Jordan Peterson

[Harv]

You can’t tell someone they are hypocrites by assigning values they don’t have.

Have I told you yet I missed you while I was away?

 

[Broken_Erika]

You can’t tell someone they are hypocrites by assigning values they don’t have.

Why not? It's fun!

 

[Lexicus]

You can’t tell someone they are hypocrites by assigning values they don’t have.

That's true; they're the ones telling us they're hypocrites by loudly proclaiming that they have values they don't have.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Very generally speaking: marriage to the state. Black women often literally can't raise children without Medicaid

Medicaid recipients in the US are 40% white, 25% Hispanic and 21% black. There are 5 states where the number black of black Medicaid recipients exceeds the number of white Medicaid recipients, Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland, Georgia and South Carolina.

So your argument seems to be trash... very generally speaking.

 

[Farm Boy]

Did we view that through the lens of the population ratios drawn by this crude demarcation?

 

[Traitorfish]

At any rate, if receipt of socialised healthcare makes you "married to the state", then most European countries constitute a single huge polygamous family, which would surely be a greater threat to the nuclear family than single mums.

 

[Mouthwash]

Medicaid recipients in the US are 40% white, 25% Hispanic and 21% black. There are 5 states where the number black of black Medicaid recipients exceeds the number of white Medicaid recipients, Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland, Georgia and South Carolina.

So your argument seems to be trash... very generally speaking.

Yeah... there's an error in this logic, I'll leave it to you to figure out what.

That's not a structure, though. It's barely a characteristic of family structure. It's a description of economic circumstance.

I mean that the economic incentive to marry has been eroded by state benefits to single mothers.

It isn't a replacement. Multi-generationality and extensiveness are the historical rule among black American families; there was no point at which they all had stereotypically WASPish suburban nuclear families, and then it all went off the rails. In the first place, these sorts of structures were far from uncommon among poor whites. While the prevalence of "extended families" in the the Medieval early modern European world has been exaggerated, single-household families do seem to have been the rule, "household" in this context implies something broader than "nuclear family". Further, black American family structures were profoundly shaped by the institution of slavery. Black Americans, unlike poor whites, mostly lived and worked on plantations, which functioned at the ground-level on a sort of barracks system, in which slaves were forced by necessity to practice a more communal lifestyle than white Americans. This was reinforced by the difficulty of maintaining anything like a nuclear family structure, even by the standards of the era, when family members may be plucked out of the community at the whim of the planters. Abolition lessened this impact, but black Americans after slavery mostly ended up as agricultural peons and gradually made the move to industrial proletarians, both of which left black communities in a state of geographic and economic precariousness, reinforcing the importance of extended family networks as a safety net and, often as not, a way of sharing and minimising costs.

This is all fine and well, but what does it have to do with anything I've said? I'm not for the autonomous nuclear family. All I'm saying is that parents are important.

Now, the obvious reply is that this was all decades ago, and that's true. But the question then is, what has prevented black Americans from adopting a conventional two-parent nuclear family structure like other ethnic minorities have tended to do over time? What in the African-American experience has differed over the last, say, fifty years that would lead to these differences in family structures being perpetuated? "Culture" is a grossly insufficient answer, unless you're prepared to argue that the peasant masses of the Old World, from Ireland to Japan, were all possessed of some latent tendency towards two-parent nuclear households that black Americans do not, and to giving a convincing explanation as to why.

State-given benefits. (Other groups, especially white Protestants, were able to resist this because of their beliefs about the family, so it really is a matter of culture.)

I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is, "the two-parent heterosexual family" is a very specific family structure that is neither "natural", in the sense that Peterson et al. would have us believe, nor universal. To declare the basis of a stable polity is therefore to raise a lot of questions about what human societies were doing for the thousands of years before Europeans developed the essentially Utopian notion that human kinship system is just supposed to look a certain way. Peterson fancies himself a stony realist, but this is an almost comical example of "no, it's the children who are wrong".

