This is like saying “Concerns about incompetent & dangerous doctors don’t seem to me to add up to much compared to life-threatening disease.”

There’s a connection you’re missing here. https://twitter.com/xandvt/status/1293821099306868736

This happens repeatedly. You cannot coherently believe both of these statements.

Social justice matters.

Bad advocacy for social justice issues does not matter.

Coherent but (I believe) mistaken:

Social justice matters
AND
Critical Social Justice (wokeist) approaches to social justice matters work well
THEREFORE
Critics of CSJ impede effective aims to improve social justice.

This is what I think most CSJ scholars & activists believe.

Coherent and (I believe) correct:

Social justice matters
AND
Critical Social Justice approaches to social justice issues are unethical & counterproductive
THEREFORE
Resistance & critique of CSJ is an important part of improving social justice.

This is what I believe.

Incoherent with no chance of being correct.

Social justice matters
AND
Critical Social Justice approaches to social justice issues are admittedly nutty & not based in reality.
THEREFORE
Critics of CSJ don't care about social justice probably because they're racist.

WTF?

The most charitable explanation for this last incoherent position is that adherents to it see that some pushback to CSJ comes from people who don't care about or actively oppose racial/gender/LGBT equality.

They then radically overestimate the number of critics of Critical Social Justice who are fine with social injustice & radically underestimate the damage that can be done to social justice by CSJ & prioritise retaining a united front with the second group against the first.

The least charitable interpretation of the motivation of the adherents to the incoherent position is that they care more about signalling their virtuous allegiance to the dominant & fashionable approach to social justice than whether it will actually improve social justice.

Don't misunderstand me. I don't think it would be at all helpful if everyone who cared about racial/gender/LGBT equality focused their attention on critiquing ineffective & unethical approaches to addressing that.

We will always need more people focusing their attention directly on social injustice in a rigorous, empirical & ethical way than on the sloppy & ethically dubious approaches getting in the way of that.

To return to my first analogy, society will always need more good medical practitioners than people focusing on identifying bad medical practitioners & showing why their practice is bad.

However, good medical practitioners are generally glad of the existence of those highlighting bad practice because it frees them up to focus on good practice & also protects the credibility & worth of their field.

You are very unlikely to see a doctor who practices sound evidence-based medicine accuse people identifying quackery & arguing for its discreditation of just not caring about sick people & insisting we all need to present a united front against the real enemy - disease.

I urge people who are actively working on social justice issues in rigorous & consistently ethical ways & recognise that CSJ approaches are neither of these things to recognise liberal critics of CSJ approaches as allies rather than enemies to the cause of social justice.

I recognise that this might take a little work. Some people who mount reasonable criticisms of CSJ do not, in reality, have the best interests of minority & underprivileged groups at heart & are not the allies of those who do.

Someone who complains about "anti-racist" identity politics as illiberal, stereotyping & divisive might themselves engage in white identity politics & thus be utilising a liberal objection in the service of self-interested & illiberal aims.

This happens so some people who care about social justice issues in non-CSJ ways have told me that they accept that I do not criticise CSJ to racist ends but that I provide plausible & ethical sounding objections to people who do & so I could do more harm than good & should stop

This is usually a good faith objection to criticising CSJ that addresses a genuine risk of doing so it is important to take it seriously & respond to it thoughtfully rather than just dismissing it as nonsense. This is a matter of weighting of pros & cons.

By making reasoned & ethical objections to CSJ, there genuinely is a risk of providing ammo to people who are opposed to ethical social justice aims that I want to support.

However, this is far outweighed by the benefits of having critiques of a certain approach to social justice by people who genuinely support social justice. These kind of 'in-house' critiques are far more effective & protective of overarching goals than harmful to them.

Let's take an example that some of you are bound to disagree with but that should hit home with non-CSJ supporters of social justice issues. Conservatism. Any kind of conservative who makes a critique of another kind of conservative risks giving ammo to the left.

But does this mean they should never do that? Should American conservatives who don't believe that Donald Trump epitomises an ethical conservatism they can respect & support shut up about this in order not to give leftists ammo against conservatism?

What about Muslim reformers. They get this a lot too. They are told that by criticising illiberal elements & downright human rights abuses done in the name of Islam, they risk giving ammo to anti-Muslim bigots and so should shut up.

This is both bad ethics & bad psychology. It's bad ethically because the only way to advance society is for reasonable & ethical members of any group to address the unreasonable & unethical elements of it, marginalise them & have the best representatives of their values up front.

It's bad psychology because denying or ignoring any problem in your own tribe doesn't mean no-one will notice it. It means your opponents or wider society will be the ones pointing it out & also that the people who should be addressing it are not doing so.This reduces credibility

This seems to be counterintuitive to many people so I will give examples and then get on with some work.

There's sexism, antisemitism & homophobia in dominant interpretations of Islam. What makes you feel more positively about Islam? Muslims saying:
1) "We see it. It's a problem. We're on it."
2) "There's no problem & if you think there is, you're probably an Islamophobe."

There's a problem with right-wing populism, nationalism, anti-intellectualism & post-truth nonsense. What makes you feel more positively about conservatism? Conservatives saying:
1) This is bad conservatism. We see it. We're on it.
2) No problem. You just have TDS. OraNgE mAn BaD

There's a problem with call-out & cancel culture & divisive identity politics on the left. What makes you feel more positively about the left? Leftists saying:
1) Yes, this is illiberal & harmful. We see it. We're on it.
2) No problem. You just want to be able to be racist.

In other words, far from weakening any political or ideological group, visible critiques of the illiberal & irrational elements of it FROM INSIDE actually disarms opponents who wish to attack it on those grounds & increases credibility in society more broadly.

TL:DR I will continue to criticise the illiberal, irrational & counterproductive approach to social justice that is Critical Social Justice & I would appreciate it if other non-CSJ people on the left recognised this as a necessary part of the effort to advance social justice.