Does focusing on an issue make that issue a bigger problem?

[The Lizard Queen]

So, here is a theory.

By focusing so much on issues like racism, gender politics, and a number of other divisive social issues, we are actually creating more of a problem by forcing people to think about these issues more often.

Look at it this way. Social Justice Warriors spend every hour of every day crusading against perceived divisions and injustices in society. Their attempts at spreading diversity actually cause divisions by forcing everyone to think of themselves not as individuals, but as part of some arbitrary racial or social group.

So, you can't just be a "person" anymore. You have to be a "black man," or a "gay woman." You have to be lumped into a group, and behave exactly like everyone else in that group... Or else.

Once you have been lumped into your group, you are then told how you are being oppressed, and who is oppressing you (usually some other group considered privileged by default). This causes hatred toward all other groups different from your own.

If you don't want to be forced into an arbitrary group, you have to go to an extreme by avoiding whatever group they are trying to put you in. Hence you have white men proclaiming they are autistic bigendered squirrel-kin in order to avoid being put in the "privileged" white male category that everyone is supposed to hate.

So, what do we think? Do modern attempts to bring focus on an issue just cause more problems? Is there any merit to this line of thinking?

Could the best way to solve a social problem be to simply not focus on it at all?

But, even if that was the solution, would it be wrong to ignore societal problems this way?

 

[SiccDicc]

There's very little that can be said other than I agree. When you explain the justifications of segregationists you're exposing children to the concept of difference and that's what gets stuck in their heads. A lot of kids have no concept of race, just that someone looks different... they can't explain why so when you do, they then realize there's a fundamental difference between the two of you. Before they'd be more likely to accept the individual as another kid, but now that they know the fundamental difference they become wary. It's like when black kids make fun of other black kids for hanging around whitey or vice versa, when they become aware of the difference they tend to huddle among their own -- at least it becomes exacerbated since we tend to be attracted to what's familiar to begin with.

The problem isn't so much the focus or concern, but how much it dominates the thought process. That said, I think Morgan Freeman said it best:

 

[Mariposa Electrique]

Rate me dumb, autistic or off topic, but wat you're describing sounds a lot like the law of attraction. In fact, it's bigger than the law of attraction. It's a metaphysical theory that we create our reality based on our thoughts, attitudes, or beliefs. If you go outside expecting trouble like BLM and dindu nuffins do, there's going to be trouble. If you go outside thinking society is conspiring to make you an impoverished slob, well, that's what you're going to get. The problem arises when our thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs clash with others. There's always going to be racist people, and there's always going to people who are perennial victims. People who exclusively focus on race and racism are creating the problem.

 

[Rand /pol/]

Literally nothing wrong with segregation

 

[wylfım]

Literally nothing wrong with segregation

Grouping people is :dumb:. Super broad categories like race or culture or intelligence that exist on spectra don't have a single defining feature, so much as dozens or hundreds of small contributing factors. You can't just classify and say "everyone in group x is y," because there will always be outliers and exceptions. People in group x might *on average* be y, but that's not every individual. People are complicated, handle them on an individual basis.

 

[Eryngium]

Yes it always does, but tackling the problem early makes the damage lesser.

 

[Triple S Rank]

While it's a neat idea to think society could ignore group politics/social issues/racism, and I do think we would benefit from less identity politics, that just isn't how the human brain is wired. We make sense of the world by pattern identification and predictions based off them. So to get society to stop focusing on patterns of perceived or real problems they would need to be forced or information/data controlled, which would lead to a kind of Streisand effect of even more attention being put on them and the data leaked.
So, the way I see it, the right thing to do is not to to focus on ignoring these problems but to get people to see the truth behind a lot of this modern ever-splintering group oppression point competition as not actually improving things as it leads to a lot of alienation from both sides of the group. Like wylfim said, individual basis for understanding their problems is ideal and the way to get there isn't ignoring but truth. However, the truth can get quite very complicated and sensitive to information control as a lot of people have a lot to gain from lies with some of these societal problems. No idea what to do about that really...

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

I mean, I suppose you could make an argument for that, but ignoring shit isn't going to help either.

It's the people who freak out about shit and panic that make things worse.

 

[The Lizard Queen]

To me at least, a lot of the problems seem to come from perverse incentives (AKA, when the proposed solution to a problem goes against how people act for their own self interest, so people act against the intention of the solution and make the original problem worse.).

Most social policies in this regard seem to think that people will act against their own interests if you pass enough laws, which simply never happens.

A good example is affirmative action.
You know what happens when you make policies that favor one race over another? People who aren't in that race start getting resentful.
What happens when people become resentful about something that relates to race? They start seeing the other race as the problem. And just like that, a whole lot of people are given a good reason to feel racial hatred toward other people.

This is basically akin to someone saying:
"How do we solve racism?"
"More racism!"

Then, anyone who points out the the solution is causing the problem is called a racist.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

No, focusing on an issue allows you to solve it. What makes it a bigger problem is being dishonest about it.

But, why do you think racism or whatever have gotten worse? You hear about it more, because the media is aligned with the people who like to freak out about everything, but in your personal experience have you actually seen that?

I mean, anti-white racism has certainly become way more visible online, but it's no more prevalent in real life for me than it ever has been (It's basically annoying due to the hypocrisy of it, but I'm not worried about white genocide or something). Anti male sexism is the same way.

I mean, I think overall things are getting better, but fixing things often involves dragging them out into the light and seeing them for what they are. So at any given time, it might feel worse than just ignoring them, but if you look back you can see how things are better for it.

I'm just talking about the US here, I imagine the racism situation in the EU is a bit different, and I don't have any experience to be able to comment on it.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

I don't think the problems associated with race and gender politics are the result of people merely focusing on it, I think they're more the result of people focusing on the wrong things, and/or responding to bad incentives which cause them to view activism as an end in itself.

This latter one is perhaps born of quite a cynical view, but it occurred to me a while ago that a lot of activists don't actually have much of an incentive to make things better, for the simple reason that they have so much invested (emotionally, and sometimes financially) in things being bad. I don't want to assume bad faith on anyone's part, but a cynical part of me is inclined to suspect that the Al Sharptons and the Germaine Greers of the world might struggle to adjust to a reality where racism and sexism had become a thing of the past, and where their entire life's work had thus become an obsolescence.