He’s right to do so. Statements that your research must be presented with a filter based on how it will advance political goals calls into question the integrity of all research. When people don’t “trust the science” this will be why.
But further, I’d never seen the statement from antiracist before…wow. The idea that the only cure for discrimination is discrimination is akin to saying the only cure for violence is violence. It’s abject insanity that such a notion is being advanced in society.
The cure for discrimination is forgiveness. The cure for violence is forgiveness. The cure for hatred is forgiveness.
The only way anything stops is for people to have the humility and wisdom to say “this will stop with me.”
> But further, I’d never seen the statement from antiracist before…wow. The idea that the only cure for discrimination is discrimination is akin to saying the only cure for violence is violence. It’s abject insanity that such a notion is being advanced in society.
Kendi is just advocating for a system of racial preferences administered by "good white people." That's been a hobby horse of a segment of the political left since the Nixon administration. Decades later, it still remains unpopular even among the minorities it is supposed to help: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/05/08/americans-see-adv.... But center left think tanks and advocacy organizations won't let it go. Even the most liberal state in the country defeating it resoundingly won't dissuade them: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/california-not-bell.... So keep expecting it to pop up in different guises until they manage to get their way.
Is the reason that he wants it administered by "good white people" because every other ethnic group (including the "bad white people") is nakedly self-interested when it comes to racial preference?
What makes you think they’re not nakedly self interested? They get the most out of the system, because they get to run the show. They not only get a powerful club against “bad white people,” but also get to hand-pick “representation” to shape minority groups according their own preferences. They’ll pick Hispanics who answer to “Latinx” but never one that believes that abortion is wrong. They’ll pick Muslims that endorses white American views of gender roles. They’ll pick the Asian that says Asian values are a “model minority myth.”
As to why Kendi supports it, who knows. Lots of people attach a low price to their dignity.
> They’ll pick Hispanics who answer to “Latinx” but never one that believes that abortion is wrong. They’ll pick Muslims that endorses white American views of gender roles. They’ll pick the Asian that says Asian values are a “model minority myth.”
Is that worse than not picking a single Hispanic, Muslim, or Asian because they are Hispanic, Muslim, and Asian?
The main flaw in your blend of anti-affirmative action argument is that at it's core it's a pro-racism argument, which supports the racist status quo as a default desirable scenario by first going out of your way to reject each and any alternative to the racist status quo.
No, what would be preferable would be a non-racist, objective system where minority groups can have independence and agency. Systems where minorities don’t have to appeal to the tastes of panels of white people in order to advance. Instead of a system of managed racism where white people create carefully curated collections of minorities, like Apple’s goddamn App Store.
> Is the reason that he wants it administered by "good white people" because every other ethnic group (including the "bad white people") is nakedly self-interested when it comes to racial preference?
Systems like this have historically been managed by the dominant "white people", which have unknowingly or not been advancing "white people" almost exclusively whether due to good or bad intentions, thus forming a vicious cycle. See for instance companies that employed machine learning models to drive admissions which ended up admitting candidates which already match the candidates which were already admitted in the past (white candidates from specific white-dominated academic institutions) and rejecting everyone else in the process regardless of ability.
You are 100 years late for people in power to care about race. With exception of how some of them distribute their self-serving racial justice. Self-serving, because they can remain among the enlightened and generally better people.
> But further, I’d never seen the statement from antiracist before…wow. The idea that the only cure for discrimination is discrimination is akin to saying the only cure for violence is violence. It’s abject insanity that such a notion is being advanced in society.
This has been the way it's gone since Kendi wrote How to be an Anti-Racist. It is racism by any other name whether somehow "justified" or not. The books in the catalog of anti-racism include great hits like "White Fragility" further exemplifying the movements innate hatred of a certain skin color. The more you go down the rabbit hole the more you realize it's been a movement to transfer all problems other non-white races have onto white people and use that to promote what is objectively racist and bigoted language and methodology. These "authors" (I use that term loosely here, they are racist demagogues) are a key driver of so-called "diversity hiring" and an overall more difficult workplace because now anything can be conceived in their framework as some sort of anti-PoC swipe. This concept of "increasing representation" has in many places replaced the meritocracy. If anything, this type of movement has an overall negative effect (as exemplified by the pejorative "diversity hire" to refer to a person who is undeserving of their position).
It's not uncommon to get silenced for having the above view of anti-racism though a cursory view of the movement will lead you to the same thing. The reason you are just seeing this now is we've reached the point the average American realized "anti-racism" is cleverly designed newspeak and it's supporters are becoming more fringe by the day. In fact, commonly, criticism of the movement is associated with "marginalizing" the experiences of "people of color" which creates a situation where the movement can do what it wants because the opposite of anti-racism, is, of course racism (in English). If you're criticizing them as the wrong skin color you "benefit from power structures designed to empower white people". There's no winning with them, and that's why the movement has taken so much ground. No one wants to be accused of racism so you end having to do all sorts of backflips through flaming rings just to show how not-racist you are.
I don't have a solution to whatever perceived slights other people feel. I do know that targeting a group of people for punishment based on their skin color is wrong regardless of who it is or what they are.
> He’s right to do so. Statements that your research must be presented with a filter based on how it will advance political goals calls into question the integrity of all research. When people don’t “trust the science” this will be why.
When I started to read it, I thought it would be about making a statement about how we should be diverse. Not that he would have to present only science that is about diversity.
The second I read there would be a litmus test for studies I was right onboard with him quitting.
> The cure for discrimination is forgiveness. The cure for violence is forgiveness. The cure for hatred is forgiveness.
Stepping aside from the main debate, how can you possibly justify this? If I'm going to be forgiven every time I discriminate, assault, and slander people, why would I ever want to change my behavior? After all, I get rewarded for it: When I do those things I gain advantages over other people that benefit me, not to mention the psychological rush of dominating others. You forgive me for those things? Over and over, unconditionally? That sounds to me like I'm your god and I can do with you as a I please.
Discrimination, violence, and hatred are antisocial behaviors. They need to be reduced in a way that is just and fair and effective. Forgiveness is none of those.
> Discrimination, violence, and hatred are antisocial behaviors. They need to be reduced in a way that is just and fair and effective. Forgiveness is none of those.
The key thing for me is we give people the opportunity to change. This doesn't necessarily mean that there shouldn't be consequences. Only that the consequences are proportionate and finite.
In my opinion, hostility towards people who have made mistakes is a major problem that holds the left back. Identity politics has been very successful in driving a wedge between groups that would otherwise have very similar economic and class interests. I don't believe that was a mistake.
I didn't say the left aren't allowed to have aggression. However, I do think it needs to be directed at the right people. My point was that the right are much more likely to look past things they might disagree with rather than excluding that person entirely. The most obvious example of this being evangelical support for Trump (and other Republicans) despite his numerous affairs.
I'm in no way saying that going that far is desirable. However, I do think less ideological purity and more flexibility would be beneficial in bringing in people who agree on the core values.
> My point was that the right are much more likely to look past things they might disagree with rather than excluding that person entirely.
Like women who have abortions? Gay people? Trans people? Liberals? Communists?
I'm not against flexibility, but IMO the left is far too forgiving, and needs to be much more aggressive. the Trump right is a fascist party, and the left needs to openly recognize that.
> Like women who have abortions? Gay people? Trans people? Liberals? Communists?
Yes. The right are quite ready to entirely ignore pretty much all of that if you're in agreement with them on whatever other issue is currently at hand. Plenty of women on the right have had abortions. Some fairly prominent gay figures would be Dave Rubin and Milo Yiannopoulos. I don't think Blair White needs much introduction either. Ben Shapiro is quite clearly Jewish and regularly reposted by the same kind of guys that were chanting "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville. The right are practical beyond the point of hypocrisy when it comes to the topic of the moment.
> I'm not against flexibility, but IMO the left is far too forgiving, and needs to be much more aggressive. the Trump right is a fascist party, and the left needs to openly recognize that.
The left needs to be aggressive in the right way. The right are extremely effective at being extremely hateful while also guiding relatively normal, if sometimes problematic, people down a path that takes them much farther right. From what I've seen, leftists doing the same work to reach out to the uninformed and apathetic are often attacked for a perceived lack ideological purity. I've not seen that kind of behaviour from the right and I think it plays a big part in pushing people away.
Besides, elements of the left are already aggressive, in the wrong way. Personally I think allowing race to supplant class as the primary talking point has been a huge mistake. You essentially alienate a great many people who would otherwise share a common interest by allowing the issue to be morphed into a blame game with fingers pointed across racial lines.
>Besides, elements of the left are already aggressive, in the wrong way. Personally I think allowing race to supplant class as the primary talking point has been a huge mistake. You essentially alienate a great many people who would otherwise share a common interest by allowing the issue to be morphed into a blame game with fingers pointed across racial lines.
Why is it race instead of class and not race AND class?
Also, who has been canceled inappropriately? In fact, who has even suffered significant consequences for being cancelled? My impression is that it's a band of rapists who become right wing celebrities and get book deals.
I think the people being pushed right are:
1. Generally already on the right
2. If they are pushed, it's by the internal contradictions on the left. And those internal contradictions are caused by a wavering of conviction, not an excess
> Why is it race instead of class and not race AND class?
It's not race and class because race has eclipsed class in the public discourse. I don't know why that is but if I was being cynical I'd say it's to sow division and limit effectiveness.
On And vs Or, there's limited space in public discourse. Introducing additional issues necessitates that space being divided into smaller chunks. Grouping the issues also only serves to narrow your potential support. That's not to say certain issues can't/shouldn't be grouped.
Personally I believe that a focus on class would be more effective in dealing with the harms of systemic racism than the current approach focused on race. While also taking a lot of steam out of the right's rhetoric.
I honestly only see harm in the current approach where upper middle class white people tell some guy living in a trailer, paycheck to paycheck, that he has white privilege and that's why he should be paying reparations and passed over for a job.
> Also, who has been canceled inappropriately?
I'm not talking about people being cancelled, I'm talking about how we engage with people who are either politically apathetic or exploring a leftist perspective for the first time.
> 1. Generally already on the right
There seems to be this insular view that we should only engage with people that already fully agree with us and it often results in attacking people that might have problematic views that they would otherwise have become open to examining. I've seen a lot of younger people who don't necessarily have fully formed opinions pushed away in this way. The same applies for people who are generally apathetic and maybe examining their opinions for the first time.
> 2. If they are pushed, it's by the internal contradictions on the left. And those internal contradictions are caused by a wavering of conviction, not an excess
Hard disagree. The demand for ideological purity is the biggest factor that pushes people who haven't quite made up their mind or don't fully engage to the right. We literally saw this play out with the atheism movement in the early 2010s.
We will have to agree to disagree. I predict that if the left becomes more aggressive they will win more elections. No one is going to vote for wimpy liberals, whose hearts no longer beat
Perhaps, although I'd stil be interested in hearing why you think that is. I can't think of any examples of people moving right because the left was too nice.
My observation has been that orthodoxy and too many causes has alienated a lot of people that were traditionally aligned with the left.
In the UK a recent example would be the collapse of the red wall. Constituencies that had been held by Labour for up to ~80 years flipped. A key factor was that the working class in the area felt that Labour was no longer interested in representing them, with the focus having shifted to social justice and right wing press latching onto this as an angle of attack.
I don't follow celebs enough to name names here but there are many democrat-leaning ones being cancelled. It's hard to cancel a dedicated conservative in a conservative environment, but a lib can be cancelled for anything, like saying the correct messages from six months ago.
And then there's everyone not in the news. All the women kicked out of breastfeeding or ovarian cancer groups for complaining that they allow men, etc.
> In fact, who has even suffered significant consequences for being cancelled?
Parents who question what their child's school is doing. The father who the school board worked with the FBI to label a terrorist because he shouted during a meeting where he was discussion the cover-up of the rape of his daughter at school.
> people being pushed right [by] the internal contradictions on the left. And those internal contradictions are caused by a wavering of conviction, not an excess
Contradictions are probably not caused by wavering beliefs but by inconsistent or hypocritical beliefs. Combine this with an excess of conviction and usual absolute unwillingness to discuss and you have alienating opinions.
But I don't think people are being pushed "right" as much as the liberal parties are being pushed to hard-left absolutist positions. "Capitalism bad. White people bad. Men are women." The people are staying roughly where they were and the parties are moving.
> If I'm going to be forgiven every time I discriminate, assault, and slander people
If that's too much, you could at least forgive the people who had nothing to do with the discrimination, assault and slander - which is something that Kendi doesn't seem to be able to do.
The forgiveness line is straight out of the Bible. If you were a domineering tyrant wouldn’t it be convenient if your population were obligated to forgive you? Sounds pretty docile
I always thought anti-racist meant “this will stop with me.” My understanding was that anti-racism meant, if you hear/see something racist, take a part in ending it. I think you can be anti-racist, and walk the fine line of being forgiving of unintentional missteps, while also helping people realize why what they did was wrong.
You would be cancelled for that view. The correct view is that people of good standing should only admit and hire from a few groups until there is parity. Extra points if you want overrepresentation, to compensate for past imbalances. Explicitly, you must accept the proposition that the son is not only to be blamed for the sins of the father, but also to be blamed for the sins of all who share similar ancestry. Individual behavior or innocence is irrelevant.
Too handwavy, the cure for discrimination is at the very minimum adequate public funding for primary and secondary education _everywhere_ (with adequate student to teacher ratios _everywhere_).
Although the discussion is at NYU this problem is not limited to the US. The issue with this and other societal problems is that state governance is operated in 4 year cycles (much like corporations now are restrained by the next quarter). Public education is something you invest in now to see a benefit of 25 years down the road. Until we collectively solve the incentives around long term policy all other aspects of addressing discrimination fall short.
> the cure for discrimination is at the very minimum adequate public funding for primary and secondary education _everywhere_
So how does increasing the funding of poor white students advance Kendi's "anti-racist" program, precisely?
Clearly there's no logical link between the two concepts of discrimination and government school funding, at best a historical one and where I live, government schools get way more funding per pupil ($10k more) than private school tuition. But that doesn't make the government schools good, as a rule.
> the cure for discrimination is at the very minimum adequate public funding for primary and secondary education _everywhere_ (with adequate student to teacher ratios
You know that when you're describing a policy with vague words like "adequate" you are actually giving yourself an escape hatch in case the policy fails?
"The policy was great, it's just that funding wasn't adequate".
Which makes your policy unfalsifiable and almost religious in nature.
"Adequate" is less vague than most other ways you could describe levels of funding though.
You can easily enough define a base set of requirements that all educational institutions need to be able to provide (independent of any proposed goal such as combating entrenched discrimination against particular minorities) and establish what the minimal funding necessary for that much is. And if after doing so, given a reasonable span of time of ensuring those requirements are met (let's say 10 years), there's still no measurable (relative) improvement in educational outcomes for those you're aiming to help, it's fair to say the theory is falsified - or at least, you've proven that adequate funding for all education institutions regardless of location or ethnic make-up of students isn't enough on its own. Which personally is the result I would expect to see, for various complex reasons - while I'm not a fan of policies that explicitly show favoritism to individuals based on ethnicity etc., I don't have a problem with accepting that it costs more to provide effective education to students from certain socio-economic backgrounds, and therefore there's an argument for allocating taxpayer funding accordingly (esp. in parts of the world, and it's certainly the case here in Australia, where even public schools rely on a percentage of their funding to come from the community/parents).
Ok I will bite, adequate budget means you can keep a 20 students to teacher ratio. And you have enough school supplies (for all students) in order for teachers to follow their programmes.
Thomas Sowell explains how insurgent movements generally have a more just vision for the world in their early stages, and become tyrannical after they seize power.
He gives the example of the vision laid out by MLK in the 1960s ("judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin"), and contrasts it with that of modern social justice types, and also compares Christianity when it was persecuted in the Roman Empire, to when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
You're saying the only way to end discrimination is for the victims to forgive the perpetrators? How would that work exactly?
IMO, the only way to move forward is to correct past wrongs by heavily investing in affected communities economically and afa education and health.
What Haidt is being asked to do here does none of these things and is purely for show.
The outcomes have been underwhelming because we (at least, the US) haven't actually been doing this, and we've just found new and arguably worse ways to maintain deeply racist policies.
If what you say is true, books like “how to be an antiracist” would include examples of these “arguably worse” mechanisms to maintain inequality. They don’t contain such examples. Indeed, a central premise of Kendi’s book is that affirmative measures are required because simply “not being racist” doesn’t work.
Nothing's changed. I think Kendi is an ideological grifter. It's frustrating to see "normie" anti-racism, of the "BLM lawn sign" variety, tainted by association with him.
I don’t think he’s a “grifter.” Kendi thought is just the logical combination of three mainstream progressive ideas:
1) (a) The history and experience of Black people in America is sui generis and (b) justifies responses that don’t need to be generalizable or measure up to ordinary standards of procedural fairness.
2) the “bootstraps”approach of Kendi’s parent’s generation has failed.
3) bureaucratic institutions operated by well meaning credentialed people can solve every problem.
Really, the only area where I substantively disagree with him is (3)—the white people in charge of bureaucratic institutions will inevitably use any special powers given to them to advance their own economic and cultural interests.
But how convincingly does he make that case? It seems to be that while we're obviously a long way from a truly race-blind world, someone belonging to a minority ethnic grouping has a much better chance of succeeding in most careers in the average Western country today than they would have 50 years ago. I struggle to believe that's largely due to the weird sort of "anti-racism" Kendi promotes.
I would like to point out that one of the important reasons South African didn't descend into a race war at the end of the apartheid was the formation of the Truth & Reconciliation Committee for precisely this reason: to forgive and reconcile.
> South Africa’s ruling party on Tuesday defended the singing of an apartheid-era song with the words “Kill the Boer” in a row that has raised fears of increasing racial polarisation.
> The African National Congress dismissed a ruling by a regional high court last week that uttering or publishing the words would amount to hate speech and violate the constitution put in place after the end of white minority rule.
> “These songs cannot be regarded as hate speech or unconstitutional,” ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe told a news conference. “Any judgment that describes them as such is impractical and unimplementable.”
> correct past wrongs by heavily investing in affected communities economically and afa education and health
Which should eventually lead to forgiveness, right?
The framework presented does not include forgiveness at all, the crimes are treated as unforgivable and atonement is eternal. Which clearly indicates that their goal is not to end discrimination.
Discrimination is but a small part of the otherization/dehumanization and subjugation disempowered groups are subjected to. To focus on discrimination without regard for the broader socioeconomic landscape different demographics find themselves in by luck of birth is to not see the forest for the trees.
Perhaps we should consider what crimes are treated by America as unforgivable as a way to establish common ground and then look at outliers from in groups and out groups for trends? There’s a lot of discussion here that is naive to how social work professionals routinely and successfully resolve these matters. I anticipate rich and colorful debate over the forgivability of rape, child abuse, and murder depending on the offenders demographics, assets, and associations.
Forgiveness is a process that victims undertake for themselves when they are out from the clutches of their abusers. Forgiveness is not a trophy for active offenders to carry as a spoil of their conquest, instead it a badge of shame they honor by being a better human than they were when they willingly harmed our caused others to be harmed tangibly or otherwise. Victims must be extraordinarily supported through their healing journey in any community truly invested in solving generational problems, which is not a process that can be scheduled or timed. Some people may never achieve this and accepting that is non negotiable if our goal is to heal. The offenders must work on themselves to, at minimum, become incapable of ever perpetrating these offenses again and be able to articulate the explicit details of their offenses while taking responsibility for their actions and making personal restitution to their direct and indirect victims. Only when both victim and perp have successfully achieved these ends can they be safely reunited. Those who are incapable or refuse to rehabilitate have no place in civil society, their status or demographics are irrelevant. This applies to gang banging murderers as it does to the architects and agents of slavery, the war on drugs/terrorism, or child abusers whether or not they hold status in their communities, etc.
Demanding forgiveness for ongoing abuses is laughable and shameful. No one is entitled to being forgiven for their wrongs, especially not if they keep doing the same horrible shit over and over and over again.
What's laughable is failing to recognize that regardless of your skin color and socioeconomic status, if you were born in the US, you are one of the most privileged people in the world.
Have you considered that blaming white folks for your all problems might be one of the main reasons those problems persist?
Indians, Latinos, Asians move to the US with no money to their name, work their assess off and achieve success. Do you think they are not being discriminated against?
Your "generational problems" are a minor nuisance compared to the struggles of the rest of the world. Maybe it's time to stop with the despicable victimhood and whining?
Heed my words, the biggest change to well-being of the black community will not come from the policies. It will come from within.
Ah the classic: it’s worse elsewhere so we don’t need to look in the mirror and be accountable for our actions; out of hand dismissal. Just because you’re not ready to look in the mirror does not give you the right to stop others. I hope you get there soon.
I’m not blaming white people as a monolith, but that seems to be what you want to interpret from my post. Telling. I’m blaming the people who made the choice to hurt others, see the bit above about without respect to one’s status, wealth ,or demographics. I meant that. All bad actors should be rehabilitated or imprisoned. Black white pink, gay straight trans or female, or Democrat. These things do not matter for the purposes of identifying bad actors.
Have you no capacity to emphasize with others? It seems you don’t. Minimization, and suggesting victims of state sponsored abuses should shut up and take it because America seems better than your cherry picked examples? Have a long face to face conversation with someone that repulses you just listen while they tell about their life. Imagine yourself in their shoes.
What qualifies you to make sweeping off the cuff assertions about all black Americans? Have you any similar assertions for gay Americans? Lesbian Americans? Trans Americans? Japanese Americans? Korean Americans? Irish Americans? Catholic Americans? Indigenous Americans? American communists/socialists/anarchists? I’d love to hear more of your hot takes on what these large and homogenous populations need to heal.
> suggesting victims of state sponsored abuses should shut up and take it
If that leads to a better outcome for them, why not? I don't believe they should live in poverty for the sake of achieving some weird intergenerational justice.
> What qualifies you to make sweeping off the cuff assertions about all black Americans?
Oh, but I'm actually not talking about all black Americans. Are you aware that the racism you talking about somehow evades Nigerian Americans, with their income being higher than national average, and poverty rate being lower (in fact being less than half that of African Americans)? Somehow they don't feel the same about police brutality.
Can you entertain the thought that this enforced victimhood mentality doesn't help black folks, but hurts them instead?
Why are you assuming that people will live in poverty if we address historical injustices? I’ve addressed this elsewhere but if that were to occur we would have failed at righting these wrongs and invest even more resources to correct this wrong if we had done it correctly the first time. Poverty in America is a governmental failure, and in some cases is intentional (racism is behind the intentional subjugation of these people, see the Nixon tapes as one example) or the result of bad governance and a political process corrupted by greedy people and those driven by hate or delusions to deny reality.
I don’t think you understand what rehabilitation entails, America, as a general rule, does not facilitate rehabilitation so it is outside our cultural knowledge. Generally speaking this rehabilitation in practice looks like restorative Justice. Punitive systems lead to worse societal outcomes. Undertaking a restorative Justice project for victims of American subjugation would require actions like paying restitution, expunging criminal records, drawing the architects and agents of these systems of repression under charges for their crimes, returning land stolen from indigenous peoples, etc.
This is not the gotcha you think it is, and if you’re going to refer to a small minority of a demographic you should name them so it doesn’t seem like you’re moving the goalposts when I take you at your words. Police brutality is not a subject up for debate, this term refers to police using force in excess of what they were trained to do. A severe problem in police departments across the country fostered by a toxic culture and poor oversight. What Nigerian or any Americans think about it is a pointless exercise. Either we hold violent criminals to account or we don’t. In America some violent criminals are excessively punished, others are not punished at all and instead celebrated for mercilessly assaulting the right people. These are systemic failures.
enforced victim hood mentality is a racist dog whistle and I’m not going to engage with you further if you can’t help but use hateful language. This article could be helpful in your understanding, however you will need to do the work of relating their examples to America and considering the adjustments to your outlook needed to drop the dog whistles and underlying prejudices.
> if that were to occur we would have failed at righting these wrongs and invest even more resources to correct this wrong
Essentially what you're saying is: if we try policy X and it doesn't work, we need to try even harder. Rinse and repeat.
This is a religious mindset.
You know perfectly well that most of your described actions will never happen. And that is exactly why you put them on your list: it protects you from the evidence that your policy doesn't work. When it fails, you can always claim that we didn't do enough.
> enforced victim hood mentality is a racist dog whistle
Back at you. Your messages reek of White Savior complex.
Repeatedly failing to solve a problem is not religious, it is perseverance. Trying the same over and over against is stupidity and insanity. You don’t seem to understand the fundamental reality that it is harder and more expensive to fix social problems than to do things fairly the first time. Half measures create more problems.
You’re ascribing motivations to me when you don’t understand the definitions of the words you use. I don’t want to make you feel bad, but you might be wise to look up some things before you speak about them.
White savior complex is used to describe people who try and solve problems for people they pity. I suspect you may treat empathy and sympathy as synonymsthey are not. I’m not trying to solve any problems for any groups I’m not part of. What I am is an ally who strives to understand the realities experienced by marginalized groups and I am willing to adjust my perspective toincorporate new (to me) information. I recognize that America only has democratic freedom for rich white men and that in order to make a freer society for all there need to be systemic changes and accountability for the consequences of this power structure must be had. By learning about the experiences of marginalized people I can incorporate their views into my mine and can in solidarity for the solutions these people demand.
> White savior complex is used to describe people who try and solve problems for people they pity.
> I’m not trying to solve any problems for any groups I’m not part of. What I am is an ally who strives to understand the realities experienced by marginalized groups and I am willing ...
A large part of the problem is calling it a racial problem. You're declaring yourself an ally to a racial group which means that the problem then has to be universal amongst your concept of that racial group. If a black person testifies that this isn't a universal race-based problem they aren't listened to (as tautological proof of their statement) but instead lambasted as having internalized white-supremacy or whatever.
Also, 'ally' is a pretentious term in this context. Ally generally means peers who support each other not a paternalistic protector but BLM showed that this isn't how it was being used in a social justice setting. There's a video from Portland during BLM of a black resident trying to talk to a black officer and a white Antifa runs between and starts shrieking at them because it would destroy the narrative if we could simply discuss our problems calmly.
It quickly starts to look like using marginalized people as props in a fight against your political enemies more than actually trying to help them.
You’re putting words in my mouth to use a non sequiter as your argument? Nowhere have I said all people party to all marginalized groups suffer the same amount of racism. There isan ever increasing body of unbiased research unequivocally proving that people who are not rich white cishet men face discrimination, abuse, neglect, poverty, untreated illness, housing insecurity, addiction, and various other preventable adverse experiences. Intentionality explores, in part, where these experiences intersect with demographics.
Understanding this key point is fundamental to understanding intersectionality, which you would know if you had read the link I shared earlier. I have extended generous benefit of the doubt to you regarding your arguments and assuming, despite ample contrary indicators, that you’re arguing in good faith. I think this comment chain serves to prove that you’re actively arguing in bad faith in violation of the site guidelines. I suggest you read those as well as the article I linked above up thread and reflect upon your words and actions while digesting the content therein.
Once again you’re using words that you do not understand. I don’t know where you’re hearing these terms used in the way you’ve used them but you would be wise to excise that source of propaganda from your life.
so one person got upset and acted poorly? I hope that they’ve learned from their mistakes because they do not represent anti fascism, blm, or me. Anti fascism means to be against fascism. Fascism is anti American so to be antifa is to be patriotic. My families elders did not kill fascists in wwii to see fascism brought to America by our own minority party. America can not be a democratic state and fascistic.
another non sequiter, and failure to understand me. I am trying to speak plainly for you but you need to do your part in trying to understand me. I actually want to help people, especially the marginalized and forgotten. I won’t bore you with the details or doxx myself but I think it suffices to say that I put considerable money and time where my mouth is.
> You’re putting words in my mouth to use a non sequiter as your argument?
I'm quoting you. You wrote those two sentences.
> Once again you’re using words that you do not understand. [Posts link to definition of 'Ally']
That definition is clearly aspirational.
> so one person got upset and acted poorly?
A lot more than one. And when they returned to their group nobody took issue with it. Look at riot footage, a majority of the people burning down black neighborhoods were whites carrying BLM-supporting signs.
> Anti fascism means to be against fascism.
Apparently anti-fascist just means fascist. I'm sure there's an aspirational definition somewhere that says otherwise but actions speak more loudly than words.
> Fascism is anti American so to be antifa is to be patriotic.
Antifa beats people in the street for their political views. That's very un-American! There was literally a USA communist party during the cold war, but there was no USA party in the USSR.
> My families elders did not kill fascists in wwii to see fascism brought to America by our own minority party.
Surprise, it's being brought by the majority party!
> There isan ever increasing body of unbiased research unequivocally proving ...
The article we're discussing is literally about how the institutions sanctioning the research are biased and only accepting research that purports, in its very setup, to support DEI. What we see is an echo chamber where people are expected to agree with those statements.
> I am trying to speak plainly for you but you need to do your part in trying to understand me. I actually want to help people, especially the marginalized and forgotten
This is what I used your quote to show, the type of allyship you are practicing defines problems as being based on intersections such as race, and how that turns into attacks on anyone who disagrees. (Even where that outcome is absurd, such as white people lecturing black people about blackness.)
I have seen Thomas Sowell and Candace Owens being racially attacked, by supposed anti-racist allies, simply because they did not subscribe to the narrative you use. I've seen Antifa members beat unarmed people and claim to be patriots. Behavior speaks louder than words.
After decades/centuries of abuse, how does "forgiveness" fix systemic issues? Forgiveness can't fix the fact that black Americans were denied access to loans, houses, GI Bill provisions, and all sorts of opportunities that were the primary source of household wealth gains for the last 75 years. It can't fix the fact that those gains mean white people have, on average, more access to "a small loan" from a family member to start a business, a house or inheritance to fall back on if their take a risk starting a business and it doesn't pan out, and so on.
