
In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values - jseliger
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/09/02/in-defense-of-amy-waxs-defense-of-bourgeois-values/
======
taylodl
If 'all cultures are not equal' is a false statement then we're stating 'all
cultures are equal' which I interpret as saying there is no metric by which we
can measure the 'goodness' or 'effectiveness' of a culture.

So let's accept the statement 'all cultures are equal' at face value: all
cultures are equal and therefore there exists no metric for measuring
'goodness' or 'effectiveness.' If C(now) captures my current cultural state
and C(future) captures my future cultural state and we're saying both of these
states are equal - because all cultures are equal - then where's the impetus
for any new legislation? Where's the drive for change?

In the United States our past culture included slavery, which we'll call
C(slavery). Are we really saying C(slavery) == C(now)? I bet most people would
claim C(now) > C(slavery) and if so should be suspect of any claim that all
cultures are equal.

This isn't a rigorous proof, but I do think it calls into question the notion
that all cultures are equal. But maybe that's not what the phrase actually
means: maybe what they really intend to say is we've yet to identify unbiased
metrics by which we can use to measure cultures and thus correlate them.
Presumably most people would bias the metric in such a manner that their
culture turned out to be the best. If that's what's actually meant by the
phrase 'all cultures are equal' (and I've never heard of anyone presenting it
that way) then it should be stated as such because then we can work toward
identifying those metrics so we can objectively improve our own culture.

~~~
ewzimm
You have a good point, but the next sentence clearly states the metric: "Or at
least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced
economy." It's not a statement about the artistic or spritual value of
cultures, only their ability to create economically productive individuals,
which is easy to measure.

~~~
ouid
>Which is easy to measure

I think this might be formally incomputable...

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, it seems to me intuitively obvious that cultures that value education
prepare children better for their economic future than cultures that don't
value education.

I may not be able to compute it. I may not even be able to measure it. But I
think that anyone who disagrees is making a far less reasonable claim than I
am making, and therefore has the burden of proof.

~~~
ouid
The problem with the computation is over what length of time you define
economic future.

------
exelius
I don't think there's inherently anything wrong with the original author's
thesis: not all cultures are created equal. But the author does make a
critical conservative assumption by implying that economic output is a proxy
for "value".

This is honestly the critical point: our culture defines how we value things.
Some cultures are not bothered by things like social welfare or socialist
policies because the base unit of society is considered to be the family
rather than the individual. Cultures like this may value things like "familial
harmony" more than "individual prosperity".

So it's obvious that someone like the original author -- who likely grew up in
this "bourgeois culture" \-- would attribute everything bad in society to the
decline in things she holds valuable. It's part of the definition.

As a counterpoint, American culture is much better for the individual than it
was 30-40 years ago for anyone who isn't a straight white male. Those people
have the viewpoint that things have improved. Bourgeois values aren't
meaningful to these people because they never really applied.

So really, we're back to where we already knew we were: globalization had
winners and losers. The losers were primarily located in the western middle
class (i.e. the bourgeois class).

~~~
stijnh
>Cultures like this may value things like "familial harmony" more than
"individual prosperity".

In the article, it was stated that there is a relationship here. Children are
much more likely to be successful in live if their parents were married.

>the author [..] would attribute everything bad in society to the decline in
things she holds valuable. It's part of the definition.

No, that's just a strawman.

~~~
exelius
It's the definition of "successful" that I'm arguing against. It presupposes a
lot about what the purpose of culture is/should be.

------
wsxcde
Let's not get bogged down by the all cultures are not equal strawman. That is
not at all the key point here. Amy Wax/OP's argument is problematic because it
conflates very different things using a subtly disingenuous argument. She
starts off by saying something completely uncontroversial: kids from stable
marriages do well in school. But she then plays on the audiences implicit
biases to imply -- but not explicitly articulate -- a completely
unsubstantiated racist claim: inner city blacks are incompatible with an
advanced free market economy.

This sleight of hand where the speaker/writer stops just short of an
explicitly racist implication that deliberately confuses causation and
correlation in the presence of multiple confounding factors is a standard
white supremacist parlor trick. That is why Amy Wax was roundly condemned. And
the OP's claim that saying anything negative about the (lack of) black
marriages is taboo in academia is quite blatantly false. Read for example this
gushing review ([https://nyti.ms/2kbBHRP](https://nyti.ms/2kbBHRP)) of Ralph
Richard Banks' book on the very same topic by Imani Perry.

