Tuesday, February 04, 2014

the massive liberal failure on race...,


slate | When I started the book, after eight miserable years of George W. Bush and the euphoria of the Yes We Can crusade, I’d been driven pretty far left on the political spectrum. Taking on the issue of race, you’d think I’d have kept heading in that direction. But the more I read and researched, the more I went out and talked to people, I found that a funny thing was happening: I was becoming more conservative.

Which is not to say I was becoming a Republican. Because how could I? At this point, the GOP’s rap sheet of racial offenses is almost too long to recount. Pushing undemocratic voter ID laws, trotting out candidates like Herman Cain, calling Barack Obama the “food stamp president” … if it has to do with race, you can count on Republicans being wrong early and often.

The pernicious effects of Republican attitude on race are plain to see. But one of the more subtle consequences of the right’s willful incompetence is that there is rarely any thoughtful critique of the left when it comes to race. Affirmative action is unfair to white people and the Democratic Party is a plantation—that’s about as incisive as the rhetoric usually gets. Even when Republicans have a legitimate point to make about the shortcomings of some government program, it’s almost as if they can’t help blowing their own argument. They’ll start off talking sensibly enough about educational outcome disparities and within seconds they’re rambling incoherently about how black men don’t take care of their babies. It’s really astonishing to watch.

But the fact is that a lot of liberals hold on to some really bad ideas about race too. Some of the arguments they keep trotting out amount to little more than unexamined platitudes, riddled with holes. Fifty years after the March on Washington, America’s high school cafeterias are as racially divided as ever, income inequality is growing, and mass incarceration has hobbled an entire generation of young black men. Do we really think this is entirely due to Republican obstruction? Or is it also possible that the party charged with taking black Americans to the Promised Land has been running around in circles?

The left has been ceded a monopoly on caring about black people, and monopolies are dangerous. They create ossified institutions, paralyzed by groupthink and incapable of self-reflection. To the extent that liberals are willing to be self-critical, it’s generally to flagellate themselves for not being liberal enough, for failing to stand fast with the old, accepted orthodoxies. Monopolies also lead to arrogance and entitlement, and the left is nothing if not arrogant when it comes to constantly and loudly asserting its place as the One True Friend of Black America. And yet, as good as liberal policies on race sound in speeches, many of them don’t hold up in the real world.

There is no shortage of people ready to pounce on every instance of Republican racial insanity, but there is also no expectation that those Republicans will reform any time soon. It is therefore imperative that at least some Democrats begin to shift the discussion to what is wrong with themselves. With the right being derelict, the left assumes stewardship of our new multiracial America by default. So there is an added responsibility to get it right, to purge outdated orthodoxies, admit past mistakes, and find real solutions that work.

21 comments:

John Kurman said...

Rather than view it as a primate enhancement, I view this little patch as the fundamental limitation on human cognition. Sorry, bud, you cannot exceed factory specs with this module.

CNu said...

Sure you can John http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/brave-new-epoch - you just can't reset the bloody thing to factory defaults.

CNu said...

Which in a very peculiar way loops back round to this very peculiar historical juncture
http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2014/02/alexandre-saint-yves-alveydre.html
http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2014/02/synarchism-root-of-fascism-and-fascist.html

Tom said...

Well, they're at least discussing the subject coherently.


You understand it's not that I care about the subject. Smart people are smart, and you find them by checking how smart they are. No I just got tired of BD's bluffing.

CNu said...

Both Ken and BD do the best they can with what they have Much of cognitive linguistics concerns itself with how we build the
mental apparatus to understand everyday situations: a hospital, or a
date, or a cash machine. Erving Goffman, commonly cited as the most influential sociologist of the 20th century, wrote Frame Analysis
in 1974, defining and exploring exactly how this happens. Having built
the frames to understand life
, we no longer deliberately plug back into
it. It is unconscious; what we think of as “common sense” is merely an
act or notion that resonates with one of our deep frames. Having clearly grasped precisely what that consists of, one recognizes that everything beyond that oft-repeated frame is merely conversation http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2014/02/liberals-do-everything-wrong-strict.html

Vic78 said...

This guy gets it: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/09/04/796011/deval-patrick-dnc-backbone/.

I have to disagree with the article a little. The left of the past had badass representatives. There was Emerson, Fredrick Douglas, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Dr. King, Harriet Tubman, and many more. We really can't compare the clowns of today with what passed back then. What they call the left's representatives today are a bunch of pansies.

I thought it would be easy to argue for social justice. The one who has an issue with that has to justify being against social justice. The lefties couldn't hit that slow ball. Welcome to America.

ken said...

