Brandon Levston had an encounter with a road-raging Trump supporter. It’s kind of awful: the road rager uses racial slurs, dismisses his wife’s protest with “be a woman”, and declares that black lives don’t matter, repeatedly. The video is definitely not safe for work.

And then, as the Trump-lovin’ asshole walks away, Levston throws his own insult at about the 3:05 mark and calls him…

…transgender faggot…

And with that, they both get thrown into the basket of deplorables. I guess some bigotries just stick around forever.

OK, a lot of people are saying Levston did not say the slur — it was the Trumpkin. It’s not clear: Levston is laughing just after the comment, and it blurs together with the voice.

I’d love to hear from Levston himself to clear up the ambiguity. It may well be that only one of them needs to go in the basket, but it’s going to need to be a bigger basket.

You can build all kinds of horrible stories around anecdotes, and here’s a perfect example. A woman’s mother is ill, and needs constant care. One day she starts to slide out of her wheelchair, and the woman rushes to prevent her from falling, and yells for their live-in caretaker…and that’s where it gets weird.

When I shouted for the personal support worker, I was panicked. Paralysed bodies are like dead weight — they are heavy and I wasn’t sure how long I could hold my mother up.

The worker, a visible minority and recent immigrant, was sitting on the couch behind my mother and couldn’t see what was happening. She slowly and deliberately put aside her homework — an open binder and some textbooks — and came to help me. Her annoyance at being interrupted was obvious. The emergency was taking her away from her real goal in life, becoming someone in her adopted country of Canada.

Ah. The relevant point here is apparently that the worker is a “visible minority and recent immigrant”, and wasn’t as solicitous of the woman’s mother as her daughter was. Let’s unpack an assumption or two, shall we? The first is that the minority status of this person was relevant; are foreigners just assumed to be more callous than True Canadians? Are we expected to believe that if the personal support worker were a real “someone”, that is a white native-born Canadian, they would have been more eager to drop their books and leap out of their chair to assist this rather unpleasant woman who is shouting at them? Is the problem here really that the caregiver is an immigrant, or that she is poorly trained and working for cheap?

And then the story gets worse.

[Read more…]

Amy Schumer has stepped in it again — she did a parody video of Beyoncé’s Formation that wasn’t very funny, wasn’t at all enlightening, and most eye-rollingly of all, once again let a white woman pretend to be synonymous with being black. There was an awkward event in which Jessi Klein, Schumer’s producer, tried to defend her against the charge that she was racist. It did not go well, as described in this article by Nikki Gloudeman.

Because here’s the thing: Yes, Amy Schumer is racist. Amy. Schumer. is. racist. She’s racist because we live in a society founded on racism that has afforded her racial privilege, and she’s racist because she’s said some racist shit. Last night, Jessi made it clear that she’s racist, too.

And yes, I am white, and yes, I am racist too—because we live in a society founded on racism that affords me racial privilege, and because I haven’t always fully acknowledged how I move through this world differently because of the color of my skin, and I’ve done some racist shit. I’ve thought “that cop was nice!” when I got off without a ticket, instead of “How would that have been different if I wasn’t white?” I’ve viewed black men and white men walking behind me at night differently. I’m trying to be more aware every day, but I fuck up. I’m still racist.

So if racism can happen in contexts outside white-hooded vigilantism, and if it indeed perpetuates our entire society, what now then? It’s not quite as simple as saying “Yep, I guess I’m racist like everyone else!” For one thing, that ignores the nuances and degrees of racism. For another, that’s not really going to affect anything.

The most important step is owning that shit.

Yep. I’m racist, too, and I’m also sexist, because I take advantage of all of the immense privilege of being a white man in a racist, sexist culture. You take every advantage you are given, as well. It shouldn’t be so hard to acknowledge that fact, but I do know what is really difficult, and that is…changing it.

I also don’t often know how to “own it”. When a traffic cop doesn’t give me a ticket, in part because I’m white, it wouldn’t help to demand that I be punished; that I don’t get pulled over as often because I’m driving while white isn’t going to be corrected by pulling up to random patrol cars and insisting that I really should have my plates run and hey, officer, maybe you should check my trunk or frisk me? The goal of us privileged people shouldn’t be to share the injustices given to others, but to make sure we all get the same justice.

I think the first step is simply to listen to those who have been oppressed and honor their requests for respect. Schumer and Klein don’t seem to be able to do that.

I’ve just gotten out of a 2½ hour faculty meeting. During one of the breaks, I read this page on McSweeney’s, and when I got to #5 and #6, I almost lost it. Then #8, and I felt a funny noise trying to rise up the back of my throat. I seized up at #9, beginning to wonder if they had a spy camera on the wall behind me.

But then I read this article and realized they must have the spy cams installed at the University of Chicago, not here. Whew. We’re only sorta exactly like that.

