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The last time I participated in this community I was in November. When as part of some discussion about how DnD had gone woke or something, /u/RandomRanger posted a very long comment where, to paraphrase, he said that black people were an inferior stupid race who bring crime and dysfunction wherever we go and that in order to stop the west from being "overrun" with blacks, white racists would need to "block" us in a way the didn't account for "international law" and "human rights". I replied calling him a cracker bitch and was temp-banned by the mods.
Now I know my outburst was against the rules, it was uncivil, I was reacting with anger, and I knew at the time I'd get banned for it. But I don't know, when I see someone essentially laying out a justification for bringing back slavery, how am I supposed to respond, as a black person? Am I expected to lay out some "well have you considered..."-ass intellectual rebuttal, Am I supposed to beg and plead for my own rights? "No sir, Please sir, I'm one of da good ones see!" I'm sorry but I don't have the patience for that
When made my first comment here where expressed profound distress over the possibly that HBD is real. I got a lot of responses along the lines of "well, what's it matter to you? you're an individual and population level statistics don't apply to you." I never thought that they applied to me. But when people in this community use HBD and crime statistics to argue that things Jim Crow and Apartheid were good and just and maybe should even be brought back THAT FUCKING AFFECTS ME. I'M BLACK
I remember another person asked me if I sincerely related to black underclass criminals and no I obviously don't but I relate to people like Toussaint Louverture, Malcolm X, Steve Biko. The intelligent black men who dedicated their lives to fighting the people who wanted to keep us in eternal subjugation for all the same goddamn reasons. And when I read what RandomRanger says about how society ought to forcefully disempower black people for the sake of having a "civilized" country. I'm reminded of the poem written by Claude McKay during Red Summer when white supremacists were terrorizing black people across America:
So bring it on! I don't care if we won't win but I'll FIGHT LIKE HELL for my people and if I die I know I'll have died a proud black man who stood for dignity instead of cowering negro who submitted to slavery. I'LL NEVER BE ACCEPT BEING A SLAVE!!!
I sympathize. I really do.
I, personally, do not like racists. I do not like antisemites and Holocaust deniers. I do not like misogynists. I do not like a lot of people. I sometimes struggle to be polite to the most hateful people here. It's a daily exercise, trying not to hate the haters.
But the answer to your question: are you expected to lay out some "intellectual-ass rebuttal" to people saying, in so many words, that black people are orcs, is yes.
There are Jews here. They have to read people talking about how Jews are responsible for every evil in the world and are secretly conspiring against the goyim because Jews are sneaky evil parasites who hate everyone else. They aren't allowed to just go off on the antisemites and call them names. They have to engage politely, or choose not to engage.
There are women here. They have to read people talking about how women are non-sapient hypergamous slutwhores who should be kept the property of their fathers for the good of civilization, and definitely not allowed to work or vote or even have a say in who fucks them. They have to engage politely, or choose not to engage.
We have Democrats and liberals here (not the same thing but for practical purposes almost always treated as the same thing here). They have to read people talking about how "Blues" are hypocritical amoral stupid mindless traitors with no principles or reasoning abilities and we can't wait to line them up against a wall. They have to engage politely, or choose not to engage.
That's hard, and not everyone can do it, and now and then we have someone who flames out because they can't. Being a black person, I understand why you'd be tempted to flame out at people advocating Jim Crow or apartheid or just casually talking about black criminality and low IQ.
But the Motte is a weird place. It's intended to allow the most outrageous views, the ones that are unsayable in most places, to be civilly debated. Hopefully views that are truly outrageous and offensive- like "Black people should be slaves" or "The Holocaust didn't happen and it's good that it did" - will be debated and pushed back against. And usually they are! But you may be disconcerted to realize that many people in fact agree with those views. Is that infuriating? I am sure it is. Sometimes I'm angry at the shit people say about black people or Jews or women, and I am not black or Jewish or a woman. But the Motte lets you bring your hottest take, your most controversial opinion, the things you want to propose that you know would get you kicked off most mainstream sites, and put them out there and see what people say about them.
