Politics: J'accuse!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
I've seen it. It can be pretty obvious. Details of the most colorful incidents are somewhat outable, since 100 people in my LS class witnessed the same incidents I did. But I will say that, when a professor tries to have a student expelled for sexual harassment because the student "demeaned" her in front of the class by asking her to explain factually incorrect statements used as the proof of an argument, it ain't hard to tell.

But I did get an A+ in the most relentlessly thoughtless, knee-jerk-PC professor's class I ever took by treating the exams and term paper as exercises in satire. With blind grading, anyone with a brain can usually avoid retaliation by lying like hell on the exam (caveat: above). It's not a useless exercise to learn; one should be able to understand arguments one disagrees with enough to make them before dismissing them. But it doesn't speak well for the openmindedness of academe.

I've of course seen conservative professors do exactly the same thing, though less frequently (which is certainly only because I've encountered conservative professors less frequently). And liberal profs I've known seemed to express much more dismay when hearing of other profs shutting down student inquiry that didn't comport to that other prof's political views - though I believe, in sincerity, that the conservative profs were themselves so used to being on the receiving end of disrespect and nasty allegations intended to shut them up that their attitude tended to be "university is about learning to defend yourself against the slings and arrows of closed-minded bigots; stop whining and get used to it" rather than "I am shocked - SHOCKED - that such a thing could happen here!"

Try saying "I agree wholeheartedly with Milton Friedman's free market theories" durin Econ 101 taught by a 60ish radical professor who'd never worked outside a 4000 person liberal arts institution. Dead flat "C". The paper on why 1980s bank deregulation was a great thing garnered a fat "C-".

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I don't really understand what you mean here.

People have heart-felt and varied views about race, etc. In the same way that some on the left can dismiss those on the right as "racist" instead of engaging in a fuller conversation with respect for the other side's views, some on the right can dismiss those on the left as "PC" instead of engaging in a fuller conversation with respect for the other side's views. Both sides convince themselves that the other side had adopted its position out of some kind of orthodoxy and is too irrational to reconsider or change its views.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
And this is exactly what bothers me about people who use the term PC as it's ordinarily used, by which I mean to distinguish what bilmore said earlier. It's being used to refer to substantive issues about race (and gender, etc.) about which people feel differently and strongly, and it sums up a lot of those differences and wishes them away (and in so doing, disrespects them) by suggesting that the people advocating them did so out of a desire to be "correct" rather than on their merits. It shows about as much respect for the advocates of those views as they did for you when they called you racist.

So it acts as a balancing agent. Would you rather the debate be permanently tilted in one side's favor?

There's a certain self-righteousness woven through speech of vehement liberals. Its hard not to want to slap a liberal when he's on his high horse, just like its hard not to want to slap a racist.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I don't really understand what you mean here.

I'll take a stab at it. Let's say the person in your class says, "That is so racist! Not all black men are predisposed to be criminals" and your sole response is, "Yu are irrational and mired in the PC orthodoxy." That ignores the substantive argument, which is that the person understood whatever you were saying to mean that you are contending all black men are predisposed to be criminals. It's dismissive. It's basically dismissing everything the person says and thinks. It would be like me dismissing someone's thoughts on the nature of morality by saying "that's just Jesus-freak crap" because the person believes Jesus was a guy who performed miracles and was the son of God and died and then rose on the third day.

But

If you made a substantive point and the people in the class said only "you are a racist, you bastard, eat shit and die" then they are "refer[ring] to substantive issues about race (and gender, etc.) about which people feel differently and strongly, and it sum[ming] up a lot of those differences and wish[ing] them away (and in so doing, disrespects them) by suggesting that the people advocating (i.e., you) them did so out" of bigotry. To use Ty's words.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
So it acts as a balancing agent. Would you rather the debate be permanently tilted in one side's favor?

I'd rather that irritating people just shut up.

A sentiment, I must say, with remarkably little application to the activity on the boards today.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Try saying "I agree wholeheartedly with Milton Friedman's free market theories" durin Econ 101 taught by a 60ish radical professor who'd never worked outside a 4000 person liberal arts institution. Dead flat "C". The paper on why 1980s bank deregulation was a great thing garnered a fat "C-".

And that's so much worse than not getting a job because "all women just get married and have babies and quit."

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Not Me
What if someone believes that the explanation for why blacks are represented in certain professional sports at higher percentages than their percentage in the population as a whole has to do with physical abilities that on average are found more often in blacks than in other races. Is this racism?

Like long distance runners. Why are the good ones usually black? Is this cultural or genetic?

