July 16, 2020

What is the science behind the "white fragility" ideology that people are being pressured to internalize and not question?

I wondered as I began to read the long NYT Magazine article "‘White Fragility’ Is Everywhere. But Does Antiracism Training Work?/Robin DiAngelo’s best seller is giving white Americans a new way to talk about race. Do those conversations actually serve the cause of equality?" by Daniel Bergner.

To leap into the text to find an answer to my question, I searched the page for "science." Look what I found instead of the science underlying the ideology:
Borrowing from feminist scholarship and critical race theory, whiteness studies challenges the very nature of knowledge, asking whether what we define as scientific research and scholarly rigor, and what we venerate as objectivity, can be ways of excluding alternate perspectives and preserving white dominance. DiAngelo likes to ask, paraphrasing the philosopher Lorraine Code: “From whose subjectivity does the ideal of objectivity come?”...
Robin DiAngelo is the author of the book "White Fragility." She's critiquing science — or "what we define as scientific research" — but is she doing science? There's a paradox here. Is her theory about white supremacy white supremacy or is it just completely unscientific?

And there's this:
[Glenn E. Singleton, a Black trainer whose firm, Courageous Conversation, has been giving workshops for over two decades, said that] “a hallmark of whiteness,” which leads to the denigration of Black children in school... is “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect.” He said, “There’s this whole group of people who are named the scientists. That’s where you get into this whole idea that if it’s not codified in scientific thought that it can’t be valid.” He spoke about how the ancient Egyptians had “ideas about how humanity works that never had that scientific-hypothesis construction” and so aren’t recognized. “This is a good way of dismissing people. And this,” he continued, shifting forward thousands of years, “is one of the challenges in the diversity-equity-inclusion space; folks keep asking for data. How do you quantify, in a way that is scientific — numbers and that kind of thing — what people feel when they’re feeling marginalized?” For Singleton, society’s primary intellectual values are bound up with this marginalization....
That's what we're dealing with — the radical dumbing down of America.

Now, pay attention to the article, which focuses not on whether the theory of white fragility has scientific support — which was my question — but about whether the cure for the problem — the "training" that is being foisted upon us — has scientific support.
Donald Green, a professor of political science at Columbia, and Betsy Levy Paluck, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton, have analyzed almost 1,000 studies of programs to lessen prejudice, from racism to homophobia, in situations from workplaces to laboratory settings. “We currently do not know whether a wide range of programs and policies tend to work on average,” they concluded in a 2009 paper published in The Annual Review of Psychology, which incorporated measures of attitudes and behaviors. They’ve just refined their analysis, with the help of two Princeton researchers, Chelsey Clark and Roni Porat. “As the study quality goes up,” Paluck told me, “the effect size dwindles.”

Still, none of the research, with its dim evaluation of efficacy, has yet focused on the particular bold, antisupremacist consciousness raising that has taken hold over the past few years — and that may well become even more bold now....
So don't expect the science to catch up with this snowballing trend. It didn't need science to get rolling, and science isn't going to get out in front of it or get in the way of it at all. The theory isn't based on science, and the theory critiques science as racist, and you don't want to be racist, so better get up to speed on all the many things that are considered racist by these people who've stepped up to define racism for you and who tell you it's racist to resist their definition of what is racism and what you've got to do about it.

But maybe it's like religion, operating in a different dimension from reason and science, and maybe, like religion, it has great power to help human beings meet the challenges of living in a world that is not paradise. But no:
If the aim is to dismantle white supremacy, to redistribute power and influence... do the messages of today’s antiracism training risk undermining the goal by depicting an overwhelmingly rigged society in which white people control nearly all the outcomes, by inculcating the idea that the traditional skills needed to succeed in school and in the upper levels of the workplace are somehow inherently white, by spreading the notion that teachers shouldn’t expect traditional skills as much from their Black students, by unwittingly teaching white people that Black people require allowances, warrant extraordinary empathy and can’t really shape their own destinies?
The author, Daniel Bergner, is delicate enough to put that in question form.

158 comments:

Tim said...

There is no "science" behind it.

rhhardin said...

Teach good character and the science will take care of itself.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

They specifically call out “rationality” and “the scientific method” as intolerable traits of whiteness. They aren’t even hiding their desire to take FACTS outside the realm of discussion. It has often been said here that Progressives are allergic to facts, become angry when confronted with them and operate on blogs and in life on pure emotion. Now it’s in their plank. No facts please, we’re progressives. That can only succeed in a dumbed down and heavily indoctrinated youth. Check and check.

rhhardin said...

It's playing on white frigidity, which blacks are presumed not to have a problem with.

Best analysis of the day.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

It's not even social science.

This race theory is a conspiracy theory. Any tools used to debunk the theory- facts, science, history- are denounced as part of the white supremacy. It's like asking for proof of UFOs and being told the government has covered it up.



Craig said...

All of this focus on race is going to cause way more racial division, bias and inequality than would exist in a society that tries to be color-blind.

It's sad. A smart person can see this coming a mile away. Which makes one question whether the predictable consequences aren't really the end goal for those in charge.

Sebastian said...

"Is her theory about white supremacy white supremacy or is it just completely unscientific?"

Or? Anyway, it's just prog snake oil.

"That's what we're dealing with — the radical dumbing down of America."

Well, smartness and learning are part of white culture, so serves us right.

"whether the cure for the problem — the "training" that is being foisted upon us — has scientific support."

Of course, for progs, the Party of Science, science itself is a tool: invoke when it serves the cause, denounce when it is just another instance of whitey doing his whitey thing, trying to test ideas.

Wa St Blogger said...

Am I to understand that to combat racism we need to completely embrace racism - That we need to admit that each race is different?

Terry di Tufo said...

It’s not like religion. It is religion.

Tommy Duncan said...

There is an inherent problem when you attempt to argue logically that logical arguments are not relevant.

Birkel said...

It is the science of the Secret Police.
They have asked the Green Grocer to put the slogans in the windows.
He will comply or be harmed.

Or insert your Gulag Archipelago analogy.
It works too.

JPS said...

"That’s where you get into this whole idea that if it’s not codified in scientific thought that it can’t be valid."

That's really not at all how science works. If it did, we'd be incapable of learning anything new. We'd be the Bourbons, learning nothing and forgetting nothing.

True, some of the people "named the scientists" give credence to this kind of argument because they prefer to ask "Who are you to question me?" rather than say, "That's not correct, and here's why." But that's a problem with people, not the scientific method.

And now I think of Alan Sokal, a leftist disappointed in the left, confessing his hoax:

In the second paragraph I declare without the slightest evidence or argument, that "physical 'reality' (note the scare quotes) [...] is at bottom a social and linguistic construct." Not our theories of physical reality, mind you, but the reality itself. Fair enough. Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. I live on the twenty-first floor.

GingerBeer said...

There is Black English, and Black Math. Now we have Black Science. Melanin, is there anything it can't do?

Birkel said...

Here is the tell: Trump is going to win 15-20% of the black vote.

So all this racial division stuff gets lots of air time.
This is a psy-op.

And it is coordinated.
There are central planners.
What else would Leftist Collectivists do if not have a central planning authority?

Carol said...

teaching white people that Black people require allowances, warrant extraordinary empathy and can’t really shape their own destinies?

As if schools weren't already bending over backward to shove black students over the graduation line.. The achievement gap has been an all-consuming obsession in the schools for 50 years. There is no more discipline, because you know who'll get most of it.

So the solution is, do what we've already been doing. Got it.

Two-eyed Jack said...

Try reading things like the Smithsonian poster, but substituting "American culture" or "American cultural" for "whiteness" or "white" and ask yourself if the poster's observations are wrong. The problem is mostly the description of broad and positive cultural traits as things that are undesirable or unattainable by non Caucasians, which is absurd.

The Crack Emcee said...

I still have my copy of "Bullshit"

I don't have to do this.

Lucid-Ideas said...

@Teri di Tufo

Yep. It's religion. Praise be to their intersectional god.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

First of all...what the heck is White Fragility.

As to these seminars and training sessions to try to stop racism and bring kumbaya diversify to the workplace....the don't work. And the especially don't work on the targets that they think they are helping.

