What? You are the one who is labeling the position as racism, even though evidence was presented. Isn’t that what you just said not be done. The starting point is the argument presented. He presented a hypothesis, with evidence for his position. You just magically deemed it “racist”. For the reasons I already shared.
I don’t believe this. Historical oppression, and the concepts of superiority and inferiority have never been justified by anything to do with melanin. OTOH, intelligence had always been intimately tied to these concepts. That’s why they’re extremely different, in my view.
If he claimed it was no more than a hypothesis, I wouldn’t call the statement racist. We’ll disagree about the evidence, since I think none of it holds up as actual evidence for any inherent characteristic.
Magic has nothing to do with it. “Racist,” once more, is a term applied to a person who believes one race is superior to another. That is a perfectly reasonable definition, and it makes for a perfectly reasonable word, like Democrat, pacifist, Muslim, pro-lifer, and all the others I mentioned: it describes a belief.
None of the others hinge on the amount of evidence that supports the position. Someone doesn’t stop being a Muslim if we gain concrete evidence of Mohammad’s divinity; they don’t stop being a pro-lifer if the evidence for fetal personhood becomes sufficiently strong. The term is a descriptor of a belief, not of a definitionally unsupported belief.
I started to answer this, but am realizing it’s a distraction. When someone makes that declaration and is called a racist, it’ll become a relevant conversation. Otherwise, it’s a garden path, and if I take one step on it, I guarantee we’ll spend fifty posts on it.
The real question is more nuanced. Is ‘taller’ considered ‘better’? It’s not that genetics influence our destiny, or our appearance, abilities and so forth. That is considered scientific and certain. It’s when the value judgement of ‘better’ or ‘superior’ is involved that people become angry, and even a hint that science is somehow showing that your genetics matter in a value issue, then it becomes racism, racist, wrong, bad, and this is a social issue.
Since ‘racist’ is an extreme charge, calling somebody “RACIST!” is a huge insult. Even if you are sure it’s true, it’s still an insult.
The matter of “but it’s true” is the same for all the other insults that one can use that reasoning with. Just because “I’m sure somebody are an idiot”, it doesn’t mean calling someone an idiot is going to get a pass.
But it is relevant. When the term racist is going to be applied to claims that are absent of animus (and to the person who makes the claim) its important to know where the line is between racist and racial (non-racist) statements.
If you think the example I provided is racist, that’s valuable in that it let’s people know that you’re using the term very broadly. Using it to merely describe something that can be described as racial sans animus.
If you think the example is not racist, then it would be helpful to explore the quality of a stamen that would move it over the line into racist territory.
Yes, when value judgements are applied, we can easily get into racist territory. My point is that information without value judgements—pure data—cannot be racist. Otherwise, nature would be racist, numbers would be racist.
I just realized something, if you claim taller people are better, and genetics determines your height (which it mostly does), then believing tall is better makes you a racist.
The deal there, is that in such cases the suspicion is raised, why bother to research some specific statistic in a way such that it’s to be linked to “race” to begin with? IOW, that this is somehow a way to legitimate that “race” is something objectively measurable as opposed to a social construct. That there IS such a thing as an objectively distinct clade of humans with certain traits.
And as I said, trailing behind that as a hungry wolf is the unspoken “therefore…” As in “normalizing for everything else, blacks are lower in IQ… therefore their failure to achieve academically is no failure of the system”. You may not like it but the Real World experience is so overwhelmingly that such “data” gets used as such an excuse that it has become the reasonable presumtion.
Of course we’re straying into GD territory here, but if there are problems related to racial minorities, it would be good to understand what causes those problems. If there is a genetic component, wouldn’t it be good to know?
Just as a late edit – those were very, very long posts that I linked to, and I attempted to cut them down to the relevant portion while retaining the context. These come from very, very long (and rather fascinating to look back upon) past discussions
Or “the genetic component must not be ascribed to a ‘race’ classification”.
Of course people have differences. The problem is when someone says “the ‘(X) Race’ has an intrinsic deficiency”. Because of what has so far happened whenever a ‘race’ is claimed to suffer an intrinsic defect, whether or not supported by anything. Give me 400 years of that “finding” resulting universally in more and better support to get such ‘race’ over the hurdle and we may feel more neutral about it.
Problem with this post is that (AFAICT) none of those arguing the “racist” position re races and intelligence have ever argued that all blacks are dumb, and some (including CP specifically) have gone to pains to make clear that this was not their position.
So to make your point you need either a cite to someone making this claim (good luck with that) or a cite to a mod warning for “Catholics/liberals have a greater tendency to …”.