Some anti-oppressive thinkers distrust powerful institutions, and end up distrusting the scientific institution and even scientific knowledge itself. However, scientific knowledge and scientific practise are not inherently oppressive. The oppressions that appear to come from science actually come from the upper-class white male domination of scientific disciplines.

Science is not the enemy; the practise of science is a productive method for understanding ourselves and our world. When some scientific studies overgeneralize and/or neglect certain groups of people, the problem is bad science, not science.

One of the serious problems with the lack of diversity in the practise within certain knowledge domains is that some important aspects of reality are not even considered, leading the researchers to overgeneralize and draw incorrect conclusions. This problem comes from the fact that scientific practise is a social activity, subject to the biases and prejudices of the scientists. In contrast, the scientific methods of gathering empirical data to refute hypotheses, and using statistical methods to determine statistical significance, are perfectly sound.

It is illogical to assume without reason that the results of a given scientific study (especially one that you do not particularly like) must be false. There is no contradiction between truth and justice. Anti-oppressive thinkers should not be afraid of science.

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Apparently, the United Nations thinks that recognizing race is racist. Here is an article from last year, March 08, 2007:

UNITED NATIONS - Canada’s use of the term “visible minorities” to identify people it considers susceptible to racial discrimination came under fire at the United Nations Wednesday - for being racist.

The world body’s anti-racism watchdog says in a report on Ottawa’s efforts to eliminate racial discrimination in Canada that the words might contravene an international treaty aimed at combating racism.

For people who want to discuss racism, this accusation is sounds familiar. A person who points out an instance of subtle racism is often accused of being racist herself. The accuser argues that this person is racist for noticing race. Would this be the reasoning of the UN committee?

Canada’s Employment Equity Act defines “visible minorities” as “persons, other than aboriginal people, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.”

To the committee, highlighting a certain group does not appear to be consistent with Article One of the convention, which says racial discrimination occurs when equitable treatment is upset by “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.”

Recognizing race is making a distinction, but recognizing race does not necessarily lead to exclusion, restriction, or preference. “Visible minority” is a meaningful and intuitive term that recognizes that those who do not appear to be “white” may be discriminated against because of their physical racial appearance, which is a separate factor from their ethnicity, language, and culture.

An explanation of why colorblindness subverts antiracist work is well-articulated by Magniloquence in the post Race Relations 101: Colorblindness:

I don’t want [my race] to not be a problem for you; I don’t want race to be problematic.

The distinction may seem subtle, but it really isn’t. When a person says “I don’t see color” as a way of saying “your race is not a problem for me,” it casts the problem as race. Race is not the problem, racism is.

The news article on the UN accusation continues:

Speaking at the committee grilling of Canada last month, committee member Patrick Thornberry went further.

“The use of the term seemed to somehow indicate that ‘whiteness’ was the standard, all others differing from that being visible,” says the British international law professor, according to UN note-takers.

First, let us bring up the normative versus descriptive distinction. In philosophy, a normative statement is a statement about how things should be, while a descriptive statement is a statement about how things are.

Normatively, whiteness should not be the standard, and all others differing from that should not have a unique visibility due to their non-whiteness. Descriptively, however, it is true that ‘whiteness’ is the standard, and that all others differing from that do have a unique visibility due to their non-whiteness.

Rachel’s Tavern notes that the inability to make this [normative versus descriptive] distinction is one of the central problems with colorblindness:

Moreover, like most people I hear discuss race, she was unable to make a distinction between “should racial issues/identities matter” and “do racial issues/identities matter.” This is, of course, one of the central problems with colorblindness. Maybe in an ideal world where race was never invented race wouldn’t matter, but we don’t live in that world.

Other Related articles:

• Misreading the Dream: Color-Blindness and the Distortion of Martin Luther King Jr. by Tim Wise

If you condemn people of ethnicity P who live in your country based on the actions of foreigners of ethnicity P living in a different country, your reasoning is illogical. At a basic level, this is fallacious because

• If individual x has property P and individual y also has property P, one cannot conclude that x = y.
• If individual x has property P and individual y also has property P, one cannot conclude that if x has some property Q, y also has property Q.

In the ethnicity example, if a foreigner x of ethnicity P in a different country participates in action Q that is morally questionable, one cannot condemn a minority y in your country for action Q simply because that individual is also of ethnicity P.

For example, if a Muslim in a Western country complains that her rights were violated by the state, it is illogical to argue that this individual is being hypocritical because the laws in Saudi Arabia are worse in terms of human rights violations. Here, the individual y who complained about the violation is not necessary the person x who carried out a human rights violation, even though both x and y have property P, being Muslim. Furthermore, it is not the case that if some w has property P and property Q, all z who have property P also have property Q.

