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More on US v EU crime Anyone who isn’t exhausted by this subject, will be after slogging through the comprehensive job of heavy lifting over at a spin-off post on the Smallest Minority blog.
This is the post I would have put up if I wasn’t so damn lazy. Many statistics, and a heaping helping of good sense. Extra bonus points for the Jesse Jackson quote!
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(Whoops! – I put this comment in the wrong thread!)
Well, check the article again.
The Interpol data appears to be bad. Absolute crap for Scotland’s homicide rates, and apparently also for Sweden’s.
While this isn’t good, it does not negate the point of the article.
If anybody can tell me why the Interpol numbers are so screwed up, I’d appreciate it.
A clear presentation of something that has been widely noted before, thanks. It is not racist to note that there’s a strong linkage with race–and note, also age and sex–in the statistics.
However, I too take issue with: “[The US] murder rate is high largely due to the multicultural nature of our society.” I think that this does show a racist habit of mind in two ways:
1. It equates race with culture.
2. Even if we deem race and culture to be interchangeable, it just doesn’t follow that multiculturalism/multiracialism is responsible. The figures clearly show that the murders we’re discussing are overwhelmingly intra-group. Mixture is not the problem.
I submit it is not about being black. It is about being urban underclass, and the structure of US society means that the urban underclass is predominantly black. There’s one specific culture responsible, and that’s not “black culture”, but the ghetto-gangster culture.
The way to test this is to look at the statistics county-by-county. My guess is the death-rates are even more frighteningly concentrated. That middle-class blacks are no more implicated in this than their white social equals. And that there are some relatively few, but equally poor and poisoned, non-black districts that can compete on murder rates.
Guy,
“It is not racist to note that there’s a strong linkage with race (…)”
But it is racist to use “race” in stats like the Census Bureau does.
Why does the US need to label US citizens with “race”?
WHY ???
“Why does the US need to label US citizens with “race”?
WHY ???”
Because the left and the racial interest groups demand it. It is essential to all their affirmative action and reverse discrimination schemes.
All the pressure to abandon this kind of data gathering and labelling comes from conservative/right/anti-statist groups.
Glad to see you are coming around, Kodiak.
R C Dean,
So you’re telling us the US uses racist breakdown to set out demographic datas just because of a bunch of stalinian teachers, Guardian readers & NAACP activists.
I don’t buy that.
Well, of course not. We don’t get the Guardian. It’s stalinian teachers, New York Times readers & NAACP activists.
And Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Tribune, various racial pandering groups (the National Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is meeting here in San Diego and lots of big Democrats like Gray Davis, Cruz Bustamante, and Dianne Feinstein are here sucking up)…shall I go on?
Definitions:
Gray Davis – Governor of California, soon to be recalled.
Cruz Bustamante – Absolutely far left Democrat (ie: socialist) Lt. Governor of California. Is the top in the polls for Democrats in the recall election.
Diane Feinstein – Another left-wing nut Dem, but she’s one of our 2 Senators in Washington.
Hispanic – Any person who speaks Spanish as their first/primary language, including Mexicans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Panamanians, but not Spaniards (Spaniards look too white to fit into this classification)
So the official racist approach to demographic data was caused by a neolefty conspiration…
…and certainly not by a well-grounded tradition of segregating “races”, and neither by an apartheid legislation abolished just 40 years ago ?
******
Andy:
So I’d belong to the Hispanic “race” should I happen to be a US citizen with Spanish as my mother tongue + coming from Spanish-speaking America (USA & Canada excluded).
Is there a Lusitanic “race” for US citizens of Brazilian descent? Would Lusitanic include US people of Portuguese ancestry?
Are there Frankish, Germanic, Polanic, Italic or Anglic “races”?
What about an Hispanic whose skin colour would be black? And what about an formerly English-speaking, amnesic Black who’d chose to restart it all in Spanish while still living in the USA?
Are the Arabo-Muslim or Frog-Socialist “races” to be used by the Census Bureau anytime soon?
