How To Prove Yourself Superior
Be the ‘quit’ in equity.
What we need is a “Resign for Diversity” campaign…
Any academic from an overrepresented group who advocates more “diversity” is directly contributing to the lack of “diversity” by remaining in his position. Assuming the number of jobs is relatively fixed, such an individual is effectively saying, “I want the percentage of academics who have the same demographic characteristics as me to go down, but I am not willing to give up my job in order to achieve that goal. Rather, I want other academics with those demographic characteristics to give up their jobs, or to lose job opportunities.” Needless to say, this is not a principled stance…
If you can’t explain why you haven’t resigned, then don’t expect others to partake in this foolish “diversity” charade.
The goal wouldn’t be to encourage mass resignations; since most people look out for themselves, we shouldn’t expect many to actually resign. Rather, it would be to “get the incentives right” – to internalise the externality of advocating “diversity.” At the moment, white academics who have jobs can go along happily, waxing lyrical about “diversity,” while white academics who don’t have jobs bear the consequences. If those incumbents were pressured to resign, they might start to rethink their ideology.
A longer, more detailed airing of the idea, with much to chew on, can be read here.
Also, open thread.
“you just don’t see Asperger’s Syndrome in children growing up in intact, biological families.”
NTSOG is being far too kind in her reply. Your statement is utterly wrong.
I’ve taught a significant number of autistic students over the years, and their families were often exceptionally nice. Many of the children had siblings who were perfectly normal. (Our school is often picked by their parents, because we are quite old-fashioned, which suits their love of predictability, and reduces the bullying.)
We’ve known for a long time that autism has a genetic component.
To deny that is to make parents of autistic children feel like they are responsible.
innocent childhood request for ketchup to out on my school lunch macaroni and cheese
A good quality hot sauce is what goes on Mac n cheese.
Chester Draws: “To deny that is to make parents of autistic children feel like they are responsible.”
In fact it’s not all that long ago [1970s] that parents of autistic children were described as ‘refrigerator parents’ by Bruno Bettelheim, especially the mothers who were blamed for their supposed lack of personal attachment and emotional affection for their children, thus causing them to ‘become’ autistic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theory
CD: “(Our school is often picked by their parents, because we are quite old-fashioned, which suits their love of predictability, and reduces the bullying.)”
Absolutely correct. I attended an exclusive and old-fashioned private school in which the structure and rules were explicitly defined and supported by staff – it was almost military in style. That made it easy for my to function in formal settings. In the unstructured schoolyard though I was bullied without mercy, even strangled unconscious once. [When one doesn’t have the innate capacity empathise and thus read and respond to spoken and unspoken (emotion-based) communication, then one stands out as ‘different’ and being different marks one as an easy target.] One of the psychologists who assessed me years ago asked what would have happened had I been born 20 years later [around 1970] to ‘flower-child parents’ and later attended modern, trendy ‘laissez faire’ state primary and high schools. My response was that I would probably have ended up in a mental institution as, until the early 1980s, an alternative diagnosis for very smart, but strange, young autistics was Childhood Schizophrenia. The professor agreed.
Jim
Although Asperger’s is an “autism spectrum disorder”, it presents very differently than what is typically described as “autism”.
I stand by what I said. All the data sets I’ve seen – keeping in mind that’s limited to Canadian data and with the proviso that Asperger’s is being intentionally misdiagnosed – shows a huge correlation between divorce and Asperger’s diagnoses. The younger the child at the time of the divorce, the higher the likelihood. Asperger’s diagnoses in stable, two-parent biological families, by contrast, trend with the more severe forms of autism and are rare.
We’ve known for a long time that autism has a genetic component.
We used to think that about BPD, too. And it does, after a fashion, just not directly; it is largely environmental.
My wife puts ketchup on her grilled cheese sangwiches.
That mother of hers…..
My wife puts ketchup on her grilled cheese sangwiches.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
DR: “The younger the child at the time of the divorce, the higher the likelihood. Asperger’s diagnoses.”
If you were to meet me you would not know I’m severely autistic because I was taught and learned how to pass through society without causing disruption and drawing attention top myself in formally structured, known settings, e.g. an office setting or school. However if I was required to enter a social setting such as a bar or tavern or attend some other social event I would be terrified and stand as close to exit as I could for a quick escape before I had a severe anxiety attack.
Children, born autistic but not diagnosed [including both high and low IQ], can ‘appear’ to be totally functional/normal in a safe, known and structured social setting in which the rules are explicit and predictable, e.g. a normal middle class family. However add the disruption of a divorce with an added layer of acrimony between the parents, then all the rules of that family break down. Hence a previously undiagnosed, but now dysfunctional and highly anxious undiagnosed autistic child will suddenly be noticed. Divorce/family breakdown doesn’t cause autism, but the environmental changes as family structure breaks down exacerbates the presentation of autistics.
DR: “it is largely environmental.”
Perhaps you missed my reference to refrigerator parents [Bettelheim] before you posted? Your comment is actually parent-blaming.
I have heard of unscrupulous people who have sought a [mis]diagnosis of autism, usually so as to obtain government funding/services that is dedicated specifically to the autistic population.* I have also encountered parents who sought a diagnosis of autism for their spoiled brats: by mislabeling a badly behaved child [brat] as being autistic – autistic children are well know for their temper-tantrums and meltdowns – some parent avoid their responsibility to be effective parents and train their otherwise normal children to behave correctly. They hide their lazy parenting behind the autism diagnosis.
