Awesome clarity. I see I have another brother in the devotion to the brilliance and deeply humanistic insight of Dr. Sheena Mason. You are building on her work and extending the conversation to help us all grapple with the current wave of DEI ensconced in the D'Angelo/Kendi ideology. Thank you for writing this so well and thank you FBT for publishing.
Mar 15, 2023·edited Mar 25, 2023Liked by Free Black Thought
Can we dare to agree if we’re “white” (as he appears to be)? And if we agree with anyone, white, black, or other, who says we’re not allowed to weigh in on the question of “race-lining” because we’re “white,” are we exercising race-lining too?
In terms of what makes us human the color of our skin is no more relevant than the color of our hair or eyes. What is fundamental to all humans is the capacity to reason. Having the capacity does not guarantee that individuals will use it, but if they did the problem of 'race' would disappear.
The problem with your argument is you lay blame on the victims of racial ideation for the persuasion of a shitstem they have NO CHOICE but function within, if they remain part of the shitstem.
For instance, I had taught my son from toddler days that his race is human. You know who beat that out of him? The school system. He had to choose a “race” as defined by the shitstem, i.e. by White Power. And “human” was not an option.
And from that forced identification comes all the “racelining” you suggest exists. Why? @Because if I’m FORCED into a racialized slot against my will, then I’m damn sure gonna set standards of my own, to give me SOME modicum of say within the prison to which I’ve been confined.”
The other choice, & choice I follow, is to withdraw from the shitstem and have as little reason as possible to ever declare a “race” that conforms to the standards established by white power.
1. You should look deeply into the Friston “Free Energy Principle” and Autopoesis, both of which touch on some ideas you reference - like “uncertainty avoidance”. Self-perpetuating systems depend on identifying uncertainty (Friston “Surprise”) and expending energy to maintain homeostasis, a kind of “temperature”, or predictability. The most effective systems at minimizing surprise (the average of “surprise” over time is “disorder” or entropy) are the most energy-efficient and durable. The mathematics behind it, statistical thermodynamics, are rigorous and amazing. It gives the actual ability to quantify the outrageous cost, for instance, of maintaining a nonsensical state of racism in a society, through the same mathematics that drives quantum gravity. Love to chat sometime.
2. I think I was 6 or 7 when my parents tried to explain racism to me. I remember it in high detail as why calling an adult man “boy” was inappropriate in any situation (it involved a strange tense moment I didn’t understand in a TV show with Flip Wilson) and particularly if they were of African ancestry. That was 50 years ago when I grasped that race wasn’t real in the same way that “Santa Claus” was a fiction. I decided people who believed in it were deluded. I subsequently learned the history of racist pseudoscience along with “physiognomy” and “phrenology” - attempting to assign human behavioral traits based on observed superficial physical features or “phenotypes”. I’m completely in alignment with Dr. Sheena Mason.
3. About the same time as this I realized that many people had supernaturalist beliefs - gods, ghosts, and superstitions - which I also found to be a deluded way of explaining the universe. At the same I decided I was not atheist, or agnostic, but rather “anti-supernaturalist”, and tried to learn ways of coping with people who were.
4. Being an unusually bright child who was also astonishingly argumentative and arrogant (I call it my inner Sheldon), I made sure to tell anyone within earshot that racism was a pseudoscience; that belief in supernatural entities and forces was hokum, and anyone who believed in either was not very smart. Being a gay child in the Deep South, the Buckle of the Bible Belt, the general effect of all this this did not go well over time with the general public within earshot.
5. Today, our culture keeps dishing it out - from things like the mathematically dubious pseudo-science of “intersectionality” to the radically corrupt supernaturality of “trans” and “gender” sex fetishism imposed on children, my only hope is that over time more and more people adopt the stance that when something becomes a cult that seeks to impose a cult will on a group of people, that we run from it as fast as possible.
I am going to be a jerk, and possibly an asshole, and jerk this in a slightly different direction.
I searched this essay for 'science', 'technology' and 'economics'. The only result was a couple of occurrences of 'socio-economics'. The current state of the world is the result of Europeans developing some "useful" technologies before anyone else. For more than 300 years Europeans had the oceans to themselves and only had to compete with other Europeans. I think this went to their heads and many, if not most, chose to believe their own delusions. One white man with some real brains figures out something great and a thousand white morons jump up and shout, "See how intelligent WE are." Of course any idiot can shoot a machine gun.
