Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society
reason.com
reason.com
But further, I’d never seen the statement from antiracist before…wow. The idea that the only cure for discrimination is discrimination is akin to saying the only cure for violence is violence. It’s abject insanity that such a notion is being advanced in society.
The cure for discrimination is forgiveness. The cure for violence is forgiveness. The cure for hatred is forgiveness.
The only way anything stops is for people to have the humility and wisdom to say “this will stop with me.”
http://www.mnchurches.org/blog/2021/02/18/holocaust-survivor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_Agreement_between_...
Part of a functioning, healthy system is recompense/justice, and yes foregiveness.
If you tear a system down, even if you manage to shift some power balance, you stand to create a situation as bad or worse than the one you began with.
Unless a core value of the system you seek to create is forgiveness, you only stand to substitute one systemic opression for another.
Put in terms perhaps you might understand, african americans, hispanics are not forgiven their crimes, where often those with wealth and influence or socially favorable bias are (often) foregiven.
Adding more henious lanaguage, attitude to the mix does not help, when it can be redirected at those still in a position of relative powerlessness.
Some specific crimes should be punished harder (rapists especially in college and positions of power should immediately be punished and severely), at the same time where we are willing to dole out forgiveness, that should be equally given.
You cannot have one without the other.
As if we hadn't been doing that for past 60 years, with extremely underwhelming (in fact, arguably negative) outcomes.
1) (a) The history and experience of Black people in America is sui generis and (b) justifies responses that don’t need to be generalizable or measure up to ordinary standards of procedural fairness.
2) the “bootstraps”approach of Kendi’s parent’s generation has failed.
3) bureaucratic institutions operated by well meaning credentialed people can solve every problem.
Really, the only area where I substantively disagree with him is (3)—the white people in charge of bureaucratic institutions will inevitably use any special powers given to them to advance their own economic and cultural interests.
1. Virtually nobody with a BLM lawn sign believes this: https://twitter.com/DrIbram/status/1302724276412387334
2. I can't do any better than Kalefa Sanneh at pointing out the incoherence of Kendi's professed world view. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/19/the-fight-to-r...
Which should eventually lead to forgiveness, right?
The framework presented does not include forgiveness at all, the crimes are treated as unforgivable and atonement is eternal. Which clearly indicates that their goal is not to end discrimination.
Perhaps we should consider what crimes are treated by America as unforgivable as a way to establish common ground and then look at outliers from in groups and out groups for trends? There’s a lot of discussion here that is naive to how social work professionals routinely and successfully resolve these matters. I anticipate rich and colorful debate over the forgivability of rape, child abuse, and murder depending on the offenders demographics, assets, and associations.
Forgiveness is a process that victims undertake for themselves when they are out from the clutches of their abusers. Forgiveness is not a trophy for active offenders to carry as a spoil of their conquest, instead it a badge of shame they honor by being a better human than they were when they willingly harmed our caused others to be harmed tangibly or otherwise. Victims must be extraordinarily supported through their healing journey in any community truly invested in solving generational problems, which is not a process that can be scheduled or timed. Some people may never achieve this and accepting that is non negotiable if our goal is to heal. The offenders must work on themselves to, at minimum, become incapable of ever perpetrating these offenses again and be able to articulate the explicit details of their offenses while taking responsibility for their actions and making personal restitution to their direct and indirect victims. Only when both victim and perp have successfully achieved these ends can they be safely reunited. Those who are incapable or refuse to rehabilitate have no place in civil society, their status or demographics are irrelevant. This applies to gang banging murderers as it does to the architects and agents of slavery, the war on drugs/terrorism, or child abusers whether or not they hold status in their communities, etc.
Demanding forgiveness for ongoing abuses is laughable and shameful. No one is entitled to being forgiven for their wrongs, especially not if they keep doing the same horrible shit over and over and over again.
Have you considered that blaming white folks for your all problems might be one of the main reasons those problems persist?
Indians, Latinos, Asians move to the US with no money to their name, work their assess off and achieve success. Do you think they are not being discriminated against?
Your "generational problems" are a minor nuisance compared to the struggles of the rest of the world. Maybe it's time to stop with the despicable victimhood and whining?
Heed my words, the biggest change to well-being of the black community will not come from the policies. It will come from within.
I’m not blaming white people as a monolith, but that seems to be what you want to interpret from my post. Telling. I’m blaming the people who made the choice to hurt others, see the bit above about without respect to one’s status, wealth ,or demographics. I meant that. All bad actors should be rehabilitated or imprisoned. Black white pink, gay straight trans or female, or Democrat. These things do not matter for the purposes of identifying bad actors.
Have you no capacity to emphasize with others? It seems you don’t. Minimization, and suggesting victims of state sponsored abuses should shut up and take it because America seems better than your cherry picked examples? Have a long face to face conversation with someone that repulses you just listen while they tell about their life. Imagine yourself in their shoes.
What qualifies you to make sweeping off the cuff assertions about all black Americans? Have you any similar assertions for gay Americans? Lesbian Americans? Trans Americans? Japanese Americans? Korean Americans? Irish Americans? Catholic Americans? Indigenous Americans? American communists/socialists/anarchists? I’d love to hear more of your hot takes on what these large and homogenous populations need to heal.
If that leads to a better outcome for them, why not? I don't believe they should live in poverty for the sake of achieving some weird intergenerational justice.
> What qualifies you to make sweeping off the cuff assertions about all black Americans?
Oh, but I'm actually not talking about all black Americans. Are you aware that the racism you talking about somehow evades Nigerian Americans, with their income being higher than national average, and poverty rate being lower (in fact being less than half that of African Americans)? Somehow they don't feel the same about police brutality.
Can you entertain the thought that this enforced victimhood mentality doesn't help black folks, but hurts them instead?
I don’t think you understand what rehabilitation entails, America, as a general rule, does not facilitate rehabilitation so it is outside our cultural knowledge. Generally speaking this rehabilitation in practice looks like restorative Justice. Punitive systems lead to worse societal outcomes. Undertaking a restorative Justice project for victims of American subjugation would require actions like paying restitution, expunging criminal records, drawing the architects and agents of these systems of repression under charges for their crimes, returning land stolen from indigenous peoples, etc.
This is not the gotcha you think it is, and if you’re going to refer to a small minority of a demographic you should name them so it doesn’t seem like you’re moving the goalposts when I take you at your words. Police brutality is not a subject up for debate, this term refers to police using force in excess of what they were trained to do. A severe problem in police departments across the country fostered by a toxic culture and poor oversight. What Nigerian or any Americans think about it is a pointless exercise. Either we hold violent criminals to account or we don’t. In America some violent criminals are excessively punished, others are not punished at all and instead celebrated for mercilessly assaulting the right people. These are systemic failures.
enforced victim hood mentality is a racist dog whistle and I’m not going to engage with you further if you can’t help but use hateful language. This article could be helpful in your understanding, however you will need to do the work of relating their examples to America and considering the adjustments to your outlook needed to drop the dog whistles and underlying prejudices.
Essentially what you're saying is: if we try policy X and it doesn't work, we need to try even harder. Rinse and repeat.
This is a religious mindset.
You know perfectly well that most of your described actions will never happen. And that is exactly why you put them on your list: it protects you from the evidence that your policy doesn't work. When it fails, you can always claim that we didn't do enough.
> enforced victim hood mentality is a racist dog whistle
Back at you. Your messages reek of White Savior complex.
You’re ascribing motivations to me when you don’t understand the definitions of the words you use. I don’t want to make you feel bad, but you might be wise to look up some things before you speak about them.
White savior complex is used to describe people who try and solve problems for people they pity. I suspect you may treat empathy and sympathy as synonymsthey are not. I’m not trying to solve any problems for any groups I’m not part of. What I am is an ally who strives to understand the realities experienced by marginalized groups and I am willing to adjust my perspective toincorporate new (to me) information. I recognize that America only has democratic freedom for rich white men and that in order to make a freer society for all there need to be systemic changes and accountability for the consequences of this power structure must be had. By learning about the experiences of marginalized people I can incorporate their views into my mine and can in solidarity for the solutions these people demand.
> I’m not trying to solve any problems for any groups I’m not part of. What I am is an ally who strives to understand the realities experienced by marginalized groups and I am willing ...
A large part of the problem is calling it a racial problem. You're declaring yourself an ally to a racial group which means that the problem then has to be universal amongst your concept of that racial group. If a black person testifies that this isn't a universal race-based problem they aren't listened to (as tautological proof of their statement) but instead lambasted as having internalized white-supremacy or whatever.
Also, 'ally' is a pretentious term in this context. Ally generally means peers who support each other not a paternalistic protector but BLM showed that this isn't how it was being used in a social justice setting. There's a video from Portland during BLM of a black resident trying to talk to a black officer and a white Antifa runs between and starts shrieking at them because it would destroy the narrative if we could simply discuss our problems calmly.
It quickly starts to look like using marginalized people as props in a fight against your political enemies more than actually trying to help them.
Understanding this key point is fundamental to understanding intersectionality, which you would know if you had read the link I shared earlier. I have extended generous benefit of the doubt to you regarding your arguments and assuming, despite ample contrary indicators, that you’re arguing in good faith. I think this comment chain serves to prove that you’re actively arguing in bad faith in violation of the site guidelines. I suggest you read those as well as the article I linked above up thread and reflect upon your words and actions while digesting the content therein.
Once again you’re using words that you do not understand. I don’t know where you’re hearing these terms used in the way you’ve used them but you would be wise to excise that source of propaganda from your life.
https://libguides.library.cpp.edu/c.php?g=1047593&p=7681898
so one person got upset and acted poorly? I hope that they’ve learned from their mistakes because they do not represent anti fascism, blm, or me. Anti fascism means to be against fascism. Fascism is anti American so to be antifa is to be patriotic. My families elders did not kill fascists in wwii to see fascism brought to America by our own minority party. America can not be a democratic state and fascistic.
another non sequiter, and failure to understand me. I am trying to speak plainly for you but you need to do your part in trying to understand me. I actually want to help people, especially the marginalized and forgotten. I won’t bore you with the details or doxx myself but I think it suffices to say that I put considerable money and time where my mouth is.
I'm quoting you. You wrote those two sentences.
> Once again you’re using words that you do not understand. [Posts link to definition of 'Ally']
That definition is clearly aspirational.
> so one person got upset and acted poorly?
A lot more than one. And when they returned to their group nobody took issue with it. Look at riot footage, a majority of the people burning down black neighborhoods were whites carrying BLM-supporting signs.
> Anti fascism means to be against fascism.
Apparently anti-fascist just means fascist. I'm sure there's an aspirational definition somewhere that says otherwise but actions speak more loudly than words.
> Fascism is anti American so to be antifa is to be patriotic.
Antifa beats people in the street for their political views. That's very un-American! There was literally a USA communist party during the cold war, but there was no USA party in the USSR.
> My families elders did not kill fascists in wwii to see fascism brought to America by our own minority party.
Surprise, it's being brought by the majority party!
> There isan ever increasing body of unbiased research unequivocally proving ...
The article we're discussing is literally about how the institutions sanctioning the research are biased and only accepting research that purports, in its very setup, to support DEI. What we see is an echo chamber where people are expected to agree with those statements.
> I am trying to speak plainly for you but you need to do your part in trying to understand me. I actually want to help people, especially the marginalized and forgotten
This is what I used your quote to show, the type of allyship you are practicing defines problems as being based on intersections such as race, and how that turns into attacks on anyone who disagrees. (Even where that outcome is absurd, such as white people lecturing black people about blackness.)
I have seen Thomas Sowell and Candace Owens being racially attacked, by supposed anti-racist allies, simply because they did not subscribe to the narrative you use. I've seen Antifa members beat unarmed people and claim to be patriots. Behavior speaks louder than words.
> South Africa’s ruling party on Tuesday defended the singing of an apartheid-era song with the words “Kill the Boer” in a row that has raised fears of increasing racial polarisation.
