So I’m doing a Google search for Philosophy. (I’m looking for some good lit on philosophy. If anybody has some cool links; please share. )
Somehow I managed to come accross this White spremisist message board.
I’m a little embarassed to admit, curiousity got the best of me so I clicked on a couple of the threads. fully expecting to see whoever posted in these threads to be ten kinds of stupid.
To my amazement, there where some dolts in the threads but there where also some very well written, informative and well thought out posts in there as well.
I’m not trying to say I agree with them I’m just saying it creeps me out how otherwise, seemingly smart people can be such asses when it comes to race.
It’s scary because smart people are usually the ones with powerfull jobs or maybe even jobs or duties that effect our (the common Joe) lives.
I’ve seen the same thing. Back in the days when I used Yahoo chat (many years ago, when I was much younger), I went in racist private rooms just for the amusement. As you would figure, several of the people in there were anti-racists arguing with the racists. The sad thing was that usually the racists seemed more intelligent. I could never figure out why.
I spent some time on a white supremacist message board, probably the one you are thinking of, and plenty of them are eloquent, logical, and knowledgable when it comes to debating and their area of expertise: race. You can see why some of them chose to take the stance they do, and it’s not due to anything normally attributed to cause racism. In terms of posting style and skills in debating I would rank a few of the with some of the best on this board. In fact quite a few weren’t simply “racists”, and it is a diservice to lump the view points of a rather sparse number of them with the opinions and nonsense spouted by your sterotypical racist.
Of course the vast majority of posters were the normal idiots that you would expect to see posting at a board like that who would foam at the mouth just thinking about “mud-people” or Jews. Unfortunately minds like that are what some of the smart ones use as expendable pawns in what is a “RaHoWa” to them.
Ultimately, though I disagree with almost all of what they believe, you got to admire the fact that they researched and actually thought out the reasoning behind why they feel the way they do.
I am not one to point to movies, but American History X is great and would back what you say up completely, also explaining how some people come to their ways.
There was a bit of a board-war situation a while back, with a big white-pride (IIRC it was not white supremacist, by their protestations) board. Did the name of the board you found resemble a meteorological term?
That’s one of the more popular ones, yes. I’m just treading warily to avert another board war debacle, which I still recall. For some it does bother them to be called a white supremacist and you are correct in saying some prefer white pride.
The leaders and a large proportion of the followers in Germany, Russia, China, Japan and a lot of others were all clever, intelligent people. A lot of brainpower went into the Holocaust. That’s actually why I find the Holocaust more horrifying than other mass purges. From the Nuremberg laws to the immense project planning of the actual slaughter, clever people worked out ways to rationalise, formalise and expedite the process. The horror of it was lost. Empathy was non-existent or at least repressed.
Don’t ever fool yourself that intelligence=humanity(for want of a better term).
Humans can rationalise almost anything when it suits them.
The intelligent ones are generally just better than the stupid ones at not outing themselves as the cunts they are
Indeed. Though I haven’t taken a crack at Mein Kampf as an adult, I know that it is said Hitler describes in some detail how he felt about the Untermenschen such as the Poles, and in particular the Slavic peoples.
By the time they came to power, the Nazi party, and the SS in particular, made no bones about the fact that they considered the Aryan Ideal to be, well, ideal, and that anyone else was second class at best.
I spent some time on that particular board (logged in once about 6 months ago, just to see if my ID still worked) and indeed, while a lot of them are idiots, there are a handful of quiet, well spoken, eloquent posters.
Those are the ones that scare the hell out of me.
It’s easy to point to a guy who screams about RaHoWa and the ZOG and say he’s a delusional idiot. It’s harder with a quiet guy who is versed in Socratic Method and has hard to disprove stats to back him up.
My views on race are very complicated because I grew up in the rural South practically raised by my black nanny from age 1 - 18. My parents taught in an all black school when I was young (even a reform school that happened to be mostly black) and my home town was 40% black. I always hear that prejudice is due to ignorance and I don’t believe in that idea strongly. I believe that prejudice against most groups is due to familiarity and competition for resources. That partially explains why white people in the South encounter problems with blacks under some circumstances and people in the Southwest have bigger problems with illegal Mexicans. That type of thing occurs over and over again. It isn’t as if they don’t know “them”. They know them all too well and, for better or for worse, they view them as an outside group trying to take away something from their self-identified group.
I went to graduate school in behavioral neuroscience at Dartmouth. We were based in the psychology department and It took two classes on intelligence while I was there by world renowned scholars threat were on top of my undergraduate courses. The thing that stuck me was the academic elite fought hard against the idea that people with black skin are less intelligent than all of the other groups you can come up with as measured by intelligence tests. People tend to find offense with this idea and you can ask yourself what information we have to support this finding. This answer is all of it. You cannot design one of our standardized tests of intelligence where blacks will equal or exceed those of whites. Keep in mind, this only refers to the population as a whole and their can still be individuals that blow everyone else away. I think academia is uncomfortable with this idea and fights it strongly in spite of the evidence. The black population as whole has a Bell Curve shifted to the left of every other group and no one seems to ask why in a public forum.
