What we talk about when we talk about "critical race theory," Part III: If not critical race theory, then what?

 And, we're back.  "We," being the royal we, as in, I am narcissistic and solipsistic, fully cognizant of the fact that nobody wants to read hot air from a professor who criticizes critical race theory.  Some people vent into diaries about petty, interpersonal dramas.  I shout into the void about an idea-virus (see Inception) that escaped from a lab (law reviews).  What?  What do you do with your Saturday mornings?  Sleep?  That's how you get incepted.  Damn.  We're back to paranoia, conspiracy theories, and solipsism.

Anyway, in Part II, I was less than gentle towards critical race theory in its academic form.  I found some merit in the concepts of "whiteness as property" and "interest convergence," if we were to take them as parsimonious models from which one could derive falsifiable hypotheses.  Yet at its core, critical race theory resists any such approach.  It is postmodern, and it exists primarily as a counter-narrative to operate against what proponents see as a dominant narrative supporting a racial hierarchy.  To derive falsifiable hypotheses is to miss the point.  However, there is a real, empirical motivation behind critical race theory.  Multiple empirical observations, in fact.  Racial wealth gaps persist over time.  Nearly every measure you can devise shows better outcomes for white people in America than for African-Americans.  While a critical theory, generally speaking, has three elements, only one of which is an explanation for empirical observations (the other two being normative principles, and practical guidance), CRT does propose an explanation for these empirically observable outcome gaps.

When challenged, a critical race theorist will often respond as follows.  If you reject critical race theory, then what is your explanation for these phenomena?  The racial wealth gap persists.  It persists long past the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and other legal victories for the mainstream civil rights movement, as do other differentials.  Why?  If not critical race theory, then what?

As a skeptic of critical race theory, I have no obligation to present an alternative.  I would like to have one, but rejecting critical race theory does not require presenting an alternative.  This is a nice rhetorical device, but it is a fallacy.  It goes by an old name, in other contexts.

The god of the gaps.

If there is a phenomenon you cannot explain, you must attribute it to the divine.  The god of the gaps.  Of course, as our scientific models improve, our gaps shrink.  Charlie Sheen, Ben Vereen, shrink to the size of a lima bean!

Explain earthquakes?  Oh, you can't?  Well, then, you must accept that they are caused by an angry god.

Once upon a time, this was compelling.  The more fully we understand geology, the less compelling the explanation becomes.  We have a relatively well developed model of plate tectonics by modern times.  There is a layer of magma, upon which tectonic plates glide, very, very slowly.  However, these plates border each other, and those borders-- faults-- become sticking points.  They can stick in a variety of ways, creating multiple varieties of faults, but as the plates collide, separate, or slide laterally against each other, pressure builds until it is released.  That release of pressure is an earthquake.  We no longer assert that Poseidon, nor any other deity, causes earthquakes out of a fit of pique.  Do we have perfect models?  No.  Consider, for example, the New Madrid fault.  Unbeknownst to many, the most "dangerous" fault in the continental US runs through the midwest.  It goes kaboom very rarely, but when it goes, ooh, boy, does it go.  We cannot predict with perfect certainty when a fault will snap, crackle or pop, but we have an understanding of tectonics which has reduced our uncertainty about the world.  And hence, shrunk the place of religion.

This is a common plotline in science fiction and fantasy.  The progress of science pushes magic to the sidelines, yet the core observation from an Enlightenment point of view is that as we learn more about how the universe works, our gaps diminish.

So... explain the precise moment of an earthquake!  Oh, you can't?  Well, then...  Poseidon!

We explain the start of the universe with the big bang.

So... explain the big bang.  Oh, you can't?  Then you must say, "god."

The gaps shrink, and as they do, the goalposts move.  There will always be a gap, and the dishonest move-- the fallacy-- is to insist that the scientist respond to the gap with "then, god."  That is the god of the gaps, ever-shrinking, but like the remaining distance in Xeno's paradox, always there.  Trickery and fallacy.

The scientific position is always that the burden of evidence falls on the one making the claim.  Rejection of a claim entails no burden of a counterclaim because the default scientific position is skepticism.  This is a fundamentally different epistemological approach from dividing claims between narratives and counter-narratives on the basis of oppressor narratives and oppressed counter-narratives, but that is rather the point, isn't it?  The scientific position is to say, OK, you have a claim?  What is your evidence?  If your empirical evidence is insufficient, and it cannot be derived logically, then I reject your claim, having no burden myself of presenting a counterclaim.

This creates the following dynamic.  The critical race theorist says, I know why racial gaps persist-- the American system is designed to perpetuate a racial hierarchy as its central reason for being.  The skeptic responds, I find your argument unconvincing because of A, B and C.  The CRT theorist retorts, then, what?

