“Nielsen-Haydens, your fellow travelers, and media goombahs . . . I MOCK YOU! I MOCK YOUR ASININE INCESTUOUS CLUSTERFUCKED LITTLE CULTURE OF DOCTRINAIRE PROGRESSOSEXUAL MEDIOCRITY MASKED AS SUPERIORITY! You are all dolts. You are moral and physical cowards. You are without ethics, without scruples, and if you weren’t so patently pathetic, I’d say you might be dangerous.
Fuck you. Fuck you all. The forces of the progressive pink and poofy Xerxes were met at the Hugo Hot Gates, and repelled by a few brave dudes and dudettes with the stones to stand up to your bullshit.”
So that was Brad Torgersen, talking about two editors at the science fiction publisher Tor. Torgersen is the leader of the “Sad Puppies,” the public face of a bunch of right-wing science fiction writers whose proudest achievement is gaming the Hugo award nominations this year.
(Note also the homophobic “pink and poofy” comment. Not Torgersen’s first homophobic comment, either.)
So that’s the kind of rhetoric Puppies engage in.
Well, okay, it happens. I’m not bothered by Torgersen losing his temper – almost everyone does, in these situations. (I am icked, but not at all surprised, by Torgersen’s homophobic comments.)
So, anyway, Irene Gallo, who (I think) is in charge of cover design at the science fiction publisher Tor (which has published more than one Puppy author), was asked on her personal Facebook page “what are the Sad Puppies?” Gallo replied:
There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.
This is impolite, and hyperbolic, and you could argue it’s inaccurate as well. For instance, one could argue that Rabid Puppy leader Vox Day is not literally a neo-nazi, but merely a vicious fascistic racist misogynistic trans-and-gay-hating anti-semite. I think that’s a specious distinction, because many English speakers use “neo-nazi” to refer to racist anti-semitic fascists in general, whether or not the person in question has actually joined the Nazi party; but it’s a distinction that reasonable people might make.
And, in my opinion, the primary goal of the Puppies isn’t to end social justice in sf/f, but merely to find a way to win a prestigious writing award without having to earn it through merit. (That’s certainly what the history suggests). But reasonable people might disagree.
A lot of Puppies have been arguing that it’s unfair to refer to Sad Puppies like Torgersen as “neo-nazi.” But Gallo straight-out didn’t do that; she called the Rabid Puppies neo-nazi, not the Sad Puppies.
It’s true that she refers to the puppies collectively as “unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic.” Although probably this isn’t true of every single Puppy, it’s no more unfair to characterize the Puppies by their leaders’ statements than it is unfair to characterize Republicans by the positions of George Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney. And multiple Puppy leaders have said things that can be fairly interpreted as racist, sexist, homophobic, or all three.
And certainly, that all the Puppy nominated works were terrible is a reasonable opinion to hold.
I don’t think the way Gallo wrote would be a good way to open a respectful dialog with a Puppy supporter. But that’s fine, because Gallo was writing on her personal Facebook page. She’s not obligated to pitch her words to Brad Torgersen’s or Vox Day’s oh-so-delicate ears.
That was back on May 11. Vox Day screencaped it immediately, but didn’t publicize it until he could use it to create a distraction from the Nebula Awards. So he tweeted it, and his loyal followers exploded in the predictable way, many of them (including Day himself) demanding Gallo’s “resignation.”
Tor’s founder, Tom Doherty, responded with a blog post that sucked up to the Puppy narrative and apologized:
We apologize for any confusion Ms. Gallo’s comments may have caused. Let me reiterate: the views expressed by Ms. Gallo are not those of Tor as an organization and are not my own views. Rest assured, Tor remains committed to bringing readers the finest in science fiction – on a broad range of topics, from a broad range of authors.
Okay, enough summary. (A fuller summary can be found on BlackGate). A few thoughts:
1) As many people have pointed out, Doherty seems to have a notable – and sexist – double-standard. Harry Connolly writes:
For years, Tor editor Jim Frenkel was widely known as a serial sexual harasser at conventions. What was done about it? Not much, for a very long time. Eventually, he was encouraged to resign after the public outcry became too much, which was announced with typical corporate blandness.
Last year, Tor contracts manager Sean Fodera publicly attacked one of Tor’s authors, Mary Robinette Kowal, in a typically gross and sexist way. […]
Did Tor CEO Tom Doherty release a letter apologizing publicly for Frenkel’s or Fodera’s behavior, while insisting that they should have been smarter about separating the personal from the professional? Of course not. For one thing, Frenkel’s shitty behavior happened while he was representing Tor Books at public events. For another, they were dudes and their victims were women.
However, it took Doherty less than 24 hours to issue a letter of apology for Gallo’s comment on her personal Facebook…
2) Trying to get someone fired because of their political opinions is terrible.
We can have a country in which people can feel safe and secure while stating political opinions. Or we can have a country where people live in fear and are subject to losing their livelihoods if they ever say anything that gets people angry. Everyone who is now trying to get Irene Gallo fired for what she said on Facebook has shown they favor the second option.
3) Prominent Puppy Dave Freer once wrote:
We should look rather harshly on anyone who takes their grudge – whatever it is, and says ‘gee I don’t like Joe Writer. I can’t get at him any other way, but let’s hurt his ability to make a living. That’ll teach him.’ […]
So far, to best of my knowledge, the Puppies, both sad and rabid, and their followers have avoided attacking things which make people a living.
Freer has changed his tune now that so many Puppies are calling for a boycott against Tor until Irene Gallo resigns or is fired. Freer doesn’t explicitly advocate the boycott, to be sure; but he weasels out of opposing it, and adds “I will hold off on buying any books from them in the meanwhile.”
Hopefully Freer will return to the principles he once claimed to believe in.
4) Happily, I’ve seen many people in the sf/f community stand by Gallo. A chorus I’m pleased to join.
5) I’m going to end by quoting Chuck Wendig at length; his entire post is excellent.
I find it no small irony that both the Sad and Rabid Puppies — who so strongly espouse freedom of speech, would then endeavor to rob that from Irene Gallo unless, gasp, we’re talking about another double-standard in play? It’s almost like women get treated differently in the world and held to different standards… hmm. *strokes beard thoughtfully*
Regardless of whether or not you agree with what she said, the fact remains: her publisher publicly rubbed her nose in the mess, then threw her under a bus, then threw her body to a pack of wolves. Again: publicly. Not privately. Perhaps this was all part of some legal stratagem or even a legal necessity — but what it feels like is an entreaty by the publisher to appease folks who believe and opine about really horrible things. And any time you want to make sure that your “inclusiveness” includes the most awful amongst us, please understand you’re not creating a safe space for anybody but the abusers. It’s like putting up a sign in your flowerbed: POISON IVY WELCOME.
I stand by Irene Gallo because she is a person who has the right to air her personal sentiments, regardless of whether or not we find them disagreeable. She has that right without being smacked across the nose by her employer in a sanctioned public shaming. I do not agree with Tor’s posturing on this point because it represents a double-standard of sexism and favoritism. I do not agree with Tor because they are opening the tent flap to the worst among us.
“2) Trying to get someone fired because of their political opinions is terrible.”
Hahaha. Pot, kettle, black.
Did you have a particular thing in mind, Echo?
You know publishing is an expression of political ideas. It’s not as if she was driving a delivery truck or reloading paper stock in the print machine, she’s responsible for communicating an authors ideas. If you want to be a publisher which produces work from across the political spectrum, you can’t employ a sjw who won’t look past the politics. You particularly can’t employ a sjw who publicly attacks authors and works her job may be to promote.
So, if I understand what’s going on:
People are on the puppy side because they want to see a scifi fandom where unpopular views can be expressed unhindered, and some puppies are explaining that the best way to promote political freedom and robust expression of popular ideas is to get people fired for having incorrect political views.
Okay.