Kwame Anthony Appiah gave a lecture on race and globalization, and all I’ve got is a second-hand review of the talk that makes me wish I could hear the whole thing.

Society still largely operates under the misapprehension that race (largely defined by skin colour) has some basis in biology. There is a perpetuating idea that black-skinned or white-skinned people across the world share a similar set of genes that set the two races apart, even across continents. In short, it’s what Appiah calls “total twaddle”.

“The way that we talk about race today is just incoherent,” he says. “The thing about race is that it is a form of identity that is meant to apply across the world, everybody is supposed to have one – you’re black or you’re white or you’re Asian – and it’s supposed to be significant for you, whoever and wherever you are. But biologically that’s nonsense.”

I can almost hear the alt-right whining in rebuttal…but there are genes for skin color, that’s biology, isn’t it? And aren’t there other genes that affect physiology and morphology? Yes, there are, and these can be significant markers of lineage. I can look at my brothers and sisters, and my aunts and uncles, and see an assemblage of traits that confer a familial resemblance. We don’t, however, assume that all members of the Myers clan are identical in behavior and attitude and ability because of the shape of their chin; we lack a social construct that affiliates that undeniably genetic trait with a whole vast host of assumptions about our place in society and every other biological property of the family.

What we do have is a complex social construct that takes one biological property, skin color, and imposes a mess of entirely non-biological assumptions on individuals with it. Worst of all, the people who do that then think that their racism, which is all about history and propagated myths and unjustified beliefs about relative superiority, is based on science because you can empirically measure the density of pigment cells in the skin. Or they do measurements of stuff like “intelligence” (where the tools are flawed and clumsy), correlate them with skin color, and pretend that the influence of cultural ideas and oppression and poverty, all freighted with the constructed social beliefs that they claim to be objectively assessing, are nonexistent.

But Appiah knows all this and is explaining it. I get irritated with the abuse of my discipline to justify nonsense.

Appiah is at pains to point out that, while society has made race and colour a significant part of how we identify ourselves, particularly in places such as the UK and US, it is an invented idea to which we cling irrationally.

Appiah’s lecture explores the notion that two black-skinned people may share similar genes for skin colour, but a white-skinned person and a black-skinned person may share a similar gene that makes them brilliant at playing the piano. So why, he asks, have we decided that one is the core of our identity and the other is a lesser trait?

“How race works is actually pretty local and specific; what it means to be black in New York is completely different from what it means to be black in Accra, or even in London,” he explains. “And yet people believe it means roughly the same thing everywhere. Race does nothing for us.

“I do think that in the long run if everybody grasped the facts about the relevant biology and the social facts, they’d have to treat race in a different way and stop using it to define each,” he says.

At a time when the world continues to divide itself along racial lines and where, in the US, “being put in that black box means you tend to get treated worse and are more likely to get shot by a police officer”, getting people to understand race as a social invention could, in Appiah’s view, save lives.

And expand human potential. Being put in the black box means much more than that you’re more likely to get shot — it carries a multitude of socially constructed biases that mean you’re more like to be imprisoned, less likely to get a job, more likely to face a thousand micro-aggressions every day, less likely to attend a good public school, etc., etc., etc. — and none of those are genetic.

None of this implies that we should be blind to color. I’m quite proud of my family, and I’m not going to deny our resemblance; I’m also not ashamed of my descent from a long line of stolid Scandinavian farmers. I think we should all recognize the struggles and successes and flaws of our forebears, and black people have diverse and complex histories, too, and rightly take some pride in their families. But let’s stop pretending that skin color is a simplistic proxy to excuse the baggage of our biases, OK?

It’s been a strange couple of days. The Trump camp is going down in flames, and I think they’re lashing out in frustration at totally irrelevant people, including me. I’ve had a sudden surge of off-the-cuff email from people angry about something, and they’re just randomly yelling at me. Dozens of emails all at once, all carping about something — transhumanism is good! You’re a goddamn cultural Marxist! Of course women and black people are biologically different from white men…and inferior! Are you Jewish? — it’s just gotten weird. Here’s one example; apparently, everything is my fault.

Richard Carrier

Your social justice warrior bullshit is making the entire atheist community look bad. If Richard Carrier hadn’t participated in the same kind of thin skinned, self-righteous bullshit you’re practicing right now, I would feel sorry for him.

Sent from my iPhone
Roger Ward

This is so typical. None of the current emails include a specific reference to anything, or even so much as a link or a quote — it’s all just furious blaming for something that has annoyed someone somewhere, and that something has provoked them into targeting me.

Which actually makes me kind of happy. I’m glad to steal the credit for social justice ‘bullshit’ anytime.

