What’s Our Problem - Book Review and Comments

 What’s Our Problem - Book Review and Comments

This is about this book: What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies by Tim Urban. He is the author of this popular blog: Wait But Why  The latest blog entry at this date is his experience of his first child’s birth - also worth a read.

If you just want an overview of the book, go to the Amazon link above. He wrote the summary there. He spent 6 years writing the book. At one point, it had twice the number of pages published. With a lot of research and a lot of help, he got it pared down a bit.

I really encourage you to read the book. Jude says that I say this about every new book I pick up - but THIS ONE is really important, interesting, life changing, and could help save our democracy. Superlatives abound. It is also a lot of fun, and “graphically illustrated” - kind of. The last few chapters are the best part - but if you skip to those you will not quite get what is going on. 

I write these blog entries for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I retain things better if I write them down. It forces me to organize ideas, form connections, etc. The other motive is that I really want to share them, and discuss them with someone - anyone. If this one strikes you, send me a note, an email, a comment. 

So, how to entice you to read it? I am your standard progressive, liberal kind of male octogenarian. In the course of reading this book I learned a ton of new things about our culture, our democracy and myself. Let me lay out a few of my “strange” ideas that you might also be suffering from. 

Short List of My New Learnings

This is a list of things which I discovered I had not understood correctly.

• Critical Race Theory 

• White Privilege

• Transgender persuasion or education

• JK Rowling’s transphobic opinions

• Diversity is always a good goal.

• Google Memo on gender differences in IT

• Police are killing blacks disproportionately 

• Racism in the U.S. has gotten worse

• Women are paid less than men for comparable work

• Trans women of color have a shorter life expectancy.

• Most people of the “other political persuasion” are not thinking rationally.

• The extreme left are a small and insignificant part of the Democratic party.

• Universities support open idea exchange

I want to assure you that there are many more insights in the book - this is just to whet your appetite. And I am willing to bet that my grandkids have no idea about the origin of that expression: “whet your appetite” - just as they have no clue what “prime the pump” comes from. But  . . . 

Expanded List of My New Learnings

• Critical Race Theory.
  My prior view of this topic was that it was a tempest in a teapot. The ultra conservatives are resisting it for no good reason. Turns out, there are two manifestations of this thing. The “liberal” one - my view - is that this is a fair and accurate examination of our history as a nation, and the history of slavery as a human institution. Slavery was perverse, and universal, and the fact that we finally understood that and outlawed it is a huge accomplishment. We should teach and celebrate that. This is the view of the “Social Justice Liberals”, or “Progressives” in my vocabulary. See Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves. by Adam Hochschild 
  Turns out, what the conservatives are opposed to is a totally different program supported by the far left, the group the author calls  “Social Justice Fundamentalism”, or SJF proponents. These folk are pushing Critical Race Theory as a kind or racist teaching curriculum, not a descriptive history term. They are basically teaching people how to be racist, in a perverse fashion. They are committed to removing the social negatives that are embedded in our world view by pushing an extreme, contrary racism. This is not history - this is not based on any science or fact. This is a biased, hateful approach to all humans. The author describes these classes and curriculums in great detail - it would make me ill to think that my children would be exposed to this kind of craziness in school, and our family is multiracial! 

• White Privilege.
  I read a whole book on this topic, and agreed wholeheartedly with the author’s understanding of the problem. By the good fortune of being born with fair skin, from a European heritage, my current world accords me many advantages that have nothing to do with my skill, ability, or hard work. This was especially true when I was growing up during the 40s and 50s. That is simply an undeniable fact.
  But this term, “White Privilege” has been cast by the extreme left, the SJF, as a blanket condemnation of all individuals of fair complexion. It could be called “white guilt” - and there is a book by that title that I have also read. This book and this approach has not a scintilla of research or evidence supporting the view - just opinions and condemnations. Those white folk are not accorded any room for discussion or debate. That white group is told to be quiet. Anyone of a darker hue who protests that they are not affected by this syndrome or atmosphere is considered to be non rational, a traitor, or worse. This is reverse racism. This is a non rational approach to a significantly complex social problem - and it is not helping. People of a conservative bent are rightly upset about that kind of stupidity, as should we all.