~~~
leepowers
> .... inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market
> economy.

We must have read different articles because that's not what I saw - I think
you're so focused on detecting a dog whistle that you're missing the key point
being raised.

Values are race, gender, and class neutral. A value or system of values can be
adopted by a person regardless of their race, gender, class, sexual
orientation, etc. Values are the only way we can find common ground with
others, they are the only way we can be unified as a society. Imagine a white
supremacist. Certainly if his skin color was magically changed to black
overnight he would no longer be a white supremacist. But that's not a
possibility - a white supremacist cannot change his skin color. But he can
change his values.

We all agree that a stable family life is very advantageous for children. Most
often this stability is achieved via marriage. Examining it along this axis we
can then say that bourgeois, pro-family, pro-marriage values are _measurably
better_ than others.

We can also imagine an inner city black who has a choice between two value
systems - a bourgeois value system or a hedonistic "gangster" value system.
Which value system should he adopt? The bourgeois one, as this one will have
better outcomes for him, for his family, and for his community.

Now there's a possible danger here: that we assume that all inner-city blacks
have a gangster value system. That by dint of skin color and geographic
location a person must necessarily have a certain value system. So let's not
make that error.

Additionally, I would be very surprised if a majority of inner-city blacks
held to some sort of gangster value system. While I don't have the data or
surveys on hand, I would assume that most of this population already agrees
with and holds most of the pro-family bourgeois values.

If these bourgeois values are already widespread yet poor outcomes remain then
we can't pin these outcomes on a person lacking correct values. There's
another factor in play. It may be that bourgeois values are hostage to other
social, economic, and cultural factors. That they might yet bloom into
something positive but are missing other essential ingredients. Wax fails
insofar as she assigns too great a weight to the impact of bourgeois values.

~~~
wsxcde
"I think you're so focused on detecting a dog whistle that you're missing the
key point being raised."

There is no need to detect a dogwhistle. We have an explicit statement from
Wax ([http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/08/amy-wax-penn-law-
cultur...](http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/08/amy-wax-penn-law-cultural-
values)) where she says Anglo-Protestant cultural norms are superior. "I don't
shrink from the word, 'superior,'" she said, adding, "Everyone wants to come
to the countries that exemplify" these values. "Everyone wants to go to
countries ruled by white Europeans."

~~~
Veelox
An aside, I grew up in a small Midwest town. There was one black family in
town. One of the sons was in the grade above me in school and people would
joke that he wasn't really "black". This was because he had been raise in a
small Midwest town and had small-town values and habits. He and his family
were an accepted part of the community because they had the same values.

If a member of the Bloods had moved in town, they would very much have been
rejected because they would have been acting with very different values.
Further more, they probably would have starting acting in ways that were
contrary to cultural norms.

Is it racist to say that I think small-town Midwest values are superior to
inner-city black values?

Is it racist to say that I think that the lives of inner-city blacks would be
improved if they adopted small-town Midwest values?

What if I switch the statement and say that I think small-town Midwest values
could improve the lives of all poor people in the inner city. Is that "dog
whistling"?

~~~
kelnos
You're assuming that "inner-city black values" is a thing, and that black
people living in inner cities all have the same values. _That 's_ the part
that's racist.

~~~
Veelox
My sister taught in Memphis for 3 years. The kids she taught were of raise
significantly differently than we were raised.

I will grant you that not all black people living in the inner city have the
same values but I think it is factually incorrect to say that low income
African Americans living in the inner-city do not have a common culture and
common values.

