The Left is Now the Right (NOTE: this does not speak of gender ideology at all actually, but a lot of the rhetoric the "left" uses regardless of topic is eerily similar)

submitted by vitunrotta from taibbi.substack.com

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[–]sisterinsomnia 16 insightful - 2 fun16 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

It is a good piece. The far left is increasingly authoritarian and inflexible. The horseshoe theory of politics really does apply to that part (though not to everything in politics) in that the far right and the far left are both more likely to have authoritarian group-think centered and also in the very black-and-white thinking where introducing nuances is seen as 'problematic.'

He writes about the demands to stop blind auditioning because it has not produced enough orchestra members belonging to racial and ethnic minorities. That it has increased the share of women in orchestras quite dramatically should matter to progressives, because returning to auditions where the player can be observed will bring back sexism. So how are those clashing interests going to be negotiated?

I guess they won't be negotiated at all...

[–]PassionateIntensity 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

it has not produced enough orchestra members belonging to racial and ethnic minorities.

This seems to be obviously class/poverty-related. If you want more black classical musicians, you make training, lessons, instruments available in public schools. But nobody wants to put money for art and music in schools anymore, I guess. I didn't even realize the left was now arguing inequality and crime weren't linked to poverty but 100% racism, until I saw someone arguing that against Steven Pinker (who I don't even like).

[–]sisterinsomnia 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

That is an important point about the impact of class (and class and race are linked). Most real changes in inequality require real money to be spent (making auditions blind is an example from the few cases where change is not costly).

For some reason much of the woke world pays not attention to that, being too busy language-changing and then enforcing the new language they created. No structural analysis, but a belief that each individual must be altered and then change will happen. It will not. The cultural revolution of China didn't work in the long run, either.

In fact, today's liberal feminism has no structural analysis, either. That may be why it doesn't even try to define the concept 'woman' or exclude anything or anyone from it.

There are many studies which show that poverty and crime are correlated for all racial and ethnic groups. Racism also contributes to black poverty which would be lower without it, but poverty everywhere tends to breed more crime, for fairly obvious reasons (urgent economic needs which cannot be met, high levels of general stress because being poor is exhausting etc.)

[–]GConly 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

are many studies which show that poverty and crime are correlated for all racial and ethnic groups.

The poverty itself is probably only a minor factor in causing crime. Most people who steal in the west don't do so out of necessity, the do it for drugs or to buy better stuff, not to survive. You see a better correlation to income inequality, where young males seek status through crime when they can't compete economically. It's called the Gini coefficient.

Sex crimes have absolutely no correlation to SES. They vary wildly by group.

The fact is poverty and crime share a lot of the same causal factors. Low empathy, low self control and low IQ all correlate to low SES and crime in adults. Criminal offending on adults is significantly heritable.

Racism also contributes to black poverty which would be lower without it,

This isn't true. There was quite a large study that looked at the life outcomes for sons by the same mother that were of different races.

The black sons and white sons (half brothers) have exactly the same educational and employment outcomes.

The NLSY looked at a mass of data on the outcomes of youths put through the AFQT (army IQ test) and the chances of escaping poverty with an IQ of 100 was the same for black and white youths.

The studies that claimed to show racial discrimination in hiring had major issues with study design. It's well known there's a class bias in hiring, also a bias against white foreigners. They just didn't correct for those factors. When you do, the bias is not evident.

My SO is getting an earful about the lack of diversity in the hiring at their place. Literally all the info they get is employment history and quals. No sex race or even a name. It's all stripped off. Still ending up with a largely white male interview group for each post.

[–]7of99 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's more about the developmental impact of growing up in poverty, not simply "I'm so poor that I can't afford to eat so I'm going to steal or deal drugs." Poverty tends to breed a chaotic upbringing, even with parents who are doing their best and being responsible. I say this as someone who grew up impoverished. When parents are working all the time and poorly educated, or if they're irresponsible and using drugs to cope with a difficult upbringing, it's more difficult to provide needed structure, and behavioral problems are more likely to go unchecked.

My sibling was a delinquent minor, but my parents couldn't afford a therapy program, and the school offered very little. They were busy working three jobs, but the house was falling apart and soon after I left, it was condemned. I mean the floors were falling through, so you had to be careful getting inside and in certain rooms. Several older relatives were in jail or dead. Our parents didn't graduate high school, and my mom had my oldest sibling as a teenager, and my siblings and I all had different fathers. That all can and does stunt intellectual and behavioral development. Luckily, I was able to get into a good public charter school and had a much better education and stable school environment than my siblings, and I was the only one to go on to and graduate college.

