Whew! Is it April already?! I’ve been so caught up with new conversations recently that I only just realised I still hadn’t posted the follow up to this conversation from all the way back in January! My run-in with Mrs C generated a little controversy and a lot of great analysis, so let’s slather on some context. In my article, The Racism Arms Race, I coined the term “mutually assured racism”, to describe the growing phenomenon of tit-for-tat racial violence and discrimination. I highlighted the fact that it won’t end well for anybody. Black or white.
Steve, I see your perspective as more consistently focused on individual power and attitudes, for example as would strongly apply to an interaction between two people. Because of that consistency, it can be more logical - in assessing the individual ability to be racially discriminatory, it looks at individual power rather than shifting the focus to a different level.
Mrs C appears to me to confuse individual power with collective group power (ie: not logically consistent). If we posit that a majority population group usually has more collective power than a minority group in a society (especially in a democracy based on majority rule), does that mean that within an interaction between a member of the majority group and a member of the minority group, the former has more power? The concept she seems to believe is yes, because the overall society has their back, in turn because the majority group dominates the society.
Indeed, one can easily imagine that. Picture a white working class man in Georgia in 1947, and a black man of equal economic and class status. If they were to get into a fist fight, say, the white man might be more able to count on the authorities being substantially biased in his favor. Mrs C's experience (and/or the stories she heard when growing up which shaped her worldview) may may be conditioned on examples like that.
But in 2022, if two employees of different races were to get into a fracas, it's not clear that the company managers would be automatically biased towards the white employee (scenario 1); it could be relatively unbiased, judging based on the actual circumstances rather than assuming (scenario 2), or actually biased towards the non-white employee (scenario 3).
It's extremely hard to objectively know the statistical frequency of these three scenarios, so people mostly project whatever best reinforces their pre-existing world view, and dismiss the other scenarios as rare to non-existent. Certainly in general (with local exceptions), the white employee could not simply depend on expecting to receive unfair advantage today (which affects the power they have within the interaction - can't count on being covered so better not push things too much).
In other areas, the whole concept is very suspect. White voters comprise a numerical majority, so if the had a hive mind and voted as a block they would control all democratic political power. However, on political issues, white people are greatly divided and fragmented, such that any individual white person has no more voting power than an individual person of color.
However it's easy for the tribalized mind to (consciously or unconsciously) weave a narrative that white people DO control the democracy because they generally agree on what is in the self interest of white people and pass laws and policies to benefit them all as a group. To some degree this imagining comes from projecting their own individual and/or group identity, especially if their group is much closer to voting as a block based on their own perceived self interest, so it seems natural that other population groups are doing the same (this intuitive sense ignores the actual statistics). And to some degree this comes from the way their ideology encourages them to perceive and interpret the world, confusing individual actual power with group-level nominal collective power, as part of a narrative with which to "win" discussions and to seek power over others.
As you may notice, in this latter context, I find your approach more reasoned and generally more accurate. But I can understand the appeal and the payoffs of the hive-mind strategem.
There are aspect of understanding the real world where focusing on individuals has more intellectual traction, and there are aspects in which focusing on groups sheds more light. The trick is to really think about which is more salient for understanding (and potentially remedying) a given situation, rather than switching back and forth more as a argumentation ploy. I think neo-progressives are too often caught up in the latter, often quite unconsciously.
One of the reasons I read your work is your ability to look more clearly at such issues (in my opinion obviously).
"Mrs C appears to me to confuse individual power with collective group power (ie: not logically consistent)."
Yeah, I think this is the reason why discourse on so many issues has become so toxic. It's the problem with concepts like "whiteness" and "the patriarchy."
Yes, there are power differentials in society. There are instances where it's not only valid to look at demographics in society, but important. One that I've spent all weekend arguing about is males vs females. Men are overwhelmingly more likely to commit sexual violence. And women are overwhelmingly more likely to be on the receiving end of that violence. It doesn’t mean all men are rapists or all women are victims, it means that when considering policy, it's important to bear in mind this difference.
But the differences between black people and white people are not only smaller and less predictable than the differences between men and women, they're different in nature. As has been pointed out countless times, there are many instances when it would be more useful to focus on class or wealth than race when it comes to solving problems. Black people would be disproportionately helped by policies in this area because they were disproportionately harmed by them in the past. But all of this has next to nothing to do with individual interactions.
