All of that is true. The point that I’m trying to make is that the idea of value-specificity and how it functions for oppressed groups supports isolating grievances when we can because assuaging everyone’s grievances just cannot be done according to a uniform criterion - especially for those that have more composite identities, as you note.
According to the logic in the OP, we address individual groups’ problems individually but orient the solutions towards parity in consequences across groups. Does that not sound like a reasonable course of action?
Not to sound like a broken record, but there really is nothing unique about poverty except that it is a particularly heterogenous group in terms of values assigned to the groups within it. That reality alone presents problems when trying to apply a uniform criterion of justice to the group if we want parity of consequences. Thus, we address the plight of the unfortunate by embracing value-specificity of groups on a more basic level when we can and build those groups up towards some semblance of equity. Otherwise, as you note, we inevitably have disparities along the lines of intersectional group identities.
Not every group disparity needs to be immediately solved. I just think we need to push to make headway in terms of establishing an earnest process that could allow vulnerable groups’ grievances to be heard and assuaged. And trying to establish uniform criteria to address the grievances of very heterogenous groups is at best inefficient.
trying to establish uniform criteria to address the grievances of very heterogenous groups is at best inefficient.
Agreed. But you’ve still not demonstrated that ‘the poor’ are any more heterogeneous than any other group. You tried, by saying that ‘the poor’ contained some portion of other marginalised groups and so must be more heterogeneous by definition, but my counter was that all groupings share this property (that of containing other marginalised groups) ‘blacks’ contains some portion of ‘the poor’, just as ‘the poor’ contains some portion of ‘blacks’.
So …
that it [the poor] is a particularly heterogenous group in terms of values assigned to the groups within it.
… remains un-demonstrated.
Some of ‘the poor’ will be black and so carry those attached values, some will be white and so carry those attached values - the heterogeneity you point out.
But some of ‘blacks’ will be poor and so carry those attached values, some will be rich and so carry those attached values - the exact same heterogeneity.
… And we haven’t even touched on the unifying features. All marginalised groups lack power, all dominant groups have it (relatively). Groups are not marginalised because of some random set of values assigned to them. They are marginalised to exercise power and the values assigned post hoc to justify the marginalisation.
As such, any group with the power to assign or re-assign attached values is already part of the problem. Don’t reassign values, reassign your power to do so.
According to your logic pretty much all groups are equally heterogenous, as far as I can tell.
I think that if we are talking about oppressed groups, there will be more consistency and continuity of grievance within a given oppressed group than the set of those who exist in the union of that oppressed group and another potentially oppressed group with qualitatively different grievances. Thus, I suggest that we attend to the groups with the greatest consistency and continuity in grievance because they are similarly valued in the ways that matter to addressing their grievances.
Okay, I don’t think you are being serious here. Nowhere did I suggest we establish some sort of structure to re-value people in the ways people with power would like. Nor did I say the valuations are random. That’s bunk. Did you even read the OP in its entirety?
there will be more consistency and continuity of grievance within a given oppressed group than the set of those who exist in the union of that oppressed group and another potentially oppressed group with qualitatively different grievances.
So only listen to the grievances of rich blacks, but not poor blacks (who exist in the union with another oppressed group)? That cannot be what you’re saying.
Yet if we can listen to the grievances of both poor blacks and rich blacks (about being black), then we can also listen to the grievances of both black poor and white poor (about being poor).
Nowhere did I suggest we establish some sort of structure to re-value people in the ways people with power would like.
If you can carry out the project, you have power. That is just the de facto definition of power. Therefore, the adjustment you suggest will be the one the people in power want. If it were not done by people in power it would not happen as they would lack the power to make it so.
The point I’m making, and it is a perfectly serious one, is that power imbalances are not fixed by those in power adjusting the rules by which they exercise that power. They are fixed by giving up that power.
Okay, you need to address what I’m saying here, because it is very relevant to the assertion you just took umbrage with:
So, I would actually advocate for helping some of the most overall oppressed groups, e.g. people of color in general. That would undoubtedly include addressing economic concerns. Rich people of color might not need those specific corrections so much, but the point is, once again, to apply the logic of value-specificity to correct for misvaluings when they might be suppressing valid grievances - not to carve up groups of people arbitrarily.