My phrasing might be racist, if that is the case, can you point out how to
express the same idea in a more neutral way so that I don't make the same
mistake in the future?

~~~
kelnos
I'm not sure how to answer that, because I still don't believe what you're
saying is correct. Living and teaching in Memphis for three years certainly
gives one more perspective than _not_ doing so, but a school-district-sized
parcel of Memphis likely doesn't even speak for Memphis as a whole, let alone
all US cities.

I do expect that all low-income black people living in cities share some
values, but that can be applied to any group. I wouldn't claim that low-income
white people living in cities all have the same culture, either, despite the
fact that they almost certainly share at least some of the same values.

Look, I'm not trying to say you're an evil racist. You just have biases
(unconscious and conscious), just like all of us do. I just worry when people
try to label a group of people so narrowly and homogeneously when there's more
to it than that.

~~~
Veelox
Thank you for the kind reply, it was kinder than I deserved.

------
ABCLAW
>"Does that make Wax a white supremacist for saying that culture matters for
poverty-related outcomes, that not all cultures are equally good for escaping
poverty, and that the 1950s American “bourgeois cultural script” was
particularly good for that purpose?"

This is the core premise of the article, the conclusion, of course, being
'no'. Unfortunately, it does not accurately deal with the fairly clear subtext
being delivered by Ms. Wax.

> "In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian about the op-ed, Wax was
> quoted as saying that “Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white
> Europeans,” because, in the phrasing of the DP article’s author, “Anglo-
> Protestant cultural norms are superior.” … [they then affirm Wax’s right to
> express her opinions, then say:] We categorically reject Wax’s claims."

This, in particular, is striking. Why is 'being ruled by white Europeans' the
draw to migrants over, say, the relative wealth of the west in the aggregate?
France and Germany certainly offer troves of opportunity, but is Greece really
more of a destination for economic migrants than, say, Singapore? Would
India's quasi-british culture provide a counter-example when compared with
China's?

The lack of any of these comparative examinations leads us immediately to
question the argument provided. Ms. Wax doesn't even make case compelling to
show that it was the 1950s script itself, rather than other causes before she
jumps into discussing the superiority of the white european ruling
establishment. Could it be that America's economic rivals had just been bombed
to ash which led to an influx of capital to the country during an era where
unions had clout? Nah, its just the fact that it was ruled by white europeans
(/s).

Give me a break.

~~~
ameister14
I think the evidence of mass emigration from White European countries in the
recent past does enough to prove her point wrong.

~~~
djrogers
This is clearly an aside from TFA, but what are you talking about? Europe has
had mass _immigration_ recently, not emigration.

~~~
zhemao
Pretty sure GP means the mass emigration of Europeans to North America in the
19th and early 20th centuries.

~~~
sologoub
What does this have to do with the article? People (all people) fled violence,
hunger and death that came from a series of conflicts so dire that some
populations haven't fully recovered still.

Add to that incredible amounts of political violence at the dawn of the 20th
century, and you have the immigration flows. Similar thing happened when the
Soviet block collapsed and economic/political strife spilled out.

------
AdeptusAquinas
A lot of the people who hold these sort of viewpoints in the US would benefit
immensely from visiting and even living for a while in literally any other
western democracy, or even just the English-speaking ones.

I can't think of any country in the western world who has a social welfare
system on the same low level as the US - and yet we don't have such a 'decline
in social indicators'. Quite the opposite. And we are not perfect: the
upcoming NZ election is pointing out all the remaining flaws in our society,
along with futile attempts to fix them by empty-promising politicians. But no
one would ever say we are not vastly better off than the average US citizen,
so clearly 'social welfare' is not the problem.

