Race – Page 10 – Maverick Philosopher

Andrew Sullivan on Tribalism

This is a very good article. There is plenty to disagree with, but I agree entirely with this excerpt:

Or take the current promiscuous use of the term “white supremacist.” We used to know what that meant. It meant advocates and practitioners of slavery, believers in the right of white people to rule over all others, subscribers to a theory of a master race, Jim Crow supporters, George Wallace voters. But it is now routinely used on the left to mean, simply, racism in a multicultural America, in which European-Americans are a fast-evaporating ethnic majority. It’s a term that implies there is no difference in race relations between America today and America in, say, the 1830s or the 1930s. This rhetoric is not just untrue, it is dangerous. It wins no converts, and when actual white supremacists march in the streets, you have no language left to describe them as any different from, say, all Trump supporters, including the 13 percent of black men who voted for him.

Compare my Is Every Racist a White Supremacist?

Sullivan also deserves praise for pointing out the excesses of Ta-Nehisi Coates:

He remains a vital voice, but in more recent years, a somewhat different one. His mood has become much gloomier. He calls the Obama presidency a “tragedy,” and describes many Trump supporters as “not so different from those same Americans who grin back at us in lynching photos.” He’s written about how watching cops and firefighters enter the smoldering World Trade Center instantly reminded him of cops mistreating blacks: They “were not human to me.” In his latest essay in the Atlantic, analyzing why Donald Trump won the last election, he dismisses any notion that economic distress might have played a role as “empty” and ignores other factors, such as Hillary Clinton’s terrible candidacy, the populist revolt against immigration that had become a potent force across the West, and the possibility that the pace of social change might have triggered a backlash among traditionalists. No, there was one meaningful explanation only: white supremacism. And those who accept, as I do, that racism was indeed a big part of the equation but also saw other factors at work were simply luxuriating in our own white privilege because we are never under “racism’s boot.”

What Do Gun Violence and Systemic Racism Have in Common?

Neither exist.

(William Tingley calls me "the pithy Maverick." How are you doing these days, Bill?)

Dennis Prager on Liberalism, Leftism, and Race

Dennis Prager insists on a distinction between leftism and liberalism. "The two have almost nothing in common," he tells us. He points to a number of differences. I will comment on just one:

Race: This is perhaps the most obvious of the many moral differences between liberalism and leftism. The essence of the liberal position on race was that the color of one’s skin is insignificant. To liberals of a generation ago, only racists believed that race is intrinsically significant. However, to the left, the notion that race is insignificant is itself racist. Thus, the University of California officially regards the statement “There is only one race, the human race” as racist. For that reason, liberals were passionately committed to racial integration. Liberals should be sickened by the existence of black dormitories and separate black graduations on university campuses.

a) A minor point: while color of skin is a phenotypical manifestation of race, race is not the same as skin color. Otherwise, how do you explain the differences in attitudes towards blacks and people from India, many of whom are very dark in color? It is their behavior, not skin color, that determines attitudes toward blacks, and behavior is a better indicator of race than skin color. Most white liberals would not think of buying a house in a predominantly black area. Is that because of skin color or typical behavior patterns? The question answers itself.

On second thought, my "minor point" is not so minor. To speak of race in terms of something as superficial as skin color is to assume that race is of no significance. But this is a question that ought not be begged. Is sex also of no significance? I say No and Prager says the same.

How can Prager hold that race is of no significance when he also holds, rightly, that sex is of great significance and that the behavioral differences of men and women are rooted in biological differences and are not just a matter of socialization? Is it at all plausible to think that gender differences are rooted in biological differences while racial differences are not so rooted? No, it is not.

b) What is it for race to be significant or insignificant? Is the idea that race has no explanatory connection to any behavioral attributes? But that cannot be right. How explain the 'over-representation' of blacks in the NBA and NFL? Why are blacks, as a group, so much better than other groups at basketball and football? Even if part of the explanation is social and cultural, surely part of its has to do with the biological realities of race.

Consider parallel questions about sex. Are men and women equally capable of being competent fire fighters? Of course not. That fact cannot be explained by differential socialization such as a lack of toy fire trucks in the nurseries of little girls. The explanation must invoke biological realities having to so with muscle mass, upper body strength, etc.

