The Counterweight Handbook: Principled Strategies for Surviving and Defeating Critical Social Justice - At Work, in Schools, and Beyond

by Helen Pluckrose

The stated goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are often reasonable, if not noble—to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment for all. Yet, as more and more people are discovering, DEI as commonly practiced isn't a natural extension of past civil rights movements or an ethical framework for opposing discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, etc. Rather, it is inextricably connected with an illiberal and authoritarian ideology—Critical Social Justice—that demands adherence to its tenets and punishes any dissent from its dogma.

Even the mildest questions about Critical Social Justice claims—that all white people are racists, that all underrepresented minorities are oppressed, that sex and gender differences have no biological basis, that censorship is a necessary good—are regularly met by DEI trainers and HR officers with pat "Educate yourself," "Do the work," "Listen and learn." At work, raises, promotions, and future employment often depend on our nodding approval of such claims. At school, grades, nominations, and awards are often contingent upon our active agreement with these beliefs.

When facing a choice between silent submission and risky if ethical opposition, what is a person to do? The Counterweight Handbook is designed to help people address Critical Social Justice problems in the most ethical and effective way possible. It not only offers principled responses to the main claims of Critical Social Justice but also teaches individuals what to do when they are asked to affirm beliefs they do not hold, undergo training in an ideology they cannot support, or submit to antiscientific testing and retraining of their "unconscious" minds.

In short, it is for all of us who believe in freedom of speech and conscience, who wish to push back against the hostile work and educational environments Critical Social Justice has created, and who want to stand up for our individual liberties and universal rights.

Genres: Nonfiction, Cultural, Sociology, Politics

Audible Audio

Published June 25, 2024

About the author

Helen Pluckrose is a British author and cultural writer known for critiques of social justice and promotion of liberal ethics, most notably in the grievance studies affair.

Pluckrose completed a degree in English literature at the University of East London and a master's degree in early modern studies at Queen Mary University of London,[6] with a particular focus on "the ways in which medieval women negotiated the Christian narrative".

She now focuses primarily on postmodernism and Critical Social Justice scholarship and activism and their negative effects on the humanities and the political left. Helen took part in the "Grievance Studies Affair" with James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian. She is the editor-in-chief of Areo, a digital magazine focused on politics, culture, science and art.

Reviews

[David]

I put this on my TBR list prior to the recent US elections. You might think that there's no point criticizing folks on the Left after that election, when clearly the most extreme threat is from the Right.

But in some ways they are part of the same problem, and for the Left to muster a coherent and compelling argument against the Right, it needs to put its own house in order. Pluckrose talks about "reactive overcompensation" (p. 174), "when people take on an extreme view in direct opposition to an equally extreme view on the other side as though this can somehow balance things out and restore order".

I would argue that much of the modern Republican party is fueled by this, where they take positions simply to "own the libs" and policies are judged merely by how much they annoy Democrats. (In those cases, Pluckrose's insistence on an "equally extreme view" isn't always true.)

This book focuses on the Critical Social Justice viewpoint that has taken over the vocal Left. This ties into reactive overcompensation in two ways. First, there are those on the Left who take extreme views in an attempt to balance out the extreme views on the Right (e.g., "there are white supremacists on the Right, so we must put down white people and value their opinions the least"). Second, there are ways in which the Right is engaging in reactive overcompensation because of genuinely extreme views on the Left (e.g., if Critical Social Justice warriors argue there has been no progress at all against racism in the United States ever—and some mainstream ones actually do—then the Right introduces laws forbidding children being taught that there was ever any racism in the US).

Those of us on the Left who value free speech and reasoned argument don't have much of a home these days. In the US, the Republican Party has gone from something we just disagree with to something that's genuinely crazy, while on the Left our views are no longer something that we're supposed to share. I think we're actually still the majority on the Left, even the vast majority, but those who are very vocal are entirely committed to Critical Social Justice. Most well-meaning people on the Left don't know much about it and just follow along saying the words because they do support social justice and don't understand the radical nature and extreme worldview of Critical Social Justice.

All of which is a long-winded way actually getting to this book. Pluckrose has previously laid out the underpinnings of Critical Social Justice, in Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody. This current book is supposed to be a practical handbook for how to respond in workplace and educational settings. (It also corrects one big oversight of that previous and otherwise excellent book, which is that she entirely overlooked Ibram X. Kendi in it. She engages with him here, because, as she now points out, Kendi disagrees with Robin DiAngelo on many things.)

It's a fairly successful book, in that I find the arguments persuasive and she has some evidence that employers do too. Many of the things she shares have actually been tested in real-world situations, and have apparently been successful. I do sometimes feel that Pluckrose is making arguments she finds persuasive rather than always finding those arguments that others would find persuasive, but the real-world validation is the true metric of success, so perhaps I'm wrong.

We need to build up the Left so that we can actually be successful against the dangerous ideas on the Right. And we're not going to be able to do that if we keep alienating allies. Most Latinos and Latinas have never heard the term "Latinx", and most of those who have heard it pointedly do not use it. The Democrats are going to score a few points with some academics in diversity departments and maybe some genderqueer second-generation immigrants by using "Latinx", but those groups were never going to vote Republican anyway. But the Democrats lost 30–40 percentage points among Latinos from the 2016 election to the 2024 election. In Michigan, Democrats held a 21-point advantage in this group in 2016, 11 points in 2020, but by 2024 Michigan Latinos voted Republican by a 21-point margin. It turns out Latinos care mostly about the economy (like other voters), and a lot less about whether or not we're decolonizing the curriculum.

I'll close with a quote from Arif Ahmed that Pluckrose features (p. 178):

Freedom of speech is not just one political position or value among many... The reason is that freedom of speech, like democracy, is—although it may not only be—what you might call a process value rather than an outcome value. It does not tell you what the outcome of any political or scientific debate should be. What it tells you is how that dispute should be conducted: namely, through open and tolerant discussion in which all sides both feel and really are free to express their views.

[Daniel]

Critical Social Justice is flawed, and based on flawed studies about subconscious racial biases. In fact people can and do score very differently based on their tiredness. And the training does not work. All white people are forced to say they are racist and must repent.

It is like the Inquisition all over again. This book teaches readers how to gently say no to organisations forcing them to go for CSJ courses. The courses actually forced people to only look at race and destroy workplace camaraderie.

I think People are fed up. So they vote for Trump and let the Republicans take both the Senate and the House…

[Rhonda]

Picked this up at my local library. This is reasonably calmly written and I can see why people might be over critical social justice theory. Not sure the title is going to get it into the right hands and I doubt any organisation would cope with receiving some a longwinded letter as some of the examples suggest.

[Cesar Gonzalez-Perez]

Excellent work. Helen’s prose is crystalline and as precise as it gets. Practical advice with a solid grounding to fight Critical Social Justice and “see it out”.