Kodiak: You’ve happened on the silliness that makes up the racial groups here in the US. And, for the record, I’m considered either: Anglo-Saxon or white; Supposedly Anglo-Saxon covers everyone that’s white, but I’m not sure that a Russian, Italian or Egyptian is Anglo-Saxon no matter how far you strech that term. Yes, a white Egyptian (if they move to the US) isn’t considered African-American. You need to be sub-Saharan to be African-American, but somehow Ethiopians are African-American. At least, that was how I understood the terms a few minutes ago. Could have all changed by now, depending on how the liberals want the voting constituencies defined.
Although there is a lot of daft stupidity regarding the racial groupings within the US – it does have an advantage… without the statistics that these groupings provide it would be even more difficult to see that the vast majority of homicides is young “black on black” men.
I suppose like everything – whether making specific notes of these racial “groupings” is a “good” or “bad” thing entirely depends on the use that it is put to.
Joe,
Racial grouping made by any State on Earth is definitely, thoroughly, essentially, unquestionably, irremediably a VERY BAD & SAD thing, whatever the actual use.
It’s also an insult to each & every Citizen of the interested State as it is to the Human Race.
But…but…without racial grouping there can be no more hiring quotas, no more college admissions advantages for certain races, no more business loans to minorities, no more indian casinos, no more redistricting cities to give political advantage to certain groups, no more hate crime. If we don’t know who’s what, how can we tell the victim from the oppressor?
I’m getting a headache.
Have you really gone that far in abandoning the very concept of Citizenship?
The State is so low-rated & the notion of Republic just a vague recollection from the past. Your politics too is overprivatised… God in the schools & “races” in the stats. Evil cast on some groups & good on some others. What about a customer service for complaining “races”?
Miserable.
Kodiak,
I work at a public university in New York City, and the left and liberal research centers all make use of racial statistics in all their studies. They need this data to find evidence of discrimination and unequal outcomes. Let me tell you, these lefties are pissed when they do comparative international research, because governments like those in France and Brazil do not keep track of race in census data.
Everyone who applies for a job at the university must report his race, so the Affirmative Action office can make sure the hiring practices are not racist. The heads of research centers, whenever they are doing a search for someone to fill a position, strive to include blacks and Latinos in the interviewing process, lest they be branded racist.
Also, remember the way U.S. legislative districts are drawn; there is an attempt to draw the borders of districts in such a way that districts exist which contain a majority of blacks. This way, in the U.S. winner take all system, some blacks are sure to get into the legislature. (If districts were color blind there would likely be very few if any blacks in state and national legislatures, as blacks make up only 13% of the U.S. population.)
In America, the government and the left are all for keeping racial statistics. Some brave right-wingers and libertarians fight against it (like Ward Connerly), but I don’t think anybody thinks they will win any time soon.
Too many comments here rely too broadly upon the term “racist”, loaded as it is with so much anti-white, PC sentiment. This is a sad failing.
The correct statistical term for crime analyses is “racial”, and knowing the racial correlates in crime is extremely useful. For example, if (as I think is true) around 50% of violent crime is committed by African-Americans and around 50% of arrests for such crimes are of African-Americans, it would suggest that the State – in the form of the police – is correct in its general racial approach, and racism has nothing to do with it.
Mitch,
You’re right: anyone or any public or private entity performing any kind of racist (racial is racist, by mere definition >>> there’s only one race) approach must be loudly denounced & firmly fought. That lefties are doing so the US (according to what you all have told so far) is of course no excuse & above all no exemption for them to be stigmatised & given the only right treatment they deserve: overt contempt & adamant opposition.
I nonetheless think that lefties are reacting with respect to a deep-rooted rightist invariant: that’s racism, among whites, blacks & the rest of the population. Fighting racism through delivering upside down, soft racism is blatantly stupid. The only way out is promoting Republican values (& don’t get me wrong: I don’t mean the disgusting “republican” label you use in the USA; I mean Res Publica). Promoting the State as the secular arm of the Republic & the democratically determined expression of the common will that’s transcending the mere addition of separated individuals (customer service approach) is the key to fight both racism & counterracism-that-ends-up-in-racism.
