An old post from armedliberal.com back in 2002 which seems highly appropriate in light of yesterday’s Duke acquittals, and this post at Maggie’s Farm:
The War on Bad Philosophy continues.
I’m still working today, so I can’t give this the depth it deserves, but I want to point folks to an article on Free Speech and Postmodernism, by Stephen Hicks, a Randian liberal arts professor, and commentary on the article by Arthur Silber on his blog Voice of Reason. (link originally via Instapundit)
First, I’m not a big fan of Rand and Randians. As a group, they tend to exhibit the confusion between logic and reason that many bright teenagers display (I should know, I’ve got two…). But while there is a framework in both articles I’d take some exception to (and will when I get a moment), there are a couple of 18kt gems worth pulling out and handing around. From Hicks:
What we have then are two positions about the nature of speech. The postmodernists say: Speech is a weapon in the conflict between groups that are unequal. And that is diametrically opposed to the liberal view of speech, which says: Speech is a tool of cognition and communication for individuals who are free.
If we adopt the first statement, then the solution is going to be some form of enforced altruism, under which we redistribute speech in order to protect the harmed, weaker groups. If the stronger, white males have speech tools they can use to the detriment of the other groups, then don’t let them use those speech tools. Generate a list of denigrating words that harm members of the other groups and prohibit members of the powerful groups from using them. Don’t let them use the words that reinforce their own racism and sexism, and don’t let them use words that make members of other groups feel threatened. Eliminating those speech advantages will reconstruct our social reality – which is the same goal as affirmative action.
A striking consequence of this analysis is that the toleration of “anything goes” in speech becomes censorship. The postmodern argument implies that if anything goes, then that gives permission to the dominant groups to keep on saying the things that keep the subordinate groups in their place. Liberalism thus means helping to silence the subordinate groups and letting only the dominant groups have effective speech. Postmodern speech codes, therefore, are not censorship but a form of liberation – they liberate the subordinated groups from the punishing and silencing effects of the powerful groups’ speech, and they provide an atmosphere in which the previously subordinated groups can express themselves. Speech codes equalize the playing field.
I haven’t read a better description of the postmodernist take on speech and power.
I believe Hicks to be off base in his explanation of the root of this construction; he explains it as a political tactic adopted as the previous tactic – affirmative action – began to fail. He’s wrong; this is a manifestation of the underlying philosophy behind affirmative action – the primacy of group identification, and the construction of politics as conflicts between identified groups.
I’d suggest going back to Marcuse’s ‘Repressive Tolerance’ for a historic touchstone.
A bit more bloggage then back to work…
…2002 was an interesting year, wasn’t it?
A.L., I realize most this was an old post and what I am about to write may well have been covered ad naseum several years ago.
As someone strongly opposed to all speech codes but who equally strongly supports affirmative action, I naturally do not agree that the two spring from the same source–or, that if they do, there are so many profound differences between the effects and consequences of the two, that any shared source is irrelevent to their expression. For example, it could be argued that making love to one’s wife and rape spring from the same fundamental source, but we would nonetheless evaluate the two actions completely differently.
My main disagreement with your comment is the implication that politics can somehow be something other than conflicts between different identified groups. Take woman and blacks in this country, the two main groups who are meant to be helped by affirmative action programs. The US consitituion itself has made the point of classifying these groups and extending or denying the most basic right of citizenship –the right to vote — on that very classification. What else is politics but conflicts between the interests of self-identified groups.
Affirmative action in this country is merely an attempt to bring up to speed the fairness that exists now in theory in the Constitution but that was withheld by the Constitution for so long. The Constitutin gave property rights and control of policy through voting rights to one group, who, quite naturally, took advantage of that system to set up a way of life, an economy, a political and educational system, a whole range and network of ways and means that was meant to benefit that particular group. (of course, they would not have seen themselves as a group–they would have seen themselves as all mankind.) Why not recalibrate the system to equalize the advantages? There is no violation of any fundamental value here.
Speech, however, as the expression of thought, should never be curbed and doing so is a violation of a very fundamental value.
To me the difference is larger than any similarities.
A couple of things:
Identity politics certainly governs the modern political debate about affirmative action, but it is not quite the philosophy underlying affirmative action. The old liberals who created affirmative action did not envision or will into existence the horror of Identity politics, which is anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-rational, and anti-humanist.
Speech codes, of course, do not empower any subordinated group anywhere, ever, and the dumbest postmodernist who ever lived knows it. Speech codes are a weapon that a social elite uses to attack other elites – and not just elites, but also “subordinated” groups like lower-class whites, Christians, NASCAR fans, etc.
The irrational, fascistic, and outrageous nature of Identity politics is what makes it such an effective weapon against the white post-Kennedy “liberal”, who has no principles worth fighting for (peacefully or otherwise) and whose only defense is a smug assumption of unquestioned superiority.
None of which has much to do with Don Imus, who ran afoul of ordinary propriety, not a Speech Code.
It does have a lot to do with the Duke travesty, which is not the work of the disturbed individual who started it, but the elites who seized it to advance their political agenda.
Glen,
“whose only defense is a smug assumption of unquestioned superiority.”
I’d respectfully ask you to re-read your post and see if you can find in it a hint or two of a smug assumption of unquestioned superiority.
What’s that old injunction against casting stones?
mark:
If so, it’s unrelated to my point and does not undermine its truth. I do not regard myself as a superior person, only as a person with better ideas than some other people – a fact which does not make me better or worse than other people.
Unlike the racialist-genderist-fascist, I do not believe that politics defines the worth of individuals, demographic groups, or humanity in general. Still less do I believe that politics imparts or replaces character and morality.
BTW, the thin skin of the modern liberal is what makes him such a fat, slow-moving target for the postmodern predator. Mere criticism knocks him down at a thousand yards.
I partly agreed with your defense of affirmative action, you might have noticed.
If politics is nothing more than a conflict of self-identified groups, why shouldn’t I get to play too? I mean, I’m a white male, I have no descent at ALL to hyphenate (gotta love adoption), where’s my interest group? If a black interest group is legitimate, and a women’s interest group is legitimate, than I shouldn’t feel bad about working or voting for my own interests, right? And conveniently, my group has this nice power advantage agaisnt which you’ve been crusading, so if it comes down to tribalism, don’t we (and thus, I) win?
If racism and sexism are wrong, then they are wrong for all parties.
I’m not arguing that there isn’t a lot of racism or sexism around, nor that these things should be tolerated. But there’s a difference between advocating equal treatment of blacks and positive outcomes for blacks, and between advocating equal treatment of women and positive outcomes for women. The equal treatment arguments have enormous moral power and have essentially prevailed in public discourse. The positive outcomes arguments do not, and have not.
(This is why reparations is such a silly issue. Should I tax a poor white man to pay a rich black man because of something the white man’s ancestors did a hundred years ago? How is that different from taxing a poor black man to pay a rich white man because his father was a slave a hundred years ago?)
As far as “giving everybody equal access to speech”, this ain’t 1950, folks. Every man has a soapbox from which every man can hear, should he choose to stop and listen. Even the poorest man can pop into a public library, hop on a public internet terminal, and engage in political discourse.
Glen, I’m not so sure it IS unrelated to your point. Nor am I sure that your point (or your post) contained any truth–as opposed to your opinions, which are not quite the same thing.
I don’t think that anyone believes that politics defines the worth of individuals, a matter that isn’t being addressed–nor should be addressed–in this discussion.
Identity Politics is simply the recognition of the reality that one’s gender, race, age, sexual orientation has an impact upon the extent of his or her political rights and on over-all social rights. It is, in other words, a recognition of the gap between reality and the ideal. It would be fine to argue for a color-blind Politics, if we lived in a color-blind world. But since we don’t, it seems kind of silly to pretend.
Let me give you a quick for instance, apropos this whole Duke business. It is always troubling when someone is falesly accused of a crime…especially something like rape. However, in this country that happens every day. It seems every week or so there is a story in the papers about some guy—almost always black–who is released after 15 years in jail now that DNA is able to establish his innoncence of the crime. These frequent episodes, however, never lead to such a hue and cry, internet postings, disscusssions, larry king interviews, calls for prosecutors heads, etc. etc. etc. We live in such an obviously double-standarded society and, my opinion, is that attacks on “Identity Politics” is simply an attempt to maintain the status quo in which white men reap the most political and economic fruits of the land.
This circles back to why I think the very tone of your attack IS relevant to the discussion. Phrases, eg, such as “the irrational, fascistic, and outrageous nature of Identity politics” bespeak of a smug arrogance that belittles those who do not enjoy the same access to power as others.
Avatar,
It strikes me as odd that you would use a phrase like “nothing more than” in reference to a description of politics as a conflict of self-identified groups. What more would you like it to be?
It is even curiouser that you think that as a white male you don’t have or belong to an interest group. Our nation was set up by that very group in the interests of that very group, and while great strides have been made over the last 225 years or so, the repercussions of the minority-controlled past remain enormous. Statistically speaking, wouldn’t you think the US Senate would be at least 50-50 men to women, or something close to that at least? If you flipped a penny 100 times and it came up 80 heads and 20 tails, wouldn’t you think there was something other than blind chance at work?
Do you think it wouldn’t have an effect on which laws are passed if women were to have an equal say in the drafting and voting process of those laws?
Don’t these considerations apply equally to the poor departed Mr. Imus? It was clear to me in listening to the Rev. Jackson and Rev. Sharpton that this incident was less about the motive and circumstances of the statement and the sincerity of the apology than the assertions that there aren’t any minority hosts on MSNBC or any minority entertainment shows on a major network since Arsenio Hall.
Well, MSNBC has one African-American host, the beautiful and talented “Alison Stewart”:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080452/ (Is it sexist to mention her beauty?) And this is not a diss at her by any means, but she appears to have been born and raised in a well-to-do suburb, and graduated from an Ivy League college, before becoming a news anchor. Yes, she’s too professional to insult a group of college athletes, but she somehow doesn’t exude powerlessness. Or perhaps more time for blowhards like Jackson, Sharpton and Alan Keyes.
