The barrister, novelist and essayist Helen Dale is not a lady to mince her words. She talks about the Jason Arday fiasco at Cambridge University:
“The idea that historically disadvantaged groups are entitled to extra civil rights – coupled with social preferment – over and above those held/enjoyed by people considered their oppressors is inimical to the rule of law, specifically the principle that people should not be punished for crimes they did not commit. We do not inherit criminality from our ancestors. This is in turn derived from the larger principle of treat like cases alike, which was first articulated in its modern form by the Roman jurist Ulpian.
I love the Ulpian reference. I wonder if the Cambridge dons who initially approved Arday’s PhD have heard of him.
“Jason Arday got his job in large part because a lot of people – and especially humanities and social science academics – think it’s reasonable to punish whites (and sometimes East Asians) who have never wronged blacks by making it harder for them to get into university or gain employment. This punishment of whites/East Asians who have done no wrong is undertaken to compensate blacks who have not been wronged for wrongs committed by other white people against other black people in the past. This logic is the basis of all affirmative action schemes and preferential hiring regimes (provision for which exists – albeit in limited form – in the UK’s Equality Act 2010). It is also the logic of inherited vengeance.
“It took humans centuries to work out that the law should punish individual wrongdoers rather than members of their family, their descendants, or their extended kin group for crimes or civil wrongs. One only need read some of the world’s great literature, both ancient and modern – from Njal’s Saga to The Godfather – to gain imaginative entry to a world where intergenerational and kin-based revenge are norms.
“May I suggest that the world of medieval Iceland or a New York dominated by the Five Families are the sorts of places you probably only want to visit in fiction? We stopped basing punishments on vendetta – a long, slow process of legal evolution starting in early Republican Rome – for good reasons. Societies based on vendetta are places of violent horror and boiling intergenerational resentment.”
There is a line in the film, For Your Eyes Only, starring Roger Moore as James Bond, where he tells Melina Havelock, daughter of the slain Havelocks, that she should remember the Chinese proverb that before entering on revenge, first dig two graves. I think that a lot of DEI and related ideological stuff is driven by revenge, by a desire to “settle scores”, even if the score-settling activity is self-destructive. Many graves end up being dug. This is why I think it is right, as several Samizdata and other commenters have said over the years, that there is a thick seam of moral nihilism that runs through all this. Drill into it, to maintain this geological metaphor, and all you will hit is darkness rather than a reef of gold.
It is worth pointing out that this happens in larger measure in subjects like social science and so forth. Areas where success is not objectively measured. One cannot tell if a professor in social science is a good professor except by the plaudits of other people in that field. One can definitely tell if an engineer is a good engineer or not based on whether his bridge falls down.
A bit OT but the description of blood guilt did remind me a lot of Christianity. The basic idea of Christianity is that we all inherit the sin of our forefather Adam, and that guilt, plus whatever we individually pile on top of that, is expiated by the death of an innocent person, namely Jesus. Blood guilt and punishment of the innocent for the crimes of their forefathers is the very core idea underlying Christian redemption, and I don’t see all that much difference between that and what is described here. Except perhaps as the late lamented Christopher Hitchens pointed out, at least in a human tyranny you can escape by dying, Christian doctrine promises punishment in hell for the sins of our father even after we die, for all eternity.
There were never, at any time, “Jim Crow” laws in the United Kingdom – so the argument presented in support of the 1964 American Civil Rights Act, that this government intervention counter balanced previous government interventions against black people, falls flat in Britain in relation to the government intervention that was the 1965 Race Relations Act – as there were no historic “Jim Crow” laws in Britain to counter balance.
But this whole discussion ignores the elephant in the room – Marxism.
If Jason Arday was a conservative – he would not have got the position he held, regardless of how black he is. And the same people who praised him – would have condemned him.
And “whiteness” (the thing the international establishment hate-and-despise) is not really about skin colour – it is about such things as belief in objective truth, hard work and (even) turning up on time. When Jason Arday did not turn up to teach his students – this was considered a good thing as his laziness was a rejection of “whiteness” (I also think it was a good thing – given what he would have taught them, if he had turned up). If he had been a hard working man who happened to be black – he would have been guilty of “whiteness”.
Everything is now “power relations”, “power structures”, with everyone being divided between “exploited and exploiters” “oppressed and oppressors” – with all evidence and logical argument rejected as “capitalist”.
Unless it is understood that we are dealing with Marxism, in its Critical Theory (Frankfurt School) form, then we have lost before the battle has even started.
And we have have to basic courage to call Marxism – Marxism, not hide from the word.
The world is infected by this disease – as we can see, for example, from the statements of so many Democrat candidates in the United States – including white candidates – it is not really about skin colour.
Whenever they speak or write it is obvious that they are Critical Theory (“Woke”) Marxists – yet there is some bizarre fear of pointing out that they are Marxists.
Frasor Orr – no, in fact doubly no.
First STEM can and is being infected with Critical Theory Marxism – they do not care if bridges collapse or aircraft fall from the sky. I agree with you that such things make them bad engineers – but they do not agree with such a test. Any more than leftist architects cared that their buildings were horribly ugly, dysfunctional, and often fell down – that is not how their stature as architects was measured – indeed the worse an architect was (in terms of the beauty of their buildings – or their strength) the more prizes and praise they got.
