We have been discussing efforts to fire professors who voice dissenting views on various issues including an effort to oust a leading economist from the University of Chicago as well as a leading linguistics professor at Harvard and a literature professor at Penn. The cancel culture has also extended to museums, book publishers, and other forums for intellectual exchanges. Now the esteemed Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has fired podcast host and deputy editor Dr. Edward Livingston, who raised his own concerns and doubts in a podcast over claims of structural racism.
While JAMA is supposedly independent from the American Medical Association (AMA), the AMA wrote in a statement that it was “deeply disturbed” and “angered” by the podcast and declared that “this tweet and podcast are inconsistent with the policies and views of AMA.”
The conservative site The Daily Wire has a copy of the since-deleted podcast. During the episode, Livingston reportedly asked Dr. Mitchell Katz the following question: “Given that racism is illegal, how can it be so embedded in society that it’s considered structural?”
Katz then explained how structural racism can manifest itself. Livingston then followed up by noting
“I feel like I’m being told I’m a racist in the modern era because of this whole thing about structural racism, but what you’re talking about, it isn’t so much racism as much as that there are populations, it’s more of a socioeconomic phenomenon, that have a hard time getting out of their place because of their environment. And it isn’t their race; it isn’t their color; it’s their socioeconomic status. It’s where they are.”
Katz appeared to agree with the socio-economic point.
There is much there to unpack and people of good faith can disagree with the socio-economic perspective. That is the point of such forums to allowing different viewpoints and a debate on issues facing society. I disagree with the comments and I would be interested in an exchange on the issue. There was a time when such controversial discussions were welcomed as a platform for discussion. This is not that time.
The podcast triggered the usual demands for termination and condemnation. Rather than simply present arguments against the socio-economic point, critics wanted Livingston fired. What is most disconcerting is that the loudest celebrating the termination were professors who rejoiced in the notion that someone can be fired for expressing an opposing viewpoint.
As reported on Campus Reform, University of Minnesota Professor Betsy Hirsch“Glad to see some concrete steps here after the #racist physician tweet/podcast.” For his part, University of Southern California Michael Cosimini demanded to know how such viewpoints could ever have been allowed to be posted.
We previously discussed how commentators and corporations often call for a national dialogue on race. However, those with opposing views of underlying causes and controversies are subject to cancelling campaigns. The result is closer to a diatribe than a dialogue. If we are to have a meaningful discussion about race, we have to tolerate opposing views. Indeed, the statements made on the podcast would offer a great opportunity to confront such views directly and to challenge the socio-economic claims. Canceling Livingston only reinforces the already overwhelming pressures on faculty members and others not to voice such dissenting views.
“JAMA Editor Fired After Questioning Structural Racism”
– Professor Turley
______________
“It’s the [Communist Chinese Cultural Revolution], stupid!”
– James Carville
_____________
“No amendment is absolute.”
– Joe Biden
_________
The communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs) are the mortal enemies of America.
In establishing a restricted-vote republic, and understanding that one man, one vote democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government and will always end in dictatorship, the American Founders prepared you for this inexorable eventuality.
To wit,
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
– Declaration of Independence, 1776
This movement has nothing to do with racism. It is the tip of the spear of Marxism. They have been poking us with it for some time and now they are aiming for our eyes. All these people cancelling and censoring are today’s useful idiots. As history has shown us, you cannot appease this ideology. All empires end. This is just the beginning of the end as we have reached the tipping point in the numbers indoctrinated in our fine learning institutions.
Many years ago, perhaps in the late 1980s, I dropped membership in the ABA. The pro-abortion position it took and the statements it released, as the purported representative of all its membership on this issue, was so awful that I denied it my dues – and active participation. MDs wo think with a clear head on the issue of race should not tolerate the politicalization of the AMA and all journals.
The AMA has very low numbers though physicians interested in politics might become interested in the AMA.
Many years ago the AMA made an agreement with the government and screwed over its physician population even keeping its agreement a secret from almost everyone.
If I remember correctly the editor of JAMA was fired during the Clinton claim of not having had sex with Monica. The article was about what young people considered sex.
What would a world without “structural racism” look like? I think the average leftist would answer by saying one without any disparity in crime rates, economic and academic achievement between the races. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this world will never come due (at least in part) to the differences in average group IQ. These differences are real, and consistently shown in any test that possesses accurate psychometric predictability (Stanford-Binet, Weschler, SAT, ASVAB, LSAT; bar exam passage rates, GMAT, etc.) and are partially genetic in origin. There is no existing test which shows a different result. And I say the above, not because I “hate” people who “don’t look like me”. These differences are real and consistent whether one chooses to accept them or not.
We were told when the civil rights laws were adapted that these laws did not require equal representation in the professions, economy or anything else, it only meant the law was to be colorblind with regard to individuals. The goalposts have been repeatedly moved for the last 55 years due to these differences. And the repeatedly promised equality doesn’t seem to happen despite lowered standards, affirmative action, set asides, defunding the police, etc. And now “equity” or equal results are the next goal. I predict much more draconian attempts at social engineering in an attempt to change human nature.
http://intelligence.martinsewell.com/Gottfredson1997.pdf
Linda Gottfredson is considered an expert on IQ and inteliligence. Sorry, lefties, you can’t cancel her, she has tenure.
