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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
From a Clintonista Democrat, circa 2014:
"What the new research really appears to reveal is just how confused we continue to be about race – and how, even amidst this confusion, whiteness remains a dangerously malleable idea that Americans must deal with more candidly." (Eric Liu - CNN)
For over a decade now, white bigots have been expressing everything from disapproval to anger at the growing phenomenon of Asians and Hispanics identifying as white.
Oops! My bad. Democrats and the racially-deterministic left have been expressing that outrage.
The left's insistence on slotting people into strict skin color categories makes them sound like a 19th century British slaver in the West Indies invoking the odious "one drop rule" and deciding whether the indigenous person before him is a quadroon or an octoroon.
The Left's Replacement Theory
A related propaganda vector emanating from the racially-obsessed left is the "White Minority by 2045" fetish they enjoy wallowing in so much. The most charitable articles view this as a "shoe on the other foot" morality tale, hoping the looming prospect of minority status will chasten whites into atoning for their white privilege, toning down the Karen, and humbly accepting their lower status.
The worst ones wallow in giddy glee and snarky smart-assery, but most of it's designed to troll whitey, feeding us a steady drumbeat of how this is upsetting whites, making them more fearful and bigoted, despite the lack of any actual evidence to support their schadenfreude fantasies.
The Great Abandonment Theory: A Democrat Dream Destroyed
Professors Richard Alba, Morris Levy, and Dowell Myers shoot down the "Great Replacement theory" and its concomitant "White minority theory." Both theories are racially-deterministic, grounded in the abhorrent "one drop rule," and wrong.
That narrative depends on the misleading practice of classifying individuals of mixed backgrounds as exclusively nonwhite.
Their research reveals that instead of a "Great Replacement," there is actually a "Great Welcoming:" Whites are welcoming Hispanics, Asians and other "people of color" into the wonderful world of White Privilege, just like the beneficent whites of the 19th and 20th Century welcomed Italians, Irish and Jews into the exclusive club.
More excerpts from their Atlantic article:
Nearly three in 10 Asian, one in four Latino, and one in five Black newlyweds are married to a member of a different ethnic or racial group. More than three-quarters of these unions are with a white partner. For more and more Americans, racial integration is embedded in their closest relationships.Among Latinos, identifying as white or as simply “American” is common, and belies the notion that Latinos should be classified monolithically as nonwhite.As much as they are competing for economic resources and political power, America’s racial groups are blending now more than ever. According to the most detailed of the Census Bureau’s projections, 52 percent of individuals included in the nonwhite majority of 2060 will also identify as white. By the same token, the white group will become much more diverse, because 40 percent of Americans who say they are white also will claim a minority racial or ethnic identity.
"They" are not "Replacing us," -- They are Joining Us
That is a threat to the leftwing deconstructionist agenda, which is why activists continue to stoke the flames of black and white conflict, us against them racial resentment.
Fie on them all. They are only marginally better than the white supremacists. Racial identity tribal warfare is a losers game, but its all Democrats and their mirror-image fellow travelers on the extreme right have left.
Meh! The 1st world problems of Left Neo-Liberals BORE me! Don't they bore you, too, yet?
ReplyDeleteAnn Coulter on GRT power fantasies.
DeleteRead FJs, Ann Coulter link -comment above mine-.
DeleteThe same thing happened in the UK and I kept a link to some "Progressive" MP that was fairly forthright about the mass immigration of third world immigrants into the UK - the link was disappeared-. It was to enlarge the population of "less educated more tractable" into the voting rolls. That's why preference is given to unskilled and poorer immigrants. The problem is the next generation isn't as uneducated, tractable or poorer and trend to vote their pocket book.
The problem is that when you lessen your standards you get undesirables such as mendicants, thieves, drug dealers, pimps, sex traffickers -et al- and those that will never be anything more than a drain on society and the "free" social services that those that actually work will have to pay for. There are more than enough of them with your native born citizens without importing more.
Unlimited immigration is a nightmare and I don't give a damn where they come from or what color their skin is!
"the link was disappeared" That doesn't surprise me. I was searching the same topic, since I had a vague memory of a British pol admitting the "multi-culti" as they call it over there, was to troll the anti-immigrant crowd and the Little Englanders
DeleteLike you, I could find no evidence of it. Google is good a memory holing information.
DeleteI used to use several "deep search" engines but Google supplanted them, they are no more.
DeleteWarren typed in:
DeleteUnlimited immigration is a nightmare!...
