I've been a teacher in a majority-minority community for fourteen years. In all that time, I've been unable to avoid noticing certain patterns among the students who succeed and the students who fail.
The success profile: Engaged parents (usually two). A family ethos that emphasizes education. Consistent attendance. Consistent homework completion. A respectful, cooperative attitude.
The failure profile: Absent or hostile parents. No pressure from family to succeed in school. Comes whenever he or she feels like it. Never does homework. Treats the whole educational enterprise with distrust.
There are subcultures within my community that tend to produce kids who fit the first profile, and there are other subcultures that tend to produce kids who fit the second. I can't not see this. But I also can't talk about this forthrightly without being tarred as a racist. This is deeply frustrating because, in the end, the differences I notice have blessed little to do with race. I've worked with fresh-off-the-boat families from West Africa (read: black and speaking with foreign accents) whose kids go on to enroll at our state's flagship school (average SAT score: 1400) -- or even, in one case, Harvard. But no: discussion of this is apparently verboten.
Also verboten: Discussing the fact that my best friend in high school was repeatedly called an Oreo because she a) hung out with me and b) actually gave two shits about school.
It was even proposed to me, once, that simply bringing up the existence of the academic achievement gap is itself a racist aggression.
I'm not surprised, then, that ideologically-possessed leftists have been falling all over themselves this week to defend Baltimore. I'm not surprised that it's now verboten to discuss all the things I personally witnessed while living there, including the rampant drug use, the crime, the crumbling town homes, and - yes - the rats.
But folks: it's bug-crap crazy to actively cover up the truth just because Orange Man said it and Orange Man Bad. As a matter of fact, I think we should all be screaming at the top of our lungs about the decay of Baltimore. That decay is a monument to our failure to get urban policy right; if we don't face it, how will we ever empower the people who live there?
Question Trump's motives for bringing it up all you want. It's still profoundly unjust that there are people in America today who've been relegated to trash-and-vermin-filled slums. We should be coming together to come up with solutions instead of banishing each other for highlighting the problem. And yes -- we should be questioning government officials who supposedly represent these people on their manifest failure to help their constituents.
Showing posts with label regressive racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label regressive racism. Show all posts
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Saturday, September 22, 2018
The Left Needs to Retire These Rhetorical Tics
(Or at least severely limit their use.)
It was probably a terrible mistake to get a Twitter account.
In my defense, my original intent was to follow a favorite kitten foster of mine; one of the kitties was sick, and I wanted access to breaking news on his condition. But before too long, I started following some favorite authors. Then some favorite YouTube personalities. Then...
274 follows later, my feed is full of absolute trash -- not because of the people I follow, thank God, but because of the stuff they retweet and criticize.
A significant minority in this country (and in the West in general) has gone absolutely insane. Many - including people I used to respect - have embraced a creed that not only rejects the basic foundations of liberal democracy but also seems to reject reason itself. Whether the correct label for this creed is "cultural Marxism," "post-modernism," "identity politics," or some other term not yet devised, the result of its adoption is the same: the wholesale destruction of critical thought. In thought's place, these ideologues deploy the tools of unthought: buzzwords, blanket insults, and ridiculous demands designed to silence dissenters in disputes both large and small.
Whether we're bickering over comic books or Supreme Court appointments, we keep getting bitten by the same intellectual mosquitoes. Can I exterminate them all by myself? Not in one blog post. Probably not even in a hundred blog posts. But right now, I can at least smack a few annoyances and, hopefully, entertain my readers in the process.
1. Believe All Women.
No. I'm sorry for the upcoming language, but that is bug-fuck crazy. Were these people never the targets of mean girls in junior high? Some women absolutely are evil enough to spread bullshit if it gives them a social advantage and/or sympathy points.
Sure: like male rapists, female pathological liars are very rare. But we don't even have to assume a large population of prospective malicious accusers to understand the importance of due process. We just have to understand some basic human psychology.
