You must realize that in most cases biases are vague and therefore fairly innocuous. Unless I’ve been taught to hate a particular group, why would I think of them the most horrible thoughts conceivable? Do you really think that’s how most people operate - that they are all seething, heaving volcanoes of racial, ethnic and religious hatred? I don’t believe that you do but that seems to be what you are describing.
Also, you need to distinguish between bias and prejudice. Thinking that all gays are pedophiles is a prejudice not a bias. Prejudice is the realm of the bigot.
A further distinction is that someone possessed of a bias remains open to new information inconsistent with that bias. Only when they are not open to such information does it become prejudice and therefore bigotry.
I’m sure you could have seen that distinction for yourself but my guess is that you didn’t because it is inconsistent with the argument you want to make, which is that any kind of bias amounts to bigotry. Well, it doesn’t. If you’re honest with yourself, you will realize that you too have biases regarding various groups. It’s inconceivable that you or anyone would not. That doesn’t make you a bigot.
Let me give you an example. I was born in Alabama - well before the civil rights movement. I have a copy of an old will from one of my father’s ancestors which talks about the disposition of slaves. But I was never taught to hate black people. In fact, I was taught to respect everyone. However I was also taught that certain types of social interactions were acceptable and some were not. As a result of that I do have certain biases which I wish I didn’t, but they are so deeply ingrained that there is nothing I can do about them. What I CAN do is refuse to act on those biases - which is precisely what I do - without exception or deviation - ever.
So am I a bigot? No. I am not.
It’s no different than having lustful thoughts for a woman you barely know. Does that make you an adulterer? No, it doesn’t. Because what matters is how you treat people - and that includes indirect contact as well - like voting for a black president for example.
dzero, you excessively discount the power and impact of “vague” biases; they are, in real life, not so innocuous in their impacts. I submit to you that fairly little of the harmful effects of biases are due to people who are “seething, heaving volcanoes of racial, ethnic and religious hatred”, but instead are the result of individuals who are not even consciously aware of their biases, who have bigoted thoughts but who would recoil from the concept of being labelled a bigot, but who still express, reinforce, and in minor but many multiple ways act on, stereotypes and biases every day. The David Dukes and skinheads are obvious but their actual impact is small; those who think it reasonable to post a list of Jews who have been no more vocal in their support of Israel and who have no more actual ties to Israel than a host of Christian conservatives higher up in an administration with the comment that it is reasonable to ask if their judgement is clouded and that while they are not necessarily Israeli agents, they could be … and who then suggest that Jews overwhelm Hollywood and discriminate against non-Jews … and who feels comfortable calling someone who says that maybe Jews succeed in Hollywood on the basis of cultural factors and talent is a bigot and a Jewish Supremacist … is not as necessarily such a seething volcano, may recoil from the concept of being thought of as a bigot, but is the one who has more potential to cause harm. The taxi drivers who are just too nervous to pick up the Black fare, the citizens who fear an Islamic Community center … these people with their vague biases and indescript discomfort, cause more harm, even though many voted for a Black man for President.
So far you’ve argued that if there’s no genocide then racism isn’t a really big deal and if you don’t have “the most horrible thoughts conceivable” then bias about a group doesn’t count as fully. But that doesn’t hold. There are degrees of racism and someone who doesn’t like Mexicans is a racist, just to a lesser degree, as someone who was lynching ‘uppity’ blacks during the civil rights struggle.
The distinction you’re trying to draw between “bias” and “prejudice” is also nonsensical. If one prejudges a group then they have a bias having to do with that group. If someone has a bias having to do with a group, then they have prejudged them.
This is a spurious distinction. What you’re describing is someone who’s prejudiced against a group but who remains open to new information. With that logic even hardcore racists who later change their minds weren’t really racists. Besides, what does it mean to be open to new information? “I think blacks are inferior and all the evidence I’ve seen hasn’t changed my mind, but if I see some hypothetical evidence it might change my views.”
That’s also a non sequitor. Having lustful thoughts means you do lust after someone. Adultery is an action, not simply thoughts. Bigotry/racism/prejudice/bias describes beliefs. Someone who privately thinks that blacks are inferior and shouldn’t marry white people but smiles at their black employees and doesn’t mistreat them is still a racist.
