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The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
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Wednesday, February 9, 2022

LIFE GOES ON

While I have been spending much of each day in the nursing facility here sitting with my wife, the little counter on my blog that keeps track of visits passed the 5 million mark. I have been blogging regularly since June 2009 and taking account of my Paris trips and other vacations from blogging, that comes out to somewhat more than 1100 visits to this blog each day. Now even subtracting my visits and all those of S. Wallerstein, that is over a thousand a day for almost 13 years.  I am no Joe Rogan (I had never even heard of him until this latest kerfuffle) but still, that strikes me as a lot. I suppose it all exists somewhere in the cloud.


Yesterday, while I was visiting my wife, I had a simply wonderful experience. When we moved into building five at Carolina Meadows, across the hall from us was living a single lady named Adabel Pozner.  Addie, as she is known, is Jewish, born in New York City (or more precisely, in Brooklyn) and when Susie had her little mezuzah mounted on our doorjamb, Addie qvelled.  A year and half ago, Addie moved to the nursing facility permanently and yesterday she came downstairs to visit Susie. I found the two of them talking when I walked in yesterday afternoon.  After a bit, I started asking Addie questions about her childhood, her marriage, and her life before Carolina Meadows. She talked on for a long time, telling us all about how she met her husband. Her account was charming, a story from another age, and I wish that I had somehow been able to record it.

 

In September, Addie will turn 100! She is as alert and sharp as ever.

66 comments:

Another Anonymous said...

Prof. Wolff,

Great story.

We often, particularly when young, fail to appreciate that elderly people were once themselves young and had to deal with many of the same challenges we must deal with. They often have intriguing and informative stories about their past, from which we can benefit, if we are willing to listen. One of my favorite songs is "Hello In There," sung by Bette Midler and written by the recently deceased John Prine.

Pleased to learn that Susan is on the mend, with your help.

Unknown said...

You iPhone should include an app called "Voice Memos" which should work. I recall fondly the recording of our grandmother's memories done with your father and aunt.

Barney Wolff

Robert Paul Wolff said...

Barney, I have a little tape cassette of that recording, with the story of how the Bible got bound for enough money to enable our great-grandmother (or greater great-grandmother?) to be married.

Another Anonymous said...

LFC,

A cousin!

LFC said...

Yes, he had already made that clear. (It's buried in a previous thread somewhere.)

Another Anonymous said...

I apparently missed it.

For those who may not know, a mezuzah is a metal casing which contains a parchment on which are inscribed the Ten Commandments, in Hebrew. Jewish people place a mezuzah on the door jamb entrance to the home or apartment, to keep the inhabitants safe. It is customary among religious Jews to kiss the mezuzah as they exit and enter the home, by placing a finger on the mezuzah and kissing the finger. My mother used to place a mezuzah in the glove compartment of every car I owned when she was alive.

Marco Aurelio Denegri said...

Professor Wolff, I think it is a relief that your numbers do not compare to those of Rogan. If it did, the blog content would be suspect. I wish great health for you and your wife and for more of your interesting posts .

Anonymous said...

Great story professor Wolff and it prompted me to speak up from the crowd a little. I pop in everyday to read your blog but never really comment, so I thought I'd just throw in my sentiments as well and say thank you, I think you are helping many people without even knowing it.
For me, it was your brilliant Kant lectures that helped me into the critique and now can say that it is one of my favourite works. (Hume too actually). Honestly that's a pretty amazing gift if you think about it.

Anyway sorry to go on but I just wanted to say thank you and I'm hoping you and your wife the best.

Nat P.

Ahmed Fares said...

"more than 1100 visits to this blog each day"

A lot of lurkers here, given that it's just a few people making comments. As an aside, are these "unique visits" or fewer people checking the blog comments repeatedly, which increases the visited counter?

In Internet culture, a lurker is typically a member of an online community who observes, but does not participate. The exact definition depends on context. Lurkers make up a large proportion of all users in online communities. Lurking allows users to learn the conventions of an online community before they participate, improving their socialization when they eventually "de-lurk". However, a lack of social contact while lurking sometimes causes loneliness or apathy among lurkers.

Lurkers are referred to using many names, including browsers, read-only participants, non-public participants, legitimate peripheral participants, vicarious learners, or sleepers.
—Wikipedia

Michael Llenos said...

AA

I once ordered a Christian mezuzah in the distant past, from Larry Huch Ministries, but that was the same time in the past I was heavily reading the Koran, so instead I took the paper (with the Hebrew and English prayer translation) and taped it to my bedroom door. When you read the Koran a lot, you start to see idols coming out of everything. As a Catholic, I stopped worshipping Mary and the saints and the statues inside every Church--all because of the Koran. And if you think about it, the reason the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches have icons (just paintings) instead of statues is probably because of the influence of the Muslim culture next to the vicinity of Byzantium of the past Byzantine Empire. --I also purchased my first Tallit from Larry Huch Ministries, and I now own three other Jewish Tallits from Amazon. I have a favorite: my Elijah Tallit, whom the Kabbalists say will return sometime in the future. The sooner the better. --I also own several Jewish Bibles by the Jewish Publication Society. --Some Catholic priests may not call me Catholic because I hold such beliefs or that I sometimes pray with the Tallit or sometimes pray Islamic Rakas--until I stopped doing it ritually since I developed the medical condition called: Arab Knee, although that was a long time ago and now my knees are better. I don't think anyone will burn in hell if they're of any other belief systems. I think they'll burn rather if they're bad people. Of course, what does bad people mean to me? Like Arthur S. said it is your duty to give kind offices to the poor: directly or indirectly. Although, I admit I am a more draconian overseer when I pass sentence than Arthur, since I believe one is damned if one never has given to the poor whether you believe or don't believe. I believe the righteous are both theists, agnostics, and atheists on that count. But do I believe such a system is fair? It might seem fair if you know all of the details. I don't. I just give, every once in the while, in the form of money, food, drink (indirectly now because of being cautious because of COVID) because I fear the Creator. I don't care if God is fair or unfair. I just want to save my own skin! So I'm selfish and I don't really care. I realize that if God allows hells in this life: e.g. Vietnam, Iwo Jima, Nagasaki, Rwanda, Iraq, the Titanic, shark attacks on U.S.S. Indianapolis crew members, and other types of events or things that happen mostly every day, why wouldn't he do so in the next life? --And I never bought into that banal college student reply: Well if God wants to damn me then I'll give a piece of my mind! --But I hate to break it to some people, but they are not much older than 21 and if the universe is any indication, then God is over ten billion years old. (Or that is until the WEBB telescope manages to start sending good pictures back to Earth. If it does happen... the universe could be found to be much older. I think the current accuracy is between 12 and 14 billion years of age.) But ten billion years is a lot of time for God to work on his back & forth rhetoric. Plus, if God was omniscient since day one, then watch out! --But how would God defend himself at the Judgment? It's not a debate. From what I've read, God doesn't really justify himself through words but by infinite glory & power, just like Job realized at the end of the Book of Job. But I could be mistaken about all this... When you start having Existential Crisis's because of Descartes' First Meditation you begin to think that chair is absurd, this planet is absurd, and gee-wiz: why am I not living on a Star Trek planet like Risa instead of stuck on this evil Earth?

s. wallerstein said...

Michael Llenos,

You suggest that God might not have been omniscient from day one.

