“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.” John Stuart Mill
George Rebane
This is the title of a recent major essay by Dr Amy Wax that initially appeared (here) in the January 2018 issue of the Imprimis, and was also featured in the 17feb18 issue of WSJ. I bring it to our attention because it asks and answers a question of great moment in today’s America, and it also totally reflects the Rebane Doctrine that I have promoted for years in these pages. Her vitae abstract reads –
Amy L. Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she has received the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence. She has a B.S. from Yale College, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. She is a former assistant to the United States Solicitor General, and her most recent book is Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century.
Dr Wax sets the stage with – “Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.”
Her thesis on cultural diversity – “cultures are not equal in terms of preparing people to be productive citizens in a modern technological society” – should by now be familiar to RR readers wherein she expands.
The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants.
Nowhere is this cultural discord more evident today than in the left-dominated academia. There we have only one dominant “politically correct” worldview that is jealously defended against even a civil encounter with any other viewpoint. In that environment academics on the left reject the “proper response” wherein they would “engage in reasoned debate” with opposites who would “attempt to explain, using logic, evidence, facts, and substantive arguments, why those opinions are wrong.” In the large, across our land, this no longer is possible.
A prime method of “stifling dissent” is the practice of “mindless labeling”. Even though “one has the right to hurl labels like ‘racist,’ ‘sexist,’ and ‘xenophobic’ without good reason—but that doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Hurling such labels doesn’t enlighten, inform, edify, or educate.”
Dr Wax’s previous writings on the topic have elicited the predicted and now common responses from her progressive colleagues, students, and leftwing commentarians. They sought to proscribe her, hurling the well-worn pejorative labels at her, but not providing any substantive rebuttals to her arguments. One of these was accusing her of “the sin of praising the 1950s – a decade when racial discrimination was openly practiced and opportunities for women were limited.” (sound familiar?) In her arguments she had acknowledged these “benighted attitudes and practices”, but the perennially promoted point by the leftists, with which she does not agree, is that the era “has nothing to teach us.”
The penultimate error of these existential anti-academics is that they no longer teach “the practice of civil discourse—the sine qua non of liberal education and of democracy—they are sending the message that civil discourse is unnecessary.”
On the oft used attempts by the Left to redirect or redefine explicit speech they disagree with (the perennial hubris of, ‘I know what you really meant.’), Dr Wax offers a particularly resonating explanation –
Furthermore, the charge that a statement is “code” for something else, or a “dog whistle” of some kind—we frequently hear this charge leveled, even against people who are stating demonstrable facts—is unanswerable. It is like accusing a speaker of causing emotional injury or feelings of marginalization. Using this kind of language, which students have learned to do all too well, is intended to bring discussion and debate to a stop—to silence speech deemed unacceptable.
As Humpty Dumpty said to Alice, we can make words mean whatever we want them to mean. And who decides what is code for something else or what qualifies as a dog whistle? Those in power, of course—which in academia means the Left.
To encourage the Left to open up our ability to solve problems through a national dialogue, we echo Heather MacDonald’s (Manhattan Institute) question – “What if the progressive analysis of inequality is wrong . . . and a cultural analysis is closest to the truth? If confronting the need to change behavior is punishable ‘hate speech,’ then it is hard to see how the country can resolve its social problems.”
Professor Wax closes with the assertion that “the American way is to conduct free and open debate in a civil manner. We should return to doing that on our college campuses and in our society at large.”
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