You seem to think that people can exist in the world and not have any kind of bias. You’re wrong. Bias is, in my humble opinion, and evolutionary adaptation. I believe there is research to support that opinion but I’m not sure I could track it down easily. I don’t think that is necessary though if you think about it. We never have all the information we need when dealing with new situations or people. So out of necessity we will make certain assumptions based on whatever partial information we have. We understand that some of it may be wrong or misleading but we also know that there is likely to be an element of truth as well. It may be distorted in the same way as other myths and legends, but just as those usually have some basis in fact, however attenuated, we know that there is a good chance our preconceptions will have some kernel of truth as well.
What you are failing to do is look at this objectively. Try to remember the last time you encountered someone whom you did not know but about whom you had some preconceptions. Did you assume those beliefs were fact and act accordingly or did you use them as a hypothesis to gauge the situation you were in at the time? This is what I’m talking about and this is what both you and Finn seem to be doing your best to ignore.
All people, everywhere and always, have been, are, and forever will continue, to be biased in a staggering number of ways and about an indefinite number of subjects. Whether I think Fox News is a shill for the neo-cons or that North Koreans eat their babies, you, me and everyone will be biased about something. Sometimes that something will be a group of people. But in that case I’m not allowed to have any bias because, well, I don’t know why. It’s ok for me to be biased against Fox news. You don’t have a problem with that. But if I have a bias about blacks, I’ve somehow stepped over a line. Well, as I’ve already shown, I haven’t stepped over anything.
If you want to make the case for latent bias as being the genesis of the next holocaust, you’re going to have to make a much more convincing argument than you have. And if that isnt’ your fear, then what is? Whatever it is, is it more important than my right to discuss my thoughts and ideas? If you’re going to try to shut me up the minute I broach a subject that is indicative of a bias, you’d better have a damned good reason. So what is it that makes discussing anti-semitic tropes, memes, etc so verboten that I dare not speak their name?
Do true anti-semites use the ruse of “intelligent discussion” as a blind for their true agenda? Abso-fucking-lutely. Does that somehow mean I need to STFU? That’s not even guilt by association. That’s guilt by some transitive property of being human.
FinnAgain: I have made the points I thought were important as clearly as possible. If you don’t see them, it’s because you don’t want to and nothing I say will change that. You are willfully misinterpreting what I’ve said and responding to arguments I have not made. I see no point in engaging you.
Not only did I see them I directly responded to them. Much like the argument that if someone doesn’t agree with you, why, they must not understand you or be lying about what you aid. It’s rather funny that I quote your words, respond to them, and I’m somehow misrepresenting them. Now that’s funny.
Of course, it’s rather elucidative that when faced with your own words, you too would like to claim (without pointing out any actual errors, naturally) that your words aren’t what you really meant to say, and also that people should be free to say racist stuff without someone trying to “shut you up” by daring to speak their mind about what they’re saying.
I directly quoted your words and pointed out where there were contradictions or errors in logic, so like Spokes claims, yours too must be distorting what you’re saying. Funny that the those who are arguing for their right to say anti-Semitic things without criticism are continually being misrepresented by their own words.
Curiouser and curiouser.
If you actually have a point, why don’t you point out a single instance where I was incorrect about what you said. Just one will do. Something tells me I shouldn’t hold my breath.
You keep jumping to this, why? If it’s not genocide then who cares? If it’s not genocide then it doesn’t matter? What exactly is your point, anti-Semitism is okay as long as Jews aren’t rounded up and gassed?
You have an interesting double standard there. You want to be able to discuss anti-semitic tropes, memes, etc… but if someone else wants to tell you that’s offensive and you shouldn’t be saying that, why, that’s wrong.
That’s also a weird non sequitor. Nobody has said that you shouldn’t be saying racist/anti-Semitic/offensive because anti-semites use the same conversational tactics, but that you shouldn’t be talking nonsense and using anti-Semitic tropes because you’d be talking nonsense and using anti-Semitic tropes.
But of course your response seems to be “but if it won’t lead to a Holocaust then just shut up and don’t object!”
Yes, but that’s a bit of a sidetrack. The Stein article seems to be focused on the management end of the business, not the creative end.
Jews are very well represented in the upper echelons in a number of fields (a fact which, just so you’re clear, causes me no resentment whatsoever). However, they are NOT as dominant in those other fields as they seem to be in the ranks of management in Hollywood. As I noted upthread, Jews comprise something like 20% of the lawyers in the biggest firms. That is greater than their percentage of the general population, but not so great that it couldn’t be explained by cultural emphasis on achievement and/or cultural emphasis on communication skills.
