I have no opinion on whether he’s racist or not. I’m not nearly educated enough to follow his posts about genetics. I certainly recognize that there’s enough circumstantial evidence to construct the sort of guilt-by-association hit piece that Gawker used to get the NYT to drop him like a hot potato, but I also note a distinct lack of any direct, damning quotes from the man himself. I certainly recognize that he has clearly signaled either his openness to taboo thoughts about race and biology, or his sheer refusal to play politics when it comes to science. The real point is, I don’t care. I have enough faith in my own thinking ability to not get tricked into believing in some kind of malevolent “race science”, even if he were trying to subtly indoctrinate his readers with it, and there’s too much good stuff on his blog to avoid it for the sake of appearances. More importantly, I’m just sick of the shrieking and the demands for collective shunning that dominate online discussions.
It almost surprises me to admit that. At this point, I would prefer a conversation with a mild reactionary to one with a self-righteous progressive who only knows enough to master the dynamics of high-school cafeteria politics. Too many people assume they already know everything they need to know, and the only thing left to do is make a big public display of which team you’re on. To hell with that.
In the midst of this otherwise disheartening fracas, I did snicker at this comment:
The left argues that while no governmental law is explicitly racist, governmental and societal institutions have racism built into them. So this is what enables leftists to decry racism even though there are no governmental laws explicitly permitting it. The left calls this “institutionalized racism.”
The same argument applies to free speech. While it’s true that there is no governmental law explicitly preventing Razib from expressing his views, governmental and societal institutions have built into them mechanisms that prevent Razib from expressing his views. Perhaps we should call this institutionalized censorship.
March 25, 2015 @ 5:16 pm
Clever, but all ideas are not equal. Institutionalized racism exists, and it is an evil the government should do everything in it's power to eliminate. The government has no interest in supporting speech that is contrary to that effort, except to allow it. This person probably thinks he is being discriminated against if he is not allowed to discriminate against others.
Shorter: To people who put "institutionalized racism" in quotes: Fuck you very much (except when I do it.)
March 25, 2015 @ 4:53 pm
I think you may be reaching a bit here, Damian. Depending on how "mild" the reactionary is, there is plenty of hgih school dynamics in what passes for consrevative thought today. Despite your distate for SJW discourse…have you looked at the cool kid posturing of "the right"? The same internet group think is arguably even more evident as they martial these problems to the defense of yes, reactionary cultural attribues (including racism).
Not sure about Razib, so no comments there. And I see your point about institutionalized censorship, while noting that this has always been true to some extent. Except for the volume enabled by the Intertoobs, not sure it has changed.,
March 25, 2015 @ 5:25 pm
Noel has good points, too.
Damian….your readers are about to stage an intervention! We don;t want to lose you to The National Review or , horrors, the American Thinker!! Step back from the ledge!
LOL. 🙂
March 26, 2015 @ 1:58 am
Assholes are always unpleasant! All I am saying is that it is a mistake to focus on leftist assholes because rightist assholes are often worse.
But sure, mild reactionaries versus PZ?
March 26, 2015 @ 1:49 am
I think you may be reaching a bit here, Damian.
I have no idea what you mean, so let me put it this way. Are you familiar with the "Almost-Politically Correct Redneck" meme? Well, I know people sort of like that in real life. I increasingly find that I prefer people like that to, say, the kind of sanctimonious fuckwits who write and comment at Gawker. Because, once again, the important distinction for me is not left vs. right, it's assholes vs. non-assholes. There are people with wrong, misinformed opinions who manage to not be assholes about it. There are people with correct, progressive opinions who are absolute flaming assholes about it. I seriously do not know how to make it any clearer than that.
March 26, 2015 @ 2:10 am
Institutionalized racism exists
Sure. So does patriarchy. It still doesn't follow that anyone who sounds the alarm about them is seeing things clearly or describing things accurately.
This person probably thinks he is being discriminated against if he is not allowed to discriminate against others.
Certainly a possibility, though I wouldn't draw such a sweeping conclusion from one comment. Personally, I think it's just as likely that he was adopting a rhetorical stance in which he explained the concept as if to someone who'd never heard of it before. The scare quotes could just as easily indicate that the concept isn't entirely accepted or settled.
