Why cannot the media print the most important stories?
This Week in Common Sense, April 11 – 15, 2022.
4 replies on “Watch: The Front Page (boosted from Page 2)”
“Alarms really ought to go-off about the redefinition of ‘racism’. The original concept was quite coherent and useful; if it were not coherent, then the redefinition (which essentially adds a condition) would inherit the incoherence. Racism on the part of people with little social power still has significant social consequences; any legitimate use of the new concept is far more sharply limited than that of the original concept.
“Let’s imagine that someone prejudiced against those outside his own major racial group makes a solo walking tour of Los Angeles. As he travels from one neighborhood to another, he gains or loses social power as the ethnic compositions of those neighborhoods vary. His beliefs about the relation between race and merit needn’t change (and should not be expected to do so much if at all). Yet by the mere act of travel through a large city in which ethnic groups are not uniformly distributed, under the redefinition he would repeatedly go from being a racist, to not being a racist, to again being a racist. It would be extraordinary and dangerous to make a solo walking tour of all of Los Angeles, but a great many people regularly move across communities of different ethnic composition. Application of the proposed redefinition of ‘racism’ would routinely become unworkable, under circumstance in which the standard definition remains quite workable.”
The people who wish to redefine “racism” simply don’t care about any of that, and have their own idea of what’s “workable” (and “useful” and “sensible” and “logical” and “obvious”) as well.
Firstly, their definition of “racist” maps exactly to “white”. Full stop.
Include with that, “honorary white”, like Asian; a much more flexible term, which means anyone – even a black person – who defends white people or white culture, or “acts white”, or is perceived to have been permitted a piece of the supposed unfair advantage over black people that comes from simply being white. An honorary white is not only racist, but self-abasing (“Uncle Tom”) to boot.
Secondly, they claim that racism is . . . say “radiated”, like Tesla’s wireless energy, from the great mass of white people everywhere, full strength at infinite range. and at the same time absorbed by every white person as well. A white person in Compton is racist. A white person orbiting Alpha Centauri would still be racist, just by being white.
The fact that the very premise is the essence of racism is irrelevant. To point out the fact is “racist”.
[I made paragraphs, truly I did.]
A discussion of the motivation behind the attempted redefinition has an importance, but is neither necessary nor sufficient to building a proper case against it.
Verifiably exposing one’s own motivations is impossible. If debate in general is reduced to claims about motivations, then those members of the audience who are uncommitted or weakly committed are reduced to deciding matters based upon theories of personality (which theories, in turn, were adopted based on theories of personality).
One argues against this new definition with little or no hope of swaying those who have already adopted it, but with some hope of enlightening those who are wondering about it. By showing those people that the redefinition is not workable, we bring them to our side. If we instead discuss motivations, then we merely preach to the choir.
4 replies on “Watch: The Front Page (boosted from Page 2)”
“Alarms really ought to go-off about the redefinition of ‘racism’. The original concept was quite coherent and useful; if it were not coherent, then the redefinition (which essentially adds a condition) would inherit the incoherence. Racism on the part of people with little social power still has significant social consequences; any legitimate use of the new concept is far more sharply limited than that of the original concept.
“Let’s imagine that someone prejudiced against those outside his own major racial group makes a solo walking tour of Los Angeles. As he travels from one neighborhood to another, he gains or loses social power as the ethnic compositions of those neighborhoods vary. His beliefs about the relation between race and merit needn’t change (and should not be expected to do so much if at all). Yet by the mere act of travel through a large city in which ethnic groups are not uniformly distributed, under the redefinition he would repeatedly go from being a racist, to not being a racist, to again being a racist. It would be extraordinary and dangerous to make a solo walking tour of all of Los Angeles, but a great many people regularly move across communities of different ethnic composition. Application of the proposed redefinition of ‘racism’ would routinely become unworkable, under circumstance in which the standard definition remains quite workable.”
“On the Meaning of ‘Racism’”
The people who wish to redefine “racism” simply don’t care about any of that, and have their own idea of what’s “workable” (and “useful” and “sensible” and “logical” and “obvious”) as well.
Firstly, their definition of “racist” maps exactly to “white”. Full stop.
Include with that, “honorary white”, like Asian; a much more flexible term, which means anyone – even a black person – who defends white people or white culture, or “acts white”, or is perceived to have been permitted a piece of the supposed unfair advantage over black people that comes from simply being white. An honorary white is not only racist, but self-abasing (“Uncle Tom”) to boot.
Secondly, they claim that racism is . . . say “radiated”, like Tesla’s wireless energy, from the great mass of white people everywhere, full strength at infinite range. and at the same time absorbed by every white person as well. A white person in Compton is racist. A white person orbiting Alpha Centauri would still be racist, just by being white.
The fact that the very premise is the essence of racism is irrelevant. To point out the fact is “racist”.
[I made paragraphs, truly I did.]
A discussion of the motivation behind the attempted redefinition has an importance, but is neither necessary nor sufficient to building a proper case against it.
Verifiably exposing one’s own motivations is impossible. If debate in general is reduced to claims about motivations, then those members of the audience who are uncommitted or weakly committed are reduced to deciding matters based upon theories of personality (which theories, in turn, were adopted based on theories of personality).
One argues against this new definition with little or no hope of swaying those who have already adopted it, but with some hope of enlightening those who are wondering about it. By showing those people that the redefinition is not workable, we bring them to our side. If we instead discuss motivations, then we merely preach to the choir.