Hatefacts

Cavehill Red

A few issues rolled up together in this; therefore, if the mods wish to move this thread to the politics cafe forum (or elsewhere if deemed more appropriate), go ahead, but I thought it would work best here.

In short, a conservative British journalist has been sacked by The National Review in America for writing this article for the conservative opinion website Taki's.

In it, he basically states (and I'm summarising here) that a combination of white hate among a small minority of blacks, plus the law of large numbers and peer pressure, effectively puts whites and others at risk of violence and danger from blacks, and hence it is prudent to avoid black people in general, but to cultivate relationships with what he calls 'intelligent, well-socialised blacks' so as to avoid appearing racist, which can be personally damaging to one's reputation.

His article, while clearly prejudiced, is not without quite a lot of supporting evidence, especially relating to statistical evidence of black on white criminality in America, and hence, while he offers an opinion, he does strive to base it on factual evidence.

Three things occur to me pondering this article and its aftermath:

1. Recently, the same online magazine had written about the concept of 'hatefacts' - things that are factually true but so societally unpopular as to be heretical. Is it the case perhaps that he lost his job because he forgot the importance of not stating hatefacts? Do hatefacts really exist? If so, what does that mean for the concept of justice or democracy or freedom of speech? Do we have our own Irish hatefacts?

2. His job as an opinion features journalist is to state his opinion, and America does facilitate full freedom of speech. So, did he get sacked for only doing his job, even if his opinion is odious, or even untrue? To what extent should public opinion influence the employment of writers? Is it fair to sack someone over something they wrote elsewhere?

3. To what extent can the supporting evidence he offers, which veers from youtube clips to statstical mathematical studies, be reasonably thought to support his argument? Is it the case that he's just a roaring old racist, even though he offers a lot of supporting evidence for his opinion? Or is his opinion partly or wholly justifiable, and hence he is right to warn his children (and by extension, others, by way of his article) about a danger he perceives?

It seems to me that he opened a can of worms and got sacked as a result. I think that was probably an overreaction, and he fell foul of spouting a combination of racist prejudice and hatefacts, but I'm not really qualified (not being American or in America) to tease the two strands apart. Opinions welcome.

Coyler

I'll let the man speak for himself;

John Derbyshire wrote:

I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal pretty soon, the way we are going.

From this interview in 2003. The man's own words. He goes on to defend those statements here.

As for those "hatefacts", they are a series of straw men (who ever said that being fat was healthy?) that people will rightly counter with actual facts. There is a nub truth in them, that I don't disagree with, but to suggest that they tell the whole story about the issue at hand is stretching it a little.

Lets take the common one racists use, the statistical evidence that some races are smarter than others. Well that only tells part of the story. The Flynn Effect is the observation that IQ is increasing on average, so we have evidence that IQ is not a static result. There is even evidence that IQ changes with age. This doesn't include the potential effect of decades of poor education can have on IQ scores either. In any case both of those observations leave us with the conclusion that there doesn't seem to be a genetic component to IQ. Therefore that "hatefact" isn't so much a fact as racists claim it to be.

See the actual problem is that simple answers can't be given to incredibly complex questions and it can be very difficult for the complex answer to be accepted. That doesn't mean the simple answer is correct.

RandolphEsq

It seems to me that the author is a product of white, middle-class America, and that is the context in which his article was written. Effectively he was dressing up his racism in facts and figures, but to me it is as if those fact and figures are a direct result of the power white, middle-class Americans have in that society.

So for example; "Black people have a lower I.Q. in general" is a fact, and the author uses that fact, among others, to justify his 'advice' to his kids thinking to himself that it is common sense to adopt such attitude.

However, what the author is failing to realise is that there is a great segregation in America due to attitudes from white people like himself which in turn results in a neglecting of an attempt to address this segregation, which in turn only compounds the negative facts against black people. The author would be well-advised to offer a proper solution to the problem of segregation and disproportionate poverty among the black community in America, as opposed to his 'sweep it under the carpet' attitude in the article.

Wibbs

Coyler wrote: »

In any case both of those observations leave us with the conclusion that there doesn't seem to be a genetic component to IQ.

Yet any number of other non population based studies will show us that IQ is strongly linked to genes. That intelligent parents tend to have intelligent children. Intelligence does have a genetic component(s). The question is does it have a population* component? I'd reckon it's possible depending on the environment over time. Environmental pressures skew it in a big way. If a culture or an environment favours say aggression over smarts then you're going to see more aggressive individuals and more of the same will have more kids etc. Sub Saharan Africa does have on average noticeably lower IQ scores than say Japan. They also tend to have much lower longevity. Both environmental IMH. Watch those IQ scores soar as various African nations economies really grow.

See the actual problem is that simple answers can't be given to incredibly complex questions and it can be very difficult for the complex answer to be accepted. That doesn't mean the simple answer is correct.

I so agree with you there.



*can't abide the race description it's woefully unscientific.

Zombrex

Just reading the article it seems far to blatantly and purposefully worded to take genuinely. My guess is that the author was trying to make some sort of point about the perceived acceptance in society of black parents telling their children to be afraid of white people. You know the old thing "its ok for black parents but if I DID THE SAME THING LOOK WHAT WOULD HAPPEN"

I suspect the author anticipated such a back lash and probably was counting on it.

johnnyskeleton

1. On him being fired, if I wrote for a newspaper with one kind of slant and also wrote a blog saying the opposite, I could expect to lose my job too. Here, the paper has decided that they will lose more readers keepin him than to fire him, so that makes sense.

2. On his argument, it doesn't sound like someone who looked at all the facts neutrally and deduced this theory, instead he seems to have started withthe theory and found facts to support it. In any event, most would argue that his conclusions are wrong and racial segregation leads to far more problems than multiculturalism.

3. On iq, h j eysinck (sic) carried out a number of studies on iq. He found a trend that on average, people with genetically similar parents tended to have slightly lower iqs, while those with genetically varied parents had slightly higher iqs. He postulated that mixed race marriages invorgated the genes to produce a better child, but I suppose growing up in a mixed race household could also provide an environment for increased iq - ie learning 2/3 languages from
an early age etc

southsiderosie

Just a point of clarification - the magazine he was fired from, National Review, is itself a conservative publication, and has gotten some heat in the past for what were considered racially insensitive comments. So given that Derbyshire was fired by a conservative publication - and considering the state of American conservatism in 2012 - I think that says something about how far beyond the pale his comments were.

