Index for posts concerning Race

Your Mexican stats! by Darth B'strad
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Obama and Race in America 2 by Bieren Skidels
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Obama and Race in America? by Bieren Skidels
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What ever happened to the Feminists? by Darth B'strad
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Racism in a test tube! by Darth B'strad
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Victimhood by Darth B'strad
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Racism by Darth B'strad
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Your Mexican stats!

Posted on March 26th, 2009 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Immigration, Race, Comedy.

I just thought it would be a good time to lighten up the mood around here so I deiced to post up this e-mail that’s been going around for you to “Sheck your Mexican status.” You know how thous chain e-mail things go, you just meet some people that like them and then they’re always sending them to you all the time! But I thought this one was funny but if you get offended– I didn’t write it!

Sheck your Mexican status

If you can run and play any sport while wearing chanclas….You’re a Mexican!!

If your late Tio [uncle] left you a van and you turned it into a taco vending business…Yes, you’re a Mexican.

If you pronounce words beginning with the letter ‘S’ by putting an ‘E’ in front of it, (estop instead of stop or esprite instead of sprite)…big time Mexican.

If you call a chair, a sher, you got it…. Mexican.

If you have ever hurt yourself and your mama rubbed the area while chanting, ‘ Sana , Sana , Colita de rana…..’ You’re Mexican, big time!!!

If you have your last name in old English lettering anywhere, your car, truck, or tattooed on your back…Yes, you ARE a Mexican (proud one too).

If you refer to your wife as your ruca, your hina, your wifa, your old lady, mija or your vieja, guess what?…Not only are you a Mexican, you’re a cholo.

If you throw a ‘Grito’ every time you hear Vicente Fernandez…then not only are you a Mexican, but you are a drunk Mexican.

If you have ever been pinched in church and been told ‘pobrecito de ti si lloras’ or ‘ Vas a ver horita que salgamos.’ …Yes, you’re definitely a Mexican.

If you grew up being called ‘chamaca or chamaco’ ..Mexican.

If you grew up scared of La Llorona, or fear the dark because of El CuCuy)! …Yes! Mexican!

Si te persinas (cross) with a lotto ticket in your hand before every drawing….You’re in the Mexican Zone!!!

If you ask for something by ‘dame esa chingadera’ instead of calling it by its name…Yup! Mexican!

If you constantly refer to cereal as ‘con fleys’ or cake as ‘kay-ke’…You’re a Mexican.

If you use manteca (lard) instead of vegetable oil and can’t figure out why your butt is getting bigger…….You might be a Mexican.

If you have some Tias that dress up in their prom dresses to go to a birthday party at ‘el parque’… Guess what? You are a Mexican.

If your Tias and Abuela dress up in their Sunday best with heels and all to go to the ‘pulga.’ (AKA the Flea Market) …Then, yes, you are a True Mexican.

If most of the houses on your block are painted bright pink, mint green, and lavender. …Mexican.

If you use the bushes in front of your house, the fence, or the top of an old car to dry laundry…Yes, you’re a Mexican.

If you’re congested and your mamasita rubbed ‘Bicks’ on you…You’re Mexican.

IF YOU DON’T NEED ANY EXPLANATIONS FOR ANY OF THE ABOVE, YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE A TRUE MEXICAN. VIVA LA RAZA!!!

You know you’re laughing your head off. It’s all in fun, so don’t get all ‘adolorido.’

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Obama and Race in America 2

Posted on November 6th, 2008 by Bieren Skidels.
Categories: Race.

I thought I’d follow up on the Gerald Early article because of the number of people out there (many African-American) that are now pronouncing this election as “THE” tipping point in racism in America. I think, here in Denver we have been a bit disconnected from the feelings in particular, in the south and in African American communities, that this election was very much about race. Race, in particular, black isn’t all that big of a deal here - mainly because in the west its not the blacks who are the large minority, its mexicans and that is a very different story. So maybe we didn’t pick up on the magnitude of feelings of African Americans around the country. Remember, the most interesting thing here is that so many truly believe this is the tipping point in racism..:

“And now we know what there was no way to know until now–we needn’t have worried. America really has come that far.” - John McWhorter (The New Republic)

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“But we have never seen anything like this. Nothing could have prepared any of us for the eruption (and, yes, that is the word) of spontaneous celebration that manifested itself in black homes, gathering places and the streets of our communities when Sen. Barack Obama was declared President-elect Obama. From Harlem to Harvard, from Maine to Hawaii—and even Alaska—from “the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire … [to] Stone Mountain of Georgia,” as Dr. King put it, each of us will always remember this moment, as will our children, whom we woke up to watch history being made.” - Henry Louis Gates Jr. (The Root)

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 ”I am watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan in the land of Lincoln on this new day in America. This is the morning after a great divide in the biography of the United States. As a nation, we have come of age.” - Lawrence Tribe (Forbes Magazine)