Jim
* Governments around the world provide funding/services to support people who are disabled or developmentally different. Each disability group is usually assigned funding. To gain access to such funding means that a person has to have a formal assessment according to the formal diagnostic criteria for the funded group, whether it be cerebral palsy, visual impairment, autism and so on. In Australia suffering a brain injury during the developmental period up to 18 years means a person will be funded on the basis of having an intellectual impairment and possibly a form of cerebral palsy. After age 18 years such an injured and incapacitated person will be considered to present with an Acquired Brain Injury [ABI] and funded from a different ‘bucket’ of money. People do ‘doctor shop’ for certain diagnoses that might offer better funding/support. I have been required in the distant past to deny services to certain families wanting services for a family member because the affected person did not meet formal clinical criteria set my the government department in which I worked.
Jim
Daniel, besides what NTSOG said (which is absolutely correct), that “proviso that Asperger’s is being intentionally misdiagnosed” makes those “data sets” about as reliable as the ones that prove global warming, or that liberals are “more evolved” than conservatives.
Some relevant personal info:
* My father, may he rest in peace, came from a stable two-parent family. He was never formally diagnosed, but his behavior pretty well screamed Asperger’s.
* My parents divorced when I was 5, and I saw my father only sporadically for almost thirty years after that. Yet I have a lot of his personality traits (for what it’s worth, I scored 42/50 on that AQ test), although I’d like to think that I’m a lot better socialized than he was.
* I’m married now for over two decades (thank G-d), and one of my children has been formally diagnosed with Asperger’s and another one with ASD (and, trust me, not for the government funding; it got them extra therapy in school, but other than that we’ve largely paid for everything out of pocket or through our insurance).
Granted that the plural of anecdote is not data, I think it’s fair to say that what I’ve presented above doesn’t support any notion of the underlying cause of Asperger’s/ASD having much of anything to do with the environment. (Of course, as NTSOG pointed out, it can be exacerbated by such factors.)
I did not like lying and to write “Love Jim’ was to lie.
Heh. I have the opposite end problem. I have never felt comfortable starting a letter to someone who was not friend/family with ‘Dear’. It has always felt absurd. “Dear Human Resources Administrator”…I mean WTF? Yet in all my years I have never heard any of you normals having this issue. Expressing fondness/affection for some bureaucrat in an office you will never visit, someone you have never and likely will never meet? It’s absurd. Is it any wonder sincerity has been lost in the modern world.
And on the ‘love’ end…as I find myself speaking to people who are good friends but not close friends, people a bit older than me, whom I sense that it’s entirely possible that I might be speaking to them for the last time, I frequently have to stop myself from awkwardly using that ‘L’ word. Especially as many of that generation are pretty much the last people on this earth that I GAF about.
A good quality hot sauce is what goes on Mac n cheese.
Hot sauce at my elementary school? Dude, we didn’t even have air conditioning. The iron in the water stained the white walls brown and tasted like licking a rusty pipe.
“My wife puts ketchup on her grilled cheese sangwiches.”
Clearly she married down. The world needs more like her…
Back in grad school in the 1970s I had an interest in autism. I heard about a group forming of people interested in this syndrome. The first meeting was pleasant and promising. But the second meeting was attended by a vocal contingent of angry radicals who pushed the group into a political action orientation aimed at protesting, complaining, marching, demonstrating…woke in the 1970s. That was also about the time I heard people saying things like “There are too many people on the planet.” and “It’s cruel to do research with animals. Use alcoholics. They’re useless bags of flesh.”
G’day Jose B.,
There are whining ‘militant’ autistics who play the victim/poor me ‘card’ and have been doing so for many years. As we all know playing victim is SOP for many groups of people nowadays. That’s why, I believe, that Jim Sinclair wrote his essay in 1993: “Don’t Mourn for us”. Such whining autistics seek pity from gullible, but well intentioned neurotypicals. I don’t want to be associated with such people who have little self-respect.
https://www.autreat.com/dont_mourn.html
Jim
Normally I agree with Daniel Ream’s posts, but he’s wrong about Asperger’s. My own experience, both as a parent with an Asperger’s son (and two neurotypical sons), and as a teacher, would actually imply the opposite. My own family and that of my husband are intact through every generation – no divorces at all – and the children I’ve taught who’ve had diagnoses of Asperger’s have also had two still-married parents.
My son – Andrew – had developmental delay: he didn’t walk till he was 18 months, didn’t talk till he was nearly three, and couldn’t draw or control a pencil until he’d been at school for a year or so. (Even now, his writing is almost unreadable.) He was diagnosed as dyspraxic when he was seven. However, the suggestion of Asperger’s came from his secondary school shortly after he started there (I’d never heard of it until they contacted me): it certainly wasn’t to get funding, which we’ve never had. (Our local authority isn’t well off.)
Again, the four Asperger’s girls* whom I’ve taught have all been diagnosed at the school’s suggestion: in their parents (all married) have realised that their daughters weren’t ‘normal’, but haven’t known why, or tried to get funding. In every case, the diagnosis has come as a great relief both to the parents and to the girl herself.
*Most of my teaching career has been spent in girls’ grammar schools [for non-UK readers, that’s a school which selects for academic ability – often very high in Asperger’s pupils: of the four Asperger’s girls I taught, three went to Oxford or Cambridge]. There are, as noted above, more boys diagnosed with Asperger’s than girls, otherwise I’d have expected to see more such diagnoses among my pupils.