Images of what I imagine to be their yearly performance goals rush through my head as soon as it turns to victim, race, oppression, etc.
"25% of stories uplifting Black voices" etc.
It just seems so forced.
"25% of stories uplifting Black voices" etc.
It just seems so forced.
For example, would the same people who say "we focus too much on race" view Desantis's policies and opinions as "race neutral"?
Well, I disagree with that.
I just said NPR specifically focuses too much on identity politics, and I think Desantis is implementing anti-LGBT, anti-education, anti-freedom and anti-democracy legislation.
I dont support the dichotomy that one must either desire an abundance of identity-based journalism or be blind to the issues minorities face. I think many of the problems this country faces, which may disproportionately affect minorities, can be covered without it being race-based. Poverty, healthcare, education, environment, climate change, foreign policy affect all.
Unless the person has done something worth mentioning that isn't being mentioned only because of their so called "identity" I've zero interest in hearing about it, and would consider such a discussion to be bordering on racist.
For example, one interviewee in the trump reelection campaign said they talk a lot internally about obstruction. And so, the campaign has lined up a bunch of politically aligned people ahead of time to take over key departments in the US government if trump gets re-elected, so trump can change a lot of government policies on day 1. I find that fascinating. No matter your politics, it’s interesting to know that the “opposing parties, taking turns governing in different ways” angle seems to be getting stronger.
Hearing from people I don’t have the opportunity to understand in daily life is exactly what I listen to podcasts like this for. I’m glad this coverage exists.
No, it starts from the position that race is not the most important facet of a human being's life.
> So without intention you'll simply perpetuate the negative voices.
Almost none of a person's daily life is dominated by racial issues, except maybe people who specifically work in that field of course, and so very little news would have racial relevance. Going out of your way to use race as a lens on every issue is why it's forced.
I won't presume to know your race but many americans do not live with such comfort. Studies have documented how race is correlated to outcomes in everyday encounters such as traffic stops, employment interviews, rental applications, health care treatment, and school performance.
Traffic stops, employment interviews, rental applications, and health care treatment are not events a single person experiences every day, so even if race was a huge factor in all of them, and "huge" is debatable, this is all besides the point.
Really? You don't think the outcomes from those events impact your everyday life?
The long game has always been to take some contentious minority status and make it boring and commonplace. An example where you can see the success of the LGBT movement in real time is how "coming out" for gay folks is fading away because it's not some big deal most places anymore. Saying you like girls is trending towards the moral gravity of saying you prefer chocolate ice cream.
And how we got to this point is by making sexual orientation a lens on lots of different issues — gay marriage, sodomy laws, public indecency, access to prep, blood donations, aids treatments,... until people just start to consider their existence by default. You stop having to "advocate" for them.
And in an ironic twist of fate one of the largest contributing factors to lgbt acceptance happening so fast was huge amounts of marketing pushing pretty white people, specifically pretty white femme women as the least offensive gays to raise all ships with the tide. Once you see it you can't unsee it, the same playbook is happening with the trans folks with pretty white trans women and afab enbys.
I can't say race "dominates" my daily life -- but as a matter of politics it probably ranks #2 after issues directly related to income (mostly taxes). And I can confidently say that almost all of the negative in-person interactions I've had in my life have almost exclusively been because of race.
Why do you think racial politics works so well? Why do Black women align more strongly with racial causes than gender causes? Is it because gender issues aren't really important? Do you think that if there was less identity politics that things would actually be better for minorities? Or would it mostly be better for the majority?
That said, I don't discount the impact that both implicit and explicit racism can have. I just think it's important to take a more holistic view rather than falling back on identity as the main causal factor.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/us/slavery-black-immigran...
[2]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2007/03/18/black-immigrants-c...
[3]: https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2021-10/the_a...
[4]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-inheritance-of-black-...
[5]: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/07/black-women-...
I'm sure it does for many, but the question is why does it rank that high? Is it because it materially affects your life, or because of other qualitative, personal reasons that don't have much material impact? You just said that material impact ranks higher than race (eg. income, taxes), so do you think race has a higher material impact on you than foreign policy, or education policy?
> And I can confidently say that almost all of the negative in-person interactions I've had in my life have almost exclusively been because of race.
I'm genuinely curious whether you think a white person in your place would not have had most of the same negative experiences, all else being equal. You said "almost all", so if we put that at 80%, do you really think white people in your same circumstances (education, socioeconomic status, etc.) have only 20% of the negative interactions you experience? Doesn't that seem a bit implausible?
