
The Liberal Blind Spot - nkzednan
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/the-liberal-blind-spot.html
======
gozur88
That's because they're not actually liberals. They're leftists. Would it be
too much to ask that we use the word "liberal" the way the rest of the
Anglosphere does?

~~~
hnamazon123
To be fair, this is mostly goalpost moving. Leftism is now mainstream
liberalism.

I used to identify as a liberal but now mainstream liberalism (leftism) is
against basic things like freedom of speech.

Feels weird to identify as a 'conservative' since I grew up associating very
negative things with that term but there it is.

~~~
DigitalJack
The political terms left, right, conservative, liberal, have a different and
often opposite meaning in the US than most of the rest of the world.

------
ebola1717
This is a messy and poorly constructed argument. In the abstract, sure the
author's not wrong that the academy lacks conservative voices, but what
concretely are we missing? In economics, the contributions of conservative
thinkers is clear. What's the equivalent for conservative voices in sociology?
That in fact, blacks are poor because of their culture and not ongoing
structural racism? I honestly feel that any worthwhile conservative arguments
are being made by center-left thinkers.

This particularly is incredibly disingenuous:

> I suspect many liberals disdain evangelicals in part because they don’t have
> any evangelical friends.

The comparison to Muslims is an awful false equivalence. First of all,
discriminating against someone because they hold intolerant beliefs is
categorically different from discriminating against someone based on their
religion (and let's be honest, given that Sikhs and other South Asians get
targeted, it's really a racial issue). Second, he's postulating this without
any evidence. Lots of academics grew up in the South or the Midwest, and a lot
of great universities are in those areas as well. Thirdly, even if someone
doesn't know an evangelical personally, they are exposed to Jerry Falwell, the
Bush administration, Fox News, Kim Davis, etc.

If Kristoff wants to make the claim that individual conservatives shouldn't be
judged based on the plethora of conservative thought leaders that represent
them in the media, he needs to provide an actual argument for that
distinction. If he doesn't want racists, homophobes, misogynists, etc. in the
academy, he needs to provide examples of the useful discourse we are missing
out on.

Frankly, the center-left vs hard-left feel like the debates we should be
having as a society, e.g. how do we reconcile the racist history of our most
esteemed institutions with our modern values, or how do we deal with the
consequences of tech rapidly eliminating the livelihoods of millions of
working class citizens.

~~~
jdminhbg
> Thirdly, even if someone doesn't know an evangelical personally, they are
> exposed to Jerry Falwell, the Bush administration, Fox News, Kim Davis, etc.

Even if someone doesn't know a Muslim personally, they are exposed to Osama
Bin Laden, the Saudi regime, ISIS, Hezbollah, etc.

~~~
ebola1717
Which is why I said that if this is the argument Kristoff wanted to make, he
has to make that argument. The equivalence you're trying to draw is a very
poor parallel, and needs a lot of work to turn into a coherent argument:

1\. The elected officials and thought leaders of a group are much more
representative of a group's beliefs than rogue actors.

2\. The point you're trying to make is that evangelicals may not be a
monolith. That's a completely fair argument abstractly - but what does it mean
concretely? After all, Evangelical is much more specific than Muslim.
Specifically, in the context of the last 30 years of American politics,
Evangelicals have been a socially conservative movement, often standing in the
way of gay rights & women's rights. "Muslim" is just a much broader term, and
doesn't carry that political weight.

If your argument is that there are evangelicals outside of that movement that
aren't bigoted that deserve to be heard, well you have to explain what that
group looks like. Also, you have to change your thesis to "We need more
moderately right leaning people in the academy" which as you can see is a much
less bold and interesting claim, and is one about goal posts, not the
intolerance of the left.

3\. Internal politics are more reliable. The average American can understand
more of the nuance of what's happening in their country because it's reported
& discussed more, and competing sources are more readily available.

4\. Let's be honest, it's not like the academy is swimming in Muslims either.

Kristoff agrees that blatant homophobes, racists, misogynists, etc don't
deserve to be hired.