But also – of course history and the other humanities contain objective truth (indeed it is precisely the case of the-enemy they that they do not) – who is a good historian and who is a bad historian can be worked out, without any reference to “esteem from colleagues” or other such irrelevant things.
And a good economist, such as Ludwig Von Mises can be understood as different to a bad economist, such as J.M. Keynes, again NOT by the “esteem from colleagues” – but by the logical quality of their reasoning.
If there is no objective truth there is no scientific truth, and no engineering truth. So Critical Theory (“Woke”) Marxism – means the end of STEM – at least STEM in the sense of “whiteness” (as the international establishment call it).
That was one of the reasons that even “Stalin” was against the Frankfurt School interpretation of Marxism – “Stalin” wanted rifles and tanks (and so on) that worked.
That depends on objective truth in engineering.
Imagine a rifle designed by someone appointed by DEI – say because they were a transsexual who was also “neuro diverse”.
This is indeed what Fraser Orr is pointing to – and he is correc in that, but, sadly, the modern international elite (unlike “Stalin” – monster though he was) do-not-care.
To them everything is “power structures”, “power relations”, “exploited and oppressed against exploiters and oppressors”.
And the statement “this rifle does not work” would be met with the reply of “Racist!”.
Or “sexist”, “homophobe”, “transphobe”, “Climate Denier”, “Covid Idiot”.
Or some combination of the above.
Somehow, i doubt that Helen Dale has read the 2 works that she mentions.
It is true that the Sicilian Mafia retaliated against relatives of the culprit, when it could not do so against the culprit.
That is implicit in several movies, such as Il Mafioso and Goodfellas. It is also explicit in the fact-based movie, Il Traditore.
But that does not happen in The Godfather iirc; either book or movie.
It is also true that there is (at least) one saga (whose title i don’t remember) in which a relative is killed in retaliation for his dead relative’s crime; but that is not Njal’s Saga.
Incidentally, there is also the Saga of Hrafnkell Frey’s Godhi, in which Hrafnkell kills the brother of the man that he feels has wronged him. But that is not in revenge: it is to be able to kill the man who wronged him without fearing revenge from the brother.
— Having said all that, it is also true that, in both Medieval Iceland and the Sicilian Mafia, relatives had an obligation to avenge their killed relatives. (Hence the incident in Hrafnkell’s Saga.)
Perhaps that is what Helen Dale meant. But it is different from collective retribution.
I note, however, that this obligation was not equally stringent in all cases: if A kills B in retaliation for B killing A’s father, that was felt to be less than fully justified if A’s father had seriously wronged B (eg killed B’s father).
Fraser: It’s worth noting, I think, that the Constitution of the United States specifies that “no offense shall work corruption of blood.” That’s a powerful safeguard against the state destroying an entire family because one member was a traitor. But also, though its authors may not have drawn that conclusion, it’s a powerful rejection of the Christian idea of original sin.
OK, just because I think we need some balance here – and not necessarily because I whole-heartedly embrace what I’m about to say – let me play Devil’s Advocate.
My dad came home from the Navy in ’55. Got off the train in Minneapolis, and almost immediately bussed over to the University of Minnesota. He enrolled right then – with his military benefits, it was free – and eventually got his BA in education.
During his schooling, he had no blacks in his classes, and saw none on campus.
He took a teaching job in California, and moved out there (and I came along.) He established a career, got a Masters, and eventually a doctorate in Ed. He saw no blacks amongst his fellow teachers.
We eventually moved back to Minnesota, where he got a better job, with better pay. He had no blacks among his fellow teachers.
They bought a small house in a very good suburb, and went about building equity and savings and a reputation and a future. I went to one of the better suburban schools. In the top ten big suburban schools on that side of the Metro area – each with graduation classes of 1000 or more – there were probably ten black students. Total, not per school.
I got a very good education out there, enabling me to gather a nice scholarship and then move on to a highly rated college. At that college (in the 70’s) I began to see more black students. Not many. And I saw only one or two black profs.
During that time, our black population – for various reasons – were stuck in the inner city (Minneapolis or St. Paul) schools. They got barely-adequate to crappy educations, and most never considered college.
So, from ’55 to maybe ’80, I and my white friends were building our resumes and educations – our social and economic equity – and getting the kind of jobs that come from that, while most blacks in Minnesota were getting pushed through lousy schools with low graduation rates, and getting the kind of jobs (if they could get hired) that that kind of education provided. Car washes, gas stations if they were lucky. We established welfare to keep them peaceful in the face of unequal position.
I won that lottery, along with most of my white cohort. I built wealth and family and security. The blacks lost that lottery, and barely survived on welfare and some few bad jobs.
So, here comes the 1990’s, and the whites had most of the wealth and equity, and the blacks had little to none. I know for a fact that there were many blacks who were just as smart, just as ambitious, just as hard-working as I was, but I and my family ended up with everything.
So now, we have all of these whites with equity, which helps build future possibilities and reputation and a place at the top, while the blacks by-and-large had little.
