Imma tell you why. Sociology has unfortunately become not just infected but nearly consumed with Marxism. And that's not a right-wing sound-byte hyperbole, it's literally Marxist, as in much of the theoretical foundations of modern Sociology are based on Marxist theory. In practice what this ends up meaning is that they see everything in terms of groups and conflict between groups, a la Marxist class conflict, but this is what I'd call "Social Marxism" because the emphasis is not just on wealth but on other factors that either do divide or they think divide society, like sex, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, politics, etc. Individual people and their actions are left to psychology, it's all about groups, they see everything in terms of groups, and it's why they constantly, CONSTANTLY, whenever they talk about people, always preface them with an ungodly mess of social categories. They never just refer to a "man", they'll say "white straight cis wealthy (the old Marxist "bourgeois" is out of style) male", because to them all those categories are very important. Just like how Marx insisted society is simply a never-ending class war (unless you apply his Communist Utopia solution, conveniently), they see society as a never-ending war between different groups, or as they call them "identities" because they like to frame it as if it's an individualistic thing to "identify" and have an "identity", but never actually act as such towards people and just lump them together as groups. As such, Sociologists are the Generals of generalization - if you're white, you're part of the white group, and implicitly assumed, even if you protest to the contrary, to be a contributor to whatever social affects that group has. If they say white people are generally subtly racist but rarely do it consciously, but you insist you're not, they'll just tell you that you have a bias towards your own behaviour and would never be able to realize it, or if you did, admit to having such bias; thus, the only ones that can be trusted to determine whether you're racist are the sociologists, and unless you actively join a group seen to be in a struggle against whites (ie, constantly support black activists), they'll just assume out of hand that you are in fact a little racist, you just either don't know it or won't admit it. While humans do group and conflict with other groups, and they do create stupidly arbitrary groups (skin colour, etc) and fight over those stupidly arbitrary differences, the problem is that Sociologists typically take this to mean that society as a whole functions this way and this group conflict is not only inevitable (thus there's no point in trying to stop people from dividing based on stupid things like race), but involves everyone. You're not allowed to be an individual in their eyes, they insist you're deluded, you're always part of a group whether you like it or acknowledge it. They don't pay much mind to individual people like Economists or Psychologists do. This has very, very important implications for their affect on society, because rarely are sociologists just passive analysts. The Marxist nature of the theory naturally either draws in people who already are leftist, or persuades them to be leftist, further amplified by the fact that basically every sociologist is left wing. As such, they stop simply viewing groups - which while highly generalized and not always correct, is harmless for the most part - and start assigning values to those groups. If they perceive blacks to be oppressed, they side with blacks. If an issue comes up where there seems to be a racial tendency on each side of the debate (or hell, even if there isn't and they simply speculate their could be), they'll always take the side of the "oppressed". And by "oppressed" they don't mean legally, not in the West anyway, because no one (with a few exceptions in some countries) is here. They mean that other groups, namely whites, might have thoughts or feelings about them that aren't completely conciliatory, empathetic or inclusive and sometimes act based on those feelings. Opinion and the exercise thereof is now "oppression" - ever since Adorno and those other Frankfurt school nutjobs got them all convinced the media is always a control tool by the most powerful group, they fear any expression of ideas contrary to the interests of minority groups because they assume it will inevitably feed into the oppressive media machine that will keep the white men in charge. Of course, their disdain for white men is purely arbitrary - were another group to supplant them and stick around for a few hundred years, they may very well end up on the opposite side. The point is that once they start trying to evaluate the relative power in society of the different groups they come up with (and they assume that power is always at the expense of minorities; a counterpart to Marx's ridiculous assumption that profits made by capitalists were always made at the expense of workers and this was theft and oppression of some kind), they have an inherent bias against those they think are powerful and the problem again is the generalization. If you're white, it doesn't matter if you're a poor redneck from Alabama, they assume (or simply want to believe to fit their moral compass) that you have some advantage over a black guy in the inner city just because you're white, when in reality you're just as poor as the black guy being referred to. They just assume your lack of melanin will give you advantages they can't prove exist or that have happened to you - but don't try to insist you've never received those advantages. I think