Say what you want, link what you want. Self-linking is the stuff.
By the way, the bad news is I’ve been posting less often because I’m working hard on the Hereville graphic novel. The good news is, I’m working hard on the Hereville graphic novel.
Via LL, Eugene on My Modern Met writes:
The sculpture “What You see Might Not Be Real,” by Chen Wenling, was displayed at a Beijing gallery Sunday. A bull, meant to represent Wall Street, is seen ramming the biggest con man of all time, Bernie Madoff, into a wall. Totally deserving, if you ask me.
The huge cloud coming out of the bull’s rear not only refers to the end of a greedy era, but also symbolizes the danger of virtual bubbles in international financial markets. In a society based on desire and money, some people choose to create many false impressions, while others sadly fall for them.
* * *
- A defense of gender-neutrality in early childhood.
- Tiger Beat Down on Polanski excusers. (Via)
- Reading about this case of a couple kept apart as one of them died reminds me: People who are against same sex marriage are hateful and cruel. That’s all they are, that’s all they’ve ever been.
- Oh, and they’re insincere about not being bigots, too.
- $41,000 to $470,000. That’s the lifetime financial cost of being a same-sex, rather than opposite-sex, couple.
- Controversial All Black School Opens in Ontario
- CBS Feeling the Pressure to drop Lou Dobbs. (This alternet story on the same subject is interesting, as well.)
- The Right’s Smear Campaign Against Kevin Jennings.
- Life In Four Bottles Bint quotes a correspondent, who says “Damn! I’m already on the third one!” Sometimes I feel like I’m not even at bottle two yet.
- Racism or Free Speech? Maybe both. An Asian student puts up a racist flyer full of “funny” racist jokes about Asians.
- Is mandating that Americans buy health insurance Constitutional?
- Looking at this chart of job loss in this recession, compared to past recessions, may make you weep. And if you’re an elected Democrat, it should definitely make you weep, and perhaps panic.
- Disclosure is not information.
- Texas prepares to cover up the execution of an innocent man.
- Rabbi Brant on the Goldstone Report, and why he finds it trustworthy.
- Why women have sex, why men have sex, and why the hell is the media so determined to pretend that the reasons are vastly different?
- How “paper sons” were part of the Chinese American immigration experience. (And by the way, go welcome back Reappropriate to active blogging!)
- Glenn Sacks, the least horrible MRA, is hosting a debate on his blog between two scholars, one from a feminist perspective, one from an MRA perspective, about domestic violence.
I wonder what they’ll do with the book of James.
Yes, I said it is a Jewish trait/ stereotype, but not specifically so.
I can’t help but wonder if there is some unconscious anti-semitic bias in this feeling of being talked down to because of lack of wealth or education? There is a stereotype that Jewish people value education
This is what I was responding to. Daisy’s point was specifically about class not necessarily education. The fact that Dianne introduced the ‘value education’ posit in response to a point about classism, is in itself telling about the depth of that class association. I believe that it is a stronger association than any other group.
PG,
So there’s a class element there, but it’s actually about the possibility of movement between classes, not about “you value education ergo you are upper class.”
It’s true that this model is used to shame certain groups – and to a certain extent, keep Asians themselves in line. But I don’t think the issue was about an aspect of the model minority angle as a source of injury, but perceived condescension that is drawn from a basis of class superiority.
Obviously Daisy can speak better for herself but I think she was saying that she was not being disagreed with as an equal who’s argument was felt or not to be incorrect, but as someone who got it wrong because of intellectual inferiority, due to her class.
Manju’s history of Jewish enterprise was really interesting, his entreaty to namely blacks to throw off the shackles of mediocrity, wasn’t.
Sadly he and others who keep making this point overlook that it’s not that black people don’t make bids for entrepreneurial glory/ class ascendency, it’s that they keep having to do it over and over and whenever they do at a certain point, some kind of erm… societal reflex kicks in and their prospective ascendency is ‘corrected’.
The fact that Dianne introduced the ‘value education’ posit in response to a point about classism, is in itself telling about the depth of that class association.
Many of Daisy’s examples of screen names that she suggested might make her be taken more seriously referenced universities: Oxford, Vassar, Harvard, Yale. Only a few were strictly class based referencing Orange county or yachts. I don’t think it’s a huge jump to assume that she considered education or lack thereof to be a major part of the issue-and strongly related to class.
Well, that and she doesn’t know the class or education level of many of the people here, at least not from conversations on this blog. I don’t know Chingona’s class or education level (although I think it was implied on Daisy’s blog that she was a college graduate). I *do* know Barry’s — but only because we’re personal friends — and it’s not what Daisy seems to be claiming.
On the other hand, the fact that Chingona and Barry are both Jews is clearly available on the site.
So what are her assumptions based on?
In point of fact, I assume her assumption has less to do with the fact that there are Jews around, and more to do with the fact that this blog has an academic tone, though this is not reflective of every poster’s educational status, and certainly not of every commenter’s.
I just found the coincidence of her comments with Jewish stereotypes to be extremely vexing, particularly while she was arguing that she has a better sense of anti-semitism than actual Jews.