Race, like sex, does matter. Why is it 'racist' to point this out? It can't be racist since it is true. Is it 'ageist' to point out that there is a good reason why one cannot enlist in the U. S. Army if one is over 40 years of age?

Is it 'discriminatory' in a pejorative sense to require that enlistees be in good health, be fluent in English, and have a high school diploma or equivalent? Of course not. Only a liberal knucklehead could think otherwise.

Is age a mere social construct? Of course not. Age, as it relates to activities like schlepping heavy packs and climbing over obstacles is related to ageing, the latter being a biological process.

c) Since Prager is a sex realist he ought to be a race realist as well. Just as it would be absurd for him to say that there is only one sex, the human sex, it is absurd for him to say that there is only one race, the human race.

But surely it is not racist to say this as crazed leftists think. On the contrary, it expresses the salutary desire to get beyond racial differences and find common ground in our common humanity. That can't be bad! So why do leftists think that it is racist to to say that there is only one race, the human race?

It is because they think it implies a denial of black identity.

I suggest that the correct view lies between Prager's race irrealism according to which race is just skin color and to that extent insignificant, and the identitarian view, found both on the Left and on the Alt-Right, that race is constitutive of who one is at a very deep level.

The correct view is that racial differences are real and significant just as sexual and age differences are real and significant, but that for purposes of social harmony and political cooperation we had better not identify ourselves racially but in terms of attributes more conducive to comity. And what might these be?

Some candidates: fellow citizen, rational animal, American (for Americans), child of God.

I will leave it to the reader to explain why each of these candidates has become in recent decades highly problematic. For example, if you believe in the nonsense of a 'living constitution' which is in reality no constitution at all, then you are not an American in the sense required to secure some common ground.

So I end with a dark thought: in the end tribalism wins.

Race Obsession

Is Good Faith Dialogue Possible with Leftists?

Arguably not:

Our “mainstream conservative” is a pathetic hostage to the Left. He somehow hasn’t yet realized that the Left is hell-bent on branding everything “racist” regardless of whether the label has any basis whatsoever in either reason or reality. Things are so bad that a progressive merely has to threaten to play the “you’re a racist” card, and our “mainstream conservative” will do anything, including betray his own staff, to save face with a crowd that has already decided that he is irredeemable: nothing more than the political and moral equivalent of white supremacists and neo-Nazi fascists. He hasn’t developed sufficient contempt for this judgment, I suppose, or perhaps he really believes that he can change it by engaging with them in good faith. He cannot.

Indeed. Conservatives need to realize that leftists are enemies, not co-inhabitants of the plane of reasoned dialog. They will do anything to win. An indication of this is the ever more prevalent use of 'white supremacist' to smear conservatives. Traditional conservative values prevent too many of us from replying in kind and giving the scumbags a taste of their own medicine.

But the times they are are a'changing. A good indication thereof is the election of Donald J. Trump. He knows how to punch back, and decorum be damned. Civility is for the civil. There comes a time for incivility assuming you care to preserve a space in which such values as civility can flourish.

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Reader RP writes,

Solzhenitsyn wrote in November 1916, "By his own experience, Colonel Vorotyntsev comes to realize that 'educated people were more cowardly when confronted by left-wing loudmouths than in face of machine guns.'”

The " mainstream conservative" is no different.

Will the Culture War Issue in Civil War?

John Davidson:

[. . .]

For all their shortcomings, conservatives at least have a limiting principle for politics. Most of them believe, for example, in the principles enshrined in the Constitution and maintain that no matter how bad things are, the Bill of Rights is a necessary bulwark, sometimes the only bulwark, against tyranny and violence. In contrast, here’s Timothy Egan of The New York Times arguing unabashedly for the repeal of the Second and Fifth Amendments.

The rapid radicalization of Democrats along these lines follows a ruthless logic about the entire premise of the American constitutional order. If you believe, as progressives increasingly do, that America was founded under false pretenses and built on racial oppression, then why bother conserving it? And why bother trying to compromise with those on the other side, especially if they reject progressives’ unifying theory that America is forever cursed by its original sin of slavery, which nothing can expiate?

Before you scoff, understand that this view of race and America is increasingly mainstream on the American Left. To read someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose recent article in The Atlantic is a manifesto of racial identity politics that argues Trump’s presidency is based on white supremacy, is to realize that progressive elites no longer believe they can share a republic with conservatives, or really anyone with whom they disagree.

