The SNP’s National Executive Committee (NEC) recently decided to reserve the top spot on the 8 regional list seats for someone who was either disabled or an ethnic minority (BAME). It also decided that it would allow candidates to self-identify as BAME or disabled. This is extraordinary because it shows the SNP moving towards the ultra-woke position of transracialism and transableism.
The logic of allowing people to define themselves as
men or women without regard to anatomy or any other objective characteristic is
that being a man, or a woman is subjective. But once this is allowed the next
step is to allow people to define themselves as black even though they lack the
objective characteristics such as skin colour or ancestry that would normally
be associated with this. If I can define myself as a woman even though I lack
the anatomy and chromosomes of a woman, then why can’t I define myself as black
even though both my parents were white.
The same logic applies to disability. If I can define
myself as black though my objective ancestry is white, why can’t I define
myself as disabled (e.g. I have one leg) even though I in fact have two legs. Likewise,
I could define myself as schizophrenic even though no doctor has diagnosed me
as having the symptoms of schizophrenia. This might seem absurd, but it merely
follows the logic of allowing someone to self-define as a woman without there
being any medical diagnosis either of gender dysphoria or of having female
anatomy.
But the extension of the logic of transgender to other
areas has proved controversial. In 2017 the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia
published an article by Rebecca Tuvel In Defense of Transracialism and was subsequently
accused of transphobia and racism. Even
in academia the idea of transracialism has been a step too far.
The SNP might deny that they are believers in either
transracialism or transableism, but it follows logically from its decision to
allow someone to self-identify as BAME or disabled. If someone applies to be
head of the SNP list because of being black the SNP official administering the
decision will not be able to ask “Are you really black?” because it will be a
matter of self-identity. To question someone’s self-identification about their
ethnicity or disability would be the equivalent of questioning someone about
their gender identity. But this means that the SNP must suppose that someone
who self-identifies as black really is black even if the candidate neither
appears to be black nor has black parents.
Likewise if a candidate says he is disabled it follows
merely from his self-identification that he really is disabled, because to
question that the candidate defines himself as one-legged by the fact that he appears
to have two legs would be to doubt the self-identification in the same way as
doubting a person’s self-identification as a woman because of a lack of female
anatomy.
The SNP position is that the person really is BAME or
disabled even though they lack all of the objective characteristics of a BAME
or disabled person. The SNP isn’t merely saying that such a person says the he
is BAME or disabled, it is saying that he really is these things. If the SNP
admitted that a BAME or disabled candidate who self-defined as such might
really not be these things, it would be to question the whole logic of allowing
self-identification as a method of determining truth. For this reason, the SNP
must allow that someone without black parents can really be black and that
someone with two legs can really have one or that someone with good mental
health might have schizophrenia.
Of course, the SNP might argue that we are just trying
to be kind to BAME and disabled people by not subjecting them to intrusive tests.
But being an MSP is a lucrative position. It is reasonable to assume that
someone who is neither BAME nor disabled might pretend that they are. How is
the SNP to weed out those who are pretending? Can I self-identify as an SNP supporter? I'm also willing to pretend to be disabled black man so long as they give me the job. If anyone denied I was an SNP supporting disabled black man I would get Mr Yousaf to prosecute them.
But this is our problem. How are we to tell the
difference between a transgender person who really is transgender and someone
who is merely pretending to be transgender? What objective test could we use to
determine that this person really is transgender and this one is not? We cannot
use physical appearance, we cannot use chromosomes. All we are left with is the
person’s assertion. But so long as the person pretending maintains the pretence
there is no way of telling them apart.
To weed out those candidates who are merely pretending
to be BAME or disabled we must rely on objective characteristics, ancestry, appearance
and medical diagnosis. But that is to admit that self-identification is not a
reliable method of determining ethnicity or disability. But if it is not reliable,
why use it? Worse if it is not a reliable method of determining ethnicity or disability
why do we suppose is a reliable method of determining sex?
The reason transracialism has been so controversial is
that it annuls race as an objective characteristic. But this has the
consequence of making for instance Black Lives Matters self-refuting because
how are we to determine which lives are black? It also annuls racism. What if
the policeman who murdered George Floyd defined himself as black? There would
no longer be a racial motivation for his crime. We would no longer be able to
blame white people for historically oppressing black people, because we would
not know how these people racially defined themselves. If race becomes a matter
of self-identification, then anyone could avoid the charge of racism by changing
his self-definition. We could all then say whichever forbidden words we pleased
and sing along to rap songs.
More importantly if race were no longer to be a matter
of skin colour and ancestry there would be nothing for us to be racist about.
How can I be prejudiced against a black person if I cannot know he is black? I
cannot know it because race would be a matter of self-identification rather
than skin colour.
So too the concept of disability dissolves if it becomes
a matter of self-identification. If society provides extra resources or parking
spaces for disabled people and these become available to anyone who defines
themselves as disabled, then there will be no extra resources and no more
parking spaces because the term disabled will apply to anyone who chooses it
and it will be impossible to judge from appearance if someone is disabled or
even if they have one leg or two.
If anyone can define themselves as black or disabled
it would follow too that anyone can define themselves as Scottish. Why should
being resident in this particular corner of the world called Scotland prevent
self-identification as Scottish? But if any person in the whole world can
define themselves as Scottish, then Scottish comes to mean human being. But if
that is the case why is this small group of humanity trying to become independent
from the rest of humanity? If on the other hand being Scottish is an objective
characteristic only available to people with these characteristics, why does
the SNP suppose that being BAME, disabled or indeed a woman is a matter of
self-identification?
To suppose that human characteristics are a matter of
self-identification is to abolish truth. If I can define myself as being black
when I am white, I could equally define myself as being well when in fact I am
infected with Covid. But this is to abolish medical science in a pandemic. If truth
were a matter of self-identification there would be no science, because science
requires an objective shared space rather than how we identify. But once this becomes
clear the whole concept of defining what someone is by how they identify
becomes untenable.