It’s easy to say that, if we all started treating each other as equals, the blacks would eventually catch up. But that’s cold comfort to blacks who foresee generations of hard work to build that same social equity that I got as part of the ruling race.
So, for two reasons – to try to fix this situation more quickly than “eventually”, and to forestall armed uprising by blacks – we devised Affirmative Action. It’s purpose was simply to kick-start this evening-out process, knowing that it was NOT a situation based on individual merit, but on group merit, and so would be unfair individually, but might bring some equality of opportunity to people who had been thrown off of the rising boats of 20th-century America.
It IS unfair individually. But it was not entirely devoid of merit.
I am suspicious of Affirmative Action when it is used to ‘right previous wrongs’. Does anyone factually know how many women should be on the board of a company? Or how many black (brown, yellow etc) professors there should be in a University?
I suggest Affirmative Action should be used to remove any bar to employment other than merit. This might involve making sure that opportunities for recruitment/employment are well published. After that it is up to the people themselves to follow their own wishes. Otherwise you end up painting your own prejudices on other organisations. Strangely you don’t hear of campaigns to insist of equal numbers of women on trawlers, or equal numbers of men in the publishing industry.
The Constitution of the United States is only as good as the Justices who decide Constitutional cases – a few leftist appointments to the Supreme Court, and the Constitution will be held to uphold every Critical Theory Marxist doctrine. Even the present SCOTUS declared there was a right to “Gay Marriage” – which Founder put that in the document?
Look at the Californian Constitution – and what the judges there have done to it. With illegal (illegal) immigrants having a right to endless government benefits and public services – over ruling the referendum by the people to stop this. And, of course, no right to honest elections.
SCOTUS is the same – before the 2020 Presidential election SCOTUS (John Roberts – the Chief “Justice”) refused to rule against mass mail-in-ballots – because no election fraud had yet happened – the election had not happened yet, and after the election SCOTUS also refused to do anything – on the grounds that the election had already happened and so it was too late to do anything now.
Catch 22.
Go to an art gallery, or a museum – including museums of science.
Wall-to-wall leftist propaganda – as should be expected as they are run by products of the education system, the schools and universities.
The leading “private business enterprises”, the Corporations, are the same – see their advertising, with the racial and sexual messages (selling goods and services is a side issue to them – what really matters is “The Message”).
It is not just Britain – it is the Western world in general.
Well said, bobby (the entire post, not just the bit I quoted)
Yes, it may well be unfair, but it’s also unfair that some peoples have little chance to better themselves due to circumstances of birth, and previous wrongs that have left them in that position – regardless of whether the people who perpetuated those wrongs are still alive or not, it’s cold comfort. I’m not wholeheartedly in favour of it, but I’m not soulless enough to not understand why Affirmative Action etc is popular, and people can in good faith think it’s warranted. The alternatives, however much I wish we’d enacted them, were just politically unrealistic.
It reminds me of those who unthinkingly defend the NAP, with no regard to the subsidy of history (which is not, of course, everyone who subscribes to the NAP)
It’s a good principle, for sure, but if I and my mates invade your town with guns; steal all of your goods, houses, factories, farms etc, and then set-up a government to legally codify our ownership, leaving you with no choice but to work on the property we now “legally” own but was previously yours, and THEN I say “Hey, don’t touch my stuff! That’s mine! You’re breaching the Non-Aggression Principle!1111one!!!!”, welp. One might very rightly look at bit askance at the whole thing.
(Robert Nozick is very good on this, he argues that people who have been made worse off by previous injustices are rightly owed reparations. I am not aware that he ever went into detail, understandbly enough, as it’s a knotty subject which doesnt’ lend itself to simple solutions, but he’s very clear that it’s not something to be glossed over)
@bobbyb
It IS unfair individually. But it was not entirely devoid of merit.
It is undoubtedly true that the unfairness you describe exists in American society at the very least. But the world is unfair, that is just a fact, and, it must be said, that the minority kids who are born in America, while compared to you or I, are considerably disadvantaged, compared to the rest of humans in history they are in the luckiest 0.01% having been born free in one of the freest most opportunity laden, technologically advanced civilization in history — a civilization that actually gives a damn about the plight of the poorest of their number.
But regardless, relative good fortune is often the most apparent and the thing we think about the most, and certainly some people are greatly disadvantaged compared to you and I. But the question is what to do about it?
The idea of affirmative action is one of those seductive ideas that looks appealing on the surface, but any considered reflection on the idea blows it up into a million holes. It is a form of reverse racism, it sets up a patronizing, “bigitory of low expections” and, I think most importantly, it papers over the cracks — it means that we set people up who do not have the skills and abilities they need, to fail. Which is why black graduation rates at college are much lower than whites, which are in turn lower than Asians. Sending someone to a college that they don’t have the skills to graduate from is much worse than not sending them to college at all.
It is a classic example of “the government should do something about that” where, although the original problem is bad, adding the government makes it much much worse. This is self evident in statistics where before the Civil Rights Act and the virtual elimination of racism, and certainly legislatively backed racism, the paternalistic view of the government has turned many minorities into wards of the state, and left the black community DRAMATICALLY worse off than they were when they still suffered under the lash of shocking racism.