Your point stands, but population dynamics over the last 75 years complicate matters. There are as many immigrants in the United States today (not even counting children of immigrants) as there are Black Americans – immigrants who of course did not have access to GI Bill provisions, etc. How do they fit into the picture?
Part of a functioning, healthy system is recompense/justice, and yes foregiveness.
If you tear a system down, even if you manage to shift some power balance, you stand to create a situation as bad or worse than the one you began with.
Unless a core value of the system you seek to create is forgiveness, you only stand to substitute one systemic opression for another.
Put in terms perhaps you might understand, african americans, hispanics are not forgiven their crimes, where often those with wealth and influence or socially favorable bias are (often) foregiven.
Adding more henious lanaguage, attitude to the mix does not help, when it can be redirected at those still in a position of relative powerlessness.
Some specific crimes should be punished harder (rapists especially in college and positions of power should immediately be punished and severely), at the same time where we are willing to dole out forgiveness, that should be equally given.
>The idea that the only cure for discrimination is discrimination is akin to saying the only cure for violence is violence. It’s abject insanity that such a notion is being advanced in society.
Absolutely not. The idea that any of this is fixable with 'forgiveness' is far more insane. You can't undo hundreds of years of systematic disenfranchisement and subjugation with forgiveness - you have to discriminate in the opposite direction.
To quote LBJ, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." That's what Kendi is saying, and he's completely right.
> You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair."
It's not fair. Neither is discriminating in the other direction because these people are not at fault for what their ancestors did, not to mention that affirmative action policies divide people along racial lines rather than the factor more relevant to today, class lines.
Ask yourself whether a black student with wealthy parents should benefit from preferential admissions to colleges over a white student from a poor background.
Similarly when immigrant minorities gravitate to particular localities for their shared culture and background, this is a wonderful example of diversity.
When white people do this, its called white flight and is akin to nazism.
> To quote LBJ, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." That's what Kendi is saying, and he's completely right.
My problem with this quote is it intentionally ignores the plight of anyone who has nothing and isn't African American. Kendi's approach is an inherently selfish one and that's what makes it so polarising.
The answer to the societal issue of wealth disparity is not to give the poor of one racial group an advantage over the poor of another. It's to actually address the source of the problem in a manner agnostic to race. Doing anything else only serves to stoke division and racism.
Where Kendi and I (appear to, I haven't read his book) disagree is the idea that your antiracist policies must be _explicitly_ discriminatory to work. You can implement universal social goods like "everyone gets housing and health care" which in practice give far more to black people (because on average they're starting further back) but which apply to everyone and get the right outcome.
Certainly I wouldn't argue for a second that we should implement policies that ignore or exclude poor white people.
if you care more about what happened hundreds of years ago (racism against group A) than what is happening now (racism against group B). you are part of the problem!
I never understand the American way to fix these issue. They do have good intention, we can see that, but somehow the perspective of how they see the problem is distorted, which let to distorted answer. I think many of us can see it, but can't say it aloud.
Unless we see others as friends — that everyone is flawed human being, including yourself, that share this same world, and one day have to left this world altogether sooner or later, then I don't see how this problem will genuinely get fixed.
What they did instead is amped up individualistic ego and make the divide even more...divide.
> The cure for discrimination is forgiveness. The cure for violence is forgiveness. The cure for hatred is forgiveness.
> The only way anything stops is for people to have the humility and wisdom to say “this will stop with me.”
This is how I used to think. It’s reminiscent of the thinking of the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, John Lennon, and countless others who have had noble idealism which sadly isn’t congruous with reality. Here is a quote which demonstrates the logical endpoint of this idea:
> Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.....It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.[1]
That is the logical conclusion of this idea, take your own life in hopes you’ll posthumously be considered worthy of having been spared, and worthy of having anyone intervene to spare you. Because unilaterally, arbitrarily deciding to forgive a transgressor who’s still motivated by their transgression grants permission and submission to their goal.
There is historical precedent for a similar notion being more realistic and effective: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. But what makes it more realistic and more effective is that there was significant, forceful pressure which motivated the transgressors to seek mutual reconciliation. To some extent, they were also willing participants.
Personal anecdote time: like probably many here, I was bullied as a kid. It was a shockingly regular occurrence for me to be violently attacked, sometimes even by people I don’t think I’d ever interacted with before they were beating me. I had a timid and peaceful demeanor even when some of my family strongly encouraged me to defend myself. Eventually this led to a group of ~20 kids kicking me on the ground while I covered my head and neck and hoped to make it out alive. I was 13-14 years old, I had endured beatings on a lesser scale too many times to count. Of course I knew I couldn’t defend myself from 20 kids, so I took another beating. But the next time I got jumped, by one kid, I punched him straight in the face. I didn’t even know I had it in me to do, but instinct took over. Then I got up, saw the kid who attacked me was embarrassed but physically okay, and I walked away. That was the last time anyone ever laid hands on me outside a sporting context with established consent. Now I can forgive those kids, because they’ve stopped beating me.
I don't mean to pick on your personal story, but it would only be relevant if you found your bullies 60 years later, punched them in the face, and that somehow fixed your broken character.
In the real world, your bullies are no longer the same people, and punching them 60 years later won't address your past or future problems.
Huh? Actual discrimination and hate and violence are also active and ongoing. That was my point. You can’t forgive someone for transgressions they’re determined to continue. I can forgive people for something that happened to me 25 years ago because it’s in the past. That’s the relevance of my story. I can’t forgive people who are going to do the same to me tomorrow. And no one forgiving them while they still pursue that aggression is going to “end” anything other than their own dignity or their own lives.
> You can’t forgive someone for transgressions they’re determined to continue
My understanding is that hate and violence in the last few decades have been steadily declining. At the same time, self-reported perception of those has been increasing since ~2014.
Maybe there's eluding racism we can all feel but cannot measure.
Or maybe a side effect of changes to social network recommendation algorithms is that we're now building echo chambers and polarizing people.
Today there's less hate, but more talk about it. And drastic measures aimed to decrease it have a high likelihood of changing the trend.
When white people have kids, they have to give their children the birds and the bees talk when they reach an appropriate age.
When black people have kids, they have to give them the same talk, and also the one where you need to be really careful about acting a specific way around cops lest they unalive you because police officers view blacks as more aggressive than whites because of prejudice.
As long as my kids have to live in a world where they need to be given that second talk? I don't care about how put-upon you are by people actively reacting against racism.
Hmm, while I was an exchange student in the US, I got that exact speach house from a friend's father ("hands on the wheel unless asked to do otherwise, stay friendly, no sudden moves"). However, I was very white (a geek who didn't get out much) and he was a white Mormon. That was in 1997 and since my friend had obviously heard that speech many times before, I just assumed that's what all kids are taught over there...
Did he tell you about how you shouldn't act suspicious when you walk into a convenience store lest the employees stalk you? Did he warn you that attempting to sell a house in this country will automatically result in a lower sale price from your own agent than if you were white? There are literally hundreds of these examples.
> shouldn't act suspicious when you walk into a convenience store lest the employees stalk you
I understand it's tempting to blame it on racism, but please go talk to non-white store owners. They do the same thing, it's not about the race.
You have to pick which battle you're going to fight.
Either racism today is the major problem. Or there's racism in the past that lead to poverty in the present. Those are two different lenses dictating two different strategies.
You can choose to feel righteous and fight ever-elusive racism.
Or you can chose to be pragmatic and fight poverty.
Being righteous is definitely more pleasant and convincing to the masses, but it rarely produces better results than being pragmatic.
How would you know it's not a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Have you considered that giving the talk and installing the idea that "cops are your enemy" might cause your kids to run away or resist the police, thus unnecessarily escalating what could be a perfectly civil interaction?
Because people aren't pulling themselves over and and shooting themselves. They aren't invading their own homes and shooting themselves. They aren't kneeling on their own chests and asphyxiating themselves. And the simple fact of the matter is that this is a RESPONSE to how cops have treated minorities for generations. Pretending that educating children on how to act around people who have a preconception that the color of your skin causes you to be a threat is racist gaslighting.
There's a speed trap in Louisiana that I passed through for over 30 years. I've never seen a white person behind the wheel of a car with a police car nearby unless it was a traffic accident, I've seen tons of white motorists pass through the area far above the speed limit, and the community is 60% white. Meanwhile, I saw black folks pulled over literally every day. Please whitesplain to me how being wary of the cops in that stretch is the fault of black folks.
> Because people aren't pulling themselves over and and shooting themselves. They aren't invading their own homes and shooting themselves. They aren't kneeling on their own chests and asphyxiating themselves
Are you aware that for every example you brought up (Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd) there's a recent example of the exact same thing happening to a white person and getting no national attention whatsoever?
Your cherry-picking and emotional response is what leads to polarization in society.
> how cops have treated minorities for generations
Representation is a significant goal post move past equality of opportunity. Typically what is meant is that unequal representation is evidence of discrimination. Academia has bent over backwards for a long time now to attempt to admit people of all groups. Blaming academia's admission and hiring processes for the numbers not being the way representationalists would prefer completely ignores the practices of decades.
My understand for how we measure systemic racism issues seems to typically be predicated on assumed outcomes. For example that if the distribution of employees race does not match the general population then there must be a systemic cause for this.
What I don’t understand is why that is assumed true. If we want to encourage many different cultures to live together wouldn’t it naturally make sense that different cultures would have different outcomes in job preferences? How do you separate potential racism from cultural differences?
My fear is if there are strong cultural differences that lead to disparate racial outcomes so organizations will always be able to point out that systemic issues exist even when they may be eradicated. I don’t know how we measure this.
> How do you separate potential racism from cultural differences?
By conducting studies where you study the effect of the race variable. This has been done many times over in multiple countries and the results have shown that colored people and racial minorities are discriminated against. But despite the vast amount of empirical data, people still refuse to believe that racial discrimination is a factor in the job market.
Well, your examples seem pretty cherry-picked and not necessarily generally empirical (ie. lots of embedded subjectivity).
Now your first link is more interesting and is usually the one that everyone pulls out as "absolute proof" that discrimination is live and well in modern hiring against Black people.
I wonder, though, how much of this is in the bias of the experimenters when they selected "Black sounding names" and how much is just unfamiliarity with an "unusual" (and by this I mean rare) name and how much is the knee-jerk reaction to a name (basically real prejudice).
For example the actual most common names for Black children in the US are – Jacob, Emma, Michael, Ava, William, Emily, etc. And I suspect they are not choosing those names on purpose.
On the other hand, my ex's sister named their son "Air Jordan" (for his first name) and their daughter Cinnamon for her first name. And I personally have great uncles with the real first names of "Snapbean" and "Squawk" (I am not joking).
None of these people are Black, but how do you imagine their resumes are accepted at large (or small) companies?
So I am wondering how much is prejudice against the person and how much is prejudice against the name?
I'm genuinely missing your point. It sou d like you're insinuating that the lack of a "normal" name is a good reason to disqualify someone from a job opportunity. That possibly implies that the resume screen uses someone's name as a discriminating factor and I don't think that it should be.
Why is it your choice to make? When you hire someone, you're hiring everything they bring to the table. You might be wrong in your interpretation, but it's what you've got. So perhaps you find names beyond the pale, but why not dress codes too? Names and many other characteristics involve human choices well beyond genetics.
You do realize that the orchestras used to hire blind, that is, the audition was done with the musician hidden behind a curtain and all other factors withheld, so that the only factor that was perceivable was the sound of the music from the musician, in an effort to remove bias. And New York Times in the last year or two had an editorial decrying this as unfair, because it didn't give the correct outcome of reducing underrepresentation. The DIE crowd does not want fairness and equality of opportunity; they want equality of outcome. They want diversity hires, not hires of the maximally strong candidates.
> The DIE crowd does not want fairness and equality of opportunity; they want equality of outcome
I always find it weird that people see this is a bad thing. Equality of outcome is equity. Extra time for people with learning disabilities is equity, ada regulations is equity, hearing aids, glasses, booster seats, handicaps in golf and chess, giving bus seats to the elderly are all equity. Equity is the thing we naturally strive for in basically all aspects of life. Provide aid when we can, receive aid when needed.
> They want diversity hires, not hires of the maximally strong candidates.
That's not what affirmative action is, it's recognizing both the systematic and individual disadvantages that someone experienced and, potentially, depending on what they are, realizing that they have more potential than meets the eye. It's like basing hiring decisions entirely on leetcode challenges and putting on your blinders on not realizing that the people who have the time to waste on leetcode is a skewed sample of the population.
Who is the more impressive student? Alice who had a stable suburban comfortable upbringing and went to prestigious private high school and got a 34 on her ACT, or Bob who grew up with a single father, went to a public high school in an high needs district, had to work a part time job after school and babysit his little brother every day before his dad got home and got a 29?
The above is an example of an individual disadvantage, now apply that same logic to systematic disadvantages.
> Who is the more impressive student? Alice who had a stable suburban comfortable upbringing and went to prestigious private high school and got a 34 on her ACT, or Bob who grew up with a single father, went to a public high school in an high needs district, had to work a part time job after school and babysit his little brother every day before his dad got home and got a 29?
The kid with the higher score is a more impressive student. But there might certainly be a justification for giving the kid who had a tougher road to get there a leg up.
But that’s different from what we’re doing, where we apply racist assumptions and treat certain minorities as if they’re all from single parent homes, regardless of whether that’s true for the individual.
> treat certain minorities as if they’re all from single parent homes
That’s not what you should have taken from that example at all, which is specifically why I used two white coded names. The point is that people grok individual disadvantages easily and giving them a leg up feels natural, and the same reasoning should be applied to systematic disadvantages.
> regardless of whether that’s true for the individual.
What you’re describing is looking at privilege through the lense of intersectionality, which nobody disagrees with.
Cough. Intersectionality assumes that people's problems are the problems of their identities, and that their identities are the ones visible to others. Black, short, etc.
Identity politics seems purpose-built by "allies" to explain why the allies don't actually listen to the people they're helping.
For instance, Thomas Sowell isn't treated as an individual who disagrees with BLM's policies instead he's declared to be a defective or traitorous black man who isn't part of the real black people group.
Intersectionality also reframes all minority politics in terms of a framework defined by white people according to white people’s political priorities. It creates a framework where you “center POC” voices—but only if they agree with white people. To further your example, Justice Clarence Thomas is treated as unrepresentative of Black people even when his views are typical of a southern Black man. About half the Black people in his home state of Georgia oppose abortion, and Black people nationwide have similar views on same-sex marriage as Republicans. When Justice Thomas votes to overturn racial preferences in college admissions, he’ll be attacked as a tool of white supremacy—even though most Black people also oppose using race as a factor in admissions and jobs.
By contrast, progressive POC are always presented as representative of their race even when they’re not. Ilhan Omar is held up as the face of Islam in America. But there’s way more Trump voting Muslims than ones who are as far left as Omar.
> That’s not what you should have taken from that example at all, which is specifically why I used two white coded names
What’s a “white coded name?” Most Black people have names similar to other Americans. E.g. here are the top names by ethnicity for babies in NYC in 2013: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/baby-names-.... The top 3 Black baby names are Ethan, Jayden, and Aiden. Playgrounds in Park Slope are full of kids with those names.
Yes, but he’s applying the inverse here: asking me to assume that a non-Black coded name doesn’t refer to a Black person. That rests on the stereotype that most Black people have Black-coded names.
As someone who belongs to a Muslim family living in this country since the 1920s, I for once have to drop my jaw, side with rayiner and point out that you’re being the tendentious one (many such names like Jamal are in fact held by “whites” and non Blacks too)
If equity was our standard we wouldn't give eyeglasses to anyone because blind people can't see at all.
Instead we strive for equality, where everyone is able to use the best devices they or their insurance can provide regardless of others. I can get glasses to restore my vision to 25/20 even if yours never was 20/20.
> That's not what affirmative action is, it's recognizing both the systematic and individual disadvantages
Affirmative action doesn't treat people as individuals. It's specifically about using people's visible identities (whether or not they do!) to determine how they're treated. Under affirmative action a rich black man would get a job before a poor white man and it would be defended by its supporters as undoing systematic obstacles even if the recipient never encountered those obstacles themselves.
> people who have the time to waste on leetcode
Why do we hate people who teach themselves a skill? Why is it literally considered a negative these days?
> a skewed sample of the population
They're individuals, not population samples.
> Who is the more impressive student
If I was running a scholarship this would be the criteria because it would indicate who would get the most out of the resources. If I'm hiring them to fit a defined role I only care about their current skills, not where they started.
Yes, you are missing my point. I am not insinuating anything, I am stating directly that some people might be biased against unusual (to them) names. Names that are difficult to say, spell, etc. depending on the language, or just out-right stereotypical prejudice with a name (which is what these studies just assume). I am not saying that any of this is ok, people rarely get to pick their names. What I am saying is that it might not all be based on the color of people's skin.
Reducing racial bias to solely and precisely "skin color", and not the cultural biases that come with it is itself missing the point.
Begin biased against Black skin is a problem (and is the important bit in some instances). Being biased against "Black" names is also a problem, even if you can devise situations where the name is attached to a person who doesn't have Black skin. And both are racism, because they are directed at people based on the assumption that they are in a particular ethnic group, even if that assumption is wrong.
> Being biased against "Black" names is also a problem, even if you can devise situations where the name is attached to a person who doesn't have Black skin. And both are racism, because they are directed at people based on the assumption that they are in a particular ethnic group, even if that assumption is wrong.
You assume a racist motive in your scenario, but what if the bias is actually towards all unfamiliar names, only some of which are black names?
The specter of racism is so great that people are expected to be free from every potential bias because it could be race-equity related somewhere.
"I'm not biased only against Black people, I'm actually biased against anything that is sufficiently non-white" (in this context, since we're talking about a study of conventionally WASP-y vs. black names) is not the slam dunk you think it is. And it's still racist.
> You assume a racist motive in your scenario
No, I don't assume any motive whatsoever. I'm talking only about actions.
I read the above as a way of saying that names may not necessarily be a good proxy for race specifically. Not as a comment on whether discrimination based on names is right or wrong.
You are of course entirely right that it shouldn’t matter in the decision process, unless the job at hand is “person named John”. But a point to raise is that this holds for positive discrimination as well, if the goal is to increase the number of X minority employees, then you cant optimize for that by selecting for X-sounding names if that’s a bad proxy.
I'm not sure it matters, in the sense that both feel like an example of "systemic" racism (as referred to above). It may not be the recruiter/interviewer's intention to be prejudiced, but it is the outcome of the system.
Well, I purposely pointed out the first link. Regarding the others, I think there are deeper historical, social, and religious issues that go beyond the racial problems in the US and I don't have any type of deeper insight on those.
People love to cite this study as an example of absolute proof of discrimination, but it isn't. There is an obvious rational non-racist explanation for the outcome in question, and it is affirmative action.
A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level, as a consequence of affirmative action policies. The filters they had to pass through are different, and therefore an Asian person who went to Harvard almost certainly is in the top 1% of the absolute test score distribution, whereas the same is not necessarily true for the others.
Since job performance is correlated with absolute capability, and not group-relative capability, discrimination on the basis of race is rational in a society that employs affirmative action policies at prior points in the credentialism pipeline. Correcting and controlling for this would only be possible by designing resumes that don't reference achievements that have group-relative thresholds.
That's a fair response, so I suppose I should add the asterisk: Conditional on a belief that test scores are correlated with ability level. However, this belief is rather common, and I wouldn't say that it is an intrinsically racist belief.
> There is an obvious rational non-racist explanation for the outcome in question
> A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level
I have. They do not refer to the capability of the groups, only their present level. It's entirely consistent with what I said that the current differences between the groups are a consequence of historical racism and inequity.
That doesn't change the fact that the absolute level of current ability implied by the same credential differs between groups, when the credential is conferred via affirmative action.
Take a moment to wonder at the implication of your observation. Why do you assume, if three people all went to the same university and had the same credentials, that one of those people is almost certainly at the top 1% of absolute test scores because of their race? Perhaps you may be experiencing subconscious biases without even realizing it?
Based on your other comment, you would claim "Affirmative Action" is why you think this. But it is important to realize that by making this assumption at all you are expressing biased judgements on these three humans entirely based upon their race.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Affirmative action policies mechanically have this consequence. Asians have the highest test scores (among the racial groupings commonly used for AA policies), and affirmative action policies effectively z-score test scores by racial group for the purpose of admittance. The effect I described is a mechanical consequence of these two facts, it doesn't require any further assumption.
Let me try again. You receive three resumes for a job application, for three humans of three different races. They have the exact same credentials. You immediately assume one of the three is the brightest of them, because your understanding of Affirmative Action Policies says this particular race has the highest likelihood of having higher overall test scores.
One of the other two could have had the highest possible score of all time, but you have written them off by making an assumption about them, based on race. You have made a judgement based on statistical inference, when you should have treated them all equally.
You may not intend it in any ill-meaning way, but it is important to realize that minor assumptions like this are pervasive, and they have far-reaching effects.
> You immediately assume one of the three is the brightest of them, because your understanding of Affirmative Action Policies says this particular race has the highest likelihood of having higher overall test scores.
I think it's important to distinguish between probabilities and possibilities. It is possible that any of them has the highest score. However, it is most likely that the Asian does.
Let me articulate this phenomenon in a more neutral example. Suppose you start an elite academy for the game Go. All of the best Go players in the world come from places like South Korea, China, etc, who have a long history of playing the game. However, you would like to increase the appeal of the game internationally, so you institute an affirmative action policy that says 50% of your students must come from non-asian countries.
Let's say you have 100 slots to fill each year, and you operationalize your affirmative action policy as follows: You take all the asian applicants, rank them by ability, and take the top 50. You take all the non-asian applicants, rank them by ability and take the top 50.
It should be obvious that, in this example, the average absolute ability level of the two groups will be quite different. The incoming Asian group would crush the non-Asian group in competition. This isn't due to any innate racial capacity gap, but due to the historical and cultural relationship to the game of Go.
Now, you educate each group together for say, 4 years. That education process may homogenize ability a little bit - helping the lower performers improve more than the higher performers (though the opposite may also be true), but it's probably not sufficient to close the rather large incoming skill gap.
Now, if you were watching a match, and the only things you knew about the two competitors were that they both attended your elite academy, and one was from South Korea, and the other was from California, who would you bet on to win?
It's entirely possible that the Californian is better! It's just less likely, given no additional information. Critically, this isn't an argument against the affirmative action policy. The AA policy is doing just what it should do - helping to close the skill gap. But it does means that statistical reasoning about racism has to be sensitive to this confounding variable if it wants to make truly accurate inferences.
This is a good example, and I appreciate you trying to explain it further. But I think we are a bit like two ships passing in the night here. As I interpret it, you are trying to explain the effect of affirmative action on the likelihood that someone from a particular background is more likely to be skilled or not. I totally understand that this is an effect of AA, and that neither of us are arguing about the merits of AA.
However, the point that I am trying to make is that we, as a society, should be trying to ignore these obvious statistical likelihoods when we are choosing a candidate. Those statistical likelihoods have nothing to do with the candidate themselves. If we make these kinds of interpretations, we are no longer judging a candidate based on who they are, but rather who we think they might be. And who am I to make that judgement? I'm nobody special. That's all I'm trying to say, really.
EDIT Someone else in the thread brought up the idea of why there is AA for school, but not for the workplace as in my argument. It's kind of a different topic, but I think it's a good counterargument about the complexity of this. I don't really have a good answer, to be honest, but it will be on my mind for awhile now.
> However, the point that I am trying to make is that we, as a society, should be trying to ignore these obvious statistical likelihoods when we are choosing a candidate. Those statistical likelihoods have nothing to do with the candidate themselves. If we make these kinds of interpretations, we are no longer judging a candidate based on who they are, but rather who we think they might be. And who am I to make that judgement? I'm nobody special. That's all I'm trying to say, really.
Ah, ok I see. I didn't understand your point then. I think we at least kind of agree on that point. What I was trying to say is that, I don't think that it's accurate to characterize the resume study as proving racism or racial discrimination, given the bias induced by AA. At least, providing they are not going further than correcting for that bias.
I do agree with you that in an ideal world, people would try to avoid factoring that in. But, it is important to keep in mind I think that hiring decisions are often extremely consequential for the people that make them (in a way that university admissions are not), and as a consequence, asking the decision makers there to intentionally ignore pertinent information is almost always going to be a losing proposition.
I think, even if people are correcting a bit for this bias in the hiring pipeline, AA is still providing considerable value to historically disadvantaged candidates, by helping them get access to alumni networks, and presumably a higher quality education and hopefully that will be sufficient to close the remaining skill gaps over time.
> However, the point that I am trying to make is that we, as a society, should be trying to ignore these obvious statistical likelihoods when we are choosing a candidate.
The truth is one. If you lie to other people and demand they lie to you it affects your entire model of the world. If there are facts about the world that you would prefer not to acknowledge they are linked to other facts. Lying consistently requires enormous effort.
I think what GP said was logical. Imagine Harvard has 3 entrance criteria, and the criteria a student receives depends on the first letter of their first name:
* A name: must be in top 1% of test scores
* B name: must be in top 5% of test scores
* C name: must be in top 10% of test scores
The following 3 students are admitted:
* Allison (is in top 1%)
* Brian (is in top 4%)
* Caitlin (is in top 1%)
We can only safely assume that Allison is in the top 1% because her criteria certifies it. Even though Caitlin in actuality is in the top 1%, because her entrance criteria is more lax, we are not sure.
I think this is one downside of affirmative action, people are unsure if a person passes based on affirmative action or purely on merit. Now we consider the upsides and downsides of affirmative action, and decide whether it should be implemented.
Yes, I understand that affirmative action can have this consequence. I am not arguing for or against affirmative action. I am pointing out that it should not matter whether someone has an A, B, or C name when applications are being triaged. Because Allison, Brian and Caitlin all have the same credentials, they should be viewed as equally likely candidates.
Making assumptions about them based on probabilities is exactly the problem here, and it is one that we can easily avoid.
This is obviously the golden standard we are trying to achieve, but how do we get there? It's theoretically impossible to treat everyone equally and apply affirmative action at the same time. I understand there is a difference between equality and equity, but I'm replying to the words you wrote.
Affirmative action may be the best solution we currently have to deal with systemic racism, but ultimately it's trying to fix prejudice with prejudice - and that is not a perfect solution. It also creates a lot of confusion because sometimes we say to treat people equally (as you say when trying to decide between hiring candidates), and other times we say we should help out the disenfranchised (such as when admitting students to schools). So where do we draw the line for when we want equality versus equity?
It is actually pretty simple (in this example anyway). If three candidates come to you with the same credentials, then do not assume one of them is the best candidate based on your interpretation of their background. You have to treat them all as equally likely candidates - interview all three. It is more work for you, but the effort is worth it, because it helps prevent the effect of possible biases.
Sure, I understand in that example what to do. But as a society, where do we draw the line? Why is it okay to apply affirmative action for selecting students but not okay when accepting employees (continuing the example from this thread)? Since we're trying to fix a systemic issue, we need a consistent response across society for it to be most effective.
My point is this is a complicated problem with no perfect solution, and people will correctly point out flaws with it both theoretically and (more relevant for this discussion) how we implement it.
This is a really good point, and I appreciate you bringing it up. What I am saying directly conflicts with affirmative action itself, so in effect I am arguing against it. I don't really have a good answer to that. Thanks for pointing it out, I guess I'll ponder that for awhile.
It is perhaps worth mentioning that this is actually only a means for potentially learning what is going on, and that it can also lead one into a state of confident confusion/misunderstanding.
Study results may only suggest something, which can often have the appearance of showing it.
IQ is a deeply questionable metric to start with (I have yet to see good evidence IQ tests measure anything more than "how good at IQ tests you are", and as a child I obsessed over them and got very good at them by learning how to approach them, which means it very much isn't measuring something innate), tests are often (and in the case of the historic ones actually cited in the "evidence", all) culturally biased, and the supposed evidence for IQ differences is deeply flawed. (The famous example of "The Bell Curve" citing absurd things like tests in English referencing British culture being given to people who didn't even speak English properly and had never been to Britain as accurate IQ tests).
> It's clearly because of some more innate qualities measured by IQ.
This is an absurd statement, because even if the IQ differences exist, you are jumping to a conclusion here: that difference in IQ is innate, and not a result of racism or other external factors, with your only justification being:
> And the differences appear before school age, so it's hardly any opportunity for racism to cause it.
One of the biggest factors for childhood success is how much time your parents spend with you when you are young. If historic racism means your family is poorer, it likely means your parents can spend less time with you. Just one example of many of how this argument just doesn't hold water.
> I have yet to see good evidence IQ tests measure anything more than "how good at IQ tests you are",
See, for example, Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. (2004). General Mental Ability in the World of Work: Occupational Attainment and Job Performance, cited 1600+ times:
> The psychological construct of general mental ability (GMA), introduced by C. Spearman (1904) nearly 100 years ago, has enjoyed a resurgence of interest and attention in recent decades. This article presents the research evidence that GMA predicts both occupational level attained and performance within one’s chosen occupation and does so better than any other ability, trait, or disposition and better than job experience. The sizes of these relationships with GMA are also larger than most found in psychological research.
One main reason why you might not have seen this is that you didn't go out of your way to find it, and the mainstream publications systematically hide, distort, and often blatantly lie about the existing evidence.
I thought IQ was correlated quite well with the idea of "Spearman's G", and unless people actually use something else on a massive scale over decades I'm not sure how you can avoid using it as a metric.
The military still uses it because it is highly predictive. They also have a hard cutoff at the bottom which wasn’t always the case (see McNamara’s Folly for the history of when the army accepted literally retarded people - it didn’t end well). We also see a very strong correlation between eg IQ and occupation.
The U.S. marine corp promoted its first black 4 star general this year. I don’t think it’s the shining example of a race-blind institution, at least as far as leadership is concerned.
