racism

I just got pointed to Confronting Evolution's Racists Roots via my RSS. This is a common tactic. And it might work for unsophisticated people on the margins. Just like a tract like "Christianity's racist past" would also sell. Or, "Socialism's white supremacist heritage." But intellectually it's a rather low-brow tactic. The real question is: Is It True? The racism of European intellectuals and the racialist inferences made from evolutionary theory are of historical interest, but not of scientific ones. It isn't as if a tract with the title "Jesus Christ, Semitic Supremacist," would…
I love Ursula K. le Guin's the Earthsea series, and recently finished reading the final novel, The Other Wind. Those who are familiar with the Earthsea books will know that among other topics, le Guin explores traditional gender roles, their change, and men's disparagement of women's power. Towards the end of The Other Wind, one of the characters, Tenar, observes How men feared women! she thought, walking among the late-flowering roses. Not as individuals, but women when they talked together, worked together, spoke up for one another - then men saw plots, cabals, constraints, traps being…
Nature, the publishing group, not the Mother, has taken Darwin's 200th as an opportunity to play the race card (which always sells copy) and went ahead and published two opposing views on this question: "Should scientists study race and IQ? The answers are Yes, argued by Stephen Cici and Wendy Williams of the Dept of Human Development at Cornell, and No, argued by Steven Rose, a neuroscientist at Open University. I would like to weigh in. The real answer, as is so often the case, is "You dumbass, what kind of question is that? Think about it further and rephrase the question!" But I don't…
The Kennedy School of Government had banned all smoking within the building, but had not yet banned smoking just outside the doors facing the Charles River, to the south of the complex. An African American woman, about fifty years of age, took a light from me, and we stood in the falling snow enjoying our smokes. That was a heavy year for snow. It seemed that every day about the same time the two of us would be standing here in a blizzard. I never knew her name, but I knew she worked in the cafeteria. We talked about a wide range of topics, including (and possibly mainly) the weather. A week…
Dan MacArthur has started a big discussion on whether or not the relationship between IQ and race should be studied. Inspired by a pair of essays for and against the idea it has created a pretty healthy debate among the sciencebloggers including Razib with whom I will likely never agree on this issue. For the record, I'm on the side of those like Richard Nisbett (for a good review of his analysis of race and the black white divide see here PDF) that genetics are a poor explanation for the divide. But this issue aside, why do I believe this is a still a bad idea to expend resources to…
So Amanda and I arrive at some public building in a largish Midwestern city. I'm a scientist, here to sit on a panel for a public discussion related to science and education. The building, a library, is not open yet but is scheduled to open in a few minutes. There are two groups of people standing in the flurries and chilly wind waiting for opening. The larger group is pressed against the door, seemingly anxious, and I (incorrectly, it turns out) attribute this anxiety to the cold. I'm thinking they want to go inside because it is cold. All but two people in this group are brown to dark…
From the archives: One of the things that is often neglected on Martin Luther King day is his dedication to economic justice. What is forgotten--often willfully--is that he was an advocate for racial and economic justice. From a speech he gave to striking sanitation workers in Memphis on March 18, 1968 (italics mine): My dear friends, my dear friend James Lawson, and all of these dedicated and distinguished ministers of the Gospel assembled here tonight, to all of the sanitation workers and their families, and to all of my brothers and sisters, I need not pause to say how very delighted I…
Picture the scene - you sit in a room with two other people, one white and one black, waiting for a psychological test. As the black person leaves to use their mobile phone, they bump the knee of the white person on their way out. While they're gone, the white person turns to you and says, "Typical, I hate it when black people do that." How would you feel? Would you be shocked? Angry? Indifferent? And would you want to work with that person later? This was the scenario that Kerry Kawakami from York University used to try and understand the state of race relations in 21st century America.…
Regular readers know I've been beating this drum since the inception of this blog, but the Krugman says it well: The fault, however, lies not in Republicans' stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party's champion, to the Bush administration's pervasive incompetence, to the party's shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision. If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well…
Thankfully, this seems to be the only case of anti-Obama terrorism--and make no mistake, that's what cross-burning is, an attempt to intimidate and terrorize people. I'm not sure it took though: NEWARK, N.J. - A family who had supported Barack Obama's presidential campaign emerged from their home in the northwestern New Jersey town of Hardwick Thursday morning to find the charred remnants of a 6-foot wooden cross on their front lawn. Pieces of a homemade bedsheet banner reading "President Obama , Victory '08," which had been stolen from the yard the night before, also were found, leading…
