Cancel Culture Doesn't Excite

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Editor of top US medical journal put on leave amid outcry over racism podcast

When I first heard about I thought this was another example of woke overreach. My goodness saying you are offended being called a racist is now a fireable offense in elite of the medical world. But then they promoted the podcast saying no doctor is racist thus handing the wokes a gift on a silver platter. Arguing that you can not discuss racism in a conversation about racism, WTF?

IMHO the idea that all white doctors are racist is just as offensive as saying no doctors are racist. The problem is the the first is becoming mainstream thought in elite circles and beyond. The other problem is comments like the above “prove” the wokes are right. Of course it does no such thing but in the real world they put anti wokes on the defensive if not leaving them defenseless and give the wokes good reason to be cocky.

The doctor stepped down because the idiot can't defend himself. Have you thought about that?

He is behaving is an unprofessional manner, he is obviously not incapable of googling structural racism in healthcare and finding peer reviewed artlces published in his own bloody journal

I do not think he “stepped” down, more like “pushed”. He knows what the concept of structural racism is and was saying the term is a ineffective way of dealing with it. That is until he utterly destroyed his own argument.

What was unprofessional about about the podcast? Did he appear on the podcast in his pajamas? Did he curse? He did not understand that as far as the people that paid him are concerned not going woke means adding a whole bunch of unpaid time to his life.

He is an academic and an editor on a major medical journal.

he made a public statement that - “Structural racism is an unfortunate term,” Livingston said. “Personally, I think taking racism out of the conversation will help. Many people like myself are offended by the implication that we are somehow racist.”

The statement demonstrates ignorance on a evidence based concept of structural racism in healthcare (which is real) which if you are a dumb/ignorant MAGA is understandable but not if you are a highly paid professor of medicine.

I'm 100% sure he regretted having to be accountable to defend his position which he knew very well couldn't be defended.

And therein lies the biggest myth of cancel culture. If you take Gina Carano, she made no attempt to get legal counsel (despite the big claims) because she knew what she said was inflammatory and she would look more stupid and dig herself into a even deeper hole. She ran to the only person who would publicly support her (not surprisingly a right wing agitator).

Falling on your sword isn't getting pushed.

VICE has been doing a lot lately on the War on Drugs including interviews with Carl Hart (have seen him on some MAPS discussion panels).

IMHO one of the best things they could do is dismantle that and move toward more simple forms of legalization and regulation. I say this because I try to think of either deeply classist or racist laws, or things that disproportionately put poor and non-white people in prison, and I'd say the War on Drugs is probably one of the most institutionally racist things we still have in motion right now (which I'm surprised that it doesn't come up front and center in that context).

It seems like Carl Hart, Johan Hari, Gabor Mate, are all on the same page - ie. 'addiction' is a side effect of other downward forces and this is yet another way of twisting a knife in people who were self medicating precisely because society was twisting a knife in them.

I think structural racism and classism are hard to dislodge firstly because those who control these structures benefit from the preferential treatment. Secondly those who work in these sectors are benefitting from their privilege but don't want to appear they are privileged.

People who might have marched against desegregation in the 1960s are now claiming only the left see race. Yet mysteriously they live in all-white neighborhoods, work in organisations or companies employing predominantly white staff and have children going to all-white schools.

I think the problem - writ large - is much scarier than that.

The reason why historically disadvantaged groups seem to do poorly - aside from starting out without the wealth or quality of education that would help nurture and support their progress - the dominant culture (middle and upper class white as well as non-disadvantaged minorities) are in harsh Darwinian competition both with each other and even within their own races and families. They can't stop running as fast as they can to keep what social status and economic prosperity they can, if they stop they begin to fall, and it's true as well that disadvantaged minorities are trying to get into the race while everyone else is already half way to the finish line of something like a 10K.

The problem is that we're in a perpetual economic arms race condition. Just doing 'good enough' is a failure mode where if you don't get married you'll never own anything, at best you may have a stable studio apartment and get paid between 30 and 40K per year. To make a living you have to quite often work 50-60 hours plus per week, be on call, and then add to that responsibility for all sorts of things that might be over your head because the value of labor has been plummeting due to global free trade and consequently to be employable you have to put in all sorts of unpaid overtime if the company you're at hasn't leveraged your activities well for profit.

