6 ms·

Let's not get bogged down by the all cultures are not equal strawman. That is not at all the key point here. Amy Wax/OP's argument is problematic because it con

by wsxcde 9y ago

Let's not get bogged down by the all cultures are not equal strawman. That is not at all the key point here. Amy Wax/OP's argument is problematic because it conflates very different things using a subtly disingenuous argument. She starts off by saying something completely uncontroversial: kids from stable marriages do well in school. But she then plays on the audiences implicit biases to imply -- but not explicitly articulate -- a completely unsubstantiated racist claim: inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy. This sleight of hand where the speaker/writer stops just short of an explicitly racist implication that deliberately confuses causation and correlation in the presence of multiple confounding factors is a standard white supremacist parlor trick. That is why Amy Wax was roundly condemned. And the OP's claim that saying anything negative about the (lack of) black marriages is taboo in academia is quite blatantly false. Read for example this gushing review (https://nyti.ms/2kbBHRP https://nyti.ms/2kbBHRP) of Ralph Richard Banks' book on the very same topic by Imani Perry.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
s17n 9y ago
The question that the article raises is, should the Amy Wax face professional repercussions for making a racist argument? I think that as a law professor, the answer is yes - she should be held accountable for incompetence in op-ed writing in the same way that a scientist should be held accountable for incompetence in conducting an experiment. If she were a math professor or something, I would say that she had the right to her opinion.
- overgard 9y ago
  The idea that she made a "racist argument" is a HUGE leap. She argued that marriage is important. You might agree or disagree, but ruining somones career because they have social views you disagree with is just gross.
  - s17n 9y ago
    As a specialist in, among other related fields, "social welfare law and policy" her social views are the substance of her career. If a mathematician believed that 1 + 1 was 3, I'd want her fired. This is similar.
leepowers 9y ago
> .... inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy. We must have read different articles because that's not what I saw - I think you're so focused on detecting a dog whistle that you're missing the key point being raised. Values are race, gender, and class neutral. A value or system of values can be adopted by a person regardless of their race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc. Values are the only way we can find common ground with others, they are the only way we can be unified as a society. Imagine a white supremacist. Certainly if his skin color was magically changed to black overnight he would no longer be a white supremacist. But that's not a possibility - a white supremacist cannot change his skin color. But he can change his values. We all agree that a stable family life is very advantageous for children. Most often this stability is achieved via marriage. Examining it along this axis we can then say that bourgeois, pro-family, pro-marriage values are measurably better than others. We can also imagine an inner city black who has a choice between two value systems - a bourgeois value system or a hedonistic "gangster" value system. Which value system should he adopt? The bourgeois one, as this one will have better outcomes for him, for his family, and for his community. Now there's a possible danger here: that we assume that all inner-city blacks have a gangster value system. That by dint of skin color and geographic location a person must necessarily have a certain value system. So let's not make that error. Additionally, I would be very surprised if a majority of inner-city blacks held to some sort of gangster value system. While I don't have the data or surveys on hand, I would assume that most of this population already agrees with and holds most of the pro-family bourgeois values. If these bourgeois values are already widespread yet poor outcomes remain then we can't pin these outcomes on a person lacking correct values. There's another factor in play. It may be that bourgeois values are hostage to other social, economic, and cultural factors. That they might yet bloom into something positive but are missing other essential ingredients. Wax fails insofar as she assigns too great a weight to the impact of bourgeois values.