The kind of racism that Mrs C is taking about her is interpersonal. And it's very rarely different from the kind of rudeness and ignorance that all human beings face. Yes, black people face this ignorance more than white people. Yes, in the aggregate, this does have an impact on black people's path through life. But as you say, if we extend that to treating the "black experience" as a monolithic experience of oppression, we make talking about and solving these problems MORE difficult. My rejection of "collective group power" as you put it, is really just a desire to be precise and effectively solve problems.
Yes, this confusion between the individual level and the collective level perspectives is inherently somewhat tricky, but that potential confusion is strategically weaponized by certain ideologies rather than being clarified.
There are two basic models competing here, which I think I can try to describe less verbosely than I sometimes do:
Model 1: To the degree that Black people (or whatever group) is disproportionately represented at the aggregate level (for whatever reason, including but not limited to residues of slavery or Jim Crow), that population group will receive disproportionate benefits. If over time a group becomes more or less represented statistically, the aggregate benefits to members of that group will automatically go up and down.
Model 2: Consider all members of a population group to be at the same economic level. Give benefits depending on membership in a population group and at a level decided by the aggregate group means - regardless of the actual financial status of the individuals. Asian individuals would receive no benefits, because Asians in general are statistically at the top of the income hierarchy while Black (or Native American) individuals would receive the most benefits - again, not depending on their individual need or level of success.
I find the self-leveling granular approach #1 to be much more effective and to have much better outcomes for societal cohesion (versus fostering tribal political resentments which can be exploited for political gain).
The differences between the means (or medians) of income for different population groups are vastly smaller than the differences between the top and bottom decile within each group (even leaving aside the top 1 or 0.1% extremes). Sweeping the huge intra-group disparities aside to focus on the far smaller inter-group differences seems like an unwise approach in most cases.
(As an aside, by coincidence the focus on racial groups lets the economic elites - the core socio-political base of neo-progressivism - largely off the hook. Instead of one-percenters attending the ivy league facing a daunting 99%, they either get either to be part of an oppressed collective group, or if white they diffuse their highlighted 'oppressor group' into 2/3 of the population so they are not labeled as any more guilty than the Appalachian dirt farmer.)
And something similar applies to power. It too is extremely unevenly distributed within population groups and is better assessed at the individual level. In addition, even for a given individual, it varies considerably on context so no one number (equivalent to reported annual income) could describe it accurately (even conceptually).
Collective aggregates of power are relevant only to the degree that the group agrees on issues. Right handed people have an outrageous degree of control over democracies, completely controlling every election outcome from dogcatcher to president. However, that's irrelevant unless they tend to vote as a block, which they do not. I don't think racial groups today are very well modeled as nearly monolithic today either (with Black voters being the closest to that status and whites being among the furthest from political unity, in the US).
I despair for Mrs C. People who suffered incredibly from the terrible stain that mars our shared history. People who view the legitimate progress made as some sort of vicious trick they must be on guard against, and treat the next generation of thinkers like you as hopelessly naive and some kind of sellout to the oppressor.
The wound may never heal. I think that has to be accepted as a cost to the way generations were treated. Yet where does that lead us? All too often to racialized battlefields where the sneers of hate are the only forms of currency.
I don’t want to live in a world that refuses to see the goodness in another heart because of the outside layer that wraps it.
Keep going Steve - people of good will believe in you and your message.
"People who view the legitimate progress made as some sort of vicious trick they must be on guard against, and treat the next generation of thinkers like you as hopelessly naive and some kind of sellout to the oppressor."
You really have a beautiful way of putting things Jen! Yes, I think this sums it up so well. Especially the feeling that progress is some kind of trick. That's why progress is so often generational. It's hard for people, especially people who suffered, to trust that change is real and update their model of the world.
A bit out of line admittedly but a topic suggestion I would like to see.
Why is the right trying to reignite the Culture Wars? They have clearly lost, young conservatives find all of this embarrassing. I know, I know, hate is what they have to sell and the gains made by sexual and racial minorities must have them pounding pillows. Perhaps in the SJWs and the "woke" culture they see an opportunity to stoke more outrage.
Id like to see what your talent at teasing apart the nuances could bring to bear on this.
