Tuesday 29 January 2019

Red Noise: Should RNZ Be Promoting “Progressive” Causes?

Advocacy Journalism: Should a radical resetting of Auckland City’s priorities ever be undertaken in the way the “expert witnesses” quoted in Kate Newton's "White Noise" investigation (posted on the  RNZ website on 21/1/19) suggest, then it would entail a profound redistribution of municipal resources away from the leafy suburbs and towards the city’s poorest and most marginalised communities. To believe that Auckland’s upper- and middle-classes would sit idly by while this was happening is fanciful in the extreme.

THAT RICH, OLD, WHITE PEOPLE dominate decision-making in New Zealand hardly qualifies as news. Having taken barely a quarter-of-a-century to dispossess its indigenous Maori inhabitants; rich, old, white people set about creating a society and an economy in their own image. In terms of whose views count, the New Zealand of today differs only marginally from the New Zealand of 150 years ago. Why, then, was RNZ moved to produce “White Noise”?

The tag-line for RNZ journalist Kate Newton’s investigation summed it up nicely: “It’s our most culturally diverse city, but older, wealthier, Pakeha people have the loudest voice when it comes to shaping the city’s future.” What follows is a series of geographical, social and statistical vignettes featuring four Auckland suburbs: Devonport, St Helliers, Avondale and Mangere. Emerging from Newton’s examination of the data is the entirely unsurprising conclusion that older, richer and whiter Aucklanders forward more submissions to Auckland Council than anybody else.

The truly intriguing question arising out of Newton’s “White Noise” (reported in depth on RNZ’s Morning Report of 21/1/19) is: How did the national public broadcaster expect its listeners to respond? Were they supposed to be shocked and horrified at this prima facie case of white privilege? Were RNZ’s listeners (a very large percentage of whom will be older, richer and whiter than the average Kiwi) supposed to be wracked with guilt? Were Auckland listeners, in particular, expected to contact their local board members and/or councillors and demand that something be done to counteract this all-too-obvious racism?

The answer could very easily be “Yes” to all of the above. One of the people Newton turns to for “expert” commentary on the findings of her investigation is Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw, currently a senior associate at Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies. The Institute’s website describes Berentson-Shaw as a “researcher, writer and communicator, interested in the values that inform the development and implementation of evidence-based policy”. The Institute is not, however, the only body with which Berentson-Shaw is associated. She is also the co-director of a “think and work tank” called “The Workshop”. This collection of high-powered social activists describes its vision as: “a more inclusive New Zealand” driven by “compassion and manaakitanga to others”. Exactly the sort of group to take umbrage at the fact that rich, old, white people are exercising a disproportionate degree of influence over the future direction of Auckland and (presumably) the rest of Aotearoa-New Zealand.

In Newton’s posting on the RNZ website, Berentson-Shaw is described simply as a “public policy researcher”. Her co-directorship of “The Workshop” is not mentioned, nor is there any reference to the latter’s unabashed enthusiasm for thinking about and working towards radical social and economic change in New Zealand society. Newton’s failure to fully inform her readers about Berentson-Shaw’s political mission casts a worrisome shadow across the entire “White Noise” investigation.

Also absent from Newton’s investigation is any significant reference to the decisive relationship between social class and political power. Her readers are asked to focus on the ethnicity, age and household income of those participating in the Auckland Council’s consultation process. Unexplored were such factors as whether those participants were unskilled wage-workers or salaried professionals. Closely related factors, such as levels of educational attainment, were similarly neglected.

These are significant omissions. Not least because had social class and educational attainment been the focus of Newton’s study, then it is entirely possible that instead of old, rich, white people emerging as the villains of the piece, the culprits would have turned out to be self-interested members of the highly-educated middle- and upper-classes. Viewed through this lens, the degree of exclusion of ethnic communities would have taken on a very different aspect. Indeed, it would almost certainly have confirmed that people’s political influence is principally determined by their position in the socio-economic hierarchy – not by their age and/or ethnicity.

