Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

[Thanas]

Also, weirdly, but the hatreds I listed are due to structural actions and inactions.

Then your language is very imprecise, for instead of saying you hate "structural actions and inactions of group X" you simply lazily say "I hate group X". I don't know how that can stand up to academic rigor, it certainly would not at the universities I have attended and/or taught at.

[Effie]

Also, weirdly, but the hatreds I listed are due to structural actions and inactions.

Then your language is very imprecise, for instead of saying you hate "structural actions and inactions of group X" you simply lazily say "I hate group X". I don't know how that can stand up to academic rigor, it certainly would not at the universities I have attended and/or taught at.

A newspaper editorial is not an academic paper. Do your universities demand that all students police their language outside of an academic context to the extent you are outlining here? How do they enforce this policing? Are you willfully pretending that my posts are not a response to people saying that it's unacceptable to express hatred for people in the position of oppressor within a power structure, in order to make some pompous posts implying that anyone who doesn't write or speak in a detached, disaffected voice is worthy of only contempt?

[Thanas]

Also, weirdly, but the hatreds I listed are due to structural actions and inactions.

Then your language is very imprecise, for instead of saying you hate "structural actions and inactions of group X" you simply lazily say "I hate group X". I don't know how that can stand up to academic rigor, it certainly would not at the universities I have attended and/or taught at.

A newspaper editorial is not an academic paper. Do your universities demand that all students police their language outside of an academic context to the extent you are outlining here? How do they enforce this policing?

Your argument makes no sense. Either you claim it is not an academic paper and instead aimed at a broad audience - in which case you should not be outraged at "normal" people failing to understand the concepts behind it - or you are saying it is aimed at an academic audience - in which case the language used is imprecise and should not be used. I don't use latin when I am writing a piece intended for a broad audience and would be rightfully castigated if I did so without providing a translation.

Are you willfully pretending that my posts are not a response to people saying that it's unacceptable to express hatred for people in the position of oppressor within a power structure, in order to make some pompous posts implying that anyone who doesn't write or speak in a detached, disaffected voice is worthy of only contempt?

Your shtick of immediately assuming the worst about anybody who criticizes your argument is wearing thin, I suggest you find a new one. Is this how you debate in your field of education?

[Effie]

Then your language is very imprecise, for instead of saying you hate "structural actions and inactions of group X" you simply lazily say "I hate group X". I don't know how that can stand up to academic rigor, it certainly would not at the universities I have attended and/or taught at.

A newspaper editorial is not an academic paper. Do your universities demand that all students police their language outside of an academic context to the extent you are outlining here? How do they enforce this policing?

Your argument makes no sense. Either you claim it is not an academic paper and instead aimed at a broad audience - in which case you should not be outraged at "normal" people failing to understand the concepts behind it - or you are saying it is aimed at an academic audience - in which case the language used is imprecise and should not be used. I don't use latin when I am writing a piece intended for a broad audience and would be rightfully castigated if I did so without providing a translation.

Are you willfully pretending that my posts are not a response to people saying that it's unacceptable to express hatred for people in the position of oppressor within a power structure, in order to make some pompous posts implying that anyone who doesn't write or speak in a detached, disaffected voice is worthy of only contempt?

Your shtick of immediately assuming the worst about anybody who criticizes your argument is wearing thin, I suggest you find a new one. Is this how you debate in your field of education?

I don't feel any need to treat people using "outrage" in the fashion you used it in this post with more than a bare minimum of respect, no, because they have already communicated that they will be treating me similarly. Perhaps you should use less lazy, sloppy language which smacks of policing tone over content.

In any case, your argument is very unclearly written. It seems to be that you believe the concepts involved are like using untranslated Latin, so they should not be used in anything other than monographs and papers. This is some really fascinating pedagogy, but I have argued that the concepts involved are ones most people understand intuitively if not consciously, such as people understanding "I hate Packers fans" does not indicate a desire to torture and murder most of Wisconsin. Which you have not really engaged with.

Furthermore, the concept that power structures create relationships that cannot be reciprocal, that hatred of the oppressed and of the oppressor cannot be equivocated, is entry-level. It's a fairly basic understanding, that power matters. This isn't like chiding people for not recognizing an unfamiliar passage from Martial.

[Ziggy Stardust]

1. Your arguments are about how we can't compare these things because they are ontologically dissimilar.

No, that is not what I am arguing. As I made very explicit in that post, I am referring to modes of inference, which is an epistemic concept, not an ontological one. I am not making any claims about the ontological status of these fields, and in fact have now TWICE explicitly noted that I am not doing that. If you don't understand my arguments, then ask for clarification. If you do understand my arguments, respond to them on their face, do not dismiss them with a strawman representation.

I am arguing that all of them offer an epistemological expansion regardless of their ontological status.

What is an "epistemological expansion"? An expansion of what? This isn't anything resembling standard terminology, so please define your the parameters of your argument more clearly.

And your argument doesn't really address that, nor does it offer any kind of argument for the idea that critical race theory must be softened, Fabianized, in order to be made acceptable for the masses.

I never made a claim about critical race theory "needing" to be softened or made acceptable. Please do not conflate the arguments I have made with those of other people in this thread. I never made a qualitative claim about critical race theory, and in fact in both of my previous posts I have explicitly stated that I am not trying to make any such claims. Do not put words in my mouth, especially when they are the exact opposite of what I said in the post you are responding to.

2. You're explicitly arguing that it is unacceptable to group critical theory, linguistics, and physics together while arguing that it is acceptable to group linguistics and physics together. This would seem to require justification. You're also implicitly arguing that archaeology and history can be grouped with linguistics and physics, which would require more justification.

I never argued for such groupings. For the dozenth time, please respond to the points I actually raised in my post, and stop responding to arguments I never made nor implied. In fact, the entire point of my post was that such groupings are inherently fallacious without carefully considering the nuances of how different fields of science and different modes of inference operate. Remember, this began with YOU grouping all of these fields together and acting as if they could all be treated equally! It is extremely puzzling that you have twice now accused me of making the exact argument that you made that I am refuting. I can't tell if you have poor reading comprehension or are just intensely dishonest.

