There's Nothing You Can't Blame On "White Male Privilege"
Toast a little burnt? Easter Bunny's ears a bit droopy? White men's fault!
There was a horrible near-tragedy in the UK, with a jogger pushing a woman into the path of an oncoming bus back in May. She probably only survived due to the quick reflexes of the bus driver, who swerved around her.
Well, the police in the UK thought they'd found their man -- but the man in question denies that he was the jogger, and he claims to have irrefutable proof that he was in the US at the time.
The bit on the white male thing is at the end of the piece by Jamie Grierson and Nadia Khomami, in The Guardian:
Prof Craig Jackson, the head of psychology at Birmingham City University, told Good Morning Britain: "I think what we're looking at here is an embodiment of what we often see as 'cis privilege', or you might want to call it white male privilege.
No, I think it's the embodiment of sociopathy (which gets used a little interchangeably with psychopathy). Look up Robert Hare if you want to get into the details on this.
Back to the Guardian piece, quoting Jackson again:
"This is clearly an individual who, upon seeing someone in his path, veers towards them and not only does he barrel them over, but he continues to run down the road without even looking back to make sure they're OK."That to me is quite horrifying behaviour and I think what we're looking at here is the pedestrian equivalent of road rage. It's very, very worrying ... it could have been murder or manslaughter."
Countless, countless white men (and I will not use the term "cis") are wonderful human beings. And just as with all people, some white men are horrible people. Nobody of any particular color has cornered the market on that, much as Craig Jackson likes to believe it.
And though tragedy was averted in the speeding bus/woman/jogger situation, tragedy continues in that Jackson is in charge of the teaching of psychology at British university.
I applaud your stance on the term 'cis' and further move that anyone using the term (rather than merely citing it, as per this instance) be banned from any vocation within the realm of education, at any level.
In such conditions, most of the world's problems would likely solve themselves within a generation.
Steven J Williamson at August 14, 2017 6:21 AM
Concur with that; if you say "cis-" anything, you'd better be talking about chemistry. (The real irony is that the SJWs who use these terms use them in the exact opposite of the correct sense. In chemistry, "cis" means "same side", and "trans" means "opposite side" or "across from". So a "cis"-sexual person would be homosexual, and a "trans"-sexual person would be heterosexual.)
Cousin Dave at August 14, 2017 6:43 AM
Interesting Cousin Dave. So a cisgender is asexual? Like an amoeba? I'm not sure what 'cis privilege' would be. We all have the same privileges?
Ben at August 14, 2017 8:27 AM
That burnt toast had better not be white bread!
mpetrie98 at August 14, 2017 9:12 AM
Labelling people as "cis" is a way of dismissing them; demonizing political and cultural opponents. Once they're "cis," they're no longer people with ideas and viewpoints; they're the embodiment of socially-unacceptable ideologies and now easy to dismiss, shut down, and punish. You've shut them down and ostracized them; you've made them wear a modern version of the yellow Star of David in public.
Conan the Grammarian at August 14, 2017 11:53 AM
Conan,
In part, that only depends on whether other people buy into the effort. The person who uses the term wasn't going to take the guy seriously, or at least will lie about what he says, and so will others who pretend to take "cis" seriously.
Third parties who aren't already biased against the guy won't buy the effort, and, in fact, may even feel a bit sympathetic.
Calling somebody a "white man" in order to demolish arguments when you have jacksquatall to go on yourself only works with people who are equally unprepared for an actual argument.
The rest of us see past it.
Richard Aubrey at August 14, 2017 12:22 PM
Conan,
In part, that only depends on whether other people buy into the effort. The person who uses the term wasn't going to take the guy seriously, or at least will lie about what he says, and so will others who pretend to take "cis" seriously.
Third parties who aren't already biased against the guy won't buy the effort, and, in fact, may even feel a bit sympathetic.
Calling somebody a "white man" in order to demolish arguments when you have jacksquatall to go on yourself only works with people who are equally unprepared for an actual argument.
The rest of us see past it.
Richard Aubrey at August 14, 2017 12:24 PM
Oh, yeah. Did the fact that the guy could prove he was elsewhere at the time actually get him off?
Richard Aubrey at August 14, 2017 12:25 PM
With college students being told by other students to check their privilege, demanding racial exclusion zones or non-white days on campus, and harassing conservative or non-woke speakers from campus, I think that hurdle has been cleared.
The revolution will be conducted by young people who have come to see anyone against Affirmative Action as racist, anyone against bathrooms open to anyone as homophobic, anyone against abortion-on-demand as sexist; young people who are philosophically and intellectually a mile wide and an inch deep.