------
Afforess
When this topic comes up, I feel "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The
Outgroup"[1] should be mandatory reading. Tolerance isn't about allowing
dissent or including marginal groups. Tolerance is difficult, unpleasant, and
uncomfortable. If you don't feel those particular traits for any given groups
opinions, then it isn't tolerance.

[1] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-
anything...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-
except-the-outgroup/)

~~~
curiousgal
Exactly.

Personal anecdote; I am not a religious person but I live in a Muslim country.
A Facebook friend who is an atheist keeps making obnoxious posts about
religion; calling religious people stupid and atheists intellectuals etc. I
was really tempted to honestly tell him to zip it as all of this was
cringeworthy and served only to annoy people. But as I was typing a long reply
I realized that this is what "tolerance" or more likely "freedom if speech" is
all about; it's not "believing people can say what they want" as much as "not
pointing out how annoyed they make you feel".

~~~
nkurz
Maybe, although I'm not sure it's clear cut in your case. I don't think that
tolerance necessariy requires pretending to agree. Sometimes (although not
necessarily in this case) an uncomfortable private conversation is more
appropriate. There's a large difference between pointing out to someone one-
on-one that you don't agree, versus pointing out to "the group", who you
expect to agree with you, that the individual is in the wrong.

------
ender7
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

------
jrapdx3
It's hard not to agree with the premise of the article, basically that we
should live by the values we assert. Or as often expressed on HN, we should
"eat our own dogfood".

I guess it's the familiar problem of awareness of one's own biases, and the
classic example of the kind of "insight" that few people achieve. Acceptance
of others feedback and interpretations of reality is usually essential for
such self-development. Likely the author believes the essential components are
missing: both the diversity of world views and the willingness to hear them.

Reminds me of HN discussions about diversity in tech industries, while widely
divergent points of view are expressed, moderators caution us to express
experiences and opinions in a civil manner. That can't be too much to ask.

Lucky for me I've not had to deal with academia in a long time. Remarks like
those in the article give the impression that there is increasing bias and
intolerance. Of course that couldn't be uniformly true among institutions and
disciplines, but to the extent it exists it would be pernicious.

To those on HN who have current first-hand experience in academic
environments, I'd love to ask how much the situation resembles that noted in
the article.

Edit: keeping a good thought the thread's subject can be discussed calmly,
better to be able to learn something from it.

------
guelo
Conservatives love liberals and are super inclusive of them. This is only a
problem on the liberal side.

------
kaid
It's quite ok if people have prejudices, and even discrimination, or any other
thoughts that are controversial, as long as their actions aren't harming
another person's property.

In my personal observation, the problem of liberalism, is it is trying to
enforce a ideology/doctrine in a larger scale, through law making process or
extensive propaganda, etc.

~~~
sangnoir
> In my personal observation, the problem of liberalism, is it is trying to
> enforce a ideology/doctrine in a larger scale, through law making process

This 'problem' sounds like a near-perfect description of the civil rights
movement in the 60's.

I'm not saying it's the correct tactic for all social ills (as seen by
liberals), but it has its use and it has worked before. I fear the problem is
that the only tool they have is a hammer.

~~~
kaid
Yes, it worked initially, as those oppressed groups did get some degree of
equal opportunities. But today, as it evolved in such a political way, the
subtext has changed, different groups of people using it not to gain equal
rights, but equal privileges, or rather, supremacy against other groups.

------
esolyt
It is not a blind spot. Intolerance against intolerance is intentional.

> Surveys show that Americans have negative views of Muslims when they don’t
> know any; I suspect many liberals disdain evangelicals in part because they
> don’t have any evangelical friends.

