Does Viewing Racism as a Disease Make Woke Progressives Think like Conservatives?
An application of The Parasite-Stress Theory of Values and Sociality to the Disease Theory of Racism
I. Contemporary Discourse on Racism
Within contemporary political discourse in America, there is no issue that captures public attention as much as racism. Within the past year, the topic has garnered unending media attention and new theories found their way into the mainstream. “Woke” Critical Race Theorists like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi have persuaded many progressives to view racism as a pervasive and nefarious force in the United States. Many conservatives and moderates are skeptical of the woke’s claims because they rarely see overt discrimination. Most progressives would acknowledge that racism of the past took a more explicit form1 but would argue today’s racism is more covert but still systemic and pernicious.2
If overt discrimination is relatively infrequent, then how do progressives know that racism is taking place? The progressive view would be that a company, university or organization would not explicitly say “we actively discriminate against ethnic minorities” as they would in an earlier era but if we see that minorities are underrepresented relative to their proportion of the greater population, this is good evidence for racism. In the vein of Milton Friedman when he claimed, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon…,” many anti-racists believe “[Statistical Disparity] is always and everywhere a [racist] phenomenon.” 3
Since statistical disparity is the norm and not the exception, woke progressives view racism as the norm and not the exception. Important disparities exist in wealth, income and health as well as in rates of unemployment, graduation and homeownership.4 Progressives are able to find disparities in all sorts of outcomes. Where there are statistics on race, there are disparities to be analyzed and there is attention to be had for pointing out the issue. Here are some examples of articles discussing racial statistical disparities:
The Problem of African American Underrepresentation in City Councils
Why Are African Americans So Underrepresented on Business School Faculties?
Diversity remains golf's biggest challenge, says PGA of America CEO
Washington D.C.’s Comic Con Had Only Four African American Guests
From the progressive perspective, the first step is to acknowledge that racism is the cause of the disparities and the next step would be to figure out how racism is manifesting itself. The proposed mechanisms by which covert racism drives disparities are numerous.
The most obvious would be the lasting historical legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. The progressive could see the effects continuing for generations due to differences in intergenerational wealth and the educational or investment opportunities that wealth affords. Many who hold this view believe that reparations could help significantly to alleviate many disparities between Blacks and Whites. In this view, the injustices that faced Blacks must be compensated for because their legacies continue as evidenced by the statistical disparities.
Another contributing factor would be covert racism. For example, the business that silently turns away the Black applicant for no good reason. We cannot know the inner thoughts of the discriminating boss and if pressed, he would surely deny that he was discriminating. One reason would be it is against the law and another would be social pressure. Although people behave in a racist way, they do not want to make it apparent. Some theorize this leads to dog whistling, or saying something that seems somewhat ambiguous but really has a coded message that followers of racist ideology will understand.
Another possible factor would be unintentional or implicit racism which has provided opportunity for research projects in fields like social psychology. There are some plausible mechanisms as to how White people could be engaging in discrimination frequently but not even admit it or recognize it. They could deny they have racist attitudes, possibly due to social-desirability bias5. This could either be self-deception or intentional deception because of social stigma. Despite suppressing or hiding it, Whites could be implicitly associating bad stereotypes with minority ethnic groups. This can be discovered through implicit association tests. These biases could subconsciously influences other thoughts and decisions Whites make, like where to buy a house or go to school, generating a ripple effect.
These negative stereotypes that White’s hold could be made apparent to minorities and influence their feelings of self-worth or make them anxious that they will conform to a negative stereotype. This is a major area of research called stereotype threat. The idea is that anxiety generated from possibly fulfilling a stereotype can harm productivity, most notably on standardized testing. Obviously, doing poorly in school by underperforming on standardized tests can have far reaching effects.