I’m not too sure libertarians & other rightists are well-intentioned when using “the lefties are more racist than the racists” theme. I tend to think they are being more opportunistic (beat the left) than sincere (they don’t fight actual racism as hard as they bark at the left).
******
Guessedworker,
No, “racial” can be used for horses, cows, dogs & poultry. Not to you & me.
I’m not a representant of any “race”, nor an element of any. And neither are you.
Kodiak – libertarians are among the very firmest opponents of racial groupings, and indeed of identity group politics in the US. Glad to see we finally found an issue that we can agree with you on.
The race industry and their allies on the left in the US profit from continuing to pick at the scabs of racial conflict, and by using the state to create groups that the state can then reward, punish, and generally set against each other. The hypocrisy of the left and the race industry is truly staggering.
One of the unfortunate effects of the identity group politics is the continuing ghettoization of urban blacks and the perpetuation of an urban black subculture that is highly dysfunctional and extremely violent. The continued existence of this underclass serves both the left and the race hustlers well; thus, they constantly oppose efforts to assimilate, and try to reinforce through their “multi-cultural” cant the very tendencies and habits that keep so many urban blacks in misery.
R C Dean,
I too am glad we agree on the most important thing in life: Human dignity.
Libertarian sincerity. Although I remain somewhat perplexed (all the abusive cheap rationale against the State, the EU, the French, the socialists, the violation of Iraqi self-ownership, the right to strike, e tutti quanti –the list is endless…), there’s the benefit of the doubt.
“One of the unfortunate effects of the identity group politics is the continuing ghettoization of urban blacks and the perpetuation of an urban black subculture that is highly dysfunctional and extremely violent”
To that, I’d only quote Guy Herbert:
“However, I too take issue with: “[The US] murder rate is high largely due to the multicultural nature of our society.” I think that this does show a racist habit of mind in two ways:
1. It equates race with culture.
2. Even if we deem race and culture to be interchangeable, it just doesn’t follow that multiculturalism/multiracialism is responsible. The figures clearly show that the murders we’re discussing are overwhelmingly intra-group. Mixture is not the problem.
I submit it is not about being black. It is about being urban underclass, and the structure of US society means that the urban underclass is predominantly black. There’s one specific culture responsible, and that’s not “black culture”, but the ghetto-gangster culture”.
Kodiak, at risk of saying something totally wrong and offending you – I’ve got to ask- what is your game?
You aren’t playing fair with the other commentors…
For instance:
Saying that the word “racial” is “racist by mere definition”
hahahahaha – I bet you know fine rightly that’s not true.
I’m sorry, – Bear with me – usually you are so precise with language but that is just nonsense.
As I’m sure you very well know- The use of the word “racist” is specific to the idea of the superiority of one particular racial type.
As you handle your language so precisely your comment has got to be a wind up!
Especially when you follow it with this:
“lefties are reacting with respect to a deep-rooted rightist invariant…”…etc etc…
You come up with some interesting thoughts but your answers to comments often sound like they have been written according to “official left party line!” or even “newspeak”.
While commenting on samizdata you claim to be an individual thinker and congratulate others on individual thinking, but much of the language you choose is that of the pure left ideology! (not that being pure left doesn’t mean you can’t be thinking individually – but when you do it so consistantly I feel it just lessens the chances!)
Commenting with you I never feel that I hear your thoughts… I feel I’m talking to a political “robot” and I would much rather hear your own honest opinions written in plain language. I think it would be much more interesting.
Its not that I am trying to wind you up – its just that I would hate to think that I’m sitting here reading all your comments wrongly- and that you are really trying to say something different!!!
If these have been your own honest – thought out for yourself – opinions then I apologise profusely: If they are not, then I wait in the hope of hearing your real thoughts and opinions.
Joe,
Anything I’ve posted is pure Kodiak. And you don’t have to apologise for doubting it.