See, I told you I might be an asshole.
My perspective of reality is unquestionably an effect of my starting to read science fiction in 4th grade. The other kids in The Projects called me "Goofus". Some nun told me, "You will get into a good high school but you won't do well." She was mad because I refused to be a patrol boy. If I had to fight with the stupid bitch then that was what was going to happen but she didn't push it that far. Maybe she was correct if seen in a certain light. I got straight D's in religion my freshman year to go along with my straight A's in mathematics. That science fiction influence again.
I decided that I was an agnostic in 7th grade and stopped going to the Catholic church right after grade school graduation. The concepts of atheism and agnosticism were in a number of SF books. A certain percentage of white people consider a rather large percentage of white people to be dummies. They also know that they are outnumbered. Two short stories to check:
The first story is from the 1950s and a lot like the movie Idiocracy. Heinlein was more subtle with a colony on the Moon. It even turned up later with NASA. Every one of the Mercury astronauts had an IQ score of at least 130. Sending people into space will be very expensive for a long time to come. Mistakes could get people killed and destroy a lot of equipment that cost a lot just to get into space. Governments and corporations are not going to send people up who are less than very smart. So a Moon colony will be filled with only those people.
So why have I gone on for what has already been to long? I just came back from a break in fact.
The Laws of Physics do not give a damn about Black people!
The Laws of Physics do not give a damn about
White people!
They do not give a damn about the Human Race!
We could all go the way of the dinosaurs and they would be incapable of noticing.
But there is cobalt in the Congo. I just learned recently that there is more cobalt in Africa than in the rest of the world. That brings us back to socio-economics and technology. I do not know how much cobalt is in this Samsung smartphone that I am typing on right now. Was it dug by Black children who will never get to own anything like it? What has Oprah Winfrey said about it? LOL
I swear these smartphones are science fiction.
Beam me up Scotty. There is no intelligent life down here.
I think pretending race does not exist is like pretending that I cannot tell the difference between a Dalmatian, a Collie and a German Shepherd. I do consider some dogs to be better looking than other dogs. I'm a dog racist. So sue me!
But our global socio-economic power games are wrapped up with technology. The sociologogists, psychologists and literary intellectuals are not going to psychologize this away. Notice that economists do not talk about planned obsolescence of the technology or the depreciation thereof.
When Black People get their act together with technology and economics there can be some progress.
By the way, you white guys going into debt for junk designed to become obsolete is nothing but consumer slavery to me. Try finding an economist who can tell you the annual depreciation of automobiles since Sputnik.
Just encountered this 3/30/23:
A HISTORY OF COMMERCE
BY CLIVE DAY, Ph.D.
KNOX PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN YALE UNIVERSITY 1925
Nothing less than expected, until we recognize the damage this illusory categorization of race has caused humanity, we will keep repeating the mistakes. This is a first step towards abolish race. Well done Steve
This comment is addressing this essay and the prior essay recently published by FBT by Tabia Lee that discussed the theory of racelessness that this essay references.
I appreciate the desire to challenge the dominant race ideology that currently asserts authoritarian control over many of our institutions, and I think it would be fruitful to introduce people to various race ideologies that exist. According to the classification of ideologies that is discussed I am somewhere between a “race naturalist” and a “race constructionist.” I think exposing students and teachers to race elimitivism would be a good thing though even if I don’t think it is the most accurate way we can understand race and racism.
Personally I think that race can quite comfortably and rationally be viewed as a a biological phenomenon while also accepting that the folk categories of race, such as black, white, asian, etc, are “social constructions” -- basically erroneous and arbitrary abstractions that only vaguely adhere to what would be rationally valid and they have served to delineate the boundaries of various socially constructed tribes of people.
I find it not at all complicated to conceive of the fact that people have biological lineages wider than our family lineages, and at a certain width of those lineages, when it gets quite vast, that is understandably called a “race.” At the most vast point is the human “race.” Where any “race” begins and ends though is somewhat arbitrary, but there may be more sensible points of division than others, such as points of greater or lesser random inter geographical mating. Since we have such biological lineages, regardless of what they mean about any individuals within those lineages, race exists. To say that race doesn’t exist is not compelling to me given the fact that such an empirically sound concept of race, at least somewhat analogous in contour, can be found all the way back to the ancient Greeks and around the globe historically and anthropologically. To say race doesn’t exist requires an unjustified amount of linguistic and conceptual contortion.
