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[sebastian_dangerfield]

argument can be made. This one gets dismissed pretrial with prejudice.

Klein suggested it should not be made at all, but could not explain why, as he had no argument around Harris's assertion that it was a logical inquiry.

Please make that argument for me. How the fuck can a group's disadvantages be partly the group's fault if they were oppressed? I think you'll need an example, but maybe not. So far, all I've heard from you is that this is a thing. You have yet to explain how the hell it's possible.

I don't think the group's disadvantages are the group's fault. As I've said, I think the group concept does not work. But if one is going to have these debates by defining people by group, as Klein and Harris did, how else can I respond?

The truth is, each person is individually responsible for his own actions. Each should be assessed exclusively as an individual.

Here's a personal example. My grandfather was an immigrant from Eastern Europe. Came over with nothing. Started working in menial labor as did everyone else on the boat. But then he said "This shit's a train to nowhere." He took a chance and started a business. Life got better. Compare him to the other people who remained in menial labor (and this can be done, as he remained in his neighborhood for most of his life). The people who faced the same choice he did and decided to stick with the menial labor enjoyed a life a few degrees below the life he did. (Many died young, abused by oppressive corporate bosses at a time when there were few labor protections.) Some others took the same chance and failed. Still some others took the same chance and succeeded far beyond him. Are these people not partly responsible for the differentials between their success or lack thereof? Stated otherwise, because they were significantly disadvantaged at the start, do their personal decisions somehow not matter?

I have another grandfather who was an Ivy League fuckup. Blew a pile of opportunities. He owns 100% of his failures. But let's say he'd been oppressed, rather than advantaged. Would he then have no responsibility for his situation?

Each person always owns some % of responsibility for his life's circumstance. That's not a point up for debate. It's impossible for a contrary situation to exist. There can never be a scenario where it can be said, "[Name] bore absolutely no responsibility for his fortune or lack thereof." The percentages can vary wildly based on individual and outside forces acting upon that individual. And there can be discrete instances over a lifetime in which a person bears no responsibility. But there can never be a scenario where it can be said that a person has 0% responsibility.

No. He's pinning you down by (i) stating that this argument can't actually be made in any logical way (and I have been arguing that as well) and (ii) asking you what the point of the argument is. The only people who want to make such an argument are looking to say, "This minority group is partly to blame for their own circumstances because as a group they ________."

That a bunch of people want to abuse a logical argument doesn't render it invalid. For the 50th time, I do not think the group construct works. But if we use the correct construct, the individual, the argument is this:

"Is an oppressed person 0% responsible for his life's circumstance?" No. That's flatly absurd. Every individual owns some percentage of responsibility for where he's at.

No I don't because that rebuttal is fucking ridiculous. It's like saying, "If you say that the sky is blue, you invite a rebuttal that it is not."

I do not think the assertion that an individual owns some percentage of responsibility for his circumstances on par with arguing the sky is not blue. And I think I'm on fairly solid footing there.

Bullshit. Based on what you have posted, I think it is quite clear that you believe minority groups need to own a certain percentage of the blame for their circumstances.

No. I do not. I do not think any "group" owns a certain % of responsibility (blame is a different concept) for its circumstances. I think every individual person owns a percentage of responsibility for his circumstances. And this applies to the positive as well as the negative. The most wildly successful person owes a certain percentage of his success to luck and, if he had certain advantages, those advantages.

This is a big part of why looking at people as groups first, individuals second, is dumb. But that's what Klein and Harris did, and a lot of fans of identity politics do. I'm not fighting the hypo.

You are conflating a response to a ridiculous rebuttal that says the rebuttal is complete bullshit and steeped in racism with soft censorship. It is a ridiculous position to take. Every time an argument is proven to be stupid and/or racist is not an example of "soft censorship," whatever the fuck that means.

The argument wasn't proven to be bullshit. I provided Ty with a study from Duke, based on data, doing the assessment he claimed could not be done. (I think it's flawed because, again, it's using groups where the only valid measure is individuals.) I could offer many more similar studies, I'm sure.

But Klein suggested we not even engage in that kind of study. That's foreclosing inquiry. That's not a "marketplace of ideas," as Ty put it, but the preclusion of certain ideas. Klein is not a judge, nor is Ty. They don't get to decide what gets dismissed with prejudice on a 12(b)(6) based on their sensibilities.

TM[/QUOTE]