Slate Finds A New Way To Shame White People For Daring To Say Something About Anything
This is speech on Twitter -- the completely benign tweets I've enjoyed seeing from a variety of people on #First7Jobs.
No, Slate associate editor L.V. Anderson doesn't say "white people" when she writes about "privilege," but that's surely what she means.
We're all supposed to feel terrible white guilt -- and accomplished, wealthy black people are supposed to feel they're accidents, I guess -- whenever we speak or do anything.
The unbelievable headline and subhead on her ridiculous piece?
Stop Tweeting Your #Firstsevenjobs
It's just a way to disguise your privilege.
She continues in the piece:
But what really bothers me about #firstsevenjobs is the ideology it reflects. #Firstsevenjobs promotes the ideal, as old as America, of the self-made man who creates his own destiny through hard work. The archetypal #firstsevenjobs tweet begins with a few humble, menial jobs--babysitting, retail work, slush-machine operating--and culminates in glory. Even if the seventh job on the list isn't anything to write home about, the tweeter's bio will demonstrate that she has overcome adversity to attain an interesting, lucrative, or high-powered career. "What is compelling about this snapshot of career trajectories is that it, by nature, emphasizes a career as a journey and not necessarily the logical result of a blinkered, do what you love mantra," writes Adam Chandler in a piece praising the hashtag at the Atlantic. "It also implicitly belies and discourages narratives fashioned by nepotism and privilege."It's true that the hashtag discourages narratives of privilege, but that doesn't mean those narratives aren't true! #Firstsevenjobs obscures the extent to which the socioeconomic status we are born into shapes our career potential.
What seems to make a huge amount of difference -- about whether you grow up middle class or poor and in poverty, in a dangerous neighborhood -- is whether your parents are married and together.
This isn't something you can control as a child, but you have a far better shot of growing up in an intact family if you are white, Latino, or Asian. Black families have a 70-plus percent out of wedlock rate.
So, yes, there's a problem, but not one that isn't solvable -- and the way to solve it isn't for white people to feel bad about their first jobs but for black leaders and others to attach a stigma to out-of-wedlock births and push for black kids to get their lives and careers and relationships together before having babies.
I do this -- for black and Latino and other "at-risk" kids -- when I speak at a local high school mainly populated by inner-city kids. But where are all the black-ortunists (my brand new word, just now, for the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons)? If black lives really do matter, shouldn't they matter in the ways that don't involve TV cameras on a fire?
I talk to these kids at this school about some of the things they can do and the thinking they can employ to make it and explain to them that it is possible for them to do things with their lives. (One of the things I talk about is life history theory, from ev psych, though in very simple terms -- about how, if they grow up in a risky environment, they're likely to have what I explain as a strong need for excitement. Recognizing that, they can get their excitement in healthy and legal ways, like through adventure sports.)
Maybe, if they're in 11th grade with not the greatest school skills, they can't go become a software coder, but they can apprentice with the best person they can find to take them on (while working and earning a living) and then become great at something and earn a living.
Then again, there are now an increasing number of free online courses out there, including one that's probably the most popular in the world right now, by engineering professor Barbara Oakley, called Learning How To Learn. (Next one's August 22, and I'm in one of the videos that goes along with the course, talking about tricks I use to be more productive.)
To tell you what's possible, Oakley made the video for this course in her basement for $5,000, and I think it has had more students than all of Harvard's put together -- or close to that. Big corporations and organizations and universities bring her out around the world to talk about the science of learning and how to create a successful MOOC.
Who is Oakley? Not some fancy Ivy League princess who went to private schools. A woman who had a tough childhood and did poorly in school (failing all her math and science classes) and who had to pay for college by going to the army.
She later went to a community college and worked to figure out math and science -- to the point where she became a tenured professor of engineering, and then blazed over into psychology to take it on in non-doctrinaire ways (thanks to not being part of the social science mafia).
So no, shaming white people and others who've perhaps had intact families and who've worked to make something of their lives isn't the answer.
Oh, and Cathy Young said it so perfectly on Twitter in response to this Slate piece:
@CathyYoung63
Stop telling people what to tweet and not to tweet. It's just a way to disguise your bullying as "social justice."