In case, the reader is unaware the average IQ level for the following groups is as follows:
Ashkenazi Jews 115 (that is why these talented people are disproportionately represented in the economy, professions, Nobel Laureates; sorry neo-nazis, it isn’t some Jewish conspiracy).
East Asians 108
European Whites 100
Hispanics 93
Amerindians 90
American Blacks 87
African Blacks 75
Australian Aborigines 65
antonio
Your sets intersect.
Ashkenazi Jews are European Whites.
Hispanics can be any race or religion.
Are you curious why your numbers are different than those given by Scott J below (“Dr Richard Haier of UC Irvine that had a lecture on Race and IQ. He describes test data that shows groups having different group average g-factor intelligences as estimated with IQ tests as follows: Whites = 100, African Americans = 85, Hispanics = 85, Jews = 110, Asian Americans = 105”).
Could a very long history of written communication and the associated cultural complexity play a role?
To what degree does culture play a role?
Though nutrition can play a role in affecting IQ, I also wonder to what degree the topics discussed in Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond is also relevant.
Why are peoples from northern latitudes ‘over-represented’?
There is no agreed on definition of intelligence.
Why do people believe that IQ tests measure intelligence?
If the Stanford-Binet or SAT had little predictive accuracy these lower scoring groups would perform better than their test scores. Sorry, nice try lefty.
The SAT does not claim to be an IQ test.
LOL that you talk about “predictive accuracy” without specifying predictive accuracy for what or for whom.
Sorry, nice try righty.
No, it isn’t strictly an IQ test but there is a high correlation between a high IQ and high SAT score, same for the ASVAB test used by the military. All have good predictive ability for anyone who takes the exam. Again, if the tests had little or no predictive ability the lower scoring groups would do better than their test scores say they should.
I suggest you start with paragraph 5 on page 2/11 of the link below but you won’t. You’ll just call me a “racist”.
http://intelligence.martinsewell.com/Gottfredson1997.pdf
antonio
Again: predictive ability for what and for whom?
I already skimmed your link the first time you posted it. I also did a Google Scholar search to and skimmed some of the titles that used it as a reference (there are many).
“You’ll just call me a “racist”.”
Yet I haven’t.
That is interesting. What do they measure? Could you elaborate?
I do agree that too much stock is put on the outcomes of these tests. Plenty of obvious genius going around long before these tests.
Is it all a racket?
I don’t know how to characterize what they measure. I suppose it’s a small subset of our knowledge and reasoning skills.
Can you recommend some relevant articles?
@prairierose
What do they measure? I would suggest you start with paragraphs 9 – 13 on page 2/11 on the link. From the December 13, 1994 WSJ – Mainstream Science on Intelligence.
http://intelligence.martinsewell.com/Gottfredson1997.pdf
antonio
Let’s see. The results correlate strongly with people’s own assessments of who is more intelligent than whom.
Nobody in particular asks: “why do people believe that IQ tests measure intelligence?
***
CLUE: It is an abbreviation for Intelligence Quotient.
Yes, I know what IQ stands for.
CLUE: the name doesn’t guarantee that it actually measures intelligence.
You question was why people believe IQ measures intelligence, not whether the letters actually guarantee they measure intelligence. I told you why.
That implies you believe people necessarily believe that names are accurate. We clearly don’t believe that names are accurate in general, since people question the accuracy of names all the time (e.g., when someone asks “what do conservatives conserve?”). Yours is a superficial answer.
Yes, Ashkenazi Jews have much European genetic admixture. And yes, Hispanics can be any race. I know this better than you, sir. And no matter the specifics mentioned or overlap the general principle is accurate.
antonio
No, as an Ashkenazi Jew, I very likely know this better than you. I’m white. I’m of Eastern European ancestry.
There was a period when Ashkenazi Jews (and Italians, and some others who are now considered white) were not considered white. This was a function of bigotry.
“no matter the specifics mentioned or overlap the general principle is accurate.”
There is no agreement about what general intelligence IS, so no, the general principle isn’t accurate, nor is your editorial proof that it’s accurate. Perhaps you want to read some of the subsequent research and editorial responses.
@anonymous
So what I am Hispanic. I was only saying I am well aware of the admixture in many new world Hispanics. Have a bit of Sephardic ancestry myself. How about that? And as for Jews, you should know many do not claim to be “White” or only do now when it is useful in making a political point. Again, I am aware that Ashkenazi Jews have much European admixture.
antonio
There is much agreement on what general intelligence (or – g) is and what and how it is measured. What is your point? I am certain you have quite a high IQ. Mine is around the 95th percentile.