This implicit racism can also manifest in what are called microaggressions. Vox writer Jenée Desmond-Harris explains microaggressions as:
the kinds of remarks, questions, or actions that are painful because they have to do with a person's membership in a group that's discriminated against or subject to stereotypes. And a key part of what makes them so disconcerting is that they happen casually, frequently, and often without any harm intended, in everyday life.6
These microaggressions are sometimes subtle but not harmless. The idea is that they form a psychological burden and cause stress, low self-esteem, depression and anxiety. Racist attitudes expressed by others can cause People of Color to believe these stereotypes are true and form internalized racism.
In addition to the internalized stereotypes and negative emotions, microaggressions normalize racism. This normalizations can lead to macroaggressions like lynchings and beatings because stereotypes and harmful attitudes go unchecked. This sort of thinking is exemplified in the below chart from the Anti-Defamation League and its description:
The Pyramid shows biased behaviors, growing in complexity from the bottom to the top. Although the behaviors at each level negatively impact individuals and groups, as one moves up the pyramid, the behaviors have more life-threatening consequences. Like a pyramid, the upper levels are supported by the lower levels. If people or institutions treat behaviors on the lower levels as being acceptable or“normal,” it results in the behaviors at the next level becoming more accepted. In response to the questions of the world community about where the hate of genocide comes from, the Pyramid of Hate demonstrates that the hate of genocide is built upon the acceptance of behaviors described in the lower levels of the pyramid.
II. Is Racism a Disease?
In the woke progressive worldview, racism is nearly everywhere, racist attitudes can be transmitted to others, racism is frequently undetectable and racism can be extremely harmful. It is easy to see why advocates of social justice sometimes think of racism as a disease. Here is the abstract of Racism as disease: Etiological and treatment implications7:
Addresses various ways that the notion of a disease model of racism has both heuristic and clinical utility. It is suggested that racism is a disease that is often unwillingly and unwittingly hosted by members of the dominant American culture. This disease damages both the host and target individuals, as well as their families and communities. An underlying schema of irrelevance is posited as a cognitive structure that is acquired in childhood to cope with the inconsistent data of racial oppression in an ideologically egalitarian society. As this schema comes into conflict with the increasing diversity of American life, the individual frequently manifests disease symptoms that are treatable with a variety of techniques. The utility of group treatment designed for Caucasians in the early stages of treatment is specifically addressed.
Here are some other illustrative examples of the same phenomena:
Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, saying "Racism comes out of our pores as white people. It's the way that we are."
Ayesha Appa, an infectious disease fellow at the University of California–San Francisco and signee of “Open letter advocating for an anti-racist public health response to demonstrations against systemic injustice occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic,” calls racism “one of the more dangerous infectious diseases.”8
It is important to note that the more apt comparison is non-congenital disease. Progressives do not want to believe that people are born bigoted.9 This could reduce perceived blameworthiness as someone could argue their racism is beyond their control.
Disease is a good analogy for racism but the point is not that it is an interesting or poetic comparison. I believe that for woke progressives, racism is psychologically interpreted similar to the way people think about infectious disease. The thought patterns that are triggered by a prevalent disease are triggered by the disease of racism.
III. The Parasite-Stress Theory of Values and Sociality
Without an understanding of evolution and disease, a lot of human behavior and psychological processes are perplexing. Why does seeing someone else vomit make others want to vomit? Why does rotting flesh smell so bad? Why does seeing blood make people sick? Why are people so afraid of bugs and other vermin? Prior to the creation of theories like miasma theory or germ theory, people mostly used their natural revulsions to guide their disease avoidance behavior but also cultural practices. Evolution wired disease avoidance behavior into our DNA and, some would argue, psychological tendencies toward generating disease avoidant cultures when necessary.