(In case you were unaware, there are limits to variable control which mean linguistics is proportionally more observational than physics, and in turn archaeology and history are almost purely observational. Ignoring this seems to exist solely to denigrate certain fields of knowledge.)

In both of my posts I have explicitly stated that I am not making qualitative comparisons between fields. If in your next post you again put words in my mouth, or accuse me of saying things that are the exact opposite of statements I have explicitly made, I will report you to the moderators, full stop. There is no room for such dishonest debating on these forums.

Further, the notion of "more observational" is utter gibberish, and further demonstrates that you do not have even a basic, fundamental understanding of how epistemology works. It seems to me like you just browsed the wikipedia page and are just throwing around words without even the vaguest inkling of their history or context.

3. Well, I think it's meaningful to describe ideas that require major shifts in worldview to incorporate them into one's mind as "radical" for the purposes of comparison with other ideas that also require major shifts in worldview to incorporate them into one's mind, for the purposes of explaining why self-censorship in the latter field is equivalent to self-censorship in the former field.

It is only meaningful if you clearly define the terms you are using, and how you are declaring things 'radical'. What you don't seem to understand is that this word has different meanings in different contexts. It's like comparing Isaac Newton with the Black Panther Party, and saying both are "radical", without providing any of the context or nuance that would make such a comparison meaningful. And the only way you can make such a comparison meaningful is by clearly defining the epistemic framework in which these ideas operate and how they relate to worldviews and shifts therein. THIS IS LITERALLY THE ENTIRE BASIS OF EPISTEMOLOGY. Which you have completely rejected in order to make vague, sweeping generalizations. The point is you can't just equate Newton's theory of gravitation with Derrick Bell's 6 propositions of critical race theory and say they are both equally "radical" or influential, without carefully explaining the nuance and context of each. Just saying they are both "radical" full stop without further qualification or explanation is just as meaningless as saying they are both "cool". It's a vague adjective being slapped onto complex topics with no effort being made to disambiguate the intended meaning.

[Effie]

1. Your arguments are about how we can't compare these things because they are ontologically dissimilar.

No, that is not what I am arguing. As I made very explicit in that post, I am referring to modes of inference, which is an epistemic concept, not an ontological one. I am not making any claims about the ontological status of these fields, and in fact have now TWICE explicitly noted that I am not doing that. If you don't understand my arguments, then ask for clarification. If you do understand my arguments, respond to them on their face, do not dismiss them with a strawman representation.

I am arguing that all of them offer an epistemological expansion regardless of their ontological status.

What is an "epistemological expansion"? An expansion of what? This isn't anything resembling standard terminology, so please define your the parameters of your argument more clearly.

And your argument doesn't really address that, nor does it offer any kind of argument for the idea that critical race theory must be softened, Fabianized, in order to be made acceptable for the masses.

I never made a claim about critical race theory "needing" to be softened or made acceptable. Please do not conflate the arguments I have made with those of other people in this thread. I never made a qualitative claim about critical race theory, and in fact in both of my previous posts I have explicitly stated that I am not trying to make any such claims. Do not put words in my mouth, especially when they are the exact opposite of what I said in the post you are responding to.

2. You're explicitly arguing that it is unacceptable to group critical theory, linguistics, and physics together while arguing that it is acceptable to group linguistics and physics together. This would seem to require justification. You're also implicitly arguing that archaeology and history can be grouped with linguistics and physics, which would require more justification.

I never argued for such groupings. For the dozenth time, please respond to the points I actually raised in my post, and stop responding to arguments I never made nor implied. In fact, the entire point of my post was that such groupings are inherently fallacious without carefully considering the nuances of how different fields of science and different modes of inference operate. Remember, this began with YOU grouping all of these fields together and acting as if they could all be treated equally! It is extremely puzzling that you have twice now accused me of making the exact argument that you made that I am refuting. I can't tell if you have poor reading comprehension or are just intensely dishonest.

(In case you were unaware, there are limits to variable control which mean linguistics is proportionally more observational than physics, and in turn archaeology and history are almost purely observational. Ignoring this seems to exist solely to denigrate certain fields of knowledge.)

In both of my posts I have explicitly stated that I am not making qualitative comparisons between fields. If in your next post you again put words in my mouth, or accuse me of saying things that are the exact opposite of statements I have explicitly made, I will report you to the moderators, full stop. There is no room for such dishonest debating on these forums.

Further, the notion of "more observational" is utter gibberish, and further demonstrates that you do not have even a basic, fundamental understanding of how epistemology works. It seems to me like you just browsed the wikipedia page and are just throwing around words without even the vaguest inkling of their history or context.

3. Well, I think it's meaningful to describe ideas that require major shifts in worldview to incorporate them into one's mind as "radical" for the purposes of comparison with other ideas that also require major shifts in worldview to incorporate them into one's mind, for the purposes of explaining why self-censorship in the latter field is equivalent to self-censorship in the former field.

It is only meaningful if you clearly define the terms you are using, and how you are declaring things 'radical'. What you don't seem to understand is that this word has different meanings in different contexts. It's like comparing Isaac Newton with the Black Panther Party, and saying both are "radical", without providing any of the context or nuance that would make such a comparison meaningful. And the only way you can make such a comparison meaningful is by clearly defining the epistemic framework in which these ideas operate and how they relate to worldviews and shifts therein. THIS IS LITERALLY THE ENTIRE BASIS OF EPISTEMOLOGY. Which you have completely rejected in order to make vague, sweeping generalizations. The point is you can't just equate Newton's theory of gravitation with Derrick Bell's 6 propositions of critical race theory and say they are both equally "radical" or influential, without carefully explaining the nuance and context of each. Just saying they are both "radical" full stop without further qualification or explanation is just as meaningless as saying they are both "cool". It's a vague adjective being slapped onto complex topics with no effort being made to disambiguate the intended meaning.