Meanwhile, people are on the anti-puppy side because it’s totally ridiculous how those dumb puppies think they’re somehow being excluded from the fandom. Everybody knows that the people who are puppies have always been totally welcome and they only think otherwise because of their paranoia! and Chuck Wendig demonstrates how paranoid those silly puppies are by saying that they’re an “invasive species” who are “shitting up the beach”.
Okay.
Christopher, what does “totally welcome” mean to you?
To me, I think it means that conservatives (like everyone) have been and are welcome to purchase Worldcon memberships; that
virtuallyall major SF publishers publish both conservative and liberal authors (as well as many not-that-easily-catagorizable authors); that the Hugo voting is completely transparent and does not provide any way to exclude conservative fans from voting; etc, etc..You seem to mean that “totally welcome” means that conservatives can never, ever be criticized in strong terms, not even in the middle of a heated internet debate.
That seems completely ridiculous to me.
ETA: And, anyway, “conservatives” and “sad puppies” are not interchangable terms. It’s quite possible to think that the Sad Puppies (and the Rabids) have been horrible jerks who have acted in disgusting ways, and to still think that the thousands of conservative SF fans who aren’t Puppies are totally cool and essential members of the SF community.
To give a concrete example, Mike Resnick and Gene Wolfe are both extremely respected authors – Resnick has been nominated for more fiction Hugos more than any other author – and conservatives.
Pete Patriot, is there ANY evidence at all that Gallow ever did less than an excellent job for Wright or any of the other conservative authors whose covers she was involved in designing? (Wright himself seems to think she’s done a good job on his books).
If she’s not doing her job, that’s a reason to fire her. But in fact, she has a demonstrated history of doing her job well, including when working with conservative authors.
You just want her fired because she’s liberal. That’s not full-on McCarthyism, but it’s certainly headed in that direction.I crossed off that last sentence because it was unfair to PP.
I’ll say instead: The Puppies calling for Gallow to be fired are, imo, seeking to punish someone for speaking out against the Puppies. Among the Puppies I’ve read, the concerns about the quality of her work seem both completely unjustified, and to be a post hoc rationalization.
Ah, schadenfreude.
I don’t agree with much of what Beale says, but he certainly got skill at using (faulty) SJW logic and hyperbole to troll progressives. It does seem to have driven a wedge between those that support enacting professional punishment against people who commit rhetorical sins online, and those that support a more proportionate approach to political advocacy.
I think that the response from Doherty was pretty much on target and in proportion to the issue. Making public, personal attacks on people you have a professional connection to, even if the basis for the attack is true, is unprofessional behaviour. A public apology seems appropriate, and firing would seem an over the top response. Whether the damage to the professional relationships or Gallo’s reputation (i.e. authors refusing to work with her) is to the extent that it prevents her from doing her job remains to be seen.
I can’t help but wonder if the SFWA response to Beale’s misconduct had been similarly proportioned, how differently things would have played out.
I don’t know if it makes sense to separate public and private in the way that you do here. This whole thing seems to involve mixing them up, doesn’t it?
People are talking all over about personal viewpoints. People are one-starring books based on association with people whose viewpoints they don’t like. People are alleging that there’s a lot of discrimination between groups based on underlying personal viewpoints. In one way or another, the whole damn thing has to do with personal issues, as reflected in economic and award and publishing realities.
If that’s the pool folks are swimming in, well… I don’t think it’s unreasonable for this to be treated as public. Nor does it seem unreasonable for her to have apologized, or for her mixed-up-in-it-all employer to have disclaimed involvement.
The calls for firing seem a stretch, especially post-apology. Then again, the calls claiming that the apology and disclaimer were also horrific and should never have happened are probably driving a lot of this. Its hard for people to say “OK, you apologized, I’m taking a deep breath moving on” when so many folks are screaming “TAKE BACK THE APOLOGY AND DISCLAIMER THESE PEOPLE ARE ASSHOLES” at you.
Yup, I stand with Doherty. He did exactly the right thing by pointing out that Gallo’s personal opinion is not endorsed by Tor, which is staying out of it. Smart and sensible.
Ideological purges and calls for firing aren’t exactly unknown among the radical left, you know. Ever try making a dongle joke to a friend at a computer conference? Or pointing out that Muslim women in actually misogynist cultures have it worse than middle-class white women attending atheist conventions? The moral high ground… it is not available to either side in this issue.
The SFWA is a professional organization; it was not Beale’s employer. Beale’s livelihood was in no way dependent on his SFWA membership. And btw, kicking out someone who misused the SFWA’s official twitter account to publicize a racist attack on another SWFA member seems totally appropriate, although I suspect that it was also a “straw that broke the camel’s back” thing in Beale’s case.
G&W, who, specifically, are you quoting? Provide a link, please. Black Gate has a round-up of people in the SF community supporting Gallo, and none of them can be fairly characterized the way you just did, that I can see.
It’s interesting that both of you, in the bits I quoted above, are implying that conservatives can’t be responsible for their own actions; anything a conservative does wrong is apparently the fault of lefties, in your views.
G&W, you also get the sequence wrong. Check out File 770’s very thorough coverage for the last week; there was a flood of Puppies saying that her apology was no good and unacceptable which came BEFORE the flood of support for Gallo.
I know. I’ve objected to lefties calling for people to be fired many times, you know.
You know, I’m not interested in hosting a discussion that even borders on people defending Beale. Desipis, if you want to admire Beale’s skill or suggest that his actions are anyone’s fault but his own, there are a zillion spaces online where you can do that; “Alas” isn’t one of them.
By the way, I don’t recall a single person calling for the dongle-joke dude to be fired.
He was fired by his employer, so I guess you could claim that the employer called for him to be fired, but that’s a real stretch. Other than his boss, there’s no evidence that anyone called for him to be fired.
On the other hand, political conservatives and anti-feminists viciously called for the person who made the complaint to be fired, going so far as to make a DOS attack on her company until they fired her.
I’m not denying that lefties have sometimes called for people to be fired or otherwise economically punished for their speech – that has happened, and I’ve objected to it. But the example you chose was exactly the opposite of the truth.
I’m not quoting, merely summarizing, if that wasn’t obvious (when I quote, I actually quote.) I read the comments http://www.tor.com/2015/06/08/a-message-from-tom-doherty-to-our-readers-and-authors/ myself. I prefer to not rely on summaries, though a quick scan shows that (unsurprisingly) there are different viewpoints on this, e.g. http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.ch/2015/06/the-tor-imbroglio-and-progressive.html Given the vitriol aimed at the Puppy crowd, I’m scratching my head at what seems so off.
…what? Honestly, I have absolutely no idea how you could possibly conclude that from my post, nor how you could possibly think that is actually true.
People get annoyed at what other people do. Imagining how someone could be annoyed at Vox is pretty easy, because of what he does. Imagining how someone else could be annoyed at them is also pretty easy.
Yes, but a ton of the press on it came post-apology post-TOR-response. And the TOR response started a lot of anti-Puppy “how dare you have posted this” stuff, which, entirely predictably, helped the battle continue. So then a Tor editor joins in, and now VD is responding (it’s a “donotlink”, don’t worry,) and the fight continues.
So, anyway, Irene Gallo, who (I think) is in charge of cover design at the science fiction publisher Tor (which has published more than one Puppy author), was asked on her personal Facebook page “what are the Sad Puppies?”
Gallo is Creative Director at Tor (yes, in charge of cover design and apparently talented at it) and Associate Publisher at Tor.com. She’s not a junior employee. The post on her “personal” Facebook page was one where she was promoting a Tor-published author’s upcoming Tor-published book and her professional connection with that book.
These details matter. That it was her “personal” page becomes largely irrelevant in context. She clearly trades on her employment at Tor on those pages.
If she’s not doing her job, that’s a reason to fire her.