• Transgender persuasion or education.
  I thought the extreme right were simply opposed to all transgender support efforts. Many of them are, but the more moderate folk are focused on a very different beast. There is a decent amount of data that indicates that many more young women are now questioning their gender as a result of all of the publicity and discussion about gender identity. The number of young men going through this seems stable. The concern is that the simple fact of being a woman in today’s still male dominated world is enough to cause some questions in any young woman. We should not rush to introduce biological therapies, some of which are irreversible, when young people are still highly persuadable and impressionable. See JK Rowling’s concern below.

• JK Rowling as transphobic.
  I saw a whole flurry of articles in the media about JK Rowling being somehow transphobic - upset about the push for recognizing trans teens or some such. I figured she had some quirk in that area, and it was not my problem. After reading some of this book, I decided to go check. I did a Google search on the topic. The first few hits were popular magazine articles exploring how terrible this was and lamenting the damage to her reputation, etc. Even articles defending her assumed that she was transphobic.
  Looking further down the search list, I found her website, and a lengthy piece that she penned there to explain her concerns. You might also read it (see below) - and then tell me how this concern could have possibly given her the reputation of being transphobic. I know she is wealthy and she will survive this, but she has suffered enormous loss to her public image and probably some income to a totally trumped up case with no basis. What she describes is a very real concern based on her own experience as a woman and the data that is available about the numbers of trans teens. It seems likely that many young women are being persuaded to undertake biological therapy without need. It is a well balanced, careful argument that our society and government need to be careful here. I have to admit that Twitter and her tweets there have not helped this perspective at all, but the criticism is way over the top. I am NOT a fan of Twitter.
  https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/
  https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/my-article-for-the-sunday-times-scotland-on-why-i-oppose-gender-recognition-act-reform/ 

• Diversity is always a good goal.
  At first glance, that seems like a commendable thing. Any group is better if it represents our full population - be it “race”, “gender”, conservative, liberal, etc.
  But the far left see it very differently. It has to be a mathematical precision, with no other values considered. Blind auditions is one good example that shows how ridiculous this is. Major orchestras introduced this blind audition method to ensure that a racial or gender bias was not affecting their decisions for promoting and hiring capable musicians. The candidate performs behind a screen, and they are judged based solely on their performance.  Page 591 
  “In 2020, The New York Times published an article arguing that orchestras should end blind auditions, because they produced orchestras that were not diverse enough, with too many Asian and white musicians. The writer was adhering to Kendi’s definition of an antiracist. The policy of auditioning musicians without seeing who they were was producing an outcome with a racial disparity—and was therefore a racist policy.”
  The extremists are unhappy with this because the results are not as diverse numerically as the general population of candidates. A disproportionate number of “asians” are excellent musicians, and we have disproportionately less representation from “people of color.”  The extreme folk want to fix the problem by juggling the numbers. What we should be doing is working to understand why there is this difference, and determine how we want to attack the cause of that disparity to resolve the problem. Just adjusting the numbers is NOT solving the problem, but rather hiding it, and it is also “reverse racism” against those folks with better abilities. 

• Google Memo on gender differences in IT.
  In this case, a Google employee wrote a very balanced and critical memo to Google management about their diversity programs. He had many suggestions about how to improve things for correcting their male / female disparity in hiring and promotion. All I ever saw of that initially was that he was a biased antifeminist, complaining that his male gender was not being treated fairly for unscientific reasons. He was criticized in the press, in the public, and he was fired by Google.
  Having read the actual memo, it is a wonderfully crafted document, based on research and statistics, and is very supportive of diversity and inclusion. It recommends practical methods for Google to improve their gender balance. You can see this discussion on page 502 of the book. Read the actual memo here:
  https://web.archive.org/web/20170809021151/https://diversitymemo.com/
  (That link should download it. If it stops working, drop me a note - I have a copy.)
  So what happened? The media and the SJF attached a “straw man” memo that the author never wrote. They characterized the attack as a biased, negative reaction to their efforts to achieve gender balance. Within Google and “The Media”, virtually no one defended the author and the actual memo - and he was terminated. When good folk say nothing,  bad things happen. You can read more about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Chamber 

