this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
516 points (98.0% liked)

World News

32112 readers
1140 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

undercuts the whole meritocracy narrative

How do you mean?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (3 children)

A classic case of success against all the odds, to manage to become a lawyer at all is a challenge let alone when you live in an iron lung. It's an argument for people saying that no matter who you are in society you can succeed and that (therefore) society isn't racist/classiest etc.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Oooh, I see. Thanks.

I was missing this part:

and that (therefore) society isn't racist/classiest etc.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yup. Through no fault of his own, the dude spent his entire life lying motionless. Where's the merit in that story?

It's not really helpful on it's own in a debate, because you'll 100% get "okay, but normal people" back, and it takes way too long to unravel how there's not actually a hard distinction between various degrees of disadvantage. You're better off with a mini Gish gallop, since there's no shortage of examples, and your opponent will be too embarrassed to say the African children were lazy directly.

You could also use actual hard numbers if your talking to an audience savvy enough and with enough attention span to get that. That's a rare audience, though.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Oooh, I see. Thanks.

I was missing this part:

and that (therefore) society isn't racist/classiest etc.