How can any of us judge or qualify the damage passed down over generations who perpetuate trauma on successive generations? It's impossible. Just no way to evaluate that, so it's folly to think that we can. A subjective experience happens regardless of cultural knowledge or a historical context. If my mother beats me, and 8 generations of her people beat their kids, I don't need a history lesson to frame it as destructive or traumatic. Cultural references aside, it still hurts. Research into epigenetics is also demonstrating how trauma affects us on the cellular level, carried into the next generation. Why would that only carry forward a few decades? Nah, we can't possibly evaluate how far forward trauma and PTSD will ripple.
It'll be interesting to see what they come up with, and maybe they *will* find evidence of trauma impacting people at the genetic level. What will become interesting after that is not who owes who reparations but how you can tell what impacted you. Or how much impact every person has (I'm guessing rather a lot). Trauma is universal, and what we call trauma *today* most would call minor inconveniences.
Like intersectionality, these things are interesting but unfortunately for many, they become excuses for perpetuating self-inflicted victimhood and hatred against people who never harmed them, but who look like the people who did. And back we are to tribes fighting over caves...
This article reminds me of the heavily used principal guiding Canadian policy makers "Substantive Equality". At it's core it is the idea that any discrimination based on race, gender, religion, ... can be justified so long as it is seen as righting some real or imaginary wrong from in the past. This concept is in the Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms where one paragraph says you can't and the next describes the exceptions where you can discriminate.
Yes, the Indigenous are another matter entirely. I have a lot of questions about how and why we're handling the various band situations, as well as why they're living the way they do in the middle of nowhere and how much obligation we have to them (somewhat, but not 100%). I think there are also some cultural/values issues there that need to be dealt with, that *they* have to fix, not us. Drew Hayden Taylor has written a lot about this. I want to see, moving forward, asking more of 'marginalized' groups what they're going to do on their own, and how they're going to develop themselves, rather than expecting the government to fix everything wrong with their lives.
"Substantive Equality" is used for a lot more than just indigenous people. It shows up in Human Resources departments. In the name of eliminating discrimination typical Canadian/US job application questions include Indigenous, Disabled, Veteran, Recognized Minority(defined as anyone other than Caucasian regardless of where you were born), Gender(4-5 options), Sexual Orientation(5-7 options). Officially you can decline to answer these questions but why are they being asked to begin with.
Yes, I know what you mean. I wrote an article a few years back when Ketanji Jackson was named to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the diversity she brought that I liked was a more liberal/moderate view to counterbalance Trump's three all-conservative picks. And I extrapolated on how we should choose candidates (whether for a regular company or the Supreme Court) with a blind system similar to what Malcolm Gladwell describes in one of his books (it's a faulty experiment, as it turns out, but I think it could be tweaked). I think it's time for everyone to be judged on merit, and the US SC agrees as it recently ended race-based university admissions, which is bad news for African Americans, better news for those groups who study harder and prepare longer (lots of research to back this one :) ) I also wrote one recently arguing that transwomen should compete with biological women in chess (I hadn't known it was a controversy) because it's not the same as competitive sports; there's not much difference in brain power between sexes although I do acknowledge males have some advantages intellectually at this time in chess *but it's nothing women can't eventually overcome*, just as African Americans aren't inherently less intelligent or even less motivated, but they've been able to coast on skin colour and get into good schools with very good grades, as opposed to really damn good grades which is how whites and Asians have to get to get in. And even then there's no guarantee.
Female chess players may have to lose awhile longer to male chess competitors, regardless of their fashion choices, but I think it will be good for women overall. Like AA students, we're gonna have to try harder. (That's an editorial 'we' as I don't play chess).
Apart from the physically disabled, for whom I'm open to continuing giving them some edge, I'm not sure any of the other so-called 'marginalized' groups really need all that much help anymore. I'm probably more au courant with it in the US than I am in Canada, but I agree with you, we shouldn't be asking those questions. And I'm frankly getting very tired of hearing about how 'marginalized' the trans set is. Feh. As if.
This is getting off topic but the gender chess difference is interesting. It obviously has nothing to do with physical capability. Men and women play on the same curling teams until it gets to professional levels then there are men's and women's curling. It is not due to a physical need but there is something causing the difference. Each gender has it's strengths and that is just sexual dimorphism which is what humans are.