Any fool should be able to see that! Just think of where you live: apartment, condo, townhouse, single family detached home. Allowing too many relatives under your roof destroys the home and the standard of living for all. Critical mass always matters.
Can you remember any more details about the british MP's statement, maybe the time period? With a bit more to go on, I might be able to dredge it up...
DeleteSorry, Meh! pretty much sums up my reaction. That all came across as gibberish to me.
ReplyDeleteThank you both for the feedback.
ReplyDeleteRace categories and their corresponding Intersectionality scores are like golf tournament handicapping to determine the social seating arrangement at the end of year awards dinner. The higher the handicap, the closer you sit to the power center of the main table and the lower you get charged for the dinner tickets. I've got a '0' handicap. My table's near the kitchen door.
DeleteAlso, where I'm sitting there, everyone feels justified in trying to spit in my water glass and send my waiter off to do little errands for themselves. My food gets served colder and colder every subsequent year. It's a good thing I can afford to eat at better places the other 364 days a year. :)
"The left's insistence on slotting people into strict skin color categories makes them sound like a 19th century British slaver in the West Indies invoking the odious "one drop rule" and deciding whether the indigenous person before him is a quadroon or an octoroon."
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the saddest and scarriest posts I have read to date SF. Thank you for posting this. I have read about this and heard on the news but tried to block it out because it is too insane, but sadly this is happening and so sad.
"That is a threat to the leftwing deconstructionist agenda, which is why activists continue to stoke the flames of black and white conflict, us against them racial resentment."
It has also been stated as "reverse racism," when against white people. My own daughter believes we deserve this because we have "white priveledge." It disgust me that she is fooled by this propoghanda and the likes of AOC and The Squad. She would agree with such a "manifesto" because that is what this is.
I cannot even speak about Black people and question why amongst many there is black on black crime, or a hatred towards white people, so I shut up. No point arguing with those that do not have an ear to listen.
I hope you find my response useful to a conversation worth having.
Layla,
DeleteThank you for your excellent comment.
Back when I was growing up in Northern Virginia, we were still "Old South" enough to go by the "one drop rule." In fact, in many quarters, it was a prevailing philosophy until well after the Civil Rights Movement. That has changed now -- for the vast most part, anyway. I know very few people who worry about "one drop" contaminating their families.
Interesting that you never before heard of "the one drop" rule.
There is plenty of "reverse racism these days. **sigh**
PS: Sorry about your daughter.
PPS: Shutting up is sometimes the way to go!
DeleteI do not claim to be the brightest or smartest person on the planet or this topic, but it is a topic that needs discussing.
ReplyDeleteLayla,
DeleteDon't run yourself down! And you are always welcome here at this blog.
Thanks AOW and thanks about my daughter too. Hopefully she will eventually see through all the lefts nooks and crannys of crap!
Deletehttps://youtu.be/W4PBwOLJWT4?t=107
ReplyDeleteEd,
DeleteThat takes me back to the days when Americans could laugh at themselves. Are those days forever gone?
Hi, I dig the title! (That book was a struggle)
ReplyDeleteIts a good article, a couple of tangential thoughts occurred to me: 1, we tend not to think of white as a race, but as the default flavour of human. Commenter above talks about not feeling able to discuss black on black crime, I wonder if it would ever occur to her to describe white-on-white crime in those words. In Britain we often frame knife violence as a uniquely black issue, and that would be fine if it didn't change the way we reason about reducing it, eg look at how differently knife crime was tackled in London (mostly black) vs Glasgow (mostly white). We tend to crack down harder on black crime Vs treat the white violence as a social issue; the Glaswegian approach has been a lot more effective. Like I was saying in the other thread, it's easy not to notice this difference and one of the ways we obscure it is by not talking about white as a race. It's not, policy x for whites, policy y for blacks. It's policy x for everyone, black-onhblack is a special case...
My other thought is that the position of African-Americans in US culture is not the same as the position of Latins, Asians etc. so I think nonhblack racial minorities face different or much less structural/legacy of oppression.
Isnt that a tricky comparison to make? Where were these 1st gens educated, in the us or abroad? To qualifyi for visas etc, don't you have to prove that your productive? So wouldn't you expect this group to earn more than the native white population, which includes some layabouts? Or are you including illegals in the immigrant cohort? Even then, perhaps that filters for chutzpah.
DeletePeople don't get put in jail without being found guilty of something, so of course crime statistics reflect the imprisonment outcome. Turn to them if you want, but it wouldn't be wise to use them to validate the level of imprisonment, when it's obvious that they would both reflect the same systemic biasses, if there are any. That said, I wonder if the 3 strikes and your out rule and similar impact differently across races? Would you be surprised if it turned out that rules like that are applied more unyieldingly to black people?