Randy Thornhill, a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico, and Corey Fincher, an independent scholar, have recently put forth a theory of human social values that views disease as a major influence. The theory is described in their 2014 book The Parasite-Stress Theory of Values and Sociality: Infectious Disease, History and Human Values Worldwide. Here is a description of the theory from the Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior:
The parasite-stress theory of values or sociality is a recent, encompassing perspective in human social psychology and behavior. As an ecological and evolutionary theory of peoples’ cultural values/core preferences, it applies widely across many domains of human social life and human affairs. It is a general theory of human culture and sociality. Fundamental to the theory is the behavioral immune system. The human behavioral immune system includes: psychological traits and manifest behaviors for avoiding contact with infectious diseases; behaviors of in-group social preference, altruism, alliance, and conformity that manage the negative effects of infectious diseases; mate choice to increase personal and offspring defense against parasites; culinary behavior; and components of personality. The contagion-avoidance aspect of behavioral immunity is much more than out-group avoidance and dislike (xenophobia). It also includes the preference for the natal or local region (philopatry) and hence avoidance of foreignness in people and places where novel parasites may occur. The parasite-stress theory has produced a cornucopia of newly discovered patterns and informed and reinterpreted previously described patterns in the behavior of individuals and at the level of cultures/societies and regions. In novel ways, it informs and synthesizes knowledge of major features of the social lives and societal-level affairs of people, ranging from prejudice and egalitarianism to personality, economic patterns, core values, interpersonal and intergroup violence, governmental systems, gender relations, family structure, and the genesis and maintenance of cultural diversity across the world.10
The authors believe that “collectivist values” are used as a shield against pathogens that can harm a group. The more prevalent disease is, the more likely a society is to adapt collectivist values.
With our colleagues Damian Murray and Mark Schaller, we hypothesized that collectivism (in contrast to individualism) functions as a defense against infectious diseases, and thus is more likely to be evoked in cultures that have a greater prevalence of parasites. The logical basis of this hypothesis is evident in all the major defining features of collectivist (versus individualist) value systems tabulated and discussed in the previous chapter. Here we mention only a few of these.
First, collectivists, in comparison to individualists, are embedded in their in-group and form durable in-group relations. This provides the health “insurance” of nepotism and other in-group altruism that manages the negative effects of contagion when it occurs in the in-group.
Second, collectivists make strong distinctions between in-groups and out-groups, whereas among individualists the in-group–out-group distinction is weak. Consequently, collectivists are more distrustful and avoidant of contact with outgroup people. This xenophobic attitude can serve an effective anticontagion function by reducing exposure to novel infectious diseases that may be harbored in out-groups.
A third distinction between collectivism and individualism lies in their different emphases on conformity versus tolerance for deviance from the norms. Collectivism is characterized by a strong value placed on tradition and conformity, whereas individualism is characterized by a greater tolerance, and even encouragement of, deviation from the traditional status quo. 11
Could it be the case that woke progressives demonstrate collectivist values? Instead of thinking of progressives as xenophobic as typically conceived, think of progressives having aversion to making contact with those that could be carrying the disease of racism. This would mean that progressives would have negative attitudes towards groups that could be racist or unintentionally engage in racist behavior.
IV. Moral Foundations Theory
Liberals or progressives typically have individualizing moral foundations while the woke typically have the collectivist binding moral foundations. I believe progressives are shifting to having more binding moral foundations despite not becoming more conservative but becoming more left wing.
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University and one of the creators of moral foundations theory. The theory was created by Haidt and colleagues because they sought to understand why some people and cultures have moral beliefs that seem based on different considerations. Most starkly contrasted are practices of other countries such as menstruating women not being near sacred objects and treating objects as if you had moral obligations to them. Haidt has said that his research project was partly created due to frustration by the 2000 and 2004 Democrat presidential loses and to understand how to make Democrats more persuasive. Haidt recognized Republicans have different moral foundations than Democrats and wanted to help Democrats to speak their moral language. The original foundations are:
1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]
3) Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it’s “one for all, and all for one.”
4) Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).
The distribution and weight of moral foundations varied across groups but there was an interesting trend in Haidt’s research. The more liberal someone was, the more focus they placed on harm and fairness, which are the “individualizing foundations”. The more conservative someone was, the more focused they placed on purity, authority and in-group values, which are called the “binding moral foundations”. Conservatives tended to maintain a level of concern for harm and fairness but not as much as liberals. Liberals had a low level of concern for the in-group, authority and purity foundations.