This conclusion may have been considerably harder to sell, however, than one fixing the blame on old, rich, white people. For a start, class and conflict go together in a way that leaves precious little room for inclusion, compassion or manaakitanga. Should a radical resetting of Auckland City’s priorities ever be undertaken in the way Newton’s “expert witnesses” suggest, then it would entail a profound redistribution of municipal resources away from the leafy suburbs and towards the city’s poorest and most marginalised communities. To believe that Auckland’s upper- and middle-classes would sit idly by while this was happening is fanciful in the extreme. The very skills and advantages identified (and implicitly condemned) in Newton’s posting would be turned instantaneously to the task of bringing such a redistributive exercise to a shuddering halt.

It would not be a pretty process. The ugly intent of protecting class privilege would be carefully masked in the populist rhetoric of racial defence. Not all of Auckland’s ethnic communities would opt to identify with the poor and the brown. Nor would the rest of New Zealand. One has only to recall the fate of Labour’s “Closing The Gaps” initiative; or the extraordinary reaction to Don Brash’s Orewa Speech; to appreciate the political fragility of Newton’s optimistic assumptions.

The closest “White Noise” comes to anticipating this kind of push-back is in its description of Old, Rich and White Auckland’s jeering dismissal of “Generation Zero’s” vocal endorsement of the Auckland Unitary Plan in 2016. Newton describes an incident in which the representatives of this highly articulate group of young professionals found themselves under attack in a hall filled with elderly white property-owning opponents of the Plan. That naked self-interest could express itself with such shameless antagonism clearly came as a shock to these youthful champions of progressive urban design.

The core mission of change agents such as “The Workshop”, “Generation Zero” and, one suspects, journalists like Newton herself, is to find a way around the political obstacles erected against “progressive” reform by self-interest and prejudice. “White Noise” attempts to do this by delegitimating the contributions of well-heeled, well-educated and well-connected Pakeha Aucklanders, so that a more just distribution of the city’s resources can be effected. Whether or not this is viewed as a worthwhile project will depend, almost entirely, on the reader’s ideological standpoint. The question for RNZ’s managers is whether or not investigations like “White Noise” should be undertaken by a supposedly politically neutral public broadcaster at the taxpayers’ expense?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 24 January 2019.

34 comments:

peteswriteplace said...

Too much noise comes from Auckland, a place that can't even organise itself.

Geoff Fischer said...

I am surprised that gender was not also a feature of the analysis. Might that have shown that old, wealthy white men were most concerned to exert influence in local government? Or has there been a material change in the gender balance?
On a visit to Auckland Hospital last week I learned that only two of the ten DHB members were male (one of whom held the Chair) while eleven of the twelve senior management positions, including Chief Executive, were filled by women. But one wonders whether that is any great comfort to the RDA.
Are "race, gender, age" and even, dare I say it, "wealth" really more important than the ethics and values to which people hold and the way in which they actually behave towards others?
RNZ rarely strays very far from neo-liberal orthodoxy, and in this case it has not. Identity politics still rules, conveniently allowing privileged academics and politicians to make a lucrative living by riding their moral high horses over the sensitivities and sensibilities of others.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Apropos of nothing in particular, a friend of mine who was ironically, a libertarian always valued national radio, because he said it was a counterweight to the crass commercial one-sided crap put out by nongovernmental stations.

But when you come down to it, even if you are looking at it through the lens of class, you still looking at privileged old white men on the whole. I know old socialists love to ignore anything but class, but really – there are more dimensions to life than just class. And some of them have more effect on people's lives than just class. The most egregious examples seem to be in the US, where middle-class and wealthy black people get harassed by the police a shitload more and middle-class and wealthy white people, or even working class American white people. And I know that – maybe to a lesser degree – it does happen here. You can't ignore it if you're going to be looking at a problem in the round. You might not be able to ignore class either, but race........... has a place.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, pretty much agree with you here - and I usually don't!

