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America Class Gender Race

Unstrange bedfellows

While it may be counting chickens before they’re hatched, this election seems to be slipping from the tiny fingers of Donald J. Trump. America, you did it! It was the bare minimum required of a democracy hopeful of its continuance, but you did it.

The GOP has already begun its quadrennial public mortification and, in true Republican form, they don’t have a clue. George Will figures this will be accomplished in a single sentence, “Perhaps it is imprudent to nominate a venomous charlatan.” This has been expressed more concisely elsewhere. You can find half a dozen fresh columns by conservative pundits each week insisting that The Donald has damaged the brand and, crucially, that he was never a real Republican any way and could we please just move on from this whole ugly episode. I see that point. I really do. The Republicans I know have no use for the misogyny, religious persecution, racism or protectionism of the Trump campaign. Their shtick is small government, local solutions, free markets, etc., etc.. They opposed Trump every step of the way and are a fine example of putting principle above Party. Bravo, #NeverTrumpers!

The point of this post is not to rub salt in their wounds. The traditional fiscal conservatives are entitled to their wrong opinions on taxing and spending. They don’t have to take credit for Trump any more than I have to take credit for everything said by the anti-natalists at NARAL. But, in my opinion, Republicans have put far too little thought into how they got here. Is it merely a coincidence that the free market advocates and the racists ended up in the same party? It is, after all, a genuinely impressive trick to win the votes of lower-class whites while advancing a host of policies that would take money from their pockets. Are Republicans just that good?

The key to understanding the big, peculiar circus that is the GOP is the concept that inspires the most eye-rolling from them. The connection between the “where’s the fence!” wing and the “taxation is theft!” wing of the GOP is … privilege. More accurately, it’s the willful or accidental ignorance of inherited privilege in the United States circa 2016. In order for the GOP to exorcise these demons, they’re going to have to first understand, then acknowledge the existence of, privilege and their relationship to it.

What privilege is not

We almost need a new word for this phenomenon. Modern conservatives have so shut themselves off from understanding the concept of privilege that they can’t speak of it sans sarcasm.

“Sorry guys. Gotta go. My white privilege job needs my attention.”

“With all this male privilege I’m enjoying, people just throw money at me.”

(It’s long been established that conservatives are abysmally losing the contest for comedic superiority. Low expectations are key here.)

I wish it didn’t have to happen, but let me say what’s been said thousands of times before: White privilege does not mean you didn’t work for the things you have. The rewards, financial and other, that you receive, are undeniably correlated with the effort you put in. Congratulations!

What we mean when we say that you enjoy “privilege” is that this correlation between effort/character and wealth is not perfect. And, some of the additional variation can be accounted for by your race/gender/religion/parentage/etc.. That’s it. You work hard. But some people who work just as hard as you receives less because they have different parents. Is that so hard to imagine?

We’ve explained this in a hundred different ways. The playing field is not level. Some people are born on 3rd base. There are comics. And object lessons. And a personal address to a lost Yalie. The resources are out there.

White privilege also does not mean that no woman or Black person has ever succeeded. That’s not how a statistical correlation works. At the upper end of the bell curve for all races/genders, we’ll find highly talented, motivated and lucky people who succeed. But that does not mean that one population does not enjoy an unearned advantage. Obama and Oprah do not mean racial privilege is over.

Why privilege is the glue

Privilege is the glue that holds together the Brooks Brothers wing and the patriotic jumpsuit wing of the GOP. The fiscal laissez-faire conservatives want to shrink government since it takes money from deserving makers and redistributes it to unworthy takers. But this only works if you think possessing wealth is highly correlated with deserving wealth. As you become aware of the myriad ways society and its institutions give incremental advantages to (for example) white men born into wealth and put obstacles in the path of lower-class Latinas, this argument becomes a lot less compelling. The weaker you believe that correlation between wealth and character to be, the less you’re concerned about taxing rich people to pay for programs for poor people. Wealthy Republicans believe this correlation is strong and taxes are, therefore, immoral.

