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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

In Defense of Racism

My defense of racism is quite narrow.  I'm not going to try to defend any sort of institutional racism enforced by national or regional governments like slavery or Jim Crow laws.  That level of racism is unconscionable. Instead, I'm going to focus on the individual, and argue that the primary person the individual racist hurts is himself; and groups of racist individuals, themselves.

In the past I've pointed out that I'm a "romantic racist."  That is, I find Caucasian women more attractive than women of other races.  I call this racism where it counts the most and statistically, it seems that a lot of people of all races suffer from this particular variant of racism. This puts me clearly at level 6 in Bret's Hierarchy of Racism (BHR)tm. Because of my racism, I've reduced my range of opportunities by billions of women. Bummer! On the other hand, what have these billions of women lost? At worst, access to 1 decrepit old guy. In other words, nothing at all. Certainly in this case, racism hurt the racist and nobody else.

Let's say I move up the BHR from level 6 to level 4 and I discriminate, based on race, as either a prospective employee or a prospective employer.  It's the same thing as in the romantic version.  I've substantially reduced the pool of prospective companies or employees and have therefore damaged my prospects as an employee or my company's staff.  Nobody else has really lost anything at all, just access to one employee out of billions or one position at one company out of millions. The impact nearly completely only hurts the racist.

One thing that I find interesting in the racism debate is that in Japan, racism is perfectly legal (note the "JAPANESE People ONLY" in the sign below) and moderately widespread.



But there were plenty of people in Japan willing to take my Yen and so I was able to eat quite well (I love Japanese food, especially Japanese food in Japan).  The vendor pictured above (hypothetically) refused my business but his competitors were quite happy to serve me.  His loss was their gain.  His racism mainly hurt him. Note that his competitors may well be racist too, but for them, profit trumped racism, and that's a good thing.

It's an important point that people trade to make profit and trade brings people together. Indeed, economists use that line of thinking to cast doubt on the alleged gender and racial gaps in wages.  Why would a greedy businessman pass up the opportunity to hire a cheaper woman or minority if the return-on-investment of hiring them was higher than hiring a white male?  Greedy businessmen hiring women and minorities would then drive wages up to the point of having the same ROI as white men.  In other words, you can be greedy or racist/sexist but not both, or, more accurately, for any given hiring decision one motivator inherently trumps the other.  As long as enough businessmen are greedy (and it doesn't take many), wages reach parity.

It's hard to know exactly how pervasive racism is in Japan, but for the purposes of a thought experiment, assume that it's universal; all Japanese feel superior to everybody else. So who does that affect?

In this case, it probably affects the whole world by a little bit since it probably makes trade more difficult. But this is no different than a government restricting trade for whatever reasons governments restrict trade (possibly some of those reasons for some governments are racist).  And Japan would be the most adversely affected in this hypothetical example because it would have more difficulty getting crucial imports such as food and energy.

So now let's say there was a large immigration of whites into this hypothetically ultra-racist Japan.  Let's say those whites were totally racist against the Japanese as well as the Japanese being totally racist against the whites.  However, let's say there was no government institutionalized racism - everyone is still equal before the law.  Then it would be like two separate countries with restricted trade.  It would be better if the racism didn't exist, but it wouldn't be that big of a deal.  Everybody could still do pretty well in their portion of the resulting highly segregated society.

But what if the whites who immigrated started with nothing, perhaps because they were fleeing severe oppression somewhere else? Would they be stuck with nothing forever?  No, they wouldn't. There are a few points to consider for this argument:
  • Once upon a time, wealth and productivity were mostly based on land ownership.  That's simply not true anymore. Looking at the world's wealthiest people, very few, if any, are wealthy because they own a lot of land (for example Jobs, Gates, Ellison, etc.).  So the fact that the white's start out owning no land is immaterial.
  • There are several examples of countries and their peoples starting out with nothing and within two generations becoming wealthy with some help but also some hindrance from the rest of the world. Taiwan is good example.  Just after WWII, their GDP per capita was less than one-tenth that of the United States.  Now they're approaching parity with the United States.  They had help from the United States but a lot of hindrance from the mainland Chinese.  South Korea and Singapore (and Hong Kong to some extent) are similar examples.
  • Taiwan is a small speck of a country with no significant natural resources.  Innovation and hard work were the main factors of their success in building a wealthy society from nothing.
The example of Taiwan (and others) show that a people can pretty much start with nothing and catch up with the first world within a couple of generations.  Thus the whites in the hypothetical example could have caught up with the Japanese even starting with nothing.  Racism by itself, even group racism, as long as it's not institutionalized, cannot keep a people down.  They can always rise to the task and make their own productive and wealthy future.

Even in the case of institutionalized racism, the racist is also hurt according to the economist Tyler Cowen:
I would suggest that most living white Americans would be wealthier had this nation not enslaved African-Americans and thus most whites have lost from slavery too, albeit much much less than blacks have lost. For instance it is generally recognized that freer and fairer polities tend to be wealthier for most of their citizens. (We may disagree about what “fair” means for many issues, but slavery and its legacy are obviously unfair.) 
More specifically, many American whites benefited from hiring African-American labor at discrimination-laden discounted market prices, but many others lost out because it was more costly to trade with African-Americans. That meant fewer good customers, fewer eligible employees, fewer possible business partners, fewer innovators, and so on, all because of slavery and subsequent discrimination. The wealth-destroying effects are surely much larger here, even counting whites alone. And the longer the time horizon, the more likely the dynamic benefits from trade will outweigh the short-run benefits from discriminating against some class of others. 
Empirically, I do not think whites in slavery-heavy regions have had especially impressive per capita incomes.  And a lot of the economic catch-up of the American South came only when the region abandoned Jim Crow. 
In every case, the racist is always hurt.  In the case of non-institutionalized racism, the racist is hurt the most.

Given all that, I've concluded that calling someone racist is sort of like calling someone fat.  Just like being racist, eating too much primarily hurts the person doing the eating.  If the person's not fat, then calling him fatso is pretty silly.  If he is fat, it's just a childish and mostly meaningless and unhelpful insult.

440 comments:

1 – 200 of 440   Newer›   Newest»
Harry Eagar said...

'Who does that affect?'

Koreans, burakumin, Ainu.

Clovis said...

Bret,

Well, I am quite sure every Nazi soldier killing someone in a concentration camp looked pretty fat from the point of view of the prisoner.

Bret said...

Harry,

Certainly not in my thought experiment and those were each cases of institutionalized discrimination in the real world.

But as I said, I find it interesting that Asian-Asian (as opposed to Asian-American) discrimination against the "other" is widely accepted around the world with almost no criticism. But if a white person discriminates against someone, it's the worst thing in the universe!!!! Why is that?

Bret said...

Clovis,

That's institutionalized racism, which I'm not defending.

Bret said...

I'm also not defending violence, war, genocide, politicide, etc., whether or not based on racism.

erp said...

Bret, the Japanese may think they're the most superior people, but the Chinese know for a fact that they're the most superior people and they very well may be right. :-)

All kidding aside, the Chinese and Japanese academics (all native speakers) I worked with and knew well were extraordinary -- witty and loved joking -- not that their students would ever know.

At one time saying some one was discriminating was a compliment, but then language nazis got to work and turned the word on its head and in today's world, the word "racist," is used to scare people into going along with the poverty pimps rather than risk being so labelled.

Just think how different our country would be now if each immigrant group had their advocates who demanded their people be given special privileges because their forbears were mistreated and kept in virtual slavery, i.e., the Irish, the Russians, the Poles, the Jews, the Chinese...

Instead each group became an important and integral part of our society on their own efforts with a little help from their family and friends and the same things was happening in the Negro community after the Second World War. Soldiers came home from the war with much less provincial ideas than their elders. It would have been slower integration, but one that would have happened naturally.

Of course, one of the presidents since reconstruction could have issued an EO to end segregation on all federal lands and buildings ... but none did until Johnson figured it out:

“I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” —Lyndon B. Johnson to two governors on Air Force One -
“These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”—LBJ


Even Johnson couldn't have foreseen just how right he was.

Clovis said...

In some ways, you are, you just don't know it.

For racism to remain both widespread and non-institutionalized is quite the exception. Institutions are collections of people, and it is against the laws of probability that one won't influence the other over time.

So to mark racism as something worse than to be fat is a salutary protection of a good social order. Otherwise you step in a slippery slope. Your position in this post is an invitation for trouble in the long run. And that's not so long a run, as illustrated by many historical examples.

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "Otherwise you step in a slippery slope."

Using slippery slope arguments is a slippery slope because once you start doing it, you tend to do it more and more. See! There I go again! :-)

Clovis wrote: "Your position in this post is an invitation for trouble in the long run."

In my opinion, you have that exactly backwards. Well, for sure you have it exactly opposite of how I see it, but perhaps I have it exactly backwards.

Historically, slavery and institutionalized discrimination are the default state of all societies. Pharaohs/slaves, lords/serfs, nobility/peasants, kings/subjects, etc.

The important breakthrough, in my opinion, is to ensure the ability to distinguish between beliefs held by the individual and institutions composed of individuals. Political Correctness destroys that capability and I think will end in the tears of yet more institutionalized discrimination.

Harry Eagar said...

'widely accepted around the world with almost no criticism'

I'm not sure what you mean by widely-accepted. Most Asian governments have been vocal in their objections to Japanese racism.

I doubt many Americans know what a burakumin is, though of those who do I have yet to find anyone who thinks it is admirable.

I think you may need to consider export. White racism was for export, big time, which earned it the fear and horror not only of those it was exoprted to but of those who feared they were going to be next. Same with Japanese racism, at least in Asia. Few Europeans worry about export of Japanese racism to them.

Consider Hindu racism. It is as vicious as any kind but outside South Asia not an issue that inspires much comment.

Not sure where you think you are going with this, but of all the examples you could have run with, Japan is about the poorest choice you could have made.

Curious exception: Japan has a goodish reputation in Micronesia despite the suffering the islanders endured during the war. The reason: the Japanese taught the children to read and write, which the Germans and Spaniards refused to do.

erp said...

Germans and Spaniards refused to teach Micronesian children to read?

Wha???

Clovis said...

Bret,


In a side comment, you should entertain the possibility that your lack of attraction for women of other races is not racism, maybe it is only lack of testosterone. :-)

Harry Eagar said...

erp, consult the works of Lamont Lindstrom, anthropologist in Micronesia.

I don't see why you are so shocked. Your own white countrymen did the same here. Of course, you know all about that, right?

Bret, if you are trying to make a meaningful distinction between individual actors and corporate/social/religious/government actors, I doubt you can find a real-world example.

But for sure not in Japan where people won't get married if the proposed spouse has an inappropriate blood type. This discrimination is purely private; no government angle at all.

You should visit a Japanese dating site. Just for research.



erp said...

Harry, in what century were Micronesian children denied reading instruction by Germans and Spaniards, but instructed by the Japanese?

It's very doubtful that any of my ethnic countrymen were ever in Micronesia with or without reading primers, but if you are referring to my fellow Americans, then it makes even less sense since you must be referring to missionaries whose main goal was teaching children to read so they could read the bible.

So what are you talking about?

Your sarcasm isn't effective when the meaning is this obtuse.

erp said...

Harry, if you're okay with people in Japan making decisions based on purely personal preferences, why do you revile people here who do the same and call them racists?

Harry Eagar said...

I am not comfortable with people mating based on blood types; I think it is ignorant and crazy. But it happens.

In what country did this refusal to teach children to read happen? the USA, the Spanish colonies in Guam and associated smaller islands, which (except for Guam) were taken over by Imperial Germany until they were taken by Japan during World War I.

Also tsarist Russia, Italy, most of Latin America etc. etc.

It most of these cases, it was a matter of religious policy and neglect, but in the USA it was a matter of law.

Bret is entirely correct that racism damages the racist as well as his target, though seldom equally.

erp said...

Harry, I asked what century, not which country you refer to? When was it a law in the U.S. that Germans and Spanairds couldn't teach Micronesian children to read?

Bret said...

Harry wrote: "... if you are trying to make a meaningful distinction between individual actors and ... government actors, I doubt you can find a real-world example."

Whether or not true, I'm convinced that we should make it true. You'll never rid the world of racism from individuals. It's important that it not be institutionalized at the government level. (I don't much care about religious or corporate levels).

Clovis said...

Bret,

---
It's important that it not be institutionalized at the government level.
---

Sorry Bret, but you are old enough to be not allowed such a naive position.

Do you really believe that, in a openly racist society, the institutions are not going to feel the heat?

Can you imagine profoundly racist judges juding in fair ways towards people of the race he dislikes?

Or profoundly racist politicians acting in the best interest of any hated minority?

What are the mechanism that you think will be able to stop individuals "contaminating" the govt institutions?

If you think about it, PC is the form of pressure you should be the happiest with, to the extent it is adopted by individuals instead of enforced by high authorities. What do you hypothetically prefer: a society that only stops looking to your face if you are a rabid racist, or one that puts you in jail and forces you to be in a closed cell with a lot of criminals of that race you hate?

Harry Eagar said...

What Clovis said.

I still find your Jaan example weird, but now let's engage your argument, rather than your example.

It seems to assume that each individual racist is equal in power. We know this isn't so.

It may not matter that Cliven Bundy is a racist but it sure mattered that my Uncle Pat was. He refused to hire blacks. Therefore he would not open stores in Chicago, only the suburbs.

Probably he hurt his business by excluding Chicago customers, but he made millions anyway. He certainly hurt black people on the South Side by reducing their job opportunities.

A few Uncle Pats affected thousands of black people.

I am sure Uncle Pat never considered his racism anything but positive in every way. I defy you to find a black Chicagoan who would feel the same.

You are posited equal but opposite actions. It never works that way.

Anonymous said...

He certainly hurt black people on the South Side by reducing their job opportunities.

No. He failed to improve them, which is quite a different thing. His impact on those job prospects was as if he had never existed at all.

This is also quite different from Jim Crow laws which did have a negative impact.

Hey Skipper said...

[Bret:] Historically, slavery and institutionalized discrimination are the default state of all societies. Pharaohs/slaves, lords/serfs, nobility/peasants, kings/subjects, etc.

The important breakthrough, in my opinion, is to ensure the ability to distinguish between beliefs held by the individual and institutions composed of individuals.


The important breakthrough that made the important breakthrough possible was the development of free markets. They are what make your central point: treating individuals solely as if they inherit all the presumed qualities of the group to which they belong (which is one of the pillars of progressivism) is a self-inflicted wound. Restaurants that exclude blacks, car dealerships that are condescending to women, etc hurt themselves because those people can go somewhere else. Monetizing people has greatly improved free societies' morals.

Hey Skipper said...

