This article gives me the willies and I can’t exactly articulate why. I think this “luxury beliefs” theory is based on his interactions with Yale students. Yes they are privileged, but more than that, they are 18-22 years old. I’m not surprised that any group of 18 year olds dont understand the importance of stability, let alone ones who have probably not experienced instability.
But the tone of the rest of the article smells of a certain kind of conservative smugness that it is your individual responsibility for improving your own situation. This is absolutely correct but he discredits “community leaders” and students who “had little in common with others other than how they looked” and specifically calls out defunding the police. So it is somehow also about race, and policy decisions.
Just say “I don’t like poor people.” I’m one of the good ones. I made it, so can you. If you didn’t make it, it’s your own fault. Well your parents’ fault but it’s your fault now. Race has nothing to do with it, other than the fact that I’m bringing it up a lot. Don’t organize. Don’t make policy. Stop complaining about the police.
> Instead of looking to self proclaimed leaders of various marginalized and dispossessed groups, we need to actually ask those groups themselves.
It’s worth collecting data, looking at surveys, speaking with people — not just community leaders and activists who have their own agendas.
> I saw this at Yale where someone who shares the characteristics of a historically mistreated group would claim to speak on behalf of them, but they had very little in common with them other than the way that they looked.
> I want people to be a bit more skeptical of the self-proclaimed activist leaders who could be trying to push an agenda, trying to elicit sympathy, and trying to exploit people’s concerns
See that’s the thing, these culture gripes are never (that I’ve seen) accompanied by a cogent proposal for an alternative. It’s just: tear it down and let the market figure it out. But we already did that, and it was fucking awful, which is why there are systems borne of activist sympathies, imperfect as they are.
Yeah, two-parent households are really fantastic, and so is high-quality education. Which of those is more addressable via policy? Imploring people to have more durable relationships through child-rearing doesn’t seem like it’ll move the needle as much as broadening access to education which is almost totally controllable by policy.
Not having policies which penalize marriage would be a good start. For most people if they are "poor" being married means less access to benefits. The ACA / Obamacare is well known for it's marriage penalty but many other benefit programs have similar guidelines.
What percentage of failed or avoided marriages are due to such policies, do you reckon? Not opposed to your suggestion, but a path to national prosperity it is not.
The official government recognition of marriage is pretty divorced from having that relationship. If a couple is disadvantaged more than advantaged by official marriage, why would they not get a paper divorce but continue to live as a couple?
I'd say any time I hear these conservative laments, my main response it always, "so what?". It's an ideology that doesn't believe in government intervention, and what other lever do they have to influence collective behavior? That is to say, what do they want to do about it? If you only have complaints, but are unwilling to even try and take any action to change what you see as a problem, then you have only created your own victimhood narrative.
Throughout the vast majority of human history the levers to influence collective behavior have been not been through government intervention, they’ve been through familial, religious, and small community based norms and pressures. One of the common conservative perspectives which follows this is that in the past most groups of people have found success not by direct government intervention, but by unity and collective action within that community. I’m surprised you’d disagree, but I think it’s very possible for human behavior to adapt and evolve without the government being the one pulling all the levers.
Then is there a problem here? I'm not sure I understand then - is there some change in the prevalence of two-parent families that is deleterious to the nation as a whole? Or is it merely a current trend in familial, religious, and small community based norms and pressures? Or is this just some sort of modern moral panic?
> But the tone of the rest of the article smells of a certain kind of conservative smugness that it is your individual responsibility for improving your own situation. This is absolutely correct but he discredits “community leaders” and students who “had little in common with others other than how they looked” and specifically calls out defunding the police.
Most liberals discount conservative beliefs because of how they "smell," and vice-versa. That's toxic and discriminatory. It's helpful to look at arguments on a case-by-case basis, than rather with which cultural pattern it lines up. Listen to what the dude is saying, rather than whether he identifies with blue team or red team.
