Elsewhere (290)
Dave Huber reports from the bleeding edge of intersectional scholarship:
Rutgers University’s Brittney Cooper… an associate professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies… says that the very concept of time itself is racially biased. In an interview with NPR last week, Cooper said that the way we “position ourselves in relationship to time comes out of histories of European and Western thought”; in other words, “white people own time.”
According to our feminist educator, time “doesn’t feel linear” for black people – all of them, presumably – because, she says, they live with “the residue of past historical trauma.” You see, for “African-American folks,” the present “feels like the past” – specifically, “narratives of race that are rooted in violence and a lack of freedom” – i.e., slavery – “can become our reality again at any moment.”
And John Paul Wright and Matt DeLisi ponder leftist theories of crime:
Criminologists’ lack of direct contact with subjects, situations, and neighbourhoods—their propensity to abstraction—invites misunderstandings about the reality of crime… The gulf between numbers on a spreadsheet and the harsh realities of the world sometimes fosters a romanticised view of criminals as victims, making it easier for criminologists to overlook the damage that lawbreakers cause—and to advocate for more lenient policies and treatment. Evidence of the liberal tilt in criminology is widespread. Surveys show a 30:1 ratio of liberals to conservatives within the field, a spread comparable with that in other social sciences.
At which point, readers may recall a Guardian interview with lawyer and activist Clive Stafford Smith, who airily dismissed burglary as “really quite inconsequential,” thereby implying that the wellbeing of burglars is more important than the wellbeing of their numerous, often very poor, victims. Especially if the burglar is a “young black person.” According to Mr Stafford Smith and Guardian columnist Decca Aitkenhead – for whom, such things are largely theoretical and not a routine fact of life – anger at being burgled and the subsequent sense of violation are somehow trivial, plebeian and unsophisticated. And so, these enlightened creatures pretend to feel sympathy for career criminals who may prey on their neighbours for years, while disdaining the victims’ expectations of lawfulness, and justice, as “idiotic attitudes.”
Update, via the comments:
Note that the woke position – the one that apparently isn’t idiotic – is that if your elderly parents are burgled and left fearful and distraught, and if this upsets you, then you, and they, are just bourgeois reactionaries, unschooled in modern theory. Because the correct, more progressive view is that it’s unfair for “poor people” – Mr Stafford Smith’s eye-widening euphemism for habitual criminals - to “end up in prison” for repeatedly committing crimes that, according to the Guardian, nobody should care about. Say, when returning home to find the door kicked in and anything of value, however modest, stolen or destroyed by sociopathic predators.
And hey, burglars have feelings too.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
A Public Defender that didn’t think the crime was “that big of a deal”.
The people who choose to become Public Defenders tend to have that attitude. (Which reminds us that “Public Defender” is often a euphemism for “protector of criminals”.)
SF story idea: a person teaches themselves a language without any notion of time while at the same, er, time, going to great pains to lose their own language in order to become a time traveller. Of course, once they cease to regard time as in any sense meaningful their newfound powers become nugatory!
…yeah, maybe it needs work.
I do find these theories fascinating, though on a practical level of course they seem somewhat self-defeating. And it seems highly unlikely that Whorf’s interpretation of Hopi is entirely correct: I mean, out of all the world languages you’ve got to go to a relatively obscure language to justify your theories? Cool story, bro.
I mean, out of all the world languages you’ve got to go to a relatively obscure language to justify your theories? Cool story, bro.
Actual LOL.
It’s like all those “pacificist” tribes, that on fuller examination have higher murder rates than Detroit. I suspect that if you live as a Hopi you have a very good understanding of time, at least as it pertains to the year. They were croppers, so the chance they had no understanding of a necessary time to plant,a time to water, and a necessary time to harvest — and each specific to different plants — is zero.
The Wikipedia article is good for a laugh. In one paragraph we get “The Hopi and the Navajo did not have a conception of land being bounded and divided.” and then two paragrahhs down we get “The Hopi and the Navajo fought over land,”. An interesting conjunction of ideas to believe. (What they might not have had is a concept of individual ownership, but they sure as hell knew the boundaries of their lands.)
If Brittany actually believes “white people own time” then she’s never visited Japan.
DA’s office didn’t want to prosecute to fullest extent of the law.
You may have no idea the pressure from Sacramento (and ever changing rules from them) about NOT convicting criminals.
Indeed, if it was this guy’s first offense, I’m surprised he was convicted, or pled guilty, to a felony that exposed him to 2/4/6 years state prison.
They were croppers, so the chance they had no understanding of a necessary time to plant,a time to water, and a necessary time to harvest — and each specific to different plants — is zero.
That reminds me: Farmers work by the sun and the seasons and the needs of their crops and animals: At certain times they work extremely hard long days while at other times they work relatively little each day. When rural Britons began moving to the cities to take factory jobs the managers had great difficulty training them to work to the clock. It took a long time to train people to new habits, one solution to which was the factory whistle which workers could hear from their homes.
one solution to which was the factory whistle which workers could hear from their homes
Clocks were expensive. One of the reasons town churches sounded the bell tower on the hour.
IIRC, one of the major pushes for standardized time was train travel. If each town, city, region kept it’s own time, it made a shambles of any effort to schedule trains’ arrivals and departures.
“The uncertain predictive value of the GRE exam is far outweighed by the toll it takes on student diversity.”
I wonder what jobs (and student loan balances) await such graduate candidates whom Harvard and Cornell do not want to tabulate GRE scores–assuming degree completion. Apparently the rush (demand) for bodies of color outweigh competence, academic achievement, subject-matter mastery, scholarship, et al.