Isn't it also plausible that at least some of those people were already angry at you for other reasons, and then used racial insults because they knew it would anger you in return? Also a shitty thing to do, but it's meaningfully different to say that you had a negative interaction caused by your race, as opposed to a racist insult caused by a negative interaction.
> Why do you think racial politics works so well?
Because human beings are tribal and love defining in-groups for solidarity and blaming out-groups for their problems, justified or not.
> Why do Black women align more strongly with racial causes than gender causes? Is it because gender issues aren't really important?
Yes, most gender issues these days are relatively unimportant compared to historical norms, and shared culture defines in-groups more strongly than gender.
> Do you think that if there was less identity politics that things would actually be better for minorities? Or would it mostly be better for the majority?
I think this is a false dichotomy at the core of identity politics. The most significant objective group that materially impacts literally everyone is class, and identity politics is an excellent tool for destroying class unity. Power intentionally amplifies identity politics to play on people's tribal instincts for exactly this reason.
Probably so. At least more day-to-day. At the extremes I imagine foreign policy could be huge (if we go to war with China, for example), but even the war with Ukraine/Russia has had little impact on my day-to-day life (that I've noticed).
> I'm genuinely curious whether you think a white person in your place would not have had most of the same negative experiences
Probably not. And to be clear, these aren't small day to day interactions. But major negative interactions I've had in my life. From being put up for adoption because my birth-moms family didn't want her to have a black child (I have this directly from my birth grandmother), to being picked on as the only black kid in my class, to having my fiancée say that her family won't come to our wedding due to race (never got married, so won't know if they'd follow through or not -- but it put an extra strain on the relationship that didn't help).
And these are selected examples where race was explicitly noted as the reason. There's also a bunch where race wasn't noted, but I have strong suspicions. And while this makes me cautious, it doesn't make me disengage because most day-to-day interactions with people are tend toward quite positive.
> Because human beings are tribal and love defining in-groups for solidarity and blaming out-groups for their problems, justified or not.
These tribes are social constructs, as it applies to identity politics. But you're ignoring the fact that real politics have been used against the out-groups. Whether it was slavery, internment camps, home loans, segregation, medical care, etc... Sure you can say, "their just constructed tribes", but when one tribe has used this construct to great advantage -- it won't go unnoticed. And I'm unclear if you're saying it should be ignored or that the advantage gained doesn't exist.
What's an example of a race-based policy that has been or you think can be realistically enacted that has had or should/will have material benefits?
> From being put up for adoption because my birth-moms family didn't want her to have a black child (I have this directly from my birth grandmother), to being picked on as the only black kid in my class, to having my fiancée say that her family won't come to our wedding due to race (never got married, so won't know if they'd follow through or not -- but it put an extra strain on the relationship that didn't help).
That all sucks and I don't at all doubt that such people still exist, but I'm confused how you think race-based politics would help. To recap, you said that race issues are #2 in your political priorities after material/economic issues, ostensibly because of experiences like this, so what sort of municipal, state or federal policies or laws could be enacted that would help?
> But you're ignoring the fact that real politics have been used against the out-groups.
If identity politics have been used against out-groups, I'm skeptical that you can fix it by doubling down on identity politics in some "opposite" direction.
> And I'm unclear if you're saying it should be ignored or that the advantage gained doesn't exist.
Depends what you mean by "ignored", but to be clear I've been saying a few things:
1. identity politics is a pseudo-zero sum game and divides people who should unite against the people with the actual power.
2. class politics is materially more important than identity politics.
3. groups that have been disproportionately disadvantaged by identity politics, as you point out, are also disproportionately advantaged by a focus on class politics, and this has been born out by studies on the economic impacts of class-focused policies vs. identity-focused policies.
You don't have to ignore history to ally with someone against a common foe.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Act is an example. Affirmative Action is another example that I have mixed feelings on, but an example nevertheless. Other examples include things like access to voting, typically at a state level.
> but I'm confused how you think race-based politics would help.
Those were personal interactions meant to show where the underpinnings for where racial identity comes from. I don't think there's a policy that would fix those things.
> If identity politics have been used against out-groups, I'm skeptical that you can fix it by doubling down on identity politics in some "opposite" direction.
It's been the only thing that has worked so far. Slavery didn't stop because people suddenly forgot about identity. But rather because there were people who fought against it. The "opposite direction" doesn't mean being "equally racist", but rather not being racist AND mitigating against leverage created by past racism.
