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Archive for April, 2011

In a comment on “The N-Word (part 3),” blogger and bubble-butt enthusiast Aaron J. asks:

is black child abuse a problem bordering on epidemic [in the Americas]? I’m new to this part of the world so I don’t know. In my native New Zealand there are huge problems with Maori (the indigenous group) child abuse. Stories like this are reported just all the fucking time so I want to figure out if it’s an underclass thing or a Maori thing.

See the appendix (section 4) for more on Maori crime.

1. Black child abuse

Well, it turns out black people are more likely to abuse their children than white people. And guess what, it’s not because white people working for Child Protective Services just hate all dark-skinned people so much, they don’t care if they beat and molest their kids! Because that was everyone’s first guess. From the Root:

Rates of reported child abuse are disproportionately high for black children, a fact that has long been linked to suspected racial bias by a largely white child-protection workforce. But a recently released study by Washington University researchers debunks that allegation, citing poverty as the main reason black children are twice as likely as white children to suffer abuse.

Fuck this country. Seriously. Black people beat the shit out of their children twice as much as white people do theirs, and what’s the default explanation? The go-to theory? White people are just a bunch of racists. They like it when blacks beat their kids. It should be unbelievable. Instead, it’s canonical.

Published in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics, the study, “Racial Bias in Child Protection? A Comparison of Competing Explanations Using National Data,” does note the importance of policing potential racial bias among teachers, doctors, nurses, law-enforcement officials, child-protective-services workers and other primary reporters of abuse.

Actually, Washington University researchers, you just proved it isn’t important to police “potential [meaning fake, imaginary, non-existent] racial bias among [evil, disgusting, white] teachers, doctors, nurses, law-enforcement officials, child-protective-services workers and other primary reporters of abuse.” See: “The problem is not that (child protective services) workers are racist” (lead author Brett Drake).

What’s important is to police black people abusing their children. Oh, wait. That would be racial profiling.

The rate of abuse among Latinos children was proportionately higher than that of whites but lower than that of blacks. Researchers attribute that difference to the “Hispanic paradox,” or what are believed to be that community’s comparatively stricter cultural mores against child abuse.

White > Hispanic > black. Where have we seen that order before? (Answer: Pretty much everywhere — IQ scores and crime rates being two obvious examples.) I wonder where East Asians place…

Don’t worry, I’m sure we can find some way to blame white racism for something.

Though unfamiliar with the study, Zena Oglesby, founder and executive director of the Los Angeles-based Institute for Black Parenting, told The Root that a major, lingering concern is the question of how race factors into court settlements of abuse cases. … “I’ve watched hundreds of white families show up with their relatives, and those relatives are given custody of abused children without their home ever being screened for safety or suitability,” he continued. “Too often, that [granting of temporary custody to relatives] never happens with black families who end up in court.”

Hurray! We set out to find white racism to explain away all of black people’s problems, and armed only with anecdotes and confirmation bias, we succeeded!

2. More black child abuse

We turn to another article on the same study at the Defenders Online (run by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund). A special Unamusement Park “fuck you” goes out to Sondra Jackson, Executive Director of the Washington, D.C.-based Black Administrators in Child Welfare, who said that

this study is yet another attempt to shift the discussion away from race and toward other causes like poverty. “People can use research to disprove stuff they don’t want to deal with,” she said.

No, you moron, people use research to disprove your paranoid fantasies about white racism, making your “Black Administrators in Child Welfare” organization unnecessary — not to mention your fanatical race loyalty that would embarrass the average Klansman.

Richard Wexler, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) offered critical comments about this and other studies, saying they are rife with fatal flaws in that they fail to take into account that child welfare decisions are affected by both class and racial biases, and they reinforce each other.

He goes on to say that black people are poor, and that makes them abuse their children, contradicting exactly nothing about the study.

Wexler asked: “Why do these distinguished researchers believe that the bias that still is part of every facet of American life somehow disappears at the child welfare agency door, or the office of a doctor or some other mandated reporter of child abuse?”

Because, racial paranoia notwithstanding, there is no such bias.

Stacey Patton is the author of the Defenders Online article and Senior Editor of the same NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Working away for the Advancement of Colored People, and only Colored People — clearly the right person to ask if you want an unbiased take on race issues. She writes:

The problem of racism is still deeply ingrained and systemic in all of our institutions.

Citation needed. (Hey, where was all that deeply ingrained and systemic institutional racism when America was electing a race-obsessed half-black socialist? For that matter, where was it when he was applying to Harvard Law School? Probably out burning crosses or something.)

Thus, the child welfare system does not exist in a vacuum, unaffected by the past and present treatment of black people. Similar racial disparities can be found in health, employment, education and criminal justice.

That’s because black people are less intelligent and more criminal than white people. Racial disparities: EXPLAINED.

As long as we continually try to fix people [You mean black people, right? Because white people don’t seem to need “fixing.”] rather than the institutional racism that burdens us all, the problems will persist and children will continue to be become hapless victims of the poverty of life and scores more will die.

Oh my gosh, people are dying from “institutional” (i.e., invisible) racism? Meanwhile, in the real world, a black man murders eight white people — clearly, white racism is to blame for that too.

3. White America: Your attention, please

That is what racial discrimination in America really looks like. You don’t need to unearth it in child abuse statistics, or imprisonment rates, or achievement gaps. It’s out there in the open for everyone to see. A black man murders innocent white people, and everyone agrees: they were asking for it, those racists.

Anti-black discrimination is insignificant, invisible, or as liberals like to say, “institutional,” but blacks won’t stop crying about it. Anti-white discrimination, on the other hand, is ubiquitous, blatant, shameless; indulged by the media, enforced by the courts, celebrated by mainstream blacks and whites alike; so commonplace you hardly notice it, whether it’s a stereotype or a racial slur or a random beating or a mass murder; but you’re expected to act like it’s a logical impossibility, as if a racist black might as well be a square circle.

Maybe you should start paying more attention. After all, this is your country; your culture; your civilization.

For the moment.

Vienna, 1530

4. Appendix: Maori crime

Maori make up just 14 percent of the population of New Zealand, but are responsible for over 65 percent of all crime (source: One News). Compare this to the similarly outrageous crime rates of black Americans, who make up just 13-14 percent of the population of the USA.

Maori criminality is partly genetic. From the New Zealand Herald (via American Renaissance):

A New Zealand researcher claims there is an over-representation of the “warrior” gene, which has been linked to aggressive behaviour, in Maori men.

Dr Rod Lea said the monoamine oxidase gene, carried by a large number of Maori, could be key to addressing health issues.

The genetic epidemiologist at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research in Wellington said the gene has been linked to aggressive behaviour as well as addictions to things such as tobacco.

… Australian Associated Press quoted him as saying: “It is controversial because it has implications suggesting links with criminality among Maori people. I think there is a link, it definitely predisposes people to be more likely to be criminals and engage in that type of behaviour as they grow older.

“There are lots of lifestyle, upbringing-related exposures that could be relevant here so, obviously, the gene won’t automatically make you a criminal. … We have to be clear that behavioural traits such as susceptibility to addiction, aggressive behaviour, risk taking, all those sort of things are extremely complex and they are due to numerous factors including non-genetic environmental factors like upbringing and other lifestyle factors. So there is an influence there, but it’s probably a minor one in the scheme of things.”

Very politic of him. Now let’s hear from the Maori. Why that should be necessary to understand the genetics of aggression is a bit of a mystery, but whatever.

Maori MP Hone Harawira said he had been hearing similar things for decades.

