Are White People Evil?

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Purple Knight
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Are White People Evil?

Post #1

Post by Purple Knight »

Question for debate: Are white people an evil race, evil by nature and not just nurture?

Common wisdom says that all white people are racist. Common wisdom also says that this is largely because of upbringing in a racist system. However, there are some grounds for disagreement with the latter.

Common wisdom (the book Being White, Being Good by Barbara Applebaum) also argues that whites can never fully escape racism. Whites can put on a show, be good allies, and even do some good things, but this will always be with the motivation of escaping the stigma of racism or showing the self as good for selfish gains.

Arguably this constitutes a race of entirely evil people; people who are evil by nature, not just nurture.

Is it time to admit that lions can't thrive on a vegan diet? Or that white people simply can't help being evil incarnate? Actually making this admission has some serious and negative consequences for critical race theory, which probably stops short of this admission for just this reason.

You can't blame a lion for eating meat, because that is its nature. If racism and oppression are truly the nature of white people and they can't be trained out of it, having the expectation of better behaviour is actually pretty cruel. Repeatedly insisting that whites must experience multiculture without any racist behaviour would then simply be setting them up for failure and punishment. It would be a lot like commanding your dog to sprout wings and fly, and then beating it when it failed to do so (though the analogy is not perfect). The cruelty of this position is compounded by the real harms whites inevitably inflict against innocent people when forced to live alongside them.

The analogy of the dog beaten for not sprouting wings fails because not sprouting wings hurts no one, whereas the punishment whites rightly should incur for their hate crimes is definitely deserved. The problem comes along when you realise that if you intentionally throw a hunting dog into a rabbit pen, it will kill the rabbits. And if you know this, and if you did this, either rubbing your hands together in glee anticipating punishing the dog, or perhaps far worse, legitimately expecting the dog to just do better, the dog is still to blame, but no longer solely.

Especially if there are other options.

Total isolation. Build the wall. Take away all ill-gotten land gains that have come to whites at the hands of white theft, give them at least some land... and build the wall. Cut off all contact. Any white person who thinks they can do better and actually rid themselves of their racism (they'd be the first to succeed) is welcome to live wherever they were before (though they must buy any land they "own" from its real owners if it was ever stolen), but with the expectation that they will do better. If they don't, that's on them. However, they should also be given the option to admit they can't do better and be deported to live where they can't continue to harm anyone.

Genocide. Arguably it's not evil to destroy evil. I don't agree with the notion that evil people have just got to be killed, however, it's a viable option, and less cruel than simply punishing people for what they can't help. I wouldn't own a lion and try to make it eat vegetables. It's a sad but true admission, but if there's a lion, and nothing but you for meat, you kill the lion. I just don't believe it needs to come to that in this case.

The admission that I can't be non-racist shouldn't be followed by further commitment to just try harder. I don't see how that's fair. It's the same sort of assumptive positivity that blames people when bad things happen to them because they must have caused them by negative thinking.

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Re: Are White People Evil?

Post #11

Post by Kenisaw »

Purple Knight wrote: Tue May 04, 2021 5:55 pm
Kenisaw wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 2:12 amSo you are willing to say that white people are evil because it harms critical race theory (CRT).... Sorry, that is a laughable claim.
The fact that it harms critical race theory for white people to be actually evil by nature and not nurture isn't why I do or say anything. I'm pointing out that it does do harm to that theory because I'm interested in the truth. I'm also pointing out that CRT seems almost deliberately to stop short of something that is hardly a leap from anything they say, and that it seems to me to be dishonest not to even bring it up.
If you were interested in the truth you would state what is obvious - that no group of people can be labeled with a subjective adjective based on their immutable characteristics. CRT is dishonest because it plays oppression olympics, and its end game is about bringing forth a Marxist revolution. BLM and other socialist groups don't actually care about race.

I don't know why you'd even think CRT is the one that gets to define what it and isn't evil in the first place. Evil is nothing more than a purely subjective human concept. It doesn't exist outside of human brains. Group like BLM and the 1619 project are making up nonsense, and you are legitimizing it by talking about it on their grounds. If you want to harm CRT, stop playing their game and expose their claims for the fraudulent illogical rhetoric that it is.
Frankly I was hoping someone would prove that white people aren't just naturally evil, and however silly it seems, that yes, each individual racist white person is actually choosing to be evil, and even though BILLIONS OF THEM all somehow choose the same thing, with not one exception, that they all actually had a choice. It's a similar claim in my mind to the idea that vampires don't really have to drink blood; they all just choose to. I hope you can see how, in a universe with real vampires, this would be a very dangerous contention to all parties involved. I was hoping someone could still defend it, but no one seems to be able to.
False logic. You can't prove a negative. Again, you are playing their game, comrade Purple Knight. Why don't you go ahead and prove that white people ARE racist. I'd love to see the data on that. No one else has been able to show that CRT is actually backed with empirical evidence. Bring your A game and let's see you do it...