Coyler

Wibbs wrote: »

Yet any number of other non population based studies will show us that IQ is strongly linked to genes. That intelligent parents tend to have intelligent children. Intelligence does have a genetic component(s). The question is does it have a population* component? I'd reckon it's possible depending on the environment over time. Environmental pressures skew it in a big way. If a culture or an environment favours say aggression over smarts then you're going to see more aggressive individuals and more of the same will have more kids etc. Sub Saharan Africa does have on average noticeably lower IQ scores than say Japan. They also tend to have much lower longevity. Both environmental IMH. Watch those IQ scores soar as various African nations economies really grow.

Ah yes, my language wasn't precise but seeing as we largely agree that the "hatefact" was selective use of a particular statistic lets leave that there to prevent thread derailing.

Cavehill Red

The author is himself in a mixed race marriage with mixed race children. The all-purpose silencer weapon word "racist" is thus difficult to apply in this regard. His stated issue is with the black-affiliating population of the United States (and possibly elsewhere, though I haven't delved into his oeuvre enough to examine that.)

If we define racism as prejudice based on race, then his self-definition and clarification seem perfectly comprehensible. He is a self-stated mild racist with a prejudice about black people, for which he has offered his reasons, based primarily on statistical evidence of greater criminality and wrong-doing. That's not very fair to the individual black people he may meet, but he states that he does attempt to treat individuals as he finds them. Whether this is self-delusion on his part or not, only those who know him personally can tell.

On the evidence he offers, speaking personally I'm generally convinced on the IQ issue, and tend to disregard the issue of cultural specificity, since Asians and Ashkenazi Jews tend to top all race-based examinations of IQ testing in any variant you care to consider. This may well indeed be a result of poorer education standards, or cultures which attribute different values to formal education, or indeed a raft of other non-genetic aspects. Again, I'm not expert, but even if we disregard that, the evidence on criminality he offers seems very solid.

In the context of the meme of black parents warning their children about the dangers of white people, a danger clearly fractional when compared to the statistical danger offered to whites by the black population in the US, his proffered warning seems validated.

On the basis of science, I'm reluctant in general to consider anything solely through the prism of race, which is a Victorian construct disproven by genetics advances. Equally, however, from a sociological point of view, race is a major component in how people define themselves, organise themselves and identify themselves and others, and hence is not so easily disregarded.

It seems to me race has become such a radioactive issue in the US that it is now at the point of heresy to introduce it into any form of public discussion, and that the author, perhaps knowingly, has breached that heresy and reaped the consequences.

southsiderosie

Cavehill Red wrote: »

In the context of the meme of black parents warning their children about the dangers of white people, a danger clearly fractional when compared to the statistical danger offered to whites by the black population in the US, his proffered warning seems validated.

Again, a clarification - the 'talk' is generally understood not to be about the dangers of white people, but rather white authority figures, in particular the police. Personally I would argue that the focus on the race of the officer here is problematic, because I don't think there is evidence that non-white officers are any less likely to engage in profiling or harassment (and speaking from personal experience, I've found black - and female - officers to actually be more aggressive in this regard). But I think the general point about black parents feeling obligated to train their children how to behave when dealing with the police, etc., still stands.

I would also add that the statistical danger offered to whites by the black population pales in comparison to the statistical danger offered to blacks by the black population. Black on black crime - especially violent crime - is a much larger problem, yet black on white crime is treated much more seriously - and harshly - by the judicial system (for a very good overview of research on crime and sentencing disparity, see this article). It is particularly telling that black on white sexual assaults are treated more harshly than black on black sexual assaults - the former violates a long (and some would argue, still) held taboo in American society. However this disparity in sentencing sends a terrible message to victims of black-on-black crime: your victimization is less important to the state than the victimization of whites. It is exactly this kind of disparity that makes many blacks lose all faith in the police, courts, and criminal justice system in America.

southsiderosie

Cavehill Red wrote: »

The author is himself in a mixed race marriage with mixed race children. The all-purpose silencer weapon word "racist" is thus difficult to apply in this regard. His stated issue is with the black-affiliating population of the United States (and possibly elsewhere, though I haven't delved into his oeuvre enough to examine that.).

Sorry, but just to address this point - why do you think being in a mixed-race marriage automatically qualifies someone as being less racist? The author admits that he only likes a certain 'kind' of black person: one who ostensibly has a similar socio-economic status and similar cultural values to himself. If he found a partner who fit that description, does it make him any less racist?

I would also add that within the dynamics of American racial politics, being married to an Asian woman does not have the same implications in terms of a 'mixed race marriage' as it would if he was married to a black woman. So I really don't get the idea that his Asian wife somehow insulates him from charges against being racist against black people.

Cavehill Red

southsiderosie wrote: »

Again, a clarification - the 'talk' is generally understood not to be about the dangers of white people, but rather white authority figures, in particular the police. Personally I would argue that the focus on the race of the officer here is problematic, because I don't think there is evidence that non-white officers are any less likely to engage in profiling or harassment (and speaking from personal experience, I've found black - and female - officers to actually be more aggressive in this regard). But I think the general point about black parents feeling obligated to train their children how to behave when dealing with the police, etc., still stands.

Firstly, I don't think your anecdotes qualify as evidence. Secondly, profiling does not accommodate facts such as the comparative rates of, for example, white on black rape (negligible) versus black on white rape (vastly disproportionate to relative populations) in the United States. The criminality is a fact. Whether it is genetic, or the product of environment, is not really the issue. If a threat exists, then it is surely legitimate to point that out, especially if it is considered legitimate for those of other races to point out a much less arguable case of threat to their own populations. (In other words, the criminality is a statistical truth; the perception of universal and endemic law enforcement racism is not as easily and comprehensively demonstrated.)

Rosie wrote:

Sorry, but just to address this point - why do you think being in a mixed-race marriage automatically qualifies someone as being less racist? The author admits that he only likes a certain 'kind' of black person: one who ostensibly has a similar socio-economic status and similar cultural values to himself. If he found a partner who fit that description, does it make him any less racist?

I would also add that within the dynamics of American racial politics, being married to an Asian woman does not have the same implications in terms of a 'mixed race marriage' as it would if he was married to a black woman. So I really don't get the idea that his Asian wife somehow insulates him from charges against being racist against black people.