That reminds me of a comment by Nietzsche: "it is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to become an author--and that he did not learn it better."

Greek is not an easy language to learn.

Michael Llenos said...

s.w.

I didn't know that the Greek language was so complicated. I only know one language, i.e. English, and barely at that. I flunked French in college.

BTW,

I believe that all forms of the past Greek language weren't always appreciated by past scholarship. I remember something of the subject because of something I read in the past. Here's the quote:

"The Greek writers of the second century thought otherwise; for them, the best literary style had been fixed by the great writers of the classical age, four or five hundred years before their time, and the only way to achieve distinction was to copy their idiom as closely as they could. The only two books we possess of which the language approaches the koine, or contemporary spoken Greek of Syria and Asia Minor, are the New Testament and the records taken by Arrian of the lectures of Epictetus. For centuries scholarship and pedantry, too often the same thing, supposed that the Greek of the New Testament was barbarous and debased--Nietzche's notorious jibe about God having learned Greek, and having learned it so badly, is a case in point. But today most of us are wiser, and the beauty of New Testament Greek and it's power of expressing what it's users wanted it to express make us wish that the professional literary men, too, of that epoch had taken their language warm from contemporary lips instead of seeking it in the written pages of the past." --Aubrey De Selincourt, The Campaigns of Alexander, Arrian, p. 8 (1971) Penguin Classics

Michael Llenos said...

I just realized that many people view the KJV of the Bible the same way. It may be looked on by people as archaic, but scholars are saying that since it came out in the beginning of the 17th century that it had more to do with shaping the English language of today than any other book since it's time.

s. wallerstein said...

Michael Llenos,

No one doubts the literary quality of the KJV, but some call into question if it's a faithful translation of the original text.

I have a question for you. Why do you consider the Bible to be a greater source of wisdom than any other text in our Western or for that matter Eastern canon?

By the way, that's a real question. I'm curious about your point of view. I'm not a New Atheist (although I am an atheist) and I'm not going to attack you for what you have to say, although I might ask you more questions if you're willing to answer them.

Eric said...

Philosophers have been retreading a lot of the same territory for centuries. Yet, for the atheist, the questions that confront philosophers today are profoundly different than anything any philosophers ever faced in the past. Choices we make now will affect all future generations, not only of all humans, but of all life. No humans ever before faced such choices.
(I say "for the atheist" because religious people have always believed, as a matter of faith, that their choices held that kind of significance.)

Eric said...

"One dimension of contemporary gerontocracy"
Samuel Moyn
https://twitter.com/samuelmoyn/status/1491755248431644673

"The modal faculty member [at law schools] is now 65. In 1980, the modal faculty member was *35*."
Kevin Munger, author of Boomer Ballast
https://twitter.com/kmmunger/status/1491534739030700033

"This graph shows the changing age composition among U.S. law school faculty"
Sophie Hill
https://twitter.com/sophie_e_hill/status/1491473847954157570

"Eliminating mandatory retirement also slowed gender and racial diversification."
Dan Ho
https://twitter.com/DanHo1/status/1491804937730150403

Eric said...

"... [Boomer Ballast is] the unprecedented concentration of raw demography, wealth, cultural relevance, and accumulated historical experience in a single generation at the top of the age distribution. Our 'ship of state' thus has more ballast than ever before, rendering us unusually stable and thus slow to adapt.

...

They are alienated by design. In other times or other cultures, elders receive a degree of deference or respect for their role in ensuring familial cohesion and for the wisdom of their accumulated experience. But old people are bad for progress, and progress is the dominant model of liberal capitalism. Declining mental and physical plasticity throughout the life cycle makes the elderly less useful as workers. The cold logic of the market that equates value with productivity does not valorize the elderly.

Older people are also less likely to change their minds. When the world changes, they’re left behind. On topics from gay marriage to marijuana legalization, the Baby Boomers have been routed. The very existence of the elderly serves as proof of progress’s limits: no matter how quickly the views of younger generations change, older generations stubbornly keep median public opinion in place. Indeed, the dominant perspective of many young activists is that they wish Boomers would just go away.

But the Baby Boomers will not go away...."
Kevin Munger

LFC said...

The baby boom is usually defined as those born betw 1946 and 1964, with the statistical peak of the baby boom being the year 1957.

The youngest baby boomers, those born in 1964, are not even 60 yet. Those born at the statistical peak of the boom in 1957 are just turning 65. So it's questionable for Munger to describe all boomers as elderly.

Moreover, and more importantly, he assumes that keeping Soc Security solvent vs combating climate change and student loan debt represents an either-or choice. I doubt it. I wd also point out that Millennials and those younger will eventually have need of these programs, so they have a long-term interest in their solvency.

Michael Llenos said...

s.w.

You said:

"I have a question for you. Why do you consider the Bible to be a greater source of wisdom than any other text in our Western or for that matter Eastern canon?"

By canon I think you mean both secular and religious texts. --I was raised Catholic. But I didn't start getting involved in Catholicism, or voluntarily going to Church & Confession & reading the Bible until I was 17 years of age. When I started college, I was interested in the ancient Greeks because my Jewish philosophy professor Jim West said 300 Spartans held off 600,000 Persians for three days. I picked up Peter Green's The Greco-Persian Wars at the bookstore Borders and I got hooked. Over the years of reading ancient Greek history it led me to reading Roman History. During all that time I was reading the Bible and the ancient history I was reading made the Bible make more and more sense. I got hooked on the Lady Wisdom, or Athena, by that same professor since his course introduced me to Plato. In the Bible, Solomon talked about Wisdom as a real Lady, in Proverbs & the Book of Wisdom. Then the Book of Sirach, my favorite, made me realize that Wisdom was a pragmatic path to life that could be part of a religious regimen. --What made me think the Bible the greatest source of Wisdom? These words: the Jewish people, Solomon, Plato, Sirach, the ancient Mediterranean, the Greeks, the Romans, the Spartans, Socrates, Xenophon, the Persians, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Livy, the Egyptians, the Book of Revelation, especially Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, the Catholic Church, and the entire ancient Mediterranean & Persian past. --It is that concoction or mixture that did it for me. And it was probably more than those things mentioned, but that is the basic summary. Also, it is a matter of faith. And just liking to read the Bible. --Although, these last two years I've been having an Existential Crisis of some sorts thanks to Descartes & Covid. What is real? What is absurd? Why am I here? What can I be certain of? Though I still believe in the legitimacy of Abrahamic monotheism. Or Judaism, Christianity, & Islam. And I can still sort of believe in the Best of all possible Worlds of Candide. And I still definitely believe in the guiding hand of God's Providence.

Michael said...

Eric's first comment reminded me of this passage near the end of Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons:

Belief in God, or in many gods, prevented the free development of moral reasoning. Disbelief in God, openly admitted by a majority, is a recent event, not yet completed. Because this event is so recent, Non-Religious Ethics is at a very early stage. We cannot yet predict whether, as in Mathematics, we will all reach agreement. Since we cannot know how Ethics will develop, it is not irrational to have high hopes.

