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I think you're assuming the infographic is saying "non-white people can't share these values". I see it as saying "non-white people are punished if they don't s

by rovolo 6y ago

I think you're assuming the infographic is saying "non-white people can't share these values". I see it as saying "non-white people are punished if they don't share these values" or "non-white people are punished by saying they don't share these values". The easiest bullet point to see this distinction for is "Christianity is the norm". It's not saying that being Christian makes you white, but that white people in the US made Christianity the norm. For example, people tried to cast Obama as un-American by claiming he was Muslim. A longer bullet point to explain is the Scientific Method, but I'll take a shot at that one too. Science is a way to seek truth and reduce bias. However, the people who practice science are not fully objective actors free from bias. For example, evolution is absolutely true, but social darwinism is how many people understood evolution. A scientific truth was used to support a political position. People who would complain about inequalities could be said to be anti-scientific because they were arguing against the natural social order. Science itself isn't the issue, it's people using science to reject individual stories or support their priors.

bad_user 6y ago
The scientific method means coming up with hypotheses that get validated via experiments, whose conclusions are reported and undergo peer review. And we generally have a pretty good idea about how strong the evidence is, or about how well a theory predicts the universe. The "natural social order" for humans isn't scientific because there is none that we can identify, unlike in animals with much simpler social structures. Social Darwinism isn't based on evidence, being promoted by quacks that are anti-science. You're trying to draw a distinction where there is none. Science is the way to seek truth. And yes, we should use scientific evidence to reject anecdotes, if that evidence is strong enough. Not sure what you mean in your last sentence but it sounds wrong to me.
- brnt 6y ago
  Up two the last sentence you seem to be in perfect agreement. The last sentence merely adds that the actors in science may color their studies, results, interpretations, to make unscientific points. Many a scientist thought they were proving differences in e.g. intelligence between the races, up to and including some of the Nazi's horrors. Doing in vivo lobotomies to show Jews are inferior may be scientific, but that is very far besides the point.
everdrive 6y ago
>I think you're assuming the info-graphic is saying "non-white people can't share these values". I see it as saying "non-white people are punished if they don't share these values" or "non-white people are punished by saying they don't share these values". Then why call them white at all? Is his a cultural, or a racial definition? Do you believe the two can be separated? >A longer bullet point to explain is the Scientific Method, but I'll take a shot at that one too. Science is a way to seek truth and reduce bias. However, the people who practice science are not fully objective actors free from bias. For example, evolution is absolutely true, but social darwinism is how many people understood evolution. A scientific truth was used to support a political position. People who would complain about inequalities could be said to be anti-scientific because they were arguing against the natural social order. Science itself isn't the issue, it's people using science to reject individual stories or support their priors. I'm honestly not sure how to respond to this. It sounds like you mean to say that science was sometimes used in a biased way. This may be true in some sense, but it's not clear that this has anything to do with the scientific method itself being a "white value."
- rovolo 6y ago
  > Then why call them white at all? Is his a cultural, or a racial definition? Do you believe the two can be separated? White is a cultural definition in the US which used to be legally defined and still carries cultural implications. It is intrinsically tied to race because race is also culturally defined. The US's "one drop" rule defined people's race as Black even if the vast majority of their ancestry was "White European". As an analogy, consider the names we give various colors. We can tell that light blue and dark blue are different colors, but in English we will default to calling them both 'Blue'. In Russian, you cannot call those two the same color. There is a continuous gradient of colors, and we divide those colors into different named categories due to culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Basic_color_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Basic_color_terms Culture determines racial boundaries as well, since there are no clear genetic/cultural dividing lines between the "races". Slavs used to be excluded from Whiteness in the US because they were considered "Asiatic", but now we consider Slavs "White". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th... So to answer your questions, "White" is a cultural concept which is used to define racial boundaries in the US. > it's not clear that this has anything to do with the scientific method itself being a "white value." The scientific method is not a "white value", but whiteness values scientific data over interpersonal opinions. One example would be: "IQ tests show that Black people are dumber than White people, and that explains why there is an income gap". You would be elevating scientific data over personal narratives of schooling and job discrimination. I'm not saying that science is bad, what I'm saying is that science is a combination of technical and cultural aspects. The bullet point is referencing the cultural motivations and impacts of science more than the technical aspects.
skissane 6y ago
> The easiest bullet point to see this distinction for is "Christianity is the norm". It's not saying that being Christian makes you white, but that white people in the US made Christianity the norm. For example, people tried to cast Obama as un-American by claiming he was Muslim. Were the Obama religion conspiracy theories being driven by "Christianity is the norm", or by Islamophobia? Suppose, counterfactually, that instead of a nominally Muslim father and stepfather, his father and stepfather had been Jews or Hindus or Buddhists? And, likewise, suppose, that instead of spending some of his childhood in majority Muslim Indonesia, he'd spent it in Israel or Nepal or Thailand? And, suppose instead of an Arabic-derived middle name, he had a middle name derived from Hebrew or Sanskrit or Pali? An "Obama is a secret Hindu" or "Obama is a secret Buddhist" conspiracy theory would have had far less steam, because whatever misconceptions the average American likely has about those religions, far less Americans fear them than fear Islam. And "Obama is a secret Jew" would have struggled because it sounds antisemitic, and antisemitism is far more taboo in American culture than Islamophobia is. Anti-Muslim sentiment in American culture is largely specific to Islam, most of it is not driven by some generic "hate everyone who isn't Christian" sentiment.
- thephyber 6y ago
  It's not nearly as simple as just "anti-Islam" or even "Christianity is the norm". It's a meta-religion that bridges multiple sects of Christianity and even more secular Americans who identify with Christianity as solely a philosophy. The same propaganda machine that labelled Obama "a socialist Muslim Kenyan agent and anti-Christ" also assassinated the character of Bill and Hillary for 30 years (including attributing something like 40 murders to them) and later credited them with the "under age sex trade ring" (queue PizzaGate and the QAnon canon). Then they attacked Obama's birth certificate. The same thing happened with Obama's advisers (eg. Valerie Jarrett). It's a power play by politically-biased news sources which convince people of conspiracies. The details are irrelevant because the conspiracies that don't gain traction are left behind and the propaganda evolves. The only details that matter are the ones that best apply to Confirmation Bias. The NYTimes has a podcast called RabbitHole[1] which describes how this works so well on the internet and reverse engineers how a YouTube visitor was radicalized and later rejected his previous radicalization views. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole
SiVal 6y ago
Sorry, but there's a simpler way to see it for what it is: Just imagine replacing white with black. Each time an organization publishes one of these "problems of xness" or "dismantling xness" or "confronting xness" or "Dear X people" or tells "x people" how to "do better" or requires all (and only) "x people" to attend a seminar to criticize themselves or tells children in public school that "x people" are guilty of <whatever> and need to be corrected in some way, etc., etc., just imagine replacing "white" with "black" and imagine how quick and explosive the response would be by those in power in the West. The culprits responsible would be instantly labeled racists, publicly and loudly denounced, and fired. So whatever that infographic is, if the people who wrote it would consider it a racist attack if someone else did it and used "black" instead of "white", it tells you how they really intend it, regardless of how they might edit the definition of "racism".
- rovolo 6y ago
  Are you saying that "dismantling White supremacy" would have been racist in the 1960s because "dismantling Black supremacy" wouldn't have made sense? Black and White are not interchangeable. For your rule of thumb to make sense, you'd have to believe that Black and White people experience the US in the same way.
  - throwaway309182 6y ago
    You are making the assumption that everyone reading these statements about "White" and "Black" are American. Even if it is Americans making these statements in an American context, the Internet and the media broadcasts them to the rest of the planet. You have to think, not just about whether they make sense in an American context, but also whether they make sense in the non-American contexts in which they are being received.
    - rovolo 6y ago
      The National Museum of African American History & Culture is an American institution. The tweeter Bryan York lives in Washington DC. Your other comment about the Australian experience was interesting and it's useful when comparing the US to the rest of the world. However, it feels like you're trying to say I'm off topic because I'm discussing an American document and an American reaction by using American history.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by rovolo 6y ago

