Post: #301

@ Samseau

Quote:"Athlone's version of racism closely resembles the kinds of arguments feminists use to claim that women do not receive the same jobs and opportunities men do, which of course are terribly weak arguments, while ignoring the fact that westernized women have the highest standards of living in the entire world compared to what non-western women receive."

This argument equating the dynamics and impetus of feminism with racism and civil rights is so specious one marvels at the mental malpractice required to assert it.

This is wrong in the extreme because of the obvious counterargument that lots of right-wingers don't seem to get: being male isn’t unidirectionally privileged over being female, in a way that being white is unidirectionally privileged over being black. If you don't understand that it's because you're trying really hard not to.


@ Athlone

When you have to actually define, using a dictionary, what racism actually is that should be a clue that you aren't dealing with intellectually honest---or particularly well-informed---interlocutors. It is for this reason that I, personally, don't engage in protracted dialogue on the forum--especially with right-wingers. They aren't working from a similarly broad knowledge base and they are, most times, willfully blind. Hats off to you for doing what you do here---I don't have the time, inclination or the energy. I imagine a man of your talents probably just likes the target practice though.


@ iknowexactly

Agree with your comment. The idea that Barack Obama's daughters may be eligible for affirmative action while a broke white kid from West Virginia isn't, is bullshit. Race-based affirmative should be repealed and socioeconomic affirmative action (where needed) be installed as the new paradigm.

Post: #302

(11-10-2012 09:51 AM)dragnet Wrote:  being male isn’t unidirectionally privileged over being female, in a way that being white is unidirectionally privileged over being black. If you don't understand that it's because you're trying really hard not to.

Hey I read this quote in another context:

'Except being male isn’t unidirectionally privileged over being female, in a way that being straight, or cis, is unidirectionally privileged over being gay, or trans.'
http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/10...z2BpgaPDex


Interesting point.

Post: #303

(11-10-2012 10:18 AM)Nineteen84 Wrote:  

(11-10-2012 09:51 AM)dragnet Wrote:  being male isn’t unidirectionally privileged over being female, in a way that being white is unidirectionally privileged over being black. If you don't understand that it's because you're trying really hard not to.

Hey I read this quote in another context:

'Except being male isn’t unidirectionally privileged over being female, in a way that being straight, or cis, is unidirectionally privileged over being gay, or trans.'
http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/10...z2BpgaPDex


Interesting point.

Wow. That is fucking creepy.

Post: #304

really? how so?

Post: #305

(11-10-2012 10:26 AM)Nineteen84 Wrote:  really? how so?

Just that we used nearly the exact same language lol.

Post: #306

(11-10-2012 10:34 AM)dragnet Wrote:  

(11-10-2012 10:26 AM)Nineteen84 Wrote:  really? how so?

Just that we used nearly the exact same language lol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem - sort of.

This happened to me at college with a matching sentence. I had never laid eyes on the book it came from but the plagiarism software flagged it up. The teacher was cool though.

Post: #307

(11-10-2012 08:21 AM)Samseau Wrote:  I noticed Athlone's denial of human nature never addressed my simple challenge:

Quote:You think you're well read? Name one historical instance where a culture didn't prefer it's own, or a culture that harbored no racial preferences.

Read much more closely this time:

(11-10-2012 03:30 AM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

Quote:All of these arguments make two fatal assumptions:

1. That human nature can be changed.

None of what I ask for requires a change in human nature. Levels of discrimination seen within the United States are not immutable and/or insurmountable. That's a mere excuse, and a poor one at that.

Quote:2. There can exist a world where one race doesn't discriminate against another.

Not necessary either. Discrimination may always exist and, by extension, racism may always exist. That doesn't mean that discrimination and its impacts can't be further minimized, or that further actions should not be taken to do so. It certainly doesn't establish the notion that nothing more can be done to attack discrimination in the United States.

(11-10-2012 03:30 AM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

Quote:You cannot eliminate human bias because it is human to be biased.

You don't need to.

Quote:But total removal of all forms of racial discrimination? Can't be done. There's no such thing as a perfect world. Utopia doesn't exist.

Good. Nobody is asking for it.

None of what I ask for requires the complete and total elimination of racism in all forms. I do not need to reference a culture in which there has been a total elimination of racism/ethnic discrimination because my argument does not call for the creation of a culture with those qualities. Your entire argument is a strawman, which is why the component you sight did not get a specific response (though the point, as I've shown, was addressed multiple times).

