Wow, two guys who are so completely and totally full of shit.
Coleman Hughes was correct. TED has gone Woke.
Specifically, to combat Chris Anderson's lie: Coleman's TED Talk has less views on the TED TALK SITE specifically BECAUSE it is being throttled by the TED Talk people. If you go and look at his numbers on YouTube, you see that Hughes's talk is perfectly inline with other TED videos on that platform. So not only Chris a liar, he is using semantics in a way that is especially deceitful because it's his organization that is throttling-down the ability of people to see Hughes's talk.
As for Adam Grant... dude... NO ONE trusts your "rigorous research." No one. We know what that means in today's academic world. It means the researchers have a predetermined outcome, and any and all evidence to the contrary is purposefully not included in the final findings.
It is not so much that his research is trustworthy or untrustworthy, it is that it is a joke to consider whether this question -- a moral and ethical one -- can be resolved by "empirical data." Grant writes that "I would love to live in a color-blind world" presumably because he recognizes this is the correct moral principle, but claims that "the data" doesn't support advocating for the world he would love to live in. How convenient. Some things cannot be determined by data, Mr. Adam, including whether the current fashion against meritocracy and for doling out scarce resources on the basis of race is justice.
💯 exactly. You can tell that he even struggles with the ethical implications by obscuring raced-based discrimination(which is what it is) by calling it Multiculturalism.
There can be no era of good feelings based on racial discrimination, especially such overwhelming racial discrimination as found in the Fortune 100 report.
I would actually be totally fine with Democrats systematically discriminating against white people if Democrats would just admit that they are evil racist sacks of shit and that’s the reason they are doing it.
It’s the fraudulent posturing as virtuous that is intolerable. The open discrimination is just annoying.
Democrats admitting that they are the exact same as the Nazis would go a long way towards creating a sense of national unity imho.
"Democrats admitting that they are the exact same as the Nazis would go a long way towards creating a sense of national unity imho.”
…was posted prior to Oct 7th. Post Oct 7th: How ironic that many on the left who are probably registered Democrats openly commended Hitler for executing the Holocaust. Good god, how do they live with themselves?
Yeah but still I really do not think anything will ever dethrone the ‘masks don’t impact speech development’ world champion of data-driven horseshit research that has been crafted in a pedophile dungeon by evil Democrat pussies who went to graduate school.
I am of course referring to the research that showed vaccines are awesome because they literally just labeled all of the vaccinated people who got sick as unvaccinated. You simply cannot top that one without pulling something directly from Nazi Germany.
Yes - just 6% whites hired to 94% POC, which is racist because it’s not proportionate to population! But according to Grant only whites can be racist so that’s that.
First, thank you for posting the link to the Bloomberg report. Really interesting and useful information. I have to say, however, that the fact you highlight here re: the high (I agree staggering) proportion of new jobs going to people of color doesn't even begin to tell the whole story as revealed in the report, notably this conclusion: "White people still hold a disproportionate share of the top, highly paid jobs in the US at S&P 100 companies. But the share of executive, managerial and professional roles held by people of color increased by about 2 percentage points compared with 2020 — more than double the average annual gains at big and mid-sized US companies in previous years." The actual percentage increase is a measly 2%. But I'm wondering what your point was in citing this report. Do you mean to suggest that hiring aimed at increasing the proportion of people of color in various jobs is a good thing? A necessary thing? A kind of almost okay thing? A horrible injustice wrought upon white people? What does fairness really look like? As Adam Grant points out, color blindness (a proxy for fairness) as an operating principle is not always possible or useful.
Too much focus on both. But, working in Corp Tech for over 20 years, I was discriminated against by a lesbian senior manager for a position that my white sis male manager, recommended me for --- I am so sick of labels and of course using lesbian, white, sis -- is not helpful and stating that facetiously - sort of. It wasn't funny that I did not get the position. People are humans and all humans regardless of who they are, exhibit the same biases. That is my experience in the 20 plus years working for high tech companies. And to also note, my mentor was male ---- but he was asian so I guess that was o.k. (again saying that facetiously). Regardless, too bad we have over rotated in society because now, my husband has been told numerous times at his company that they can't hire him for a position because it is slated for a diversity hire. In summary, the "good ole boy network" did discriminate- but that has been replaced with the "good ole diversity network". People are people --- and human behaviors are the same regardless. Same pig, different lipstick.
This is a great comment. Not all questions in life have answers found in an analysis of data. I’m sure empirical data show that censorship leads to fewer opinions that offend (or “harm”) people. Does that mean it makes sense to censor upsetting opinions? No.
It's all groupthink. I can curate anything I want given the time and resources. If the 'empirical data' is coming from academia or academic sources, they are already in lockstep with viewpoints that are inflexible.
I loved the quote from Chris Anderson, "When people on your own team feel like their identity is being attacked, it’s right to take pause." it made me immediately think his team is very woke and isn't really about differing opinions. I didn't see any attacks in the talk. All I heard was an alternate view from the current 'empirical data.'
If it hasn't been said, thank you Free Press for posting the TED talk and even these 2 rebuttals. It takes a bit of courage to push against the wall to sell if it is really solid or just paper machete.
Anyone whose identity is so subject to outside influences should be spending all their free time trying to figure out why that is and how to fix it. It is as though these people are perpetually thirteen years old.
Which has always been the problem with the social "sciences." I'm not saying you can't get insight into real-world trends or dynamics, just that it's very iffy to make strong statements of cause and effect such as Adam Grant made. And, frankly, it boggles the mind that color blindness hides or increases discrimination. I suspect that any study that finds such an outcome has a contrived definition of discrimination.
Update: I read Adam Grant's LinkedIn post included below. One of the works that he recommends in that post talks about how people who are raised to be color blind more often fail to recognize "inequality." Inequality is not discrimination, though it may (or may not!) be caused by it. I think it is likely true that people who are color blind are less likely to see inequality as being the result of discrimination, because they view the world through a non-discriminatory prism. But that doesn't mean that color blindness is counterproductive to fighting racism and discrimination, as Grant suggests in his letter to TFP, it just means that sometimes it's not enough. Color blindness is still an admirable and quite positive trait.
Good question. On a subjective issue you can make the outcome to be anything you want. And that is exactly what these two left wing, touchy feely, morons just did. And they don't even know it.
Really. His logic is completely circular. My take away is his position basically means nothing less than a perfect world will suffice for aggrieved POC. And that perfect world is satisfied by having g their ever-changing standards met.
I could no longer take him seriously when I came upon "fair world." When, in all of human history, has the world ever been "fair"? Or equitable? The world by its nature is unfair and inequitable, and for any generation to think it can be the first one in millennia of recorded history to magically make it not so is hubris in the extreme.
Great catch, Celia! I noticed the flip side results he quoted, but had forgotten that Coleman Hughes had recommended a blended approach that combined color-blindness and meritocracy. Those two should be the bedrock of how we deal with people in all things. Thank you for making the point.
It's actually both--for starters the research is untrustworthy, and on top of that, the topic is not subject to being resolved by empirical data. Double fail.
Exactly. Adam Grant is simply insulting our intelligence, essentially saying “I would like to live without racism (a color-blind world), but the “data” shows that use of racism (specifically, reverse racism) makes the world a better place”! This proud “social scientist” reminds me of a combination of Himmler and Goebbels. Before CRT, they were the last ones to preach how racism improves life. I’m sure that they had great “data” as well. Amazing chutzpah!
Agreed! The default of all appeals to "data" is engineered results in every area of human experience that are exactly congruent with racial proportions in the general population, with anything else being a "problem" that requires "solutions." Grant smuggles in a utilitarianism that discredits his whole argument. "Color blindness doesn't 'work' because it doesn't result in the 'right' statistical outcomes." You know what? Even if and when everyone is treated 'fairly," outcomes may not match your desired group statistics. "Not everything that counts is countable; not everything that is countable, counts." (Einstein) Engineering results by the numbers reminds me of the French revolutionaries who tried to divide France into exactly equal geometric squares, completely ignoring geography, because "equality" has to mean math or geometry.
Grant provides zero concrete examples to flesh out his assertions in any way. Therefore it's impossible to gain a real sense of the situations in which color-blindness might fail. In the end, he does nothing more than confirm age-old concerns about the "softness" of the social sciences. The great sage Drew Carey said it best: They're the show where everything is made up and the points don't matter.
It seems like this Adam Grant has measurements of skulls and noses, just like his illustrious Nazi predecessors, and the “data” shows him that the white race has a special brain lobe where the eternal “systemic racism” resides, and that’s why he says that a colorblind world is unrealistic, reverse racism being a necessity as shown by the “data”. That is literally the only way to make sense of what he writes.
Yup. Basing ones worldview entirely on data proven concepts, especially if you focus on only one specific desired outcome with zero regard to other moral or ethical questions is, at best, shortsighted and lazy and , at worst, dangerous.
For instance, a strict ethno state would result in significantly fewer racially motivated hate crimes since it keeps people of different races separate. However, that is morally and ethically abhorrent. So, we don't do that even if it would result in some statistical reduction of some specific harm. Sometimes, data and stats must take a backseat to what is simply the right thing to do.
Hey, dummy here. I'm curious of what your alternative would be. It's pretty typical practice in science or business or life to have a theory, put it into practice, and then gather data to see whether it had the desired outcome you were aiming for. I'm definitely not qualified to review the data to determine if I agree or disagree with Grant's conclustions and I think healthy dose of skepticism with all of this is a good thing. It seems like gathering data on how well racial policies work is a good idea, though. In this case it would be a pragmatic approach, not a moral one, but I understand why people would think this is a moral issue. Let me know what I'm missing, take care. :)
In order to evaluate how well a machine, for example, "works" you first must have an understanding of what the machine is supposed to do; what its telos or goal is: it wouldn't be reasonable to fault a motorcycle because it won't get you across Lake Superior.
Opinions differ as to what racial policies are supposed to achieve, and those differences are fundamentally moral in nature. So there's no real way to gauge objectively or pragmatically whether a given policy "works" or not. Are you trying to cross the Mohave Desert in your motorcycle, or are you trying to cross Lake Superior?
Oh my, and who knows what types of questions were asked to derive that "empirical" data he alludes to. Psychology, sociology, and even anthropology are really compromised fields......
I've always wanted to hear the SPECIFIC PROOF that the George Floyd killing was Racially motivated. We have white people harming and killing other white people for a wide variety of motives and reasons. We have a black people killing other black people for a wide variety of motives and reasons. We have whites killing blacks . We have blacks killing whites. While police kill other white people. Black police kill black people. SOME people kill other people simply based on race. SO- again what were the specific factors, evidence that Floyd was killed BECAUSE the cop was Racist?
There was not a single shred of evidence presented at Derek Chauvin's trial that the killing was racially motivated, or that Chauvin had a history of racism, because it didn't exist. One of the four officers involved was black, one was Asian. Floyd had fentanyl in his system and was resisting arrest. He also had a history of swallowing drugs and saying "I can't breathe" when he was pulled over by cops. Chauvin used excessive force to subdue him. That's it. All of that mayhem and destruction over that.
I almost DON'T want to hear this- I cannot believe that we are considered a "civilized" society and how little it takes for so many people to lose their rational minds and behave this way- Corp and Social Media certainly are responsible for igniting this powder keg. Covid lock downs of course didn't help. I do recall a pod by Sam Harris now that I'm recalling some things and I was extremely impressed with his explanation of how there was no indication to prove the action was racially motivated.
Agree re Adam Grant's "rigorous research." The telling line for me was when his experts write "discrimination may be most problematic in organizations where color blindness prevails.” May be?
That statement boggled my mind, I don’t even understand what it means. A place where people don’t recognize color may be the most problematic in terms of discrimination? How? Seems oxymoronic, would love to be enlightened
Likely due to resentment from those who were hired based strictly on their ability to do a job having to work with less qualified people hired due to their ethnicity.
Easy. He is just pointing to every situation where there isn’t a precise demographic representation of society - so every single situation - and he is calling this “discriminatory”.
Too many Asian people playing the violin?? DISCRIMINATION!!!
You’re having trouble grasping this approach because you aren’t a sack of shit. This approach is often baffling to people who aren’t sacks of shit.
Well I didn’t say it is impossible for normal nice people to understand this way of thinking. It’s just disorienting the first time you encounter it if you aren’t a Democrat who is possessed by Satan.
Answer: Those places are FILLED with micro aggressions!!! It’s “horrible” and “dangerous” for people of color to be subjected to such extreme conditions.
He's probably (deliberately) confusing "discrimination" and "disparate outcomes". If there is colorblindness and meritocracy, there may well be "disparate outcomes" if, for example, blacks on average receive a poor education from dysfunctional public schools and accordingly face diminished employment prospects. But, this is not "discrimination." It is disingenuous for Grant to say that it is and, importantly, mislabeling it distracts from addressing the serious problems--for example, the dysfunctional educational system. (Grant's appeal to what are likely badly flawed psychology studies is also disingenuous, particularly his reference to RCTs. RCTs are not immune to producing wrong answers if, for example, they study the wrong question, use flawed methodology (aside from randomized treatment), or use a sample not representative of the population of interest.)
If you saw Hughes' TED talk on YT, I think he gave an excellent example when asked how to address these "disparate outcomes." Asked what should be done about "blind" orchestra auditions which result in black musicians being shut out, he proposed the solution is not to "grade on a curve" but to invest more in young minority musicians by helping them get instruments and lessons so they can improve their abilities. Address the root of the problem.
The problem is that there’s quite a bit of research that shows that when people try to be “objective” in their judgments of people, they fall back onto stereotypes. That’s how that works.
There is an unpleasant implication to that statement. If there is color-blindness, then presumably meritocracy is the metric to use when hiring, promoting etc. Are these experts saying that under meritocracy certain groups of people do less well? Have they thought through what they are saying about those people? I'm not going to unpack that any further: that's now their job having made such an inflammatory statement.
I took this to be a reference to something like the orchestra tryout example from Coleman's TED talk. You may get disparate results in some situations with a very fair process, but the measured output looks like discrimination.
Changing the process to force the outcome does not address the root cause of the issue.
This is the “disparate outcome” theory of discrimination. The feds have been using this for the past 30 years. Basically it says that if there is no discrimination each race/group should show up in X place in the same % they exist in the community/applicant pool. Our family experienced this during the 1995-96 school year when our kids were in the local GT program. The city was trying to get out from under a busing order. The school board got into a deal with the DOE and long story short, one of the requirements was to raise the % of Black kids in the GT program. The city was about 40% Black but they were only 20% of the program. Hence automatic finding of discrimination (if there was no discrimination the two %’s should be the same, according to the theory).