As usual, the identity politics brigade are asking the wrong questions wrt fairness, but probably the right ones wrt appealing to their supporters.

How dare 'rich, white, old' Aucklanders respond to requests for submissions? Aren't they aware they are supposed to defer to their cultural and moral superiors, brown people?

Is anything stopping poor brown South Aucklanders from making submissions (other than perhaps time, education and language barriers?( which are not the responsibility of 'rich, white, old' Aucklanders)

Are submissions from poor brown South Aucklanders being ignored or otherwise unfairly treated?

Who cares?! Not the 'White Noise' people, clearly. Much easier to indulge in some race/age baiting, and cultural self hatred, no doubt.

Plugger said...

I recall in the early 2000's implementing the 'closing the gaps' policy as a bureaucrat.

I struck overt and subtle resistance and resentment mainly from Pakeha, middle-class, mostly university educated people.

As a result, some people who were my friends are no longer my friends. Such is the depth of feeling on class mobility in New Zealand.

Anonymous said...

White noise is a very derogatory title.
Generally local governments welcome submissions but obviously not older pakeha in Kate Newton's world.

Nick J said...

Seems to me that white fellas are to blame. Yes pretty much every technological advance, medical advance, political advance in the last threee centuries is down to white males. Yes it's our fault, and despite our women benefiting hugely they appear total ingrates. Then there's every other non white who uses our great gifts....where are the thanks?

Of course I'm being bloody selective with what parameters I analyse with, yeah maybe we used our guns to get our way but hell, every SJW I encounter looks to be another ungreatful recipient of white males generosity.

So I'm going to get into Mr Ford's gift, powered by Mr Diesel and Mr Benz gifts, turn on the Marconi,not on National mind you, Les Paul technology based noise preferred, drive in aircon to that great old British institution, the pub and raise a glass to white males. If Katy Newton is about it's pretty much incumbent on her to buy a round.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Plugger. I wouldn't be at all surprised. The Middle-class have a visceral hatred of anyone they think is getting something which they consider to be undeserved. But let's face it, social mobility is pretty much a zero-sum game as they say. No matter how many people you educate, someone still has to empty the bins. I think we should concentrate on paying the bin emptiers a damned sight more and the CEOs a damned sight less. And given that huge proportion of students' achievement at school is directly related to the amount of money their parents have, making sure people have more money would go quite a way towards redressing some of the balance.

Anonymous said...

Is any problem in the whole wide world not the fault of old white men? An exclusion list would be helpful, short as it may be.

At what point does blaming someone else for all ones failures become nonsensical?

Those failures will still be there once all the evil old white men are supping with the devil.

Which group of people will get the blame then?

Seeing that it is easier to malign another group of people so as not to address ones own shortcomings?



Unknown said...

I used to like listening to Morning Report on RNZ National.

Then Geoff left.

Then show became Morning Interrogation.

It is made even worse - if this is possible - by Guyon Espinor's half-arsed pronunciation of Maori. No doubt he is sincere, but he sucks at it.

My late mother was a native speaker of Maori.

davey said...

One fact that was conveniently and consistently overlooked by RNZ and the contributors to the piece is that those " 'rich, white, old' Aucklanders are the very people who are paying for Auckland. These are the ratepayers and if anything they deserve more of a say than the net beneficiaries that RNZ seems to beleve should be telling us how are money should be sent (oh and that we should be contributing more of it).

David Stone said...

@ Garrit
Old white men are largely responsible for how the world is today. Both good and bad. We have been the doers of things. The inventors, the explorers the planners , the colonists, the warmongers. There is some to be proud of and some to be ashamed of but lets keep doing our best. And not complain,
D J S

John Hurley said...

