[HN Gopher] 'Culture wars' are fought by tiny minority - UK study
___________________________________________________________________
'Culture wars' are fought by tiny minority - UK study
Author : archiepeach
Score : 391 points
Date : 2020-10-26 09:23 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| lki876 wrote:
| Like journalists at the guardian...
| another-dave wrote:
| I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream
| media.
|
| "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches
| for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists
| looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for
| 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself.
| Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line
| commenting on events, it's helping to shape what becomes a story.
|
| I think a lot of it is probably a symptom of trimmed budgets and
| the 24hr news cycle -- social media is in easy reach and
| available at whatever point you're writing your article.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't think we can roll back on the constant
| need for more 'breaking news', but would be interesting if a
| newspaper were to take an editorial stance that it won't
| quote/embed any tweets or social posts in their articles.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| "news" about tweets is the most ridiculous thing to happen in
| the last decade.
| hrktb wrote:
| I am curious about how do you see street corner enquetes and
| random telephone sampling before SNS.
|
| Thoses enquetes were done on somewhate crowded yet non busy
| places for convenience, and tended to sample a specific part of
| the population: e.g. people going to shopping districts at off
| hours, or people coming out of church for the most biased
| samplings.
|
| Telephone checks were similar in that you had a very high
| percentage of at home caregivers responding to them.
|
| Do you the past journalistic methods as that much more
| sophisticated than nowadays ?
| another-dave wrote:
| I wouldn't say I think that they're more sophisticated but
| conducting a telephone sample, or doing a vox-pop on street
| corners with a TV camera requires more effort than just
| typing a hashtag into a searchbox and pulling out a few
| responses. I think the lower friction of skimming social
| media, plus the added pressure of having more air-time /
| articles to fill means there's an over-reliance on it in a
| way that there wasn't before.
| _jal wrote:
| So, as in most market-driven things with negative impacts, it
| is more complicated than just one thing. You can think of it as
| a security issue.
|
| Alice wants to read the news, Bob wants to write it. Mallet
| wants to foster discussion of an idea of dubious worthiness to
| further nefarious but unstated aims.
|
| Alice is attracted to lurid, weird and scary, even though she
| mostly knows better, because we all are.
|
| Bob is attracted to easy stories, because it is hard to run a
| paper today.
|
| Mallet doesn't care too much about how his poison gets out
| there, only that it does.
|
| Among other things, this suggests that any one thing, like not
| embedding Twitter quotes, is unlikely to make much difference -
| Mallet will shift to something else.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Don't forget about Evelyn, who makes money by exposing people
| to ads, and Steve, who provides a platform to do it and gets
| paid by Evelyn. Together, they create the primary pressure
| that forces stories to be attractive to the likes of Alice
| and Bob, and they'll more than happily enable Mallet, as long
| as his poison has a side effect of getting more Alices and
| Bobs to view stories filled with ads.
|
| That's the problem here. Kill the advertising dependency, and
| Mallet will find it much harder to spread their poison.
| cmdshiftf4 wrote:
| >I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream
| media.
|
| I understand your argument but I also in no way want to
| distract from the culpability owned by social media companies,
| their product designers and managers, and the people who wrote
| the code to implement their desires.
|
| They are ultimately guilty for the damage they have wrought on
| our societies. Traditional media companies may have exacerbated
| the issue with their participation, but they didn't create it.
|
| >Unfortunately, I don't think we can roll back on the constant
| need for more 'breaking news'
|
| We can't, but just like smoking cigarettes or shooting up
| opioids we can recognize it as a source of damage and addiction
| and start changing things to combat it.
| centimeter wrote:
| It's not clear that cigarette smoking is actually net
| harmful, due to the substantial decrease in obesity
| associated with smoking.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| They did the math actually on that one - comparing smoking
| rate and obesity counter-correlations and the rise and fall
| across various countries. The smoking drop was modest, less
| than 10% which makes it a fairly clear net harm unless one
| defines net harm ghoulishly such that dying soon after
| retirement is a good thing due to reduced healthcare costs.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| The difference is while few people would claim social media
| companies are in any way a credible source of truth, there is
| still a residual notion that the main stream media's role is
| to be the eyes and ears of society, a role that it obviously
| no longer deserves.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _" The difference is while few people would claim social
| media companies are in any way a credible source of truth"_
|
| Many, many people in my area regard social media as a
| credible source of truth. I know that people don't think
| much of the people where I live, and that comes from the
| lack of good educational opportunities afforded them out
| here in flyover country. But these people get to vote too.
| They get to participate in society as well. I guess I mean
| that they count. You can't say there is no one who claims
| social media is credible, when it is obvious there are
| millions who are swayed by social media precisely because
| it is credible in their view.
|
| In fact, if a story is only on social media, it's _proof_
| of the story 's validity in their eyes. If the mainstream
| media won't run a story they found on social media, then it
| must be part of a conspiracy to keep the "truth" from
| getting out. I hear this narrative everyday in my area of
| the midwest.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Sadly there's more and more support for their point of
| view. We are entering a new period of MSM censorship but
| this time we're seeing the social media platforms out in
| front taking active measures to censor political speech,
| probably due to a mix of short-sighted "best intentions"
| (flyover country is no more susceptible to indoctrination
| than the sophisticates on the coasts) and partly to avoid
| anti-trust suits from the likely victors in the upcoming
| election. Just like they censor on behalf of
| authoritarian regimes abroad to protect access to
| markets, they will do the same here. Good reason to break
| up the FAANGs for the public good.
| blm202021 wrote:
| I'm going to retort, specifically in the context of a very
| important issue in the US currently: the BLM movement.
|
| Contrary to popular thought, the "liberal" media utterly
| failed minorities. The abuse of minorities in the US spans
| generations and has consistently been relegated to the
| margins of mainstream news. It has been typical in the US --
| for decades -- for the NY Times to grant a single death in
| Israel front page coverage while a death of an African
| American at the hands of police in NYC would barely get
| coverage. My point is not that either is acceptable -- but
| rather that both are bad. Perhaps non-coverage of an incident
| in NY is worse because a NY paper might want to consider the
| atrocities happening right down the street.
|
| The BLM movement finally came to the forefront not because of
| the "liberal" media but in spite of it. The BLM movement was
| enabled by _Social Media._ If Twitter did not exist, there is
| no reason to assume we would have made any progress.
|
| The media overall and the liberal media have lost part of
| their control over the narrative (and the power that
| selective coverage conveys) and trying to blame things on
| social media. But believe this -- what we have seen in 2020
| is progress. As messy and as ugly as it is, we've actually
| moved forward with minority rights.
|
| Consider also how hypocritical the coverage has been. Liberal
| media tells us that "Silicon Valley lacks diversity". TBH it
| does, but you know the real problem is not SV, it is a
| national media controlled by four families with zero
| minorities on their boards and executive staff -- telling an
| industry with huge numbers of minorities (including many
| brown people in senior/CxO ranks) they lack diversity.
|
| SV does need to get better, but saying SV is the start and
| end of all problems is absolutely false.
| mainstreem wrote:
| The BLM movement claims to speak for minorities but the
| burden of proof that this is actually the case remains on
| you.
| [deleted]
| Veen wrote:
| Which media companies and which families? I'd like to
| verify those claims about zero minority executives and
| board members?
| wnissen wrote:
| Forget the boards, the LA Times has one (1) black
| reporter out of 90 covering local news. LA is 8% black.
| https://www.npr.org/2020/06/15/874530954/rancor-erupts-
| in-la...
| Veen wrote:
| I will not "Forget the boards". blm202021 made a factual
| claim to back up their argument. I want to know whether
| that claim is true.
| jariel wrote:
| The PMs of Facebook are not responsible for the decision by
| CNN producers to use Twitter commentary as a source of
| information and legitimacy.
|
| I'm not generally one to speak out against capitalism, but
| having come from a country that has 'strong, communitarian
| and cultural ideals' - I believe that hyper-individualism and
| capitalism have created an ugly, 'perfect storm of self
| flagellation' here with MSM, Social Media, Politics,
| Entertainment.
|
| 'Communitarian ideals' mean that there are unspoken rules of
| legitimacy, fraternity, civility, professionalism etc. that
| exist in many fields like the media, even in politics where
| all the 'grey areas' of civility count for so much, a lot of
| US Senate functions like this historically.
|
| These soft ideals however leave the door way open for
| radicals and money-seekers to 'disrupt' and take over,
| justifying their cause through either 'moral legitimacy of
| social justice' or 'responsibility towards shareholders' -
| or, like in the case of Nike for example - both.
|
| Any institution that can be instrumentalist and submitted
| will be.
|
| Though I don't blame FB PM's specifically - it's right there
| in the ethos: 'disrupt' and 'move fast / break things / do it
| ask for permission later'. Without any regard at all for
| social and cultural ideals, they just get completely uprooted
| in the search for whatever it is the objective is, in the
| case of FB, money.
| remarkEon wrote:
| I'm not sure why we'd treat FB and Twitter PMs separately?
|
| They both built a virality engine, and then acted
| dumbfounded (at first) when news sites used this to tune
| their content to go viral. It's an intentionally incredibly
| addictive, and borderline malicious, product that
| capitalizes on the worst human instincts. The entire thing
| exists as a feedback loop that grants you legitimacy by
| counting the number of eyeballs (real or not) that see it.
| mainstreem wrote:
| Sorry, in what way are the dominant social media websites
| (Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit in particular), NOT main
| stream media in 2020?
|
| Certainly they aren't part of the legacy media, but they all
| seem to carry water for the same narratives and ideologies.
|
| The non-mainstream media is publications that people in
| polite urban mostly-coastal American culture sneer at:
| Breitbart, The Post Millenial, Reason, Parler, Gab, specific
| independent journalists on some of the mainstream platforms,
| etc.
|
| But certainly Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit are media and
| they are mainstream. And they have demonstrated their
| willingness to censor stories with more or less the same bias
| (in the same ideological direction) as the mainstream legacy
| media. They're just the mainstream new media.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Do you have any evidence for that point? Like sure, I'd love
| to blame Twitter and Facebook for all of our societal ills,
| but they aren't new. Culture wars didn't just suddenly happen
| in the early 00s.
|
| Cue the 1960s and 70s long before any social media and the
| amazing amount of not just protests but bombings,
| assassinations and so on that make the current culture war
| seem like a mere shouting match.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| If we're going to blame one thing for the US culture wars,
| I'd have to pick the removal of the Fairness Doctrine in
| 1987.
|
| It's obviously much more complicated than than that though.
| andrew_ wrote:
| "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix touches on this - in part,
| the algorithms that run these platforms and govern (guide?)
| user interaction are responsible in large part for pitting
| people against each other. It's in their best interest to
| keep eyeballs on their respective sites as much has humanly
| possible.
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| Yes algorithms contribute, but the media is the reason
| these problems go from being just an argument on social
| media, to an actual societal issue.
|
| Before the media started using social media as "facts"
| for their reporting, these arguments would just be
| another online "flame war." Remember when we used those
| terms? Remember when online arguments remained as just
| that?
|
| Now, when 1000 people on Twitter try to cancel someone
| the media reports it as if it's an actual popular
| opinion, thus amplifying the problem for better or worse.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I think this conflates two separate, but equally damaging
| issues. (1) Social media sites have been optimized in the
| same way tobacco was, to take advantage of human
| chemistry to make it as addictive as possible; and (2)
| news companies are run for a profit, and the profits all
| started going to online advertisers, so the news
| companies had to follow. Thus things that are important
| on social media, become important to news companies,
| which becomes mainstream news.
|
| I find it tough to blame the news for this -- the social
| media companies were making deliberate design choices and
| the news companies were reacting in an attempt to stay in
| business in a rapidly changing market.
| rstupek wrote:
| I think you're generous with 1000 people being the high
| bar for media reports. My gut says <12 is enough
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There are legitimately things on social media that become
| much bigger and become a story in and of itself though.
| Breonna Taylor's case was not covered in MSM initially,
| and the continued pressure on it is largely due to social
| media self-sustaining it.
| [deleted]
| ilyaeck wrote:
| Hardly a credible source of objective information, given
| that The Social Dilemma is itself a piece of media
| designed to trigger people into consuming and spreading
| it.
| mmastrac wrote:
| This is nothing new. Journalists were cribbing from blogs and
| Reddit before social media, and from usenet before then
| (although the latter to a lesser degree).
|
| Agree with your statement of this being a symptom of trimmed
| budgets and the 24hr news cycle. The push for free news on the
| internet may have also contributed.
| zests wrote:
| Read the Economist or probably any "content is paid by
| subscriptions and not advertisements" news sources.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| It is possible to collect money from both subscriptions and
| advertisers. Arguably, people willing to pay for
| subscriptions are a more interesting target for the
| advertisers.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Minor point about rowing back on the need for constant news
| updates - I happily rely on checking high quality news outlets
| morning evening and watching Channel 4 News at 7pm. I don't
| watch 24 hour news channels, and it works just fine. It's
| certainly possible for a person to go back to considered
| coverage.
| ggggtez wrote:
| > journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a
| stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it
| the story itself.
|
| I'm surprised that you say that the main culprit is the main
| stream media. I see this kind of reporting in all news outlets,
| especially non-MSM. It's cheap and trivial to write an article
| that highlights some comments from four people with 15 twitter
| followers a piece, and claim that "People are saying".
|
| You even hear the POTUS frequently use "people are saying" and
| then quoting whackadoos from Twitter. Can we really hold MSM to
| a higher standard than the president of the free world?
| rmrfstar wrote:
| In Orwell's Oceania, the inner and outer party made up around
| 10% of the population. Minitrue was a small subset of that
| apparatus, and developed such wonderful products as "the two
| minutes hate".
|
| It's not like we weren't warned.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Neil Postman wrote in 1985:
|
| "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What
| Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a
| book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
| Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information.
| Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would
| be reduced to passivity and egotism."
|
| "Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.
| Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of
| irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.
| Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied
| with [indulgences]."
|
| "As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil
| libertarians and rationalists, who are ever on the alert to
| oppose tyranny, "failed to take into account man's almost
| infinite appetite for distractions."
|
| "In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave
| New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In
| short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley
| feared that our desire will ruin us."
|
| -- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse
| in the Age of Show Business
| voidifremoved wrote:
| One of the most prescient of the 20th dystopian novels was
| Fahrenheit 451.
|
| This was not about a totalitarian government burning books.
|
| This was about a population numbing themselves with bright
| colours, bland affirmation and meaningless feeds of facts.
| With vacuous, superficial interaction with friends and
| family through screens. They burned the books themselves,
| so they didn't have to encounter anything challenging.
| specialist wrote:
| Neil Postman's books influenced me tremendously.
|
| I've been rereading McLuhan, Postman, Huxley, etc.
|
| Manufacturing Consent is the most directly applicable to
| understanding social media. With at least two updates to
| the thesis.
|
| #1
|
| The outrage machine is fueled by advertising, right? What's
| new is the motivating control (choice) moved from the
| advertiser's intent to the algorithmic recommenders.
|
| #2
|
| Third parties learned to effectively manipulate the
| algorithmic recommenders. So whereas before the gatekeepers
| acted as a great filter, third parties are now able to
| command attention and drive narratives.
|
| --
|
| Forgive me for stumbling over my descriptions. I'm just now
| trying to write out my notions. And I don't think any of
| this is "new". Just that with the new medium upsetting the
| old constraints and balances, different parts of the
| ecosystem are more impactful.
| [deleted]
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > The outrage machine is fueled by advertising, right?
|
| The purpose of purchaing advertising is to increase sales
| of the advertised product or service. How does the
| "outrage machine" lead to increased sales of the products
| or services being advertised? Do you think many people
| are actually buying products through advertisements
| posted in, say, Trump vs. AOC flamewars?
| specialist wrote:
| Exactly. And are the advertisers happy?
|
| Who has the (most) power in the social media ecosystem?
| Certainly not the advertisers. Today, the power balance
| has shifted to the aggregators (h/t Stratechery) and the
| trolls.
|
| Here's a loaded question that might help explain the new
| power dynamic: Who are the current targets of
| dissastified customers? During broadcast era (the time of
| Manufacturing Consent), people boycotted advertisers and
| brands. Today, people boycott the aggregators (FAANG) and
| influencers (aka cancel culture).
|
| Take it one step further. Let's call manipulating the
| algorithm "trolling" (for lack of a better term). What
| leverage does anyone have over the trolls? I find it very
| weird, a la roshambo, that there are no effective checks
| on their power. As in, how does one protest or boycott a
| troll farm? Even the aggregators struggle to check the
| trolls.
| andrew_ wrote:
| The "outrage machine" in this instance keeps the eyeballs
| on the page, which display the ads, which ties into the
| psychology of advertising. e.g. people remember
| advertising, even if they aren't consciously aware of it.
| [deleted]
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| My saying: "It's a brave new world, until you resist. Then
| it's 1984."
| rmrfstar wrote:
| It's a great book, but that excerpt reflects a pretty
| shallow read of 1984.
|
| It doesn't account for this specific example, the use of
| outrage as an instrument of social control.
| arethuza wrote:
| I think fear will always be a more powerful means of
| influence than desire:
|
| _" Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought
| to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have
| to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce
| the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the
| country to greater danger."_
|
| Although said by one of the Nazi leaders - I don't think
| it is any less true.
| mdifrgechd wrote:
| Wow, that couldn't be more relevant right now with covid
| pram wrote:
| I've never liked this analysis, it seems to downplay a
| major and crucial element in the story: citizens in BNW
| were biologically engineered to be satisfied with their
| assigned role/class. There were far more totalitarian
| control mechanisms employed than simply keeping everyone
| occupied with hedonistic activities.
| jiajweiorjawejr wrote:
| I can't recommend the book _Amusing Ourselves to Death_
| enough, especially in our current hyper-stupid times.
| geephroh wrote:
| Absolute must-read for anyone who hasn't already. Postman
| was remarkably prescient, especially given that it was
| written in 1985.
| alex_c wrote:
| Sometimes I wish I had a way to block Twitter from my life
| completely. I don't even use it, but I wish for an AdBlock-like
| tool that would:
|
| - block Twitter content in news articles
|
| - block links to articles with Twitter content from ever being
| shown to me in the first place
|
| Most news articles provide little value to my life anyway, but
| I don't think I've ever read an article referencing Twitter
| quotes that was worthwhile.
|
| While I'm dreaming, if I had any way to filter all the news
| about what public figures _say_ , and keep only the news about
| what they actually _do_...
| cortesoft wrote:
| Twitter links on my phone never work... i will click on the
| link to a tweet, and then it will just say "failed to load
| content"
|
| So I guess I somehow do block twitter?
| bootlooped wrote:
| I get this a lot and not just on my phone. What is wrong
| with their site?
| wnissen wrote:
| They definitely block all of AWS, are you using a VPN or
| similar aggregated connection?
| jimbokun wrote:
| One of the absolute laziest ways to write a "news" article is
| the "here are a list of things people tweeted about this
| topic" compilation.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > One of the absolute laziest ways to write a "news"
| article is the "here are a list of things people tweeted
| about this topic" compilation.
|
| It's definitely less work that investigative journalism,
| but to the extent that twitter is influential, it's a topic
| that should be covered.
|
| IMHO, the media has (at least) two important jobs: 1)
| conduct novel investigations and 2) summarize the firehose
| of events and ideas into a form concise enough for someone
| to read on a daily/weekly basis. "What people are saying on
| social media" falls squarely into the second category.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Your #2, summarizing, isn't what I usually see in these
| "here's what people are saying on Twitter" stories. The
| valuable version that you're talking about would have to
| include things like polls or something, saying "20% of
| people agree with this idea, 5% agree with this other
| idea, etc." Instead, these stories just say here's some
| tweets that are really edgy/funny/gotchas/something I
| agree with."
| alex_c wrote:
| I very very strongly reject the idea that "What people
| are saying on social media" is worth summarizing or
| covering by the media.
|
| I can list many reasons, the top few would be:
|
| 1. It is too easy to game "what people are saying" on
| social media
|
| 2. Loudest voices / most extreme positions get picked up,
| amplified, and passed off as "what people are saying"
|
| 3. It is too easy / predictable to game what kind of
| messages the media chooses to summarize
|
| 4. None of it _matters_ (see my original post about what
| people say vs. what people do)
|
| If an idea is worth discussing, it is worth discussing
| regardless of its source (social media or otherwise).
| Conversely, and I know this is open for debate, but
| Twitter is not a great medium for discussing ideas.
|
| Social media regularly reminds me of the Douglas Adams
| quote:
|
| _"The story so far:_ _In the beginning the Universe was
| created._ _This has made a lot of people very angry and
| been widely regarded as a bad move."_
|
| _That_ is, on average, what people are saying on social
| media. It is not worth summarizing and covering.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I see this a lot in an attempt to smear a candidate or
| public figure: "Here are some abhorrent Tweets from their
| followers". Of course, it's an enumeration fallacy--there's
| no way of knowing whether those Tweets accurately represent
| the candidate's followers or not. That said, journalists
| are happy to find real life followers of candidates/etc
| with abhorrent views, but I suppose Twitter makes it easier
| to create the desired spin.
| toss1 wrote:
| OTOH, if you spend sufficient effort to curate your lists,
| you can enjoy a BETTER news feed than from major media, who
| even if they aren't straight-up biased, are full of their own
| constraints to fill airtime, not offend sponsors, etc.
|
| It takes work to filter out the noise, (& there's plenty of
| noise to avoid!), but one can select the actual scientists
| diong the research, who will link to their key findings &
| papers, answer questions, etc., or direct to current & former
| officials, key industry/govt players, the journalists
| themselves and get their comments directly, without the
| scaled editorial slant. (private lists, to avoid the
| algorithmic feed is the key; I don't think it is possible on
| FB)
| sk2020 wrote:
| I appreciate RSS for that reason. Information is opt-in.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political
| attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election,
| one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I
| couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so
| much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that
| year alone, which got virtually zero attention.
| kevindong wrote:
| Personally, I think the reason is just another take on the
| bike shed effect.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
| ardy42 wrote:
| > In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political
| attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016
| election, one of the main issues was gender and public
| bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why
| that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid
| overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero
| attention.
|
| One factor in that is America is a pretty unequal society,
| and problems the relatively wealthy [1] face receive
| disproportionate attention than those primarily confined to
| the less wealthy. Not saying that's the only factor, but it's
| definitely a major one.
|
| Ditto with de-industrialization, which a sibling comment
| mentioned. The relatively wealthy gain disproportionately
| from it in the short term, and those who are
| disproportionately hurt by it are less wealthy and typically
| live in unfashionable areas. Predictably, their problems get
| relatively less attention than they probably should (esp.
| since the relatively wealthy have the option of hand-waving
| those problems away with stuff like "Pareto efficiency,"
| etc.).
|
| [1] I'd count software engineers and similar professionals as
| "relatively wealthy."
| taxcoder wrote:
| Could you give some examples of societies that are more
| equal and how they are?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Is bathroom choice a problem of the relatively wealthy?
|
| Because I sure don't see opiate abuse or ODs as a problem
| _disproportionately_ affecting the poor. Sure, it affects a
| lot of poor people, but it also affects a fair number of
| the wealthy, quite possibly in numbers greater than their
| proportion in the population. (It 's hard to judge because
| every celebrity overdose will be widely reported, so
| availability bias might be affecting my perception.)
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Is bathroom choice a problem of the relatively wealthy?
|
| Your rephrase lost an important nuance. I said "problems
| the relatively wealthy face." Bathroom choice is a
| problem wealth can't really solve or mitigate, so it's
| one they still face (either directly or through their
| children or peers).
|
| > but it also affects a fair number of the wealthy, quite
| possibly in numbers greater than their proportion in the
| population. (It's hard to judge because every celebrity
| overdose will be widely reported, so availability bias
| might be affecting my perception.)
|
| IMO, celebrity drug abuse is kinda a different thing,
| because celebrities are a special, tiny class that's easy
| to hold yourself apart from.
| vharuck wrote:
| It's easy to take extreme positions on issues that likely
| won't bother your base no matter how they turn out. It's like
| international immigration: a life-or-death matter to some,
| but a distant matter to a vast majority. If a politician
| doesn't follow through with promises or bungles the
| execution, these matters won't cause enough of his base to
| turn on him. But his stances gives followers a clear flag to
| wave.
| mobilejdral wrote:
| It wasn't about bathroom usage, but about getting a voting
| base to vote. Religious groups don't care about opioid
| issues, but they do like talking about and voting against
| LGBT+ issues.
|
| As for the issue itself, the wikipedia article has a pretty
| good overview of the whole thing
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathroom_bill
| rmrfstar wrote:
| If you started talking about deaths of despair, you'd have to
| start talking about de-industrialization and how the Fed lied
| about it to give Congress political cover [1]. Can't go
| there.
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-12/sha
| res...
