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Hannania, Iowa State Fair, and Vivek. Vivek’s response to LGBTQ made the rounds on twitter mostly with positive support on how it can be handled.
https://twitter.com/richardhanania/status/1690890371398836224?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
Vivek says a lot of words but if I had to summarize it’s basically libertarianism for adults - you can do what you want - but no pride for kids and restrictions on female sports and bathroom usage.
I use to share these type of opinions and perhaps I still do. But I no longer find these as stable positions. It comes down to well why don’t you want pride in schools? It’s because I believe in social contagion (and the broad right) that pride is bad and I don’t want the next generation of children to be more gay and transexual. Basically I don’t want grooming for those lifestyles. I think the left knows this. And won’t settle for the right thinking pride is bad. And then it’s well your a homophobe/transphobe. Masks off yea I am. That is why I don’t want pride in school because I think it’s bad for people.
Of course I think the same problem exists with Hannania’s new position on race. Treat everyone the same. Be tough on crime. Do I think being colorblind will be accepted by the left when it ends up with whites always on top and blacks on the bottom with a lot of black men in prison? No.
I feel like we have discussed these issues a lot. Even a mod thru in a post on why can’t we just be colorblind (perhaps bad summary from memory). I think it’s interesting seeing the third leading GOP candidate making similar arguments. And in all honesty my guess is Vivek’s position is likely the preferred position of mosts on the Motte. None of the pride everywhere but adults can do as they please. The race issues I think perhaps we could get back to the old equilibrium of ignoring disparate outcomes and just treating blacks as if they are white. But I doubt it. The Pride issues I think are harder because not wanting children exposed more directly says we think it’s bad and don’t want our children taught this stuff. The positions I’m laying out are likely the preferred position of most of the GOP establishment. I think Desantis would even accept these positions if offered. I don’t expect the left to offer these compromises because they are true believers that disparate outcomes are proof of racism or because a lot of supporters find the moral superiority of getting to call red tribe “your a racists/transphobe” etc enjoyable so no reason to stop.
While I think these positions are unstable I’m not sure the right could move the country to the stable positions. Which would be widespread knowledge that a great deal of disparate outcome is from hbd and on pride matters getting the country to agree that lgbtq lifestyles are not desirable (which was the world pre-2008). As it is the current positions seem unstable to me and easily attacked by the left and to a great extent makes the right look like hypocrites afraid to say the quiet part out loud.
Also, might be a good place for anyone to posts anything they found interesting at the Iowa State Fair.
Thank you for the chance to vent on this: I just listened to him talk with Rufo on this and they sounded - frankly - delusional.
The things that they and others cite - AA is unpopular with the general public - just don't seem to matter that much. Because...the public hasn't had to live with the outcomes Hanania predicts in living memory (when they did, they could easily blame it on racism).
When I see normies and progressives agree with SCOTUS' AA decision the idea is always "good, do it by class". But that's cause normies aren't HBDers like Hanania. What does he think is going to happen when we get #OscarSoWhite every couple of years at some major college or you see huge jail sentences for black people?
Most likely outcome: exactly what we're seeing now. People like Kendi are looking a step ahead, like Hanania and unlike normies they know "lol, class" isn't a solution right now, which is why they've forced the dilemma of "either it's society or you're saying our kids are broken". As you say: most people, even Republicans, don't want to bite the bullet here. If they do, they do similar moves to "I'm not against gays but.." like "well, it's the culture...", which not only gets called racist but still suggests AA.
I don't even know what I'd do if it came to my vote, and I think just being here and being so open to his takes marks me out as pretty atypical.
The only charitable explanation I have is that Hanania doesn't actually think you can reason people into separating race from everything (at least not those with a lot to lose). The plan would be to simply not sound super-racist (Hoste-like, one might say) so you can build enough of a mixed coalition with minorities with success in America like Vivek that you can tell blacks and their most devoted prog allies to suck it up without causing another Racial Reckoning. But even that sounds dubious.
I doubt it. Because the consensus has been broken and leftists , deliberately or not, act in ways that break up groups that might stand against the new status quo (e.g. more and more people identifying as some sort of alphabet person). Even if the Right could muster up the courage to maintain a substantive exclusionary position I don't know that it matters.
It's like racial homogeneity: easy to keep. Once it's gone it's much harder to argue for.
The exact same thing that happens now when rural white people talk about how they're actively discriminated against by elite institutions - a bunch of basement-dwellers complaining on TheDailyKendi or Blackfront about how it isn't fair and that actually society is being racist against them. If his side has gotten the policy changes they want, they necessarily have the cultural power and influence to cast their opposition into the same dustbin of popular opinion that white nationalism exists in now.