it's obvious at this point we're dealing with emotional people, and differing opinions or challenges to their theory is not well received. They'll just tell you that you don't realize you have an advantage, but of course they can never actually prove you've ever been given one. This is why sociologists are so (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*) self-righteous and so cliquish. If you're male, if you're white, if you're straight, your opinion on social issues if flat out not valued because you're inherently, by your genetic nature, outside your control even if you insist otherwise, privileged by your group identity, and the most powerful group is by definition bad because it's assumed that status is at the expense of other groups. As such, people like this publish papers and opinion pieces and support political parties that devalue individual people and their rights and instead champion group rights, typically socialists. They do not care about individual people and they have no problem with punishing someone for the sins of a group they're part of even if they had nothing to do with a perceived wrong. You may think I've simply described socialists in general, but these people have more sophisticated and learned reasoning for what they think, it's simply not entirely reflective of reality and it doesn't make room for individual choice. And they have power in academia, they and their offshoots (gender studies, race studies, etc - all simply subcategories of sociology is reality) are passionate and put out a great body of work on the matter. Every time these people bring up the gender pay gap for example, ignore all the economics behind it and simply assume without evidence it exists because of sexism, the Economics department collectively will tear its hair out. If you care about each and every human being and their right to be who they want to be and live how they want to live, don't listen to these people. Until some psychological heterogeneity surfaces, as some have called for, sociology is a massive hivemind of Marxist bull(*)(*)(*)(*), resistance to facts and huge generalizations, and is by far the most useless social science when it comes to describing reality.
1. First you complain about Marxists/sociologists making generalizations, then generalize all sociologists as Marxist by definition? All right. 2. You characterization of Marxism is blatantly incorrect and makes little sense. Marxists aren't focused on race so much as they are focused on wealth (though the two are definitely connected). You seem to characterize more of a liberal position than a Marxist one. Marxists accept the concept of white economic privilege, but see no distinction between poor whites and poor blacks in terms of both being part of the proletariat class. The only distinction they might offer is that many poor whites have been brainwashed into accepting conservative policies that clearly hurt them. Marxists don't divide people by race. They divide by class. You mention this, then claim that sociologists are just social Marxists because they make divisions between people. See below as to why that doesn't work as the definition of an ideology. 3. Politics that "champion the individual" are actually never about that. See fascism, for one. Moreover, Marxism is actually more about the ability to make choices than conservatism is. It's essentially people protesting the fact that they have no choice (in their work, economic status, etc.) because of systematic inequality. Conservatism is about maintaining the fetishistic illusion of choice in a choiceless society, at all costs. 4. You think it's "ridiculous" that Marx claims that workers are oppressed by capitalism? Tell that to child laborers working in sweatshops in Indonesia to produce the clothes you and I wear. 5. You seem to be describing political correctness when discussing how sociologists "don't want to hear other's opinions", etc. Marxists generally dislike political correctness because it (a) individualizes what are ultimately class issues and (b) does nothing in the long run to address said issues. Again, Marxism and liberalism (which does support political correctness) are VERY different things. 6. Almost all political ideologies rely on categories of people and generalizations about said categories, including conservatism. Conservatives essentially split humanity into two broad groups: "winners" (people who succeed economically) and the parasitic "losers" (people who cannot succeed economically). Within the first class of people exist (in the conservative mind) hard-working, just individuals who "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" and who just happen to almost always be white, Christian, and straight. In the "loser" group exists social "parasites" like "thugs", criminals, and terrorists, who just happen to almost always be non-white and poor. It is interesting to add that conservatives also tend to view left-leaning intellectuals as "losers". Since these intellectuals tend to be middle class and white, we could mobilize your logic and claim that conservatives are secretly all Marxists because they are clearly replacing "bourgeoisie" with the more acceptable "loser" when discussing these intellectuals. When your logic can prove that conservatives are Marxists, there's a problem.
Sociologists have a particular methodology that lends itself to being socialist, largely because Marxism hugely influenced the field and still does today. Thus, most sociologists, perhaps unintentionally, end up becoming socialist in pursuing their field, or are attracted to it in the first place because they already are.
