The Liberal Blind Spot

[s_bushido]

A trick to avoid being called a bigot:

Criticize a serious of ideas that can derive from Islam. It will not only avoid you getting called a bigot, but also avoid the 'Christians do it too' reply as well.

To be fair, there is a subset of people who will call you a bigot if you are even slightly unapologetic in your criticism, regardless of how accurate or dispassionate your observations are.

[Felya]

I too don't want to hear shit about how blacks are discriminated against while they are so busy committing a lot more crimes on average compared to any other race.

Are you sure the statistic you referencing doesn't mean there are more caught?

[Spectral]

I agree not all are. But evangelicals generally lie on the extremist end of Christianity...

I think this is still far too broad of a characterization. Estimates vary, but self-identified Evangelicals constitute upwards of 30% of the total American population. This large of a group, collectively, is not likely to consist anywhere near entirely of extremists.

...so if your time is precious and you have multiple potential candidates to interview, are you going to spend some of it on someone who has a very good chance of being ideologically extreme? Just like they will weed out Islamists (not all of whom will be Islam supremacists) they will do the same with Christians and weed out Evangelicals (not all of whom will be Christian supremacists).

This just isn't a legally acceptable way of weeding people out. Maybe it should be (I'd be fine with that, but it's not the law). It's not legal to say, "your religion is a good proxy for believing stupid shit, so we're going to weigh your religion against you". Depending on exact interpretation of disparate impact laws, it may not be legal to even engage in hiring practices that accidentally have this effect, much less explicitly saying that it's the plan.

It's not anti-christian but anti-extremist because teaching the young is too important and sensitive a task to let extremists gain sway in. Countries that have let their guards down and let those extremists have a foothold in education have ended up with all sorts of problems. Look at what has happened to Pakistan and other nations that have let Saudi Arabia establish extremist Madrassas on their territories.

Oh, how I wish we applied this logic to the self-identified Marxist radicals that make up ~20% of social sciences...

To be clear, I don't really disagree with you in principle. I would expect Evangelicals to be underrepresented in academia. What's untoward is that academics and universities are really big on insisting that they promote diversity and equality while not so much giving a shit about those principles when it's a disfavored religion.

[turboether]

No, they should all have the same freedom of speech and it should all end at exactly the same spot.

You should remind the extremist left of this, they seem to have forgotten.

[Akani]

Are we talking about the democrats in the 50's?

The southern Dixiecrats of the 50's became the base of the Southern Strategy the Republicans in the 60's. The bigots didn't change, they just changed parties so what sort of point are you trying to make?

[alexw]

This is going to be an analogy that doesn't hit home exactly but is similar enough to warrant making it.

"We just did an experiment that showed that 99% of mice that ate our special diet of uber food TM in 2 generations all had black fur. Oh, on a side-note - we also removed all mice with different coloured fur from the experiment but that totally wouldn't invalidate the conclusion or make it questionable."

When currently exposing any kind of conservative or right views is grounds for you being fired or not hired appealing to authority in order to invalidate the same ideas that remove one from that position isn't the best argument to be making.

Errr what??? That is laughable and not at all how the scientific process works. But +1 on inventing a straw man argument that is completely detached from reality then using it to justify your position.

If you deny evidence based reality but are supposed to teach evidence based reality you are not going to be hired as a teacher of evidence based reality. Period. That you don't like that and whine and complain, well tough. Its not a problem with us its a problem with you.

[Deleted]

Are you sure the statistic you referencing doesn't mean there are more caught?

If that's the case I'm really impressed by how much not being black increases your chances at getting away with various crimes.

[lockedout]

The southern Dixiecrats of the 50's became the base of the Southern Strategy the Republicans in the 60's. The bigots didn't change, they just changed parties so what sort of point are you trying to make?

So the answer is yes?

[s_bushido]

If that's the case I'm really impressed by how much not being black increases your chances at getting away with various crimes.

Careful. You're getting pretty close to having to concede that maybe there's more to this "institutional bias" talk than just bluster from a bunch of black supremacists.

[Spectral]

If that's the case I'm really impressed by how much not being black increases your chances at getting away with various crimes.

It's not the case for violent crime - when data from victim surveys is taken, the results are entirely consistent with who's jailed for those crimes. This is particularly true for the worst crimes, such as murders. Cops don't tend to ignore bodies just because they suspect the killer might be white, hard as that may be to believe for BLM and friends.