Maybe having a society where a random illness or infection doesn't destroy you
economically - unless you are slaved to your employer with health insurance -
might help fix things? Or maybe endless foreign wars and an influx of PTSD
veterans along with an outflow of patriotically brain washed kids is not
healthy? Maybe a political system where a egotistical demagogue can hijack the
government is a flaw to correct?

~~~
darawk
It's hard to compare a country like NZ to the US in a fair and meaningful way.
NZ is a small, ethnically (and therefore more importantly culturally)
homogenous country. Now, it's not completely homogenous, but it is _much_ more
so than the US.

Being a democracy, the policies of the country are inseparable from its
culture and demographics. You say universal healthcare might stem the tide of
cultural breakdown. But we cannot be sure the causality doesn't flow the other
way. Unfortunately, it's likely a feedback loop. We have bad policy in part
due to the cultural and social decline the author describes, and we have
cultural and social decline in part due to bad policy. Simply proposing policy
changes neglects the complex interdependencies of these things, and is why
national demographics are so important in a democracy.

Part of the reason NZ is able to cohere around its policy more than the US is
because everyone in NZ (to a greater degree than in the US) shares the same
values and cultural identity. This is why you see similarly idyllic societies
in the Scandinavian countries. High social cohesion due to shared cultural and
ethnic identity. Same in Korea and Japan - although Japanese culture is a good
example of some of the downsides of ethnic and cultural homogeneity as well.

~~~
manofstick
>> NZ is a small, ethnically (and therefore more importantly culturally)
homogenous country

Not according to the CIA Factbook it isn't:

NZ: European 71.2%, Maori 14.1%, Asian 11.3%, Pacific peoples 7.6%, Middle
Eastern, Latin American, African 1.1%, other 1.6%, not stated or unidentified
5.4%

USA: white 72.4%, black 12.6%, Asian 4.8%, Amerindian and Alaska native 0.9%,
native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2%, other 6.2%, two or more races
2.9% (2010 estimate)

I would say almost quite comparable.

~~~
dmurray
Moreover, the Maori population was just as downtrodden and oppressed as the
blacks of the USA, 50 or 100 years ago, and is still on the whole poorer and
less educated than the white majority.

~~~
gertef
Well sure, but they were natives that weren't part of the "culture" one
pictures when one imagines an average New Zeala---ohhhhh

------
random023987
I think underlying many of these discussions is a fundamental question:

"If not all cultures and values are equally successful in modern society,
should we (as a society) encourage people to adopt a more successful values,
or should we adapt society to make all cultures and values equally
successful?"

(edit: obviously I have biases, but I tried to phase this in a way that masked
my biases. If there's a more neutral way to phrase this, I'd be interested in
hearing it)

~~~
marcoperaza
The only way to accomplish the latter is to pull the excellent down to the
level of mediocrity or worse. How do you propose to raise up a culture that
doesn't value creativity and hard work, for example, to the level of success
of one that does. Culture is much more than what food you eat and music you
listen to.

This reminds me of a famous Tocqueville quote:

 _There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all
men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the
lesser to the rank of the greater._

 _But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality which
impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level and which
reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom._

~~~
chickenfries
Not attributing this to you, but you could deploy your argument against
abolishing slavery.

> How do you propose to raise up a culture that doesn't value diligent hard
> work

Which culture? Don't be abstract. Name what culture you think doesn't value
hard work and I will and we'll see if I can't find a counterexample.

~~~
marcoperaza
I prefer positive examples. It's no secret that the Jewish people have done so
phenomenally well, despite two millennia of persecution, because of their
strong values of hard work, family, and creativity.

~~~
chickenfries
> It's no secret that the Jewish people have done so phenomenally well,
> despite two millennia of persecution, because of their strong values of hard
> work, family, and creativity

This is a commonly held hypothesis but the question of "why are the Jews
successful despite being outsiders" is complicated and not in any way settled.
What I know of it comes from reading some of "the origins of totalitarianism"
Hannah Arendt. "The Jews are really hardworking" is a lazy and easy
explanation for the question of how some Jews have flourished despite
persecution.

It is not simply the case that culture is the proximal cause of (some) Jewish
wealth than the particular material conditions of certain Jews throughout
history that has lead to the affluence of and importance of some, mostly
European Jews. For example, many Jews came to have a privileged position in
European courts because of the rise of protestantism (a hardworking culture
that doesn't value credit, something that Wax would probably say is "bad").
You're ignoring politics and history when you just chalk everything up to
culture. It's survivorship bias at it's finest.

Edit: I butchered a sentence in the middle of my comment. Added a line break.