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How does that follow? The solution to "it's the culture" is to fix the damn culture. Hold black people to the same job/college standards that everyone else is held to, no more no less, and if any assistance is provided then it should be in the form of teaching them how to escape the broken culture so that they can meet those standards.
I can see how that would be viewed as racist by people who think that thug culture is authentically black, but I view those people as the real racists because thug culture is awful, and to purport that black people are unable to avoid it is to suggest that black people are inherently awful. And also wrong (as demonstrated by the many who do avoid it).
Genes play a part, because of course they do, but pretty much every trait is a mix of nature and nurture. To the extent that nurture is a lever we can pull, and nature is not, let's pull the nurture lever and see how far it gets us. My guess is like 80% of the discrepancy is culture and 20% is genetic, but even if it's 50-50 or even 20-80, solving the cultural issue would solve a non-negligible portion of the issue, and see massive gains for black people and for everyone who ever interacts with them. Which multiplied by millions of people is a huge win for society. And then after we've dealt with that we can figure out what to do about HBD if anything still needs to be done by then.
If you tell certain groups that it is the culture, the conclusion they'll draw is that racism caused that culture (and you can't draw on biology as a counter). Which justifies hamfisted remedies.
Especially since a lot of interventions have to start late - Harvard isn't going to set up pre-schools so it's easier to do it come admissions time. If there are as many Miles Moraleses as Peter Parkers then there is a stronger argument for doing AA. The Murrayian argument against it is precisely that there aren't and it ends up hurting people and causing all sorts of distortions (like promoting kids past their - relatively immutable - IQ warrants, which is less of an issue here).
And we're talking about Hanania. He doesn't believe it's the culture*. So what happens when it inevitably doesn't fix the problem?
Well, clearly the country is more racist than expected! (You are here x)
* He might echo your last paragraph, but imo only to lull normies. He doesn't come across as anywhere near this optimistic. Murray either. If they did the solution would probably not be to dismantle systems that give the "disadvantaged" a leg up first.
I don’t think that the preschools most black people go to, even ghetto blacks, are transmitting the ghetto culture. It’s rap music, fatherlessness leading to lack of availability of good male role models, and all the usual things conservatives point to. Because even ghetto daycares are not trying to convince their students to be promiscuous, lazy thieves and drug users.
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This is probably a reasonable conclusion to draw. Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" paints a pretty convincing picture of how black slaves, stripped from their homes in Africa and brought to the southern U.S., picked up the lazy violent redneck culture of the people around them, which over time morphed into its own variant, but still shares enough similarities that you can trace its lineage back to the same source.
Now, several centuries later, I don't think it's fair to primarily blame modern white people for inculcating it into their ancestors when more of the blame would be appropriately placed on the more recent generations of black (and white) people who have propagated it and resisted attempts to change it. To the extent that reparations were deserved by black people for slavery, I think making all of them U.S. citizens with all of the same rights fulfills that (Look at the average living conditions of people who were enslaved and brought to the U.S., and look at the average living conditions of people born in Africa today. I think our debts are paid.) Further, I don't think we have more of an obligation to help lift black redneck/thugs out of their degenerate culture than we do to help lift white rednecks out of theirs. But I don't think we need to have a burden of guilt in order to recognize actions that would help people and do them anyway, because it's the right thing to do. I don't feel any personal responsibility for causing black people to have the culture or the economic or social problems that come with it, either via slavery or Jim Crow laws or racism, none of which I or my immediate family contributed to. I would like to help them anyway if possible.
To the extent that Harvard wants to get involved in humanitarian efforts to uplift underprivileged people, it should do it in a race-neutral way. Because the root cause of black people's issue is some combination of culture and genes (and this particular argument does not depend on what the ratio of those actually is, even exclusively one or the other) rather than racism, Harvard cannot influence them to actually solve the issue. Race-based affirmative action only serves to help out the fraction of black people who aren't underprivileged (because they didn't grow up in thug culture, or because they happen to have enough high IQ genes [even HBD is about averages, and thus allows for uncommonly intelligent black people via variance]). Further, holding people to lower standards decreases the signalling strength of their diplomas and thus retroactively justifies rational racism on the part of people looking to hire people with Harvard degrees. If instead you hold everyone to the same standard, then even if fewer black people get through, the ones who do will actually gain full values from their degree. Which, especially if culture is the dominant factor, creates a gateway to success for black people who want to escape that culture and become successful. But even if genes predominate, this still enables a way for above-average intelligence black people to distinguish themselves from the average.
