Great piece! Also, I would add that sociology should start focusing more on other social problems besides racism. Economic inequality, for example, is a subject that could use far more attention from the field. It is too important to be left to the economists
There is plenty of work on economic inequality, and it's equally unpopular as the studies of racial inequality. Indeed, the field is almost founded on the study of economic inequality.
I completely agree with the critique of sociology and 100% appreciate the defense of its formerly traditional standards. That said, I also think that this piece could have been a lot stronger if it had included a deeper analysis of why the societal impact of critical race theory and related ideas evolved in a way that was so, so much worse than what could have been imagined in the 1990s (at least by the liberal-left).
Back then, a broadly defined liberalism dominated U.S. politics and culture so thoroughly that it was hard to imagine that this would ever change. Therefore, it seemed to many (including myself at the time) that CRT and the like would simply help to move the needle towards an even better, more fully inclusive realization of American liberal democracy. This, however, has proven to be an extremely naive and time-bound assumption. It hasn't aged well at all . . . instead, we've seen how the appropriation of this history of racial injustice in the U.S. by elite women and non-whites has undermined the ethos that propelled the country towards their greater inclusion and equality in the first place.
Patel is the son of a father who (according to a quick search) came to the US to get an MBA at Notre Dame and went on to become a corporate marketing executive. His mother worked as an accounting professor. This is an elite family by any reasonable measure. Yet, he was encouraged in college to use the term "white supremacy" to describe his feelings around his family serving biryani instead of turkey for Thanksgiving. While I get how at the time this seemed insightful, now it honestly seems like stolen valor in the service of securing the elite status of the college educated professional managerial class.
This was the same decade in which NAFTA was passed under a Democratic Administration, and many communities that had relied upon a manufacturing jobs base collapsed. This included both White and Black areas. And since then, with the influx of more and more devastating street drugs and accelerating family breakdown, such areas have only gotten far, far worse.
Plus, places like Gary, Indiana, were full of Black workers whose ancestors had actually experienced the real horrors of White supremacy in this country. To equate their ancestral experience (and its continued aftermath) with that of a college-bound son of elite professionals and his feelings around a holiday meal is -- let's just say, a huge problem on multiple levels.
Then, when Trump is elected in a populist reaction to so many people and parts of the country being written off (not saying Patel ever did this, just speaking generally), the response from the progressive side of US politics is to call them racists. We can now connect the dots and should.
While there's valuable insight in your post, it warrants some scrutiny you're less willing to give Patel.
• That "quick search" on his background in the 3rd paragraph is not relevant the broader points being made, and is essentially a personal dismissal of the author. Patel is no less well-poisitoned to comment on this matter than you or I, full-stop. Pivoting to the Thanksgiving dinner anecdote doesn't get around this, or the cloying focus on identity that transcends sociology and any other Humanities major in the crisis of higher ed.
• "To equate [the hardships black underclass of Gary, Indiana] (and its continued aftermath) with that of a college-bound son of elite professionals and his feelings aroune a holiday meal is ... a huge problem on multiple levels."
• The author did not do this. (No, he didn't.) This part of this article meant to evoke the censorious and anti-intellectual atmosphere that has not only permeated sociology for decades, but also U.S. culture at large, to the point where being more credentialed, curious and driven to pierce the ideological blur becomes a larger-than-life task.
But, that anti-intellectualism provides what any other echo chamber does: a cheerful break with day-to-day realities experienced by most citizens, degree-holding or not:
"Sociology was like an alternate universe full of concepts that helped me see parts of my life experience I had not fully explored, and professors who validated me for sharing them."
To clarify, I didn't mean to suggest that Patel shouldn't comment on this; on the contrary, I'm very happy to see people like him doing so. I also appreciate his defense of traditional research methods in sociology. And I agree that when well taught, sociology can and should be a worthy subject to study that broadens one's horizons in important ways.
Where I diverge is that I read the piece as basically saying "while my early introduction to understanding white supremacy was helpful, it needed to be bounded by traditional sociological methods. When that was jettisoned, what had been a useful framework was distorted."