One could argue that making highly-derogatory statements about authors her company publishes in public (a “personal” Facebook page is not the same thing as a “private” Facebook page) is not doing her job. It certainly calls into question her judgment as a publishing professional. Whether that’s grounds for dismissal is up to Tor and Macmillan. In many companies it certainly would be.
It seems fairly obvious to me that an employee who publicly trashes in vitriolic terms the suppliers of the product she sells, the quality of the product those supplier provide, and by implication all those customers who support the suppliers and buy the product from her company is at the very least not making intelligent career decisions…
I don’t really understand the “grounds for dismissal” stuff.
You know what is grounds for dismissal? Pretty much anything, if you’re an at-will employee, including “bad hair.”
You know what actually requires dismissal? Pretty much nothing, outside sexual harassment and a few other such things.
If McMillan/Tor wants to fire her, they will. But they shouldn’t. This is not because they can’t, but it seems that she stepped over the “you have caused us problems, so you should apologize and not do this again” line, and not the “you must immediately depart the premises” line.
Honestly, this Moshe Feder post, in the current context of the dsclaimer and brouhaha and Tor’s apparent preference not to get in the middle of the shitshow, seems more fire-worthy than Gallo’s.
@gin-and-whiskey
Grounds for dismissal is usually pretty straightforward. And is usually spelled out to employees in a policy statement or employee handbook. Yes, in the U.S. in “work-at-will” states, an employer does not have to provide a reason for termination, unless it is termination for cause, which is a different thing.
But I can think of quite a number of “other things” beyond sexual harassment that would pretty much “require” termination. How about criminal activities such as stealing or embezzlement? Insulting a client in a meeting. Habitual tardiness. Successive poor performance reviews. There are lots of thing that might require termination.
Tor and/or Macmillian will determine for themselves whether Ms. Gallo has crossed any lines and whether they should or shouldn’t let her go. I image her job is safe and that she’s learned that even when speaking in a “personal” capacity her views can cause harm to their business.
I will agree that Moshe Feder might want to take a lesson as well. The Nielson-Haydens should have received a similar scolding for some of their vitriol during past Puppies campaigns, but aside from a couple of virulent statements in the first days of the Hugo kerfluffle, they’ve wisely remained pretty quiet on the subject.
Actually, none of those require termination, except in some relatively-rare circumstances. You may be a fool to keep an employee who steals from you on staff, but you’re welcome to do so. And you can keep as many insulting, late, incompetent, people as you want. That happens all the time. Trust me. There is almost nothing which requires anyone to fire an employee.
If my paralegal was playing nude poker in my conference room with my nemesis, while throwing darts at a print of my face and watching The Birth Of A Nation in the background…. well, I would fire her, but I wouldn’t HAVE to fire her. It would still be my call.
Well, apparently they decided “don’t fire her, but make her apologize and publish a disclaimer.” Which seems pretty straightforward to me, though there are some folks who seem to think that they shouldn’t have done that at all.
I will agree that Moshe Feder might want to take a lesson as well.
I don’t think that people usually scold themselves, and as the people who basically run Tor I am not surprised at they are granted additional leeway to make these decisions.
The Nielsen Haydens don’t run Tor.
I think “grounds for dismissal,” in a legal sense, isn’t relevant to my post. I haven’t seen a single person argue that Tor doesn’t have the legal right to fire Gallo.
What I’m arguing is that it would be morally wrong to fire Gallo. It would be morally wrong to support a world in which employees are fired for having political opinions on Facebook. That is not compatable with being a supporter of free speech, in any meaningful way, imo.
And basically, it’s just scummy to try and punish people economically because they criticized you politically.
I never said she was a junior employee (are junior employees in charge of cover design? Not in my experience.)
I don’t think those details matter. I don’t believe a single person sincerely read what Gallo wrote and thought “this is a statement of Tor’s official position that Rabid Puppies are neo-nazis.” The puppies are disingenuously pretending there’s confusion on that point because Puppies want to get a woman fired for daring to criticize them; but it was perfectly clear that she was speaking off-the-cuff and stating a personal opinion.
I think it’s pathetic and wrong that you’re advocating McCarthyist-lite economic reprisals against people who disagree with you.
Here’s an idea: How about responding to words you disagree with, with rational arguments, instead of whining that their bosses should punish them for disagreeing with you? Are Puppies really that incapable of supporting their views with arguments, that they have to resort to these strongarm tactics?
Whoops, I disagreed with you! Well, for the record, my employers are Dollars and Sense Magazine, and Abrams Books. Please feel free to go complaining to them.
@Ampersand
I didn’t mean grounds for dismissal in a legal sense, I meant it in a business sense and whether Gallo may have violated the company code of conduct (Macmillian’s code of conduct is available in the footer of their homepage).
The point is not that Gallo isn’t or shouldn’t have the right to have opinions, political or otherwise, and to express those opinions. She absolutely has those rights. But businesses are not government, and they have the right to expect employees (and I’d say especially senior staff) to conduct themselves in a professional manner, particularly when expressing opinions in pubic about, in this case, authors they work with. The point is professionalism.
No one I’ve seen has ever said Gallo was speaking as a spokesperson for Tor. And I realize you dismiss the context of her comments as details that don’t matter, but they not only matter, they are crucial, even if they don’t fit your narrative. And in that context her comments were extremely unprofessional. In the business context, Gallo has every right to express her opinions in whatever manner she chooses, but she has no right to expect to escape the consequences of that expression.
I think it’s pathetic and wrong that you’re advocating McCarthyist-lite economic reprisals against people who disagree with you.
That’s fine, since I advocated no such thing here.
How about responding to words you disagree with, with rational arguments, instead of whining that their bosses should punish them for disagreeing with you?
I have nowhere advocated (“whining” or otherwise) anyone’s bosses punishing them for disagreeing with me. Instead I’ve been commenting on words (yours) calmly with rational arguments. So we’re in agreement there.
Whoops, I disagreed with you!…Please feel free to go complaining to them.
Since I haven’t advocated getting people fired in that manner, I have no need to complain to anyone least of all your employers. If they have a problem with the expression of your opinions, they can discover them for themselves and make their own decision whether to fire you.
@ gin-and-whiskey
If none of those actions require termination, then nothing requires termination, including sexual harassment. Which belies your statement that sexual harassment and “a few other things” would require termination. Unless, of course, a company has employment policies in place where those actions do require termination.
But enough of the sophistry.
We have no idea whether Tor or Macmillian have made a decision to retain or terminate Ms. Gallo. I suspect, like you, that they will not fire her, but neither you nor I know.
And, as Mandolin notes, Patrick Nielson Hayden does not run Tor (his wife is actually no longer even indirectly employed there, to my understanding). Nominally Tom Doherty runs Tor, and he is responsible to his corporate bosses at Macmillian.
And there is some evidence that things may not be so rosy at Tor. As far as I understand Doherty has not been in good health recently. The US company just announced a new line of publishing novellas, which is kind of a strange move if their novels are selling well. And Tor UK’s editorial director “left” last month “following a review of the company’s science fiction and fantasy publishing.”
So another reason Doherty may have been quick to issue that statement is that he’s trying to save his company (and job) and having staff stir up unnecessary controversy isn’t helping.
Ampersand:
Like how people responded to the Resnick/Malzberg columns?
I’m effectively a columnist for Dollars and Sense Magazine (albeit one who works in cartoon form instead of prose). I’ve been doing that gig for over a decade now. I love that gig.
But if I started making my comics about – say – the Hugo controversy, rather than delivering the cartoons I’ve agreed to deliver – which is to say, cartoons about economics – then they’d be entirely right to stop publishing my cartoons.
And if I started expressing political opinions that D&S’s readership finds repulsive, then it would also be fair for D&S to stop publishing my cartoons.
(ETA: For that matter, if the D&S folks just decided that my cartoons had grown stale, or no longer fit in with the direction they want to go in, or just that it’s time for some new blood, then it would be fair for them to stop buying my cartoons. That’s the life of a columnist. And, honestly, I’m pretty sure something like that was how I got the gig in the first place.)
