Regarding arguments around race and racism.
I would argue that we haven’t actually tried having social policy that doesn’t suck yet. A combination of factors produced by our society and policies incentivize bad outcomes.
You get the outcome the incentives produce. To change the outcome, one must change the incentives.
Anonymous asked:
sinesalvatorem answered:
Leukemia is not actually a good thing, anon. If your blood is over-saturated with white cells then please seek medical assistance.
I just saw an article last week suggesting that using identity politics in the US was a bad plan because the majority can practice identity politics, too, and the definition of “white” has expanded in the past.
I’m pretty hyped. What exciting new races or ethnic groups will be considered “white” in the future? Could Asian-Latin fusion cuisine become the next official white people food? When will they be issued their official White Man™ polo shirts?
I said I’d talk about politics less, but I feel like I do need to get this out of my system.
There’s an idea going around both on my dash, and people I know in person, that the behavior of people on the left is what caused Trump to be elected. Different groups get the blame, whether it is rich white liberals in Silicon Valley, DC, and Hollywood, the campus left, black lives matter, internet SJWs and feminists, mainstream media journalists, late night comedians, or some combination of these, the theory goes that Trump was essentially a white working class middle finger to the condescension, radicalism, and disrespect toward traditional values of members of these various left-wing groups. People who put forward this theory say that to win back Trump voters, the left needs to be kinder, more compassionate, and less radical toward white working class (WWC) culture, values, and way of life. The claim is that if only the left were nicer to WWC people and respected their way of life more, Trump would have never even won a Republican primary, let alone an electoral college majority.
Now, leaving aside whether it would be personally moral and virtuous to be more compassionate and less radical toward the WWC (probably to at least some extent), I want to raise doubts about whether this perspective is actually useful for winning elections and defeating Trumpism.
No doubt many WWC people, and those sympathetic to them, feel condescended to, disrespected, and that their way of life is under attack by the left. There is also no doubt that there have been individuals and groups on the left that have been openly hostile to the WWC way of life, where “white male” is an insult, conservative Christians are publicly degraded and mocked, performative flag-waving nationalism is seen as not just gauche but stupid and hick-ish, and where white rural people are assumed to be personally racist and homophobic.
But, all political movements are going to have their assholes who degrade the other side and openly disrespect them. It’s easy to miss when you largely live in left-wing bubbles online and off, which I imagine is true of most people on my dash, and is certainly true of me, but the right has their own version of this, and it’s popular. There’s a post going around my dash about a condescending line in a Meryl Streep speech, and how this is an example of liberal condescension that created Trump, but I guarantee you that more people listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity on the radio every day than saw that Meryl Streep speech. And Limbaugh and Hannity on an almost daily basis disrespect, mock, and condescend to liberal constituencies, values, and ways of life. And guess what, Republicans still won.
People like Limbaugh and Hannity, not to mention Fox News and Breitbart, make their money by inflaming a sense of grievance and resentment of the left among the disproportionately rural, older, religious, and WWC Republican base. These outlets have far more political reach and power than random SJW blogs, the campus left, black lives matter, actors or tech billionaires giving speeches, or even late night comedians.
In the educated liberal bubbles that I and many people in my online and offline circles reside in, the reverse can seem true. It can seem like left-wing culture is omnipresent and the right is completely stifled by blacks lives matter, SJWs, and late night comedians. But in other circles, which comprise nearly half the country, the reverse is true.
In many ways, the left is already on net more compassionate to the WWC than the right is to left-wing constituencies. There were countless articles in left-wing outlets talking to Trump voters in order to understand and sympathize with Trump voters. I don’t think I’ve ever once seen an article in a right-wing outlet that went to Harlem, San Francisco, or Ann Arbor, trying to compassionately understand the motivations and lifestyle of people on the other side from their point of view.
So the idea that the left must hold itself to an even higher standard on compassion and than the right to win elections seems implausible to me (again, leaving aside whether holding ourselves to a higher standard would be more virtuous and moral).
