Why are antiracists so... racist?

[plarq]

That's lovely plarq. Thank you for your contribution.

Actually I posted this to argue against your opinion. If the legal fiction sets up the battle between races, people will fight against each other. This is consequences of legislation.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Actually I posted this to argue against your opinion. If the legal fiction sets up the battle between races, people will fight against each other. This is consequences of legislation.

I was being sarcastic.

 

[Arent11]

Soo, I read through all your comments (whew) & there were some really surprising & insightful responses

Many other answers, however, were just a repetition of arguments you commonly hear in large news outlets. & that is, of course, disappointing. Since these arguments are extremely repetitive & quickly made the discussion run in circles, I just want to sum them up without responding to single comments:

Standard argument 1: "You may not call Isis/Hamas/whatever racist. Non-western groups may not be called racist. I forbid you to call non-western groups racist!"

Well, that somehow proves my point. There are people around who can not accept the mere existence of racist groups that are non-western Even more absurd are the "arguments" given in favor of that world view. Let's quickly go over them:

Standard argument 1a: "You shouldn't call Isis racist because it hinders the fight against western intolerance."

Well, these people just admitted that they are not interested in topics like racism at all. They are just interested in selectively criticizing western countries. In fact, they even demand to belittle ethnic cleanings & slave markets just because it happens to disturb their ideological world view.

Standard argument 1b: "We should start with ourselves. Only then we can criticize others."

Err, well, no, we should not "start with ourselves", we should just start with actual racism. And if that actual racism is done by someone else than "ourselves" than we should be as critical as with anyone else.
In fact, these people often criticize borders or citizenship as "discriminatory", "intolerant" or "racist" even though they clearly are not & in fact, they are the constitution of virtually every modern society. At the same time, actual ethnic cleanings are ignored as long as they can not be blamed on western countries.

And if you look closely, they do not at all mean "themselves" - they are not criticizing themselves at all What they mean is "ourselves", and by "ourselves" they mean the western world

Standard argument 1c: "You may not call ethnic cleanings, slave markets & threats to wipe out ethnic groups racist, if those people claim they do it for religious reasons."

These people know perfectly well that ethnic cleanings, in history, were almost always justified by some ideology or religion. You cannot wipe out an ethnic group without giving some sort of justification, you have to argue that a certain ethnic group is evil, dumb or worthless, so you are "allowed" to wipe them out. And such generalized derogatory views are almost always supplied by some ideology or religion.
In fact, the presence of an overarching ideology that supplies & justifies such derogatory views is proof that we are not confronted by "common" conflicts over ressources or "simple" wars over a patch of land. The people who use that argument know that, they just pretend they would not know that. They can't accept that a non-western group like Isis is called racist & try to find an argument to prevent that.

Standard argument 2: "Yes, true! Isis/Hamas/Whatever is racist! The western world is completely nice and tolerant & everyone is just lying about it!"

Err, well, no, there is racism in the west. However, borders, citizenship and rejection of illegal immigration is not. Even if some groups - whether they are white or black or asian - "self segregate" or want to live amongst themselves that is obviously not racism. Racism is derogatory views that other ethnic groups are less worthy or attempts to wipe them out.

Standard argument 3: "Well, true but all ideological/religious/ethnic groups claim they would be '"nice" and "tolerant" and "peaceful" and if you look closely, they are not. So, who cares?"

Well, that might be true, but that doesn't mean you should let them get away with it. You can, once in a while, point out that they are not at all "anti-racist", "tolerant" or "peaceful". Of course that can be dangerous to your health

 

[Senethro]

Anyone feel obliged to defend dumb strawmen selected by an absentee OP?

 

[Lexicus]

There is plenty of race-essentialist discourse in the anti-racist left. It is fact-free and counterproductive but not racist.

 

[Archon_Wing]

It's the narcissistic tendency to only care for injustice commuted against you, and less so others. I remember in college, various groups based on race would clamor against discrimination against their people but then go ahead and sprout ignorant garbage about others. I guess tribalism at work.

