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train wrote (edited )

I mostly like this article. Framing social issues as an epistemic imbalance between people with differing identities is not really the problem. However, it's the problem that "conversations" are ostensibly trying to solve. Thus of course they are innefective.

Additionally, I've found many radical activists kind of assume that conversations don't work because people on the other side of a conversation are acting cynically in order to defend their own identity and/or class position. While that's sometimes the case, I think more often than not the reality is that peoples frameworks for understanding how the world works vary depending on ones own material conditions.

That's why I think you can show liberals the legacy of Jim Crow, the horrors of global poverty, and the terrible violence of war and yet the solutions they offer won't change. It's not simply that they don't understand the scale of the suffering under capitalism. It's also not even that such people don't emapthize with those that are suffering.

This ironically is why I think issues of inequity get framed as epistemological problems in the first place.

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BlisterPacked wrote

We can only really reach common ground through dialogue, so this piece is rather shortsighted. Action is important of course, but without dialogue, we won't be able to decide on the correct course of action to take.

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