Does it make him less racist? Obviously, yes. He is not racist against non-black races, nor against some types of black people, therefore he is less racist than those who are racist against all of the above. There is a scale of prejudice - it's not (forgive the pun) a black and white issue. The author has carefully positioned and quantified the degree of his own prejudice, which to my mind correlates with his opinions as he expresses them. Attempting to ignore the nuances of that position is an erroneous simplification.

southsiderosie

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Firstly, I don't think your anecdotes qualify as evidence. Secondly, profiling does not accommodate facts such as the comparative rates of, for example, white on black rape (negligible) versus black on white rape (vastly disproportionate to relative populations) in the United States. The criminality is a fact. Whether it is genetic, or the product of environment, is not really the issue. If a threat exists, then it is surely legitimate to point that out, especially if it is considered legitimate for those of other races to point out a much less arguable case of threat to their own populations. (In other words, the criminality is a statistical truth; the perception of universal and endemic law enforcement racism is not as easily and comprehensively demonstrated.)

I find it ironic that you quote me without quoting the send part of my post which provided clear statistical evidence of unequal treatment for both black criminals and black victims of violence - and then go on to make claims without any statistical evidence in your post whatsoever. Claims that, I might add, have little to do with my actual post.

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Does it make him less racist? Obviously, yes. He is not racist against non-black races, nor against some types of black people, therefore he is less racist than those who are racist against all of the above. There is a scale of prejudice - it's not (forgive the pun) a black and white issue. The author has carefully positioned and quantified the degree of his own prejudice, which to my mind correlates with his opinions as he expresses them. Attempting to ignore the nuances of that position is an erroneous simplification.

The statements he got fired for were due to his making racist statements against blacks specifically. I fail to see how his having an Asian wife mitigates his racism against black.

SamHarris

RandolphEsq wrote: »

It seems to me that the author is a product of white, middle-class America, and that is the context in which his article was written.

He is British? Or at least it says so in the first post.

This also illustrates another interesting fact which often serves to spread hate and the victim mentality, albiet through different groups, - it is seen as perfectly fine by people to generalise about the 'white, middle-class America' or in other cases 'Zionists', 'Mormons' and 'travelers'. Depending purely on the ideology the person represents.

That you cant see it is exactly the same process in action is a sad indication of your ability to analysis your own opinions.

Either it is wrong in all cases, or it is wrong in none. This picking and choosing when people can make judgements on big groups, especially without any statistics what so ever is par for course throughout certain media and less formal discussions as long as that group meets certain, hidden, criteria. See the reaction to the Traveler thread for another example of this in action.

Cavehill Red

southsiderosie wrote: »

I find it ironic that you quote me without quoting the send part of my post which provided clear statistical evidence of unequal treatment for both black criminals and black victims of violence - and then go on to make claims without any statistical evidence in your post whatsoever. Claims that, I might add, have little to do with my actual post.

I failed to quote that bit because it is irrelevant to the point made by the author, which is the threat (perceived or real) posed by blacks to white people. It seems demonstrable such a threat exists statistically and factually. Suggesting that this is entirely explainable by racial profiling of law enforcement is not plausible, and attempting to divert the discussion into issues of sentencing is a McGuffin.

southsiderosie wrote: »

The statements he got fired for were due to his making racist statements against blacks specifically. I fail to see how his having an Asian wife mitigates his racism against black.

It doesn't, though his racism does not extend to all black people either. But it does make him less racist than those with wider prejudices, which is the discussion we were having. In other words, it is simplistic to simply use the silencer word 'racist' here, because his position is significantly more nuanced.

southsiderosie

Cavehill Red wrote: »

I failed to quote that bit because it is irrelevant to the point made by the author, which is the threat (perceived or real) posed by blacks to white people. It seems demonstrable such a threat exists statistically and factually. Suggesting that this is entirely explainable by racial profiling of law enforcement is not plausible, and attempting to divert the discussion into issues of sentencing is a McGuffin.

But that is not what I am trying to do, and it is not what the article I quoted does either. My point was about what 'the talk' was for in the black community, and that it was NOT about the broader thread that whites in general present to black people. TBH I don't really see any point in discussing this further, since you seem intent on misconstruing my posts.

Cavehill Red wrote: »

It doesn't, though his racism does not extend to all black people either. But it does make him less racist than those with wider prejudices, which is the discussion we were having. In other words, it is simplistic to simply use the silencer word 'racist' here, because his position is significantly more nuanced.

As quoted earlier in the thread, the man called himself a 'mild and tolerant' racist - whatever that might mean. Does he deserve an award for not being Bull Connor?

Cavehill Red

southsiderosie wrote: »

But that is not what I am trying to do, and it is not what the article I quoted does either. My point was about what 'the talk' was for in the black community, and that it was NOT about the broader thread that whites in general present to black people. TBH I don't really see any point in discussing this further, since you seem intent on misconstruing my posts.

I already addressed your point about 'the talk'. You didn't respond, so let's try again: If it is legitimate for black people to warn their children against dealing with white people, even only white authority figures (though I'm not sure that nuance carries in 'the talk'), despite there being a lack of hard evidence to justify that warning, then why is it not legitimate for a white person to warn his mixed-race children about the factually demonstrable dangers black criminality poses to them?

southsiderosie wrote: »

As quoted earlier in the thread, the man called himself a 'mild and tolerant' racist - whatever that might mean. Does he deserve an award for not being Bull Connor?

It means that his opinion deserves to be dealt with on its merits or demerits and ought not to be dismissed as akin to that of a KKK member or, to use your term, a Bull Connor, so as to silence the discussion.

Nodin

Cavehill Red wrote: »

I already addressed your point about 'the talk'. You didn't respond, so let's try again: If it is legitimate for black people to warn their children against dealing with white people, even only white authority figures (though I'm not sure that nuance carries in 'the talk'), despite there being a lack of hard evidence to justify that warning, then why is it not legitimate for a white person to warn his mixed-race children about the factually demonstrable dangers black criminality poses to them?.

You seem to be confusing institutional racism with the dangers of urban living. The same dangers caused by "black criminality" arise with "white" criminality. However even today there are certain unique elements in dealing with authority figures, based on ones race. This obviously varies from region to region in scale and intensity.

Castigating "black" parents for doing such a talk is akin to castigating nationalist families in coaching their children how best to deal with elements of the security forces during the worst times of the conflict in NI.

Cavehill Red

Nodin wrote: »

You seem to be confusing institutional racism with the dangers of urban living. The same dangers caused by "black criminality" arise with "white" criminality. However even today there are certain unique elements in dealing with authority figures, based on ones race. This obviously varies from region to region in scale and intensity.

Except for the fact that white criminality is significantly lower, proportionate to population density, especially as regards serious assault crimes.