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| Well in 2016, to talk about de-industrialization would have
| helped the designated "outsider" candidates, despite the
| fact that one of those, Bernie Sanders, _was not Donald
| Trump_.
| rmrfstar wrote:
| Aren't both political parties equally culpable for the
| destruction?
|
| A frank discussion about industrial policy would not
| inure to the benefit of any established political actor.
| It's a story of breathtaking incompetence, callousness,
| greed, and self-deception.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| > Aren't both political parties equally culpable for the
| destruction?
|
| Yes, they are, and in 2016, _both_ political parties
| faced outsider candidates running surprisingly strong
| campaigns in their Presidential primaries on explicitly
| repudiating different aspects of neoliberalism, including
| deindustrialization.
|
| But one of those candidates was Donald Trump, and it was
| much more important to point out what a rude, crude
| bastard he was, 24/7, than to discuss the issues of
| political economy raised by the outsider populists. The
| point was to crush them, to _avoid_ anyone in the
| political sphere questioning deindustrialization and
| financialization.
|
| Four years later, we know that trying to silence populism
| while also giving Trump, a populist, 24/7 earned-media
| coverage _did not work_. At the time, though, people
| expected it to work.
| rmrfstar wrote:
| Saying that a nation ought to manage its industrial
| capacity in a deliberate way isn't necessarily a populist
| position.
| walshemj wrote:
| Energizes the right wing GOP base or strictly the entryist
| faction that has taken over.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't think it's wise to make some guesstimates about the
| number of people who will be directly affected by each
| policy, then sort all policies by that number descending, and
| then expect or hope that only the top N policies on that list
| receive political attention.
|
| For one thing, guesstimating the number of affected people is
| pretty subjective. A policy can be important to me even
| though it does not nominally affect me directly. Secondly,
| this method doesn't even attempt to weigh policies by
| anything else, like the magnitude of benefits/downsides,
| budgetary concerns, civil rights implications, etc. For
| instance, in my view, it's fine for a political issue
| involving state-sanctioned persecution or bigotry of a very
| small minority to share political attention with a large
| public health crisis.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| What is very interesting to me is that there are large
| groups that are underserved, even suffering, that have no
| voice. Yet the current administration identifies the
| situation and corrects it, winning over a significant
| number of voters.
|
| The first example that comes to mind is US armed service
| veterans. Apparently, the medical care they received from
| the Veteran's Administration was really terrible, with
| apocryphal stories of veterans dying while waiting for
| appointments to see Drs. There were many bad actors in the
| VA medical service who would have been fired in any other
| organization but due to VA policy, kept their jobs. Through
| programs such as VA Choice and VA Accountability[0], the
| approval rating of the VA jumped to 91%, a record.
|
| In the US, there are 17.4 million veterans, and as you
| indicated, they all have family and friends who are going
| to see these improvements in a positive light.
|
| It makes me wonder how many other situations there are like
| this that we don't hear about.
|
| On the other end, the president can pardon one person at a
| time. Perhaps that's the least number of people who can be
| positively affected by one act.
|
| [0] https://www.va.gov/opa/choiceact/documents/choice-act-
| summar...
| klipt wrote:
| The Google trends for "black lives matter" searches peak in
| 2016 and 2020. The media only brings it up in election years,
| even though police brutality happens every year.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > The Google trends for "black lives matter" searches peak
| in 2016 and 2020. The media only brings it up in election
| years, even though police brutality happens every year.
|
| That's correlation, not causation. Even if there's a
| connection to election years, the causality could very well
| be reversed (e.g. activists increase their efforts to get
| attention when it matters most). However, I'm inclined to
| think your observation is just coincidence or misses a
| critical factor.
| klipt wrote:
| Let's see if there's another peak in 2024 then.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream
| media.
|
| Much as this is reassuring, its not the whole story.
|
| Yes, the "MSM", well parts of them report chaff because its
| cheap.
|
| But why bother? because it sells.
|
| In some cases there are editors that push a certain stance or
| opinion. even more rare are the cases where they manage to
| actually shift a section of society's world view permanently.
|
| The problem is perfectly illustraited by the german newspaper
| "DER SPIEGEL" it literally means "the mirror"
|
| Both social, print and to a lesser extent tv news(the uk is
| highly regulated) are a mirror on society.
|
| They push what sells, and if its comfortable lies, then it so
| be it.
|
| So no, the main problem is not "the media" its us for consuming
| shit.
|
| If we stop reading gossip, junk and "punditry" then they'll
| stop making it. Its as simple as that.
| secondcoming wrote:
| > newspaper were to take an editorial stance that it won't
| quote/embed any tweets or social posts in their articles.
|
| The entire internet should take this advice, firstly for the
| reason you stated, and also because the Twitter website UX is
| appalling.
| [deleted]
| neilwilson wrote:
| When I did media training years ago they told us that the media
| isn't there to inform. It's there to sell imprints.
|
| And that journalists have knowledge that is a mile wide and an
| inch deep. Their job is to file copy to strict deadlines.
| dboreham wrote:
| >I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream
| media.
|
| It's driven by any participant who is making money from the
| political process. This includes MSM, Social Media, Political
| Consultants, and on and on.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's good to get every bit of confirmation we can of this, but
| the "myth of polarization" has been known for a long time -- best
| described in Morris Fiorina's 2011 book _Culture War? The Myth of
| a Polarized America_.
|
| There is overwhelming evidence that at the end of the day,
| people's political and issue views are overwhelmingly bell curve-
| shaped.
|
| The issue is that the bell curve gets split into categories.
| American voters are given two options, so people get split into
| "right" and "left" even when the mode is in the center. Or
| academics define the "center" extremely narrowly and therefore
| claim a majority of citizens are polarized.
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/Culture_War/s5YZQQAACAA...
| some_furry wrote:
| Additionally, in politics, the "center" in discourse is usually
| shifted along with the Overton window.
|
| i.e. If you're an extremely conservative government, your
| moderate citizens views will seem extremely liberal.
| k__ wrote:
| I had the impression, that the center is exactly the problem
| because it's always looking away.
|
| Hook-theory, etc.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You mean "fish hook theory", the idea that centrism is
| somehow inherently ideologically aligned with the far right?
|
| AFAIK that's simply a fantasy promoted in certain corners of
| the internet (like the ironically-named
| r/EnlightenedCentrism). It's not supported by any actual
| quantitative evidence at all, nor am I aware of any credence
| given to it in academia. It's essentially made-up. There is
| no political scientist I'm aware of who takes it seriously.
|
| To my knowledge, it's nothing more than a talking point
| invented by progressives to try to convince other
| progressives not to be pulled to the center.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| The Martin Luther King quote that begins: "I must confess
| that over the past few years I have been gravely
| disappointed with the white moderate," should be read in
| full.
|
| If you define a centrist as someone who finds the status
| quo a reasonable compromise,
|
| and you recognise that the history of the United States
| (among others) and its status quo is infused with white
| supremacy,
|
| then it's unsurprising that a self-declared "centrist"
| would often hold views that more closely align with the
| right-wing than the left.
| crazygringo wrote:
| But that's not how centrism is defined.
|
| Centrist public opinion is _very_ different from the
| status quo, and this is a _hugely_ important distinction
| to make.
|
| The status quo is set mainly by elites who have a vested
| interest in their own wealth and power.
|
| The "center" of public opinion, when you actually survey
| people in detail on the preferences they hold, does _not_
| match particularly well with government policy in the US.
|
| (If democracy worked perfectly, then the two might
| coincide, but they don't because it doesn't.)
|
| From surveys I've seen, the American "center" maps best
| to a moderately liberal position in current politics,
| though it really depends on the issue. The American
| center is extremely liberal when it comes to gay
| marriage, very liberal with a public option for health
| care and race issues, moderately liberal when it comes to
| abortion and gun ownership, and moderately conserative
| when it comes to economic policy.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| >Centrist public opinion is very different from the
| status quo
|
| The centre of public opinion might be different from the
| status quo, I don't want to argue about that here.
|
| I was doubting that people who identify as 'centrist'
| usually hold the 'centre of public opinion'; I think they
| are more likely to hold a significantly right-wing
| opinion on most issues.
| bigbubba wrote:
| Fish hook theory is perpetuated by some among the far right
| in an attempt to rebrand their ideology to give it more
| mainstream appeal.
| k__ wrote:
| I don't know.
|
| The center is pro police, which is known to the other way
| for right terrorism.
| bluescrn wrote:
| From The Guardian, a not-insignificant player in those culture
| wars.
| frankish wrote:
| > Tim Dixon, co-founder of More in Common and co-author of the
| report, said that while there had been an increase in "culture
| war" politics in Britain, the country was far better placed to
| avoid further divisions than many other nations: "Both sides of
| a culture war rely on exaggerating the threat of the other," he
| said. "Both sides want us to think that every person who is 'on
| the other side' to them has all these opposing views. The truth
| is many of these debates just pass most people by, because they
| are often based on creating false choices.The UK is actually in
| a better position than many countries and should be more
| optimistic.
|
| It was a very sour taste in my mouth after reading this
| paragraph near the end and then seeing the exaggerated threats
| to garner donations.
|
| > America faces an epic choice ... > ... in the coming weeks,
| and the results will define the country for a generation. These
| are perilous times. Over the last four years, much of what the
| Guardian holds dear has been threatened - democracy, civility,
| truth. > > The country is at a crossroads. The Supreme Court
| hangs in the balance - and with it, the future of abortion and
| voting rights, healthcare, climate policy and much more.
| Science is in a battle with conjecture and instinct to
| determine policy in the middle of a pandemic. At the same time,
| the US is reckoning with centuries of racial injustice - as the
| White House stokes division along racial lines. At a time like
| this, an independent news organization that fights for truth
| and holds power to account is not just optional. It is
| essential. > > Like many news organizations, the Guardian has
| been significantly impacted by the pandemic. We rely to an ever
| greater extent on our readers, both for the moral force to
| continue doing journalism at a time like this and for the
| financial strength to facilitate that reporting. > > We believe
| every one of us deserves equal access to fact-based news and
| analysis. We've decided to keep Guardian journalism free for
| all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can
| afford to pay. This is made possible thanks to the support we
| receive from readers across America in all 50 states. > > As
| our business model comes under even greater pressure, we'd love
| your help so that we can carry on our essential work. If you
| can, support the Guardian from as little as $1 - and it only
| takes a minute. Thank you.
| yters wrote:
| What happens if culture warriors make everyone hate the position
| they are fighting for by using really annoying methods?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| People like Trump.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| This should come as a surprise to nobody, unless you happen to be
| in the bubble that believes Twitter is the real world.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| The claim that it is a tiny minority is not very relevant
| considering the recent dominance of intolerant identity-politics
| type views in the media. For example, read Matt Taibbi on the US
| media:
|
| https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-i...
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Culture wars are fought _by_ tiny minorities, but they 're fought
| _over_ the large majority.
|
| The issue of gay marriage in the US was fought mostly by
| progressive and social conservative activists, but the people
| they were trying to convince were those in the middle. The reason
| the progressives won is that the middle became increasingly
| convinced that banning gay marriage was immoral for the
| government to do.
| john_moscow wrote:
| There's a very disturbing difference between the gay rights
| movement and the current social justice people.
|
| In the case of a gay marriage, a small minority was directly
| affected by a tangible and quantifiable problem: not being able
| to have the same legal status as straight families. It wasn't
| about taking something from the majority, or guilt-tripping
| others. So adopting what they asked for had a net-positive
| effect: straight people were unaffected, while the gays got
| perks previously unavailable to them.
|
| The current trends are different. Climate change and social
| justice issues don't _personally_ affect most the people who
| are vocal about it. Interestingly, most of them do have one
| thing in common: lack of highly marketable skills or
| professional weight. Most of them are priced out of property
| ownership or retirement. Many are depressed to a point where
| they cannot find anyone to make family with (in my experience,
| strong marriages boil down to having common _constructive_
| interests, working on the same goal together and relying on
| each other). Except, they are not addressing the quantifiable
| problems. Instead, their fury got redirected to much broader
| problems that are almost impossible to quantify or address in a
| measurable way. So now it 's a fight with no winning, it keeps
| people busy blowing their steam off at random strangers who
| dare to disagree with them, but all it does in the long term is
| increases the divisiveness of the society and makes fear and
| anger the new normal.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Climate change and social justice issues don't personally
| affect most the people who are vocal about it.
|
| Okay, I'm stopping reading here to start replying, because
| there are already numerous problems with your reasoning:
|
| * In the case of gay marriage, many of the people fighting
| for it were not, in fact, gay, and were not personally
| affected. Why does that matter? There were white people
| fighting in the civil rights movement for black rights, is
| that somehow lesser? Why is fighting for others a problem?
|
| * Climate change already has, in fact, displayed _some_
| impact on most people by now.
|
| * The fight over climate change is focused on the future,
| it's focused on prevention of larger harms, we're talking
| about a timeline that includes decades. Waiting until things
| are already a total, unmitigated disaster and _then_ doing
| something about it would obviously be deeply stupid.
|
| * Social justice issues actually do affect tons of people --
| my wife, being a woman, is affected by various problems of
| sexism. Women and girls comprise half the population, add in
| basically any ethnicity or sexual minority and you're already
| at a majority of people.
|
| * Again, even if you're personally the whitest, straightest,
| cis-est, male-st person possible, what's wrong with standing
| up for the rights of others? How is that disturbing in the
| least? I think you may be confusing "disturbing" with
| "encouraging" or "inspiring".
|
| > Interestingly, most of them do have one thing in common:
| lack of highly marketable skills or professional weight.
|
| Imagine someone making an identical argument for MLK's march
| on Washington DC, or for the broader civil rights movement at
| large. This is basically a character attack designed to
| deflect from the actual problems they're protesting. "These
| people only protest because they're losers!" is basically the
| message you're sending here.
|
| If you look at social conservatism as a whole, this is
| basically always the argument, the way that history is
| rationalized. As soon as they lose one fight -- women being
| able to vote, civil rights movement, gay marriage, etc. --
| the mantra suddenly goes from "okay okay, fine, [last change]
| was totally a good thing after all, but [new change] is
| completely crazy! For _real_ this time! "
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > Why is fighting for others a problem?
|
| Generally, it is not, but there is a risk that "people who
| are not X, but are fighting for X" will misrepresent the
| opinions of "people who are X".
|
| Also, "people who are X" usually have diverse opinions,
| while the "people who are not X, but are fighting for X"
| crowd often develops a monolithic opinion, and if you
| disagree with it, you are called anti-X.
|
| To give an example, I know gay people who want equal
| rights, but are disgusted by the "prides". If a woke
| straight person heard me saying that I support equals
| rights but don't like the "prides", they would call me a
| homophobe. Because it is known -- among the woke straight
| people who support gay rights -- that all gays support the
| "prides".
|
| Similarly, an Indian person probably wouldn't be offended
| by finding out that I practice yoga (they might actually be
| happy about it), but a woke white person might sic a
| Twitter mob on me for the sin of cultural appropriation.
|
| > Again, even if you're personally the whitest,
| straightest, cis-est, male-st person possible, what's wrong
| with standing up for the rights of others?
|
| Nothing, unless I appropriate their cause in service of
| signaling my wokeness and attacking people I don't like.
|
| For example, when racism is used as a weapon in fight
| between two groups of white people, who already had another
| reason to fight each other, but used this opportunity to
| make their attack more socially acceptable.
| orf wrote:
| > but a woke white person might sic a Twitter mob on me
| for the sin of cultural appropriation.
|
| Who cares. Wasn't the point of the article you're
| commenting on that a tiny minority is responsible for
| outsized impact in discussions like this?
|
| So who cares what a "Twitter mob" says about you
| practicing yoga? Does this really have any bearing on
| current social justice issues like _real_ cultural
| appropriation, anymore than a right-wing figure posting a
| video of someone yelling about the patriarchy has any
| bearing on feminism?
|
| It's a distraction that boils down the issues to figures
| you can hate: Cultural appropriation is stupid because
| someone got angry on Twitter because of yoga. Feminism is
| stupid because Ben shapiro filmed himself winning a
| debate against a feminist.
| totetsu wrote:
| You know I don't recall hearing the term "culture war" when I was
| studying critical theory and culture and media and so on at
| university last decade.. I heard about hegemony, and how theories
| of cultural transmission have changed over time.. I heard of
| Edward Said and his The Myth of the "Clash of Civilizations", I
| heard of Virilio's "Pure War" of technology vs humanity... but I
| can't recall any discussion of a culture war.. which leads me to
| suspect that this phrase is actually just made up by a group of
| people who want to bring the ideas of violent struggle into their
| discourse about who the world ought to be.. and journalist have
| unwittingly picked up the phrase and reified it(another nifty
| media studies word). There aren't two side to a culture war,
| there isn't any war. from what I've heard of fascist ideology,
| and how it glorifies violence and war, it's not surprising that
| the phrase would arise.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| Studies have shown that both sides are increasingly favorable
| to violence for political ends. The interesting thing I gained
| from your statements is, it would appear that both parties are
| moving towards fascism or "corporatism" as Mussolini liked to
| put it, with all the military-industrial complex that comes
| with it. It is clear to most people how corporatism could be
| applied to the Republican party, but socialism is also a
| "partnership" between government and corporations where
| government regulations and incentives to the market bend it to
| the governments will (and both the Right & Left have
| consistently increase the military-industrial complex). We may
| feel that climate intervention and laws implementing that needs
| to happen, but it is quite clearly a corporatism partnership
| with the government where companies are given marching orders
| with legal regulation, then given incentives to change their
| behaviour. Oddly enough, I think America is moving towards
| fascism, but the "anti-fascists" are just as guilty as the war
| hawks on Wall Street. There are very few people advocating
| truly a truly free society or scaling back the massive
| military-industrial complex and surveillance state.
| [deleted]
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, that's obvious. Social sciences that describe societies
| usually lag behind the events they describe. That's natural.
| It's also true for other sciences. You won't learn cutting edge
| Physics in your lecture class. You'll learn the established
| stuff. It takes a long time till you attend lectures where
| you'll hear that stuff and it won't be general admission.
| bla3 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) too.
| dmurray wrote:
| > It states that 12% of voters accounted for 50% of all social-
| media and Twitter users - and are six times as active on social
| media as are other sections of the population.
|
| That's not a tiny minority: it's a pretty reasonable dispersal of
| social media use. 12% of the population accounting for 50% of
| _anything_ is a more egalitarian distribution than we see with,
| say: wealth, healthcare use, or educational attainment.
|
| Public discourse was dominated by a "tiny minority" when the only
| people with a wide-reaching mouthpiece were a few hundred
| journalists and a few hundred politicians.
|
| I don't really disagree with the article's main claim - that the
| more extreme views are overrepresented on social media - but it's
| not a numbers thing.
| raverbashing wrote:
| And to add to that, not all of those 12% take hyper-polarizing
| stances
| thinkingemote wrote:
| 12% of voters is not 12% of the population.
|
| People who didn't vote, People who are too young to vote,
| People who cannot vote. Etc
|
| Voters as a group is meant to reflect that proportion of the
| population that is involved with the political process at the
| basic level.
| dmurray wrote:
| Good point. Only about 50% of Britons voted in the Brexit
| referendum, for a turnout of 72% [0].
|
| So the inequality is twice what I made it out to be there. I
| don't think it changes my comparisons all that much: we don't
| usually consider infants when measuring inequality in wealth
| or educational attainments either, or we use their caregivers
| as a proxy.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_Europ
| ean...
| eurekasurveys wrote:
| Intolerant Minority rule by Nassim Taleb.
| DevX101 wrote:
| The Enlightenment was also a "culture war" fought by a tiny
| minority.
| [deleted]
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Another interesting factor is the level of excitement found in
| young people with little experience in the sphere under
| discussion. (i.e. college campuses are full of zealots who've
| lived privileged lives and don't really have any contact with
| many of the subjects they are excitedly concerned about).
|
| Last week the internet had a compelling video showing a young
| white person yelling at a black man trying to cross a BLM
| barricade. The black man wanted to go on his way, the protester
| was insulting him and telling him what a terrible person he was.
|
| It's completely nuts. But not a new phenomenon.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That's not particularly surprising. The core of the US
| Revolutionary movement was very small relative to the total
| population
| toyg wrote:
| Indeed. I mean, one guy made a system out of the concept, and
| ended up taking over one of the biggest countries on the planet
| some 100 years ago. Anyone serious about political technique
| has known this since forever.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I was about to say, isn't virtually everything fought over by a
| tiny minority? Like was there ever a point in history when
| culture wasn't determined by either elites or revolutionary
| groups? The indifferent, amorphous general population just
| swings wherever successful opinion-making moves, that's not
| news, and also not really relevant.
| bfrydl wrote:
| One issue I have with this is that on many of the "battlegrounds"
| of the "culture wars", non-participation is effectively the same
| as fighting for one particular side.
| SoSoRoCoCo wrote:
| It is a minority until people start to see a direct impact an
| issue has on their lives.
|
| I know it is de rigueur to bash the minority of liberals at the
| forefront of these "wars" (as opposed to the conservatives
| pushing back to "conserve" the cultural status quo, hence the
| names), but this article kinda shoots itself in the foot when it
| shows the increase of of awareness around issues that used to be
| fringe, like Climate Change, that are now regarded as a main-
| stream threat and not a "culture war", which is what
| conservatives have tried to paint it as for 30+ years.
|
| Or consider gay marriage. In the 80's this was heretical on both
| sides of the pond, now it is close to being the law of the land
| in the US and no longer a "culture war". But thankfully the
| minority fought for what is now majority.
| offtop5 wrote:
| This is why it's impossible to have a nuance discussion online.
|
| The vast majority of people who heavily use social media, are
| much more likely to have much stronger beliefs one way or another
| than people who don't.
|
| I even have a theory much of this is driven by social isolation,
| mostly young men with nothing better to do. So these young men go
| on tirades about how the Last of Us Two is a feminist plot to
| destroy masculinity or something stupid like that.
|
| Normally if you have stuff going on you won't waste your time
| being angry about a piece of media. Society is going to need to
| find a path for these left over men, self worth shouldn't be tied
| into your income after all.
| toyg wrote:
| Way to overgeneralize. Women go on tirades too.
| sakopov wrote:
| > Normally if you have stuff going on you won't waste your time
| being angry about a piece of media.
|
| I'd wager that boredom and, more importantly, lack of purpose
| fuels most of the hate and insanity we see today on the
| internet. This impacts all genders equally and our society is
| going need to think real hard how we go about tackling a
| growing number of young people struggling with existential
| angst.
| monoideism wrote:
| This is not my experience in the US. Culture wars have invaded
| both work and family life. It's not a tiny minority, it's many,
| if not most, Americans.
|
| I feel sure most Americans have the same experience, but perhaps
| I'm an outlier?
| standardUser wrote:
| I'm curious how culture wars have impacted your work and family
| life. I've lived most of my life in large metro areas, so from
| my perspective "culture wars" are mostly people in far away
| towns waving fists at us city folk. The actual impact on my
| life is minimal.
| stale2002 wrote:
| The way that this usually effects people's personal lifes, is
| when there are individuals who care way to much about
| abstract politics, turn it into a moral cursade, and think
| that if _you_ don 't agree with them on every single issue
| then this is some huge judgment on you as a person.
|
| Basically, it is with us or against us mentality. Even not
| having an opinion on some abstract idea, means that you are
| therefore a perpetrator of this moral wrong.
|
| Not caring about politics is often the worst sin that you can
| commit to those people, no matter what other actions you have
| taken in your personal life regarding them or the community.
|
| This is less common in person, and more common with
| individuals who have arguments with their "friends" on
| Facebook and the like.
|
| Anyone who makes a post like "If you don't agree with me on
| X, then unfriend me, as I don't want any people like you in
| my life!"
| gsk22 wrote:
| Apathy and centrism are friends of evil governance
| everywhere.
|
| To quote Howard Zinn (even if you disagree with his
| politics - it applies to both sides of the aisle): "You
| can't be neutral on a moving train. Events are already
| moving in certain deadly directions, and to be neutral
| means to accept that."
|
| Being "above" politics is not a virtue when the politics in
| question are harmful - thus, the "moral crusade".
| monoideism wrote:
| Ok, fine if hold that viewpoint, but don't gaslight us
| that nothing new is going on. Politics has invaded
| everything, and it wasn't like this even 10 years ago.
| gsk22 wrote:
| Disagreeing with your assessment is not gaslighting.
|
| I do agree America is more politicized now, but that
| doesn't mean the answer is to retreat into a shell and
| pretend the issues don't exist.
| monoideism wrote:
| > I do agree America is more politicized now,
|
| OK, then please don't play this "what culture war?", as
| if you have no idea what we're talking about. That's
| debating in bad faith. I'd not do that to you.
| gsk22 wrote:
| Honestly, I don't know what you're on about. The term
| "culture war" is extremely vague and with an obvious
| negative connotation, but as far as I can tell you're
| simply complaining that politics are more visible in
| everyday life.
|
| Can you succinctly define what makes a "culture war", and
| how that is different from political debate?
| monoideism wrote:
| OK, here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_wa
| r#Broadening_of_the_...
|
| Specifically, stuff like QAnon, facemask protests, BLM,
| trans rights, "white privilege", anthem protests, etc etc
| etc. There's pretty widespread recognition in the US of
| culture war flashpoints.
|
| But before I engage anymore: are you American? Because
| we're discussing these political topics in the US context
| in this thread, explicitly.
| gsk22 wrote:
| I am American, which is why I was asking. I just don't
| understand how "culture war" is any different than
| "political disagreement over social issues". Why do we
| need a scary new term?
| stale2002 wrote:
| So then you agree that this stuff is invading people's
| personal life a lot, which was the original question?
|
| Cool. You agree with me.
| gsk22 wrote:
| If you want to play that game, the original statement
| was: "Culture wars have invaded both work and family
| life."
|
| I questioned whether this was really "invading" family
| life - that implies that across large swathes of the
| American population, family/home life has been
| meaningfully changed.
|
| I did not question whether political discussions had
| increased in the public sphere, and as you mentioned, I
| agreed with that point of view.
|
| I'm happy to discuss, but I don't appreciate the smug
| twisting of words.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > family/home life has been meaningfully changed.
|
| Ok, and I gave them descriptions for how life has changed
| in my response to that.
|
| I gave examples of frequent political discourse that I've
| been seeing lately, especially online.
|
| > I did not question whether political discussions had
| increased in the public sphere, and as you mentioned, I
| agreed with that point of view.
|
| So then you agree with the factual descriptions that I
| laid out in my response.
| standardUser wrote:
| "If you don't agree with me on X, then unfriend me, as I
| don't want any people like you in my life!"
|
| Most of those comments I have seen are specifically related
| to racism. For example, an individual will state that "if
| you don't support Black lives, unfriend me". I fail to find
| fault with that. Can you explain why it is problematic for
| someone to want to distance themselves socially from people
| that are opting-in to oppose a modern civil rights
| movement? I would certainly do the same with anyone who
| opposed the right of Women to vote, or gay people to marry.
| monoideism wrote:
| You live in a large metro area where beliefs are fairly
| uniform. It would be understandable if you share those
| beliefs that you wouldn't have any disagreements, right?
|
| And I'm not sharing with HN the details of my family and
| workplace discussions, sorry. But maybe someone else here
| will be willing to. If you don't believe me, then that's OK,
| that's up to you.
|
| Edit: I mean, the media even covers the near constant revolts
| of activist employees at Facebook, Twitter, Coinbase, and
| many other tech companies. Do you want me to find you some
| articles? Is this new to you?
| standardUser wrote:
| "If you don't believe me, then that's OK, that's up to
| you."
|
| I didn't say, suggest or imply that I didn't believe you. I
| stated my alternative experience and asked for more
| information about yours.
|
| "the media even covers the near constant revolts of
| activist employees"
|
| From what I see, those are arguments between people who
| believe in Thing A very strongly and want to act on it and
| people who also believe in Thing A but would rather not
| make a huge fuss about it. But the number of people who
| don't believe Thing A, in the extremely diverse and heavily
| populated areas I have lived in, are very tiny. For
| example, I almost never encounter people who think we
| should censor sex more, or ban abortion, or not fight
| racism or oppose police oppression, or that we should in
| any way oppose LGBTQ rights, or enforce religious ideology
| on the public sphere, etc.
