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"Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Paul Street at Sep 16, 2005

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Here (below) is the next and only other chapter from my aborted past race manuscript (see my last post) that I want to put up. It's about the loaded class-race issue of affirmative action and you will notice again I do not think you can fully understand race or class alone --- without the other --- in the American experience.... For what it's worth, I will be talking about race (and class and empire/foreign policy and gender and...) in my next position as a visiting history professor. I do all the unjust authority structures and their interrelatedness...a far and radical cry from the narrow "identity politics" of which I am so falsely accused..... CHAPTER THREE: THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONTROVERSY Understood to mean special hiring and school-admission preferences for racial and ethnic minorites and women, affirmative action has sparked more political controversy than any other Amercian racial policy during the last 35 years. From its emergence as a consequence of and elite response to the civil rights struggles and urban race riots of the mid-and late-1960s, affirmative action has provided something of a litmus test for measuring Americans' perspective on race and race relations in the United States. Those who believe that racism continues to provide a major obstacle to black equality tend to be in favor of affirmative action for African-Americans. Those who think that the US has essentially achieved color-blind equality of opportunity for its black citizens tend to oppose affirmative actin for blacks. Not surprisingly given the racial perception gap mentioned in the last chapter, public opinion for or against affirmative action tends to divide sharply along racial lines. A poll conducted by CBS and the New York Times in December 1997, for example, asked 1,258 Americans what they thought should happen to affirmative action programs for women and minorities over the next few years. Eighty percent of the 173 black respondents said that affirmative action but there was a sharp racial divide. Eighty percent of the 173 black respondents but just 35 percent of the 933 whites polled said that affirmative action programs should be continued. An additional 45 percent of whites felt that affirmative action programs should be phased out and 13 percent said the programs should be ended immediately. Still, American public opinion on affirmative action is far from black and white, either racially or ideologically. A considerable number of American whites support the policy. More than a few African-Americans, including one current justice on the U.S. Supreme Court (Clarence Thomas), oppose affirmative action. Many who believe that blacks are still significantly victimized by racism see affirmative action as counterproductive and misguided policy that actually deepens black subordination and the the social and economic stigma of race. Others are sympathetic to affirmative action for African-Americans but think that the policy should be at once broadened and decolorized to include special preferences for people of economically disadvantaged backgrounds regardless of their race, ethnicity, language or nationality. The phrase affirmative action dates from the centuries-old legal concept of equity. Under that concept, justice is often best achieved not by rigidly following strict legal rules in all cases but my implementing what is fair in each particular situation. The phrase affirmative action first appeared in American policy history as part of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. In that important piece of labor legislation, it meant than an employer found to be discriminating against union members would have to stop discriminating and also take affirmative action to employ the victims of discrimination in the positions they would have held without the employer's anti-union bias. In the spheres of American race relations and civil rights policy, the term affirmative action first appeared in an executive order that was issued by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and slightly revised by President Johnson in 1965. This order required that businesses holding contracts with federal government not discriminate and also take “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” An important section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act empowered courts to order affirmative action in cases where an employers was intentionally engaged in the denial of employment and promotion on the basis of race. As originally formulated in these federal rules, affirmative action was not connected to the idea of special preferences for African-Americans or any other disadvantaged group. It meant only that government would direct employers to undertake corrective actions to ensure that their employment policies were technically color-blind and that employers rewarded and punished employees solely on the basis of workers' individual attributes without regard to race and other group distinctions. It was concerned mainly with cases of intentional racial discrimination on the part of employers. As it developed in the courts, workplaces, colleges, and in federal civil rights agencies, however, affirmative action came to mean race-conscious rather than color-blind policy. Affirmative action came to refer to a model of hiring and higher-educational admissions whereby employers and unviersitites hire, promote, and admit with an awareness that race is a real and relevant group distinction. It meant that employers would recruit, hire, retain, and promote an adequate “representative” number of racial minorities rather than just treat each prospective worker or student as an individual. Affirmative action de-emphasizes concern with discriminatory racist intent on the part of individual employers or academic and to empahsize the achievement of proportionate overall representation of minorities in workplaces, occupations, and educational institutions. It has tended to de-emphasize or at least qualify accepted standards and traditional “white” and “middle class” concepts of merit. Affirmative action's advocates have tended to argue that these race-conscious departures from standard color-blind ideals are necessary to compensate African-Americans for the crippling legacy of institutional and cultural racism in the US – the long history of negative and hardly color-blind anti-preferential treatment that blacks have received at the hands of the majority population. They have also tended to note that many special preferences continue to exist in American society (hiring preferences for veterans and admissions preferences to the children of alumni at prestigious Ivy League schools for example) and generate nothing like the cloud of controversy that surrounds affirmative action for blacks. Legally, affirmative action for blacks has been on the defensive for at least the last 13 years. The policy was first upheld by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1978 case Bakke v. The Regents of the University of California. While the decision ruled against the use of numerical quotas to reserve a specific number of seats for blacks, it accepted the use of racial preferences for minorities in university admissions. The Bakke ruling maintained that the inclusion of black and other minority students would Ten years later in City of Richmond v. Croson, however, the Court concluded that affirmative action was “a highly suspect tool” for enforcing equal opportunity. In responding to a lawsuit challenging Richmond, Virginia's practice of setting aside 30% of the city construction funds for black owned firms, the Court ruled that affirmative action must be subject to “strict scrutiny,” meaning that it is unconstitutional unless racial discrimination can be definitely proven to be “widespread throughout a particular industry.” A legal lightning bolt flashed in March 1996, when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Hopwood v. The University of Texas Law School suspended University of Texas' affirmative action program, ruling that Bakke was invalid and that racial preferences of any sort are unconstitutional. The 5th Circuit Court ruled that racial diversity in education was not a legitimate public goal. The U.S, Supreme Court let the ruling stand by refusing to hear challenges and in 1997 the Texas Attorney General announced that all “Texas public universities [should' employ race-neutral criteria.” That same year, California voters enacted Proposition 209, which banned all forms of affirmative action in the state and the state of Washington followed with a similar referendum in 1998. Florida Governor Jeb Bush banned race as a factor in college admission at public universities in his state in February 2000. The highest court in the land has yet to make a definitive post-Bakke ruling on these recent state measures. As this book goes to print, however, it is preparing to rule on racial admission preferences at the University of Michigan. That university has so far received two very different rulings from federal – one upholding affirmative action as a tool for increasing diversity in the university's undergraduate student body and the other shooting down the use of affirmative for that (or any other purpose) at the university's law school. While the policy itself is now very much on the political and legal defensive, the intellectual debate about affirmative action remains alive and well. In what follows, we will view just a few of the key flash points in a remarkably wide-ranging and multi-colored dialogue about one of the most hotly contested social policy issues in United State history. 1. Affirmative action for blacks is politically doomed in the United states because the notion of preferential treatment and targeted outcomes for a specific racially defined group violates basic American values. For: The essence of the American value system is a strong belief in open and fair competition between and among individuals regardless of group identification. This American Creed embraces equal opportunity but does not endorse efforts to generate equality of results between and among different different groups. If there is one universally held idea in American political culture, it is “utilitarian individualism.” This idea holds that the good society emerges from the free competition of self-interested individuals. Americans see their country as a purely individualistic and color-clind land of opportunity in which meritocracy rules: one deserves all that one can attain only on the basis of their purely individual talent and effort. The only legitimate guarantee granted to Americans is a “fair shake” in the competitive pursuit of wealth and happiness. Because affirmative action violates these core principles it has never received majority support in the U.S. It arose only the very unusual circumstances of the 1960s, as an effort by top policymakers and employers to find a way to quell the racial violence and related urban disorders of that decade the current decline in the policy's legal status is consistent with its underlying unpopularity, which is rooted in the individualist American Creed. Against: Beyond the official American story line of color-blind individualism and equal opportunity, American history has witnessed more than 350 years of special negative preference (deprivation) for blacks. That dark history has created black social and economic conditions and capacities so dire that the concept of equal opportunity is simply insufficient for African-Americans. Centuries of discrimination against blacks have called for decades of discrimination in favor of blacks in order to level the playing field. As then-President Lyndon Baines Johnson put it in 1965, “you do not take a person hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say ‘you are free to compete with all the others' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” At the same time, it is disturbing and suggestive of racial double standards on the parts of affirmative action's critics that other forms of preferential hiring and academic admissions persist relatively free of public criticism. Examples include the relatively uncontroversial practices of giving preferences to military veterans in government hiring, preferential hiring and promotion of family members and relatives (nepotism) in the private sector, and glaringly elitist “legacy admissions” in the nation's leading colleges and universities. Under standard practice, schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton give special admissions preference to the sons and daughters of their alumni, who happen to very predominantly wealthy and white. It is perfectlty legitimate and understandable for blacks to think in terms of group demands, grievances, and solutions like affirmative action. Group identity has been essentially imposed on African-Americans by longstanding racism. For most of American history it has worked to blacks' profound disadvantage and it is only right that for once it work to their advantage. 2. Affirmative action is invalid because it simply replicates through inversion the evil of racial discrimination to which it claims to be opposed. For: In America whites once set themselves apart from blacks and claimed special privileges for themselves while denying them to others. Now, through affirmative action, blacks do the same. If it was unfair to treat blacks unfairly, it is equally wrong to give them preference and thereby to treat whites unfairly. Affirmative action unjustly tilts a by-now-level playing field in African-Americans' direction. Under its rules, whites are wrongly punished for the social and political sins of earlier generations of whites. It is especially unfair to single out whites for “reverse discrimination” in a period of history when the evil of white racism has been corrected. Now that equal opportunity has been granted to blacks, society has no legitimate for punishing whites. As many whites like to say in criticizing affirmative action, “Why should I suffer? My family didn't enslave anyone and I'm not a racist.” Two wrongs don't make a right Against: It is highly misleading to equate the discrimination that some whites have experienced at the hands of affirmative action during the last three decades with the centuries of discrimination experienced by African-Americans. The two forms of “unfairness” simply aren't equivalent. Blacks have been subjected to nearly two-and-a-half centuries of enslavement and then more than a century of third-class citizenship. They have suffered rampant legalized discrimination, severe economic exploitation, education deprivation, toxic cultural shaming, and more. The real-world playing field, moreover, remains heavily tilted for whites and against blacks. Nearly a half century after Brown v. Board of Education, for example, black children tend, through no choice of their own, to attend highly segregated primary and secondary schools that are less well-funded, equipped, and taught than those attended by whites. It has also been demonstrated repeatedly that the standardized tests, which play such a key role in determining who goes to what colleges are heavily, biased in favor of people of more affluent and white backgrounds. The SAT and ACT primarily measure accidents like birth, social status, race, and access to libraries, museums, travel, and opportunity to take expensive ACT and SAT preparation classes, not innate ability or actual merit. Finally, critics of affirmative action often fail to see the fundamental difference in the thinking and goals behind affirmative action's “reverse racism” and the original white racism that made affirmative action necessary in the first place. Discrimination against whites under affirmative action is the unavoidable product of a policy whose primary goal is to cure the historical cancer of racism. Nothing of the sort can be said for the ideas that advanced and justified the unfairness experienced by blacks since the 17th century in America. Like chemotherapy, affirmative action is strong medicine whose harmful side effects (in this case reverse discrimination against whites) are unavoidable in order to cure the larger cancer – a system of racism designed for and by whites. Equating affirmative action's reverse discrimination with historical white racism is to equate a cure with the disease. 3. Affirmative action has caused more harm than benefit to the black community. For: The practice of giving special preference to blacks hurts the black community in number of ways. It attacks black self-esteem by operating on the condescending assumption that African-Americans are incapable of achieving on the basis of their own individual merit. It subjects successful blacks to the widespread suspicion among that they owe their position not to their abilities or hard work but to special favors. It feeds negative white stereotypes about black abilities by placing certain African-Americans in positions they are not ready to successfully fill. It feeds white political hostility to the cause of color-blind equal opportunity for blacks by creating resentment especially among economically disadvantaged whites who see no reason why they should not enjoy special compensatory preference extended to even middle-class blacks. Ironically, while contemporary black civil rights organizations tend to strongly defend the policy, many early civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, were very dubious about the political wisdom of embracing racial preferences for blacks. They felt that such preferences were likely to alienate large numbers of whites and destroy their commitment to the fundamentally color-blind goals of the civil rights movement. Affirmative action creates the illusion of a sweeping societal change that has put all blacks on an equal footing with whites. In reality, however, it has worked primarily to the advantage of a small minority of economically privileged African-Americans. This elite minority within a minority has become increasingly removed, socially and geographically for the urban mass of highly disadvantaged blacks. The later no longer benefit, as they once did, from the visible role models, assistance, and race leadership that the black middle-class used to provide to the entire black community when that class lived in greater proximity and acted in greater concert with poor blacks. Meanwhile, in an age when their mostly unskilled labor power is no longer valued, the truly disadvantaged black masses suffer continue to suffer profound economic and cultural deficits – including poor schools, low job skills, weak family structures, widespread substance abuse, rampant incarceration and more – that place them in no position to take meaningful advantage of the opportunities afforded by affirmative action. Against: To argue that affirmative action divides blacks and whites is to forget that policy never would have been developed if the races had not been so divided in the first place. To argue that affirmative action leads whites to see blacks as inferior is to ignore that it arose to cure the effects of the prejudice that gave rise to that stereotype in the first place. To say that affirmative action hurts its black beneficiaries' self-esteem is to beg the question of white racism's certainly greater and more powerful challenges to blacks' ability to love themselves and each other. It is also to ignore polling data showing that only 4 percent of well-off African-Americans – the most likely segment of the black population to have benefited from affirmative action – think that the policy hurts blacks. The notion that affirmative action has placed blacks in academic and occupational places they are not prepared to handle finds little support in an exhaustive research project conducted by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The foundation looked at the student records, career outcomes, and life histories of more than 80,000 students admitted to 28 selective colleges in the Fall semesters of 1951, 1971 and 1989. Written up in William G. Bowen and Derek Bok's widely read and critically acclaimed book The Shape of the River (1998), this project found that black students admitted to prestigious schools through affirmative action came in with strong educational backgrounds and abilities, graduated in large numbers, and did very well after leaving college. It also discovered that affirmative action improved both black and white students' ability to live and work with people of other races. There is little evidence that the contemporary black middle class is any more isolated from or antagonistic to their less privileged fellow African-Americans than in previous eras. It is clear, however, that successful blacks are much more likely to donate time, money, service to poor black communities than privileged whites are to assist poor communities of any color. The best response to the fact that many blacks are unable to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by affirmative action is not to abolish racial preferences. It is, rather, to raise the floor of opportunity for the truly disadvantaged African-Americans with improved public education, job training, job expansion, and the like. 4. Affirmative action for blacks and other minorities in college admissions should be replaced by a policy that changes the criterion for college admissions preferences from race to socioeconomic status. Affirmative action in this area should be changed from a race- to a class-based preference. For: Granted that true equal opportunity does not actually exist in America and that an advantaged elite enjoys the greatest amount of real opportunity, the disadvantage suffered by the mass of non-elite people is less racial than socioeconomic. It is both wrong and preposterous for college admissions offices to privilege the son or daughter of a wealthy black doctor over a white child whose parents are coal miners and high school drop outs. Since blacks are disproportionately poor relative to whites, moreover, an admissions policy based on economic class will tend to generate a large number of black college students. It will achieve increased black representation – the main goal of race-based affirmative action – without causing the alienation of whites from the goal of black equality that is generated by racially specific affirmative action. It will provide ground for alliance and cooperation between economically disadvantaged people of different skin color, something that would be conducive to the advocacy of policies that help the black community's significant number of truly disadvantaged people. Against: Class inequality is a significant barrier to equal opportunity for tens of millions of economically disadvantaged American whites and blacks. Still, race continues to be a significant disadvantage even for the minority of blacks who are otherwise privileged in American society. Thanks to persistent racial discrimination and bias, even middle- and upper class blacks and their children continue to experience significantly diminished access to opportunity, especially when compared to whites of the same socioeconomic status. Racism is a persistent fact of American culture, independent of social and economic status. Its effects are reduced by the acquisition of wealth but they are still great enough in numerous key areas, (including access to housing, quality education, jobs, loans, services, and more) to justify racially specific compensation regardless of socioeconomic status. At the same time, it is very unlikely that shifting from race-sensitive to class-based admissions would help black college admissions or black status in general. Universities would find such an approach very hard to pay for, since admitting poor students usually requires significant outlays of needs-based financial assistance by colleges. It would add little to black college enrollments since blacks make up less than a third of all the poor children in the country. To make matters worse, poor blacks are much less likely than poor whites to excel in school. This means that class-based admissions would be much more likely to help whites than blacks. Class based admissions, finally, would make it more difficult for the most selective colleges and universities to recruit the most talented black students to be prepared for positions of leadership in government, business, and the professions. Those students tend to come from relatively privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. 3651 words Questions Q. What precisely is the policy called affirmative action and how has the meaning of the phrase and policy changed over time? Q. Opponents of affirmative action claim that it stands in hopeless conflict with core American social and political values past and present? Do you agree or disagree? Why? Q. Have you ever heard a friend, relative, neighbor or immediate family member express an opinion about affirmative action for African-Americans? Carry out a survey of family, friends, neighbors and/or classmates. Do you find differences in their knowledge about and/or attitude towards affirmative action? If yes, how do you explain those differences? Q. What brought affirmative action for African-Americans into being? Why did it emerge, in your opinion? Q. How do you explain the highly controversial nature of affirmative action? Who tends to support affirmative action and who tends to oppose it? Is the difference in opinion purely racial? Q. How would you describe the current legal status of affirmative action for African-Americans? Use a library or the Internet to find descriptions of the key court cases from Bakke to the present and construct a time line showing the trajectory of legal interpretation on this important issue. Q. Imagine that you are a new black student at a prestigious university like Harvard or Princeton and that affirmative action is at least part of why you gained admission. Would you be willing to tell your classmates? Why or why not? Would you make a distinction between white and black students in terms of what you revealed? If so, why? Q. Imagine that you are a white student with high ACT and/or SAT scores who was turned down for admission at the leading university in your state and that you had good reason to believe that African-Americans with lower test scores had been admitted at least in part because of affirmative action? Would your consider yourself a victim of reverse discrimination? Would you undertake legal action against the university? Explain your reasons for your response. Q. List and describe three other forms of group-based preferential treatment besides affirmative action for blacks in America. Evaluate these group preferences in comparison with affirmative action. On what basis do you find each of them either more or less justified than affirmative action for African-Americans? Q. Imagine that you are an employer in a metropolitan area that is half-black and half-white. Imagine further that your workforce is only 5 percent African-American. Would you make an effort to increase the black percentage of your workforce? If no, say why. If yes, say why and what methods would you use to bring that increase about? Would those methods include affirmative action? Why or why not? Q. Some opponents criticize affirmative action as reverse discrimination, arguing that “two wrongs don't make a right.” Do you agree or disagree? Provide evidence for your opinion. Q. On what grounds do opponents of affirmative action for blacks claim that the policy produces more harm than benefit for African-Americans? Do you agree? Why or why not? Q. On what grounds do some opponents of affirmative action for blacks argue that it should be replaced by preferences for economically disadvantaged persons, regardless of race? Do you are or disagree? Why? Q. Has affirmative action achieved its basic goals in the United States?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Mjc7373, Mcorbin at Oct 05, 2005 10:43 AM
Calvin and cryofan: You guys are not fooling anyone here, except perhaps yourselves, with your racist ideologies poorly masked as concern for anything or anyone. I just can't read anymore of your post without pointing out the obvious.

