What's wrong with being gay?

[Daedalus X]

This thread is a continuation of an off topic conversation from here.

First, I think that we all agree that it's important to promote understanding, respect, and equality for all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation. Everyone should be treated with dignity and allowed to express their identity without fear of discrimination or harm.


Question for debate is LGTBQIA2S+ a harmless social contagion, or are there serious unintended consequences awaiting the individuals and societies that are going down this road?

[boatsnguitars]

Yeah, I'm going to let others deal with what appears to me a racist, sexist, nazi-ish, incel perspective on manhood, womanhood, and what "feminized" means.

The generation that fought the Germans in WW2 had a standard of what a man should act like. If that standard is even brought up today, the new generation will get so triggered that they will accuse the person who brought it up of being a NAZI. This is how feminized our society has become. If our kinder gentler nation loses the ability to defend itself then a less kinder gentler nation will remove our new found way of life from this world. This is why we need to think hard before we try to feminize and gay our men.

Yeah, I'm not going to discuss this with you. Sounds like you have a romanticized version of the 1940-1950s, and you seem to have no clue what your own point is. I guess the Nazi's were feminized - because they started the war - or are you saying "feminizing" makes men soft - which goes against your point that women start more wars... It honestly just sounds like you hate women and love butch men.

As I said, there's nothing wrong with being gay, but I don't think we need to demean women - or idolize "manly men".

I also think it would be entirely useless to debate this with you since you seem to think people should be forced to whatever social engineering program you ascribe to, rather than people living as they'd like to live. I think you've got a non-starter. Is your plan to enforce corporeal punishment so kids get a good beating when they're young? Maybe force everyone to go to war to learn how to be tough?

Were you bullied as a child - and possibly mocked by women?

[Clownboat]

Yeah, I'm going to let others deal with what appears to me a racist, sexist, nazi-ish, incel perspective on manhood, womanhood, and what "feminized" means.

It's all probably for the best though. Even though I wish I could learn more about your thoughts on the matter, I'm not interested in what slander you want to levy at another person.

Evolution has spent millions of years in honing our gender roles, and now we think we can overturn the whole project in a few generations.

This argument in itself is not racist. (@boatsnguitars) Care to discuss this idea, or just call people names?

There is a reason why young black men are responsible for half the murders in our country. I think the reason for that is that these men are predominantly raised by single mothers, with no father living in the home.

Also not racist to point this out and to then have this feeling (about being raised in single families more often and what affect that might have). Care to discuss the murderers to see if there is a correlation to having been raised by a single parent compared to a household with both a mother and a father?

Don't even try, I'll just call you names! J/K!

And without good, strong masculine men to teach them their gender role in life they will ad lib and end up becoming violent criminals.

Also, not racist. What if there is a correlation? If so, shame on those for trying to shut down such a discussion.

I have never seen a good argument that would conclude, that feminizing men is going to do us any good, have you?

(@Daedalus) And you are not going to get one here it seems. Too bad, who knows what we might learn.

[Clownboat]

Yeah, I'm not going to discuss this with you. Sounds like you have a romanticized version of the 1940-1950s, and you seem to have no clue what your own point is. I guess the Nazi's were feminized - because they started the war - or are you saying "feminizing" makes men soft - which goes against your point that women start more wars... It honestly just sounds like you hate women and love butch men.

As I said, there's nothing wrong with being gay, but I don't think we need to demean women - or idolize "manly men".

I also think it would be entirely useless to debate this with you since you seem to think people should be forced to whatever social engineering program you ascribe to, rather than people living as they'd like to live. I think you've got a non-starter. Is your plan to enforce corporeal punishment so kids get a good beating when they're young? Maybe force everyone to go to war to learn how to be tough?

Were you bullied as a child - and possibly mocked by women?

I bolded what seems like slander and not debate for anyone interested. Over half!

To the topic of debate: "Nothing is wrong with being gay IMO".

[Daedalus X]

Sounds like you have a romanticized version of the 1940-1950s, and you seem to have no clue what your own point is.

It is a time that can be romanticized. That is why you used that word to describe that time. Thou, a lot of people feel that the "Ozzie and Harriet" life was a myth or had bad unintended consequences, but most people believe there was something worthwhile in that time, and would be good to find it again. School mass murder shootings were very rare then.

I guess the Nazi's were feminized - because they started the war - or are you saying "feminizing" makes men soft - which goes against your point that women start more wars... It honestly just sounds like you hate women and love butch men.

It was actually the policy of appeasement by Neville Chamberlain, that gave Hitler the green light to push for war. Neville would have made even modern feminists proud of him.

