Donovan Schaefer

Donovan O. Schaefer is an author and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Quotes

• Why does a racist society end up producing, validating, and recirculating racist science, for instance? I don’t think it’s adequate to say that racists create a well-packaged lie that none of them actually believe and put it into circulation to preserve existing hierarchies. I think racist ideas are genuinely believed by racists, even when they verge into absurdity. [1]
• The liberal fantasy of a rational public sphere—in which people are always and everywhere persuaded by better arguments, more evidence, more facts—is a myth; but it’s also a mistake to think that someone who isn’t persuaded by new information is fundamentally immune to facts. [2]
• When you change how somebody feels, you’re changing how they think. And when you change how they think, you’re changing how they feel. That, in essence, is persuasion. [3]