I am contending that progressives are developing a more “conservative” approach to moral foundations as they are become more receptive to the anti-racist view of the world. This means that progressives would demonstrate higher levels of groupishness and concern for authority and purity. However, the woke manifestations of these traits will take a different form from the way they appear in conservatives.
V. Evidence for a Ingroup, Authority and Purity Foundations Among the Woke
V a. In-Group Behavior
Fincher and Thornhill believe that xenophobia and ethnocentrism are adaptations to novel disease in outside groups. The woke typically accuse others of demonstrating xenophobia and ethnocentrism as typically conceived. However, the woke themselves demonstrate these traits in a non-standard way. Ethnic minorities, foreigners and so forth are not the target of their aversion because they cannot be racist and therefore they do not pose a disease threat to others.
The woke are well known for disassociation, deplatforming and cancellation, in which people are removed from their job or position. Part of what is happening is use of power and social shame to suppress dissenting opinion. Another part may be dislike for associating with people perceived as backwards. The woke also look down on rural whites, Southern whites, working class whites, police, Republicans, conservatives and other right-wingers. They are the most inclined to racism in their view. If they discuss them, they are hostile or mocking. Many of the woke are very insulated from these groups.
Many progressives demonstrate something like anti-loyalty, by having loyalty to out groups. This makes since if you think your in-group is more of a threat or bad than the out-group. For example, a progressive white male denigrating white males and an American praising foreigners and attacking their own country. For white progressives, being critical of whites seems normal and possibly even praiseworthy. Celebrating ethnic minorities is good and asserting positive ethnocentrism is very bad for whites.
Liberals treat minority groups differently but in a way that is favorable. This demonstrates a form this “out-group” loyalty. Social psychologist Cory Clark explains some evidence for this phenomena in the article “Are Liberals Really More Egalitarian?”:
Similarly, in a more naturalistic study on Twitter, liberals were more likely to amplify the successes of female and Black athletes than male and White athletes, whereas conservatives treated the successes of groups more similarly. In another set of studies, White liberals presented less self-competence to Black than White interaction partners, whereas White conservatives treated Black and White interaction partners more similarly. And in another set, liberals had stronger desires to censor passages that portrayed low-status groups unfavorably than identical passages that portrayed high-status groups unfavorably, whereas conservatives treated the passages more comparably.
Progressives are accepting of groupishness among ethnic minorities. This is often justified as a defense against whites. Whites pose a form of a threat. Any whites at all is too many in some circumstances.
Examples:
Yes, Black NYU Students Demanded Segregated Housing. No, the University Didn't Agree to It.
Black Lives Matter Philly Bans White People From Its Meetings
“Safe spaces for Black folks are not negotiable; they are necessary and vital to protect the mental health and support the multi-faceted well-being of Black people.” from NO, BLACK-ONLY SAFE SPACES ARE NOT RACIST.
V c. Deference to Racial Authority and Cultural Tradition
I believe that the woke demonstrate a deference to racial authority and they engage in behavior that is reminiscent of engaging with high status authority when just talking to minorities. There is extra precaution around saying something potentially perceived as offensive and mistakes seem to generate a lot of anxiety. As an example, I am going to provide an extended quote about a story that Robin DiAngelo experienced from her book White Fragility:
The equity team has been invited to a meeting with the company’s new web developer. The team consists of two women, both of whom are black, and me. The new web developer, who is also black, wants to interview us so that she can build our page. She starts the meeting by giving us a survey to fill out. Many questions on the survey inquire about our intended audience, methods, goals, and objectives. I find the questions tedious and feel irritated by them. Pushing the survey aside, I try to explain verbally. I tell the web developer that we go out into the satellite offices to facilitate antiracism training. I add that the training is not always well received; in fact, one member of our team was told not to come back. I make a joke: “The white people were scared by Deborah’s hair” (Deborah is black and has long locked braids). The meeting ends and we move on.
