I am quite worried by the tendency to push back at currents that see racism everywhere by not seeing racism anywhere. I think it's clear that this is a result of our reason having evolved to provide us with what Jonathan Haidt calls an inner lawyer rather than an inner scientist

By this, Haidt meant that because it has benefited our survival much more to have the support of a group with a shared narrative than to seek the unvarnished truth, individual reason is very flawed & works mostly to rationalise intuitions after the fact.

I think that the idea of an inner lawyer is particularly useful right now with the current polarisation over racial issues. Any situation that occurs that requires interpreting through a racial lens will immediately acquire factions best understood as prosecution & defence.

And they will each use rhetorical skill to arrange the facts of the matter in such a way as to create a damning narrative & an exculpatory one. This 'best interpretation' & 'worst interpretation' approach is very useful to present to a jury who then has to sift this.

But it's not very useful when this happens on a societal scale & involves large numbers of people picking the prosecution team or defense team. It normalises subordinating the truth to an ideological position on a massive scale.

For example, the claim "white supremacy is increasing" is a truth claim. It is either objectively true or false even if we don't have clear data to tell us which it is or we have data which qualifies the claim.

So, we could define white supremacy clearly as 'the belief that white people are superior & should be in charge" & then data could show something like that this belief is decreasing generally but that extremist groups with this belief are growing.

So there will be a right answer & knowing what it is is important, but this doesn't tend to be how the claim is responded to. Instead defense teams & prosecution teams form & produce rhetoric & shared narratives for one answer or another & cast aspersions on the other team.

Again, I stress that I think this is a natural thing & doesn't necessarily indicate any ill intent. But imagine someone standing in front of you who says "White supremacy is growing" or "White supremacists are a dwindling group of extremists." What is your instinctive reaction?

Ideally, it would be to make no assumptions about the person saying this but ask them how they know this to be true & then look at the evidence for this being true, seek more confirming & disconfirming evidence & then make your best & most objective decision on its truth.

However, this is extremely time-consuming & your inner scientist is almost certainly a bit puny & being elbowed aside by your inner lawyer who is much more muscular. We humans are more likely to make assumptions about what team the claim maker is on & support or oppose them.

We are much more likely to interpret a claim about white supremacy as an expression of an ideological commitment than as a neutral truth claim which may or may not be correct or partially correct. This is probably unavoidable.

However, by acknowledging that we do this, we can take steps to mitigate it. This works best by trying to be the defense lawyer in your own mind for the view you know yourself to believe more correct.

So, if you believe that white supremacy is very common & growing, you could ask yourself whether any situation claimed to be an example of white supremacy might actually not be.

This means that every now & then you will say something like "White supremacy is a very real problem but the actions of this person in this situation do not fit the definition & claiming they do undermines the credibility of people opposing white supremacy."

Or, if you think that white supremacy is practically non-existent but being claimed to exist everywhere & do significant damage to society, you could make efforts to consider whether a specific situation might actually be an example of it.

This means that every now & then you will say something like "Claims of white supremacy are generally ideological, false & divisive but the actions of this person in this situation are racist & denying this makes it harder to oppose the ideological claims credibly."

The best way to overcome the current polarisation & actually make society more just is to create a culture in which the people who do this are recognised as principled & credible & the people who don't are recognised as biased & non-credible.

They will still be more like lawyers than (the myth of the) purely objective scientists but they will be honest lawyers with integrity & they will give people who also want to be honest & have integrity the best arguments to evaluate & apply our collective reasoning to.

This is when we do best. When we have a marketplace of ideas in which all kinds of views can be expressed & there is an expectation of reason & evidence & genuine attempts to be as unbiased as possible (coz you know others will point out where you are & you'll lose credibility).

However, this is very counterintuitive to us as a species that works on tribes & shared narratives so it needs to be really strongly upheld as a cultural norm to have any kind of chance. Everyone can do their part in this.

I am not actually very optimistic about this. I have evidence for example that my essays which have a thesis of "This thing is bad" have way more page views than ones that have a thesis of "This thing has some value but is fatally flawed in complicated ways that matter."

However, the situation is not all or nothing. Even if society continues to be dominated by our nature as tribal apes who work on shared narratives, we can make things better by having as many people as possible who actively try to mitigate this & be principled, charitable & open.