You are cherry picking data. The US military has historically been far more progressive than the country as a whole. It integrated in 1948 - long before the voting rights act or the end of Jim crow. We had a black chair of the joint chiefs long before we elected a black president. Rights and privileges were extended to gay members long before they existed elsewhere.
Only on HN would the prevailing thought be that leet-code interviews are stupid but IQ is a magical, unbiased metric of a person’s ability and potential.
What are you talking about? It has statistical predictive ability when used on groups of people. Of course it can be very inaccurate for an individual but the reality of being able to make testable predictions makes it pretty hard to throw out, except for ideologically motivated people who don't like what it reveals.
Really? HN in 1822 would be filled with educated people seriously defending phrenology. 1922 HN would be falling over itself to defend eugenics. Apparently 2022 HN hasn't come very far from 1922.
No one falls for pseudoscientific groupthink like communities of affluent, well-educated people.
Please cite it. Every time someone claims this, they come back citing something laughably easy to disprove like The Bell Curve, which claims this, and is just an absolute mess of obvious nonsense:
Using deeply culturally and/or language biased IQ tests.
Using IQ tests that essentially just test the quality of education they received.
Sampling unrepresentative populations.
Using studies from an Apartheid state as an example of "a state without systemic racism".
Using tests that aren't IQ tests and the author explicitly say isn't equivalent and "converting" them with arbitrary systems.
Literally just making up data.
Cherry picking the worst data from studies which the original study explicitly calls out as less likely to be accurate.
Every correlation vs causation mistake you can possibly make.
Just discounting every environmental factor except parental socioeconomic status.
Assuming environmental factors are a result of genetic factors (which is literally just assuming their conclusion).
Regularly citing a literally white-supremacist funded source as unbiased.
I don’t care to get in some debate at all, but first you’d have to offer up a very precise question and not some general smear campaign. If it’s some of the sentences you’re arguing with upthread, I might agree with you.
Innate was too strong a word. I meant to say that it was pre-existing. Any discrimination in a job application is not the discrimination that causes low IQ, if any. That occurs in early childhood.
Uh, can't it? Stuff like lead exposure is higher in disfavored groups, and lead exposure is very bad for IQ. All sorts of environmental pollution is bad for child development, developing brains are pretty susceptible to this stuff, and guess which people end up having to live in more polluted areas?
That’s completely hypothetical and easily refutable by rural/urban breakdown, county-level breakdowns, outperformance by poor Asians, historical LA smog, etcetera.
no, subcounty level breakdowns actually support the thesis that higher pollution is at least correlated with lower educational attainment. Don't post misinformation. "historical LA smog" isn't a statement that refutes anything. The international consensus is that pollution is bad for educational attainment as well as other iq-like metrics, this is true in India, China, Brazil, and the UK, as well as impacts of prenatal exposure being bad in NYC and internationally.
Even if we accept that (and I gave plenty of reasons above why IQ is deeply, deeply, flawed as a metric, and the link to race—both at all and in terms of amount—is deeply questionable, and just because there is some difference in early childhood doesn't mean all of what you claim is, so plenty of it could be later racism), you are still just arbitrarily saying that accounts for the disparity, when there is evidence that isn't the case, because tests have been done with matching candidates, or presenting the same applications with different photos, etc...
> and as a child I obsessed over them and got very good at them by learning how to approach them
Then you weren't doing proper IQ tests. They must be administered by suitably qualified professionals and not made available for practice. You were cheating. Of course you're going to get good at a game by breaking the rules.
In the United States coming from a position of "maybe there is or isn't an effect from racism" is simply naive. A quick glance at history will show you that many differences in both outcomes AND culture have deep-seated intentionally racist historical sources (in different ways for different races).
How do you fight intentional racism, with a healthy dose of residual lasting generational effects from past racism, with passivity?
It's like creating a game with rules, but having no penalty for breaking them for the first half of the game, and then saying it's just the fault of the loser if someone cheats to beat them.
Or saying "I can't tell for sure if it's below freezing, my thermometer has an error bar of +/- ten degrees" and ignoring a bunch of freezing water around you.
Perhaps by not telling the alleged perpetrators they are taking advantage of "power structures" provided by racism. If the US is ~60% white, then simply by the numbers there are more disenfranchised white people than any other race. Are these people also taking advantage of said "power structures"?
If the movement to fight this spectre of "institutional" racism would focus less on applying their rules to everyone, and more on applying their rules to actual perpetrators, it would garner more support from the people it needs. To use your analogy if you're sitting in your neighbors pool and he says it's not freezing, but there's freezing water, perhaps don't blame all of his neighbors.
I'm not trying to say that there hasn't been a history of racism nor even that it isn't prevalent today. I just want to understand how we accurately measure the actual effects of it so that we can understand how much effort to put into solving it or measuring if it is getting better over time. And some of the most used measures I find as evidence seem to be about the distribution of races in various jobs which on its own doesn't necessarily seem like a reliable metric to me.
Others pointed out some studies which showed potential biases in hiring and that seems like a great potential proxy to understand the current level of racism in hiring.
This seems to be the largest potential issue then with my understanding of requiring research a-priori to match an assumed outcome or ideal. I wonder if an academic wanted to rigorously attempt to isolate between these, would they be allowed to publish the results were found that systemic issues were not significant. It seems potentially dangerous if we stifle publications of studies that find minimal impact of racism because it could have the impact of only highlighting the cases of racism, but not the net impact.
The only issue with this is we can and have isolated clear mechanisms in which certain races are treated differently as compared to others (for example, names on resumes and interview rates, property assessments given a white looking household vs black looking household, pain management in hospitals for women of various races during childbirth, etc), and do I think it is fair to say that the expectation would be if the system were truly unbiased that the proportion of people of different races in various roles would be about similar.
Obviously there are a lot of mechanisms that might change that equal expectation, but it still seems reasonable to me that for most jobs the default expectations should be around equal.
> In recent decades, as understanding of human genetics has advanced, claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have been broadly rejected by scientists on both theoretical and empirical grounds.
So your focus is on what "camp" someone falls into, not whether their arguments have merit or their statements are factual?
No wonder you think there's nothing wrong with Wikipedia. As long as your "side" controls the narrative, you'll nod your head and clap like a trained seal no matter what lies and "misinformation" they spread.
The talk page, and Quillette article, are proof that Wiki entries needs to contain the discredited sources too, and the properly sourced criticisms of them of course, rather than simply deleting them.
Wiki rules are tools to build better content, not absolutes we must die on. If 90% of readers of an entry find it lacking or untrustworthy because it doesn't mention well-known studies or even fields of endeavor then it's not a useful article.
> despite what a number of skull-measuring right-wingers would like you to believe
Do you believe that acceptance of the theory that genes impact IQ is split along communist/non-communist lines? That communists are less likely than average to believe this? These broad statements and the identities around them are the partisanship behind much of the politically-motivated editing going on in Wiki now.
Quillette articles are rarely proof of more than the ability of deranged conservatives to get nonsense published.
>Do you believe that acceptance of the theory that genes impact IQ is split along communist/non-communist lines?
Maybe. I think the idea that genes impact IQ and that IQ actually usefully measures anything - certainly anything that could be described as 'intelligence' - is probably split that way.
The Quillette article was cited as tautological proof of how "those people" feel about the wiki entry. They don't find it convincing and are explaining the citations they feel it lacks...
The point of Wiki is to educate and that means reaching the uneducated who are going to have those nasty uninformed opinions. Even if I agreed with your assessments of the people involved I'd want to improve them, not crap on them for where they are. If Wiki is only for those who already believe the right things, why even have Wiki?
> split along communist/non-communist lines?
Why would a support for a scientific concept be split across groups by economic philosophy? Is there anything inherently capitalist or communist about these ideas or are these ideas conflated with identities?
> [IQ being] anything that could be described as 'intelligence'
That it's related at all, or that it's a perfect match? Because of course we'll always have subjective views of the definition of intelligence and no one test will satisfy everyone.
> the idea that genes impact IQ and that IQ actually usefully measures anything
Unlike intelligence, IQ is definable, stable, and correlates highly to job performance. (Of course, because the tests resemble many work-skill tasks...)
Why would IQ be the only trait that isn't genetic at all?
I have no desire to see any given racial group maligned, even with "correct" data, but I feel the discussion about genetic traits is limited for fear of this, and that this censoring falls exactly along the lines of the USA's post-slavery racial lines. To me this suggests that this is a you (the USA) problem, not an us (the rest of the anglo-sphere) problem, and that it should be treated with racial sensitivity training and honesty, not with demonization and censorship and quashing research.
There is a robust empirical difference that's seen between races. That quote is about the notion that this difference is inherent. Rather, most scientists think it's largely environmental. They wouldn't have to attribute the difference to environmental factors if there were no actual difference.
So the OP is correct in saying that even if you remove discrimination there would still be differences, because the environmental factors that caused those differences remain.
>There is a robust empirical difference that's seen between races.
There's not an objective/standardized way to even measure intelligence, so you'll forgive me if I treat the claim that there's an empirical difference in intelligence between races with a mountain of skepticism.
The OP said IQ. That's a specific measure that may or may not be related to intelligence. It does have strong correlations with academic and life success though.
Look at the actual research that supposedly leads to the rejection of that idea. There doesn't seem to be any, except for a bunch of unsupported speculation. A notorious example is the Minessota Transracial Adoption Study or something along those lines. They actually found what was clearly an inherent difference according to their experiment's design, then after they got this uncomfortable result, they found another variable they'd forgotten to control for and attributed it to that, without any further evidence. The science in this field is full of fraud because it's dominated by leftists who will be punished by their peers for publishing politically incorrect findings.
Personally I'd be more concerned that people don't know that IQ tests are not a measure of intelligence, and that anyone who's claiming that differences in IQ across racial lines are evidence of racial intelligence differences is attempting to launder some racist bullshit.
Except IQ differences between races are themselves heavily influenced by societal/ historical discrimination. And discrimination still occurs in employment practices for jobs where high IQ is not a significant predictor of capability.
FWIW I don't doubt that racially-aligned genetic factors that influence appearance almost certainly affect other factors, including general cognitive ability, however we're so far off the point that it's likely to be the dominant explanation for why those from particular racial backgrounds rarely gravitate toward and ultimately succeed in particular careers that I see no benefit in focusing on it.
I do however worry that many "affirmative action" policies may be well-intentioned but severely flawed and ultimately self-defeating - if I were a disabled older black female I wouldn't want to have to deal with the suspicion (in my own mind, as well in those of others) that I landed a particular role because of my race/sex/age/disabilities rather than in spite of them (or better still, because we finally lived in world where such attributes were simply considered irrelevant). There are surely better methods that can be used to help overcome undeniable levels of systemic favouritism towards those with particular attributes. I say that as a white, able-bodied male under 50 - personally I suspect most of the reason I've found it easy to succeed in the software industry is due to my upbringing and in particular my Dad, also a white able-bodied male who was even more successful in the IT industry even before he was 40. Virtually everyone technical or managerial in his in own companies fit the same profile - the sales department had some white female able-bodied employees under 50, and later on there were probably one or two Asian employees though I can't recall seeing any. The same industry today is undeniably more inclusive/representative of society as a whole, though we're still a long way from it. I don't think "affirmative action" has really been a big driving force, and I've certainly never worked anywhere that specifically had a policy of actively preferring candidates of a particular sex/race/age/etc. that traditionally has been underrepresented. But I would still like to see more of an effort made to encourage such candidates to apply and to ensure that there's nothing in the job-posting/interview/ selection process that might contribute towards that continued underrepresentation.
Because the different outcomes of those groups is popularly used as a reason that there must be racism causing it which leads to division, hate, and further racist government actions as people imagine that that racism must be very serious to cause such serious effects. But it might actually not be very significant if the cause is something else. And such efforts won't even help the people who are suffering from poverty either. It would be OK if this was a niche opinion but it's incredibly widespread and actually has real world consequences.
The ideas within a comment that is stated in a sarcastic form on the other hand, still possess the same value as they would have if stated in a different form. A sarcastic form may render the value invisible from certain frames of reference, but it is still there.
It's not unreasonable to think that cultural preferences might influence job roles in academia, but in a country with a strong and poorly addressed history of racism, the assumption should be that it results from discrimination. Cultural factor should only be considered if there is strong evidence for them, otherwise they would be used as a rhetorical justification for maintaining discriminatory systems.
Or you could just not assume any specific cause and actually study the problem, otherwise you leave such policies open to perfectly justified attacks, to say nothing of the fact that you're potentially persecuting a whole class of innocent people.
> in a country with a strong and poorly addressed history of racism
Is there a diverse country that doesn't have a strong history of racism?
Is US worse than India, with it's caste system?
Is US worse than China, with it's Uyghur genocide?
Is US worse than Russia with it's Slavs-only rental ads?
Mind you, those are not the examples of past discriminations.
Is it possible that the reason you know more about discrimination in the US is not because US had more of it, but because you are better educated about US?
Free Speech for Me--But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other (1992) [1] is a good read on how we got to a point where our ability to communicate across ideologies appears to be broken in many ways.
For example, in 1963 Yale disinvited George Wallace, who was popular in the deep south, as a speaker. As a result, observers were deprived of a chance to hear opposing speakers' arguments. To some, Yale appeared censorious. As Jonathan Rauch describes [2], that's not good for your case. Censorship is all these characters need to gain new followers. Wallace ran for president in 1968 and nearly forced a plurality which would have given him significantly more influence [3].
Early episodes of the podcast So to Speak [4] by FIRE can inform the direction that can get us talking again. Basically, open and civil discourse is the way. The podcast demonstrates, through interviews with free speech advocates, a bunch of examples showing why that is a good target to shoot for, and how to achieve it.
> Censorship is all these characters need to gain new followers.
No, they also need a platform to make people aware of their existence, their views, and to recast their censorship to be in their favour. The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience.
Not all ideological disputes are about rational argumentation, many are based in a fundamental misalignment of values. Those value-based disputes cannot be resolved by open and civil discourse alone, and we know that racists have a tendency to abuse such spaces through techniques such as emotional rhetoric and Gish galloping.
> No, they also need a platform to make people aware of their existence, their views, and to recast their censorship to be in their favour. The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience.
The only way that this works is to exert total control of the content of all communications.
Otherwise, as in the real world until now, people find each other and network. You're talking about destroying freedom of association and expression in order to root out reprehensible people with the wrong values who could speak to people who want to listen to them.
Doesn't freedom of association also entail freedom of non-association? If an organisation doesn't want to provide an individual with a platform, then they are executing their freedom of association.
I'm not advocating for some global censorship entity.
Freedom of (non) association does not extend to protected groups in public spaces. Businesses can no longer exclusively serve white people, for example, since their stores are considered public accomodations.
Ideology is not a protected class, however. In the case of Haidt, they are free to not present any research at conferences unless it advances their definition of equity, and he has no choice but to go along with it or walk away.
It's worth pointing out that they are not explicitly turning down non-equity-focused research, but that the existence of the question is his interpretation of an ideological pressure to conform.
That freedom of public accommodation is under attack.
If it even existed in the first place; there are plenty of laws that expressly allow discrimination in deference to 'religious beliefs.'
Courts, & the Supreme Court in particular, are giving far more weight to 'christian freedom' at the expense of the rest of us.
Cases include recent PrEP ruling, insane football prayer ruling that willfully ignored facts, bathroom & sports laws targeting kids. crazy ruling on prayers in court.
Adoption discrimination (de-facto govt by transitive property. we have to stop outsourcing government to contractors, especially when it makes religious orgs the only avenue).
Upcoming ruling from CO which will probably allow even more queer discrimination.
that 'pressure to conform' is and has historically been one way, giving one class the legal go ahead to discriminate in the name of some skewed idea of christian ideals
I'm referencing the many other classes that are perfectly legal to discriminate against. and the allowable discrimination is becoming broader.
But this disagreement highlights this major problem the US faces.
We live in two increasingly separate realities with different 'facts', where obvious is totally different based on your identity.
the one religious non-belief class example I gave is the football coach prayer case.
to me it's an obvious overreach and clearly breaks secular education norms (and past scotus rulings).
to such an obvious degree that the minority (on the court, majority in public opinion) broke precedence and put photos directly refuting the 'facts' the majority claim are truth.
that's also a bit spurious. i don't think anyone is arguing that churches must be forced to interview (or hire) other religions.
but the majority does believe that the state & courts shouldn't create laws that expressly allows someone to discriminate or refuse to provide service to someone else just because they are gay or trans or use different pronouns. or deny an adoption. or disallow kids from playing incredibly low states high school sports. or ban books. or not talk about gender & sexuality. i keep using queer-centric issues because that's my identity and I can speak to it better than race/trans issues. there are plenty of examples there too.
it's minority religion dictating laws that affect our lives and explicitly allowing those beliefs to take away rights from the rest of us.
>The only way that this works is to exert total control of the content of all communications.
Not true! Just being banned from significant swaths of social media has frequently forced many prominent Nazis/alt-righters out of business. Before Kiwifarms recently had all of their major issues, they were already finding it difficult to keep the site running as a result of continued pressure on every host they switched to.
Regardless of the accuracy of your classification of KiwiFarms, they aren't gone, just moved into the onion. And for conspiracy-minded people that's not a negative sign.
It also introduces readers to the entirety of the uncensored internet all at once, the most 4-chan thing imaginable, which is somewhat counter to the "limit exposure to disinformation" goal being claimed by the original deplatformers.
>Ideas, especially those that stoke resentments, are like viruses.
The problem is that people make statements like this but apply them selectively. E.g., platforms like major news networks are happy to give airtime to the claim that people alive today, who never owned slaves and are very likely not descended from anyone who did, must pay reparations to others alive today who were never enslaved and may well not be descended from slaves. These same platforms also give airtime to those claiming all societal ills stem from one ethnic group or another (as long as it's the "right" ethnic group being blamed).
This incredibly skewed double standard isn't fooling anyone.
Another measure might be the extent to which it leads to an unequal distribution of knowledge. Censorship can be seen as means of preventing misinformation, and sometimes quite effective at that, but a potential negative byproduct is limiting the output of (interpretable) factual information.
In both cases the application thereof, while it will not assist at all with getting to the truth of any issue, will certainly allow you to manipulate those you subject to it to tell you whatever you want to hear.
Of course, as soon as they are removed the subject will typically recant, and often overcorrect in the exact opposite direction, in light of the exposure to loathed coerced manipulative strategies.
Sunlight doesn't have that problem. People may make mistakes and come to the wrong conclusion, but at least they won't double down on their erroneous position as a retributive strategy for the coercive manipulation to which they have been subjected.
But hey, maybe some ends are just so awful they justify any means in pursuit of their prevention, be it torture, censorship or whatever. Certainly lots of people these days clearly seem to think so.
He's a black guy who went out of his way to befriend KKK members, and many of them ended up leaving the KKK when they realized he didn't fit what they were told about black people.
Censorship would not have helped, they had to be shown that they were wrong. That's what "sunlight is the best disinfectant" means.
From what I can tell most racists are either born into it (grew up surrounded by it) or fall into it looking for a place to fit in. Mere exposure to an idea is insufficient. I propose you test this 'idea virus' theory yourself. Go find a racist podcast and see how many episodes it takes for you to start thinking that jews and black people are inferior. I'm going to go ahead and guess that no amount of hate speech will cause you to think that way, but feel free to try to prove me wrong.
Exposure is neither a sufficient nor necessary condition. But exposure increases the propagation. You have this realization yourself when you say "grew up surrounded by", which is one way people get exposed.
There are many case studies in the real world.
"Go find a racist podcast and see how many episodes it takes for you to start thinking that jews and black people are inferior."
That is what happens, though. Not with probability one, but with a probability decently above zero.
Rwandan genocide being incited over radio, 1930s/1940s Germany being incited by the press and speeches, same with 1930s Japan.
Many mass shooters that targeted specific ethnicities were radicalized online. Dylan Roof. Also the recent guy that wrote the N word on his gun. These were white nationalists. The latter said it wasn't his offline world, it was purely online where he got radicalized.
You're just making assertions that it's not like this but our best understanding of ideas that they are social and contagious.
If you genuinely think listening to racists would turn you into a racist I really do encourage you to try it so you learn you don't need to fear hearing bad ideas.
Researchers and activists spend countless hours doing exactly that, listening to what racists are saying, lurking in their online communities, and analyzing their rhetoric and membership. It doesn't turn them into racists. How is it you think that they don't become radicalized? It's not because they have some kind of power that makes them immune to idea viruses.
If you're too afraid to dive deep into racist speech why not start with something a little less unpleasant and attend a religious service of a faith you don't belong to. It's fascinating to do, most places of worship are very welcoming to newcomers, and again, you really won't be magically converted.
Yes, some people who walk into a church do end up becoming members, just like some people who stumble onto racist online communities do end up joining, but in both cases it's not because exposure to the message has infected them. The actual message itself (in both cases) generally isn't terribly convincing, logical, or consistent. It's very often because they offer people who feel alone and lost a place to be accepted, something besides themselves to blame for their troubles, a clear and narrow path for how to move forward, and a comforting narrative and identity.
If you're happy with who you are and how your life is going, have friends/family who support you, and strong convictions you have nothing to fear from listening to people whose views you strongly disagree with and often you'll have a lot to gain from it.
> If you genuinely think listening to racists would turn you into a racist I really do encourage you to try it so you learn you don't need to fear hearing bad ideas.
I just gave you evidence that it does by pointing to specific case studies throughout history. You then proceed with an assertion that it doesn't, backed up by you saying that less than 100% of people who view racist material become racists (well, of course, not everyone that's exposed to a virus becomes infected). This discussion is going nowhere.
You say 'exposure' but then you discuss powerful orators and crowd dynamics. These aren't the same at all.
Also I don't think the Nazis and Hutus were made into racists by academic discussion of genetics, and I don't think that people who study genetic factors of IQ are more likely to be Nazi-sympathetic. It's not like the Nazis were scientific racists, they were pseudo-scientific racists - they started out racist and went on a quest for the appearance of proof.
The pro-censorship side needs to prove the science->racism pathway and then prove that "deplatforming" works to reduce overall belief in or following of that path. Censorship tends to have a whiplash effect to those who notice it which is rarely taken into account by those who preach censorship. (Which is what you'd expect if the people who were doing the censoring didn't care about the issues and were simply using them to bolster their control of the censoring mechanism...)
Yes, racism is bad for the believer and for society but there is no evidence censorship could help and a ton of evidence that it is ruinous to democracies.
> You say 'exposure' but then you discuss powerful orators and crowd dynamics. These aren't the same at all.
I didn't just discuss that. I also discussed mass shooters who were radicalized by these ideas that they read in online forums. No orators.
> Also I don't think the Nazis and Hutus were made into racists by academic discussion of genetics
Scientific racism is just one instantiation of it. Not every bad outcome of racism is going to be traced back to scientific racism.
But I will say that scientific racism was a part of Nazi thought. And the mass shooter who wrote the N word on his barrel, and Dylan Roof, were inspired by scientific racism. You can read his manifesto for yourself, or you can see Dylan Roof's interview on Youtube.
> The pro-censorship side needs to prove the science->racism pathway
I really don't see the point of this. I'm not even talking about science or exclusively about scientific racism. You're the one who pivoted the conversation in that direction.
> [scientific racism] You're the one who pivoted the conversation in that direction.
The whole article is about a professor being forced to politicize and limit his research, presumably because it would be used to justify wrong-think.
To restate more generally though, the censoring side needs to prove the 'reading viewpoints -> copying actions' pipeline. Would a plainly written description of Hitler's beliefs create nazis of those who read it or is it the oration and the cult tactics that do that? If a nazi quotes a book in support of their views does that mean the book would cause someone without those views to become a nazi?
Sun Tzu counsels to know your enemy, how would this work if they were censored?
> I'm not saying that censorship is just or desirable. Just that it works.
But it doesn't, unless it is extensive/complete. It just seems like it does because censored media is constantly reassuring us that the censorship is working, and that all reasonable people enjoy it.
You can't destroy ideas by censoring them from the largest outlets, you have to perpetually search out the smallest outlets (e.g. open everyone's mail) to make sure that these ideas aren't still infecting people, multiplying exponentially. You can't relax anywhere, for a moment. The only surefire way to kill or silence ideas is to kill or silence the people who hold them. That means you have to have systems in place to detect stray ideas, and processes in place to eliminate them.
It does. Look at Alex Jones and Trump. Their reach was significantly cut after deplatforming.
It's not about surefire ways to silence someone. You're setting up a burden that's too high for no good reason. It's about whether it works in practice to an extent.
>I'm not saying that censorship is just or desirable. Just that it works.
Does it though? Ideas are hard to kill. Just because you stop people from saying something in public, does not mean they aren't talking about it in private. In fact, oftentimes people even assume the thing you can't talk about must be really important or else they'd let you talk about it. And in turn, it holds more powerful and spreads further. I don't think censorship is really effective at stopping ideas
You say ideas are like viruses. Since when has trying to stop viruses worked?
One common characteristic amongst the people involved in today's standard angry mobs is a total inability to defend their opinion, and a total unwillingness to engage. Instead, they snipe by repeating things they sort of remember someone else saying and post memes, then disappear when engaged. A kind of personal deplatforming, where they don't allow contrary opinions to have access to their ears.
The way you learn how to defend your opinion is to engage with people who have different opinions, not having affirmation parties with people who are predisposed to agree with you about everything.
With the beneficial side effect of sometimes revealing that you are in fact wrong, thereby allowing you to improve your understanding. It’s sad and telling that people don’t seem to consider this possibility.
Censorship is not the best disinfectant at all;it had a fundamental issue: who decides what should be censored.
Now you and I, hey we know what’s good and morale so that’d be fine. But when it’s someone else who is in control, as it will be, then the “wrong” things get censored.
this is the rather discomforting truth of it - consensus (therefore social change) is achieved through eliminating alternative views, something which can be achieved by the hammer and anvil of relentless repetition of the approved view and de-platforming / silencing of the disapproved view. It is certainly not achieved through some sort honourable battle of ideas
yes, but the persons point wasn't that its good/bad but wether its the best disinfectant (in my interpretation that means effectiveness)
so, censorship may be morally bad or wrong and also very effective, and its the fact that it is effective and working is why there is a very loud objection to it
This is an excellent example of public discourse during a moral panic. We seem to be prone to them as a society, and every generation has its own. Today racism, before that, Satanism, Communism, and alcohol.
> You're talking about destroying freedom of association and expression in order to root out reprehensible people with the wrong values
We all have a strong moral obligation to root out "reprehensible people with the wrong values." If you think otherwise then you don't understand what the word "reprehensible" means.
It's not about shaming anyone since most of the people targeted don't give a crap about the opinions of the wokes and the woke-adjacent.
Right now the target is to deprive them of employment. You can at the very least be honest about it.
That only works when you have mob behind you. What will you do when you find yourself disagreeing with the majority and they apply this technique to you?
Shame them for their bad behavior. It does not matter how many of them there are. It does not matter if I am the only person in the world who knows what right behavior is, I still must follow my conscience.
That's not how shaming works. If you try to shame someone who doesn't think they've done anything wrong, which will be case in this hypothetical scenario, they will not feel shame. They'll just think you are wrong. If a mob of people engages in public shaming, you probably still won't make that person feel shame, but you can cause them to feel humiliated and isolated and so likely silence them, along with others who might have otherwise agreed with them publicly.
Shaming is a way of silencing people who disagree with you and that only works if you do it as a mob. Otherwise you're just making yourself feel good by expressing your disapproval. Mob shaming at least accomplishes something, individual shaming is just a lazy substitute for persuasion.
Would you call someone who's primary goal is to due good deeds a "good person"? Would you call someone who's primary goal is to due reprehensible deeds a "reprehensible person"?
People certainly can change over time, but someone's state at a given time is what that person actually is at the time.
That's an excuse to dehumanize people. Labeling people rather than deeds is simply an announcement that you're willing to compromise your own ethics in order to attack that person. It's what's really happening when we label people as terrorists.
As pharrington points out, your words imply that you agree with me that terrorists are reprehensible people, or you are trying to argue that terrorists don't actually exist. Which is it?
It's not a problem if someone with a big audience advocates for and does not use rational arguments, as long as that thing is relatively harmless. (Let's say Bono advocates for peace, or a local group wants a new playground because it would warm their hearts. Or a group wants lower taxes, or a different group wants to tax the rich more. Even this last one, while advocates discrimination, it's not against a disadvantaged group, it's not judging something unchangeable like skin color, IQ, etc.)
Of course it's never good to allow bad arguments into the "marketplace of ideas", because then they'll take over the market, but unfortunately that ship has sailed, or likely never arrived.
> It's not a problem if someone with a big audience advocates for and does not use rational arguments, as long as that thing is relatively harmless. (Let's say Bono advocates for peace [..]
Q: Who gets to define "relatively harmless"?
"Advocating for peace" sounds pretty harmless, yet if you dare to mention any specifics - at least this year - it seems supporting it is deemed anything but harmless. Before my time, but seems the same applied in 1964 – 1973.
Descriptively history, normatively society through whatever mechanisms it comes up with. (Eg. in the US it's done through an "by default everything is allowed, and SCOTUS can make exceptions" mechanism.)
I don't think there's anything wrong with advocating for peace, from a free speech aspect, especially if someone is sincere. (Even if someone is completely brainwashed by whatever propaganda. And even if peace itself is a super meaningless term. After all wouldn't a totalitarian world government bring peace? Etc, etc.)
The Christian right could make identical arguments, and a few decades ago had the political power to deplatform” those who disagreed with them. Why is your argument different?
Because in a liberal democracy - or anywhere for that matter - not all ideas are of equal value. The same goes for Putin's Russia as it does for, say, Finland. You have to decide what you stand for, a culture has to decide what it wants to value.