There are no racial clauses in "three strikes" rules.
DeleteLook, there is a whole billion dollar noisy industry in this country telling black people whitey is keeping them down. Successful people ignore it and get on with their life plans.
Anyway, that is not even the subject of this post. The left is stoking race resentment. Meanwhile, "whites," "blacks," Hispanics and Asians are intermarrying. Please read the article.
Sorry SF, I compose offline and forgot which post this was in.
DeleteIt's always the case that you can enjoy a more comfortable life ("be more successful") by ignoring injustice and focussing on your own career, doesn't mean the injustice doesn't exist or that it's not worth fighting despite personal cost.
DeleteLook up the racial disparity in infant mortality and tell me again how it's all down to black culture not valuing education highly enough.
Lots of people are kept in their place through fear of being labeled a class traitor. It's not a unique black thing. but it seems to me like intelligence is being celebrated more and more in black American culture (or maybe I'm getting more efficient at finding the bits that interest me), so maybe that anti-school thing is becoming passe
Jez, What do you think explains the infant mortality disparity?
DeleteI'm sure there is a parental lifestyle component to this, and maybe even a genetic one too. But a big part of it would seem to be due to how black babies are treated specifically by white medics. The article I read showed a large part of it was correlated with the race of the baby's carer: fewer black babies died when they were cared for by black medics. Meanwhile the race of medic had no effect on the rate of white baby mortality.
DeleteI don't really want to speculate further, I just wondered if you would have any ideas about black babies taking personal responsibility for their own outcomes. ;)
"But a big part of it would seem to be due to how black babies are treated specifically by white medics."
DeleteI have seen zero evidence to support that. I do think class-based disparities in health probably is a factor, and health of the mother. Diabetes and obesity contribute negatively to a pregnancy and childbirth.
Warren: 'rising and falling in status and wealth were too common to appeal to the American populace so they resorted to appealing to "racism"'
Deletesocial mobility in America 'lags behind its comparable peers in Europe. Absolute upward mobility in the US has been declining since the 1940s. ... The probability that children with parents from the bottom half of education ranks will “out-learn” their parents and reach the top of the education ranks has declined'
In my opinion the American rejection of socialism is more a consequence of her national mythology than it is the result of measurable socio-economic outcomes.
SF: "I have seen zero evidence to support that."
Deletehere it is. Infant mortality rate of black babies really does vary wildly with the ethnicity of the physician. I don't know if this is a good example of structural racism, but it is serving as an example of how reluctant we are to acknowledge racial disparities even when the data is strong, and the size of the effect is large.
Okay, props for bringing that study. The implication could be quite dark. I would like to see other studies or further critical analysis of this study.
DeleteI don't know why we are not conducting databased discussions around studies such as you have posited.
What has parents upset in this country is when teachers will have children stand up in class and have white children identify as oppressors and acknowledge their white privilege, while black children stand up and claim victim status. This actually happens in classrooms. That is the kind of crap that people are pushing back against.
So, crap like I have just cited, and racists of all stripes, take up all the air, and we can't have any productive discussions on anything.
Plenty of teachers foul up Pythagoras, but we still keep geometry in the curriculum. I admire the effort America is making to tone down the whitewashing in its history curriculum, I wish we would do some of that over here. I wish the parents pushing back against these lessons could see the opportunity and share some of my excitement, instead of trying to shut the whole thing down and revert to the old curriculum they're familiar with.
Delete@ jez,
ReplyDelete"Where were these 1st gens educated,"
It doesn't matter. The opportunities, in the US, are there whether they are taken or not. My assertion is that education is looked upon, in US Black Communities, as acting white. -and therefor- those participating are ridiculed. I must add that this is through elementary and 12th grade levels which leave most unprepared -at the very least- for higher education.
I would add that of the three Africans I personally know, two came to the US for higher education and worked their way through University, the third came from a wealthy family in the Ivory Coast. The last was educated in France but came to the US for Medical School.
"So wouldn't you expect this group to earn more than the native white population, which includes some layabouts?"
I don't see that as a problem and who said otherwise? We're talking about generalities and percentages and people that come to the US for opportunity and over 300 million people.
Look jez, I've told you before, I'm mixed race, American Indian, Scots Irish and who knows what else. As was made very clear as a child, my failures are mine to own, not some conspiracy against me. A failure is something to personally overcome through merit and grit not something to wail and gnash teeth over.
