Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion
Details
This discussion follows from our last discussion on today's debates over "social justice" and "privilege theory" centered around college campuses & online social networking platforms. Whereas last time we focused on the psychology & sociology of the left-wing student activists popularly known as "Social Justice Warriors", this time we will look at their opponents -- the "Cultural Libertarians", also known as the "Anti-P.C. Movement".
"Cultural Libertarians" is a new term similar to "civil libertarians" in that it indicates a commitment to free speech & freedom of the press, and it's also similar to "civil societarians" who believe that certain public institutions like universities should be ideologically diverse and non-partisan. They oppose the left-wing student activists popularly known as "Social Justice Warriors" (SJWs) and tend to see the push for "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" on college campuses as an infringement of free speech & academic freedom, and they see the increases in expulsion of students and firing of professors & administrators over sometimes dubious accusations of racism & sexism as a violation of due process & judicial impartiality.
The "cultural libertarians" are a loose & ideologically diverse coalition that only occasionally work together, and involves people from a wide variety of positions on the political spectrum: (1) Liberal Professors who fear offending their SJW students and being fired, (2) Center-Left political pundits who fear the political backlash from mainstream Americans reacting against the Far Left on college campuses, (3) individual/equity feminists like Camille Paglia & Christina Hoff Sommers who've long feuded with the radical/gender feminists on college campuses, (4) the "New Atheists" like Sam Harris & Richard Dawkins who've experienced attacks from SJWs when they criticize Islam, (5) Civil Libertarian organizations like FIRE & the ACLU, (6) various liberal & libertarian comedians like Chris Rock, Bill Maher, Doug Stanhope & Joe Rogan that voiced fears that SJWs will kill comedy by declaring anything edgy to be "offensive", (7) satirists that have mocked PC norms in TV shows like "South Park" and "Portlandia", (8) Libertarians & Constitutional Conservatives who've been battling Political Correctness since the "Culture Wars" of the 1990s, and (9) online gamer & hacker groups that have clashed with SJWs since the "Gamergate" controversy.
- For more information on "Cultural Libertarians" as a concept, check out Allum Bokhari's article, "Rise of the Cultural Libertarians". This is the article at the conservative news site Breitbart that coined the term and lists the various factions in the anti-PC movement - http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/24/rise-of-the-cultural-libertarians/
** Not surprisingly, since the Anti-PC movement is ideologically diverse, there's been some chafing amongst its members who often suspect each other's motives. These 3 articles provide some interesting reflections on the way "Cultural Libertarianism" has made strange bedfellows. Each of them opposes the "illiberalism" of the SJWs but also has some sympathy for social justice in general, and they explain how they differ from the other anti-PC factions:
Daniel Pryor, "Cultural Libertarianism on Trial"
https://c4ss.org/content/39463
Elizabeth Nolan Brown, "In Search of The Elusive Cultural Libertarian"
http://reason.com/blog/2016/04/20/the-elusive-cultural-libertarian
Scott Alexander, "Looking A Gift Horse in the Mouth"
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/09/looking-a-gift-horse-in-the-mouth
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As usual, rather than engaging in a typical political debate where people argue for the merits of their preferred political viewpoint, I'd like us to look at the psychological reasons why people think & feel the way they do about "social justice" and "privilege" and the sociological mechanics behind the way people group together and interact in the course of these debates.
Below is a list of some of topics pertaining to our discussion, as well as some links to articles. I've done my best to provide a short summary of each article so you can get the general gist of each article even if you don't have time to read every one...
- Moral Foundation Explanations for "Cultural Libertarians", Anti-PC Reactance, and Why Libertarians Use Satire
If we look at the conflict between SJWs and Cultural Libertarians from the perspective of Jonathan Haidt's Moral foundation theory, it seems we have a clash between the "Care/Harm" foundation that's linked to sympathy and the "Liberty/Oppression" foundation is linked to independence from authority. Haidt notes the "Liberty/Oppression" foundation is connected to the psychological phenomenon known as "Reactance" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology)
Robert S. Wyer, in his book "Stereotype Activation & Inhibition", argues that the backlash against political correctness is probably an example of "norm rebound" linked to psychological reactance:
"It is hard not to view many of the responses to so-called 'political correctness' pressures as manifestations of psychological reactance in the domain of social stereotyping. Given the commonplace advocacy in our culture of egalitarianism and the desirability of avoiding sexism, racism, and so forth, some people apparently feel that their freedom of thought is being threatened. And some of these individuals... make outrageously sexist or racist remarks, primarily (or so it seems) to defy the perceived constraints on their intellectual autonomy.