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Person

Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Oct 04, 2005 22:17 PM
"What do you do, Calvin? " You don't want to know. Given the stuffs he posts I would rather he just trolls on the internet. But then agian if he posts his exploita he would probably be in jail.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Oct 04, 2005 09:46 AM
"Wholly mainstream and conservative sources" When did I ever claim that your opinions were not entirely mainstream? The idea that spouting the fashionable orthodoxy of the day more fervantly than the majority of the sheep somehow makes you the internet equivalent of Che Guevera is your delusion not mine. Culture Terrorism, the covert Communist assault on Western European civilization, has dominated Western academia since the sixties. Apostates are supressed with the same degree of diligence once employed by the Catholic Church. I'm not, for this reason, greatly impressed by your ability to cite "mainstream" sources, especially when you are unable to convincingly verify most of the "facts" which back up their dreary screeds. Facts like; The NOPD "is" White, highly contentuous; Islam conquered Europe, bullshit; Botswana's developement was retarded by colonialism, the opposite of the truth. I hope you continue to enjoy grazing on the designated pastures of knowledge Freddy. An original thought might bring you into confrontation with authority. I don't think you could handle that.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Oct 02, 2005 23:34 PM
Freddy, I know you yanks don't know much about geography, so let me tell you a little bit about Europe. Europe is a vast geo-pokitical area which is divided into regions, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Islam, at various points in History, was in possesion of Spain, Greece and the Balkan states, therefore, Islam was sometimes in control of some parts of Europe. Islam never conquered Europe. If you want a citation I suggest a childrens atlas of world history. BTW, it is laughably obvious that you consulted an online dictionary for your definition of "solipsism" and that you have no understanding of the difference between its meaning in use and its narrow literal meaning. You are a pseud who has stockpiled a vast armoury of left-wing nonsense which you plagiarize without mercy or understanding. Please, please tell about the Islamic conquest of Germany, where the ruined mosques of Italy are or how the faithful flocked to the call of the muezzein in fifteenth century London. Show me your cites which name the great Islamic generals who invaded and subjugated Scotland, Holland and Switzerland. I can't wait Freddy.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Oct 02, 2005 20:14 PM
Yawn! No Freddy, I meant solipsistic in the sense that your arguments are driven by a personal agenda and free of objective asessement. "is to see if points if are rebutted. If I have more material, it means there are likely to be more points out there that you do not address. If you continue to not address it" If you are going to post gibberish like that I'd advise you to cut out the crap about spelling. "A population density problem is relative. Depending on culture, economy, polity, technology, terrain, etc. the same area could be crowded or not crowded" It's a great pity you don't have an argument to back up your claim that Botswana has one, perhaps that's because they don't Freddy. Botswana doesn't have a population density problem; Islam did not conquer Europe; your posts are replete with equally bogus assertions which make your conclusions baseless. You need help Freddy.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Oct 02, 2005 04:18 AM
Your posts are longer than mine so therefore you are right? I get publications from the Jehovas witnesses which are at least ten times as long as your posts, so that means that the Jehovas witnesses must be ten times smarter than you? No it doesn't, because in both cases an avalanche of bad evidence, false facts and solipsistic reasoning, is no antidote to a few simple truths. In point of fact you need to posit your arguments in prolixious screeds of contorted reasoning, because of your a priori violation of the principle of scientific parsimony. "Which remains relevant how? Urbanization and crowding are serious problems at population densities below Botswana's" FC So Botswana, which is a beef exporter, and has a habitable landmass which is about 16% of France, with a population which is about 3.5% of France's, has a population density problem? No it doesn't Freddy. "Islam conquered Europe" No it didn't Freddy. That's all I have to say Freddy. I don't need reams of citations because you are simply wrong on both points. These two assertions are as good examples as any of the generally laughable quality of your "evidence". Islam inherited the classical world, conquered Europe and invented science. Why did the renaissance take place in Europe then Freddy?

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Person

Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Oct 01, 2005 12:58 PM
Bong: "Aristotle in fact articulated the essence of the scientific spirit. Yet those stuffy European scholars managed to not only miss this marvelous gift but basardized it into its exact opposite, a personality cult that retarded science for a few centries" The "cult" of Aritotle was a stage in European intellectual development. Can you point me in the direction of an Islamic reformation or the Islamic enlightenment Bong? Islam is a stagnant Koranic pond. Europe is a softly flowing stream.

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Person

Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Oct 01, 2005 12:05 PM
Calvin: "Your entire output is a farcical example of the strawman fallacy..." Freddy; "Really? Where was your rebuttal to their social services? To the fact that they only have 16% inhabitable land? " Yes, really Freddy. My rebuttal was that although Botswana may only be 16% habitable this was mitigated by the fact that it only has a population of between one and a half and two million. Botswana is as big as France which has a population of about 60 million I think. You didn't say anything about social services. You, in fact, mentioned, "social justice". Is there any other point on which you haven't realised that you have had your ass kicked which you would like me to expound upon? In an argument one can either dispute specific claims, or posit alternative explanations Fred. For your edification positing an alternative explanation is not conceding a point. According to your last post there is a huge untapped market in financial service and housing provision for Blacks. Why don't you get together with your Znet buddies and start lending money and renting property to African-Americans? Sorry, I'll have to end this post. The tears of laughter are clouding my vision.

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Person

Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Oct 01, 2005 09:35 AM
"The medieval European Scholastics studied Aristotle, Euclid and Cicero. The West Africans studied the Koran" Interesting example. Aristotle taught that true knowledge came only through observations,--not religious dogmas or pronouncements by authorities. It was revolutionary in his time. But the medieval European Scholars managed to completely missed his point while "studying" him. They turned Aristotle himself into an infallible god, his every utterance was accepted without question.Appealing to the authority of Aristotle was supposed to be an adequate argument. Aristotle would have spinned in his grave had he knew he was turned into the father of all dogmas. Aristotle in fact articulated the essence of the scientific spirit. Yet those stuffy European scholars managed to not only miss this marvelous gift but basardized it into its exact opposite, a personality cult that retarded science for a few centries. There cannot be a better example of "Western" idiocy.Must be in their genes.

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Person

Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Oct 01, 2005 08:17 AM
I know many professional people: doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, teachers, engineers.. you name it. Most of them are fairly mediocre people. You don't need to be an Einstein to be a run of mill engineer.Being a G.P is not that challenging a job. Most lawyers don't ever appear in court and write aweful English. Perry Masion is just a TV show. Most professionals forget what they learned in school anyway because their daily work involves only a fraction of the knowledge. Ask your family doctor next time how often does he/she read medical journals and how much does he/she remember from medical school. Let's face it. We live in a mediocre world.Most people, if given the opportunity, can perform an adequate job. Selecting talent? You're cracking me up.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Oct 01, 2005 07:54 AM
"How can a programe which selects on race be more productive than a programe which selects on talent?" Whites have their own affirmative action programme. That is called the old boys network. I am not saying anyone who gets a job through connection is unqualified. Most people get jobs through connections of some kind anyway hence the word networking. The guys who read newspaper ads for jobs are called the unemployed. Having an initial hand up is important. The same principle applies to affirmative action. BTW, How many "programmes" in the real world actually select "talent". Get real. Most jobs in the real world don't require a lot of talent. Many artificial selection criteria exist just to weed out applicants. They are arbitrary and have nothing to with the job. Why do you need a high school diploma to be a sales clerk or drive a bus?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Oct 01, 2005 04:39 AM
"When you concede points," I haven't conceded any points. "you ignoring your ridiculous claim that none of Europe was ever conquered" I said Europe wasn't conquered. "Were the monasteries of Europe simply centers of Christian indoctrination?" The medieval European Scholastics studied Aristotle, Euclid and Cicero. The West Africans studied the Koran. "What let the Europeans conquer the world was stolen from the Chinese" That's a bit like attributing the invention of formula one racing cars to the nonadic steppe barbarians who first employed the wheel. "Elvis' house is ugly" The point being made was that no one dictates how wealthy Blacks spend their money. "No, job applicants are not just judged by formal qualifications" And Blacks tend to excel in every other major field which may be detrimental to your emplyment prospects. Its a racial pattern, not a racist pattern. "aff. action has been proven (as you've conceded) to produce as good or better students and workers" No I haven't. How can a programe which selects on race be more productive than a programe which selects on talent? "you also conceded numerous other barriers and difficulties Botswana faces and numerous other successes" No I didn't. Your entire output is a farcical example of the strawman fallacy. Feeble stuff Freddy!

