Thanks for the context. I hadn't heard about this before. Loved a lot of the comics but that does change my opinion about him.
To get a bit off-topic...
R.E. "It's okay to be white": I think this slogan is the perfect example of effective propaganda. Out of context, at face value, it appears mundane and uncontestable. But in context it holds a wildly different meaning. I definitely saw members of my family fall for this exact trap. Retired parents spending too much time watching "news" aren't so different from terminally online incels.
Important because it should remind us that when we think people are acting wildly obtuse that we should question if we are missing something. Seems like the best way to combat getting caught in those echo chambers and identify propaganda. I think we're getting so used to crazy (rather, the perception that others are crazy) that we aren't setting off these "alarms", where we would if we were talking about "real people". IDK what it says about how we view one another, but I think it is concerning.
> "It's okay to be white": I think this slogan is the perfect example of effective propaganda.
It's so effective because negative polarization is so powerful. People see something that makes them mad on the internet and then make it their whole mission in life to fight it. That slogan was designed to bait people into saying "it's not OK to be white", which is obviously absurd and guaranteed to cause white people to get angry and say racist things in response. Magnifying the Internet race war that they want to break out.
> I think we're getting so used to crazy (rather, the perception that others are crazy) that we aren't setting off these "alarms", where we would if we were talking about "real people". IDK what it says about how we view one another, but I think it is concerning.
I don't understand what you mean. Political ideologies are real, most people aren't crazy or duped by propaganda. They aren't just haplessly regurgitating 'white lives matter', it's a slogan that aligns with their beliefs, we should take that seriously and not pretend like 'they just don't know what it actually means'.
I don't think it's nearly so easy to disentangle a person's ideology from the propaganda they have been exposed to. The way propaganda works is by nudging ideology.
This goes for all of us. Some people do a worse and some a better job of separating out the truth from the manipulation, but everyone is susceptible to some degree.
"It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles."
My takeaway of the point was there are situations in which you will end up in an unsympathetic quagmire of "well, actually..."
You can see it in this thread, and I guess I'm walking into the trap in this very post
> And you don’t argue when a woman tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar.
I think it's misleading to group these you-should-not-argue about statements together. They're not the same.
Can you explain why someone would want to "well actually" a woman who says they only earn 80 cents on the dollar versus men?
To me sounds like "Well, actually, men don't have that much of an advantage over women. So could you please stop trying to raise women's earnings?" Tell me where I'm not understanding.
- not all of it is an apples-to-apples comparison of job/experience/hours
- not all of it results from discrimination
Put another way: is all of that pay gap due to "sexism"/"discrimination"? If not, then simply removing discrimination won't necessarily result in equality. What else might be at play, and what does that mean for public policy?
> Mechanically, the earnings gap can be explained in our setting by the fact that men take 48% fewer unpaid hours off and work 83% more overtime hours per year than women. The reason for these differences is not that men and women face different choice sets in this job.
Rather, it is that women have greater demand for workplace flexibility and lower demand for
overtime work hours than men. These gender differences are consistent with women taking
on more of the household and childcare duties than men, limiting their work availability in the
process (Parker et al., 2015; Bertrand et al., 2015).
The original (provocative) "80 cents" statement seems to imply that the problem is simply solved by making sure we don't discriminate in pay (or perhaps just boost women's pay to compensate, or, as I described here, offer higher referral bonuses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43890123) and that's that, we've solved it. But it sounds like there's more to it, doesn't it?
See also "why is there a gender pay gap" (https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality-by-gender#why...), which discusses various adjustments, which in that dataset (contemporaneous with Scott's post, coincidentally) brings it to roughly 90 percent. So right off the bat there exists "well, actually, it's closer to 90 cents when adjusting for..."
To me it was an inflammatory way to say, "for a happier life, just smile and nod and do not engage with the topic", set up to provoke exactly the sort of internet back-and-forth to illustrate the point. Parent at least tries to look for some good faith, whereas its sibling straight out yells that I must be a sexist bigot.
>My takeaway of the point was there are situations in which you will end up in an unsympathetic quagmire of "well, actually..." IF YOU'RE A SEXIST BIGOT.
Well thanks for revealing yourself for what you "well, actually..." are.
It's only a "trap" if you you're a sexist bigot, and don't want people to know what you are, but you just can't keep your mouth shut.
> "It's okay to be white" (IOTBW) is an alt-right slogan which originated as part of an organized trolling campaign on the website 4chan's discussion board /pol/ in 2017. A /pol/ user described it as a proof of concept that an otherwise innocuous message could be used maliciously to spark media backlash.
And boy were they right about that. Nobody on earth is easier to bait than journalists.
The way the statement "it's okay to be white" has been vilified, by associating it with racist groups, supports the narratives pushed by people like Adams.
It would help if the mainstream culture admitted that racism against white people exists too, and that it is unacceptable, as every other form of racism is.
You have to go one level deeper. Not all racism has equal consequences and white people enjoy a privileged position in our society. Focusing on anti-white racism while we still have an overwhelming problem of racism against non-white people hurts the cause of racial equality.
Saying "it's okay to be white" is innocent statement only if you ignore any societal context around it.
Either racism is bad or it’s not. Whether the consequence of it is better or worse for one group or another is irrelevant if the principle that racism is bad is adhered to.
And I’d argue the consequences aren’t that different. If someone is passed over for a job, pulled over by cops, denied the ability to purchase a house, those all have equal levels of consequence for the person on the receiving end.
I think the statement as art was brilliant. It forced those who play lip service to “all men are created equal” to put themselves and try to explain why a rather uncontroversial statement was so controversial. It was wild seeing them twist themselves into a knot trying to explain why it was so bad.
> And I’d argue the consequences aren’t that different.
This is wrong. (Systemic) racism (still) exists. Someone who has natural advantages in society (white men) does not suffer the same consequences of the events you listed:
- "passed over for a job" Jobs are easier to get for white people in the US, no?
- "pulled over by cops" really?
- "denied the ability to purchase a house" redlining has denied a lot of wealth to black families in the US
> those all have equal levels of consequence for the person on the receiving end.
>Someone who has natural advantages in society (white men)
White men no longer have natural advantages. As a matter of fact the Supreme Court agreed that White and Asian males are now at a natural disadvantage.
Yup. It sad to see leftists contort themselves into loving racism as long as the target is approved by the Party, academia, the previous administration, etc. Since the clergy has approved the target, it is therefore just and moral.
Disagree. All racism is unacceptable and it's not at all evident that there is less systemic racism against white people.
Example:
Participants across experiments were twenty five more likely to shoot unarmed White suspects than unarmed Black or Hispanic suspects, and were more likely to fail to shoot armed Black suspects than armed White or Hispanic suspects