I mean, look — anti-semitism like any discrimination isn’t a thing that occurs in a vacuum. It’s practiced in certain ways that are highly contextualized. The reason that the LeBron James spread is racist is that it fits in with the way that racism is expressed in American culture — to many of the posters on this thread, the Madoff sculpture does not fit in with the way we’ve seen and felt anti-semitism to be expressed. I don’t think anyone has adequately explained these contextual cues yet — though Sailorman’s reasoning gets at part of it — and sometimes those factors are difficult to tease out in a conscious way, which is why Barry called it his “antisemitism sense.”
There was a thread here a few months ago about race theory and how it did or did not provide a structure for understanding anti-semitism, and the general feeling was that it didn’t do so well for creating a structural understanding of how modern, American antisemitism works. The theories tend to get bogged down in historical examples, foreign examples, or extreme examples, rather than getting at everyday, current, American things. Tons of Jews came out of the woodwork to name their examples of being discriminated against in the U.S.– when we see that duck, we can name it, even if we are having trouble articulating a theory about how it works systemically. The flip side of being able to name the duck is being able to tell it from a goose, more or less.
More or less because as much as we’re saying there’s no question when there’s a racist or sexist incident, these things often exist in an ambiguous area where they embody both prejudice and non-prejudice at the same time. As a woman, I think the concept behind Buffy is pretty sexist. Most other people I’ve talked to think it’s pretty feminist. Buffy as a series embodies this contradiction; it’s both sexist and anti-sexist, both feminist and anti-feminist, in different aspects, at different times, and sometimes in the same aspect and time but with different interpretations.
Everyone may be entitled to an opinion of these incidents, but not all opinions are of equal value. American black people are experts in experiencing American racism aimed at black people. American women are experts in experiencing sexism aimed at women in America. American homosexuals are experts in experiencing American homophobia. That means when people who are outside that group are told there’s homophobia going on, then they should probably look twice. But it also means that when they’re told there’s no homophobia going on, they should probably look twice. In any case, if you’re outside the group, you should probably bear in mind that you *aren’t the final arbiter*.
(By which I mean to express that the statue is ambiguous; I’m sure there are many people, Jews and not, who do think it’s anti-semitic. Some of them have posted here and elsewhere to explain why.)
All of which, actually, applies to Daisy’s claims about classism. So, maybe she’s right, maybe this is what classism looks like. But simultaneously, I’ve got to say, decrying Jewish people as the ones who can’t care about or recognize anti-semitism smells like anti-semitism in just the same way that men telling women how to run feminism smells like — and is — sexism.
It’s an understandable thing that happens, even when all parties concerned genuinely care about ending bigotry against any given group. It’s just vexing.
—
I won’t be commenting on this subject anymore. Just FYI.
Mandolin, I think you put that really well. Thanks.
I’ve only skimmed the comments about the bull sculpture, and so someone may have said this already, but I am wondering if the Jews-with-horns trope even signifies in China.
Am I the only one who thinks that whether or not the bull fart statue is anti-semitic, it is certainly a crappy work of art? It looks like a larger version of the sort of kitsch one might find in a collegiate head shop, and reading the description of the exhibit, I see nothing to make me believe that such a resemblance was an intentional aspect of the piece.
In fact, I initially assumed that this was a joke, an interpretation strongly encouraged by the text:
“The huge cloud coming out of the bull’s rear not only refers to the end of a greedy era, but also symbolizes the danger of virtual bubbles in international financial markets. In a society based on desire and money, some people choose to create many false impressions, while others sadly fall for them.”
Frankly, I’m still feeling a little bit reluctant to believe that this isn’t some sort of prank. I was chuckling along with the joke until people’s reactions made me begin to suspect that it…er, well, wasn’t meant as one.
Me:
More accurately, in a comment posted to hereville.com
I was mistaken. Ampersand may or may not have said this, but the comment I was thinking of was this one:
Which does not resolve the question. It could be a Jewish troll praying on human Jews.
chingona:
Fruma is knowledgeable and wise, but not omniescent. She said that trolls were “usually quite stupid”, which did not apply to this troll. Its also likely that she, or perhaps just the body of lore which she’s learned, is biased to attribute evil to other cultures.
In my opinion, the Troll is not Jewish. I also don’t see anything in the narrative that supports the interpretation that he is Jewish.
But that’s just my opinion.
Daran,
It doesn’t make sense to say that Fruma thinks the troll is goyishe because she associates evil things with other cultures. She might very well associate evil things with other cultures, but it has nothing to do with the troll. It’s goyishe because it doesn’t appear in Jewish folklore – hence the grandfather not knowing what it is. I think you’re making it really complicated when it’s not that complicated.
Anyway, I would think most readers wouldn’t think the troll is Jewish because it’s a troll. I wouldn’t think it would be anything – ethnically or religiously – because those are human categories. A dog or a cat isn’t Jewish or Irish or Presbyterian or whatever.
As the author of the work, you have the authority to declare it to be so by fiat. There’s nothing in the narrative to support the interpretation that he “preys on Jews” in particular, or that he preys at all on anyone who isn’t trying to rob him. But if you say he does, then he does.
I agree that there is nothing in the narrative to suggest that he is Jewish, other than that he speaks Yiddish. But that’s hardly dispositive. There’s also nothing which definitively excludes that interpretation.
My argument is that when you use antisemitic stereotypes, however subtly, you create the possibility that some of your readers will recognise the tropes at some level. (I didn’t, by the way, until you pointed it out.) Given the rich scope for interpretation to which Hereville lends itself, some of them might think that you intended to convey that the troll itself was Jewish, even though you did not have this intent.