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| I have not had this experience at all personally. Then again I
| tend to just stay neutral when such subjects come up, though
| its rare that they do.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| Yes, as someone with university-educated friends and families
| in large cities, the recent surge of intolerance of more
| centrist views on the identity-politics left are tearing apart
| both my friend and family groups.
| gsk22 wrote:
| How has this so-called culture war invaded your family life?
| da39a3ee wrote:
| I (late 30s) am unable to talk to younger members (late 20s)
| of my family about science in western society because they
| believe that academic science is inherently corrupted by
| patriarchal and racist power structures, whereas I believe
| that there is no need to be anywhere near so cynical about
| academic science and that it is in fact one of the areas of
| society that we can be proud of.
|
| The younger members have grown up taught by many university
| professors who have pushed postmodernist, power-structure
| analyses in any different subject areas, to the extent that
| they find it more important to think of science from the sort
| of postmodernist cultural theory point of view, than to
| actually think about the science itself.
| gsk22 wrote:
| So in other words, it _hasn't_ invaded your family life.
| "Some of my family disagrees with my views" is different
| than "my family life has been upended/invaded".
| [deleted]
| da39a3ee wrote:
| Did you miss the part where I said "unable to talk to
| younger members of my family about science"?
|
| Which part of that do you not find particularly
| significant? You don't think "talking about science" is
| an important thing for family members to be able do do?
| You think "science" sounds like a narrow, nerdy sort of
| conversation that one wouldn't need to have often? You
| don't think that arguing every time the topic comes up
| could damage relations with people that I want to get on
| with? You don't think that us mutually disrespecting each
| others positions could damage relations? I'm really at a
| loss for what goes on in your family; do enlighten us.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| "inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power
| structures" is a quite strong and specific (but I'm
| assuming also a bit of a strawman on your part). But
| "extremely misaligned incentives and pretty abusive to the
| foot soldiers in a way that compromises personal integrity"
| is a fair characterization of a lot of modern academic
| science. Everything about the way the system is designed
| incentivizes
|
| Out of curiosity, do you have a STEM PhD? How many millions
| of dollars in grant money have you raised? How many 100+
| citation papers have you published? Are you TT @ an R1 or
| are you a group lead industry research lab?
|
| I ask because I find that the people who are most excited
| to defend "academic science" from these sorts of structural
| criticisms often don't actually have much experience
| working within the system they are defending. People who
| actually work in the system know there's plenty to
| critique.
|
| We should be proud of what academic science has
| accomplished in the last ~70 years, but not blind to how
| the extremely poor treatment and high pressure put on grad
| students and early-career professors warps incentives,
| creates the conditions for abusive behavior, attracts the
| wrong sorts of people into management positions, etc.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| I'm more your age but I think I agree with your family
| members here. Thinking about the technical details of
| science is not very important to lay people like me.
|
| But the cultural questions involved like who is doing
| science? for what reasons? under what constraints? what
| practical applications are there and who will they be
| applied to? Those potentially matter quite a bit to me.
|
| Sounds like your family are attempting to be active and
| well-informed and have chosen to become informed in a part
| of the domain where they can have useful opinions, rather
| than a part where they can't.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| > I think I agree with your family members here. Thinking
| about the technical details of science is not very
| important to lay people like me.
|
| It's not just the "technical details". It's the entire
| scientific outlook and scientific method! We all agree
| that building the fair and healthy societies that we want
| is a very hard task. So when we have hard tasks to do, we
| don't want to turn away from a scientific/engineering
| mentality, quite the opposite!
|
| For example, we see that we have a lot of unfairness in
| society that we want to fix. Perhaps studying game theory
| and mathematical economics would allow you to contribute
| to human efforts to create incentive structures and
| legislation that will promote fairness. Presumably
| studying statistics and decision theory will help
| understand the challenges we face as a society needing to
| make decisions in the face of uncertainty and complex
| costs.
|
| But studying these things is HARD; it requires effort
| over a long time span to climb the mountain. It does NOT
| help at all if young people are encouraged to mill around
| at the base of the mountain wittering about power
| structures and unfairness in academia.
| helen___keller wrote:
| Not the usual culture war, but my wife and I live with my
| mother-in-law and after she got addicted to a certain
| conspiracy youtube scene she's started taking (or almost
| taking) increasingly drastic actions.
|
| 1. (pre-covid) asking us to cancel a family trip to her home
| country because her youtube channel says the police are just
| randomly shooting americans for being american
|
| 2. Refusing to go outside at all for months post-covid. In
| the first few weeks she tried to convince us not to even open
| the windows!
|
| 3. Having family members send us HCQ as a "just in case" even
| though we literally are more cautious about covid than
| probably 99% of households
|
| 4. Trying to convince us that she should take the HCQ as a
| preventative even though she goes outside the house for maybe
| an hour a week and takes no significant risk of exposure
|
| Anyways, I think the easy part is avoiding discussions about
| politics and world events. Ultimately it matters very little
| to me why she thinks democrats are evil and which boogeyman
| she thinks secretly controls the world's finances. It becomes
| problematic when it leads to irrational behavior. I'm
| concerned what her youtube channel is going to convince her
| to believe or to do should Joe Biden win the election.
| monoideism wrote:
| Excellent example. I have mostly the same problem at the
| opposite end of the political spectrum, and then one
| extended family member on the other end who is a lot like
| what you describe. They all are disruptive to family life.
|
| And the media has covered the many revolts/disagreements of
| activist employees at Facebook, Twitter, Coinbase and
| elsewhere. I'm sure people have seen the coverage?
| ehnto wrote:
| I think that's why it catches "the rest of us" off guard when the
| media portrays this intensely divided community.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I recall when movies were condemned by the Catholic Anti-
| defamation League, it was one rich old woman and her priest. And
| they didn't watch the movies.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is "centrist" propaganda. I'm also absolutely sure you'll
| find that 99% cross-stitch and scrapbooking content online is
| posted by a tiny percentage of cross-stitchers and scrapbookers.
|
| You'll also find that radical centrists (as defined by actual
| political positions) are an infinitesimal group, and that the
| vast majority of people will report their beliefs as middle of
| the road no matter what the actual content. They will also report
| that they are middle-class, no matter what their income.
|
| And what content-free questions:
|
| > It concludes that unlike in the US, climate change is not a
| culture-war issue in the UK. In Britain, it found that 85% of
| voters believe climate change concerns us all. The most sceptical
| group were voters described as "disengaged traditionalists",
| where the figure was still 76%. Meanwhile, 79% of all voters say
| gender equality is a sign of progress.
|
| _Does climate change "concern us all"?_ Yes, climate change is
| being used as a weapon to destroy progress and people's
| livelihoods.
|
| _Is gender equality a sign of progress?_ Yes, when the courts
| stop favoring women, and give me the right to choose who I want
| to hire regardless of whether they 're a man or woman, society
| will have progressed.
|
| > The research also suggested that the Covid-19 crisis had
| prompted an outburst of social solidarity. In February, 70% of
| voters agreed that "it's everyone for themselves", with 30%
| agreeing that "we look after each other". By September, the
| proportion who opted for "we look after each other" had increased
| to 54%.
|
| I don't even know what this question means, or how it's relevant
| to the thesis. I think they were searching for people who both
| had no loved ones, and are not just covid denialists, but not
| even aware that anything is even going on. Covid denialists have
| support networks, that's how they keep their businesses open and
| schedule protests. It's very difficult to phrase a question when
| the position that you think is the most reasonable is also a very
| extreme one (that covid is very dangerous and justifies extreme
| measures.)
|
| > More than half (57%) reported an increased awareness of the
| living conditions of others, 77% feel that the pandemic has
| reminded us of our common humanity, and 62% feel they have the
| ability to change things around them - an increase of 15 points
| since February.
|
| Unintelligible. And these are the _entirety_ of the examples
| cited in the article.
|
| edit: also Jo Cox supported BDS, so I guess she was an extremist,
| too.
|
| edit2: missed this
|
| > Its polling found that 73% believe hate speech is a problem,
| while 72% believe political correctness is an issue. Some 60%
| believe many are too sensitive about race, but 60% also recognise
| issues around "white privilege".
|
| - looks pretty extreme to me.
| wheaties wrote:
| > Yes, when the courts stop favoring women...
|
| Um, no. You already can hire whomever you want and for whatever
| reason you want. You just can't be blatantly sexist. Perhaps
| you need to step back and reassess your viewpoint because it
| reeks of scare mongering.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That is not my opinion. That is a way in which somebody who
| is an "extremist" could reasonably answer that question, and
| magically be converted into a centrist.
|
| tl;dr: If you go around with a survey that asks "Are you an
| unreasonable extremist?" and mark everyone down who says "No"
| as a Brownite centrist Democrat, you're going to find a
| silent majority of Brownite centrist Democrats.
| reccanti wrote:
| From my perspective, it doesn't really matter to me what
| percentage of the population holds what beliefs, or how many
| different political stances they're balancing. What matters is
| the beliefs they have and the outcomes of these beliefs.
|
| For example, if you think about support gay marriage and LGBT
| nondiscrimination protections, these are things that would have
| been framed as fringe progressive ideas a few decades ago, and in
| the US it's still framed as a "culture war" issue. However, if
| you are in the LGBT community, these things DO have an impact and
| will affect your life. It doesn't really matter whether 30% of
| the population supports these things or 60%.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| > It doesn't really matter whether 30% of the population
| supports these things or 60%.
|
| In two-party democracies, 30% and 60% are exactly the
| percentages that do matter.
|
| At 30% support you can expect no change - even human rights
| violations will scarcely be considered a relevant political
| issue with such a level of support.
|
| Once you hit 60% support, you can expect reform that won't be
| rolled back.
|
| Exactly as we have seen with gay marriage in the USA. Support
| for gay marriage reached 40% around 2005 - I can't establish
| when it hit 30%, as it was rarely polled in the decade before
| this. Support reached 60% for the first time in 2015 - the year
| when the Supreme Court ruled it a constitutional right.
| reccanti wrote:
| It's true that these numbers do matter when it comes to
| _implementing_ these laws, my argument is that it isn't a
| useful barometer for the quality of the ideas.
|
| In your example, 60% of people didn't support gay marriage in
| 2005. I would argue that gay marriage didn't become a
| "better" idea between 2005 and 2015. It was always a good
| idea that provided tangible benefits to gay people, public
| opinion didn't just reflect this.
|
| This is sort of aimed at other comments in this discussion,
| which seemed to be lamenting that the "polarizing" ideas were
| being pushed in people. I don't really care if something
| like, say, a "bathroom bill" is considered a polarizing
| culture war issue or how many people support it. It has an
| effect on me and the other trans people in my life, and I
| don't feel any inclination to compromise on my position
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| I agree with everything you have said and would add - 70%
| of the population can be wrong.
|
| It's evident from these examples that the public can change
| their mind even over a relatively short period of time.
| lsd5you wrote:
| In the UK 60%+ of people have consistently supported reducing
| immigration, over decades.
|
| It's more correct to think that when 60% of the elites
| support something change occurs.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| a) Recent polling suggests that this figure has dropped
| from 60%+ to now more like 25%, and,
|
| b) Immigration levels were constrained by being a member of
| the EU; which the UK has now consequently left.
| krona wrote:
| Isn't this (more or less) what we'd expect to find?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
| originalvichy wrote:
| I'm a person who has seen the culture war start and evolve to its
| current status. I knew it became about money when certain
| outspoken people in the movement against "left wing" ideas
| started going on speaking tours and selling books.
|
| They would act as though they were intellectuals and people who
| had common sense. I listened to hours and hours of them talking,
| and an observant person saw through their act pretty quickly.
|
| These people could rarely offer any depth in any other subjects
| other than "guess what I saw on Twitter yesterday".
|
| They get money by believing people online (especually Twitter)
| represent a majority opinion, and after building that strawman
| they go on speaking tours to scare people to be afraid of college
| kids with blue hair.
|
| Outrage porn sells. It's easy to sell outrage and this symbiotic
| relationship is very lucrative. Unfortunately they flooded many
| of my favorite places online and I've had to learn to tune them
| out.
| [deleted]
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| I 100% agree with you but then you know one of the so-called
| college kids with blue hair married into my family and it's
| never made me tune in more to these "outrage porn" sellers than
| ever in my life.
|
| I think perhaps much of their audience has real-life
| relationships (through work, family, etc) with one of those
| caricatures they make and that's probably what drives a lot of
| their audience.
| godelzilla wrote:
| There's no "culture war". People who oppose science, human
| rights, etc. are irrational and violent terrorists. Humanity
| should defend itself both on the internet and IRL.
| anarchop wrote:
| Most people are scared of losing their jobs for saying / thinking
| / doing / being accused of doing the wrong thing by the vocal
| minority of social justice warriors. This is totally obvious if
| you're not part part of the minority, but a bitter pill for the
| woke crowd to swallow.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| The idea that it is a culture 'war' comes out of a right-wing
| framing.
|
| A (small) group of Conservative Party MPs in the UK have
| presented it as such and indicated that it's useful to their
| cause that there is a perceived enemy to unite behind, whether or
| not they agree with any particular policies.
|
| e.g. https://inews.co.uk/opinion/tories-culture-war-win-back-
| popu...
|
| similarly referenced from an international perspective on
| Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#Artificiality_or_a...
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Eh, communists also portrayed their struggle against the
| capitalists as not only a political, military war, but also a
| cultural/social war. That's why it was called the Cultural
| Revolution after all. The Communist Party of China explicitly
| mentioned that the bourgeoisie was using old ideas, culture,
| and customs to stage a comeback after being overthrown. That
| squarely places culture in the same realm as the
| military/political in terms of warfare.
| bobthechef wrote:
| First, the Guardian is one to talk given they've fueled and
| capitalized on the culture war themselves. They're not the only
| ones, of course. Mainstream media outlets are propaganda outlets.
| They all have a POV that the owner and editorial staff enforce
| through hiring, company culture, what they accept for print, etc.
|
| Second, culture wars are always fought by minorities. It doesn't
| take a large number of people to change the status quo. This
| applies as much to revolutionaries (communists, Nazis, etc) as
| demographics (Taleb once gave the relatively innocuous example of
| kashrut classifications on food in the grocery store as an
| example of how a tiny minority can impose its sectarian norms on
| an agricultural industry that serves a majority that probably
| doesn't even know what kashrut is; he used this, I believe, to
| illustrate that the argument that you don't need a majority of
| devout, Sharia law-following Muslims for Sharia to become a
| realistic possibility).
|
| Third, the current culture war is real. Even if it is led and
| actively propelled by a small minority, it nonetheless embroils
| everyone. It's difficult to give a single date of birth for the
| current culture war, and in some sense, the world has always been
| in a state of cultural war. But what people typically have in
| mind is the deep-cutting revolution that has been escalating
| since the 1960s. Like newborn fish that don't know what water is
| and have no memory of things past, many fail to grasp the
| revolution taking place. Perhaps people expect revolutions to
| look theatrically dramatic. But there is a culture war taking
| place. In the last 20 years along, we have seen changes that were
| unthinkable across human history.
|
| The stakes are high and the multitudes will be led by whoever is
| the victor. The media are instruments of different factions in
| the war. Some are looking for a seat at the table when the dust
| has settled Other look to wage total cultural war against their
| opponents. Some are fighting to preserve what's left. Others seek
| to counteract the entire rebellion.
|
| It may be better to call this a culture battle. I claim to know
| the victor of the war. I just don't know who will win the battle,
| or how much blood will be spilled.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| > It found that there was actually widespread agreement in the UK
| over topics such as gender equality and climate change - often
| seen as culture war issues.
|
| I really don't think The Guardian understands what they're
| talking about here. The so called "culture war" is about Marxist
| ideology. The people denying climate change are fringe wackos
| _of_ this tiny minority who fight culture wars.
| vidarh wrote:
| The proportion in the UK who are any kind of Marxist is
| vanishingly small. The extremist pushing "culture wars" do like
| to _argue_ it 's about "Marxist ideology", but what they paint
| as Marxist rarely has anything whatsoever to do with Marxism.
|
| EDIT: It's fascinating to see the votes on this change without
| anyone even trying to make an argument to justify the claim it
| has to do with Marxism. I'd love to see one of those downvoters
| explain exactly _how_ it has anything to do with Marxism. I 'm
| not holding my breath.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Jeremy Corbyn has praised Karl Marx as "a great economist",
| FWIW.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Well, Marx _was_ a big contributor to our view of
| economics. He sure as hell hasn 't been obscure - he
| basically founded Marxian economics (not to be confused
| with Marxist politics).
|
| He had some pretty sharp ideas about the _problems_ in his
| contemporary economic system that are still relevant today,
| even if he dropped the ball on predicting the best
| solution.
| jacobion wrote:
| Karl Marx WAS a great economist. Is this something one is
| no longer allowed to say without being smeared as an
| extremist?
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Karl Marx WAS a great economist.
|
| He really was not. He was great at politics. He was great
| at taping into things that workers cared about.
|
| But his actual economics that he laid out, in Das
| Kapital? The actual mathmatical equations in it, and
| falsifiable predictions in that book? The labor theory of
| value?
|
| All pretty worthless. Basically no serious academic takes
| the labor theory of value seriously. It is non-sense.
|
| Heterodox economic theories are heterodox for a reason.
| That reason being that they are not reflective of
| reality.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> > Karl Marx WAS a great economist._
|
| _> He really was not. He was great at politics._
|
| Not in the governance sense (he wasn't a statesmen), so
| you must mean in the other sense ("activities within an
| organization that are aimed at improving someone's status
| or position").
|
| But this is sort of a difference without a difference,
| right? For most of human history, people who were "great
| at X" were in truth at least as good at politics as the
| thing they're actually known for.
|
| Even e.g. Euclid was arguably a great geometer but an
| even greater politician.
|
| Hell, Pythagoras was literally a cult leader.
|
| With rare exceptions, your name isn't remembered by
| history unless you're good at politics.
|
| _> Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory
| of value seriously._
|
| The labor theory of value is much older than Marx, and
| components of it are certainly taken seriously in
| management schools when talking about pricing services
| for example. Similarly, economists use components of
| other theories of value where it makes sense. I think
| it's more accurate to say that economics as a profession
| has moved on from these sorts of "generalizable theories
| of value" to give more nuanced analyses, which is quite
| different from saying that those theories proposed
| historically by Marx or Frisch or whoever have no
| influence.
|
| Anyways, can you define "serious academic" in a way that
| doesn't make this sentence tautological? There's no one
| who claims Das Kapital is the Bible of Economics, but the
| same is true for Wealth of Nations and basically any
| other historical text. That doesn't mean that Smith and
| Marx are irrelevant, though.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Anyways, can you define "serious academic" in a way
| that doesn't make this sentence tautological?
|
| Sure. Basically the entire field of modern day economics
| does not take the labor theory of value, in the way that
| Marx means it.
|
| In terms of an actual description of how economies work,
| almost all real life, professional, economists do not
| take Marxian "economics" seriously.
|
| > to give more nuanced analyses
|
| It is not a matter of something being "nuanced" or not.
| It is instead that the vast majority of modern day
| economists do not take Marxian economics seriously at
| all.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Worthless or a stepping stone? The Platonic conception of
| knowledge is obvious nonsense today. I am, in my
| epistemology, superior to Plato. But it is named Platonic
| though I achieved the understanding of its flaws as a
| teenager. And even just for the conception of this
| epistemology, Plato is remembered. It is not known as
| Wiltordian epistemology after my teenage revelations.
|
| That's because in many things in science and knowledge,
| being among the first to predict things wrong in an
| interesting manner is valuable.
| vidarh wrote:
| And yet his policies are moderate enough that UK Labours
| 2019 program is outflanked on the left by the Norwegian
| conservative party on a number of issues.
|
| Corbyn is certainly left wing by US and UK standards, but
| has never been a Marxist, and is moderate by the standards
| of most of Europe. McDonnell on the other hand, could
| reasonably be described as Marxist.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Obviously he was that and a foundational social scientist.
| I'll do that and I'm almost certainly closer to being an
| ancap than you are.
| gampleman wrote:
| A lot of the Scottish intellectuals I've talked to where
| pretty explicitly Marxist (including, but not limited to, my
| supervisor who had a poster of Lenin in his office). Also I
| think current SNP politics are pretty close to Marxism-
| Leninsim.
| vidarh wrote:
| Yes, you _can_ find Marxists in the UK. That does not at
| all change what I wrote. The narrative of Marxism as some
| big scary bogeyman in UK politics is an alt-right trope.
| Suggesting the SNP, which is only moderately left wing even
| by UK standards, is close to Marxism-Leninism is equally
| ludicrous.
|
| Put another way: If Marxism had any prominent support in
| the UK, RLB would have been outflanked on the left in the
| Labour leadership elections, rather than losing to someone
| on her right.
| arethuza wrote:
| "Also I think current SNP politics are pretty close to
| Marxism-Leninsim."
|
| Care to share which policies those might be?
| arethuza wrote:
| It's not like the Socialist party in Scotland are fans of
| the SNP:
|
| https://scottishsocialistparty.org/?s=snp&submit=Search
| o_class_star wrote:
| The cultures wars are stoked by the 0.01% because they want
| working people divided against each other.
|
| If "blue state" workers think their red-state brethren are
| incorrigible racist assholes, and "red state" working people
| think the blue states are full of virtue-signaling effete
| hypocrites... then capital wins because, even though 75% of the
| American public likes socialist economic ideas (when stated
| plainly and without a "socialist" label) they are all fighting
| each other over unrelated stuff, like whether J.K. Rowling's
| latest misinformed comment means we should stop reading her.
| insickness wrote:
| When I was younger, this was a quote that was always thrown
| around:
|
| "Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed
| citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that
| ever has." -- Margaret Mead
|
| Is this really true though or does change occur in ways that are
| a lot smaller, more incremental and undetectable than we realize?
| mathnmusic wrote:
| Nassim Taleb also argues this in his "Minority rule". That all
| it takes a stubborn minority to bring along changes. This can
| be both a good thing and a bad thing.
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The common pattern tends to be that a focused, outlier
| minority, through consistent and concerted effort, can change
| the public perception on a topic until it becomes the publicly-
| advocated goal, and then a culture can shift.
|
| The US 'Founding Fathers' were a relatively small group of
| merchants, land owners, an publishers that were, if you will,
| "thought leaders" of an American "englightenment" movement that
| saw significant opportunities if they could toss the foreign
| rule of Great Britain. But "Let's break loose from the
| monarchy" was hardly a common public opinion before a
| combination of a series of writings made by an absolute handful
| of individuals in the group and a series of publicized bad
| tactical / strategic calls made by the representatives of the
| British government in the Colonies.
|
| (It may be difficult to tease apart cause and effect on this
| topic, however; consider the possibility that there are fringe
| thinkers pulling in _all_ directions, but as circumstances
| change, an accident of incidents may bring some of the fringe
| thinkers to a position of being less fringe. People were saying
| police in the US were too brutal to minorities for decades
| before combination of ubiquitous smartphone cameras and
| multiple disconnected high-profile incidents that common folk
| considered brutality started to bring public perception around
| to that way of thinking. We 're in the middle of a cultural
| fight right now, but if policing as it's done in the US _does_
| fundamentally change, history will probably record a story of
| Black Lives Matter leaders bringing about that change. And if
| it doesn 't change, this era of US history will probably hold a
| place in history books similar to the one the LA riots hold).
| mellosouls wrote:
| Somewhat ironic to have the leading liberal culture warrior
| publication in the UK dismiss the ugliness as some sort of
| sideline crank affair.
|
| The Guardian is as bad as The Daily Mail from the other side, but
| seems to genuinely believe it's somehow above it all.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Reminds me of the research NPR did before closing their comments
| section.
|
| >In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and
| 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400
| commenters, Montgomery said. That's 0.06 percent of users who are
| commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2016/08/17/4895169...
| dugmartin wrote:
| That pretty well matches the 90-9-1 rule:
|
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/
| ciarannolan wrote:
| I wonder if dang or others could comment on whether this is
| true of HN too.
| Cactus2018 wrote:
| Dang comment about the 1% rule from 7 months ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622983
|
| > The number of accounts that have posted to HN this year,
| divided by the number of IP addresses that have accessed
| HN, is 0.008. How close that is to the '1% rule' ratio
| depends on which is the bigger factor: users with more than
| one IP or IPs with more than one user. We don't know. If
| the former is bigger, then 0.008 is a lower bound.
|
| > Here's another way. The number of accounts that have
| posted this year, divided by the number of accounts that
| have viewed HN while logged in, is 0.36. That doesn't tell
| us much, but we can estimate the ratio of logged-in users
| to total users this way: logged-in page views divided by
| total page views. That ratio is 0.23. We can multiply those
| two to estimate the ratio of posters to total:
|
| > So the two ways of estimating produce 0.8% and 8%
| respectively. Both ways are bogus in that they assume
| things we don't know and mix units that aren't the same,
| but they're the two I came up with and I don't remember how
| I did it before. It's interesting that they're almost
| exactly an order of magnitude apart. That makes it tempting
| to say the number is probably in between, but that's
| another cognitive bias talking.
| ciarannolan wrote:
| Very interesting, thanks.
| avianlyric wrote:
| I think dang has commented in a number of other threads
| basically saying that HN pretty much follows this rule as
| well.
|
| Hopefully someone will be able to find an example because
| my Googlefoo is failing me.
| Cactus2018 wrote:
| I found a thread with the search term
| hackernews comments to visitor rate
| dugmartin wrote:
| Re-reading that article makes me realize I've been using that
| rule a bit differently (wrongly?) over the last 10 or so
| years.
|
| I always assumed it meant 90% only read, 9% interact/comment
| and 1% create.
| glitcher wrote:
| I have to say that the term "lurkers" to describe the 90% who
| don't participate rubs me a little the wrong way. I know this
| point is somewhat trivial, but it has a negative connotation
| that seems to promote the assumption that the only "correct"
| way to use social media is for all to participate.
|
| On the flip side, I wonder if _everyone_ on social media were
| to comment on most items they had interest in, if it wouldn
| 't completely drown out all of the extreme viewpoints. It may
| actually make social media extremely boring, as compared to
| the current standard. One can dream...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Is this unusual for online forums? It's been a rule of thumb
| for decades that 1-5% of users are active posters and everyone
| else is what used to be called a "lurker" - there to read and
| be informed/outraged/entertained.
|
| I'd expect the same for politics. Of course politics affects
| everyone personally in all kinds of ways, but most of the
| population just isn't that interested.