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 ”I must admit, I cried. I’m not perfectly sure why, but of course I was overjoyed. It is still astonishing that a country with our history of slavery and racism could elect a biracial man who identifies as African-American. This is a proud moment for all of us. I even photographed my ballot in the voting booth, my fingers pushing the X into the Obama-Biden slot.” -  Elizabeth Wurtzel (The WSJ)

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 ”Long after the world forgets the moral and intellectual collapse of the banks, 2008 will be celebrated as the year when America took another major step toward healing the self-inflicted wound of racism that has burdened it for generations.” - Robert Fulford (National Post)

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 ”History was out in the street, invisible but powerful, and it would, you’ll see, improve lives the way it had once ruined them. Change: It can happen.” - Richard Cohen (Washington Post)

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 ”The other day I got an e-mail message saying simply this: Rosa Parks sat in 1955. Martin Luther King walked in 1963. Barack Obama ran in 2008. That our children might fly. Tough days lie ahead. But it’s a moment to dream. Americans have earned that right, along with the renewed respect of the world.” - Roger Cohen (New York Times)

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 ”This presidency in particular should be a source of pride even for those who do not share its priorities. An African American will take the oath of office blocks from where slaves were once housed in pens and sold for profit. He will sleep in a house built in part by slave labor, near the room where Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation with firm hand. He will host dinners where Teddy Roosevelt in 1901 entertained the first African American to be a formal dinner guest in the White House; command a military that was not officially integrated until 1948. Every event, every act, will complete a cycle of history. It will be the most dramatic possible demonstration that the promise of America — so long deferred — is not a lie.” - Michael Gerson

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“There have been many awful mistakes made in this country. But now we have another chance. As we start fresh with a constitutional law professor and senator from the Land of Lincoln, the Lincoln Memorial might be getting its gleam back. I may have to celebrate by going over there and climbing up into Abe’s lap.” - Maureen Dowd

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 ”He cited Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” On Tuesday, 221 years after the adoption of a Constitution that allowed slavery to continue, an African-American won the presidency. In Grant Park, as Barack Obama left the stage, you could see that arc bend.” - John Dickerson (Slate)

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Obama and Race in America?

Posted on November 5th, 2008 by Bieren Skidels.
Categories: Race.

Back in early october I read an article written by Gerald Early, a professor of African-American cultural history at U.Wash of St. Louis. He talked about the first generation of Blacks to attend elite white universities, they are about 15 years older than Obama. He discusses what African-American identity meant and the role it has played since the civil rights movement, in particular its role as the “original sin” of America. The question he poses is, how does this African-American identity, and America’s “original sin” fare in a country with a black president.

“The end of racism would mean that blacks can live their lives as fully as whites can, that any existing racism is residual and has no impact on the quality of black life. Thus the end of racism means the end of the claim of black victimization. But how would we know when we have reached it? What sign would show that we have arrived at, in effect, the end of America’s racial history”

He consider previous african-american success icons and why they were not signs of achieving equality.

“Apparently, for many black leaders, pundits, and scholars, the signs were not the success of Bill Cosby or Oprah Winfrey, not the Nobel Prize of Toni Morrison or the career of Spike Lee, not the crossover achievement of Serena and Venus Williams and Tiger Woods, not the political careers of Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell, not the stardom of Will Smith and Morgan Freeman, not the Ivy League college presidency of Ruth Simmons or the arrival of such black public intellectuals as Henry Louis Gates Jr., Michael Eric Dyson, Orlando Patterson, and Cornel West.”

He then moves to discuss what Obama could mean in the narrative of victimization:

“Might the presidency of Barack Obama be the tipping point? Blacks may become famous authors, film directors, diplomats, CEO’s, fashion models, entertainers, and physicists. But the presidency of the country, the most powerful person in the world, is the ultimate — to have authority that all whites, everyone in the world, would be bound to respect. What could mean more to a people who have endured a history of powerlessness? Black people were convinced that no black would become president of the United States during the lifetime of the baby-boom generation, not in the lifetime of any African-American adult currently living. That may change in a matter of weeks. My mother, who is 79 years old, summed it up: “I never thought I would live to see the day when I could vote for a black man for president and he actually has a chance to win.” My mother says this as if that fact signifies the end of America’s racial history, or at least the end of race as we once knew it.”

He ends with an interesting idea of what this new president might mean for America’s story:

“The black narrative of victimization may have outlived its historical need and its psychological urgency, but it still may have a kind of cultural work to do as a tale of redemption and an example of salvation history. If we are the shining city on a hill, part of that city must be the quarters of bondage, the world the slaves made, and America’s true greatness might be that it is the only nation that symbolizes itself in this way, the grand city as the uplift of all people, even those it has enslaved. In the tale of heroism in adversity, perhaps best exemplified in spirituals, black-American Christianity, and the secular humanism of the blues, the narrative of victimization reminds all Americans of the need, from time to time, to lift every voice and sing in tribute to who we are, however inadequate, and to what we hope we can be when we arrive at that day when, as Martin Luther King Jr. prophesied in his vision of America as a beloved community, politics becomes an expression of love.”