Some ideas and actions are quite obviously, objectively anti-life, pro-misery.
Two people saying the same thing or doing the same thing are not inherently achieving the same outcome, pursuing the same end goal, arriving at their ideas from the same place, and so on. All of that matters in a big way.
A liberal, human rights respecting democracy with a constitution is objectively better if human well-being is your standard, than a theocracy. We have many centuries of experimentation and result at this point, no guessing is required.
Which is to say, deplatforming two very different people that are saying entirely different things and attempting to accomplish very different end goals, is not the same thing just because they're both the act of deplatforming.
Shooting and killing an innocent person at random on the street is not the same as shooting and killing a robber that has broken into your home and is intent on harming your family, despite the fact that they both involve you shooting and killing someone. The same exact moral principle is involved in the deplatforming premise.
“I’m right and they’re wrong” is a unpersuasive argument, and doesn’t provide a foundation for deciding the rules in a pluralistic democracy. What best serves “human well being” is highly disputed. How do you create a framework for groups to cooperate democratically without agreeing in advance who is right?
The problem is that you’re begging the question. You’re assuming that maximizing individual freedom is what serves well being. Most humans disagree with that premise. Studies show, for example, that Christian conservatives are both happier and have more children than other Americans. Those are “objective” measures of “human well being.” Indeed, zooming out, nearly every highly individualistic, secular western society is in decline—to the point where they can’t even take care of their elderly population without importing religious Catholics from Latin America (in the US) or Muslims (Europe). “Ability to propagate one’s culture sustainably” certainly seems like at least one measure of success at serving human well being, no? And on that measure, modern "liberal democracies" are failing.
Now of course there are other ways to measure human well being, and liberal democracies do quite well on those measures. My point is that by 2022, it should be clear that people disagree on what constitutes a good life, and societal progress. In the last two decades, we've seen country after country reject secular liberal democracy. And even in the west, reaction is on the rise. A majority of Hindus, Afghans, and Iowans agree that San Francisco isn't their dream for the future of their own society. And if you want to dismiss that as "they're wrong and we're right," what you're advocating for looks more like a holy war than "liberal democracy."
> "The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible..."
Uh...reprehensible by whom?
You do realize that what's "reprehensible" is extremely subjective, right? And the same tactics and standards that you are using to silence opinions you don't like can therefore just as easily be used against you and yours by people who find your opinions reprehensible.
That's the whole point of promoting the free and open exchange of ideas, it protects everyone's ability to speak freely. And then individuals can make up their own minds about what is "reprehensible" and choose whether THEY want to listen to it or not. In other words, people don't need you to be an arbiter of what is reprehensible for other adults.
I find that all groups including non-racist groups use emotional rhetoric to attract and maintain group bonds. An anti racist group cannot exist without racist groups and racist groups have little reason to exist without non-racist groups. Deplatforming one side kills the other side and without that balance they go hunting for people in the middle.
>No, they also need a platform to make people aware of their existence, their views, and to recast their censorship to be in their favour.
They were doing this long before the Internet if that is what you mean! If you mean a platform as in showing up at a prestigious place, well being denied entrance is just as good, you just have your group stand outside and ask "What are they so afraid of? If our ideas are so bad/crazy/etc. can't they just easily shoot them down with social discourse?" and you get all the awareness and revision of the ideas that you want!
All we need to do to end piracy or pornography is "no-platform" it, right?
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Rational or not, it's better for bad ideas (ignoring the even more pernicious question of who decides which ideas are "bad") to be examined than have them fester in dark corners.
I suspect that the answer is "it depends on the culture". China seems to have a lot more control over the spread of anti-CCP ideas than Iran has over the spread of anti-regime ideas, and it isn't because of Iranian censors trying less or having worse tools. But the Iranian population seems to be much less conforming and more ready to rebel.
It's still somewhat effective in Iran, it's just not sufficiently effective to prevent protests.
The US has a number of natural experiments that show that censorship is effective at silencing someone. Look at what happened to Trump and Alex Jones after they were deplatformed. Their reach was cut a lot and that wasn't even state censorship.
Russia had a natural experiment after Gorbachev lifted speech codes. People described the renaissance of new ideas being spoken that were previously stifled. Censorship worked.
It makes sense that it works given our understanding of social contagion. People aren't designed to believe facts. They're designed to join a team and believe whatever stuff their team believes in. Things like taboos or censorship or blacklists are effective, however repellent they may be.
> The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience
If they were invited to speak then they already have an audience. Censoring them is working against the cause of fighting their ideas.
Protest or debate them if you consider their views reprehensible.
> Not all ideological disputes are about rational argumentation, many are based in a fundamental misalignment of values.
On one hand, you are acknowledging that some values are not based on rationality, and on the other hand you think they should be imposed upon those who don't share them by censorship?
> The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience.
Exactly. No platforming is a naked display of power without any pretence at principle. If you can keep the power forever, great. You win. If not, well, turnabout is fair play and if you have no attachment to free speech or the marketplace of ideas yourself and you couldn’t maintain power with the benefit of censorship you’re probably in for a bad time.
That is assuming everyone else is too stupid to make that decision for themselves.
Who gets to decide what is acceptable and what isn't?
Our/society's rights and wrongs has greatly changed over time and that is only possible because of both good and bad ideas being heard.
No one person should be deciding what's acceptable for the whole of soceity. Every individual should hear different ideas, good, bad and terrible, and decide for themselves what/who they agree with.
To your point, IIRC, the impact of deplatforming has been studied. Like when that troll Milo got bounced. It greatly diminished their reach and impact.
Sadly, some trolls (Alex Jones) have enough juice to spin off their own bespoke hate machines.
This specific institution claimed to have high academic credentials. One of the historical bonifides was the ability to hear an opposing view. It was thought that one could then argue back. Yale bouncing his presentation showed that they weren’t living up to their claimed standards.
Yale in the 1960s still had a secret Jewish Quota to limit the number of Jewish students they would enrol, as they had done for decades.
I'm not sure them inviting popular racists to speak against human rights is really a good look for them in that situation, nor an instant solution to centuries of systemic racism in America at that time, even if they made some really good points in the debate.
` Yale disinvited George Wallace, who was popular in the deep south` Wow that's crazy, why was this Wallace figure so popular in the deep south? I vaguely remember there being some minor political movement around the 50s and 60s but I can't quite place my finger on it.
I blindly accepted your claim that Wallace was not permitted to speak at Yale. That's not true. I regret not being more skeptical. I am fail. Please accept my most humble apology.
TLDR: Yale Political Union invites Wallace. President Kingman Brewster Jr blocks. Much drama. Including local black leaders and civil rights activists, who defended Wallace's appearance per principles of free speech and academic stuff. Brewster removes block. Two student groups reinvite Wallace. Wallace declines, though he did speak at other Ivy League schools.
Described more fully p104-106 in Hentoff's book "Free speech for me--but not for thee", which you cited.
Here's 4 more articles, to round out the reality-based version of that incident:
"Free Speech, Personified" NYT [2017] https://archive.ph/LvAHn About the 1963 incident, how Pauli Murray appealed to Brewster to let the white supremacist speak, and how Yale recommitted towards and continues to uphold free speech.
FWIW, I now don't understand your other cites. [2] Is just common sense. [3] Unrelated. [4] Might be broken.
Though I do agree with Jack Newfield that mocking racists and neoreactionaries should be avoided. We now know that right wing partisans are personally insulted when their leader is criticized or mocked. (Probably something about having their identity wrapped up in the demagogue. Who knows.) So mockery just drives those partisans further away.
For what? I don't think we conversed yet in this thread.
> I blindly accepted your claim that Wallace was not permitted to speak at Yale. That's not true.
I can see that the context changed the meaning for you. Good thing I cited the source. For me, my original comment still rings true as a summary. Wallace was disinvited and ultimately did not speak at Yale.
There are a few errors in your TLDR. Kingman was provost at the time, not president, and it was reported that two groups of law students reinvited him, not two student groups.
> Donald Kagan reported that “two groups of law students issued another invitation to Wallace, reaffirming ‘the right of students to hear speakers of their own choosing without restraint or interference from those who would like to limit the right of free expression to those whose views coincide with theirs.’
It's not clear that Provost Brewster would've allowed Wallace to speak had he accepted the new invitation from these students. Also, the book describes how Brewster, later as president, accused an established student group of "playing games" with free speech. So it's not like he had a change of heart on the subject:
> "The occasion does not warrant departure from Yale’s principles of free speech. However, the use of free speech as a game, the lack of sensitivity to others, the lack of consideration for the community, and the lack of responsible concern for the university as an institution seem to me reprehensible..."
Regardless, it does not substantially change what happened. Wallace was disinvited and ultimately did not attend. Human relations aren't so easily Ctrl-Z'ed. It doesn't surprise me that some tried to reinvite him after the backlash. As you said, many in the community stood against Brewster's decision.
These days, it is common for students to shout down undesired speakers, so it's interesting to look back at when this practice may have began. For awhile, the University of Chicago was a place where such debates were encouraged. A group of Harvard students jokingly ranked it as the least fun school, less fun than West Point, for that reason [1].
> FIRE is just another dark money funded group working on the reactionary project to roll back civil rights, assert corporate rule. and end democracy.
Wow. Just going to slip that in at the end there huh? That's quite a take down. What do you think is dark about it? They're a non-profit which makes them subject to much more scrutiny than private organizations.
As for "asserting corporate rule" and "ending democracy", I think that's a ridiculous claim. They exist to defend the free speech rights that the ACLU now declines to do, as I mentioned elsewhere [2]. If anything, they're responsible upholding democracy by encouraging people to choose words over violence.
> [4] Might be broken.
Works for me. It's the last page of their podcast listing as of now.
> Kingman was provost at the time, not president...
Oops. I initially wrote "Provost" and then changed it. I gotta learn to trust my gut more.
I stand by the rest of my reply.
> These days, it is common for students to shout down undesired speakers...
And speakers show up to be shouted down. I think all the clapping and pwnage is lame.
But what do I know?
Remember when Bernie got shouted down in Seattle? As a Bernie fan, I was confused. Why would those kids mess with the candidate closest to their own views?
I actually know one of the persons who climbed onto the stage. Afterwards, I asked the Gen Z and Y people I know, and that person on stage, about the incident.
A kid name Xander, who I respected very much, said something very interesting. Paraphrasing: "All politicians should be challenged." So he agreed with the action, despite being a Bernie fan.
I can't speak to what's happening in higher ed. And I really don't, truly don't care. All that drama is just performance art.
But clearly something has changed. Direct action and confrontation are the norms again. For better or worse.
That's right. It can be a political win for you when people don't let you speak. The audience wants to hear both sides. Anyone who acts censoriously comes off as afraid of words, as if words are violence. And that's the exact argument that many (but not all) protesters today are using, that words are violence. We can instead draw a distinction between words and violence in order to encourage civil discourse. When you don't do that, the majority naturally suppresses minority views.
> A kid name Xander, who I respected very much, said something very interesting. Paraphrasing: "All politicians should be challenged." So he agreed with the action, despite being a Bernie fan.
What happened with Bernie [1] was not as bad as other cases where violence occurred, but preventing a speaker from talking is still against free speech principles.
> I can't speak to what's happening in higher ed. And I really don't, truly don't care. All that drama is just performance art.
You don't think those protesters are genuinely expressing themselves?
I can understand how it's hard for some of them to see why blocking speakers is not a good idea. It is a bit similar to what the likes of MLK Jr. and John Lewis supported, direct action by standing in the way, as was done at the lunch counters. But I don't think either of those civil rights defenders would have supported the current movements that seek to displace speakers. They wanted their ideological opponents to speak so that they could respond with reason and win more followers.
Nonviolent direct action, in itself, is not a bad thing, but it's problematic when you use that method to prevent someone from speaking. Words are not violence, so speech should be acceptable. If it's not, then we need more speech to discover where the disconnect is. Free speech is an old idea, not a new one, and it's been proven to work. It takes some effort to understand, and I would argue that such challenging issues are the very ones worth taking the time to learn.
The problems often start historically when one group comes to believe that some other group wants to “eliminate open society and civility” (or so some other evil thing), and thus feel justified in using any means to oppose them. Never forget the bad guys almost always think they are good guys fighting evil.
100% except perhaps we don't agree on who is doing that.
Look at marjorie taylor green's most recent insanity.
"accusation in a mirror."
and it goes far beyond a handful of loud extremists who are given megaphones from the 'less-extreme' in their party (are they really the minority then?)
the Fox news led contingent have been screaming this 'under attack' narrative.
and they are openly setting the conditions for IRL violence.
Othering trans & queer people. freaking attacking drag queens which is SO silly..
claiming we are pedo groomers who give out hormones to tweens like candy. saying your identity will no longer be people like you in the future, straight & cis.
child abusers seem to be the one class that it's still acceptable to openly wish violence upon.
telling their audience to 'take a stand' or else lose their entire existence & identity produces extremism and prods armed extremists to show up in real life.
they are bringing guns to shut down libraries, ban books, pile into vans to go attack pride, passing discriminatory laws.
not even touching on poc, immigrants, & attacks on democracy/jan 6; i'm focusing on my identity since I can better speak to it. which btw funny how there is always an eminent caravan invasion (a specifically chosen word) right before the election.
we have always been victims of violence.
but this is a much bigger boiling kettle and one group is stoking the fire.
i clearly see this fear in the eyes of a large & heavily armed group.
they think they are under attack. what will they do to 'protect themselves and save our country'? what happens when the kettle boils over?
I agree with you if you mean that the individuals that first do the targeted group violence are the bad guys. But not if you generalize blame to the group.
Just about any large group of people, whether defined by by race, religion, nationality, or creed, will have bad individuals in it. And so the bad guys can almost always point to people from the other group that "started it".
When someone from the out-group commits an atrocity, it is just more proof of how bad that group is. When someone from the in-group commits an atrocity, it is an exception.
Sure, and those groups almost always believe they are the good guys, fighting against some group that does and exists to do bad things.
The point is, if you are going to write of a group (presumably, the other political party) as bad beyond redemption, you better have a damn good reason to think that you are the historical exception.
I mean the commonly understood contextual meanings of those words. Dictionaries are useful when you're unfamiliar with the words in context. I trust that you, being a native Anglophone, know what those words mean in the contexts they're used. However, if you're thinking of specific examples where you expect our understood meanings of those words to differ, I'll entertain those examples.
Also, violence isn't the only bad thing people do which justifies some sort of retribution.
>When one group wants to eliminate open society and civility, how is it possible to have an open and civil debate with them?
In the US, there is not one group trying to do that, but a multitude of groups, some who are in power and some who are not, most of whom deny that they are trying to do what you charge them with.
There are a multitude of groups doing that, but they're not equally dangerous now. The problem is that the hard right has control of the Republican Party. The hard left does not have control of the Democratic Party. If US democracy falls in the next few years, it's almost guaranteed to be because of the hard right.
I'm not surprised, but continually amazed that people actually and truly think this way; that there's only one insidious group that are the problem, and only they will be the cause of disaster. Take the blinders off, there's more at work here that petty tribalism.
Sometimes there is only one truly insidious group, and to suggest otherwise is the false balance fallacy. That group's supporters will think of themselves as just, and even see themselves as victims. It's always like that with authoritarian movements.
Can you pleas explain how that bothersiderism logic would not be equally valid for defending the Nazi party in the 30s? You must believe it’s not valid because it being valid means the comment is gas lighting.
The only thing surer than debates on the internet eventually leading to nazi comparisons is that some commenter will then cite godwins law.
It’s actually godwins second law of nature. how pertinent nazis are to the topic is not relevant, Godwin’s law will be brought up and very often inappropriately as even Godwin himself has noted.
“Godwin's law itself can be applied mistakenly or abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, when fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparison made by the argument is appropriate.[12]”
“Godwin himself has also criticized the overapplication of the law, claiming that it does not articulate a fallacy, but rather is intended to reduce the frequency of inappropriate and hyperbolic comparisons“
And yet it doesn't make it any less true. The correlation exists, just as tides to moon phase, and doesn't negate the existence of either. HN has turned into that one site where any remotely ideological topic, any minutely political (cue the "everything is political crowd") will invariably bring out the "BUT NAZIS" replies. It's insufferable.
A. I wasn’t the one who broached the topic of nazis
B. This is a comment page about censorship and this thread in particular is about one party trying to end open society
So nazis are a natural comparison, and the valid comparison was attempted to be censored and avoided by bringing up an internet meme in exactly the way the originator has criticized. But hey knowing the meme is a get out of jail free card, no civil discourse needed!
Just admit that the comment would have been a valid defense of the nazi party in its ramp up. No meme-ing out of that and there’s been no attempt to deny it, just distract from it.
One group also set alight many businesses, destroyed property, incited violence, and destroyed the lives of countless individuals in the last two years. The point remains: there are a multitude of groups. Focusing on a single one only shows a blatant and ignorant bias.
Once one realizes that tolerance follows the model of a peace treaty rather than a moral precept, these apparent dilemmas resolve themselves. Treaties only protect parties who abide by their terms. There is no contradiction in being intolerant of intolerance.
> There is no contradiction in being intolerant of intolerance.
There is, because literally every viewpoint is an implicit repudiation of some set of values, ie. aka intolerance. The whole point of tolerance is the recognition of this fact and that resolving such differences requires dialogue (edit: resolving them without violence that is).
As Popper said, only those views that directly incite violence or cannot be kept in check by public opinion should be silenced, otherwise you put the whole enterprise of tolerance in jeopardy.
I am becoming more sympathetic to this, too. Real liberals (not necessarily leftists, although perhaps so) need to start punching back, hard. Slippery slopes are real and we're on one.
To reinforce the peace treaty of civil society everyone needs to push back against these “defections from peace.” It’s social contract stuff, too.
The alternative looks like a replay of all the worst stuff from social repression to actual nuclear war-given the misinformation propping up the Russian invasion of Ukraine and nuclear threats.
> When one group wants to eliminate open society and civility, how is possible to have an open and civil debate with them?
Roger Baldwin, founder of the now gone-astray ACLU, said this [1],
> Host: "What possible reason is there for giving civil liberties to people who will use those civil liberties in order to destroy the civil liberties of all the rest?"
> Roger: "That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it."
> "Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
> > "Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
There's a much shorter version of this sentiment that people loved to use during the 2020 riots: "violence is the language of the unheard"
This has been the rule throughout human history, and it’s unfortunate that people (some in this thread even) are discovering the first principles for the first time for why we strive to apply the same standards to everyone, and not do carve outs. Unfortunately, politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from power. When elite opinion makers decide that certain things are okay, those things are okay … like mass protests and rioting during a pandemic.
There is no nuance in this debate. Roger made those statements in 1982. The only access to broad public announcement was via TV, controlled by private companies for the most part.
Today platforms have the same choices about what to air or not. Free Speech is also about not forcing people to say things they do not want, it is also about not forcing platforms to broadcast lies.
I'm (still) strongly sympathetic to Baldwin's point of view, but the GP also has a valid point, in that liars have gained most of the benefit of the civil-libertarian point of view since the rise of the Internet. These days, a lie can literally travel around the world before the truth makes it out past the firewall.
There's a reason we divide history into the time before and after the invention of movable type made mass publication possible. We're living in a similar transitional era now, likely an even-more profound one. The resulting intellectual and political upheaval is so extensive that some things are going to have to change, including minds. Maybe even mine.
> I'm (still) strongly sympathetic to Baldwin's point of view, but the GP also has a valid point, in that liars have gained most of the benefit of the civil-libertarian point of view since the rise of the Internet. These days, a lie can literally travel around the world before the truth makes it out past the firewall.
That's largely made possible by censorship. When you counter such views in groups that support them, you are likely to be silenced without your knowledge. Social media sites have built a whole suite of tools to aid in the removal of such content [1], and such tools are available to people from all ideologies. You might think that evens things out, but the secretive nature of the tools means that only a handful of people, relatively speaking, know how it all works. That creates a new "us vs. them" mentality, and we need to find our way back to a concept of shared humanity.
> There's a reason we divide history into the time before and after the invention of movable type made mass publication possible. We're living in a similar transitional era now, likely an even-more profound one. The resulting intellectual and political upheaval is so extensive that some things are going to have to change, including minds. Maybe even mine.
Social media today, like the printing press in its infancy, is understood and managed by a small number of people. In that environment you can still take a principled stance to argue against censorship and for transparency.
Yes. Imagine complaining about not being able to sit at a particular lunch counter, or getting the seat on the bus you want. I mean, dude, there are other seats and better places to eat. Why are you eating at diners anyway?
We have always made a distinction between things that are not the fault of the individual (skin color, gender, ethnicity) and things that are (speech and actions). Which seems perfectly reasonable to me.
As usual, this stops the conversation cold, because it doesn't fit anyone's narrative. Free speech advocates want to claim that the marketplace of ideas will lead people to good ideas, while people for restricting speech want to claim that it's possible to restrict speech without going full-on totalitarian dystopia. The case of religion shows quite starkly that both narratives completely fail to describe a central example with great historical and current relevance.
Free speech is a good idea for game-theoretic reasons. That's it. Free speech lets people fight it out with only the occasional riot and attempted overthrow of the republic. That's better than the alternative.
This one is in flux, I suspect. In the past, people were born into their religion, and today, at least in the west, it is becoming more common for people to choose their religion. So I guess this is the exception that proves the rule.
When people with the wrong opinions (on who knows what, frankly, the list keeps changing) get banned from banking systems the very same people will be in the thread defending the sanctions and censorship action.
“Just build your own bank.”
“Just build your own currency.”
It's like the tech tree from the Civ games in reverse.
To develop 'Social Network' or 'Digital Currencies', you need 'Server Farm', 'Internet', and 'Power Grid', and to have those you need everything from 'Intercontintental Data Cables' to 'Semiconductor Manufacturing', and way back to extraction and refining of raw materials..
They do it to regular people every day, I was banned countless times from websites when I was a stupid kid, and more than a few times as an adult. No one cares until it happens to famous racists. I wonder why.
Where we pretend that groups like the ACLU didn't have to go to court for that, and that it's always allowed for everyone and it's never a huge problem.
>"That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it.""Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
I'm not aware of any group intending to overthrow a government or otherwise do harm which was allowed to recruit and spread their propaganda as aggressively and freely as possible, and which was thwarted in their aims by nothing more than civil discourse. I don't know what experience he believes to be contrary to that classic argument, but that of the Nazis and Communists ain't it.
It certainly doesn't seem to work with modern propaganda or conspiracy theory. I'm certain QAnon and anti-vaxxers have been presented with arguments contrary to their claims, and those of white supremacists and anti-semites have been litigated for a century or more, and yet not only do they persist, but are experiencing a modern renaissance.
Show me an example where this proposition that "letting them all talk" is the best way to prevent organized violence and mayhem at scale. I can raise you book burnings and gulags and death camps galore.
> I can raise you book burnings and gulags and death camps galore.
Yes, the famous events that come from letting everyone speak: book burnings and death camps. If we could just burn enough books, we could keep books from being burned forever. If we silence enough people, we can keep people from being silenced.
Elaborate on your examples of how the powerful allowing the weak to speak leads to book burnings and death camps, and I'll give you something more detailed than a clear, concise response.
The argument is for deplatforming, so it would be more accurate to say, “in order to prevent book burnings, we must not give them any assistance in publicizing their thoughts.”
Deplatforming doesn’t forcibly prevent speech, it just pushes it to the margins. You can still publish your book in favor of book burnings, but, in a deplatforming world, no major publisher would publish it, so you’d have to do a small independent print run that would likely be ignored.
This is the way the world has always worked. Publishers (including TV channels, newspapers, etc.) have always exercised discretion over what they thought was worthy to publish. What’s different today is that the human content moderation has largely disappeared, which has allowed the marginal voices (antivax on both left and right, QAnon, etc.) to flourish.
Edit: That’s not to say this content moderation has been perfect. It allows small communities to exercise behavior that the larger society finds abhorrent, such as refusing service to people of color. And so laws are passed regulating what small communities can do, which understandably pisses them off. Human systems are messy; there’s no absolutist answer that works, either in unbridled control or unbridled tolerance.
> In its application to statements about groups, the German law of insult
had a development very similar to the Anglo-American law of libel.1 The
Supreme Court had decided at an early date that statements about a class
of people were punishable only if it could clearly be established that they
were directed against definite individuals. An insulting remark about "Jews
generally" was not considered within the statute. This view was reaffirmed
in 1931 in a case in which a general attack on the Jews was held to be "not
directed in a sufficiently recognizable manner against individual Jews."
Similarly, an attack against the "German Jews" was held not to be suffi-
ciently restricted, although in a few instances persons were convicted for
insulting the Jewish inhabitants of small communities
Even known extremists, posting lies about people who were targetted for being Jewish, were let off, where the same lie about any random person could have led to a year in prison:
> In one of several cases
against Julius Streicher, the editor of the Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer,
a fine of 400 marks (then less than $100) was levied for an article which
stated that a Jewish attorney, Dr. Wassertriidinger of Nuremberg, had
committed perjury. The opinion of the court was that in spite of the seri-
ousness of the libel and of a prior conviction of Streicher, no prison sentence
be inflicted because "the defendant is a fanatic whose statements cannot
be taken too seriously." Similar tenderness in meting out punishment was
frequently explained by the characterization of the defendants as zealots.
> Furthermore,
the immunity of the members of the Reichstag often protected Nazi depu-
ties against criminal prosecution. Those deputies became the so-called re-
sponsible editors of many newspapers—frequently one deputy was the
editor of several newspapers—and thus made criminal prosecution for
many libelous publications impossible. Although the Reichstag could waive
the immunity of its members, it did so infrequently and then only after
long delays.
So it looks like we tried not censoring them, and suprisingly, it didn't work.
That's not what I wrote. I said he was already a popular figure whose views should be publicly refuted. The fact that he later became a presidential contender isn't Yale's fault, but rather the unfortunate result of a lack of willingness to let the bad ideas see themselves out the door.
> "Haters in the end bury themselves if you let them talk" - Jonathan Rauch
He was challenged by most, but not all, newspapers. It clearly didn't work as we're still dealing with the same BS 60 years later.
But sure, the real problem is Psychologists trying to adress systematic racism in their field. That's worth resigning about. Because they're trying to hide the truth, but also we should let them speak, in our academic Psychological publications, because it's obvious nonsense.
Just want to point out that you became unilaterally unhinged over the course of this exchange while. the other commenter wrote calmly.
Also, how do you propose to convince people of this clearly-objective “truth” that you know, if you silence them from questioning and debating it? Do you think that’s ever worked?
I think this is exactly what they’re talking about. In no way did the grandparent endorse or glorify Wallace; his implication was that Wallace would have been less popular had he and therefore his opponents been heard. But in this environment, merely suggesting a person should be heard is taken as a strident endorsement.
Another more extreme example would be the Nazis. They went through early political suppression and existed in an environment where organized political street violence was already common. Who knows what the counterfactual was, but censoring and punching Nazis did not stop their rise. The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans is a good book on this. It certainly seems that extremism is fostered by such environments.
> censoring and punching Nazis did not stop their rise.
Precisely. Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU board from 1991-2008, argues that censorship helped the Nazis [1]
> "In the Weimar Republic there were laws very similar to the anti hate speech laws that still exist in Germany today. And they were very strictly enforced, there was an umbrella of Jewish organizations in the Weimar Republic, the head of which did a study. They said that these laws are by and large being strictly enforced, the prosecutions are being capably handled, there were many convictions, including of Nazis, and the Nazis loved the propaganda. They got far more attention than they otherwise would have, became free speech martyrs, actually had posters saying, 'In all of Germany why is this one man silenced?' They gained sympathy and attention that they otherwise never would have."
A written version of their (by which I mean Strossen and other's like Haidt involved in FIRE movement) "anti-hate laws helped the Nazis" argument is found here:
> Considering the Nazi movement’s core ideology, as espoused by Hitler in “Mein Kampf,” rested on an alleged conspiracy between Jews and their sympathizers in government to politically disempower Aryan Germans, it is not surprising that the Nazis were able to spin government censorship into propaganda victories and seeming confirmation of their claims that they were speaking truth to power, and that power was aligned against them.
I don't find it particularly convincing, but it does explain the strategy of complaining about free speech and censorship by "the jews" has a long history of success, with Nazis. Everyone else thinks, "oh these people are Nazis". But Nazis think, "It's a Jewish Conspiracy to silence the truth", because they are Nazis.
Suggesting that anti-hate speech laws are worth bringing up in this context is like mentioning Hitler was a vegetarian or banned smoking and seems to be sourced to a cartoonist, rather than a historian.
Hitler went to jail for 'high treason' after an attempted coup.
> Goebbels' tactic of using provocation to bring attention to the Nazi Party, along with violence at the public party meetings and demonstrations, led the Berlin police to ban the Nazi Party from the city on 5 May 1927.[65][66] Violent incidents continued, including young Nazis randomly attacking Jews in the streets.[62] Goebbels was subjected to a public speaking ban until the end of October.[67]
Goebbels, the victim of oppressive laws that stop you from randomly attacking people in the street. Why have we not learned this lesson from history? If you stop them attacking people violently in the streets, and removing the government, then it's your own fault what happens next.
I mentioned Evans’ The Coming of the Third Reich because it’s critical for understanding what happened here to know the historical context. Those measures were not targeted at the Nazis specifically, nor were the tactics developed by the Nazis in a vacuum.. Organized political street violence was already normal in Weimar Germany before the Nazis had more than a dozen members. They came into existence at a time when violence was a socially acceptable method to shut people up. They faced political/legal repression, censorship, and arrests before the coup.
I don’t know if it helped them amass the numbers/backing and cement the ideology that led to the attempted coup, but it definitely didn’t stop it. You can definitely see how pre-existing political street gangs made it easier to justify forming their own street gangs.