You need to read some research from Linda Gottfredson. The “editorial” you refer to was a statement signed by 50 professors who were considered experts in intelligence and IQ and appeared in the WSJ on December 13, 1994. The statement came out due to the hysteria surrounding the publication of the Bell Curve. I know, I know they were “white supremacists” and the WSJ is part of the WS power structure.
Read it for yourself. Here is a free link to download.
http://pombo.free.fr/herrnsteinmurray1994.pdf
Again, don’t expect you to read any of this, you’ll just point, sputter and name call.
Egalitarianism is creationism for leftists!
antonio
And since intelligence “cannot be measured”, I would challenge these egalitarians to seek out and admit low SAT scoring individuals; put them in a competitive academic environment and see how that works out. Measure class ranks and graduation rates with non-affirmative action admittees.
And when they fail out at much higher rates than their peers blame it on all “structural racism”.
Oh wait, universities already do that.
And lefties, if you really want to put your money where your mouth is, give up YOUR kids spot in one of these elite universities. Of course, the latter will never happen.
antonio
“Perhaps you want to read some of the subsequent research and editorial responses.”
I am interested. What do you recommend?
How would you characterize intelligence in contrast to the standard understanding?
There is absolutely structural racism in the United States. Every race based hiring, lending, school admission, government contracting, etc. rule is government mandate and therefore structural racism. I’ve lived a life trying to live up to inclusion and equality. Our government has specifically rejected such things.
@tony
Good luck at achieving “equity”. Are you ready to cut the check for your “white privilege”? Give up your upper middle class job for someone that may have fewer qualifications? Send your kid to a minority dominated school? Move to a minority dominated area? Until you answer “yes”, you are simply virtue signaling.
Whenever I ask for examples of structural racism, I’m usually given disparities.
For example, they’ll say how blacks have a low rate of homeownership and difficulty getting a loan. However, that’s credit and income based. A black person with good credit, sufficient income-to-debt and PITI ratio, would get a loan just like anyone else. Loans are not denied based on race, so the disparity is not due to structural racism.
Or they’ll say that Redlining decades ago meant that black people had less assets to bequeath to their heirs, leading to less accumulation of wealth. In a way, that’s true. Although neither of my parents were bequeathed any wealth, either. One set of grandparents died when my father was young, and my other grandparents just had a modest property, every dime of which went to pay for their medical bills in their final years. There seems to be this romantic notion that white people are trust fund babies that does not reflect reality. Redlining has been illegal for decades. In addition, people immigrate here from African nations or the West Indies with a few cents in their pocket, and within a decade financially and academically outperform blacks who were born here. If it was systemic racism holding people down, then black and Latino people who immigrate here would all fare the same as those born here.
But they don’t. And one of the reasons for that is individual and family culture. There is no “black culture”, really, any more than there is one umbrella “white culture.” Whites don’t all act the same. There are white meth heads, 4th generation poor, strict Protestants, Baptizing in the river, Yachting club, Old Money, or Blue Collar. Whites are heterogenous in their family cultures.
Blacks are, too. Not all black people are in gangs, speak poorly, are uneducated, or single mothers. I find it appalling that the culture of failure of one group of black people has been indicated as “black culture.” That’s not “black culture;” it’s a subset culture of black people that leads to failure. It’s nothing to emulate or enable.
There are proven steps to success that work for blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos…everyone. Stay in school, study hard, don’t get in trouble, don’t do drugs, don’t break the law, don’t hang out with people who do drugs or break the law, wait to have kids until you are married, get a job. Do those things, and you have a statistical likelihood of achieving a middle class lifestyle. DON’T do those things, and unless you are a professional athlete or rap star, then you probably won’t achieve at least a middle class life.
Why do parents tell their kids to study hard, show up on time, don’t do drugs, don’t break the law, and don’t have kids out of marriage? Because this advice WORKS.
So why do more blacks than any other race suffer higher poverty, drug use, and crime? Because more blacks follow the culture of failure rather than success.
There are no white people interfering with black students at school. There are no laws against black people. Whites are not out there pressuring them to do crime, ditch school, or have babies as single mothers.
When a black person does well in school and gets a good job, they get the heck out of that bad neighborhood, just like whites do. The Obama’s participated in “black flight”, as well. You don’t see them living in poor black neighborhoods. If people have the means to do so, they leave high crime or dilapidated neighborhoods. That’s not racism but self preservation, and wanting the safest environment for their kids to thrive.
The problem is that if someone’s mother is a single mother, and she’s a single mother, and all her friends are single mothers, and everyone she knows is going absolutely nowhere, how is she going to teach her children a different culture than what she was raised with? Family culture is passed down. Someone’s got to break out of this pattern, wise up, and embrace the culture of success, which they can then pass down to their kids. Otherwise, it’s a vicious cycle.
And this is true of all races. The culture of failure is growing among whites, too. Single motherhood is up. Entire towns have become bombed out opioid addiction epicenters. As poverty and drug use rise, jobs leave.
Most homeless people are white males. They’re not doing so hot. Most are drug addicts or mentally ill.