Hopefully, if your views are just stupid and offensive, you will be persuaded to rethink them. (Yeah, this rarely happens.) But that's the purpose- to allow the conversations that aren't allowed anywhere else. People can talk about HBD here. People can talk about evpsych here even in the most reductive "are-women-actually-people?" way. People can talk about pedophilia and accelerationism and the Holocaust and trans people here in ways that make peoples' heads explode everywhere else.
The Motte is a weird place. A lot of people are offended by our very existence. We have trolls who come back again and again to call us a bunch of Nazis because they just can't believe we allow literal Nazis to post here. I have been attacked, personally, for participating and modding here. The assumption being that if I enable a place that allows horrible views, I must support those views. Of course I don't. But I support having a place where those views can be expressed, so I can see what sort of people seriously espouse those views. I have learned a lot about the real, unironic Holocaust deniers and white nationalists and rape enthusiasts from people who were mostly just Internet boogeymen until I started talking to them. I like to think it's made me better at arguing with them, but I can understand why those who think we simply shouldn't platform them at all would think this is delusion.
I am proud of what the Motte is, as an actual bastion of free speech, and disheartened by what it's become, when you actually allow free speech. I would not want every other place to be like the Motte. I assure you I would prefer not to deal with Holocaust deniers and segregationists and pedophiles on my other social media sites. At the same time, I am like many disaffected liberals who have been driven off of many other social media sites because even asking questions that offend people is unsayable there.
Since this is personal to you, let me make it personal. I am a Gen Xer. I grew up in a world where we believed everyone was supposed to strive for the goals of that Martin Luther King speech. We were all supposed to become "colorblind." We wanted racial harmony and believed it was possible. We believed in racial equality and thought all we had to do was stop being racist and it would happen.
Those hopes and dreams have crashed and burned. Not just because I have come to the sad realization that HBD is real and that, in fact, there are racial differences in behavior and IQ. No, hear me out, I am not trying to make an argument for why the racists are right! I am telling you that eventually people like me notice things and have a hard time reconciling them with our ideals... and then we're told that Noticing such things makes us racist. I have had... mostly unpleasant interactions with black people. I wish this were not so. (I also have black friends. Yeah, yeah, "Some of my best friends...") I still believe every individual should be treated as an individual. I still want a world where we can coexist. But what has happened is on the one side, we have the most awful people in the world who unfortunately make some compelling arguments, and on the other side we have people saying "Shut up. Stop noticing things. Racist!"
Who do you think is going to win?
I wish you would stay. I wish you would participate, even if it means gritting your teeth to make "intellectual-ass arguments" against people who want you put in a reservation. I get that it's probably not easy, but we have a lot of people putting up with awful things being said about their group who do put up with it. Yes, if you just call people "cracker bitches" you will be banned. But I assure you even the most racist people will engage with you civilly if you engage with them civilly. And if they don't, they too will be banned, because while we allow "controversial" opinions, we also do not allow people to just say "Black people are orcs/criminals/subhuman." (And people have been banned for that.)
You can decide whether the Motte project is for you or not. It's not for many people. We have very few people at the pointy end of debates here who stick around, and it's easy to see why. Who wants to hang around with a bunch of people who barely consider them human and have to be polite to them? But I hope you will give it a shot.
I am strongly in favor of institutional color- and gender-blindness. Give everyone the same admission test, and if half of the people with the top scores are Ashkenazim, that should be of little interest to the university.
I think that this is what MLK argued for -- let everyone compete on equal footing, and let the outcome be what it may. Racial equality before the law seems an excellent idea, but does not imply racial equality of outcomes. Nor is the latter required for peaceful coexistence.
When it became apparent that equal(ish) opportunity does not lead to equal outcomes, it was the SJ left who defected from colorblindness, and pushed for racial discrimination. This creates perverse incentives. If medical school was colorblind, then I as a not overtly racist patient would have no reason to care about the skin color of my doctor -- after all, they all competed on merit. If the schools practice affirmative action, then as a rational patient I would prefer a doctor whose racial group would be overrepresented in a meritocratic system, e.g. someone White or Asian. It is hard to overstate how fucked up this is. We have the tools to measure individual merit much better than what racial stereotyping -- even if backed up with decades of HBD research -- could ever accomplish. And then we forgo these tools, so crude racial stereotyping will be the most effective tool for the individual. (I think the reason is that SJ does not really believe in individual qualifications. High-earning careers are simply deserved.)