> The African National Congress dismissed a ruling by a regional high court last week that uttering or publishing the words would amount to hate speech and violate the constitution put in place after the end of white minority rule.
> “These songs cannot be regarded as hate speech or unconstitutional,” ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe told a news conference. “Any judgment that describes them as such is impractical and unimplementable.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/ozatp-safrica-racism-2010033...
Too handwavy, the cure for discrimination is at the very minimum adequate public funding for primary and secondary education _everywhere_ (with adequate student to teacher ratios _everywhere_).
Although the discussion is at NYU this problem is not limited to the US. The issue with this and other societal problems is that state governance is operated in 4 year cycles (much like corporations now are restrained by the next quarter). Public education is something you invest in now to see a benefit of 25 years down the road. Until we collectively solve the incentives around long term policy all other aspects of addressing discrimination fall short.
So how does increasing the funding of poor white students advance Kendi's "anti-racist" program, precisely?
Clearly there's no logical link between the two concepts of discrimination and government school funding, at best a historical one and where I live, government schools get way more funding per pupil ($10k more) than private school tuition. But that doesn't make the government schools good, as a rule.
You know that when you're describing a policy with vague words like "adequate" you are actually giving yourself an escape hatch in case the policy fails?
"The policy was great, it's just that funding wasn't adequate".
Which makes your policy unfalsifiable and almost religious in nature.
You mean like when people decide to highlight issues with diversity and representation in academia by requiring it to be addressed?
This has been the way it's gone since Kendi wrote How to be an Anti-Racist. It is racism by any other name whether somehow "justified" or not. The books in the catalog of anti-racism include great hits like "White Fragility" further exemplifying the movements innate hatred of a certain skin color. The more you go down the rabbit hole the more you realize it's been a movement to transfer all problems other non-white races have onto white people and use that to promote what is objectively racist and bigoted language and methodology. These "authors" (I use that term loosely here, they are racist demagogues) are a key driver of so-called "diversity hiring" and an overall more difficult workplace because now anything can be conceived in their framework as some sort of anti-PoC swipe. This concept of "increasing representation" has in many places replaced the meritocracy. If anything, this type of movement has an overall negative effect (as exemplified by the pejorative "diversity hire" to refer to a person who is undeserving of their position).
It's not uncommon to get silenced for having the above view of anti-racism though a cursory view of the movement will lead you to the same thing. The reason you are just seeing this now is we've reached the point the average American realized "anti-racism" is cleverly designed newspeak and it's supporters are becoming more fringe by the day. In fact, commonly, criticism of the movement is associated with "marginalizing" the experiences of "people of color" which creates a situation where the movement can do what it wants because the opposite of anti-racism, is, of course racism (in English). If you're criticizing them as the wrong skin color you "benefit from power structures designed to empower white people". There's no winning with them, and that's why the movement has taken so much ground. No one wants to be accused of racism so you end having to do all sorts of backflips through flaming rings just to show how not-racist you are.
I don't have a solution to whatever perceived slights other people feel. I do know that targeting a group of people for punishment based on their skin color is wrong regardless of who it is or what they are.
When I started to read it, I thought it would be about making a statement about how we should be diverse. Not that he would have to present only science that is about diversity.
The second I read there would be a litmus test for studies I was right onboard with him quitting.
Kendi is just advocating for a system of racial preferences administered by "good white people." That's been a hobby horse of a segment of the political left since the Nixon administration. Decades later, it still remains unpopular even among the minorities it is supposed to help: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/05/08/americans-see-adv.... But center left think tanks and advocacy organizations won't let it go. Even the most liberal state in the country defeating it resoundingly won't dissuade them: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/california-not-bell.... So keep expecting it to pop up in different guises until they manage to get their way.
As to why Kendi supports it, who knows. Lots of people attach a low price to their dignity.
Is that worse than not picking a single Hispanic, Muslim, or Asian because they are Hispanic, Muslim, and Asian?
The main flaw in your blend of anti-affirmative action argument is that at it's core it's a pro-racism argument, which supports the racist status quo as a default desirable scenario by first going out of your way to reject each and any alternative to the racist status quo.
Systems like this have historically been managed by the dominant "white people", which have unknowingly or not been advancing "white people" almost exclusively whether due to good or bad intentions, thus forming a vicious cycle. See for instance companies that employed machine learning models to drive admissions which ended up admitting candidates which already match the candidates which were already admitted in the past (white candidates from specific white-dominated academic institutions) and rejecting everyone else in the process regardless of ability.
Absolutely not. The idea that any of this is fixable with 'forgiveness' is far more insane. You can't undo hundreds of years of systematic disenfranchisement and subjugation with forgiveness - you have to discriminate in the opposite direction.
To quote LBJ, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." That's what Kendi is saying, and he's completely right.
It's not fair. Neither is discriminating in the other direction because these people are not at fault for what their ancestors did, not to mention that affirmative action policies divide people along racial lines rather than the factor more relevant to today, class lines.
Ask yourself whether a black student with wealthy parents should benefit from preferential admissions to colleges over a white student from a poor background.
If a white people said this everyone would say he is a nazi.
My problem with this quote is it intentionally ignores the plight of anyone who has nothing and isn't African American. Kendi's approach is an inherently selfish one and that's what makes it so polarising.
The answer to the societal issue of wealth disparity is not to give the poor of one racial group an advantage over the poor of another. It's to actually address the source of the problem in a manner agnostic to race. Doing anything else only serves to stoke division and racism.
Certainly I wouldn't argue for a second that we should implement policies that ignore or exclude poor white people.
He gives the example of the vision laid out by MLK in the 1960s ("judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin"), and contrasts it with that of modern social justice types, and also compares Christianity when it was persecuted in the Roman Empire, to when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
> The only way anything stops is for people to have the humility and wisdom to say “this will stop with me.”
This is how I used to think. It’s reminiscent of the thinking of the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, John Lennon, and countless others who have had noble idealism which sadly isn’t congruous with reality. Here is a quote which demonstrates the logical endpoint of this idea:
> Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.....It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.[1]
That is the logical conclusion of this idea, take your own life in hopes you’ll posthumously be considered worthy of having been spared, and worthy of having anyone intervene to spare you. Because unilaterally, arbitrarily deciding to forgive a transgressor who’s still motivated by their transgression grants permission and submission to their goal.
There is historical precedent for a similar notion being more realistic and effective: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. But what makes it more realistic and more effective is that there was significant, forceful pressure which motivated the transgressors to seek mutual reconciliation. To some extent, they were also willing participants.
Personal anecdote time: like probably many here, I was bullied as a kid. It was a shockingly regular occurrence for me to be violently attacked, sometimes even by people I don’t think I’d ever interacted with before they were beating me. I had a timid and peaceful demeanor even when some of my family strongly encouraged me to defend myself. Eventually this led to a group of ~20 kids kicking me on the ground while I covered my head and neck and hoped to make it out alive. I was 13-14 years old, I had endured beatings on a lesser scale too many times to count. Of course I knew I couldn’t defend myself from 20 kids, so I took another beating. But the next time I got jumped, by one kid, I punched him straight in the face. I didn’t even know I had it in me to do, but instinct took over. Then I got up, saw the kid who attacked me was embarrassed but physically okay, and I walked away. That was the last time anyone ever laid hands on me outside a sporting context with established consent. Now I can forgive those kids, because they’ve stopped beating me.
1: Quoting Gandhi, source: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gandhi-on-the-holocaust
In the real world, your bullies are no longer the same people, and punching them 60 years later won't address your past or future problems.
> You can’t forgive someone for transgressions they’re determined to continue
My understanding is that hate and violence in the last few decades have been steadily declining. At the same time, self-reported perception of those has been increasing since ~2014.
Maybe there's eluding racism we can all feel but cannot measure.
Or maybe a side effect of changes to social network recommendation algorithms is that we're now building echo chambers and polarizing people.
Today there's less hate, but more talk about it. And drastic measures aimed to decrease it have a high likelihood of changing the trend.
When white people have kids, they have to give their children the birds and the bees talk when they reach an appropriate age.
When black people have kids, they have to give them the same talk, and also the one where you need to be really careful about acting a specific way around cops lest they unalive you because police officers view blacks as more aggressive than whites because of prejudice.
As long as my kids have to live in a world where they need to be given that second talk? I don't care about how put-upon you are by people actively reacting against racism.
Have you considered that giving the talk and installing the idea that "cops are your enemy" might cause your kids to run away or resist the police, thus unnecessarily escalating what could be a perfectly civil interaction?
There's a speed trap in Louisiana that I passed through for over 30 years. I've never seen a white person behind the wheel of a car with a police car nearby unless it was a traffic accident, I've seen tons of white motorists pass through the area far above the speed limit, and the community is 60% white. Meanwhile, I saw black folks pulled over literally every day. Please whitesplain to me how being wary of the cops in that stretch is the fault of black folks.
Are you aware that for every example you brought up (Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd) there's a recent example of the exact same thing happening to a white person and getting no national attention whatsoever?
Your cherry-picking and emotional response is what leads to polarization in society.
> how cops have treated minorities for generations
No, this is how cops treated everyone.
> shouldn't act suspicious when you walk into a convenience store lest the employees stalk you
I understand it's tempting to blame it on racism, but please go talk to non-white store owners. They do the same thing, it's not about the race.
You have to pick which battle you're going to fight.
Either racism today is the major problem. Or there's racism in the past that lead to poverty in the present. Those are two different lenses dictating two different strategies.
You can choose to feel righteous and fight ever-elusive racism.
Or you can chose to be pragmatic and fight poverty.
Being righteous is definitely more pleasant and convincing to the masses, but it rarely produces better results than being pragmatic.
You’re at least a year behind.
Stepping aside from the main debate, how can you possibly justify this? If I'm going to be forgiven every time I discriminate, assault, and slander people, why would I ever want to change my behavior? After all, I get rewarded for it: When I do those things I gain advantages over other people that benefit me, not to mention the psychological rush of dominating others. You forgive me for those things? Over and over, unconditionally? That sounds to me like I'm your god and I can do with you as a I please.
Discrimination, violence, and hatred are antisocial behaviors. They need to be reduced in a way that is just and fair and effective. Forgiveness is none of those.
The key thing for me is we give people the opportunity to change. This doesn't necessarily mean that there shouldn't be consequences. Only that the consequences are proportionate and finite.
In my opinion, hostility towards people who have made mistakes is a major problem that holds the left back. Identity politics has been very successful in driving a wedge between groups that would otherwise have very similar economic and class interests. I don't believe that was a mistake.
I'm in no way saying that going that far is desirable. However, I do think less ideological purity and more flexibility would be beneficial in bringing in people who agree on the core values.
Like women who have abortions? Gay people? Trans people? Liberals? Communists?
I'm not against flexibility, but IMO the left is far too forgiving, and needs to be much more aggressive. the Trump right is a fascist party, and the left needs to openly recognize that.
Yes. The right are quite ready to entirely ignore pretty much all of that if you're in agreement with them on whatever other issue is currently at hand. Plenty of women on the right have had abortions. Some fairly prominent gay figures would be Dave Rubin and Milo Yiannopoulos. I don't think Blair White needs much introduction either. Ben Shapiro is quite clearly Jewish and regularly reposted by the same kind of guys that were chanting "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville. The right are practical beyond the point of hypocrisy when it comes to the topic of the moment.
> I'm not against flexibility, but IMO the left is far too forgiving, and needs to be much more aggressive. the Trump right is a fascist party, and the left needs to openly recognize that.
The left needs to be aggressive in the right way. The right are extremely effective at being extremely hateful while also guiding relatively normal, if sometimes problematic, people down a path that takes them much farther right. From what I've seen, leftists doing the same work to reach out to the uninformed and apathetic are often attacked for a perceived lack ideological purity. I've not seen that kind of behaviour from the right and I think it plays a big part in pushing people away.
Besides, elements of the left are already aggressive, in the wrong way. Personally I think allowing race to supplant class as the primary talking point has been a huge mistake. You essentially alienate a great many people who would otherwise share a common interest by allowing the issue to be morphed into a blame game with fingers pointed across racial lines.