“I remember 30 or 40 years ago when I was a kid people said Maori had a natural inclination to play the guitar, that Maori had a natural inclination to play rugby, Maori were good on bulldozers etc…,” he said. “I’ve stopped listening to all that sort of carry on.”

In other words: science is racist and mean and I’m not listening to it, lalalalala… Hey, Hone Harawira: there’s a difference between the kids at school telling you Maori are good at rugby, versus a genetic epidemiologist identifying a gene associated with both the Maori and aggressive behavior.

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia dismissed the research as incredible.

She told The Press newspaper she had heard of Maori having a genetic pre-disposition towards alcoholism, but it was a big leap to include violent tendencies in that.

“I realise that violence is an issue to us, but there are very common factors as well with violence which are not really related to race,” she said.

Incredible! I’ll say. Again, she knows nothing about genetics or violent behavior, but she’s Maori, so we should all listen respectfully to her ignorant opinion.

Meanwhile, the police cannot acknowledge the realities of Maori crime (that would be racist), so their hands are tied. From One News:

“We’ve actually got some structure around where we can now pull Maori and the police together and how we can effectively work together,” [Inspector Wally Haumaha] says.

… Police now believe the key to changing that statistic could lie in a new plan allowing increased visitation rights with family members and then involving the wider Maori community in trying to turn offenders around.

This is beyond satire. Maori keep raping and murdering people, and the solution is (obviously) to give them more visitation rights. I absolutely agree, assuming by “visitation rights” they mean “chemical castration and death sentences, respectively.” (It should, but probably doesn’t, go without saying that this applies to all criminals, regardless of race.)

If 14 percent of the population is committing 65 percent of the crime, I’d say the “wider Maori community” is already involved, Inspector.

Maori respondents believed unanimously that the police viewed Maori as essentially criminals…

Gee, I wonder why.

Whether the new strategy will bring a drop in the crime rate should become clear in a year’s time when officers review its success.

So how’d that work out? One year later (from the New Zealand Press Association):

The high proportion of offending by Maori is rated “a significant concern” by the Ministry of Justice. It noted in its annual report today that though Maori form just 14.5 per cent of New Zealand’s population, half the prison population and 45 per cent of offenders serving community-based sentences identify themselves as Maori.

I guess they didn’t increase Maori visitation rights enough.

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Over at Stuff Black People Don’t Like, I discovered that the Web Editor of the Onion (and semifinalist in the Blackest Name in America competition), Baratunde Rafiq Thurston, is crying like a baby because not everyone buys into the conventional liberal “wisdom” that any criticism of a black person is automatically racist.

It was during my viewing of this video that I began to cry. I thought of my ancestors, both direct and collective, who had fought and died so that I might be treated as an American.

Who are these presumably black "direct and collective" ancestors who fought and died for that poorly defined goal? Somehow I doubt we'll find them in a history book.

I then thought of this fetid, smug, hate-filled, wealthy white man [it’s all about race and class to you people] taking credit for the release and yet still not being satisfied. It does not matter how long we’ve been in these United States. We will never be American.

Part of being American is not being a pathetic, whiny, race-baiting cry-baby.

So, tears in my eyes, pain in my heart and rage in my soul [lol], I composed this video message. More than written text, it comes close to expressing my full pain at witnessing a white man who was handed everything call the President of the United States (and me) a nigger.

Look, Baratunde: this is not what it sounds like when a white man, who was handed everything, calls the President of the United States (and you) a nigger. This is what it sounds like: “Hey, Barack Hussein Soetoro — I mean, Obama. Hey, Baratunde Rafiq Thurston. You’re niggers. Now go the fuck back to Kenya.”

See the difference? This Trump birther business is not racism, you little brat. It’s just a white man who dared to mildly criticize a black — a lying, un-American black. Now quit your bitching.

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Today on Unamusement Park: the stunning conclusion to our three-part series on the word “nigger” (part one, part two).

Stereotype threat

The white people we’ve see calling blacks “niggers,” or comparing them to animals, represent the too-small segment of the white population that correctly perceives their existence threatened by people of a certain other race, occupying certain extremes of certain bell curves. They have simply observed the indisputable reality of racism in America today: whites are targeted for extreme violence by racially motivated black criminals who despise them because of the color of their skin.

What reaction is appropriate in the face of such savagery? Wild animal. Missing link. Sub-human primate. Consider them. Pretend you know nothing about American history, and consider them.

It is, in fact, possible to behave like a wild animal, a missing link (between ape and man), or a sub-human primate, just like it is possible to behave like an emu or a jar of strawberry jam. (Just ask a mime — not that you’ll get much of an answer.) The only questions we should be asking are

  1. have we or have we not seen behavior, by people who happen to be black, which warrants comparison to wild animals?
  2. should we or should we not care when other black people, who have nothing to do with it, complain about their feelings being hurt by such comparison?

Yes, we have, and no, we really shouldn’t.

Why are the comparisons offensive, anyway? Let’s spell it out: in the past, though not for the past few decades, black men in general have been stereotyped as “innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal… a fiend, a sociopath, an anti-social menace… hideous, terrifying predators who target helpless victims, especially White women” (racism expert Dr. David Pilgrim).

But black people in general are no longer stereotyped that way. (Duh.) Even a hint of the stereotype is met with universal opprobrium, whether in 2009 or 2011. Yet the analogy persists in our culture, and it remains offensive to black people, because a disturbing number of black people can actually be fairly described as (check the dictionary) savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal — terrifying predators who target helpless victims, especially white women. The proof is there for anyone willing to face it.

A racist poster! I'm outraged. By the way, black people commit more crime than white people, and they specifically target whites.

Niggers

Can there be any doubt what “nigger” means to those who use it seriously, out of anger, frustration, and yes, even hatred?

nigger noun

a violent black criminal, especially one who targets white people, especially a rapist

To a white man (yes, they’re people too, and their opinions count), who could possibly be a more deserving target of disparagement than these racist misogynists? And what better word for probably the most offensive form of life on Earth than “probably the most offensive word in English”?

Other black people who have nothing to do with it and get their feelings hurt are just collateral damage — figurative collateral damage, that is, unlike the literal victims of literal black violence. (If the word “nigger” is clear evidence of racial bigotry and hatred, what is the epidemic of black-on-white hate crimes clear evidence of? Super-thriving racial mega-bigotry and ultra-hatred?)

If language is defined by usage, then here are the niggers you’ve heard so much about — the wild animals, the sub-human primates: here and here and here and here and here and here.

Niggers.

Oh, do you think I hurt black people’s feelings when I used the N-word just now?

Do you think they want an apology?

Am I supposed to care?

Nigger, please.

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Our series on the word “nigger” continues from where we left off, today joining forces with Hatred, our five-part documentary on the War on Hate (part 1, part 2, part 3), to tackle real live racism!

On the Internet.

‘Cause that’s about the only place you can find it.

Racism! (Pretty fucking badass racism, to be honest.)

“Nigger” in the near-absence of usage

The near-universal censorship of “nigger” — which to black people like abagond constitutes a “simple act of respect,” and which typifies the balance of racial power in America today — raises an interesting question: what, exactly, does “nigger” mean to non-black people today?

An overwhelming majority of them would never dream of mentioning it (as in “the word ‘nigger’ is offensive”), let alone using it (as in “you are a nigger”), although they can hear it used every day on television by black people. Those non-black people understand “nigger” to mean

  • whatever black people say it means, when they say it; and the worst thing in the world, if I say it, which I am not allowed to do, because it would hurt their feelings.

