Does the word racism hold any philosophical value?

[cynicist]

Colin Flaherty has been slimed with the racist smear for writing a book that sites, contrary to rubbish from the MSM,  numerous statistics showing whites most often as the victims of inter racial crimes in the US.

Is that evidence that would exclude culture? If not, how could one factor out culture?

 

The statistics around blacks committing a larger proportion of crimes or whites being victims more often can be entirely valid while having nothing to do with 'race' itself. It depends a lot how you define it. (whether culture is included really) If like me, you see 'race' as being physical differences like skin color, facial structure, etc, then it would hard to say those characteristics determine someone's behavior. (Though they can affect people's behavior, through faulty perceptions for example) 

 

In order to factor out culture you would have to compare people of similar 'races' growing up under different circumstances. Poor vs wealthy blacks, blacks from different countries (UK vs USA, or those from Africa), etc. If there are certain behaviors that they all have in common you could at least say that it was possible this behavior has a 'racial' component (unless of course it is something specific to all human beings, like eating)

 

It's all pretty ridiculous though. Since we are fairly similar genetically, the main differences are necessarily going to come from our environment and our choices. (which will also impact our genes) How your skin looks or where your ancestors originated from is not going to determine who you are. Here is an interesting excerpt from Wikipedia quoting Richard Dawkins on race:

 

In The Ancestor's Tale Richard Dawkins devotes a chapter to the subject of race and genetics. After an extensive discussion race, and how the term is not well defined, Dawkins turns to the genetics of race. Dawkins describes the relatively low genetic variation between races, and geneticists conclusion that race is not an important aspect of a person. These conclusions echo those of Lewontin, and Dawkins characterizes this view as scientific orthodoxy. However, Dawkins felt that reasonable genetic conclusions had been tainted by Lewontins politics. Dawkins accepted Lewontin's position that our perception of relatively large differences between human races and subgroups, as compared to the variation within these groups, is a biased perception and that human races and populations are remarkably similar to each other, with the largest part by far of human variation being accounted for by the differences between individuals. Dawkins' also agreed with Lewontin that racial classification had no social value, and was in fact destructive. Together with Edwards, Dawkins disagreed with Lewontin that this means race is of 'virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance' and summarized Edwards' point that however small the racial partition of the total variation may be, if such racial characteristics as there are highly correlated with other racial characteristics, they are by definition informative, and therefore of taxonomic significance. Dawkins went on to concludes that racial classification informs us about no more than the traits common used to classify race: the superficial, external traits like eye shape and skin color.

[Aaron727]

I have some questions, why on earth do you care if your  picture is taken with red headed Muslims from Yemen? What do they represent to you? Do you live in some country where you will be assassinated if your caught posing with Muslims? How do red headed Muslims affect your life? Is your distaste for posing with redheaded Muslims based on anything objective?

 

​I think you can insert any racist scenario and answer  those questions and you will understand if your racism is rational. 

[tiepolo]

And where is the evidence that this has anything to do with an inherent attribute like 'race' instead of culture? (ie. parenting practices)

The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study, for one...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study#Results

[fractional slacker]

I have some questions, why on earth do you care if your  picture is taken with red headed Muslims from Yemen? What do they represent to you? Do you live in some country where you will be assassinated if your caught posing with Muslims? How do red headed Muslims affect your life? Is your distaste for posing with redheaded Muslims based on anything objective?

 

​I think you can insert any racist scenario and answer  those questions and you will understand if your racism is rational. 

Red headed Muslims is an analogy to the Donald Sterling story. It's intended to show the nature of the word racism: a made up term used to slander while having no basis in philosophy.

Don Lemon is a presenter on the cable tv show/propaganda channel of CNN.

 

How do you become a highly paid mouth piece for the ruling class? Come up with brilliant stuff like this.

“I’ve said for years now that the new unicornism is the denial of unicornism,” Lemon said. “But in the past few weeks, after hearing from Bundy and Sterling, I have changed my mind.The new unicornism is being unaware that you are unicornist.”

 

That is what you call a solid proof - in the land of CNN make believe.

 

http://www.mediaite.com/online/cnns-lemon-not-knowing-youre-racist-is-the-new-racism/

[tiepolo]

Martin Willett's great vid exposing the double standards and engineered guilt around The 'R word':

 

[cynicist]

The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study, for one...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study#Results

 

They argued that,"contrary to Levin's and Lynn's assertions, results from the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study provide little or no conclusive evidence for genetic influences underlying racial differences in intelligence and achievement," and note that "We think that it is exceedingly implausible that these differences are either entirely genetically based or entirely environmentally based. The true causes of racial-group differences in IQ, or in any other characteristic, are likely to be too complex to be captured by locating them on a single hereditarianism-environmentalism dimension."

