Conservative political commentator and author Ben Shapiro spoke at UC Santa Barbara on Tuesday for his event, “The Regressive Left, ‘Social Justice’ and #BlackLivesMatter.”
Soham Tikekar / Daily Nexus
Campbell Hall was filled to maximum capacity 10 minutes before the event began, leaving some students to watch the event through a livestream outside the lecture hall.
Several student groups, including the Black Student Union, expressed concern that the lecture would encourage hateful rhetoric against minority groups and spoke for six hours during an A.S. Senate open forum in October, an opposition which Shapiro said on Tuesday was “sort of fascist.”
During the event, Shapiro criticized UCSB and said the perception of victimhood allowed students to deface posters for his lecture, dismiss anything he says as hate-speech and essentially slander him as a neo-Nazi.
Shapiro claimed his Jewish faith as evidence for the irony of calling him a Nazi.
Bigots, racists and homophobes represent individuals and do not represent American society and institutions, Shapiro said, and thinking of individuals as representatives of a collective is “false” and “counterproductive.”
Soham Tikekar / Daily Nexus
He also discussed white privilege, saying that although American history is “replete” with racism, it is important to focus on the future.
“Some people are currently affected by racism in the past … but we cannot fix that with more racism. Injustice does not solve injustice,” he said.
Shapiro denied that America and Western civilization privileges white people above ethnic minorities. He said we cannot fix where we start, but we can fix where we’re going.
He then cited the Brookings Institution and suggested three things that people can do to avoid poverty: get married before having children, finish high school and get a job.
Shapiro criticized the idea that poverty is racially based, saying that it is mainly based on personal decisions.
“Seventy-one percent of poor families with children are unmarried and … the strongest indicator of intergenerational poverty is single motherhood,” Shapiro said. “The poverty rate among non-married white families was 22 percent in 2008; the poverty rate among black married couples that same year was seven percent.”
He used the statistics to question the validity of white privilege, saying if the country was inherently biased against minorities, a white single mom would be financially better off than a black married couple.
Soham Tikekar / Daily Nexus
On the topic of the gender wage gap, Shapiro referenced Time magazine and said that “in 147 out of 100 — of 150 of the biggest cities in the United States, women actually make, on average, eight percent more than men if they are single and childless and they’re out of college and have the same job description and work the same number of hours.”
He also said income inequality is not an issue in the United States.
“The stupidity of the income inequality idea is the idea that just because I make a lot of money, it means I’m stealing it from you. I don’t care about you; I’ve never taken anything from you,” Shapiro said. “In order for you to give me something, I’m going to have to give you a service in return.”
UCSB’s Educational Opportunity Program hosted a “Cultural Appreciation Night” at the same time as Shapiro’s talk on Tuesday. There was food and activities at the event, which included candlestick-making, bracelet-making, canvas-painting, a poetry slam and movie screenings.
Organizers of the Shapiro talk, however, said the event was an attempt to counter the talk. Young America’s Foundation (YAF) programmer Amy Lutz tweeted a photo of posters announcing the “Cultural Appreciation Night,” which she said was “the leftist’s attempt at counter programming.”
Here’s the leftist’s attempt at counter programming for @benshapiro at UCSB tonight. Stickers and cultural “appeciation.” pic.twitter.com/lmucZgTib6
— Amy Lutz (@amylutz4) February 21, 2017
When asked if their event was a response to Shapiro’s talk on campus, organizers of the “Cultural Appreciation Night” said it had nothing to do with him and that they just wanted to study diversity and culture together.
Correction: The event name was changed from “Lies, Prejudice, and Division: The Legacy of the #BLM Movement.” to “The Regressive Left, ‘Social Justice’ and #BlackLivesMatter.”
“in 147 out of 100 of 150 of the biggest cities in the United States..”
I admit I have not seriously studied math since college.
Can anyone tell me what that means? How can there be 147 out of 100 (of 150?)?
nexus writers struggle with math sometimes
The quote marks mean those are his words, not the Nexus’. If you want to mindlessly bash the nexus at least do it right.
look at source video
There are also transcripts online fyi. The fact that quotes exist does not validate the statement. Sometimes it’s just human error. Sometimes it’s malicious such as the many times Briebart quotes itself all the time in its “reporting” in an attempt to pass them off as the authentic quotes.
corroborate and validate.
