Racism and identity politics

This video is an interesting take on the whole diversity issue.
Essentially Peterson argues that even though there are measurable, objective differences between different groups, the differences are realtively small. They are not significant next to the differences between individuals.
Therefore any argument for diversity based race or gender is basically a racist one, because it essentially states that the major differences between a white person and, let's say, and Asian person are determined by their race, and not by their persons. So an Asian person is more alike to all other Asians, a black person to all other blacks, and a man is to all the men in the world. This reduces a person essentially to his or her "group" being race, gender, sexual orientation, age or anything else.
This is obviously racist, and I do agree with his conclusion on this particular point -somewhat. Indeed the whole problem and paradox of identity politics is that it is fundamentally racist.

But then he further argues that the real basis of diversity is the individual. I am not certain I can accept this, however.

Those small differences he mentioned added up do amount to visible/detectable differences between individuals. Peterson makes the mistake of taking these differences on their own, and not looking at their cummulative effect. Taken as a whole, these differences do amount to an overall variation between groups, even though certain members of the groups may indeed be more similar to another person from a different group than to members of their own group.

So no. I do think it is still important to have as many types of people in groups as possible, although it is probably true that it does not necessarily mean that you have to focus on the "emphasised" grouping, like gender or race. While it may seem like a no-brainer that including a black guy in a group of lawyers may add an extra point of view, I would argue that if that token black guy is coming from the same Harvard environment as the rest of his pastry white co-workers, he will not  bring as much diversity of point of view into this group as a white kid for Idaho who attended to community college (or, god forbid, someone from an European country) would. If you include a black guy who is coming from a ghetto, you are getting there, however. But this is the point that Jordan is pressing: just by picking a random feature, and making it into the sole basis of "diversity", you are essentially a racist (if this feature is race), or, indeed sexist (if it is gender).

Putting your feet in your mouth -twice

So a small-time politician (he is the mayor of the Third District of Budapest) of the Democratic Coalition (DK) in Hungary had a very interesting insight: he thought Hitler totally deserved to be chosen "Man of the Year" by Time magazine in 1938, as under his leadership the German economy was soaring.
Well, yes. And there was the Crystal Night, the Night of the Long Knives, concentration camps and murder of "invalids". But yeah, the economy was good.

Not surprisingly the right side of the media and establishment jumped onto this with relish, while the left side tried to defend his misstep as a mistake, and used the age old "but you too" as well, saying that the "other side" would not have mentioned this gaffle had their own guys committed it. Which is absolutely true. But it is also undeniably true that if this was a right wing politician, the New York Times and the Guardian would have already justified a NATO strike on Hungary for this.

OK, so far we have a stupid comment, which demonstrates how Mr Imre László has absolutely no clue about history, and how the different sides of the political divide interpret this event. Amusing but not a big deal, really. If you thought this could not be elevated onto an ever greater level of absurdity and amusement - well, you were clearly wrong.

Mr Imre was offering an apology for his unfortunate historical parallel but, as he explained, he was taking part in a debate about naming a public square after Josef Mengele when he made it. You know, Mengele. The Angel of Death, the Nazi doctor who did horrific experiments on the inmates of the Auschwitz death camp, and all that. But before you start writing to the New York Times about that NATO strike, read on.

What actually took place was a debate about naming a public square after none other than Nelson Mandela. (The Right here are very much on the opinion that Mandela was a racist terrorist first and foremost, so he does not deserve any recognition - again: politics before history.)

… 

Let this sink in for a second.

Mengele, Mandela what's the difference? You say tomato I say tomato.

And people wonder how Fidesz is still in power. With allies like this, who needs enemies?

A narrowed defition of diversity exported to Europe

So apparently Europe has a diversity problem.
(Apologies for the CNN link; I hate these websites which start ad videos without asking. Deplorable.)

So anyhow, apparently we do.

What do you think it might be? The issue with the roma minority? The status of Hungarians in Romania? (Linked because it is NYT - some things have improved since then, some had not.) Is it the any other problems ethnic minorities face in European countries?