Yeah, my long-winded point is that we need to move forward toward a merit-based competitive system, that most 'marginalized' groups are far less marginalized than before and are mostly suffering from fear of failure. The skills required for superlative chess performance strike me as being those developed by men over thousands of years of Da Patriachy but that, with one exception, they're quite possibly skills women can develop, although it may take generations to do so. The one potential brain matter advantage men may have over women is what one evolutionary psychologist speculates is a large spatial ability advantage. So there may be that, but we won't know unless women really apply themselves over the course of the next several generations. Testosterone may also fuel the male killer instinct but, who knows, maybe all those trans-identified women on T will start kicking male ass! :)
We can never discount the cascading effects of generational trauma on future descendants. Why would we think the negative effects would end at some arbitrary point? Imagine how anger, shame, grief, sadness, physical and psychic pain of all kinds, etc. in a parent would effect immediate offspring, who would then visit the effects of mistreatment, stress, etc. to their own children? Why wouldn't they, without extensive therapeutic interventions? Think about the children of survivors of residential schools, the Holocaust, the Holodomor, internment camps, physical and emotional abuses, and on and on for centuries back. Epigenetic connection or not, the ongoing effects are legion and can't be underestimated.
I did, but I stuck to trauma that was outside one's experience or at least somewhat removed. I didn't mention the Holocaust because people are still alive today who remember it & can talk to others about it. It's 2-3 generations removed. Ditto residential schools et al. That's easily understandable trauma. Lynching trauma is more recent, but slavery trauma not so much. I can't swear it's not epigenetic but I'm trying to separate valid self-imposed trauma (voluntary historical learning) from trauma allegedly passed down from the last century. Like, genocide for Natives, slavery for blacks, the Inquisition for women (which may already be too far in the past for epigenetics, who knows.
My slight skepticism is because, how much can you truly be traumatized by something you didns't experience *or know about*? What if my ancestors were horribly tortured and executed in Europe for being witches or heretics? I have no way, at this time, of knowing if there's anythng like that (it could still go back a few hundred years rather than 500-600 years ago). Maybe they weren't witches, they were enslaved by the worst European slave owner ever. How badly can that affect me if I don't know about it?
I would take more seriously trauma experienced, or not too far removed. Residential schools for sure. The Holocaust for sure.
As soon as I saw your headline, I was hoping you’d mention Coleman Hughes, and you did not disappoint! I was pleasantly surprised to hear him interviewed extensively on NPR about his new book yesterday.
How can any of us judge or qualify the damage passed down over generations who perpetuate trauma on successive generations? It's impossible. Just no way to evaluate that, so it's folly to think that we can. A subjective experience happens regardless of cultural knowledge or a historical context. If my mother beats me, and 8 generations of her people beat their kids, I don't need a history lesson to frame it as destructive or traumatic. Cultural references aside, it still hurts. Research into epigenetics is also demonstrating how trauma affects us on the cellular level, carried into the next generation. Why would that only carry forward a few decades? Nah, we can't possibly evaluate how far forward trauma and PTSD will ripple.
It'll be interesting to see what they come up with, and maybe they *will* find evidence of trauma impacting people at the genetic level. What will become interesting after that is not who owes who reparations but how you can tell what impacted you. Or how much impact every person has (I'm guessing rather a lot). Trauma is universal, and what we call trauma *today* most would call minor inconveniences.
Like intersectionality, these things are interesting but unfortunately for many, they become excuses for perpetuating self-inflicted victimhood and hatred against people who never harmed them, but who look like the people who did. And back we are to tribes fighting over caves...
This article reminds me of the heavily used principal guiding Canadian policy makers "Substantive Equality". At it's core it is the idea that any discrimination based on race, gender, religion, ... can be justified so long as it is seen as righting some real or imaginary wrong from in the past. This concept is in the Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms where one paragraph says you can't and the next describes the exceptions where you can discriminate.
https://sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1583698429175/1583698455266
Essentially this is equality of outcome over opportunity and social justice over merit.
Yes, the Indigenous are another matter entirely. I have a lot of questions about how and why we're handling the various band situations, as well as why they're living the way they do in the middle of nowhere and how much obligation we have to them (somewhat, but not 100%). I think there are also some cultural/values issues there that need to be dealt with, that *they* have to fix, not us. Drew Hayden Taylor has written a lot about this. I want to see, moving forward, asking more of 'marginalized' groups what they're going to do on their own, and how they're going to develop themselves, rather than expecting the government to fix everything wrong with their lives.
"Substantive Equality" is used for a lot more than just indigenous people. It shows up in Human Resources departments. In the name of eliminating discrimination typical Canadian/US job application questions include Indigenous, Disabled, Veteran, Recognized Minority(defined as anyone other than Caucasian regardless of where you were born), Gender(4-5 options), Sexual Orientation(5-7 options). Officially you can decline to answer these questions but why are they being asked to begin with.