In terms of the “intent is/is not relevant” discussion, I would say that your lack of intent to do this isn’t relevant, but that your positive conscious intent to use the stereotypes for a non-Jewish monster that preys on Jews does matter. I agree that what you did was interesting and that your use of these tropes seems justifiable.
And that’s why I raised Hereville in this thread – not because I want to talk about Hereville in particular, but to illustrate my point about positive intent mattering and lack of intent not.
That is a most compelling argument. Thank you.
Your argument in the second paragraph appears to be diametrically opposed to that of the first.
Daran — I’m pretty sure that “goyishe” means not-Jew. If I say something is not-water then I’m not saying it’s wind, I’m just saying it’s not-water.
I don’t see what it is you think I’ve misunderstood.
Daran,
Well, if you think my two paragraphs are diametrically opposed, you’ve misunderstood something. In the first paragraph, I’m addressing an argument you made that I don’t think makes sense. In the first paragraph, I’m talking about what Fruma would have meant by saying goyishe. In the second paragraph, I’m talking about how I think most readers will think. Two different things.
Again, when Fruma says it’s goyishe, she’s not necessarily talking about the nature or characteristic of the troll itself. She’s talking about where it fits in her world-view. Our stuff/not our stuff. A troll is not her stuff. The troll is goyishe the way that ham and cheese on white bread is goyishe, the way blueberry bagels are goyishe, not the way you’re goyishe. Or I could say that Golem was a Jewish monster, but it wouldn’t mean that the Golem was Jewish in the way that would apply to a human being. He was a lump of clay who had life breathed into him my a Jewish person using Jewish means to bring him to life. The story of Golem is a Jewish story. I certainly wouldn’t say Golem is goyishe. But Golem wasn’t “a Jew.”
I brought it up at all because you asked if there was evidence inside the story that perhaps you didn’t see. I pointed to some. In my comment @91, I was engaging with your argument on its own terms without bothering to go on and on about how I don’t actually see it in those terms. (I thought you brought it up for illustrative purposes, not to debate the nature of trolls.) Because we’ve gone on this far and it seems to be a source of confusion, in the second paragraph @ 111, I’m explaining that I don’t really see it in those terms, and I had assumed that would be the common reading.
chingona, thank you for clarifying what you meant.
To be clear, I never said that the troll might thought of as “a Jew”. I suggested that he might be thought of as Jewish in some of the senses that you agreed that Golem was Jewish. It’s clear that he is cultured in a way that traditional conceptions of trolls are not. The question “which cultures” is legitimate.
Another interpretation of Fruma’s “Goyishe” remark occurs to me, but I’ll save it for the other thread.
Incidentally, on reading the Wikipedia article about Golem, I was struck by the similarity between the classic narrative, and the story of Frankenstein. Again according to Wikipedia, Frankenstein was first published under Shelly’s name in 1831, while the classic Golem story was published in 1837. It’s hard not to conclude that the former significantly influenced the latter.
Ampersand:
I was not trolling. I genuinely do believe that mmy’s remark was problematic in the way implied by my comment: – namely that the prejudice expressed is not just an individual act of meanness, but a manifestation of a systemic prejudice against men.
It is additionally problematic that such systemic sexism exists within the discourse of a movement which purports to be opposed to sexism…
…and that such expressions are protected from being criticized in the places they are made, by moderators who purport to be opposed to sexism.
Finally I’m disappointed that you’ve chosen to accuse me of trolling, while denying me the opportunity to respond to the accusation in the forum it was made.
Edited to add: By “purport” I mean only that your claim to oppose sexism contrasts with your action in this instance which protects sexism. This is a statement of what you are doing, of what effect this has. I am certainly not suggesting that you never oppose sexism against men, or that you have a secret pro-sexist agenda, or that you are otherwise evil. I am not commenting upon your internal mental states at all.
It’s hard not to conclude that the former significantly influenced the latter.
It certainly would seem that way. The story of Golem has always seemed to me like a proto-Frankenstein story, but I hadn’t realized until I read that Wikipedia entry that it was of such recent origin.
Daran, thinking about it further, I think my reaction to your comment had at least as much to do with its tone as with its content. You didn’t engage MMY; you didn’t say “this seems weird to me. Why do you say ‘men,’ instead of people?”; you didn’t even criticize in a direct but respectful way.
You mocked. With a tone of sneering, superior contempt.
Or at least, that’s how the “Hey, ballgame, look at this wacky thing this person I’m not even addressing said over here!” approach of your comment came off.
As for disappointing you because I don’t moderate my blog in lockstep with whatever your preferences are, that’s something that I’ve been hearing from all sides for years, and I am sick to death of it. I am no longer able to give a flying fuck what you or any other person (except for a few close friends) thinks about how I mod. If you don’t like the way this blog is moderated, there’s an easy and simple solution.
I second chingona at 111. The claim doesn’t make any sense — non-human creatures can’t have human ethnicities, because they don’t have human ancestors to pass on their racial background. Trolls, unicorns, cats and dogs can’t be Jewish any more than they can be Hispanic, black, or white. Much like humans can’t be terriers, thoroughbreds or other non-human, species-specific designations.
And converting a troll definitely wouldn’t be kosher. :P
I think this is the first time I can remember seeing amp use the word ‘fuck’ at another person. I vote ppl not rag on Amp for mod policy, lest he say fuck it all and close up shop to work on comics full time.