The impoverished could definitely list valid grievances, but are those grievances actually linked to their identities in unique ways specific to that class of people? Such is the case for people of color, immigrants, etc.
So how is justice achieved? If the well-intentioned people give up power the fascists and bigots will seize it.
That sounds like a tautology.
Do you think that those without power must not want adjustments made by those with power on the basis that they do not have power?
I would actually advocate for helping some of the most overall oppressed groups, e.g. people of color in general
So this base assertion seems to be what was behind our disagreement. You seem to see it as unarguable that people of colour, as a group, are more oppressed than the poor (or more subject to value assignments which perpetuate their oppression). I don’t take this to be an unarguable fact. I’m not sure I even agree with it, I certainly don’t think it can just go without argument.
You emplore us to avoid what is “inefficient” but then hand waive that your preferred methodology might lead to
Rich people of color might not need those specific corrections so much
How is that not also then ‘inefficient’?
are those grievances actually linked to their identities in unique ways specific to that class of people?
Yes. There are plenty of prejudicial judgements the poor have to suffer from that are similar to other oppressed groups - workshy, unintelligent, slovenly, lacking in entrepreneurial spirit, untrustworthy (with money particularly). One only has to look at the social welfare system of pretty much any country to see the appallingly prejudicial manner with which the poor are treated.
So how is justice achieved? If the well-intentioned people give up power the fascists and bigots will seize it.
So the world is made up of the well-intentioned white folk, and bigots? Those are the only two options for who can hold power? I don’t think that’s true, and I suspect you don’t either.
Do you think that those without power must not want adjustments made by those with power on the basis that they do not have power?
I think those without power would rather be given some power than be mollycoddled by beneficent overlords with a guilty conscience.
How many people of colour are now in governmental positions? Quite a few. How many immigrants? Far fewer, but rising (especially second generation). How many trans? Lamentably few, but the barriers are being removed.
Good point. I agree. Wasn’t thinking that one through. I’m not subject to much of that kind of oppression at all - even though I’m by no means wealthy.
You are right: it isn’t a given. However, I think that it is very unlikely that all of these groups are actually equally subject to value assignments that perpetuate oppression. Thus, I think that if we were to just do the work and evaluate groups along those lines, we could reasonably isolate certain groups for greater corrective measures in terms of enabling them both a better quality of life and greater representation in government or whatever they may want.
Not at all what I’m saying. I advocate for enacting a process that would address grievances that might be being ignored due to misvaluing. That would definitely include giving power to the people that I or some other relatively privileged person might view as being oppressed. That would be something they would want, clearly.
All good points. I concede that supporting self-determination of vulnerable groups and minorities does not equate to ceding ground to bigots and that no one likes being mollycoddled.
I’m not subject to much of that kind of oppression at all - even though I’m by no means wealthy.
It’s not a prejudice that gets a lot of press either. I think it’s fundamental though (material insufficiency). The cynic in me thinks that’s not a coincidence. Racial prejudice, homophobia, transphobia, etc., are allowed a lot of air space precisely because they could all be addressed without changing an iota of the fundamental structures that create wealth oppression.
That’s not the same as saying those other forms of oppression aren’t real, they very much are, just that their favouring over material oppression as public campaigns is not accidental.
I think that it is very unlikely that all of these groups are actually equally subject to value assignments that perpetuate oppression. Thus, I think that if we were to just do the work and evaluate groups along those lines, we could reasonably isolate certain groups for greater corrective measures.
Absolutely. And that work may well have been done already, somewhere in the literature, though your metric is very well-defined, so maybe not.
The point about poverty is that it enables everything else. Without freedom from basic material insufficiency, it is very difficult to rectify other inequalities for the affected group, and then indeed reliance on the apocryphal ‘white saviour’ is greater.
Take away material insufficiency and people can be far more effective addressing inequality themselves, because they have the means.
Stripping lady justice of her blindfold is the surest way to injustice. Life isn’t fair. I’m better off than others, maybe because I’m white, maybe because I’m educated, maybe because I had good parents. Balancing out my inequalities by weighing me down where I unfairly soar and lifting me up where I unfairly drag isn’t doable or just in itself. The rule of law applied without favor or affection is a major advancement of mankind and it is not the major impediment for the downtrodden.