]quote]
Kenisaw wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 2:12 amYou think whites are racist, plain and simple. Maybe you will find the guts to just come out and say it....
I do think that all white people are racist, and I provided citations. I'm also willing to say that CRT might be flawed.[/quote]

You "cited" common wisdom, and summarized one named book without any actual quotes. No, you haven't provided jack squat. But it's not surprising that a racist like yourself would resort to such a pitiful effort. Most that engage in race baiting just assume people will accept their baseless claims. You will have to prove your stance to convince anyone.
Kenisaw wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 2:12 amCRT is garbage no matter what. Even a cursory examination of CRT shows how illogical and contradictory it all is.
Just claiming something is garbage is an unsupported claim. If it has internal, irresolvable contradictions, perhaps you should state them. I don't have any such ammunition against CRT; I just said that it seemed dishonest to stop exactly short of a claim because it would ruin your theory. I have no actual evidence that CRT is false. As far as I know, all objections against CRT have been answered, though not always in a way that doesn't involve a lot of ad hoc assumptions.
My bad, I didn't know your Google was broken. Please read at your convenience...

https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/reaso ... ng-racism/
https://news.yahoo.com/critical-race-th ... 39894.html
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/03/12/ ... m-problem/
https://www.city-journal.org/how-to-fig ... ace-theory
https://www.newsweek.com/asian-american ... on-1574503

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Re: Are White People Evil?

Post #12

Post by Purple Knight »

nobspeople wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 11:35 amEvil is a qualifier people use to organize stimuli to better understand the world they live in. "Evil" knows no age, gender, race, religion, orientation, height, weight, shoe size, IQ....you get the idea.
Actually IQ does correlate with psychopathy, just not in the way most people think.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/21 ... elligence/
nobspeople wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 11:35 amSaying one race is 'evil' or 'good' or 'just' or 'dangerous' is erroneous and or disingenuous IMO and speaks to the idea that this person making such a claim is clueless about humanity and or seeking only to 'stir the pot', as they say.
I don't see how a syllogism is disingenuous.

1. All white people are racists.
2. All racists are evil.
________________________
∴ All white people are evil.

I didn't pull these premises out of a magic hat. I simply maintain that the syllogism is valid and the premises are true, because I have citations for both premises. The citations I'll have on "all racists are evil" (full disclosure) will say that racism is the worst kind of evil, not that specific racists are evil, but honestly I take that as a given from racism being the worst evil... worse than animal abuse, pederasty, or rape, or anything else. So putting the two together, if you can say all genocidal maniacs are evil, I can say all racists are evil, because racism is worse than genocide.

Furthermore, I've noted that actually making the admission that whites are truly evil by nature, not just nurture, actually breaks critical race theory. I wish it didn't, but it does. And it seems to me that critical race theory is only one step away from that admission anyway... and that's why what seems disingenuous to me is failing to make a simple and logically necessary step simply because that ruins your conclusion.

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Re: Are White People Evil?

Post #13

Post by Purple Knight »

Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmIf you were interested in the truth you would state what is obvious - that no group of people can be labeled with a subjective adjective based on their immutable characteristics.
I'm not the one who did that. I'm not the one who said all white people are racist. This article is. I merely cited it. Unfortunately I have to LINK IT LIKE THIS because this very specific url breaks this website. But somehow, not if I use tags to link it to other words I write... only if I just plop the link down directly.
Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmI don't know why you'd even think CRT is the one that gets to define what it and isn't evil in the first place. Evil is nothing more than a purely subjective human concept.
Well then, the answer to the question for debate would be yes, if enough people think so. You can think a movie is terrible, but you can't actually disagree with the objective collective assessment, one of which would be the rotten tomatoes score. If it scores 83%, you can think the movie is garbage, but it's objectively not. Its score is 83%, which is a high score, and you can't dispute that it has one. (I think this about Beasts of The Southern Wild, but I'm just wrong, because quality is subjective, everyone has had their say, and I am simply outvoted.) Saying evil is subjective gives the term more power, not less, because it gives people the power to determine what is evil and what is not.

Your first link derides the idea that knowledge is socially constructed, and instead posits that knowledge is universal. No matter who does an experiment, the result will be the same. Well, if evil is subjective then you have just admitted that your first article is wrong. How do we get knowledge about good and evil? It's not universal. It is socially constructed. So, if we follow this logic, when teaching about subjective ideas like good and evil (or... art... shudder) CRT is needed, because in this, your article says knowledge is not subjective, so it would be incorrect and CRT would be correct.