I think some of the points that AA advocates make are legitimate, I can create thought experiments in which some individuals benefit from it. It's just that the costs tend to be higher, and the entire strategy is strictly inferior to a class based AA, which carries fewer costs and more benefits.
I see no way in which the benefit to fewer degree holders will overcome the total wreckage for everyone else.
If the anti-hereditarians are right, I see far less reason to not provide AA since we know class-based AA will disadvantage blacks. If we can't blame genes we will have to look at things like where blacks live, which may or may not be blamed on racism. But, even putting that aside, if blacks won't inherently revert to the mean as HBDers claim, if the "dumb" AA students are only merely disadvantaged by living with the wrong people (as opposed to being promoted to schools well past their competence) why not take them? You're going to miss out on the chance to give the future leaders of the community even more cachet so they can shape the community? In the name of...changing the norms of the community?
Like, I don't think Obama has caused a major change in norms but it's probably better to have had him and men like him than not. By his wife's own account people like her might not have made it without AA.
If Hanania and Murray are right there's also almost no way getting rid of AA is better for black people.
I'll use Murray, since he gives us clear numbers on what he thinks happens at the top scores in Facing Reality:
900 & 3,300...to 27,000. There is no set of hidden benefits to disadvantaging everyone apart from this population that'll make it worth it for the losers.
If you want to do as Murray does and argue for meritocracy or a politics of difference, okay. But it just isn't one of those "rising tide" situations. Someone has to lose in a meritocracy. Allegedly entire categories of "someones", sometimes.
Yes, John McWhorter and Neil DeGrasse Tyson will lose that asterisk - but they seem to have shed it on their own anyway. But plenty of black people will never get a shot at all at that level. Yes, as it stands now there's some drag on Harvard's credibility and the credibility of black AA beneficiaries. But, as I said, most people are normies and either don't know the details of AA or know better than to say and Harvard is clearly maintaining enough of its prestige for them to get benefits.
You're also leaving out the problem that feminists run into: women's revealed preference is to work less, let's say we had a legal situation that allowed most women to do so. It would create its own negative stereotype. You're worried about the stereotype that McWhorters have to swim against, but you forget the much older prejudice of "yeah, he made it through X but maybe he slipped through the cracks. I'd prefer a white. "
There's almost no way a wipeout better from the African-American perspective than the current messy system that at least incentivizes Harvard to find some ADOS blacks (even if most of them are Nigerians)
How does class-based AA disadvantage blacks? If blacks are disproportionately poor, then they're disproportionately likely to fall into the category that the class-based AA is looking for. Granted, they'll have to compete against poor white and asian students for those slots, but they won't have to compete against wealthy Nigerians. Obviously if you measure "black" as a class and look at the average outcomes across all of them it will go down as benefits shift from wealthy black people towards poor white people, but it's not obvious to me (possible, but not obvious) that poor black people, as individuals, would lose out by the switch.
And, apparently, they lose. Which is why Harvard and the NY magnet schools were in the mess they were in.
Your point might be true, if we took "disadvantaged" to mean "pushed to engage in slanted competition" as opposed to "disproportionately loses in competition". But the latter situation is at least in play now.
They will have to compete with a bunch of poor or "poor" Nigerians and other immigrants who are technically lower SES still have some social capital (this is the standard explanation of "model minority" success)
But, again, if people like Hanania are right: both groups are not only taken to the cleaners by Asians now, they will continue to do so indefinitely.
If your argument was for race + class-based affirmative action to cut out well-off Nigerians it'd be one thing. But pure class AA is another thing entirely.
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No it doesn’t, it suggests blacks should either fix their culture or use white culture.
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The obvious solution is to import 5 million cream of the crop Nigerians who proceed to take their rightful place at the top of society. Then "black people" as a whole in the US will be doing well and you can tell the low end ADOSs to take a hike since if contemporary racism was the issue then how come blacks are now doing pretty well in top positions?
IMO Hannania has shown stats that foreign blacks with graduate degrees have kids that are not doing much above average ADOS on test scores. So I’m not sure that’s a solution.
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Are you going to force these elite Nigerians to live in places that most black Americans actually live and intermarry with them? If not, ADOS black Americans will remain a distinctive group, and thanks to disproportionately living in Southern and Midwestern swing states they will remain politically powerful above what their numbers would suggest.
Maybe not them but their grand-kids?
I think you underestimate how good Americans are at assimilation. They only have to win once, and they usually do.
