Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think TM was about to convince Sebby he made a mistake in not voting for Hillary. But now that will never happen.

Remind me again where to send something to help with the cost

Re: Oh my God, what has this board turned into?
 

Also, mint. Do not grow mint. Ever.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

The biggest idiots are the both-sider, centrist, not taking a position but taking a position by doing it morons, the third party voters. When will they die off?

As we all know, ain't nothing in the middle of the road but road kill.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...=.6e76a8351bf1

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.9082b93f6c1e

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown...than-students/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.7285fc094e77

You really should read White Fragility. This idea that white people create actual friendships with diverse people is, in general, just not true. It may occur early in life, but apparently, those relationships do not last, no matter what your overly-weighted anecdotal evidence tells you.

I don't know what this means: "Whites still have some institutional advantages, but the trend is toward a much more varied culture." But the first part is comical. Whites enjoy deep, entrenched, lasting, meaningful, and self-sustaining advantages.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I just watched the first one and about 10 minutes of the second one. I’m not sure. It seems slow, but I will give Mr. Weiner a chance.

I did like the apartment in the first episode. And I love Paris, so there is that.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

I’m pretty sure it means “institutional racism isn’t a real thing.” But I could be wrong.

When you’re a fish, it’s pretty hard to understand why those porpoises have to keep going up to the surface instead of staying underwater all the time.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

It gave you the nine main points of the book. You've more than adequate intelligence to catch the drift of them while ignoring the blog author's editorializing.

Here's another article that works pretty much as a Cliff's Notes of the book: https://heterodoxacademy.org/coddlin...american-mind/

And I commented on your doing so because you do so so often it's almost a shock when you don't.

If conservatives have created a conservative media similar in influence to that of the mainstream media, and the mainstream media trends left, and the conservative media trends right, then there's equivalence.

You might say the mainstream media does not trend left. This is incorrect. Even mainstream media people will admit it does. And a cursory search of honest articles on the subject acknowledge the fact. (That the mainstream media pays enormous attention to Trump does not refute this. The attention it pays to him is almost exclusively in the form of criticism.)

You might say the right wing media has a disproportionate effect because it nakedly lies, while the mainstream media does not. There, you'd be correct. But the right wing media is much smaller than the mainstream media, so any enhanced influence it gains from peddling propaganda is met if not overcome by the mainstream's much broader reach. Also, the propaganda only works on the right wing base. It actually precludes the right wing media from gaining a bigger audience, as moderates and intellectually honest conservatives and independents find it distasteful.

It is ubiquitous. The extreme left and right are both refusing to live in a factual world.

Some people, apparently you included, think there's significant earnestness among the advocates of the extreme left (and perhaps the right). I think that applies to some of them, but not to the people who are shaping and pushing the agendas of these groups. They are gamers.

The usefulness of it was in describing both groups in total. Again, you seemed to be arguing there's a significant amount of earnestness behind the extreme left's anti-speech behaviors. I see very little of it. I see lying by refusing to allow any discussion that might refute their narrative and delusion (to earnestly align hard right or left, one has to be delusional).

If you use an ad hominem as the left and right do, you are trying to avoid having a discussion on merit for a reason. that reason is because you fear you may not be able to sustain your argument on the merits. You are precluding the uncovering of a weakness in your position. Perhaps that's not lying. Maybe there's another word for it. But it shares 99% of the same DNA with a lie.

I would not place Klein in the category of the extreme left. I believe he engages in some sophistry here and there, but I'd never lump him in with people who wish to live in their own narratives and ignore facts which they dislike.

My point there was simple. You asserted that the people who were seeking to squelch debate were merely "insisting [things be considered] in a broader context." The people on the right and left which Haidt assesses are not doing that. At all.

Sure. Political correctness demands that people not say certain things that, even though factual, are deemed hurtful, impolite, or would undo certain academic views of how society should be arranged. This precludes a full view of reality. Trump just flat out bullshits. His reality is not reality. But neither is the reality political correctness seeks to mold. In both cases, you're not seeing What Is Actual. That Trump's lies are truly in bad faith and more absurd than many PC lies doesn't change the fact: Both revel in the non-factual. In the end, bullshit's bullshit, however you get there. And it's all bad.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

My liver has another 15-20 in it.

And I'm not voting for Trump. And I don't like any D competitor I've yet seen.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

He acknowledged whites still have "some" institutional advantages, it's really just a question of what "some" means.

I mean, maybe he's just talking about advantages in jobs, education, housing, voting, healthcare, food, taxation, water, transportation, the military, government representation, athletics, public services, immigration and emigration, environmental quality, and a few other things. That's just "some" advantages, right?
.
To be fair, I do know some people who believe blacks get all the advantages, so even his "some" is better than some white people.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

I read some of the reviews of it after you posted about it last week and it sounded like a damn fine piece of writing. I'll order a copy to read after finishing House of Cards Season 6.

