In the comments to my previous post, sdferr points out that the latest line of justification for terming something “racist” that demonstrably (and admittedly, even by those who once thought it racist) is not, is to trot out the idea that something can be “unintentionally racist.”*
But saying that a statement is “unintentionally racist” is really just another way of saying that the statement was “racist-sounding” — that is, that in the absence of knowing intent (or perhaps, in the absence of even wanting to know intent, which is what committed Patrick Frey to the colossal gaffe of calling a statement by Stacy McCain racist, and then having to backpedal, before finally settling on its being something less so, thanks to a more thorough understand of the context, which in turn provided better clues to the statement’s intent), all we have to determine what a statement means is to determine what it means to us. And we do that by pretending to interpret the words, as they are used conventionally and within our established code, to establish what those words mean. This is the essence of how formalism purports to work.
As I’ve explained on countless occasions, however, language simply does not exist in the absence of intent. Intent — the intent to signify — is what turns signifiers into signs, marks into language (and so, potential communication). In an instance where we don’t know the intent of the author or utterer, it is our job as receivers of a communication to try to decode that intent. And that’s because the intent and the message are irrevocably tied together. Which is why when we aren’t interpreting by way of appeals to authorial intent, we aren’t “interpreting” at all. Rather, what we are doing is treating marks as mere signifiers, and then we are attaching to them our own signifieds — in essence, writing our own text. To then turn around and attribute the text we wrote to that author is not only wrongheaded, it is pernicious: after all, we are still privileging intent. It’s just that we have now privileged our own, while attributing that intent to the writer/utterer.
Intent is always present; whose intent gets privileged determines whether or what we’re doing is “interpreting” or “creative writing.”
So then. For something to be “racist-sounding,” it has to be racist sounding to someone (or a number of someones).
And if we have already admitted that a racist-sounding statement was unintentional — that is, that we don’t believe it was uttered or written with racist intent — we are now left to ponder what it is that led us to believe the statement was “racist” in the first place.
And once you understand that, you’ll understand from whence such a feeling sprang: conventional usage, context, code, intertext, rhetorical and historical moment, etc.
The problem with attaching “meaning” to things like convention (as I once explained graphically to Thersites) is that conventions can change over time. Conventions shift (for instance, who can keep up with the latest names we’re to deploy when talking of certain groups so as not to cause offense. People of color? Okay. Colored people? RACIST!). And so if one isn’t aware of the convention, one can write or utter something that may sound “unintentionally racist,” when the fact of the matter is, it was never racist at all. It was simply ignorant to current convention. And there is a HUGE difference between calling something racist and noting that it simply used antiquated terminology.
To apologize for a failure to adhere to convention is in effect to apologize for contemporary usage. If you must do so, I suggest apologizing for not knowing the convention; but don’t EVER buy in to the pernicious “fact” that what you said was “unintentionally racist.” Because there’ no such thing — and acceding to such a formulation will get your vanity plate ripped away by the state.
****
update: In the comments over at Little Miss Attila, Frey writes, of a hypothetical prejudiced southern racist (who, thank god, doesn’t have a male dog with him):
[...] I bet if you could put an X-ray to the guy’s soul he would have himself convinced he was standing in that doorway [of a school, keeping blacks out] for only the purest motives. He does not “intend” racism.
This is incorrect.
Instead, what is happening here is that the man in the doorway doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong with what he’s doing. Which is hoping to keep segregation enforced. Because he doesn’t want his white kids mixing with black kids. Because he finds them different. And he believes them inferior.
Which makes him a racist. And so his intent is racist, whether he acknowledges it as such or not.
Ironically, were we to use the conventions of the time — and didn’t look to intent — we’d be more likely to conclude that what was on display here was not racism as we now understand it.
What never changes, however, is the original intent behind the signification.
****
update: Patterico responds to my argument that, linguistically speaking, there can be no racist statements without racist intent: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
****
See also, “Is Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Patrick Frey anti-semitic”?
Comment by Squid on 12/11 @ 10:05 am #
It seems to me that we’ve stumbled on the one occasion where the non-apology apology is appropriate: “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
Comment by Joan of Argghh! on 12/11 @ 10:15 am #
We are all racists now.
Might as well be okay with it, and perhaps by means of mocking and over-use we can shame it into the non-sense which it is beginning to embody.
Comment by SarahW on 12/11 @ 10:21 am #
The little critters of nature: they don’t know they’re racist.