Jonathan Haidt has suggested that "reactance" against political correctness can explain not only the rise of "Cultural Libertarians" but also the rise of Trump 2016 election:
"Translated to the Trump phenomenon, I would say that decades of political correctness, with its focus on 'white men' as the villains and oppressors — now extended to 'straight white cis-gendered men' -- has caused some degree of reactance in many and perhaps most white men. [In both the workplace and academia,] the accusatory and vindictive approach of many social justice activists and diversity trainers may actually have increased the desire and willingness of some white men to say and do un-PC things. [In this atmosphere,] Trump comes along and punches political correctness in the face. Anyone feeling some degree of anti-PC reactance is going to feel a thrill in their heart, and will want to stand up and applaud. And because feelings drive reasoning, these feelings of gratitude will make it hard for anyone to present arguments to them about the downsides of a Trump presidency."
People who rely more on the Liberty foundation will often interpret calls for more sympathy that have religious or political overtones as a form of authoritarianism and will react against it. They will assert their independence by purposefully violating the social norms of the authority figure - this is known in psychology as the "Boomerang Effect" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang_effect_(psychology)
This is not to say that anti-authoritarians are without sympathy - they tend to prefer diffusing social tensions (like those involving racism, sexism & homophobia) by bringing them out into the open via humor & satire - this is known is social psychology as "Benign Violation Theory."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_humor#Benign_Violation_Theory
The Atlantic had an article recently that explained why we don't see too many successful conservative comedians - American humor tends to have an anti-authoritarian and a conservative attempting to use this type of humor are like people who live in "glass houses" but "throw stones" - they risk setting up a release on social taboos that will undercut the authorities & solemnities that they favor (nationalism, family values, traditional religion). When they try to rein in humor that offends them, they appear as overly sensitive killjoys.
When we look back at Haidt's study of libertarians, we remember they tend to score low in both Agreeableness & Conscientiousness. This helps explain why, unlike conservatives, certain libertarians can excel at comedy -- especially if they're atheist/secular. They have both low sympathy for others & low respect for social norms and so they don't have a "glass house" to protect. They can be "equal opportunity offenders" and attack the social norms of both liberals & conservatives. (They also have the lowest ranking on the "disgust scale" which can explain some of the potty humor.)
http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/02/the-science-of-libertarian
The classic example of this type of libertarian satire is Trey Parker & Matt Stone's "South Park". Both of them identify as vaguely libertarian and they've explained they skewer liberals a bit more because: "Ripping on Republicans is not that fun only because everyone does it.It’s so much more fun for us to rip on liberals only because nobody else does it and not because we think liberals are worse than Republicans."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/25/matt-stone-trey-parker-ar_n_475744.html
- The Dark Side of Satire: Sadistic Trolls, Demonization & Burning Bridges
There can also be a darker element of sadism in satire - especially in "trolling" one's enemies. A recent psychology study of people who enjoy internet trolling found their enjoyment is linked to the "Dark Triad" traits of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism - with the link to sadism being strongest. Internet trolls enjoy seeing the distressed and angry reactions of the people they troll. Not surprisingly, trolls quickly learn that certain people - e.g. the overly sensitive & self-righteous - display the greatest emotional reaction to trolling and thus they target those people especially.
