Two of these stories in one week—something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, however.
I’m sorry, I start channeling old Sixties songs at times like this.
Not one but two colleges have advocated segregation in their policies this week:
- Hampshire College explains on its website that it allows students to reside in “identity-based” housing communities, provided they have a “unique social identity” that has “historically experienced oppression,” arguing that such residences “give support to members of our community with social identities that have been historically marginalized in this country, and strive to counter systemic oppression.” The Massachusetts school’s confident promotion of such living arrangements “arises from our commitment to fostering diverse, socially just, and inclusive communities.” An informational booklet explains that “identity-based housing is an institutional structure designed to assist members of historically oppressed groups in supporting each other,” and “helps to create an added level of psychological comfort and safety for those who choose to live in those spaces, often providing the foundation for those students to be able to engage fully in the greater community.”
Translation: Black students don’t want to live with whites, but prefer “their own kind,” because whites are viewed as potentially dangerous. And that’s okay!
- In Illinois, Moraine Valley Community College has restricted certain sections of a mandatory introductory course to black students only. Jessica Crotty, Moraine’s assistant director of communications, justified the segregation by arguing that the school periodically reserves certain course offerings for various demographics of students, and doing this for black students is no different.
“The focus can be on specific issues they face,” Crotty explained. “Students feel comfortable and are more likely to open up because they’re with other students who are like them.”
Pop quiz: What are whites called who demand that in the interests of safety and their “comfort,” they should not have to be in class with blacks?
I am curious about how this particular ethics alarm—you know, “racism is bad”?— got deadened to such a point that this blatant and destructive double standard is even possible. It is undoubtedly illegal, though I seem to have missed the immediate response of the Obama Administration condemning it. Ethics, as I have written here from the beginning, is evolutionary and dynamic. Through experience, study, reflection and eventually enlightenment, society and civilization tend to move in an ethical direction, constantly learning that what was once thought of as right is wrong, and vice-versa. Laws and cultures absorb these changes.
Sometimes, however, whole societies forget what they have already learned. Like now.
This could have been seen coming the second black student groups on various campuses, egged on by the racist rhetoric of Black Lives Matter and emboldened by enabling white progressives who gave the groups’ grievances respect and legitimacy they did not deserve, began “demanding” increased segregation on campus. You can peruse a list of hundreds of such demands” by black student movements at universities on WeDemand.org. Many of the demands include calls for reductions in white faculty and the establishment ”safe spaces” for black students.
This is straight up racism. Why does it receive anything but scorn and condemnation from the Democratic Party, alleged advocates of diversity, and the news media? My suspicion is that the inherent hypocrisy of affirmative action, obvious racial preferences in high places and the tolerance for the activities and pronouncements of Black Lives Matter and similar racists groups have created a retrograde movement toward segregation, now favored by blacks rather than whites because they perceive it as a route to political and social power.
The development is dangerous and divisive, and the culture needs to speak clearly, first by saying “NO” through its leaders, and second by eliminating policies and institutions that have the effect of eroding the societal consensus that racial segregation, for “safety” or any other reason, is per se unethical. That means killing affirmative action, and eliminating the cynical “disparate impact” justification for finding discrimination where there is none. It also means finally treating black colleges like Howard exactly as “white colleges” would be treated. Organize a wave of white student applicants to those schools, and declare them in violation of the law if the student bodies are disproportionately made up of one race.
Moreover, this has to happen quickly. The presidency of Barack Obama has been the worst disaster for race relations since Woodrow Wilson, and the chasm between the races is widening rapidly.
Ethics Alarms 
HBCUs accept students from any racial category. Howard undergrad is about 5% nonblack, the law school about 10% nonblack. Many HBCUs have shifted from serving a primarily black population to serving a primarily white one. Your idea isn’t novel. But if they are accepting federal funds, they admit students from all racial backgrounds, and will probably continue to do so. I think going to an HBCU would be a bewildering and uncomfortable experience for most whites, which is why the vast majority do not apply.
I think going to an HBCU would be a bewildering and uncomfortable experience for most whites, which is why the vast majority do not apply.
I’m sure it would, but then, the same applied to the black students trying to integrate all white schools in the South in the 50’s and 60’s. So why do you, an intelligent person of ethical orientation quote exactly from the rhetoric of segregationists and racists of the period to rationalize racial exclusion and “separate but equal.” Of course not many whites apply to Howard or the others: they market themselves as black colleges. A college that advertised itself as a white college wouldn’t get many black applicants either, but such a college would also be accused of open racism and prejudice. There’s no difference ethically. And the black colleges could be stopped in their hypicrisy the same way blacks fought segregation. Get thousands of white students to apply to black schools, and, if accepted turn them into majority white schools, or sue the hell out of them for violating te civil rights of whites unfairly rejected.
At the base, and reduced to the obvious common-denominator, the purpose of intense racial integration is to eventually eliminate the category of ‘white’. If one thinks it through I believe one can only conclude that. And this is also a stated opinion, a stated intention.
The purpose of racial integration may have started on some other note — who knows? — but when the notion of racial integration gets rolling, and when its intention is understood, that intention is to eliminate the controversy of distinction by eliminating the distinction. I beg anyone to contradict this assertion.
The reasons are fairly simple: It is (indeed it is) the white European culture which established itself as a superior category, and on that basis it entered strongly into the world. Starting in the 17th century more or less it has imposed itself on a world scale. That is why a black or brown person has and can structure an anti-white prejudice.
It is true that there is such a thing as ‘brown imperialism’ (or Asian imperialism as it is known) but the articulation of difference was never quite as acute.
Therefor, it is obvious, and it should be obvious, that if one really gets behind integration one is advocating for the eventual blending-away of a problematic distinction. And that is fine and it is also ethically defensible as such. One can make that argument.
I have no difficulty in understanding why Blacks or any other racial category would desire to spend those college years among their own kind. None. The reason they cannot is not because it is unethical to do so, but because it is illegal. I do not quite understand how they manage to circumvent the strict interpretation of the law and it is not my business to ferret it out. But I have no problem understanding it.
I also would venture to say that it was not fully or exclusively blacks who ‘fought segregation’ but whites who chose to put the integrationist plan into motion, and to set it up as an ethical imperative. I am somewhat certain that, given the opportunity, black in the early days might have wanted nothing to do with America, with white America, and with the European project generally. I wonder at times if this integration is really something arising in their own will. I mean: conscious choice.
Some evidence points in a different direction: the desire, if it were possible, to be separate and to develop separate communities, businesses, communities, and much else. If this is so, what argument (aside from a legal one) would I have to bring against them?
Not any argument at all. It is their right.
At the base, and reduced to the obvious common-denominator, the purpose of intense racial integration is to eventually eliminate the category of ‘white’.
No it’s not. The goal is to eliminate bias and fear from familiarity, create a unified culture, bolster equal opportunity, eliminate the handicap of “othering,” and stop stigmatizing via “separate but equal.”
Alright. So as an ethicist you are comfortable and tolerant of working out biological definitions, or any definitions, which a group may employ to maintain race separation? You allow for segregation — a desire to remain segregated and separated — and only desire to eliminate unfair bias, augment familiarity, and bolster equal opportunity?
Either there are material typos in there, or I don’t understand how you could glean that from what I wrote.
Alizia said, “At the base, and reduced to the obvious common-denominator, the purpose of intense racial integration is to eventually eliminate the category of ‘white’.”
Spoken like a true white supremacist.
Alizia said, “If one thinks it through I believe one can only conclude that.”
That “only” is only true if the morals of the person doing the thinking is rooted in white racism. Using the word “only” in such a sentence is a clear sign of illogical finite thinking.
Miss Metaphysics,
Is this really how you want to be pegged?
Actually, Dear Zoltar of Unending Electric Impulse, the statement functions well in the hands of a dedicated anti-racist and committed non-supremicist. It is the logical outcome of integration policy. The verb ‘integrate’ comes from the Latin ‘integratus’ and the pp ‘integrare’: ‘to make whole’.
To integrate a mixed race or cultural community is to cause them to blend together into a whole. One could desire that from various perspectives, not just that of white supremacist. Actually this ‘integration’ of man is a well-founded Christian ethical position.
Miss Metaphysics works.
I’m sure it would, but then, the same applied to the black students trying to integrate all white schools in the South in the 50’s and 60’s. So why do you, an intelligent person of ethical orientation quote exactly from the rhetoric of segregationists and racists of the period to rationalize racial exclusion and “separate but equal.” Of course not many whites apply to Howard or the others: they market themselves as black colleges. A college that advertised itself as a white college wouldn’t get many black applicants either, but such a college would also be accused of open racism and prejudice.
When white is the default, as it is in the United States, historically white colleges don’t have to market themselves as such, it is well-known already. Whiteness is the assumed background. “Colorless”, if you will. That’s the advantage of whiteness and being the majority, and the predominant power. I’m certain that universities in Nigeria don’t market themselves as being black colleges either.
I don’t have a problem with universities who are not oriented towards the majority communities making their niche known, as long as it’s open to all. I don’t have a problem with schools that focus on the arts, or sciences. I don’t have a problem with male schools, or female ones. Nor do I have a problem with Asian schools, Hispanic schools, or black ones. As I’ve noted, Howard averages around 5-10% nonblack population. Most selective PWCUs average about 5-10% black populations. They are basically in line with each other. Why single out Howard for condemnation?
Splitting the populace into unique sub-groups to pit against each other has been a close personal friend, and a growing trend, of the political left for years; division is very high on their tactic list. I think the phrase is, divide and conquer; the political left has been extremely good at using this tactic.
I remember the song very well!
There’s battle lines being drawn, nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong…
Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep…
I think it’s time we stop, Children, what’s that sound? Everybody look – what’s going down.
We had some serious problems in Chattanooga in the 60’s; I remember it like it was yesterday, the riots, arson fires, protests, etc. Too many have forgotten the lessons learned in those turbulent times and way too many ignore history except the selective parts they want to exploit.
Jack wrote: “Ethics, as I have written here from the beginning, is evolutionary and dynamic. Through experience, study, reflection and eventually enlightenment, society and civilization tend to move in an ethical direction, constantly learning that what was once thought of as right is wrong, and vice-versa. Laws and cultures absorb these changes.”
________________________
I look at these issues and questions very differently but I am not unaware of the issues, the civil struggles, and many of the discourses articulated by activists, the religious faction, and of course government agency. Because I am not an activist and do not have a specific or decided political agenda I remain, for now, within a theoretical camp.
I notice that the central axiom in what you have written (which nicely encapsulates your belief and understanding as well as your values) is when you refer to ‘an ethical direction’. The word ‘axiom’ comes from axioma and I think it means ‘worthy’. So what I notice is that the ethic that you have defined is one that you have determined is ‘worthy’, and because you have made this assessment, your assessment becomes the one worthy of being pursued.
If I interject at this point that ‘worthiness’ is sometimes a subjective valuation, and that the worth of something can be more closely examined, I am reasonably sure that in this specific instance I will encounter a fire-storm of opposition. To turn against and to even question a defined social value which has been defined as The Ethical value can only result in an attack. The attack involves shaming, belittlement, insult. If you don’t think ‘right’ you draw down upon you the wrath of those who do. I think it is important to notice this if only because that is how social pressure works. The base of it as an enforcement-mode is emotional.
Yet according to your own statement you place an emphasis on ‘experience, study, reflection and eventually enlightenment’. The obvious issue here, and if it is this methodology that is used (not only in this area but in all areas) is What should happen if one analyzes experience, one studies, one reflects, but one becomes enlightened to see things somewhat differently, or quite differently?
