One of the more balanced accounts of the campus protest controversy comes from Cornell Law Professor Michael Dorf published November 18 in Verdict. Professor Dorf notes that recent protests against administrators at Yale, the University of Missouri and other places “have already sparked a backlash.”
Critics who have “long regarded college campuses as bastions of liberal political correctness see the protesters as shouting down anyone who disagrees with their views, self-segregating, and making symbolic lightning rods of administrators at the cost of their jobs and reputations.”
Professor Dorf is critical of what he calls “the unfortunate conduct of some of the students” and “the controversies that immediately provoked the protests,” and argues “there does appear to be some truth to the claims of the critics.”
As a constitutional law professor, he writes, “I feel a special responsibility to defend free speech, due process, and integrated spaces.” He added, “Moreover, seen in isolation, an email about Halloween costumes (at Yale) or the submission of racial incidents to a slow-moving bureaucratic process (at Missouri) does not necessarily constitute grounds for demanding the resignation of administrators.”
However, as we have argued recently, “the flash points for student protest are just that.” And the “real complaints go much deeper.” The professor writes that the students “object to a campus culture that repeatedly challenges their sense of belonging—occasionally directly through the use of racist language and imagery but more often through subtle, perhaps even unconscious, signals from fellow students, faculty, and administrators. They want colleges to do more—much more—to make them feel welcome on campus.”
This is the root of the problem and why the use of the n-word in a class of nine whites and one black is problematic and why the language of the Claremont Dean who talked about working to serve those who “don’t fit our CMC mold,” strikes at the heart of that flash point.
Professor Dorf writes, “Seen in that broader context, the recent campus protests hold lessons for how to view race-conscious affirmative action admissions programs that aim to boost minority enrollment at academically elite campuses beyond token levels.”
Professor Dorf offers “a more hopeful-and fairer-reading of the protests.” He argues, “The latest campus protests do reflect a failure, but not the failure of diversity. Rather, they reflect the failure of campus administrators, faculty, and students to follow through on promoting diversity beyond the admissions process.”
What the minority students want is “a sense of belonging.” He cites a New York Times article about students at the University of Missouri, where it becomes clear that the problem is not just overt racism – which manifests itself from time to time. But it goes beyond that to “suspicious stares, patronizing and ignorant questions from white classmates, and the relative paucity of minority faculty (which) take a cumulative toll.”
He writes, “Does that mean that political correctness is not a problem on college campuses? Certainly not. But it is a profound mistake to treat a few incidents of irresponsible behavior as indicative of an entire movement.”
He writes, “For example, the person whom Friedersdorf identifies as the most aggressive ‘weaponizer’ of safe space—a white assistant professor of communications who called for ‘muscle’ to remove a student journalist attempting to record the protest—has resigned her courtesy appointment from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism and apologized for her conduct. Both departments condemned her actions, and the student protesters themselves issued a statement endorsing the First Amendment rights of journalists to cover their protests.”
More broadly, “the student protests are an outgrowth of the civil rights movement, which was central to the development of both racial equality law and modern free speech law. Any attempt to associate civil rights demonstrators in the U.S. with political correctness, censorship, or segregation must rely on a highly selective and unfair sample of events.”
He writes, “Likewise, whatever one might make of Justice Scalia’s invitation to litigation against particular university programs that permit the formation of minority enclaves, the motivation behind many such programs must be understood in larger context.”
As a black senior at the University of Missouri told the New York Times, “It can be exhausting when people are making assumptions about you based on your skin color . . . . It can be exhausting feeling like you’re speaking for your entire race.”
He continues, “When universities provide spaces where minority students can spend some—not all—of their time avoiding being stereotyped and just relaxing, they can ultimately facilitate the broader mission of integration.”
Professor Dorf proceeds to note progress, writing, “Over the last generation, we as a nation have made considerable progress in addressing the stains of three centuries of slavery and a century of Jim Crow, but it would be naïve, willfully blind, or just plain dishonest to claim that we live in a color-blind society. Progress towards racial equality must be made on many fronts, including at universities.”
At the same time, he argues, “It is no accident that it is the University of Missouri where the most dramatic protests have occurred. Many of the activists on campus are veterans of the Black Lives Matter campaign, which first emerged in Ferguson, Missouri.”
Thus, he continues, “it would be a tragic mistake to regard the campus protests as a reason to abandon the goals that the Supreme Court endorsed in Grutter and, twenty-five years before that, in Bakke.”
“One of the lawyers for the University of California in Bakke was Berkeley law professor Paul Mishkin. He was no liberal, let alone a practitioner of political correctness. But he viewed “race relations [as] our most durable domestic crisis,” and he understood that race-based affirmative action in higher education has a critically important role to play in helping to heal this nation and chart a more promising future. The protests around the country should be regarded as a signal that, as far as we have come on race since the late 1970s, when Bakke was decided, we still have a considerable way to go,” Professor Dorf concludes.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I think all races have been subject to these types of things.
So students of color want to segregate themselves in order to integrate?
Balanced? What, instead of an extreme left it’s only a far left account?