Comment by JHo on 12/11 @ 10:27 am #
If the proggleft would only admit hyper-religious fervor and method, all this would go better. For it has many of the trappings: Erected power, trust of scant evidence, exclusivity, subscription, rhetoric, denial, and penalty. From this we find that all of progressivism eventually balls together into one intellectual whole, if “intellectual” can be applied to what is quite evidently technically not such a pursuit.
Krauthammer on The Hive’s use of AGW as its tool of morality statism:
AGW, race, and redistribution are the three theologies of the one central progressive religion…one severely curtailed by the separation clause, right?
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 10:28 am #
Which, I hasten to add, does not mean white folks can toss around the word “n*gga” and then later say, “Hey, I didn’t MEAN it as an insult.”
Not if what you meant was to toss around a forbidden word freely and then hope to beg off later by claiming you didn’t intend to be a racist.
You probably didn’t. You just intended to be an obnoxious douchebag.
Comment by Andrew the Noisy on 12/11 @ 10:30 am #
To apologize for a failure to adhere to convention is to apologize to, en effect, contemporary usage.
So what happens when we use a word correctly and it sounds racist to people who’ve never heard of it? Like say, “niggardly”?
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 10:32 am #
Ergo, referring to my theater analogy, if you speak English and you know what is likely to happen if you shout “Fire!” intentionalism is not giving you license to do it anyway and then claim ignorance of convention.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 10:32 am #
What am I if I write a check with “United Negro College Fund” or “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People” on the pay to line? Am I better or worse than if I were to give a shout out to all my niggas?
I need a good man to guide me through a minefield like this.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 10:34 am #
Is it forbidden? Really? To whom?
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 10:35 am #
Word.
Comment by alppuccino on 12/11 @ 10:44 am #
So if there is danger of anything you say being taken as racist by some “protected” group, the only way to not be racist is to avoid that “protected” group at all costs. Eliminating that group would take care of it faster.
Comment by Beldar on 12/11 @ 10:44 am #
Jeff, I think you’re using “racist intent” to be a synonym for “subjective malicious intent.” And I think you’re insisting that unless there is an underlying subjective malicious intent, someone can’t have engaged in a racist thought or statement or action.
I don’t think that’s right.
When I grew up in a small West Texas town in the early 1960s, I attended a segregated public elementary school that served grades 1-6. By the time I reached 7th grade, desegregation had caught up to my hometown, and the separate “colored” junior high had been closed, with the previous “whites only” (including Hispanics) junior high becoming integrated. The decision to integrate was opposed by many white teachers and administrators who’d formerly taught by choice at the “colored” school. They sincerely insisted that sudden integration would victimize black children, and that (contrary to the premise of Brown v. Board of Education) those black children would be much better off at their old school (which was actually quite a bit newer and more modern). They certainly had no malicious intent to harm or deny education to anyone.
But they were making judgments based on race. Their opposition to integration was both objectively racist (i.e., any outside observer would conclude that they were trying to assign students to one school or another based on race) and subjectively racist (i.e., even in their private thoughts they would have admitted that they were trying to treat white and black students differently based on race — albeit in their view, they were trying to keep the black students from being disadvantaged).
Racism is making judgments based on race. That’s true whether the intention is good or bad.
And as Chief Justice Roberts has written — concisely and brilliantly and simply — the way to end racial discrimination is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. That’s true without regard to one’s intention to help or hurt any particular race. Avoiding racism means we stop sorting people based on their race, period, for better or worse.
Comment by alppuccino on 12/11 @ 10:45 am #
How about a sign: We use the entire English language here. So if there is a chance that you would be offended by anything written, no not enter.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 10:45 am #
Well, alp, you could just keep your filthy racist mouth shut. After all, that nasty limbic brain of yours is attached.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 10:49 am #
No, that’s discrimination. Racism is the belief in the superiority/inferiority of people based on race.
Comment by Lost My Cookies on 12/11 @ 10:49 am #
OT but why are all the racists southern? I grew up in the northeast surrounded by racists. Just sayin’ is all. I didn’t have a real black friend until I moved to the South.
Comment by alppuccino on 12/11 @ 10:52 am #
I could Pablo, but I’ve chosen to use the word “Racist” in place of all forbidden racist terms. I’ll then be called a racist for calling someone a racist. It’s win win.
Example: I was in East Austin to get some Racist Food, and a gang of Racist came up to me and gave me a hard time. I yelled “RACISTS!” and ran away. I finally caught a cab and the driver, who was himself a Racist, overcharged me. “You racist bastard, here’s your money. You racists are all alike.”