Two points that you seemingly don’t get:
1) The principle of “people shouldn’t face on-the-job consequences for their off-the-job speech” obviously does not apply to what I say IN MY WORK. Of course I can, and should, face on the job consequences for HOW I DO MY JOB.
2) No one has a free speech right to be published in Dollars and Sense, or in the SFWA Bulletin. Nor would such a right be desirable. People should be given free reign to say what they want on their own time and in their own spaces (or in public spaces); but no one has a right to space in someone else’s publication.
LostSailer:
Well, professionalism cuts both ways. I don’t think for the boss to publicly criticize Gallo by name – instead of merely saying “for the record, Tor employees on their own facebook pages are not speaking for Tor. We have reminded all employees of the need to make this clear” – in a blog post was very professional.
You say you’re not advocating for bosses to punish employees for stating political opinions you disagree with. But you also wrote “The Nielson-Haydens should have received a similar scolding.” A “similar scolding,” in this context, would have been a scolding from their boss. So what you’re saying is that you think they should have been scolded by their boss for stating their political opinions on their own blog.
So, yeah, I stick by my criticism. Maybe you’re walking it back now, but you’re clearly favoring bosses calling their employees on the carpet for what the employees say on their own space. If you meant something else, then you did not express yourself very clearly.
(Although I admit my tone was hyperbolic and over the top.)
[never mind, misread attribution]
Christopher, what does “totally welcome” mean to you?
To me, I think it means that conservatives (like everyone) have been and are welcome to purchase Worldcon memberships; that virtually all major SF publishers publish both conservative and liberal authors (as well as many not-that-easily-catagorizable authors); that the Hugo voting is completely transparent and does not provide any way to exclude conservative fans from voting; etc, etc..
You seem to mean that “totally welcome” means that conservatives can never, ever be criticized in strong terms, not even in the middle of a heated internet debate.
Well, I suppose since those are literally the only two choices it is a pretty irrational opinion I have.
Actually, I was using the term “welcoming” in the same sense it is often used by many progressives, e.g. the way you yourself use it in this post you wrote (Interesting Bloggy Debate About Inclusivity):
He then says the rationalist community is the same way, and therefore there is no problem of women and some minorities feeling excluded by the dialog there. But unlike yoga class, we have direct evidence – such as the post Scott was responding to – that there are women and minorities who do feel excluded from rationalist communities, and say so clearly.
Remember that? Remember back when a population saying that they felt excluded by the norms of a community was “direct evidence” that there was something real going on?
You’ll note that nobody was complaining about rationalist communities that had, say, a segregated message board that didn’t allow black people to join; back then you seemed pretty open to the idea that a community could be “unwelcoming” without literally making laws or policies to exclude people.
And hey, you also seemed to have the idea that the people who were complaining wanted something other than the ability to be free of all criticism.
I’m not sure where that middle ground went to when you were analyzing my comment.
And, anyway, “conservatives” and “sad puppies” are not interchangable terms. It’s quite possible to think that the Sad Puppies (and the Rabids) have been horrible jerks who have acted in disgusting ways, and to still think that the thousands of conservative SF fans who aren’t Puppies are totally cool and essential members of the SF community.
Yeah, you misread my post or confused it with somebody else’s post. I never said conservatives felt excluded from the Hugos and the sci-fi community, I said the puppies felt excluded.
I, uh, think it’s pretty damn clear that they feel excluded since they say it all the time and it’s the locus of their whole movement.
EDIT: And as much as I know people are going to say “Puppies only started to get pushback after they acted like jerks!” that’s not how the puppies see it. You may not have felt like you were excluding them, but they felt excluded.
And in other cases, that subjective feeling alone has been enough to strongly suggest to you that there was a real problem, and that the people who felt like there wasn’t a problem were burying their heads in the sand. Now, back then, as here, the exclusion may have been justified, but the fact of it wasn’t questioned.
Look at what Wendig actually says; he starts with:
To mix my metaphors, [the puppies] stormed the beach of the awards they imagined they were being kept from (despite having had nominations in the past),
But goes on to characterize them as “assholes”, says they’re “shitting up the beach” of the hugos, and goes on to write
want to reassure the horrible people that hey, horrible people, you’re welcome under the tent, too, and we’re sorry for pointing out that you’ve been defecating on our beach for a while, no, no, it’s fine, keep defecating on our beach, we are inclusive to all beach-goers and that includes you feisty beach-shitters too here we’ll even put up a sign BEACH-SHITTERS WELCOME TOO!
I’m sorry, he’s gone from “Isn’t it delusional that these people feel excluded” to “These people need to be excluded”.
I mean, maybe he’s right; or on the other hand, maybe he just means the puppies that do bad things and not the vaguely right-wing puppy fence-sitters.
But what I mean by unwelcoming is that, well…
There’s a large contingent of people who make fun of the puppies for imaging they aren’t welcome at the hugos and then follow up by explicitly saying puppies aren’t welcome.
No, I get your points. I just disagree with them. You are seemingly ignoring my point that the context of Gallo’s comments matters: her comment appeared in the context of her promoting her work for Tor. Her employer might still have issues with her comments even without the context, but within the actual context, their concern is, I think, quite logical and warranted.
Do you think your employers would be completely cool if you posted something like “Hey, check out my latest cartoon for Dollars and Sense if any of you Dollars and Sense readers have the wit to understand it since you’re all a bunch of misanthropic troglodytes.”
Or if I were to organize a Klan rally wearing a t-shirt with my employers name and logo on it, do you think they are morally forbidden from having a problem with that?
The larger point is that public commentary and activism doesn’t happen in isolation. Trying to erect artificial barriers between the different spheres of our lives denies reality. If one doesn’t want to bear the responsibility of potential consequences of our expression, we should consider the nature of that expression.
Your second point I won’t address because it has nothing to do with the topic; no one is arguing that point.
@Ampersand:
I don’t consider Mr. Doherty’s response to be unprofessional. As I noted above, he’s trying to protect his business.
But I take your point. Mr. Doherty could have worded his post differently, more in keeping with how you think it should be done. By the same token, Ms. Gallo could have answered the question about the Puppies in more moderated language, but didn’t. Which you spent several paragraphs in your post defending. All in all, Mr. Doherty’s statement was pretty mild. Ms. Gallo’s comments weren’t. I don’t have a problem with Mr. Doherty’s statement.
And you mistake me and distort what I’ve commented: I’ve never said bosses shouldn’t “punish” employees for stating political opinions that trash the company’s authors, I’ve only said they’re within their rights to do so. I have not called for anyone to be fired; just that’s within the range of options. But I have advocated for consistency: while Tor probably should have spoken to their employees privately long before their online commentary blew up on them, yes, if they’re going to scold Gallo, they should apply the same standards to the Nielsen Hadyens (or at least Patrick, who is their employee) and Feder now, for that matter.
And I’m not walking anything back. I don’t mean something else.
I appreciate this post. I’m following all this controversy as best I can, and I stand with Irene Gallo, too. If there was a misstep, it would have been only in the disparagement of Tor books, and even still, she took the comment down and apologized. I find it concerning that Day is openly conducting a verbal war against people and books that promote social justice and that this is neither the first attack, nor likely to be the last. He has openly said he will attack people who criticize him, and he appears to explicitly seek out and exploit vulnerabilities. I find it even more concerning that even though he repeatedly comes within a hair’s width of illegal hate speech (he’s very careful linguistically) this rarely gets official censure or even notice.
Lostsailer, if you’re not saying that Tor should be publicly criticizing its employees by name for what they say on their own webspaces, just saying that if they do it they should do it consistently… Well, okay. I’d rather see them be consistent by NOT publicly calling out their employees for using un-moderated language on their own webspaces, but whatever. I apologize for misunderstanding you.
