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Encountering Thomas Sowell

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Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#241

Post by jjeaff »

chmod600 wrote: post #215
jjeaff wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Seems irrelevant. Of course police see women as less threatening. Most police are men. Though I'm sure Black women are killed by police at higher rates than white women.

Seems like just trying to redirect the narrative. Kind of like when you bring up the studies where identical resumes were sent out half with white sounding names and half with Black sounding names and the white sounding names get way more callbacks.

The response is usually something like, that probably has more to do with class/wealth, not race. As if the two are not strongly linked.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#242

Post by jjeaff »

monstersinF wrote: post #226
jjeaff wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They are probably referring to policies or laws or just culture that make it more difficult to thrive if you don't have 2 parents, one male, one female. It's obviously not an actual, literal requirement, hence the quotes.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#243

Post by debacle »

brodouevencode wrote: post #89
ceilingcorner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whew, that was a dismantling if I ever read one.

Hughes can do that if anyone can. I know among the right, Ben Shapiro is often viewed as the great argument destroyer but I think Hughes could give him a run for his money.

Shapiro is nearly universally reviled by the left and right. It's hard even for an open minded person to not see him as openly racist and misogynistic.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#244

Post by baumy »

jjeaff wrote: post #235
droopyEyelids wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall you seem to be saying you don't know anything about the actual organization or people at the helm of BLM, or what they've done with the money they've collected, but you hope it's all good. I guess I agree with all of that, but I don't feel like it's a strong argument.

You would be hard pressed to find anyone who protested over the summer that has had any contact with or knows anything about or even donated money to the BLM non-profit or even cares what they have on their website. It's a catchy phrase that captures the essence of what many people were protesting and not much more. Personally, I gave money to the naacp.

I'm tempted to agree with you because the BLM non-profit seems to be an extremist political organization, and most people are not extremists. On the other hand, that does not explain why so many of those selfsame people become very defensive when you criticize the BLM non-profit organization.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#245

Post by yannickt »

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…

It's more complex than that because not every black person is equally likely to have an encounter with the police. There are studies that suggest that if you control for encounters with the police, blacks are just as likely as whites to be killed by the police. Half of violent crimes in the US are also committed by blacks. This is definitely one of the consequences of the history of slavery and segregation. Nevertheless, given that blacks commit 50% of violent crimes, it should be expected that the percentage of people killed by the police who are black, will be higher than their rate of representation in the general population.

There ARE also videos of whites getting killed in conditions just as tragic as e.g. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, etc. But they go largely unreported in comparison.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#246

Post by monstersinF »

threatofrain wrote: post #214
Igelau wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That’s not what TomatoDash was asking for though

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#247

Post by wrycoder »

JasonFruit wrote: post #236
wrycoder wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet despite what the media constantly drums into us, this is what Trump actually stands for, if you listen to him directly.

I think that you have a point about how the media portrayal of Trump differed from the reality, but Trump is an example of what I'm saying. He had some good instincts, and a vague sense that we lost our way forty or so years ago, and he may value family, markets, and some sort of liberty, but he can't mount a coherent defense of those things, because he doesn't really understand them. He has some positions, albeit fl…

Trump is not an intellectual, to be sure. But have you listened to his Black Hills speech?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXD4zPY4Ai0

Start at 24:53

I can't agree that he doesn't understand the value of family, markets, and liberty. He does - and these things are not complicated. The great majority of citizens in these United States have believed in them for hundreds of years.

But some people these days want us to stop believing in those values, and they are very vocal. We need more public intellectuals in the mold of Thomas Sowell, and politicians that would listen to their council.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#248

Post by jjeaff »

throwawaysea wrote: post #191
glasss wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do hope everyone would be at least sympathetic towards other human beings wanting justice and equal treatment. I would be wary about that website and I would take whatever you see about a central organization relating to BLM with a grain of salt. I've been involved in local protests and other events in Chicago and I've never once been directed to or heard of a centralized website. I hope you reconsider your stance…

It may be decentralized, but it does have a shared slogan (which is repeated and amplified by individuals and organizations affiliated with the movement), and it does have an agenda expressing their ideology. BLM deleted the "What We Believe" page once it became controversial but you can find a copy of the original online ( https://uca.edu/training/files/2020/09/black-Lives-Matter-Ha... ). You can also see the "13 gu…

I'm not saying they don't have democrat aligned demands, but as to your examples, you can certainly want Trump and other supporters of the big stolen election lie to be banned for incitement to violence and insurrection. That is not necessarily a political issue so much as a legal one.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#249

Post by jjeaff »

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…

It's also much better to grow up with enough money rather than not enough money. But what good are you doing by going around announcing that?

You speak as if single parent households are that way by choice. I'd wager 99.99% wish they had a stable partner helping them out.

Re: Encountering Thomas Sowell

#250

Post by rayiner »

jjeaff wrote: post #249
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…

It's also much better to grow up with enough money rather than not enough money. But what good are you doing by going around announcing that? You speak as if single parent households are that way by choice. I'd wager 99.99% wish they had a stable partner helping them out.

Clearly “choice” is a sliding scale here that’s based on prevailing social norms. The US has double percentage of single parent, households compared to Germany, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-childre..., almost five times the rate compared to India, and almost eight times the rate of China.
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