Coates has attained near god-like status among progressives with his oracular writings on race and politics, which take for granted the immutability of race and racial animus. So it’s deeply disturbing when he writes, as he does in a new collection of essays, that “should white supremacy fall, the means by which that happens might be unthinkable to those of us bound by present realities and politics.”

What does Coates mean by that? It isn’t hard to guess, and lately Coates isn’t trying too hard to disguise it. In a recent interview with Ezra Klein of Vox, Coates expanded on this idea. Writes Klein:

When he tries to describe the events that would erase America’s wealth gap, that would see the end of white supremacy, his thoughts flicker to the French Revolution, to the executions and the terror. ‘It’s very easy for me to see myself being contemporary with processes that might make for an equal world, more equality, and maybe the complete abolition of race as a construct, and being horrified by the process, maybe even attacking the process. I think these things don’t tend to happen peacefully.’

This is the circuitous, stumbling language of man who knows precisely what he wants to say but isn’t sure if he should come right out and say it. Coates isn’t alone in feinting toward violence as a means—perhaps the only means, if Coates is to be taken at his word—of achieving social justice. On college campuses, progressive activists increasingly don’t even bother mincing words, they just forcibly silence anyone who disagrees with them, as a Black Lives Matter group did recently during an event featuring the American Civil Liberties Union at the College of William and Mary. (Ironically, the talk was supposed to be about students and the First Amendment.)

For a sincere progressive, almost everything that happened in the past is a crime against the present, and the only greatness America can attain is by repudiating its past and shaming—or silencing, if possible—all those who believe preserving our constitutional order is the best way for all of us to get along.

Seen in that light, the radicalization of Democrats is something qualitatively different, and much more dangerous, than the radicalization of Republicans. It means, among other things, that the culture war is now going to encompass everything, and that it will never end.

A Version of Alt-Right Identitarianism

My right-wing identitarian sparring partner makes a good response to my attempt, earlier today, to locate a common root of both right-and left-wing identitarianism. My responses are in blue.

……………..

Wouldn't you agree, on reflection, that the bolded passage [from a NYT article] is a straw man?

"Both sides eagerly reduce people to abstract color categories, all the while feeding off of and legitimizing each other, while those of us searching for gray areas and common ground get devoured twice. Both sides mystify racial identity, interpreting it as something fixed, determinative and almost supernatural."

A typical 'alt-right' identitarian in Europe or America believes things like this:

(a) race is real,

(b) race is an important part of human identity, and a natural basis for organizing society,

(c) racial differences have important political consequences,

(d) whites have the right to act in their own interest, e.g., by stopping immigration or defending the dominance of white European culture and norms in white European societies . . .

I accept, with qualifications, all four of these propositions. Much depends, of course, on what exactly they are taken to mean.

As for the first proposition, I accept it as it stands if it is the negation of the claim that racial differences are wholly a matter of social construction. Racial theories and classifications are of course social constructs; but these theories and classifications are attempts to understand an underlying biological reality. That there are biological differences between the races is as obvious as that there are such differences between men and women. These biological realities make it impossible for a person to change his race. See my response to Rebecca Tuvel's "In Defense of Transracialism."

As for the second proposition, I can accept it, but only with serious qualifications. I hold that a human being is a spiritual animal, and therefore not just an animal. My opponent will probably not accept this; my impression is that he is a naturalist. My theistic personalism is a version of anti-naturalism. As a personalist I maintain that race bears only upon my animal identity, WHAT I am as a bit of the world's fauna; not upon WHO I am as a person. Furthermore, my identity as a person trumps my identity as an animal. Part of what this means is that it would be a false self-identification were I to identify myself as a member of a racial or ethnic group or subgroup. For if a person identifies himself as a white male or a black female, then he reduces himself to what fundamentally he is not, namely, an animal, when what he fundamentally and most truly is is a person. See Is There a Defensible Sense in which Human Beings are Equal?

Of course, I don't expect my interlocutor to accept any of this if he is a naturalist. But then the discussion shifts to naturalism which comprises a set of questions logically prior to the present set.

