(August 29, 2018 at 6:04 pm)Khemikal Wrote: I'm very sincere, I hold you in high esteem, lol..and I don't think that you're incapable, I just note that the normalization of white supremacy has been very..very effective.  You're not supposed to realize that you've picked it up.  It's supposed to seem plausible.  It's supposed to be trivial enough to conform to some personal experience or another. 

It's supposed to seem plausible, at least assuming that the person involved hasn't developed the critical thinking skills necessary to think "wait, there could be a legit reason things are the way they are that doesn't fit into this worldview."

Like I've said before, especially in this thread, there's a lot I seriously question about the left, but I know better than to latch onto someone who seems to be saying what I'm thinking, but, deep down, is preaching an ideology that is more than simply questionable. 

When Stephen Dedalus in Portrait of the Artist as a young man admits to his friends that he's given up Catholicism, one asks if this means he'll become a Protestant, he replies:

Quote:—I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?

This appears to have mirrored an actual exchange Joyce had; a woman asked the same question as his friend, and he said: “Madam, I have lost my faith, I have not lost my mind.”

I suppose my old morbid interest in the white supremacist movements (from the old days when we just assumed they'd stay irrelevant forever) trying to figure out how they ticked properly inoculated me from picking their bullshit up. I figured out what bullshit they were spewing to support it and I learned quickly to see it for what it was.

But, make no mistake, for a lot of people, it's hard. Take the case of JonTron.  RationalWiki's article on him ends with this section:

Quote:Jafari is himself half-Iranian[130] and has a Muslim grandmother.[131] It's a true testament to the progress of multiculturalism that someone categorized as nonwhite by white nationalists[132] and Jafari himself[133] can now freely defend white nationalism.
Jafari has provided a cautionary tale in how alarmingly effective alt-right propaganda has become in recent years, especially considering Jafari is someone who has done the following:

• Voted for Barack Obama twice[134]
  
• Used to support Bernie Sanders[135]
  
• Happily uses a person's preferred pronouns[136]
  
• Voted in favour of same-sex marriage[137]
  
• Is the child of two immigrants[138]
  

He's "one of those people," the son of two immigrants, one of which considers itself a mortal enemy of the US, and he'd almost certainly suffer if the alt-right had their way, and Trump could actually get his way. He's pro same-sex marriage, he voted for Obama twice, and even supported Bernie Sanders. And yet, he's still repeating the logic behind the "white genocide" bullshit, seems to believe there's a plot by Mexico to take the land they lost in the Mexican-American war, and is convinced that black people are inherently more criminal than white people (which isn't exactly borne out by the evidence). That's how effective it's been.

[protip about that last link: South Africa, with its sizable white minority is the worst on the continent, and Ghana, where many locals have never seen a white man in person, is far safer, indeed, only a little less safe than the US, but actually marginally safer than Sweden; Ireland, the whitest nation on Earth with 96.4% whiteness, has a crappier score than Tunisia, which has 1% white people]

Also, Cracked has an article about this phoenomenon, and it's one of the more thought-provoking articles on the site.

Hopefully, this will put this into more perspective.

(August 29, 2018 at 6:04 pm)Khemikal Wrote: It's a bit more specific, Benny.  Not every rural white is a redneck or trailer park trash.  Hell.  I'm a redneck.  Thing is, whites aren't historically disenfranchised in any meaningful sense...that's just some ground leveling business in the normalizing effort.  People who weren't regarded -as- whites, were, constantly, but we've all congealed into a single mass nowadays..even the miscegenated ones.  lol

Whites as a group aren't disenfranchised, but a fair percentage of white individuals, especially at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale, are. I'd say in a sense they are DOUBLY disenfranchised-- not only are they less than the average American, but they are members of a supposedly privileged group, and are not receiving any of that privilege. That notwithstanding, they are expected to bear part of the moral responsibility for that prilivilege-- i.e. that white people have taken too much, and in too oppressive away, that they should be willing to voluntarily give back, either by accepting personal abuse, or by accepting public policy that helps others, and disadvantages them, without regard to individual need or merit.