Of course there isn't any evidence. The root thinking of genetic IQ and ideas of one race being generally more intelligent than another comes out of ideas based on evolution. I have been simply performing an exercise exampling theories around genetic intelligence and what root assumptions must first be in place.

CNu said...

Created equal, and with equal opportunity under the law is the minimum baseline for justice. What proceeds therefrom is natural law and how could natural law be anything but just?

CNu said...

Matthew 13 is about as perfect a statement of natural law as one could ever hope to find anywhere and the origins of negrophobic racism are to be found in the Babylonian Talmud.

ken said...

Today, the wrong headed interpretations of the story of Ham are not what is driving ideas about racial differences in genetic intelligence. Anybody can plainly see the people who advocate this are rooted in evolution.

As for Matthew 13 for the discussion here, thinking of ability to understand, and value, and nurture, yes I can find no fault for your scripture, but for natural law, I might give a better run with this:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+2%3A1-16&version=NKJV

I think though your next post about the father is fitting with the Matthew scripture, when we remove the idea of being boxed in by genetic limiting for intelligence, then we have to understand the value of good soil, fertile ground, and cultivating to grow the seed, and growing up without worry of the cares and possessions of this world. Of course we understand with the talk of Bible like these and renewing your mind, taking every thought captive, and the Spirit teaching us in all things, the Bible is completely in conflict with the idea of genetic intelligent limiting.

I loved your thoughts at Cobb talking about the idea of of the Matthew scripture of growing up in thorns:

"For us, the mountaintop consisted in being off on our bikes and out to high adventure - rather than a host of other things that might more fully preoccupy us just a few years later. The point I'm trying to make is that I never truly left that frame of mind wrt the poor righteous happiness of my youth. No matter what context I found myself in subsequently, I have always only ever operated with blithe disregard for material things, always feeling like a boy-king and to this very day delightedly snacking like a hobo on a train."

http://cobb.typepad.com/cobb/2014/02/the-good-old-days.html#comment-6a00d834515ae969e201a3fcb2b1a7970b



That's freedom and being content in all things.

Vic78 said...

People that advocate race and iq are promoting and rooted in a eugenicist agenda.

Vic78 said...

I wouldn't say the writer got conservative; I'll say he's a little more sensible than he was in the past. It makes sense to stop doing things that don't work. I'm glad he saw the light. I wonder if he's going to say how Democrats are responsible for gentrifying our large cities.

Looking back, I see why they derailed Howard Dean. His strategies would make elected officials more accountable to the electorate due to increased turnout and more people paying attention. The Clinton caucus wants to stay on top and getting upstaged is bad for business.

It's up to the people on the ground to clean up the rot. God be with anybody that believes the Democrats will take anything to the promised land. The party isn't going to clean itself up.

CNu said...

There might have been a few log cabin republicans involved with the gentrification, anyway - not only does it make sense to stop doing things that obviously don't work - it's absolutely necessary to clean out longstanding incumbents. Incumbents don't become vessels of institutional wisdom or knowledge, they become corrupt and entitled tapeworms who figure out how to maximize their personal yield from the system.



As much as I see Dr.Gov.Dean on MSNBC - I guess somebody ultimately made him an offer he couldn't refuse and he decided that if he couldn't beat the 2party/1ideology system, he might as well cash in and join them.


A whole sequence of factors need to be engaged in order to make significant change;
1. Institutional mechanics pervading government and governance.
2. Political machinery required to access electoral government and governance.
3. Strict-father judgement, discipline, and aims for whatever is formed on the ground
4. Categorical rejection of the thought and language policing of the cathedral and its faux coalitions
5. Establishment of new and clear ideological and moral frames (rejection of the lowest common denominator definition of the common good - plain and simple - some trifling muhfuggah's are the equivalent of societal gangrene and they gotta go)
6. Rejection of the social conservative teatard (enemy of my enemy is my friend) alternative political horseshit being peddled by unimaginative and non-solutions oriented negroe conservatives.

CNu said...

"Genocide is as human as art or prayer." - John Gray

We have seen that thermodynamic laws promise us less-and-less, while our genes are demanding more-and-more. Although these biophysical laws are now politically incorrect and suppressed from public discourse, *these laws will not go away.* Roughly fifteen years from now, the thermo/gene collision will cause people to revert to a fundamentally different set of behaviors. These are the ancient behaviors that we evolved during the many periods of overpopulation which have occurred in our millions of years as animals. Those in power will use every tool at their disposal including nuclear weapons to increase their *fraction* of the remaining energy thereby maintaining social hierarchy (social advantage) for their children.