With respect to the first half of (b), I would say that race is not an important part of my identity as a person, because it is not any part of my identity as a person, even though it is essential to my identity as an animal: I am not accidentally Caucasian any more than I am accidentally male. (Thus even if I pulled a Bruce Jenner and donned 'superdrag' apparel complete with surgically fabricated vagina, mammaries, etc, I would still remain biologically male. I would just be parading around in 'superdrag.' ) My opponent, if he is a naturalist who sees himself as identical to a living human animal, is committed not only to saying that race is an important part of human identity, but is essential to human identity.

The second half of (b) also requires qualification. First of all it is not clear what it means to say that race is a natural basis for organizing society. Is this supposed to rule out a 'proposition nation'? And what exactly is a 'proposition nation'? The Alt-Right seems adamantly opposed to such a thing. But the unity of the USA is not the unity of a tribe but the unity of a set of ideas. Those who accept these ideas are Americans regardless of whether they come from England or Germany or Italy, or Greece — or China. I grant, of course that certain ethnic groups are better equipped to implement American values and ideals than others. But that is consistent with the USA being a 'proposition nation.'

As for the third and fourth propositions, I agree. Racial differences do have political consequences, and immigration policy must be to the benefit of the host country and its culture. It would therefore be national suicide to allow the immigration into Western nations of sharia-supporting Muslims. But what about educated secular Turks who are religiously Muslim to about the same extent as a Boston Unitarian is Christian and bear some of the innocuous cultural marks of Muslims such as the valuing of modesty in women and an aversion to the consumption of alcohol? What could justify excluding them from immigrating?

An Identitarian is an Identitarian, Left or Alt-Right

And a pox on both houses, say I. What strikes me is what they have in common. Here is something from the NYT that makes sense (emphasis added):

In the most memorable sentence in “The First White President,” Mr. Coates declares, “Whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.” I have spent the past six months poring over the literature of European and American white nationalism, in the process interviewing noxious identitarians like the alt-right founder Richard Spencer. The most shocking aspect of Mr. Coates’s wording here is the extent to which it mirrors ideas of race — specifically the specialness of whiteness — that white supremacist thinkers cherish.

This, more than anything, is what is so unsettling about Mr. Coates’s recent writing and the tenor of the leftist “woke” discourse he epitomizes. Though it is not at all morally equivalent, it is nonetheless in sync with the toxic premises of white supremacism. Both sides eagerly reduce people to abstract color categories, all the while feeding off of and legitimizing each other, while those of us searching for gray areas and common ground get devoured twice. Both sides mystify racial identity, interpreting it as something fixed, determinative and almost supernatural. For Mr. Coates, whiteness is a “talisman,” an “amulet” of “eldritch energies” that explains all injustice; for the abysmal early-20th-century Italian fascist and racist icon Julius Evola, it was a “meta-biological force,” a collective mind-spirit that justifies all inequality. In either case, whites are preordained to walk that special path. It is a dangerous vision of life we should refuse no matter who is doing the conjuring

I am not so sure the febrile, destructive bullshit of millionaire celebrity Coates is morally superior to white supremacism, but the bolded passage gets at the truth of the matter.

By the way, the bums at the NYT have made it difficult to copy from their articles, but here are two work-arounds. I just now employed the first and it is not too much of a pain.

Is It ‘Racist’ to Hose Dog Droppings off Sidewalk?

Thanks to 'liberals,' we live in an age of race obsession. Almost everyone and everything is 'racist' these days.

Story here (and it is no joke):

According to the [Seattle] Times, Councilmember Larry Gossett “said he didn’t like the idea of power-washing the sidewalks because it brought back images of the use of hoses against civil-rights activists.”

The article did not reveal Gossett's race. It turns out he's black.

Isn't it profoundly racist for the the author not to mention Gossett's race so that blacks can get the credit they deserve for having among them a man of his great sensitivity and compassion?

Bourgeois Norms and Race

This from an alt-right correspondent. My responses in blue. For the record, I am not alt-right, neo-reactionary, or dissident right (except for my contempt for the yap-and-scribble, do-nothing, anti-Trump, elitist, bow-tie brigade).