"Why is the right trying to reignite the Culture Wars? "
Hmm, interesting! Do you think the culture wars ended? And do you think the current state of them is mainly because of the political right? I would primarily blame "woke" culture for the state of the culture wars today.
Yes, the right loves to stir racial angst or any perceived attack on "family values" but there is some truly insane stuff coming out of woke circles and gaining traction in society. All the right really has to do is point a camera at it and pretend that it represents "the Left." And the left has been absolutely awful at distancing itself from the crazies. Do you see it differently?
"All the right really has to do is point a camera at it and pretend that it represents "the Left."
I overlooked this. How critically important this is. But political suicide didn't start with the SJWs.
Back in the early 80s when I was starting to sour on gay political activism I was on a dialup forum and read one guy boasting that he had been on TV in the pride parade coverage and was gloating that he had been in his most shocking S&M gear and preening at the revulsion and disgust (my words) he inspired in the "tourists from Omaha" (his).
Just in case you were wondering when my revulsion at the attention freaks comes from.
There was one such activist who stood at the microphone and shrilled "yes, we do recruit children."
I wouldn't argue about the role the SJWs play in maintaining outrage, I've written about them before and won't bore you or your readers with a repetitive diatribe. I will only add that while yes they are trying to stoke things up, there are substantial differences.
The "woke" culture is neither organized nor serious. They lack priorities and focus, more passionate about pronouns and bathrooms than brutality and murder. Their side has won victory after victory but is impatient and wants to push for something more, to impose a ridiculous and rigidly policed outlook on all of us.
BTW I don't see the same wrongness in "cancel culture" that you do; it seems perfectly reasonable to me to uninvite a university speaker who has published abhorrent views,
But "woke" culture is new, I don't see it as having roots in Civil Rights or marriage equality. I see it as made up of contemptible attention freaks who will turn to other issues should they appear to be fruitful sources of attention.
The Trump right on the other hand isn't new, it's a movement of intolerance that goes back to before the nation's founding, and it has already pretty much lost. Their racism is embarrassing, same-sex marriage is the law of the land; things are not going their way so they try to gin up the old hatreds in their diminishing and aging supporters. Click here to donate $20 and Save America.
Where the symmetry becomes disturbing is some—some— progressives' rigid orthodoxy; allegedly progressive forums ban people for using gendered pronouns and any right wing forum instantly bans someone who doesn't follow their exact program.
My point though is that the right has been in retreat on the social issues for a long time. Going ugly is not going to get them any new votes.
But yes I do wish the SJWs would put a cork in it.
On a societal level, yes, I think that's true. Although there are still plenty of the "get off my lawn" types. And young people are often not taken seriously until a certain age, regardless of their abilities. But yes, society pretty much discards people after a certain age. And women especially.
Steve, you handle this conversation quite well. Claiming Blacks cannot be racist because they are powerless is MASSIVELY disempowering. You frame this very well, and it is a critical point for all of humanity to see. Cudos.
One small edit I might suggest: You don't want to gaslight one aspect of her argument. On AVERAGE it is probably true that the AVERAGE white person is in a position of greater power, than the average black person. So not all peoples are in an equivalent position to cause race related damage. I think you can acknowledge this truth while still keeping all humans in the same bucket... all of us can be racist, some are in a position to do greater damage, but it is all the same stuff. This more nuanced framing does acknowledge the difference she is claiming, while also putting that difference into it proper place. (but this is nuanced, so harder to execute. your statement is powerful in its simplicity... I just like to acknowledge anytime there is any part of my partner's argument with some degree of merit.)
" On AVERAGE it is probably true that the AVERAGE white person is in a position of greater power, than the average black person."
I wonder if this is true in 2022 once you account for the difference in population sizes. But regardless, I don't think this is a useful way to look at disparities. In fact, it's kind of Kendian in the end.
On average, tall people do better in life than short people. Slim people do better than fat people. But as somebody who is tall and slim, I don't consider short, fat people powerless. And I definitely don't consider myself more (or less) "powerful" than all the short, fat white people in the world.
As I've pointed out a few times, the concept of privilege is far more complex than the single factor of race. And telling yourself that you're inferior *or* superior on the basis of a single difference is hopelessly simplistic (and in either case, a signifier of deep insecurity). Especially when you apply it in broad strokes on a group identity level.