Since the school board didn’t like the GT program anyway (“the last thing we need is more gifted kids”), instead of IQ testing to find more gifted Black students, they changed the program to run off the white families (bus the kids to the other side of town in a really dangerous neighborhood). White families fled the system and presto! The Black kids were now a larger % of the much smaller GT program. Not a single new gifted Black student, but they were now 40% of the city and 40% of the program. Problem solved, “no discrimination”. Gotta love the logic.
Yes, "disparate impact" (that is how I have heard the term used) has been the
bogus intellectual/legal basis for much of the racialist divisiveness of recent decades. In other words, if outcomes in virtually any field of endeavor show a "protected group" represented at something less than their proportion of the overall population, than "discrimination" is, prima facie, the cause. Disparate impact needs to be identified as a the bogus proposition that it is and done away with, along with all the racialist gerrymandering that it has spawned.
Thanks for that. “Disparate Impact” is exactly the term the DOE people used against us back then. The school board broke up a good half dozen top notch magnet programs in addition to the GT program, and they almost destroyed the Academic & Performing Arts high school that was the crown jewel of the system and the city. The damage was incalculable. So many families moved either to private school, Catholic school, or even just physically moved to the next county to get away from what was left of the system after the dust settled that I think we lost 30% of our enrollment. But they got rid of the busing order, so they said “Mission Accomplished”.
Thanks for sharing your story, Ann. It is consistent with others I have heard that have been driven by the noxious doctrine of "disparate impact." It needs to be critiqued at every opportunity.
Yes. This is exactly where the Woke mind is. They do not expect nor want meritocratic outcomes. They want "fair" outcomes. To them, this means that if you and I compete and both work hard, we should get the same. Regardless of whether you outperformed me. Especially if I am deemed by society to deserve special protection based on historical wrongs.
So, I as a woman, worked hard building a house. You as a man worked equally hard building a house. Because you are bigger and stronger innately, you finished first and, since I had to rush to even attempt to keep up, your work was finer and, overall, better.
In woke, "fair" terms, we both deserve equal pay, and I should win the contract because I am from the oppressed group (female).
Whenever I see the left-wing buzzword "problematic," I immediately take everything that comes after it with a grain of salt. Just that term derailed any respect I would have had for his "research." By "discrimination" I'm sure Grant means merit-based outcomes that don't favor people of color; otherwise known as the B.S. concept of "disparate impact." In other words, some people can't cut it unless they are given a leg up. What they want is special treatment, not equal treatment.
I took it to mean that organizations that describe their hiring and promotion practices as "color blind" show more discrimination in the actual practices, as may be evidenced by stats on who is promoted, who is hired, etc. I realize I have had to insert a lot of "mays" and "mights" here but I'm extrapolating based on the kinds of stats that typically appear in such studies. Is Grant's response a thorough, in-depth analysis of the research/evidence? No. But reading it with an eye for trying to first understand before I poke holes, that's what I came up with.
Yet try to explain the corrupt, insular, circular nature of modern social science 'research' to someone and you seem like the town kook and the 'anti-science' nut.
I'll help you here. In the 1980s most colleges, no matter how lowly or teaching oriented started to demand publishing to get tenure. This really accelerated in the 1990s. To accommodate this demand, academic journals proliferated. The easiest way to get published was to do an "observational" study. Multi-variable analysis took to much math and CRT studies took to much time and effort to accomplish. The problem of course is that observational studies can't provide causation. And even correlation is tough because it is easy to introduce various biases even if you aren't attempting too. But the kicker, was the peer review was done by folks just like them who needed to get published to get tenure. So a lot of scratching each others back going on! Hence you have thousands and thousands of crap observational studies which can be cited to prove about any point you want...........
I am not familiar with the studies on color blindness.................but would be stunned to see much CRT are multi-variable analysis involved.
The science of "my truths" based on qualitative foo-foo. But they do use statistics to analyze that foo-foo. Yep GIGO all the way (Garbage In Garbage Out). Well, that's My Truth.
I'm just waiting for Grant to address the replication crisis in his field and how that affects the validity of his meta analysis. Garbage in, garbage out.
Additionally, there's the fact that no one can any longer get a study published that runs against the progressive orthodoxy.
“Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say.”
Genuinely hurt? Suck it up buttercup. I have to hear offensive bastards like him prattle on every day about equity and institutional racism. Doesn’t hurt me, but annoys the hell out of me.
Just a few years ago, it was shown that something like 90% of published “social science research” could not be replicated, that the field is rife with made up bullshit. Most of the “researchers” are progressive wokesters and ALL of the journals are fully woke. This is an excellent example of how anything but the dogma is suppressed.
The telling aspect of Grant's claim was the metric that he purported to be measuring against. It is vague and ill-defined, and likely serves as a rough rubric for "how much traction is gained by toxic ideas from cultures that we unduly elevate." I've little doubt that neoracism achieves "better outcomes" according to the measure they've fabricated, but I have even less doubt that that metric is not one we actually care to optimize.
It seems far more likely that the YouTube algorithm is messing with these numbers than the TED people. Users of YouTube have almost no control over who gets to see their stuff and the comments about liking and commenting on videos to boost the algorithm are things I've heard numerous times from unrelated sources. Add this to the fact that we know YouTube puts its fingers on the scale constantly and I'm not at all certain blaming TED makes much sense here.
If TED was trying to suppress the video what are the methods they would use? I can imagine two, which I'm not sure would even be effective: reposting or replacing the original video, mis-tagging the video. I have doubts about the efficacy of trying to suppress one's own video particularly and it seems far more likely that any issues are caused by YouTube itself.
Several people have reported that the TEDTalk app is shadow banning Coleman's video. Apparently if you do a search for "Coleman Hughes," no results come up.
I don't personally have that app, so I can't check this out. But more than one person has noted this happening. If it is, then yes, TED is *literally* censoring Hughes.
And no wonder he offended some of those people. He took away their identity given to them by people like Grant- victim identity... instead the of the hopeful individual identity that Hughes wants for them.
If somebody isn’t “hurt and offended” by a controversial topic, then it’s not controversial. The solution is to evaluate and correct, or perhaps change your mind. To try to shut down the “offensive” idea is a totalitarian impulse.
That was one of the dumbest points Chris made. To be frank, who cares if people’s feeling are hurt. If you’re not intentionally being an a** who cares. You can’t control peoples feeling. People’s feelings should not be your guiding light to what you publish.
I don't think the goal is to hurt and offend people; it's to say what you want regardless of whether it's likely to have that effect. But he's right: the definition of controversial is, well, causing controversy. The least that does is makes people uncomfortable. As that concept is now used among the snowflakes, it's "harmful."
Hurt and offense! Hurt and offense?!!? If a group of TED employees is so psychologically fragile that THAT particular talk causes ‘hurt and offense’ at a major scale, the TED solution should be to provide them with counseling and support to increase their resilience and ability to cope with - with - with their jobs!! NOT to reengineer the standard TED publication process as some sort of reparation for their emotional upset. The best analogy is to incredibly weak parents given the toddlers a bunch of candy instead of their vegetables because the toddlers swore to hold their breath otherwise.
I don’t believe I did. He states they didn’t attend to hurt or offend people. I’m sorry that’s a ridiculous statement. One, the assumption is you didn’t “intend” to do that because I’m taking at face value the fact youre a good person and don’t intend to hurt people. Two, it’s just word salad to show he’s morally inline with the “good side”. Again, who cares if feelings are hurt by someone’s talk. Maybe if TED truly cared about diversity they’d hire more people who have different perspectives as opposed to a bunch of young people who get their feels hurt by words
I'm not sure what you're seeing in Chris's post, he doesn't address intent.
On an objective basis his comment is perfectly reasonable- controversy only exists when opinions differ and open conversation is a better route to consensus.
We just disagree. You take him at his word and I just see the same canned response from a leader of an organization that has a very left leaning perspective. You see an “objective” response with all the catch phrases that claim moral superiority of wanting a just world, magic wand, etc. I see a PR BS response where he’s just trying to get out unscathed from the side who demands moral perfection.
“Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say. This is not what we dream of when we post our talks. “ That is statement is saying he does not intend or “dream” of when they post talks.
Ah, I see the problem. Your original reply was to a Chris Paramore, this being the Chris I assumed you were referring to. Which was surprising as his post was relatively innocuous.
It appears your specific beef is with Chris Anderson. That chap admittedly I don't have much time for.
I really appreciate how both of you ended your conversation (it was a simple miscommunication). It seems like all too often things like this devolve into screaming contests benefitting nobody, and I appreciate the maturity level both of you have shown.
But, but, but the Left is all about ‘feelings’ - why do you think so many otherwise intelligent women vote ‘left; the Left abandoned thinking, reasoning and intellectualism awhile back.
Yeah. I actually thought that the two responses were fairly levelheaded (and hopefully backed by data). But this:
"Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say."
Tough shit! That's their problem, not his, and not ours. It's absurd and embarrassing that anything he said would "genuinely hurt" allegedly relevant numbers of people. Who cares? What happened to sticks and stones? Pathetic.
The characterization of people ‘being hurt’ by ideas they disagree with is so disturbing it blows my mind that any adult, never mind scientists and/or supposed academics/intellectuals, takes it seriously for one second. Where does this balderdash end??
Agreed. Millennials and Gen Zers are truly fucked. Zero resiliency and completely unable to problem-solve because they’re too hurt or offended by the actual causes of those problems. How can you possibly begin to address Black crime, for example, when you refuse to entertain or acknowledge that single-parent households are a huge contributor?
Don't you know that speech is now violence? And that there's dangerous misinformation everywhere that causes people "harm"? This is the rhetorical frame that social justice activism has been dumping on the country, in academia, the arts, everywhere...for years now.
"Sticks and stones" and words are now the same thing.
Xi Jinping passes a law that it is a crime to hurt Chinese feelings. Anyone criticizing the Party can be caught in it. This is where this balderdash ends.
Going to college where speech you don't agree with is "violence" will have lasting impact on being able to engage in constructive dialogue. So much easier to be "hurt", or believe that my "lived experience" of being hurt matters more than engaging in a rational way. This is postmodern madness running amok. I thought we had tired of Marcuse et al in my college days in the 1960's. But like roaches, these bad ideas just keep returning.
What they are talking about are "micro-aggressions" which has no scientific validity. It's a muddled term first used in 1970s by psychologist that has never been put into a scientifically verifiable form. There have been several attempts to eliminate it as a part of DEI training. Here is what current sociologist think: Sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have written in the academic journal Comparative Sociology that the microaggression concept "fits into a larger class of conflict tactics in which the aggrieved seek to attract and mobilize the support of third parties" that sometimes involves "building a case for action by documenting, exaggerating, or even falsifying offenses"
Just a slight correction, Marcuse didn't talk about "getting feelings hurt by words." Summation of Marcuse "One Dimensional Man"; "Marcuse argued that the modern “affluent” society represses even those who are successful within it, while maintaining their complacency through the ersatz satisfactions of consumer culture."
Big topic here. As we transition from a unipolar world in which the hegemony of the US$ gave us the ultimate privilege such that our 4% of the world's population consumed 40% of the world's goods (more or less) mostly due to the price of oil (it is energy that is the basis of all production) being denominated in US$ (and we can and did print the $$ that paid for that overconsumption) to a multipolar world where the Chinese now buy oil in yuan and owning US$ is becoming less important than owning real assets (Russian energy, Chilean copper, essential commodities, etc.) . . . sorry for the run-on sentence, but I hope you see where I am going with this . . . the luxury of 4 years of college where you can fuck off and come out with a useless degree and a shit load of debt and be OK has gone. Many of those folks are screwed, and pols can't bail everyone out. You foresaw that and did something about it, started a business, and you are willing to grind instead of whine and good for you. You earned your "privilege".
That struck me, too. "Genuinely hurt" by his TED Talk? How so, exactly? It's banal to the point of unbelievable to claim "genuine hurt" without providing clear information about the damage done.
I generally tend to agree that just because something hurts someone else's feelings, that's no reason to ban that speech. In the real world though, humans are complicated beasts, with history and emotions and we do indeed have plenty of situations where certain speech does indeed cause offense. For instance, if TED had hosted a talk by someone outlining why they thought that Jews should be systematically rounded up and exterminated, I'd bet that a lot of people would (rightly) find offense, feel extreme hurt, and call for the talk to be removed.
There's also the practical side of this: TED, as with any platform, is a finite resource. It's not possible for TED to host talks about every single possible topic. There are some topics that I think most people would agree should not be hosted as a TED talk. e.g. if I gave a talk about that dream I had last night, where I thought it was really cool at the time, but I can't really remember all the details, but I'm going to spend 20 minutes trying to tell you about it anyway, I'd argue that most people, except me, would not want to watch that. Should TED still agree to host that talk? If they decided not to host it, would that be censorship? Or just good practical judgement?
I'm glad that Coleman's talk wasn't removed, and I'm also glad that TED seems to have taken the complexities of the responses to this talk seriously. There is no censorship here (despite what lots of commenters here seem to be implying), and the very fact that TFP not only published the original piece by Coleman, but also published this follow up to give more context and response, is laudable. TFP doesn't always approach subjects from a fair standpoint, which I've found maddening, but I'm glad they did it here.
Agree, but TED curates the talks, as Hughes described in the article. He did not just show up and surprise everyone. And in terms of content - I am a relativist too, but it is not all up for grabs. A talk defending the extermination of the Jews would violate basic human values widely shared, and cornerstones of liberal societies. There is no way that Hughes’ talk could be compared to that.
No... I leaned strongly into a slippery slope to counter the claims on here that offense at any speech is unwarranted. Lots of commenters are making the claim that people who are offended at speech are unjustified at being offended. They pull out terms like "woke" to smear on anyone who raises objections about things like this TED talk. I'm simply trying to demonstrate that there are types of speech for which general offense is clearly warranted (though no universal... we have pockets of people in this country who would gladly discuss ethnic / LGBTQ cleansing). Therefore, making a blanket statement that being offended by speech is only something that people who have caught the "woke mind virus" do is demonstrably false. And, indeed I wish to show that this is a continuum, rather than a black and white issue (pardon the pun). One can express nuanced feelings about speech, and it's totally appropriate for an organization like TED to take serious consideration about how to manage criticisms.
You are correct. As an Autist (and retired philosopher), I contemplate the offense “continuum” ad nauseum. I am forced to consider whether someone’s hurt feelings are reasonable almost daily. Mostly I think people are just pussies. LOL.