Here I’m not so sure. Here’s the article which prompted the OP and which seems to be saying that nearly all of the upper management in the entertainment industry is Jewish. If all the studio heads are Jewish, and most of the upper management is Jewish, I think it’s a fair bet that similar percentages of lower management in the entertainment industry are Jewish. (Assuming promotion from within the ranks.)
Those numbers for lower management are not available, so the evidence we do have is suggestive, but not conclusive.
The numbers among upper management are so skewed that they might provide encouragement to a discrimination lawyer with an aggrieved client in his lobby. The actual numbers in lower management, as well as the hiring practices in the affected companies, would be factual matters that would have to be fleshed out during the discovery process. (Depositions, written discovery, etc.)
You are comparing apples and oranges here I think. Stein writes: “The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.”
While Jews may be overrepresented in some professions (such as doctors and lawyers), they are not dominant to that extent. You don’t have to “scour the trades” to come up with Gentiles in high positions in those professions. And that is why the numbers in Hollywood suggest that something more than just merit-based achievement may be at work. It suggests, as I have said all along, a (non-sinister) good-old-boy network.
Of course. There is no Jewish hive mind. (Why are you even asking me this? Nothing I have ever written suggests anything to the contrary.)
Sorry, but it is an open question. We just don’t have enough information to know. (In particular I mean information about lower management, and about hiring practices.) We have information that is suggestive of discrimination, bot not in any way conclusive.
And while some in this thread seem to think that the very idea of a lawsuit is anathema, and maybe indicative of some sort of anti-Semitic grudge, I couldn’t disagree more. It seems to me like a lawsuit might clear the air. If there is are no discriminatory hiring practices at work, evidence adduced in discovery should disclose that fact, and put the idea to rest.
I recognize that everyone has biases; I was merely objecting to your discounting those biases as “fairly innocuous” if they are “vague” - you are very wrong, seriously wrong, about that. Vague biases are often the worst kind because they are so endemic and so … accepted. One needn’t be a “seething, heaving volcano of racial, ethnic and religious hatred” to have their biases have very harmful effects, and it is especially when one is unaware of even having the biases that some of the greatest harm can be done. It are those biases that create systematic oppression.
Biases are short cuts, cheats of sorts, and over the course of evolution have no doubt been adaptive. But like many other of our biologic predispositions, what served us well in prehistory can be maladaptive in today’s world. We no longer live in small kinship based bands. Being distrustful of the “other”, oppressing the “other”, is indeed part of our evolutionary heritage, and did serve to help pass on the genes of those who did it better than those who did not. But is still maladaptive for our society of today.
I think that your assumption that a prejudice (bias) likely has some basis in fact, some element or kernel of truth, is frighteningly ignorant. I hope that you reconsider that position.
You are also confusing experience based learning with prejudices. I know from experience that John Stewart often makes me laugh; turning on his show and expecting to be entertained is not being biased, it is experienced based learning. I know from past observation that Fox spins the news to a particular political end and creates a news cycle for that purpose; that also is not a bias, it is experience based learning. OTOH being receptive to a belief that I should be afraid of a random Black man, or of a random Muslim person on a plane, or any of the anti-Semitic tropes that I listed, is not experience based learning - it is distorted generalization from highly filtered images of reality without enough actual reality to offset it. It is allowing the mythologies of the haters to substitute for real experience given a state of ignorance.
Of course Holocausts cannot occur without these less horrific more mundane acts of prejudice, so of course latent biases are the genesis of not only the next Holocaust, but of the genocides that are occurring on this planet in our time. But I don’t need to be worrying about genocide to be concerned about the harm of accepting prejudicial tropes as reality and to be concerned about the harms that the our individual biases may cause unless we remain vigilant against them.
Of course discuss your thoughts and ideas. And when those thoughts and ideas are based not on actual evidence but on fictions created by those with bigoted beliefs, be prepared to be told that such is the case. And if you develop a record of expressing those tropes as reasonable thoughts, and if you persist in expressing them even after the facts have been pointed out to you, and it has been explained to you how those are historically fictions created by the haters and the oppressors, then be prepared for others to conclude bad things about your motives. A lie that is allowed to be repeated enough gets some to believe that there must some kernel of truth … and then that it must be true. The tropes cannot be allowed to fester and spread. I give the benefit of the doubt that they are “asking” out of simple and innocent ignorance; but when the apparent ignorance becomes willful, stubborn, and repetitive, then ramping it up a notch is indicated.
spoke that article is not evidence. It is a column written by a columnist trying to mock something that I think he is naive to try to mock. It is not a comprehensive review of the ranks of even upper management in movie making at this particular time. It is noting that right now the heads of the majors are mostly Jewish. And saying that Jews shouldn’t be afraid to be proud of what those of their culture have accomplished. Instead be pleased that we live in a country in which that can occur.