If I start working at a place where my boss is white, that's not an example of white people having power over me. If you get a job where your boss is black that's not black people having power over you. In both cases, it's an interpersonal dynamic where hopefully both people can treat each other as human beings. And in think in 2022, this is what happens more often than not.
Steve (and Passion guided by reason) we see the world in precisely the same way. And I agree wholeheartedly that the her framing is misleading, you articulate well WHY it is misleading.
Perhaps Passion is correct that I should not use the term 'gaslight', but the one thought I was trying to add to all of this agreement, was the idea that you could have acknowledged her point that some folks are in more able to cause damage because of their biases, but then go on to notice that white/black is not the only axis upon with such asymetries exist.
That is how I would have responded, simply because I think she (incorrectly) feels that you believe people are in equivelant positions, and she sees this as a false equivalence (as you do as well).
Still I acknowledge my approach would bring this distracting non-argument into the foreground, and my approach is more complex, which might loose the reader. but if the reader feels unheard, they may also be lost.
Anyway... the three of us have no disagreement on the invalidity of her arguments
> "On AVERAGE it is probably true that the AVERAGE white person is in a position of greater power, than the average black person. So not all peoples are in an equivalent position to cause race related damage. "
I want to agree with the idea of looking for any kernal of truth in the arguments of an opponent.
However, in this case I want to join Steve in pushing back against this framing. The second sentence reflects concepts which are ubiquitous and conventional today, but I believe it misleads the mind as way of modeling the world around us. It fosters the illusion that "population groups" (or as you call them "peoples") are the most salient entities, each with its own unitary collective will and agency.
Agency (and the target for interventions) resides at the individual level, not at the collective level (pending the arrival of hive minds).
If you change the actual real-world incomes of many people within a population group, that will automatically change and completely control the population-wide averages (and sums and medians and percentiles). The agency is at many individual levels, and the statistics are derivative. By contrast, society doesn't have a knob by which to turn up or down the average, and have the magically change the individual incomes. The averages do not control individual lives, but individual lives do control the averages.
The proper role of derived statistics is to help in deriving hypotheses about the mixtures of broad causative forces which may underpin some statistical differences influencing individuals - and to help in evaluating and assessing the relative validity of those hypotheses. Averages (and medians and distributions) are potentially useful simplifications of complex realities, from which to learn - but very carefully. A biased interpretation of partial statistics can very easily mislead, by accident or deliberation. So what you get is a potentially useful, and potentially misleading, simplification of overall reality - not a useful predictor (much less controller) of individual outcomes, income, or power.
So in terms of two individuals interacting, focusing on the AVERAGE (or median) of the groups to they may belong, is more of a matter of toxic stereotyping - assuming that group traits (whether based on high or low statistical validity) apply to any individual within that group.
Suppose we found that Asians (or whites to a lesser degree) tend to on average have more education than other groups; should that influence the jobs or the wages paid to a given person? Or should we look to individuals and their actual education, rather than group averages?
The unfortunate truth is that the average crime rate among some population groups is substantially higher. Should we treat that knowledge as telling us something important about each individual within that group, or treat each AS an individual (whether as a criminal or as a non-criminal)?
In what contexts is the derived group average useful and when is it misleading or unhelpful? We need a logical argument based on fuctionality, NOT an argument of convenience where we get to switch willy-nilly and without justification, between individuals and group averages depending just on what serves our argument in the moment.
The individuals with significant societal power are a small subset of every broad population group, and they do not today tend to reflect or answer to the rest of those population groups. So when you focus on "whites on average have more power than Blacks", that is implying that the proper focus is on broad and diverse groups and small differences between their averages, and avoiding the reality that to overwhelming degree the axis of differential power resides within each group (or just as relevantly, all groups together). Some people (within every broad population group) have many thousands of times more power than others, but instead we are supposed parse out relatively small and tractionless differences between broad "averages".
I maintain that this focus on the AVERAGE (as you put it) harms the validity of our mental models much more than it helps, and leads us to miss the larger causative factors in favor of smaller ones.
And a small note: my reading of the interchanges is that Steve's disagreeing with her would not be reasonably described as "gaslighting" her. If you think otherwise, please explain further. Let's not turn meaningful concepts into undifferentiated free-floating slurs.