At any rate, you may have already decided that he's a racist, homophobic right-winger, but if so, you might have overlooked that his quip about institutionalized censorship is Chomsky 101. Nothing right-wing about it. I mean, seriously, this is one of Chomsky's perennial themes, stretching back several decades. In Western democracies, we don't send armed goons to kick your door down. Censorship isn't overt and violent. It takes the form of a tacit understanding among media elites that debate is only permissible within a very narrow band of opinion. Anything from A-C. Anyone trying to argue between D-Z will find themselves frozen out and usually given the silent treatment. Occasionally, they may be the victim of a smear from above, without being given anything like an equivalent platform from which to defend themselves. People remain free to choose to express or withhold their opinion, even as the incentives almost guarantee that they will be too afraid to speak up. In Chomsky's view, the system almost evolves this way. No one purposely makes it happen. No one sticks a gun in the face of a thought criminal to shut them up. He uses Orwell's description of Western censorship: the understanding that "it wouldn't do to mention" this or that opinion.
Shorter: To people who put "institutionalized racism" in quotes: Fuck you very much (except when I do it.)
As the kids like to say these days: Well, that escalated quickly.
March 26, 2015 @ 2:42 am
All I am saying is that it is a mistake to focus on leftist assholes because rightist assholes are often worse.
Assholes with power are always the worst, regardless of whether they have a fucking donkey emblem or a fucking elephant emblem on their fucking uniform. Assholes without power are nothing but annoyances, and there's no difference between them outside of personal taste.
Calling it a "mistake" to "focus" on one side instead of the other assumes that somehow, it matters in the fucking slightest which one I choose. I have no idea why you persist with this strange delusion that it's vitally important to pretend as if writing or commenting on a fucking blog is somehow a "political" act. It's not. It has no significance whatsoever. No one is going to change their vote based on what some no-name blogger writes. No politician is going to read what I say and act on it. For most people, reading blogs is just another shallow exercise in empty affirmation, the online version of channel surfing.
In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the majority of the "political" arguments on the web are being made by stupid fucking college kids and bored fucking cubicle drones wasting time on the boss's dime. None of it changes the world. It's hissing static and white noise being discharged into a void.
In the voting booth, for the foreseeable future, the only meaningful choices are between the Democrat and the Republican. Well, I don't know about you, but I don't see any sane Republicans worth voting for. Is that settled, then? Good. So, as I was saying, too many progressives are just as much the stupid, sanctimonious assholes as the conservatives they mock, and leftism is a huge fucking joke, seemingly dedicated to performing CPR on Marx's dusty corpse, or pinning their hopes on fraudulent fucking clowns like Zizek. And yet, you keep insisting over and over that it's vitally important that I give these fucking tools a slightly higher grade on some meaningless report cards, because hey, as stupid and worthless as they are, at least they're not Republicans. Well, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of blogs that will be happy to repeatedly tell you how important it is that these particular fuckwits are at least not Republicans, hooray, hoorah. This is not one of them.
March 26, 2015 @ 2:51 pm
….slinks off into the corner…..
March 26, 2015 @ 3:21 pm
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/matt-gregory-mclaughlin-kill-all-gays-california
March 26, 2015 @ 3:28 pm
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/03/24/black-woman-locked-in-psych-ward-for-8-days-because-cops-couldnt-believe-shes-a-businesswoman/
March 26, 2015 @ 3:40 pm
My point was that it is absurd to want the government to treat all legal actions and speech equally. There are things that are legal that should be discouraged. There is speech that is legal, but that should be condemned. In other words, "institutionalized censorship" (of Nazism, misogyny, homophobia, etc.), but not actual censorship, is a public good, and therefore not analogous to institutionalized racism, which is a public evil.
That institutionalized racism exists is irrefutable. One must be willfully blind to think that blacks and whites are treated equally by the police, for example.
March 26, 2015 @ 3:54 pm
And I completely agree that a lot of progressives and Democrats are irredeemable assholes, so I'm letting Brian have all of that spanking, but I would have just sent him to bed without a cookie. Different parenting strategies, I guess.
March 26, 2015 @ 4:13 pm
But, of course, arguing on the internet DOESN'T MATTER. Contra Carr, it helps the day pass!
Plus, I will paraphrase Ioz: What rational and balanced person FIXATES on politics? Politics sucks! LOL
Cheers!
March 26, 2015 @ 1:22 pm
Actually, let's unpack this a bit more: All I am saying is that it is a mistake to focus on leftist assholes because rightist assholes are often worse.