Comment by Beldar on 12/11 @ 10:55 am #
Pablo, you’re playing word games. If you characterize someone as inferior or superior based on race, you are engaging in racial discrimination, and that act of characterization is a racist act. (That one characterization doesn’t necessarily mean you are a thorough-going dyed-in-the-wool reflexive racist. Nor need the characterization have been based on a malicious intent to harm or advantage anyone.)
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 10:56 am #
I think you need to distinguish between racist and racialist.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 10:58 am #
Doctors make judgments based on “race”. I wouldn’t call those judgments racist.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 10:58 am #
With this rulebook.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 10:59 am #
As do college admissions officers and government contracting officials.
Comment by alppuccino on 12/11 @ 10:59 am #
Remind me, was skin color the main issue in ‘03, ‘05, ‘07? I can’t remember.
Comment by JHo on 12/11 @ 11:00 am #
If only that rulebook — by the definition you linked, no less — would apply to this government.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 11:01 am #
Oh. And racism — the belief in the superiority/inferiority of people based on race — wasn’t always considered malicious. In fact, it was, at a time, considered scientific fact.
But it was still racism, and the people speaking to those conditions were still racist. They were just racist in a way we don’t today frequently recognize.
Because the conventions for what we believe is “racist” have changed. What hasn’t changed was the intent to signify a belief in the superiority or inferiority of a people based on race. It can’t. It is tied to the utterance, if in fact the utterance is “racist” to begin with.
Comment by JHo on 12/11 @ 11:02 am #
At 52, my chances of making the NBA diminish with each passing day. Racist?
Comment by Joe on 12/11 @ 11:03 am #
Tiger Woods just changed his name…
to Cheetah!
I must denounce myself now for being unintentionally racist, or speciesist, or something.
Comment by Jack on 12/11 @ 11:05 am #
I think that publishing a book called “What White People Can’t Say” would be a best seller:
-the N word.
-three monkies (hear no, speak no, see no evil) compared to black people.
-compare black people to monkies
-talk about IQ and race
-talk about crime and race
-talk about violence and race
-talk about abortion and race
-talk about immigration
-talk about Community Reinvestment Act and race
Depending on your position on any of the above you are either a racist or a Democrat.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 11:06 am #
Discrimination requires a discriminatory act. I can opine that someone of X race is inferior, and that does not constitute discrimination, though it would be racist. Now if I refuse to hire that person because they’re of race X, that would be discriminatory.
Now, suppose I though that person of race X would be a fine employee, and I thought them a good person, but I refused to hire them because I thought my customer base would dislike it and I’d lose business. That would be discrimination, but it wouldn’t be racism. It would be a sop to racists, but my motivation would be my bottom line and not and feelings of superiority/inferiority.
Words mean things, Beldar.
Comment by alppuccino on 12/11 @ 11:06 am #
White blonde babes are total ho’s for famous people. Racist?
Comment by Squid on 12/11 @ 11:06 am #
The old “appeal to authority” gambit again, Pablo? ;-)
Comment by Jack on 12/11 @ 11:06 am #
Or, worst Cities to Live In in the US
and the color of the people running them. (Democratic Party anyone?)
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 11:08 am #
And yes, I regret that certain failings in my character have prevented me from attaining the kind of readership numbers that could help spread the linguistic arguments I make here. Because, contrary to claims that I do this just to “manufacture controversy” so that I can profit from it (and believe me, I’m stinking RICH off all the crazy blog money), I actually care about this stuff, and I think it not only important, but paramount for the survival of classical liberalism.
Comment by Bob Reed on 12/11 @ 11:09 am #
This whole notion of unintentional or unconscious racism is more poppycock often used to by rhetorical opponents to discredit someone altogether. I’ve been hoist on that petard a lot recently, for a term I used to ridicule the press’ attempt to cast the Obama white house as the new “Camelot” and Obama as the 5th Kennedy brother; I referred to Michelle “Gun Show” Obama as Blackie-O.
It seems that my particular quip has been spread far and wide, for at many of the sites I visit and comment at, especially when the topic turns to race, I’ve been painted as a racist and challenged to retract and apologize for a characterization that had nothing to with race in particular but everything to do with a facet of the desired legacy media meta-narrative that is Barack Obama.
I still see nothing wrong with that term of ridicule of that whole “Camelot” construct.
And Jeff G, that may mean PW is still more highly read than you think!
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 11:10 am #
Boston Blackie could not be reached for comment.
Because he’s been scrubbed from the culture.
