Of course, as per my recent talking-past point...this is primarily an emphasis point, NOT a truth point. What matters is the issue at stake.
In politics, there are 4 distinct positions:
Liberals, Conservatives, Libertarians, and Insiders(only marginally part of any other group).
- The honest liberals want to protect the weak, and find libertarian and conservative ideals indistiguishable for their lack of protection of the weak.
- The honest conservatives want to preserve the good we have now, and find liberal and libertarian ideals indistinguishable for their lack of preservation of the current good.
- The honest libertarians want to enhance liberty, and find liberal and conservative ideals indistinguishable for their lack of freedom.
Affirmative action, White supremacy(Should I say cultural isolationist?), Anti racism.
- Affirmative action supporters (if white) want to keep the playing field fair, because there are massive semi-invisible advantages to the whites, that unfairly burden non-whites. Anti-racists and white supremacists are indistinguishable because they both want to abolish the fairness of the field.
- White supremacists (if white) want their folks (kin, kids, and co-ethnics) and preferences to win. Anti-racists and Affirmative action supporters are indistinguishable because they both result in their folks losing out.
- Non-white affirmative action supporters are all but identical to white supremacists.
- Anti-racists want the government to GTFO of the race business, because the race business is evil. Affirmative Action supporters and white supremacists are indistinguishable because they all want the government in the race business.
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30 comments:
How can you know definitions are always wrong?
How do you know definitions are always wrong?
How is your alternative not a formal definition?
Reminds me of the guy I clashed with a few years ago. He claimed to be "Pro-black and anti-racist". I told him he was a racist and he banned me.
If liberals believed in their own race dogma, I think that they would encourage AA in their own workplaces and organizations.
http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus/staff
I think that the staff mix shows something besides what you've posited for liberal motivation for AA. It's the same thing I come across in academe; many stone liberal professors don't want AA hires in their own workplaces. I view AA as an attack on an out-group.
Alrenous:
1. Depends on how human brains form concepts.
Cognitive Science is pretty clear that brains don't work that way. Formal definitions are a naive way of understanding how human concepts work.
Concepts are created by people, watching the world and pointing at specific instances...then grouping specific instances into concepts. Borderline cases are actually unclear, and unavailable to conceptual analysis because the definition follows the concept, doesn't surround the concept.
2. I know because I've studied (a) child development, and (b) cognitive science, and (c) learning; all for quite a bit.
3. It's not a formal definition because it's got LOTS of fuzzy edges. You can't use the definition to carefully decide what qualifies and what doesn't...which I considered (perhaps wrongly) to be the formal definition of a formal definition.
I see, thanks. I want to make sure I understand:
Formal definitions slice off sections of the intuitive definition and declare them misunderstandings...but intuitive definition trumps formal definition.
Meh,
1. I am certain that some folks use AA as a weapon/attack on out-group.
I am certain that most folks believe whatever the hell sounds good from their ingroup...and don't care about the inconsistancy.
I am also certain that many/most intelligent liberals (An arbitrary californian friend of mine) hold a position that is functionally equivalent to the one I outlined.
2. Early in this blog's history, I concluded that there are smart, thoughtful honest people on ALL sides of ALL issues (+/- 3%)...and that they're not necessarily wrong to be there. Indeed, the strong form of the argument is: There are people who are (a) honest, (b) smarter than me and (c) who have thought longer/harder/more carefully about a topic than I have on all sides of all issues. This said as a 4+ sigma uber-geek. Let's take those folks seriously.
I know that most of my liberal or liberal-leaning friends are supportive of AA due to it's positive effects. Politicos, others...maybe slime. But I have friends across the ideological spectrum (Hugo Chavez communists)... and they mostly aren't holding their positions for personal gain, or f***-the-outgroup reasons.
Alrenous,
That's a problem...but not the core problem.
Formal definitions assume that things are or are not.
Actual definitions have shades of grey. Is crossing the street to avoid a black guy, but not crossing the street to avoid a chinese guy racism?
A little bit.
If your definition doesn't admit of "a little bit"/"kinda"...it's probably not useful-to-humans in other-than-narrow circumstances.
I thought that's what I meant.
Intuition declares that avoiding the black dude but not the chinese chick is racism (and sexism) to some extent. Formal definition slices off that section of the intuitive definition and declares it not-racism.
The problem with all these definitions is that they're basically like 'sinner' in Christian theology. They pretty much always apply---only sinners and lying sinners. This puts people in the position where they have to be deceitful to avoid the racist tag---which only ever seems to be meaningfully applied if they're white. I suggest tossing out the word entirely and replacing it with words without the baggage that admit to reasonably crisp definitions.
Except that "anti-racist" in the modern world in practice means "anti-white" and that's it. Its easy to prove - just notice the "anti-racists"s reaction to anything but white 'racism'. In Europe the "anti-fascists" and "anti-racists" violently attack people criticizing Islam and not even a race.
I'm afraid your definitions are too naive. Anti-racism, in practice, is completely, overwhelmingly anti-white-people only.