If you follow the culture of failure, the result will be bad, regardless of your skin color.
So how did this culture take root in some black communities? For a hundred years after slavery, blacks had lower unemployment than whites. They had lower rates of single motherhood. They were religious Christians and had very conservative values.
The Left created a welfare system that financially incentivized single motherhood. If you put the father’s name on the birth certificate, you have a harder time getting financial aid. There was this big push in the 80s that single mothers could “make it.” NO. They can’t. Not unless you’re a wealthy socialite or actress with a fleet of nannies and assistants.
Democrats don’t want to face the facts that single motherhood and unemployment rose sharply, and that blacks now fare worse than whites in several key areas in which they used to do better. They won’t address the fact that minorities immigrate here with nothing. Their parents didn’t bequeath them any real estate. Yet within a few short year, they outperform US-born blacks. Democrats have expressly labeled the steps to success – nuclear family, punctuality, studying hard, staying away from crime and drugs, “whiteness” or white supremacy. Judging people based on character not skin color is now a step of white supremacy.
It’s behavior, not skin color.
Democrats have deliberately denigrated behavioral steps proven successful, and claim that it’s white people’s fault if black people are poor.
But this is not true.
Very well said, Karen!
Thomas Sowell has been making similar points for years. In the early sixties, 25% of Black children were in single parent households. Now, that figure is 70%. To be cancelled for suggesting that a factor like this may be more significant than “structural racism” ensures that the causes of the disparities that are noted by all may never be properly identified let alone resolved.
“blacks now fare worse than whites in several key areas in which they used to do better”
In what key areas did Blacks used to fare better than Whites?
Affirmative action.
Since when is affirmative action a key area?
You think “blacks now fare worse than whites” in affirmative action?
In some ways, yes. A professor of mine once told me in frustration that he had to teach the same class to two different audiences – those of any race who got there on merit, and Affirmative Action recipients for whom the bar was lowered. That latter group was totally lost. Most had flunked out before the end of the grading period. So they did not receive an excellent education.
Same thing held true when Democrats conceived that home ownership was a human right, and that banks requiring A paper and high credit scores were racist. They lowered the bar, incentivized banks to make subprime loans, which flooded the securities markets with bad paper. This lead to the mortgage meltdown, massive waves of foreclosures, and people who had bad credit and insufficient income lost homes they could never afford. Hence why banks require good credit and a certain income to debt ratio.
The most productive way to help blacks is to ensure that they receive the best education from K-high school. Simply shuttling people academically unprepared to college was a path to failure.
Universities created fluff degrees, for instance in activism, LGBTQ studies, and gender studies in order to be able to graduate students unequal to the task of completing rigorous coursework. This was also fueled by the proliferation of student loans, which shuttled more students than would normally attend universities, and of lower academic preparedness.
But there is a more insidious way in which Affirmative Action undermines the black people it was purported to help. Under a meritocracy, a black student, doctor, police officer, or fireman would be assumed to have gotten where they were on merit. If they were there, they earned it.
Under Affirmative Action, the bar was lowered. This tainted all black students, doctors, police officers, or firemen, because people assumed that the bar was lowered for them. Multiple black people I’ve known or worked with have said they’ve experienced assumptions like this. Once it came out that standards were relaxed based on skin color, then everyone would just assume they were less capable and had been gifted their position. That’s really problematic for the talented black people who earned success in their field.
Here is an example. King Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles was supposed to be this shining light of Affirmative Action. They preferentially hired black people, from the janitorial staff to cardiologists. By prioritizing skin tone over merit, they had extremely low quality of care. There were shocking rates of medical malpractice, deadly medication mistakes, poor nursing, and people were dying in the ER forgotten about by staff. A simple chair was one of the most deadly pieces of equipment in the hospital. A jaw dropping number of staff tipped over in chairs and demanded, and received, disability. Doctors and surgeons were charging over 24 hours a day in time worked. Eventually, they lost their accreditation, but not before community organizers claimed such loss was racist. They were blind to the fact that the hospital was a death trap, or that it would be better to dissolve the hospital and start afresh, rather than sentence the community to sub par medical care.
That’s what happens when you lower the bar.
It doesn’t matter what color your doctor or lawyer or pilot is. It matters if they can do the job. Skin color needs to be regarded like hair color.
If ANY student of ANY race has fallen behind in school, or if any school has a dangerous level of violence or truancy, then that needs to be addressed. Students of all races are in serious trouble for their future if they graduate from high school with poor reading or math skills. Simply dumbing down the requirements for university admissions or jobs is not going to make up that gap. Most of them are never going to do well. That’s why all efforts need to be focused on keeping kids in school, ensuring they are getting the best education possible, providing tutoring or other help, making school a safe place to learn, and regularly sharing with students that the best way to get stuck in poverty is to have kids out of wedlock, do drugs, or commit crimes.
