Reading Wednesday 24/10

[liv]

Recently read:

Aru Shah and the end of time by Roshani Chokshi. (c) Roshani Chokshi 2018, pub 2018 Disney Hyperion, ISBN 9781368012355

I read this because Judith was excited about it, and rightly so, it's the best YA I've read in ages. The basic plot is that a 12yo girl turns out to be the reincarnation of a hero from the Mahabharata, and she has to go on a quest. I love the characterization and particularly the interplay between Aru and her magical sister Mini. I love the vivid descriptions of all the different characters and creatures and situations they encounter on their quest. I'm always a sucker for stories based on Hindu mythology, and this really does a great job with the source material. The plot is really great too; yes, it's a completely standard quest plot, but there are some really interesting twists. Even as an adult reading a book intended for kids, it was exciting throughout. I definitely recommend it if you like YA or know anyone who does.

Diversity is a dangerous set-up by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. There's a lot to mull over in this essay; it's the first argument for affirmative action which I've found at all convincing, though I'm still not sure it's the right solution, at least not in Europe. Prescod-Weinstein is discussing a complex theory of racism and racial justice proposed by Jonathan Kahn, whom I should probably check out directly. The insight that appealed to me particularly was that not all bias is implicit and our discourse about minorities is fundamentally flawed if a central tenet is protecting members of the majority from feeling guilty about racism. The legal history stuff is US-specific, but the general ideas seem really important. Basically, you should read the essay, because it's really dense and I can't do it justice by summarizing.

On a lighter note, I really enjoyed this piece by Jo Walton on Genre pacing. Walton often has fascinating and original things to say about genre and this recent piece is no exception.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Which hero is she? Or is that one of the twists?

[siderea]

*looks at Katniss*

*looks at Merida*

*looks at Neytiri*

It's Arjuna, isn't it? I bet it's Arjuna.

[liv]

:-) Talking of Merida, one thing I really liked about this book was Aru's relationship with her mother. It does the really standard YA thing of having a mother who's a bit distant, since children in the target age-group often have anxieties around individuation. But it does more than just have Aru resenting her mother, it really explores the consequences and the mother's parenting style turns out to have an interesting plot-related reason.

[liv]

I really love how you have an appropriate icon! She's established as one of the Pandavas from the first scene, but then her first quest is to convince her divine father to acknowledge her and in the process find out which of them she is. So I guess that's kind of a spoiler?

[rachelmanija]

Definitely Arjuna then. Though it would be cool if it was Bhima.

[siderea]

Diversity is a dangerous set-up by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.

Okay, I've read it. Yes, "not all bias is implicit and our discourse about minorities is fundamentally flawed if a central tenet is protecting members of the majority from feeling guilty about racism," is electrifying and true. My understanding of the rhetorical work of the implicit bias work was precisely to do an end-run around white fragility, and the tendency of even the most unreconstructed white racists to deny their racism; I thought it's point was to demonstrate the presence of racism in the responses of even people who disavow explicit bias. As such it was surprising to me to see these two lines of work opposed, even while entirely granting how whites might preferrentially gravitate to implicit bias because it is more comfortable, such that it sucks all the air out of the room; but this author goes further, following Kahn, and arguing that implicit bias theory is itself racist in function and constitution. That's certainly a novel and surprizing idea to me.

I've certainly heard the idea that it's bad science, but usually from white people who are sure we have a post-racial color-blind society, and that antiracism activists are making it all up. It may in fact be bad science (I am never not willing to slag any branch of social sciences for being crappy science). Just surprising to hear that criticism from the left.

More thoughts, but too tired to marshall them.

[liv]

Ooh, thank you for opinions! The way I understood the criticism of implicit bias from the left is, well, it's a combination of two ideas I've seen expressed in less academic register, Lorde's the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, and intent isn't magic. If implicit bias can only be measured by tricky psych experiments, or even by brain scans (and if there's any branch of science I'm happy to trash it's neuro-bollocks over-interpreting fMRIs as if they were phrenology), then racism can only be judged by the academic psychology establishment which suffers from significant exclusion of Black Americans (and other underrepresented minorities). If racism is primarily about whether white people who hold power have a cognitive quirk that means they are slow to associate positive words with dark-complexioned faces, you're basically ignoring the practical harms of racist actions and policies and only caring about what goes on in white people's brains.

Using tools controlled by the white-dominated academic establishment to measure white cognition, instead of actually taking into account the lived experience of POC, leads to testimonial injustice. That's a really useful concept that I learned a few years back from a colleague of my philosopher brother's, Miranda Fricker. Also it leads to moral injustice: if white racists are always innocent because their actions are explained by implicit bias, then how can the victims of racism get meaningful redress for the harms done to them?

I think you're not wrong that implicit bias has the potential to be a pragmatic way to achieve something in the face of the massive stonewall of white fragility and defensiveness, and you're not wrong that that framing can suck all the rhetorical air out of the room. Whether it does more harm than good I really don't know.

The other prong of Prescod-Weinstein's argument AIUI is that diversity as an aim primarily benefits white people, because they get to experience lots of different perspectives. She wants the ultimate aim to be equal protection, and to achieve this aim institutions and the state need to be doing something that recognizes and accounts for historical injustices.. I think that part holds whether or not you accept the implicit bias framing. It's the part I find most challenging, as someone from a jurisdiction where affirmative action is universally illegal.

[nineveh_uk]

Thanks for the link to the article by Prescod-Weinstein. It was a fascinating coda to some 'implicit bias' training I was at recently that even the entirely white* audience came out going, 'we've just been told that we are nice people who should work on our souls to try not to be racist, as if that were a real solution'. I shall be sharing the article with colleagues - the summing up in the abstract Promoting diversity rather than substantive structural change will not create equal opportunity and equal outcomes. A focus on implicit bias at the expense of an attention to both explicit bias and the impact of bias may in fact be harmful to the fight for equality. felt spot-on to the failure of what seemed to be the goals of this particular intervention.

*Though in the immediate context, gender and especially class inequalities were major institutional issues as well as race and ethnicity, and the audience was more varied on those fronts.

/via friendsfriends

[seekingferret]

I'm chewing on Dr. Prescod-Weinstein's post still. I'm sympathetic to the argument that we need to be aware of the history of African-Americans in America and therefore work to rectify historical wrongs in responsive ways. But I wish Dr. Prescod-Weinstein, who is herself of partial Jewish descent, were at all sympathetic to the fact that 'meritocracy' has long been a tool that minority activists including Jewish-Americans and Asian-Americans have used directly to fight against white supremacist discriminatory quota systems (even if it can also be a tool of white supremacy). That was a historical context that her essay seemed to willfully refuse to acknowledge.