Seriously though, if you’re a publication with a mission statement like TED’s, I do not think emotional responses should be a consideration. There are plenty of other criteria that exclude certain subjects. In fact, Adam cited the most important one: Does the piece address and account for the most recent research on the topic?
It is incredibly hard for me to assess a person that says "Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say" and believe they are any sort of intellectual or have any desire to promote intellectual thought is just impossible. To believe people are "genuinely hurt"..."genuinely"...the man is either an idiot or a sucker.
"hurt, offended, and safe" are PC/Woke buzz words. IOW bullshit. No matter how you phrase something there will be a group, mainly left wing snowflakes, that will be "hurt, offended or not safe" and that is a fact.
You could be on a street corner giving out $100 bills and somebody would be "hurt, offended or not safe".
My father was a progressive in the 1960s. He went down to the worst areas of NYC and helped the poor. He got into a bar fight when the bartender wouldn't serve his friend, a black woman. And much more. Now--- progressives typically are those who go-- or went to-- elite colleges (probably on their parents' dime) and write books like "White Fragility" and lecture to those of us on which words should be omitted from conversation or publication because they could be perceived as "hurtful and offensive." By the way in the new 2023 AP style book, now the word "female" should not be used because it "can also sometimes carry misogynistic tones that may vary in severity by race, class and other factors."
“How to Be an Anti-Racist” was written by Ibram X. Kendi, a Black man from a lower middle class family who started out at an HBCU in Florida that no one has ever heard of. Doesn’t fit your profile.
Oops -- was thinking of the white woman: Robin DiAngelo, an academic and anti-racism consultant, published the surprise best-seller “White Fragility.” The book, which argues that white people tend to undermine or dismiss conversations about race with histrionic reactions.
ALSO-- the mandatory meetings on "How to be a Non-racist Teacher" given by white 25 year olds.
Thank you. My best friend from college is my lawyer and at the annual chamber of commerce dinner he gives a$50 prize for whomever can tell the best lawyer joke.
Did you hear the post office is recalling all stamps that have lawyers on them?
Yeah people don't know which side to spit on.
Only people over 40 years old when you had to lick a stamp catch that joke.
I agree. In this day and age, especially, there are so many things a person might say that will offend or hurt another. However, to stop speech so as to make everyone feel nice and happy is not free speech.
Hurt and offended is easy and indulgent which is why it is so popular. What happened to refuting a statement? Pick your lip off the floor and work to present facts in a logical manner that support your beliefs.
Perhaps TED should re-evaluate who they are employing? It seems like many are overly sensitive, racist snowflakes. This is what should make Chris uncomfortable not Coleman’s talk.
‘Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say. This is not what we dream of when we post our talks. I believe real progress can be made on this issue by each side getting greater clarity and insight from the other. We share more in common than we know. We all ultimately want a just world in which all can thrive.’
If Chris Anderson is afraid of controversy and hurting people’s feelings he’s in the wrong business. Someone is insulted? So what. Anderson may think he’s in the right business, indulging intelligent people’s closed minds, but he advances nothing when the TED audience isn’t challenged but is merely intrigued and excited by views of someone which mirror their own. All that does is keep everyone in the same lane, where it’s safe.
But being safe only perpetuates and widens the divide - preventing any intellectual crossover to take place.
And if there is a time for cross pollination, it is now. TED has failed in that regard, as have most of our academic institutions.
The critics talk reverently about multiculturism as if it the solution to everything. It isn't. It is a failure. It has never worked but the snowflake fanatics love it and will try to force it on us and if you don't agree you are of course a racist!
The Krauts dumped multiculturism 13 years ago. But you didn't hear the multiculturism "expert" bring that up, did you?
I must have "hurt, offended or made you feel not safe". I'll be more delicate next time. I wouldn't want you to feel that this isn't a "safe" environment.
Some of us have very damn good reasons for disliking Germans. Six million reasons if you count only Jews, one hundred million if you count all deaths they caused between 1914 and 1945.
My father's youngest brother, shot down in a B 17 and killed. I feel badly using that awful term, Kraut. I sure wouldn't want to offend a NAZI soldier.
Absolutely my thoughts too, you beat me to the post. And even more to that point, if "Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say", then I say they're simply part of the problem, when they should seek to be part of the solution. We can all work together to end racism by listening to everyone's ideas, or we can pick sides and take a corner and continue to stoke the flames of hatred.
Adam Grant once again refuses to admit that the research he citing is actually supportive of Coleman's position. Chris Anderson refuses to accept that the conditions for posting Coleman's video have NEVER been applied to any other speaker... EVER. Gaining through the archives there are several other videos where that same approach should have been applied but was not. Why?Coleman has done a great service by calling out the hypocrisy of this once highly regarded institution.
So, according to the Social Scientist poring over his meta-analyses, color blindness is ineffective. As someone who grew up in and served in the military I can personally attest to the absurdity of this claim, as demonstrated by the multiple black Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Military. I would also point out that all of the many new approaches to addressing racism, such as “How to be an Anti-Racist”, have not only not provided progress but have done incalculable harm. It’s worth considering that identifying a white person as a racist simply because he/she is white is the equivalent of assigning attributes to someone based on the color of their skin which is, indeed, the textbook definition of racism. So our advancement over color-blindness is to become racist. I’ll stick with color-blindness and considering individuals as individuals, regardless of the color of their skin.
Well said, Bill. I completely agree. The anti-racism crowd have perpetuated more racism... not less and have been one of the significant contributors to our polarized society.
yep, I was thinking about my military service when I read that. We all just treating each other as people, didn't matter what your skin color was. And thus we had an amazing group of people.
As a musician, I was frequently the only white person in all Black bands. Maybe they didn't notice my color, or lack thereof? Or was it that I played what they wanted to hear?
As a fellow vet (and a fellow Bill!) I agree with you. The military is a meritocracy. Not a perfect one, mind you. Every single vet knows of someone that got an award erroneously, or got promoted ahead of someone more deserving, or got shafted by their chain of command for one asinine reason or another, but damn if it doesn’t work the majority of the time. And I love it for that reason.
I work with people from many different walks of life and cultures and races and ethnicities that I never would have been exposed to had I not joined. But we come together and we succeed because what matters is the mission, not the man.
What are you talking about?? Adam Grant both summarizes it accurate and uses the summary and interpretation of the ACTUAL authors of the paper. Who would know the paper and it’s results better than the actual authors who disagree with Coleman.
Adam Grant gives no specifics in his summary and no citations of where his evidence came from, the sample sizes, etc. In an academic context, his words would get an F grade for substance and credibility.
Reading the paper right now, it is full of political sociology jargon and straw-men definitions of the topic of 'colorblindness' to the point that it is hard what to know what to make of it. It is hard to tell what the study population in the experiments were (all college students? workers at different businesses?), and it looks like it mostly survey data which is often not very indicative of behavior at all.
“The Band of Debunkers Busting Bad Scientists”…there was also the Patrick Brown article posted here (a couple weeks back) that covered similar concepts regarding Academic Journal publishing.
Actually it is based on critical scientific review. Amen, there is a serious problem with replication of scientific research. It is widely recognized. The social sciences are ground zero in that regard. It is an easy search e.g. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.114.303819
The “in breeding” of faculty in these departments will make it an even harder ship to correct. A meta-analysis of bad, biased research will output the same results. Garbage in, garbage out. Occam’s razor, the public is wiser than you might ever give them credit for.
Ok. That’s a lot of words that don’t have much bearing on the conversation. Can you actually point out issues with the specific meta analysis itself? Or either of their points of view? I’m not going to read an entire book by Jesse Singal anytime soon and telling me to do so is pretty unproductive.
Unproductive in the sense that you’re asking for me to read literal books outside the conversation’s initial scope. I’m not going to be able to read it in a day, a week, or even a month and give a proper response. I’ll certainly take a look at it, it’s just not feasible for me to be able to give a proper response in a timely manner.
I also think it’s unproductive in the sense that it says nothing about this particular paper. Yes, SOME research is bad, faulty, and has statistical and design problems, but you need to analyze this particular paper (and since it’s a meta analysis, papers it uses) (I used to work in academia in computer science -- there are statistical problems and poor design choices abound)
You are correct in saying that this isn’t the daily wire’s comment section, but honestly, everyone here is a conservative on this subject as they (like Coleman) are limited to the liberal understanding of race and their understanding of racial dynamics is limited to a frankly “dominant” mode of thinking that is common across the west. It is the idea that color-blindness, meritocracy, and not emphasizing the different outcomes between people based on race (or being nonchalant about it) is what will “defeat racism”.
Critical scholarship since the 1970s has moved past that understanding and sees it as fundamentally flawed, especially among black scholars. If you want some people to read, you can start with “Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that formed the movement”, “When Affirmative Action was White”, “Racecraft”, and then anything from Clarence Thomas including biographies about him (he’s a staunch Afro-Pessimist conservative with a lot more in common with black racial scholarship than white conservatives understanding).
Judging people by anything other than the color of their skin is White Supremacy(TM). Or something like that. I lost interest after I heard that fitness is extreme right wing, math is racist and men are women if they say so. Trying to have a rational, reality based conversation with these insufferable people is like trying to teach a pig to read. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
My advice after 38 years of marriage is tread lightly.
By coincidence, my wife and I are in Zaragoza Spain at a craft beer bar as I type this. No shortage of muy bonita Hispanic women around here. Por favor, don't tell mi esposa that I said that
> Judging people by anything other than the color of their skin is White Supremacy(TM).
Grant and Anderson seem to be arguing the opposite here. That we must judge people by the color of their skin; that's the only path that's properly enlightened.
And “Frederick Douglass, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King. They succeeded not because they made people more aware of race but because they did the opposite, by persuading us to look beyond mere complexions to our vast common humanity“
"But the talk ended up causing more upset than we foresaw...." "So yes, there was controversy. When people on your own team feel like their identity is being attacked, it’s right to take pause."
Really? Were there more complaints from "upset" people than people giving him a standing ovation? What was the ratio of written complaints to those coming from TED itself? What was the breakdown of lefties to righties on your staff who felt that their identities were being attacked? What does that even mean anyway?
"Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say."
How many is "many"? How many thought it was wonderful? More or fewer than thought it was bad?
"If I could wave a wand and replace some of the anger that’s been stirred up here (on all sides) with curiosity and a desire to listen, engage, and understand, that would make me really happy."
I'll tell Anderson what I told Rafael Reif (former president of MIT): this could have been a great teaching moment. Instead, you told a howling bunch of immature people how they could disrupt the normal flow of discussion and exchange of ideas. You blew it. Stop doing that and don't do it again.
In addition, he makes it clear that his little team and their feelings are more important than the vast audience they supposedly serve, which is socially and intellectually irresponsible.
It's nice to see both Grant and Anderson respond quickly and thoughtfully to yesterday's Hughes essay. Thanks to all three for their commentary on a white-hot issue--pun intended--without devolving into TwitterXian trash talk.
I have one question, though: Adam Grant saying, "In early May, I was asked by TED to offer a confidential assessment of his talk." Is it normal for TED to back-check someone's talk? How many other speakers have been assessed by an outside agency or person? If it's routine on controversial topics, then fine, assess away. But if it's not, why would Hughes's opinion--that's what it is, his opinion based on his view of our world--be assessed in any way?
As for some of the TED staff feeling "aggressed" by Hughes's talk, grow up. There was nothing to give you a moment's ill ease. It was an opinion, and as valid a topic for a TED talk as Adam Grant making the opposite argument in a future debate with Hughes via TED, and yes, I would love to see that debate occur. Your job as staff is to carry out management's decisions as long as they're not illegal or immoral, and Hughes's video was neither.
There are several other TED Talks that easily should have been subjected to the same treatment. The question is... why is it that this was only done to Coleman and why was John McWhorter's interview never published?
Fine questions, both. I read McWhorter and like him. Why would TED not publish?
TED is a strange cat. It wants controversial subjects, but when it gets them, it ties itself in knots caring about hurt feelings. Can't have one without the other, my dudes.
Only the curators (used loosely) at TED know. For his post it seems that John doesn't know either. One thing's for sure... the next version of The Black Guys (John and Glen on The Glen Show) is going to be epic.
I recall that a Rupert Sheldrake TED that critiqued modern science was blocked for some time. And sending out for an outside opinion can get predetermined results based on who you send it to. That has been made very evident in the highly biased "peer-review" process that has been amply demonstrated in numerous articles here and elsewhere.
Copernicus and Galileo were once considered "nutjobs", too. Interesting how some people are so quick to dismiss new ideas and innovations. Good thing there are more open-minded people than not, or we'd still be living in the Dark Ages.
The answer is simple. The wrong group had its feelings hurt. If it was a group of normal humans (instead of professional victims) professing their dismay over the latest Newsom encroachment on parental rights, for example, Anderson and his piss boy would have said nothing and if questioned about it would have given responses indistinguishable from what they are seeing directed at them in this thread.
Great comment. And weren’t we told that Coleman’s talk had already passed the ombudsman stage anyway? So Adam Grant is now saying they didn’t do a thorough pass the first time? (But as you said, I find it hard to believe that anyone else is scrutinized to this degree.)
Furthermore, if you have an employee who is mad “uncomfortable” and “upset” by the notion of color blindness, why on earth are you still employing said racist?
I don't believe questioning the notion of color blindness makes you a racist. I don't think anyone can be colorblind; we notice color and other differences and our tribal roots react to them. Civilized people overcome that to treat people fairly no matter what their color or creed, but to say "we don't see color" is nonsense.
My argument is that employees who bitch incessantly about the horror, horror of what their employer is doing need to find a new job. And wasting time on Slack is so Not Doing Your Job as to be loafing on the company dime.
On the one hand, they say they WANT “controversial” talks on their platform, and then on the other hand they show solidarity with people who are “offended” by the talk??? And Hughes has to jump through extra hoops to placate the emotional sensibilities of the children trapped in adult bodies who apparently work at TED. Unbelievable.
This coddling, Mommy-crying, emotional primacy bullshit has got to stop.
Grant and Anderson: your employees’ emotional states are NOT YOUR OR ANYONE ELSE’S RESPONSIBILITY.
Exactly the types of well thought out conversations and debates we should be having on all issues. Thanks again to the Free Press for providing a forum, and for everyone who contributes thoughtfully, it makes us all better.
Sadly, something similar happened to John McWhorter. We are beginning to see a pattern here and it is not pretty. John tweeted this today "Why no one has heard an interview I did with TED about race is a similar story. Some staffers wanted to ask me "some questions," I said ok but that I would not submit to being schooled about institutional racism - and the interview was never released."