Satire often uses "straw men" which exaggerates the opponent's beliefs to the point of absurdity to make them easier to refute. This is similar to the satirical use of caricatures which exaggerate something odd or negative about an opponent to mock and "delegitimize" them and justify removing the "establishment" of one's in-group from power and/or moving some in-group members to the out-group. In more extreme cases of social conflict, mockery can be used to "dehumanize" the out-group and turn them into a depersonalized enemy so that one's in-group can feel comfortable stripping them of human rights and using violence against them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegitimisation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization#Related_psychological_processes
This process of demonization can also be understood in the context of "burning bridges". The phrase was originally used in the military with the sense of intentionally cutting off one's own retreat (burning a bridge one has crossed) to commit oneself to a course of action, and was later used primarily to mean “alienate former friends”. While pragmatic moderates who seek to expand a group's reach to former out-groups actively try to build bridges, radical purists who seek to preserve the original in-group often actively seek to burn those bridges...
Examples of Demonization from the Political Right: Neocon hawks typecasting moderate Muslims as "terrorist-sympathizers", Trump & his followers demonizing Mexicans as "rapists and drug dealers", mockery of Occupy Wall Street protestors as "dirty hippies," mockery of Black Lives Matters protestors as "thugs", general right-wing mockery of gays & trans people, alt-right's mockery of moderate Republicans as "cuckservatives"
Examples of Demonization from the Political Left: General mockery of poor rural whites as "white trash", mockery of Tea Party as "ignorant rednecks", mockery of black yuppies & conservatives as "Oreos" and "Uncle Toms", feminist mockery of self-proclaimed "nice guys" as "creeps" and male nerds as "neckbeards", feminist "misandry jokes" for general mockery of cis/straight white males, mutual vilification of Hillary supporters & Bernie Sanders supporters as "Hillarybots" and "Bernie bros".
Jonathan Chait, a liberal journalist at NY Magazine who's alarmed by the rise of Trump and critical of the PC left notes that all this burning of bridges has had a polarizing effect on American society, and on the 2016 election in particular. Chait notes that this polarization is conscious & strategic for many activists on both sides, and quotes one of the anti-Trump activists explaining: "The disruptions polarize it in a way. People have to make a choice of where they stand. [If they side with Trump,] that's the gamble we have to take... In this moment, we cannot win over Trump supporters. Nor can we necessarily win over fence sitters. [Instead, confrontations opponents can help] consolidate our base and encourage action."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/how-trump-and-illiberal-left-feed-off-each-other.html
- Cognitive Dissonance, The Backfire Effect, and the Conflict between The Mean World & Nice World Syndromes
One of the major explanations for anti-PC sentiment that's been explored recently in the media & blogs has to do with "cognitive dissonance" and the "backfire effect". Social psychology theorizes that people build a mental structure for interpreting the world during their formative years (infancy to roughly college age). This mental structure is based off a favored set of heuristics & cognitive biases. Once people establish a strong identity & worldview, they often undergo what Julian Sanchez calls "epistemic closure" - i.e. their minds close off to new information that does not confirm their biases. Most people enjoy having their worldview reinforced through a selective information diet - popularly known as an "echo chamber" - and this has become even easier with the polarization & fragmentation of news media since the 1990s and the rise of social media networks composed mostly of like-minded friends.
When people find their worldview powerfully challenged by new evidence & alternate viewpoints, they experience "cognitive dissonance" which is confusing & unpleasant. In an attempt to regain their composure & reduce the cognitive dissonance, the reject the new evidence/viewpoint. This leads to the "backfire effect" where, in the face of contradictory evidence, established beliefs do not change but actually get stronger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect
The view of many SJWs and PC activists can perhaps be understood as a variation on the "mean world syndrome". Research shows that being deluged with reports of violence from the media can result in the "Mean World Syndrome" (MWS). Violent crime is highly salient for people with MWS, and they tend to vastly overestimate both the crime rate and their personal risk of being attacked. Similarly, people who are in involved in social justice activism often seek out evidence of racism, sexism & homophobia, and in the age of the internet & social media its very easy to find incidents that provoke their outrage on a daily basis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome
Meanwhile, Cultural Libertarians who feel that the SJWs are over-reacting may seek out evidence that social inequalities are decreasing and that the world is not such a bad place after all. If they've had a relatively privileged upbringing and haven't experienced much in the way of personal discrimination, good news accords with their view of the world & feeds into their confirmation bias. This creates a view of the world through "rose-colored glasses" that psychologists refer to as the "optimism bias."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias
Eliezer Yudkowsky, the founder of Less Wrong, had an insight into how both activists with a "mean world" view and counter-activists with a "nice world" view will often deploy different types of counter-factual reasoning & false dilemmas as rhetorical strategies when they debate one another. "Mean world activists" with utopian ideals like the SJWs will often employ something known as the "Nirvana Fallacy" - "since current conditions are not completely perfect, they are intolerable". Many of them do not realize that "making the perfect the enemy of the good" makes realistic, incremental reform difficult or impossible.