Even if the left was nicer to the WWC, I don’t see that changing vote patterns, or making the WWC feel any less resentful and under attack. Suppose 90% of the left-wing people who are being blamed for the rise of Trumpism became nicer. The Limbaughs and Hannitys and Breitbarts of the world, and the millions who follow them, wouldn’t take a step back and say “you know, maybe the left doesn’t hate me or my way of life”. No. They would continue to cherry pick the worst examples, as they already do, from a smaller set of mean liberals in order to inflame cultural resentment and grievance among their followers, and they would also continue to see things that I think aren’t mean and are true that the left says, like that black people have a rougher relationship with the police than other groups, as offensive and attacking their dignity and way of life.
I’m not saying there’s no way to convince some of these people over to the left. But, pointing the finger at the meaner (and numerically smaller) strains of the left and thinking that if only for them being condescending and disrespectful we would be in a golden age of liberal dominance in politics doesn’t strike me as true or productive.
So I get your frustration, and a lot of what you say is correct. It’s far too tempting to say “Hey leftists-who-disagree-with-me, YOU’RE the reason our enemy won!” without sufficient proof. That’s just opportunism.
And we should treat the WWC (and all of the WC) in this country with compassion, and we should help their material needs, regardless of whether it wins us elections. Trying to come up with political justifications for basic human decency is a bit creepy.
(Plus, not to mention a Far Right resurgence is occurring across the entire developed world. It seems very petty to blame that on a few annoying American liberals. There are deeper trends here.)
I feel you here.
However, there is some countervailing evidence here.
1. If we’re not being condescending to them, we should listen to what our enemies are saying. And in between accusations of corruption and defending the free market, Republican voters seem really, really upset about Political Correctness. Obsessed with it, and explicitly saying they support idiots like Trump just to defy Political Correctness.
You can dismiss what they say and come up with other reasons they voted the way they did (they just want to be racist, or economic anxiety) but then that is being patronizing because you aren’t really listening anymore. If you listen, Political Correctness is a huge deal to them, and teasing out the source of that sounds like a worthwhile endeavor.
2. A lot of this is just projection from some left-of-center allies about the illiberal tactics used by establishment social justice, such as extreme arrogance, dismissiveness, shallow analysis, using institutional power to punish dissenters, and a bunch of other mindkilling, groupthink tactics. Said allies (or, former allies) really hated those tactics, and so rejoice in blaming them for the defeat of the mainstream SJ candidate.
Projection is not a good source of analysis of course, and so they might be wrong that this really caused Trump’s victory. But said establishment really should pay attention to how many enemies it has, even “on its own side.” Their tactics are really ticking off their friends, causing dissension every step away. SJ can try to ignore this dissent and pain as long as they wield the hammer, but don’t be surprised when their enemies leap at any weakness as a chance to earn some rhetorical points.
Social justice has enraged and alienated conservatives, libertarians, moderates, socialists, communists, and artsy anarchists. At some point it will have no friends left except the business-friendly / socially liberal wing of a city-based party.
3. Something happened between 2012 and 2016. There’s some reason Republicans started really getting into unbridled rudeness and race-baiting. You can’t even wholly blame Trump for finally opening the floodgates, he tried in 2012. What the hell happened to make voters so much more racist, or at least racist-tolerant? It’s not like there are a lot more immigrants around or other normal causes of racial strife (let alone to explain the tolerance of crude sexual behavior.)
And to the unaided eye, one of the real changes of the past 4 years was the political visibility of intolerant liberalism. So it’s at least worth considering “the thing that changed in the last 4 years, is somewhat responsible for the rather different outcome this time around.”
Regarding #1: If a 100% black company is okay, but a 100% white company “isn’t diverse enough”, this implies whites are inherently worth less than PoC. If women have equal beneficial capabilities to men, but men are uniquely violent and oppressive, this implies women are better than men.
I think people can feel this even if they don’t consciously realize it.
Also, as one of those alienated types, those tactics you mention make SJ a liability to me in many ways.
One can only imagine what it is like to be a straight white male. To go to the movies, enjoy the story fully, and then leave without the necessity to form any kind of emotional attachment to the characters. Why would they? They will find themselves perfectly represented all over again in the next movie they decide to watch, whichever it might be, and the next one, and the next one. Representation to them is not a luxury, it’s a given right.
possibly one of the stupidest things ever written? we may never know. (via argumate)
In which the grass is always greener on the other side of the thinkpiece writer.
Every time that I’ve talked about feeling white guilt and in general being seen as a white person, people have said things like, “But… aren’t you Asian?”