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Bauerly, Mtbrad at Sep 30, 2005 23:06 PM
"It strikes me that most studies are carried out by academics and most academics are liberals. I'm not surprised that these studies findings tend to back up liberal beliefs about race." And liberals make up these fantasies about race for what reasons Calvin? Why would so many (this is a huge area of research in sociolgy, something I know about) studies all be riged to come to the same results, what purpose would this serve? Did liberals at the FHA also rig the results of morgage loan studies that showed a highly disproportionate number of loans to whites over blacks of equal qualifications? Good point bwong, just look to legacy policies at say Yale and you can see how some dip shit might graduate and go on to become president as a C student.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 30, 2005 20:31 PM
In race and class discussions emphasis is often put on equal opportunities to excel, but not enough is said about equal rights to screw up and be stupid. Since most people are medicore and make bad choices from time to time I think it's important to bring this up. For example, scholarship does not really level the playing field between the rich and poor in terms of access to higher education if tuitions are high. A poor student would have to be exceptional to get the scholarship in order to stay in the programme while her more affluent peers merely need to pass. The poor student does not have an equal opportunity to do poorly.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 30, 2005 19:51 PM
"...previous job performance, freedom from criminal convictions, a history of drug or alcohol addiction, employee references etc., are taken into account. Go check some statistical data . .." References and previous performance are subjective evaluations. Anyone with work experience knows skills at office politics often outweights work skills in getting good references. One can imagine what a racist supervisior like KKKalvin would say about his former black subordinate who needs a reference. Data show substance abuse is more prevalent among the white middle class but blacks are convicted more often. Even when a white and a black are convicted of the same charges the black convict is likely to get harsher sentence. Blacks are constantly judged by whites based on a double standard. "Whites" who behave badly are likely to get a second, third.. nth chance. Their bad behaviours don't tar all "whites". With blacks it is the opposite. Another golden rule is that the higher your economical status the more breaks you get and the more you can afford to fuck up. That puts blacks in a double whammy because they are also more likely to be poor.Here class and race converge. A white, middle class kid addicted to crack for a few years is "experimenting. Everyone forgives the folly of youth. But a black addict is likely viewed as a hard core criminal. This is clear to anyone who lives in the real world. "Liberal academics" only confirm the obvious with data.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 30, 2005 18:14 PM
"Far more of Africa was colonised by Islam than was Europe. The Europeans inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the Muslims". A lot of this "conquest" was actually conversion to a faith that better could mobilize the societal resources for purpose of war. After wich, the conquest just as well might go the other way. Ethiopias troubled border was to the south, no ? Aggressive nomads forcing nomadification of a more sedate and "cultured" society is an old story in the annals of human history. It obviously strikes Calvin that most studies are carried out by academics. This is indeed a sharp observation, and i would like to add, that most cars are repaired by mechanics. An interesting picture emerges here. Thanks Cal, for the insight. Hmm ! Most mechanics are football-fans. I strongly disagree with the influence budweiser has on carmanufacturers.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 30, 2005 17:06 PM
.To take your second point Freddy, that studies "prove" that Black job applicants are less likely to be hired than White job applicants, even when equally qualified. It strikes me that most studies are carried out by academics and most academics are liberals. I'm not surprised that these studies findings tend to back up liberal beliefs about race. If aficianados of porcine women conducted studies into female desirability these studies would, no doubt, "prove" that fat chicks were better in the bean bag , better cooks and far more sweet of temperament their more attenuated sisters. Even if your claim were true, which, taking into account affirmative action etc., I strongly doubt, you are still applying the one point fallacy just as you did with Botswana. You focused exclusivley on Botswanas GDP and "forgot" about its public health crisis and low general standard of living. Job applicants are not judged exclusively on formal qualification Freddy. When the formal qualifications of several applicants are equal, which is normal in a huge percentage of cases, especially in the low skilled and blue-collar sectors, factors such as previous job performance, freedom from criminal convictions, a history of drug or alcohol addiction, employee references etc., are taken into account. Go check some statistical data on racial disparity in these areas Freddy

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 30, 2005 12:14 PM
"You're totally conceding that the Mali, Songhai, Ghana and Ethiopans.......were superior to Europeans" Hello! When you are not resorting to brazen assertions of victory Freddy, you are inventing the surrender of your opponent. You are wrong in nearly every aspect of your historical analysis. Far more of Africa was colonised by Islam than was Europe. The Europeans inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the Muslims. The Songhai empire was an Islamic polity which was destroyed by Moroccan Arab invasion. Ethiopia had so much trouble with the tribes on its Southern borders that its Emperors were forced into a semi-nomadic existence.The only time Islam attempted to conquer Ethiopia it was saved the Portuguese. Mali did not have universities, as is claimed by revisionist establishment historians, it had centres of Islamic indoctrination. It is patently ludicrous to compare the Songhai Empire with 15th century Europe. It might, perhaps, be compared to the Empire of Charlegmagne which existed 700 years before it. Brutality is neither unique to Whites nor to their culture. Take a look at the behaviour of the Maori, the Huns, the Zulu, the Aztecs, etc., all of whom showed at least as much brutality as Europeans. We are very lucky that these "civilisations" lacked the creative genius and technological adeptness of Europeans. Your entire worldview is based on romantic fantasy Freddy. That's why I keep telling you to get real. Get real Freddy!

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 30, 2005 04:52 AM
But its true what Kalvin says. Black and white are different. As you vs me or scandinavians vs germans, but i already mentioned that. Comparing the irish underachievement vs the superiour english culture. The memes created while beeing underdog are dangerous. The Wise/Horrowitz was good:-)

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 30, 2005 04:18 AM
More sunlight from cucumbers Freddy? What you are basically saying is that White success is evidence of Black oppression. Why not take it further? Jews enjoy a higher than average standard of living than gentiles; are overrepresented in the professions; are overrepresented in American academic institutions and are overrepresented in government and in the media, so according to your logic Jews must be the worlds biggest oppressors. The real reason why Blacks are underrepresented at officer class in the NOPD and are also underrepresented in the middle and upper classes socially is the same. An excess of testosterone and a deficit of academic aptitude. Historically speaking the greatest Black civilisation you have to offer is the Songhai. As a contemporary example of Black achievement the best you can do is Botswana. White oppression is a poor excuse for 200,000 years of Black underachievement Freddie. As Bob Dylan said, "You don't need a weather man to know what way the wind blows", and I don't need spectrum analysis to know that Black people are different from White people.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 30, 2005 00:03 AM
Much of politickin can be summed up into two teories. The teory of institutional evil vs The teory of institutional stupidity. Were the Irish inferiour to the english race? Kalvin pointed to the irish being under the catholic church as a cause of less success. I find that a bit silly, considering the EUgrants given and all that, but a Religious Meme can be a heavy hand, just as it can be a gentle helper. Denying the POWER of religion is a dangerous thing. The memes used in institutional racism are similar to those described by Fannon pertaining colonialism. Debating with the word "whiteruled" is essentially same as the debatable genetic superiority of the irish riverdancer.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 29, 2005 18:48 PM
I don't particularly care about the racial make up of the NOPD. The fact that South African townships were run by back is not an argument that apartheid was not racist. That the Kapos were all Jewsish does not prove that Nazi death camps were a Jewish institution.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 29, 2005 18:27 PM
"Irrespective of the demographical composition of the NOPD in relation to the NO population, you cannot claim that it is a racist institution unless you can establish that Whites hold the balance of power at an institutional level. You can't." The NOPD is not an isolated institution. By your logic the Warsaw Ghetto was not racist because its day to day activities were managed by local Jews.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 29, 2005 18:01 PM
I don't know what calvin is getting at. So what if the NOPD is 100% black? There are inept, corrupt, irresponsible, cowardly "white" people all around but no one would atribute that to their whiteness. The way the Bush white house handled Katrina is almost universially condemned as incompetent. Is that a proof of bad genes? By now it should be clear how calvin plays this game. He selectively exaggerates "white" achievements and dignigrates the contributions of non whites (so Euclid was a pioneer whileAl-Khwarizmi was a mere "translator"). Conversly, every blunder committed by non whites are highlighted while similar fuck ups by "whites" are ignored. Are the Exxon oil spill, chernobel, three miles island and a long list of disasters "proofs" that "whites" are stupid, corrupt and inept? Whenever there is a shooting involving blacks the newspapers scream black crime. But no one depicts the bikers as "white" gangs. When a black person get a job through affirmative action it's a big deal even if the person is qualified; but when an inept white person gets a job through the old boys network no one raises an eyebrow(just think of Bush's career) Racism utlimately means double standard in judging whites and non whites. Calvin provides a text book case for racism. And how is Tim Wise Jewish background relevant?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 29, 2005 13:31 PM
You don't have an argument in defence of your racist denigration of Nagin and Compass Freddy. You claimed that, although they were talented individuals, they were appointed because of their skin colour. That's not an argument, that's an opinion. You seem to be having consistent trouble confusing assertion with argument Freddy. As for the NOPD, as your guru, Jewish academic Tim Wise, is fond of reminding us, racism is essentially an abuse of power. An argument which is trotted out with regularity in denial of the existence of Black racism. This being the case, the NOPD can only be described as racist based upon an analysis of power. Irrespective of the demographical composition of the NOPD in relation to the NO population, you cannot claim that it is a racist institution unless you can establish that Whites hold the balance of power at an institutional level. You can't.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 29, 2005 04:55 AM
Freddy, did you really think that you could get away with that evasion? The NOPD may have an officer corps which is 68% White, but that officer corps presides over a force which is 55% Black and labours under a Black Police Chief who is answeable to a Black Mayor. I'm feeling generous so I'll concede for the sake of argument that this may indicate a parity of ethnic power between Blacks and Whites in ther NOPD. Given the closeness of this power balance, however, in order for the NOPD to be a "White police force", in the sense that it worked in the interests of Whites to the detrimement of Blacks, it would be neccessary for 100% of the White members of the NOPD to be involved in a racist conspiracy against Blacks. I'm sure that the NOPD has some racist White officers and I'm just as sure it has some racist Black officers, but to imply that 100% of White NOPD officers are part of a racist conspiracy, simply because you didn't bother to check your figures before you mouthed off makes you look more pathetic than your racist denouncement of Nagin and Compass did Freddy. BTW, what gives with all this "Billy Bob" stuff? Is it OK for me to refer to Blacks as "Leroy"? As usual the only consistent standard here is the double standard. I'm just off for some gravy and chittlins. Bye!

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 29, 2005 03:01 AM
"But, paul, have you asked Billy Joe Bob whether he thinks liberals hate people like him.." But Cryofan, have you asked Billy Joe Bob whether he hates people like me? "Identity politics" goes both ways. Your formulation is one sided. When Billy Bob Joe hates minorities that is not identity politics(regardless the reasons) but if I don't feel like being pissed on and talk back I am a meat puppet for the elites? Get a grip. I work part time and go to school, very far from the "elite". But if I have to choose yes, I would rather side with the urban elite than economically aware rednecks like Baldrick who hates me and wish for my removal from the continent simply because of what I am. The 'elite" is the lesser evil from my perspective.At least capitalism is not personal. You make constant insinuations about Ford foundations and CIA fundings. I think you're just out to lunch and lack empathy.If I were less charitable I would accuse you of being a meat puppet sent by Pat Buchanan to divide the left. Leftism would not stand if it is only based on narrow self interest of particular groups. I have spoke out frequently against navel gazing identity politics devoid of class analysis. But pure economical leftism without awareness of broader, multipole injustices is just as narrow. Economical leftism can be subverted and has been as I illustrated in the union example. It was a caricature, granted. But not without some truth. Well said ebogan. Exactly how I feel.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 29, 2005 01:51 AM
But, paul, have you asked Billy Joe Bob whether he thinks liberals hate people like him and whether they prefer minorities over him, at least in some way? I have, trust me. I come from Billy Joe Bob country. As for non whites, as I type this, I am right in the midst of one of the largest aggregations of non whites in America.... All around me, literally.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Street, Paul at Sep 29, 2005 01:36 AM
"Time for the left to start sticking up for the white lower middle class. To stop hating Billy Joe Bob, and start LOVING him." cryofan the left supports labor law reform for stronger unions for working-class. It supports progressive texation and workplace safety regulations and earned income tax credit and national health insurance and livable wages (and more)...the list of populist social democratic things it (me included) talks about and demands goes on. I call for worker ownership and management clauses in corporate charters. I confess to skipping much recent dialogue here so let me ask: cryofan have you repented and apologized yet for equating merely "talking about race" with shaming what you call "the white working-class" and with making "Billy Joe Bob" "the enemy"? I really hope you have, for your own good. cryofan in one of these two race chapters I put up --- hey, remember those, THE ORIGINAL POSTS?! --- I actually talked about how its the white wealthy, not the "white working-class," that do the most damage to black communities. Did you bother to read that stuff? You just put people in your pre-packaged box: talking (in this instance) about race (I also talk alot about class and empire and ecology etc....including lots of references to and denunciations of the wealthy few)) is just put into the cateogry of liberal elitist identity politics by you. How ridiculous. Actually, as bwong suggested back when I had time to pay attention, YOU are the one charging white working-class racism when you make that bizaree - and I mean bizarre (almost bizarre as your recurrent use of the phrase "meat puppet")and knee-jerk jump. Believe it or not I know and have talked to many working-class white males who are fully capable of handling the race issue and talking about racism without feeling hated and demonized. I think you may live in a weird cyber-world and probably need to get out and talk to some real working-class people (that category includes some non-whites by the way!) and organizers. There's a regional thing here too. You all think folks here are singing Neil Young's "Southern Man" but I get LS's "Sweet Home Alabama" too and so BTW did Neil.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 28, 2005 23:25 PM
you ever hear of judo? Everything has its season, and a time for everything, etc. Time for the left to start sticking up for the white lower middle class. To stop hating Billy Joe Bob, and start LOVING him. The American working class needs an enemy. THat enemy is the elite, not Billy Joe Bob. But that is exactly what the elite has steered the (Faux)Left into making out as an enemy--poor Ole Billy Joe Bob. If the Left arises and embraces the lower middle class white male, and denounce the elite, the right would be TROUNCED. That don't mean you have to start wearing Klan hoods or sporting the Swastika. THat was just an elite canard, anyhow. Show Billy Joe Bob some love, and show the upper class some hate, and 2006, 2008 would be LANDSLIDES. But you won't do that. Because you ARE the elite, or you are a wannabe elite, or you are their ideological cattle.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 28, 2005 22:15 PM
"Bong, I am familiar with the ludicrous argument that Blacks are superior to Whites because Whites are dependent on Blacks. Using this logic, the brush is superior to the painter; the keyboard is superior to the writer and the car is superior to the driver. Twaddle laddie!" ??? What the hell are you talking about? Where did I say anything about one "race" being "superior" to another for whatever reason?That is YOUR way of arguing. You must have lost your mind.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 28, 2005 14:58 PM
So now you are claiming that the NOPD is a Black majority police force in the control of a White officer majority. That's a bit more tenuous than your original "the NOPD is White" claim isn't it Freddy? Especially since the office of the highest ranking Police offical of all seems to be reserved for Blacks only. Your denigration of Black high achievers like Nagin and Compass, as "puppets" and "corporate tools" reveals that behind your lofty rhetoric, you are as racist as David Duke. Nothing stinks quite as highly as hypocrisy Fred, and I had to hold my nose when I read that one. 55% of the NOPD is Black. 32% of its officers are Black. The chief of police is Black. Hardly a bastion of White power Freddy. Get real!

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 28, 2005 14:20 PM
Snide! Moi? I'm hurt Freddy. "Oh, and yes, given that 100 - 45% is 55%, and taking into account Asian, Hispanic, black, Native American, etc. police forces, it is almost undoubtedly the case that the highest proportion of NO cops are white" I think that you are losing the plot a little there Freddy. The source I quoted stated quite clearly that the NOPD had a Black majority. In which case any Asians or Hispanics would by part of the non-Black minority, meaning that the NOPD is even less than 45% White. You're not too good on facts are you Freddy? Is that why you keep trying to veer of at tangents? Stick to the nebulous stuff like "institutional racism".

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 28, 2005 13:15 PM
Freddy, take a canoe down to a NO Walmart and loot yourself a sense of shame and some polish for your brass neck. A police force with a Black majority and a Black police chief working in a city with a Black Mayor is not a "White" police force. Your citations are bullshit. Case closed. Don't you think that an apology would show more dignity than the above straw clutching desperation?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 28, 2005 12:46 PM
Bong, I am familiar with the ludicrous argument that Blacks are superior to Whites because Whites are dependent on Blacks. Using this logic, the brush is superior to the painter; the keyboard is superior to the writer and the car is superior to the driver. Twaddle laddie!