Why is it race instead of class and not race AND class?
Also, who has been canceled inappropriately? In fact, who has even suffered significant consequences for being cancelled? My impression is that it's a band of rapists who become right wing celebrities and get book deals.
I think the people being pushed right are:
1. Generally already on the right
2. If they are pushed, it's by the internal contradictions on the left. And those internal contradictions are caused by a wavering of conviction, not an excess
It's not race and class because race has eclipsed class in the public discourse. I don't know why that is but if I was being cynical I'd say it's to sow division and limit effectiveness.
On And vs Or, there's limited space in public discourse. Introducing additional issues necessitates that space being divided into smaller chunks. Grouping the issues also only serves to narrow your potential support. That's not to say certain issues can't/shouldn't be grouped.
Personally I believe that a focus on class would be more effective in dealing with the harms of systemic racism than the current approach focused on race. While also taking a lot of steam out of the right's rhetoric.
I honestly only see harm in the current approach where upper middle class white people tell some guy living in a trailer, paycheck to paycheck, that he has white privilege and that's why he should be paying reparations and passed over for a job.
> Also, who has been canceled inappropriately?
I'm not talking about people being cancelled, I'm talking about how we engage with people who are either politically apathetic or exploring a leftist perspective for the first time.
> 1. Generally already on the right
There seems to be this insular view that we should only engage with people that already fully agree with us and it often results in attacking people that might have problematic views that they would otherwise have become open to examining. I've seen a lot of younger people who don't necessarily have fully formed opinions pushed away in this way. The same applies for people who are generally apathetic and maybe examining their opinions for the first time.
> 2. If they are pushed, it's by the internal contradictions on the left. And those internal contradictions are caused by a wavering of conviction, not an excess
Hard disagree. The demand for ideological purity is the biggest factor that pushes people who haven't quite made up their mind or don't fully engage to the right. We literally saw this play out with the atheism movement in the early 2010s.
My observation has been that orthodoxy and too many causes has alienated a lot of people that were traditionally aligned with the left.
In the UK a recent example would be the collapse of the red wall. Constituencies that had been held by Labour for up to ~80 years flipped. A key factor was that the working class in the area felt that Labour was no longer interested in representing them, with the focus having shifted to social justice and right wing press latching onto this as an angle of attack.
I don't follow celebs enough to name names here but there are many democrat-leaning ones being cancelled. It's hard to cancel a dedicated conservative in a conservative environment, but a lib can be cancelled for anything, like saying the correct messages from six months ago.
And then there's everyone not in the news. All the women kicked out of breastfeeding or ovarian cancer groups for complaining that they allow men, etc.
> In fact, who has even suffered significant consequences for being cancelled?
Parents who question what their child's school is doing. The father who the school board worked with the FBI to label a terrorist because he shouted during a meeting where he was discussion the cover-up of the rape of his daughter at school.
> people being pushed right [by] the internal contradictions on the left. And those internal contradictions are caused by a wavering of conviction, not an excess
Contradictions are probably not caused by wavering beliefs but by inconsistent or hypocritical beliefs. Combine this with an excess of conviction and usual absolute unwillingness to discuss and you have alienating opinions.
But I don't think people are being pushed "right" as much as the liberal parties are being pushed to hard-left absolutist positions. "Capitalism bad. White people bad. Men are women." The people are staying roughly where they were and the parties are moving.
If that's too much, you could at least forgive the people who had nothing to do with the discrimination, assault and slander - which is something that Kendi doesn't seem to be able to do.
Unless we see others as friends — that everyone is flawed human being, including yourself, that share this same world, and one day have to left this world altogether sooner or later, then I don't see how this problem will genuinely get fixed.
What they did instead is amped up individualistic ego and make the divide even more...divide.
What I don’t understand is why that is assumed true. If we want to encourage many different cultures to live together wouldn’t it naturally make sense that different cultures would have different outcomes in job preferences? How do you separate potential racism from cultural differences?
My fear is if there are strong cultural differences that lead to disparate racial outcomes so organizations will always be able to point out that systemic issues exist even when they may be eradicated. I don’t know how we measure this.
Obviously there are a lot of mechanisms that might change that equal expectation, but it still seems reasonable to me that for most jobs the default expectations should be around equal.
By conducting studies where you study the effect of the race variable. This has been done many times over in multiple countries and the results have shown that colored people and racial minorities are discriminated against. But despite the vast amount of empirical data, people still refuse to believe that racial discrimination is a factor in the job market.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-appli... https://www.jstor.org/stable/40276548 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/lehr-2015-000...
Study results may only suggest something, which can often have the appearance of showing it.
Well, your examples seem pretty cherry-picked and not necessarily generally empirical (ie. lots of embedded subjectivity).
Now your first link is more interesting and is usually the one that everyone pulls out as "absolute proof" that discrimination is live and well in modern hiring against Black people.
I wonder, though, how much of this is in the bias of the experimenters when they selected "Black sounding names" and how much is just unfamiliarity with an "unusual" (and by this I mean rare) name and how much is the knee-jerk reaction to a name (basically real prejudice).
For example the actual most common names for Black children in the US are – Jacob, Emma, Michael, Ava, William, Emily, etc. And I suspect they are not choosing those names on purpose.
On the other hand, my ex's sister named their son "Air Jordan" (for his first name) and their daughter Cinnamon for her first name. And I personally have great uncles with the real first names of "Snapbean" and "Squawk" (I am not joking).
None of these people are Black, but how do you imagine their resumes are accepted at large (or small) companies?
So I am wondering how much is prejudice against the person and how much is prejudice against the name?
Yes, you are missing my point. I am not insinuating anything, I am stating directly that some people might be biased against unusual (to them) names. Names that are difficult to say, spell, etc. depending on the language, or just out-right stereotypical prejudice with a name (which is what these studies just assume). I am not saying that any of this is ok, people rarely get to pick their names. What I am saying is that it might not all be based on the color of people's skin.
Begin biased against Black skin is a problem (and is the important bit in some instances). Being biased against "Black" names is also a problem, even if you can devise situations where the name is attached to a person who doesn't have Black skin. And both are racism, because they are directed at people based on the assumption that they are in a particular ethnic group, even if that assumption is wrong.
You assume a racist motive in your scenario, but what if the bias is actually towards all unfamiliar names, only some of which are black names?
The specter of racism is so great that people are expected to be free from every potential bias because it could be race-equity related somewhere.
> You assume a racist motive in your scenario
No, I don't assume any motive whatsoever. I'm talking only about actions.
You are of course entirely right that it shouldn’t matter in the decision process, unless the job at hand is “person named John”. But a point to raise is that this holds for positive discrimination as well, if the goal is to increase the number of X minority employees, then you cant optimize for that by selecting for X-sounding names if that’s a bad proxy.
Why is it your choice to make? When you hire someone, you're hiring everything they bring to the table. You might be wrong in your interpretation, but it's what you've got. So perhaps you find names beyond the pale, but why not dress codes too? Names and many other characteristics involve human choices well beyond genetics.
You do realize that the orchestras used to hire blind, that is, the audition was done with the musician hidden behind a curtain and all other factors withheld, so that the only factor that was perceivable was the sound of the music from the musician, in an effort to remove bias. And New York Times in the last year or two had an editorial decrying this as unfair, because it didn't give the correct outcome of reducing underrepresentation. The DIE crowd does not want fairness and equality of opportunity; they want equality of outcome. They want diversity hires, not hires of the maximally strong candidates.
I always find it weird that people see this is a bad thing. Equality of outcome is equity. Extra time for people with learning disabilities is equity, ada regulations is equity, hearing aids, glasses, booster seats, handicaps in golf and chess, giving bus seats to the elderly are all equity. Equity is the thing we naturally strive for in basically all aspects of life. Provide aid when we can, receive aid when needed.
> They want diversity hires, not hires of the maximally strong candidates.
That's not what affirmative action is, it's recognizing both the systematic and individual disadvantages that someone experienced and, potentially, depending on what they are, realizing that they have more potential than meets the eye. It's like basing hiring decisions entirely on leetcode challenges and putting on your blinders on not realizing that the people who have the time to waste on leetcode is a skewed sample of the population.
Who is the more impressive student? Alice who had a stable suburban comfortable upbringing and went to prestigious private high school and got a 34 on her ACT, or Bob who grew up with a single father, went to a public high school in an high needs district, had to work a part time job after school and babysit his little brother every day before his dad got home and got a 29?
The above is an example of an individual disadvantage, now apply that same logic to systematic disadvantages.
The kid with the higher score is a more impressive student. But there might certainly be a justification for giving the kid who had a tougher road to get there a leg up.
But that’s different from what we’re doing, where we apply racist assumptions and treat certain minorities as if they’re all from single parent homes, regardless of whether that’s true for the individual.
That’s not what you should have taken from that example at all, which is specifically why I used two white coded names. The point is that people grok individual disadvantages easily and giving them a leg up feels natural, and the same reasoning should be applied to systematic disadvantages.
> regardless of whether that’s true for the individual.
What you’re describing is looking at privilege through the lense of intersectionality, which nobody disagrees with.
What’s a “white coded name?” Most Black people have names similar to other Americans. E.g. here are the top names by ethnicity for babies in NYC in 2013: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/baby-names-.... The top 3 Black baby names are Ethan, Jayden, and Aiden. Playgrounds in Park Slope are full of kids with those names.
Cough. Intersectionality assumes that people's problems are the problems of their identities, and that their identities are the ones visible to others. Black, short, etc.
Identity politics seems purpose-built by "allies" to explain why the allies don't actually listen to the people they're helping.
For instance, Thomas Sowell isn't treated as an individual who disagrees with BLM's policies instead he's declared to be a defective or traitorous black man who isn't part of the real black people group.
By contrast, progressive POC are always presented as representative of their race even when they’re not. Ilhan Omar is held up as the face of Islam in America. But there’s way more Trump voting Muslims than ones who are as far left as Omar.
If equity was our standard we wouldn't give eyeglasses to anyone because blind people can't see at all.
Instead we strive for equality, where everyone is able to use the best devices they or their insurance can provide regardless of others. I can get glasses to restore my vision to 25/20 even if yours never was 20/20.
> That's not what affirmative action is, it's recognizing both the systematic and individual disadvantages
Affirmative action doesn't treat people as individuals. It's specifically about using people's visible identities (whether or not they do!) to determine how they're treated. Under affirmative action a rich black man would get a job before a poor white man and it would be defended by its supporters as undoing systematic obstacles even if the recipient never encountered those obstacles themselves.
> people who have the time to waste on leetcode
Why do we hate people who teach themselves a skill? Why is it literally considered a negative these days?
> a skewed sample of the population
They're individuals, not population samples.
> Who is the more impressive student
If I was running a scholarship this would be the criteria because it would indicate who would get the most out of the resources. If I'm hiring them to fit a defined role I only care about their current skills, not where they started.
A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level, as a consequence of affirmative action policies. The filters they had to pass through are different, and therefore an Asian person who went to Harvard almost certainly is in the top 1% of the absolute test score distribution, whereas the same is not necessarily true for the others.
Since job performance is correlated with absolute capability, and not group-relative capability, discrimination on the basis of race is rational in a society that employs affirmative action policies at prior points in the credentialism pipeline. Correcting and controlling for this would only be possible by designing resumes that don't reference achievements that have group-relative thresholds.
> A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level
Say these sentences out loud.
That doesn't change the fact that the absolute level of current ability implied by the same credential differs between groups, when the credential is conferred via affirmative action.
Based on your other comment, you would claim "Affirmative Action" is why you think this. But it is important to realize that by making this assumption at all you are expressing biased judgements on these three humans entirely based upon their race.
One of the other two could have had the highest possible score of all time, but you have written them off by making an assumption about them, based on race. You have made a judgement based on statistical inference, when you should have treated them all equally.
You may not intend it in any ill-meaning way, but it is important to realize that minor assumptions like this are pervasive, and they have far-reaching effects.