There's no way I can argue with the statistics you cite in those articles. I could take the cheap approach and cite a contrary finding, but I find the data in those articles pretty convincing. I also think I may have committed the sin of extrapolating from my own background. I grew up in a diverse neighborhood and strangely still live in one, and I see the diversity expanding. But YMMV. Living in the Mid-Atlantic is not living in Missouri. Sincerely, Indians, Asians, and people from of varied Middle Eastern descent have been and remain fixtures of the local communities I've known for so long, the idea of them as an "other" is just bizarre. And I think that experience is common to almost everyone I know. (I suspect it derives from having lived in areas populated with well off professionals.) I think I'm just lucky to have enjoyed diverse neighborhoods, and that perhaps gives me an unduly skeptical view of the issue of segregation.

My comment on varied cultures means that whites still dominate both in number and influence in my area, but are being overtaken by people of various non-white backgrounds.

God damn it.
 

Who are you and what have you done to Sebastian?

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

Not sure what it means either, but it only makes sense if you assume the culture has been white, which has been pretty obviously not true for other people.

Re: God damn it.
 

Data's data.

I also have to consider, I grew up with Asian and Indian neighbors, in an isolated area where most of the original homeowners were successful Jews and Italians (the local Temple was a solid drive and a three iron away). My high school was also private and filled with Indian, Asian, and Middle Eastern kids.

I think my upbringing may have led me to downplay the prevalence of bigotry. Quite literally, we just never thought about it.

And I've been as oblivious about it since. I could see why this would frustrate people who've spent their entire lives dealing with it. Ultimately, however, I will probably always revert to the thinking I've followed on it from the start: Race/Sexual Persuasion/Ethnicity should be immaterial among enlightened people, and the ultimate fix for bigotry - which sadly won't occur until long after we're all dead - is people ignoring those categories and mixing adequately enough that they become something hardly recognizable. (And get rid of religion, which causes most ethnic bigotry.)

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

I understand from the NY Times that we're finally starting to see some African American performers in Jazz get some attention out there.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

Thank you, that is much more useful.

I'm not sure why anyone thinks that book is important. It seems like an effort to spend a lot of time refuting arguments that aren't worth it for a problem that isn't much of a problem.

But they haven't.

It's astonishing and frightening that someone as smart as you would say this. But not surprising, since you recently you said that the mainstream media are doing the Democrats' bidding.

Just to scratch the surface, it is categorically not true that the mainstream media pays attention to Trump almost exclusively in the form of criticism. I wonder what planet you are on. To take a single recent example, the news has been dominated recently by Trump's hyping of a bunch of poor Hondurans walking in Mexico, a thousand miles from the US border, which has called an invasion. If all you mean is that you can find people in the media who have criticized Trump for this, that is correct, but that is not what you said.

There is no left-wing media that counterbalances the right-wing media.

As are you, when you say things like this.

Who is "shaping and pushing the agenda" of which "groups"? WTF are you talking about? This was a conversation about how you equate when conservatives respond to arguments they don't like with lies and lefties respond with accusations of bigotry. Now it's about the agendas of shadowy groups?

As Adder is my witness, there are a lot of people who earnestly believe that there is a lot of bigotry afoot in this country and who point it out when they think it's relevant. I see very little lying involved in that. I really don't know what you're talking about, and maybe you could provide a specific example that illustrates it.

If you believe that whenever someone on the left introduces the idea that bias is relevant to what is being discussed, that it's really a calculated lie to subvert the conversation and an ad hominem attack on the speaker, then what you are saying makes a lot of sense.

Of course, you don't believe that. You are now going to explain that you're really just talking about the extreme left, the unnamed nutballs who exercise an enormous influence on your understanding of reality and run amok on college campuses, crippling the fragile psyches of the next generation. You have a fertile imagination.

No, no one would. And that's my point. Your extreme left is a chimera without any influence.

If you define PC that way, sure, maybe that makes sense. If you define a bicycle as a gilled, scaled creature that swims in the water, then you can say crazy things about bicycles, too, that make sense by their own logic.

I'll give you an example. PC says that the term "redskin" should be avoided in favor of, say, "Native American." There's nothing about the term "redskin" that is in any way more "factual" than the term "Native American." Asking that people substitute one term for the other does not "preclude a full view of reality." It is true that it's an effort to use language in a way that is constitutive of how people think and behave, but you're really not engaging with the real arguments for PC, so it's not surprise that you end up saying silly things about it.

Re: God damn it.
 

I bet that's not true of your non-white friends.

But I know what you mean. It was a non-issue for us, so we didn't need to think about it. Which is why it's so important to listen when people tell you what the world is like for them.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

I mostly skimmed this exchange, but what are these truths that PC says you're not allowed to say?