Conversely, the "nice world counter-activists" with a more pragmatic world view will often employ what he calls the "Inverse Nirvana Fallacy" - "Since current conditions are not completely horrible, they are tolerable". This ties in with a status quo bias -- the counter-activists are often arguing that drastic reform is unnecessary and conditions can stay more-or-less the same, perhaps with a little tweaking.
Mean world activists realize the "nice world" rhetoric could lull some of their followers into complacency and react strongly against it. They work to conserve their follower's outrage, since outrage provides the motivation to push for further reforms. Conservation of outrage feeds into the "concept creep" we discussed last time. In order to conserve outrage, what were once considered minor violations of social norms must be condemned with a level of outrage formerly reserved for more serious offenses. "Microaggressions" must be treated as "macroaggressions" and draconian punishments enacted.
https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10152609442249228
However, draconian punishments that do not distinguish between major & minor offenses typically backfire in several ways:
(1) "Chilling Effect": Timid people will cease innocuous pro-social behaviors that might lead to a minor norm violation, and the loss of these pro-social behaviors will have a negative effect on society.
(2) "Third Strike Resistance": When someone is suspected of a minor crime that could carry a harsh penalty, they may become desperate and resist with maximum force, making enforcement much more difficult. (Criminologists noticed this with offenders facing their 3rd strike & life imprisonment under the "Three Strikes Law.")
(3) "Cornered Animal Strategy": Eliezer refers obscurely to a famous moment in Chinese military history that began the Dazexiang rebellion. Two generals realized they were late in leading their armies to join the emperor and would be executed for this, so they rebelled. Strategic people may reason that if the penalty is the same for major & minor offenses and feel they can't avoid a minor offense, they might as well commit major offenses. Even if the odds are stacked against them, they have a better chance if they resist and if they fail they'll go down fighting. Someone who feels backed into a corner may even join in an extremist counter-movement that embraces this approach.
(4) "Zero Tolerance Backlash": More moderate members of the general public, seeing someone guilty of only a minor offense treated harshly according to a "zero tolerance" policy, will often see the offender as the "true victim" and will be outraged enough to demand a counter-reformation.
- Locus of Control, Just World Hypothesis, Queen Bees & #WomenAgainstFeminism
Some people have suggested that the conflict between SJWs and "Cultural Libertarians" can be explained by each side having a different "locus of control". You may remember that we discussed "locus of control" before in the context of libertarianism, since it's connected with people's sense of agency & individualism...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control
Psychological research indicates that people with an internal locus of control tend to be economically conservative and subscribe to a "Horatio Alger/bootstrap" vision of individual effort & progress. This ties in with the "just world hypothesis" and attendant cognitive biases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger_myth
People with an external locus of control tend to be economically liberal and either tend to fall into "learned helplessness" or subscribe to a view of progress that depends on large-scale social & economic reform and collective "solidarity".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_mentality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
Research indicates that people with an internal locus of control show greater "reactance" towards personal attacks on their freedom, whereas those with an external locus of control show greater "reactance" towards impersonal (systemic) attacks on their freedom.
http://gem.greenwood.com/wse/wsePrint.jsp?id=id404
Locus of Control and Just World Hypothesis can help explain why some successful members of minority groups may strongly resent the SJWs that are ostensibly advocating for their rights. They resent the idea that they are a "victim" since this would undermine their self-esteem and rob them of agency. Their internal locus of control combined with social norms imbibed during their rise to personal success predisposes them to believe in a just world.