Bond,
Right, non-human creatures can’t have ethnicities, but as chingona notes, they can come out of a particular culture. So far as I know, many of the fantasized beings of Western culture (such as fairies) don’t exist in South Asian culture. That doesn’t mean that those beings are themselves Western (in a lot of stories, they don’t really live in this material world at all), but it’s reasonable to say that because there are no fairies in South Asian culture, a fairy in a story about South Asians is kind of an import from Western culture (or if the story is about South Asians in the West or is otherwise culturally mixed, that the fairy is probably going to be marked as a paradesi).
PG — yes, indeed. I had this tab open for awhile before commenting, so I didn’t see 116 and on when I posted. Oops!
Ampersand, I’m sorry about the tone of my comment. I aspire to engagement, but like yourself, I am a flawed person.
I’d love it if Amp could work on comics full time — for all the right reasons.
But I wouldn’t want him to shut up shop here. Perhaps I could suggest… Doing without sleep?
Maybe not.
Daran, thanks for the apology. No problem, we all slip up at time.
I actually am a full-time cartoonist right now (which is a huge part of why I don’t blog very much nowadays in comparison to years ago), but I have a part-time job on top of that.
Whether or not I get to continue being a full-time cartoonist will depends, to a great extent, on what sales on the Hereville graphic novel are like, when it finally appears.
And converting a troll definitely wouldn’t be kosher. :P
Why not? The troll in this story was clearly sentient. He spoke several human languages and indirect evidence suggests that he* can read. Why shouldn’t he convert to Judaism or any other religion if he wants to? And why shouldn’t a person of any religion attempt to convert him if they so desire? In short, I agree that non-humans can’t have human ethnicities, but they can have human religions if they have the capacity to understand religion.
*If the troll is a “he”. I seem to think that amp referred to the troll as “it”. And why should a monster have human type genders anyway?
Dianne,
Many of Daisy’s examples of screen names that she suggested might make her be taken more seriously referenced universities: Oxford, Vassar, Harvard, Yale.
Not overrun by the poor. If that didn’t matter, those places wouldn’t be associated with certain classes.
I don’t think it’s a huge jump to assume that she considered education or lack thereof to be a major part of the issue-and strongly related to class.
It’s the conflation of intellectual capacity with education plus the association of those two with certain classes that she was referring to. The reverse is also true, a poorer background is conflated with a lack of education and associated with a lesser intellectual capacity.
I think she felt that her point was disagreed with not on it’s own merits, but on the latter basis.
Mandolin,
I won’t be commenting on this subject anymore. Just FYI.
Noted, but I just wanted to say;
I assume her assumption has less to do with the fact that there are Jews around, and more to do with the fact that this blog has an academic tone,
Exactly.
particularly while she was arguing that she has a better sense of anti-semitism than actual Jews.
I am not Jewish either, so I might be out of line saying this, but the fact that she was speaking from her own cultural upbringing on the symbolism of the piece means that it wasn’t a ‘teach grandma to suck eggs’ type deal. I think she was genuinely surprised that you didn’t echo her reaction. Although, an outsider commenting on the reactions of people on the inside, might be walking a thin line, you can learn about prejudice from a viewpoint you don’t have access to.
I think your Buffy point is well made, things can be pro and anti at the same time, teasing them out is not an exact science. I also think our responses are not always predictable and can sometimes be stronger from an outside point of view, at times.
Not overrun by the poor. If that didn’t matter, those places wouldn’t be associated with certain classes.
Er, can someone name an academically elite institution that is “overrun by the poor”? So far as I know, all of those schools have merit-based admissions (i.e. the people deciding admission do not know what your financial need is, and once you are offered admission, the school ensures you have a package of loans and grants that will allow you to attend). So the implication that people who go to Oxford, Vassar, Harvard, or Yale can’t be poor is factually mistaken.
There seems to be a certain degree of reverse snobbery going on here. How about everyone just offer their analysis without aggressively going on about his or her education, IQ or lack thereof? It’s precisely to avoid this sort of BS that I don’t comment under my name or anything else particularly identifying, and that I avoid putting up an FAQ or bio on my blogs. Let your argument be made on its merits instead of based on special pleading for your PhD or GED.
Er, can someone name an academically elite institution that is “overrun by the poor”?
Some think this means the poor must be intrinsically less intelligent, presumably a credulity bourne of lack of intelligence on their part.
So the implication that people who go to Oxford, Vassar, Harvard, or Yale can’t be poor is factually mistaken.
That’s a bit of a leap from ‘not overrun’, your own point about these hallowed halls reflects that the poor are thin a bit thin on the ground.
There seems to be a certain degree of reverse snobbery going on here.
Really? Feel free to quote.
How can I put this delicately, are you sure?
And does ‘lack thereof’ reflect a certain amount of reverse envy?
Just to reiterate something I said quite a long time ago: I don’t suspect Daisy of any conscious or intentional anti-semitism in her remarks. But she, like all of us, grew up in a culture that has certain stereotypes about Jewish people* and she seemed to be referencing those, albeit unconsciously. It’s hard to get rid of assumptions that everyone around you have always made. I don’t think that it’s her fault but I do think that it can be helpful to point out when unconscious stereotypes come into play and interfere with a discussion.
*No, I don’t know what Daisy’s background is beyond what she’s said in the blog. But she speaks and writes English fluently which suggests a familiarity with Anglo culture which has an anti-semitic component. Therefore I think I can safely say that cultural stereotypes about Jews are part of the culture she lives in or has lived in for an extensive period of time.