I’m also amused at the assumptions. There is an atheist community, and they’re looking bad, because someone is demanding equality and respect for all of its members? I don’t think the problem is one old nerd cocking an eyebrow and criticizing the normally uncriticized bad behavior of a few people, guy.

I shudder when I hear that phrase.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a steady increase in the number of minority students in my classes, which is great…but strangely, there hasn’t been any increase in the percentage of minority faculty over the same period. One possible explanation is that since the tenure of faculty is so much longer than the tenure of students, student numbers are going to be more responsive to current demographics. But I can’t help but feel that there’s more going on. That we current faculty are not doing our part to create a professoriate that reflects our culture.

Here’s a blunt assessment of the problem. Why don’t we hire more faculty of color? Because we don’t want them. The author lists a whole series of excuses we white faculty make, and I’ve heard them all.

First, the word “quality” is used to dismiss people of color who are otherwise competitive for faculty positions. Even those people on search committees that appear to be dedicated to access and equity will point to “quality” or lack of “quality” as a reason for not hiring a person of color.

Typically, “quality” means that the person didn’t go to an elite institution for their Ph.D. or wasn’t mentored by a prominent person in the field. What people forget is that attending the elite institutions and being mentored by prominent people is linked to social capital and systemic racism ensures that people of color have less of it.

This is slightly less of a problem in my current liberal arts, teaching-focused institution, but boy, I heard a lot of it in the big state schools I worked at before. I knew faculty who went through job applications looking only at the name of the institution/faculty member they worked with on the first pass, and if they didn’t come from a Name university or worked with a Name scientist, they were round-filed.

Second, the most common excuse I hear is “there aren’t enough people of color in the faculty pipeline.”

It is accurate that there are fewer people of color in some disciplines such as engineering or physics. However, there are great numbers of Ph.D.’s of color in the humanities and education and we still don’t have great diversity on these faculties.

In biology, we have a reasonable number of minority faculty applying for jobs — there are historically black colleges, like Howard University, that have excellent biology programs and turn out a good number of well-qualified black biologists. We just don’t hire them.

Third, I have learned that faculty will bend rules, knock down walls, and build bridges to hire those they really want (often white colleagues) but when it comes to hiring faculty of color, they have to “play by the rules” and get angry when any exceptions are made.

Let me tell you a secret – exceptions are made for white people constantly in the academy; exceptions are the rule in academe.

Oh man yes. Faculty tend to resent rules — this is a job that encourages independent thinking — and are accustomed to using the rules to get what they want. There is a kind of adversarial relationship between faculty and administration, and I suspect deans have all kinds of stories about how faculty try to work the system.

Fourth, faculty search committees are part of the problem.

They are not trained in recruitment, are rarely diverse in makeup, and are often more interested in hiring people just like them rather than expanding the diversity of their department.

True confession: I’m on the search committee for a tenure track cell/molecular biologist this year — we meet with our human resources person next week for the mandatory diversity training, which I have been through several times now. We still tend to hire our fellow white people every time. I will try to pay more attention to minority applicants, and will avoid insisting that faculty at UMM must fit the Lake Wobegon stereotype.

Fifth, if majority colleges and universities are truly serious about increasing faculty diversity, why don’t they visit Minority Serving Institutions — institutions with great student and faculty diversity — and ask them how they recruit a diverse faculty.

Now that is a really good idea. We should be sending out our job ad specifically to minority serving institutions with strong graduate programs in biology, which would also enrich our applicant pool significantly. Please do suggest such places in the comments and I’ll be sure to add them to our mailing list.

Of course, once we hire a diverse faculty, there’s the next problem: community and university attitudes. Science just ran an article on doing science while black.

But my experiences with the larger scientific community still made me feel like I didn’t belong. A few years after becoming a professor, for example, I went to a social event at a society meeting with an international, multiracial group of colleagues. I was the only black researcher among them. When we walked into the room, the crowd fell completely silent, apparently uncomfortable with my presence. I considered myself a scientist with great potential, but that experience made me feel that, to others, my skin color was more important than the quality of my work. The next year, as I was starting a sabbatical in a lab at another institution, I asked one of the researchers in the group whether the PI was in. “Are you delivering a package?” he asked. “I can pass it on to him.” These and other encounters imply that, no matter how productive my research is or how professionally I present myself, I and other black scientists do not belong in academia’s hallowed halls.

Ouch. That’s going to be another difficulty here in the blindingly white Minnesota farm country.

Oh, hey, the other committee I’ve been assigned this year is to serve on the multi-ethnic experience committee, which works to promote “campus-wide understanding of racial and ethnic minorities”, despite the fact that I am made of doughy Wonder Bread and was raised in the same kind of Scandinavian-American household that just about everyone grew up in around here. You might notice that I’m trying hard to educate myself on these phenomena.