It seems to me that the reason you should not call yourself a skeptic is that, at least at this point, you have aligned yourself more strongly with other goals and beliefs than to "a deep seated commitment to making sure that the things I believe about the world are true".

You characterize skeptics as being distinguished by "their rationality and unflinching commitment to evidence."

But then you go on to relate a claim by non-skeptics: "Post-colonial studies and critical race theory have explored the concept of “rationality” and “science” as being properties attached to certain types of people, in the context of race, this constitutes the idea of a scientific, rational, progressive West as opposed to the rest of the world and the types of people that originate from outside of the West."

You reject that a skeptical approach is intrinsically problematic: "there is nothing in valuing evidence or critical thinking that must inherently be racist".

But instead of concluding that--if there is any merit to the concerns at all--skepticism is the solution, you conclude "in a society that already rife with prejudice about which categories of people are capable of embodying this sort of rational enquiry, a political project that identifies separate rational and irrational types of people is necessarily very vulnerable to falling into deep seated bigotry".

So, let's review. We have a harmful, false belief (you claim); it does not comport with evidence and reason (you claim); and there is a group that prides itself on evidence and reason (you claim); and yet that group is so big a part of the problem that their identity must be rejected?!

In order to convince us of something so counterintuitive, one ought reasonably demand some very good evidence--if not a careful study, at least a lot of anecdotes.

But, no, you raise the fear, give anecdotal accounts about only two people (both in part poorly-reasoned as I describe below), and call it a day.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan liked to say. While human psychology is sufficiently non-obvious that it is possible that people championing rationality and evidence could be so trapped by society's views on who gets to do use "rationality and evidence" that they will blindly rationalize their way to holding the societal view and will not rely predominantly on reason and evidence despite trying to, it's both pretty darn weird and demands really good evidence that this scenario is true and it begs the question of how, if that is true, any group could come to any well-founded belief on anything.

So, here's where it seems you hang up your skeptic hat and run off with a different crowd because you like that crowd better, not because they have better evidence.

Just to be sure, let's examine your anecdotes to see if--not that two would be enough--you at least have made a good case there.

Dawkins and the Winged Horse

You level a serious charge against Dawkins: "Dawkins argues that Hasan, as a Muslim, is not a type of person who can be relied upon as a source of knowledge." That is, you claim that Dawkins' objection is specifically that they are a Muslim. Not that Hasan has particularly batty beliefs only shared by some Muslims.

Furthermore, you deepen the charge with: "Implicit here is the clearly racist assumption that the almost 2 billion Muslims in the world, mostly people of colour and mostly in the global South, are fundamentally irrational people."

Okay, so you charge that he's racist as well. Pretty serious charge. Your evidence...is...actually, that is all of your evidence. It's just an assertion.

Let's see what Dawkins argues. You quote him! "Hasan admits to believing Muhamed flew to heaven on a winged horse."

That seems like it might be taking issue with scriptural literalism, not racistly and unjustly denying the rationality of two billion people?

Let's check if Dawkins likes it when non-Muslims who are not people of color believe similarly fantastical religious dogma. If you are right, he ought to be okay with it. But if you are wrong, he should be just as critical.

Here's Dawkins again: "Why in the world is BBC hiring a young earth creationist to host BBC Breakfast? Why not someone who accepts reality?" (https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/698162917833707520). (Dawkins' link no longer resolves, but here's the guy he was talking about: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/14/bbc-breakfast-dan-walker-creationist-fact-fiction)

Dawkins is consistently anti-religious-fantasy, across race, and across religion, maybe because he thinks it's important that people have at least a modicum of attention to science and evidence before letting beliefs in their heads. That is, he's advocating for acting as a skeptic.

And you're not acting as one: you made a charge that was strained, extended it until it was even more strained, didn't supply good evidence, and additional evidence suggests that you're wrong.

Dawkins and the Very Long "Sex Based Rights" Document

Dawkins can certainly be faulted, I think, for endorsing this document, for several reasons. But you want to call our attention to a particular spot: "what is most notable for my purposes is the tension between Dawkins’ role as a supposed educator and advocate for science and his signature on a document that calls for the restriction of research".