When I think of a white person who regards himself as superior by virtue of a low melanin level I can't help but segue to an image of the same person gasping out his life in agony from metastasized melanoma and in rare moments of lucidity reflecting that a little more melanin fifty years earlier just might have been a good thing.
Steve, I see your perspective as more consistently focused on individual power and attitudes, for example as would strongly apply to an interaction between two people. Because of that consistency, it can be more logical - in assessing the individual ability to be racially discriminatory, it looks at individual power rather than shifting the focus to a different level.
Mrs C appears to me to confuse individual power with collective group power (ie: not logically consistent). If we posit that a majority population group usually has more collective power than a minority group in a society (especially in a democracy based on majority rule), does that mean that within an interaction between a member of the majority group and a member of the minority group, the former has more power? The concept she seems to believe is yes, because the overall society has their back, in turn because the majority group dominates the society.
Indeed, one can easily imagine that. Picture a white working class man in Georgia in 1947, and a black man of equal economic and class status. If they were to get into a fist fight, say, the white man might be more able to count on the authorities being substantially biased in his favor. Mrs C's experience (and/or the stories she heard when growing up which shaped her worldview) may may be conditioned on examples like that.
But in 2022, if two employees of different races were to get into a fracas, it's not clear that the company managers would be automatically biased towards the white employee (scenario 1); it could be relatively unbiased, judging based on the actual circumstances rather than assuming (scenario 2), or actually biased towards the non-white employee (scenario 3).
It's extremely hard to objectively know the statistical frequency of these three scenarios, so people mostly project whatever best reinforces their pre-existing world view, and dismiss the other scenarios as rare to non-existent. Certainly in general (with local exceptions), the white employee could not simply depend on expecting to receive unfair advantage today (which affects the power they have within the interaction - can't count on being covered so better not push things too much).
In other areas, the whole concept is very suspect. White voters comprise a numerical majority, so if the had a hive mind and voted as a block they would control all democratic political power. However, on political issues, white people are greatly divided and fragmented, such that any individual white person has no more voting power than an individual person of color.
However it's easy for the tribalized mind to (consciously or unconsciously) weave a narrative that white people DO control the democracy because they generally agree on what is in the self interest of white people and pass laws and policies to benefit them all as a group. To some degree this imagining comes from projecting their own individual and/or group identity, especially if their group is much closer to voting as a block based on their own perceived self interest, so it seems natural that other population groups are doing the same (this intuitive sense ignores the actual statistics). And to some degree this comes from the way their ideology encourages them to perceive and interpret the world, confusing individual actual power with group-level nominal collective power, as part of a narrative with which to "win" discussions and to seek power over others.
As you may notice, in this latter context, I find your approach more reasoned and generally more accurate. But I can understand the appeal and the payoffs of the hive-mind strategem.
There are aspect of understanding the real world where focusing on individuals has more intellectual traction, and there are aspects in which focusing on groups sheds more light. The trick is to really think about which is more salient for understanding (and potentially remedying) a given situation, rather than switching back and forth more as a argumentation ploy. I think neo-progressives are too often caught up in the latter, often quite unconsciously.
One of the reasons I read your work is your ability to look more clearly at such issues (in my opinion obviously).
"Mrs C appears to me to confuse individual power with collective group power (ie: not logically consistent)."
Yeah, I think this is the reason why discourse on so many issues has become so toxic. It's the problem with concepts like "whiteness" and "the patriarchy."
Yes, there are power differentials in society. There are instances where it's not only valid to look at demographics in society, but important. One that I've spent all weekend arguing about is males vs females. Men are overwhelmingly more likely to commit sexual violence. And women are overwhelmingly more likely to be on the receiving end of that violence. It doesn’t mean all men are rapists or all women are victims, it means that when considering policy, it's important to bear in mind this difference.
But the differences between black people and white people are not only smaller and less predictable than the differences between men and women, they're different in nature. As has been pointed out countless times, there are many instances when it would be more useful to focus on class or wealth than race when it comes to solving problems. Black people would be disproportionately helped by policies in this area because they were disproportionately harmed by them in the past. But all of this has next to nothing to do with individual interactions.
