No.
The rule against calling a poster a racist derives from the rule prohibiting insults directed at posters that will cause threads to crash and burn.
That is why there is no prohibition against pointing out that an idea is racist, but one must still refrain from calling the poster racist.
It may be “precise language” to note that a morbidly obese person is fat, but it is still an insult call such a person fat.
Not to answer for LHoD, but the underlying situation is frustrating. Proponents of the existence of racial differences rarely show knowledge or interest in the necessity of comparing larger intra-group dispersion with relatively small (though sometimes statistically significant) differences in inter-group means after adjusting for the usual factors. And since this is a general interest message board, most lack the statistical background or education to grasp the preceding. Heck, even professionals are known to overlook variance at times. So we are left with arguments similar to, “No offense, but people like you on average are butt-ugly. But let’s keep this intellectual. Here’s a cite.” This is on top of the routine slights and situations borne routinely by American minorities. It’s frustrating.
First, I appreciate your posting without saying I’m pretending to something, without saying I’m refusing to admit something, without saying I’m disconnected from reality. I hope you’ll continue in this vein.
Second, are you convinced that saying, “Your post is really racist, because…” is going to lead to fewer threads crashing-and-burning than saying, “You’re being racist, because…”? I suspect that very few people will see the same difference you see. Look at Magellan: when you correctly call his ideas racist, that gets him all upset and gets him wanting you to use different, less clear language.
Third, in terms of what makes threads crash and burn, what I’ve seen repeatedly lead to crash-and-burn is when racists come into a thread about something else (income inequality, public schools in the US, AIDS in Africa, anything at all in Africa) and start spouting racist rhetoric. If the concern is that something is going to derail a thread, empirically speaking that’s the place to focus attention.
Calling someone a racist is a god-damned insult no matter how shrill the holier-than-you liberals otherwise suggest.
Question: do you think that the phrase “holier-than-you liberals” is an insult? If so, consider reporting your post for rules violation :). If not, you’re going to have a hard row to hoe explaining why that phrase isn’t an insult, but “racist” is.
Well, we could prohibit the claim that a statement was racist, as well, but JC and I would find ourselves spending even more hours policing the fora.
Prohibiting a direct insult is a way to limit personal feuds; insisting that the ideas be attacked instead of the poster does provide guidelines that all posters can recognize to keep threads on track.
ANYTHING can cause a thread to jump the rails. We are working under one set of rules to reduce trainwrecks.
Allowing racists to spout racist rhetoric in unrelated threads has caused a buttload of trainwrecks–do you agree?
And what possible advantage is there to prohibiting the claim that a statement is racist? Further circumlocutions do no good.
And when they are seen or reported, they are addressed.
There is no advantage to it–which was my point.
The rule prohibits insults.
Accusations that a poster is racist is an insult.
That is prohibited.
Any further discussions are permitted, (subject to the rules against trolling, threadshitting, hijackings, etc.).
Who specifically did I call a “holier-than-you liberal”?
And, yes, it’s an insult.
That is exactly correct.
But you and magellan01 are engaged in exactly the same behavior: you are demonizing others and rejecting anything they have to say.
(And, I suppose, I’m doing the same to you.)
Isn’t all of this a pathetically thin excuse for a real debate? Mutual name-calling and dismissal contains no actual thesis.
Nobody is confused by this verbal equivalent of “I’m not touching you!” Do you think this sort of tactic should be permitted?
I’ll give a short answer as to not hijack the discussion… The answer is no. Part of the reason is that speed is largely an innate skill. You are either really fast or you aren’t. Speeds for any individual can of course be improved, but even with the best training in the world, I (pretty darn fast) was never going to make it onto to a good college team, never mind to the Olympics. The other part of the reason is that the sport has a very low bar for entry, so it it really open to all. The fact that it is so dominated by people who have black skin is striking. It’s particularly striking in the U.S. and the NFL. Virtually all the speed positions in football are held by Blacks, even though they make up about 12% of the population. Tom is correct that the correlation is much stronger with those with west African ancestry, but to go further and claim that there is no correlation between speed and black skin is, to use his word, silly.
Back to the discussion…
It seems you’re using a different definition for the word “correlation”. But this serves as a perfect example of one of the reasons the term should not be allowed. iiandiiii, who is definitely in LHOD’s camp on this, just said that he thought the discussion you just proclaimed to be racist was not racist. So, we have another less-than-clear instance of something racist. And that means that the topic will not get discussed unless one poster submits to being portrayed as arguing a racist position. That is the game the left plays. And it has no place in actual debate.
The right plays the same game, just on different topics.
This is a message board, not a university level debate team.
Dropping “the left” into the conversation is just more partisan posturing.
I have some issues with that, but I don’t want to hijack any more than I have. Could I pm you?
People often get the number of i’s wrong in my user name, but you’re the only one who consistently forgets the y. 
Good lord, it’s like you summed things up perfectly. Well done.
If we wish to have an actual debate forum - especially one in which long-term posters argue the same topics over the course of many years - then it behooves Tom and I to keep it as civil and non-dismissive as possible.
While I agree with LHOD in principle, since we’re free to call out racist arguments and assertions as racist (as long as we don’t call out the poster), I don’t feel that much is lost in the ability to challenge bigotry.
Like LHOD, though, I was surprised by the rhetoric from tomndebb, which certainly seemed to me like he was challenging LHOD’s sincerity and honesty in his posts on this. You said he was pretending, tomndebb – that word certainly implies insincerity and/or dishonesty. Maybe it’s not a huge deal, but I think that you should own what you said. If that’s not what you meant, then maybe you used the wrong word, but I think that’s what the word implies pretty clearly.
I don’t think that’s the case. Could you provide some examples in today’s discourse where the right is trying to do what the left is doing on campuses, as well as elsewhere?