“I think all races have been subject to these types of things.”
i think the problem is that when you are a minority on campus – you feel that you stand out and are scrutinized under the guise of other people who look like you. it’s not that my daughter, for instance, didn’t have white friends, but there were clearly times when she was more comfortable sitting with a group of people who had more common experiences with her.
“So students of color want to segregate themselves in order to integrate?”
if you had experience in this matter, you might not find it so contradictory.
“Balanced? What, instead of an extreme left it’s only a far left account?”
he acknowledges that the accounts you have brought up are in fact problematic but argues that those shouldn’t be used to dismiss the underlying issue. on the other hand, you believe that those examples preclude any legitimate beef, whereas i might argue that if you look deeper into those examples, the problems that they cite are only peripherla to the experience.
“patronizing and ignorant questions from white classmates”
“It can be exhausting feeling like you’re speaking for your entire race.”
By now, I doubt anyone doubts my far left credentials. But I see these two statements a little differently from what some of you may expect.
The first, if allowed to affect the relations between the black student and his white classmates is a missed opportunity. When someone asks you a question, regardless of whether you consider it patronizing or ignorant, you have been given an opportunity to educate them, to open their eyes to aspects of your experience that they most likely have never had a chance to appreciate. What a shame to allow your own frustration to thwart a chance to broaden someone’s experience, and perhaps make a friend or colleague in the process.
While I understand that fatigue that can come from “feeling like you are speaking for an entire group”, it is important to realize that if you want to be perceived as an individual, instead of like a “stereotypical group member” you must act as an individual, and treat those with whom you are interacting as individuals….not just some ignorant white person. Also, I think it is important to own one’s own “feelings”. Others around you do not “make you feel anything”. Their actions are their’s to own. Your feelings are solely your own and it is up to you to sort out, interpret, and use those feelings to the advantage of yourself and others.
while i don’t doubt your creds as a liberal, you are still white and upper middle class and may not exactly understand the issue of perception. whereas while i am also white and also upper middle class can see through the eyes of my mixed race daughter the truth in this essay. you might as well if you place yourself in medical school at a time where undoubtedly the majority of the class heavily titled toward the y-chromosome.
While I don’t doubt your credentials as a deep thinker, you are hopelessly biased from your own heart related to you daughter who is likely more effected by her personality than her racial origin.
I think a major difference between a parent of a minority child and a white child is that the parent of the white child does not have any built in excuses for why his child might struggle at times feeling like she fits in.
Please go find me any child that has not at times felt difficulty fitting in and that did not feel more comfortable associating with people more like him/her. You will find some, and in Davis is is more likely to be those children with academic gifts.
what you call “bias” i think gives me perspective to watch what someone goes through. i don’t think you understand that perspective. i think the major difference between being a parent of a minority child and a white child – i happen to be both – is that the minority child has a lot of more challenges to overcome. my daughter was ultimately successful, so i find the notion of excuses as bullshit and insulting and you have no idea what she had to go through at times here. you’re talking about stuff that you have never had to experience. there are differences between people having difficulty fitting in and every day having a bullseye on the back of their shirt just because of the color of their skin. i find it interesting that you automatically reject the narratives that have been consistently given in recent months and you do so without having any real insight or perspective off.
That is the point DP. All of our children… and in fact almost every human, faces difficulty feeling like the don’t fit in. Public school is a traumatic experience for almost everyone.
Maybe you were one of those lucky kids that was the apple of the teacher’s eye, and gifted with a personality that made you popular and with abundant self-confidence. And if so, that might explain your lack of perspective for what is really just a human condition, and not a race condition.
As a child I was moved to a different location and had to re-assimilate into half a dozen different schools before I graduated high school, and I learned that the reasons that a child might feel like he/she does not fit in are far more broad and general than can be explained by racial differences.
The “I don’t fit in because I am not accepted because of my race” problem is long-gone… or at least de minimis is the scope of other issues. In fact, the shy kid with red hair and freckles will be a more likely outcast than will anyone of color just because of their color.
The kids are generally color-blind today. It is the adults that are screwed up projecting race onto “problems” where there are other root causes.
he we go again, you are making the “all lives matter” argument which of course doesn’t resolve the problem that there are people who are treated unfairly.
I think you are stuck DP. Stuck on an emotional argument that you are not willing to let go of. It is all victim mentality. You are not alone in this, but it is really unfortunate.
We don’t have material problems with racial bias. We have problems with class bias that are really more a root problem of cognitive segregation.
And I will give you this. I think blacks are more likely branded as being part of the lower cognitive group… because they are (for many reasons including our crappy education system), and hence lower socioeconomic group, and have to overcome more challenges in life because of this branding.
It is not racial biases per se, because otherwise we would see the same for Asians.
But the root cause of this is really in your wheelhouse. Homgamy and cognitive segregation. You are one of those brainy professional-class guys that live an exclusive life that most blacks are not a part of. For example, just look at the city you live in. If you cared so much about your daughter feeling like she better fit in, you might have considered living somewhere where she did not feel so cognitively segregated.
Davis Progressive
“you are still white and upper middle class and may not exactly understand the issue of perception”
“you might as well if you place yourself in medical school at a time where undoubtedly the majority of the class heavily titled toward the y-chromosome.”
