A Few Questions for My Social Justice Colleagues

“What I left out of that piece are the many questions my immersion has raised whose answers, if I could find them, might help what I’ll call the reasonable unwoke better assess SJ/DEI claims. I would like to air those questions here.”

In a prior essay for Merion West, I outlined where I find social justice activism and campaigns for diversity, equity, and inclusion (SJ/DEI) convincing, where I think they overreach, and where my immersion in the movement has led me to new but heterodox insights. I hoped that by doing so I might model for other people—particularly White, heterosexual, “cis-,” men like me—a dispassionate, non-defensive engagement that would enable them to concede what needs to be conceded without being cowed by the movement’s goofier excesses.

What I left out of that piece are the many questions my immersion has raised whose answers, if I could find them, might help what I’ll call the reasonable unwoke better assess SJ/DEI claims. I would like to air those questions here. As in my original piece, I offer a bulleted sampling with thumbnail elaborations. My questions fall into two categories. The first are comparative/contextual questions, whose answers might help us better understand certain SJ/DEI concerns by properly framing them. The second are logical/inferential questions, where I either do not understand the logic that informs certain SJ/DEI positions based on the evidence adduced for them, or where plausible inferences from that evidence readily lead to conclusions that diverge substantially from those we are given.

I want to stress that my questions are genuine, not rhetorical. I do not presume to know the real answers, and I fully expect to be chastened by some. But I cannot know for sure until I hear them.