Dilbert dropped as scott adams declares blacks to be a hate group.

[dzheremi]

Nope.

Apologies, I mistyped earlier -- the actual page that I was reading was the one that was linked via the Washington Examiner opinion piece you shared, which was actually on ResumeBuilder, though they are reporting on the poll that was conducted by GlassDoor. So I was off by a degree as far as the citation is concerned, but my point still stands: they're not my initiatives to begin with, and I'm not defending them just because I am commenting on the findings of the poll. You are doing the same thing, after all.

Me-what about racial discrimination against whites?

You-mockery.

Me-statistics.

You-Well I guess that's less racist than blablahblah...DEI initiatives.

You mocked racism...I showed you statistics...you messily tried to imply I'm racist to cover your tracks.

It's real simple.

I acknowledged the statistics, though. Here, I'll do it again, just so you don't miss it in your rush to paint me as 'mocking' the people that are affected by these hiring practices: the people who are deliberately kept from being hired on account of their racial background when they otherwise would be if these DEI initiatives were not being implemented in the way that they are absolutely have a case to argue concerning discriminatory hiring practices. That's presumably why the story mentions the lawsuit against Google for engaging in those same practices. That's no small thing. Again, if that suit actually goes anywhere to the point of being used to establish precedent, then that's probably going to mean something for the future of these sort of initiatives, in the same way that challenges to Affirmative Action policies in school admissions have led to the end of some of those policies in the past, with consequences for the communities that those policies helped (see here, for instance). Again I'll note your reticence to discuss anything about what should replace DEI policies, which is a real shame given how removing these sorts of policies does not eliminate the disparities that make them seem necessary to those who implement them, so things do not get better as a result.

Are you in favor of any kind of racial discrimination in hiring?

No I'm not, but again I think if we're going to get rid of DEI policies, we need to find a way to take into account the disparities that cause them to be seen as an answer in the first place. In other words, I don't believe DEI policies are the answer, but I also don't believe that pure meritocracies actually exist, because the idea that getting rid of a 'leg up' (whether ill-conceived or not) somehow restores things to a level playing field where you're only looking at a person's qualifications and nothing else assumes that without DEI-type initiatives, this is how things would or do actually go. And that's a complete crock. You can't seriously pretend that, just for example, someone who is a legacy at Harvard and someone else who is a first-generation college student from a state university are going to be considered the same for hiring purposes, even if everything else is exactly equal, because that would imply that there is somehow no benefit to going to Harvard over a state school, which of course would be crazy.

You'll notice, I hope, that I came up with that example without explicitly mentioning race at all, but if you want to continue looking at things through that lens (since that is the overall topic of the thread), then I guess we could say that being white is the Harvard legacy of race, while being non-white is going to a state school. Is it OK to be a legacy at Harvard? Sure, but you didn't really 'earn' it (it's not like you did anything to make your relatives go there before you were even around...), it doesn't actually make you better than anyone who went to a state school, and not recognizing that it gives you an unearned edge over the competition doesn't mean that this is somehow not what it does, and doesn't make anyone who points out that this is what is actually going on into the 'real' racist. Er...excuse me, the 'real' school supremacist.

Now to eagerly await what sorts of accusations of racism you're going to make out of me recognizing that we're not all equal because we live in a racist society.

They were both racists and Marxists when they created that slogan. You might be the last person to realize this....but that's the facts.

The big clue, was when a broad multi racial group responded of course black lives matter, all lives matter....they said "nope....only white supremacists say that!"

To be fair, "Black lives matter" would make a pretty terrible slogan for a movement about how "all lives matter"...it's almost like black people are a specific group of people, and they are protesting against the brutality that is too often a part of the daily interactions of members of their community with police.

Now let's see...what type of person would be uncomfortable with recognizing something meant to assert the value of black people's lives in particular? Maybe white supremacists? I mean, say what you will about the so-called 'black racists' who answered the poll in a way that hurt Scott Adams' feelings, I really don't think they'd be a good fit as an answer to this question.

Which if I was incurably dumb...might have made sense. I mean, what kind of moron thinks "all lives matter" was ever a white supremacists slogan?

Yes, thank goodness neither of these things are the case.

Let's run with this theory....

Let's imagine this is "edgy trolling" from 4Chan users....

How would it work....if the targets aren't racist towards white people???

It wouldn't. All those people who saw that simple phrase and got upset are in fact, racists. That was the whole point....that's the only reason why it worked.

Curses! Outsmarted by 4Chan yet again! They're always one step ahead!

You mentioned "all lives matter" being the wrong response to black lives matter.

Yep. Sure did.

Again, I completely understand the "wider context"...


The phrase was created for one purpose and one purpose only...to reveal people who were racist against whites.

They are the only ones who would ever disagree with the statement.

I don't know if you've noticed, but no one actually participating in this thread seems to have a problem with the idea that it is OK to be white. It is rather as RDKirk put it in reply #112, that some people do have problems with it as a statement because of its connection to the intentions of the group that uses it. That's why it's a huge problem for your insistence that this is all really about exposing anti-white racists that "It's OK to be white" was eventually adopted by avowed white supremacists, because now if you go around saying it (no matter what point you think you're making by doing so), people who know about its adoption by white supremacists are going to have that connection in their minds. They're not going to think "Oh, what an ingenious method of showing who hates white people!" They're going to think "Okay then, that guy's a neo-Nazi. I'm not okay with that." Can you blame them? I wouldn't. There's a reason why the mustache sported by Adolf Hitler has not made a comeback in years since the war, and it's not because of all barely-concealed anti-mustache hatred out there that's just waiting for some clever boys to figure out a way to reveal it.

It is benign...it's broad agreement.

If you really understood the wider context of these things like you claim you do, you probably wouldn't be asserting things like this.

Now you're flip flopping right back.

I'm sure that to you it looks that way, but I'm going to trust that most people who can follow how this conversation has gone (with apologies to anyone who has actually done so; I'm sure it's as exciting as can be) will also understand the distinction to be made between agreeing with an idea and thinking it appropriate to latch on to a slogan that has ties to white supremacists as though that is the most appropriate and neutral way of expressing that idea.

And before you go there (again), yes, the same argument can be made against "Black Lives Matter" with regard to its origins in Marxist circles: if a phrase's being associated with this or that disreputable group is enough to discourage its usage, then maybe this says something about people who would give a phrase created by Marxists a pass while excoriating those who use a phrase created by internet trolls. If I recall correctly, that's more or less the argument that you yourself have made in this thread, and you'd hardly be the first one to do so. The difference again is that with "It's OK to be white", we have a phrase that started out as a way to troll liberals and was later adopted by white supremacists (again, following the chronology found at the ADL link), making the white supremacist-affiliated usage the more recent development (and hence more salient in most people's minds), while with "Black Lives Matter" we have a phrase that started out in Marxist circles and was later adopted by non-Marxists, making the non-Marxist usage the more recent development (and hence more salient in most people's minds). That's a pretty important difference, given how language change works.

 

[childeye 2]

Propaganda? You mean the Rasmussen poll?

Well according to this site I've seen used by some left wing members, they've got the second best rating on factual reporting.

Rasmussen Reports - Bias and Credibility

RIGHT-CENTER BIAS These media sources are slightly to moderately conservative in bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words

mediabiasfactcheck.com

That's a higher rating than CNN and MSNBC (both got mixed).

So if Rasmussen is propaganda, then CNN and MSNBC must be pure brainwashing.