Anyway, I am biased. Imus was one of the few t.v. personalities that appeared to have both the access and the gaul to ask the impolitic questions that I wanted someone to ask. He deserved condemnation for his remarks, but somewhere along the line it became a witch hunt full of self-congratulatory moralizers.
On identity politics, I would point out that Eric Alterman complained this week on blogging heads that they have prevented the successful formation of what he would like to see which is a broad coalition of the poor and working class.
I haven’t read a better description of the postmodernist take on speech and power either.
I’m much friendlier to post-modernism than anyone else I’ve noticed at Winds of Change. (Metaphysically, I have to be: since I think reality is fundamentally diverse and only partly coherent, and the universe is not the sort of thing of which a complete and true account could be written, the demand for a single, consistent truth to which all must conform is broken-backed at the outset, and post-modernism is a hopeful approach to the big mess.)
But speech as struggle between unequal groups is where post-modernism goes crazy. That model is basically wrong, and poisonous and demoralizing. You can’t tweak it a little and make it right. You should reject it.
#5 from Avatar: “Even the poorest man can pop into a public library, hop on a public internet terminal, and engage in political discourse.”
Yes, and the ethical / political values that prompt us to provide these services and try to shape things like the Internet to maintain access for all are completely valid. This is what we get right as a civilization. We should hold onto it and not be bluffed out of it.
[sarcasm on]
#5 from Avatar: “If politics is nothing more than a conflict of self-identified groups, why shouldn’t I get to play too? I mean, I’m a white male, I have no descent at ALL to hyphenate (gotta love adoption), where’s my interest group?”
Oh, but it wouldn’t be your “interest group” (as though oppressive and coercive cultural formations were engaging in some free and neutral renegotiation of power with the oppressed, and all “interests” were equal!), rather you are an agent and a product of mass culture (which is worthless by definition, I mean, just look at FOX news) as opposed to popular [ethnic enclave] culture, which can be transgressive, which can be interesting, which constituting an alternative discourse can make space for fresh, enlightening ideas of race, class and gender. Feminism, now there’s an exciting way to (blah, blah, blah)
[sarcasm off]
Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom on his worst days can explain (and mock) this stuff forty times better than I can do it in my wildest dreams.
Anyway, the reason you don’t get to ask for an interest group equal to everyone else’s is that you don’t get to ask. To ask is to use speech. Shut your mouth.
That’s so wrong I don’t even have words for how wrong it is. Which I suppose is part of how it’s supposed to work.
That would be bad enough, but in fact what’s proposed often amounts to taxing a poor white man because some other white man’s did something a hundred (or more) years ago.
Oops, that last sentence of course should say “some other white man’s ancestor…”
#6 mark wrote —
bq. Let me give you a quick for instance, apropos this whole Duke business. It is always troubling when someone is falesly accused of a crime…especially something like rape. However, in this country that happens every day. It seems every week or so there is a story in the papers about some guy—almost always black–who is released after 15 years in jail now that DNA is able to establish his innoncence of the crime. These frequent episodes, however, never lead to such a hue and cry, internet postings, disscusssions, larry king interviews, calls for prosecutors heads, etc. etc. etc. We live in such an obviously double-standarded society…
You have come up with an viewpoint that panders to your preconcieved notions of the wealthy whites who rallied around the wealthy white Duke students. Probably this gives you a little frisson, as you confirm to yourself and your friends that you’re the better sort of white who wouldn’t stoop so low. Or perhaps it’s your superiority as a black/Asian/Amerind/Latino that’s on display. Either way.
Recalling Occam’s Razor, there is a simpler if less rewarding explanation of why the Duke Lacrosse Rape Hoax has garnered such attention.
As you noted, false accusations “happen every day”. Ah–but which accused individuals are innocent? How many accused rapists/possibly-innocent accused-rapists/probably-innocent accused-rapists have you rushed to defend lately? How sure are you–assuming they didn’t commit this rape–that they haven’t committed other felonies?
If you are like most of us, you hesitate to act. Because there is no way to be sure.
In the case of the Duke hoax, careful observers could marshal all of the facts that were needed to make a fairly certain judgement by late spring (the rape allegedly took place on 3/13/06).
The D.A.’s claims only got more outlandish as time went on. The only plausible explanation was that innocent players were being framed by an ambitious, unethical prosecutor.
Getting back to A.L.’s points about postmodernism: the second reason for the passion of the hoax’s opponents was the despicable conduct of much of the academic Hard Left. Duke’s “Group of 88” delightedly led a Rush to Judgement in April, tacitly supported by Duke’s top administrators. By “throwing the students under the bus,” they provided D.A. Nifong with important cover for his frame job.
Enthusastic backup was also provided by potbanging community “activists”, by many of Durham’s prominent black leaders, by a sizeable proportion of the students at Durham’s historically black college, and by the Hard Left blogosphere.
To this day, even with the hoax in ruins, hardly any of its enablers have apologized for their vocal support of Duke Show Trials. One small current example can be seen in the post “Duke’s Faculty Gets an F”:http://johninnorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2007/04/dukes-faculty-gets-f.html and its comments.
So you are right, mark, to posit that the hoax signifies that we live in a “double standarded society.” But not in the way that you suppose.
Mark:
Senate 50-50? No, since you’ve brought it up, I wouldn’t expect that. I’m perfectly capable of believing in equal rights without believing that men and women are exactly equal. I mean, if you want to go there, why are minorities disproportionately represented in the NBA? Do we need to go petition the commissioner and ask him why white guys are being discriminated against?
No, obviously not, because the NBA isn’t discriminating against white men – it’s choosing the best players available by other metrics, and the racial makeup of the NBA is the result.
I’ll even freely admit that, culturally, a lot of the traits that are required for a successful career in politics are admired in men but discouraged in women.
However, what’s wrong with that? Are you going to demand an equal sex balance in Nobel Prize-winning mathematicians? In exotic dancers? In the NFL? Shopping at Hobby Lobby?
There’s removing the kind of discrimination that creates a glass ceiling, and removing the kind of discrimination that creates separate mens’ and women’s restrooms. The one is laudable. Installing urinals in the women’s john is -not-.
mark:
Then I guess I you’ve never heard of abortion, euthanasia, slavery, or the collectivist theories of the past two hundred years. What’s the atomic weight of Cobalt in your universe?
Uh huh. That’s like saying Nazism is a fondness for marching band music. By your definition everybody is down with Identity Politics, except for crazy people who think that there’s no such thing as discrimination.
By the definition everyone else uses, Identity Politics is distinct from civil rights politics – though I.P. enthusiasts try hard to claim that legacy – and is in fact considered by many to be destructive of civil rights goals. (For a liberal who sure thought so, see Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s The Disuniting of America.)
There is a long-standing confrontation between Identity Politics and civil rights traditionalists in the black civil rights movement, which you surely ought to be aware of. There is also such a division among gay activists.
If you can spot any difference between Martin Luther King and Louis Farrakhan, you might understand what I’m talking about.
AMAC,
hmmmm, kind of a bitter taste to those words you put in my mouth. don’t really care for them. but thanks for trying.
I never said anything about wealth and your belief that I secretly intended to is baseless.
As to the certainty of innocence, please re-read my original post. I specifically referrenced those who have been exonerated by dna evidence.
I don’t mind your disagreeing with me. that’s what we’re here for. but please don’t attribute to me things I didn’t say in order to more easily counter what I did say.
Avatar,
Why on earth would you compare the Senate to the NBA? Nothing done in the NBA affects my life. I don’t expect the NBA to function democratically either.
I agree that women and men are not the same. That was kind of my point. Women are half the population living under a set of laws created by the other half. Understanding that goes a long way to realizing what is at the base of identity politics.
Glen,
Your hostility to identity politics is evident (facism & nazism references) and so you will only accept a definition of it that justifies your hostility. People do that with “liberal” all the time. They begin with the belief that “liberal” is bad and then define it in such a way that ensures that it is bad. You need to focus only on the very extremes of a broad movement to keep your definition alive and reject the reasonable heart. Good luck to you.
mark —
OK, fair enough. Let me explain.
In #5, as the conclusion of a paragraph on the Duke Hoax, you said:
bq. These frequent episodes, however, never lead to such a hue and cry, internet postings, disscusssions, larry king interviews, calls for prosecutors heads, etc. etc. etc. We live in such an obviously double-standarded society and, my opinion, is that attacks on “Identity Politics” is simply an attempt to maintain the status quo in which white men reap the most political and economic fruits of the land.
I took that to mean that you view
* the “hue and cry” about the Duke Hoax, and
* the lack of hue and cry about “these frequent episodes” “about some guy—almost always black–who is released after 15 years in jail”
as examples of the practice of Identity Politics. That was the topic of your comment.
I think that is a smug and incorrect explanation of why the hoax has struck such a nerve, even though it is a view that is widely held on the Hard Left. Follow the link in #13 to “Tenured Radical” for an example.
So I’m glad to find out that this “status seeking” explanation for pooh-poohing the attention given to the hoax does not fit you. I apologize for reading too much into what you said.
I’m left not knowing how you do connect your idea of our “obviously double-standarded society” with the wave of popular revulsion at prosecutorial abuse, police misconduct, and the rush to judgement, abandonment of Due Process, and mob mentality displayed by so many professors, activists, reporters, pundits, bloggers, et al.
AMAC
“I’m left not knowing how you do connect your idea of our “obviously double-standarded society” with the wave of popular revulsion at prosecutorial abuse, police misconduct, and the rush to judgement, abandonment of Due Process, and mob mentality displayed by so many professors, activists, reporters, pundits, bloggers, et al.”
I apologize for this rushed response but I did want to respond as best I could now since I won’t have computer access for the rest of the day.
My point was precisely that THERE IS NO WAVE of popular revulsion at prosecutrial abuse, police miscond…..etc.,etc. That it is a singular instance of such revulsion despite the obvious frequent occurence of such prosecutorial abuse, etc…..only that that “victims” tend to be black and thus not worthy of the attention that the Duke case promotes.
