FAIR Weekly Roundup
December 5th, 2021
For Quillette, Sally Satel, visiting professor of psychiatry at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons, expressed her deep concerns with a new 54-page document from the American Medical Association called Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative, and Concepts.
According to Satel, “the guide reads more like a postmodern manifesto than an actionable blueprint for physicians,” and contains “page after page of ‘medical newspeak.’” For instance, the guide attempts to explain all health disparities between groups in terms of “power relations” to be solved by a redistribution of “power and resources.”
Satel believes this kind of activism has no place in medicine. She states:
Physicians cannot—and should not—“dismantle racism and intersecting systems of oppression” as part of their clinical mission. To imply that such activity falls within our scope of expertise is to abuse our authority. Doctors can reasonably lobby for policies directly promoting health, such as better coverage for patient care or more services, but we will lose our focus and dilute our efforts to care for patients if we seek to address the perceived root causes of health disparities.
Read the full article here.
For Persuasion, Adrian Wooldridge explained his belief that the idea of meritocracy is “so fundamental to modern societies that we take it for granted” and risk losing it. He says:
The meritocratic idea is necessarily fragile: humans are biologically programmed to favor their kith and kin over strangers. We are right to think that the modern world, with its vibrant economy and favor-free public sector, would be impossible without the meritocratic idea. But we are wrong to think that meritocracy will be with us forever if we proceed to douse its roots in poison.
Wooldridge believes that the rise of meritocracy was a rejection of the “pre-modern” norm that favored “lineage rather than achievement and willing subordination rather than ambition.” The rejection of this norm, according to Wooldridge, “was at the heart of the four great revolutions that created the modern world”—the industrial revolution, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and Great Britain’s liberal revolution.
Wooldridge thinks the current “war on merit” is a threat to the modern world and “will rob the West of its economic dynamism while simultaneously encouraging interest groups to compete for resources on the basis of collective rights and group resentments.”
Read the full article here.
For The New York Times, columnist Bret Stephens outlined why he believes “wokeness” will ultimately fail.
According to Stephens, there are two kinds of protests: those based on the idea that “the American system is ultimately geared to fulfill its inner promises” of equal and unalienable rights, the pursuit of happiness, and forming a more perfect union, and those that “have turned against the system, either because they don’t think the system can meet its promises, or because they never agreed with the promises in the first place.”
Stephens explains that the former type of movements generally succeed because they “build the country up, and bring Americans more closely together, on foundations already in place,” while the latter type always fail because they “want to tear things down, divide Americans” and they “reject and [want to] replace our national foundations.” Stephens believes “wokeness” will fail because it resembles this second type of movement. He states:
In the long run, Americans have always gotten behind protest movements that make the country more open, more decent, less divided. What today is called Woke does none of those things. It has no future in the home of the free.
Read the full article here.
For Jewish Journal, David Bernstein wrote about a worrying trend he has observed within the Jewish community—the rejection of intellectual debate on topics relating to social justice. He personally encountered this tendency after writing an article claiming that so-called “critical race theory” or “CRT” taught in some Jewish day schools was akin to religious dogma. For merely expressing this view, Bernstein says he was labeled a “racist.”
Bernstein believes that CRT, which he claims “prioritizes collective culpability over individual responsibility,” is dangerous because it increases racial tensions and fuels antisemitism. Furtermore, questioning and challenging conventional thought and refusing to conform is central to Jewish teaching and history.
The Jew has always questioned the unquestionable and challenged the conventional… What the antisemite hates most about us—the refusal to conform—has been our most vital function in society. And there is no more powerful expression of this sense of purpose than our argumentativeness, always forcing the discussion, never letting things rest.
Bernstein believes that “healthy society needs more than one kind of person,” but worries that many progressive Jews are now “demanding acquiescence to a new status quo” in the name of progress.
Read the full article here.
For Persuasion, psychologist Jonathan Haidt and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff outlined “eight steps business leaders can take to prevent ideological pressure and political conformity in the workplace.”
Following the publication of their book The Coddling of the American Mind, Haidt and Lukianoff claim they are frequently contacted by corporations asking for advice on how to deal with “internal issues” regarding their recent Gen-Z hires.
They told us that their youngest employees show increased levels of anxiety, depression, and fragility; a tendency to turn ordinary conflicts between co-workers into major issues requiring the attention of the Human Resources Department; and greater insistence that the organization must share and express their personal political values related to social justice.
To help assist companies that wish to avoid such issues, Haidt and Lukianoff outline eight steps companies can take to avoid or mitigate these workplace issues.
Find out what those eight steps are here.
For Newsweek, Rienard Knight-Laurie wrote a powerful essay on what he believes is the best way to eliminate racism. While some currently hold that the best way to address America’s dark past is to have white people identify with “the worst actors in Western history,” Knight-Laurie believes this is counterproductive. He states:
You don't accomplish that by reifying the same racial segregation that convinced the children in those photographs that they had nothing in common with "Black" bodies. You don't do that by inducting today's children into groups of oppressors and oppressed. You certainly don't do that by segregating white victims of police brutality from Black ones… You do it by eliminating the barrier to empathy between races. In other words, by eliminating the perceived reality of race.
According to Knight-Laurie, most Americans are in agreement about the evils of race-based discrimination. However, one belief that still persists, and which is ironically perpetuated by those claiming to fight racism, is the “pseudoscientific idea that we're categorically distinct from others in our species.” He states that:
An aspiration to see race as irrelevant is not the same as seeing racism as irrelevant; quite the contrary: Discrimination makes even less sense when you see your reflection in the other's eyes.
Read the full article here.
Recently, FAIR Advisor Batya Ungar-Sargon sat down with Briahna Joy Gray on Gray’s podcast Bad Faith to discuss “wokeness,” and free college, and other topics. Despite the podcast’s “Bad Faith” moniker, this conversation perfectly encapsulates FAIR’s good-faith and pro-human approach to discussing important issues.
Though Ungar-Sargon and Gray disagree on many things, their openness to hearing and understanding each other’s viewpoints leads them to realize how much of their disagreements arise from semantics rather than substance.
You can watch the first 47 minutes of the discussion above, or get the full conversation here.
This week, FAIR Advisors Glenn Loury and John McWhorter discussed anger, shame, sadness, and race in America on Loury’s YouTube channel and podcast The Glenn Show.
The topics covered are wide-ranging: they question whether they’re wasting their time taking about race, discuss how each of their families shaped their attitudes toward race, and even reflect on their own past radicalism as well as their current anger.
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