Elsewhere (199)
Jonathan Haidt and Lee Jussim on the fundamental defects of “diversity” ideology:
As practised in most of the top American universities, affirmative action involves using different admissions standards for applicants of different races, which automatically creates differences in academic readiness and achievement… These differences are large, and they matter… As a result of these disparate admissions standards, many students spend four years in a social environment where race conveys useful information about the academic capacity of their peers. People notice useful social cues, and one of the strongest causes of stereotypes is exposure to real group differences. If a school commits to doubling the number of black students, it will have to reach deeper into its pool of black applicants, admitting those with weaker qualifications, particularly if most other schools are doing the same thing. This is likely to make racial gaps larger, which would strengthen the negative stereotypes that students of colour find when they arrive on campus.
Do read the whole thing. See also this by Heather Mac Donald.
Gad Saad chats with Janice Fiamengo about the dishonesties and conspiracy theories of campus feminists:
[Among campus feminists,] men are expected to constantly apologise for their maleness… I’ve seen that at the talks I’ve given, where men will stand up and before they even speak they have to “check their privilege” and talk about how they’re white and they’re male, and how that means that therefore they can’t really understand the experience of victimisation, and they have to apologise for that, and erase themselves in some way, and acknowledge how terrible they are, and then they might be allowed to speak… as long as it’s in favour of feminism.
See, for instance, these pious confessions of default male wrongness.
And Theodore Dalrymple ponders the strange, changing fortunes of the Pacific island of Nauru:
The diet that the Nauruans favoured was not refined from the gastronomic point of view. They ate huge mounds of rice and drank vast quantities of Fanta. For those who preferred something stronger, there was Château d’Yquem in the island’s one supermarket. At the time, Nauru must have had the highest per-capita consumption of Château d’Yquem in the world.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
This is likely to make racial gaps larger, which would strengthen the negative stereotypes that students of colour find when they arrive on campus.
Somewhere an SJW’s head is exploding.
It is fascinating to watch as the movement which was nominally born out of a desire to improve the lot of women who were “devalued” and “marginalized” by our society, who were shut out of the marketplace of ideas because of their gender…has been inexorably taken over by a vocal and angry mob who are now themselves systematically devaluing and marginalizing men and shutting them out of the marketplace of ideas (at least in academic circles) because of their gender. The feministas don’t want to level the playing field…they want to turn the tables.
They don’t want equality. They want revenge.
They want revenge.
Well, if you watch this, for instance, or pretty much any of Janice Fiamengo’s video series, you’ll see that sadism, spite and an urge to coerce are not uncommon motives. And as the guts of campus feminism is basically a conspiracy theory, a non-rational worldview, it’s essentially insatiable. Whatever the actual status of women in society, whatever advantages they enjoy, not least on campus, the drama and cultivated grievance can never end.
Hullo David.
Gaad Sad and Janice Flamingo are obviously fake names, like “Chester Draws”, “Elephants Gerald”, or “Barrack Obama”.
I’ve got nothing against flamingos, mind you. But let’s be honest: they’re just gay ostriches.
They think they’re so sexy, standing on one skinny leg and showing off their fabulous pink plumage. It’s all a bit attention-seeking if you ask me. Like they’re the Boy Georges of the bird world.
At least they don’t have that scary makeup Boy George thinks is a cunning disguise for his double chin. You’ll never see a flamingo eating a pile of chips.
Anyway, re: apologising for being white and male. I think we should go for it, they’ll probably respect us more!
The Magnificent Milo has inspired me with his work.
“I’m so sorry that we invented electricity, the printing press, universities, your problem glasses, catfood, the KFC Bargain Bucket, Spanx, iPads and Tumblr.”
“Also, I’m sorry you’re fat.”
At least they don’t have that scary makeup Boy George thinks is a cunning disguise for his double chin.
Heh. Someone pointed that out to me a couple of weeks ago. Not a good look.
David, just wanted to thank you for introducing me to Janice Fiamengo’s videos.
I Boy George still alive. I would have thought someone would have answered his “Do you really want to hurt me” question with “Yes. Yes I do” long before now.
just wanted to thank you for introducing me to Janice Fiamengo’s videos.
She does good work.
Excellent article by Jon Haidt and Lee Jussim.
