There's a little rhetorical trick you see among the woke left lately that goes like this: If someone de dicto supports X, and if, according to the woke left, X in fact causes bad thing Y, then you say the person also supports Y, even though that person de dicto opposes Y and disagrees that X causes Y.
All philosophers learn to disambiguate attitudes de dicto from de re, so this is just embarrassingly bad philosophy. But the people doing this are usually more activists than philosophers anyway.
For those not familiar with the distinction, here's an illustration:
Lois doesn't know Clark Kent is Superman.
She is in love with Clark. If you ask her if she loves Superman, she earnestly replies no, she loves Clark. But Clark is in fact Superman. So, does she thereby love Superman?
We disambiguate as follows:
De re = about the thing
De dicto = as described, under that description, about the label/words
She in fact loves the person who is Superman but she does not affirm the proposition, "I love Superman" because she believes the name "Superman" applies to someone she believes she does not love.
In the context of racism
One view says that you are a racist if you are a well-functioning cog in a racially oppressive machine (or however it's best to put it).
A more moderate view says that you are a racist if (i) you are a well-functioning cog in a racially oppressive machine and (ii) you'd know this if you did your epistemic due diligence.
Both of these views imply you can be a racist for doing X, in virtue of the causal relation between X and Y, even when you deny that that causal relation obtains.
Maybe neither of these views is correct as a theory about the meaning of racism in ordinary English. But I think the more moderate view, in particular, is accepted widely enough in certain contexts that presupposing it doesn't amount to a motte and bailey tactic in those contexts. In those contexts you start out in the bailey.
However, if philosophers are going to start making this move all the time, it helps libertarianism immensely. By this logic, libertarians can just go around saying, "All you anti-open borders folks are classist, pro-poverty white supremacists."
They're on especially strong grounds given then existing empirical work overwhelmingly shows open borders help the global poor, reduce inequality, and help poor people of color far more than, say, the welfare state does or ending police racism would. It's not even a close comparison.
To be clear, e.g., Rawls's favorite political institutions do indeed reinforce global white supremacy. There's not even much of a debate to be had about this at this point, given how robust the empirical lit is. But I would think it unfair to say Rawls supports white supremacy or is a white supremacist or wants to dominate black bodies and erase other identities or whatnot, even though his favorite political policies have those effects.
However, if that's how we're gonna talk now, great, it's a game my side wins easily.