Although we might want to fix the problem legislatively, the simple fact is that the government is NOT able to fix this, primarily because the government can barely fix anything, but more importantly they are exactly the wrong tool. For sure if you want to lift the poor minority community out of the dreadful state they are in, there are some government actions that are needed, dramatic improvements in our terrible schools — mostly brought on by the labor unions — a change in the welfare laws and the child support laws to reduce the horrendously high level of unsupported single mothers who often cannot take care of their children well because they have to work many petty jobs to put food on the table, the police fully enforcing the law so that the kids can gain an education without a constant fear of violence or pressure to get involved in gangs and drugs, and so that businesses in those areas can thrive without threats of violence, mobocracy, and incompetent employees, and probably a dozen other things.
If I can give a specific example of this which I think is amazing. I know a guy who writes software to help the government deal with homelessness. One thing he does is write cell phone apps that homeless people can use to claim benefits, find a place to sleep etc. Just let that sink in. The most impoverished, poorest, often severely handicapped by mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, have widespread access to a technology that did not exist for even the richest people in the world twenty years ago. FWIW giving people in this situation a cell phone IS something the government can do to improve their situation.
These things the government CAN do, and they would actually work. Unfortunately most of the things the government actually does do, including affirmative action, is exactly the wrong thing that makes the situation worse.
So, when somebody cries “this is terrible the government should do something” let’s reply with “if the government is going to do something let’s make sure it makes things better rather than worse.” And maybe, just maybe, put some sort of mechanism in place to cancel the program if it doesn’t actually work. It is easy to “do something” and feel good about ourselves, even while ignoring the destruction that “something” leaves in its wake. Better really, because if things get worse it gives you us excuse to do “something” else, and polish our halo even brighter.
As a follow up here are five specific things cities and states can do to dramatically improve the lot of the poorest among us:
1. Change the tax law so that parents get to control the public education dollars allocated to their children, so that they can chose to send their kids to a better school, and introduce real competition into the school systems.
2. Have the police enforce a broken windows type policy where they actually, fairly and fully enforce the law, even against the petty criminals. Build bigger jails if necessary.
3. Make it much easier to fire bad teachers
4. When single mothers have to rely on welfare to provide for their children, allow the state to pursue the fathers for part of the cost, and, if necessary, enforce criminal penalties against the delinquents.
5. Make homeless shelters much safer (put a cop in every one for example), and clear the streets of homeless sleepers.
This will not solve everything, but it’ll help a lot.
The other non governmental aspect is a cultural one. FFS stop telling young black men that they are so put upon they can’t succeed. Stop telling young women it is ok to get pregnant when you are sixteen and that their use as sexual objects is the only value they bring. Instead tell these people that if they try hard, stay in school and do their best that they live in the freest, most opportunity filled country in the world, and they can succeed at something besides basketball. To tell them any different, which is what the media pumps into their brain every moment of every day, is basically nothing short of child abuse.
6. Remove any and all regulations which prevent people from starting their own small businesses. I really don’t care whether it’s “literal” insomuch as “You cannot”, or financial insomuch as “You can, but you need to pay $X first”. In practical terms, it often amounts to the same thing.
There’s obviously loads of nuance which I can’t possibly cover in a short post, but largely: stop forcing people into black and grey markets just to survive.
I would have thought that the non working rifles would be a self correcting problem as the guys with those rifles would be the ones who got shot.
This post did remind me of the story of the DKW RT125 motorcycle. A very sound design that was taken from the Germans as reparations after the second world war. Copies of the RT125 popped up everywhere, BSA, Harley Davidson, Yamaha and quite a few others made their own versions to supply markets hungry for cheap personal transport. I had an MZ TS125 which wasn’t a copy exactly as it was made in the original DKW factory. It was a great little bike for commuting, cheap, reliable and easy to maintain. The Bantam was BSA’s best selling bike.
The Russian version of the bike started being imported into the UK in the mid to late seventies, it was called the Neval Minsk. The Minsk was an appalling piece of shit. Despite being a sound design, the terrible build quality and poor finish rendered it almost useless.
The aim of the intellectuals behind all these discriminatory measures is to destroy Western nations and Western civilisation. The university “educated” fools who follow them naively believe that it is about being fair, It isn’t. At root, it is part of evil people’s project to destroy our civilisation.
@bobby b
Those blacks in MN, CA etc. They almost all arrived after 1940. The “Great Migration”. Overwhelmingly from poor rural Southern areas. Do you know why they did so badly in school / education etc until AA quotas started in the 1970’s? Because they came from a cultural background that always did badly in education etc.
No different from you can predict with very high degree of accuracy the educational attainment of immigrant children from Central America purely on whether they are blanco, mestizo or indio. Nothing to do with “structural racism” in the US. The pattern has been repeated for generations back in their home countries. In fact there is a large literature on the subject in Mexico. Going back almost 100 years.
What I find interesting is that AA since the 1970’s has not produced a well integrated black middle class. Quite the opposite. Blacks in middle class quota jobs are some of the most bitter racists you will meet. Not just against whites. You should hear their hatred of Asians.