If a liberal perceives Muslims and evangelicals to be intolerant (or at least
less tolerant than themselves), their intolerance against them will be
intentional and it may serve a purpose.

~~~
mikevm
This is beyond just intolerance of the intolerant, it's a sick worldview. I'd
like to repost here a Reddit comment which I found to perfectly capture what
is wrong with the so-called regressive left:

Social Justice Warriors are also referred to as the regressive left because
they are regressing backward from liberal society to defining people based
solely on their identifying group, be it race, gender, sexual orientation,
ethnicity, or religious belief. They simply rationalize their bigotry
differently; the bigoted right separates people by these lines but think that
everybody should conform to the majority/dominant group. The
bigoted/regressive left also treats people on the same lines but think that
those in the dominant group should give special privileges to those in the
minority in order to equalize.

This is also an important distinction. It isn't that they are just overzealous
on equality; I don't think that's necessarily possible. They have redefined
equality. For most of us, it has always meant equal treatment of all
individuals by setting a single set of rules and judgment based on individual
merit. The liberal ideal is to not even care what color, gender, religion,
sexual orientation, or other personal identifier a person has, unless it is
directly relevant. Thus which group you fall in is generally irrelevant. That
you happen to be born with a certain skin color then gives you no personal
benefit or hindrance.

The regressive left defines equality as a bulk statistic over the whole of an
identifying group. Which group you fall in then is critical to how they treat
you, the same as far-right bigots. (They only differ on how they treat each
group.) If you are white and male, for example, then you are seen as
privileged because, statistically, white males have more wealth and power.
That you may individually have no power or wealth is irrelevant to them, as if
there is some big party where all the white males all go to divvy up the loot
and push a single common agreed interest. By this reasoning, a homeless
American white male murdered by police (like Mark Kelley) is privileged; a
billionaire African black woman (like Isabel Dos Santos) is not. To these
regressives, the idea of not caring what somebody's personal identity is (such
as race) is abhorrent. They don't see their blatant racism or bigotry, largely
because they think it's ok as long as they're rooting for the group that is
statistically an underdog (even if the individual isn't).

When challenged on this whole bizarre re-definition of equality, many will
dismiss it as "reverse racism", meaning it's only racist against the dominant
group, so who cares. (Again, regardless to the actual circumstances of the
individuals.) But this is, of course, mistaken. They are stereotyping all
people based on the groups they fall in, and dictating which groups are
allowed to do what, across all groups, and to the detriment of many in those
groups. Muslims are seen as oppressed in the West, so the regressive left
oddly supports the conservative Muslims to oppressive other Muslims, like
separating men and women, because that oppression is just part of their
culture, which is an underdog in the West. So if you are a liberal Muslim
woman seeking equal rights and treatment for Muslim women, the regressive left
will actually fight against you, even trying to get you banned from speaking
at a university. It's this perverse redefinition of equality based on bulk
statistics that leads to such bigoted reviews that the regressive left ends up
with many of the same policies as the bigoted right. A fundamentalist
religious group on the right in California sued (and failed) to have yoga
removed from schools as a violation of their religion. A regressive left
student union successfully stopped yoga classes at the University of Ottawa
under the guise it is "cultural appropriation".

At Missou, the activists demanded blacks-only housing so that they could
explore their culture. Racists on the right also want blacks in their own
housing. In the UK, student unions have supported the right of Muslims to
separate men and women in lectures as long as they are the same distance from
the front. "Separate but equal" was also a policy of the American racist
right. The regressive left, led by Anita Sarkeesian, wants to stop sex and
violence and scantily clad women in video games. The religious right, led by
Jack Thompson, have long fought for this as well.

Same policies over and over. Just different rationalizations. They aren't just
an extreme version of the left; they've abandoned liberalism for a form of
underdog authoritarianism via stereotypes.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
> If you are white and male, for example, then you are seen as privileged
> because, statistically, white males have more wealth and power.

No. If you are white and male, you've experienced more _invisible_ privilege
than you realize. [1] It's not about wealth, but it is about power -- power
over others.

Questions:

* White man says that black woman stole something from him. What will happen?

* White woman says that black man stole something from her. What will happen?

* Black man says that white woman stole something from him. What will happen?

* Black woman says that white man stole something from her. What will happen?

What were your honest, visceral, reactions to each of these statements? Were
they all _completely_ symmetric? I can tell you I've been working on balancing
my own feelings about various races, and I can't claim my own thoughts were
completely unbiased. And I have been trying for years to purge the bias.

There's an _awesome_ video of three college-student-aged in a park. All three
are _obviously_ trying to steal a bike. They picked three actors and dressed
them roughly equivalently. [2] Watch the video if you want to be shocked, or