Nodin wrote: »

Castigating "black" parents for doing such a talk is akin to castigating nationalist families in coaching their children how best to deal with elements of the security forces during the worst times of the conflict in NI.

Firstly, no it isn't. And I say that as someone who grew up in a Nationalist family and in a Republican area during the height of the troubles.
Secondly, I didn't castigate anyone. I merely asked how the less justifiable warning from black parents could be considered legitimate while the more justifiable (in terms of proven statistical fact) warning from white parents is not. In other words, I want an explanation for the inconsistency.

Nodin

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Except for the fact that white criminality is significantly lower, proportionate to population density, especially as regards serious assault crimes..

...which again ignores the fact that in certain areas where theres white poverty, crime is indeed a problem.

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Firstly, no it isn't. And I say that as someone who grew up in a Nationalist family and in a Republican area during the height of the troubles.
Secondly, I didn't castigate anyone. I merely asked how the less justifiable warning from black parents could be considered legitimate while the more justifiable (in terms of proven statistical fact) warning from white parents is not. In other words, I want an explanation for the inconsistency.

Its been shown earlier that what "black" parents have to do is justifiable and your idea that his idea of a warning from "white" parents based on skin colour alone is justifiable is frankly bizarre.

Cavehill Red

Nodin wrote: »

...which again ignores the fact that in certain areas where theres white poverty, crime is indeed a problem.

... which is still statistically nowhere near parity with black crime, even when matched for deprivation.

Nodin wrote: »

Its been shown earlier that what "black" parents have to do is justifiable and your idea that his idea of a warning from "white" parents based on skin colour alone is justifiable is frankly bizarre.

Whereas a warning from black parents based on white skin colour isn't? I'm still waiting for an explanation for this logic inconsistency.

Nodin

Cavehill Red wrote: »

.

Whereas a warning from black parents based on white skin colour isn't? ....

Its based on more than skin colour, as was earlier pointed out to you.

You might explain to me how the following is defendable?

10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.
(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.

There is a magnifying effect here, too, caused by affirmative action. In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs. Because of affirmative action, the proportions are higher. In government work, they are very high. Thus, in those encounters with strangers that involve cognitive engagement, ceteris paribus the black stranger will be less intelligent than the white. In such encounters, therefore—for example, at a government office—you will, on average, be dealt with more competently by a white than by a black. If that hostility-based magnifying effect (paragraph 8) is also in play, you will be dealt with more politely, too. “The DMV lady“ is a statistical truth, not a myth.

Cavehill Red

Nodin wrote: »

Its based on more than skin colour, as was earlier pointed out to you.

Yes, it's based primarily on the largely unsupported argument that black children will be unfairly treated by law enforcement. Furthermore, it rests on an error of logic. Someone brought up the troubles as an analogue earlier. The reason why my parents didn't need to warn me about being treated unfairly by the RUC or British Army is because I didn't do anything illegal to attract their attention in the first place. Similar applies here.
By contrast, the statistical facts of black on white criminality are rather hard to argue away with semantics or suggestions of systemic racism. People are tried in courts of law in the US in front of their peers, many of whom will also be black. It may well be that they are profiled in advance of their arrest, or disproportionately sentenced afterwards because of the colour of their skin. But what is certain is that they were guilty of the offences.

Nodin wrote: »

You might explain to me how the following is defendable?

I never once said it was defendable. What I queried was the concept of hatefacts, and whether it was disproportionate for a publication to sack an opinion features journalist for writing his opinion, and in another organ to boot.
I think what he says in relation to minority employment in public services in the US is largely true, though. There is a disproportionate number of minority employees in such jobs in America. I suspect what he calls the 'magnifier effect' of black on white hostility is at best overstated, however. And I wouldn't expect overweening intelligence from civil servants in any country, regardless of their race.

Nodin

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Yes, it's based primarily on the largely unsupported argument that black children will be unfairly treated by law enforcement.
.

The "largely supported" you mean.

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Furthermore, it rests on an error of logic. Someone brought up the troubles as an analogue earlier. The reason why my parents didn't need to warn me about being treated unfairly by the RUC or British Army is because I didn't do anything illegal to attract their attention in the first place.
.

Thats odd, because there'd be a number of badly injured, battered and occassionally dead young men that would beg to differ.

Cavehill Red wrote: »

I think what he says in relation to minority employment in public services in the US is largely true, though. ..........

So you agree with his thesis that because of affirmative action thick black white hating black people are given jobs in the civil service......

In government work, they are very high. Thus, in those encounters with strangers that involve cognitive engagement, ceteris paribus the black stranger will be less intelligent than the white. In such encounters, therefore—for example, at a government office—you will, on average, be dealt with more competently by a white than by a black. If that hostility-based magnifying effect (paragraph 8) is also in play, you will be dealt with more politely, too. “The DMV lady“ is a statistical truth, not a myth

.

Cavehill Red

Nodin wrote: »

The "largely supported" you mean.

Not remotely as well supported as the factual statistical evidence for black on white crime, however. So remind me, why is it legitimate to warn about the one but not the other?

Nodin wrote: »

Thats odd, because there'd be a number of badly injured, battered and occassionally dead young men that would beg to differ.

I'm tempted to respond to your appeal to emotion by pointing out that dead people can't beg at all. However, I will instead indicate again that, as someone who actually lived through it, in an area which was effectively a no-go area for the RUC, by an interface, and prone to regular rioting, everyone I knew who got arrested and prosecuted was arrested and prosecuted legitimately, and for good reason. Furthermore, and I speak as someone with one damaged kidney as a result of a British Army gun butt to the back as a child, exceptional instances in a state of war are not analogous to alleged day-to-day discrimination in a nation at internal peace.

Nodin wrote: »

So you agree with his thesis that because of affirmative action thick black white hating black people are given jobs in the civil service......
.

I concur it is much more likely that black people and other minorities will be employed in the civil service as a result of affirmative action. I further concur that this will in part be because they, and similar white employees, would be less likely to gain employment in the private sector on the grounds of their intelligence. As I already said, I don't find his thesis of endemic black hatred of whites in the civil service in America particularly plausible.

southsiderosie

Cavehill Red, you have posted a lot of unsubstantiated nonsense on this thread. I said I was done with it, but I can't resist at this point.

I provided clear empirical evidence that if blacks end up in the criminal justice system, they will be treated more harshly than whites, and if they are the victims of a crime, the perpetrators of that crime will be treated more leniently if they are black. So please explain to me why blacks in the United States should not be wary of the criminal justice system: they get unequal treatment both as perpetrators and as victims.