------
danfolkes
Here is a follow-up article written by one of the 33 members of the University
of Pennsylvania Law School faculty to sign a letter criticizing Amy Wax:

Don’t Care if Amy Wax Is Politically Incorrect; I Do Care that She’s
Empirically Incorrect

[https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/09/03/i-dont-care-if-
amy-w...](https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/09/03/i-dont-care-if-amy-wax-is-
politically-incorrect-i-do-care-that-shes-empirically-incorrect/)

~~~
coldtea
What hypocrisy.

All they care is that she is "Politically Incorrect" \-- they could not care
less about the facts.

Not to mention that when someone is wrong about facts you correct them, you
don't fire them or ask for their condemnation. Professors are not supposed to
be correct, just to probe for what's correct. In fact they should be
encouraged to be boldly inquisitive and incorrect in that pursuit, and use
dialog to sort out the ultimate answer.

And of course even "incorrect" ideas can be considered correct in an era -- in
the 19th and up to the mid-20th century there were all kinds of facts and
studies showing how some races were genetically inferior available to racists
(that is: almost everybody).

Now we laugh at them, but how many similar (or even in the reverse direction)
BS we take as fact because social "scientists" just put things under the rug
and only give facts and statistics that are compatible with current cultural
norms?

~~~
gertef
Professors are expected to have some self-awareness and avoid stating their
opinions as facts.

~~~
coldtea
Professors are supposed to present the conclusions they've come to from their
studies and work with no "self-awareness" filtering to avoid hurting anybody's
feelings. Doubly so in an article, which is not a scholarly paper, and is
meant to represent a broader picture with broader strokes.

And being a professor is not about only presenting raw factoids. It's also
about drawing conclusions from the data and pointing to the bigger picture the
way you interpret them -- a bigger picture that no data are going to give you
by themselves alone. Informing the public opinion is not about being a
glorified statistician.

Of course nobody would have batted an eye if a processor had done exactly the
same kind of "stating of facts" for opinions they like (and that goes for
"righteous indignation" both sides, left and right).

------
jxramos
I think this is a key motivational paragraph from the article...

"The students are certainly correct that claims by a professor about the value
of bourgeois culture could be misused by racists to say that one race is
inherently superior to another. But does that make any discussion of cultural
differences taboo? Does that make Wax a white supremacist for saying that
culture matters for poverty-related outcomes, that not all cultures are
equally good for escaping poverty, and that the 1950s American “bourgeois
cultural script” was particularly good for that purpose? No, and here’s why."

------
dibujante
Large, pluralistic societies create a new kind of natural-selective
environment that pushes cultures towards greater fitness in their niches or
rewards cultures that expand into or create new niches. You definitely can't
expect all cultures to behave the same way and exist in all niches. See e.g.
the enormous propensity of Mormons towards dentistry - "be a dentist" is not a
valid universal cultural attribute, but can be adaptive for a small group.
There are many routes to success.

------
notthegov
All cultures are not equal and few cultures are uniformally isolated.
Civilization is a byproduct of cultures interacting and blending.

And human happiness and quality of life is most supported by improving our
diets, our education, our expressions and our psychologies.

Enlightenment ideals built the modern world, not relativism. We should be
criticizing all cultures and our everyday actions.

"Culture" in some ways is just a random repetition of behavior and ideas. It
may conform to environmental pressures but there is nothing intrinsic about it
in regards to any ethnicity or race. All humans are lazy, hardworking,
intellectual, superficial, selfish and selfless. The difference is which ideas
push us in the right directions of our better nature.

------
Veelox
I have not read Amy Wax's original letter but my understand is that she made
the claim that people in the lower social-economic classes have been rejecting
the "Bourgeois" culture. She then went on to say that this rejection has and
will have negative affects on those groups.

Would someone be willing to point out how that claim is offensive? Or is it
how she made the claim that is the issue?