Now the interesting thing is blue collar blacks, those who live in the projects and the bad parts of town, rarely show that degree of racism. Who haven’t benefited from AA> In fact once you get over the initial – why is this white dude talking to me – blue collar blacks are some of the most down to earth (and color blind) people you can meet. Once they work out you are not some “Liberal White Guilt” idiot.
AA has been catastrophic for blacks. Every black in a position they got through pure merit has that diminished by the fact that so many will look at them and think – they only got that job because they were black. In fact AA has utterly debased all accomplishments of blacks achieved on pure merit. And I have met plenty of those too.
It is no accident that AA was the brain-child of the Democratic Party. The party of race hatred since the 1820’s. The toxic effect of AA and related programs has guaranteed further generations of racial antipathy and outright hatred. By design perhaps?
Everyone in the US has stories of the utter stupidity of Federal AA rules. I knew a blonde guy who would not have be out of place in a Danish Tourism ad 30 years ago who was “black” according to AA. A milk white skinned red headed girl with freckles who looked like she was from Galway, She was “Hispanic”. Or one of my best friends who was born in Africa from a family who had lived in the same part of Africa for many generations. Who was immediately considered “on of us” by people from all over Southern, Central and East Africa. A true African American. Who qualified for nothing even though being dirt poor at the time. Because she is white Afrikaans.
And that in a nutshell is the deeply toxic utter stupidity that is Affirmative Action. The good news is it will go away sometime. When blacks become the fourth largest minority group in the US. Just like they are in CA. Just watch the Asians and others dismantle it in the coming decades. The only Hispanics who seem to support it always seem to be anchor babies. Californios and pre 1965 hispanics in CA most certainly dont. Plus the Liberal White Guilt middle-class types support it of course.
Have to agree with most of the above comments. AA is cargo cult crap. Islanders saw massive piles of relief goods sitting on runways, and when the relief stopped, they built fake runways so that more goods would arrive.
Now, people see a lack of attainment by groups, and so they place those groups into “attainment”, ignoring the fact that nothing changes if the attainment isn’t accomplished through education or training or socialization. Same basic mistake. Conflating cause and effect.
So, yeah, the best AA substitute to me would involve a redesign and re-populating of our education industry. Lack of ed is the cause, and to address a problem you need to accurately target the true cause.
Cool phrase which I’ve never heard before but which perfectly encapsulates what I meant!
“Preemptive score-settling” is an interesting concept.
Fits right in with all the other bits of socialist “philosophy”.
@bobby b
So, yeah, the best AA substitute to me would involve a redesign and re-populating of our education industry. Lack of ed is the cause, and to address a problem you need to accurately target the true cause.
Education is a big part, but there are really four anchors that keep the poor black minorities down. The terrible education system, the lack of law enforcement in the places they live, the collapse of the family and lack of fathers, and a deeply destructive culture based around hopelessness, violence, nihilism and resentment inculcated into them from birth. And perhaps a fifth being the self righteous prigs, usually upper middle class white women who “lunch”, with their self righteous, patronizing, simpering attitudes.
All of these need to be addressed to release these people from their prison. And it is such a damn shame because that is 15% of the population that could be freed up to help make out society stronger and richer, while making a prosperous and positive future for themselves and their families. Of course many black people do escape this terrible situation, and good on them, they are better men and women than I am to overcome so much.
I think is is perfectly encapsulated in the term “African American” a term that is mostly incorrect. They mean “Black American” but can’t bring themselves to say it, but they sure don’t mean Elon Musk. I seem to also remember some asinine Democrat politician describe Nelson Mandela as an “African American”.
But doesn’t that beg the question? You have to then ask WHY they always did badly in education. And I think the answer remains the same as it is now – because they were never educated, anywhere. Ed money has always been spent on some groups and not on others, even pre-1940.
It remains in MY best interests that YOUR children be educated. A society will always be drug down by its least-educated cohort. If we design systems that make the least educated cohort always out of one racial group, that group will always drag us all down.
That will establish them as an interest group based on that group membership, and only widen societal splits – which is injurious to ME.
See, I think that the education arm brings us 80% of the way there. You list four or five areas, but I see those areas as all being addressable by education, which gives people hope for their own future. A lack of hope, in my mind, contributes to crime, to fathers never feeling able to support their families – to the general feeling that, as the dregs and lepers, they never need conform to rules made by the people who DO have hope and futures., because what do they have to lose?
They have a Janis Joplin freedom right now – nothing left to lose – so what pressure do they have to conform? Give them hope and possibilities through education, and something to fear the losing of, and they become stakeholders themselves. Then your parade of horribles self-corrects.
@bobbyb
To some extent, but they are all intertwined. Even if you had the world’s best schools if you can’t get to school because you might get shot, or without being hassled by the local drug dealer you won’t learn anything. If you have a broken family with the best education in the world you won’t have a home life to support you, to have a place to work and do your homework, someone to support and encourage you, a good male role model, and if you are drowning in a culture where studying and school is “actin’ white” and where drugs and sports are glorified as the only way to succeed, you are going to find it hard to succeed. I mean would you have been successful without a great dad to look up to, a mom to feed you and make you do your homework, a neighborhood where you felt safe, and a culture that celebrated things like good grades and going to college? For sure these kids need a good school, but a good education requires a lot more than that.
