This thread was misnamed from the beginning. It was in response to Stupid Republican Idea of the Day, but the now-banned OP thought that liberal was the opposite of Republican. He should have named it Stupid Democratic idea of the day.
The difference is that the original thread pointed out things that actual elected Republicans were doing that were stupid, whereas this thread can nutpick liberals all day long, no matter how little power or backing they have.
So, some liberal teacher somewhere tells the class something about, I don’t know, eating Chinese food is cultural appropriation or something, and it’s in this thread. Whereas it takes an actual elected idiot to do something that makes the original thread.
I never really made a distinction between liberal and progressive but it seems more relevant lately when there’s a growing split between center-left and far-left. I once considered myself far left, but far left used to mean something different. There are a growing number of left-wing progressive representatives that strike me as batshit insane, or at best, unserious.
So yes I suppose I meant progressive. I’ve been in and around progressive activists for years so I don’t consider it nutpicking. There are large numbers of professionals who will attend that webinar, even with the legal threats Trump has made against all nonprofits who engage in “illegal DEI” activities. The webinar is being hosted by a major nonprofit technical assistance provider.
Had to scroll up to see who that was… I remember them. Total idiot.
Well, if we spin off a Stupid Progressive Idea of the Day, I’m sure I would find the occasional example, even if we limited it to elected politicians and major media figures. But I haven’t felt so inclined to post in the Liberal thread.
I consider progressives a subset of liberal if there is any distinction at all. You keep capitalizing Liberal which means something quite different to me than liberal so I’m not really clear about what you consider an acceptable post in this thread.
I think some progressives are liberals and some progressives are illiberal.
The distinction was drawn most eloquently here and I always reference this article, specifically the breakdown it gives in the first footnote:
I think progressives straddle the boundary between the edge of the liberal left and the illiberal left, and that the first “Left” group is trying to pull them away from “Left-Liberals” and towards left wing Illiberalism. That’s where much of the current conflict in the Democratic Party is coming from. And when a progressive espouses ideas like the one you quoted, it’s clear that they are on the illiberal side of the line.
It’s not talking about merely ‘having to thank donors’, seems to me, it’s talking about having to taķe on the emotional labour involved again and again. And black people definitely have thoughts about that. What Blacks mean by "I'm done with whites."
You are privileged to see ‘having to perform gratitude’ as just ‘part of the job’. POC still have a group memory of when bring able to shuck and jive was a matter of life and death.
Given the severe disparity between liberal/Democrat stupidity vs. conservative/Republican stupidity, I’m perfectly happy using this thread as a general dumping ground for all stupidity that falls on the left side of the spectrum.
I don’t think it’s quite that restrictive. Other Republicans get mentioned, as does prominent right wing MAGA / conservative stuff.
I’m fine with @Spice_Weasel’s criteria, though I also share @MrDibble’s skepticism a bit: I’d want to see what they actually said. Is it actually about the same stuff all fundraisers are supposed to do? And, even if it is, is that responsibility equally shared?
But that’s arguing about whether the idea is actually stupid. Not policing what can/should be meant by “liberal.”
I agree. This is definitely a situation where I’d like to see more background on what’s going on with the complainants’ organization and what specifically prompted the complaints.
But just speculating on probabilities, I incline toward this interpretation: It’s not so much that anybody’s objecting to the realities of nonprofit orgs needing to express gratitude to donors. It’s that systemic racism has created a society where even now, vastly disproportionate numbers of rich donors are white, and disproportionate numbers of POC are in subordinate positions. And when the latter’s job duties include substantial amounts of deferential fawning over the former… yeah, that has uncomfortable cultural echoes from the past that I would think could be pretty exhausting to deal with on the regular.
(Especially if some of the wealthy white donors are of an age and background, as many wealthy white people are, where they take it for granted on some level that POC are supposed to treat them with subservience and deference. Geee-ross.)
But it is part of the job. In any nonprofit fundraising enterprise, someone has to do it. Is the premise that that job always has to be done by a white person? I hardly think that “only white people can do certain jobs” is what we’re looking for, here.
OK, the solution to that is to get more minorities into positions of power and authority. Which is, in fact, the solution to most racism-related problems.
There are actually a fair number of “liberal ideas” that have good goals, but end up actually working directly counter to those goals. One I often complain about is “person-first terminology”. Like, you shouldn’t refer to “black people”, but rather “person of color”. Not “AIDS patient”, but “person with AIDS”, and so on. The idea is that, by putting “person” first, you’re emphasizing their personhood. Except that the actual effect is that, by using a different and linguistically-unnatural construction exclusively for things that are viewed as negative, you’re othering them. Because nobody ever uses person-first terminology for anything that’s considered neutral or positive: When my fellow teachers ask for my help in putting up a poster high up on their wall, or getting things down from a shelf, they’re not looking for a “person of height”; they’re looking for a tall person. The 1% aren’t “persons of wealth”; they’re rich people.
I’m involved in more than one nonprofit where that is definitely not the case. Performative gratitude is not a necessary part of nonprofit activities. Genuine thanks, sure, obsequy, no.
Maybe it’s different here in South Africa, where Blacks are not in the minority and wield at least political power (even though the funders still tend to be White). But based on what I’ve read from US non-profit workers, I don’t think they feel it’s something necessary, either:
I don’t know anything about working for a non profit, but I would assume some donors are rich, arrogant assholes, and thus some charities would logically be incentivized to cater to such rich, arrogant assholes, which might include ass kissing and obsequious displays of gratitude.
I say this with no judgement (aside from that of rich, arrogant assholes, as well as the society that caters to them over the priorities of the many unmet needs that charities exist to address). And certainly white privilege would be involved in this if workers of color were to be required to express such displays to white donors.
I don’t know the exact moral calculation for a charity that might or might not consider it morally acceptable to engage in this behavior to get bigger donations (and thus help more needy people).
I’m not reading anywhere in that article that coddling donors doesn’t work. The article doesn’t even appear to be about the donor relations aspect specifically - it seems to be about relations within an organization.
As far as if it is effective, my wild guess is that even most rich donors don’t care and roll their eyes through it, but the ones that do care really want to be told how great they are. There’s a separate question of whether coddling the donors isjust cannibalizing them from donating to other organizations or if it actually gets more money donated to good causes than otherwise.
It might that the blurb for the seminar wasn’t communicated well but my read on it was that it was saying that organizations should still have people who coddle the donors but shouldn’t have black people do it which does seem pretty racist to me.