I don’t think anti-black attitudes flourish here, though. Right now we’re talking about three people and their opinions are decidedly unpopular. You can call them out and you’re encouraged to do so. What’s discouraged is commenting on them personally. It’s not really an insult but it’s the kind of personal commentary we discourage in GD.
My problem is when people encourage the use of adjectives like “crackpot” and “ignorant” for emotional reasons, not because the word “racism” is inappropriate.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about here. Note that you corrected Finn when he called NDD racist, in this very Pit thread.
And why? Why on earth should we restrain ourselves from calling this guy a racist, even here, in the Pit? Why is it better to call him “just” a crackpot, when his words show him to be a flaming racist and a crackpot. This is the behavior I take issue with. This is what I see here.
So the problem goes beyond just the desire to keep GD ad hominem-free.
We will have to agree to disagree on that.
No, what you saw there was just being fair, the fact was that I was not 100% sure about what NDD was, by this time I’m now 100% sure of what he is, as I said before: racism is a form of ignorance, of the worst willful kind.
But like the scientists in Larson’s case, even if your gut feeling is to brand others as racist, one should still make an effort to find first if they are clueless or just plain evil.
And, as I found out, it is reassuring to find out that in reality they do not have the **specific **support for their ideas that they think they have in academia.
Knowing that they are in practice useless twits is priceless IMHO.
I agree with YWTF. There are more then three people with anti-black attitudes; those three people are just the special one’s who continuously love to preach and hijack threads.
I’m happy to listen to your take on what we can do about that.
It’s not necessarily of the “worst willful kind”, not any more than any other “ism” we talk about it. Making racism out to be this big, horrible, deliberately evil thing is probably why so much goose-stepping is going on with the word. Racism is a kind of ignorance, but it doesn’t necessarily have to egregious.
If I pronounce that blacks as a group are borderline retarded, I’m racist. If you’re not 100% of sure that this is the case, imagine me saying that “Jews as a group are morally unscrupulous” instead. Any doubt that I’m antisemitic?
Being “fair” has nothing to do with it.
Lets be clear about something, I agree with you. Over here I make a request that this rule needs to be changed, but I still think there is a need for some restrain.
Once again, in GD there are people that are having a fit with biologists for using definitions that are not popular, If my gut feeling is correct many are racists, but they may just have that anti-science righteousness like creationists have.
If the rules are changed I would still check if they are clueless first before branding them evil.
Okay, but no one is suggesting that anyone be branded as evil.
Conflating racism with evilness is, in fact, an act of ignorance. Join me in my crusade to fight it.
Well, I have to explain that I just saw the BBC documentary on the history of racism, you bet a good chunk of that was evil.
This is where we disagree.
We aren’t just talking about segregated drinking fountains. The theories that NDD, CP, and Chen advocate led to the Jim Crow reign of terror, the murders of thousands of people, including some of my relatives.
CP in particular dismisses this as trivial or merely unfortunate. You know what? Fuck that. This is race war they’re advocating, whether they’re honest and/or smart enough to realize it.
They’re evil, make no mistake about it.
I think these guys are possibly evil, but I think ywtf’s point is that if we don’t allow for there to be degrees of racism, if we equate all racism to its worst possible forms, then we lose the ability to talk about more minor forms. And there are minor forms. Racism is always bad and always ignorant, but it doesn’t mean that anyone who ever had a racist thought ever is completely and thoroughly evil. Normal, average, nice people can have racist thoughts. Most if not all of us have had racist thoughts. Being able to identify them and talk about them rather than equating them with Nazis is a good thing.
I take your point.
I’m talking specifically about people who persistently advocate pseudoscientific theories about the inherent inferiority and criminality of certain ethnic groups.
Sure, they aren’t burning down the house. They’re just soaking it with gasoline.
I definitely agree with you.
And, like you, I do not believe these guys are ignorant. I think they are deliberately spreading false information in the hopes that the ignorant will swallow it. And, as we can see in this thread, the ignorant sometimes do.
Exactly.
I mean, if we allow that one doesn’t have to be evil to be sexist or xenophobic, why do we have to create a different rubric for racism? Nothing separates these terms from one another except the object being discriminated against.
I don’t put a whole lot of stock in the notion of “evil” anyway, because it makes me think of fanciful things like Satan and religion. CP et al. may very well be “evil” as other people define the term, but it’s more likely to me that they are a handful of unhappy, insecure men who acquire some measure of comfort by seeing themselves as superior to others. They’re obsessed with this subject because preaching their beliefs makes them feel smart and connected with a larger movement. They have so much to say, you see. And they’re talking about scientific stuff!
I would also not be surprised if they got shortchanged on penis size. Seriously.
Would explain why they’re so smart, as we know from Rushton’s work that intelligence and large penises are tradeoffs one against the other.
lol, I didn’t expect that! Great ending. 
I can see three fallacies here.
Description of Ad Hominem
Translated from Latin to English, “Ad Hominem” means “against the man” or “against the person.”
An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of “argument” has the following form:
Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A’s claim is false.
The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).
http://nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html
Description of Appeal to Consequences of a Belief
The Appeal to the Consequences of a Belief is a fallacy that comes in the following patterns:
X is true because if people did not accept X as being true then there would be negative consequences.
X is false because if people did not accept X as being false, then there would be negative consequences.
X is true because accepting that X is true has positive consequences.
X is false because accepting that X is false has positive consequences.
This line of “reasoning” is fallacious because the consequences of a belief have no bearing on whether the belief is true or false.
http://nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-consequences.html
Charles Murray has pointed out that political policies that are based on assumptions that are not true usually have unfortunate consequences.
Description of Personal Attack
A personal attack is committed when a person substitutes abusive remarks for evidence when attacking another person’s claim or claims. This line of “reasoning” is fallacious because the attack is directed at the person making the claim and not the claim itself. The truth value of a claim is independent of the person making the claim.
It would be a lot easier to fight racism if it was not continually reinforced by the performance and behavior of certain racial groups. Until those groups begin to perform and behave as well as other groups, fighting racism will require censorship. It will also require hypocrisy, by requiring people to state publicly what they know to be untrue.
Exactly. Like the political policies that would follow from your racialist pseudoscience. Like the political policies base on this same racialist pseudoscience which ruined the lives of millions of black Americans during the Jim Crow reign of terror.
Glad to see we’re on the same page.
But seriously, this is war we’re talking about. Dehumanize the enemy to make it easier to commit atrocities against them. It’s happened before. We won’t let it happen again.