Second, racial profiling by law enforcement officials in the US is well-documented; even the Bush administration acknowledged that it was a problem, so it is not just the ACLU that is concerned about this.

As for interracial crime, according to the Department of Justice violent crime statistics, the likelihood of a white person being a victim of a black criminal is statistically equal to a black person being the victim of a white criminal: 15.4% versus 15.9%. Most violent crime victims are attacked by people of the same race: 67.4% of violent crime committed against whites is by other whites, and 64.7% of violent crime committed against blacks is by other blacks. Blacks may commit more crimes relative to their size in the population, but the levels of cross-racial crime are the same for blacks and whites. So given that there is a 2/3 chance that a victim of violent crime will be attacked by a person of the same race, the kinds of 'oooo, white people avoid scary black people' warnings are clearly misplaced: there is less than a one in five chance that the perpetrator of a violent crime against a white person will be black.

So what does this mean for parental warnings? Well, it is common sense for any parent to tell their child to avoid high-crime areas. But it is patently ridiculous for a parent to warn their child to avoid areas with 'a lot of black people' because this suggests that all black neighborhoods are dangerous and that all blacks are potential violent criminals. It is common sense to tell your kids to leave any bar or concert where fights are breaking out, or you see a lot of arguments. But it is patently ridiculous to tell people to avoid bars or concerts where there are a lot of black people because their very presence means that trouble might break out.

I am all about teaching kids situational awareness. That means that they should be aware of not walking down dark streets alone at night, of not stopping for gas or lingering in high crime areas, and recognizing when things might start to get out of hand at a party or nightclub. But I emphatically reject the notion that this should be a race-based analysis. Which brings me back to 'the talk': teaching black kids about how to interact with the police is all about raising situational awareness because as the statistics from the US Department of Justice make clear, blacks are more likely to be stopped than their white counterparts, and therefore need to be careful not to let their aggravation at being stopped lead to an escalation of the situation. I'll also add that, given the statistics on the prosecution of black on black crime, it is even more critical for blacks to teach their kids situational awareness of how to avoid being a crime victim because, again, according to DOJ statistics, perpetrators of crimes against black victims are treated more leniently by the state.

Permabear

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Cavehill Red

Rosie, I don't know where to begin with that balderdash, It's evident you cannot understand simple statistics. Firstly your headline figure relates to all crime, including threats. Actual completed crime stats on the same page show blacks completed 20% of all crime against whites, despite being only 12.9% of the population.
Drilling down further, it gets more out of kilter. Blacks are responsible for 16.4% of all rapes of whites, while whites are responsible for - zero* - percentage of rapes of blacks. That's c. 20,000 black on white rapes to zero white on black ones. This isn't an anomaly. The figures for most years going back to the nineties reveal the same thing - white on black rape is negligible, whereas black on white rape is significantly disproportionate to population densities.
Let's keep going: blacks commit 35.6% of white robberies, 37.2% of white robberies where property was taken, and 46% of white robberies where the victim was injured. By contrast, whites were responsible for zero* cases of robbery where a black victim was injured. Again, blacks are negligibly likely to be injured in a robbery by a white person, whereas over 33,000 white people were injured while being robbed by a black perpetrator.

So what does this mean for parental warnings? To be blunt, it means that white people face rape disproportionately from black perpetrators and white people disproportionately face injury while being robbed by black perpetrators, while the opposite literally does not exist.



*Zero indicates fewer than 10 incidents recorded by the Dept in the calendar year.

Cavehill Red

Permabear wrote: »

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I'm aware of that and entirely accept it. But I was querying more the fairness of the sacking than its legality, which is not in question.

Permabear

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RandolphEsq

SamHarris wrote: »

He is British? Or at least it says so in the first post.

This also illustrates another interesting fact which often serves to spread hate and the victim mentality, albiet through different groups, - it is seen as perfectly fine by people to generalise about the 'white, middle-class America' or in other cases 'Zionists', 'Mormons' and 'travelers'. Depending purely on the ideology the person represents.

That you cant see it is exactly the same process in action is a sad indication of your ability to analysis your own opinions.

Either it is wrong in all cases, or it is wrong in none. This picking and choosing when people can make judgements on big groups, especially without any statistics what so ever is par for course throughout certain media and less formal discussions as long as that group meets certain, hidden, criteria. See the reaction to the Traveler thread for another example of this in action.

He is settled enough in the U.S. to be a product of their unjust society which clearly favours white people. The very foundations of their country were flawed; black people were brought over as slaves, this superiority mentality by white people over black people is still strong over there.

southsiderosie

Permabear wrote: »

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I noted in my post that blacks do commit more crimes. But as I said, most of that criminal activity is levied at other blacks - itself in part a legacy of high levels of residential segregation in the US.

To be quite honest, I find the whole 'avoid black people' thing to be both lazy and dehumanizing. It teaches kids that all members of a group are bad, and the only people that they can trust are people who are like them. It also contributes to the seething anger that many professional blacks feel when, despite their fancy degrees and good jobs, they still can't get a taxi at night, despite the fact that they are standing in front of an office building in a suit. The flip side of that is when middle and upper-class blacks hear 'we you aren't like other black people' - as if that is some kind of complement.

Maybe my experience is unusual because I grew up in a mixed-race household, in an integrated neighborhood, and I have lived in cities which have large black middile and upper-class neighborhoods. This isn't actually unusual; not every black neighborhood is like Beirut. But the very idea seems to cause cognitive dissonance for a lot of people whose views of blacks were shaped by the 10 o'clock news and the warnings of ill-informed and 'mildly racist' folks like the author in question.

Permabear

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LostinKildare

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Yes, it's based primarily on the largely unsupported argument that black children will be unfairly treated by law enforcement.

This article nicely summarises (with reference to studies by Human Rights Watch, the American Bar Association, etc., as well as testimony in US Congressional hearings) how blacks are treated unfairly at every stage of the US justice system.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/fourteen-examples-of-raci_b_658947.html


A couple of facts from this link:

* Although whites and blacks engage in drug offenses (possession and sales) at roughly the same rate, blacks account for 37% of the drug arrests (though they are only 13% of the total pop, and only 14% of monthly drug users). Blacks are arrested for drugs offences at rates 2-11 times higher than whites.

