Yeah the original comment is (rightly) flagged dead
"Racist" is an extremely lazy label; it shuts down any interesting or well-motivated conversation.
It's especially silly in this case because the "traditional racist" explanation to Lali's question is genes, and Diamond's whole point is to provide a different answer to the question. Many people think he has gone too far in the direction of geographical determinism, but that's hardly a racist POV -- it's more like the opposite.
To be clear, what I was saying is NOT that anyone who disagrees with Diamond has an "ideological bone to pick". There are plenty of people who disagree with him honestly -- it's inevitable because it's a work of synthesis that "stomps on" many academic subfields. He makes leaps to the "big picture" that don't meet the standard of evidence for many (although I don't think there is any false advertising of rigor)
What I was saying that the "racist" label applied to Diamond is evidence of someone who wants to shut down conversation, probably because he doesn't conform to that person's ideology. If they understand what he wrote, they wouldn't make such a claim (especially not as a one line Internet comment)
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These critiques linked by a sibling are better, and show evidence of having read the book!
It's weird that you say there's a lack of evidence that Graeber and Wengrow don't think Diamond is racist. If that's what you take away, it seems like a pretty big misunderstanding.
The problem that Graeber and Wengrow have with Diamond (and "big history" authors like Harari) is that they assume that inequality is inevitable and we have little agency as human societies to do otherwise.
I actually love this point and 100% agree -- we should be consciously shaping our society to be more egalitarian, and not just let evolution and capitalism play out.
However it's also true that Dawn of Everything doesn't propose solutions. It's an amazing critique, including accurate claims of Eurocentrism and male bias, but it doesn't lay out a path forward. It gives evidence for many egalitarian societies, but falls short on how we apply those lessons to our own.
i.e. people read things and don't pick up on nuance -- all information (e.g. a book on the entirety of human history) is eventually reduced to a single bit of "racist" or "not racist"
"Racist" is an extremely lazy label; it shuts down any interesting or well-motivated conversation.
It's especially silly in this case because the "traditional racist" explanation to Lali's question is genes, and Diamond's whole point is to provide a different answer to the question. Many people think he has gone too far in the direction of geographical determinism, but that's hardly a racist POV -- it's more like the opposite.
To be clear, what I was saying is NOT that anyone who disagrees with Diamond has an "ideological bone to pick". There are plenty of people who disagree with him honestly -- it's inevitable because it's a work of synthesis that "stomps on" many academic subfields. He makes leaps to the "big picture" that don't meet the standard of evidence for many (although I don't think there is any false advertising of rigor)
What I was saying that the "racist" label applied to Diamond is evidence of someone who wants to shut down conversation, probably because he doesn't conform to that person's ideology. If they understand what he wrote, they wouldn't make such a claim (especially not as a one line Internet comment)
---
These critiques linked by a sibling are better, and show evidence of having read the book!
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...
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It's weird that you say there's a lack of evidence that Graeber and Wengrow don't think Diamond is racist. If that's what you take away, it seems like a pretty big misunderstanding.
The problem that Graeber and Wengrow have with Diamond (and "big history" authors like Harari) is that they assume that inequality is inevitable and we have little agency as human societies to do otherwise.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/opinion/graeber-wengrow-d...
I actually love this point and 100% agree -- we should be consciously shaping our society to be more egalitarian, and not just let evolution and capitalism play out.
However it's also true that Dawn of Everything doesn't propose solutions. It's an amazing critique, including accurate claims of Eurocentrism and male bias, but it doesn't lay out a path forward. It gives evidence for many egalitarian societies, but falls short on how we apply those lessons to our own.
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The original post in this subthread reminds me of
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30128061
i.e. people read things and don't pick up on nuance -- all information (e.g. a book on the entirety of human history) is eventually reduced to a single bit of "racist" or "not racist"