Then if I understand you correctly, your answer to John Mace’s question -
would be No, it would not be good to know, because it has been used to justify discrimination in the past.
If I do understand you correctly.
Regards,
Shodan
“Discrimination” is putting it rather lightly, don’t you think?
Maybe it is. John Mace’s question, come to think of it, is subject to refutation by argument from consequence. The response to the question “there is no such” is not subject to that counter, however, because the truth of a statement is not affected by whether or not it leads to desirable consequences.
Regards,
Shodan
OTOH, where that argument does have a lot of relevance is as to whether it’s worth raising the issue altogether. These racial differences - even if one were to assume they exist - have very little predictive value for any specific individual, and are not worth anything in this regard - but can be misused in this manner. (The problem here is that people keep harping on racial disparities as proof of discrimination, which makes the group average issue hard to avoid.)
To respond first to this your latest post, I refuse an unnuanced Y/N dichotomy to that question. My position re: John Mace’s question is that then it becomes useful and necessary to justify the line of inquiry and the purpose thereof up front, so as to refute what is an understandable presumption, otherwise it will be seen at best as a “JAQ” exercise or an attempt to validate the “race” construct. Sadly I cannot buy “we report, you decide”; tell me WHY are you pointing this out about (Race X).
Which however I am willing to consider separately from the character of the persons in the conversation. Someone may not himself be a racist yet his position may arise from premises that in turn had racist sources or lend itself to racist application. In which case pointing THAT out is not, IMO, a personal attack.
One thing we need to keep in mind with all this discussion about “intelligence” is that we don’t really even know how to define it, much less measure it. We don’t even know how many different kinds there might be.
At best, we can define a number of specific skills (how quickly the hoo-man can navigate a maze, or how many images he can memorize and then recall an hour later). We know, for instance, that chimps have an uncanny ability to memorize the arrangement of objects in a grid when shown the grid for only a brief instance. They beat us handily at this task, and no one knows why.
This thread is about the use of the term ‘racist’, not yet another thread about “what actually is the definition of race”, or “does race even exist?”, or “why you are a racist and I am not”.
Correct?
Not just that we can’t measure “it”, but there are some types of intelligence which can’t be measured even by themselves (e.g. musical ability).
I once saw someone make a similar point in a letter to the editor in response to an article about Marilyn Vos Savant, who had the highest measured IQ in the world. This guy’s position was that she had the highest measured ability to figure out a certain specific type of puzzle which is measured by these tests. But what did she ever come up with with all her IQ other than being smart, and how could you compare her to people who had the ability to actually think up great theories, discoveries, or inventions?
Is “because it appears to be the case” enough of a justification?
In Chief Pedant’s case, he has been known to follow up with a statement in support of race-based affirmative action. Is that enough?
Regards,
Shodan
True.
Similarly, Slave owners almost without exception expressed love and affection for the humane they owned.
Therefore only a moron would accuse them of being racist.
Particularly if you follow the logic for the people on this thread insisting poor CP isn’t really a racist since racism requires “ill feelings”.
People familiar with American history of course realize that such logic is at best highly ignorant.
What was that again about people being familiar with US history?
Labels are valuable in summarizing your thinking by showing how you categorize things. If I say “I believe such and such to be a racist…” I am stating that I observed this person to exhibit a pattern of behavior indicating they believe one race is superior to another. Your label would tell me something about what you observe.
That’s still a racist. I think there were many people in the 1800s who believed the slaves should be freed but still thought of black people as inherently inferior.
And he is saying that the differences in academic performance are linked to these average genetic differences between these differing geographic populations that just so happen to correspond to our societal concept of race. You know, racism.
And if there wasn’t a better indicator of racism!
That argues for a racist ideology.
Extreme, huh? Actually it is just a very common word with a specific definition that is uncontroversial in its application to many people in our society. It’s not an insult anymore than calling a person who is a serial killer a serial killer. Or a Republican a Republican.
Let’s start with changing the outcomes in this society that are readily associated with the genetics of skin color. Let’s continue to perform the research and support the policies that change our society so that the genetics of skin color is not such huge predictor of vastly differential outcomes. Since so much productive research has already gone into this topic, lets stick with it.
Huh?
Other than my typo switching “humans” to “humane”, what do you disagree with in the above quoted passage?
Southern slave owners were amongst the most literate people who ever lived and scores of their diaries show them expressing affection for their slaves whom they regarded as their children, seeing themselves as stern parents whose duty was to guide and protect their “children” who in turn served them.
Numerous historians, such as Eugene Genovese, Eric Foner, and others have pointed how raw anti-black hatred in the South didn’t start till Reconstruction when people like George Fitzhugh discovered the hard way how their slaves had different views of the situation.
And for anyone who wants an idea how slaveowners felt, seriously, read George Fitzhugh, one of the most vocal proponents of slavery and one of America’s first public intellectuals.
I think it’s the “almost without exception” that is so jarring.
Serious question.
“Holocaust Denier” is also “an extreme charge”. Do you think the it’s use should always be considered an insult, even if the person using it thinks it true, and that using it in GD should entail getting a warning?
If not, why?
Read the diaries. I had to in college and had one of the top experts in the Abolitionist movement for a professor. It is shocking and “jarring” but genuinely true. “Without exception” would have been an overstatement, but “almost without exception” is not.
I went in assuming they merely viewed their slaves as livestock and at times you can find passages where they seem to do so, but for the most part, they don’t. They’re just willfully blind.
Or read Genovese’s Roll, Jordan Roll. The parts where he details how rare lynchings were prior to Reconstruction and how slaves in the antebellum South accused of crimes like murder and rape were actually given trials and actually occasionally, very occasionally aquitted is shocking particularly when he contrast that to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren who were simply hanged from a tree without a second thought.
Racism doesn’t require “Ill feelings” and frankly very often the the most vicious practioners genuinely thought what they were doing was for the best.
I’ve read some of these, along with many narratives from slaves and former slaves. I have no doubt some slave owners felt this way. But I think it was a lot fewer than “almost without exception” – we don’t have diaries from nearly every single slave-owner, so we can’t know for sure.
People love their dogs and horses, too. That doesn’t mean they think dogs and horses are their equals. The idea that slave owners had “affection” for their slaves is a complete red herring. Would you want “affection” like that?
I agree with this point too… Owners may have believed they loved their slaves, but then many abusers believe they love their spouses and children. Probably not love as non abusers would recognize.
I think the point is that introducing the idea of emotional animus to the concept of racism muddles the issue, as many people who built their family fortunes on the idea of the racial inferiority of black people appeared to hold no such racial animus; it would require us to see a slaveowner who believes white people are uplifting their black slaves as a nonracist.