Notice that in all those words, Karen, you never answered my question: In what key areas did Blacks used to fare better than Whites? (Asked because you claimed “blacks now fare worse than whites in several key areas in which they used to do better”)
Can you bring yourself to answer it?
anon ; I work in a skilled trade that works amongst many other skilled trades to make it happen. most of this work is in city environments and or industrial settings. There are very few blacks in my trade and often as less in other skilled trades I have to interact with. And people of low info status like you will sit there and scream structural racism..BS !!!. Now I have worked alongside and under some minority guys that were stellar. Sadly they are few and far between. The gap and lack of these people out there is the “culture” they swam/swim in.
I had an apprentice once – ely , great guy and showed promise. He could not help himself and fathered multiple children with different baby mommas of all races and had to skip town and from the bills. He had such promise but literally followed in his fathers footsteps and left a wake of illegitimate children with loose women. I have worked around some minorities that had brains but were so ill prepared for reality that their command of language and ability to adapt and overcome such pitfalls eventually caused them to bow out or get fired. I damn near got canned for trying too hard to lead such a man through it to make it to the other end , but he stalled and failed…nearly taking me with him.
This is now our goofy goobermint…propping up mediocrity out of fairness and now equity…expect a lot of problems in our society with such drivel. There was a time in our armed forces where is you stepped up to the plate and could do that job you advanced regardless of heritage race etc etc. A merit system…oh god I did say that . Now under senile lord darth baizou biden our military went into a stand down and is going under an inclusion & equity inquisition….and absolute circus of stupid aimed at dumbing down our forces and maiking many more zero critical thinking drones for the goobermint…if they don’t get killed off in the wars they have and the ones they will create.
Anonymous – I did answer it. It appears you started a new thread discussion and my answer to your question posted below.
Here is a link to my answer: https://jonathanturley.org/2021/04/09/jama-editor-fired-after-questioning-structural-racism/comment-page-1/#comment-2079744
Yes, I saw and replied (April 9, 2021 at 8:17 PM) to that response shortly after I posted my April 9, 2021 at 7:55 PM comment, thanks.
In what key areas did Blacks used to fare better than Whites?
She said: blacks now fare worse than whites in several key areas in which they used to do better. Maybe she was inferring……than Whites; maybe she was saying far worse… Meaning they are far worse off than they were before. That latter statement would certainly be true.
She said “now,” which implies that there was a time when Blacks did not “fare worse than whites in several key areas.” I’m asking her what those areas were.
Had the word “now” not appeared in the sentence, the meaning would be different.
“maybe she was saying far worse.”
The sentence makes no sense if you substitute “far” for “fare,” as it would lack a verb there.
The better response would be to ask for clarity, instead of proof of your assumed meaning.
There is a difference between an implication and an inference. My inference from what she wrote is that blacks once did better than they now do, a true statement. You can, of course, infer that she meant something different, but to then accuse her of meaning to imply that is to impute something that is not necessarily true, although it might be, but only she would know that it is. You cannot. But you can infer to your heart’s content.
The societal reality is unquestionable — in 1960, the average black family was very different from what it is today, as was the average white family. How the differences impact behavior, achievement, and other factors for individuals is a matter for serious study, not spurious comments or Critical Race Theory and training, which are nonsense. A link . . .
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/04/09/the-racism-racket/
“There is a difference between an implication and an inference.”
Absolutely. Sometimes they coincide, and sometimes they don’t.
“My inference from what she wrote is that blacks once did better than they now do, a true statement.”
Your inference ignores that she said “blacks now fare worse than whites in several key areas in which they used to do better.” If you omit that from your inference, you’re not dealing fully with what she said.
“you can infer to your heart’s content.”
Yes, and she’s confirmed that I inferred correctly.
“How the differences impact behavior, achievement, and other factors for individuals is a matter for serious study, not spurious comments or Critical Race Theory and training, which are nonsense.”
It’s your opinion that it’s nonsense. It’s other people’s opinion that Critical Race Theory is part of serious study. The (in)effectiveness of diverse kinds of teaching/training and how to improve them is also a subject of serious study. That teaching/training is often ineffective should be unsurprising, as that’s the case across subjects (think of how many people fail math — I bet that many of those who conduct these trainings are less prepared as teachers than the standard math teacher, and the standard math teacher often isn’t well-prepared to teach effectively).
Anonymous – blacks used to have lower unemployment than whites, less single motherhood than whites. Considering that single motherhood is one of the highest risk factors for the offspring to engage in criminal activity, do poorly in school or drop out, be behind in reading and math, do drugs, join a gang, and/or be murdered, any policy or action that increases the rate of single motherhood in ANY demographic creates a crisis.
Crime rates used to be much lower in black communities. Thomas Sowell often speaks of how in the age before air conditioning, families used to sleep outside on fire escapes and porches in Harlem. Doing so would be inconceivable today due to higher risk of crime.
Higher unemployment tends to correlate with higher crime and drug use, so policies that created more unemployment in black communities also helped drive higher crime and drugs. Anyone who could move out, does, leaving behind higher and higher concentrations of criminals who prey on those who remain.