That being said, "anti-racist" is generally a much broader category than "racist". I mean, The Western Allies and Soviet Union in Ww2 were both "anti-nazi" but they certainly were not the same. Likewise, both religious people and athiests may oppose Islamic Theocracy for very different reasons. Sharing one belief (or lack of one) doesn't indicate solidarity. Thus people may hate racism or forms of racism for many different reasons, and they don't all have to be good ones. Oh, and athiests aren't a united bunch either!

And of course, beware the faulty logic that hypocrisy invalidates what people say. Someone can denounce racism while holding racist beliefs; it doesn't mean that it invalidates what they say and suddenly racism is okay. I feel there is an overbearing tendency to shoot the messenger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#Tu_quoque

 

[plarq]

I would guess that people are ultimately selfish, and the selfishness, either for the succession of genes (blood is thicker than water) or memes (carrying on social structure) bring in tribal/ethnicity/religious/national preference treatment, and it can be broadly, and inaccurately, classified as racism.

 

[Perfection]

Standard argument 1c: "You may not call ethnic cleanings, slave markets & threats to wipe out ethnic groups racist, if those people claim they do it for religious reasons."

These people know perfectly well that ethnic cleanings, in history, were almost always justified by some ideology or religion. You cannot wipe out an ethnic group without giving some sort of justification, you have to argue that a certain ethnic group is evil, dumb or worthless, so you are "allowed" to wipe them out. And such generalized derogatory views are almost always supplied by some ideology or religion.
In fact, the presence of an overarching ideology that supplies & justifies such derogatory views is proof that we are not confronted by "common" conflicts over ressources or "simple" wars over a patch of land. The people who use that argument know that, they just pretend they would not know that. They can't accept that a non-western group like Isis is called racist & try to find an argument to prevent that.

ISIS is certainly bigoted but calling them racist is kinda weird. Their ideology and targets of bigotry isn't based on categorization into racial groups.

The non-western world is filled with bigotry. Whether or not it meets the definition of "racism" is boring. I'm sure some liberal-minded folks don't understand the bigotry of the world, but you can still understand it and be liberal-minded. While I'm especially pissed that the bigots are getting more power in mainstream US politics, I am not a fan of bigotry worldwide.

Bigots everywhere suck.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Hmmm back to human nature, are we? I think circumstance and culture have more to do with how humans act than some innate feature of human existence. So if you change those conditions, and therefore alter the culture, people will generally act in whatever way their society encourages. Shown in Nazi Germany, shown in Indigenous North American protosocialism.

Human nature/behavior patterns on average are not something we can ignore. If you want to do something that works, you need to account for it. Cultures and policies can dictate how that nature interacts and normalizes behavior, but that doesn't change that most people on average look out for themselves/family/friends first with extreme priority. If we're really honest about optimizing for max human rights/utility (maybe this isn't the goal though) then yes, we will need people to contradict their nature and somehow operate against bias (consistently!). If that's a possibility, I would take that deal. If it isn't, then you need to account for human nature. Not to excuse it, but to use it wisely.

The "assets" of an individual exist only by the goodwill of the society. If morality is relative, I can invoke the moral calculation I have made that tells me that anything an individual would deprive another individual of, when the first has plenty, is at its essence a thievery of the highest degree.

For that to work, we need evidence that such a rationale would steer society towards the most desirable outcome, and why that outcome is more desirable than others. Disincentivizing behaviors that lead to wealth by guaranteeing it despite inaction (and at the expense of those who do actions) results in less total wealth. For scenarios where the "deprived" individual could in principle attain that "anything" if they did what the person who has it did rewarding inaction lowers average wealth across the population as a whole.

Cutting marginal utility of effort --> you get less effort and less total stuff to go around. You can make a case that is "more moral", but I see no reason to consider that desirable over alternatives.

People are born equal

That is, unfortunately, objectively false. It's not even true by societal standards, despite attempts to claim otherwise. It certainly isn't true by genetic standards. People have differing levels of cognitive ability, physical ability, and disease vulnerability no matter what choices they make or how hard they try.

If we push the origin of an individual's sentience to causal bounds as we understand them, there's still no equality there.