Quote:

Quote:Well, this argument has been made in this thread, has it not?  That white people who express pride are racist, because they selectively choose not to focus on the harm that white people have done?  Are black people who express pride expected also to present a balanced view, and present the harms done by black people?  How about Asians?  How about Natives?

I've already said that I'm not particularly proud or ashamed of being white. That being said, I perceive a double standard, and I do not agree with a philosophical position which seeks explicitly to support it.

Quote:I'm more of a "why don't you poor fuckers realize that you're all one class and stop attacking your peers to the benefit of your owners" kinda guy.....but tell me more about how the ideologies explicitly opposed to racism are, in fact, the real racists.  

See, now you're speaking my language. If any individual feels he's being mistreated, he has a perfect right to stand up and speak, or otherwise act, on his behalf. If he can talk others into standing with him, fucking rock on. Every time I see another black kid shot, for example, I think "This is when every pissed off black guy with a firearm is going to storm that shitty police station and teach them what's what." But so far, they never have.

Yeah, you're super-opposed to racism-- ALL of it, right? No, you are not. You seek first to establish a moral balance-- to give back, or enable the taking back, of enough power that black people (or gay people or women) are on an equal footing in every way. That's the PC mandate-- look at which groups are victimized, and work to bring them as nearly as possible to a true equality-- by social pressure if necessary, and by legislation if possible.

I get that principle, but as I've already shown, I think much of the work of ACTUALLY restoring equality is done by careful general policies, not by differential treatment based on demographic membership.

For example, we know that most people in prisons are black, and that many of those have been imprisoned unfairly. Instead of racial sensitivity training and all that, I would recommend an independent review process that completely REMOVES race in arbitration, and looks specifically at the severity of the case, and then removing people on their own recognizance with a contract meant to encourage productivity. I'd do arbitration in one of two ways: (1) completely blind-- no names even, just a description of charges and sentences; (2) true peer review-- i.e. a jury or tribunal could go through cases of people who share membership in the same demographic group-- i.e. let black people decide if they want a particular person back in their communities. I vastly prefer (1), but if we are going to insist on demographics, I'd go even FURTHER, and make sure to minimize the class war-- where say a group of only white adjudicators have the power to determine whether black people should be released. Because we already know, don't we, that that would fail horribly?

The result of either should be that the majority of prisoners released are black, giving a net shift toward equality among demographics, without bringing one demographic group into opposition with another.

(August 29, 2018 at 10:28 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(August 29, 2018 at 6:04 pm)Khemikal Wrote: It's a bit more specific, Benny.  Not every rural white is a redneck or trailer park trash.  Hell.  I'm a redneck.  Thing is, whites aren't historically disenfranchised in any meaningful sense...that's just some ground leveling business in the normalizing effort.  People who weren't regarded -as- whites, were, constantly, but we've all congealed into a single mass nowadays..even the miscegenated ones.  lol

Whites as a group aren't disenfranchised, but a fair percentage of white individuals, especially at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale, are.  I'd say in a sense they are DOUBLY disenfranchised-- not only are they less than the average American, but they are members of a supposedly privileged group, and are not receiving any of that privilege.  That notwithstanding, they are expected to bear part of the moral responsibility for that prilivilege-- i.e. that white people have taken too much, and in too oppressive away, that they should be willing to voluntarily give

Complaining about the non-existence of white privilege and stigmitization of whites is going to work precisely the opposite way that you intend it to. It is a thing..and yes, even poor whites benefit.

Quote:I've already said that I'm not particularly proud or ashamed of being white.  That being said, I perceive a double standard, and I do not agree with a philosophical position which seeks explicitly to support it.