To be clear, I think the smart Nigerians would assimilate and do fine in America. It's just that given the choice like every other high IQ immigrant group they'll mostly gravitate toward wealthy blue cities and assimilate into that milieu (doing wonders for, say, Ivy League schools looking to become more aesthetically diverse), which doesn't really do anything to fix the problems of existing black Americans that mostly live elsewhere or to dilute the outsized political power held by that group (White Americans are also overrepresented by their political system, but they don't bloc vote anywhere near as intensely.). Black Americans (and the Robin DiAngelos of the world, for that matter) in places like St. Louis aren't going to be impressed that a bunch of immigrants that look like but don't sound or act much like them are making money any more than white Americans in places like rural Kentucky are impressed by people that look like them doing well in the Acela corridor.
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Nope, the point is to shut the ADOS's up by refuting their claims of "racism" by having huge amounts of very successful black people in the country, not destroy their group identity.
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Why would they need to do any of that? The ADOS can just remain a distinctive group that's mired in generational poverty, misery and crime - but this will actually fix the problem because they won't be able to say that the reason why is racism. "Racism" defeated, and life gets worse for everyone (except maybe the elite Nigerians) - sure, that's a terrible outcome, but it isn't really that different from the outcomes of a lot of antiracist proposals.
That's going to be tough to pull off as long as so many black Americans live in swing states (A bunch of Nigerians moving to coastal cities and doing well isn't going to change the electoral map all that much.). It can be (and has been done) with American Indians because there's not a lot of them, and Appalachian whites can mostly be ignored because they live in a handful of deep red states, but black Americans are too numerous, too strategically located (and institutionally embedded) to just ignore, and too convenient a cudgel for white liberals to wield toward white conservatives to pass up.
Maybe the Democratic Party radically changes its marketing strategy and the electoral map changes in the future such that Southern and Midwestern swing states aren't so important, but for now the Democrats are the party of Biden, and they're presently re-engineering the primary calendar to make black Southerners more important, not less.
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Amen brother! I wish first world countries would just pull their heads out of the sand and start importing massive amounts of smart foreigners. The possibility won't be there forever, and the longer we wait the worse things get.
Hell we could even just make it easier to get smart white people in here. IQ over 105? You're in!
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Almost from a marketing position it just doesn’t feel like it’s defensible especially in the current environment.
You end up with some autists like me. Largely male probably well above average quantitively. Then some working class coalition. But I don’t see how Vivek’s position is going to work on midtwits. The 5-30% of the IQ spectrum. The people who fill the bureaucracy and PMC. Kendi’s arguments will fill that as the positions crumble under accusations of bigotry etc. Which then means your best political outcome is a Trump trying to do things with everyone below his direct appointees opposed. You won’t get anything done and lose. And the people then recruiting for you and getting votes end up being Alex Jones types. Which Hannania complains the GOP is stupid but then he won’t sell what he wants. So you end with a slider/Thiel coalition with Alex Jones voters.
It feels like asking for a ceasefire. And hoping the left gets bored with their current thing. It’s failing to make the arguments you actual believe which is where I get this unstable feeling. Now I can’t figure out how to sell that so figured I’m not that smart but no one is doing it.
I guess the best possibility for what I call a “ceasefire” would be to get a Desantis type who can dismantle some institutional advantages while playing for time.
Why not? I think the counter that I find pretty compelling is also compelling to "midtwits", regardless of what the think the underlying cause of differences is. When a dark brown guy like Vivek, or a first-generation Asian-American, or a dude named Carlos says, "I'm doing well and I don't think racism substantially impacted me", I really do think this is close to a killshot on the argument that black Americans struggle because of oppression. The Kendi-style arguments or Hannah Nicole-Jones resorts to deeper history require more time and cultural buy-in to explain than just looking at Vivek and saying, "well, that is kinda fishy that we're a racist country, but these browns dudes move here and do great".
America has more successful immigrants of color than ever before. Has the argument that America is a racist country been refuted? I don't think so. If anything, we've just imported a bunch of Saira Raos to tell us how racist we are.
There are a few probably unfixable problems here: One, other groups being successful doesn't make black Americans successful. They can easily claim that the new arrivals discriminate against them just as much as white Americans (sometime moreso; it never occurred to white Americans to monopolize the business of black haircare products like it did to the Koreans), that new immigrants didn't suffer slavery or Jim Crow or whatever, and this can't be refuted.
Two, as alluded to above, there's nothing to stop the new immigrants from claiming that they, too, are victims of racism. It doesn't matter if they are in fact "privileged" in every objective measure relative to the average white American. There's status to be had in victimhood and if anything high-IQ immigrants will just be smarter at it than the locals.
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