Question: do you think semantics arguments which are admitted to be entirely disconnected from any other aspect of the conversation and are purely pedantic in nature should be treated as if they were being made in good faith?

[Effie]

I think it should be pointed out when considering justice for Amerindian peoples that land theft was actively US policy until the 1970s and the end of termination, and genocide was actively US policy until the 1970s or 1990s, depending on whether you consider the end of the IHS sterilizing Native women without their knowledge or consent or the end of the Indian schools as critical. The crimes are not in some distant past. On the federal level, they were happening in my lifetime and in the lifetime of many people alive today, and they're still ongoing, really, when you consider DAPL.

[Straha]

More bullshitting.

The question is, simply, "if being born here doesn't confer right to the land, what does?" This is logically equivalent to Rogue's formulation, and evading it seems pointless. Either being born on a patch of land is sufficient to confer a right to reside there, or it isn't. If it isn't, what is it that does confer this right?

Simon, buddy, this is one of those times where it becomes clear that you haven't spent serious time thinking about this, much less reading a book.

Let's go through three of the myriad ways that Rogue's assertion is fucked up:

1. Rogue's assertion that people born here have equal ties to the land that natives were born on begs the question why were you able to be born here while the Natives were once able to born on that land but are no longer. In other words, why is Rogue's birth, or your birth, on this land possible when according to this formulation other people should have had that land because they were born there. The answer is a doctrine of racial supremacy that said that Natives didn't get right to the land because they were born on it. In other words asserting your right immediately delegitimizes the universality of that right based solely on racial grounds. That's fucked up.

2. This also explicitly makes genocide okay if you get away with it. The reason people genocided the Natives was so that their kids could be born on the land the natives once were. Saying that genocide can confer that right legitimates genocide as a process to get what you want. That's fucked up.

3. There's an implicit claim here that "We're owed this land because we were born on it, and you have land that you were born on that you are entitled to now so that it balances out." Except the land natives are born was picked for them to die on. In other words, it papers over and legitimates the reservation system. That's fucked up. And if you're going to say "Well, hold on, we can fix that by making demands on other lands..." that loops back to unmooring white notions of absolute right to the land their. Which, yes. (That's not even beginning to scratch the surface of how we deal with comprehending Blackness in this construction. See my discussion of Red, White, and Black by Frank Wilderson above.)


Again, though, this thread has become you demanding my emotional and intellectual labor to educate you on things that are obvious to people who have read a book on the subject. This conversation can not be reasonably advanced as long as you haven't engaged in the work to even understand the basics of the field. My offer stands: Are you willing to commit to some intellectual self-improvement and engage in a more learned discussion?

Hell, I'll even do this. Pick one of the five books I listed. Read it. We can circle back to this discussion after you have and if you think it's pointless to continue we'll stop. If you think otherwise than a whole world of possibility awaits.

And, frankly, the only argument you've made against it is "this will take time" which seems inevitable with these forum posts and that you might be uncomfortable which seems irrelevant to whether or not the authors are right.

[Simon_Jester]

NOTE: I acknowledge Straha's exhaustion. The statements you have presented are ones that I can respect, if not fully agree to. I would not have brought them up myself had Rogue not asked a question that I felt was being unfairly misconstrued and ignored. As discussed below, I am prepared to take up devil's advocacy of the positions in question and defend them against others who disagree, e.g. Rogue, for the interim. More on that below.

More bullshitting.

The question is, simply, "if being born here doesn't confer right to the land, what does?" This is logically equivalent to Rogue's formulation, and evading it seems pointless. Either being born on a patch of land is sufficient to confer a right to reside there, or it isn't. If it isn't, what is it that does confer this right?

Simon, buddy, this is one of those times where it becomes clear that you haven't spent serious time thinking about this, much less reading a book.

Let's go through three of the myriad ways that Rogue's assertion is fucked up:

1. Rogue's assertion that people born here have equal ties to the land that natives were born on begs the question why were you able to be born here while the Natives were once able to born on that land but are no longer. In other words, why is Rogue's birth, or your birth, on this land possible when according to this formulation other people should have had that land because they were born there. The answer is a doctrine of racial supremacy that said that Natives didn't get right to the land because they were born on it. In other words asserting your right immediately delegitimizes the universality of that right based solely on racial grounds. That's fucked up.

Which is an answer to Rogue's question. Sounds like your Answer #1 is:

"No, being born here is not enough to give you a right to live here, because you could not have been born here had a previous generation not totally ignored this right and violently dispossessed the people who lived here. Your ancestors' refusal to respect the principle of jus soli negates your right to benefit from the principle of jus soli, because otherwise you are a beneficiary of someone else's defection from a prisoner's dilemma, which is grossly unfair."

Is that a reasonably fair summary of your Answer #1?

NOTE: Since you are growing exhausted explaining things to me, I am volunteering to do my best to take up devil's advocacy defense of this position on your behalf. I'm not entirely sure I believe it, but I can defend it. Warning: I may do a bad job, for reasons you are painfully aware of. I will, however, either really for serious try, or acknowledge that I have reached my limits in the proposition's defense.

2. This also explicitly makes genocide okay if you get away with it. The reason people genocided the Natives was so that their kids could be born on the land the natives once were. Saying that genocide can confer that right legitimates genocide as a process to get what you want. That's fucked up.

Okay, so you also have an answer #2:

"No, being born here is not enough to give you a right to live here, because if we start acknowledging people's right to live in places where their ancestors killed everyone or chased them all out, it will create an incentive to be successful genocidaires, and that would be horrible."

Is that a reasonably fair summary of your Answer #2?

NOTE: As above, I am willing to take up devil's advocacy of this position. I actually like it rather better than I like #1, because I'm a consequentialist by nature. I may be able to do a vaguely decent-ish job of defending it.

3. There's an implicit claim here that "We're owed this land because we were born on it, and you have land that you were born on that you are entitled to now so that it balances out." Except the land natives are born was picked for them to die on. In other words, it papers over and legitimates the reservation system. That's fucked up. And if you're going to say "Well, hold on, we can fix that by making demands on other lands..." that loops back to unmooring white notions of absolute right to the land their. Which, yes. (That's not even beginning to scratch the surface of how we deal with comprehending Blackness in this construction. See my discussion of Red, White, and Black by Frank Wilderson above.)