I don't think evil is subjective, however. At least, I hope it's not. I think it's possible to prove someone is good, even if most people think they are evil, or that they are evil, even if most people think they aren't. I don't think that the Jones Family not knowing about their neighbour's fifty-odd bodies in his basement makes him a good person, and I hope those bodies will be discovered and the neighbour's murderous nature revealed.
Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmFalse logic. You can't prove a negative.
I actually have a whole rant about this, one where I'm actually taking the conservative's side, believe it or not. Here it is. You can click the quote and it'll take you back to the original topic and what I posted in it.

viewtopic.php?f=79&t=37986

And like the subject of that topic, you can phrase "prove white people aren't evil" as a negative, or you can say, "show at least one non-evil/good white person" which is absolutely a positive that can be reasonably shown if true.
Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmAgain, you are playing their game, comrade Purple Knight. Why don't you go ahead and prove that white people ARE racist. I'd love to see the data on that. No one else has been able to show that CRT is actually backed with empirical evidence. Bring your A game and let's see you do it...
It's unprovable and also unfalsifiable since it primarily deals with what is, or is not, in peoples' heads. I'll admit this. I do, however, find it likely that 1) people prefer their own group and 2) that one group has done this so successfully that it has created the system of oppression CRT describes.
Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmYou "cited" common wisdom, and summarized one named book without any actual quotes. No, you haven't provided jack squat. But it's not surprising that a racist like yourself would resort to such a pitiful effort. Most that engage in race baiting just assume people will accept their baseless claims. You will have to prove your stance to convince anyone.
I actually provided two citations. If you're very interested I can type, word for word, what I read about it in the book. But you actually can read reviews of the book to find out what's in it, more or less. In fact, your own first link talks about "interest convergence" which is the idea I cited from Barbara Applebaum's book that white people are never just being magnanimous when they do good deeds for others and you said I provided no evidence for.

Take the demand that also comes from Critical Race Theory that everyone should be an anti-racist. This sounds good on the surface but is horrible underneath. If someone with “racial privilege” (including white, Asian, Hispanic, Arab, Indian, and lighter-skinned black people) decides to become an anti-racist in accordance with this request, the Interest-Convergence Thesis would say they only did so to make themselves look good, protect themselves from criticism, or to avoid confronting their own racism.

You provided the reference for me. While this article is a rebuttal, it does in fact admit that this lack of magnanimity is a part of critical race theory. And yes, it would make white people evil if true, because someone who only thinks of themselves and never engages in a selfless act is evil. That's a given. (It's also very difficult to prove someone isn't selfish, which I admit, because almost any act can be attributed to a selfish motive.)
Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmPlease read at your convenience...
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/reaso ... ng-racism/

This I generally agree with. I do have some problems with this article, but I'll leave it at yes, the article is right that some aspects of CRT are not falsifiable and are self-reinforcing (like the bit about whites being unable to be magnanimous) but that doesn't mean the claims are false.

https://news.yahoo.com/critical-race-th ... 39894.html
It is inconceivable that anyone could look back at human history and not see that singling out a particular racial or ethnic group as the cause of all societal problems can quickly lead us to a very bad place.

This is true. It is inconceivable. It's also true that it would be horrible to, for example, genocide white people.

However, none of this means that one group being the cause of all or most of society's problems is impossible. It's just horrible to think about.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/03/12/ ... m-problem/

...Not sure what you think anyone's problem would be with this one. This is connected to the last one, but CRT is not intended to apply to Jews, who as a race have been oppressed constantly and happen to do well anyway. The people who apply it to Jews in that way are simply going against the wishes of the originators of the theory, and are wrong. CRT is about people who gain undeserved power for themselves and their race through racism, not about people who legitimately simply succeed at a high rate through hard work, such as Jews and Asians. Jews and Asians can't be guilty of systematic racism because they simply don't have the numbers.

This article actually explains why the idea that Jews are oppressors is incorrect. I agree with it entirely.

https://www.city-journal.org/how-to-fig ... ace-theory

This article conflates antiracism with communism. It does so by citing a few people who are both. It makes one or two good points, but the whole overarching basis being the assumption that it's communism revisited and the assumption that we should be fighting it make the article a miss.