~~~
wmf
Some people translate "bourgeois culture" as "white culture" and thus
interpret her conclusion as "if you don't act white your kids will be doomed".
That's offensive to people who believe that diversity and multiculturalism are
superior.

~~~
Veelox
Ahh, your phrasing of "if you don't act white your kids will be doomed" puts
it in a way I can understand it, thank you.

Part of me feels like the idea "white culture is harmful" is harmful. I think
it would be much better if we could split it along economic lines "lower vs
upper class" instead of racial lines "black vs white" that would help us draw
parallels between the plight of rural Tennessee with inner city Detroit. But
it feels like if I started talking about class people would accuse me of using
class as a mask for being racist. Which just so happens to be the case here.

------
ianbicking
From the article:

"Of course we are always free to dispute each other; Wax’s colleagues could
certainly have written essays or a collective essay debating her claims and
pointing out flaws in her reasoning, but when is it morally and professionally
appropriate to issue a collective public condemnation of a colleague?

"I think such collective actions are only appropriate when colleagues have
clearly and flagrantly violated their professional duties. I mean things like
data fabrication or taking bribes to produce dishonest academic papers desired
by a trade association."

Well, that's just your opinion man.

This is one of the key claims of this article, and it has no support. Why is a
collective response inappropriate here? Why should those students and
professors who disagree with Amy Wax not band together intellectually and
through collective speech? Why is a collective response only appropriate when
someone is clearly and vagrantly violating their professional duties? The
author is making a very extreme assertion, but does it as an aside.

~~~
stinkytaco
> Why is a collective response inappropriate here?

I think that the default should be to allow a discourse that is wide ranging
and open, and to only censure in cases that are truly extreme (such as
incitement). Institutional censure carries with it a huge weight, and
potentially the ability to silence opinions. Though I strongly disagree with
this person, I must also try to imagine a situation where the roles are
reversed, where I am in the minority and having my opinion censured. I believe
that to live in a society that is truly free, it guarantees you will come into
contact with opinions and beliefs that you find repugnant. It troubles me that
the left has so aggressively mobilized against speech, not just disagreeing
with it, but demanding that it be institutionally silenced.

That said, this school (being a private institution) and these professors
(being individuals entitled to their own opinions) are also within their
rights. Free speech does not free you from criticism for your views.

------
Cacti
"if understood within their sociocultural context" is akin to saying "if you
agree with all of _our_ assumptions". It's a bullshit, vapid argument no
matter how you use it, and the students should be embarrassed to be using such
childish arguments. But of course they're aren't, because they're children.

------
CptBland
Looking at the Heterodox Academy's blog history, they seem mostly to be
interested in advocating for a conservative viewpoint than anything else. To
say that they're trying to 'break orthodoxy' comes across as ridiculous when
they're based in a country where the current president and congress are the
most right wing they've been for decades. The whole narrative of 'free speech'
being under attack in academia has just been from right-wingers who really
want nothing like free speech - they just want the ability to be racist and
bigoted with impunity while shutting down speech in favour of equality.

------
anigbrowl
_Of course we are always free to dispute each other; Wax’s colleagues could
certainly have written essays or a collective essay debating her claims and
pointing out flaws in her reasoning, but when is it morally and professionally
appropriate to issue a collective public condemnation of a colleague?_

Whenever the signatories of such a communication agree upon the idea, surely?
Political agency only exists to the degree that one is willing to exercise it.

I find it perplexing that conservatives on the one hand deplore restrictions
on speech that seem to stifle the expression of conservative ideas and so
forth, but then complain about improper forms of speech when they find their
ideas rejected. If it's OK for Wax to co-author a lightweight op-ed that
expresses support for bourgeois (capitalist) moral values and breezily
dismisses the downsides thereof, why should her critics limit themselves to
scholarly analysis but abstain from making moral arguments of their own? Why
is it OK for Wax to claim that "things are likely to get worse for us all"
thanks to "the academics, media, and Hollywood", but not OK for Wax's
colleagues to say they consider her to be giant hypocrite?

