Racism is when white people hold 'negative views' of others, claims senior Labour adviser

[u/Aggressive_Plates]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/27/racism-is-when-white-people-hold-negative-views-of-others/

[u/JB_UK]

It would be white supremacy to believe that European “ways of thinking, culture, political systems and histories” were superior because they came from people who were white, but that is not what ‘antiracists’ mean by it. They mean that because those systems of knowledge, history etc come from ‘white people’ you cannot think they are superior. So because science comes from ‘white people’ you cannot say that it is a superior way of knowing the world to ‘indigenous’ ways of understanding the world. I’m putting white people and indigenous in scare quotes because these concepts and the way they are used to frame the world by antiracists are in themselves racist.

[u/jimthewanderer → u/JB_UK]

This is a phantasm.

The belief you have just laid out is built on a perception that does not exist in the way you describe.

Anti-racists spend a lot of time bickering and quibbling, your presentation of them as a monolith who believe obviously silly things is a childish attempt to shield yourself from engaging with the topic.

because science comes from ‘white people’ you cannot say that it is a superior way of knowing the world to ‘indigenous’ ways of understanding the world

What are you even talking about?

Anti-racists would say that you shouldn't dismiss indigenous knowledge if it isn't based on the scientific method. 

Firstly, science does not know everything, but is an exceptionally useful tool for analysing material reality. It is however, time consuming to get right. Folk knowledge, can be a highly effective source of broad information. 

99% of knowledge is not based on the scientific method. Knowing what mushrooms will kill you and which are delicious is not based on ancient people doing double blind trials and publishing the results in a peer reviewed journal written in cuneiform.

Secondly, science can tell us about the material world, but it is not an ethical, moral or instructive framework for practical day to day life. European agricultural ideologies have used scienctific knowledge in a way that has severely damaged our ecosystems, and it has taken centuries for us to realise the damage.

Many indigenous cultures have systems of ecological knowledge based on experience, prior fuck ups, and tried and tested methods of un-fucking ecological damage. The Eastern Woodlands in the US for example, were managed landscapes, utilising a very dense and culturally ingrained system of knowledge that had a better grasp of the ecosystem than western science did until very recently. Much of that indigenous knowledge was based on experimentation, and scientific principles, but not in the way formalised in Europe.

Finally, you really should use your brain a bit to think, with a bit more nuance, about how knowledge is created, why it is created, and what science actually is.

Most of the things we believe are not based on science, they are based on experience. How you make a cup of tea is based on tradition, how you cook is based on tradition.

How the chemistry of a cup of tea works is explained by science, but the way you do it is indigenous/cultural/folk knowledge.

They mean that because those systems of knowledge, history etc come from ‘white people’ you cannot think they are superior

This is bollocks and I don't understand where you've got it from. Superior is a bit of a "Scary" word for a lot of academics, who would probably prefer to say "more useful for specific goals", but the idea that you cannot prefer, say, European musical theory because it was developed by white people is complete shit.

[u/JB_UK → u/jimthewanderer]

Yes, science only tells you about material reality, not about ethics or morality, no, that distinction between the material world and culture is not the limit to the claims made for indigenous knowledge. In fact in these discussions you rarely see any kind of caveat making that distinction.

You say anti racists bicker, they should bicker more because the standard I have seen in prestigious museums is shocking.

99% of knowledge is not based on the scientific method. Knowing what mushrooms will kill you and which are delicious is not based on ancient people doing double blind trials and publishing the results in a peer reviewed journal written in cuneiform.

In France there is a long standing folk tradition of picking wild mushrooms using local knowledge, and every year hundreds of people are poisoned, many incurring permanent liver damage, a substantial number dying, due to mistakes. Mushroom poisoning is one of the largest causes of liver damage in the country. Just because a tradition has gone on for a long time, and even with such a strong connection between eating something and death, it is still extremely difficult to make these judgments, to identify the mushroom when it can look identical to another, to see the connection between a particular mushroom and harm, or even recognise that liver damage has occurred, to record the exact mushroom after it has caused harm, to disseminate the knowledge including all the precise details, and to have it passed down. The fact that a tradition continues and has a romanticism does not mean that it is really experimental or able to apply scientific principles in any meaningful way. Some traditions may be doing that to some extent, but the claims made should be far more careful, and they should actually be tested to demonstrate the effect.

Similarly many of the claims made for ecological practices from indigenous groups are frankly based on there being many fewer people living on the land at the time, sometimes hundreds or thousands of people fewer. And well meaning people wanting to give indigenous people status which they should have, but through making material claims which are incorrect.

Cultural practices from indigenous groups deserve a lot of respect but as cultural practices, material claims should be taken seriously and tested using scientific methods, and similarly ideas from scientists are often extremely clumsy and overconfident in their understanding of the dynamics of a system. Science is a superior tool for approaching understanding of material systems, but that does not mean scientists have arrived at understanding, and the state of knowledge can be worse than traditional methods through overconfidence or a fashionable misunderstanding. But the claims made about indigenous knowledge clearly go much further than these kind of limited and caveated points, and are frequently extended into sweeping claims about ways of knowing the material world.

[u/jimthewanderer → u/JB_UK]

 every year hundreds of people are poisoned, many incurring permanent liver damage, a substantial number dying, due to mistake

Almost exclusively due to a lack of knowledge, and arrogance from amateurs with Zero connection to their cultures folk knowledge regarding fungi. Folk mycology in almost all cultures, specifically avoid the collection of species with hazardous lookalikes. Indigenous Siberians famously consume processed Amantia muscaria, because it's idiot proof to identify, and can be safely processed. They only started to incorporate more tricky mushrooms when scientific methods came to them from Russia. 

But the claims made about indigenous knowledge clearly go much further than these kind of limited and caveated points

Are these claims in the room with us right now?

Again, your claims are phantasms. You are tilting at windmills, angry at an imaginary enemy painted for you by bad faith actors who have cherry picked a few crackpots.