I also think it would be entirely useless to debate this with you since you seem to think people should be forced to whatever social engineering program you ascribe to, rather than people living as they'd like to live. I think you've got a non-starter. Is your plan to enforce corporeal punishment so kids get a good beating when they're young? Maybe force everyone to go to war to learn how to be tough?

As I said before, we don't want to force anyone to do anything. We just need to teach people what healthy and stable societies look like, and that it is more rewarding to live in such a society.

[boatsnguitars]

Sounds like you have a romanticized version of the 1940-1950s, and you seem to have no clue what your own point is.

It is a time that can be romanticized. That is why you used that word to describe that time. Thou, a lot of people feel that the "Ozzie and Harriet" life was a myth or had bad unintended consequences, but most people believe there was something worthwhile in that time, and would be good to find it again. School mass murder shootings were very rare then.

I guess the Nazi's were feminized - because they started the war - or are you saying "feminizing" makes men soft - which goes against your point that women start more wars... It honestly just sounds like you hate women and love butch men.

It was actually the policy of appeasement by Neville Chamberlain, that gave Hitler the green light to push for war. Neville would have made even modern feminists proud of him.

I also think it would be entirely useless to debate this with you since you seem to think people should be forced to whatever social engineering program you ascribe to, rather than people living as they'd like to live. I think you've got a non-starter. Is your plan to enforce corporeal punishment so kids get a good beating when they're young? Maybe force everyone to go to war to learn how to be tough?

As I said before, we don't want to force anyone to do anything. We just need to teach people what healthy and stable societies look like, and that it is more rewarding to live in such a society.

It wasn't a healthy society. You are simply misremembering, or misattributing. Or, you are simply referring to the portrayal on TV.

There's a reason there was civil unrest shortly after.

Restrictive gender roles, Lack of diversity and representation, Patriarchy and misogyny, Racial and social inequality.

Let me guess: You are a white, straight man, right? Of course you think they were the 'good old days'.

[boatsnguitars]

Democrats and Republicans Are Living in Different Worlds
July 26, 2023
By Thomas B. Edsall

Two books published last year, very different in tone — Senator Josh Hawley’s “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs” and Richard Reeves’s “Of Boys and Men” — have focused public attention on this debate.

Hawley approached the subject from a decidedly conservative point of view.

“No menace to this nation is greater than the collapse of American manhood,” he declared, placing full blame “on the American left. In fact they have helped drive it. In power centers they control, places like the press, the academy and politics, they blame masculinity for America’s woes.”

Hawley added:

More and more young men are living at home with their parents, apparently incapable of coping with life on their own. As for jobs, fewer and fewer young men have them. In 2015, nearly a quarter of men between the ages of 21 and 30, historically a cohort strongly attached to work and the labor force, had no work to speak of. These men had not engaged in labor during the previous 12 months. At all.

Reeves painted a similarly downbeat picture of the state of men but contended that the solutions lie in an expansion of the liberal agenda. “Men account for two out of three ‘deaths of despair’ either from a suicide or overdose,” Reeves wrote, and

young men are five times more likely to commit suicide than young women. The wages of the typical man are lower today than in 1979. Boys and men of color, and those from poorer families, are suffering most. In part, this reflects a dramatic reversal of the gender gap in education. In fact, the gender gap in college degrees awarded is wider today than it was in the early 1970s, just in the opposite direction. But there is also a big gap in what might be called personal agency: Men are now only about half as likely as women to study abroad or sign up for the Peace Corps, much less likely to buy their own home as a single adult and half as likely to initiate a divorce. In advanced economies today, women are propelling themselves through life. Men are drifting.

Reeves and Hawley had quite dissimilar causal explanations for this phenomenon — as do so many Republicans and Democrats. Let’s take a look at a July survey, conducted by Ipsos for Politico, “The Best Way to Find Out if Someone Is a Trump Voter? Ask Them What They Think About Manhood.”

“It turns out ideas about gender and masculinity can be reliable indicators of how people vote by party and by candidate,” Katelyn Fossett, an associate editor at Politico Magazine, wrote in an article describing the poll.

In blunt terms, the poll asked, “Do you agree or disagree with the statement ‘The Democratic Party is hostile to masculine values’?” Republicans agreed, 68 to 8 percent; Democrats disagreed, 62 to 6 percent.

One of the core differences between Republicans and Democrats lies in their views on family structure. Ipsos asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement “Traditional family structure with a wage-earning father and a homemaking mother best equips children to succeed.”

Republicans agreed 52 to 24 percent; Democrats disagreed 59 to 16 percent — once again almost mirror images of each other.

A similar level of partisan disagreement emerged in responses to the statement “The MeToo movement has made it harder for men to feel they can speak freely at work.” Republicans agreed 65 to 10 percent; Democrats disagreed 43 to 21 percent.