Can’t right now but even if he didn’t use those words it’s either a transcription or copy error, not a math one. Original comment makes no sense.
well it’s a two second google search.
No it’s def a math error on the part of the writer. Can’t really splice it further than that. Someone in the nexus can’t be bothered to make rudimentary edits apparently.
I’m not sure how listening through an hour and a half lecture is “a two second google search” but I did it anyways. He stutters that line, so I can see why there might be different interpretations, but to me it sounds more like “147 out of 100 of the 50 biggest cities…” So not exactly but pretty close to what the Nexus quoted him as saying. I still don’t see how this is in any way a math error. Again, even if your argument is that they misquoted him, the writer wouldn’t have been performing any math, just quoting… Read more »
He was correcting himself you dumbass
BTW: “make on average is a piss poor statistical indicator. If he wanted to be meaninful and not simply argumentative he could have chosen the median. The average is always influenced by outliers (is there are any) — e.g. women who are single, childless, out of college and CEOs.
median is not-by any means a better indicator in general.
What a stupid comment.
I think that showing that women typically make more right out of college is a good indication that there is not in equality in the work place. Because looking at the median income can be flawed. Men are more likely to stay in the work place and not take time off from work to stay at home or leave the work place entirely. So it is logical to assume the median for men would be higher.
Oy vey. Like discussing logic with fish.
And that make the mean a useful indices how?
This is akin to discourse with blocks of wood. Enjoy your alternate facts/reality and try to keep a cautious eye out for more terrorist incidents like Bowling Green and Sweden.
Goodbye and good luck.
Would you prefer he pull out the actual graph of men’s and women’s wages so your small brain could understand it. He did as every scientific paper does when comparing two groups and took the average he also went into that when a proper regression analysis accounts for job, hours worked, and experience there is no statistical difference in earnings. You are too stupid to actually defend why median would be better and resort to name calling instead to deflect from your own inadequacies.
You obsequious moron. I already did say why the mean is inherently misleading (in a way the median is not) — it is overly influenced by outliers (e.g., the average income in LA is xyz, but if one factors out the 1-@ percent making more than 1M, the average recedes to Xy). I see you can read; is comprehension optional? Every scientific paper does not use the mean. What a perfectly ignorant statement. And those that do, particularly economics and the social science, misuse stats routinely (e.g., performing regression on data that are neither ration nor interval scaled). My “small… Read more »
My bad. One more.
What the f*/k does 147 out of 100 mean in your mathematical universe (my original question)? Can you perhaps provide a graph for my small brain so I can see just how that works?
One, one more.
You are right about one thing. When frustrated I do resort to ad hominem.
I just get too worked up when I see the level of intellectual competence on display on a site associated with an institute of higher learning of which I have been a member for 29 years. It is very sad — and a constant reminder that the level of conceptual vacuity in this country is gaining ground.
It’s called a mistake, he meant to say 147 out of 150. He said 100, noticed his mistake then followed it with 150. Which if you knew how to read you could tell by the fact that the 100 was followed by 150. You could also tell by the fact that 147/100 cities literally makes 0 fucking sense. Use some logic
“I think that showing that women typically make more right out of college is a good indication that there is not in equality in the work place.”
just idiocy. How do you extrapolate that “fact” to continued incremental pay raises? Are you in possession of data showing that women continue your alleged advantage?
Put up or stop bloviating your talking points (or lack of critical thought; or both).
Are you in possession of an6 evidence proving women are payed less becuaer they are women? On average, women as a whole earn less over their entire career because they take time off to give birth to and raise children.
So when asked to prove there is no inequality in the work force it is not logical to point out that both men and women make roughly the same amount in the beginning of there careers with women making slightly more? Does it prove it definitively? No of course not. but calling someone an idiot for defending a point made by someone else because it does not fit your personal narrative is childish.
If someone came to give a lecture at UCSB with a perspective that is left of center, I doubt the Nexus would label their lecture as controversial. IMO, the title demonstrates bias that signals to the reader that Shapiro’s views are radical and not widely accepted by society.
Probably correct.
