So I was going to post this because I want to hear decent counter-arguments to what is said. It was mentioned in an earlier thread that Crowder argues with people who just really aren't close to his level and his opponents aren't educated in the subject matter. So this one is "white male privilege doesn't exist, change my mind": It's split into two parts, one is two women arguing systematic racism, and then the second half is two men disagreeing and stating their own opinions. I just want to hear what you all think and have to say, owing to the fact you all have the internet and infinite time to respond. Could you come up with better arguments than two teenage girls.
No need for stats or infinite internet time. Most of the arguments defeat themselves with logical inconsistencies. Very little was said about sex discrimination, but Crowder said that the majority of women didn't want the vote, but men gave it to them anyway. That sounds like men having power over women to me! Crowder feeling "more oppressed than a black person on campus" for having to speak French at school was weird. I wonder if that means he believes Mexicans shouldn't have to speak English at US schools? Crowder pulls two standard tricks out of the right wing play book: first, he gives an incorrect definition of systemic racism as codified racism, which is not the same thing, and then he gives the "more white people are killed by police than black people" obfuscation; more white people are killed by police because there are a lot more of them, but a black person is still more likely to be killed by police than a white person. The black guy apparently agrees with Crowder that systemic racism doesn't exist, but then says that the reason black communities aren't performing as well as they could be is because of Democratic policies and government welfare. Well, if government policies are to blame for black people not doing as well as other ethnic groups, then he has just made a case for systemic racism. Then you have the Asian guy, who Crowder loves at first when he's talking about the family pressure to succeed academically in Asian families, but didn't appreciate him so much when he said "yeah, that's why South Korea and Japan have the highest suicide rates in the world". There wasn't really much in there to debate, considering it's not a short video.
As a man I don't have to have periods or give birth to babies. Seems pretty privileged to me right off the bat.
Excellent stuff. I picked up on the white killed more than black straight away. The first one about women voting is a hilarious point! The Air Force guy also said that a lot of it is culture. It's not "cool" to get good grades or be part of after school clubs or any of that. How much do you think culture affects a group vs systemic racism affecting a group?
I think privilege gets bandied about a lot with an imprecise definition, and a lot of people wind up talking past each other when they think that it means 'who has it better.' But that's really not what it's looking at, at all. It's an examination of institutions and society's behavior at large towards different groups of people. Crowder initially poses the idea that because women weren't supposed to be part of bucket chains or register for the draft, that they were not actually privileged. So let's make an analogy - paraplegics weren't expected to register for the draft nor were they expected to be parts of bucket chains. And yet it's undeniable that society was not structured in a way that allowed them to freely navigate and move through it.
I think that the culture is a result of generations of socioeconomic depression. That kind of culture is common to many poor white neighbourhoods too, like in sink estates where the poor are isolated and neglected over generations. It becomes a vicious circle.
Counterculture is necessarily anti-authoritarian. My kids don't brag to each other about getting high grades, they brag about doing well in a videogame, creating a mixtape, their artwork, etc. As soon as adults begin approving of those activities, they become less interesting. But it's only in culturally disadvantaged groups that that counterculture rebellion becomes an explanation for and a reason to oppress them, rather than just a phase they're going through. I can literally see it in the reactions of (some) of my fellow teachers - they'll think the 16 year old starting a garage band and dressing in grunge or punk clothing is cute, but start treating another student like a potential criminal when he wears saggy pants and starts rapping and making beats on his computer. Neither student was particularly interested in learning biology, I'll add.
So, I can't speak about US black communities, but in poor communities I know the attitudes and values of the kids are not very different from the attitudes and values of the parents. It's not about rebelling, it's about coming to terms with the fact that crime is the easiest way to achieve status through wealth where they live, that getting the most out of government welfare is a survival skill and not a game for lazy people, that generational isolation and neglect breed suspicion and resentment... add into that the attitudes and assumptions about them, made by almost everyone they interact with, especially in the education system, and you have this massive cultural inertia that no-one knows how to shift.
Without going on the internet I can tell you now how it's played a part in my life. White privilege is the fact that I've never been pulled over when driving a car by myself late at night, when the black people I know had been by my age. I've never been taught to be afraid of the police, or to see them as the enemy. I'm not from an immensely wealthy family, but it's been very, very rare that my social status has caused me to be excluded from anything. Male privilege? My sister first got catcalled by a stranger in a car aged 12. Excluding a couple of joking ladies in classes I've taught, I've never been catcalled. I've never been given the advice 'put keys between your knuckles when you walk alone at night'. Aside from trying to stay sensibly alert I'm not worried when I walk through a strange street in a strange city late at night. I've never had strangers in the street or the club try and kiss me, and on the one occasion someone did touch me in an unconsensual way, I didn't feel threatened or pressured to please them for fear of violence. So yeah, people can talk about the pay gap, or the disparity in terms of employment, anything like that, I've never done much research into it. I know I'm advantaged.