This is obviously the golden standard we are trying to achieve, but how do we get there? It's theoretically impossible to treat everyone equally and apply affirmative action at the same time. I understand there is a difference between equality and equity, but I'm replying to the words you wrote.
Affirmative action may be the best solution we currently have to deal with systemic racism, but ultimately it's trying to fix prejudice with prejudice - and that is not a perfect solution. It also creates a lot of confusion because sometimes we say to treat people equally (as you say when trying to decide between hiring candidates), and other times we say we should help out the disenfranchised (such as when admitting students to schools). So where do we draw the line for when we want equality versus equity?
My point is this is a complicated problem with no perfect solution, and people will correctly point out flaws with it both theoretically and (more relevant for this discussion) how we implement it.
Anyway, I think we mostly agree. Cheers.
I think it's important to distinguish between probabilities and possibilities. It is possible that any of them has the highest score. However, it is most likely that the Asian does.
Let me articulate this phenomenon in a more neutral example. Suppose you start an elite academy for the game Go. All of the best Go players in the world come from places like South Korea, China, etc, who have a long history of playing the game. However, you would like to increase the appeal of the game internationally, so you institute an affirmative action policy that says 50% of your students must come from non-asian countries.
Let's say you have 100 slots to fill each year, and you operationalize your affirmative action policy as follows: You take all the asian applicants, rank them by ability, and take the top 50. You take all the non-asian applicants, rank them by ability and take the top 50.
It should be obvious that, in this example, the average absolute ability level of the two groups will be quite different. The incoming Asian group would crush the non-Asian group in competition. This isn't due to any innate racial capacity gap, but due to the historical and cultural relationship to the game of Go.
Now, you educate each group together for say, 4 years. That education process may homogenize ability a little bit - helping the lower performers improve more than the higher performers (though the opposite may also be true), but it's probably not sufficient to close the rather large incoming skill gap.
Now, if you were watching a match, and the only things you knew about the two competitors were that they both attended your elite academy, and one was from South Korea, and the other was from California, who would you bet on to win?
It's entirely possible that the Californian is better! It's just less likely, given no additional information. Critically, this isn't an argument against the affirmative action policy. The AA policy is doing just what it should do - helping to close the skill gap. But it does means that statistical reasoning about racism has to be sensitive to this confounding variable if it wants to make truly accurate inferences.
However, the point that I am trying to make is that we, as a society, should be trying to ignore these obvious statistical likelihoods when we are choosing a candidate. Those statistical likelihoods have nothing to do with the candidate themselves. If we make these kinds of interpretations, we are no longer judging a candidate based on who they are, but rather who we think they might be. And who am I to make that judgement? I'm nobody special. That's all I'm trying to say, really.
EDIT Someone else in the thread brought up the idea of why there is AA for school, but not for the workplace as in my argument. It's kind of a different topic, but I think it's a good counterargument about the complexity of this. I don't really have a good answer, to be honest, but it will be on my mind for awhile now.
Ah, ok I see. I didn't understand your point then. I think we at least kind of agree on that point. What I was trying to say is that, I don't think that it's accurate to characterize the resume study as proving racism or racial discrimination, given the bias induced by AA. At least, providing they are not going further than correcting for that bias.
I do agree with you that in an ideal world, people would try to avoid factoring that in. But, it is important to keep in mind I think that hiring decisions are often extremely consequential for the people that make them (in a way that university admissions are not), and as a consequence, asking the decision makers there to intentionally ignore pertinent information is almost always going to be a losing proposition.
I think, even if people are correcting a bit for this bias in the hiring pipeline, AA is still providing considerable value to historically disadvantaged candidates, by helping them get access to alumni networks, and presumably a higher quality education and hopefully that will be sufficient to close the remaining skill gaps over time.
The truth is one. If you lie to other people and demand they lie to you it affects your entire model of the world. If there are facts about the world that you would prefer not to acknowledge they are linked to other facts. Lying consistently requires enormous effort.
* A name: must be in top 1% of test scores
* B name: must be in top 5% of test scores
* C name: must be in top 10% of test scores
The following 3 students are admitted:
* Allison (is in top 1%)
* Brian (is in top 4%)
* Caitlin (is in top 1%)
We can only safely assume that Allison is in the top 1% because her criteria certifies it. Even though Caitlin in actuality is in the top 1%, because her entrance criteria is more lax, we are not sure.
I think this is one downside of affirmative action, people are unsure if a person passes based on affirmative action or purely on merit. Now we consider the upsides and downsides of affirmative action, and decide whether it should be implemented.
Making assumptions about them based on probabilities is exactly the problem here, and it is one that we can easily avoid.
Using the credentials is making assumptions about them based on probabilities.
Is there a diverse country that doesn't have a strong history of racism?
Is US worse than India, with it's caste system?
Is US worse than China, with it's Uyghur genocide?
Is US worse than Russia with it's Slavs-only rental ads?
Mind you, those are not the examples of past discriminations.
Is it possible that the reason you know more about discrimination in the US is not because US had more of it, but because you are better educated about US?
The assumption alone is wrong yet any other assumption inevitably leads to stigmatisation and segregation.
Whatever study anyone comes up with it will inevitably turn into a discussion if either racism or discrimination.
How do you fight intentional racism, with a healthy dose of residual lasting generational effects from past racism, with passivity?
It's like creating a game with rules, but having no penalty for breaking them for the first half of the game, and then saying it's just the fault of the loser if someone cheats to beat them.
Or saying "I can't tell for sure if it's below freezing, my thermometer has an error bar of +/- ten degrees" and ignoring a bunch of freezing water around you.
If the movement to fight this spectre of "institutional" racism would focus less on applying their rules to everyone, and more on applying their rules to actual perpetrators, it would garner more support from the people it needs. To use your analogy if you're sitting in your neighbors pool and he says it's not freezing, but there's freezing water, perhaps don't blame all of his neighbors.
Others pointed out some studies which showed potential biases in hiring and that seems like a great potential proxy to understand the current level of racism in hiring.
A foundational belief here is that correlation is causation!
For example, in 1963 Yale disinvited George Wallace, who was popular in the deep south, as a speaker. As a result, observers were deprived of a chance to hear opposing speakers' arguments. To some, Yale appeared censorious. As Jonathan Rauch describes [2], that's not good for your case. Censorship is all these characters need to gain new followers. Wallace ran for president in 1968 and nearly forced a plurality which would have given him significantly more influence [3].
Early episodes of the podcast So to Speak [4] by FIRE can inform the direction that can get us talking again. Basically, open and civil discourse is the way. The podcast demonstrates, through interviews with free speech advocates, a bunch of examples showing why that is a good target to shoot for, and how to achieve it.
[1] https://archive.org/details/freespeechformeb0000hent
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0T9XSG73kY&t=4889s
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace_1968_presidenti...
[4] https://www.thefire.org/category/newsdesk/so-to-speak/page/1...
No, they also need a platform to make people aware of their existence, their views, and to recast their censorship to be in their favour. The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience.
Not all ideological disputes are about rational argumentation, many are based in a fundamental misalignment of values. Those value-based disputes cannot be resolved by open and civil discourse alone, and we know that racists have a tendency to abuse such spaces through techniques such as emotional rhetoric and Gish galloping.
The only way that this works is to exert total control of the content of all communications.
Otherwise, as in the real world until now, people find each other and network. You're talking about destroying freedom of association and expression in order to root out reprehensible people with the wrong values who could speak to people who want to listen to them.
I'm not advocating for some global censorship entity.
Ideology is not a protected class, however. In the case of Haidt, they are free to not present any research at conferences unless it advances their definition of equity, and he has no choice but to go along with it or walk away.
It's worth pointing out that they are not explicitly turning down non-equity-focused research, but that the existence of the question is his interpretation of an ideological pressure to conform.
If it even existed in the first place; there are plenty of laws that expressly allow discrimination in deference to 'religious beliefs.'
Courts, & the Supreme Court in particular, are giving far more weight to 'christian freedom' at the expense of the rest of us.
Cases include recent PrEP ruling, insane football prayer ruling that willfully ignored facts, bathroom & sports laws targeting kids. crazy ruling on prayers in court.
Adoption discrimination (de-facto govt by transitive property. we have to stop outsourcing government to contractors, especially when it makes religious orgs the only avenue).
Upcoming ruling from CO which will probably allow even more queer discrimination.
that 'pressure to conform' is and has historically been one way, giving one class the legal go ahead to discriminate in the name of some skewed idea of christian ideals
If it were not, mosques would be legally compelled to hire rabbis and churches would have to consider hiring druids for services.
Where the line ought to be drawn is nowhere near as obvious as you seem to think it should be.
But this disagreement highlights this major problem the US faces.
We live in two increasingly separate realities with different 'facts', where obvious is totally different based on your identity.
the one religious non-belief class example I gave is the football coach prayer case.
to me it's an obvious overreach and clearly breaks secular education norms (and past scotus rulings).
to such an obvious degree that the minority (on the court, majority in public opinion) broke precedence and put photos directly refuting the 'facts' the majority claim are truth.
that's also a bit spurious. i don't think anyone is arguing that churches must be forced to interview (or hire) other religions.
but the majority does believe that the state & courts shouldn't create laws that expressly allows someone to discriminate or refuse to provide service to someone else just because they are gay or trans or use different pronouns. or deny an adoption. or disallow kids from playing incredibly low states high school sports. or ban books. or not talk about gender & sexuality. i keep using queer-centric issues because that's my identity and I can speak to it better than race/trans issues. there are plenty of examples there too.
it's minority religion dictating laws that affect our lives and explicitly allowing those beliefs to take away rights from the rest of us.
We all have a strong moral obligation to root out "reprehensible people with the wrong values." If you think otherwise then you don't understand what the word "reprehensible" means.
People certainly can change over time, but someone's state at a given time is what that person actually is at the time.
Shaming is a way of silencing people who disagree with you and that only works if you do it as a mob. Otherwise you're just making yourself feel good by expressing your disapproval. Mob shaming at least accomplishes something, individual shaming is just a lazy substitute for persuasion.
Not true! Just being banned from significant swaths of social media has frequently forced many prominent Nazis/alt-righters out of business. Before Kiwifarms recently had all of their major issues, they were already finding it difficult to keep the site running as a result of continued pressure on every host they switched to.
It also introduces readers to the entirety of the uncensored internet all at once, the most 4-chan thing imaginable, which is somewhat counter to the "limit exposure to disinformation" goal being claimed by the original deplatformers.
And that substantially reduces their reach and ability to disseminate their garbage. It's good.
And yes, they're a bunch of Nazi stooges.
To your point, IIRC, the impact of deplatforming has been studied. Like when that troll Milo got bounced. It greatly diminished their reach and impact.
Sadly, some trolls (Alex Jones) have enough juice to spin off their own bespoke hate machines.
On one hand, you are acknowledging that some values are not based on rationality, and on the other hand you think they should be imposed upon those who don't share them by censorship?
In the spirit of fairness, should one actually no-platform everyone using emotional rhetoric?
Your favourite media outlet will almost certainly have a lot less to say if we do. Depending on your PoV, this may or may not be a bad thing.
Of course it's never good to allow bad arguments into the "marketplace of ideas", because then they'll take over the market, but unfortunately that ship has sailed, or likely never arrived.
Q: Who gets to define "relatively harmless"?
"Advocating for peace" sounds pretty harmless, yet if you dare to mention any specifics - at least this year - it seems supporting it is deemed anything but harmless. Before my time, but seems the same applied in 1964 – 1973.
Each of us defines this for ourselves, using our own moral compass.
I don't think there's anything wrong with advocating for peace, from a free speech aspect, especially if someone is sincere. (Even if someone is completely brainwashed by whatever propaganda. And even if peace itself is a super meaningless term. After all wouldn't a totalitarian world government bring peace? Etc, etc.)
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Rational or not, it's better for bad ideas (ignoring the even more pernicious question of who decides which ideas are "bad") to be examined than have them fester in dark corners.