My point was that while this is also how I would have thought about it back in the 1990s, at this point in time, I think that the entire framework (of how "white supremacy" was conceptualized and taught as part of a larger "critical social justice" paradigm) merits a much deeper critique.
Basically, teaching elite college students who are either women, non-whites, or both that whatever "micro aggressions" they experienced in their lives should be put in the same "white supremacist" or "patriarchal" framework as slavery/Jim Crow/lynching and a gender segregated job market/women not being able to have credit cards/normalized aggressive sexism in the workplace etc. was an extremely bad idea from the get-go. (I know that Patel didn't discuss feminism but the same thing applies in terms of the way these ideas evolved and have been used in practice).
Several decades later, we can and should see the ways in which these ideas were used to leverage advantage in the elite educational and employment arena by women and non-whites while at the time undermining the cultural bases of an equalitarian ethos in America. And also making the growing socioeconomic inequality that paralleled the rise of wokeism since the 1990s more invisible.
This view combines a class-based left-wing critique of wokeism and a culture-based right-wing one. Both are correct IMO. Therefore, I felt that the article didn't make as incisive and deep a critique of its subject matter as I would ideally like to see.
How I wish we had more of this kind of excellent work in today's frantic discourse. Thanks for this. I remember what a revelation it was to encounter sociology in its academic infancy in the late 1960s early 1970s with books like Michael Harrington's The Other America. Sadly, I've watched the field descend into the prescriptive morass it is today, taking generations of young Americans with it. Same thing with literature and the Theory movement in literature; another thought-provoking analytical tool being converted into prescriptive dogma. And we wonder where reactions like MAGA come from.... One radical dogma opposing another. Not sure how we get through this, but my fingers are crossed.
Speaking of lacking rigor, this article has no "empirical base" to put the point in Popperian terms. This is because there is no discussion of what the evidence presented means.
Exhibit A: Membership in the ASA has declined 33% from its peak in 1972. This is supposed to indicate a collapse in "trust". (Let's leave aside the question of whether "trust" would be a reason for anyone to study anything). Did the author consider, as a good social scientist must, alternative explanations such as cost, or the proliferation of alternative venues for presenting work? No.
Exhibit B: Undergraduate majors are falling. What is this supposed to indicate? Undergraduate majors are falling in the study of German and Scandinavian as well. Does this indicate a lack of "trust" or a decline in "rigor"? No evidence is adduced.
Exhibit C: The head of the ASA "described the field as 'currently undergoing a renaissance as antiracist, decolonial, feminist, queer and transnational theorizing [has emerged?]". This statement is adduced to prove that Ron DeSantis is right that sociology has been captured by radicals. How so? What texts, arguments, claims etc show this? What if the statement is just factually true?
Exhibit D: The "liberal to conservative ratio in sociology is somewhere around 50:1". What is this ratio? Professors, students? What do these categories mean? Why should this be surprising since, as I have written elsewhere, conservative ideology in the US is hostile to the very notion of society?
Exhibit E: The author presents an anecdote drawn from his own research in which his initial hypothesis found no empirical support. So what? Is the suggestion that this doesn't happen in sociology departments? If so, it's flatly wrong.
Exhibit F: Sociology should adhere to Popper's criterion of falsifiability. Uhm, ever read Lakatos?
This is of a piece with the generally dismissive and ignorant tone many Persuasion articles have when it comes to critical work. Maybe the site should get an actual working sociologist for articles such as these.
A big problem as I see it as a total outsider is that modern social science fields are often influenced by postmodernism which denies the ability to have objective knowledge ! Read the book Cynical Theories by Pluckrose for more details.
Behind the bullet-point list of criticisms of this article is a lack of curiosity to see what point the author was trying to make. It certainly isn't Patel's best work, or of Persuasion.