> groups that have been disproportionately disadvantaged by identity politics, as you point out, are also disproportionately advantaged by a focus on class politics,
The problem is that once this association is known the in-group fights these class policies too, even if it would've helped them. Aka, Drained Pool Politics. Welfare is a common example of this. Or even healthcare reform. Public school funding another. And if you're not aware of the underlying reason for this it'll be exceptionally frustrating because it will seem like they're going against their own interest.
It’s part of the reason polls show some minority voters shifting towards Trump. They don’t see their opinions and beliefs reflected in white progressivism, even with the surface emphasis on DEI.
I have started reading the piece by Uri now and it basically confirms what I was imagining.
"He declared that diversity—on our staff and in our audience—was the overriding mission"
"Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system."
Pretty much guaranteed that they were trying to hit race/gender quotas.
If NPR wants actual diversity (of opinion), they should consider tracking the political affiliation of the people they interview in their database. But in my experience, DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) never seems to include a diversity of political views. I find that very suspicious.
I think it’s quite on the nose for organisations to cater to that community explicitly. And the wider population is far more diverse than that.
Some opinions are not worth entertaining. If NPR were broadcasting the rantings of flat earthers, Sasquatch hunters, and anti-vax weirdos, it may be entertaining but it wouldn’t be news.
Also: the reason DEI initiatives ignore “diversity of political views” is because that is not a trait you are born with.
Is that true? You're born from your parents[0]. I don't think it's actually much of an important distinction that you would have different socialization if you were adopted. Younger LGBTQ/NB people don't agree with this nearly as much as they used to, for instance. Several of those groups are just things you decide to do.
[0] as the vice president said: https://twitter.com/brownskinthem/status/1712665740069724184
So is every other society in history. I'm sure ancient Greeks were convinced that they had it all figured out, too.
Fish don't have a word for water. Spend a significant part of your life immersed in a society with a radically different worldview, and it'll be very clear just how arbitrary team blue/red complaints about bias are.
You don't actually want unbiased reporting. It would be either useless, or make you extremely uncomfortable all the time. You're just unhappy that it's got the wrong bias.
Its a balancing act. Like every balancing act, you can fail on both sides - by being too open minded (and believing Alex Jones or whatever), or by being too closed minded.
I think if you live in a country where half of the population has some particular view of the world, you're being a bad democratic citizen if you don't take the time to understand that point of view.
I think its much healthier when news sources actively struggle against the pressure to be an echo chamber. And be self aware enough to know their own biases & make them clear to their readers. I also like hearing the reasonable arguments against their position: "We endorse candidate A, but here are some reasonable criticisms of A that their opponents bring up."
The Economist does this. Other commenters in this thread mention the New York Times does this. Generally, I want to follow journalists who know more about the topic than I do, and can help me see a bigger picture.
Surely you can see the difference between airing the view that it's reasonable and expected for the modern IRS to have significantly fewer employees per capita than they did before the advent of computers, and airing the view that autism is caused by Lizardmen.
Computers can do audits and litigate cases now?
The vast majority of the contemporary debate revolves around the defunding of the IRS's legal team and their ability to hire external council, and the observed fact that they have been pursuing less and less tax cases over time against large companies in particular.
there's a number of reasonable "defund the IRS" arguments I could entertain, such is "tax collection is bad", but the idea that computers simply means the cuts in IRS employees is "reasonable and expected" just ain't so. The cuts were directly agitated for by lobbying groups like CEETA, of which Microsoft is a member, Microsoft having a massive pending IRS tax case.
The other side of this coin is that every time the IRS audits anyone, they have to incur significant uncompensated costs to deal with the audit even if they've done nothing wrong. Anyone subjected to this obviously and reasonably is not going to like it, and allowing the government to convert all of the efficiency gains from computerization into more staff to impose those costs on innocent people is not inherently the right thing to do.
> The vast majority of the contemporary debate revolves around the defunding of the IRS's legal team and their ability to hire external council, and the observed fact that they have been pursuing less and less tax cases over time against large companies in particular.
How many staff they have and who they target with those resources are two separate issues.
> the idea that computers simply means the cuts in IRS employees is "reasonable and expected" just ain't so.
If they had N employees doing audits and M employees doing clerical work, and now computers mean they only need 10% as many employees to do clerical work, it is completely reasonable to say that they should now be able to do the same work as before with 10% as many clerical employees because that is what happened.