Was there meant to be another word or two at the end of the underlined passage? I am not entirely sure I understand what you're saying here, but I think it may be because of a typo. If I do understand what you're saying, then what I think you're saying is something like:

"For the purpose of recompensing and generally un-fuckenating the treatment of Native Americans, the reservation system is miserably inadequate, and does not represent a remotely fair division of resources. This is true even by the extremely shady standard of saying that the tiny shattered remnant of the native population deserves a share proportionate to their share of the current population, which is overwhelmingly majority-white because of previous generations of whites committing genocide and ethnic cleansing, at even best opportunistically taking over land a plague apocalypse had killed all the natives capable of putting up a fight, like a bunch of vultures."

"Therefore, whites collectively have too much of the stuff in North America, disproportionately so, even by extremely and perhaps absurdly generous standards. Standards such as "divide all the stuff in North America into one equal share per person regardless of whether they are red, white, yellow, black, or blue, ignoring how a continent that used to be full of red people wound up full of white people." "

"In turn, this undermines any individual white's claim that they have a right to their little sliver of the disproportionately large slice of the pie given unto whites, because they did not receive this sliver as part of a remotely fair system of apportionment."

I'm willing to try to devil's advocate for this one too, but I'm not actually sure I understand it, whereas I'm pretty sure I understand the other two. That makes it harder.

...

Also, I don't think you mentioned Red, White, and Black, at least not in the immediate vicinity of Wilderson's name, but that's a minor detail.

Again, though, this thread has become you demanding my emotional and intellectual labor to educate you on things that are obvious to people who have read a book on the subject. This conversation can not be reasonably advanced as long as you haven't engaged in the work to even understand the basics of the field. My offer stands: Are you willing to commit to some intellectual self-improvement and engage in a more learned discussion?

Hell, I'll even do this. Pick one of the five books I listed. Read it. We can circle back to this discussion after you have and if you think it's pointless to continue we'll stop. If you think otherwise than a whole world of possibility awaits.

And, frankly, the only argument you've made against it is "this will take time" which seems inevitable with these forum posts and that you might be uncomfortable which seems irrelevant to whether or not the authors are right.

Counterproposal:

For the interim, pick one book that you think will be useful in support of the three propositions above. Perhaps you would like to recommend Red, White, and Black? Or something else. Either way, I'll start by reading THAT one. How does that sound?

If it includes useful insights on black/white race relations too, that's gravy. Alternatively, I'll read a different specific book on that. Maybe the Coates book would be best. I've read some Coates, admittedly not a lot, and he seems to have a pretty level head on his shoulders. I think I trust him to not try and sneak any stupidity past his readers.

Deal?

...

That being said, if you're planning to convince other vaguely well-intentioned but obstructionist people to get their asses out of the way of a pro-Native or pro-Black agenda, you probably want a better sales pitch than "hey, you're an ignorant crypto-racist, go read this book." This is purely a practical observation, on par with "probably a bad choice to pour water in the gas tank." It is the case even if one is entirely right to want the obstructionist people out of the way.

[Straha]

>snip<

Admitted typo in point 3 aside I think the arguments speak for themselves. I really don't care about a devil's advocate understanding, but if you want to take on Rogue's next reply by all means go for it.

Also, I don't think you mentioned Red, White, and Black, at least not in the immediate vicinity of Wilderson's name, but that's a minor detail.

This post includes the discussion of Red, White, and Black. It's the last section which begins with "Navel-gazing"

Counterproposal:

For the interim, pick one book that you think will be useful in support of the three propositions above. Perhaps you would like to recommend Red, White, and Black? Or something else. Either way, I'll start by reading THAT one. How does that sound?

Custer Died for your Sins by Vine Deloria Jr. If you need a copy of it let me know and I'll hook you up.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Question: do you think semantics arguments which are admitted to be entirely disconnected from any other aspect of the conversation and are purely pedantic in nature should be treated as if they were being made in good faith?

It's not merely a "semantics" argument, simply because it is disconnected from other aspects of your argument. You made a series of claims towards Simon that were based on faulty reasoning derived from a false analogy; namely, that Simon is hypocritical/racist/whatever for not treating critical race theory as epistemically similar to quantum physics and other disciplines. Your inability to defend a basic tenet underlying your argument does not invalidate my points as being "purely pedantic".

Even if they WERE purely semantic/pedantic as you claim, why do you think that gives you the right to violate board rules concerning honest debating?

In any case, it seems pretty clear that you are conceding the points I raised as being valid, due to your repeated refusal to even try addressing them directly.

[Rogue 9]

So much for being unequivocally against the injustices that Natives received. That was quick.

An evasion. Allow me to be more direct: Is it your position that ethnicity creates ties to land, yes or no? Because it really sounds like it.

[Effie]

Question: do you think semantics arguments which are admitted to be entirely disconnected from any other aspect of the conversation and are purely pedantic in nature should be treated as if they were being made in good faith?

It's not merely a "semantics" argument, simply because it is disconnected from other aspects of your argument. You made a series of claims towards Simon that were based on faulty reasoning derived from a false analogy; namely, that Simon is hypocritical/racist/whatever for not treating critical race theory as epistemically similar to quantum physics and other disciplines. Your inability to defend a basic tenet underlying your argument does not invalidate my points as being "purely pedantic".

Even if they WERE purely semantic/pedantic as you claim, why do you think that gives you the right to violate board rules concerning honest debating?

In any case, it seems pretty clear that you are conceding the points I raised as being valid, due to your repeated refusal to even try addressing them directly.

Now you're advancing the claim that the analogy is false, rather than fallacious. Perhaps you ought to be less smug if you can't tell the difference between the two.