These differences were then reflected in key policy issues. For example, “Do you support or oppose increased military spending?” Republicans supported it, 81 to 11 percent; Democrats modestly opposed it, 47 to 40 percent. “Laws that limit access to firearms”? Republicans opposed them, 67 to 28 percent; Democrats supported them, 87 to 10 percent.

The substantial 22-point gender gap found in the 2022 election pales in comparison with the policy and attitudinal differences found in the current Ipsos/Politico survey.

Other polls provide further illumination.

In its 2022 American Values Survey, the Public Religion Research Institute asked a related question: “Has American society as a whole become too soft and feminine?” Among those surveyed, 42 percent agreed, and 53 percent disagreed.

There was, however, P.R.R.I. noted, a “partisan divide on this question of nearly 50 percentage points: Approximately two-thirds of Republicans (68 percent) say society has become too soft and feminine, compared with 44 percent of independents and less than one in five Democrats (19 percent).”

What’s not clear in the data from the Ipsos/Politico poll is how these partisan differences on gender-linked issues will play out in November 2024.

There are a number of additional emerging trends that have clear partisan implications, including generational schisms.

In a July 10 Washington Post essay, “2024 Won’t Be a Trump-Biden Replay. You Can Thank Gen Z for That,” Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, and Mac Heller, a producer of political documentaries, described the growing strength of young Democratic-leaning voters. “Every year,” they wrote,

About four million Americans turn 18 and gain the right to vote. In the eight years between the 2016 and 2024 elections, that’s 32 million new eligible voters. Also every year, two and a half million older Americans die. So in the same eight years, that’s as many as 20 million fewer older voters.

Which means that between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2024 election, the number of Gen Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2010s) voters will have advanced by a net 52 million against older people. That’s about 20 percent of the total 2020 eligible electorate of 258 million Americans.

Why is that significant? These Gen Z voters are turning out in higher percentages than similar-age voters in the past, and their commitment to a liberal or even progressive agenda has “led young people in recent years to vote more frequently for Democrats and progressive policies than prior generations did when of similar age — as recent elections in Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin have shown,” Lake and Heller wrote.

Ideologically and demographically, these voters tilt sharply left.

The Lake-Heller essay continued:

About 48 percent of Gen Z voters identify as a person of color, while the boomers they’re replacing in the electorate are 72 percent white. Gen Z voters are on track to be the most educated group in our history, and the majority of college graduates are now female. Because voting participation correlates positively with education, expect women to speak with a bigger voice in our coming elections. Gen Z voters are much more likely to cite gender fluidity as a value, and they list racism among their greatest concerns. Further, they are the least religious generation in our history.

A February 2023 Brookings report, “How Younger Voters Will Impact Elections: Younger Voters Are Poised to Upend American Politics,” noted, “Younger voters should be a source of electoral strength for Democrats for some years to come.”

The authors, Morley Winograd, a senior fellow at the U.S.C. Center on Communication Leadership and Policy; Michael Hais, a consultant; and Doug Ross, a former Michigan state senator, argued that “younger Americans are tilting the electoral playing field strongly toward the Democrats” and “their influence enabled the Democrats to win almost every battleground state contest” in 2022.

The authors cited 2022 exit poll data for Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania showing a consistent pattern: Voters 45 and older cast majorities for Republicans, while those 18 to 44 backed Democrats by larger margins.

There are, conversely, developments suggesting gains for the Republican Party.

On June 8, Gallup reported a steady increase in the percentage of Americans who described themselves as “social conservatives” — from 30 percent in 2021 to 33 percent in 2022 to 38 percent this year. The percentage describing themselves as very liberal on social issues fell from 34 to 29 percent.

Among Republicans, the percentage describing themselves as social issue conservatives rose from 60 in 2021 to 74 in 2023. More important politically, social issue conservatism among independents, who are most likely to be swing voters, grew from 24 to 29 percent from 2021 to 2023. The share of social issue conservative Democrats remained unchanged at 10 percent.

In another signal of possible troubles for Democrats, Gallup reported this month that the percentage of Americans describing immigration as “a good thing for the country” had fallen to 68 percent this year from 77 percent in 2020. The percentage describing immigration as a “bad thing for the country” rose from 19 to 27 percent over the same period.

On a different and perhaps more revealing question, Gallup asked whether immigration should be increased, kept the same or decreased. From 2020 to 2023, the percentage saying “decreased” grew sharply to 41 percent from 28 percent. The share supporting an increase fell to 26 percent from 34 percent.

Gallup created a measure it called “net support for increased immigration” by subtracting the percentage of those calling for a decrease in immigration from the percentage of those calling for an increase.