It's as with forced busing, which has come up before. If you didn't protest when it took black kids past white schools, you have no standing to protest when it takes black kids to white schools.

What the heck are you talking about?

Because blacks and whites in Virginia generally lived in segregated neighborhoods, race-neutral measures would not ensure racial balance in many schools …

In many northern cities, the 1974 United States Supreme Court decision Milliken v. Bradley killed any hopes of integrating the public schools. That ruling, involving Detroit and its suburbs, said that a mandatory plan to achieve integration by busing black children from Detroit across district lines to mainly white suburbs was unconstitutional.

On the other hand, a progressive comes to terms with busing's epic failure. (A pretty good read, once getting past several paras of leftist catechisms).

Or, if you want to save me the bother of linking, google [busing black students]. Interestingly, no matter the source, the verdict seems the same: fail, fail, fail, fail.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any links to busing black kids past white schools. Oh, wait, that's not quite right. I found seven. One being an unreferenced Clarence Page OpEd from 1991, and the other six referencing the Clarence Page OpEd.

The phrase "busing black students"? 55,600 results.

No doubt there must have been some instances of busing black kids past white schools, but vanishingly few in comparison to the flip side of that coin.

BTW, here is a screed from Harry's alma mater on busing.


[Clovis:] Do you really believe that, in a openly racist society, the institutions are not going to feel the heat?


If you think about it, PC is the form of pressure you should be the happiest with, to the extent it is adopted by individuals instead of enforced by high authorities.


Good point. However, your conclusion somewhat contradicts your premises. PC isn't possible in openly racist societies, and, in the US anyway, is more effect than cause. In its defense, PC isn't a government imposition; however, its imposition is almost always by mob, and its practice is often hilarious: "colored people" is used only by racist h8ters. "People of color" is the PC term. Odd, considering the only thing separating the latter from the former is sloppy English.

[AOG:] No. [Uncle Pat] failed to improve them, which is quite a different thing. His impact on those job prospects was as if he had never existed at all.

Exactly.

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "Do you really believe that, in a openly racist society, the institutions are not going to feel the heat?"

I believe that institutions are going to feel the heat equally whether or not the racism is open or closeted. And I believe that a huge number of people are racist at some level in the BHR and it's terribly naive to believe they're going to stop being racist just because you insist that they hide it via Political Correctness.

Note that Japan is an openly racist society (as per the picture in the post and even Harry's comments). Yet I was very comfortable that the legal system would be pretty fair to me if something had happened.

The solution, in my opinion, is to reduce the size and therefore the power of institutions that can truly oppress people.

Clovis asked: "Can you imagine profoundly racist judges juding in fair ways towards people of the race he dislikes?"

That's why serious crimes are tried by a jury of peers here in the U.S for serious crimes.

Clovis also asked: "Or profoundly racist politicians acting in the best interest of any hated minority?"

Reduce the power of government to oppress and this matters at lot less.

Yes, if you insist on governments controlling a large percentage of human activity, it will be oppressive to most humans, minority or not.

Clovis also asked: "What are the mechanism that you think will be able to stop individuals "contaminating" the govt institutions?"

Reduce the size and power of government. But I repeat myself.

Clovis asked: "What do you hypothetically prefer: a society that only stops looking to your face if you are a rabid racist, or one that puts you in jail and forces you to be in a closed cell with a lot of criminals of that race you hate?"

That's quite a hypothetical! :-)

Since both choices are so unrealistic, I hardly know how to answer. I assume the rabid racist would pick the first choice.

Bret said...

aog wrote: "His impact on those job prospects was as if he had never existed at all."

Exactly.

That was my point in writing the part about the writes with nothing immigrating to hypothetically ultra-racist japan. As far as the whites were concerned, it would be like the japanese simply weren't there, and, like Taiwan, would build up their society from nothing.

A this point in time, nothing stops the blacks from doing that. If whites won't hire them, who cares, they can (and do) start their own businesses and hire themselves.

Harry Eagar said...

Are you so sure you would get equal justice in a Japanese court? History says different.:


This review is from: Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific (Paperback)
For years, historian Gavan Daws has been talking to men of one of the most neglected groups from World War II, the white prisoners of the Japanese. To Forrest Knox, National Guard artilleryman from Janesville, Wis.; "Slug" Wright, from east Texas and another artillery unit; Harry Jeffries and Oklahoma Atkinson, civilian construction workers who were captured at Wake Island; Frank Fujita, a Texan and perhaps the only American of Japanese ancestry captured early in the war; and many more.
Most of them are dead now, but 27% of the 140,000 men didn't even make it to the surrender in August 1945, and many died within a short while of the lingering effects of abuses.
A few killed themselves. One that Daws tells about but doesn't name, an Australian barely out of his teens, had a job repairing shoes just outside the latrines. Men dying of dysentery would be dragging themselves along, and the boy would help them, and help clean themselves afterward, getting filthy himself.
Not many would have done that, says Daws.
After the war, the boy went home to his mother, but a few weeks later he killed himself.
"Prisoners of the Japanese" is filled with stories like this, some two sentences long, some two pages, some gruesome, some uplifting in a grim way.
If you were a white soldier, sailor or airman (or mixed Dutch-Asian in the Colonial Army of the Netherlands Indies,) being taken by the Japanese was the worst fate a POW could face, although that statement requires some elaboration.
By what Daws calls "human arithmetic," the chances of survival were worse for a Russian in a German prison camp or a German in a Russian camp.
The Germans killed, directly or by neglect, about 60% of their Russian prisoners (against about 4% of British or Americans); and the Russians killed, one way or another, about 40% of their Germans, although the German historian Paul Carrell makes the point that a German who was in reasonable physical condition when captured stood a good chance of living, even if he were not released until 1955.
Daws points out that the Japanese, unlike the Germans, did not pursue any idealistic (their word for it) policy of exterminating whole classes, such as Jews, gypsies, priests, commissars, homosexuals and the mentally retarded. The Japanese killed freely but indiscriminately.
But conditions in Japanese prisons were so bad that, "If the war had lasted another year, there would not have been a POW left alive," writes Daws.
Daws, well-known in Hawaii for his forthright histories, has a hard time coming to grips with the why of it. A main theme is that the Japanese had a special contempt for their white prisoners, based on race, rancor and their warrior code of bushido, which allegedly stripped the honor from any soldier weak enough to surrender.
There is plenty of evidence that they did, but this did not then mean that nonwhite prisoners were treated better. For every western POW who died building the Burma-Siam railway, the biggest killing ground for POWS, 10 locals perished. Their bodies were used as fill in embankments.
Part of the reason was that the military men had better discipline and their own physicians. Another part was that the families of the enslaved laborers followed along, since they had no alternative. It was starve here or starve there.
So although the Japanese had ready explanations for what they did, the explanations did not fit the events. At times, Daws acknowledges the incongruity: "Bushido, the way of the warrior, meant whatever officers wanted it to mean," he writes of the Bataan Death March.
Daws points out that the Japanese, because of their contempt for soldiers who surrendered, tended to exile their misfits to guard duty. But again, the day-to-day behavior he describes shows no meaningful difference between the normal Japanese and the abnormals.

Harry Eagar said...

REST OF REVIEW

This review is from: Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific (Paperback)
For years, historian Gavan Daws has been talking to men of one of the most neglected groups from World War II, the white prisoners of the Japanese. To Forrest Knox, National Guard artilleryman from Janesville, Wis.; "Slug" Wright, from east Texas and another artillery unit; Harry Jeffries and Oklahoma Atkinson, civilian construction workers who were captured at Wake Island; Frank Fujita, a Texan and perhaps the only American of Japanese ancestry captured early in the war; and many more.
Most of them are dead now, but 27% of the 140,000 men didn't even make it to the surrender in August 1945, and many died within a short while of the lingering effects of abuses.
A few killed themselves. One that Daws tells about but doesn't name, an Australian barely out of his teens, had a job repairing shoes just outside the latrines. Men dying of dysentery would be dragging themselves along, and the boy would help them, and help clean themselves afterward, getting filthy himself.
Not many would have done that, says Daws.
After the war, the boy went home to his mother, but a few weeks later he killed himself.
"Prisoners of the Japanese" is filled with stories like this, some two sentences long, some two pages, some gruesome, some uplifting in a grim way.
If you were a white soldier, sailor or airman (or mixed Dutch-Asian in the Colonial Army of the Netherlands Indies,) being taken by the Japanese was the worst fate a POW could face, although that statement requires some elaboration.
By what Daws calls "human arithmetic," the chances of survival were worse for a Russian in a German prison camp or a German in a Russian camp.
The Germans killed, directly or by neglect, about 60% of their Russian prisoners (against about 4% of British or Americans); and the Russians killed, one way or another, about 40% of their Germans, although the German historian Paul Carrell makes the point that a German who was in reasonable physical condition when captured stood a good chance of living, even if he were not released until 1955.
Daws points out that the Japanese, unlike the Germans, did not pursue any idealistic (their word for it) policy of exterminating whole classes, such as Jews, gypsies, priests, commissars, homosexuals and the mentally retarded. The Japanese killed freely but indiscriminately.
But conditions in Japanese prisons were so bad that, "If the war had lasted another year, there would not have been a POW left alive," writes Daws.
Daws, well-known in Hawaii for his forthright histories, has a hard time coming to grips with the why of it. A main theme is that the Japanese had a special contempt for their white prisoners, based on race, rancor and their warrior code of bushido, which allegedly stripped the honor from any soldier weak enough to surrender.
There is plenty of evidence that they did, but this did not then mean that nonwhite prisoners were treated better. For every western POW who died building the Burma-Siam railway, the biggest killing ground for POWS, 10 locals perished. Their bodies were used as fill in embankments.
Part of the reason was that the military men had better discipline and their own physicians. Another part was that the families of the enslaved laborers followed along, since they had no alternative. It was starve here or starve there.
So although the Japanese had ready explanations for what they did, the explanations did not fit the events. At times, Daws acknowledges the incongruity: "Bushido, the way of the warrior, meant whatever officers wanted it to mean," he writes of the Bataan Death March.
Daws points out that the Japanese, because of their contempt for soldiers who surrendered, tended to exile their misfits to guard duty. But again, the day-to-day behavior he describes shows no meaningful difference between the normal Japanese and the abnormals.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
[On PC] however, its imposition is almost always by mob, and its practice is often hilarious:
---
Maybe there is a reason I am not that traumatized by PC, as you and others here look to be - PC norms down here are much milder.

For example, jokes in public about women, gays, portuguese, argentines, arabs and jews are still widespread, with little chance of someone bothering much with them. Jokes about blacks were common a few decades ago, now no longer.

Yet, see that one of the hypotethicals I've cited above is the law here: to offend someone with racial slurs is a crime, potentially leading to jail. [There is a law project to do the same regarding homosexuals, which has been quite polemical].

Neither the PC or the law will effectively extinguish racism, yet I think they are better than to allow race confrotation to spiral to bloody feuds.

Bret's idea of a toothless racism, where one race only stops talking and relating to the other, is far away from what happens in racist societies of the real world out there. Neither Nazists or KKK members were interested only in minding their own business.

Clovis said...

Bret,

---
Note that Japan is an openly racist society (as per the picture in the post and even Harry's comments). Yet I was very comfortable that the legal system would be pretty fair to me if something had happened.
---
Only because you are American, and your government has quite some influence with the Japanese.

There is a large population of Japanese descendants down here. In the 80's and 90's, many of them went back to Japan for work. Since Japanese wouldn't take workers from other ethnicities, they were openly recruiting people of Japanese blood here.

I've already heard many stories of racism those Brazilian-Japanese suffered there. Even though they many times knew the language and were little different from the locals (in physical terms), many endured harsh episodes only because they were external to the society.

I can tell you that some would hardly feel "comfortable that the legal system would be pretty fair" to them. And they owuld not have the heavy hand of Uncle Sam intervining for them.


---
Clovis also asked: "What are the mechanism that you think will be able to stop individuals "contaminating" the govt institutions?"

[Bret] Reduce the size and power of government. But I repeat myself.
---
Taking aside if your affirmation is true or not, please take a look at your general proposal: you advocate the acceptance of racism by general society, yet the mechanism you have for that no to lead to bad outcomes is to then advocate another (much bigger) change to said society.

It is like the doctor saying, "go ahead, it is no problem to eat lots of fat and sugar, at some point we'll build and sell better artificial hearts all around." Good luck that'll happen before your heart attack.

Harry Eagar said...

What Clovis said.

Discrimination against half-white and half-black Japanese is notorious, and now, quarter-white and quarter-black.

It is notorious even that the occasional pure Japanese child who does not have black hair will be hounded, even to suicide, in school.

I do not see how, in that case, Bret's universal panacea of "market will make it better" could operate.

Fair shakes in courts for burakumin and Koreans are widely doubted.

Apparently Bret was in Japan. There was more to see than he saw.

erp said...

How racial mix and match works in the world of lefty fantasies.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

You are skipping over the essential contradiction in your position. In a democratic society, if you need such laws, you won't have the votes. If you have the votes, you don't need the laws.

Clovis said...

Erp,

On your link, well, down here blacks targeting someone for being white would also be classified as a racial crime, beyond the few other crimes comitted with the assault. Which means they would aggravate the charges and jail time.

As you see, maybe explicit laws against racial attacks may be helpful for everyone.

erp said...

Clovis, don't bet on it. In lefty lingo only whites can be racists because blacks have no power. I know it doesn't make sense, but there it is.

Clovis said...

Erp,

But that may well be another reason to write it in Law: it then hardly depends on the political inclination of anyone. If the evidence points to racial targeting (whatever the race of the offender and the victim), it remains for the tribunal to sort out if the ensuing charge is applied or not.

I am aware there is some racism, in US, from blacks towards whites. That's a very unusual thing down here, even though we also are a society far away from any equality between races in the economical spectrum.

The difference has anything to do with the Law? Absolutely not. It is the contrary: the overall mentality of minimizing racial conflicts whenever possible is reflected, among other things, in laws such as that one.

erp said...

There are ample laws against battery, murder, etc. The race of the perps and victims are immaterial. Race crimes are more divide and conquer and have nothing to do with fairness or law enforcement.

Clovis said...

Erp,

Sure, to pass laws against racial attacks in order to address muder would be quite inefficient, and that's not their primary role.

Their primary role, a supporter would say, is to address the stage before that, where racial hate is allowed to nurture and grow. Basically, people who feel violated tend to let off steam by having a legal channel to deal with it.

I am not an avid supporter of these laws, but I do not think they have been necessarily counter-productive or abused here, as far as I know.

erp said...

As I said, there are already plenty of laws against violent behavior, etc. Making a violent crime more or less reprehensible according to the color of the victim's skin is insanity of the first order.

