The No True Scotsman argument in Critical Theory

Reacting to this post from Ann Althouse who is commenting on someone else's tweeted argument.  She unrolls the tweet argument made by Rod Graham.  Her bolding indicates breaks in the tweeting.

Here is a list of some black intellectuals who are skeptical of claims of systemic racism: 

 

Wilfred Reilly

Thomas Chatterton Williams

Jason Reilly

Coleman Hughes

John McWhorter

Glenn Loury

 

For lack of a better term, I will call this the "integrated" group. This group is so-called because of what appears to be their racially integrated experiences. The integrated group may have interracial family and friendship networks, or currently in interracial relationships. They are navigating white spaces successfuly [sic].  

 

The "modal" black person, on the other hand, lives in segregated neighborhoods and has a more monoracial friendship and family network. They navigate black spaces. This isn't about who is "authentic", but about differences in lived experiences... 

 

So integrated black folk may not have had life-altering experiences with racism, or they may not have close family and friends who are relaying their experiences about racism. Indeed, in their lives, race simply doesn't matter. ...however, the modal black person will be constantly communicating with people intimately who are dealing with past and present racism, maybe they have had a friend who has been harassed or shot - they will not have had as many positive interracial experiences. 

 

So you have two separate groups of people whose experiences bend them in divergent directions. They will have different thoughts about race and will ask different questions (e.g. the modal black person is not going to ask "if" there is police brutality...they see it). Asking different questions is wonderful, and we need a diversity of thought. But 2 problems arise. 

 

(1) Many whites will find commonality with assimilated black folk because their experiences jibe. They will see the integrated black intellectual as "reasonable" and... ...use their views to support their own. In other words "how can I be racist when Coleman Hughes thinks just like me"? Another example of this dynamic is the infamous roundtable by Brett Weinstein... ...no one representing a standard social science view (or far left) view was on that podcast. I have communicated with many white folks on Twitter who believe racism is not "real". They find comfort in Reilly et al. who support their views. 

 

(2) Although all questions are valid, the viewpoints of the assimilated black intellectuals do not represent the views of modal black people. They are a minority in a minority, and some whites never get the modal viewpoint. The standard response is going to be... ...blacks are conservative - "look data showing that black folk do not want to defund the police". Yes, this is true. But surveys show that black folk view racism and police brutality as a problem. Moreover, they speak with their vote - disproportionately Democratic. This dichotomy creates a lot of confusion about race in the United States for white folks who tend to consume the views of integrated black intellectuals. 

  

Before ending this thread, I'm sure that as someone reads this......they will look for disconfirming evidence of my claim (e.g. a conservative or anti-woke black person who does not fit the "integrated" profile). Great! Diversity of views is important! There is no authentic black person (alternatively, we could say each group is authentic in their own way). 
 
My concern, though, is that the world described by... ...integrated black folk is not the world most black people live in. Thus, while it is easy for some white folks to support the "reasonable" and "rational" Loury, McWhorter, Reilly, and Hughes, they ignore the concerns of most black people

The gentleman making the argument is African-American and "Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology | Coordinator of Old Dominion University's Cybercrime Program | Podcaster | Writer | Middle-Aged Gym Rat."

This caught my eye because at one level his point is indisputably true - different groups of people, even though they may nominally share some attribute, can still respond quite differently to a set of circumstances for other reasons than their shared attribute.

This is a mere a variation of the truism, so poisonous to Critical Theory and Postmodernism:

THE INDIVIDUAL IS NOT THE AVERAGE!

And its corollary:

THE AVERAGE IS NOT THE INDIVIDUAL! 

You can find disparate impact (i.e. different averages) among groups of individuals based on a near infinity of attributes.  Race is a popular one in the US, especially among intellectuals and aspirant intellectuals.  In other countries it is religion.  Class is big elsewhere.  Culture also.  In egalitarian Finland, there are material differences in all sorts of psychometric and sociological measures between the majority Finns and minority Swedes.  They are both white, race is not the issue for the disparities.