Obviously, what I notice is that you work from the standpoint of a foregone conclusion. And it is a foregone conclusion, which is also based on your study and reflection, that forms your decision about the ethical. Ethics then is a decision that you make based on analysis of many factors. Yet if this is so it stands to reason that other arguments, and other platforms of evaluation and decisions about ‘worth’ are possible. And if they are possible then they too may well be ethical in exactly the sense that you allow. A person, a group, a community, a culture and a nation may reason together and conclude upon what are its ethics. If this is so, ethics are not determined by anything except what people decide or choose and there is no possibility of referring to a religious command or an apriori ethical standard, and certainly no ‘metaphysical principle’.
Also, if you allow that a culture can correct itself and now determine what is ‘right’ from what was previously determined to be ‘wrong’, so it is possible that people — and in this specific instance and in respect to this specific issue — are ethically capable of redetermining a question through application of analysis of experience, reflection and study, just as you have stated.
Essentially, what I notice is that because you have made a specific determination, and you call this ethical, that any other who comes to a different choice must be determined to be unethical.
What I notice, overall, is that there is a certain weakness in the ethical platform that is determined by reasoning from within a moment. Some who read my writing may imagine that I know what is right and what is wrong. Or that I know what is supposed to happen on the face of the planet. Or that I have some sense of what is determined by the structure of the Universe. This is not the case. It may well be that the best option, maybe the only option, is to choose to decide in ethnic blending at a global level, and as a global project. Is it inevitable? Who can say.
I just find it interesting that your methodology allows for a radical departure from your own choice and your own conclusion which are, as I see it, arbitrary and rooted in specific currents of thought.
“Any ethics issue can be blurred and muddied by piling on generalities, tangents, cosmic puzzles, dancing angels and navel-gazing exercises.” Jack Marshall 2016
But that is not argumentation. It is also not your argument which tends to make its use sort of creepy.
Alizia Tyler said, “But that is not argumentation.”
Not an argumentation, so what; it describes what you’re doing.
Alizia Tyler said, “It is also not your argument…”
I know it’s not mine, that’s why I attributed the quote to the appropriate person; but wait; didn’t you just say it wasn’t an “argument”?
Alizia Tyler said, “…which tends to make its use sort of creepy.”
Quoting someone else and attributing that quote to the originator is creepy; okay I’m a creep, got it, don’t care.
I only suggest, Zoltar, that you would much better serve your own values and ideas if you dealt with what I write at the level of argument, and by showing me where I go wrong, how I go wrong, and correcting me so that I see clearly and correctly. That can only be done through solid and fair argumentation.
Alizia,
I simply don’t have the time to write a dissertation on all the ways you go wrong, how you go wrong, and correcting you. As I’ve noted before; you wouldn’t learn from it anyway; you’re on a fixed track with no brakes and no way to divert the momentum.
That is an example of a group of false argument as well as slanderous arguments. The only valid part is the statement ‘I have no time’.
That I can understand.
I would wager that you are not capable of writing an argued response, carried out fairly and ethically, and I base my assessment on a wide sweep of your writing. You don’t argue. As I noted once you ‘slam down’ assertions like thunderbolts. That is not enough, not in our day, and not now with so many important things going on. The emotional argument … does not function.
Doesn’t mean I don’t like you or respect you. It only means that you are failing, in my view, the pupose of a blog such as this.
Alizia,
We completely understand your logic, we really do; anyone who isn’t piling on generalities, tangents, cosmic puzzles, dancing angels and navel-gazing exercises like you do or talking directly about the generalities, tangents, cosmic puzzles, dancing angels and navel-gazing “arguments” that you present is “not capable of writing an argued response, carried out fairly and ethically”.
Yup, we all understands that kind of logic; the world surrounds you.
OK. One last shot. It is unethical to employ the ‘we’ as you are employing it. First, you employ Jack’s phrase made in a specific place and you use it to attempt to indicate that all I am about is ‘navel-gazing’ etc. But that is a false assertion. In fact it is a lie.
But the use of the ‘we’ is just as bad. Might I suggest that you speak only for yourself? When the ‘we’ is used in that way it is a coercive argument.
In any case, I will withdraw. However I still look forward to reading real, structured arguments from you. And if you do I will certainly engage with you.
Perhaps Zoltar is using the royal “we.” He often expresses exactly what I would say if I had his gift for cutting through the BS.
I think I know exactly what Zoltar is up to. I explained it exactly as well as its short-coming.
If you were to ask me, and if I were given the opportunity to express myself about those underhanded tactics, not only would I condemn them on the surface, I would further say:
“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling”. (Thomas Sowell).
I suggest, with agonized, bent-over-backwards humility and with acute politeness and respect for your person (which is not offered to me BTW), that one large problem easy to notice today in many people is that the structure of their arguments are located not in thinking and reasoning of a high caliber, but in the expression, in tones of righteousness, of sentiments and emotions which are confounded with muddled thinking and badly structured analysis.
You can speak about the sentiment of ‘cutting through BS’ until the fabled cow jumps the moon, but unless you STRUCTURE AN ARGUMENT, and unless this argument is capable of convincing others, you either abandon the field to your opponent or you lose the argument because you have no argument.
wyogranny said, “He often expresses exactly what I would say if I had his gift for cutting through the BS.”
Thanks. It’s nice to know that there are a few others out there with a wacky mind that think a little bit like me once in a while. 😉
wyogranny said, “Perhaps Zoltar is using the royal “we.” “
Alizia’s blowing off the intent off the overall comment and focused on that one little word was a deflection; the same kind of deflection I’ve seen on other sites where the commenter is self-absorbed.
I actually started with “I” and intentionally changed it to “we” knowing full well that Alizia would take the bait and go off on a new tangent. The “we” was simply a statement that there is more than just “me” who have these opinions about Alizia’s verbose nonsense, and the fact is that any more than just “me” becomes “we”; we was an accurate and a reasonably logical assertion. It’s fun to watch Alizia reveal her lack of knowledge.
Also, her argument that using the word “we” is a “coercive argument” is ridiculously false; either it was used as blatant hyperbole or Alizia sincerely doesn’t know the meaning of coercion. What using the word “we” might do is to “inspire” (not coerce) those that actually fall within that “we” to come out of the shadows and affirm that using the word “we” is truthful and appropriate. Alizia might not understand that there is a big, BIG difference between using the word “we” and “everyone” or “all” which would have been completely inappropriate and a false assertion for me to make in the context we I was talking about.
I suppose Alizia will have something “special” to say about this comment too.
Alizia Tyler said, “I think I know exactly what Zoltar is up to.”
With the way you think, it’s highly unlikely. However, I’d certainly like to read more of your entertaining speculations in that regard.
That was a nice little lightening bolt thrown from the throne of Zeus
I said, “That was a nice little lightening bolt thrown from the throne of Zeus.”
I think using thunderbolt would have been more appropriate in that context because the implications of a big boom “gotcha” are better.
I notice the use of coercion all the time. Especially when it comes to imposing social values. I have noticed group coercion in forum and blog spaces often. I would not say that I am opposed to it — we are social creatures and we are trained, as it were, to operate in social environments and according to enforced codes — and yet what interests me is to notice . To notice it and mention it when I see it. And in this case to notice when it is used. You have used two unethical approaches: One is to borrow Jack’s argument and to employ it as your own. And the other is to start to speak of ‘you’ as a ‘we’. It is certainly not the end of the world. It is just bad argumentation. I should not have to explain this.
I am very interested in ‘coercive force’ to achieve social agreements of a general sort and I recall that you have at various times put up a video of a California social experiment in classrooms which proved (in the context of the video) that there is such a thing as social coercion. The video had to do with the famous California classroom experiment that proved how easy it is to turn folks into Nazis..
But I am more interested in the structure of ideas, removed from politics, and how our views of ‘reality’ are formed, and then how we see these things as ‘normal’ ‘necessary’ and ‘self-evident’ (when they are not).
Metaphysics my dear Zeus, metaphysics.
I am also aware that I am, speaking generally, an interloper into a specific ethical camp as it were, and that I often deal in contrary notions and that I question and counter-propose accepted ideas. I also will point out that I have been ‘accused’ (therefor and for this reason) of being mentally ill, of being ‘un-engagable’ and other slanders.
I understand why these ad hominem terms are used. I understand it very well. It is common practice ‘out there’. I believe it should be modified.
I prefer to stick to the ideas.
If it were to happen that you would understand my interests as ethical, sincere and genuine, perhaps your general view of me would shift? (But none of that is my concern nor am I interested in changing your mind).
Alizia said, “If it were to happen that you would understand my interests as ethical, sincere and genuine, perhaps your general view of me would shift? (But none of that is my concern nor am I interested in changing your mind).”
I quoted it all for context, I applied the bold tag to the part I’m replying to.
That’s hokum; complete and utter hokum.
Now, you focus on the wrong thing. You seem to wish to assert that it IS important that I change your minds when I say that it isn’t. (This is telling the other person they are lying or not being honest).
What is important to me — the most important — is two-fold: One is to see how arguments are structured and to structure mine well; and 2) To use my time here to get clear about what I think about things. The topic is ‘ethics’.
I am not here to convince anyone to change their mind, nor to see me in any other light except that which they choose. I hope you can understand this: I believe in the sovereignty of persons. I try to live from this perspective, this ethic. This is very important to me.
The only tactic or strategy I can use, and remain ethical, is to point to a badly-structured argument, and attempt to explain my own understanding with good argumentation.
Please feel free to have the last word in this series. You tire me. With you I always end up frustrated. Your style is very different from what I’d hope for ‘in the best of all possible worlds’.
Yet a respect you and your choices.
Alizia Tyler said, “You seem to wish to assert that it IS important that I change your minds when I say that it isn’t.”
In regards to this conversation I don’t “wish” anything; I’m boldly going where no man has gone before and saying that single statement from you in context with the sentence prior to it is hokum.
Alizia Tyler said, “This is telling the other person they are lying or not being honest.”
Hokum does not necessarily mean your lying or not being honest with others, but in context with what you wrote, I think it would be fair to say that you’re likely not being honest with yourself and therefore writing something that does not fit the persona you have projected here. Look inward for your answer; but I stand by my statement that what you wrote is hokum; complete and utter hokum.
Pues la rueda aun esta girando
Y no hay manera de decir
a quien habra de nombrar ….
This goes out to my man Zoltar:
___________________
More than anything (although I do have some certain semi-concusive ideas that I am working with — until they may be overturned) I am most interested in ‘determining predicates’. The famous Sixties song on the Changing of the Times is quite interesting insofar as it mirrors the ethical methodology that Jack employs.
There is a force that turns the Wheel of Fortune and it names ‘quien quiera’ (who it will) and then these folks rush in to revolutionize ethics, morals, law, social structure, etc.
Those who ‘come gather around’ to hear the Good News are hearing a new social gospel which has been taken to be (literally) the Voice emanating from the Wheel of Fortune (the ‘spinnig wheel’ of fate) and can be taken as little else than God himself.
I find it interesting, within a topic of Ethics, to notice what the predicates are; in what ideation they are based; and how they function.
One thing I have noticed, and I think it is clear and obvious, is that many who write here have been very influenced by Sixties modes of thinking. These are not ‘conservative’ modes but ‘liberal’ modes. They seem to me to be based more in sentiment than in idea, though idea is certainly there.
So, is this a pitch for some sort of ethical relativism? I just want to understand you.
Is there an alternative to ethical relativism? I ask the question genuinely and sincerely. I know that the word ‘relativism’ is a term of denigration and is understood by those who use it to refer to a bad thing. (The Christians often refer to ‘moral relativism).