 

In a 1998 article, Scarr wrote: "The test performance of the Black/Black adoptees [in the study] was not different from that of ordinary Black children reared by their own families in the same area of the country. My colleagues and I reported the data accurately and as fully as possible, and then tried to make the results palatable to environmentally committed colleagues. In retrospect, this was a mistake. The results of the transracial adoption study can be used to support either a genetic difference hypothesis or an environmental difference one (because the children have visible African ancestry). We should have been agnostic on the conclusions 

[tiepolo]

Yes, but that is PC waffle. It is regime flavour. The data is what it is. Children adopted by adoptive parents of other races still end up, by the time they are teenagers, with an IQ around the average for their biological race. If you won't accept the results of adoption studies as evidence against the culture/environment argument then that amounts to special pleading and goalpost-moving. What would you consider incontrovertible evidence? Interracial adoption in a society of blind people?

[cynicist]

If he's testing and comparing to parents from the same area then if there is a stigma against a certain skin color, that stigma will remain present regardless of the difference in parents. I mean these people aren't exactly raised in a locked room are they? I assume they are interacting with others besides the parents and will be influenced by them, as well as the parents being influenced by others they come into contact with. I'm not rejecting the data, I'm saying that your conclusion is stretching the results to fit your perception. 

 

As Scarr & Weinberg (1976) note, transracial adoption studies only control for family environment, not social environment. For example, children who are socially identified as black may still be subject to racial discrimination despite being raised by white parents.

 

Lee further suggests that causality may run from IQ and other behavioral variables to differences in pre-adoption experiences rather than the other way around, and that race by itself as a visible characteristic may have affected pre-adoption experience.

 

He further offers another possible explanation of the results, namely unequal prenatal factors: "[O]ne possibility lies in the prenatal environment provided by Black and White biological mothers. The Black-Black group, of course, all had Black mothers. In the Black-White group, virtually all of the birth mothers were White (66 of 68). Willerman and his colleagues found that in interracial couples it made a difference whether the mother was Black or White: The children obtained higher IQs if she was White. They suspected that this difference was due to postnatal environment, but it could, of course, have been in the prenatal one."

 

 

So before you begin accusing me of ignoring the evidence you should think about the results more carefully...

[Aaron727]

Red headed Muslims is an analogy to the Donald Sterling story. It's intended to show the nature of the word racism: a made up term used to slander while having no basis in philosophy.

 

 

yes I understand the analogy. I agree its bullshit

[tiepolo]

Quite an obvious displays of projection, there (as well as wielding of Occam's butterknife) since I am not the one refusing to take the evidence at face value or making complicating excuses to avoid the most obvious conclusion. That the black subjects of interracial adoption faced stigma is an unproven presumption. That social stigma could lower IQ is also an unproven presumption- in fact it is contradicted by at least one example that I can think of. There was a stigma around being a Jew, in Europe, for over a thousand year, but Jews hardly lag behind in the IQ stakes. Ashkenazi Jews have a higher average IQ than white gentiles.

 

This environment 'theory' also doesn't accord with the evident fact that blacks tend to do worse the further away from whites they are found, far from being held down by white discrimination or stigmatization. Anyway the only legal discrimination in the part of the world in question is all about giving blacks advantages over whites ('affirmative action', as they call it.) Millions of tax-payer dollars, moreover, have been poured into closing the achievement gap, to no avail. Students in Detroit, which is mostly black and therefore where white social discrimination can't be blamed for anything) have more spent on them than in most of the rest of the US (according to one of Stefan's presentations) but still perform worst than most.

 

The only way to eradicate racial inequality would be to eradicate racial difference, as some globalist demagogues and Leftist fanatics have sought to promote. I can't see what advantage there would be in that from a white perspective, since mixing with blacks would seem to be dysgenic in IQ terms (mixed race children tend to show an IQ intermediate between the norms for their parents' races).

 

http://rense.com/general77/racedif.htm

 

There is also the matter of aesthetics. The loss from the world of blue eyes and rosy cheeks, for example, would be something to lament. Not a price worth paying for 'equality', which is a cult for losers. 

[fractional slacker]

Podcast 2698 from Wednesday May 14 (about the 7 minute mark)

"Racism is a general statement about a group based on inconsequential biological characteristics."

 

"And racism is of course negative racism and positive racism."

 

"Negative racism is blacks are stupid."

"The positive racism is blacks are the coolest ever."

"Both of those are a racist statement."

 

In Stef's defense, this was tangent/metaphor on the fly in the middle of a conversation. I say dumber things everyday as my main point in conversation.

