"Privilege"

[Voronwë the Faithful]

From what I have seen so far, it does not seem appropriate that the backup officers should be charged as accessories after the fact, but they should certainly be held accountable, that appears to be happening, as I just heard that two officers have been put on administrative leave pending further investigation.

[Primula Baggins]

Did the officer who did the shooting forget that he had a body cam on? Or did he think the recording would be ignored?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Well, that delves into mind-reading, but I think it ties into what Ax said about the attitude needing to be yanked out at the roots. Whether the officer forgot that he had the body cam, or thought it would be ignored, or some combination thereof (or something else that we haven't thought of), it stems from the fact that traditionally officers have not been held accountable for these types of situations. That seems to be slowly changing, partly because of body cams, but mostly because enough people are getting up and standing up, to paraphrase the prophets Robert Nesta Marley and Winston Hubert McIntosh (aka Peter Tosh).

[Inanna]

Was this the thread where Yov discussed minority representation in movies? I hope so, because I just read this in NYTimes, coverage of a lack of representation report on Hollywood.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/movie ... ore-iphone

[yovargas]

It was indeed this thread and my look at the time suggested that black representation, to my surprise, isn't too bad, while gender representation is hugely skewed. That article backs that up. It says "The movies are white: 73.1 percent of all the speaking or named characters in the top 100 movies were white." But whites make up 77.7% of the US so, if anything, whites are slightly under-represented! Where I suspect it would look very differently is if you looked at movie leads instead of "all speaking or named characters". As I said then, I suspect the formula has become "White stars with a black supporting actor or two".

[Frelga]

Even if numbers were meaningful in this context, and I'm not convinced they are, they do not answer a meaningful question. A better question is, what percentage of stories being told in these movies are about someone other than a white male.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

whites make up 77.7% of the US so, if anything, whites are slightly under-represented!

For the sake of accuracy, you should acknowledge that figure includes Hispanics. The actual percentage of non-Hispanic whites as of the last census in the U.S. is 62.6%.

[yovargas]

Ah, thanks, that makes more sense. I wasn't sure how that works, actually. As a Hispanic guy, I'm always confused by how we're counted. It feels weird being called "white" but I guess the census would count me as one?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It is (as is usual when the government is involved) a little more complicated than that. The Census asks two relevant questions, are you Hispanic, and what race do you identify as. As you can see, for the purpose of the census "Hispanic" is not a "race". So if you identify as Hispanic, you have to also identify as either White, Black, or some other race. I don't know what the breakdown is of what percentage of people who identify as Hispanic also identify as White, Black, or some other race, but it might be possible to track down the information. [Edit: so to be clearer, the 77.2% figure includes Hispanics who identify as white, while the 62.6% figure does not.]

[Primula Baggins]

Wow!

And I'm pretty sure the information is out there at census.gov.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

According to Wikipedia:

62.4% of Hispanic and Latino Americans identified as white.[8] 30.5% identified as "Some other race" (other than the ones listed). According to the PEP ( 91.9% of Latinos are white, as these official estimates do not recognize "Some other race".[5] In the official estimates, Black or African American Hispanics are the second-largest group, with 1.9 million, or 4.0% of the whole group. The remaining Hispanics are accounted as follows, first per the PEP: 1.6% American Indian and Alaska Native, 1.5% Two or more races, 0.7% Asian, and 0.03% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. Per the ACS: 3.9% Two or more races, 1.9% Black or African American, 1.0% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4% Asian, and 0.05% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander.

For what it is worth.

[yovargas]

Yeah, I've certainly encountered questionnaires like that. I usually leave the "race" part blank if I can. I guess Hispanics aren't considered a race which I sorta get but I think of myself as Hispanic, not white, so .

[Frelga]

I confess, this made me cry.
Why I’m Absolutely an Angry Black Woman

[Primula Baggins]

Me, too.

What a powerful, passionate, mind-opening statement.

[Griffon64]

Wow, that is powerful.

[Faramond]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/nyreg ... .html?_r=0

We can see here who is privileged on college campuses. It's the students who think that they hold the only correct viewpoint and that anyone who disagrees is "disgusting and should not sleep at night". They are privileged because inevitably their demands will be catered to by administrators terrified of being labeled as racist or sexist.

