Comment by devalier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devalier | Hacker News Reader

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I think people who disagree that MM's writing is racist are mostly just hoodwinked by the above rhetorical ploy

I think MM's answer to the racism charge was much better here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677367 - he wrote:

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The word "racist" and its conjugations does not appear in the English language until the 1920s - see Peter Frost's cultural history [0]. If you asked Shakespeare if he was a "racist," he would not know what you meant.

"Racist" is essentially a term of abuse which no group or party has ever applied to itself. Like most such epithets, it has two meanings - a clear objective one, describing a person who fails to believe in the anthropological theories of human equality which became first popular, then universal in the mid-20th century; and a caricature of the vices, personal or political, typically engaged in by such a foul unbeliever.

I actually like the answer given by Steve Klabnik above [1]. To call Steve a communist is a serious personal insult, and you can get banned for it [2]. However, Steve reserves the right to call himself a communist, or not, as he likes. This is actually kind of cool... [0] - http://www.unz.com/pfrost/age-of-reason/ [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676630 [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676861

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This debate over whether MM is a racist is silly. The word is just an epithet with an ever changing meaning. It's not a descriptive label.

Holy shit your quote is a perfect example of exactly what I'm talking about.

1. It dismisses an obvious truth. You know, that there actually really were/are actually people who actually thought black/latino/etc. people were actually inferior... actually. For Real. Historical Fact. Period. That the term "racist" clearly and unambiguously identifies those people, regardless of whether people disagree about the edge cases.

2. MM dimisses this totally obvious objection by quoting historical inanity (who the fuck cares if the word wasn't in common usage until the 20's? What does that actually have to do with anything?! "Cathedral" didn't enter common usage (under MM's defintion)... ever. Guess the term means nothing in the context in which he's using it? This observation is pure unadulterated inanity)

3. And also while making some unsubstantiated comment about those icky Progressives for those In The Know.

4. Note that what MM literally said (that in addition to being an epithet, "Racist has a clear objective meaning") actually directly contradicts your interpretation of what he said:

> The word is just an epithet with an ever changing meaning. It's not a descriptive label.

I'll excuse you for the lapse in reading comprehension since you actually perfectly translated MM's true meaning. MM said X. He gave unimpeachable evidence for X. And you interpreted X to mean the slightly different Y. Unsurprisingly, since it's totally clear that Y is what MM actually intends his reader to walk away beliving. The rub is that MM didn't actually provide any cogent argument for Y. But his defense of X sure did sound authoritative and unpeachable!

You know, that there actually really were/are actually people who actually thought black/latino/etc. people were actually inferior... actually. For Real. Historical Fact. Period. That the term "racist" clearly and unambiguously identifies those people.

No it does not. For it is not at all defined what it means to view "black people as inferior".

For instance, it is a fact about the world that across a vast number of tests of cognitive ability -- SAT's, NAEP, LSAT's, AFQT, IQ tests, etc, -- the average score among blacks is about a standard deviation lower than the average among whites. This is not controversial, I read articles in the NY Times all the time about closing the test score gap. If I believe have read evidence that convinces me that 1% of that gap is due to differences in gene frequency between the races, am I a racist who believes that "black people are inferior"? What if I believe that genes explain 10% of the gap? 50%? 100%? At what percentage am I an evil bigot who should be excluded from polite society?

> What if I believe that genes explain 10% of the gap? 50%? 100%?

At exactly the point where you think this actually fucking matters when evaluating the value of those people. That's the "clear, objective" meaning MM refers to. If The Cathedral invented demonization of racism then I'll happily attend the sunday mass.

Or maybe just before that, where you take some raw statistics and draw wild conclusions from it in order to prove your prior. Like people used to do by measuring skull sizes, just slightly more refined this time 'round.

As a matter of fact, people using the term "Racism" in the 1920's-1950's were often referring to people who genuinely believed they had scientific evidence that jews/blacks were inferior.

Racism accompanied with the epistemology du jour is still objectionable. Just because you earnestly believe something doesn't make that belief impeachable.

> At exactly the point where you think this actually fucking matters when evaluating the value of those people.

In that case, you must believe that Yarvin is not a racist, because he has stated at great length (not that he's capable of talking at other lengths, of course) that the value of other people has absolutely nothing to do with their intelligence, whether it's 0% genetic or 100%.

> because he has stated at great length... that the value of other people has absolutely nothing to do with their intelligence

1. It's not

2. It's not what he says. It's what is totally completely obviously entailed by what he says but he refuses to actually come out and say point blank.

At exactly the point where you think this actually fucking matters when evaluating the value of those people.

Well I certainly would wish that the entire issue of the racial test score gap would be dropped. We should only worry about treating individuals based on who they are as individuals, and that does not require using statistics broken down by race.

But the racial test score gap is a huge issue, and blame does get assigned, and action is taken based on that blame. So if I am in a conversation and someone says, "Well if you don't think schools/culture/racism/poverty causes the gap, what does?", then I'm going to give my honest opinion. If that explanation includes genes, then am I a racist bigot who should be ostracized from polite society?

It doesn't seems to me that racist "clearly and unambiguously identifies those people", especially as stated "no group or party has ever applied to itself".

In contrast, there are groups that have applied to itself the word "communist", and so far as it applies to them, it is clear and (somewhat) unambiguous. The scope, however, of who it doesn't apply to, and who it may be used against is ambiguous e.g. McCarthyism.

This doesn't mean that I agree that the word is purely abusive (and as such agree with MM), but I don't think his opinion is either completely wrong, without merit, or obviously so.

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