"People don't get put in jail without being found guilty of something, so of course crime statistics reflect the imprisonment outcome. Turn to them if you want, but it wouldn't be wise to use them to validate the level of imprisonment, when it's obvious that they would both reflect the same systemic biasses,"
Or it would be more logical that people that reject societal norms commit, and are convicted of, more crimes, especially in areas of dense population where criminals are prone to locate and where they can hide more easily and there are more and easier victims. By definition, criminals reject societal norms. It's pointless to claim systemic racism when everyone has to dance around blacks because they might be labeled "racist" and relentlessly harassed. Tucker Carlson was labeled a racist because he said that people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, which was a quote from Dr Martin Luther King. -How racist can you get! (/sarc)-
" I wonder if the 3 strikes and your out rule and similar impact differently across races? Would you be surprised if it turned out that rules like that are applied more unyieldingly to black people?
I would expect they do percentage wise, as proportionally blacks commit more violent crime.
Three strike laws are kind of screwy and it's not Federal law. Some States have them and others don't and even then it's prosecutorial discretion whether they are applied or not. 24 States have them. You do realize that they are mostly reserved to those convicted of violent felonies and keep career criminals off the streets?
I can tell you about a deceased family member that was almost sentenced under the three strike law -my uncle Jail Bird-. He was a ne'er-do-well career criminal that always blamed everything he did on someone else. He was also younger than me.
He had health issues that required surgery, expensive surgery. So the DA decided to drop charges because the cost of the surgery would have to be borne by the State and his last crime -a $5000 theft- wasn't a violent crime. Too bad, it would have been better for everyone if he would have been locked up. Afterward, there were a couple of assaults that were charged as non-felony assaults but could have been charged as felonious assault.
Fire Water and Indians don't mix very well. That's why they don't sell booze on the Reservation.
Whoops! That was racist of me, or is it some of that systemic racism?
"[Where those first gens were educated] doesn't matter."
DeleteIt only matters because SF is using their educational attainment as evidence against racism in the US -- he could be taking credit for another country's homework.
I don't dispute that education is valued differently within different communities. I don't think white people in general value it all that highly either. Do nerds still get picked on?
"I don't see [self-selecting cohort of immigrants] as a problem."
It isn't, unless you're measuring them against the white native population to prove a point like SF is doing. If you want to do that properly, you've got to normalise for the way the migrant gorup self-selects for various traits.
"my failures are mine to own, not some conspiracy against me"
the fallacy of the excluded middle: personal responsibility and class-based oppression can and do exist in the same universe. When we celebrate the lives of the great social crusaders who sacrificed so much to secure the rights we now enjoy, why are we not more critical of them for their refusal to keep their heads down, tend their own gardens and thereby live more comforably?
Opportunity is part of American mythology, which is not to say it isn't to some extent true, but I contend that extent is limited. It isn't true that we all have the same opportunities, and it's only patriotic zeal that could prompt us to assert that we do. I admit that I have more opportunities than some and a lot less than a few; I'm not Ameican of course but I can plainly see from here that the situation in your country is not entirely different.
"it would be more logical that people that reject societal norms commit, and are convicted of, more crimes..."
Whenever I catch myself wanting to claim my point of view is logical, I like to carve out some time to examine my position and write down all the assumptions that it rests on and work it thought from one inference to the next... you know, actually do the logic. Spoiler alert: there are always more assumptions than I first thought.
"Tucker Carlson was labeled a racist because he said that people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin"
that is not why people call Carlson a racist.
Your uncle's case is a good example of how the system can be lenient. Whether leniency was wise in any particular case is a separate issue: my question is about how different social groups might experience different degrees of leniancy. I don't think you can check by looking up the crime statistics, since your uncle's later crimes would show up in those stats as non-felonies. Do you see what I mean?
"Whoops! That was racist of me"
you were doing fine until you called it "fire water" ;)
I don't say racism doesn't exist, although I do question the 'systemic racism' narrative. If there is some racist system in place, too many POC have slipped through the filters.
DeleteI bring up crime rates and success of immigrants as data points. I do not draw any definitive conclusions from them. I know that sounds slippery, but they are evidence that goes against the systemic racism arguments.
I haven't even heard any cogent arguments that show the situation has gotten worse for POC. All evidence points to continuing improvement.
"they are evidence that goes against the systemic racism arguments."