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What ever happened to the Feminists?

Posted on September 8th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Ethics, Party System, Media, Republicans, Race.

Man! We put up a woman for our veep and then the “Feminists” then start getting vicious! What is this? Here’s CBS reporting on the National Enquirer:

John McCain’s campaign threatened legal action against the National Enquirer today for running a story about McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, allegedly having an affair with her husband’s business partner.

“The smearing of the Palin family must end. The allegations contained on the cover of the National Enquirer insinuating that Gov. Palin had an extramarital affair are categorically false. It is a vicious lie,” said McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt.

“The efforts of the media and tabloids to destroy this fine and accomplished public servant are a disgrace. The American people will reject it.”

What is that? They start making false charges of affairs to try to smear this woman! With Edwards they waited to catch him in the apartment with the woman he had an affair with before they published anything. But not with Sarah! No they push in with the charge regardless of the fact that they don’t have any proof. Why is that? Now I am one who thinks that we should not care about the personal lives of public officials but rather on the merit of what they are saying. That goes for both sides as well, if they start bringing up some affair of Obama’s I would also criticize it as well. But sill, why do they have to wait for proof for Edwards but when it comes to Sarah they can just go ahead with the article? But that’s not the only thing, the LA Times is also on the charge path:

Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women — and to many men too — who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the “white-male-only” sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

Man they really hate us.

But here is even better news: It won’t work. This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.

She’s more qualified then the guy your putting up! It’s funny that they’ll go down that route. There just going to end up killing their own candidacy by bringing that up.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”

I didn’t hear Rush touting her all summer! What are they talking about? They don’t know anything about conservatives. And what does it matter that there were twice as many male to female delegates? Is that even true? and if it is, was your convention different?

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can’t do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn’t say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden’s 37 years’ experience.

What did Biden do in all thous years again? What sort of bills does he have his name on? 37 years is meaningless if you didn’t do anything.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn’t know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, “I still can’t answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?” When asked about Iraq, she said, “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.”

She’s the veep candidate not the presidential candidate! She’s not going to be making thous calls McCain is.

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she’s won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain’s campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn’t know it’s about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate’s views on “God, guns and gays” ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

Getting elected because a incumbent was unpopular is a lot better than getting someone thrown off the ballot like Obama did for his state senate seat. It’s also better than Obama getting his senate seat because of Jack Ryan’s exposed divorce papers.

So let’s be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can’t tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

She’s a Governor! She has far better idea than Obama!

Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

She’s a traitor to womanhood! Man some times you just have to laugh.

I don’t doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn’t just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn’t just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn’t just echo McCain’s pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

That’s right! She goes out there herself and shoots the poor little animal! Also I don’t think they know that overturning Roe vs. Wade will not criminalize abortion but all each state decide for itself. I am one that will allow for abortion in the cases of rape and incest but I also strongly encourage that they still have the child just like Sarah does. But abortion protects the right to have a child? What kind of screwed up thinking is that? Abortion only gives you the right to end someones life before it is born and in no way would it keep the state form taking your children from you.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, “women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,” so he may be voting for Palin’s husband.

Yes, that’s it! All of us conservatives are sexist bastards! We’re only voting for her husband and not for her! That makes plunty of sense.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can’t appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

You wanta bet!

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.

Oh! so Obama and Biden are more of a woman than Sarah Palin! In situations like this you could ether laugh or cry. So I choose to laugh because that’s a lot more fun. But you don’t attack something that your not afraid of and it is quite clear that they shaking in fear of Sarah here! They know that she will appeal to Americans so they are pulling out every little thing to try to smear her. It’s not working though because they don’t understand any of us conservatives. They live in their little insulated world were they never meet a conservitive and sit down to talk with them. I on the other hand have many liberals I am around on a daily basis and they are my greatest friends! The media tries scare us conservatives from Sarah by saying “Oh! Her unmarried 17 year old daughter is pregnant!” But in our eyes, her daughter is doing the very thing that we want to see much more of! Her daughter is going to have the child and marry the man who got her pregnant. Do they know that I (a good example of the people their trying to scare away from Sarah) have dated a girl that already had two kids? I knew that that relationship wouldn’t work but it had nothing to do with the kids and I also still have her as a friend and I do look forward to helping her raise her children. And I take this issue very seriously, so much so that I have stayed a virgin despite the fact that I have had clear opportunities. I am saveing that for who ever my wife will be. They don’t understand anything about us conservatives. If you are a conservitive that automatically means that you are a sexist, raciest, Bigot, Homophope in their minds (hence Darth B’strad, I like to play into they’re narrative with my name but then say the opposite). So then when you get a Clarence Thomas (a black conservitive), he’s then branded as an uncle Tom. And when you get a Sarah Palin, she gets branded as a traitor to the cause of womanhood. But why should it be that way? Shouldn’t our cause be making life better here for all Americans? Do they ever go over the fact that men in this country have a far higher suicide rate then women. But if it was the reverse I am sure that we would never hear the end of it. Isn’t Sarah the very thing that these “Feminists” want to create? A strong woman with a husband following behind her and supporting her. But no! Because for the “Feminists” it’s not about advancing the rights of women, it’s about imposing their ideology. And any woman that disagrees them and tries to take office must be destroyed. It’s said to see this happen but I have to say that I am not surprised by it. The media feels no shame in doing it, they just know how to tear down but not to build up. But it’s not going to work! The more that they get vicious at Sarah, the more that Americans will turn them off and stop reading what they have to say. So bring it on Leftist of the media! Let’s see what new low that you can descend to!