Many feminists have argues that prominent conservative & libertarian critics of feminism furnish an interesting example of a particular type of the Just World Hypothesis known as the "Queen Bee Syndrome". The most common targets for this accusation are women like Ann Coulter who display the confidence & aggressiveness of an "alpha female" yet make misogynistic comments towards the bulk of the female population. For example, Ann Coulter notoriously said that: "If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women."
http://mediamatters.org/research/2007/10/04/coulter-if-we-took-away-womens-right-to-vote-we/140037
Research has shown that alpha females with high self-esteem and internal locus of control may display "queen bee syndrome" where they show little care for female subordinates and feel they attained their position of authority from a "masculine" mindset that set them apart from other women. This is described in psychological literate as "low gender identification" although it does not mean that they identify or outwardly present themselves as "masculine". In fact, they may display a strong adherence to traditional gender roles and "hyper-femininity" and may manipulate men with their physical attractiveness. They often believe in "adversarial gender relations" where sexual coercion is normal, and they are more likely to judge female rape victims as being to blame for their own victimization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_bee_syndrome
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/porterevilpaper.pdf
However, as we discussed last time, the amount of young Millennial women who support gender equality but decline to self-identify as "feminist" implies the "queen bee" explanation probably can't be applied to all women who reject aspects of radical/gender feminism. In 2014, the "WomenAgainstFeminism" hashtag circulated on social media, and as Cathy Young (an equity feminist) notes, many of the female posters indicated they repudiated feminism even though — indeed, because — they support equality and female empowerment. Many of the examples seem to indicate women with high locus of control along with a high degree of gender identification, and a desire for egalitarianism without adversarial gender relations:
“I don't need feminism because I believe in equality, not entitlements and supremacy.”
“I don't need feminism because it reinforces the men as agents/women as victims dichotomy.”
“I do not need modern feminism because it has become confused with misandry which is as bad as misogyny, and whatever I want to do or be in life, I will become through my own hard work.”
“I don’t need feminism because egalitarianism is better!”
http://time.com/3028827/women-against-feminism-gets-it-right/
- E-S Theory and The Mechanistic & Mentalistic Approaches to Social Reform
In our last discussion, we touched upon Simon Baron-Cohen's "Empathizing-Systemizing Theory" (E-S Theory) and how the research that shows libertarians score highest in Systemizing and liberals score highest in Empathizing may suggest why these two come drastically clash in their political views.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing_theory
And back in our discussion of libertarianism, we looked at Jonathan Haidt's study that suggested that "liberals have the most ‘feminine’ cognitive style, and libertarians the most ‘masculine’” and that the “feminizing” of the Democratic Party in the 1970s may thus explain why libertarians moved into the Republican Party in the 1980s.
http://reason.com/blog/2011/07/20/being-libertarian-may-cause-au
We also discussed Will Wilkinson's argument that libertarians and Marxists have similarities in terms of their systematic & rigorously philosophical way of thinking and in terms of their desire for "liberation" from crony-capitalism despite the fact that they vastly differ in their proposed remedies.
I propose that E-S theory can help us explain why empathetic SJWs clash with both systematic libertarians & anarchists/socialists, especially with males in both of those movements.... Both libertarians & socialists/anarchists often take a more mechanistic view of the world, which is not surprising since their movements skew male, and men tend toward the "systemizing" side of the E-S spectrum. This systemizing tendency is especially the case for those men attracted to systematic philosophies like Marxism or libertarianism.
Libertarians tend to believe returning to a more free market will remedy social problems through greater economic growth & innovations that improve our lives. Although libertarians generally don't use "privilege theory" rhetoric, if they did they'd argue that virtually everyone alive today has a lot of "capitalism privilege" and "technology privilege" since markets & innovation have allowed even people in the Third World to reap major rewards in terms of higher life expectancy and above-subsistence income they personally didn't "earn". Many younger libertarians in the STEM community are very optimistic about the future and some gravitate towards forms of technological utopianism like "singulitarianism" and "transhumanism" and expect that artificial intelligence, nanotech & genetic engineering is about to usher in an age of unparalleled prosperity. Libertarians who do favor some sort of social justice interventions tend to gravitate towards "effective altruism" and/or "basic income" that redistributes some wealth to the poor without interfering too with free market dynamics (deadweight loss) or property rights.