A few days later, one of my team members lets me know that the web developer—who I will call Angela—was offended by my hair comment. While I wasn’t paying attention at the time, once I am informed, I quickly realize why that comment was off. I seek out a friend who is white and has a solid understanding of cross-racial dynamics. We discuss my feelings (embarrassment, shame, guilt) and then she helps me identify the various ways my racism was revealed in that interaction. After this processing, I feel ready to repair the relationship. I ask Angela to meet with me, and she accepts.
I open by asking Angela, “Would you be willing to grant me the opportunity to repair the racism I perpetrated toward you in that meeting?” When she agrees, I continue. “I realize that my comment about Deborah’s hair was inappropriate.”
Angela nods and explains that she did not know me and did not want to be joking about black women’s hair (a sensitive issue for many black women) with a white woman whom she did not have a trusting relationship with, much less in a professional work meeting.
I apologize and ask her if I have missed anything else problematic in the meeting.
“Yes,” she replies. “That survey? I wrote that survey. And I have spent my life justifying my intelligence to white people.”
My chest constricts as I immediately realize the impact of my glib dismissal of the survey. I acknowledge this impact and apologize.
She accepts my apology. I ask Angela if there is anything else that needs to be said or heard so that we may move forward.
She replies that yes, there is. “The next time you do something like this, would you like feedback publicly or privately?” she asks.
I answer that given my role as an educator, I would appreciate receiving the feedback publicly as it is important for white people to see that I am also engaged in a lifelong process of learning and growth. And I could model for other white people how to receive feedback openly and without defensiveness.
She tells me that although these dynamics occur daily between white people and people of color, my willingness to repair doesn’t, and that she appreciates this. We move on.
To a person unfamiliar with critical race theory, this should seem like a very strange interaction. The joke that was mildly inappropriate seems to weigh extremely heavily in DiAngelo’s mind. I doubt that she behave similarly if she upset a White Christian with a comment. For DiAngelo, there would be a greater harm in upsetting a Black person even if the Black person is less offended than the Christian would be. There seems to be legitimate and illegitimate harms.
Many believe or are sympathetic to the idea that lived experience are very important. Whites cannot have Black lived experiences and so their opinion is of less worth. They lack an understanding.
Examples:
White people need to be listening to black activists, not talking over them
“Black and brown communities are speaking out now, and we must recognize that they (we) are the only experts that can identify the goals to aim for in rebuilding and restoring communities” from Deanna Van Buren from Raising Up and Listening to Black Voices
“For white supremacy to end and for multiracial democracy to triumph, white folks will have to learn to listen to Black and Brown peoples, trust that they know their lives better than we do, and follow their lead in the movement for collective liberation.” from “‘Listen to Black People’ Is 100 Percent Correct— and Not Enough”
The authority foundation also includes respect for tradition. The woke have no respect for the Western intellectual tradition, Christianity, the constitution, respect for parental authority and prior generations consideration for what is decent. They reject these things, often explicitly. However, they do have extreme level of respect for cultural traditions. They want to avoid what is called cultural appropriation.
In this article “Why Cultural Appropriation is Wrong,” Susan Scafidi, author of “Who Owns Culture?”, defined cultural appropriation as follows:
“Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else's culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture's dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. It's most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, e.g. sacred objects."
It is okay to degrade White American culture, in fact sometimes hating on America is actually praiseworthy, but it is totally unacceptable to disrespect other cultures. In fact, it is not even okay to practice other cultures because it is a taking of a form of collective intellectual property. This seems like either a respect for tradition or an expression of the purity foundation.
V a. Purity
The purity or sanctity foundation is another binding moral foundation. As typically conceived, purity deals with things that are frequently regarded as disgusting. If someone said incest was bad, they may be demonstrating the reasoning from moral purity. Purity seems very important to the woke.