The connection to I.P. is that those who are drawn to I.P. understand the reality that race, sex , ect. DO MATTER a lot about how you are treated in society. The above was an example of that…not an example of I,P. iteself, but an example of the conditions that lead one to rethink things.
sorry this is so convuluted. i really am in a rush. but i think my meaning is clear. if not i’ll try again at next oppurtunity.
mark, thanks for responding, understand about being rushed.
AFAICT, you are saying, again, that the wave of revulsion at the framing of the rich, white Duke students is best understood by considering the absence of similar responses to the framing of poor, black men. That you see this as an instance of Identity Politics.
Then you say
bq. The connection to I.P. is that those who are drawn to I.P. understand the reality that race, sex , etc. DO MATTER a lot about how you are treated in society. The above was an example of that… not an example of I.P. iteself, but an example of the conditions that lead one to rethink things.
In other words, the response to the Duke hoax is not an example of I.P.
Have cake or eat cake, not both.
In other words, I’m confused by your answer.
Mark,
Let me see if I can explain my problem with IP without reference to the Nazis.
Liberals usually recognize railroading when it is done to black defendants, and oppose it. That’s why civil-rights lawyers and judges were behind the “revolution” in criminal justice spearheaded by Earl Warren: they wanted to curb those abuses largely for the sake of innocent black men. But when you read the decisions, you often can’t tell that the victims of railroading were black; the people who argued and decided them sought evenhanded justice, not race-based revenge.
At Duke, we see a lot of prominent “civil rights” types and liberals/leftists cheerleading the railroading of lacrosse players because they are white. In other words, they are now out for racial revenge, and to hell with what actually happened (see also: OJ).
That’s the difference between civil rights and IP in a nutshell. One is concerned with creating a more just society by defeating prejudice, and you’ll find that most white people will sign on to that project. The other is concerned solely with grabbing spoils for its own group and punishing their ethnic “enemies.” The day that you convince most white people to go down that path, you have a first-class disaster for minorities. After all, it’s us pasty white conservatives with most of the guns.
The connection to I.P. is that those who are drawn to I.P. understand the reality that race, sex , ect. DO MATTER a lot about how you are treated in society.
I got Mark on this, and I don’t see it as having cake while eating it. The discussion of why there is not an uproar about typically black males who are finally freed via DNA tests after 15 years in jail is fascinating.
A couple hypothesis points:
1. Rarity. How often do well to do white college students get unfairly accused? Does this man bites dog dimension help explain the coverage?
2. Do IP groups in fact form and respond to the perception of group disadvantage? This could go a long way to explaining the lack of ‘white’ IP groups – if things are going well, why bother with meetings? How else can you explain the cohesion and durability of these groups, unless they have some motivation to band together?
mark:
White supremacism, and the racial theories of Nazism, are examples of identity politics. I am not comparing these things to I.P., they are notable examples of I.P.
Not all forms of Identity Politics are Nazi or even racist, of course, as any distinct group can be the basis of an Identity Politics. It follows that not all are equally bad. Neither are they all equally harmless.
All of them are based on principles hostile to liberalism and pluralism, though some I.P. movements embrace it as a tactic, not an ideology.
Look at where Identity Politics takes us:
If you are white you will vote the “white ticket” and eventually end up with Klu Klux Klan Nightriders vs. Louis Farakkahn’s Nation of Islam Thugs.
In other words, the Balkans.
The genius of America (and Patriotism) as Frank Miller wrote was it’s bargain. Adhere to the unity and symbols and all the rest, defend it, and you also will be defended.
Identity Politics is EXTREMELY DESTRUCTIVE and must for the preservation of Western Society be tossed over the side as White Supremacy, Slavery, and denial of Women’s Rights were.
The United States is based on the notion of inalienable individual rights tied to the “mystic chords of memory” … i.e. Patriotism.
Liberals feared the unity of national governments, particularly the power it had to mobilize the nation so have struck at it’s heart by the concoction of Identity Politics which is hideously dangerous.
How many “rich white men” are there? Those who are traffic the most in that to demean and debase those who are not. The Duke Lacrosse guys were white middle class Midwesterners. Yet Rose McGowan on the View notes “they were guilty of something and had to be punished, and guys like that oppressed me in HS.” Real thoughts under the rhetoric: “They were not as high status as Marilyn Manson or Richard Rodgriguez, my former and current squeezes. The heck with them.”
What is the NATURAL REACTION to this anti-White Male identity politics?
Why of course, White Male Identity politics. We are back to the KKK vs. Nation of Islam model.
Identity politics begets counter-identity politics.
Much of the African American community has balkanized itself by an insistence on racial purity and separatism, social controls against “acting white” and “not being black enough” etc. African-Americans have been extraordinarily successful in keeping themselves separate in the face of integration and intermarriage but at what cost?
Morever there is another, far more ominous set of Identity Politics. One that threatens to undermine Western Society from within, gradually. Islam.
#23 from jdwill:
bq. 2. Do IP groups in fact form and respond to the perception of group disadvantage? This could go a long way to explaining the lack of ‘white’ IP groups – if things are going well, why bother with meetings? How else can you explain the cohesion and durability of these groups, unless they have some motivation to band together?
Identity politics groups seem to stay together for the spoils, including intangible spoils such as honor and victim status for themselves and the pleasure of putting shame on people they hate.
There are few such spoils for “whites”, instead, they are effectively sanctioned.
Where subsets of ‘whites’ can get together to grab the spoils and not get sanctioned, like female bureaucrats getting together to advance their own and each others’ careers and calling it “feminism”, they do it.
AMac
in #21 you wrote:
“AFAICT, you are saying, again, that the wave of revulsion at the framing of the rich, white Duke students is best understood by considering the absence of similar responses to the framing of poor, black men. That you see this as an instance of Identity Politics.”
But I have been saying no such thing. I’d be curious to know what exactly I have written that leads you to believe otherwise. It probably was a result of my being unclear. I used the example of the Duke case because a) it is in the heading of this post; and b) it is a good example of how different groups receive different treatment by our society’s structures, such as the media, or the law. Recognizing that an individual’s sex, race, or religion, etc. make a difference about how one is treated and percieved by society and thus impact how one is able to function in that society is the foundational act of indentity politics.
I am not saying it is right or wrong to be concerned about the Duke students or that it is right or wrong to be concerned about poor black men in a similar situations. What I am saying is that it’s informative about our society at large that one situation draws so much attention while the other does not.
People are not treated equally in our society (or in any, I should imagine). People are treated unequally based upon race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, etc. This situation leads some to adopt identity politics and rejecting the –as they see it– myths of the civil rights movement, e.g.
Rob,
you wrote: “At Duke, we see a lot of prominent “civil rights” types and liberals/leftists cheerleading the railroading of lacrosse players because they are white.”
I am unaware of any such cheerleading. I admit that I have not followed the Duke case very closely at so my lack of awarness may be the result of my ignorace. I would, of course, deplore any such cheerleading and would offer this: I’m sure that the IP movement has its share of bad apples. But I wouldn’t characterize it by such actions.
I did read that letter that some academics wrote and signed, the one that got many people so upset. I found that it was wildly mischaracterized by those who opposed the signers.
mark:
Please explain what was mischaracterized, and by whom.
mark, I’d love it if you’d explain a bit why you think the 88’s letter was misunderstood…
A.L.
One of the active bloggers at the anti-Duke-hoax LieStoppers board wrote in to “speak in intimate terms”:http://z9.invisionfree.com/LieStoppers_Board/index.php?showtopic=3034&st=0&#entry8665074 about his impending death.
‘Svolich’ leaves an impression that’s quite different from the ideas discussed above. His comments indirectly address the notion that the inequalities that are the precedents for Identity Politics (if I have that right) are what mattered most to partisans of the falsely accused students.
mark and I discussed the Group of 88’s Listening Statement “back in January”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/009358.php (comments 11 ff.). To repeat the most blatant parts of the text that indicated the Rush to Judgement by the signatories:
* “we [the sponsoring professors] are turning up the volume in a moment when some of the most vulnerable among us are being asked to quiet down while we wait.” [irreconciliable with the ideas of presumption of innocence and respect for Due Process]
The statement’s points include:
* thanking protesters “for shouting and whispering about what happened to this young woman.”
* mirroring concerns about keeping “the young woman herself central to this conversation”
* applauding the claim “that the disaster didn’t begin on March 13th [the date of the alleged rape] and won’t end with what the police say or the court decides”
The statement ends with
* “To the students speaking individually and to the protestors making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard.” [a reference to the potbanging demonstrations where protesters carried posters saying such things as “CASTRATE” and “GET A CONSCIENCE NOT A LAWYER”]
If this “Listening Statement” is not about prejudging the lacrosse players, it’s because the Red Queen has finally triumphed. “Words mean what I want them to mean, no more and no less.”
AMac:
Right on, but that would be the triumph of Humpty Dumpty, not the Red Queen. Sorry to be such a pedant, but this is an educational forum.
Pedant? Never; that’s one false memory down and 999 to go…
… and “the follow-on lines of the story”:http://www.sabian.org/Alice/lgchap06.htm even return to the theme of the post.
Glen, A.L,
AMac is right. He introduced me to this drama several weeks ago. You can use the link he has provided above to see the misrepresentations and my thougts about them.
Here is my original post on the subject. I still stand by it:
AMac,
Thank you for all the information contained in #11, and all the pointers & links.
I am new to this story, not having followed it all, and had never heard of the 88. My interest and involvment was limited, as I said, to Mark Buehner’s quotations and his subsequent interpretation of those quotations, which seemed to me to be incongruous.
I have since read the “listening statement.” I have to say that based upon your post I was expecting something entirely different.
The intent of the statement seems to me to be to address issues raised by all the noise surrounding the alleged incident and not the incident itself. Unless I am very wrong (& I often am), the listening statement is addressed to those who believe that there are serious racial issues alive in the community & who felt drowned out by all the clamour. The 88 seemed only to be telling those people–minority students, for the most part–that their concerns were being heard and that they, the 88, were acknowledging the legitimacy of those concerns.