 _I have gone to great lengths to show that Wax’s central claim about culture
is probably correct because the necessity of protecting dissent is clearest
when the dissenter brings an important and neglected truth into the
conversation._

In reality, Haidt takes one aspect of Wax's claim (about the value of
marriage), shows some bipartisan/broad-spectrum support for the idea that
promoting marriage can have social benefits, and treats this like an empirical
result. I don't think that comes anywhere close to validating Wax's broad
claim that the hegemonic post-war culture is the best cure for today's social
ills, or that its shortcomings are incidental rather than inherent, or that
its desiderata of modest obedience and productivity are the acme of human
experience.

It's fine with me if he agrees with Wax, but this doesn't give him the right
to dictate the terms of discourse. If Wax can write a "provocative essay" why
must her critics restrict themselves to the language of theoretical discourse?

~~~
WillPostForFood
You are a little disingenuous - no one would be complaining if someone on the
law faculty wrote a counter opinion piece. What's happening isn't an
expression of disagreement, which would be fine, but an attack on Wax to try
and suppress her POV. Her critics made no "moral argument" they simply condemn
her.

[http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/08/open-letter-penn-law-
fa...](http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/08/open-letter-penn-law-faculty)

~~~
anigbrowl
First, I am absolutely sure that someone would complain no matter what the
response.

Second, the letter which you linked to is very clearly an expression of
disagreement. In what way is it 'an attack on Wax to try and suppress her
POV'? It explicitly acknowledges both her civil rights and the security of her
academic tenure, and explicitly rejects her claims rather than demanding she
be fired or refrain from public expression of her views.

Third, they absolutely make a moral argument: _We believe the ideal of equal
opportunity to succeed in education is best achieved by a combination of
academic freedom, open debate and a commitment by all participants to respect
one another without bias or stereotype. To our students, we say the following:
If your experience at Penn Law falls substantially short of this ideal,
something has gone wrong, and we want to know about it._

I still fail to see why people who disagree with someone on a political issue
should be required to express their disagreement in a particular form. It
looks to me as if these academics consider Wax's arguments so specious as to
be unworthy of discussion. Why should they feel obliged to respond in a forum
or format of their opponents' choosing?

------
jancsika
> All cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing
> people to be productive in an advanced economy.

So for which statement is the author providing evidence? The first or the
second?

They are two completely different statements.

~~~
johnminter
Decisions and choices have consequences. These are not made in a philosophical
vacuum, they are made according to the values the individual holds - which are
largely influenced by the culture from which the individual comes. Indeed the
term "culture" arises from the Latin "cultus" which is a religion or value
structure.

A culture that passes on default values of industriousness and a high regard
for education will generate individuals that are more motivated and perhaps
more resilient than one who does not. A culture that values consistent
parenting of children will likely pass on more deliberate traits than a
culture that does not value active parenting.

One should not be surprised to see different distributions of outcomes from
different groups who hold different values. One of the advantages of living in
a multicultural society where people live together peacefully and actually
listen to one another is that we can learn which choices lead to the best
outcomes and encourage our children to emulate those and to avoid choices that
lead to dependency and addiction.

The Brookings Institute can hardly be considered a right wing think tank and
yet they published a well reasoned piece on the behavioral aspects of poverty
[1].

[1] [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-behavioral-aspects-
of...](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-behavioral-aspects-of-poverty/)

------
drawkbox
From the original article:

 _These basic cultural precepts reigned from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s.
They could be followed by people of all backgrounds and abilities, especially
when backed up by almost universal endorsement. Adherence was a major
contributor to the productivity, educational gains, and social coherence of
that period._ [1]

People attach happy ideas during this time because during good economic times,
things just work on all cylinders. However, two major things were happening
that actually led to the advancements and fruitfulness of the time mentioned
from 40s to mid 60s.

1) World War II happened and ended, everyone was obliterated but the US. This
led to massive gains in all areas of wealth and industry. It was a war that
took us to a superpower, and at the time, everyone owed us money. Good
economic times lead to more ability to have kids and a solid consumer base to
support middle class housing/restaurants/retail etc.

2) Women started entering the workforce and diversity started to happen
opening up the workforce that was previously built for 1 person to provide for
multiple people and salary needed for that, to suddenly having sometimes 2 in
the house that brought in double the money needed for a time.

You could say a move away from family focused housing and middle class
retail/restaurants is a problem, but that is more to do with wage stagnation
and the internet/productivity. People can't afford to get married and have
multiple kids as they could before, wages have not truly kept up and been
steadily dropping since the 70s as well as share of productivity/GDP gains[2].

People have more kids in good economic times and less kids in bad economic
times[3][4], same reason there was a baby boom in the time they mentioned from
the 40s to the mid 60s. The 90s are similar in terms of good economic times,
people had more kids, people bought more homes, more products, people were
getting wage increases, new technologies/innovation that gains advantage
worldwide etc.

In the end it is economics and timing, whatever is popular during those times
people will attribute it to their own confirmation biases.

[1] [http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/paying-
the-p...](http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/paying-the-price-
for-breakdown-of-the-countrys-bourgeois-culture-20170809.html)

[2]
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=2Xa](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=2Xa)

[3] [http://www.prb.org/publications/datasheets/2012/world-
popula...](http://www.prb.org/publications/datasheets/2012/world-population-
data-sheet/fact-sheet-us-population.aspx)

[4] [http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/10/12/in-a-down-
economy-...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/10/12/in-a-down-economy-
fewer-births/)

