could there be a more racist assertion than the idea that *rationality* and *logic* are...”white”?

genuinely shocked to find this is commonplace in anti-racist lit and discourse

in addition to being wildly factually inaccurate (just a passing familiarity with the history of science, math, and logic explodes the idea) the implication is that certain races/cultures/ethnicities are less rational

I’m 100% on board when it comes to criticizing the racist misapplication and abuse of rational thinking, as well as the overvaluation of rationality and quantification in certain contexts more generally

but “rationality is white” not the way to go

racism is associating the Pythagorean theorem with white culture, when it existed in different forms, in other non-white cultures!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Papyrus_6619

I'm especially sensitive to this argument since I've written about it—and refuted it—in the context of Chinese medicine, about which some claim that "Eastern" thought doesn't use the same logic as "Western" thought, and can't be evaluated with it.

https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/traditional-chinese-medicine-origins-mao-invented-it-but-didnt-believe-in-it.html