Personal story......Many years ago when I was a female broker at a large firm, we had a big conference and there was a mandatory regional session about diversity....they didn't call it that then. As one of 8 females in a crowd of bout 120 brokers, from ALL over our area of the US,....we were minorities. A mixed bag of gender and ethnicity. White women,women of other races, with a few other Asians , Mexican guys, and some Black guys. But...yes...mostly white men. We had to sit through this bullshit which was pointing at US. Making everyone hyper aware that WE were somehow infiltrating their club and bending over backwards in a totally hypocritical way to treat us like some sort of deficient handicapped specimens.

Up until this point I and some of the others who I spoke to about the session felt that we were part of the team. Never had experienced any overt discrimination. Was friends with many of the other "guys" (using that in a generic way). NOW we felt apart and as if the people we thought were friends would only be acting that way because they were forced to. Affirmative Action effect.

The heads of the conference later, at one of many cocktail parties, ask us what we thought. What we thought ....they didn't like. I told them to stop fucking trying to "help" us. We are big boys and girls and can handle this on our own. All you did was make it worse.

You would have thought I slapped him with a cold cod fish.

Fernandinande said...

Any discussion of the problems of blacks which doesn't mention IQ (or cognition) is not based on science or any approximation of science, which is nearly all of them.

The silly nyt article contains some great examples of widely accepted conclusions not supported by any evidence.

Anti-white racist Marcus Moore projected a sequence of slides showing the persistence and degree of the academic achievement gap between Black and white students throughout the country, and asked us, at our racially mixed tables, to discuss the reasons behind these bar graphs.

Moore ludicrously and falsely concludes:

“The cause of racial disparities is racism. If I show you data that’s about race, we need to be talking about racism. Don’t get caught up in detours.”

Tommy Duncan said...

History teaches us that ignoring facts and results will quickly bite you in the kiester.

Which is why they also put no stock in history.

Gahrie said...

It has often been said here that Progressives are allergic to facts, become angry when confronted with them and operate on blogs and in life on pure emotion.

Somebody has been making the argument that emotionalism is superior to rationality on this blog for sometime now. The name will come to me ...

Paul Zrimsek said...

I fucking love critiquing science.

CJinPA said...

And? Barack Obama was defending "Critical Race Theory" on campus in the 1990s. Anyone paying attention has watched these absurd and, ultimately, hateful ideas transmitted through the academia-media pipeline for three decades.

What can we do about it beyond chronicling it? (Of course, we can't do a damn thing until we know what's going on, so posts like this are much appreciated.)

What can we do? What WILL we do?

Nichevo said...

DiAngelo likes to ask, paraphrasing the philosopher Lorraine Code: “From whose subjectivity does the ideal of objectivity come?”...


https://fee.org/articles/ayn-rand-a-centennial-appreciation/


Cultural and Political Decay
Moral and social deterioration go hand in hand with cultural and political degeneration, in Rand’s view. In the dystopian society of Atlas Shrugged, Rand contrasted the “symphony of triumph” that is Richard Halley’s “Concerto of Deliverance” with the “dreary senselessness of the art shows” in vogue. And yet it is the senseless that receives public adulation and government subsidies. As the literary leader of his age, Balph Eubank declares: “No, you cannot expect people to understand the higher reaches of philosophy. Culture should be taken out of the hands of the dollar-chasers. We need a national subsidy for literature. It is disgraceful that artists are treated like peddlers and that art works have to be sold like soap” (141).

This is the same cultural figure who asserts that “Plot is a primitive vulgarity in literature”—a claim like that of Dr. Simon Pritchett, who adds: “Just as logic is a primitive vulgarity in philosophy.” And Mort Liddy, who proclaims: “Just as melody is a primitive vulgarity in music” (134).

As another sign of the cultural and philosophic bankruptcy of the society portrayed in Atlas Shrugged, we are introduced to Pritchett’s book, The Metaphysical Contradictions of the Universe, which “proved irrefutably” that “Nothing is absolute. Everything is a matter of opinion” (265). And then there is Dr. Floyd Ferris of the State Science Institute, which produces the top-secret “Project X,” an apparatus of death. Ferris is the author of Why Do You Think You Think?—a book that declares that “Thought is a primitive superstition” and that “Nothing exists but contradictions” (340–41).

It's no wonder why leftists hate Rand like vampires hate garlic. She had you pegged a century ago.

Joe Smith said...

Still not clear where the 'Fragility' part comes into it. The white people who created the things that are used by most of the world in everyday life (television, telephone, automobiles, air planes, air conditioning, radio, etc.) seem pretty self-assured to me.

But feel free to be non-linear and live in a lean-to instead of a skyscraper. Makes no difference to me.

As for the dumbing down part, that ship sailed a few decades ago. Importing tens of millions of illiterate laborers along with indoctrinating children instead of teaching them will do that to a country.

Temujin said...

There is no science here. It IS a religion, or as Crack would correctly point out: a cult. There is a concerted effort to paint anything that speaks of the independent person, individual liberties, individual rights as evil. They work to stamp out any thought that the individual is good. Only collectivism is allowed into the minds of these people, no matter that collectivism is responsible for the outright murder of millions upon millions of human beings throughout time. Concepts such as individual ruggedness & objectivity are pasted with the name-calling of 'white concepts', or 'whiteness', or just simply 'racist'. Being objective, striving for the rights of individuals is considered by this religion as racist.

I guess my black neighbor who spent his life as an engineer, building massive structures around the US might disagree that his science was about whiteness or racism. That he used actual science to oversee the building of structures that hosted thousands of people, without a glitch, must be some sort of white wickedness.

I look forward to the new buildings and bridges that this new generation of clean thinkers will be constructing for us all. I do hope the girders that have been cleaned of racism will hold up as well as the previously used racist girders do.

Nichevo said...


rhhardin said...
Teach good character and the science will take care of itself.


I don't care for the cut of your character's jib, Mr. Hardin.

Ryan said...

Maybe we should all just accept "racism" and "white supremacy" as part of what makes us rational humans. There is really no use fighting it and the epithets have lost all meaning anyway.

Darrell said...

It's complete bullshit like everything else from the Left.

Goddess of the Classroom said...

Part of the justification for slavery in the South and imperialism around the world was "saving" other races--they were inherently less capable and needed salvation, corporal and spiritual.

Teaching slaves to read was illegal because it might give them ideas they couldn't handle.

"White Supremacy" today, especially as defined by BLM, is really Western Civilization/Enlightenment Supremacy. No one is excluded as people once were, but, ironically, there seem to be some who are suggesting that POC just aren't capable of handling it.

An aside: when I see POC, I think "pock," the singular of pox, which is rather unfortunate.

lgv said...

"White Fragility" is a pile of gibberish. It's just a point of view not supported by anything.

When you see the word "conversation", it is not about an actual conversation, which is why these programs don't work other than to teach non-believers to STFU lest they be cancelled.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Why try to make sense of obvious nonsense?

frenchy said...

He's got a point. When you conclude that 1 + 1 only = 2, you are definitely excluding a lot of other possibilities. I'm not saying it's a good point, but it's a point.

traditionalguy said...

Required Submission to Your new rulers is always their conclusion. The EDU vomited BS reasons are a twisted myriad. But Americans just laugh , cling to our Bibles and buy more ammo. We don’t plan to lose this war.

Joe Smith said...

Charles Murray could not be reached for comment.

stlcdr said...

Do they really want to prove, scientifically, that black people and white people are different?

Kassaar said...

It’s not science. It’s malicious racist ideology posing as science. It’s the kind of “science” that starts with the required conclusion, then constructs the “theory” supporting it.

Lucid-Ideas said...

White people are so fragile they conquered the known the world, eradicated hundreds if not thousands of diseases that had plagued man and animal kind for millenia, built continents filled with nothing into powerhouses in only a few centuries, invented or developed 95% of the world's current technological inventory, and 75 years ago split the atom.

Fragile.

Browndog said...

I'm pretty sure they had the solution to all their problems all worked out back in the '60's-

Kill Whitey.

Rory said...

"This race theory is a conspiracy theory."

