Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Encountering Thomas Sowell

lawliberty.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 272 posts

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#221

Post by chmod600 »

rayiner wrote: post #48
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…

The alliance of necessity between social liberals and racial justice advocates creates this problem. There is not anything inherent about “people of color should be treated equally” that also requires buying into “we should disrupt the nuclear family.” That’s just how the political alliances have worked out. The latter ideology in practice works to undercut the former ideology. The contribution to racial inequality i…

But why does that alliance exist, I wonder? What is necessary about it?

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#222

Post by rayiner »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #60
rayiner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alliance of necessity between social liberals and racial justice advocates creates this problem. There is not anything inherent about “people of color should be treated equally” that also requires buying into “we should disrupt the nuclear family.” That’s just how the political alliances have worked out. The latter ideology in practice works to undercut the former ideology. The contribution to racial inequality i…

>But it’s almost taboo in socially progressive circles to say that family structure matters (even though this is obvious to Asians). You must hang in some especially woke circles

Yes, but you’d be surprised how woke some circles have become: https://freebeacon.com/campus/northwestern-law-administrator.... That’s from my quite business-oriented law school.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#223

Post by rayiner »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #80
monoideism wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try saying that you believe that two-parent households are better for a kid that single-parent households in the presence of anyone who considers themselves social justice oriented or left-wing.

Does left-wing include the majority of Biden's base? Woke twitter is a small minority.

No, but it includes the vast majority of the 20-30 year old college grads that comprise the rank and file of Biden’s staff. And those people are influential.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#224

Post by kyrra »

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…

> Black males seem to disproportionately die at the hands of police.

There are lots of ways to measure this, which one are you talking about? There are lots of variables to control for: # of police encounters. Person being confronted while in the middle of (or just after) a committing a crime. Person being armed or not.

Talking just about deaths I feel like distracts from the issue that really warrants discussion in American society, which is number of interactions with police and how many of those turn into physical altercations. Then we need to look into the reasons for those and what the possible solutions are. We also need to admit that this likely isn't just a policing issue, but a societal and cultural issue that needs to be addressed.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#225

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #168
rayiner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alliance of necessity between social liberals and racial justice advocates creates this problem. There is not anything inherent about “people of color should be treated equally” that also requires buying into “we should disrupt the nuclear family.” That’s just how the political alliances have worked out. The latter ideology in practice works to undercut the former ideology. The contribution to racial inequality i…

We've been through this argument, recently, and I'm a little disappointed that you're framing this observation as if that discussion hadn't occurred already. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23766155 The implication of your comment is that the alternative to "the nuclear family" is "single-parent families". But the other alternative to nuclear families is "extended families", which you yourself have written about…

I recall that argument, I just don’t read the platform page as charitably as you do. Even in an extended family network, the two parent unit is the nucleus. Particularly in view of the conspicuous absence of the word “father,” I read the platform point as seeking to further normalize the situation where kids are raised in households that lack fathers but includes other relatives (usually grandmothers and aunts).

I agree with you about the need to remove barriers to multi-generational households that include other relatives in addition to two parents. I just don’t read the platform that as being directed to that.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#226

Post by monstersinF »

jjeaff wrote: post #198
calvinmorrison wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And across all the KPI's we know of - kids in a two parent household are more successful by every measure.

Which is why it says they reject the "requirement". No one is denying that a 2 parent home is better. But if you are a kid that grew up with one parent, we need to have alternatives to help those kids thrive. Harping on the fact that 2 parents are better than 1 does nothing for kids with only one parent (except maybe make them feel defective and disadvantaged).

Who made it a requirement?

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#227

Post by chmod600 »

wcerfgba wrote: post #219
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?

"One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist'" -- Kendi https://millennial-grind.com/30-quotes-from-how-to-be-an-ant...

That philosohy departs from popular understanding of MLK dramatically.

Inequities are results, so he's basically saying that you will forever be trying to manipulate outcomes to arbitrary standards of equity, or you are a racist.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#228

Post by f154hfds »

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…

Thank you for calling into question my underlying assumption (that media representation of BLM could be taken at face value).

