Each generation feels that they’re as oppressed as the one before
That has not been my impression. Some advocates might think things are as bad as they were 5 years ago, but I’m not aware of anyone with influence who thinks things are as bad as 50 years ago. Or any advocate at all who thinks no improvement has happened in the last 500 years.
His assertion is that if you scanned the brain of a victim 50 or 500 years ago you’d find the same amount of subjective “oppressed feeling” as scanning a modern victim, i.e., that people have an “oppression set point” similar to the happiness set point.
Well, 500 years ago there was plenty of brutal physical oppression going on, and I’d expect that kind of thing to have lots of other negative effects on top of the first-order emotional reactions of the victims.
But I would claim that if you did a big brain-scan survey of, say, Western women from 1970 to the present, you’d see very little correlation between their subjective feeling of oppression and their actual treatment in society.
He does have influence, but I don’t read that as saying things are as bad as they were in the 1950s. He’s pointing out that a lot of the power structure of the Confederacy is still around, to the point that imagining if the Confederates had won is less different from now than many folks ignorant of history believe.
Ta-Nehisi has written very pointedly about DT’s victory, but even then I don’t read him as saying things are the same as 50 years ago. Factually, I don’t see how anyone could claim that. Leading protest in 1950-1960s was literally life threatening. Blessedly, that doesn’t seem to be true in the present.
That has not been my impression. Some advocates might think things are as bad as they were 5 years ago, but I’m not aware of anyone with influence who thinks things are as bad as 50 years ago. Or any advocate at all who thinks no improvement has happened in the last 500 years.
That wasn’t ewbrownv’s assertion.
His assertion is that if you scanned the brain of a victim 50 or 500 years ago you’d find the same amount of subjective “oppressed feeling” as scanning a modern victim, i.e., that people have an “oppression set point” similar to the happiness set point.
Well, 500 years ago there was plenty of brutal physical oppression going on, and I’d expect that kind of thing to have lots of other negative effects on top of the first-order emotional reactions of the victims.
But I would claim that if you did a big brain-scan survey of, say, Western women from 1970 to the present, you’d see very little correlation between their subjective feeling of oppression and their actual treatment in society.
Interesting to read this shortly after this. Does Ta-Nehisi Coates have “influence”?
He does have influence, but I don’t read that as saying things are as bad as they were in the 1950s. He’s pointing out that a lot of the power structure of the Confederacy is still around, to the point that imagining if the Confederates had won is less different from now than many folks ignorant of history believe.
Ta-Nehisi has written very pointedly about DT’s victory, but even then I don’t read him as saying things are the same as 50 years ago. Factually, I don’t see how anyone could claim that. Leading protest in 1950-1960s was literally life threatening. Blessedly, that doesn’t seem to be true in the present.