| skrebbel wrote:
| 1-5% is very different from 0.06% though.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The 0.06% is the share of total NPR visitors, not those who
| read the comments sections. If we limit our sample to
| people who view the comments sections, it's probably closer
| to 1%.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Good point! You convinced me, it's not an impressive
| statistic (except maybe wrt a "nobody reads comments"
| argument)
| base698 wrote:
| Also knows as Pareto Principal and Matthew Effect
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
| jjones2 wrote:
| You can tell that much of it is paid and bots. Social media
| spreads a lot of negativity.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Any diverse media ecosystem is going to have a wide variety of
| quality and stance of writings and media, the issue is: is our
| populace well-educated enough to contextualize and understand it?
|
| What if we levied an information fee -- any entity which
| dispenses information for profit must then pay into public
| education tax funds to enhance the discerning capabilities of the
| populace.
| [deleted]
| OneGuy123 wrote:
| The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority
|
| https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
| totetsu wrote:
| The Most Tolerant wins: The silent battle of who cleans the
| toilet.
| adamjb wrote:
| Here's the study
|
| https://www.britainschoice.uk/
| rayiner wrote:
| I like the More in Common Project. But it overlooks the
| disproportionate representation of the extremists in our
| institutions. This happened at my alma matter earlier this year:
| https://freebeacon.com/campus/northwestern-law-administrator....
|
| They also voted to abandon entrance exams at my magnet high
| school: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4979
|
| It's not comforting to know that only a tiny minority of people
| are standing up and declaring themselves "gatekeepers of white
| supremacy" when that person is the Dean of a school or a School
| Board Superintendent. Just because folks fighting the culture
| wars might be few in number doesn't mean they don't have their
| hands on a lot of levers.
| ineedasername wrote:
| That school appears to be abandoning the exam in favor of GPA.
| I certainly don't know their own data on the utility of the
| test vs. GPA in predicting student success, but I do know that
| data with respect to college admissions: HS GPA is consistently
| as good or slightly better than standardized test scores.
|
| Even if the balance is tilted the other way for this particular
| magnet school, it's quite inflammatory to claim this initiative
| is in any way similar the destruction of 1,500 year old
| religious icons by an extremely violent group of religious
| extremists.
|
| The people who "rearranged their lives" to try to get their
| children into the school are also in no way entitled a spot. If
| this school is doing an excellent job teaching students, and
| that absolutely appears to be the case, then more energy should
| be spent on expanding those same opportunities to a greater
| number of people, not worrying about the speculative
| incremental decline in quality that might be incurred when
| switching from one set of entrance criteria to another.
| iguy wrote:
| > but I do know that data with respect to college admissions:
| HS GPA is consistently as good or slightly better than
| standardized test scores.
|
| The data I've seen says the reverse, that SAT is a better
| predictor than GPA, but both together contain more
| information.
|
| https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/underreview.
| ..
|
| > then more energy should be spent on expanding those same
| opportunities to a greater number of people, not worrying
| about the speculative incremental decline in quality that
| might be incurred when switching from one set of entrance
| criteria to another.
|
| Making all schools better is a noble goal. But I thought the
| point of selective magnet schools was largely to gather
| selected _students_ in one place. It 's not so much that you
| give superior teachers to some, it's that a whole class of
| kids who are all into math (or whatever) can be taught more,
| faster, than an average class.
| danans wrote:
| The event described in that article about Northwestern was
| voluntary, as were the statements of that Dean.
|
| Statements of that sort are meant to be acknowledgement that
| systemic racism is universal and perpetuates through us at the
| individual level, and usually in ways far more subtle than
| police brutality or the use of racial slurs.
|
| One of the most anti-racist things that one can do is
| acknowledge the racism in themselves, and keep that in mind and
| in check when making decisions that affect others. Never trust
| when someone says they are absolutely not racist - it's
| something we all struggle with because of our shared
| conditioning.
|
| A Dean saying they are racist and a "gatekeeper of white
| supremacy" is just acknowledging that through the power of
| their position, thet exercise a system that furthers white
| privilege.
|
| If anything, that Dean should be applauded for confronting and
| acknowledging their own role in racist systems.
|
| All the same, I can acknowledge that part of me becomes
| somewhat racist when walking through a less white part of town
| at night (and I'm not white).
| rayiner wrote:
| It doesn't matter if they were voluntary. They were hostile
| and cult-ish. This was a Zoom meeting attended by hundreds of
| students, many of them not even American and most likely
| unfamiliar with how academics are defining those words today.
| As a non-white person I would have been extremely
| uncomfortable sitting through that. We can talk about
| systemic racism and implicit bias without the theatrics and
| personal confessions of responsibility.
| danans wrote:
| > They were hostile and cult-ish.
|
| Hostile to whom? People who deny the existence of systemic
| and institutional racism?
|
| > As a non-white person I would have been extremely
| uncomfortable sitting through that.
|
| Why? I ask because I'm also a non-white person who has sat
| through just those kind of discussions. They weren't
| "comfortable" - no introspective discussion of racism is -
| but they certainly were not hostile because the
| participants came with charity and a desire to understand
| themselves and the context better.
|
| The tone of any conversation, defined by the attitudes of
| those who participate, has a great deal to do with the way
| people experience it.
| secondcoming wrote:
| They sound like people who've been through a re-education camp.
| oblio wrote:
| Maybe you're aware, but your first source is far from unbiased.
|
| I'm not even American but I've found the more pompous a thing
| is named, the more likely it is to be Republican backed. I
| guess it's their penchant for drama :-)
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I'm one of those "extremists" who went to TJ and supports the
| end of the test. What can I do to convince you that I'm a real
| person and not a lunatic?
| rayiner wrote:
| I didn't call anyone a lunatic. But believing that we should
| abandon testing entire is an opinion that is extreme in the
| sense it's not widely held: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2019/02/25/most-americ...
|
| Super majorities of people believe race should play no factor
| at all in college admissions. And grades and standardized
| test scores are the two things people list first as criteria
| that should govern admissions decisions. I do not believe
| that folks who would advocate abandoning standardized testing
| entirely based on the premise that they're irredeemably
| flawed are not expressing a widely-held opinion.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| I don't believe you're a lunatic. I believe your values are
| inimical to excellence and that you support destroying one of
| the tiny number of schools that support accelerated education
| for gifted children in the USA. That benefits no one and
| harms the children deprived of the opportunity to go to a
| school where they are challenged.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| But you led with people like me as example of extremism in
| modern discourse. What makes me not an extremist but my
| peers extremists?
|
| It is true that we probably have somewhat different values.
| I don't personally value TJ having some high rating as
| decided by magazines and would happily sacrifice scores if
| I believed it was possible to better provide education to
| gifted students across Fairfax County. And I do believe
| that the test makes it _harder_ for FCPS to do this well,
| though it certainly allows TJ to select for specific kinds
| of students that make it score well in magazine ratings.
|
| I also believe that it is not good to separate students
| into many strata earlier in life and believe that the
| lottery limits the effect of wealth and other inequities on
| young kids. You may believe that we should reward students
| who studied their brains out in school, did test prep on
| weekends, and joined clubs so they could round out a
| resume. Those are different values and that's okay.
|
| It is also very likely that we have different opinions
| about the expected outcome of ending the test. I believe
| that it will make it _easier_ , not harder for students to
| access high quality education and recognizing that there
| are _so many_ students that could succeed at TJ will
| encourage FCPS to allocate more resources to magnet
| programs so there can be more slots for these students. I
| also hope that this will demonstrate the need for a
| humanities-focused alternative, which currently does not
| exist (the humanities education offered at TJ is atrocious,
| IMO). I also believe that moving away from strict testing
| as the primary mechanism for excellence will help TJ
| recover some of its creative side that is so valuable for
| young learners. The creativity available during 8th period
| has been slowly crushed under the weight of standardized
| learning processes over the last several decades. A lot of
| the skills I learned during 8th period are no longer made
| available to students in order to serve the almighty test
| score. I hope that admitting smart students who aren 't
| bound to testing will help this.
|
| It is also very likely that we have different opinions
| about the ability of the test to separate students into
| strata.
|
| I do not support destroying TJ. I believe that this _makes
| FCPS education better_ and _encourages more TJs_.
|
| We disagree. That's fine. But you list my peers among
| extremists and you claim that I intend to sabotage quality
| education. Why is your position not extreme?
| pessimizer wrote:
| And how is this disagreement not only "extremism," but only
| "extremism" on the opposite side than the one you support?
| throwawaycltr wrote:
| I wasn't able to find the details about this course the faculty
| participated in but I wouldn't read too much into it. For some
| of these you must describe yourself as a racist and apologise
| for your evil. Suggesting that perhaps you're not that bad
| means it's even worse than we feared.
|
| I don't think someone who really was a "gatekeeper of white
| supremacy" would describe themselves that way.
| charlesu wrote:
| Being racist isn't the same as being evil. Just about
| everyone, to some extent, is racist. I don't see how that's
| an extreme claim. Humans are a social species. We have in-
| groups and out-groups. Often times the most salient marker
| for whether someone is in your group is whether they share
| certain phenotypes or language. There's nothing weird about
| that. It's expected. It's our default setting. But it does
| lead to treating some people differently than others. That's
| racism.
|
| In racism training, you simply acknowledge that by being
| human, you are racist. You can't cure it anymore than you can
| cure alcoholism. It's always with you and if you care to not
| be racist, you have to be aware of that.
|
| Why is that claim uncomfortable?
| valboa wrote:
| This is a cult like approach. The main proposition
| "Everyone is a racist, whether you know it or not", is an
| overstatement. There is no way you can tell "everyone" is a
| "racist", is just an aphorism with multiple
| interpretations. This has become the tool of identity
| politics and group thinking, throw and aphorism and let
| people fight over it. Unfortunate.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Hm. Humans are built to identify with a group, absorb
| culture, and be uncertain and uneasy when not in their
| group or their culture. That can easily lead to treating
| different people differently, and to the conclusion.
|
| It's not completely true though. We usually reserve the
| term for active, conscious acts. Not just unconscious
| bias. So maybe we need a new word for that?
| [deleted]
| zozbot234 wrote:
| We may tend to prefer in-groups as humans, but there's no
| reason why one's "in-group" should be defined by race.
| Indeed the whole notion of 'race' itself is largely
| artificial, historically- and locally-contingent, and thus
| so is racism. If the claim was that as humans, we're all
| naturally driven to be more broadly biased and perhaps
| intolerant towards _some_ others, that would be far more
| defensible.
| charlesu wrote:
| > We may tend to prefer in-groups as humans, but there's
| no reason why one's "in-group" should be defined by race.
|
| I agree! There's no reason in-groups should be defined by
| race...but, at least in the United States, it was quite
| literally legislated in law for centuries and formed the
| basis of a slave state and then segregation. So it seems
| like race has historically been one way we define in-
| groups and out-groups. Based on current events, I'd argue
| race is still pretty important to a lot of people.
| Otherwise our politics wouldn't be...whatever you want to
| call them.
|
| > Indeed the whole notion of 'race' itself is largely
| artificial, historically- and locally-contingent, and
| thus so is racism.
|
| Race is socially constructed but it's definitely real.
| Racism is also real.
| ByteJockey wrote:
| The claim is uncomfortable because the word "racism" has a
| connotation in some circles of basically being a klansman
| (or at the least of actively hating people based on nothing
| except for their race).
|
| Admitting said claim for those people does not feel like
| acknowledging the system we live in against their will or
| that they have unconscious biases. It feels like
| acknowledging a serious character defect, worthy of
| ostracism, being fired, and possibly having a mob show up
| at your house.
|
| Now, I'm not a prescriptivist. I acknowledge that language
| evolves, but it does not evolve the same way in every place
| at the same time. It tends to evolve in a particular place
| and spread out from there. The particular definition you're
| using has not spread to the entirety of society yet. Your
| pitch could really benefit from some localization to the
| various sub-dialects of the english language if you'd like
| less push back in the future.
| charlesu wrote:
| In the first link, some administrators took part in an anti-
| racism training and in the second a school got rid of an
| entrance exam. What's extreme about either of those things?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| The first describes a quasi-religious ritual in which all
| participants ritually affirm that they are unworthy sinners,
| racists. Those who believe get the satisfaction of publicly
| proclaiming their sin, signaling their superiority over the
| outsiders. Those who don't believe have their faces rubbed in
| the fact that other people have the power to make them lie in
| public about who they are and what they believe. It shows who
| is in charge.
|
| The second is the destruction of an institution. A school for
| the gifted and talented with no mechanism to keep out those
| who are neither rapidly becomes just another school. Once the
| City University of New York was one of the major public
| research universities of the USA. Then it moved to open
| admissions. Now it's nothing special. In contrast Berkeley
| instituted affirmative action which allows for different
| standards for different ethnic groups. It's probably the top
| public university.
| donohoe wrote:
| Thats an over-reaction.
|
| The first is not religious in any sense. It appears to be
| an acknowledgment of the bias's we all have as humans. We
| all have bias's, unconscious and conscious - its part of
| being human. In that sense we're all 'racist' to some
| degree and its important to acknowledge that so as to
| overcome it.
|
| As far as the second example cited I think more information
| is missing before jumping to a conclusion.
| jlokier wrote:
| I think there is a fair argument to be made that
| acknowledging bias and calling yourself racist aren't the
| same thing.
|
| If you're endeavouring to acknowledge, understand and
| overcome biases, that isn't racism, it's _anti-_ racism.
| [deleted]
| kharak wrote:
| It is completely baffling that anyone could not see the
| cult characteristic of a ritual where you're required to
| tell everyone around you that you are inherintly guilty.
|
| Seriously? What else do you need? Proclamation of the
| believe in unseen powers?
| donohoe wrote:
| "cult characteristic of a ritual"
|
| Thats a big stretch.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Respond with an actual argument, or don't respond at all.
| ericmay wrote:
| > In that sense we're all 'racist' to some degree and its
| important to acknowledge that so as to overcome it.
|
| No. I reject this. No matter how many times you or others
| tell me that I'm racist and can't help it, and if I just
| pray... I mean take enough sanctioned training courses
| it'll go away I will not partake. Period. Nobody is
| racist until proven otherwise, or racist until they've
| taken enough unconscious bias training courses. That's
| something you and others are making up to deal with your
| own insecurities and racism. Being uncomfortable walking
| down the street at night because you see a black man is
| your racism. Not mine. No thanks.
|
| This entire "movement" looks exactly like a witch hunt or
| the Soviet gulags. When someone is inconvenient, you just
| call them a racist since everybody is magically,
| automatically guilty of being racist and off they go.
|
| I'm really sick and tired of seeing this crap. It's
| ruining western civilization and creating conflict. It's
| not even about race anymore. It's just white people
| telling everyone they are racist so they can feel good
| about themselves and create positions of power and
| authority. Some genuinely believe this, but some also
| genuinely believe they are saving your soul when they
| pray for you.
|
| I reject racism. I'm not a racist and you're not going to
| tell me or others that we are racist just because you are
| or you think others are.
| tankenmate wrote:
| I suspect that a lot of people forget the concept of mens
| rea (sometimes through lack of critical thinking,
| sometimes for deliberate conflation). Labels are easy to
| throw around; unconscious bias gets lumped together with
| racism. One is culpable behaviour, the other not paying
| attention. But again if someone wants to push a
| particular point of view it's just easier to label
| someone else as "bad" without having to explain exactly
| what is bad or how bad.
|
| For every problem there is a solution that is simple,
| neat--and wrong. -- H.L. Mencken
|
| and from a different social issue but highlighting how
| easy it is to go from "good guy" to "bad guy";
|
| When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When
| I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist. --
| Helder Camara
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Mens rea as a cultural notion has been undermined by the
| growth of strict liability laws to be "tough on crime"
| plus it spares any prosecutorial inconveninces like
| having to prove the barest level of intent.
|
| I am no domain expert but an ammendment to require mens
| rea for far more felonies as opposed to the farcical
| nonsense where picking up an unidentified feather could
| be a crime if the feather turns out to be from a bald
| eagle.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >No. I reject this. No matter how many times you or
| others tell me that I'm racist and can't help it, and if
| I just pray... I mean take enough sanctioned training
| courses it'll go away I will not partake. Period. Nobody
| is racist until proven otherwise, or racist until they've
| taken enough unconscious bias training courses. That's
| something you and others are making up to deal with your
| own insecurities and racism. Being uncomfortable walking
| down the street at night because you see a black man is
| your racism. Not mine. No thanks.
|
| Racism comes in many forms, it's _not_ just about being
| scared of black men on the street. That 's a wildly
| exaggerated strawman.
|
| Everyone has biases and prejudices. _Everyone_. Yes, that
| includes you.
|
| But people don't have the _same_ biases and prejudices.
| People differ in what they 're prejudiced against (or
| for!) and they differ in the magnitude of their
| prejudice.
|
| And let's be clear: this is not just about skin colour.
| Gender, sexual orientation, class, accent, formal
| education... people have prejudices against all of these
| things and more.
|
| Unconscious bias not a type of prayer or cleansing
| ritual. You don't stop being biased or prejudiced because
| you do UB training.
|
| It is supposed to help you identify when and how that
| prejudice manifests itself so that you can take a step
| back and try and consciously try and remove your
| prejudices from your decision-making.
|
| And if you reject racism, why not arm yourself with this
| tool? If you're not racist (or sexist or classist etc...)
| Why not take a couple of seconds to think "has some
| stereotype about this person lead me to this conclusion?
| No? Okay, let's carry on..."
| kofejnik wrote:
| > Everyone has biases and prejudices. Everyone. Yes, that
| includes you.
|
| Everyone is a sinner (not the Pope, tho). Yes, that
| includes you! Go confess and do your penance
| germinalphrase wrote:
| On the first, you're overreacting. I've gone through such
| training and it was nothing like you describe.
| luckylion wrote:
| Did you have to say "I'm a gatekeeper of white supremacy"
| to complete the training? Either your threshold for
| "looks cultish" is very high or you didn't go through
| _that_ kind of training.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I was never compelled to say anything at all; however, it
| did cause me to think more subtly about racism and white
| supremacy in my life rather than simplifying it to a
| reactive good/bad:racist/not racist dichotomy. Perhaps
| this is all more subtle, complicated, and bonding than
| the fringe culture warriors would like us to believe.
| luckylion wrote:
| As with many things, nuance is important. Sensitize
| people to larger issues is one thing, creating a cult
| they have to submit to is another.
|
| You can tell people about factory farms without screaming
| "cow rapist". You can tell people about privilege without
| spiraling into some racist cult. But that would probably
| be class privilege, which is _much_ better at predicting
| success than the color of your skin.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Based on the experiences that I - and my wife - have had
| in trainings of this type, I am somewhat skeptical that
| any such "cult" exists. There were moments of discomfort,
| but I was never coerced or made to feel negative about
| myself as a white man. I have always walked away from
| these events with a better sense of myself (for good and
| bad) which I view as a positive thing.
| globalx wrote:
| The Python Software Foundation is an example of such a
| cult:
|
| https://marc.info/?l=python-dev&m=159351161520376&w=2
|
| This is just one example of the musings of a PSF vice
| chairman and Steering Council member.
|
| Follow the Twitter for more.
| zepto wrote:
| I'm not white, and the presence of the things we call
| white privilege and racism is blindingly obvious to
| anyone who grew up like me.
|
| However, I have also routinely seen cult-like, and racist
| behavior in diversity training, and frankly in anti-
| racist activism.
|
| I'm glad you didn't experience these. I also think that
| the work _can_ be done in a nuanced way that avoids the
| pitfalls.
|
| Unfortunately I think this is becoming less and less
| common as a drive to scale delivery of these kinds of
| trainings causes the quality to drop.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| The comparison to religious rituals is interesting. As
| someone who is Catholic, this looks to me sort of like an
| attempt at a group confession, but at least in the Catholic
| tradition we perform examinations of conscience [1] and go
| to confession [2] and we are told to come to terms with
| what _we actually did wrong._ You don 't get away with some
| vague acknowledgement of being a sinner. As the Catechism
| says, "Through such an admission [a person] looks squarely
| at the sins he [or she] is guilty of, [and] takes
| responsibility for them."
|
| Whether one agrees with Catholics on any number of things
| (and many reasonable people do not), there is a certain
| logic to the idea that before you can be better, you have
| to actually say what's wrong. Forcing a group of people to
| self label as racist in the way described above is unmoored
| from reality: even if one had done things that were racist
| in the past, there is no looking squarely at one's short
| comings, and there is no taking responsibility for
| anything. And for someone who hadn't done anything racist,
| or for someone who claims to have never done anything
| racist, it's just a show, and things won't actually get
| better in a meaningful way.
|
| [1] https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/sacraments-
| and-sacr...
|
| [2] https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechis
| m/p2s...
| saghm wrote:
| Not to mention that the Catholic form of confession
| doesn't require you to publicly proclaim your "sins" in
| front of your peers!
| charlesu wrote:
| > The first describes a quasi-religious ritual in which all
| participants ritually affirm that they are unworthy
| sinners, racists.
|
| Why would being racist make someone an unworthy sinner?
| Racism is just treating others differently based on their
| race. It's not weird or evil. In fact, it's perfectly
| normal and even understandable. Humans have probably always
| separated themselves into groups. Even chimpanzees do it. I
| think that's what the trainings try to get at.
|
| > The second is the destruction of an institution. A school
| for the gifted and talented with no mechanism to keep out
| those who are neither rapidly becomes just another school.
| Once the City University of New York was one of the major
| public research universities of the USA. Then it moved to
| open admissions. Now it's nothing special. In contrast
| Berkeley instituted affirmative action which allows for
| different standards for different ethnic groups. It's
| probably the top public university.
|
| Meanwhile, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and UVA
| all have affirmative action and are doing fine. Decades of
| supposedly different standards haven't hurt their standing.
| They continue to graduate a diverse class of high achievers
| that are well-represented in just about every field
| imaginable. How does that square with your claims?
|
| Are you sure you're not the extremist? You seem to have an
| axe to grind.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Meanwhile, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and
| UVA all have affirmative action and are doing fine.
| Decades of supposedly different standards haven't hurt
| their standing. They continue to graduate a diverse class
| of high achievers that are well-represented in just about
| every field imaginable. How does that square with your
| claims?
|
| That's the entire point of comparing CUNY and Berkeley.
| You can maintain prestige while having different
| standards for different ethnic groups. You can't while
| having no standards. Eliminating entrance exams is how
| CUNY did it. Different standards is how Berkeley and
| Harvard etc. do it. That's not what is being proposed for
| the gifted school in question. It's the elimination of
| standards.
| charlesu wrote:
| Fine, the University of Chicago, Wake Forest, and almost
| all of the elite liberal arts colleges (Williams College,
| Swarthmore College, Bowdoin College, etc) are test
| optional or test free and no worse for it.
|
| Standardized tests are _one_ measure of academic merit
| and not even the best one. There are plenty of 1500s
| reporting to 1250s.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Elite colleges relying on high school grades and letters
| of recommendation instead of objective blindly marked
| tests open to all is replacing one test with others. The
| others allow much more room for picking the right sort of
| person. That was the entire point of instituting holistic
| admission at prestige US universities, to keep out Jews.
| The modern drive to eliminate tests is in large part to
| keep out Asians. Nothing ever changes. Those in power
| change the standards to stay in power.
| [deleted]
| charlesu wrote:
| Standardized tests could also be considered a way for
| picking the right kind of person: namely, people who know
| that standardized tests are something to prepare for.
| I've tutored students at both elite and underperforming
| high schools. Students at elite schools, irrespective of
| their socioeconomic status, are highly aware of the
| importance of standardized tests. Some of the
| underperforming high schools don't even administer the
| PSAT. Many, if not most students at the low-income
| schools think the SAT is an IQ test where the results are
| predetermined. I've had kids go from the low 30th
| percentile to the mid 80th percentile with just a few
| months of tutoring. After I've taught them how to
| _practice_ the test, they improve dramatically. I'm not
| making them smarter, just passing along some cultural and
| educational capital they literally would not get
| otherwise. Their parents and teachers do not know this
| stuff.
|
| As for affirmative action being an effort to keep out
| Asians...have you been to Harvard's campus? There are
| many, many Asian students there. In fact, nearly one in
| five students at Harvard are of Asian descent. The idea
| that elite schools are purposely excluding Asians is
| absurd on its face. The people pushing the idea have an
| axe to grind and it usually isn't actually in the
| interest of Asian-Americans.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _As for affirmative action being an effort to keep
| out Asians...have you been to Harvard's campus? There are
| many, many Asian students there. In fact, nearly one in
| five students at Harvard are of Asian descent. The idea
| that elite schools are purposely excluding Asians is
| absurd on its face. The people pushing the idea have an
| axe to grind and it usually isn't actually in the
| interest of Asian-Americans._ "
|
| If you're Asian and you're reading this, never forget
| that the above is what progressives believe about how
| society treats Asians: transgressions against you get
| simply waved away. Think twice about supporting them.
|
| For the record, I am Asian and a liberal but definitely
| not progressive.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Studies disagree that you on avg. see large gains from
| test prep on the SAT.