just read my summary if you can't be bothered:

* White Actor: Everyone ignores him or asks him what he's doing. He gives dodgy answers, but people wish him "good luck" or leave the scene. Some say they might have called the police later (when confronted by the camera crew), but they clearly didn't seem to be concerned.

* Black Actor: Within seconds, people start to confront him. They talk about calling the police. They _CALL_ the police, right then and there. Many are confrontational.

* White Female Actor: People walk by, mostly ignoring her; one guy _offers to help her steal the bike._

That last one had me dying of laughter. If _that_ video doesn't convey a
direct, _obvious_ example of white privilege, then I'm perfectly confident in
saying you're the one who's got the closed mind -- or a political agenda to
promote. That video is one _indisputable_ example of white privilege.

Watch that video and tell me, with a straight face, that 90% of US prison
populations are black men because they commit more crimes, and not because
they simply are arrested more often. For drug crimes especially; I knew tons
of kids who did drugs when I was in (my 99% white) high school, and none were
harassed by cops, much less arrested. One guy's brother got arrested
eventually for dealing [EDIT: Just remembered, he was or at least looked
hispanic!]. Would that have been true if it were 99% black? I bet everyone I
knew would have a story about being harassed.

> When challenged on this whole bizarre re-definition of equality, many will
> dismiss it as "reverse racism", meaning it's only racist against the
> dominant group, so who cares.

The dominant group _doesn 't need help._ Some other groups do. Helping groups
isn't the same as discrimination.

Girls do as well as boys in engineering and programming, and yet _many_
cultural pressures push them away -- not least of which are the attitudes of
boys (and other girls) toward girls who seem to "geeky." Is it bad to have
programs that encourage girls to follow STEM career paths?

But if you fire a white person to maintain a quota of black employees, _that_
is reverse racism, and it's illegal. I know because I'm friends with a
(liberal) attorney who successfully won a multimillion dollar reverse-
discrimination lawsuit against an employer who fired white employees to meet a
minority quota. (IIRC--not sure if I have the details precisely correct.)

> At Missou, the activists demanded blacks-only housing so that they could
> explore their culture.

Were the activists black? Given the video above, and the way that blacks can
be treated in the US, could you really _blame_ them for wanting to live in a
safe place, where someone isn't going to accuse them of ... whatever?

> So if you are a liberal Muslim woman seeking equal rights and treatment for
> Muslim women, the regressive left will actually fight against you, even
> trying to get you banned from speaking at a university.

This topic is far more complex than you're making it out to be -- and I can't
claim to know all of the details. Among other things, there are people (and
countries: France) that want to _prevent_ Muslim women from wearing
traditional Muslim garb in the name of "liberating" them. I would say that any
government that is enforcing a particular behavior (that doesn't harm others!)
has to provide the burden of proof that their actions are just. And forcing
women to take off all head scarves or religious symbolism is no better than
forcing them all to wear head scarves.

You're throwing up straw men by the ton; there are real people out there,
suffering broad cultural prejudice, and people like you are trying to ridicule
them by using terms like SJW. I'm a privileged, straight, white man, and I
recognize that fact. Maybe it's easier to recognize because I also have a
decent amount of wealth, but I'm not going to pretend that my success is
_entirely_ because I'm awesome. It was _far_ easier for me to get where I am
because I'm privileged, and I'm not going to poke fun at people who are trying
to help those who aren't.

And I'm going to try to help disadvantaged people when I can, your ridicule or
no.

[1]
[https://www.mtholyoke.edu/org/wsar/intro.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/org/wsar/intro.htm)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7i60GuNRg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7i60GuNRg)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> What were your honest, visceral, reactions to each of these statements?

Let me add some:

Attractive white woman says that low income white man stole something from
her. What will happen?

Black woman and white woman each comment that babies of their own race are the
prettiest babies. What will happen?

Power dynamics are fluid and contextual.

> Helping groups isn't the same as discrimination.

It is. The only cases where it makes a difference are inherently zero sum or
net negative, because if they weren't then the racial preference wouldn't have
been necessary to reach the same outcome.

> Watch that video and tell me, with a straight face, that 90% of US prison
> populations are black men because they commit more crimes, and not because
> they simply are arrested more often.

90% of US prison populations are men. Less than half of those men are black
men. Black men are, however, highly overrepresented in part for the reasons
you suggest.

> Girls do as well as boys in engineering and programming, and yet many
> cultural pressures push them away -- not least of which are the attitudes of
> boys (and other girls) toward girls who seem to "geeky." Is it bad to have
> programs that encourage girls to follow STEM career paths?

It depends on the nature of the program. Does the program mitigate the
cultural pressures? Good. Does the program make girls "special" and give them
things not available to the boys? Not good.

> It was _far_ easier for me to get where I am because I'm privileged, and I'm
> not going to poke fun at people who are trying to help those who aren't.