In brief: Our memories are not digital cameras. On the contrary, our memories are susceptible to influence. For example, in one study, participants who were asked to remember the sentence "the ball hit the window" later reported being told that "the ball broke the window." These people were sober, yet their own assumptions altered what their memories recorded. Do you really think the recollections of a drunken tryst are going to be any more reliable? Or the memories of something that happened more than three decades ago?
We cannot rely on one person's account of an event. That's why we presume the innocence of the accused until we can gather more evidence. Yes: a full-scale investigation and cross-examination is very stressful for someone who sincerely believes she's been the victim of a crime, but the alternative leads to Salem.
2. Stay in Your Lane.
When white people opine on race relations, this denial of the universal accessibility of the truth always manages to make an appearance. Recently, I tweeted the following reply:
"I have severe rheumatoid arthritis. I am an expert on how this has impacted me personally. But I would never presume that I am therefore more qualified to speak on RA than a board certified rheumatologist, even if he/she were healthy.
"My understanding of RA is pretty educated, but it's still a layman's understanding. Thus, it would be ridiculous for me to pass myself off as an absolute authority based just on my personal experience alone.
"Hell, I can't even speak for other sufferers of RA! There are commonalities among us sufferers that led to our diagnoses in the first place, but our disease courses are still going to be individualized based on severity, life situation, etc.
"The same is also going to be true for issues surrounding American race relations, gender, sexuality, etc. If you identify as a particular minority, you definitely have some important insights to share. But to declare yourself an absolute authority is wrong.
"'Outsiders' may have access to important data that are germane to the discussion. Your perceptions could be wrong, so have some humility and recognize the limitations of your viewpoint."
3. Alt-Right Hate Group.
There is such a thing as the alt-right, but it has a very specific, narrow definition. To be alt-right, one must believe that national identities are racial/ethnic in character -- that the idea of a nation-by-creed is fundamentally ridiculous. That's why members of the actual alt-right have attacked author Sarah Hoyt, a libertarian and extremely patriotic Portuguese-American immigrant, as a pseudo-American.
According to the left, however, Sarah is herself "alt-right." So am I. And so is anyone else who has participated in any or all of the consumer revolts that have dominated discussions in geekdom over the past several years. Gamergate, the Sad Puppies, Comicsgate -- all of these have been smeared as "alt-right hate groups" by leftwing journalists and creative "professionals" based on the thinnest of evidence. Why? Because they want to silence our critiques of popular culture and its increasingly obtrusive political tilt.
I'm not saying we've never been salty. We're human beings, after all. But have you noticed that SJW's keep using the same few lapses in judgment to build their weak-sauce case against us? When ConCarolinas rescinded its invitation to John Ringo this past year, for example, everyone defending the decision used the same Ravencon panel from twelve years ago as evidence that Ringo was a "sexual harasser." And whenever anyone wants to discredit prominent Comicsgate personality Richard C. Meyer - a.k.a. Diversity and Comics - they always, always dip into that one ill-advised "dark roast" from 2017 for ammunition. If Ringo and Meyer were as bad-bad-terribad as SJW's claim, we would have been presented with evidence of long-standing patterns of behavior a long time ago. But we haven't -- because they aren't.
Hey, we're imperfect. I'll cop to that. But that makes us neither "alt-right" nor members of a "hate group." See above. "Alt-right" has a meaning, and it's not "opposes identity politics" or "is generally conservative or libertarian" or even "criticizes the works and behavior of minority creators." The alt-right calls itself the alt-right precisely because it wants to distance itself from conventional rightwing beliefs. Thus, if you're calling ordinary individualist fans "alt-right," you either don't understand what you're talking about or you're being a dishonest prick.
4. Racist/Sexist/Homophobic.
Racism, sexism, and anti-gay sentiments also exist, but once again, the left is playing games with their definitions to mendaciously attack people they disagree with. If you're calling Frank Oz a homophobe simply because he won't accede to your wishes and agree that Bert/Ernie is canon, you are part of this problem. If you are calling fans sexist simply because they don't like the all-female Ghostbusters, you are part of this problem too.