Comment by Joe on 12/11 @ 11:15 am #
We do not even have to go back that far to find examples of it. Andrew Sullivan was pillored on this issue for allowing excerpts of The Bell Curve to be posted at TNR. I do not buy TBC’s premise only because statisical data is so easy to manipulate and defining race is so difficult, but I can accept as patently obvious that small groups of human beings can show genetic traits (both good and bad) that the collective whole may not have. Anyone involved in animal and plant breeding knows this.
But now that Sullivan is on his Palin/Bush jihad he is forgiven. And now that Patterico has shown he is one of the “good ones” perhaps he will get a pass from the left. That is how it works.
For example, I love watching athiests and humanists get all misty-eyed over The Golden Compass/Northern Lights and miss that some of them are playing the roll of the Magisterium. Perhaps this tendency toward authoritarian is hard wired as racism and tribalism may be.
But Patterico can claim his scalp now, and that is what his whole affair with RSM was about.
Comment by Beldar on 12/11 @ 11:25 am #
Actually, if you’re the statistically rare white child with sickle-cell anemia and you die from it because despite all your other symptoms and history, the docs (wrongly) ruled out that disease as a possible diagnosis simply because you’re white, then yeah, you’ve been the victim of a racist decision. It wasn’t because the doctor hates white people or intended to kill you. It was because he over-used a statistical tendency, changing it from a measure that should guide his first reactions into something conclusive that closed off the rest of his diagnostic duties.
Jeff, the teachers and administrators I wrote of from my home town (#13 above) weren’t trying to preserve segregation because they didn’t want their own children to mingle with blacks. They’d volunteered to work full-time in a segregated black school. They didn’t believe black children were inferior, they believed they were historically disadvantaged relative to white children (which was indisputably true at that time). But the bottom line is that they were making judgments based on race, and the Fourteenth Amendment says state governments can’t do that (either for good or bad of the particular race).
As for the “racist”/”racialist” distinction, I frankly don’t know what you mean by that. “Racialist” isn’t a word that was previously used in this post, and it’s not a word in my working vocabulary.
Requiring an intent — even an intent to recognize one race as “superior” and the other as “inferior” — excuses a lot of thoughts, words, and deeds that are still premised on making judgments based on race. I think government is flatly prohibited from doing that. And I think people ought to try not to do that, either.
Comment by Beldar on 12/11 @ 11:27 am #
(I do agree that intent becomes crucial if we’re talking about legal standards, but we’ve been talking about general morals and ethics, not violations of law.)
Comment by LBascom on 12/11 @ 11:28 am #
“Which, I hasten to add, does not mean white folks can toss around the word “n*gga” and then later say, “Hey, I didn’t MEAN it as an insult.”
Not if what you meant was to toss around a forbidden word freely and then hope to beg off later”
See, this is what is so insidious about the progressive use of language Jeff is fighting.
Our own dicentra, one of the true geniuses at PW, accepts the premise of forbidden words.
That is the pathway to thought control.
Comment by Jeff G on 12/11 @ 11:30 am #
No, you haven’t. You’ve been the victim of malpractice, and of statistical tendencies having an influence over how we try to prune from a seemingly infinite number of potentialities.
Comment by Beldar on 12/11 @ 11:33 am #
Pablo, you write: “Discrimination requires a discriminatory act.” That’s patently untrue. Discriminating quite literally means distinguishing one thing from another. It may, but need not, be malicious or based on some belief about superiority or inferiority. And it may or may not be accompanied by words or actions. If I see three people walking down the street, and I say nothing to them, and I do nothing to them, and the only thing that happens is my mental process in which I say entirely to myself, “I sure am glad I don’t have to have anything to do with the two of those fellows who are black,” then I’ve engaged in a racist (and racially discriminatory) thought. I’m not saying that’s illegal — it’s not. But if I had that thought — and then I realized I had just made (purely mental) judgments about three strangers based solely on their race — I would regret the thought, and I would be glad I had not vocalized or acted on it, and I would resolve to try harder to avoid such racist thoughts in the future.
Comment by Jeff G on 12/11 @ 11:35 am #
Then they were segregationists, or perhaps libertarian. Doesn’t mean they were racist.
Racialism is an emphasis on race or racial considerations. Racialism entails a belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, but not necessarily in a hierarchy between the races, or in any political or ideological position of racial supremacy.
Comment by Danger on 12/11 @ 11:37 am #
Hey Bob,
I left a comment for you at your Polls and Presidents post.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 11:38 am #
One need only reflect on what it was that occasioned this digression into the question “Can an admittedly racist statement be uttered by a non-racist agent, i.e., an agent with no racist intent?”