Yes, I know what you mean. I wrote an article a few years back when Ketanji Jackson was named to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the diversity she brought that I liked was a more liberal/moderate view to counterbalance Trump's three all-conservative picks. And I extrapolated on how we should choose candidates (whether for a regular company or the Supreme Court) with a blind system similar to what Malcolm Gladwell describes in one of his books (it's a faulty experiment, as it turns out, but I think it could be tweaked). I think it's time for everyone to be judged on merit, and the US SC agrees as it recently ended race-based university admissions, which is bad news for African Americans, better news for those groups who study harder and prepare longer (lots of research to back this one :) ) I also wrote one recently arguing that transwomen should compete with biological women in chess (I hadn't known it was a controversy) because it's not the same as competitive sports; there's not much difference in brain power between sexes although I do acknowledge males have some advantages intellectually at this time in chess *but it's nothing women can't eventually overcome*, just as African Americans aren't inherently less intelligent or even less motivated, but they've been able to coast on skin colour and get into good schools with very good grades, as opposed to really damn good grades which is how whites and Asians have to get to get in. And even then there's no guarantee.
Female chess players may have to lose awhile longer to male chess competitors, regardless of their fashion choices, but I think it will be good for women overall. Like AA students, we're gonna have to try harder. (That's an editorial 'we' as I don't play chess).
Apart from the physically disabled, for whom I'm open to continuing giving them some edge, I'm not sure any of the other so-called 'marginalized' groups really need all that much help anymore. I'm probably more au courant with it in the US than I am in Canada, but I agree with you, we shouldn't be asking those questions. And I'm frankly getting very tired of hearing about how 'marginalized' the trans set is. Feh. As if.
This is getting off topic but the gender chess difference is interesting. It obviously has nothing to do with physical capability. Men and women play on the same curling teams until it gets to professional levels then there are men's and women's curling. It is not due to a physical need but there is something causing the difference. Each gender has it's strengths and that is just sexual dimorphism which is what humans are.
Yeah, my long-winded point is that we need to move forward toward a merit-based competitive system, that most 'marginalized' groups are far less marginalized than before and are mostly suffering from fear of failure. The skills required for superlative chess performance strike me as being those developed by men over thousands of years of Da Patriachy but that, with one exception, they're quite possibly skills women can develop, although it may take generations to do so. The one potential brain matter advantage men may have over women is what one evolutionary psychologist speculates is a large spatial ability advantage. So there may be that, but we won't know unless women really apply themselves over the course of the next several generations. Testosterone may also fuel the male killer instinct but, who knows, maybe all those trans-identified women on T will start kicking male ass! :)
We can never discount the cascading effects of generational trauma on future descendants. Why would we think the negative effects would end at some arbitrary point? Imagine how anger, shame, grief, sadness, physical and psychic pain of all kinds, etc. in a parent would effect immediate offspring, who would then visit the effects of mistreatment, stress, etc. to their own children? Why wouldn't they, without extensive therapeutic interventions? Think about the children of survivors of residential schools, the Holocaust, the Holodomor, internment camps, physical and emotional abuses, and on and on for centuries back. Epigenetic connection or not, the ongoing effects are legion and can't be underestimated.
I did, but I stuck to trauma that was outside one's experience or at least somewhat removed. I didn't mention the Holocaust because people are still alive today who remember it & can talk to others about it. It's 2-3 generations removed. Ditto residential schools et al. That's easily understandable trauma. Lynching trauma is more recent, but slavery trauma not so much. I can't swear it's not epigenetic but I'm trying to separate valid self-imposed trauma (voluntary historical learning) from trauma allegedly passed down from the last century. Like, genocide for Natives, slavery for blacks, the Inquisition for women (which may already be too far in the past for epigenetics, who knows.
My slight skepticism is because, how much can you truly be traumatized by something you didns't experience *or know about*? What if my ancestors were horribly tortured and executed in Europe for being witches or heretics? I have no way, at this time, of knowing if there's anythng like that (it could still go back a few hundred years rather than 500-600 years ago). Maybe they weren't witches, they were enslaved by the worst European slave owner ever. How badly can that affect me if I don't know about it?
I would take more seriously trauma experienced, or not too far removed. Residential schools for sure. The Holocaust for sure.
* correction: visit upon
As soon as I saw your headline, I was hoping you’d mention Coleman Hughes, and you did not disappoint! I was pleasantly surprised to hear him interviewed extensively on NPR about his new book yesterday.
And yes, I agree that the vast majority of people alive today descend from some sort of oppressed group, whether slaves or feudal serfs or whatever.
He *inspired* it! Okay, he inspired me to go dig up the old article and repurpose it and update it.