Socialists & anarchists disagree vociferously with libertarians in terms of the major problem - classism and capitalism - and in their favored social interventions, preferring either democratic control of industry by local worker councils or nationalization and federal control of industry in the interest of the working class, but they still tend to measure success quantitatively by looking at income and access to material resources. They tend to see racism & sexism as outgrowths of classism and expect that they will disappear once society transitions to a more egalitarian & collectivist economic system.
Social Justice Warriors often view the white male "glibertarians" on the right and white male "manarchists" and "brocialists" on the left as focusing on economics as a way to avoid an analysis of their white male privilege. SJWs are concerned with economics as well, but often view empathy as a critical trait and take a more "mentalistic" approach by advocating a more just distribution of non-material goods like respect, empowerment, "emotional labor" and "cultural capital". This is why the focus on things that influence people's self-esteem and mental well-being like incidents of street harassment or invasion of personal space, positive & negative depictions of one's race/gender in the media, offensive or inclusive language, a friendly or unfriendly atmosphere in educational & professional settings, etc.
People on opposite ends of the E-S spectrum have very different forms of social cognition that directly lead to different proposals for social reform:
Systemizers tend toward "hypo-mentalizing" which is to say they "under-infer" people's mental/emotional state - they're often referred to as "mind blind". Mindblindness also leads them to miss social context, which can lead them to develop "idiosyncratic" system of logic to which they rigidly & dogmatically adhere, since it's their only tool to understand the world. They often must learn explicit rules for social interaction that focus on overt behavior. Thus, when they come to favor social reforms, they often gravitate to something akin "legalism" that relies on external legal incentives & quantitative measures of economic equality like the Gini coefficient or a "cybernetic" view dependent on external market incentives who's success rate can be measured via GDP per capita.
Empathizers tend toward "hyper-mentalizing" which is to say they "over-infer" people's mental/emotional state - this type of projection can lead to "fundamental attribution error" and paranoia. Because they are deficient in systemizing ability, their worldview tends to rely more on intuition, emotional reasoning & ad hoc rationalizations. The social justice ideology of empathizers often has a quasi-religious tinge that echoes Puritan Calvinism and prioritizes changing people's mental states. The poor & unfortunate must be comforted, assured of their value in the eyes of God, and empowered by the light of the true faith. Wrongdoers must be charged with accepting their guilt, followed by a period of penitence for their sins, then a spiritual renewal with newfound humility.
- Although the above is mostly wild speculation on my part, I was inspired in large part from these articles:
https://newrepublic.com/article/121540/privilege-checking-debate-often-overlooks-income-inequality
- How Privilege Theory Can Evoke Narcissistic Rage & Self-Hatred
Much of the discussion of privilege theory contrasts it with an earlier anti-racist concept -- "colorblindness", i.e. trying to ignore race in all types of professional & social interactions in order to avoid stereotyping or discrimination. Some sociologists have argued that claiming to not see race risks allowing covert discrimination such as "structural/institutional racism" to continue. However, other sociologists have argued the so much emphasis "identity politics" makes people so hyper-conscious of race that it risks encouraging racism. The Atlantic has had authors argue both sides of this issue recently:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-blindness-is-counterproductive/405037/
Reading those articles, you might come away thinking that colorblindness and privilege awareness exist on some sort of ideological spectrum and that we might be able to find some sort of optimal point in the middle. However, privilege theorists in academia do not see the issue this way and have constructed a theory known as "White Racial Identity Development" (WRID) - developed by psychologist Janet E. Helms - in which colorblindness is an early stage of ignorance that must be overcome before a white person can overcome their "implicit racial bias", reject "white supremacy" and develop an "anti-racist" identity.