Some interesting critical reflections on this passage and on Parfit's subsequent work in "Non-Religious Ethics" (i.e. his On What Matters) can be found here, in a review authored by Michael Rosen (Department of Government, Harvard). Two selections from the review:

(1) It is only natural, [Parfit] says, for religious believers to think that we ought to obey God's commands. But that is to assume that religious ethics is essentially a matter of obeying commands whose authority consists in the fact that they have come from God (and that there are conflicting understandings of what those commands amount to). Yet, on the dominant self-understanding of Western Christianity, God is not an arbitrary source of imperatives. On the contrary, God's commands coincide with what it is open to human beings independently to recognize as good. So, from the point of view of orthodox religion, pace Parfit, there is no reason why belief in God should have prevented "the free development of moral reasoning." On the contrary, religious ethics, no less than secular, takes itself to draw on the inherent powers of human reason (that is why Catholic ethics felt free to take so much of its content from Aristotle).

[COMMENT: The bolded portion surprised me to read. I suspect the author is over-intellectualizing religion, and downplaying the extent and significance of religious fundamentalism. But maybe I'm wrong to overemphasize the fanatical conservatism and anti-intellectualism we often find in religion; are those things more peculiar to religion today than to religion historically?]

(2) Perhaps, then, a properly "Non-Religious Ethics" should purge itself of deontological [e.g. Kantian] elements and accept a thoroughgoing hedonistic consequentialism. But how secular is pure hedonistic consequentialism? Taking up the "point of view of the universe" with Sidgwick and steering one's action according to what will maximize aggregate happiness here and everywhere, now and forever, looks like installing ourselves on the Deity's empty throne. Furthermore, if we come to see human beings as no more than a conjoined sequence of experiences, positive and negative, then yes, death may lose its fearfulness - the coming to an end of that sequence should be no more terrible than the non-existence that preceded our births. But what would that mean for the value of life? Why would anyone worry about bringing one sequence of experiences to an end if that makes more, longer and better, sequences possible? We have little experience of avowed atheists in positions of political power, but the record of those ruthless aggregators Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot (to say nothing of Napoleon and Frederick the Great before them) should surely cause anyone to worry. Perhaps we would do better to cling on to the wreckage of our religious heritage.

[COMMENT: These litanies of murderous dictators always make me roll my eyes a bit.]

Michael Llenos said...

s.w.

And here's a funny story. Besides Plato the Iliad translation by Fitzgerald made me think people thought and spoke wiser in the past than they do now. It took many years for me to realize that people have always acted like people.

s. wallerstein said...

Michael Llenos,

Thanks for your explanation.

I was just listening to a conversation in Youtube with Yuval Harari and the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Haidt, who claims to have studied all the ancient wisdom texts from the standpoint of contemporary psychological research, says that if one wants a reasonably happy life, one would do best to follow the teachings of the Buddhists or the Stoics, especially Marcus Aurelius. Harari is a Buddhist, by the way.

LFC said...

Michael,

Re the first quote from the Rosen review. (I haven't really read the second quote yet.)

I'm v. far from an expert on this, but I'm a little surprised that you found the bolded portion surprising, since if you take "the dominant self-understanding of Western Christianity" to mean the "self-understanding of Western Christianity as articulated by many, probably the majority, of theologians and other writers," then I think the statement is likely right. Yes, there are strands and movements that treat, and treated in the past, divine commands as arbitrary orders, but I don't think that's "the dominant self-understanding of Western Christianity" -- or Judaism. That said, it might be accurate to say that while belief in God did not *prevent* "the free development of moral reasoning," it did put some limits on it. That's my initial reaction anyway.

Eric said...

LFC,
I don't think Munger is saying all Baby Boomers (US Census definition) have reached traditional retirement age. I think his point is that the majority of them have.

I think the bigger issue is:
"Older people are also less likely to change their minds.... [N]o matter how quickly the views of younger generations change, older generations stubbornly keep median public opinion in place."

That's always been true, but the consequences of it seem to be of far greater significance than ever before.

Eric said...

Michael,
Agree about those litanies of dictators. As if the religious rulers who preceded them were all Gandhis and Mother Teresas.

Michael said...

In reply to LFC:

I wasn't thinking so much of scholars and theologians and such as the general, overall population of Christians, particularly in the present-day US. "Human reason can discern the truth on matters of right and wrong, even if unaided by divine revelation (and therefore morality is not exclusive to believers)" - this view strikes me as characteristic of the more liberal/progressive, or moderate/left-leaning, strands of religion; and while it's possible that it's a majority view, I doubt that it's an overwhelming majority view. I may be wrong, of course.

I pretty consistently get the impression from glancing over the data (and extrapolating from polls on seemingly related issues, e.g. public attitudes on various hot-button scientific and social questions) that what's commonly called "fundamentalism" is characteristic of a large minority, like a third to a bit less than half, of the US population.

For example, Google tells me that 55% of US Christians believe in Biblical inerrancy. You might shave off 10-15% or so on the presumption that the polling questions were ambiguous, such that not everyone interpreted "inerrancy" to mean "Genesis trumps Darwin"; but even then, it'd seem to fit with similarly sized chunks of the population professing the most illiberal and anti-intellectual positions on things like climate science, LGBT equality, etc. It's probably not too much of an over-simplification, IMHO, to think of all this as (one of?) the main ideological package(s) that made the success of Trump/Pence possible.

I think of this ideological package, or at minimum Christian fundamentalism, as offering a space for the most extreme form of "divine-command ethics" to flourish, and as nourished in turn by this ethics; this would be the ethics that considers our basic duty as humans to be unconditional obedience to God - even if (or especially when) God's commands are "foolishness to the wisdom of the world."

Tony Couture said...

It is good that The Philosopher's Stone has hit 5 million page views and that your independence of mind can be displayed directly or actually communicated to all your readers, and that Joe Rogan Experience has become wildly popular as a pioneering podcast.

Joe Rogan is a street philosopher with more hard questions than any other interviewer, and has now done 1775 podcasts (113 of which have been taken offline, but are likely to be re-packaged and sold later for a profit). I have probably watched over 300 Joe Rogan podcasts, and he is definitely not racist but rather an excellent source for information about stand up comedy, martial arts, and contemporary politics. He is an expert in the long form interview (about 2 to 3 hours long, one on one without a script, completely conversational street philosophy approach. Joe Rogan is also both self-confident and self-deprecating to an equal measure and not stupid though he admits to possible brain damage from being a fighter in martial arts as a youth.

More philosophers should use Joe Rogan's interviews as a resource. Joe Rogan Experience #1325 (now available free on Spotify, but only in partial clips on YouTube) is with philosopher Cornel West on race matters. The interviews with Bob Saget, Tom Green, Dave Chappelle, Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Snoop Dogg, Gilbert Gottfried, philosopher Andy Norman, Russell Peters, Bill Burr and many others give the public a depth perspective of Western culture from the inside of some of its leading creators and performers.

Almost all the Joe Rogan Experience interviews are available free on Spotify and often deal with a new book or current events or other relevant discussions to comedy performance and stand up in particular, or pandemic issues during the last 2 years. Another podcast by Sam Harris about "Joe Rogan and the Ethics of Apology" is available on YouTUbe which explains some of the context around Joe Rogan recently with reasonable accuracy. Don't believe the hype, Joe Rogan pursues the truth like a brain damaged wrestler and often gets his guest in an awkward position to better squeeze some wisdom out of them. He has appropriate skills for a true dialectical exchange, and has surprised me many times by his foolish questions and comments. He is a much better listener than most interviewers and has greater honesty because of his comedy approach, which gets guests to let down their guard and speak freely. See how he treats Cornel West seriously to get a proper perspective on whether he could be racist or not.