In this sense I think the primary problem is much less race and much more an arms race condition where no one can call time out or 'help these people catch up' without someone else printing ahead of them or even using it as an opportunity to plunder them for standing still. When it's an economic war of all against all you'll then see natural antipathies heightened rather than decreased, and TBH at present it seems like were doing unusually well at keeping the veneer of civility, even with as much economic damage and uncertainty as Covid has given us.

These are excellent points (and yes the intra-class and intra-race conflicts/competition are real). What's probably relevant is the disparity between the wealthiest and poorest in society has grown larger in the last 50 years. Wealth is being concentrated in fewer hands.

And yes, privileged minorities have no time to help the less fortunate as they need to sprint to keep up with the ruling class.

BTW - The American Psychology Association (APA) refer to white privilege as cultural hegemony where the people you refer to as white/upper middle class are by proxy the "ruling class". I am not joking but this is infact how psychologists perceive white people perceive themselves in the western world.

The game-theoretic landscape:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/m ... on-moloch/

I think the best things we can do to at least start the ball rolling in the right direction:

a) end the drug war and, where needed, license use of some more challenging drugs the way you'd license a CCW.
b) open-source the best education out there for anyone willing to utilize it.
c) do what's possible to re-seed what's considered cultural capital in poor and underpriveleged communities as much as the rest, it breeds cooperation and may help take the arms races down a notch or two.
d) I want to say suburban-style policing in the inner city as has been a popular turn of phrase lately but ending the drug war seems like it takes care of most of that other than take tasks away from police that aren't police tasks and then make sure that the police they do have are both well paid and exceptionally well trained for what they do.

All of these things are indeed being done at the grass roots level. But how widespread I'm not sure?

That kind of stuff is just B.S you are not a racist for caring about how science can effect things..you are being open minded. There is racism in in the system but things like 'reverse racism' do not help cause also the thing is reverse racism and reverse sexisim is all kind of bs....If you see males and females being treated differently on a professoinal level that is sexism. a guy who thinks the can never be good enough for a woman...sexism a girl who thinks guys will only be intersted in her for sex and nothing else...sexism. Guess what sexism effects both women and men but society does not want to talk about how sexism effects men. It is all about how it effects women, but you know even I think about like well what about the guys....like treating sexism as if it only effects women is kinda toxic. LIke men have gotten abused in relationships and like people laugh at them if they speak out about it....like its ha ha funny if a guy gets violated without giving a person permission and yeah peple just laugh that kind of thing off. Even though guys can also face sex abuse and it is just as serious as a woman facing sex abuse but the culture we have decryes assulting a woman against her will, but if a guy get assaulted against his will people just laugh about it and wont even acknowlegde if the male found it uncomfortable. They may say things like' at least you got laid bro'....oh well it was a woman you could have fought her off at any-time if you weren't into it. All toxic victim blaming attitudes, I see over and over again online like to me I think that kind of stuff is just as sexist as if people post like sterotypes of women and say we are all exact copies of that mold. I mean men are not all just a penis with a brain that thinks sometimes....they are people to.

I understand what you are saying but an editor of a journal has some responsibilities. Reading his comments I can assure you it has nothing to do with "caring about how science can effect things", it sounds like he has personal problems with being held accountable for racism in the healthcare system which isn't what structural racism is and he clearly misunderstands or wants people to ignore/diminish it's importance.

i've long thought that policing needs to totally eschew the traditional "slave patrol" mentality and become pro-social. to that end, i think all police should be social workers FIRST and FOREMOST. armed social workers. carrot and stick.

Yeah I looked over that more and seems like you are right about that, and for sure it seems to be like the right wing trick of making like what sounds like a potential plausible thing to discuss, but its really just some dumb rant.

But yeah still it mentioned like 'reverse racism' and presumably down that road they may believe in reverse sexism but I find that stuff stupid because there isn't reverse racism or reverse sexism.....racism is racism, sexism is sexism.

Can you link the thread here please when you're making it?