I repeat: except for animals, plants or bacterias, racial = racist, BY MERE DEFINITION TO THE VERY EXTENT THERE’S ONLY THE HUMAN RACE.
This has nothing to do with linguistics. This is rather related to common sense, heart, life or whatever you may call it. It’s self-explaining.
Also: I’m into no party, do not read The Guardian (but do read Le Canard Enchaîné >>> the most serious French newspaper), do not worship any ideology nor have one, except the product of my own deficiencies.
Perhaps I talk “robot” when attending “robotised” circles… My thoughts are mine; sorry…
Since we are being pedantic: animals, plants, or bacteria don’t exhibit “race” since it isn’t one of the five orders of nature. In fact the concept of race is a cultural distinction invented by 19th Century anthroplogists such as Gobineau to draw national differences from arguments from nature.
Okey dokey Kodiak- I’ll take all your comments as written- so it looks like we’ll just have to disagree on a few things then…
RE: The Human Race or any race for that matter… you realise that the term “Race” can be applied to any genealogical tree… from just a single set of ‘parent and child’ right up to the whole all of their antecedants- in fact every single one who came before them or is genealogically related… even if you want to be really broad with the brush strokes… the preceding species right back to the single cell organism- because where does the sharp line fall between species in linear descent? (Ignore this last bit if you are a “creationist”) To define Race is just to define a grouping related by genealogical descent… (technically speaking). There is nothing wrong with doing so – it has many positive medical uses; defining disease susceptibility, gene problems, etc..) So to say it is all BAD is wrong. Badness is down to usage and to a lesser extent “intent”;.. just like guns, knives, bombs, barbie dolls, kilts, furry dice etc… ad infinitum.
Re: Linguistics… they are important- words give rise to both understandings and misunderstandings. How we use our words is very important indeed. The good use of linguistics and the use of common sense go hand in hand.
As to what you read… Maybe you should read the Guardian – maybe also the Sun, and papers from all round the globe. Me I just read whatever crosses my path… often womens magazines (in the hope of one day finally understanding those beautiful creatures). One of the best things I read recently was Bill Whittle’s essay “Responsibility” on his weblog – ejectejecteject.com – its very “american” – and not a womens magazine but very well worth the read all the same.
I hear in Kodiak’s comments the characteristically French position regarding the State and citizenship therein.
I do have critiques of that Statist approach, too long for this venue. But I will comment here on one issue, namely that no matter how noble the ideology of Citizenship may sound, in *practice* France has done a wretched job of integrating e.g. Moslem immigrants into French society and responsible participation as citizens. In the name of not discriminating, the French State has utterly failed to transmit and encourage the discipline, rationality and order that are at the heart of the Republic — and which are necessary for its surivival.
Most of the Moslem immigrants in France have been ghettoed as badly as underclass Blacks in the US, if not more so. Poverty, violence, undereducation and unemployment are rampant … and the violence is growing rapidly. Unfortunately, French government and society seem intent on closing their eyes to this major problem.
It is one thing to insist that all who embrace the Republic be seen as equals and equally French no matter the origin of their ancestors. It is quite another to pretend that such an embrace has been made when in fact a large proportion of disaffected youth from a specific cultural background increasingly commit violence and intimidation *in the name of religion*, stating explicitly their intent to imposetheir religion and practices on e.g. young women in their neighborhoods.
Before you criticize the US for discussing racial identity – which, by the way, is mostly declared by each person on his or her own behalf and not assigned by others — I suggest you look at the actual results of a State and a society which pretends that simply declaring equal Citizenship will cause all differences of belief, self-identity and cation to disappear.
And no, I have no tolerance for the “racial / gender / sexual preference identity lobbies” either.
Fundamentally I’m with Kodiak and most other posters on this. Race is a social construct. The phenotypic range isn’t that great. To quote P.J. O’Rourke (from Holidays in Hell): “Race doesn’t exist[…] If we were dogs we wouldn’t even be a different breed.”
