Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
More or less true. The rest of this comment is basically slander.
There’s probably a leftist out there who would endorse the racist paternalism you describe, but that person is not an “average person.” The concept is so far outside the Overton window that it horseshoes around to the general fringe category.
Oh, come on. It wasn’t enough to make a strawman of the policy? You had to have them killing puppies, too?
I don’t believe that you want to escape that conclusion.
Perhaps this is because “racist” is the wrong label for what you’re describing.
You’re putting an awful lot of words in people’s mouths. If those words are shocking and incoherent, if you notice you are confused, maybe they aren’t the right words.
True, prosecutors and judges tend not to be average people. In that case, you have 2 possibilities: either the true belief is limited to them, or it's politically advantageous for them to act in a way indistinguishable from believing it [in which case we need to ask why that is, and we can assume that, because some of these are elected positions, that the charge of racist paternalism can be said to extend to a significant portion of the population, or at the very least it doesn't bother them].
I think most of the moral sentiment that caused racism in the first place is absolutely alive and well (in that some people have a psychological need for an enemy outgroup categorized by simple observable markers like skin color and gender, and furthermore that people who do this are inferior themselves), and I even believe Progressives when they claim it's [relatively] uniquely a problem with whites. Perhaps ironically, I think this is an HBD thing.
Naturally, I am highly suspect of a race of people who then seem to exempt themselves because they say "look we're maximally discriminatory against ourselves on the basis of race", because the intent is the crime, not the fact it was ever done (which is also the problem with other X-supremacy groups, most notably feminists/gynosupremacists). The correct lesson, and one the classical-liberals tried to teach in the '70s, is that the correct way to not be discriminatory on the basis of race is to not be discriminatory on the basis of race; their folly is that this discriminatory behavior is, in fact, innate to white people (and cannot be trained out of them), and they were just laying the grounds for the (overwhelmingly white) daughters of the Confederacy to roll right back over them with their new racism after classical-liberalism reached its high water mark that decade.
Which also explains the related phenomenon where a non-trivial number of [assuming/acting in the progressive framing] "white supremacists" are black or hispanic (or married to one). That inconsistency is resolved if you assume Progressives are more guilty of the discriminatory-intent-mind-crime (which is what non-progressives actually mean by "racism") than those who they accuse of it.
It doesn't need to be if you accept the progressive framing that "white supremacy" means "being of a mental state that opposes the progressive power structure", but at that point "white supremacy" is not the actual crime.
It occurs to me that there is a funny counter factual out there where people of different skin colors are really all nearly identical on all the measurable things that are supposed to matter (intelligence, crime, education, financial outcomes, hygiene, health, inhabiting clean a tidy communities, etc.) and then you have the racists making enemies of certain pigments. But then they would struggle to come up with any reason why they don’t like group besides the mere color of their skin. It would be rather ludicrous. I suppose there are a lot of people who do think that’s our current situation.
Is it really the skin color that people object to when they think about immigrants?
Once you control for class filter bubbles (i.e. if you believe the only people who exist are middle or upper class, and in that case/context, what you have stated is literally true) this is exactly how progressives behave (the pigments they hate are white and yellow). It's not ludicrous, it's personally advantageous- those classes are shrinking, so as any
good whorerational actor would do they sell their dignity and do stupid things like "be racist against themselves" (the upper class that pays them loves a good self-hating worker who tells their fellow workers they deserve lower wages because of their pigment). That is how they defect against everyone else, by signalling that a lower [sociofinancial] salary will be acceptable to them, and the other workers who won't do the same thing should be fired (or killed).It's the exact equivalent to a scab working behind a picket line, just using an expanded sociofinancial sense of salary, not just the financial one most are used to. Rational, yes; but the union response to that sends goons to their homes to extract a little rent of their own, and so far that clearly hasn't been happening for a bunch of reasons that are out of scope of this response.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Openly endorse it? Never. That's a second order consequence that would make them look bad, so it's basically an antimeme.
Live every day as though that were a fair and accurate description of their true beliefs? Yes, I observe it personally all the time, it's a constain refrain in their published works ("X bad behavior is just a reflection of the oppression they suffer!" is an entire genre of progressive articles), and it's borne out in studies and research (e.g. progressives dumbing down their speech and downplaying their competence when speaking with black/brown people).
What's a better one?
The confusion was wondering why progressive people I know seem incapable of assigning blame for bad behavior to anyone but straight white men. The "words in their mouths" may be less than charitable, but they're an explanation that resolves the confusion.
Do you have a better one?
Maybe they won't endorse it because, you know, they don't believe it? Second-order consequences are for nerds.
The modal progressive believes that people deserve the same standard of living. When reality falls short, he blames the people with the most money and power. In America, that's usually white dudes, but anybody who does well enough gets trimmed out of the coalition. See Asians. The rest of the world imports their narrative from us whether or not it makes sense.
Sometimes, he gets a slice of that money and power, then drives himself nuts trying to bring the world a little closer to his ideal. Call it "neurotic philanthropy."
What does that have to do with anything? Do you use that standard to disregard all criticisms of conservatives? "Well, they say that aren't Xist, so you should stop calling them that." In either case, we can look beyond people's own self-conceptions. Though IME, if you lay out enough rope in the right circumstances it really isn't hard to trip leftists into essentially stating "Whites are the master race and that's a bad thing". They just absolutely will not close the loop, and it's fascinating to watch play out.
Right, which is why they had the national guard deport the busload of immigrants who made it to Martha's Vinyard.
But I'm not even talking about vast, general trends. I'm talking about specific individuals. I can tell my progressive friends about an absolute fucking idiot I encountered, and the part where I literally saw her committing welfare fraud, and if I phrase it to imply she's a low-class white, they laugh and sneer. If I reveal she's Hispanic, they suddenly find vast reserves of sympathy and patience.
It's the exact phenomenon Scott wrote about where all his oh-so empathetic friends were very humanistic and somber when bin Laden died and then turned around to chant "DING DONG THE BITCH IS DEAD" when Thatcher passed, but very clearly race/culture coded. The same people who would express grave concerns about the brutal consequences of America's prison system on the brown illigrant who raped and murdered a teenaged white girl would laugh about TheNybbler going to pound-me-in-the-ass prison if he failed to mention an elementary school shrink visit on a gun permit.
It certainly looks like they think he's the master race, and ought to have known better and deserves what he gets, while imprisoning the poor immigrant is like beating an animal that doesn't understand it did something wrong.
Solzhenitsyn wrote on this. Remember that kerfluffle? Remember Ma'khia Bryant?
I once had a Haitian kid who worked for me. He apparently straight up told the (female) hiring manager "I have a learning disability. I just need someone to give me a chance.", and so he was hired and assigned to me. He wasn't a bad guy, but his general level of competence and basic problem-solving was painful. And the amazing thing was watching some of my most diffcult, entitled, asshole regular customers suddenly turn into kindergarten teachers when he was helping them, just so proud of themselves for being patient and understanding with the slow guy with an accent. I have a white kid now who isn't nearly as bad, and the same customers treat him like something to scrape off their shoes if I can't interceed.
It's not reality falling short, it's people. Individual humans. It wasn't reality that repeatedly raped a 10 year old, it was Tue Lue Vang, who was pardoned by Tim Walz and Keith Ellison to protect him from consequences. Meanwhile Brock Turner is a vile piece of subhuman shit who deserves to spend his life being raped in prison.
If someone isn't willing to hold an immigrant to the same standards as a native, then they ought to have to justify that stance. And if their own ideology says that such a disparate impact is obvious evidence of giga-racism, then they should have to weasel their way out of that too.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link