Hopefully, McWhorter will write a column in the NYT about this. His antithesis at the the Times is Jamelle Bouie, the person TED got to “debate” Hughes instead of one of the researchers that Grant recommended. I’d love to see McWhorter debate Bouie, but it will never happen.
Read: white people at TED were worried about being called racist because the black group raised a stink because the proposition of colorblindness would essentially take away the ability to leverage skin-related power and the privileges that lobbied for by DEI associated groups. Coleman’s ideas (which are far less racist than what we have going on now) were dangerous because they indicate that power is for every person as persons, rather than the idea that all power must be ceded to those we decide to call victims. “Victims” and the “hurt” are trying to maintain power through these ironically powerful statuses by any means necessary and it’s not pretty.
Assuming a serious question, a serious response (based on being submerged in social justice and anti-racist culture [and yes perpetuating it, which I deeply regret now] for years):
Since there are examples of inequality of outcome in most parts of society based on race even after over 50 years of equality of law, there must be some other thing to work on (besides the law) to create equal outcomes. Leaving aside the facile arguments about not thinking everyone should be able to play in the NBA, the outcomes in important things like education and poverty and health and imprisonment are stark enough to at least beg the question of what's going on there, and given the racial history of our country, we should wonder if at least some of it is based on racism (against non-whites, and especially black people) that's still kind of baked into all of our institutions, formal and informal.
From that foundation, any explanation that "blames" people of color for the unequal outcomes is dangerous. For one, it gives credence to some really heinous (and still more widely held than most of us acknowledge) beliefs in the inherent inferiority of non-white "races." But for this context (how folks were "genuinely hurt"), it's also about how the "dream" of color-blindness (Dr. King's vision) didn't come true and how a focus on doing more than just changing the laws to not discriminate against blacks would be necessary to achieve true racial "equity" (equality of outcomes in things like housing, income/wealth, jobs, etc., via equality of access to resources, including being made whole for historical wrongs that are believed to be the reason there are current inequalities). Those institutions (formal and informal) would have to change.
And for various reasons (I still am examining this), the focus on institutions got morphed into a hyper-focus on the interpersonal, including "microaggressions." Yes, a black person may be "equal" on paper, but she has to deal with neverending interpersonal racism (anti-blackness, in the latest framing) and THAT (in addition to the historical and institutional stuff) explains racially disparate outcomes. Microaggressions, because they're not LITERAL violence and because the law is equal, are "literal violence" now. I.e., harmful. I.e., "genuinely hurt." Additionally, as a matter of persuasion for progressive whites (especially white women), the call to action in signing onto this ideology and its necessary policy changes is that people of colors, especially black people, are being HARMED by white supremacy on the daily, even if it's not from the law or "the law" (cops).
So I read that comment as the black staff at TED felt that what Coleman advocates for harms them as individual black people for whom their racial identity is very wound up in this particular political position and also harms them because it will be perceived as giving credence to white supremacist ideology (that explains racial differences by "inherent inferiority" of black people) and as giving ammunition to what they perceive as a very real, very dangerous movement to reinstitute (formally and informally) white supremacy (de jure and de facto).
Oh please......instead of tying yourself in knots trying to argue that the only reason for unequal outcomes must be systemic racism, why not look at the cultural norms that lead many other people of color to succeed or even exceed (east asians) white equality? Immigrant cultures that start at the same line but value hard work, impulse control, personal accountability and education are very successful at pulling themselves out of poverty and realizing the American Dream.
Even if all of this were true, which I do not concede, trying to say that it is because of amorphous "white supremacy" which can only have meaning if there are ""white supremacists" advocating it it deflects accountability for the [perceptions of blacks that they are mistreated] from the entities and individuals who actually are responsible. Like oh say financial entities which financed slavery in that era and imposed redlining in the more modern era. Or insurance and real estate companies that profited from redlining. Or retail establishments that rewarded redlining by building in the favorable locals and profited therefrom. White people, like black people, are not monolithic. There are poor white people who have worked themselves to the bon, and have for generations, and they deserve better than to be told they are white supremacists just because of the color of their skin. Or that they owe black people anything. Those people actually have more in common with you as concerns mistreatment by and grievances against the controlling class - more than a few of whom are brown- and black-skinned at this point.
How can we take seriously a response by someone who doesn't even know the definition of color blindness. He cites to an article that is fundamentally flawed because it misunderstands the principal of colorblindness. Colorblindness simply means we treat people equally. We do not discriminate based on race. It does not mean we pretend not to see race because of course we do. Coleman made this clear in his talk. Yet, the criticism of Coleman is based on this flawed idea that color blindness means pretending not to see race.
But this is to be expected. Because those like Adam Grant who believe that we should discriminate based on race can't simply come out and say that. They have to weasel around it to make their ideas more palatable. That's exactly what Adam Grant is doing here. If he wants to be honest, he needs to come out and say that he thinks we should discriminate based on race and list out the reasons why. But, he knows he'll lose that argument if he states his position clearly and honestly.
This is also what all debaters need to do when debating those who want to discriminate based on race. Hold their feet to the fire. When they say they are against color blindness then ask them "so you want to discriminate based on race?" And keep pushing them to admit that and explain how, why, and when they think racial discrimination is acceptable.
I’d agree if it were anything other than virtue signaling and playing to endowments. This dude is a total fraud and he knows it. Anderson is no better. He’s an amalgamation of every director and c-suite in tech that I’ve ever worked with or for. Just a walking buzzword. Never met a workshop he didn’t love. Never missed a media training course. Probably calls himself something that he thinks is clever like, “the velvet hammer.”
I think the fundamental idea contradicting Coleman is the false premise that if equity is not achieved then there is only racism to blame. I call BS on this. Is it racism that causes the NBA to not have equitable racial representation? No. The first thing to do is define your version of what racism is; I know it is not the inverse of equity.
I found it interesting that Anderson at the end of the talk made a comment about a "largely white" orchestra being undesirable. So does he consider racial disparities on professional sports teams undesirable, too? If not, then I think that just proves Coleman's point.
I guess I would ask "Why is a largely white orchestra not desirable"? What about having people with more melanin changes their playing of Mozart? In general the orchestra plays what the Conductor says and how they say to play it. You don't bring your experience or diversity to the table. Much like your sports example, when I listen to an orchestra, I only care how it sounds. I don't generally care about the skin color of the performers.
It’s all about appearances. The theory is that the audience needs to SEE people of color in the orchestra, not necessarily HEAR them. The orchestra should “look like the community”. Just like when they said the USSC should “look like the country”. Role models and all that. A Black child who is musically talented will not think they can one day be in the orchestra unless they “see someone who looks like them” in the orchestra. BS, but there it is.
Equity IS racism. One of those words that when you drill down doesn't actually mean what you think it does.
Edit: or think it should. Hardly any of us are innocent of this elective ignorance: unless septegenarian, we should have picked up on this universal lying about meanings in the first year or two of high school.
I grew up in the craptastic socialist hell of 60's/70's England when it was quite obvious substantial elements who should have known better, or were equally obviously Marx's stepchildren out to subvert the realm in the first place, were away with the faeries; but even so only woke to a lot of this egregious lying when 'Social Justice' reared it's head in the era of the laughable Atheist+ farrago and soon after came for our comics and PC/Console gaming.
You know: the really important stuff in life. :-)
When your children catch on that Santa is Dad and the Tooth Faery, Mum, do tell them to trust and never forget this instinct; and that, if they think they are being told porkies, to hold onto that thought: because they probably are.
"When people on your own team feel like their identity is being attacked, it’s right to take pause." Mr. Anderson, an opinion or feeling on diversity ideologies is not an identity.
Adam Grant missing the forest for the trees. He claims that the data reveal that color blindness approaches "are either ineffective or counterproductive on key outcomes," but the 'outcomes' listed may be just the nature of human interaction or the products of other multivariate collateral effects (e.g., falsely interpreting a small number of black candidates for key positions as de facto discrimination). He ends with the boilerplate regressive "I wish we could be colorblind, but people aren't, so we can't." Such a tired talking point. EDIT: It sometimes makes me cynical as I wonder if it's true.
I am a learned person myself so I hope disagreement with the erudite Adam Grant's prolix discourse is not mistaken for anti-intellectualism. I'm sorry not sorry but all the data-collection under the impressive label of "meta-analysis" does not in any sense assail the indisputable moral truth that we humans should look upon one another for what is in our hearts and character, not for the variegated shades of tan or brown on the surface of the epidermis. In short, Coleman Hughes is 100% correct.
Wow, two guys who are so completely and totally full of shit.
Coleman Hughes was correct. TED has gone Woke.
Specifically, to combat Chris Anderson's lie: Coleman's TED Talk has less views on the TED TALK SITE specifically BECAUSE it is being throttled by the TED Talk people. If you go and look at his numbers on YouTube, you see that Hughes's talk is perfectly inline with other TED videos on that platform. So not only Chris a liar, he is using semantics in a way that is especially deceitful because it's his organization that is throttling-down the ability of people to see Hughes's talk.
As for Adam Grant... dude... NO ONE trusts your "rigorous research." No one. We know what that means in today's academic world. It means the researchers have a predetermined outcome, and any and all evidence to the contrary is purposefully not included in the final findings.
It is not so much that his research is trustworthy or untrustworthy, it is that it is a joke to consider whether this question -- a moral and ethical one -- can be resolved by "empirical data." Grant writes that "I would love to live in a color-blind world" presumably because he recognizes this is the correct moral principle, but claims that "the data" doesn't support advocating for the world he would love to live in. How convenient. Some things cannot be determined by data, Mr. Adam, including whether the current fashion against meritocracy and for doling out scarce resources on the basis of race is justice.
💯 exactly. You can tell that he even struggles with the ethical implications by obscuring raced-based discrimination(which is what it is) by calling it Multiculturalism.
Academic fraud is rampant. Adam Grant reminds me of the HBS professor Francesca Gino, who ironically faked data while studying dishonesty and ethics https://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-francesca-gino-fake-data-fraud-allegations-scholar-2023-7?op=1
Yesterday's Bloomberg report about race based hiring is staggering - 94% of the 300,000+ new jobs at Fortune 100 companies in 2021 (post-BLM) went to non-white people: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/
There can be no era of good feelings based on racial discrimination, especially such overwhelming racial discrimination as found in the Fortune 100 report.
I would actually be totally fine with Democrats systematically discriminating against white people if Democrats would just admit that they are evil racist sacks of shit and that’s the reason they are doing it.
It’s the fraudulent posturing as virtuous that is intolerable. The open discrimination is just annoying.
Democrats admitting that they are the exact same as the Nazis would go a long way towards creating a sense of national unity imho.
"Democrats admitting that they are the exact same as the Nazis would go a long way towards creating a sense of national unity imho.”
…was posted prior to Oct 7th. Post Oct 7th: How ironic that many on the left who are probably registered Democrats openly commended Hitler for executing the Holocaust. Good god, how do they live with themselves?
Fake news, it turns out:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/bloomberg-flubs-data-for-bombshell-report-that-only-6-of-new-corporate-hires-are-white
Yeah but still I really do not think anything will ever dethrone the ‘masks don’t impact speech development’ world champion of data-driven horseshit research that has been crafted in a pedophile dungeon by evil Democrat pussies who went to graduate school.
I am of course referring to the research that showed vaccines are awesome because they literally just labeled all of the vaccinated people who got sick as unvaccinated. You simply cannot top that one without pulling something directly from Nazi Germany.
Yes - just 6% whites hired to 94% POC, which is racist because it’s not proportionate to population! But according to Grant only whites can be racist so that’s that.
First, thank you for posting the link to the Bloomberg report. Really interesting and useful information. I have to say, however, that the fact you highlight here re: the high (I agree staggering) proportion of new jobs going to people of color doesn't even begin to tell the whole story as revealed in the report, notably this conclusion: "White people still hold a disproportionate share of the top, highly paid jobs in the US at S&P 100 companies. But the share of executive, managerial and professional roles held by people of color increased by about 2 percentage points compared with 2020 — more than double the average annual gains at big and mid-sized US companies in previous years." The actual percentage increase is a measly 2%. But I'm wondering what your point was in citing this report. Do you mean to suggest that hiring aimed at increasing the proportion of people of color in various jobs is a good thing? A necessary thing? A kind of almost okay thing? A horrible injustice wrought upon white people? What does fairness really look like? As Adam Grant points out, color blindness (a proxy for fairness) as an operating principle is not always possible or useful.
Too much focus on both. But, working in Corp Tech for over 20 years, I was discriminated against by a lesbian senior manager for a position that my white sis male manager, recommended me for --- I am so sick of labels and of course using lesbian, white, sis -- is not helpful and stating that facetiously - sort of. It wasn't funny that I did not get the position. People are humans and all humans regardless of who they are, exhibit the same biases. That is my experience in the 20 plus years working for high tech companies. And to also note, my mentor was male ---- but he was asian so I guess that was o.k. (again saying that facetiously). Regardless, too bad we have over rotated in society because now, my husband has been told numerous times at his company that they can't hire him for a position because it is slated for a diversity hire. In summary, the "good ole boy network" did discriminate- but that has been replaced with the "good ole diversity network". People are people --- and human behaviors are the same regardless. Same pig, different lipstick.
This is a great comment. Not all questions in life have answers found in an analysis of data. I’m sure empirical data show that censorship leads to fewer opinions that offend (or “harm”) people. Does that mean it makes sense to censor upsetting opinions? No.
Exactly. How can one get “empirical” data on a subjective issue?
It's all groupthink. I can curate anything I want given the time and resources. If the 'empirical data' is coming from academia or academic sources, they are already in lockstep with viewpoints that are inflexible.
I loved the quote from Chris Anderson, "When people on your own team feel like their identity is being attacked, it’s right to take pause." it made me immediately think his team is very woke and isn't really about differing opinions. I didn't see any attacks in the talk. All I heard was an alternate view from the current 'empirical data.'
If it hasn't been said, thank you Free Press for posting the TED talk and even these 2 rebuttals. It takes a bit of courage to push against the wall to sell if it is really solid or just paper machete.
Anyone whose identity is so subject to outside influences should be spending all their free time trying to figure out why that is and how to fix it. It is as though these people are perpetually thirteen years old.
Which has always been the problem with the social "sciences." I'm not saying you can't get insight into real-world trends or dynamics, just that it's very iffy to make strong statements of cause and effect such as Adam Grant made. And, frankly, it boggles the mind that color blindness hides or increases discrimination. I suspect that any study that finds such an outcome has a contrived definition of discrimination.