Much of history, and certainly Europe vis-a-vis the colonized world, has to do with imposition and ethical imposition, does it not? Is there not an entire argument against Euro-Christian ethics which imposed itself as-against other ethics and cultural systems? No part of this has to be spelled out. You know what I mean.
Well?
If I defend myself against your ethic, and I do this by asserting my own ethic, and if this is backed up by my ontological understanding and my relationship to the world and my creator, what right do you have to tell me I am wrong? (I am speaking from, say, the position of a Hindu as-against a Christian missionary in the 17th or 18th century. Many other examples are possible).
If you’re saying that because no absolute ethical standard has yet to be universally accepted, this is the Ad ignorantiam fallacy (A is unproven, therefore not-A is true). If you’re saying that one set of standards or practices is right in one society, and wrong in another, then you still have to have a universal frame of reference in order for right and wrong to have any meaning. Is there any room for improvement or improvement within the bounds of one society? If so, you have to appeal to some sort of ethical standard, and the argument that there is no such standard collapses. You mentioned subjectivism at one point. If right and wrong have no universally applicable meaning, then you’re essentially saying that language itself has no meaning, or do you claim that ethical words can be reduced to non-ethical values, like aesthetics or survival of the fittest?
Yet I did not say that. It may very well be possible that there is a universal ethical standard that functions not only in our world but in all worlds throughout creation. If such does exist, can you demonstrate it and can you prove it? And if so can you communicate it and apply it? I doubt that I can.
Different standards of practice do indeed exist in different time-contexts and social-contexts, and thus what is right in one is often wrong in the other. This is an assertion that needs little proof. ‘Times change and with them their demands’.
The only ‘universal’ frame that I am aware of is the one in which the conversation takes place: an abstracted space. I am ‘universal’ to the conversation because, it seems, I float above it. I have always had a sense that this is a false-universalism however. I cannot really know the universal since I cannot really know the *universe* or very much outside of my local sphere, which is subjective. So, I make no assertions to ‘universal values’ and I am uncertain on what basis you would, if you do, other than that of revelation (which I do not categorically reject).
😉
There is endless room for improvement within the bounds of society because, as I see it, society is a closed-off system. A system where agreements are reached or they are enforced. So, I argue that within a system ‘coercion’ takes place, and also ‘conversation’ and ‘agreement’. Deals are worked out. But this has little, as I see things, to do with universals. It has to do with specific systems.
I would not say that right and wrong have no meaning — they most certainly have a great deal of meaning — but I am chary of believing it possible that I can reveal to you what is ‘universal’ and for the above-mentioned reasons. To be chary or hesitant does not mean that I do not imagine it possible that such exists. I have only the capacity to function within my means.
Since I do say that I have no ways and means to reveal and communicate what is ‘universal’, except in speculative terms, and I am relatively sure that you cannot either, and yet I do use language, I may be forced to concede that language is, in itself, an imperfect medium, and thus I may realize that I might not be able to depend on it in an absolute sense. And not as an absolute arbiter of ‘truth’. I see the Aristotelian law of identity as being an intellectual idealism. Do I see wrongly?
Another problem with relativism has to do with group boundaries and identity. Think about how stratified your typical society is. How does the relativist find an identity in this sort of atmosphere, while still remaining a relativist?
I did not say that I think relativism is not problematic. But everything is problematic!
I am not completely sure I understand what you are asking. But if you mean that there are different ethical strata, and how does the ethicist navigate (or perhaps explain or ‘allow’) those differences to exist, or how does he or she justify or explain them without recourse to a ‘universal’, the answer is up in the air. Obviously, we apply universals. But I use the terms ‘agreement’ or ‘imposition’ to refer to how this takes place.
Am I catching the essence of the question?
Aliza: Axiom and axioma means self evident truths which are not subjective. Therefore the argument you make regarding subjective worth is invalid.
The word “axiom” comes from the Greek word ἀξίωμα (axioma), a verbal noun from the verb ἀξιόειν (axioein), meaning “to deem worthy”, but also “to require”, which in turn comes from ἄξιος (axios), meaning “being in balance”, and hence “having (the same) value (as)”, “worthy”, “proper”. Among the ancient Greek philosophers an axiom was a claim which could be seen to be true without any need for proof.
I could have copied from Wikipedia as well. My point is that that you went on to discuss “worthiness” when evaluating Jack’s ethical direction. Axiom and its derivative forms do not simply mean worthy as your wiki definition shows.
Your statement, “If I interject at this point that ‘worthiness’ is sometimes a subjective valuation, and that the worth of something can be more closely examined.
I interpreted that statement as there are no absolutes i.e. axioms from which we can draw postulates. If we accept the postulate that diversity and inclusion are “worthy” a self evident truth requiring no proof then it logically follows that if we assign values to whites and Blacks and if A+B = C then B+A=C as well. If we accept the postulate that A and B are positive values then C>A+B. Thus, A or B individually must be <C. If you argue that B or A will be of more value in isolation then you must accept that one value must become negative when paired with the other which negates the postulate of diversity and inclusion are worthy.
Keep in mind that no definitive proof has quantitatively demonstrated diversity of thought accomplishes more – go to a college faculty meeting once and see the woeful lack of divisiveness.
I understood from Jack and this entire column that the idea of promoting social unity and harmony using segregation tactics as a political tool undermines the premise or postulate that diversity and inclusion are to be seen as an evolutionary improvement in social structures and ethical behavior.
Do you think less of me because I copied that paragraph? 😉 It was just convenience. I only focused on what I understand as Jack’s foundation for his ethics as an ‘axiom’ and then mentioned that axiom is related to ‘worth’ as a way in to the topic!
However, I do see his ethics, and also general assertions of ethics such as those that reign in our present about ‘race and culture’, as being assertions of value, or decisions about values. He seems to establish them as axioms.
To keep it simple: I see that postulates and evaluations can certainly function when it comes to assessing ‘diversity and inclusion’. And I well understand on what base our present mores are constructed, and also why they are. I can even explain this, and I might be able to do it better than many. (I have spent maybe 2 years total reading, as I could, Eldridge Cleaver, Malcom X, Angela Davis as well as a considerable time dedicated to ‘liberation theology’ and a great deal of material about Latin American liberation. I am originally from Venezuela in case you don’t know).
I am inclined, at the present, to see ‘diversity and inclusion’ as impositions which also have a dangerous and a destructive side. If I say this it does not mean I am advocating for an apartheid society. Yet, I am — and very much so — a Eurocentric. And I also see genetic structure and biological self as being worthy of defence. This means that I must define difference, high and low, better and worse, and much else, and do this in physical terms. It is possible that doing this (I mean if anyone on the planet does this) that it may ‘make things worse’ or make things bad. I remain open.
But I am not an advocate of being forced to accept a point of view, or an understanding, because it is held and enforced by some sector within society or by the Federal government.
You wrote: “I understood from Jack and this entire column that the idea of promoting social unity and harmony using segregation tactics as a political tool undermines the premise or postulate that diversity and inclusion are to be seen as an evolutionary improvement in social structures and ethical behavior.”
I well understand what Jack is arguing both for and against. I have been thinking about it for well over a year now and for at least 1 year before I came here.
I have explained a few times that I tend to focus on ‘meta’ issues.
According to the law, to the tenets of Americanism, and in some sense to common sense, segregation of blacks and whites in universities is unconscionable. If we are going to truly believe in the American Project we had better do it with the full force of our being.
I am not 100% sure I believe in that.
Jacks points are additive. You dont have to buy all theories ot postulates to contribute to society. We live in a practical world but what I glean from your comments is that you claim to be searchimg for some theoretical truth but to me it comes across as an excuse to avoid taking a definitive stand.
I often say that one should not take a stand until one can do so with certainty. It is prudence and caution that keeps me working within theory. I do not have an activist’s soul. I came despite appearances from a pretty left-leaning orientation when I first got started. For example I have read a great deal of Chomsky and Zinn and many of that tribe. I used to think that the liberal or the Marxist-Progressive viewpoint was in fact the ‘just’ one (in the Platonic sense).
Well, certain things happened, I met different people, and I was introduced to a different perspective. Also, I got into Shakespeare studies for awhile and became interested in Elizabethan (17th century) worldview. I encountered some materials that demonstrated to me that a ‘metaphysical vision’ of reality reigns in a given time-period and that it takes a ‘metaphysician’ to recognize it.. (‘The Great Chain of Being’ and other works were of great interest to me). It then became clear to me that ‘the present’ is a metaphysical position and that there is a ruling *understanding* that is received, not chosen. Then, I went back through all of the left-leaning stuff, as well as French revolutionary idealism, and began to understand it all in a different way. I am speaking of about a 10 year period (though it seems shorter). I find it hard to believe that I have been on EAs for almost two years. How is this possible? 🙂
Is the French Revolution man’s step toward an enlightened future? and one toward man’s real betterment? Or is it the beginning of a crisis of destruction of hierarchy, of difference, and toward a full leveling within a world of values? It is not a simple question, and there is not a simple answer.
My theoretical/practical truth, the one I am working with, is that one must function on two distinct levels. On one hand one may well contribute to helping those around one. I do this by contributing to educational projects among the non-monied of Colombia (where I am the most of the time). I do this and I must say it is highly rewarding to help people see barriers fall away and to see themselves, to feel themselves, advancing in life.
But on another level, one must absolutely avoid association and ‘contamination’ by these masses. I am not saying this to be either mean or dramatic. To advance in the most important areas defined by man and culture … is to step OUT of these common tracks. These people will drag you down into their pit if given a chance. When I say ‘pit’ I mean something that requires a good deal of explanation. It is not what you think. It is imperative to define radically different projects and alternatives. I believe in exclusivity. Absolutely. Of the most defined sort. Even if I can never make it there and even if I would not be admitted. To define exclusive things is to know of them and to have some ability to sense, appreciate and emulate them. And to serve them. Most do not have this sense. They are poison in this sense.
I believe in segregation (but I accept the rule of law and that is one of equal treatment before the law and all the rest). I also very strongly sense that biological integrity — or if you wish eugenics — is highly relevant and important, and that every person has as his or her project his or her own biological self to deal with, to cultivate, and improve. Do you capture what I mean? I am the biological outcome of my progenitors. I am the best they were able to come up with! There is no hiding what I am (and what I am not). This is what I have been given, and it is this that I must work with. I must improve it and I must not squander it. I am speaking here of my biological self. Idea-self is related but different, more ephemeral. The return to the concept of biological self and genetic self is what most interests me now.
It is these ideas, these assertions, that get me into substantial hot-water around these parts. I say such things and what is *heard* is something very different. These are intolerable and regressive ideas to some ears. You are not allowed to think in such terms. So, I read Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, and I feel I fully understand what they are speaking about. Their arguments convince me. (Always trust a Harvand man, right?)
If you really wanted to talk more about white identity, or white nationalism, I would not shy away from it. It does involve radical distinctions. Radical definitions are problematic. It also involves back-tracking through a certain amount of history and making decisions about things which make people quite uncomfortable. In brief, to take a position in contradistinction to the common ideology of the present is a dangerous and a demanding enterprise. But I think one can do it with integrity.
(…. And I am clearly a chatter-box … I also have periods when I have a good deal of free time. To write I mean. Like today).
Wow! How the hell did you type that?
I referred to Jack’ assertion of the ethical as operating axiomatically. As a ‘claim which is seen as being true without requiring additional proof’. His ethical value is subjective, not objective. Etc. etc.
Zoltar, I too remember the 60s conflict in Chattanooga and remember several of my dad’s friends in the National Guard being called out to deal with the rioting, looting and burning.