Karen, I’m not sure that Blacks on average did better than Whites on average in these areas but I agree with much of what you say. Glad to see you referring to Thomas Sowell. He is the leading light among a group of Black conservative intellectuals and writers that includes John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, Wilfred Reilly, Coleman Hughes, Jason Riley and Larry Elder. There are no doubt others. It is too bad their voices are not heard more widely, and that their views seem to gain little traction.
“blacks used to have lower unemployment than whites, less single motherhood than whites”
Thanks for answering my question. I’ll be glad to consider your claim when you present some evidence to back it up.
The problem is that if someone’s mother is a single mother, and she’s a single mother, and all her friends are single mothers, and everyone she knows is going absolutely nowhere, how is she going to teach her children a different culture
Growing up I would see something and tell Dad, “I wish I was like “that””. Most times my dad would say. “if you want what they have, you have to DO what they DO.
Wish I had a boat. Dad: He owns the local trucking company. He is on the road every morning by 5 or before. When he gets home at night, he has to clean his truck, and if it needs work, he will work into the night to get if fixed, Do those things, and you too can have a boat.
But of course I am not a product of a baby moma, that is unsure of exactly which baby daddy did the deed. So there’s that.
The prevalence of non-existent/non-contributing fathers for all these children of “single” mothers has been caused by the federal government providing welfare, food stamps, public housing, medicaid, baby-sitting (whether Head Start in the 1960s or Pre-K today), child tax credits and on and on to these women. It’s not limited to “black” people; in New Mexico, you will observe the generations of a family of women with children who are dependent on government and, in fact, encouraged by all the government-provided freebies – rather than on the men who have failed to really “father” the children they produced.
Thank you, Karen, for stating the obvious facts. Well done!
Yes, points well made!
the AMA leaders no longer represent their members: I quit years ago when they made decisions without bothering to ask any of us working docs what we thought.
So I suspect they didn’t even bother to ask their members about this.
Medical journal editors should be above politics, but alas the NEJM, Lancet and the BMJ have long pushed unscientific surveys and editorials to push their agendas. So now JAMA will join the PC crowd.
By the way: There is racism in medicine: a lot is impatience with poor people of all races whose drug and alcohol use and bad dieting make them sick, and they refuse to change.
But the “Structural” racism is again against poor people, not from racism per se. It is hard to find doctors willing to work in many poor areas due to economic reasons (i.e. high malpractice fees, low reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid for docs who work in poor neighborhoods). This is not racism per se, since I had to quit one job in a white rural area due to overwork and underpay, so joined the IHS, where overwork was horrible but at least I could pay the bills.
Nancy, do you agree that there is considerable racism in medical history (e.g., the totally immoral refusal to inform the Tuskegee syphilis study patients that they were infected and could be treated). That’s not an instance of class-based bigotry. It specifically focused on Black men.
“a lot is impatience with poor people of all races whose drug and alcohol use and bad dieting make them sick,”
Do you also get impatient with middle income and wealthy people of all races whose drug and alcohol use and bad dieting make them sick, or only with poor people? Are you concerned about food deserts that make is harder for poor people to purchase healthy food? …
Stop citing “racism” (of whatever kind) as the explanation of every issue in the USA and the fault of everyone who is persuaded by facts, not by a political crusade. Your need to fall back on “racism” as the cause of all problems, is similar to one of the many sycophants of JOker Biden, the now head of the CDC, blaming “racism” for the statistics about the CCPvirus affecting “black” people.
How can I stop doing something I wasn’t doing in the first place?
You are guilty “per se” with no hope of forgiveness or redemption.
The Church of Woke is a church with no salvation.
antonio
I’m an atheist, and as a cultural Jew, I wouldn’t go to church anyway.
Nancy, do you agree that there is considerable racism in medical history (e.g., the totally immoral refusal to inform the Tuskegee syphilis study patients that they were infected and could be treated). That’s not an instance of class-based bigotry. It specifically focused on Black men.
Many times the CIA experimented on white men in groups of 10, 20, or 60 before simply murdering them to cover up their actions. How many blacks and whites did the USG send to their deaths in combat? Which race got the worse of that kind of slavery? The hardships (including hundreds of thousands of horrible deaths) of conscripted white soldiers in the Civil War alone probably outweigh all the hardships ever suffered by chattel slaves in the United States.
Sorry – the first paragraph above is a quote and the second is my response. I screwed up the formatting.
“The hardships (including hundreds of thousands of horrible deaths) of conscripted white soldiers in the Civil War alone probably outweigh all the hardships ever suffered by chattel slaves in the United States.”
Your opinion. Not a fact. I hope you learned enough US history to know that Black soldiers also fought in the Civil War. Interesting that you ignore them.
“How many blacks and whites did the USG send to their deaths in combat?”
Why are you asking me instead of looking up the answer to your question? Are you having trouble figuring out how to look it up, or are you just too lazy?
“There is much there to unpack and people of good faith can disagree with the socio-economic perspective.”