A sound reasoning is going to be based on facts, and I don't see how Pollster ratings are going to be any reliable indicator congruent with propaganda.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Dilbert cartoon dropped by US newspapers over creator’s racist comments

Once-popular cartoon scrapped from hundreds of papers after Scott Adams calls Black people a ‘hate group’ on his YouTube show

www.theguardian.com

To quote from the article

Adams called Black Americans a “hate group” and suggested white Americans “get the hell away from Black people” in response to a conservative organization’s poll purporting to show that many African Americans do not agree with the statement: “It’s OK to be white.”


The Anti-Defamation League says the phrase was popularised in 2017 as a trolling campaign by members of the discussion forum 4chan and was then used by some white supremacists.

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people ... that’s a hate group,” said Adams, who is white, on his YouTube channel on Wednesday. “And I don’t want to have anything to do with them.”

Oh well. I've never been a Dilbert fan anyway. Calvin and Hobbes and Far Side have always been my thing more or less.

 

[PsaltiChrysostom]

I finally unsubscribed from Dilbert after 20 or so years. Adams finally crossed a line for me. I'm going to miss him skewering corporate American.

 

[Ana the Ist]

This is how it is: The poll literally asks, "Do you agree or disagree with this statement?" It does not literally ask, "Is it okay to be white or not okay to be white?"

So, with that fact in mind

It's a poll...


With that in mind, you can't ask open-ended questions.


That's why it was written the way it was.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Apologies, I mistyped earlier -- the actual page that I was reading was the one that was linked via the Washington Examiner opinion piece you shared, which was actually on ResumeBuilder, though they are reporting on the poll that was conducted by GlassDoor. So I was off by a degree as far as the citation is concerned, but my point still stands: they're not my initiatives to begin with, and I'm not defending them just because I am commenting on the findings of the poll. You are doing the same thing, after all.


I acknowledged the statistics, though. Here, I'll do it again, just so you don't miss it in your rush to paint me as 'mocking' the people that are affected by these hiring practices: the people who are deliberately kept from being hired on account of their racial background when they otherwise would be if these DEI initiatives were not being implemented in the way that they are absolutely have a case to argue concerning discriminatory hiring practices.

How about we stop supporting the party pushing for racist hiring practices?

That's presumably why the story mentions the lawsuit against Google for engaging in those same practices. That's no small thing. Again, if that suit actually goes anywhere to the point of being used to establish precedent, then that's probably going to mean something for the future of these sort of initiatives, in the same way that challenges to Affirmative Action policies in school admissions have led to the end of some of those policies in the past, with consequences for the communities that those policies helped (see here, for instance). Again I'll note your reticence to discuss anything about what should replace DEI policies, which is a real shame given how removing these sorts of policies does not eliminate the disparities that make them seem necessary to those who implement them, so things do not get better as a result.

I don't have to defend these DEI policies, he said, before spending several paragraphs defending DEI policies.

You're completely transparent.

And no...no we don't need to address "disparities" because when I need a doctor, I don't care what race or sex or anything they are. I care if they're qualified. I don't care if the pilot is black or white, I care that he knows how to fly an airplane.

And guess what? When a business hires a salesman? They want him to make sales....they don't care if he's black. I know that might lead to disparities but that's life.

No I'm not, but again I think if we're going to get rid of DEI policies, we need to find a way to take into account the disparities that cause them to be seen as an answer in the first place. In other words, I don't believe DEI policies are the answer, but I also don't believe that pure meritocracies actually exist, because the idea that getting rid of a 'leg up' (whether ill-conceived or not) somehow restores things to a level playing field where you're only looking at a person's qualifications and nothing else assumes that without DEI-type initiatives, this is how things would or do actually go. And that's a complete crock. You can't seriously pretend that, just for example, someone who is a legacy at Harvard and someone else who is a first-generation college student from a state university are going to be considered the same for hiring purposes, even if everything else is exactly equal, because that would imply that there is somehow no benefit to going to Harvard over a state school, which of course would be crazy.

You'll notice, I hope, that I came up with that example without explicitly mentioning race at all, but if you want to continue looking at things through that lens (since that is the overall topic of the thread), then I guess we could say that being white is the Harvard legacy of race, while being non-white is going to a state school. Is it OK to be a legacy at Harvard? Sure, but you didn't really 'earn' it (it's not like you did anything to make your relatives go there before you were even around...), it doesn't actually make you better than anyone who went to a state school, and not recognizing that it gives you an unearned edge over the competition doesn't mean that this is somehow not what it does, and doesn't make anyone who points out that this is what is actually going on into the 'real' racist. Er...excuse me, the 'real' school supremacist.

You want to end legacies at Harvard? Fine. Who cares.

Now to eagerly await what sorts of accusations of racism you're going to make out of me recognizing that we're not all equal because we live in a racist society.

We live in a racist society? You mean like one where 25% of people of a certain race are openly racist?

To be fair, "Black lives matter" would make a pretty terrible slogan for a movement about how "all lives matter"...it's almost like black people are a specific group of people, and they are protesting against the brutality that is too often a part of the daily interactions of members of their community with police.

Everyone has those interactions with police.

Now let's see...what type of person would be uncomfortable with recognizing something meant to assert the value of black people's lives in particular?

No one. See above.

I mean, say what you will about the so-called 'black racists' who answered the poll in a way that hurt Scott Adams' feelings, I really don't think they'd be a good fit as an answer to this question.


Yes, thank goodness neither of these things are the case.


Curses! Outsmarted by 4Chan yet again! They're always one step ahead!


Yep. Sure did.


I don't know if you've noticed, but no one actually participating in this thread seems to have a problem with the idea that it is OK to be white.

Most here seem to imagine some hidden context that invalidates the phrase.

It is rather as RDKirk put it in reply #112, that some people do have problems with it as a statement because of its connection to the intentions of the group that uses it.

Why?

That's why it's a huge problem for your insistence that this is all really about exposing anti-white racists that "It's OK to be white" was eventually adopted by avowed white supremacists, because now if you go around saying it (no matter what point you think you're making by doing so), people who know about its adoption by white supremacists are going to have that connection in their minds. They're not going to think "Oh, what an ingenious method of showing who hates white people!" They're going to think "Okay then, that guy's a neo-Nazi. I'm not okay with that." Can you blame them?

Yes. If you can't agree with the statement, explain why.

Because the racist Marxist origins of "Black Lives Matter" aren't a problem for anyone.

I wouldn't. There's a reason why the mustache sported by Adolf Hitler has not made a comeback in years since the war, and it's not because of all barely-concealed anti-mustache hatred out there that's just waiting for some clever boys to figure out a way to reveal it.


If you really understood the wider context of these things like you claim you do, you probably wouldn't be asserting things like this.

There's no wider context. There's no **wink wink**. Just a bunch of idiots scared of being called white supremacists by racists who call everyone who disagrees with them "white supremacists".

I'm sure that to you it looks that way, but I'm going to trust that most people who can follow how this conversation has gone (with apologies to anyone who has actually done so; I'm sure it's as exciting as can be) will also understand the distinction to be made between agreeing with an idea and thinking it appropriate to latch on to a slogan that has ties to white supremacists as though that is the most appropriate and neutral way of expressing that idea.

And before you go there (again), yes, the same argument can be made against "Black Lives Matter" with regard to its origins in Marxist circles: if a phrase's being associated with this or that disreputable group is enough to discourage its usage, then maybe this says something about people who would give a phrase created by Marxists a pass while excoriating those who use a phrase created by internet trolls. If I recall correctly, that's more or less the argument that you yourself have made in this thread, and you'd hardly be the first one to do so. The difference again is that with "It's OK to be white", we have a phrase that started out as a way to troll liberals and was later adopted by white supremacists (again, following the chronology found at the ADL link), making the white supremacist-affiliated usage the more recent development (and hence more salient in most people's minds), while with "Black Lives Matter" we have a phrase that started out in Marxist circles and was later adopted by non-Marxists, making the non-Marxist usage the more recent development (and hence more salient in most people's minds). That's a pretty important difference, given how language change works.