• Police are killing blacks disproportionately
  I do my best to stay up on the news. It was my impression that police kill many more blacks than whites in any set of circumstances - armed, crime, traffic stop, etc. In a sense, I put some of this down to a higher crime rate in black populations. None of that is supported by any factual basis.
  “A 2019 survey asked 980 people from across the political spectrum how many unarmed Black men they believed were killed by police (by shooting or any other means) in 2019. That year, 31 unarmed Black men were killed by police. All groups overestimated the number, with those on the political left being the farthest off. Fifty-four percent of the “very liberal” group were off by a factor of over 30X, while 22% of that group were off by a factor of over 300X.” Page 562
  So, we had 31 unarmed black men killed by police. Estimates from liberal folk ranged from 300 to 9,000. The problem is in the news coverage.
  “Between 2016 and 2022, 326 unarmed white men and 232 unarmed Black men were killed (by any means) by police in the U.S. Media coverage of these incidents has been highly skewed, with the median story about a Black victim receiving nine times the coverage as the median story about a white victim.”
  In actual fact, more unarmed white men were killed by police than unarmed black men. The truly terrible crimes committed against people like George Floyd and others made those much more newsworthy. On the other side of that, we really do not know whether the killing of white men had some similarly shocking circumstances. 

• Racism in the U.S. has gotten worse
  Prior to the election of 2016, I thought we were making decent progress against racism. After that election and the clearly racist support of many I thought perhaps it had just gone undercover, and was waiting for a spokesperson to make it legitimate to voice those opinions again.
  But the facts indicate that racism is declining in our opinion and in fact. Sources are cited in the text.
  “A Pew question asks Americans whether they believe “racial discrimination is the main reason why many Blacks can’t get ahead.” The percentage of Black respondents answering “yes” steadily decreased starting in the mid-1990s, suggesting that Black Americans’ feeling of agency was on the rise. This makes sense, given the amount of promising data pointing to improving conditions for Black Americans—both the Black poverty rate and the Black unemployment rate have dropped to all-time lows, while both the Black incarceration rate and the disparity between the Black and white incarceration rate have been steadily declining over the past 20 years. But the SJF narrative tells the opposite kind of story, and this could be contributing to a sharp reversal in Black Americans’ sense of empowerment in recent years.”  Page 584                            
  The SJF, extreme left, are preaching a totally different story, which makes black Americans feel even worse about our problems, and less trusting of the police.

• Women are paid less than men for comparable work
  This one is interesting, as you see these numbers cited everywhere, all the time. I have regularly seen estimates of 30 to 40% less for “comparable” work. But it is simply not true. If you take the data and break it down by age, profession, etc. the actual documented difference is about 1%.
  “According to the website Payscale, when controlling for “all compensable variables”—i.e., when comparing apples to apples—the gender wage gap drops dramatically, from 18% to 1%. Women earn 99 cents—not 77 or 80 or 83 cents—for every dollar a man makes, for the same work.” Page 585
  Hmmm. Looking at the Payscale website and their recent press releases, one would get the impression that this statement in the book is not exactly true. See: https://www.payscale.com/press-releases/women-stand-to-lose-900000-in-lifetime-earnings-payscales-gender-pay-gap-report-shows/
  Payscale has good data, but it is also pushing an agenda for selling its expertise. Numbers are flexible things if you have an agenda. I guess the simplest thing to say here that this is NOT a simple problem, and is not going away in a hurry. I did find this interesting:
  “The gender pay gap is also closing in some locations. Women are paid the same as men overall for coastal metros that include Los Angeles, San Diego, ​San ​Jose, Portland, and Washington, D.C. The metros with the largest controlled and uncontrolled gender pay gaps are situated across America’s heartland, such as St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City.”

• Trans women of color have a shorter life expectancy
  The number cited most often is 35 years, less than half of the normal female lifespan. This was cited in a recent Emmy Awards program, and repeated in virtually all of the leading news outlets.This was news to me. As cited in the book there are many articles describing this "fact," but none of them cited a legitimate source, or any data supporting the claim. Best case the news media is incredibly sloppy for some topics. Worst case our more ardent progressives are not above simply making things up to advance the cause. That never turns out well. See: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/09/23/41471629/is-the-life-expectancy-of-trans-women-in-the-us-just-35-no 

• Most people of the “other political persuasion” are not thinking rationally.
  I have to confess that I am prone to this one. Jordan Klepper would provide all the data I need about the folks on the right. Turns out though, exactly the same is true of most of us - left or right. And the extreme left may have a larger vocabulary, but their thought police as even worse than non rational - they are downright fascist. 