The kind of racism that Mrs C is taking about her is interpersonal. And it's very rarely different from the kind of rudeness and ignorance that all human beings face. Yes, black people face this ignorance more than white people. Yes, in the aggregate, this does have an impact on black people's path through life. But as you say, if we extend that to treating the "black experience" as a monolithic experience of oppression, we make talking about and solving these problems MORE difficult. My rejection of "collective group power" as you put it, is really just a desire to be precise and effectively solve problems.
Yes, this confusion between the individual level and the collective level perspectives is inherently somewhat tricky, but that potential confusion is strategically weaponized by certain ideologies rather than being clarified.
There are two basic models competing here, which I think I can try to describe less verbosely than I sometimes do:
Model 1: To the degree that Black people (or whatever group) is disproportionately represented at the aggregate level (for whatever reason, including but not limited to residues of slavery or Jim Crow), that population group will receive disproportionate benefits. If over time a group becomes more or less represented statistically, the aggregate benefits to members of that group will automatically go up and down.
Model 2: Consider all members of a population group to be at the same economic level. Give benefits depending on membership in a population group and at a level decided by the aggregate group means - regardless of the actual financial status of the individuals. Asian individuals would receive no benefits, because Asians in general are statistically at the top of the income hierarchy while Black (or Native American) individuals would receive the most benefits - again, not depending on their individual need or level of success.
I find the self-leveling granular approach #1 to be much more effective and to have much better outcomes for societal cohesion (versus fostering tribal political resentments which can be exploited for political gain).
The differences between the means (or medians) of income for different population groups are vastly smaller than the differences between the top and bottom decile within each group (even leaving aside the top 1 or 0.1% extremes). Sweeping the huge intra-group disparities aside to focus on the far smaller inter-group differences seems like an unwise approach in most cases.
(As an aside, by coincidence the focus on racial groups lets the economic elites - the core socio-political base of neo-progressivism - largely off the hook. Instead of one-percenters attending the ivy league facing a daunting 99%, they either get either to be part of an oppressed collective group, or if white they diffuse their highlighted 'oppressor group' into 2/3 of the population so they are not labeled as any more guilty than the Appalachian dirt farmer.)
And something similar applies to power. It too is extremely unevenly distributed within population groups and is better assessed at the individual level. In addition, even for a given individual, it varies considerably on context so no one number (equivalent to reported annual income) could describe it accurately (even conceptually).
Collective aggregates of power are relevant only to the degree that the group agrees on issues. Right handed people have an outrageous degree of control over democracies, completely controlling every election outcome from dogcatcher to president. However, that's irrelevant unless they tend to vote as a block, which they do not. I don't think racial groups today are very well modeled as nearly monolithic today either (with Black voters being the closest to that status and whites being among the furthest from political unity, in the US).
I despair for Mrs C. People who suffered incredibly from the terrible stain that mars our shared history. People who view the legitimate progress made as some sort of vicious trick they must be on guard against, and treat the next generation of thinkers like you as hopelessly naive and some kind of sellout to the oppressor.
The wound may never heal. I think that has to be accepted as a cost to the way generations were treated. Yet where does that lead us? All too often to racialized battlefields where the sneers of hate are the only forms of currency.
I don’t want to live in a world that refuses to see the goodness in another heart because of the outside layer that wraps it.
Keep going Steve - people of good will believe in you and your message.
"People who view the legitimate progress made as some sort of vicious trick they must be on guard against, and treat the next generation of thinkers like you as hopelessly naive and some kind of sellout to the oppressor."
You really have a beautiful way of putting things Jen! Yes, I think this sums it up so well. Especially the feeling that progress is some kind of trick. That's why progress is so often generational. It's hard for people, especially people who suffered, to trust that change is real and update their model of the world.
A bit out of line admittedly but a topic suggestion I would like to see.
Why is the right trying to reignite the Culture Wars? They have clearly lost, young conservatives find all of this embarrassing. I know, I know, hate is what they have to sell and the gains made by sexual and racial minorities must have them pounding pillows. Perhaps in the SJWs and the "woke" culture they see an opportunity to stoke more outrage.
Id like to see what your talent at teasing apart the nuances could bring to bear on this.
"Why is the right trying to reignite the Culture Wars? "
Hmm, interesting! Do you think the culture wars ended? And do you think the current state of them is mainly because of the political right? I would primarily blame "woke" culture for the state of the culture wars today.
