Racism is as Prevalent as Ever

[RickHolland]

Speciesism is the thesis that our treatment of animals is based on an arbitrary distinction between species. In principle, being of a different species implies no difference in treatment, as species is at least a value-neutral signifier. How ever we are to treat animals, it cannot be because we draw a distinction between their happening to not be our species. Moral significance is not just another way to say ‘human’; we mean something other by its attribution.

This line of reasoning is usually combined with another premise—that humans have moral significance—in order to justify a vegetarian moral framework. It’s not really that bad, at least insofar as one considers the arguments against racism and sexism to be not really that bad. Indeed, I’ll even point out that the first paragraph only forwarded true propositions, it is that they do not happen to be the major premise of the argument. In general, these arguments defend a proposition of the kind:

We cannot treat one group different from another if they have no significant differences.

Along with the proposition that there are no significant differences, it is concluded that both must be treated as the better-treated group is treated. As such, animals would have to be treated like humans are, with rights to life, and so on. However, there is no reason the speciesist induction must be followed to this conclusion. If we are only concluding that our difference of treatment is unjustified, and we already find it justified to herd cattle in order to later slaughter and eat them… and treating humans differently is unjustified… [And if one identifies a willingness to round up humans and slaughter them with Nazism, then meat-eaters are Nazis. Hey, it’s just logic.]

There is a popular narrative in the culture that racism by whites against blacks became less prevalent after the Civil Rights movement. Segregation was prohibited by federal law and enforced in every state, whether it was an association in education, employment, or home ownership. In truth, racism did not meaningfully fall. While many of its most outward and vulgar expressions were curtailed, these were only its most superficial examples. The surest evidence that racism operates with as much force as ever is the suburbs, products of white flight resulting from the inability to exercise discrimination by other means. Racism is innate, and its reflexive expressions cannot be eliminated without intensive conditioning.

Of course, intensive conditioning is also a necessary if insufficient condition of brainwashing. Likewise, racism never had any significant explanatory power for the distribution of outcomes by race. Yet strangely, it seems as though the idea of racism and the truth of the hypothesis that racism is a significant causal influence on the outcome disparity viz. whites and blacks are conflated into one and the same thing. You cannot doubt the latter hypothesis, never mind its empirical nature, which means it cannot be known to be the case analytically, without just ignoring the idea of racism. There is no room to accept the concept and study outside the pre-packaged narrative.

How are we to observe the influence of racism on the impact of different racial groups? If it amounts to nothing more than observing statistically significant differences in outcome between groups, with the conclusion that any group which has better outcomes along some arbitrary [in the sense you are not allowed to question it] metric must be exercising some structural racial prejudice in opposition to this group, then the policy to abolish racists from respectable society is an incredible cover for anti-Semitism. [Reason #31 to not be a Nazi: They weren’t smart enough to figure out they could just hack the Progressive narrative to their own ends.] Considering Asians and Jews seem preternaturally beyond claims of racism, which is reserved for the behavior of whites, this cannot be how racism is verified as a causal influence.

If it is no more than the claim that we form racial stereotypes, then undoubtedly everyone is racist as it is effectively impossible to not form stereotypes if you’re reasoning anything like a neurotypical human being [and this is not something you escape by autism]. Further, if it is only the claim that one treats different racial groups differently, then just like the claim which rests on it being the forming of stereotypes, it is not reflected in the common usage. Anti-racism is not an escape; it merely transfers the momentum of prejudice on to other groups which are actually less deserving of negative stereotypes. As Peter Stone at Social Matter notes, making it politically incorrect to notice the negative qualities of aggrieved minorities only makes it politically correct to manufacture negative stereotypes of relatively pro-social groups.

Ignorance is, in the long run, preserved. Knowledge might initially dispel superstitions, but given a sufficient amount of time to consolidate, the bias of humans toward the present only means structures of knowledge will become invested with utility, and by extension those forms of ignorance which are aligned with that knowledge. Magical thinking converges on the obvious; ask someone to elaborate on the multifarious ways racism can be shown to exist, and they can write a book documenting everything from the most grievous transgressions to the most banal of micro-aggressions. Ask someone to demonstrate that racism meaningfully impacts outcomes compared to, say, the natural consequences of intelligence or choices exhibiting high time preference, and you will instead be treated to a barrage of ad hominem. The concept of ‘racism’ is loaded with these curious logical inconsistencies, but since they are buried over as taboo a politically useful principle of explosion allows its scope to increase to the point it dominates discourse, weakening its utility as a means of conflict resolution. Insofar as one is barred from considering hypotheses contrary to the orthodox narrative, this actually makes it difficult to appreciate people for who they really are.

There tend to be two perspectives on racism: either that it exists and has significant explanatory power for the difference in racial group outcomes, or that it doesn’t exist in meaningful quantities and has no such explanatory power. Both perspectives are fundamentally agreed that racism would have a noticeable effect in the way of disparate group outcomes, but what if exercising racism to that effect is a lot more difficult than presupposed? The lack of clarity on the issue of racism, and the opportunity to forward meaningfully precise definitions which can be tested for their empirical influence being denied, it is only inevitable that the reality that different racial groups do not ordinarily get along, and why, is overlooked in various ways. All the ways racial groups don’t get along is classified under racism, and thus subject to the treatment of “Well people just need to stop being racist,” never mind the question of whether racism as such will actually harm the quality of life for anyone in a significant way. Attached to the narrative of anti-racism is the supposition of reciprocation; if we act altruistically, then the other party will necessarily choose to cooperate. The possibility that our altruism will be exploited by other groups isn’t even considered, and likewise put back under the label of racism, thus not open to being discussed. Entire realms of causality are barred from critical analysis and study.

Racism, at least as it is currently used, is a useless word. It is unable to make useful predictions of behavior; some of the people who are classified as racist do indeed go out and commit violent crimes against other people on the basis of their skin color, but many more of the people who are classified as racist do not. Many of the people who do go out and commit violent crimes on the basis of race seem conspicuously capable of avoiding the label of racism being applied to them with any force. A causal narrative is imposed by the idea of racism, but it cannot be meaningfully questioned, analyzed, or tested. Grappling with it, then, is most likely of negative value whatever one is going to say about it, since virtually everyone using it imposes only one very strict, narrow interpretation from which you cannot dissent without just being a vile person.

https://anarchopapist.wordpress.com/...alent-as-ever/