Without equality, neither can exist

You can most certainly have life without equality...in fact inequality is the more common state for life by a wide margin. It's kind of hard to refute this one too; simple daily observation is plenty of evidence but there's solid statistical backing that people live w/o equality too.

Liberty is debatable, mostly because no matter how free or not free your society is, there are things you can't do without having it taken away. An obvious extreme for illustration is murder; the utility for taking away the liberty to kill people on a whim is much greater than the loss of "freedom" to do that..but that doesn't change the fact that it's something you can't do (and if you do it, you then are denied the ability to do many more actions). Make no mistake though, in a theoretically truly "equal" society there would be lots of things you could not do, including basically anything that would give you more wealth than others even temporarily. After all, if you allowed that it wouldn't be equal anymore.

This is a defense of post-scarcity capitalism, right? Literally asking, I don't really understand this sentence

No, I myself am confused as to what exactly "post-scarcity" capitalism would actually look like (or whether the distinction would matter much any longer). I start thinking about resources like "air" or "ocean water", and barring the ability to take these things into environments lacking them, these are generally freely available to everyone who can access them. If you put food at the same cost as breathable air to a typical person's daily life, it's effectively a non-factor. Maybe at that point capitalism is irrelevant, or only constrained to things that aren't necessities like various entertainment? I don't know, it's hard to imagine if you "airify" all survival resources on a wide scale, hence my confusion. It would be a great thing for humanity to achieve, I just can't effectively picture how it changes these interactions.

Since wealth redistribution for the past several decades has actually been from black people to white people, I don't believe the assumptions behind this question are accurate.

When you consider the world as a whole that's a bit disingenuous and simplified. Even if it were 100% absolutely true in an unqualified fashion, however, what makes you think continuing wealth redistribution changes what happens in practice? You'd need severe (and enforced) policy shift or you'll see several decades more of similar, at least until political powers shift and someone else gains the ability to siphon using whatever pretense is handy + culturally acceptable (IE considering historical Rome, Spain, China as managing very similar redistribution, albeit each with different pretense).

Redistribution by itself is not a good solution, though it is a necessary one practiced everywhere. Taxes are a form of redistribution. Not necessarily from the top to the bottom of the social scale, but generally so (because the bottom cannot afford paying taxes anyway).

That's the present design of taxes, and the tendency over time (because doing it wins votes --> power). Governments do provide a few services typical firms aren't so good at doing, including protecting its own citizens and their assets, managing how firms interact, creating/enforcing law --> allowing some insurance that you're better of making/doing stuff than taking from others in the same society (if everybody only took from others in society, nobody would have anything).

In the technical sense any transaction is a redistribution of wealth, but when I was talking about it I was thinking more so in terms of doing this without any transaction other than "this person gets this instead of you or vice versa".

Over and under regulation are both problems. Pre-80's firms were less efficient, but if you have no regulation then you wind up with less total wealth than some regulation since you get crushing monopolies among other issues.

That's not moral in ANY framework. That's discrimination based on race.

Strictly speaking, it is possible to have a moral framework that allows this (even a coherent one, if someone is sufficiently evil by my standards ), but the consequences are pretty bad when considering most peoples' utility functions.

 

[Traitorfish]

The hell should I care about increased "total wealth" if more of it ends up in some other bastard's pocket that did before? If its condition is the proliferation tedious and pointless work? If the price of entry is to live in a state of fear and subjugation?

You're trying to sell us on a prison with the promise of a bigger, shinier prison.

 

[Lexicus]

When you consider the world as a whole that's a bit disingenuous and simplified. Even if it were 100% absolutely true in an unqualified fashion, however, what makes you think continuing wealth redistribution changes what happens in practice? You'd need severe (and enforced) policy shift or you'll see several decades more of similar, at least until political powers shift and someone else gains the ability to siphon using whatever pretense is handy + culturally acceptable (IE considering historical Rome, Spain, China as managing very similar redistribution, albeit each with different pretense).

I was talking specifically about the US

 

[inthesomeday]

Plus I'll be honest I stopped taking the post seriously when you disagreed that people are intrinsically equal from birth. It's a pretty solid and important foundation of most value systems including mine.