I've been interested in conspiracy/fringe theory for years, was reading about Sasquatch and UFOs as a kid. The most interesting aspect to me now is the response that such theories - denier, settled science, tinfoil hat, whatever. The science itself recognizes that our powers of observation are not perfect, so we don't really know things, we just have more and less likely and we move forward based on those estimates. I think that the sneering attitude fuels the belief of the theorist, because the one thing they know is that there are holes in the other side's argument.

Anyway, what we seem to have here is a conspiracy theory, but that its adherents have acquired the smug contempt that's usually exhibited mainstream people. I'm not sure how to neutralize that, but I don't think that winning an election will do it.

Kevin said...

This is fascinating stuff.

The left is pushing blacks to segregate themselves in “safe spaces”, while charging whites with wholesale racism.

Since they couldn’t be there in 1968, they’re re-enacting it.

MayBee said...

Craig said...
All of this focus on race is going to cause way more racial division, bias and inequality than would exist in a society that tries to be color-blind.


Yeah, I think anything that pushes people toward being more awkward with each other, or seeing someone and being afraid of interacting with them in the wrong way, is a bad thing.
What if we just treated others as kindly as possible, realized people have all kinds of their own thoughts, and forgave people for the honest mistakes they make in their attempts to interact with us? What kind of society would that give us?

Larry J said...

Critical Race Theory and White Fragility are just products of the social science process known as Making Up Shit. They come up with a bullshit theory that justifies their own bigotry, then cite that theory as if it has validity. In reality, the social sciences are bullshit all the way down.

Jamie said...

So, borrowing from the language of atheism: it's considered a worthy goal to further human thriving. Does science further human thriving? Well, it's a tool that can be used to do so. How about religion? I'd argue that some religions do a better job than others, but overall, religions provide solace to mortal beings and a moral framework that keeps us from having to make a million individual decisions about how to behave, so I'm going to say yes.

Does this race theory beastie further human thriving? Does it provide any practical help to humanity, as science does? If so, I've yet to hear it described even by its proponents. Does it provide solace to anybody? I think that's an obvious no - it's intended to make white people feel bad and black people feel put-upon. Does it provide a moral framework that makes people lives easier?

That's the only one I can make a case for, since its primary tenets are white=racist and black=oppressed but superior if only white people would shut up and listen. Theoretically these tenets mean that any white or black person knows going in where she will stand in a relationship, conversation, or other interaction. But the point of most religious moral codes appears to be to allow adherents to act in the world with minimal guilt, and to get us to take care of one another. And decidedly race theory isn't trying for these goals.

So I'm going to say it's not a religion - it's just using the Iowahawk method of taking over an institution, skinning it, and wearing its skin as a suit while demanding compliance. It's just interesting that they picked religion as the skin suit to wear, since they decry it so loudly. Even weirder is that they seem to have decided to skin that particular branch of Christian fundamentalism that attempts to describe a young, instantly created world in pseudoscientific language.

mezzrow said...

"My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing." - Jon Gabriel, 11/24/2014

A historical milepost on the subject of how we got here. When belief systems run headlong into facts, the energy that is released is considerable. What did you believe in 2008 that seems risable today?

PB said...

The dumbing down of America. Concise.

Pat said...

If you actually read White Fragility, you will spot the scam fairly quickly. DiAngelo describes the reactions of white people to her training sessions. They get angry, they cry, they storm out of the room or clam up and refuse to engage. Sounds like it would be tough to get a return engagement, right? Ah, but if all of those reactions are expressions of white fragility, then your company has a problem with racism and absolutely needs more diversity training.

I'm absolutely boggled that this tract is a best-seller. The passage on Jackie Robinson is particularly laughable. DiAngelo believes that white baseball fans have been taught that Jackie Robinson was the first black man capable of playing major league baseball, and imagines how much more instructive his tale would be if white fans learned that he was the first black man allowed to play MLB. This is a woman who is supposed to be an expert on race relations?

Lawrence Person said...

Remember that Bret Weinstein interview with Joe Rogan?

Social Justice Warriors explicitly rejected the Enlightenment, and the idea of enlightenment.

They are explicitly anti-science, except for the instances where it benefits them to pretend otherwise.

madAsHell said...

What is scientific support? Lysenko genetics? Climate science?

It's like your looking for a reason to believe in your guilt.

Charlie said...

It's patronizing to Blacks, like the "voter suppression" myth: Black people are not mentally/socially capable enough to acquire the proper IDs necessary to vote, so any effort to require IDs is racist.

Wince said...

Max Weber tried to draw a line of distinction 100 years ago. From Wiki:

Science as a Vocation is the first of the two "Vocation" lectures Weber delivered. The second lecture was "Politics as a Vocation" which was delivered in January 1919, also in Munich.

...Weber probes the question "what is the value of science?" and focuses on the nature of ethics underpinning the scientific career. Science, to Weber, gives methods of explanation and means of justifying a position, but it cannot explain why that position is worth holding in the first place; this is the task of philosophy. No science is free from suppositions, and the value of a science is lost when its suppositions are rejected.

Weber reasons that science can never answer the fundamental questions of life, such as directing people on how to live their lives and what to value. Value he contends can only be derived from personal beliefs such as religion. He further argues for the separation of reason and faith, noting that each has its place in respective field but if crossed over cannot work.

Weber also separates fact from value in politics. He argues that a teacher should impart knowledge to students and teach them how to clarify issues logically – even political issues – but teachers should never use the classroom to indoctrinate or preach their personal political views.

Weber also makes some practical comments about research and teaching. He notes that good scholars can be poor teachers, and that qualities that make one a good scholar, or a good thinker, are not necessarily the same qualities that make for good leaders or role models.

Bob Boyd said...

The Dr. Suess story about the Star-bellied Sneeches and the Plain-bellied Sneeches has more intellectual heft and does more to combat racism than all these whiteness studies combined.

Of course combatting racism was never the goal.

66 said...

Gaining knowledge through methods outside of science does not, in my view, equate to a radical dumbing down of society. Science is great for many things — much of the progress of western civ came through science. But there’s a lot of knowledge that can be gained through art, religion, literature, philosophy, music. None of that is scientific knowledge, but all of it is rational.

Understanding how it feels to live as a black person in America may be best achieved by talking to black people in America.

gspencer said...

"Wallow in self-pity. That's the ticket. The only way to go through life. If you ever give up self-pity and begin to accept personal responsibility, you will rue that day forever."

Mattman26 said...

Science, done properly, is the best way to ascertain the truth. The truth, I would have thought self-evident, is a good thing.

Maybe we can’t handle the truth.

rehajm said...

While drifting a bit off topic, the same twisted, distorted logic has infected economics. Sound economic principles stand in the way of progressive goals, therefore economics must be reinvented...

Magical monetary theory full review

It is claimed MMT has existed since the - what? late 80's early 90's but go try to find a reference that old. It came to light about the time W. Bush and the GOP could override the filibuster. What a coincidence...

Tommy Duncan said...

A silly question: Do you want someone who thinks 2+2=5 designing the bridges you drive over?

Thatched huts and loincloths for all.

PoNyman said...

Bret Weinstein has an extended conversation with Joe Rogan on this very topic starting here: https://youtu.be/pRCzZp1J0v0?t=1439

JB71-AZ said...

"Borrowing from feminist scholarship and critical race theory, whiteness studies challenges the very nature of knowledge, asking whether what we define as scientific research and scholarly rigor, and what we venerate as objectivity, can be ways of excluding alternate perspectives and preserving white dominance."

So... it's a massive exercise in 'Okay, we'll take this faulty educational doctrine and that faulty belief system, meld them together, and we'll get something totally unassailable and great out of it!"

And we can't criticise it because to do so totally confirms the premise.

(Shrug.) Far as I'm concerned, at this point it's total crap. Unverifiable, un-provable and unfalsifiable crap. You can't even attempt to verify whether it's true or not, because they'll scream that your attempt to is total proof it's true.

Kafkatraps. Don't you just love 'em? (NOT!)


daskol said...

Every day almost, a new example proving the adage that you take away conventional religion, hoary old Christianity or Judaism say, and people will find something to believe in.

McWhorter is working on a book laying out his case that this is a religious awakening. I imagine he'll locate this in the tradition of prior religious awakenings in America. McWhorter is brilliant, but also kind despite his contrarianism. Even as he calls it a cult, he may be too kind perhaps to locate it in the tradition of "year 0" Mao/Pol Pot tradition, although Matt Taibbi goes there. Given the way I feel about what I'm seeing, I'm more inclined tempermentally to agree with Taibbi's take.