The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work. Countering speech with more speech is better. Roger Baldwin, founder of the now gone-astray ACLU, may have put it best [1],
> Host: "What possible reason is there for giving civil liberties to people who will use those civil liberties in order to destroy the civil liberties of all the rest?"
> Roger: "That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it."
> "Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
Regarding your claim that this is only "faintly" related to free speech, you should know that Jonathan Haidt is very near to that issue. He co-authored a book [2] with the current president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Greg Lukianoff. See also: Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives [3]
> The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work.
This is the core of your argument, and if true, it’s unassailable. However, I don’t believe it’s true. Do you have evidence that it is? I don’t mean well-crafted arguments by respected people, but actual evidence.
For my part, I’ve seen evidence to the contrary. Elsewhere in this thread, there’s a study that cites the positive benefits of deplatforming on Reddit. I’ve also observed that online forums invariably turn into cesspits if they aren’t moderated. The larger the forum, the more aggressive that moderation has to be, to the point of banning and shadowbanning. HN does it. (For that matter, downvoting is another form of deplatforming, in that it literally pushes other people’s opinions out of sight.)
So there’s two points of evidence that make me believe that deplatforming is effective: one is academic; and one is the personal observation, that I think we’ve all shared, that moderated fora work better than unmoderated fora. What evidence do you have? Please summarize rather than just posting links.
> This is the core of your argument, and if true, it’s unassailable. However, I don’t believe it’s true. Do you have evidence that it is? I don’t mean well-crafted arguments by respected people, but actual evidence.
> For my part, I’ve seen evidence to the contrary. Elsewhere in this thread, there’s a study that cites the positive benefits of deplatforming on Reddit.
I'm familiar with that study and I'm pretty sure they acknowledged that they only measured activity of individuals who remained on Reddit. It's really hard to definitively say what happens when groups move to private forums where you can no longer track their conversations. Also, what people say in public vs. private can be different [1] [2], and I think periods when that is true (such as right now) should be cause for consideration about whether or not censorship contributes to that. I'd argue that state or widespread cultural censorship does contribute to self-censorship by chilling conversations, and that people's views don't change when you block them from view. It's like sending someone to prison vs. rehabilitation. You might still argue that the views can't spread as easily, and I would argue against that too.
When groups are deplatformed, they find their own ways to communicate, either by joining private groups on services like Telegram or by creating their own platforms.
Then they are outside your sphere of influence and harder to reach. We are pushing them in this direction and I think we will end up regarding that as a mistake. But it's not like this is the first time that's happened.
You can join my talk next Wednesday, October 12th [3] to learn more about what I think with sources. It's the first one listed. This particular question is not the focus, but it is related. I'd also recommend listening to free speech defenders such as Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Greg Lukianoff, and Jonathan Rauch, to name a few [4]. They've all spoken at length about this via many forms of media, books, podcasts, conferences, etc. Anyone interviewed on the So to Speak podcast is also great, particularly the earlier episodes where they bring in the older generations who've been defending free speech for their entire lives.
The evidence is there, but every time there is a new technology it takes time to collect. You can instead consider a principled approach based on what you know works between individuals. Jonathan Rauch makes a great case for this in his books and speaking.
> I’ve also observed that online forums invariably turn into cesspits if they aren’t moderated.
I think this is true! Yet, the more we censor, the more concentrated the echo chambers become, both the ones you agree with and the ones with whom you disagree. So IMO we must stop regarding "ugly" forums as a bad thing to be avoided. We all have difficult conversations in the real world, and I think curating the online world to look nice and pretty only provides more evidence to the idea that our current "solution" to online disagreements isn't working and appears to be infecting the real world.
> The larger the forum, the more aggressive that moderation has to be, to the point of banning and shadowbanning. HN does it.
That is evidence that it's popular, not that it is a good idea.
> (For that matter, downvoting is another form of deplatforming, in that it literally pushes other people’s opinions out of sight.)
I agree, and I think that has the unfortunate side effect of hiding some useful rebuttals, as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread [5].
> So there’s two points of evidence that make me believe that deplatforming is effective: one is academic; and one is the personal observation, that I think we’ve all shared, that moderated fora work better than unmoderated fora. What evidence do you have? Please summarize rather than just posting links.
I'd say the jury's out on how to effectively moderate fora. We're just at the start of this era and it's been quite a bumpy ride. Moderation, at the very least, should be transparent to the authors of the content, and that's not the case across all of the major platforms, including this one.
This is my understanding of their analysis, based on a fairly shallow read:
> Are accounts being created on an alternative platform after being suspended?
A: Yes, 59% of Twitter users and 76% of Reddit users moved to Gab.
> Do suspended users become more toxic if they move to another platform?
A: Reddit users became more toxic on Gab. 60% of Twitter users became less toxic and 20% became much more toxic, although the most toxic posts
contained hatred against Twitter and complaints that their free speech and rights had been denied. (Toxicity was determined using Google's Perspective API.)
> Do suspended users become more active if they move to another platform?
A: Yes. A manual inspection determines that at least some of that increased activity is complaints about being suspended.
> Do suspended users gain more followers on the other platform?
A: Although users tend to become more toxic and more active after they move to the alternative platform, their audience decreases.
I think you could read this either way. Deplatforming is ineffective because it "radicalizes" those have been deplatformed. Or; deplatforming is effective because it reduces the spread of toxicity. Your post above is mainly focusing on the former; my post focused mainly on the latter.
The jury's still out, as you said. Personally, I'll continue to lean in favor of moderation, if only for the selfish reason that unmoderated communities are nasty places, and I want to participate in communities that "bring me joy," to indulge in a Kondo-ism. I think we've shown pretty conclusively, though, that your argument "The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work" is premature at best.
> You didn't actually answer my request for evidence, though
I agree with the NYT that censorship is rooted in fear [1].
Evidence is aplenty of the benefits of open discourse. In real-world places where open discourse is encouraged, people and ideas thrive. Also, saying "you need to be protected from other people's words" is not a winning argument in the public sphere. People want to be trusted to make their own decisions about how to feel, not have the importance of speech dictated to them.
It's really only a small minority who seek protection against certain viewpoints, and they too want to be able to express themselves. Unfortunately, censorship is also used against them, often with prejudice and without their knowledge [2]. History has shown how this has happened over and over, for example in "Don't Be a Sucker" (1947) [3]. If you choose to ignore it, that is your prerogative. History is evidence.
> I think is the study we've been discussing
Thanks for linking it, that's not the one I had in mind. To expand on my previous comment about how we should accept "ugly" forums, I think measuring toxicity is problematic. For one thing, it's a subjective measure. One man's trash is another's treasure. For example, here's an article from someone making a case in favor of Kiwi Farms [4]. But also, censorship can chill what people state publicly. I already shared Axios's write-up of a recent study that shows that these days, what people say publicly does not align with what they say privately [5].
> The jury's still out, as you said. Personally, I'll continue to lean in favor of moderation, if only for the selfish reason that unmoderated communities are nasty places, and I want to participate in communities that "bring me joy," to indulge in a Kondo-ism. I think we've shown pretty conclusively, though, that your argument "The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work" is premature at best.
FWIW, I think moderation is fine if the author is informed of actions taken against their content. That is not happening consistently on any of the platforms though, and hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of users are impacted. Load 10 tabs of randomly selected active Reddit users on Reveddit [6]. Five or more will have had a comment removed within their first page of recent history. Almost none of these will have been notified, and all of their removed comments are shown to them as if they're not removed. I just did it and got 7. Reddit last reported 450 million monthly active users. And, Facebook moderators have a "Hide comment" button that does the same thing:
> "Hiding the Facebook comment will keep it hidden from everyone except that person and their friends. They won’t know that the comment is hidden, so you can avoid potential fallout." [7]
It's hard for me to believe that this has had no negative impact on discourse, particularly when our recent difficulties communicating across ideologies seem to align quite well with the introduction of social media. Things like this 1998 Firing Line episode [8] simply are not happening today. The depth of conversations these days is shallow and combative.
> I'll let you have the last word. Best wishes.
I will reject (graciously, I hope) your offer. I think continued discussion is the way forward.
It's worked incredibly well. The United States - the country with easily some of the most well protected free speech laws - continues to be one of the most diverse and welcoming countries in the world. It's one of the most desired places for people to immigrate to, and continues to have a large foreign born population. By comparison, look at how a single digit percentage influx of foreigners rattled Europe. When racists do gather it usually results in plummetting support for their causes. This was the case with the Unite the Right rally: following the rally support for the movement dropped considerably.
By what metric has Chomsky's strategy failed? You seem to be postulating this as fact, without anything backing it up.
"By comparison, look at how a single digit percentage influx of foreigners rattled Europe."
Islam played a role in that. Europe and Islam have been on mostly fighting terms since around 700 AD. There is much smaller cultural difference between the mostly Hispanic immigration into the US and the mainstream American culture than there is between the mostly secular European cultures and people from, say, Afghanistan, who express significant support for things such as Shari'a law.
Seems like it's worked well? Wikipedia tells me that he's "one of the most cited scholars alive" and "has influenced a broad array of academic fields"; I'm not personally familiar with his academic work, but most of my friends strongly endorse his perspectives on capitalism and foreign policy. It's hard to see how compromising on free speech could have led his ideas to be more successful.
> That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us.
With the small difference being that those groups did not suppress speech by refusing to invite speakers to an event. Let's not put academia memberships and pogroms in the same category.
I wasn't comparing academia to nazis. Rather, I was saying that even in the most extreme situations e.g. nazis and communists, open and civil discourse is still better than censorship.
It's also worth noting that FIRE was expressly founded to deal with free speech violations in higher education. FIRE's president often discusses this, for example in a recent interview with Nick Gillespie [1]. FIRE recently expanded to cover all free speech issues, but that is where they got started. They've taken over a role that the ACLU has largely abandoned, since they now construe rights to be in conflict with each other, as former Executive Director Ira Glasser mentions [2] with the ACLU's new guidelines [3]:
> "The guidelines are designed to assist in consideration of the competing interests that may arise when such conflicts emerge. The guidelines do not seek to resolve the conflicts, because resolution will virtually always turn on factors specific to each case."
> "The potential conflict between advocacy for free speech and for equal justice in the fight against white supremacy is especially salient, but by no means unique in presenting tensions between ACLU values."
But you're not supposed to construe rights as being in conflict with each other, as implied by the 9th amendment [4]:
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people
Like balancing form and function, one should not take away from another.
He may be right with the general idea, but the point was that his phrasing needs some serious work. The classic argument is really that they should be censored so they can't easily organise and kill us. If he doesn't say that, I don't know if he realises what stakes he's talking about. (he probably does, but... say it)
I'm annoyed, because there are lots of people who don't realise this is literally about survival for others, not just about free speech ideas.
> some serious work. The classic argument is really that they should be censored so they can't easily organise and kill us.
There's a difference between words and actions. Words fo not kill. No, words are not violence no matter how much people try to claim otherwise.
Furthermore, censoring people does nothing to reduce a groups ability to kill. Taking away someone's public voice does not take away their capacity to carry out violence. Disinviting a speaker or banning a book does not magically make people's guns disappear.
So, I like the voting system on social media because it surfaces good comments.
But I don't like when the vote ranks stifle good retorts, which is what has now happened here. Logged out users won't see this entire thread of replies because the comment to which you are replying is marked "dead".
Thanks, I did so in this case, though in general I'm wary of that button. The system could count against me if I "vouch" for something that people later downvote. We don't knowfor sure what happens because they don't tell us how it works.
It is good to go to the sources - but the obvious source I found appears to be [0] a recursive link so that isn't too helpful. Throwing babies out with the bathwater is bad and doing studies with diverse participants seems like a good idea. The statement can say "this research doesn't further the SPSP's goals" So I don't see why the statement itself would be objectionable.
The objection would be if the statement is used as a tool to discriminate against good research. So this resignation should probably be treated as a vote of no confidence in the people and goals of the specific institution. I can see why the sort of people who would demand this statement would be a problem as ironically the DIE crowd seems to sometimes attract a weird sort of modern racist. Something that is always a risk when developing a race-obsessed ideology.
The source doesn't actually say whether submissions not advancing "SPSP's goal of promoting equity, inclusion and anti-racism" would be accepted though.
They would pass the reviewing process where they would receive the lowest score on the "3-point rating scale".
It would also mean by negation that the submission did not employ "diverse research participants", "diverse research methods (e.g., methodology that promotes equity)", or "diverse members of the research team", which basically would be viewed as a self-indictment in our political climate. Nobody with an interest to succeed would willingly arrive at this conclusion, they would view it as necessary to avoid it (like by making up reasons as to why the submission advances anti-racism).
In other words, the requirement to include the statement is a way of enforcing the stated goals and policing the researchers' conformity.
I'm not sure that this is really a problem. The sample of "57 college students that we forced to participate" is a bane of psychology research even if we ignore the racism angle. So what's wrong with writing a paragraph about how you took pains to get a representative sample?
> I personally think it’s disgusting Democrats are trying to revive institutional racism — but they’ve been doing that for 150 years, so I’m not surprised.
Any ideology that discriminates against one race or ethnic group vs. any other is racist. Trying to make elaborate arguments as to why some types of discrimination are acceptable because historical or societal reason X or Y is a form of rationalization.
Could it be affirmative action is sometimes rational?
After decades of apartheid would you prefer the South African government stop all consideration of race across the board, despite the profits of inequity having already been partitioned?
Depends. If you believe discrimination by race is wrong you should not discriminate by race. If you disagree with how discrimination was done but have no objection to racial discrimination as such you should discriminate in the way your values suggest you do.
We have laws for separation of church and state, they should be applied to this as any other. This is a religion.
It's the same as any religious group trying to impose their morality and beliefs on everyone else. To be a good person use the correct words and correct ideas as defined by us, the good people. If you disagree you are a bad person. Sinful, evil.
How can you disagree with the Holy Words, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity? You're either with us or against us. Sign here on the dotted line to confirm membership.
> We have laws for separation of church and state, they should be applied to this as any other. This is a religion.
I'd say this about any sort of psychological theories that get intertwined into the justifications of power structures. The government should not be speculating about or creating rules about people's inner states. A government trying to change the minds of the population undermines democracy. An administration, fine, but not the government itself, with regulations paid for with tax money.
People should change governments. Governments shouldn't change people.
Like most religious analogies in this area, I completely agree with it as a framework but don't really follow the conclusions. If it's a religion, surely part of living in a secular society is allowing people to practice it freely, even if that means that some conferences (or professors, or schools) adopt explicit creeds. I do worry, because I think this particular religion is factually wrong in ways that matter a lot, but the idea that academics should never let their core beliefs impact their work isn't really realistic.
> the idea that academics should never let their core beliefs impact their work isn't really realistic.
I wanted to explore this a bit. Let's hypothesize that the academic is in some ISIL dominated region and the caliphate says that all research must further the goals of caliphate expansion and the spread of the religion. If an academic were to write an equivalent statement - is it their core belief, or are they simply saying the Emperor's clothes are beautiful?
Given the ideal role of academia in society, isn't the latter possibility quite harmful?
As Haidt says, it's harmful to the extent that it contradicts the core telos of academic research, but I don't think it's so harmful that research becomes impossible. Quite a lot of foundational scientific work comes from medieval Christian and Muslim sources whose religious authorities executed people for heresy.
In terms of some outcomes, yes, the research can continue unhindered if they say "Hallowed are the Ori".
Personally I feel like it makes for a very poor work environment, so I sympathize with many who are put in that position. I would prefer it if they did not feel constrained by this type of environment, so that their best work would emerge.
It would mean, however, that the state should not be explicitly backing the 'religion' in e.g. public universities, even though that's not the immediate issue at hand in the article.
The current events aren't really new though. Universities have been getting steadily more left wing over time, and there's no clear waterline at which point it became 'religion'.
So this can easily be taken as an argument that governments should be divorced from academia. No grants, no student loans, no degree requirements in public sector jobs. Which would be fine, I think. The arguments for why governments should fund academia look very weak these days. It was supposed to be about long range research that the private sector wouldn't fund, but what we see in practice is the private sector funding ultra-long-range research like self driving cars, AI, etc whilst public funding gets guzzled by oceans of non-replicable P-hacked ideology driven pseudo-science. And as for education, well, researchers often don't make the best teachers anyway.
Private academic institutions (in the US-sense / not-government-funded) have no blanket obligation to separate from church, because they aren't the state.
What's kosher or not has different interpretations depending on which group (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform) you're talking to. The situation w/ Cheese and source of rennet is a frequent one where you'll see different groups following different rules.
There might be disagreement on some details between groups, but at least within a group the agreed standard is both clear upfront and objective.
This DEI standard currently sounds totally subjective with no guidance on what will pass muster, which is ideal substrate for the worst forms of corruption, nepotism, and abuses of power. You know, the very things academia is thought to fundamentally oppose.
However, if I may use the old allegory, in the deep darkness of this dei temple, there is light of the inner life. While the priests of the temple further their goals, power over others in particular, they, in fact, unknowingly implement the will above them, that's pushing our society away from individualism and towards some basic form of unity. Individualism has been necessary to develop intelligence, and now that we have it sufficiently developed, it's time to move on to the next milestone - a form of distributed mind. Once the transition is over, the priests of ignorance that thought themselves powerful will be overrun by the crowd.
Indian immigrant here who’s also not religious nor Christian. I don’t want either of them to be in schools or academia. DEI is a religion nowadays.
I personally find a lot of this DEI stuff repulsive and even racist. It seems like soft bigotry of low expectations. Also, forced inorganic ideology (in this case DEI) makes people develop disdain for the very groups who are supposed to be included while keeping it hidden. It creates a toxic environment.
It also makes me, a minority, wonder if I got an opportunity because of my skin color or because of my qualification.
Also, we live in a world of interracial marriages and families. Such DEI policies create friction in such families where the minority family member may get some opportunity while the non minority family member gets their opportunity taken away.
Also, DEI policies simply don’t make logical sense to me. Indians, Asians and Nigerian immigrants are excelling in high paying jobs. Tons of tech CEOs are Indians. It doesn’t make logical sense to push for it even more.
It seems to me that most people just want everything to be rational. It's just that the most idealogical on both sides are the ones that are always speaking.
It’s an insightful critique that a mandated statement does force many academics to lie.
This is by grasping at straws trying to find a relationship between their decades-long research thrust and a shiny new requirement popular among the administrative class that is now in charge.
> This is by grasping at straws trying to find a relationship between their decades-long research thrust and a shiny new requirement popular among the administrative class that is now in charge.
That's my biggest problem with it. It's not a bad idea by itself, but what makes it such a bad idea is that it seemingly gets shoved on top of everything. The idea that everything has to advance DEI is crazy, because some things just aren't related.
This is a classic boy who cried wolf problem. I'm sure there is racism in the US and we can certainly do a better job in advancing DEI in _some_ places. But when you go around yelling that everything has a DEI problem, you focus on the bullshit and miss the real issues.
"most academic work has nothing to do with diversity, so these mandatory statements force many academics to betray their quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth by spinning, twisting, or otherwise inventing some tenuous connection to diversity."
The article doesn't quote or link to the policy in question, seems difficult to get a neutral point of view without actually reading the changes to the policy.
Edit: the link was in the sixth paragraph, but it's much less damning than the article frames it.
“In order to present research at the conference, all social psychologists are now required to submit a statement explaining 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.’”
"Evaluate the extent to which the submission advances SPSP's goal of promoting equity, inclusion and anti-racism. To do so, please consider the equity statement as well as the submission as a whole. Submissions advancing equity, inclusion, and anti-racist goals may include (but are not limited to):
* Diverse research participants (e.g., understudied or underserved populations)
* Diverse research methods (e.g., methodology that promotes equity or engages underserved communities or scholars).
* Diverse members of the research team (e.g., those from underrepresented sociodemographic backgrounds, from an array of career stages, from outside the United States, or with professional affiliations that are not typical at SPSP such as predominately undergraduate serving institutions, minority-serving institutions, or outside academia)
Note none of these things are required but will be considered.
The text from the paper submission document has a large blank labelled:
"Please explain whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP. This may include, but is not limited to: The research participants in the sample; the methods used in the research; the members of the research team(s) involved in the work (e.g., background, diversity, career stage, affiliation type); the content of the presentation (e.g., critical theories, prejudice, equity, cross-cultural research). "
I... This seems pretty different than what Haidt is painting it as. This is saying sociology research should communicate if it engaged with communities that haven't been a part of this sort of research in the past.
> Well, it's explicitly giving an advantage to submissions that engage with these diversity goals.
I honestly don’t understand your problem with this.
Historically, the majority of humanity was not a part of social science study. For example, economics has a tradition of drawing conclusions about the labor market based on data only on American white males (literally). This has been changing and it reveals blind spots in our previous understanding of the economy.
All that this policy change seems to be doing is encourage researchers in social psychology to work with a wider subpopulation than, for example, American undergraduates aged 18 to 22. It does not mandate anywhere what their findings should be.
I feel like you didn't read my comment. It contained:
> Favoring research of understudied populations makes a lot of sense and is necessary.
Which is in direct agreement with what you wrote in response.
> Favoring researchers based on their own personal diversity metrics is controversial.
But it also acknowledges there are aspects others may find controversial. The policy extends beyond sample selection and populations addressed in research, and e.g. favors researchers from diverse backgrounds. Personally, I think this is useful (more perspectives good; more inclusion in science good)-- within reason.
> Favoring research whose findings support specific diversity-related desired outcomes is dangerous (and the policy may do this in practice).
And it points out that if interpretation of the policy extends too far, that by only allowing certain types of outcome to publish, it could create distortions. The worry is that the latter criteria in the policy could reach here.
If you can publish research that has a finding that supports "A", but cannot publish research that supports "!A", then the only published research will say "A", whether or not "A", "!A", or something else entirely are true.
Even modest publication biases can dwarf true effect sizes in social research, and can create the illusion of consistent effects and scientific consensus when neither actually exists.
That's great, because my comment never assumed the existence of neutral review.
It merely pointed out that some kinds of DEI input to review are almost certainly helpful to advancing science (e.g. ensuring we get reasonable samples in social research); some are controversial (e.g. favoring diverse researcher groups); and some are almost certainly harmful (e.g. determining whether the research can be published based on whether it makes a pro-DEI finding).
Yeah it looks like it's just an opportunity for "unusual" datasets and research by the "outsiders" to possibly break through academia's typical cronyism.
Edit: it's actually sort of hilarious that Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory can't come up with any diversity angle. Is it foundational or not?
It's got the smell of someone selling a Grand Unified Theory being annoyed that they're asked to check off whether and how their research addresses gravity.
Some things need correction. Using samples composed of overwhelmingly white university students in social research is hilariously and obviously flawed. In that sense, lacking inclusion is like ignoring gravity.
If you're shopping a general theory about morality that encompases Christian morality and non-Christian morality, I don't see what there's to be worked up about.
Unless you haven't actually explored the world beyond your backyard. I have typically found Haidt's moral foundations to be pretty interesting but because he's always sold it as cross-cultural. So this seems a bit odd, honestly.
Extremely likely to be a virtue-signaling publicly stunt, TBQH.
They also have an explicit expectation that most papers will "slightly to moderately advance[] SPSP's goal of promoting equity, inclusion, and anti-racism", as well as a header that separates the DEI review from the normal review. It's hard to imagine someone reading this policy and saying "well, my research is unrelated to equity or anti-racism, so I'll just say that and it'll be fine".
I guess I'm not sure why you doubt that. The standards are pretty clear that "does not advance SPSP's goal of promoting equity, inclusion, and anti-racism" is a failing grade on the DEI section, and that anti-racism in particular is not merely a thing the conference does but a core component of their identity. I'm sure if you sat down with them, they wouldn't frame it as abandoning anything; they would tell you that social psychology inherently touches on diversity and authors who believe their papers are unrelated should maybe think a bit harder about it.
> The standards are pretty clear that "does not advance SPSP's goal of promoting equity, inclusion, and anti-racism" is a failing grade on the DEI section
Please cite how it is a "failing grade" versus not receiving the bonus for it. The bottom score is "not applicable", not "not satisfactory" like it is in other areas.
Reviewers did not receive the statements. The assessment of the statement was only a small input into the committee making final decisions primarily based upon reviewer feedback.
Honestly, this just strikes me as typical of the the kind of heavy-handed, bureaucratic box-ticking that now dominates academia.
One of the first things I had to do as a post-doc was complete a 4-page document on whether my chair was comfortable enough.
I have been involved in major EU grant applicants that exceed 100 pages, and consist of excruciatingly obtuse questions as to how our project aligns with their institutional goals and byzantine definition of 'success'.
These policies may even negatively impact faculty who broadly agree with their institution's DEI values but disagree on some of the specifics
This is a money quote, and I think it's spot on. I don't think I'm projecting to say many people are personally committed to DEI but hate hate hate DEI initiatives (doubly so when they become cringey).
> the left used to be creeped out by loyalty oaths, whether administered by the McCarthyite right or the Soviet left. But young people on the left seem to be very comfortable requiring such pledges.
I firmly believe that DEI and its neighbor ESG have become one giant scam. Anyway to demonstrate that your corporation, literature, or organization mimics the ideologically virtue-signaled narrative and you are more likely to get better funding/support/grants.
You're not the only one. I see DEI and ESGs as a giant scam as well. More people are starting to see them this way as well. Here's a take I enjoyed listening to by Capitalisn't: [The Smoke and Mirrors of ESG Investing with Tariq Fancy](https://capitalisnt.com/episodes/the-smoke-and-mirrors-of-es...)
Episode Summary
> Environmental, social and governance investing, also know as ESG, has exploded in recent years. It promises to help us solve problems like climate change and inequality all while allowing investors to still turn a profit.
>
> But BlackRock’s former global chief investment office for sustainable investing, Tariq Fancy, says it isn't what's being advertised. Recently, he penned a blog post claiming that not only are ESGs not making societal problems better, they may actively be making them worse.
I am extremely glad I live in a country in continental Europe where this shit is unconstitutional and will be stricken down by the courts immediately (as will be any sort of preferential treatment of any minority in hiring or admissions). Hope it stays that way.
Interestingly, in my EU country we have explicit laws in constitution which forbid any kind of preferential treatment or discrimination based on gender, race and etc. However, there are agencies and courts who allow affirmative action policies to exist. For example, a public grant for entrepreneurs where women are officially awarded extra points for their gender. So basically constitution is ignored and no one cares.
In Switzerland it's illegal to make a difference between genders...however since a very short time woman's had to work not as long as men, now some woman cry it's unfair and blablabla, and there is still one or more thing, woman's don't have to go to military-service OR pay money for not going.
But if you say that, some of them will tell you that they would do that if they earn the same as men, but that is already in law...if you ask them for proof they never have any...
>>Appropriate measures aimed at achieving true equality are not regarded as discriminatory.
So since Men have a shorter lifespan (even in country's where alcohol and drugs are a nogo...if someone want to come with that argument) Men should not work as long as Woman's ;) excellent!!
BTW: What are Appropriate measures?....that's a typical Swiss law, it just say's nothing..and everything ;)
> Interestingly, in my EU country we have explicit laws in constitution which forbid any kind of preferential treatment or discrimination based on gender, race and etc. However, there are agencies and courts who allow affirmative action policies to exist. For example, a public grant for entrepreneurs where women are officially awarded extra points for their gender.
Yes it sure is. Interesting, in California in 2020, there was an attempt (Proposition 16) to overturn Proposition 209. It went down in flames, almost 60% against / 40% for.
Prop 209, passed in 1996, "amended the state constitution to prohibit government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education."
If Prop 16 had passed, it would have allowed government agencies to deliberately and explicitly discriminate against people based on immutable characteristics.
The wording from Prop 16's advocates seems to embrace Kendi's punitive stance on using active discrimination to reach some kind of equity goal:
"Despite living in the most diverse state in the nation, white men are still overrepresented in positions of wealth and power in California. Although women, and especially women of color, are on the front lines of the COVID-19 response, they are not rewarded for their sacrifices. Women should have the same chance of success as men.
Today, nearly all public contracts, and the jobs that go with them, go to large companies run by older white men. White women make 80¢ on the dollar. The wage disparity is even worse for women of color and single moms. As a result, an elite few are able to hoard wealth instead of investing it back into communities. Prop. 16 opens up contracting opportunities for women and people of color. "
In 2020 I tried to find data and studies backing the laundry list of assertions but came up empty-handed. The wording seemed very slanted... "older white men"... "single moms"... Certainly there are disparities in society, but we must always consider, objectively, what are the root causes.
Where does it end? Does anybody want an NBA where the makeup of the teams is based on the racial percentages in society, or do people want the best players playing? Do you want the best surgeon or pilot? Absolutely I bet 99% of people on HN want everyone to have equal opportunity; in my experience, in the vast majority of American tech companies (I don't work in healthcare of finanace, etc. so I can't speak to them), if you had 2 equally qualified candidates, and one was a white man and one was a woman or a racial minority or perhaps even not-straight, the white man will usually be the one not getting the job.
I think there is a burgeoning push back on quotas and such as well. I think the woke crowd pushed their luck a bit too hard. This is coming from a very progressive person (me) but who also feels egalitarianism and personal responsibility should always be the goal and not an afterthought.
I'm not getting that impression. For what it's worth, "woke left" has always been a minority, yet it hasn't lost momentum as much as it continually rotates in direction. Specifically, we're seeing more and more non-NA countries adopt these rhetorics from both the US and CA.
Politics is becoming more and more extremist too, with the extreme left lashing out and calling anyone who even questions the status quo an extreme rightist bigot, and the extreme right doing the equivalent. And the two are fueled by both one another, as well as increasing tensions due to national issues.
The extreme left and right do fuel each other. I think Trump's rise in 2015 was somewhat related to the rise of wokeness in 2012. A large slice of right wing media today is outrage at wokeness. It's animating them. The fascists in Japan and Germany were partly motivated out of a fear of Bolsheviks.