Strange, I don't perceive it.  I'm just as proud of my heritage as anyone else - it's an fun mix that includes confederates and native exterminators and other assorted undesirables. Hell, my living influences include a non white white supremacist, lol..I love that guy - my favorite person in the whole world, lol. Outside of his racism, he's my model for life.

Quote:See, now you're speaking my language.  If any individual feels he's being mistreated, he has a perfect right to stand up and speak, or otherwise act, on his behalf.  If he can talk others into standing with him, fucking rock on.  Every time I see another black kid shot, for example, I think "This is when every pissed off black guy with a firearm is going to storm that shitty police station and teach them what's what."  But so far, they never have.

I've always been speaking your language, as has social justice and pc.  That you think otherwise is not an effect of -our- language, it's an effect of white vicitimization propaganda.  

Quote:Yeah, you're super-opposed to racism-- ALL of it, right?  No, you are not.  You seek first to establish a moral balance-- to give back, or enable the taking back, of enough power that black people (or gay people or women) are on an equal footing in every way.  That's the PC mandate-- look at which groups are victimized, and work to bring them as nearly as possible to a true equality-- by social pressure if necessary, and by legislation if possible.

No, the pc mandate is not propagating ethnic slurs and racial myths on tv.  The social justice mandate is about equality, but not through taking anything from anyone.  The entire social justice contention is that much is being taken -from- all of us, yes, some more than others..and that this needs to stop.

Quote:I get that principle, but as I've already shown, I think much of the work of ACTUALLY restoring equality is done by careful general policies, not by differential treatment based on demographic membership.

If your house is on fire, you don't pay equal attention to watering the lawn.  

Quote:For example, we know that most people in prisons are black, and that many of those have been imprisoned unfairly.  Instead of racial sensitivity training and all that, I would recommend an independent review process that completely REMOVES race in arbitration, and looks specifically at the severity of the case, and then removing people on their own recognizance with a contract meant to encourage productivity.

Good luck with that, the racists are the arbitrators.  There is very little chance of an effective plan like that in a society where white supremacy has been normalized, and even goes unrecognized for what it is by decent people™. Prisoners don;t have a productivity problem, for the very last time. They're a never ending well of labor (and wealth).

Quote:The result should be that the majority of prisoners released are black, giving a net shift toward equality among demographics, without having to encode differential treatment predicated on membership in those demographics.

Somehow, in your mind, equality has been transformed into differential treatment.  The reason we have inequality in the first place, is due to differential treatment.  Addressing that differential treatment is not..itself, differential treatment.

..but ask yourself this..so what if it were? If one persons house is on fire and the other person needs their lawn watered.....is there something sinister or wrong in giving "differential treatment" to the person facing the fire? Ostensibly, you'd pay a little more attention to the other guy if his house was on fire as well, but it isn't..and it would be more than a little bit silly for him to field a laundry list of complaints about the unfairness of it all. Any suggestion that the best way to deal with these problems is to water the fire and the lawn equally is risable at best, and deeply fucked up at worst.

(August 29, 2018 at 10:40 pm)Khemikal Wrote:

Quote:Yeah, you're super-opposed to racism-- ALL of it, right?  No, you are not.  You seek first to establish a moral balance-- to give back, or enable the taking back, of enough power that black people (or gay people or women) are on an equal footing in every way.  That's the PC mandate-- look at which groups are victimized, and work to bring them as nearly as possible to a true equality-- by social pressure if necessary, and by legislation if possible.

No, the pc mandate is not propagating ethnic slurs and racial myths on tv.  The social justice mandate is about equality, but not through taking anything from anyone.  The entire social justice contention is that much is being taken -from- all of us, yes, some more than others..and that this needs to stop.  

It seems to me you just said "no" to something I didn't say, and then defined the PC mandate pretty much as I just did.

Quote:Somehow, in your mind, equality has been transformed into differential treatment.  The reason we have inequality in the first place, is due to differential treatment.  Addressing that differential treatment is not..itself, differential treatment.