The left wants armed camps hating each other and they're doing a very good job of making it so.

Clovis said...

Erp,

And as I said before, if that's the Left intent, they are being successful only at your beloved country.

erp said...

That's no consolation to me.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

that may well be another reason to write it in Law: it then hardly depends on the political inclination of anyone.

Not at all. There are currently such laws on the books and they are applied in a race based way. If you want an example, just review the Martin / Zimmerman case. Just like "Black X" organizations are permitted, but "White X" ones are not, "hate crime" laws are and will be enforced in a race based manner in the USA.

Their primary role, a supporter would say, is to address the stage before that, where racial hate is allowed to nurture and grow. Basically, people who feel violated tend to let off steam by having a legal channel to deal with it.

One, passing laws for such reasons is IMHO a very bad reason to have a law. Second, I can't make any sense of your claim - by making something illegal, a legal channel to blow off steam is created?

Susan's Husband said...

Since we're on the subject, is this racism?

erp said...

Well aog, this one requires an advanced degree in lefty racist thinking. You may think explaining what you do to non-technical people is complicated, it's nothing to the convolutions of lefty thinking -- to wit.

Sorting by Column A: the jerk is white and the person he wants to boot out of the country is a woman and Hispanic to boot, it should be a no-brainer that he's a racist, but he's a lefty, so

we need to sort by ...

Column B: Since the jerk isn't black and exempt from being labeled racist due to his powerlessness, there must be exonerating factors in this case ... and voila, there are. The lady governor is a tool of the devil aka conservative and although she's Hispanic, she's a white Hispanic (her skin coloration doesn't count here even if she's very very dark skinned), so ergo, the jerk can't be a racist.

Sorting once again ...

Column C: All people designated white, whether women, Hispanic, even gay or transgendered, i.e., whichever of God's varied children they may be, can and will be called racist if they don't spew the lefty cant.

I hope I cleared that up for you.

Clovis said...

AOG,

---
If you want an example, just review the Martin / Zimmerman case.
---
I do not get your point. Do you think the justice system was unfair because he was white? But he was acquitted.

---
Just like "Black X" organizations are permitted, but "White X" ones are not,
---
I also do not understand what you mean here.

---
One, passing laws for such reasons is IMHO a very bad reason to have a law. Second, I can't make any sense of your claim - by making something illegal, a legal channel to blow off steam is created?
---
I agree passing laws for such reasons can be tricky, yet, if you knew how prolix and full of garbage our Law codes are, you would see this as a drop in the ocean.

About my claim, it is very simple: if someone, after feeling he was disrespected by a direct racial slur (something like "you are a stupid negro, go back to Africa you monkey" - that's very close to common real cases), can report that to the police instead of striking back and starting a possibly murderous fight, that's what I call blowing off steam.

Clovis said...

---
Since we're on the subject, is this racism?
---

Compared to what I am now used to in Rightist blogs and their comments, absolutely not.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

Clovis;

Zimmerman was acquitted after having his life and finances ruined, his marriage destroyed, and becoming a figure of national hatred who recieves numerous death threats. All of that is no big deal in your view because he was acquitted? None of that would happened had the law been applied in a race neutral way.

For instance the Black Congressional Caucus. That is, a group of federal legislators who openly have a group with race based membership. Or La Raza, a quite influential NGO that is again, race based. Any group that had exactly the same set up with the race changed to "white" would be shunned or legally destroyed. We have race neutral laws that ban such things, but those are not enforced in a race neutral way.

yet, if you knew how prolix and full of garbage our Law codes are, you would see this as a drop in the ocean.

That attitude is what creates ever worse law. Professionally when I see a development team that thinks that, it's an almost sure bet their code is lousy and getting worse. I don't accept that professionally and I don't accept it politically.

Reporting bad language to the policy - yeah, that's the path of people taking broader responsibility, as in that quote of yours. This is a classic example of what I meant about "progressive" policies being aimed at destroying personal and community responsibility. Don't you do anything about it, defer all responsibility to Big Brother.

erp;

You nailed Clovis' response.

Telling an American citizen to "go back where she came from" - not racist.

Opposing the ACA - racist.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] Maybe there is a reason I am not that traumatized by PC, as you and others here look to be …

Traumatized and furious are two different concepts. I get that PC terms, just as with other euphemisms, frequently spring from well intentioned desires to avoid causing offense. So far as that goes, that's fine. "Mentally challenged" instead of "retarded" is a bit wordy, but other than that, there is no real loss to society.

And I also get that jokes about identifiable groups of people are increasingly out of bounds. In part, that is because greater mixing of groups in the US removes the isolation that allows stereotypes to survive. But even that risks going to far. There are, for instance, some valid stereotypical gay behaviors. Are they to be out of bounds even as reality American TV shows (Project Runway, for instance) continue to verify the validity of the stereotype?

However, when PC strides from euphemisms to defamation — as our own Harry Eagar, acting as the stereotype of a progressive has done repeatedly and unapologetically — then anger is well and truly in order.

Neither Nazists or KKK members were interested only in minding their own business.

Correct. But doesn't their ongoing marginal existence — in the US, at least — rather mitigate the degree to which they can go about minding others' business? This rather highlights the anti-human nature of progressivism.

Let's take as read that racism in all its manifestations is bad. Unfortunately, history is not a mere inconvenience to be ignored in favor of progressives' pronunciamentos. For example, forcing integration through busing amounted to completely ignoring the existing attitudes of those whom busing would affect. The act of imposed busing created reactions that would not have existed had the government simply outlawed discriminatory acts and policies, while leaving people alone to live their lives with the history they had.

Europe has a much more significant racial component to some of its political parties, because the dominant left simply rode roughshod over citizens' preferences for their own communities.

Push, expect shove.

Hey Skipper said...

From the post:

It's hard to know exactly how pervasive racism is in Japan, but for the purposes of a thought experiment, assume that it's universal; all Japanese feel superior to everybody else. So who does that affect?

Japanese racialism has practically eliminated immigration.

Japan ranks 199 out of 214 countries in total fertility -- the population is destined to plummet.

Hey Skipper said...

Link.

Clovis said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clovis said...

AOG,

---
[On Zimmerman] All of that is no big deal in your view because he was acquitted?
---
It is sad all those things happened to him - yet, it may happen to anyone who goes through a murder trial, independent of race matters. What I do not understand is why you say that "None of that would happened had the law been applied in a race neutral way". The law is applied the moment the judge rings the bell, isn't it? At that moment, he was found not guilty. So what is your point?

On the black groups you point to, I am much uninformed about it and will refrain to comment now.


---
Professionally when I see a development team that thinks that, it's an almost sure bet their code is lousy and getting worse. I don't accept that professionally and I don't accept it politically.
---
Yeah, lousy would be a very good word to describe Brazil in many aspects, you are right.

What you probably did not think much about - living in USA paradise and having a lifelong career of things under your control - is how to survive in an utterly lousy environment. How to adapt objectives and techniques to achieve the possible, instead of the perfect. If one day you drop by for a visit, and is open enough to take notice of that, you may rethink a bit of that superior attitude.


---
This is a classic example of what I meant about "progressive" policies being aimed at destroying personal and community responsibility. Don't you do anything about it, defer all responsibility to Big Brother.
---
Are you suggesting that the offended people should take revenge on their own hands? Well, you should well suggest that we make better use of our money and turn off all the police departments altogether. If we can just solve any conflict by our own hands, why to bother with having police at all?

I thought this miniarchist thing was to go back to Old West, but I suspect I was too kind. It is more like the Stone Ages...

Harry Eagar said...

'As I said, there are already plenty of laws against violent behavior, etc. Making a violent crime more or less reprehensible according to the color of the victim's skin is insanity of the first order.'

There were laws against murder in the South, but that did not prevent whites from murdering blacks with impunity.

You really should learn something about the history of the USA. It is really interesting.

Harry Eagar said...

'"White X" ones are not'

Somebody shut down Stormfront? News to me.


You are usually less delusional than erp. Maybe it's catching.

Harry Eagar said...

'while leaving people alone to live their lives with the history they had.'

You mean you approve of this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance

Harry Eagar said...

'Zimmerman was acquitted after having his life and finances ruined, his marriage destroyed, and becoming a figure of national hatred who recieves numerous death threats'

Meanwhile, Martin is famous and rich.

Harry Eagar said...

'Europe has a much more significant racial component to some of its political parties, because the dominant left simply rode roughshod over citizens' preferences for their own communities. '

Yeah, because the dominant left governments of the '20s led invitably to the rcist stats of the '30s.

you are really sounding silly now.

Harry Eagar said...

To go back to the beginning, Bret adopts the curiously lefty position that 'all people are racist' (not an opinion I hold).

This is slightly surprising.

After some convoluted argument, he decides that nothing government can or should do can improve the racial situation.

Surprising coming from someone who lives in California.

I live in a place that the historian Gavan Daws called 'the most successful multicultural society in history.'

We tell jokes about ethnic groups. Our most popular comedian, Frank DeLima, does only this.

Hard to understand how such a situation could arise anywhere, but especially hard if you take Bret's example of Japan as dispositive (which he seems to wish us to do), given that people of Japanese ancestry make 35% of the population and an AJA-dominated political party has dominated government since 1954.

How can this be?

I have seen racial behavior in the South change in ways I would not have thought possible when I was young. For the better, for all of us.

I totally agree with Bret that racism harms the racist econmically, but I do not think racists agree with him, or care.

erp said...

Clovis, reacting to insults isn't only old west. Men have resorted to physicality if the insult were directed toward their families or elders or youngsters, etc. since time immemorial. In many societies it was even codified ala King Arthur's court. Most of the time, however, it's best to ignore morons and bullies.

Your proposal that the police be called whenever some jerk who doesn't have the brains God gave a doorknob, says something stupid, is absurd.

erp said...

Multicultural Hawaii where only those who can prove they have aborigine blood can own property.

Harry Eagar said...

erp, where did you get that?

I own property, quite valuable property (it's how I approached the 1%).

I have often asked where you get your "facts," and you never answer, but this time I really would like to know.

You didn't make it up, so you were told. But by whom? I have heard a lot of nonsense about Hawaii, but that is a new one.

erp said...

Quoting Harry above:

Yeah, because the dominant left governments of the '20s led invitably to the rcist stats of the '30s.

... and guess what? Those racists states of the 30's were even more dominantly left than those of the 20's.

Who'd a thunk it?

Bazinga on steroids!

erp said...

Nice try Harry, but you know very well about leaseholds. Your valuable property is not yours in the same way my far less valuable property is mine.

Harry Eagar said...

I own in fee simple, just like you.

Where did you get that nonsense?

erp said...

More from Harry's silliness: Martin is rich and famous, but it's not the druggie hoodlum, it's his loving (s/off) family who abandoned him while he was alive, but are milking his death for every nickel they can.

erp said...


Well perhaps you've proved your family are aborigines? Stranger things have happened.

Look it up yourself.

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
Men have resorted to physicality if the insult were directed toward their families or elders or youngsters, etc. since time immemorial.
---
Yes, Erp, that's why I mentioned Stone Ages.

To evolve from a society where people fight within themselves at every corner, to one where they follow Law and Order to deal with conflicts, is pretty much the description of what we mean by civilization.

That you and AOG prefer to go back to tribal times is a surprise to me. But it is my fault, by now I should've been used to your nonsense.

To wit, even though we down here are such a lousy society, I believe we have done a far better job of integration and minimization of racial conflict than you guys. We have many problems, but thanks God that is not one of them.

And no, Erp, it is not the Left's fault. It is people like you, more probably. A lot of people like you...

erp said...

Racial conflict? It's being orchestrated and manipulated. The last thing the left wants is for us all to be ordinary Americans. I don't think you understand what divide and conquer means.

Abrogating the responsibility to protect their families has made men into wimps. Girly men and metrosexuals are easy manipulated by bullies.

That is the left's great gift to you guys.

You'd grab your phone and call the police if somebody was abusing your child or your wife and then what? Stand there? Hide under the bed?

Dear Lord.

Clovis said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
The act of imposed busing created reactions that would not have existed had the government simply outlawed discriminatory acts and policies, while leaving people alone to live their lives with the history they had.
---
You may have a point here, Skipper. The same way we had no welfare for the poor down here for a long time, we also had no affirmative action or forced acts of integration for much of our history too.

That results in downsides and upsides. An American friend once remarked to me that, although race relations are way better in Brazil compared to the US, when it comes to actual conditions for blacks, the US would look to be far less racist, for the blacks there were not in the rampant poor conditions as many of ours here are.

He attributed the difference to Affirmative Action.

I think that's not the whole story. Both our blacks and whites are way more poor than their counterparts in the US, so that must be considered too.

When we witness solid economic growth, like in the last 15 years, large chunks of the black population got better lifes. IOW, no racism was acting to hold them back compared to the larger economy.

In Brazil, most of the discrimination any individual may feel is not really related to race. It is related to economic status. It thus follows that, blacks being proportionately more poor, they feel proportionately more discrimination.
But everyone knows it is, above all, about money.

Harry Eagar said...

erp, I am sure that you would be less discontented and angry if you would stop listening to the race-baiters and rightwing liars who seem to have your attention. They do not have your interests at heart.

You could read up on the Great Mahele.

I really would like to learn what racist, lying pieces of crap are spreading their hate around about Hawaii and the Hawaiians.

There is not a scrap of truth, not even some situation that can be distorted an twisted. What you wrote, and seem to be committed to, is a complete fabrication.

Why do you do this to yourself?

I suppose you are too embarrassed to climb down, but I will understand and think better of you if you do. I realize some person who wishes you ill lied to you and you got caught. No shame in that, only in sticking with it.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] None of [the Zimmerman/Martin case] would happened had the law been applied in a race neutral way". The law is applied the moment the judge rings the bell, isn't it?

[erp:] As I said, there are already plenty of laws against violent behavior, etc. Making a violent crime more or less reprehensible according to the color of the victim's skin is insanity of the first order.

[Harry:] There were laws against murder in the South, but that did not prevent whites from murdering blacks with impunity.

You really should learn something about the history of the USA. It is really interesting.


Harry, before making yet another snotty comment, you really need to address your appalling shortcomings with English grammar.

erp: … areis

Harry: …weredid not

Not only did your difficulties with tense render you incapable of taking erp's point on board, it also blinded you to your own goal. There were, and are, laws. Whites could, but cannot, murder blacks with impunity.

Something changed. And with that change came the insanity of which erp speaks.

I swear, there is nothing on this earth so incurious as a progressive.

Hey Skipper said...

[Hey Skipper:] … while leaving people alone to live their lives with the history they had.

[Harry:] You mean you approve of this?