On the other hand, we have a minority of non-black people who continue to use the word to disparage black people. If anyone knows some alternative definition of “nigger” that would justify its extreme offensiveness to black people, it is them.

Unfortunately, they are extremely rare, for reasons which must now be obvious. Personally, I’ve never met one. They are hard to find even on the Internet. Stormfront, the infamous white-nationalist forum, disallows the word. The notorious website Chimpout is practically obsessed with it, but there it’s impossible to separate serious usage (i.e., hatred toward black people or some particular black persons) from shock humor.

The anti-Jewish white-nationalist website Vanguard News Network (VNN) uses “nigger” often, and seriously. Here is a representative selection.

  1. A commenter on this article about a black rapist uses “a pack of wild niggers” to describe the dozens of black and Hispanic criminals involved in the Central Park Jogger case:

    On the evening of April 19, 1989, a young woman, out for her run in New York’s Central Park, was bludgeoned, raped, sodomized and beaten so savagely that doctors despaired for her life and a horrified nation cried out in pain and outrage. [Source: MSNBC]

    Another commenter responds: “I doubt 1 in 1,000,000 white female victims of nigger crime would side with the nigger.” The word refers to black criminals, especially rapists with white victims.

  2. A commenter on this article about the media’s portrayal of white racists (in the first or second sense) uses it to describe President Obama, as follows: “[o]ne arrogant Nigger with too much power can easily set race relations back decades. We are seeing just that.”

    Another commenter complains: “Niggers get bail on ARMED robbery, but not a White man who spoke clearly about our ill’s.” Here, again, “nigger” refers to black criminals.

  3. A commenter on this article about interracial rape being almost exclusively black-on-white has this explanation:

    That’s because niggresses are among the ugliest females in the world… Besides that White males are not the animal missing link that the nigger is. … it’s pure [racial] hatred, get back at Whitey.

    It’s a fucking race war & we’re legally not [allowed] to do anything.

  4. The author of this article, “Do You Spend Like a Nigger?,” is referring to financially irresponsible blacks who prefer alcohol to books, quoting this article (by, for, and about blacks):

    Among our [i.e., African-Americans’] favorite purchases are cars and liquor. Blacks make up only 12% of the U.S. population, yet account for 30% of the country’s Scotch consumption. Detroit, which is 80% black, is the world’s No. 1 market for Cognac. …

    The only area where blacks seem to be cutting back on spending is books; total purchases have gone from a high of $356 million in 2000 to $303 million in 2002. This shortsighted behavior, motivated by a desire for instant gratification and social acceptance, comes at the expense of our future. …

    Certainly, higher rates of unemployment, income disparity and credit discrimination are financial impediments to the economic vitality of blacks, but so are our consumer tastes.

  5. You can find more posts under “nigger crime,” “nigger mentality,” and of course “niggers.”

Apparently, to this major Internet community of anti-Jewish white nationalists, “nigger” means

  • a violent black criminal, especially one who targets white people, especially a rapist; or
  • a black person who sets back race relations by refusing to address the issue of niggers in the previous sense; or
  • (occasionally) a financially irresponsible, hard-drinking, uneducated, lower-class black person,

this last definition clearly related to niggers in the first (violent black criminal) sense.

“Chimping out”

Running out of “nigger” references, I widened my search for racial slurs to include comparisons of black people to animals, especially lower apes (the premise of the website Chimpout, obviously). Lately, they have seen a spike in popularity, in certain corners of the Internet where they were once as rare as the word “nigger” still is.

In the comments on this video (H/T Roissy) of two black women beating a white (transgender) woman until she has a seizure, for instance, we find a representative animal analogy (from “SkullandBones”) — among other horror stories of unprovoked black-on-white violence (emphasis always mine):

Even their women are out of control sub-human primates with a reactionary ape brain based on raw emotion. Someone should study them.

After watching that video, it’s difficult to summon up much sympathy for whatever black people might have suffered hurt feelings from being compared to “sub-human primates.” Isn’t there something more important we should be talking about?

Ape analogies: as damaging to blacks' self esteem as repeated kicks are to a skull?

Mangan thinks there’s a trend here:

it’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore, even though the media is doing its utmost to keep the public ignorant, that these sorts of incidents are commonplace, at least on a national level. If whites were perpetrating these crimes against blacks, we’d never hear the end of it…

Meanwhile, from the hurt feelings files, “a bunch of people are quite exercised over an Orange County, CA, politician who sent an email with a photoshopped image of Obama as a chimpanzee” (ibid.).

In the comments: “I think the key is to reframe these encounters. Don’t think of blacks as people who happen to be angry. Think of them as wild animals. Just as you wouldn’t photograph a bear with a flash bulb, you don’t use the word ‘monkey’ around blacks in such a way that the black might think you are referring to it” (“Sabril”).

OneSTDV is on top of it, of course.

Look at the behavior above and try to temper your jadedness. The behavior is shockingly savage, animalistic, and carnal. The way they speak, the extreme lack of control, the violent outbursts. HBD blogs focus so much on blacks because their behavior best illustrates racial disparities. While one can surely find much to criticize about lower-class white proles (i.e. “white trash”), their behavior never devolves to this level of savagery.

In the comments: “What makes me the sickest in the video isn’t the attack of the G-ape on the white guy. It isn’t the attack of the she apes on the white girl. I have come to expect this behavior from these animals who are allowed to roam free in our society. What makes me the sickest is the bystanders” (“Lance Justice”).

Gucci Little Piggy, too:

There have been several criminal incidents at McDonald’s captured on film over the last few days. Two are unrelated to the massive job search that was widely advertised in the media, but the most disturbing involved a fight in the McDonald’s parking lot that ended in a group of people being run over by some animal who had some minor beef with somebody. SBPDL [Stuff Black People Don’t Like] has covered it well.

In the comments: “As for the video [at SBPDL] — savage is the only [way] I can describe it” (OneSTDV himself).

The links lead us to SBPDL:

Just a few days removed from the aborted attempt to hire 50,000 new employees nationwide, McDonald’s announced that inflation is about to hit their value meal, which helped drive up profits and the company’s stock price a few years ago.

Will these rising prices cause more violence? Yes.

In the comments: “These wild animals need to be hung in the town square for all wild blacks to see. I bet you crime rates go down” (“John McClane”). And “… blacks have a problem with ‘racism’ when whites look down on this kind of animalistic carrying-on??????? THAT’S the mystery to me… Again, how any ANY race on the globe not find such loud, violent, obnoxious Negro behavior sickening?” (Anonymous.)

Aside: SBPDL chose my graphic for their campaign to boycott McDonald’s. Sweet!

Black people really don't like this stuff.

A disturbing trend

Hoosier Nation has been on it since February at least (with links):

every day, untold millions of our children are foisted into a hostile environment. They know that breaking their silence will likely provoke charges of “racism” from their mentors and retaliation from their peers. Kids learn quickly, either from example or from painful first-hand experience, to shut up, blend in, and stop crying. With boys it’s typically physical harassment and with girls it’s typically sexual harassment, but the purpose and effect are the same: humiliation and domination.

… we who are explicit must stop hiding behind abstract talking points and statistical reports. We need to be reliable advocates for specific children. These kids are alone in the dark and we need to be there for them. Why not start with this 12 year old girl, Morgan, who was brutally assaulted by a pack of “refugees” a few days ago?

Jewamongyou, too (with links):

There have been many recent racial attacks, against whites, that have been posted to YouTube. Sagat linked to one a few days ago. Hoosier Nation also posted a few examples. A few have been featured, over the years, on Amren as well.

… There is no doubt that those we see on YouTube are merely the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, I would venture to guess that the odds of justice being served in most of these attacks, are slim to none. Media coverage of such attacks is almost nonexistent. There are no large organizations, or political parties, to advocate for the victims. If we so much as complain about this state of affairs, we are labeled “racists” and “haters”. And people wonder why we are angry.

Now what do these crimes (and the lack of media coverage) have to do with the sudden popularity of ape analogies? And what does any of this have to do with the various definitions of “nigger”? “The N-Word” concludes tomorrow.

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Today Unamusement Park begins an exploration of one of the most interesting words in the English language: “nigger.” As I mentioned in my open letter to race conscious black people,

[“nigger”] does seem to be a uniquely hurtful word. You [black people] should probably just get over it. I mean, you go around saying: “Here is a word you must not say, because it is so upsetting to us. If you said it, we would really be mad! So don’t say it unless you want to hurt our feelings.” You’re not just giving the (largely mythical) racists ammunition, you’re putting a loaded gun in their hands and showing them the best place to shoot you.

You shouldn’t worry about black people. They’ll be okay. White racists generally pose no threat to them, by virtue of being imaginary — a paranoid racial delusion. (Big Lie #2: Racism is everywhere.) The vanishingly small minority of real racists is the most reviled group of people in America, and the least influential in politics, culture and the media.

Even my benevolent brand of “racism” in the second sense — properly, white racial consciousness (WRC) — is “the one topic more outrageous than any other… so controversial that even a site replete with obscenities, graphic descriptions of sex, anti-feminism, game, and general anti-establishment ranting can’t handle it” (Dennis Mangan). (The site in question is the otherwise excellent In Mala Fide, to which I have contributed one post, which may have started all these WRC shenanigans.)

What makes “nigger” so interesting is that, decades after the extinction of the widespread white racism that weaponized it, the word — like a Cold War-era hydrogen bomb buried under the New Mexico desert — is just as lethally radioactive as ever.

So let’s dig it up and play with it!

Language is defined by usage

Consider an albatross.

An albatross.

A-L-B-A-T-R-O-S-S. The letters themselves and their arrangement tell us nothing about the referent. The word “albatross” is not, in any way, albatross-like.

It could be. It could be that the first A tells us the albatross is an animal; the L, that it is living, not extinct; the B, that it is a bird; and so on. Very logical — but that is not how English works. The only reason why “albatross” means albatross is that we (normal English-speaking people) agree that it does. If we all agreed that, beginning at midnight tonight, we would replace it by “zob” or some other random string of characters, that new word would serve just as well. It is not as if the albatrosses themselves would change.

In short, language is defined by usage.

“Nigger” as defined by usage

Today, the word “nigger,” often rendered “nigga,” is almost exclusively used by black people to mean

  • a person (often a black person), in a neutral sense, as in: “Where y’all niggas goin’?”; or
  • a person (often a black person), in a positive sense, as in: “My nigga.”

Black people, and their non-black enforcers, do not allow non-black people to use “nigger” in this way, because many decades ago (around the time “computer” stopped meaning “person who computes”) the word was mostly used by non-black people to mean

  • a black person, in a negative sense, as in: “I hate all the niggers and I wish they would just go back to Africa sometime very soon.”

In fact, blacks generally do not allow non-blacks to even mention the word “nigger,” for the same reason. For example, according to black blogger abagond*,

blacks do not like whites using the n-word. That alone should be reason enough for whites not to say the word. End of story.

But not the end of our story. “The N-Word” continues tomorrow.

*Yes, the same Abagond who obliviously (I hope…) kicked off an attempt to discredit race realist science (by plagiarizing, selectively editing, and misquoting me) with a picture of four convicted black torture-rape-murderers.

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It’s that time of the month again — no, not that time, the good time: time for Unamusement Park’s three-month anniversary spectacular! Hurray! Or should I say… Unamusement Park’s three-month anniversary slut-tacular. Hurray again! Hurray for sluts!

We like sluts!

You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you? You silly goose.

I feel the need... the need for sluts.

This is a day I’ll remember forever, like the first time I lied to get sex (“I love you too”), or the first time I took advantage of a drunk girl (“close your eyes, open your mouth, and take off your top — there’s something I want to tell you”).

April is the sluttiest month, and the last nine days of March are pretty slutty too

Tonight we commemorate the founding of Unamusement Park, surely a pivotal moment in women’s history. Bigger than Roe v. Wade. Bigger than suffrage. Bigger than the invention of the push-up bra. Bigger even than the first time a man said: “Hey, you know what would be great? If only there was some way we could oppress all women forever… with our dicks.” So put on some clothes, wipe off your face, and take my hand, as we look back on some of the slut-tastic hate-erosexual experiences we’ve shared and you’ve later regretted, you dirty little girl.

  • As part of the previous anniversary celebration here at Unamusement Park, I dispatched my crack squad of Research Assistants into the field to collect data on a disturbing cultural trend: stupidity levels, already unsustainably high since the late 90s, are still rising.
  • There’s a whole new world of psychology research, a new fantastic point of view on race differences in intelligence. No one can tell us no, or where to go, or say we’re only dreaming. I’m like a shooting star: I’ve come so far, I can’t go back to where I used to be. With respect to behavior genetics, that is.
  • Colorlines: offering solutions to whatever mythical problems today’s minorities are whining about, especially if it’s something white people are doing, like staying in school, getting good grades, not doing drugs, keeping out of jail, or succeeding in life without government handouts.
  • Poor sportsmanship? It’s a reactionary musical extravaganza!
  • One of the peculiarities of our decadent age is the ongoing undeclared War on Hate, which is being waged by the most hateful and malicious elements of our society. Hatred is a five-part documentary on their struggle. Their stupid, useless, confused, evil struggle.
  • Race denialists really don’t think about race. They will do anything to avoid it.
  • They also display a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot. “African blacks don’t have an average IQ of 70,” they crow. “It’s actually 81! That’s only nineteen points (1.3 standard deviations) below the white average!”
  • It’s funny how many people accuse me of being hateful, bigoted, crazy, stupid, or ignorant. Every time they do, I remember the immortal words of Inigo Montoya: “You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Wait, no, that’s not right.
  • Since this is my very first post wholly devoted to the dreadful subject of feminism, I’m going to treat it like spaghetti: throw a bunch of angry sex-conscious women at a wall and see if they stick. No, that’s not quite right. Let’s just say I’m going to strip down my rhetoric, whip out my toolbox of reactionary politics, and shoot my hateful ideas right in their faces. There’s got to be a better metaphor for that…
  • Every time a feminist lies that rape is about power, not sex, and every time she meets useful information with victim-blaming hysteria, she is making the world a little less safe for women. Thanks to feminists, no rape victim will ever forget it wasn’t her fault she was assaulted as she walked home at 3 am, alone, drunk, and wearing her awesome new miniskirt. The man who attacked her was clearly seeking power and control over women. Next week, he’ll probably rape an 80-year-old grandmother at lunch time.
  • You wouldn’t ask a shark to respect your right not to get eaten, would you? Don’t ask rapists to respect your right not to get raped. They don’t care. That’s what makes them rapists. Just stay away from them.
  • You can determine race with 99.86 percent accuracy by looking at gene clusters. You can also determine race by looking at bones. That’s forensic anthropology, or as I like to call it, CSI Serengeti.
  • The truth is, statistically speaking, there is no bias against blacks inherent in the justice system. All the anecdotal evidence in the world won’t change that.
  • “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him” (Jonathan Swift).
  • It’s a genetic epic: an Hispanic panic! Are they ethnic or organic? That third rail (of rape responsibility) was galvanic. (I’m manic.)
  • Human Biological Variationa race denialist favorite, “used in virtually every physical anthropology class for undergraduate students in America” — has the following to say about race differences in intelligence: “There is little debate over the average 15-point difference [in IQ] between American blacks and whites…” Research is hard!
  • Madness? THIS. IS. SFORZA.
  • “Fuck this shit,” I hear you say. “Fuck the war, fuck the economy, fuck global warming, and fuck the price of gas. Fuck the Democrats and fuck the Republicans, but especially the fucking Democrats, and especially the fucking Republicans. Fuck Obama, fuck Biden, fuck Boehner ’til he cries. Fuck the radicals liberally. Fuck the libertarians freely. Fuck the socialists according to your needs, and fuck them again according to their abilities.” Anyway, I came up with this thing. I call it compassionate reactionism.
  • I’ve actually been thinking about that a lot lately. Not the fact that I’m a frantic schizoid bum — I came to terms with that long ago. No, I mean I’ve been thinking about ways to take these wonderfully hateful ideas off the Internet, out of my fortified bunker complex in Vermont, and into the light of day. Or rather, into the twilight of Western Civilization.
  • This is not what racism looks like: a scientist gives intelligence tests to some people, then announces he’s found a difference in their average IQs. This is what racism looks like: a high-school dropout shoots some beer bottles with an air rifle, then announces “I hate all the niggers, they like to eat watermelon, and I wish they would just go back to Africa sometime very soon.”

Was it good for you? ‘Cause it was fucking spectacular for me.

The first annual Most Retarded Race Denialist award

Unamusement Park would not be possible — actually, it would be possible, but a whole lot less fun for me, if not for the generous contributions of random Internet losers, who have donated their ignorant, inconsistent, idiotic opinions to fuel my white-hot white rage and give me something to make fun of when I can’t think of anything substantial to write. Which is nearly always.

On this day, these men shall be honored for their generosity in the only truly appropriate way: by first insulting, then ignoring them.

Wise words. But this past month, some of those random Internet losers have been so stupefyingly ignorant, so consistently inconsistent, and so unbelievably idiotic that they’ve earned some individual recognition. To that end, I am introducing Unamusement Park’s first award, to be presented annually to the most retarded race denialist: the annual Most Retarded Race Denialist award!

The nominees are: anyone, absolutely anyone, who believes at least one of the following retarded things:

  1. Race is a social construct.
  2. Race is not biological.
  3. Race is only skin deep.
  4. Diversity is a strength.
  5. Black people are just as smart as white people (and Asians).

Without further ado, I proudly present the first annual Most Retarded Race Denialist award to… all of them! They’re all the most retarded! Hurray!

By popular demand: a slutty slut acting slutty!

We turn now to a slutty slut acting slutty, to hear her slutty thoughts on Unamusement Park’s three-month anniversary slut-tacular, or as I like to call it, “International Touch-a-Sleeping-Girl’s-Boobs Day.”

I miss my gratuitous French girl, but she has far too much self-respect to appear in the slut-tacular.

Take it away, you slutty slut.

“Oh my God, I haven’t been fucked in hours. I can’t think straight. I can’t even see straight. Someone, anyone, please stick your cock in me. You!”

Me?

“Yeah, you: the blurry guy with the turnips, wearing the ‘I Hate Black People’ t-shirt. I need you to fuck me. Now.”

… Seriously?

“Do I look like I’m kidding? This is a medical emergency! I. Need. Cock.”

Uh… wow. Hehe, are you at least going to buy me dinner f—

“Shut the fuck up. Take off your pants.”

Hey, what are you — those are my — oh fuck. Guys, stop the tape. Get out of here.

“No, it’s cool. They can stay.”

No, seriously, stop the —

We close on the satisfied moaning and gentle slurping noises of a slutty slut an empowered, sex-positive woman doing what she does best.

“Stop narrating.”

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Dear “race conscious” black people:

Hi there! Or as you like to say: “yo, what’s good.” I would offer you one of those secret handshakes/gang signs you enjoy so much, but (a) I don’t know any of them, and (b) you are merely a rhetorical device.

Black people don't love me.

So: you’re black. African American. Afro-American. A person of color. Basically, you are whatever you say you are, and everyone else will just have to deal with it, regardless of the number of syllables. Otherwise we would be hurting your feelings, which I’ve been told is almost as bad as slavery. Anyway, you’re black, and that’s super important to you. Well, that’s just great, because I’m actually here to talk to you about that.

Yes, I know you normally don’t allow white people to talk about “your people.” I know you think we couldn’t possibly understand your (poorly defined, unsubstantiated) daily “struggle” for civil rights, fifty years after you got them. I know you think you have special, privileged insights into science, politics, and religion, simply because of the color of your skin. And I know that if the conversation makes you uncomfortable, you can shut it down at any moment by saying (or screaming) the word “racist.” Of course, no one is allowed to do this to you (even if you openly call for the extermination of all white people, as more than a few of you do), unless it’s another black person who thinks you aren’t complaining enough about the African-American “struggle,” in which case they are allowed to call you an “Uncle Tom” (i.e., race traitor).

Anyway, you’re making it pretty difficult to have a productive conversation. Fortunately, I can sum up my ideas in one sentence: Don’t expect me to ignore reality any time it makes black people look bad. The canonical example is: black people are less intelligent than white people (on average).

This is an established fact, which you should know. You can read about the so-called IQ gap in the news, and in standard undergraduate textbooks like Human Biological Variation (Mielke, Konigsberg, and Relethford, 2006): “[m]any studies show that the average IQ of American blacks is 15 points lower than that of whites… There is little debate over the average 15-point difference” (p. 347).

Black people don't love Arthur Jensen either.

There are other, related facts you should know as well:

  1. IQ scores are a good way to measure general intelligence
  2. intelligence is highly heritable in adults
  3. there is no good reason to think the IQ gap is entirely a product of black people’s “environment” (i.e., discrimination)

Very likely this seems “racist” to you. If I asked you to explain why, you would probably throw up your hands and make frustrated, angry noises. Now, normally I wouldn’t say this, but since I’m giving you the straight dope, so to speak: you are acting like children. Do you think I acted this way when I learned that Chinese people are more intelligent than white people? No, I did not, because I am not the average of 220 million white Americans, nor is a Chinese person the average of 1.3 billion Chinese people. Your obsession with racial solidarity is irrational and unhealthy.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. This is not what racism looks like: a scientist gives intelligence tests to some people, then announces he’s found a difference in their average IQs. This is what racism looks like: a high-school dropout shoots some beer bottles with an air rifle, then announces “I hate all the niggers, they like to eat watermelon, and I wish they would just go back to Africa sometime very soon.” Here is the contradiction inherent in the notion of “scientific racism” (which is actually just valid science that doesn’t flatter black people): we’re supposed to believe that PhD psychologists and intelligence experts like Arthur Jensen and J. Phillipe Rushton are so clever, they’ve managed to fabricate utterly convincing empirical evidence for race differences in intelligence; yet so stupid, they hate all dark-skinned people. We’re expected to trust the race denialists, in spite of the fact that they are demonstrably a bunch of drooling idiots incapable of valid reasoning.

It’s sort of like accusing NASA of being run by homophobes. Someone who hates gay people indiscriminately is unlikely to have more than a basic grasp of aerospace engineering and astrophysics.

Also, black people are really homophobic.

Gay.

I can see you haven’t been listening to me. You’re still upset I said “n*gger,” right? (There, I asterisked it for you.) It does seem to be a uniquely hurtful word. You should probably just get over it. I mean, you go around saying: “Here is a word you must not say, because it is so upsetting to us. If you said it, we would really be mad! So don’t say it unless you want to hurt our feelings.” You’re not just giving the (largely mythical) racists ammunition, you’re putting a loaded gun in their hands and showing them the best place to shoot you.

If I were one of those mythical racists, this is the point where I would say: “Look how black people are unable to control their animal impulses. Clearly they are an inferior race.” I am not going to say that, for two very good reasons: (1) it is an invalid argument, and (2) it has a false premise. I don’t care if you think it’s “racist” or not, because thanks to you, the word has lost all meaning.

Be more smarter!

And now I’m going to stop talking to you, because frankly this is really boring. You, who are so obsessed with “your people,” don’t know the first thing about them. I’ve moved on from Race 101, while you’re taking it for the tenth time, still answering every question the same way, still getting it wrong every time.

RACE 101
Midterm 1
Spring 2011

#1. Which of the following best describes the nature of race?

(a) race is 100 percent genetic
(b) race is 50 percent genetic, 50 percent cultural
(c) race is 100 percent cultural
(d) YOU’RE A RACIST!

#2. Which of the following best describes the black-white IQ gap?

(a) the gap is about 15 points, and is partly genetic
(b) the gap is about 10 points, and is completely genetic
(c) the gap is about 5 points, and is completely environmental
(d) YOU’RE A RACIST!

#3. How should we interpret the following statement: “the average IQ of an African is 70”?

(a) Africans have an average mental age of 11
(b) Africans are mentally retarded
(c) black people are an inferior race
(d) YOU’RE A RACIST!

Better luck next time.

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“Minorities struggle with racism every single day of their lives,” the sensitivity trainer explains at the start of your mandatory annual Sensitivity Seminar. “You can’t see always it, because it’s so deeply ingrained in our institutions, and your white privilege is blinding you to their suffering. But there’s no denying it: the proof is in the statistics. Minority students are falling behind in school.” Somehow you doubt he’s talking about Asians. “They’re under-represented in science and engineering. They’re being sent to prison instead of college. There’s no other explanation.”

What do you say?

“Homophobes!” Your brother-in-law, the environmentalist lawyer, exclaims over dinner. “They’re just a bunch of right-wing fundamentalist homophobes. Why won’t they give up their hatred and let gay people marry each other, already? Straight people can get married — whatever happened to equal rights? How can they talk about ‘preserving the sanctity of marriage,’ when half of all marriages end in divorce?”

What do you say?

“Why don’t you take an interest in real issues that matter to real people?” Your girlfriend wants to know when you get home. “Did you know that women still make 70 cents for every dollar a man makes? Or was it 80… Anyway, one in four women will get sexually assaulted in her lifetime! Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Do you think it’s okay that cops are telling us we deserve to get raped because of how we dress? Society is afraid of women’s sexuality! Now are you going to drive me to the Slut Walk tomorrow or not? You know I don’t have a car, and I’m afraid to go alone.”

What do you say?

Okay, that last one is easy: “Did you flood my toilet?” Then, without waiting for an answer: “Bring the movies.” (Game: I’m doing it right.)

I was going to upload a picture of my ex, but I decided to just Google "slut" instead. There is an uncanny resemblance here, though.

Constructive criticism

Fellow reactionists (whatever that means), it has been brought to my attention that

  1. it’s impossible to have this conversation in the real world, so nothing I write here at Unamusement Park will ever get any further than your computer screen;
  2. very soon the raging dark masses and government thought-crime enforcers will snuff us out for good; and furthermore
  3. I am a mangled smelly bug-eyed bum.

WILL DEBUNK RACE DENIALISM FOR FOOD

Fair enough. I’ve actually been thinking about that a lot lately. Not the fact that I’m a frantic schizoid bum — I came to terms with that long ago. No, I mean I’ve been thinking about ways to take these wonderfully hateful ideas off the Internet, out of my fortified bunker complex in Vermont, and into the light of day. Or rather, into the twilight of Western Civilization.

But it’s cozy in my bunker!

Compassionate reactionism: it’s a thing now. I’m not exactly sure what thing it is, but that’s obviously not going to stop me from talking about it at great length.

It’s like ordinary reactionism, only… slightly less hateful. It’s reactionism you can talk about over tea with Grandma.

By my definition, compassionate reactionism comprises all possible honest answers to the question I posed in the introduction — what do you say? — that will not get you fired by your boss, disowned by your family, or dumped by your hypothetical girlfriend. I’m kidding about the girlfriend — you should just let that one go — but I’m semi-serious about the concept, which is the most serious I ever get about anything.

Really, what can you tell your family, your friends, your co-workers? Having none myself, I am in no position to answer. (I was raised by wolves, learned English from reading cereal boxes, and make a living selling turnips I grow behind my bunker.)

Vermont is turnip country.

On Stranger Tides

In my first post on the subject, you’ll find grains of truth, kernels of ideas, mixed nuts of sensible suggestions: it’s nice you’re a feminist, but your ideas about rape are endangering women, for instance, or I understand that you believe you’re a gay woman in a straight man’s body, but you still can’t shower with the “other” girls. That’s the direction we’re heading.

Bear in mind, we’re in uncharted waters here. Already we have sailed into the eye of the feminist storm to battle the man-hating man-eating Kraken that lurks within. We have resisted the Siren song of the sexy sluts, not to mention their incessant wordplay about “getting wet.” We have even waded through the rank, candiru-infested swamps of gender identity. Tomorrow, reactionary rapier in hand, we turn our cannons of compassion on the rowboat of race relations, fearless even in the face of certain death! By which I mean, someone is certain to brand us with the dreaded R-word.

Or should I say, the dreaded arrrrrrrr-word. Hee hee.

Yeah, we got into a whole pirate thing there. Not sure how that happened, but I'm quite pleased it did.

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Repent.

My opinion of the modern world is best illustrated by these words.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats, “The Second Coming”

My opinion of the modern world is second best illustrated by these words.

A man is lying on the street, some punk has chopped off his head,
And I’m the only one who stops to see if he’s dead.
Turns out he’s dead.
That’s why I’m singing:
Oooooo, what is wrong with the world today?
(What’s wrong with the world today?
<mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble>)

Flight of the Conchords, “Issues (Think About It)”

With all these gyres widening, innocence ceremonies drowning, and blood-dimmed tides on the loose, it is easy to become disheartened, bitter, homicidal, or glum.

“Fuck this shit,” I hear you say. “Fuck the war, fuck the economy, fuck global warming, and fuck the price of gas. Fuck the Democrats and fuck the Republicans, but especially the fucking Democrats, and especially the fucking Republicans. Fuck Obama, fuck Biden, fuck Boehner ’til he cries. Fuck the radicals liberally. Fuck the libertarians freely. Fuck the socialists according to your needs, and fuck them again according to their abilities. Fuck the birthers in Hawaii or fuck them in Kenya, it’s all the same to me. Fuck the truthers with an iron-rich sphere. Fuck the relativists and tell them it’s traditional in your country. Fuck the haters, I fucking hate those fucks. Fuck Iraq, fuck Iran; fuck Egypt and Afghanistan. Take a fifteen minute break, then fuck Libya. You know what, fuck every other Middle Eastern shit-hole sand pile, too. Fuck the terrorists. Fuck all the Muslims. Fuck the Arabs and fuck the Jews. Fuck Rachel Corrie with a bulldozer. Fuck the blacks and fuck the Mexicans. Fuck the Asians in the library. Fuck South Africa until they bring back apartheid. Fuck the feminists and make them call you ‘daddy.’ Fuck the Conscious Men, and hey, Dear Woman: Fuck You Too. Fuck the sluts, they’re asking for it. Fuck the betas. (Someone’s got to do it.) Fuck the lesbians straight and fuck the straight girls bi. Fuck the bi girls, they’re crazy in the sack. And while you’re at it, fuck the crazy girls too. Fuck the rapists before they fuck you. Fuck cancer, fuck AIDS, fuck herpes, and fuck swine flu. Fuck the criminals and fuck the police. Fuck mom and dad, they don’t fucking understand you anyway. Fuck Bristol Palin and get her pregnant with another retarded baby. (Or was it Sarah? Ah, fuck it.) Fuck Rebecca Black. Fuck her on Thursday, Thursday. Fuck her again on Friday, Friday. Tomorrow is fucking Saturday, and fucking Sunday comes afterward. You know what? Fuck ’em all. Fuck me, fuck you, fuck the whole entire world. Go fuck yourself.”

I understand your frustration, and I respect your enthusiasm (even as I fear your psychotic babbling). But I am here to tell you: fucking is not the answer! We cannot fuck our way out of this predicament. Our generation’s Berlin Walls will not be brought down by our collective jackhammer thrusting, despite the apparent aptness of the metaphor.

I'm paraphrasing.

Anyway, I came up with this thing. I call it compassionate reactionism. It’s like ordinary reactionism, only… slightly less hateful. It’s reactionism you can talk about over tea with Grandma. Over the next few days, I will attempt to explain the concept by examples. Hey, it’s not like I’ve got three other series going on already…

The Compassionate Reactionary on… Feminism

So you’ve decided women are just as good as men. Maybe better.

No, definitely better.

I happen to agree. Girls are soft and they smell nice. That alone guarantees their superiority. Oh, you meant something different. Equality and shit, right? But you’ve already got that.

Well anyway, I’m happy you’re so strong and empowered and independent and you don’t need a man and your vagina delivers monologues. Why you keep asking for special treatment is a bit of a mystery, but… whatever. We can put that aside for now. I really hope your Ph.D. in Gender Studies is six prime reproductive years well spent. (See how compassionate I am?) However:

Don’t come crying to me when your feminism meets reality, and reality kicks the shit out of you. This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. (I feel like we’ve been over this before, albeit in an altogether less compassionate way.)

If you drink and drug yourself into a stupor and wake up in a strange bed with a hangover, a tattoo, a bad case of crabs, and a whole lot of regret, you don’t get to wash away your culpability (or your crabs) by declaring yourself a rape victim. Light all the candles you want. That’s one night you can’t take back.

You say you have a right to not get raped. At first glance, this appears to be a true statement. However, your behavior has lead me to believe you have confused “right to not get raped” with “indestructible barrier protecting your vagina (etc.) at all times and in all places, allowing you to do exactly as you please without any consequences.”

The thing about rapists is: they don't need an invitation.

You say there’s a sexual double standard. I believe you. You’re still a slut, and I still don’t respect you. I’m sorry if I’m not sufficiently empowering you, but you just aren’t relationship material. Now flip over.

No, I don’t have a condom. That’s why we gave you abortion rights, isn’t it?

The Compassionate Reactionary on… Gender

So you’re dissatisfied your genitals. Hey, who isn’t?

But you… you take it further than most. You’ve decided you’re a woman in a man’s body, or a man in a woman’s body, or maybe even a gay man in a straight woman’s body. Something crazy like that. Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you were mentally ill.

mental disorder (noun): a mental or bodily condition marked primarily by sufficient disorganization of personality, mind, and emotions to seriously impair the normal psychological functioning of the individual

Anyway, you’re not happy with how nature identified you, meaning what’s between your legs, so you’re self-identifying as something else. That’s nice. I hope your decision makes you happy. (See how supportive I’m being?) However:

You can’t tell me what you are. This is the kind of thing I’m talking about.

Well, you can tell me, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe you. I’m going to identify you however I like. Probably by how you look. If you don’t like it, don’t talk to me. Definitely don’t try to date me. Because if you look like a guy and talk like a guy but you say you’re a pretty little girl on the inside, well… I’m not going inside to check, if you know what I mean. Maybe your dick self-identifies as pussy, but mine doesn’t buy it.

Natalie Portman: 100 percent irrelevant. If you had just Googled "transgender," you would understand why I need this image right now.

You’ve got your freedom of association, so don’t associate with me — by which I mean, don’t try to fuck me. But I’ve got my freedom of thought and freedom of speech, so don’t try to fuck with me either.

Don’t worry. I’m just getting started.

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My series of short essays debunking race denialism continues. Hopefully you’re not bored of this exercise yet. Someone’s got to answer their arguments, no matter how weak, in case there’s some race denialist or race agnostic out there who’s following the debate and keeping an open mind. Even slightly open. Ajar.

Frankly I’d settle for a race denialist mind that hasn’t been shut, locked, bolted, and sealed up with concrete.

Today I present my final, comprehensive remarks on the Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza controversy. Here is a summary of said controversy, according to race denialists.

  1. Evil racists claim Cavalli-Sforza is secretly on their side.
  2. Race denialists refute these claims by quoting recent books by Cavalli-Sforza.
  3. Return to step 1.

This, on the other hand, is a summary of the actual controversy.

  1. Race denialists claim Cavalli-Sforza is openly on their side by quoting his recent books.
  2. Race realists point out that Cavalli-Sforza’s work on human genetics is clearly race realist in nature. However, his recent books contain a perfunctory section or two stating that classifying people by race is impossible, useless, arbitrary, and/or racist. These statements are (a) contradicted by Cavalli-Sforza’s own research and/or (b) just plain silly. This suggests that he includes them to fool race denialists — who can be counted on to stop reading as soon as they find a quote that supports their beliefs — so that they leave him alone.
  3. Return to step 1.

One example is more than sufficient.

Step 1, or: The Usual Suspects

Zek J Evets: “[Race realists] pretend that science is divided on the issue, and try to undermine the research done on the subject, portraying people’s work as quite the opposite of what they say it is. And the whole time, yelling, raving, that the establishment is trying to cover it up! … They talk of conspiracy theories like a crazy person.” (Source: Zek’s vile rant.)

Abagond (dutifully “summarizing” Zek by completely rewriting his rant): “The reason scientific racists give for trusting, say, Steve Sailer, a computer salesman, over Cavalli-Sforza, a professor of human genetics who has, like, studied race, is, wait for it, that people like Cavalli-Sforza secretly agree with them but are too afraid to say so in public! Have they gone mad?” (Source: Abagond’s racist cult.)

Have we, indeed, gone mad?

Step 2, or: Madness? THIS. IS. SFORZA.