But of course not.

It can only be black people. No other minorities are of importance. In fact, there are no other minorities. This stupid, binary view (black/white) is imported from the US, along with its consequences, as we can see in the riots in the UK about the murder of a man in the US (let's not get into it). And yes, nobody claims black people are not disadvantaged in some countries. But the notion of singling out a population just because it is black, regadless how how few of them are actually living there, while leaving all the other minorities (who might be "only" brown, or god forbid, white - we can't have white minorities, after all) completely out, despite of the fact that by large they have been living in Europe since, well, millennia, and they do face problems of their own is simply preposterous.

In this view, a monolithic white Europe is oppressing blacks because this is what diversity means -and not the multitude of smaller and bigger ethnic groups that make up Europe itself. So when the American police murders a black person, let's smack a bobby in the face, shall we?

Sometimes it feels like the inmates are running the asylum. 

It is simple to explain, though. It is popular, it plays on the white guilt on certain people, and it aligns with the agency of certain people who are in a position to drive the public discourse, and can shout down anyone as a racist or alt-right if they object. In short it makes for a convenient way to deflect discussions about real issues, which would really open a big, freaking can of worm in the perfect European project. After all we can't have people going about tearing up this idea of idillic united Europe by pointing out that certain members may act towards their minorities in a way that is going against the fabled European Values we all heard so much about. So we turn a blind eye to real issues to focus on something that is makes for a good headline and makes the majority (e.g. all white people) into a scapegoat. And this way the proponents of the European Project (which is actually a really good one), and the out-of-control progressives (who worship identity politics) are actually digging the grave for both. The former I do deeply regret; the latter not so much.

The circles of identity politics - or whatever are we going to fight against next?

A relatively old case, but an interesting one which demonstrates how identity politics works. It is a simple one: a woman stabbed her boyfriend, and essentially got away with it with a slap on the wrist.

It is, I have to say, probably enraging a few people -after all, the judgement goes against any sense of justice, because the defendant is a woman. (See: women are wonderful effect -no wonder they get reduced sentences for comparable crimes, right?)

So I was holding my breath when I saw the Guardian headline complaining about injustice with the following headline from two years ago: The Lavinia Woodland case exposes equality before the law as a myth… could it be? The Woke of the Woke, the Flagship of Identity Politics actually stood up against a gross injustice, even if it is about a woman, you know, a person who is suppressed by the systemic forces of a Patriarchy? Maybe now we can have a level-headed discussion about sentencing policies that are so ridiculous it is hard to know where to start to describe them? That maybe the Guardian may point out that women are favoured which leads to miscarriages of justice (not in a legal sense, but in a moral one).

Well, fuck no. Of course not.

The Guardian found a different narrative.

Now it is not heroic, abused women in the yokes of the Patriarchy; after all, a woman is now a beneficiary of this Evil System.
Now it is the minority women against the evil white supremacy which puts them into prison.

There is a kernel of truth in this argument. It is undeniable that money and status played a role in this case. In fact, one can argue, it is the only factor that played any role in the judgement. A poor woman (white or non-white) would not have gotten away so easy. And yes, there is racism in the justice system.

However, deliberately staying blind to the larger injustice - the different sentencing standards for different genders- just because it does not fit into our narrative -well, this is the repugnant part of identity politics. A man would have gotten an even harsher sentence poor or not. And your narrative about the poor, abused women -well, very few criminals are criminals because they chose that life based on a school competency test. Your compassion is only reserved for one part of the population, and you do not see any reason why you should extend it to other human beings who are not in your in-group. If it is about men, your in-group is women, if it is about a white woman, your in-group is minority women. Since everything is relative, you can move the goal posts as much as you like -as long as you keep the victim/oppressor narrative. You are warping reality even when what you say is factually true. Because what you do not say matters, too. You can make fake news without uttering a falsehood, as it is demonstrated so well in this case.

Women are the best leaders

So now the internet is buzzing with the news: women make the best leaders! The few countries which are led by women are really great at COVID-19 response! It is official! There can be no other explanation, right?