~~~
zhemao
Thank you. I wondered if anyone else could see why the original essay is so
ridiculous. It assumes that bad culture is the cause of poverty, and not the
other way around. It's pretty obvious that the decision to get married and
stay married is affected by material conditions. One consequence of the
decline in manufacturing jobs is that less-educated men have pretty low
employment rates. Since they can't hold down a stable job and be the primary
breadwinner (as "bourgeois culture" expects them to), there's little reason
for them to stick around (or for their partners to keep them around). This
also explains the data Haidt and his group turned up on the correlation
between parents' marriage status and children's future success. The couples
that managed to stay together were the ones that had a better
financial/employment situation. There's no reason to believe that a deadbeat
dad would improve his child's future competitiveness that much just by staying
married to the child's mother.

There's also the fact that single moms on welfare would lose their benefits if
they married the father of their children. As one astute internet commenter on
a similar article remarked, "Only an ivory tower egghead could think that poor
people don't make rational economic decisions."

------
padseeker
"Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-
class whites; the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks; the
anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants"

Already you lost me. There are plenty of single parents out of wedlock
children in very white states like West Virginia, Kentucky, etc. How is rap
culture or black people responsible for the actions of white people in these
areas?

I live in a big city, my kids go to a bilingual school. Every parent there,
hispanic or not, want their kids to do well, to get a good education, go to
college, succeed professionally and personally. All of them have absorbed some
American attitudes to one degree or another. The few parents who don't speak
english well want their children to do so. None of these people are against
assimilating.

There may be legitimate concerns of substance here, about having children out
of wedlock, parents who are stretched thin. But this paragraph right here
reads like thinly veiled racism targeted towards blacks and hispanics. All the
sociological rhetoric does not hide this at all.

~~~
coldtea
> _Already you lost me. There are plenty of single parents out of wedlock
> children in very white states like West Virginia, Kentucky, etc. How is rap
> culture or black people responsible for the actions of white people in these
> areas?_

Where did the author said it is?

They said there are "single-parent, antisocial habits" that are prevalent
among some working-class whites" AND an "anti-“acting white” rap culture of
inner-city blacks" AND " anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some
Hispanic immigrants".

Three kinds of issues -- not an issue and two explanations for it.

> _None of these people are against assimilating._

Hence the phrasing "anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among SOME" \-- the
author did not write "prevalent in ALL".

~~~
padseeker
Amy Wax said it, quoted by the author. It's in the article. 7th paragraph
down.

~~~
WillPostForFood
You are misreading it, she is listing three distinct groups, note the
semicolons in the list. She is in no way saying one group is affecting the
other, just that they all share non-bourgeois values.

Regarding being "not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment." she
adds: _Nor are:

the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class
whites;

the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks;

the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants_