I'm about to blow your mind...

Ready?

Taaaa daaaa!!!!

 

[dzheremi]

How about we stop supporting the party pushing for racist hiring practices?

Nobody's talking about party affiliation but you.

I don't have to defend these DEI policies, he said, before spending several paragraphs defending DEI policies.

If your definition of 'defending' includes me saying that I don't think they're the answer to the problems they're meant to solve, and they should be replaced by something else (I just don't know what), then sure. I don't see that as a defense of them, but I guess there wouldn't be much of a conversation to have if we agreed on what words mean.

You're completely transparent.

And you don't understand the issues that anyone has attempted to discuss with you in this thread nearly as well as you claim to.

And no...no we don't need to address "disparities" because when I need a doctor, I don't care what race or sex or anything they are. I care if they're qualified. I don't care if the pilot is black or white, I care that he knows how to fly an airplane.

I care about competency, too. I don't know anyone who wouldn't. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the failure of supposed meritocratic systems to account for disparities between people who are already being considered for the same position. The idea that Affirmative Action-type programs result in people who would otherwise only qualify for manual labor or service jobs becoming airline pilots or surgeons is a ridiculous fantasy meant to justify the preexisting belief that people outside of your own race are inherently inferior to you, because you didn't get any darn handouts (dagnabbit!), so obviously you got to where you are on skill and talent alone, and anyone who cannot do the same must therefore be incompetent or at least less competent than you. If black people aren't entering medical school at a rate commensurate with their population, then it must mean that they're just inferior at practicing medicine, right? Right? That's the only possible conclusion we can come to!

And guess what? When a business hires a salesman? They want him to make sales....they don't care if he's black. I know that might lead to disparities but that's life.

I see. I'm going to bet that if I were to rework this point so that it was white people who were not hired (say, at a certain number of companies polled by GlassDoor...), you would cry 'anti-white discrimination' or whatever. Why is that? Why is it assumed that a level playing field would lead to disparities that specifically shut out black people in favor of white people? Are black people just that bad at everything you can think of so far? Nah, that can't be it...after all, that's the kind of logic that racists use to justify their racism, and we all know that there can't be anything like that at the foundation of a thought process that equates getting a position on merit with having significantly fewer black people around!

We live in a racist society? You mean like one where 25% of people of a certain race are openly racist?

I mean like one where racism is taken to be the epitome of logic under the guise of 'calling it like you see it' (I guess how other people see it doesn't matter, because if they disagree with you they're being racist against white people), and no one has to deal with the implications of what they say or endorse because they think that their word games (that are based on not knowing how words actually work) provide them plausible deniability should anyone call them out on their racist nonsense. Where 'DEI' is a no-no initialism, but "It's OK to be white" just means exactly that, and if you don't agree then you're the one who's racist and seeing white supremacy everywhere just because that phrase is used by self-identified white supremacists to normalize their agenda within the framework of public discussion about human rights claims made by other groups, like "Black Lives Matter". That type of society.

Everyone has those interactions with police.

As far as I've been able to gather, it is true that officer-involved murders of white people are underreported in the mainstream media, but I'm not sure that this adds up to everyone having those interactions with the police (I haven't looked up the statistics, but I'm going to guess that there's probably something to be said about proportionality here, as well as about the culture of policing in specific departments and areas). And anyway, even if it does, how does this in any way invalidate or lessen the struggle of black people to see an end to these types of interactions between the police and their community? It seems like it would strengthen the ties between different communities who recognize a problem in common with the way that the police approach their role in society, hence amplifying both black voices and non-black voices on this issue. I know how that's how it was when I was living in Albuquerque, NM in the immediate aftermath of the James Boyd shooting in 2014. Many of Albuquerque's small (>5%) black community came out to protest that shooting, which was so obviously unjust that the mayor had to do an about-face on it after the officers' bodycam footage was released. (James Boyd was a white guy, by the way.)

No one. See above.

Really? So no one has objections to "Black Lives Matter" based on what they see as the intentions of groups operating under that slogan? Why do I find that hard to believe...

Most here seem to imagine some hidden context that invalidates the phrase.

It's not very hidden. I found the little history of the usage of the phrase on the ADL website in under three seconds.

Why?

I'm not sure how to make it any clearer than what RDKirk already wrote. That's why I referenced his post in the first place.

Yes. If you can't agree with the statement, explain why.

It has been explained several times already.

Because the racist Marxist origins of "Black Lives Matter" aren't a problem for anyone.

Except for the people for whom they are. And anyway, for at least the third time, there is a world of difference between the origins of a term and how it is used and understood subsequent to its invention. For example, "mistress" is not generally understood to refer to the female headmaster of a school or a teacher of pupils anymore, even though that's where its ultimate origins lie (in Latin magister). It would not be weird for someone to look at a female teacher differently if she insisted on calling herself "Mistress _______" because that's the origin of the term, since in modern American English it has other connotations. By the same token, it is not weird for people to look at "It's OK to be white" with suspicion despite its origins in supposedly combating racial discrimination, given the fact that it has since its coining become a slogan used by those who are not on the 'combating' side of racial discrimination.

There's no wider context. There's no **wink wink**. Just a bunch of idiots scared of being called white supremacists by racists who call everyone who disagrees with them "white supremacists".

Wait...didn't you claim earlier that you completely understand the context? Now you're saying there is no context, so what is it that you 'completely understand'?

I'm about to blow your mind...

Ready?

View attachment 328915


Taaaa daaaa!!!!

Oh. Well then, I guess you showed me. This totally invalidates the point that most people wouldn't be caught dead with a Hitler mustache because it's mostly associated with Hitler, and most people hate that guy. Free Hitler mustaches for everyone...?

 

[childeye 2]

It's a poll...


With that in mind, you can't ask open-ended questions.


That's why it was written the way it was.

Asking open ended questions in a poll is not the issue for Scott Adams. While I certainly sympathize with him, the fact is people are still left reasoning upon a falsehood due to a pollster's language; a language that turns brother against brother, by inferring one is a racist if they disagree with a statement intimating it's okay to be one particular shade of skin. The truth that exposes this pretext as ill conceived, is simply that it's wrong to manipulate minds to think that people must agree/disagree about the acceptance of any individual person or groups based on the skin they were born in.

 

[MrMoe]

That site itself is just an open survey. Anyone can click in and vote.

Where did you get that info? Because that's not stated on their site or on their Wikipedia.

Methodology

Objective The primary aim of our methodology is to systematically evaluate the ideological leanings and factual accuracy of media and information outlets.

mediabiasfactcheck.com

Media Bias/Fact Check - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And even then, Rassmussen gets rated as center-right biased overall.

You say that like it's a bad thing. Are only left biased and center rated sources trustworthy to you?

 

[Ana the Ist]

Nobody's talking about party affiliation but you.

Yeah, it's germane to the issue.

If you say you're against something like "racial discrimination in hiring" but you vote for the party that promotes racial discrimination in hiring then you're either a hypocrite or dishonest.

You can claim to be for or against anything you want....but your vote is what shows what you actually support. The DEI initiatives are only coming from one side of the aisle, only the left is telling people things like "I'm going to racially discriminate against everyone but black women for the SCOTUS". It's not a mystery who is in favor or racial discrimination these days.

What would you think of someone in the 1950s claims to be against racial discrimination and for civil rights....but votes for candidates who openly endorse Jim Crow laws? Probably dishonest, right? Probably a hypocrite, right?

