This is an incisive and thought-provoking piece. I would love to share it with the other psychologists in a professional listserv I'm on, but I'm too afraid of potential backlash, despite the very cogent, rational arguments of the article. Irrational emotionalism is still too high among my (race based) social justice-driven colleagues at this moment.
This is an incisive and thought-provoking piece. I would love to share it with the other psychologists in a professional listserv I'm on, but I'm too afraid of potential backlash, despite the very cogent, rational arguments of the article. Irrational emotionalism is still too high among my (race based) social justice-driven colleagues at this moment.
YES. This is true in my field (very broadly*, anti-poverty) as well. The race-essentialism and righteous emotionalism about it all has inhibited the ability to have rational (oh wait, rationalism is just a manifestation of "white dominant culture"...) conversations about what actually works to improve outcomes for racial groups where there are disparities.
*I'm so worried about getting "cancelled" in my field for even publicly expressing doubt about the effectiveness of the dominant "equity" narrative that I can't be more specific about what my field is... That's what this has come to.
Yep, I responded to a Youtube FAIR video by a psychologist and professor of psychology about the increasing fragility with which we treat clients (e.g., the university where she taught told faculty to teach students not to use the word "maladaptive" in their clinical documentation and instead to describe "helpful vs unhelpful" behaviors, etc, because of the stigmatizing nature of "maladaptive," ahem ahem the term "euphemism treadmill" coined by Stephen Pinker). In any case, I went through the convoluted process of creating a new Youtube account under an alias b/c I dared not use my real name when I commented that I agreed with the psychologist for fear that colleagues would accuse me of upholding white supremacist ideology, etc.
This is an incisive and thought-provoking piece. I would love to share it with the other psychologists in a professional listserv I'm on, but I'm too afraid of potential backlash, despite the very cogent, rational arguments of the article. Irrational emotionalism is still too high among my (race based) social justice-driven colleagues at this moment.
YES. This is true in my field (very broadly*, anti-poverty) as well. The race-essentialism and righteous emotionalism about it all has inhibited the ability to have rational (oh wait, rationalism is just a manifestation of "white dominant culture"...) conversations about what actually works to improve outcomes for racial groups where there are disparities.
*I'm so worried about getting "cancelled" in my field for even publicly expressing doubt about the effectiveness of the dominant "equity" narrative that I can't be more specific about what my field is... That's what this has come to.
Yep, I responded to a Youtube FAIR video by a psychologist and professor of psychology about the increasing fragility with which we treat clients (e.g., the university where she taught told faculty to teach students not to use the word "maladaptive" in their clinical documentation and instead to describe "helpful vs unhelpful" behaviors, etc, because of the stigmatizing nature of "maladaptive," ahem ahem the term "euphemism treadmill" coined by Stephen Pinker). In any case, I went through the convoluted process of creating a new Youtube account under an alias b/c I dared not use my real name when I commented that I agreed with the psychologist for fear that colleagues would accuse me of upholding white supremacist ideology, etc.