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As part of my ongoing attempt to nudge you further to the right . . . consider these "life-enhancing bourgeois values preached by Amy Wax". In your earlier entry on this topic you say:

Now let me see if I understand this. The bourgeois values and norms are 'racist' because blacks are incapable of studying, working hard, deferring gratification, controlling their exuberance, respecting legitimate authority and the like? But surely blacks are capable of these things. So who are the 'racists' here? The conservatives who want to help blacks by teaching them values that are not specifically white, but universal in their usefulness, or the leftists who think blacks incapable of assimilating such values?

I'm sure that almost all blacks are capable of deferred gratification and hard work (etc.) to some degree. And I'm sure that many are capable of being 'bourgeois' to pretty much the same degree as typical white people. But is it sure that blacks as a group, on the whole, are capable of exhibiting these virtues and being inspired by these bourgeois values to the same degree as whites, on the whole?

BV: But I didn't say that blacks as a group are equally as capable as whites as a group at deferring gratification, saving and investing, avoiding drugs and crime, etc. I don't believe that this is the case as a matter of empirical fact at the present time. I merely said that they are capable of these things, and in fairly large numbers. So I'd say you are attacking a straw man here. My present view is that blacks as a group are capable of deferring gratification, etc. but not to the same degree as whites, and that for this very reason it is important to preach the values that Amy Wax and her colleague preach.

I assume that people of good will want every group to do as well as it can.

My question is why leftists object so ferociously to Wax and Co. What explains this? My reader has an explanation. He begins with the fact that blacks are not as good as whites at implementing the bourgeois values that make for success. Given this fact,

. . . it might also be 'racist' in a sense to demand that all groups embrace these bourgeois values. Maybe it just doesn't come naturally, or as naturally, to all of these groups. It's not 'racist' in the idiotic SJW sense, of course. But maybe a proper respect for distinct varieties of human nature does require us to let different groups live in the ways that they find natural and comfortable and reasonable. An analogy with sex differences might help. It's not 'sexist' to have different expectations for men and women in many areas of life. Just because we expect men to support themselves and protect their families, and we tend to look down on men who won't or can't do these things, it doesn't follow that we should have the same expectations of women–or that we should never tell men to 'be a man about it' or 'man up' (or whatever) just because we don't talk that way to women. Just because we expect women to be nurturing and empathetic, and we frown on women who don't want to spend lots of time with their young children, it doesn't follow that we should have exactly the same expectations of men. Since they tend to have different abilities and interests, a reasonable society allows for some differences in expectations and norms appropriate to their different strengths and weaknesses.

BV: The idea that my correspondent is floating seems to be that it is 'racist' to demand or even suggest to a racial group that it behave in ways that don't come all that naturally to it even if those ways of behaving would benefit them enormously. My suggestion, above, was the opposite, namely, that it is 'racist' not to suggest that they behave in these 'bourgeois' ways. For then you are falsely denying, on racial grounds, that they can improve their lot by implementing life-enhancing values.

This brings me back to one of my standard complaints: people sling the world 'racism' around with no preliminary clarification as to what it is supposed to mean.

Still it's true that if people are going to live in a bourgeois society where these particular virtues and values are pretty important, and often necessary for having a decent life, then everyone will have to act like a typical bourgeois white European. And yet, if my hypothesis about group differences is true, this would be especially hard for some groups–a problem or obstacle that only some groups have to deal with. Maybe a more humane and sustainable policy would be to let these groups live differently, let them have their own societies, where different norms are accepted. These societies wouldn't have to be purely race- or ethnic-based. You could have an explicitly bourgeois society, where it's understood that people who just won't or can't live by these particular values are not wanted; you could have some other, non-bourgeois society with a different understanding. But inevitably the first one would be predominantly white (with some north Asians). Is this a rejection of 'universal values' in your view? I'm not sure. In a sense, yes it is–but then rejection of 'universal values' in that sense seems reasonable, or just as reasonable as rejection of 'universal values' with respect to the sexes. What do you think?

BV: I stick to my assertion that bourgeois virtues and values are universal in the sense that all people of whatever race can profit by their acquisition and implementation. But it doesn't follow that all groups are equally good at their acquisition and implementation. What I oppose is the notion that these virtues and values are inherently white, whatever that might mean. Do whites own them? Does 'whitey' own them such that if a black studies, improves himself, works hard, saves, invests, buys a house, etc. then he is guilty of 'cultural appropriation' in some pejorative sense?

I say the virtues and values in question are no more white than the theorem of Pythagoras of Samos is 'Samosian.'