Yes, the right loves to stir racial angst or any perceived attack on "family values" but there is some truly insane stuff coming out of woke circles and gaining traction in society. All the right really has to do is point a camera at it and pretend that it represents "the Left." And the left has been absolutely awful at distancing itself from the crazies. Do you see it differently?
"All the right really has to do is point a camera at it and pretend that it represents "the Left."
I overlooked this. How critically important this is. But political suicide didn't start with the SJWs.
Back in the early 80s when I was starting to sour on gay political activism I was on a dialup forum and read one guy boasting that he had been on TV in the pride parade coverage and was gloating that he had been in his most shocking S&M gear and preening at the revulsion and disgust (my words) he inspired in the "tourists from Omaha" (his).
Just in case you were wondering when my revulsion at the attention freaks comes from.
There was one such activist who stood at the microphone and shrilled "yes, we do recruit children."
Thanks a lot.
I wouldn't argue about the role the SJWs play in maintaining outrage, I've written about them before and won't bore you or your readers with a repetitive diatribe. I will only add that while yes they are trying to stoke things up, there are substantial differences.
The "woke" culture is neither organized nor serious. They lack priorities and focus, more passionate about pronouns and bathrooms than brutality and murder. Their side has won victory after victory but is impatient and wants to push for something more, to impose a ridiculous and rigidly policed outlook on all of us.
BTW I don't see the same wrongness in "cancel culture" that you do; it seems perfectly reasonable to me to uninvite a university speaker who has published abhorrent views,
But "woke" culture is new, I don't see it as having roots in Civil Rights or marriage equality. I see it as made up of contemptible attention freaks who will turn to other issues should they appear to be fruitful sources of attention.
The Trump right on the other hand isn't new, it's a movement of intolerance that goes back to before the nation's founding, and it has already pretty much lost. Their racism is embarrassing, same-sex marriage is the law of the land; things are not going their way so they try to gin up the old hatreds in their diminishing and aging supporters. Click here to donate $20 and Save America.
Where the symmetry becomes disturbing is some—some— progressives' rigid orthodoxy; allegedly progressive forums ban people for using gendered pronouns and any right wing forum instantly bans someone who doesn't follow their exact program.
My point though is that the right has been in retreat on the social issues for a long time. Going ugly is not going to get them any new votes.
But yes I do wish the SJWs would put a cork in it.
The only bigotry I can think of that is legitimately unidirectional is ageism.
On a societal level, yes, I think that's true. Although there are still plenty of the "get off my lawn" types. And young people are often not taken seriously until a certain age, regardless of their abilities. But yes, society pretty much discards people after a certain age. And women especially.
Steve, you handle this conversation quite well. Claiming Blacks cannot be racist because they are powerless is MASSIVELY disempowering. You frame this very well, and it is a critical point for all of humanity to see. Cudos.
One small edit I might suggest: You don't want to gaslight one aspect of her argument. On AVERAGE it is probably true that the AVERAGE white person is in a position of greater power, than the average black person. So not all peoples are in an equivalent position to cause race related damage. I think you can acknowledge this truth while still keeping all humans in the same bucket... all of us can be racist, some are in a position to do greater damage, but it is all the same stuff. This more nuanced framing does acknowledge the difference she is claiming, while also putting that difference into it proper place. (but this is nuanced, so harder to execute. your statement is powerful in its simplicity... I just like to acknowledge anytime there is any part of my partner's argument with some degree of merit.)
" On AVERAGE it is probably true that the AVERAGE white person is in a position of greater power, than the average black person."
I wonder if this is true in 2022 once you account for the difference in population sizes. But regardless, I don't think this is a useful way to look at disparities. In fact, it's kind of Kendian in the end.
On average, tall people do better in life than short people. Slim people do better than fat people. But as somebody who is tall and slim, I don't consider short, fat people powerless. And I definitely don't consider myself more (or less) "powerful" than all the short, fat white people in the world.
As I've pointed out a few times, the concept of privilege is far more complex than the single factor of race. And telling yourself that you're inferior *or* superior on the basis of a single difference is hopelessly simplistic (and in either case, a signifier of deep insecurity). Especially when you apply it in broad strokes on a group identity level.
If I start working at a place where my boss is white, that's not an example of white people having power over me. If you get a job where your boss is black that's not black people having power over you. In both cases, it's an interpersonal dynamic where hopefully both people can treat each other as human beings. And in think in 2022, this is what happens more often than not.