That you even asked the question, never mind provided the link you did, proves you, as with all other progressives, is anti-human to the core.

Those Virginians came with their history — good or bad, progressives no matter how right they might be are the very image of rampaging hubris every time they think they can, through pure imposition, change minds.

Of all the truly insane progressive ideas, this is up in the pantheon.

Imagine, if you can, that instead of imposing upon others that which they would not do themselves — e.g. the Obama daughters at Sidwell Friends instead of the DC school system — judges had instead imposed a far less intrusive requirements: eliminating discriminatory laws and requiring equal per capita school district funding.

And then let time undo history.

Interestingly, despite your depthless knowledge, you seem to know nothing about the Boston busing crisis.

Hey Skipper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hey Skipper said...

Meanwhile, Martin is famous and rich.

Martin would certainly have lived a great deal longer had he not attacked Zimmerman and slammed his head into the pavement.

Trivial detail, I know, but nice segue into …

[Clovis:] None of [the Zimmerman/Martin case] would happened had the law been applied in a race neutral way". The law is applied the moment the judge rings the bell, isn't it?

The law was, at first, applied in a race neutral way. It was obvious from the outset that Zimmerman had been attacked, and that the law allowed him to defend himself. That is what the police determined, and the District Attorney agreed.

It was only after the professional h8ers came onto the seen, and pig-ignorant journalists aped their every move, that the law was turned on its head.

That is how Zimmerman got subjected to a completely unnecessary trial.

Hypocrisy, like irony, is a surprisingly difficult concept. Here is a real world example of hypocrisy in action.

On the one hand, the Zimmerman case. Progressive sturm und drang over Zimmerman was based upon a complete inversion of every fact.

Yet when something happens that proves their every assertion about racist violence, not a whisper, whimper, or even a whine.

It doesn't take a particularly discerning mind to figure out why. The victim and aggressor races were wrong, and a gun was used to keep the victim from suffering something worse than a mere coma.

Absent the progressive hate parade, though, the legal system was allowed to proceed as it should. According to erp, if it was white on black violence, adding hate crime to the existing battery charges would be insanity of the first order.

I bet that erp will think exactly the same way when the table is reversed.

Harry, on the other hand, who has traduced every relevant fact about the Zimmerman case, will have exactly as much to say about the obvious racist violence that he has provided so far:

[crickets]

erp said...

Harry:

The notion that I am in anyone's thrall is quite entertaining. I don't think anyone has ever made quite as mirth inducing a suggestion.

I must thank you again for the amusement you provide. It really is priceless.


Clovis:

Your comment about money being what's it's all about is also amusing. Actually only lefties believe money is what it's all about. Classic liberals like us, believe money is way way down on the list well below family, country, freedom...

Skipper:

Go easy on Harry because as a member of the lefty news media, professional editors correct his copy, but I guess he's on his own commenting here.

Clovis said...

Erp,

It is amusing how, in the same post you make fun of Harry, you show such a poor text interpretation yourself of what I wrote.

Harry Eagar said...

You are right, Skipper. Quite a bit of history had already occurred, with (as you might infer from the name Msssive Resistance) no change. None.

So, you approve, I take it, of allowing or forcing American citizens to wait indefinitely for their constitutional rights.

It is interestibg how rightwingers consider the 2nd Amendment absolute, but the rest of that document is up for "negotiation," especially if the people not getting rights are Jewish, black, Mexican American etc.

I am very familiar with the reaction in Southie, which demonstrated that national laws would have national application, a principle not admitted in the South then and still under attack by TPers.

It happens I just ran across another example of how Bret's theory of damage does not work. I had not known about this one:

At least as late as 1949, Chinese-Americans n San Francisco were not allowed to own property outside Chinatown. (One result was overcrowding and the highest disease rates in the city; so many people died.)

So here is how market forces worked: white capitalists bought up the apartments on the boundaries of Chinatown and evicted whites so that could rent to Chinese at inflated rates.

So market forces did ot ork against racims but for it.

From Herb Caen, "Baghdad by the Bay")

So whites bought

Harry Eagar said...

I get erp's tenses. I was pointing out that race-neutral laws did not protect blacks.

Been there, tried that. Didn't work.

Harry Eagar said...

First hit for 'Are only natives permitted to own land in Hawaii?':

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090102212956AAzRCZ5

That wasn't so hard.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

Zimmerman - see Skipper's response.

As for the groups I pointed to, they're not all black. I would also note that I don't expect you to know anything about except they exist. That is sufficient demonstrate my point. Mr. Eagar mentions StormFront which extremely marginalized and in fact subject to frequent investigations and attempts to shut it down.

How to adapt objectives and techniques to achieve the possible, instead of the perfect.

I do that every single day I work.

Are you suggesting that the offended people should take revenge on their own hands?

No. It turns out there are options between violent racial revenge and policing political correctness.

I do find it mordantly amusing that Mr. Eagar both protests racial oppression of Jews and Asians in the past, yet supports it in the present. Whites may be harmed by affirmtive action, but Jews and Asians get it much worse. When Mr. Eagar opposes that continuing racial oppression, rather that conventiently in the past, then I may take him seriously. But I expect not - that kind of thing has been a hallmark of the Democratic Party for all of Eagar's life.

Harry Eagar said...

If you subscribe to Bret's position in this post, then affirmative action does not harm anyone, it benefits all by eliminating some of the worst forms of racism.

Because, as Skipper says, there is history.

StormFront is not marginal, Clovis. Its fans are implicated in 100 racial terrorist murders in the past few years. I would say that, based on results, it is the most effective political organization in the country.

erp said...

The following is the response to my request for the real skinny on Hawaiian real estate from a good friend who went to college in Hawaii and then stayed there until four or five years ago when she retired and came back to the mainland to be with her family.

It couldn't be more instructive of the lefty mind set and demonstrates how Harry et al. became 1%ers by using the courts to grab land belonging to the aborigine and why he loves Hawaii and its multiculturalism so much. It made him rich ... and I'll bet he can still fulminate on the missionaries, Dole, etc. without so much as a blush on his tanned-by-the-tropical-sun cheek.

I wonder how many poor blacks and Hispanics were able to benefit from the amazing series of events described below.

Sorry not to have kept up with the machinations of the compassionates who live in Maui and lecture the rest of us and call us cold hearted because we don't care as much as they do about those less fortunate than ourselves.

____

From N.S. – the Real Skinny on Hawaii Multiculturalism 6/1/14

Nowadays, most land in Hawaii can be purchased the same way (fee simple) as land anywhere else. There are some exceptions, most notably the Hawaiian Homelands where lessees must be of Hawaiian descent and leases are $1/year for 99 years. The island of Lanai is privately owned (some guy just bought it from Dole) and I guess the land there is leasehold but I never thought about it. Other than that, there are individual lots in subdivisions which are still lease, but not that many.

You are correct that once upon a time there was MUCH land which was the property of the Bishop Estate, heir of Bernice Pauahi Bishop who was the last more-or-less direct descendant of Kamehameha III. In Kamehameha III's time, all land was owned by the King and kind of "loaned out" to others.

It was not our Western kind of system. Kamehameha III divided the land into 3 parts (not equal parts) --- the lands which belonged to the government, his personal property, and those that were to be allotted to the maka'ainana (the common people).

The Kamehameha line, never a fertile one, came down to 3 descendants --- Lot (KV) and Princess Ruth who both predeceased Princess Bernice. Bernice, who had no children, was married to Charles Reed Bishop, a wealthy businessman who didn't need or want her wealth. She will endowed the Bishop Estate, the trustee of the Kamehameha Schools (schools for children of Hawaiian descent). Her assets were mainly raw land which the BE trustees leased and much of which became the sites of various subdivisions. Leases initially were super low (like $300/year for gazillion years). (His assets, btw, went to found our wonderful Bishop Museum and Planetarium).

When those leases came close to being due (this was in the 80's sometime), the prices got WAY jacked up and some of the lessees filed class action suits (different suits for different subdivisions) asking that lessees be able to buy the lots under their houses (prices were eventually part of the settlement if I recall correctly and they were substantial). The State joined on the side of the lessees and it ultimately went to the State Supreme Court. The lessees prevailed. Some lessees chose not to purchase their land and so that is why some properties are still lease.

There were also some other, smaller, estates owned by the descendants of other alii (chiefs) who were connected to the Kalakaua line but after the Bishop Estate case, they were offered fee purchase without suits being filed.

After the Great Mahaele of Kamehameha III, there was always fee simple land (that had gone to the maka'ainana and lesser ali'i) but the Bishop Estate was the single largest private landholder.

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure.

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] So, [Hey Skipper approves], I take it, of allowing or forcing American citizens to wait indefinitely for their constitutional rights.

What rights? Please be specific.

It is interesting how rightwingers consider the 2nd Amendment absolute, but the rest of that document is up for "negotiation," especially if the people not getting rights are Jewish, black, Mexican American etc.

Which rights up for what kind of "negotiation"? Please be specific.

I am very familiar with the reaction in Southie, which demonstrated that national laws would have national application, a principle not admitted in the South then and still under attack by TPers.

Yet another example of epic point missing. Civil Rights laws did not require forced desegregation. Application and imposition are two different things.

While most progressives cannot admit error, because to do so would torpedo progressivism, not all are that blinkered. [Trigger warning: the first few paras are typical collectivist catechisms.]

The only true desegregation is that which happens after the rest of society accepts blacks into the complete range of human activities.

Forced desegregation, bound to cause antagonism, was completely contradictory to that goal.

Hey Skipper said...

[AOG:] Whites may be harmed by affirmative action, but Jews and Asians get it much worse.

With respect to university admissions, affirmative action hurts everyone. The problem isn't racist university admissions, but awful urban schools. The former cannot possibly fix the latter.

Not that facts will get in the way of fundamentalist progressives.

[Harry:] StormFront is not marginal, Clovis. Its fans are implicated in 100 racial terrorist murders in the past few years. I would say that, based on results, it is the most effective political organization in the country.

Wow, even by your standards, that is a doozy of pettifoggery, half-truth, and misdirection. Going from passive voice in the first sentence to active in the second is a sure sign prevarication is afoot.

Anonymous said...

Skipper;

Yes, but I thought that focus highlighted Eagar's disingeniousness.

His switch from "Stormfront" to "fans of Stormfront" is another tell that he's running on rhetorical vapors.

Things we are still waiting from Eagar -

1) The point of his cited article.
2) His support for racial restrictions on Jews and Asians.

Harry Eagar said...

So what you originally said was a complete fabrication.

Got it.

Harry Eagar said...

'What rights? Please be specific.'

Voting.

That wasn't so hard.

Harry Eagar said...

'The only true desegregation is that which happens after the rest of society accepts blacks into the complete range of human activities.'

So we are not going to have any desegregation.

Got it.

Harry Eagar said...

'Going from passive voice'

I do not think you know what that means

Harry Eagar said...

Since Stormfront is not a membership organization, it is hard to label them "Members."

Fans is as good a word as ay for what they are.

The Republicans cannot repeal Obamacare, and the Democrats cannot get a judge confirmed, but Stormfront is having considerable success in promoting terrorism.

Harry Eagar said...

Its called balancing interests and it occurs all the time in a democracy.

We know, from history, that Bret's market approach is not going to allow the polity to actually tap the talents of the excluded minorities, without help.

And Skipper just told us it is never going to happen, period.

So you either undertake a salvage operation for a limited time, or you decide to forgo the benefits of integration.

As we have learned in the financial sphere, there are some mistakes so stupid that it is almost impossible to correct them. We can but try.

Anonymous said...

Stormfront is not a membership organization

Which makes it completely different from the groups I cited. Yet another rhetorical sleight of hand, which seems to be the best you can do.

As for the rest of Mr. Eagar's comments, they're too incoherent and non-referential for me to parse.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

----
That is how Zimmerman got subjected to a completely unnecessary trial.
---
I do not agree Zimmerman's trail was unnecessary, or showed a lack of neutrality on race in the application of law. But maybe it is my fault, or a cultural gap, I don't know.

---
According to erp, if it was white on black violence, adding hate crime to the existing battery charges would be insanity of the first order.
---
I've mentioned that, down here, if there was clear evidence of racial targeting, that would add to the charges too. I did not mean any such case would qualify. The Detroit beating you linked, for example, would probably not. But I give up on explaining more, it is not important and there is probably a cultural gap here too.

Clovis said...

AOG,

----
[Clovis] Are you suggesting that the offended people should take revenge on their own hands?
[AOG] No. It turns out there are options between violent racial revenge and policing political correctness.
----
It turns out you don't know what you are talking about.

We have a murder rate more than 4 times the one in the USA, a country raging with violence out of control in many areas, and somehow you think we deferred too much to Police Big Brother. I bet you have no idea on how simple cotidian things spiral to violent outcomes down here.

I hope you are less sloppy at gathering your info in your professional life.

erp said...

I don't know about aog, but I stated that most racists, bullies, etc. be ignored as not worth bothering about unless the sides are unequal, like men insulting children, women, etc. Calling the police when the abuse is verbal won't get any action from them.

However, if someone is attacking another, calling the police first is preferable if there's time. Otherwise direct intervention is preferred preferably with a weapon.

erp said...

Clovis, the whole reason that Zimmerman was charged many many months after the fact is that they declared him a "white" Hispanic, just so they could charge him with a hate crime against a black youngster. You may not have been in on the beginning when all the media covered the waterfront with pictures of a cherubic 12 year boy, not the 17 year old hoodlum druggie he'd become after being abandoned by his loving family, now reaping the rewards of fame.

Did you know that the insurance company covering Zimmerman's homeowners' organization paid Martin's parents "at least one million dollars" -- the actual amount wasn't revealed -- in damages for the loss of their beloved child, but that wasn't enough and there are various other suits out there.

Anonymous said...

Clovis;

We have a murder rate more than 4 times the one in the USA, a country raging with violence out of control in many areas, and somehow you think we deferred too much to Police Big Brother.

It's quite easy to find example of Big Government states with excessive violence. Like, say, Venezuela. This renders your point invalid.

It also seems rather odd that you think in such a situation laws against racial slurs will make any difference. Those people are clearly ignoring laws against violence in other contexts, yet they'll obey the one about racial slurs?

Clovis said...

AOG,

---
Those people are clearly ignoring laws against violence in other contexts, yet they'll obey the one about racial slurs?
---
As I said, you don't know what you are talking about.

And I am done trying to explain.

Bret said...

clovis wrote: "...you [Bret] advocate the acceptance of racism by general society..."

I do generally advocate tolerance, so I suppose stretching a bit one could say I "advocate the acceptance of racism" since that would be a form of tolerance.