The True and the Good are universal.

Time to Defund the NFL

Some important points re: the NFL flag and anthem controversy.

1) In its third clause, the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech or of the press." This protects the U. S. citizen from any attempt from the side of the U. S. government to squelch free expression. It does not protect a citizen who is in the employ of a private concern from attempts by the employer to limit speech or expression. The kneeling football players while on the field of play have no First Amendment free speech rights. Their employers may fire them just as Google was within its legal rights when it fired James Damore.

The difference is that Google was morally wrong for firing an engineer who spoke the politically incorrect truth, while the club owners are morally wrong if they do not fire the overpaid, disrespectful football players.

2) What the kneelers appear to be protesting is imaginary. Jason Riley:

The players have said they are protesting the unjust treatment of blacks by law enforcement and cite the spate of police shootings that have come to light in recent years. Team owners and NFL officials will have to decide whether to continue indulging such behavior on company time, but the larger question is whether what is being protested has some basis in reality beyond anecdotes and viral videos on social media.

Hard data, however, shows that the protests are hollow. Heather Mac Donald:

The FBI released its official crime tally for 2016 today [25 September 2017], and the data flies in the face of the rhetoric that professional athletes rehearsed in revived Black Lives Matter protests over the weekend. Nearly 900 additional blacks were killed in 2016 compared with 2015, bringing the black homicide-victim total to 7,881. Those 7,881 “black bodies,” in the parlance of Ta-Nehisi Coates, are 1,305 more than the number of white victims (which in this case includes most Hispanics) for the same period, though blacks are only 13 percent of the nation’s population. The increase in black homicide deaths last year comes on top of a previous 900-victim increase between 2014 and 2015.

3) Whether or not the kneelers have anything real to protest, they of course have a right to their opinion. They ought to express it in the proper venue. They also have a moral obligation to get the facts straight and form correct opinions, an obligation they are not fulfilling.

4) Just as the kneelers have a right to their opinion, as foolish and destructive as it is, President Trump has a right to his sane and reasonable one: "Fire the sons of bitches!" My thought exactly. His expression is harsh but justified. There is such a thing as righteous anger.

5) The vicious and destructive Left promotes the lie that Trump's call for a firing of the louts is 'racist.' Not at all. If you believe that lie, you are not only stupid, but vile and deserve moral condemnation.

The kneelers are both white and black, and even if they were all black, race doesn't come into it. The kneelers are being condemned for their lack of civility, their disrespect for the USA, it values, its flag, its anthem, its war heroes, and for injecting politics into what ought to be an apolitical event.

There was a jackass on Tucker Carlson's show the other night who absurdly claimed that 'Fire the sons of bitches" is code for 'Fire the niggers." That is beneath refutation, but it does indicate what scum leftists are.

6) There is also the issue of federal, state, and local subsidies of football franchises using tax dollars. And it is not just the misuse of public funds to build stadiums. The NFL gets billions in subsidies from U. S. taxpayers. That ought to anger you even if you are a football fan. Football is of interest only to some people, does not serve the common good, lowers the general level of a culture, and its subsidy to the benefit of some is not part of the legitimate functions of government.

7) The NFL and the scumbags of the Left don't care what you think and will ignore what you have to say, no matter how reasonable. The only effective way to punish this collection of bastards is by defunding them. Boycott the games and don't buy the merchandise. If you really must watch the game of football, watch the college variety.

Is Every Racist a White Supremacist?

'White supremacist' is becoming the Left's smear word of choice eclipsing even 'racist.' This leads to an interesting question: Is every racist a white supremacist? That depends on what you think a racist is.

On one definition, a member of a race is a racist if he harbors an irrational hatred of the members of some other race just in virtue of their membership in that other race. It follows that blacks who harbor an irrational hatred of whites just in virtue of their being white are racists. But presumably few if any of them would count as white supremacists, on any reasonable definition of the latter.

To answer the title question: it is not the case that every racist is a white supremacist; with few exceptions black racists are not white supremacists.

Now what I have just written has a tongue-in-cheek flavor. I am not seriously trying to straighten out any 'progressive' loon. For surely it would be absurd to invoke reason in the Left's lunatic asylum. It would be absurd to point out to a race-obsessed 'progressive' that 'racist' and 'white supremacist' have different meanings.