I know that most of my liberal or liberal-leaning friends are supportive of AA due to it's positive effects.
Is my test of this reasonable? That an honest liberal will (in his own workplace) voluntarily follow the principal precept of racial AA by hiring even poorly qualified African Americans to achieve the appropriate racial ratios? American Progress doesn't. I think that this is good evidence that they view AA as a weapon, lawyer welfare, and an opportunity to grow the state... since that's how they actually use it.
How else can there be only a few African Americans at TP when they make up about 20% of liberal voters?
My test is bunk? Maybe your friends are very different from the liberals at TP?
"Is my test of this reasonable?"
"My test is bunk? Maybe your friends are very different from the liberals at TP?"
Thanks, Meh, doin this so I don't have to.
That said, can you think of a way to combine the two? Perhaps, they honestly think there's benefits but it just never occurs to them in the context of their work? Lots are bad at generalizing outside of the context they originally encounter an idea. Cf, word problems in math.
Perhaps blacks realize they'd hate the environment at TP (? AP?) and don't apply, and the liberals there are quite frustrated about it.
All the false possibilities can be ruled out, but you do have to rule them out, epistemically speaking.
Meh, Alrenous,
It's actually VERY simple.
1. Those friends of mine who are liberal/ AA supporters tend NOT to be managers who get to hire.
2. EVERYONE, except some of the clinically depressed, and some autistic types has 100% unreasonable self-selection bias. If X is generally good policy, that doesn't mean it's good policy for them...because their work is more important...
If there is 1 universal human error...it's that one: the idea that you and your stuff is special.
Are you really willing to try to disqualify folks from believing in something based on the fact that they self-bias on the topic?
Contemplationist,
I'm again not quite clear on your line...
Are you suggesting that the position that race should be ignored...which is held by me, my friends, Martin Luther King, and the general tea party participant or California voter...that position isn't existent? Or that the pro-Affirmative Action position has a better claim to the title of anti-racism...and we should change our title to advocates of racial color-blindness?
The primary point is that there are indeed 3 positions...and all of them find the other two problematic.
If X is generally good policy, that doesn't mean it's good policy for them...because their work is [...] special.
<-- Ways to combine the two.
That said, no I don't think someone who doesn't apply a belief to their daily life in fact means it. Apparently its function is to piss off people in opposing tribes - they believe but never attempt to get that belief to serve them, nor do they ever want it applied to anything they have the power to apply it to.
Secondly someone who has no opportunity to apply it is someone who can't test it which is someone who can't really understand what they're talking about. (Caveat: excessive research is a work-around.) They imagine they believe something, but their image will bear little resemblance to anything but other people's images.
Must be something deeply wrong with me, but every time I see this headline("Triangular positions"), I think of threesomes.
Threesomes are fun. I don't think there's anything wrong with thinking of that.
Alrenous,
All the false possibilities can be ruled out, but you do have to rule them out, epistemically speaking.
That sounds like hard work. I'd rather apply a simple test like asking whether any excuses/reasons you think up would get Wal-Mart or some fire department out of a legal rogering. Anyone who follows Sailer knows the answer.
Aretae,
Are you sure about this?
"Are you suggesting that the position that race should be ignored...which is held by me, my friends, Martin Luther King"
MLK: "If a city has a 30% Negro population, then it is logical to assume that Negroes should have at least 30% of the jobs in any particular company, and jobs in all categories rather than only in menial areas."
Meh,
Last I heard MLK was a preacher in the 50s and 60s, not an unusually well informed statistician or HBD proponent. In the absence of HBD factors, which were (I think) poorly understood in those days...MLK's line makes a lot of sense.
Indeed, most semi-educated folks today (Average college student unexposed to HBD theory) could (and do) hold something much like MLK's position.
Indeed, most semi-educated folks today (Average college student unexposed to HBD theory) could (and do) hold something much like MLK's position.
I think your egalitarian stance requires education and effort to maintain. People naturally and instinctively notice racial differences and use that information to help order the world.
Aretae,
I'll continue in rightsaidfred's line concerning this:
"Indeed, most semi-educated folks today (Average college student unexposed to HBD theory) could (and do) hold something much like MLK's position.
The race story as told in college is all critical theory: "Non-Jewish Whites are impoverishing POCs through both purposeful and accidental institutional racism."
That's it. And there's no talking to liberals about it because they will brand you a racist for arguments like this...
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
... which aren't even about HBD.
A good test of whether your friends are honest liberal proponents of AA is whether they're willing to discuss HBD. Please post about how that is received.
Finally, MLK was calling for government-enforced hiring, firing, and promotion until A-As were employed at or above their percentage of the populous at every employer. What more would he have wanted the feds to do for you to admit that he didn't believe "that race should be ignored?"
Libertarian, eh???
Meh,
There's a huge difference between the color-blind position:
"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
vs. the Libertarian position:
Government is a bad way to get to that point.
I never claimed that MLK was pro-libertarian...just that he was pro-colorblindness. As per the most famous line of his most famous speech.