This is my main gripe with wokeness. Yes I dislike the illiberalism of quotas and the collectivist nature of its moral system (collective guilt and inherited guilt). But my main concern is the right wing backlash and the consequences of that on democracy and freedom.
There aren't a lot of fully private academic education institutions in Europe, compared to the US.
But I wonder if they could do that sort of thing based of their existing limitations for academic freedom. If an institution funded by Volkswagen wants the professors to work on car related stuff to advance technological goals, couldn't they also require them to work towards social or political goals?
autonomy of "private" institutions partially died with the mechanism of tying title ix compliance to any federal dollars. i think there are 2 colleges in America that take 0 federal aid (pell grants etc.) so don't have to comply.
tbh i always found it contradictory we don't use those federal $ to require compliance with all constitutional rights, e.g. 1 and 2a.
Unlikely, I don't know what "continental Europe" means here, but DE&I is gaining a lot of traction in Western/Central Europe. In countries whose history is completely different from the US' and where it makes literally no sense to think of race this way.
They were trying to make sure the country I live in (which has more than 1 significant "traditional" minority) does not partition along ethnic lines by instituting differentiated treatment on the basis of ethnicity.
But thanks for bringing your bullshit, unapplicable anglo concepts to the entire world. We really appreciate it every time.
I for one welcome this change. The whole university system has for decades been built on a house of straw and the ideologues of DIE are dismantling it bit by bit. What structures we build next will surely be interesting.
This press piece is saying only research that advances DEI will be accepted. How many math papers on set theory do you know of whose results directly improve race relations?
what would be odd is people trying to re-define racism to attack math papers
the re-definition problem has been going on for a while in this sphere, if someone needs to control the definition of every aspect of a conversation, it basically shows they have no integrity
hoping it will not deflate further the value of public education in favour of private institutions or R&D companies which could gatekeep even further public uni graduates from "performative diploma mills". "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" scenario
The most notable, destabilizing proclivity that Universities have been engaging in for recent decades (keep in mind many have been around for centuries) is participating at all, and lo, converging towards in specific political action which is, among many traits, too censorious to be considered academic.
That being said, I have witnessed this non sense during my professional career, we had meeting discussing the need to hire woman or black people.
As an engineer I can't possibly agree to that. I want to work with engineers, problem solvers. I don't think Melatonin or the presence or absence of a vagina to be a useful metric.
That's also the reason I left the Western world for the foreseeable future. It's clearly impossible to focus long enough on a problem without being disturbed by the new shiny ideology of the moment.
That’s a pretty strong reaction to HR wanting more diversity. I wouldn’t call that a “new shiny ideology of the moment” either. Affirmative action dates back to reconstruction.
I think the fallacy here is that there’s a single best applicant for any given position. There are often multiple qualified candidates, why shouldn’t race or gender be a factor if you’re just going to choose arbitrarily anyway.
You can use gender or race or any other factor. I just don't want to have anything to do with that company because I am afraid I will lose IQ point on the long run.
I am a capitalist, I am not sure which factors are the best factors when it comes to correlating with performance.
Is it hard skills? Communication? Do I need a generalist? A specialist? Is it better to hire people with ego or not?
One thing I am pretty confident is that vagina or Melatonin are pretty weak factor. And I would not trust any HR or managers optimizing for it.
I am a lot more happy since I live in a country where that does not value these things.
> In order to present research at the conference, all social psychologists are now required to submit a statement explaining 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.'"
What are the consequences of saying "This research does not have any DEI implications."?
>Last week the New York University (NYU) psychology professor announced that he would resign at the end of the year from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, his primary professional association, because of _a newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances_ "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals." It was the sort of litmus test against which he has warned, and which he sees as corroding institutions of higher learning.
This sounds bad! Not all research has anything to do with equity, inclusion, or anti-racism.
>all social psychologists are now required to submit a statement explaining 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.'"
Oh, so it wasn't a "litmus test" or hard requirement.
Emphasis on "whether". His research didn't have to do anything with DEI. He could have very easily just said "This research has nothing to do with equity, inclusion, and anti-racism." and been done with it, but instead chose to make a mountain out of a molehill and rage-quit his position in this association to make himself a martyr for the anti-DEI movement.
>As of now, everybody presenting research at the society's upcoming conference will have to pledge that their work advances political goals.
This is a lie that is disproven by quotes provided in the article. Once again, you are not required to "pledge" anything. You just have to state whether your research has anything to do with EIAR, and if it does, what it has to do with EIAR.
This sounds optional in the same way that company socials are optional. Maybe you can skip it once, but too many times and people start asking questions.
>"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
It just shows the power of ideology to crush dissent, when obviously poisonous and destructive statements like these are accepted.
If more people thought like that, then Jews would still be shovelling Germans into ovens.
A true act of courage. Suffering personal consequences to stick up for what he believes in and do the right thing. The world needs more people like this.
He's the most important public intellectual today in more ways than one. Probably the only person who is communicating a deep understanding of the political divide to the public, and what can be done to fix it. Unlike some of his colleagues like the hack Gad Saad or the slightly less hacky but still partisan Jordan Peterson.
Off-topic, but the Reason icon is strikingly similar to YCombinator's. Orange square, with a single white letter in the middle. Wonder if one was modeled off the other.
"Now that many university presidents have agreed to implement many of the demands, I believe that the conflict between truth and social justice is likely to become unmanageable."
Can someone ELI5 what is this conflict between truth and social justice Haidt refers to?
What is equity if not equality then? (Honest question, as I just assumed it was equality as generally that's something we've been historically striving for.)
Equity is equality of outcomes (done by explicitly redirecting resources as needed to get this result). As opposed to equal opportunity which is what is generally meant by "equality".
Or to ELI5 it's treating people differently to get them all to the same position, instead of treating everyone the same. The argument for "equity" is then that we aren't all starting from the same place. It's the same line of reasoning that justified affirmative action in the US.
Opportunities and rights on the one hand, outcomes on the other. e.g.
- Equality: We are both free to operate in an open market to secure the best outcomes for ourselves
- Equity: You made $1000, I made $100, we both get $550
Wokes will bend over backwards to paint equality as an impossible project, claiming that it is doomed because of historical white supremacy, generational oppression, moon phases, etc. We're asked to believe uncritically that the goal of equal opportunity is equal outcome, and commanded to pursue equal outcome at all costs lest we are labeled racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist; de-platformed from all social media and made infamous and unemployable so we can't work to support our families. Equality is the American civil rights movement, equity is literally communism.
There’s a lot of nonsense to unpack in that comment.
Equity is not “literally communism”, it’s the pretty simple understanding that if you always start 40 meters ahead of someone in a 100 meter race, you’re likely to always finish first and they won’t have a chance.
So we put more (and therefore unequal) resources into helping the competitor who’s having to run 40 more meters than you.
That's incorrect. The goal or schema of communism is not "equal outcomes". That might be the crude rubric of some state capitalist societies of the past, e.g. equal wages regardless of rank, but in true communism the abundance of resources permits anyone to have their needs met and for anyone to realize their full abilities.
One can criticize its naivety. But please do not conflate it with the mean and frankly misanthropic world view of the woke crowd, in which large swathes of humanity are condemned to endless self flagellation.
Don't worry, they are pretty interchangeable, depending upon context. The dictionary definitions show both can be used for the same meaning, say for equal rights and for actual equal carving out of resources and means. Or something specific in the case of finance or law. And the woke crowd evidently have their own stricter definitions of both.
I'd avoid using either in any polemic for a better world, and stick to the original words of the communist manifesto, which have not been bettered: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need!
The key quote is this: "most academic work has nothing to do with diversity, so these mandatory statements force many academics to betray their quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth by spinning, twisting, or otherwise inventing some tenuous connection to diversity."
In other words a researcher studying a topic unrelated to diversity will need to lie by claiming that there is a link.
"Our lab specializes in developing hypergraph analysis techniques with applications in cybersecurity. The success of these techniques will force threat actors to innovate in order to survive. As more diverse organizations are more innovative [1][5][26] and threat actors are rational and well-informed [9][10], we expect our efforts to encourage threat actors to become more diverse as more effective cybersecurity techniques pressure them to adapt and innovate.
As threat actors account for a non-trivial fraction of global economic activity [6], we expect our research to play an active role in the co-creation of a more inclusive and diverse lifeworld for the people of earth."
This is a bad example: local knowledge (popular scams, exploits, software, etc) does play a nontrivial role in determining what the population of threats looks like; this activity is in part socially determined. So having a more diverse crowd of researchers -- with all else equal -- can improve your research group's understanding of what threats are out there. Diversity gives you edge here. Unless of course, the graph analysis research isn't really about the applications and that was just some bullshit to drum up funding.
It was a satirical example of "bullshit" application writing. I personally don't dispute the relevance of diversity (variously operationalized) within human knowledge production institutions.
I do - I think reasonably - dispute the applicability of the outputs of many of our knowledge production institutions to social justice questions. (Just as I don't dispute that there are, conversely many which are).
If we find ourselves in a situation where we can't make a useful distinction between research that is and isn't relavent to social justice, I think we're at risk of our language seeming vaccuous and nonsensical.
I didn't claim I agree or disagree with this. I answered GP's question on Haidt's argument, especially because I found the other reponses didn't do justice to Haidt by focusing on research that would contradict the dominant narrative. As far as I could tell from the article he didn't allude to that.
The question that triggered his reaction is (quoting from the article) 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.' Indeed in principle they could just answer that it doesn't. What is left out here is why they are asking this. If the purpose of the question is unclear then researchers may feel incentivised to lie to 'fit' the requirements.
My personal view is that this is much ado about nothing. More likely than not most people will ignore the answers. There will, however, be reviewers who use that to reject papers.
It's actually even worse. It is enough for research to not actively promote "social justice" (which is of course anything but social or just) to get the boot.
So everything must be politicised. "How does your new caching algorithm promote social justice?". (If the same criteria were applied in CS).
> It must be so difficult being so offended by the regular function of language. Context matters in language, and meanings and vocabulary change over time as contexts change.
The sheer irony of someone who's in favor of linguistic prescriptivism typing this out (when master record and master key have no linguistic relationship to master/slave) is astounding.
It seems to me that the real snowflakes are those who got out of their way to have the convention changed. But then again, I am just a slav who thankfully doesn't have to live in the shithole that is contemporary usa (or the valley).
"Snowflake?" Either you're projecting, or that doesn't mean what you think.
Don't forget that there were people like Rich Salz who took their ball and ran home crying[0] because of a freaking word. Was this just a fit of temporary 2020-insanity that was going around? Nope - apparently 1 year on, it's still intolerably reeecist to have a "master key" in cryptography.[1]
Are you offended when someone expresses that they want to "master the art of pasta making?" The word 'master' has many meanings, only one of which relates to slavery; every color of people on the planet has practiced slavery at some point; your boogeyman white people stopped practicing it a century and a half ago; yet just the existence of the word prevents you from being able to push code to a repo. And you call other people snowflakes...
"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." - Kendi
Kendi is a key promoter of "anti-racism", which is described in the above quote.
Many institutions are signing on to this agenda, which requires people to view everything through this ideological (social justice) lens and to participate in discriminatory activity as described above. This lens ensures that instead of seeking truth, you will just find more social injustice. A demon under every rock, if you will.
Did you notice that that promotes an eternal cycle of hatred? Because present day discrimination would mean discriminating against yesterday's powerful, and thus future discrimination will be the opposite. That someone, who seriously wrote something like that, has got influence is not a good sign.
Let's apply this to a material, concrete condition that exists in our world.
We can all hopefully agree that:
A) Redlining existed
B) Redlining was explicitly racist
C) Redlining has impacts that are still felt today
Let's use an antiracist lens to talk about it and compare to a modern, liberal "just don't be racist" lens.
The standard liberal response is, "well, redlining is over, and we know now not to do that. So, problem solved, right?"
The antiracist lens might be, "there are still people suffering from the impact of Redlining. The people who benefited from it should be helping those who suffered from it." In this case, wealthy white folks explicitly benefited from Redlining. Maaaaaybe we should tap on the shoulders of wealthy white folks and say, "hey, there was a major injustice done very recently, we want to fix it, and since you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it."
We're getting now to one of the bigger problems with the philosophy you're describing: What's "you" here? Is "you" people in the same genetic category as the people who benefited from redlining. Those who happen to look like these people, but share actual no genetic ancestry (say, because they were immigrants) or perhaps do not share the privilege (say, because they were born poor or had other disadvantages) might take exception. Push them too hard, you become the oppressor.
There's then a Kafkaesque attitude that manifests that says, "I don't care what your protestations are on this topic, nor will I hear your case, you belong to X [ where X is social group, economic class, identity group, race, or whatever ] and you should accept sacrifices for the great good. Full stop. If you deny it you're the enemy."
That's one reason why many people view highly "corrective" actions in the realm of social relations or economic re-organizations with a strong amount of terror. We certainly have strong examples of terror manifesting in the 20th century in completely separate parts of the world and at massive scale - always for the greater good.
It's totally fair to say, "wait, this person busted ass and bought in, having come from nothing. Maybe they shouldn't have to pay more." But also, the neighborhood has benefited, and that's reflected in better schools, better amenities, etc. Maybe we should find ways to ensure those better off areas help lift up the less fortunate ones.
Regarding your second point, that you belong to X, so you are the enemy. I agree. Except on economic class. For context, I made roughly $850k last year, and my taxes were paltry. It is because of people in my economic class and above they we have a lot of the problems we do.
If you make a million a year, you can absolutely afford to give more.
(I do this by spending my money on mutual aid projects, bail funds, debt relief, community owned housing, forest conservation, etc. I put about $350k into community projects that had little to no direct benefit for me. I say this only to deal with the inevitable, "why don't you put your money where your mouth is" comments I receive when I say we wealthy folks should be taxed much more.)
That wasn't reparations, that was retribution for slave labor for those forced to work in German factories. It's a start, but also about two orders of magnitude less than what Germany should pay, given the atrocities they committed in Poland. About 2-3 millions of civilians were killed during the whole war (and I mean ethnic Poles, not the Jews living in Poland, which are additional 3 millions victims)
> standard liberal response is, [...] So, problem solved, right?
Well, there's the problem. You can't declare something fixed, and you have to have standards to check against. Those people just aren't trying and you can't write every "standard liberal" off because you personally know lazy ones.
But yes, the race-blind answer would be to help people still experiencing those first-order (lack of ownership) and second-order (lack of generational equity) problems by tackling obstacles to low-end ownership and invest in wealth and estate planning classes, assisting with secondary education, etc.
A multitude of strategies and a goal of trying those and other things until the original victims are helped, while trying not the name those victims explicitly. In doing so, helping anyone similarly disadvantaged.
> antiracist lens might be, [...] wealthy white folks [...] you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it.
The anti-racist lens mentions race a lot. I'm not just saying that to be snarky but because I believe that's harmful. Like the news reporting thoughtlessly about suicides.
But I don't see in that view is any concern for finding the unfair beneficiaries - merely all white people. This is where it goes from looking racist to being racist.
Most damningly, anti-racists don't have any consistent or desirable ideas on what the problems are or how the funds would go to help. It's all about race, categorizing and separating and stigmatizing by race, and confiscating by race, but barely if ever about defining and planning to fix the problems for people of any race, let alone all.
> people in my economic class [from another post]
I feel that this class-based analysis is much more useful and less counter-productive.
Haidt gave a lecture on the topic at Duke in 2016. It's titled, "Two incompatible sacred values in American universities." It's on the YouTube channel of Duke's political science department.
It's been a while since I've watched the lecture, but what I remember is that Haidt sees the academy seeking truth as (potentially?) incompatible with the academy seeking social justice. As such, he anticipates a day when universities will have to choose individually which path they will follow.
I suspect that's the context in which Haidt is making this decision.
It goes a little bit beyond this. You're supposed to do research with an open mind and allow your conclusions to reveal themselves through the course of study. Swearing that your research advances the goals of anti-racism and equity means that your research can only have pre-formed conclusions.
It completely taints your research and any results you might come to.
That sounds nice, but the de facto the purpose of a university is the furtherance of the intellectuals.
The scientific method's purpose is to get closer to the truth.
Some research does happen at universities, but academia in its current state is far from the ideal vessel for that. (Especially when it comes to softer sciences.)
Ah yes, the always correct "society" should be heavy handed, to counter unnecessary heavy-handed university administration. That is just shifting the tyranny of the majority from an internal to a less qualified external source. Universities' end should be pursuit of the truth, not society's "goals". If society must intervene, it should be to uphold the pursuit of truth, not its own goals. That is a tall task, but lets at least aim in the right direction.
This comment is also a bit odd given the context of the last 5 years of society being ever more overrun by anti-intellectualism, that is diametrically opposed to higher learning.
> society being ever more overrun by anti-intellectualism, that is diametrically opposed to higher learning.
This has been ongoing for ever. This happens because there's a big overlap between rich, powerful, and educated groups, and there's simply a fuckton of bad "us vs them" arguments that pick one easy to identify trait and attack anyone using that.
And of course the ongoing globalization led to a lot of job displacement. Whole regions suffered and continue to suffer heavily, and ... while the whole country reaps the benefits the affected areas only got a lip service. (And of course a lot of federal transfer payments.) This created a big group ripe for populist resentment, ready to project the drawbacks of free markets onto whatever Trump said. China. Mexico. Millenials. Green stuff. Welfare queens.
One way to look at it: this is like requiring all Maths research to be applied mathematics, because we demand to get the social benefits right now and it is your job to find it. I don't know if they actually verify what you wrote in your declaration and how.
Is it really a conspiracy when we're watching exactly what the theorists said would happen, happen?
An earnest, good-hearted, and well-cited author and scientist is removing himself from academia because of the ever-accelerating creep of DEI influence into entirely unrelated work. This sounds like exactly what the so-called 'conspiracy theorists' were trying to warn us about back in 2012 or so.
If anything, your comment really just solidified to me that maybe we should have taken those folks a bit more seriously, and encouraged folks like you to quiet down. :)
Something of almost no significance to freedom of speech.
Universities are advising their staff not to council in favour of abortion or offer condoms for the purposes of birth control (but OK for purposes of diseas prevenion). Violating these rules can result in felony convictions.
This is what an attack on freedom of speech looks like. And the consequences are of far more significance in this case.
Being fired for bringing the university in to disrepute barely even registers.
So if you want to know whether someone's position on free speech is hysterical posturing, or whether it's genuine, you can compare their reaction on these two paired issues.
I'm confused, you think adding restrictions to what someone is and isn't allowed to publish has no significance to freedom of speech?
> Violating these rules can result in felony convictions.
Can you provide us with an example of a university prof being given a felony sentencing for providing counsel related to abortion? It was a bizarre thing to bring up and admittedly just sort of reads like American fear-mongering. You're coming at this from a very strange angle, you're gonna need a better formed argument if you want to change any minds here.
The way I read it was he was removing himself from an organization, not from academia entirely.
This particular organization wants to follow the antiracist line of thinking, and they probably feel that strengthens their community. He's perfectly entitled to leave it and complain about it. But, the organizations reasons for making people who join the organization align with this values statement seems like it should be their prerogative.
Maybe they feel like to grow as an organization, they need to ask their community to that line of thinking. If they have done the work to understand that's what they should do, isn't it correct, even if they lose a researcher like Haidt?
Pro-tip: being a "toxic toss-pot" should not be a reason for getting fired. People should not be fired for any non-criminal behavior outside of their workplace, even if it's racist.
Employers who fire people over non-criminal supposedly "racist" behavior should be sued and made to pay big bucks.
Being a toxic toss-pot should very much be a reason to be fired. Toxic people are notoriously destructive to the work environment, almost always in a greater degree to what they add -- even if they are top performers. Removing them can result in a more productive/creative team who can now thrive in their absence.
Are they more destructive than woke activists? I very much doubt that.
Your employer has no business judging you for how you (non-criminally) behave outside your working time. Firing over any such non-criminal behavior should be punishable severely.
I agree they shouldn't if its outside working time, but they can and should fire you for being an asshat at work.
Also, sounds like you think all 'woke activists' everywhere are always destructive. Which is an interesting take. At what point does someone cross the line to become an inherently destructive 'woke' person?
a) call/protest for firing people for said outside-of-work activities
b) protest/lobby for legislation changes restricting freedom of speech in any way
c) protest/lobby for any sort of affirmative action policies
d) protest/lobby against enforcing criminal laws because they disproportionally affect minorities (when said disproportionate effect is a result of minorities committing said crimes at higher rates)
I have question, because some of these would result in 'woke activists' on the right as well as the left.
> protest/lobby for legislation changes restricting freedom of speech in any way
There are conservative politicians, florida in particular, that have passed legislation banning CRT and gender studies. Is this not a restriction of free speech?
Toby Price was fired for reading a popular children's book to children. Was this not a form of censorship?
> protest/lobby for any sort of affirmative action policies
Does this mean that that discrimination based on race/gender be allowed or not allowed? Should bakers in an open market be permitted to say no to gay wedding cakes? Should banks be able to say no to non-white loan applicants?
> protest/lobby against enforcing criminal laws because they disproportionally affect minorities (when said disproportionate effect is a result of minorities committing said crimes at higher rates)
Does uneven enforcement count as a factor? White suburban teens smoke pot (in states where its still illegal) at rates the same as non-white urban teens, but enforcement is highly disprortionate. So what's the solution to that?
CRT and gender studies should not be part of the high school curriculum in public schools and should not receive any sort of government funding in universities because at best they are pseudoscience. Private institutions not receiving government funding should teach whatever they like, including white nationalism.
Discrimination based on race should either be allowed in all circumstances or disallowed in all circumstances. Affirmative action is discrimination based on race so it's hypocritical to have this as government policy while explicitly prohibiting discrimination against minorities.
Uneven enforcement calls for punishing those not enforced against, not letting guilty minorities walk.
Any further attempts of sealioning will be ignored.
so "restricting freedom of speech in any way" really means it can be restricted in some cases. This was your definition, not mine.
Again interesting that you consider discrimination based on race in all cases as an acceptable position equal to no discrimination based on race.
The unequal enforcement bit would mean that white neighborhoods should be given the same level of enforcement as minority ones. Is that really what you want? Where literally everyone is treated by the police exactly how they treat minorities?
I consider "restrictions of freedom of speech" justified only in the context of employment, during work hours, where said restriction directly influences your working output. If public school teachers want to teach woke pseudoscience on their own premises, during their off hours, using their own money, that's OK.
I have absolutely no problem with increasing policing in white neighborhoods. The risk to people who are not criminal lowlifes is not zero, but is negligible. And I place 0 weight on the lives and well-being of criminal lowlifes.
So, "restricting freedom of speech in any way" is actually "restricting freedom of speech in any way unless during working hours and influences working output". This revised definition now supports the use of DEI in the OP article.
I will take your word that you'd be happy with increased policing even if it affected you personally, but I doubt that if you actually experienced it that you would be happy with the outcome.
It's actually not consistent (and the example is compelled speech not restricting speech). But then again, I shouldn't be breaking what I said earlier about responding to sealioning.
It didn't take long for my point to be proven in a dramatic act of unaware self-parody. Thanks for making it perfectly clear to OP (I mean, original question asker) - if OP was indeed, genuinely unaware of what far right wing narcissistic rage looks like, which i kind of doubt.
I can be racist (teach white nationalism), you can't call me racist (that's the dread cultural cultural marxism again!). I should be subject to no laws (that restrict fascist propagandisation or mobilisation), but laws that restrict the rights of women, blacks, degenerate leftists etc. should be enforced presumably to the point of street execution (it's your own fault! gotta obey those laws!)
Reading comprehension lacking again. As I stated clearly in a comment above, I support banning employers from firing anyone over anything non-criminal they are doing during off-hours.
Also, I don't know exactly how far this is from the "opinion" of the so-called "labor movement" given that something closer to this than to anglosphere practice is the reality in most of continental Europe currently.
Attacking "Political Correctness" in a vague and non-specific way lets you sound noble.
As soon as you specify what that means in practice you just sound like a nasty bully (at best), so best leave that implied.
But a quick glance as the history of social science that these things are a direct response to, would reveal people "proving" that various groups are inferior in ways that mirror contemporary prejudices and reinforce right-wing politics that consistently builds hierarchical models to justify current social inequalities.
I think this is the quote you mean, which sounds very very different to yours?
a newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals."
You're getting downvoted and flagged because you're breaking the site guidelines by going on about getting downvoted and flagged. It's tedious and off topic. Please stop now.
This comment doesn't really explain the conflict, if it was a response to the ELI5 request.
Instead it seems to be at best discounting that there is a conflct to explain or at worse is participating in the conflict by defending one side of it.
I think a stronger case could in theory be made that the conflict is non existent but it's a harder position to advocate.
does it rly change anything? like, take sports. asians have some structural advantages (endomorphism and limb to body ratio) for lifting, west africans at mnay explosive/power sports (fast twitch muscle concentration, arms/legs to body), east africans at long-distance running etc. (lighter structure, efficient muscles over long term), whites at swimming (shoulder structure & torso length).
should we stop large swathes of research into athletic performance? bc i guess it doesn't provide sufficiently "antiracist" outcomes?
Studies that show the genetic diversity of the continent of Africa are in fact "anti-racist".
They truthfully reveal that the psuedoscientific 19th century ideas we refer to as race had no scientific basis. Some people really haven't taken this "truth" well though.
They still try to fit every new fact into their old model.
Like "West African Scorpios" are much more open to emotion, while "East African Scorpios" are open to new experience. So should we stop all research into Astrology?
Yes, because it's psuedoscientific nonsense that only distracts from the actual truth.
This current controversy includes the attempts to stop exactly this, with rules saying if you do medical research, and classify people by "race" then you need to explain who made this classification and why. Because a Brazilian looking a photos might put people into different races than an American or Japanese researcher, which might differ from the subjects chosen race, which definately differs from their genetic race, because genetic races don't exist.
i mean, i agree they're imperfect but there's also not "0 basis". if nothing else they may continue to associate with stuff because society often sees them as coherent groupings.
but cool, now suppose some study has a result i can't spin as "anti-racist". what do?
also you seem well-intentioned but your definition seems wildly different from kendi's defining anti-racism to include support for present discrimination to "remedy" past.
yeah, i've read it. they're requiring people to write statements on whether/how their research advances the stated goals of the society in this area. next year, they will make it part of the scoring rubric for submissions.
here's the thing: "anti-racism" is being used as a motte-and-bailey argument. it's basically dogwhistling an intent to promote present discrimination (c.f. kendi) even if they're using a different definition that doesn't explicitly state that, because it's how that term has been widely used and understood. but when people take issue with it, they can be like "oh our definition doesn't say that." and ngl i find it pretty disingenuous.
I don't understand the argument that genetics isn't correlated with race. I would imagine a better argument is that it's a spectrum - but the fact is that when plotting the principle components of any large scale set of human genetic data from around the world, self reported race actually clusters (PC isn't even a clustering technique) quite well. So the fact that the axes of tbe largest explained variance of the data (PC_0 and PC_1) correlates with self reported race is hard to mend with the idea that is loudly exclaimed in academia that race isn't genetic. Am I missing some important subtlety here?
While I agree that we need to do as much as possible to eradicate the awful racism we see in far too many places today, this idea to turn a blind eye to the largest explained variance in large scale genetic studies by saying it doesn't exist is perplexing.
It's correct to say that: there is a genetic history to all humans, and that history roughly correlates with pre-scientific clustering of humans by visible attributes.
The academic claim that "Race is not scientific" is really an overstatement of the case being made by people who are very optimistic but also fairly good at overlooking some fairly well understood science. It's not a universally held opinion but most people who disagree with it are fairly circumspect because it's very easy to get cancelled by talking about race and science in public.
What's that research going to be used for? Will it become of the basis of policy that says 'only asians are allowed to enter the power lifting club', 'only east africans on the running team', 'only white land owning men are allowed to vote'.
Setting aside the question of whether the truth should be suppressed because of consequences, this kind of research could very easily be beneficial.
Suppose you find out that the green people from East Arbitria are less productive. The immediate effect is that an innocent objective employer who being tried for discrimination or hated by a community no longer has to suffer- the cruelty of the universe is no longer being made anyone's fault. The secondary effect is that we now have grounds to investigate why Arbitrarians have that disadvantage. Maybe green people have a harder time metabolizing a nutrient; a non-issue with the diet/climate/lifestyle of Arbitria. An update to health recommendations later and millions of people's lives are improved.
It would also mean that people could use this to say "All East Arbitaria people are less productive than all other ethnicities, therefore I shall ban them from my workplace. I am not anti-Arbitrian, I am just using the latest science". And of course these things are always statistical and so high performing East Arbitarians are going to be shut out of work because of this study.
The point is, there is a history of race-based discrimination in the world and researchers can't just pretend that it doesn't still exist when constructing these kinds of studies and how their outcomes could be used negatively by both benevolent and malevolent actors. It isn't just 'truth or not truth', also because lots of sociological studies aren't repeatable and many others suffer all sorts of issues with methods, populations, etc. Measuring people is crazy hard to do reliably. Anyway, my hot take is that its not a simple question and does not have a simple answer.
1. we don't know how a piece of research will be used because we don't even know what the outcome will be.
2. rarely is a piece of research only used for 1 thing, and even if someone uses it wrongly, maybe someone else uses it for good purpose or builds on it for an important discovery.
3. the correct answer is to address the person attempting to abuse the data when that person does it not to attempt to suppress that information by preventing the research or limiting how it's done.
4. are you saying we shouldn't do research on e.g. whether certain groups are better at lifting because it could be abused?
The question of whether certain research should be banned because of the potential outcomes is one with deep philosophical roots and the basis of much science fiction. The 'just because we could do something, doesn't mean we should' question. I don't think there is a single absolute answer to this, as context matters.
