When we find ideas offensive or upsetting, it can be hard to stay openhanded and trust that it is worth it (or even safe)…

If you find some of the ideas that follow difficult to understand or upsetting, hang in there! This will be worthwhile, both as an exercise in critical thinking, but also to become educated regarding what much of our culture now believes about racism and inclusivity.

For now, we are not going to critique these ideas. Instead, we are going to seek to “steel man” them! We don’t want to fall prey to the “straw man” temptation, where we just caricature ideas and present sloppy interpretations of these concepts in order to bash them. Instead, we will approach the subject with humility and the hope that there is something good to learn here.

To do this fairly, it is necessary to interact with primary sources. We want to make sure that our understanding doesn’t flow from “outsider” summaries/caricatures or secondary sources. Instead, we will let authorities define our terms. This helps guard against our own assumptions and what we “think we know” about the subject.