I found this summary of the BLM language online to be pretty fair: https://www.iwf.org/2020/10/01/fact-check-is-it-true-that-bl...

I guess I believe that society functions best with households where a mother figure and a father figure are present and align as a team with the goal of providing for and raising their children. Many circumstances can get in the way of that ideal to be sure. I do see BLM language above calling into question that ideal by labeling it western which is ridiculous.

More fundamentally though it seems the solution to their problem may not be political as much as cultural. Where have the fathers gone? Honestly - where did they go? So many broken relationships, so many men in jail. These are the issues we should be fighting more than anything else _by far_.

We can tackle this in the political arena by looking closely at over-incarceration, but that's only one aspect of the problem. It seems detrimental to the actual "Black Lives Matter" cause to ignore the rest. Of course admitting that your group has a problem isn't exactly protest inducing material, and that is where my cynicism creeps in.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#229

Post by dragonwriter »

zo1 wrote: post #70
runako wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my question is: to whom did all that money go? (The link you provide outlines where the money went.)

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…

> The point is that this "decentralized" movement has a central organization that has a lot of money donated to it,

It doesn't, though. There are several large national organizations (BLMGNF, M4BL, and others) associated with the movement, not a single central organization.

> 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.

The tenets of the various organizations do obviously play a role in how they distribute funds, and the tenets of the various large and small organizations play a big role in which of them get funding donated to them by various donors.

> So if the "BLM" organization views the nuclear family as something that has to be abolished

Which, contrary to the misrepresentations, none of the major movement-related organizations do; a number of movement-related organizations have said things about policies which are punitive to families outside of that assumed norm as part of institutional racism especially in the presence of other institutional and social factors which result in more Black children not being raised in nuclear families.

> then one can assume that they wouldn't donate to local BLM chapters that don't subscribe to that idea

One can also assume that, if that were true, it would be competitive fundraising advantage to other movement organizations (e.g., direct donations to local orgs, if this really was the single central organization) without that belief, to the extent that the belief conflicted with the grassroots. But since there is neither a single central org nor any major org with the viewpoint being criticized, it's moot.

> With this whole "decentralized" argument, we might as well say the Republican/Democratic parties are decentralized

No, you might as well say the that the “right-to-far-right political alignment” and the “center-right to moderate left political alignment” are decentralized movements.

The Democratic and Republican parties are centralized organizations, in ways that the BLM movement is not.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#230

Post by ctrlp »

claudiawerner wrote: post #195
ctrlp wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, if you haven't seen it it must not exist. Are you from Missouri? If that level of radical skepticism works for you, good on ya. Personally, I don't conflate things that I don't know with things that can't be known. A trained Marxist is an activist, it's really that simple. The point is not to interpret the world but to change it yada yada yada. A Leninist is a Marxist who believes the proletariat is too econom…

>Right, if you haven't seen it it must not exist. Are you from Missouri? If that level of radical skepticism works for you, good on ya. There's no need for a confrontational tone. In the past I've interacted with many Marxists, activists, organizers, and academics. I'm more trying to apply my experience to the topic, not to suppose that nobody describes themselves as a 'trained Marxist'. >A trained Marxist is an acti…

This is the point of the Leninist party politics. It is the activist embodiment of Marxism. The Frankfurt School was trying to understand why the revolution had only occurred in Russia despite the predictions of Marx's theory. Their reasoning was post-hoc rather than strictly causal but it is the reason given to account for the failure of the proletarian class to rise up in class consciousness and the justification for a vanguard to lead the way. It remains Leninist despite the involvement of the Frankfurt School. In fact, it really proves the point. The training is literally training in revolutionary tactics. Peter Singer qua philosopher us not an activist, but of course there are trained activists in the animal rights movement who are trained in tactics to promote an agenda rooted in utilitarian reasoning. Sorry for the snark but you seem to be engaging in a bit of casuistry or being willfully obtuse about the ordinary meanings of activist and training.
Post reply on HN