From 2020 to 2023, net support among Democrats fell from plus 38 to plus 22 percent. For Republicans, net support fell from minus 34 to minus 63 percent. Among the crucial block of self-identified independents, support fell from plus 6 to minus 12 percent.

Exit polls from 2022 showed that voters who took conservative stands on social issues and those who were opposed to immigration voted by decisive margins for Republican candidates.

There are other forces pushing voters to the right. One unanticipated consequence of the opioid epidemic, for example, has been an increase in Republican support in the areas that suffered the most.

In a paper published this month, “Democracy and the Opioid Epidemic,” Carolina Arteaga and Victoria Barone, economists at the University of Toronto and Notre Dame, found that an analysis of House elections from 1982 to 2020 revealed that “greater exposure to the opioid epidemic continuously increased the Republican vote share in the House starting in 2006. This higher vote share translated into additional seats won by Republicans from 2014 and until 2020.”

Not only did exposure to increased opioid usage correlate with higher Republican margins; it “was accompanied by an increase in conservative views on immigration, abortion and gun control and in conservative ideology in general,” Arteaga and Barone wrote.

The two economists used an ingenious, if depressing, method quantifying opioid use by measuring different geographic levels of cancer deaths: “The opioid epidemic began with the introduction of OxyContin to the market in 1996,” they wrote. One of the key marketing strategies to increase sales of OxyContin was to concentrate on doctors treating cancer patients:

We start by showing the evolution of prescription opioids per capita by cancer mortality in 1996. Commuting zones in the top quartile of cancer mortality in 1996 saw an increase of 2,900 percent in oxycodone grams per capita, while areas in the lowest quartile experienced growth that was one-third of that magnitude.

There is, Arteaga and Barone wrote, “a positive and statistically significant relationship between mid-1990s cancer mortality and shipments of prescription opioids per capita. The connection between cancer mortality and opioid shipments tracks opioid-related mortality.”

This linkage allowed Arteaga and Barone to use cancer mortality rates as a proxy for opioid use, so that they could show that “a rise of one standard deviation in the 1996 cancer mortality rate corresponds to an increase in the Republican vote share of 13.8 percentage points in the 2020 congressional elections.”

There are other, less disturbing but significant developments emerging from growing partisan hostility.

As Democrats and Republicans have become increasingly polarized, three political scientists have found that partisan schadenfreude has gained strength among both Democrats and Republicans.

In another paper from July, “Partisan Schadenfreude and Candidate Cruelty,” Steven W. Webster, Adam N. Glynn and Matthew P. Motta of Indiana, Emory and Oklahoma State Universities wrote:

Partisan schadenfreude is a powerful predictor of voting intentions in the United States. Moving from below the median to above the median on our schadenfreude measure predicts an increase of approximately 13 points.

American voters “are not averse to supporting cruel candidates,” according to Webster, Glynn and Motta. “A significant portion — over one-third — of the mass public is willing to vote for a candidate of unknown ideological leanings who promises to pass policies that ‘disproportionately harm’ supporters of the opposing political party.”

Among those high in schadenfreude, they continued, “cruel candidates are not merely passively accepted. On the contrary, for this subset of Americans, candidate cruelty is sought out.”

I asked Webster whether schadenfreude was stronger in either party, and he replied by email:

It is hard to say whether Democrats or Republicans are more prone to partisan schadenfreude. This is because we measured schadenfreude in slightly different ways according to one’s partisan identification. Democratic schadenfreude was measured after subjects saw a vignette of a Democrat losing government-provided health insurance following a vote for a Republican; Republican schadenfreude was measured after seeing a vignette about voting for a Democrat and losing take-home pay in the wake of tax increases.

There was, Webster continued, “a clear pattern: Both Democrats and Republicans express partisan schadenfreude, and this attitude is most pronounced among those who are ideologically extreme (i.e., liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans).”

I also asked whether a candidate signaling willingness to punish opponents would see a net gain or loss of votes. Webster replied:

We find that most Americans do not register an intention to vote for candidates who promise legislative cruelty. It is only among those individuals who exhibit the greatest amount of schadenfreude that we see an acceptance of these candidates (as measured by a willingness to vote for them). So there is certainly a trade-off here. If political consultants and candidates think that their constituency is prone to exhibiting high amounts of schadenfreude, then campaigning on promises of legislative cruelty could be a successful tactic. As in most cases, the composition of the electorate matters a great deal.

While partisan schadenfreude is present among voters on both sides, among politicians the two most prominent champions of its use are Republicans — Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis — and they share the honor of being most willing to adopt policies to hurt Democratic constituencies to win support.