There are two approaches to bringing equality in a case where it does exist:
1) Make policies which will have the tendency to establish equality.
2) Make policies which "accelerate" the bringing of equality by deliberately boosting some groups and not others.

(August 29, 2018 at 10:55 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(August 29, 2018 at 10:40 pm)Khemikal Wrote: No, the pc mandate is not propagating ethnic slurs and racial myths on tv.  The social justice mandate is about equality, but not through taking anything from anyone.  The entire social justice contention is that much is being taken -from- all of us, yes, some more than others..and that this needs to stop.  

It seems to me you just said "no" to something I didn't say, and then defined the PC mandate pretty much as I just did.

I understand that it seems that way to you.  I even have a strong grasp of why it seems that way to you.  The pc mandate is simple, don't call black people niggers and strop kvetching about "productivity" like it was relevant. That won't bring about equality, it will just help you to not be a dick.

Quote:There are two approaches to bringing equality in a case where it does exist:
1)  Make policies which will have the tendency to establish equality.
2)  Make policies which "accelerate" the bringing of equality by deliberately boosting some groups and not others.

Like...stop treating one group un-equally? Let's call that section one a..the only policy required for social justice. That's it, that's all that has to be done to stop the bleeding.

(August 29, 2018 at 10:57 pm)Khemikal Wrote:

(August 29, 2018 at 10:55 pm)bennyboy Wrote: It seems to me you just said "no" to something I didn't say, and then defined the PC mandate pretty much as I just did.

I understand that it seems that way to you.  I even have a strong grasp of why it seems that way to you.  The pc mandate is simple, don't call black people niggers and strop kvetching about "productivity" like it was relevant.  That won't bring about equality, it will just help you to not be a dick.

Okay, I went through the math of that. If you want people to be prosperous enough not to just get arrested right away, they need opportunity and motivation. In places like Mississippi, the GDP is too low to give everyone a good basic living.

So my solution would be to tie opportunity and motivation together-- I'm not blaming black people for being unproductive, or white people for not providing sufficient opportunity. I'm saying that real work should convert to production, and raise the GDP-- giving more room for real opportunity.

Entitlements make great-smelling farts. You could try just handing everyone a check, I suppose, and pat yourself on the back. But it won't work.

And no, the PC mandate is NOT what you are saying it is. That's total horse shit.

Quote:

Quote:There are two approaches to bringing equality in a case where it does exist:
1)  Make policies which will have the tendency to establish equality.
2)  Make policies which "accelerate" the bringing of equality by deliberately boosting some groups and not others.

Like...stop treating one group un-equally?  Let's call that section one a..the only policy required for social justice.  That's it, that's all that has to be done to stop the bleeding.

I think you didn't understand that those two were meant to be seen as a choice of policy. My choice is to legislate and support individual rights, because if this is done effectively, it will automatically benefit oppressed groups, and limit the strength of oppressive groups.

Your choice, and the methodology of the PC left, is to frame the problem in demographic struggles: victim vs. villain, right vs. wrong, and so on. It makes interrelationships about a fight for right and justice, but serves mainly to impose and maintain division, when there is a larger demographic which should be considered. Repeat after me: "We are all Americans, and we extend to each other in good faith all the rights, privileges and responsibilities accorded to a citizen of this great country."

There's nothing in that that justifies calling some people trash, but protecting others from being called "nigger." There's nothing that says one man's struggles justify bad behavior, and another's are irrelevant.

(August 29, 2018 at 11:11 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Okay, I went through the math of that.  If you want people to be prosperous enough not to just get arrested right away, they need opportunity and motivation.  In places like Mississippi, the GDP is too low to give everyone a good basic living.

Rich african americans (even famous ones) also get pulled over for driving while black.  I'm not sure that prosperity is more than a canard in this context.  

Quote:So my solution would be to tie opportunity and motivation together-- I'm not blaming black people for being unproductive, or white people for not providing sufficient opportunity.  I'm saying that real work should convert to production, and raise the GDP-- giving more room for real opportunity.