One of the most clear examples is linguistic purity. Can white people say the N-Word? No. Can they even refer to the N-Word as anything other than the “N-Word”? No, unless you want to lose your job. What if you are singing to your favorite song? No. And if no Black person is around? Still no.
And there is increasing sensitivity around all different sorts of words and descriptions of race. One of the most notable thing about the woke is they talk funny and they invent new words like “BIPOC” “Latinx” and they change “black” to “Black”.
The BIPOC project explaining why they use the term:
We use the term BIPOC to highlight the unique relationship to whiteness that Indigenous and Black (African Americans) people have, which shapes the experiences of and relationship to white supremacy for all people of color within a U.S. context. We unapologetically focus on and center relationships among BIPOC folks.
From an article ‘Why we capitalize “Black” and not “white”’:
AT THE COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, we capitalize Black, and not white, when referring to groups in racial, ethnic, or cultural terms. For many people, Black reflects a shared sense of identity and community. White carries a different set of meanings; capitalizing the word in this context risks following the lead of white supremacists.
Even when people are not using racial slurs, the woke seem to get bothered by a lot of language that is seemingly innocuous. The number of unacceptable terms is always increasing. Here is an excerpt from an article Why do woke activists complain about trivial things?:
On 30 May, the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Hospital Medicine posted a tweet apologising for having published an article that used the word ‘tribalism’ to refer to disciplinary silos in medicine. A few weeks earlier, the journal’s Twitter account had posted a tweet linking to the article, which said, “#tribalism between specialties can get in the way of getting the job done”. That tweet (now deleted) attracted various irate responses from people who consider ‘tribalism’ to be a racist term. For example, one stated:
A team of non-Indigenous people is not a "tribe". Factionalism among non-Indigenous people is not "tribalism". To use this phrasing disappears actual, living #Indigenous people and cultures, and promotes #racist stereotypes. You can do better, so #DoBetter.
Another stated:
Incredibly harmful in a *medical* context, where tribal peoples are subjected to all varieties of medical trauma when they attempt to secure treatment, due to the white supremacy inherent … within institutions that don't even have the self-reflection skills to recognise that they're perpetuating white supremacy in the system.
Seven hours after posting the original tweet, the journal had already issued an apology. “We want to apologise”, it said. “We used insensitive language that may be hurtful to Indigenous Americans & others. We are learning & committed to doing better. We will retract the article & republish w/ appropriate language, & issue an editorial soon w/ our reflections & lessons learned.” Approximately one month later, the Editor-in-Chief’s own apology came, along with a link to an expurgated version of the relevant article.
The control of language seems increasingly puritanical and authoritarian. The original moral foundations research asked questions giving hypothetical scenarios about whether something was wrong and why. The scenarios would try to isolate the potential harms from the other foundations. I would ask what would be unethical about singing the n-word when no one is around. Or putting on a Native American headdress when alone. I think the woke would take issue with this and it would be difficult to justify this very well with the harm foundation.
VIII. Conclusion
In summary, the key points of current thinking about racism today are that: (1) Racism of the present is extremely pervasive and driving all sorts of disparities of outcome that are harmful to People of Color. (2) Racism is frequently covert or unintentional. (3) The worst forms of racist are built on the foundation of small racial transgressions. Therefore, small and unintentional transgressions can unknowingly contribute to major harms. I contend that this parallels a disease and many woke progressives acknowledge this.
I believe that the woke have had a major influence on progressive thinking recently, especially in the year 2020 and the influence has caused a shift in moral foundations for progressives who believe in the woke theories. The parasite-theory of social values holds that collectivist values function as a defense against infectious diseases, and are more likely to be evoked in cultures that have more disease. I find this theory plausible. It would seem that this theory could explain why woke progressives have binding moral foundations.