Like this article, is its author a racist:

http://run-down.com/guests/je_black_athletes_p2.php

No, he's not. But why's he bringing it up? What's served by highlighting differences for no other reason than to say "Hey, they're different than me?" No shit. So is the guy sitting next to you on the subway. Is there any reason to note the fact? Its understood, and we try not to make it an important point because the flip side of the coin is some guy saying "Well, Asians are better at math, and whites are better spoken than Latinos."

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
So it acts as a balancing agent. Would you rather the debate be permanently tilted in one side's favor?

There's a certain self-righteousness woven through speech of vehement liberals. Its hard not to want to slap a liberal when he's on his high horse, just like its hard not to want to slap a racist.

The self-righteousness of the liberals is balanced by the smugness of the conservatives. It's hard not to want to slap a conservative when he smugly observes that the factory's practice of dumping lead-infused sludge into the river that provides drinking water is good because it makes it cheaper for the factory to produce widgets.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
And that's so much worse than not getting a job because "all women just get married and have babies and quit."

Apples and oranges. Scratch that... apples and strombolis.

[Not Me]

http://www.local10.com/news/3030870/detail.html

• North Miami PD Drops Swimming Requirement In Bid To Recruit Blacks
  
  North Miami police say they are dropping the requirement for a year. They say few departments require swimming and their officers rarely save people in water.
  
  "Our swimming requirement may give the false perception that we are not serious in our efforts to hire Haitian police applicants," police chief Gwendolyn Boyd-Savage wrote in a memo explaining the decision. Boyd-Savage is black.
  
  "They have been intimidated because they don't swim, very few of them swim," said Mayor Joe Celestin, who is Haitian-American. "They have the ability to learn how to swim, but many of them are not that great of a swimmer as the standard, current requirement that we have. We want to bring them in and give them a chance to learn."
  
  The requirement is for police recruits to swim 150 feet without stopping while wearing all clothing except shoes, assistant police chief Doug Brown said Thursday.
  
  Critics say race and ethnicity are not factors when it comes to swimming.
  
  Assistant Police Chief Doug Brown said, "We are not here to make any type of cultural assessments. We are looking to attract both minority and non-minority candidates who would normally not apply."

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
[me yapping in response to a question to Ty from club]

Sorry Ty for butting in.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
The self-righteousness of the liberals is balanced by the smugness of the conservatives. It's hard not to want to slap a conservative when he smugly observes that the factory's practice of dumping lead-infused sludge into the river that provides drinking water is good because it makes it cheaper for the factory to produce widgets.

You beat me to it. I knew I should have edited that post to add "And there's nothing easier to slap than a Young Republican."

There's also nothing sadder than a young Republican. Taxes make the all of the successful of us Republicans someday anyway. Why grow old so early.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
People have heart-felt and varied views about race, etc. In the same way that some on the left can dismiss those on the right as "racist" instead of engaging in a fuller conversation with respect for the other side's views, some on the right can dismiss those on the left as "PC" instead of engaging in a fuller conversation with respect for the other side's views. Both sides convince themselves that the other side had adopted its position out of some kind of orthodoxy and is too irrational to reconsider or change its views.

I see no problem dismissing views held irrationally, I don't care how heart-felt they may hold them.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Sorry Ty for butting in.

Your answer may have been better.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Not Me
http://www.local10.com/news/3030870/detail.html

• North Miami PD Drops Swimming Requirement In Bid To Recruit Blacks
  
  North Miami police say they are dropping the requirement for a year. They say few departments require swimming and their officers rarely save people in water.
  
  "Our swimming requirement may give the false perception that we are not serious in our efforts to hire Haitian police applicants," police chief Gwendolyn Boyd-Savage wrote in a memo explaining the decision. Boyd-Savage is black.
  
  "They have been intimidated because they don't swim, very few of them swim," said Mayor Joe Celestin, who is Haitian-American. "They have the ability to learn how to swim, but many of them are not that great of a swimmer as the standard, current requirement that we have. We want to bring them in and give them a chance to learn."
  
  The requirement is for police recruits to swim 150 feet without stopping while wearing all clothing except shoes, assistant police chief Doug Brown said Thursday.
  
  Critics say race and ethnicity are not factors when it comes to swimming.
  
  Assistant Police Chief Doug Brown said, "We are not here to make any type of cultural assessments. We are looking to attract both minority and non-minority candidates who would normally not apply."

You're really stuck on citing differences. You just aren't getting it, are you. All of these differences are understood by everyone. Screaming about them is passive agreesive racism. There, I said it.