How is it a mistake? You mean for me, personally? You think I'm somehow in danger of forgetting that the right is also capable of groupthink even though I've written so many fucking posts about groupthink being a hardwired human trait that I even bore myself sometimes? You think that if I go for more than a few days without saying "Remember, kids, the right is still worse than the left!" I'm going to suddenly "convert" and start writing posts about how outraged I am by Chappaquiddick? I mean, Christ, it's only been two weeks since I wrote this post; I frankly find it a little insulting for that to be passed over in silence, only to have it once again implied that I'm so goddamned stupid that I need to be reminded that one grand narrative is as bad as another. The whole fucking point of this post is that simplistic narratives of "good guys vs. bad guys" often fall apart upon the slightest scrutiny. And yet, here we go again: "But…but…the right is still worse than the left!" Jesus fucking Christ.
I don't expect to never be criticized. If I say something obviously wrong, I should be called on it. But, since you mention that stupid old sack of shit Peezus Myers, I do believe that I've at least earned enough benefit of the doubt by now to not have to keep having this tired old argument. If I seem to have gone off the rails somehow, at least take a moment to consider that maybe you're just missing the point because you're reacting to what you guess I might have meant instead of carefully reading what I actually said (and what I've linked to).
How else is it a mistake? You think I somehow have power and influence, and if I'm not careful, my constant attacks on SJWs are going to light the fuse on a right-wing populist movement? Who the fuck do you think reads this blog besides you few regulars and a handful of lurkers? I get a few dozen visits a day. This blog couldn't possibly be more insignificant. If ever there were a place to be experimental, to entertain different thoughts for the sake of thinking, this would be it. And yet you seem to insist that it's somehow dangerous for me to go "off-message". As if there aren't countless insipid blogs out there who will spoon-feed you all the "All Rethuglican, all the time" news you can swallow, this apparently needs to be one of them too. Do you honestly need that daily affirmation? Do you need to be constantly reminded that "the right is worse than the left"? Then go check in with Digby, Atrios, Kos, Pandagon, or any other of the cookie-cutter blogs filled with stupid fucking amateur Jon Stewarts and Rachel Maddows auditioning for their chance at the big time. But leave me out of it. Whatever my limitations as a writer and thinker, I'm at least trying to challenge myself to keep questioning and evolving. This blog doesn't exist for any other reason. Not to preach, not to affirm, and not to make other people feel secure.
*drops mic*
March 26, 2015 @ 4:06 pm
Can we buy Damian an Ap so he can track us remotely rather than needing to "parent" his commenters?
I would note that I agree with Damian 110% that many self-righteous progs are assholes. I am being asshole-y myself in baiting some of these folks on other forums (you forogt the "t" in LGBT…forgetting it twice means you are ERASING these people from history)
My only real point is not to fixate on the sins of the left while being willing to accept the foibles of "mild reactionaries". Mild reactionaries voted for Prop 8. Even if they were not assholes about it.
But as he points out, this IS his blog, and he can focus on what he wants to focus on.
March 26, 2015 @ 4:34 pm
Yes, but a conversation with a conservative who is civil and thoughtful might be more interesting than one with an SJW who is committed to attacking all who disagree as enemies, was, I think, more or less, Damian's point. I find both types somewhat maddening.
March 26, 2015 @ 7:01 pm
And I cannot disagree with Damian at all. Hence my trolling behavior with "you ommitted a T from the acronym which is a horrific CRIME against humanity"
Or, an even worse example, a troll on one of the atheist boards who posted multiple comments like "All religious people are evil" and "there is not one successful Islamic country ever" and the like.
March 26, 2015 @ 9:56 pm
Sorry for the molten rage and hurling of lighting bolts and such, fellows. Yesterday just happened to be a twelve-hour workday (didn't get home till 9:30 p.m., too pissed off to even eat dinner), full of mishaps, setbacks and fuckups of near-slapstick proportions, which itself was just one more wretched day in what has been a recurring string of them over the last couple months. Add to that the physical discomfort of another inguinal hernia which I don't have the time and money to get fixed anytime soon, and my only choices to relieve the stress and strain were to unleash hellfire on Brian or strangle a hobo. I think we can all agree I chose the lesser of two evils.
So, in a more normal state, it is only with mild exasperation that I say, yeah, I think this issue has thoroughly been beaten to death already, so let's just agree to disagree if need be and leave it there.