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 28, 2005 11:54 AM
Well well, Freddy, you seem to think that you can dismiss my refutations on the basis that they are drawn from my knowledge of African and European history rather than the cut and paste net-plagiarisms you posit in substitution of genuine knowledge. Let's have a look at your worthless citations. You supported Paul Street in his spurious claim that the NOPD was a White police force. In point of fact the NOPD is a Black majority force, headed by a Black police chief. You post three websites which you purport support your baseless claim. The only one of these sites which explicitly claims the NOPD has a White majority, is, judging by its clenched fist logo, a hard-left minority publication. The second site is the personal BLOG of a left-wing politico, who says precisely NOTHING about the racial composition of the NOPD. The third site, Bayoubuzz, explicitly states that the NOPD is 45% White. 45% is a majority Freddy? Are you employing some kind of "superior" African arithetic here? http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2001-06-19/cover_story.html “historic hiring levels for both African Americans and women -- 54 percent and 15 percent, respectively. And the 44 new recruits -- including 31 blacks and 13 whites, and a dozen women" “Pushed by a federal consent decree during the administrations of three consecutive black mayors and four black police superintendents, the city now has a majority-black police force”

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 28, 2005 07:09 AM
On a thread at another forum, I have provided partial quotes from academics who are saying some of the same things I am: http://www.peopleforchange.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=27029&st=45&p=228730&#entry228730

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 28, 2005 06:38 AM
Cryofan is against "identity politics" because anti-racism and anti-sexism can be co-opted and turned into a navel gazing exercise unconnected to broader struggles. That has some truth to it especially in, say, university campuses. But a cause can be co-opted does not invalidate the cause itself. "The elites" would hijack anything when they have a chance and if we let them. That doesn't mean we have to cede the ground. Let's imitate Cryo's arguement and apply it to "economical leftism" and see where it leads. If you don't believe "economical leftism" has been co-opted you only need to look at what trade unions have become. Unionism was once a broad base movement with fair amount of idealism and radicalism. Now with few exceptions most unions function "basically" like any corporation whose narrow mandate is to maximize "profits" by charging whatever the market can bear for their commodities. Only difference is they sell labour as a commodity instead of widgets. "Solidarity" is a slogan unions throw at you only when they go on strikes for a wage hike and want your support.Nevermind you're only making a fraction of what they do. Otherwise they don't give a flying f&ck about the unemployed or the non union members. Let's see how many SUV driving hard hats are interested in cryo's radical meme. That's what "focusing on economics" has led us. QED Granted this is a caricature but no worse than Cryo's caricature of "identity politics".

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 28, 2005 05:50 AM
Sorry for picking on you bwong, but I have a lot of ballsy elitism in me. Know your role!

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 28, 2005 05:12 AM
"I disagree with Nietzsche's use by leftists such as primitivists and po-mo's." That has nothing to do with me. I am neither primitivist nor po-mo and I avoid them like a plague. And just for the record, neither am I an admirer of Nietzsche's. Interesting that you are mute on calvin's disgusting posts but choose to pick on me on a peripherial Nietzsche reference.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 28, 2005 03:08 AM
bwong, my comparison with Nietzsche and the Nazis is about as superficial as your comparing Nietzsche's superior and "ballsy" racism with that of Calvin's. I disagree with Nietzsche's use by leftists such as primitivists and po-mo's. I'm not trying to show off or be politically correct. I am trying to discuss the relationship between philosophy and political practice. Your refusal to discuss these ideas and to instead characterise me as a show off or a p.c. policeman is puzzling. I study philosophy and am interested in this. No more no less. Anyway have fun running in circles with Calvin, I wont run in circles with you anymore. Keep the phallic metaphors coming, they are very illustrative and useful, especially in comparison with those who showboat their interests in relevant points-those bastards!

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 28, 2005 02:24 AM
"I simply disagree" Disagree with what? My characterization of calvin? "Or am I barking up the wrong tree?" Yeh. Obviously you are. If you read my main point it wasn't so much about praising Nietzsche as highlighting the ugliness of calvin. I never said I endorse Nietzsche's philosophy. It is not much of an endorsement to say someone is better than calvin, is it? But then again you may be just using the opportunity to show off your philosophy knowledge.I had no intention of getting into the fine points of Nietzsche or Heidegger. But as an aside, it is very vulgar and superficial to compare Nietzsche with the Nazis.Also, while Nietzsche did use biology "metaphors" but I don't think he advocated biodeterminism if you read the context(though I could be wrong)It is easy to take his extravagant rhetorics too literally.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 28, 2005 01:48 AM
bwong you did not upset me, I simply disagree. It is interesting to me that you cite me for being politicaly correct as a leftist when currently the fashion is to whitewash both Nietzsche and Heidegger, who have been extremely popular amongst the left since the postmodern or culturalist/neo-idealist turn. At least Nietzsche's elitism has balls? It takes courage to fight against the dominant powers, not to participate in oppression based on "natural" biodeterministic elitism-which Nietzsche believed in. I guess Nazi ideology is also respectable because it has "balls". Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 28, 2005 01:47 AM
read this: http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/barsamianewenmay2000.htm Now take it up one level. Look at the American cultural-political scene as an ecosystem where quasi-organic entities struggle for dominance, where the environmental-ecosystem forces include the "elite force vectors" that are organized to create an American culture that suits them. The walls and floors and ceilings of the cultural-political edifice we inhabit and which we walk upon were created by them, over decades, using some of the techniques discussed in this article. It's not a "conspiracy." It's an ecosystem where quasi-organic entities self-organize in order to compete and dominate. THeir channels of communication are superior to our own; their information is better than our own; their numbers are fewer than our own; their resources are better than our own; and thus their organizational abilty is greater than our own. They created a system where the better educated an American is, the more INDOCTRINATED into their system he/she is. It started in the 1600s with the creation of the color caste system to seperate the poor whites from the blacks--the first example of how the elite created a culture to suit them. Other techniques and agencies used as well: COINTELPRO, for example. Now, we have the nonprofit foundations and their cultivation of identity politics/multiculturalism/pluralism. Read "The Mask of Pluralism" and Gramsci.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 28, 2005 00:23 AM
Sorry for upsetting M. Sullivan by mentioning Nietzsche. I know it is not "politically correct" to cite Nietzsche for some leftists. Still his comments regarding pathetic racist losers like Calvin was dead on. I mentioned Nietzsche exactly because he was an elitist. It is good for contrast. Nietzsche's elitism was based on individual achievements. Calvin's racism is found on filmsy allegations concerning the "average" DNA make up of the herd and a selective tallying of herd achievements. At least Nietzche's elitism has balls, so to speak.One can respect such a position even not agreeing with it. Calvin's ball-less, "statistically speaking", herd "elitism" on the other hand only deserves ridicues and loathing. I did not say I endorse Nietzche in any other way so MS is barking up the wrong tree.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 27, 2005 23:58 PM
"The key word being "innovator". Al-Khwarizmi was a translator. His contribution to arithmetic is a gift of transmission not of invention.The West, on the other hand, produced genuinely brilliant figures such as Oresme.." If Al-Khawarizimi who had expanded considerably on ancient mathematics was a mere "translator". Then Euclid was just an editor. According to M Clagett, "Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Quantities and Motions" (Madison, 1968), "This brilliant scholar(Oresme) has been credited with ... the invention of analytic geometry before Descartes, with propounding structural theories of compounds before nineteenth century organic chemists, with discovering the law of free fall before Galileo, and with advocating the rotation of the Earth before Copernicus. None of these claims is, in fact, true, although each is based on discussion by Oresme of some penetration and originalit.." Inventions usually don't come from an intellectual vaccum. There are predecessors and history behind most "inovations". To push his racist agenda, Calvin exeggerates the "originality" of Euroepean while dignigrating the contributions of non Europeans. Genuises are rare in any "race" or they won't be called genuises.The existence Oreseme, Newton and Gauss etc doesn't turn "whites " into a race of Titans. Most white people(like any people) are quite mediocre. Occassionally there are complete idiots like Calvin.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 27, 2005 22:47 PM
Let's take only one example from your list of arguments which I have supposedly not addressed, Freddy. Since you seem to be overfond of posting links and making assertions of victory rather than formulating arguments, can you please give me a link which establishes the NOPD to be a White majority police force? Thought not, see you tomorrow Mr. Intellectshill.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 27, 2005 22:22 PM
So "Scrapper", according to you Japan languished at African levels of civilisation for most of its history. Japan seems, then, to have taken off economically as a direct consequence of its adoption of European cultural and technological practices. I am expected to believe, however, that Botswana, which employs a European legal system, and a European system of government, is advancing because it has rejected European culture? You validate this putative rejection by virtue of the fact that the Botswanan Roman Dutch legal system is mediated in the indigenous language? Following this logic, if the Inuit translated the Principia into their language they could claim Newtons discoveries as Eskimo invention. Call me harsh Freddy, but I tend to think that the fact that one of the most successful nations in Africa cannot do anything about rampant AIDS is an idictment. Not a source of pride.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 27, 2005 21:41 PM
"No, Calvin, what I'm doing is getting past the 1500 word limit" It's not because you need emergency backup then Professor Freddy? "their economy took off when they became truly independent of imperialism" But living conditions for the majority of the population are still boarding at the station. "Re: Slavery, I was discussing Africa more generally" Being lacking in any specific example of colonial abuse in this particular instance. I see. "Calvin, I can't do much for you if you don't read links or respond to arguments" I think that I have. If you think that I have not addressed a particular argument please reveal it. It sounds like you are preparing the way for withdrawal from debate. I do hope not.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 27, 2005 21:13 PM
FC: " "algebra", named after one of its greatest innovators, al-Khwarizmi; if you couldn't guess, Arab" The key word being "innovator". Al-Khwarizmi was a translator. His contribution to arithmetic is a gift of transmission not of invention. The West, on the other hand, produced genuinely brilliant figures such as Oresme who postulated heliocentrism over one hundred years before Copernicus, and who also anticipated the Galileian law of falling bodies and Cartesian co-ordinate geometry. Your ignorance of European history is almost as comprehensive as your ignorance of African history Freddy.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 27, 2005 21:00 PM
Nietzsche was interested in personal liberation only insofar as it allowed for domination of others. He was against the organizing of workers to improve their conditions etc. His views cannot be tenable outside of some metaphysics of the human being in a social vaccum, which is not how humans live. Liberating who and for what is the important question here. It doesnt suprise me that Nietzsche would be incorporated by irrationalist primitivists and individualist anarchists, along with postmodernists etc as these groups tend to exhibit views that are politically defeatist and sectarian.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 27, 2005 20:14 PM
“ For centuries, Europe lay in squalor, disunity and ignorance” This would have been the ideal time for those brilliant Africans, who would have been the dominant social class if not for White “oppression” according to your previous posts, to develop their cultures beyond their iron-age high watermark. What happened Freddy? The fact that you describe the kingdoms of dark age Europe as the province of squalor, disunity and ignorance when they were at least (and I'm being generous here) as advanced as the African kingdoms of Ethiopia, Mali, Ghana and the Songhai empire you laughably eulogize as rivals in greatness to Greece and Rome, reveal you to be a racist incapable of objective analysis. You are clutching every straw in the barn in your attempts to deny the blindingly obvious. You seize on the fact that Botswana has good recent economic growth, somehow believing that this nullifies the fact that 30% of the Tswana are unemployed, 30% are illiterate and at least as many are HIV positive. Yes, only 16% of Botswana is suitable for human habitation, but Botswana is a massive country with a tiny population of about 1,600 000. Your absurd comments are multiplying beyond the posting limitations of this blog Freddy. Well done!

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 27, 2005 19:05 PM
Freddy, I am not remotely interested in your carefully selected links. Your posts are full of links. This is argument by appeal to authority. It's a pity you can't understand the information on these links well enough to formulate an argument from them and are reduced to punting them wholesale at me. Posting links is the argumentative equivalent of running to daddy when you are being spanked. What's the significance of Botswana's economic growth rates if it has 30% unemployment and dirt poor living conditions for its citizens? FC: "Yes, they're poorer than America, thanks to America stealing its opulence through slavery and imperialism" Few slaves, if any, were ever taken from Botswana by Europeans. Far from having any "opulence", Botswana was populated by a collection of tribes practicing subsistence agriculture, before it became a Protectorate of the British who defended these tribes from the intrusions of Boer farmers. It is clear that you know almost to nothing about Africa and are reduced to wittering on about "social justice" and "imperialism".