What I do see is a long history of race-based 'science' being used to justify some pretty terrible policies and laws.
One might respond along the lines of: "why are we investing in ways to operationalize a concept of 'superiority' in the first place?"
The long lesson from the history of this research is that it produces garbage wrapped in a thin veneer of credibility, and becomes a weapon to justify or deepen real existing problems. It doesn't matter if it gets debunked eventually, the problem is how it is used now."
edit: (I don't know that I'm happy with either pole in this debate, but it seems like a good thing to worry about)
> One might respond along the lines of: "why are we investing in ways to operationalize a concept of 'superiority' in the first place?"
Becomes sometimes it's important. The efficacy of modern medicine is not uniform across ethnic groups. To deny this fact would effectively be to deliberately withhold treatment from some groups of people. Does that seem fair and just to you?
That's not fair, they should encourage people to include:
> Diverse research participants (e.g., understudied or underserved populations)
or in case it's due to the team they should also probably encourage:
> Diverse members of the research team (e.g., those from underrepresented sociodemographic backgrounds, from an array of career stages, from outside the United States, or with professional affiliations that are not typical at SPSP such as predominately undergraduate serving institutions, minority-serving institutions, or outside academia)
Hopefully if thay do that won't be portrayed as a bad thing by anyone.
He should have tested the statement requirement policy before resigning. All he had to do was provide a statement that his research does not advance SPSP's equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals but that it is important to the field on its own. Then he would have a stronger case to point out the irony of the policy itself being discriminatory. Right now, he just comes across as a whiner.
I broadly agree with the wider point he is making. And he is free to leave any association he wants. But isn't Dr Haidt jumping the gun? Surely a valid statement would be "this research is just research, it does advance "equality" or fight racism". Wouldn't such a statement on good quality research be much more effective to communicate the core point?
In a recent example, the California ballot measure that would have legalized racial preferences in the state failed overwhelmingly, including in every majority Hispanic county in the state.
But explicit racial preferences are at the core of anti racism as Kendi formulates it:
> The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.
Why does this hold so much appeal? Because the audience of Kendi’s book isn’t minorities, it’s white people. And white people who dominate university faculties and professional organizations love this because it empowers them.
For one thing, it empowers them to use race as a club against other white people.
For another, it gives them tremendous power to shape minority culture. They have the power to select the brown people who will “represent” their whole group. Want a Muslim American professor, but don’t like what Islam has to say about women or homosexuality? Easily handled. The white faculty in charge can just pick a Muslim who agrees with white people about those things instead of other Muslims. And for good measure they can be made to sign a diversity statement. No wonder it’s the dream for Elizabeth Warren types.
IMO it's all because of virtue signaling. I would say the majority of people that push this stuff don't really care about DEI, they only care because it makes then seem righteous and virtuous, and it's a feedback loop. They do the thing, they post about it on social media, and they then get praise for the thing they are doing.
When you start looking it from the lens of "these people just want to be popular and get likes", it all starts making sense.
> In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, --a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.
That's because diversity is a stand-in term for Marxism. You either belong to the proletariat class, or you renounce your position in the bourgeoisie and join a work camp to repent for your crimes, which were completely unknown to you before your great awakening.
It comes down to first principles. Are we basing our values & worth on merit (being productivity or social impact & what defines productivity or social impact), equality, equity, classifications? What we base our values & worth will determine how the downstream systems are designed & what they optimize for.
I read the whole thread up till now and did not see anyone supporting mandated DEI statements. So I’m posting to say that I do support them. In my experience at a couple of different learning institutions I’ve seen what I believe are positive changes that they’ve enabled.
EDIT: I also support antiracist sentiments and policies. I’ve watched them make what I believe are significant positive impacts when I’ve employed them personally.
But if I'm understanding the 2nd sentence, this is so true in that these extremists feel that unless we are forced to listen to & give them a platform that they are somehow being censored.
No one is taping someone's mouth shut.
In fact those voices are louder now than they have been in my entire life.
But I'm not going to listen to it.
and yeah young people are generally more open minded and yes they are peer pressuring (subject of this complains about peer pressure). Maybe that says something..
One can change ones behavior and beliefs and maybe they'll be more accepted into the group they want to to be in.
>Several studies find that between 18 and 55% of academics would discriminate against a Right-wing applicant for a job or grant. I found that 40-45% of North American academics would not hire a Trump supporter and 1 in 3 in Britain would not hire a Leave supporter.
I of course don't expect the fact to lead to any form of reflection. After all, it's obvious you can't even grasp the fact that ideological diversity is beneficial and matters while ethnic diversity doesn't matter and is often harmful.
Jesus christ. these threads on hn have become so toxic this is pointless to engage.
how tf is ethnic diversity harmful?
also my comment had nothing to do with hiring.
but to respond anyways:
ideological diversity !== making room for racist, homophobic, christian nationalist or otherwise hateful people.
and people have every right not to want to have to work and sit next to someone who is actively working to make their life worse, take away their rights, and or who are simply diametrically opposed to their very existence and often overtly bring this with them into said workplace. e.g. see all the other threads on hn that have to do with race and gender.
> someone who is actively working to make their life worse, take away their rights, and or who are simply diametrically opposed to their very existence and often overtly bring this with them into said workplace
Isn't it amusing that these descriptions fit DEI advocates perfectly?
The loyalty oaths are, as noted in the article, quite common. This isn't just the way NYU operates. It's also, for example, the way the entire University of California system operates.
As the article suggests, these "diversity and inclusion" initiatives have negative effects when they become institutional mandates. And yet we can all agree that there is a strong moral argument in favor of ensuring that each profession is open to everyone of real talent. My sense of the right way to approach this is to encourage every hiring manager to remember their moral obligations, but without formalizing such moral concerns into mandates.
I wrote a long bit about this in "One on one meetings are underrated:"
When hiring, I rely heavily on recommendations from people I know, or at least know of. To use some Silicon Valley jargon, I rely on "social proof." If a good engineer with whom I’ve worked recommends some other engineer or project manager or product manager, that counts for a lot with me.
I recently tweeted this idea on Twitter and James Youngman responded, “It seems to me that this kind of approach is what perpetuates the domination of the industry by an in-group (who know each other, directly or indirectly) at the expense of outsiders, to the detriment of both diversity and fairness.”
That’s a valid concern. We all have a professional and ethical obligation to be sure that we hire a diverse workforce; that is, the workforce must be open to anyone who has real talent. In my experience, there is no contradiction between that obligation and a requirement that a candidate be recommended by someone we trust. Assuming you have friends and colleagues who understand their professional and ethical obligations the same way you do, they should be able to give recommendations on people they know or put you in touch with friends of theirs who can offer such recommendations. Within your extended social penumbra of friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends, you should be able to find someone who can vouch for most of the candidates that you need to hire. You just need to put in the effort, chasing down those recommendations through extended chains of acquaintances.
This approach very much works when you are hiring novices who are straight out of school. It helps to stay in touch with friends and colleagues who are teaching or mentoring at schools or the software developer bootcamps. Back in 2018, when I needed some junior-level frontend software developers, I hired several women from the Grace Hopper program for women that is run by Fullstack Academy. In that case I spoke with some experienced friends of mine who had either taught at the school or volunteered as mentors. As such, they could point me to those who were the best of the graduating class and I ended up with an unusually excellent team of novices.
[I then tell a story from 2009, when I go to a job interview, and they give me a technical test: to find the problems in their code. And yet, they didn't know what they were doing, and their code was horrible. Here is the conclusion of that story:]
...Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, nor did I want the job. He was looking to hire software developers who would be willing to follow his idiosyncratic and unprofessional style. I wasn’t interested.
I tell this story when I’m being critical of certain kinds of coding tests, and hiring managers respond, “Well, that is an extreme and ridiculous example.” It is indeed extreme and ridiculous, therefore, it’s easy to see the problem. Yet, even when tests are less idiosyncratic than that one, they will still reflect the values, skills, and aesthetics of the person doing the hiring. How could they not? Anyone who hires someone for their team will want someone who is at least somewhat consonant with the style and goals of the team. Wanting that consonance is reasonable, up to a point. Certainly, when I hire, I’m looking for someone who either shares my aesthetics or is willing to learn my aesthetics. That is, I explicitly recognize that there are subjective factors that shape hiring decisions.
Whenever I say this, I get pushback from people who say some variation of, “This is why tech remains exclusive, with a dominant in-group that never changes, because the people with the power to hire only hire those who are just like them.”
I, however, would say the opposite is true. The only way to make the profession of software development (or the profession of marketing or operations or sales or law or any other profession) more diverse is to explicitly recognize that all hiring contains a subjective element, and that one of the goals of hiring must be the creation of a diverse workforce, open to anyone with real talent. Only after you’ve explicitly recognized that there are subjective factors that shape hiring can you explicitly move to build a diverse workforce. By contrast, the pretense of objective tests has too often served as a smokescreen behind which lurk forces that conserve the status quo.
If the moral urgency of this issue leaves you unmoved, consider the practical element: everything you need to know about a candidate you can learn from recommendations and by talking to the candidate. If you ask them direct questions, and you ask follow up questions until you are sure you know everything that you need to know, then you will discover what you need without wasting time on tests. This is faster for you, and it is faster for the candidate, and therefore this is both more fair and more efficient for everyone.
This is not to say that I never use tests. I use tests all the time. Not because they are objective, but for the opposite reason: they often reveal some of the subjective factors that are essential for making good hiring decisions. If I am interviewing a junior level software developer, and I give them a challenge that only a senior level software developer could handle, I’m not actually looking to see if this developer can do the work. I know they can’t. I am looking to see if they panic, or if they remain calm and ask me all of the questions that they should be asking me.
> newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals."
Diversity is fine. But every single piece of research has to be related to diversity? Is it not possible to do research on anything else that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with identity issues?
This is not a statement about promoting diversity, this is a statement that identity issues are the only thing that matters and only research that has to do with identity will be considered (for presentation at this conference)
An ideological monoculture is not a healthy intellectual environment.
did they really say this? reading the comments it seems they wanted people to commit to only doing work/research that also serves the goal of anti-racism, no?
1. "anti-racism" is a specific ideological doctrine with nefarious branding because it falsely implies anyone who does not support present and future discrimination (c.f. kendi's def) is a racist. i am "anti racist" but not "Anti-Racist (TM)".
2. haidt is clearly protesting the requirement to describe how any research further's the associations "anti-racism goals". there's plenty of knowledge to be uncovered that has nothing to do with it and targeting all your work to uphold a specific viewpoint offends the general idea of "academia" as a tool for broadly and impartially adcancing knowledge.
Research should not be dependent on whether or not it hurts any cause.
If the research is poorly done, exclude it for that reason.
If not, maybe re-examine what your cause is in light of the research.
Copernicus's research into the Earth revolving around the Sun hurt the Catcholic church's cause of being the ultimate source of truth for all humanity. They wanted to put a stop to that...
Starting with the answer and rejecting anything that doesn't support it is not how research is supposed to work.
Copernicus and Galileo being harangued by the Church of their time, and stifling progress of the obvious, is more popular myth than historical fact. It has been debunked many, many times. Ironically, the fervor and persistence with which this story gets propagated ad nauseam feels almost ... religious.
I wish people would stop dropping it as the de facto example of interference with science when there are so many better ones (and also current ones). It's a bad analogy, evokes emotion, and ultimately it typically does a disservice to the argument intended.
Astronomical books regarding heliocentric theory were on the banned book list for centuries.
The banned book list was compiled and maintained by the Church. We can split words whether Copernicus or Galileo were harangued in person and to what degree, but nascent modern astronomy was very much in the scope of Catholic censorship.
> Copernicus and Galileo being harangued by the Church of their time, and stifling progress of the obvious, is more popular myth than historical fact.
I’m not sure why it has suddenly become so popular to claim that every single historical fact is a myth. Galileo’s prosecution by the Church is not only well-documented, John Paul II. officially apologized for it in 1992. He might have looked into their archives before doing that.
I swear, going around smugly claiming “Only sheeple still believe that theory” about random facts doesn’t make a person seem nearly as smart as they might think it does.
> It's not so much off-topic research. The research output of much of social psychology tends to hurt the cause of DEI. They want to stop that.
This might be the most potentially fascinating comment in the thread. In what way is the research of much of social psychology hurting DEI?
As far as I know, based on my limited understanding of the field, there's not a lot of research that's performed/approved/funded in that field where people know that the research could yield some "politically incorrect" data or conclusions.
> The research output of much of social psychology tends to hurt the cause of DEI.
Demagogues will use any factoid for their own goals, and racists will use things to promote racism, but that's not an argument to stop research into biology, sociology, psychology, behavioral econ, etc.
No, it's more like requiring everyone submitting papers to the ACM to explain how their research will result in a more equitable society. That'd exclude a ton of research topics: how is a faster rendering technique going to result in anti-racist outcomes? I guess you cant submit that paper.
Or alternatively, faster renders magnify the advantages of people who can afford graphics cards. After all, the most marginalized people don't even have GPUs, so this research is further oppressing the poor.
Don't worry, Marx is still fair game in Western academia! It has even become fashionable as of late to proclaim oneself a "socialist" (though generally some sort of "socialism with Scandinavian characteristics" is being implied).
Even though the larping socialist dummies here in the US don't know the history of socialism in scandinavia and how Sweden in particular famously abandoned it in the 90s after a 20 year experiment with it where they saw their GDP remain absolutely flat despite almost 10% population growth.
Swedes will proudly claim to be capitalists with healthy social welfare programs.
The tax rates of New Yorkers and Californians are very similar to those across Scandinavia except that the Americans are getting way way less bang for their buck in services for that tax money due to state and local governments that are woefully ineffective. That and Norway/Sweden/Denmark have close to 1/3 public sector employment.
Just roll with it. These are fake internet points anyway. They don't have any value. You can't leave them to your kids (something a commenter said the other day that's still ticking my brain). Complaining only motivates people to poke at you with more downvotes because they know it bothers you.
No that's bullshit. If you ask me to say "I hate hitler and bin laden" for no reason I would have a similar reaction as well.
How can people put up with this filth? It repulses and disgusts me so much when kindness, compassion and even justice are absorbed by this bureaucratic ideological machine where people say and do things out if insincerity, just as lip service to fall in line politically. How do people feel comfortable living lies and forcing others to live and practice falsehoods?
No matter how much I agree with the statement, when you force it, it becomes an insincere compelled speech.
I work at a multi national now and I see upper management do this but I or anyone else I work with never had to do this, also when I worked at a national (only in US and canada) company that employed mostly older folk and has a "mom and pop shop" kind of culture I never had to see this at all.
Only companies that have a lot of HR,legal and management people that were indoctrinated with this stuff in college seem to have this cultural component.
You are generally free not to stand for the national anthem.
Suppose the SPSS (the professional society Haidt left in protest) had instead made a rule that they would play the national anthem at the start of every conference and anyone who didn’t stand wouldn’t be allowed to present their research.
If he had left in protest of that, would you assume he’s an unpatriotic asshole who hates America or that he’s standing up for free speech?
Yes, you might get some criticism for it, just like Haidt is.
A private organization like the NFL or the SPSS might not let you be a member if you don’t follow their rules. That’s within the bounds of free speech.
We only have freedoms by continually asserting them and sometimes sacrificing some social capital to use them.
I get that. I was just trying to understand from the original person I was responding to if they found the National Anthem “requirements” as repulsive.
Yes and no, a private organization can’t deny someone membership if a prospective member refused to make an oath to the effect of “I swear to discriminate against Asians”. So their freedom of speech ends where it infringes on the civil rights of others. Arguably, some DEI statements could come close to crossing that line.
Thanks for reminding me, yes it does. I use to stand but refuse to say or do anything when I was in school. I didn't get in trouble but teachers were visibly upset and would be mean afterwards.
I love america and will defend her if we ever get attacked for the record.
Haidt argues that much of the work that researchers do have no relationship to 'anti-racism' that Kendi popularized, or DEI goals in general.
It also appears that Haidt is taking SPSP's new direction literally - whereas you appear to be taking it figuratively. That SPSP's direction is a requirement for all members, not an interpretive statement that all members can come to terms with on their own accord. I think being compelled to a specific viewpoint by an institution is antithesis of freedom. Your comment seems like a huge dismissal of Haidt's view with this regard.
That is, if we are to trust that you looked at the linked article as you claim.
> He quit that group because he can't sign a statement that he is anti-racist, and supports diversity and inclusion?
Incorrect, this statement was not directed to members' conduct. The diversity statement was to pledge that members' research submissions are advancing anti-racism, equity, and inclusion. This would, for example, prohibit a psychologist studying something like memory retention. This has no reasonable link to advancing equal racial outcomes. How does measuring the amount of time it takes to memorize a paragraph advance racial justice? Thus such research would thus fail to live up to this pledge, and be ineligible for submission - if this pledge were actually enforced, that is.
Of course, I doubt the people making this pledge actually intend to have every piece of their research connected to an anti-racist goal. This is just performance and naval-gazing.
> prohibit a psychologist studying something like memory retention
wat? how? why?
real social justice doesn't work that way. (contrary, it needs to know deficiencies so it can help those who are in need, so people have equal opportunities for self-actualization.)
He wasn’t asked to sign a statement that he was anti-racist. He was asked to sign a statement explaining how the academic work submitted to be presented “advanced… anti-racism goals.”
He’s quite right that not every academic paper need directly concern itself with the very specific set of ideologies contained within contemporary anti-rascist texts.
Would you support requiring a pledge of allegiance to a particular political party or ideology before conference attendees made their presentations?
This is surprisingly close.
The issue at stake is more abstract than American racism. This is a dangerous precedent.
And it requires some itchy mental gymnastics. Thinking about and encouraging diversity and inclusion through action is great. Forcing people to do it seems specifically contrary to the abstract goals of diversity and inclusion! Said another way: Is the point of these statements to increase or decrease the intellectual diversity of discourse?
Agreed. And the whole style, wording, method is dumb.
> intellectual diversity of discourse
The goal is clearly to reduce a certain part of the "thought space" (intellectual diversity), in particular the goal is to weed out anti-racist thoughts.
I guess they think of this as public health thinks of pathogens. Diversity of species is great but we still want less of pathogens.
What these people seemingly have no idea about, is that populist xenophobic movements can start, spread and become popular at no time. And obviously (?) the way to contain them is not with preemptive firebombing of academia, but by strengthening the ideals of equity, and the institutions themselves that implement those ideals. Make them shining beacons of good. The first criterion for that is efficiency, transparency, etc.
>He quit that group because he can't sign a statement that he is anti-racist, and supports diversity and inclusion?
Can you reply to my comment with the anti-racist and supportive of diversity and inclusion phrase "it's OK to be White"?
>I'm from the american south. It was full of racists when I lived there, who were all against diversity, hated the idea of needing to hire minorities to be teachers, things like that. There was no need to hire them, everything was fine. It didn't matter that all the school principals were white men, there was no point to a kid seeing a black man or woman as the principal I heard.
I'm from the american west. It was full of racists when I lived there, who were all against diversity, hated the idea of needing to hire whites to be teachers, things like that. There was no need to hire them, everything was fine. It didn't matter that all the school principals were women of color, there was no point to a kid seeing a white man or woman as the principal I heard.
>That's all I can take way from the usually white men who see some incredible threat from saying there's a benefit in including more voices. I can only see this as people threatened by including other voices that might disagree with their own.
That's all I can take way from the usually women of color who see some incredible threat from saying there's a benefit in including more voices. I can only see this as people threatened by including other voices that might disagree with their own.
> he can't sign a statement that he is anti-racist, and supports diversity and inclusion?
The strange part to me in comments similar to yours is how you have chosen to interpret his actions and completely ignore his explanation or the context around it.
I will not be surprised if this sort of incendiary kneejerk where you deliberately misrepresent a person is becoming pervasive, and causing people to leave.
"Antiracists" is literally, as explained in the article, are a political group that prescribes racial discrimination against white people. They're a very ironically named group of people considering. If your research is not specifically engineered to justify racial discrimination against a group of people you may be subject to a number of administrative consequences.
Regarding your experiences in the American South, all I can say is two wrongs don't make a right. This is hardly about including more voices, this is about opposing a policy that prescibes the acceptable Overton window of research, it's clearly about limiting the acceptable range of discourse.
We are literally maybe a quarter of a century towards whites becoming a plurality, and not much longer after that until they become an actual minority. You can't just think about the past, think about the future, making publishing scientific racism an ideological goal because a group is politically powerful NOW when they won't be in the future is bound to have unintended consequences.
"Anti-racist" here requires signing up to the following creed:
> "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
In this context anti-racist doesn't mean what it appears to mean by a "plain language" interpretation.
If you look at the quote in the article, it illustrates that "anti-racist" actually means supporting discrimination:
"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
This "friendly fascist" form of discrimination festers under the cover of cheap political expediency.
It is abhorrent, at least to any society that supports liberal values.
Haidt was required to endorse an ideology stating “the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination…only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” We can debate the merits of that premise. Simpler is concluding it’s contentiousness. Academia exists to resolve contention; forcing an outcome by dictat is dishonest.
Being mostly sheepish about responding to this kind of argument, it feels me with gratitude that so many here can more finely discern the situation presented.
“Anti-racism” is actually about racism against Asians.
“Equity” is actually about lowering the standards and destroying meritocracy.
“Inclusion” is actually about excluding people that have different political or moral opinions (e.g. that don’t want to be racist against Asians or that support meritocracy).
>exceptional people
Why would you only provide free/subsidized schooling to exceptional people. Why not all people? If you truly believe in meritocracy, wouldn't you want everyone to have a fair opportunity to prove themselves?
If resources are limited (and they're always limited) you invest into the highest ROI options.
Exceptional people have a chance of pushing society forward (i.e. creating more resources for the future... exponentially).
(But yeah in general I oppose age-segregated schooling, I think education should have "tracks" (math, physics, sports, music, etc.) and people should attend whatever "level" they're at in each track, in mixed-age groups. And make mostly free (but guided) choices regarding which tracks to put most effort in.)
I see "egalitarianism" as "equality of opportunity". That, and "equality before the law".
But even with the same starting conditions/talent/upbringing/genes, some people will climb further than others. Effort, creativity, etc. We as society should encourage that and reward people who achieve more, for the common benefit of all.
By their very nature, "diversity" and "inclusion" are racist because it must consider someone's race. By arguing for "diversity" and "inclusion" we are mandating we judge people for what they are, rather than who they are; judge them by the color of their skin rather than the quality of their character.
"Anti-racism", which in American academia usually comes about in the form of blacks and latinos receiving preferential treatment at the cost of whites and asians, is indeed racism.
Racism is not acceptable, no matter how benevolent the intent or goal.
And while we're here, since it's part of the bigger, main discussion anyway:
"Equity" is the anti-thesis of equality, because "equity" mandates that all individuals arrive (and stay!) at the same place in life no matter who they are. It throws out individual ambitions and efforts towards obtaining a better silver plate in lieu of society handing everyone the same steel plate.
It's anti-asian and also anti- any race that isn't on the list of beneficiaries. The original argument could have been conveyed better by framing it more broadly, but it isn't wrong.
Aah, that makes sense, if I'm understanding it correctly, they specified Asians because they're another minority, but disadvantaged by policies that seek to help other minorities.
I guess, but it's, well, complicated. In my country, there are (a small number of) spots in medical school reserved for the native people.
Naturally, lots of non-native people considered that racist.
Except it was done to try to correct a very real problem - that the native people have disproportionately worse outcomes in our health system. And likewise, due to about 150 years of deliberate policy that marginalised the native people, they were disproportionately less likely to enter medical school.
And there's now, after some years of this policy, an emerging body of evidence that this "racist" policy around medical school spots is making a difference around health system outcomes for native people.
So yes, the policy is, on the surface racist, but it's slowly combating a systemic racism that was baked into all of our government institutions by previous racist policies. (E.g., native people experience a higher conviction rate and harsher sentencing for the same crimes as white people)
There's still a long way to go for us, but yeah, it gets damn complicated when you're trying to undo the damage of previous racism by introducing positive discrimination.
Asians were mentioned specifically because one common example of those "anti-racist" practices: college admissions is well known to discriminate against Asians - if you're an Asian you need to be more competent and score better on exams to have the same chance for an admission as a black person for example.
I believe GP is referencing American university admissions, where DEI-flavored racial quotas tend to disadvantage Asians when compared to a race-blind system based purely on standardized tests.
Elaborating on this, there is a passage quoted in the article from the most common text on "anti-racism" : "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
The consequences of this are easy to illustrate in orchestras. Orchestras have always been heavily dominated by white and Asian musicians. When it was argued that this was due to discrimination in hiring, the solution was quite simple and tasteful - swap to blind auditions. And that is something few would oppose. So they did.
The problem is that not only did it fail to create more diverse orchestras, in many cases they became even less diverse than they were prior. So now the 'anti-racist' view is that orchestras need to begin being racist against white and Asian applicants, and start biasing selection by race. [1] Groups that disproportionately overperform become acceptable targets for racism.
Incidentally this is not entirely different than the motivation for some of the darkest moments in our history. Alas people never seem to appreciate that the "evil" groups in times past never saw themselves as evil, but simply as people engaging in temporarily distasteful action for a greater future. That greater future never comes, but the distasteful actions certainly do. Of course, "this time it'll be different."
From my understanding, the Jewish diaspora in Christendom often became moneylenders due to various laws that a) prohibited Jews from owning property or businesses and b) laws that prohibited lending money at interest by Christians.
Then yeah, when someone fired up some anti-Semitic hyperbole, well, great way to get out of that debt you owed, right?
IIRC Edward I of England expelled the Jews primarily to confiscate their property after years of taxing them superhard, but it also gave the Crown ownership of debts owed to the Jews, so he was playing the populist hand, and getting funds at the same time.
Huh, okay, so, to clarify my understanding, because of the quotas, assuming a fixed amount of available spots, less Asians get in than they would without the quotas.
But a) wouldn't that apply to other demographics too? and b) All Asians? Are Hmong, for example, over-represented in college enrollments?
I'm just trying to understand why it's specifically anti-Asian.
A bunch of pro-diversity people see white people do well and get successful. They see the same in Asians. They see the opposite for black and latino. They conclude "we must give black and latino preferential treatment to catch up". It is a bit more elaborate, but not much more than that.
>All Asians?
Yes. Despite their fronts, diversity initiatives don't look much further beyond sex, gender and skin color. You're already one level deeper than most of these politics go.
Everyone tries to pretend it's "just not being an asshole". But it's never that simple. It's always comes with demands for an ideological obedience that goes well beyond just accepting others or letting people be free to do what they want.
It isn’t that black and white…to look at it in that light is reductionist.
Further equality is good however it would be helpful to do so in a constructive manner.
What often happens is that SJWs just shut down debates and discussions.. because they disagree. This kills freedom of speech and ideas. This goes exactly to your last point. Are you threatened by others who disagree with you?
Did you know that forcing schools to hire teachers and principals that better reflect the demographics of the school worsens the outcomes of black students in those schools?
Make your statement "This ain't got nothin' to do with that malarkey!" and move on, there's no need to throw a tantrum and take your ball and go home. It's like a conflict of interest statement, "yes" or "no" are both acceptable answers, just say something.
For others who view this DEI addition as positive, it gives them an explicit place to call out areas of focus. For people who are looking for DEI-impacting work it's a much simpler filter than abstracts or full papers.
I would source a publication more well-received by the Hacker News moderators, but I couldn’t find any stories published by those sources. This reporting bias seems to be more and more common unfortunately.
> because of a newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals."
Wow and I thought psychology was a pseudo-science before!
Sayre's law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." By way of corollary, it adds: "That is why academic politics are so bitter."
Such a great generalized insight. I’ve added the other criteria is winner take all conditions. The infighting over a small pie grows in intensity when only one person gets to take it home.
President Biden said he wanted a black woman to be in Supreme Court. Shouldn’t he have instead said he wanted the best and most qualified person for that position?
There is misunderstanding & exaggeration felt by those who feel their identity is under attack.
In this instance a statement simply saying their research doesn't perpetuate discrimination !== mandating your research must do ___ whatever ___
if the research does somehow discriminate, simply not accepting it into this particular society or some conference doesn't wipe it off the face of the earth or send someone to woke jail.
no one is forcing you to accept concepts of diversity & inclusion worldviews.
or that recognizing and trying to correct real factual imbalances somehow means that the 'other' group must be treated worse or be discriminated against.
multiple recent WSJ editorials are super similar to this article.
----
"‘Implicit Bias’ Training Cost Me My Nursing Job" [1]
the author argued that that training would have required her to 'discriminate.'
instead of the reality of a discussion highlighting the real, legitimate, and actually factual disparities of treatment and higher death rates of POC.
correcting imbalance !== actively treating white patients worse.
no one is mandating that we lower treatment quality to level the playing field. instead of trying to correct and raise everyone up!
btw a very common refrain: they knew this without actually taking the training?
----
"The College Board’s Racial Pandering" [2]
Glossing over the weird argument that funding pre-k is somehow bad because test scores have remained stagnant.. hand waving away huge benefits, including for the economy, printed by the wall street journal!
Author makes another false equivalency and presents un truths.
The addition of a new AP course on afam studies does not somehow take away from remedial math & science classes.
No one is forcing students to take this class.
author claims some ambiguous liberal education propaganda machine is aiming to "turn students who haven't even learned to read and write into social-justice warriors"
what student who can't read are taking an AP level course?
Author even spends paragraphs writing about what he assumes will be taught even though he says himself he doesn't even have a syllabus.
he complains that the afam course will ignore jewish & asian discrimination!?!
what? 1: we don't know this. 2: even so, that's not the subject of the course!
his language like "pander to black kids" sends shivers down my spine.
----
I love WSJ reporting.
But the anti-factual junk they are printing in their opeds makes it hard to read.