[Deleted]

Errr what??? That is laughable and not at all how the scientific process works. But +1 on inventing a straw man argument that is completely detached from reality then using it to justify your position.

If you deny evidence based reality but are supposed to teach evidence based reality you are not going to be hired as a teacher of evidence based reality. Period. That you don't like that and whine and complain, well tough. Its not a problem with us its a problem with you.

I know it's not how the scientific process should work. There are still cases where shit like that happens just in order to get something published. For example there are results in psychology that cannot be reproduced or in some cases come up with the opposite conclusion based on the study you look at. That's why i said it's an analogy that doesn't hit home. The paragraph afterwards is the important part.

Now to address what you said: having an opinion on stuff that doesn't match with what the left considers accurate doesn't invalidate your accomplishments in a certain field. For example if i said that there is a clear difference in the way IQ is distributed based on race & gender i would be fired. It's not just a bullshit claim that i made up in my free time to look cool on the internet but due to feelings TM this would mean that i would be out of a job. Over time this leads to the situation that's currently happening in US academia where liberals make up a large majority and are in a position to censor things(see not hiring people of a different ideology) even when that doesn't have anything to do with the subject you would be getting hired into.

When you reach a point when whether or not you agree with the left ideology dictates whether or not you can become a member of academia you can no longer use that demographic(academia) and point fingers saying "We don't agree with you so you're wrong" when the subject at hand is what doesn't allow someone to become part of that group.

Also this is different from something like creationism vs evolution thing. In that case it's not unrelated things that make someone untrustworthy. It's the actual argument. That's the whole point of this article - when your like or dislike of chocolate ice-cream dictates whether or not you're suitable for a job in IT there's a problem.

[Vynny]

Because you are enforcing discrimination and removing the free will to believe and think what you want especially when it's unrelated to the job at hand. We had an era when we didn't have laws against discrimination, i'm surprised that you as an american have to be told this with all the civil right movements.

If the majority of your nation suddenly became another religion you would be happy these laws existed to protect you. It's not uncommon for those in the majority to not see the need of said laws, but people who do so have very short term memory regarding history.

Also even with those laws in place discrimination still happens, which is again proof for the need of them.

What is the wrong that's being committed? Is it that a minority group is being unfairly discriminated against, or that an individual is being unfairly discriminated against? I'd say it's that an individual is being unfairly discriminated against, and the laws clearly state that it applies to all religious discrimination, not just the minority religions. Now, as an atheist, I think these laws are warranted. I have faced discrimination for being an atheist and I really don't wanna have to go through that again because it was bullshit, but I don't want a christian to go through that either because it was bullshit. The point is that I don't want anyone to be treated the way I was so I support laws being made to deter such bullshit behavior, but I want those laws applied fairly and equally across the board because it's the bullshit behavior that's the problem, not the fact that it's done against a certain group in particular. People need to recognize that they are self serving by nature and try to counteract that a bit because otherwise we're never going to get rid of this blatant bigotry that people just try to rationalize or justify when it just doesn't need to exist.

[alexw]

There may be a lot of stupid shit going on at college campuses these days, but I find it pretty rich that conservatives are suddenly so very interested in education. Does that mean they finally want to give it some proper funding, stop trying to push their pseudo-scientific garbage, and maybe let people have the opportunity to attend without going into massive debt? Or do they just care because their "we're so persecuted" schtick hasn't been working as well for them as it has been for the idiots on the left?

IMO the reason they now care is because millennials are pretty strongly aligned with the left, and so conservatives are realizing they are going to die out as a political force if this trend continues. Thus they want access to malleable minds to be able to indoctrinate them. The people who are supposed to teach the young based on evidence based reality, thus teach things like the biological basis of homosexuality, the way mankind is altering the climate, and how high levels of inequality are harmful, etc, not surprisingly don't want the reality deniers to have access to teach their non-evidence-based reality-denying points of view. So being blocked the conservatives whine and complain about it while screaming no-fair!

[s_bushido]

For example if i said that there is a clear difference in the way IQ is distributed based on race & gender i would be fired.