While it is true that people of good faith can disagree, there is nothing to unpack here — this is a simple example of suppressing speech that the racists among us found noisome because it questioned one of the basic tenets of their ‘religion.’ The “Elect,” as John McWhorter labels them, cannot tolerate dissent. They are true believers whose ‘faith’ has no empirical basis. CTR is a fantasy that is reminiscent of utopian and millenial thinking, just as the 1619 project is bad history because its only reason for existing is tendentious, rather like the history of the Christian martyrs.
So McWhorter’s classification of those pushing CRT and related nonsense seems reasonable. I do not agree with him on everything, but that is the point, isn’t it? I find him interesting and intellectually stimulating, and if I do not agree, that is no reason to malign him or seek his ruin. Instead, I offer a link to his blog — johnmcwhorter.substack.com
As for a socio-economic perspective on the problems of certain populations, any Marxist worth his salt would not object; he would applaud such an observation. That also is the point. CTR are not socialists; they are nihilists with no interest in reality.
I know DC fairly well because I have lived and worked there on and off over the past fifty years. I know that the District is part of a larger metropolitan agglomerate that includes large areas of Maryland and Virgina, and that there is not a single ‘black’ population in that area. There are several — the suburban blacks with good professional and government jobs, the blacks in menial jobs who live in the city or the nearest suburbs, and the blacks who live in the city that the first two groups avoid but enlist on occasion to advance their own careers. That, of course, is a socio-economic observation with cultural overtones not unlike those made by McWhorter.
The current obsessive focus on race cannot allow any other analysis; it dispenses with disciplines like sociology and economics, and it has no use for Marx and Engels, whose analysis was economic, not racial (although, like most of his contemporaries, Marx belived that nations were races, making it more difficult to see how white privilege might have helped a Pole or Hungarian in the late 1800s and early 1900s). The advocates of CRT, like the race hustlers, are incapable of rational discourse; they deal in slogans and ‘their’ truths, which function as doctrine and dogma. They are the racist equivalent of a cult and the intellectual equivalent of a mob.
You cannot have a dialogue or even a polite conversation with fanatics or members of a mob, unless you are willing to renounce your own beliefs and debase yourself by grovelling, which is what cancel culture demands of you before it cancels you anyhow.
To add to the link you provided, he and Glenn Loury have excellent conversations about these topics on Glenn’s podcast:
https://bloggingheads.tv/programs/glenn-show
They can’t stop scapegoating White America, they have nothing else.
You mean the ‘Democratic Party’ has nothing else. And as more Blacks, Asians and Latinos realize this they are drifting rightward. The Democrats if nothing else are just tedious and can be dangerous as well given how far they are willing to push their illiberality.
The race hustlers are a $billion industry. To do anything to lessen the flim flammers influence is a direct economic threat.
Democrat Party is at the top of that pyramid. Its a way to transfer tax $ to their grifters in non-profits, Charities and NGO’s.
But if the structure is Academia, the non-elected bureaucracy, Public education, All the Fortune 500 corporations. the10 largest metropolitan population centers, and the “justice system” in those metropolitan areas have black leadership, Black police in all management positions, Blacks in charge of all the charging and prosecution, all the metropolitan governance, from city managers and mayors, to all the dept heads, all music, film, and theater, all sports from High school/AAU, to college and professional. What structure is promoting structural racism? And, seeing that all levels of import are actively rooting it out. All the media, legacy and new internet platforms, Exactly what else should be done?
The race hustlers make life in contemporary USA untenable. The incessant drum beating is so annoying, that like the boy-that-cried-wolf – people are just not listening anymore.
This is so backwards. The people who are PUSHING institutional racism are the ones that should be fired. We need a way to strip them of their citizenship as well.
Welcome to the modern McCarthyism. Maybe if you want to have a actual dialogue, maybe you need to have and actual dialogue. This is nothing but condemnation and screaming. The man must be a racist because he does not agree and only racists disagree. He needs to be fired.
That sounds to me much like the Communist diatribe against their dissidents. They are crazy because only crazy people do not want to be in the people revolution and they do not want to be in the peoples paradise. So we had to send them the asylum.
History does teach this too shall pass.
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment), not limited to racism, is a progressive condition.
Everyone is racist so nobody is racist.
US-born blacks fail because of their lack of education or environment or psychological feelings of inferiority or all of the above. Black immigrants succeed because they overcome any and all of these issues.
If you think socio-economics makes them have fits, wait until someone mentions that the black population has an average IQ of 85. Could that also be a ‘structural’ problem?