Christopher, I don’t think being “welcoming” requires not criticizing people who are criticizing you in the strongest terms – look at the quote of Torgersen’s which opened my post – nor, to go back to the root of the dispute, does it require not getting angry at people who are trying to game an award that important to many people.
No one is pissed at them – or suggesting excluding them – for who they are. People are pissed at them for the incredibly aggressive and ugly way they”ve acted. There’s a huge difference.
Well, you haven’t made much of an argument before this comment – you’ve just said it’s relevant as if the relevancy were self-evident.
I agree that a little concern from Tor would have been warranted – enough to justify them releasing a public statement saying that Tor’s employees on their own Facebook pages are not speaking for Tor. Going beyond that was not justified, imo, especially since they haven’t felt the need to make public statements and apologies when Tor employees have done FAR worse things. But what concerns me much more than Tor’s actions, is the many Puppies calling for boycotts against Tor, calling for Gallo to be fired, etc.. Going after someone’s livelihood because they said something one disagrees with politically is simply immoral.
In fact, it’s not at all difficult to remember the distinction between “speaking for your employer” and “speaking in the comments of one’s own facebook page.” That she was talking about her work, and that she’s a known TOR person, doesn’t make it at all difficult to make the distinction. Are you seriously saying that anyone who ever speaks in public about their work should be treated as if she were speaking from her office as an official company spokesperson? If not, then I don’t see how your argument makes any sense.
Yes, in a way, the distinction is a little artificial – after all, it’s the same human being in both places! But real life is full of such artificial – or, to put it another way, social – conventions that we all understand and follow, everyday. I don’t walk up to someone I don’t know and criticize their manners in McDonalds, but I’ve done that a bunch of times with my nieces, because of the artificial social conventions about who we are and aren’t allowed to speak to that way. I’d be annoyed if a stranger told me to push harder and jump higher, but when a gym trainer whose name I don’t even know tells me the same thing, I’m grateful. We pretend for legal purposes that there’s a significant difference between 59mp and 61mph, between one day under age 21 and one day over. We act as if we can’t hear strangers fart in the next toilet stall. Etc, etc, etc.
We erect such social barriers all the time. Arguing as if arguing for such social barriers is inherently wrong “denies reality.”
In a country like the US, one of the greatest threats most of us face to our practical, day-to-day freedom comes from having jobs. A social convention that we should be able to say what we want off the job without suffering on-the-job consequences is enormously beneficial.
No, I don’t. Also, if someone drives drunk at 100mph in front of a school on the wrong side of the road, I’m against that, too. But that doesn’t make me a hypocrite for thinking that someone who drove a few miles an hour over the speed limit on a highway at 3am has not earned anywhere near the same treatment – and in fact, hasn’t done anything particularly wrong.
Implying that the two things are so similar that I should have the same opinion in both cases is ridiculous.
(For the record, I wouldn’t call for that employee to be fired, even in the KKK case, except in rare cases when that was clearly and unambiguously relevant to the job.)
I wonder if you’ve ever said anything that was ill-considered or temperamental on the internet? Maybe not. But if so, maybe you should try to find a perspective that includes a tiny bit more compassion for the rest of us, who don’t live up to that standard. If you ever do say something that lands you in trouble on the internet, I hope people treat you with a lot more understanding and compassion than you’re advocating for Gallo.
In the real world, almost everyone says something hyperbolic, or angry, or mean, sometimes. There’s no ironclad rule of thumb, because there are many variables to consider (where was it said? was it offhand or carefully worded? Is the person in question a candidate for President or some other volutary public figure? Etc, etc). But as a soft rule of thumb: I think we should default to shrugging and saying “this isn’t a big deal, let’s move on,” rather than defaulting to how Gallo has been treated. I think defaulting to compassion and understanding is superior to defaulting to saying “if you can’t stand the heat, then you should shut the fuck up.”
Actually, as a rule, I don’t believe employers should publicly call out their employees for posting commentary online, but the flip side of that is that, as a rule, employees should exercise restraint and common sense when posting comments that could reflect poorly on their employers.
Which is why I began my comments pointing out that the specific circumstances and the context in which Gallo posted (a post directly citing her work and her employer) and the vitriolic language that specifically targeted some of her employer’s authors. And given that the whole Hugo issue is a highly-charged and emotional public fracas, the potential to harm to her employer is all the greater.
Early on, every one of the Puppy organizers urged supporters to not criticize Tor for statements made by some of their employees, particularly the Nielson-Haydens. Many of the Puppy authors are published by Tor and generally respect the work Tor does. But Gallo went a bit over the top by specifically targeting Tor authors and their work.
As for being consistent, I stand by that: if Tor is going to call out Gallo, they should also do so when other employees go over the line. As for Tor employees who have “done FAR worse,” I’m assuming you’re referencing Jim Frenkel, and here I can only speculate. Frenkel was the subject of some rather vague accusations of sexual harassment. I am unaware of any specifics, but apparently they were convincing enough that Frenkel and Tor parted ways. The complaint that Tor didn’t make a more public announcement is also a matter of speculation, but I would suspect there may be legal issues involved, or perhaps a matter of the terms of any separation agreement.
I wonder if you’ve ever said anything that was ill-considered or temperamental on the internet? Maybe not.
Of course I have. But never in a context related to my work, my profession, or my employer. And I’ve also tried to learn from my outbursts and try to avoid hyperbolic language. Mainly because I understand that even if speaking in a personal capacity, what I say in some instances could negatively reflect on my employer or other associations I might have.
But I’m glad to see that your final paragraph seems to agree with my contention that context matters (the “many variables” you mention). It’s a nice idea th default to shrugging such thing off, and it’s generally something I practice…unless something is specifically aimed at me, and most especially when that something is a lie. Then, no, there’s going to be heat.
And in a highly-charged controversy like this years Hugos, yes, if you’re going to use immoderate, hyperbolic, and vitriolic language, especially targeting specific people, you should be prepared to take the heat…
Calling Brad Torgenson a racist has to be one of the stupidest things ever said. Brad’s wife is black and therefore his children. I included a google search of his wife and biracial daughter. Is Irene Gallo incapable of research? A simple google search could have prevented Irene from looking like a fool.
https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/fort-living-room/
Deep, what is the difference between what you just wrote, and someone saying “I can’t be an anti-Semite, some of my best friends are Jewish”?
I think this is a cultural difference between how conservatives and progressives understand the word “racism.” Conservatives tend to conceptualize racism as a matter of “Linus hates Black people, so he’s a racist; if Linus loves a black person, then by definition Linus isn’t racist.”
Progressives tend to see racism as more a matter of our unexamined and even unconscious assumptions (and also as structural factors, but I’m not going to get into that in this comment). So someone might, for instance, sincerely love their Asian friend and still hold a lot of stereotyped and unfair beliefs about Asians in general (perhaps believing that their friend is an exception).
I have no idea if Brad Torgersen “is” a racist; like most people, he doubtless has layers and can’t be summed up in one word. But I do think some of his VIEWS – such as his view that (before the Puppies) the female and nonwhite writers who received Hugo nominations were being nominated because of “checkboxes,” not because fans honestly loved their writing – are racist. A racist view doesn’t magically become non-racist because the person who expressed it is married to a Black woman.
I also think that Torgensen’s willingness to ally himself with Vox Day strongly suggests that Torgensen is willing to give even very extreme racism a pass if allying with a racist brings him benefits. Again, that Torgensen has a Black wife doesn’t alter that in any way.
Finally, I find the way Torgensen constantly hides behind “I have a Black wife!” as a way of deflecting criticism to be crass at best.
This, from Reddit, is interesting if the person really is a Tor employee:
The big difference is that we assume the person who says, “some of my best friends are X” is lying. At a minimum, we suspect that they’re exaggerating the strength of their relationship for rhetorical points.
This is totally unlike someone who points to specific, verifiable and long-term behaviors that are inconsistent with the alleged mental state.
How should people defend themselves, if not by pointing to the things that they’ve actually done?