At a second level, this reasoning is fallacious because it assumes that minorities of ethnicity P in countries like the United States and Canada are representative of people of ethnicity P living in countries where ethnicity P is the majority. This is often not the case, as those who choose to immigrate to a Western country tend to be sympathetic towards Western values, and may even be escaping persecution from their original country. Cuban Americans on average tend to be anti-communist despite or perhaps because of the fact that Cuba is a communist country. Iranian Americans on average tend to be actively against Muslim fundamentalism despite or because of Iran having a Muslim fundamentalist government. Making generalizations about ethnic minorities based on foreigners living in a different country is simply ignorant, and often ironic.

At a third level, this reasoning is racist because it assumes that Canadian-born Canadians and American-born Americans of Asian, Middle Eastern, or Latino descent are somehow “the same as” or interchangeable with foreigners. This is known as the “perpetual foreigner” stereotype. For example, the tastes, culture, and politics of a fourth-generation American of Asian descent are often inferred from the tastes, culture, and politics of her ancestral country instead of her native country and country of origin, the United States. On the other hand, the tastes, culture, and politics of a second-generation American of Western European descent are assumed to be American. The perception of foreignness when it comes to native-born North Americans of Asian, Middle Eastern, or Latino descent is almost always a result of racial prejudices rather than the “culture” manifested by these individuals.

Related webpages:

• Asian Americans and the Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome by Frank H. Wu - An analysis and history of the perpetual foreigner syndrome as it relates to Asian Americans, explaining why it is racist and making references to “color-blindness”, color-consciousness, and the reality of participating in racial discrimination without being mindful of it.
• “Asking Permission” by X. Dean Lim - Humourous video about equating “Asian” with “foreign”. Rather than the reverse situation shown in this thought experiment, in practise, there are more situations where an Asian American is alone and under the scrutiny of the white American majority, so social pressure usually works against him.

Two sociologists argue that blonde women are inherently more attractive than non-blonde women, because blonde hair is a biological marker of youth. The book is called Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, and an excerpt was featured in a Psychology Today article in 2007. Here is part of the excerpt:

Blond hair is unique in that it changes dramatically with age. Typically, young girls with light blond hair become women with brown hair. Thus, men who prefer to mate with blond women are unconsciously attempting to mate with younger (and hence, on average, healthier and more fecund) women.

Light-coloured hair among children is a characteristic of Europeans, and is not universal. Babies of Asian and African descent almost always have black hair.

It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe, probably as an alternative means for women to advertise their youth, as their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing.

Since light-coloured hair among youth is not universal among humans, the argument that heterosexual male humans are attracted to blondes because of genetics is absurd. Have Asian and African men evolved to prefer blondes as well? How would this occur, if blond hair was a rather late mutation in human evolution, confined to Northern Europe? Light-coloured hair in non-Caucasian Asian and African populations before contact with Northern European genes were markers of albinism.

However, perhaps the authors were not making this argument, and were merely arguing that contemporary males find blonde females more attractive because blonde hair is still correlated with youth, among Caucasians. That is, perhaps contemporary heterosexual males see or meet a large sample of Caucasians throughout their lives, and unconsciously extrapolate the correlation between blonde hair and youth. Perhaps the blonde-youth correlation is a result of exposure to Caucasians, rather than hard-wired. This interpretation is more reasonable, given that the authors were trained in sociology rather than biology.

Unfortunately, the full title of the book is Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire– Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do and is an evolutionary psychology book.

A racist cartoon titled “Afrocentric Algebra” showing a black man saying “S’up, dog?” and teaching incorrect math was published by Canada’s Globe & Mail, in response to the decision to open up an Africentric school in Toronto. This is the incorrect algebra on the chalkboard:

√(3x^2) + √(5x) = 12
(√(3x^2) + √(5x))/√3 = 12/3
(√3x^2)/√3 + √5x/√3 = 12/√3
x^2 + √5x/√3 = 12/√3

Line 2: You should divide both sides by the same number, but the left side was divided by √3 while the right side was divided by 3.

Line 3: √(3x^2) became √3x^2, and √(5x) became √5x. The 3 denominator on the right side became √3.

The comic author is implying that to teach “Afrocentric” math is to teach bad math, in addition to suggesting that a typical black teacher would say “S’up, dog?” This is racist, because it suggests that all black people are bad at math and speak in so-called “ebonics”.

Why would the comic author create such a cartoon? Does the author not know any black people in real life?

Why did the Globe & Mail decide to publish this? Did the editors think that stereotyping black people was a valid criticism of Africentric education?

Do they think that they are helping black kids by suggesting that black teachers, and black people in general, are stupid and bad at math? All this comic does is illustrate that even explicit racism against blacks is present in the mainstream Canadian media.