I think the crucial point being made was that should the stripper turn out to be an unstable lying sack of sh#t and the prosecuter the same, people should not then assume that all is well and that racial concerns, issues, etc. shouldn’t be addressed, are not legitimate or are baseless. I think there is a fear that the backlash against the stripper will assume the form of a belief that the underlying assumptions about the racial divide in America that led people to believe her tale credible will themselves be undermined. The 88 were addressing those fears. In, I think, a quiet and thoughtful manner, despite their silly rethoric about making noise.
But I don’t see they have any thing to apologize for. I don’t see how they violated the principle of presumption of innocence.
mark – there are a few facts that may change your perception. The only “clamor” in Durham was by those who – loudly – protested that the players hadn’t already been convicted and jailed, if not castrated.
The Group of 88 letter was laudatory of that atmosphere, and in fact helped keep it going.
And there’s the nub of the problem.
A.L.
I’m genuinely curious: are people here holding to an absolutist position that the University should not impose any sort of restriction on suspects until the case is adjudicated in court? There have been at least three student-on-student homicides in my 20-odd years living in Berkeley. What should have been done there?
Speaking for myself, the charges in the Duke case seemed plausible to me at first, although I became very skeptical soon after (having a good memory for the Tawana Brawley case for the curious reason that Newburgh, where it took place, was then the location for the United States Chess Federation’s HQ).
Andrew – there were three classes of response:
1) The official university administrative one;
2) The unofficial university administrative one;
3) The university community one.
I think that the official university response – to disband the team for a year – was harsh, but not outrageous given the unassailable facts of the case – party, alcohol, minors, stripper, etc. Letting/Making the coach resign was probably over the top, but still defensible – there’s probably a student-athlete code of conduct and if not there ought to be one.
If the students had been asked to withdraw until the conclusion of their trial, without prejudice, I’d have had no issue with it.
The unofficial university administrative one – in which they hung the students out to dry in the face of the community reaction, and through silence (and words) egged on the more vocal/outraged members of the community was indefensible. For them not to have said, loudly, and vocally, that even the accused have rights and deserve minimal standards of respect, and acted to protect the young adults in their care was outrageous, and if it had happened to one of my sons, I’d be working hard to make sure that the university was punished hard enough for that dereliction that senior administrators lost their jobs.
The university community response was shameful and disgusting. Not because a few loud activists said stupid things, but because so few adults stood up and called those things out for what they were. A pathetic display.
A.L.
mark,
you have a frustrating tendency to write off anything that draws criticism on this site as the work of “bad apples” which should not be held against the many thoughful members of whatever movement is under discussion.
Partly, this may stem from the fact that you mean something differeing by IP than I do. I would define IP to be any effort to get something for your group because it’s your group, rather than because getting it for them is a generally good idea. It’s the difference between, say, advocating rigid due process controls to protect minority defendants and cheering for OJ’s acquittal because he’s black. Or between the Civil Rights Act and reparations.
You seem to define IP as any group of people with similar characteristics banding together to fight discrimination. If I’m right In that sense, your “bad apples” are the people I identify as actually practicing IP, as oppose to others who are merely civil rights advocates.
Returning to the Duke case, I disagee with your characterization of the 88 letter because I think you are deliberately ignoring the context (protests in front of the players’ houses–that’s a normal, acceptable response which deserves a letter from professors saying they’re “listening”?). I also think you’d have to admit that if it had been a black-on-white rape, 1) the protests wouldn’t have happened, and 2) if they had, the faculty would have rushed to condemn the “racist lynch mob” rather than saying “we’re listening.” But let that go.
Oops, gotta run, I’ll get you links to the cheerleading I’m talking about later.
> are people here holding to an absolutist position that the University should not impose any sort of restriction on suspects until the case is adjudicated in court?
No.
That’s a great question; reflecting on it brings up:
* what should institutional policies be regarding (allegations of) student wrongdoing?
* what special circumstances should prompt institutions to deviate from standard procedures?
Beyond Duke’s early and ongoing actions during the hoax, I can think of a slew of difficult to anticipate, difficult to respond to scenarios.
* A black student attends a mostly-white college in an all-white small town. The Sheriff, elected because of his strong racist views, arrests the student for drunken driving, eluding police, and resisting arrest. No witnesses, no breathalyzer or other evidence beyond the Sheriff’s word, the student denies all wrongdoing.
* A male student enters a sleeping female student’s dorm room (off-campus apartment) and has sex with her. Her hidden webcam shows she doesn’t awaken–perhaps he drugged her? The woman remembers nothing, the male is brought to trial, but police mistakes exclude the webcam from evidence. The male takes the Fifth, and is acquitted (or the jury can’t reach a verdict, or the D.A. declines to prosecute).
* A student does something off-campus in bad taste–buys Hustler, or sits in the front row at a Gentleman’s Club.
* A student under 21 is caught (off-campus/on-campus) drinking a beer. Or smoking a marijuana cigarette.
* A couple of U.S.-born and Arab students end up in a brawl (on-campus/off-campus); some end up in the Emergency Room with knife wounds. The Arabs claim they were harassed, then physically assaulted; they responded as minimally as possible, and only in self defense. The Americans make the same claims. Each side tries to file charges; the police decline to get involved.
Back to Duke.
What were the University’s policies? Were they reasonable under the circumstances of the hoax’s origin, as things were known at that time? Were they applied?
I find it possible to argue that the actions of President “what they did was bad enough” Brodhead was broadly reasonable in the time frame of late March and early April, given the tumult of charges, the false information put forward by the D.A. and the police, the media and activist frenzy, and the ill will that athletes had generated in the town. As Armed Liberal argues above in #38, it’s hard to say the same about the actions of the faculty and the “community” during that time.
By May, it was obvious that this case was very queer indeed–and Duke’s administrators knew additional information that made it even less likely that the D.A.’s account was plausible.
And from that point, evidence that there was no assault or other crime, and that the three men were victims of a prosecutor/police frame grew, and grew, and grew.
AJL, a question to you: Duke invited the two charged undergraduates to return in December, notwithstanding their felony indictments. Was that wrong?
Andrew:
Jeez, Andrew. I realize we’re talking about Berkeley, but people who kill somebody should be taken into custody, don’t you think?
If a student suspect poses a threat to others, then the judge ought to deny bail. If he doesn’t deny bail, what right does the university have to summarily execute judgment before the student is tried?
Universities may have various policies regarding this, but I’m willing to bet that Duke has numerous indicted students running around right now – every large school has a fair share of drug, assault, and DUI charges floating around. Are all these people suspended? It’s not a rhetorical question, I really don’t know.
It’s not an absolutist position to insist that people receive equal treatment under the rules.
Me, too. But I normally assume that a DA wouldn’t indict somebody unless he has something vaguely resembling a case.
Maybe I should have remembered the prosecutors in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, who are tired of explaining to their liberal friends why they send so many poor people and minorities to jail, and are eagerly looking for “The Great White Defendant”.
I think the quote and your interpretation fall victim to the common problem of confusing normative with positive arguements. Claiming apples are red and demanding that all apples be red are different statements entirely. Postmodernism, like all ideological approaches to reality, can fall victim to this very same confusion– the line does get blurred.
Unfortunately for your case, the active restriction of certain words and the tendency of humans to identify in groups is not limited to postmodern academia in any meaningful way. Certainly restricting speech in a manner so glaringly offensive to the idea of natural law might be somehow pomo in spirit, but in praxis I couldn’t say.
I find it ironic though, A.L., that you continue to remain a dedicated opponent of this sort of ideology in the sphere of academia, while utterly ignoring the fact that much of the foriegn policy proposals of your compatriots here and elsewhere are underpinned by very similiar relativist assumptions and a very similiar reliance on “the construction of politics as conflicts between identified groups.” Pelosi and Laura Bush’s hyjabs aside- who doesn’t believe in communication in that arena?
You state elsewhere that “You can’t bust GWB for failing to be completely transparent and then cloak yourself in bullshit without the room starting to stink.” Well, you don’t smell much like roses to me.
SAO–
I am–perhaps incorrectly–applying your point to the (IMO) faculty misconduct at Duke, and coming up with a distinction without a difference.
Claiming apples are red: “The facts show that three lacrosse players raped the dancer, and the rest covered it up.”
Demanding that all apples be red: “Since we know that the rottenness of white male privilege governs the actions of privileged white males, three lacrosse players must have raped the dancer, and the rest must have covered it up.”
Beyond late April or May, the facts as they could be known to attentive observers did not suggest that these apples were red. This has made little difference to most of the faculty enablers of the hoax. The apples have received few retractions or apologies from them.
On the topic of truth and speech, let me recommend a fascinating column I just ran across: “Scott Horton on Torture and Secrecy”:http://harpers.org/archive/2007/04/horton-nyu-speech .
It gives fascinating background on our notions of justice, drawing on English history in the early 1600s.
Cheers,
B.
Craig at Lead and Gold has a browse-worthy series of perceptive, biting posts on the failures of the coverage of the Duke Rape Hoax. His quote of Tom Wolfe explains much about the conduct of the Duke faculty Group of 88:
bq. From the outset the eminence of this new creature, the intellectual, who was to play such a tremendous role in the history of the twentieth century, was inseperable from his necessary indignation. It was his indignation that elevated him to a plateau of moral superiority. Once up there, he was in a position to look down on the rest of humanity. And it did not cost him any effort, intellectual or otherwise. As Marshall McLuhan would put it years later: ‘Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity.’
SAO – no, you’re misunderstanding my position. It’s my belief that certain groups (nations) should be privileged, and that within nations identity politics can be destructive.
I’m a nationalist.
Further than that, I tend to believe that democratic republics represent a class of nation that should further be privileged, because that form of government leads to to widest range of opportunities and least amount of oppression.
So I have no problem criticizing IP within a polity – particularly within our polity – as destructive (while acknowledging that it has existed since the founding) while fully supporting our polity over others.
I’ve talked about this ad nauseum on the posts about patriotism, and you’ve commented there, so this shouldn’t be a surprise to you.
A.L.
Beard, that is a great article. I’ve tagged it and added it to the queue of things to write about.
A.L.