Given the assumption that turnout will be critical in 2024, the 2022 elections sent some warning signals to Democrats. In an analysis published this month, “Voting Patterns in the 2022 Elections,” Pew Research found:

The G.O.P. improved its performance in 2022 across most voting subgroups relative to 2018 — due almost entirely to differential partisan turnout. Voters who were more favorable to Republican candidates turned out at higher rates compared with those who typically support Democrats.

These trends were visible in Hispanic voting patterns:

A higher share of Hispanic voters supported G.O.P. candidates in the 2022 election compared with in 2018. In November 2022, 60 percent of Hispanic voters cast ballots for Democrats compared with 39 percent who supported Republicans. This 21-point margin is smaller than in 2018, when 72 percent of Hispanic voters favored Democrats and 25 percent supported Republicans.

Crucially, Hannah Hartig, Andrew Daniller, Scott Keeter and Ted Van Green, the authors of the report, wrote:

among Hispanic voters who cast ballots in the 2018 election, 37 percent did not vote in the 2022 midterms. Those who did not vote had tilted heavily Democratic in 2018 — reflecting asymmetric changes in voter turnout among Hispanic adults.

If Joe Biden and the Democratic Party allow the turnout patterns of 2022 to define turnout in 2024, Biden will lose, and Republicans will be odds-on favorites to control the House and Senate.

Trump is a master of turnout. In large part because of Trump, voter turnout in 2020 — measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population — was the highest in 120 years, at 66.7 percent.

Trump is the Democrats’ best hope. In the past three elections — 2018, 2020 and 2022 — when he was on the ballot either literally or through candidate surrogates, he brought out Democratic voters by the millions, reminding a majority of Americans just what it is that they do not want.

Turns out, this is the new Identity Politics by the Right. Gender and "Masculinity" are the new Right Wing talking points, so read up everyone. Like we had to defend Gay Marriage, Evolution, etc. from the onslaught of the Religious Right (and won), we will have to defend - again - the Majority from the Hyper-Religious, White, Cis Males forcing their agenda on the world.

[Clownboat]

Turns out, this is the new Identity Politics by the Right. Gender and "Masculinity" are the new Right Wing talking points, so read up everyone. Like we had to defend Gay Marriage, Evolution, etc. from the onslaught of the Religious Right (and won), we will have to defend - again - the Majority from the Hyper-Religious, White, Cis Males forcing their agenda on the world.

What Cis Male agenda are you talking about, how long has it been around and how are these males forcing it on others?

What is the simple definition of agenda?
1. : a list or outline of things to be considered or done.

[Daedalus X]

It wasn't a healthy society. You are simply misremembering, or misattributing. Or, you are simply referring to the portrayal on TV.

There's a reason there was civil unrest shortly after.

Restrictive gender roles, Lack of diversity and representation, Patriarchy and misogyny, Racial and social inequality.

It was a healthier society than today, black people had been making greater progress than white people from 1865 to 1965. It was a time of hope for all people. I don't think that we really understand what went wrong, Thomas Sowell thinks it had something to do with the new ideology of the war on poverty.




It did not help that the FBI was trying to stir up the civil unrest.

[boatsnguitars]

It was a healthier society than today, black people had been making greater progress than white people from 1865 to 1965. It was a time of hope for all people. I don't think that we really understand what went wrong, Thomas Sowell thinks it had something to do with the new ideology of the war on poverty.

This is why I'll never be a Conservative.

Imagine trying to convince people that the Good Old Days were from 1865's to 1965. Or just 40s to 50s.

Imagine trying to convince people that things were better for Black people because right after the Civil War they were granted freedom from slavery - when they had NOTHING. And imagine thinking your argument is good!

Imagine thinking that smart people will be fooled by the argument that while Black people were fighting for their lives, let alone the right to vote and clawing slowly forward to be treated as more than 3/5ths a human they were progressing faster than White people, who had those things already. Of course they progressed faster! They started with Nothing - but they are still not equal. Only a fool can think that Black people have it good, had it good, or that it was better in the 1950s-1960s. I truly mean that.

Imagine thinking this is an intellectual debate!

Imagine finding the one Black Conservative who agrees with the White majority, as if by using a Black person it outweighs the thousands of other Black people who argue the opposite point. It's racist.

I can't imagine ever being persuaded by such smarmy and anti-intellectual tactics. I don't know what kind of person could be convinced by this.

It's, honestly, one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. And, Sowell is an idiot if he thinks it can be distilled down to the War on Poverty.

To drive my point home. The fact that progress has been slow since 1965 shows that Black people, and PoC (and women, and other minorities) still face systemic racism.

There isn't a PoC today who would return to any earlier era in America. And 100 years from today, they wouldn't either.

What went wrong is that White people didn't like Black people. Most still don't. It's simply Racism - but Conservatives will scour the Earth to find some other excuse.

Also, the topic is about being gay. Do you want to argue that Gay people had it better before 1965, too?