* Police are much much more likely to stop and frisk a black person than a white person. Only about 10% of stops resulted in arrests. Most people stopped are youths, males, and black. Check out the stop and frisk stats for the NYPD here:
http://www.nyclu.org/node/1598
89% of those stopped were people of color (55% black, 30% Latino). The number of blacks stopped represents 21% of the city's population, whereas the number of whites stopped represents just 2% of the pop.
In these stops, police used force 50% more often on blacks than on whites.
Here's the kicker: "Cops found guns, drugs, or stolen property on whites about twice as often as they did on black suspects," and more stops of whites result in arrests.
So if stops of whites are more likely to produce arrests, why do they so disproportionately stop blacks? Note that 15% of the police officers who filed the majority of the stop/frisk reports never stopped any whites at all.

When you say

Cavehill Red wrote: »

The reason why my parents didn't need to warn me about being treated unfairly by the RUC or British Army is because I didn't do anything illegal to attract their attention in the first place. Similar applies here.

that's incorrect -- it's not similar. You do not have to be doing anything illegal to attract the attention of the police in the US -- 90% of the stops by the NYPD result in no arrest (which is surprising, since stopping an innocent person and using force on them may cause them to commit an arrestable offence!). To attract police attention, you need only be "suspicious," and apparently NY cops are many times more suspicious of blacks than whites, even though whites are more likely to have committed a crime.

This is largely incorrect, too:

Cavehill Red wrote: »

By contrast, the statistical facts of black on white criminality are rather hard to argue away with semantics or suggestions of systemic racism. People are tried in courts of law in the US in front of their peers, many of whom will also be black. It may well be that they are profiled in advance of their arrest, or disproportionately sentenced afterwards because of the colour of their skin. But what is certain is that they were guilty of the offences.

With reference to the HP link above, only 3-5% of criminal cases go to trial, the rest are plea bargained with the promise of a much shorter sentence if you don't exercise your right to a trial. In a country where 80% of criminal defendants are assigned hugely overworked and sometimes very poor public defenders, most people take the deal, even when they are innocent (this according to the American Bar Association, "not a radical bunch").

For those that do go to trial, according to studies cited by the Equal Justice Initiative, blacks are often illegally excluded from criminal jury service.

Then, black drug offenders are 20% more likely to be sentenced to jail than white drug offenders;
they are 21% more likely to receive mandatory sentences; and
they receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crime.

So, "African Americans, who are 13% of the population and 14% of drug users, are not only 37% of the people arrested for drugs but 56% of the people in state prisons for drug offenses."

Hatefacts.

southsiderosie

Permabear wrote: »

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Having been a female student at several politically correct East Coast universities, I must have missed that at orientation. But nice whataboutary there.

Permabear wrote: »

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That they are converging to the general norm of suspicion of all black people, regardless of whether that makes sense or not given the situation.

Permabear wrote: »

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Again, nice whataboutary here. Someone calling me an Oreo has little to no effect on the way I will be treated by police, my peers at work, or the criminal justice system.

Permabear wrote: »

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Yes, and black people tell their kids to avoid those areas as well BECAUSE THEY ARE DANGEROUS, not because they are full of black people. But that is not what the author said.

Nodin

Permabear wrote: »

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Yet wheres the added caveat referring to poverty etc? Instead it focuses on skin colour.

Chuck Stone

Cavehill Red wrote: »

It's evident you cannot understand simple statistics.

There are no 'simple statistics' when it comes to issues of race and crime. We're not counting the amount of red cars that go through a junction here.

Firstly your headline figure relates to all crime, including threats. Actual completed crime stats on the same page show blacks completed 20% of all crime against whites, despite being only 12.9% of the population.

What exactly is 'crime against whites'? Why is 'black' the identifier of the perpetrator and not socio-economic status? Are mixed race people black? These are some of the problems with using these woolly terms.

Drilling down further, it gets more out of kilter. Blacks are responsible for 16.4% of all rapes of whites, while whites are responsible for - zero* - percentage of rapes of blacks.

Here's another (I'm presuming black person's) view of these 'simple statistics'

Rape/sexual assault (a), Race of victim:

White only 117,640: perceived race of offender: 74.9% white, 16.4%* black
Black only 46,580: perceived race of offender: 0.0%* white, 74.8%* black
The star means “Estimate is based on 10 or fewer sample cases.”

So if you take 16.4% of the 117,640 white women raped in 2008 that gives you 19,286 white women raped by black men! That means that even if as many as ten white men raped black women that year, the highest number allowed by the table, blacks rape white women 1,927 (yes 1,927) times more than whites rape black women.

So our commenters seem to be pretty much right.

Well, no:

Misreading #1: The numbers are not about “rape” but “rape and sexual assault (a)”. Sexual assault means any kind of unwanted sexual touching, like groping or kissing. And the “(a)” means “Includes verbal threats of rape and threats of sexual assault”. So it is way more than just rape. Rape is probably just a small part of it.

Misreading #2: Notice that the star meaning “ten or fewer” applies not just to white-on-black “rape and sexual assault (a)” but to black-on-white cases too! So if we claim that ten or fewer black women were raped by white men then we should also say that ten or fewer white women were raped by black men!

Misreading #3: The star means “Estimate is based on 10 or fewer sample cases”, the key word here being “sample”. They did not ask everyone in the country but a sample of 77,852 people, about one in 4,000. So there could have been as many as 40,000 black women raped by white men that year!

Misreading #4: The reason for the star is because ten or fewer sample cases are way too few to draw any firm statistical conclusions. Mere chance could throw the numbers way off.

As it turns out, of the 77,852 people surveyed, only 56 people reported “rape and sexual assault (a)”. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) only 7.5% of sexual assaults are rapes and of those only 6.7% are between whites and blacks. So out of the 56 sample cases, maybe only 4 were rape and of those probably none were interracial.

So this is a case of white people seeing what they want to see, of misreading facts to fit racist stereotypes.

Source

johnnyskeleton

SamHarris wrote: »

Either it is wrong in all cases, or it is wrong in none. This picking and choosing when people can make judgements on big groups, especially without any statistics what so ever is par for course throughout certain media and less formal discussions as long as that group meets certain, hidden, criteria. See the reaction to the Traveler thread for another example of this in action.

I think there are circumstances where it is acceptable and circumstances where it is not. In America, any mention of race good or bad is a hot topic, and negative comment on race is utterly verboten.

However, mild to moderate racial comment among Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales is generally accepted. Typically, it follows success or failure in sporting events, so for the next year everyone can slag the leek munchers and there's nothing they can do about it. Apart from anything else, the British and Irish are the first to insult themselves and for all the anti-English sentiment, when in another continent the Irish and British tend to huddle together.