You're ignoring the fact that (ignoring hunter-gatherers) every other sort of family structure was horrifically destructive.

Well, yeah. Group identities are produced by negotiation, by consensus, they are not imposed from above. If an irreconcilable disagreement is encountered, a solution must be reached before the group identity can be authentically reaffirmed. What Kaerpernick and other protesters are saying is that they, as black people, can not feel wholly American unless they are treated equally with other Americans, unless their civil rights are upheld, specifically in regards to police violence. That's not an unreasonable demand- you might disagree with the empirical claim that their rights are not being upheld, bu that their rights should be upheld is itself beyond dispute- so it is reasonable for Kaaerpernick and his fellows to withhold their affirmation of the group identity until some satisfactory solution is achieved.

That's not how group identity works.

Otherwise, uncritical affirmation of the group identity and its rituals becomes the condition for even the most basic demands being met. Is it better that spectators are made to feel slightly uncomfortable, or that all criticism of the prevailing regime be carefully couched in a declaration of loyalty?

And now you're conflating group identity and regime.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yeah... there's an error in this logic, I'll leave it to you to figure out what.

Trying to reason with a blatant racist using logic is usually an error of the "waste of time" sort.

 

[Mouthwash]

Where did he say anything racist?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Where did he say anything racist?

You pointed out that he was using logic, ergo...

 

[Traitorfish]

I mean that the economic incentive to marry has been eroded by state benefits to single mothers.

That's still not a family structure. Marriage isn't even a family structure. This is a description that doesn't describe.

This is all fine and well, but what does it have to do with anything I've said? I'm not for the autonomous nuclear family. All I'm saying is that parents are important.

You asked if multi-generational households were a suitable replacement for parents, I explained that it wasn't a replacement, because two-parent nuclear families haven't historically been the norm among black Americans, or at least not to the exclusion of alternative family structures.

State-given benefits. (Other groups, especially white Protestants, were able to resist this because of their beliefs about the family, so it really is a matter of culture.)

What about them?

You're ignoring the fact that (ignoring hunter-gatherers) every other sort of family structure was horrifically destructive.

I'm not ignoring it, because I don't know that statement means.

That's not how group identity works.

In what sense?

And now you're conflating group identity and regime.

No, the people with the flag and the song about how great the flag is are conflating group-identity and regime. I'm just reporting that conflation.

 

[metalhead]

State-given benefits. (Other groups, especially white Protestants, were able to resist this because of their beliefs about the family, so it really is a matter of culture.)

"White people have better culture" is something the least racist person I ever met might say.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

"White people have better culture" is something the least racist person I ever met might say.

If I didn't know this was sarcasm I'd suggest that you broaden your circle beyond @Mouthwash.

 

[Mouthwash]

That's still not a family structure. Marriage isn't even a family structure. This is a description that doesn't describe.

They don't have much of one left, really.

You asked if multi-generational households were a suitable replacement for parents, I explained that it wasn't a replacement, because two-parent nuclear families haven't historically been the norm among black Americans, or at least not to the exclusion of alternative family structures.

When have I said anything like that?

What about them?

They subsidize out-of-wedlock childbirth (removing all economic incentive for marriage).

I'm not ignoring it, because I don't know that statement means.

Strict monogamy combined with a two parent household, plus support from extended family is the ideal situation. Remove monogamy? You get fathers with way too many children to take care of, men without wives, child marriage, etc. Remove extended family? You get atomization, which paves the way for the state to come in.

In what sense?

If your mother won't give you all the chocolate you want, do you declare yourself no longer a member of the family until your demands are met?

 

[Lexicus]

If your mother won't give you all the chocolate you want, do you declare yourself no longer a member of the family until your demands are met?