The leftist's world is a bizarre world in which treating everyone the same is in fact proof you're a monster. The aforementioned Richard Meyer has repeatedly gone after Mark Waid and other straight white men for their unprofessional behavior and crappy product -- but since he's also gone after "creators-of-color" or LGBTQ creators for the same, he's a Nazi. As Meyer himself has accurately observed, "They hold minorities to a different and lower standard." Indeed they do. Why this hasn't been called out as rank bigotry is beyond me.
As a teacher in a majority-minority neighborhood, I understand that certain groups face extra challenges in the aggregate. But the solution to that is to provide struggling people from all groups whatever additional resources or encouragement they need to clear life's hurdles and meet the same standards demanded of everyone else -- not to treat them like helpless babes and tell them they don't have to "git gud" to succeed because they're oppressed and are therefore owed that success -- and the fawning praise that comes with it.
It was probably a terrible mistake to get a Twitter account.
In my defense, my original intent was to follow a favorite kitten foster of mine; one of the kitties was sick, and I wanted access to breaking news on his condition. But before too long, I started following some favorite authors. Then some favorite YouTube personalities. Then...
274 follows later, my feed is full of absolute trash -- not because of the people I follow, thank God, but because of the stuff they retweet and criticize.
A significant minority in this country (and in the West in general) has gone absolutely insane. Many - including people I used to respect - have embraced a creed that not only rejects the basic foundations of liberal democracy but also seems to reject reason itself. Whether the correct label for this creed is "cultural Marxism," "post-modernism," "identity politics," or some other term not yet devised, the result of its adoption is the same: the wholesale destruction of critical thought. In thought's place, these ideologues deploy the tools of unthought: buzzwords, blanket insults, and ridiculous demands designed to silence dissenters in disputes both large and small.
Whether we're bickering over comic books or Supreme Court appointments, we keep getting bitten by the same intellectual mosquitoes. Can I exterminate them all by myself? Not in one blog post. Probably not even in a hundred blog posts. But right now, I can at least smack a few annoyances and, hopefully, entertain my readers in the process.
1. Believe All Women.
No. I'm sorry for the upcoming language, but that is bug-fuck crazy. Were these people never the targets of mean girls in junior high? Some women absolutely are evil enough to spread bullshit if it gives them a social advantage and/or sympathy points.
Sure: like male rapists, female pathological liars are very rare. But we don't even have to assume a large population of prospective malicious accusers to understand the importance of due process. We just have to understand some basic human psychology.
In brief: Our memories are not digital cameras. On the contrary, our memories are susceptible to influence. For example, in one study, participants who were asked to remember the sentence "the ball hit the window" later reported being told that "the ball broke the window." These people were sober, yet their own assumptions altered what their memories recorded. Do you really think the recollections of a drunken tryst are going to be any more reliable? Or the memories of something that happened more than three decades ago?
We cannot rely on one person's account of an event. That's why we presume the innocence of the accused until we can gather more evidence. Yes: a full-scale investigation and cross-examination is very stressful for someone who sincerely believes she's been the victim of a crime, but the alternative leads to Salem.
2. Stay in Your Lane.
When white people opine on race relations, this denial of the universal accessibility of the truth always manages to make an appearance. Recently, I tweeted the following reply:
"I have severe rheumatoid arthritis. I am an expert on how this has impacted me personally. But I would never presume that I am therefore more qualified to speak on RA than a board certified rheumatologist, even if he/she were healthy.
"My understanding of RA is pretty educated, but it's still a layman's understanding. Thus, it would be ridiculous for me to pass myself off as an absolute authority based just on my personal experience alone.
"Hell, I can't even speak for other sufferers of RA! There are commonalities among us sufferers that led to our diagnoses in the first place, but our disease courses are still going to be individualized based on severity, life situation, etc.
"The same is also going to be true for issues surrounding American race relations, gender, sexuality, etc. If you identify as a particular minority, you definitely have some important insights to share. But to declare yourself an absolute authority is wrong.
"'Outsiders' may have access to important data that are germane to the discussion. Your perceptions could be wrong, so have some humility and recognize the limitations of your viewpoint."