I've not responded to your arguments because I reject the idea that I am beholden to engage in conversations that 1) I have no interest in engaging in and 2) are suspiciously oriented as if to prevent other conversations from taking place. I only engaged with you at all because I falsely believed that you were making statements about the actual argument, and now that you have said you weren't, then there is no reason to pay you any more attention beyond pigheadedness.

And your argument ultimately comes down to "you can't analogize between different fields of knowledge because *fart noises*". It fails to engage with my actual argument at all, entirely purposefully according to you, and it's purely risible.

Let me also say that you have mischaracterized my argument. My argument is that there is no need to censor critical theory's conclusions for the sake of people's peace of mind, because there is no need to censor other conclusions from other fields of knowledge that similarly confound common sense. Thus the counter is to assert a reason why there is a need to censor these conclusions. Even if we accept your argument as absolutely true as you so smugly declared in this post that I am replying to, your argument still does not assert a positive reason for the need to censor and so it is irrelevant. I mean, I don't find your arguments anything more than bloviating, to be clear.

Given that you're concerned with how I'm possibly nastily calling someone a hypocrite or a racist, I suspect that you may have some reasons for engaging in this irrelevancy, but I really don't care about those.

So much for being unequivocally against the injustices that Natives received. That was quick.

An evasion. Allow me to be more direct: Is it your position that ethnicity creates ties to land, yes or no? Because it really sounds like it.

Isn't that your position? That your birth gives you ties to land?

[Straha]

So much for being unequivocally against the injustices that Natives received. That was quick.

An evasion. Allow me to be more direct: Is it your position that ethnicity creates ties to land, yes or no? Because it really sounds like it.

1. See my post above.

2. Your position that your birth gives you right to the land relies on your whiteness. Bricks. Glass houses. etc.

[Rogue 9]

1.) So you don't want to answer the question. You might as well just say it; you're arguing blood and soil doctrine. Richard Darré would be proud.

2.) My position does not rely on whiteness (or Whiteness) at all. Not one single bit. My position is birthright citizenship, applied equally to everyone regardless of ethnicity, gender, orientation, or any other criteria you care to name. You're slandering me because you knew I was homing in on 1.) I'm done here.

[Effie]

1.) So you don't want to answer the question. You might as well just say it; you're arguing blood and soil doctrine. Richard Darré would be proud.

2.) My position does not rely on whiteness (or Whiteness) at all. Not one single bit. My position is birthright citizenship, applied equally to everyone regardless of ethnicity, gender, orientation, or any other criteria you care to name. You're slandering me because you knew I was homing in on 1.) I'm done here.

Is it honest debating practice to call your opponent a Nazi because they tell you to read their posts?

That said, the only reason why your position can exist is because of whiteness and the genocide and ethnic cleansing and expropriation it drives. That is, if not for those genocides, if not for whiteness, Europeans moving into the Americas would have assimilated and integrated and fused with the people living here already. Your position thus demands that these crimes be treated as legitimate.

Furthermore, the idea of a right of citizenship that exists without concomitant responsibilities is something that emerges from whiteness, from the idea of a hierarchy of race that establishes "natural" masters and servants. That is, white people can insist that they have rights but no responsibilities, no need to contribute to community, because that's servile work for nonwhites to perform. So your position also cannot exist without whiteness because it makes no sense without whiteness. The idea that you are a citizen of a community by right rather than by existing in it with rights and responsibilities only exists because of racism and the need to differentiate whites from nonwhites by privileges and duties.

This is an important part of why whiteness must be destroyed, and cannot be solved simply by making everyone "white".

[Dragon Angel]

This isn't aimed at anyone in particular, but I wanted to go into some brief detail as to what I believe is at the center of this mess.

...

This country has a broken history. It claims to be many things positive for the world, but as we all know, that has not been the case for a very long time. If, and I'll be honest, it ever was the case.

We have an extremely dark history that is not commonly taught in our schools. Shit, I did not even know about Indian Termination until I read this thread. That, and more, are actually still part of our country's collective living memory, especially in the living memories of the Native Americans. I used to be, for example, legitimately confused as to why Native Americans were so angry at the cultural appropriation of their beliefs; I respected them and still made an effort to research as to what our limits are, but deep in the back of my mind, I still had that confusion.

Now that I've learned just how recent our crimes against them have been ... it makes sense. It completely makes sense why they would be that enraged. Us, haphazardly appropriating their beliefs without consideration or proper respect, when in the recent past we tried to crush those same beliefs and identities from them? We should consider ourselves very lucky that their patience has been this high. They would have all the rights in this country to speak out with fury about this social horror they had to, and continue to in several ways, experience.

Anger like this also resides in communities of color, and especially recently have the reasons why they are angry been brought to light for this country's deserved embarrassment. Clueless white people who think racism is "over" because Martin Luther King made his mark are only the tip of the glacier. People of color have suffered in silence while the rest of this country was blissfully ignorant; after all, until only a short while before the Ferguson protests when this truly exploded, I only knew of the treatment of Rodney King. And that event occurred back when I was in grade school.

Because I grew up with a life of privilege as a white person, I had no clue that such things were continuing even into the new millennium. I was sufficiently distant enough from their suffering that I was blind to their anger. Had I not been educated by many people of color in the recent decade, I probably would still be that kind of a clueless white girl.

At the core of it, much of this strong and furious rhetoric comes from their anger. I can only speak as a trans woman since I'm not black, but I can empathize with people of color because even though my suffering is nowhere near as great as theirs, I know how an unforgiving a society filled with bigotry feels like. I know their anger, as I have felt that kind of anger at seemingly-perpetual bigotry as well, though not as much as that of people of color who have continually been shit on since slavery, since Jim Crow, until today with unchecked police abuse. For the Native Americans, their anger that previous settlements with us have been worth as much as toilet paper, given how little we talk about crimes like Indian Termination, and even in recent years with this government's direct actions regarding the Dakota Access Pipeline.

We should be so lucky that their anger has not exploded even further, because god damn, they deserve the right to have it. This article, as has been repeatedly pointed out by Straha, was shit in its execution, but it is a symptom of the continual injustice people of color, Native Americans, and other nonwhite groups face here. An injustice that has its roots from the time this country was founded.