What do I mean by incuriosity? The energy you invest from start to finish in blanket-dismissing the article's various conclusions. "Trust" can be defined as the conditions met to invest substantial time in resources in achieving a concrete goal (a degree in the Humanities) for abstract ends (what good can you achieve, socially or otherwise, with that degree?).
If you cannot immediately sense how that 'trust' has declined in this or any related discipline, that is a case of dangerously selective perception. Enrollment for the last decade has indeed been falling, public support for universities is negligible compared with what upwardly mobile Gen-X enjoyed. Unless you live in a less materially privileged society, where putting quotes around the word 'trust' is a luxury most cannot afford, and quite frankly, I can't either.
The "why" is rooted in whether you can quite climb down from the snowy heights of honor to actually read what Patel is saying. The thirst for evidence, as you define it, is elided by your need to personally disparage Patel behind a facile blanket dismissal. Keep up the good work.
Interesting that you would say I'm not "actually reading" what Patel is saying, since I appear to be the only person in these comments who engaged with the claims that he makes in the article rather than emoting about them.
'Engage' would fall under the same umbrella as a term used earlier in the post, 'adduce,' in response to ostensibly laziness on the part of the article, whose critics cite a lack of substance while evidencing no clearing of the bar that would set their dismissals apart/above Patel's article.
Regardless of the article's quality or ability to elicit productive discussion, what's clearest of all is that it will not receive the scrutiny it deserves.
Thanks for telling a bit of your history here. My dissertation at U of Chicago was read by Martin Marty, David Tracy and Harold Bloom (Yale). Peter Berger’s The Heretical Imperative was very influential along with all the works of William James. Scott Appleby was the guy who told me to become a social theorist with a focus on the question: Can people with rival incompatible convictions of the common good ever trust each other enough to live in peace TOGETHER? That has been my life’s work at FRD. Would love to talk with you about the future of social psychology that has become more prominent as sociology became a core course for Progressive Cultural Activism.
Great piece! Also, I would add that sociology should start focusing more on other social problems besides racism. Economic inequality, for example, is a subject that could use far more attention from the field. It is too important to be left to the economists
There is plenty of work on economic inequality, and it's equally unpopular as the studies of racial inequality. Indeed, the field is almost founded on the study of economic inequality.
https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v12-14-294/
https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/what-we-study/race-poverty-and-inequality/
https://inequality.cornell.edu
I completely agree with the critique of sociology and 100% appreciate the defense of its formerly traditional standards. That said, I also think that this piece could have been a lot stronger if it had included a deeper analysis of why the societal impact of critical race theory and related ideas evolved in a way that was so, so much worse than what could have been imagined in the 1990s (at least by the liberal-left).
Back then, a broadly defined liberalism dominated U.S. politics and culture so thoroughly that it was hard to imagine that this would ever change. Therefore, it seemed to many (including myself at the time) that CRT and the like would simply help to move the needle towards an even better, more fully inclusive realization of American liberal democracy. This, however, has proven to be an extremely naive and time-bound assumption. It hasn't aged well at all . . . instead, we've seen how the appropriation of this history of racial injustice in the U.S. by elite women and non-whites has undermined the ethos that propelled the country towards their greater inclusion and equality in the first place.
Patel is the son of a father who (according to a quick search) came to the US to get an MBA at Notre Dame and went on to become a corporate marketing executive. His mother worked as an accounting professor. This is an elite family by any reasonable measure. Yet, he was encouraged in college to use the term "white supremacy" to describe his feelings around his family serving biryani instead of turkey for Thanksgiving. While I get how at the time this seemed insightful, now it honestly seems like stolen valor in the service of securing the elite status of the college educated professional managerial class.
This was the same decade in which NAFTA was passed under a Democratic Administration, and many communities that had relied upon a manufacturing jobs base collapsed. This included both White and Black areas. And since then, with the influx of more and more devastating street drugs and accelerating family breakdown, such areas have only gotten far, far worse.
Plus, places like Gary, Indiana, were full of Black workers whose ancestors had actually experienced the real horrors of White supremacy in this country. To equate their ancestral experience (and its continued aftermath) with that of a college-bound son of elite professionals and his feelings around a holiday meal is -- let's just say, a huge problem on multiple levels.
