Centering/deferring to oppressed voices doesn’t guarantee veracity- reinforces discrimination

(Daniel, Political thought AND Psychology, Psych@Duquesne, Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis: From the Frankfurt School to Contemporary Critique ed. Mills and Burston)

So far, we’ve noted two basic problems with Moss’s argument. First, he cannot explain how many white-skinned people (himself included) escape their early conditioning and become abolitionists, vigorous champions of equal rights, or anti-racist activists of one sort or another. Second, his portrayal of white-skinned people as being uniquely susceptible to acquiring the sadistic, exploitative, and dehumanizing mode of relatedness he calls ​“​Parasitic Whiteness​”​ is dramatically at odds with the facts of human history and lacks any real evidence to back it up. Of course, generous souls may insist that we honor the lived experience of the victims of racism, many of whom may honestly believe that white-skinned people are innately more prone to sadism and exploitation than non-whites. After all, they have suffered much, and quite apart from the harms inflicted on their ancestors, the mechanisms that still reinforce structural inequality today are numerous and take the form of exclusionary or predatory lending and housing practices, voter suppression, water and food insecurity, drug abuse and the ​“​war on drugs,​”​ overcrowded schools and prisons, gang life, police brutality and mass incarceration, the ​“​school-to-prison pipeline,​”​ and so on. Mindful of these egregious wrongs, activists and their allies often privilege the testimony and beliefs of the victims of contemporary racism, prompted by a deeply felt sense of solidarity with the oppressed. But this course of action is a decision, a choice – our choice – and is not a guarantee of validity or veracity by any means. As a result, people who ​“​center the voices​”​ of oppressed minorities today but who ignore or dismiss the historical record on sadism and slavery run the risk of fostering a subtle kind of anti-white racism, one which deems sadism and exploitation to be far more prevalent among white-skinned people than among non-white populations.