Michael Llenos said...

s.w.

My favorite philosopher in eloquence & style is the stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger. It seems that Seneca, Paul, Peter, & Epictetus (who then was a child) lived in Rome at the same time of Nero Caesar's reign. At that time Seneca & Epictetus we're part of Nero Caesar's household. The ending passage of St. Paul's Letter to the Phillipians hints that Paul personally knew Seneca & Epictetus since he sent warm wishes (or greetings) to the people in Nero Caesar's household.

Michael said...

I've watched a few Joe Rogan things in the past. He's not without charisma, intellectual curiosity, and talent for conversation. I don't automatically assume that someone who enjoys some aspects of his work is a bigot or a loser or a crank (though I'd question the taste and wisdom of advertising one's enjoyment openly). Up to a point, I hope people are willing to suspend judgment about one another's motives for enjoying some "questionable" entertainment - but I say that selfishly as someone who (e.g.) privately enjoys the work of certain musicians who happen to be known for some vile actions and beliefs in their extra-musical lives.

But anyway, it doesn't seem defensible to argue that Joe Rogan isn't a racist. The "hype," from what little I've seen, seems to deal with a few things: There's a compilation video of him using the N-word on several different occasions; he's invited the Proud Boys founder onto his podcast; he made a "joke" comparison between a Black neighborhood and Planet of the Apes; and there are probably one or two other things I'm not quite remembering (also the COVID misinformation, but I'm not getting into that).

In light of this, I think the most generous thing one could realistically say about Rogan is that he evidently thinks it can be okay for a white guy to jokingly drop N-bombs and liken Black people to apes. This is an offensive and stupid belief, because it's a racist belief. It's racist because it responds to something that's been used to degrade and oppress a whole community of one's fellows, by thinking "Hey, it might not be completely inappropriate if I air that in public for entertainment purposes," or at best, "While it is important to show respect to the victims of humanity's worst crimes, nevertheless, in some circumstances it may be more important for me to be perceived as edgy and cool." Racist "humor" doesn't cease to be racist simply by having humorous intent.

I'm not saying I've never in my life been guilty of anything similar; and I'm not saying that Rogan deserves to be ruined, or that anyone who enjoys certain aspects of his work is an idiot or asshole for doing so. But hopefully he's capable of owning the fact that he has indeed been guilty of having and displaying this ugly, bigoted viewpoint; then changing his mind about it, and trying to be better.

Another Anonymous said...

Prior to reading this thread, I was only vaguely familiar with who Joe Rogan was, and had assumed based on what I had read that he was a vile racist and irrational. I had not previously watched any of his videos on youtube.

My curiosity piqued by Michael’s comment about the compilation of Rogan using the N- word, I searched for the video compilation on youtube. Initially I only found an article about the woman who had prepared the compilation, but could not find the compilation itself. Then I found the link below, in which Rogan offers what appears to me to be a sincere apology for the video clips that comprise the compilation. He states definitively is never appropriate for a white person to use the N- word. He also explains the Planet of the Apes incident. He states vigorously he is not a racist, and given the genuineness of his apology, I accept his assertion.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CZlnH8MAb8L/?utm_medium=copy_link

But Rogan’s apology raises a larger issue, and that is the trend towards political correctness and the failure of the public and the press to understand the use/mention distinction, highlighted in the writings of Quine. Rogan apologizes for his having used the N- word in the past, but in the examples he gives, he was not using the N- word, he was mentioning it. He was quoting the use of the word by others, e.g., Red Foxx and Richard Prior. But quoting how others use a word is not itself using the word; it is mentioning it. And mentioning a racist word, or any word, is not the equivalent of using it, and should not be castigated by the politically correct thought police.

An example of such politically correct censorship recently occurred in Ann Arbor, involving a member of the Ann Arbor City Council. The individual in question had been complaining about how he had been treated in the local press, and he made the following comment on his Facebook page, quoting from a passage in Hunter Thompson’s “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas”:



during an interview, he made the following comment:

“The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”

Well, this ignited a firestorm of outrage in the Ann Arbor LGBQT community and they demanded that he be sanctioned by the City Council and be forced to resign for his allegedly having used the word “faggot.” But he had not used the word “faggot,” he had mentioned it. A petition was circulated to have a recall election to have him removed. The City Council penalized him by removing him from his leadership positions on various committees. This in a city which is the home of the University of Michigan, which prides itself as being the Harvard of the Midwest. The recall petition, fortunately, failed, but he committee positions were not restored. He contacted me about the potential of a lawsuit. I advised him (my position has been communicated to others, so the following is not protected by the attorney-client privilege) that what the City Council had done violated his right of free speech under the 1st Amendment and I was willing to represent him in a federal lawsuit. While using a racist term may be subject to some form of censure by a governmental entity, mentioning such a term is not the same as using it, and government censure for mentioning a racist term violates the 1st Amendment. He has not yet authorized me to file such a lawsuit.

I do not believe the use of hate speech is protected by the 1st Amendment under all circumstances and it has no place in our society, whether on youtube or any other social media format. (I in fact have a petition for a writ of certiorari pending in the Supreme Court on this very issue.) But the public and the press need to be educated about the use/mention distinction, and frankly, Joe Rogan had no need to apologize.

Another Anonymous said...

Correction:

Prior to reading this thread, I was only vaguely familiar with who Joe Rogan was, and had assumed based on what I had read that he was a vile racist and irrational. I had not previously watched any of his videos on youtube.

My curiosity piqued by Michael’s comment about the compilation of Rogan using the N- word, I searched for the video compilation on youtube. Initially I only found an article about the woman who had prepared the compilation, but could not find the compilation itself. Then I found the link below, in which Rogan offers what appears to me to be a sincere apology for the video clips that comprise the compilation. He states definitively is never appropriate for a white person to use the N- word. He also explains the Planet of the Apes incident. He states vigorously he is not a racist, and given the genuineness of his apology, I accept his assertion.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CZlnH8MAb8L/?utm_medium=copy_link

But Rogan’s apology raises a larger issue, and that is the trend towards political correctness and the failure of the public and the press to understand the use/mention distinction, highlighted in the writings of Quine. Rogan apologizes for his having used the N- word in the past, but in the examples he gives, he was not using the N- word, he was mentioning it. He was quoting the use of the word by others, e.g., Red Foxx and Richard Prior. But quoting how others use a word is not itself using the word; it is mentioning it. And mentioning a racist word, or any word, is not the equivalent of using it, and should not be castigated by the politically correct thought police.

An example of such politically correct censorship recently occurred in Ann Arbor, involving a member of the Ann Arbor City Council. The individual in question had been complaining about how he had been treated in the local press, and he made the following comment on his Facebook page, quoting from a passage in Hunter Thompson’s “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas”:

“The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”

Well, this ignited a firestorm of outrage in the Ann Arbor LGBQT community and they demanded that he be sanctioned by the City Council and be forced to resign for his allegedly having used the word “faggot.” But he had not used the word “faggot,” he had mentioned it. A petition was circulated to have a recall election to have him removed. The City Council penalized him by removing him from his leadership positions on various committees. This in a city which is the home of the University of Michigan, which prides itself as being the Harvard of the Midwest. The recall petition, fortunately, failed, but he committee positions were not restored. He contacted me about the potential of a lawsuit. I advised him (my position has been communicated to others, so the following is not protected by the attorney-client privilege) that what the City Council had done violated his right of free speech under the 1st Amendment and I was willing to represent him in a federal lawsuit. While using a racist term may be subject to some form of censure by a governmental entity, mentioning such a term is not the same as using it, and government censure for mentioning a racist term violates the 1st Amendment. He has not yet authorized me to file such a lawsuit.