Then, when Trump is elected in a populist reaction to so many people and parts of the country being written off (not saying Patel ever did this, just speaking generally), the response from the progressive side of US politics is to call them racists. We can now connect the dots and should.
While there's valuable insight in your post, it warrants some scrutiny you're less willing to give Patel.
• That "quick search" on his background in the 3rd paragraph is not relevant the broader points being made, and is essentially a personal dismissal of the author. Patel is no less well-poisitoned to comment on this matter than you or I, full-stop. Pivoting to the Thanksgiving dinner anecdote doesn't get around this, or the cloying focus on identity that transcends sociology and any other Humanities major in the crisis of higher ed.
• "To equate [the hardships black underclass of Gary, Indiana] (and its continued aftermath) with that of a college-bound son of elite professionals and his feelings aroune a holiday meal is ... a huge problem on multiple levels."
• The author did not do this. (No, he didn't.) This part of this article meant to evoke the censorious and anti-intellectual atmosphere that has not only permeated sociology for decades, but also U.S. culture at large, to the point where being more credentialed, curious and driven to pierce the ideological blur becomes a larger-than-life task.
But, that anti-intellectualism provides what any other echo chamber does: a cheerful break with day-to-day realities experienced by most citizens, degree-holding or not:
"Sociology was like an alternate universe full of concepts that helped me see parts of my life experience I had not fully explored, and professors who validated me for sharing them."
To clarify, I didn't mean to suggest that Patel shouldn't comment on this; on the contrary, I'm very happy to see people like him doing so. I also appreciate his defense of traditional research methods in sociology. And I agree that when well taught, sociology can and should be a worthy subject to study that broadens one's horizons in important ways.
Where I diverge is that I read the piece as basically saying "while my early introduction to understanding white supremacy was helpful, it needed to be bounded by traditional sociological methods. When that was jettisoned, what had been a useful framework was distorted."
My point was that while this is also how I would have thought about it back in the 1990s, at this point in time, I think that the entire framework (of how "white supremacy" was conceptualized and taught as part of a larger "critical social justice" paradigm) merits a much deeper critique.
Basically, teaching elite college students who are either women, non-whites, or both that whatever "micro aggressions" they experienced in their lives should be put in the same "white supremacist" or "patriarchal" framework as slavery/Jim Crow/lynching and a gender segregated job market/women not being able to have credit cards/normalized aggressive sexism in the workplace etc. was an extremely bad idea from the get-go. (I know that Patel didn't discuss feminism but the same thing applies in terms of the way these ideas evolved and have been used in practice).
Several decades later, we can and should see the ways in which these ideas were used to leverage advantage in the elite educational and employment arena by women and non-whites while at the time undermining the cultural bases of an equalitarian ethos in America. And also making the growing socioeconomic inequality that paralleled the rise of wokeism since the 1990s more invisible.
This view combines a class-based left-wing critique of wokeism and a culture-based right-wing one. Both are correct IMO. Therefore, I felt that the article didn't make as incisive and deep a critique of its subject matter as I would ideally like to see.
How I wish we had more of this kind of excellent work in today's frantic discourse. Thanks for this. I remember what a revelation it was to encounter sociology in its academic infancy in the late 1960s early 1970s with books like Michael Harrington's The Other America. Sadly, I've watched the field descend into the prescriptive morass it is today, taking generations of young Americans with it. Same thing with literature and the Theory movement in literature; another thought-provoking analytical tool being converted into prescriptive dogma. And we wonder where reactions like MAGA come from.... One radical dogma opposing another. Not sure how we get through this, but my fingers are crossed.
Eboo always sounds so--I'm not sure if this is the right word, but it's the one that comes to mind--sane.
Speaking of lacking rigor, this article has no "empirical base" to put the point in Popperian terms. This is because there is no discussion of what the evidence presented means.