It may not be possible to create a society where there is never any racial discrimination (just as one can never totally eliminate crime), but that's not what anybody (even the most vigilant civil rights activists) is asking for. They demand improvement, not utopia, and your claims that further improvement in the USA is farfetched are entirely unconvincing.

Quote:It's the same argument I use against feminists who say patriarchy is bad.

The "Athlone is a feminist" bullshit isn't going to help your argument, which is fundamentally flawed at a core level.

Quote:Your arguments are ahistorical, and ahistorical arguments are bad.

Your inability to actually comprehend and properly understand the nuances of my argument does not equate to its being at odds with history. It equates to you simply not understanding the topic at hand and manufacturing strawmen to serve your own purposes.

Post: #308

(11-10-2012 10:34 AM)dragnet Wrote:  

(11-10-2012 10:26 AM)Nineteen84 Wrote:  really? how so?

Just that we used nearly the exact same language lol.

You're using the same language because you're both using the same bankrupt ideas.

I'm not trying to insult you. I'm trying to make you aware.

You don't even realize that all the "anti-racism" BS comes from the same people who invented Feminism, Queer Studies, and everything else anti-white male.

You're regurgitating ideas with no idea of where or who put them in your head. I've actually met the people who have push these ideas into people's heads in the university - I've met the feminists, the English professors, etc who all repeat the same crap from the Frankfurt school and Sartrean social analysis.

The man who adopted Frankfurt ideas and John Paul Sartre's ideas was a black man named Frantz Fanon.

Pretty much everything Athlone says is textbook Fanon, which is why I knew what premises of his to attack - the premises of human nature.

Human nature is explicitly denied by Sartre and the Frankfurt school, so pretty much every "racism" style argument today carries these (faulty) assumptions.

Look at this link:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics...-like-with

Scroll down to the comments, and then there's this:

Quote:Does everyone forget that white Americans are in the minority now? Whatever old belief systems are in place about race will soon be outdated and outnumbered…

And the first response to him:

Quote:Sorry, that's not how it works. White people still have significant power and privileges over minorities. Being a “Minority” doesn't mean there are less of you in population. It means you have less of a voice. It means you face far more challenges to succeed in the White man's system. It means that you have to deal with racism and prejudice every single day.

This response looks like it came straight from Athlone. Of course it did not, it just came from yet another university educated drone who is just regurgitating the same arguments created by (white) men who hated Western culture over 70 years ago.

And like Athlone, it makes the same bad assumptions about human nature and racial prejudice - that it can be eliminated, that if white people were removed from power the next dominant race would be without prejudice, etc.

Quote:When you have to actually define, using a dictionary, what racism actually is that should be a clue that you aren't dealing with intellectually honest---or particularly well-informed---interlocutors.

Dictionaries only record the popular usage of a word.

Popularity isn't a measure of truth. Thus dictionaries are worthless and mean nothing when it comes to intellectual debate.

Quote:being male isn’t unidirectionally privileged over being female, in a way that being white is unidirectionally privileged over being black.

There are hundreds of millions of feminists, world wide, who would disagree with you, and claim the exact opposite.

In fact, they would say,

Quote:being male is unidirectionally privileged over being female

And wouldn't even bat an eye. And if I told them they were wrong and were ignoring human nature, they would behave exactly as you are right now, full of righteous indignation.



Anyhow, I know I can't convince you guys about how human nature works, even though my challenge stands completely untouched:

Quote:Name one historical instance where a culture didn't prefer it's own, or a culture that harbored no racial preferences.

But the purpose of my arguing isn't to convince you.

It's for others who read these conversations to realize there is a much broader, more intellectually rigorous, view of the world involving racial politics, and it is to plant the seeds of doubt into your own mind.

50-60 years from now, when whites will be all but a minority in America, and yet racial violence continues unabated, you will have the ideas in your head about human nature from this conversation and you will question your old beliefs and you will realize that there is more to racial politics other than the lies you were fed as a young man.

Schopenhauer Wrote:All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Post: #309

Quote:None of what I ask for requires the complete and total elimination of racism in all forms. I do not need to reference a culture in which there has been a total elimination of racism/ethnic discrimination because my argument does not call for the creation of a culture with those qualities.

Athlone, everything you've said calls for equal consideration and treatment of one race by another race, in all aspects of life, from jobs to the criminal system to the education system. This is impossible, and it will never happen.

Post: #310

(11-10-2012 03:07 PM)Samseau Wrote:  And like Athlone, it makes the same bad assumptions about human nature and racial prejudice - that it can be eliminated, that if white people were removed from power the next dominant race would be without prejudice, etc.

For the 100th time: nobody in this thread has made this argument. Utopianism is not a requirement of anything I have said. Improvement =/= utopia.