I think that it is precisely because I have been in that position that I see this differently. In order to advance in my career, I clearly saw that I could not afford the luxury of protecting myself from discomfort by avoiding my male colleagues and only hanging out in the relatively more comforting company of the females. Especially in the early years, in order to advance it was necessary to engage and to demonstrate that I was not only as good, but better than my male colleagues. I had to put up with and answer many patronizing comments and many ignorant questions about how I would manage raising my children while still pursuing my career and the like which were never directed at my male colleagues. I found that the best policy was to answer the questions and comments directly, succinctly, politely in as friendly a manner as I could muster. Part of being a surgeon is demonstrating that you are calm and self possessed even under physical, emotional, and yes, often social pressure.
I do think that there is a better example of why I feel the way I do about the importance of engaging even when you feel that you are being condescended too. That is not my race or my gender, but rather the difference between my economic and social background from that of the majority of my colleagues. I am from a rural poor background. Most of my colleagues who are doctors are, and always have been part of the middle class. This has put my in the somewhat awkward position of having one cultural “foot”more in alignment with the medical assistant and housekeeping staff and one cultural “foot” more aligned with the doctors and nurses. This has led to both some socially awkward situations in the still quite hierarchical culture of medicine, but has also sometimes put me in the position of a kind of cross cultural interpreter helping one side of the divide understand the perspective of the other side. This came in especially handy during a particularly nasty strike during my residency when I clearly had credibility with both groups.
I think that while one may feel fatigued or annoyed or unwelcome, it is critical to determine and keep one’s own goals in mind. If the goal is acceptance by or promotion in a social or professional group, one is going to have to engage even if that means accepting some discomfort.
Having said that, there is a critical distinction to be made between the social discomforts that we all face and those faced by blacks. The recognition of race is immediate. It is part of that very critical “first impression” and once seen cannot be forgotten. This means that blacks have all of the same social issues that we all have, plus the racial distinction that has been present to greater and lesser degrees throughout the history of this country.
I agree with all of this except the last paragraph. Asians have this same immediate first impression.
Here is my perspective on this.
Branding.
Marketing.
Branding is the result of the practice of marketing to assigning common feelings, assumptions, thoughts about a particular thing. Supporters will work to brand a thing as positive and opponents will work to brand the thing in a negative light.
Blacks are unfortunately branded in a general negative light.
But they there are not really opponents working on a negative branding campaign; blacks are doing it to themselves.
This is a very frustrating circumstance if you are a member of the black race, or if you are a social justice crusader. How can you make anyone happy in their misery of feeling mistreated as a group by saying it is the fault of the people in the group?
Unfortunately, Black Lives Matter, and the protests at Mizzou, only increase the negative branding of blacks as a group.
Try finding a sense of “belonging” on campus – if you happen to have conservative views! There is intolerance on college campuses in a number of ways (racial (ethnicity), political (liberal vs conservative), social (belonging to a/the “right” fraternity/sorority), and it is growing now that students have figured out how to flex their muscle, which is unfortunate. But someday those same students may be tomorrow’s administrators out of a job because of future student intolerance. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Maybe conservative students should protest and demand their own enclave, a place where they can feel safe and discuss their broader mission of conservatism. I wonder if they feel that they get funny looks, are stereotyped and asked condescending questions. Maybe they need a safe place so they won’t feel so vulnerable and not part of the school.
you’re solution to every problem is to draw in other people who might at times feel excluded to while not dealing with the problem in any tangible way. so when the problem explodes, you now have an understanding of why – because you continue to divert attention away from it until people blow up.
No, I like a growing number of Americans are tiring of these fake victimhood trivial pumped up cases of supposed racism where it really either doesn’t exist or is very minimal at it’s worst.
you’re not going to solve the problem by calling names (fake victimhood) and making excuses for not dealing with it. so this is going to get worse (or the world will simply leave you behind).
Or the grown ups in the house will step forward and put a stop to the foolishness.
i’m not exactly sure what that means or looks like, but the reality is that what you are seeing right now is the next step of the civil rights movement and it looks very different from the days of having to desegregate lunch counters.
dp: “there are differences between people having difficulty fitting in and every day having a bullseye on the back of their shirt just because of the color of their skin.”
Whatever made you think having a bullseye on the back of one’s shirt is exclusive to the color of one’s skin? One of my children had a bullseye on the back because of a learning disability (and when I say bullseye, he was physically assaulted – and the perp put in jail eventually but not by the school). I’m sure gay kids will tell you they have bullseyes on their backs, as will nerds. Having a bullseye on one’s back is NOT EXCLUSIVE to SKIN COLOR. Bullying is bullying, and the victim feels it keenly no matter the cause. What I find irritating is our society’s tolerance for bullying of all kinds.
bullying is bullying, but that’s a very narrow slice of what we are talking about here.
if you read dorf’s account: “object to a campus culture that repeatedly challenges their sense of belonging—occasionally directly through the use of racist language and imagery but more often through subtle, perhaps even unconscious, signals from fellow students, faculty, and administrators. They want colleges to do more—much more—to make them feel welcome on campus.”
within that is bullying, but a lot more of it is implicit/ unconscious bias.