Except…
By this measure, this
guy

is an even greater leader… after all, Eastern and Central European countries responded very resolutely to the pandemic, and these steps largely worked.

So now, when we say that a few countries prove that women leaders are the best, do we also say that Orban is a woman? Or do we say suppressing democracy also works? How about countries, which are led by women and responded poorly to COVID-19?

It is quite astonishing, really, that an idea takes root somewhere, some news outlets pick it up, then it becomes real, since so many news outlets are reporting about it, it must be true. The idea becomes reality.

Apart from the stupidity of identity politics, which looks at everything through gender or race (I wonder why during the 2015 refugee crisis they did not say women leaders were crap, based on how Merkel handled the situation, or when Germany essentially took down the economies of Greece and Spain, that women leaders are horribly aggressive. It is also a stroke of luck for these people that May is not in power in the UK, because, well… the UK response has been less than stellar, and May was not exactly the efficient leader women are supposed to be.

And there are other factors to consider, too, unsurprisingly. First of all, you really want to make sweeping generalizations based on a few statistical outliers? How many countries are there, and how many heads of state are women? Even if you are willing to do that (opening up the way to other, more dangerous generalizations based on outliers -how many deaths did muslim terrorists cause in the last decade, for example?), are you sure you are not ignoring everything else that may cause the difference?
Perhaps it is not the female leaders per se we should be discussing; after all they are not absolute monarchs who make decisions on their own. (I think. At least I thought in a democracy they don't.) Perhaps countries where women can and do get into power tend to be technologically, socially on the more advanced side (I am starting to hate the word "progressive"), with relatively low population density - in short, in countries where we could expect an efficient response to the pandemic, we have a higher chance to see women leaders. (Except if the country is in Central or Eastern Europe, because then it seems like efficient response can be expected from male members of society as well.)

And then there are the inconvenient facts nobody mentions about Germany… But that's another issue altogether.

The reason Fidesz won in 2018 -again

There was a lot about why Fidesz won with an overwhelming majority again in both the international and the Hungarian media.

One narrative is the age-old trope about the primitive, easy-to-manipulate people living in the countryside, who just cannot deal with democracy; if only they listened to the smart people in the Capital. (This very popular opinion is quite wide-spread among certain demographics, and of course, it is very prominent in the media. This is obviously a sure way to win people over from those small villages and towns you'd need to win elections.)

Another narrative abroad and at home is that they won because they were pushing a ceaseless xenophobic campaign, playing on the worst fears of the electorate (and thus ~subtly~ implying how horribly racist everyone is in Hungary). I've wrote about this a lot; the campaign was idiotic and disgusting, but this was not something that could not have been pre-empted with some common sense by the Hungarian "elite", which jumped onto the pro-migrant bandwagon with elane in 2015, or the barrage of international condemnation which was frankly stupid and served only as an opportunity for virtue signalling. This was handed to Orban on a cushion; he did not even have to work for this; after all, he was the only one who got this whole mess right in Europe. Which, as a side-note, is freaking scary to think about.

The third narrative is about the free press. Apparently freedom of the media is no longer a thing; Fidesz was able to monopolize every single channel, hence successfully brain-washed the stupid, uneducated masses who had no other source of information but Victor wishpering in their ears day and night about the evils of Soros and the migrants who will rape them and their daughters. (Again: the government propaganda was stomatch-churning, no question about that.)

But the numbers say otherwise. The media is very far from the pro-government propaganda-machine people make it out to be; in fact, Orban is only wishing for the corporate media that was helping Bush getting the US into an illegal war or two, torture, and mass surveillance. Even if this picture was true, there's a problem: people even in villages have access to the internet. In fact, the access is higher than in most of the rest of the world. Sure, you can argue that most of it is probably facebook cats and porn, but you can't really make the case that access to any othe source of information is only financial news and political analysis.

And there's the whole "POPULISM IS ON THE RISE! THE NAZIS ARE COMING". (A "small" issue with these articles: Fidesz is right wing. NOT far right. If Fidesz is far right so are the Republican Party and the Tories.)