That is, equality before the law is the only equality we ought demand.
No one suggested anything like that. I suggested that we try to correct for a mechanic (value-specificity in application of justice) when that mechanic is exploited by those with power to reinforce the power structures that give them control over vulnerable groups. Nowhere in there is an attempt to weigh anyone down.
Yes, I generally agree with that sentiment - laws should ideally not favor or disfavor one group or another. But I would argue that many of the laws we have now do that very thing - although perhaps not in an actual segregationist way.
Are you claiming that any amount of inequality is tolerable if it is perpetuated within the legal bounds of the system? That so long as a uniform standard is applied, any magnitude of stratification is okay?
I was responding to what I thought was suggested that we should vary our application of standards at the induvidual level in order to remedy an unfair status quo that disadvantages certain classes.
That is, a poor person stands before the court and his punishment will perpetuate his poverty and those similarly situated, so the proposed solution would be to modify how we apply the law to him to assist his upward mobility.
I have no problem rethinking what our laws are, and if we wish to legalize certain current crimes or modifying certain punishments we can, but they have to apply equally to all once passed.
At the standard setting level, we’re a democracy, and we should consider the whole community when we decide, but once that is done. we all stand as equals before the law. That is, I’m equal to the homeless man and to the Senator once the blindfold is on.
But ‘equality’ implies a measure. To be equal one must have the same quantity of something as another. What is that something? Money? Opportunity? Freedom?
If a judgement takes an equal amount of money from each party is that fair, even if, by doing so, it takes an unequal amount of opportunity or freedom?
No, that isn’t really what I had in mind. I was suggesting something more along the lines of allocating resources to disadvantaged groups to address the grievances they have that are associated with the ways in which those with power assign them value. That could take the form of creating economically progressive laws to assist with upward mobility. One could argue, perhaps, for quotas for more representation, too. Honestly, this is the part of the argument I think is best left to people who understand policy better than me.
So, laws that might favor certain groups insofar as the intent is to uplift, but probably not a difference in punishment for crimes or something on the basis of identity.
What about when a good portion of the people in the democracy are interested in, and capable of, suppressing minorities and vulnerable groups? Are the latter groups equals before the law when all is said and done? Functionally, I would say not.
Thus, do you think it is completely unreasonable to ask specifically what conditions those people need for equitable treatment and to implement a process to act on it irrespective of how the majority feels? Given that many laws are almost certainly intended to keep minorities down, I see such a process as just being a natural way of correcting for that.
That seems to conflict with your thesis about contextuality. Or, at least, this is probably where you’ll see lots of disagreement - - “If at all possible”.
People will grant context if they’re reasonable. It’s when or where or what context matters that will differ.
I like including “we listen to people”, but I’m not sure how to get there from your definition of values and concomitant definition of groups.
Also I think what I’d want to add to your thoughts is some dimension of the material: Capacities and access to goods are contextually important. I’d say if we’re collectively living such that there are people where their basic needs are not met then we can judge our way of life as unjust, even if we are following the rules just like we set them up. But I’d rather put that in material terms rather than ethical terms: there is such-and-such a basic amount of access one can expect from a society which we call just, as well as accommodation to one’s material capacities.
Also this is not a metric which is well handled for grievances and their restitution, but rather is a kind of goal that I judge our social structures by in terms of whether we can call them just or not.
When I say ‘if at all possible’ I just mean whether or not we can extricate a grievance from the circumstances surrounding the people telling us what they think they want or need. That we might not be able could be because the values assigned by society to a group are all jumbled up in ways we cannot unravel.
Kind of tying some elements together: I suggest we listen to people and then decide if we think that their grievances are contextually reasonable, e.g. reasonable independent of who is listing the grievance. The point there is to try to strip the relevant valuations from a group and do an evaluation. We then adjudicate these grievances based upon whether or not assuaging them might help counteract the ways in which they might be misvalued by those with power. Thus, if underprivileged groups produce valid grievances and assuaging those grievances would help achieve the kind of parity those groups want, I say we need to act on it. As pseudonym pointed out, we ought to empower those groups to achieve parity for themselves - and listening to what they want is a step towards that.
