How to Criticize with Kindness

“Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticizing the views of an opponent?”
How to compose a successful critical commentary:
  1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
  2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
  3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
  4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
READ: How to Criticize with Kindness: Philosopher Daniel Dennett on the Four Steps to Arguing Intelligently – Brain Pickings
Author, Small Press Publisher, Mosaic Artist, maybe a Poet

Comments

Post a Comment

White Fragility

Little Man Little Man

Popular posts from this blog

Andrew Jackson Was A Real-Life Horror Movie Monster

Image
The truth about Jackson’s savagery was just as disturbing as the fake news. After a particularly bloody battle in 1814, Andrew Jackson’s men counted the dead Indians by cutting off their noses. They collected 557 noses.

and... (this comment)

Jackson ran an ad in the Nashville Gazette, in October, 1804, for the capture of a runaway slave, which stated that in addition to the reward, he would pay an extra $10 per 100 lashes (up to 300), to anyone who willing to inflict them upon his miscreant property. He was known to hold a vengeful lifetime grudge against anyone whom he felt had slighted him, regardless of how minor the supposed offense. His betrayal the Choctow tribe, whom he persuaded to become American allies over the British during the war of 1812, culminated in the “Indian Removal Act” (Trail of Tears), of which he took personal responsiblity to see implemented, resulted in the death of thousands of men, women and children. It’s no surprise that the current occupant of the White…
Read more

1619 Might Not Be the Right Year: 6 Shocking Facts About Slavery, Natives and African Americans

Image
Wikimedia Commons “Slaves working in 17th-century Virginia,” by an unknown artist, 1670. by Sep 12, 2017
1619, the year slavery was born, or was it?

The Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center at Norfolk State University (NSU) held a conference called 1619: The Making of America in September of 2013. That year is historically significant because it was the first year Africans were brought to the colonies, slavery was born and it was the year America’s first legislative body was founded.

In an admirable gesture to honor all of the cultural relations happening in the America’s in 1619, NSU hosted several Native speakers and those familiar with Native history to address many issues not often covered in today’s classrooms. During these sessions, many little known facts about African Americans, Native Americans and slavery were addressed in the years following 1619.

The Term Negro May Have Been Meant For American Indians
During the session Native Americans at 1619 Dr. Arica Co…
Read more

They were once America’s cruelest, richest slave traders. Why does no one know their names?

Image
They were once America’s cruelest, richest slave traders. Why does no one know their names?
Hannah Natanson, September 14, 2019, The Washington Post



The two most ruthless domestic slave traders in America had a secret language for their business.

Slave trading was a “game.” The men, Isaac Franklin and John Armfield, were daring “pirates” or “one-eyed men,” a euphemism for their penises. The women they bought and sold were “fancy maids,” a term signifying youth, beauty and potential for sexual exploitation — by buyers or the traders themselves.

Rapes happened often.

“To my certain knowledge she has been used & that smartly by a one eyed man about my size and age, excuse my foolishness,” Isaac Franklin’s nephew James — an employee and his uncle’s protege — wrote in typical business correspondence, referring to Caroline Brown, an enslaved woman who suffered repeated rape and abuse at James’s hands for five months. She was 18 at the time and just over five feet tall.

continu…
Read more