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Encountering Thomas Sowell

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Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#211

Post by threatofrain »

zpeti wrote: post #86
genghisjahn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the language from the BLM site regarding disrupting the nuclear family. I'm very pro nuclear family. This didn't seem bad to me. -------------------------- We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justic…

A dig at fathers in the first paragraph, and a diplomatically stated rejection of the nuclear family in the second. You need to be very generous to interpret this as anything other than an attack on the traditional family.

It’s calling for a village rather than just nuclear families. But somewhere someone reads this passage and their instincts tell them that traditional families are being attacked.

What is your vision of traditional black family?

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#212

Post by Igelau »

TomatoDash wrote: post #196
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this feeling Sowell isn’t liked/respected by AOC/Pelosi because of how hard he disagrees with them. Can anybody tell me how he is perceived by liberals? Not trying to get political. Genuinely curious if he is an outcast to the left because a ton of what he says seems to fall into “conservative views”.

I have in the past read a few short pieces by Sowell. Impression: weak normative reasoning, shaky empirical claims. I'd be happy if you steelman Sowell for me. Point to at most 10 pages of text where you think he is at his best, giving an argument for something supported by sound reasoning and strong empirical evidence. It might update my view of him.

> I'd be happy if you steelman Sowell for me.

That's not at all how a steel man argument works. You're supposed to commit to building the best form of your opponent's argument and verify that they themselves agree with it. You don't ask someone to do it for you.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#213

Post by jjeaff »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #93
wavefunction wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'all seem to me to be selectively quoting from the statement to make it seem like they're attacking or attempting to destroy nuclear families when the full text shows that they are extending the concept of family from the nuclear family to a larger group.

> We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure But the real question is, what does this have to do with racial justice? As someone like Sowell points out, many inequities are themselves the consequence of disrupting the two-parent household.

While I think some of their talking points are reaching, this one is not. One of the most damaging things affecting the Black community today is the lack of fathers in the home. A lot could and has been said about why that is (over-incarceration of Black males is one), but the purpose behind the statement in question, i think, is to try to make the best of reality. Try to adjust society in a way so that children of single parent homes can still thrive and not feel inferior because they weren't raised in an "ideal" family.

I think we can do that without disavowing the traditional nuclear family and I don't read anything there that implies that.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#214

Post by threatofrain »

Igelau wrote: post #212
TomatoDash wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have in the past read a few short pieces by Sowell. Impression: weak normative reasoning, shaky empirical claims. I'd be happy if you steelman Sowell for me. Point to at most 10 pages of text where you think he is at his best, giving an argument for something supported by sound reasoning and strong empirical evidence. It might update my view of him.

> I'd be happy if you steelman Sowell for me. That's not at all how a steel man argument works. You're supposed to commit to building the best form of your opponent's argument and verify that they themselves agree with it. You don't ask someone to do it for you.

It’s an open invitation and like all conversation, it either appeals to you or it doesn’t. As to whether anything works, the proof is in the pudding.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#215

Post by chmod600 »

jjeaff wrote: post #205
olalonde wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was sympathetic with the anti police (brutality) movement but I was never convinced that racism was disproportionally responsible for it. Gender seems to be an even greater factor, yet you don't see a "Male Lives Matter" movement. I don't have a strong opinion on the subject though and I'd be open to see some data.

Black males seem to disproportionately die at the hands of police. But BLM is about much more than just death. Death is just a catalyst that makes people notice. Lots of Black people deal with disrespect and abuse from police on a regular basis. A lot of the seemingly flippant behavior from Black people towards police that we sometimes see during recorded interactions is well earned by years of subtle, and not so sub…

The other comment raised the interesting point that the gender gap is a stronger signal here than the race gap. Do you have a comment on that?

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#216

Post by ipnon »

specialist wrote: post #200
ipnon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically it means children being raised by their biological parents.

So foster kids like me aren't traditional?

If I offended you, I'm sorry. The terminology we are using in this context was not invented by me. My only intent with the post was to clarify the definition of the term in question.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#217

Post by chmod600 »

genghisjahn wrote: post #77
f154hfds wrote: post #2

> Many people wondered last summer why, for example, on the Black Lives Matter website the organization declared (and has since deleted) a “disruptive” stance on the nuclear family. What did that have to do with mobilizing against police violence? For a long time I was very sympathetic to BLM, I would even have considered protesting with them. It was the above that caused me to rethink my position and eventually deci…

This is the language from the BLM site regarding disrupting the nuclear family. I'm very pro nuclear family. This didn't seem bad to me. -------------------------- We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justic…

That's a vague value statement. But it's meaningless without any concrete solution/proposal presented.

It's easy to agree on platitudes. The disagreement comes when it comes to the implementation.

That's my biggest problem with the BLM movement. The cause sounds great, but I still don't understand the solution. Everything is vague, like "systemic racism". It feels like they are just winding up millions of people into a frenzy, gaining allies to a cause that is to-be-defined. I shudder to think what solutions will finally be presented when everyone is at peak temperature.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#218

Post by zo1 »

secondcoming wrote: post #102
genghisjahn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the language from the BLM site regarding disrupting the nuclear family. I'm very pro nuclear family. This didn't seem bad to me. -------------------------- We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justic…

> We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another A commune? Your child will be raised by the state automatically? It's hippy-dippy marxist nonsense.

You should read the rest of the page, it's quite eye-opening. It's most certainly not an equality movement for black people, it's some sort of leftist intersectional organization. No wonder people extrapolate the meaning of that marketing-language laden sentence.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200408020723/https://blacklive...

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#219

Post by wcerfgba »

ralusek wrote: post #83

Thomas Sowell is a titan. As was his recently deceased best friend and intellectual colleague Walter E. Williams. The leading public intellectual regarding race in America today is undoubtedly Ibram X. Kendi. His central thesis, that any differing outcomes between racial populations is evidence of racism, is the single topic that Thomas Sowell addressed more than any other. The breadth of his research on this particu…

> His central thesis, that any differing outcomes between racial populations is evidence of racism, is the single topic that Thomas Sowell addressed more than any other.

I am unaware of this idea in Kendi's work, please could you reference Kendi or Sowell on this specific point?

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#220

Post by zo1 »

jjeaff wrote: post #207
zo1 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that this "decentralized" movement has a central organization that has a lot of money donated to it, and that the central/important tenets of that central organization probably has some measurable influence in deciding which "decentralized" parts of the organization get funding/donations/focus/marketing. So if the "BLM" organization views the nuclear family as something that has to be abolished, then one…

I didn't see anything to suggest that the nuclear family should be abolished. Just a statement that we shouldn't structure our society in a way that makes it impossible for those not fortunate enough to have been raised in a nuclear family to still succeed. While I agree we need to communicate that the nuclear family is very important and beneficial to our society, we need to do so without making children of non-nucl…

> "I didn't see anything to suggest that the nuclear family should be abolished."

I was just using it because it was the example in the thread.

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