If your definition of 'defending' includes me saying that I don't think they're the answer to the problems they're meant to solve, and they should be replaced by something else (I just don't know what), then sure.

Defending is sitting there writing multiple paragraphs in defense of DEI initiatives like their something other than racial discrimination.

I don't see that as a defense of them, but I guess there wouldn't be much of a conversation to have if we agreed on what words mean.

I would ask you...but I already know that you probably would struggle to define a lot of terms you use like....

Racism. Women. White supremacy. Hate groups.

I could go on but I'm not trying to humiliate anyone here. When people blindly accept political rhetoric without giving it an ounce of thought...they end up repeating things they can't actually explain.

And you don't understand the issues that anyone has attempted to discuss with you in this thread nearly as well as you claim to.

Such as? I've seen a lot of claims about context, but no explanation of how this changes any meaning.

That's when context would matter....that's when context becomes relevant to the issue. If the meaning of the phrase stays exactly the same (and it does) then context is completely irrelevant.

I care about competency, too. I don't know anyone who wouldn't. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the failure of supposed meritocratic systems to account for disparities between people who are already being considered for the same position.

What failure? If you imagine meritocracy to result in some reflection of the imaginary racial hierarchy in your mind....then perhaps the problem is your attachment to this racial hierarchy.

I'll admit though, it's a hard argument to take seriously because we have systems of meritocracy (like sports in general or the NBA more specifically) and the same people who care about disparities don't want to see any changes to those meritocracies. It's as if suddenly, meritocracy works just fine....and disparities can be safely ignored.

If you doubt this, use the search function and see if you can find any left leaning poster complaining about the disparities in the NBA.

The idea that Affirmative Action-type

DEI initiatives. Let's not taint Affirmative Action any more than it already is.

programs result in people who would otherwise only qualify for manual labor or service jobs becoming airline pilots or surgeons is a ridiculous fantasy

Are you sure about that? I read an article recently about emails between professors who are concerned about the qualifications of medical students in their own programs. They claim they are reluctant to correct mistakes, or even point them out, for fear they will be labeled racist or otherwise fail to meet diversity goals.

If that is indeed happening (and I have no reason to think it isn't) then yes...you may soon reach the day when you go to the doctor, and they are well below the standard of competency because they were given accreditation to meet diversity initiatives.

If you want...I can show you Congress asking the new FAA candidate basic question about airline regulations and administration and he appears to have no clue about anything, despite being the candidate for the position. He is black though. That's the result of "diversity initiatives". They don't select for merit. You remember merit? That thing you disparage as unfair?

If an entire party decides to abandon merit, and promote racial discrimination, then I don't see why you think that would not result in a racially diverse outcome regardless of merit.

meant to justify the preexisting belief that people outside of your own race are inherently inferior to you,

That's your belief. I don't believe in a racial heirarchy. You do. As long as we are selecting for merit....I've no reason to think that a black pilot is any worse than a white, or Asian, or Latino, or any other kind of pilot. If we're selecting for merit....and I see a dog in the cockpit...I may be surprised but I would have to assume that dog can fly the airplane. If however, I'm aware a bunch of morons in my society don't believe in merit anymore and think we should diversify the number of non-humans flying airplanes....I'm getting off that flight.

because you didn't get any darn handouts (dagnabbit!),

More mockery. I didn't get any handouts. At no point in my life has anyone told me "don't worry about displaying competency or failing....you'll get the job regardless because you're white!"

I can understand why you might think the opposite if you don't deserve your job because you were hired by someone who said they wanted more white guys....but I've never seen nor met anyone that actually happened to. It doesn't seem likely to happen often....it doesn't even seem to happen rarely.

I don't know what you think is going to protect you from this catastrophically stupid idea....but surely you heard about those 4-5 black officers who beat that black driver to death in the street, right? You're aware that at least 2 of them were hired under lower standards because they were trying to meet diversity targets, right?

If you are aware of this happening in a profession like the police....what in the world makes you think it's not going to happen with doctors or pilots?

so obviously you got to where you are on skill and talent alone,

Let's not forget hard work and sacrifice.

and anyone who cannot do the same must therefore be incompetent or at least less competent than you.

Yeah. We aren't all equals. You may have noticed that this conversation hasn't gone well for you. It's not a coincidence. One of us is clearly better than the other at argumentation. I'm certain you have talents and skills that I don't have. Perhaps you're really good at making toast...and I burn my toast more often than you do. If we learn that you make perfect toast more often than me....that's going to create a disparity in our outcomes. Disparities aren't indicative of a problem though....they're just a disparity.

If black people aren't entering medical school at a rate commensurate with their population,

Why would it match their population size/percentage? Do you think everyone is out in the world making the same choices and pursuing the same options at the same rate? There's literally no reason to believe that or any evidence it's true.

I see. I'm going to bet that if I were to rework this point so that it was white people who were not hired (say, at a certain number of companies polled by GlassDoor...), you would cry 'anti-white discrimination' or whatever. Why is that?

Because the people who are literally doing the hiring said they were discriminating by race. It wouldn't matter if 99.9% or 0.01% of their employees are white....they would still be discriminating by race. We know this, because they literally said so. Go back and reread my above statement about argumentation.

Why is it assumed that a level playing field

What does "level playing field" refer to? I hate to ask you to define one of those things I'm almost certain you can't actually define and are probably just repeating because it's the rhetoric you believe uncritically....but it's necessary to answer your following question.

would lead to disparities that specifically shut out black people in favor of white people?

That's a loaded question. The survey I provided shows white people being shut out of certain jobs. Do you have a similar survey where hiring managers openly admit to discriminating against black people?

I mean like one where racism is taken to be the epitome of logic under the guise of 'calling it like you see it'

There's no racism in logic.

(I guess how other people see it doesn't matter, because if they disagree with you they're being racist against white people),

Well when they openly mock the idea of being racist towards white people, or when they imagine the phrase "it's ok to be white" as something they disagree with, or perhaps describe white people as the top of some imaginary racial hierarchy....then I take those as indicators they're racist towards white people.

But even then I wouldn't assume that to explain every dumb idea they state that I disagree with. After all, there's all sorts of things that have a cause other than racism.

and no one has to deal with the implications

Implications? Or active punishment?

I'm sure you're aware that black people used to get lynched, right? Are you aware it often happened by an angry mob.....after that black person was found guilty of a crime in a court of law?

Would those lynchings just be the "Implications" of their criminal behavior?

of what they say or endorse because they think that their word games

What word games? I literally gave you everything there is to know about the phrase "it's ok to be white". Unless you have something meaningful to add (which would be a first in this convo) there's no game being played here.

(that are based on not knowing how words actually work)

I'm looking forward to your explanation of "level playing field" in regards to hiring.

provide them plausible deniability should anyone call them out on their racist nonsense.

You can assume whatever you want about racial discrimination in hiring. If you're some cynical racist who imagines hiring managers are racist because they're white or some disparity exists because of racism....that's on you.

Just remember it's not the same as proof....which would be a bunch of hiring managers saying they passed on qualified candidates because of their race. That doesn't require any assumptions at all.

Where 'DEI' is a no-no initialism, but "It's OK to be white" just means exactly that, and if you don't agree then you're the one who's racist and seeing white supremacy everywhere just because that phrase is used by self-identified white supremacists to normalize their agenda within the framework of public discussion about human rights claims made by other groups, like "Black Lives Matter". That type of society.

They didn't come up with the phrase to "normalize" anything....that's just stuff you made up.

The reason why they came up with the phrase is pretty well documented and not at all ambiguous. All you had to do was think before writing this and your assumptions sound absurd....