As for the idea of racism, from its earliest usages it has referred to the categorization of races and value judgements toward a race or people perceived to be part of a race, and as it has developed through history, has to my knowledge had a negative connotation. Regardless of what racism may be, it is immoral. The connotation of it as being immoral is now lodged into the conscience of most people I suspect and it isnt going to budge. Nor do I think we should budge it. It’s fine as something immoral. But if it’s going to be immoral, it certainly shouldn’t point to something that is okay.
Believing in race and races is okay; there shouldn’t be a moral taint to that. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and such beliefs, alone, don’t automatically guide a person down the road of racial bigotry. Yes one could say it is necessary, but so is rationality itself, but I suspect a race elimitivist isn’t going to disparage reasoning. Racial bigotry only comes from rigid, irrationally held prejudices toward individuals because of their conceived race. That I consider the most basic and fundamental form of “racism”. That I think is immoral. We should disparage it. And I think there are other things we could reasonably classify as racism, and think we should. For example, I consider racial tribalism immoral — and by racial tribalism I mean shame, blame, praise, hate, or love toward other people based on their conceived race or toward ourselves based on our own conceived race. I’m alright with calling that racism. What you term “racelining” stems from racial tribalism. And likewise, I’m alright with calling that racism. I’m not alright with calling the belief in races racism. That is erroneous, as it implies believing in race is immoral, which I feel it certainly isn’t. If anything, since I think believing in a concept of race is the most rationally sound approach that I have thus far encountered, it is right, not simply okay, to believe in race.
In practice is "racelessness" really the promotion of a type of either:
---positive hyper ethno-nationalist patriotism
---positive global transhumanism (which in its worse forms conforms to "we are all the same around the world")
I think in practice what most "racelessness" advocates mean is positive hyper ethno-nationalist patriotism for ones' own country. For example:
--for people who live in the USA they mean positive hyper ethno-nationalist USA patriotism
--for people who live in Canada they mean positive hyper ethno-nationalist Canadian patriotism
--for people who live in England they mean positive hyper ethno-nationalist English or British patriotism
--for people who live in Ireland they mean positive hyper ethno-nationalist Irish patriotism
Don't see what else can be meant. There is a vast nonbinary multiplicity and diversity of global surface culture, deep culture and shared global consciousness. Wonder if the desire to impose sameness versus celebrating and respecting multiplicity originated from churchianity and extreme islamism?
"And it hurt. I'm Dominican, but was constantly told I didn't act Dominican. And in response to these insults, I made a clown of myself trying to get the “right” clothes and force-feeding myself the “right” music so that “my people” would accept and include me."
What does this have to do with "race" or "racism"? "Dominican" is an ethnicity and for those who identify as "Dominicans" to work out. Why should non Dominicans but in except in extremis? [An example of extremis would be if it is resulting in mass violence, assault, rape, murder.]
If someone who lives outside of the Dominican Republic is not accepted as "Dominican", can't they identify with the culture of the country they moved to? For example a Domincan American can choose to simply identify as "American." Why is this a big deal of not being accepted as ethnically Dominican?
Many young Americans are soft and easily triggered/offended. This is an existential threat to the survival of the USA at a time when the USA's share of global wealth and income are dropping fast and America's enemies are closing in.
What is wrong with telling American children . . . others have freedom of art, thought and speech. They have the right to think bigoted and prejudiced things about you. They have the right to disrespect you, despise you and dislike you. Just because they think them does not make them true. Be strong and succeed anyway. "Sticks and stones can break my bones but words cannot harm me."
"redlining, which is an illegal discriminatory practice in which a mortgage lender denies loans or an insurance provider restricts services to certain areas of a community, often because of the racial characteristics of the applicants.
Redlining was formalized and codified by law in the Jim Crow era. It first originated during chattel slavery in the U.S. as the practice of placing enslaved Americans in the least desirable areas of plantations. This later became the blueprint for redlining. Under Jim Crow, maps were outlined with red ink (hence the term “redlining”) thereby “filtering” entire groups of Americans into or out of specific residential areas based on racialization, ethnicity, and class. "
Redlining was an early attempt at giving credit scores to potential borrowers and business partners based on incomplete information. Because of insufficient information there were credit "market failures." The lending institutions lost money by losing higher credit higher interest rate paying borrowers. The largest victims of "redlining" were the institutions who engaged in it because it lowered their risk adjusted NPV profits.
