I guess the difference is that you are wiling to believe the "experts" are right until proven wrong whereas i'm skeptical until shown otherwise.

purplerat wrote:I guess the difference is that you are wiling to believe the "experts" are right until proven wrong whereas i'm skeptical until shown otherwise.

You are confusing scepticism with cynicism. You are sure this is a bad idea for no particularly good reason. Some people who didn't take a course throw accusations of racism about unfairly sometimes. Sure, shit happens.

Your stance seems to be to uncritically assume that this will happen as a consequence of this programme because people are getting paid to do it and advised by experts because people not a programme, not advised by experts sometimes behave badly.

Does not follow!

GrahamH wrote:

purplerat wrote:that's exactly the type of thing that those like myself look at and want to avoid in these situations.

Maybe, if the people involved had the benefit of constructive conversations about what is and isn't racism and how to reduce tensions that might have gone better, depending on course content. Who knows? There was no course, no experts and no organised programme.

In theory that sounds good but in the real world it hardly ever goes that way.

The infamous phrase "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" comes to mind here. Tweak that slightly to something like "I'm from the department of racism correction and I'm here to help" and maybe you'll see where I'm coming from, or not.

Personally I think issues like racist language and microaggressions are best dealt with organically and having paid language police or counselors is the wrong way to go.

GrahamH wrote:

purplerat wrote:I guess the difference is that you are wiling to believe the "experts" are right until proven wrong whereas i'm skeptical until shown otherwise.

You are confusing scepticism with cynicism. You are sure this is a bad idea for no particularly good reason. Some people who didn't take a course throw accusations of racism about unfairly sometimes. Sure, shit happens.

Your stance seems to be to uncritically assume that this will happen as a consequence of this programme because people are getting paid to do it and advised by experts because people not a programme, not advised by experts sometimes behave badly.

Does not follow!

It's informed skepticism. While I wouldn't claim to be an expert on how to address racist speech I do know enough to know that it's a pretty complicated topic, exponentially more so when it comes to actually trying to change the way other people think or act. So much so that I'm skeptical that a program, even one led by experts (what exactly that means in this context I'm not sure), is going to adequately train students in what I imagine is a relatively short period of time.

If I'm being cynically it's in assuming that the real purpose of this program is for the university to do something simply for the sake of showing that they are doing something. And there is no better way to show you are doing something than to throw money at something.

Hermit wrote:I'll stop playing with you for now.

Sadly justified.

laklak wrote:Ah, so we have experts setting the course. That's different then. If it were just students taking it into their own hands it might have unintended effects, but with experts in charge we have no worries, eh? What could possible go wrong?

Dunno, the Ark was supposed to be studied by Top Men, and it's still sleeping in its warehouse, we, in France, have a whole school that specializes at producing top experts to lead our administrations... znd what we got it a country in terminal shit with a macron (though former presidents valery giscard d'estaing, jacques chirac and françois hollande also graduated from it) at its head... Problem with technocracy is that the experts don't have the humanities education, especially in history and philosophy, or the breadth of vision, especially in the long range effects and by effects to propose proper solutions to the nations' problems. They focus on using their skill in providing immediate response, and then don't care if it orients us toward the lake of doo... when we reach that and not before, they'll see if they can extract us or build a floater

purplerat wrote:The infamous phrase "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" comes to mind here. Tweak that slightly to something like "I'm from the department of racism correction and I'm here to help" and maybe you'll see where I'm coming from, or not.

For me: not.

I think Graham's on the money with describing your position as cynical rather than skeptical. I get where you're coming from, but it's lazy, and the quote above is a good example of how that laziness can lead to wrongness.

Of course, I'm not intimately familiar with the functioning of your local government (beyond the well-publicised current clusterfuck of the Federal executive branch), but where I'm from, most of the people "from the government and here to help", actually help. Government programs to improve health are largely evidence-based and effective; government education programs, such as those to identify and help kids with dyslexia, for example, are well-constructed and have positive outcomes; government programs to identify farming practices that lead to environmental impacts, and promote less harmful alternatives, are effective, and well-received; close to home for me, my wife - on the government's dime - develops and delivers training programs for doctors to conduct forensic examinations of victims of violence in ways which will maximise the amount of relevant, admissible evidence in any future court proceedings, and manage the professional and emotional impacts for doctors of taking part in such court proceedings as witnesses, and as an agent of the government she helps literally hundreds of people, both doctors and patients, in hugely meaningful ways every year. Sure, sometimes large bureaucracies fuck up in truly spectacular and byzantine ways, but to use that to dismiss government in general as a force for ill, rather than good, is just Trumpian "the government fucked up your dishwasher!!1!" garbage.