When my mom kills my brother I do

 

[Bootstoots]

It isn't a replacement. Multi-generationality and extensiveness are the historical rule among black American families; there was no point at which they all had stereotypically WASPish suburban nuclear families, and then it all went off the rails. In the first place, these sorts of structures were far from uncommon among poor whites. While the prevalence of "extended families" in the the Medieval early modern European world has been exaggerated, single-household families do seem to have been the rule, "household" in this context implies something broader than "nuclear family". Further, black American family structures were profoundly shaped by the institution of slavery. Black Americans, unlike poor whites, mostly lived and worked on plantations, which functioned at the ground-level on a sort of barracks system, in which slaves were forced by necessity to practice a more communal lifestyle than white Americans. This was reinforced by the difficulty of maintaining anything like a nuclear family structure, even by the standards of the era, when family members may be plucked out of the community at the whim of the planters. Abolition lessened this impact, but black Americans after slavery mostly ended up as agricultural peons and gradually made the move to industrial proletarians, both of which left black communities in a state of geographic and economic precariousness, reinforcing the importance of extended family networks as a safety net and, often as not, a way of sharing and minimising costs.

I like this post in general, but I do have to bring up one thing. Namely, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for black Americans, as a fraction of all births, climbed from less than 20% in 1950 to about 70% by 2000, where it has stayed since. It has increased for all other ethnic groups as well, but the increase was greatest among black women. I think this is what Mouthwash is getting at.

Here's a graph from the Wikipedia article African American family structure. The author apparently cobbled it together in Excel from several sources, but the other sources I've seen agreed and didn't do as good of a job presenting the data, so here it is:

Spoiler Out-of-wedlock birth rate by race :

It appears that something definitely happened to all family structures, but disproportionately to black ones, in the second half of the 20th century. Conservatives seem to blame welfare and the Sexual Revolution. I sort of doubt that's the whole picture - certainly the extreme incarceration rates for black men play a substantial role too - but there definitely was a change.

edit: added link to article

 

[inthesomeday]

So is everybody kinda just accepting that anything at all about the structure of a family matters to someone’s outcome?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I like this post in general, but I do have to bring up one thing. Namely, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for black Americans, as a fraction of all births, climbed from less than 20% in 1950 to about 70% by 2000, where it has stayed since. It has increased for all other ethnic groups as well, but the increase was greatest among black women. I think this is what Mouthwash is getting at.

Here's a graph from the Wikipedia article African American family structure. The author apparently cobbled it together in Excel from several sources, but the other sources I've seen agreed and didn't do as good of a job presenting the data, so here it is:

Spoiler Out-of-wedlock birth rate by race :

It appears that something definitely happened to all family structures, but disproportionately to black ones, in the second half of the 20th century. Conservatives seem to blame welfare and the Sexual Revolution. I sort of doubt that's the whole picture - certainly the extreme incarceration rates for black men play a substantial role too - but there definitely was a change.

edit: added link to article

Partial answer can be found in how "out of wedlock" is defined. That involving the issuance or lack thereof of an official state document called a "marriage license" to the parents. The economically underprivileged are far less likely to see any benefit in paying licensing fees in this matter, since for them there really aren't any, and blacks are of course massively over represented among the economically underprivileged.

 

[Lexicus]

So is everybody kinda just accepting that anything at all about the structure of a family matters to someone’s outcome?

Are you in turn suggesting that family structure doesn't matter to outcomes? I can think of one good example: family structures that force children to be caretakers are strongly correlated with poorer outcomes for those children. It's one reason that mass incarceration has been a social catastrophe for black people in the United States.

 

[Farm Boy]

So is everybody kinda just accepting that anything at all about the structure of a family matters to someone’s outcome?

It's getting to be ancient news, I know, but the availability of evidence that indicates having two adults heavily invested in the well-being of a child produces happier outcomes for those children on average is damning to arguments that oppose double female parents or double male parents. I don't know that I've seen any compelling argument that would indicate that arbitrarily ends with 2 adults exactly, no more no less*. I know that heavy investment by grandparents in my son's life has seemed to enrich him, it's certainly allayed a whole crapton of childcare expenses, if we're all about the money(which we shouldn't be all about).

*It takes a village(**), all that.

**Apparently a proverb most likely of African origin. Learn something new everyday.