The best way to deal with challenges like this is to deregulate the financial industry, allow in foreign financial institutions and make "redlining" legal.
Competition in the financial industry and spreadsheets/databases killed redlining. Competition because there was a high incentive for financial institutions (domestic or foreign) to get as much profitable business as they could in redlined areas.
And secondly new technology made more accurate credit assessment cheaper.
"Racism" is incompatible with capitalism. Why would businesses leave profits on the table because they are "racist"? If they are "racist" they will be less profitable than non "racist" businesses and be driven out of business.
Trust in people. Trust in allowing people the freedom to make their own choices however they please.
Using the legal system to deal with "racism" has generally been economically harmful wherever in the world it has been used. And greatly harmed the people against whom "racism" was directed. It is far better to give people freedom and work on surface culture, deep culture and shared consciousness. And work on maximizing real GDP per capita growth (or long term total factor productivity + high savings rates).
I suspect much of the widening in socio-economic gaps between ADOS and non ADOS inside the USA since the 1970s has been because of "racism" laws and regulation. Another large cause has probably been the psychological war directed against ADOS by the European Intelligentsia. One of the main valences along which this psychological war is directed since the 1960s is "Afro pessimism."
The way to discuss racism inside the USA is to speak the truth. The US share of global income and global wealth is dropping fast. The USA's enemies are becoming stronger and dismantling the USA. The only way the USA survives is if African ancestry Americans embody excellence, perfection and merit and save the USA. And if the USA can attract a lot of talented African ancestry immigrants.
Awesome clarity. I see I have another brother in the devotion to the brilliance and deeply humanistic insight of Dr. Sheena Mason. You are building on her work and extending the conversation to help us all grapple with the current wave of DEI ensconced in the D'Angelo/Kendi ideology. Thank you for writing this so well and thank you FBT for publishing.
See you on the other side, Steve!
Can we dare to agree if we’re “white” (as he appears to be)? And if we agree with anyone, white, black, or other, who says we’re not allowed to weigh in on the question of “race-lining” because we’re “white,” are we exercising race-lining too?
In terms of what makes us human the color of our skin is no more relevant than the color of our hair or eyes. What is fundamental to all humans is the capacity to reason. Having the capacity does not guarantee that individuals will use it, but if they did the problem of 'race' would disappear.
The problem with your argument is you lay blame on the victims of racial ideation for the persuasion of a shitstem they have NO CHOICE but function within, if they remain part of the shitstem.
For instance, I had taught my son from toddler days that his race is human. You know who beat that out of him? The school system. He had to choose a “race” as defined by the shitstem, i.e. by White Power. And “human” was not an option.
And from that forced identification comes all the “racelining” you suggest exists. Why? @Because if I’m FORCED into a racialized slot against my will, then I’m damn sure gonna set standards of my own, to give me SOME modicum of say within the prison to which I’ve been confined.”
The other choice, & choice I follow, is to withdraw from the shitstem and have as little reason as possible to ever declare a “race” that conforms to the standards established by white power.
1. You should look deeply into the Friston “Free Energy Principle” and Autopoesis, both of which touch on some ideas you reference - like “uncertainty avoidance”. Self-perpetuating systems depend on identifying uncertainty (Friston “Surprise”) and expending energy to maintain homeostasis, a kind of “temperature”, or predictability. The most effective systems at minimizing surprise (the average of “surprise” over time is “disorder” or entropy) are the most energy-efficient and durable. The mathematics behind it, statistical thermodynamics, are rigorous and amazing. It gives the actual ability to quantify the outrageous cost, for instance, of maintaining a nonsensical state of racism in a society, through the same mathematics that drives quantum gravity. Love to chat sometime.
2. I think I was 6 or 7 when my parents tried to explain racism to me. I remember it in high detail as why calling an adult man “boy” was inappropriate in any situation (it involved a strange tense moment I didn’t understand in a TV show with Flip Wilson) and particularly if they were of African ancestry. That was 50 years ago when I grasped that race wasn’t real in the same way that “Santa Claus” was a fiction. I decided people who believed in it were deluded. I subsequently learned the history of racist pseudoscience along with “physiognomy” and “phrenology” - attempting to assign human behavioral traits based on observed superficial physical features or “phenotypes”. I’m completely in alignment with Dr. Sheena Mason.