Now, As the generation of actual civil rights heroes passes away, I am curious as to what and how much the current high school and college age generation of the “historically oppressed groups” really knows about the civil rights struggle, and what they think was being fought for. It certainly wasn’t what we see exemplified in these actions. Dr. King’s dream has apparently been dismissed, and we seem to be headed back to judging others by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.
If you want to get to the bottom of the question that you ask — and it is a question essentially — one would have to enter into and analyze King’s basic predicates. And when one did that one would determine, nearly beyond any doubt, that they are religious and metaphysical arguments. The exact same argument, through stated differently, that Bob Dylan used in his song, The Times are Changing.
This is not meant to denigrate or even to undermine a metaphysical argument which is also one that is bolstered with sentiment and rhetoric, it is meant only to point out that that is what the argument is based in. King was a religious rhetorician.
Now, in a culture where religious tenets, churcha attendence, and the base of a religious culture are fading, and in any case all its tenets are questioned if they are not attacked, it should be no surprise that the religious argument loses force. It cannot convince. It does not persuade.
There are other diemsnions here as well, though they may be uncomfortable for some. Black Liberation Theolgy, of which King was an advocate, and which is also expressed at a later date by President Obama’s former pastor (Rev Wright) has clear and arciculatable links to Marxian theory, and Christian activists linked up with Marxian activists. The tenets that *function* in King’s sermons can be looked at through this lens. This does not mean that noticing this invalidates King’s premises. Not necessarily. Nor does it mean that Wright’s premises are invalidated. No. It simply means that all of this can be looked at.
I could also say, and with no irony and with the capability of backing it up scientifically, that we MUST pay attention to who we are at a somatic level. When King says ‘color of skin’ he is not really certain what he is speaking to. Because he speaks as a Christian metaphysician who understands that the physical frame is irrelevant to the ‘content of character’ which is the Christian soul. I could suggest that Christian ethics is therefor incorrectly founded insofar as it is involved, quite obviously, in a false dualism. I would further say that now, in our present, the notion of this dualism (body-soul) is an outmoded idea, and no one believes it, not really.
We are our selves; our selves are part-and-parcel of our physical manifestation, and in this non-dual sense we *occur* within our spiritual world and our material world. With this I have suggested numerous inversions of common and historical Christian doctrine.
This does NOT mean establishing apartheid. I am not advocating this. It means a realistic revisit of the questions. I have written here (in other places) and bring forward a perspective which can be loosely defined as ‘alt-right’. I only wish to mention tha there is a philosophical school which is revisiting these questions, looking at them differnetly. It is indeed part of an ethical project insofar as ethics as a branch of philosophy and also phenomenology.
Aliza
Clifford Geertz described religion as a cultural system of behaviors and practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics, and societal organization. Its purpose is to provide answers to thorny questions to ensure group harmony.
You said: “Now, in a culture where religious tenets, churcha attendence, and the base of a religious culture are fading, and in any case all its tenets are questioned if they are not attacked, it should be no surprise that the religious argument loses force. It cannot convince. It does not persuade. ”
I disagree that religious culture is fading. What is happening is that one new secular religion is supplanting the older theistic based dogma. The new religion is the I want my equal share religion. It appeals to those who feel oppressed, because others have more. They are guided by their “high priests” who provide them easy to accept rationales for why they have less and the how they must force the oppressors to equilibrate the resource allocation.
In the new order all values are subjective. The value of a Black life is high when political hay can be made but if it gets in the way of the neighborhood hustlers then the loss is acceptable and not worthy of outrage. Everything right or wrong is determined through which lens the action is viewed. Nothing anymore is absolute. Killing is Ok if the person killed is the oppressor, theft is acceptable if the person who was stolen from has substantially more than the thief, the idea that it takes a village to raise a child means that we no longer are personally responsible for our own children and society has an obligation to absorb the costs of my sexual behavior.
The concept of viewing ethics and ethical behavior through various self- interested lenses is what is causing social upheaval. It is not an argument that can stand on its own merits.
“This is not meant to denigrate or even to undermine a metaphysical argument which is also one that is bolstered with sentiment and rhetoric, it is meant only to point out that that is what the argument is based in. King was a religious rhetorician.”
Only two paragraphs in and you’ve already wandered into obscurity. Not everything is a metaphor for something “deeper.” Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
God, it is so frustrating to argue with people who are not really prepared for conversation. There is nothing obscure about my statements about King. If you knew his background and understood his Christian orientation, and the specific school of theology that trained him up, you would see no ‘obscurity’ in what I wrote. More to the point: your understanding is obscured.
http://www.bu.edu/sth/dr-martin-luther-king-jr/
Alizia Tyler said, “God, it is so frustrating to argue with people who are not really prepared for conversation.”
Dang I couldn’t agree more.
It’s terrible having to deal with “those people” that seem to go off on a tangent with wandering thoughts that blur and muddy virtually every conversation they engage in by piling on generalities, tangents, cosmic puzzles, dancing angels and navel-gazing, they just can’t seem to focus on anything; but, most importantly, they can’t ingrain into their psyche the simple concept that we should think all we speak, but speak not all we think!
Hay Alizia… SQUIRREL!!!!!
That was a rather large thunderbolt from the throne of Zeus.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
Is that some kind of phallic reference, mister?
nah. It’s just an axiom.
JimHodgson said, “Zoltar, I too remember the 60s conflict in Chattanooga and remember several of my dad’s friends in the National Guard being called out to deal with the rioting, looting and burning.”
We could see the smoke from the fires at UTC from our house in Highland Park, the protest marches down McCallie Ave and don’t forget the fire bombings of some of the small neighborhood churches. Protests at Brainerd High. What a freaking mess it was! My parents tried to “shield” our family as much as possible from the mess, but it didn’t work; I’m glad we were exposed to it, I remember it well, and have passed those memories on to my children.
JimHodgson said, “Now, As the generation of actual civil rights heroes passes away, I am curious as to what and how much the current high school and college age generation of the “historically oppressed groups” really knows about the civil rights struggle, and what they think was being fought for. It certainly wasn’t what we see exemplified in these actions. Dr. King’s dream has apparently been dismissed, and we seem to be headed back to judging others by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.”
Yup, it’s sad.
I hate that expression, “historical oppression”, b/c while true, it comes across like a “catch-all”, excusing just about any current behavior by blacks as a result of something that was once prevalent, but is no longer nearly as prevelent in America. As far as I am aware, I have never been denied a job, paid less, denied housing, pulled over by law enforcement, or unfairly treated by people in positions of authority, based solely on my race.
One of my favorite quotes of all time by Dr. King, one that I struggle to live up to, but am, at least, aware of (while it seems like too many of my peers are oblivious to) is:
“I want young men and young women who are not alive today, but who will come into this world with new privileges and new opportunities – I want THEM to know and see that these new privileges and opportunities did not come without somebody suffering and sacrificing for them!”
GREAT men and women fought, struggled, and gave their lives so that people could live together without being judged by their skin color. And today, many ignorant people, people who truly believe that blacks cannot be racist (a more cringe-worthy statement, I’ve never heard), are pissing all over that struggle, and …and worse yet, think that they are correct to do so, b/c too few people that they’ll listen to will actually call them out on it.
When I was a preschool director years ago, I dealt with a habit by some parents to treat their children as if they could do no wrong, and would reject/spin any attempt to discuss their 5 year old’s misbehavior. I can, on some level, understand why they did it; parents who don’t want to believe their parenting could lead to misbehavior, or still want to infantilize their child by treating them as if they are still to young to have autonomous agency over their actions that would lead to bad behavior. However I do not, can not, and will never understand how treating black people as these parents treated their small children, by denying their agency for autonomous, independent thought/emotion, thought/emotion that is natural for every living human being to engage in (bias), is not in itself racist, infantilizing, and deeply insulting.
I commented on Twitter yesterday, regarding an article that someone posted, about Claremont students refusing to live with white people. A quote from the article, from a college student about why they didn’t want to live with whites:, “This is directed to protect POC, not white people. Don’t see how this is racist at all”. Another student said, “White people have cause [sic] so much mf trauma on these campuses…why in the world would I want to live with that?”
My reply: “I have never been more ashamed to share a race with other members of my race, than I am after reading this…”
Skins1109, I’m sorry this comment got stuck in the middle of other oft-repeated arguments, 80 of them at last count. It deserves its own space. COTD, Jack?
Thanks Pennagain!
I don’t usually use a screen name, and normally post under my name (Chris Bentley), but since getting a new computer, I have had just a devil of a time properly logging in/posting on here.
#NotAFanOfWordpress 😦
Uh huh. How to you think “again” got stuck on the end of my name?
“I heard it through the grapevine” that “It’s gettin’ dark, too dark to see…”, “that long black cloud is comin’ down…”, it seems that we look inside ourselves and see our hearts are black, but eventually we’re all “knocking on Heaven’s door”.
In today’s topsy-turvy world, “I can’t get no satisfaction”; it’s a “Wild World”.
I can only imagine the discussion at Moraine Valley Community College about this idea.
“Isn’t reserving sections of courses to races unconstitutional?”
“Uh, let’s see” Flips through the pages of a book. Uh, it says here that Supreme Court Justice Plessy Ferguson in 1996 said we can have equal and separate.”
As to why “Democratic Party, alleged advocates of diversity, and the news media” have not said anything about this, they are still trying to find a way to blame Bruce Rauner for it.
I think it comes from a lack of contextualisation… These arguments invariably rely on historical discrimination, because there really isn’t a contemporary experience for them to reference. “Jim Crow! Slavery! Lynching!” They’ll cry, never having faced that kind of hate in their life. They have no frame of reference.
And so they think that what they experience, these microagressions (TYSRL), subliminalities, things so slight they rely on statistics to prove, because they can’t point to instances. And treat them every bit as seriously as the racism their ancestors faced… More so! MLK would roll in his grave at the tactics these people are using. But they have to, self-obsessed as they are… they couldn’t possibly come to terms with someone actually being more important, more victimised, more needy than they are. And because of that, they are fundamentally ill-equipped to recognise actual overt racism for what it is, because that recognition would have to come with the honest self-awareness that they do not experience it.
I used to ask “Why should white America give a damn about subliminal racism in the face of overt racism, especially considering that overt hostility is condoned?” I never get a good answer, although some have tried, weakly; “Jim Crow! Slavery! Lynching!” Others with a little more panache: “Disproportionate Outcomes!”
Well you know what? I’m ready to call it. Disproportionate Outcomes. Right? That’s all we need to prove, right? This kind of bullshit doesn’t happen to minorities at rates even close to white people. I mean…. could you imagine, “White-only dorms, minorities need not apply?” It obviously, self evidently, disproportionately effects white people. This wasn’t true probably as recently as a decade ago, but social pressures have created new mores and the bad behaviour of some groups coupled with the bleeding hearts of liberals too afraid to call out bad behaviour at the pain of being labelled *gasp!* a racist, have led us to this point. And to the idea that it doesn’t have negative effects on white people… Well… Maybe? I don’t think the phenomenon has been going on long enough to really prove that. Although due to all the social support minorities get, there is evidence of things such as their upward mobility being significantly better. That is, while white people are less likely to be in poverty than minorities, if a white person is poor, they are significantly less likely to climb out of poverty.
And I just can’t give much credit to the idea that the relative thickness of one’s skin somehow changes changes the actions of their abusers. It’s either unacceptable, or it’s acceptable, and if you aren’t willing to call out racism, and deal with it with the seriousness that it deserves, well… There’s not much I can do about it, except label you for the bigot you are. And if you happen to be a blessedly self-hating white liberal, you have my pity.