Because in a liberal democracy - or anywhere for that matter - not all ideas are of equal value. The same goes for Putin's Russia as it does for, say, Finland. You have to decide what you stand for, a culture has to decide what it wants to value.
Some ideas and actions are quite obviously, objectively anti-life, pro-misery.
Two people saying the same thing or doing the same thing are not inherently achieving the same outcome, pursuing the same end goal, arriving at their ideas from the same place, and so on. All of that matters in a big way.
A liberal, human rights respecting democracy with a constitution is objectively better if human well-being is your standard, than a theocracy. We have many centuries of experimentation and result at this point, no guessing is required.
Which is to say, deplatforming two very different people that are saying entirely different things and attempting to accomplish very different end goals, is not the same thing just because they're both the act of deplatforming.
Shooting and killing an innocent person at random on the street is not the same as shooting and killing a robber that has broken into your home and is intent on harming your family, despite the fact that they both involve you shooting and killing someone. The same exact moral principle is involved in the deplatforming premise.
The problem is that you’re begging the question. You’re assuming that maximizing individual freedom is what serves well being. Most humans disagree with that premise. Studies show, for example, that Christian conservatives are both happier and have more children than other Americans. Those are “objective” measures of “human well being.” Indeed, zooming out, nearly every highly individualistic, secular western society is in decline—to the point where they can’t even take care of their elderly population without importing religious Catholics from Latin America (in the US) or Muslims (Europe). “Ability to propagate one’s culture sustainably” certainly seems like at least one measure of success at serving human well being, no? And on that measure, modern "liberal democracies" are failing.
Now of course there are other ways to measure human well being, and liberal democracies do quite well on those measures. My point is that by 2022, it should be clear that people disagree on what constitutes a good life, and societal progress. In the last two decades, we've seen country after country reject secular liberal democracy. And even in the west, reaction is on the rise. A majority of Hindus, Afghans, and Iowans agree that San Francisco isn't their dream for the future of their own society. And if you want to dismiss that as "they're wrong and we're right," what you're advocating for looks more like a holy war than "liberal democracy."
Who gets to decide what is acceptable and what isn't?
Our/society's rights and wrongs has greatly changed over time and that is only possible because of both good and bad ideas being heard.
No one person should be deciding what's acceptable for the whole of soceity. Every individual should hear different ideas, good, bad and terrible, and decide for themselves what/who they agree with.
They were doing this long before the Internet if that is what you mean! If you mean a platform as in showing up at a prestigious place, well being denied entrance is just as good, you just have your group stand outside and ask "What are they so afraid of? If our ideas are so bad/crazy/etc. can't they just easily shoot them down with social discourse?" and you get all the awareness and revision of the ideas that you want!
If they were invited to speak then they already have an audience. Censoring them is working against the cause of fighting their ideas.
Protest or debate them if you consider their views reprehensible.
Uh...reprehensible by whom?
You do realize that what's "reprehensible" is extremely subjective, right? And the same tactics and standards that you are using to silence opinions you don't like can therefore just as easily be used against you and yours by people who find your opinions reprehensible.
That's the whole point of promoting the free and open exchange of ideas, it protects everyone's ability to speak freely. And then individuals can make up their own minds about what is "reprehensible" and choose whether THEY want to listen to it or not. In other words, people don't need you to be an arbiter of what is reprehensible for other adults.
Exactly. No platforming is a naked display of power without any pretence at principle. If you can keep the power forever, great. You win. If not, well, turnabout is fair play and if you have no attachment to free speech or the marketplace of ideas yourself and you couldn’t maintain power with the benefit of censorship you’re probably in for a bad time.
Have y'all considered that this is what the "talking" looks like?
I see a whole bunch of noise about "CENSORSHIP IS RAMPANT!" and I'm kind of like, no silly -- this noise IS the signal.
In 1963, was there anyone in America left unaware of George Wallace's project to preserve white supremacy?
Why is a private institution obligated to signal boost a national leader who openly defies the law?
I'm not sure them inviting popular racists to speak against human rights is really a good look for them in that situation, nor an instant solution to centuries of systemic racism in America at that time, even if they made some really good points in the debate.
I blindly accepted your claim that Wallace was not permitted to speak at Yale. That's not true. I regret not being more skeptical. I am fail. Please accept my most humble apology.
TLDR: Yale Political Union invites Wallace. President Kingman Brewster Jr blocks. Much drama. Including local black leaders and civil rights activists, who defended Wallace's appearance per principles of free speech and academic stuff. Brewster removes block. Two student groups reinvite Wallace. Wallace declines, though he did speak at other Ivy League schools.
Described more fully p104-106 in Hentoff's book "Free speech for me--but not for thee", which you cited.
Here's 4 more articles, to round out the reality-based version of that incident:
https://yalecollege.yale.edu/get-know-yale-college/office-de...
"Free Speech, Personified" NYT [2017] https://archive.ph/LvAHn About the 1963 incident, how Pauli Murray appealed to Brewster to let the white supremacist speak, and how Yale recommitted towards and continues to uphold free speech.
Blurb from 1963 about the incident. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1963/9/27/yale-provost-br...
Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression at Yale [1974?] https://yalecollege.yale.edu/get-know-yale-college/office-de...
--
FWIW, I now don't understand your other cites. [2] Is just common sense. [3] Unrelated. [4] Might be broken.
Though I do agree with Jack Newfield that mocking racists and neoreactionaries should be avoided. We now know that right wing partisans are personally insulted when their leader is criticized or mocked. (Probably something about having their identity wrapped up in the demagogue. Who knows.) So mockery just drives those partisans further away.
For what? I don't think we conversed yet in this thread.
> I blindly accepted your claim that Wallace was not permitted to speak at Yale. That's not true.
I can see that the context changed the meaning for you. Good thing I cited the source. For me, my original comment still rings true as a summary. Wallace was disinvited and ultimately did not speak at Yale.
There are a few errors in your TLDR. Kingman was provost at the time, not president, and it was reported that two groups of law students reinvited him, not two student groups.
> Donald Kagan reported that “two groups of law students issued another invitation to Wallace, reaffirming ‘the right of students to hear speakers of their own choosing without restraint or interference from those who would like to limit the right of free expression to those whose views coincide with theirs.’
It's not clear that Provost Brewster would've allowed Wallace to speak had he accepted the new invitation from these students. Also, the book describes how Brewster, later as president, accused an established student group of "playing games" with free speech. So it's not like he had a change of heart on the subject:
> "The occasion does not warrant departure from Yale’s principles of free speech. However, the use of free speech as a game, the lack of sensitivity to others, the lack of consideration for the community, and the lack of responsible concern for the university as an institution seem to me reprehensible..."
Regardless, it does not substantially change what happened. Wallace was disinvited and ultimately did not attend. Human relations aren't so easily Ctrl-Z'ed. It doesn't surprise me that some tried to reinvite him after the backlash. As you said, many in the community stood against Brewster's decision.
These days, it is common for students to shout down undesired speakers, so it's interesting to look back at when this practice may have began. For awhile, the University of Chicago was a place where such debates were encouraged. A group of Harvard students jokingly ranked it as the least fun school, less fun than West Point, for that reason [1].
> FIRE is just another dark money funded group working on the reactionary project to roll back civil rights, assert corporate rule. and end democracy.
Wow. Just going to slip that in at the end there huh? That's quite a take down. What do you think is dark about it? They're a non-profit which makes them subject to much more scrutiny than private organizations.
As for "asserting corporate rule" and "ending democracy", I think that's a ridiculous claim. They exist to defend the free speech rights that the ACLU now declines to do, as I mentioned elsewhere [2]. If anything, they're responsible upholding democracy by encouraging people to choose words over violence.
> [4] Might be broken.
Works for me. It's the last page of their podcast listing as of now.
Oops. I initially wrote "Provost" and then changed it. I gotta learn to trust my gut more.
I stand by the rest of my reply.
> These days, it is common for students to shout down undesired speakers...
And speakers show up to be shouted down. I think all the clapping and pwnage is lame.
But what do I know?
Remember when Bernie got shouted down in Seattle? As a Bernie fan, I was confused. Why would those kids mess with the candidate closest to their own views?
I actually know one of the persons who climbed onto the stage. Afterwards, I asked the Gen Z and Y people I know, and that person on stage, about the incident.
A kid name Xander, who I respected very much, said something very interesting. Paraphrasing: "All politicians should be challenged." So he agreed with the action, despite being a Bernie fan.
I can't speak to what's happening in higher ed. And I really don't, truly don't care. All that drama is just performance art.
But clearly something has changed. Direct action and confrontation are the norms again. For better or worse.
That's right. It can be a political win for you when people don't let you speak. The audience wants to hear both sides. Anyone who acts censoriously comes off as afraid of words, as if words are violence. And that's the exact argument that many (but not all) protesters today are using, that words are violence. We can instead draw a distinction between words and violence in order to encourage civil discourse. When you don't do that, the majority naturally suppresses minority views.
> A kid name Xander, who I respected very much, said something very interesting. Paraphrasing: "All politicians should be challenged." So he agreed with the action, despite being a Bernie fan.
What happened with Bernie [1] was not as bad as other cases where violence occurred, but preventing a speaker from talking is still against free speech principles.
> I can't speak to what's happening in higher ed. And I really don't, truly don't care. All that drama is just performance art.
You don't think those protesters are genuinely expressing themselves?
I can understand how it's hard for some of them to see why blocking speakers is not a good idea. It is a bit similar to what the likes of MLK Jr. and John Lewis supported, direct action by standing in the way, as was done at the lunch counters. But I don't think either of those civil rights defenders would have supported the current movements that seek to displace speakers. They wanted their ideological opponents to speak so that they could respond with reason and win more followers.
Nonviolent direct action, in itself, is not a bad thing, but it's problematic when you use that method to prevent someone from speaking. Words are not violence, so speech should be acceptable. If it's not, then we need more speech to discover where the disconnect is. Free speech is an old idea, not a new one, and it's been proven to work. It takes some effort to understand, and I would argue that such challenging issues are the very ones worth taking the time to learn.
The objection would be if the statement is used as a tool to discriminate against good research. So this resignation should probably be treated as a vote of no confidence in the people and goals of the specific institution. I can see why the sort of people who would demand this statement would be a problem as ironically the DIE crowd seems to sometimes attract a weird sort of modern racist. Something that is always a risk when developing a race-obsessed ideology.
[0] https://spsp.org/events/demonstrating-our-commitment-anti-ra... - the "We requested the submitters to please explain whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP" link leads to the same page for me.
They would pass the reviewing process where they would receive the lowest score on the "3-point rating scale".
It would also mean by negation that the submission did not employ "diverse research participants", "diverse research methods (e.g., methodology that promotes equity)", or "diverse members of the research team", which basically would be viewed as a self-indictment in our political climate. Nobody with an interest to succeed would willingly arrive at this conclusion, they would view it as necessary to avoid it (like by making up reasons as to why the submission advances anti-racism).
In other words, the requirement to include the statement is a way of enforcing the stated goals and policing the researchers' conformity.
Is there much of a difference between this and halal/kosher certification?
It's the same as any religious group trying to impose their morality and beliefs on everyone else. To be a good person use the correct words and correct ideas as defined by us, the good people. If you disagree you are a bad person. Sinful, evil.
How can you disagree with the Holy Words, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity? You're either with us or against us. Sign here on the dotted line to confirm membership.
I assume at least some of this research is funded with public grants. That might be from where pressure can be exerted.
I'd say this about any sort of psychological theories that get intertwined into the justifications of power structures. The government should not be speculating about or creating rules about people's inner states. A government trying to change the minds of the population undermines democracy. An administration, fine, but not the government itself, with regulations paid for with tax money.
People should change governments. Governments shouldn't change people.
I wanted to explore this a bit. Let's hypothesize that the academic is in some ISIL dominated region and the caliphate says that all research must further the goals of caliphate expansion and the spread of the religion. If an academic were to write an equivalent statement - is it their core belief, or are they simply saying the Emperor's clothes are beautiful?