What do you think they were trying to normalize? An already normal statement that any non-racist person agrees with lol?

As far as I've been able to gather, it is true that officer-involved murders of white people are underreported in the mainstream media,

Perhaps under prosecuted even...who knows?

but I'm not sure that this adds up to everyone having those interactions with the police

You realize I didn't mean every single person literally. Just every racial group.

(I haven't looked up the statistics, but I'm going to guess that there's probably something to be said about proportionality here, as well as about the culture of policing in specific departments and areas).

Again....proportion related to population size as if everyone everywhere is making the same choices at the same rate. There's no socioligist, no psychologist, no one who studies people who would make such a ridiculous claim...

Yet it's 100% necessary for your assumptions to even begin to be true.

And anyway, even if it does, how does this in any way invalidate or lessen the struggle of black people to see an end to these types of interactions between the police and their community?

I never claimed it did.

It seems like it would strengthen the ties between different communities who recognize a problem in common with the way that the police approach their role in society,

Well it would...but that would require mutual recognition.

If one group says "we don't care if you're facing the same problem/don't believe you're facing the same problem" then you risk losing their support in solving the problem.

hence amplifying both black voices and non-black voices on this issue. I know how that's how it was when I was living in Albuquerque, NM in the immediate aftermath of the James Boyd shooting in 2014. Many of Albuquerque's small (>5%) black community came out to protest that shooting, which was so obviously unjust that the mayor had to do an about-face on it after the officers' bodycam footage was released. (James Boyd was a white guy, by the way.)

I don't recall that one...sorry.

Really? So no one has objections to "Black Lives Matter" based on what they see as the intentions of groups operating under that slogan?

Nobody object to the statement "black lives matter" that isn't racist.

Why do I find that hard to believe...

Well you do hold a lot of baseless negative assumptions about people.

It's not very hidden. I found the little history of the usage of the phrase on the ADL website in under three seconds.

Oh? Well maybe you've seen some evidence I haven't...

Go ahead and post whatever evidence the ADL has that the originators of the phrase wanted to "normalize" what appears to be a completely normal phrase

It has been explained several times already.

Wait...didn't you claim earlier that you completely understand the context? Now you're saying there is no context, so what is it that you 'completely understand'?



Oh. Well then, I guess you showed me. This totally invalidates the point that most people wouldn't be caught dead with a Hitler mustache because it's mostly associated with Hitler, and most people hate that guy. Free Hitler mustaches for everyone...?

It never changed meaning regardless of context....it's far too simple and unambiguous. But let me put it like this....

I doubted the sincerity and intentions of the BLM protests from the very beginning. They had no stated goals...and frequently perpetuated lies about the details of interactions with police that they were protesting. I saw their arguments change just to keep the protests going....and still offering no solutions. When it was revealed their leaders were Marxists and goals were black supremacist....I openly opposed them, despite multiple people suggesting I was racist or bigoted for doing so. In the end of course, I was right, it was revealed to be a scam and the damage it has wrought on the black community is still ongoing.


Yet despite this clearly negative origin....if some pollster were to call me tomorrow asking if I agree with the statement "black lives matter" I would respond with a yes without any hesitation. Nothing about it's negative origins or context changes anything about the meaning of the phrase.

To assume otherwise would be bizarre and as stupid as imagining Jordan there is a nazi or fascist because of that tuft of hair on his lip.

 

[MrMoe]

A sound reasoning is going to be based on facts,

It is a fact that this poll was taken, it is a fact that people answered this poll and it is a fact that there was a specific result. Adam Scott and others, including members in this forum then used their sound reasoning to interpret those facts.

and I don't see how Pollster ratings are going to be any reliable indicator congruent with propaganda.

You do not know the definition of propaganda if you think this poll is congruent with propaganda.
Rasmussen simply created the poll, asked the question and put the results out there to for others to interpret as they wish. In propaganda that isn't allowed. In propaganda the interpretation is done for you.

Saying that, I don't think people should come to a conclusion just based on a poll, which is a good thing Adam Scott didn't to that.

This is a quote from Adam Scott during an interview with Chris Cuomo.

"...But the notion is that race relations are terrible. The context was that there was a Rasmussen poll, which I did not rely on for my comments, but I discussed it as a starting off point. So the Rasmussen poll said there were some alarming percentage of black Americans, it was a smallish sample, but it was still statistically within the eight percent of margin of error, that said that 26% would not say that it's okay to be white. Now I have a problem with the question because I think everyone interpreted it differently. So we can if you would allow me, I don't believe the poll is important to the point."

 

[RDKirk]

Where did you get that info? Because that's not stated on their site or on their Wikipedia.

Methodology

Objective The primary aim of our methodology is to systematically evaluate the ideological leanings and factual accuracy of media and information outlets.

mediabiasfactcheck.com

Media Bias/Fact Check - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You say that like it's a bad thing. Are only left biased and center rated sources trustworthy to you?

Read the site more closely.

 

[dzheremi]

Yeah, it's germane to the issue.

If you say you're against something like "racial discrimination in hiring" but you vote for the party that promotes racial discrimination in hiring then you're either a hypocrite or dishonest.

Sure, but two things: we're not talking about how anyone votes, and even if we had been, I personally vote across the board, not in a straight-down-the-ticket manner. It just depends on who and what is being offered where (e.g., it was a lot easier to vote for a Republican when I was living in NM and voting based on the proven performance of local candidates there than it would've been to vote for a candidate on the national level when the options were proven failures like Bush Jr. or 'mavericks' with no political experience like Trump). Point being that you are assuming that I'm some sort of diehard liberal Democrat based on nothing more than the fact that I disagree with your racial viewpoint, and just like when you decided to latch on to the idea that I'm some kind of 'self-hating white liberal' based on nothing more than me disagreeing with you earlier, that does not actually fit.

You can claim to be for or against anything you want....but your vote is what shows what you actually support.

Since when have the DEI policies enacted by individual companies (the situation you originally brought up by linking to the Washington Examiner opinion piece) been voted on by members of the public outside of those companies' governing boards anyway? What the heck? It's like you want to now talk about racial discrimination more generally because you realize that I'm not actually responding the way that you're trying to characterize me as responding concerning racial discrimination in hiring in particular.

The DEI initiatives are only coming from one side of the aisle, only the left is telling people things like "I'm going to racially discriminate against everyone but black women for the SCOTUS". It's not a mystery who is in favor or racial discrimination these days.

Is it? I think neither major party has a monopoly on stupid and racist ideas. For instance, Trump had his ban on Middle Eastern refugees that was ostensibly done for safety reasons related to terrorism but somehow did not actually include banning people coming from the country of the majority of the 9/11 hijackers (and a great deal of the ideological and financial support for Islamic terrorism), Saudi Arabia. That was pretty darn stupid, and arguably at least sort of racist (true, Muslims are not a race, but the discrimination that this feeds into is one of a more general sort of "vaguely Middle Eastern = terrorist = bad" thinking, similar in that way to certain comments it is not uncommon to hear being made about 'Mexicans', even when the people that are being referred to actually come from various nations in Central America, not Mexico).

Defending is sitting there writing multiple paragraphs in defense of DEI initiatives like their something other than racial discrimination.

Except, again, what I actually wrote was that I think they are discriminatory and should be replaced, since they're not even helping correct the situation they are supposedly designed to correct (according to the respondents to the poll on GlassDoor), and seem mostly put in place so that companies can have something to point in response to questions about hiring non-white people. Only in your mind does this transform into me defending them.

I would ask you...but I already know that you probably would struggle to define a lot of terms you use like....

Racism.