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-
| the...
| supernova87a wrote:
| _>...have you been to Harvard's campus? There are many,
| many Asian students there. In fact, nearly one in five
| students at Harvard are of Asian descent. The idea that
| elite schools are purposely excluding Asians is absurd on
| its face...._
|
| So, as long as you see some people of a given race and it
| meets some arbitrary % in your mind, that's enough, is
| that the argument you're making? No discrimination going
| on then?
|
| This level of lack of critical thinking here is
| astounding, and it's sad (actually scary) that opinions
| like this might guide admissions policies.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > As for affirmative action being an effort to keep out
| Asians...have you been to Harvard's campus? There are
| many, many Asian students there. In fact, nearly one in
| five students at Harvard are of Asian descent. The idea
| that elite schools are purposely excluding Asians is
| absurd on its face. The people pushing the idea have an
| axe to grind and it usually isn't actually in the
| interest of Asian-Americans.
|
| Are there any elite school (so sourcing students from the
| same pool of applicants) that don't include race in their
| admission process? Would be interesting to compare the
| demographics.
| nsp wrote:
| I believe it is illegal in california to consider race
| for public universities, so you could look at Caltech and
| Berkeley which fit most definitions of elite schools.
| Caltech is 48% Asian, while MIT is 25.7% for undergrad.
|
| There is the in-state vs out of state tuition
| distinction, so it's not exactly the same pool as east
| coast universities.
|
| Sources:
| https://registrar.caltech.edu/records/enrollment-
| statistics
| https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/massachusetts-
| instit....
| rayiner wrote:
| > The idea that elite schools are purposely excluding
| Asians is absurd on its face. The people pushing the idea
| have an axe to grind and it usually isn't actually in the
| interest of Asian-Americans.
|
| My high school was 70% Asian. Projections are that
| getting rid of the entrance exam will drop it to about
| 30% Asian. (Ironically, the group that will benefit the
| most from the lottery is white people.) The elite schools
| are capping the percentage of Asians--you can see this by
| comparing against schools that don't practice holistic
| admissions.
|
| Affirmative action and lottery-based admissions in
| particular is, in at least a narrow and direct sense,
| contrary to "the interest of Asian-Americans" just as its
| contrary to the interests of white Americans.
| Standardized testing offers a direct path to the middle
| and upper middle class for Asian immigrants (as well as
| other immigrant groups such as Nigerians who come to the
| U.S. with lots of education but not necessarily money).
| Asians have extremely high levels of income mobility in
| the U.S.--an kid growing up in the bottom 20% has a 27%
| chance of ending up in the top 20%; double the odds for a
| white kid born in the bottom 20%. My dad was born in a
| village in Bangladesh. Thanks to the SAT, my brother and
| I are comfortably in the top 1%. The U.S. system of
| "meritocracy" (such as it is) is extremely effective at
| helping us distinguish ourselves from upper middle class
| white people who have more cultural competency, social
| connections, etc.
|
| In "How to be an Anti-Racist," Ibram X. Kendi defines
| "equity" as the representation of a group in an
| organization reflecting the representation of the group
| in the general population. Any other distribution, he
| declares, is the product of systemic racism. I don't
| think Kendi was thinking about the implications of that
| statement for non-white, non-Black people, but they are
| alarming for Asians, Jews, Nigerians, etc. Imagine
| cutting Harvard down from 20% Asian to 5-6% Asian. Or
| Google or Facebook! What do you think that would do to
| Asian income mobility?
|
| Now, I happen to support measures to reduce disparities
| for ADOS people, because all Americans have a common
| obligation to remediate the nation's history of slavery
| and segregation. To that end, I support things like
| traditional affirmative action.
|
| At the same time, Asians are a minority and have to be
| realistic about the fact that they are not similarly-
| situated to either white people or Black people and do
| not have identical interests to either group. Holistic
| measures that limit the Asians at elite educational
| institutions and businesses to 20-25% may be tolerable.
| Measures like lotteries that would reduce Asian
| representation down to 5-6% would be a dramatic negative
| change.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >As for affirmative action being an effort to keep out
| Asians...have you been to Harvard's campus? There are
| many, many Asian students there. In fact, nearly one in
| five students at Harvard are of Asian descent. The idea
| that elite schools are purposely excluding Asians is
| absurd on its face. The people pushing the idea have an
| axe to grind and it usually isn't actually in the
| interest of Asian-Americans.
|
| Looks like the courts found that Harvard's admissions
| system did not qualify as _legally_ discriminatory, but
| did nonetheless somewhat disadvantage Asian-American
| applicants.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/harvard-admissions-
| law...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Meanwhile, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and
| UVA all have affirmative action and are doing fine.
| Decades of supposedly different standards haven't hurt
| their standing. They continue to graduate a diverse class
| of high achievers that are well-represented in just about
| every field imaginable. How does that square with your
| claims?
|
| The issue is these institutions cast a way wider net for
| their admission pool compared to a high school.
|
| Really, MIT gets applicants from everywhere in the world
| and kids will gladly relocate to Boston to attend. A high
| school, especially a public one, can only expect
| applicants from its county.
| refurb wrote:
| _Why would being racist make someone an unworthy sinner?_
|
| Because those who were enlightened before you now hold
| the power. They removed the scales from your eyes, so now
| the power structure has been set. All you need to do is
| obey.
| monoideism wrote:
| > Are you sure you're not the extremist? You seem to have
| an axe to grind.
|
| I'm sure once you're downvoted to invisibility, you're
| takeaway will be that "HN is a bunch of extremists",
| instead of the more reasonable "why are a bunch of mild-
| mannered software developers whose culture has _always_
| been open to different types of people strongly
| disagreeing with what I say? ".
|
| Could it be that we see a danger in this that you do not?
| It's seems fairly obvious to me that our country is
| starting to crumble around us. Perhaps you're living in a
| situation where that's not apparant.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Why would being racist make someone an unworthy sinner?
| Racism is just treating others differently based on their
| race. It's not weird or evil. In fact, it's perfectly
| normal and even understandable. Humans have probably
| always separated themselves into groups. Even chimpanzees
| do it. I think that's what the trainings try to get at.
|
| Chimpanzees murder. Just because primates have been doing
| something for millions of years doesn't make it
| acceptable. We have the capability to rise above our
| instincts and make rational decisions about who we want
| to be.
|
| Treating others differently based on their race is
| fundamentally unethical. You're not an irredeemably
| broken person just because you've done something
| unethical in the past, but saying "well everyone does it"
| or "it's just natural" is just refusing personal
| responsibility.
|
| Maybe some people honestly can't accept the idea that
| they have done something wrong, and would cling to a
| belief that deep down they knew was wrong if they didn't
| have such an "out" to preserve their view of themselves.
| They'ed rather double down on racism than admit they've
| knowingly treated people incorrectly.
|
| For most people though, acknowledging a problem is the
| first step to solving it. Everyone alive today has spent
| the vast majority if not the entirety of their lives in a
| world where the idea of racial superiority has been
| thoroughly discredited. The emphasis on certain features
| like skin color over others like hair color in
| segregating people is an entirely learned behavior. For
| racism to endure to the degree it does today, enormous
| numbers of people must have actively chosen to learn this
| behavior and refused to change. It hardly seems
| unreasonable to conclude that for many, telling them that
| something is normal and natural robs them of their
| imperative to change.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| The first link is obviously against such training (as
| judged by links below): I can't tell the screenshot is what
| it is. I highly doubt the information.
|
| The second is obviously an opinion piece as well: Being
| more inclusive isn't "ruining an institution" nor is
| changing things. It isn't like entrance exams are perfect.
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| As the product of another of the Governor's Schools in
| Virginia, I've been in favor of the move away from admissions
| tests to increase diversity opportunity. A lot of students
| can't afford $100 for testing, and GPA should be a fine proxy
| for student performance.
|
| Give it a few years to see if the drop-out rate changes.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The 'Founding Fathers' in the US were landowners, merchants,
| and publishers. This is a common pattern.
| cabraca wrote:
| I know those diversity sessions... They claim everyone who is
| white or passing as white is racist. I had to "confess" that
| i'm racist and promise to do better or it would have
| consequences for my career. Sidenote: I volunteer at a refugee
| center and took in a syrian family. Literally hitler, i know. A
| colleague got fired because he wouldn't confess and left the
| session.
|
| So even if that Dean said he is a racist, he's probably not
| unless you warp the definition of racism.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Even worse. If these high ranking people are so afraid for
| their careers that they will say these things even if they
| don't believe them then the few people who do believe it are
| indeed quite powerful.
| username90 wrote:
| Yet they still don't see themselves as the establishment.
| bigbubba wrote:
| Not necessarily. Preference falsification is a thing; it's
| quite possible for a organization to enforce compliance
| with a principle which no individual member of the
| organization sincerely holds. In cases of large scale
| preference falsification, everybody lies to fit in with
| everybody else, who are also lying for the same reason.
|
| Such scenarios may be susceptible to preference cascades
| though, when people realize that they're actually in good
| company and suddenly feel free to act and say as they truly
| wish. When that happens, change is rapid. The personal
| guards of a hated dictator may switch sides overnight and
| execute the leader they would have killed others for the
| day before.
| mainstreem wrote:
| It's simple, we just have to fully embrace that all White
| people are Racist due to the history of oppression of PoCs in
| the West by Whites.
|
| Then you will understand that it is Whites who are Racist.
| Then you must swear your fealty to being Anti-Racist. Not
| just Non-Racist, that's not enough, you must fight to
| eliminate Racists from positions of power and eventually from
| society. Anti-Racism. Fight to eliminate Racist Whites from
| power. Fight to eliminate Whites from power. Fight to
| eliminate Whites.
| speeder wrote:
| This is basically a Chinese struggle session.
| robocat wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
| pessimizer wrote:
| I didn't realize it was Chinese, that makes it much worse.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I think the official term was "Maoist struggle session."
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| lol the Chinese eventually pushed back against Maoism.
| charlchi wrote:
| > I had to "confess" that i'm racist and promise to do better
| or it would have consequences for my career. Sidenote: I
| volunteer at a refugee center and took in a syrian family.
|
| It's almost like making generalisations about people's
| actions only by their skin colour or ethnic background is
| somehow wrong. Weird to think that basically anyone studying
| social science or humanities is being taught this stuff and
| that it is at this point basically accepted as fact.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > I had to "confess" that I'm racist and promise to do better
| or it would have consequences for my career.
|
| So, basically inquisitor wannabees and pseudoscience
| cultists. Your colleague dodged a bullet.
|
| The idea that claiming that you are racist makes you not
| racist is totally gaga, random, and based in magical
| thinking, not in science. It only helps to hide in plain
| sight the real racists making much easier to admit it for
| everybody.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| He signed the document to stay at the institution. I
| wouldn't call it "dodging a bullet" I'd call it "securing
| his own yoke".
| pvaldes wrote:
| And their friend was fired.
|
| We talk about an institution that will only hire people
| as long as they came out as racists first. Wow!.
|
| Looks like the type of workplace to avoid at any cost.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| God forbid large firms employing people from diverse
| backgrounds require employees to take training on how to
| work with people from diverse backgrounds.
| rayiner wrote:
| What you're doing is called a motte and bailey fallacy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
|
| You're defending diversity training, which nobody is
| attacking. We're talking about a particular kind of
| rhetoric where people take personal responsibility in
| behalf of their race and label themselves with words
| that, in ordinary usage, have extremely inflammatory
| meanings.
|
| I'm from a "diverse background." I think diversity
| training and making organizations more diverse is great.
| But this rhetoric is an explosively bad approach to race
| relations, and as a non-white person I am very worried
| about what the result will be.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| You'd have to nail down what rhetoric you mean for me to
| have any response to that.
| rayiner wrote:
| The example is in my OP: It's a session where white
| people acknowledge that they take personal responsibility
| for participating in a system of "white privilege" and
| admit to being "racist" and "gatekeepers of white
| supremacy." (That's the bailey.)
|
| By contrast, your motte: "training on how to work with
| people from diverse backgrounds.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Honestly, I don't see much distinction between teaching
| people about structural privilege and suggesting they
| admit they benefit from it. Difference of degree,
| perhaps, but not much.
|
| You trusted your alma mater when you were taught there;
| not trusting the direction it's taking now? Is it
| possible you're not seeing the picture the way they are?
| maxwindiff wrote:
| Benefitting from structural privileges is very different
| from being a racist though.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| In computer security, we often talk about the lack of
| distinction between malice and ignorance---if the
| security system is bad, it doesn't matter if the attacker
| is intent on causing harm or merely innocently curious
| and hack-sawing away through your computer security for
| fun. The outcome is the same.
|
| I think the same principle applies here. Malicious racism
| and passive racism have the same effect.
| tpxl wrote:
| I'll bite, what the fuck is passive racism?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The unconscious biases people walk around with in their
| heads. They're things people pick up without realizing it
| that lead to friction for minorities in society.
|
| Studies have shown that people who don't think themselves
| to be actually racist still act in race-discriminatory
| ways. For example, people with non-ethic-names get more
| callbacks for their resume controlled for qualifications
| on the resume
| (https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/employers-replies-
| racial-n...).
| tpxl wrote:
| So a bad way to say unconscious racism.
| rayiner wrote:
| But do you see the difference between teaching people
| about structural racism and having them stand up and
| declare "I am a racist" and "I am a gatekeeper of white
| supremacy?" Two things about that are outside acceptable
| norms:
|
| 1) Having people declare personal complicity for a
| general social ill; and
|
| 2) Using words that have widely-understood connotations
| to mean something different in order to achieve shocking
| rhetorical effect.
|
| It's not just inconsistent with social norms, it's
| alienating to many non-white people. I don't think the
| well-meaning white people doing this (and almost everyone
| involved in this is white) really understand that we have
| to actually go on and try to interact normally our
| professors and administrators after this.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| How does that change the normal interaction dynamic?
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I don't think specific examples are really useful here.
| At the end of the day, either I'm allowed to say "I am
| not a racist" at work and be left alone for making that
| statement, or I'm not. If I'm not, it's a cryptofascist
| struggle session.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Without specific examples, I have no idea if I am
| committing a motte and bailey fallacy because the
| specific examples I have in my mind are the weaker
| example, the specific examples the speaker has in their
| mind are a different example, I've never experienced
| their example (but have experienced people experiencing
| my example and treating it as something more draconian
| that could, perhaps, approximate their example).
|
| So not much more to say on this topic without specific
| examples.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with bringing privilege and
| systemic racism up and taking a "course" as a way to make
| it poignant. Forcing white people to say "all white
| people, including myself, are racist P's of S" is garbage
| and I would get up and walk out at that point, no amount
| of money or "this position is cool" would convince me to
| do otherwise. If you don't have standards then why even
| be alive or call yourself an individual? Sure if you're
| racist speak up and would like to fix it, otherwise it's
| blackmail and you are working with garbage people.
| luckylion wrote:
| Are you suggesting it's required to "confess that you're
| a racist" in a Mao-style struggle session to work with
| people from diverse backgrounds?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm definitely not. I also hold such descriptions of
| these trainings in high skepticism, because I've been
| through a similar training and had a coworker describe it
| as such when all the training was doing was surfacing the
| scientific evidence suggesting unconscious bias is a real
| phenomenon that people aren't aware of.
|
| The fact my colleague took it so personally says more
| about them, I think, than the training.
| asdiovjdfi wrote:
| In my experince, the true believers find the diversity
| courses validating.
| luckylion wrote:
| You might have visited different seminars than the ones
| this thread was originally about, or you might just
| experience them differently given that you appear to be a
| staunch believer in white privilege & the post-modern
| theory of racism.
|
| Religious rituals seem totally normal to the initiated
| and strange and cult-ish to others.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Conflating trainings derived from theory based on
| research and evidence with religion is also strange.
| luckylion wrote:
| I think research & evidence is vague when you include
| gender & diversity studies in sciences. There's a lot
| that's barely above an essay, it'll stick for a few years
| and then get retracted (gender pay gap anyone?) The
| cultish behavior surrounding it ("I'm a sinner, even
| though I never know when I'm sinning, I'm worthless, oh
| please, Lord, forgive me, I submit myself before your
| will") makes it look like a replacement for religion, not
| anything stemming from science.
|
| I don't believe the similarity to Maoist struggle
| sessions is an accident, it's born from the same general
| school of thought.
| free_rms wrote:
| The "school of thought" behind the cultural revolution
| was twofold:
|
| 1) Mao had been frozen out after the disaster of the
| Great Leap Forward, and this was his way of discrediting
| his enemies and getting back on top.
|
| 2) Young people full of fervor are _fucking vicious_.
|
| None of it really had much to do with marxist philosophy
| in general or with the things Mao in particular had said
| before he'd been frozen out. But it says a lot about
| power.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| There's also the similarity of the class alignment behind
| today's "neo-Maoist" stuff and the actual Cultural
| Revolution. https://www.thebellows.org/the-new-cultural-
| revolution/
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > "I'm a sinner, even though I never know when I'm
| sinning"
|
| The entire point of the courses I've seen is to bring
| people awareness of unconscious bias and thereby help
| them transition from ignorant commission of error to
| awareness of the potential for such error. And
| unconscious bias doesn't make one "worthless," it's (as
| far as we can tell) pretty ordinary human behavior.
| Reelin wrote:
| Disclaimer: I realize the below could be interpreted in
| an inflammatory manner. I DON'T MEAN IT THAT WAY. I just
| find it absolutely unbelievable that someone could
| honestly claim not to see the clear religious parallels
| here.
|
| The entire point of the [bible camp] I've seen is to
| bring people awareness of [unconscious sinning] and
| thereby help them transition from ignorant commission of
| [sin] to awareness of the potential for [sin]. And
| [unconscious sinning] doesn't make one "worthless," it's
| (as far as we can tell) pretty ordinary human behavior
| [since we're all born in sin].
| (https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-is-the-
| biblical-ev...)
| rayiner wrote:
| You don't have to believe the description of the session
| --there are screenshots in the article.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Nothing about the article suggests that text was forced.
| I'm not going to trust the Free Beacon's interpretation
| of some out-of-context screenshots.
| rayiner wrote:
| The statements standing alone are damning, whether forced
| or not. That's not how faculty and administrators should
| be speaking in front of students.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Agree to disagree
| pessimizer wrote:
| If you go around asking who the "real racists" are, you'll
| never find any. Turns out self-reporting is dubious.
| LanceH wrote:
| The alternative is hardly declaring people such based on
| skin color.
| LandR wrote:
| If you declare everyone a racist then finding the actual
| racists becomes a much harder problem.
|
| Firstly, if everyone is a racist then the word racist
| loses meaning. So when you have an actual racist and say
| this person is racist, it's meaningless. Everyone is
| racist.
|
| Secondly, the amount of false positives will just be
| crazy high. How can this possibly ever work?
|
| I don't know what they think they are achieving?
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >I don't know what they think they are achieving?
|
| They don't think they're actually hunting down people who
| hate others based on race. They're self-consciously
| building class power that serves themselves as
| individuals and the material interests of their class.
| [deleted]
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| Klansmen and neo-Nazis are perfectly happy to call
| themselves racists.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Are you a real racist?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The trainings I'm familiar with have the opposite intent:
| to help people who don't believe they are racists (or
| believe racism doesn't exist) understand the unconscious
| mental processes that feed into racism and the nature of
| structural discrimination, even when unintended.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| How is that not the same as forcing people to stay in an
| unpleasant class until they confess to racism?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I believe the fact some people perceive it to be is the
| root of, perhaps, quite a bit of consternation on the
| issue.
|
| But I see it is the same as forcing people to stay in an
| unpleasant class until they understand type theory. We
| teach people things they need to know so that they know
| them, because knowledge is useful. We're certainly not
| calling the question of "having education seminars" into
| question, are we?
| danmaz74 wrote:
| Having to publicly humiliate yourself is pure Maoism. How
| can you compare it to learning type theory?
| [deleted]
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| But the 'knowledge is useful' stance presupposes that
| these classes have value, that what they're teaching is
| actually true or useful. That's precisely what many of us
| don't believe.
|
| Suppose we were discussing a risk management seminar
| which you had reason to believe was teaching a flawed
| methodology, one likely to cause serious harm if widely
| adopted. Would you be similarly sanguine in that case?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > That's precisely what many of us don't believe.
|
| With respect, I'll defer to the career sociologists and
| psychologists on the topic, much as I'd defer to the risk
| management PhD on the topic of risk management.
|
| I've known too many tech-savvy folk who think humans can
| be reduced and deconstructed like a computer, declare
| humanities research bunk because it doesn't fit their
| mental model, and get profoundly surprised when their
| mental model doesn't fit actual human behavior. The
| psychologists and sociologists have a better track record
| on modeling and predicting human behavior.
| iguy wrote:
| > With respect, I'll defer to the career sociologists and
| psychologists on the topic, much as I'd defer to the risk
| management PhD on the topic of risk management.
|
| This isn't a good heuristic, without some way of judging
| the entire field. Would you defer to expert career
| scientologists about E-meters? Would it help if they
| published papers on the topic and held conferences and
| you picked only the best-cited ones from that process?
| Why not?
|
| I think the relevant question is: If they were completely
| wrong about how the world actually works, would this have
| had any negative consequences for them?
|
| This would lead you to some degree of skepticism of risk
| management professionals, too. If the risks are small and
| frequent (like estimating how many car crashes per month)
| then you can trust that people & methods that are badly
| wrong will have been weeded out. But when the risks are
| of rare events (like, say, housing market crashes, or
| nuclear war) then professionals can pass an entire career
| without being tested against reality. So you should be
| wary that the most prominent voices are chosen for
| reasons other than actually predicting the risk.
|
| And career sociologists, of course, aren't heavily
| rewarded for accurate predictions.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| With respect, these careerists subscribe to journals that
| will literally publish translations of Mein Kampf so long
| as a few buzzwords are exchanged. On a less
| sensationalist but more quantifiable note, 70% of the
| research comprising the field can't be replicated. I
| think my scepticism is warranted.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Even still, my Bayesian priors suggest that techies get
| worse than chance results on second-guessing them.
| rayiner wrote:
| We have been teaching people about unconscious bias for
| years without these theatrics.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| How well has that worked?
| nec4b wrote:
| Exactly what the Chinese government says about Uighur
| reeducation centers. They only want to help them to
| understand the unconscious mental processes that feed,...
| kofejnik wrote:
| > understand the unconscious mental processes that feed
| into racism and the nature of structural discrimination,
| even when unintended.
|
| I wonder how scientific this understanding is
| shadowgovt wrote:
| UCSF has a useful overview on the topic.
|
| https://diversity.ucsf.edu/resources/state-science-
| unconscio...
| tomp wrote:
| Quite biased. At least the Wikipedia page includes a
| _Criticism_ section. Also, as with most psychology, the
| prior should be that all these studies are a result of
| p-hacking and publication bias (i.e. that the effect is
| actually noise).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit-
| association_test#Crit...
|
| Also pretty obvious biased cherry picking on that page.
| Counterexample:
|
| _Women preferred 2:1 over men for STEM faculty
| positions_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9372481
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I don't see how the provided counterexample is a
| counterexample. It appears to indicate unconscious bias
| favoring women in STEM faculty positions for hiring.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Well that's the thing. These diversity training people do use
| a different definition of racism then what you are thinking
| of. The diversity training definition of racism doesn't
| simply mean prejudiced, it means a part of a system of power
| that benefits people considered "white" at the expense of
| others. By that definition, most white people are probably
| "racist". If you understand the context used when they call
| themselves "racist", it's really not that big of a deal. It's
| basically just them saying, "I'm white, and I recognize that
| society treats me a little bit better cause of that".
|
| I will say, I think it's strange they are asking them to
| admit to being racist, and "be better". It's a systemic
| thing, so it requires systemic change. Asking them to say
| they are racist and that they need to be better seems
| unneededly divisive.
|
| Edit: As others have pointed out, the last sentence is kind
| of wrong. The paraphrase should probably say, "I recognize
| I'm a part of a system or systems that uphold racism". Look
| at the ADL's definition for racism to see what I mean:
|
| https://www.adl.org/racism
|
| By their definition, you are racist if you help uphold any of
| the "systems, institutions, or factors that advantage white
| people and for people of color, cause widespread harm and
| disadvantages in access and opportunity."
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Even by their definition, how am I supposed to "be better"?
| If it's not my choices that are creating this system of
| power that benefits people considered "white", then what,
| specifically, am I supposed to do?
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> it means a part of a system of power that benefits
| people considered "white" at the expense of others._
|
| This definition doesn't even bother me on face. Obviously,
| systems can be designed to advantage one group and
| disadvantage another group. And, obviously, Jim Crow
| effects the distribution of family wealth to this day.
|
| What bothers me about BigCorp diversity training is
| something a quite different. Choose a random public
| company. Its stocks are almost certainly disproportionately
| owned by white people. Many of the older companies even did
| business with apartheid states in the USA (and elsewhere)
| pre-1960. The ones that have been around for a century
| might've even done business with Nazis or were even run by
| anti-Semites (eg Ford). But even if not, just due to the
| fact that wealth is disproportionately owned by white
| people, so too are most stocks in large companies.
|
| Racially skewed allocation of large company's stock due to
| a combination of historical discrimination lumping capital
| into white folk's pockets until ~60 years ago and the
| compounded nature of wealth is EXACTLY the sort of thing
| actual social theorists mean when they say "structural
| racism".
|
| The problem with diversity training at BigCorps is not that
| they talk about structural racism per se. The problem is
| that they use the training as a way to distract from the
| _actual_ structural inequalities in our financial system
| and instead put the onus of change on low-level employees
| who have almost no access to actual power and agency within
| the org (or larger society). I 'm half convinced that this
| sort of diversity training is intentional miseducation.
|
| When I listen to these training seminars, I can't help by
| hear them as the board/CEO saying "please don't pay
| attention to our mostly white and ivy-educated executive's
| stock-based compensation plan or our disproportionaltely
| white stockholder's dividends, which are actually excellent
| examples of structural racism in action; look over there
| instead".
| rayiner wrote:
| > Racially skewed allocation of large company's stock due
| to a combination of historical discrimination lumping
| capital into white folk's pockets until ~60 years ago and
| the compounded nature of wealth is EXACTLY the sort of
| thing actual social theorists mean when they say
| "structural racism".
|
| Ironically Ibram X. Kendi uses this exact example in "How
| to Be an Antiracist."
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Focusing on things they can reasonably change is a
| legitimate approach. It would be defacto illegal for them
| to engage in racially discriminative stock sales. Asking
| their ownership to please give away their stocks to
| random minorities sounds like a fast way to get booted by
| the board for crashing the stock value by creating a
| needless controversy .
|
| Only fanatics seriously consider large scale forced
| redistribution for good reason - the damage to property
| rights causes the market to come tumbling down as it
| undermines trustworthiness. Would you work for someone
| who just decides one day "You know what? You worked for
| us for a decade - we're going to need all of your
| remaining salary back."?
