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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44935 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Since the thread only loads five comments at a time (Zorbaaaaaa!) I will do a small, top level update on the BYU-Duke volleyball saga. You can find previous discussion in the thread below. In short, a black college volleyball athlete claims she repeatedly heard bad words during a game with thousands of fans in attendance. Said athlete has some family that amplifies her grievance, specifies the claims, and off it goes to become a thing.

Today, BYU released a statement on the conclusion of their investigation. BYU found no evidence bad words were used, nor could they corroborate bad word usage from witness testimony. BYU formally apologized to the poor chap who was banned from the game.

We also reached out to more than 50 individuals who attended the event: Duke athletic department personnel and student-athletes, BYU athletic department personnel and student-athletes, event security and management and fans who were in the arena that evening, including many of the fans in the on-court student section.

Duke's athletic director also released a short statement:

The 18 members of the Duke University volleyball team are exceptionally strong women who represent themselves, their families, and Duke University with the utmost integrity. We unequivocally stand with and champion them, especially when their character is called into question. Duke Athletics believes in respect, equality and inclusiveness, and we do not tolerate hate and bias.

Which is about as close as you get to "we will not contest the conclusion of the investigation" in a PR statement while making sure people know you hate racism, still support your athletes, etc. This is a case we've seen before. It did not garner quite as much attention as the Covington case or Smollett case, but follows the same path as them. I do not have much to add, because I'm not sure there's a lot of light here. If there is a way to cool off the culture wars it might start with interrupting the racism-to-national-story pipeline.

One interesting thing. I do not believe we saw the alleged perpetrator's name get released on the internet. BYU immediately put security in the relevant section after Richardson's claim. Eventually security targeted a UVU student and removed him, but BYU has since apologized to him. Perhaps this is evidence we are learning? The crowd may have helped in preventing his identification online or his purported disabilities protected him to an extent. Maybe all it took is one reasonable person in the chain to decide to keep his name under wraps until things had been confirmed. If so, kudos to him or her, because there's an alternate time line where some poor kid with a mental disability gets publicly shamed by Twitter mercenaries.

This aspect may have been the product of the media seemingly being disinterested in investigating this story. Alternatively, the media may be past all that jazz in these types of cases. If I were an editor Nick Sandmann's lawsuits would have some impact on how I treat these stories. Perhaps they realize the juicy headline is enough rather than the public shaming process. Hey, that'd be something. These types of cases are pure culture war all the way down. An army of online I Told Ya So's will continue to clash with the Of Course They Said Nothing Happened vanguard and Racism Is Still A Big Problem Anyway main line of infantry. So it goes.

It's also worth worth noting that (1) the University of South Carolina canceled a two game women's basketball series in response to these accusations and (2) South Carolina lawmakers are asking why. So this has already gone further than just "did it happen or not"--there have been direct consequences of people drawing their own conclusions concerning unproven allegations.

While researching this story I was intrigued to see how much bigotry is directed at BYU athletes. If BYU canceled games over bigotry and slurs directed at Mormons, they might not have any games left. If they're now to have games canceled by others over hate hoaxes, maybe they should just get on with it and end their athletics program entirely.

Mormons, quite frankly, are used to it. That doesn’t mean they’re fond of it or that it’s okay, but they have functionally no true allies in the sociocultural landscape (with other Christians considering them a heretical near-cult and progressives considering them self-evidently bigoted), and there are no real social penalties for even the harshest of criticism towards them.

When I was Mormon, I was used to mostly keeping my head down to avoid trouble in the public sphere, and I doubt I was uncommon in that. Criticizing Mormons is playing the social game on easy mode.

Criticizing Mormons is playing the social game on easy mode.

Among the juvenilia of Scott Alexander is a piece called Mormonism: The Control Group For Christianity. (There are other hints scattered across his blog that his father lives or lived at some point in Salt Lake City, and that Scott visited him there. Beyond that it's unclear to me what SA's connection with Mormonism is.) This particular case makes me wonder if Mormonism is also a suitable "control group," or at least a bellwether, for religious toleration.

Actually, Google tells me that there are approximately 15 million Jews in the world, and maybe 16 million Mormons. Judaism is a much older religion, has a dedicated ethnostate, boasts numerous special interest NGOs dedicated to defending it against anti-Semitism, and so forth. Mormons have not been subjected to a Holocaust, but were apparently subjected to a surprising amount of murder in their early days. Mormons did not trek through the wilderness for 40 years, but they did follow a bearded prophet into the desert and then settle in a not-that-pleasant place (sorry, the mountains are lovely but the fact is, inland from the Pacific coast the western United States is a barely habitable wasteland, and if you post a picture of the Grand Tetons I will respond with a picture of the Salt Flats). Is there an ADL for Mormons? (Google suggests no!) Are Mormons subjected to employment discrimination, etc.? (Google suggests yes!) Like Jews, Mormons punch above their weight politically, but again--not with the same oomph as Jews. Lists of "famous Mormons" have some interesting entries, as do lists of famous ex-Mormons (actress Amy Adams? New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Adern?), not quite to the degree that we see famous Jews in, say, Hollywood but certainly to an unusual extent considering the size of the sect.

And here it looks like Jewish universities are also culture war targets. I feel like I need an image macro along the lines of: "Mom, can we stop and get some Jews?--We have Jews at home!--The Jews at home:" [insert picture of Donny and Marie Osmond having dinner with Mitt Romney].

But I wonder if Mormons benefit in job markets from being considered trustworthy? Better to have people privately discriminating in favor of you than giving you public support.

It was widely believed that Mormons were preferred in job markets in my small ~20% Mormon area.

One area where they're strongly favored is security clearance jobs, where not drinking and the mission experience are both plusses.

I would be very surprised if they do not in heavily Mormon areas.

How often does religion come up in job interviews? I expect there are a few advantages from connections through church etc. but other people have those same connections from other sources.

Lots of people get jobs through connections. If you think someone is honest you are more likely to recommend them to be hired by your firm.

The coded way for LDS people to signal their religion to employers is a bit of a joke within the Church - putting a section on your resume about your missionary service, but trying to make it as subtle or as not obvious as possible so gentiles don't pick up on it. To be clear, it's really only something you list as a new grad when you're scraping the barrel for things to put on there.

"Organized door to door sales presentations, presented quarterly earnings reports to superiors", it's kind of a meme.

I'd forgotten about that option. Those resumes are always hilarious. I've seen worse--I saw a resume where a guy boasted about "organizing a multi-billion dollar fundraiser" because as a missionary he had volunteered to help with the fundraiser.

FWIW, as a Mormon I do what I can to obscure that fact. So if there's much of a benefit there, then I've been missing out. I do work in tech though where things are possibly more anti-religion than the average field.

I've taken it off my resume at this point, I have enough project and technical experience that I don't need that. I only had it there when I was looking for first job out of school and had like, no good experience. I doubt it had much of a benefit, but it made me feel better to have a full page at least.

I bet they benefit more now than they used to. I will never forget the first time I worked with a Mormon - I was working for my dad one summer and we had a new guy working with us - he was friendly, polite and a hard worker, but my dad wouldn't give him the time of day because he was Mormon, and my dad thought that meant he would refuse to serve in the army if asked. It was baffling to me back then and it's baffling to me now.

Did he confuse Mormons and Mennonites?

I was thinking Jehovah's Witnesses, who also proselytize a lot, but don't participate in war.

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