The belief that racial background makes someone or some population in general more or less fit in some way (e.g., the belief that black people only get hired to certain positions because of DEI initiatives, not because they're actually qualified to do ______, or similar thinking).

Women.

I don't recall this coming up at any point in this thread, but I guess you've got to make sure you go down your checklist of things that you have a stereotypical 'liberal' caricature of to make sure you try to trap me on each in turn. Anyway, women are people who are biologically born with female sex organs and XX sex chromosomes.

White supremacy.

The belief that white people are inherently better or more capable than others.

Hate groups.

Groups whose substantial reason for existing involves expressing hatred of others for being outside of their group.

I hope these definitions help clear things up for you.

I could go on but I'm not trying to humiliate anyone here. When people blindly accept political rhetoric without giving it an ounce of thought...they end up repeating things they can't actually explain.

I agree. Now if only that's what we were talking about in this conversation before your most recent reply...

Such as? I've seen a lot of claims about context, but no explanation of how this changes any meaning.

That's when context would matter....that's when context becomes relevant to the issue. If the meaning of the phrase stays exactly the same (and it does) then context is completely irrelevant.

The meaning of a given phrase is informed by its context, so this is in some sense an artificial division. For example, Libya under Ghaddafi and Albania under Enver Hoxha were both self-described as 'socialist', but obviously since the former attempted to fuse Islam with socialism and the latter officially mandated state-atheism, socialism included some things in the first case that were not included in the second. In other words, there were more local contexts that informed what 'socialism' would entail in each place. This is equally true of racial categories in different places. If you say that someone from Mexico is a 'mestizo', then you are describing someone who is of mixed Spanish and Native Mexican background, whereas the Portuguese cognate 'mestiço' is used in Brazil to describe people of any mixed background, not specifically European and Native Brazilian. This makes sense if you consider the local contexts of both countries, since Brazil has a much larger population of people descended from African slaves brought to the new world than Mexico does (~14.5 million/almost 8% vs. 2.5 million/around 2%, respectively), in addition to larger populations of Arab-descended people and others.

 

[dzheremi]

What failure? If you imagine meritocracy to result in some reflection of the imaginary racial hierarchy in your mind....then perhaps the problem is your attachment to this racial hierarchy.

???

I thought this was clear in my original reply: "I'm talking about the failure of supposed meritocratic systems to account for disparities between people who are already being considered for the same position." In other words, how 'meritocracy' is often taken to mean that two people of wildly different backgrounds (cf. the earlier point about the difference between Harvard legacies and first-generation college students from state schools) are somehow treated equally even when that is not actually the case in practice. In practice, the person who comes into the interview with Harvard on their CV is going to look more prestigious than the person who comes in with University of Colorado or whatever on theirs. That is part of why certain schools are highly sought after in the first place. True, this is not the same as racial discrimination, but it's not quite the dreamed-of merit-only-and-nothing-else process that proponents of supposed 'meritocracy' over whatever else (DEI or Affirmative Action or whatever) have in mind, is it? It is still something that is other than demonstrated competence, which is what was assumed in all of your examples of the hypothetical black guy who is not as good as his white counterpart at selling things, or flying a plane, or performing surgery.

I'll admit though, it's a hard argument to take seriously because we have systems of meritocracy (like sports in general or the NBA more specifically) and the same people who care about disparities don't want to see any changes to those meritocracies. It's as if suddenly, meritocracy works just fine....and disparities can be safely ignored.

With due respect to basketball players, it's a recreational activity that is also a career for maybe the top 1% (or whatever the actual percentage is) of players. Everyone else needs a day job. That's probably why most people don't care about it in the same way as a more normal job, since it's remote from the everyday working lives of basically everyone, regardless of background. It's more akin to being a pop star or a movie star in that way, and yet there have been calls for increased diversity in at least some entertainment-related fields. Remember the "Oscars So White" social media campaign from a while back?

DEI initiatives. Let's not taint Affirmative Action any more than it already is.

If you're going to bring up people's hypothesized political leanings, wouldn't it make more sense to look at something that has actually been voted on by the general public like Affirmative Action, rather than something that does not get voted on, like how individual companies make their hiring decisions?

I don't know where in the USA you are located, but if you're not in California like I am (or if you just happen to hold stereotypical views about how Californians must vote, since this state reliably votes Democratic on the national level), it might surprise you to find out that the Affirmative Action program in place in the state university system was struck down over 20 years ago with the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996.

Are you sure about that? I read an article recently about emails between professors who are concerned about the qualifications of medical students in their own programs. They claim they are reluctant to correct mistakes, or even point them out, for fear they will be labeled racist or otherwise fail to meet diversity goals.

If that is indeed happening (and I have no reason to think it isn't) then yes...you may soon reach the day when you go to the doctor, and they are well below the standard of competency because they were given accreditation to meet diversity initiatives.

I don't want to dismiss the article that you read out of hand since I don't know where it came from or what it actually says, but if there's one thing I know about the medical establishment it is that they are famously risk-averse when it comes to anything that might result in a big hospital or other medical provider getting sued for malpractice. In some cases, this has actually enabled medical interns to get away with blatantly murdering people before being wisely passed over for promotion to actual positions as surgeons (see: Michael Swango), while in other cases it has enabled nurses or others to escape well-founded charges of extreme malpractice and continue to be employed in the medical field so long as they left the establishment at which their crimes were originally reported (see: Genene Jones).

Given that this is the case, I don't so much doubt that professors in nursing schools or other medical education programs have such fears (and I think they are quite reasonable fears to have; getting sued over alleged racial discrimination is still getting sued just as surely as getting sued over medical malpractice would be) as I would have reservations about extending these too far beyond that level of interaction with the medical system, precisely because the stakes are so much higher once someone is actually in a hospital, whether attempting to practice surgery and failing due to incompetence, or being a psychopath overseeing a pediatric intensive care unit. Michael Swango is serving life without parole after being convicted of three counts of first degree murder in New York, while Genene Jones is serving life after pleading guilty to the 1981 murder of an 11-month-old, and will not be eligible for parole until she is 87 years old (she is currently 72, and has been in prison since 1985). Both of these murdering medical frauds are white people, and if taken together could have as many of 120+ victims spread from small-town Texas to Zimbabwe (where Swango escaped to for a while in order to avoid the law in the USA).

If you want...I can show you Congress asking the new FAA candidate basic question about airline regulations and administration and he appears to have no clue about anything, despite being the candidate for the position. He is black though. That's the result of "diversity initiatives". They don't select for merit. You remember merit? That thing you disparage as unfair?

I don't disparage it as unfair. I contend that it doesn't actually exist, or that if it it does, it at least does not operate in the way that those who advocate for it as an alternative to DEI or whatever else is out there seem to think that it does. (And I hope you'll note that when I originally brought it up in post #102, I specified a 'pure' meritocracy. Obviously I think that merit does and should play a role in hiring decisions. I just don't think that anyone can realistically claim to have gotten where they are entirely based on merit, as though there are no other factors involved.)

That's your belief. I don't believe in a racial heirarchy. You do.

I believe that it exists. I don't believe in it in a positive sense. I don't know why you continue to mischaracterize what I am saying in this manner, but I really wish you'd stop that.

 

[dzheremi]

More mockery. I didn't get any handouts. At no point in my life has anyone told me "don't worry about displaying competency or failing....you'll get the job regardless because you're white!"

Is that what anyone's telling non-white people? I'm pretty non-white people get fired for being incompetent at their jobs every day, same as white people do.

I can understand why you might think the opposite if you don't deserve your job because you were hired by someone who said they wanted more white guys....

