ASU Training video on white supremacy
An example of specious reasoning
In one especially poorly reasoned video, an ASU professor talks about how colonization normalized white supremacy. There is no doubt that there have been racists. But the claim here is much larger than that. It is that the whole American system is racist and that the explanation is found in binary thinking. Let’s analyze this argument to learn how to apply logic.
The claim is that European colonization created binary thinking of “good” and “bad” people. What is the proof of this? Did each and every person from Europe think this way? How could this professor possibly know that?
Because such a claim is easy to disprove, a mottte and bailey fallacy is used (begin with one dubious claim and then fall back to defend another). The new claim is that the whole system is based on white supremacy. Again, there is no doubt that there have been some racist practices that needed to be corrected. But that isn’t the claim here. It is that the whole system from the very beginning was built on white supremacy.
What is the proof of this? Pointing to racism here or there doesn’t prove that the entire system is racist. Pointing to the Civil War proves the opposite which is that the system was able to make progress and root out the evil of slavery through great sacrifice and loss. Pointing out differences in income or education isn’t proof of this, as those can be explained in other ways.
It seems that this system is the opposite of white supremacist. It begins with universal claims about all humans (we are all created by God, equal before God, given the same rights, etc). Even before that, colonists in New England believed the Bible contained a redemptive message for all humans. We have seen these beliefs applied more and more consistently in the last two centuries. But we also saw greater and greater challenges by secular professors to the foundation of those claims: Because we are created by God, we are equal. Each of us is made in the image of God. Therefore, we should love our neighbor.
Instead of the love of one’s neighbor, this radical agenda teaches people to resent their neighbors, to hate their neighbors, to covet their neighbor’s belongings, and to hide all of that in spurious claims about the past and “social justice.” Is this what we want used as an employee training video?
Parents, potential students, and donors, you need to know what information is communicated by these kinds of videos and in the classes of such professors. We should demand that fallacious thinking like this be countered with coherent and logical arguments that teach students how to think critically and love their neighbors.