Just as an example, and revisiting the last, people who actually believe in CRT don't want Jews to lose their wealth even if it is disproportionate. If it was attained by hard work and not oppressing others, they should have more.

https://www.newsweek.com/asian-american ... on-1574503

The only problem with this is that it cites the disproportionate success of Asians as discrediting CRT. CRT doesn't say you can't succeed in a white world. Asians overcome massive discrimination AND still do better. They gain success through hard work, so it's probably unfair to have a problem with Asians. Any CRT advocates who do perhaps judge Asians as overly complicit in the white system of oppression. Your own article (I believe the first one) says that CRT maintains that any success achieved within the system of oppression is achieved through complicity, so perhaps some advocates of CRT think that Asians must be jumping at the opportunity to help whites oppress. I don't think that's the case.

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Re: Are White People Evil?

Post #14

Post by nobspeople »

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #13]
Actually IQ does correlate with psychopathy, just not in the way most people think.
I never said it didn't. I spoke about EVIL, not psychopathy
I didn't pull these premises out of a magic hat.
No. You're bandwagoning IMO. Which is a very popular thing to do these days
I've noted that actually making the admission that whites are truly evil by nature, not just nurture, actually breaks critical race theory.
That's not something I can't bandwagon just yet simply because it doesn't make sense.

I'd go as far as saying nothing is evil but how certain actions are viewed at certain times by certain people. People aren't evil, their actions sometimes can be.
Have a great, potentially godless, day!

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Re: Are White People Evil?

Post #15

Post by Kenisaw »

Purple Knight wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 10:26 pm
Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmIf you were interested in the truth you would state what is obvious - that no group of people can be labeled with a subjective adjective based on their immutable characteristics.
I'm not the one who did that. I'm not the one who said all white people are racist. This article is. I merely cited it. Unfortunately I have to LINK IT LIKE THIS because this very specific url breaks this website. But somehow, not if I use tags to link it to other words I write... only if I just plop the link down directly.
A direct quote from post #11, which you wrote: "I do think that all white people are racist". You didn't say all white people are racist, eh.....
Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmI don't know why you'd even think CRT is the one that gets to define what it and isn't evil in the first place. Evil is nothing more than a purely subjective human concept.
Well then, the answer to the question for debate would be yes, if enough people think so. You can think a movie is terrible, but you can't actually disagree with the objective collective assessment, one of which would be the rotten tomatoes score. If it scores 83%, you can think the movie is garbage, but it's objectively not. Its score is 83%, which is a high score, and you can't dispute that it has one. (I think this about Beasts of The Southern Wild, but I'm just wrong, because quality is subjective, everyone has had their say, and I am simply outvoted.)
So slavery was OK back in 1800 because most people thought so? If the score of pro-slavery was 83% of the population, then that was a "objective collective assessment", right? "Its score is 83%, which is a high score, and you can't dispute that it has one." I mean 83% is a pretty high score Purple...

It's good to know that we can use your standards to show that slavery was OK.
Saying evil is subjective gives the term more power, not less, because it gives people the power to determine what is evil and what is not.
Evil is obviously subjective. So is good, pretty, ugly, etc. They are all human concepts used to lump similar things into categories for ease of communication. The word evil doesn't become more or less powerful just because it is a subjective term. Your brain assigns that power to it. My brain does not. People determine all those things, for themselves, through their brains. It is all subjective, Purple.
Your first link derides the idea that knowledge is socially constructed, and instead posits that knowledge is universal. No matter who does an experiment, the result will be the same. Well, if evil is subjective then you have just admitted that your first article is wrong. How do we get knowledge about good and evil? It's not universal. It is socially constructed. So, if we follow this logic, when teaching about subjective ideas like good and evil (or... art... shudder) CRT is needed, because in this, your article says knowledge is not subjective, so it would be incorrect and CRT would be correct.
The scientific Theory of Gravity is not socially constructed. It is universal knowledge. It is testable and verifiable, by anyone at any time no matter who they are or where they live. It is demonstrable. 2+2=4 is universal knowledge. The speed of light is universal knowledge. This is what the first article was referring to, and it said so in clear and concise terms. CRT tries, and fails, to claim that scientific knowledge reflects the values and interests of a society. Since scientific knowledge can be produced no matter the values or interests of a society, and can be validated and verified by any and all societies and peoples, it is obviously objective.

You can't equate scientific knowledge with any person's self-knowledge of good or evil. No one can test or replicate a person's personal experiences throughout their life. No one else has access to a person's brain to understand why they call something good, evil, ugly, pretty, funny, etc. "Evil" is not verifiable, it is not demonstrable, it is not testable. Evil is a value that a person assigns to something based on their worldview, and their worldview only. There is no way to verify that something is evil, because evil is an opinion.