Was the digression fallen upon in a theoretical pathway, as a result of an exploration of utterances, intentions and agency? No?
No.
It was reached because a man (RSM) stood in a position of one judged to have uttered a “racist statement” and therefore in a position of one potentially guilty of being a racist when uttering the statement. It then happened that the source of the accusation (PF), realizing he couldn’t make the case that the utterer intended the utterance as a racist statement — let alone that the utter remains to this day a racist, another question altogether from the question “was the utter a racist as he uttered the racist statement?” — found it necessary to dissociate the utterer (non-racist) from the utterance (racist) and away we go digressing. And so to the silly, in my opinion, idea that a racist statement (bearing necessarily a racist intention, otherwise what could “racist” in such a context mean?) can be made by a non-racist having no racist intent as the statement is uttered.
Nuts.
Comment by Cowboy on 12/11 @ 11:38 am #
“Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
Racist.
Comment by Jeff G on 12/11 @ 11:38 am #
So you want to get rid of the intent requirement because YOU FEEL PEOPL OUGHT NOT to make any judgments based on race, and that if they do, those judgments should be termed “racist”?
Here’s the thing: nothing is being excused. It is being properly described. And by properly describing, we make distinctions — the kinds of distinctions that prevent us from calling non-racist statements “racist” statements when they weren’t intended as such.
Comment by Beldar on 12/11 @ 11:40 am #
It’s possible to be the victim of both malpractice and racism. It’s malpractice to use race as a conclusive proxy for genotype, even though statistically race may have high correlations to some genetic diseases. That such a missed diagnosis falls beneath the standard of medical care that a reasonable physician should use under the same or similar circumstances does not change the fact that my hypothetical doctor has just based a treatment decision on race — without any malicious intent — when he ought not have.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 11:46 am #
This is much like getting in a swimming pool and attempting to swim its length backwards just to show it’s possible to do.
How does speech work?
Let’s prove a non-speech act and then we’ll know, what say?!
Comment by Jeff G on 12/11 @ 11:47 am #
So because his decision was born from the racial considerations based in population genetics, it was “racism”, and the doctor a “racist”?
Wow.
I would, once again, point you to the distinction between racialism and racism.
Incidentally, this kind of scenario might be what I had in the back of my mind when I wrote this. For which I made CRAZY blog money, and manufactured quite a controversy.
And yes, it IS possible to be the victim of both malpractice and racism. But that is not the case in the scenario you’ve described.
Comment by Lazarus Long on 12/11 @ 11:50 am #
Just a reminder: the racist standing in the schoolhouse door?
He’s a Democrat.
Comment by DarthRove on 12/11 @ 11:52 am #
It’s amazing how hypothetical people seem to behave exactly as we want them to.
Comment by Beldar on 12/11 @ 11:59 am #
When I worry about my own racist tendencies, it’s the unintentional ones I worry about. I catch myself nodding in agreement when someone says, “Oh, those Asian kids are natural math wonks.” Well, I have no malice toward Asians, no deeply held and consistent belief that they’re superior to non-Asians or any race or ethnicity or national origin. I don’t think I’m a racist. I have no evil intent toward anyone in connection with that statement, or my nodding approval of it. And yet: That’s a racist statement. It’s judging based on race (in this particular example, judging math skills). It’s stereotyping, and even to the extent that there may be statistical support for such an argument, that confuses correlation with causation and may ignore lots of other causal sources (e.g., cultural ones that tend to overlap with racial categories but certainly don’t do so uniformly or automatically).
Were I to catch myself feeling “revulsion” at mixed-race couples, that too is something I would not approve of in myself. Such a feeling might or might not be motivated, in whole or part, by a belief that one of the races is “inferior,” but regardless of my good or bad or absent motivations, it’s a racist feeling.
Last thought (I have to dash and can’t continue the conversation): I’m not imputing any bad motives to anyone involved in this discussion. Jeff, you say — and I utterly believe — that you genuinely care about these issues. That we may disagree (as I think we do) doesn’t mean either of us is acting in bad faith or being disingenuous. You and Patterico both long since earned my respect, and would have to work hard to forfeit it. I don’t know McCain nearly as well, but I have no reason to reject his assertions about his own lack of bad intentions or his arguments about how his writing may have been misconstrued. (I think the most I would say is that his writing left him particularly vulnerable to misconstruction.) So let’s continue to encourage the better angels of our natures to be temperate. Cheers!