Now, when I read that document a couple weeks ago, I noted this passage too, and I thought that was a pretty dumb thing for Dawkins to support. I read fast, so I got through all 6600 words (though by the 50th or whatever instance of "men who claim a female 'gender identity'" I was ready to pull my hair out). But it's really easy to overlook that 40 word anti-research passage lost in the sea of the rest.

Appropriately, you admit as much: "While I cannot know for certain whether Dawkins read the declaration in full before signing".

But then you go on: "one could be forgiven for thinking that he simply assumed"

And your whole argument against him is that we could be forgiven for thinking that he assumed something. I think you're right that we could be forgiven for thinking this. But when it comes to the difficult task of assembling compelling evidence regarding someone else's mental states (especially that they aren't what they claim they are), "we could be forgiven for thinking that their mental state is" does not rise to the challenge.

No evidence of your embrace of a skeptic's approach here.

Sokal and the Humanities

You describe the Sokal affair thusly: Sokal "was able to get a paper making a number of absurd claims published in a humanities journal, from this we are supposed to conclude that the entire field of the humanities is worthless".

Let's check with Sokal: "The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least, that some fashionable sectors of the American academic Left have been getting intellectually lazy." (Sourced from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair)

That is, shall we say charitably, not very charitable of you. The claim is substantially narrower.

Because of your misrepresentation, most of the rest of your point is attacking a straw man. (Bringing up scientific fraud is also a straw man. Lying that you observed something that you did not observe, and about which a reasonable observer could not be mistaken, is not the same as expressing thoughts on a matter which are not one's true thoughts.)

You go on to apparently belittle the accomplishment of getting gobbledygook published (it is hilarious if you know the mathematics/physics subject matter) by quoting DamselDystopia (who is that? do they have particularly relevant knowledge?) saying, "Wow, you got a shitty, nonsensical paper published? You and every other academic at some point in their career."

Um. What? This is the whole problem!! It is not every other academic! Not even remotely. In the physical sciences it's almost impossible to get a shitty, nonsensical paper published. It's almost like physical scientists are acting like skeptics regarding their field. You know, because they're supposed to; it's part of the scientific method.

So, because someone trained in an evidence-based rational approach took the time and effort to demonstrate that a different set of academics were not holding themselves to that same standard (e.g. the standard a skeptic would) you criticize Sokal and do so with poorly-sourced evidence that accidentally (?) boosts rather than weakens his claim.

It is difficult to imagine how one could take a more non-skeptical approach than this and still be formulating one's speech as an argument.

Sokal and Gender Identity Conversion Therapy

Here, you finally start sounding like you know how to take a skeptical approach.

Sokal makes three claims, each of which you debunk with evidence, and you conclude, "Sokal shows a fundamental lack of curiosity about the evidence and material reality of conversion therapy, while making very strong claims and public interventions on the subject."

Yes, it seems so. A shame, and Sokal certainly deserves to be called on it.

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You conclude with as much confusion as you start with. You (correctly) defend the skeptical approach: "What can be seen in my two case studies above is not a shortcoming of a skeptical approach. In fact a truly skeptical approach ... would have avoided this.".

But then you make an unjustified leap: "both Dawkins’ and Sokal’s errors are examples of how a skeptical identity can form a barrier to skeptical thinking". How do you know it had anything to do with "a skeptical identity"? Here again you're trying to infer things about the internal mental states of people, and asking us to believe, that because these people support using evidence and reason, they failed to use evidence and reason. Again, human psychology is weird, so this isn't impossible, but you haven't come anywhere close to establishing this!

So--should you identify as a skeptic?

No! Please don't, not like this. What you're doing here is not what is meant by being a "skeptic".

You show that you can do it (in your second bit on Sokal), but mostly you present assumptions and assertions that range from weak to disproven by counterexample, and thereby along the way make false claims about people.

Neither Dawkins nor Sokal is a member of a marginalized group, so maybe you don't care.

But if we want to avoid falling into the trap of making false claims about anyone or any group, we have to adopt the discipline of basing our beliefs on good evidence and sound reasoning--that is, we have to act like skeptics. (Technically, we'll still make false claims, because knowledge is tentative, humans are fallible, etc.; this just reduces the rate.)

Given the many successes of self-styled skeptics acting skeptical, and your relatively poor track record here at demonstrating any cognitive errors arising specifically from adopting the mantle of a skeptic, the tentative conclusion should remain that a good way to act like a skeptic is to try to be one.