The actual reason why Fidesz won is much simpler and prosaic.

The opposition is shit. As this, and several other similar cases clearly demonstrate, they have no desire to cooperate, to have a coherent program, they are absoltely incompetent, and they refuse to do the hard, grassroots work. After it lost the elections in 2002, Fidesz did just that. Despite of having an overly hostile media, it went out, and talked to people, organized groups in the countryside, making people feel like they are valued (but still not offering any solution to their problems). And it worked. It's as simple as that.

So now we have a winning strategy to win an election, and there is the opportunistic career politician. Guess which one will get a 2/3 majority in the next election.

Gender pay gap and the case of who gets to the top

The narrative about gender pay gap has changed subtly over the last year or so; finally the flimsy argument not supported by actual facts, that "because of Patriarchy women get paid less for the same amount of work" has seem to be dropped; it's nice because literally nothing supports it. (But if you did not know: we have pocket money pay gap, too - again the evils of men suppressing women from an early age.)

The ONR's figures show that between the ages of 22 and 29 women earn 1.1% more than men of the same age, and between 30 and 39 women earn 0.2% more than men in the same age group. (Of course this is not a problem worth correcting.) This pay gap reduces and then reverses around the average age of having children. Yes, overall men earn more but that is because the pay gap flips before the higher earning years. Employers, however, are being gender blind on this issue, and simply basing decisions on productivity and output. Feminists can describe this as unarguably unfair and hence slander men as sexist or even misogynist but it is a grey area depending on your perspective on fairness. For instance is it fair to discriminate against someone who has more experience and fewer career breaks simply because they are a man?

When you compare apples to apples -same experience, same qualifications, IT companies (which supposed to be the epitomes of "Da Patriarchy", with all those spotty little nerds who break out in sweat whenever they see a woman) show no gender pay gap.

So finally the narrative is shifting; now even The Guardian admits (in contrast to previous articles) that the situation is not as clear-cut as women getting paid less for the same work. (It took about two decades, but finally data and facts overtake ideology. There is hope still. Next you're telling me that Climate Change is real...) The sneering condescension is actually ramped up, but there you go. It's somewhat ironic that finally they are getting closer to the "other" narrative, and admitting that the situation is more complex than the identity politics' response of "women are downtrodden", and yet being more hateful and confrontative. I think it's understandable (and even necessary) since they cannot possibly admit that "the other side" might have been right about something all along.

So what does it leave us with? Our feminist now scornfully explains (you can see this as "womansplaining") that the solutions should include societal changes - the very things that "the others" have said, since this is what the data suggested. Just to make it clear: she is explaining something that was constantly brought up to feminists as an alternative explanation to the disparity of pay between genders... in a tone that suggests that everyone else but her was stupid. I really do think it's a great example of the hitherto unidentified, but not unobserved womansplaining.

Yes we know. We kept telling you the very same thing while you called us misogynists. 

So there are a couple of issues here. Career choices - a difficult proposition. A woman who has no family has the same pay as a man. But can you negatively discriminate others so that you promote women who do have children? It is something that does need to be discussed; but the angry, straight-out hostile tone is not helpful -or even warranted. Interestingly these authors are looking at women in isolation when it comes to career choices and pay, instead of looking at them as part of a family unit. By taking a career break, they do impact their own earning potential; however the other member of this family unit can actually make up for the shortfall. Unless you gimp them as well, because "they're men, and they should also earn less even though they have more experience and did not take career breaks". In this case the whole family suffers the loss of earning, you know. Unintended consequence which can be actually foreseen. 