[tiepolo]

These definitions don't seem very scientific, and they don't exactly justify the hysteria around 'the evil of racism'. Stefan has also said 'it's can't be racist if it's true') It is actually the case that blacks, on average, have a lower IQ. (This doesn't mean always, obviously, and we all know how wise and clever Thomas Sowell is). It is also true that blacks tend to be more extroverted and impulsive, to be more highly sexed, to have fewer inhibitions and be less anxious than caucasians and mongoloids, hence the 'coolness' reputation. There are more than plausible environmental/evolutionary explanations for these things. 

 

See:

 

http://penta3.ufrgs.br/educacao/teoricos/MIND/SITE_PESSOAL/texto_aleatorio/arquivo1-33.htm

 

I don't think a space alien making dispassionate studies of the different manifestations of humanity on planet earth would have a problem recognising such 'racist' realities. It is mostly social taboos and political ideologies that motivate resistance, it seems to me. And fear of an irrational but terribly damaging label that the egalitarian Left in particular deploy as a means of psychological terrorism. 

[fractional slacker]

Never want to work another day in your life? Ez peazy. Come up with a way to sell a fake cure to a fake disease. That is what Stefan says about religion. It seems applicable to the boogey man/word of racism, as well.

 

Quote referring to statist supremacist  Eric Holder, "He said the new battleground against discrimination should focus on policies and laws that appear race-neutral but in practice impede equal opportunity."Okay, how about you start with affirmative action?Furthermore, Mr. Holder it's quite obvious you would rather focus on the non issue of discrimination rather than get a real job that doesn't rely on violence and coercion. Your whole existence is predicated on forcing others to pay your bloated salary and to submit to your unjustified authority. But  at least you are out bravelly battling the unicorns and leprechauns of "discrimination."

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/u-attorney-general-says-racial-equality-threatened-subtle-144426557.html

[PatrickC]

It is mostly social taboos and political ideologies that motivate resistance, it seems to me. And fear of an irrational but terribly damaging label that the egalitarian Left in particular deploy as a means of psychological terrorism. 

 

I'd go as far as to say that the Left use these taboos as a form of faux ethics, as much as they use them to destroy the reputations of their enemies. The sheer importance that is laid upon them by many is a marvelous invention for getting people to not think about real ethics and create yet more slave on slave conflict.

[fractional slacker]

I'd go as far as to say that the Left use these taboos as a form of faux ethics, as much as they use them to destroy the reputations of their enemies. The sheer importance that is laid upon them by many is a marvelous invention for getting people to not think about real ethics and create yet more slave on slave conflict.

I would argue that as being the difference between philosophy and sophistry. The sophist's primary goal is confusing morals with aesthetics. The word racism is a sophist's best friend. It is one of a few labels that makes the accused guilty until proven innocent.Exhibit B.Mark CubanHis charge by those who live in the world of words? Racism

His action in reality? Speaking truth.The focal point? Mr. Cuban didn't use the 14th letter in the alphabet word. No, he showed his racism by using the new 14th letter of the alaphabet word: Hoodie. Sorry if I have offended anyone. Join me in stamping out racism by referring to that wicked word in a more sensitive manner. We do then decree from this point forward in the name of fairness and equality to call that word the 8th letter in the alphabet word!

 

http://news.yahoo.com/mavericks-owner-cuban-under-fire-comments-touching-race-155324522--nba.html 

[tiepolo]

Meanwhile note the callous disregard for the feelings of the facially tattooed community...

[PatrickC]

Yes, 'sophistry' is a much better way to put it Fractional.. It was interesting to note a FaceBook meme going around in the UK regarding any friends considering to vote Ukip in today's European elections. The meme suggested that since you are obviously racists for voting for them, then please unfriend me.

 

On the surface this is fine I guess, nothing wrong with people disassociating from folk that transgress your own (subjective) code, without violence of course. Except if this truly is the level of discourse when it comes to ethics, many people have a long way to go considering all manner of transgressions that these types barely address. But if all they desire is a momentary faux feeling of integrity, then of course, they should knock themselves out.

[fractional slacker]

Meanwhile note the callous disregard for the feelings of the facially tattooed community...

Touche.Why Cuban decided to use tattoos and baldenss on white guys as markers of fear shows the coward he is. How would he react were it a black bald guy and tats?  While I applauded his  courage to even broach the subject, as he has nothing obvious to gain and lots to lose, my applause was short lived.Mr Cuban is now grovelling at the feet of the race baiters for daring to use the 8th letter in the alphabet word to make a point. It's understandable he would apologize, but it's unfortunate as Mr. Cuban's repentence encourages and rewards word bullies, again. 

http://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2014/05/22/mark-cuban-apology-race-trayvon-martin-nba/9456125/

 

This story is changing every hour.Now Cuban is the enviable position of proving he is NOT racist.Okay, I am not convinced he has proven his non-racism to my satisfaction. If the moral crusaders of the noble NBA do not take his team, fine him $2.5 million, and ban him for life, well then the NBA is going to need to prove to me they are not a racist institution.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101698785