Jess Berentson-Shaw talks about "good information" and "false balance" Eg We shouldn't hear from Don Brash. This appears to be based on the writings of Herbert Macuse. The problem is: who chooses the "good information"? She is also into "de-colonisation" etc. When I saw that first up on RNZ for their start back I had the same thoughts as Chris.

John Hurley said...

That whole RNZ/Spinoff thing seems joined at the hip
https://thespinoff.co.nz/auckland/12-08-2016/the-oldest-whitest-meeting-in-the-world/

Regardless of national history, the rise of left-modernism in the high culture prompted an attack on majority ethnicity. For settler societies, this meant a dual focus on aboriginals as dispossessed natives and non-white immigrants as a welcome source of diversity who experience discrimination. In Australia, it's common for progressives to preface their talks by thanking the local aboriginal tribe as the 'rightful owners of the land', and this was also a demand of the Evergreen State protesters. In 1998, Australia formalized white repentance in the form of a National “Sorry Day' [71] Genocide against aboriginals is important to expose but needs to be contextualised. As Jared Diamond outlines in Guns Germs and Steel,, agriculturalists have replaced hunter-gatherers — mainly due to differences in immunity to animal-borne diseases — throughout human history. This is as true of the Bantu cattle-herding ancestors of African Americans, largely wiped out the indigenous pygmy and San peoples of Central and Southern Africa, as it is of Europeans in the New World. We also know that the chance of being violently killed is ten times higher in hunter-gatherer societies than in agricultural civilizations [2] On the Great Plains, the Comanche were able to master the Western technology of horsemanship before white settlement and used this to brutally conquer other Amerindian groups, nearly wiping out the Apache. None of which means today's Comanche should feel ashamed of their identity and dwell on the foibles of their ancestors. A balanced perspective which acknowledges positives and negatives of Western settlement rather than a 'social-justice' lens narrowly focused on white original sin would be considerably truer to the facts. It may also be the case that, as McWhorter writes for African-Americans, the focus on white guilt removes a sense of agency from aboriginal groups, worsening their plight. Victim status may bring lower resilience and worse social outcomes. As Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt point out, the ideology of victim hood elevates precisely those habits of mind — such as viewing others' innocent statements as malign or relying on emotional reasoning (`I feel it, it must be true') —which produce depression and anxiety. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is explicitly designed to correct such neuroses through building resilience, yet left-modernist ideology seems intent on doing the opposite. It's certainly the case that the severe problems of suicide and substance abuse among Canadian and Australian aboriginal peoples haven't improved since the 1960's. Anti-Western tropes can also be used by developing-world politicians like Robert Mugabe who leaned on postcolonial leftist arguments to deflect attention from his misdeeds. Eric Kaufman - White Shift.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Yes pretty much every technological advance, medical advance, political advance in the last threee centuries is down to white males."

As usual wrong.

Automatic transmission.
Separation and storage of blood plasma/Blood banks
The clothes dryer.
The golf tee.
The pacemaker.
The Jenny coupler.
Improvements to sewage.
Aspects of crop rotation.
Dry cleaning.
The ISA bus.
Agriculture.
The carbon filament for lightbulbs.
The Brassière.
Medicine.
Mathematics.
Mining.
Lithium ion batteries.
Calculus.
Miss Schilling's orifice.
Inoculation.
Radio guided torpedoes/Wi-Fi.
The number zero.
The windscreen wiper.
Admittedly, some of these are pre-300 years ago, and some of them might be considered less than important, but Jesus wept if you can't do 30 seconds worth of googling before you open your mouth to comment sarcastically/passive aggressively you might as well give up any idea of having credibility. But you're far too focused on feeling resentful to think obviously.

greywarbler said...

Nick J and GS such a pleasure to read the results of active minds. Most of the rest is mumbling, grumbling incoherence.

John Hurley said...

