Not quite, but the failure to communicate clearly is mine.
But I will point out that the actions of Republicans currently infecting the state legislatures of such as Texas and North Carolina are affecting a far more grievous set of crimes than a bunch of punk-ass college kids, spread out over the previous decade.
I wouldn’t cut them any slack at all, I am heartily offended by exploiting good and worthy causes. But neither will I exaggerate their significance, they have little or none.
As the investigation is not over and the parties involved so far report that that is the case, one has to go for that as the likely possibility and the beef of the right has with the rally is just partisan crap.
The point here is that you are demanding the administration to ignore the past incidents. So stop acting like if the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland had a good point.
The FBI says there were about 6,200 ‘single-bias’ hate crime incidents last year. A little less than half were racially motivated. So… compared to 20 frauds over a decade or so, it’s really a wash if you think about it.
My point is that the rally should not have been held in the first place. This is 2013, not 1963. There’s a black president…and these students in the video are still singing “We Shall Overcome”. Yes racism still exists…by sick individuals. It is not institutional, socially-approved racism like 50 years ago, and everybody knows it.
The university should simply condemn racist events, expell any student involved in it…and get on with life as usual. This unnecessary rally was an exercise in simplistic, elitist narcisism.What itrchampion called “a phony narrative of victimization.”
The opposite of what a university is for.
And again, your search terms? How did you google these things, all on you own with your own little pink paddy-paws? You could clarify all of this with a few strokes of the keyboard, but you would prefer to blame me for being skeptical?
And what is your actual theme here? That “liberal/gay/African American” students are not to be trusted? Compared to whom? You won’t even come straight out with that, you say you “wonder” about it. So, you’re “just askin’ questions”, then? Or what?
The last election and several relatives involved in sending me the propaganda they posted showed me that no, not everybody knows it.
And that would work if only the hoax was the issue, as the Kentucky university case that Terr so helpfully linked to showed, the racists are still there. The point for the hoaxers is that they should heed the warning of the old tale of the “Boy who cried wolf” but the other lesson of that tale applies to the ones poopooing the rally.
**
In the end there was a wolf**…
I fear your irony is too light. I appreciate a deft touch, indeed, I do, but there are times that a two-by-four is called for. Nod, wink, blind horses asses, that sort of thing.
But I liked it, for whatever that’s worth.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is why we can’t have nice things. There is arguably less individual racism than ever, which is terrific. But institutions are slower to change and they can be more difficult to change. One reason is that whenever systemic or institutional racism is discussed, people reject it on the grounds that unless there is visible personal racism, there is no bias - and anyway we can’t talk about this because it makes them feel bad.
As an aside, economist Timur Kuran wrote a really interesting book about preference falsification called Private Truths, Public Lies. One of the topics he takes on is affirmative action and racism. The theory itself is ingenious if flawed. He argues that people respond to majority opinion and repress views that may be controversial. This self-repression removes ideas from the public discourse altogether: once they might have been “unthinkable” to express, but soon they become “unthought.” There is quite a bit more to this, and despite its flaws, the book is well worth reading. He is a university professor and speaks with special zeal for the stifling affects that accusations of racism have on ideas and discourse.
Here is a remark on p. 237 that might be of interest.
It’s impossible to overemphasize the preposterousness of saying “[Racism] is not institutional, socially-approved racism like 50 years ago, and everybody knows it” at a time when elected officials from one party - I won’t name names - have decided that a key part of their electoral strategy is making it harder for minorities to vote.
Maybe. I think the larger point is that racism hasn’t gone away, it just needs to be encoded properly to be socially acceptable. It’s socially approved so long as one can plausibly deny being a racist while holding beliefs that have prejudicial consequences, even if the believer doesn’t think they are racially motivated.
The matter at hand is the discussion of Terr’s thesis – to the extent it can be determined what that thesis is; he seems to be hoping that his readers will construct an argument for him out of his critical commentary and disconnected propositions. I suspect his thesis is: The Oberlin administration participated in the various rallies and events condemning racism even after it knew that the incidents which spawned the rallies and events were hoaxes; this proves something unspecified but negative about either Oberlin, racism, leftists, hoaxers, or some combination thereof.