To pretend that that column, written as a bit of entertainment, is serious research, is pathetic. But your persisting in presenting it as such is consistent and tells me what I need to know.
Of course, this is simply spin on the part of Stein. What evidence does Stein have, (which he carefully failed to present), that the individuals called were “afraid” of anything, (as opposed to dismissing Stein as some sort of shit-stirring crank and choosing to not feed his unrevealed agenda)?
Given an industry that was nearly created by a single ethnic group, (much as most U.S. industry was created by WASPs in the nineteenth century), it hardly strikes me as out of line that less than a century later that industry might still be dominated at the highest levels by the same ethnic group. (My Dad joked, a couple of years after JFK’s election, that that had been nice, but that Catholics had finally gained genuine admittance to American society when James Roche was selected CEO of General Motors.)
You’re still dodging the most important question. If I have certain biases regarding blacks - which I have already admitted - and I don’t act on them, how does that hurt anyone? If I express those biases and want to discuss them but refuse to accept your version of the so-called “facts”, whom am I harming?
You have no answer to that because there is no harm - neither real nor speculative. You object to anyone even entertaining the idea that every major studio is headed by someone of presumed Jewish heritage due to any reason other than the fact that they just so happen to be better at this sort of work than anyone else. What other possible explanation could there be? Without exaggeration, you seem to believe any other proposed scenario is, by definition, bigoted. And yet you are the one implying that I’m the party who is deluded and ignoring the facts. Personally, I would have to classify that as nothing less than ironic. You won’t even consider any other possibility - not because any alternative is so outlandishly implausible (although you no doubt see it that way), but simply because it doesn’t doesn’t match your world view - which obviously must be perfectly and completely correct.
I think it is amusing that you talk so blithely about “facts” when in many situations of this sort the facts, by design, cannot be obtained. I’m at least willing to admit that your explanation may be correct. I think the odds are heavily against that outcome, but I won’t dismiss it. You have repeatedly demonstrated no such willingness of any kind. Again, who more closely matches the profile of a bigot?
Along the same lines you say that I should learn from my experience. That is simply ridiculous. If my only exposure to black people has been when I have been robbed, do you really think I should use that experience as the basis for formulating broader views on race relations? How can you not see the absurdity of that approach?
And finally, how can you have the unmitigated chutzpah to tell me what I’m thinking or how I have arrived at my views? Are you reading my mind? Should I go back to wearing my tin foil caps and living in a Faraday cage?
You don the trappings of impartial empiricism quite well, but in my opinion, you have lost sight of what any of those words mean.
For someone who was accusing other posters of “deliberately” mischaracterizing your remarks, you seem to be doing a pretty good job of the same thing, here.
First off, the discussion appears to have diverged with you and DSeid making separate points, meaning that you are both responding to points not actually made. I suspect that you both need to step back and take a look at your core arguments and try it again, fresh. Assert a specific thesis without relying on previous posts and defend that without getting hung up on what might have been said (and possibly misunderstood) in previous posts.
Second, I see no place in the thread where DSeid has asserted that the only possible explanation for the prevalence of Jewish CEOs in the movie industry is some innate capacity. There are any number of reasons why one ethnic group might dominate a particular niche in a particular industry. DSeid has not claimed that only one possible reason could exist. He has noted that some of the arguments advanced for that prevalence–or the perception of that prevalence–bear a close parallel to arguments that have been proferred about “Jewish dominance” in other realms that are based on stereotypes and anti-semitism. The discussion has tended to focus on whether the stereotypes have validity (or whther they are harmful) while alternative explanations have tended to be lacking or mentioned only in passing.
If I have mischaracterized anyone’s position, then certainly, I apologize and I welcome any explanation DSeid would like to offer for this most striking apparent coincidence. I did make a good faith effort to reprise what I believed that explanation to be but I am more than happy to stand corrected.