And they’re right to say that, to be clear! It’s really shitty to reduce Asians to Basically-White if they disagree with you, and I appreciate everyone who pointed the gross unfairness of this action out.
But at the same time I feel like they’re missing the point. For all intents and purposes, as someone who’s been adopted across racial lines, I am white. I am white-cultured. I am Western-cultured. I’m American in my individualism and my perspectives.
And that feels wrong to ignore as well.
When kyriarchy tries to cleave reality at inexact and ill-defined fault lines, people rightly object. Categories don’t cut neatly; there are always people who queer binaries by their very existence. Forcing them to Choose a Side rarely works out well.
The same applies to sj. I’m racially Chinese and ethnically white-American; you can’t discredit the white part of me without also ignoring and erasing the Chinese part, and you can’t pedestalize the Chinese part without ignoring and erasing the white part.
Under white supremacy, either my white-American ethnicity is celebrated and my Chinese race is “excused” (and erased), or my white-American ethnicity is erased and my Chinese race is denounced. Under the reverse discourse, either my Chinese race is celebrated while my white-American ethnicity is “excused” (and erased), or my Chinese race is erased and my white-American ethnicity is denounced.
Sj must not forget intersectionality. It must not forget that identities lead to complicated intersections that are inseparable from each other. It must deconstruct and replace kyriarchal categories rather than enforcing them.
I’m not American+Chinese. I’m Chinese American.
I propose a model in which power is represented and analyzed as a graph of relationships between individuals, where nodes represent individuals and weighted directed edges represent power relationships.
Relationships that effect groups can then be observed and measured without reducing all members of those groups into indistinct blobs where all members are considered interchangeable, or venn diagram intersections.
Edit: May also be of interest to @theunitofcaring.
I think you’re overconfident in your interpretation of what the anon meant. Maybe that’s what you would’ve meant in their shoes, but they’re them and you’re you.
I think people can pick up on these things on a subconscious level even if they aren’t fully thinking that way explicitly on a conscious level. I certainly can’t name most logical fallacies even when I can spot them. (I didn’t know what the formal name for what the problem with religious threats about the afterlife was, but I could tell something was wrong with them, for instance.)
Take, for example, the treatment of racial diversity in America. If a 100% black company is okay, but a 100% white company “needs diversity”, then this implies that blacks are worth more than whites. That may not be what (most of) the advocates really mean, but that’s the sum vector of their words and actions as received by a number of people. And people pick up on that as being unwanted/unwelcome.
Or to take a stronger example, if men and women are equally capable of doing good things, but men are uniquely violent and evil, then it logically follows that men are worse than women. …and the ways to escape that tend to look like either MRA or “redpiller” (not the same thing) behavior, which are definitely not welcome within Feminism.
It should come as no surprise that are a lot of people that do not feel wanted/welcome within Feminism and refuse to have the label applied to them, even though many Feminists would want to apply the label to them.
But anyhow, both groups often don’t really go chasing down these chains of reasoning and making them explicit, since people don’t really think that way (and most people are relatively average). But I think they do notice them, and they become feelings that baffle their opponents.
Now, it’s possible that the Anon really does believe America has an ownership claim to those University positions, and that Anon has a partial ownership claim to America, and thus some claim to those positions. But that gets into the philosophy of ownership/property, which is a whole other thing, especially since I view ownership/property as useful rather than true.
Anyway…I don’t know much about the history of academic visa policy in America. So I can’t comment on whether every attempt to tighten it is characterized as racist xenophobia. But this particular attempt pretty clearly is xenophobic and maybe racist too.
Well, I don’t think it was handled well. I would have done TUoC’s “xenophobic plan” version instead if I were Orange Capitalism Man. But there is a reason I didn’t vote for Orange Capitalism Man despite being an unironic Nationalist.
Pretty sure that I became a liberal for the Beer and Tits more than for the “Liberalism” per see (whatever that actually is) considering that I always opposed Second Wave’s anti porn side.
The proto-rape appoligism from trans activists and “anti-racist” activists is getting extremely old. The anti free speech position, the pro violence position, the pro imprisonment and forced reeducation of people who have moral disagreement with the SJW party line, even when those who disagree are LGBTQ, or non White, or women themselves is getting to be more than I can take.