Update: I read Adam Grant's LinkedIn post included below. One of the works that he recommends in that post talks about how people who are raised to be color blind more often fail to recognize "inequality." Inequality is not discrimination, though it may (or may not!) be caused by it. I think it is likely true that people who are color blind are less likely to see inequality as being the result of discrimination, because they view the world through a non-discriminatory prism. But that doesn't mean that color blindness is counterproductive to fighting racism and discrimination, as Grant suggests in his letter to TFP, it just means that sometimes it's not enough. Color blindness is still an admirable and quite positive trait.
Good question. On a subjective issue you can make the outcome to be anything you want. And that is exactly what these two left wing, touchy feely, morons just did. And they don't even know it.
Really. His logic is completely circular. My take away is his position basically means nothing less than a perfect world will suffice for aggrieved POC. And that perfect world is satisfied by having g their ever-changing standards met.
Yeah you are right. They keep moving the goal posts. As you say "changing standards" means there are no standards at all.
And fabricating new grievances.
Which will never happen and therefore allows people like this to continue to make a living off keeping people divided.
I could no longer take him seriously when I came upon "fair world." When, in all of human history, has the world ever been "fair"? Or equitable? The world by its nature is unfair and inequitable, and for any generation to think it can be the first one in millennia of recorded history to magically make it not so is hubris in the extreme.
Magical thinking. Plus whoever gets to decide what is fair has all of the power.
Adam Grant doesn't see the contradiction in his own "evidence":
"Ignoring differences (“color blindness”) is associated with reduced stereotypes and prejudice. . . but fails to protect against discrimination."
but also:
"Meritocracy predicts lower discrimination but fails to shield against prejudice and stereotypes."
I can see why Coleman Hughes said that Grant's "research" actually supported the view that color-blindness plus meritocracy is a better approach.
Great catch, Celia! I noticed the flip side results he quoted, but had forgotten that Coleman Hughes had recommended a blended approach that combined color-blindness and meritocracy. Those two should be the bedrock of how we deal with people in all things. Thank you for making the point.
It's actually both--for starters the research is untrustworthy, and on top of that, the topic is not subject to being resolved by empirical data. Double fail.
Exactly. Adam Grant is simply insulting our intelligence, essentially saying “I would like to live without racism (a color-blind world), but the “data” shows that use of racism (specifically, reverse racism) makes the world a better place”! This proud “social scientist” reminds me of a combination of Himmler and Goebbels. Before CRT, they were the last ones to preach how racism improves life. I’m sure that they had great “data” as well. Amazing chutzpah!
Agreed! The default of all appeals to "data" is engineered results in every area of human experience that are exactly congruent with racial proportions in the general population, with anything else being a "problem" that requires "solutions." Grant smuggles in a utilitarianism that discredits his whole argument. "Color blindness doesn't 'work' because it doesn't result in the 'right' statistical outcomes." You know what? Even if and when everyone is treated 'fairly," outcomes may not match your desired group statistics. "Not everything that counts is countable; not everything that is countable, counts." (Einstein) Engineering results by the numbers reminds me of the French revolutionaries who tried to divide France into exactly equal geometric squares, completely ignoring geography, because "equality" has to mean math or geometry.
Exactly this. Treating people differently based on their race is WRONG, full stop. It doesn't matter what the research says.
Grant provides zero concrete examples to flesh out his assertions in any way. Therefore it's impossible to gain a real sense of the situations in which color-blindness might fail. In the end, he does nothing more than confirm age-old concerns about the "softness" of the social sciences. The great sage Drew Carey said it best: They're the show where everything is made up and the points don't matter.
It seems like this Adam Grant has measurements of skulls and noses, just like his illustrious Nazi predecessors, and the “data” shows him that the white race has a special brain lobe where the eternal “systemic racism” resides, and that’s why he says that a colorblind world is unrealistic, reverse racism being a necessity as shown by the “data”. That is literally the only way to make sense of what he writes.
Yup. Basing ones worldview entirely on data proven concepts, especially if you focus on only one specific desired outcome with zero regard to other moral or ethical questions is, at best, shortsighted and lazy and , at worst, dangerous.
For instance, a strict ethno state would result in significantly fewer racially motivated hate crimes since it keeps people of different races separate. However, that is morally and ethically abhorrent. So, we don't do that even if it would result in some statistical reduction of some specific harm. Sometimes, data and stats must take a backseat to what is simply the right thing to do.
Absolutely agree. This type of "data" is also used in the transgender and abortion debates.
The Experts™️ are here with their quadruple blind meta-analysis to say "actually moral philosophy is determinable, just look here at my spreadsheet!"
Hey, dummy here. I'm curious of what your alternative would be. It's pretty typical practice in science or business or life to have a theory, put it into practice, and then gather data to see whether it had the desired outcome you were aiming for. I'm definitely not qualified to review the data to determine if I agree or disagree with Grant's conclustions and I think healthy dose of skepticism with all of this is a good thing. It seems like gathering data on how well racial policies work is a good idea, though. In this case it would be a pragmatic approach, not a moral one, but I understand why people would think this is a moral issue. Let me know what I'm missing, take care. :)
In order to evaluate how well a machine, for example, "works" you first must have an understanding of what the machine is supposed to do; what its telos or goal is: it wouldn't be reasonable to fault a motorcycle because it won't get you across Lake Superior.
Opinions differ as to what racial policies are supposed to achieve, and those differences are fundamentally moral in nature. So there's no real way to gauge objectively or pragmatically whether a given policy "works" or not. Are you trying to cross the Mohave Desert in your motorcycle, or are you trying to cross Lake Superior?
Thank you. I think your explanation reached all of us who needed it “dumbed down”. I also agree.
Thank you, I appreciate your thoughtful response. 🙏
Agreed and well put. They just don’t like his views so they iced him.
Adam Grant showed his true colors during COVID and during the BLM riots, so he has NO credibility here.
What went on with that? I am unfamiliar.
This is one example he posted on LinkedIn after the BLM riots and George Floyd--if you’re citing Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, then GTFO.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-white-people-stay-silent-racism-adam-grant?utm_source=share&utm_medium=guest_mobile_web&utm_campaign=copy
Oh my, and who knows what types of questions were asked to derive that "empirical" data he alludes to. Psychology, sociology, and even anthropology are really compromised fields......
Wow! And this hypocrite said at the very first of today's article that he was completely unbiased.
What a liar.
Whenever they lead with that I'm suspicious. it's the woke equivalent of "I have Black friends."
And this from someone who insists he has "no ideological stance" and "only looks at the data." As soon as I read that I thought, yeah, riiiiight.
I've always wanted to hear the SPECIFIC PROOF that the George Floyd killing was Racially motivated. We have white people harming and killing other white people for a wide variety of motives and reasons. We have a black people killing other black people for a wide variety of motives and reasons. We have whites killing blacks . We have blacks killing whites. While police kill other white people. Black police kill black people. SOME people kill other people simply based on race. SO- again what were the specific factors, evidence that Floyd was killed BECAUSE the cop was Racist?
Anyone?
There was not a single shred of evidence presented at Derek Chauvin's trial that the killing was racially motivated, or that Chauvin had a history of racism, because it didn't exist. One of the four officers involved was black, one was Asian. Floyd had fentanyl in his system and was resisting arrest. He also had a history of swallowing drugs and saying "I can't breathe" when he was pulled over by cops. Chauvin used excessive force to subdue him. That's it. All of that mayhem and destruction over that.
I almost DON'T want to hear this- I cannot believe that we are considered a "civilized" society and how little it takes for so many people to lose their rational minds and behave this way- Corp and Social Media certainly are responsible for igniting this powder keg. Covid lock downs of course didn't help. I do recall a pod by Sam Harris now that I'm recalling some things and I was extremely impressed with his explanation of how there was no indication to prove the action was racially motivated.
Not sure what happened to Sam since then..
Thanks for that link. Always good to know the backstory. Not biased at all, is he?
Agree re Adam Grant's "rigorous research." The telling line for me was when his experts write "discrimination may be most problematic in organizations where color blindness prevails.” May be?
That statement boggled my mind, I don’t even understand what it means. A place where people don’t recognize color may be the most problematic in terms of discrimination? How? Seems oxymoronic, would love to be enlightened
Likely due to resentment from those who were hired based strictly on their ability to do a job having to work with less qualified people hired due to their ethnicity.
"May be" is weasel language for asserting a conclusion without evidence; it's unassailable.
Because if research later demonstrates the opposite? Well, we DID say "may be."
Meanwhile, the claim hangs there....
SEE ALSO: "journalism"
Easy. He is just pointing to every situation where there isn’t a precise demographic representation of society - so every single situation - and he is calling this “discriminatory”.
Too many Asian people playing the violin?? DISCRIMINATION!!!
You’re having trouble grasping this approach because you aren’t a sack of shit. This approach is often baffling to people who aren’t sacks of shit.
Then what does it make you if you understand this line of logic 🤔.. Kidding, I think you’re right thanks for the explanation!
Well I didn’t say it is impossible for normal nice people to understand this way of thinking. It’s just disorienting the first time you encounter it if you aren’t a Democrat who is possessed by Satan.
That said, I’m a terrible person.
Answer: Those places are FILLED with micro aggressions!!! It’s “horrible” and “dangerous” for people of color to be subjected to such extreme conditions.
He's probably (deliberately) confusing "discrimination" and "disparate outcomes". If there is colorblindness and meritocracy, there may well be "disparate outcomes" if, for example, blacks on average receive a poor education from dysfunctional public schools and accordingly face diminished employment prospects. But, this is not "discrimination." It is disingenuous for Grant to say that it is and, importantly, mislabeling it distracts from addressing the serious problems--for example, the dysfunctional educational system. (Grant's appeal to what are likely badly flawed psychology studies is also disingenuous, particularly his reference to RCTs. RCTs are not immune to producing wrong answers if, for example, they study the wrong question, use flawed methodology (aside from randomized treatment), or use a sample not representative of the population of interest.)
If you saw Hughes' TED talk on YT, I think he gave an excellent example when asked how to address these "disparate outcomes." Asked what should be done about "blind" orchestra auditions which result in black musicians being shut out, he proposed the solution is not to "grade on a curve" but to invest more in young minority musicians by helping them get instruments and lessons so they can improve their abilities. Address the root of the problem.
The problem is that there’s quite a bit of research that shows that when people try to be “objective” in their judgments of people, they fall back onto stereotypes. That’s how that works.
There is an unpleasant implication to that statement. If there is color-blindness, then presumably meritocracy is the metric to use when hiring, promoting etc. Are these experts saying that under meritocracy certain groups of people do less well? Have they thought through what they are saying about those people? I'm not going to unpack that any further: that's now their job having made such an inflammatory statement.
The problem isn’t meritocracy, it’s the PERCEPTION of meritocracy. Thats what the scientists have been getting at.
When people perceive the world around them to be just, they are more likely not to care about or even exacerbate racial discrimination.
I took this to be a reference to something like the orchestra tryout example from Coleman's TED talk. You may get disparate results in some situations with a very fair process, but the measured output looks like discrimination.
Changing the process to force the outcome does not address the root cause of the issue.
This is the “disparate outcome” theory of discrimination. The feds have been using this for the past 30 years. Basically it says that if there is no discrimination each race/group should show up in X place in the same % they exist in the community/applicant pool. Our family experienced this during the 1995-96 school year when our kids were in the local GT program. The city was trying to get out from under a busing order. The school board got into a deal with the DOE and long story short, one of the requirements was to raise the % of Black kids in the GT program. The city was about 40% Black but they were only 20% of the program. Hence automatic finding of discrimination (if there was no discrimination the two %’s should be the same, according to the theory).
Since the school board didn’t like the GT program anyway (“the last thing we need is more gifted kids”), instead of IQ testing to find more gifted Black students, they changed the program to run off the white families (bus the kids to the other side of town in a really dangerous neighborhood). White families fled the system and presto! The Black kids were now a larger % of the much smaller GT program. Not a single new gifted Black student, but they were now 40% of the city and 40% of the program. Problem solved, “no discrimination”. Gotta love the logic.
Yes, "disparate impact" (that is how I have heard the term used) has been the
bogus intellectual/legal basis for much of the racialist divisiveness of recent decades. In other words, if outcomes in virtually any field of endeavor show a "protected group" represented at something less than their proportion of the overall population, than "discrimination" is, prima facie, the cause. Disparate impact needs to be identified as a the bogus proposition that it is and done away with, along with all the racialist gerrymandering that it has spawned.
Thanks for that. “Disparate Impact” is exactly the term the DOE people used against us back then. The school board broke up a good half dozen top notch magnet programs in addition to the GT program, and they almost destroyed the Academic & Performing Arts high school that was the crown jewel of the system and the city. The damage was incalculable. So many families moved either to private school, Catholic school, or even just physically moved to the next county to get away from what was left of the system after the dust settled that I think we lost 30% of our enrollment. But they got rid of the busing order, so they said “Mission Accomplished”.
Thanks for sharing your story, Ann. It is consistent with others I have heard that have been driven by the noxious doctrine of "disparate impact." It needs to be critiqued at every opportunity.
Yes. This is exactly where the Woke mind is. They do not expect nor want meritocratic outcomes. They want "fair" outcomes. To them, this means that if you and I compete and both work hard, we should get the same. Regardless of whether you outperformed me. Especially if I am deemed by society to deserve special protection based on historical wrongs.
So, I as a woman, worked hard building a house. You as a man worked equally hard building a house. Because you are bigger and stronger innately, you finished first and, since I had to rush to even attempt to keep up, your work was finer and, overall, better.
In woke, "fair" terms, we both deserve equal pay, and I should win the contract because I am from the oppressed group (female).
It is insanity.
Whenever I see the left-wing buzzword "problematic," I immediately take everything that comes after it with a grain of salt. Just that term derailed any respect I would have had for his "research." By "discrimination" I'm sure Grant means merit-based outcomes that don't favor people of color; otherwise known as the B.S. concept of "disparate impact." In other words, some people can't cut it unless they are given a leg up. What they want is special treatment, not equal treatment.
I took it to mean that organizations that describe their hiring and promotion practices as "color blind" show more discrimination in the actual practices, as may be evidenced by stats on who is promoted, who is hired, etc. I realize I have had to insert a lot of "mays" and "mights" here but I'm extrapolating based on the kinds of stats that typically appear in such studies. Is Grant's response a thorough, in-depth analysis of the research/evidence? No. But reading it with an eye for trying to first understand before I poke holes, that's what I came up with.