3. Alt-Right Hate Group.
There is such a thing as the alt-right, but it has a very specific, narrow definition. To be alt-right, one must believe that national identities are racial/ethnic in character -- that the idea of a nation-by-creed is fundamentally ridiculous. That's why members of the actual alt-right have attacked author Sarah Hoyt, a libertarian and extremely patriotic Portuguese-American immigrant, as a pseudo-American.
According to the left, however, Sarah is herself "alt-right." So am I. And so is anyone else who has participated in any or all of the consumer revolts that have dominated discussions in geekdom over the past several years. Gamergate, the Sad Puppies, Comicsgate -- all of these have been smeared as "alt-right hate groups" by leftwing journalists and creative "professionals" based on the thinnest of evidence. Why? Because they want to silence our critiques of popular culture and its increasingly obtrusive political tilt.
I'm not saying we've never been salty. We're human beings, after all. But have you noticed that SJW's keep using the same few lapses in judgment to build their weak-sauce case against us? When ConCarolinas rescinded its invitation to John Ringo this past year, for example, everyone defending the decision used the same Ravencon panel from twelve years ago as evidence that Ringo was a "sexual harasser." And whenever anyone wants to discredit prominent Comicsgate personality Richard C. Meyer - a.k.a. Diversity and Comics - they always, always dip into that one ill-advised "dark roast" from 2017 for ammunition. If Ringo and Meyer were as bad-bad-terribad as SJW's claim, we would have been presented with evidence of long-standing patterns of behavior a long time ago. But we haven't -- because they aren't.
Hey, we're imperfect. I'll cop to that. But that makes us neither "alt-right" nor members of a "hate group." See above. "Alt-right" has a meaning, and it's not "opposes identity politics" or "is generally conservative or libertarian" or even "criticizes the works and behavior of minority creators." The alt-right calls itself the alt-right precisely because it wants to distance itself from conventional rightwing beliefs. Thus, if you're calling ordinary individualist fans "alt-right," you either don't understand what you're talking about or you're being a dishonest prick.
4. Racist/Sexist/Homophobic.
Racism, sexism, and anti-gay sentiments also exist, but once again, the left is playing games with their definitions to mendaciously attack people they disagree with. If you're calling Frank Oz a homophobe simply because he won't accede to your wishes and agree that Bert/Ernie is canon, you are part of this problem. If you are calling fans sexist simply because they don't like the all-female Ghostbusters, you are part of this problem too.
The leftist's world is a bizarre world in which treating everyone the same is in fact proof you're a monster. The aforementioned Richard Meyer has repeatedly gone after Mark Waid and other straight white men for their unprofessional behavior and crappy product -- but since he's also gone after "creators-of-color" or LGBTQ creators for the same, he's a Nazi. As Meyer himself has accurately observed, "They hold minorities to a different and lower standard." Indeed they do. Why this hasn't been called out as rank bigotry is beyond me.
As a teacher in a majority-minority neighborhood, I understand that certain groups face extra challenges in the aggregate. But the solution to that is to provide struggling people from all groups whatever additional resources or encouragement they need to clear life's hurdles and meet the same standards demanded of everyone else -- not to treat them like helpless babes and tell them they don't have to "git gud" to succeed because they're oppressed and are therefore owed that success -- and the fawning praise that comes with it.
*****
So what say you, readers? Are there other leftist nonsense arguments that you wish would just disappear? I encourage you to comment below!
Friday, April 14, 2017
Around the Nets
When the United story exploded early this week, I mainly had fun with the memes. Seriously -- the internet really outdid itself this time. Even a Catholic satire site decided to play, which amused me to no end.
But there are serious things to learn from the whole incident, as discussed by the writers below:
How United Happens, by Charlie Martin
Big organizations frequently act like idiots, says Charlie, because their leaders lack on-the-ground knowledge. To me, this seems like an excellent argument for keeping organizations (like - ahem - governments) small and local whenever it's humanly possible.