Rob,
Regarding my frustrating tendency to write off bad apples: What I find frustrating about the thought that is expressed on this site is the tendency to use bad apples, or extremests, to stand for the center of movement that is disliked. It’s a bad way of arguing or making a point.
If I am going to argue against a conservative opinion or conservatism, eg, I’m not going to chose Ann Coulter’s writing as an example.
I think you are wrong about what I construe IP to be or to be about. I don’t think it is about people banding together to fight discrimination. I think it is the result of people concluding that discrimination is endemic and perhaps so deeply inbedded in our society that it mights as well be inherent. It is an abandonment of the melting pot vision, or of the possiblity of a color-blind socieity, or blind justice, as unworkable fictions. That’s one position.
Another position that works alongs side the first is that one’s cultural identity IS one’s identity. Straight white middle-aged men, such as myself, who enjoy power, privilidge, respect etc. from socieity as a whole have difficulty understanding that our perspective is not universal..is not a “truth” and that a desire on our part to have gays, women, blacks, etc. think and behave like us and conform to our rules (because we believe them to represent truth and justice) is really an unconscious attempt to maintain the dominance of our cultural identity over theirs. Some people see this as a threat to the existence of their cultural identity and they come to the conclusion that politics should be seen as a clash between different identities.
I.P.ers believe they are working to expose and undermine the fantasy that equal treatment or equal justice is possible. Whatever the written rules might say, the laws, the court decisions, etc., the reality remains that members of groups outside the power structure are seen FIRST by members of the power group as members of their group. What I mean is that I, as a straight, white guy when I encounter a gay guy, or a black guy seem them first as gay or black and that I treat them differently than I do another straight white guy. It’s how I define them.
So, their position is that if I am going to continue to see them as members of a group, their only real chance of gaining equal power is to associate themselves as members of that group and fight for equal power.
This is indeed a strong theoritical challenge to the underlying assumptions of the civil rights movement which was based on the belief in the possibility of a color-blind society. It is also a strong threat to the assumptions of liberalism. I am confident liberalism, in the end, can withstand such a challenge. Nonetheless, these challenges have a great deal of merit and validity and need to be openly discussed not summarily dismissed. They are part of the great dialetical process of Western thought, which often turns on itself and thereby reinvigorates itself.
In the Guardian, of all places, a very good short piece on much the same topic as this thread. The author redefines the “Clash of Civilizations” as a clash of relativism and dogmatism.
“Julian Baggini”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2057060,00.html
I have felt strongly since 9-11 that much of what we faced from Islamofascism was a reaction to us in the sense that globalization had push the anti-modern into a corner. This sheds a new light that intrigues me. Do they hate us because we don’t stand for anything? Do they hate us because they sense us as weak-minded?
jdwill,
If you ask me they hate us because they see ours as a way of life that threatens to destroy theirs. The agent of this destruction is, as you say, globalization or modernization or, quite simply, technology that spreads our culture globally.
For all the clamor against it in sites like these, ours is a very relativistic society when compared to most others through time and space. Each decade that passes sees us cutting more tethers to anything resembling a fixed authority. Some are bothered by this trend. I am not. I see it as an advancement and as getting closer to an understanding of they way things really are.
Thanks for the Baggini link. What I don’t get about this style of thinking is well-contained in this: He writes, “The finger of blame has to be pointed largely at academics and intellectuals who have been so keen to debunk popular notions of truth…”
Now the irony here that Baggini doesn’t seem to get is that these intellectuals are debunking popular notions of truth not for fun, but because they think such notions are lies. In other words, they are seeking the truth. The truth may be that there is no truth or, more likely, that while there may be an ultimate truth, it is hardly within our ken to apprehend it.
It’s a difficult & challenging way to think but it is possible that we must stumble along and figure out the best ways to go about things based upon circumstances and judgement and without recourse to some ultimate authority that can back up our choices and say we have made the correct or incorrect choice.
mark,
Here’s an off the cuff hypothesis:
Baggini is taking Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty to task for the misuse of their ideas. They are like Kurt Vonnegut’s Felix Hoenikker in Cat’s Cradle. He invents a supremely dangerous substance, ICE-9, carelessly thinking of it only as a mental puzzle. Other’s misuse the stuff and the planet’s oceans are solidified ending all life on earth.
Baggini is demanding, “where is the warning/disclaimer label”. I guess you could fault him there, but given our litiguous/no-fault society, it is understandable. This analogy is not a perfect fit, but I have been thinking about KV a lot this weekend.
I get your point about Foucault and Rorty but I have no way of evaluating it as yet. Maybe they just went where the muse lead them. What would they say after a hundred years and the impact of their ideas was better known?
jdwill,
I don’t know Rorty’s work. My guess is that Foucault would not evaluate his work by its consequences but by whether it is an accurate assessment of how the human mind has crafted its rules over the years.
Baggini puts me in mind of the Grand Inquisitor chapter in Karamozov Bros. People need their myths. They are good for everyone. To expose them is dangerous.
I am working on the assumption that Foucault and his ilk actually believe what they say. If this is true, it seems wrong of Baggini to take them to task for airing their beliefs.
People see post-modernism as a threat. Perhaps it is. But that doesn’t interest me as a criteria for evaluating the validity of its tenents
.
“I am working on the assumption that Foucault and his ilk actually believe what they say.”
Derrida died a couple years ago. Foucault died in the mid-80’s. Heidegger died in the late 70’s. De Man died in the early 80’s.
A number of Derrida’s critics had suggested that it was all a game for him–a nihilistic game, naturally, if he could care so little for truth. Derrida demonstrated very amusingly that his critics were right when he viciously attacked those who disagreed with him during the shameful affair of leading post-modernist Paul de Man. De Man was revealed after his death to have been a Nazi collaborator who wrote anti-semitic articles for the Belgian newspaper Le Soir. (Jews “polluted” Europe.) Derrida wrote thousands of words of utter BS in an attempt to twist the historical record and exonerate de Man. A number of other post-modernists also had shameful pasts, such as Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism, which has led some intellectuals and journalists to speculate that this was a motivation in their developing a theoretical system in which truth is undecidable and blame cannot be assigned. (De Man also abandoned his family when he came to the US after WWII.)
Foucault extravagantly praised the Ayatollah Khomenei, which once again raises the question of how supposedly freedom-loving progressive intellectuals can fall in love with fascistic tyrannies. I haven’t read anything that indicates Foucault did not believe his own BS.
For some interesting looks at the anti-intellectual nature of post-modernism, as manifested in its attacks on scientific knowledge, you might check out Fashionable Nonsense by Sokal & Bricmont, which contains a tour-de-force satire of pomo BS–a hoax which was swallowed by pomo editors hook, line, and sinker. Also Higher Superstition by Levitt and Gross, The Flight from Science and Reason by Levitt and Gross, A House Built on Sand by Noretta Koertge, and Signs of the Times by David Lehman.
pst314,
Thanks for the pointer to Fashionable Nonsense. The Amazon reviews are a good mirror to get an initial glimpse with.
This review by Olly Buxton (liked the name and title and the review was excellently written) gives a good defence of relativism, which I find at least as useful as the many glowing reviews I found.
He leaves us with this:
Not the last word, but a seemingly reasonable position to take. I am not fully convinced by Buxton, but he makes a good argument. Next stop: Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend.
mark,
I apologize that I have not gotten you the promised links; I can’t say whether I’ll have time today or not.
Thank you for your thorough definition if IP. By that definition, I regard the entire IP project to be one of bad apples from start to finish–basically just a return to primitive tribalism, out of which blood-soaked muck we have been trying to crawl for the last thousand years or so (dressing it up as a “critique of the white power structure” doesn’t change anything). There’s apparently a fair amount of fantasy mixed in, if tiny minorities think they can get “equal power” by banding together and defining politics as a clash between them and the majority. That’s more of a recipie for getting slapped down than “equal power.”
IP as you describe it is more or less precisely the point of view which has enabled oppression of minorities in every society on every corner of Earth. It was the abandonment of the notion that one’s birth was what really mattered that has been at the root of the American project since the start, and the gradual extension of that concept from propertied white Protestant men to everyone else which has led us to where we are–a frankly damn great place to be in the minority compared to anywhere else on Earth (except maybe Canada).
The total elimination of all discrimination may not be in reach, but really, how many American blacks would prefer to live in Haiti or Zimbabwe or even Germany?
(As an aside, I hate it when people talk about “white privilege” as though being white somehow makes you part of a hereditary aristocracy. Yes, that’s the perfect way to describe the daughters of unemployed Appalachian coal miners. We’d better offer the Exeter-educated sons of black lawyers special preferences at Harvard to protect them from the “white power structure” composed of West Virginia welfare cases)
Rob,
I have no argument with your view of the consequences of IP. As I’ve repeatedly said, I do think think there is some value in its assessment of how things work in reality as opposed to theory.
But I must address your aside. You have provided me with a perfect example of what I was referring to one posting ago. You are taking an extreme and letting it represent the general or common situation and in so doing misrepresenting the exeperience of the vast majority of interested people. Of the 20,000,000 or so blacks in this country, how many would you say go to Exeter?
As far as being better off here than in Zimbabwe or other places, 2 things. Most people live where they are born and not being in hell doesn’t mean one should celebrate one’s life in purgatory….especially when one’s neighbors are suffering the same pains.
As a straight, white middle aged man I see every single day the privilege I enjoy simply by right of birth. My community (New York City) treats me very differently than others. Almost all assumptions made about me by others are, on the whole, positive assumptions. I don’t hate it when someone points this truth out.
mark,
The vast majority of white people are middle or lower class. They are not meaningfully part of any “power structure,” except in so far as being Shift Leader at the local auto-parts store gives them power. It is absurd to talk about them possessing “privilege” when they have to get up in the morning and drag their asses to work on time just like the black, Asian, Hispanic, gay, Jewish, whatever employees of the world.
To talk about the “white power structure” in the US is no differnt than talking abou the “Jewish power structure” in banking or the “gay power structure” in Hollywood or the “black power structure” in jazz. It may be that there’s a statistical imbalance, but that doesn’t mean that somehow the average gay guy has an inside line to Broadway tickets or the average black guy is great with a saxaphone.
