When Virtue Signalling goes wrong No. H 8321071733001

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So on the one hand, they can provide evidence of this racism and suffer the full consequences of it…or they can show themselves to be simply doing public grandstanding (“virtue signaling”).

This is going to be fun to watch.
 
Should be interesting to find out what the findings are about racism at Princeton University.
 
Historical experience has shown that it isn’t enough to just introduce legal measures against racism to actually stop it occurring. I don’t mean on the individual level, either, but on a societal wide level.

Maybe the Trump administration should launch an investigation into why black Americans experience such disproportionate levels of poverty and crime?
 
Remember when our Ivy League universities used to be held in such high esteem, as bastions of the very best education the world had to offer?

Now, they’re virtue-signal laboratories. Complete laughingstocks.
 
Well, on the one hand I think the Education Department shouldn’t look the other way. On the other, I don’t think any agency under Trump is an honest broker, and in this case the Department is being used as a cudgel to beat Princeton over the head.

I think Princeton’s President didn’t totally think this through.
 
But I bet it is enough to stop this particular instance of virtue signaling.
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I don’t really think that “virtue signalling” is a useful concept, in that I’m not sure academics say these things to appear virtuous, but the way academic institutions relate to race is particularly bizarre. A US academic recently got in trouble for pretending to be black to advance her career:


There were a couple of other cases of people being “outed” as pretending to be non-white when they are actually white following this. Clearly in a lot of disciplines in these institutions it’s valuable to not be white, I suppose because it gives your academic work more credibility. “Lived experience” and other such things are worthwhile in these liberal disciplines.

I’m surprised this story didn’t get its own thread here, honestly.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
Maybe the Trump administration should launch an investigation into why black Americans experience such disproportionate levels of poverty and crime?
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This has been said over and over. Even President Obama spoke about this years ago when he was president. Has to do with fatherless homes, school drop outs and welfare. Although I do not think Obama mentioned welfare then.

Somehow the narrative has shifted. Now it is systemic racism. But this systemic racism does not make sense. Politics has taken on the racism bandwagon and made things worst. Not better. People today are starting to “hate” people of a different color, because the media keeps lying to us. Anger sells, and anger makes things worst.
 
Has to do with fatherless homes, school drop outs and welfare.
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This is hand-waving the issue as much as “systematic racism” is. Fatherless homes and school drop outs seem as much to be symptoms of poverty than the cause (though they can be both). Welfare I understand, though I never see right-wingers elaborate on this point. Most black Americans do work, so this doesn’t fully explain it.

In regards to unemployment though, under capitalism a large segment of the population essentially has to be permanently unemployed. Partly this will be an accidental feature in that production simply won’t be able to profitably absorb the whole population, but it also serves a purpose in that it helps to drive down wages and increase competition between workers trying to get jobs. There are other ways in which wages can be regulated using mass unemployment in America particularly. For example, America uses a lot of forced labour from its prisons, and black Americans are a good source of this forced labour, making up a very disproportionate amount of the prison population.

So I don’t think that black American poverty is accidental or a contingent thing. Capitalism relies on the existence of a reserve army of labour, and due to historical circumstances the black population have been made into the perfect reserve army in America.
 
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Regular_Atheist said:
This is hand-waving the issue as much as “systematic racism” is.
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This is a conversation to be had. As I have seen things play out, Republicans want to take people out of welfare, but that is not popular, and Democrats see poor people so inept to succeed that they throw more money at them.

I can be wrong in my short assessment, but it gives an idea as to the complexity of this issue.

I do not see systemic racism as a race related issue. I see a systemic problem that keeps poor people poor, no matter the color of your skin. I actually find offense at “Black people are poor” statements. That is a racist statement to make. What about Hispanics, Asians and Caucasians? Are they not poor. But people say, well it is the proportionate number. It is still racist.
 
I do not see systemic racism as a race related issue. I see a systemic problem that keeps poor people poor, no matter the color of your skin. I actually find offense at “Black people are poor” statements. That is a racist statement to make. What about Hispanics, Asians and Caucasians? Are they not poor. But people say, well it is the proportionate number. It is still racist.
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I agree that it would be racist to imply that all black Americans are poor, but there clearly is a correlation between race and poverty. Black Americans suffer from unemployment at double the rate of the population as a whole, and similar statistics apply to other racial minorities. There clearly is a correlation, you can’t just ignore it. Honestly I think conservatives generally do want to ignore it, while liberals want all black people to unite into some kind of “anti-racist” alliance across class lines, which is absurd.
 
PaulinVA said:
I think Princeton’s President didn’t totally think this through.
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But maybe he did. Maybe racism really is deeply embedded in Princeton, and he was just telling the truth about it. Does Princeton, for instance, admit unqualified minority persons to look virtuous, then cause them to fail or pursue worthless “soft” degrees for which there are no jobs, when those persons might do better going to a junior college and learning wastewater treatment or animal nutrition, for both of which jobs are plentiful.
 
Tolle_Lege said:
Remember when our Ivy League universities used to be held in such high esteem, as bastions of the very best education the world had to offer?

Now, they’re virtue-signal laboratories. Complete laughingstocks.
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Actually, according to their own president, they are not virtue signaling, they are racist.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
There clearly is a correlation, you can’t just ignore it.
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Yes there has to be something about it. But throwing racism as the cause, actually sends us backwards instead of forwards.

There are many prominent black people who play the race card all day long. This hurts the solutions because the leadership listens to them for being loud. Examples like. I did not get the job because I am black, or" they are racist" when what people are doing is disagreeing with them. This is race bating. And there are a lot of powerful race baiters.

Getting past those, we can have conversations. There is more of a social aspect and cultural aspect that keeps people in that state of poverty. I have family that are straight up poor, and they “Milk” the system. They always want more, and vote for the politicians who gives them more. I go to poor neighborhoods and people have better clothe than me, better cars than me, and their homes are top notch inside. This is not all of them. But there is a huge majority that just milks the system.

You see, the old saying. Give man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish, you feed him for life. What we have is the opposite. Give people free money and they will vote for you.

And when people like me bring it up. Others begin to cry that we are stereotyping the poor. Well, all that I have said, I have seen my self.

Hope it makes sense. Seems everyone here wants to talk to me right now, so I hope I typed something that makes sense.
 
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