There are a couple of nuances though. The first is having lived before PC and after PC, I don't think the "acceptance" or "non-acceptance" of racism much affects the level of racism. It just forces the now disgruntled racist into the "closet," and I'd much rather, as a Jew, have people be open about their antisemitic beliefs so I know who NOT to turn my back on lest I find a knife in it.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me" was a silly little saying that children were taught when I was a kid. My friends and I jokingly called each other ethnic and racist epithets all the time and kidded each other about stereotypes all the time. It was actually sort of and intimate/trust sort of thing, and if anything, made those stereotypes seem silly, which, in my opinion, is a good thing.

Now, if you have a racist feeling or belief, you wouldn't dare express it, where you might be confronted and kidded and possibly get over it. Instead, you suppress it and it festers. Hopefully, it won't one day pop up as something violent and virulent. But we'll see.

Bret said...

Harry wrote: "Bret adopts the curiously lefty position that 'all people are racist'..."

I do? News to me.

Bret said...

Harry wrote: "If you subscribe to Bret's position in this post, then affirmative action does not harm anyone, it benefits all by eliminating some of the worst forms of racism."

That would only hold true of affirmative action were private and voluntary. Government imposed racism also hurts more than just the racist, in my opinion.

Bret said...

Harry wrote: "We know, from history, that Bret's market approach is not going to allow the polity to actually tap the talents of the excluded minorities, without help.

Please explain the success of asian minorities then.

I think the success of asians here is very much like my though experiment of the whites with nothing immigrating to Japan.

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
Clovis, the whole reason that Zimmerman was charged many many months after the fact [...]
---
I know little of your laws, but down here, anyone killing a minor with no criminal record in a street fight would end up in a murder trial by default. There would need to be outstanding evidence (like cameras recording the whole action, leaving no room for doubts) for a trial not to happen.

My interpretation for that not to happen initially for Zimmerman - within what I am used to down here - was that, due to him being known to the police, they took his word for granted, and that was legitimately questioned by critics and reporters.

Maybe I am reading it all wrong, with the killing of minors by vigilantes being OK for most of your society, with no need for trials. I really don't know anymore to separate what's standard in your society from the warped exceptional views some of you guys present here in the blog.

Clovis said...

Bret,

---
I'd much rather, as a Jew, have people be open about their antisemitic beliefs so I know who NOT to turn my back on lest I find a knife in it.
---

Are you actually talking literally?

I mean, do you fear at any level that someone may physically assault you for your origins?

Bret said...

Clovis wrote: "Are you actually talking literally?"

I live a pretty safe life at this point, so definitely more figuratively (so the "knife" would be business or social damage). For some it would be more literal.

Hey Skipper said...

[Hey Skipper:] 'What rights? Please be specific.'

[Harry:] Voting. That wasn't so hard.


Note carefully. My question was in response to Harry saying "So, [Hey Skipper approves], I take it, of allowing or forcing American citizens to wait indefinitely for their constitutional rights."

Harry, and please do be specific, where are (which, in case you are confused about tense, means now, today, at this moment, since the very recent past, currently, as I type, as you breathe, etc.) American citizens waiting indefinitely for their constitutional right to vote?

[Hey Skipper, channeling someone famous:] The only true desegregation is that which happens after the rest of society accepts blacks into the complete range of human activities.'

[Harry:] So we are not going to have any desegregation.


Maybe I need to get a life, but one of my more soul-warming moments recently has been taking quotes from African Americans and putting them in the mouths of people of pallor. It is hilarious watching progressives working themselves into a lather over sentiments to which they would otherwise kowtow.

With just enough paraphrasing to frustrate a google search — not that there was much risk of that, since progressives pervasive genuflecting in the worship of their own ideas makes their skeptical inquiry only slightly more likely than three full moons in a month — I put in my keyboard Dr. King's own words.

From "So we are not going to have any desegregation" we can conclude several things.

Harry trumps Dr. King.

There has been no desegregation since Dr. King.

And therefore my, and a great many others', extensive first hand experiences are casualties of Mr. Eagar's progressive preening.

A couple years ago, I was the relief (junior) pilot on a transoceanic flight. Both the Captain and First Officer were black. Annnnndddd …

Nothing. Not a single dam* thing. That, in microcosm, is desegregation. Not pooreaucrats shoving students around the planet to satisfy some mythical numerical balance, but rather African Americans judged on their merit, rather than melanin.

Of course, I must take into account that you live in Hawaii, which, at 1.8% has half as many African Americans as already extremely melanin deficient Alaska.

No wonder you are so ignorant of recent American history.

The Republicans cannot repeal Obamacare, and the Democrats cannot get a judge confirmed, but Stormfront is having considerable success in promoting terrorism.

Bovine excreta. In a contest between Stormfront and your slime bucket as to which is quickest to provoke nausea, it is Stormfront by a nose. You cited, without reference or description, that Stormfront is "implicated" in "100 racial terrorist murders".

Please, and do be specific, breakdown where those murders occurred, who the victims were, and exactly how Stormfront is — and here you go with the passive voice again (a worthwhile sociology study would examine the prevalence of passive voice among collectivists compared with individualists) — "implicated" in those murders.

So far, your arguments have amounted to throwing stuff in the hope something will stick.

Clovis said...

Bret,

---
I live a pretty safe life at this point, so definitely more figuratively (so the "knife" would be business or social damage).
---
But what kind of business or social damage anyone would be able to inflict on you?

I mean, you probably already protect yourself in business against frauds, theft, and things like that, so what more would you do if any of your collaborators were to attack you for being Jew?

And if anyone is a closet anti-Jew, he probably would naturally not be on close touch with you anyway, right?

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] I know little of your laws, but down here, anyone killing a minor with no criminal record in a street fight would end up in a murder trial by default.



My interpretation for that not to happen initially for Zimmerman - within what I am used to down here - was that, due to him being known to the police, they took his word for granted, and that was legitimately questioned by critics and reporters.


In the US, where there is a possible crime, and a suspect in hand, the police provide the details they have to the District Attorney, who then decides whether to press charges.

With regard to the Zimmerman case, the facts were clear: Mr. Zimmerman had engaged in a text book case of self defense.

A couple months later, the racist h8rs swung into action, and applied enough political pressure to get the state DA to take the case away from the county DA. (IIRC, the state DA later got into trouble for proceeding with a case that so lacked any merit).

By this time, the racist h8rs (among whom I include Harry) and the collectivist newspapers had absolutely beclowned themselves — white Hispanic? really? — and drunk so much of their own bathwater they had lost complete touch with reality.

Fortunately, the jury, when presented with the actual facts, as opposed to the stuff progressives were throwing, reached the acquittal decision in less than 2 hours.

The only reason that case came about was due to politics trumping law and reality.

The proof is in the pudding. When an actual racist crime happens, the racist h8rs are nowhere to be seen. Especially if the incident involves a gun stopping someone of the wrong race getting beaten to death.

BTW, the attackers in that incident had hate crime charges attached to the battery charges.

I'm with erp — even though the victim in this case was white, hate crime laws are still a horrible idea.

Hey Skipper said...

Harry, since you have such difficulty taking the concept of racism on board, here is a primer.

erp said...

Clovis:

a. Martin did have a criminal record of violence and drug abuse.

b. It wasn't a "street fight." Zimmerman was empowered by the owner's association of which he was a member, to patrol the area because of multiple break-ins and other problems. (See explanation of Section 8* housing below)

b. Zimmerman was walking back to his car when he was attacked and knocked down and had Zimmerman not had a gun would have had his head further bashed into the pavement and most likely been killed.

Maybe I am reading it all wrong ...

Yes and not only this. I've said many time, practically everything you think you know about the U.S. is wrong because that's what the media want you to believe.

*Something else you may not remember my saying: This area of Florida is very depressed and over-built because of the wildly inflated real estate bubble some years back, so many units from lower, middle and upper income condo and housing complexes are now Section 8 housing, i.e., "rented" to welfare and other low income people with us tax payers picking up the tab.

Martin's father's girlfriend with whom he was staying was one such person living in that complex. She no doubt was getting some of the money he was getting from Uncle Sap in return for letting him stay there, a very common practice.

People who get Section 8 housing often pack their space with others who pay them from their own government largesse.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
With regard to the Zimmerman case, the facts were clear: Mr. Zimmerman had engaged in a text book case of self defense.
---
I know, and believe me, down here he would still go through a trial, even accounting all the facts you mentioned. The conclusion that he was legitimately defending himself (and all evidence collected by the police) would still ask for a judge's opinion (unless, as I mentioned, they were blatantly obvious by some camera footage). Furthermore, he could still get penalized for some reponsibility on causing the episode.

I am not saying the system here is better, only explaining why his trial did not strike me as anything other than standard procedure.



Erp:

---
b. It wasn't a "street fight."
---
The fight was in the street, i.e. in a broad open area whereby people walk routinely. So how come you say it is not a street fight?

---
Zimmerman was walking back to his car when he was attacked and knocked down
---
Do you have some camera footage of that? How do you know who approached who? As far as I know, there are only witnesses who saw them already fighting in the floor. There is not anyone who witnessed the whole thing.

---
I've said many time, practically everything you think you know about the U.S. is wrong because that's what the media want you to believe.
---
Think about it, Erp: if what I believe to be true is the same as many of your fellow citizens believe to be true, why do you single me out?

I mean, you are fond of remarking how I know nothing about the US for real, but I do not see you making the same accusation about your fellows who end up believing the same News I've read.

erp said...

It wasn't a street fight because there was no fight. Martin hit Zimmerman from behind as he was headed for his car.

You are right that a great many people believe what the media want them to believe that is why our wonderful country is now on the fast track to becoming a banana republic.

You can take solace that you are part of the herd, the very herd your mother cautioned you against, you know one, "If everyone is jumping off the bridge must you jump too"? In your case jumping is better than using your own head.

Clovis said...

Erp,

That's still a fight.

And please, do not include my mother on this one, yourself asked for no family comments here.

Clovis said...

BTW, I like bananas, they are tasty and nutritive. Why the pejorative?

I welcome thee to the Union of Banana Republics of the Americas.

Our UBRA is very happy to have you guys joining this cheerful organization of nations who like bananas.

Try it with your cheerios or your flakes in breakfast. Together with a warm cup of coffee, it makes for a great beginning of your day.

erp said...

As you should know, that isn't a reference to anyone's mother, merely a rhetorical remark.

So if someone hits you on the back of your head while you're walking along the street, you would classify it as a street fight?

A fight requires more than one participant. An attack only requires a victim and a perp.

erp said...

The Americas already have more than enough banana republics and we don't need another one.

Clovis said...

Erp,

Well, it is you who said you guys are getting Banana status now, not me.

An no, Erp, Zimmerman was not caught unaware from behind, go read his own testimony. He would be a heck of a patroller if that happened. Well, he may well be a heck a patroller anyway.

erp said...

Clovis, I think what I said is far closer to the truth than whatever you read, but I have no desire to read courtroom testimony.

I don't believe much of what's in the media and have had little occasion to regret that position.

You may believe what you like.

This was a scenario tossed around in the Florida media: A white Hispanic racist who hates handsome young black boys (could he be gay and spurned?), so he stalked and killed him and then bashed his own face in the pavement ...

Harry Eagar said...

Skipper, you seem strangely hung up on tenses, but if I take Bret aright, he is making an argument about markets, personal sentiments and race that would hold at all times.

If his system works at any time, it ought to work at any other time. Therefore, to test the system, we ask, well, how did it work back then?

(My answer, not at all.)

Now we are into Robertson territory. Were de darkies all happy de livelong day, picki' de cotton and not singin' de blues?

Or were they insulted, humiliated and oppressed by being denied the vote?

I vote for the second assessment.

It is, to put it mildly, mighty odd for you to be simultaneously noting that black pilots are in your cockpit now and denying that Great Society programs had any good effects (so far as racial integration is concerned), when we can look back and ask: who then was in the cockpits?

Not black pilots, for sure.

That racism still exists is not an argument against antiracism laws, you know. It is more of a demonstration of why those laws were wanted in the first place.

Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] I am not saying the system here is better, only explaining why his trial did not strike me as anything other than standard procedure.

Ooops. You were easily clear enough when you said that the first time; apologies that I didn't pick up on the glaringly obvious.

erp said...

There were black pilots during the second world war.

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] Skipper, you seem strangely hung up on tenses …

You are the one who said something is happening now, and when queried came back with a response that was equal parts churlish, irrelevant, and fifty years ago.

Given that you were a journalist, I supposed I shouldn't be surprised.

Now we are into Robertson territory. Were de darkies all happy de livelong day, picki' de cotton and not singin' de blues?

No, you are into poo-flinging progressive territory, where it is absolutely standard behavior to attribute to someone something they never said, or meant, and where you get to substitute whatever you want for their first hand experience.

While simultaneously demonstrating your inability to hold two ideas in your head at the same time. Yes of course, blacks were humiliated, oppressed, and denied the vote. One would think that, by now, you would stop pushing at an open door. Also, of course, blacks did not live in crime ridden neighborhoods, go to disastrous schools, or have families ravaged by the tender ministrations of the welfare state.

It is, to put it mildly, mighty odd for you to be simultaneously noting that black pilots are in your cockpit now and denying that Great Society programs had any good effects (so far as racial integration is concerned), when we can look back and ask: who then was in the cockpits?

Non sequitur much?

I have never denied that Great Society programs had no good effects. Rather, progressives need to take ownership for the consequences of all their policies, including the disastrous ones.

There are, and will be, far fewer blacks in cockpits because progressive policies have ruined their educations, and destroyed their families.

Of course, being a progressive means never being wrong.

erp said...

Skipper says:

There are, and will be, far fewer blacks in cockpits ... and all the other opportunities for middle class upward mobility ... because progressive policies have ruined their educations, and destroyed their families.

Bret said...

Clovis asks: "But what kind of business or social damage anyone would be able to inflict on you?"

A nuisance lawsuit would be thing I'd be most worried about.

I would avoid working with a non-closeted antisemite. The problem with a closeted one is that I wouldn't know and they may not realize I'm Jewish (I don't have a particularly typical Jewish look) until we're in a business relationship and then things might sour quickly.

I'd rather have people be perfectly open about what they think of me.

Clovis said...

Bret,


Actually, you are making a good argument for the PC.

People hardly hold more extremes form of racism without some level of idealization of his target.

When they mix around with people and get to know more of the kind he supposedly hates, there is a good chance that many of them will rethink their position. Back to your example, the anti-semitic person who may not have known you were Jew may end up questioning his prejudices after learning that.

So, to the extent that PC facilitates for people to interact and know each other, it is a good thing.

See that, were a person to label you as Jew in negative ways, hence not talk to you, and were you to label him back as anti-Jew, and not talking to him, we end up in a situation where the racism would only persist unchallenged.