One imagines they’re going to take some serious flak for that.
Excellent article by Jon Haidt and Lee Jussim. One imagines they’re going to take some serious flak for that.
I should think so, yes.
As Haidt and Jussim put it,
All of which is pretty obvious and is experienced daily by millions of people going about their lives, though generally by people whose minds haven’t been deformed by exposure to the Angry Studies racket. In short, the way to get past race is to stop fixating on it and to engage with people as individuals, not as mascots of some rival, eternally competing group. However,
And yet this zero-sum thinking, this tribal antagonism, is the default template of “diversity” hustlers, who balkanise students along racial lines, pit them against each other, tell them they’re being “oppressed” by some other group and then pander to and amplify any mote of grievance, whether real or imagined, cultivating a kind of racial paranoia among their brown-skinned victims, while trying to foster pretentious collective guilt among supposedly “privileged” and “supremacist” white students.
And should any students dare to dissent and say they’re not terribly interested in a person’s pigmentation, they may well be accused of “neo-racism” and told that, “To ignore race is to be more racist than to acknowledge race.”
And so it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that the identitarian tribalism favoured by the left, its vast and growing “diversity” bureaucracy, is actually intended to perpetuate and exacerbate racial tension, or even to invent it, thereby justifying even more spending, more coercion, and the employment of more hustlers like themselves.
And Steve2 is back. 🙂
Fun prom photo gets compared to a Klan lynching.
http://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2016/05/08/video-game-director-plays-the-kkk-card-as-he-ruins-superhero-prom-picture/
Fun prom photo gets compared to a Klan lynching.
But they’re having gendered fun. How very dare they?!
David, indeed. To all of that.
There’s something truly wicked about this whole racket.
My mother grew up in South Africa during Apartheid. She – and her siblings and friends – left after finishing university and earning enough money to get on the boat.
They left for England, and for America.
We were brought up in London. At the local primary school, my mother, there for some kind of school event, asked me to point out a friend she hadn’t yet met. I did.
Years later, she told me she had been deeply moved that I had pointed out my friend, who happened to be black, by describing what she was wearing.
It was a different world.
Thankfully.
These people make me angrier than I can say.
David, before I make any further comments here, I feel that I must first check my privilege:
Just imagine the stunned silence that would follow…
There’s something truly wicked about this whole racket.
I still like John Ellis’ description of the Angry Studies hustle:
It captures the basic dynamic.
If it gets me laid, I’m all over it.
It captures the basic dynamic.
Yes. That’s very good.
Keep them angry, keep them frustrated, keep them bitter, keep them “yours.”
Keep them angry, keep them frustrated, keep them bitter, keep them “yours.”
The irony being that the victims of the hustle typically imagine themselves as radical titans, subverting this and that, speaking truth to power, and all the rest of it. There are in fact dupes, suckers, foodstuff.
If it gets me laid, I’m all over it.
It won’t. Don’t listen to what women say, watch what they do (or who they do…). Weak men are not attractive to women.
Hanlon’s Razor is useless as a diagnostic tool when faced with the social justice Left. Even if one were to reject the idea that they were actively malevolent (a possible interpretation, albeit not one I can find myself able to support) then their bovine obtuseness in the face of mountainous evidence that their policies wreck lives and create discord is so great as to embody an evil all of its own.
So Waponi Woo was modeled on Nauru. Who knew?
If it gets me laid, I’m all over it.
In those circumstances, best to stick with Madam Palm and her five lovely daughters. They won’t mess with your mind.
I benefit from the privilege of living in a civilisation where Enlightenment ideas have freed us all from priests and supernatural beliefs.
I take it you’ve never heard of Al Gore, Jr, son of a senator who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Hanlon’s Razor is useless as a diagnostic tool when faced with the social justice Left.
Given that the movement as a whole behaves like a sociopathic narcissist, I’d say that Hanlon’s Razor should be exactly reversed for best effect.
Hanlon’s Razor is fine when your neighbors or in-laws are involved but not with SJWs, Bolsheviks, or any kleptocrat and his flunkies.
Which, assuming malice will get you to Understanding Them (and predicting their next move) much faster than the other named razors.
I’d guess that Malicious people controlling Stupid people would be quite effective and… hey, WAIT A MINUTE!