As the author of the work, you have the authority to declare it to be so by fiat.
Hmm…I’m not sure. Of course, Amp is, in effect, the god of his world and can do with it as he pleases. However, authors have been known to lie about their work and so I don’t think that one can take the issue as settled just because the author said so. (Example of an author who is clearly just lying about his work: Wallace Stevens wrote a poem called “The Emperor of Ice Cream”. Someone asked him why he called the poem that and he replied it was because his daugher liked ice cream. Which would have made more sense if the poem didn’t predate the birth of his daughter.)
Some think this means the poor must be intrinsically less intelligent, presumably a credulity bourne of lack of intelligence on their part.
Who are these people? In particular, who thinks that poor young people, i.e. those who are undergraduate age, must be intrinsically less intelligent? At least in the U.S., the sort of people who look down on the poor generally subscribe to the meritocratic belief that “anyone who’s smart and works hard can make it here,” and thus if you haven’t “made it” by the time you’re middle-aged, it’s a reflection of your intelligence and work ethic. Certainly every American conservative I’ve ever encountered professes this belief, with exceptions built in, if he himself is not successful, for how he’s been exceptionally unlucky and gotten screwed over.
Really? Feel free to quote.
“Further, if a religious believer dared write about our “Spidey senses tingling” –in judging whether something is offensive, they’d EAT US ALIVE. (The educated atheists and agnostics can be as irrational as they wanna be and it’s okay. But us uneducated, dumb hillbillies better back everything we say up with copious links and footnotes, or we are stupid.)”
How can I put this delicately, are you sure?
And does ‘lack thereof’ reflect a certain amount of reverse envy?
Omit the delicacy and go for clarity if you’re trying to have a conversation rather than merely sound clever. And with regard to IQ, I’d be operating on just regular envy, since IQ tests in large part measure spatial ability, which I lack.
Sorry PG, but I’ve seen enough classism coming from Americans to know that, yes, for a goodly number of the middle class, the poor are intrinsically unintelligent. Not just “less” intelligent. The character of Cleatus, the Slackjawed Yokel exists for a reason.
Crys T,
Cletus the Slackjawed Yokel is generally an adult, I believe, not a child. Again, do you have an example of someone who believes that intelligence is based on the class you’re born into? Maybe I just know a disproportionate number of people whose contempt for those who need assistance is based in part on having come out of poverty themselves, and their certainty that their success is based on their own intelligence and hard work, not on any factor of luck. Public education is extremely popular in this country even among most of those who are contemptuous of the poor, yet the entire project of public education seems pointless if the people who couldn’t afford to pay to educate their children never have children who are worth educating in the first place.
I think the assumption of a meritocracy is pretty fundamental to the internal logic of the conservative mindset in America: you have to think that everyone gets a decent chance in order to justly condemn those who don’t seem to have taken advantage of it. Horatio Alger and other “pulled themselves up by the bootstraps” stories are beloved in the conservative mythology of this nation precisely because they let conservatives off the hook of having to care about what happens to poor people.
PG, I agree with Chrys — I’ve heard poor kids, and especially poor kids who are also non-white, denigrated for stupidity in a way that is classist.
A number of the republicans I know believe that IQ is essentially genetic. If poor adults are stupid, then their kids will also be stupid. Which is one reason why it’s bad those poor people are breeding. Bad stock.
(This argument about IQ is, if I recall correctly, traceable back to essentially the day after the invention of the IQ test — and if you make it more generally about intelligence rather than the measure, then I’m sure you can find older examples.)
It’s not unusual for a culture to embrace mutually contradictory concepts, such as this idea and also the Horatio Alger myth.
PG, you weren’t talking about intelligence perception at birth. You asked:
Undergrads are generally 18-22.
By that time, there are huge disparities in education level and knowledge between people. Given our generally class-focused public education system, the unfortunate result is that there is a relatively high correlation between class and education/knowledge.
Technically intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) is not particularly knowledge dependent (an illiterate adult who can’t divide can have an incredibly high IQ), but in practice most people confuse intelligence and knowledge. So many people will think uneducated adults are less intelligent. And since many poor people are comparatively less educated, that will result in a class based judgment of intelligence–which is WRONG, but nonetheless is present.
I also think that it is even more insidious than that: if your primary encounters with people of the other class happen when they are older, you may well end up thinking that the difference in knowledge is in fact somehow genetic.
I say this because for many people, there is comparatively little mixing across classes when they are growing up. Only when they get into college or the workforce do they start seriously being exposed to people outside their social group.
So although i regret saying it, i’m inclined to believe taht there are many people who have erroneously concluded that poor people are less intelligent.
So the implication that people who go to Oxford, Vassar, Harvard, or Yale can’t be poor is factually mistaken.
Speaking as someone who has been involved in Oxford admissions, while some of the colleges will bend over backwards for a small number of poor students they are very much the exceptions in the system. Undergraduates are expected to demonstate they can afford the course and living costs in their applications. The number of privately educated upper class undergraduates is many many times higher than that of the country as a whole and the majority of the other students will be middle-class and above. The students are also prodominately white. So while they can be poor, it is overwhelmingly likely that any student you do meet at Oxford is not poor – many of the ones I met finished their undergrad degree having never had a job.
