Can we be even more honest than my last post?
Most black people don’t possess an appreciation for truth… Like, the actual truth.
We like to (almost exclusively) affirm truth after we find out it coincides with our desires or identity. It is very hard to run a civil and lawful society this way. The more I see these responses about Karmelo and Austin, the more obvious it becomes.
The handful of black folks who do want to get at the real truth are considered self-haters. This is not because they actually hate themselves, but because the large majority of vocal black commentators cannot fathom truth outside of its instrumental use in furthering personal agendas. These vocal commentators interpret a black person being lenient (really, just fair) toward whites as being part of a white agenda. They do so because that is how they operate on their end of the spectrum. It is really sad.
By contrast, many white folks come from a history steeped in explicit and hotly contested philosophical schools of thought — There is even a subfield (epistemology) dedicated to understanding knowledge and how it applies to our statements/the nature of truth. This field, in the academically respected analytic tradition, is dominated by whites.
Where is our African American equivalent? Please, don’t mention lived-experience or group-based epistemologies to me.
It is almost pointless for groups deeply wedded to distinct philosophical or cultural histories to try to have a conversation on collective social and moral resolutions. Our differing foundational attitudes prevent us from experiencing the same reality, despite living alongside one another.
There will be no solution so long as this continues. We have to engage in real conversations about this incompatibility.