3. About the same time as this I realized that many people had supernaturalist beliefs - gods, ghosts, and superstitions - which I also found to be a deluded way of explaining the universe. At the same I decided I was not atheist, or agnostic, but rather “anti-supernaturalist”, and tried to learn ways of coping with people who were.
4. Being an unusually bright child who was also astonishingly argumentative and arrogant (I call it my inner Sheldon), I made sure to tell anyone within earshot that racism was a pseudoscience; that belief in supernatural entities and forces was hokum, and anyone who believed in either was not very smart. Being a gay child in the Deep South, the Buckle of the Bible Belt, the general effect of all this this did not go well over time with the general public within earshot.
5. Today, our culture keeps dishing it out - from things like the mathematically dubious pseudo-science of “intersectionality” to the radically corrupt supernaturality of “trans” and “gender” sex fetishism imposed on children, my only hope is that over time more and more people adopt the stance that when something becomes a cult that seeks to impose a cult will on a group of people, that we run from it as fast as possible.
6. Thanks for a sharp article.
I am going to be a jerk, and possibly an asshole, and jerk this in a slightly different direction.
I searched this essay for 'science', 'technology' and 'economics'. The only result was a couple of occurrences of 'socio-economics'. The current state of the world is the result of Europeans developing some "useful" technologies before anyone else. For more than 300 years Europeans had the oceans to themselves and only had to compete with other Europeans. I think this went to their heads and many, if not most, chose to believe their own delusions. One white man with some real brains figures out something great and a thousand white morons jump up and shout, "See how intelligent WE are." Of course any idiot can shoot a machine gun.
See, I told you I might be an asshole.
My perspective of reality is unquestionably an effect of my starting to read science fiction in 4th grade. The other kids in The Projects called me "Goofus". Some nun told me, "You will get into a good high school but you won't do well." She was mad because I refused to be a patrol boy. If I had to fight with the stupid bitch then that was what was going to happen but she didn't push it that far. Maybe she was correct if seen in a certain light. I got straight D's in religion my freshman year to go along with my straight A's in mathematics. That science fiction influence again.
I decided that I was an agnostic in 7th grade and stopped going to the Catholic church right after grade school graduation. The concepts of atheism and agnosticism were in a number of SF books. A certain percentage of white people consider a rather large percentage of white people to be dummies. They also know that they are outnumbered. Two short stories to check:
Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth
https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/51233/pg51233-images.html
It's Great to be Back (1947) by Robert Heinlein
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_Great_to_Be_Back!
The first story is from the 1950s and a lot like the movie Idiocracy. Heinlein was more subtle with a colony on the Moon. It even turned up later with NASA. Every one of the Mercury astronauts had an IQ score of at least 130. Sending people into space will be very expensive for a long time to come. Mistakes could get people killed and destroy a lot of equipment that cost a lot just to get into space. Governments and corporations are not going to send people up who are less than very smart. So a Moon colony will be filled with only those people.
So why have I gone on for what has already been to long? I just came back from a break in fact.
The Laws of Physics do not give a damn about Black people!
The Laws of Physics do not give a damn about
White people!
They do not give a damn about the Human Race!
We could all go the way of the dinosaurs and they would be incapable of noticing.
But there is cobalt in the Congo. I just learned recently that there is more cobalt in Africa than in the rest of the world. That brings us back to socio-economics and technology. I do not know how much cobalt is in this Samsung smartphone that I am typing on right now. Was it dug by Black children who will never get to own anything like it? What has Oprah Winfrey said about it? LOL
I swear these smartphones are science fiction.
Beam me up Scotty. There is no intelligent life down here.
I think pretending race does not exist is like pretending that I cannot tell the difference between a Dalmatian, a Collie and a German Shepherd. I do consider some dogs to be better looking than other dogs. I'm a dog racist. So sue me!
But our global socio-economic power games are wrapped up with technology. The sociologogists, psychologists and literary intellectuals are not going to psychologize this away. Notice that economists do not talk about planned obsolescence of the technology or the depreciation thereof.