If you are a conservative on campus, if you are gay or a nerd, don’t belong to a certain fraternity/sorority, trust me, you get “unconscious signals” as well as conscious ones.
maybe. but unlike people of color, they are not necessarily standing out all the time. and moreover, my objection is that this is being used by some as an excuse to ignore the problem rather than address it.
DP – I certainly hope you are not projecting this onto the mindset of your child because it would be destructive.
For one, you have no reasonable remedy even if you are correct in your criticism (you are not, IMO).
The only thing we can do as parents is to teach our children how to cope with adversity… because they will all have it all the time in everything they do. Because people are largely uncontrolled emotional bags of crap that never grow up and are always prone to envy and craving to fill gaps in their needs for attention. These are things that a virtuous-religious culture can help with (humans getting some values and principles to live by that help them regulate their emotional impulses) but as we become more and more a secular society we will experience more people behaving like the children they really are. And so our children need tools to help them cope with that.
Even back in the 19760s and 70s when I attended public school I had groups of friends that were every race and ethnicity. Today it is even more common. My sons have groups of friends that look like the UN.
You seem to be stuck.
this is where i have a problem with your viewpoint. first, what am i projecting into the mindset of my “child” that is destructive? i taught my daughter to work hard and not accept second class status, not to accept having to sit at the back of the bus. i disagree that the only thing we can do is teach them to cope with adversity – that means accepting it. why should they? it’s interesting that you have a completely different mindset as me – you’re not a fighter. you don’t believe is fighting injustice. and yet you somehow believe there is only one way to proceed.
My point is that it should always be seen as an individual fight.
For example, if you get in my way, I will just work harder to push you aside. My strength is that I know most people are incapable of controlling their emotions. I have very low expectations for truly virtuous human behavior. I see that many people don’t feel good about themselves at times, and will try to make others feel worse only as a placebo to make themselves feel better by comparison. It is that blocking tendency. That feeling that someone is getting ahead and the envy and resentment boils and they start doing things to undermine it instead of just working on their own game.
It isn’t racial, it is just the imperfection of the human condition.
But if you develop a mindset in young people that that are institutional solutions to these challenges of the imperfect human, they will both become dependent on these institutional solutions, and constantly harmed because the institutional solutions will never be enough to stop the crappy behavior of humans.
We wiped out institutional racism, and not you are advocating for institutional solutions to wipe out individual human behavior you don’t like. That won’t work especially as we also continue to reject a society and culture base on Judea-Christian values.
and mine is that it’s not an individual fight. classes of people are and have been discriminated against. whether it was the civil rights movement or unionization, mass movements empower people who never had the power individually to overcome the power structure.
Ha. Well yes. Since the current power structure is that of liberals, then I guess what you and these these activists are crybullying about is the liberal power structure.
I am both disgusted with what is happening on American campuses and also amused. I am disgusted because it is another clear indication that our nation is continuing its decline into another unsustainable European-style mess. I am amused because the adult liberals are seeing the chickens come back to roost.
The good news is that this along with the fact that it is pricing itself out of the market, will hasten the demise of college as we know it… to be replaced by college as it should be.
Teaching your child that there are external forces responsible for his/her unhappiness will cause a victim mentality and undermine the other needed lessons for learning how to cope with adversity.
Do you think any of this protest crap on Campuses is going to do anything to make any life better? Not at all.
Here is how it works for the crybully. They cry and use their new power of a persecuted victim in a political correctness PC police state to lash out in attack on others for their misery. The response from others it to move as far away as possible from the crybully. Thereby isolating the crybully into even greater segregation. They can have their safe space, because nobody else will want to hang with them. Misery loves company… so only the miserable need apply.
Here is what is really quite toxic about your view and that of many liberals.
You are consumed with your sense of perceived unfairness and so you demand that we legislate fairness. But you cannot force one person to like another person. And entitled, thin-skinned crybullies are generally not very likable people. Race has nothing to do with it. But it causes greater segregation.
It is really quite simple. People that have their crap together don’t like to associate with people that have a chip on their shoulder. And it is not even really an issue or like or dislike… in this toxic PC-correctness environment, it is not even safe to associate with these people.
It seems that you have been helping to build, or at least reinforcing the building of, a chip on your child’s shoulder. That isn’t good. I would instead say, people can be mean, ignorant, biased, blind, selfish and will frequently fall short of your expectations… now what are you going to do about it?
Protest about it? Give me a break.
“Teaching your child that there are external forces responsible for his/her unhappiness will cause a victim mentality and undermine the other needed lessons for learning how to cope with adversity.”
isn’t that just reality? there external factors that will enable or constrain their success – shall we enumerate them? we don’t operate as islands – none of us do.
“Do you think any of this protest crap on Campuses is going to do anything to make any life better?”
i’m sure the french protesters in 1968 didn’t think they would bring down the government and i doubt that jonathan butler thought he would bring down the chancellor and president. will that make things better? i’m old enough to be cynical, but clearly he was able to effect change.
“Here is how it works for the crybully. ”
i just think you are mischaracterizing what is going on. you call it toxic, i call the existing atmosphere on campuses toxic.