bad_user 6y ago

The scientific method means coming up with hypotheses that get validated via experiments, whose conclusions are reported and undergo peer review. And we generally have a pretty good idea about how strong the evidence is, or about how well a theory predicts the universe. The "natural social order" for humans isn't scientific because there is none that we can identify, unlike in animals with much simpler social structures. Social Darwinism isn't based on evidence, being promoted by quacks that are anti-science. You're trying to draw a distinction where there is none. Science is the way to seek truth. And yes, we should use scientific evidence to reject anecdotes, if that evidence is strong enough. Not sure what you mean in your last sentence but it sounds wrong to me.

brnt 6y ago
Up two the last sentence you seem to be in perfect agreement. The last sentence merely adds that the actors in science may color their studies, results, interpretations, to make unscientific points. Many a scientist thought they were proving differences in e.g. intelligence between the races, up to and including some of the Nazi's horrors. Doing in vivo lobotomies to show Jews are inferior may be scientific, but that is very far besides the point.

everdrive 6y ago

>I think you're assuming the info-graphic is saying "non-white people can't share these values". I see it as saying "non-white people are punished if they don't share these values" or "non-white people are punished by saying they don't share these values". Then why call them white at all? Is his a cultural, or a racial definition? Do you believe the two can be separated? >A longer bullet point to explain is the Scientific Method, but I'll take a shot at that one too. Science is a way to seek truth and reduce bias. However, the people who practice science are not fully objective actors free from bias. For example, evolution is absolutely true, but social darwinism is how many people understood evolution. A scientific truth was used to support a political position. People who would complain about inequalities could be said to be anti-scientific because they were arguing against the natural social order. Science itself isn't the issue, it's people using science to reject individual stories or support their priors. I'm honestly not sure how to respond to this. It sounds like you mean to say that science was sometimes used in a biased way. This may be true in some sense, but it's not clear that this has anything to do with the scientific method itself being a "white value."

