As a scientist, the claim that one has to be affected by something to understand it makes me cringe.

[redgreenandblue]

"Only those who were directly affected by discrimination/war/poverty/etc truly understand it."

This argument pops up frequently in one form or another in various discussions. The idea that in order to have anything meaningful to contribute to a discussion of some negative phenomenon you must have been affected by it, or at least acknowledge that those affected by it know best.

To me this is a form of anti-intellectualism. It is a stereotype in American culture that "hands-on experience" is superior to "objective analysis" (or "book learning", how it is often dismissively called). It plays right into the demonization of the intellectual class that is typical for authoritarian societies.

No one in their right mind would argue that a person affected by some deadly disease is best suited to come up with a treatment for said disease, or even by necessity has any degree of understanding of what exactly is happening to them. We would instead defer to people who have taken in upon themselves to study the disease objectively from all possible angles, even the counter intuitive ones, and to precisely dissect the different mechanisms at play.

In the legal system we even go as far as to postulate a priori that people with a personal stake in something are in fact the least likely to hold objective views about it.

But somehow when it comes to sociology the perception is a different one. I find that pretty weird.

I'll take Chomsky's view on the big picture of poverty over Joe the Plumber's any day.

[The2ndWheel]

1. As a scientist, you have a subjective and personal stake in objectivity

Why should anyone take your word for it?

There's no single way that a large group of people are affected by anything. The same thing can happen to two different people, but they can react to whatever it is in completely opposite ways. Some people will think that being directly affected by something is the only way to understand it, others won't, and most likely nobody will convince anyone that their way of thinking is wrong, because right and wrong don't exist anywhere outside of the human mind.

[annabanana]

2. It reminds me of the phenomenon of "scales falling from the eyes"

of Republicans the minute a family member is affected by some disease, or comes out, or suddenly has some difficult, expensive medical issue. Then they're all in where before they were strictly an "up by your own bootstraps" guy.

[PADemD]

3. How does a scientist understand and measure pain?

[Jerry442]

4. When you're trying to understand a social or psychological phenomenon...

...it's vitally important to make a serious effort to understand the perspective and experiences of the people who have experienced it directly, even if it's something extremely bad, like Nazism. Ultimately though, it's quite impossible to experience everything directly and we have to rely on language and abstract thought.

If someone believes that language and abstract thought can't result in understanding, yeah, that would definitely be anti-intellectualism.

[Nitram]

5. There is an enormous gulf between an intellectual "understanding" of the damage discrimination does,

and the emotional and psychological experience of being the target of discrimination.

[ShrimpPoboy]

6. To put it another way:

I don't need to eat shit to know that it tastes bad.