March 26, 2015 @ 10:29 pm
Cool! No worries, Damian.
Just consider me that particularly nagging little spiteful sprite that sits on your shoulder. You can decide if I am the devil or the converse!
March 26, 2015 @ 11:51 pm
That institutionalized racism exists is irrefutable. One must be willfully blind to think that blacks and whites are treated equally by the police, for example.
Let me suggest an alternative: "Institutionalized racism" is just another way of saying "People persist in being racist despite the laws, rule, codes of conduct, and social mores prohibiting it." Personally, I don't think you need to invent convoluted theories to explain that fact. Granted, this is more of a "conservative" perspective, but it's one I hold: Human nature being what it is, many people will seek to bend or break the laws, rules, etc. if it's advantageous to them and if they think they can get away with it. So, if a racist happens to become chief of police, he may very well allow black people to be treated differently under the law as long as he can get away with it.
So, what do you do about it? Well, my pessimistic answer would be, "Not much." You can't invent an unbreakable law. There's no pedagogical method that will inoculate children against thoughtcrime. You can't act against these people until they reveal themselves, and there's no foolproof way to prevent them from gaining some sort of power. Unfortunately, the good guys are always at a slight disadvantage here. You can attempt to smother reactionary thoughts under bureaucracy, invent more specific rules and regulations, impose more sensitivity training seminars, and plug all the loopholes with paperwork, but as long as people have any freedom at all, they can and will still harbor the wrong kind of thoughts, and you can't do anything about it until they act on them.
Unless, of course, you want to allow your righteousness to madden you to the point of becoming a monster in the process of fighting monsters. Maybe brain scans can become so sophisticated one day that we can force employees to undergo scans for the seeds of thoughtcrime. Maybe we can just be born into the Panopticon, and only allowed out into the world once our education is complete and all our scans come back clear.
The trick, then, for good people is to do the best you can to respond to injustice as it happens without becoming deluded enough to think that you can outwit and eradicate it forever. That way eventually lies Orwellian dystopia. If a Presidential candidate says that he thinks blacks or gays should be killed, by all means, go scorched-earth on his ass. If some dumb teenager on Twitter says something racist or homophobic, though, maybe try to restrain yourself from publicly outing him, getting him fired from his job, and organizing a social media stoning. "What's the difference? Racism is bad, isn't it? We're fighting racism!" There's no rest from the vigilance against letting righteousness become its own form of thoughtless reaction.
March 27, 2015 @ 2:16 am
As for Razib's situation, no, it's not a first amendment issue, as he himself said. No one that I can see is arguing that Razib has a "right" to get published on the NYT op-ed page. The criticism is more along the lines that it's unfair or unsporting, for lack of a better term, for people with a grudge against him to raise hell about this, as if "He's wrong about race and genetics, so he's wrong about everything else, too, and if he's allowed to get 500 words in the NYT, he'll use it to send coded messages of white supremacy and encourage a bunch of tony Manhattanites to bring back lynching." It's just a petty, juvenile way to remind him that he's not welcome on "their" media turf because he's a bad man with bad thoughts who should be shunned like a plague carrier.
"Race science" is obviously a loaded, inflammatory term, but it's true that he writes about race and genetics. However, for what it's worth, I've never seen anything, directly or obliquely, along the lines of "…and that's why blacks are obviously an inferior race, a fact which should be reflected in law, blah blah blah." I just think it's an example of the scorched-earth policy I mentioned earlier: "We can't take a risk that he might be as bad as we fear, so let's just treat him like a flat-out eugenicist."
March 27, 2015 @ 1:40 pm
I understood that the problem had more to do with his relationship with white supremacists.
Anyway, I had a look at his "race science." Scare quotes are appropriate because different races of living homo sapiens are not actually recognized by science. His data show that "European" Americans are remarkably homogeneous, while "African" Americans and "Latino" Americans are quite mixed. Of course, this certainly implies that anyone who is half white and and half African is identified as African American. See the problem? It's tautological to identify the mixed race people as the "other", and then say you've proved racial purity of those you've selected for racial purity. See:
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/american-racial-boundaries-are-quite-distinct-for-now/
Also, this shit happens every fucking day. It is obviously systemic:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/detroit-area-cops-shown-beating-black-man-during-traffic-stop
March 27, 2015 @ 1:50 pm
Also: really sorry about your bad day – hope subsequent ones are better.