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Asking their ownership to please give away their
| stocks to random minorities sounds like a fast way to get
| booted by the board for crashing the stock value by
| creating a needless controversy_
|
| That's kind of my whole point, right?
|
| It wouldn't be "systemic" or "structural" if a single CEO
| or a few CEOs could unilaterally fix the problem, because
| one man isn't a "system" or "structure". The thing that
| makes systemic/structural racism systemic/structural is
| that you'd have to radically change of the normal order
| of things to address the underlying problem. It's not
| personal, and it therefore can't be fixed by a few
| personal actions. It has to be fixed at the systems
| level.
|
| BigCorps _can 't_ change anything about systemic racism
| because they _are_ the system.
|
| _> Focusing on things they can reasonably change is a
| legitimate approach._
|
| "Mandatory HR training made me rethink my views on
| systemic racism" -- no one ever.
|
| In fact, I'm 100% convinced that these diversity
| trainings are actively counter-productive to actually
| changing any minds.
|
| If you take structural racism seriously, then the idea of
| BigCorp "doing something" about structural racism via HR
| lectures to low level employees is prime facie absurd.
| Cindy in accounting can't do shit about
| structural/systemic racism... that's kind of the whole
| point of distinguishing it from more personal forms of
| discrimination/prejudice.
|
| Training on systemic racism might make sense for powerful
| people with the ability to effect the functioning of
| systems over years/decades. Politicians, boards, CEOs,
| execs, VCs, maybe some managers, etc. And it's the sort
| of thing that activists should try to explain in public
| forums.
|
| But at the individual contributor level, a much simpler
| regimen of "what is explicit discrimination" + "we will
| fire you for overt explicit discrimination because it is
| illegal and not aligned with our corporate values" +
| "dear god don't do stupid shit like wearing blackface to
| the company party" + maybe a short module on implicit
| bias is much more effective. Because that's the sort of
| material is actionable at the IC level, and it's the sort
| of thing people are open to being told by HR drones.
|
| Half day trainings on systemic racism for Cindy in
| Accounting or Bob the Admin Assistant makes no god damn
| sense, and probably does more harm than good.
|
| Like, seriously, HR is not the right place for this
| conversation. You'll lose more people than you gain by
| shoe-horning such a complex topic into a BigCorp training
| module. Stick to shop ethics.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >It would be defacto illegal for them to engage in
| racially discriminative stock sales.
|
| Well, maybe they shouldn't be declaring themselves
| society's chosen vanguard against structural racism,
| then. After all, it wouldn't be _forced_ redistribution
| if they _volunteered_ to just mail every black person in
| the country $16,000 worth (to take an example from a film
| about reparations) in company stock.
| Junk_Collector wrote:
| The common definition of racism is (from Webster but also
| colloquially):
|
| "A belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human
| traits and capacities and that racial differences produce
| an inherent superiority of a particular race"
|
| By broadly redefining racism in a way that removes
| individual agency you can declare anyone you want as
| racist. Then you can conveniently and selectively conflate
| it with the common definition to produce individual
| responsibility. It's a huckster tactic it's how you get
| things like
|
| "I will say, I think it's strange they are asking them to
| admit to being racist, and "be better". It's a systemic
| thing, so it requires systemic change. Asking them to say
| they are racist and that they need to be better seems
| unneededly divisive."
|
| By ensuring that the target they want is inherently racist
| and also individually responsible but with no possible
| power to change this, you can ensure an endless need for
| racism seminars and donations to assuage inherited guilt.
| waffle_ss wrote:
| > _" I'm white, and I recognize that society treats me a
| little bit better cause of that"._
|
| That's a complete crock. East Asians top the charts in
| income by ethnicity, college admissions, and have the
| lowest rates of criminality. For a supposed system created
| to benefit white people it sure is doing an awful job of
| it.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >These diversity training people do use a different
| definition of racism then what you are thinking of.
|
| Sure, but this only reinforces u/rayiner's point. Nobody
| amended or replaced the Civil Rights Act. No vote was held
| to enshrine a broader definition of racism as legally and
| ethically binding on all citizens. Instead, a small clique
| of well-connected professional-class people are imposing
| this stuff top-down through their control of ostensibly
| private (but in fact, pseudo-private, often dependent on
| donations, subsidies, tax breaks, or public funding)
| institutions.
|
| To my mind, the solution is simple: bring major public
| institutions back under full public governance and control.
| No more "we're on private property" rubbish from people
| taking tax dollars.
|
| And, preferably, a fresh labor law enshrining protection
| for political opinions in the workplace that do not violate
| extent civil-rights laws.
| Swizec wrote:
| > The diversity training definition of racism doesn't
| simply mean prejudiced, it means a part of a system of
| power that benefits people considered "white" at the
| expense of others
|
| But then everyone is racist. Including black people.
| Everyone is part of this society that has systemic features
| tht benefit whites.
|
| So if everyone is racist, what's the point of labeling?
| Miner49er wrote:
| I wouldn't say everyone is racist, by that definition. If
| you want to and are working to change or get rid of these
| systems, then you are not racist.
| Swizec wrote:
| I think it's more complicated than that based on some of
| the diversity books I've read.
|
| For example I wasn't even "white" until I moved to USA a
| few years ago. Took me 6+ years to even grok how "white"
| works and what it means but I'm told I was racist all
| along.
|
| And yeah sure I want the system to change, but honestly I
| have enough work with being an immigrant without inherent
| rights. Hell I'm technically a visitor so I don't even
| have immigration rights yet. This is not my fight to
| fight ... but folks say that makes me racist and
| privileged and how dare I.
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| rayiner wrote:
| I wasn't a "person of color" until 2009! (I distinctly
| remembered when it happened. I was reading ad copy about
| my law school, and saw that our incoming class was 30%
| "people of color." I had never seen the term before, and
| was confused by what it could mean, until I realized they
| were grouping all non-white people together.)
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It includes some white people too! No Latino would think
| for half a second before identifying me as white, but
| because I'm _also_ Latino, I end up as a "person of
| color" whenever these statistics are aggregated. And this
| isn't a minor edge case - something like 10% of the US
| population is white hispanic.
| refurb wrote:
| So whether you're racist is determined by whether you are
| "working to change the system"? What does that mean?
|
| If I do yes to BLM does that mean I'm not racist? What if
| I speak in support of BLM? Is that a blanket dispensation
| against being racist?
| Miner49er wrote:
| Idk, I'm just trying to logically apply the definition. I
| don't think you could say Malcolm X, John Brown, or MLK
| are racist for example. It's at least possible not to be
| racist by their definition.
| DenisM wrote:
| That reminds me of "war to the death" - the only way
| you're not the enemy of the people is if you give up
| everything you had actively join the fight on our side.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_of_War_to_the_Death
| rayiner wrote:
| Even on its own terms, the "white privilege" theory is
| deficient. In terms of structural aspects of society that
| perpetuate race-based disadvantages, the main difference
| isn't between white people and everyone else, it's between
| Black and Native American people and everyone else:
| https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353
|
| > White and Hispanic children have fairly similar rates of
| intergenerational mobility.... Because of these modest
| intergenerational gaps, the income gap between Hispanic and
| white Americans is shrinking across generations.... Asians
| appear likely to converge to income levels comparable to
| white Americans in the long run.
|
| > In contrast to Hispanics and Asians, there are large
| intergenerational gaps between black and American Indian
| children relative to white children.... If mobility rates
| do not change, our estimates imply a steady-state gap in
| family income ranks between whites and American Indians of
| 18 percentiles, and a white-black gap of 19 percentiles.
| These values are very similar to the empirically observed
| gaps for children in our sample, suggesting that blacks and
| American Indians are currently close to the steady-state
| income distributions that would prevail if differences in
| mobility rates remained constant across generations.
|
| In terms of rhetoric, moreover, it's deliberately
| inflammatory. Critical theorist academics appropriated
| existing terms with weight connotations, like "racist" and
| "white supremacy," to mean more abstract, systemic things
| that don't necessarily imply prejudicial intent.
|
| People should be wary of adopting this rhetoric even if
| well-intentioned. Just because some academics thought this
| rhetoric was clever doesn't mean that people of color
| generally want race-relations to be defined by such
| inflammatory rhetoric. As a purely practical matter, there
| is a ceiling on the fraction of white people who will
| actually respond in a productive way to being called a
| "racist" and a "white supremacist" (even if you explain to
| them the academic twist on the words). There is a reason we
| do things the way we do them. There is a reason civil
| rights movements have been built on appeals to universal
| values and the goal of color-blind equality as the ultimate
| ideal.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| What you say might be the case - that some people are
| trying to take a word with certain connotations and change
| it's definition. If they had read more, they would see the
| self-parody that creates.
|
| > 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a
| scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean --
| neither more nor less.'
| seibelj wrote:
| Yes but the term "racism" is an extremely loaded term with
| a long history that is widely understood throughout
| American society. You can't just say "oh, we don't mean
| actually racist, we mean 'woke-racist'" and expect everyone
| to agree with this new definition and feel good about
| calling themselves woke-racist.
|
| This stuff _barely_ flies with hyper-progressive elites,
| and many of them are deeply uncomfortable with it. This is
| possibly the dumbest thing ever pushed by those who think
| they are doing good.
| komali2 wrote:
| Why didn't they use the term "privileged" then? I'm very
| happy to acknowledge my privilege, but I'd have to push
| back if someone was asking me to declare that I'm racist.
| I'm also happy to hear about times I was unintentionally
| so, but to lump me into the same boat as the people that
| were screaming in my face that I'm a race traitor for
| holding a black lives matter sign doesn't feel fair.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Why didn 't they use the term "privileged" then?_
|
| They use that too, interchangegly and confusingly...
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| > Why didn't they use the term "privileged" then?
|
| Because that word lacks any form of punch. Being
| "privileged" does not imply any personal responsibility;
| it's essentially saying you got lucky.
|
| My understanding is that this tactic of taking very
| strong words like "racist" or "nazi" and superextending
| their definitions is just an attempt to harness the
| strong emotional response people have to these words and
| direct it at a very large group of people.
|
| The unfortunate side effect is, that it slowly weakens
| the terminology, to the point where some day being a
| "racist" might just not be a big deal anymore.
|
| The more direct danger of this strategy is that, in the
| short term, while most of the population still associates
| a term with a different definition, it allows quickly
| invoking very strong emotions with an accusation that is
| not technically wrong by the newer definition.
|
| This becomes even more obvious when you look at how
| people often dance around these definitions to
| deliberately keep the newer definition as esoteric as
| possible, so the word retains its connotations for as
| long as possible.
| dTal wrote:
| That's not even slightly what "racist" means, though. The
| accepted term for what you are describing is "privileged".
| If you're going to assert that every white person is
| "racist" regardless of their beliefs, you render the term
| meaningless and might as well just say "white".
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >If you're going to assert that every white person is
| "racist" regardless of their beliefs, you render the term
| meaningless and might as well just say "white".
|
| Sure, but that'll get you temp-banned from Facebook, so
| you have to spell it _wypipo_.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Well, I said "most". I was a bit wrong. It's not just
| benefiting from racism that makes you racist by the
| definition, it's being a part of one of the systems that
| props up racism.
|
| Here's a definition from the ADL for systemic racism.
|
| "A combination of systems, institutions and factors that
| advantage white people and for people of color, cause
| widespread harm and disadvantages in access and
| opportunity. One person or even one group of people did
| not create systemic racism, rather it: (1) is grounded in
| the history of our laws and institutions which were
| created on a foundation of white supremacy;* (2) exists
| in the institutions and policies that advantage white
| people and disadvantage people of color; and (3) takes
| places in interpersonal communication and behavior (e.g.,
| slurs, bullying, offensive language) that maintains and
| supports systemic inequities and systemic racism." [1]
|
| So if you support one of the "systems, institutions and
| factors", you are by this definition, racist. I just said
| most white people probably are, by this definition.
|
| [1] https://www.adl.org/racism
| taxcoder wrote:
| It's a bit troubling that the definition of racism
| specifies what colors the actors must be to meet the
| definition. That fact alone makes the definition suspect.
| cabraca wrote:
| Don't you think that the definition of racism from a
| organisation that profits of fighting racism is a little
| bit biased?
| Miner49er wrote:
| Yes, that's my entire point. They are working with a
| different definition then most people.
| cabraca wrote:
| So you agree that this definition is biased and we
| shouldn't use it?
| Miner49er wrote:
| I think it would be better if there was more
| understanding of what people were talking about when they
| said "racism". I personally think that this definition of
| "racism", is more useful, but it clearly causes
| misunderstanding.
|
| I personally don't think individual racists are that big
| of a deal anymore. Systemic racism is much more harmful.
|
| I even think that a little bit of the prejudice-type
| racism can help people overcome racism. More on that:
| https://qz.com/398723/slavoj-zizek-thinks-political-
| correctn...
| pegasus wrote:
| Of course it causes misunderstanding (and so is not
| useful after all), because "racism" simply means
| something else. Use the word "complicit" maybe, but
| redefining words at a whim is counterproductive.
| Dangerous even, in the case of highly charged words like
| this one.
| stale2002 wrote:
| I mean, if you are using a wildly different definition
| than what most people understand what the word means,
| then it seems like you are the one making a mistake.
|
| You should pick a different word, to describe this, since
| you are mostly just confusing people with the new
| definition that you are using.
| cabraca wrote:
| Could you give me an example what constitutes systemic
| racism from your point of view?
| Miner49er wrote:
| It's just systemic things that end up, on large scale,
| hurting minorities more. For example, the judicial and
| prison system. Black people aren't incarcerated at such a
| high rate [1] because the judicial system and the police
| are full of KKK members or anything. It's due to a bunch
| of systemic problems and America's history of racism and
| slavery. It's a result of when America was clearly
| straight-forwardly racist. Like when black people
| couldn't buy houses in white neighborhoods. Now they have
| on average 10x less wealth than the average white family
| [2] and have access to worse schools, etc. This of course
| will lead more black people to turn to crime, because
| they have less good options, because they are on average,
| poorer and less educated. All the old laws and our
| history going back to slavery still has effects today
| that are compounding and allow the problem to continue to
| exist.
|
| [1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html
|
| [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/racial-wealth-gap-costs-
| economy...
|
| [3] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-
| opportunity-race-...
| cabraca wrote:
| > It's due to a bunch of systemic problems and America's
| history of racism and slavery.
|
| How do you explain then, that asian-americans (on
| average) outearn whites, have a higher SAT score and are
| less likly to be in prison? They have been impacted by
| racist policies too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intern
| ment_of_Japanese_America...
|
| > This of course will lead more black people to turn to
| crime, because they have less good options, because they
| are on average, poorer and less educated. All the old
| laws and our history going back to slavery still has
| effects today that are compounding and allow the problem
| to continue to exist.
|
| poverty and education dont explain those numbers, but
| there is (at least partly) the growing number of
| fatherless homes that correlate with many factors
| influence positive outcome. https://www.npr.org/sections/
| ed/2017/06/18/533062607/poverty...
| https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/line/107-children-
| in-s... You want black people to get out of this cycle?
| Dont be a criminal, comply with police, educate yourself,
| help others do the same. But somehow this is called
| "acting white".
| Miner49er wrote:
| > How do you explain then, that asian-americans (on
| average) outearn whites, have a higher SAT score and are
| less likly to be in prison? They have been impacted by
| racist policies too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intern
| ment_of_Japanese_America...
|
| It's ridiculous to say that Asian Americans have
| experienced anything near the racism that black people
| have in the United States. I don't think they should even
| be included in the conversion when talking about racism.
| The racism they experience is mostly prejudice-type
| racism, not systemic.
|
| > the growing number of fatherless homes that correlate
| with many factors influence positive outcome.
|
| Well yeah, that's another systemic problem, that's
| partially caused by fathers being in prison and such.
|
| > You want black people to get out of this cycle? Dont be
| a criminal, comply with police, educate yourself, help
| others do the same. But somehow this is called "acting
| white".
|
| I don't follow your logic. If it's so easy for black
| people to get out of the cycle, why don't they? Why is it
| that so many black people are in the cycle vs. white
| people? Are you saying that black people are inherently
| worse?
| cabraca wrote:
| > It's ridiculous to say that Asian Americans have
| experienced anything near the racism that black people
| have in the United States. I don't think they should even
| be included in the conversion when talking about racism.
| The racism they experience is mostly prejudice-type
| racism, not systemic.
|
| How much more systemic can you get than an Executive
| Order? Sure, it wasn't to the same degree as for black
| people, but shouldn't it have an effect? At least a
| little?
|
| > If it's so easy for black people to get out of the
| cycle, why don't they?
|
| Yeah, why don't they? Check the biography of every black
| celebrity. Everyone chose to get their shit together
| early in their life or was supported by the parents.
| EVERYONE! ICE T by joining the military to support his
| daughter. Samuel L. Jackson was sent to LA by his mother
| before anything bad could happen after a tip from the
| FBI.
|
| At some point personal responsibility has to come into
| play.
| tomp wrote:
| > I think it would be better if there was more
| understanding of what people were talking about when they
| said "racism"
|
| You do realize that one of the main reasons for
| redefining words _is_ to cause confusion?
|
| As in, _we 'll take this word with narrow meaning and
| then massively expand the meaning in order to fight our
| cause_?
|
| As in, _nobody wants to be accused of being racist so if
| we reuse the word "racist" for something else we'll be
| able to manipulate the discourse_?
|
| If they actually used the words as they mean, people
| would realize that they're complaining about nothing.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Well, about real things. But using the wrong words,
| perhaps out of frustration.
|
| The other unfair argument is to refute a minor point and
| claim there's nothing left to discuss. Like you did right
| there.
| coldtea wrote:
| Several SJWs say just that.
| megaman821 wrote:
| So the first thing you do to combat racism is to make a
| negative generalization of people based on their skin
| color? I can only imagine how effective this program is.
| [deleted]
| Pelic4n wrote:
| This is terrifying, almost cult-like.
|
| The fact that this is what "fighting racism" looks like when
| forced hysterectomies are performed on undocumented
| immigrants in concentration camps show that it's not really
| about racism for the people that are doing this.
| cmdshiftf4 wrote:
| >it's not really about racism for the people that are doing
| this.
|
| It's about power and is using something people are very
| unlikely to disagree with to grab at power.
|
| "We're anti-racists, therefore if you oppose us or our
| actions you must be racists".
|
| "We're anti-fascist, therefore if you oppose us or our
| actions you must be fascists".
|
| And it's very effective. Just look at the choke-hold it has
| corporate America in, in particular, at the moment.
| monoideism wrote:
| > And it's very effective
|
| Yes, the CRT/Woke crowd learned well from the success of
| Frank Lunz and similar conservatives in the 80s and 90s.
|
| Their ideology may well break apart the country, but
| their linguistic propaganda is very effective, indeed.
| 1241414315 wrote:
| > forced hysterectomies are performed on undocumented
| immigrants in concentration camps show that it's not really
| about racism for the people that are doing this.
|
| The accused doctor is named Mahendra Amin, is an immigrant,
| is brown (if you couldn't tell from his name), and has a
| history of medicare/medicaid fraud (he settled with the
| State of Georgia). How did what is most likely just more
| insurance fraud from a brown immigrant quack with a history
| of insurance fraud become "Nazi forced sterilizations in
| concentration camps?"
|
| Ironically, I'm more likely to be downvoted/flagged for
| pointed out the doctor's name, race, and immigration status
| than you are for spreading misinformation.
| globular-toast wrote:
| They are just conformists. PG wrote an excellent piece
| about conformism here:
| http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html
|
| True progressives are out there fighting current battles.
| Corruption, bribery, current-day slavery etc. Conformists
| are out there marching about battles already won like gay
| rights, slavery in the United States etc.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Gay rights is hardly a settled issue. If it were, the GOP
| wouldn't have adopted reversal of the Obergefell v.
| Hodges precedent as a party platform plank in 2016.
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/richard-grenell-addresses-rnc-
| gop-220...
| globular-toast wrote:
| The US isn't the world.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Obviously, but calling gay rights a "battle already won"
| when the third largest country in the world by population
| still has one of its two major political parties fighting
| tooth-and-claw on the issue seems premature.
| pornel wrote:
| I've been in such trainings, and I've seen lots of people get
| offended at hearing "you benefit from racism" as if it meant
| "you're racist".
|
| Racists in positions of power may tilt the playing field in
| your favor whether you've asked for it or not. And it may not
| even be you personally, but people in your neighborhood, your
| social groups in general.
| barrkel wrote:
| Jumping from generalizations about groups to specifics of
| individuals is inherently unjust - as is the inverse,
| generalizing about a group from a few individuals.
| Generalization from systematic group aggregation is useful
| for exposing systemic biases, but action should be specific
| to the circumstances of individuals independent of group
| membership or the risk of injustice is very high.
|
| Unsafe generalization is at the root of prejudice. Racists
| / sexists / bigots generalize from the worst instances of
| individual behaviour to a group, or aggregate statistics
| about a group, and then apply the generalization in
| specific individual scenarios. A crude example, taking the
| generalization "Jews run global finance" - and it's true
| that they have been historically over-represented - and
| then applying the generalization to specifics: "you're a
| Jew, I don't like Jews because they run the world".
|
| A good rule to bear in mind before leaping to prejudice is
| that the variance within groups is larger than the variance
| between groups.
|
| White privilege is a prejudice concept built along the same
| architecture as racism and sexism. It takes aggregate group
| attributes and tries to enforce it in the particular
| against individuals. You've just rehearsed the line
| yourself - "you benefit from racism" - you've given an
| example of instantiation of a group attribute upon an
| individual without evidence. It is literally prejudice, and
| it's unjust, even if it's more likely to be true than
| false.
| valboa wrote:
| Identity politics and group thinking are the cancer of
| society. Everyone can be oppressed, everyone can be an
| opresor. Just give them a reason.
| curation wrote:
| Identity politics and group thinking squished together
| loses a dangerous amount of nuance. Identity poltics is
| how self-identified liberals assert their form of
| universal subjectivity by splitting the working class
| racially (read Wilderson, Hartman, Moten and
| afropessimistic thought and of course Lacan). While
| Groupthink is naively but generally defined as: " a
| psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of
| people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in
| the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional
| decision-making outcome". The distinction thus becomes
| clear. Identity politics is born of the desire to divide
| the working classes using the disharmony of racialization
| causing irrational decision making, while Groupthink has
| the same ending but with explicitly the opposite desire.
| komali2 wrote:
| Let's get down to the core of your argument, which to me
| seems to be that white privilege doesn't exist. I can
| spend five minutes on google and turn up a cornucopia of
| studies that demonstrate otherwise, so why deny the exist
| of racial privilege?
| barrkel wrote:
| No, the core of my argument is that treating individuals
| based on aggregates is unjust, as is generalizing to
| aggregates based on individuals. The former is prejudice
| in action - from the general to the particular - and the
| latter is prejudice formation - unsafe generalization
| from the particular to the general.
|
| I have zero doubt that many people are treated
| differently based on skin and other overt
| characteristics. But that's not my argument.
| seneca wrote:
| They are called Struggle Sessions[0].
|
| > Struggle sessions were a form of public humiliation and
| torture used by the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) at various
| times in the Mao era, particularly during the years
| immediately before and after the establishment of the
| People's Republic of China (PRC) and during the Cultural
| Revolution. The aim of struggle sessions was to shape public
| opinion, as well as to humiliate, persecute, or execute
| political rivals and those deemed class enemies.
|
| > In general, the victim of a struggle session was forced to
| admit various crimes before a crowd of people who would
| verbally and physically abuse the victim until they
| confessed. Struggle sessions were often held at the workplace
| of the accused, but they were sometimes conducted in sports
| stadiums where large crowds would gather if the target was
| well-known.
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session Sorry for
| the Wikipedia reference.
| idea_heroin wrote:
| All white people are racist. Y'all are demons. Here's my
| paypal, now give me some money.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5keqoXCIrq0
| [deleted]
| arkh wrote:
| > I had to "confess" that i'm racist
|
| Good old Struggle sessions:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Is there any real proof that these diversity sessions
| actually help people work in diverse environments? The way
| you describe this, it reads like a really, _really_ weird
| cargo cult where just confessing to one 's supposed racism
| will somehow make you more open to people of differing
| backgrounds. How exactly does this help?
| username90 wrote:
| No. But the goal isn't for it to work, the goal of the
| advocates is to bill a lot of money and the goal of the
| company is to virtue signal.
|
| https://hbr.org/2012/03/diversity-training-doesnt-work
| [deleted]
| monoideism wrote:
| > he goal of the advocates is to bill a lot of money and
| the goal of the company is to virtue signal.
|
| You miss the biggest goal: for departments of diversity,
| inclusion, etc to gain more power and hires.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| My observation at past employers has been that D&I teams
| are consistently under-staffed and overwhelmed.
| remarkEon wrote:
| I've long wondered if this is the reason large,
| established companies (tech or non-tech) pour money into
| these seminars. It acts as a barrier to entry for smaller
| competitors who don't have giant piles of cash to spend
| on things like this, but now they have to because, well,
| they don't want to be the "racist startup".
| beaconstudios wrote:
| My understanding is that it's to placate activist
| employees (or, if management are activists, to play out
| their beliefs).
| shadowgovt wrote:
| They do sometimes cause Googlers to out themselves as a
| hostile work environment hazard and get fired.
|
| So, benefit there. ;)
| [deleted]
| cmdshiftf4 wrote:
| >Is there any real proof that these diversity sessions
| actually help people work in diverse environments?
|
| I read a study a while back, which I can't find right now,
| that concluded that these sessions do more harm than good
| in the workplace.
|
| One study I could find, which might be of relevant
| interest, is that diverse workplaces are far less likely to
| come together and organize in terms of unions or worker
| rights[0], which might go some way to back up the suspicion
| this whole shitshow we've been submerged into is merely a
| big-money attempt to turn normal people against one another
| by provoking racial tensions to prevent them from becoming
| class conscious and instigating a movement like Occupy Wall
| Street again.
|
| >How exactly does this help?
|
| It doesn't. The entire purpose of it is ritual humiliation.
|
| [0]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979391560225
| 3
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Not yet, but these are still pretty new to corporate
| environments. I've been in "harassment prevention" training
| sessions for years, but only within the last year sat
| through my first "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI)
| training. (It was not an inquisition; quite helpful in the
| opinion of this middle aged white guy.)
|
| There _is_ research that shows that companies with diverse
| leadership and staff financially outperform the average.
| See for example:
|
| https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-
| inc...
|
| The problem is, no one knows for sure how to take an
| existing corporate culture with low diversity, and
| transform it to one with higher diversity and higher
| performance. Cultures can be extremely resistant to change.
|
| DEI trainings are just the latest attempt to find something
| that works. It will take a few years to see if they do.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I'm super suspicious of research like that for a couple
| of reasons.
|
| One it would it be impossible to publish research that
| came to the opposite conclusion. Imagine seeing a
| headline that said "replacing female and black executive
| leadership with old white dudes increases profit" by
| McKinsey.
|
| Second the magnitude of the impact seems insane. This
| seems larger than the difference most studies find
| between good leadership and average leadership. And while
| I wouldn't be surprised if diverse leadership is
| marginally better than non-diverse leadership I would be
| surprised if it's larger than the difference between
| average and good.
|
| Three they're pulling from many different countries which
| could potentially create huge confounds.
|
| In general "research" that comes out of a place like
| McKinsey and Bane is pretty suspect but something like
| this is even more.
|
| Even if none of the other problems are real they still
| don't establish causation. It could easily be the case
| that diverse candidates are harder to find, so more
| competitive/better firms are able to better attract them.
|
| I think diversity is great and there are lots of great
| reasons to increase it but I doubt the impact on
| profitability would be anything beyond marginal.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I wonder if the effect works backward - excellence
| attracts the best and remaining on top requires
| assimilating the best from all sources. Diversity
| essentially is a side effect of their paradigms and world
| views in terms of openness to new things and
| experimentalism.
|
| On a related note successful Empires become more diverse
| over time - one of the few virtues of Imperialism and
| they need the edge to expand further while the most
| xenophobic ones tend to be shorter lived or more limited
| in their success. One insulting but true observation
| about national flags flown by white supremacists is that
| they are all flags of losers (Nazi Germany, Confederacy,
| Rhodesia).