BTW:

What’s wrong with Thomas Sowell?
Dawson Richard Vosburg

There is something of an obsession among my fellow evangelicals with an economist named Thomas Sowell. I’ve seen his name trotted out all over the place — most recently, Thaddeus Williams’s book Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth calls him “the other St. Thomas.” Williams repeats a claim I’ve heard many times: he’s never heard anyone engage the arguments of Thomas Sowell (or any number of other Black conservatives). Many of Sowell’s avid fans, of which the Internet contains multitudes, make the conjecture that this is because people on the left are afraid of Sowell’s no-nonsense, fact-based challenges to their arguments.

To a degree I also think it is a shame that there are so few counter-arguments to Sowell in public and in accessible language. To be sure, reviews, rebuttals, and critiques of Sowell’s work have appeared in academic publications, but these are frequently not within reach to people without academic affiliation, and compared to other conservative favorites such as Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro, relatively few popular critiques of Sowell are to hand. However, I don’t share the assessment of Sowell’s fans that this is because of his unmatched brilliance. Sowell’s arguments are, in the main, sophomoric in construction and ideologically resistant to intervention from the real world. Despite his bluster about Evidence and Facts that purportedly come to knock down the house of left economic and racial ideas, Sowell is unique even among the conservatives he’s usually cited with for his immunity to real knowledge and his social-scientific sophistry.

Given the gargantuan volume of Sowell’s popular writing, I’m going to need to focus on the central cluster of claims Sowell is known for. This is essentially aggregated from a variety of Sowell’s work, since much of it is repetitive—the primary books I’m addressing are Discrimination and Disparities and Black Rednecks, White Liberals, combined with the vast expanse of Sowell video interviews and clips available on the Internet. I’ve broken down what I see to be this central cluster into its constitutive claims in order to deal with them in sequence:

Disparities do not prove discrimination, particularly pertaining to Black-White economic inequality in the US.
Black Americans, especially the worst-off living in urban centers, have a “redneck” culture that was handed to them by White southerners via Britain. It is this culture which produces bad behavioral patterns, such as crime and single parenthood.
These behavioral patterns are exacerbated by the interventions of the welfare state.
It is these behavioral patterns from the combination of culture and welfare that lead to Black-White economic inequality.
Black people are blameworthy for their inequality-producing behavior.
Each of these claims, as well as the argument as a whole, are riddled with problems of argumentative logic and empirical evidence. In many cases even just one of them would tank the entire enterprise; the sum of all of them is utterly damning.

Discrimination and Disparities
Sowell is correct that intentional racial discrimination (according to Sowell’s classification, Discrimination 1b and 2) at a given juncture — say, racial discrimination by an employer — cannot fully explain Black-White racial disparities in economic outcomes. It does not follow, however, that therefore the remaining racial disparity not explained by acute racial discrimination is not caused by racism in society. Sowell concludes that, for instance, employers and realtors and bankers will make choices about hiring or real estate or loans based on the relevant qualities the individual brings to the table, such as education, credit scores, criminal or eviction history, and so on (this is what he calls Discrimination 1a). People have differences in the quantity and quality of these they can bring to the table, and thus it is perfectly reasonable to find inequalities in economic outcomes.

What is not answered by this, however, is why these inequalities would be unevenly distributed by race. It’s certainly not a realtor’s fault that there is a Black-White disparity in credit score, but that difference is not a natural fact of the universe. I and most other social scientists believe that there is inherited inequality from the entire history of American social life that at least in part accounts for why the distribution of these sorts of things are unequal by race. The literature on inherited racial inequalities in sociology, economics, and history is simply massive and cannot be hand-waved away. As it stands, Sowell’s argument on this point is hopelessly endogenous.

This argument is also wrapped up with the claim that any government intervention intended to reduce disparities will result in unintended consequences that will most likely make things worse for the people you’re trying to help. This is, in the terms of Albert Hirschman, the “perversity thesis” — the common conservative argument that whatever change you want to implement in society will actually do the opposite of what you want it to do. The reason why this rhetorical move has power is because it seems intuitively true, and sometimes policies do have consequences of this kind. But it simply does not logically follow from the example that some such policies backfired that any such policy inevitably will.

Black Rednecks
Where Sowell thinks underlying disparities originate from, rather than inherited inequality, is inherited culture. This argument is perhaps one of the worst ones Sowell makes and betrays an unbelievable historical and social-scientific ineptitude. The basics of his claim is that British Americans introduced “redneck” culture into the South prior to the Civil War, this culture was transmitted to Black people, and that it was brought to Northern cities with Black migrants. This, he says, explains why Black people commit so much crime and have such high rates of poverty, single motherhood, and unemployment.