• The extreme left are a small and insignificant part of the Democratic party.
  They may be small in number, but the extreme left are now dominating our educational and research institutions in an incredible fashion. The author offers many, many examples where more moderate liberals cannot voice a concern about any “woke” issue without literally losing their jobs and reputation to the “liberal” media and protests. I do not see a huge funded conspiracy here as has been alleged about the Koch brothers on the right. But the fact is that “diversity goals” and “safe speech” are now coloring every type of university research and education. This is even true in purely physical science fields where they have no place. In many institutions the majority of liberal faculty are too afraid to even voice a concern, as their colleagues have been similarly dismissed for doing the same. This is a HUGE problem. This is the whole focus of the book - how can we possibly counter the impact of this tiny, extreme view of racist ideas?

• Universities support open idea exchange
  There is a spectrum of conservative and liberal universities, and the liberal are more numerous. The number of faculty members who identify as conservatives in any survey has rapidly declined. In the top 5 schools, no faculty member was brave enough to indicate that they were conservative or Republican.
  That is one problem, but well beyond that, every moderate liberal faculty member must now defend themselves against the cultural diversity police. Universities have diversity boards, focused on purity and numbers. These groups call out any faculty or students who simply voice a more moderate opinion of the problems facing our society. The author cites many instances where moderate faculty have been roundly condemned by students and fired for expressing their opinions. The result is that no one can even mention that they might disagree with these extreme “thought police.” Things like “speech codes,” “free speech zones,” and “safe areas,” are the new code for “you cannot even express those ideas here.” This is really bad news.

Point of Disagreement

I have one area of disagreement with the author, and I intend to raise that to him in some fashion. He has a quote from Isabel Wilklerson and her book Caste. He cites her statement as another example of this extreme left view. I think he is taking too simplistic a cast on that one - intentional play on words. What Caste describes is not an enforced view that is not amenable to rational discussion of the problem. It is rather a carefully researched and nuanced evaluation that we are all impacted by an unconscious, unaware mental bias about our position in our society. The problem is that this tendency is so far below our normal awareness that it is not amenable to rational discussion. Ms. Wilkerson has done us the service of bringing it to our attention. And she is not forcing us to believe that - it is simply a matter of looking at the evidence.  I wrote a lengthy piece on that which you can read here if you are so inclined.
https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2021/04/finally-i-understand-what-is-wrong-with.html 

Steps To Take

This is a shorthand note of the steps he recommends for us to take to try to counter this extreme left, and to better communicate with the moderate right. Page 659 ff.

1. Courage level 1: Stop saying stuff you don’t believe.
   To really do this, we all need to spend some time THINKING about what we do believe - not just where we happen to be following along.
   I think I have this one in hand - how about you? I used to let people think I was a believing Catholic. When I was accidentally outed, I decided to let it ride. I think going public with my unbelief would have cost me a city council election . I know of a few local politicians who claim membership in the “christian” church called Universalist Unitarianism. That group of folk are not overtly atheistic, but you do not need to believe in any deity to be a formal member. In my case, my “coming out” to our most recent clerical pastor resulted in my being banned from reading during liturgy, or holding any leadership position in our church’s volunteer activities. I am hopeful that my visibility may help a few others be more open to their religious questions.
   On the political scene, I always felt that I was an independent. Running for office at the local level never required any identified political party. I was significantly honored when a local group of active Republicans tried to recruit me to run for our State Legislature. I considered it a high compliment - but I assured them that my mother would turn over in her grave if I did that.
   
   

2. Courage level 2: Start saying what you really think, in private, with people you know well
   I feel pretty good about this one. I do my very best to never mislead anyone about anything. But I have to confess that in a mixed group, I will keep my opinions to myself just to avoid conflict. If people know me at all, our family’s multi-racial makeup pretty much keeps people from engaging in racist discussions. That generally impacts political topics as well. But I have to admit, that even in a private family discussion, I will not raise my voice if I think it will just upset people. I am pretty sure I would object if I felt someone else was being harmed by an erroneous opinion - but I do not travel much in circles where that occurs.
   
   

3. Courage level 3: Go public
   And here we are - a public blog stating strong political views, etc. But this thing has zero impact - well almost zero. Did not mean to malign you personally now that you have read all the way to the bottom. My Apologies.

SO?

So - what do you think? What can you do to help us out here? Thanks.

Stay safe out there.