March 27, 2015 @ 4:33 pm
From the beginning here, my points were that institutionalized racism is not a scare quote thing – it's existence is not seriously debatable, and that "institutionalized censorship" is a public good when what is being discouraged is antithetical to a civil, just society. Not all ideas are equally deserving of respect. Is that fact problematic? Of course it is. But the alternative is absurd. It would be like saying every time someone speaks against racism, the KKK must be given equal time.
March 27, 2015 @ 3:19 pm
I think we can all agree that scorched earth is the appropriate response to csaes like Detroit.
Damian makes some good points. Unless you are far more pure than I, noel, you have had "prejudiced" thoughts. I certainly have. It's inevitable. So is the solution scorched earth campaigns? It's totalitarian
March 28, 2015 @ 12:19 am
The ironic thing is this contested "media turf" is proud to host venomous cretins like Thomas Friedman,(have you SEEN the Stachestapo's house? it's large enough for an entire cicrus troop) who suggested "as a thought exercise" that the United States arm and train ISIS because the Boogie Man Persian Peril is TAKING OVER THE WORLD, MAN!
But…of course, it is more important to screech about intersectionalism-whatever than the gathering war drums for invasion of Iran. 🙁
March 28, 2015 @ 12:06 am
From the beginning here, my points were that institutionalized racism is not a scare quote thing – it's existence is not seriously debatable
Ah. Well, if that's all we're arguing, then sure, absolutely, I agree that racism exists on the institutional as well as individual levels. However, like I said above, patriarchy and privilege exist, too. In common usage, though, not every person who throws the terms around is being accurate. In some (perhaps many) instances, they're nothing more than empty buzzwords that signal one's tribal affiliation.
So, ferzample, when I mock SJW-speak here, I'm not denying that some groups of people statistically have better resources and opportunities than others, which is a banal truism. I'm mocking the inaccurate and weaponized ways in which the concepts are being used.
I can't speak for Razib's commenter, but I can well enough imagine that the term "institutional racism" might conjure up images of paranoid-conspiratorial-type leftists who rant about how "AmeriKKKa" has always been a thoroughly racist state and always will be, no matter how much superficial progress seems to be made. (I say this because those people do exist; I've encountered quite a few of them in my time.) I don't know; I'm just suggesting a way in which someone could raise a skeptical eyebrow at the term itself without denying that racism exists on every level of society.
Anyway. In Razib's case, I seriously doubt he was going to use his NYT column to promote a tendentious theory of race and genetics, and I'm sure the NYT wouldn't have accepted that as a topic anyway. He could have used it to talk about being an apostate Muslim, perhaps. Or maybe he would have talked about the sorts of things he talked about as a Guardian contributor. Like I said, he writes about a variety of topics on his blog. He could have, and likely would have, written about any number of mainstream topics, none of which would have been infected with racist cooties. So this isn't about society or the government refusing to promote harmful, antisocial ideas, it's about a group of assholes who won't even allow one individual to write about history or religion on their media turf because as far as they're concerned, he has felonies on his record against progressivism and is a irredeemable Bad Man who needs to be shunned.
I know, I know, I'm talking as if I expect people to be able to talk and think like calm, rational adults, when, as we all know, political "discourse" in this country is more like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, MMA-style.
March 28, 2015 @ 12:35 am
Yeah, well, Gawker are precisely the sort of progressives who won't say boo about a preemptive war as long as a Democratic president starts it and X-percentage of the troops are LGBTQ.
March 29, 2015 @ 11:52 pm
Also: really sorry about your bad day – hope subsequent ones are better.
Thanks. I should know better than to respond to anything while in a foul mood, though.
My only real point is not to fixate on the sins of the left while being willing to accept the foibles of "mild reactionaries". Mild reactionaries voted for Prop 8. Even if they were not assholes about it.
True enough. Still, though the future is impossible to predict, and time changes all of us by degree, I think it's as near a certainty you'll ever find that no matter how stupid and risible I find social justards, it's never going to make me think that voting for a Christian Coalition Randroid is a good idea. I simply can't imagine what sorts of logical twists and turns it would take to lead me in that direction. So rest easy.
March 30, 2015 @ 6:40 pm
Even if he is a FRIENDLY and mellow Christian Coalition Randroid?
Just kidding, just kidding! 🙂
I mean, I have friends who are Ammosexuals, for FSM's sake. 🙂