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Racism in a test tube!

Posted on June 11th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Ethics, Abortion, Crime, War, Law, Philosophy, education, Race.

Actually Bieren and I had just talked about this article the other day and I just so happened to stumble on it today. Henry Louis Gates Jr. had himself an interview with James Watson who is the father of our understanding of DNA. Here’s what he wrote up at the Root:

James Watson has long assumed a certain special status among American scientists. The molecular biologist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962, along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, for, as the Swedish Academy put it in its announcement for the prize, “their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.” Watson and his British colleague Crick are remembered popularly for identifying the elegant and unexpected “double helix” three-dimensional structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, commonly known as DNA. Watson’s important contribution to this uncanny discovery was to define how the four nucleotide bases that make up DNA—guanine (G), cytosine (C), adenine (A) and thymine (T)—combine in pairs to form its structure. These base pairs turn out to be the key to both the structure of DNA and its various functions. In other words, Watson identified the language and the code by which we understand and talk about our genetic makeup.I have been among those who have long held Watson in high regard for several reasons. First of all, the discovery of DNA’s three-dimensional structure was counterintuitive; it was an ingenious act of deduction, using models made of cardboard and paste with an exacto knife and a straight edge. How Watson and Crick, working at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, became the first scientists to identify this elusive structure is the stuff of drama, especially when we recall that Watson was just 25 years old when he and Crick published their findings in the journal Nature on April 25, 1953.

Though Watson would tell me during our recent interview that he had a rather low IQ, as proof that IQ tests aren’t really that important, he enrolled at the University of Chicago when he was merely 15 and earned his B.S. in zoology there in 1947 at the age of 19 and a Ph.D. in zoology from Indiana University at age 22. He was 34 when he won the Nobel Prize. Not too shabby for a guy with a “low” IQ.

Watson’s youth and a certain absent-minded professorial quirkiness made him an American hero, the symbol of American enterprise and intelligence. What’s more, unlike Crick, or Einstein, say, Watson was an American born and bred: His discovery, coming at the height of the Cold War, would be hailed as attesting to American genius and the unrivaled potential of the free market system versus communism. The intrigue over allegations that Watson and Crick made unauthorized use of the seminal work on X-ray diffraction by Rosalind Franklin, a brilliant scientist who died before the Nobel Prize committee made its decision, only made Watson’s story all the more titillating.

And Watson—never camera shy or publicity averse—contributed to the power of his own myth first by writing “Molecular Biology of the Gene,” a 1965 textbook that, updated, remains enormously popular today, and, three years later, “The Double Helix,” an account of the dramatic story of his discovery that also contained startling and scandalous revelations of petty tensions, jealousies and rivalries among scientists whom we all had assumed were motivated primarily by the pursuit of truth. Watson’s book did nothing less than deconstruct the myth of the scientist as secular saint, laboring away in a laboratory for knowledge’s sake at the service of mankind. (One scientist summed up Watson’s view of the scientific profession as “with malice toward most and charity toward none.”) But Watson’s account also made his quest to determine the structure of DNA gripping and exciting, one of science’s greatest and most compelling triumphs. Though he was a professor at Harvard University at the time—he taught there from 1956 to 1976—the Harvard University Press refused to publish the book because of its tell-all nature. A commercial press published it instead, it became a best-seller and Watson’s celebrity only grew.

sounds like an interesting guy that that I would like to have a beer with. However he just sank his reputation with one interview:

On Oct. 14, 2007, one of Watson’s former assistants, Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, wrote an article about him in London’s Sunday Times that quoted him making racist comments about black people by suggesting there are inherent, unalterable biological differences in intelligence between black people and everyone else. The response was swift and impressively devastating. The father of DNA had spoken the unspeakable. Echoing racist remarks that have been used to justify the enslavement and colonization of black people since the Enlightenment (think Hume, Kant, Jefferson, Hegel), Watson’s comments implied that he believed that nature had created a primal distinction in intelligence and innate mental capacity between blacks and whites, which no amount of social intervention could ever change.