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 27, 2005 17:59 PM
Nietzsche is complex. Most geniuses are, but I judge him as a supporter of elitism and fascism. This is a simple conclusion to make There is no doubt about his politics if you read his texts, even in the works of his supporter and translator Walter Kauffman, his views are explicitly clear as he praises caste systems and attacks all democratic struggles and liberatory philosophies. Some like to paint Nietzsche as someone who was horribly distorted by the Nazis. Yes, his sister did help this process of Nazi appropriation of N's works along, but it didnt take much creative thinking as Nietzsche's philosophy was already deeply fascist and irrationalist. Nietzsche and Heidegger do have fascinating things to say, and are worth studying for a variety of reasons, but I am amazed how within the laast twenty or so years the political philosophies of these men are censored by postmodernists and borgois intellectuals so as to create and defend politically defeatist and individualistic philosophies of their own creation.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 27, 2005 11:39 AM
Bong, the crusades were an attempted liberation of the Holy land from its Islamic invaders. The crusades began in 1096 and lasted around 250 years. The Islamic Jihad against the Great Land (Europe) lasted from 711 until 1683. The Muslims began to attack Europe around 400 years before the crusades and continued their attacks for almost 1000 years. Despite their relentless agression They never conquered Europe. The Europeans are the bad guys though! Do you wish to posit any more of your quaint anti-White historical interpretations?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 27, 2005 11:17 AM
Dear, dear, Freddy, so many bad points, so little time. Let's consider your beloved Botswana. 90% of Botswanas wealth is based on Diamond exports. Without Diamonds Botswana would be as poor as Liberia. Even with diamonds Botswana has unemployment rates of around 30%, resulting in widespread and abject poverty, and the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection in the world. The average life expectancy for Botsanans is 36. The official language of Botswana is English. The Botswanans employ the Roman legal system and the European parliamentary system. Botswana inherited good systems of government from Britain and benefited from close proximity to SA and Rhodesia, two formerly stable and wealthy White governed African countries. Diamond reserves are leveling out. Botswana has created no alternative economic strategy. If you want a ticket to Botswana I will send you one. Why don't you go to Botswana and live on the average Botswanan wage? After all with such a dynamic economic growth rate it shouldn't be too long before the average Botswanan is living like the average Manhattanite.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 27, 2005 06:37 AM
Let it be said that Nietschze was a total elitist. He absolutely hated democracy,Jews, socialists, liberation theology, and what could be called "the rabble". Nietzsche also made racist arguments much like Calvin's. He believed in biological determinism, and that whites were naturally the superiors of blacks. In fact, he was a big believer in eugenics and the concept of the ubermensch or overman. Nietzsche hated the Enlightenment and any idea of rationality or historical theory, to say nothing of his hatred for any concept of the universal rights of man and the dialectic. He was an irrationalist, an aesthete, an aristocrat, and a fascist. While not a Nazi himself, Nietzsche's ideas are easily appropriated by any sort of fascist or racist movement, as history illustrates. Lately many French theorists have tried to rehabilitate N's history and have written many volumes that eradicate many aspects of his life and thought in order to white wash him for their own purposes. I find this to be disgusting and totally irresponsible. But then these are the same people who appropriate Heidegger while white washing him of his actual membership of the Nazi party and a virulent anti-semite. Any cursory reading of Nietzsche's own texts will reveal his true views without much room for speculation. To paraphrase what Adorno said of Heidegger, which applies equally to Nietsche: his philosophy is facist through and through even in its innermost cells.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 27, 2005 06:15 AM
Memes are the new Hegelian world spirit. Its the rage amongst all the politically ineffectual Neo-Idealists. Historically most revolutions have been caused by uber memes doncha know? It's true I read so in Adbusters.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 27, 2005 02:49 AM
Some various meat puppets & ideological cattle wrote: This creep makes me too angry to type properly....he considered racists the lowest order of humans. ...thought only a truly pathetic loser would seek to validate himself through some imagined group superiority derived from the accident of birth. ... All of KKKalvin's vile, racist pesudointellectual arguments concerning technological achievements.... ... We all were Africans at one point... So when the hell did the white race emerge and become superior? ...let's engage instead in a debate on the cranial capacity of the races. Black immigrants often do better than native blacks, precisely because they're self-selected immigrants. Further, native blacks face barrier after barrier that you still continue to concede because you can't make an argument to save your life. .... Black folks aren't dependent on us; we're dependent on black folks. .... the nomadic, tent dwelling, herdsmen, Arabs and Ottomans brought a special depth of understanding with them from the watelands they populated before their looting of post-Classical Europe? Dance, little meat puppets & ideological cattle, DANCE to the tune your elite masters play! Keep arguing about race. DO NOT focus exclusively on getting the money from rich folks and using it for the people. THat's the LAST thing we wanna see.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 27, 2005 00:28 AM
Sorry for the typos. This creep makes me too angry to type properly. Contrary to popular belief, Nietzsche was not a racist(his writing was edited and published out of context by his sister who was an anti-Semite) In fact he considered racists the lowest order of humans. Being throughly an individualist he thought only a truly pathetic loser would seek to validate himself through some imagined group superiority derived from the accident of birth. At least I can agree with Nietzche on this! All of KKKalvin's vile, racist pesudointellectual arguments concerning technological achievements have been throughly, and powerfully rebutted by Jared Diamond in his beautiful book "Guns, Germs and Steel". While KKKalvin scoffed at Diamond and the book he has yet been able to mount any counter argument other than recycling cliches that Diamond has completely demolished without missing a beat. I don't think he has even read the book other than caricatures through "book reviews" on white supremacist web sites.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 27, 2005 00:00 AM
"Have you never heard.. Geofrey Chaucer, Grosseteste, Roger Bacon,... Albertus Magnus, ..plainsong.." Just because these names are better known in the West doesn't mean that they were the only signposts of civilization. How much do you know about Arabic music and literature to allow you to say that they had no muscians comparable to Mozart, writers comaprable to Shakesphere? How many Chinese poets do you know? Do you the Chinese person who invented movable prints and paper making?(Following your "logic" ,Guetenberg then "stole" this marvelous invention and "debased" it as a tool for mass religiousindoctrination,--printing the bible) Medieval Europe was in a dark age because of its superstitution and moribound instutitions that stifled inquiries and scholarship. Was It was not the Arabs who made them burn books and set up the Iquisition. Suppose you're right that European civilization regressed because of Arab attacks. The Arabs were also attacked by the Euroepans but somehow their civilizations flourished. Is it a proof that Europeans were gentically inferrior? If the Arabs only squandered technolgies they have "stolen" for superstitious purpose how come they were able defeat the crsuaders using superior explosive, ballistic and metallurgy? What have YOU done to advance civilization other than basking in the false belief of your supposed genetical superiority? Loser.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 26, 2005 23:17 PM
"Stole information" from Western Europeans? The information they didn't have the cultural ability and advancement to use?" Its quite amusing to hear someone who can favourably compare pre-colonial Africa with imperial Japan dismiss medieval Europe as culturally retarded. Have you never heard of Thomas Tallin, Geofrey Chaucer, Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Witelo, Oresme. Albertus Magnus, Gothic architechture, Gregorian plainsong, or institutions like the Icelandic parliament or the Anglo-Saxon Moot Freddy. I suppose that the nomadic, tent dwelling, herdsmen, Arabs and Ottomans brought a special depth of understanding with them from the watelands they populated before their looting of post-Classical Europe? The greatest building in the dar-al-islam is the Hagia Sofia. A Christian Church built by the Byzantines.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Ragu6, Ragu at Sep 26, 2005 23:00 PM
Then I'd feed them hypocritical lines of being pro-life as the only Christian way to be. Then very contradictingly, I'd fight for the spread of the death penalty, as if thou shall not kill applies to babies but not to criminals.Then I'd introduce them to those sworn to protect and serve, creating a curb in their trust in the law. I'd show them the nightsticks and plungers, the pepper spray and stun guns, the mace and magnums that they'd soon become acquainted with, the shakedowns and illegal search and seizures, the planted evidence, being stopped for no reason. Harassment ain't even the half of it. Forty-one shots to two raised hands, cell phones and wallets that are confused with illegal contrabands. I'd introduce them to pigs who love making their guns click like wine glasses. Everlasting targets surrounded by bullets, making them a walking bull's eye, a living piñata, held at the mercy of police brutality, and then we'll see if they finally weren't aware of the truth, if their eyes weren't finally open like a box of Pandora.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 26, 2005 22:48 PM
"The Africans developed the West's only source of caffeine until coffee was discovered" Pity they ovelooked the wheel, domestication of animals and writing though, isn't it? "You have utterly conceded my Botswana example" If anyone on this blog seriously thinks that Botswana will look like Belgium in ten years time I'll eat their Che Guevera t-shirt. "In the past, empires of incredible power have arisen in Africa" Could you name these sub-Saharan super empires for me Freddy? "Good scholars have compared the African empires with Japan" Where can I find the African version of a Zen garden or Kabuki theatre. Where are the rice paddies, Koans and laminated steel weapons? "Just think for a second, Calvin, if during the centuries of slavery blacks had been paid wages they could have passed onto offspring, and during the centuries of segregtation they had equal opportunity for loans, houses, etc" Yup! They could have attained the same giddy heights of economic achievement as the Haitians who suffered none of these "oppressions" Freddy. "Calvin, black immigrants often do better than native blacks, precisely because they're self-selected immigrants" So the African slaves (non-self selected immigrants)were the more likely to be the least intelligent and capable members of the African population. So Africa offloaded its crapest people onto America, got paid for it, and still produced nothing in terms of civilisation or technology.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Ragu6, Ragu at Sep 26, 2005 22:24 PM
Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing and regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They'll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity, and as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent. Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing and regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They'll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity, and as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Street, Paul at Sep 26, 2005 22:22 PM
That's an astonishingly good critique of cryofan's confusion on class and race and it hooks up marvelously with cyo's elitist search for a master cyber-meme, yes?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 26, 2005 22:17 PM
"I didn't get the idea that he[Cryo] was advocating giving up on the working class as being inherently racist." Cryo is the ONLY one who believes the "white working class" is inherently racist. It follows from this premise that mere mention of race(and gender, sexual orientation)automatically alientates them. Cryo shows great contempt for the "masses" whom he claims to speaks for. In his depiction "the working class" appear to be zombies who have no minds of their own The "elites", whoever they are, somehow manage to manipulate and program the masses like robots down the centries. Either "the elites" are gods or Cryo's "working class" are hopelessly brain damaged. This is a sword that cuts both ways. While this view exonerates the "working class" of their real and percived vices. But it also denies their capacity and agency in shaping history. It reduces the working people to mere worker ants. Cryo's "leftism" curiously dovetails with the "elitist" view of history as the story of great men(members of the elite) From his early posts Cryfofan strongly believes in spreading "left propaganda". This is consistent with his (unspoken, probably unconscious)premise that the masses are "meat puppets" who passsively absorb anything thrown at them. We'll "win" if we're better than the right in pulling the strings. Only unlike the right, "we" have the puppets best interests at heart, of course. Cryo's "leftism" is actually a kind elitism.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Ragu6, Ragu at Sep 26, 2005 22:01 PM
maybe KKKalvin the racist mutherfucker should get on this bus too Etan Thomas of the Washington Wizards ETAN THOMAS: Giving all honor, thanks and praises to God for courage and wisdom, this is a very important rally. I'd like to thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts, feelings and concerns regarding a tremendous problem that we are currently facing. This problem is universal, transcending race, economic background, religion, and culture, and this problem is none other than the current administration which has set up shop in the White House. In fact, I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip. I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner and no seatbelts and round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson and any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, and take them all on a trip to the ‘hood. Not to do no 30-minute documentary. I mean, I want to drop them off and leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed and no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 26, 2005 21:58 PM
"Besides which there's plenty of good readers and commenters to take care of the reactionary nonsense" What, like joeblogs who cannot tell the difference between Black sub-Saharan Africans and their American kin and the mainly Semitic/Berber population of North Africa? North Africa was colonised for hundreds of years by the Romans and subsequently by the nordic Vandals. Does the population of Algiers look like the population of New Orleans Joe? The Arabs stole information from Western Europeans and prevented its dissemenation. European civilisation was further arrested by the constant attacks of militant Islam. The Arabs acquired the wisdom of the classical world and produced nothing much. We acquired their musical instruments (and I'd take that claim with a pinch of salt BTW) and produced Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, etc.,etc.,. Why is it impossibe that Black people really do have smaller brains than White people BTW? It should be easy enough to find out.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 26, 2005 20:01 PM
Why does the moderator tolerate trolling racists and fascists arguing for biological determinism and the supremacy of whites? I used to love participating in these blogs because it was a forum for dedicated leftists to discuss praxis and current events. Now the discussions have become so intolerable lately that I may just relegate myself to being a reader only. I thought this was Znet. Lately it reads like KKKnet. Kudos to those who have the energy and will to battle the ranting racists who have invaded. Much support to Paul Street. Your work is incredibly valuable. The importance of your work can be seen in the intensity of the reaction against it by racists and imperialists-your work is a THREAT! Keep up the good work.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 26, 2005 13:18 PM
"the corporations and executive branches of the governments that in reality run the IMF are primarily white males" Take a look at a biographical dictionary Freddie. High achievers in every field are overwhelmingly white males. This merely indicates that white culture produces higher levels of creative intelligence. Just because these IMF executives are White, it doesn't follow that they are working in the intrests of White people any more than the fact that people like Mugabe, Idi Amin, Kaunda and Bokassa are Black they were working in the interests of Black people. Your attempts to find a White source for every problem suffered by Africans is laughable Freddie. "Yes, most of those left behind in NO were poor, but there were still blacks who were denied the ability to leave. More broadly, black people with money more closely resemble the working class" Indicating once again the correlation between Blackness and economic underachievement. Where were all the Asian victims or the racist White power elite? Many White people with money tend to "closely resemble the working class". I expect that you will find in both cases that this has more to do with the fields in which these people produce their wealth. Would Elvis have built the vulgar Graceland mansion if he had made his millions as a NASA scientist?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 26, 2005 12:14 PM
An endless torrent of words, saying precisely nothing. The sound and the fury of leftism. No African country ever developed any culture or technology beyond Iron age European levels, despite tens of thousands of years of independence from White oppression. The wealth and stability of any African nation is directly related to the length of time it was colonized by Europeans. The far East was colonoized by Europeans for just as long as Africa. The far East now rivals the Eurosphere in economic power. There is no African "tiger economy", and not the remotest possibility of Africa producing one. There is, however, the imminent prospect of Africa as a continent, descending to sub-Haitian levels. The socio-economic status of Black immigrants in Europe and America is analogous to the socio-economic status of Black nations. You can present as many complex and tortured anti-European economic and political explanations as you like, there is still one glaringly obvious biological fact staring you in the face.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Bauerly, Mtbrad at Sep 26, 2005 05:06 AM
Before we slipped into the conspiratorial CIA connection to Znet blogers, I never heard anyone (excluding calvin) say that race and gender issues were not real issues. I would argue that the best way to ameliorate these would be by eliminating the oppression caused by the market. Giving everyone an equal opportunity to succed would be the first step in showing folks such as Calvin that racial differences are socially benign. The one thing every person who was left behind in NO was class, not race or gender. The one thing that holds minorities and women back is the material prizes granted to others, not biggots or the KKK. A society based on a twisted material basis will continue to be culturally depraved until the initial class based system is removed. To focus on the effects of captialism is to reduce the force of focus on the cause of the problems.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 26, 2005 02:33 AM
But the system is really big :-) I mean its language, its steel. Its in all aspects of culture, society. Terms like "country" , definition in terms of dark and light. Progressive rap spreading a new language of pride by redefining terms, ups , downs etc. As opposed to stupid rap spreading violence, sexual abuse and class-segregation How can revolution change this without catching the virus ? What chaos can give birth to better models of cooperation ? One answer is through global intergration and legislation. "Equality" will either prepare the road to a peacefull revolution/reform or make it superfluous. Its neccesary to have the supacops believe in the true value of the values they are set to protect. Democracy and suchlikes. Its supposed to be a democratic system, and even if its not, we can probably walk down that road towards demcoracy.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 25, 2005 22:54 PM
People Someone mentioned a need for "leaders" a while ago. I find this statement based solely in our primitive man-focused neolithic super-"meme". I would suggest that this need exists as long as confrontational argument is preeminent. Other ways to talk are possible. Inclusional (?) argumentation. This "meme" is needed for that thing called democracy. Reducing the hierarchical stupidity of it all. ( Not talking about authority based on years of labour here ). Kalvin A good example ( for you ) would be how african poultry-industry has been closed down due to subsidised european fowl. This not only keeps local industry down. It allso is a tragic waste of world rescource. Frosted, defrosted, refrosed pain in the fridge. People ( Cryofan ) The secret secretaries have people all over. There exists a strategy of splintercells employed by most of them nowadays ( I believe ) Example would be the russian secrets involvement in killing that old arch-duke. They supplied the explosives to get entrance to that olde nihilist-anarchist society. This does not make all nihilists/anarchists tools of the russian government. I belive this makes a classical revolution an impossibility, ( or counteproductive to societal change). Thus, reformism for me. Slow change untill we are allready there.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 25, 2005 22:10 PM
Yet more ignorant anti-White racism based on a self serving ideologically based false assumption that the IMF somehow represent the White race. Am I expected to believe that the IMF is a front organization for the Klan? It seems to me that it is a trans-national plutocratic fiscal institution with no racial agenda whatsoever. "Money is often spent on mega projects which facililate the extracting of resources for export(at bargain basement price or even "free" as the countries are required to repaid their "debts" with compounded interests)" "Kaunda remained in office for 27 years. Although during his early years great strides were made in the areas of education, health and infrastructure, his attempts to ‘decolonise the economy by nationalising it completely, produced only inefficiency, corruption and a disastrous decline" History of Zambia Kaunda's mega-project was the Kariba Dam. An African Mega-project brought down by African inefficiency and African corruption. Mugabe's all African mega-project is the redistribution of land. That's going really well isn't it?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Gammon101, Bwong at Sep 25, 2005 20:34 PM
"How many billions of dollars have been pumped into [Africa] in the last three decades?"KKKalvin The question should be how much wealth have been extracted from Africa. Aid is a smokescreen. Most aid,-especially American aid,--are "tied". That means the recipients are required to spend the aid money on specific items. That usually means purchasing exports at inflated price from the "donars". A large chunk of aid money goes to pay the overheads and personels who distribute the aid such as givernment departments and big NGOs. IMF loans are basically loan sharking with interest rate so high that it would be considered criminal domestically. Money is often spent on mega projects which facililate the extracting of resources for export(at bargain basement price or even "free" as the countries are required to repaid their "debts" with compounded interests) While these projects are of dubious value to the locals to begin with, the contracts are awarded to Western firms which charge outrageous fees even when local expertise are availiable at much lower costs. The Africans don't even get unintended "benefits" such as technology transfer and employment which sometimes come with colonialism. Africans don't need charity. They would be a lot better of if we stop screwing them.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 25, 2005 06:06 AM
Identity politics (IP) was more or less created or at least augmented by elite forces in order to subvert economic leftism. I submit that these foundations, which took over for the CIA and FBI decades ago, seek out and promote and fund virulently passionate IP writers/ activists as tools. Thus, the political debate is shaped, so that over the years, IP and other social wedge issues become accepted as what politics is supposed to be about. Economics oriented politics is shunted aside. Also, it serves the elite purposes when economically leftist writers and activists associated with a virulent brand of IP with economic leftism. This virulent brand of IP is found right here on Znet. A prime example. White hating? Yes, I am afraid so. And rightfully or not, over the years, this White-Hating Identity Politics (WHIP) has been associated in the minds of white working people everywhere with leftist economics. These working class white people, with no power of their own, and born into a centuries old color caste system, are disgusted by WHIP. No wonder the Elite Right is able to do almost anything at all via Bushco. The white working class would rather see Bushco do as they please, as long as the white-hating fauxleft is kept out of office. Our welfare state, our progressive tax system, our infrastructure, etc etc, all are in a death spiral thanks to WHIP. The Right can do as they please as long as their talk radio proxies make noise against WHIP.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Hihopes, Hihopes at Sep 25, 2005 02:16 AM
Cryofan says: "This is all far from proven. Go research it yourself. My own journey towards the truth has just begun...." Well, if it's far from proven why the zealotry? Keep in mind that your fellow leftists on ZNet are sincere in their beliefs. Like you we believe we are doing the right thing to bring about justice. You are not talking to enemies. You are talking to compatriots, accomplices, who want the same basic thing that you want. I don't see where you are going to get anywhere by the going the zealot route maintaining that everything your fellow leftists are doing and have done, both informally and professionally for their whole lives, is merely the work of CIA duped stooges. Now, you can see where that would grate on folks, can't you? Your journey has led you to find the "truth," but it's unproven? Only you know this truth? Maybe it's not as solid as you think. The folks here are pretty smart so you may want to exchange ideas since you're working towards a common goal. You already know preaching at folks doesn't work. You said so yourself; that our preaching and scolding of the working class just drives them to talk radio. In this I think you are correct. Your preaching and scolding is merely you making the same mistake here resulting in similar irrational reactions.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 25, 2005 01:27 AM
Frederick, so Cryofan isn't being unique. He is parroting Zinn, Chomsky and Albert? I'm not parroting them; I am extending them. I am extending their themes, expecially with respect to the historical creation of the color caste to split the poor whites and blacks 300-400 years ago, and with respect to the modern subversion of American leftism via identity politics. Neither Zinn nor Chomsky will touch the color caste idea or the identity politics leftism subversion idea. THey both say the American left is moribund. But they cannot say why exactly, as least not to my satisfaction. Neither has said the truth--that the identity-politics oriented American Left is actually a Fauxleft. A proxy evolved to meet elite needs. Why have they not addressed this? I dunno. Maybe cuz it would ruin their status as idols of the Fauxleft. Social pressure affects even such people as these. Maybe they would miss the money. Maybe they do not realize the reality of these aspects of American leftism. Maybe for other reasons.... Maybe they are as ideologically strait-jacketed as Paul and Frederic and 95% of all other online fauxLefties? Who knows?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Hihopes, Hihopes at Sep 25, 2005 01:09 AM
Frederick, so Cryofan isn't being unique. He is parroting Zinn, Chomsky and Albert? Good! Those guys were right ten years ago, twenty years ago, and they are right now. What better guys to parrot? Now if only we could get a few million more folks like Cryofan parroting them I think we're in business. We're off to the races!