Pace rkb, the “race” we’re talking about here is appearance muddled with culture. It has very little to do with genetic variation, which it conceptually predates by quite a way. You can’t tell someone’s ancestry with any certainty by looking at them, but you can easily form an impression of which traditional racial type they fall into, and your impression will be subtly tweaked by cultural clues. Reality is more diffuse than category.
However, it is sometimes worth discussing the implications of that social construct in a social context where it does matter. And however madly, and maddeningly, it matters more in the US than almost anywhere else in the West. (Though it is also an obsession of public sector bodies in the UK.)
A modest proposal. When faced with a racial profiling questionnaire, do as I do: tick the “other” box and write “human” alongside. Not quite Martin Luther King, I know. But it is a way of sending the same message.
Oh, and Guessedworker…
Doesn’t that rather depend on whether the right people are being arrested? Comparing two rather arbitrary statistics doen’t always give you much information. To judge from their conviction rates, the Saudi police are among the world’s fairest and most efficient.
Kodiak,
Congratulations on the improvement in your English skills. I had a very difficult time following you initially. (I’ve always admired your perserverance by the way.)
I wish you could spend a couple months working in the US. It would change your views considerably. A month in Lincoln, Nebraska followed by a month in South Central Los Angeles. At the end of the second month you would be extraordinarily prepared to identify specific “cultural” differences. If you decide to try, be sure and purchase major medical coverage (accidents can happen anywhere.)
Harry: yes, Gobineau & al.: Chamberlain, Galton, Vacher de Lapouge, Günther, Rosenberg, Jensen, Rushton, Gould & Eysenck.
******
Joe:
“RACE”: “To define Race is just to define a grouping related by genealogical descent… (technically speaking)”. I disagree. Mechanist or materialist approaches all harbour a major flaw as they aren’t consistent with an elementary bit of truth: all Humans are concealing something that’s beyond analysis or articulation & that’s DIGNITY. That enormous fact alone is enough to wipe out any skull-, penis-size or skin-colour, blood-group argument without even bother to read or hear counterarguments. Call it irrational; I think it’s utmost rationality per se, like “Cogito, ergo sum” & stuff like that. Now they’d add that Human dignity was certainly to burst out somewhere (African trees or Dordogne caves) sometime (Homo Sapiens, Australopithecus Gracilus, Paranthropus Boisei or even Pan Troglodytes). Perhaps it has. So what? The risible speculation over a reconstruction of the past can’t measure up to what we’ve got right now. And so can’t any State-sponsored “intellectual” method consisting in outrageously pretending there can be “races” & too much something (murders, drugs, rapes, guns, laziness, Welfare addiction, inability to get a life etc) in “race” A or “race” B. It is indeed ONLY BAD & ALWAYS SAD to “define” a “race” for any kind of purpose.
THE GUARDIAN & WOMEN’S MAGS: actually I went to The Guardian website to check if the paper was that leftist, teacherised, Welfare-hungry, State-obsessed, communist-nostalgic etc. I found it wonderfully well written & pleasantly interesting. Not like The Sun. I like polemicists & some good columnists can be found in that ink-overspilling rag but… -there’s a but, it’s really too rightist, xenophobe, brainwashed, cheap, ideological… Moreover it’s own by Murdoch (like The Times), isn’t it? I too would prefer women’s mags (much more interesting than populist page 3).
******
rkb:
1/ FRANCE: France may be not performing best with her Citizens with regards to “Liberté Egalité Fraternité”. She doesn’t want to “integrate” people for there’s nothing like a typical, actual, pattern-like French to be integrated to. The integration is about values: Republic, Citizens being considered as such & not as representatives of a group, a sex, an age, a sexual orientation, a religion, a party, a “race”, an ethnicity, a way of living, a class, a professional occupation… The only thing existing here is a Nation, called the French (for historical reasons).
This ambition doesn’t mean that ghettos aren’t existing. Ghettos’ being there proves that the ambition was implemented poorly. That said, our Nation is not closing her eyes. On the contrary. Much has been done to change life in those areas & more is to come soon.