Real opportunity is not present in places -with- tidy gdps, as the case of georgia demonstrates so well.  

Quote:Entitlements make great-smelling farts.  You could try just handing everyone a check, I suppose, and pat yourself on the back.  But it won't work.

Handouts handouts handouts.

Quote:And no, the PC mandate is NOT what you are saying it is.  That's total horse shit.

I understand that you think that, and why you think that.  

Quote:If all individuals are treated equally, then there is no longer any such thing as a group which is being treated unequally.

Imagine that..and not a single farthing taken from anyone.

(August 29, 2018 at 11:17 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Rich african americans (even famous ones) also get pulled over for driving while black.  I'm not sure that prosperity is more than a canard in this context.  

Right, and this a problem I've mentioned. Wherever there is the ability or need to arbitrate, then the stereotypes that an officer operates on will lead to that. And it's not only white cops, right? My understanding is that black cops also preferentially detain or harass black civilians-- so they have the same stereotypes in play.

I don't know what the solution to that is. I'd imagine that outraged civilians with guns or a couple torched police stations might make people think twice.

Quote:Real opportunity is not present in places -with- tidy gdps, as the case of georgia demonstrates so well.  

I have no doubt that there's a great deal of racial prejudice in much of the south, and probably everywhere. Certainly, I can say that Asian countries explicitly and unapologetically look down on black people.

Quote:

Quote:Entitlements make great-smelling farts.  You could try just handing everyone a check, I suppose, and pat yourself on the back.  But it won't work.

Handouts handouts handouts.

I'd rather make it an entitlement of citizenship, and bundle it with clearly-outline responsibilities.

Quote:

Quote:If all individuals are treated equally, then there is no longer any such thing as a group which is being treated unequally.

Imagine that..and not a single farthing taken from anyone.

Don't you dare agree with me. I've been saying this for many pages.

(August 29, 2018 at 11:58 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Right, and this a problem I've mentioned.  Wherever there is the ability or need to arbitrate, then the stereotypes that an officer operates on will lead to that.  And it's not only white cops, right?  My understanding is that black cops also preferentially detain or harass black civilians-- so they have the same stereotypes in play.

I don't know what the solution to that is.  I'd imagine that outraged civilians with guns or a couple torched police stations might make people think twice.

It's institutional (even if some of it is personal) yeah.  I suspect that civvies with guns and torched stations will lead to an even more severe example of Ferguson, personally.   More "Blue Lives Matter".  More extrajudicial killings.

Quote:I have no doubt that there's a great deal of racial prejudice in much of the south, and probably everywhere.  Certainly, I can say that Asian countries explicitly and unapologetically look down on black people.

Sure, to an extent, it's baked into what we are as creatures.  That's part of why racist ideology and positions are appealing, even to what we would all consider a non-racist person.

Quote:I'd rather make it an entitlement of citizenship, and bundle it with clearly-outline responsibilities.

We're trying to do that here...with work requirements.  Don't even get me started on how silly, fact divorced, and overtly (but acceptably) racist that one is.  That's just an example from the US of America, ofc, that shows how the language of white supremacy attempts to weasel it's way into law - not necessarily something you think is a good idea.

Quote:Don't you dare agree with me.  I've been saying this for many pages.  

-and I've been telling you..for pages, that we would agree on most if not all issues.  You've been saying many things these last few pages, and even in the context of this example you began with the notion of taking this or that from some other group and giving it to a disadvantaged group.  

The area in which we do not agree is your perpetuation of the white victimization complex, the language and examples you use to defend and assert it, and it's ultimate origin as a part of your positions.

-and yes..yes yes yes..a thousand times yes, I get that you don't think you're doing that, and that when you're doing that you're certain that you're just telling it like it is, and that you've come to it entirely on your own.

This is all too confusing for me. Are white people the good guys or the bad guys?