“UK authorities install knife surrender box to help ‘knife control’ efforts. It went as well as you thought it might.”
Reporter: Why do you rob banks Mr. Sutton?
Willie Sutton: I rob banks because that’s where the money is.
TOXIC MASCULINITY!!! Is there nothing it can’t do?
I was the victim of a Burglary last year- walking into my home while they were there stealing.
Ah, but according to our betters at the Guardian, the consequences are negligible and the emotional impact is “zero.”
I’ve mentioned before that, back in the Nineties, I worked at a large recording studio, often through the night. The studio was in a converted factory in a rough part of town. From time to time, a local gang would try to break in after dark, when the offices in the building had closed, presumably unaware that we were still working. Their attempts to break in weren’t successful, but I can’t say that it’s pleasant to hear the hammering of half a dozen youths armed with crowbars. We once saw the same gang from an office window. The younger members – aged maybe 10 or 11 – rode bikes and scouted the area for potential witnesses before giving the all clear, at which point, the older members would attempt a spot of wealth redistribution, tools at the ready.
Presumably, Mr Stafford Smith would have us believe that these creatures were merely the victims of some ill-defined injustice and tragic circumstance, and therefore deserving of our sympathies. They were in fact very organised predators and actively, even gleefully, making choices.
A Public Defender that didn’t think the crime was “that big of a deal”.
Presumably on grounds that it’s being done to someone else, and not their own family. The desire to excuse malevolence and spare its perpetrators from consequences is, I think, a defining vice of the age.
Tim Newman, here.
Kinda OT but kinda not, I haven’t seen much discussion of this new Missouri university situation involving a MAGA hat and it appears that the video has been retracted. Anyone know anything about this?
https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article228713429.html
Sorry, Professor, but time is universally recognized as an objective reality. It may be measured differently at different times and places, but is is not an invention of white people to oppress the “othered”. Blame the Sumerians.
We are surrounded by self-professed ‘experts’ who know — despite not actually living in the everyday world — just how our society works (and equally who is to blame for a less-than-perfect lot) and with it are absolutely convinced society can be ‘improved’ (usually with unlikely outcomes attached, inevitably leading to unforeseen events) with little effort. But whenever I hear these ‘experts’ squeak I am always reminded of the saying:
“You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”
Regarding time and the Hopi. When I was at school I was reliably informed by teachers that the Eskimos had 80 words for snow. Having learned later that this was nonsense, I called bullshit and I note the Wiki article’s 1st para ends “…whether the Hopi “had a concept of time”, despite it now being well established that they do”.
I worked in Africa for 5 years and found that promises of “it will be done ready for tomorrow” were frequently unfulfilled. I could have escaped into fantasies of “this Western concept of time” but I soon recognised that requests from such people’s manager (regardless of race) were fulfilled on time. Problem: I was lower in the pecking order. Solution: make the request to the manager who would delegate it to the same person. Much more effective.
“You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”
Again, The Gods of the Copybook Headings. They may slumber but once they awake you are f’d.
Regarding time and the Hopi. When I was at school I was reliably informed by teachers that the Eskimos had 80 words for snow. Having learned later that this was nonsense, I called bullshit and I note the Wiki article’s 1st para ends “…whether the Hopi “had a concept of time”, despite it now being well established that they do”.
And also per “experts”, the number of things that I was taught in school that I was later taught in school that were wrong that I was thus even later taught that the corrections of the corrections were wrong that I later learned in THE REAL WORLD that all three contained tiny elements of truth but wrapped up in great streaming piles of BS will haunt me to my dying days.
And of course she’s a feminist who teaches sociology.
Readers are welcome to speculate as to whether this woman is (a) recounting a real-life exchange in order to be appear woke and therefore superior, while oblivious to the fact that she comes across as obnoxious, or (b) inventing the whole thing in order to appear woke and therefore superior, while oblivious to the fact that she comes across as obnoxious.
Via Dicentra.
Search her name plus rutgers in google images.
And of course she’s a feminist…
Meanwhile, in Qatar…
Virgin airlines gets woke* but continues body shaming by not having people of enhanced gravity, while “transgenders” and the alternatively abled are triggered by their being left out of the diversity. It is unclear whether any of the new logos represent actual virgins.
*5th logo is a redheaded lass as a nod to the Ginger Pride community
““white people own time.”
Well Dr Who is always hideously white.
If not always hideously male so some progress there at least.
And of course she’s a feminist who teaches sociology.
Damn, missed it. She took the account private.
Damn, missed it. She took the account private.
Not to worry, Orwell & Goode and someone called Jul have it screen capped and summarized.
The knife thing is laughably stupid. While it’s not easy to make a working gun, a piece of scrap steel and 10 minutes at a grinder will make a new knife. Turning them in won’t change things.
I don’t think young people believe me when I tell them it was common to carry pocket knives (myself included), even to school. No secret, the teachers knew and just kept an eye out for dangerous play. My wife’s dad didn’t want her to carry on (it’s not ladylike) but her brothers did. Neither did we have ID cards or locked security doors on the school. Different world.
{.. and almost everyone’s name, address, and phone number was in a big book that you got for free]
While it’s not easy to make a working gun…
Define “working gun” – a replica BAR, hard; a zipgun, not so much.
Different world.
Indeed, for those of us who had fathers who had brought back trophies from WWII or Korea, stuff brought in for Show & Tell would have gotten a school today locked down, razed, encased in concrete, and all the kids medicated and in therapy for the rest of their lives.
In an interview with NPR last week
How on earth did they schedule that?
Speaking of gratuitous leniency, this seems apposite.
Time is a difficult concept for some. Think:. The English in India trying to make the trains run on time…
For progressives everything old is new again.