He had uttered the unutterable, the most ardent fantasy of white racists (David Duke would wax poetic on his Web site that the truth had at last been revealed, and by no less than the discoverer of the structure of DNA). His words caused a ripple effect of shock, dismay and disgust among those of us who embrace the range of biological diversity and potential within the human community. It was as if one of the smartest white men in the world had confirmed what so many racists believe already: that the gap between blacks and whites in, say, IQ test scores and SAT results has a biological basis and that environmental factors such as centuries of slavery, colonization, Jim Crow segregation and race-based discrimination—all contributing to uneven economic development—don’t amount to a hill of beans. Nature has given us an extra basketball gene, as it were, in lieu of native intelligence.

Watson is no stranger to controversy. Since the heated critical reception to the publication of “The Double Helix” 40 years ago, he has seemed to delight in making, with some regularity, outrageously provocative comments, comments designed at best to disturb the status quo, to shock if not awe both his fellow scientists and the general public. His autobiography, “Avoid Boring People,” published in September 2007, lambastes his fellow scientists as “dinosaurs,” “deadbeats” and “has-beens.” By the time the London Sunday Times article appeared, Watson had been engaged in several controversies over genetic screening, genetic engineering, homosexuality, obesity and the purported relation between skin color and libido.

But none of those controversies could begin to prepare him for the intensity of the firestorm ignited by the Sunday Times article, which quoted him as saying that “he was inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa,” since “all of our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really”; that “people who have to deal with black employees find that [the belief that everyone is equal] is not true”; and that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.” Five days after the article was published, he profusely apologized in a statement to the press; on Oct. 25, he abruptly retired from his position at Cold Spring Harbor, after 40 years of service there.

That’ll kill the career of anyone and is clearly a very stupid thing to say. However, Gates decided to go interview Watson to see if he can get some clarity on what Watson thinks (and Gates is black). I certainly that is a big thing of Gates to do and I only have praise to give him for doing it.

I thought of that slightly awkward dinner conversation and his gracious gift as I arrived at his offices at Cold Spring Harbor on March 17 for our interview. We talked for well over an hour, with no holds barred.

“Well?” one of my friends asked later. “Is he a racist?”

I don’t think James Watson is a racist. But I do think that he is a racialist—that is, he believes that certain observable traits or forms of behavior among groups of human beings might, indeed, have a biological basis in the code that scientists, eventually, may be able to ascertain, that the “gene” is some mythically neutral space and what it purportedly “measures” or “determines” is independent of environmental factors, variables and influences. The difference, the distinction, between being a racist and a racialist is crucial. James Watson is not the garden-variety racist as he has been caricatured by the press and bloggers, the sort epitomized by David Duke and his ilk, and he seemed genuinely chagrined, embarrassed and remorseful that Duke and other racists had claimed him as their champion, as one of their own, because of his remarks as quoted in the London Sunday Times. And, as we might expect, he apologized profusely for those remarks, contending that he had been misquoted, at worst, and his remarks taken out of context, at best. (I have not been able to determine if the writer who reported the remarks taped them or reconstructed them from notes or memory.)

But I did leave Cold Spring Harbor convinced that Dr. Watson believes that many forms of behavior—such as “Jewish intelligence” (his phrase) and the basketball prowess of black men in the NBA (his example)—could, possibly, be traced to genetic differences among human beings, although no such connection has been made, and will probably never be made on any firm scientific basis, it seems to me. And I have to say that it was ultimately chilling to me when he remarked, with what seemed to me to be monumental naivete, that “if they find genes for all kinds of Jewish intelligence, I don’t think it’s going to affect me in the slightest,” especially when we couple that sort of remark with his passionate belief that “everyone should be judged as individuals. No one should be judged by a term like ‘black.’”

And that’s a belief that I firmly reject. I think that the social behaver of groups has much more do with the victimhood mentality that anything that genes has to do with it. Here’s my post on victimhood but now back to the article:

Yet precisely because of the misuses of science and pseudoscience since the 18th century, which put into place fixed categories of four or five “races” to justify an economic order dependent upon the exploitation of blacks (and other people of color) as cheap sources of labor, starting with slavery and continuing through Jim Crow and beyond, it has never been possible for a person of African descent to function in American society simply and purely as an “individual.” And if the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama has taught him, and us, anything at all, it is that this perhaps ideal state of affairs—to function as an individual and to be judged on your individual merits—still remains a most elusive and somewhat naïve dream.

Watson’s error is that he associates individual genetic differences (which, of course, do in fact exist) with ethnic variation (which is sociocultural and highly malleable). Character traits—abilities and behaviors, such as intelligence or basketball skills, that are popularly attributed to groups and are defined as “genetic”—will, in fact, continue to delimit the freedom of choice and expression of individuals who fall into those “racial” categories, regardless of our individual attainments and achievements. In the end, visions that are racialist may end up doing the same work of those that are racist. This is a lesson Watson has lived, and it is one from which we all might learn.

And that’s right on point with what I think.