Given the ideal role of academia in society, isn't the latter possibility quite harmful?
Personally I feel like it makes for a very poor work environment, so I sympathize with many who are put in that position. I would prefer it if they did not feel constrained by this type of environment, so that their best work would emerge.
Ironically, DEI damages what are ostensibly its objectives.
So this can easily be taken as an argument that governments should be divorced from academia. No grants, no student loans, no degree requirements in public sector jobs. Which would be fine, I think. The arguments for why governments should fund academia look very weak these days. It was supposed to be about long range research that the private sector wouldn't fund, but what we see in practice is the private sector funding ultra-long-range research like self driving cars, AI, etc whilst public funding gets guzzled by oceans of non-replicable P-hacked ideology driven pseudo-science. And as for education, well, researchers often don't make the best teachers anyway.
Also gelatin is another one.
This DEI standard currently sounds totally subjective with no guidance on what will pass muster, which is ideal substrate for the worst forms of corruption, nepotism, and abuses of power. You know, the very things academia is thought to fundamentally oppose.
This is by grasping at straws trying to find a relationship between their decades-long research thrust and a shiny new requirement popular among the administrative class that is now in charge.
That's my biggest problem with it. It's not a bad idea by itself, but what makes it such a bad idea is that it seemingly gets shoved on top of everything. The idea that everything has to advance DEI is crazy, because some things just aren't related.
This is a classic boy who cried wolf problem. I'm sure there is racism in the US and we can certainly do a better job in advancing DEI in _some_ places. But when you go around yelling that everything has a DEI problem, you focus on the bullshit and miss the real issues.
There you have it. And will remain popular as long as it's a ticket to career advancement. Or, in plainer terms, to power.
From the mid-20th century, a satire in allegorical form:
https://mathematicalcrap.com/2022/08/14/the-great-loyalty-oa...
Edit: the link was in the sixth paragraph, but it's much less damning than the article frames it.
“In order to present research at the conference, all social psychologists are now required to submit a statement explaining 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.’”
"Evaluate the extent to which the submission advances SPSP's goal of promoting equity, inclusion and anti-racism. To do so, please consider the equity statement as well as the submission as a whole. Submissions advancing equity, inclusion, and anti-racist goals may include (but are not limited to):
* Diverse research participants (e.g., understudied or underserved populations)
* Diverse research methods (e.g., methodology that promotes equity or engages underserved communities or scholars).
* Diverse members of the research team (e.g., those from underrepresented sociodemographic backgrounds, from an array of career stages, from outside the United States, or with professional affiliations that are not typical at SPSP such as predominately undergraduate serving institutions, minority-serving institutions, or outside academia)
* Presentation content (e.g., prejudice and discrimination, critical theories, cross-cultural research). "
Note none of these things are required but will be considered.
The text from the paper submission document has a large blank labelled:
"Please explain whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP. This may include, but is not limited to: The research participants in the sample; the methods used in the research; the members of the research team(s) involved in the work (e.g., background, diversity, career stage, affiliation type); the content of the presentation (e.g., critical theories, prejudice, equity, cross-cultural research). "
Favoring research of understudied populations makes a lot of sense and is necessary.
Favoring researchers based on their own personal diversity metrics is controversial.
Favoring research whose findings support specific diversity-related desired outcomes is dangerous (and the policy may do this in practice).
It merely pointed out that some kinds of DEI input to review are almost certainly helpful to advancing science (e.g. ensuring we get reasonable samples in social research); some are controversial (e.g. favoring diverse researcher groups); and some are almost certainly harmful (e.g. determining whether the research can be published based on whether it makes a pro-DEI finding).
I honestly don’t understand your problem with this.
Historically, the majority of humanity was not a part of social science study. For example, economics has a tradition of drawing conclusions about the labor market based on data only on American white males (literally). This has been changing and it reveals blind spots in our previous understanding of the economy.
All that this policy change seems to be doing is encourage researchers in social psychology to work with a wider subpopulation than, for example, American undergraduates aged 18 to 22. It does not mandate anywhere what their findings should be.
What is so bad about this?
> Favoring research of understudied populations makes a lot of sense and is necessary.
Which is in direct agreement with what you wrote in response.
> Favoring researchers based on their own personal diversity metrics is controversial.
But it also acknowledges there are aspects others may find controversial. The policy extends beyond sample selection and populations addressed in research, and e.g. favors researchers from diverse backgrounds. Personally, I think this is useful (more perspectives good; more inclusion in science good)-- within reason.
> Favoring research whose findings support specific diversity-related desired outcomes is dangerous (and the policy may do this in practice).
And it points out that if interpretation of the policy extends too far, that by only allowing certain types of outcome to publish, it could create distortions. The worry is that the latter criteria in the policy could reach here.
Even modest publication biases can dwarf true effect sizes in social research, and can create the illusion of consistent effects and scientific consensus when neither actually exists.
Edit: it's actually sort of hilarious that Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory can't come up with any diversity angle. Is it foundational or not?
It's got the smell of someone selling a Grand Unified Theory being annoyed that they're asked to check off whether and how their research addresses gravity.
Imagine giving papers that described how they advanced Christendom priority.
Ironically, "saluting" DEI in academic papers has the opposite of the ostensibly intended effect.
Political alignment of professors favors the left by 9 to 1. If anything, favoring DEI will cement "academia's typical cronyism".
Unless you haven't actually explored the world beyond your backyard. I have typically found Haidt's moral foundations to be pretty interesting but because he's always sold it as cross-cultural. So this seems a bit odd, honestly.
Extremely likely to be a virtue-signaling publicly stunt, TBQH.
OTOH, it may get a little harder to publish research where your study population / sample is all-white-wealthy-undergrads.
Please cite how it is a "failing grade" versus not receiving the bonus for it. The bottom score is "not applicable", not "not satisfactory" like it is in other areas.
Reviewers did not receive the statements. The assessment of the statement was only a small input into the committee making final decisions primarily based upon reviewer feedback.
One of the first things I had to do as a post-doc was complete a 4-page document on whether my chair was comfortable enough.
I have been involved in major EU grant applicants that exceed 100 pages, and consist of excruciatingly obtuse questions as to how our project aligns with their institutional goals and byzantine definition of 'success'.
Without both sides of the story it's impossible to deem the truth.
https://spsp.org/events/demonstrating-our-commitment-anti-ra...
This is a money quote, and I think it's spot on. I don't think I'm projecting to say many people are personally committed to DEI but hate hate hate DEI initiatives (doubly so when they become cringey).
I've witnessed this too. It is concerning
Episode Summary
> Environmental, social and governance investing, also know as ESG, has exploded in recent years. It promises to help us solve problems like climate change and inequality all while allowing investors to still turn a profit.
>
> But BlackRock’s former global chief investment office for sustainable investing, Tariq Fancy, says it isn't what's being advertised. Recently, he penned a blog post claiming that not only are ESGs not making societal problems better, they may actively be making them worse.
Politics is becoming more and more extremist too, with the extreme left lashing out and calling anyone who even questions the status quo an extreme rightist bigot, and the extreme right doing the equivalent. And the two are fueled by both one another, as well as increasing tensions due to national issues.
This is my main gripe with wokeness. Yes I dislike the illiberalism of quotas and the collectivist nature of its moral system (collective guilt and inherited guilt). But my main concern is the right wing backlash and the consequences of that on democracy and freedom.
But if you say that, some of them will tell you that they would do that if they earn the same as men, but that is already in law...if you ask them for proof they never have any...
> Appropriate measures aimed at achieving true equality are not regarded as discriminatory.
https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1996/1498_1498_1498/de#ar...
So since Men have a shorter lifespan (even in country's where alcohol and drugs are a nogo...if someone want to come with that argument) Men should not work as long as Woman's ;) excellent!!
BTW: What are Appropriate measures?....that's a typical Swiss law, it just say's nothing..and everything ;)
This is also the case in the United States.
Prop 209, passed in 1996, "amended the state constitution to prohibit government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education."
If Prop 16 had passed, it would have allowed government agencies to deliberately and explicitly discriminate against people based on immutable characteristics.
The wording from Prop 16's advocates seems to embrace Kendi's punitive stance on using active discrimination to reach some kind of equity goal:
"Despite living in the most diverse state in the nation, white men are still overrepresented in positions of wealth and power in California. Although women, and especially women of color, are on the front lines of the COVID-19 response, they are not rewarded for their sacrifices. Women should have the same chance of success as men.
Today, nearly all public contracts, and the jobs that go with them, go to large companies run by older white men. White women make 80¢ on the dollar. The wage disparity is even worse for women of color and single moms. As a result, an elite few are able to hoard wealth instead of investing it back into communities. Prop. 16 opens up contracting opportunities for women and people of color. "
In 2020 I tried to find data and studies backing the laundry list of assertions but came up empty-handed. The wording seemed very slanted... "older white men"... "single moms"... Certainly there are disparities in society, but we must always consider, objectively, what are the root causes.
Where does it end? Does anybody want an NBA where the makeup of the teams is based on the racial percentages in society, or do people want the best players playing? Do you want the best surgeon or pilot? Absolutely I bet 99% of people on HN want everyone to have equal opportunity; in my experience, in the vast majority of American tech companies (I don't work in healthcare of finanace, etc. so I can't speak to them), if you had 2 equally qualified candidates, and one was a white man and one was a woman or a racial minority or perhaps even not-straight, the white man will usually be the one not getting the job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16
But I wonder if they could do that sort of thing based of their existing limitations for academic freedom. If an institution funded by Volkswagen wants the professors to work on car related stuff to advance technological goals, couldn't they also require them to work towards social or political goals?
tbh i always found it contradictory we don't use those federal $ to require compliance with all constitutional rights, e.g. 1 and 2a.
Were they trying to advance equity, inclusion, and anti-racism?
But thanks for bringing your bullshit, unapplicable anglo concepts to the entire world. We really appreciate it every time.
the re-definition problem has been going on for a while in this sphere, if someone needs to control the definition of every aspect of a conversation, it basically shows they have no integrity
That being said, I have witnessed this non sense during my professional career, we had meeting discussing the need to hire woman or black people.
As an engineer I can't possibly agree to that. I want to work with engineers, problem solvers. I don't think Melatonin or the presence or absence of a vagina to be a useful metric.
That's also the reason I left the Western world for the foreseeable future. It's clearly impossible to focus long enough on a problem without being disturbed by the new shiny ideology of the moment.
I think the fallacy here is that there’s a single best applicant for any given position. There are often multiple qualified candidates, why shouldn’t race or gender be a factor if you’re just going to choose arbitrarily anyway.
I am a capitalist, I am not sure which factors are the best factors when it comes to correlating with performance.
Is it hard skills? Communication? Do I need a generalist? A specialist? Is it better to hire people with ego or not?
One thing I am pretty confident is that vagina or Melatonin are pretty weak factor. And I would not trust any HR or managers optimizing for it.
I am a lot more happy since I live in a country where that does not value these things.
What are the consequences of saying "This research does not have any DEI implications."?
This sounds bad! Not all research has anything to do with equity, inclusion, or anti-racism.
>all social psychologists are now required to submit a statement explaining 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.'"
Oh, so it wasn't a "litmus test" or hard requirement.
Emphasis on "whether". His research didn't have to do anything with DEI. He could have very easily just said "This research has nothing to do with equity, inclusion, and anti-racism." and been done with it, but instead chose to make a mountain out of a molehill and rage-quit his position in this association to make himself a martyr for the anti-DEI movement.
>As of now, everybody presenting research at the society's upcoming conference will have to pledge that their work advances political goals.
This is a lie that is disproven by quotes provided in the article. Once again, you are not required to "pledge" anything. You just have to state whether your research has anything to do with EIAR, and if it does, what it has to do with EIAR.
It just shows the power of ideology to crush dissent, when obviously poisonous and destructive statements like these are accepted.
If more people thought like that, then Jews would still be shovelling Germans into ovens.
They make grand non-disprovable claims and don't operate on any empirical basis.