Precisely.
I don't know what he just said Lynne but if you liked, I liked it.
#metoo
HA
I like it!
LOL! Exactly! I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
INCONCEIVABLE!!! :-)
Yet try to explain the corrupt, insular, circular nature of modern social science 'research' to someone and you seem like the town kook and the 'anti-science' nut.
I'll help you here. In the 1980s most colleges, no matter how lowly or teaching oriented started to demand publishing to get tenure. This really accelerated in the 1990s. To accommodate this demand, academic journals proliferated. The easiest way to get published was to do an "observational" study. Multi-variable analysis took to much math and CRT studies took to much time and effort to accomplish. The problem of course is that observational studies can't provide causation. And even correlation is tough because it is easy to introduce various biases even if you aren't attempting too. But the kicker, was the peer review was done by folks just like them who needed to get published to get tenure. So a lot of scratching each others back going on! Hence you have thousands and thousands of crap observational studies which can be cited to prove about any point you want...........
I am not familiar with the studies on color blindness.................but would be stunned to see much CRT are multi-variable analysis involved.
Thanks for the clarity Dave. Great historical synopsis.
We need a whole article on this. Pitch it to TFP!
Wow
The science of "my truths" based on qualitative foo-foo. But they do use statistics to analyze that foo-foo. Yep GIGO all the way (Garbage In Garbage Out). Well, that's My Truth.
Only to the kooks and nuts.
I'm just waiting for Grant to address the replication crisis in his field and how that affects the validity of his meta analysis. Garbage in, garbage out.
Additionally, there's the fact that no one can any longer get a study published that runs against the progressive orthodoxy.
I’m putting together a study as to why there are no white cornerbacks.
Because there are no white corners.
You could have just stopped at "full of shit" (especially Grant)
Research much like statistics can be manipulated anyway you want to reach one’s desired outcome. Really, really disappointed in TED
Yep.
There's a wondeful book from the 50s, titled; How To Lie With Statistics. It's still available.
My exact first thought too. What a couple of bull shitters!
TED has gone WOKE. What hasn't? Please folks, name some.
TED hasn't "gone" WOKE, i'd argue it's ALWAYS been WOKE...
I knew he was full of shit by this comment:
“Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say.”
Genuinely hurt? Suck it up buttercup. I have to hear offensive bastards like him prattle on every day about equity and institutional racism. Doesn’t hurt me, but annoys the hell out of me.
Just a few years ago, it was shown that something like 90% of published “social science research” could not be replicated, that the field is rife with made up bullshit. Most of the “researchers” are progressive wokesters and ALL of the journals are fully woke. This is an excellent example of how anything but the dogma is suppressed.
The telling aspect of Grant's claim was the metric that he purported to be measuring against. It is vague and ill-defined, and likely serves as a rough rubric for "how much traction is gained by toxic ideas from cultures that we unduly elevate." I've little doubt that neoracism achieves "better outcomes" according to the measure they've fabricated, but I have even less doubt that that metric is not one we actually care to optimize.
It seems far more likely that the YouTube algorithm is messing with these numbers than the TED people. Users of YouTube have almost no control over who gets to see their stuff and the comments about liking and commenting on videos to boost the algorithm are things I've heard numerous times from unrelated sources. Add this to the fact that we know YouTube puts its fingers on the scale constantly and I'm not at all certain blaming TED makes much sense here.
If TED was trying to suppress the video what are the methods they would use? I can imagine two, which I'm not sure would even be effective: reposting or replacing the original video, mis-tagging the video. I have doubts about the efficacy of trying to suppress one's own video particularly and it seems far more likely that any issues are caused by YouTube itself.
You've got it. YouTube algorithms are programmed to be woke.
If it is hard to find the book on Amazon will you think otherwise?
And I'm a teapot.
Several people have reported that the TEDTalk app is shadow banning Coleman's video. Apparently if you do a search for "Coleman Hughes," no results come up.
I don't personally have that app, so I can't check this out. But more than one person has noted this happening. If it is, then yes, TED is *literally* censoring Hughes.
And no wonder he offended some of those people. He took away their identity given to them by people like Grant- victim identity... instead the of the hopeful individual identity that Hughes wants for them.
Amen on the assessment of Adam Grant’s “research”.
If somebody isn’t “hurt and offended” by a controversial topic, then it’s not controversial. The solution is to evaluate and correct, or perhaps change your mind. To try to shut down the “offensive” idea is a totalitarian impulse.
That was one of the dumbest points Chris made. To be frank, who cares if people’s feeling are hurt. If you’re not intentionally being an a** who cares. You can’t control peoples feeling. People’s feelings should not be your guiding light to what you publish.
I don't think the goal is to hurt and offend people; it's to say what you want regardless of whether it's likely to have that effect. But he's right: the definition of controversial is, well, causing controversy. The least that does is makes people uncomfortable. As that concept is now used among the snowflakes, it's "harmful."
Tough.
Hurt and offense! Hurt and offense?!!? If a group of TED employees is so psychologically fragile that THAT particular talk causes ‘hurt and offense’ at a major scale, the TED solution should be to provide them with counseling and support to increase their resilience and ability to cope with - with - with their jobs!! NOT to reengineer the standard TED publication process as some sort of reparation for their emotional upset. The best analogy is to incredibly weak parents given the toddlers a bunch of candy instead of their vegetables because the toddlers swore to hold their breath otherwise.
I believe you may have misunderstood Chris’s post
I don’t believe I did. He states they didn’t attend to hurt or offend people. I’m sorry that’s a ridiculous statement. One, the assumption is you didn’t “intend” to do that because I’m taking at face value the fact youre a good person and don’t intend to hurt people. Two, it’s just word salad to show he’s morally inline with the “good side”. Again, who cares if feelings are hurt by someone’s talk. Maybe if TED truly cared about diversity they’d hire more people who have different perspectives as opposed to a bunch of young people who get their feels hurt by words
I'm not sure what you're seeing in Chris's post, he doesn't address intent.
On an objective basis his comment is perfectly reasonable- controversy only exists when opinions differ and open conversation is a better route to consensus.
We just disagree. You take him at his word and I just see the same canned response from a leader of an organization that has a very left leaning perspective. You see an “objective” response with all the catch phrases that claim moral superiority of wanting a just world, magic wand, etc. I see a PR BS response where he’s just trying to get out unscathed from the side who demands moral perfection.
“Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say. This is not what we dream of when we post our talks. “ That is statement is saying he does not intend or “dream” of when they post talks.
Ah, I see the problem. Your original reply was to a Chris Paramore, this being the Chris I assumed you were referring to. Which was surprising as his post was relatively innocuous.
It appears your specific beef is with Chris Anderson. That chap admittedly I don't have much time for.
That makes sense. Sorry for not being more clear!
I really appreciate how both of you ended your conversation (it was a simple miscommunication). It seems like all too often things like this devolve into screaming contests benefitting nobody, and I appreciate the maturity level both of you have shown.
I think Zach is talking about Chris Anderson, not Chris Paramore (the commenter).
Zach, You misread what Chris said.
He is talking about Chris Anderson, not Chris Paramore. He just expounded on Chris Paramore's comment.
But, but, but the Left is all about ‘feelings’ - why do you think so many otherwise intelligent women vote ‘left; the Left abandoned thinking, reasoning and intellectualism awhile back.
Yeah. I actually thought that the two responses were fairly levelheaded (and hopefully backed by data). But this:
"Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say."
Tough shit! That's their problem, not his, and not ours. It's absurd and embarrassing that anything he said would "genuinely hurt" allegedly relevant numbers of people. Who cares? What happened to sticks and stones? Pathetic.
I am more interested in how they were hurt by what he said. I can see not agreeing with Coleman, but being hurt by it?
The characterization of people ‘being hurt’ by ideas they disagree with is so disturbing it blows my mind that any adult, never mind scientists and/or supposed academics/intellectuals, takes it seriously for one second. Where does this balderdash end??
Problem is that we don't cultivate or value adults or adulthood anymore. We value and cultivate perpetual adolescence.
I think you are right about that.
Agreed. Millennials and Gen Zers are truly fucked. Zero resiliency and completely unable to problem-solve because they’re too hurt or offended by the actual causes of those problems. How can you possibly begin to address Black crime, for example, when you refuse to entertain or acknowledge that single-parent households are a huge contributor?
Don't you know that speech is now violence? And that there's dangerous misinformation everywhere that causes people "harm"? This is the rhetorical frame that social justice activism has been dumping on the country, in academia, the arts, everywhere...for years now.
"Sticks and stones" and words are now the same thing.
wait a minute, I thought "Silence was Violence"? Now speech is violence?
Hard to keep up with the rules.
Yes, "speech is violence," and "silence is violence," but (depending on the situation) actual violence is not violence (i.e., George Floyd riots).
Yep, it is a nutty world the Left has created, But I think it is beginning to crumble. Witness the pathetic attempts on this thread to defend it.
Yes, of course. It's both. I don't know how you missed that.
My instinct is that is the goal.
Yorg, this "balderdash" only ends when we defund, dismantle, and re-invent higher education. The current system is beyond redemption.
Xi Jinping passes a law that it is a crime to hurt Chinese feelings. Anyone criticizing the Party can be caught in it. This is where this balderdash ends.
Going to college where speech you don't agree with is "violence" will have lasting impact on being able to engage in constructive dialogue. So much easier to be "hurt", or believe that my "lived experience" of being hurt matters more than engaging in a rational way. This is postmodern madness running amok. I thought we had tired of Marcuse et al in my college days in the 1960's. But like roaches, these bad ideas just keep returning.
What they are talking about are "micro-aggressions" which has no scientific validity. It's a muddled term first used in 1970s by psychologist that has never been put into a scientifically verifiable form. There have been several attempts to eliminate it as a part of DEI training. Here is what current sociologist think: Sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have written in the academic journal Comparative Sociology that the microaggression concept "fits into a larger class of conflict tactics in which the aggrieved seek to attract and mobilize the support of third parties" that sometimes involves "building a case for action by documenting, exaggerating, or even falsifying offenses"
Just a slight correction, Marcuse didn't talk about "getting feelings hurt by words." Summation of Marcuse "One Dimensional Man"; "Marcuse argued that the modern “affluent” society represses even those who are successful within it, while maintaining their complacency through the ersatz satisfactions of consumer culture."
Summation of Marcuse: commie fruitcake. Who cares what he said or wrote? once he'd imbibed the Kool-Aid it was all going to be bullshit.
That was my conclusion when I started to read a bit of his writing in the late 60s.
"We hold these truths to be self evident..." This crap goes back a LONG way. ;-)
Big topic here. As we transition from a unipolar world in which the hegemony of the US$ gave us the ultimate privilege such that our 4% of the world's population consumed 40% of the world's goods (more or less) mostly due to the price of oil (it is energy that is the basis of all production) being denominated in US$ (and we can and did print the $$ that paid for that overconsumption) to a multipolar world where the Chinese now buy oil in yuan and owning US$ is becoming less important than owning real assets (Russian energy, Chilean copper, essential commodities, etc.) . . . sorry for the run-on sentence, but I hope you see where I am going with this . . . the luxury of 4 years of college where you can fuck off and come out with a useless degree and a shit load of debt and be OK has gone. Many of those folks are screwed, and pols can't bail everyone out. You foresaw that and did something about it, started a business, and you are willing to grind instead of whine and good for you. You earned your "privilege".
Right on Max S., continue to tell your story, the young'ins need to hear it. As do the rest of us.
That struck me, too. "Genuinely hurt" by his TED Talk? How so, exactly? It's banal to the point of unbelievable to claim "genuine hurt" without providing clear information about the damage done.
It means that they weren't able to eat their lunch.
I generally tend to agree that just because something hurts someone else's feelings, that's no reason to ban that speech. In the real world though, humans are complicated beasts, with history and emotions and we do indeed have plenty of situations where certain speech does indeed cause offense. For instance, if TED had hosted a talk by someone outlining why they thought that Jews should be systematically rounded up and exterminated, I'd bet that a lot of people would (rightly) find offense, feel extreme hurt, and call for the talk to be removed.
There's also the practical side of this: TED, as with any platform, is a finite resource. It's not possible for TED to host talks about every single possible topic. There are some topics that I think most people would agree should not be hosted as a TED talk. e.g. if I gave a talk about that dream I had last night, where I thought it was really cool at the time, but I can't really remember all the details, but I'm going to spend 20 minutes trying to tell you about it anyway, I'd argue that most people, except me, would not want to watch that. Should TED still agree to host that talk? If they decided not to host it, would that be censorship? Or just good practical judgement?
I'm glad that Coleman's talk wasn't removed, and I'm also glad that TED seems to have taken the complexities of the responses to this talk seriously. There is no censorship here (despite what lots of commenters here seem to be implying), and the very fact that TFP not only published the original piece by Coleman, but also published this follow up to give more context and response, is laudable. TFP doesn't always approach subjects from a fair standpoint, which I've found maddening, but I'm glad they did it here.
Agree, but TED curates the talks, as Hughes described in the article. He did not just show up and surprise everyone. And in terms of content - I am a relativist too, but it is not all up for grabs. A talk defending the extermination of the Jews would violate basic human values widely shared, and cornerstones of liberal societies. There is no way that Hughes’ talk could be compared to that.
Did you actually try to create an analogy between color-blindness and ethnic cleansing?
No... I leaned strongly into a slippery slope to counter the claims on here that offense at any speech is unwarranted. Lots of commenters are making the claim that people who are offended at speech are unjustified at being offended. They pull out terms like "woke" to smear on anyone who raises objections about things like this TED talk. I'm simply trying to demonstrate that there are types of speech for which general offense is clearly warranted (though no universal... we have pockets of people in this country who would gladly discuss ethnic / LGBTQ cleansing). Therefore, making a blanket statement that being offended by speech is only something that people who have caught the "woke mind virus" do is demonstrably false. And, indeed I wish to show that this is a continuum, rather than a black and white issue (pardon the pun). One can express nuanced feelings about speech, and it's totally appropriate for an organization like TED to take serious consideration about how to manage criticisms.
You are correct. As an Autist (and retired philosopher), I contemplate the offense “continuum” ad nauseum. I am forced to consider whether someone’s hurt feelings are reasonable almost daily. Mostly I think people are just pussies. LOL.
Seriously though, if you’re a publication with a mission statement like TED’s, I do not think emotional responses should be a consideration. There are plenty of other criteria that exclude certain subjects. In fact, Adam cited the most important one: Does the piece address and account for the most recent research on the topic?