Having spent the past three decades studying racist discourse in the West (starting with my Ph.D. dissertation on the Enlightenment), I know that such conclusions—say, about an entity called “Jewish intelligence”—would deleteriously affect me as a black person because it would reinforce stereotypes about Jewish people being genetically superior to us, and that such a conclusion would reinforce stereotypes about black people being inherently less intelligent than other members of the human community. If such differences in intelligence were purported to have a genetic basis, as David Duke proclaimed on his Web site with such naked glee, all of the social intervention in the world could have only so much effect. (Head Start? Why bother, when nature is to blame.) Sooner or later, in a time of increasing economic scarcity, members of these supposedly “different” or “lesser” ethnic groups or genetic populations could very well find their life possibilities limited and perhaps even regulated. Who among us can doubt that this would be true?

Likewise, I worry even more that Dr. Watson confessed to me that “we shouldn’t expect that different persons have equal intelligence, because we don’t know that. And people say that these should be the same [that is, that all human beings, that all members of different “racial” groups, should have the same basic range and potential for development of intelligence genetically]. I think the answer is we don’t know.” And later, he remarked in passing that “we’re not all the same,” by which he meant genetically. Rest assured that in the very near future, some scientist somewhere will claim to have proven this through our genes, and that claim will be deeply problematic for the future development of black people in American society.

I actually don’t put much stock in IQ test. I think you are as smart as your driven to be and also remember that wisdom is different from knowledge and in this society we really lack wisdom. I wish I had a heck of a lot more wisdom but you can also learn to be wise.

As I drove away from Cold Spring Harbor, I realized that my conversation with Dr. Watson only confirmed something I already, with great trepidation, have come to believe: That the last great battle over racism will be fought not over access to a lunch counter, or a hotel room, or to the right to vote, or even the right to occupy the White House; it will be fought in a laboratory, in a test tube, under a microscope, in our genome, on the battleground of our DNA. It is here where we, as a society, will rank and interpret our genetic difference.

And he very well may be right here. This whole conversation is filled with land mines but I will try here to get some clarity on this subject. As I had explained in a prevous post of mine, I believe that there are only two races! NO! Not black and white but rather the decent and the indecent. Also that’s where my post on victimhood that I sited earlier comes in because victimhood is the dominant trait of the indecent while the dominant trait of the decent is self control. In my post on victimhood I am reviewing an article by Dennis Prager and in that article he is talking about the reasons that people do evil. Number two on that list just so happens to be genes:

2. Genes. The contemporary term for devil is “genes.” Just as with the devil, when we observe a person engaging in evil behavior for which we have no rational explanation, we speak of it as coming from the person’s genes.

And here was my response to that idea:

I don’t believe in an evil gene. There are too many examples of evil parents having wonderful kids and vice versa. I think that one is a stretch.

Now, after reading this article it seems that Dr. Watson does believe in genes being the reason that people do evil and I think that this is a dangerous line of thought. As Gates had said in his article this is something that takes away from the American value of freedom and I say that it enforces a sense of victimhood. It says to people they can’t get ahead because of their race and this is the same line of thinking that fed the racism early on in our county’s history. We have to be careful in how we conduct our research here so as to not fall back into the same trap of the past. This sort of thing can lead to a reemergence of lie of the right, that race determines behavior. That’s not true! It’s values that determines behavior and not anything else that you could possibly label any one in a group of people. That leads me back to my post on racism because in that I talked about the defining traits of the decent (being self control) and the indecent (being victimhood). That’s a concept that Viktor Emil Frankl had came up with with his experience in the holocaust and he wrote about in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. I really don’t care all that much about IQ and oddly enough Dr.Watson himself is the proof that it doesn’t matter. With the fact that he has a “low IQ,” he was still able to make a big discovery despite that and forever land his name in the history books. Not bad for a guy who has “low IQ.” His conversation with gates and clarification makes it so that I can’t list him in the race of the indecent but his remarks does give ammunition to them and makes this world just a little bit more dangerous. Now the question is: will we be seduced by this kind of science so that we will go back to the old racial hatreds or continue to not care about race? But even if he is right that still means that we shouldn’t be raciest but to work even harder to mix them. Children of mixed racial backgrounds tend to do very well in our society (and I know from experince). Start combining the “athletic ability” of blacks with the “intellect” of whites and you’ll get better more well rounded people but I still think it’s all BS. Gates my be right that this battle will be fought in a test tube but I think we can fight it in better way: by teaching Americans the good values left to us by our forefathers and pushing people to be better than they are! That’s what the decent do, they fight the battle within them selfs to make them self better and thus they slowly (one battle at a time) make society better.

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Victimhood

Posted on September 5th, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Ethics, Philosophy, Race.

In His latest article Dennis Prager discusses why people do evil. in that article he comes up with the nine most predominate reasons why people do evil then he adds a tenth one that he think is the most effective reason. You can find this article at Townhall.com:

1. The Devil (or whatever name the devil goes by in any given culture). I do not believe in a devil, but when one observes the seemingly inexplicable cruelty engaged in by some people, it is understandable that people have attributed it to some evil being that has taken over that person.