Certain habits and attitudes will lead to success,such as focus, spending time on a task, being on time, etc. Most middle class people of any race do get some advantages like more familiarity with these habits, but rarely do they get a free ticket into the rich people's club. Sure, my uncle had his own business and could give me a summer job in high school--patching canvas awnings and tarps and loading trucks. Not exactly the Ritz. My parents had no special connections or inheritance to give me except a focus on education.
What the Slate article ignores is that the middle class cannot keep these habits a secret. Immigrants often figure it out and do very well in America even with poor English skills. The belief that people who are initially disadvantaged cannot improve their circumstances by changing how they do things is really the worst form of racism. Blacks from Nigeria who move here can do well but blacks born here cannot? Koreans who barely speak English can be successful but not blacks? Please. It doesn't even make sense. As Thomas Sowell notes, before Jim Crow laws and then the welfare state, blacks were moving into the middle class and had a higher rate of being married than whites. A recent book asks the gov to Please stop helping us. props
Craig Loehle at August 20, 2016 11:07 AM
So now my work at a movie theatre concession stand, Burger King, McDonald's, University of Maryland (only 6 to 8 dollars an hour), cut-rate lawn mowing, my first job out of college starting at much less than fucking 15 an hour, and a slew of temp jobs makes me a white privileged dude?
I hate these people.
mpetrie98 at August 20, 2016 12:23 PM
I hear black leaders talk about the pit falls of fatherlessness all the time.
Why are people still bringing up Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Are we going to bring up gangster rap as well (if you don't know that shit hasn't been popular in 20 years).
Ppen at August 20, 2016 12:29 PM
It goes against the lefts narratives, that no one works their way up, only minorities or poor actually have had low wage jobs, etc.
Mine:
1. Picking vegetables on several farms
2. Mowing lawns
3. Shoveling snow
4. Shoveling and caring coal and ash
5. Caretaker at a church
6. Construction
7. Research Physicist
Joe J at August 20, 2016 12:38 PM
Ok Ppen. What needs to change to be effective? At 72.2% of birth are out of wedlock births for non-Hispanic blacks there is a lot of room for improvement.
Mind other groups aren't wonderful. And being born to a married couple doesn't mean they stay married.
Ben at August 20, 2016 12:52 PM
I would add that there are white people too who think that one goes straight from college to a fat salary and a house in the suburbs, who are not equipped to work hard or long hours. I know some of these who were physically sick when their first job was difficult (with an anthropology degree) and not high paying. They may be totally unaware that it is possible to work your way up in a job. Something everyone should learn.
Craig Loehle at August 20, 2016 2:53 PM
If you bother to read to the end, she admits that the reason she's bothered by this hashtag is because it distracts people from focusing on her agenda, which is to promote the idea that success is accidental and undeserved because the US is actually a hell world of oppression.
What's cute is that she holds herself out as a primary example of this because she's an assistant editor at Slate, which she attributes to the fact that she went to an Ivy league school on her parent's dime.
mmm at August 20, 2016 2:58 PM
Cathy Young hit the nail on the head with her response tweet; "bullying" is exactly what this kind of nonsense is.
charles at August 20, 2016 3:43 PM
In the spirit of "It's Chinatown, Jake":
It's Slate.com, Amy.
Kevin at August 20, 2016 7:42 PM
I revel in Slate's disdain for me.
And I return it measure for measure.
dee nile at August 21, 2016 3:41 AM
Slate's got a bad advice column, so they are consistent. I must am trying to be nice in my old age.
MarkD at August 21, 2016 4:35 AM
Slate's got a bad advice column, so they are consistent. I must am trying to be nice in my old age.
MarkD at August 21, 2016 4:35 AM
This just proves that she hasn't outgrown her old-fashioned "it's not nice to brag, dear" WASPy ways. It's not braggin' if you did it, I think.
KateC at August 21, 2016 9:04 AM
Leftists keep harping about a class-stratified world because it is, whether they admit it or not, the kind of world that they want. Like Lenin and his gang, leftists don't actually want to destroy the ruling class. They want to be the ruling class.
Cousin Dave at August 22, 2016 7:49 AM
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