As any Ben Shapiro-type logician would be happy to explain to you, admitting the above does little to rebut the underlying proposition of natural white superiority. Which, being “natural” ought to be reflected in the order of things. Which, of course it is, because America is a free society where rewards are fairly distributed based on one’s level of effort and merit…
I don’t regard this as a serious argument, but it’s the kind of argument that precocious 14 year olds land on (similar to Randian “objectivism”), and from what I’ve seen a lot of not so precocious 45 year olds ultimately reach conclusions similar to precocious 14 year olds.
You probably wouldn’t get a comparable meme with a guy’s name, about a guy who wants to speak to the manager etc, because there is no such stereotype to play to. It’s therefore arguably steeped in misogynist tropes.
My sense is that it was absolutely bound to appeal to misogynists, or to latent misogyny within people if you want to get fancy. But idk, when you have a lot of PoC talking about how Karen is like the avatar of bougie white feminism, I don’t think it’s overly significant that it appeals to misogynists as well. Why let them dictate everything?
You’re confused because the same people who think Karen is mildly offensive and ‘loaded’ are against outing Lindsay Graham. They are so obsessed with the means they use that they’ll never get into the same zip code as any ends worth having. They’d rather things be incredibly dysfunctional and messed up and be personally right than fix everything and have to live with some regret/guilt about how they got it done.
Now the conservatives obviously have this problem in reverse. They ONLY care about their own personal gain and how they get there is utterly beside the point. That can lead to some really really really ugly outcomes as we’re all experiencing.
I think both groups are certifiable honestly. I want to be effective far more than I want to be perceived as a good person. I think what actually makes a good person is their impact on the world. That doesn’t require being an angel, which is good because I’m not one.
If he wants hard-core evidence, there are two academic studies that I think have very understandable punchlines in the context of employment-related discrimination:
When researchers sent out a bunch of resumes with identical backgrounds and achievements, but randomly assigned African-American- or White-sounding names, White names received 50% more callbacks for interviews.
Bertrand, M., and S. Mullainathan. 2004. Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination. American Economic Review 94 (4): 991–1013.
When jurisdictions adopted “ban the box” policies that prevented employers from asking about job applicants’ criminal records, the result was that young, low-skilled black men were less likely to be employed. Put bluntly, when employers were prohibited from asking individuals about their actual criminal records, employers just assumed that young black men were much more likely to have been a criminal, and discriminated against them accordingly.
Doleac, J. L., and B. Hansen. 2020. The Unintended Consequences of “Ban the Box”: Statistical Discrimination and Employment Outcomes When Criminal Histories Are Hidden. Journal of Labor Economics 38 (2): 321–374.
The reason I advocate openly discussing white supremacy and “free market” ideas is because they are the firmament that produces the Brett Kavanaugh’s and other “elite” conservatives. Such ideas should be methodically ripped to shreds at their roots.
On the other hand, maybe the job has already been done sufficiently, because it’s a lot harder to find Brett Kavanaugh’s than it used to be, and it’s a waste of everyone’s time to educate the lagging 15% of the conservative elite as to why their view of the world is so deeply wrongheaded.
This has already been said in this thread, but I feel the need to jump on the bandwagon.
I’m more or less on board philosophically with “Defund the Police”. We just need to rename that stat. It’s basically going to turn into Defund the Police = No Police = Anarchy = Trump Win.
The Democrat Party position is that cops should shoot people in the legs. I don’t think we have to worry about the platform being No Police. If you’re going to worry about what Trumpkins make out of what Dems say, well, it’s like Obamacare => … => Stalinist Russia no matter what is said.
Someone tell me if I need to add this to my Trump speech bingo card. I mean why would the greatest president since Lincoln giving a speech on race hesitate to condemn everything about this guy?