It is literally, ontologically, impossible to please them with anything less than ceasing to exist if one is straight, cis, and/or White, and even if you are LGBTQ or a PoC, that’s only good enough if you toe the party line completely, erase all evidence that you ever haven’t, keep up to date on the latest terminology and erase all evidence that you ever used old terms in the past, and never piss off someone who is more “disadvantaged” than you or has more social clout.
I can’t keep doing this.
I think that people should be treated based on their actions and the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I think that people should be permitted to love as they will, to form consensual relationship with adults as they will, and that minors should receive accurate information about sex and human reproduction and access to birth control if they so desire and not legally punished for consensual relationships with others of their age.
I think that gender and gender roles have changed, gender reassignment technology has advanced astronomically in the last half century, and our culture is struggling to absorb these changes. I don’t have all the answers for how to best accommodate all the permutations and changes. I do know that, at minimum, people should be permitted to do what they like with their own bodies and make whatever modifications they feel inclined to make, and as long as nobody is misrepresenting the body modifications that they’re selling, it’s not really any business of strangers what body mods other people choose to have.
I’m not sure exactly how all this should best be accommodated or not by schools, medical insurance, or employers though, or to what, if any, degree the government should enforce particular accommodations or forbid them.
I think that people ought to call people what they want to be called, but I also think that occasional accidental misgendering is a regular part of life and not necessarily intentional or meant to be harmful.
I don’t think that there is anything wrong with interracial relationships. (And JFC, WTF is wrong with the world that I’m saying that in 2017 to differentiate myself from LIBERALS?)
I don’t think that anybody is morally obligated to try to change who they are sexually attracted to, although you might be morally obligated to not act on some attractions (eg. Minor attracted people). I’m also pretty sure that attempts to change what you are sexually attracted to don’t work.
I don’t think that anybody has a right to sex with anybody else, whether in general or specific. Marital rape is rape, and you don’t have a right to have sex with x category of people either.
I don’t think that speech that isn’t outright direct “you kill that guy” type incitement has any business being called violence, and DEFINITELY should not be met with violence, but rather more speech.
I think that silencing those you strongly disagree with is a bad strategic move, not merely morally doubtful. If you are so right and they are so wrong, there is nothing to be gained by not publicly debating them.
I believe in freedom of religion, and freedom to not be religious, and freedom to say that other people’s religions are stupid and bad.
And I have to go get lunch now, so that’s where I’ll end for now.
I think most actual liberals are probably closer to you than the people you’re complaining about. I don’t know what your life is like so maybe I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like you’re reacting to social bubble and “the most obnoxious yeller gets heard” effects that create a very distorted picture of what the liberal Overton Window actually looks like.
Knock on the door of your average Democrat voter and my bet is you’ll find a person who has never heard of the Cotton Ceiling, has a basically liberal perspective on anti-racism and feminism and LGBT rights, thinks Hillary Clinton is kind of cool, thinks the rich have too much but doesn’t like communists and doesn’t want revolution, etc.. Heck, go to your average Tumblr leftist and my guess is you’ll find somebody with roughly the opinions you just posted. Opinions like “interracial marriage is actually problematic” get reblogged disproportionately because they’re unusual and therefore interesting.
I mean, Hillary Clinton won the 2016 primary and Bernie Sanders was the maverick outsider who fired the imaginations of the young and radical. Do either of them look like the kind of candidate a hard-core “SJW” type would get excited about to you?
I think this is why hard-core “SJW” types are so frustrated and angry: they know that most people are extremely problematic and unenlightened by their standards and this includes most of their ostensible allies.
This use of the word “Liberal” probably has something to do with the American usage not differentiating “Liberal” and “Leftist.”
Github eliminated gender bias in selecting conference speakers for ElectronConf by using randomized blind review, 100% of selected speakers turned out to be men, so they are cancelling the conference
amazing
now reveal the demographic breakdown of the reviewers
For diversity purposes in tech companies, Asians count as white. So obviously majority white, ofc.
I mean, you think I’m shitposting, but most of my shitposts are not completely groundless - there was a criticism of diversity levels at some Silicon Valley tech company a while back, and they conveniently left out that like 30% of the staff were Asian.
(And from what I’ve read, it’s Asians that take the actual brunt of Affirmative Action policies in schools… overall I’m not sure how long the political alignment will hold out. The true racists are split on this matter from what I’ve seen.)