Hence, this morning's post.  Yet the question is unwarranted.  The question presumes that the skeptic has a burden to present a counterclaim.  The skeptic has no such burden.  The presumption of such a burden is the presumption that CRT plays the role of the god of the gaps.  There is a gap-- the persistence of racial discrepancies.  Wealth gaps, for example, to use the same g-word.  If you cannot explain those gaps any other way, says the CRT advocate, you must accept CRT, like a god of the gaps.

It is no accident that religious rhetoric, metaphors and tics proliferate here, undergirding the McWhorter argument.  This is, fundamentally, a god of the gaps argument.  If you can't explain X, you must accept CRT, even if you find it illogical, because it is an explanation.

Yet the persistence of racial wealth gaps and similar phenomena is a topic for empirical analysis, when not subject to such fallacies.  The answers are myriad, complex, and often unsatisfying.

What do we infer, for example, from the statistical observation that Nigerian immigrants have higher levels of education, higher incomes, and generally, better outcomes than most other groups in the US, including native-born white people?  This observation throws a wrench into so many simplistic attempts to wave away a long and persistent difference in means, reduced to skin color.

Charles Murray is back in the spotlight with his argument about racial IQ differences, yet were one to take the Murray argument too seriously, the observation about Nigerian immigrants would present a rather serious problem.  What, there's something about Nigeria, specifically?  No, that makes no sense.  I'll leave it to others to go through Murray point-by-point, but it should be clear how much of a challenge the Nigerian immigrant observation presents to the Murray thesis.

Yet fascinatingly, the same observation about Nigerian immigrants creates a problem for CRT.  The entire system is rigged, permanently, structurally, intentionally, against black people, but somehow, there's a Nigerian immigrant loophole?  All doors are closed, but there's a secret back door, where we, the cabal of whities say, OK, Nigerian immigrants!  Y'all are not only cool, y'all are cooler'n us, so y'all get better outcomes than us.  Here are your special, backstage passes.  Now shhhhhhhh!

This is as silly as trying to reconcile the success of Nigerian immigrants with Herr Murray.

When pressed, then, a CRT skeptic may say some combination of two things:  a) it's complicated, and b) I don't know.

The "it's complicated" observation should be almost too obvious to make, once we note the Nigerian immigrant phenomenon, but it does not end there.  Break down the category of "black" further, and break down the category of "white" further, and you see so many differences that are simply absurd in the context of a simple-minded model like CRT.

As a basic empirical observation, there is relatively little class mobility in the US, compared to other industrialized democracies.  One's likely economic situation in life is closely linked to one's parents' circumstances.  Why?  That, too, is a difficult question, but it is empirically measurable by the statistical relationship between your SES and your parents' SES.

That means we have a complicated situation.  If your parents are poor and [INSERT RACE HERE], you are statistically likely to be poor.  And... [INSERT RACE HERE].  In statistical terminology, then, we have a "confound."  Parents' SES.  It is statistically associated with your race because of... history, and has a direct impact on your SES, regardless of your race.  It is the most causally proximate determinant of your eventual SES.

R... egardless of your race.

Yet that does not mean race plays no role.  Since race has historically been associated with SES, and it may have been directly, causally associated with your parents', or grandparents' or whoever's SES, this is not a causal chain in which race simply disappears from every equation.  Yet it is also not necessarily the most direct, proximate variable, nor is the historical relevance of race any comfort to anyone who is poor and white, whose chances in life were negatively impacted by the same proximate causal chain as someone who was born poor and black.

The problem, in social scientific terms, is that we don't have a dichotomy between "it's all race" and "race doesn't matter."  Instead, we permit the following:  "it's complicated."

CRT has the appeal of cleanliness, which is appealing for those who like their answers a little less statistically uncertain and abstruse.  Yet, we often rely on a method called "process tracing."  Short version:  what is the effect of A on B?  What is the effect of B on C?  Trace that out in order to measure direct effects, indirect effects, separate them, aggregate them, and see what makes empirical sense.

You can't take race out of the historical process, when you trace it.  Yet that does not mean that a simplistic, racially determined model makes empirical sense.  It's... complicated.  That complication makes it difficult for us to say precisely what the role of race is in the wealth gap today, so much of it being past legacy rather than direct impacts of existing structures, keeping in mind that past legacies also hurt white people, because we have comparatively low class mobility, which is the most proximate factor anyway.

Consequently, our big answer to a lot of questions about racial gaps is as follows:  it's complicated.  And because it's complicated, we don't quite know.

That's why there's this ongoing thing called, "social science."

Are you comfortable with "I don't know?"