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

Fair enough.

The book actually discusses the phenomenon you mention above and I think we touched upon it with Ty the last time I posted about the concept awhile back (i.e., that there is an immense amount of racism in places that we associate with liberalism and diversity).

We tend to look at places where racism is out in the open as the only or major problem. DiAngelo points out that white people use the idea of living in a diverse city or working at a diverse company as a shield to avoid any real significant analysis of their own racism. It's part of the constant push back she gets when conducting a race seminar (and that every black person trying to discuss the impact of racism must endure) while trying to educate people on why the good/bad binary approach to racism doesn't work.*

She calls the defense mechanism "Color Celebrate." People talk about their experience working with black people or where they grew up or the diverse people in their families or their distant ancestry, etc. The idea that any of these things makes one immune from engaging in or benefiting from racism is, of course, silly. But the desire to only view one's experience set up solely against extremely hostile racism lets the person in Color Celebrate mode off the hook. They never end up acknowledging their own racism because they have convinced themselves they are a good person (when compared to an "actual" racist).

Anyway, I really like the book and I am going to bring her in to run a program at this firm.

TM

*The good/bad binary assumes that racism is something that only bad people do. It is an action that happens, not a fully-developed structure that benefits one set of people consistently. White people tend to think it only exists if someone is a bad person, which is why you get this huge disconnect when someone like that West Virginia county employee called Michelle Obama an ape in heels can claim to not be racist and why the first defense of such people by whites is, "She's not like that. She's a good person." Once you try to discuss race with any white person, they only hear, "You're a bad person," and switch off or argue about how good they are and then apply either a Color Blindness standard or the Color Celebrate standard discussed above.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

They'll tell you life is full of dirt.
And that women never really faint,
And that villains always blink their eyes.
And that children are the only ones who blush.
'Cause life is just to die.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

Agreed. DiAngelo is all over this too.

TM

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

Please let me know how this plays out.

Re: God damn it.
 

This is the Color Blindness defense that is so often employed to avoid any actual introspection. It's like saying, "Everyone should be treated like the rich. If we start treating everyone like they're rich, things will be better because the ultimate fix for poverty -- which sadly won't occur until long after we're all dead -- is no one being poor." You cannot ignore the reality of people's actual existence and just act like things aren't the way they are as an effort to effect change.

TM

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

My current levels of not giving a fuck are extraordinarily high, so I am hoping she goes hard.

TM

Re: God damn it.
 

I'm not offering mutually exclusive ways of viewing racism and ethnic bigotry. I'm offering complimentary views.

Practically, everybody needs to recognize the obvious fact that racism and ethnic bigotry make minorities into second class citizens.

Ideally, conceptually, however, I believe it is not only fair but important to say that, while we must take that practical step, the ultimate goal must always be color/ethnicity-blindness.

The former's necessary in the immediate, the latter the long term goal. And inevitably, the latter is how it will all get fixed. Ten or fifteen generations from now people here are going to have blended so much that the noticeable physical differences on which we've arbitrarily and unfairly judged people will be slight to the point that recognizing them at all would seem odd.

Re: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
 

I find myself alternatively giving no fucks and giving all the fucks. It would be easier on a lot of people if I'd choose one approach and stick with it.

Re: God damn it.
 

Ah the melting pot! My grandparents were not wanted filthy dagoes and I’m a typical*white Midwest American. Problem is blacks have been free for a whole lot longer than the time it took for I tie blood to mix in, so not sure it’s just going happens. Like once a group misses its melting in spot can it still get in? If it is to happen it’s not 10 generations, and there are things I see with 20 somethings that seem positive, but it’s cold comfort to someone 30 now that even though he won’t get a chance maybe someday someone else will. I mean we all have some self to think about.


*typical other than preternaturally (hi Penske sniff) big dick.

Re: God damn it.
 

I think we've had this conversation before.

Racism exists because people treat people of color differently than they treat white people. It's built-in to our society, and it's systemic, institutional, cultural. Having a goal of a color-blind society makes no sense until there is no racism. And if there is no racism, there is no need for color-blindness because people will be treated equally.

Since there is racism (and there will always be racism), what I'm telling you is that most white people use the idea of being blind-to-color as a shield to protect themselves from acknowledging, understanding, and dealing with their own racism. "I'm colorblind, therefore I'm a good person. And only bad people are racist. End of discussion."

That's how it works.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

It's just me. We are running on a benevolent dictatorship nowadays.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

If people do have some extra money I would suggest I deserve to be paid for the content I provide.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

When can I start drinking?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Should have started already.

Frankly, I am surprised dems picked up as many house seats as they did. Though I am a dyed in the wool socialist liberal, the messages dems chose to focus on don't resonate with the vast majority of americans.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Do I take this as disappointment or celebration? If you're a fan of checking Trump, of gridlock, last night was a pretty good evening. You got the House but not the Senate. But the Senate was always a long shot.