DeleteI don't think they're that powerful. The best I would say for them is they are not positive evidence of systemic racism. I hope I've built a reputation for enjoying strong evidence and sound reasoning, but policy development is not a theorem and I think if we're too fussy about evidence, it stacks the deck in favour of the status quo. Let's pick a country (South Africa?) or a year (1955?) which we agree is/was racist, do either of those work? What evidence would you gather to prove that SA is or America was racist back then?
I am talking about America, and I am talking about comparing conditions for people of color now versus 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, etc.
DeleteMeasurement criteria could include employment rates, educational attainment, wages, wealth, incidences of racism.
I have seen no evidence that things are worse today for black people in America than they were 10 years ago I am open to evidence
Well, not that I think these stats are necessarily useable, I notice hate crime (predominantly racially motivated) went up over the last 10 years, against a background of declining crime in general. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/hate-crime-recorded-law-enforcement-2010-2019
DeleteBut why does racism need to have got worse? If it was intolerable 50 years ago, it could still be intolerable now. I think I'm losing track of the argument here.
Sorry for the tangent. I only commented on this one because you encouraged me.
The FBI changed how it booked hate crimes. That attributes for all categories. Do you understand how vanishingly rare a white on black attack is in this nation? Indeed, something like over 80% of violent crime is same race on same race.
DeleteIf someone is going to allege the situation is getting worse for POC, they need to bring the evidence.
Hate crimes?
DeleteHere are the government stats. Have a ball
In 2019, race was reported for 6,406 known hate crime offenders. Of these offenders:
52.5 percent were White.
23.9 percent were Black or African American.
6.6 percent were groups made up of individuals of various races (group of multiple races).
1.1 percent were American Indian or Alaska Native.
0.9 percent (58 offenders) were Asian.
0.3 percent (22 offenders) were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.
14.6 percent were unknown.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-pages/offenders
US Demographics
DeleteWhite: 62%
Hispanic: 17%
Black: 13%
8000 hate crimes is nothing to brag about, but in a very diverse nation of 330 million, not exactly the end of the world
ReplyDeletehttps://www.statista.com/chart/16100/total-number-of-hate-crime-incidents-recorded-by-the-fbi/
2,800 anti-black hate crimes, and that includes vandalism, spray painting, etc. Crimes against persons was 70% of all hate crimes.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/hate-crime-statistics
https://www.justice.gov/crs/highlights/2020-hate-crimes-statistics
"If someone is going to allege the situation is getting worse for POC..."
ReplyDeleteI didn't realise that was the argument. I don't think it's the most important thing, it's not like we should overlook an injustice just because it's long-standing. It's plausible that racist individuals were emboldened by Trump's ascent (reported hate crime is the tip of an iceberg, it's like sexual assault, the majority is not reported) but that's not necessarily correlated with the systemic racism we were talking about.
Btw, can you imagine of jan 6th happened with a mostly black crowd? Do you think the authorities would have handled it any differently?
Jez,
Deletecan you imagine of jan 6th happened with a mostly black crowd? Do you think the authorities would have handled it any differently?
As in how leniently the authorities handled the BLM riots of Summer 2020?
Believe me, we were hammered with the counterfactual you posit. Unknowable, especially in light of the billions of dollars in damage to cities in 2020.
DeleteYou're just going to jump over the statistics I provided?
DeleteLook, if people want to say there are issues that need addressed, we need actionable items that are measurable.
Jez, you don't owe me a response. We're not getting anywhere.
DeleteSF,
Deleteif people want to say there are issues that need addressed, we need actionable items that are measurable.
My point earlier, though I didn't put is as well as you did.
I voiced my ambivalence over the useability of the hate crime stats up front; I don't have any deeper commentary than that to add.
DeleteI do think that it's good practice to validate any statistical test against well understood examples, ie apply your test to some societies that you know are racist (and some that aren't) to check its sensitivity and specificity. It may be that there is no rigorous, objective statistical test that is sensitive enough to be useful. We might have to accept the wooly nature of the humanities, and take courage from our rich history of successful reforms which were not backed by objective measures. Please remember, I like measurements and tests. If they *can* be applied, I think we should defer to them. But they're applicability is limited, and I don't want to let that limitation cause politically paralysis. If we need to use another appraoch, so be it.
Imo, we are at the point of paralysis in this country, because we cannot even agree upon a punch list of measurable, actionable items to debate and address.
DeleteIf a young woman of color going to school at Harvard says she does not feel fully a part of that campus, there's not a damn thing I can do about that
Well! An opinion writer at the WaPo offers this solution to America's problems with race relations. WaPo Suggests Black Americans Who ‘Tired of U.S. Hostility’ Consider Relocating to Ghana.
ReplyDelete