Said one of the offended students: “It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It is about creating a home here!”

That student is rather confused. What that student seems to want is a daycare, not a university.

Actually, what that student really seems to want is a totalitarian state.

[Primula Baggins]

Faramond, I read the article, and I can understand your aggravation—I do think the issue of demanding so much protection from offense that others feel oppressed by the ensuing restrictions is worth discussing seriously in universities and elsewhere. I don't think any of these students want a totalitarian state. They just aren't thinking things through to, say, a point after graduation when there will be no institution from which they can demand or receive perfect safety and ease of mind at all times.

[Faramond]

I kind of think some of them do want a totalitarian state, even though none of them would call it that. They have no tolerance for dissenting ideas. They have no wish for conversation or discourse.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... le/414810/

Just watch the video in the middle of this article to see how intolerant and uninterested in anything but agreement some of these people are.

They think this man and his wife should be fired for expressing an opinion -- a rather respectful and well-thought out one at that. Maybe totalitarian is the wrong word -- maybe they are more like religious fanatics? Cultists?

The long article is really worthwhile, and while I might not agree with every little point made I more or less agree with the main points of it.

Here are some great quotes:

According to the Washington Post, “several students in Silliman said they cannot bear to live in the college anymore.” These are young people who live in safe, heated buildings with two Steinway grand pianos, an indoor basketball court, a courtyard with hammocks and picnic tables, a computer lab, a dance studio, a gym, a movie theater, a film editing lab, billiard tables, an art gallery, and four music practice rooms. But they can’t bear this setting that millions of people would risk their lives to inhabit because one woman wrote an email that hurt their feelings?

Their feelings are the most important thing in the universe. I think these students are sort of bizarro-Objectivists.

This notion that one’s existence can be invalidated by a fellow 18-year-old donning an offensive costume is perhaps the most disempowering notion aired at Yale.

It's almost like they want to feel disempowered.

It ought to be disputed rather than indulged for the sake of these students, who need someone to teach them how empowered they are by virtue of their mere enrollment; that no one is capable of invalidating their existence, full stop; that their worth is inherent, not contingent; that everyone is offended by things around them; that they are capable of tremendous resilience; and that most possess it now despite the disempowering ideology foisted on them by well-intentioned, wrongheaded ideologues encouraging them to imagine that they are not privileged.

It's almost like the people indulging the students don't really care about the students, but about ideology.

Here’s one of the ways that white men at Yale are most privileged of all: When a white, male student at an elite college says that he feels disempowered, the first impulse of the campus left is to show him the extent of his power and privilege. When any other students say they feel disempowered, the campus left’s impulse is to validate their statements. This does a huge disservice to everyone except white, male students. It’s baffling that so few campus activists seem to realize this drawback of emphasizing victim status even if college administrators sometimes treat it as currency.

It almost seems like being a victim is the highest state of being. I think these students have found a shortcut to Enlightenment.

[Primula Baggins]

I think of totalitarians as wanting the same thing for everyone. The extreme examples you quote are people who want exactly what they want, for themselves.

But I see a hazard here, that if we sweep everyone with concerns along this same line into the bin of "people who want to control other people's behavior to avoid a minor annoyance," we forget that there are many cases in which the offensive behavior is not at all a minor annoyance. Customs can be used as a thin mask for racism, sexism, hatred of LGBT people—anything. The people being sent the message get it—they're used to getting it—but when they object, they get the same response as the Silliman students who can't bear anything. "You're overreacting. You're politicizing this. You're yelling for attention. It's just a costume/game/song/hazing ritual/cartoon/old flag; why do you people always make such a big fuss about it?" And that's been the response for lifetimes now. People get angry, and that anger is real.

[yovargas]

Thing is, the letter in question didn't say don't get angry or stop overreacting. It just said that it shouldn't be the faculty's responsibility to protect you from anything potentially upsetting. Which was, ironically, apparently deeply upsetting for many students to hear.

I increasingly find this kind of thing deeply troubling but I can't quite put my finger on what it is. There is a line between legitimate outcries against harmful deeds and attitudes and stuff like this, a kind of strange outrage that is IMO starting to do more harm than good, but what the line is, what it is that separates these things, I haven't been able to articulate yet.