Steve (and Passion guided by reason) we see the world in precisely the same way. And I agree wholeheartedly that the her framing is misleading, you articulate well WHY it is misleading.
Perhaps Passion is correct that I should not use the term 'gaslight', but the one thought I was trying to add to all of this agreement, was the idea that you could have acknowledged her point that some folks are in more able to cause damage because of their biases, but then go on to notice that white/black is not the only axis upon with such asymetries exist.
That is how I would have responded, simply because I think she (incorrectly) feels that you believe people are in equivelant positions, and she sees this as a false equivalence (as you do as well).
Still I acknowledge my approach would bring this distracting non-argument into the foreground, and my approach is more complex, which might loose the reader. but if the reader feels unheard, they may also be lost.
Anyway... the three of us have no disagreement on the invalidity of her arguments
> "On AVERAGE it is probably true that the AVERAGE white person is in a position of greater power, than the average black person. So not all peoples are in an equivalent position to cause race related damage. "
I want to agree with the idea of looking for any kernal of truth in the arguments of an opponent.
However, in this case I want to join Steve in pushing back against this framing. The second sentence reflects concepts which are ubiquitous and conventional today, but I believe it misleads the mind as way of modeling the world around us. It fosters the illusion that "population groups" (or as you call them "peoples") are the most salient entities, each with its own unitary collective will and agency.
Agency (and the target for interventions) resides at the individual level, not at the collective level (pending the arrival of hive minds).
If you change the actual real-world incomes of many people within a population group, that will automatically change and completely control the population-wide averages (and sums and medians and percentiles). The agency is at many individual levels, and the statistics are derivative. By contrast, society doesn't have a knob by which to turn up or down the average, and have the magically change the individual incomes. The averages do not control individual lives, but individual lives do control the averages.
The proper role of derived statistics is to help in deriving hypotheses about the mixtures of broad causative forces which may underpin some statistical differences influencing individuals - and to help in evaluating and assessing the relative validity of those hypotheses. Averages (and medians and distributions) are potentially useful simplifications of complex realities, from which to learn - but very carefully. A biased interpretation of partial statistics can very easily mislead, by accident or deliberation. So what you get is a potentially useful, and potentially misleading, simplification of overall reality - not a useful predictor (much less controller) of individual outcomes, income, or power.
So in terms of two individuals interacting, focusing on the AVERAGE (or median) of the groups to they may belong, is more of a matter of toxic stereotyping - assuming that group traits (whether based on high or low statistical validity) apply to any individual within that group.
Suppose we found that Asians (or whites to a lesser degree) tend to on average have more education than other groups; should that influence the jobs or the wages paid to a given person? Or should we look to individuals and their actual education, rather than group averages?
The unfortunate truth is that the average crime rate among some population groups is substantially higher. Should we treat that knowledge as telling us something important about each individual within that group, or treat each AS an individual (whether as a criminal or as a non-criminal)?
In what contexts is the derived group average useful and when is it misleading or unhelpful? We need a logical argument based on fuctionality, NOT an argument of convenience where we get to switch willy-nilly and without justification, between individuals and group averages depending just on what serves our argument in the moment.
The individuals with significant societal power are a small subset of every broad population group, and they do not today tend to reflect or answer to the rest of those population groups. So when you focus on "whites on average have more power than Blacks", that is implying that the proper focus is on broad and diverse groups and small differences between their averages, and avoiding the reality that to overwhelming degree the axis of differential power resides within each group (or just as relevantly, all groups together). Some people (within every broad population group) have many thousands of times more power than others, but instead we are supposed parse out relatively small and tractionless differences between broad "averages".
I maintain that this focus on the AVERAGE (as you put it) harms the validity of our mental models much more than it helps, and leads us to miss the larger causative factors in favor of smaller ones.
And a small note: my reading of the interchanges is that Steve's disagreeing with her would not be reasonably described as "gaslighting" her. If you think otherwise, please explain further. Let's not turn meaningful concepts into undifferentiated free-floating slurs.
When I think of a white person who regards himself as superior by virtue of a low melanin level I can't help but segue to an image of the same person gasping out his life in agony from metastasized melanoma and in rare moments of lucidity reflecting that a little more melanin fifty years earlier just might have been a good thing.