All these things affect each other and it is only by attacking them all that these kids can escape the Lord of the Flies world they live in.
“Critical Theory” Marxism, whether in higher education or anywhere else, can only be defeated if we have the basic courage to call it what it is.
If we are too scared to even use “the M word”, Marxism, we will not defeat it – not in higher education, and not anywhere else either.
I am surprised that Thomas Sowell has not been referenced on this thread.
@bobby b
Its got little to do with “educational availability”. Everything to do with home culture. Black immigrant kids do very well. Except for those from certain Caribbean countries. Same ones as in the UK. But American black kids usually do badly. All culture.
Put a poor black Nigerian immigrant kid, poor Asian kid and poor American black kid in the same really bad inner city school and just watch the very different outcomes.
And by definition all big city / USD schools are terrible. On the West Coast SF USD was first to fall, then LA, next Portland and now Seattle. If you care about your kids education and live in a big city you go private. Or move to some suburb which doesn’t have a USD. Which by definition is now run by the teachers unions. Which are all controlled by the worst sort of low IQ marxists with their pseudo-intellectual sociology jargon
Want good quality education for all? Then shut down all USD public schools. They have proved to be unreformable. The teachers unions make sure of that. Give out school vouchers etc. But the big city USD PS’s are totally toxic money pits by this stage which have nothing to do with actual education.
As for home culture. Just like with crime the single biggest determinant of a positive home culture attitude towards education is it being not a unmarried mother household. The sort of culture that has high rates of unmarried mothers is the sort of culture that puts low value on education. Nothing new here. Was discussed even before the Moynihan Report in the 1960’s.
I’m not sure how relevant this is but thought it was interesting anyway.
https://notalwaysright.com/their-performance-is-outstanding/420775/
Not so much the brief little story but the comment thread that suggests that managing personal finances should be taught in schools. Being able or unable to competently manage your money can make the difference between being comfortably off or permanently skint no matter what job you have.
What Fraser said… well, in as much as i can judge, from the other side of the Atlantic.
(I took the liberty of inserting a few carriage returns for clarity.)
Now, as for bobby’s reply that 80% of it depends on education.
Item #1 obviously does.
It seems to me that, other than that, only #4 (the “deeply destructive culture based around hopelessness, violence, nihilism and resentment”) can be directly blamed on the education system. But it is not a lack of education: it is an excess of bad education.
It is quite likely that these 2 items are causing 80% of the problem.
The fifth item can be blamed on bad education of the AWFL, but not of Black people.
“Original sin is the only doctrine that’s been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.” G.K. Chesterton
@tfourier
And by definition all big city / USD schools are terrible.
What does “USD” mean?
@Stonyground
Being able or unable to competently manage your money can make the difference between being comfortably off or permanently skint no matter what job you have.
Just a thought on this, to reiterate my previous comment. Certainly how to manage your money should be part of a kid’s education, as should be how to cook a healthy meal, maintain a house, how to form romantic and sexual relationships and many other such life skills. But, even though kids need this as part of their education, does it need to be part of their schooling? This comes back to this idea that that parents are ultimately responsible for the education of their children and it seems to be accepted that it be fully delegated to the state. This does not seem right to me, surely we parents have a role to play too?
But it reminds me of social security. Most people are too inept to manage their money for their retirement so the state steps in and does it for them. And for both social security and childhood education, the state does an absolutely terrible job, but at least they cover the basics. At the ground level it is a symptom of a society who have been so neonatized by the government and the culture, that it is a surprise they can wipe their own ass without a government inspector to help them.
Fortunately, acquisition of this latter skill is one that is still firmly in the hands (so to speak) of the parents.
James Lindsay deserves a lot of credit for showing how the doctrines of Critical Theory Marxism came to dominate higher education and so much else.
Including much of the Corporate world.
Again – unless one understands what an enemy is, one is very unlikely that enemy.
This seeming insanity in universities did not come from nowhere – it came from Frankfurt School “Critical Theory” Marxism.
This is a set of ideas that, when it was first being developed, even “Stalin” (mass murderer though he was) was shocked by.
The ideas, the Frankfurt School Marxist ideas, that now dominate Western institutions (with their “anti racism”, “ant sexism”, “anti homophobia” and so on – none of which is about not being nasty to people, and all of which is about a political and cultural agenda of destruction) is not compatible with a functioning society.
Let that sink in.
The ideas that now dominate Western institutions (including much of Big Business) are not compatible with a functioning society.
David Roberts – yes indeed Thomas Sowell has done very valuable work.
Tragically neither he, nor the late Walter Williams, would have any chance of a mainstream university place if they were just starting out today. Their being black would NOT save them.
First attempt at posting this comment not showing, when tried reposting specified as a duplicate. Trying again, attached to this explanation.
