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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29231 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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Not that anyone is obligated to play along, but I'm not getting many answers to my question. There's lots of "no, women don't do that" and lots of "preach, king!" but the question stands. How does a run-of-the-mill progressive expect people with much more credible claims to oppression than middle-class women to talk themselves into striving when the highly privileged are so consistently talking themselves out of it? Anyone?

How does a run-of-the-mill progressive expect people with much more credible claims to oppression than middle-class women to talk themselves into striving when the highly privileged are so consistently talking themselves out of it? Anyone?

We do it by politically organizing our communities to vote our candidates into power, who will then abolish systemic structures and usher forth a better world, everybody knows this you dummy. We stand on the right side of history, oppression will be defeated and all the people liberated. In the meantime using critical thinking and calling out centers of power who benefit from their unjust privilege and who perpetuate injustice is us doing the work. Remember, the question is not: Did racism sexism take place? but rather How did racism sexism manifest in that situation?

You see, the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.

Whether or not the OP is begging for it, assembling a strawman is still against the rules. Honestly, there’s less credible ones in this very thread, so you’d probably be in the clear if it wasn’t for the facetious framing device. Speak plainly, and try to avoid putting words in others’ mouths.

What exactly is the strawman in my argument? That progressives in general believe that there is a thing called privilege, that it manifests itself not necessarily in any particular situation or person (e.g. that somebody is sexist) but that it manifests itself in systemic ways? So yes, the fact the somebody has more privilege - e.g. they are white woman as opposed to black woman - it does not mean that no sexism or racism takes place. Maybe the thing about the revolution is a little bit too on the nose, but in the end it is closer to the truth: the fact that there are women in managerial position in our company is not the issue, the systemic sexism (AKA patriarchy) is the issue.

Or let me put it this way: do you think it is strawman to think, that "run of the mill progressive" believes that there is such a thing like systemic racism or systemic sexism (AKA white supremacy and patriarchy) respectively and that it is present and can be detected in mundane situations like workplace interactions? Does run of the mill progressive believe in privilege in context of gender or race? If not, what does run of the mill progressive believe in this area?

Talking about privilege or oppression is not a strawman. The problem is adding all the snide, self-righteous bits. They make any position a lot more punchable. It’s occupying the bailey.

You shouldn’t be setting up the most annoying, least defensible version. You especially shouldn’t do so by pretending to hold that position.

I also took that question as rhetorical.

How does a run-of-the-mill progressive expect people with much more credible claims to oppression than middle-class women to talk themselves into striving when the highly privileged are so consistently talking themselves out of it?

Do they?

Do you get the impression the women in question are really into "grit" and "growth mindset" and all that? That seems like a conservative thing, along with lots of emphasis on math and trades and Economically Important Skills. I would have expected them to be more into dispensing with mandatory algebra courses in favor of more Indigenous Education or rapping as Literature or other such things. There was a fairly charming class at one school where the teens got an English credit for beading while someone read a book out loud. The assumption was that they just needed to graduate and get on with their lives of catching fish, ricing, beading, and probably working at the casino or something. That seemed... plausibly realistic? Like another high school with very strong Cosmetology and Culinary Arts programs -- if communism isn't forthcoming, might as well work in a restaurant or a hair salon, since that's what Society is setting you up for.

Not that anyone is obligated to play along, but I'm not getting many answers to my question. There's lots of "no, women don't do that" and lots of "preach, king!" but the question stands. How does a run-of-the-mill progressive expect people with much more credible claims to oppression than middle-class women to talk themselves into striving when the highly privileged are so consistently talking themselves out of it? Anyone?

To be honest, I took the question as rhetorical garnish to the meat of dunking on groups of people and ideas you disapprove of.

The run-of-the-mill progressive does not consider striving and can-do attitudes an important part of success, but an ex post facto justification of privilege, so they wouldn't see your concerns as a problem. 'We don't need to convince Blacks to try hard, Blacks are already trying just as hard as anyone; we just need to dismantle the systems of oppression to unleash their human capital' would be their framing.

The run-of-the-mill progressive does not consider striving and can-do attitudes an important part of success

Yeah, it's this. The median progressive thinks that "a pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality" is a bad-faith rhetorical device drempt up by right-wingers as an excuse to cut welfare. The progressive solution to black and/or female underachievement is affirmative action and redistribution, not inculcating a culture of grit and determination. Self-reliance is suspicious, not laudable, to them: believing yourself to be master of your own fate is heterodoxy to the left's no-man-is-an-island axiom.