Two years of gridlock. The market will be happy. Perhaps there will be less volatility. There's a good case that last night's result was the best result possible.

If Democrats got the Senate somehow, and we had an impeachment, we'd be on a rollercoaster for the next two years. That's not where anyone wants to be in the midst of so much uncertainty elsewhere.

I think this is a great result. Trump is checked and maybe if we're lucky we'll see some compromises between the parties on policy.

I'd drink either way, of course.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Russia/Mueller: Not popular
Kavanaugh: Not popular
Economy: Popular
More women/minorities in office: Popular
Health care reform (protecting pre-existing conditions): Popular

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/06/polit...lts/index.html

Re: God damn it.
 

There will always be racism during our lives, but I do not think there will always be racism. If the environment doesn't do us in as a species in the meantime, eventually we will become so interconnected globally that both culturally and physically differences underpinning the notion of "race" will fade away.

Is a tenet of that book's point that all people in this country are racist to some extent? That people start out racist because we live in a system that's racist? Is racism a sort of original sin with which we're all born?

I ask that because if that's the case, then that same logic would apply to sexism.

And you see how this would preclude, necessarily, an argument that racism or sexism are acts of free will. It would make an argument that the individual is automatically freighted with decisions of the society into which he was born. But if this is the case, I assume one can reject racism and by doing so remove himself from that group indictment. In this regard, racism would still have an intent element to it. Only, rather than intending to engage in it, one is born into it and makes an intentional decision to reject it.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Senate would have been better than the house, if we got to choose. Next court pick Trump might pick someone CONVICTED of something just to see if he can get that through.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Lesson of the night: racism gets out the vote. Both for and against. And the for wins in a lot of places.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The Senate was always a long shot. You can't be upset you didn't prove a 1 in 7 shot incorrect. Those just aren't good odds.

Republicans seem disappointed that they lost the House. I don't understand that either. The math was near insurmountable there.

I think Trump's upset victory is leaving people with unrealistic expectations about surprise victories over well established odds.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

In GA, yes. But where else? FL? FL is always a crap shoot. No one knows why anything happens in that freak kingdom.

Judging from the election of many minorities, the against won the night.

Re: God damn it.
 

I've had this conversation a few times in college. While there is an end point on the spectrum of race somewhere in the extremely distant future in which all races will blend into one, bringing it up like it is some sort of solution to racism in the immediate future or even the next 1,000 years, is ridiculous. Hell, even when all the races meld into one on some superficial level there will be other ways to determine lineage and race. Trust me. White people are never letting it go.

Short answer? Obviously not at birth, but so early on that it is effectively a problem from moment one? Yes.

First let's talk about how she draws the distinctions between race prejudice, racial discrimination, and racism that so few of us acknowledge. We use the term "racism" to cover everything. But really, we should be using the proper terms.

• Race prejudice is stereotyping and prejudging people based on their race
• Racial discrimination is an injurious action committed based on race prejudice
• Racism is the systemic, cultural, institutional structure this country was built on and maintains that favors white people to the detriment of people of color (and black people, historically more than others)

In the book she sites a study performed by Monteiro and others*--and Monteiro discovered racial hostility in white children as young as three years old--that focuses on groups of white children aged 6/7 and 9/10 years old. The groups were separately asked to allocate money to other white and black children sometimes with no adult in the room, sometimes with an adult in the room. The younger group discriminated against black children under both conditions. The older group discriminated only when they were alone, proving that they have been taught not only to discriminate, but to hide their racial discrimination.

I don't want to get into a long discussion about all the factors that we are consistently bombarded with that teach every human being on this planet what the racial hierarchy is and where there place is in it. But what you need to understand is that there is no such thing as "color-blind." And for all effective purposes (since this planet will die long before we get to the "Browning of America" utopia you keep bringing up), there never will be. So arguing that such a standard should be the goal is absolutely pointless and only serves to equip white people with a shield to use now to keep from confronting their own racial issues.

Your argument is flawed from the start. These traits are not innate. They are taught. The fact that you can't see how they are taught from the moment of birth on would be stunning to someone like me if it weren't the norm. White people do their best to resist studying these issues. They push it all off on us as if it's our issue to solve--like it's even possible for us to solve it. I don't have an issue with racism. I suffer from it. White people have the issue and they do not want to admit it, learn about it, or deal with it.

Read the book.

TM

*https://repositorio.iscte-iul.pt/handle/10071/8425

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

MN8, MN1, FL Gov, FL Senate, GA gov, etc. The GOP ran on the scary brown people coming to get you, and voters turned out pretty strong on that message.

The against wins where there are black and brown people (except Florida).