Paul Marks, have you seen this? Notice Coleman Hughes, he is starting out nowish, and he is doing well. https://youtu.be/XeWGy3fVkK8?si=0E-hbCyF7NpGHnhK
I agree that parents have a responsibility too but not all parents even have those skills themselves, let alone the ability to pass them on. Teaching such skills in school would provide a safety net for the less fortunate kids. I think that the purpose of school should be to prepare kids to be functional adults. I can remember being all at sea when first starting work and taking a while to adapt. I get that many parents prefer to leave their kids’ education entirely to the state and that the state taking over duties that shoul be the parents’ responsibility encourages that. I do recall that much of the stuff that I learned in maths class was rather abstract and has never been applicable to anything that came up in real life. That said, being numerate definitely is applicable to life in general. Learning about personal finances would certainly have been a better use of my time.
It is not skin colour – it is the belief system.
It is not “gender” – it is the belief system.
It is not “sexual orientation” – it is the belief system.
A black conservative – would not now prosper in academia or anything dominated by the ideas pushed by the education system.
A female conservative – would not now prosper in academia or anything dominated by the ideas pushed by the education system.
A homosexual conservative – would not now prosper in academia or anything dominated by the ideas pushed by the education system.
And what is the belief system?
Frankfurt School interpretation, “Critical Theory”, Marxism – that is the belief system.
And it is so universal now that most of the people (police officers and so on) who push it – have no idea it is Marxist.
The left have achieved what the Italian Marxist Gramsci called “ideological hegemony” – a state of affairs where certain doctrines so dominate the institutions (public and private – including Big Business) that they are just taken for granted.
So, I 100% agree with you here, so please don’t take anything I say next as disagreement.
There’s a couple of aspects to this, in my mind.
Firstly, the parents (in my experience) don’t often have those skills themselves. I cook a lot meals for a number of different families in my circle, both pro bono and “paid for”, and generally it’s because they either don’t have the time themselves, or they simply don’t know how. I try not to be judgemental, but sometimes even I have that “seriously? You can’t even make a chilli con carne?” – but they can’t. They don’t know how, they were never taught/never learned. Largely, it’s because both parents were working long hours, combined with the ease and convenience of relatively high-quality “pre-prepared” meals and/or eating out before they had kids.
By and large, I’m talking families who are aged 40 or younger. These are, generally, couples where both of them work, they get home at 7pm or later, and simply don’t have the time/energy. Long gone are the days where one parent (usually Dad, obvs) could work and the other could stay home. The cost of living is just too high now.
Most of them regret not learning to cook. I run some cookery classes sometimes, just very basic stuff, but sparing the time is hard for them.
I’m focussing on cooking, but I could equally say the same about being able to darn a sock, unblock a sink, wire a plug, perform basic maintenance on your car and so on. These were all skills I was taught variously by my mother or father – and uncles/aunts/grandparents/neighbours – as a teenager, but these are dying skills, and I would guess that many parents don’t have those skills themselves to pass on, which I think is hugely lamentable.
A second factor is the role of the State in all this. This is trickier, very nuanced, and will vary depending on where you are, but the State has slowly been taking over what used to be voluntarily run organisations (not sure that’s quite the right phrasing) such as mutual aid groups, friendly societies and the like, who used to provide things like healthcare/fire services, etc etc. In at least some cases, these were deliberately suppressed by outlawing gatherings and associations, Combination Laws or by the various legislations (too numerous to go into now) which pulled the “Friendly Societies” into the State, and basically destroyed their original purpose.
So we now have at least two or three generations who have never known anything other than State-provision of various services, and almost cannot imagine them being provided outside of that framework – and even if they could, their immediate thought would be “but I can’t contribute, because I have not the time or energy once I get home from work”
The two things, combined, add up to a world where it’s really difficult. On one hand, I find it very sad that these skills are being lost, but on the other hand, the State played a huge role in making those skills more difficult to learn, so it’s not entirely unreasonable for people nowadays to expect the State to fill those gaps.
It’s not hard to follow a recipe, I lot of my, pretty ordinary, cooking skills came from recipe books. There is also a half way house between cooking from scratch and heating up a ready meal. Cook in sauces are really easy to use and generally get good results, there are instructions printed on the jars.
When it comes to fixing cars and doing household repairs, I seem to have a natural aptitude for these. I my job was in engineering so that helped. I learned some skills from a Readers Digest DIY book that came from a second hand book shop.
She gets a lot of flak, but Delia’s “How To Cook” is actually very good. Yeah, yeah, how to boil an egg, whatever. But she teaches the basics, and as a 19-ish year old fella when I was given them, I devoured them because I hadn’t a scooby at the time.
I think there’s a lot of “language” that gets used that doesn’t immediately make sense. What is “sauteing” vs “frying”? What is “dicing” vs “finely chopped”? If you have the basics, these all make sense. If you don’t…well, it can be hard work. For me, I sometimes think “oh, come on!” but I try to pull myself back and think “actually, would I know, if I hadn’t been cooking since I was 19? Maybe not.”
I agree on the sauces for sure. Whilst I prefer “from scratch” (I’m a full-on “curing my own bacon” foodie and cooking is my thing) but I’ll always default to “fed is best”. I keep a store of Dolmio, Uncle Bens, and even (*gasp*) full-on Co-Op readymeals in my pantry/fridge/freezer for days when I’m not up to it.