I guess I have not been as clear as I intend to be. I don’t think that you can help but act on them. You at least have some hope to minimize it because you are explicitly aware of your biases. I also do my imperfect best and am often amused when reality is so different than my preconceptions would lead me to have expected them to be. But if you really do not have your behavior affected by your biases at all you either live where you do not interact with those of whom you have biases (which of course may a function of having them though), or you are much more thoughtful in your actions than most of us. We are all to some degree part of the problem, some of us more and some less than others. The ones who do not think they can be part of the problem are perhaps at greater risk to actually be more of the problem though.
Indeed over-generalizing from extremely limited experience, or even fictive experiences, is a core part of forming stereotypes. And superstitions. It is not what I mean by experienced based learning. Do you really not understand the difference?
As to the rest, the points have been made before. Are you suspicious of the Nobel Prize winning Jews as well? How could it be that such a small percent of the world’s population has produced such an unreasonable percent of Nobel prize winners (and Kyoto Prize winners, and …)? Maybe there is a conspiracy by the Nobel Prize Committee to award it to Jews who do not deserve it? They are controlled by Jews! Or maybe only Jews are given the access to the right research facilities across the world … we should be open to all possible explanations.
Very seriously, if you can explain why that has occurred, with an explanation that is not also sufficient to explain that at this one point in time the top positions in the some of the major movie production houses are Jewish, then have at it. My suggested explanation is on record, but if clannishness seems absurd to explain the number of Nobel winners, then there is no cause to selectively evoke it for a different field.
As to Tom’s request, perhaps you’d like to go through the same nine points I put out for spoke.
Btw, what of your thinking have I told you that you did not tell me? (Sure, chutzpah I got, but I claim no mind reading ability. I can only tell people what things sound like and what people will very likely conclude and not to be surprised when you hear it.)
And would we excuse an historically WASP-dominated industry for hiring only WASPs in upper management positions? Of course not.
Yes, it is understandable that the film industry is still dominated by the same ethnic group that founded it. Understandable does not equal legal. To the extent hiring decisions may be made based on ethnicity, or based on good-old-boy networks that by their nature tend to exclude other ethnicities, then Hollywood may have crossed a legal line. And that is all I am saying.
Not that anyone cares, but I really hate doing these sorts of vivisected posts. I don’t think I can avoid it this time.
You do realize that you’re really saying my previous statements as to scrupulously never acting on my biases are bullshit - right? I think it’s interesting that you arrive at that conclusion based on nothing more than supposition. You don’t even know what those biases are since I have never disclosed them, but yet you have no trouble assuming that I am lying. Do you really think there is any way I can have a constructive conversation with you when you won’t even accept that I might be telling the truth? And don’t you think the ease with which you made that determination demonstrates the level of your presumptuousness? What basis do you have for saying that I am lying about some unknown quantity other than your own apparent bias as to my veracity?
I was attempting to lead you to the illogical but inevitable extremes of such an approach. Were I to live a few score lifetimes, THEN I might have the sort of exhaustive experience your model would require. Every individual’s experience will be subject to chance. Unless their experience is exhaustively random and repetitive, there is no way to determine if it is representative of the experiences of the population as a whole. Therefore, while it can be useful, it will never give you a truly unbiased perspective. The range and variety of human interaction is so infinitely complex that even the estimate of a few score lifetimes is likely woefully inadequate.
We can move on to such issues later if you insist. For now I would appreciate it if you would be kind enough to reiterate your explanation for why the head of every major studio seems (and I would emphasize the word “seems”) to be of Jewish heritage.
I would prefer that you restate your explanation to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding.
Perhaps I took this quote too personally.
It seems that you were outlining the path of anyone who even entertains some sort of bias - as if this were the inevitable product of such evil .
Aside from vague mutterings about “the man” (in a rather different context), I have never heard of any serious effort to investigate WASP dominance of any industry. I have certainly never heard of a lawsuit filed, or even proposed, to found out the “truth” about such dominance.
How many industries are dominated by one ethnic group or another?
How many of those industries get seriously challenged?
After 90+ years of Jewish “dominance,” where are the actual charges from people who have been “kept out” of movie company board rooms? If there have been no serious complaints or lawsuits prior to this, why would we think that there is any reason look for nefarious actions, now?
For that matter, what nefarious actions were employed by Iger, (or, I suppose, Michael Eisner), to wrest control of Disney into Jewish hands? Do none of these publicly traded entertainment conglomerates have independent boards of directors who can seek out Gentiles for higher positions?