Harry Eagar said...

'there is a good chance that many of them will rethink their position.'

This is what happened in the South, although there was a residue who became even more inflamed after being forced to pretend to be decent toward their fellow citizens.

The best result comes from bringing the children together, so it takes a while for the benefits of forced integration to be felt.

erp, there were not black pilots in the cockpits of civilian airliners. Only Big Gummint put them into flight training. You know nothing about the history of your own country. Learn it. It is interesting and valuable to know.

Skippr, you have an idealized picture of life among America's black population that is no closer to reality than erp's.

Since you are the one hung up on tenses, it is contradictory to ignore it in the case of Robertson. I have said, more than once, that if Robertson had said what he said when he was 16, it would not have been racist. It is repeating this phoney story today that makes it racist.

Hey Skipper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
erp said...

Harry, my knowledge of history corresponds with what actually happened in regard to the slave trade as in all things. I neither idealize the past nor paint it worse than it was and the reason for that is I don't have any axe to grind.

You are hell bent to prove that the poor people now in custodial custody are better off than those who were in the selfsame condition when they were slaves. It's far worse now because, among dozens of other reasons, the law doesn't say they are somebody's property and hasn't done so for 150 + years, so they are free to move on and join the rest of us making our own way as have millions of people of color, both descendants of slaves and new immigrants, have done.

Fact: There were black pilots in the 40’s (you said there weren't any before the Great Society) and the military put them and all the other pilots of every color into flight training. Fact: Big government had nothing to do with it.

Fact: Due to affirmative action, people who never gave a thought to what color their pilot or any other of their fellow citizens doing their jobs were, tend now to be suspicious of blacks in positions of authority like pilots, wondering if they’re token blacks hired to fill quotas or ordinary people hired because they are capable and competent ... and only fools aren't concerned. Fact: Big government had everything to do with that.

Fact: After the sainted martyr was killed, the lunatic left made the most of that crisis by pushing forward all your benighted polices which pushed back the real strides made between the races after the end of the second world war and by the early 60’s with the Soviet led anti-Vietnam war riots, everything started going to hell in a hand basket with a slight detour when Reagan was in office. Fact: Big government had everything to do with making race relations and every other part of our lives worse.

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] The best result comes from bringing the children together, so it takes a while for the benefits of forced integration to be felt.

As is to be expected of a fundamentalist progressive, you fail to understand significant major points here. Yes, there was endemic racism 50 years ago.

The question is whether progressive policies, anti-human to their core, produced worse results than simply enforcing de jure equality, and let de facto segregation work itself out.

As your transparent dodge "… it takes a while for the benefits of forced integration to be felt" makes so clear. The disastrous effects of forced integration are out there for everyone to see. As well as the hypocrisy: where did your kids go to school? The Obama's? The judges who felt they could impose their sanctimonious preening?

If their, and your kids, didn't participate in forced integration than you have no basis to criticize those whose did.

erp, there were not black pilots in the cockpits of civilian airliners. Only Big Gummint put them into flight training. You know nothing about the history of your own country. Learn it. It is interesting and valuable to know.

Harry, given your propensity to trot out the irrelevant, misapprehend the readily apparent, or to lie, (pellagra, Romney, chanting "let them die", "racist" response to Superbowl ad, etc) you have very little room to be accusing anyone else of not knowing about US history.

The military isn't the only source of pilots, white or black (industry average at the moment is close to 50-50). You know nothing about the industry about which you comment — which is industry average for journalists — learn it, to avoid beclowning yourself.

What is true about black pilots, just as much as it is for whites, is that all of them have internalized middle-class values. Which means those areas most subjected to progressive mercies — the ones with 74% illegitimacy rates, where intact families should be right at the top of the endangered species list, are exactly from where black pilots will not be coming. This, despite an industry that will instantly hire any qualified member of any Officially Designated Grievance Group.

While I'm on the subject of pilots, it is worth noting how attitudes differ by occupation. I contend that those in reality refereed fields (electrical engineering, surgeons, pilots) are far less likely to be progressive than those in peer refereed fields (humanities, journalists).

Virtually all the pilots I fly with are conservatives. I have been flying professionally for 32 years. In that time, I have heard exactly zero racist comments, even by Harry's bizarre standard which amounts to "I say so because shut up".

Racism, by the only meaningful definition of the term — disparaging characterization of people based upon ethnicity — is so rare anymore as to be essentially dead.

Which is why Harry, and Think Progress, and Crooked Timber have to resort to thoughtcrime in their attempts to delegitimize those who don't genuflect before progressivism's altar. Yet when something happens that is actual racism — the attack in Detroit, or a leftwinger shouting "This is gonna be a [expletive] nigger town", the thoughtcrime police go into lockdown mode. (The the same mode that Harry uses when challenged about the veracity of his claims.)

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] Skipper, you have an idealized picture of life among America's black population that is no closer to reality than erp's.

No, I don't. What I do have, and you do not, is the understanding that happiness and a life well lived isn't merely a sum of material circumstances, but rather comprises the material and moral. It is entirely possible, as the black experience demonstrates, that it is quite possible to become better off in material terms — every black in the US today lives a life of unimaginable opulence compared to what they had 100 years ago — while becoming worse off in moral terms.

Since you, like all progressives, have no sense of the moral, then of course you must ascribe to Robertson racism, because you either cannot, or will not, recognize that which is clearly obvious to everyone else: his comments referred to the social, moral, capital of black communities, and how progressive policies have destroyed that capital.

You ascribe this as racist. Doing so, however, leaves you progressives with nothing but racialist explanations for soaring crime, illegitimacy, epic educational failure, and the nearly complete breakdown of the black family.

My irony meter just detonated.

… if Robertson had said what he said when he was 16, it would not have been racist. It is repeating this phoney story today that makes it racist.

Hmmm. You might have me there. Clearly, Robertson is wrong, and a phoney, because he had nothing but first hand knowledge to go on.

Hey Skipper said...

[erp:] Fact: Due to affirmative action, people who never gave a thought to what color their pilot or any other of their fellow citizens doing their jobs were, tend now to be suspicious of blacks in positions of authority like pilots, wondering if they’re token blacks hired to fill quotas or ordinary people hired because they are capable and competent ...

That varies depending on the airline. The two airlines I have worked for did not engage in diversity hiring; black and female pilots are just as competent as their racistbecauseshutup counterparts. United, on the other hand, is famous throughout the industry for minimally qualified AA hires.

In order to even get an interview, everyone else had to well exceed United's stated minimum qualifications. That means non-AA hires had to go through a more extensive winnowing process before getting through the front door.

Just as one would expect, United has had many more issues with AA hires than the rest. (And before Harry shouts racistbecauseshutup, the rest would have had as many issues if they had been hired with minimum qualifications. The consequences are based upon the difference in statistical merit, not race or gender.)

erp said...

Skipper, unless we all have friends or relatives with the same kind of specialized knowledge that you have about airlines about all the other people we depend on like surgeons, etc., we are left with grave concerns just as I said in my last comment.

It's funny because in the Paleolithic (or Stone Age) days of my youth, blacks, women, etc. who were able to overcome the prejudice against them, were so clearly superior even in very selective fields, it was almost axiomatic that they were among the best. Now with government interference and trillions spent on the Great Society, they're looked at with suspicion as, possibly, even probably, unqualified.

erp said...

Harry, BTW as an aside, why are you so bent our of shape by a character on reality TV program? Could it be that what he's saying is pretty close to what you know to be true, but can't bring yourself to admit?

That would be my take on it.

Harry Eagar said...

'where did your kids go to school?'

Public schools that were 67% non-white.

There was, in fact, a great deal of self-segregation within the school. The band was overwhelmingly AJA, the football team overwhelmingly Pacific Islander.

But there was some crossover, which is not possible with segregated schools.

My children migrated to the most integrated subsegment, the drama program.

I have told this story before, I think, but it is worth telling again.

My older daughter went to a high school that was about 95% white, reflecting the overall makeup of the town. She was the top student, and I was proud of her.

I was talking to one of her teachers and told her how proud I was that she was tops. She pointed out the window to a group of black boys hanging out on the sidewalk.

"There is the best student I had, until he could not stand being told he was acting too white. He could have been better than your daughter."

And then there is this:

http://wreg.com/2014/06/02/worker-records-racist-supervisor-in-cotton-gin/

erp can nurture her delusions about whites accepting black pilots, but they are delusions.

Harry Eagar said...

So, I asked Mr. Google, who was the first black pilot at a major US airline? and this is what he said:

'Marlon Dewitt Green[1] (June 6, 1929 – July 6, 2009) was an African-American pilot whose landmark United States Supreme Court decision in 1963 helped dismantle racial discrimination in the American passenger airline industry, leading to David Harris' hiring as the first African-American pilot for a major airline the following year. Green was subsequently hired by Continental Airlines, for whom he flew from 1965 to 1978.'

So what I said was right, even though I've never been in a cockpit, because I have been around.

Clovis said...

Harry,

Be careful, you can not continue disproving Erp this way, she may end up concluding that everything she thinks she knows about America, is wrong.

erp said...

Harry: I don't remember major airlines in your previous comment.

In fact, here's what you said:
erp, there were not black pilots in the cockpits of civilian airliners. Only Big Gummint put them into flight training. You know nothing about the history of your own country. Learn it. It is interesting and valuable to know.

We can quibble about what's a major or minor airline, but you what you said was pilot and you are clearly mistaken and since Mr. Google has rewritten more history than all academics and leftwing media, I'll go with Skipper's version... and what they haven't rewritten, they conveniently made disappear, like the huge file I had on Obama and his beautiful beard, Michelle and even more beautiful brain, Valerie. That taught me to take screen shots of everything and save everything to flash drives and external hard drives.

erp said...

Clovis, your comment is puzzling because Harry has not disproven anything.

Harry Eagar said...

Clovis, erp is impervious to evidence. It's a shame, because the story of America really is beautiful. Ugly episodes, including today, but the trajectory is positive.

I asked Mr. Google the same question, but took out 'major,' and the answer I got was worse, not better:

'Years ago, Ben Thomas, a young black pilot with Eastern Airlines evaluated the state of the U.S. airline industry. By way of the landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court Case, Marlon Green had succeeded in smashing the "Color Barrier" by becoming the first black hired by a major U.S. Passenger Airline (Continental). However, the number of black pilots employed in 1976 was appallingly small. Ben was not alone in recognizing this state of affairs, but his response to the situation was special. He took it upon himself to spearhead an effort to form a permanent body to address this issue. His idea was to simply establish a representative group dedicated to advancing and enhancing the participation of blacks and other minorities in the aviation industry, especially as pilots. On September 17th and 18th of 1976, thirty-seven of the industry's approximately 80 black pilots convened at the O'Hare Hilton Hotel in Chicago. As a result of that meeting, The Organization of Black Airline Pilots (OBAP) was born.'

'Appallingly small' seem to be the right words.

erp said...

Harry, this was inadvertently truncated from my comment above:

... Harris didn't rise up from the frothing of giddy left wingers, he had to have been flying something somewhere to gain flying expertise in order to be able to fly for a major airline unless he was hired to meet a quota and never actually fly a plane.

Harry, another aside: Your surprise that a black boy hanging around with other kids could be smarter than your daughter is such a tell for your inbred racism and why didn't put the blame on his not wanting to "act white" where it belongs -- on the head of the Great Society.

The genocide going on black ghettoes where the smartest boys instead of "acting white" are selling drugs and making money by crime. The reverse Darwinism goes into effect while those genes are either killed off by rivals or deteriorate in jail cells rather than being passed on to children in loving families.

Harry Eagar said...

I wasn't surprised. A racist would have been.

I expect Harris learned to fly in the military. That was the pilot training arena up through the '60s.

Skipper says it is 50-50 now. That's a recent development.

Anyhow, erp, just name me a black civilian pilot for any airline prior to the breakthrough civil rights legislation of the '60s and we can talk.

Otherwise, you're just making stuff up.

erp said...

You "expect Harris learned to fly in the military." Do you mean he was one of the Tuskegee airmen? Were they still flying for the 20 years between the end of the war and the middle sixties?

You gave yourself away again. Yes, a racist would have been surprised (that a black boy was smarter than the daughter of a rich white man), that's why your comment indicates you were surprised.

Nothing to say on why bright, even brilliant, black boys/men are afraid of acting white.?

Harry Eagar said...

I mean he was one of the Cold War pilots, probably in the Air Force.

I was not surprised. The point of the story was that all kids got a shot in the public schools, contrary to what Skipper and you keep telling us. Some made more of that than others.

I was completely unsurprised, since I do not (unlike Skipper) believe there is any difference among Human groups, how ever easily they can be separated by inspection.

Give it up, erp. You made up racist crap about the Hawaiians and now you are making up racist crap about pilots.

Provide some evidence.

erp said...

I made up nothing. Hawaiian land was owned by aborigines until you and your friends took it to the courts and made it yours. A repeat performance, except in method, of the way whites took the land from the aborigines in North America. Yet as I said in an earlier comment, I doubt this stops you from condemning what was done centuries ago.

Racist cr*p about pilots? You've really lost it.

You said there were no black pilots before the Great Society, I linked to the Tuskegee Airmen of WW2.

You said there were no black pilots on a major airline until 1965 and I said, they must have been flying something somewhere or they wouldn't have been qualified to fly the big commercial jets.

You now say you mean they were flying in the cold war??? For what country? They couldn't have been flying in our military unless they were part of the Tuskegee airmen because you said there weren't any black pilots until 1965???

Public schools? I'm for them and I have never read anything by Skipper that might indicate that he doesn't support them as well, so I have no idea what you are talking about. How about admitting that the policies of the Great Society have resulted in black school children "not acting white" which translated means not working toward success in the larger society.

It's really difficult to maintain a position when it is contrary not only to fact, but to logic.

Harry Eagar said...

You are so dishonest that you will not even admit you said what you said.

Give it up. You are not fooling anybody.

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] [My kids went to] Public schools that were 67% non-white.

Congratulations. Unlike limousine liberals, and all the judges who imposed forced integration, and Pres. Obama, you are not, in this regard, a hypocrite.

There is the best student I had, until he could not stand being told he was acting too white. He could have been better than your daughter.

There you go with the passive voice again. Told by whom?

erp can nurture her delusions about whites accepting black pilots, but they are delusions.

Granted, I am crippled by having to rely on mere first hand experience, and that only dating back a 36 years, but she is correct.

So what I said was right, even though I've never been in a cockpit, because I have been around.

Yes, you are right. In about the most superficial manner possible.