Nope; just their usual 'We are not the NYT. Really. Honestly.' dissimulation.
It is incredibly hard for me to assess a person that says "Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say" and believe they are any sort of intellectual or have any desire to promote intellectual thought is just impossible. To believe people are "genuinely hurt"..."genuinely"...the man is either an idiot or a sucker.
TEDx is a daycare, more than a science as entertainment company.
Say it with me folx:
“Facts don’t care about your feelings.”
"hurt, offended, and safe" are PC/Woke buzz words. IOW bullshit. No matter how you phrase something there will be a group, mainly left wing snowflakes, that will be "hurt, offended or not safe" and that is a fact.
You could be on a street corner giving out $100 bills and somebody would be "hurt, offended or not safe".
I am hurt and my identity attacked every time I hear the words "white privilege".
Go to your safe space and have a large shot of Wild Turkey. That will calm you down.
Grey Goose. Brown liquor makes me mean. ;)
Is this mean like a "Hell hath no fury." mean?
No. Like I do not even need to be scorned to be mean mean.
My father was a progressive in the 1960s. He went down to the worst areas of NYC and helped the poor. He got into a bar fight when the bartender wouldn't serve his friend, a black woman. And much more. Now--- progressives typically are those who go-- or went to-- elite colleges (probably on their parents' dime) and write books like "White Fragility" and lecture to those of us on which words should be omitted from conversation or publication because they could be perceived as "hurtful and offensive." By the way in the new 2023 AP style book, now the word "female" should not be used because it "can also sometimes carry misogynistic tones that may vary in severity by race, class and other factors."
“How to Be an Anti-Racist” was written by Ibram X. Kendi, a Black man from a lower middle class family who started out at an HBCU in Florida that no one has ever heard of. Doesn’t fit your profile.
Oops -- was thinking of the white woman: Robin DiAngelo, an academic and anti-racism consultant, published the surprise best-seller “White Fragility.” The book, which argues that white people tend to undermine or dismiss conversations about race with histrionic reactions.
ALSO-- the mandatory meetings on "How to be a Non-racist Teacher" given by white 25 year olds.
Gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah, DiAngelo is a piece of work. As are they all.
We've been reading one another's posts too long, LP....
What can I say? You are my inspiration, my guiding light.
Keep up the good work.
And the very same to you.
Not lawyers
99 % of all lawyers give the other 1% a bad name.
I am a lawyer, and I approve ^this^ message!
Thank you. My best friend from college is my lawyer and at the annual chamber of commerce dinner he gives a$50 prize for whomever can tell the best lawyer joke.
Did you hear the post office is recalling all stamps that have lawyers on them?
Yeah people don't know which side to spit on.
Only people over 40 years old when you had to lick a stamp catch that joke.
#MeToo
I won’t
I agree. In this day and age, especially, there are so many things a person might say that will offend or hurt another. However, to stop speech so as to make everyone feel nice and happy is not free speech.
Hurt and offended is easy and indulgent which is why it is so popular. What happened to refuting a statement? Pick your lip off the floor and work to present facts in a logical manner that support your beliefs.
Nor will it work. The goal post will just be moved to the next grievance.
Perhaps TED should re-evaluate who they are employing? It seems like many are overly sensitive, racist snowflakes. This is what should make Chris uncomfortable not Coleman’s talk.
It's too late, they're already in charge. And they'll be more demanding next time.
‘Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say. This is not what we dream of when we post our talks. I believe real progress can be made on this issue by each side getting greater clarity and insight from the other. We share more in common than we know. We all ultimately want a just world in which all can thrive.’
If Chris Anderson is afraid of controversy and hurting people’s feelings he’s in the wrong business. Someone is insulted? So what. Anderson may think he’s in the right business, indulging intelligent people’s closed minds, but he advances nothing when the TED audience isn’t challenged but is merely intrigued and excited by views of someone which mirror their own. All that does is keep everyone in the same lane, where it’s safe.
But being safe only perpetuates and widens the divide - preventing any intellectual crossover to take place.
And if there is a time for cross pollination, it is now. TED has failed in that regard, as have most of our academic institutions.
You nailed it.
The critics talk reverently about multiculturism as if it the solution to everything. It isn't. It is a failure. It has never worked but the snowflake fanatics love it and will try to force it on us and if you don't agree you are of course a racist!
The Krauts dumped multiculturism 13 years ago. But you didn't hear the multiculturism "expert" bring that up, did you?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11559451
The greatest irony of “diversity” is how “offended” people get, so easily upset that we must walk on eggshells! If that doesn’t sell it, what does?
Of course they did; that is why they responded so robustly to the New Year Muslim Rapethon of 2015-16. Oh, wait...
The “Krauts”? This wartime derogatory term is up there with Kook, Kike, Jap and N****r.
I must have "hurt, offended or made you feel not safe". I'll be more delicate next time. I wouldn't want you to feel that this isn't a "safe" environment.
Some of us have very damn good reasons for disliking Germans. Six million reasons if you count only Jews, one hundred million if you count all deaths they caused between 1914 and 1945.
My father's youngest brother, shot down in a B 17 and killed. I feel badly using that awful term, Kraut. I sure wouldn't want to offend a NAZI soldier.
I’m offended - my great uncle twice removed died in a concentration camp
Got drunk and fell out of the guard tower
Too soon?
Probably a Canuck.
I find it rich that you use other words to critique the use of one. Pretty telling that you cannot even write out one though.
Brown shirts?
Lotta that lately.
Absolutely my thoughts too, you beat me to the post. And even more to that point, if "Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say", then I say they're simply part of the problem, when they should seek to be part of the solution. We can all work together to end racism by listening to everyone's ideas, or we can pick sides and take a corner and continue to stoke the flames of hatred.
Bravo Chris, great post.
I'm offended and hurt by these comments.
Take a deep breath and go to a "safe" place with a touchy/feely counselor. I'm sure after a box of Kleenex and a few hugs, you will feel better.
I think Carl was being facetious!
After rereading it I think you are correct.
"To try to shut down the 'offensive idea is a totalitarian impulse."
You must really say WHY that's a problem, Mr. Paramore. For this people? Not a negative.
Adam Grant once again refuses to admit that the research he citing is actually supportive of Coleman's position. Chris Anderson refuses to accept that the conditions for posting Coleman's video have NEVER been applied to any other speaker... EVER. Gaining through the archives there are several other videos where that same approach should have been applied but was not. Why?Coleman has done a great service by calling out the hypocrisy of this once highly regarded institution.
So, according to the Social Scientist poring over his meta-analyses, color blindness is ineffective. As someone who grew up in and served in the military I can personally attest to the absurdity of this claim, as demonstrated by the multiple black Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Military. I would also point out that all of the many new approaches to addressing racism, such as “How to be an Anti-Racist”, have not only not provided progress but have done incalculable harm. It’s worth considering that identifying a white person as a racist simply because he/she is white is the equivalent of assigning attributes to someone based on the color of their skin which is, indeed, the textbook definition of racism. So our advancement over color-blindness is to become racist. I’ll stick with color-blindness and considering individuals as individuals, regardless of the color of their skin.
Well said, Bill. I completely agree. The anti-racism crowd have perpetuated more racism... not less and have been one of the significant contributors to our polarized society.
yep, I was thinking about my military service when I read that. We all just treating each other as people, didn't matter what your skin color was. And thus we had an amazing group of people.
As a musician, I was frequently the only white person in all Black bands. Maybe they didn't notice my color, or lack thereof? Or was it that I played what they wanted to hear?
My guess is that it was because you were/are a great musician. Meritocracy still rules there.
"Great" is an overstatement. Thank you.
As a fellow vet (and a fellow Bill!) I agree with you. The military is a meritocracy. Not a perfect one, mind you. Every single vet knows of someone that got an award erroneously, or got promoted ahead of someone more deserving, or got shafted by their chain of command for one asinine reason or another, but damn if it doesn’t work the majority of the time. And I love it for that reason.
I work with people from many different walks of life and cultures and races and ethnicities that I never would have been exposed to had I not joined. But we come together and we succeed because what matters is the mission, not the man.
Yup.
What are you talking about?? Adam Grant both summarizes it accurate and uses the summary and interpretation of the ACTUAL authors of the paper. Who would know the paper and it’s results better than the actual authors who disagree with Coleman.
Adam Grant gives no specifics in his summary and no citations of where his evidence came from, the sample sizes, etc. In an academic context, his words would get an F grade for substance and credibility.
He is referring to the paper that Coleman mentioned. Which was citied earlier.
Reading the paper right now, it is full of political sociology jargon and straw-men definitions of the topic of 'colorblindness' to the point that it is hard what to know what to make of it. It is hard to tell what the study population in the experiments were (all college students? workers at different businesses?), and it looks like it mostly survey data which is often not very indicative of behavior at all.
Thank you for getting curious!!
Right! The Wall Street Journal did a story this week about this and people who expose the faulty “research.”
“The Band of Debunkers Busting Bad Scientists”…there was also the Patrick Brown article posted here (a couple weeks back) that covered similar concepts regarding Academic Journal publishing.
I missed this. Gonna check the article. Thanks!
But oh my stars has Patrick Brown been lambasted. I have had at least 10 articles in my feed doing so.
By “publications” like a Rolling Stone and Vox an Slate I presume?
All this comment boils down to is: “Because bad scientists exist, therefore ALL research that I disagree with is wrong.”
Actually it is based on critical scientific review. Amen, there is a serious problem with replication of scientific research. It is widely recognized. The social sciences are ground zero in that regard. It is an easy search e.g. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.114.303819
The “in breeding” of faculty in these departments will make it an even harder ship to correct. A meta-analysis of bad, biased research will output the same results. Garbage in, garbage out. Occam’s razor, the public is wiser than you might ever give them credit for.
Ok. That’s a lot of words that don’t have much bearing on the conversation. Can you actually point out issues with the specific meta analysis itself? Or either of their points of view? I’m not going to read an entire book by Jesse Singal anytime soon and telling me to do so is pretty unproductive.
Unproductive in the sense that you’re asking for me to read literal books outside the conversation’s initial scope. I’m not going to be able to read it in a day, a week, or even a month and give a proper response. I’ll certainly take a look at it, it’s just not feasible for me to be able to give a proper response in a timely manner.
I also think it’s unproductive in the sense that it says nothing about this particular paper. Yes, SOME research is bad, faulty, and has statistical and design problems, but you need to analyze this particular paper (and since it’s a meta analysis, papers it uses) (I used to work in academia in computer science -- there are statistical problems and poor design choices abound)
You are correct in saying that this isn’t the daily wire’s comment section, but honestly, everyone here is a conservative on this subject as they (like Coleman) are limited to the liberal understanding of race and their understanding of racial dynamics is limited to a frankly “dominant” mode of thinking that is common across the west. It is the idea that color-blindness, meritocracy, and not emphasizing the different outcomes between people based on race (or being nonchalant about it) is what will “defeat racism”.
Critical scholarship since the 1970s has moved past that understanding and sees it as fundamentally flawed, especially among black scholars. If you want some people to read, you can start with “Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that formed the movement”, “When Affirmative Action was White”, “Racecraft”, and then anything from Clarence Thomas including biographies about him (he’s a staunch Afro-Pessimist conservative with a lot more in common with black racial scholarship than white conservatives understanding).
🎯🎯🎯🎯🙏
Nicely said, Max!
How do you know it has never been done to anyone other than Coleman? Not being snarky, just curious.
You can never “know” a negative for certain, but despite looking no one has found any example of it.
When asked about it directly the founders of TED have also not pointed to any other instance - which they undoubtedly would if they could.
THAT’s how we know.
Thanks. Inferences are valid evidence.
I’m still with Dr King who urged us to judge others by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. Words to live by.
Judging people by anything other than the color of their skin is White Supremacy(TM). Or something like that. I lost interest after I heard that fitness is extreme right wing, math is racist and men are women if they say so. Trying to have a rational, reality based conversation with these insufferable people is like trying to teach a pig to read. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
just read today that marriage is a "White privilege concept"
Wait until I tell my Hispanic wife that she is emotionally hurting me in this white institution.
My advice after 38 years of marriage is tread lightly.
By coincidence, my wife and I are in Zaragoza Spain at a craft beer bar as I type this. No shortage of muy bonita Hispanic women around here. Por favor, don't tell mi esposa that I said that
just cuz you is on a diet don't mean you can't look at the menu
True. Plus she constantly informs me that I cannot afford the price on the menu
it's them there auxiliary costs that get you...
divorce attorney, alimony, etc
Godspeed dodging the chancla, hermano.
> Judging people by anything other than the color of their skin is White Supremacy(TM).
Grant and Anderson seem to be arguing the opposite here. That we must judge people by the color of their skin; that's the only path that's properly enlightened.
"That we must judge people by the color of their skin"
Exactly, because to judge them on any other basis is .... (see above).
You forgot Dr Seuss...turns out he's "racist," too...sigh...
I hear John Lennon singing Imagine when I try to interact.
I hear the theme to The Flintstones. But same idea
🤣
And “Frederick Douglass, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King. They succeeded not because they made people more aware of race but because they did the opposite, by persuading us to look beyond mere complexions to our vast common humanity“
https://open.substack.com/pub/gurwinder/p/why-antiracism-failed-26b?r=2gdkzj&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
I wonder if Grant believes Dr. King's followers should be open to changing their opinion of his teachings "based on the data we have today."
Ironically King was a communist surrounded by communists, had the morals of a tomcat, and was a Xtian cleric. The Whole Nine Yards of dodgy character.
A Communist Christian. That's an interesting concept.
"But the talk ended up causing more upset than we foresaw...." "So yes, there was controversy. When people on your own team feel like their identity is being attacked, it’s right to take pause."
Really? Were there more complaints from "upset" people than people giving him a standing ovation? What was the ratio of written complaints to those coming from TED itself? What was the breakdown of lefties to righties on your staff who felt that their identities were being attacked? What does that even mean anyway?
"Many people have been genuinely hurt and offended by what they heard Hughes say."
How many is "many"? How many thought it was wonderful? More or fewer than thought it was bad?
"If I could wave a wand and replace some of the anger that’s been stirred up here (on all sides) with curiosity and a desire to listen, engage, and understand, that would make me really happy."
I'll tell Anderson what I told Rafael Reif (former president of MIT): this could have been a great teaching moment. Instead, you told a howling bunch of immature people how they could disrupt the normal flow of discussion and exchange of ideas. You blew it. Stop doing that and don't do it again.
In addition, he makes it clear that his little team and their feelings are more important than the vast audience they supposedly serve, which is socially and intellectually irresponsible.