Howard said...

Blogger Lucid-Ideas said...

White people are so fragile they conquered the known the world, eradicated hundreds if not thousands of diseases that had plagued man and animal kind for millenia, built continents filled with nothing into powerhouses in only a few centuries, invented or developed 95% of the world's current technological inventory, and 75 years ago split the atom.


All quite true, minus the negative externalities imposed on the defeated, conquered and exterminated tribes.

That's a hellava inheritance, white man (lets get real, white means just Viking/Celtic, southern Europeans, Muslims and Jews don't exactly qualify). It's almost like the "white man" progeny has some sort of built in advantage derived from such a lineage of unrelenting success. Since us lucky ones didn't build the physical, social, intellectual and economic structure we were born into, it seems like it's quite a privilege to be born "white" in the most powerful and riches nation ever.

What could we possibly call that?

n.n said...

It's faith (a separate logical domain) that cannot be reached without trust. It's religion (i.e. behavioral protocol, moral philosophy, or "ethics" - religion's relativistic cousin), notably Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic. It's ideology, the realization of faith and religion in a secular context.

Diversity (i.e. color judgment( is the denial of individual dignity, denial of individual conscience, affirmative discrimination, color quotas, color blocs, including racism, sexism, and other class-based taxonomies. Diversity is a religious dogma that is normalized by various sects of the Progressive Church. Feminism is female chauvinism, specifically the ideology of a minority to exploit men and women, too, for sociopolitical leverage. Keep women barefoot, available, and taxable. #HateLovesAbortion

Libertarianism is self-organizing. Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is [unqualified] monotonic. Conservativism is moderating. #PrinciplesMatter

PJ said...

There is a kernel of truth in the idea that the set of true propositions is much larger than the set of propositions that have to date been established as true via the scientific method. So yes, it is wrong to say that a proposition is either scientifically established as true or it’s invalid. Still, if you’re trying to persuade various multicultural others that a particular proposition is true, scientific proof is a better starting point than “Believe this or I’ll call you names,” or “Believe this or I’ll get you fired,” or “Believe this because I have a gun at your back.”

Rick said...

It'll be fun responding to the next person who claims conservatives are "anti-science" by noting their claim supports white supremacy. Do you suppose they'll fall apart apologizing or laugh and by doing so reveal this is all nonsense?

JB71-AZ said...

Maybee said...

"What if we just treated others as kindly as possible, realized people have all kinds of their own thoughts, and forgave people for the honest mistakes they make in their attempts to interact with us? What kind of society would that give us?"

One that the Left would hate, because they wouldn't be in control of our interactions.

I believe they want our society fractured and divided, and everyone casting hostile glances at each other. By playing to the miscellaneous aggrieved groups they gather scraps of political power, and that's all that's important to them. The good of the country be damned - if they don't control it they'll gladly burn it down.

Retail Lawyer said...

But Democrats are the party of science! Is there enough time to cover this up before the election?

Fernandinande said...

Here are some interesting results and correlations, although accompanied by typical MSM feigned ignorance in the Bloomberg article.

All the measurements listed below follow this rank order in the U.S.:

Asian > White > 'Hispanic' > Black

IQ.
Literacy.
Not Obese.
Employment.
Infant survival.
Having health insurance.
Life expectancy (but 'hispanic' > white)

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

My brother did outreach with inner city youths in Edmonton, Alberta. One contact he made was a very articulate First Nations person. In conversation this person would sometimes say: if you want to go Greek, I can go Greek. Meaning: some kind of structured rationality instead of the indigenous way of doing things. It always comes across a bit like: never mind Jake, it's Chinatown.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

The “science” isn’t even wrong.

n.n said...

Christian fundamentalism that attempts to describe a young, instantly created world

Science is, with cause, a philosophy and practice in the near-domain, where accuracy is inversely proportional to the offset (backward, forward, and all around) from the observer's frame of reference.

That said, the Judeo-Christian line does not assert a "young, instantly created world". The "scientific" alternative assumes that space (and perhaps "time") are uniform and that circumstantial ("myth") physical evidence alone is sufficient to establish, not the facts, but what is plausible, aided by liberal doses of inference, hopes, and dreams. The problem for "scientific" faiths and porgressive ideologies is the propensity to conflate logical domains.

Josephbleau said...

This new thrust of Lysenkoism is primarily a short term tactical assault on Trump and intended to damage his reelection by making promises to people that can't be cashed, but even so, true believers will adopt it if Biden is elected. It is phase 3 of affirmative action, if you let minorities into elite schools and over time they can't be 13% of the science professoriate and publish 13% of the most cited papers, next you have to burn the house down and say that there are other sciences than Popperian science, like Egyptian water deities and such.

In the end people want their cable tv to work and they want the airplanes to fly, and they want crono vaccines, so we will see how this all works out. I expect that there will be "special" science departments run by people who can't do productive science. Lets let them take over History of Science and Philosophy of Science. That will be harmless.

Nonapod said...

This really shouldn't need be said, it's stunning to me that apparently it has to be though:

If you're positioning yourself against objectivity, reason, critical thinking, and logic then you are necessarily for ignorance, for stupidity, and for destruction. The very foundations of human civilization are based around reasoned thinking. We'd still be struggling to survive in the African savanna if it weren't for basic problem solving through reasoning. To either imply or outright say that these concepts are tools of "White Supremecy" is beyond absurd, it's outright destructive. I'd go so far to argue that it's worse than racist, it's anti humanity.

Fernandinande said...

According to Moore, in the US, Asians tend to do better than whites on most measures or outcomes because:

"The cause of racial disparities is racism."

Asians aren't mentioned in the anti-white nyt propaganda, except as cast members in a play, because they falsify the desired conclusion.

n.n said...

Teach good character and the science will take care of itself.

Exactly. Most people, men and women, do not exercise liberal license to indulge diversity. And while bias is intrinsic, prejudice and bigotry is forced. #Principles... CharacterMatters

Night Owl said...

Now, pay attention to the article...

No offense Althouse, but some of us who have jobs and better things to do are trying our best to ignore this racist nonsense.

Your last paragraph sums things up nicely. I don't know if the white people pushing this new form of racism are deliberately trying to hold back young blacks and minorities but that will be the end result of their efforts. Any educated black or minority who pushes this crap is a con-man who is willing to hurt "his/her people" to make money.

Wa St Blogger said...

It seems clear to me that the biggest mistake America made was ceding the Universities to the 60's radicals. It is a gangrene that has spread throughout nearly every facet of society. The radical left has just admitted what we on the right have known for decades: Rational thought is inimical to achieving their social goals.

hombre said...

Black delinquents drag down their schoolmates. Adult black criminals drag down the entire black community. Eliminate black criminality and the black community will rise. Residual white (and brown and yellow) racism will not significantly deter that rise.

What passes for racism is the justifiable fear that the black male, and more recently black female, with whom you have random contact may well be a criminal who means to harm you or take your property.

Obvious enough, but probably not dumb enough, silly enough, or “nuanced” enough for 2020 Americans.

Browndog said...

"What if we just treated others as kindly as possible, realized people have all kinds of their own thoughts, and forgave people for the honest mistakes they make in their attempts to interact with us? What kind of society would that give us?"

You're talking about individual interactions. Which, for the most part, are just fine.

We are no longer individuals, but part of a collective, a tribe. The sin of one is a sin of all. The grievance of one is a grievance of all.

We no longer have discernible characteristics as an individual. Hell, we no longer have faces.

MASK UP!

AllenS said...

Life would be better and easier if we just allowed discrimination. Why on earth can't people make up their own minds on where they want to shop, or who they want to hire, fire or not talk to? I could go on, but you probably can catch my drift.

daskol said...