- angersock 9y ago
  Building on this point, values for a single person/group can be ranked in terms of importance: I value easily drinkable water much more than I value easy access to cat pictures, and I value easy access to cat pictures more than I value Irish independence (for example). This being the case, two groups that might differ on some values can oftentimes work together if they have similar regard for highly-prioritized shared values--for example, I would have no problem protesting with somebody from the IRA were our common supply of water or internet threatened. The cancerous line of thinking adopted by extremist conservatives and progressives, though, requires that all values must be ranked according to some ill-defined group gestalt, and moreover, that any difference in value systems--no matter how low-priority!--is sufficient for name-calling and failing to cooperate. That desire to gridlock over petty things is what rots a society.
erulabs 9y ago
I do agree completely, but it should be pointed out that she, before mentioning inner city blacks, also mentioned: > Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites Its a bit silly to split that along racial terms (both Wax and the offendees)... There are plenty of single-parent antisocial working-class blacks as well. In my mind the real conflation is the difference between an eagerness and hopefulness for upward mobility and what Wax calls "Bourgeois" or "European" values. Bourgeois is a vastly superior word than European - the two are only conflated because for much of human history, only some Europeans were wealthy. The author could have saved herself a boatload of trouble (if she in fact is _not_ racist) by just pointing out that no one really knows what a modern, international, not-ruled-by-whites Bourgeois society will look like - but that we ought to bring back a general respect for nice things - rather than a lionization of poverty. What I think a lot of rich/college educated white people don't understand is that the lionization of poverty was done _by the impoverished_ - media creation was finally in our grasps, so jazz, hiphop, rap, etc bloomed. It's only inevitable that there will be an identity conflict as the poverty and hardships are (thankfully!) eased over time by technology and wealth. The solution to people being proud of being poor is _to have no more poor people_ - and the solution to that is not cultural, it's economic and legal.
- Edmond 9y ago
  Small nitpick: While Jazz is mostly an African American creation and most of it's most successful practitioners are black, most Jazz aficionados will bristle at lumping Jazz with hiphop... it would be like lumping Beethoven with Ozzy Osborne, doesn't compute....I am a big hiphop fan and a lover of jazz but they are different.
  - erulabs 9y ago
    Well, of course they are, but your first sentence is all I was after. Jazz and hiphop share the fact that they were authored, in majority, by african-americans and the songs in both genres, in majority, tell tales of poverty and hope.
    - 9y ago
mistermann 9y ago
> But she then plays on the audiences implicit biases to imply -- but not explicitly articulate -- a completely unsubstantiated racist claim: inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy. I beg you to walk me through the logic of how reading this essay left you with the idea that "inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy"?
overgard 9y ago
It seems far more "problematic" to infer a racist statement when none was actually made. It's disingenuous to put words in people's mouths. Let's not forget a persons reputation is at stake here, and casually calling them a racist because you extrapolated something that they may or may not agree with can be extremely damaging. If someone is truly a racist you don't really need to "out" them -- they'll do it themselves over time.