1. Not all, just most. It's not conjecture, though one could make the reasonable assumption given how much Marxist inspired theory there is in Sociology, when polled almost all sociologists are left wing. 2. If you want to stick to traditional definitions of Marxism, but then we have to go back to calling it Critical Theory which to me sounds kind of full of itself. 3. That's completely false, namely because Liberalism exists. 4. Who said child labour has to be legal to have a capitalist society? 5. Marxists invented political correctness to be technical, though it meant something different (towing the party line). And what I mean is more that they have this habit of, based off their assumptions about a group they assign you to, trying to make people fit those assumptions (or interpret your actions as fitting them). The result is that, like I said, an individual choice is never regarded as that - every choice is assumed to feed into group dynamics, and thus they assume you share some responsibility for the actions of the group even if you have no control over the actions of others. 6. You appear to be describing Anarcho-capitalists. Which is not conservatism.
For once, I completely agree with the OP. Probably because I didn't read that wall of nonsense, but scanned it with my eye catching on enough keywords that I knew if I read it I wouldn't agree, but I was feeling all charitable since this is a new year and all. Anything involving the study of two or more people not shooting at sumpin' is Marxism, or gay, or HomoMarxism.
1. False definition. Being left-wing doesn't mean that you're a Marxist. And my point about the deep problems in your logic still stands. Using your logic, the demonized sociologist you present could argue that not every straight white male is wealthy and earns more when compared to people of color, but most are/do (not all, just most, as you said), so white privilege exists. How is this position (which you seem to greatly dislike) different, logically, than your own? The problem is that you use the very logic you complain about. Additionally, being "inspired" by elements of Marxism doesn't make a ideology Marxist. By that logic, most western European states are Marxist because they have free healthcare, college-education, and subsidized housing, all reforms that derive from socialism, and hence, Marxism. 2. Sorry, but you just can't throw around terms like they don't mean anything. Modern Marxism is a system of belief that is diverse and complex. Some Marxists are more inclined to multiculturalism (which seems to be what you are talking about here). Most aren't because they see it as a creation of globalized capitalism. Liberals are FAR more comfortable with the views you complained about than Marxists. 3. I assume you're referring to Canadian liberalism or liberalism in a broad context (because American liberalism includes many of the views you seem to greatly dislike). Regardless, what I said about conservatism before equally applies to liberalism: it's about believing in choice even when none really exists. 4. History, for one. Name one time in the history of capitalism that child labor didn't exist. Moreover, capitalism has always oppressed workers. 5. Again, putting people into generalized groups is a characteristic of every ideology. You do it yourself when you claim that "they [sociologists] have this habit of, based off their assumptions about a group they assign you to, trying to make people fit those assumptions (or interpret your actions as fitting them)", as you imply that all sociologist act in a certain way. Thus your critique that "an individual choice is never regarded as that - every choice is assumed to feed into group dynamics, and thus they assume you share some responsibility for the actions of the group even if you have no control over the actions of others" can be read as a critique of your own position. In other words, you generalize sociologists and Marxists as people who generalize others and then explain why generalization is bad. That's a real logical problem. 6. In America, they're almost the same thing (see Carly Fiorina or Ran Paul). Regardless, conservatism is very much focused on group distinctions. While they don't possess the radicalism of anarcho-capitalists, I maintain that conservatives do have a worldview in which they divide people into generalized groups based loosely on the standards I discussed earlier. You've provided no reason as to why these standards are categorically not conservative. In fact, true anarcho-capitalists would likely have an altered standard: all who depend on the government (including government subsidized corporations and businesses) would be included in the "social parasite" category. Conservatives would place such individuals in the "winner" category; they don't care very much how you succeed as long as you did so.You also never responded to my point that, under your logical system, anyone who generalizes wealthy males as a group (including conservatives) is a Marxist.
Well to offer some validity to the OP i can tell you that many universities are dropping their anthropology programs because political beliefs have tainted that entire field to the point that very little of their research can be considered unbiased.
