Sherrod's joke about school shootings was one of many misses. And he knew he missed because he repeated the punchline in a desperate attempt to right the ship.
I've heard the point about white representation in mass shootings (indeed, serial killings as well) from my friends further to the left who want to racialize gun control. It's never gone through for me. I believe their goal is to level the moral playing field. It comes off as a kind of schoolyard taunt, like "I know you are but what am I".
I agree that Glenn and John could have picked up the "police harassment" thread, and that harassment was being conflated on stage with real violence. Again, Jon Laster's delivery on his gun-to-the-head anecdote ruined it for me. He was bragging and pleading victim simultaneously, and he didn't bother to elaborate or qualify the incident. Are we to understand that NYPD just go around pointing guns at people's heads for no reason? Clearly, perceptions matter, but this kind of histrionics does nothing to get to the core of the problem.
Race in sports would be an interesting topic for Glenn and John to broach. (Oddly, John always seems to avoid discussion of anything sports-related. Too plebeian maybe.) Football is a ridiculous sport in my opinion, and yes, it is designed to breed "thugs". There's no other game where for the majority of men on the playing field, the object is to throw other men violently to the ground. I'm not sure that the public perception of basketball is the same. Firstly, it's a different class of athlete, and secondly, most basketball players are thoughtful and soft-spoken. Both sports are problematic due to the amount of physical contact they entail, which invariably leads to scuffles.
The answer to all of it, of course, is to strictly enforce codes of conduct across the board. Some measure of violence in professional sports has always been tolerated because it attracts fans. The notion is preposterous that until very recently, you could, as an act of retaliation and with intent to harm, hurl a baseball at someone's head as part of some ancient ritual.
I think John confessed on a recent podcast with Glenn and Matt Taibbi that he wasn't into sports at all, so that probably explains in part why the topic is never broached between Glenn and John. That and the fact that to two Ivy League academics sports might just be too plebian as you say.
In any case, on the entire topic of unfair stereotyping of Black males and that sort of thing, I did find the comparison of perceptions of violence in basketball and football versus perceptions of violence in baseball and hockey to be interesting. If I'm remembering correctly that was one of points raised in the aftermath of the entire Malice in the Palace incident way back in the day. We don't seem to care all that much that in hockey white guys are basically encouraged to fight one another or that even today deliberating throwing a baseball at an opposing batter is considered a legitimate part of the code of honor of MLB if done in retaliation.
So I do think there are instances where legitimate claims can be made that all else being truly equal there's residual bias or negativity towards Blacks relative to non-Blacks. That's why the Roland Fryer study concluding that Blacks were more likely to be treated roughly by the police all else being equal didn't surprise me that much. I think there's a large body of social commentary offered by those like Sherrod and others that highlight the anti-Black biases that might exist in society today.
I guess my own thought has always been that while I certainly can't condone outright bias, I can certainly understand that perceptions and stereotypes don't arise out of a vacuum and that to a non-trivial extent perceptions of particular groups are based off of observed group differences in behaviors and outcomes in the aggregate. This is a point that Glenn has forcefully emphasized as well.
I agree: all the training and social commentary in the world can't completely undo ingrained biases that arise from observed behavior. Particularly when it hinges on some aspect of self-preservation, bias seems like an essential component of human nature. In my experience, new arrivals to the United States harbor stronger biases than native whites (often revealing them matter-of-factly), and I think this is a testament to your claim above.
While anti-black bias is typically invoked as presenting in other groups, I think it would be interesting to explore the stereotypes that black people keep about their own kin. I imagine it's a touchy subject. How do these self-stereotypes affect development and social cohesion within the black community?
Sherrod's joke about school shootings was one of many misses. And he knew he missed because he repeated the punchline in a desperate attempt to right the ship.
I've heard the point about white representation in mass shootings (indeed, serial killings as well) from my friends further to the left who want to racialize gun control. It's never gone through for me. I believe their goal is to level the moral playing field. It comes off as a kind of schoolyard taunt, like "I know you are but what am I".
I agree that Glenn and John could have picked up the "police harassment" thread, and that harassment was being conflated on stage with real violence. Again, Jon Laster's delivery on his gun-to-the-head anecdote ruined it for me. He was bragging and pleading victim simultaneously, and he didn't bother to elaborate or qualify the incident. Are we to understand that NYPD just go around pointing guns at people's heads for no reason? Clearly, perceptions matter, but this kind of histrionics does nothing to get to the core of the problem.
Race in sports would be an interesting topic for Glenn and John to broach. (Oddly, John always seems to avoid discussion of anything sports-related. Too plebeian maybe.) Football is a ridiculous sport in my opinion, and yes, it is designed to breed "thugs". There's no other game where for the majority of men on the playing field, the object is to throw other men violently to the ground. I'm not sure that the public perception of basketball is the same. Firstly, it's a different class of athlete, and secondly, most basketball players are thoughtful and soft-spoken. Both sports are problematic due to the amount of physical contact they entail, which invariably leads to scuffles.
The answer to all of it, of course, is to strictly enforce codes of conduct across the board. Some measure of violence in professional sports has always been tolerated because it attracts fans. The notion is preposterous that until very recently, you could, as an act of retaliation and with intent to harm, hurl a baseball at someone's head as part of some ancient ritual.
I think John confessed on a recent podcast with Glenn and Matt Taibbi that he wasn't into sports at all, so that probably explains in part why the topic is never broached between Glenn and John. That and the fact that to two Ivy League academics sports might just be too plebian as you say.
In any case, on the entire topic of unfair stereotyping of Black males and that sort of thing, I did find the comparison of perceptions of violence in basketball and football versus perceptions of violence in baseball and hockey to be interesting. If I'm remembering correctly that was one of points raised in the aftermath of the entire Malice in the Palace incident way back in the day. We don't seem to care all that much that in hockey white guys are basically encouraged to fight one another or that even today deliberating throwing a baseball at an opposing batter is considered a legitimate part of the code of honor of MLB if done in retaliation.
So I do think there are instances where legitimate claims can be made that all else being truly equal there's residual bias or negativity towards Blacks relative to non-Blacks. That's why the Roland Fryer study concluding that Blacks were more likely to be treated roughly by the police all else being equal didn't surprise me that much. I think there's a large body of social commentary offered by those like Sherrod and others that highlight the anti-Black biases that might exist in society today.
I guess my own thought has always been that while I certainly can't condone outright bias, I can certainly understand that perceptions and stereotypes don't arise out of a vacuum and that to a non-trivial extent perceptions of particular groups are based off of observed group differences in behaviors and outcomes in the aggregate. This is a point that Glenn has forcefully emphasized as well.
Very well said, Yan.
I agree: all the training and social commentary in the world can't completely undo ingrained biases that arise from observed behavior. Particularly when it hinges on some aspect of self-preservation, bias seems like an essential component of human nature. In my experience, new arrivals to the United States harbor stronger biases than native whites (often revealing them matter-of-factly), and I think this is a testament to your claim above.
While anti-black bias is typically invoked as presenting in other groups, I think it would be interesting to explore the stereotypes that black people keep about their own kin. I imagine it's a touchy subject. How do these self-stereotypes affect development and social cohesion within the black community?