(see: http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/how_to_apply/admissions_statistics/index.html )
Interestingly the stats are roughly in proportion to who applies (privately educated students do slightly better, but not enough to skew the percentages by much). It’s the discrimination lower down that prevents the poor applying – the schools in their areas are worse, and they are less likely to get the 3A’s at A-level, and even if they do very few students consider Oxford/Cambridge an option for them. (The university has a department that’s sole purpose is reaching out to schools who have never sent anyone to Oxbridge, and encouraging the pupils to apply)
Mandolin,
It’s not unusual for a culture to embrace mutually contradictory concepts, such as this idea and also the Horatio Alger myth.
I agree that a culture can do so, but given how important the Horatio Alger myth is to conservative ideology in U.S. politics, I’m surprised that the born-poor-ergo-stupid belief can co-exist with Alger in the same brain, or that enough conservatives disown the Alger and embrace the bpes belief to constitute a significant voice. I just honestly have not encountered anyone who thinks that, or at least no one who will acknowledge it. But my understanding is probably biased by knowing a lot of politically-conservative immigrants and children of immigrants.
Sailorman,
By that time, there are huge disparities in education level and knowledge between people. Given our generally class-focused public education system, the unfortunate result is that there is a relatively high correlation between class and education/knowledge.
Sure, but it’s part of the conservative ideology that because a few poor people manage to get enough education even in crappy schools to end succeeding, that’s proof of meritocracy working. Mainstream conservatism has a bad habit of making Marxist theory sound plausible: they do need to raise up a few people from the masses into the bourgeoisie in order to keep the system running and the masses divided. The poor white male from Appalachia is very important to the modern conservative argument against affirmative action.
Speaking as someone who has been involved in Oxford admissions, while some of the colleges will bend over backwards for a small number of poor students they are very much the exceptions in the system.
Shame on Oxford, then. I have some involvement in the MIT admissions process. MIT is quite proud of the fact that some 90% of undergraduates get at least some form of financial aid, and IIRC over 50% of admits get over 50% of their tuition, fees and housing expenses compensated for by grants, waivers, loans, etc.
There certainly are plenty of people who think that people who haven’t gone to college are less intelligent or even that people who went to state schools are less intelligent. And there definitely are people that think poor people are less intelligent and their children are less intelligent by nature.
The question isn’t really whether that prejudice exists. It does. The question is whether it’s been on display here.
All I can really say is that I know people with lots of education who I think are pretty dumb, and I know people without much education who are pretty smart. There’s nothing in the way Daisy writes or presents her arguments that makes me think “here is someone who is not smart/is ignorant/doesn’t know what she’s talking about” and I’ve never consciously interacted with her from that assumption. It’s pretty obvious she thinks she is being interacted with from that assumption, and there’s not a good way for me or anyone else to defend themselves against that charge.
Dianne:
I think this is too hasty a generalisation. Until I saw those horrible, horrible, Holocaust pictures in a double page magazine spread when I was about twelve, I guess, the sum total of my knowledge of Jews was that they were the people in those Biblical stories, which I didn’t pay much attention to anyway.
Excluding the brief period when I worked for an Israeli company, I can count the number of Jews I have ever met in person, knowing them to be Jews, on the thumbs of one hand. I’ve learned more antisemitic stereotypes from people saying ” is an antisemitic stereotype” on this blog, that I ever had the chance to internalise from the culture I was brought up in.
Where the minority is so minor as to be invisible, which is the case in respect of Jews in Britain, I think it is possible to grow up without internalising bigoted attitudes toward them, or indeed any attitudes toward them.
I’m not saying you’re wrong about Daisy, who doesn’t live in Britain. Nor am I saying that you are right about her. I’m only suggesting that your generalisation to the entire English-speaking world isn’t valid.
Daran,
Britain has the fifth largest Jewish population in the world, but I suppose that unless you live in London, Manchester or other places with a significant Orthodox community, you may not have known that the person you were encountering was Jewish. (The United States as a whole has a relatively large Jewish population, but I grew up in a rural area and knew only one Jewish person before I went to college.) And of course many Jews in the UK are secular and marry outside their faith, although there can be pushback against doing so. One of my friends who went to Oxford dated a Jewish girl there who was not herself religious, but her family disliked the relationship because he wasn’t Jewish and the pressure eventually broke them up.
Briefly, because this is my forth post in a short space of time, and I’m mindful of Amp’s admonition, It appears that, in criticizing Dianne’s hasty generalisation I made one of my own. My point stands, that it is possible in some places to grow up or live in Anglo culture without assimilating antisemitic stereotypes, or indeed anything about Jewishness at all.
The only visible* minority in my home town is Polish, and yes, there is a fair amount of anti-Polish feeling around.
*Visible to me, he says, averting another hasty generalisation, not counting the Filipino community which is very small and only visible to me because my best friend’s wife is Filipina.
Turned out not to be brief at all. Sorry Amp. I am gone for now.
I have some involvement in the MIT admissions process. MIT is quite proud of the fact that some 90% of undergraduates get at least some form of financial aid, and IIRC over 50% of admits get over 50% of their tuition, fees and housing expenses compensated for by grants, waivers, loans, etc.
The number was 67%, IIRC, at my school (University of Chicago.) I’m not sure if that was any financial aid or significant (>50%) financial aid. I do know that almost all my tuition was paid for by financial aid and I wasn’t considered particularly poor. Of course, MIT and U of C are real academic schools, not like those lightweights in the Ivy league (speaking of serious snobbery.)