Conan the Grammarian at August 14, 2017 12:58 PM
Professor Jackson is making the world safe for Scientology, one ridiculously off-based psychological assessment at a time.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 14, 2017 1:43 PM
Look a little deeper at things Conan. (Though yes, the whole line about looking into the abyss ...) These cis/sjb revolutionaries are already waging war. Where did you think Antifa came from. But look at where Antifa is successful. Pretty much only on the coasts. Also look at why Antifa doesn't spread. Essentially they like hitting people when they won't hit back. The moment you force them to take off the masks and are willing to return fire when attacked they run away and give up.
I do worry about a second civil war. But I can't see the socialists winning that war. I would rather not have the violence. But I am also not willing to appease in order to get short term peace.
Ben at August 14, 2017 3:31 PM
Richard Aubrey: "Oh, yeah. Did the fact that the guy could prove he was elsewhere at the time actually get him off?"
It wouldn't make any difference. If a cis white man commits an offense, then a cis white man must be punished.
If they don't know for sure who the offender was, then of course they don't really know if he's cis, trans, gay, pan, bi or anything else. So in the present socio-political environment, he's assumed to be cis until proven otherwise.
Ken R at August 14, 2017 4:28 PM
I'm not that worried about a civil war. '70s level societal dysfunction and violence, sure, but a civil war seems a bit of a stretch.
It's possible, of course, as emotions are running high and common sense seems pretty uncommon. Of course, very few in 1860 thought a civil war would happen either.
Conan the Grammarian at August 14, 2017 7:29 PM
Obviously not all men act like this but unfortunately, a lot do.
I noticed that my husband buffalos his way through the house, especially the kitchen. I know to just get out of the way. He has knocked into me several times or will patiently wait for me to get out of the way. I usually go to the table and scroll through my phone until he leaves.
This surprised me at first. I grew up with two sisters. We would prepare meals with my mom. There was almost always someone else in the kitchen. We could tell when someone needed to get by or get into a cupboard and could scoot out of the way enough for them without any interruption of what we were doing. We all just adjusted slightly.
I thought it was just a quirk with my husband. I went to the doctor's office and the doctor requested something. The nurse was 2 1/2 or 3 feet from what she needed. She turned around to leave the room. The doctor said, "I'm not a man, I'll move over!" and let the nurse by. From all of our laughter I could tell this was a universal experience.
Generally when we see a man on the sidewalk, we move. We get out of the way.
I wonder what dozens of these little evasive actions turn into. How much productivity is lost?
The type A who buffalos through situations is bound to get more done. I notice that people both male and female react positively to my husband's take charge stance and body language and give him respect. It is an interesting dynamic.
Jen at August 15, 2017 4:24 AM
Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about this ending peacefully. The anti-first-amendment gang have redoubled their efforts. They seem to imagine young white males will just roll over and play dead in the face of obvious government sanctioned discrimination against them.
That resentment real, earned, and is going somewhere. Treating everyone equally seems to be too controversial a solution, so we'll just have to see how this plays out.
MarkD at August 15, 2017 4:34 AM
Heather Graham, in today's Wall Street Journal points out that the socialists are winning that war.
EXCERPTS:
"Just wait till those campus snowflakes enter the real world—that’ll shape ’em up!” So goes a typical response to totalitarian hysteria at colleges. The firing of a Google engineer last week for questioning the company’s diversity ideology exposes that hope as naive. The “real world” is being remade in the image of college campuses with breathtaking speed.
A conveyor belt of left-wing conformity runs from the academy into corporations and the government, so that today’s ivory-tower folly becomes tomorrow’s condition of employment. Google’s rationale for firing James Damore perfectly mimics academic victimology—the equation of politically incorrect speech with violence, the silencing of nonconforming views, the refusal to hear what a dissenting speaker is actually saying.
AND
The corporate world is even mimicking academia in its inhospitality to nonconforming speakers. Earlier this year, a Google employee asked me if I would be interested in speaking there about the police. The employee ultimately abandoned the idea, however, citing “personal/professional matters.” An affiliation, however remote, with someone who challenges the Black Lives Matter narrative is apparently a job hazard at Google.
Don’t assume that the discipline of the marketplace will prevent this imported academic victimology from harming business competitiveness. Google sets managerial goals for increased diversity. Mr. Damore wrote that he has observed such goals resulting in discrimination. That is fully believable. A comment on an internal anonymous discussion app warned that more Google employees need to stand up “against the insanity. Otherwise ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ which is essentially a pipeline from Women’s and African Studies, will ruin the company.”
America’s tech competitors in Asia are not yet infected by identity politics. The more resources U.S. companies spend on engineering diversity while competing firms base themselves on meritocracy, the more we blunt our scientific edge. Employees are thinking about leaving Google because of its totalitarian ideology, Mr. Damore said in an interview after his firing. While the prestige of elite companies may outweigh the burden of censorship for now, there may come a point when the calculus changes.