Before the last election: A Slice of Heaven with Noelle McCarthy - in association with Massey (ie Paul Spoonley). In last episode - Smart Talk at The Auckland Museum panelists weren't remotely uncertain of the benefits of immigration Ali Camel had them in stitches with his joke "Nothing is less convincing than a New Zealander looking up from a butter chicken pie made by a Cambodian baker, complaining about immigration”. Noelle McCarthy cracked the sound barrier over that one (edited out of original recording). Then there was TVNZ's Hard Stuff where immigration got the soft stuff from leftist Nigel Latta (see his twitter feed). NZ lacks competition in it's media outlets.
Berentson-Shaws problem is democracy. Those old white people in the "leafy suburbs" are hanging on to an earlier time before progressives decided NZ was too homogeneously Anglo-Saxon.
I'm picking Berentson-Shaw is not put off by Putnam or Alberto Alesina who show that diversity is the inverse of social cohesion and community; Berentson-Shaw with use story telling and the network of activists journalists and academics will oblige.

Johnathon Haidt warns against activist academics. If the universities have the floor covered where can parties like New Conservative get a leg in? All political alternatives need academic backing? Rightly or wrongly political alternatives need academic backing (argument).

Davey said...

@SG OK I'll bite...

Automatic transmission - 1904 by the Sturtevant brothers of Boston. Surprisingly white & male
Separation and storage of blood plasma/Blood banks - John Braxton Hicks, C19th, English, white, male
The golf tee. -Scotsmen William Bloxsom and Arthur Douglas
Miss Schilling's orifice. - OK you can have that one
Inoculation - various attempts but generally accepted that Jenner is the father of that. Superseded by vaccination - yep white, Euro & male
Radio guided torpedoes/Wi-Fi. - Tesla, male & European
The windscreen wiper - Józef Hofmann, Polish, white, male

Now, to use your own logic, as you claim the golf tee to have been invented by a black man - and yes George Grant did improve the existing design - then I'm happy to claim the improvements to medicine & especially surgery that have given us modern healthcare as very much white, male and mostly European.

Davey said...

And because I had time on my hands...

The pacemaker - 1889 - John Alexander MacWilliam (British), 1926 Mark C Lidwill (Aus), 1932 Albert Hyman (USA). Take your pick all W/M/E
The Jenny coupler - Assuming you meant the Janney Coupler well the clue's in the name - Eli H. Janney W/M/E
Improvements to sewage - what does that even mean? I think the Romans had a lot to do with that. Yep W/M/E
The clothes dryer - what kind?
Aspects of crop rotation - who knows? It's been going on as long as mankind has been cultivating crops. But the principles and practice was codified by those pesky W/M/Es in the C7th
Dry cleaning - Jolly Belin in Paris in 1825 W/M/E
The ISA bus - Mark Dean, you're correct on this one
Agriculture - Meaningless, too broad
The carbon filament for lightbulbs - John Wellington Starr, 1845 - W/M/E
The Brassière - Ancient Greeks and Romans W/M/E
Medicine - too broad a claim
Mathematics - developed rather than invented
Mining - again developed rather than invented, digging a hope is hardly an invention. But modern mining methods absolutely European
Lithium ion batteries - British chemist M Stanley Whittingham W/M/E
Calculus - history attributes it to Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who both independently discovered calculus in the mid-17th century.

Nick J said...

Trust you to take the bait GS, I'm taking the proverbial. The more subtle messages are there though.

First, criticism of "patrirchy" and other advantage / disadvantage "analysis" are very prone to narrow parameters...I did the same on purpose to highlight.

Second I was deliberately mirroring the inverse side of Newton, nothing is unidimensional, there's a hell of a lot to be thankful for in the achievements of European culture, and I'm not going to let that pass uncommented upon, or cringe. Yes we white males can be old bastards, but overall the balance is admirably positive (I say with some pride).

greywarbler said...

Thanks for the story of Miss Shilling's orifice GS. I hadn't heard about her and like to collect stories of individuals who are amazing individuals.
Another female one being John Clarke's mother, Neva McKenna Clarke.