They may be two separate issues, but they are two interconnected issues, as with limited legal resources its more profitable to audit average people than to audit the wealthy who can evidently hold you up in court for decades, whereas with more legal resources there's more of an incentive to go after the high-hanging fruit since you'll already have the low-hanging fruit covered and have exhausted their resources already.
Suppose the IRS can audit a thousand small businesses and they recover more from this than their own costs. But at the same time most of the small businesses are innocent, and the audits collectively cost them several times as much as the IRS "profits". This is not a socially beneficial undertaking because the net costs across society exceed the net benefits, even if it has higher margins to the IRS than auditing large companies.
If you specifically want the IRS to target large companies then you can have them do that regardless of whether the margin of that to the IRS is less lucrative than the behavior that imposes more uncompensated costs on smaller businesses.
It's not really all that hard to earmark a certain amount of IRS funds to only go after companies over XX size. I think this is actually essential under neoliberalism because one of the fatal flaws of neoliberalism is giving large companies more wealth & power and then expecting to be able to tax that back to fund the welfare state, which generally falls on its face as you've just given large companies all the wealth and power in the world to stop that from even happening. If neoliberalism is to survive as a political ideology and for us to not end up adopting socialism (which is bureaucratic and corrupt and inefficient), it's sort of essential that organisations like the IRS have a decent amount of power and for them to direct that power at large institutions.
Most of their reporting does have a left bias, and of course opinion even more so.
But they do have some serious, thoughtful conservatives in their opinion pages. Like David French and Ross Douthat. And they have reported on controversial issues like the dangers of medically transitioning minors. David Leonhardt points out the places where conservative arguments have facts on their side, like how closing schools during Covid for so long greatly damaged learning outcomes and was a bad decision overall.
It eliminates blind spots that come from only considering views confirming an ideology and thus getting important stories wrong.
Balance isn't positive or useful when it shifts things further one direction, especially when there's such a massive shift.
It’s hard to find a thoughtful full on Trump supporter, because his “arguments” don’t lend themselves to thoughtful reflection or analysis.
Trumpism believes in nothing but suborning yourself to Trump's will and needs. Sure there's some vague isolationism and xenophobia, and some pandering to Christian nationalism, but the only consistent policy position is fielty to Trump. That's why there aren't any interesting Trumpist pundits. The House is twisting itself in knots right now because they can't decide what he wants or will tolerate regarding Ukraine funding. A real party with a policy would have an articulatable agenda, probably with some dissenters on this or that, but all the current Republican party can agree on is how great dear leader is, and Democrats are bad.
Some of their editorials are nutz but many, on both the left and the right, are exemplars of journalism.
You do a serious disservice to David French by including him in the same boat as Ross Douthat. Mr. French does often post thoughtful pieces from a conservative viewpoint, but most of what I’ve read from Mr. Douthat is quite the opposite.
Indeed, most of what I’ve read from Mr. Douthat is just a thinly-veiled sermon that paints “liberals” as one-dimensional characters that (along with our whole society) just need to find god. A conservative catholic god, specifically.
Really, he’s a religion columnist masquerading as political commentator. And not a particularly good one, at that.
David French, though, is a decent writer.
Check out the Matter of Opinion podcast. Douthat is very comfortable engaging in give and take with liberals who have very different views. He presents orthodox Catholic opinions yes, but he’s intelligent enough to understand what’s a good or a bad argument.
My other problem is that I just find his writing and rhetoric to be very weak.
I think publications like Unherd, Compact, and of course Taki's Mag have their fingers closer to the pulse. I don't endorse the contents and can't even vouch for the quality of the writing, but it's not an ideological dead-end in the way the NYT, Atlantic, and National Review are.
Those other publications do indeed have their fingers on the pulse of the dominant populist faction on the right, just like their progressive counterparts have their finger on the pulse of the populist left. But those aren't the only (or in my view, at all) interesting things to read about.
It's fine (good, even, IMO) that you disagree with conservatives (I do as well), but that doesn't mean they don't exist. The "normal people" that you've met, or that I've met, are not a good sample of the range of political viewpoints that exist.
The people who voted for Reagan and HW Bush and John McCain - who was way more popular than any current Republican leader, and put up a strong showing against Barack Obama, the most popular politician of our era - and Mitt Romney haven't all died or joined Trump's weird and actually pretty tiny cult of personality. They're still out there stewing about what has happened to the Republican party.
Diversity is implemented in a strangely homogenous way where there is only one monoculture. One correct, diverse way to run such an organisation.