A few of those are very real. That cat-calling one. My girlfriend has been cat-called a few times in the last few months but it's only when she goes out alone. I think that's why she doesn't like going by herself. Can someone do this one for me? The gender pay gap? I'm under the impression that men and women get paid the same for the same job.
Gender pay gap figures reveal eight in 10 UK firms pay men more The issue is why women and men are selected for differently payed roles. Some of that may be choice, however it's very likely there are also structural reasons that arnt based on choice. (personal example, many women where I work, work part time due to childcare, the part timers don't get promotions, so they on average get less pay, I also would like to go part time (4 days a week), but I can't because there are no part timers at my level to cover my day off, so even though I'm on more money per hour and a bloke, it impacts my own choice on how my childcare is organised). This isn't a man vs women game, we all lose when we don't organise our society justly, and women are our mothers and partners. If you want to look further, clickbait videos are a very poor way to study any subject.
It is more nuanced than some would have you believe, but again we don't have to dispute the reasoning of people who say it is a myth to point out sexism in society when it comes to employment and wages. People like Jordan Peterson say that the fundamental reason for the pay gap is that women are generally interested in people, and men are generally interested in things. He believes this is genetic, but I'm not convinced we have enough data to say whether, if we take that as true, it is due to socialised behaviour or innate biology (for the purposes of our discussion it doesn't matter). Men are also said to have generally more aggressive personalities, so in jobs where pay is negotiated they tend to get more, and also argue for promotion more. Women opting to stay at home and look after children is a huge factor (usually because if they have a male partner they get paid more so they can't afford for the man to stay at home with the kids). Women also miss out on pensions because of all of these factors. If we take all of the above as read, I would still ask the question why we reward traditionally male roles far more highly. Why are care and support roles paid so poorly, for example? Why don't we train and reward parents who stay at home, seeing as they are some of the most important and valuable people for the next generation of citizens? Compare elderly care to IT support; why do we value machines more than people? There is also the wider issue of growing iniquity between the wealthiest in society and the rest of us. Those board members and majority share holders are mostly men, and the growing gap between the super rich and ordinary people shunts the averages between men and women way off. I would say that it is reasonable to conclude, based on the same arguments of personal preference given by those who say the gender pay gap is a myth, that the share of reward between the sexes on average shows a systemic bias toward traditionally male roles in society. In other words, their own arguments point to us being in a patriarchal society.
So where I'm lost is where these numbers come from. Surely if you're role is the same as someone else's and you put in the same hours you'll get the same pay? Wouldn't it be illegal otherwise? I know it's not at the lowest levels of employment (minimum wage zero hour contracts) but higher up. So can't a woman go to HR and show that she's not being payed equally? Or is it just subtle things on the part of the employer?
If the job role is identical, and their experience is identical, then that would be illegal and the woman could go to an employment tribunal. But it is very easy to make up a new job title, and when contracts are negotiated it is a very different thing than when you are paid to scale. Before this year it was very hard to find out how much other people were being paid.
Someone posted a meme on FB the other day about how bizarre it is that we pay people to train to be soldiers but we expect people to pay to train to be nurses. For the life of me I cannot see a good reason why that is the way it is.
"the data showed that women were being paid a median hourly rate that, on average, was 9.7% less than that given their male colleagues." So the comparison is between median pay, between women and men. You need a little maths for this, Mean, Median, Mode, and Range | Purplemath but essentially its a rough statistical analysis to see if women are on the whole, statistically paid less then men, this isn't a job vs job comparison, that would be too specific to be able to generalise from. This means either A) women are too stupid/etc to get the best jobs, which we know isn't true. B) systemically women are prevented from getting a fair chance at the best jobs, The issue here is that this is a nuonced statistical discussion, which obviously most people don't understand and instead trot out the same job, same pay line that misses the actual point. Potentially Under employing half the workforce means as a country were not functioning optimally, it also means people have to give up a good job to have kids which means demographically the country suffers again. If you want a good economy, you want the best people in the best jobs. And the population to be able to reproduce in a way that doesn't negativity impact the economy or long term demographics.
it is a very grey area, as you can hire several people for the same role, and they can all be paid differently regardless of gender. I know people who work with HR systems and I have myself; the data is very obviously weighed towards men having higher salary for the same role. I know women who go into a role without any childcare needs and still get considerably less than men who have equal or less experience. it is illegal to discriminate based on gender/ nationality/age, but the reality is, it's very difficult to prove that is the reason for the varying salary based on a wide range of other salary discrepancies.
...and until recently, if you wanted to take it to tribunal you would have to pay and gamble losing your money.
It's also a big decision to go to tribunal, because not many employers want to hire someone who has gone against a previous employer. It might be the right thing to do, but it can also ruin your chances of a successful future career.
I've not known of anyone take it to a tribunal, I didn't realise that there used to be a cost involved. Analytics is becoming bigger, and is highlighting the pay gap even more. I don't have any data to disclose publicly, but I have seen a lot of data around it. having worked in construction industry, I am not surprised in the statistics for the guardian article @Dead_pool posted. tech industry (I work on) is another with a large gap which I didn't see published statistics for.