“But you cannot force one person to like another person. ”
true, but it’s also not what people are asking for.
What ARE they asking for? What are you asking for?
“But you cannot force one person to like another person.” True enough… but I remember a good HR person who shared a problem he had had with two bickering employees, where their behavior was severely negatively affecting the office environment.
As he told the tale, he took each of them aside, told them they had to “play nice” (damn liberal, right, Frankly?).
As the story was told, one employee said, “But you cannot force me to like (the other) person.” The HR guy said, you are absolutely correct. But as your employer, I can compel you, during working hours, as a condition of your continued employment, to pretend you do.” [Private sector situation] According to the account given, the problem was resolved.
Given the first-hand account (L Michael Thompkins), I believe it was a “true story”. And very wise.
hpierce – Good story. Work is different.
I have had the same conversation with several employees in my management life. But they don’t have free will as an employee. They have performance requirements.
This deserves repeating, you can’t make this up:
and what does it mean to you? to me it means you need to have safe spaces in your life or else you will burn out. you have safe spaces every where you go and so you don’t understand the problems of those who don’t.
So you’re really okay with having minority enclaves on public campuses where whites are not allowed? This is so wrong in many aspects and something that I even think liberals would be against.
i think we need to really address the problems here and be open to potentially outside the box solutions. i hadn’t given it any thought until i read this article this morning, but since you are against the concept, how do you respond to a student who comes up to you and says, “It can be exhausting when people are making assumptions about you based on your skin color . . . . It can be exhausting feeling like you’re speaking for your entire race.”
can there be safe spaces for minority students in your world view? how do you create them?
Now if they indeed do create these safe space enclaves for minorities will high achieving Asians be allowed in? What if Asians want their own safe space. What if whites feel they need a safe space too for whatever reasons? What this will be creating is further segregation for everyone involved and solves nothing.
This survey from the Pew Research Center is a good one in covering the general white-vs-black socioeconomic gaps.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/08/22/kings-dream-remains-an-elusive-goal-many-americans-see-racial-disparities/
I thought this point was interesting:
So, the higher the family income of either black or white, the stronger the opinion that blacks are worse off. Lower income blacks and whites have a stronger opinion that blacks and whites are more equally well off.
Isn’t that interesting? You would think it would be the opposite. I think this is possibly a key to understanding ongoing black-vs-white racial socioeconomic gaps.
Frankly, quote: Among African Americans with annual family incomes of $75,000 or more, 79% say the average black person is worse off than the average white person in terms of overall financial situation.
Frankly: So, the higher the family income of either black or white, the stronger the opinion that blacks are worse off. Lower income blacks and whites have a stronger opinion that blacks and whites are more equally well off.
Isn’t that interesting? You would think it would be the opposite.
No, it makes sense to me. I can see how that would happen. The survey is asking about perceptions. It depends on how much socio-economic and geographic mobility you have, and whom you find yourself in contact with. We segregate mostly by income. Statistically a higher percentage of African-Americans are at or near poverty level than whites. A middle class African-American family will probably live in a corresponding community where the schools are perceived to be better, where there are more choices for shopping, where the crime might be lower. But there’s a better chance that they will have connections — by family, friends — and hence awareness of conditions in lower income neighborhoods where African Americans tend to congregate. A lower income African American is probably not going to have the geographic mobility to hang out in middle- & upper-income neighborhoods to be able to note any income disparities by race.
I find this fascinating. It indicates that the more people move up the socioeconomic ladder the more they lament the circumstances of those that don’t… but conversely those that don’t are more blissfully ignorant and less likley to internalize or believe in racial inequity.
Said another way, moving up derives more troublesome relativism.
Here is another related thought. Because the new upper class is also the cognitive elite… those that are blessed with academic gifts that then are more easlily leveraged for higher income due the changes in the economy, and that through homogamy repeat this in subsequent generations… that there is some guilt that these rewards were not so much earned as bestowed in luck and this then results in a level of guilt and hypersensitivty to the circumstances of those with less.
Historically, with few exceptions, the upper class teneded to have to move up through the socio-economic ranks and hence were less likely to feel any guilt about being there and seeing that others could do the same. But the new upper class didn’t take that path. They had advantages beginning at birth that carried them through to a prestigious college education and then almost immediately after that, put them in the upper class.
This is a race neutral phenomenon. New upper class blacks seem to follow the opinion trend-line for upper class whites. Race is only a related issue because of the macro statistics of racial representation in socioeconomic classes, but the trends for opinons moving up in socioeconomic class are eerily in sync.
Pew quote: Among African Americans with annual family incomes of $75,000 or more, 79% say the average black person is worse off than the average white person in terms of overall financial situation.
The bold part that I added is a provably true statement. For example, see this from the U.S. Census Bureau. Middle-/upper-class African Americans are more aware of this reality.
You’re ignoring the interaction of education with awareness.
Not really. For example, I am of that old-style ascendance to the upper class. I started working in low-skill, to then blue-collar-skilled, then white-collar while I attended college and earned my degree. I was a B-average student with a strong work ethic.