Meanwhile, in New York City, …using safety as a pretext for discrimination or as a way to reinforce traditional gender norms or stereotypes is unlawful… so it is now illegal for a bartender to refuse to serve a pregnant woman alcoholic beverages because giving your child fetal alcohol syndrome smashes the patriarchy, or something.
A human right, I tell you. Of course, Miss or Mrs. Kahalili is featured in Women In Islam where consuming alcohol, let alone by a woman alone in a bar, is most assuredly not a human right, but then she is also the first Executive Director of the Commission on Gender Equity which is also not exactly a feature of mohammedanism.
So, getting back to Hanlon’s razor, “progressives” are both stupid and malevolent, there is no other way to explain their constant immediately self-contradictory statements and actions.
Of course it will be a field day for the lawyers who will sue if the bartenders don’t serve, and will sue if they do and Miss or Mrs IMustDrink winds up with an FLK.
“progressives” are both stupid and malevolent
“War Is Peace” — Stupid or malevolent?
“We have always been at war with Eastasia” — Stupid or malevolent?
“Ministry of Truth” — Stupid or malevolent?
“Bartenders cannot cut off pregnant women because Patriarchy” — Stupid or malevolent?
There is a tipping point after which stupidity cannot possibly be just stupidity: it must necessarily be a malicious attempt to humiliate the populace by forcing them to accept an obvious lie.
Azadeh Khalili knows how stupid her position is but she doesn’t effing care: it is “logical” by the lights of her Path to Power and so it must be “so.”
Don’t believe me? Stupidity often relents in the face of information; malice doubles down.
And there’s all the math you need on that.
Meanwhile, at the University of Minnesota:
It’s high in educational fibre.
The event was sponsored in part by the university’s School of Public Health
⊙_ʘ
⊙_ʘ
What’s interesting is how these clowns can take an issue that previously elicited no particular feeling and then, almost instantly, make it objectionable. I mean, in general I don’t particularly care how big and fleshy someone is – I don’t consider it my business. But when self-styled “activists” start telling students that being too fat for the average chair is both oppressive and someone else’s fault, and that not fancying people who are morbidly obese is a form of bigotry, and on a par with racism, then polite indifference becomes hard to sustain.
Likewise, when students are told that “fatness has little or nothing to do with health”…
…by someone who’s enormous to the point of impracticality and who was famously reduced to panting sweats after lifting her arms half a dozen times while sitting down.
And so while I don’t much care if someone is weighty, I do tend to dislike the kinds of personalities who become “fat activists.”
My feelings entirely. I couldn’t care less until somebody tries to stuff it in my face and try (unsuccessfully) to make ME feel guilty. The powerpoint is just so intellectually strong and right I am stunned!
It comes down to a a case of rationalising one’s insecurities/failings by finding someone else to blame them on.
She protesteth too much, me thinks!
Key takeaways?
Kentucky FC
MacDs
B. King
Taco B
Cruel? No she’s asking for it.
@bilbaoboy
Indeed, the choice of the word ‘takeaways’ was possibly revelatory of something rattling around in the vast space of her unconscious…
The fact that the School of Public Health is teaching students that “fatness has little to nothing to do with health”, while simultaneously preaching to students about patriarchy, white supremacism, colonialism, and all the other intersectional bollocks, suggests quite a bit of mission creep going on with that organization. Shouldn’t they be focusing on things like disease prevention and research?
Stupid or malevolent?
To quote Instapundit, embrace the healing power of “and.”
Meanwhile, in New York City . . .
This business of serving pregnant women alcohol is interesting because it sets up a possible conflict among the various regulations of human activity beloved by the nanny state. In New York, a bar owner may be held liable for civil damages sustained by third parties if the bar serves “habitual drunkards” or someone “visibly intoxicated,” the definitions of which are left to the discretion of the bar owner.
In the case of a pregnant woman, the “third party” would be the child born with fetal alcohol syndrome, a set of circumstances, which in my jurisdiction would result at a minimum in the removal of a child from the custody of mother and perhaps prosecution for felony child endangerment.
My inner libertarian believes that people should assume personal responsibility for their own actions come what may. However, if the state is going to require that certain of us act as proxies in enforcing certain codes of behavior, then the state better grant me the same immunity it has from civil liability for doing so.