RSF,
When the tribe teaches you a truth...it takes a lot of work to look at reality and see something else: The whole red pill thing.
Meh:
"That sounds like hard work. I'd rather apply a simple test"
Me:
"That said, no I don't think someone who doesn't apply a belief to their daily life in fact means it."
It's a lot of effort, but if you really mean to find the truth, it's not work at all.
"whether any excuses/reasons you think up would get Wal-Mart or some fire department out of a legal rogering."
Most aren't particularly interested in the truth, and probably don't realize their excuse would get Wal-Mart in trouble. Hence my mention of word problems.
Unfortunately, though innocent of epistemology, most people aren't stupid. They know where HBD talk leads. You can try to bring it up without reminding them of racism, but it usually won't work.
Aretae,
"Libertarian, eh?" was directed at you, not MLK.
But since you down-voted my revealed preference hiring test for whether liberals actually believed AA was legitimate, what do you think about the test that you can apply to your non-managerial liberal friends? Are you going to talk HBD the next time they espouse AA? Sounds like a great way to see if they arrived at and hold their opinions honestly.
Right, you won't because your liberal friends would never talk to you again. Liberals won't allow real arguments.
Meh,
Apparently you don't know me or my friends...not surprising. I've been the crazy loose cannon pursuing ideas that were beyond the bounds of respectability since before high school. My friends are mostly friends who've been around since then. I talk HBD with any of my friends/family who get anywhere near the topic, and they all still talk to me...even though my friends are half liberal, half libertarian, and my wife is black.
My dad in particular is liberal to the point of working at the ACLU, sending money to greenpeace, and volunteering on political campaigns. My gay sister thinks he's a stick-in-the mud and holds with the humans are viruses on the planet hypothesis. My best friends at work (over the last 10 years) are a hard liberal gay guy, a strongly liberal vegetarian Indian guy, and a geeky math libertarian white guy like me.
I've talked to all of them about HBD...and to my black libertarian/ conservative wife as well. I don't live in your political correctness space.
When I assert that they're thoughtful liberals espousing AA, I mean it. It's actually pretty easy to espouse AA after you understand HBD. Hell, Charles Murray comes awful close to it.
Aretae,
Are you saying that you'll argue the Sailer side on fire department hirings, detailing the attempts by politicians and test developers to produce tests that yield the same average results across different races? And that this fails every single time? Are you saying that you'll discuss the implications of Ashkenazi I.Q. and how they are by far the most dominant intellectual and economic force in the U.S. even though many of them are refugees or the children of refugees? Are you saying that you'll contrast Asian incomes with Black and Hispanic incomes, showing how weird it is in Amerika that Asians have a higher median wage than Whites? Do you point out that Americans from the Phillipines are screwed by being grouped with those from Japan just as the Scots-Irish are screwed by being lumped in with Ashkenazi? Are you pointing out that Black children whose parents are from the wealthiest quintile have lower SAT scores than Whites from the poorest quintile? That European Americans have PISA scores at the top of the European heap but that the US average is lowered by demographic change?
Do they just not care whether you're right? It just makes sense to them that non-rich Whites and SE Asians should be shafted by AA while Ashkenazi should be buoyed by being grouped with gentiles?
I'm just trying to see what it is you're actually saying to these thoughtful liberals and how they're responding.
I have argued more than half of the positions below with my liberal friends. Fact is, things below are facts, not opinions, and I don't tend to associate with folks who don't like reality. Usually, I quote Charles Murray and Tino, not Sailer. Nonetheless...they're still liberal, and still my friends.
I haven't pushed the Ashkenazi side of things, or the Phillipine angle. I've pushed hard on the poor, stupid white side. The purpose of AA is to help the poor, the weak, and historically disadvantaged. Asians, and Ashkenazi are not weak nor disadvantaged (any longer, for sure). And poor stupid whites face fewer challenges than equivalent blacks do. And fundamentally...they don't care. Either you do it at a group level or you don't.
Aretae,
"The purpose of AA is to help the poor, the weak, and historically disadvantaged."
AA looks to me like a continuation of the work of critical theorists. I don't know why you'd just accept the liberal line as true.
Your response is really hazy. As far as I can tell, you mostly avoid talking about AA and HBD and just say that poor Whites are shafted to the benefit of poor Blacks with equivalent credentials. This is an argument designed to test no liberal bounds.
And when I try to picture your friends and family, none of them sound like they're stuck working with people who can't do the work just to please the EEOC.
My (possibly wrong) summation: the liberals with which you surround yourself who are ostensibly honest and well-reasoned believers in AA don't have to placate the EEOC, don't deal with its effects personally, have no stake in their own critical theory. You seem to come at them with a truly uncomprehensive anti-AA case all the while we in the rest of the world are surrounded by garbage like this:
http://gawker.com/5527355/meet-stephanie-grace-the-harvard-law-student-who-started-a-racist-email-war
The above being the only level of response that I've ever witnessed from a liberal.
Ever.
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