This argument is rife with historical and conceptual problems. For instance, if “redneck” culture accompanying Black migrants to Northern cities was the cause of increases in crime in those cities, why did homicide rates increase after the second wave of the Great Migration, but not the first? Why wasn’t there a similar racial disparity in crime in the South, where Black people were moving to cities from? Why did crime rates only begin to rise in the 1960s (at the same time low-skilled Black unemployment rates began to soar)? Why did the rise in single parenthood that coincided with the rise in crime and unemployment wait until some 20 years after the second wave of the Great Migration to take effect if we’re to believe that this is all caused by “redneck” culture, passed along in the 18th and 19th century and not taking full effect until the second half of the 20th?

Sowell’s theory of culture is also incredibly bizarre. To read his argument, you would imagine culture to be a free-floating thing, unaffected by material circumstance, passed unilaterally from one group to another and retained, unchanged, until you strip it off and put on a new one. Culture does not work that way. At the very least, culture adapts to material circumstance, especially culture regarding how one should behave in order to be successful in life. If your group is presented with a series of poor economic chances in historical succession culminating with the segregation into neighborhoods of concentrated unemployment following de-industrialization, it would be perfectly rational that your group would develop a culture adapted to that economic environment. There is little reason to believe Sowell’s theory of unchanged cultural traits passing unilaterally to a population, while the theory of cultural adaptation to material circumstances has much to recommend it given the actual historical record.

The Welfare State
I’ve previously written an entire post about this argument of Sowell’s — that the welfare state helped create the behavioral pathologies that maintain Black-White inequality. There simply is not a lot of evidence for this, and even where it may have merit — a welfare cliff when you get married is bad — it cannot go the whole way to explaining the persistence of these disparities. On the other hand, the historical record of mass Black migration to Northern cities followed by housing discrimination and de-industrialization has immense explanatory power here, and Sowell basically doesn’t acknowledge that possibility.

I want to briefly point out that this is exactly the sort of adaptive theory of culture and behavior that Sowell ignores when it’s not convenient to his underlying ideological assumptions. Why would it be that Black culture would adapt to the material conditions of the welfare state but not the material conditions of, say, housing discrimination and deindustrialization leading to unemployment? The rational conclusion is that Sowell wants to downplay the history of material deprivation and inequality that led to the behaviors he wants to condemn and magnify the role welfare had to play in those behaviors because he has an ideological predisposition to oppose welfare, being a Chicago-school libertarian economist.

Culture, Behavior, and Inequality
One of the big payoffs to this entire line of Sowell’s argument is that culture and behavior are the cause for the continuation of Black-White disparities in economic outcomes. Setting aside the continuing problem Sowell has with endogeneity (how do we determine that differences in culture and behavior are not shaped by present and past discrimination?), Sowell also has a major empirical obstacle with this argument. The best recent scholarship on poverty has adopted a new framework called the “prevalences and penalties” framework that tackles the question of whether the prevalence of behaviors considered to be poverty risks (the four commonly agreed on are single motherhood, young head of household, unemployed head of household, and below-high school education) actually explain the level of poverty in society. Sociologists David Brady, Ryan Finnigan, and Sabine Hübgen found that bringing single motherhood to zero would only result in a dip of US poverty of 1.3 percentage points. Even worse, this is only because the US has one of the highest penalties for single motherhood among rich democracies. In some countries, due to their better-developed welfare states, a single-mother household is no more likely to be poor than other households. A recent talk by David Brady cites from two pre-publication papers which I do not have permission to cite, but which both go into more specifics about the effect reducing single motherhood would have on racial disparities in poverty — and the findings are not promising for Sowell’s thesis.

This brings us to one of the big problems with cultural and behavioral explanations of economic inequality. Someone’s culture and behavior is only one side of the transaction; the distributive institutions of a society are the other. A behavior is only a risk for poverty if the distributive institutions of a society make it so. Imagine a teacher is giving an exam and has decided to grade on a curve. She already knows exactly what proportion of the class will get a given letter grade. That’s the distributive institution. The students study to varying degrees, some studying quite hard and others slacking off. A social scientist could observe the studying behaviors of each student and then look at who received what grade as a result. They would most likely find that the students that worked most diligently got the best grades and the students who slacked off got the worst grades. But it would be completely incorrect to conclude that how much the students studied determined what grade they received. The teacher set up a distributive institution such that even if everyone behaved perfectly (studied for the test), everyone would still not receive an A.