OlivierK wrote:

purplerat wrote:The infamous phrase "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" comes to mind here. Tweak that slightly to something like "I'm from the department of racism correction and I'm here to help" and maybe you'll see where I'm coming from, or not.

For me: not.

I think Graham's on the money with describing your position as cynical rather than skeptical. I get where you're coming from, but it's lazy, and the quote above is a good example of how that laziness can lead to wrongness.

Of course, I'm not intimately familiar with the functioning of your local government (beyond the well-publicised current clusterfuck of the Federal executive branch), but where I'm from, most of the people "from the government and here to help", actually help. Government programs to improve health are largely evidence-based and effective; government education programs, such as those to identify and help kids with dyslexia, for example, are well-constructed and have positive outcomes; government programs to identify farming practices that lead to environmental impacts, and promote less harmful alternatives, are effective, and well-received; close to home for me, my wife - on the government's dime - develops and delivers training programs for doctors to conduct forensic examinations of victims of violence in ways which will maximise the amount of relevant, admissible evidence in any future court proceedings, and manage the professional and emotional impacts for doctors of taking part in such court proceedings as witnesses, and as an agent of the government she helps literally hundreds of people, both doctors and patients, in hugely meaningful ways every year. Sure, sometimes large bureaucracies fuck up in truly spectacular and byzantine ways, but to use that to dismiss government in general as a force for ill, rather than good, is just Trumpian "the government fucked up your dishwasher!!1!" garbage.

My intent is not to dismiss anything just because it's coming from the government or a large institution. But there are plenty of areas where I think governments (and in this case the university is basically "the government") should stay out of and speech/thought is one. I definitely would not want to see similar government roles in society in general; where some people are appointed to trying to get others to speak or think in a certain way. For what it's worth I think anti-blaspheme and holocaust denial (I guess saying that makes me guilty of holocaust denial now) a laws are not things governments should be getting into either regardless of how well intentioned they may be.

If there's any laziness on my part I guess it's in not feeling like explaining why "the department of racism correction" sounds like a bad idea. It's one of those things that I feel like if I have to explain it it's just a waste of time anyways.

I used to be cynical, but then I lived long enough to realize that I was correct in most cases, so I started calling myself skeptical. Other people have different words for it, Mrs. Lak calls it "curmudgeonly". Fuck's she know, anyway?

she is entirely correct ....ain't it grand.

OlivierK wrote:...where I'm from, most of the people "from the government and here to help", actually help. Government programs to improve health are largely evidence-based and effective...

...with food stamps and robodebt for the undeserving poor, and continued support for the deserving rich.

Hermit wrote:

OlivierK wrote:...where I'm from, most of the people "from the government and here to help", actually help. Government programs to improve health are largely evidence-based and effective...

...with food stamps and robodebt for the undeserving poor, and continued support for the deserving rich.

Yes, as I said, government isn't perfect, and can fuck up in spectacular ways due to its scale.

I gave examples of the far more numerous times it gets it right, and why I think that ignoring the good that governments do can lead to poor, lazy, thinking about whether government is, as a whole, a force for good, by distorting perspective by focusing solely on governmental failure.

I'm not sure that listing governmental failures, while editing out examples of governmental effectiveness, does any more than provide one more example of poor thinking on the matter.

This specific sort of bullshit thinking is a prime tool of Trumpism, and the sort of off-the-end-of-the-pier Libertarianism that Seth and others used to peddle around here.

purplerat wrote:

OlivierK wrote:

purplerat wrote:The infamous phrase "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" comes to mind here. Tweak that slightly to something like "I'm from the department of racism correction and I'm here to help" and maybe you'll see where I'm coming from, or not.

For me: not.

I think Graham's on the money with describing your position as cynical rather than skeptical. I get where you're coming from, but it's lazy, and the quote above is a good example of how that laziness can lead to wrongness.

