Journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, authors of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “His Name Is George Floyd,” are still unclear why they were told they couldn’t read from their book or talk about systemic racism to a room full of high school students in Memphis.
Two days before an event at Whitehaven High School, they said they were “blindsided” by the last-minute restrictions, which they believed event organizers issued in accordance with Tennessee laws restricting certain books in schools. They said they’d also been told the week before the appearance that their book wouldn’t be distributed at the event.
One thing is for certain, the authors said: The students paid the price ultimately.
I think the subject of the post begs the question a little. It’s hardly intellectually honest to insinuate that institutional racism doesn’t exist in broad form because the guy who formalized it fudged the numbers.
It speaks plenty that conservatives won’t allow institutions that they control to even talk about it. If those numbers are so radically false, why stifle the conversation? Especially when the data would then benefit conservative counterpoints.
The truth can be seen in raw data from other sources, like the prison population of the state I live in for instance. How come in Louisiana, black people make up a third of the population but two thirds of the prison population?
Are you going to argue that there’s not enough data to draw the conclusion that black people are incarcerated at a higher rate? The numbers are right there. Are you going to try to justify the (racist) idea that black people just do more crimes? Maybe it’s just that people stuck in lower socioeconomic positions resort to crime more often. So is it that black people tend to not have the same resources other people do to lift themselves up? Possibly due to a generational pattern of poverty?
Or maybe it’s that the police here know that people of a certain color won’t be able to afford to fight back as often. Or that the judges in this shit hole state are ancient racists (with the exception of a couple I know) and don’t believe black people can reform.
That doesn’t sound like institutionalized racism to you?
That reasoning exists independent of the guy who formalized it. It’s pretty asinine to deny the existence of something because of flaws in the way it was studied, regardless of the intent of the person who wrote the paper.
The correlation to jim crowe and red lining is exceptionally clear in regards to criminal behaviour of individuals whose families were impacted by those laws, that’s not in question, how much of an impact it has is definitely in question. i.e. do they commit to these behaviours because of a society that pushed them to do this, or are they using the excuse of an unfortunate past to commit these behaviours? Are individuals in power actually using racist agenda to dictate policy or are they following empirical facts. I would hazard that the latter is emphatically not the case. I do believe many lawmakers use empirical data, but in regards to criminality and racial tension, I’m of the opinion that most lawmakers just throw their personal views and opinions behind their actions as opposed to the research and evidence therein (here, plainly, we see the negative impact that the liar has had because now EVERY research paper is questioned because the vast majority use 1 or more of his papers as referential material.
For the same reason people of jewish heritage claiming the holocaust negatively impacts them when they’re 2-3 generations removed, sure it impacts them in how they were raised by their parents and how their parents were raised by their parents, but beyond that? Extremely doubtful that the event that changed the world only impacts the jewish community, especially when the concentration camps killed scores of people from every background with emphasis on minorities, the mentally disabled and the queer community.
I am not saying to disregard the research as a whole, I’m saying we need to repeat all of the research to verify the findings are accurate and reliable as opposed to just going ‘well I see one bad thing and another bad thing and although they’re clearly correlated, I’m arbitrarily going to note they’re causally related’.
This reasoning is exceptionally racist to even suggest. The logic that black people on the whole commit a higher rate of crimes enough to reflect statistically because they think it’s ok because of their races’ past, is a conservative talking point and a scare tactic.
It’s like suggesting that, because white people tend to make it further in their careers, is it because society as a whole favors white people to be more capable of higher paying jobs? Or is it because white people actually have higher work ethic? The latter is racist to assert, even if you juxtapose it with the actual reasoning like it’s supposed to be considered just as equally.
It seems like you’re just brushing on the point but still missing it. Sure, the studies need to be made again with regards to the actual data. But the data is public. The conclusions can be made without published scientific work. Those help, but conservatives sure aren’t quoting published research papers when they say things like “drag harms children” or “a fetus is a baby”.
The point I’m making is that just bringing up that the guy who formalized the concept falsified his findings, is not enough justification to deny the people talking about their personal convictions to an audience willing to listen, and it’s damn sure not enough for an institution to decide to snip and cut certain things such a group might want to talk about in a way that neuters the point.
The Tennessee school/government has an agenda, just as much as they might claim the group in question does. If that researcher hadn’t have been deposed as a liar, they’d be saying the same things and making the same restrictions, just like they did in the years before he was outed as a liar.
The difference in this conversation is that I only care about the science and don’t care about the politicking.
That’s fine and dandy. But this is an article about politicking and you’re making a point as if the science invalidates the fact that the politicking is the major motivation.
Whether you like it or not, social science bleeds into politics and vice versa. It’s not really something you can take one without the other.
I guess we’re done here?
Asking that the experiments are replicated in order to verify their reliability is not a political stance.
Insuring veracity shouldn’t be on a left or right spectrum, everyone should be aspiring to be as correct as possible, regardless of the politicking.
You’re just asking questions.
Again, invoking science on a post about politics.
Social science in particular relies on many wide concepts and general statements. Sometimes, being as correct as possible is beside the point.
In this case, we don’t have to cite a research paper to understand that conservatives are stifling dissenters to their own world view.
Citing “as correct as possible” on a post about politics is questionable at best. Insisting on reconducting the research before denouncing a clearly political action is basically missing the forest for the trees.
Have a good one, mate