You evoke an active –yet tiny- minority of Frenchmen & foreigners alike involved in systematic provocation & malicious testing of Republican limits. It’s true you can see some French young girls wearing scarves as their French mothers were walking naked-head at their ages. But you can also see more French young girls with their French mothers demonstrating bang in the middle of the ghetto (with miniskirts & big mouths) shouting what they want: freedom & Republic. Don’t underrate our determination to be successful when fighting for our aspirations: you’d be surprised.
The trend you refer to is religious integrism or religion-inspired tensing. The trend may affect & is affecting any kind of religion, not just the Muslims.
2/ USA: “Before you criticize the US for discussing racial identity – which, by the way, is mostly declared by each person on his or her own behalf and not assigned by others (…) » >>> « Race » self-declaring is the most abyssal stupidity I ever came across in my whole life…
Again, Kodiak, I will disagree with your last statement.
Many people DO identify themselves with groups other than the State and I do not think them wrong to do so. Usually this is a cultural and ethnic matter rather than “race” but not always. My ancestors came from two places in the past, each with a rich heritage I treasure. That does not make me any less an American, but it does inform who I am. I will resist the sterile reductionism that says I should cast that aside to be only a “Citizen”.
In practice, most Americans have similar experiences and attitudes to mine. The interesting result is that conflicts which were often bitter and unending in “the old country” die out here in a generation or so, not because we are heritage-neutered Citizens but because we all are free to contribute our identities to the mixing pot that is our evolving society.
The one MAJOR exception to this are Blacks whose ancestors were slaves. In most cases they have lost that precious link to their pasts. For them, their “race” IS what they can claim, and many do so strongly.
The further step of deciding that all persons of that or any other “race” deserve special privileges, reparations etc. is one that I think is pernicious. However, I understand and empathize with those for whom this idea of being Black is the one thing they can try to build on when considering where they’ve come from and what to pass on to their children. Some do so with great sensitivity and scholarship, identifying the aspects of sub-Sahara African cultures that inform their own ways of artistic expression and community life.
It’s worth noting how well persons of negroid appearance such as Colin Powell and Dr. Condoleeza Rice, for whom the evil practice of slavery 200 years ago is not a part of their sense of self, integrate well in the US society. This is equally true the numerous middle class and working class Blacks who are my personal friends.
To go back to a much earlier comment in this thread, it is not racist to note that much of the homicide in the US is Black-on-Black violence in the inner cities. Many who live in those areas are precisely those who do not have and treasure a link to a respected past — and in turn, feel they have little to build on or to pass on to the future.
No “Citizenship” will make up for that lack. I believe responsible Citizenship builds on the identities and values we bring to our participation in democracy. While there certainly are civic virtues that can and should be promoted, without personal virtue and identity to build on, “Citizenship” is at best an empty concept and at worst the vehicle for an authoritarian state.
Dear All,
Race is not a social construct. Sorry, Mr Powell, but your Boasian advocacy is profoundly out of touch and of use only to marxists who spursue the ultimate egalitarianism of the blood. Same goes for you, Kodiak. Sorry you don’t know know what race you belong to. But do not presume to tell me that I am as lost as you.
On the crime issue, since this is meant to be a crime thrad, the correct technical term applied to studies of crime by race is “racial profiling.”
Racism is an anti-white term used, for the most part, to prevent proper discussion of one of the greatest issues. We should nver use it unless we are discussing actual racism. There are plenty of better, more accurate and more neutral terms.
No Kodiak… dignity has little to do with race – it has much more to do with “politics” as its used to define the essential worth of a being… animals can have dignity just as much as humans. Generally a person (being) cannot lose their essential worth except through illness or death. But what matters about dignity is really the reaction of others. If no-one respects your dignity you will suffer and vice versa- If your dignity is highly respected you will gain. This makes dignity a very political football – it is like commerce of the soul. Shares in your dignity can go up or down depending on how good or how lucky you are in the political game or within your society.
Now take the subject of Race: Race is just a grouping mechanism – a tool. You cannot deny that within humanity there are different groups. For a start there are Men and Women. There are definite group differences there. To ignore the differences between Men and Women would be choosing to be blind, deaf and without a sense of touch or smell as all these senses can tell the difference between male and female.