I do not believe the use of hate speech is protected by the 1st Amendment under all circumstances and it has no place in our society, whether on youtube or any other social media format. (I in fact have a petition for a writ of certiorari pending in the Supreme Court on this very issue.) But the public and the press need to be educated about the use/mention distinction, and frankly, Joe Rogan had no need to apologize.

s. wallerstein said...

I've listened to a couple of Joe Rogan episodes and I've never found him to be a bigot. Rather, he seems to want to explore different issues in his own idiosyncratic way and that same idiosyncratic exploration may at times lead him to stray from the boundaries of political correctness.

I don't see what's wrong with that. Isn't philosophy about, among other things, challenging hegemonic common sense, whether that common sense be conservative or liberal?

If you read Nietzsche, as I do, he says lots of things which are not politically correct in his questioning of hegemonic common sense. As Brian Leiter points out, Nietzsche is "illiberal". Should we stop reading Nietzsche? I for one am not planning to do so.

LFC said...

I have never listened to Joe Rogan so will not comment rt now on Rogan (except to say that there may be occasions when it cd legitimately be deemed offensive for a white person to quote an African-American's use of the N word; but as I say, I haven't listened to Rogan).

I do have a comment on the difference between using a word oneself and quoting someone else's use of that word. First, it is completely unnecessary to refer to Quine and the use/mention distinction in order to grasp the difference between using a word oneself and quoting someone else's use of the word. Second, there may be occasions -- though I am not saying the Ann Arbor politician's case is one of them -- when quoting someone else's use of a word *might* be inappropriate or offensive.

In the case of the Ann Arbor city councilman, removing him from his leadership positions on committees for quoting Hunter Thompson is prob unwarranted (and may be a violation of his 1st Am rights), but he cd have managed to quote most of the passage w.o quoting the word that caused the outrage. It's the kind of decision that, for better or worse, people in the public eye (and others, for that matter) have to make all the time. Or he cd have quoted the passage and not spelled out the word. There were at least a couple of ways he cd gave quoted Thompson and attacked the press w.o spelling out the full word. Just as there's a difference between a black person using or quoting the N word and a white person's doing so, there's a difference betw a gay person's using the F word and a straight person's using, or "mentioning," the word. That may not be a wholly desirable state of affairs but it's the way things are, and people making public utterances likely to garner attention shd be aware of that. I'm not advocating self-censorship, but common sense suggests that a small amt of self-censorship is sometimes a reasonable, prudent, and perhaps even wise decision.

Another Anonymous said...

LFC,

“[I]t is completely unnecessary to refer to Quine and the use/mention distinction in order to grasp the difference between using a word oneself and quoting someone else's use of the word.”

Why? It is an important distinction; Prof. Quine, a professor of philosophy, was one of its most prominent defenders; and this, by the way, is primarily a philosophy blog. So it was certainly appropriate to mention the distinction, and Prof. Quine’s role regarding the distinction.

The councilman’s 1st Amendment right of free speech was flagrantly violated by the City Council. Yet you offer a critique which says that while it may have been protected by the 1st Amendment, it was not appropriate for him to quote Hunter Thompson verbatim. This is just another incarnation of the politically correct thought control which is running rampant in this country.

I recently represented a college professor employed by a public university in New Jersey who was disciplined because she used the word “Negro” in class, and number of Black students were offended by the use of the perhaps archaic term, but a term which was once considered polite and respectful. The professor was disciplined for purportedly violating the New Jersey Policy Prohibiting Discrimination In The Workplace. I was admitted pro hac vice in New Jersey in order to litigate the matter. I maintained that the Policy was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment. The lawsuit settled before the court could decide the constitutionality issue. However, I am currently representing another former professor at the same university who was both an adjunct professor and an attorney. She was hired to teacher business law to undergraduate students. During a class, she explained that immigrants who do not have a green card are not allowed to work in the United States. This was a correct statement of the law, but a number of Latino students in her class were offended by this statement and they complained to the administration. The university proceeded to fire the adjunct professor, again for allegedly violating the Policy. I contacted her, told her that her 1st Amendment rights had been violated, and that lawsuit is currently pending in New Jersey federal court.

So, yes, political correctness is running amuck in this country, and it needs to stop.

LFC said...

Re-read what I wrote pls. Didn't say it was "not appropriate," said there were other ways he cd have done it that wd have had the same expressive effect. He did have written "f*****s," for example.

Michael said...

Some "real talk" (as they say): I can't quite remember the last time I said the N-word. Maybe at some point in my 20s, when quoting a scene from a movie, in a "safe setting." Prior to then, I had at one point straight-up used it (in a hushed voice, among white friends) in a fit of uncomprehending nerd-rage after being intimidated and belittled by some middle-school bullies who happened to be Black. I "graduated" from there to "merely" laughing at racist jokes (again, among white friends), and shortly afterward to laughing at racist jokes with an uneasy conscience...and from there to saying nothing (or at most eye-rolling and shaking my head) when white acquaintances make racist jokes. Maybe some day I'll work up the nerve to verbally express disapproval to white acquaintances making racist or otherwise bigoted jokes or remarks. For now I'm divided between, on the one hand, "Eh, am I really capable of changing anyone's mind on this? Would this be anything over and above empty self-congratulation?" and on the other hand, "Would my silence just be a softer version of the N-bomb I dropped at 12?"

If and when people insist that "racism is racism is racism," and that by extension, it's just about impossible for a white person brought up in this society to be totally non-racist...I think at the end of the day, I should be willing to agree with this view, however reluctantly. I can't say I'm particularly tormented by it - that wouldn't be true, after all; it just seems realistic to admit that I and my white acquaintances (or male, or able-bodied, etc.) will never fully succeed in banishing every piece of socially ingrained bigotry from our unconscious habits. And calling it "socially ingrained" doesn't excuse us from making an effort anyway; nor does wondering if all this focus on "soft bigotry" is "excessive" and indirectly contributory to people's more overt bigotry. (See, e.g., Trump insisting that Rogan not apologize to the "far left lunatics.")

As I saw someone say in connection with the Joe Rogan controversy, and all these attempts to "measure" Rogan's racism, etc.: "That sounds like a white people problem."

LFC said...

Correction: *could* have written, not "did have written." (Typing too fast on small phone keyboard.)

Another Anonymous said...

LFC,

I am not going to quibble with you. By offering alternative ways in which the Councilman could have expressed himself, you are clearly implying that the alternatives were in some way better or preferable. To say that one mode of expressing oneself is better or more preferable than another, you are clearly suggesting that that the mode of expression which was actually used was less preferable, and therefore not appropriate. So, yes, maybe I am quibbling, but with justification.

LFC said...

If X says the N word, X is using the word. If X quotes Y using the N word, X is quoting someone else's use of the word. I suppose the use/mention distinction might be a more economical way of putting this, but I'm actually not familiar w how Quine explained/elaborated on the use/mention distinction.

But my point is that sometimes a quote or "mention," as opposed to a "use," might convey either approval of or indifference to the word "mentioned," esp on social media where many people are not reading as carefully as they might.