CRT makes all kinds of claims about power and race and history. It does not, however, offer any facts or empirical data to support the claims. It is not demonstrable. Just the opposite in fact, it can be shown (as I just did when talking about gravity) that the claims of CRT can be shown to be false. Since you don't know me I'm sure you won't take this piece of advice, but I will still urge you to avoid believing and accepting nonsense like CRT anyway. It will not serve you well in the real world.
I don't think evil is subjective, however. At least, I hope it's not. I think it's possible to prove someone is good, even if most people think they are evil, or that they are evil, even if most people think they aren't. I don't think that the Jones Family not knowing about their neighbour's fifty-odd bodies in his basement makes him a good person, and I hope those bodies will be discovered and the neighbour's murderous nature revealed.
What if the bodies are there because all those people tried to rape and murder his wife. Is he evil then? In Pakistan it is honorable to kill your daughter if she has sex before she is married. Not just good, but honorable. Good and evil obviously have societal and personal influences. Gravity does not.
Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmFalse logic. You can't prove a negative.
I actually have a whole rant about this, one where I'm actually taking the conservative's side, believe it or not. Here it is. You can click the quote and it'll take you back to the original topic and what I posted in it.

viewtopic.php?f=79&t=37986

And like the subject of that topic, you can phrase "prove white people aren't evil" as a negative, or you can say, "show at least one non-evil/good white person" which is absolutely a positive that can be reasonably shown if true.
Those two things are not the same. One is making a commentary on all white people, while the other is making a commentary on one white person. But let's ignore that and focus on the bigger picture:

I am white, and I am not evil. There, I've shown it to be true that at least one white person is not evil.

Or have I? You have no way of knowing what my life experience is, or what I have done. You also have no way to know if I am lying or not. That, in a nutshell, is why evil is subjective. You have to assign the adjective "evil", based on your opinion of what I have done, and your opinion is based on your worldview, which no one else can truly know, and you might be lying about it as well. Evil is an opinion, nothing more.
Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmAgain, you are playing their game, comrade Purple Knight. Why don't you go ahead and prove that white people ARE racist. I'd love to see the data on that. No one else has been able to show that CRT is actually backed with empirical evidence. Bring your A game and let's see you do it...
It's unprovable and also unfalsifiable since it primarily deals with what is, or is not, in peoples' heads. I'll admit this. I do, however, find it likely that 1) people prefer their own group and 2) that one group has done this so successfully that it has created the system of oppression CRT describes.
I completely agree that people prefer their own groups. That is an evolved trait in humans. It is actually part of our genetic code. That is why we root for sports teams and hang out with people that have similar experiences as we do. There are good evolutionary reasons for such a trait to develop in humans, but in the modern version of homosapiens it doesn't always serve us as well as it used to.

But I completely disagree with point #2. If there was such a system of oppression in America as CRT claims, why aren't blacks still slaves? How did Obama get elected (twice no less) and Kevin Hart and Dave Chappelle become the two most popular comics? How did Bruno Mars and The Weeknd host the Superbowl halftime show, and Tim Scott give the GOP rebuttal to Biden's speech last week. Why is the Rock the biggest movie star? I can go on and on, but there is no need. Systemic racism doesn't exist today. There are still racist people, but no racist systems.
Kenisaw wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 3:29 pmYou "cited" common wisdom, and summarized one named book without any actual quotes. No, you haven't provided jack squat. But it's not surprising that a racist like yourself would resort to such a pitiful effort. Most that engage in race baiting just assume people will accept their baseless claims. You will have to prove your stance to convince anyone.
I actually provided two citations. If you're very interested I can type, word for word, what I read about it in the book.
You did provide two, my bad. I missed the HTML in your first sentence in the OP. No matter really, because that opinion piece by Marley K has no basis in fact whatsoever. "All whites are racist". There, I just summed up her entire rant so no one need bother read it. No data, no empirical evidence. She did manage to offer the Articles of Confederation (which was thrown out 250 years ago) as proof of racism today. Logic is not her strong suit...

As for the book, please do type out those quotes so we know what your evidentiary support is. Why don't you type out all the sources the author used in that book, so we can see if it is just another opinion piece.
But you actually can read reviews of the book to find out what's in it, more or less. In fact, your own first link talks about "interest convergence" which is the idea I cited from Barbara Applebaum's book that white people are never just being magnanimous when they do good deeds for others and you said I provided no evidence for.
It was actually very hard to find a review of the book. More like impossible if I want to be accurate.

Does Barbara provide evidence for her claim, or is it just a claim? This is what I am talking about Purple. Her writing it doesn't automatically make it true. You wanting it to be true doesn't automatically make it true either. Dude, you really need to throw off whatever liberal arts education you're getting and learn to be skeptical and think methodically...
Take the demand that also comes from Critical Race Theory that everyone should be an anti-racist. This sounds good on the surface but is horrible underneath. If someone with “racial privilege” (including white, Asian, Hispanic, Arab, Indian, and lighter-skinned black people) decides to become an anti-racist in accordance with this request, the Interest-Convergence Thesis would say they only did so to make themselves look good, protect themselves from criticism, or to avoid confronting their own racism.
Classic example of the no-win scenario: Admit you are a racist because of your skin color, and become anti-racist, even though you can't ever not be racist because of your skin color.

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Re: Are White People Evil?

Post #16

Post by Purple Knight »

Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmA direct quote from post #11, which you wrote: "I do think that all white people are racist". You didn't say all white people are racist, eh.....
I do think that, but it is because of the evidence in the article. I don't see how anyone can dispute that article. It certainly sounds hateful, but often the truth isn't polite or nice.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmSo slavery was OK back in 1800 because most people thought so? If the score of pro-slavery was 83% of the population, then that was a "objective collective assessment", right? "Its score is 83%, which is a high score, and you can't dispute that it has one." I mean 83% is a pretty high score Purple...
I can disagree, but if it's the agreement with slavery is really that high and I actually go back in time to that era and try to make people see the light, either I'll just be shouted down and there was no point in doing that, or they will see, in which case they might not have been sampled correctly, since a little discussion got them to change their minds.

I think the reason we have the knowledge that slavery is not permissible is that people did change their minds without being scared or forced or even bullied into it. Perhaps they knew they were doing something wrong from the start, though I admit this doesn't support my "white people are evil and can't help it" hypothesis.

But hypothetically if everyone really agrees with slavery, or so many that it might as well be everyone, there's not much point in denouncing it. If it's wrong I don't see how you'd prove that, at that place, and in that time, without resorting to the judgment of history... which they have no access to.

Something that follows this general formula of a few people disagreeing, yet basically everyone does it and considers it permissible, in a particular case where history has not yet made its judgment, is eating meat. Do you think eating meat is wrong? And does it change if history makes the opposite judgment of yours? It's something I struggle with (and I have tried swearing off meat with pretty bad results) and I can't help but say that you can't judge people by a judgment history hasn't made yet.

Does that mean slavery wasn't wrong? If they knew they were doing something wrong, then yes I damn them for it. If they really and truly didn't know... well then how can I? That would be expecting them to know the future.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmEvil is obviously subjective. So is good, pretty, ugly, etc. They are all human concepts used to lump similar things into categories for ease of communication. The word evil doesn't become more or less powerful just because it is a subjective term. Your brain assigns that power to it. My brain does not. People determine all those things, for themselves, through their brains. It is all subjective, Purple.
You're not saying the word evil is subjective... you're saying it's meaningless. I disagree. I think it means something. The only question is who gets to decide what is evil.
1) The prevailing culture because evil is subjective
2) No one - evil is objective, culture can be wrong
3) Every individual can decide for themselves and contradictory notions are simultaneously correct
I put these in the order of what I think is most likely to be true. I think it's ridiculous that a murderer can decide for himself that murder simply isn't wrong. Objective evil isn't ridiculous... but it is unknowable; maybe murder isn't wrong and we're all mistaken. To me, only the first option makes much sense. Option 0 is the idea that the word is meaningless, which it might be, but then we have no basis to assign right and wrong or even discuss it. You would have no basis to post in this topic, because I could say white people are evil and you could say they're not and it's none of it meaningful. It's not even language that conveys meaning; it's just verbal flatulence. We might as well be making fart sounds at each other.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmThe scientific Theory of Gravity is not socially constructed. It is universal knowledge. It is testable and verifiable, by anyone at any time no matter who they are or where they live. It is demonstrable. 2+2=4 is universal knowledge. The speed of light is universal knowledge. This is what the first article was referring to, and it said so in clear and concise terms. CRT tries, and fails, to claim that scientific knowledge reflects the values and interests of a society. Since scientific knowledge can be produced no matter the values or interests of a society, and can be validated and verified by any and all societies and peoples, it is obviously objective.

You can't equate scientific knowledge with any person's self-knowledge of good or evil. No one can test or replicate a person's personal experiences throughout their life. No one else has access to a person's brain to understand why they call something good, evil, ugly, pretty, funny, etc. "Evil" is not verifiable, it is not demonstrable, it is not testable. Evil is a value that a person assigns to something based on their worldview, and their worldview only. There is no way to verify that something is evil, because evil is an opinion.
I can sample people and get many opinions. Beyond math and logic, science actually requires big sample sizes (of whatever you're studying) and there will absolutely be a margin for error. Generally P-values of 5% or less are considered fine, but it depends on the field. (Basically, a 5% chance that random chance and not your theory being correct would explain the values you got. So if I hypothesise that coins are more likely to land on tails, flip a coin twice and get two tails - a 25% chance for random chance to explain this phenomenon if I am not correct - then I have a P-value of 25%, which is far too high, and I must get a bigger sampling before I open my mouth.)

If evil really is an opinion, it can still be measured and studied scientifically, and we can learn what patterns make a behaviour evil within a certain margin of error.

If we can't do any of this, then the article you reference would simply not apply to the sociological sciences or to knowledge of right and wrong, though it would apply to math absolutely and to physics almost absolutely and somewhat to any science with any reasonable replicability requirements. Believe it or not I agree with the article on that point. Science is objective. You can say science and the way it's done is oppressive and exclusionary (both may be true), or that there are better ways of obtaining knowledge that aren't so Western (maybe there are; I wouldn't know), but if one chooses to work within the scientific method, what is found should be objective and replicable. That doesn't mean that using the scientific method is permissible, however, and if it is impermissible, the method of discovering that impermissibility might involve knowledge generated another way, and CRT's idea of how to obtain knowledge would apply to that, because it's not scientific.

Golden rectangles (rectangles with the side ratios that are objectively most pleasing) are an opinion, but we can still measure them and even derive the reasons these rectangles are the most pleasing. I don't see why we can't measure golden behaviour and come up with a formula.
it has been always considered that is the most pleasing proportion to human eyes [4], [5].
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmCRT makes all kinds of claims about power and race and history. It does not, however, offer any facts or empirical data to support the claims. It is not demonstrable. Just the opposite in fact, it can be shown (as I just did when talking about gravity) that the claims of CRT can be shown to be false. Since you don't know me I'm sure you won't take this piece of advice, but I will still urge you to avoid believing and accepting nonsense like CRT anyway. It will not serve you well in the real world.
I've found the opposite so I'm trying to change. No, CRT is not falsifiable. It makes some claims that end up being essentially circular and not disprovable in any situation, the claim about the lack of white magnanimity for example. If you add in the selfish desire to be seen as non-racist, there is no potential action a white person could take to disprove the idea that he's always acting in selfish interest alone.

...Except perhaps one.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmWhat if the bodies are there because all those people tried to rape and murder his wife. Is he evil then? In Pakistan it is honorable to kill your daughter if she has sex before she is married. Not just good, but honorable. Good and evil obviously have societal and personal influences. Gravity does not.
Then good and evil should be studied the CRT way, without trying to use Western notions of how to obtain knowledge. Whether the protector of his wife's holes is evil depends upon whether defence of holes by lethal force is permissible or not. I've gotten the idea that no, it's not, but I could easily be wrong. I've generally gotten the idea that unless someone is going to kill you, the moral thing to do is not fight back, but again, I could easily be wrong.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmI am white, and I am not evil. There, I've shown it to be true that at least one white person is not evil.
If you're telling the truth indeed you have disproven the statement "all white people are evil". That's exactly how all-statements get disproven: By showing a counter-example.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmYou have to assign the adjective "evil", based on your opinion of what I have done, and your opinion is based on your worldview,
What I think is based on evidence. I also playtest views that seem consistent and rational, and then discard the ones that generate universal disgust. I might have internal notions of right and wrong but I try not to let them come into play.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmWhy don't you go ahead and prove that white people ARE racist. I'd love to see the data on that. No one else has been able to show that CRT is actually backed with empirical evidence. Bring your A game and let's see you do it...

Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmI completely agree that people prefer their own groups. That is an evolved trait in humans. It is actually part of our genetic code. That is why we root for sports teams and hang out with people that have similar experiences as we do. There are good evolutionary reasons for such a trait to develop in humans, but in the modern version of homosapiens it doesn't always serve us as well as it used to.
Proven done and done. This group-preference, in whites, happens to be called racism. In other groups it is simply not called that for (generally accepted) reasons of power-difference.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmBut I completely disagree with point #2. If there was such a system of oppression in America as CRT claims, why aren't blacks still slaves? How did Obama get elected (twice no less) and Kevin Hart and Dave Chappelle become the two most popular comics? How did Bruno Mars and The Weeknd host the Superbowl halftime show, and Tim Scott give the GOP rebuttal to Biden's speech last week. Why is the Rock the biggest movie star? I can go on and on, but there is no need. Systemic racism doesn't exist today. There are still racist people, but no racist systems.
I would assume because they're so much more skilled than white competitors that they simply attain those positions in a free market. CRT would blame them for "participation" in the system of oppression, but I'm not sure I agree with that part of it.