The attack on science and "objectivity" is ultimately at the heart of this "movement." Science and measurement in particular, whether it is related to group differences in IQ or admission to selective secondary or post-secondary schools on the basis of objective tests, is telling us things we don't want to hear: persistent underperformance by some groups, persistent outperformance by other groups, even adjusting for a variety of socioeconomic factors. Ironically, this whole "movement" has to be predicated, implicitly, on the notion that decades of affirmative action policies (reparations by another name) have been ineffective, even as it calls for more reparations. I don't know what the science or measurement around affirmative action says conclusively, but the notion that we have not made progress, and that such programs haven't had any beneficial impact since the 60s, seems wrong. The whole thing is a muddle, but because our preferred narrative can't account for persistent group differences in outcomes, it's become more important to throw away the whole concept of measurement and science rather than actually try to develop and implement helpful programs. This is a nihilistic movement, even on its own terms.

AlbertAnonymous said...

Some men are women. Some women are men. There are 57 gender identities.

Once you understand those things, this Race stuff is child’s play.

SensibleCitizen said...

What we call racial discrimination is usually class discrimination. Race has become an imprecise proxy for the underclass, especially the criminal underclass.

The issues of economic distress in Appalachia are identical to the economic distress in large cities where higher melanin levels are typical. Melanin level tells us nothing about an individual, and to presume it does, even in the aggregate, racializes society in a toxic way.

Our individual internal battle against tribalism is at the core of enlightenment. Racializing economic stress is a false path that has never led to solutions and is regressive by definition.

Michael said...

What tiny percentage of the population gives one shit about any of this? Smaller than the writer of the article in the NYT Magazine believes you can be sure of that. If there was ever any such thing as white fragility it is being cured by the current onslaught of bullshit occasioned by the accidental killing of a thug on drugs. A moments reflection would reveal the disconnect. How many white people wake up wishing they had been born black? Close to none would be my guess. OK, that is supportive of the idea of white supremacy, of the belief that one is better off, superior in a way, by being born white and a recipient of the civilization built by members of a Judeo Christian tradition with a dash of Islam tossed in. Not much from Africa south of the Sahara, however, and that is difficult to ignore. Very. Our universities can excavate the libraries of the world in search of the great intellectual contributions by ancestors from Africa south of the Sahara and they will find very little in comparison to those from the so called western tradition. So, no reason for "fragility". The white fragility idea is as bogus as the claim that the Greeks stole their ideas from Africa.

MikeR said...

Does this stuff work? The question makes no sense until you define, "work". If the goal is to create frightened peasants who don't dare open their mouths, I think it might work.

West Texas Intermediate Crude said...

"The defeated, conquered and exterminated tribes" that Howard whined about above are actually doing better today under the yoke of white fragility than they were before they were supposedly oppressed/persecuted by the fragile folks.
Also, Howard sez the Jews are excluded. American Jews are doing quite well in our society. Even better, they also have found a way to run a whole 'nother country despite local and worldwide opposition.
And Howard doesn't even mention Asians. Clearly not white, yet doing well here in Fragilestan.

h said...

THe outcomes discussed here are not measurable. It's like asking whether eating bacon makes your soul larger. Since there is no way of measuring the size of a soul, the question cannot be subjected to empirical analysis. The real intention of these efforts is to enrich the instructors and developers of the anti-racism programs. That outcome can be measured, and by that standard the programs have been unquestionably successful.

Francisco D said...

JPS said... In the second paragraph I declare without the slightest evidence or argument, that "physical 'reality' (note the scare quotes) [...] is at bottom a social and linguistic construct." Not our theories of physical reality, mind you, but the reality itself. Fair enough. Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. I live on the twenty-first floor.

That quote pretty much captures it.

Smart Generals always try to fight on the battlefields of their choosing.

gspencer said...

All the measurements listed below follow this rank order in the U.S.:

Asian > White > 'Hispanic' > Black

- - - - -

Water seeks its own level.

Inga said...

“What tiny percentage of the population gives one shit about any of this?”

Oh boy, I can agree with this. I’d say there are enough real tangible things that are worth worrying over. Why create even more angst in a time of real angst? Change will come in its own time in it’s own way, it may come when the old ideas die off with the people who hold them. All of these training sessions and the people trying to benefit off of them are ridiculous.

Unclebiffy said...

Has anyone else noticed that one of the fundamental elements in each of the latest theories on race (anti-racism, white privilege, white fragility, etc...) is that to deny the truth of the theory is proof that you are a racist, biased, privileged, fragile, etc,...

Joan said...

Great posts today, daskol.

The attack on science goes hand in hand with the attack on Judaism and Christianity, both of which posit a rational, ordered universe. If your premise is a chaotic universe ruled by capricious gods where literally anything can happen (magic, for example), you have already abandoned science.

I’m not saying all other religions are irrational, but the Judeo-Christian worldview explains why so-called white culture has advanced so far in so many areas. The belief that Creation is comprehensible and ordered Is essential. That so many people lack this belief in the 21st century is yet another indictment of our education system.

Bruce Hayden said...

“He's got a point. When you conclude that 1 + 1 only = 2, you are definitely excluding a lot of other possibilities. I'm not saying it's a good point, but it's a point.”

To be facetious, 1+1=2, until it equals 10. Of course, the 10 is really only 2, but in another base of reference. Which argues that I+I=II is also equally valid. I will add that we did prove at one time in a higher level math class that 1+1=3 or some other arbitrary result. I seem to remember that it partially depended on dividing by zero. I think that that exercise was to teach us to look a bit deeper into mathematical fallacies. But on the the other hand, our Newtonian universe is just a special case of the larger Einsteinium universe, and while the angles to a triangle add up to 180 degrees in Euclidian space, they may not in non Euclidean space. One good example of this is Relativity. I should add that one of my favorite undergrad classes was Non Euclidian Geometries, where all we did every class was play “let’s pretend”.

Still, we effectively live in Euclidian space with Newtonian physics. In that case, knowing that 1+1=2 is critical in making the technology of our universe work. If you assume that 1+1=3, or even 1+1=1.01, buildings and bridges aren’t going to stand up, cars won’t run, and airplanes won’t stat in the air, if you can feet them to get off the ground in the first place. Computers won’t work either. Indeed, you probably don’t realize how ruthlessly mathematical computers are, until you muck around in them at a low enough level. For example, computers do exactly the same thing, time and again, with the same inputs, because they execute exactly the same commands each time. They are “deterministic”. Part of that is a result of a P (program) counter that increments (correctly) every time an instruction is executed. The minute that 1+1=/=2 (ok, 10, since we are talking base 2 arithmetic) commands are skipped, and the computer is no longer deterministic. And without computer processors not operating completely deterministically (where 1+1 always equals 2) little of our modern technology would work.

So, I am perfectly willing to live in a ruthlessly mathematical, deterministic, world, where 1+1=2 (ignoring relativity, etc), where I can keep my house, bridges, cars, computers, the Internet, cell phones, etc, and you can live without that certainty, and without the technology that that certainty brings. Or you can be duplicitous, use the technology that my ruthlessly mathematical, deterministic world has developed, while pretending that that wasn’t necessary for developing all of the conveniences of modern life that we so enjoy.

Bilwick said...

The whole Leftist ideology is pretty much a religion we're being asked (trans.: told) to internalize and not question. Just read the comments from Crack, Inga, Howard, et al that appear here regularly. These are people who view the syllogism the way Dracula viewed a crucifix.

The Godfather said...

As I recall, John C. Calhoun justified slavery on the ground that Blacks were incapable of rational thought. How is “White Fragility” different from that?

AZ Bob said...

My favorite era of fragility began in 1789.

Earnest Prole said...

Anyone who’s been around religious fundamentalists recognizes who and what Robin DiAngelo is.

Roger Sweeny said...

Singleton and DeAngelo are saying, "I fu**ing HATE science." If you forwarded something from I fu**ing LOVE science, you should question how accurate this "whiteness" stuff is.

daskol said...

In America, as others have noted, class war is fought on the culture field, in the form of racial grievance.

In Harrison Bergeron, if you were fit, they would weigh you down to make you like the heavy and unfit folk. Today, we just throw away the scale and deride any competition in which we don't like the outcomes, doing away altogether with contests that may produce uncomfortable outcomes. Dumbing it down is one way to put it, but it seems much more than that, since we're trying to get rid of "it" rather than change it.