At least they are still labeling it oped, unlike fox news.
i've written to apple news so many times. they will put non-factual, non-reporting opinion on the news feed and not label it, presenting it as real news.
Whatever. Haidt should start a new professional sociology society that excludes class, caste, and wealth.
After the 2016 presidential, I binge read everything that might provide a clue to what just happened. Haidt was highly recommended. (Corporate media has a radical centricism fetish.) So I read all his words.
Not impressed.
This review of Haidt's Coddling of the American Mind [2018], by another professor, perfectly captures my own reaction to all the cancel culture boomers:
This is a very narrow and small-minded book parading as a big thoughtful one. It says it is about the American Mind, but the data and the theory only support "the coddling" of a very narrow subset of the American mind: upper middle class college kids born after 1995 that got to college in 2013. As far as that group is concerned, this is really good advice. I totally agree with his three untruths--your feelings are not necessarily true, the world is not good and evil, and adversity does not make you weak. I also agree that children need lots of free play and that social media is bad for kids and they are over-protected. There is nothing to disagree with here (even though I sometimes chafe at "when we were kids..." arguments)
HOWEVER, using this group's specific problems, the authors make vast over-generalizations. The few anecdotes highlighted are meant to be examples of a deeper problem, but to me, they are the sum total of the problem. Left leaning students are behaving very badly toward conservative speakers. At most, there are 10 or so highly publicized events that seem to play on a loop among conservatives and intellectual dark web types. And there are no defenses to these behaviors, but it hardly represents our nation. And they provide no data whatsoever that it does. It's too soon to even tell that the next generation will be like this one.
And for people who seem to care a lot about both sides arguments, they seem to leave out a lot of counter-examples. Here are a few:
1. They talk about the metoo movement once in the beginning. Is that not a product of this "call out" generation? None of us "old" women had the "balls" to speak truth to power like these young women do. Good for them.
2. And the Parkland teens and all the ways in which this generation is more compassionate and engaged than we were. My generation (I'm 40) thought it was cool not to care about anything. My middle school kid stays up after school making protest signs and watching political debates. Is that not progress?
3. The authors also focuses on one particular subset of an entire generation (left-leaning, and mostly women and LGBT or Trans students asking for safe spaces). They leave out that Gamergate and the trolls and the alt right are also made up of this generation. Why not talk about them at all? Seriously. They are literally the same age and except for one aside in the entire book that "the right does it too" there are no examples at all of the right doing the thing they are decrying. It seemed like a half-assed "both sides" argument without support.
4. Do you know how many books I've read written by old people decrying the hippie generation of the 60s (Alan Bloome's Closing of the American Mind is an example)? Bloome was talking about Haidt and Luianoff. Boy do they grow up fast.
5. It makes me sad that more people will read this book than will read books highlighting actual big problems like inequality. The authors give a nod to the fact that inequality should definitely be remedied, but they would rather you do it the right way and not call it "social justice."
Again, I agree with all the parenting advice and the cognitive behavior advice, but this is not a self-help book. It's meant as a polemic and it strikes at the wrong target.
FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) has been defending student rights from attacks from all sides since the late 90s, well before any of this social justice stuff. They've done innumerable good works that your slanderous implications here deny without cause simply because the world changed around them and they're not exclusively protecting students from one political block instead of all political blocks.
But maybe you're just acting the clown to highlight the very issue this comment thread is discussing: inability to discern shades of grey due to polarization.
And I like this phrase: "inability to discern shades of grey due to polarization". It is well-said. Many intersting intellectual discussions are about exploring shades of grey in a difficult topic.
You can be in favour of immigration and still object to immigrants being carted (likely illegally) around the country for political stunts.
If you feel you need to call out hypocrisy, why don't you complain that people are not allowed to carry guns into an NRA or Republican convention, or how security and supporters beat up people protesting at trump rallies. Or about senators family members getting abortions while the same senators are advocating for making abortions for any reason (including rape) illegal.
Err... the gist of the protest is: not all research is there to advance diversity, while Uni requires it, that guy doesn't want to lie to get his work presented. I'm not going to assume any interior motives.
Isn't forcing left/right political views counter productive? I've seen this in the industry (people rant) and local politics (e.g. my country swings between left and right every few years after they get fed with one PoV).
But the SPSP requirement went a step further, dropping "diversity" in favor of "anti-racism," a term frequently associated with Boston University's Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist and other works. Among the book's passages is a widely shared one highlighted by Haidt:
"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
In this thread I’ve noticed people have jumped from these principles, which do seem true to very specific statements about race that don’t seem true. Interesting.
How is the principle incorrect? It’s a truth like evolution. You can’t fix past discrimination without future discrimination, in most cases. That is something you can model quite nicely mathematically.
The question is just if it is reprehensible to do so. Or if there are times when it is more or less reprehensible.
1) Evolution is not "a truth", as in a revealed truth that is true just by uttering it. Evolution is a well-supported and falsifiable scientific theory.
2) Evolution was not blindly accepted as "truth" the way you seem to expect this so-called "principle" to be accepted simply on your say-so (or prophet Kendi's?). Quite the contrary, it was not accepted at all and evidence had to provided. Lots and lots of evidence. Overwhelming evidence. And it is not accepted as truth by faith now either.
3) The mere claim "you can model [this] quite nicely mathematically" is not evidence for the claim. It is only evidence for you making that claim.
4) Even an actual mathematical model, should one actually be presented rather than just claimed, is not evidence for the claim. There are infinite mathematical models that are consistent with themselves yet inconsistent with the real world.
5) Yet, there are mountains of evidence that identity politics lead to bad outcomes.
6) And yes, racism (which this so-called "anti-racism" clearly is) is clearly reprehensible. This is something we fortunately figured out a while ago, and the fact that we figured it out was a major step up in our societal evolution. Quite frankly I am shocked and dismayed that we are even having a discussion about this. No. NO. Doing away with this nonsense was a major achievement for humanity, we can't give it up this easily.
For 1-4, we will mostly set that aside for now. But I do think that most people find it obviously true -- it just may or may not be to their benefit to say so.
Identity politics does lead to bad outcomes, yet here we are. Unfortunately we've gotten ourselves to the point that now acting like there are no identities is just another form of identity politics. E.g., saying "lets stop talking about gender -- we have male and female and lets just stop there and move on" seems less appealing to those that feel currently disenfranchised by the status quo.
On 6, anti-racism is racist, but not for the reason that most people assume. It is because white people tend to double down when confronted with anti-racist data. For example, when whites are told that the legal system is unjust to blacks, they tend to support it more. By anti-racisms very definition of being strictly results, and not intent, oriented -- it itself is racist.
On your second 6 -- the second wrong can dampen the impact of the first wrong. I also notice that the beneficiaries of the first wrong, do love this quote. A tad convenient?
Reminds me of the rental manager at my London flat justifying a raise in my rent with "well, rents are rising". When I confronted him with his own organisation's web site, which unambiguously said that rents were flat or falling, he countered with "Statistics aside, rents are rising".
But I see the problem. Previously you claimed that these things actually were true. That people may believe they are "obviously" true is an entirely different matter, and probably the crux of the problem.
Because people believe in false things as "obviously true" all the time. For example, people used to believe that the sun obviously revolves around the earth, and many still do (and our language certainly still does: sunrise, sunset etc.)
And these things are just as false.
> that now acting like there are no identities is just another form of identity politics.
No it's not, and that's also a false dichotomy. Repudiating identity politics does not require claiming that (or acting like) there are no identities. But group identities don't define us, and certainly not to the exclusion of everything else. I am an individual first, and a member of various groups second. This isn't hard.
> anti-racism is racist
Glad we agree.
> It is because white people tend to double down when confronted with anti-racist data.
That's both untrue and also even if it were true it would not mean that "anti-racism" is racist. "Anti-racism" is racist all by itself without any external help required.
> when whites are told that the legal system is unjust to blacks, they tend to support it more.
This is not true.
However, speaking of doubling down on the false (and inconsistent) things people believe: the same people who believe that blacks are discriminated against, and use the legal system bias to justify their belief, also fervently believe that males are privileged. Yet the bias against males in the criminal justice system has been shown to be 6x larger than the bias against blacks. When confronted with these facts, do they ever double down!
But thanks for clarifying that what you are talking about is the not actual facts, but all the various false beliefs that people in fact do have.
My experience has been that it is better to base policy based on actual facts, not on things that feel truthy, though of course policy based on the latter is easier to sell.
I know it doesn’t sell well, but most whites do, at some level, prefer blacks not to do well. Not because they necessarily hate blacks, but in aggregate it means they’ll do less well (in aggregate).
So you talk about facts, but the data shows that whites will choose to enact policy they think hurts blacks. Those are the facts.
Your take away from the original study was fear of crime? Now I understand what our problem is — your basic logic skills. This is like a basic LSAT question you got wrong.
Edit: the quote is right on. Your statement that it wasn’t racism missed the point of the authors quote. Try again and see if you can see where you missed.
And no, I didn't miss anything. Fear of crime ≠ racism. And unconsciously associating crime with blackness also is not racism when, for example:
"According to the FBI, African-Americans accounted for 39.6% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 29.1%, and "Other" 3.0%".[1]
So 14% of the population, but almost 40% of the homicides[2]. That's a rate almost 3x higher than you would expect from the population numbers. And whites are 61.6% of the population, so their share of homicides is slightly less than 1/2 of the expected rate. If you combine these two figures, you find that blacks have a 6x higher per/capita share of homicide offenders than whites.
Now this is all very unfortunate, problematic etc. But unconsciously associating blackness more strongly with crime than whiteness is not racism, but sound statistical reasoning based on the real world[3]. And humans are generally very good natural unconscious statisticians, particularly when it comes to assessing personal danger.
And please note that I am not in any way claiming that this association is "intrinsic" or that it is fair, or saying anything about the causes of the disparity in crime rates whatsoever[4]. I am just showing the unambiguous fact that the association is based on reality.
Also note that even if, in spite of the facts, you still hold that associating blackness with crime is solely or primarily due to racism, it would still not support your original assertion that "For example, when whites are told that the legal system is unjust to blacks, they tend to support it more." and certainly not your assertion that "most whites do, at some level, prefer blacks not to do well." That's just complete BS you made up.
[2] Homicides tend to be a good indicator because they are fairly unambiguous (there's a dead person) and also tend to have less chance of inconsistent investigation than other crimes.
[3] Note that this only applies to such unconscious associations as was the case here. It does not justify other sorts of inferences, particularly on an individual level.
[4] Except that, particularly for homicides, it isn't the result of unfair policing practices in any way that comes close to explaining the actual disparity, see [2] as well as the research on racial disparities in the criminal justice system, which came to more a 10% divergence, so nowhere near the 6x difference we see here.
You haven’t cited any data. Review the Vox article and linked study within it. You won’t address any of this.
Edit: what’s your point about gender bias? That’s a reasonable point to raise — in a different discussion. Maybe you can next talk about biases due to height and looks too? Also irrelevant.
The important thing is establishing that one group has too many resources which rightfully belong to some other group. The rest is implementation detail.
No one will take your house for that reason by itself. But they might take it when you can no longer afford to pay the mortgage because you were convicted of a drug felony where you were given a harsher sentence than someone of a different race, after being arrested under suspicion that others wouldn’t be. As a result you can’t find a job after release from prison.
Racism is symmetric/reciprocal. If it is wrong for group A to discriminate against group B, then it is ALSO wrong for group B to discriminate against group A.
> How is the principle incorrect? It’s a truth like evolution. You can’t fix past discrimination without future discrimination, in most cases.
True like creationism more like.
Here's some other perspectives:
- Things in the past can't be fixed. We can't "fix" past discrimination any more than we can fix 9/11 or retroactively fix the holocaust.
- Are you trying to decrease discrimination or racially biased life outcomes? If you want less discrimination, adding more discrimination is obviously counterproductive. If what you want is more wealthy black people, why don't you say that?
- There's lots of ways to help people of color without discriminating against white people. Like introducing better social support for single parent families, reducing prison sentences for non-violent offenders, etc.
- Having discriminatory hiring quotas misunderstands how wealth creation works. Promoting people in companies based on skin tone or gender instead of their skills makes companies weaker, and in turn rusts the engine of capitalism. That makes everyone more poor.
- Discrimination like this causes new problems. For example, I know several female programmers who worry that they were only hired / promoted as "diversity candidates". That sucks. As a white dude, I know the only thing keeping me employed is my capacity to add value to the business. So in some ways I'm actively supported more because I'm white and male.
- The research shows that diversity of background makes teams stronger, and diversity of values makes teams weaker. Where is this nuance in the political conversation?
There's plenty more ways to think about this issue. Fixing past racism against black people with modern racism against white people is an obviously controversial policy. (This thread alone is proof enough). Shutting that conversation down is censorious and utterly unbecoming of the academy.
> - Things in the past can't be fixed. We can't "fix" past discrimination any more than we can fix 9/11 or retroactively fix the holocaust.
You're right -- fix is not the right word. But you can dampen the impact of the event. For example, I think we provided various types of relief to different classes of victims of 9/11.
> - Are you trying to decrease discrimination or racially biased life outcomes? If you want less discrimination, adding more discrimination is obviously counterproductive. If what you want is more wealthy black people, why don't you say that?
I want people to not be impacted by discriminatory practices. The problem is that there are many practices that exist, for which their reduction in the name of this cause would be noted as discriminatory in themselves. At any given point in time you often must choose between which discriminatory practice to continue. For example, giving admissions benefits to legacies. Or tax breaks for estate taxes. Or property tax based funding of schools. Etc...
> - Having discriminatory hiring quotas misunderstands how wealth creation works. Promoting people in companies based on skin tone or gender instead of their skills makes companies weaker, and in turn rusts the engine of capitalism. That makes everyone more poor.
This is an example of a practice that only looks like it helps underreresented minorities, but is actually long-term discriminatory against them. I don't support such policies. In fact as you note, this actually helps you as a white male even more -- and I actually do believe this.
> - There's lots of ways to help people of color without discriminating against white people. Like introducing better social support for single parent families, reducing prison sentences for non-violent offenders, etc.
This is where it gets interesting and where anti-racism comes into play. There are things that can reduce the gap, and based on anti-racism principles these policies are indeed anti-racist, and discriminatory against whites. Again, it's about being results driven and not intent driven. These practices can reduce discrimination aginst minorities in outcomes -- but the mere fact of doing so increases discrimination against whites in outcome (at least relatively so). I don't think you can do one w/o the other. This is why the only way to counter past discrimination is future discrimination, even if not intended to discriminate.
And what anti-racism asks is to look at all policies through this lens. As I noted in another thread, unfortunately, this tenant of anti-racism itself is racist (usings its own definition). Not because of "reverse-racism", but simply because once things are cast as beneficial to minority groups, their support amongst the general population reduces. In essence the most effective way to reduce discrimination is to discriminate, but w/o intent.
> based on anti-racism principles these policies are indeed anti-racist, and discriminatory against whites.
I don’t think the best policies are racist. Providing more financial support for single parent households helps poor, struggling single parents of every race. It doesn’t discriminate.
And nor should it - poor white children deserve support just as much as poor black children do. No child deserves to be homeless.
Policies do discriminate in who they benefit, even when unintentionally so. School free lunches help Blacks more than Whites. But narratives often (usually?) matter more than discriminatory impacts — whether it helps Blacks or Whites.
Ibram X Kendi is explicitly advocating for racial discrimination here. Just racial discrimination in favor of his race. That is pretty obviously racist.
That's ... not how this works. This is not a zero-sum thing. (Even if there are parts of the problem where the actual conflicts are zero-sum, ie. there's a limit of how many first-year students can fit into classes, etc.)
Discriminating against already well off groups to help chronically not well-off groups (affirmative action) is of course discrimination but the consequence is very unlikely to cause the well-off groups to suddenly find themselves at the other end of the spectrum. (Mostly because they have a lot of other opportunities... that's why they're well-off. Of course it's not that simple, because there's stratification of these groups themselves, so it's very important to look at people individually, and don't simply give them plus/minus points just because of an external trait. Eg. skin color.)
I haven't read anything from him (except that one line, I assume, you quoted a few comments back), but now I'm interested. Can you cite the relevant parts?
Kendi argues that policy outcomes are central in measuring and effecting racial equity. He has said, "All along we've been trying to change people, when we really need to change policies." When speaking in November 2020 to the Alliance for Early Success, Kendi was asked if that even means abiding racist behavior and attitudes if it leads to winning an antiracist policy. Kendi answered with a definitive yes. "I want things to change for millions of people – millions of children – as opposed to trying to change one individual person."
Kendi provoked controversy when he tweeted about the relationship between Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump's third Supreme Court nominee, and two of her seven children, who had been adopted from an orphanage in Haiti. Kendi said:
Some White colonizers 'adopted' Black children. They 'civilized' these 'savage' children in the 'superior' ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity. And whether this is Barrett or not is not the point. It is a belief too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can't be racist.
His remarks were interpreted as criticizing interracial adoption. A substantial backlash against Kendi ensued. He later said his comments were taken out of context and that he does not believe that white parents of black children are inherently racist.
I can't really say much about this. It's typical vague bullshit. Kendi projects everything onto white people. (This argument/rant that "white person does X and now they think racism is no more" or "white person does X and now white person is automatically a hypocrite" is typical in radical social justice texts. Here he hedges it with "too many" white people have this belief.)
That said, I don't see where they say that fuck poor Asians, or where they say that being black entitles someone to more social help/justice than being a poor Asian.
"That said, I don't see where they say that fuck poor Asians, or where they say that being black entitles someone to more social help/justice than being a poor Asian. "
It isn't just Asians, any racial minority that is "too" successful, like Jews, Indians, Asians, Persians, etc, would be hurt by Kendi's ideas because they are essentially just the same philosophy that is mocked in the story Harrison Bergeron. Kendi thinks any difference in outcome between racial groups proves racism and thus must be fixed.
For too long, Kendi told the audience, society’s understanding of racism has focused on the perpetrators rather than the victims. “We should be outcome-centered and victim-centered,” he said. “If a policy is leading to racial injustice, it doesn’t really matter if the policymaker intended for that policy to lead to racial injustice. If an idea is suggesting that white people are superior, it doesn’t really matter if the expressor of that idea intended for that idea to connote white superiority.”
If we train our focus on outcomes and victims, Kendi said, “intention will become irrelevant.”
The book presents 5 questions to settle the question of "Am I racist?"
__always giving primacy to the individual over the collective, or group;
__always embracing the concept of individual rights to help me judge problematic social interactions;
__never assessing quantities of stuff in gauging whether a policy is racist;
__always attempting to embrace the “color-blind rule” when making choices;
__always maintaining awareness of the distinctions between equity and equality; never compromizing equality of rights in order to bring about equity of stuff.
the central idea of antiracism seems to be that all racial groups are equal, and therefore, any inequality is proof of racism, and any policy that arguably contributed to that inequality is also racist. This too, does not make sense. If inequality is due to racism, how can we explain inequality within racial groups? Why do white people in one state make more money than in another state? Why do chlidren from two parent households generally do better academically than children from single parent households of the same race? Racism can't be the answer. And Kendi rarely offers any proof that racism is the primary source of inequality between groups, let alone the only source. The book also feels overly long and highly repetitive, with Kendi driving home the same handful of points/ideas over and over again.
His name is Ibram Rogers Kendi, and under this name he has published books that make his "anti-racism" a moderate view. He's switched to this X pseudonym to make readers forget what kind of extremist he had been.
I did not say that it's okay, I stated a simple fact, that positive discrimination is discrimination too.
Then I tried to explain the likely consequence of one usual version of that, and then I explicitly said that it's not that simple, because looking at ethnic groups and deciding the fate of individuals, just because they belong to that ethnic group, is almost textbook racism, as you also pointed out.
Because what often passes for equity/diversity/inclusion in these contexts is the farthest thing from what would be truly equitable or inclusive. True diversity is not fostered by EDI goals, these are purely about enforcing conformity. And dangerous conformity at that - many people ITT have pointed out that "anti-racist" has pretty much become code for anti-Asian.
As a hiring manager, DEI efforts have made hiring a lot more challening.
For my team we pretty much can only hire experienced, senior candidates with specialized skillsets. We do hire and train up juniors from time to time when our team gets big enough and has the time to mentor effectively. Anyway, women and minority candidates do apply (and get hired) for our positions but at much lower percentages.
To meet DEI goals though, our internal recruiters shove completely inexperienced/unqualified candidates into our pipeline and then put internal pressure on us to hire their candidate (one time there was a complaint from HR to a few exceutives claiming we were sabotaging their DEI efforts...the executives had to explain to the HR team how difficult and specialized the job that we do is and how important it is for us to have a pipeline of the best candidates...) even though they can't succeed in the role at that experience level.
They've even gone so far as to modify resumes of people we interview to inflate the experience level and immediately get caught out by the candidate who tells us that isn't the resume they submitted...and these are our _internal_ recruiters fucking with us like this. They even pushed through a candidate once who didn't speak any of the same languages as anyone else on our team. We only found out at the in-person interview stage...
Damn, that's where diversity initiatives become too much for me. Hiring people for the sake of diversity only perpetuates negative stereotypes about women in tech.
I don't want anyone I hire to be set up to be in a situation where they will surely fail, but that does seem to be where this is going. DEI seems to care about short term efforts/results but not long term.
My team has huge demands put on it as a result of product development and most of the time we need to hire entirely self-sufficient people. That's simply not possible without a significant amount of in-field experience. Having inexperienced people shoveled into our pipeline is a complete counter-productive waste of time.
OTOH it also takes like two years of dedicated peformance coaching in my org to fire anyone so the DEI folks are getting exactly what they want in the end anyway.
So these individuals are like potential spies inside the organization? To whom would they report?
I've seen a considerable number of people hired who seemed to have no productivity but the idea that they might have a reporting function outside the usual "chain-of-command" (e.g., like communist party political officers in the military) never occurred to me.
mandated DEI hires without also working on providing training for candidates (or at least post-hiring training) .. wow, what a bold strategy.
> We do hire and train up juniors from time to time when our team gets big enough and has the time to mentor effectively.
If DEI is a real goal then ... training has to be a real priority, not just "when big enough" and "when have time".
So if the company doesn't want to spend resources on it then it'll get strictly worse results. (Ie. it'll either find itself unable to hire people, it'll be chronically understaffed, and/or it'll end up with a lot of internal conflicts about skills/competence.)
I understand that, I tend to avoid them as much as possible also, but if it's the only place where certain facts are present, I'll read them.
But I ignore the emotive language or opinion dressed as reporting.
Which is something I noted while staying in LA recently - all the news shows I had access to on the hotel TV were "here's something that happened", which typically ran for 30 - 60 seconds, followed by 15 minutes of people offering opinions on it. And the channels that wanted to present as unbiased would give a Democrat aligned commentator and a Republic aligned commentator equal "this is how you should interpret this" time.
But yeah, blew my mind that so much of the "news" was talking heads telling you what to think about the news.
If you are not simultaneously against bezos-funded propaganda or zuck-funded propaganda (he still funds fwd.us whose main goal is to lower tech salaries by increasing immigration), you are a hypocrite.
That is in fact what the book How to be Anti-Racist prescibes that you do.
Part of the thesis of that book is that you are a racist if you treat people as individuals. To be Anti-Racist, you must treat people as part of their collective and then treat them well or badly based on membership of that collective in the name of equity. Thus whites and asians must be treated poorly because of their race and other minorities treated positively because of their race.
Basically you fight racism with racial discrimination.
As stupid and wrong it is, it is invading every aspect of our professional lives. It's extremely disturbing to find how many of my generation (let's say 30s & 40s) have accepted this belief system uncritically.
It seems at least that zoomers are somewhat more critical, or at least 50-50 on the topic. It's going to take many, many decades to unravel the harm this is causing.
They like that it's vile; that's the point for them. The power, the influence, and the authoritarian ability to control people's lives and, eventually, kill them (in my opinion), is what they crave.
Do not underestimate these people and how insane they are.
The point of all this is to have people who are unqualified as individuals embedded deep in every organization who are loyal to and owe their jobs and livelihood not to their own merit, but to external political movements.
Unlike unions, these external political movements do not care about the organizations their members are embedded in, but have other goals which is why they are unconcerned with merit. Unions at least wanted the organizations their members belonged to to survive and employees to have some level of competence.
The book presents 5 questions to settle the question of "Am I racist?"
__always giving primacy to the individual over the collective, or group;
__always embracing the concept of individual rights to help me judge problematic social interactions;
__never assessing quantities of stuff in gauging whether a policy is racist;
__always attempting to embrace the “color-blind rule” when making choices;
__always maintaining awareness of the distinctions between equity and equality; never compromizing equality of rights in order to bring about equity of stuff.
These questions and what you said are two different things. You don’t need to treat any group poorly and none of those questions suggest you do. You made a leap that doesn’t logically follow.
You clearly have not read the book or even the quoted parts of it in the article. This quote is highlighted by Haidt who even supports and says there is a place for anti-racism.
> "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
The book makes its point of view as plain as day. I haven't made any kinds of leap whatsoever.
Haidt only drew the line at his work being compelled to promote anti-racism because that's contradictory to the aim for truth and why we do research in the first place.
Your characterization of poor treatment seems like a leap. I guess the question for you is: if I discriminate against you in the post in such a way it creates inequity, but never attempt to correct it but merely say from this point forward no one can discriminate — is everyone being treated fairly?
You say it's a leap but then you present an argument where only way to achieve "fairness" is to engage in discrimination the other way. WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THE BOOK WE'RE TALKING ABOUT CALLS FOR!
Life isn't and will never be fair. The fairness you seem to be seeking is "eye for an eye". You know what does make life fair though? We're all headed for worms and dirt eventually. None of us escape that. That's how you square the inequalities of what happens in between.
I can't engage with you any more on this. The doublethink required to accept your argument is off the charts.
Your rationale for the lack of attempting to right past wrongs is we all die? Is that how you view the Justice system? I assume you see no need for detectives.
As a society we view “further wrongs” differently. Taking money from someone who stole from you (with the help of the legal system) isn’t considered a further wrong. Criminals rarely utilize the “let’s do no further wrong defense” at sentencing. But maybe they should, as there seems to be a huge appetite for this sort of thing.
There is a big difference between punishing a criminal for a thing they did, and punishing a disfavored-race-person for a thing their ancestor did. It’s both a moral difference (collective punishment is wrong) and a practical difference (unwinding history to determine the true victim and true perpetrator is almost always impossible - as illustrated by the case of “mixed-race” people with both slave and slave-owning ancestors).
> As a society we view “further wrongs” differently.
Yes, and that includes letting bygones be bygones when we all have terrible injustices in our collective past. This is what a generalized amnesty is all about. The only alternative is a destructive war of all against all, as indeed is often seen in "honor-bound" societies where "the duty of righting wrongs" is taken as an absolute.
Academic societies can have whatever ideologies they wish. Go present at a conference that doesn't have an ideology you don't have. That's true freedom. This is the same thing as Trump complaining about being banned from twitter. It's anti-capitalism and anti-freedom.
Can an academic society in the USA today have an ideology explicitly presented as "the advancement and preservation of the white race"? No? Then your whole argument falls apart.
Can you give me one example where such a society was allowed? Because I can give you plenty of examples where white ethnic activism was explicitly prohibited and people were kicked out of university for engaging in it.
The white suprematists found it more effective not to explicitly state their ideological goals.
There are plenty of academic legal societies very interested in “states’ rights”, “returning to the constitution”, “memorializing the Confederacy”, etc. I don’t see a important distinction between an explicit statement and dog-whistle so thinly veiled that everyone knows what it stands for.
> I don’t see a important distinction between an explicit statement and dog-whistle so thinly veiled that everyone knows what it stands for.
That’s an interesting statement.
I’ve personally attended a memorial ceremony hosted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy where a Black woman spoke for an hour about the conditions under which Blacks, both enslaved and free, existed in the Confederacy. She was a UDC member, which means that she was a thoroughly documented descendant of a Confederate soldier. In her case, that was a man who was offered his freedom in exchange for military service.
You say “everyone knows it stands for”, but my experience says that a more truthful statement would be “most people believe they know what it stands for”.
I’ve noticed an interesting trend of people attempting to performatively “get cancelled” and when they fail to accomplish that, the next best option is to very publicly voluntarily quit their job and imply they had no other choice.
What is the implied real-world loss by this man choosing to no longer (according to wikipedia) do research to help the Democratic party win over conservatives and libertarians?
I genuinely cannot imagine a scenario where I’m actually concerned that somebody who is described as a “thinker” voluntarily chooses to stop… “thinking”?
It's not. Instead, the infinitives of "cut" and "heal" are being used as noun phrases. The grammar is correct, and the switch if anything makes the sentence more punchy.
I would have preferred and opted for "to teach" instead, or probably the more emphatic yet more problematic "to teach the truth" but the sentence structure seems sound to me grammatically speaking.
The more people talk against racism the more racism is generated. As if they are ashamed from their racist practices and they try to exorcise it ... with just talk.
Incidents like the Jussie Smollett hoax, the Jazmine Barnes hoax, and what happened to the Covington Catholic kids show that the demand for racism often exceeds supply.
>But to civil rights activists, including Shaun King, who received the tip that led to the arrest, the race of the suspect did not upend the meaning of the case — for Jazmine's family or for the country.
>"We live in a time where somebody could do something like this based purely on hate or race," he said on Sunday. "And that it turned out to not be the case I don't think changes the devastating conclusion that people had thought something like that was possible."
But further, I’d never seen the statement from antiracist before…wow. The idea that the only cure for discrimination is discrimination is akin to saying the only cure for violence is violence. It’s abject insanity that such a notion is being advanced in society.
The cure for discrimination is forgiveness. The cure for violence is forgiveness. The cure for hatred is forgiveness.
The only way anything stops is for people to have the humility and wisdom to say “this will stop with me.”