So I don't think the City Council shd have punished him for the Facebook post and that quote, but I do think he could have achieved pretty much the same expressive effect with a minor change that would have possibly avoided the whole problem. These are tricky issues and I'm not claiming I have a well worked out position or all the answers.

Another Anonymous said...

Michael,

What I am about to write is likely to get me into a bit of hot water with some of the readers/commenters on this blog, but I am constitutionally unable to keep my mouth shut, or my typing hand quiescent, when I hear or read something which I believe is fundamentally unsound. I do not believe that every Caucasian who lives in the United States is, deep down, racist towards African-Americans, or subconsciously possesses anti-Black sentiments. I do not believe this any more than I believe that most or all African-Americans harbor racist views towards Caucasians. Do some in each respective community harbor such views? Of course. But I believe it is fundamentally unfair to judge any person by virtue of the color of their skin, or by virtue of their race (whether or not apparent from the color of their skin) that they necessarily harbor racist views towards those of a different race. And I adamantly reject the perspective that Caucasians in the United States have to engage in self-flagellation because the color of their skin is white. By the same token, I reject the opposition to the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, so long as it restricts itself to teaching the history of slavery in this country and the persecution and oppression of African-Americans, which I believe indisputably does continue to occur in various sectors of this country, as well as teaching the history of racism towards Native Americans, Asians, Italians, Irish and Jews. (My apologies if I have left out any ethnic or religious group.)

s. wallerstein said...

Another,

With regard to what you just wrote, our own Professor Wolff wrote a book, The Confessions of an ex White Man and I would bet that if anyone born white is not racist towards African-Americans, Professor Wolff is not. I would say that someone like Professor Wolff bends over backwards not to be racist and in fact, isn't.

As for myself, while I don't claim to be an ex White Man, my parents were not racist by 1950's standards, believing that racism against Blacks was similar to anti-semitism, which they, as Jews, were very concerned about. If I had used the n-word as a child, I would have been punished. I recall some kids in junior high using that word, but after that, having always hung out in progressive circles, including participating in CORE (Congress on Racial Equality) while in high school and in college, I never ran into people who used that term or who speak negatively of African-Americans at all.

Michael said...

I genuinely appreciate the pushback, AA. To echo LFC, these are very tricky and uncomfortable topics, and I don't claim to have it all figured out; it's quite possible that I've spent the last several years "over-correcting" myself and becoming a bit of a caricature. (A favorite quote from Wittgenstein: "Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.") But I do think I'm more-or-less on the right track, even though I surely need to continue reflecting, revising, and testing out my position.

In no special order, here are a few basic observations or ideas that have informed my present opinion; note that I'm not accusing anyone here of denying these:

-Unconscious bigotry is definitely real, and often difficult (for the person themselves) to detect, admit to, and begin to correct. Our society has done many things throughout its history to promote conscious and unconscious bigotry; these things leave traces even on well-meaning people, and cannot be expected to disappear "quickly" or "easily."

-Bigotry need not mean hatred, or an explicit desire for some group/individual to suffer or be wrongly excluded (or a belief that such an outcome would be deserved). It can also be less overtly violent; it can consist in negative stereotyping, culpable ignorance (as suggested e.g. by people's increasing awareness regarding gender pronouns), or skewed priorities and preferences - as in Rogan's case, or in the general case of racist "humor," which de-prioritizes respect for marginalized people, for the sake of something relatively trivial, like securing peer approval by way of "irreverent humor."

-When marginalized people themselves indicate (or especially, when they very widely and frequently indicate) that certain behaviors or attitudes or statements constitute bigotry, it's good policy to take them at their word, even if the appearance of bigotry is much less striking to the offender.

s. wallerstein said...

Here's the obituary of a guy whom I knew in college, the leader of the university chapter of CORE (Congress on Racial Equality), white and Jewish. Read it and tell me if you believe that Michael Flug, who dedicated his life to the cause of African-American struggle was racist.

https://forward.com/culture/428596/michael-flug-caretaker-and-maker-of-civil-rights-history-dies-at-74/

By the way, why should be always take marginalized people at their word? Marginalized and oppressed people, just like their oppressors, will use all sorts of strategies to take advantage of others. Lines from a W.H. Auden poem:

"Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return".

Another Anonymous said...

Michael,

I am going to give you a little push-back on your assertion that every Caucasian in the United States necessarily, subconsciously harbors anti-Black, racist sentiments. While I agree that this is probably true of a lot of American Caucasians, I do not believe it is necessarily true of all American Caucasians. As an example, a subconscious racist reaction would be to doubt the credentials of an African-American professor, or physician, or attorney. A white person finding out that their insurance company has assigned them to an African-American physician may consciously have some qualms regarding whether the physician attended an accredited medical school, or had sufficiently good grades to qualify him/her as a competent physician, or was the beneficiary of affirmative action and would therefore feel uncomfortable be treated by the physician. I suspect this is rather common among American Caucasians, but I do not believe it is universal. I do not entertain such views, nor do I suspect s. wallerstein or Prof. Wolff, or many of this blogs readers, consciously or subconsciously entertain such views, and to maintain that I/we must subconsciously have such racist sentiments, when we do not have them consciously, would be circular, assuming these views must be held subconsciously when the individual denies having such views consciously. My daughter had a Black pediatrician. She was wonderful, and neither I nor my wife ever talked about her credentials or questioned them.

Another Anonymous said...

s. wallerstein,

Thank you for your quote from Auden’s superb poem, “September 1, 1939.” As he writes in the poem, this is a lesson that “all schoolchildren learn[.}”

When our daughter was in third grade, she had an experience which troubled and confused her. A new student had arrived in her class, an immigrant from, I believe, Yugoslavia. During recess, the group of students she played with ostracized the new student – would not communicate with her, or include her in their games. Our daughter went out of her way to insist that the group include the newcomer. After a couple of days, the newcomer was fully accepted in the group, and then the group, including the newcomer, started ostracizing our daughter. She was very upset and did not understand why this was happening. Why was the girl whom she had befriended mistreating her? We tried to console her, but finally I said something to the effect, “Marlowe, in the course of your life you are going to run into many people like this. Do not take it personally. She is weak, where you are strong.” Marlowe disassociated herself form the group and joined a new group, which appreciated her more. She continued to fight and stand up for her fellow students whom she felt were being mistreated and bullied.

Michael said...

I'm not sure I get the point that it's circular to infer a person's unconscious bigotry despite their conscious denial of bigotry.

For example, I think I have claim to consider myself an LGBT ally. But if someone mentioned to me in conversation that they were attending their girlfriend's wedding, and I reflexively responded by asking for information about the husband (I have in fact committed similar gaffes, by the way), then arguably, one way to interpret this utterance is as an inadvertent expression of an unconscious assumption that opposite-sex marriages are or ought to be considered "the norm" - an assumption that I've tried pretty hard to interrogate and reject, but only imperfectly, it would appear. Unconscious bigotry, in other words. (Maybe a poor choice of words?)

I think of my position as a somewhat tentative doubt that I or any like-minded individual - or even perhaps the most dedicated and praiseworthy among us, e.g. wallerstein's friend - can be entirely successful in eradicating bigotry from our minds. The position follows naturally from the interpretation of the "gaffe" I describe as unconscious bigotry.

I want to stress that this doesn't make any of you shitty, discreditable people in my mind. Maybe it'd help to think of it as just an implausible psychological notion - wouldn't be the first I've had!

s. wallerstein said...