Gahrie said...

whether it is related to group differences in IQ or admission to selective secondary or post-secondary schools on the basis of objective tests, is telling us things we don't want to hear: persistent underperformance by some groups, persistent outperformance by other groups,

I sometimes cut the Left some slack here, because what IQ tells us can be very unpleasant, and even frightening. So it is easier to avoid and deny the issue.

However, the dirty little secret that no one talks about is that our public schools use IQ tests all of the time, and these tests are treated as valid measurements of student ability and potential. Every IEP out there depends on IQ tests, and usually multiple IQ tests, to define a measurable difference in performance with the performance predicted by IQ. This is what qualifies the student for special education.

My second year as a teacher I taught 7th grade Social Studies and English. I had a young girl that was struggling, and had struggled for years. She would cry in frustration, and her parents did too. they begged me for help. The special ed department kept telling me they couldn't help her. There was no discrepancy between her performance and her IQ tests. She was simply stupid. (Of course no one had the courage to tell the parents that. I used the "no discrepancy" language, but I think I was blunt enough that they got it) I had her younger sister several years later, and she was a straight A across the board student.

So the next time someone says IQ and IQ tests are meaningless, ask them why they are the key part of legal documents pertaining to kids' education?

Gahrie said...

Rational thought is inimical to achieving their social goals.

I have been waging a war defending rational thought against emotionalism on this site for years. It would be interesting to see some evolution on this issue.

Ice Nine said...

>>Understanding how it feels to live as a black person in America may be best achieved by talking to black people in America.<<

Indeed...for anyone who manages to be interested.

Gahrie said...

if you let minorities into elite schools and over time they can't be 13% of the science professoriate and publish 13% of the most cited papers, next you have to burn the house down and say that there are other sciences than Popperian science, like Egyptian water deities and such.

Oh it's much worse than that. They want 50% participation or more. (see CBS's announcement) Partly it is because they don't realize, or accept, that 75% of the population is White. Right after the Floyd riots took off I had a conversation with a Black middle school administrator in which he denied that Blacks were only 13% of the population, Whites were 75% of the population, and over 50% of violent crime was committed by around 5% of the population (Even while 500,000 young Black men are already off the streets in prison). Even when presented with FBI statistics and the 2010 census he refused to concede.

But to your basic point, that is the point. Fifty years of Affirmative Action and wealth transfer has actually made things worse, not better. The facts are against them, so now they're trying bullshit and banging on the table.

Fernandinande said...

There are 57 gender identities.

57 in binary = 111001.

Gahrie said...

it seems like it's quite a privilege to be born "white" in the most powerful and riches nation ever.

Well it is. It's also quite a privilege to be born Black, Brown, Yellow, Red, Purple and Green in the most powerful and richest nation ever.

The first day of class, and several times during the year I tell my students to stop bitching and whining about how bad their lives are. (Especially when they're using a smart phone while wearing $200 sneakers and a couple of gold chains.) They were all lucky enough to live in the United States in the 21st century, which makes them all better off than 99% of all humans who have ever lived.

YoungHegelian said...

I have found, in discussions with my liberal friends, that it is very difficult to get them to take seriously the anti-scientific & anti-Enlightenment ideology of post-modernism. The liberals see themselves as keepers of the flame of the Enlightenment against what they consider to be the anti-rationalism of theocratic troglodytes of the Right, but they gloss over entirely the explicit anti-Enlightenment foundations of post-Modernism.

It's amazing just how deeply in denial they are about the whole thing. They will quote to you a definition of "systemic racism" that is pure Foucault, but somehow they want to maintain a system of morals that allows them to hector the rest of us about it, as if "morals" survive in a Foucaultian universe!

Happy Warrior said...

It's anti-science in the extreme. Good thing Western Civilization came along with its emphasis on reality, rationality,and objectivity or else we'd be stuck as slaves, regardless of our race. It's not so much 'whose subjectivity did the idea of objectivity come from' but rather 'Objectivity doesn't give a rat's ass about your subjectivity.'

Gahrie said...

Do they really want to prove, scientifically, that black people and white people are different?

I put this slightly differently. They have convinced Black people that contra MLKjr, being Black matters.

They really, really don't want to convince White people that being White matters. Really.

Anthony said...

I saw all this coming in anthropology/archaeology in the early 1990s and mostly kept out of it as much as I could (was working on my PhD at that point, finishing in 2001, and mostly known around the department as That Mystery Guy Who's In The Lab Every Night). All of a sudden oral histories were just as "valid" as radiocarbon dating, actually more so.

Remember when we used to say "Well, that's social science, it won't ever come for hard sciance!"

They're coming for everything.

The Crack Emcee said...

We are not dealing with the radical dumbing down of America - America was dumb already.

You can't deprive your citizens of their history - white, black, native, Mexican - and expect them to be scholars when toppling statues.

They know the history's been hidden, but they also know of lies, treaties broken, rapes and killings, and that's heavy stuff to have floating in the air of a young nation.

Blacks know the Haitian revolution scared Jefferson - then president and no revolutionary - damning Lincoln and many others to death, long after blacks had suffered for centuries, and, thanks to white folks, there was still about another century and a half to go, just so I can talk to you as I do, online. That's a tragedy you dress up as something to be proud of.

If you didn't already grasp that, as I said, you're dumb already.

RMc said...

There's a paradox here.

The only paradox that matters is the Rick Astley paradox:

If you ask Rick Astley for a DVD of the movie “Up”, he will not give it to you because he will Never Gonna Give You Up. However by not giving you Up, he is letting you down. The Astley Paradox.

Narr said...

I ran away from the school of education after two weeks of "fundamentals" taught by the sorriest old PC queen on the campus. Not a clue about what, how, or why he was there--and
the (mostly) girl students were airheads . . . the smart girls had better options by 1971.
(My mother was from a line of teachers, and I thought, what the heck . . . soon cured!)

Anywoop, the schema was there in the ed schools even back then, but not as the unquestioned public orthodoxy it is becoming now.

Once I got my head on straight and focused on history and political science, it was common to hear that "There is no such thing as Objectivity." My response is always, "Is that an Objectively true observation?" An early indication that feelings, attitudes, and emotions were becoming reified as valid modes of understanding.

One symptom of our degeneracy is the exaltation of sport (especially team/spectator sport) and physical prowess as the greatest of human achievements and a (supposedly) unifying force.

Another is the wholesale lumpenpiety and spirituality that permeates popular culture. Angels and demons, mysticism, magic, and monsters, life after life (after life), superheroes with superpowers . . . a ground-bass of nonsense, a drumbeat of the irrational. All for $$$ and to distract and stupefy the populace.

A cultural revolution -- by and for the most crass and childish among us--has been simmering and is now boiling over.

Narr
The Long March through the Institutions is no myth


Lloyd W. Robertson said...

Lionel Shriver in the British Spec, "We're making a spectacle of shame."

"We're witnessing the spectacle of white people frantically competing with other white people over who can appear more self-excoriating, more self-loathing. But these people don't hate themselves. They hate other people--mythical other people, for the most part, all those terrible racist white folks to whom they can feel vastly superior."

"Proper guilt feels bad. Its emotional cousin, shame, feels even worse."

"It's insensible to feel 'guilty' or 'ashamed' about something you didn't do."

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

Lionel Shriver in the British Spec, "We're making a spectacle of shame."

"We're witnessing the spectacle of white people frantically competing with other white people over who can appear more self-excoriating, more self-loathing. But these people don't hate themselves. They hate other people--mythical other people, for the most part, all those terrible racist white folks to whom they can feel vastly superior."

"Proper guilt feels bad. Its emotional cousin, shame, feels even worse."

"It's insensible to feel 'guilty' or 'ashamed' about something you didn't do."

daskol said...

Hey Bruce, you can't take 3 from 2, 2 is less than 3 so you look at the 4 in the 8s place, now that's really 4 8s, so you make 3 8s, regroup and you change the 8 to 8 1s and you add it to the 2...

daskol said...

Every IEP out there depends on IQ tests, and usually multiple IQ tests, to define a measurable difference in performance with the performance predicted by IQ. This is what qualifies the student for special education.

Interesting Gahrie. Even some of IQ and psychometrics' greatest critics acknowledge that it is predictive on the low end of things: it's good at identifying and predicting underperformance on the lower end of the scale. They often reject IQ's validity on the basis that on the right end of the distribution, it loses predictive power: the higher your IQ, one may think, the more likely one is to achieve success as measured by educational attainment and wealth. But at a certain point, very high IQs have a negative correlation with these outcomes.