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I would expect a company with more diverse leadership to
| outperform, because they are able to access more talent.
|
| White men are like 35% of the U.S. population in total.
| So on the back of the envelope, a corporate culture that
| inclines toward hiring white men, also inclines against
| hiring from 65% of the population. That's a lot of talent
| available for your competitors to hire.
|
| And the numbers get even more dramatic the younger you
| look. Non-hispanic white U.S. residents under 16 made up
| _less than 50% of the population_ at that age as of last
| year. And the trend direction is obvious. Source:
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-census-data-shows-
| the...
|
| The left-hand side of this chart is what the future of
| the American workforce will look like. The right-hand
| side is what it used to look like:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/30/most-
| common...
|
| If a company does not figure out how to hire, retain, and
| promote people who are not white men, they are going to
| see a shrinking talent pool for decades to come. The data
| is obvious to corporate leaders, which is why so many
| companies are treating diversity as an issue for
| management of the business.
| usaar333 wrote:
| > If a company does not figure out how to hire, retain,
| and promote people who are not white men
|
| Agreed. Not hiring the best talent is always bad for a
| company. If you are biased against your best talent,
| you've selected worse talent.
|
| However, diversity goals keep moving - they are well past
| bias issues. Note that tech companies aren't hiring
| mostly white men at this point - they are in fact
| outnumbered by Asian men (Google was at 30% and 39% in
| tech hiring respectively last year.). And yet, we are
| still talking about the lack of diversity in tech (women
| remain underepresented, but in terms of ethnicity it's a
| very diverse place)
| iguy wrote:
| > I would expect a company with more diverse leadership
| to outperform, because they are able to access more
| talent.
|
| You implicitly assume that the performance of a
| leadership team is the sum of the talent of its members.
|
| I'm sure that's important, but the more direct variable
| to study (somehow) would be how similar people's
| backgrounds are. If they are all precisely alike, then
| they'll miss perspectives and be blindsided. But if they
| are totally different, then they will struggle to
| communicate their assumptions, and also won't perform
| well.
|
| So I'd expect honest research to show a U-shaped loss
| curve. Or more realistically, to have gathered cautionary
| tales of companies that fell apart for both of these
| reasons.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The issue a non-diverse team will hit is getting blind-
| sided by lack of perspective on emerging phenomena. Given
| that aspect, I don't find it surprising that the benefits
| from a diverse team could exceed the benefits between the
| difference in average and good leadership.
|
| Both an average and a good leader will drown the same
| army if they lead them into a swamp because they've never
| seen a swamp before.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| A blue collar factory worker, a harvard grad management
| consultant, and a business researcher who are all white
| males try to solve a problem.
|
| A black woman, a white man, and Asian woman who all
| graduated from Harvard and worked for McKinsey try to
| solve a problem.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if the more diverse group came up
| with a better solution.
| usaar333 wrote:
| Agreed, but there's conflation in these reports between
| cognitive diversity and demographic diversity.
| Udik wrote:
| > There is research that shows that companies with
| diverse leadership and staff financially outperform the
| average
|
| Ah, that looks like a nice bit of marketing from
| McKinsey. Huge companies that work on global markets with
| clearly recognizable brands are naturally more diverse
| (sourcing people from all over the world) and also care
| about their public image enough to increase their
| diversity in management positions.
|
| Of course this doesn't mean at all that by increasing
| diversity your performance will improve, the causal arrow
| goes in the opposite direction.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Is there any real proof that these diversity sessions
| actually help people work in diverse environments?_
|
| I'd say no for the most part.
|
| It's mostly hypocrisy and everyone knows is theater, which
| creates boredom at best, and bad blood at worst.
|
| Diversity is built organically, not through sessions.
|
| It's like those bogus "we're a big family" pep sessions --
| and then the company screws you over.
| C1sc0cat wrote:
| Yes I suspect some one suggesting to HR that one of the
| ways to increase diversity and combat institutionalised
| racism would to be a transparent pay survey might be in
| trouble.
| _iyig wrote:
| In the manner of all business consulting, it 'helps' by
| letting management say, "Look, we hired a consultant! We
| care deeply about ____ and have given it our best shot. If
| any problems related to ____ arise in the future, blame the
| consultant." In this case, the blank is diversity and
| inclusion.
| ljm wrote:
| It sounds like someone took Alcoholics Anonymous, kept the
| bit where you admit you're an alcoholic, and then dropped
| the rest of it. Not that having the rest of it would be any
| better, but the whole thing sounds utterly regressive.
| michaelt wrote:
| Demanding people declare they are racists sounds very
| strange to me - I'm not sure _that_ would help things much.
|
| But I've also seen some people do some pretty oblivious
| things in my time - like ordering company tee-shirts for
| their mixed-gender team, but only getting male sizes. Or
| evaluating every interview candidate's communication skills
| and cultural fit based on a conversation about rock
| climbing and craft beer.
|
| And other stuff managers might need to get good at aren't
| taught at home or in college. If you get performance
| complaints about an otherwise-good employee who is fasting
| during Ramadan, what's the right way to address that while
| respecting privacy and being fair to the complainant,
| complainee and the company?
|
| I can understand why an employer might want their employees
| to have a bit of extra training, above and beyond what
| college and life experience have already taught them. At
| least for the employees destined for promotion to senior
| positions.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| While I'm sure there are complicated issues around race
| and gender that training can give you the tools to solve
| these examples seems pretty easy to fix.
|
| > Or evaluating every interview candidate's communication
| skills and cultural fit based on a conversation about
| rock climbing and craft beer.
|
| I feel like any cultural fit test is going to be
| inherently sexist/racist/classist. Better to just throw
| them out. Also why waste time talking about anything not
| relevant to the job to judge communication skills when
| you could be having job related discussions.
|
| > If you get performance complaints about an otherwise-
| good employee who is fasting during Ramadan, what's the
| right way to address that while respecting privacy and
| being fair to the complainant, complainee and the
| company?
|
| Is the complaint this person isn't doing their job? Then
| it should be treated like every other complaint. Is the
| complaint is "They aren't eating lunch" then it should be
| treated very differently.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Is the complaint this person isn 't doing their job?
| Then it should be treated like every other complaint._
|
| Sure, but how is that? Different performance problems
| call for different solutions.
|
| Do you treat it like the newly hired dyslexic person?
| Like the person who's going through a difficult divorce?
| Like the person who likes to party and sometimes comes in
| tired or hung over? Like the person with gaps in their
| education and training? Like the parent who sometimes
| gets called for child-related emergencies? Like the
| person who disagrees with the policies, but can be
| convinced with better explanation? Like the person who
| finds the work too boring to be able to concentrate on?
| Like the person who doesn't like the job, but hasn't
| found another yet?
|
| A competent manager will have half a dozen different
| tools in their toolbox - and it takes some forethought to
| be able to reach for the correct one first time on
| receipt of a complaint.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Like any other performance issue is limited to a month
| each year. If it's mild and they're otherwise a great
| employee probably just ignore it. If it's large drop in
| performance that is having a material impact on the team,
| document the performance impact, take any steps necessary
| to mitigate the impact of the drop in performance and ask
| if there is anything you can do to help them improve
| their performance.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| These are all valuable things to address, but in my
| experience they're not what corporate diversity programs
| do. I'm scrolling through my company's diversity page
| right now, and the front page from top to bottom
| contains:
|
| * An affirmation that we stand with the black community.
|
| * A list of political organizations we should donate to
| in support of the black community.
|
| * TED talks on how news, policing, etc. are sometimes
| implicitly racist. (We as a company aren't involved in
| news or policing.)
|
| * A reimbursement offer for up to $1,000 per person on
| anti-racism materials.
|
| * Recommended articles, books, etc.
|
| There's a lot of other stuff in tabs and menus and such.
| But if I didn't know how to handle an employee with poor
| performance during the Ramadan fast, none of the
| information I see would help me figure it out, and it's
| my understanding that this is typical.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > So even if that Dean said he is a racist, he's probably not
| unless you warp the definition of racism.
|
| Please elaborate on what you mean by "warp the definition of
| racism".
| cabraca wrote:
| > Please elaborate on what you mean by "warp the definition
| of racism"
|
| changing the definition of racism so a specific targetgroup
| is included. For example instead of "discriminate minority
| groups" they say "disadvantage minority groups" and then
| include things like those entrence exams as a disadvantage.
| In the end everything is somehow racist.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > For example instead of "discriminate minority groups"
| they say "disadvantage minority groups"
|
| But to intentionally disadvantage a minority group _is_
| to discriminate against that minority group.
|
| Are you suggesting that intentionally disadvantaging a
| group is not discriminating against that group?
|
| Or are you suggesting that unintentionally disadvantaging
| a group is not only _not_ discriminating against that
| group, but that also it is is also excusable and needs no
| correction? i.e. that the consistent, albeit
| unintentional, disadvantaging shall continue?
|
| ---
|
| With respect to entrance examinations specifically -
| while I have zero experience of context with the
| situation today, I fully appreciate how entrance
| examinations can be intentionally and unintentionally
| exclusionary - and yet still be seen as innocuous. A good
| example is in the (historical) [entrance exams for the
| UK's Grammar School systems which are sat at age
| 11[(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven-
| plus#Controversy); while the grammar-school system was
| ostensibly universal and open to all, the entrance exams
| with questions predicated on a familiarity with middle-
| class culture naturally disadvantaged working-class
| students.
| scythe wrote:
| >Or are you suggesting that unintentionally
| disadvantaging a group is not only not discriminating
| against that group, but that also it is is also excusable
| and needs no correction? i.e. that the consistent, albeit
| unintentional, disadvantaging shall continue?
|
| The problem arises when the only opportunity is to
| replace measurable discrimination with non-measurable
| discrimination. For example, SAT results are easy to
| measure, and because of this we take correlations with X,
| Y, and Z, and find that SAT slightly discriminates
| against people in subpopulation Z.
|
| So we replace the SAT with a holistic interview-and-quiz
| format that is only used at our institution. The data is
| kept internal (for student privacy) and there aren't
| enough datapoints to derive meaningful correlations with
| X, Y, or Z.
|
| Is there less discrimination? _We don 't know!_ What you
| accomplish is to replace a standard within which you can
| detect discrimination with one where you can't.
|
| So yes, using metrics that have small but measurable
| inequities may be preferable to using metrics where
| inequities cannot be measured. In the metrizable case the
| "disadvantage" is at least _bounded_.
|
| Now, in the alternative case where you actually have
| options, i.e. you have one measure with some inequities
| and another measure that you _know_ has fewer inequities,
| then _of course_ it would be racist to choose the first
| measure over the second. But this is not an analogous
| situation to university entrance exams at all.
| cabraca wrote:
| > But to intentionally disadvantage a minority group is
| to discriminate against that minority group.
|
| I would argue that depends on the intent. Do i put them
| in a disadvantage because they are part of that group or
| because a large part of that group wouldn't fit the
| requirements i have.
|
| Lets say i'm looking for someone doing voiceover. Someone
| without an accent. That would probably put a lot of non-
| native english speaker in a disadvantage. Would you
| argue, that i'm discriminating against them or have
| racist intentions?
|
| In this diversity session they would then argue my
| knowledge that non-native english speaker are put in a
| disadvantage by this requirement was the reason to put it
| in and therefor i'm racist.
| pessimizer wrote:
| What if I want my company to feel like family, so I only
| hire people who look like they could be related to me?
| What if I don't think brown skin matches the decor of my
| offices, and I want to present a certain aesthetic to
| potential clients? What if I want to do business with
| people who think women shouldn't be seen in public
| unaccompanied by their brothers or husbands?
|
| What if I'm not racist, but the rest of my employees are,
| and I want my team to be cohesive and productive?
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Someone without an accent.
|
| _Everyone_ has an accent. When you say "without an
| accent," what you mean is that you are looking for
| someone with a particular accent that is meant to be free
| of features that identify someone as coming from a
| particular region.
|
| In a way, it's discriminatory, because you're saying that
| people who do not speak your preferred dialect are not
| speaking "proper" English. Even if they grew up speaking
| English their entire life.
| cabraca wrote:
| >Everyone has an accent. When you say "without an
| accent," what you mean is that you are looking for
| someone with a particular accent that is meant to be free
| of features that identify someone as coming from a
| particular region.
|
| Thats what an accent is, yes. https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/accent
|
| > In a way, it's discriminatory, because you're saying
| that people who do not speak your preferred dialect are
| not speaking "proper" English. Even if they grew up
| speaking English their entire life.
|
| thats not what i said/wrote. Thats how you interpret it.
| leftyted wrote:
| > Or are you suggesting that unintentionally
| disadvantaging a group is not only not discriminating
| against that group, but that also it is is also excusable
| and needs no correction? i.e. that the consistent, albeit
| unintentional, disadvantaging shall continue?
|
| It depends on the policy. Is the height of a basketball
| hoop a policy that is unintentionally discriminating
| against me because I can't jump that high? Is the Nobel
| Prize racist because Jews are massively overrepresented
| among winners?
|
| The debate here is over whether any policy that results
| in racial disparity is racist. To me, that argument is
| obviously wrong.
|
| > A good example is in the (historical) [entrance exams
| for the UK's Grammar School systems which are sat at age
| 11[(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven-
| plus#Controversy); while the grammar-school system was
| ostensibly universal and open to all, the entrance exams
| with questions predicated on a familiarity with middle-
| class culture naturally disadvantaged working-class
| students.
|
| To you, tests like the one you mention are racist (or
| classist) because you assume that certain races or
| classes will be more likely to know certain things and
| others less likely. But, ironically, to me, your
| assumption is racist (and classist) because we have
| different definitions of racism.
|
| Finally, I think there's a serious flaw in your thinking.
| If "studies show" that rich kids test better in math,
| does that mean math tests are classist? Is it even
| possible to create a test so that every group you
| consider (ethnic or socio-economic) will achieve the same
| average score? And which groups shall we consider? Isn't
| it common knowledge these days that there is no canonical
| way to divvy people up into "races"? Why is it that, for
| the purpose of college admission, "Asian" is an ethnicity
| but "Jew" isn't? Furthermore, imagine I am born to rich
| parents and my parents hire a math tutor from the age of
| 3 until I graduate high school. By the time I take the
| SAT, I will probably be much better at math than the
| average high school student. Is there anything wrong with
| that? Why is it correct for tests to attempt to discern
| _innate ability_ rather than _current ability_?
| dTal wrote:
| >Why is it correct for tests to attempt to discern innate
| ability rather than current ability?
|
| The issue was that they were testing for neither; rather,
| they were testing knowledge irrelevant to the thing
| ostensibly being tested (but specific to a class group).
|
| From Wikipedia: "For example, questions about the role of
| household servants or classical composers were far easier
| for middle-class children to answer than for those from
| less wealthy or less educated backgrounds".
| leftyted wrote:
| > they were testing knowledge irrelevant to the thing
| ostensibly being tested
|
| That's a good argument but it's not the argument that I
| was responding to:
|
| > the grammar-school system was ostensibly universal and
| open to all, the entrance exams with questions predicated
| on a familiarity with middle-class culture naturally
| disadvantaged working-class students.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Is there any evidence that these types of questions are
| currently driving the majority of the difference in test
| scores?
| bosswipe wrote:
| Spoken as a skilled cultural warrior that knows which
| weaponized stories to deploy to generate outrage for their
| side.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes. The culture war is to a great extent a US import. The US is
| extremely polarised, possibly uniquely so for a country with a
| single national language and mostly-shared ethnic background
| (compare Belgium, which is highly polarised but along language
| lines). The UK has its own natural fragmentation lines
| (north/south, class system, four nations, catholic/protestant)
| but those are not the lines on which the culture war is run.
|
| While there has been incursion of talk radio (LBC/Farage), there
| is no counterpart to the hyper-polarised TV of Fox News yet. Sky
| News is comparatively normal. The right-wing disinformation comes
| in via the press and various "client journalists" who repeat
| things they've heard from "Downing street sources" who they
| refuse to hold accountable.
|
| > It found that most voters balanced competing political concerns
| and ideas. Its polling found that 73% believe hate speech is a
| problem, while 72% believe political correctness is an issue.
| Some 60% believe many are too sensitive about race, but 60% also
| recognise issues around "white privilege".
|
| This is just the combination of leading questions and people
| responding to words without actually thinking about the
| underlying concepts.
|
| See, always, Yes Minister:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
| beaner wrote:
| Fox news only exists as a balance to the left-lean of most
| other corporate media. And since it's existed, the others have
| felt free to embrace their partisanship more deeply. As a
| result, today, CNN is just as partisan as Fox.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| I don't understand how someone can say this with a straight
| face. Whitewater was a New York Times created scandal. It was
| the New York Times that ran cover for the Bush administration
| in invading Iraq. It was the New York Times that a week
| before the 2016 election ran dueling stories that played up
| the Clinton e-mail story and simultaneously absolved Trump of
| any links to Russia. All of these stories got widespread
| media attention by the so-called left-leaning media. The
| Whitewater story never amounted to anything, the grounds for
| invading Iraq were all lies, and the Clinton e-mail story
| lead to nothing while Trump's ties led to a long-running
| investigation that led to jail time for several members of
| Trump's campaign.
|
| If Biden wins, then by spring, the leading story in the
| "left-leaning" media will be that we need to cut social
| spending to combat the deficit. The deficit miraculously
| stops being a story whenever a Republican is in the White
| House, and becomes a major priority whenever a Democrat is in
| the White House. Just because people in the media think that
| racism is bad doesn't make the media left-leaning.
| apatters wrote:
| If you genuinely believe the mainstream US media doesn't
| lean left, have a look at the Media Bias Chart:
| https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
|
| The methodology is thorough and non-partisan (that's the
| point). Note that the triangle's apex is literally left of
| center.
| croon wrote:
| Isn't the vertical alignment much more important than the
| horizontal?
|
| Not that it counters your point, but the left alignment
| at the top is very minor.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| So how do you explain the many times in which the media
| trumpets news stories that benefit the Republicans that
| don't hold up? Judith Miller's reporting on the lead-up
| to the Iraq War, reporting on leaks from the Democrats of
| dubious news-worthiness (like John Podesta's risotto
| recipe).
|
| If you want a chart, look at this chart of the most
| common words associated with each candidate in 2016:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/gallup-candidate-word-
| clouds...
|
| That's as clear an example of media bias in favor of the
| Republicans as you can wish for.
| nailer wrote:
| > simultaneously absolved Trump of any links to Russia
|
| The investigation also failed to find sufficient evidence
| to charge anyone in the Trump administration with
| collusion. At this point Russiagate is thoroughly debunked.
| croon wrote:
| Collusion is a very specific charge.
|
| I wouldn't call "Russiagate" in any way debunked given
| this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_charges_brought_in
| _th...
| nailer wrote:
| > Collusion is a very specific charge.
|
| Yes. And Russiagate was the belief that the Trump org
| colluded with the Russians. Which was debunked.
|
| Not that citing Wikipedia means anything, but from the
| main article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_int
| erference_in_the_20...:
|
| > there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy
| or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.
| shoemakersteve wrote:
| It was not "debunked" in any way. We know 100% they
| colluded with Russian agents. They just couldn't prove
| criminal intent. As far as Trump's obstruction of
| justice, correct me if I'm misremembering, but I'm pretty
| sure the Mueller report basically said "He did it, but we
| couldn't come up with solid enough evidence that we would
| be confident we could indict a sitting president" and the
| last line saying something like "this absolutely does not
| absolve the president of wrongdoing". Basically if Trump
| was anyone other than the president, they would have
| charged him.
|
| Without 100% rock-solid evidence, the legal complexity of
| trying to indict him (and him potentially pardoning
| himself) would have likely caused a constitutional
| crisis, and who knows what might have happened then. It
| wasn't worth the risk.
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The key part of that, as you've noted, is _sitting
| President._
|
| Citizen Trump would have been vulnerable to federal
| charges three different ways in 2018 if he hadn't been
| elected President.
| nailer wrote:
| > We know 100% they colluded with Russian agents.
|
| The references in this thread so far say the opposite. If
| you have others that prove "We know 100% they colluded
| with Russian agents", add them.
| TMWNN wrote:
| No American on that list got indicted of anything related
| to "Russiagate", but for unrelated procedural crimes
| discovered during the investigation. (You know the saying
| that everyone wittingly or unwittingly commits three
| crimes a day?) Several Russian agents were indicted for
| Russiagate-related things; Putin will turn his goons over
| to US custody any day now.
| croon wrote:
| > but for unrelated procedural crimes discovered during
| the investigation
|
| The "unrelated" is completely false, which invalidates
| your entire argument.
|
| Name an American indicted for unrelated crimes and maybe
| I can fill in the connection. It's mostly covered in the
| wiki under each of their paragraphs though.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >It's mostly covered in the wiki under each of their
| paragraphs though.
|
| You're hoping that people won't bother to read said Wiki,
| or get confused by the legalese.
|
| Papadopoulos: Indicted for making a false statement to
| FBI.
|
| Manafort and Gates: Indicted for not registering as
| foreign agents of Ukraine (which, you might have noticed,
| is sort of an enemy of Russia right now)
|
| Flynn: Indicted for making a false statement to FBI.
| (Forced by lack of legal fees into pleading guilty, which
| later caused problems when the government tried to drop
| charges.)
|
| Pinedo (Who? Exactly): Indicted for identity fraud.
|
| van der Zwaan: Indicted for making false statements (and
| not an American, anyway).
|
| Cohen: Indicted for making false statements.
|
| Stone: Indicted for making false statements and witness
| tampering.
|
| Then we have people like Carter Page, whose name was
| raked over the coals for years because a FBI lawyer
| intentionally altered evidence
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-
| report...) showing that far from being a Russian asset,
| Page had for years briefed the CIA every time he met with
| suspicious Russians. (Got to love how the _Times_
| describes said altering evidence as a "serious error".)
| You want an actual Russiagate-related indictment and
| guilty plea? Kevin Clinesmith, said FBI lawyer, is your
| man.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| It's really not. Mueller went as far as he felt his remit
| allowed, and turned it over to the Justice Department,
| where Barr was determined not to follow up on it. Expect
| this to change in January.
| bnlpmk wrote:
| Indeed, both parties want to exploit the people who do
| actual work. The champagne socialists of FAANG, the New
| York Times etc. want to preserve inflated academic salaries
| and cozy bullshit jobs, the right wants to preserve
| existing ownership and rent seeking.
|
| Two sides of the same coin.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Interestingly the US actually does not actually have an
| official natrual language.
| Someone wrote:
| But it is a topic of discussion. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Language_Unity_Act.
| Latest attempt, AFAICT, is
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
| bill/997/..., which became
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-
| bill/997/....
|
| That has not been moving recently.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| Neither does most of the UK (the exception is Welsh in
| Wales).
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Wales is the only place in the UK where _English_ is an
| official language.
| arethuza wrote:
| Scotland appears to have "official languages" used by the
| Scottish Government:
|
| https://www.gov.scot/policies/languages/
| [deleted]
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| > mostly-shared ethnic background
|
| America at this point has little shared ethnic background. It's
| largest states are minority-majority for example and that will
| be the case everywhere soon as minority babies are already the
| majority.
| readarticle wrote:
| America in 1998 had little shared ethnic background by the
| standards of America in 1898, which had a frankly hilarious
| lack of shared ethnic background by the standards of 1798.
|
| California and Texas are utterly dominated by Non-Hispanic
| and Hispanic white people, the two ethnic groups with by far
| the highest rates of intermarriage in the United States of
| America.
|
| England 1798 -> Europe 1898 -> Western 1998
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| First, I've honestly never hear of "Western" ethnicity, but
| I get what you are trying to say. Hispanics tend to self-
| identify as white, especially after a few generations.
|
| I think the rest of your analysis is just wrong. First
| there was no "English" America. America from the start had
| European immigrants. New York was a Dutch colony. The early
| censuses used "white" and it always meant the same it means
| today.
|
| This idea of a "progressing" whiteness is way way overblown
| to make people feel like the demographic changes we are
| facing are not unusual. But they are. Even if a huge
| percentage of hispanics start to self-identify as white -
| White people will still likely become a minority when they
| were around 90% of the population at the turn of the last
| century. Asians and Blacks are around ~20% of the
| population and Asians are the fastest growing ethnic group.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
| conspiracy/wp/201...
| readarticle wrote:
| I'm not arguing whiteness will progress, I'm arguing
| against the idea there will be little shared ethnic
| background in California or Texas, and their "minority
| majorities".
|
| That ~20% figure is repeated in California and Texas,
| while the Hispanic and Non-Hispanic white populations are
| almost perfectly equal in size. These populations
| intermix at very high rates powered on one side at least
| by _very strong_ social forces--societal and familial--
| that have existed for centuries, see: the demographic
| history of any Latin American country with substantial
| European immigration + the _wildly_ different
| European:non European ratios in the US vs them.
|
| From your own article, keeping in mind Hispanic immigrant
| populations are of European and Native descent:
|
| _We know that light-skinned Cubans were considered white
| at least as of 1950 because (despite the trepidations of
| the studio) the public accepted Lucy and Ricky, in a way
| they would never have accepted a black-white or Chinese-
| white couple. American Indians were considered non-white,
| but if they assimilated and married whites their children
| were generally accepted as part of white society. Did you
| know that Will Rogers was 9 /32 ~~Cherokee~~ Maya?_
|
| A huge percentage of white babies of 2098 won't have to
| self identify as white, they'll just be white.