Possible answers: Because the interaction between middle class white women (blue tribe) and say working class urban black people is close to zero, they don't hold the same opinions and while they might be on the same "side" when reduced to left/right they are not homogenous. A white middle class woman not striving has basically no impact on why a black teen in the projects might not strive. Entirely separate living conditions and ecosystems.

In addition, it would pretty easy for oppressed black people to feel that white women complaining is co-opting the arguments of the oppressed for their own advantage. See "Karen" as a meme. This can either be used to fuel you to strive more, or as an excuse to strive less dependent on each individuals locus of control. They are not a single united group.

Your question is predicated that what middle class white women do has a sizable impact on the mind set of what others might do. But you first you have to find out if that assumption is true or not. Just like some middle class white male programmer blaming him not getting promoted on affirmative action might not have any real impact on why a poor rural white guy living in a hollowed out ex steel-town turns to opioids rather than trying to pull himself up by his boot straps.

The other assumption is that a progressive might expect people to talk themselves into striving at all. I suspect they would be more likely to look at addressing the systematic reasons why people might not be striving than put the expectations on the individual to strive in poor circumstances. "We're all one bad day away from living on the streets" and the like. Whether you strive or not is not going to help you against a system. So the answer might be "I don't expect anyone to strive when the system is against them, which is why we must change the system. " You can't transcend a culture or system that is keeping you down, you can only strive to replace that system with another.

In other words are you sure you are even asking a question that makes sense to progressives?

Because the interaction between middle class white women (blue tribe) and say working class urban black people is close to zero, they don't hold the same opinions and while they might be on the same "side" when reduced to left/right they are not homogenous. A white middle class woman not striving has basically no impact on why a black teen in the projects might not strive. Entirely separate living conditions and ecosystems.

In addition, it would pretty easy for oppressed black people to feel that white women complaining is co-opting the arguments of the oppressed for their own advantage. See "Karen" as a meme. This can either be used to fuel you to strive more, or as an excuse to strive less dependent on each individuals locus of control. They are not a single united group.

I'm going to second that blue tribe women are unpopular in actual working class communities, including among blacks, and that my experience has been that a black person complaining about "white people" more often than not is referring upper middle/upper class and politically liberal women.

I'm not asking about how these sorts of people affect poor black kids. I'm asking how someone like a middle-class woman explains the wider world to themselves. There is a pretty big group of people who fall between the extremes of "systemic racism has totally rigged the game against the underclass" and "HBD is true and there is no hope for any of them." This group is not super ideological, feels bad for poor people most of the time, but thinks that if the underclass had fewer kids at 14 (via abstinence or abortion or whatever) and worked hard at school, etc, then many of them would rise into the middle class themselves. Does the thought process only go as far as entry into the middle class? In that, hard work and respectability gets you across the threshold, but then further advancement is obsructed by shadowy puppet-masters? Is it just brute Karenism, in that there is no wider world to them, or that it consists only of NPCs? Is it an aloof acceptance of the hard facts of life, and requires no explanation? I'm asking here because there is no polite way to ask these people in real life. I used middle-class women as an example, but as many of the comments have pointed out, lots of people make these sorts of excuses. They can't all be HBD realists or DEI ideologues, can they?

I'm asking how someone like a middle-class woman explains the wider world to themselves. There is a pretty big group of people who fall between the extremes of "systemic racism has totally rigged the game against the underclass" and "HBD is true and there is no hope for any of them."

If you are talking about moderates then the answer is they probably think there is some level of racism and sexism, but don't support affirmative action or CRT, and much as almost everyone else, they simply do not think too deeply about the situation beyond that. They probably vaguely sad when they see on the news some black kid was killed by the police, and probably hold vaguely "normie" views about not seeing colour personally, but of course the racist history of the United States is terrible. They probably think racism and sexism is real, but somewhat overstated. And of course like everyone else they are likely to see their own situation as the important one. If Bob was promoted and she was not, it is possible that it's because of sexism. Just like in the opposite situation Bob might complain that it was only because they wanted a woman in the C-Suite that he lost out. We are all the main character in our own story after all. When we do badly it is because of other people and when we do well it is on our own merits. It takes a huge amount of self-awareness and introspection to move beyond that. And for most people there is no real need to. Our selfish journey continues regardless.

The vast majority of people do not reason hard about their positions and about the wider world. Because for the vast majority of day to day lives it is entirely irrelevant. They hold the positions they hold because they are the positions their communities hold. Just as the average Christian does not think too deeply about the exact theological underpinnings of why they are a Methodist rather than a Catholic.

My experience is that no matter your station in life, you earned it, your boss deserves it but depended on luck, and his boss is a know-nothing jerk who relied on nepotism and backstabbing.

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