Yes, I agree. Race and IQ are taboo. I watched a lecture course at The Great Courses called “The Intelligent Brain” by Dr Richard Haier of UC Irvine that had a lecture on Race and IQ. He describes test data that shows groups having different group average g-factor intelligences as estimated with IQ tests as follows: Whites = 100, African Americans = 85, Hispanics = 85, Jews = 110, Asian Americans = 105. He explained that from studies of identical twins separated at birth and raised in different environments, we know that a large component of g-factor intelligence is inherited from genetics. G-factor intelligence is basically academic intelligence (literacy and numeracy). Any individual with an IQ of approximately 85 or less is statistically much more vulnerable to crime, poverty, illegitimacy, etc. About 1 in 6 whites is in this category and about 1 in 2 blacks and Hispanics fall in this category. Our school systems are controlled by educators who believe in the non-scientific ideology of the “Blank Slate.” The Blank Slate meme states that while everyone’s physical body is a little different based on genetics, somehow magically everyone’s brain is virtually identical, the only real difference being privilege. No, not all brains are the same. Magneto-encephalography scans of human brains show that the higher one’s g-factor intelligence is, then the more white matter connections there are between the parietal and frontal lobes of the brain. Evidentially, it appears that white matter is more important gray matter. Anyway, it’s a shame that Blank Slate ideology is pervasive everywhere in our society. We can’t talk about the science of race and IQ without being called a racists by the race deniers and IQ deniers. As a result, individuals with low IQ (below 85) are abused and neglected by our ignorant leaders in both education and government. I believe that g-factor intelligence and IQ have nothing to do one’s value as a human being. And that everyone can benefit from higher levels of oracy, literacy, and numeracy (myself included as I’m just a work-in-progress too). That’s one reason why I read Jonathan Turley.
Scott: Well thought comment.
But it’s not just intelligence (“IQ” is the wrong term). It’s also time preference, impulsivity, lower conscientiousness, the “r” reproductive strategy (see Rushton), the ascription of a lower value to human life (including their own), a lesser ability to cooperate, etc.
That’s true. In addition to cognitive intelligence, I understand there are factors of emotional intelligence, Big 5 Personality Traits, cultural beliefs, values, attitudes, etc. that are also important in understanding the behavior of human beings. Of course, then there is politics which seems to “Trump” everything these days. I like the natural sciences because they’re supposed to be governed by the Scientific Method. What governs the social sciences and liberal arts? Unfortunately, the answer appears to be the Liberal-Progressive Political Method. I prefer the Libertarian-Conservative Political Method.
Have you ever read David Sloan Wilson’s work? That’s some biology that has a lot to say about human societies.
No, not yet. Thanks for reminding me about David Sloan Wilson, as he’s written some good ones I need to check out. After I read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, I remember finding a very interesting video on the internet of Jonathan Haidt and David Sloan Wilson discussing each other’s work. I really like Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory which helps explain why liberals, conservatives and libertarians have such different viewpoints. And also Haidt’s Heterodox Academy which supports viewpoint diversity and free speech, which I think is more important than demographic diversity.
Arthur Jensen, Phillipe Rushton and Linda Gottfredson came to similar conclusions. An inconvenient, unfortunate fact but a fact nonetheless.
And all of the doxxing, deplatforming and firing won’t change this one iota. All of the lowered standards giving admissions and degrees to the undeserving won’t change this one iota.
Mainstream Science on Intelligence – WSJ (December 13, 1994)
http://intelligence.martinsewell.com/Gottfredson1997.pdf
Sorry lefties, read it and weep. Naw, you won’t even read it. Everyone knows the WSJ is a bastion of “white supremacy”.
Egalitarianism is creationism for leftists!
antonio
It’s obvious – leftists want to control thought. That’s what it’s been about all along. They want to regulate beliefs. Now, racism in practice is illegal but thoughts are not illegal and speech is protected by the First Amendment. (Those who think it only applies to Congress have rocks in their head – as far as Madison and others were concerned, Congress IS the people since it’s made up of elected representatives. This is the kind of thing that is going to lead to civil war in this country, perhaps sooner rather than later.
21st Century McCarthyism
That’s unfair – to McCarthy.
The Facists strike again.
The worm always turns and then the payback starts.
What the Lefties are doing is installing a culture of hate in a country that is better than that.
What are the Lefties so scared of that they have to silence all opposition?
Im not so certain that they are afraid. I mean, what is there left for the extreme Left to actually fear?
1. They’ve done away with the concept of Justice for All.
2. They have banned many of us from multiple tech plaforms for the crime of being actually conservative.
3. They have rioted and burnt down cities, but have conservatives cowering in their homes for fear of arrest.
4. They have turned Medicine and Science into High Clubs of Inclusiveness, with any form of dissent considered unacceptable.
They now own us. The real men and women who were strong enough to have led the fight for our freedom have been preemptively taken out. Now what?
They are scared that white people will team up and end the tyrannic rule by a small minority.
LMAO. You think the small minority that holds power in the US isn’t white?
White, black, brown… it’s an ideological, religious, really, bent. Americans were not, are not, and will never exercise liberal license to indulge diversity [dogma] (i.e. denial of individual dignity, denial of individual conscience), including color blocs (e.g. people of white).
People, yes. Remember, the Constitution did not, does not discriminate by color or sex. And before, throughout, and following the Civil War, Americans of good faith were united in defeating the tyrannical minority (e.g. slavers) and their legacy of diversity (e.g. racism, sexism).