“White people” don’t have power. People with names and faces have power, and most of them are white. That is a very differet thing, and confusing the two points is sloppy to the point of falsehood.
And while you’re right that living in purgatory is only good compared to Hell, the only reason the US is not Hell is because of the rejection of IP by white American voters. That makes the adoption of IP by minorities a really dumb choice.
mark, one more thing. True, few blacks go to Exeter. But only a minority of them live in violent ghettos (although more than go to Exeter, to be sure). Why does this sort of discussion have to pretend that the ghetto is he average black experience?
All the statistics show that race is a much worse indicator of poverty than decision making, yet bringing up bad decision making (not graduating HS, having children too young and out of wedlock) is sure to get you attacked as a racist. Someone can correct me if i’m wrong, but i believe the statistic is that you are something like 97% likely to be above the poverty line if you graduate HS, dont get married too young, and dont have kids too young.
So why is so much light and heat wasted on the racial and social engineering when the obvious thing to do is figure out how to make the consequences of bad decision making more obvious? I dont know exactly how to go about this (aside from education which usually has mixed results at best), but the fact that we arent even having that conversation is depressing. I guess it much easier to tell minority young people that they dont have a chance because of racism than to tell them the truth- make good decisions and the American dream is demonstrably attainable.
Rob, I’ve never made the claim that all or most blacks are poor or live in a ghetto. Nor have I ever made the claim that most white individuals s have positions of power or are NOT middle or lower class. None of that has any bearing on what I am saying. Again, I am not talking about extremes. I am talking about average exeperiences.
You think minorities are dumb for adopting I.P. Me, I can understand why some would be attracted to the theories and conclusions. I can do this without myself having the same attraction. I do not dismiss them even if I don’t fully agree with them.
Having privilege or power, as a group, doesn’t mean all members are judges or senators. It’s about average daily experience of how you are treated by others and by society at large. Statistics ARE important in helping to understand some aspects of this. For example, if you are black you are much more likely to be suspected of a crime than whites. If suspected or stopped, you are much more likely to be arrested. If arrested you are much more likely to be convicted. If convicted, you are much more likely to be senteneced. If sentenced, you are much more likely to serve longer.
One of the many ramifications of this perception problem on the part of the entire criminal justice system from police officers through jurors is that there are a hell of a lot of blacks in prision which leads many to believe that blacks disproportionately commit crimes and this reinforces the whole cycle. On an every day level, it means that when I walk into a store, I am looked at, spoken to, treated differently than a black guy. It is not a neutral difference. I am treated BETTER. I’m treated better at the bank, on the subway, walking down the street, at the movies. That is one of many aspects I am talking about when I refer to privilege. I’m talking about daily experience of treatment and perception.
There are so many other areas: economic–credit, earnings imbalances; political; opportunity. We do not live in an equality-based society except in theory. I do think that instance that this isn’t true by some is what drives others to the more extreme ways of thinking. When the mainstream world, which is predominatlely white, continues to deny the truth of their daily experience they might reconsider things like the melting pot, the american dream, the concept of blind justice.
mark,
In #60, you are bringing your own facts to the table. This is a common debate tactic, but not a productive one.
I can try and give specific examples, later, if you’d like.
AMac,
No, I don’t really need any specific examples. I think that your statement that my facts are made-up and that my debate tactics are unproductive is sufficient for everyone. In fact, I think we can pretty much call it day now.
mark,
You appear to have asserted that blacks and whites commit crimes at the same rate, and that therefore disparities in arrests/convictions/sentences are properly attributed to racism rather than disparate crime rates.
Ditto with credit scores, earnings, etc.
These are factual assertions which are, to say the least, controversial. AMac appears to dispute them, at any rate.
Maybe some sales clerks or tellers are rude to black customers because of race. Or maybe some fo them are just plain rude and black customers make an unjustified assumption. I certainly recall in college a lot of black students saying they had been singled out by store security guards. Of course, those of us with retail experience knew that security guards target teenagers specifically–but only the black teens get to claim it’s racism.
In any case, store security guards barely register on the “white power structure” meter. Complain to the store’s (white) management and watch them fall all over themselves to avoid a PR nightmare.
My point is broadly that I think IP is at once irrational and dangerous. I don’t want to live in a society divided by skin color. Perhaps I can “understand” how some people are (irrationally) drawn to IP, but that won’t stop me from criticizing it. I can understand how some white loser would love to blame his problems on “the blacks and the Jews”–and that might be reflected in his “daily experience” with a black plant manager who fired him or the Jewish landlord who evicted him–but I still think he’s an asshole to do so.
Al Sharpton doesn’t get a pass from me just because he’s black.
Rob,
We are developing a history of talking at cross purposes. I’ve never suggeted Sharpton or anyone should get a pass because of their race or, what your statement seems to imply, that you can’t disagree with someone’s views because of his or her race. What astonishes me here and what is therefor interesting and worth looking into is why you would even bring that up. It makes me wonder if you are reading my words or making assumptions about what I think based more upon models that are in your head. On the the other hand, I know that I am not the clearest writer in the world, so the fault may be mine.
I am not asserting that whites and blacks committ crimes at the same rate. In fact, I would assert that that is unknowable unless we are comfortable that suspcion and arrest rates are not racially disparate.
Because you (or AMac) think the assertion that blacks are statistically more likely to be arrested or jailed is a contraversial one does not mean, as AMac seems to think, that I simply made it up. There are countless studies that prove this. Perhaps you want to argue with those studies rather than me. The Human Rights Watch study would be a good place to start (though it’s emphasis is on drug-related crimes). You can find it at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00.htm#TopOfPage. It’s pretty lengthy and well-documented so if you are going to argue with it, I’d suggest you give yourself a lot of time.
But there are dozens of other studies. The NY State Attorney General’s office did a pretty thorough one not too long ago.
I’m glad you don’t want to live in a society divided by skin color. But that raises the question: how can you then stand living here?
In #63, Rob Lyman showed that he can draw reasonable inferences.
bq. You [mark] appear to have asserted [in #60] that blacks and whites commit crimes at the same rate, and that therefore disparities in arrests/convictions/sentences are properly attributed to racism rather than disparate crime rates.
In #64, mark showed that he does not draw reasonable inferences, at least in regard to what I have written.
bq. Because you [Rob Lyman] (or AMac) think the assertion that blacks are statistically more likely to be arrested or jailed is a contraversial one does not mean, as AMac seems to think [in #61], that I simply made it up.
Had mark taken up my offer to point out his habit of bringing his own facts to the table, one of them would have been his assertion that the belief “that blacks disproportionately commit crimes” is simply (or even largely) the result of a “perception problem on the part of the entire criminal justice system.”
Regrettably, DOJ statistics and other evidence shows that the assertion that “blacks and whites commit crimes at the same rate” is not correct.
mark, do you have any credible evidence that your statement (that blacks and whites commit crimes at the same rates) might be true?
AMac,
There is some confusion here. I have never said that blacks & whites commit crimes at the same right. Perhaps I wasn’t clear when I said that this is something that is unknowable.
It is unknowable because we don’t know the race of a criminal until he is arrested, the obvious exception being crimes that are witnessed, but as far as I know there are no separate records kept of crimes with witnesses but no arrests.
Therefor, we have only arrests to go by in determining the proportion of criminality based on race.
According to a study by the New York State Attorney General’s office, blacks are over twice as likely to be stopped for suspicion of committing a crime than whites. Once stopped, blacks have a slighter higher chance of being arrested than stopped whites.
According to a study, cited above, by Human Rights Watch blacks have a proportionately higher incarceration rate than whites, alarmingly so when drug use is involved, which is the most common reason for incarceration.
Taken together, these and other studies suggest that a black violater has a far greater chance of being caught, arrested and jailed than a white violater.
You may dislike the facts, you may dispute the studies, you may disagree with my conclusions or interpretations, but I would ask you not to suggest that I am simply making things up which is what I gather you mean by the euphamism “bringing my own facts to the table.”
Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps you only meant to say that I bring facts that suit my argument. But if that was what you meant I am puzzled as to how doing so could be construed as an unproductive debate tactic.
mark,
Perhaps I am imagining things in your words which are not there. But you have appeared to defend IP as a legitimate political movement. Your own definition looks to me like pure tribalism, which I assert (and you seem to agree) is disastrous on a number of levels. What is left of your apparent belief that IP is legitimate?
I bring up Al Sharpton because to me he embodies and is the country’s most famous exponent of IP. If you have someone else in mind, tell me who.
I am not arguing with your claim that blacks are more likely to be stopped, arrested, convicted, and incarcerated. But you wrote that is is a “perception problem on the part of the entire criminal justice system.” If the disparity results from a perception problem, then it must not result from real differences in the crime rates, but rather must be the result of racism, conscious or not, by cops, judges and jurors. Thus, you implicitly seem to have asserted that there is no difference in crime rates, and the disparity itself proves that discrimination occurs.
To put it another way, there are vastly more men than women in prison. I doubt this is the result of the “female power structure” improperly condemning men. Disparity != discrimination.
mark (briefly) —
Thanks for the elaboration. I think common sense strongly argues against your explanation. In fact, I think it is faith-based–impossible to ever disprove. But I now see that you are making an effort to have a reasonable discussion of the issue. (Please try and take more care in attributing views to me.)
Your position in #66 can’t be addressed with statistics, because of the ace-in-the-hole that any findings are subject to disqualification if they show a racial imbalance. Nevertheless, other readers could do what I just did, and quickly google “race crime statistics”.
Here is the “first hit.”:http://www.amren.com/color.pdf It argues strongly against your ideas. But I don’t recognize the organization. OTOH, they do supply references for the figures they cite.
From the 2nd site, “here”:http://www.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/ucr/adducr/rsar%20us.xls are the FBI’s 2001 crime index figures, based on arrest rates, it seems:
All Races: 791
White: 615
Nonwhite: 1,535
It’s possible that your explanation accounts for most of this discrepancy–but is it plausible?