When Black People get their act together with technology and economics there can be some progress.
When Africa Awakes by Hubert Henry Harrison
https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69712/pg69712-images.html
Gotta have some Science Fiction:
Black Man's Burden (1961) by Mack Reynolds http://sfgospel.typepad.com/sf_gospel/2008/08/mack-reynolds-on-africa-islam-utopia-and-progress.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32390/32390-h/32390-h.htm
Border, Breed Nor Birth (1963) by Mack Reynolds http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30639/30639-h/30639-h.htm
By the way, you white guys going into debt for junk designed to become obsolete is nothing but consumer slavery to me. Try finding an economist who can tell you the annual depreciation of automobiles since Sputnik.
Just encountered this 3/30/23:
A HISTORY OF COMMERCE
BY CLIVE DAY, Ph.D.
KNOX PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN YALE UNIVERSITY 1925
https://gutenberg.org/files/70410/70410-h/70410-h.htm
Before planned obsolescence & WWII & Global Warming. Lots of talk about COAL.
Nothing less than expected, until we recognize the damage this illusory categorization of race has caused humanity, we will keep repeating the mistakes. This is a first step towards abolish race. Well done Steve
This comment is addressing this essay and the prior essay recently published by FBT by Tabia Lee that discussed the theory of racelessness that this essay references.
I appreciate the desire to challenge the dominant race ideology that currently asserts authoritarian control over many of our institutions, and I think it would be fruitful to introduce people to various race ideologies that exist. According to the classification of ideologies that is discussed I am somewhere between a “race naturalist” and a “race constructionist.” I think exposing students and teachers to race elimitivism would be a good thing though even if I don’t think it is the most accurate way we can understand race and racism.
Personally I think that race can quite comfortably and rationally be viewed as a a biological phenomenon while also accepting that the folk categories of race, such as black, white, asian, etc, are “social constructions” -- basically erroneous and arbitrary abstractions that only vaguely adhere to what would be rationally valid and they have served to delineate the boundaries of various socially constructed tribes of people.
I find it not at all complicated to conceive of the fact that people have biological lineages wider than our family lineages, and at a certain width of those lineages, when it gets quite vast, that is understandably called a “race.” At the most vast point is the human “race.” Where any “race” begins and ends though is somewhat arbitrary, but there may be more sensible points of division than others, such as points of greater or lesser random inter geographical mating. Since we have such biological lineages, regardless of what they mean about any individuals within those lineages, race exists. To say that race doesn’t exist is not compelling to me given the fact that such an empirically sound concept of race, at least somewhat analogous in contour, can be found all the way back to the ancient Greeks and around the globe historically and anthropologically. To say race doesn’t exist requires an unjustified amount of linguistic and conceptual contortion.
As for the idea of racism, from its earliest usages it has referred to the categorization of races and value judgements toward a race or people perceived to be part of a race, and as it has developed through history, has to my knowledge had a negative connotation. Regardless of what racism may be, it is immoral. The connotation of it as being immoral is now lodged into the conscience of most people I suspect and it isnt going to budge. Nor do I think we should budge it. It’s fine as something immoral. But if it’s going to be immoral, it certainly shouldn’t point to something that is okay.
Believing in race and races is okay; there shouldn’t be a moral taint to that. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and such beliefs, alone, don’t automatically guide a person down the road of racial bigotry. Yes one could say it is necessary, but so is rationality itself, but I suspect a race elimitivist isn’t going to disparage reasoning. Racial bigotry only comes from rigid, irrationally held prejudices toward individuals because of their conceived race. That I consider the most basic and fundamental form of “racism”. That I think is immoral. We should disparage it. And I think there are other things we could reasonably classify as racism, and think we should. For example, I consider racial tribalism immoral — and by racial tribalism I mean shame, blame, praise, hate, or love toward other people based on their conceived race or toward ourselves based on our own conceived race. I’m alright with calling that racism. What you term “racelining” stems from racial tribalism. And likewise, I’m alright with calling that racism. I’m not alright with calling the belief in races racism. That is erroneous, as it implies believing in race is immoral, which I feel it certainly isn’t. If anything, since I think believing in a concept of race is the most rationally sound approach that I have thus far encountered, it is right, not simply okay, to believe in race.