This country is broken and rotten to its core. Although we have ostensibly progressed as a whole in terms of racial rights, we still managed to elect an obvious racist, fascist-wannabe as President and the rest of his party elsewhere, in spite of popular vote digits. Were people of color not given equal rights and equal treatment in the 20th century? Should they have expected that we would fall this far in so relatively short a time scale?

Of course there was progress, but that progress has been built on a substantially weak foundation. Police were supposed to have weeded out the many bad apples that supposedly "merely" soured the bunch decades ago, but nowadays we see that our improvements there have been very shallow. Our society still encourages systemic punishment of protesters rather than listening to them; one only needs to see Colin Kaepernick as a blatant example for people of color. For Native Americans, one only needs to see the DAPL barbarity.

I recognize that my "right" to live here has come from a legacy of genocide and ethnic cleansing. I am an American by name, but with that name comes a history of atrocities that I still to this day find impossible to fathom. I am white-skinned, but also White in that my privilege has come at the horrific expense of generations of abuses, crimes, and slavery.

I would as soon try and toss my White identity as I would an entire refrigerator's contents of moldy, infested, forgotten food, but to do that would make me forget the barbarism committed by white-skinned conquerors in the past. I cannot forget that. It would be immoral of me to forget that. I have no moral "right" to say this country is mine, because my ancestors stole this country, pillaged its inhabitants, and left them to rot on worthless land.

And this is why they say that "Whiteness" as a concept needs to perish. Note that again, this does not literally mean "all white people should march off a cliff and die". Whiteness, and the continuing abuse by people who claim Whiteness as a central, immutable trait, needs to cease to exist. I will not be so bullheaded as to think "that time has long passed us, we're better now and we'll always continue to be better". That is not guaranteed. It can change within an instant as long as Whiteness exists.

We as white people need to seriously consider something extremely uncomfortable, and something that has been considered time and again by people of color, by Native Americans, by many other marginalized groups:

Can this progress be rolled back into uselessness?

Can people of color really trust this society to make reforms to protect them? To make lasting reform, not something fragile enough to be stripped away during the next Republican Presidency, the next Republican Congress, or universe forbid, a Republican-dominated Supreme Court? Can Native Americans trust us?

We haven't given anyone much indication that we can be trusted. Just one turn of an election, one major sweep by a party of utter trash that edges closer and closer into white supremacy, and poof. Gone. All progress vanishes.

Trump has been chucklefucking his way through these and while he is limited by his own incompetence, by Democrats who are wishy-washy as to what their values are, and even by admittedly members of his own party at some times (while continuing to lick his boot for the majority of the time), he is still an extremely unsettling omen of a bad potential future. Literal Hitler-worshipping 14/88 Nazis and the just-as-evil Neoconfederates feel more emboldened to bring this country back by a century or more. 4-5 years ago, that was an unimaginable thought.

Can marginalized people trust that this society with all its incremental gains will not just roll over during the next 10, 20, 30 years? It seems evident that they cannot. This frustration at continual injustices, with only paper-thin promises that "it'll all be better", is why they can't. I cannot fault them for their anger or their words. We have done enough to solidify in generations proof that we are either irresponsible with our privilege, or we just simply do not care.

No matter what any of you, individually, do for the causes of progressivism, that is not enough in itself to prove to people of color or Native Americans that anything you do will either be of substance, or of permanence.

We have a long way to go until this anger can finally be put to rest. It will probably not happen within our lifetimes, unfortunately, but as much as we have to continue helping in the struggle for their rights, we have to also ensure to them that we will not collectively betray their trust. Continue your dialogues with them, but engrave the knowledge into your head that you will have to deal with this anger in as respectful a way as you can muster.

We can only overcome this if we can truly acknowledge their pain, on something beyond a superficial level.

...

I would also like to greatly commend Straha for his patience throughout this thread. I would have probably given up much earlier.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Now you're advancing the claim that the analogy is false, rather than fallacious. Perhaps you ought to be less smug if you can't tell the difference between the two.

A "false analogy" is a quintessential example of a logical fallacy. It seems you should educate yourself on these terms before throwing a tantrum about how I use them.

I've not responded to your arguments because I reject the idea that I am beholden to engage in conversations that 1) I have no interest in engaging in and 2) are suspiciously oriented as if to prevent other conversations from taking place.

There is a difference between "preventing other conversations from taking place" and denying the conclusions drawn from a faulty premise. If you are unable to distinguish between the two concepts, you shouldn't be engaging in conversations about epistemology.

I only engaged with you at all because I falsely believed that you were making statements about the actual argument, and now that you have said you weren't, then there is no reason to pay you any more attention beyond pigheadedness.

Where did I say that I "wasn't" making a statement about the actual argument? The post you are responding to consisted me of explicitly explaining how my statement concerned your actual argument. How on earth do you interpret it otherwise?

And your argument ultimately comes down to "you can't analogize between different fields of knowledge because *fart noises*". It fails to engage with my actual argument at all, entirely purposefully according to you, and it's purely risible.

Once again, you dismiss all of my arguments without even bothering to address them. And, once again, you blatantly lie about what I said in my previous post. Please, point out where I admitted that I was purposefully failing to engage with your argument.

Let me also say that you have mischaracterized my argument. My argument is that there is no need to censor critical theory's conclusions for the sake of people's peace of mind, because there is no need to censor other conclusions from other fields of knowledge that similarly confound common sense. Thus the counter is to assert a reason why there is a need to censor these conclusions.

No, the counter is to challenge your definition of "confound common sense", and how conclusions from these fields relate to each other and to epistemology in general. This is a necessary first step before one can sensibly talk about any censorship issues. Otherwise, you are (as I have stated multiple times, which you continue to fail to acknowledge) just waving your hands and making broad generalizations using vague terminology, which is an impossible foundation on which to build any productive dialogue on the subject. If you refuse to precisely define the parameters of your argument, you really have no grounds to complain when people either disagree with or misinterpret what your argument is.