The WRID model theorizes that there is a secondary stage (Disintegration) caused by a nominally "colorblind" white person encountering signs of racism in their society, as well as a third stage (Reintegration) where there's a backfire/boomerang effect and the white person becomes so defensive about their own racism that they may become more overtly racist. If the white person encounter more anti-racist messages they may move into a 4th stage (Pseudo-Independence) and 5th stage (Immersion/Emersion) where they seek out & empathize with people of color, recognize & feel guilty for their white privilege, and begin to engage in anti-racist activism. The final stage (Autonomy) is where the white person can finally let go of their guilt, accept themselves again and embrace a non-racist identity.
The Reintegration stage of the WRID model explains the tendency of many white people to react negatively when confronted with their "privilege" as being due to "white fragility" - i.e. a low tolerance for racial stress. They connect "white fragility" to "narcissistic rage" - an angry reaction to a "narcissistic injury" which occurs when a narcissist feels that their hidden behaviors or motivations are revealed, or when their importance is brought into question. Narcissistic injury is a cause of distress and can lead to narcissistic rage which occurs on a continuum from instances of aloofness, and expression of mild irritation or annoyance, to serious outbursts including violence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_rage_and_narcissistic_injury
http://www.alternet.org/culture/why-white-people-freak-out-when-theyre-called-out-about-race
(* Unfortunately, for people who ostensibly do NOT want to provoke narcissistic rage, privilege theorists seem to have chosen some oddly loaded language in the case of using "privilege" and "fragility" instead of similar terms from social psychology like "social & cultural capital" and "reactance" that have a less pejorative tone.)
The Immersion stage of the WRID model also explains the way in which some white anti-racist activists can go through a stage of racial self-hatred, hatred of other members of their race, an extreme sense of white guilt, and a conflicted sense of racial identity -- sometimes evinced by a desire to modify their physical appearance to appear less "white". Ali Michael, an activist writing in HuffPo, describes her own experience with this stage. She argues that Rachel Dolezal, the white civil rights activist who pretended to be black and ran the Spokan chapter of the NAACP may have got stuck in the Immersion stage.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-michael/i-sometimes-dont-want-to-be-white-either_b_7595852.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_guilt
One of the problems with the WRID model is that it's unclear if it's backed by much empirical research, and given the politically sensitive nature of racial topics in academia and the current "replication crisis" in social psychology it's difficult to know how to evaluate it. However, to the extent that the Reintegration & Immersion stages are empirically accurate, we can see how they could create backfire and increase racial tensions. White people in the Reintegration stage may be more racist than they were before, whereas white people in the Immersion stage may become akin to an "activist strawman" due to their evident self-hatred and their tendency to lash out at other white people and "guilt trip" them.
In his essay "Social Psychology Is a Flamethrower", Scott Alexander discusses some studies that suggest that fighting stereotypes can make people more prejudiced because of the boomerang & backfire effects discussed above, as well as by making racial differences more salient. He also mentions research that suggests that calling people "racist" can make them more racist as a result of cognitive dissonance.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/22/social-psychology-is-a-flamethrower/
Also, we may doubt that "anti-racist" white people who've gone through the entire 6 stages of Helms' "White Racial Idenitity Development" emerge as enlightened beings who've overcome their ego. Research on "ego death" has argued this is a very difficult stage that can only be reached by years of meditation & mindfulness training to extirpate all desires & emotions such as fear, anger, pride, lust, etc. Since the Autonomy stage of the WRID model does not appear to result in ego death and since people at this stage are still emotional, we may assume that the "enlightenment" in this stage may still hide elements of narcissism and negative emotions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death
The enlightened activist identity has been criticized by Barbara Oakley and the others authors who's essays we discussed last week in the anthology "Pathological Altruism". In particular, the sense of moral superiority evinced by many SJWs can be considered a form of "covert narcissism", their "martyr complex" and strange sense of pleasure in self-hatred appears to be "masochistic altruism" and their attempts to manipulate others through guilt tripping appears to be "malignant altruism".
Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion