11 ms·

The myth is easier to identify: that there's campaign of murder by police officers targeting blacks. It's part of the broader myth that minorities in the US are

The myth is easier to identify: that there's campaign of murder by police officers targeting blacks. It's part of the broader myth that minorities in the US are being kept down by the powers that be. When you see it as just part of the broader identity politics movement, it's easier to identify the resources: moral vindication and reassigned blame for their troubles, handouts from other people's pockets, and discrimination against the perceived oppressor group ("affirmative action").

arrrg 11y ago
You can apply this to literally every political belief someone fights for. As such the explanatory power of your theory seems to be quite poor. If something is a political belief you do not share it is easy to call it a myth. If something is a political policy you think is wrongheaded or unfair you can always claim that someone benefits unfairly from that policy. As such your theory really doesn’t tell you anything, or at least anything interesting. It’s just worthless. A nice story, nothing more. The actual interesting thing happens when you engage with the content of political beliefs and policies.
- wildmusings 11y ago
  It's not my theory, but it is an interesting framework to view politics through. Myth doesn't necessarily mean false. Even though that's the way the original poster used it, I think the framework is actually stronger with the more general definition of myth. Answering whether the handing out of resources is fair or not is also not necessary for this framework to be insightful. And of course we should engage the content of political beliefs. But we should also seek to understand politics as a phenomenon in itself. Our understanding of the beliefs is otherwise hollow.
  - arrrg 11y ago
    It’s so general as to be useless … basically what you are demonstrating here is one huge exercise in moving the goalposts, turning the theory into unrecognizable mush. So “invent a necessarily preposterous myth” is out. It’s now just about some belief, doesn’t matter how it came to be or what it is. Can be true, can be false, can be anything. If that’s the starting point then all the rest falls apart, really. It’s senseless. You can talk about the role of signaling or whatever, but the connective tissue is missing and the entire interesting and potentially insightful part of the theory is missing.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      You keep conflating me with this thread's OP and attributing to me quotes that are not mine.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 11y ago
The myth is easier to identify: that there's campaign of murder by police officers targeting blacks. It's part of the broader myth that minorities in the US are being kept down by the powers that be There's substantial evidence for both of these though, which you're not going to address. And minorities were kept down by force of law until at least the 1960s; have the systems put in place to do so been fully dismantled?
- wildmusings 11y ago
  > There's substantial evidence for both of these though, which you're not going to address. You seem very sure about what I will and won't address. Why don't we find out? What is this evidence? > And minorities were kept down by force of law until at least the 1960s; have the systems put in place to do so been fully dismantled? I'd say yes. The right to vote is firmly protected (as for voter ID laws, I think they're very reasonable). Racial-based government policy making is prohibited. This prohibition is enforced except for in cases where the discrimination helps minorities. Private discrimination is a serious legal issue, sometimes pursued to the point of absurdity. The current shakedown of the car loan industry over racial discrimination is a good example, and many other cases pursued under the doctrine of "disparate impact". We don't hose down peaceful protesters anymore either, and even in the 60s that was appalling to people outside of the South. The contrast between Birmingham in 1963 and Ferguson in 2014 is instructive. The War on Drugs is disproportionately hurting minorities, and I think it's a terrible policy on many counts, but I don't think you can frame it as the machinery of minority oppression. The welfare state is definitely hurting minorities, but again, I think it's just bad policy-making, not intentional subjugation. EDIT: Responding to fnovd here, because Hacker News is throttling me: I happen to think that people should be free to put whatever they want into their bodies. This philosophical debate is not a racial issue. So let's assume that we decide to ban drugs, like we've banned stealing cars. If minorities are more likely to steal cars, and more likely to end up in jail because they were stealing cars, or more likely to be poor because their dad was in jail for stealing cars, or more likely to sucked into stealing cars because it's an easy source of profit in a poor neighborhood, that doesn't make banning stealing cars a racist policy.
  - 11y ago

arrrg 11y ago

You can apply this to literally every political belief someone fights for. As such the explanatory power of your theory seems to be quite poor. If something is a political belief you do not share it is easy to call it a myth. If something is a political policy you think is wrongheaded or unfair you can always claim that someone benefits unfairly from that policy. As such your theory really doesn’t tell you anything, or at least anything interesting. It’s just worthless. A nice story, nothing more. The actual interesting thing happens when you engage with the content of political beliefs and policies.

wildmusings 11y ago
It's not my theory, but it is an interesting framework to view politics through. Myth doesn't necessarily mean false. Even though that's the way the original poster used it, I think the framework is actually stronger with the more general definition of myth. Answering whether the handing out of resources is fair or not is also not necessary for this framework to be insightful. And of course we should engage the content of political beliefs. But we should also seek to understand politics as a phenomenon in itself. Our understanding of the beliefs is otherwise hollow.
- arrrg 11y ago
  It’s so general as to be useless … basically what you are demonstrating here is one huge exercise in moving the goalposts, turning the theory into unrecognizable mush. So “invent a necessarily preposterous myth” is out. It’s now just about some belief, doesn’t matter how it came to be or what it is. Can be true, can be false, can be anything. If that’s the starting point then all the rest falls apart, really. It’s senseless. You can talk about the role of signaling or whatever, but the connective tissue is missing and the entire interesting and potentially insightful part of the theory is missing.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    You keep conflating me with this thread's OP and attributing to me quotes that are not mine.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

pjc50 11y ago

The myth is easier to identify: that there's campaign of murder by police officers targeting blacks. It's part of the broader myth that minorities in the US are being kept down by the powers that be There's substantial evidence for both of these though, which you're not going to address. And minorities were kept down by force of law until at least the 1960s; have the systems put in place to do so been fully dismantled?

wildmusings 11y ago
> There's substantial evidence for both of these though, which you're not going to address. You seem very sure about what I will and won't address. Why don't we find out? What is this evidence? > And minorities were kept down by force of law until at least the 1960s; have the systems put in place to do so been fully dismantled? I'd say yes. The right to vote is firmly protected (as for voter ID laws, I think they're very reasonable). Racial-based government policy making is prohibited. This prohibition is enforced except for in cases where the discrimination helps minorities. Private discrimination is a serious legal issue, sometimes pursued to the point of absurdity. The current shakedown of the car loan industry over racial discrimination is a good example, and many other cases pursued under the doctrine of "disparate impact". We don't hose down peaceful protesters anymore either, and even in the 60s that was appalling to people outside of the South. The contrast between Birmingham in 1963 and Ferguson in 2014 is instructive. The War on Drugs is disproportionately hurting minorities, and I think it's a terrible policy on many counts, but I don't think you can frame it as the machinery of minority oppression. The welfare state is definitely hurting minorities, but again, I think it's just bad policy-making, not intentional subjugation. EDIT: Responding to fnovd here, because Hacker News is throttling me: I happen to think that people should be free to put whatever they want into their bodies. This philosophical debate is not a racial issue. So let's assume that we decide to ban drugs, like we've banned stealing cars. If minorities are more likely to steal cars, and more likely to end up in jail because they were stealing cars, or more likely to be poor because their dad was in jail for stealing cars, or more likely to sucked into stealing cars because it's an easy source of profit in a poor neighborhood, that doesn't make banning stealing cars a racist policy.
- 11y ago