Many people are not.  Discomfort with "I don't know" is both common, and the source of peoples' willingness to accept specious arguments for the sake of misleading comfort.  Yet to a scientist, "I don't know is exhilarating.  It means there is work to be done, and there are things yet to be learned.  That is exciting.  Acceptance of uncertainty, acceptance of work yet to be done... this is vital to the scientific process.

The scientist has no need to respond to the question, "then, what?"  The burden is not on the CRT skeptic.  The burden does not fall to the CRT skeptic until the CRT skeptic makes a counterclaim.

To be sure, some do!  Alternatives to CRT range from Thomas Sowell-style claims about "culture," whatever that means, to more simple measures of specific phenomena that could even be classified appropriately as "systemic racism."  Remember, after all, that systemic racism is separate from critical race theory.

Consider, for example, the manner in which we fund schools.  Schools are funded through local property taxes, which has the effect of higher funding per pupil for white students.  Why?  There are regional differences in property values and race, which are statistically associated.  Moreover, wealthy localities want to maintain the property tax structure of funding, not for the reason of any racial hierarchy, but to preserve the funding for their own kids.  Race has nothing to do with it, in terms of their own motivations.  This is exactly what we mean by "systemic racism."  Systemic racism occurs when we observe a disparate impact even when no individual is motivated by racial animus.  School funding.  Classic example, and a part of the problem.  The complete answer?  No, but that's the point.

There are many components, some of which involve things that we should describe as "systemically racist."  That is not the same as saying "it's critical race theory," since, after all, the process I just described has nothing to do with anything like the property value of "whiteness."  It's just about maintaining per-pupil spending within wealthy school districts.

So we return to the observation that it is complicated.  Schools and the process by which they are funded?  That's a part.  Measurable and amenable to study.  Hypothesization.  (That makes it more scientifically useful that some of Sowell's ideas, in my opinion, but that's another can o' worms.)

Anyone interested can go and read these, and many more avenues of research.  Yet when the topic of discussion is CRT, the burden falls... solely... (sorry) on the critical race theorist.  If I present counterarguments, I have no burden to present my own "theory" of the racial wealth gap's persistence over time.  I have made a few observations, like the success of Nigerian immigrants, and low class mobility over time, but these are far from complete.  I claim no theory, nor have I any need to do so.

The attempt to shift the burden to the CRT skeptic, rather, is the trick.  The fallacy.  The attempt to claim status as the god of the gaps.

Mind that gap.

I am acting, rather, as a kind of peer reviewer.  In peer review, a manuscript is submitted to a journal or book press, and scholars are consulted to assess whether or not the manuscript should be published.  Peer review can go wrong in oh, so many ways.  (Cough, cough...)  Yet, the goal is for the reviewers to catch any fatal logical or empirical flaws.  Reviewers have no burden to present their own counterclaims in this process.

Now bluntly, how does peer review work in law reviews, where critical race theory originated?  I have published in three disciplines-- Political Science, Economics, and Law.  Publishing in a law review is a joke.  Getting stuff through peer review in my two primary disciplines of Political Science and Economics is hard.  That's not to say that the process is good, but the process is hard.  Publishing in a law review is absurdly easy.  They'll publish anything, with no real process.  It's a fucking joke.  Hey, kids!  If you want to go into academia and beef up your CVs, publish in law reviews.  Law schools know how easy it is, so when they see CVs longer than a Trump associate indictment, they know to discount the length, but other disciplines don't really get it.  They'll just see a fuckload of publications and be unduly impressed.

Yeah... me?  Not so much, having done it.

And once it's there, it's there.  The problem is that even being there, critics still face no burden of counterclaim.

In the Thomas Kuhn model of scientific advancement, here is how things work.  A paradigm explains a set of puzzles, but eventually encounters an anomaly that cannot be explained within the existing paradigm.  The existing paradigm cannot be overthrown until a new paradigm comes along which can explain not only the observations explained by the current paradigm, but those anomalies which cannot.

CRT poses itself in such a manner, while simultaneously rejecting Enlightenment epistemology.  You don't get it both ways.  Those of us who are skeptical of CRT are not challenging it on the grounds that we propose a new paradigm to explain newly discovered anomalies.  We argue that it never explained current observations in the first place.  Critical race theory became a dominant school of thought among race-based legal scholars and race-based scholars in a few other disciplines, but it never actually supplanted social scientific models.  Its status in the public sphere is bizarre, as even most social scientists couldn't give a coherent explanation of what CRT is.  From its prominence, you'd think that it is to social science what evolution is to biology, and it is so not.

They have yet to make their case.  It is incumbent on them to do so, not on skeptics to present a single, decisive, alternative.

More to come!

Music.  Tony Furtado, "Emigrant Gap," from Full Circle.