Conan the Grammarian at August 15, 2017 6:43 AM
Regarding Google, there is an article on Reason today pointing out the legal quisling-ism behind Google's firing of Damore. The government has ramped up investigations of companies who don't toe the line regarding the government's preferred policies; Google itself is currently the subject of an investigation. Firing Damore is legal protection and sucking-up.
The Reason article points out how the government is using anti-discrimination law as a First Amendment workaround, mandating that the private sector censor speech that the government finds undesirable but cannot censor itself. Under the law, Google can permit all of the pro-feminist, pro-intersectionalist, and pro-SJW speech it wants. But it it permits speech opposed to those positions such as Damore's article, then it is prima facie guilty of discrimination, and so it must censor such speech. It's not a huge jump from that principle being applied in the workplace to that same principle being applied in all of the media that Google controls.
Cousin Dave at August 15, 2017 7:09 AM
Conan,
Did you notice the geography involved in what you quoted. A guy in New York is talking about coastal colleges and companies in San Francisco. No wonder he thinks the socialists are winning.
Cousin Dave,
Don't kid yourself that Google didn't want to censor conservative speech without governmental concerns. Eric Schmidt (chairman of Alphabet) actively worked on Hillary Clinton's campaign. When she lost he had a public cry in with Google employees over it. This was problematic enough that at the last shareholder meeting someone asked if conservatives would feel comfortable working at Google. The response was that they should have no fears whatsoever. That was a blatant lie. And those kinds of lies are the real problem.
I don't know of an employer that would have kept Damore on after that memo. It is wholly inappropriate to do something like that. After all most employers have a very strict no politics in the workplace policy. Left wing, right wing, management doesn't care. Money is all that matters. But Google didn't follow that standard. They chose to bring politics into the workplace and make those politics an inherent part of the workplace. And then they lied about doing it.
Ben at August 15, 2017 7:47 AM
Sorry, the author of the article was Heather MacDonald, not Heather Graham.
Conan the Grammarian at August 15, 2017 7:48 AM
One word, Mizzou.
Even if Google is a "compan[y] in San Francisco," it's a tech company surrounded by other tech companies. Silicon Valley is where our country's technology leadership resides, not Peoria, Illinois (Caterpillar) or Detroit, Michigan (Ford, GM, etc.). What is affecting those companies affects our global technological competitiveness.
Google controls the majority of Internet searches in this country and the world, along with a big slice of e-mail and document production; not to mention a huge chunk of the mobile phone market through Android.
Conan the Grammarian at August 15, 2017 7:56 AM
A civil war is a shooting war. I think you'll find when lines are drawn and shots fired having access to the ability to manufacture weapons, the will to use those weapons, and the food production to feed your armies is more significant.
I agree that Google controls the majority of internet searches in the US and the world at large. But they gained that position by providing the most accurate answers at the lowest cost. As they drift more and more into social justice and begin to intentionally skew their results people will go somewhere else. Look at how many of the Dow Jones Industrial Average companies have survived over the years. Look at how many have died. How quickly did BlackBerry fall? Google has a good product but it doesn't have a monopoly.
"What is affecting those companies affects our global technological competitiveness."
Does it? You act like we are all in this together. They a companies. They sell to customers anywhere in the world. Elsewhere we buy for anywhere in the world. It is a global market. Ford makes crappy cars. So buy one from Honda. Google fucks up their phones, buy a Samsung. Apple doing well has zero effect on those of us who don't work for Apple. Same with Google and Microsoft and others. I recognize there is a nice dynamic where multiple colleges produce highly skilled high tech people who then form companies and work in that area. But if it all falls apart due to political stupidity as someone here in flyover country, so what? Doesn't really affect me one bit.
If I recall correctly you live in San Francisco, Conan. I get you are far behind enemy lines. I get that the media bubble makes it pretty much impossible to understand anything outside of a few major cities. But you've fallen for the walnut argument. California produces almost entirely luxury goods. It was popular for a while for Californians to talk about California succession and then talk about how without them we would have no walnuts. They didn't even realize how silly they sounded. For one thing my walnuts come from South America. For another I don't eat that many walnuts. I can easily do away with them.
Ben at August 15, 2017 10:08 AM
"After all most employers have a very strict no politics in the workplace policy. Left wing, right wing, management doesn't care. Money is all that matters. But Google didn't follow that standard. They chose to bring politics into the workplace and make those politics an inherent part of the workplace. And then they lied about doing it."
I think that most of the Fortune 500 is like Google these days, with the exception of a few sectors like energy and aerospace. The leftists who control the companies will claim that their own politics are "just common sense" and any other opinion is irrational. They get various favors from the government for promoting leftism, and in return, they promote and enact the government's preferred policies. It's a self-reinforcing loop.