This is the important part in the OP:
I think that value-specificity, as depicted in the OP, could be thought of as enabling gatekeeping mechanics preventing certain underprivileged people from enjoying a better quality of living. So, it can be applied to almost any sort of disparity in what is considered just treatment provided there are people interested in gatekeeping - be it along material or racial lines. As such, by virtue of being tied directly to people’s identities, it is a bridge between the structural and the individual. While it cannot measure grievances or inform the exact means of restitution for specific grievances, it does give us a sense of directionality because we can address the underlying mechanic.
That is, if we can establish a hierarchy based upon valuation, we can perhaps establish an impetus for isolating groups and attempting to build them up. That is largely the point of what I wrote.
I should expand on this: what I am describing here is the fundamental turn from value-specificity alone being the relevant sort of context to the context determining whether or not a corrective action is to be actually equitable being the relevant context. Thus, strategic; it accomplishes the goal developed throughout the post. I probably could have made that clearer.
Sorry for not responding to this sooner. I had to think about it.
I agree that material capacities and access to goods are contextual indicators of whether or not people are being treated justly. But how do we get from a society that is unjust in the way you describe to the one that is? And does everyone having some sort of minimum access to material resources and their basic needs being taken care of constitute true justice as applied to different groups?
The application of justice is a process, and we need some sort of basis for taking underprivileged groups and applying corrective measures beyond those just oriented towards parity in material capacity, access to goods, etc. This matters because there are problems not solved by that. Giving everyone health insurance, for instance, could be applied from the top down with reasonable intent to help impoverished people of color and immigrants, for instance, but what about greater representation in government for immigrants? Or what about the selective interpretation of laws used to justify the oppression of undocumented Americans? How do we address those things?
There has to be some sort of metric by which we can say “this is a problem” and reasonably address it without stepping on ourselves. Value-specificity delivers exactly that: the people who are being kept down are part of an active process addressing the problems they see affecting themselves and it gives us a means of adjudicating any such claims made with their help.
I can say I agree with the premise - justice is complicated, but i cannot agree that your identified points of pressure are much relevant to that complexity. Not that they aren’t factors, but they aren’t relative to the conceptual discussion.
I guess, without writing an essay about that disagreement, i would just pose some questions:
What, in your view, is the current, extant, systemic mechanism you think is the contributor? I ask this because it seems like you’re putting forward “vibes”. You beg the question on certain policy calls and don’t much explore whether or not that particular thing meets any criteria you may have set for those concepts to come in to play.
For instance, I’m not sure what conservative policies you’re referring to and I can’t understand the implicit expectation that conservatives are racist/prefer racist policies.
I further can’t understand why there’s any mention of fascism. That seemed to be a bit of a over-wringing of the entire concept you’re bringing up there that doesn’t sem to have any significant pull/weight/gravitas when it comes to political discussions in the USA.
What metric/how are you benchmarking/assessing privilege? It seems large-grained and unhelpful in context of your post.
Fuentes is not privileged. He enjoys the freedoms given to him by hte country of which is a citizen. As do others. I realize there are lines, and he may well have crossed them - dude is dumber than a brick - but in contrast,the amount of overt, violent rhetoric aimed at white people in the media/social media is …extreme. Facebook had internal documents leaked last year which showed their (governemnt pressured) systems for combatting hate speech were interacting far more with hate speech of this kind. Not aimed at minorities.
That is a clear and plain privilege - and given that there is a wide-spread, albeit perhaps entirely reactionary, coterie of unhinged minorities who love to be racist to white people publicly with no net negatives, as compared to white people being wholly removed from polite society for being misunderstood or lied about, that to me smells of intense privilege.
However, I don’t think any of this is helpful. It is exactly the weeds and nonsense that these discussions devolve into when we start on the empirical matters that seems to call for a one-size-fits-all standard of justice.
It is wholly wrong in my view that offenders of minority backgrounds can be supported in having their sentences reduced due to cultural reporting about “deprivation” in earlier life. Where I live, this is almost wholly determined by what colour your are, and what colour your parents were. It is privilege that costs the state millions, and results in disproportionately short sentences and disproportionate rates of discharge (w or w/out conviction). Disclaimer: I have run the numbers on published cases since 2023, so you’re more than welcome to ignore this claim - I am it’s source - but again, the empirical stuff isn’t so important to me - it is conceptually sound systems of interacting with disparate populations.