The Trump wing of the party has a different privilege problem. They have a hard time coming to grips with their historically-conferred advantages. As astutely observed by Michael Kimmel, Trump is drawing support from the aggrieved entitlement of non-college educated white men and women. These are men and women who pine for the world of their parents and grandparents when a job in the factory got you a house, health care and a retirement. But this set up was always made possible by the presence and effort of both a domestic and an international underclass. Discrimination in employment, housing and education has bolstered the incomes and suppressed the rents of white people for decades. As that discrimination is eliminated, white people find it hard to build the life their parents had with only their high school diploma.

Even leaving aside state-side discrimination, the lives of Americans have been subsidized by the accident of their birth in the United States. The expansions of free trade has reduced that subsidy as well, to the benefit of the international lower class. But even if the knocking down of trade barriers benefits both rich and poor countries on the whole, there are individual victims within those countries. These disenfranchised Trump supporters see this as giving away the jobs to which they are entitled.

It’s not incorrect for this group to recognize themselves as victims of globalization. What’s incorrect is thinking the system has suddenly become unfair because you have to compete with Mexicans on a level field. The system has suddenly become fair and the real problem, that a modern economy does not support low skilled workers at American wages, was previously masked by tariffs. In effect, the US government has been picking winners and losers for decades now. Once it stopped, non-college workers discovered that the market made them the losers in this game.

Unfortunately, the GOP is the wrong place for economic losers. In the Republican Party, those who can’t support themselves have deficient character. So the GOP has to hide from it’s non-college voters the fact that they’re victims of the market. They’ve paraded various scapegoats during the Obama Presidency, but Trump’s genius was to latch on to a scapegoat with a long tradition in Republican states–the brown people.

The college-educated Republican elite are perfectly willing to paint this Republican underclass as victims of a system propping up minorities at their expense. They don’t believe in privilege either and, without white racial resentment, their political future is bleak. But the gig is up. I know right now we liberals are supposed to be sheepishly apologizing and examining our own unfortunate prejudices. But when I contemplate this country long term I believe privilege denialism is near its end. Every day, the racist and misogynist machinations of the system are more apparent. And when that glue that holds this twisted Republican coalition together dissolves, a new day dawns.

Categories
Gender Health Care Sex

TWIS : I believe life begins at conception

“Well, I believe life begins at conception.”

You don’t. It might seem convenient or fashionable in your circle to say that, but it’s important to think that through. And the place that idea inevitably takes us is a bleak vision of government surveillance and control. You see, for every person born in the US, two fertilized eggs died. That means induced abortion (the kind we always holler about) is about 9% of the unborn deaths in the country. But where’s the outrage over the other 91%? Where’s the campaign to raise research dollars to stop failed implantation and spontaneous abortion? If  SIDS were killing two-thirds of babies, you can bet we’d hardly talk about anything else. And why aren’t we prosecuting for manslaughter those parents who fail to maximize their zygote’s chances. If you really believed life begins  at conception, you ought to favor the following policies.

Mandatory birth control. Unprotected sex, because it has such deadly consequences for zygotes, would need to be carefully controlled. This is especially true of married couples who are by far the most likely to be having unprotected sex. Couples would need to undergo an examination to determine they have maximized implantation chances before they are allowed to pursue pregnancy. Forgetting to take your birth control is now a prosecutable offense.

Lots more money for the NIH. Great research is being done to improve implantation rates for in vitro fertilization (IVF). Most of this research is funded by the NIH or NSF. However, one Party in particular is determined to keep those budgets low. We should expand research related to infertility by 10X at least. (As a bonus, we just might improve the lives of the post-natal!)

Mandatory tubal ligation at 35. Beyond 35, implantation rates begin to drop. In IVF clinics, it’s been found that 45% of (in vitro) fertilized eggs successfully implant for women under 35. As women age, that rate drops quite quickly to about 7% for women over 40. Remember that IVF involves fertilizing up to a dozen egg cells, then selecting the healthiest ones and implanting at the optimal time. Natural implantation rates are liable to be quite a bit lower.

Mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds. As you can imagine, the state of the uterine walls is critical for successful implantation. Women seeking to come off of their (state-mandated) birth control should undergo a transvaginal ultrasound to determine their viability. Women with insufficient uterine walls may be required to lose weight or make other dietary and lifestyle changes in order to pursue pregnancy.