John Hurley said...

Oh dear!
This paper shows that the level of deforestation in Indonesia is positively related to the degree of ethnic fractionalization. To identify a causal relation, we exploit the exogenous timing of variation in the level of ethnic heterogeneity due to the creation of new jurisdictions. We provide evidence consistent with a lower control of politicians, through electoral punishment, in more ethnically fragmented districts. Our results are consistent with the literature on (under)provision of public goods in ethnically diverse societies

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12285

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Actually grey, Heddy Lamar was another inventor of some note as well as an actress. She helped fix the problems with US torpedoes in World War II.
Actually I'm not going through all of them again. But I've already mentioned Heddy Lamar, and the "Jenny" coupler as it's known in the US was invented by Andrew Beard who at least help the patent. Perhaps we talking about different things. In the sewage thing I can't be arsed going into the details, but it was a doodad that stopped the sewage from backing up and overflowing your toilet. Plus a guy called Latimer invented and improved carbon filament which was developed for Edison's electric light bulb the previous ones didn't last. Bra – no way all they had was a primitive binding cloth to flatten the chest because they didn't like big boobs. I could add that a black American invented the gas mask and patented the traffic light. In the black woman who patented the camera security systems. That's a twofer. I'll give you the blood plasma to a point – it was a black American who improve the process and started the first major scale blood banks, including refrigerated trucks for transporting blood.
Agriculture certainly wasn't invented by white people – most authorities put it developing everywhere but Europe.:)
Nick. Perhaps to avoid the poe, you could put/sarc at the end of your stuff. I'm too old and it's too hot to try to sort it all out.:)

greywarbler said...

It's interesting the sort of 'authority' that RWs tend to rely on in whatever arguments they are making, yet the big picture will always escape them. Here the list of inventions and progressive ideas listed by GS has become a provocative and contentious topic. Some. to prove how clever they are had to unpack the list and demonstrate to everyone how clever and thorough their thinking is, and how sloppy GS cogs are. How pathetic. Why didn't you just say that the list seemed out of kilter and request him to explain himself.

The problem with entrenched thinkers is that they are so busy sticking to their line and belief that another idea is anathema. Chimpanzees and gorillas do nit-picking of each other as a community bonding service to each other. Humans tend to be too busy parading their individual superiority to think about community good. This shows in our inability to face the past and admit that our present outcomes are not what we moved heaven and earth politically for in 1975 on. Now the results are that we have less options for change to prepare for the swingeing future than we had in 1984. But, nit-picking? Whinging?

Nick J said...

Thanks there Davey for exonerating me from charges most vile, and GS accused me of not Googling at expense of my credibility....I will forgive his lack of Googling...I didn't need to use it...education by patriarchal teachers. Next Google "tongue in cheek", and more seriously "credibility".

Nick J said...

Grey, to have such a brilliant mother is to be twice blessed.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Oh dear John. Well if you read all of that paper and understood the maths and the conclusions, you're a better man than I am.

Nick J said...

Problem is GS I'm so bloody flippant I'm not sure if I could always know or remember to add sarc or similar. Mind you it got Davey thinking of interesting stuff and you of amazing Heddy Lamar, beauty and brains. Think if she was here today as a post feminist what would now be possible for her.

John Hurley said...

GS
You don't have to understand the maths, you rely on peer review for that. The principle in the conclusions is quite simple to understand.

swordfish said...

Following passage is absolutely Spot on !

"Also absent from Newton’s investigation is any significant reference to the decisive relationship between social class and political power. Her readers are asked to focus on the ethnicity, age and household income of those participating in the Auckland Council’s consultation process. Unexplored were such factors as whether those participants were unskilled wage-workers or salaried professionals. Closely related factors, such as levels of educational attainment, were similarly neglected.