 

[Lexicus]

The hell should I care about increased "total wealth" if more of it ends up in some other bastard's pocket that did before?

And quick note, it is a pretty strong consensus among even mainstream economists that the benefits of economic growth have been going predominantly to the already-wealthy for decades, and almost entirely to the wealthy since the financial crisis. It is a humorous exercise watching the sort of explanations that neoclassical economists come up with for this fact, since marginal productivity theory precludes their thinking of the distribution of wealth in political terms.

Plus I'll be honest I stopped taking the post seriously when you disagreed that people are intrinsically equal from birth. It's a pretty solid and important foundation of most value systems including mine.

Most value systems that are worth the paper they're printed on, anyway.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Plus I'll be honest I stopped taking the post seriously when you disagreed that people are intrinsically equal from birth. It's a pretty solid and important foundation of most value systems including mine.

If you're talking about policy on how to treat people it's one thing. We don't need to go back to nobility.

Still, asserting that people are born equal is fantasy and runs strongly counter to evidence. The person born with better cognitive ability has an obvious advantage. The person born with a debilitating genetic disorder that impairs daily quality of life has an even more obvious disadvantage. Do you deny this, or do you have a different conception of what the term "equal" means?

One person conferred a tremendous advantage or disadvantage compared to another regardless of choices or efforts is the opposite of "equal". It is undeniable there are causal links to these advantages or disadvantages long before birth. You seem to be asserting otherwise and are saying it's *me* who shouldn't be taken seriously?

The hell should I care about increased "total wealth" if more of it ends up in some other bastard's pocket that did before? If its condition is the proliferation tedious and pointless work? If the price of entry is to live in a state of fear and subjugation?

We're not in a post-scarcity society. If someone else gets something and you take it from them by force, who's the real prisoner? If nobody else gets the resources, it's work or die.

I'd rather a society protect productivity rather than intentionally lowering it by making it less meaningful to the people who are productive.

I was talking specifically about the US

US mirrors my other examples quite nicely, though with modern pretenses. Getting a different outcome would require acting differently from them.

And quick note, it is a pretty strong consensus among even mainstream economists that the benefits of economic growth have been going predominantly to the already-wealthy for decades, and almost entirely to the wealthy since the financial crisis. It is a humorous exercise watching the sort of explanations that neoclassical economists come up with for this fact, since marginal productivity theory precludes their thinking of the distribution of wealth in political terms.

Who has the politician's ear when it comes time to push legislation? Voters or lobbyists? The answer to this question should make the outcome unsurprising. The setup is quite strong for keeping money centralized though. Give people minimal payouts, toss $$$ into legislation favorable to you, window dress it as humanitarian, and drive out employee or consumer bargaining power or competition to the best of your ability w/o getting too much attention.

It's not changing unless the people in charge of "wealth redistribution" aren't in a position where altering it bites the hand(outs) that feed. If you want something different, the answer is not to hand people making decisions with $$$ incentives that power. As you yourself pointed out, the track record of this setup is pretty bad.

 

[Traitorfish]

We're not in a post-scarcity society. If someone else gets something and you take it from them by force, who's the real prisoner? If nobody else gets the resources, it's work or die.

The issue I have with is this process of "getting something". Heaven doesn't simply drop good fortune into their laps. There's a whole apparatus constructed to ensure that some get, and others do not.

Still, asserting that people are born equal is fantasy and runs strongly counter to evidence. The person born with better cognitive ability has an obvious advantage. The person born with a debilitating genetic disorder that impairs daily quality of life has an even more obvious disadvantage. Do you deny this, or do you have a different conception of what the term "equal" means?

One person conferred a tremendous advantage or disadvantage compared to another regardless of choices or efforts is the opposite of "equal". It is undeniable there are causal links to these advantages or disadvantages long before birth. You seem to be asserting otherwise and are saying it's *me* who shouldn't be taken seriously?

You understand that "equal" does not mean "identical", surely? We're talking about the value of a human life, not about effectiveness in some contrived competition.