Remember what happened to David Starkey – the “rudist man in Britain” (famous, for many years, for being rude about everyone – including himself) he is also a leading historian – yet when he said “bloody blacks” on a podcast – many of honours and positions were “revoked” including prizes and awards he had won for academic work.
No terrible fraud had been found in his work – but he had (horror-of-horrors) said something “racist” – and thus offended against the Frankfurt School “Critical Theory” world view.
This is a society where people have to worry about every word they say, where people can never relax, never breath, never talk to each other as men have done for thousands of years (mocking banter – which anyone who has worked for a living knows very well), and where serious academic work counts for NOTHING compared to offending against the bloody Frankfurt School and their “anti racism”, “anti sexism”, “anti homophobia” (Dr Starkey is a homosexual – but he is just as rude about homosexuals as he is about anyone else), “anti Transphobia” and-so-on.
This is no good – a society like this can not survive, and should not survive.
Their being black would be a drawback for them: them being accepted and promoted by conservatives would go against the narrative of conservative racism — and their being conservatives would show that at least some intelligent blacks do not believe in conservative racism.
Same as Clarence Thomas.
@neosnake and @stonyground, I sort of get what you are saying, but when I say the parents are responsible for the education of their children that does not mean they have to do it themselves, nor does it mean that the only possible organization to which to delegate is the state.
And TBH not being able to cook or darn a sock is simply a personal decision to remain ignorant in the age of the internet and YouTube, come to that, in the age of the public library. How is it possible to not be able to cook decent food if you have a phone with YT and a few dollars at the grocery story. And the web is full of instructions on how to do everything from darn a sock to hang a shelf to do the laundry. I’m a pretty decent cook and nobody taught me a damn thing except Adam Ragusea and Chef John. I think my mother might have taught me how to make toast, maybe?
Now, something like personal finance is a little bit more complicated, but seriously, make your kids read a book or go on a udemy course or something. I don’t know for sure but my guess is there are some cool gamified ways to learn that kids would love.
And for things that are more hands on you will find abundant experts who would be delighted to teach your kids for free to throw a ball, or shoot a gun, or do some gardening, or climb a mountain, or get in shape.
The parents’ responsibility is not to do the teaching but to ensure the kids get taught.
If you imagine how much time kids spend on pointless crap in school, were that redirected to more useful endeavors our children would be much better prepared for adult life.
FWIW, I think it is one of the reasons home schooled kids often come out so well. They are not occupied every minute with school and homework in academics, but have the time and flexibility to explore these other things, and their parents have the time and flexibility to provide these other opportunities for them. School and homework in particular is often full of pointless busywork, and I think this is by design to “keep the kids out of trouble.” But it consumes all their free time to pursue their interests and learn the many things not on the curriculum.
It is not just the government schools that are dominated by leftist doctrine – many of the private schools are also dominated by it.
Paying twice (once via taxes, and then via fees) to have your children indoctrinated with this false doctrine, is not good.
@Fraser
I largely agree with your last post. I think it’s a very fair point to say that it’s not necessarily the parents’ place to do the actual teaching themselves, and I think you’ve nailed it with “you will find abundant experts who would be delighted to teach your kids for free to throw a ball, or shoot a gun, or do some gardening, or climb a mountain, or get in shape.” – I’m very much a proponent of the “it takes a village” philosophy. In an earlier post, I initially wrote that my mother and father taught me everything, but then I reflected and edited in “and uncles/aunts/grandparents/neighbours” because that was the real truth of it. When my nephews get older, one of my tasks will be to teach them at least some of the skills you mentioned (their father sadly died at 39yrs in 2020, so that’s why it’s on me, before anyone asks why their Dad isn’t doing it).
And I totally get you when you talk about YouTube etc. I dunno how many times I’ve pulled up a YouTube or whatever when I’ve had a “minor” issue that I feel I “should” be able to fix without “getting a bloke out”, and yeah, 30 minutes later I’ve got my tools out and I’m sorting it. It’s not necessarily about whether I have the skills, but rather, do I have the confidence to try it myself?
I sometimes wonder about why those skills have been lost. I’ve had lots of messages over the years along the lines of “thanks so much for the ragu, if it wasn’t for you, they’d have been eating chicken nuggets with fries and baked beans lol” and sometimes I have a slightly visceral “Surely not???” reaction.
These skills just aren’t taught anymore. I’m lucky, I guess, in that my generation was taught basic cookery, car maintenance, DIY etc, but younger people have been bought up in a world of ultra-specialisation and individualism where you focus on one thing and one thing only (your career), and everything else, you pay someone else for.
I sort of get why, when both parents have to work just to afford a mortgage/rent/bills etc and still aren’t getting home until 6.30pm or later, just to pick the kids up from the childminders, maybe they’d rather sit down and spend time playing with them rather than disappearing into the kitchen to cook a “proper” meal.
There’s not an easy answer when the reality is that both parents have to work; it’s very much a shame, but I’m not strictly against state schooling picking up the slack when it comes to things like Home Ec, woodworking and the like, as much as I wish it wasn’t necessary.