“MLK would roll in his grave at the tactics these people are using.”
“These people”? What do you MEAN, “these people”?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
I actually went back and edited some of the more inflammatory bits down… “These people” started out as “These terrorists”.
I was going to be a bit flippant and question whether white student’s who identify as black will have a special place or if they can make a case to be included in black safe spaces. But it’s getting harder to be sarcastic when it comes to social justice. Every ridiculous permutation has already been absorbed into mainstream campus culture. What exactly, does this prepare those students to do with their lives?
Fail. Miserably. And blame that failure on anything but their own inadequacy.
Bingo.
The thing is, they’re not wrong, it isn’t entirely their fault. I mean… When it’s one person, they’re an asshole, when it’s two people, they’re coincidentally assholes at the same time, but when it’s an entire generation, I think it’d be useful for everyone to take a step back and go “Woah, what’re we fucking up here, because we’re definitely fucking something up.” From the employer’s standpoint, it doesn’t really matter, the body in from of them in unemployable… But societally, I have no idea how history is going to look at late Gen X to the millennials. Probably in hazmat or something.
Hazmat. Funny, but frightening.
Living in South Florida, there are three days out of the year when the temperature drops to about 45 degrees. I clearly remember dropping my daughter off for pre-school and overhearing a mother, with hands on hips, declare that “under no circumstances” was her child to go outside to play in that weather. Forty-five degrees. Ten bucks says that same child is now one of those college students asking for a safe space from trigger words.
What are we fucking up? The list is long. But helicoptering princess 4-year old is when it started.
A while back, I had the opportunity to help a few young black men prepare for their GED’s. The most difficult part of that endeavor was convincing them that they could succeed and have productive lives. It was amazing to see how excited and enthusiastic this revelation made them. Very tragic that so many are thoroughly brainwashed by their own kin into continuing that legacy of failure.
I had a similar experience with Canadian Natives in college, I tutored about a half dozen who were taking classes as part of a “we’ll pay you to go to school” program, and they seemed genuinely amazed at the idea that they could pass these courses and actually take their certificates to the bank. Half of my guys made it through and I know for a fact that at least two got pretty good jobs.
Jack, you can’t be shocked, shocked that this is going on in the academic establishment. This sort of thing has been going on since at least the ’60s.
When I went to Hamilton College in 1969, the grouped us in dorms by whatever clever means the admissions people came up with. I was paired with another Catholic high school guy, being one myself. The two black guys on the hall were paired up. They started a the Black Students Association and gave them a house on campus. A bunch of the kids were from Harlem Prep and didn’t stand a chance. Some of them were from the rural south and didn’t stand a chance (once football season was over, particularly). Others survived and graduated. I bet the same thing was going on at Harvard when you were there.
When my daughter was in ninth grade at Andover twenty five years ago, they put her and a Korean girl in with about eight or nine black girls. I guess they figured they could put the stray Korean girl and the white girl from equally ungodly Arizona in with the black girls and keep all the wealthy northeastern kids safe. The experience was an eyeopener for our daughter.
At Notre Dame law school in the late ‘seventies/early ‘eighties they started the Black Law Students Association.
My point is historically white colleges and universities have floundered around trying to figure out how to make black kids comfortable on campus for decades now. This sort of stuff is just not at all new. The only thing relatively new is the “historically oppressed” card everyone plays. It’s code for “many of these kids are let in despite their being from really poor and disadvantaged situations and they’re going to have a hard time keeping up so let’s let them feel as if they’re back home among people and behaviors they’re used to because it’s going to be stressful enough.” Who knows if it does anything at all to help these kids adjust. I suspect not. The ones who are already well enough equiped and used to functioning in white society will be okay, the others will have a hard time. As a general rule, if you don’t know what you need to know to get through college when you get there, you’re most likely not going to pick it up while you’re there.
Again, this is just another symptom of the continuing stuggles and failure to thrive of the black underclass. It’s driving the earnest do gooders in the country literally crazy. I think terribly difficult problems do that.
“What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with
us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!
Frederick Douglass
And, if we as a people, (all people toward all other people) had been able to do that we would all be much better off.
Whew. I bet Frederick Douglas isn’t allowed on campus.
He has to leave his white half in the lobby …
Jack,
” The presidency of Barack Obama has been the worst disaster for race relations since Woodrow Wilson, and the chasm between the races is widening rapidly.”
Perhaps, but that statement is unquantifiable and therefore subjective.
Oh, I think it’s very quantifiable. Wilson reestablished Jim Crow, a major step back from slow racial progress. Race relations under Obama have declined precipitously, though he denies it, in Orwellian fashion. Both blacks and white overwhelmingly feel racial reconciliation and trust is bad. The number of Americans who say that is far greater than it was 8 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Black students are advocating segregation. A vocal black movement argues that whites are trying to murder blacks. What’s subjective about that?
About a year from now, we’re going to see the Obama version of the t-shirts and bumper stickers of Bush saying “miss me yet?”
Jack,
We haven’t reestablished Jim Crow; feelings only speaks to morale, not race relations overall; SOME minority students are advocating for segregating dorm rooms; there has ALWAYS been a vocal black movement which argues whites are trying to murder blacks. BLM-affiliated groups haven’t increased in the last number of years, they’ve only gained more notoriety. The change has largely been in their mainstream (non-black) following.
-Neil
Neil Dorr,
I’ve heard some of my nearly life-long black friends opinions shift in dramatic ways that I never would have expected, and it’s all happened since Obama was elected President. The change in attitude and rhetoric has been absolutely astounding. I think I’ve had no less than a dozen of my black friends unfriend me on Facebook for reasons that they never would have 10-15 years ago, and some others have just ceased to communicate. Some of these people have been friends from 25 to nearly 50 years – yup long before Facebook and computers when people had real face-to-face conversations and shared our lives offline. I still consider these people to be my friends and I miss their company, but some of them have built impenetrable walls between us and gone to a very dark place – racism is a very, very dark place.
Maybe the last 7+ years have unleash some dormant feelings in some of them; maybe what some of them used to consider racist behavior from blacks has become so common place that now it’s somehow “popular” to be a black racist; I’m absolutely positive that one of them bowed to peer pressure; maybe some of them that I used to go out to dinner with on a regular basis have just moved on in life; but one thing has been perfectly clear with most of them – any disagreement with an Obama policy was immediately deemed racist even when they knew full well that I had been against the same kind of policies in the past but yet my opposition in the past wasn’t considered racist. We’ve agreed and disagreed over the years on may things but nothing has changed their attitudes and rhetoric as it has since Obama was elected President. Furthermore; it has been abundantly clear that some of them completely flip-flopped long-term political views on some policies simply because Obama supported the opposing view.
“Something’s happening here”
…ya damn right there is…
“What it is ain’t exactly clear.”
…it’s clear to me…
What it is, is divisive racism brought on by continual race baiting that has been “inspired” and ignored by Obama, pushed by the political left, and now dominates the psyche of many blacks across the country and, to top it off, the media fuels the fire with unchallenged illogical justifications of the nonsense. The propaganda related to race baiting is a very dominate feature in our society now and that is new since Obama was elected President! Did race baiting exist before Obama, yes, but its wide-spread usage in the political theater and the negative consequences of it’s wide-spread usage is new since Obama’s election and the cannot be denied! Racism is now viewed by some as a means to an end – whatever end they choose – racism is now viewed as a power to dominate; demonize the opposition into absolute capitulation by using deflections that paint them as racists. It is complete “the ends justify the means” moral bankruptcy!
I want the divisive racism to stop and I want my old friends back!
Unfortunately, I fear that some of those old friendships “might” now be irretrievably broken. It’s truly sad.
Just wait till Hillary is elected and the blatant sexism baiting starts.
Furthermore;
This is not something that fits nicely into that correlation and causation statement, this is clearly cause and effect!
Human error causing bold tag failure on “effect“.
Fixed!
Comment of the Day, ZS.
And the last sentence is spot on.
That is an interesting piece of writing Zoltar. It deserves to be thought-through. I had to look up the term ‘race-baiting’ which I only somewhat understood and am still trying to get clear about what it actually is.
At first blush it appears that race-baiting (if it means ‘manipulating race fears and anxieties to influence people to act irrationally or paranoiacally’) has a far longer history as a tool of the non-liberal sector. Race-paranoia is as old as the Republic, is it not?
Then, in the Sixties, another form of race-baiting came on the scene. One aspect of it might not be actual race-baiting but has to do with accusing people of being racist or of identifying racists and systemic racism. As with Angela Davis and the Black Panthers and Malcolm X and MLK.
In the Sixties song that Jack posted, which I looked up the lyrics and have been thinking of them (it is a good song), when they say:
‘Hey now what’s that sound, everybody look what’s going down’, what they are speaking about is the activity of the State, aren’t they? ‘The man with a gun’ is the ‘repressive State’ who is there to restrain social democracy, no? The manifestation of social democracy — black liberation, social justice, women’s rights, etc. — is going to be defeated and those various forces are going to be rechanneled when they are dulled. So, the song is a warning, isn’t it? And if you ‘step out of line’ and ‘the man comes to take you away’, you are taken to a State prison.
You seem to refer to the song in a different way. I cannot see your use’s connection with the context or the overall message. But these lyrics are new to me.
From the Sixties through the Willie Horton incident ‘race baiting’ seems to have a constant usage. It becomes part of the ‘cultural wars’ doesn’t it?
Now, and I imagine this to be your case (if indeed you locate yourself on the Conservative side of opinion)(a Conservative Hippy?) you and people like you are employing the perception of racism and an accusation of being racist against Blacks (and presumably ‘people of color’) and significantly against (presumably white) liberals and progressives.
It is kind of a new twist, at least according to a more general context.
Overall, what I notice in what you write is a lament and a condemnation of one particular aspect of racism and race-baiting: and you refer to Obama as being the author of it and the one who has inspired it. If McCain had been elected and the Obama presidency had not come roaring on the scene, I assume that this racist upheaval might not have taken place?
I guess that follows in some sense: Obama had a pastor who was an exponent of Black Liberation Theology, and both Mr Obama and his wife — again from all I have read — were and perhaps still are progressive activists. I can only imagine the reception they must have gotten -stated or unstated, up and down the halls of American power. I mean, can you imagine their reaction to a rap-dancing First Lady shaking her booty as the phrase goes. (It had to have been a farily radical ‘first’, and heaven only knows what’s to come in our future! I mean what if we have a gay president? I am embarrassed even to imagine butless chaps and riding whips …)
As such they would have internalized a specific interpretation of history, and would see their continued activism, and progressive activism generally, as a necessary continuation of the ‘legacy of King’. If this is so, they would not describe their efforts as ‘race-baiting’ but as ‘telling the truth about the racial situation in America’.
In this their *narrative* seems to diverge from yours which is structured quite differently. But how to encapsulate it?
You say, more or less: I am a (southern) white man who is not a racist or who overcame my racism (the racism of my culture and nation). Now, I declare that I have no racism and I am not a racist. I have black friends and I appreciate them. I thought we were beyond all that dark history. Then, the Obama presidency came along and Obama infected and poisoned race relations. My former black friends, with whom I felt I had a solid friendship and among whom there was no racial conflict, turned their backs on me (for unspecified reasons). They stopped being friendly with me and ostensibly so because I criticized some policies of Obama.
What I notice here is that your narrative does not seem to take into account what would likely be their entire side of the issue. From overbearing policing, to killing Black church-goers, to many different race-incidents, as well as to a long history of African Americans in America.