I certainly am educated enough to read and understand the statistics, but don’t draw the same conclusions as do the average modern upper-class. I am of that “if I could do it, then others should be able to do it too” mindset.
Actually not what I meant. When I was a grad student in political science, I studied the interaction of education on awareness of campaign stimuli. Some of what WDF’s student is picking up on is a greater aware of educated people of such matters.
But think about this.
So you are educated and because of this you are more enlightened to tell a low income person that they should feel more miserable than they actually do.
It is projected victim mentality.
When did being low-income become a “problem” that social justice crusaders believe they must solve?
When did being low-income become a justified reason for feeling bad?
From my perspective these data-points above are indicative of a problem with the upper-class fomenting class anger that would otherwise not exist.
And it creates a secondary problem in that political energy spent in class anger deflects from the real useful debate about how we keep income mobility strong. Class difference isn’t a problem from a historical perspective because it was primarily transitory and there wasn’t as much of an observable life-style difference between the middle-class and the upper middle-class. With strong income mobility it should not be a problem worth fretting about today.
Income mobility is the problem.
Frankly: I am of that old-style ascendance to the upper class. I started working in low-skill, to then blue-collar-skilled, then white-collar while I attended college and earned my degree. I was a B-average student with a strong work ethic.
I certainly am educated enough to read and understand the statistics, but don’t draw the same conclusions as do the average modern upper-class. I am of that “if I could do it, then others should be able to do it too” mindset.
I, too, can describe my life by that narrative, but I also think I happened to be lucky. There’s a quote I like, “Luck comes more often to those who work hard.” It means you have to have some luck.
You and I grew up in a more fertile environment in which there was more likely a payoff for one’s efforts. You yourself have often criticized the Obama economy for not creating the same kinds of opportunities that existed in earlier decades. Well, I can agree with you that the current economy is not quite as fertile as earlier times. Charles Murray made that case more generally for recent decades in his book, Coming Apart, that social mobility (the ability to rise out of poverty) is more limited in contemporary times.
Also, developing persistence, vision, and work ethic for me required some adult modeling (mostly parents and closer family friends). To navigate all the options for higher education also (for me, anyway) required adult social connections for advice and tips. As we increasingly segregate by socio-economic class, those connections are more limited in lower socioeconomic communities.
What I understand you to say is that you succeeded due to personal moral virtue, and that those who don’t succeed deserve what they got because they lack that personal moral virtue.
Not quite.
I succeeded due to personal moral virtue, hard work, persistence, ambition, refusal to see myself as a victim, understanding of the benefits for forging strong personal relationships, understanding the benefits of being a good moral person… of doing the right things and minimizing mistakes made.
And of course luck.
But for all my good luck, let me introduce you to my bad luck. I have lot’s of it.
Most people have both.
It really comes down to if you let the bad luck take you down, or do you grow strength from it so that you are in a good position to leverage the opportunities of the good luck that presents itself from time to time. Victim mentality wipes this out.
But I do agree that we have lost much of that ability to move up through socioeconomic ranks. There are several reasons:
1. Industrial automation
2. Globalism
3. Immigration of cheap labor that has caused the market rates for low-skilled labor to fall behind the market rate adjustments for skilled labor.
4. Government policies: Minimum wages that take out the lower rungs of job opportunity and push more low-skilled jobs to foreign labor. Extreme environmental laws that kill industrial business starts and expansions. Mounting regulatory and tax costs that kill business starts and expansions. Crappy schools that have always been crappy, but have failed to modernize to keep up with the need to better prepare students for the new workplace in light of all the previous.
From my perspective liberals attempt to make political hay out of #1 and #2 and reject working on #3 and #4, but #1 and #2 are uncontrollable while we have the power to make changes to #3 and #4.
Frankly: It really comes down to if you let the bad luck take you down, or do you grow strength from it so that you are in a good position to leverage the opportunities of the good luck that presents itself from time to time. Victim mentality wipes this out.
But I do agree that we have lost much of that ability to move up through socioeconomic ranks. There are several reasons:
You have an interesting rhetorical dilemma.
You argue how terrible the situation is today, worse than the past, and at times maybe we are closing in on social collapse. You present reasons why an individual might not be able to make it in today’s society — big bad government, Obama’s fault, immigrants, and always crappy schools, etc.
And yet you are prepared to blame the victim if they don’t succeed. And if an unsuccessful individual were to rationalize their failure by the reasons you list, then you might say they have succumbed to a ‘victim mentality.’
So do you.
You argue how terrible the situation is today, worse than the past, and at times maybe we are closing in on social collapse. You present reasons why an individual might not be able to make it in today’s society — big bad business, Bush’s fault, whites, and always not enough money being spent on schools and social services, etc.
And yet you are prepared to blame the external factors if anyone in a protected group does not succeed. And if an unsuccessful individual were to rationalize their failure by the reasons you list, then you might say they have succumbed to institutional and unconscious bias.
My point is that those falling behind are blaming the wrong boogieman and hence are destined to never solve their problem of falling further behind.
Frankly: Except that you are generalizing several things that don’t apply to my views, a frequent trait of yours.
wdf1: you are doing the same of me.
Can’t make much progress understanding while walking on eggshells that we will offend one another.