Anyway, we don't like it, I don't like it and mostly the people who love talking about it are racists. But let's not throw out the whole idea of measuring things, ok?

Rory said...

"What we call racial discrimination is usually class discrimination."

If you watch a lot of old TV, you find episodes that are directly about class, with atrocious behavior from people in fraternities and sororities, country clubs, women's auxiliaries. With the Lear-MASH age, that turns so that even if you run into a group of snobs, their offensive behavior is grounded in race and sex.

Joe Smith said...

@ Gahrie

You must not have been a CA teacher.

I was under the impression that IQ tests are not allowed for black students in California. Per the right-wing 'L.A. Times' article:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-08-05-mn-139-story.html

When I was in third grade in California in the '60s, everyone was tested. I remember it fairly well because I was pulled out of class and got to play some games that I thought were fun...

CA also had a program designated Mentally Gifted Minors, and if you made the cut in the IQ test you could attend some special classes. At the time the program was young and the classes were interesting but few in number. That program evolved into GATE program and I have no idea where it went from there.

Douglas B. Levene said...

All the complaints here about the anti-rational, anti-scientific, anti-work ethic, anti-modern theories of the "antiracism" movement are irrelevant. They don't care if their program makes blacks uncompetitive in the modern world, because their goal is to eliminate competition against whites and asians by implementing hard racial quotas for every aspect of public life so that blacks will only be competing against other blacks. This is the logical end game, and the left is just biding their time before they start pushing for it.

JohnAnnArbor said...

From whose subjectivity does the ideal of objectivity come?

That's one of the dumbest pseudo-intellectual lines I've ever heard.

narciso said...

yes the soviets designed most of these templates in the 70s,

minnesota farm guy said...

My first thought on reading that the scientific method only applied to whites was: What was George Washington Carver; a potted plant?

So I thought: why not do a little search for "prominent black scientists"? Turns out there have been a bunch,and more, even wikipedia has a list.

Given the obstacles that these people overcame it is criminal to ignore the accomplishments of these black scientists and to assert that they were incapable of applying the scientific method because they were not white.

effinayright said...

Crack: "If you didn't already grasp that, as I said, you're dumb already."
*****************

Says Crack, PERFECTLY capturing the circular "reasoning" of "White Fragility".

As for America being dumb, we somehow managed to lead the world in inventions and standard of living.

How much civilization has come "Out of Africa"?

Joel Winter said...

"...without evidence" is wielded like a cudgel in headlines against opponents, but snuggled in, like a soft warm blanket, applied to white fragility. I'm confused....

Rick.T. said...

I am surprised none of your learned commenters has posted this famous story:

Refutation of Bishop Berkeley -

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Given the obstacles that these people [prominent Black scientists an inventors] overcame it is criminal to ignore the accomplishments of these black scientists and to assert that they were incapable of applying the scientific method because they were not white.

But then they were probably accused of acting white.

Crab Bucket Mentality

deepelemblues said...

It's not supposed to work.

It's supposed to be an endless Kafka gauntlet.

daskol said...

It's amazing just how deeply in denial they are about the whole thing. They will quote to you a definition of "systemic racism" that is pure Foucault, but somehow they want to maintain a system of morals that allows them to hector the rest of us about it, as if "morals" survive in a Foucaultian universe!

Isn't that just the most fucking annoying thing?

Drago said...

Crack Emcee: "You can't deprive your citizens of their history - white, black, native, Mexican - and expect them to be scholars when toppling statues."

2 + 2 = 4.

Do you agree?

RichardJohnson said...

Gahrie
My second year as a teacher I taught 7th grade Social Studies and English. I had a young girl that was struggling, and had struggled for years. She would cry in frustration, and her parents did too. they begged me for help. The special ed department kept telling me they couldn't help her. There was no discrepancy between her performance and her IQ tests.

My mother once had a conference with some parents who were dissatisfied with their son's performance in school. "He has an IQ of 100, but he's getting only C's." His parents believed that 100 IQ meant top-of-the-line, 100th percentile. His 100 IQ and C average were quite compatible.

Rockport Conservative said...

I think it is time we hear from you on the difference between a cult and a religion. Or how a cult becomes a religion and otoh how religion becomes a cult. That is what is going on here. I'm not sure which it is. I've thought the climate alarmists had environmentalism as a religion, now this rears its head. The people of these religions/cults overlap. So what do he have here?

Tommy Duncan said...

What would Darwin say about disparate racial outcomes and affirmative action?

Stephen said...

This is so hostile to the anti racism project that it raises concerns about your capacity or willingness to engage honestly with the problem of American racism.

For one, it is not a fair reading of the article itself, which is keenly aware of the dumbing down problem and presents voices from within the African American community who offer a significant critique that is broadly consistent with yours. By the way, Drezner is a great journalist and his book on Angola State Prison is a classic.

For another, it treats some anti racists denigration of science as inherently white as establishing that there is no science that actually supports the idea of white fragility. But surely the science of prejudice and bias, explicit and implicit, as well a variety of other insights from social psychology, behavioral economics, and social and economic history go a significant distance to underwrite the claims made. You appear to have no interest in those bodies of knowledge.

Third, I see in your focus on the extreme and, in my view, unpersuasive versions of white fragility as a calculated effort to avoid engagement with the more plausible versions and with the question of systemic racism generally. This seems weird to me, as those more plausible versions are on regular display both from our national leaders, and, even more strikingly, from the commentators on this blog. Contrast what you have to say with the recent thoughtful explanation of systemic racism by Megan McCardle--whose libertarian perspective, moderation and thoughtfulness you admire.

Finally, it is striking to me that you choose to spend your time lambasting white fragility with real passion and anger, but have never been able to muster any passion and anger to attack the racism and divisiveness of Donald Trump. Is it an accident that you have chosen to spend your time attacking woke culture, while ignoring COVID-19 and the economy, at the precise time that Trump has also turned to that strategy?

n.n said...

Diversity (i.e. color judgments) is dogma normalized by the Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, ostensibly secular religion, is based on the belief in discernment from low information attributes, denial and exclusion, for social and religious progress, and for leverage to secure capital and control. Ignore the bigots whenever possible to mitigate its progress. Discover and exercise your dignity. Stand, don't kneel.

Tom said...

So; let’s temporarily accept the premise of this book. White people have collectively and systematically controlled the levels of socioeconomic and political power for hundreds of years without even trying. That doesn’t sound fragile to me? I can think of a lot of words but not fragile.

Birkel said...

The Crack Emcee: "They know the history's been hidden..."

We cleverly hid it in libraries.

Martin said...

Anti-racists are the worst racists since Hitler.

JAORE said...

Don't you just love it when the D's call themselves the Party of Science?

Of course it's science/clown nose on-science/clown nose off at random intervals.

Birkel said...

Stephen really wants us to believe in systemic racism.
I demur.

effinayright said...

Stephen said:
For another, it treats some anti racists denigration of science as inherently white as establishing that there is no science that actually supports the idea of white fragility. But surely the science of prejudice and bias, explicit and implicit, as well a variety of other insights from social psychology, behavioral economics, and social and economic history go a significant distance to underwrite the claims made. You appear to have no interest in those bodies of knowledge.
***********************************

ALL of "social science" needs to be published in "The Journal of Irreproducible Results".

How many freaking times do we have to read about "studies" claiming that:

Whites are bad
Conservatives are stupid
Republicans are ignorant, stupid and bad
There are few conservatives in academia, because conservatives are stupid
Black Republicans are ignorant, stupid, bad and race traitors

And how many times do people like Stephen lap it up as "Science", if not Holy Writ?

Drago said...

Stephen: "Finally, it is striking to me that you choose to spend your time lambasting white fragility with real passion and anger, but have never been able to muster any passion and anger to attack the racism and divisiveness of Donald Trump"

Althouse has been too busy debunking your near daily hoax and lie-filled allegations of racism and division against Trump.

See: Trump Charlottesville comments and Mt Rushmore speech.

If you guys on the lying left would cease with your lies for more than 15 minutes maybe Althouse could get around to other things.