If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million. The "thermo/gene collision" will ultimately kill billions of people worldwide as nuclear wars, starvation, and social system collapse grip the planet into the future. When our subconscious feels our fitness is best served by lying, cheating, stealing, raping, or killing, then we will do so. It is our genetic legacy.

ken said...

I believe I used the term: Today, talking about currently, for what is driving genetic intelligence. I made no attempt at a blanket condemnation of the theory of evolution. I simply pointed out that one of the elements of the theory is that all species and variations within a species group came from a result of mutation via genetics and natural selection. It is only reasonable to assume that not only are there differences physically that was motivated by genetics, but also differences mentally and with intelligence that are motivated by genetic mutations.


On the previous thread I wanted to point out to refute this science is on the level of denying there is man made global warming, or that evolution isn't a fact.

ken said...

"Of those, the two key frames informing political judgment involve the idea of government as a family: the strict-father model (conservative) versus the nurturant-parent model (progressive)."
Isn't that interesting, one calls the father out by name, and then when we define the other its a nurturant-parent. In his description he seems to have the strict father parent considering watching over the discipline and development of his children, meanwhile in the nurturant-parent (father neutered) model instead of striving for the outcome of the kid, its discussed in terms "the world the nurtarant-parent seeks to create.

CNu said...

I simply pointed out that one of the elements of the theory is that all
species and variations within a species group came from a result of
mutation via genetics and natural selection. There's actually no evidence for "mutation" as an underlying mechanism. Almost without exception, what is referred to as "mutation" damages or undermines the functionality of the organism rendering it non-viable.

Natural selection is of course operating on phenotypic traits.It is only reasonable to assume that not only are there differences
physically that was motivated by genetics, but also differences mentally
and with intelligence that are motivated by genetic mutations.It is not in fact reasonable to draw that assumption, unless there are significant corresponding functional differences, e.g., language acquisition, motor development, visual acuity, etc...., To borrow an afrocentric trope, ancient Egypt and Nubia were in ascendent glory thousands of years ago while the occupants of the British Isles painted themselves blue and lived in caves. On the previous thread I wanted to point out to refute this science is
on the level of denying there is man made global warming, or that
evolution isn't a fact.lol at half a step forward and five lunging/flipping leaps backward. That was just now a flagrant attempt to condemn the theory of evolution and climate science with a profound misunderstanding which holds racial pseudoscience to be a branch of evolutionary theory.

For a moment I felt bad about invoking you and BD in the same sentence, but given the show you're putting on here - that's neither a stretch or hyperbole. You plainly and simply don't have the foggiest understanding of what you're talking about.

John Kurman said...

Have you seen a pic of my recent ancestor? http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?section=diversions&xfile=/data/diversions/2014/January/diversions_January26.xml


A colleague looked at his pic, and pronounced him "dateable". I'm betting high latitudes and milk, a diet of milk is what made me and mine white.

ken said...

"There's actually no evidence for "mutation" as an underlying mechanism. Almost without exception, what is referred to as "mutation" damages or undermines the functionality of the organism rendering it non-viable."

True, but what's your point? I am pretty sure I could find the word mutation used pretty frequently in the teachings of evolution.

"It is not in fact reasonable to draw that assumption, unless there are significant corresponding functional differences, e.g., language acquisition, motor development, visual acuity, etc"

I don't think you're considering this properly say for instance the evolution of the eye: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ybWucMx4W8

Certainly and eye starting out in the wrong place on a body and without focus and ending up at the optimum place for survival with the better focus had to come with gradual brain modifications as the eye modified. Sometimes even when there was no visible difference in to the eye, we wouldn't be out of our minds to consider the brain is internally modifying to ready itself for the better eye. The same with the journey of the small wolf like animal that morphed into the whale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2C-3PjNGok



The mind of the wolf like creature started liking the food of the sea and then its legs started becoming more and more like fins until they actually were fins and then the breathing apparatus moving to the best spot on its body, all this stuff had to have small variations in the mind also. It all morphs together to the next species. Evolution of course is still happening, for us it may be as the earth warms and the water levels rise many humans might start losing their feet too and start growing fins, perhaps the young ideas (young from and evolutionary perspective) of a mermaid are already the beginnings of our evolution to be a water creature.


The point is, as we evolve to whatever the next species is, all the gradual changes we are already in the process of making, are happening in the mind and body.

ken said...

Well certainly the high latitudes in the snow areas had you blend in with the snow so it would be harder for predators to see you. For the milk I suspect we would have to have a longer evolutionary time span to have the milk randomly affect your pigmentation.

Uglyblackjohn said...

The photo though... It brought to mind an old Paul Mooney joke.

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