4 ms·

Yeah, that's upsetting. If I were paranoid, I'd consider whether it were intentional brainwashing designed to perpetuate the superiority of the white race. Of c

Yeah, that's upsetting. If I were paranoid, I'd consider whether it were intentional brainwashing designed to perpetuate the superiority of the white race. Of course, I'm not paranoid, so I don't think it's intentional at all. But, I do think it may have that unintended effect.

telchar 8y ago
I think it's become a meme, something many writers use without considering whether both affluence AND race are significant in a given situation. They often are and so I suspect some people use them together without thinking in situations when they're not.
barry-cotter 8y ago
Oh come on. They’re just doing the traditional American thing of dividing everybody into two groups and acting as if that’s all the important diversity politically. Before the groups were white and black. Now they’re black and not black. NYT reporters read Asians as white in every important sense. http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/asian.htm http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/asian.htm > Asians are now white. > Don't believe me? A recent MSNBC news headline announced a "Plunge in Minority University Enrollment" at the University of California, with UC Berkeley reporting that "minority admissions had declined 61 percent." Actually, the total percentage of racial minority students at Berkeley, Asians included, fell from 57% to 49%. If you exclude the burgeoning group of people who decline to state their race, the minority percentage fell only three percentage points, from 61% to 58%.
- turtlecloud 8y ago
  I agree. As a former reader of the NYT, it infuriates me how they are portraying different groups in America and playing off the identity game. If the citizens of this country primarily identify as American then the NYT would have nothing to write about /s The Asian American point is a very interesting thing I too have been following the past few years.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - wasted 8y ago
    If you’ve been paying attention, the manner of social justice sexism pandering and race-baiting follows, almost to the letter, the pattern of the child pornography moral panic. It starts from the position of a comparatively rare bird (child molestor) as villain, and agitates the moral high ground so that people auto-polarize to the only tenable side. Then, the bandwagon get crowded, and casual conversation fatigue sets in, first at the water cooler, then the dinner table. Child molestors are everywhere. They’re hoarding jpegs on their laptops. Everyone’s a suspect. You’re either with us or against us. Throw them in jail, even the inmates hate them so it’ll be an instant death sentence. Serves them right. Scarlet letter registries, because there’s so many child molestors. Make them go door to door, but keep them a thousand feet from schools, because that’s where they molest children. When the panic fatigue starts to eat at people, and they get tired of the two minute hate, that’s when things get interesting, because to break with the party line is to question authority. How do you question moral authority? Are you advocating child molestation? Are you suggesting a molested child is no big deal? Are YOU a child molestor? Now take the next bracket of boogie man (neo nazi klansmen) and repeat. Seriously how many KKK neo nazis have you ever met? How many child molestors? And yet here we are, moral panic, fever pitch. So keep going until, what? What’s the end game? Maybe there is none? Just constant infighting as a steady state? Yeah, probably. Gotta stay perpetually vigilant in case zombie Hitler returns from the dead to kill us all. So there’s this angry mob constantly on the prowl, witch hunts for child molestors, witch hunts for bigots. But the mechanism is the same. Scare tactics with a handful of examples. Stereotype the villain. Demarcate the moral high ground. Send out citizen militias to patrol and brainwash. What do we get? A captive audience? More viewers for each spectacle? More lemmings to compound the number of spectacles? But it’s not just some ad money feedback loop. It’s there to keep people in line and afraid.
- darkerside 8y ago
  > Oh come on I'm a little confused. Are you disagreeing with me? If so, I'm still not clear in what way. Edit: In case my original point wasn't clear, here it is restated. When people talk about "white, affluent people" as some type of special group, when they really just mean affluent people, it connotes that white people are more likely to be affluent, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy (see: impostor syndrome). And, yes, white people today are more likely to be affluent for a host of reasons. But I think it does a disservice to all of us to interject that at times when it's completely irrelevant.

telchar 8y ago

I think it's become a meme, something many writers use without considering whether both affluence AND race are significant in a given situation. They often are and so I suspect some people use them together without thinking in situations when they're not.

barry-cotter 8y ago

Oh come on. They’re just doing the traditional American thing of dividing everybody into two groups and acting as if that’s all the important diversity politically. Before the groups were white and black. Now they’re black and not black. NYT reporters read Asians as white in every important sense. http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/asian.htm http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/asian.htm > Asians are now white. > Don't believe me? A recent MSNBC news headline announced a "Plunge in Minority University Enrollment" at the University of California, with UC Berkeley reporting that "minority admissions had declined 61 percent." Actually, the total percentage of racial minority students at Berkeley, Asians included, fell from 57% to 49%. If you exclude the burgeoning group of people who decline to state their race, the minority percentage fell only three percentage points, from 61% to 58%.

turtlecloud 8y ago
I agree. As a former reader of the NYT, it infuriates me how they are portraying different groups in America and playing off the identity game. If the citizens of this country primarily identify as American then the NYT would have nothing to write about /s The Asian American point is a very interesting thing I too have been following the past few years.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wasted 8y ago
  If you’ve been paying attention, the manner of social justice sexism pandering and race-baiting follows, almost to the letter, the pattern of the child pornography moral panic. It starts from the position of a comparatively rare bird (child molestor) as villain, and agitates the moral high ground so that people auto-polarize to the only tenable side. Then, the bandwagon get crowded, and casual conversation fatigue sets in, first at the water cooler, then the dinner table. Child molestors are everywhere. They’re hoarding jpegs on their laptops. Everyone’s a suspect. You’re either with us or against us. Throw them in jail, even the inmates hate them so it’ll be an instant death sentence. Serves them right. Scarlet letter registries, because there’s so many child molestors. Make them go door to door, but keep them a thousand feet from schools, because that’s where they molest children. When the panic fatigue starts to eat at people, and they get tired of the two minute hate, that’s when things get interesting, because to break with the party line is to question authority. How do you question moral authority? Are you advocating child molestation? Are you suggesting a molested child is no big deal? Are YOU a child molestor? Now take the next bracket of boogie man (neo nazi klansmen) and repeat. Seriously how many KKK neo nazis have you ever met? How many child molestors? And yet here we are, moral panic, fever pitch. So keep going until, what? What’s the end game? Maybe there is none? Just constant infighting as a steady state? Yeah, probably. Gotta stay perpetually vigilant in case zombie Hitler returns from the dead to kill us all. So there’s this angry mob constantly on the prowl, witch hunts for child molestors, witch hunts for bigots. But the mechanism is the same. Scare tactics with a handful of examples. Stereotype the villain. Demarcate the moral high ground. Send out citizen militias to patrol and brainwash. What do we get? A captive audience? More viewers for each spectacle? More lemmings to compound the number of spectacles? But it’s not just some ad money feedback loop. It’s there to keep people in line and afraid.
darkerside 8y ago
> Oh come on I'm a little confused. Are you disagreeing with me? If so, I'm still not clear in what way. Edit: In case my original point wasn't clear, here it is restated. When people talk about "white, affluent people" as some type of special group, when they really just mean affluent people, it connotes that white people are more likely to be affluent, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy (see: impostor syndrome). And, yes, white people today are more likely to be affluent for a host of reasons. But I think it does a disservice to all of us to interject that at times when it's completely irrelevant.