It's that simple. Kick out the religion before we damage our society.
Who's to stop the bullies?
Sadly, I've come to a place where I have no idea what these words mean. And at this point, I'm afraid to ask.
Can someone ELI5 what is this conflict between truth and social justice Haidt refers to?
The scientific method's purpose is to get closer to the truth.
Some research does happen at universities, but academia in its current state is far from the ideal vessel for that. (Especially when it comes to softer sciences.)
Yes, and unavoidably so. That is why it is society's task to structure the universities in such a fashion that those goals align with society's goals.
This comment is also a bit odd given the context of the last 5 years of society being ever more overrun by anti-intellectualism, that is diametrically opposed to higher learning.
This has been ongoing for ever. This happens because there's a big overlap between rich, powerful, and educated groups, and there's simply a fuckton of bad "us vs them" arguments that pick one easy to identify trait and attack anyone using that.
And of course the ongoing globalization led to a lot of job displacement. Whole regions suffered and continue to suffer heavily, and ... while the whole country reaps the benefits the affected areas only got a lip service. (And of course a lot of federal transfer payments.) This created a big group ripe for populist resentment, ready to project the drawbacks of free markets onto whatever Trump said. China. Mexico. Millenials. Green stuff. Welfare queens.
It completely taints your research and any results you might come to.
Attacking "Political Correctness" in a vague and non-specific way lets you sound noble.
As soon as you specify what that means in practice you just sound like a nasty bully (at best), so best leave that implied.
But a quick glance as the history of social science that these things are a direct response to, would reveal people "proving" that various groups are inferior in ways that mirror contemporary prejudices and reinforce right-wing politics that consistently builds hierarchical models to justify current social inequalities.
Instead it seems to be at best discounting that there is a conflct to explain or at worse is participating in the conflict by defending one side of it.
I think a stronger case could in theory be made that the conflict is non existent but it's a harder position to advocate.
It’s Galileo all over again.
So everything must be politicised. "How does your new caching algorithm promote social justice?". (If the same criteria were applied in CS).
And this will be here before you know it unless more people start calling bullshit.
This is a funny anachronism and the very opposite of science.
E.g. if your research gets the "wrong" results regarding police shootings then anyone who defends your research will have to resign: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/resignation.html?m=1
And anything regarding differences in crime numbers or IQ? Forget it.
I’d reflect on that.
I'd reflect on that.
Equity is equality of outcomes (done by explicitly redirecting resources as needed to get this result). As opposed to equal opportunity which is what is generally meant by "equality".
Or to ELI5 it's treating people differently to get them all to the same position, instead of treating everyone the same. The argument for "equity" is then that we aren't all starting from the same place. It's the same line of reasoning that justified affirmative action in the US.
- Equality: We are both free to operate in an open market to secure the best outcomes for ourselves
- Equity: You made $1000, I made $100, we both get $550
Wokes will bend over backwards to paint equality as an impossible project, claiming that it is doomed because of historical white supremacy, generational oppression, moon phases, etc. We're asked to believe uncritically that the goal of equal opportunity is equal outcome, and commanded to pursue equal outcome at all costs lest we are labeled racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist; de-platformed from all social media and made infamous and unemployable so we can't work to support our families. Equality is the American civil rights movement, equity is literally communism.
Equity is not “literally communism”, it’s the pretty simple understanding that if you always start 40 meters ahead of someone in a 100 meter race, you’re likely to always finish first and they won’t have a chance.
So we put more (and therefore unequal) resources into helping the competitor who’s having to run 40 more meters than you.
So, to each according to their needs, and from each according to their ability, more or less?
That's incorrect. The goal or schema of communism is not "equal outcomes". That might be the crude rubric of some state capitalist societies of the past, e.g. equal wages regardless of rank, but in true communism the abundance of resources permits anyone to have their needs met and for anyone to realize their full abilities.
One can criticize its naivety. But please do not conflate it with the mean and frankly misanthropic world view of the woke crowd, in which large swathes of humanity are condemned to endless self flagellation.
heh
I'd avoid using either in any polemic for a better world, and stick to the original words of the communist manifesto, which have not been bettered: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need!
Kendi is a key promoter of "anti-racism", which is described in the above quote.
Many institutions are signing on to this agenda, which requires people to view everything through this ideological (social justice) lens and to participate in discriminatory activity as described above. This lens ensures that instead of seeking truth, you will just find more social injustice. A demon under every rock, if you will.
Of course they want the blood feuds to continue forever.
We can all hopefully agree that:
A) Redlining existed
B) Redlining was explicitly racist
C) Redlining has impacts that are still felt today
Let's use an antiracist lens to talk about it and compare to a modern, liberal "just don't be racist" lens.
The standard liberal response is, "well, redlining is over, and we know now not to do that. So, problem solved, right?"
The antiracist lens might be, "there are still people suffering from the impact of Redlining. The people who benefited from it should be helping those who suffered from it." In this case, wealthy white folks explicitly benefited from Redlining. Maaaaaybe we should tap on the shoulders of wealthy white folks and say, "hey, there was a major injustice done very recently, we want to fix it, and since you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it."
My heritage is Polish. How much do the Germans owe me?
This is true for historical systematic oppression of any kind.
We're getting now to one of the bigger problems with the philosophy you're describing: What's "you" here? Is "you" people in the same genetic category as the people who benefited from redlining. Those who happen to look like these people, but share actual no genetic ancestry (say, because they were immigrants) or perhaps do not share the privilege (say, because they were born poor or had other disadvantages) might take exception. Push them too hard, you become the oppressor.
There's then a Kafkaesque attitude that manifests that says, "I don't care what your protestations are on this topic, nor will I hear your case, you belong to X [ where X is social group, economic class, identity group, race, or whatever ] and you should accept sacrifices for the great good. Full stop. If you deny it you're the enemy."
That's one reason why many people view highly "corrective" actions in the realm of social relations or economic re-organizations with a strong amount of terror. We certainly have strong examples of terror manifesting in the 20th century in completely separate parts of the world and at massive scale - always for the greater good.
Regarding your second point, that you belong to X, so you are the enemy. I agree. Except on economic class. For context, I made roughly $850k last year, and my taxes were paltry. It is because of people in my economic class and above they we have a lot of the problems we do.
If you make a million a year, you can absolutely afford to give more.
(I do this by spending my money on mutual aid projects, bail funds, debt relief, community owned housing, forest conservation, etc. I put about $350k into community projects that had little to no direct benefit for me. I say this only to deal with the inevitable, "why don't you put your money where your mouth is" comments I receive when I say we wealthy folks should be taxed much more.)
Well, there's the problem. You can't declare something fixed, and you have to have standards to check against. Those people just aren't trying and you can't write every "standard liberal" off because you personally know lazy ones.
But yes, the race-blind answer would be to help people still experiencing those first-order (lack of ownership) and second-order (lack of generational equity) problems by tackling obstacles to low-end ownership and invest in wealth and estate planning classes, assisting with secondary education, etc.
A multitude of strategies and a goal of trying those and other things until the original victims are helped, while trying not the name those victims explicitly. In doing so, helping anyone similarly disadvantaged.
> antiracist lens might be, [...] wealthy white folks [...] you benefitted from it, we're asking you to pay a slightly larger share in fixing it.
The anti-racist lens mentions race a lot. I'm not just saying that to be snarky but because I believe that's harmful. Like the news reporting thoughtlessly about suicides.
But I don't see in that view is any concern for finding the unfair beneficiaries - merely all white people. This is where it goes from looking racist to being racist.
Most damningly, anti-racists don't have any consistent or desirable ideas on what the problems are or how the funds would go to help. It's all about race, categorizing and separating and stigmatizing by race, and confiscating by race, but barely if ever about defining and planning to fix the problems for people of any race, let alone all.
> people in my economic class [from another post]
I feel that this class-based analysis is much more useful and less counter-productive.
In other words a researcher studying a topic unrelated to diversity will need to lie by claiming that there is a link.
As threat actors account for a non-trivial fraction of global economic activity [6], we expect our research to play an active role in the co-creation of a more inclusive and diverse lifeworld for the people of earth."
I do - I think reasonably - dispute the applicability of the outputs of many of our knowledge production institutions to social justice questions. (Just as I don't dispute that there are, conversely many which are).
If we find ourselves in a situation where we can't make a useful distinction between research that is and isn't relavent to social justice, I think we're at risk of our language seeming vaccuous and nonsensical.
The question that triggered his reaction is (quoting from the article) 'whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP.' Indeed in principle they could just answer that it doesn't. What is left out here is why they are asking this. If the purpose of the question is unclear then researchers may feel incentivised to lie to 'fit' the requirements.
My personal view is that this is much ado about nothing. More likely than not most people will ignore the answers. There will, however, be reviewers who use that to reject papers.
It's been a while since I've watched the lecture, but what I remember is that Haidt sees the academy seeking truth as (potentially?) incompatible with the academy seeking social justice. As such, he anticipates a day when universities will have to choose individually which path they will follow.
I suspect that's the context in which Haidt is making this decision.
A good warning to all of us to try to keep ourselves in check.
Let’s be clear: most minorities oppose explicit racial preferences, including Black people: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/05/08/america...
In a recent example, the California ballot measure that would have legalized racial preferences in the state failed overwhelmingly, including in every majority Hispanic county in the state.
But explicit racial preferences are at the core of anti racism as Kendi formulates it:
> The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.
Why does this hold so much appeal? Because the audience of Kendi’s book isn’t minorities, it’s white people. And white people who dominate university faculties and professional organizations love this because it empowers them.
For one thing, it empowers them to use race as a club against other white people.
For another, it gives them tremendous power to shape minority culture. They have the power to select the brown people who will “represent” their whole group. Want a Muslim American professor, but don’t like what Islam has to say about women or homosexuality? Easily handled. The white faculty in charge can just pick a Muslim who agrees with white people about those things instead of other Muslims. And for good measure they can be made to sign a diversity statement. No wonder it’s the dream for Elizabeth Warren types.
> In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, --a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.
IMO it's all because of virtue signaling. I would say the majority of people that push this stuff don't really care about DEI, they only care because it makes then seem righteous and virtuous, and it's a feedback loop. They do the thing, they post about it on social media, and they then get praise for the thing they are doing.
When you start looking it from the lens of "these people just want to be popular and get likes", it all starts making sense.
EDIT: I also support antiracist sentiments and policies. I’ve watched them make what I believe are significant positive impacts when I’ve employed them personally.
Join me in making equal far-right representation on all campuses a reality.
(Only the 'join me' in the above is sarcasm)
But if I'm understanding the 2nd sentence, this is so true in that these extremists feel that unless we are forced to listen to & give them a platform that they are somehow being censored.
No one is taping someone's mouth shut.
In fact those voices are louder now than they have been in my entire life.
But I'm not going to listen to it.
and yeah young people are generally more open minded and yes they are peer pressuring (subject of this complains about peer pressure). Maybe that says something..
One can change ones behavior and beliefs and maybe they'll be more accepted into the group they want to to be in.
Or not!
it's their choice that they are free to make.
No, actually if you just don't explicitly engage in hiring practices on the basis of ideology.
https://unherd.com/thepost/political-discrimination-is-fuell...
>Several studies find that between 18 and 55% of academics would discriminate against a Right-wing applicant for a job or grant. I found that 40-45% of North American academics would not hire a Trump supporter and 1 in 3 in Britain would not hire a Leave supporter.
I of course don't expect the fact to lead to any form of reflection. After all, it's obvious you can't even grasp the fact that ideological diversity is beneficial and matters while ethnic diversity doesn't matter and is often harmful.
how tf is ethnic diversity harmful?
also my comment had nothing to do with hiring.
but to respond anyways:
ideological diversity !== making room for racist, homophobic, christian nationalist or otherwise hateful people.
and people have every right not to want to have to work and sit next to someone who is actively working to make their life worse, take away their rights, and or who are simply diametrically opposed to their very existence and often overtly bring this with them into said workplace. e.g. see all the other threads on hn that have to do with race and gender.