I think value-driven justice is not just bad, but has always been that way when enacted. We see cases in the UK almost daily of judges saying hte most batshit stuff in service of exactly this type of two-tiered justice. It is wrong.
I also suggest there are an extremely small number of people of a conservative bent who think any group is “less deserving of justice”. Everyone has an in-group bias and it is democrats who are now routinely calling for the collapse of due process when it comes to conservatives (yes, private voters, not politicians). I have saved plenty of these clips.
So, again, i think the only possible way to mete out justice in a multicultural society is one-size-fits all. Sharia cannot be instantiated. Culpability does not change because of your skin colour.
There’s also the added spanner to all of the what get called “bleeding heart” arguments that most people who are disadvantaged don’t resort to crime, particularly not violent crime.
If you want to see a reason why stupid white people are worried about stupid black people, look at the utterly indefensible, and unexplained disparities on inter-racial violence.
I mention ‘nascent fascist regimes’ because grievance, as described in the OP, is central to the fascist project; one thing we are seeing now in the US is attacks on immigrants enabled by the process I describe in the OP. That is, fascism gives specific form to the mechanism of grievance built on upon value-specificity central to oppression. As such, when I claim that there is privilege expressed in how immigrants are treated and how people like Nick Fuentes are treated, it is because the former are being stepped on and the latter are allowed to explicitly worsen that situation with little to no consequences. There are consequences for just existing for some people. Furthermore, the claim that
is simplistic. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be denied his first amendment freedoms, but rather that no one should be platforming him because he is a Nazi. Yet the right flirts with Nazis openly. Tucker Carlson interviewed Nick Fuentes iirc. He is privileged by virtue of being able to even engage in white supremacist rhetoric without being universally chastised.
Are white people being rounded up and stuck in what amounts to prisons without medical care, potable water, access to phones, etc. largely on the basis of skin color?
Who holds most of the power? Who could actually exploit value-specificity against the white majority? Probably no one, so there is little need to litigate this point imo. I mean, subgroups of people of color have always been more militant or engaged in incendiary rhetoric, which is to be expected, of course, but what you are talking about is not systemic enough to count as “privilege” as it is put forth in this discussion elsewhere.
I’m not sure what you mean here. I don’t think we are in the weeds, and I’m not advocating for one-size-fits-all standards of justice.
The extant, systemic mechanism is people building grievance arguments on value-specificity to misvalue underprivileged groups which would be reflected in legislation passed by those interested in gatekeeping. Yes, there is a vibes element there, but I think I do a good job of laying out an argument that could be convincingly applied: much of our policy around immigration, for example, meets the relevant criteria to be considered a manifestation of the process not on the grounds of the correctness of a premise assuming that this policy is actually unjust but rather because it gives form to the mechanism I lay out.
We could argue about the specific ways in which this is the case, if you want, but that is secondary, I think.
Whether or not that is an effective policy is beyond my expertise, so I’m not going to comment on that. But I don’t know if I’m totally against it if it is applied to all of those who are deprived in the relevant ways.
I think you didn’t support that claim much at all. You mostly just claimed that white people are also subject to racism, selective treatment legally, etc. Those things are addressed by my argument in the OP because the application of the justice I call for could just as easily be used to evaluate white peoples’ grievances against people of color or society at large too. They are largely crappy attempts to maintain control over underprivileged groups, however, so they would ultimately be dismissed in all likelihood.
Like I told Moliere, value-specificity mostly just gives us a direction to go in when we see something that looks unjust beyond the obvious claim that it is unjust according to some sort of universal standard. Everyone lays claim to universal standards and argues that they have the most just one. Thus, disagreement over normative superiority is second in some ways to what we can actually argue about effectively: the side-benefits of specific models of justice. Mine has many benefits:
It involves those who are oppressed in the process by which they gain parity
It establishes an impetus for change beyond attempting to apply other pre-existing models tied to the status quo
It allows for addressing more ‘hidden’ disparities insofar as we can address the underlying mechanics of privilege
There are probably more, but those are the most obvious to me.