These are significant omissions. Not least because had social class and educational attainment been the focus of Newton’s study, then it is entirely possible that instead of old, rich, white people emerging as the villains of the piece, the culprits would have turned out to be self-interested members of the highly-educated middle- and upper-classes."

A disproportionate number of the most aggressive Intersectionals being, of course, paid up members of this inherently privileged club (whilst shamelessly pointing the finger at everyone else).

Davey said...

Right-oh GS, I'll take you on on that list...

the "Jenny" coupler as it's known in the US was invented by Andrew Beard - if you accept that then you accept the date as 1897. The "Janney" coupler - the same thing was patented in 1873. So an improvement at best

In the sewage thing I can't be arsed going into the details, but it was a doodad that stopped the sewage from backing up and overflowing your toilet. You mean the toilet trap Alexander Cummings in 1775 (Scottish)

Plus a guy called Latimer invented and improved carbon filament which was developed for Edison's electric light bulb the previous ones didn't last. Again an improvement not an invention

Bra – no way all they had was a primitive binding cloth to flatten the chest because they didn't like big boobs. So they did invent the principle.

I could add that a black American invented the gas mask and patented the traffic light. You could, but again you'd be wrong. Ancient Greece for the principle and Alexander von Humboldt in 1799 for the gas mask.

Traffic lights, yep I'll give you the lights aspect but that was an improvement to the traffic control signals that already existed plus "On 9 December 1868,[7] the first non-electric gas-lit traffic lights were installed outside the Houses of Parliament in London to control the traffic in Bridge Street, Great George Street, and Parliament Street. They were proposed by the railway engineer J. P. Knight of Nottingham who had adapted this idea from his design of railway signalling"

In the black woman who patented the camera security systems. That's a twofer. Relly, you're claiming an application of existing technology as an invention? TV camera - John Logie Bair, Videotape: Phillips

Agriculture certainly wasn't invented by white people – most authorities put it developing everywhere but Europe.:) But you've claimed improvements as invention so I'll use your own logic to claim that

Ian said...

It is interesting (but not surprising) that when a tiny number of well educated and well placed white men invent some things during a period in history when white people dominate the world, other white men want to take credit as if it is something they all did, but when a much larger group of white men do bad things or hold racist attitudes then other white men don't want to share the blame and prefer either to deny it or to spread it more widely.

Of course, historically when white people weren't the dominant group on the planet most of the inventing was done by non-whites. For example, when Egypt and Chinese were the most advanced societies, it was Africans and Chinese people who did most of the inventing.

Probably the best (and more permanent) way a young, woke, middle class white person can redress the power imbalance between their submission writting parents in the leafy suburbs and poorer brown people in the more treeless suburbs is between the bedsheets without contraceptives.

greywarbler said...

I repeat this bit from an earlier comment about the attitudes that somecommenters display here.

Some. to prove how clever they are had to unpack the list and demonstrate to everyone how clever and thorough their thinking is, and how sloppy GS cogs are. How pathetic. Why didn't you just say that the list seemed out of kilter and request him to explain himself.

And John Hurley - one shouldn't rely on peer review being the absolute
accolade concerning some research. Nobody these days can rely on peers not being bought by big companies. It is naive to completely trust until you have all the information and background on the people involved. There is a need to know about the whole sector, how it operates and which university graduates have been captured by corporate interests. Critical thinking, wariness and assertive personal research is helpful in finding the patterns of subterfuge and networks of flim-flam couched in formal academic language and forms of course.

John Hurley said...

Former RNZ Media watch host


RusselBrown@publicaddress

Amused to see “free speech” sorts up in arms about the presence of neo-Nazis at yesterday’s rallies. Guys, do you actually think the dress-up goons are that different to the bulk of the crowd at last year’s free speech protests? C’mon.
https://twitter.com/publicaddress/status/1091896686182490114
..............
Apparently one of the neoNazis said "6 million Jews were killed and there should have been more."