I was hired because I have a master's degree and experience that is directly relevant to my field. That's according to the hiring manager herself, so unless she was lying for some reason, I don't think she considered my race as a deciding factor. (Though I don't have access to the company's hiring guidelines, so who knows.)

but I've never seen nor met anyone that actually happened to. It doesn't seem likely to happen often....it doesn't even seem to happen rarely.

Well yeah...because white people have not had trouble getting their feet in the door to be considered for certain jobs on account of their race. Can the same be said about non-white people?

I don't know what you think is going to protect you from this catastrophically stupid idea....but surely you heard about those 4-5 black officers who beat that black driver to death in the street, right? You're aware that at least 2 of them were hired under lower standards because they were trying to meet diversity targets, right?

This is perhaps going to sound like a stereotypical lefty answer to you, but since I don't make a habit of following national news on anything more than a semi-regular basis, I'm not entirely sure which particular case of police brutality you are referring to here. I don't doubt that this is the case, however. I would wonder aloud, though, if officers hired to meet diversity targets actually fair any worse with regard to their conduct than those who were not hired as part of some kind of diversity initiative. Officer Derek Chauvin was probably not such a hire (since he is a white guy, and we've just established that white guys don't get hired with diversity quotas in mind), nor was the white officer involved in the killing of James Boyd that I brought up earlier (the other officer involved in that killing was Hispanic, but since this was in New Mexico, that doesn't necessarily mean anything), etc. I'm not aware of where such information can be found (if such a breakdown is kept anywhere to begin with), or else I'd provide it here.

If you are aware of this happening in a profession like the police....what in the world makes you think it's not going to happen with doctors or pilots?

I'm not saying that it couldn't happen. I'm saying that using the fear of it potentially happening in the absence of any evidence that it is actually happening strikes me as racist, in the same way that the fear that illegal immigration from Latin America is somehow opening the door to Islamist terrorism is racist (in the vague "those non-white people over there are all in cahoots against us" sense that fueled things like Trump's ban on refugees from several Muslim-majority nations that I mentioned earlier).

Let's not forget hard work and sacrifice.

Of course not.

Yeah. We aren't all equals. You may have noticed that this conversation hasn't gone well for you. It's not a coincidence. One of us is clearly better than the other at argumentation.

Ah yes. You are clearly the debate champion of the internet. Not just some guy who is being disagreed with on matters over which any two people may disagree due to different perspectives. No.

I'm certain you have talents and skills that I don't have. Perhaps you're really good at making toast...and I burn my toast more often than you do. If we learn that you make perfect toast more often than me....that's going to create a disparity in our outcomes. Disparities aren't indicative of a problem though....they're just a disparity.

This is paternalistic as all get out.

 

[dzheremi]

Why would it match their population size/percentage? Do you think everyone is out in the world making the same choices and pursuing the same options at the same rate? There's literally no reason to believe that or any evidence it's true

No, but I would expect it to be similar to the relative percentage of the white population who make the same choice, were all other things equal (as again, attempts at meritocratic systems must assume). Unfortunately, according to the American Medical Association, that is not the case with regard to African Americans and the medical field in the United States. Rather, the AMA states at the link above that "for more than 100 years, the AMA actively reinforced or passively accepted racial inequalities and the exclusion of African-American physicians."

If you do not believe that this history can have an effect on enrollment rates in medical programs today, then I would like you to seriously ask yourself whether you would be inclined to enroll in such an intensive and expensive program in a field that people of your background have been told for generations they ought not bother with, because it's not for your kind of people. You may indeed go for it anyway (as black medical pioneers like Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler did even during the Civil War), but it would not be strange in this context if you were seen as the odd man out for pursuing such an unlikely thing.

Because the people who are literally doing the hiring said they were discriminating by race. It wouldn't matter if 99.9% orI 0.01% of their employees are white....they would still be discriminating by race. We know this, because they literally said so. Go back and reread my above statement about argumentation.

Hahaha. My point was that your attitude of "That may lead to disparities, but that's life" does not seem to hold when fewer white people are being hired. You cooked up a scenario in your head where this hypothetical black guy who just happened to be a worse salesperson than the alternative candidate is passed over based on his lack of merit, so it's fine because it's not explicitly racist (unlike hiring managers being told to hire fewer white people), which is what lead to my question about your vision of meritocracy somehow naturally leading to the exclusion of black people. Again: are black people just naturally worse at everything you come up with as an example for how meritocracies work? Or is this just totally coincidental and not a backdoor way of saying that if DEI initiatives were not in place, black people wouldn't be hired over white people, because white people are just more qualified and competent at everything?

Let me guess: Black people would still predominate in the NBA, where pure meritocracy reigns supreme, so it's fine.

What does "level playing field" refer to?

Any system in which a candidate's background is not taken into account in the hiring process. The vision of the pure meritocracy in the minds of those who swear by it (whether it actually exists or works as they say it does or not). What would supposedly exist if we could only get rid of DEI initiatives that lead to the hiring of dangerously underqualified candidates in liberals' rush to discriminate against qualified white candidates.

I hate to ask you to define one of those things I'm almost certain you can't actually define and are probably just repeating because it's the rhetoric you believe uncritically....but it's necessary to answer your following question.

I just gave you three definitions. Take your pick.

That's a loaded question. The survey I provided shows white people being shut out of certain jobs. Do you have a similar survey where hiring managers openly admit to discriminating against black people?

No I do not, because I am asking about a hypothetical setup in which DEI initiatives do not exist and everyone is hired purely based on merit, since this is what I am assuming you would be in favor of in lieu of the way the companies that are currently using DEI initiatives to implement racially-preferential hiring policies are being run.

 

[dzheremi]

What word games? I literally gave you everything there is to know about the phrase "it's ok to be white". Unless you have something meaningful to add (which would be a first in this convo) there's no game being played here.

Word games like pretending that because 4Chan people came up with the phrase "It's OK to be white" to ferret out anti-white racists, then that is exactly what it means, and subsequent developments in its usage -- like it's adoption by white supremacists -- are of no concern or do not provide a context in which people who agree that there is nothing inherently wrong with being white would still have reason to object to that phrase.

That is a word game, to put it politely. You would like us all to pretend with you that it does not matter that "It's OK to be white" has been adopted by white supremacists in order to inject their abhorrent views into the public conversation on race with an innocuous-sounding phrase. After all, that's not what it was originally meant to do! My point is that I acknowledge that, but by your refusal to acknowledge subsequent developments in its usage that have actually taken over from the original meaning to become the dominant understanding of what it is conveying to at least some percentage of people out there (perhaps a larger percentage of people than participate in 4Chan forums), you are revealing your position to be at odds with the reality of how the phrase is currently used and understood. That does not mean that it cannot still be used with its original intended meaning, of course, but it does mean that you're going to have a much harder time convincing people who are aware of its connection to white supremacist groups that it is totally innocent when you use it. It's similar to why white people have gotten in trouble in the past for using the word 'niggardly' instead of 'cheap' or 'stingy'. It's too risky to use when it sounds like a racial slur, even though its roots are probably in the Old Norse *hniggw, related to hnøggr "stingy". Just like in the case of "It's OK to be white", it does not help to cling to its non-racialized roots in order to defend its use, due in part to its being the basis for a sort of 'coded' racial slur in the shortened form of nig, which also means 'a stingy person' (this is how we know that it is a shortening of niggard, rather than...some other word), but by c. 1832 was being used in American English specifically as a shortened form of...some other word. You'll never guess which one.