Which is why it's a lot easier to tell how much help someone needs based on
where they are right now rather than the color of their skin or whether or not
they have a penis.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
> Power dynamics are fluid and contextual.

True, but a distraction. When you can have a black man graduate from a top
university, well dressed, and yet pulled over, torn from a car, treated poorly
and handcuffed -- all for being black and owning a car that made the cops
think he might be a drug dealer, that seems _even worse_ than privilege from
money.

Fighting privilege as a result of wealth is another noble cause; the entire
99% movement was about that, as is Bernie Sanders' popularity. But its
existence doesn't mean that other problems aren't worse.

I honestly don't like the statements on either side about the babies, so I'll
just leave that one.

> > Helping groups isn't the same as discrimination. > It is. The only cases
> where it makes a difference are inherently zero sum or net negative, because
> if they weren't then the racial preference wouldn't have been necessary to
> reach the same outcome.

No, I'm not talking quotas, I'm talking extra education and being open to
working with someone who doesn't look like you. There are cognitive biases
that cause people to naturally _want_ to work with people who look like
themselves; making an extra effort to overcome that bias and honestly compare
candidates is _not_ , by any stretch, a bad thing.

It's only "net negative" if you think the whites who had all of the privilege
somehow "deserved" the jobs that the potentially better minority or
disadvantaged candidates could get with additional help and with mitigation of
bias in hiring. I know that there are groups who feel that way (otherwise
Trump wouldn't be where he is), but that kind of us-vs-them mentality is
harmful.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
You're defending positions nobody is attacking.

Here's the part from the original post where you were wrong:

> The dominant group _doesn 't need help_.

And the reason is that you assume the dominant group is homogeneous or even
discretely identifiable. "Black men need more help than white men" is a
statement which is true in the aggregate but tells you nothing about whether a
_specific_ black man needs more help than a _specific_ white man, and using
the color of a man's skin to make the assumption that he is like the
stereotype of his race is black letter racism.

We need to be teaching people that that is not OK, not that it is OK under
various subjective circumstances that racists can then use to rationalize
their racism.

So this:

> When you can have a black man graduate from a top university, well dressed,
> and yet pulled over, torn from a car, treated poorly and handcuffed -- all
> for being black and owning a car that made the cops think he might be a drug
> dealer, that seems _even worse_ than privilege from money.

Even assuming that's true (but cf. people who die of starvation or exposure or
suffer preventable diseases for lack of money), the fix for that is to fix it.

This kind of gets at the heart of what is wrong with the concept of privilege.
If you frame it as privilege then the evildoers are the people who have this
"privilege" of not being unjustly harassed by the cops. But the actual
evildoers are the cops who unjustly harass black people. And we need to attack
a problem where it is, not where it isn't.

> It's only "net negative" if you think the whites who had all of the
> privilege somehow "deserved" the jobs that the potentially better minority
> or disadvantaged candidates could get with additional help and with
> mitigation of bias in hiring.

"The whites who had all of the privilege" are not in the same decision space.
The rich man's son always gets the job because his father owns the company.

The problem with making decisions at the margin by favoring a nominally less
privileged group is that it's too late by then. If the specific person
applying for the same job really had significantly more privilege, he wouldn't
be applying for _the same job_. He would be an engineer instead of a mechanic
or be applying for a senior position instead of a junior one. To be in the
same decision space already implies an equivalent level of privilege.
Accounting for it again is double counting.

> that kind of us-vs-them mentality is harmful.

Categorizing people into groups that have more variation within them than
between them and then using the groups to to make preference choices _is_ the
us-vs-them mentality.

------
Frozenlock
It's too late for leftists.

The leftist narrative lost with Gamergate.

All the domains used to crumble in face of the leftists. They went after
individuals and tried to get them fired. They virtue-signaled even in Github
repos.
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015)

Everyone who wasn't inclusive enough got attacked. You career was in jeopardy
if you ever dared to think something a little outside the norm.

Politics, scifi, comedy, STEMs... Every and all domain fell.

Except gamers. Gamergate was when everything changed. This is when being more-
progressive-than-thou stopped working.

The pendulum stopped moving left.

To anyone who's been paying attention (and old enough to understand), this was
a major event.

Everything since then was just going through the motion. An immense building
crumbling down while everyone inside it is trying to get to the top. "I'm more
tolerant than you; I accept trans in my bathroom!"

If you are even slightly interested in history and sociology, you should be
very attentive to the next few months/years.

As a more libertarian/right-wing individual, it is a glorious thing to see.

I just hope that the leftist didn't push the pendulum so far that it's going
to come back with a vengeance and destroy everything it its path.

------
hnamazon123
If he got this far, this guy is about 2 months away from supporting Trump.

Leftism is a religion and leftists are some of the most close-minded people
you will ever meet.

MAGA