In practice is "racelessness" really the promotion of a type of either:
---positive hyper ethno-nationalist patriotism
---positive global transhumanism (which in its worse forms conforms to "we are all the same around the world")
I think in practice what most "racelessness" advocates mean is positive hyper ethno-nationalist patriotism for ones' own country. For example:
--for people who live in the USA they mean positive hyper ethno-nationalist USA patriotism
--for people who live in Canada they mean positive hyper ethno-nationalist Canadian patriotism
--for people who live in England they mean positive hyper ethno-nationalist English or British patriotism
--for people who live in Ireland they mean positive hyper ethno-nationalist Irish patriotism
Don't see what else can be meant. There is a vast nonbinary multiplicity and diversity of global surface culture, deep culture and shared global consciousness. Wonder if the desire to impose sameness versus celebrating and respecting multiplicity originated from churchianity and extreme islamism?
"And it hurt. I'm Dominican, but was constantly told I didn't act Dominican. And in response to these insults, I made a clown of myself trying to get the “right” clothes and force-feeding myself the “right” music so that “my people” would accept and include me."
What does this have to do with "race" or "racism"? "Dominican" is an ethnicity and for those who identify as "Dominicans" to work out. Why should non Dominicans but in except in extremis? [An example of extremis would be if it is resulting in mass violence, assault, rape, murder.]
If someone who lives outside of the Dominican Republic is not accepted as "Dominican", can't they identify with the culture of the country they moved to? For example a Domincan American can choose to simply identify as "American." Why is this a big deal of not being accepted as ethnically Dominican?
Many young Americans are soft and easily triggered/offended. This is an existential threat to the survival of the USA at a time when the USA's share of global wealth and income are dropping fast and America's enemies are closing in.
What is wrong with telling American children . . . others have freedom of art, thought and speech. They have the right to think bigoted and prejudiced things about you. They have the right to disrespect you, despise you and dislike you. Just because they think them does not make them true. Be strong and succeed anyway. "Sticks and stones can break my bones but words cannot harm me."
"redlining, which is an illegal discriminatory practice in which a mortgage lender denies loans or an insurance provider restricts services to certain areas of a community, often because of the racial characteristics of the applicants.
Redlining was formalized and codified by law in the Jim Crow era. It first originated during chattel slavery in the U.S. as the practice of placing enslaved Americans in the least desirable areas of plantations. This later became the blueprint for redlining. Under Jim Crow, maps were outlined with red ink (hence the term “redlining”) thereby “filtering” entire groups of Americans into or out of specific residential areas based on racialization, ethnicity, and class. "
Redlining was an early attempt at giving credit scores to potential borrowers and business partners based on incomplete information. Because of insufficient information there were credit "market failures." The lending institutions lost money by losing higher credit higher interest rate paying borrowers. The largest victims of "redlining" were the institutions who engaged in it because it lowered their risk adjusted NPV profits.
The best way to deal with challenges like this is to deregulate the financial industry, allow in foreign financial institutions and make "redlining" legal.
Competition in the financial industry and spreadsheets/databases killed redlining. Competition because there was a high incentive for financial institutions (domestic or foreign) to get as much profitable business as they could in redlined areas.
And secondly new technology made more accurate credit assessment cheaper.
"Racism" is incompatible with capitalism. Why would businesses leave profits on the table because they are "racist"? If they are "racist" they will be less profitable than non "racist" businesses and be driven out of business.
Trust in people. Trust in allowing people the freedom to make their own choices however they please.
Using the legal system to deal with "racism" has generally been economically harmful wherever in the world it has been used. And greatly harmed the people against whom "racism" was directed. It is far better to give people freedom and work on surface culture, deep culture and shared consciousness. And work on maximizing real GDP per capita growth (or long term total factor productivity + high savings rates).
I suspect much of the widening in socio-economic gaps between ADOS and non ADOS inside the USA since the 1970s has been because of "racism" laws and regulation. Another large cause has probably been the psychological war directed against ADOS by the European Intelligentsia. One of the main valences along which this psychological war is directed since the 1960s is "Afro pessimism."
The way to discuss racism inside the USA is to speak the truth. The US share of global income and global wealth is dropping fast. The USA's enemies are becoming stronger and dismantling the USA. The only way the USA survives is if African ancestry Americans embody excellence, perfection and merit and save the USA. And if the USA can attract a lot of talented African ancestry immigrants.