I will note that I am not sure this theory is correct. It is highly speculative and I am open to criticism. This issue is so complicated and there are so many elements to moral thinking and the woke ideology. If the woke ideology is correct and there is pervasive racism everywhere causing harm through minor transgressions which support major transgressions, then perhaps their moral outlook is better warranted. Perhaps controlling language, having Black safe spaces, deferring to racial authority and so forth is productive and warranted. Perhaps we are fighting a disease and these responses are justified. I do not believe this is the case. I say this to note that if this phenomena is occurring, as I suggest it may be, then it does not mean the woke behavior is incorrect. That is a different matter.
“The social and political movements to eliminate racism in society have decreased overt displays of racism, known as explicit racism. Explicit racism includes any speech or behaviors that demonstrate a conscious acknowledgement of racist attitudes and beliefs. By contrast, implicit racism includes unconscious biases, expectations, or tendencies that exist within an individual, regardless of ill-will or any self-aware prejudices.” Aversive Racism: Implicit versus explicit racism. Wikipedia.
Coats, Rodney (2007). Covert Racism.
“As an anti-racist, when I see racial disparities, I see racism. But I know for many racist Americans, when they see racial disparities they see black inferiority.” Ibrim X. Kendi. Quotation from: “‘When I See Racial Disparities, I See Racism’ Discussing Race, Gender and Mobility”
“Racial Economic Inequality”. Inequality.org
For another article on the matter by the author, see: “How Prevalent is Left-wing Social Desirability Bias?”
Desmond-Harris, Jenée. “What exactly is a microagression?” Vox.
Skillings, J. H., & Dobbins, J. E. (1991). Racism as a disease: Etiology and treatment implications. Journal of Counseling & Development, 70(1), 206–212. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1991.tb01585.x
“Public health experts say the pandemic is exactly why protests must continue.” Slate.
A paradigmatic example of the common progressive attitude: “Gaither: I don't think anyone's kid is born racist. Children are born into a world that has systemic racism, and they're born into a culture that harbors racists attitudes and racist ideologies and those ideologies seep into everything. If someone is harboring certain racist attitudes, it's something that they are learning from their parents, schools, the media and the culture.” from: Davis, Lisa Selin “Children aren’t born racist. He’s how parents can stop them from becoming racist.” CNN
Thornhill, R., & Fincher, C. (2020). The Parasite-Stress Theory of Cultural Values and Sociality. In L. Workman, W. Reader, & J. Barkow (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 167-178). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108131797.015
Thornhill, R., & Fincher, C. (2014). The Parasite-Stress Theory of Cultural Values and Sociality. Springer. pp. 113 - 114
"if we see that minorities are underrepresented relative to their proportion of the greater population, this is good evidence for racism" - That's only true if the underrepresented minorities have equal interest in and ability to join the population in question. Charles Murray has spent much of his career making the case that that isn't so. (This is not a claim about genetics - the effect might be entirely due to culture, but seems to be real nonetheless.)
The very idea that subgroups of humans (races, ethnicities, genders, ...) might, on average, differ from one another in *any* way has become taboo on the left (one wonders how the "racists" are supposed to know who to discriminate against, if the subgroups are all identical).
If point (1) (per your summary) is wrong, then all the other points that follow from it are wrong as well.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/10/22/golding-pre-med-letter-of-resignation/
>While this isn’t just another story about the toxicity of pre-med culture, getting weeded out, or leaving my academic path for some earth-shattering love of another aspiration, it is a story of how white supremacy lives and breathes in each of our bodies, spreading between each of us — body to body — like contagion. It is a story of trying to mitigate chronic pain to create the possibility for genuine healing and recovery. A story of a great act of resistance: a Black woman choosing herself.
>I took an inorganic chemistry exam the same day that a grand jury failed to charge two police officers with the murder of Breonna Taylor. That day, my body inhaled molecules of white supremacy as they seeped out of my computer from that proctored Zoom room. They entered my bloodstream and catalyzed a metabolism that would allow for the invasion of my body by a violently infectious life form.