But you won't. Because you can't. The lies are all you have.

Sebastian said...

Let's take a look at the latest in progspeak.

@Stephen: "This is so hostile to the anti racism project that it raises concerns about your capacity or willingness to engage honestly with the problem of American racism."

“The” anti-racism “project." “The” project? Which and whose “project”? AA "raises concerns": and what could be worse than an attitude that raises the "concerns" of progs who presume to sit in judgment on one’s moral purity? And worst of all, if you do not show "willingness" to "engage honestly" with the problem of American racism, you know what follows. (Actually, of course, Althouse is not hostile to "anti-racism," but to anti-racist bullshit.)

"For another, it treats some anti racists denigration of science as inherently white as establishing that there is no science that actually supports the idea of white fragility. But surely the science of prejudice and bias, explicit and implicit, as well a variety of other insights from social psychology, behavioral economics, and social and economic history go a significant distance to underwrite the claims made. You appear to have no interest in those bodies of knowledge."

More of just the sort of BS to which Althouse is allergic: "surely" the scientific literature shows no such thing--most of the stuff mentioned has nothing to do with "fragility" in general or with DiAngelo's speculations in particular.

"Third, I see in your focus on the extreme and, in my view, unpersuasive versions of white fragility as a calculated effort to avoid engagement with the more plausible versions and with the question of systemic racism generally."

A “calculated” effort, no less: you can just see Althouse engaging in her racist “calculations.” So what version is "plausible"? What is the "question" of systemic racism? Besides the question of how it is used as an untestable claim to justify prog politics.

"Contrast what you have to say with the recent thoughtful explanation of systemic racism by Megan McCardle--whose libertarian perspective, moderation and thoughtfulness you admire."

McCardle "thoughtful." Now there's an argument. Who are you to disagree, Althouse?

"have never been able to muster any passion and anger to attack the racism and divisiveness of Donald Trump. Is it an accident that you have chosen to spend your time attacking woke culture, while ignoring COVID-19 and the economy, at the precise time that Trump has also turned to that strategy?"

Althouse! Start attacking the "racism" of Donald Trump! Don't "ignore" Covid and the economy, like the Orange Man! Otherwise, progs might think it is "no accident" that you are just like Trump!

So we have: BS assumptions and false attribution of motives, empty claims about science proving something, an appeal to authority (of Megan McCardle!), finished off with the old ad hominem and, for good measure, the pseudo-Marxist is-it-an accident smear.

Roy Lofquist said...

Terry di Tufo said...
It’s not like religion. It is religion.
7/16/20, 8:18 AM

Yes, indeed. The religion is Islam. To be more specific, the Ash'arite sect of Islam, adhered to by 80% of Shia. It dates to the dehellenization of the 9th and 10th centuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehellenization

Tommy Duncan said...

Blogger Stephen said...

"This is so hostile to the anti racism project that it raises concerns about your capacity or willingness to engage honestly with the problem of American racism."

Stephen, I agree there is a lack of "capacity or willingness to engage honestly." Let me suggest to you that it is the side that is screaming and rioting that lacks capacity or willingness.

A great place to start the engagement would be to define the alleged racism in a factual manner that provides truthful and concrete examples so that all parties agree on the nature and scope of the problem.

Hell, why don't you delineate "the racism and divisiveness of Donald Trump" for us? Give us some factual examples to examine in their full context. Show us the complaints from his former employees. Help us find real documentation of his sins.

The Crack Emcee said...

You guys can keep this up, but, as long as you're losing, I don't care.

I told you I'd win.

Never said it'd be pretty.

Rick said...

Stephen said...
Finally, it is striking to me that you choose to spend your time lambasting white fragility with real passion and anger, but have never been able to muster any passion and anger to attack the racism and divisiveness of Donald Trump.


Isn't it strange racists like Stephen refer to "divisiveness" as if it's a negative when their entire political, social, and economic program is demonizing people? I'm not sure a more clueless insult exists.

Amadeus 48 said...

Heh. Before I retired, we used to go through racial and gender sensitivity training at my law firm. I remember I had to fight like crazy to retain my belief that all are created equal after listening to those trainers talk for two hours. They didn’t exactly inspire either confidence or belief. They gave the impression they disapproved of people in general.

wildswan said...

"What is the science behind the "white fragility" ideology that people are being pressured to internalize and not question?"

DiAngelo wrote a paper enititled White Fragility in 2011 which pretty much sets out her theory. https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116
The key statement is:
"Although white racial insulation is somewhat mediated by social class (with poor and working class urban whites being generally less racially insulated than suburban or rural whites), the larger social environment insulates and protects whites as a group through institutions, cultural representations, media, school textbooks, movies, advertising, dominant discourses, etc. ... [She argues that there is a] reduced psychosocial stamina that racial insulation inculcates. I call this lack of racial stamina “White Fragility.” "

The articles she cites are in the main from journals dealing with education, a notoriously unscientific area of study. Those who can do real science, law or history; those who can't write for education journals. In the references I do not see any original research based on any hard science and very little based on any social science - psychology, anthropology. In the main random sociological observations are used to show the presence of a "discourse" and the discourse is presented as "protective." The "discourse" (and this is DiAngelo's innovation) is a sort of Helicopter Mom circling above white people and swooping down whenever they are challenged to carry them off to milk and cookies and Mommy. Helicopter parents are a major problem is schools and the most common criticism made of them is that they cause their children to be less resilient. I believe there is no science underlying "white fragility" but rather the power of this buried image working unchecked at the back of people's minds. The criticism that might be made is that white fragility struggle sessions as they actually exist do not allow anyone to develop resilience and competence in racial interactions, the ostensible goal. Rather there is a helicopter race assessor hovering over all and swooping in to force a predetermined outcome for every interaction. Continual interference will make dialogue impossible.

Joan said...

You guys can keep this up, but, as long as you're losing, I don't care.


It's a little early to be counting your winnings, Crack.

In fact, how is any of what's happening now ending up in the "win" column for anyone? Everything is a huge mess right now and we'll just have to wait to tally the winners and losers when everything shakes out.

mikee said...

What is the science behind White fragility, or any other form of Marxist agitprop? You are guilty for asking. And don't ask what you are guilty of. You are guilty, period. But we knew that when we charged you with being guilty.

Phil 314 said...

"There’s this whole group of people who are named the scientists. "

So I guess they'll be tearing down Galileo's statue.

daskol said...

Telling people they're part of a project, whether they like it or not, is a rather sharp point. Projects should be a matter of choice.

eric said...

You have to be a schizophrenic to be a Democrat these days.

Democrats: Science is white supremacy!

Also Democrats: Trump and Republicans are anti-science racists!

PM said...

DON'T THINK, JUST LISTEN
It's easy if you try.

Sam L. said...

I despise, detest, and distrust the NYT. And its little dog WaPoo, too!

Doug said...

I told you I'd win
What are you winning? More deaths in inner cities? A clueless white author that makes you think (lowercase b)lacks are somehow superior because they don't value logic, scientific method, work ethic? A Democrat party that treats you like chattel?

Congratulations. Here's your prize.

Kirk Parker said...

"That will be harmless"

We already see that is not the case.

Caligula said...

I find it difficult to find much in "critical race theory" or "whiteness studies" that does not seem to ultimately boil down to a simple Kafkatrap: you're guilty if you admit (or even think) you're guilty, but, if you claim (or even think) you might not be guilty then you are especially, deeply guilty.

The "logic" is always: you're guilty, guilty, guilty. All of this starts from the assumption that (based on your race, ethnicity and sex) you can only be guilty. It's from this a-priori assumption that all else follows. Critical Race Theory (and its companions) starts with the conclusion, then proceeds to build a fantastic scaffold of theory (and frequently mangled language) around this to "prove" what it has already assumed to be true.

This seems remarkably like the game of proving God's existence by defining "God" as "the greatest being that could ever be," and then declaring that if God did not exist then God could not be "the greatest being that could ever be," and therefore God must exist.

Calling this "sophomoric logic" insults sophomores.

The question is, why does anyone take this seriously? It's not as if it takes some deep knowledge and proficiency at logic to understand how insipidly stupid every Kafkatrap is, is it?