A friend of the blog writes:
Last week, I saw this article from MPR .
I admit to being somewhat old fashioned and probably judge everyone too harshly. However, I do think that there are some social norms and expected behavior that should be followed if one seeks respect and success in life. Basic social norms like speaking respectfully to each other, dressing appropriately for the situation, respecting other people’s property come to mind, and being accountable for one’s own actions come to mind. But, in terms of treating some people more harshly than others, I’m just not seeing the same results as MPR.
If a black student disrupts a classroom, or punches a teacher, we’re asked not to hold him accountable. The white teacher had to have been racist. If black people get stopped by police, for minor offenses, and the situation escalates more than it would for a white person who is stopped, we’re asked not to consider the black person’s prior history or the person’s approach and interaction with the officer. That would be a racist thing to do.
If we question a woman’s choice of skimpy attire, we’re “slut shaming.” If we question a woman’s judgment and how that might affect her ability to lead the country, we’re not given answers or any hint of accountability. Instead, we’re call sexist for asking these questions.
On the other hand, if a white man is running for Republican president, hold him accountable for everything. How he travels with his dog. His former hiring and firing practices. The remarks he makes on Twitter. His public opinions. His private opinions.
Now, I am ok with holding Trump accountable for many of the things he says and does. He isn’t meeting my standard for how a President should act. But, unlike what the MPR article noted in their study, I am not seeing Clinton being held to a higher ethical standard. And I don’t want her held to a higher standard, but the same standard would be a good starting point. If black lives matter and women are equal, then we all need to be accountable for what we say, what we do, how we dress.
I recall hearing the interview that the writer is talking about. I think it tracks with our entire society putting women on pedestals, at least in an ideal world; they start out as “sugar and spice and everything nice”, and grow up into a life of being revered as mothers, wise grandmas, the whole cultural shebang.
At any rate, the whole thing is worth a read/listen.
“Social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam.”
The guy is a diversity looney.
“Herring has just completed his study. He found that companies that are more diverse have more customers, a larger share of their markets and greater profitability. In fact, when Herring puts his numbers on a graph, he finds a linear relationship between diversity and business success, meaning that as diversity increases, those business indicators increase in step.”
This is simply not true. There is no linear relationship between ‘diversity’ and business success. All those Chinese companies? No diversity. All those japanese companies? No diversity. All those Swedish companies? No diversity.
I am going to put this in all caps because this needs to be emphasized:
IF DIVERSITY MADE BUSINESSES MORE PROFITABLE THEY WOULD NO MORE RESIST DIVERSITY THAN THEY WOULD RESIST HAULING BUCKETS OF MONEY TO THE BANK.
No company would ever be sued for sexism or racial discrimination because by the very act of discrimination they would be fining themselves.
It is a sign o’ the times that sociologists think that companies are waiting around for sociologists to tell them how to make money.
They have schools for that. They are called “business schools.” The people who graduate from them are called “businessmen”.
There is, BTW, an interesting side effect of enforced racial equality in social punishment (either schools or jails).
Since the offenses are committed by members of group A more than they are by group B, punishing both groups equally means the same offense merits less punishment for members of group A and more punishment for members of group B.
This makes members of group A even more likely to commit offenses and members of group B even less likely to commit offenses. Taken to its absurd end, all the offenses would be be committed by group A and all the people punished for the offenses would be in Group B.
BLM has published a “policy statement” at https://policy.m4bl.org/
If you choose to slog your way through this grammatical nightmare a vision of their totalitarian future emerges. In particular from their policy on reparations:
“3. Reparations for the wealth extracted from our communities through environmental racism, slavery, food apartheid, housing discrimination and racialized capitalism in the form of corporate and government reparations focused on healing ongoing physical and mental trauma, and ensuring our access and control of food sources, housing and land.”
Sound familiar? This was essentially the complaint against the kulaks.
Here from the BLM Policy statement is the part DG wants NOW:
“Democratic Community Control of Local, State, and Federal Law Enforcement Agencies, Ensuring That Communities Most Harmed by Destructive Policing Have the Power to Hire and Fire Officers, Determine Disciplinary Action, Control Budgets and Policies, and Subpoena Relevant Agency Information”
if the mind boggles reading that nonsense (you can tell what they were trying to say but a close reading reveals their failure to say it) remember that it was written by an affirmative-action college graduate.
What happened to the other BLM planks we discussed earlier? The ones that seemed fairly reasonable and could open a dialog? Are we dealing with Judea People’s Front vs People’s Front of Judea?
and ensuring our access and control of food sources, housing and land.
“The workers must control the means of production!”
Except they don’t want to be workers.
Regarding the article linked, if only 35% of women lawyers who sleep with their clients and such are disbarred, and only 17% of men, then the problem is not unequal treatment of the sexes. It is that the ABA and states are not taking legal discipline seriously. Now there are probably some nuances there, but I would hope that 100% of lawyers who sleep with their clients (to whom they are not married at least) get disbarred when that behavior is found out.
BLM is looking Communistic, and not in a vague way. At least that branch of BLM.
This is not science. This is a just-so story:
Ad hoc is a fallacious debating tactic (also called a “just so story” or an “ad hoc rescue”) in which an explanation of why a particular thing may be is substituted for an argument as to why it is; since it is therefore not an argument, it is not technically a fallacy, but is usually listed as one because it is a substitution for a valid argument. It is similar in form to moving the goalposts, but protects the argument by adding additional speculative terms rather than changing the meaning of existing ones.
Users of ad hoc claims generally believe the excuses and rationalisations serve to shore up the original hypothesis, but in fact each additional speculative term weakens it. This is both due to the speculations being based simply on the faith that there might be an explanation, and because each additional term makes the hypothesis weaker according to the principle of parsimony.
“Possibly,” “probably,” “maybe,” “might” and “could” are all good markers of ad hoc claims.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ad_hoc
Bento Guzman wrote:
“IF DIVERSITY MADE BUSINESSES MORE PROFITABLE THEY WOULD NO MORE RESIST DIVERSITY THAN THEY WOULD RESIST HAULING BUCKETS OF MONEY TO THE BANK.”
Diversity is the new Snake Oil.
3. Reparations for the wealth extracted from our communities through environmental racism, slavery, food apartheid, housing discrimination and racialized capitalism in the form of corporate and government reparations focused on healing ongoing physical and mental trauma, and ensuring our access and control of food sources, housing and land.”
As a descendant of Irish slaves, with as much connection to my descendants as these moochers do theirs, I have as much right to reparations as they do.
The response to that twaddle from the NPR commentariat is heartening.
Where and when do I collect my reparations from Egypt?
JPA: or Babylon, or the Czars, or…..
I was hoping to get some reparation money myself, but sad to say, my family name is Norman and not Anglo-Saxon. Maybe I could get some reparations money from the guys who have torpedoed the economy for the past decade. :^)
Off topic:
Bento, I see KECK was involved recently in measuring the O2 content in a galaxy that is appearing to us as it was 12 billion years ago. Yow.
Were you in on that action?