**I have read every race thread here I can find and I understand all of the problem associated with the traditional idea of race. However, I also believe there is a bait and switch going on. “The Out of Africa Hypothesis” makes a great case that mankind descended from a small group of people that moved about the world and formed humanity and moved about the world to form the groups that we see now. The switch is that there were other groups that were very distinct (the claim is that there is more genetic diversity in Africa than any other place) forces the conclusion that there are some groups that are inferior in certain areas and superior in others.
Before anyone goes ape-shit my positions are:
People with black skin have not ever scored as well on any traditional measure of intelligent than any other counterpart against a representative sample whites.
Black people have other areas as music where some appear to be amazingly talented.
The scientific positions for all of these things has a whole body of scientific evidence spanning decades yet few want to publish them.
The criticism about the book The Bell Curve suffered undo criticism a decade ago and yet, like hear people were calling “Cite!”, “cite!” and that was often deserved but the central message remained largely untouched. No one can show that blacks in the U.S. will do as well as whites academically. under any circumstances. The reason could be anything but the simple fact remains and everyone seems to accept that fact internally these day yet deny it and find ideas to cope with it.
Say what you want about what I just presented. The idea isn’t a genetic one or a condemnation of any group. The thesis is that a given black population will not score against its white counterparts on the ideas that society deems important at this point. That isn’t surprising considering that whites are creating these measures but I also postulate that there isn’t all that much that has worked to make the populations more equal.
Well, Shagnasty, what effect do (or should) your positions have in real world employment and public policy? Is it OK for an employer to discriminate in favor of whites in fillig cognitively challenging positions? If not, why not? All other things being equal, it seems that the employer can depend on the white candidate on being the smarter cookie, and therefore it’s in his or her interest to discriminate.
Maybe you would acknowledge this as a logical outcome of your positions. But again, if not, why not?
I’ve met them. I’ve argued with them. They were much older and more knowledgeable than me and pretty much handed me my ass on a plate. I’d say it was a pretty good experience; it forced me to take a step back and examine why I believed things like race equality instead of only believing in them because it was “right”. It also made me realise the far right is made up of people who are variously passionate, hateful, intelligent, thick, bandwagoners, knowledgeable and misinformed, just the like the rest of the world. I don’t find their intelligence chilling, I find it refreshing. It’s not as if there aren’t enough equally intelligent moderates to take them on in argument, but there are definitely enough semi-literate ding dongs from all over the political spectrum. I wish everyone could be that well-reasoned.
I would say that sort of thinking is a mistake. To argue effectively with someone you have to understand their position rather than simply taking them head-on, and to write them off as a faceless evil removes any incentive to do so. It is the very reason these people can talk circles around the complacently moderate, who are convinced they SHOULD be able to come out on top because they are “right”.
This is pretty much the standard schtick for smart racists. They’ve had years of argueing indefenible (or maybe just unpopular) positions. Average Joe Liberal hasn’t that training.
I was reading a book, whose name eascapes me, where the author and a tennagr who was a prisoner in Auchwitz appeared on TV (Donahue?) and came face to face with a Holocaust Denier. The author tried to coach Holocaust Victim to only talk about actual personal experiences and not to mention soap and lampshades. Unfortunately once confronted with a real life neo-Nazi the old lady did exactly the opposite of what was asked of her and the Hitler Fan tore her to shreds.
If anyone wants a fun book on how folks who hold unorthodox positions, I’d reccommend Them: adventures with extremists. Neo Nazis, David Ike, cospiracy wing nuts et al are all found to be pretty smart and surpringly rational.
It’s easy to understand how you come to that perspective, and many would probably agree with you. The thing that still keeps me on the nurture vs the nature side of the equation are the following vignettes:
I lived in Africa (Ivory Coast/Abidjan & then Sudan/Khartoum) between the ages of 4 and 9 and our household help was all African. The “houseboy” Sabid-Peter I primarily interacted with was fairly well educated & very well spoken and was (for lack of a better term) quite a serious and thoughtful person. The other Africans I met (not just professionals) were also mainly serious, thoughtful people.
The Jamaican IT guy at my place of work was incredibly intelligent, hard working and upwardly mobile. We had many wide ranging discussions on all manner of topics.
The professional black women I deal with are usually extremely competent & hard working.
The black people on the SDMB.
I do believe there is a powerful strain of “keeping it real” anti-intellectualism in American black culture that cripples the academic & intellectual aspirations of many black people, and especially black males, but referencing back to my “other” black experiences I really believe this is predominately an aspect of choices and circumstance than innate capacity.
Coincidentally, I just finished reading this. I agree - it’s a fascinating (and very funny) book. It’s also very eye-opening: that these people are nuts doesn’t mean they’re stupid.
Oh, and I should add that when I finished reading it, I left it in the bathroom and mrs jjimm started to read it. Then when she was halfway through it, it suddenly disappeared. Nobody was in apart from us. She posited the suggestion that the Illuminati took it, or perhaps giant lizards. Or the cat.
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