That's why it's insane that some of these liberals leading the current charge against racism seem to think that the majority of the problem lies in subtle biases of hiring and college admissions. Subtle racist biases exist of course, but it's much less prevalent or impactful of a problem compared to the legacy of systemic racism breeding stark economic disparities. I think to be so delusional as to think the subtle biases and "microaggressions" are the main reason for racial disparities in the USA can only happen if you've led a relatively sheltered, privileged life where you don't see the on the ground reality of life growing up in impoverished communities. It's also much easier for the neoliberal elite to accept, because focusing on subtle biases does not threaten the wealth-related interests of champagne socialists who are much more talk than action and maybe will accept a higher tax for social programs but otherwise want to retain their elite status.

[–]sisterinsomnia 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This isn't true. There was quite a large study that looked at the life outcomes for sons by the same mother that were of different races.

The kind of racism you are about is not what I was referring to, but the cumulative impact of past racism over larger geographic and demographic areas. Redlining, discrimination in mortgage lending, deeds which excluded black families from buying houses in white areas (which would not have been redlined etc.) and so on in the past affected the amount of wealth that black families could create and ultimately pas on to their children. These were either openly race-based rules or rules which in practice affected blacks and whites differently.

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

He writes about the demands to stop blind auditioning because it has not produced enough orchestra members belonging to racial and ethnic minorities. That it has increased the share of women in orchestras quite dramatically should matter to progressives, because returning to auditions where the player can be observed will bring back sexism. So how are those clashing interests going to be negotiated?

I think what gets lost here is that classical music especially in the past 100 or so years has made up only a very small, rarified, tradition-bound, snobby sliver of the music world in entirety. It's a sliver in which male composers, male musicians and male maestros traditionally have predominated and ruled the roost. Because what we call "classical music" is an explicitly European art form that was established centuries ago.

In the wider music world over the past century or so, male players of various instruments who are black and of other non-white ethnicities have had far more opportunities - and a better shot at equality - in Europe, the USA and the rest of the West than women across the board. This has been the case at least since the jazz era.

Yes, there's been a great deal of discrimination and unconscionable exploitation of racial and ethnic minority artists of both sexes in Western and Global North popular music in the past 100 or years. But at the same time, there have been many more overall opportunities and chances for fairness for minority race/ethnic males in Western/Global North pop music than for females regardless of their race/ethnicity. Especially when vocalists are separated out from those who were/are solely instrumentalists.

In the USA, which long has played a central role in Western/Global North popular music, many groups and orchestras of the jazz, big band, rhythm and blues, and rock 'n' roll eras prominently featured male black and minority ethnic players - and a lot of orchestras, bands and acts were led by black and Hispanic men too. In addition, many successful bands in the history of recorded sound have been primarily or exclusively made up of racial/ethnic minority males.

By contrast, female instrumentalists regardless of race and ethnicity have not appeared nearly so prominently in pop music no matter what the particular genre.

My sense is that in the USA and many other countries, a lot of black and minority ethnic males who in the past might've aspired to be classical musicians have in the past 100 years instead focused on other genres of music - where men regardless of race and ethnicity have generally done much better than women overall.

What I'd like to see are the stats that show how many participants in "blind auditions" in classical music have been males of racial and ethnic minorities versus how many have been females - as well as how many of the females have been of racial and ethnic minority groups.

My guess is, in the US and Europe in recent decades proportionally and numerically more females regardless of race and ethnicity have aspired to be classical orchestra musicians than males whose heritage is African American, Latin, Asian and African.

Then again, when the issue is looked at from a wider lens and more multinational perspective, it becomes more complex. But my sense is, in this calculus it's the women who are gonna lose out.

https://www.startribune.com/orchestras-grapple-with-how-to-boost-diversity/384185541/

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2008/sep/14/music.classicalmusicandopera

[–]Shinjin_Nana 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"that the political right and left in America have traded villainous cultural pathologies. Things we once despised about the right have been amplified a thousand-fold on the flip."

That was an excellent article. Very stark and kind of scary.

" If we can’t laugh at 'time is a white supremacist construct', what can we laugh at?"

[–]censorshipment 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I didn't read the whole article, but this shift is so obviously linked to (typically older) white men identifying as "marginalized minorities" and claiming to be oppressed. White men are like termites... they seek to destroy from outside and from within.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Haunting and very in line with what I have observed as well.