...or one more reason why decent people should vote Democratic. Republican Senator Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania bluntly spells out the only way McCain wins his state: There are a "couple of hidden factors" in this election, said Specter. "The first is that people answer pollsters one way, but in the secrecy of the ballot booth, vote the other way." Yes. That is what he said, to a chorus of hopeful affirmation. Arlen Specter was openly -- in public, into a microphone -- crossing his fingers, and hoping for racism. Keep in mind that this isn't some wackaloon attending a Sturmabteilungen…
Apparently, Digby and I are thinking the same thing. In a response to this post about the anti-Obama bear killing, I wrote that I was worried about violence against Obama supporters. But, by way of digby, apparently the government is concerned that black people will riot if Obama loses. I'm far more worried about the opposite happening: if Obama wins, Obama supporters will be targeted with arson (or worse), black churches and Democratic party headquarters will be firebombed, and so on (I'm sure there are other 'targets' that I haven't thought of). Given all of the low grade vandalism and…
Recently, a McCain campaign spokescritter used the phrase 'real' Virginian. Anyone who has lived in the South has heard the phrase 'real Southerner' before. What's despicable about that phrase is that it always refers to white Southerners--African-Americans are completely marginalized and ignored in the definition of a Southerner as if they don't exist. Given the changing demographics of Virginia, 'real Virginian' has also entered the lexicon (and is something I've heard many times). Here's what the McCain spokescritter said: ....I can tell you that the Democrats have just come in from…
From Fayetteville, NC: Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said. Sheriff's deputies are investigating. The tires were cut while people were inside the Crown Coliseum listening to speeches, said Maj. E. Wright of the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office. Many of the damaged vehicles were parked on Wilkes Road. Representatives from Obama and Sen. John McCain's campaigns said they were unaware of the acts. Susan Lagana, the North Carolina communications director…
I hate having to repost this but there's a reason. If you watch the GOP rally's lately, they are becoming filled with hate, with near-violence, with hyperbole calling Obama as terrorist. McCain isn't my candidate, but that's it---I may not agree with him, but I know he's no terrorist; I know he's not evil. But the GOP is now explicitly calling up it's more violent, racist base in its desperate attempt to claw its way back to the top. A lot of folks around here like primates. In fact, all of the bloggers around here are primates. So a number of us are pretty riled up about a recent story…
In the midst of the hoopla over how 'in touch' Sarah Palin is supposed to be (all her faux personal touches), I came across this speech by a steelworker at an AFL-CIO convention. A couple of you might have noticed the image I use in the sidebar: It's from Norman Rockwell's famous series, the Four Freedoms (this one is freedom of speech). I'll turn the description over to driftglass: He's nervous. Really nervous.By his tan and his hands and his clothes, you can tell he's a working man. Everyone around him is wearing a tie; his collar is open.Those are his remarks there in his pocket, which…
If you ever needed evidence for the idea that voters are not rational but rationalizing, this NY Times story about the role abortion might play in Pennsylvania is a clear example (italics mine): One parishioner ruled out voting for Mr. Obama explicitly because he is black. "Are they going to make it the Black House?" Ray McCormick asked, to embarrassed hushing from a half dozen others gathered around the rectory kitchen. (Five of the six, all lifelong Democrats who supported Mrs. Clinton in the primary, said they now lean toward Mr. McCain.) Mr. Madonna, the political scientist, said of the…
First, Roland Martin attacks Palin for her comments about community organizers: And ScienceBlogling Matt Nisbet has the quote of the day: Weren't Jesus and Mother Teresa community organizers? Didn't they, in the words of Palin, have "actual responsibilities?" Aren't Evangelicals such as this group "Christians for Community Organizing" or this group "Evangelicals for Social Action" dedicated to community organizing? Aren't faith based initiatives built on community organizing? Matt is absolutely right on the merits, but, make no mistake about it, "community organizers" is code for 'uppity…
I've never gone in for electoral prognostication; after all, in the 2006 election, a huge swath of voters didn't decide whom they would vote for until a couple of days before the election. Having said that, driftglass identifies the true swing voters of the 2008 election: Because 100 years from now, the Tale of Election 2008 will be the story of several million ignorant, white, working-class voters - both Democrats and Independents (the Republicans are a lost cause who will remain an unashamedly morally bankrupt open-sewer for at least another 30 years) and which way they turned. Period.…
Admist all of the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over what some think is a relatively poor performance by Obama against McCain, skippy puts racism in its proper context (note: skippy worked very hard to remove all of those capital letters. Who am I to put them all back?): obama is comfortably ahead. but the media aren't reporting that, because that's not exciting.are there still rednecks that wouldn't vote for jesus christ if he came back because he's a swarthy semitic? yes.are there rednecks in the board room that won't say out loud how they hate the darkies, but create…