Humanity has many different ways of grouping – but the main ones are skin colour, language, shape, age, and creed. All but the blind can see the difference between dark and light skin. Even the deaf can lip read the differences between languages. Yet you appear to want to close our eyes and shut our ears and pretend that these differences have no meaning in reality.
I know three French women living in three different parts of France who have been the victims of violence in this past year. All three were subjected to this violence by the same group of French society- young male Muslims. Now you don’t have to use the word “Race” – but it doesn’t change the fact that these young men came from the same sub-group of French society. What word you use to describe that sub-group is unimportant but if you try to deny that that one sub-group is a major cause for concern in French society then you are denying the facts and hiding your head in the sand.
Racial profiling is a tool – we need to ensure that just like all tools it is used for good – but to ignore its beneficial use in identifying trends among such groups within society and to pretend that groupings like this dont exist is to throw away a tool that can help identify and therefore help fix any problems. That is basically stupid. Ignoring such trends doesn’t grant either the victims or perpetrators of this violence much in the way of dignity as it assumes they are both the same- which they are definitely not.
Guessedworker,
Don’t worry: I know the race I belong to >>> Human race.
Joe,
“Racial profiling is a tool ” >>> when I read this address with those 22 letters put together this way, I’d like to disintegrate at once, not “hid(e) (my) head in the sand”.
I respect you but I can’t understand how you can reach such disappointing “certainty”.
Kodiak, sorry to hear you disintegrated -hope you you didn’t loose any bits.
Generally I reach a reasonable degree of certainty from dealing in plain facts.
I cannot understand what you find SO appalling about the factual description of a statistical research instrument.
With regard to your idea of RACIAL PROFILING:
Are you saying that there are NO differences between black people and white people and their sub-cultures?
– or –
Are you saying that we should not be allowed to notice the differences between the different sub-cultures of society?
-or-
Are you saying that the government shouldn’t be allowed to notice the differences between sub-cultures within society?
Honestly – what are you saying?
Tell me plainly so that I can understand.
Joe,
Mechanist or materialist approaches all harbour a major flaw as they aren’t consistent with an elementary bit of truth: all Humans are concealing something that’s beyond analysis or articulation & that’s DIGNITY. That enormous fact alone is enough to wipe out any skull-, penis-size or skin-colour, blood-group argument without even bother to read or hear counterarguments.
If you want to make stats, use anything you want (income, age, sex, geography, nationality, language…) but please, drop the “race”.
“Race” profiling won Europe 50 million dead 60 years ago & brought decade-long disgrace upon the USA with its slavery & apartheid legislation, not to mention the Secession War.
ah Kodiak – now I understand where you are at…
…your heart is in the right place but you are making a mistake- For Example take the NAZIS – you are placing the blame on a statistical tool called “racial profiling” when in fact the blame should be laid right at the door of the PEOPLE who dreamed up and executed their genocidal rascist plan- the “NAZIS”. By blaming the tool rather than the people who were responsible you are giving them an EXCUSE for their horrendous behaviour…. you are in effect saying; “the people (the nazis) weren’t to blame – it was all the fault of that horrible “racial profiling”!!! IF people don’t accept responsibility for their own actions -If they are excused responsibility because blame is allowed to fall on something else (an inanimate object, a tool, another person etc) then they feel free to repeat those actions. After all – they won’t be responsible for it if its the fault of that horrible old “racial profiling”.
That is exactly how the Nazis were able to put their plan into action… instead of accepting responsibility for their own hardships – they blamed the “Jews” -and passed responsibility onto them- then as the “Jews” were seen as “to blame” – doing harm to them was easy!
No Kodiak – we have free will – we have the ability to see when we are doing wrong… passing our responsibility over to a non thinking tool is not acceptable behaviour. If we drive a car so badly that someone gets killed then we are to blame – not the car! Bad and irresponsible actions by PEOPLE are to blame for Rascist behaviour – not the tool called “racial profiling”.