Of course, I'm not intimately familiar with the functioning of your local government (beyond the well-publicised current clusterfuck of the Federal executive branch), but where I'm from, most of the people "from the government and here to help", actually help. Government programs to improve health are largely evidence-based and effective; government education programs, such as those to identify and help kids with dyslexia, for example, are well-constructed and have positive outcomes; government programs to identify farming practices that lead to environmental impacts, and promote less harmful alternatives, are effective, and well-received; close to home for me, my wife - on the government's dime - develops and delivers training programs for doctors to conduct forensic examinations of victims of violence in ways which will maximise the amount of relevant, admissible evidence in any future court proceedings, and manage the professional and emotional impacts for doctors of taking part in such court proceedings as witnesses, and as an agent of the government she helps literally hundreds of people, both doctors and patients, in hugely meaningful ways every year. Sure, sometimes large bureaucracies fuck up in truly spectacular and byzantine ways, but to use that to dismiss government in general as a force for ill, rather than good, is just Trumpian "the government fucked up your dishwasher!!1!" garbage.

My intent is not to dismiss anything just because it's coming from the government or a large institution. But there are plenty of areas where I think governments (and in this case the university is basically "the government") should stay out of and speech/thought is one. I definitely would not want to see similar government roles in society in general; where some people are appointed to trying to get others to speak or think in a certain way. For what it's worth I think anti-blaspheme and holocaust denial (I guess saying that makes me guilty of holocaust denial now) a laws are not things governments should be getting into either regardless of how well intentioned they may be.

If there's any laziness on my part I guess it's in not feeling like explaining why "the department of racism correction" sounds like a bad idea. It's one of those things that I feel like if I have to explain it it's just a waste of time anyways.

We've got such a department in Australia, with government-paid Anti-Discrimination Commissioners and their associated staff, and it works fine. Our local Trumpists at the Institute for Public Affairs (a conservative-donating "think tank" funded by billionaires including Murdoch) have a hard-on for getting the enabling legislation neutered or repealed, but it's been in place for decades, and the only people who seem to have suffered are some conservative hate-mongers in the media with a fondness for spewing hateful racist shit on air or in the press. If it's the thin edge of the wedge, it's taking generations to drive that wedge past its edge.

As a matter of interest, what do you think of the USA's Civil Rights Act?

OlivierK wrote:

Hermit wrote:

OlivierK wrote:...where I'm from, most of the people "from the government and here to help", actually help. Government programs to improve health are largely evidence-based and effective...

...with food stamps and robodebt for the undeserving poor, and continued support for the deserving rich.

Yes, as I said, government isn't perfect, and can fuck up in spectacular ways due to its scale.

I gave examples of the far more numerous times it gets it right, and why I think that ignoring the good that governments do can lead to poor, lazy, thinking about whether government is, as a whole, a force for good, by distorting perspective by focusing solely on governmental failure.

I'm not sure that listing governmental failures, while editing out examples of governmental effectiveness, does any more than provide one more example of poor thinking on the matter.

This specific sort of bullshit thinking is a prime tool of Trumpism, and the sort of off-the-end-of-the-pier Libertarianism that Seth and others used to peddle around here.

Apologies for being too curt. In principle there is nothing wrong with the government's role to help. That's what it is there for by definition. I am no Trumpist or Friedmanite. My objection is focused on our current government and most previous conservative governments we have voted into office before it, reaching at least as far back as Malcolm Fraser's. It simply cannot be said that most of their initiatives were helpful to the people in general. In addition to the instances of government "help" mentioned above, there is the constant whiteanting of our national health system, the undermining of unionism
and plenty more. I won't mention the help asylum seekers get in our outsourced offshore concentration camps or the National School Chaplaincy Program because our Labor governments have been complicit in both.

The positive aspects of "I'm from the government and here to help" consist almost entirely of where the governments did not come around to "help", at least during the past several decades when the conservatives ruled. Australia has been socially preferable to the US, beginning with the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, Australian labour laws that rose out of the Harvester case and the principle of a living wage during the first decade of Australia's existence. The long reign of Menzies was relatively benign, if somewhat paternalistic. Whitlam's prime ministership was economically somewhat suspect, but it achieved an astonishing amount of socially desirable reforms in a very short time. These achievements of the past are what makes Australia so much better than the USA, but they are being whittled away every time a conservative government comes in to "help", and we've had those pricks in power for all but six of the past 24 years.

I clicked on "quote" instead of "edit", didn't I?

OlivierK wrote:
As a matter of interest, what do you think of the USA's Civil Rights Act?

Its primary aims are not to regulate how people talk to each other. Being on the receiving end of racist language is among the lesser pains inflicted on people holding the wrong end of the stick of civil rights discrimination. Do I really have to include boilerplate verbiage about how "that doesn't justify racist language"? Justify until you're blue in the face. Shit happens, and theory is not much help when shit comes to call.