Prove it. Stating facts doesn't get people fired. Stating facts and then offering their own ideologically-biased interpretations might. But if you see no difference between reporting and editorializing, that's not anyone's fault but yours.

[Vynny]

Another: Conservatives “are narrow-minded and are sure they have the right answers.”

Oh the irony. I mean come on, they have to have some level of self-awareness don't they?

[s_bushido]

IMO the reason they now care is because millennials are pretty strongly aligned with the left, and so conservatives are realizing they are going to die out as a political force if this trend continues.

Problem with that idea is: a lot of what's going on with people "on the left" is pushing others who would normally hold liberal positions into more conservative ideas. Or at least ideas that can be easily branded as conservative in the US's warped political spectrum. I don't think conservatives will ever die out, because there will always be a "oh, hell no" response to certain ideas when they start getting too extreme.

[Akani]

The key point here is that you're not dealing with the criminals in your analogy. It should be more like this: "That's like saying that convicting murderers,their family, and anyone who shares some ideology with them is bigotry."

Your disanalogy doesn't work because the people I want to hold accountable are the criminals. This isn't a 50-year-old cold case we're taking to trial here. DOMA and DADT was only ~20 years ago and Obergefell v Hodges was less than a year ago. This isn't like tarring and feathering Barry Goldwater's grandchildren it's simply holding right accountable for what they've done and are still doing right now.

The main point here is that, for anyone that values equality, the right is completely untenable due to the right's recent violations. That's not bigotry it's just disagreeing with what they've been saying and doing for decades.

[Spectral]

IMO the reason they now care is because millennials are pretty strongly aligned with the left, and so conservatives are realizing they are going to die out as a political force if this trend continues. Thus they want access to malleable minds to be able to indoctrinate them. The people who are supposed to teach the young based on evidence based reality, thus teach things like the biological basis of homosexuality, the way mankind is altering the climate, and how high levels of inequality are harmful, etc, not surprisingly don't want the reality deniers to have access to teach their non-evidence-based reality-denying points of view. So being blocked the conservatives whine and complain about it while screaming no-fair!

Are you sure it's not just because academia's drifted really far left? Here's one source:



I don't perceive this effect so much in STEM, but social sciences, humanities, and the more recent grievance studies style departments are pretty ridiculous at this point.

[alexw]

I think this is still far too broad of a characterization. Estimates vary, but self-identified Evangelicals constitute upwards of 30% of the total American population. This large of a group, collectively, is not likely to consist anywhere near entirely of extremists.

This just isn't a legally acceptable way of weeding people out. Maybe it should be (I'd be fine with that, but it's not the law). It's not legal to say, "your religion is a good proxy for believing stupid shit, so we're going to weigh your religion against you". Depending on exact interpretation of disparate impact laws, it may not be legal to even engage in hiring practices that accidentally have this effect, much less explicitly saying that it's the plan.

Oh, how I wish we applied this logic to the self-identified Marxist radicals that make up ~20% of social sciences...

To be clear, I don't really disagree with you in principle. I would expect Evangelicals to be underrepresented in academia. What's untoward is that academics and universities are really big on insisting that they promote diversity and equality while not so much giving a shit about those principles when it's a disfavored religion.

That is a very old survey. A 2014 study put it at 17-18% of the population

http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/

But I am really really surprised at the number of Marxists, though given that its academia I'm wondering if they believe in the Marxist ideals as in actual Karl Marx, rather than communism which is what most people think of when they think of Marxism. I also wonder how much of their teaching is colored by their viewpoints. If they are espousing communism or some such then IMO I don't think they should be teaching either (I personally don't think they are as I see practically no young people who espouse such views and I'd expect there to be lots of them if they were being indoctrinated into such belief systems).

[Xeones]

Are you sure it's not just because academia's drifted really far left? Here's one source:

http://righteousmind.com/wp-content/...-left-tilt.png

I don't perceive this effect so much in STEM, but social sciences, humanities, and the more recent grievance studies style departments are pretty ridiculous at this point.

You said it yourself it's not in the "sciences" it's in the "arts".

I recall the thread a week or however long ago that was bemoaning how colleges were liberal bastions. All they did was talk about "arts" departments. Liberal arts degrees are pretty useless, just like most of the "liberal" bull shit happening on campuses. While they are required courses for degrees I'd be interested to know what the discrimination was like in the sciences.