Anyway, before I miss out on the other discourse going on: Piper Harron has basically said that universities need to fire white mathematicians, because WOC have no chance to be hired to do math otherwise.
Problematic?
Or super problematic?
No. Woke.
Dammit! Are you sure?
Does she look white to you? Woke.
Granted, I was just shitposting and hadn’t checked first, but this whole edge case wokeness thing has been more stupid than politics in general so it seemed like a good guess. Of course if a white man said the same thing it would be a sign of his racism, but SJ informally asserts that truth value is based on race, sex, and orientation of the speaker, so…
——————-
ST. LOUIS (CN) — A Missouri appeals court upheld a $4.85 million racial discrimination award to a white teacher who was fired from Harris-Stowe State University, an historically black college.
A trial jury awarded Elizabeth Wilkins $1.35 million in compensatory damages and $3.5 million in punitive damages on her claim that she was fired in favor of less senior black teachers. She also claimed Dr. Latisha Smith, the temporary co-chair for Harris-Stowe’s Teacher Education Department, repeatedly proclaimed her belief in “black power” in emails.
Harris-Stowe’s defense was crippled by the fact that it deleted emails in Smith’s account, in violation of a court order.
“During discovery, the trial court ordered the Board [of Regents] to preserve Dr. Smith’s email account,” Judge Kurt Odenwald wrote for the three-judge panel.
“In violation of the order, the Board deleted Dr. Smith’s email account. Because of this violation, the trial court ruled, as a sanction, that the following allegations were deemed admitted: Dr. Smith’s email account contained statements expressing her desire to make the Teacher Education Department ‘blacker’ and that she recommended terminating Wilkins’s employment.”
Harris-Stowe claimed it fired Wilkins for her “inappropriate activities.”
The college made five points in its appeal to the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District:
But on Tuesday, the appeals court affirmed the trial court ruling on all five points, plus Wilkins’s request $35,603 in for attorneys’ fees and costs.
“We have not yet had an opportunity to review the ruling with counsel,” a Harris-Stowe State University spokesperson said in an email. “After review, we will evaluate the steps the University will need to take in light of the ruling.”
Writing for the unanimous panel, Odenwald noted that Wilkins earned around $67,622 a year when she was fired. She planned to teach into her 70s and had received nothing but positive performance reviews.
“The record is absolutely void of any evidence to suggest that Wilkins was unsuited for her position or that she was at risk of being lawfully terminated,” Odenwald wrote. “Yet, after her termination for ‘inappropriate activities,’ Wilkins testified that her academic reputation was ruined, that HSSU placed a letter alleging misconduct into her employment file, and that she believed she could not receive the necessary recommendations for subsequent employment. Unexpectedly thrust into the job market, the record reflects that Wilkins was interested in, and searched for, similar teaching positions at colleges or universities in the area. However, Wilkins was unable to find such a job within commuting distance of St. Louis.”
Presiding Judge James M. Dowd and Judge Gary M. Gaertner concurred.
Harris-Stowe, in St. Louis, has an enrollment of about 1,400. Annual tuition for an in-state residential student is about $16,984, according to the college website, which estimates tuition for an in-state nonresidential student as $7,484. Part-time students pay $199 per credit hour.
Edit: Huh, forgot I had this in my queue.
Anyhow, above is a point of calibration for how racial discrimination laws are enforced in America.
We can see that they are not unidirectional.
SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass. “This new verification system offers users a simple, efficient way to determine which accounts belong to total pieces of shit whom you should have no qualms about tormenting to your heart’s desire,” said spokesperson Elizabeth James, adding that the small red symbol signifies that Twitter has officially confirmed the identity of a loathsome person who deserves the worst abuse imaginable and who will deliberately have their Mute, Block, and Report options disabled. “When a user sees this symbol, they know they’re dealing with a real asshole who has richly earned whatever mistreatment they receive, including profanity, body-shaming, leaking of personal information, and relentless goading to commit suicide. It’s really just a helpful way of saying to our users, ‘This fuck has it coming, so do your worst with a clear conscience and without fear of having your account suspended.’” At press time, Twitter reassuredly clarified that the red X was just a suggestion and that all users could still be bullied with as little recourse as they are now.