As a Christan I actually do believe in the devil. I attribute the devil to the bible that says:

1 Peter 5:8-9 (New Living Translation)
8 Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. 9 Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your Christian brothers and sisters all over the world are going through the same kind of suffering you are.

Ephesians 6:12 (New Living Translation)
12 For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

Now when I comes to possession, I do think that such things do occur but such instances are very rare and more likely that Hollywood depicts it in movies more that it actually occurs. The devil usually works in the realm of temptation rater than actual possession and usually to commit sins rater than evils. However there certainly is a demonic element to evil but we still have choice.

2. Genes. The contemporary term for devil is “genes.” Just as with the devil, when we observe a person engaging in evil behavior for which we have no rational explanation, we speak of it as coming from the person’s genes.

I don’t believe in an evil gene. There are too many examples of evil parents having wonderful kids and vice versa. I think that one is a stretch.

3. Parents. After genes, parents have become another popular explanation for much evil. “How was he raised?” we wonder when we read about evildoers, especially those who deliberately hurt children. There is no question that parental upbringing has both good and ill effects on children. But there are too many bad people raised in homes that did not abuse them, and too many good people who were raised in awful homes to allow us to make parents the primary explanation for evil.

ditto!

4. Religion. Religion is a popular culprit these days. And it is undeniable that religion can be a source of evil — it certainly is in the case of the true believing Islamic terrorist. And it was in the wars over theology that racked Europe for centuries. But two facts mitigate against regarding religion as the primary explanation for evil. One is that religion itself was often developed precisely in order to reduce human evil. Whatever evil individual Christians may have ever engaged in, it is hard to find advocacy of evil within Christian Scriptures. The other is that secular ideologies and regimes — Nazism and Communism, for example — have murdered and tortured far more people than any religion has.

This is a good reason and certainly has a lot of merit to it. People who misinterpret religions can be prone to commit evil. But the evil committed by religion is vastly outweighed by the evil committed by secularism. However the evil we face today is a religious based one and we always need to look for that.

5. Money. Money and greed are so widely regarded as causes of evil that the phrase “Money is the root of all evil” has become a cliche. And there is no doubt that people seeking what money can buy — luxury, status, women and excitement, to name but a few things — have engaged in much evil. But flawed human nature and a lack of self-control, not money per se, are the causes of evil in these instances.

This is more for the individual motivation to commit evil rater than a societal reason to commit evil. You find this one being the reason for someone robbing the gas station and murdering the attendant.

6. Power. Like money, many who seek power will do anything, no matter how evil, to attain power. However, it is a relatively small number of people that seeks such power and commits evil in its pursuit.

It was a reason for Hitler but I doubt that this was the only reason he committed such evil. If power was the only reason then why was it necessary to murder Jews?

7. Pursuit of the good. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. One should never underestimate the amount of evil caused by people thinking they were doing good. Far more evil has been perpetrated by idealistic people than by cynical criminals.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions! This is very true but I still think that this is just an added reason and not the primary one.

8. Sadism. There are people who simply enjoy seeing others in pain and inflicting it on them. But sadism accounts for few, if any, large-scale evils. It accounts for many individual acts of cruelty.

There may have been a sadist element to Hitler.

9. Boredom. Boredom is widely underrated as a source of evil. Yet, it most certainly is. Lack of purpose, not a lack of things to do, is the source of nearly all boredom. People need meaning in their lives. And if they don’t, they will pursue visceral excitement instead of meaning or seek meaning in evil causes.

The lack of purpose is also a contributing factor. But there is still one more that I think is the primary reason to why evil is committed.

10. Victimhood. A lifelong study of good and evil has led to me conclude that the greatest single cause of evil is people perceiving of themselves or their group as victims. Nazism arose from Germans’ sense of victimhood — as a result of the Versailles Treaty, of the “stab in the back” that led to Germany’s loss in World War I and of a world Jewish conspiracy. Communism was predicated on workers regarding themselves as victims of the bourgeoisie. Much of Islamic evil today emanates from a belief that the Muslim world has been victimized by Christians and Jews. Many prisoners, including those imprisoned for horrible crimes, regard themselves as victims of society or of their upbringing. The list of those attributing their evil acts to their being victims is as long as the list of evildoers.

This is also true in the micro realm. Family members whose primary identity is that of victim usually feel entirely free to hurt others in the family. That is why psychotherapists who regularly reinforce the victim status of their patients do the patient and society great harm.

If my belief is even partially correct, the preoccupation of much of America with telling whole groups that they are victims — of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and classism, among other American sins — can only increase cruelty and evil in America.