The 3rd hit is “by Steve Sailer,”:http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050213_mapping.htm a controversial critic. While I disagree with some of his strongly held views, to my knowledge he is scrupulously honest in how he presents facts, and in offering legitimate, correct citations for them (so please don’t bother with ad hominem criticisms). Check the maps he shows and the numbers he discusses. Is “suspicious lawmen” a plausible explanation here?
You didn’t supply hyperlinks to the studies you mentioned, which is okay in this case because I don’t have time to check them. I admit to starting out skeptical when studies of P.C. and ultra-P.C. organizations are cited in support of P.C. orthodoxy. However, I’ll grant that they might bring up important points. The conventional wisdom is sometimes right.
Rob, It is a legimate political movement. So is conservatism, whose theories and practices I don’t much agree with. I can separate analysis from conclusion. I can, eg, agree with Marx’s analysis of capitalism withou advocating his solution to what he sees as a problem.
There is much to the IP movement to disagree with (and there are a lot of internal disagreements within the movment) and there also much value to be found there. It’s not either/or for me.
I never implicity or explicitly asserted black/white crime rates are similar. That was YOUR conclusion based on the facts I offered. There are many possibilities. Blacks could commit crimes at twice the rate of whites, but if they are jailed at 4 times the rate, there still needs to be another factor to account for the discrepancy. (these numbers are hypothetical for illustration purposes only).
Pardon the expression, but I just don’t see things in quite the same black & white terms as you do. It’s not a matter of pure & total discrimination versus no discrimination at all. But to get back to the original point, I was only using this crime/arrest rate business as an example that races in america do not receive equal treatment. the criminal justice system is merely one example among many. I don’t want to get overly hung up on it.
AMac,
I am unaware of any need on my part to take more care in attributing views to you that are not your views. If you care to post an example of my having done so, I’d be happy to see it.
The only view, in fact, that have attributed to you as far as I can see is your claim that I was bringing my own facts to the table.
AMac
you wrote:
“From the 2nd site, here are the FBI’s 2001 crime index figures, based on arrest rates, it seems:
All Races: 791
White: 615
Nonwhite: 1,535”
As I have said, nonwhites are much more likely to get arrested. If you want to conclude that this must mean nonwhites are much more likely to commit crimes because they get arrested more often, go right ahead and conclude that. We’ll just let our disagreement end there.
I never implicity or explicitly asserted black/white crime rates are similar.
I was only using this crime/arrest rate business as an example that races in america do not receive equal treatment.
These two sentences are in tension. If differences in arrest rates are to prove unequal treatment, then equal crime rates are an indespensible postulate. Hence my conclusion that you were implicitly asserting that crime rates had to be equal. If you don’t assume that, then your conclusion (unequal treatment by the law) simply does not follow from your evidence (unequal arrest rates).
I suppose I can concede that IP is a legitimate movement, in the same way that Communism is a legitimate movement, or that the Aryan Nation is a legitimate movement. I’ve actually read Mein Kampf, and Hitler did have some stinging criticisms of legislators and their flight from accountablity which ring quite true. This does not mean I would accord “legitimate” status to a movement based on his views.
Similarly, I am strongly inclined to simply dismiss people who outright advocate treating different races differently, regardless of their allegedly progressive motivations.
Rob, I refer you back to my previous post. Crime rates don’t need to be identical to assert unequal treatment. I do assert that a black man who commits a crime is more likely to go to jail than a white man who commits a crime for the following reasons, which constitute unequal treatment:
1. he’s more likley to be suspected.
2. he’s more likely to be arrested.
3. he’s more likely to be convicted.
4. he’s more likley to be sentenced to prision.
5. he’s more likely to be serve a longer term.
whether or not blacks commit more crimes, less crimes or the exact same number of crimes as whites has no bearing on the above conclusion regarding unequal treatment.
I am saying no more and no less. Whatever other conclusions you reach are your conclusions, not mine.
My conclusion about unequal treatment presumes the facts presented to be accurate. Feel free to dispute the facts. Feel free to disupte the conclusion.
mark,
Only #1 constitutes unequal treatment without further information. Maybe more blacks are arrested because suspicions (whether justified or not, racist or not) prove correct more often than for whites. Maybe more are convicted because more are actually guilty. Maybe more are sent to prison for longer times because their crimes are, on average, more serious. Maybe I’ve missed the evidence out there that excludes all of these possibilities, but I don’t think I have.
This kind of abuse of statistics is precisely why I think IP is an illegitimate movement. If someone commits a crime, that person deserves punishment. The fact that “too many” people who happen to look like that criminal are in jail has nothing to do with anything.
mark —
Is there any way to test your strongly-held belief that White Racism (or racism-related systems effects, e.g. unreasoning suspicion of blacks) accounts for most or all of the black/white inequality shown so starkly by nearly all statistics on crime?
I don’t think so. Seems to me it is an article of faith.
Are unequal outcomes always mostly or entirely due to Racism and its sequelae?
If not, what makes crime so uniquely resistant to inquiry?
Criminologists often focus on murder to simplify the confounding effects that you mentioned earlier. E.g. it’s usually quite hard to argue about whether or not a murder occurred.
I think you would be forced to argue that seeming black-on-black murders in mostly-black urban neighborhoods are actually mainly caused by whites who slip in, kill, and slip out, undetected. As a general phenomenon, this seems unlikely to me.
No offense, Rob, but it isn’t so much an abuse of statistics on my part here but a lack of understanding on your part.
I’m going to try one last time and then I have to call it a day for this subject.
We’re not talking about total #s in general, do you see? we’re talking about criminals. and of criminals, we’re, again, NOT talking about total #s.
let’s say there’s a town called Mark&Robville. In M&Rville, there are 4000 blacks and 10,000 whites. 2,000 of those blacks commit crimes. 1,000 whites commit crimes. In this town twice as many blacks commit crimes as whites and as a proportion to the poplulation WAY more blacks commit crimes 50% vs. 10%.
BUT:
of those 2,000 black criminals, 90% are arrested, 80% are convicted, 65% are jailed and 10% are given parole.
of those 1,000 white criminals, 75% are arrested, 45% are convcited, 30% are jailed and 20% are given parole.
So you see, it’s not about MORE or LESS, it’s about LIKELIHOOD of arrest, conviction, jail etc. It is, in other words, about DIFFERENT TREATMENT.
Put it another way, a white man caught with an ounce of coke is likely to do less jail time than a black man caught with an ounce of coke. A black man with an ounce of coke is also more likely to get caught with an an ounce of coke than a white man who has an ounce of coke. See? Both men have coke. I’m not saying black men do more coke or less coke. That’s not relevant here. The issue at hand is how the system treats criminals differently if they are of different races.
If you read the Human Rights Watch report I referenced earlier you will see that while whites constitute the vast majority of drug users, the majority of those who serve jail time for drug use are black.
A personal anecdote, Rob. I was recently summoned to jury duty. I went through 2 voir dires. In each case, all the defense lawyers, prosecutors, assist. prosecutors, judges and balifs AND the selected jurors were white. All the defenedants were black. Statistical fluke? perhaps.
AMac,
I’ve never mentioned White Racism, or racism at all, for that matter. Nor have I stated any beliefs. You can draw your own conclusions. I am merely saying that statitics bear out that fact that blacks and whites are treated differently in our criminal justice system. I leave it to you to decide the cause of that inequality and whether or not it is justified.
I used it as an example–one example among many–of how one’s race (sex, religion, & sexual orientation) have an impact upon how one is treated in our society. I have claimed that this unequal treatment has led some people to adopt many of the theories and priniciples that collectively can be called Identity Politics. I have also stated that I can understand how some would be drawn to that movement, given the facts.
You can make more out of it all, if you wish. As to your last question, I refer you to my previous post to Rob. That should clear up any confusion you might have.
AMac, Rob
Here’s a quote from the 2000 Human Rights Watch report:
“Our research shows that blacks comprise 62.7 percent and whites 36.7 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prison, even though federal surveys and other data detailed in this report show clearly that this racial disparity bears scant relation to racial differences in drug offending. There are, for example, five times more white drug users than black. Relative to population, black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. In large part because of the extraordinary racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenses, blacks are incarcerated for all offenses at 8.2 times the rate of whites. One in every 20 black men over the age of 18 in the United States is in state or federal prison, compared to one in 180 white men.”
You can dispute the report’s accuracy. You can say that the disparity is justified by the behavior of blacks, i.e., they (12% of the population) committ 8.2 times as many crimes as whites. I’m sure there are other ways of maintaining the claim that people are not treated differenty by the criminal justice system based on their race. One way is to attack me, I suppose. I made the quote up or I am using it out of context.
mark —
> As to your last question, I refer you to my previous post to Rob.
Agreed, that racism exists and that the workings of the criminal justice system are adversely affected by it. Further agreed that phenomena like this serve as fuel for Identity Politics.
One question would be whether unequal rates of incarceration (etc.) are strong evidence of racism at work. Would a color-blind and just system show equal rates of incarceration (etc.) of blacks and whites?
Based on the statistics and demographic information that are available, the answer, unfortunately, is clearly, “no.” Higher rates of black incarceration are partly due to higher rates of commission of crimes.
Since most crimes are within-race rather than between-race, artificially lowering the rate of black incarceration to match white incarceration would have the side effect of increasing the already-high rates at which blacks are victimized by criminals.
mark —
Your argument is strongest when you are talking about drug crimes. Thanks for quoting the HRW report, I hope to read it more fully.
AMac,
I refer you to my #78 to address some of what you wrote in #79 (the two crossed in the mail).
“Would a color-blind and just system show equal rates of incarceration (etc.) of blacks and whites? Based on the statistics and demographic information that are available, the answer, unfortunately, is clearly, “no.””
I’m not so sure how clear this “no” of yours is. Nor am I clear about just what evidence you are referring to.
“Higher rates of black incarceration are partly due to higher rates of commission of crimes.”
Partly, sure. But only partly. I would guess a very small part at that. 8.2 times? That hardly seems likely. Does it to you? Seriously? A rate of incarceration 8.2 times higher can be partly accounted for by a higher crime rate of what? 2 times that of whites, 3 times. Are blacks 4 times as likely to commit a crime as whites? That still leaves another 4.2 times worth of disparity to account for. Of course, the report could be wrong.