It's nice to see both Grant and Anderson respond quickly and thoughtfully to yesterday's Hughes essay. Thanks to all three for their commentary on a white-hot issue--pun intended--without devolving into TwitterXian trash talk.
I have one question, though: Adam Grant saying, "In early May, I was asked by TED to offer a confidential assessment of his talk." Is it normal for TED to back-check someone's talk? How many other speakers have been assessed by an outside agency or person? If it's routine on controversial topics, then fine, assess away. But if it's not, why would Hughes's opinion--that's what it is, his opinion based on his view of our world--be assessed in any way?
As for some of the TED staff feeling "aggressed" by Hughes's talk, grow up. There was nothing to give you a moment's ill ease. It was an opinion, and as valid a topic for a TED talk as Adam Grant making the opposite argument in a future debate with Hughes via TED, and yes, I would love to see that debate occur. Your job as staff is to carry out management's decisions as long as they're not illegal or immoral, and Hughes's video was neither.
There are several other TED Talks that easily should have been subjected to the same treatment. The question is... why is it that this was only done to Coleman and why was John McWhorter's interview never published?
Fine questions, both. I read McWhorter and like him. Why would TED not publish?
TED is a strange cat. It wants controversial subjects, but when it gets them, it ties itself in knots caring about hurt feelings. Can't have one without the other, my dudes.
Only the curators (used loosely) at TED know. For his post it seems that John doesn't know either. One thing's for sure... the next version of The Black Guys (John and Glen on The Glen Show) is going to be epic.
Which is why I don’t listen to TED talks 😂
I recall that a Rupert Sheldrake TED that critiqued modern science was blocked for some time. And sending out for an outside opinion can get predetermined results based on who you send it to. That has been made very evident in the highly biased "peer-review" process that has been amply demonstrated in numerous articles here and elsewhere.
Is it up now? I've read several of his books: bloke is a bona fide nutjob.
Copernicus and Galileo were once considered "nutjobs", too. Interesting how some people are so quick to dismiss new ideas and innovations. Good thing there are more open-minded people than not, or we'd still be living in the Dark Ages.
We are still living in the Dark Ages.
The answer is simple. The wrong group had its feelings hurt. If it was a group of normal humans (instead of professional victims) professing their dismay over the latest Newsom encroachment on parental rights, for example, Anderson and his piss boy would have said nothing and if questioned about it would have given responses indistinguishable from what they are seeing directed at them in this thread.
Bob-- Good point.
Great comment. And weren’t we told that Coleman’s talk had already passed the ombudsman stage anyway? So Adam Grant is now saying they didn’t do a thorough pass the first time? (But as you said, I find it hard to believe that anyone else is scrutinized to this degree.)
Thanks, fathom, much appreciated. Yes, this strikes me as double secret probation because of a small group of employees with not enough work to do.
Well said. I noted the confidential review aspect too. Is that a veiled complaint about being sucked into this?
Ha! Do I ever veil anything cleverly and quietly???
I just thought it was weird, TED asking an outsider to review someone else's talk. Seems like double secret probation . . .
Employers take employees much too seriously on the wrong things these days.
Agreed. Much injustice has been done via double secret probation.
Furthermore, if you have an employee who is mad “uncomfortable” and “upset” by the notion of color blindness, why on earth are you still employing said racist?
I don't believe questioning the notion of color blindness makes you a racist. I don't think anyone can be colorblind; we notice color and other differences and our tribal roots react to them. Civilized people overcome that to treat people fairly no matter what their color or creed, but to say "we don't see color" is nonsense.
My argument is that employees who bitch incessantly about the horror, horror of what their employer is doing need to find a new job. And wasting time on Slack is so Not Doing Your Job as to be loafing on the company dime.
Thanks, Bari, for promoting civil discourse, a process greatly lacking in our culture today!
On the one hand, they say they WANT “controversial” talks on their platform, and then on the other hand they show solidarity with people who are “offended” by the talk??? And Hughes has to jump through extra hoops to placate the emotional sensibilities of the children trapped in adult bodies who apparently work at TED. Unbelievable.
This coddling, Mommy-crying, emotional primacy bullshit has got to stop.
Grant and Anderson: your employees’ emotional states are NOT YOUR OR ANYONE ELSE’S RESPONSIBILITY.
Exactly the types of well thought out conversations and debates we should be having on all issues. Thanks again to the Free Press for providing a forum, and for everyone who contributes thoughtfully, it makes us all better.
Sadly, something similar happened to John McWhorter. We are beginning to see a pattern here and it is not pretty. John tweeted this today "Why no one has heard an interview I did with TED about race is a similar story. Some staffers wanted to ask me "some questions," I said ok but that I would not submit to being schooled about institutional racism - and the interview was never released."
Yes, John McWhorter, another Black man who escaped the Leftist intellectual gulag...keep on, brother.
Hopefully, McWhorter will write a column in the NYT about this. His antithesis at the the Times is Jamelle Bouie, the person TED got to “debate” Hughes instead of one of the researchers that Grant recommended. I’d love to see McWhorter debate Bouie, but it will never happen.
How so can "many people be genuinely hurt" by Coleman's TED talk? I mean genuinely hurt?
They can't. It's baloney,.
I think the closest integer to that would be zero.
In this day and age EVERYONE is offended and hurt. Sigh. People need to toughen up a bit.
Exactly. I predicted this would happen back when "political correctness" was rolled out.
I think when some people say they are hurt it is their reaction to someone disagreeing with them. Oh, the humanity!
Read: white people at TED were worried about being called racist because the black group raised a stink because the proposition of colorblindness would essentially take away the ability to leverage skin-related power and the privileges that lobbied for by DEI associated groups. Coleman’s ideas (which are far less racist than what we have going on now) were dangerous because they indicate that power is for every person as persons, rather than the idea that all power must be ceded to those we decide to call victims. “Victims” and the “hurt” are trying to maintain power through these ironically powerful statuses by any means necessary and it’s not pretty.
A key point.
Assuming a serious question, a serious response (based on being submerged in social justice and anti-racist culture [and yes perpetuating it, which I deeply regret now] for years):
Since there are examples of inequality of outcome in most parts of society based on race even after over 50 years of equality of law, there must be some other thing to work on (besides the law) to create equal outcomes. Leaving aside the facile arguments about not thinking everyone should be able to play in the NBA, the outcomes in important things like education and poverty and health and imprisonment are stark enough to at least beg the question of what's going on there, and given the racial history of our country, we should wonder if at least some of it is based on racism (against non-whites, and especially black people) that's still kind of baked into all of our institutions, formal and informal.
From that foundation, any explanation that "blames" people of color for the unequal outcomes is dangerous. For one, it gives credence to some really heinous (and still more widely held than most of us acknowledge) beliefs in the inherent inferiority of non-white "races." But for this context (how folks were "genuinely hurt"), it's also about how the "dream" of color-blindness (Dr. King's vision) didn't come true and how a focus on doing more than just changing the laws to not discriminate against blacks would be necessary to achieve true racial "equity" (equality of outcomes in things like housing, income/wealth, jobs, etc., via equality of access to resources, including being made whole for historical wrongs that are believed to be the reason there are current inequalities). Those institutions (formal and informal) would have to change.
And for various reasons (I still am examining this), the focus on institutions got morphed into a hyper-focus on the interpersonal, including "microaggressions." Yes, a black person may be "equal" on paper, but she has to deal with neverending interpersonal racism (anti-blackness, in the latest framing) and THAT (in addition to the historical and institutional stuff) explains racially disparate outcomes. Microaggressions, because they're not LITERAL violence and because the law is equal, are "literal violence" now. I.e., harmful. I.e., "genuinely hurt." Additionally, as a matter of persuasion for progressive whites (especially white women), the call to action in signing onto this ideology and its necessary policy changes is that people of colors, especially black people, are being HARMED by white supremacy on the daily, even if it's not from the law or "the law" (cops).
So I read that comment as the black staff at TED felt that what Coleman advocates for harms them as individual black people for whom their racial identity is very wound up in this particular political position and also harms them because it will be perceived as giving credence to white supremacist ideology (that explains racial differences by "inherent inferiority" of black people) and as giving ammunition to what they perceive as a very real, very dangerous movement to reinstitute (formally and informally) white supremacy (de jure and de facto).
Oh please......instead of tying yourself in knots trying to argue that the only reason for unequal outcomes must be systemic racism, why not look at the cultural norms that lead many other people of color to succeed or even exceed (east asians) white equality? Immigrant cultures that start at the same line but value hard work, impulse control, personal accountability and education are very successful at pulling themselves out of poverty and realizing the American Dream.
Recent black African immigrants as a group also do very well in the US.
Even if all of this were true, which I do not concede, trying to say that it is because of amorphous "white supremacy" which can only have meaning if there are ""white supremacists" advocating it it deflects accountability for the [perceptions of blacks that they are mistreated] from the entities and individuals who actually are responsible. Like oh say financial entities which financed slavery in that era and imposed redlining in the more modern era. Or insurance and real estate companies that profited from redlining. Or retail establishments that rewarded redlining by building in the favorable locals and profited therefrom. White people, like black people, are not monolithic. There are poor white people who have worked themselves to the bon, and have for generations, and they deserve better than to be told they are white supremacists just because of the color of their skin. Or that they owe black people anything. Those people actually have more in common with you as concerns mistreatment by and grievances against the controlling class - more than a few of whom are brown- and black-skinned at this point.
Rosa Parks: Communist. Dr King: Communist. This tree was poisoned from the gitgo.
How can we take seriously a response by someone who doesn't even know the definition of color blindness. He cites to an article that is fundamentally flawed because it misunderstands the principal of colorblindness. Colorblindness simply means we treat people equally. We do not discriminate based on race. It does not mean we pretend not to see race because of course we do. Coleman made this clear in his talk. Yet, the criticism of Coleman is based on this flawed idea that color blindness means pretending not to see race.
But this is to be expected. Because those like Adam Grant who believe that we should discriminate based on race can't simply come out and say that. They have to weasel around it to make their ideas more palatable. That's exactly what Adam Grant is doing here. If he wants to be honest, he needs to come out and say that he thinks we should discriminate based on race and list out the reasons why. But, he knows he'll lose that argument if he states his position clearly and honestly.
This is also what all debaters need to do when debating those who want to discriminate based on race. Hold their feet to the fire. When they say they are against color blindness then ask them "so you want to discriminate based on race?" And keep pushing them to admit that and explain how, why, and when they think racial discrimination is acceptable.
To paraphrase Shelby Steele: Race has always and only been used for political power.
I’d agree if it were anything other than virtue signaling and playing to endowments. This dude is a total fraud and he knows it. Anderson is no better. He’s an amalgamation of every director and c-suite in tech that I’ve ever worked with or for. Just a walking buzzword. Never met a workshop he didn’t love. Never missed a media training course. Probably calls himself something that he thinks is clever like, “the velvet hammer.”
I think the fundamental idea contradicting Coleman is the false premise that if equity is not achieved then there is only racism to blame. I call BS on this. Is it racism that causes the NBA to not have equitable racial representation? No. The first thing to do is define your version of what racism is; I know it is not the inverse of equity.
I found it interesting that Anderson at the end of the talk made a comment about a "largely white" orchestra being undesirable. So does he consider racial disparities on professional sports teams undesirable, too? If not, then I think that just proves Coleman's point.
I guess I would ask "Why is a largely white orchestra not desirable"? What about having people with more melanin changes their playing of Mozart? In general the orchestra plays what the Conductor says and how they say to play it. You don't bring your experience or diversity to the table. Much like your sports example, when I listen to an orchestra, I only care how it sounds. I don't generally care about the skin color of the performers.
It’s all about appearances. The theory is that the audience needs to SEE people of color in the orchestra, not necessarily HEAR them. The orchestra should “look like the community”. Just like when they said the USSC should “look like the country”. Role models and all that. A Black child who is musically talented will not think they can one day be in the orchestra unless they “see someone who looks like them” in the orchestra. BS, but there it is.
Left-handed people buy more ice cream in summer than winter.
Therefore the key to commercial success is reaching those left-handers obviously.
We also like eating a hot bowl of soup 0n a 90 degree day too.
No wonder American businesses fail! They should be trying to sell ice cream to those lefties in winter!
It's perfectly fine to say Blacks excel at sports. But there the line is drawn. Not exactly intellectual honesty.
Equity IS racism. One of those words that when you drill down doesn't actually mean what you think it does.
Edit: or think it should. Hardly any of us are innocent of this elective ignorance: unless septegenarian, we should have picked up on this universal lying about meanings in the first year or two of high school.
I grew up in the craptastic socialist hell of 60's/70's England when it was quite obvious substantial elements who should have known better, or were equally obviously Marx's stepchildren out to subvert the realm in the first place, were away with the faeries; but even so only woke to a lot of this egregious lying when 'Social Justice' reared it's head in the era of the laughable Atheist+ farrago and soon after came for our comics and PC/Console gaming.
You know: the really important stuff in life. :-)
When your children catch on that Santa is Dad and the Tooth Faery, Mum, do tell them to trust and never forget this instinct; and that, if they think they are being told porkies, to hold onto that thought: because they probably are.
"When people on your own team feel like their identity is being attacked, it’s right to take pause." Mr. Anderson, an opinion or feeling on diversity ideologies is not an identity.
Adam Grant missing the forest for the trees. He claims that the data reveal that color blindness approaches "are either ineffective or counterproductive on key outcomes," but the 'outcomes' listed may be just the nature of human interaction or the products of other multivariate collateral effects (e.g., falsely interpreting a small number of black candidates for key positions as de facto discrimination). He ends with the boilerplate regressive "I wish we could be colorblind, but people aren't, so we can't." Such a tired talking point. EDIT: It sometimes makes me cynical as I wonder if it's true.
Exactly. So he seems to want to counter discrimination with more discrimination, as if that's never led to anywhere dark.
Look to Kendi's recent failures!
I celebrate them.
I am a learned person myself so I hope disagreement with the erudite Adam Grant's prolix discourse is not mistaken for anti-intellectualism. I'm sorry not sorry but all the data-collection under the impressive label of "meta-analysis" does not in any sense assail the indisputable moral truth that we humans should look upon one another for what is in our hearts and character, not for the variegated shades of tan or brown on the surface of the epidermis. In short, Coleman Hughes is 100% correct.
I like the erudite way in which you expressed this opinion Sir.
What he said.
= the inane Adam Grant's verbal diaorrhoea. Adam and Chris are the only anti-intellectuals in the room atm.