After WWII, Navy and AF pilots had to be officers; to be an officer requires a college degree. So for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with racism in aviation at the time, the pool of black pilots was bound to be much smaller than that for whites.

Clearly, the number of black pilots in 1976 was appallingly small.

Do you know what? It still is. Of course, the only reason for that can be racist h8rs. Of course. Absolutely. No doubt about it.

Unless one dissects those words "appallingly small" just a bit. They are meaningful only with respect to what the number of black pilots could possibly have been in 1976, or now. Since I am a fanatic for tense — silly me, insisting that an assertion about the the present is unlikely to answered by an assertion about the state of play 50 years ago — how about doing me a favor and separating the here and now from the there and then.

I will happily accept as read that there was significant systemic racism in the 1970s. I am asserting that has vanished. The fact that there are still so few black airline pilots cannot be put down to the airlines, because the difference between the number there could be, and are, is essentially zero.

Anyhow, erp, just name me a black civilian pilot for any airline prior to the breakthrough civil rights legislation of the '60s and we can talk.

How many can you name who were in the position to be airline pilots?

Skipper says military - civilian hiring is 50-50 now.

This report, written in 1997, shows that the percentage varied considerably based upon sector and time. At times of very low hiring, and in the major airlines, it could be as much as 90% military. The greater the hiring rate, the lower the percentage. When I was first hired in 2000, the ratio was about 50-50; my first airline was less than half ex-military.

BTW, the report is an interesting enough read, except for the "have you stopped beating your wife" aspect to it.

Interestingly, the numbers for minority and female pilots haven't budged in the succeeding 18 years since it was written.

No doubt because sexist h8rs, too.

Just to reiterate, the point here is that virtually all pilots are "rightwingers" and "gun nuts" who by Harry's definition are racist h8rs because shutup.

Having only first hand experience on which to hazard an opinion, not one of those rightwing gun nuts is a racists. If Harry wasn't so religiously fanatical about his notions, he might consider that an important fact that his notions do not accomodate.


The point of the story was that all kids got a shot in the public schools, contrary to what Skipper and you keep telling us.

erp and I have? Where? Exact quotes, please.

Hey Skipper said...

[erp] You are so dishonest that you will not even admit you said what you said.

I'm still mopping the coffee off my desk. I have never read anyone who even comes close to matching your record for falsehoods — which you relentlessly fail to acknowledge when called on them — and you call erp dishonest?


BTW, you referenced "100 racial terrorist murders" showing how Stormfront was successfully promoting terrorism.

Would you mind providing a breakdown of who was murdered where? Rough numbers will do. Also, it would be nice to show how Stormfront promoted those murders.

BTW, in case you haven't figured it out by now, I'm not asking this question because I don't know the answer.

Harry Eagar said...

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/17/splc-report-nearly-100-murdered-by-stormfront-users/

It isn't hard to figure why relatively few (compared to population) black kids make pilot.

I have a son-in-law who is a captain. He got his private license by hanging out at the airfield in high school and exchanging odd job work for lessons. But it cost him $60,000 to get his commercial license. A significant barrier for poor kids.

But of course the standard to which we are comparing, the pre-big gummint interference benchmark, is 0. That's zero as in nil, nada, nothing.

Women, I don't know. Math fear, maybe.

erp said...

Skipper, Harry is in meltdown mode. All his cherished shibboleths are in tatters and yet like the mindless Borg he is in relentless pursuit of his master's directive.

The thing that really upsets me the most is how cavalierly Harry dismisses the black kids who have been taught that they shouldn't act white and so rather than join the rest of their countrymen in the greater society, they are condemned to a life of violence and despair. That they are collateral damage is clear, but how can Harry and the rest of the moonbats think it's worth the price of destroying so many kids' lives in order to be able to say, mission accomplished: Schools are no longer segregated by Jim Crow, now they are segregated by Harry and his friends.

Integrated airlines, very anecdotal, but interesting: At least 15-20 years ago, in the probably Delta waiting room at Orlando Airport, a vast space, was packed when a flight crew walked by, eight or ten persons in uniform, a couple of whom were black, some women ... not a single person made a face and not one of those red neck Floridians who whipped darkies jumped up and said they wouldn't ride in a plane manned or womanned by other than white fundamentalists. Since then black pilots are commonplace. I personally have never been chauffeured through the ether by one of my own sex (that I know of), but it would be pleasure should it happen, now that you've explained that none of these people are affirmative action babies, I can sit back and relax.

Thank you for that.

Clovis said...

Erp,

---
... I can sit back and relax.
---

Don't you worry about that, Erp, Affirmative Action or not.

Most big airplanes nowadays are self-driven most of the time, one generation later and Skipper would be jobless.

A few other generations laters, we all would be jobless, thanks to Bret and other fellow robotic revolutionaries.

Have you thought on how to update our discussions here to that world? Would you feel too much humiliated for needing govt to hand you out something to eat, because there won't be jobs anyway?

erp said...

In a few months I'll be 80, so I don't think it'll matter much to me, but I don't think I'd like it for my grandchildren. However, I have no problem with people who are unable to take of themselves being helped by the rest of us.

Don't be so sure that there will be no jobs. Maybe no manufacturing jobs, but get government out of our faces, and a whole new way of life will emerge. I have no idea what that will be. That's up Bret and aog and their successors, but if we human beings are left to our own devices, we can amazing things.

Personally, I'd like to be around when replicators are commonplace. I've been waiting for them all my life.

Clovis said...

But replicators will exterminate the Human race, Erp. Hmm, I guess I then understand why you were waiting for them so eagerly... :-)

erp said...

Replicators don't replicate people only objects and food. Robots replicate people.

Why do you think I want people replicated. More irony? Your comments aren't making a lot of sense Clovis.

erp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hey Skipper said...

[Clovis:] Most big airplanes nowadays are self-driven most of the time, one generation later and Skipper would be jobless.

Yes, but.

Airliners up through the mid-80s were completely analog. That didn't mean they didn't have autopilots, though, or that pilots manually controlled the aircraft most of the time.

Since digital flight management systems (FMS) and GPS, aircraft now know which phase of flight they are in, and the difference between the current flight state and the desired flight state.

With some very important caveats.

Almost all the time, air traffic control in the terminal environment consists of assigned headings, altitudes, and speeds. Consequently, while the FMS knows where it is, it has absolutely no idea where it is going.

Which means where it matter most, most often, the human brain trumps, and we end up flying the latest generation airplanes very much like much older ones.

There is still a payoff -- we now have the ability to shift most of the complexity of the terminal environment to the cruise phase. That means the pilots can think strategically when it matter most.

The downside is a huge increase in complexity.

Will there be a time without human pilots? No doubt. However, I think it is more than a generation away, because there are way too many times when even the most modern aircraft do dumb sh*t things, and without a human in the loop, very ugly results would not be far off.

Hey Skipper said...

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/04/17/splc-report-nearly-100-murdered-by-stormfront-users/

So the SPLC is vying with Wonkette for credulous ideological buffoonery?

I am absolutely no fan of Stormfront, or any other racial supremacist outfit. But that "study" to which your link links is so foolish, that neither it, nor, apparently, you, get the implications.

Let's say it is true, in that Stormfront through undisclosed means successfully promoted 100 racial terrorist murders. Fine. Let's also completely ignore the fact that almost all those 100 murders were of the same race as the murderer: Breivik killed 69 white Norwegians — his own race — to protest Muslim — a religion, not a race — immigration.

That is almost as droolingly stupid as citing someone who signed up with Stormfront, then six hours later killed his family.

If this is what constitutes the standard of proof, then I am quite certain I could find a great many more cases of BET successfully promoting murder.

Fortunately, outside the bizarro marxoid world you seem to inhabit, the standards are far higher.

But it cost him $60,000 to get his commercial license. A significant barrier for poor kids.

Thank you for gut shooting your own argument. You have let existing racism right off the hook: none of those gun nut rightwinger pilots are keeping minorities out of aviation.

Then you go one step further in self flagellation. Let's say it costs $100,000 to get someone from pedestrian to an employable commercial pilot. Further, members of officially aggrieved groups, are absolutely certain to get a job at a major airline. Remember, there are no qualified minorities or women who don't have flying jobs.

That means it would be a sound decision to invest in, say, black college graduates: front them the $100,000, with an eventual payoff of $150,000.

Beats the heck out twice the cost for a grievance studies degree.

Women, I don't know. Math fear, maybe.

Sexist h8r!

Harry Eagar said...

Who did i say was keeping minority pilots out ov the cockpit now?

I didn't say anyone was now, although it is true enough that not everybody has the same chance.

That's institutional. Because we have laws -- which erp wants to get rid of -- that restrict individuals from doing that, at least blatantly.

Who was keeping blacks out of cockpits before the Great Society? Management. Customers. And they were perfect.

erp said...

Harry, is your story now that racist customers kept black pilots out of cockpits? What's the word that's way past nutso desperation?

I've flown a bit and never came across anything like that, but Skipper, you've probably flown a bit more than the average bear, what say you? Do passengers ever get to pick their pilot's coloration?

Back to your son-in-law who, heaven forfend, had to pay for his own journey to captain of a flying machine. Why didn't you pay for it to save the poor lad from the onerous task to taking responsibility for his own life.

Nah. Lefties never put their hands in their own pockets, only in our pockets.

Harry, please point out which law(s) keep people from doing something which I am against or for? Your remark is so convoluted I don't know if I'm for or against whatever is the subject of your incoherence.

Clovis said...

Erp,

We are talking different SciFi languages.

Replicators are going to replicate machines and make a superpopulation of them, and evetually they will exterminate humans (not all, some will remain for studies in their modern version of a Zoo).

erp said...

I see. I just want to get out of cooking and cleaning the house.

Hey Skipper said...

Who did I say was keeping minority pilots out of the cockpit now?

Your mantra: racist rightwingers, because that's what racist rightwingers do, and since essentially all pilots are rightwingers, that is what is keeping minority pilots out of the cockpit.

Because it couldn't possibly have anything to do with progressivism achieving what Jim Crow could not: the destruction of the African American family.

Those middle class values that progressives love to loathe? Without them, blacks (the active agent behind your passive voice above) don't stand a chance of becoming pilots, surgeons, machinists, welders, etc.

The problem isn't laws aimed at stopping systemic discrimination; rather, it is the plethora of anti-human progressive programs that destroyed families, communities, and schools.

You progressives need to take credit where it is due.

Who was keeping blacks out of cockpits before the Great Society? Management. Customers. And they were perfect.

There were a lot of things keeping blacks out of cockpits, then and now.

You should review past and present tense, and think a little harder about now and why.

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
Almost all the time, air traffic control in the terminal environment consists of assigned headings, altitudes, and speeds. Consequently, while the FMS knows where it is, it has absolutely no idea where it is going.
---
Really?

I thought you would program the whole thing in the flight computer system and it would take it from you after take off and give it back to you before landing...

I do not see any intrinsic software difficulty with programing all that, why is it not the standard?

As for the analogic times, I am fascinated for the old technology for autopilots, based on gyroscopes. I usually teach a little bit of that when I give classes on rotational dynamics, it is beautiful. Of course, the modern technology is very nice too. My hobby project for now is to learn some of this Arduino stuff and use it to build some MEMS based autopilot for toy model airplanes myself. I will have my own homemade little Drone.

Hey Skipper said...

Before takeoff, we program the departure procedure (if there is one), en route path, and arrival procedure (if there is one, and if we know the landing runway, and if we know which procedure).

Mostly, that means we don't program the arrival and approach until about an hour out.

In almost all cases, approach control has to sequence traffic arriving from multiple directions, so it is almost never the case that the aircraft can follow a pre-programmed profile to the ground.

In heavy traffic, that means getting vectored off the arrival, assigned altitudes, and speed adjustments.

In light traffic and good weather, ATC can turn airplanes in tighter than pre-programmed arrival tracks.

Either way, the pilots end up telling the airplane what to do via directly controlling airspeed, altitude, heading and descent rate (thereby bypassing the FMS), or hand flying.

My son is all about Arduino.

(BTW, modern airplanes still significantly rely on gyroscopes -- in our case ring laser gyros -- to determine the aircraft vector.)

Harry Eagar said...

Funny thing, erp tells about her black physician and saw black flight crew at an airport. Since the Great Society.

She would not have seen either before that. Would she?

Clovis said...

Skipper,

---
(BTW, modern airplanes still significantly rely on gyroscopes -- in our case ring laser gyros -- to determine the aircraft vector.)
---
Yes, but they are not really gyroscopes, there is no momentum angular and torque dynamics going on.

They are basically fiber cables in ring format, with counter-propagating laser beams and a detector to measure the interference pattern formed. When the gyro is in inertial movement, both laser rays follow equal distances before they join again at the detector, hence there is no "fringe patterns". When the plane rotates somehow, the beam following the same rotation direction in the ring runs a shorter path than the one following the opposite direction of the ring, hence a fringe pattern forms at the detector, and from that you can measure the plane's instantaneous angular velocity.

Sure there is also beautiful physics behind it, and a fundamental relativistic effect (the Sagnac effect) was behind the efforts that led to the patent of this invention.

I guess though that a MEMS circuit will do good enough for a toy airplane.

Clovis said...

Ops, little mistake: it is the beam counter-rotating that covers a shorter path up to the detector.

erp said...

Harry, ya got me. I lived in the Big Apple from 1934 to 1964 when I moved to the Connecticut suburbs with my husband and three small kids. During the NYC period, I went to school with black kids, saw black people in my neighborhood, had black people as teachers in high school (only white nuns in grammar school) and then worked in Manhattan for a very large real estate company located in a skyscraper on the corner of 5th Ave. and 42nd St. Black people were in every imaginable position, but since I hadn’t traveled by air until well after the little one was born in 1964, you are right, I didn’t see any flight crews of any color at all before 1965, but you’re wrong about physicians, I saw plenty of them.

I also saw a black family who lived next door to us in Connecticut for the 14 years we lived there prior to moving to Vermont for my husband’s job. Not only them, but their friends and relatives with whom we all socialized, etc. in a neighborly way … and you know why that family had an easy time when the previous owner, the chairman of the county Democratic party, broke the color line in our neighborhood by soaking them for more than twice what the house was worth, it was because we, the hideous racists that we are, refused to join those who wanted to run away and talked everybody into taking a deep breath and giving the new neighbors a chance. It worked very well. Not one white family moved and slowly the neighborhood became integrated in a calm sensible way.

That’s the way things are done with the government keeps their grimy hands off.

Please note the year was 1964.

Harry Eagar said...

But that's not the way it worked other places. Other places, black families were burned out.

It's weird how you see things happening after the Great Society got involved and yet you insist the Great Society failed.

erp said...

What's weird is that you didn't take note of my final note noting this happened the year before the Great Society.