That’s sometimes the case, but it’s not always the case, in my experience. To use an example, Orson Scott Card is genuinely friends with the singer Janis Ian, who is an out lesbian. I know they’re really friends because Ian has said so, and I don’t see any reason to doubt Ian’s word on this. But that doesn’t make some of OSC’s statements not bigoted against gays.
How should people defend themselves? By defending their statements on the substance. Or, if the statements are indefensible on substance, retracting the statements. Why is that so hard?
ETA: Also, as my comment pointed out, being close to – even married to – someone is not incompatible with having some bigotry against that class of person.
To use a commonplace example, many sexist men are married to women, and have daughters. As I said in the comment you’re responding to, someone can have a genuinely beloved Jewish friend and still believe in unfair stereotypes about Jews (maybe thinking their friend is an exception). Loving someone in a class, and having bigoted beliefs about that class, aren’t mutually exclusive.
Progressives tend to see racism as more a matter of our unexamined and even unconscious assumptions
That’s a rather convenient–and facile–definition of “racism.” One that’s extremely easy to assign and impossible to refute. And ultimately, it’s meaningless: it means everyone is racist and drains the term of any significance.
Well, except that it makes a cudgel to be wielded whenever one chooses to shut down debate.
Which is why I reject it as a definition.
Ampersand:
Clark over at popehat has some interesting comments on the two ways the concept of ‘freedom of speech’ can be used: the legality of free speech and the culture of free speech. The basic idea is that the principles of secular liberalism shouldn’t just apply to the government via the constitution, but should also apply within significant social and cultural institutions. That to me means that people holding and expressing views that others find offensive still need to be welcomed within any organisation and not be subject to personal attacks, or denied access to platforms of speech.
For example, expressing the Christian view that homosexual acts are sinful and that those promoting same-sex marriage are undermining the moral standing of society, ought to be just as welcome as expressing the view that such Christians are homophobic and by advocating against same-sex marriage are undermining the rights of gay people. While on the other-hand, taking action to exclude or silence those who hold the view that homosexual acts are sinful is just as bad as attempting to exclude or silence those who support the freedom to do such acts. I would tend to see personal verbal attacks as falling in the later, e.g. calling a Christian homophobic or bigoted, or calling an openly gay person abnormal or abhorrent.
ETA: You’ll notice that the personal attacks are the things that both Torgersen and Gallo have apologised for, suggesting there is some agreement on the point that personal attacks are unacceptable.
Of course it’s certainly possible to have an organisation that deviates from the principles of secular humanism, particularly if the organisation has the purpose of pursuing particular ideological goals. For example, a Christian organisation might choose to suppress the expression of support for homosexual acts, while a progressive organisation might choose to suppress the expression of the idea that homosexual acts are immoral.
I think its important for organisations that have a non-ideological purpose, whether that be promoting technological advancements or the enjoyment of the science fiction genre, to adhere to the principles of secular liberalism. That’s not to say there can’t be organisations that are a mix of both, such as a Christian book club or a progressive technology community, however I think that the ideological bias in the organisations ought to be explicit.
Running an organisation that purportedly has a general non-ideological purpose, and controlling the publications and platforms of that organisation in a ideological manner, is something that is contrary to the principles of secular liberalism, i.e. is something that goes against the culture of free speech. Doing so while claiming to hold values of openness and tolerance would seem to me to not only be deceptive but also be hypocritical.
So while we’re on the topic of bigotry, are you willing to be tolerant of people holding and expressing their support of Catholic dogma, including the bits you don’t like, within the organisations and communities that you are a part of?
LostSailor:
I actually have found such a definition to be very useful. As Jay Smooth points out in a very worthwhile ten-minute TED talk, if we can all admit that we’ve all got some internalized stuff, then we can work on it, but if we reject the premise, then we tend to defend our status as non-racists rather than working to actually enact the least racism in the moment.
It changes the conversation from one of classification to one of behavioral detail. Or it can.
It’s a lot like the starting point many religious traditions use, that all humans are flawed, and that to claim to be perfect is both the height of arrogance and a bar to progress toward being a more virtuous human being.
I’d be interested to hear what you accept as a useful definition.
Grace
Grace:
Well if you’re going to adopt that religious tradition, you really should also adopt this one too. I suspect doing so would do a lot more to help discussions about race relations than attempting to broaden the use of a term that is half a step away from a Godwin.
You’re equivocating pretty freely between the accusation that Brad Torgersen “is” a racist, and your new (and much milder) claim that he’s made indefensible statements.
If you want to disavow the former argument, that’s your right. But it’s unreasonable to claim that you’ve washed your hands of that argument while also objecting to the way Torgersen defended himself against it.
You can say that his response would be crass if he were responding accusations along the lines of your new arguments. But that’s not what happened.
In context, calling someone ‘racist’ is saying that their motivations are extraordinarily malicious. To the point that they merit a special label to set them apart from the mainstream.
Conflating this with the observation that they — like all humans — have some number of biases is wrongheaded and misleading. It seems on par with labeling someone a “pedophile” because they’re fond (-phile) of children (ped-). The confusion is entirely foreseeable. As is the offense.
Worse, the definitions are selectively applied. When leftists start self-identifying as sexist & racists, then I’ll take the claim that these words have a “new” definition seriously. Until then, all the wordplay seems like a thin pretense to justify libel.
Could you please quote exactly where I said “Brad Torgersen ‘is’ a racist,” please? Quote the exact words. The only thing I can see is that maybe you think I said that through some sort of guilt-by-association with Gallo’s words, but I’d call that a very ungenerous reading. Although of course I mess up sometimes, I consciously try to address people’s arguments (i.e., “that’s a racist argument” rather than “you’re racist”), and I’ve done so for years.
Leftists say that everyone has some internalized racism and sexism to deal with all the time – there are tons of articles, both written by whites and by POC, addressing this theme.
For example, here’s a handful of the literally hundreds of articles and books and courses written by lefties (both white and POC) on the subject of how white people can address their own internalized racism:
Five Stages of Unlearning Racism – Life as I Know It
Your Internalized Dominance Is Showing: A Call-In to White Feminists Who Believe That #AllLivesMatter — Everyday Feminism
Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence – Google Books
On Racism and White Privilege | Teaching Tolerance
Identifying Race Privilege: From One White to Another | CLGS
What We Aren’t Talking About When We Talk About ‘White Privilege’ – The Feminist Wire | The Feminist Wire
Why acknowledging white privilege is not surrendering to “white guilt” – Salon.com
You could also find many articles written by POC addressing POC about their own internalized racism, ones addressing internalized sexism, etc etc etc.. It’s commonplace. It’s not like “check your privilege” is something only said to right-wingers; I’d bet that 95% of the time a lefty says that phrase, the person they’re talking to is a fellow lefty.
For the record, of course I have internalized racism and sexism to deal with. My guess is that most or all of the bloggers at this site would say the same.
Despipis, can you name a single example of a historic racist practice that went away because everyone stopped talking about it? Do you think, for example, that Jim Crow would have gone away faster if the civil rights movement had just shut up?ETA: Never mind, that was a possibly unfair interpretation of what Desipis meant.I’d actually say that Jay Smooth’s point is entirely compatible with John 8:7, which I don’t interpret as meaning “never ever criticize what anyone else has done,” but that it’s wrong to condemn someone for their sins. (As I’m sure everyone recalls, the issue in John 8:7 was whether or not a woman would be stoned to death, which seems very condemnatory). The approach Smooth, and Grace, suggest, is to address problems in a non-condemning way while admitting that we all have problems.
(And Drew, Smooth’s video is yet another example of a progressive talking to other lefties about accepting being criticized for having said or done something racist.)