VK,
I’m surprised to hear that Oxford does not have need-blind admissions — that certainly makes it less competitive with American schools in obtaining the best talent. My husband took his course at Pembroke, and he says his education there cost less than his brother’s in-state at the University of Alabama. (They both worked in high school and college.) According to the Oxford website, an EU citizen who was taking the same course at Pembroke starting this year would pay £3,290 ($5k USD) for a year’s tuition and no college fee in the first year. That’s almost half the current annual tuition cost of my non-Ivy, state school alma mater, even at in-state rates. I visited Oxford recently, and enough of it is still ungentrified (thinking of the Cowley Road area particularly) that living expenses aren’t bad either.
Do you know where on the application Oxford asks students to indicate that they can afford all of the costs without assistance? It looks from the website like Oxford uses the common application for the UK, just as most American universities now accept the common application here. (I am seriously resentful that this did not exist when I was applying for undergrad, especially since this was back when I had to painstakingly fill out application by hand.)
“But my understanding is probably biased by knowing a lot of politically-conservative immigrants and children of immigrants.”
Yes, I think this makes a difference. My Jewish relatives are less likely to buy into this crap than my husband’s father’s relatives who’ve been here for longer.
I also think that the Horatio Alger myth is often employed to discuss people who are perceived as being as rare as violin prodigies. *I* did it (made it up a rung on the class ladder) because *I’m* so awesome, or *that* person did it because *he* is so awesome, but all those other poor people? Lazy. Just the same way that the black guy I know is a stand-up guy, but he’s the exception. Most black guys are violent and dumb. (Or, as my paternal grandfather would have said about all Jews but my father’s first wife, greedy and cruel.)
Horatio Alger’s great, and so is my gay neighbor, but those other poor folk/minority folk…
How using prisons for economic development went very, very wrong for one little Montana town.
Do you know where on the application Oxford asks students to indicate that they can afford all of the costs without assistance?
My knowledge is now several years out of date, so forms may have changed since then. Oxford and Cambridge had a seperate additional application form, which required an additional personal statement, and you (and I think your parents) to sign a pre-printed statement that you would could afford all costs of the course (similar to this ) . It was in a long statement that went alongside the application and had to be printed out and signed – which dates it horribly as I can’t imagine they still require forms to be printed and posted in.
According to the Oxford website, an EU citizen who was taking the same course at Pembroke starting this year would pay £3,290 ($5k USD) for a year’s tuition and no college fee in the first year.
That sounds about right. The UK government offers a low-interest loan (with some very kind restrictions on repayment -not until you are earning above a certain level, and the loan company cannot insist you pay more than a percentage of your earnings above that level) that will cover this cost + ~£4,000 a year living costs. Oxford also offers a lot of bursaries (more than are ever taken up) for students from low-income families. But there are shockingly few applications for these.
Poking the website it looks as if things have changed for the better – there is no mention of needing financial guarentee for undergraduates, they’ve dropped the college fee (which was an extra £1,125 a year), introduced these
it is still ungentrified (thinking of the Cowley Road area particularly) that living expenses aren’t bad either.
Depending on the area, rental prices can get down pretty low (£300 a month), but food costs tend to be quite high – more like London prices.
In addition, a lot of the colleges offer cheapish in-college accomodation and meals -more expense per month than Cowley, but as it is only available for term-time enables you to go back to your parents house (assuming that is an option). Hilariously outdated restrictions means you cannot live more than 5 miles from Carfax Tower during term time without prior written permission from the university.
On paper, the university does a lot to help low-income students. In reality, very few low-income students go there, despite constant publicity from the university to relevant schools.
Who are these people? In particular, who thinks that poor young people, i.e. those who are undergraduate age, must be intrinsically less intelligent?
Anyone choosing to believe that if the poor are underepresented at University it must be due to lack of intrinsic merit. You seemed to allude to this yourself, by referring to the meritocratic basis of admission as if that explains things;
So far as I know, all of those schools have merit-based admissions
As sailorman said, things go awry way before that stage.
“Further, if a religious believer dared write about our “Spidey senses tingling” –in judging whether something is offensive, they’d EAT US ALIVE. (The educated atheists and agnostics can be as irrational as they wanna be and it’s okay. But us uneducated, dumb hillbillies better back everything we say up with copious links and footnotes, or we are stupid.)”
Reverse snobbery is the belief that someone who is educated or middle/upper class is somehow less authentic, balanced, or accomplished even, than someone who isn’t. Kind of like the noble savage myth.
What you quoted is not reverse snobbery, it refers to the undoubted intellectual snobbery that a lot of non theists have toward theists and I say that as one of the former.
Federal Judge Sanctions ‘Birther’ Lawyer for ‘Frivolous’ Suit
Until I saw those horrible, horrible, Holocaust pictures in a double page magazine spread when I was about twelve, I guess, the sum total of my knowledge of Jews was that they were the people in those Biblical stories, which I didn’t pay much attention to anyway.
This strikes me as a negative stereotype in itself: you saw Jews as a historical group, not a living culture that might include your neighbors and online friends. People in the US pull this one all the time with the Amerind: they tend to see them as a historical group, the lost “noble savage” of a “purer” time before the Europeans arrive. Which makes it easier to forget about the living Navajos, Seminole, Cherokee, etc who are facing problems from continued discrimination to high rates of alcoholism and diabetes.