In short,  if life begins at conception, there’s going to be a whole lot more of Uncle Sam in your vagina. Even if the only sex you’re having is with your spouse. And, lest you gentlemen feel left out, there is evidence that your health can have an effect on implantation as well. Get ready to drop those drawers for your state scrotum inspection!

Now, ThisWeekInStupid supports a grown-up discussion of when life begins. But we want it clear at the outset that it won’t just be about slut-shaming unmarried women. If life begins at conception, the choices of all of us are going to need to be severely restricted.

Categories
Elections Gender Race

Mia Love boldly goes where only 26 Black women have gone before

The Republicans are in the middle of an orgy of self-congratulation having just elected the first ever female Black Republican to Congress. Mia Love, newly elected representative of Utah’s 4th district, narrowly defeated Doug Owens on Tuesday. In that race, she outspent her opponent 7 to 1, having garnered millions of dollars’ worth of support from the New York investment bankers, the Kochs and Utah’s thriving multi-level marketing industry. This was important to the GOP. And so, on Wednesday the media took to the interwebs and airwaves to hail this important leap forward for America.

Now, ThisWeekInStupid would be over the moon if the Republican Party started addressing real problems with race in America, and we hope Representative Love will bring an important perspective. However, we thought it appropriate to point out that the GOP is about 40 years behind. The first Black Congresswoman was Shirley Chisholm, elected in 1968 by New York’s 12th district. She served there until 1983 and even sought the Democratic nomination for President in 1972. Since that time, the Democrats have elected 26 Black Congresswomen and one female Black Senator. Take a minute and let that sink in. That’s forty-six years. Babies became grandmothers in that length of time. The Beatles were still together then. There’s been a flag on the moon for a shorter amount of time than the time in which Black women in Congress only belonged to one Party.

So, congratulations, GOP. I do hope you’ll listen to Ms. Love and her perspective. But something tells me if you were really interested in being a part of progress in America toward racial and gender equality, you’d already be over here.

Categories
Class Education Gender Race

Check My Privilege? What privilege?

As a former college Republican myself, I had great sympathy for Tal Fortgang, Princeton student conservative, Fox News guest, and author of Why I’ll Never Apologize for My White, Male Privilege. I could hear myself saying some of those same things. And I ached with embarrassment. And so for his good and for mine, I’m posting

An open letter to Tal Fortgang and to my 19-year-old self:

Dear privileged white dudes,

You’re angry. I can tell. You’re frustrated that the world won’t hear you like you think it should. Your sincere and rational arguments aren’t reverenced as they should be. And I know where you’re coming from. I remember hearing exposition of social inequality as a indictment of myself and a devaluation of my talent and effort. Right now, in your darker moments, you think sometimes the brown kids get all the breaks. They get all the scholarships, right? You feel under-appreciated and unfairly passed over for accolades and criticized for oppression to which you’re not party.

I’m here to tell you I’ve been there and that there’s a third way to approach race, class and gender from your perspective.

First, it’s important to establish some facts.

Number 1. You’re a lucky guy. Miraculously lucky. Much of your luck is actually the result of the sweat of people who love you. Your grandfathers and grandmothers fought and worked and were beaten and went hungry and without medical care, to build your life. Your parents saved with admirable gusto, then mortgaged their future to pay for your place at the table. They worked nights and weekends for bosses that abused them to feed brats (you!) that sassed them then borrowed the car and wrecked it. Their gift to you could be measured in literal years taken off of their lives. And they did it all with pleasure because they loved you. And before there was you, they loved the vision of you. But all of those things, you didn’t earn.

Number 2. You’re a hard worker yourself. No one should devalue the fact that you studied and worked and practiced and prayed while others of your high school friends partied and slacked off. It would have been nice to spend some time in home economics or consumer math. Instead, you dragged your feet to Mr. McCarthy’s calculus class where you’d surely get a solid hour’s worth of homework. But you went every day (except that one day you skipped school to go to Wild Waves). Well done.