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 25, 2005 00:50 AM
that CIA thing sounds a bit crackpot to me. It came out in Congressional hearings in the 70s that the CIA and FBI were heavily involved in subverting leftism abroad and in America starting more than 50 years ago (Church committee?). My knowledge of all this came out of my research for my documentary, which is mostly about how elite entities and people molded American culture to suit their needs. There is TONS of documentation on this. This idea is a major theme of Chomsky, et al. My documentary, when complete, will feature many examples of this elite manipulation (video and pictoral propaganda from past decades). But then what about today? I had already figured out that identity politics was a modern leftist-subversion tool, but I had no evidence of how it was carried out. Recently I came across Bob Feldman's and Joan Roelofs. Joan is an academic who wrote a book on how the huge nonprofits guided leftism. Feldman exposed how the CIA was involved in the creation of the Ford Foundation (the biggest of them). Also there is the fact that Gloria Steinem was funded by the FBI in her earliest days. Also, others have pointed out the same things (but very few: the fauxLeft elite enforce social-leftism ideological hegemony, just as the rightwing does for rightist-economic ideological hegemony) This is all far from proven. Go research it yourself. My own journey towards the truth has just begun....

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Hihopes, Hihopes at Sep 25, 2005 00:24 AM
Frederick says: "Cryofan will have to recognize that when he accuses others of being underwritten by the CIA, undermining the Left, and in general insulting their motives, their intelligence and their integrity without ever reading or quoting a word they say, he will elicit angry responses." Yeah well, that CIA thing sounds a bit crackpot to me. It may not be, but I would need more documentation before I buy into that. But even assuming the worse, that Cryofan is a crackpot, and I'm not saying he is, still, he is our crackpot. The notion that we may want to downplay race and gender issues (not abandon them) and focus more on working class issues thereby garnering more popular support doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Jeez, it seems to be working great for the Republicans. They're only hawking those phony "moral issues." We have real substance. Besides, don't we want the working class to have a real leg up? As for "angry responses" I suppose you are talking about Street. I don't know what's up with him. I don't know if he is a baseball pitcher throwing high fast ones, a fellow selling apples, or a hard guy from the South Side of Chicago. I guess he's not a hard guy. Never heard a real hard guy talk about it so much. He is supposed to be an intellectual sparking discussion not shutting it down because his personal feeling are hurt.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 24, 2005 23:59 PM
HiHopes wrote: Fer crying out loud, Street. Try to control yourself. Paul is responding as I expected. My posts are deliberately provocative because I want them to be remembered for a while, or at least the gist of them. Politically indoctrinated people do not change their ideas quickly. I know a fellow who was a S. Viet Nam officer in the early 70s. He was captured and placed in an indoctrination camp for years. It took him that long to accept the possibility that the communists were right. Strange example, I know.... as a leftist cryofan's goal is economic Totally. Take money from the rich and give it to the rest of us as a dividend. Capitalism and socialism are just tools. Get some of the wealth and distribute it, period. Organize the country around healthcare and high quality of life. A country for the citizens. Cryofan posted here to talk Spreading memes. I am not just about anti-identity politics. That is just the latest successful elite tactic. I am about painting a revisionist picture of the past and societal-hierarchical relationships (e.g., color caste America). I am totally a reformist, but my tactics are about meme communication to instigate a paradigm shift. I seek others to help me propagate these memes. And to get them to focus on the right memes, and abandon counterproductive memes ("Whites are evil racists. Give us spoils..." etc). See my blog for more: http://www.leftwingmediamachine.blogspot.com/

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Hihopes, Hihopes at Sep 24, 2005 23:54 PM
Frederick says: "What of my attacks, HiHopes?" What attacks? You appear to be discussing ideas. Isn't that what a discussion forum is for? I guess Cryofan can speak for himself, but I didn't get the idea that he was advocating giving up on the working class as being inherently racist. From what can understand he thinks the racism is generated from elite desires to divide and control the population and we can have more success by having at them directly rather than trying to stamp out the brush fires they set. I don't think you can honestly impugn the motives or the ultimate aims. At least I don't see any reason to do so. To my mind there may be a question of effectiveness. We generally all have the same goals. Is this the best way to achieve them? Another way? A combination? What?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 24, 2005 23:32 PM
the stagnation of the Eurosphere's economic growth rate, which is due to mass immigration from economically incompetent cultures creating a low wage neo-feudalist economy Mass immigration always increases the labor supply faster then the labor demand, and thus is bad for the citizens. Mass immigration from 3rd world, low wage countries is criminal, and our elected officials should all be on trial for treason for facilitating 3rd world mass immigration. How many billions of dollars have been pumped into [Africa] in the last three decades? The African socialcultural/governmental setup is hyper-exploitative from the outset, and the first world investment is calculated to take advantage of that and maintain that setup. Africa is a bad place to live for the people, for many many reasons, most of them cultural (e.g., little social capital), and some of them historical-geographical. It takes a long time to change a culture, and the capital investment you refer to was not meant to change that, only to exploit it. Let's take control of our OWN country before we worry about Africa. We can only help Africa BY taking control of America. If we help the American workers, we can help Africa, but not before then.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Street, Paul at Sep 24, 2005 21:03 PM
And speaking of what a "liberal" I am, see my 2004 piece titled "Deans, Democrats, and Democracy," available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=4893§ionID=1. See also my piece on today's ZNet top page ZNet | Anti War Marching Without Illusion by Paul Street; September 24, 2005 I regret being unable to attend the antiwar demonstrations in Washington D.C. today. It's important to make visible large-scale American dissent from the American government's bloody, illegal, immoral, and brazenly imperialist occupation of Iraq. It is important also for marchers, organizers, and speakers to show that they and other Americans understand the intimate interrelations between American empire abroad and American inequality at home...ctd... The connection between these inseparably linked evils has recently become more evident than anytime in recent memory. Tropical Storm and Societal Failure Katrina (TSSFK) has taken a lid off the nation's steep racial and related socioeconomic disparities in ways that reflect poorly on the nation's commitment to imperial militarism. Large numbers of Americans have been led to reflect anew on the dark absurdity of an unimaginably wealthy society that can't provide reasonably adequate natural disaster protection and relief for many of its poorest citizens while it can sustain a costly and provocative overseas empire of more than 700 military bases and fight an unjust war in Iraq. “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and TSSFK have combined like nothing since the 1960s to suggest the dialectically intertwined nature of what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the triple evils that are interrelated:” poverty, racism, and militarism. They have combined to give unusual exposure to what King called the “perverted” nature of America's “priorities.” Hurricanes aside, a super-affluent nation that consigns many tens of millions of its citizens to poverty and health insecurity is in no position to export something the Bush administration calls “freedom” to Iraq or anywhere else. Marchers, reporters, and others seeking signs of that poverty can find abundant evidence in the segregated slums of Washington D.C., which display extreme deprivation within a short cab-ride of America's leading corridors of power. Fittingly enough, the disenfranchised District of Columbia is the most unequal city in the most unequal and wealth-top-heavy nation in the industrialized world. A nation where the top 1 percent owns more than 40 percent of the wealth and a larger share of the policymakers and politicians is in no position to lecture the Middle East or Latin America on “democracy” and “equality.” A nation where more than a million black children live at less than half the nation's tragically inadequate poverty level while certain citizen-aristocrats spend tens of thousands of dollars on their pets (some even building ostentatious “Palaces for [their] Pooches”) has no business lecturing the world on “compassion,” “conservative” or otherwise. A nation that sends masses of children to bed hungry and/or homeless each night while granting outlandish tax cuts and subsidies to the already super-rich has little to tell the rest of the world about fairness and justice. The repair of “broken societies” (and levees) begins at home, where inequality serves as both taproot and fruit of empire. I doubt that many of today's marchers labor under the illusion that president Bush will be persuaded of anything positive by their speeches and demonstrations. Bush is a narrow, stubborn, arrogant, and doctrinaire man-child. He's a permanent silver-spoon boy-king who believes that God and History are on his everlasting side come Hell, high water, and/or hurricanes. Katrina displayed the literal and figurative bankruptcy of regressive neoliberal social policy. For Bush, it has been an opportunity to trumpet standard plutocratic tax-cutting and vapid “free-market” ‘entrepreneurialism” as solutions to the hurricane's aftermath. Just this week, Bush once again shamelessly linked his imperialist war of choice on Iraq to the 9/11 attacks. He gave the American people, the world, and (one might argue) his own sorry 9/11 Commission the finger by equating withdrawal from Iraq with “victory the terrorists.” But marches like these shouldn't be about “speaking truth to power.” Among other things, they are early preparations for taking power back from those who enjoy illegitimate authority. It's about showing the “powers that be,” ourselves, and the world who “We the People” (the alleged masters and beneficiaries of policy under what America's Founding Fathers called “popular government”) are. It's about flexing and feeling our collective strength and raising doubts in the hearts and minds of the master class and its assorted power- and Mammon-worshipping officers and agents. It's about systemic disruption, standing down the killing lines, and provoking “elite” responses that help expose the unjust and coercion-based heart of what passes for social order under the rule of empire and inequality. Marching and speaking against the war aren't themselves the moral and social revolution that King and so many other Americans have long sought, but they are a significant part of the larger struggle. I wish my comrades well today in the streets --- their streets---- of Washington D.C. Paul Street (pstreet@niu.edu) is a writer and historian in DeKalb, IL. His publications include Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004) and the just-released *Segregated Schools: Race**, Class***, and Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005) My apologies to cryofan for including race** (bad Paul) in the subject matter and text of my latest book.* I hope he notes that I also have class*** (good Paul) in the title (and in the text, where you can see both related ---- imagine ---- to American miltarism...not sure if that's good or bad for cryofan).