I suppose the general rule is keep going until someone tells you to stop, then stop. I would hate to see us go the way of the Yanks where even describing someone as being of a different race can be a social faux pas.

I can't imagine that comments such as "father from fermannagh, mother from figi, neither place known for it's hurling" could be made on us television, and that leads to a form of repressed racism that is more serious.

RDM_83 again

Chuck Stone wrote: »

There are no 'simple statistics' when it comes to issues of race and crime. We're not counting the amount of red cars that go through a junction here.



What exactly is 'crime against whites'? Why is 'black' the identifier of the perpetrator and not socio-economic status? Are mixed race people black? These are some of the problems with using these woolly terms.



Here's another (I'm presuming black person's) view of these 'simple statistics'

To be honest though that blog post was interesting and shows how the stats with this source of study should be examined closely, the data still supports the extrapulation (though we can't be sure of the confidence interval).
What is most interesting about that blog and some of the replies on here is nobodies pointed that it makes sense for the rate of black M to White F sexual assualt to be 3 times higher as most sex crimes are commited by somebody known to the victim and we can make a guess at interracial relationships from the marriage rates. However the disjunct between these relationship rates probably doesn't fit the bloggers agenda (though it could be argued that white men just find black woman less attractive).

QUOTE=LostinKildare;78048182]

* Although whites and blacks engage in drug offenses (possession and sales) at roughly the same rate, blacks account for 37% of the drug arrests (though they are only 13% of the total pop, and only 14% of monthly drug users). Blacks are arrested for drugs offences at rates 2-11 times higher than whites.

* Police are much much more likely to stop and frisk a black person than a white person. Only about 10% of stops resulted in arrests. Most people stopped are youths, males, and black. Check out the stop and frisk stats for the NYPD here:
http://www.nyclu.org/node/1598
89% of those stopped were people of color (55% black, 30% Latino). The number of blacks stopped represents 21% of the city's population, whereas the number of whites stopped represents just 2% of the pop.
In these stops, police used force 50% more often on blacks than on whites.
Here's the kicker: "Cops found guns, drugs, or stolen property on whites about twice as often as they did on black suspects," and more stops of whites result in arrests.
So if stops of whites are more likely to produce arrests, why do they so disproportionately stop blacks? Note that 15% of the police officers who filed the majority of the stop/frisk reports never stopped any whites at all.

When you say



that's incorrect -- it's not similar. You do not have to be doing anything illegal to attract the attention of the police in the US -- 90% of the stops by the NYPD result in no arrest (which is surprising, since stopping an innocent person and using force on them may cause them to commit an arrestable offence!). To attract police attention, you need only be "suspicious," and apparently NY cops are many times more suspicious of blacks than whites, even though whites are more likely to have committed a crime.


So, "African Americans, who are 13% of the population and 14% of drug users, are not only 37% of the people arrested for drugs but 56% of the people in state prisons for drug offenses."

Hatefacts.[/quote]

Hmmmm a lot of this is fairly meaningless unless we know the amount and type of drugs they were carrying, there's a fairly big difference between holding a dimebag of weed and a bag of coke, also holding a small amount of drugs in a dealing hotspot (watched to much of the Wire :rolleyes: ) is probably treated differently.

"Cops found guns, drugs, or stolen property on whites about twice as often as they did on black suspects," and more stops of whites result in arrests.
So if stops of whites are more likely to produce arrests, why do they so disproportionately stop blacks?"

Now I'm not saying these figures aren't an indication of a biased and racist police force (it is!) , BUT since the proportion of whites stopped is so low they must be exibiting some really suspicious behaviour or be known to the officer or something to be stopped, it could be argued that the rate of finds/convictions should be even higher rather than just 50% as only the most suspicious 2% of the (white) population is being targetted

LostinKildare

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

I think there are circumstances where it is acceptable and circumstances where it is not. In America, any mention of race good or bad is a hot topic, and negative comment on race is utterly verboten.

However, mild to moderate racial comment among Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales is generally accepted. Typically, it follows success or failure in sporting events, so for the next year everyone can slag the leek munchers and there's nothing they can do about it. Apart from anything else, the British and Irish are the first to insult themselves and for all the anti-English sentiment, when in another continent the Irish and British tend to huddle together.

I suppose the general rule is keep going until someone tells you to stop, then stop. I would hate to see us go the way of the Yanks where even describing someone as being of a different race can be a social faux pas.

I can't imagine that comments such as "father from fermannagh, mother from figi, neither place known for it's hurling" could be made on us television, and that leads to a form of repressed racism that is more serious.

I completely disagree!

Americans talk about race incessantly. And a lot of it is quite a lot edgier than your example of intra-national slagging (e.g., calling Welsh players "leek munchers"). If you cannot imagine that US television would permit comments identifying someone's place of origin and slighting the sporting skills of that region, then I guess that you aren't very familiar with US television (and radio and print media).

Americans are actually much freer than the Irish or British to air ugly racist opinions because "hate speech" is not an offence in the US (only obscenity, defamation, incitement to riot -- where violence is imminent, and fighting words).

In Ireland, in contrast, the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 outlaws words or behaviours which are "threatening, abusive or insulting and are intended or, having regard to all the circumstances, are likely to stir up hatred" against "a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnic or national origins, membership of the travelling community or sexual orientation." Recently the mayor of Naas was reported to gardai for his comments about African constituents, which were certainly insulting, at the least.

Similarly, UK laws prohibit speech that is hateful, threatening, abusive, or insulting and which targets a person on account of skin colour, race, disability, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, or sexual orientation. The penalties for hate speech include fines, imprisonment, or both.

In the US, the thinking is that racist speech should be lawful for the reason you gave above: that forcing it underground makes it more dangerous. Instead of prosecuting hate speech -- as the UK or Ireland would do -- they rely on the force of public opinion to keep it in check.

Which is what happened in this case. For years Derbyshire has been writing articles with ugly little nuggets of racism, homophobia, and misogyny (he thinks women shouldn't be allowed to vote, and that only girls aged 15-20 are really sexually attractive). It's just now that he's written something so over the top that it's gotten a lot of attention, the public is repulsed, and the National Review cut him loose because they recognised that this hurts its brand (dog-whistle, plausible-deniability racism okay; blatant racism not okay).

Nodin

RDM_83 again wrote: »

"Cops found guns, drugs, or stolen property on whites about twice as often as they did on black suspects," and more stops of whites result in arrests.
So if stops of whites are more likely to produce arrests, why do they so disproportionately stop blacks?"