Number 3. You’re (temporarily) stupid. It’s not your fault. What makes you stupid is all the things you haven’t seen. In particular, some of the things you haven’t seen are the things your grandparents have. Like people assuming you’re lazy or irresponsible or criminal because you’re poor or speak with an accent. Or being judged first by the shape of your body. Or having no idea how to fill out a FAFSA.

But you won’t always be stupid. You’re quite close right now to a lot of wisdom. Expressing gratitude to your parents is an important foundation. Right now, you still feel like an extension of your parents’ family. Your successes are their successes and their efforts feel a little like your efforts. Denying yourself the advantages they worked to give you would be denying it to them as well. But as you get older you’ll meet very deserving, talented and hard-working people who weren’t given the things you were given. And soon, God willing, it will occur to you that, while someone certainly earned your privilege, it wasn’t you, or at least not primarily you.

And at that moment, you may even realize that while your effort was significant, doors have opened for you your whole life because people expect to be led by someone your color and gender. Principals, professors and bosses see in you an echo of themselves. When you assert yourself, it’s interpreted as a young man growing into the leader he was meant to be. It’s not that way for everyone. And that’s before even considering what your parents gave you individually. Is a minority scholarship any different than the tuition grant you got from the Get Tal To Move Out of the Basement Foundation?

So, as someone who’s been where you’re standing, here’s my unsolicited advice to you:

Listen more. That doesn’t mean you stop expressing your thoughts. But your instinct is to speak a little too often. Maybe only speak the cleverest half of the things you instinctively would. Spend the rest of the time listening to other perspectives and trying to imagine what it would be like living someone else’s life.

Do speak. But as you do so remember that the perspective of privilege has been heard. It’s been heard and codified–canonized even–in laws and textbooks and even in scriptures. That perspective is as valuable as any other but, in particular when the topic is social inequality, you may be the one speaking from a position of ignorance. Asking sincere questions is almost always welcome.

Stop hearing personal criticism. Living as a white man in a system that advantages white men does not make you bad. Refusing to acknowledge it does…a little. Often when we discuss social justice, we’re talking about things that happen at institutional levels. You don’t have to be a misogynist, or even a man, to be a part of a system (a company, a university) that disadvantages women. So, instead of assuming you’re forever relegated to play the villain in this narrative, hear an invitation to be part of the solution.

The next time you hear “Check your privilege,” hear it in your grandfather’s voice. Are there times when he might reprimand you for ingratitude? Would he relate better to you or to the person on the opposite end of your argument? Would he give you less credit than you give yourself? When you refuse to acknowledge what he’s given you, you disrespect him.

You’re a good person.You don’t harbor ill will toward others. Once you gain a little knowledge, you’ll be a great help to the world and a happier person yourself.

Your sincere ally,

HeyStupid

Categories
Gender Race

That’s Reverse Discrimination!

 

7 of 10 Fox News viewers think America is unfair to White people

A few years ago, the Brooking Institute reported that, among regular viewers of Fox News, nearly 7 in 10 believe that, in the United States, discrimination against whites is a bigger problem than discrimination against blacks and other minorities. In the context of the disproportionate success of white people in America, the racism in that statement is astounding. To convince yourself that whites are more successful in business, education, politics and science in spite of a systematic disadvantage, you’d have to be quite thoroughly convinced of the genetic superiority of white people.

GOP leaders agree. In Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” speech, we mostly ignored his statement that “had [his father] been born of Mexican parents, [Romney would] have a better shot of winning this.” You heard that right. Captain Oblivious is so fundamentally superior a person that he’d have risen to the top no matter where or to whom he’d been born. And if it happened to be to one of those Mexican families that get all the breaks, he’d be a shoe-in.

“So, what?”

So, there’s a despicable racism that makes people think “reverse discrimination” is common. There’s also a perilously warped sense of justice behind the belief that society should worry more about disadvantaging the white beneficiaries of centuries of slavery and imperialism than about mitigating the damage to the children of its victims. We are only a generation or two separated from a time when Blacks were effectively precluded from voting in some states. So, instead of debating whether this-or-that program is discrimination against white people, perhaps the best reaction to accusations of reverse discrimination is “so, what?”. White men oppressed and enslaved the world for a thousand years. Will it really all come crashing down if Latinas have a leg up for a few decades?