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Hihopes, Hihopes at Sep 24, 2005 20:10 PM
Calvin, your posts are treasures. Your intellectualizing of what seems to me to be your personal likes and dislikes are worth the price of admission. Don't get me wrong. Your personal likes and dislikes are yours and I defend your right to hold them. It's just your odd shaping of rationality to force it to fit those likes and dislikes is, well, entertaining. Your lack of depth is quite stunning and amusing as well. Keep up the posts. After reading the weighty and brain stressing posts of others in this discussion I smile with relief when I come to yours. Sometimes they produce a real stress relieving belly laugh, which is all for the good, I think. By the way, while I find your reasoning burlesque, I do admire your pluck in posting here. Rather a ballsy thing to do, I'd say.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Hihopes, Hihopes at Sep 24, 2005 19:32 PM
Cryofan, are you certain your rejection of gender and identity politics is valid? Assuming the goal is economic and political justice for everyone, doesn't gender and identity politics seek to accomplish this in an incremental manner? Face facts, the elite are too powerful for a head-on assault. It will fail. They have the wealth, the laws, the media, and the police and military on their side. Given our available options isn't a tactic of incremental change likely to be more successful? There have been political successes and even some (small) economic ones. Unrelenting step-by-step pressure for justice for blacks, women, gays, immigrants, the poor, etc., in short, the whole population, has a chance of accomplishing the goal of economic and political justice for everyone, doesn't it? More so than a frontal assault against overwhelming elite power, right? How is it that your strategy is right and Street's strategy is wrong? His has a series of political successes that can be pointed to. Won't your more direct assault on elite power just lead to increased repression and failure?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 24, 2005 19:00 PM
"The "model minority" myth is just that, a myth. Many Asians are failing". Asians in fact make less than comparable whites." said Freddy "No. Because despite these obstacles, many Asians do do better and matriculate into colleges at higher rates" said Freddy So, given a balanced analysis of your two statements we can assume that Asians in general are faring no better or worse than anyone else. So where's all the crap about racism coming from Freddy? Pakistani Muslim immigrants (Asians) to the UK are on average less well off than the native population, because their women spend more time taking advantage of our NHS, popping out baby Muslims, than they do working and earning cash/paying taxes.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 24, 2005 18:20 PM
"(because frankly his "analysis" is not "correct"), and he has no response" It's maybe hiding beside your response to the refutation of the claim that New Orleans has a White Police force Paul? "Further, you're again flatly wrong. Botswana, one of the only countries on the globe to tell the IMF to blow off, has been having 8-10% GDP growth, far beyond America. By your logic, Botswanans and Chinese (China also having similarly high GDP growth) is far superior to any European country" Yes Freddie, that's a bit like the "most improved pupil" awards they reserve for floundering ethnics. Let's put Botswanas GDP growth into perspective. Botswana would have to continue this rate of growth for about 100 years before it achieved anything like economic parity with Europe. I do agree that the stagnation of the Eurosphere's economic growth rate, which is due to mass immigration from economically incompetent cultures creating a low wage neo-feudalist economy, is worrying. "No African country IS free from white oppression, Calvin" Yeah right! How many billions of dollars have been pumped into that continent in the last three decades? Are short people absent fron basketball teams because tall people are "oppressing" them Freddie, or would that be a case of one group lacking the basic attributes to succeed?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 23, 2005 22:22 PM
Not hitler , just one of the meatpuppets of facism. :-)

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Street, Paul at Sep 23, 2005 22:17 PM
crybaby now says he means "stop talking about race from an identity politics angle" when he actually disgraced himself by saying "stop talking about race" at all. The other absurdity that is enough to make a grown man cry is that the people here are mainly leftists (neither this characterization nor the term "person" applies of course to the noxious racist web pig that calls itself "calvin," who loves to "talk about race" and deserves to be called "kkkalvin") and so are not actually tackling race from a liberal identity politics angle. In earlier comments, I linked my collected ZNet works and a specific recent leftist piece that interwove (imagine) class, race, empire, poverty, and inequality as part of the interrelated evils that democratic socialist Martin Luther King. Jr. (who cry-me-a-river-fan claimed to admire after he determined King wasn't "just another nigger") used to write and speak about. If cryingoutloudafan wants to call this liberal identity politics he can do so and thereby dig his hole yet deeper: don't let me stop his cybernetic moral and ideological self-destruction. I think ole'cry just got turned down by the Ford Foundation. If he's going to hurl charges like "FauxLeftist" he better "bring his 'A' game," if he's got one to bring....and I have the sense that all he's got is a C game. Maybe the racist pig from England should experience segregation in the form of a special blog posting (I could just take an old blog and cut and paste in all of his comments) titled "KKKalvin's Korner." cr's confusion and denial on race is a small but emblematic part of why racial fragmentation poses such stern difficulties for the proeject of interracial working-class and peoples' solidarity

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 23, 2005 20:24 PM
Its disturbing that a cryofanesque left can take the role of the sa-socialism of the thirties. So if I say "stop talking about race from an identity politics angle, and instead talk about how the elite built a color caste in order to divide the races", then that makes me Hitler? Nice argumentation, there....

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 23, 2005 19:50 PM
Its disturbing that a cryofanesque left can take the role of the sa-socialism of the thirties. Kalvin. asian immigrants arrived in europe invited by countries in need of workers. They manned factories, communal transport systems and in britains case, hospitals. It would be interesting to study an alternative scenario where anglo-indian doctors advanced indias medicare instead of supporting western health. Using the base strategies of the victorious republican party would mean excluding bloggers k and maybe cry. This step ( wich i advocated in general, earlier ), would be a loss to the moral superiority of the solidarity-movement. Our hands dirty. Hehe :-)

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 23, 2005 16:15 PM
It is very funny that Calvin cites 50 Cent, Denzel Washington, Jackson, and Woods as examples of blacks achieving some sort of racist sociobiological aptitude. Woods is the first major success in golf who is black. He had to/has to deal with incredible racism from many for intruding on this "white man's sport". He is so talented that he cannot be denied! Denzel Washington was acknowledged not for his role in Glory, or John Q, or respectable films but for Training Day where he plays a violent and corrupt black cop training a purehearted white cop. 50 Cent's success is banking on his image as dangerous black gangster. Meanwhile many black rappers with better mc skills are abandoned because they do not have the threatening image that white teen boys dont catch sparks from. In pop culture blacks achieve notoriety for conforming to popular racist stereotypes performing the role of what some cultural critics have called the "super-nigger"-a pop archetype of over the top violence and sex linked to racist views of black maleness. Meanwhile better rappers who in some cases dont conform to the prepackaged gangster archetype are left on the margins because white music bosses cant profit from them in the lcd mainstream. In sports it is more of a meritocracy. Woods is such a brilliant golfer that he cant be denied. Calvin's argument accounts for what....0001% of American blacks. So laughable.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 23, 2005 12:12 PM
Dear "Scrapper" Christie. Ignoring Mr Street's immature ravings: "Calvin: The "model minority" myth is just that, a myth. Asians in fact make less than comparable whites, and several Asians are not making it by a long shot" So we are left with universal economic underachievement as the leitmotif of non-European immigrants. Can you tell me please then, what's the great advantage of allowing millions of underachieving aliens into our countries? "but let's just list the obstacles blacks in our society face: Discrimination in hiring, firing, wages, housing, loans and mortgages, the criminal justice system, promotions, being set into remedial classes..." These discriminations are based on differences between White and Black behavioural norms and aptitudes, not on their skin colour. Why no discrimination in the fields of sport and entertainment? Did no one notice that Denzel Washington, Samuel L Jackson, Tiger Woods and 50 cent were Black? Why is no Black country, free from White "oppression" able to emulate European standards of socio-political organization? Take a look at Haiti. Downtown New Orleans in hurricane season on a national scale. Take a trip to Zimbabwe and have a preview of your future.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Street, Paul at Sep 23, 2005 07:34 AM
pity poor cryofan, who has no response to the numerous criticisms that have been launched his way...nothing other than his increasingly pathetic broken-record accusations of CIA and Ford Foundation funding to move politcs off of economy (good) and into race (bad) and gender (bad). The really devastating part is when he calls you a "meat puppet." I want just one of those "Ford Foundation" checks I'm suposedly working for. In the "Social Health and Spiritual Death" article I linked, I actually (imagine) interwove class, race, empire (still curious to know if crybaby thinks militarism is a fit or a vile, CIA-crafted, diversionary, and white-working-class-demonizing topic of left discussion), poverty and the rule of the wealthy few who cryofan so rightly loathes. It's called walking,chewing gum, and talking at the same time. Contrary to cryofan's economistic crybaby rhetoric, the left and laborite struggle for solidarity over fragmentation is hardly won by denying and suppressing racial,ethnic, gender and other divisions. Radicals tackle such divisions openly and honestly not to wallow in them but to overcome on behalf of the inherently multicultural struggle of the many against the privileged few. Frederic, on the thing you are arguing with: trace its comments back through the recent history of this blog and you will discover that it is an open, self-described racist and neo-eugenicist. It also seems to think it knows American history and sociology; an arrogant assumption on the part of its programmer.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 23, 2005 04:29 AM
"The point about the Stephen Lawrence case in the UK was that the racist murderers got away with it, due greatly to 'institutional racism' in the metropolitan police force" Can you please show me the evidence that the conviction rate for racist murders compares unfavourably with the conviction rate for murder generally? There are two notorious Scottish cases, the George Gibson case and the Chris Cawley case, in which the victims were murdered by stabbing, in view of witnesses, and in which no conviction was secured. These people were White. "The police practiced a method of strategic incompetence" Unprovable opinion. There are several reason to suspect that the Lawrence murder was motivated by things other than racism. The Police were forced to abandon all lines of investigation which were not based on a presumption of racism. Perhaps one of these lines of enquiry would have led to a murder conviction. "The point about the Scottish-Asian youths who brutally killed a white Scottish teenager is that they were subjected to the full course of law and its punishments" Are you for real? One of the murderers confessed! Its virtually impossible NOT to secure a conviction faced with a confession.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Street, Paul at Sep 22, 2005 18:34 PM
Dry your eyes "cryofan." Your "societal detachment" is a cloak for an offensive, morally vapid, and racially insensitive economism that takes "FauxLeftism" to sad but hardly novel depths. The fact that the supposedly great disembobied master-meme seeking you (whoever you may be beneath the anonymous label) were inspired by my writings is irrelevant. Many rightists and mere liberals have derived inspiration from Marx (for example, and no I do not equate myself with a Marx)only to miss the basic moral and intellectual points. Here's something to reflect on: "Social Health and Spiritual Death: Empire, Inequality, and the Costs of War," available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=7902§ionID=10 You might have figured out that King "wasn't just another nigger," but you still don't get what he was saying.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 22, 2005 04:14 AM
I'd boot cryofan just for sheer unmitigated idiocy and for calling me a "Faux leftist": this sorry son of bitch (who once told this blog of his initial sense that Martin Luther King, Jr. "was just another nigger") doesn't know the difference between a real leftist, his ass, and a hole in the ground. How sad. Your writings actually gave me many research leads into discovering what trueLeftism should be, and what the true American history really is all about. This conflict we see here is perhaps representative of how these elite-centered idea systems lock people into them, and how people get invested in them. Both the Right and FauxLeft are locked into these ideological straitjackets. I see this same thing with cryonics. It becomes apparent to any curious cryonicist activist (after a few years) that the vast majority of people lock off parts of life from the application of objective reasoning. Same thing seems to apply to politically aware Americans. It is something like a religion, I suppose. The same societal detachment that allowed me to consider cryonics rationally, also allowed me to avoid investing myself into FauxLeftism once I had rejected and abandoned the Right. As for MLK, and race and so forth, yes, in years past, I was captive to the societal caste-culture conditioning.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Street, Paul at Sep 22, 2005 02:04 AM
There's too much ignorant racist filth showing up on this "left" blog system's comments section. One frequent left commenter has written to tell me that he told the relevant ZNet administrator about the rampant ignorant racist filth (and that's precisely what it is, no matter how outwardly erudite its expression may seem)and the obvious rationale for banning in certain cases. It's getting so that every time I see a comment from the immediately relevant ignorant racist I begin to visualize the face of the aforementioned administrator. Maybe that's unfair, but, well, there you have it. Call me (inaccurately) a Lenninist if you want, but I just don't get the squeamishness about kicking certain people off. Hell, if it was my blog, I'd boot cryofan for calling me a "Faux leftist": this saucy critic (who once told this blog of his initial sense that Martin Luther King, Jr. "was just another nigger") doesn't know the difference between a real leftist, his rear end, and a hole in the ground as far as I can tell.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 21, 2005 10:00 AM
The rise of the KKK was a response to the post war rape of the South in which former Black slaves were often (understandably)active participants. The KKK helped to quell lawlessness, looting, carpetbagging and anarchy. The film "Birth of a Nation" although not historically balanced, does indicate that there is an aspect of history detrimental to leftist ideology which is being suppressed. White people were just as likely to be the victims of lynching or to suffer under the feudalistic sharecropping system. I find Davis's attempt to co-opt these phenomena into his historical fantasy "pathetic". I repeat, Black people had a higher quality of life under segregetion. Black Zimbabweans were better off under Smith than they are under Mugabe. Its not my fault that these facts piss you off.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Sep 21, 2005 03:45 AM
" Your ad hominem is a particularly venerable cliche BTW." Yeah, but the shoe fits.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 21, 2005 01:04 AM
Your MLK name drop is argument by appeal to authority. Facile and spurious. "aparthied laws of Jim Crow were put in to prevent the full participation of black people in society due to white supremicst notions of superiority" Argument by assertion. Don't you EVER feel the need to provide evidence to back up your wild claims? "How utterly pathetic you are" How utterly predictable you are.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 20, 2005 23:37 PM
"Ebogan, and all other progressive thinkers: Calvin's assertion, that the Stephen Lawrence murder in the UK was unproven as a racially motivated attack should perhaps decide you in whether you want to continue debating with him at all" Translation; Calvin is beating you in debate, here's a prefabricated excuse for you to jump ship. FYI, I don't care WHY Steven Lawrence was murdered. I care THAT Steven Lawrence was murdered. Whoever commited that murder should be hanged, regardless of motive. The insistence that no other motivation save racism should be investigated in the Lawrence case probably contributed to the Police failure to secure a conviction. People like you would rather the murderers remained free than a conviction be secured on the basis of a non-racial motivation. You people are dangerous enemies, but far more dangerous friends.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 20, 2005 10:18 AM
ebogan, In order to validate your assertion that Jim Crow served the vital function of, papering over the cracks of class division" in the South, you would first have to demonstrate that the class divisions in the South had the potential to be particularly explosive. You would further have to demonstrate that in the South there was a specific absence of social unity within the White community which which demanded the invention of a unifying myth of common racial superiority. Since class divisions in the South seem to have been less pronounced than in the more urbanised North, and because a far greater sense of common cultural identity seems to pervade the South (in comparison to the North), I feel feel that I can dismiss your speculations in this area. Unless you believe that Blacks are incapable of emmulating the economic status of Whites, why should segregation be considered a factor in comparative Black underachievement? Your objection to segregation is based on a racist premiss.