In essence, you blame THEM for being racists and imply no comlicity of any sort in *the present*. It is an odd reversal of typical narratives and I have to admit I am a little suspicious of it.
As I say from time to time: My interest is in getting to and exposing ‘predicates’ and my analysis of your piece was undertaken in that spirit.
Alizia said, “In essence, you blame THEM for being racists and imply no complicity of any sort in *the present*.”
Eight hundred and nine words prior to that sentence were nothing but piles of generalities, tangents, cosmic puzzles, and twisted nonsense trying to support a false preconceived conclusion based on an ignorant assumption. When you start with a preconceived conclusion that is false, your doomed to failure.
Alizia said, “My interest is in getting to and exposing ‘predicates’ and my analysis of your piece was undertaken in that spirit.”
Nonsense!
Your interest is to twist whatever you reply to with mind numbing tangents in an effort to arrive at preconceived conclusions that are presented to deflect away from the content of that which you reply to. You are intentionally trying diminish any value contained in the comments you reply to. You’re an internet troll.
When are you going to start using your head as something other than a prosthetic supporting nonsense.
Zoltar writes: “Your interest is to twist whatever you reply to with mind numbing tangents in an effort to arrive at preconceived conclusions that are presented to deflect away from the content of that which you reply to. You are intentionally trying diminish any value contained in the comments you reply to.”
_____________________
The problems that we face (I mean nationally) are of such magnitude and are often so complex, and so fought-over and contentious, that it takes a great deal of self-control and patience to gain a sense of what the truth is. That is my understanding. And I approach current events, and ethics, from this starting point.
A ‘tangeant’, for you, and I see this as an American problem (Americans as ‘anti-intellectuals’) is anything more than the most simple premise, or your pet premise. But I think this is why the more pressing and difficult questions are knotty and contentious: there are all manner of ‘tangeants’ that rise out of them and connect to them.
My present viewpoint is that it is not I who needs to modify my methods, but you who needs to expand your own.
‘To deflect away from the content’ means, I think, that I am not reading your narrative in exactly the way you wish it to be read. That is a fair point, yet the effort is not destructive but rather constructive and creative. That is a difference to note.
I would not say that I try to ‘diminish value’ in your comments, though I can see why you might feel that way. Yet I would say that though I did confess to you that I am suspicious of your narrative — I am upfront about what I see and that is a good trait — I am also suspicious of many narratives as well as the one’s that I may be attracted to.
But in any case, and in the discussion of any important issues or problems, I think we have to put aside our own feelings and be willing to have others apply critical analysis to what we write.
So, get used to it.
I am definitely “anti-pompous intellectualism” or “anti-faux intellectualism”; but, I’m definitely not “anti intellectual” or “anti-intellectuals”. Most of your comments fall directly within the “pompous intellectualism” or “faux intellectualism”.
I do appreciate you proving my point.
Miss Metaphysics,
You should seriously consider this definition of metaphysics and all that it entails…
Metaphysics: Excessively subtle or recondite reasoning.
What that definition entails…
Recondite: Not easily understood; abstruse or obscure
Abstruse: Not easy to understand; ambiguous or vague or esoteric
Esoteric: Not known by or suitable for the public.
Ambiguous: Difficult to understand or classify.
Vague: Not clear in meaning or expression; inexplicit.
Inexplicit: Not definitely or clearly expressed or explained.
I know that I just presented some things and you will fail to learn anything from the effort, but at least I presented it clearly.
Better:
a: A division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology : ontology
b: Abstract philosophical studies: a study of what is outside objective experience.
Alizia Tyler said, “Better:”
There are some really simple concepts that seem to be completely over your head; here is another one. Your presented definition is not “better” or even more accurate, it’s just different.
You seem to be purposely ignoring that other definitions of the word metaphysics are VALID in an effort to justify presenting arguments that are not suitable for the public. Your documented commenting pattern is to twist whatever you reply to with mind numbing verbose tangents that are presented in such a way as to deflect away from the content of that which you reply to. You are intentionally trying diminish any value contained in the comments you reply to; that’s exactly what internet trolls do.
You’re just as much of an internet troll as I am a human being. You should change your pseudonym from Alizia Tyler to either Metaphysical Troll or Miss Metaphysics that way intelligent people can know ahead of time that your comments are just taking up pixel space and likely not suitable for the public and should be ignored.
I have Greek keyboards on my iPhone and ipad.
Εν αρχε ως λογος και λογος ως προς θεον. (In the beginning was the word snd the word was with God).
To help break out of Judaism I studied Greek for a time.
But all of that You quoted: copied from a Wiki article.
::: sheepish grin :::
αρχή, not αρχε
Show off.
HT, you almost spoke to me! Careful, we may find some κοινη between us. But wait! You said ‘speak my language or get bent’ and now look!
Creepy Alizia,
There are times when I wish I were a little more capable of a detail oriented point by point verbal nonsense take down.
Alizia, you usually brings that desire out in me. Then I realize Alizia, that it wouldn’t change anything. Anyone who can spin out verbiage at the scale you manage is not going to be persuaded. Especially as you repeatedly express, you will not argue with unworthy contenders, and you get to decide who is unworthy. My great fear is that you have convinced yourself that you are wise.
It’s time for me to go back to lurking.
Use me as a vehicle or an inspiration to coelesce your ideas. It is an ethics blog and our communication is based on words and arguments. ‘Service’ here (service to the blog, to ethics) is performed when we write out our ideas.
You might not change me, but your solid argument might convince others and influence them.
There is really no one filling Dr. King’s position as the “reasonable” leader, everyone is a Malcolm X, or seems to want to be. Discussion is not the goal, division is. The wheel is turning and everyone is in for a hell of a ride.
The tragic outcome of this trend is to identify the growing institutionalization of an anti-assimmilation trend, another excuse for not communicating or being willing to engage on any level, much less problem-solve. It is perhaps yet another rationalization, a variation on #27 THE VICTIM’S DISTORTION. This one is very close to the voice of adolescent angst: THE FALSE SELF-EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE or “The Slammed Door.” Essentially, You “others” are too … politically, religiously, economically, physically, intellectually, ethnically, superior, inferior, etc. … different from me, so you can’t possibly understand me, so I’m not going to explain or argue with you.
(She goes to her room, slams the door, calls her bff mirror-image and complains; they commiserate, replay old scenes, manipulate private vocabulary. He does the same, except for six hours spent playing “Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare”). The outcome of false self-exclusion — ostensibly to promote safety — is to learn new ways to reinforce the feelings of different-ness, disrespect (disobedience) and victimization, and the need to erect higher, stronger communication barriers to support them.
The actual outcome: leads to increased anger, fear, depression, desperation, despair (in teens, often to suicide), and failure to thrive in the greater society. Arguably, of all the rationalizations, this one does most harm to the ones who use it.
I might suggest a different angle of view and also harder analysis which, like yours, is partly psychological. A very simple possibility is to become more completely open to the nature of the racial conflict which very certainly exists. I was reading this AM some of CG Jung’s ideas about America, Americans, American women, and Jung’s ideas about what it means — psychologically — to live in such proximity to the ‘primitive man’ (as Jung described the American Black).
One particular interview I read was dated from 1912, so it is rather old — before the First War and the Second and before so many things It can be googled). I would suggest that there is a whole range of things that are not acknowledged or even recognized openly when it comes to considering race relations and also the present uprisings and manifestations of American Blacks. One has to speak of a general incapacity to ‘integrate’ into the white system. One might suggest that the core reason is the primitive nature of the Black American. I am speaking of course in *real* terms and avoiding liberalthink which, it seems to me, desires to impose on Reality an artificial view, which comes about through liberal idealism. But in fact it is quite fair to say that a primitive man — a tribal man, a non-civilized man — was ‘stolen from the shores of Africa’ as Angela Davis put it and made to work within the white man’s system. The implications of this cannot be denied. Not now and not ever. To understand what it means to rip a people out of their cultural and terrestrial context and force them to assimilate into a system in which they are utterly alien is a legacy — the legacy — of the Black man in the Americas.
You seem to me, Pennagain, along with others here, not to be able to relate in a truthful way to a ‘reality’ and you very definitely desire to impose your will on a people that you notice do not behave as you think they should. You can surely do this to people who are like you, who come from your background, but I’d suggest that a great part of *the problem* has a relationship to *your problem*, and your problem has to do with a whole series of impositions you make without, I think, understanding the ramifications.
I would say that American Blacks indicate pretty clearly that they do not now and will not desire to ‘cooperate in the American project’. It is a radical statement because it stands as a possibility that I am *radically wrong*, that is true, and it is a risky statement because no one, not these days, is allowed to speak in such direct terms. I mean, can you imagine this level of conversation on national TeeVee? For this reason I suggest that a huge amount of the present problems are submerged, semi-conscious and also unconscious problems. And I make this proposition: American Blacks will not ever be ‘assimilated’ into white American culture. Nor is it just or even sensible to imagine that they would, nor that they should desire to. For this reason they are emblematical of rebellion, resistance, wildness, the untamed, and numerous forms of infectious resistance.
From whence comes the desire to dress up like Angela Davis in a ‘natural’ and play the role of rebellious ex-slave? Or to appear with bandoliers filled up with bullets destined for your lily-white heads? Think about it. I’d suggest that one needs to examine a great deal that remains hidden and obscured.
Another question: What really is there, in Whites, and what renders them so appalled by the presence of this untamed, rebellious African-in-their-midst? The tribal/ghetto dweller who will not speak like whites speak, who surrounds himself with symbols of rebellion, rebellious and dangerous/violent music which is little else but a lashing out at the conditions of his separation from his own self? Who with every gesture indicates, in symbolic articulation, that he and she will not cooperate with you, and oppose you in fact? You are literally appalled by this, yet you cannot really name it, but in naming it — I suggest — many things will become much simpler and yet more demanding.
So, we start with a premise:
The rebellious Black, as has always been the case, must be beaten into submission.
Now I am not making this statement. It is effectively The System which said in the past and still says, every day, that this is the black man’s fate. How ‘beating’ functions is of course varied. I call it ‘will’. A will to make conform. I base this largely on sideways reading of both Davis and Cleaver and certainly of George Jackson. But the American White cannot understand this basic and this very psycho-physical fact: The primitive African, imported into your brutal system, has been brutalized BY YOU since proverbial Day One. And you imagine that simply because you, white American liberal, having watched Mississippi Burning and seen into your own dark heart, decide from one eve to the morning to ‘change your ways’ and sing Amazing Grace with feeling, that the essential nature of your Project has changed? Here, I suggest, lies a tremendous self-deception. But the mill of America grinds and with every passing year and decade some of the depth of the problem and the inner-dimensions of the problems, become less intelligible. They seem to me to get repressed. But what is repressed never disappears. It reappears in different guise.
I tend to see value in posing questions. If you can organize a question and pose it, you have done a certain amount of the work. Just to be able to pose a question means to be at least attempting to function through consciousness and awareness. What does it mean, culturally and historically, to have imported a primitive tribe of people into your nation, enslaved them, then thought better of it and ‘freed’ them, and then to demand of them, under threat of tremendous brutality and violence, that they act just like some well-behaved European white folks in a well-ordered polity, with a radically different destiny as well as general intentionality? What does it mean to demand that they (‘those people’) erase their own very real history, suffered at your hands, and perform in the freedom you magnanimously decided to gift them when you became aware of the inhumanness of your brutal system? These are really profound psychological questions.