What's interesting is that Google may have violated federal workplace law by firing Damore. Apparently there is some aspect of labor law that says that employees may not be disciplined for discussing workplace conditions with co-workers, which part of Damore's memo explicitly does. Everyone seemed to think that that only applied to unionized employees, but now some labor-law people are saying no, it applies to all employees. We'll see what happens.
Cousin Dave at August 15, 2017 10:34 AM
Politics are a common part of your workplace, Cousin Dave? I know I work in the energy sector so management is usually more right-wing. But it doesn't matter. There is a very strict policy of not talking about non-company things on company time. And politics is definitely one of those non-company things. If someone complains then you are in trouble.
Yes people talk about things with coworkers. But definitely never management with subordinates. And always be on your toes about someone complaining to management.
Is it really all that different elsewhere?
Ben at August 15, 2017 10:57 AM
Lived, Ben, lived. I used to live and work in the Bay Area. I moved to central North Carolina over a year ago.
And I haven't fallen for any walnut argument. I posted that California secession was a ridiculous fantasy from the beginning; that California needs the US far more than the US needs California.
However, right now, the capital and main locus of the US computer technology industry is Silicon Valley, California. The venture capital is there, the industry expertise is there, the university support is there. That's not fantasy, it's reality. Although Seattle, Washington has a fairly strong technology start-up culture and Austin, Texas and St. Louis, Missouri are working hard to develop their own technology start-up culture, the center of that culture is located in Silicon Valley, California.
As far as replacing Google once it no longer provides the best search results (update: it no longer does), that will take a while as Bing and any competitors fight it out. And a successor to Android will need to arise.
And so, the rot setting in at Google and other Silicon Valley companies will be duplicated in other technology companies, even those outside of Silicon Valley, at least for a while until the majority of our software engineers and entrepreneurs are no longer being trained by UC-Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, or the Ivy League. And that rot will adversely affect our competitiveness in the world.
Conan the Grammarian at August 15, 2017 11:56 AM
The Goddess writes:
That's because the words mean the same thing. "Sociopathy" is the older term for "psychopathy," which have since both been replace in the DSM by "anti-social personality disorder."
Although the way people use it now, sociopathy describes someone with an underdeveloped sense of empathy, and psychopathy refers to someone with no empathy at all.
Technically, psychopathy is obsolete, although some psychologists still use it.
Regarding the whole "civil war" discussion, I think the situation is wholly unfair to Trump, as detestable as he is.
He is expected to condemn the soi-disant Nazis over the death of one person struck down by a car at one of their demonstrations. BLM and Antifa are guilty of far, far greater amounts of violence than the neo-Nazis, but we're supposed to give them a pass because they're the good guys.
No, they're not.
Oh, by the way, remember how the media put the pressure on Obama to condemn radical Islamic terrorism in the wake of the Orlando shooting? Yeah, neither do I.
Patrick at August 15, 2017 2:14 PM
I think you underestimate just how fast things can move Conan. You want to replace Android? Then fork it and make your own thing. The source code for Android is publicly available and free. In fact most cell phone companies do this. They each have their own proprietary version of Android and not the Google one. Which makes getting bug and security issues resolved quite difficult.
You are right that the rot is in the people and the schools that trained them. If Google collapsed tomorrow and a bunch of exGoogle people founded Gaggle it wouldn't matter if they founded it in Texas. It would would still be the same people doing the same thing.
I'm still curious what you think the benefits of 'our competitiveness' are? Google isn't really a computer company. They are an advertising company. Apple produces fancy phones and a few other status related items. I don't see the silicon valley having much impact on our military capabilities. As for economics, does it really mean much to you if Google makes more or less money? It matters to the governments who tax them. But elsewhere it doesn't have much effect. In the same boat I don't really care about the american movie industry. Or the fact that the major music companies are having a harder time with the rise of streaming. It impacts those employees and those shareholders but I'm having a hard time seeing how it impacts the rest of us.
Ben at August 15, 2017 3:18 PM
Ben, I work in a government facility. Most of the civil service is unionized and their jobs are pretty much ironclad. Most of them don't go around subjecting others to their political opinions, but if one does, there's not a thing anyone can do about it. Us contractors have to be a lot more circumspect, so if someone starts a political argument with one of us, we have to just sit there and nod our heads. We can't say a thing.
And being that it's government, there's all kinds of mandatory political-correctness training. This is one place where the civil servants get the short end of the stick, though. They have to take all of it. Us contractors only have to take some of it, because the government doesn't want to pay for our time to sit in a three-hour sexual harassment class.
Cousin Dave at August 15, 2017 7:42 PM
That makes sense to me Cousin Dave.
Ben at August 15, 2017 8:58 PM
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