if you want to be assured of getting a passing grade.