Let’s think of the real-world example of unemployment and health insurance. Unemployment is a big risk for being uninsured in the United States because we primarily distribute health insurance through employers. However, in (for instance) the UK, Canada, or Finland, there is no relationship between unemployment and health insurance because they distribute health insurance to everyone. This is also why there are countries where single motherhood is not a significant risk for poverty: their welfare states provide much more comprehensive family benefits. We have chosen to structure our distributive institutions such that unemployment, low education, and single parenthood are risks for poverty — and such that even if no one in our society had any of these risks, we would still have high poverty and racial inequalities in poverty. Even if Sowell’s arguments had survived to this point, this simple descriptive reality would render them entirely moot.

Black Blameworthiness for Inequality
We finally come to the last piece of Sowell’s argument: the normative claim that Black people are at least in part (to Sowell’s mind, in large part) to blame for their economic position in society by nature of their inequality-producing behavior. The fact that very little poverty can be explained by the typical poverty risk behaviors can lead us to the conclusion that even if we conceded this point, the amount of Black-White economic inequality in poverty that can reasonably be explained by the behavior of Black people is quite a lot smaller than Sowell imagines. But we do not have to concede the point of Black blameworthiness, either. Here I commend Adaner Usmani’s debate with Glenn Loury on the subject of the persistence of racial inequality and summarize the crux of Usmani’s case against Black blameworthiness for Black-White economic inequality. If we take Sowell’s argument to be the case — that Black culture produces behaviors that further their disadvantaged economic position — this is not something created by any individual Black American, but rather inherited as a set of cultural circumstances. Can they be blamed for acting in a way that gains them what anyone is looking for — social acceptance and getting their needs met — within that cultural setting? Borrowing from philosophers Christopher Lewis and Julia Markovits, Usmani argues that a person of average willpower would, in aggregate, behave the same given that cultural environment as the average Black person. To say otherwise is, ultimately, to claim that Black people as a whole have behaved more poorly given their inherited culture than other people would. To make such a move would be to assign an essential racial inferiority to Black people. This is only a brief and thus truncated summation of Usmani’s entire subtle and compelling argument, and I certainly recommend watching the entire debate.

I believe this claim of the blameworthiness of Black people for their economic position is why many of Sowell’s critics call him a racist. It is not always a knee-jerk reaction to disagreement, but is rather based on the implicit logic of saying Black people are blameworthy for their own circumstances. There is a microscopically thin line between saying that Black people are inherently inferior and are thus blameworthy for their circumstances and saying Black people have a bad culture and are thus blameworthy for their circumstances. Sowell tries to get around this by saying that they received but did not create “redneck” culture, but even if they had received that culture from other people, the argument in the paragraph above would completely pertain. I don’t think Sowell intends to espouse racist views, but I don’t think it is mere hysteria that brings people to call Sowell a racist, even if that’s not what I would say.

Why Do People Love Thomas Sowell?
Thomas Sowell, I think it is fair to say, is first and foremost a pundit. He has made his career less on scholarly arguments accountable to the rigorous critique of his peers and more on quotable quips, book-length tirades, and debate clap lines for the adulation of his libertarian fans and conservative think tank colleagues. Even though they are hollow when you knock on them, Sowell presents his arguments with confidence and frames the story as being one of an incompetent, mean-spirited economic left against a sensible, evidence-based economic right. When that is a story you already believe, Sowell’s arguments appear compelling, and his demeanor is confident and charismatic. But ultimately, Sowell is better at rhetorical flourish than thoughtful empirical analysis or philosophical consistency. I worry that too many Christians assume with Sowell that those on the left are simply ignorant and naive or resentful, even while failing to recognize the devastating problems with every part of Sowell’s program.

Enjoy!

[Daedalus X]

Also, the topic is about being gay. Do you want to argue that Gay people had it better before 1965, too?

The gays had a much better life before 1965, in fact the vast majority of the LGBTQ2+ people were living satisfying monogamous lives with children and a spouse of the opposite sex.

Imagine trying to convince people that things were better for Black people because right after the Civil War they were granted freedom from slavery - when they had NOTHING. And imagine thinking your argument is good!

If a person does not value freedom, that would be a hard sell. But to someone who would be willing to escape slavery with nothing more than the shirt on ones back, that would be a 100% improvement.

Imagine thinking that smart people will be fooled by the argument that while Black people were fighting for their lives, let alone the right to vote and clawing slowly forward to be treated as more than 3/5ths a human they were progressing faster than White people, who had those things already.

The 3/5 compromise, was pushed by the free states to keep the slave states from being too powerful and enshrining slavery forever. Even then, the southern democrats won most of the presidential elections before the First Civil War.

Imagine finding the one Black Conservative who agrees with the White majority, as if by using a Black person it outweighs the thousands of other Black people who argue the opposite point. It's racist.

There is actually a lot of white supremacists out there that just happen to have black skin. And even if there were more black supremacists, that would not mean anything.

If you search for them you will find a lot of them, and many are very wise.