United Airlines and the Internet Mob, by Amie Gibbons
In this post, meanwhile, Amie summarizes why United was in the wrong here and then goes on to address why the American public responded with one angry voice (a bizarre occurrence indeed). According to her (correct) analysis, our airlines have become so wedded to government support that they have started to behave like government agencies and not like private companies -- and as anyone who's been to the DMV or the VA will no doubt confirm, government agencies either don't care one bit about pleasant customer service or are just too incompetent to provide it due to the reasons discussed by Charlie above.
Whatever the issue may be with United, it seems clear that the industry as a whole needs to get off the government tit, as the subsidies are going to the airlines' heads.
In other news...
Could It Be Time to Deny White Men the Franchise? Huffington Post
Folks in my circles knock the HP all the time for being an SJB-converged fake news site, but honestly, I'm glad it exists. Without it, we would never get to see the sort of insanity that is condoned by much of today's left. Deny white men the franchise? Let's leave aside the fact that this is openly calling for human beings to be denied their rights based on sins that completely different people committed. Like I've said many times before, these ideologues have no clue what it's actually like to be white. While it's true that the European imperialists were often predatory, they did not represent the great mass of white men. They were the people in power. The great mass of white men, in the meantime, continued to struggle to make ends meet -- much as they do today. This collective guilt bullshit is really getting tiresome.
Whedon Warns Trump May Start Killing Gays, Christian Toto
Based on what? Based on the fact that Trump is the first successful GOP candidate to support homosexual marriage? Jesus. I adore much of Whedon's work and think he's a real talent. But he needs to start taking some meds before he completely loses touch with reality -- assuming, of course, that he hasn't already, which we all have good reason to doubt.
Forcing Political Correctness on Employees and Characters Is Killing Marvel Comics,
Jon Del Arroz
Fans of SFF should find this discussion pretty familiar. I happen to agree with other writers that there are multiple factors involved in Marvel's decline - like, for example, the changing nature of the market for comics - but the political uniformity Del Arroz describes is also a big problem that is certainly not limited to one particular company publishing one particular genre of geek literature. If you head on over to Tor's blog, you can see another pretty good illustration of capital-F Fandom's tendency to mistake political agendas for quality in a field completely outside the comics industry. Note: Being "queer" does not make a book good. It doesn't make a book bad either, mind you, but you can't use queerness as a standalone gauge for literary merit. Does the story work? Are the characters people a reader can relate to and care about? Does it address universal human themes that will still resonate ten, twenty, or even a hundred years down the line? If you can't answer those questions, you may want to reassess.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Drive-By News Reaction: Charlotte
No, I didn't watch the debate Monday night; I had to work. Scanning the transcript reveals, however, that I didn't miss much. Besides, as a classical liberal/constitutional conservative/federalist/I'm not sure what, I don't have a dog in this fight anyway.
You said it, Chandler.
I do, however, have a stake in what happens to our society as a whole -- which is one reason why reports like the following from the Charlotte Observer strike a nerve:
Trucker to 911 as looters close in: "They are coming this way... hundreds of them."
That there are people out there condoning this mode of "protest" chills me to my very core. How does robbing a long-haul trucker just trying to do his job help the black community? How does blocking major thoroughfares and throwing rocks at cars accomplish anything?
These people are terrorists, pure and simple. Their behavior shouldn't be excused or explained away; it should be prosecuted. Then, perhaps, actual law-abiding citizens can talk and hash out some real fixes for our widespread social decay and the accompanying corruption of our institutions.
You said it, Chandler.
I do, however, have a stake in what happens to our society as a whole -- which is one reason why reports like the following from the Charlotte Observer strike a nerve:
Trucker to 911 as looters close in: "They are coming this way... hundreds of them."
That there are people out there condoning this mode of "protest" chills me to my very core. How does robbing a long-haul trucker just trying to do his job help the black community? How does blocking major thoroughfares and throwing rocks at cars accomplish anything?
These people are terrorists, pure and simple. Their behavior shouldn't be excused or explained away; it should be prosecuted. Then, perhaps, actual law-abiding citizens can talk and hash out some real fixes for our widespread social decay and the accompanying corruption of our institutions.
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