So my BLM forecast was wrong. Support has dropped 2 points and opposition has risen 1. My confidence was only at 55%. In retrospect, I should have forecasted that the opposition would fall, rather than support would rise, but I still would have been wrong.
This study finds that "Conditional on parent income, the black-white income gap is driven entirely by large differences in wages and employment rates between black and white men; there are no such differences between black and white women."
Indeed, the following chart shows that for those living in poverty, who are disproportionately black, the gender wage gap goes the other way. Read more.
I've written about this several times but I still don't know what to make of it. If the racial wage gap is caused by past and/or present discrimination, why does it affect boys and not girls? Intersectionality suggested that racism + sexism should equal worse outcomes for black girls but that does not seem to be the case.
FiveThirtyEight made a really good case for ranked choice voting and proportional representation.
"This also echoes something social psychologists have found in running experiments on group behavior: Breaking people into three groups instead of two leads to less animosity. Something, in other words, appears to be unique about the binary condition, or in this case, the two-party system, that triggers the kind of good-vs-evil, dark-vs-light, us-against-them thinking that is particularly pronounced in the U.S.
Ultimately, the more binary the party system, the stronger the out-party hatred."
Will promotion of a non binary system lead to less animosity?
"in proportional democracies, multiple parties can still win seats in geographically unfriendly areas, with coalition governments including some balance of both urban and rural representation.
It’s not just the lack of a stark urban-rural divide that makes proportional democracies less polarized, though. There is also less of a clear strategic benefit to demonizing the opposition in an election that has more than two parties. For instance, in a multiparty election, taking down one party might not necessarily help you. After all, another party might benefit, since negative attacks typically have a backlash. And because parties can take stronger positions and appeal more directly to voters on policy, there’s less need to rally your supporters by talking about how terrible and dangerous the other party is. Moreover, in systems where parties form governing coalitions, demonizing a side you’ve recently been in a coalition with (or hope to be in the future) doesn’t ring quite as true."
In my post, "In Defense of Violating Social Norms," I gave examples of Jackie Robinson and Copernicus as people who violated a social norm that was unpopular and now is celebrated. I wish I had thought to include Harvey Milk, who was openly gay at a time when it had very little public support. Coming out violated a social norm that is now popular.
I wrote a post about how teaching a "patriotic" education might have been an attempt to create a myth about America since mythology is the only way to unite a large, diverse body. I suggested that the antiracist group was attempting to create a new myth that makes America the villain. I think I misinterpreted the motives of the antiracists. The goal isn't to villainize America, it's just an unintended consequence. The goal is to create a hero via a minority-as-victim narrative, since we have moved into a society that grants the highest status to the victim.
I recall seeing a progressive friend at a Black Lives Matter rally. He had a sign that spelled out his Mt. Rushmore: Tamir Rice, Emmit Till, Ruby Bridges, and Trayvon Martin. Not Frederick Douglas or Harriet Tubman. Not Barak Obama or Ta-Nahesi Coates. No, with the exception of Bridges, the people he chose as the most revered icons were all famous for being victims.
It reminded me that progressives live in the victimhood culture, while I'm stuck in the dignity culture. If the icon of honor culture is John Wayne, the tough guy who responds to insults with violence, and the icon of victimhood culture is Tamir Rice, the innocent minority oppressed by a White member of a violent institution, then the icon of dignity culture would be a stoic like, I dunno, Teddy Rosevelt.
I came across this quote about a blogger describing her writing "not as her permanent opinions, but instead as ‘a stream of thoughts, caught in the middle of updates." That is how I view this blog and why I keep up old takes I no longer hold. Case in point, I wrote a blog about why I hold to Truth and call out lies (part VI) even if they are moving in a direction I agree with. A few posts later I wrote a post about Persuasion Man and how it's sometimes better to just let people be wrong if they aren't hurting anyone.
I recently had a Truth vs. Justice conflict. JD Vance wrote a column about daycare and linked to a study that purportedly showed how daycare can be worse for some children than staying at home. I looked at the study, which was actually a Christain think tank's analysis of the study. Then I read the actual study and found that the supposed negative impacts of daycare disappear when you control for income.
So Vance is wrong, or at the very least dishonest. But I decided to let it go because his final conclusion is that we should not be subsidizing daycare, we should just give people cash and let them decide how to use it (eg spend it on daycare or use it as income so one parent can stay home). And I agree with his conclusion, so why waste time calling out his dishonesty when we could be building a coalition.
In my post "Balancing Theory and Action" I wrote about how I'm more theory than action because I'm so concerned with getting to the truth of the matter before deciding if acting on it is the right decision. I regret that I only now realize the perfect metaphor for what I was trying to describe would be the Ents (talking trees) from The Lord of the Rings. War is raging around them and they're still taking their slow-ass time to make a decision.
"It takes a long time to say anything at all in Entish and we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say."
In "Through the Lens of Salience" I wrote of Dr. King "His prescription (which later became more nuanced and antiracist) was a color-blind humanism ... We will reach equality when we see past color."
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