I’m left back where I started. One’s race impacts how one is treated within the criminal justice system. Perhaps jurors are more willing to sentence blacks. Perhaps whites are more willing to plea out. There are a host of possible reasons but they all amount to the same thing: unequal treatment before the law. Justice, sadly, is not blind. Justice is extremely race conscious.
FWIW
“Incarceration by race”:http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/prisons/atlas.html
is quite striking. The black/white ratios literally flip between general population and prison population in some cases. Also shocking to me is the difference between Michigan (my state) and some others:
These numbers are 1980 vs 2000 incarcerations per 100K (not including Fed prisons, I think).
ST 1980 2000
MI 163 478 (and a huge black/white disparity)
AL 149 571 (Southern man?)
OR 120 307 (middling)
UT 64 248 (a very white state, IMO)
WV 64 207 (West by God Virginia)
TX 210 779 (don’t mess with Texas)
I found the above via,
“DISC”:http://www.disc.wisc.edu/newcrossroads/links.asp?cat=Crime+and+Justice
which has many other resources.
Also interesting is the corresponding drop in violent crime.
“BJS Stats”:http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_c.htm
Questions:
1. Is the increased incarceration helping reduce crime, or are increased conceal and carry laws, or both, or what?
2. While, there is no way to know the contribution of risk taking behavior, it is hard for me to believe that such a disparate ratio of black to white incarceration can be written off entirely to black behavior.
3. And analagous to the IP question, is black behavior and attitudes driven by these facts?
4. How much of the prison glut is due to over-zealous drug law enforcement. This is a huge cost to society, is legalization and/or treatment looking better to you now?
Hope I didn’t get this in too late.
jdwill,
only able to address number 4 right now (though all good questions). Michael Massing did a great study back in 1999 or so effectively demonstrating that drug treatment was less costly and more effective than prison. However, its political death to advocate something like that and so it doesn’t get done.
Mark,
1) your #60 post did not address the difference in treatment of actual criminals; it spoke only of blacks being more likely to be arrested, convicted, and jailed, etc. I do not deny that is true; I deny that it proves unequal treatment without additional information.
2) I doubt very much your claim to know that a black criminal is necessarily more likely to be convicted than a white one given an equal crime. That would require you to know who the white criminals are, how many they are, and how serious their crimes were, despite the fact that they are apparently not being arrested or convicted. You yourself have said you don’t know those things and that they are extremely hard to know.
As long as you’re asserting that it can’t possibly be accounted for by differences in behavior, I can match you with an assertion that it is.
3) If whites are more willing to plead out, then lighter sentences for the pleaders isn’t unequal treatment. The fact that you apparenlty regard it that way rather hurts your credibility.
The HRW report you quote is a classic example of the kind of statistical obfuscation I’m talking about. Most drug prosecutions are for drug dealing, not simple possession. So differences in drug use would not necessarily be expected to correspond to drug prosecutions. If most drug dealers were black and most users were white, then we’d expect the pattern that we actually see.
Rob, I strongly suggest you READ the report before making assumptions about it. I think you’ll find that most of your doubts are adequately addressed.
When I spoke of blacks being more likely to be arrested, convicted and sentenced I assumed it was understood that I was talking about criminals. If you want to open the can-of-worms about innoncent blacks being more likely to be arrested, I’m happy to go there. (a black man is 5 times more likely to be FALSELY convicted of sexual assault than a white man).
Whites pleading out is a result of whites having better legal representation than blacks and that IS different treatment within the system.
I don’t claim to know these things. I claim to have read reports that say these things. I am not in a position to evaluate these reports. I’m just going to have to trust Human Rights Watch and others on this.
I never asserted that it can’t possibly be accounted for by differences in behavior. In fact, I said it is possible but not likely in my view. The rate of 8.1 times more likely to be incarcerated suggests to me the likliehood that it is not soley –or much — attributable to behavior but other factors. I don’t think–though it is possible–that blacks commit 8.1 times as much crime as whites.
I do believe that these things are very well documented and I don’t think much is in dispute (except by you).
If most drug dealers were black and most drug users were white, I think you’d see the opposite of what you say, since, presumably, the ratio of users to dealers would be quite high. Nonetheless, I’m going to venture that HRW has done more research on the matter than you have. Further, I’m not at all certain that “most” drug prosecutions are for dealing as opposed to using. If there’s that many dealers in jail then there are a hell of lot more users than anyone realizes.
I do believe that these things are very well documented and I don’t think much is in dispute (except by you).
I graduated from law school in 2006. As you might expect, all of these issues were discussed ad naseaum, and I’ve read many of the “studies” and “reports,” although perhaps not the one you’re referring to. They tend to make unjustified leaps and assumptions or rely on statistically shaky methods (as it happens, I also spent time in physics grad school, so I have greater facility with numbers than many law professors and journalists).
Perhaps I’m merely cynical, but I’ve seen a lot of very bad science claiming to prove racism, and I’m more than a little tired of it. Who knows, maybe HRW has managed to do the first really solid study and I’m being totally unfair, but frankly their record of left-wing advocacy doesn’t give me much hope.
Of course, I also have very little sympathy for criminals who are rightly convicted; “that other guy got off” is not exactly a robust defense. It’s not fair, but it’s not the same as an innocent man being convicted. If the people we’re talking about are actually guilty, then it suggests that there’s an easy way to avoid the “racist” criminal justice system.
To use a recent analogy, Don Imus deserves what he got whether or not black rappers say worse things.
(To the extent that whites have “better legal representation,” it’s probably because they are, on average, richer, and thus less likely to rely on appointed counsel. That’s a class issue, not a race one. Besides, how do you know that’s why whites plead out more, if in fact they do? More assumptions wihtout data…)
Well Rob, once again, we’ll just have to disagree. You seem to feel that people are not treated differently by the criminal justice system according to their race. And your basis for this belief seems to be only that studies that show otherwise are untrustworthy.
No, you don’t seem cynical. You seem naive.
Again, I have never mentioned racism. If the different treatment received by blacks is attributable to class or economic differences, it is still different treatment.
I never ever said that whites plead out more frequently. What I said was that it was one among many possibilities that might account for the disparity in conviction rates.
One last comment about the truth or accuracy of those studies. It’s not a real difficult task to count the number of people in prision according to race and then comparing that with the general population. It’s a pretty straightforward process.
HRW is a left-wing advocacy group? Gee, I didn’t know that. I thought it was founded to monitor the abuses of Soviet-era Eastern Bloc Communist nations. Well, live and learn.
You seem to feel that people are not treated differently by the criminal justice system according to their race.
I didn’t say that. And in fairness, there is not one unitary “criminal justice system,” but maybe 1000 or so semi-independent systems, some of which are undoubtedly more fair than others.
And your basis for this belief seems to be only that studies that show otherwise are untrustworthy.
Ok, I did say that. Racism is a serious accusation (like, say, rape), and must be supported by meaningful evidence. If it’s as rampant as some people believe, then there should be no need for statistical tomfoolery.
It’s not a real difficult task to count the number of people in prision according to race and then comparing that with the general population. It’s a pretty straightforward process.
No doubt counting is fairly easy. But drawing meaning out of those numbers is not at all straightforward. The fact that 90% of prison inmates are men doesn’t prove that women control the justice system for their benefit, or that there is “unequal treatment” of men and women by courts.
Mere counting and then jumping to a conclusion could just as easily be used by the KKK to justify their belief that certain races are inherently criminal.
I thought [HRW] was founded to monitor the abuses of Soviet-era Eastern Bloc Communist nations.
Apparenlty they’ve either moved beyond their founding mission or concluded that the US is a communist nation under Soviet domination. Many fine organizations, including the NAACP, ACLU, ABA, Amnesty, and numerous “scholarly” associations have morphed into left-wing advocacy groups for no apparent reason. Really, read their press releases and the resolutsions passed by their respective governing bodies. It’s not my fault. I’m just sayin’.
Rob, tell me what unfounded conclusions I’ve jumped to. You’re the one who keeps bringing up racism. All I’m saying is that the numbers indicate different treatment. Maybe there’s a good explanation for the different treatment. You keep arguing against things I’ve never claimed.
I’m pulling out of this now. It’s giving me a headache.
cheers
I thought by “different treatment” you meant “racism.” that seems like a sensible definition of racism to me: different treatment, based on race.
At this point I have no idea what you actually meant.
Rob, What I actually meant is what I actually said at the very beginning. One’s sex, race, religion and sexual orientation have an impact upon how one is treated in and by socieity. (one example of this is the different treatment blacks receive in the criminal justice system). This is the underlying theory of Identity Politics. The next phase of the theory says that politics is about resolving the conflicting interests of various groups based upon sex, race, religtion and sexual orientation.
Racism, by the way, is the belief that one race is inherently different than another, blacks are lazy, asians are smart, white’s smell bad & make better presidents but can’t jump…that sort of thing.
mark, if your claim is that, given two people, one black and one white, who are identical in every respect and commit identical crimes in the same jurisdiction, the black one will be treated worse by the criminal justice system than the white purely because of his race, then:
1) I do not think that claim impossible or even implausible, especially at the very earliest stages of investigation (traffic stop/search or the like), but
2) I do not think it proven or justified by mere counting of convicts without considerable analysis of the circumstances of conviction, which has never in my personal experience (admittedly limited) been done convincingly, and might actually be impossible to do,
3) I think it not unreasonable, linguistically, to refer to that sort of “different treatment” as “racist,” and it was in this sense that I used the word “racism.” This usage has apparently been a source of confusion.
I do not doubt that people are treated differently by society at some level merely because of who they are. Heck, I’ve met a couple of for-real bigots who quite literally blame heavy traffic on Asian drivers and celebrate war because it kills black soldiers.
Rather, I doubt that, in 2007, this difference matters very much except in rare cases. On average,(and you are Mr. “On Average”) you can do quite well and lead a comfortable middle class life in this country if you are willing to take a shower, show up to work on time, and do your job, and your skin color simply won’t prevent that.