Many people exposed to DEI trainings that focus primarily on race. These can create a sense of guilt and shame, or confusion and anxiety if you object- because you will be told that your objection is white fragility/centering whiteness/internalized white supremacy.

Rhetorical fallacies

Guilt by association: Collective guilt; group discrimination is wrong for the same reason that racism is wrong

Circular argument: White people object to this because they are white (or if you aren’t white, you object to this because of internalized whiteness)

Kafka trap: if you admit that you are racist, you are racist, but if you deny it, it’s because you are racist.

Ad hominem attack: question the person’s character instead of addressing the substance of their claim.

Logic of DEI racial trainings falls apart on itself:

DEI = Applied demographics- using demographic data to make social policy, focusing on racism

So what is racism and how is it harmful?

Racial discrimination: assumption/association of unwanted/negative stereotyped characteristics with a particular racial/ethnic group

prejudicial behavior towards individuals (based on those assumptions) who are perceived to belong to that group

This is wrong because -

unfair to apply stereotyped negative assumptions about behavior or characteristics to individuals based on demographic characteristics outside their control treating individuals differently based on such assumptions can create negative outcomes for those individuals that they have done nothing to deserve.

When racial discrimination is widespread in a culture these negative outcomes are magnified and can have broad societal and intergenerational implications. 

 The many experiences of racism in a culture form observable patterns that can and should be considered on a sociological level, but most importantly each of those experiences impacts an individual who directly feels the negative outcomes of racism.

Even at the group level, we are still talking about an aggregation of individual harms.

The simple answer to ‘why is racism wrong?’ could be: because it is unfair for individuals to be persecuted for negative feelings others have about people who look similar to them.

Put another way, it is essentially wrong because racism is anti-individualist, valuing group identity above everything else that makes up a person.

CSJT falls apart logically: if the harm of racial discrimination is experienced on the individual level, and groups are but aggregates of individuals, yet individuals do not matter- then what are they fighting for?

Bottom line- two wrongs do not make a right

The antidote to racial discrimination is not more racial discrimination, but recognition of individual value.