Do read Bill Whittle’s – Responsiblity
he says it far better than I do.
Oops sorry Kodiak – I messed up the link:
here it is again…
Do read Bill Whittle’s Responsibility
Its long but worth it.
Joe,
“(…)you are placing the blame on a statistical tool called “racial profiling” when in fact the blame should be laid right at the door of the PEOPLE who dreamed up and executed their genocidal rascist plan- the “NAZIS””
It goes without saying that the Nazis & any kind of haters of their sort, only, are to blame for the assassination of the Jews & others, not a tool.
In addition to that I’m saying that using such a “tool” as “racial” grouping isn’t a methodological error only, it’s also a very serious insult to Human dignity whatever the aim of the said “tool”. I couldn’t care less about their “free will”, or their “ability to see when (they) are doing wrong” or the good intentions of any peaceful, tolerant, enlightened Census Bureau clerk: they don’t have the slightest right to label me in any “race” nor to think I could do that myself, nor to figure out that I’d want to either.
That is NOT negotiable.
Kodiak, you say that “they don’t have the slightest right to label me”
By doing that you are trying to control what other people think and say: That is the most evil sort of “Political Correctness” because it appears to be acting in the name of good.
You talk about being insulted but what greater insult is there than to force someone else to think only your thoughts – it implies that they have no ability to think for themselves. That is incredibly dangerous… it automatically assumes that other people are not as good as you… that they have to be controlled – by you!
What is so dangerous about that is that in truth people do need to be controlled… otherwise there would be anarchy: But the way to control people is to get them to control themselves.
Yes people use tools like “racial profiling” wrongly- but that is all the more reason for teaching them how to use it correctly and beneficially – not to hide from it by outlawing it!
With regard to insults and dignity. My dignity (my self worth) is ultimately my concern alone. No-one can take that from me personally unless I let them.
Why on earth would I allow insults to hurt me? Insults are little political manouevres by people who wish to gain power for themselves and make them selves look more worthy by trying to show that I am worth less. For them to want to insult me this means that they must initially feel worth less and must think that I am worth more – otherwise they would not bother to insult me. Therefore by insulting me they pay me a little compliment – a sad one but a compliment all the same- and this stupidity only makes them look less worthy in my eyes. In reality whoever insults me is really complimenting me and fucking with their own worth. I only accept or trade “insults” if I can use them as part of a process towards some other goal; otherwise I let those meaningless sad little back handed compliments fade away on the wind.
Teaching people to do right means you have to leave them to make the mistakes… you should not make laws to control the thinking of adults. Times and situations change- therefore what works for one situation may not work for another and different thinking is called for… if “different” thinking is outlawed – then what often happens is that destruction or revolution follows!
Allowing people to think for themselves raises their levels of personal responsibility- it makes society more stable.
Joe,
Quoting you quoting me: “Kodiak, you say that “they don’t have the slightest right to label me””.
I wrote: “(…) they don’t have the slightest right to label me in any “race” (…)”, which I confirm once more.
And since I’m being into quoting-bulimia, excuse my self requoting:
1/ “Mechanist or materialist approaches all harbour a major flaw as they aren’t consistent with an elementary bit of truth: all Humans are concealing something that’s beyond analysis or articulation & that’s DIGNITY”
2/ “It is indeed ONLY BAD & ALWAYS SAD to “define” a “race” for any kind of purpose”
3/ “That is NOT negotiable”.
Kodiak, as you have seen by my replies- I disagree- I do think you are trying to overcontrol other people by trying to outlaw speech you disagree with.
Your three points may make lots of sense to you but I see them as unnecessary constraints on the freedoms we both need in order to think and act responsibly as individual adults.
Joe,
I grant very much worth to “the freedoms we both need in order to think and act responsibly as individual adults” but “(my) three points” DO “make lots of sense to (me)”.
Sorry about that.
A correction of the assumption at Smallest Victory…
If the link doesn’t work then just click on the homepage link, it’s the top post.