~~~
BrooklynRage
It's official, /r/the_donald has now reached HN.

------
vacri
The author is missing the point of tolerance, which at it's core is "don't
bother other people". _Evangelical_ christians, by definition, bother other
people.

~~~
hnamazon123
The _raison d 'être_ of leftism is literally to bother other people because it
gives leftists a feeling of power.

~~~
smsm42
If you want to compare bothering other people, both left and right is guilty
of bothering other people. On the left, we have taxes, gun control, speech
control (the PC variety), various financial and labor regulations, etc. On the
right we have decency laws and associated speech controls, marriage licenses,
drug prohibition, opposition to immigration, etc. Of course, both lists are
far from being complete.

The ideologies built on not bothering are outside linear left-right spectrum,
towards libertarian and further anarchist ideas (depending on how far you are
willing to go with that concept).

~~~
hnamazon123
Yeah I agree except for the immigration thing. That is an international affair
and a matter of sovereignty and has nothing to do with personal freedoms.

Leftism currently is driving the hardest for authoritarianism. I expect we'll
see something similar on the right in about a decade though I'm curious to see
what it'll look like considering that it seems like religiousness is on the
permanent decline in America.

~~~
angersock
They hardly have a monopoly. Trump's stated positions on weakening and
attacking the press when it suits him are from the same playbook.

~~~
hnamazon123
I don't know how you can look at media organizations like the New York Times
and not see that they clearly have a comically overt agenda in how they talk
about him and represent his positions.

~~~
smsm42
NYT certainly has a known political bias, and that's no secret to anyone
paying attention. Trump highlighting this bias and addressing it would not be
a problem. Trump hinting at using state coercion to influence the content of
NYT reporting is a huge problem and runs directly contrary to the 1st
amendment (not that his presumptive opponent doesn't have her own huge flaws
in that department) and US free speech culture.