FWIW, in this case, I think both sides are right:
1) If people don't believe it's their own individual responsibility to improve their situation, they will never do so. One of the best ways to keep people oppressed is to give a sense of inevitability and hopelessness, exactly as the liberals do here.
2) The system is racist (in ways and degrees most conservatives, and indeed, even few liberals, will acknowledge), and we ought to fix that. That involves organizing and discussion.
I'll give an example of a problem is those discussion, in my (liberal) school start in kindergarten, well before kids can organize, but well after they can feel hopeless and victimized. We have resources like these being used there:
By the time they're done with it, you see kids splitting up into privileged and disadvantaged groups, exactly as you see in the Robbers Cave Experiment. It was fascinating to watch, as my child had friends all over the spectrum:
* Going in, my child didn't remember the skin color of other kids.
* Coming out, he had a clear racial construct, but kids who were Indian, Chinese, etc. were lumped together as "white."
The issues with liberals aren't specific to 18-22 year old students, as it's happening with perfectly adult teachers and administrators. And yes, there is a complete disconnect between wealthy liberals trying to virtue-signal, and the communities they pretend to want to help.
> there is a complete disconnect between wealthy liberals trying to virtue-signal, and the communities they pretend to want to help.
There is a disconnect between wealthy people and poor people regardless of political views. It's convenient to call out the hypocrisy of the rich liberals, but that doesn't make the conservatives a better alternative for the disadvantaged.
That's all the more deplorable that the guy from TFA denounces community activists. These people may have an agenda as he says (though not more than any other people publicly involved in politics), but most of them are presumably from the community they defend. Who else would represent the poor communities otherwise?
I believe I made almost all of my claims completely symmetric.
> but most of them are presumably from the community they defend
This is not the case. Most woke activism comes from rich, white, progressives (mostly young), who have close to zero actual experience here. Those voices drown out the voices of people from communities they claim to serve. I've seen many organizations devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion without a single person from the communities they claim to serve in any leadership position, or in some cases, in the entire organization.
Most of those organizations are actively harmful.
The one thing I can say is that if you're donating money, see where the people running the place are from, and check 990s for income. If it's e.g. a group of people from a low-income African American community earning $20k-$100k, you can donate, knowing you'll do good. If it's a bunch of Ivy Leaguers who group up in rich communities earning $100k-$1M -- regardless of skin color -- you're probably doing harm.
It's also important to keep in mind international representation, and to be mindful of where people come from. A Nigerian who grew up on Victoria Island, or an Indian whose only interaction with poor people is as servants, is likely to be worse than no representation at all.
You actually want people from low-income communities representing the diversity of the world.
"Smell" is the heuristic which, in practice, led to hiring discrimination against African Americans in the eighties -- in the period where overt discrimination was no longer kosher, but before implicit bias was widely recognized and people tried to compensate for it.
There are hundreds of minute differences in behavior, communication style, dress, body language, etc. between middle-upper class white communities and low-income African communities which had no impact on job performance, but massive impact on "smell."
That's a major part of the reason there was such a disconnect between African Americans and white Americans about the level of racism in America.
It continues to impact many smaller minority groups, which don't quite fit liberal / census DEI slots, to an extreme level.
It also almost entirely cuts across the red/blue line in many communities, leading to increased political segregation and polarization.
If you read many texts, they will tell you everyone is racist. Congrats! You've just learned one of the ways how you're a racist.
But the tone of the rest of the article smells of a certain kind of conservative smugness that it is your individual responsibility for improving your own situation. This is absolutely correct but he discredits “community leaders” and students who “had little in common with others other than how they looked” and specifically calls out defunding the police. So it is somehow also about race, and policy decisions.
Just say “I don’t like poor people.” I’m one of the good ones. I made it, so can you. If you didn’t make it, it’s your own fault. Well your parents’ fault but it’s your fault now. Race has nothing to do with it, other than the fact that I’m bringing it up a lot. Don’t organize. Don’t make policy. Stop complaining about the police.