Drew:
My guess is that you would consider me a “leftist”, though I don’t use the term. So, let me help:
I, myself, am racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, etc. By this, I mean that as a product of my society, in growing up and living within my society, I have internalized patterns of thought and behavior which are biased in racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, etc ways. I think that this is true to a greater or lesser extent of all people in my society (and probably all people everywhere). It’s even easy to demonstrate; you need look no farther than the experiment where people were asked to rapidly gauge danger/trustworthiness of the people shown in flashed images, and people all rated black people as more dangerous, even when the raters were black people.
I work on this, in myself, in a variety of ways. Sometimes, when people point something out, I am able to look at it, realize that they’re right, and say, “Thank you.” I’m not always able to do this; it depends on the circumstances. But I work hard on being able to do it.
An example: awhile back, I was talking about shift coverage at my job, and referred to “manpower”. My wife interrupted me and said, “staffing”. I stopped, saw what she was getting at, and said, “Oh, good catch. Yes. Staffing. Thanks.” …and then went on with my point. Since then, I have tried to model “staffing” instead of “manpower” in the same way that I already modeled “firefighter” instead of “fireman” and “police officer” instead of “policeman”.
My unthinking use of that word was an example of internalized, unconscious sexism. Since then, and working on my habits, I’ve noticed that I can now consistently catch myself when I’m about to say “manpower” and say “staffing” instead. The sexism is still there, but I have more control over it. In time, that control will become habitual, and I’ll have excised that little bit. Other bits will remain, and I’ll have to work on them as I’m able to perceive them.
Now, will you do as you said, and take seriously that people use and apply this “new” definition (which is, in fact, not new at all, though it may be new to you)?
Grace
desipis:
Well, I was drawing a parallel to a useful tenet of some religions, not suggesting the adoption of a religious tradition. But I think that was clear.
To your point, I think that attending to the beam in my own eye before addressing the beams in others’ eyes is also a good idea. That’s why I do a lot of work on myself (see my reply immediately above), and work to consider whether I am wrong about something before replying, and try to write and speak in such a way that I focus on problems and behaviors rather than people, and generally write drafts when I’m writing replies like this, set them down and come back to them after reflection before I post them. This would be a very different discussion if I did not do this work on myself and approach communication in this way.
I acknowledge that internal self-work is not very visible to others, except to those who know me very well. But I think it’s foundationally important, as it sounds like you’re suggesting. The world would probably be a vastly better place if we were all even incrementally better at it.
Back to my point, if you watched Jay Smooth present his point, then you know that the great utility of the “we’ve all got stuff to work on” approach is that it enables incremental progress instead of creating an expectation of a binary state of good (“non-racist”, in this case) and evil (“racist”), which requires, essentially, that anyone who is slightly wrong (said something sub-optimal which arose out of unconscious attitudes) is Evil. And when you’re Evil or Good, transition between the two requires a dramatic salvation, and it’s easy to deny any small sign which might put you in the Evil category… which denial is a bar to becoming actually Good. (Or, in the incremental, actually-possible model, Better.)
Grace
Sure. The conflation of the conclusory construction (‘is AN x’), to the of the shades-of-grey (‘has some X beliefs’/’is X’) construction happens between posts 36 and 39.
Here’s the exchange, with some additional annotation:
Deepthoughts 35 makes a comment about Gallo and the ‘Is a Racist’ accusation.
Ampersand 36 discusses the ‘is a racist’ argument and calls Torgensen’s response to that argument crass:
Drew 38 discusses behavioral patterns as a legitimate defense in Gallo’s ‘is a racist’ argument:
The pivot happens here:
Ampersand 39:
It looks like you’ve switched from saying that his arguments were a crass way to respond to he Gallo and are now saying that he was crass because there would be better ways to respond to your comment-focused critiques.
That only works in as far as you’re treating the argument he responded to (Gallo’s “Is a racist”) as being equivalent to the argument you’re saying has better-available-defenses (“made racist statements”)
—
I have to admit that I also screwed up my grammer. The line should have been “When leftists start self-identifying as sexists & racists…” as I was trying to distinguish the conclusory, noun-based construction (‘Is A Sexist’) from the continuous adjective-based one (‘Has sexist beliefs’/ ‘is sexist’).
I’ll readily concede that we can find leftists acknowledging their own sexism. I do not see people casually referring to in-group members using language like ‘is A Sexist’. When that sort of language is used, it’s treated as a harsh critique.
Grace:
The problem is, that such patterns of thought are an intrinsic part of how humans think and reason. The biases you’ve identified are just a drop in the ocean of all the flaws in the way humans think. If people were to take a holistic approach to the idea of internalised biases or irrational thoughts and behaviours, instead of focusing so heavily on a small politically-inspired subset, then I think it’d be an approach that was more accepted.
For example, using the ‘internalised bias’ argument, the comment “I think that you said/did that because of an internalised racial bias form by the racist culture you are in” is as valid as the response “And I think you said that because of an internalised bias to see racial bias where there is no significant racial bias, as a result of the obsessively anti-racism culture you are in.” Clean eyes and all that.
Well the I would suggest three things that would improve the approach to racial issues that I commonly see:
1) Use language that appropriately acknowledges the weak and subjective foundation of any insight into other peoples subconscious. e.g. “From my perspective it seems your judgement is influenced by a subconscious racial bias,” and if the person doesn’t agree, follow it by “Oh, you’ve reflected on it and disagree? Fair enough, carry on,” and not “You only disagree because you’re doubling down on your racism!”
2) Use language that isn’t emotionally charged or going to put a person on the defensive, as such language will cloud peoples ability to be introspective. That is, don’t use terms such as “racism”, “homophobic”, etc.
3) Use language that frames the issue as one of degree and subjective judgement, and not one of objective binary nature. Again, using labels such as “racist” or “transphobic” is doing the later and should be avoided.
Issues of subconscious bias are inherently both subtle and complex. To deal with such issues requires language that is both precise and nuanced. The language I see commonly being used to criticise such issues is neither.
Pingback: Lord Foul’s Baying 6/14 | File 770
Drew:
It sounds like you’ve got an argument you very much want to respond to, and you’ve decided I made that argument, without much regard to what I actually wrote.
The clear fact is, you’re unable to quote me saying what you claim I said, because I never said it. You’re not giving me a reasonable benefit of the doubt; instead, you’re using a strained chain of dubious interpretations to insist I said something that I didn’t say.
I never said Torgersen is a racist. I did criticize some of his statements because I think the statements were racist.
Why should I continue to make that distinction, when conservatives so rarely acknowledge that the effort is being made? Instead, no matter how careful I am to attack the argument, not the speaker, right-wingers will claim that I’ve made a personal attack.
I think some people in this thread are not clear on what implicit bias is.
We know implicit racial bias exists in the U.S. because it has been measured over and over again in controlled experiments (here is a summary of the state of research in 2014). As long as such experiments show that most Americans, including people of color themselves, harbor implicit racial bias the burden of proof should be on those arguing that race is not a factor in decisions which have a negative effect on people of color.
Guilty of thought crime until proven innocent. How wonderfully Orwellian.
Desipis, please tone your rhetoric down several notches. Thanks.
To clarify, I meant to refer to the role of racism in broad social trends, not particular cases.
You haven’t understood, implicit bias is subconscious. Those supporting thought crime are the moderates.
On the one hand, this isn’t actually so offensive that I won’t approve it.
On the other hand, I honestly don’t understand what you mean. How are moderates supporting thought crimes? Were you being sarcastic? Maybe this is actually super-offensive, and it just went over my head? These are the trials and tribulations of being a blog moderator.
Is someone under the impression it’s a crime to have racist or bigoted thoughts?
Because it sure isn’t.
There are certain racist actions which are illegal. But no one is sending people to jail for thinking Jews control the media, or whatever.
And hey, look: If you have an argument against the existence of implicit bias, let’s hear it! I’m down. So far, I think the science is pretty settled, but hey, maybe I’m wrong. I am open to being convinced.
I am not open to pretending that Orwell references are the same thing as an argument.
