Comment by devalier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devalier | Hacker News Reader

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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?

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