There were far more burnings and other violence after forced integration of neighborhoods and schools.

My contention that things were moving forward slowly, but surely, until your lefty friends interfered, still holds.

Harry Eagar said...

This never happened:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/308994_Meet_the_Upstate_New_York_Man_

erp said...

I don't link to Charles.

Hey Skipper said...

[Harry:] This never happened.

And your point being?

Here is the tag line from the link: Benning [the black motorist at whom a woman shouted racist epithets] says that keeping his composure was necessary for him to document the racism that many Americans refuse to acknowledge.

Perhaps because it is practically non-existent.

Of course, if Charles Johnson is chasing down racist incidents of a kind that almost never happen, and in this case had no real consequences, then he must be all over this.

Google search on [detroit motorist beating] -- 753,000 results.

Google search on ["little green footballs" detroit motorist beating] -- zippo, nil, nada, none.

I'll bet if you could go inside Charles' head, the only thing you would be able to hear is the sound of axe grinding.

Same as Wonkette, Salon, et al.

Harry Eagar said...

Videos are uncommon. The behavior itself is not, regrettably, practically non-existent; as a reading of your daily newspaper will reveal.

Such behavior is nowadays less common than it was and less tolerated than it was, which is one of the excellent results of government efforts to improve behavior.

Like this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/warehouse-supervisor-in-memphis-tennessee-fired-for-alleged-racism/

Before I retired, I used to try to attend the employers' law conference the local employer law attorneys presented to HR people. They used real-world examples of what not to do. You would not believe the level of don't-do-that employers have to pay money to be told.

Hey Skipper said...

The behavior itself is not, regrettably, practically non-existent; as a reading of your daily newspaper will reveal.

You were a journalist, right? If so, then you must have heard of a "man bites dog" story. If the behavior was as common as you say it is -- although no reading of any local newspaper anywhere I have lived in decades substantiates your claim -- then the TN incident would have been a "dog bites man" story, and wouldn't have been reported, never mind visible to someone in HI.

Likewise, we would never have known of the video, because there is no news value in the commonplace.

However, for axe grinders such as yourself and Johnson -- a blustering blog post for a singularly nasty woman, and not a pixel for a guy who got beaten into a coma? -- that the fact you are reporting on such things completely refutes your reporting on such things.

Such behavior is nowadays less common than it was and less tolerated than it was, which is one of the excellent results of government efforts to improve behavior.

What government should be doing is making just laws, not engaging in behavior modification.

That the modifiers, leftists such as yourself, absolutely cannot be trusted is reason enough.

Never mind the disasters your "modifications" have caused.

Being a progressive means never having to take accountability.

Harry Eagar said...

Nevertheless, and no matter how much you dislike it, behavior has been modified and for the better,improving the life of tens of millions and -- no small matter to me although it seems to be a matter of indifference to you -- extending civil and political rights to almost the whole population.

erp said...

What behavior has been modified?

Do you mean incredible violence in welfare infested areas is a positive behavioral modification because Section 8 "renters" aka as welfare recipients are moving quickly into lower and middle income areas and bringing with them their violence and lawlessness and the behavior modification among the law abiding taxpaying residents is also changing and not for the better vis-à-vis their new neighbors which in this area are overwhelming non-blacks nor browns ... but then you don't care about any of that.

Hey Skipper said...

Nevertheless, and no matter how much you dislike it, behavior has been modified ...

There you go with the passive voice again. I swear, if not for passive voice, the left would have nothing to say.

Behavior has changed, that much is clear.

What is also clear, and which you keep dodging, is that progressive attempts to modify behavior, chief among them forced busing, have been complete disasters.

... and -- no small matter to me although it seems to be a matter of indifference to you -- extending civil and political rights to almost the whole population.

Okay, there is still lefty defamatory snottiness.

What, precisely, does eliminating de jure discrimination have to do with forced busing?

Harry Eagar said...

Gee, what a tough question. What, precisely, did a Supreme Court decision have to do with the ability of Jews to buy houses in restricted neighborhoods?

Well, everything. Here is a nice graphic explanation, worth many words:

https://www.facebook.com/ZinnEducationProject/photos/a.10150110390139677.282958.121352639676/10152167768559677/?type=1&relevant_count=1

Hey Skipper said...

OK, besides passive voice, defamatory snottiness, and non sequiturs, leftists would have nothing to say.

After the SC eliminated anti-Jewish housing covenants, the buses started shifting kids around to satisfy progressives, right? Oh, wait ...

Blacks were the only group subjected to the tender mercies of progressives. And we ended up with this.

Congratulations. Give yourselves a pat on the back.

erp said...

Skipper, you forgot ad hominems.

Harry Eagar said...

Well, no, blacks were subjected to the much less tender mercies of the white racists. You deny that forced busing existed before the Great Society, but like erp, you are delusional.

And you know how many rightists complained about forced busing in the fifties or earlier? I can tell you exactly. 0. That's zero, nil, nada, not any.

erp said...

Delusional means believing something that doesn't exist and I denied nothing.

I said there was no forced busing any of the half dozen or so places in four different states where I've lived over the past 80 years.

Why is the issue of forced busing so important to you?

It was bad policy when it was to exclude black kids and it was bad policy when it was to include black kids.

The difference being that the kids were better off during Jim Crow when the learned even if they used cast off books than they are now after the Great Society put them back on the plantation.

Hey Skipper said...

You deny that forced busing existed before the Great Society …

I did? Where? Please do me a favor, either provide the direct quote, or retract your accusation.

I'm sure that some busing shifted black children to somewhere else other than the nearest school. However, residential patterns, as much the result of governmental segregation as anything else, ensured that such a thing would be rare.

Once government committed itself to stop doing what it had long been doing — that big gummint thing isn't a hobby horse you can get off of whenever you want — big gummint types could have made law race-blind, and let time undo what had taken a great deal of time and effort to do in the first place.

Instead, progressives, anti-human to the core, forced entire communities that did not include the progressives doing the forcing, to do immediately what required time, or re-education camps.

It isn't often I find the Socialist Worker useful, but this is certainly one of those occasions.

From the link: "We want mixed schools not because our colored schools are inferior to white schools--not because colored instructors are inferior to white instructors, but because we want to do away with a system that exalts one class and debases another. -- Frederick Douglass

He was right.

Unfortunately, the progressive solution did not achieve desegregation, but it did create colored schools that would have to get better by an order of magnitude just to become merely inferior.

Congratulations. You deserve it.

Hey Skipper said...

Skipper, you forgot ad hominems.

NOBODY expects the progressive inquisition! Our chief weapon is passive voice and snottiness ...snottiness and passive voice...snottiness and passive voice.... Our two weapons are snottiness and passive voice...and non sequiturs .... Our *three* weapons are snottiness and passive voice, non sequiturs...and an almost fanatical devotion to ad hominem attack .... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements are snottiness and passive voice, non sequiturs...and an almost fanatical devotion to ad hominem attack...

erp said...

Skipper, I must have missed that comment. My wireless connection and email is touch and go since TW/Comcast took over Bright House which, until a year or so ago, was a wonder among cable providers for being competent.

Your last comment says it all in a nutshell.

Of course, coloreds could have made their schools superior and their kids more accomplished scholars in the arts and sciences. It didn't take a lot of money in those days. They didn't need electronics or expensive art supplies just willing teachers and students. Perhaps they would have after the war if the, I'll use your word, "progressives" hadn't started getting nervous their voter base would slip away from them and stepped in to make things "fair."

Harry Eagar said...

'He was right. '

No, he wasn't. And if you read him carefully, he isn't saying that the schools were equal.

They never were.

I suggested, over at RtO, that you read 'The Negro Question' by G.W. Cable, which is mostly a collection of magazine articles from the 1880s.

Back then the moderate racists were making exactly the same argument you just made -- just give us a little time.

They had time and nothing moved.



Harry Eagar said...

This never happened either:

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/06/11/texas-official-refuses-to-resign-after-saying-get-those-blacks-off-the-school-board/?utm_source=crowdignite.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=crowdignite.com

Hey Skipper said...

Back then the moderate racists were making exactly the same argument you just made -- just give us a little time.

Because circumstances today are exactly the same as in 1880.

BTW, that is a pretty nasty ad hominem you have going on there.

Clearly you would rather resort to those than address the real disaster: progressive policies, imposed as diktats, destroyed entire school systems.

“It’s not going to get any better until you get those blacks off the school board. She really turned black. She got on the school board with the rest of the blacks and they all just ganged up and that’s why the school system has gone to hell.”

If she had said "Christians" instead, you would be worshipping her.

(Also, noting it was a private conversation. And you know nothing about the circumstances, which could very well mean that she is identifying a group of people because of their methods and goals, not because of their skin color.

Thoughtcrime and speechcrime accusations are par for the course with progressives.)

erp said...

Spot On ... and insert Tea Partiers for Christians and they'd nominate her for mayor.

Harry Eagar said...

'Splainin' away is not the same as refuting.

Fact is, the situation in 1950 WAS unchanged in most respects since the 1880s.

You can imagine all you want, but you do have to account for the history of the United States in the 80 years after the Civil War. It does not support the idea of gradual movement on segregation, political, economic, social or any other way.


Anonymous said...

Actually, according to all the data I have seen, the trends were noticeably positive in that period until the Great Society kicked in, at which point they leveled off. I, therefore, come to exactly the opposite conclusion. Had the government not been involved, we as a society would be much better off with significantly better race relations.

erp said...

Also a (wo)man on the scene in real time confirming your data.

Bret said...

That's what the data looks like to me as well. The paranoid interpretation is that the left could tell they were going to lose their poor constituency so they instituted programs to keep the poor from becoming better off.

And I'm one of those with the paranoid interpretation. Somebody suggested I go to paranoid's anonymous - but the folks from PA wouldn't tell me where they met. :-)

Clovis said...

Bret,

We do meet at Baker Street 221B. But you need to mount a watch so you know at what time.

Harry Eagar said...

What constituency was that? Not black southerners. They were not allowed to vote.

What the Democrats lost by taking up the Great Society was the white vote that then controlled the South.

If you want to talk trends, let's go back to airline pilots. Prior to court interference, 0. After, trend is up.

Hey Skipper said...

If you want to talk trends, let's go back to airline pilots. Prior to court interference, 0. After, trend is up.

How about enumerating that trend for the rest of us?

Up doesn't mean what you think it means.

What the Democrats lost by taking up the Great Society was the white vote that then controlled the South.

Democrats gained destroyed school systems and entire urban areas devastated by welfare dependency fueled family breakdown and rampant crime.

What the left should also have gained from this experience, but won't, is the knowledge that diktat imposed behavior modification never works well.


This never happened either:

You have no idea what "this" is.

That's no reason not to fire up the h8r machine, though, is it?

erp said...

Skipper maybe you'll have better luck than I. If there were black pilots after 1965, where did they come from on that day of days?

Were they born from the thigh of Zeus aka Lyndon Baines Johnson full grown, capable, experienced and certified to pilot the big commercial jets as soon as their feet hit the ground?

Make sense Harry.

Hey Skipper said...

[erp:] Skipper maybe you'll have better luck than I. If there were black pilots after 1965, where did they come from on that day of days?

Harry, in this regard at least, isn't completely wrong.

Discrimination against blacks through at least the 1970s was so pervasive that very few were able to run the gauntlet, regardless of their individual merit.

I don't really know, so I'll guess: most, if not all, the black pilots at the time came from the military.

But even though Truman had integrated the military (the one part of US society that is amenable to diktats), the Air Force and Navy -- never mind their own residual racism -- could not train candidates that did not exist: degree > officer > pilot training.

The barriers to the first hurdle were easily sufficient to ensure there weren't very many blacks to jump the second two.

And there is no doubting that there was both overt and systemic discrimination against those few black pilots that did exist.

Overt, in the sense that, at some airlines at least, blacks were getting hired far less often than their apparently equally qualified white peers.

And systemic because most airlines largely rely upon internal referrals in deciding to interview in the first place. Even though there is nothing racist about internal referrals, and there are defendable reasons for such a system, the inevitable consequence is to perpetuate the existing airline pilot population.

My airline, without any external pressure I know of, appears to have recognized this. Internal referrals disappeared from the hiring process a couple years ago.

Where Harry goes off the rails is the disconnect between eliminating discriminatory impositions, and imposing outcomes through fiat.

Progressives did that with forced busing, and it has been a disaster.

Fortunately, not even progressives are so blind to reality as to impose a solution upon a field so reality refereed as flying.

To enumerate where Harry failed to, since court interference, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-b-aziz/african-american-pilots_b_2895993.html>the trend is all the way up to 2%</a>

The link clearly points out all the discrimination this particular black pilot faced en route to flying at FedEx.

The problem Harry fails to understand is disastrous progressive policies have ensured scarcely any blacks can even get to step one.

Hey Skipper said...

Here is a pretty good and reasonably balanced article about blacks in military aviation.

But not entirely accurate.

Rigidly limited slot allocations for ROTC and academy students aside, the 1999 DOD report specifically identified “test score cut-off points” as having a major negative impact on the racial/ethnic mix of flight school entrants.

Black candidates, as a group, score lower than whites on entry tests, but high test scores don’t necessarily translate into good pilots, the report said.


Wrong. There is an extremely strong correlation between test scores and successfully completing pilot training, which is why the cut-off points exist in the first place. Below the cut-off points, the failure rate starts markedly increasing at an increasing rate.

Also, the washout rate for blacks is almost twice that of whites. No one knows why, but racism isn't the answer.

erp said...

Skipper: I agree with everything you say, my problem with Harry is his contention that after the Great Society, black pilots were on board everywhere. As you say, that didn't and couldn't have happened.

Nobody is saying there wasn't a general opinion that blacks were inferior to whites when it came to other than menial tasks, but when the evidence was in front of their eyes, things started to change especially when the soldiers came back from war after fighting alongside blacks.

If blacks were left to prove their worth, even with Jim Crow, as did all the immigrant waves, many of which were also frozen out of jobs (Irish and Chinese, to name two), we wouldn't still be having this conversation 150+ years after the last slave was freed.

The plain fact is blacks who are willing are still being kept on the plantation for the political gain of the left.

Harry Eagar said...

It took a decision of the freakin' United States Supreme Court to get the FIRST black pilot hired by a major airline (who, in those days, hired almost all pilots because pre-Kahn there weren't many regionals.)

Now you say that there are still few blacks hired, and you attribute that to the Great Society. Ockham would say that is not the least parsimonious option.

There is the evidence of several studies showing that identical resumes submitted with 'white' names get a far better response than with 'black' names.

As the father of a daughter who with a friend founded the White Girls with Names that Sound Black Club, I find these studies completely believable.

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