Michael,

Don't be so hard on yourself.

Bigotry is about the way you treat others, not about whether you only have pure thoughts on certain subjects.

As far as I can see, you're making a genuine effort not to treat African-Americans or LGBT people in a discriminatory manner. Not everyone does that. Why group yourself and others who make genuine efforts not to treat others in a discriminatory manner together with those who don't make such efforts?

Virtues have to do with human beings and human nature, not with some saintly ideal of purity. There are real bigots out there, people who hate and discriminate against marginalized groups. You're not one of them, so relax, feel good about yourself for once.

Another Anonymous said...

Michael,

I agree with s. wallerstein.

I would not share your sense of guilt under comparable circumstances, nor would I conclude that I must be a subconscious sexist. Until Obergefill was decided in 2015, the vast majority of marriages were between members of the opposite sex, and this continues to be true today. Your asking for information about the ‘husband” does not, in my mind, expose a subconscious disrespect for individuals involved in a same sex relationship, nor would I regard it as a gaffe. In fact in light of Obergefill, the word “husband” can refer to a female in a same sex marriage, and the word “wife” can refer to a male in a same sex marriage. This is not true of the words “groom” or “bride,” but even if those words were used inappropriately, it would not, in my mind, expose a subconscious antipathy for, or even discomfort with, same sex relationships.

aaall said...

"...I reject the opposition to the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, so long as it restricts itself to teaching the history of slavery in this country and the persecution and oppression of African-Americans..."

As with your reference to "political correctness" (now become "wokeness"), we should take care not to accept the memes of those who would oppress us. Critical Race Theory is a graduate level approach to certain aspects of law. Teaching about slavery and Jim Crow is merely teaching history, regardless of the grade level. The plutocratic-funded right has long supported those who would weaponize the darker sides of our simian nature (mental health is also a factor - check out a few conservative sites and the comments).

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/how-a-conservative-activist-invented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theory

Perhaps much of the PC/wokeness in academia to which you object is an artifact of administrative bloat - you know - idle hands and incompetence, etc.

Of course, we could have taken Reconstruction seriously as well as hanging Jeff Davis and Alexander Stevens, etc...

Re: Rogan - TRT and HGH, enough said.

Eric said...

Agree with Michael @1:43pm.

This being "primarily a philosophy blog," wouldn't it be useful to define what one means by being "racist" or being "a racist" before spilling pages of ink debating whether someone is or isn't? (I think misunderstandings of definitions being used is a large part of what got Whoopi Goldberg into hot water last week.) I'm sure I have posted here on this topic in the past, but I don't have time at the moment to look for the post. So I will briefly restate a bit of what I mean.

(1) You don't have to be a flag-burning member of the KKK to be racist.
(2) A person who is sexually attracted to people of a certain race can simultaneously be racist against that race (Thomas Jefferson, Strom Thurmond). A person who has married a person of a certain race, or who has adopted children of that race, can also have racist feelings or beliefs about that race.
(3) Someone can consider a person of a certain race a good friend, yet simultaneously have racist feelings or beliefs about that race.
(4) A person can have racist feelings or beliefs about a race yet approve of certain individuals of that race. So a person could have racist views of blacks yet still prefer Obama as a presidential candidate over his white competitors.
(5) An African American can hold racist beliefs about black people. The fact that someone is black him- or herself does not necessarily mean that they cannot be racist against blacks.
(6) The feelings or beliefs someone holds about a race can ostensibly be positive yet still be racist. (People of that race are good with money. People of that race are extremely smart. Women of that race are sooo sexy!)

Racism, like so many other -isms, exists along a spectrum. In recognition of this, social scientists often resort in their studies to using indirect devices such as various social-distance questions and implicit-association tests to try to tease out and quantify degrees of racial bias and racism. (I do not intend in mentioning this here to start an argument over the validity of these instruments.)

So Joe Rogan could sincerely consider himself non-racist and describe himself as such on his podcast yet also hold some racist beliefs and tell jokes, or show approval of jokes, with racist content or implications.

Similarly, Joe Biden could simultaneously hold Mandela and MLK in high esteem and run for the White House three times with black partners, yet also have a history of gaffes such as calling Obama in 2007 "the first mainstream African-American [presidential candidate] who is articulate and bright and clean" or saying in 2019 "poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids."

LFC said...

I pretty much agree with Michael about unconscious or implicit bias (I think I prefer those phrases to "unconscious bigotry," but I think the meaning is very similar).

I think AA and S. Wallerstein are perhaps misconstruing the point here. By definition, unconscious bias is bias that a person is not conscious of having, but it comes out in behavior and/or unreflective assumptions. There is plenty of psychological research, I believe, showing that it exists.

That said, it's a different problem than conscious bigotry or hatred, and I don't think anyone is equating the two or saying they're equally bad. Nor, as Michael said, is it a matter of criticizing particular people for unconscious bias (no one is doing that).

Finally, this is not something limited to one group -- everyone probably has unconscious biases. (There may be some rare exceptions.) The issue is that, in a society still working to come fully to grips with a long history of racism and in which many deep racial inequalities persist, it is unconscious bias held by members of the dominant group(s) that is likely to have the most immediate negative effects.

P.s. I actually don't think there's a great deal of disagreement here -- some of it is that we're using terms in different ways.

LFC said...

p.s. posted before seeing Eric's comment above.

Eric said...

Another Anonymous @7:13am,

I cannot tell from what I have read of the Ann Arbor councilmember's case what the context of the Facebook discussion was.
Was he trying to communicate that he was upset by how he had been treated by some members of the press? And was his use of the Hunter S. Thompson quote his way of saying that (1) he shared the sentiment expressed in the quote that the press can be vicious and that (2) he had himself felt victimized by the press?

If the answer to those questions is "yes," the use of the quote is indefensible.

It's one thing to use language like that in a book review or history class when directly quoting and responding to what someone else has said or written.* That's fine and should (must) continue. It's something else entirely to quote that kind of material as a way of expressing your own feelings, when no effort is made to distance yourself from or criticize the hateful language that is included. I have no sympathy for that kind of behavior.

(* I think this was part of the plot of Sandra Oh's tv show "The Chair.")

Another Anonymous said...

Well, I disagree with both Eric and LFC.

Everything that Eric states is of course true – a person “can” (i.e., it is possible) to be married to a person of a different race, and still be racist; a person “can” have close friends of a different race, and still be racist. All of these possibilities are of course possible; etc., etc.

But that is not the point of my response to Michael. Michael is claiming that all Caucasians either consciously or subconsciously harbor racist sentiments against Blacks. I do not believe this is true, and vehemently reject it as true. Likewise, I do not agree with LFC that everyone on Earth necessarily harbors some bias against others who are racially or ethnically different. This may be true of a lot of people, or even the vast majority of people, but I do not believe it is true of everybody – and I am not naïve or Pollyannish.

Another Anonymous said...

Eric,

Yes, he was expressing his anger with how he was treated by the prese, which, by the way, was what Hunter Thompson was also expressing.

"Indefensible"? Why? It was certainly defensible under the 1st Amendment. Indefensible in the sense of being inappropriate? There we go again, the political correctness police at work.

Eric said...

I posted yesterday after reading a Twitter quote from Samuel Moyn.