Race obsession is a cognitive aberration of leftist group-thinkers. These sick people need therapy, not refutation or calm analysis.

A ‘Progressive’ Paradox: Leftists Stuck in the Past Over Race

Leftists like to call themselves 'progressives.' We can't begrudge them their self-appellation any more than we can begrudge the Randians their calling themselves 'objectivists.' Every person and every movement has the right to portray himself or itself favorably and self-servingly.

But if you are progressive, why are you stuck in the past when it comes to race? Progress has been made in this area; why do you deny the progress that has been made? Why do you hanker after the old days?

It is a bit of a paradox: 'progressives' routinely accuse conservatives of wanting to 'turn back the clock,' on a number of issues such as abortion. But they do precisely that themselves on the question of race relations. They apparently yearn for the bad old Jim Crow days of the 1950s and '60s when they had truth and right on their side and the conservatives of those days were either wrong or silent or simply uncaring. Those great civil rights battles were fought and they were won, in no small measure due to the help of whites including whites such as Charlton Heston whom the Left later vilified. (In this video clip Heston speaks out for civil rights.) Necessary reforms were made. But then things changed and the civil rights movement became a hustle to be exploited for fame and profit and power by the likes of the race-baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Read almost any race screed at The Nation and similar lefty sites and you wil find endless references to slavery and lynchings and Jim Crow as if these things are still with us. You will read how Trayvon Martin is a latter-day Emmett Till et cetera ad nauseam.

For a race-hustler like Jesse Jackson, It Is Always Selma Again. Brothers Jesse and Al and Co. are stuck inside of Selma with the Oxford blues again.

In case you missed the allusions, they are to Bob Dylan's 1962 Freewheelin' Bob Dylan track, "Oxford Town" and his 1966 Blonde on Blonde track, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again."

Wake up you 'progressive' Rip van Winkles! It is not 1965 any more.

Higher Education or Higher Enstupidation?

In case you haven't yet had your fill of academic insanity, take a gander at Heather MacDonald's Higher Ed's Latest Taboo is 'Bourgeois Norms.'

Apparently, such norms are white-supremacist, misogynistic, and homophobic. And what norms might these be? Why, "hard work, self-discipline, marriage and respect for authority."

Apparently you are a 'racist' if you advise blacks to "Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. . . . Eschew substance abuse and crime."

As stupid as this is, it perhaps gives us a clue as to the 'liberal' criterion of racism: Something is racist if it is something blacks can't do. So deferring gratification, working hard, saving and investing, refraining from looting, showing respect for legitimate authority are all racist because blacks as a group have a hard time doing these things.

To promote and recommend these life-enhancing values and norms is to 'dis' their 'culture.' After all, all cultures are equally good, equally conducive to human flourishing, right?

Are these the implications here? I'm just asking. I am trying to understand. I am trying to get into the liberal head. So far it seems like diving into a bucket of shit. Or am I being unfair? Am I missing something?

There is no Systemic Racism

The Democrat Party is a party of race-hustlers. Clear proof of this is their endlessly repeated lie about 'systemic' or 'structural' or 'institutional' racism. David Horowitz, Big Agenda (Humanix, 2017), p. 51:

While institutional or systemic racism has been illegal in America for 50 years, the 2016 Democratic Party platform promises that "Democrats will fight to end institutional and systemic racism in our society." There is no evidence that such racism actually exists. It is asserted in a sleight of hand that attributes every statistical disparity affecting allegedly "oppressed" groups to prejudice against them because of their identity. This "prejudice," however, is a progressive myth. This is not to say that there aren't individuals who are prejudiced. But there is no systemic racism in America's institutions, and if there is, it is already illegal and easily remedied.

The Dem's race-obsession is an amazing thing to behold. With every passing day it becomes more insane. An Asian man becomes the focus of a controversy because his surname 'Lee,' which is a mere sound-preserving transliteration of some Asian characters, reminds some idiots of Robert E. Lee. Soon thereafter, a banana peel ignites a controversy at Ole Miss. One can only hope that the Dems keep it up and destroy themselves. They have found that playing the race card has gotten them what they want in many cases. But they need to think twice about transforming every card in the deck into a race card. For while the leaders of the party are extremists, many of the rank and file retain a modicum of common sense.