> someone who is actively working to make their life worse, take away their rights, and or who are simply diametrically opposed to their very existence and often overtly bring this with them into said workplace
Isn't it amusing that these descriptions fit DEI advocates perfectly?
If this is the way NYU operates, it is no longer a university.
I wrote a long bit about this in "One on one meetings are underrated:"
When hiring, I rely heavily on recommendations from people I know, or at least know of. To use some Silicon Valley jargon, I rely on "social proof." If a good engineer with whom I’ve worked recommends some other engineer or project manager or product manager, that counts for a lot with me.
I recently tweeted this idea on Twitter and James Youngman responded, “It seems to me that this kind of approach is what perpetuates the domination of the industry by an in-group (who know each other, directly or indirectly) at the expense of outsiders, to the detriment of both diversity and fairness.”
That’s a valid concern. We all have a professional and ethical obligation to be sure that we hire a diverse workforce; that is, the workforce must be open to anyone who has real talent. In my experience, there is no contradiction between that obligation and a requirement that a candidate be recommended by someone we trust. Assuming you have friends and colleagues who understand their professional and ethical obligations the same way you do, they should be able to give recommendations on people they know or put you in touch with friends of theirs who can offer such recommendations. Within your extended social penumbra of friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends, you should be able to find someone who can vouch for most of the candidates that you need to hire. You just need to put in the effort, chasing down those recommendations through extended chains of acquaintances.
This approach very much works when you are hiring novices who are straight out of school. It helps to stay in touch with friends and colleagues who are teaching or mentoring at schools or the software developer bootcamps. Back in 2018, when I needed some junior-level frontend software developers, I hired several women from the Grace Hopper program for women that is run by Fullstack Academy. In that case I spoke with some experienced friends of mine who had either taught at the school or volunteered as mentors. As such, they could point me to those who were the best of the graduating class and I ended up with an unusually excellent team of novices.
[I then tell a story from 2009, when I go to a job interview, and they give me a technical test: to find the problems in their code. And yet, they didn't know what they were doing, and their code was horrible. Here is the conclusion of that story:]
...Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, nor did I want the job. He was looking to hire software developers who would be willing to follow his idiosyncratic and unprofessional style. I wasn’t interested.
I tell this story when I’m being critical of certain kinds of coding tests, and hiring managers respond, “Well, that is an extreme and ridiculous example.” It is indeed extreme and ridiculous, therefore, it’s easy to see the problem. Yet, even when tests are less idiosyncratic than that one, they will still reflect the values, skills, and aesthetics of the person doing the hiring. How could they not? Anyone who hires someone for their team will want someone who is at least somewhat consonant with the style and goals of the team. Wanting that consonance is reasonable, up to a point. Certainly, when I hire, I’m looking for someone who either shares my aesthetics or is willing to learn my aesthetics. That is, I explicitly recognize that there are subjective factors that shape hiring decisions.
Whenever I say this, I get pushback from people who say some variation of, “This is why tech remains exclusive, with a dominant in-group that never changes, because the people with the power to hire only hire those who are just like them.”
I, however, would say the opposite is true. The only way to make the profession of software development (or the profession of marketing or operations or sales or law or any other profession) more diverse is to explicitly recognize that all hiring contains a subjective element, and that one of the goals of hiring must be the creation of a diverse workforce, open to anyone with real talent. Only after you’ve explicitly recognized that there are subjective factors that shape hiring can you explicitly move to build a diverse workforce. By contrast, the pretense of objective tests has too often served as a smokescreen behind which lurk forces that conserve the status quo.
If the moral urgency of this issue leaves you unmoved, consider the practical element: everything you need to know about a candidate you can learn from recommendations and by talking to the candidate. If you ask them direct questions, and you ask follow up questions until you are sure you know everything that you need to know, then you will discover what you need without wasting time on tests. This is faster for you, and it is faster for the candidate, and therefore this is both more fair and more efficient for everyone.
This is not to say that I never use tests. I use tests all the time. Not because they are objective, but for the opposite reason: they often reveal some of the subjective factors that are essential for making good hiring decisions. If I am interviewing a junior level software developer, and I give them a challenge that only a senior level software developer could handle, I’m not actually looking to see if this developer can do the work. I know they can’t. I am looking to see if they panic, or if they remain calm and ask me all of the questions that they should be asking me.
For others who view this DEI addition as positive, it gives them an explicit place to call out areas of focus. For people who are looking for DEI-impacting work it's a much simpler filter than abstracts or full papers.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/01/20/jordan-peterson-re...
I would source a publication more well-received by the Hacker News moderators, but I couldn’t find any stories published by those sources. This reporting bias seems to be more and more common unfortunately.
Wow and I thought psychology was a pseudo-science before!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
Sayre's law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." By way of corollary, it adds: "That is why academic politics are so bitter."In this instance a statement simply saying their research doesn't perpetuate discrimination !== mandating your research must do ___ whatever ___
if the research does somehow discriminate, simply not accepting it into this particular society or some conference doesn't wipe it off the face of the earth or send someone to woke jail.
no one is forcing you to accept concepts of diversity & inclusion worldviews.
or that recognizing and trying to correct real factual imbalances somehow means that the 'other' group must be treated worse or be discriminated against.
multiple recent WSJ editorials are super similar to this article.
----
"‘Implicit Bias’ Training Cost Me My Nursing Job" [1]
the author argued that that training would have required her to 'discriminate.'
instead of the reality of a discussion highlighting the real, legitimate, and actually factual disparities of treatment and higher death rates of POC.
correcting imbalance !== actively treating white patients worse.
no one is mandating that we lower treatment quality to level the playing field. instead of trying to correct and raise everyone up!
btw a very common refrain: they knew this without actually taking the training?
----
"The College Board’s Racial Pandering" [2]
Glossing over the weird argument that funding pre-k is somehow bad because test scores have remained stagnant.. hand waving away huge benefits, including for the economy, printed by the wall street journal!
Author makes another false equivalency and presents un truths.
The addition of a new AP course on afam studies does not somehow take away from remedial math & science classes.
No one is forcing students to take this class.
author claims some ambiguous liberal education propaganda machine is aiming to "turn students who haven't even learned to read and write into social-justice warriors"
what student who can't read are taking an AP level course?
Author even spends paragraphs writing about what he assumes will be taught even though he says himself he doesn't even have a syllabus.
he complains that the afam course will ignore jewish & asian discrimination!?!
what? 1: we don't know this. 2: even so, that's not the subject of the course!
his language like "pander to black kids" sends shivers down my spine.
----
I love WSJ reporting.
But the anti-factual junk they are printing in their opeds makes it hard to read.
At least they are still labeling it oped, unlike fox news.
i've written to apple news so many times. they will put non-factual, non-reporting opinion on the news feed and not label it, presenting it as real news.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/fired-from-my-nursing-job-for-r...
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-college-boards-racial-pande...
After the 2016 presidential, I binge read everything that might provide a clue to what just happened. Haidt was highly recommended. (Corporate media has a radical centricism fetish.) So I read all his words.
Not impressed.
This review of Haidt's Coddling of the American Mind [2018], by another professor, perfectly captures my own reaction to all the cancel culture boomers:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2520208235
This is a very narrow and small-minded book parading as a big thoughtful one. It says it is about the American Mind, but the data and the theory only support "the coddling" of a very narrow subset of the American mind: upper middle class college kids born after 1995 that got to college in 2013. As far as that group is concerned, this is really good advice. I totally agree with his three untruths--your feelings are not necessarily true, the world is not good and evil, and adversity does not make you weak. I also agree that children need lots of free play and that social media is bad for kids and they are over-protected. There is nothing to disagree with here (even though I sometimes chafe at "when we were kids..." arguments)
HOWEVER, using this group's specific problems, the authors make vast over-generalizations. The few anecdotes highlighted are meant to be examples of a deeper problem, but to me, they are the sum total of the problem. Left leaning students are behaving very badly toward conservative speakers. At most, there are 10 or so highly publicized events that seem to play on a loop among conservatives and intellectual dark web types. And there are no defenses to these behaviors, but it hardly represents our nation. And they provide no data whatsoever that it does. It's too soon to even tell that the next generation will be like this one.
And for people who seem to care a lot about both sides arguments, they seem to leave out a lot of counter-examples. Here are a few:
1. They talk about the metoo movement once in the beginning. Is that not a product of this "call out" generation? None of us "old" women had the "balls" to speak truth to power like these young women do. Good for them.
2. And the Parkland teens and all the ways in which this generation is more compassionate and engaged than we were. My generation (I'm 40) thought it was cool not to care about anything. My middle school kid stays up after school making protest signs and watching political debates. Is that not progress?
3. The authors also focuses on one particular subset of an entire generation (left-leaning, and mostly women and LGBT or Trans students asking for safe spaces). They leave out that Gamergate and the trolls and the alt right are also made up of this generation. Why not talk about them at all? Seriously. They are literally the same age and except for one aside in the entire book that "the right does it too" there are no examples at all of the right doing the thing they are decrying. It seemed like a half-assed "both sides" argument without support.
4. Do you know how many books I've read written by old people decrying the hippie generation of the 60s (Alan Bloome's Closing of the American Mind is an example)? Bloome was talking about Haidt and Luianoff. Boy do they grow up fast.
5. It makes me sad that more people will read this book than will read books highlighting actual big problems like inequality. The authors give a nod to the fact that inequality should definitely be remedied, but they would rather you do it the right way and not call it "social justice."
Again, I agree with all the parenting advice and the cognitive behavior advice, but this is not a self-help book. It's meant as a polemic and it strikes at the wrong target.
Hiding in plain sight, as they say xD
But maybe you're just acting the clown to highlight the very issue this comment thread is discussing: inability to discern shades of grey due to polarization.
And I like this phrase: "inability to discern shades of grey due to polarization". It is well-said. Many intersting intellectual discussions are about exploring shades of grey in a difficult topic.
There are plenty of academic legal societies very interested in “states’ rights”, “returning to the constitution”, “memorializing the Confederacy”, etc. I don’t see a important distinction between an explicit statement and dog-whistle so thinly veiled that everyone knows what it stands for.
That’s an interesting statement.
I’ve personally attended a memorial ceremony hosted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy where a Black woman spoke for an hour about the conditions under which Blacks, both enslaved and free, existed in the Confederacy. She was a UDC member, which means that she was a thoroughly documented descendant of a Confederate soldier. In her case, that was a man who was offered his freedom in exchange for military service.
You say “everyone knows it stands for”, but my experience says that a more truthful statement would be “most people believe they know what it stands for”.
Deliver or be proved the bullshit artist you are.
first: tone & language means this is silly of me to reply.
second: how about basically the entire existence of the US
so many examples of government & local police enforced white ethnic activism and active racism & enslavement.
fugitive slave act. legally forced segregation & jim crow laws.
Also, you were not explicitly asked or referenced in my comment so your first point is irrelevant.
Yes, especially dense.
you clearly asked "Can you give me one example where such a society was allowed?" that is past tense, not bounded to now. I answered. You are wrong.
Oh and BTW white ethnic activism is alive and well.
What is the implied real-world loss by this man choosing to no longer (according to wikipedia) do research to help the Democratic party win over conservatives and libertarians?
I genuinely cannot imagine a scenario where I’m actually concerned that somebody who is described as a “thinker” voluntarily chooses to stop… “thinking”?
There’s a large scale pushback against this new religion and it’s happening fast.
> "The telos of a knife is to cut, the telos of medicine is to heal, and the telos of a university is truth."
Since when is "truth" a verb?
An example from the Barnes hoax <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/06/us/jazmine-barnes-arrest....>, which occurred just before the Smollett hoax:
>But to civil rights activists, including Shaun King, who received the tip that led to the arrest, the race of the suspect did not upend the meaning of the case — for Jazmine's family or for the country.
>"We live in a time where somebody could do something like this based purely on hate or race," he said on Sunday. "And that it turned out to not be the case I don't think changes the devastating conclusion that people had thought something like that was possible."