Keep in mind that language-policing on campus involves interactions only among individuals already privileged enough to be attending college. Once they get out into the world a little more, they'll be well-practiced in identifying microaggressions, whether or not there is a special promotion of identifying it. It's not that I think there's anything wrong in speaking up about insensitive speech, but unless there's a cultural ombudsman in the office, the redress of prickly politics is mainly to identify complainers as troublemakers. This is unfortunate, but if you've ever worked in an office, you'll know that there's something like an office culture, and we don't all get to take jobs among clots of culturally-sensitive hipsters.

Oops. Transgression, there. Hipsters may be sensitive about being group-identified that way. Here's another one, in case you're hungry for more: Microaggression, as a concept, is the brainchild of people who have not anything more challenging on their CV than "cultural studies" and "critique". It looks like a vulnerable, cute little thing, but when you squeeze it a little, it squirms right out of your hands.

The worst thing about language policing on campus might be the raising of unrealistic expectations of the world. What has happened as the world has become smaller is that everybody's prickly side is getting exercised, and campus offices of language policing are a cottage industry feeding off of people's prickly sides. Who knew that people in general really are not overjoyed in the face of too much difference. Except, you know, the rational, culturally-sensitive types. Like me. Outside this determinedly-liberal convocation, I'm a voice crying in the wilderness. But here, I easily recognize the presence of justifying until we're blue in the faces.

What is this obsession with "police" and "government".
It's an education programme at an educational institution. No authority, no sanctions, no policing.

The thinking seems to "if something can go wrong it will" then list some unrelated instances of things going wrong (and holocaust denial being criminalsed) and taking that as case made.

GrahamH wrote:What is this obsession with "police" and "government".
It's an education programme. No authority, no sanctions.

The thinking seems to "if something can go wrong it will" then list some unrelated instances of things going wrong (and holocaust being criminalsed) and taking that as case made.

In my case, it's because it's making more necessary the jobs of college administrators who have nothing better to do than invent and administrate programs. I'm a fossil, Graham. I'm repining for the days when the tail of administration did not wag the dog of inquiry.

You're desperately defending these programs with nothing more than the mantra that they don't obviously cause any harm, rather than on the basis that they demonstrably will do any good in relation to the money spent on them. Except, you know, good for the folks who administrate them.

And that, Graham, is an opinion about what looks like your increasingly myopic focus on terms of convenience in discussing this, and your idiotic implication that this is nothing more than spin-doctoring.

Students may need to be trained to respond effectively to unpleasant social interactions, but that's an extracurricular endeavor, and is not the same as training people not to initiate unpleasant social interactions, because there's no fucking methodology for that. You know, no authority, no sanctions.

GrahamH wrote:What is this obsession with "police" and "government".
It's an education programme at an educational institution. No authority, no sanctions, no policing.

The thinking seems to "if something can go wrong it will" then list some unrelated instances of things going wrong (and holocaust denial being criminalsed) and taking that as case made.

Yes, it’s not clear that Sheffield University could ban any form of speech that’s not already illegal in the UK, even if they wanted to. The UK does have laws against hate speech, also for human rights, equality and protection from harassment (these acts are discussed on page 109 of the Equality and Human Rights Commission 2019 report on racial harassment in UK universities here).

It sounds as though Sheffield University is trying to work with the grain. Given that they have students from many different cultures and countries living away from home for the first time, most of whom prefer not to cause unintentional offence (or to break UK laws), it makes sense to provide some official guidance and discussion, and to promote this while leaving it optional.

Whether it’s a good idea to put students rather than staff in charge of the training/discussion groups is another question. It could be tricky even for a trained professional to manage a productive discussion on an emotive subject in a roomful of students from a variety of cultures. There’s no obvious indication that Sheffield University has run a pilot project before launching this initiative, I don’t know whether it’s been tried elsewhere.

Cito di Pense wrote:
You're desperately defending these programs with nothing more than the mantra that they don't obviously cause any harm, rather than on the basis that they demonstrably will do any good in relation to the money spent on them. Except, you know, good for the folks who administrate them.

You are wrong. I am not "desperately defending these programs." None of us are in any position on our own account to predict how such a programme might work out. The difference between us is simply that I am not utterly cynical about the possibility of expertise in academia achieving smething worthwhile.

Frankly your stance there surprises me. I had a vague notion you were an academic and valued expertise. Is it just the social sciences you despise?

Even the cynics seem to agree that if the programme worked well it would be a good thing to tackle racism on campus. I just allow the possibility that those ends might be achieved and many of you seem certain, with no good reason that has been articulated here, that some great and terrible oppression of entirely decent innocent people will surely result.