by wsxcde 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

s17n 9y ago

The question that the article raises is, should the Amy Wax face professional repercussions for making a racist argument? I think that as a law professor, the answer is yes - she should be held accountable for incompetence in op-ed writing in the same way that a scientist should be held accountable for incompetence in conducting an experiment. If she were a math professor or something, I would say that she had the right to her opinion.

overgard 9y ago
The idea that she made a "racist argument" is a HUGE leap. She argued that marriage is important. You might agree or disagree, but ruining somones career because they have social views you disagree with is just gross.
- s17n 9y ago
  As a specialist in, among other related fields, "social welfare law and policy" her social views are the substance of her career. If a mathematician believed that 1 + 1 was 3, I'd want her fired. This is similar.

leepowers 9y ago

> .... inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy. We must have read different articles because that's not what I saw - I think you're so focused on detecting a dog whistle that you're missing the key point being raised. Values are race, gender, and class neutral. A value or system of values can be adopted by a person regardless of their race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc. Values are the only way we can find common ground with others, they are the only way we can be unified as a society. Imagine a white supremacist. Certainly if his skin color was magically changed to black overnight he would no longer be a white supremacist. But that's not a possibility - a white supremacist cannot change his skin color. But he can change his values. We all agree that a stable family life is very advantageous for children. Most often this stability is achieved via marriage. Examining it along this axis we can then say that bourgeois, pro-family, pro-marriage values are measurably better than others. We can also imagine an inner city black who has a choice between two value systems - a bourgeois value system or a hedonistic "gangster" value system. Which value system should he adopt? The bourgeois one, as this one will have better outcomes for him, for his family, and for his community. Now there's a possible danger here: that we assume that all inner-city blacks have a gangster value system. That by dint of skin color and geographic location a person must necessarily have a certain value system. So let's not make that error. Additionally, I would be very surprised if a majority of inner-city blacks held to some sort of gangster value system. While I don't have the data or surveys on hand, I would assume that most of this population already agrees with and holds most of the pro-family bourgeois values. If these bourgeois values are already widespread yet poor outcomes remain then we can't pin these outcomes on a person lacking correct values. There's another factor in play. It may be that bourgeois values are hostage to other social, economic, and cultural factors. That they might yet bloom into something positive but are missing other essential ingredients. Wax fails insofar as she assigns too great a weight to the impact of bourgeois values.

angersock 9y ago
Building on this point, values for a single person/group can be ranked in terms of importance: I value easily drinkable water much more than I value easy access to cat pictures, and I value easy access to cat pictures more than I value Irish independence (for example). This being the case, two groups that might differ on some values can oftentimes work together if they have similar regard for highly-prioritized shared values--for example, I would have no problem protesting with somebody from the IRA were our common supply of water or internet threatened. The cancerous line of thinking adopted by extremist conservatives and progressives, though, requires that all values must be ranked according to some ill-defined group gestalt, and moreover, that any difference in value systems--no matter how low-priority!--is sufficient for name-calling and failing to cooperate. That desire to gridlock over petty things is what rots a society.

erulabs 9y ago

I do agree completely, but it should be pointed out that she, before mentioning inner city blacks, also mentioned: > Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites Its a bit silly to split that along racial terms (both Wax and the offendees)... There are plenty of single-parent antisocial working-class blacks as well. In my mind the real conflation is the difference between an eagerness and hopefulness for upward mobility and what Wax calls "Bourgeois" or "European" values. Bourgeois is a vastly superior word than European - the two are only conflated because for much of human history, only some Europeans were wealthy. The author could have saved herself a boatload of trouble (if she in fact is _not_ racist) by just pointing out that no one really knows what a modern, international, not-ruled-by-whites Bourgeois society will look like - but that we ought to bring back a general respect for nice things - rather than a lionization of poverty. What I think a lot of rich/college educated white people don't understand is that the lionization of poverty was done _by the impoverished_ - media creation was finally in our grasps, so jazz, hiphop, rap, etc bloomed. It's only inevitable that there will be an identity conflict as the poverty and hardships are (thankfully!) eased over time by technology and wealth. The solution to people being proud of being poor is _to have no more poor people_ - and the solution to that is not cultural, it's economic and legal.

Edmond 9y ago
Small nitpick: While Jazz is mostly an African American creation and most of it's most successful practitioners are black, most Jazz aficionados will bristle at lumping Jazz with hiphop... it would be like lumping Beethoven with Ozzy Osborne, doesn't compute....I am a big hiphop fan and a lover of jazz but they are different.
- erulabs 9y ago
  Well, of course they are, but your first sentence is all I was after. Jazz and hiphop share the fact that they were authored, in majority, by african-americans and the songs in both genres, in majority, tell tales of poverty and hope.
  - 9y ago

mistermann 9y ago

> But she then plays on the audiences implicit biases to imply -- but not explicitly articulate -- a completely unsubstantiated racist claim: inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy. I beg you to walk me through the logic of how reading this essay left you with the idea that "inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy"?

overgard 9y ago

It seems far more "problematic" to infer a racist statement when none was actually made. It's disingenuous to put words in people's mouths. Let's not forget a persons reputation is at stake here, and casually calling them a racist because you extrapolated something that they may or may not agree with can be extremely damaging. If someone is truly a racist you don't really need to "out" them -- they'll do it themselves over time.