A really appreciate the dialog.
Frankly
“ the higher the family income of either black or white, the stronger the opinion that blacks are worse off.”
I am not sure what you are interpreting this to mean. I also do not know why you would think it would be the opposite. Perhaps one key is differences in the interpretation of what the “average black” or “average white” actually means. When questions are this vague, there is a great deal of room for misinterpretation of the responses.
Wow Tia, I totally agree! You may three awesome points and very well said. These three points are the base issues I have with the vibe of the entire movement.
Frankly: ” I have very low expectations for truly virtuous human behavior.”
I don’t mean this to sound snarky, but you really need to get out more and widen your horizons. There are many, many people who give of their time for no remuneration to do good in the world – every day. (Think of how this nation pulled together on 9/11 to selflessly save as many in NYC as possible, the good Samaritan medical student who helped a woman being beaten but was shot in the stomach by the assaulter, the rescuers of abused animals who foster them for free, etc.) The problem is the media dwells on the negative, but as a conservative particularly, you should know enough to ignore the media’s negative slant.
I am out plenty and have very wide horizons. In fact, some that know me say I am objective to a fault…. failing to see the single transaction through the big picture that it is transacted in.
A virtuous act does not define a person as being 100% virtuous. I am not talking about the heroic and giving transactions that people are capable of in moments of necessity or passion. What I mean is that people are generally flawed in that they are emotionally needy, and it will cause them to act selfishly at times… especially when they are feeling bad, but even when they see the opportunity that they would have to compete for and win at the expense of another that would lose.
But I don’t think of them as being any worse as a human… just human.
Taking this back to the topic of people of different groups feeling like they are treated fairly. What we are really talking about is people going out of their way to give up their own needs of feeling safe and satisfied, and ignoring their own fears, to reach out and give of themselves to lift up these others that are feeling not accepted.
Let’s use GATE/AIM as an example. How many of the parents of these children that are just more cognitively-advanced bristle over the suggestion that they children remain in the standard classroom and supplement their leaning by tutoring those that are struggling more? Would not that be the virtuous thing?
But my main point was that you cannot force people to like another.
From my perspective that is a biggest challenge with the black-white divide today. Too many blacks have a big chip on their shoulder and are angry people and, frankly, that makes them very unattractive to befriend. It has nothing to do with their race, it is their behavior and mindset.
And this is a compounding problem as the divide grows and blacks as a group become even more angry about it. And Democrats, liberals and the media egg it on.
Frankly
“What we are really talking about is people going out of their way to give up their own needs of feeling safe and satisfied, and ignoring their own fears, to reach out and give of themselves to lift up these others that are feeling not accepted.”
Now that is interesting. That is exactly how I see those who are willing to put aside their fears to welcome the Syrian refugees.
I agree with you.
My opinion on this has changed a bit as I have read more about it. I am in agreement to allow some of these refugees in as long as Congress and the President agree to pass the bill that passed the House.
Frankly
Actually, I did not mean to sound quite as harsh as I may have in my 3:41 post. It takes a big person to admit when they change their mind on the basis of additional information and consideration. I much appreciate your statement.
I am not anti-asylum. And I am not anti Muslim. I am anti-believing our government, except for our military, is competent enough to do reasonable work to keep us safe. The new legislation is the minimum I would accept to make me believe we have reasonable safeguards from allowing in terrorists in the group of refugees. It is bi-partisan legislation. Representative Garamendi voted for it. However, as usually the partisans in the Democrat party are conspiring to try and overturn it… Reid by blocking it from the Senate and Obama claiming he would veto it. So if you really care about these people, you should get to your party leaders to tell them to pass the legislation.
Keep in mind though that I have a slightly different perspective of Americans verses the rest of the world. Just as I have a different perspective with my family and my neighborhood.
Since we cannot save everyone on the planet, it is irrational to pursue life as if we can.
I can be empathetic and sad about the circumstances of others outside of our “family” but I don’t believe we can nor should feel obligated to save everyone… especially as we have plenty of our own family that need saving.
You keep making the point that we are rich enough to afford it.
We really are not. We are $19 trillion in debt.
Frankly
“Since we cannot save everyone on the planet, it is irrational to pursue life as if we can.”
And that is nothing but a straw man argument since I know no one, including myself who has claimed that we can “save everyone on the planet”. What we can do is to save everyone that we can reach, and not turn anyone who is truly in need away.
And
You are contradicting yourself here if not literally, then certainly from a practical perspective.
We turn away people in need all the time. The US government turned away all the Coptic Christian refugees from the earlier ISIS expansion. What makes the Syrian refugees so special to get an exception pass?
The US has admitted several hundred Iraqi Christians. A small number of Chaldean Christians who entered illegally through Mexico and made false statements to immigration authorities were returned to Europe. They already had asylum there, but wanted to emigrate to the US. So I’m not sure what exactly you are referring to with this comment.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/08/17/yazidi-refugees-flee-isis-but-find-door-to-us-asylum-closed/
I think Coptic Christians was too narrow. I should have written Yazidi and Assyrian Christians.