Anyway — can you cast any insight on his “use” of statistics to support his “radical views”? Sure seems baffling (that is the polite way of putting it).
Perhaps I am wrong, and you can point out how his non-normative (with respect to the Nexus and readers) “perspective” is backed by the statistical evidence he marshals in support.
if he has stats he must be right. good thinking
Right? Those damn stats and objective models of looking at things! Let’s just appeal to emotion amirite?
Uhm yeah, if you watched the lecture he cites a plethora of statistics. Look it up on YouTube
If they are as quoted (and provide evidence they are NOT), then it is fallacious use of statistics.
IF it is NOT fallacious, please take a moment to explain to me why that is the case.
Otherwise, if induction is meaningful, and this piece of the “plethora” is representative (perhaps not) — then he cites a plethora of nonsense.
Please parse the claims he made and discuss the meta data in the study.
If you don’t have any training or familiarity in the field, then you are not in a position to determine what is a “fallacious use of statistics”
“If you don’t have any training or familiarity in the field, then you are not in a position to determine what is a “fallacious use of statistics” I teach statistics at UCSB. What, pray tell, are your credentials? You do not need ANY training in the field to note the idiocy of the quote I ALREADY cited in this posting — a use of statistics that appears to violate every principle of mathematics (cardinal numbers, transitivity, etc). Also, as I ALREADY noted, his use of means is (intentionally or just stupidly?) misleading — and yet another example of lying with… Read more »
More: What the hell does ” parse the claims he made” mean? You want me to dissect the components of his sentences? Do you know what it is you are talking about or do you just talk?
I ALREADY quoted his mathematically intractable proposition and asked repeatedly for anyone to tell me what it means (some new form of math?).
If you can, do so– else shut up.
I would guess that the sentence was intended to say 147 out of 150, with the reference to 100 an error in his wording. This simplest remedy would, however, to look up the Time magazine study.
If a left-of-center speaker came to UCSB I doubt anyone would speak about it for 6 hours during A.S. public comment. “Controversial” isn’t a slur, it just happens to be true in this case.
I agree that controversial is more likely than not an accurate way of describing the climate at the campus but if the journalist wanted to allow the reader to make up there own mind, including it in the title was not a good idea.
It’s only controversial because the social justice warriors make it so. His ideas are actually not controversial in the main. If SJW’s define what is controversial, then anything right of Trotsky would be considered controversial. The media commonly paints people to the right end of the spectrum with loaded terms in order to paint their ideas as fringe or paint the individual as an out-of-step radical. Consider this… how often does the media call a speaker left wing? Almost never. Yet they routinely call conservative speaker as “far right”, “alt right”, “controversial”, and make loose associations, like “linked to white… Read more »
For example, would the Nexus ever call BLM “controversial”? I highly doubt it.
that is an excellent point and that is a great example of bias.
I agree and I am a huge shapiro fan but if there are people rallying and protesting against it a person could say that makes it controversial.
Nexus pls look at the event page. The title of the event is different because he actually didn’t speak that much on BLM. Why is research so difficult for your paper?
Bottom line, “facts dont care about your feelings.”
You’re quoting of the women’s pay in major cities is incorrect. He did not qualify it with hours worked because as he says in major cities women make more than men on average. He did qualify that Audi as with all employees doesn’t pay women less when you account for hours worked and experience. You’re misquote makes it seem like it had to qualify his stat to an absurd degree. How many other quotes did you mangle in attempt to change the tone of his argument.
Since you adroitly refer your self-identified “misquote” to no one in particular, it is difficult to know what it is you object to. I did quote Shapiro’s idiotic comment (see multiple times above) BUT took it from the quote in the article: “On the topic of the gender wage gap, Shapiro referenced Time magazine and said that “in 147 out of 100 — of 150 of the biggest cities in the United States…” Since my post is the only one (best I can tell) quoting Shapiro, I assume this is the “mangled quote” which you sagely “correct” with “He did… Read more »
BTW: In what context (other than your private debate with your other selves) did a post discuss or open itself for discussion of “hours worked”? I am at (another) loss here!
If the Nexus will not remove article posting sections, they should at least have the decency to run a moron filter algorithm.
Whack that sutdents funds are used to make some silly stickers