—Myca
Ben Lehman wrote:
Ben, please stay in your current location with your hands visible. The compliance officers will be along shortly to
remind you not to share our secrets with the goysgive yourenewed sensitivity brainwashingdelicious homebaked cookies.It’s wrong to accuse advocates of legal action against implicit bias of supporting thought crime, as desipis did. If you’re accused of a ‘thought crime’ your thoughts matter, you can disprove the case against you by showing you didn’t think something. If you’re accused of implicit bias you can’t; it is after all implicit and happens regardless of what you did or didn’t think at the time – you won’t even be aware of it.
That’s why I’m trying to make the dividing line between the two positions clear. I don’t want to see moderates, who understandably think people should be sanctioned for their thoughts, being lumped in with extremists who think people should be judged for things they didn’t even think.
What is an example of someone advocating for legal action against implicit bias? With a link or a direct quote, please.
Kate:
That certainly makes your statement closer to what the evidence supports. It’s still going to be important to establish (with evidence) the significance of racial bias in any particular context though.
I’ve got a question for Desipis, and Pete Patriot. Do you think that racism is a major problem in America? If not, I think the science is against you (the implicit bias research I linked to @53). If so, what do you propose we do about it?
Kate, I think that racism is a problem, more in some areas, less in others. However, I see the major problems of African American people as being caused by disadvantage originating from historical racism and systems that entrench disadvantage generally. I don’t see tackling subconscious racial bias as either practically beneficial or ethically clear as tackling other problems in society.
desipis,
So how do you interpret the identical resume studies that find that resumes with white sounding names get 50% higher call-back rates than resumes with black sounding names, with less improvement by resume quality for resumes with black sounding names? Or the study that found that a white convicted felon gets called back after an initial interview at the same rate as a black person with no criminal record? Do you think that those results are the result of conscious, intentional racism rather than implicit bias, or do you think that a 50% decrease in call-backs on job applications is not a significant problem?
Charles S:
The naming patterns of black people are marking themselves clearly as lower class, and it may be a bias against class, rather than race, that may be the cause of the results of the resume study.
As for the second study:
It’s utterly ridiculous to take a study with a sample size of four to signal anything other than the fact that those two particular African Americans might just suck at job interviews.
The sample size is the number of employers contacted, not the number of auditors they used. In the case of this study, the sample size was 350.
Typically, the auditors for a study like this are matched to have a similar presentation style and trained to take similar approaches in the interview; according to the study, “All were bright and articulate, with appealing styles of self-presentation.”
desipis,
The study you cite explicitly does not support the argument you derive from it. It explicitly states that it can’t distinguish between black names being a proxy for class and black people being discriminated against whether or not they have distinctly black names:
“An important question is how our results can be reconciled with the audit-studies that report lower interview rates for resumes with distinctively Black names (Jowell and Prescott-Clarke 1970, Hubbick and Carter 1980, Brown
and Gay 1985, Bertrand and Mullainathan 2002). The first point to note is that it is unlikely that a Black name could have a large impact on one’s labor market success at any other step in the process. Once an employer has met a candidate in person, race is directly observable.”
Distinctly black names are a useful research proxy for blackness, but the in-person audit studies strongly suggest that it is not the names that are the important signal.
And while it may be convenient for you to dismiss audit studies for using a small number of actors, it is not anything more than convenient.
Ampersand:
The study was focused on the relationship between two different populations: employers and potential employees. The sample size for the employers appeared reasonable, however the sample size of the potential employees was tiny. Thus, generally speaking the results can be extrapolated to the employers but, as the sample of potential employees is not representative, can not be extrapolated to all potential employees.
The study did attempt to filter out confounding variables of the different auditors from that of the criminal history, by controlling that variable and assigning it randomly. This means the results from the study can be reasonably extrapolated to all employers in the sampled population react to potential employees with criminal history, even though they did not have a representative sample of potential employees.
It’s obviously not possible to do the same thing with race, and so the results of this study can not be reasonably extrapolated to potential employees more generally.
Charles S:
My argument was the exact thing you say the study explicitly states. That is, the evidence doesn’t clearly show that impact of the names is racially driven, and therefore does not contradict my opinion at 66. I’ve had enough of reading social science studies for the time being (which appears rather off topic for this thread anyway), however if anyone links to something of a higher standard I might read it later (and possibly reconsider my opinion as a result).
Heh. I used to work with a guy who self identified as a redneck. White as white could be in our neck of the woods. Yet people thought he was black due to his name. Malcolm. This was happening in the 80s & 90s to a guy born in the 50s. He noticed the difference in the way he was perceived and treated before & after people discovered that he was white. I’m pretty sure that this is a thing that didn’t start happening once people born in the mid-80s reached employable age.
Regarding the names on resumes evidence, Marian Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan’s study “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” used the home address of the applicants so that some of the applicants were coming from wealthier neighborhoods, while others were coming from poorer neighborhoods. Employers did notice this, and favored applicants from wealthier neighborhoods. However, even comparing only black and white applicants from wealthier neighborhoods, being white remained a significant advantage for an applicant. This makes it seem very unlikely that employers were just using the names as a stand-in for class with no racial effect.
Also, on better qualified resumes – workers with special skills, more education, and more work experience – the white advantage was actually slightly larger. This seems hard to explain if employers were using the names only a signal of class.
Finally, they looked at the high school graduation rate rate of mothers of children with the names they tested (mother’s high school graduation rate is correlated VERY strongly with class), and didn’t find a race-independent correlation between mother’s high school graduation rate and how well employers responded to names.
* * *
Desipis, “sample size,” in the context of a published study, is a technical term, not a term that has ad hoc meanings according to Desipis’ opinions. The sample size here is not the number of auditors. If you think it is, the only thing you’re demonstrating is that you don’t understand what the term “sample size” means.
You raised a real issue, which is whether or not the auditors were adequately trained and matched. This is a real question to be considered in all in-person audit studies (although it’s not an issue in “paper” audit studies, such as the names study). But it’s not as if the study Charles cited is the only one of its kind. To believe that all the audit studies which have found evidence of racism are bad because in every case the black auditors did (whatever the task was) in an inferior way to the white auditors, would require believing that there’s some sort of generalizable effect in which every social scientist who runs an audit study of racism is either consciously or unconsciously cheating in order to generate their results. That seems implausible.
* * *
Real-life individual examples can always be dismissed as unrepresentative. Surveys of people of color about their experiences of racism can be dismissed as subjective. Real-life statistical studies can be dismissed for not measuring every possible confounding variable. Audit and laboratory studies can always be dismissed because they’re not like real life (which is essentially what Desipis is doing here – in real life, there would be hundreds of different people applying for jobs, but in an audit study there’s only a handful of trained auditors). Etc, etc.
But the evidence taken as a whole is pretty overwhelming.
I’m curious, based on the paper desipis linked to, whether anyone has done an in-person audit in which they compared black auditors using distinctly black names and black auditors using names that are not distinctly black. That seems like it would answer quickly and directly the hypothesis that distinctly black names serve as a proxy for class.
Ampersand:
Well it could be that, or it could be publication bias. Are there statistics available on what portion of these studies show a racism results? If a study shows no bias, or a bias against white people, how likely is the study to be published and get media attention?
The evidence shows that social science researchers overwhelmingly hold progressive political views, so I don’t think these concerns are trivial.
In fact, the evidence for racial bias in hiring is so strong that any result from a well-designed and properly-run study that did not show racial bias would be a major news item. Which would tend to promote publication of such a study, not suppress it. (And you could even make that align with progressive political views: what was there in this study design that made black applicants as successful as white applicants, and how can we use that to aid real-world black people on the job market?)
Confirmation bias is, of course, a real thing, and one that is hard to address without serious introspection from both scientists and journal referees. But it’s a bias that favors one side, not a bias that completely removes competing evidence even when it’s strong. (And, of course, saying most social scientists are progressive does not mean all of them are, either as authors or as reviewers.)