Once again, as a new member, I must strongly encourage you to actually familiarize yourself with the board policies and the general culture here with regards to honest debating. Simply put, these are not forums where it is considered acceptable for you to just utterly ignore someone's arguments in a thread just because you "aren't interested in engaging with them", as you stated. This isn't even some sour grapes, as you are likely interested in trying to spin it, this is a helpful warning for a new member that these forums don't operate the same way, say, reddit does. There are fairly stringent expectations here regarding how you are supposed to conduct yourself in debates. And continually refusing to address someone's arguments for petty reasons while outright lying about the content of their posts is absolutely not in line with those expectations.

[Effie]

Now you're advancing the claim that the analogy is false, rather than fallacious. Perhaps you ought to be less smug if you can't tell the difference between the two.

A "false analogy" is a quintessential example of a logical fallacy. It seems you should educate yourself on these terms before throwing a tantrum about how I use them.

I've not responded to your arguments because I reject the idea that I am beholden to engage in conversations that 1) I have no interest in engaging in and 2) are suspiciously oriented as if to prevent other conversations from taking place.

There is a difference between "preventing other conversations from taking place" and denying the conclusions drawn from a faulty premise. If you are unable to distinguish between the two concepts, you shouldn't be engaging in conversations about epistemology.

I only engaged with you at all because I falsely believed that you were making statements about the actual argument, and now that you have said you weren't, then there is no reason to pay you any more attention beyond pigheadedness.

Where did I say that I "wasn't" making a statement about the actual argument? The post you are responding to consisted me of explicitly explaining how my statement concerned your actual argument. How on earth do you interpret it otherwise?

And your argument ultimately comes down to "you can't analogize between different fields of knowledge because *fart noises*". It fails to engage with my actual argument at all, entirely purposefully according to you, and it's purely risible.

Once again, you dismiss all of my arguments without even bothering to address them. And, once again, you blatantly lie about what I said in my previous post. Please, point out where I admitted that I was purposefully failing to engage with your argument.

Let me also say that you have mischaracterized my argument. My argument is that there is no need to censor critical theory's conclusions for the sake of people's peace of mind, because there is no need to censor other conclusions from other fields of knowledge that similarly confound common sense. Thus the counter is to assert a reason why there is a need to censor these conclusions.

No, the counter is to challenge your definition of "confound common sense", and how conclusions from these fields relate to each other and to epistemology in general. This is a necessary first step before one can sensibly talk about any censorship issues. Otherwise, you are (as I have stated multiple times, which you continue to fail to acknowledge) just waving your hands and making broad generalizations using vague terminology, which is an impossible foundation on which to build any productive dialogue on the subject. If you refuse to precisely define the parameters of your argument, you really have no grounds to complain when people either disagree with or misinterpret what your argument is.

Once again, as a new member, I must strongly encourage you to actually familiarize yourself with the board policies and the general culture here with regards to honest debating. Simply put, these are not forums where it is considered acceptable for you to just utterly ignore someone's arguments in a thread just because you "aren't interested in engaging with them", as you stated. This isn't even some sour grapes, as you are likely interested in trying to spin it, this is a helpful warning for a new member that these forums don't operate the same way, say, reddit does. There are fairly stringent expectations here regarding how you are supposed to conduct yourself in debates. And continually refusing to address someone's arguments for petty reasons while outright lying about the content of their posts is absolutely not in line with those expectations.

So, in your world, you can advance some dipshittery about how things need to be reduced to first principles and I have to engage with it until you're too tired to bullshit further.

Well then, please define "A", "false", "analogy", "is", "quintessential", "of", "logical", and "fallacy" to my satisfaction before any argumentation can begin. It will probably be necessary for you to define other words to my satisfaction as well.

[Straha]

1.) So you don't want to answer the question. You might as well just say it; you're arguing blood and soil doctrine. Richard Darré would be proud.

2.) My position does not rely on whiteness (or Whiteness) at all. Not one single bit. My position is birthright citizenship, applied equally to everyone regardless of ethnicity, gender, orientation, or any other criteria you care to name. You're slandering me because you knew I was homing in on 1.) I'm done here.

Here is a post where I explained this at some length, here is a post where Simon restated what I said, and here is a thread where we hashed this out some years ago, I had hoped your answers would have gotten slightly more nuanced since then.

Your position absolutely relies on whiteness. To say otherwise is the height of historical myopia and settler-colonialism.

[Simon_Jester]

EDIT:

Straha, I would seem to have located a copy of Deloria's work; if I run into obstacles getting my hands on it long enough to read it, I'll contact you.

>snip<

Admitted typo in point 3 aside I think the arguments speak for themselves. I really don't care about a devil's advocate understanding, but if you want to take on Rogue's next reply by all means go for it.

If my attempt to rephrase and repeat back the argument was a fair representation of what you were trying to say, then the arguments did succeed in speaking for themselves, typo or none. It is simply that a typo of that class can "eat" important clauses within a sentence, making it impossible to be truly certain one has understood the author's argument without at least questioning the author on the matter first.

The devil's advocate thing was me attempting to reduce your headaches, as a gesture of appreciation for your unbending far enough to present me with reasons for your position that were intelligible enough for me to parse them.

Also, I don't think you mentioned Red, White, and Black, at least not in the immediate vicinity of Wilderson's name, but that's a minor detail.

This post includes the discussion of Red, White, and Black. It's the last section which begins with "Navel-gazing"

Ah, I see. I only searched the thread as far back as the recommended reading list, and thus overlooked the mention. My apologies.

[Ziggy Stardust]

So, in your world, you can advance some dipshittery about how things need to be reduced to first principles and I have to engage with it until you're too tired to bullshit further.

Well then, please define "A", "false", "analogy", "is", "quintessential", "of", "logical", and "fallacy" to my satisfaction before any argumentation can begin. It will probably be necessary for you to define other words to my satisfaction as well.