But that's the problem - when institutional and color-/gender-blindness happens and fail to achieve equitable outcomes, people lose their minds, because any explanation other than structural bias is unacceptable. If they resort to explanations that are Less Wrong, then everything implodes.
"What can be destroyed by the truth should be" is something that most of the world won't agree on when they are what will be destroyed in the process.
Yep.
As an Elder Millenial I can recall the colorblind world that the Gen Xers were trying to create being very close to fruition...
But the snag came because disparate outcomes were inevitable. Once you'd done everything you can to level playing fields and boost disadvantaged players, the remaining disparities are probably intractable. Whatever reasons you think cause that, its still resulting in one group seeing better performance, better outcomes on average, and your other group is still lagging and you've already skimmed the cream of the crop.
And if you sneak in an assumption that equal outcomes is the true goal, this can't be allowed to stand.
I've lived through both the realization that the actual goal was to ensure equality of outcomes, and the increasing ham-handed efforts to achieve such a goal...
AND the ultimate realization that to make things equal, they have to actively disadvantage people who would otherwise find success and contribute more to society, and they feel this disadvantaging is morally justified and right.
Even as this gnaws at the load-bearing infrastructure of your civilization in more ways than one. The colorblind world was probably possible, but it was an unstable equilibrium that required us to be okay with some groups just continuing to 'win' fair contests and certain groups hitting a ceiling that we can't guide them past.
It's because if the reasons are subject to the hard reality that there's nothing that will make a poor white kid run a marathon faster than a Kenyan, there's no point in the kid trying in the first place. And that's not something people are willing to say.
It's one thing to design society to be Gattaca, it's another thing entirely to be told that Gattaca already exists and statistically, certain things are close to impossible for you and your children. An entire generation that was told growing up that they could be President or go to space hasn't come to terms with it.
That's probably a part of it.
There was an element of inflated expectations that kids in my generation grew up with. I get the sense that Gen Z does NOT have such a core belief of "I am a being of unlimited potential I just have to choose my goal and work at it!" So they're more nihilist, whereas a lot of millenials had to learn some hard lessons about their own
I, personally internalized something like The Mewtwo Lesson. But it turns out that the "circumstances of one's birth" are pretty damn relevant to your long term outcomes, and you can either lean into your existing strengths or you'll inherently underperform and end up fighting twice as hard for half the success. And that's assuming nobody has actually stacked the deck against you.
Cold meritocracy pokes through either way. We have more ways to make people's skill differentials apparent than ever before.
The original Pokemon games were lowkey based for teaching children a lesson.
You can give your Pokemon team all the tender loving care in the world, the best socioeconomic factors, take them on bike rides, play them the Pokeflute, bring them on cruises like the SS Anne, nurture them from the time they were level 5 with careful battle experience and with the best potions, ethers, elixirs, and rare candies that money can buy.
Yet, a Mewtwo who spent half his life experimented upon in a lab and the other half of his life isolated in a cave can solo your carefully-crafted, nurture-maxxed team.
Funny anectdote on that. In the original Red, Blue, and Yellow games the early version of Effort values meant if you leveled up your Pokemon the standard way, just constant battles, its 'under the hood' stats would actually be higher than if you cheated it with rare candies to reach level 100.
So one time I battled my cousin using the Gameboy link cable (how's that for old school) and his team of straight level 100 'mon, and me, my strongest being a level 98 Mewtwo, and it turned into a surprise stomp in my favor, although it did come down to both of our Mewtwos in a slapfight to end it. I had NO CLUE about the hidden stats, I just chose to believe that because I had raised my pokemon with more care and attention as opposed to just pumping them with chemicals, they wanted to fight harder.
So the lesson is that yeah, sometimes pure effort does win over mere pedigree and performance enhancing drugs.
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