Your black subject are not now behaving right, nor will they ever behave right, and thus (thus!) you must understand that — psychologically — they actually desire not to behave within your law & order system, and to sumbit to white man’s historical will, but to overtake the system and reduce you to a similar status as that which you made them live lo the 400 years. (It is true that I am taking all sorts of outrageous risks in what I write, yet it is a therapeutic exercise: I force myself to say what I feel is submerged and unsaid; unsayable in fact.)
The future is tragic for a number of reasons. Tragedy is produced by an invisible factor, that which is not ‘recognized’ but which influences the whole show. I think it was the Canadian Greek scholar Humble Talent who brought up something or other where Aristotelian ‘anagnorisis’ was discussed?
‘A change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune’ (From Wiki).
One level of tragedy, for American idealism, may well be that the project of ‘integration’ will not succeed. It is not succeeeding is another way to put it. This has all sorts of implications not only for America but for Europe as well (and a post-war project of ‘multi-culturalism’.)
Should one shy away and deny the ‘peripeteic’ truths that are becoming apparent? I think many on this blog struggle with this. I suggest: give in to it. Recognize that the game is up. Accept it. Stop attempting to enforce something that was not ever destined to be. Come to ‘anagnorisis’ and make the critical discovery which opens up to self knowledge and genuine understanding. That is my generel thesis, though I do not have it all worked out: It is white folk who need to awake and ‘recognize’ in the full sense indicated by the term agnorisis, not anyone else. You are holding up the show.
I’d appreciate it if when you rain down blows that you please avoid my head. “Starting with the head makes your victim fuzzy”. I am a little sore from the last ones! If possible please be so kind as to direct your compensatory violence into body-blows for the time being, that is until my head fully heals …
Alizia said, “I’d appreciate it if when you rain down blows that you please avoid my head. “Starting with the head makes your victim fuzzy”. I am a little sore from the last ones! If possible please be so kind as to direct your compensatory violence into body-blows for the time being, that is until my head fully heals …”
Really folks, it appears that Alizia’s feelings are being hurt, we should all learn to accommodate her while she’s in her safe place. We should all make an effort to talk about the concepts, ideas, arguments, and things in the way that she want to talk about them. Opposing opinions, of any sort, should never arise when replying to her for fear that it might hurt her feelings and diminish her self-image.
Now that we’re all going to concern ourselves with her happiness; everyone should ask her permission to violate her “safe place” with criticism before they actually do it, that would give her a change to squeeze her eyes shut, put her fingers in her ears and yell na, na, na, na, na… at her computer screen thus maintaining her over-blown self-image.
Alizia,
Your own words set this one up nicely. Sometimes sarcasm can be a useful tool and sometimes it can backfire in unexpected ways. 🙂
I have a better idea (if, indeed, there is a workable one): skip it. Do not read. Pass Start-Alizia and do not collect the 20,000 words. She has shown no respect for anyone who writes here, occasional acid drops of condescension notwithstanding. I enjoy reading the give-and-take otherwise resident in the Comments here, and sometimes get to break a sweat myself when one or another of them tosses me a revelation, or leaves an inviting gap that I might be able to stick a word or two into, but I consider a great deal of Alizia’s exhaustive (exhausting), repetitive column inches of pseudo-philosophizing not so much sarcastic as masking a sadistic taunting that purposely invites response but — have you noticed? — leaves no opening for a rational one. So I disrespectfully withdrew from her games some time ago. And Ethics Alarms began to sound clear and happily, honestly and even ethically disharmonic once again.
More slander. The purpose of this, as with Beth’s first use of it, is to turn a group against one particular individual. You do this through ‘framing’. You set up a ‘spin’ and invite others to chime-in.
I am occassionally somewhat acidic, sometimes sarcastic, but no different than anyone. My contributions are fair, expressed in clear prose, and consistent. As well I reveal exactly what I am up to.
It is up to you to write ‘rational responses’ and they are welcome.
I deal with difficult aspects of the ethics problems that are brought out here. Because I do this I receive a certain amount of ire. It is typical and anyone who thinks as I do will often get this reception.
It is far easier and much more appropriate to speak to the ideas, not to attack the person writing.
“I am occassionally somewhat acidic, sometimes sarcastic, but no different than anyone. My contributions are fair, expressed in clear prose, and consistent. As well I reveal exactly what I am up to.”
You actually ARE different. Your comments are “un-unravelable.” There is noting clear about them. You can’t reveal exactly what you’re up to because you seem to either be up to much too much or much too little for the amount of space you use. The hostility you feel comes from (at least in my case) the feeling that you are either sincere or a master of distraction. It’s like trying to hold on to a slippery object in water.
You write like a text generator ie:
“One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen. She packed her seven versalia, put her initial into the belt and made herself on the way. When she reached the first hills of the Italic Mountains, she had a last view back on the skyline of her hometown Bookmarksgrove, the headline of Alphabet Village and the subline of her own road, the Line Lane. Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek, then” (blindtextgenerator,com)
I’m determined to return to lurking and yet you somehow pull me back in. You are maddening and only the small voice in the back of my mind telling me that you might just possibly be sincere makes me occasionally forget my vow of silence and quit skipping your comments entirely. I detect a note of smugness in this comment thread and I think I may be able to completely ignore you because I have concluded that you are not worth my waning interest any longer. You really should do something about revealing your self regard. You aren’t quite as smart as I think you think you are.
And none of this has any relationship or connection to the discussion of ideas.
Of course it does. If you can’t express your ideas, you can’t discuss them. If you make your writing so obscure that it can mean anything and everything it has so much wiggle room you can always say no one understands you properly, and you just want to have an honest discussion. When in reality, that is the last thing you are really up to. You don’t discuss you lecture and you make up the rules as you go along.
The post I wrote this morning, in response to Pennagain, fulfils all of my requirements for being a good post, a good effort, and a worthy effort for this blog. I like what I wrote and I try to satisfy myself first. In that post there is a line of related ideas, a beginning, a middle and an end. Not chaotic and not disparate: a group of ideas that function together. If you wish to bring out a quote from any part of it and tell me what you think about it, or why you think I am off-track, or anything else related to the ideas therin, I will happily read what you say very carefully and make an effort to respond in a respectful manner.
You are speaking — inappropriately in my opinion (though I don’t doubt that you could bring in others who share your perspective) — of your subjective interpretation of my themes and topics, as well as my style. You have that right.
Yet you have never engaged any post of mine at the level of idea. You have only ever expressed that you don’t like what I write, who I am, etc. You are entitled to do this if you wish. It is my opnion however that by doing this, and by failing to jump into the fray and to concretize your own ideas, even oppositional ones, you are not serving the purpose of a blog like this, and a forum of communication as this is.
What you do — who really knows why? — is to draw the conversation away from the discussion of ideas or current events into these non-productive rehearsals of your dissatisfaction. I suggest to you that you choose to 1) write about your ideas and 2) keep the expressions of dissatisfaction to yourself.
All else, to quote a familiar line, ‘pollutes the site’. That is disservice. I can’t put this in any other way.
“I can’t put this in any other way.”
Exactly.
And I can’t either, so we will (evidently) continue to disrespect each other.
I can’t write in reply to your remarks because they make no sense to me.
What I am seeking to do is direct your efforts into a more accessible less smug and look-how-smart-I-am direction. Give your reader something solid to reply to.
You actually might have the same opinion I have about many things, but I can’t tell. One minute you sound like you belong to the KKK and the next you sound like a Socialist.
So, the teacher in me has given you a grade (D) and an assignment (work on expressing your thoughts clearly without being a smarty pants.) You may do as you wish with both.
“you would much better serve your own values and ideas if you dealt with what I write at the level of argument, and by showing me where I go wrong, how I go wrong, and correcting me so that I see clearly and correctly. That can only be done through solid and fair argumentation.”
You did write this to Zoltar sincerely right? If that’s really what you want why be so upset when I try to do just that. You go wrong from the moment you start to speak (write) in your I’m-trying-to-educate-you-pathetic-people voice.
You lecture me on what you believe is a “disservice.” I don’t think it is a disservice. You nag at me to engage, but as I read, not just your replies to me, but to everyone (including the host) about how they are failing to live up to your expectations. I’m currently engaging that point. You brought the ethics of they way I respond to you into the discussion when you tacitly and openly accused me of being unethical.
As respectfully as I can say it, Wyogranny, you have not succeeded in gleaning out an idea or a topic that I have an interested in discussing with you. So, with no further comments to any of that I will move on to other things.
I will engage with you on a couple of things though since they did touch on ideas.
I am sort of interested in speaking about the KKK — a nationwide organization which had its hayday in the teens, twenties and thirties — and other activist, right-wing and ‘racialist’ groups. And I am also sort of interested in the question of socialism, and the sort that arises in a homogenous cultural and social setting, as in the Scandinavian countries.
I have been reading some US theorists from the teens and twenties whose ideas I don’t think would be considered at all popular today: Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant. These are people who wrote about race issues, about distinction and difference, about race categories, and about the position of the white races vis-a-vis the ‘yellow, brown, red and black worlds’. I have said a few times that I examine material and am open to considering questions which are off-topic for all or most and which are considered ‘unthinkable thought’. So while some, or all, avoid the difficult or the dangersous readings, I write down the titles, order the books or locate them in our library, and then sit down to read them. I have been doing just this for 8-10 years now. And then I make up my own mind.
In the process of making up my own mind I have noted a few basic things. I will attempt to explain what they are. The main one is that, in many cases in reading opinions as they are expressed in today’s journalism, in opinion pieces, and certainly by scholars in different fields, and what is spewed out on TV (when I have the terrible misfortune of tuning in) I have determined that *I am being lied to*. This is a radical statement, a troubling statement. What does it mean?
Now, I can begin to tell you all about this, and tell you why it is important, but I really don’t think you have much interest in hearing. Yet this stance of mine, and my deep suspicion and cynicism, is the starting point for all of my studies and investigations. Now perhaps you are wondering “What possible relation does this comment have to any of my critiques?!?” I answer as follows:
To get clear about the KKK and a whole group of fringe, ultra-nationalist, nativist political organizations and the mind-set of those who think in these terms, one cannot rely on what is said about them by those who have political and other reasons to frame and distort those perspectives, one must jump in and read the material oneself. Or even better speak to those who hold those opinions.
Now, I don’t know much about the KKK though I have been interested to know that its hayday of mass support in all the main US cities was in the teens and up to the 30s (and there was significant enrollment), but I did take it upon myself, because his name was coming up, to read David Duke’s ‘My Awakening’. Lo and behold I saw that what he says and what he values is very different from what people say about him. He is effectively a swear word. Actually he is a ‘devil’s curse’ and he is related to an existent notion of ‘ontological malevolence’. No one really knows what he is about but they feel free to toss his name-curse around when they feel they need it. And the people who do this are relying on ‘opinion’ and yet they believe that they are dealing in ‘truth’. It is within this methodology that *the lie* as I define it exists and has its being, and its power. This defines, in my view, an entire outlook and methodology that is common in our present. Do you grasp the significance of this?
Magnify it by millions, and by tens of millions and what do you wind up with? A vast population that is not really *seeing the world* (their world) but a simulacrum of it. They receive into their brains ‘signal words’ which prompt them to release emotional chemicals in response to the trigger words, and they are through these processes conditioned to respond to the world and manipulated by them.
This outline may have no meaning for you, and you may not be able to understand what I am saying, and you may have little concern for its importance, but that is not so in my case. It’s the opposite in fact. It is core to my thesis.
If you have not at least captured even slightly what I am getting at here, or if it is insulting to you to have it pointed out in this way, you and I have nothing to discuss and I hope you will drop all attempts to communicate.
(A similar topic is that of ‘socialism’ and why it is that you notice what you take to be 2 opposed poles of thought.)