Exhibit A: Membership in the ASA has declined 33% from its peak in 1972. This is supposed to indicate a collapse in "trust". (Let's leave aside the question of whether "trust" would be a reason for anyone to study anything). Did the author consider, as a good social scientist must, alternative explanations such as cost, or the proliferation of alternative venues for presenting work? No.
Exhibit B: Undergraduate majors are falling. What is this supposed to indicate? Undergraduate majors are falling in the study of German and Scandinavian as well. Does this indicate a lack of "trust" or a decline in "rigor"? No evidence is adduced.
Exhibit C: The head of the ASA "described the field as 'currently undergoing a renaissance as antiracist, decolonial, feminist, queer and transnational theorizing [has emerged?]". This statement is adduced to prove that Ron DeSantis is right that sociology has been captured by radicals. How so? What texts, arguments, claims etc show this? What if the statement is just factually true?
Exhibit D: The "liberal to conservative ratio in sociology is somewhere around 50:1". What is this ratio? Professors, students? What do these categories mean? Why should this be surprising since, as I have written elsewhere, conservative ideology in the US is hostile to the very notion of society?
Exhibit E: The author presents an anecdote drawn from his own research in which his initial hypothesis found no empirical support. So what? Is the suggestion that this doesn't happen in sociology departments? If so, it's flatly wrong.
Exhibit F: Sociology should adhere to Popper's criterion of falsifiability. Uhm, ever read Lakatos?
This is of a piece with the generally dismissive and ignorant tone many Persuasion articles have when it comes to critical work. Maybe the site should get an actual working sociologist for articles such as these.
A big problem as I see it as a total outsider is that modern social science fields are often influenced by postmodernism which denies the ability to have objective knowledge ! Read the book Cynical Theories by Pluckrose for more details.
Leverage teenage discomfort into resentment in order to destroy democracy - check.
Democracy destroyed - nearly there!
Behind the bullet-point list of criticisms of this article is a lack of curiosity to see what point the author was trying to make. It certainly isn't Patel's best work, or of Persuasion.
What do I mean by incuriosity? The energy you invest from start to finish in blanket-dismissing the article's various conclusions. "Trust" can be defined as the conditions met to invest substantial time in resources in achieving a concrete goal (a degree in the Humanities) for abstract ends (what good can you achieve, socially or otherwise, with that degree?).
If you cannot immediately sense how that 'trust' has declined in this or any related discipline, that is a case of dangerously selective perception. Enrollment for the last decade has indeed been falling, public support for universities is negligible compared with what upwardly mobile Gen-X enjoyed. Unless you live in a less materially privileged society, where putting quotes around the word 'trust' is a luxury most cannot afford, and quite frankly, I can't either.
The "why" is rooted in whether you can quite climb down from the snowy heights of honor to actually read what Patel is saying. The thirst for evidence, as you define it, is elided by your need to personally disparage Patel behind a facile blanket dismissal. Keep up the good work.
Interesting that you would say I'm not "actually reading" what Patel is saying, since I appear to be the only person in these comments who engaged with the claims that he makes in the article rather than emoting about them.
'Engage' would fall under the same umbrella as a term used earlier in the post, 'adduce,' in response to ostensibly laziness on the part of the article, whose critics cite a lack of substance while evidencing no clearing of the bar that would set their dismissals apart/above Patel's article.
Regardless of the article's quality or ability to elicit productive discussion, what's clearest of all is that it will not receive the scrutiny it deserves.
Eboo,
Thanks for telling a bit of your history here. My dissertation at U of Chicago was read by Martin Marty, David Tracy and Harold Bloom (Yale). Peter Berger’s The Heretical Imperative was very influential along with all the works of William James. Scott Appleby was the guy who told me to become a social theorist with a focus on the question: Can people with rival incompatible convictions of the common good ever trust each other enough to live in peace TOGETHER? That has been my life’s work at FRD. Would love to talk with you about the future of social psychology that has become more prominent as sociology became a core course for Progressive Cultural Activism.
Best wishes, Randall Paul