rovolo 6y ago
> Then why call them white at all? Is his a cultural, or a racial definition? Do you believe the two can be separated? White is a cultural definition in the US which used to be legally defined and still carries cultural implications. It is intrinsically tied to race because race is also culturally defined. The US's "one drop" rule defined people's race as Black even if the vast majority of their ancestry was "White European". As an analogy, consider the names we give various colors. We can tell that light blue and dark blue are different colors, but in English we will default to calling them both 'Blue'. In Russian, you cannot call those two the same color. There is a continuous gradient of colors, and we divide those colors into different named categories due to culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Basic_color_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Basic_color_terms Culture determines racial boundaries as well, since there are no clear genetic/cultural dividing lines between the "races". Slavs used to be excluded from Whiteness in the US because they were considered "Asiatic", but now we consider Slavs "White". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th... So to answer your questions, "White" is a cultural concept which is used to define racial boundaries in the US. > it's not clear that this has anything to do with the scientific method itself being a "white value." The scientific method is not a "white value", but whiteness values scientific data over interpersonal opinions. One example would be: "IQ tests show that Black people are dumber than White people, and that explains why there is an income gap". You would be elevating scientific data over personal narratives of schooling and job discrimination. I'm not saying that science is bad, what I'm saying is that science is a combination of technical and cultural aspects. The bullet point is referencing the cultural motivations and impacts of science more than the technical aspects.

skissane 6y ago

> The easiest bullet point to see this distinction for is "Christianity is the norm". It's not saying that being Christian makes you white, but that white people in the US made Christianity the norm. For example, people tried to cast Obama as un-American by claiming he was Muslim. Were the Obama religion conspiracy theories being driven by "Christianity is the norm", or by Islamophobia? Suppose, counterfactually, that instead of a nominally Muslim father and stepfather, his father and stepfather had been Jews or Hindus or Buddhists? And, likewise, suppose, that instead of spending some of his childhood in majority Muslim Indonesia, he'd spent it in Israel or Nepal or Thailand? And, suppose instead of an Arabic-derived middle name, he had a middle name derived from Hebrew or Sanskrit or Pali? An "Obama is a secret Hindu" or "Obama is a secret Buddhist" conspiracy theory would have had far less steam, because whatever misconceptions the average American likely has about those religions, far less Americans fear them than fear Islam. And "Obama is a secret Jew" would have struggled because it sounds antisemitic, and antisemitism is far more taboo in American culture than Islamophobia is. Anti-Muslim sentiment in American culture is largely specific to Islam, most of it is not driven by some generic "hate everyone who isn't Christian" sentiment.

thephyber 6y ago
It's not nearly as simple as just "anti-Islam" or even "Christianity is the norm". It's a meta-religion that bridges multiple sects of Christianity and even more secular Americans who identify with Christianity as solely a philosophy. The same propaganda machine that labelled Obama "a socialist Muslim Kenyan agent and anti-Christ" also assassinated the character of Bill and Hillary for 30 years (including attributing something like 40 murders to them) and later credited them with the "under age sex trade ring" (queue PizzaGate and the QAnon canon). Then they attacked Obama's birth certificate. The same thing happened with Obama's advisers (eg. Valerie Jarrett). It's a power play by politically-biased news sources which convince people of conspiracies. The details are irrelevant because the conspiracies that don't gain traction are left behind and the propaganda evolves. The only details that matter are the ones that best apply to Confirmation Bias. The NYTimes has a podcast called RabbitHole[1] which describes how this works so well on the internet and reverse engineers how a YouTube visitor was radicalized and later rejected his previous radicalization views. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole

SiVal 6y ago

Sorry, but there's a simpler way to see it for what it is: Just imagine replacing white with black. Each time an organization publishes one of these "problems of xness" or "dismantling xness" or "confronting xness" or "Dear X people" or tells "x people" how to "do better" or requires all (and only) "x people" to attend a seminar to criticize themselves or tells children in public school that "x people" are guilty of <whatever> and need to be corrected in some way, etc., etc., just imagine replacing "white" with "black" and imagine how quick and explosive the response would be by those in power in the West. The culprits responsible would be instantly labeled racists, publicly and loudly denounced, and fired. So whatever that infographic is, if the people who wrote it would consider it a racist attack if someone else did it and used "black" instead of "white", it tells you how they really intend it, regardless of how they might edit the definition of "racism".

rovolo 6y ago
Are you saying that "dismantling White supremacy" would have been racist in the 1960s because "dismantling Black supremacy" wouldn't have made sense? Black and White are not interchangeable. For your rule of thumb to make sense, you'd have to believe that Black and White people experience the US in the same way.
- throwaway309182 6y ago
  You are making the assumption that everyone reading these statements about "White" and "Black" are American. Even if it is Americans making these statements in an American context, the Internet and the media broadcasts them to the rest of the planet. You have to think, not just about whether they make sense in an American context, but also whether they make sense in the non-American contexts in which they are being received.
  - rovolo 6y ago
    The National Museum of African American History & Culture is an American institution. The tweeter Bryan York lives in Washington DC. Your other comment about the Australian experience was interesting and it's useful when comparing the US to the rest of the world. However, it feels like you're trying to say I'm off topic because I'm discussing an American document and an American reaction by using American history.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]