It is likely that no one in your world talks like this, and no one in your world talks to you like this. But I think you need to come up to speed and not ask that anyone drop back to your level, whatever it is (and who really cares?)
Just as I suspected. Disappointing.
Pas de problème wyogranny. I write to satisfy myself first. If it has value or usefulness for others, that is secondary.
“What does it mean, culturally and historically, to have imported a primitive tribe of people into your nation, enslaved them, then thought better of it and ‘freed’ them, and then to demand of them, under threat of tremendous brutality and violence, that they act just like some well-behaved European white folks in a well-ordered polity, with a radically different destiny as well as general intentionality?”
So, what’s the answer? Free tickets to Liberia? I don’t see modern-day America making special concessions to people several generations removed from officially-sanctioned opression, let alone slavery.
” Your black subject are not now behaving right, nor will they ever behave right, and thus (thus!) you must understand that — psychologically — they actually desire not to behave within your law & order system, and to sumbit to white man’s historical will, but to overtake the system and reduce you to a similar status as that which you made them live lo the 400 years. ”
…and in the same breath, many wonder why it seems they’re not treated like everyone else. There’s more than one party responsible for improving race relations.
I will share my opinion with you, and you can do with it what you wish: My opinion is that the American race-blending (integration of the races) experiment will fail. It is failing now and the evidence is all around. It is very hard to say what will happen as this *fact* — if it is a fact — settles in. I do not create this *fact* I only observe that it is occurring. (And yet I do say, unapologetically, that I am ‘Eurocentric’ and ‘race-realist’).
To begin to see this (that is, if this is true) and to describe it in accurate terms, requires a supreme effort of discriminatory perception. I suggest that to *perceive* in these areas is really very difficult because of the intensity of the opposition. That is and in essence: the force of politically correct thinking.
I am open to hearing your opinion on any of this.
The question I asked is, obviously, but not unfairly so, a loaded question, but then the best questions are loaded in this sense: they force one to engage with their content. A good question can lead to a lifetime of efforts to answer it.
I have never failed to say, openly and honestly, what is the area of my interest, and I have not shied away from open-eyed examination of troubling questions.
I desire to see the world in the most accurate terms.
I agree, not because the “races” are incompatible, but because people tend to resent efforts at forcing them to shed their group identity and freedom of association. There are too many complexities that can’t be accounted for, and we eventually sense that we’re being played.
May I question a few things? What would be the cost to you — personally I mean, as a person — if you had to face, as a truth, that the race-blending project to which America is dedicated, and on which it built itself, came to be understood as non-viable? What if it were in fact and in truth on the verge of dissolution because of that?
Guillaume Faye wrote: “As for the United States, founded on anti-ethnic principles, its racially kaleidoscopic society hasn’t a chance of becoming planetary. It’s not even certain if it’ll endure —for lacking an ethno-national community, its existence is likely to be ephemeral. It’s far more probable that China or Japan, representing homogeneous ethnospheres, will survive.”
It is becoming clear to me that America holds as an ideal its project of race-blending. I have come to think that it is one of the tenets of its religious position. It sees it as inevitable and natural and good, and thus it seeks to impose it on others. That is certainly Faye’s position. He sees Europe as the subject of an American position.
I think your statement contains evident self-contradictions. You imply that people only need to surrender (shed) their ‘group identity’ and thus you present THAT as the obstacle. Pretty classic liberal misconception (based on a value-imposition). I think there is nothing more natureal, as well as necessary, as division and separation on the basis of identity and freedom.
So, I take that as the value to be pursued. Difference, division, separation, freedom, independence and all that arises from that.
I looked closely at all the tags you had on the lead for this article. I did not see Critical Race Theory listed anywhere. Did I miss it? Because that is the kernel driving this entire issue. It helped put Michael Brown down dead on a Missouri boulevard, and it is the engine behind the “new segregation”. I scanned the lengthy posts here but seem to have missed where it was discussed.
You saw racism in the tags, right? Same thing. CRT is just a jujitsu cover-ideology for justifying anti-white racism as a power maneuver. It’s unethical by definition. I have no use for it.
How it “helped put Michael Brown down dead on a Missouri boulevard” I have no idea. What put him down was the fact that he attacked a cop rather than submitting to a lawful arrest.
Here is a link about Critical Race Theory.
https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/bridge/CriticalTheory/critical4.htm
In other words, no foundation.
Yes, because a racist power structure would enforce laws against hate speech in an even-handed manner…
The word itself, “hate speech”, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
All the remarks here seem to skip the fact that this doctrine was considered legitimized by a POTUS who has taught it and publically endorsed it. I fail to see how others fail to see its imprint in the current racial conflict. Derek Bell may have been a crackpot but you are woefully misinformed if you do not see the extent of this dogma.
Brown was trying to practice a street level version of CRT through his entire last episode. Taking cigars and shoving a smaller immigrant storekeeper around is not political; parading down the middle of a street and defying a white LEO…is.
“I did not see Critical Race Theory listed anywhere. ”
This isn’t The Onion or The National Enquirer.
“It also means finally treating black colleges like Howard exactly as “white colleges” would be treated. Organize a wave of white student applicants to those schools, and declare them in violation of the law if the student bodies are disproportionately made up of one race.”
Isn’t this also the death knell for your beloved Sweetbriar College, Jack? Women are a historically oppressed minority as well. (Although if you told that to my wife she’d say, “You’re damned right. Now shut that computer and take out the trash. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time? What are you always writing about anyway?”)
Although if you told that to my wife she’d say, “You’re damned right. Now shut that computer and take out the trash. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time? What are you always writing about anyway?”
Now that right there is some oppression! We need to organize and start a group, maybe call it No Ma’am (National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood/Numb Old Men Anxiously Awaiting Morticians)
I finally clicked on Alizia’s name and linked to “her” web page.
Explains a lot. I could have saved myself a lot of time if I’d done it earlier.
Next time I run across a suspected troll I’ll click the link before I reply.
Well played.
What are you trying to tell us?
She is not what she claims to be. She may not even be a she. There are no women listed as contributors on that site. She is not on a quest for enlightenment she already has an agenda. She is using classic troll behavior. Pretending to be one thing when what she really wants is to do is cause confusion and provoke a reaction.
I don’t like the person she provokes me to be and so I’ve put myself in blog commenting time out until I can learn to control myself.
Send me what you have off-site. If true, he/she is goooood. I’ve been asked plaintively if the posts are too much, if I want “her” to leave, and I’ve answered: as long as your opinions are civil and serious, I’m not banning you because you annoy people. If all that was an act, I’ll be…unhappy.
In case you did not catch it she is referring to the website clicking on my name links to. To clarify: you have been asked by me numerous times if my posts are not appropriate for this blog.
There is no ‘act’ here.
I need to know your real name, if it isn’t, as I assumed, Alicia Tyler.
Alizia Tyler with a ‘z’.
Is that the real name, or are you just correcting my typo?
That is my real and legal name.
Thank you, Alizia. That’s all I need.
Alizia Tyler said, “That is my real and legal name.”
I’m not saying that what you said is not true; but, why is it that when I search the internet for Alizia Tyler (with a “z”) the only references I get are on Ethics Alarms and one reference on the Literature Network Forums (which is flagged as a harmful website by virus software and reputable internet browsers)? This is really, really strange.
Even my 86 year old father and my 84 year old mother and my 92 year old mother-in-law have search hits and my mother-in-law has never even touched a computer. Heck I’ve even found direct internet hits to people that died before the internet was invented. Have you never had a phone number in your name, never rented or owned a home, never rented an apartment, never had an address, did you graduate from High School, never been on Facebook, Twitter, Classmates, dating sites, other blogging sites, work connection websites, etc, etc, etc…
Rhetorical question: Did you actually change your name in the recent past? (PLEASE DON’T ANSWER THAT QUESTION)
Rhetorical question: Are you in witness protection? (PLEASE DON’T ANSWER THAT QUESTION)
I do a lot (I mean a whole LOT) of searching on the internet for specific things and it is rare, very rare indeed, that I cannot come up with some kind of hit for something that I’m looking for. AS you can tell from my questions above; this is so very, very weird, it’s so very, very unlikely, do you have an explanation?
Feel free to completely ignore this if you feel it is inappropriate for you to answer any of the questions – I truly mean that 100% sincerely! It’s not that I feel that I need to know any of those things, it’s just falls into the unexplained Twilight Zone, I have never come across this before from any living human being that I’ve “met”.
Alizia Tyler said, “That is my real and legal name.”
Unless someone can convince me otherwise; I have come to the conclusion that based on the lack of any support evidence, Alizia Tyler name is not Alizia Tyler and it’s just a pseudonym (just like mine) which is absolutely fine if you’re not portraying it a being your real name, which is exactly what she has done.
A few times as you know I have asked you by emails to deactivate my user name to keep me from the temptation of posting here. I don’t think there is much more progress for me to make here. I have articulated pretty much the position that I am working with.
I have learned a good deal here, no doubt of that, but even I can see that my opinions and ideas, and my natural intensity in expressing them, are not so welcome here.
So I think it time for me to fly up and out. I know I have said that before and not done it.
Realistically, my posts and my ideas are too outlandish for 98% of the people who write here. My ethical platform for many is questionable. It is not impossible that I turn off people from writing and contributing here.
I hope that this more direct statement will be such that I can resist the temptation, which for me is great, to further engage in polemics. I am not an obsessive in anything but I do tend to obsess when it comes to fighting over ideas and hashing rehashing … That’s just the truth.
Miss Metaphysical Polemics is how I prefer to be remembered!
This is a good site and a great animating idea. And I do appreciate having had the opportunity to write here. And thank you to the others for toleration of my presence. I understand how intolerable some of — quite a few of — my ideas are.
Savitri Devi is the only woman author as far as I know (of books sold through the site). But there are women contributors from time to time. It is one site among numerous sites and really a pretty good one.
The lady said “Black Liberation Theology”, of which King was an advocate, and which is also expressed at a later date by President Obama’s former pastor (Rev Wright) has clear and arciculatable links to Marxian theory, and Christian activists linked up with Marxian activists.”
I have to call you on this. Cone did not complete or distill the finish of his ideas until AFTER being influenced by the work of Dr, King and others. Your horse-and-cart are reversed. MLK was not in the modern or other definitive sense a practitioner of “Black Liberation Theology” in general it clashed with his religious position.
I tried to figure out what ‘cone’ is. Can’t figure it.
King was very certainly an advocate of ‘Black Liberation Theology’ as it was developing in a pan-American context. The pan-American liberation movements are in many senses connected to each other even if they arise in different countries.
There is a direct link between the national liberation movements in the Americas (most of it post-war but with Marti and Sandino certainly a will that existed prior to the WW2) and the theological movement that became Liberation Theology. Black liberation theolgy is a very significant part of the general liberation movement. King is a part ot it, not the author of it.
When you say it ‘clashed with his religious position’ I do not understand what you mean. King was a mass-organizer who channeled a vast and pre-existing religious sentiment (the black churches as well as a general religious sentiment of America) into a social liberation movement. Quintessential modern progressive Christianity no matter how you look at it.
In my view to say ‘it clashed with his religious position’ is a large misunderstanding. King was acutely political as well as ‘anti-imperialist’ (neo-imperialist if you wish) and in certain senses anti-American. His endeavor was one that had and has much to do with the overthrow of America as a historical entity, and a replacement of it by factions within it, and ones defined raciially.
I would say that King is and has been one of the main sources of the destruction of ‘white identity’, and thus of European solidarity and identity, and this points to a destructive spirit latent in Christianity (which must be resisted).