 

[luiz]

There is plenty of race-essentialist discourse in the anti-racist left. It is fact-free and counterproductive but not racist.

Racism and white supremacy are not synonyms. There's a lot of racism in the left. Anti-semitism is an obvious example, but there's anti white racism too.

Plus I'll be honest I stopped taking the post seriously when you disagreed that people are intrinsically equal from birth. It's a pretty solid and important foundation of most value systems including mine.

All decent value systems should place an equal value at all human life at birth. But that doesn't mean people are "born equal" in any other sense. Obviously some people are born with enormous disadvantages, and I'm not talking of wealth or parents' education. Just good old genetics, which will have an enormous impact on every aspect of one's life. People should be equal under the law, but beyond that, there is no such thing as equality and never will be.

*and of course all notions of rights, equality under the law, value system and etc are just fictions that we make up to make life better. Very useful, and worth defending, but entirely made-up.

 

[inthesomeday]

Do you silly fussers really think I meant every single person is born with identical abilities??? Obviously not! Human beings are born with equal intrinsic value, and every human life ought to be treated, from the start of their life, with equal dignity and respect. I think it's incredibly obvious that's what I meant.

Yeah, some people are born with better potential for bicep development than others, or superior cognitive abilities. This does not mean their life has any more intrinsic value than others. If you think it does I am going to stop responding to your messages.

If we accept, then, that every human has equal value in their life, we arrive at the logical conclusion that, regardless of individual abilities-- which very rarely make any difference to an entire society made up of 7 billion human beings-- every person deserves to have the basic provisions of life. Organizing society meritocratically (which isn't even really the case today, but seems to be the ideal y'all are getting at) is directly antithetical to this obvious conclusion.

 

[Perfection]

You are correct. Perhaps a more interesting discussion would be, why so much obsession with racism, when other forms of bigotry are killing so much more?

I'm not saying racism is OK, of course, but it's not any worse than ISIS-style zealotry, is it?

I don't have ISIS-style zealots in my own family but I have quite a few racists.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Do you silly fussers really think I meant every single person is born with identical abilities??? Obviously not! Human beings are born with equal intrinsic value, and every human life ought to be treated, from the start of their life, with equal dignity and respect. I think it's incredibly obvious that's what I meant.

Yeah, some people are born with better potential for bicep development than others, or superior cognitive abilities. This does not mean their life has any more intrinsic value than others. If you think it does I am going to stop responding to your messages.

If we accept, then, that every human has equal value in their life, we arrive at the logical conclusion that, regardless of individual abilities-- which very rarely make any difference to an entire society made up of 7 billion human beings-- every person deserves to have the basic provisions of life. Organizing society meritocratically (which isn't even really the case today, but seems to be the ideal y'all are getting at) is directly antithetical to this obvious conclusion.

I have to agree that the use of the word equal is sort of a pedantic debate.

There are objective statements, such as "Men are generally taller than women". Problem is when people start to put in their own value judgement such as "Being taller is better, therefore men are better than women". And certainly, things can be very situational. For example, all the superior cognitive abilities you may have mean nothing when you're next to a lion.

it's a common talking point that people who are against racism wish to deny any differences between cultures, but that is not the point. I certainly don't think anyone would suggest that here, but just

All decent value systems should place an equal value at all human life at birth. But that doesn't mean people are "born equal" in any other sense. Obviously some people are born with enormous disadvantages, and I'm not talking of wealth or parents' education. Just good old genetics, which will have an enormous impact on every aspect of one's life. People should be equal under the law, but beyond that, there is no such thing as equality and never will be.

*and of course all notions of rights, equality under the law, value system and etc are just fictions that we make up to make life better. Very useful, and worth defending, but entirely made-up.

Our ability to make up stuff is what differentiates us from the rest of living things. Though I suppose that is also made up too.

 

[luiz]

I don't have ISIS-style zealots in my own family but I have quite a few racists.

That sucks, but objectively, what do they do? Beat up minorities? Torch black churches? Or just say mean stuff? How does it compare to ISIS-style bigotry?