7 ms·
Note that while I use/discuses the term racism here, I intend for this argument to apply to prejudice and systemic discrimination more broadly. I would persona
by mreome 7y ago
Note that while I use/discuses the term racism here, I intend for this argument to apply to prejudice and systemic discrimination more broadly.
I would personally argue against any definition of racism that discounts acts based on intent. Your source seems to start out trying to sort-out a kind of binary (trinary) fallacy, where it's arguing that there must be only a single valid definition of what qualifies as racist that can be used in any/all contexts, rather than just acknowledging that there are multiple ways to be racist, with varying degrees of intent/malice/severity/subtly and contextual applicability. It seems to reach that conclusion in the end though with "Overall We Probably Use A Combination Of All Of These, Weighted In Favor Of Definition By Motives." Beyond that, I’d argue that a more limited definition is dangerous as it allows people to argue/believe that a lack of blatantly malicious intent absolves them of the consequences of their acts.
Broadly speaking, yes this would be accurately termed profiling. That is in no way mutually exclusive with being racist, given either of our definitions of racism. The developer of an AI profiling algorithm must make choices about what data is provided to that system, and others must make a choice to act based on the outputs of that system. The choice to include racial or socioeconomic criteria (or criteria that are proxies for these) as training data for a given model, and act on its outputs in ways that could contribute to systemic racism, could be done without malice or could be driven by blatantly racists motives. We just end up back at the same argument about the definition of racism.
And again, I’d argue that the more limited definition is dangerous as it allows exactly what wlesieutre meant with “we've decided to deflect blame.” Allowing an act that leads to systemic racism to not qualify as racism without a clear blatant intent only serves to excuse those developing/using such systems for the consequences of their choices. Additionally, the narrower definition could actually discourage consideration of such consequences, as acting without any thought or consideration at all is acting without intent. Thus, willful or feigned ignorance becomes a defense against the furtherance of systemic racism.