One word. Begins with R. Or if you prefer two words - R & P.

Permabear

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RDM_83 again

Nodin wrote: »

One word. Begins with R. Or if you prefer two words - R & P.

I was making the point that though the police are acting in a racist manner the figures for a higher arrest rate among stopped whites don't indicate a higher rate of criminality among whites in fact since its such a restricted group of whites being stopped e.g the most obviously criminal (they probably spot them due to their sloping foreheads :P ).

LostinKildare

RandolphEsq wrote: »

He is settled enough in the U.S. to be a product of their unjust society which clearly favours white people. The very foundations of their country were flawed; black people were brought over as slaves, this superiority mentality by white people over black people is still strong over there.

He's not a product of the racist US society, he's a product of the racist British society.

He didn't settle in the US until he was 40 years old.
http://johnderbyshire.com/FamilyHistoryJD/People/Self/page.html

The US is to blame for enough **** in this world; we're not taking the blame for every racist foreigner who comes to live in the US.

Nodin

RDM_83 again wrote: »

I was making the point that though the police are acting in a racist manner the figures for a higher arrest rate among stopped whites don't indicate a higher rate of criminality among whites in fact since its such a restricted group of whites being stopped e.g the most obviously criminal (they probably spot them due to their sloping foreheads :P ).

Soz. Read it wrong.

<---Big eejit etc

Victor

Is 'black' a proxy word for 'poor'?

Worldwide, justice systems focus on poor people's crimes, not rich people's crimes.

Cavehill Red

Victor wrote: »

Is 'black' a proxy word for 'poor'?

Worldwide, justice systems focus on poor people's crimes, not rich people's crimes.

I'd be interested to see correlated crime figures for primarily black residency areas of America in comparison with, for example, Cambodia or Malaysia. I wonder what that might say about poverty and crime.

Of course, one might argue that comparing different nations is like comparing apples and oranges. However, that raises the spectre of a cultural, if not exactly racial, component to criminality.

Equally, one might call into question the veracity of SE Asian crime figures. Then again, some are calling the veracity of US crime figures into question anyway.

Even if it's argued that it is relative poverty which causes crime - an argument I am intensely unsympathetic towards, having come from a poor background where little criminality apart from that deemed terrorism occurred, and having travelled to many very poor places where criminality was negligible (rural China, for one), and other relatively well-off places where crime was significant (South Africa, much of London, Washington DC) - then, for America one would have to examine closely the crime rates of comparably poor black and white regions to see if that correlated with or against a racial component. But on anecdotal evidence, the Ozarks don't have drive-bys. Just saying.

Dannyboy83

southsiderosie wrote: »

Just a point of clarification - the magazine he was fired from, National Review, is itself a conservative publication, and has gotten some heat in the past for what were considered racially insensitive comments. So given that Derbyshire was fired by a conservative publication - and considering the state of American conservatism in 2012 - I think that says something about how far beyond the pale his comments were.

I thought this would have to be proof-read and reviewed by the editor prior to publication?

Dannyboy83

southsiderosie wrote: »

To be quite honest, I find the whole 'avoid black people' thing to be both lazy and dehumanizing. It teaches kids that all members of a group are bad, and the only people that they can trust are people who are like them. It also contributes to the seething anger that many professional blacks feel when, despite their fancy degrees and good jobs, they still can't get a taxi at night, despite the fact that they are standing in front of an office building in a suit. The flip side of that is when middle and upper-class blacks hear 'we you aren't like other black people' - as if that is some kind of complement.

Maybe my experience is unusual because I grew up in a mixed-race household, in an integrated neighborhood, and I have lived in cities which have large black middile and upper-class neighborhoods. This isn't actually unusual; not every black neighborhood is like Beirut. But the very idea seems to cause cognitive dissonance for a lot of people whose views of blacks were shaped by the 10 o'clock news and the warnings of ill-informed and 'mildly racist' folks like the author in question.

Granted it's impossible and meaningless to make a statement about 40 million+ people (the population of Spain) & I find myself agreeing with you strongly, but I have to admit; I am a bit of a hypocrite...if you substitute the word 'traveller' for 'black' *, I would be the the first to admit I would unquestionably warn children to steer clear of them.

*-no offence intended to any black american who may be reading - I'm making an analogy, not a comparison.

Cavehill Red

Dannyboy83 wrote: »

.if you substitute the word 'traveller' for 'black' *, I would be the the first to admit I would unquestionably warn children to steer clear of them.

*-no offence intended to any black american who may be reading - I'm making an analogy, not a comparison.

But offence to travellers intended? Well, I admire your honesty. It's a commodity in ever-decreasing supply in this world. Your prejudice is not pleasant, but you admit your hypocrisy, and I understand it in the same way I understand the original article I referenced in the OP.

It's a pity that the discussion has become so focused on one small aspect of what I hoped to open up to debate, but perhaps given the radioactive nature of race-related issues, and the strong compulsion to orthodoxy in many quarters, that was inevitable.

What I'd really hoped for was a discussion on the wider concept of hatefacts, and whether they exist, and if so, whether there are localised Irish ones. Because the idea underpinning the concept of hatefacts is a kind of hypocrisy too, one that a society rather than an individual engages in.

It seems to me that if hatefacts exist, they are located in the factuality residing within iconoclastic thinking. Hence in Ireland today, we would have to look at areas which are actually contradictory to the way Ireland thought in the past. For example, the role and existence of the Catholic Church was for a long time widely seen as a good and valued, indeed essential, thing. Now it's pretty much the opposite.

So perhaps a current Irish hatefact would be that the Catholic Church is still a valuable component of Irish life doing good work. Of course, to be a hatefact, that statement would need to be factual. As an atheist, I think it largely is. Another possible one I'm more uncomfortable with is the idea that Fianna Fail might likewise be considered. Is Martin's FF doing a valuable job in opposition? Maybe so, but it upsets my orthodoxical thinking to consider that possibility.

Considering these examples, and perhaps those offered in the original Taki's articles, I wonder is it inevitable that hatefacts must be essentially conservative or regressive in their politics? If they exist, are they the product of either a conservative backlash to progression, or are they the locus of the overspill, where the pendulum has swung too far? Or are there progressive hatefacts too?

Anyway, this was the sort of area I hoped the discussion would originally go. I'm not trying to reboot the discussion, but I think race issues get discussed to death sometimes and this concept of hatefacts seemed like a more intriguing and novel area of inquiry.

RichieC

This is the first forum I've read about this on where the actual merits of the article were discussed.

Poor.