This is a theme that I have been working to develop in my posts recently so I appreciate Dennis Prager for writing this article. I think that the primary reason for people to commit evil is because of a sense of victimhood. You can add to the list the Los Angles riots in the 90’s when blacks saw them selfs as victims to whites and thus giveing them the right to riot, steal and murder. The problem is that our society today is far more interested in creating victims rater than having people take responsibility for their actions. This is all due to help gain political power in our government. “Vote for me and I’ll get thous rich bastards!” “Vote for me and I’ll get even with thous people!” But yet they really can’t do what they promise. There all empty promises that are not followed up on. So now you have people with a victim stats focusing on others to solve their problems when they are fully capable of solving their problems them selfs. Another damaging effect is it hurts the possibility of you becoming happy. Constantly placing your blame on others makes you incapable of facing up to your problems and working to solve them so that you can become a happy person. Then it also gives you reasons to commit evil because now you have the right to get back at the person that has caused all of your problems. This victimhood status has caused much harm to our society and has caused much suffering. So what is the answer. Sorry to say but it is self control. In our society people do not like to hear that they are the cause of their suffering but in the vast majority of cases this is true. Now don’t get me wrong their are people that have been victimized in terrible ways. However it is still their choice to face up to it or to let it control them. It’s a hard thing to do but if you can stop seeing yourself as a victim then you have a real chance at happiness.

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Racism

Posted on August 8th, 2007 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Ethics, Race.

One of the most common things that the left accuses the right of being are Raciest, sexist, Bigots and Homo phoebes (hence Darth B’Strad). So since that is what the left continually calls us on the right then I will go ahead and “come out of the closet” and admit it. Yes, I am a Raciest as you always keep on saying that I am. However I believe that there are only two races. Anyone what to take a guess on what those two races are….

If you Thought Black and White then you are completely wrong. I am a completely different kind of raciest because I could care less about what the color of your skin is! It dose not matter to me! So what are the two races that I am referring to? Viktor Emil Frankl was a Holocaust who wrote about his experience there in his book Man’s Search for Meaning and when asked if he hated the Germans he answered there are only two races the decent and the indecent. While the nation of Germany was guilty of the Holocaust he understood that there were still decent Germans out there that did not support what Hitler was doing to the Jews. One example was my grandfather who was half German and during World War II he trained pilots to fight the oppression of the Nazis and did his small part in helping free the Jews from the concentration camps. It is important for us to determine if people are members of the race of the decent or members of the race of the indecent.

So how do we determine this? Well it’s not an easy task because there are many factors that are completely irrelevant to what race that you are a member of. The color of you skin, the color of your eyes, the color of your hair are completely and utterly irrelevant to the question of what race you are a member of. Thous that believe in the lie of the right would look at these things to determine if you are decent or indecent but they are wrong in doing this. Like the old saying “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover” well you also can not judge a person the same way. However there are still more factors that thous that believe in the lie of the left will look at to judge people. How much money you make in a year is also completely and utterly irrelevant to what race you are a member of. What your IQ is, what career you are in, what political party you belong to, and where you live are also completely and utterly irrelevant to what race you are a member of. So what is the one factor that determine what race you are a member of? The truth is values determine if you are a member of the race of the decent or the race of the indecent. What a person values most is what determines what race you are a member of. There are many that I could go through to explain this but there are really two different values that are the most striking when it comes to the different races and serve at the center piece values for each of them: victimhood and self control.

The biggest value for the race of the indecent is this sense of victimhood. For example the Germans back in 1933 felt that they were victims of the Jews because the Jews were successful and owned banks. So Hitler laid all the blame on the Jews and promised that if he were elected he would fix that problem and only the decent complained when the Jews were kidnapped and sent to concentration camps in the following years. You can also see this in communism when they saw them selfs as victims to the “imperialists” or capitalists that were making money. So that gave them the right to take the wealth of the rich and give it to who they sought fit. You can also see this in the Los Angles riots when African Americans saw them selfs as victims to the whites and thus gave them the right to riot and kill and ransack shops so they can steal from the innocent. Simply put a sense of victimhood is the center piece value for the indecent and therefore gives them a sense that they can commit evil because they are the victims of whatever group that is oppressing them. Thous with the value of victimhood are on a destructive path that will only lead to more pain and misery for them selfs and thous around them. This is a value that we must work the put to rest and should not start seeing our selfs as victims.

However on the other hand there is the central value to the decent that is self control. No one likes this value but it is essential to being a member of the race of the decent. This is a biblically based value for me but you do not have to be religious in order to hold this value. This value simply states that my biggest battle in my life is me! I am proud to say that I am not a victim but that the things that go wrong in my life are largely a function of my choices. Everything has a price to it and there are consequences to every choice that I make. Self control means battling the worst parts of my nature and confronting them so that I can make better decisions in my life. It’s a hard thing to do but if you just start to look at your self to identify your problems then that is half the battle. In order to help you do this I suggest you read Dennis Prager’s book Happiness is a serious problem and maybe he might help you gain a certain degree of self control. And remember that life is hard for everyone.

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