Do culturally integrated African-Americans (and similarly, majority-culture culturally assimilated African and African Diaspora immigrants) see the world and respond to mainstream culture differently from the clumsy stereotype, the "modal black person?"  Of course.  Just as would a Harvard grad and a West Virginia dropout, even though both are white.  

Graham's point is banally true.  But in his attempt to defend (as I am interpreting it) victimhood conferred by intersectional Critical Theory, which definitionally assigns African-Americans to a secondhand status based on psychometric and sociological measures, Graham seems to me to unconsciously point towards the problems in this argument which Classical Liberals have always been attuned to.  

1. There are potentially a plenitude of identities which a person might assume, often with some intermittency and contextual dependency.  
2. No identity can be arbitrarily imposed which can necessarily reflect an individual's self-perceived identity. 
3. The average is not the individual and the individual is not the average.
4. Disparate results are not evidence of discrimination.
5. Virtually all psychometric and sociological measures differences are multi-causal in nature.
6. Disparate results are often completely explained by controlling confounding independent variables.
7. Some of the strongest advocates for "racial" traits are among those who are heatedly declarative in their opposition to racism.
8. All humans are genetically disposed towards creating binary social constructs of Us and Them, however those two terms are differentiated.  We are also strongly disposed towards social collaboration.
9. Almost everywhere in the world, the independent variables of greatest divisiveness are Religion, Class, and Culture, especially to the extent that the mix of those three generate systemic differentials resulting in superior group productivity.  (See Anti-Igbo sentiment in West Africa as an example, or anti-semitism endemic among some classes in Europe.)

 The entirety of Graham's argument could be recast, with equal validity, based on class as the contributing variable.  For example.  (Word changes in italics)

Here is a list of some academic intellectuals who are skeptical of claims of classism as systematically more consequential than claims of racism: 

Virtually every left-liberal academic in the US

For lack of a better term, I will call this the "class privileged" group. This group is so-called because of what appears to be their high status integrated experiences. The integrated group may have closed family and friendship networks, or currently in homogenous class relationships. They are navigating status successfuly [sic].  

The "modal" poor person, on the other hand, lives in segregated neighborhoods and has a more open friendship and family network. They navigate interracial, inter-religious and inter-other spaces with greater familiarity simply because they have no choice but to do so. This isn't about who is "authentic", but about differences in lived experiences... 

So integrated class privileged folk may not have had life-altering experiences with poverty and class discrimination, or they may not have close family and friends who are relaying their experiences about poverty and class discrimination. Indeed, in their lives, class privilege simply doesn't matter. ...however, the modal poor person will be constantly communicating with people intimately who are dealing with past and present class discrimination, maybe they have had a friend who has been harassed or shot - they will not have had as many positive equal-citizen experiences.  

So you have two separate groups of people whose experiences bend them in divergent directions. They will have different thoughts about class and will ask different questions (e.g. the modal poor person is not going to ask "if" there is police brutality...they see it). Asking different questions is wonderful, and we need a diversity of thought. But 2 problems arise. 

The above facsimile is just as banally true as Graham's original argument.  But Graham is an academic.  He prioritizes Race over Class.  Unlike others with different "lived experiences."

Even more fundamentally, Graham is making the No True Scotsman Fallacy work as his argument.  When facts contradict his world view of Critical Theory and Postmodernism, then he resorts to rhetoric dependent on logical fallacies.  In this case, that of the eponymous Scotsman.

No true Scotsman, or appeal to purity, is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample. Rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any new specific objective rule or criterion: "no true Scotsman would do such a thing"; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group.

Graham is arguing that those blacks who do not see systemic racism as an explanation of disparate impacts (integrated blacks per Graham's terminology, a description which also extends to diaspora African immigrants, some groups of which culturally integrate into the mainstream and do spectacularly well.)  They are not True Blacks.

Again highlighting just how racist is Critical Theory and Postmodernism at their totalitarian core.