I had been searching for his name to see if he had made any public remarks about the report of Biden's presidential commission on possible changes to the Supreme Court, which was released in December. (Sherillyn Ifill, a very prominent black civil rights attorney, served on the commission.)

Here are some questions.

Does it matter if all of the justices on the Supreme Court are white men? Or all Catholics? Does it matter if none is openly gay?

Was Ruth Bader Ginsburg racist? Did she have some racist views? Does it matter?

Ginsburg reportedly hired only one black law clerk during her nearly 40 years as a judge. (That's reportedly like 0.6% of her hires.) Why so few?

(One of the criteria frequently cited in determining how well qualified someone is to be nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court is whether they have had experience as a law clerk and for which court and judge they have clerked.

Was John Roberts right that the way to stop discrimination by race is to completely eliminate consideration of race in all hiring? And if that means no blacks qualify for the Supreme Court, then so be it?)

Biden is now considering candidates to replace the retiring Breyer (who should have announced his intention to retire early last year instead of waiting until now; Dem Sen Luján is currently out after a stroke).

Biden has vowed to nominate an African-American woman.
Is it racist for a president to take this approach?
Should it be unconstitutional?
Would opposition to the nomination be ethical if the opposition were based on disagreeing with making a selection on the base of race & gender?

Personally, I am troubled to read/hear so many self-identified left-of-center people expressing approval of Biden appointments that are based on identity characteristics such as race, gender, and sexual orientation with little or no consideration of the policy positions held by the appointees. We don't need more pro-corporate, pro-police/pro-prosecutor, pro-security state judges.

aaall said...

"Personally, I am troubled to read/hear so many self-identified left-of-center people expressing approval of Biden appointments that are based on identity characteristics such as race, gender, and sexual orientation with little or no consideration of the policy positions held by the appointees. We don't need more pro-corporate, pro-police/pro-prosecutor, pro-security state judges."

I guess there are no left of center gay, Black/brown, female/trans folks. He can narrow it down to Black women because there are literally hundreds (thousands?) of folks fully qualified to serve as a SC Justice. Among those hundreds (thousands?) there are at least a score or so of any combination so why not considering there has yet to be even one?

s. wallerstein said...

So what if I have unconscious racist biases?

That's like saying that I have unconscious rape fantasies. Maybe I do, but the point (in ethics at least) is that I don't rape anyone, never have and never will.

So too whether or not somewhere in my deep unconscious mind I have racist biases, in my daily life I don't discriminate against any racial group and I don't hate any racial group. That's what counts.

Michael said...

>Michael is claiming that all Caucasians either consciously or subconsciously harbor racist sentiments against Blacks.

I think that's actually putting my position too strongly, as is this bit from earlier:

>I am going to give you a little push-back on your assertion that every Caucasian in the United States necessarily, subconsciously harbors anti-Black, racist sentiments. While I agree that this is probably true of a lot of American Caucasians, I do not believe it is necessarily true of all American Caucasians.

I don't think I used the words "necessarily true of all white people" at any point. I'm really not clear on what would justify the use of such language, particularly the term "necessarily." What could it possibly mean, and how could one purport to demonstrate, that "100% bigotry-free white person" is as contradictory or absurd as "17-sided quadrilateral"?

I think a better (albeit convoluted) way to express my position may be to echo Eric's helpful use of the term "spectrum," and say that it seems overwhelmingly unlikely that anyone in "my part of the world" (phrased with deliberate looseness - but applicable to white Americans, yes) is entirely devoid of attitudes that allow of placement somewhere on the spectrum of bigoted attitudes. (It took some work to come up with this articulation, so it's quite possible I'm overlooking something that calls for revision.)

I hope it's clear that this is compatible with my acknowledging the praiseworthy efforts, accomplishments, and character of people like s. wallerstein's friend.

I get why this can be attacked as unfalsifiable. I think that's a legitimate worry, but not a decisive objection; partly because it seems an over-simplification to equate "unfalsifiable" with "vacuous" or "meaningless/nonsensical," but more importantly, because in many cases, it seems a straightforward inference from insensitive/exclusionary/preferential etc. behavior or language to unconscious bigotry. And I also get the worry that this position unhelpfully obscures the distinction between hate-speech etc. and the sort of innocuous gaffe I describe in my same-sex wedding hypothetical. That's a legitimate worry, too, but I don't think it's relevant to the truth-status of my position.

Thanks, finally, for the words of encouragement not to be too hard on myself. It's kind of embarrassing how often I have to hear that. :)

Michael said...

Gotta head out in a moment, folks - glad to finally be done with quarantine! Good conversation.

Eric said...

Oops. I wrote "flag-burning" when I meant "cross-burning."

Eric said...

s. wallerstein: "So what if I have unconscious racist biases?

That's like saying that I have unconscious rape fantasies. Maybe I do, but the point (in ethics at least) is that I don't rape anyone, never have and never will.

So too whether or not somewhere in my deep unconscious mind I have racist biases, in my daily life I don't discriminate against any racial group and I don't hate any racial group. That's what counts."


(I am going to reframe this as "someone" rather than as "you, s. wallerstein.")
Someone may not knowingly make decisions or take actions that are discriminatory. But if they harbor those biases unconsciously or subconsciouly, it may still lead to their doing things or making choices that are discriminatory. A form of "racism without racists," as sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva puts it.

The result can be that someone's actions when voting in an election, or voting as a member of a trial jury, or recollecting the events of an assault that one witnessed, or assessing the performance of a student or trainee can be affected by those biases of which one is unaware (and which one might even abhor). In the case of a doctor or nurse who consciously desires that there be no racial discrimination, it might mean being in spite of themselves less likely to take a patient's complaints as seriously if the patient belongs to a certain race as they might otherwise. In the case of a banker, it might mean being less inclined to offer a loan. And yet not being aware of the effect of their unconscious biases on their behavior.

s. wallerstein said...

Eric,

No doubt that our unconscious fantasies, likes and dislikes, biases, etc. affect all our decisions, not only about other "races", but also having to do with whether people are tall or short, fat or thin, attractive or ugly, smiling or frowning, etc. All of this has been studied and I don't question that.

People who make important decisions about hiring practices or about patient care (which is not the case with my life) should be aware of possible unconscious biases of all sorts which may affect the rationality of their decisions.

However, I still would not call someone who has unconscious racial biases a "racist", which seems to me to be an ethical qualification having to do with our conscious ethical
values and options.

Anonymous said...

So much pathetic white guilt on display here.

Your forefathers did not bring you into existence with such self-defeating truisms. But you will certainly succeed in weeding out your bloodline by instilling this nonsense into the minds of future generations. Repent before it is too late and do right by your ancestors and your people. There’s no glory or virtue in self destruction.

Michael said...

Eh, okay. Call it guilt if you want. I think of it more like this: As neat as our glorious forefathers were, they still took part in a long tradition of dehumanizing whole communities of people for no real reason, and interestingly enough, this has had a lasting negative influence on the way we understand and deal with another. In fact, if we pay close attention to ourselves today, we can sometimes notice this negative influence at work, sometimes in minor ways, sometimes in major ways. Regardless, whenever we do notice it, IMO, it's best to acknowledge that it isn't a good thing, and make an effort to correct it. You know, rather than openly celebrate it. But YMMV.

aaall said...

Anon, if your concern with bloodlines goes beyond the equine and bovine you need some serious couch time. Just curious, as your post is almost but not quite American English, what is your native language?