Damn HTML fail. I must learn not to comment before finishing my first cup of coffee in the morning.
Damn HTML fail.
‘Preview’ is your friend.
Well, at least I didn’t repeat that unfortunate Grenache incident.
I don’t even make eye contact before I’ve finished coffee #2.
Don’t believe me? Stupidity often relents in the face of information…
Alas, particularly among “progressives”, the stupid are too stupid to know they are stupid and thus will never relent in the face of information, no matter how overwhelming (cough)bernie(cough)(cough)Venezuela(cough).
The event was sponsored in part by the university’s School of Public Health…
At one time schools of public health served a great purpose and were at the forefront of ridding the world, at least in the west, of such things as endemic TB, typhoid, cholera, malaria, polio, rickets, and other numerous other diseases which could be addressed at a population level as well as an individual one. However, having succeeded so well in eliminating real threats, they had to turn to claptrap like the intersectional bollocks, climate change, and the usual leftist drivel. Compounding this unfortunate turn of events, no “health” experience or study at all is required to get into most schools of public health (London, Tulane, and a couple others have specialized sub-programs, e.g., parasitology, that require actual medical knowledge), and yet the graduates wander out convinced that they are, as a result of a grueling 9 month program crammed into two years, actual health experts, though they couldn’t tell a guinea worm from a guinea note.
Indeed, the choice of the word ‘takeaways’ was possibly revelatory of something rattling around in the vast space of her unconscious…
You give her unconscious too much credit, as she is over here in ‘Murika, I doubt she knows your “takeaways”=our “take outs”.
Meanwhile, in the lighter (pardon the upcoming pun) side of “progressive” stupidity, The Atlantic wonders Why White People Don’t Use White Emoji.
An obvious wrong, having to use a generic yellow emoji was the same as Jim Crow laws, apartheid, the Holocaust, and the Rape of Nanking combined.
The horror, the horror.
“It’s disempowering because people of color are uniquely burdened with this choice.”
I had no idea that being “misrepresented” by one’s own choice of emoji was a thing one could be “disempowered” by.
Truly, we live in an age of heroes.
On a lighter note, marbles and magnets. Rube Goldberg would be proud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ9gs-5lRKc
I had no idea that being “misrepresented” by one’s own choice of emoji was a thing one could be “disempowered” by.
My long-suffering wife who has a Ph.D. in English believes that the whole emoji phenomenon is result of people not being able to write properly. That is, people cannot adjust their word choice, sentence structure or tone to convey what they really wish to communicate to the reader. Thus, they are forced to rely upon cute cartoons. It’s a combination of laziness and shallow thinking.
In other words, it’s another sign of the end of Western Civilization.
“It’s disempowering because people of color are uniquely burdened with this choice.”
The above is laughable, but consider the thought process behind it, the signalling, the mental habit. Countless students have been encouraged to search out or hallucinate ways in which they can construe themselves as being unfairly disadvantaged, based on their ethnicity or gender or whatever, by some mote of fleeting inconvenience. In this case, the terrible “burden” of choosing an emoji without feeling “disempowered” – and all in the pages of a national periodical, and with no apparent embarrassment.
marbles and magnets.
What sorcery is this?
Truly, we live in an age of heroes.
Titans, David, Titans; you cannot begin to imagine the horrors of being an Indian engineer in a parochial place like New York City.
Titans, David, Titans;
As a habit, a way to signal status and political sophistication, it seems likely to make a person tiresome and generally unpleasant to be around. And as others, quite rightly, avoid that person for being a pretentious, neurotic, narcissistic bore, this will presumably then be seized upon as further proof of some cosmic injustice.
As a recipe for happiness, it leaves a lot to be desired.
As a habit, a way to signal status and political sophistication, it seems likely to make a person tiresome and generally unpleasant to be around.
True enough, but I have to wonder why they continually seize upon such trivial crap over which to dither. Regarding the emoji mess, as an experiment, I looked at my phone and can’t help but wonder, in my simple minded way, if people of pallor who use other than pure cracker emojis do so because the duskier hued ones show up better against the white text background.
Crazy notion, I know.
The point I was trying to make is that this checklist of privileges that white males are expected to recite in universities today is irrelevant compared to the privileges that Western civilisation bestows upon everyone, regardless of their ranking in the Victimology Olympics