[tootie]

The fallacy that Graham is espousing seems to be that moral superiority (or even moral improvement) is utterly impossible and any attempt to raise the level of discourse is oppression. The change in tone in the 80s he refers to is the ascendance of civil rights, feminism and gay rights. All incredibly worthy movements. The fact that some adherents make mistakes is human nature. The notion that they can't be debated is patently false. The anti-progress faction is still very very powerful. Plenty of unequivocal sexists and racists face no punishment.

[rayiner]

The idea that there is an “anti-progress faction” is a self-serving delusion. What you have is different people with differing views of what “progress” looks like.

For example as to “feminism”—in 2022 nearly all women agree it’s a good idea women can have bank accounts. But Roe remains deeply divisive and most women reject the full scope of those “rights” (specifically the right to abort in the second trimester). Half of women with children at home would prefer to be homemakers, and many resent the social and economic pressures for mothers to work.

Same thing for “civil rights” or fighting “racism.” Does that mean Black and brown people being able to order food at any restaurant? Virtually nobody disagrees with that. Does that mean Black and Hispanic people getting racial preferences in college admissions or employment? Most Black and Hispanic people themselves reject that. As one of the oft-discussed “Black and brown” people, I would say much of what passes for “fighting racism” today is more like this: https://contexts.org/blog/who-gets-to-define-whats-racist/ (“Rather than actually dismantling white supremacy or meaningfully empowering people of color, efforts often seem to be oriented towards consolidating social and cultural capital in the hands of the ‘good’ whites.”).

Don’t forget that there were lots of ideas advanced in the name of “progress” that turned out to be ideological dead ends. 60 years after “free love,” we have massively retrenched, pushing sexuality out of more and more contexts. I don’t see Malcom X-style racial separatism being the way forward in a multi-ethnic society. “Same sex marriage” was actually a moderate reaction in it’s time—a response to those who wanted to use gay rights as a vehicle for a larger change in norms around marriage and gender.

Finally, we don’t know the ultimate effect of these changes. I can’t help observing that the countries that initiated major shifts in views towards marriage and sexuality in the last 50 years have become dependent for their continued population stability on immigration from countries that have traditional views on marriage and sexuality.

[twofornone]

>The anti-progress faction is still very very powerful. Plenty of unequivocal sexists and racists face no punishment.

If I dared to push back on diversity and inclusion mandates in my workplace I'd lose my job. That includes explicitly racist talk about not hiring any more white guys. These "anti-progress" sentiments may exist but effectively in a parallel society, relegated mostly to blue collar work. It's dishonest to pretend that this ideology hasn't effectively taken over nearly all of our major institutions, and this slimy sort of denial is partly how it happened.

And these topics are not nearly as black and white as culture warriors make them out to be, but God forbid if you express the wrong opinion or even ask the wrong question. Progress is great but sometimes you need to stop and listen to the people warning you that you're about to progress right off a cliff.

[tootie]

For one that's a sample bias of HN being primarily affluent coastal elites. Half the country voted for the anti-progress candidate. Second, I do not at all believe that you'd be fired for a reasonable objection to diversity policy. Saying "I don't want diversity at all" might.

[rendall]

> I do not at all believe that you'd be fired for a reasonable objection to diversity policy.

That's not an argument. Not even really a reasonable belief. It happens to people on the regular.

Let me introduce you to Jodie Shaw. https://dangerousintersection.org/2021/02/20/jodi-shaw-resig...

[tootie]

She quit, she wasn't fired. And it was at least partly over incidents she wasn't even party too. Apparently she was upset that a supervisor suggested she not rap.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jodi-shaw-...

[rendall]

The Rolling Stone article is inaccurate. NYT article is better. Clean your mind of Rolling Stone.

Shaw quit because of a hostile work environment prompted specifically by her protest, which your linked article elides. Regarding the rap, she was told specifically she could not do it because she is white, and not because of any other reason.

Here's a compare-and-contrast between the 2 articles (NYT vs RS) https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/02/25/smith-meltdown-nyt...

[rayiner]

The anti-progress candidate—as defined by “affluent coastal elites”: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote...

E.g. they called Trump a racist for saying things that most minorities themselves agreed with.

> We began by asking eligible voters how “convincing” they found a dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points. Among other elements, the message condemned “illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs” and called for “fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.”

> Almost three out of five white respondents judged the message convincing. More surprising, exactly the same percentage of African-Americans agreed, as did an even higher percentage of Latinos.

[tptacek]

And? Minorities are racist just like everybody else. Why do we have to triangulate this stuff? Trump was obviously a pretty racist guy.

The sneaky lawyer trick in what you wrote is "they called Trump racist for saying things minorities agreed with". That's true, they did. But they also called him racist for a bunch of other reasons!

[rayiner]

> And? Minorities are racist just like everybody else.

There is a difference between minorities being racist, which of course they can be, and minorities not finding allegedly racist things to be racist. My point is that it makes no sense to define "racism" to encompass supposed "dog whistle" messages directed at minorities that those minorities themselves agree with.

It not only gets used to shut down debate, as PG observes, but it's exploitive. It gets used to argue on behalf of minorities against policies that minorities themselves support. Associations of law-and-order with racism got weaponized in the last couple of years to advance approaches to policing and criminal justice that minorities themselves rejected.

> Why do we have to triangulate this stuff?

Because white people shouldn't get to police other white people on minorities' behalf over statements that those minorities don't find offensive.

> Trump was obviously a pretty racist guy.

In the sense that pretty much every 70-year old man is racist? Sure. In the sense that any of his policies were racist? No. Strong borders, careful scrutiny of refugees from parts of the world rife with fundamentalism, quelling riots, etc., are not racist.

[tptacek]

You did it again: you framed something like "Is Trump racist? No, this set of policies everyone says is racist isn't really racist." I don't even have to disagree with your premises to continue to find Trump's policies racist, because he did more than carefully scrutinize refugees and attempt to quell riots. (I do disagree with your premises, though).

I'm not out to get you with these observations. I don't think you're racist, or running cover for racists. I like that there are vocal conservative-leaning people around here. It's weird that you'd deploy high school debate tricks to respond to me, isn't it? If it's "sneaky lawyer trick" upthread, I apologize; I was just having fun, not trying to cast aspersions.

[oh_my_goodness]

Points. On the other hand, how carefully did you read the comment you're responding to?

[tootie]

I'm not arguing with the above poster. I'm expounding. The confidence people have in their moral compass may be overinflated but that doesn't mean it's without value. I'd take the judgment of a social justice warrior over the Church of England any day of the week. But also you have to recognize that not everyone is so self-important and can be rational. Modern liberal values are a massive improvement over the past even if not everyone applies them sensibly.

[Apocryphon]

Just a quibble, not to argue with your overall point- isn’t the modern CoE, as a mainline church, much closer to the prototypical SJW than a more conservative religion?

[jimkleiber]

How I understood his essay was that he actually wants more debate about things and finds statements such as "that is X-ist" to end debate.

Did you read that differently?

[zozbot234]

> The change in tone in the 80s he refers to is the ascendance of civil rights, feminism and gay rights

Source? These movements are more than 100 years old. (yes, even gay acceptance basically got its start in the early 19th c.!) Did they really progress all that much from the 1980s to the present day? This is very much non-obvious, at least to me.

[tootie]

That's being very literal. Jim Crow lasted until 1965. Loving v Virginia was 1967. Gay marriage was made legal in 2015. The 80s wasn't necessarily a watershed but it was a generation raised knowing that a civil rights battle could be won.