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| Today, in California the percentage of white babies is
| ~27%. Today.
|
| How on earth can you possibly say that in 2098 that "a
| huge percentage of white babies ... will be white"? Are
| there any demographic studies that say this? Where are
| you getting this info from? Rarely do projections even go
| that far.
|
| Even US Census predictions have been off by huge margins
| within a few years because of unexpected declines in
| longevity, birth rates, ect.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The oversensitivity over race and cultural heritage in the U.S.
| is at a point where talking about having a "shared ethnic
| background" might well be a stretch. It's hard to see the
| difference compared to a place like Belgium, although the
| latter has been dealing with it for longer, and found unique
| ways to cope with their situation.
|
| The race-based division in the U.S. also heavily reinforces
| differences in culture that would be seen as purely class-based
| elsewhere, and thus mitigated in many ways - we see this when
| broadly pro-social cultural values end up associated with so-
| called "Whiteness" in the U.S., it's hard not to see that as a
| problem.
| donohoe wrote:
| "oversensitivity over race"?
|
| To be clear, this isn't a difference of culture we're talking
| about. We're talking about people who routinely get murdered
| and harassed by police, disenfranchised, paid less ins
| salary, and excluded from many professional roles by default.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > We're talking about people who routinely get murdered and
| harassed by police, disenfranchised, paid less ins salary,
| and excluded from many professional roles by default.
|
| You're of course right that the criminal justice system
| treats minorities very badly, and that many people are
| unfairly disenfranchised and excluded from many
| professional roles due to their past interactions with this
| problematic system. But that has nothing to do with a claim
| that our society itself is irredeemably racist, or that
| everyone is irredeemably racist.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Why add the word "irredeemably?"
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| In diversity trainings I've received over the past few
| years, it's been emphasized that the racism of society
| necessarily causes me to personally be racist. No amount
| of awareness, care, or action on my part will erase the
| racial bias which (the trainings say) is embedded deep
| within me; the only course of action is to continually
| struggle against it.
| antepodius wrote:
| Does woke religion offer a path to redemption?
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm not saying talk Radio and Fox News aren't part of the
| problem, but blaming that alone for the polarization is short-
| sighted. A huge part of our polarization is due to our Supreme
| Court resolving social disputes before society has reached a
| consensus. Folks in Europe often don't appreciate how different
| American constitutional law is on social issues compared to
| European norms:
|
| The UK makes teaching religion mandatory in public schools:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_education_in_primary...
|
| > Additionally, all schools are required by law to provide a
| daily act of collective worship, of which at least 51% must be
| Christian in basis over the course of the academic year.
|
| This would be unconstitutional in the United States. We are far
| more religious than the U.K. But our Supreme Court has imposed
| a public secularism similar to that of France. (Based on an
| extremely strained reading of the Establishment Clause.) To
| this day, 2/3 of Americans oppose this 70-year old precedent.
|
| In the UK, you legalized same-sex marriage by law. In the U.S.
| the Supreme Court found it to be a constitutional right (in a
| decision that is in my opinion correct as a legal matter, but
| many disagree). A year later, the European Court of Human
| Rights reached the opposite result (finding that denying same-
| sex couples the right to marry does not violate the European
| Convention on Human Rights) in a case arising out of France.
| It's still not legal in Switzerland.
|
| The UK legalized abortion by law. It's 24-week limit on
| abortion for economic reasons is the longest in the EU. In the
| US, abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court. 24 weeks is a
| fairly typical limit in the US--a country that's more religious
| than Poland (where abortion is illegal). The 12-week limit in
| Denmark or Germany or France, or the waiting periods that were
| place in France until 2015, would be unconstitutional.
| Germany's abortion laws (where the constitutional court found
| it unconstitutional to legalize abortion so it's still just
| decriminalized under 12 weeks, and where there is a counseling
| requirement) would be unimaginable. Indeed, at the same time as
| the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to abortion, the
| courts of Canada, Austria, and France found that it was a
| matter for the legislature to decide.
|
| You passed a law banning discrimination based on sexual
| orientation. Since it was legislation, you were able to
| consider and impose a large set of exemptions for specific
| occupations. (You can't sue a Catholic Church for not hiring
| gay clergy.) The Supreme Court just recently held (in a
| decision I think was correct) that our existing 1960s-era law
| already banned sexual orientation discrimination.
|
| Our Supreme Court is dominated by our country's cultural
| elites. Even the conservatives tend to be steeped in the
| cultural norms of the coastal urban areas. (The one Justice who
| is not, and has social views typical of Black men like himself
| of his age, is demonized mercilessly.) No other developed
| country puts a highly-educated elite in charge of dictating to
| the rest of the country how to handle these social issues. This
| is a huge source of resentment and polarization.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The US replaces state religion with a religion of the state;
| the weird mandatory recitation of the pledge of allegiance.
| Nothing like that in British schools. As Arethuza points out,
| state religious education and the official Church of
| _England_ are only in _England_. Scotland has various forms
| of protestant nonconformist and Northern Ireland had a
| religous civil war whose bombs were detonating until 2001.
|
| The US's leaning on the Supreme Court to make social progress
| is really a result of its inability to make social progress
| in sane ways through legislatures. The fact that it took a
| Supreme Court decision to legalize _interracial marriage_
| only two years before the Moon landings should be a source of
| profound shame on its legislatures.
| rayiner wrote:
| > The US's leaning on the Supreme Court to make social
| progress is really a result of its inability to make social
| progress in sane ways through legislatures.
|
| The situation with slavery and segregation in the United
| States is unique (and unique legal mechanisms were created
| to combat the issues). But it's not clear to me that you
| can generalize from that to other social issues. On
| homosexuality, for example, the U.S. is between Western
| Europe and Eastern Europe, and similar to Italy in terms of
| acceptance. Absent the Supreme Court, many U.S. states
| would have same-sex marriage in similar time-frames to EU
| countries. As to abortion, public opinion mirrors the
| actual laws in countries like France and Germany: support
| for making it legal up to 12 weeks, subject to things like
| waiting periods, with strong support for making it legal
| after that with only limited exceptions.
|
| Sure, some U.S. states would be stragglers, but the same is
| true in the EU. Ireland didn't legalize abortion until just
| a couple of years ago. Switzerland and Poland still don't
| have same-sex marriage. How would the EU react to the
| European Court of Human Rights taking these decisions away
| from the state legislatures? Maybe that's what should
| happen, but this thread is about polarization. It would be
| polarizing as hell.
| jl6 wrote:
| " [England] makes teaching religion mandatory in public
| schools"
|
| Just to add some nuance to this...
|
| RE is the lesson in which pupils are taught _about_ religion.
| It does not instruct that any particular religious claim is
| true or false.
|
| And the "daily act of collective worship" is one of those
| laws that is widely disregarded, to the point where OFSTED
| inspections will note that schools are not compliant but not
| mark them down for it. It's rapidly becoming one of those
| archaic laws like "the queen owns all the swans" which has
| very little practical effect on everyday life.
| rayiner wrote:
| Sure, but: http://www.spinnensacre.medway.sch.uk/About%20Us
| /REpolicy.ht...
|
| > The Education Reform Act (1988) requires that: -
|
| > 2. Religious Education should be taught in accordance
| with an agreed syllabus.
|
| > 4. The agreed syllabus reflects "the fact that the
| religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main
| Christian while taking into account the teachings and
| practices of other principal religions represented within
| Great Britain". (Education Reform Act 1988, Section 8)
|
| Even if the concepts aren't taught as "truth" it makes
| things vastly easier for Christian parents to socialize
| their children in their religion. (Which the U.N.
| recognizes as a human right.) And it would likely be
| illegal in the U.S. (Teaching about religion generically
| would not be, but the provision about the Christian
| tradition of the UK would likely push it over the line.)
|
| Also:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_worship_in_schools
|
| > Schools with a formal faith designation are required to
| arrange worship in accordance with their trust deed or, if
| they have no trust deed, in line with the practices of
| their designated faith. For schools without a formal faith
| designation, the majority of the acts of worship should be
| "of a broadly Christian character". In practical terms,
| this has been interpreted to mean that 51% of school days
| each school term must have an act of worship of a broadly
| Christian character.
|
| Social conservatives in the United States would be thrilled
| to have laws like the one in the U.K. Obviously a country
| like the U.K. that's becoming irreligious might not take
| the legal requirement too seriously. Folks in San Francisco
| probably wouldn't either. But folks in Iowa would probably
| take these requirements seriously. Under current U.S. law,
| schools in Iowa in communities where 80% of people go to
| Church every week are required to operate like schools in
| France. (My wife and I once calculated that her little town
| in northwest Iowa had a church for every 150 people.)
|
| Forcing Iowans to act like the French drives a lot of
| polarization and resentment. When you hear people complain
| about the "war on Christmas" that's what they're talking
| about--stripping away the fact that "the religious
| traditions in [the United States] are in the main
| Christian."
| TMWNN wrote:
| >The UK legalized abortion by law. It's 24-week limit on
| abortion for economic reasons is the longest in the EU. In
| the US, abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court. 24 weeks
| is a fairly typical limit in the US--a country that's more
| religious than Poland (where abortion is illegal). The
| 12-week limit in Denmark or Germany or France, or the waiting
| periods that were place in France until 2015, would be
| unconstitutional. Germany's abortion laws (where the
| constitutional court found it unconstitutional to legalize
| abortion so it's still just decriminalized under 12 weeks,
| and where there is a counseling requirement) would be
| unimaginable. Indeed, at the same time as the Supreme Court
| found a constitutional right to abortion, the courts of
| Canada, Austria, and France found that it was a matter for
| the legislature to decide.
|
| Indeed. To provide background for others, by the early 1970s
| various US states had legalized abortion. In _Roe v. Wade_ ,
| however, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was a
| constitutional right, abruptly legalizing it nationwide with
| more or less no restrictions whatsoever; even many abortion-
| rights supporters believe that the legal theory behind the
| decision was faulty
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#Legal). The result
| was so across-the-board that, among other things, the US
| still allows abortions to occur later than anywhere else.
|
| Preventing the full political debate process from occurring
| is why abortion remains so controversial in the country
| almost 50 years and counting. _Because_ such issues are
| polarizing and partisan, they need full discussion in a
| legislature, as opposed to unelected judges unilaterally
| short-circuiting the debate.
| arethuza wrote:
| "The UK makes teaching religion mandatory in public schools"
|
| The UK does no such thing - education is handled completely
| separately by the different parts of the UK.
|
| There certainly weren't "daily acts of collective worship"
| when I was at school in Scotland 40+ years ago and there
| aren't now when my kids went to school.
| Jochim wrote:
| Also went to school in Scotland. We'd sing a hymn at
| morning assembly. I wonder if this was done to satisfy the
| requirement.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| > there is no counterpart to the hyper-polarised TV of Fox News
| yet.
|
| Yet. The planned GB News fronted by Andrew Neil looks a lot
| like a Fox News clone with 24/7 opinion:
| https://www.ft.com/content/470cf7f4-59e6-47c1-9efa-ce634b798...
| reedf1 wrote:
| As a twenty-something who grew up in Texas but has spent my
| adult life learning and working in the UK - I really disagree
| with calling any large cultural ideas as "US imports". The
| perception from the UK is that the US is much more polarised
| than it actually is - and from my perception the UK is even
| more polarised, but just refuses to believe it.
|
| I think this is because minority populations are so much
| smaller in the UK. Minorities have less of a collective voice
| and influence on culture, and hence most brits "collision
| cross-section" with racism is smaller. Hence they think of it
| as less of a problem, but it isn't. I've had Indonesian
| colleagues yelled at on a bus, Chinese friend shrieked at for
| using their phone, and my black friend who just feels like he
| wont ever "be british". My Indian colleague can talk my head
| off about the racist hiring techniques he's had to deal with.
| It's not "not a problem" it's just that most brits don't even
| know someone who is a minority, let alone one that's
| experienced racism.
| fit2rule wrote:
| >Texas
|
| +
|
| >the US is much more polarised than it actually is
|
| == not representative of the US. Travel more.
| arethuza wrote:
| If anyone thinks that racism at all levels isn't a problem I
| can strongly suggest reading about the Windrush scandal:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windrush_scandal
|
| I'm in the middle of a reading a book about it at the moment
| and to say I am appalled by how these people were treated is
| an understatement.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| How did "we lost the paperwork" turn into "well you look
| foreign so leave your country"?
| jlokier wrote:
| You should have seen the despicable "Go Home" vans that
| were circulating for a while.
|
| And the "hostile environment" that is legally mandated
| homelessness (people aren't allowed to rent privately,
| landlords have to check with .gov for "eligibility" to
| rent).
|
| All those "we lost the paperwork" people are subject to
| that. They would have lost their jobs, gradually had
| their banks close the accounts (with no alternative), had
| their landlords gradually unable to continue the
| tenancies (each renewal would check), and if they were
| sick, found themselves rejected at hospital. Someone died
| due to cancer treatment being stopped.
|
| Some other people who were resident did the decent thing
| and supplied the tax office with minor tax corrections
| after their accountants made small errors. This was
| encouraged by the tax office, we're all supposed to do
| that and it's quite straightforward. For that good
| behaviour they got labelled as having bad character and
| kicked out, because... any excuse to. That's a doubly-
| harsh label as it limits their rights in other countries
| in addition to being kicked out of the UK.
| nailer wrote:
| > > How did "we lost the paperwork" turn into "well you
| look foreign so leave your country"?
|
| > You should have seen the despicable "Go Home" vans that
| were circulating for a while.
|
| How is losing the paperwork for legal migrants comparable
| or even closely related to telling illegal migrants to
| leave?
| jlokier wrote:
| Because both sets of people were treated exactly the same
| by the system. I.e. inhumanely.
|
| FYI, they didn't lose the paperwork.
|
| UK gov _destroyed_ the paperwork, then deemed people to
| be illegal migrants.
|
| Then those people were told: quit your job (or we'll
| force it), leave your spouse, move out of your home, and
| leave the country. Have 2 weeks notice because we're
| nice. Obviously with nowhere to go to. And because
| married people do not have the right to residency, if
| they were married to a UK citizen that didn't protect
| them either.
|
| And then consequences started to happen for real. They
| couldn't just ignore these notices. Jobs were lost. Money
| was stopped.
|
| As I said, one person even died due to life-critical
| hospital treatment withheld, and I'm sure many others
| were pretty worried because all of them would have been
| denied medical care until the case was settled, and lost
| their incomes. A number of them were illegally deported.
|
| UK gov has done similar things to other people, not just
| the Windrush crowd. But Windrush got the press because it
| was more people at once and older people. There are
| others who have done everything correctly, paperwork,
| fees and all, and have kept their own copies of paperwork
| to confirm their status is fine. Who have then been told,
| surprise!, quit your job, ditch the tenancy, leave with 2
| weeks notice etc.
|
| As it happens, the UK has plenty of people in it who
| believe they are legally resident and one day find out
| they are not on some unknowable technicality. And others
| who are in fact legally resident but the Home Office
| decided to kick them out _anyway_.
|
| For a example a number of EU citizen students found out
| they were not eligible to remain in the UK because they
| didn't purchase some kind of private health insurance - a
| condition nobody knew about, nobody was told about, and
| the Home Office was unable to explain, other than to say
| they should have purchased it when they arrived as
| students so that's the reason for telling them to leave.
|
| That kind of technicality. Note that nobody else had to
| buy this mythical insurance, only students, who weren't
| told. Essentially the Home Office looks for loopholes to
| catch people in, that nobody reasonable knows about or
| would try to enforce. Unlike other areas of law, where
| "what is reasonable" is taken into account in a
| principled way, and a process of restoring balance takes
| place if something is a bit off, the Home Office seems to
| lack this aspect, perhaps in its pursuit of quotas for
| kicking out X people a year without regard for whether
| it's the right people, or even the people intended by
| policy.
|
| As you can imagine some of these cases end up in court
| because it's the government breaking the law. But the
| court system is not well suited to protecting the
| individuals in these cases, and people can't afford the
| legal fees.
|
| You often need a judicial review (which is very
| expensive), because the ordinary policy is "deport first
| appeal later" or "no appeal possible" depending on the
| case. Under "deport first appeal later", people usually
| fail to appeal even when they would win, because it's
| highly impractical when you can't access your own
| documents from abroad any more; yet if they do appeal,
| most appeals are won because the government is found to
| be not following the law.
| nailer wrote:
| > UK gov destroyed the paperwork
|
| You're right. I quoted the parent but it's an important
| distinction.
|
| > Because both sets of people were treated exactly the
| same by the system. I.e. inhumanely.
|
| The destroying of paperwork was incompetence rather than
| inhumanity. The removal of illegal migrants is also not
| inhuman: it is lawful and reasonable - if you enter a
| country illegally, you may be kicked out.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I think this was referring to the "well you look foreign
| so leave your country" part. The law is often... _not
| right_ on these issues.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The _only_ distinction between people with legal status
| and those without is paperwork. Which may have errors in
| it.
|
| A coworker of mine had to spend six months living in
| someone else's flat and legally barred from working while
| he sued the Home Office; he'd entered legally, they found
| a paperwork error (making him "illegal"), and he won
| (making him "legal") once more.
|
| Brexit provides lots of examples of how people who
| entered and lived in the UK legally but never got (and
| indeed weren't eligible for!) ILR suddenly can become
| "illegal" if they don't get "settled status".
|
| Be very clear about this: if you immigrate to the UK by
| what you think is a legal route, and the Home Office
| makes a mistake, you can become an illegal immigrant very
| quickly.
| arethuza wrote:
| Operation Vaken (who came up with that name?)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Go_Home%22_vans
| pjc50 wrote:
| Other way round. The UK's racism has pervaded the Home
| Office, so it's now finding pretexts to deport as many
| people as possible. This is why the UK removed in 2013
| the ability to claim legal aid money for immigration
| cases, to make it harder for people to dispute their
| illegal decisions.
| realusername wrote:
| > Chinese friend shrieked at for using their phone, and my
| black friend who just feels like he wont ever "be british"
|
| That's been one of the issues I encountered on my case on the
| time I've spent in the UK, you can spend as much time as you
| want there, you will never be considered like a local, you
| will be designated as a part of the community you supposed to
| belong, that's great if you like recreating the place you are
| coming from, not so great if you actually want to integrate.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > I really disagree with calling any large cultural ideas as
| "US imports".
|
| Apart from film, pop music, reality television, the Yankees
| baseball cap, jeans, and a constant stream of news articles
| about Trump, what have the Americans ever done for us?
|
| Compare how many cultural products are American in origin or
| mention America or American news to how many you get about,
| say, France or Germany. The influence is _huge_. This is why
| France has laws requiring a fraction of culture (especially
| TV and film) to be in French.
|
| The UK is certainly polarised, and racist, but _in different
| ways_ to America. It may be the case that a police murder in
| Portland starts a riot in Bristol, but it would _never_ be
| the other way round.
|
| When was the last time there was a protest by Americans
| outside a British embassy over British politics? The US
| embassy in London practically has a rota for all the
| different groups that have protested there.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >While there has been incursion of talk radio (LBC/Farage),
| there is no counterpart to the hyper-polarised TV of Fox News
| yet. Sky News is comparatively normal.
|
| This is because we have strong broadcast regulation.
| Broadcasters _must_ have regard for due impartiality and due
| accuracy.[0]
|
| LBC are managing to push that line to its very limit, by having
| shows that are presented by opposing polemics so that overall
| they maintain balance.
|
| [0] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-
| co...
| arethuza wrote:
| "there is no counterpart to the hyper-polarised TV of Fox News
| yet"
|
| The Daily Mail?
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| The reason the UK doesn't have hyper-partisan television news
| is because of the regulation of broadcast television (i.e.
| Ofcom).
|
| There is an effort to start a Fox News equivalent in the
| pipeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_News
| vixen99 wrote:
| The instigator and driving force of the supposed 'Fox News
| equivalent' is Andrew Neil. Try putting it to him that he's
| 'hyper-partisan'! Neil is anything but that, as unprepared
| politicians across the spectrum from left to right have
| discovered to their cost.
| raverbashing wrote:
| The Sun, Express, etc are probably worse (I'm not condoning
| the Daily Mail with this statement)
| derriz wrote:
| To be fair, the Daily Mail seems to have toned it down a bit
| since the editor changed a few years ago.
|
| Subject to the caveat that I haven't lived in the UK for over
| 15 years, overall the popular press in the UK is a bit
| shocking. I don't know of any liberal western country where
| you see the kind of racism routinely displayed on the front
| page of mainstream/popular UK newspapers. Perhaps xenophobia
| rather than direct racism would be a better description but
| it's not easy to tell the difference in many cases. It's all
| a bit weird as the UK is generally a tolerant society but
| somebody must be buying all those newspapers.
|
| About the only UK newspaper I can read these days without
| getting upset is the Financial Times - there's pockets of
| good journalism in the Guardian also but it's almost too much
| of a struggle to find them in the swamp of opinion pieces. I
| guess the Times isn't too bad or at least tries to represent
| some sort of centrist view but it feels fairly shallow.
|
| For me the Brexit issue is the UK's version of the culture
| war in the US. I've talked to people who say they can barely
| talk to members of their family any more because of Brexit
| stance differences. And I don't see this division healing
| very soon - I fear it's going to fester for years.
| Zenst wrote:
| "opinion pieces" nailed it there and sadly that is what
| journalism has become and fuelled these so called `culture
| wars`, it's as if they create the issue to report about -
| which given the bulk of content in the Guardian (other
| newspapers just as guilty and maybe more so), I find
| somewhat farcical.
|
| I miss the days when all the facts was reported, instead it
| is opinions that are slanted one side or another to market
| to the social media rabbles of the moment. In effect social
| media like twitter has becomes the REUTER/news wire source
| of news and opinions are treated as news today.
|
| But in a world in which problems are ignored until some
| celeb parrots them, one can only cry at the loss of real
| investigative journalists who are drowned out by a sea of
| bandwagon opinion pile-ons.
| arethuza wrote:
| The Daily Mail had an anti-WFH campaign recently with
| classics like this:
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8671837/RICHARD-
| L...
| jlokier wrote:
| I'm no fan of the awful writers and opinions are the
| Daily Mail. This did get me thinking though:
|
| > Meanwhile, they're climbing over each other to fill
| their faces with state-subsidised chicken and chips at
| Nando's, while at the same time pretending to be too
| frightened to turn up for work.
|
| I walked around town at the weekend. Town seemed as busy
| as I'd expect during a holiday, which is to say people
| everywhere in crowds. I noticed Nando's was jam-packed
| with people inside and outside, as densely as I've ever
| seen it, no social distancing and little mask use was
| apparent including among the people crowded on the
| pavement outside. Same as I walked past other places, and
| some pubs were heaving, inside and outside.
|
| To be honest, I didn't feel safe walking around the
| streets with the way people were outside; it became
| difficult to avoid densely packed groups at some points.
| The "rule of six" was a joke, I saw groups of 20 people
| who were obviously together with no masks. Every so
| often, I'd find myself in the middle of a group who would
| just surround me on their way past, 0.5m away if that, no
| masks, and no way for me to avoid them. I'd make the
| effort to keep out of people's way, and I'd be
| occasionally thanked for it. But most people seemed to
| make no effort or have any awareness. About half of all
| people outside had masks, but of those with masks, about
| half were not wearing them.
|
| So is that WFH people in the restaurants? I don't know,
| but I suspect the folks who have lost their jobs, or
| getting by doing manual labour like food deliveries, or
| working in hospitals and care homes, aren't the ones
| spending much at the pubs and restaurants at the moment.
|
| Among my friends who are programmers, about half talk
| about their social meetups (face to face) at the pub,
| houses, in the parks etc and seem to have some disdain
| for CV restrictions. The other half are like me, have
| high respect for CV restrictions and generally avoiding
| town and avoiding non-virtual social meetups, and don't
| think highly of those people who don't wear masks or keep
| a distance.
|
| I think the Daily Mail anti-WFH rant is typical Tory "get
| back to work" top-grade bullshit because WFH isn't about
| people individually saying they are "scared", it's about
| protecting people at work, which is a company and
| institution responsibility. The fact some people will
| densely pack themselves at Nando's etc adds more reason
| to keep them away from offices for the protection of
| other people, not less reason. But I thought it did
| highlight some interesting contradictions going on in
| society at the moment.
| jiajweiorjawejr wrote:
| For the non-Brits who don't get the reference: a "P45" in
| the UK is a standard form that your employer issues you
| when you leave a job (whether you were fired or you
| quit), used for tax purposes.
| secondcoming wrote:
| > The right-wing disinformation comes in via the press and
| various "client journalists" who repeat things they've heard
| from "Downing street sources" who they refuse to hold
| accountable.
|
| What's also a US import is the division of people into 'right-
| wing' or 'left-wing' based on the most frivolous of attributes.
|
| 'Downing Street Sources' has been a phrase used by journalists
| for decades; everyone knows what it means. It's not a 'dog
| whistle' (another stupid imported phrase).
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| This is a surprise only to that tiny minority.
| overlyresucpp wrote:
| Similar result on Twitter from a year ago:
| https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/23/just-6-of-u-s-adults-on-tw...
|
| It's just text. Copy-paste is the first computer user habit
| anyone learns.
|
| The idea machines are learning is nuts. Sorting the same old
| human copy-pasta isn't learning. What is there to learn about
| vanilla ice cream? It's all in eating it.
|
| What a shock we're just more efficiently eating shit
| nooyurrsdey wrote:
| > It states that 12% of voters accounted for 50% of all social-
| media and Twitter users - and are six times as active on social
| media as are other sections of the population. The two "tribes"
| most oriented towards politics, labelled "progressive activists"
| and "backbone Conservatives", were least likely to agree with the
| need for compromise. However, two-thirds of respondents who
| identify with either the centre, centre-left or centre-right
| strongly prefer compromise over conflict, by a margin of three to
| one.
|
| Really telling. These fringe groups are taking over our political
| discourse and online discussion. They are driving a societal
| wedge.
| drran wrote:
| Almost any war is fought by a tiny minority, which is backed by
| large majority.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Almost any war is fought by a tiny minority, which is backed
| by large majority._
|
| While technically true, in a real war the "tiny minority" (the
| military) don't choose when or where or why to fight, that is
| done by the "large majority", the voters electing a government.
| arethuza wrote:
| "don't choose when or where or why to fight"
|
| The UK has been in a number of wars since I've been able to
| vote - I don't recall being asked to vote on any one of them?
| Or indeed the wars in question being part of the manifesto
| for any party at any election?
| goatinaboat wrote:
| Are you asserting that the British military picks its own
| wars? Because that's the quote you replied to.
| arethuza wrote:
| I was replying to the assertion that "that is done by the
| "large majority", the voters electing a government."
|
| The government picks the wars without any reference to
| the voters?
| goatinaboat wrote:
| Whether true or not, my point about those who fight in
| real wars stands. Whereas in a so-called culture war,
| those who do the "fighting" are also the instigators.
| pessimizer wrote:
| White zoomers and media studies professors didn't start
| racism.
| platz wrote:
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/
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