In my reply to the attacks above, I linked an article by Steve Sailer that explains quite clearly the “politically-correct smoke screen that Cavalli-Sforza regularly pumps out to keep his life’s work — distinguishing the races of mankind and compiling their genealogies — from being defunded.” In Cavalli-Sforza’s own words, direct from his unabridged 1994 book The History and Geography of Human Genes (HGHG, written with Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza), which I have open on the desk beside me:

The [genetic] color map of the world [see below] shows very distinctly the differences that we know exist among the continents: Africans (yellow), Caucasoids (green), Mongoloids… (purple), and Australian Aborigines (red). The map does not show well the strong Caucasoid component in northern Africa, but it does show the unity of the other Caucasoids from Europe, and in West, South, and much of Central Asia” [Source: HGHG, p. 136]

Cavalli-Sforza's genetic map of the world, from HGHG. He even put the damn thing on the cover.

Sailer goes on to explain that

Cavalli-Sforza’s team compiled extraordinary tables depicting the ‘genetic distances’ separating 2,000 different racial groups from each other. For example, assume the genetic distance between the English and the Danes is equal to 1.0. Then, Cavalli-Sforza has found, the separation between the English and the Italians would be about 2.5 times as large as the English-Danish difference. On this scale, the Iranians would be 9 times more distant genetically from the English than the Danes, and the Japanese 59 times. Finally, the gap between the English and the Bantus (the main group of sub-Saharan blacks) is 109 times as large as the distance between the English and the Danish. (The genetic distance between Japanese and Bantus is even greater.) [Source: Steve Sailer]

Neither Zek nor Abagond can refute any of this. Unfortunately, that does not stop them from disagreeing, with predictably incoherent results.

Back to step 1

Zek J Evets, who does not know when to quit:

Originally convinced that human races were subspecies… Cavalli [sic] changed his position after investing himself in research on the issue. (See [HGHG] p. 19) … This is called “learning”, but scientific racists like to quote him from 1994 (during the time he was still learning) when he said, “The most important difference in the human gene pool is clearly that between Africans and non-Africans” but not more recently when he published a book in 2000 entitled, Genes, Peoples, and Languages… that, according to The Economist (Vol. 356, no. 8177, pg. 11) “challenges the assumption that there are significant genetic differences between human races, and indeed, the idea that ‘race’ has any useful biological meaning at all”. [Source: more of Zek’s vileness]

The History and Geography of Human Genes

Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza’s The History and Geography of Human Genes (1994) is the culmination of Cavalli-Sforza’s five-decade career up to that point. Zek cites it twice. The first time it is to prove Cavalli-Sforza has “changed his position [by the time he wrote HGHG] after investing himself in research.” The second time it is to prove he was “still learning [when he wrote HGHG].” Yes, the quote about “[t]he most important difference in the human gene pool” is from HGHG (p. 93). Of course, both cannot be true. Zek doesn’t know what source he’s citing, let alone its contents.

Page 19 and the very top of page 20 of HGHG (which Zek has not read) do indeed contain all of Cavalli-Sforza’s reservations about racial classification. All of them are addressed in this article by Steve Sailer (which Zek has not read). The other 533.9 pages of the text (which Zek has not read) explain how Cavalli-Sforza produced the following 518 pages of genetic maps (which Zek has not looked at). Those maps, again, “[show] very distinctly the differences that we know exist among the continents: Africans (yellow), Caucasoids (green), Mongoloids… (purple), and Australian Aborigines (red)” (HGHG, p. 136).

One particularly silly objection by Cavalli-Sforza is that “[h]uman races are still extremely unstable entities in the hands of modern taxonomists, who define from 3 to 60 or more races… [T]he level at which we stop our classification is completely arbitrary.” (HGHG, p. 19). This philosophical fallacy also “proves” that height, weight, motion, and food do not exist, since there is no non-arbitrary dividing line between short and tall or thin and fat; nor is there a consensus on what the highway speed limit should be or what kinds of food taste good.

Despite the alleged arbitrariness of races, Cavalli-Sforza’s six genetic color maps (the world, Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Oceania) clearly depict black Africans, Khoisans (Bushmen and Hottentots), East Asians, south-west Asians, white Europeans similar to north Africans, native North Americans, native South Americans, and native Australians (HGHG, color section, Figures 1-6). To be precise, they clearly depict these races according to Cavalli-Sforza’s own captions. In fact, the only races from Richard Lynn’s Race Differences in Intelligence which are not clearly depicted are

  1. Arctic Peoples as clearly distinct from native North Americans — Cavalli-Sforza’s caption to Figure 5 suggests this is “probably because [Eskimos] inhabit a very thin area on the coast,”
  2. south-east Asians as clearly distinct from East Asians” — his caption to Figure 3 notes the “extremely dark color that makes Southeast Asia almost invisible,” and
  3. Pacific Islanders, who occupy an even tinier area, as clearly distinct from native Australians — the map of Australia shows four major regions, one of which is present in Australia but not New Guinea.

Cavalli-Sforza's genetic map of the Americas, from HGHG.

Cavalli-Sforza's genetic map of Africa, from HGHG.

Genes, Peoples, and Languages

Finally, we have Cavalli-Sforza’s 2000 book Genes, Peoples, and Languages (GPL), which I also have open on the desk beside me as I type this. Cavalli-Sforza reiterates his reservations about racial classification on pages 25-31. Then, knowing that any race denialist readers have already put down the book, satisfied — if they even bothered to pick it up in the first place — he gets back to the business of mapping human genes, in a way that happens to match up almost exactly with the everyday, hopelessly arbitrary racial classification scheme we all use (black, white, East Asian, and so on). His theories about human genetics have not changed significantly since he co-authored HGHG in 1994.

It is clear that Zek has not read GPL either, because instead of quoting it to support his case, he quotes an article in the Economist. This neatly illustrates Steve Sailer’s point: “What’s striking is how the press falls for his squid ink — even though Cavalli-Sforza can’t resist proudly putting this genetic map showing the main human races right on the cover” of HGHG. In fact, Zek appears to be quoting, not the Economist directly, but rather Wikipedia’s article on Cavalli-Sforza.

According to an article published in The Economist, the work of Cavalli-Sforza “challenges the assumption that there are significant genetic differences between human races, and indeed, the idea that ‘race’ has any useful biological meaning at all”. [Source: Wikipedia]

That article cites “Geoffrey Carr, ‘Survey: The proper study of mankind’, The Economist Vol. 356, no. 8177, pg. 11. (1 July 2000).” Compare Zek’s version:

according to The Economist (Vol. 356, no. 8177, pg. 11) [GPL] “challenges the assumption that there are significant genetic differences between human races, and indeed, the idea that ‘race’ has any useful biological meaning at all”. [Source: the world’s laziest researcher]

The find feature of any Internet browser will show that this is the only place Zek uses the abbreviation “pg.” for “page” (that is, the abbreviation used in the Wikipedia article), rather than his usual “p.” This tiny detail proves that the closest Zek came to reading his source, Genes, Peoples, and Languages, was copying and pasting from a Wikipedia article about the author that quotes an article in the Economist that interprets pages 25-31 of the actual source’s 228 pages as challenging the following:

  1. the existence of “significant genetic differences between human races,” which is demonstrated in HGHG
  2. “the idea that ‘race’ has any useful biological meaning at all,” which is validated by this video

Also note that Zek had previously written: “Apparently you [Unamused] never went to college since you still use [Wikipedia as a source]” (source). (Context: Zek was asserting that idiom is a synonym for rule of thumb. I provided the relevant Wikipedia pages for his edification.) Shortly before that, he wrote a post in which 80 percent of the citations were Wikipedia pages.

I leave it to the reader to draw his or her own conclusions as to the quality — and honesty — of Zek J Evets’ scholarship.

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