I'm tired of repeating myself, so I'll end this here.

(11-10-2012 03:12 PM)Samseau Wrote:  Athlone, everything you've said calls for equal consideration and treatment of one race by another race, in all aspects of life, from jobs to the criminal system to the education system. This is impossible, and it will never happen.

Quote:50-60 years from now, when whites will be all but a minority in America, and yet racial violence continues unabated, you will have the ideas in your head about human nature from this conversation and you will question your old beliefs and you will realize that there is more to racial politics other than the lies you were fed as a young man.

I'm done. I lack the energy to continue engaging strawmen and I'm not going to continue to tolerate unwarranted condescension/pedagogy from men without the authority or intellectual standing to provide it. If you don't get the actual nature of my argument by now, you never will. I can't be any clearer than I have been.

Post: #311

Samseau, it's very hard to follow your line of argument. I can't help but feel you're not being intellectually honest as much as you are adhering to a philosophy.

Post: #312

(11-10-2012 03:07 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(11-10-2012 10:34 AM)dragnet Wrote:  

(11-10-2012 10:26 AM)Nineteen84 Wrote:  really? how so?

Just that we used nearly the exact same language lol.

You're using the same language because you're both using the same bankrupt ideas.

I'm not trying to insult you. I'm trying to make you aware.

yeah that wasn't my quote for the record

Post: #313

(11-10-2012 10:00 PM)Nineteen84 Wrote:  

(11-10-2012 03:07 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(11-10-2012 10:34 AM)dragnet Wrote:  

(11-10-2012 10:26 AM)Nineteen84 Wrote:  really? how so?

Just that we used nearly the exact same language lol.

You're using the same language because you're both using the same bankrupt ideas.

I'm not trying to insult you. I'm trying to make you aware.

yeah that wasn't my quote for the record

I know it wasn't you.

@ Samseau

Quote:"You don't even realize that all the "anti-racism" BS comes from the same people who invented Feminism, Queer Studies, and everything else anti-white male.

You're regurgitating ideas with no idea of where or who put them in your head. I've actually met the people who have push these ideas into people's heads in the university - I've met the feminists, the English professors, etc who all repeat the same crap from the Frankfurt school and Sartrean social analysis."

The argument seems to be this: leftist academics developed the initial arguments about privilege and applied them to a whole host of issues (race, gender, sexuality, etc). We know that they hate white men and are flat wrong about privilege with regard to gender so therefore the whole set of ideas/philosophy must be discarded and any argument referencing privilege must also be wrong.

This is a transparently silly argument. Discussions of privilege are valuable in some cases and not in others. Just because discussions of privilege are (largely) off-base with regards to gender doesn't mean they are also off-base when talking about race relations in America (see my earlier comment regarding the directionality--or lack thereof--of privilege). This is like saying that because a spoon isn't a useful tool with which to eat a steak, it is therefore not useful for anything at all. Similarly, privilege isn't very useful when talking about feminism (like the spoon wasn't useful to eat steak) but it is quite a bit more useful when discussing race in America (ie, that same spoon can be used to eat ice cream). Sure, feminists disagree with this and claim to see the cruel hand of privilege in many different areas---including gender---but I disagree with their opinions and that's why an energetic and substantive debate rages around these things.

And lumping together Athlone and feminists is really just projection. The strongest similarities here are really between Samseau and feminists---both subscribe to an ideologically-based, all-or-nothing view of privilege while the views of Athlone and myself are much more nuanced, considered and non-ideological. As a matter of their respective ideologies, a feminist sees privilege in everything while Samseau sees it nowhere at all. Both are absolutists with an all-or-nothing approach to the question, and so things like nuance are threat to them. Hence his attributing arguments to Athlone that he did not actually make (ie, that racial prejudice can be 100 percent eliminated, that the next dominant race will be completely unprejudiced, etc)--when your worldview is all-or-nothing and someone introduces a nuanced argument into the debate, strawmanship is all you really have.

I'll end here.

Post: #314

Post: #315

Post: #316

While not all Obama voters are feminists, this "Victoria Jackson" in the picture above did provide a good summary of those who are.

Post: #317

Brian's future wife.

Quote:PHOENIX (Reuters) - An Arizona woman, in despair at the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama, ran down her husband with the family car in suburban Phoenix on Saturday because he failed to vote in the election, police said on Monday.

http://news.yahoo.com/arizona-woman-runs...26220.html

Post: #318

So the owner who said he might have to fire people if obama wins just gave his entire staff a 5% raise and said company had a record year. Damn cocksucker