The problem with this assertion, which is repeated mostly on very conservative evangelical Christian websites, is that there is no actual basis for it. The problem is that we accept refugees from UN refugee camps, and the claim is made that Yazidis and others don’t go to them because of fears that they will be attacked there. But there is no evidence that Yazidis or other displaced Christians in the region are applying for asylum, or seeking it, or even want to come to the US, and being denied. Only the National Review gives any context for the situation, which would basically require that we seek out those Yazidis and get them to apply for asylum. The US government has not “turned away…Christian refugees.” That is false. We repatriated a couple of dozen Chaldean Christians who crossed over from Mexico and gave false statements to immigration authorities. We have allowed some Christian refugees from the region. There is no official policy denying Christian refugees from the region.
Frankly
“You are contradicting yourself here if not literally, then certainly from a practical perspective.”
“We turn away people in need all the time. The US government turned away all the Coptic Christian refugees from the earlier ISIS expansion. What makes the Syrian refugees so special to get an exception pass?”
Nice verbal sleight of hand on your part. ” We: as a country do things that “I” as an individual, would not do all the time : I am not “we” meaning the American people or the American power structure. When I write, I am speaking only for me, and what I would choose to do if I were in a position of power. Apparently you either missed, or are choosing to ignore, the portion of a previous post in which I stated that if possible, I would have offered asylum to any other individual or group fleeing as well. There is nothing at all in my opinion that makes a member of one targeted group more worthy than another to be saved. I would point out that it is the right wing politicians who are variably saying “save only Christians, or save no one from Syria”. I have never advocated sorting out refugees by religion or county of origin
These two sentences make sense to me. These two sentences would be a good place to start. Since we are talking about our society’s young adults–our children, who we are preparing for work and life (right?) — addressing the issue from BOTH the institutional direction and individual direction is appropriate. Yes, children need to be coached on how to manage themselves around the bores and jerks they encounter at college and at work. Yes, the adult leaders of our Publicly-funded institutions have a huge influence on the institution’s climate, including those that revolve around human resources, and they should strive to use that influence to create a community that is inclusive. That is what the university is selling, right? That if you get a degree, you’ll be “in”?
This nails it and explains a lot about what is going on on the college campuses…
http://brightside.me/article/why-generation-y-is-unhappy-11105/
Frankly
I am guessing that maybe you did not continue to read the comments to the article you posted. I found this a few comments down.
“ I grew up in the “everyone is special” era, but I always interpreted it as uniqueness in the sense that I am an individual. Every person is special in that every person is different from every other person, so that nobody can be completely defined by native culture or economic station or race. It never occured to me to think that I was better than everyone else, especially since this same concept was being taught to all of my peers as well.”
There is more than one way to interpret that word “special” and only one of them leads to the conclusion that it means “better than others”. On a broader scale, it is very hard for me to see how you can feel that this article “nails it” about how it applies to college campuses, and not see how it also applies to the concept of “American exceptionalism”.
I think the main point is to illustrate the lack of meaningful historical perspective and and the corruption of micro-relativism verses macro-relativism.
Looking at the known history of humanity, it is really only a sliver of time that we can count ourselves as truly safe and free. The earlier struggles and miseries of life had always been bountiful and profound. You can see modern reflections of it in the war-torn places… especially those following Medieval cultural norms where human life is still typically violent and short and assigned a much lower value.
Enter western youth… those that have not really had much struggle in life from a macro perspective, but they immerse themselves in victim mentality and stir it up with micro-relativism.
Happiness = reality – expectations
Absolutely true.
Their expectations are way too high from the coddling of their parents mistaken in their believe that eliminating struggle from their children’s lives was the benevolent thing to do.
Humans are built for struggle. Take it away and it causes emotional and psychological problems that in-turn result in the young people inventing struggles that are destructive and absurd.
I have said this before, but I think much of the problem with youth today that we see from the protests in Mizzou are the result of a shift from a patriarchal to a matriarchal society.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Frankly
“Happiness = reality – expectations
Absolutely true.”
Far, far too simplistic. Ignores the genetics, biology, physiology, sociology, spirituality and many other aspects of happiness and focuses only on the material aspects which are probably amongst the least important attributes of what makes a happy individual, which is of course the basis for a happy group and society.
I’ve been reading material on societal history of the 20th century (1900’s), and I’m struck by how every generation has been disparaged by the older generation, including the “Greatest Generation”. It is typically related to a sense that the younger generation has an immature sense of reality and a lack of respect for norms that came before. This is fits in that theme.
Maybe this the price of “progress”?
I think perspective is one of the greatest gifts.
plato and Aristostle did the same. It’s a common theme throughout history.
Tia and Frankly–some really good comments and conversation from each of you; points raised that I have not seen elsewhere (and most of which I concur with).
If there were still such a thing as serious objective investigative reporting, it would be nice to see a series of serious investigations into the origins, political connections, and financing of the current round of student protests–while I do not doubt that many of the students are sincere (after all they have been primed by the educational system, media, and overall pc campus environment to espouse the particular views they voice), something about this protest movement does not completely pass the smell test—I suspect they are being nudged and encouraged by outside off campus forces; but must concede that I don’t have any information to provide evidence of this (bring back true investigative journalism!)