I’m forty-five years old (today, as it happens), How many online friends do you think I had before the age of twelve?
The Jews are (or were. I’m not sure what tense to use here) a historical group. The Jews are also a living culture. I knew nothing of the latter. It seems a strange to use the word “stereotype” to describe utter obliviousnes.
I’d go with “inadvisable, but unintentional”. I never heard about horns before coming to Alas – but I grew up in a liberal, Jewish neighborhood.
B. Adu,
Anyone choosing to believe that if the poor are underepresented at University it must be due to lack of intrinsic merit. You seemed to allude to this yourself, by referring to the meritocratic basis of admission as if that explains things;
And who chooses to believe that if “the poor” are underrepresented at University, it must be due to a lack of “intrinsic merit” specifically in the form of intelligence? You are making a lot of false assumptions about the conservative understanding of the world, particularly that they frame things the same way you do: “the poor” as an identity group; “intrinsic merit” as solely a matter of intelligence rather than also including persistence/ gumption. If conservatives thought it was solely a matter of inborn IQ, why would they be so delighted by Bill Cosby’s calling for black parents to push their kids harder in school? If the kids are inherently stupid, no point in pushing them. On the contrary, the conservative conception of “merit” includes character traits (which they believe should be fostered in the nuclear family) of ambition, hard work and so forth that coupled with intelligence will, in this belief system, inevitably lead to success.
What you quoted is not reverse snobbery, it refers to the undoubted intellectual snobbery that a lot of non theists have toward theists and I say that as one of the former.
No, it’s reverse snobbery: saying that a person whom Daisy believes to be educated should not be able to speak of her intuitive sense of what makes something anti-Semitic, because those whom Daisy regards as the Self-Professed Intellectuals must act and speak the way she expects, regardless of who they are as individuals.
Moreover, the overall point of her post is to say that if people disagree with her, it must be due to educational classism rather than to simply not agreeing with her perception of what is anti-Semitic. Part of reverse snobbery is to see all perceived slights as due to the snobs’ inability to take one on one’s merits.
Another local cop arrested for armed robbery and kidnapping, exactly on the anniversary of the arrest of the last one . There’s also the officer who drove around the neighborhood with someone’s mug shot on the window of his car. Someone took pictures. So I’ve been in contact with the deputy chief in the past couple days but he’s actually pretty cool.
Nazis coming out to rally again on the 24th. LA group says they’re bringing their saliva and lighters to burn more flags. Local activists will rally as well and have a victory festival at the park. And SWAT says that each will get their own side of the street to demonstrate on. I guess it’s on the calendar.
PG,
This is a better example of reverse snobbery.
rather than merely sound clever
Being told off for sounding or being too clever is the hallmark of reverse snobbery.
must act and speak the way she expects, regardless of who they are as individuals.
This is where the two views meet. If you are commenting on this and blogs like it, this is exactly what you have to do, speak as they would expect to speak to each other, or you are likely to be pulled up on matters of syntax and your personal expression etc, rather than the point you are actually trying to make.
Which is just about OK, but can become grating if those who set the rules, appear to break them.
I understand chingona’s tone of resignation @136, but that’s the exact position all sides are in if they wish to attempt to communicate with people outside their usual circle. If we can’t overcome these relatively minor issues to exchange ideas, views experiences etc, then we will all just stick to our own.
Which would be a shame.
Being told off for sounding or being too clever is the hallmark of reverse snobbery.
Who said you were sounding or being too clever? I said you were being “merely clever,” i.e. falling short of making a genuine contribution to the discussion because you prefer obscurity to lucidity.
If you are commenting on this and blogs like it, this is exactly what you have to do, speak as they would expect to speak to each other, or you are likely to be pulled up on matters of syntax and your personal expression etc, rather than the point you are actually trying to make.
I’ve only seen this happen on Alas when people are making personal attacks or are making factual claims without providing any evidence for them (e.g. people claiming that only male-female relationships ever have been recognized as “marriage”). People who state something as a matter of pure opinion (and I’m pretty sure whether an artwork is anti-Semitic is a matter of opinion — I don’t know how something can be “proven” anti-Semitic unless it actually has I hate Jews written on it) are not expected to manufacture some sort of nonexistent evidence to “prove” an opinion.
Indeed, the whole basis of discussion was that the work struck Daisy as anti-Semitic based on the horns, and several other people were not struck with the same impression. Who criticized her syntax or personal expression? Or can you provide an example in another thread where Daisy stated something as a matter of pure opinion and her syntax and personal expression were criticized?
A public service announcement…
I said you were being “merely clever,” i.e. falling short of making a genuine contribution to the discussion because you prefer obscurity to lucidity.
If cleverness is obscurity, then stupidity is lucidity, in your view. I thought my meaning was clear enough. Next time I’ll spell it out for you, literally.
Okay, guys, cool it down.
How can I put this delicately, are you sure? is your idea of being clear? I suppose If cleverness is obscurity, then stupidity is lucidity, in your view is your idea of being logical.
How can I put this delicately, are you sure? is your idea of being clear?
That’s your idea of being clever.
Oh, no, I thought that you at least had the intent of being clever, since you were so obviously failing in being clear, to the point that I assumed you weren’t even trying. If you didn’t have that intent of cleverness, then it’s really just fail all around.
K, guys, that was the last blow in that exchange. Further ones get deleted.