You were the one who claimed you were trying to make an epistemological argument. That you are either unwilling or incapable of honestly engaging with counter-arguments (or even with the basic principles of epistemology as a field) without throwing a tantrum isn't really my problem. If you really are interested in critical race theory as you seem to claim, I recommend that you actually educate yourself about how academic discourse functions within the field, because believe it or not it isn't just a bunch of lunatics shouting at each other about how "radical" they are as you seem to think. I even tried to offer you friendly advice about how not to get banned from these forums, and continuing to act like a petulant child who can't understand why nobody agrees with him is a surefire way to get yourself there. So if it makes you feel better to pull this Homer Simpson shtick ("everybody is stupid except me"), be my guest, but you won't be sticking around here for long if you do.

[Simon_Jester]

Is it honest debating practice to call your opponent a Nazi because they tell you to read their posts?

I don't know, but you were calling me a Nazi before I told you to read my posts, because you hadn't read my posts. Remove the beam from thine own eye.

1.) So you don't want to answer the question. You might as well just say it; you're arguing blood and soil doctrine. Richard Darré would be proud.

As noted, Straha did in fact make a good faith effort to answer the question. The doctrine in question has, in my judgment, very little to do with 'Blood and Soil' doctrine as practiced by European fascists. Key elements that are NOT present in the argument Straha is presenting:

1) Blood and Soil doctrine is based around glorification of agricultural and rural ways of life. By contrast, all Straha's arguments would be equally valid if the natives had lived in giant arcologies prior to the European conquest and colonization of their land; the urban/rural divide is not part of the argument while it is central to 'Blood and Soil.' So far as I can tell basis of Straha's argument is the idea that right to land is fundamentally hereditary in character; you cannot have a right to something unless you were born to people who had a right to it themselves, or unless it was freely given to you.

2) Blood and Soil doctrine grants the designated Master Race permission to conquer more agricultural land from the untermenschen- which is why the Nazis encouraged it! Straha's position does not- indeed, quite the opposite! Straha's entire point revolves around the premise that when a group of people conquer land from those they deem to be untermenschen, neither they nor their descendants can ever justly claim a right or connection to that land. Under Straha's argument, the connection is fundamentally severed, and there is no point in time at which adverse possession can turn a squatter into a rightful resident.

This is anathema to Blood and Soil as implemented by the Nazis, since under such a doctrine the Germans' right to invade Poland et al. would be obvious nonsense, killing off the Slavs for lebensraum would be literally unforgivable literally forever, and for that matter even the Germans' claim to Germany itself would be in question since the Germanic tribes are no more native to Europe than rabbits are to Australia.

Now, you may have a criticism of Straha's position in all fairness, but the words "Blood and Soil" and references to Naziism should not appear therein. The gap between Straha and Darré is very, very wide.

2.) My position does not rely on whiteness (or Whiteness) at all. Not one single bit. My position is birthright citizenship, applied equally to everyone regardless of ethnicity, gender, orientation, or any other criteria you care to name. You're slandering me because you knew I was homing in on 1.) I'm done here.

This then raises questions under Straha's arguments (2) and (3).

The first problem with this stance is that it rewards successful genocidaires. Had the Nazis succeeded in killing off all but a handful of the Poles, filling Poland with their own colonists. Suppose that only then did the Nazi regime fall, and that most of the German settlers remained in Poland for the past seventy-five years, such that the population of Poland today was mostly ethnic German. Would ethnic Germans born in Poland today have just as good a right to live in Poland as the descendants of the remaining Poles?

If so, then it seems that this creates an incentive to kill off rival claimants to a contested patch of land quickly and thoroughly, so that one can then 'launder' possession of the territory through one's own actions and give it unto one's descendants. Conversely, we can undermine this incentive by refusing to acknowledge the principle of pure birthright 'right' to land.

The second problem with the stance is that even if we grant the first problem, major questions of fairness arise. In that while stipulating that I as a descendant of foreign settlers MIGHT have as good a right to live on a patch on land as some descendant of the survivors of those who my ancestors killed to secure my right to that land... If the survivors' descendants are stuck with inferior and smaller shares of the land than I myself, clearly something is very wrong with the distribution and apportionment of land and resources. At which point all claims that the system is in any sense 'fair' can reasonably be at least called into question.

[Effie]

So, in your world, you can advance some dipshittery about how things need to be reduced to first principles and I have to engage with it until you're too tired to bullshit further.

Well then, please define "A", "false", "analogy", "is", "quintessential", "of", "logical", and "fallacy" to my satisfaction before any argumentation can begin. It will probably be necessary for you to define other words to my satisfaction as well.

You were the one who claimed you were trying to make an epistemological argument. That you are either unwilling or incapable of honestly engaging with counter-arguments (or even with the basic principles of epistemology as a field) without throwing a tantrum isn't really my problem. If you really are interested in critical race theory as you seem to claim, I recommend that you actually educate yourself about how academic discourse functions within the field, because believe it or not it isn't just a bunch of lunatics shouting at each other about how "radical" they are as you seem to think. I even tried to offer you friendly advice about how not to get banned from these forums, and continuing to act like a petulant child who can't understand why nobody agrees with him is a surefire way to get yourself there. So if it makes you feel better to pull this Homer Simpson shtick ("everybody is stupid except me"), be my guest, but you won't be sticking around here for long if you do.

You're a smug prick and I feel very sorry for the people you inflict your presence upon, but you haven't provided any definitions so that discussion can happen and so it would seem that you have conceded.

Is it honest debating practice to call your opponent a Nazi because they tell you to read their posts?

I don't know, but you were calling me a Nazi before I told you to read my posts, because you hadn't read my posts. Remove the beam from thine own eye.

Never called you a Nazi. This is a sad, pathetic lie born from your personal issues. Contemptible.

[Simon_Jester]

Never called you a Nazi. This is a sad, pathetic lie born from your personal issues. Contemptible.

I feel like I just got a reply from a Trump tweet.

You called me a genocide-fantasizer. Rogue called someone a "Blud und Boden" advocate. Which is more pivotal to calling, or not calling, someone a Nazi? Are Nazis primarily objectionable because of genocidal tendencies, or because of "Blud und Boden?"