The author of this Guardian article also argues for gender neutral recruitment; which is a very good thing, but it can certainly backfire spectacularly. She also calls for encouraging women to enter different fields; but how exactly are you going to force them to do so? Are you going to set up quotas for mining engineers, for example? Sorry, Rosie, I know you want to be a teacher, but you will need to enrol in astrophysics to fill out the quota? Like it or not, genders do differ, and men and women in general might be inclined to gravitate towards different fields. It does not mean that a particular woman cannot be a fighter pilot or a coal miner, but in general women tend to do other types of jobs. A lot of which is underpaid, I might add. This is not a gender issue we're talking about; it's a societal issue. Our society in general seems to reward other things that most of us see important; lawyers, economists, pop stars are making dis-proportionally more than people who wash the bottom of your grandmother in the hospital. We should definitely make sure that our carers and teachers are paid better; but the identity politics really poisons this conversation.

The other issue constantly brought up about gender inequality is the relative low representation of women in the top management positions (and in politics). Certain people like to look at it as the Patriarchy oppressing women; as if Joe the Septic Tank Cleaner might benefit anything from an Oxbridge educated white guy getting a CEO position at a hedge fund. (I guess they all know each other from the weekly secret penis-meetings where they discuss everything they need to oppress women). 

It is certainly a possibility, although I never got an invite, so I'm feeling a bit left out. However there are some minor issues with this. For example a LOT of high management positions are being filled out with women in the civil service, academia, etc - and there are more and more female politicians, too. So it seems like the trend is changing already. Perhaps people should just wait until this naturally equalises in reaction to the affirmative actions taken over the last two decades. (After all, women already are represented in higher numbers in universities... and yet no cries can be heard about gender imbalances.) 

Another intriguing possibility presents itself by simply taking a look at these positions and what it takes to get there. We do know that people in high positions often express psychopathic traits. And by "often" I mean one CEO in five does. Which is way more than in the general population. This is really not surprising; to get to the top you have to be absolutely driven and be absolutely without any scruples. You don't get these promotions by being passively promoted, as these authors in The Guardian seem to think; according to their wisdom you are promoted to a high management position on the basis of the possession of a penis. The truth is somewhat different. You have to be a one hundred percent dedicated individual who is willing to put in an insane amount of work, and walk over anyone if necessary -in other word, well, you have to be a psychopath. (Or something close to it.) Even if you reached a moderate success, and possess enough money to invest and live off comfortably with your family without having to work another day, these people still put in sixteen hours a day to get even higher up.

You don't get these positions by playing nice, and doing your work, climbing up the ladder one step at a time; you have to elbow yourself in, and destroy all your rivals (professionally only usually, but personally, too, should it become necessary). 

But perhaps women are underrepresented in the higher management positions partially because fewer women are willing to engage in these struggles; fewer women want or can put in fourteen hour workdays, and put up with the merciless contest leading to the top. Very few people are willing to do that - regardless of what their genitals look like. What I think is that there are a little bit more men than women who are competitive and ruthless enough to succeed; that's all. We are talking about the very edge of the outliers on the bell curve here. What feminists and other mostly arts and humanities majors tend to forget that we are biological beings; results of millions of years of evolution. This includes our gender roles as well; a hundred years of societal conditioning will not erase millions of years of savage struggle for survival. Men ARE evolved to be more aggressive; its foolish to think this can all be forgotten because you played with gender neutral toys as a toddler. 

There is also a different aspect of the higher management positions: there are really not a lot of these around, so statistics will not be very useful. For every one of these high-earners you get thousands of underlings, so a very small imbalance can absolutely skew the statistics. Ironically the feminists are right that these people make way too much; but it's not a gender issue.

I'm not sure what the solution can be to address these issues. Sudden society engineering moves will not be very successful. You cannot mandate gender quotas only in certain positions (unless you're willing to do that for others as well- coal miners and construction workers come to mind), and you certainly cannot discriminate against men  without a serious backlash. You can't mandate more women in leading positions, either; vagina-quotas will not fly well with corporations, and ironically you will entrench the position of women as the "lesser sex", since obviously they need help to climb up. You can only encourage more women to enter the fight for those position. But how exactly are you going to do that? How fair would it be to handicap males or help females to get to higher management? First of all you really, really need to answer the question: are there fewer females in these positions because it's a boy's club, or is it something else, some other factor at play? (Such as the potential explanations above.)