In my book, the existence of universal discrimination, even to crippling degrees, doesn't mean it can't possibly be overcome. Being complicit - a collaborator to borrow Kira Nerys's term - might make things easier, but it also might not be strictly necessary. If you're so good that no one else can do it (whatever it is) either you get picked or it doesn't get done. I've known gamers like this. They're horrible people, constantly insulting, racist, vulgar, telling people to kill themselves every other sentence, but they're just that good, and for top content, they have no problems getting groups. You might want to discriminate, your sheer hate for that person might rise over 9000, but you might still find yourself completely unable to exclude him.

And since whites have many generations of benefiting from the oppression of others in their genomes, and not having to work for themselves or compete at that level since they've been the recipients of preference, it's logical that some degradation in raw ability would be observed.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmthat opinion piece by Marley K has no basis in fact whatsoever. "All whites are racist". There, I just summed up her entire rant so no one need bother read it. No data, no empirical evidence. She did manage to offer the Articles of Confederation (which was thrown out 250 years ago) as proof of racism today. Logic is not her strong suit...
The free market is all the proof that opinion piece requires. If it was the sort of trash you claim it to be, no one would read it and it wouldn't get printed (or... picked up by Medium). Now to be fair, Medium is an open platform, but I doubt you can find an article saying that not all white people are racist, simply because your paper won't sell (or, generate views and ad revenue) if you print lies.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmAs for the book, please do type out those quotes so we know what your evidentiary support is. Why don't you type out all the sources the author used in that book, so we can see if it is just another opinion piece.
If you want me to I certainly will, however it might have to wait. I moved a while back and I haven't found the box with most of my books in it yet. If I can't find it I'll just have to buy them again. This is especially frustrating since I thought I'd put all academic stuff (science, philosophy, political philosophy, morality, anti-racist literature) in one box, and I have roughly 3/8ths of my academic-type books.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmDoes Barbara provide evidence for her claim, or is it just a claim? This is what I am talking about Purple. Her writing it doesn't automatically make it true.
It's not falsifiable so you probably won't say it's good evidence. But that also doesn't mean it's false. It just means there's no way to prove it false.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmYou wanting it to be true doesn't automatically make it true either. Dude, you really need to throw off whatever liberal arts education you're getting and learn to be skeptical and think methodically...
I tried that for the large part of my life. Now it's time to stop spouting obvious garbage just because it seems consistent and logical. I'm only interested in morality.
Kenisaw wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 9:41 pmClassic example of the no-win scenario: Admit you are a racist because of your skin color, and become anti-racist, even though you can't ever not be racist because of your skin color.
Quite a long time ago, someone told me this, and it's always been very true to me:

If you're only willing to play games you know you can win, you're not brave.

Now, what you're saying is an oversimplification... nobody says whites can't be non-racist because of their skin colour. But you're right that it's an unwinnable scenario. Every one of these articles touts the hypothetical ability for a white person to be better, but none of them has an example of a white person actually being better. It won't happen, and it can't happen because white people are fundamentally selfish, only interested in their own selfish interests. To me, that = evil.

But that's fine. Knowing I can't be good doesn't excuse me from trying.



This article is another powerful one. I agree with it that intentions don't matter. Results matter.

Even when we’re apologized to, the apologies are usually tainted by the poison of white virtue. A kind of photo negative of the way in which the white paint made by Liberty Paint in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man needs that one drop of black paint, or “dope,” to make it that special bright white.

So, when a white person gets called out/in for something racist, no matter how major or minor, if they manage to make an apology, they usually say, “Despite my intentions…” or “I never meant to…”

If they’re apologizing or excusing another white person, they might say, “Yes, they did something that caused harm, despite the best of intentions…” Often what they’re thinking, or saying, is, “They’re still a good white person, they just made a mistake.”

We all (should) know (by now) that racism is measured by impact, and not intent. But the white person who says these things really means, “I did not intend to harm anyone.”

But if you asked them, “Did you intend to be anti-racist? Did you intend to ask for consent for whatever action you took that harmed people of color? Did you intend to act only after considering your inherited and reinforced anti-Blackness programming?”

If they’re being honest, they’ll say no.


Yes, white virtue is a poison. And it's what pure evil looks like when it's trying its best not to be. What would it look like if someone pure evil was trying not to be evil? Well, it would look exactly like this. Exactly. It would look like a million worse than meaningless, "but I tried" or "I didn't mean to" that make you want to strangle the person because, from your perspective, doing that thing is so easy they must not be really trying.

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