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By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 20, 2005 09:48 AM
"Correlation does not imply causation..unless you're a racist grasping at straws" You mean that correlation doesn't "neccessarily" imply causation. Your lack of an alternative explanation does nothing to suggest that there is not a positive correlation in this specific case. You are too lazy to formulate a counter argument, but too arrogant to consider the validity of mine. Your ad hominem is a particularly venerable cliche BTW.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Sep 20, 2005 03:55 AM
"Under segregation Blacks enjoyed higher levels of employment, a higher average standard of living, lower levels of illegitimacy, lower levels of alcoholism, higher standards of literacy and a greater sense of self-worth." Correlation does not imply causation..unless you're a racist grasping at straws.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 19, 2005 20:07 PM
Cryofan, I respect your departure from dogmatic leftism, which shows laudable independence of thought. I agree with you that the left have simply substituted a caste hierarchy based on a spurious moral and academic elitism, as an alternative to what they clain is a caste system based on race and economic status, in order to create a platform from which they can attack conventional Western civilisation in a bid to supplant its traditional power elite. I understand your argument about cultural conditioning, but I don't think that it holds enough water to be believable. In brief, working-class Europeans drew their beliefs about the capabilities of other races on the basis of the observation that their own race, however badly it treated them, had created a civilisation which was demonstrably superior to non-European civilisations. Michael Hoffman's "They were White and they were Slaves" covers much of the same ground as your excellent video productions.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 19, 2005 19:15 PM
Cryofan Your exposition of the differentiation between european and african workers in 17-18 century is a good argument for focus on race. As for the continued "FauxLeftist" argument. The problem arizes when narrow analyzers create a problem out of a skindeep difference in focus. Focus on anything and everything i say. Just come back to the table without a smirk and a "know it all" attitude. As for caste and race: The indian castesystem goes from top to bottom: white , yellow, red, black. Some see a disturbing picture emerging.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 19, 2005 18:29 PM
Of course the fauxLeft will say America is a class based society. I say otherwise http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/articledesc.asp?cid=86551 On a comparison of USA to India re: castes: Yet, people give funny looks when the term 'caste' is suggested pertaining to America. The book The Invention of the White Race by Theodore W. Allen gives an interesting insight into how the demographic group we now call'white' emerged. He writes: "[Until the 17th century, the] white skin privilege was recognized neither in the law nor in the social practices of the labor classes. But by the early decades of the eighteenth century, racial oppression would be the norm in the plantation colonies, and African Americans would continue to suffer under its yoke for more than two centuries…African bond-laborers were turned into chattel slaves and were differentiated from their fellow proletarians of European origin. Rocked by the solidarity across racial lines exhibited by the rebellious laboring classes in the wake of the famous Bacon's Rebellion, the plantation bourgeoisie sought a solution to its labor problems in the creation of a buffer control stratum of poor whites, who enjoyed little enough privilege in colonial society beyond that of their skin color, which protected them from enslavement…Such was the invention of the white race." more here: http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/articledesc.asp?cid=86551

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 19, 2005 14:56 PM
Calvin, perhaps you are right about segregation being better, with respect to outcome, for blacks. But you are reacting from your cultural indoctrination. As a member of the color caste that has been placed at the top by the elite, here you are asserting your social caste hierarchical rights. You need to realize that you are trying to protect your caste social status. You are like some kind of programmed creature in this regaard. We all are to some degree. The thing to do is realize it. The right wing pulled you in with skin color social hierarchical appeals to your caste cultural programming. The subtext of their conversation with you may go something like this: " You are a member of the high status white skin caste. In order to preserve your high social status, we need to distinguish lower status castes (i.e., black skinned people). Segregation is one way" Just by talking about skin color in this way, they appeal to your caste culture programming, which makes you feel good because it reminds you that you are of the high status white skin caste. This appeal pulls you into the rightwing political bloc. fauxLefties like Paul would instead talk about this in terms of "racism", which I see as an ineffective and superficial term. Also counterproductive, given the forces in play as I have outlined them here recently.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 19, 2005 09:59 AM
Cryofan, the "White" elite which practiced class persecution also practised racial segregation. The class persecution was a great evil. It does not naturally follow, however, that segregation was evil. Under segregation Blacks enjoyed higher levels of employment, a higher average standard of living, lower levels of illegitimacy, lower levels of alcoholism, higher standards of literacy and a greater sense of self-worth. Segregation was good for Black people. Why do you think that radical Blacks advocate it?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 19, 2005 07:03 AM
Get ready for feeling a combination of admiration and disdain because you'll often find me mixing class (good Paul) with race (bad Paul) Yep, those elite, nonprofit foundations really like it when lefty writers mix up all that economic leftism with plenty of race-guilt mongering directed at the working class whites. They have funded you, I would guess. Oh, you may not demonize the rural and blue collar whites directly all that often, but after a couple of decades, the white working class knows the score. And if they don't, well, that is what talk radio is for, hmm? After so many years of having left economics associated with identity politics and not so subtle racist-demonization of the white working class, the white working class don't like leftist economics much, do they? Paul, the elite created this color based caste. They created Jim Crow. And the white working class simply are born into it, and live in it. They are not to blame for it. If you want to better America, skip the identity politics and racial spoils systems and go after the elite. That is where the blame lies.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 19, 2005 05:54 AM
"Everything contributes" even Cryofan, but not if your just a crying fan :-) Its not polite to take anothers argument and use half of it. You are free to use all and turm it against me though. We are divided, but there can be strength in diversity. Democracy is very much about different wievs coexisting. You must understand Streets reaction in the light of his focus. Not your focus. I believe you want equal opportunity for all. And i believe he wants to focus on class. If your point is the possible alienation of folks due to focus on their background then that is a good one. Namecalling is below a good leftist ( aka socialist ). Objectivity and zen and brotherly love and all that jazz.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Street, Paul at Sep 19, 2005 05:53 AM
cryofan you refuse to address the counter-critique of your confusion. Here is an excellent link - my collected ZNet works: http://www.zmag.org/content/AllByAuthor.cfm?lname=Street&fname=Paul&SectionName=Terror+War&startrow=1 Set some time aside. I think there's more than 120 articles or so there. For what it's worth, I don't think anyone on the Internet has mentioned the wealth of the top one percent more frequently than me over the last four years. You can do a quantitative analysis of how many times I have sinned by "talking about race" (which you appear to axiomatically identity with the embrace of "identity politics") and how many times I have been a true Leftist by talking about class (a frequent dominant theme in my work). Get ready for feeling a combination of admiration and disdain because you'll often find me mixing class (good Paul) with race (bad Paul) and empire (how do you feel about discussion of imperial foreign policy by the way...is that meat puppetry too?....and please spare me any lectures about the economic basis of imperialism since I already know about all that) and (less often) ecology (what's your feeling on the environmental issue....another silly diversion from real man/meat-and-potatoes economic leftism?)and sociopolitical authoritatianism and other factors and hierarchies (gender sometimes but too rarely in my own work to date...I know you approve that neglect, however). I am looking at this blog from the inside and so already see baby's comment (which will technically follow this comment), which tells me he/she needs to read this comment as well. Baby the point is precisely the interrelatedness that King sensed. If you don't get that interrelatedness you are lost. cryofan, later perhaps you will have space to repent and retreat from this truly terrible, crudely economistic moral-intellectual space you've gone into. When and if that happens, you should start by reading some of Martin Luther King Jr.'s essential speeches and writings from the middle and late 1960s, when King spoke and wrote against what he called "the triple evils that are interrelated": racism, economic exploitation (capitalism), and militarism. You don't want to hear ("please stop talking") anymore about the first evil. Not sure where you are on the last one. The middle one is ok --- well, it's the thing --- to talk about in your opinion. But King thought --- and he was right --- that all three are inextricably linked to one another and dialectically inseparable. I agree with Martin Luther King, Jr. I disagree with you. Marcus Denton: on location, I'm not going to make it any easier for that worthless shit D. Horowitz to put me on his neo-McCarthyite lists. Write me off-line. M. Sullivan, yes I know left liberals who do precisely what cryofan hates. You bet. It's just that he's got me confused with them and doesn't understand real leftist anti-racism.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 19, 2005 04:33 AM
Nothing is too small for us obscurantist leftist faux humanitarians. Yup, especially when you are following the lead given to you by the fauxLeftist elite of academia and the fauxLeft propaganda mills that are funded by the wealthy nonprofit foundations of the elite, which serve to divert and diffuse leftist grassroots activism into dozens of dead end rabbit holes like identity politics, porn, sexuality, abortion, etc. Anything to keep Left activism away from focusing on the wealth of the elite. Good work, fauxLeft meat puppets....

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 19, 2005 04:21 AM
Class could well be a natural consequence of lacking empathy, greed and a psychopathic personality. Its probably more diverse than that though. Nothing is to small for us obscurantist leftist faux humanitarians. Everything contributes and the sum is greater than all of the parts. Just like the human body. At least Kalvin here has some interest in this Um " boring, rigid, outdated catechism.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 19, 2005 00:49 AM
"Class" is a natural consequence of natural inequalities in talent, ambition and intelligence. Communism attempted to abolish class by abolishing the economic consequences of class. Communism failed. Game over. I'm really enjoying watching the left tear itself apart in obscurantist squabbles involving Asian porn. Have you any idea how irelevent this makes you all look? At least Cryofan has come to realise that the race shakedown gig is up. "Shall we embrace the White working-class, or shall we continue to patronize the ethnics?" What if no one is interested in your embrace, or your boring, rigid and outdated catechism? The post above show that you guys are well past your sell by date. Next!

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Organum, Baby at Sep 18, 2005 21:52 PM
Cryofan Now, this guy Nguyen, he is better known as uncle Ho was a co-founder of the french communist party. He said that the twin suckers of the capitalist-leech both had to be cut to rid the workers of the beast. So, Cryofan. Your namecalling is quite detrimental to solidarity. No matter wich sucker, lets attack the leach. Two strategies working together should be our goal. Some are turned away from politics by focus on race. Some become political. Sullivan The pornindustry is probably backward, sexist, racist, and mysogynistic, but not all moves within said industry. Uncle Ho would use a french rifle to free Viet Nam from the imperialists. Be they French, Japanese or Unitedstatesian. "All americans are equal , but some americans are more equal than other americans" Adlib;Bigpig. ( The term "American(s)" is confusing and in present use destructive. It should be used on all inhabitants of that wast continent, or be reserved for people now labeled "indians" ( India ? Anyone ? ). Its a bit like when the Conquistadors reported on Montezumas zoo having "lions" and "tigers".

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Sep 18, 2005 18:28 PM
There ya go. You fauxleft political activists just keep debating about race and racism. Anything but economics and how to get back the wealth that the rich are stealing from America. That way the upper class gets to keep their wealth because you never got around to propagating the necessary ideas to Americans....

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 18, 2005 17:55 PM
I watched the trailers and I think that this Asian porn project is laughable. This idea that Asians are "masters of the pillow" is chauveniastic. Also, the roles of men and women, what is manly and what is "nerdy", what is sexy and what is not, are highly regimented and in step with the dominant hypermasculine and misogynitic aesthetics of the rest of the porn industry. This is not a breakthrough or representative of any sort of cultural vanguard. This is only the filling of a niche market in the porn industry. The porn industry is the most backward, sexist, racist, and mysogynistic industry around. I hoped that this director would break from these trends but it seems to me, as can be viewed from the trailers, that he is simply inserting Asian males into the roles other male porn stars have occupied. Same wine different bottles.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 18, 2005 16:18 PM
Hahaha. THis porn prof is nuts. Does he think hes the first to make a film about Asian Americans and their sex lives? Hahaha. If this is the level of "resistance" on the contemporary left, some sort of groin gazing pet project, then we are well and truly f**ked. On the other hand Roediger is a very smart person with many good insights. Thanks for the link to the interview, very interesting and useful.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 17, 2005 23:57 PM
I never said Paul demonizes whites. I said much of the dominant left does. Paul's work is exemplary, especially his recent Empire and Inequality. I'm not attacking Paul. I am simply saying that Cryofan is right to point out trends within the liberal left (not the radical left mind you) regarding race and class and the depiction of poor whites. I disagree with Cryofan's disastrous decision to deny any importance to race, but I agree with the idea that poor whites are alienated from left politics by class chauvenism and cultural elitism. Postmodern leftists in particular deny the existence of class while maintaining that identity construction is one of the only ways of resisting a near irresistible system. Before you accuse me of starting a phoney debate you should probably reread my post. I find the accusation baseless as well as a bit of a trick to avoid dealing with the contet of my brief message.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 17, 2005 21:05 PM
Despite the crudeness of Cryofan's argument, Paul, I think you should take a second look at the legitimacy of the charges that parts of the left have consistently demonized poor whites as ignorant and backward social morons. I hear it all the time at UMass Amherst and Boston amongst the "enlightened" left there. This is more common amongst liberals than radical leftists. Certainly this is detrimental to radical politics and political organizing? Also, I think the intellectual fashion of postmodernism which has become the dominant theoretical outlook of the left in the past 20+ years has consistently denied the reality or existence of class to focus exclusively on race and gender along with a general political defeatism. In this sense Cryofan's accusation of the elite intellegentsia abandoning class is true and quite relevant here. In my view race and gender must be synethised with class for any theoretical arsenal which is to attack the structures of oppression, both race and class oppression under this terribly racist capitalist regime of ours.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Sullivan, M. at Sep 17, 2005 20:21 PM
I think that class position is more significant politically than race, although both charactersitics are important. Poor whites have more in common with poor blacks than Condi Rice or Colin Powell does. Rich blacks/whites have more power and "opportunity" than poor blacks/whites. I think Cryofan is wrong to negate race but I do believe that in our society today race is often talked about to the exclusion of class. In my view these things are explicitly related and any serious analysis must account for both. The clasism and elitism practiced agaisnt poor whites is just as real as the racism this country practices against minorities. These social realities need to be understood together, otherwise theoretical and social unity is impossible.

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 17, 2005 18:39 PM
Ah yes! The UK Asian community, sometimes held up as model of achievement and industry in order to mock working-class Whites, sometimes portrayed as a conglomeration of failing victim groups. You lot have more faces than the town hall clock. The Bangladeshis are Muslims. Southern Ireland didn't make much economic progress until it broke the stranglehold of Catholicism. Work it out. It seems you know in advance the motivation and circumstances of the murder of Anthony Walker, despite the fact that there has been no trial yet. Just as you know that the motivation for Steven Lawrence's murder was racism, despite no one ever having been convicted. White fifteen year old Kriss Donald was tortured to death by burning, stabbing and slashing by a gang of Asians on March 16th 2004 in a murder which the convicted perpetrators admitted was solely motivated by the colour of the victim's skin. This was and remains the worst racial murder in the history of the UK. Did that pass you by? No major newspaper covered it. No one South of Hadrian's wall knows anything about it. So, yes,it was with much anger that I watched the secular beatification of Walker just because he is Black. Any other challenges you wish to issue Joe?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Blairhead, Calvin at Sep 17, 2005 10:02 AM
"even middle- and upper class blacks and their children continue to experience significantly diminished access to opportunity" Except in the fields of popular music, movies, television and sport. The most admired and affluent people in Western culture are music, sport and tv stars. Very few scientists or intellectuals ever gain public recognition. So called racist Whites who are supposed to have the power to decide who succeeds and who fails in society have decided to deny Blacks the right to work annonymously behind the scenes in favour of elevating them to iconic public status in other more admired fields? If racism is what's holding Blacks back, why is it only holding Blacks back in some fields? If racism is holding Blacks back why isn't it holding Asians back? If racism is holding Blacks back why are Black nations with Black governments lagging behind the rest of the world? If its because of colonialism, why are other former colonies thriving? Could it just be that people succeed or fail in the areas where their talents lie?

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Re: "Please Stop Talking About Race," II

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Sep 17, 2005 04:55 AM
"even middle- and upper class blacks and their children continue to experience significantly diminished access to opportunity" How is this being measured? What is the evidence behind the assertion?

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