In discussing the argument, it developed that other hoaxes had purportedly also occurred; in defense of that claim, Terr posted a list said to be of such incidents, and you, elucidator offered a post asking what the source of that list was.
I inveighed against the logical fallacy illustrated by that request.
Now we come to the post I’m replying to, in which you confuse my critique of your argument with some imagined critique of your character. Not once in this thread did I impugn your character. I said: “…elucidator’s argument is also a steaming pile of crap – specifically, an ad hominem attack…”
So while I appreciate your unsolicited admission that your flaws of character are many and grievous, that has nothing to do with the subjects at hand: specifically, your poor argument. And it remains the subject of discussion because your post reveals yet another attempt to advance it: “…[the purported list-makers are] shameless purveyor[s] of political crap…” Yes, fine, but that has nothing to do with the subject. If there is a flaw with the list, then the flaw must be identified. It cannot be dismissed simply because of who supplied it. Surely you can see the logical problems: if Breitbart publishes a periodic table of the elements, I cannot deny the atomic weight of barium by pointing out how biased Breitbart is.
Terr has failed to muster a cogent argument. Many others have illustrated failure with valid objections. For example, Czarcasm asks how many other incidents happened during the same time frame that were legitimate. A very valid question, that – if there are many others, it destroys the implication that only hoaxes about racism, rather than real racism, exist. (Of course, that’s the problem with fighting a ghost: because Terr refuses to explicitly define his claim, his interlocutors are reduced to guessing what he means and then refuting it).
Your objections, in contrast, were nothing but repeated invocations of the ad hominem fallacy.
That misses the point entirely. The point is that on left-wing college campuses, there’s been a long list of cases where supposedly a racist organization was at work, but where it turned out to be a hoax. Given that, and given the inherent low likelihood that the Klan is secretly at work in a place like Oberlin, the administration should not go coconuts and start canceling classes and forcing students to attend rallies without first considering whether the evidence points to a hoax. The administration is supposed to make decisions that are best for the campus community, and that means using their brains to determine what’s true about the campus community. Comparisons of nationwide data that have nothing to do with life on college campuses are not useful.
You did not read the thread huh?
So, now you’re done, then? Right?
Unless you still care to advance the fallacy, sure.
Of course, the apparent lack of regret displayed by this question suggests to me that you don’t really care too much about the exactness of your argument anyway – it suggests a long-suffering inconvenience on your part; a “Yes, yes, my argument, ad hominem, blah blah blah.” If so, that’s an unfortunate disregard for the merits of proper debate.
Ah, good- someone else who knows what Terr’s point is! He won’t explain. Please tell us the point.
Quick interruption: I don’t know what all of these occurred on left-leaning campuses and some of the incidents on Terr’s list did not occur on college campuses at all.
Nobody was forced to attend anything. The school held some “discussions,” whatever those were, but there was no way to make anyone go. About a third of the student body attended a rally. While the Klansman incident was absurd, the problem Miller pointed out remains: the messages are racist regardless of why they were put up. Canceling classes strikes me as unnecessary in any case but it’s not obvious to me that a response was needed if they were “for real” and no response was needed if they were “a prank.”
There was a question about real and fake threats, so it’s relevant.
You mis-typed “strawman argument”.
Not remotely.
Terr, in the various Zimmerman threads, I repeatedly criticized you with the face for her inability to lay out a clear statement of the elements of the crime and the pieces of evidence which proved each element beyond a reasonable doubt. You, presumably, agreed with that criticism.
In this thread, you have failed to provide the analogous argument. While this is not a crime discussion, you evidently believe you have a set of facts which, taken together, compel certain inferences on the part of the reader.
What are those facts, and what inferences do they compel? Be specific.
Please be assured that if I ever feel the need for your instruction and advice on the merits of a proper debate, I will not hesitate to notify you.