This is the process by which formerly neutral terms or phrases take on negative connotations, due to the changing contexts in which they may be used. "It's OK to be white" is not immune for this evolution just because its invention is within our living memories. In the case of "niggardly", this evolution took from the late 1400s to sometime in the 1800s, but now that we are on the internet and talking about things coined there and disseminated through that medium (at least originally), we can see that evolution taking place in real time. As you have pointed out, some 50% of respondents to the poll question about the phrase responded affirmatively to it. So it has not completely been given over to white supremacists, which is good. My only point is that you ignore this evolution to the detriment of your supposed point that it is not racist, full stop.

They didn't come up with the phrase to "normalize" anything....that's just stuff you made up.

The reason why they came up with the phrase is pretty well documented and not at all ambiguous. All you had to do was think before writing this and your assumptions sound absurd....

What do you think they were trying to normalize? An already normal statement that any non-racist person agrees with lol?

I think you misread me here. When I wrote about it being adopted to normalize racist views, I was referring to its adoption by white supremacists, which was subsequent to its creation. Again, I'm talking about the evolution of the term, because that's what makes it objectionable to many people in the first place. It is used by racists for racist reasons. If it only ever means "there is nothing inherently wrong with having white skin", then there's no reason be having this conversation in the first place, as that is not a sentiment that I disagree with at all, or that anyone else in this thread has disagreed with, as far as I can remember. The point is that it means other things in other contexts (like when white supremacists use it), and recency bias would tend to suggest that its association with white supremacists is likely to make it more objectionable in the future, rather than less. (Since people usually understand words and phrases in the context in which they are most recently used, rather than only using archaic definitions of words that no one currently living is likely to understand.)

Again....proportion related to population size as if everyone everywhere is making the same choices at the same rate. There's no socioligist, no psychologist, no one who studies people who would make such a ridiculous claim...

Yet it's 100% necessary for your assumptions to even begin to be true.

I'm sorry, that was sloppy wording on my part. When I wrote "proportionality", I meant in terms of use of force, not population. The population that may be committing crimes in a given location is most likely to reflect the population that is present there, obviously, so I don't know that such a claim can even be made in the way that you appear to have understood me as arguing (and again, that's my fault, and I apologize for the confusion). Rather, it is out of proportion to the supposed 'threat' faced from a mentally ill homeless man like James Boyd that the police would shoot him several times, especially when video evidence exists of him cooperating completely with their commands. That is way overboard, and there's no conceivable way that they can argue that they were scared or whatever other excuse police usually have for doing their job incredibly poorly, or not at all (see: Uvalde school shooting).

The same thing is argued with regard to George Floyd (was it necessary to cut off his airway slowly for multiple minutes and stand around watching him suffocate while crying out for his mother, or is that horrific police abuse?), Philando Castile, and many other higher-profile cases of police-involved murders. I only brought up the James Boyd case because I was there at the time, and it was a particularly egregious case.

Nobody object to the statement "black lives matter" that isn't racist.

Agreed.

Oh? Well maybe you've seen some evidence I haven't...

Go ahead and post whatever evidence the ADL has that the originators of the phrase wanted to "normalize" what appears to be a completely normal phrase

That is not what I meant at all, as I've explained above. It is rather the subsequent adoption of the term by white supremacists that has poisoned it in the minds of at least some people. (Though honestly I'm not crazy about the original intent either, it can at least be reasonably argued to have served a purpose other than emboldening white supremacists.)

It never changed meaning regardless of context....it's far too simple and unambiguous.

I'm sorry, but this is just not how words work. This is not a true reflection of language use and evolution. Virtually nothing is so simple and unambiguous as to not be able to be used in some way other than how it was originally used. With the exception of closed or nearly-closed classes of words (determiners, numbers, until recently pronouns, etc.), it is the malleable nature of language that allows us to use it for good or for ill. Again, no phrase is immune from this, because that's simply how language works. You can personally decide that you will never use a particular word or phrase in a certain way (see: all the people on this board and elsewhere who reject the recent 'opening up' of pronouns as a category), but in general, individual decisions like this do not decide for anyone else how they will use words or phrases. Linguistic evolution is a communal process in that way, reliant on social networks (in the old, pre-internet sense of the term) that drive the adoption, (re)definition, and dissemination of certain forms, that then either die or otherwise do not further spread, or continue moving on through more and more of society until they reach a kind of 'saturation point' and become mainstream and acceptable in a wide sense.

To assume otherwise would be bizarre and as stupid as imagining Jordan there is a nazi or fascist because of that tuft of hair on his lip.

I don't know anyone who assumes that Michael Jordan is a Nazi. Haha. I do have reason to believe that many people would not be comfortable sporting that mustache due to its association with Hitler.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Asking open ended questions in a poll is not the issue for Scott Adams.

It's the issue you're claiming has some relevance.

You don't ask open ended questions in surveys or polls. If you do, you've failed to write a useful poll or survey.

 

[childeye 2]

It is a fact that this poll was taken, it is a fact that people answered this poll and it is a fact that there was a specific result. Adam Scott and others, including members in this forum then used their sound reasoning to interpret those facts.

You're basically saying these things happened as a fact of reality. While agree it's a fact that there are results that came from this poll, I don't regard the results as facts. I'm not sure what factual information can be taken from the results. But to be clear, to me "facts" are learned just like 1+1=2 is learned, so I don't see facts as open to interpretation.

You do not know the definition of propaganda if you think this poll is congruent with propaganda.

For the record, this is a foundational Truth I want to be defending in my own mind and propagating in the minds of others: Love God with all your heart mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself. And I will add, that to love others as yourself one must see others as yourself.

As I see it, every lie propagated by the devil and powers of darkness exists to undermine the Truth above. It's already been shown how the statements in the poll ended up turning brother against brother through differing interpretations of a statement. So, it would qualify as propaganda of the devil.

I don't blame Rasmussen, and not knowing their intentions, I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt. I see it as a spiritual warfare rather than a carnal vanity of us against them.

Rasmussen simply created the poll, asked the question and put the results out there to for others to interpret as they wish. In propaganda that isn't allowed. In propaganda the interpretation is done for you.

Propaganda is about turning positives into negatives and negatives into positives or making them appear equal so that no one can tell the truth from a lie. Just saying I wonder if Obama was born in the USA is propaganda because it plants a doubt that was not otherwise there.

Saying that, I don't think people should come to a conclusion just based on a poll, which is a good thing Adam Scott didn't to that.

This is a quote from Adam Scott during an interview with Chris Cuomo.

"...But the notion is that race relations are terrible. The context was that there was a Rasmussen poll, which I did not rely on for my comments, but I discussed it as a starting off point. So the Rasmussen poll said there were some alarming percentage of black Americans, it was a smallish sample, but it was still statistically within the eight percent of margin of error, that said that 26% would not say that it's okay to be white. Now I have a problem with the question because I think everyone interpreted it differently. So we can if you would allow me, I don't believe the poll is important to the point."

Well, I sympathize with Mr. Scott. He said things I believe he now regrets as I'm sure we all have. The fact is that people are vulnerable to propaganda, and it would be a hypocritical pride to think or say I have never been fooled.

I don't have a problem with the question in the poll, but rather I see the statement as problematic, so I would say that people interpreted the statement differently, not the question. As far as the results go, I'm not sure anything else can be gleaned other than people interpreted the statement differently. Maybe the poll is meant to see how many people are open to this type of messaging.

 

[childeye 2]

It's the issue you're claiming has some relevance.

You don't ask open ended questions in surveys or polls. If you do, you've failed to write a useful poll or survey.

Respectfully, you don't get to say what I mean, and I don't get to say what you mean. So, to be clear, I have no problem with being asked to agree or disagree in a poll. For example, I am inclined to disagree with any statement that validates people according to their skin color. I would think that anybody could understand that.