Comment by psycho... on 12/11 @ 12:00 pm #
I made this point (and about nine others) by ponderous analogy already, but:
Applying what may well be the best practice of literary interpretation to language that lacks literature’s formal and functional complexity — its hyperconsciously-deployed-by-its-maker-ness, at least — is dead-ending you.
The “racist” you’re trying to make sense of is exclusionary white slang. Interrogating the term is not getting it. You’re out.
Buy an Impala.
There’s one wire.
Comment by Beldar on 12/11 @ 12:02 pm #
Ack — can’t resist: “So because his decision was born from the racial considerations based in population genetics, it was “racism”, and the doctor a ‘racist’?” No, no, no, I never said the doctor is a “racist.” But if he based a decision solely on race that ought not have been based solely on race, then yes, he made a racist decision. Once again, you insist on restricting the term “racist” to things that are accompanied by bad intentions; they just aren’t. Srsly, gotta go now.
Comment by McGehee on 12/11 @ 12:04 pm #
Oh Lord, here we go again.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 12:05 pm #
There’s nothing “unintentional” about that. And yes, it’s racist, and you were racist at the time for agreeing.
Realizing that you’ve made a racist move — and correcting it going forward — means that next time you may not be racist.
Comment by Lazarus Long on 12/11 @ 12:07 pm #
” If I see three people walking down the street, and I say nothing to them, and I do nothing to them, and the only thing that happens is my mental process in which I say entirely to myself, “I sure am glad I don’t have to have anything to do with the two of those fellows who are black,” then I’ve engaged in a racist (and racially discriminatory) thought.”
But it cool when Jesse Jackson does it.
Comment by SarahW on 12/11 @ 12:07 pm #
My hypothetical intern and my own two legs will get me a cup of coffee.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 12:08 pm #
No. He made a racialist / population geneticist decision. He didn’t base his decision on any perceived hierarchy of races.
His decision, therefore, wasn’t “racist.” Your desire to see it as such is the only thing that gives such a charge any coherence. That is, you’ve just privileged your intent, and used it to turn something that wasn’t racist into something that seems racist to you.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 12:09 pm #
Oy. Well, at least we’re acknowledging a difference between racism and discrimination. One hill at a time.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 12:09 pm #
Oh, I’m getting it. I just don’t share the same attitude of fatalism toward it that you do.
I’ma walk that fucker back.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 12:13 pm #
So, a doctor who doesn’t properly diagnose your male breast cancer, having erroneously discarded the possibility, is committing an act of sexism? No. Just malpractice.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 12:15 pm #
Discriminating at its simplest is seeing three people rather than two, or one. Counting by units is discriminating. Designating the unit is discriminating that unit from all other units. Counting by object unit “pebble” is discriminating object unit “pebble” from object unit “person”. Discrimination is logos at work.
Does Beldar’s definition of stereotype necessarily involve the stereotype being potentially false or in error as to its target object? That is, if the hypothetical object of the stereotype (say a dog) never deviates from the definition under the stereotype (say having a combination of certain features: hairy, tail wagging, tongue-lolling, barking, sexually reproducing, [every-other-all-dog-always-features]), then we would, under Beldar’s stereotype, not have an instance of a stereotype?
Comment by ThomasD on 12/11 @ 12:17 pm #
“Oh, those Asian kids are natural math wonks.”
Possibly a fine example of racism. Also possibly a fine example of the confusion of culture with ‘race.’
Comment by BumperStickerist on 12/11 @ 12:25 pm #
my observation from my college “Philosophy of Language” notes:
thinkin’ about thinkin’
leads to drinkin’
-
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 12:25 pm #
Good point.
I’ve discussed this move to replace race with “culture,” and culture with “heritage,” here.
Comment by ThomasD on 12/11 @ 12:28 pm #
Discrimination is logos at work.
I don’t disagree with the argument, but I recognize that the assertion could become quite a bone of contention.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 12:30 pm #
“…the assertion could become quite a bone of contention.”
Just out of curiosity ThomasD, why I wonder? Or maybe I should ask, on what grounds?
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 12:30 pm #
ANTI-SEMITE!
(Just practicing. Go on about your business.)
Comment by Lost My Cookies on 12/11 @ 12:33 pm #
It’s possible to be the victim of both malpractice and racism.
True enough. For example if you have syphilis. But I would argue not in your example.
Comment by ThomasD on 12/11 @ 12:37 pm #
Jeff just hit on part of it.
It really depends on how you are using the term. In a classical Greek philosophical way? Ok, sure but in that sense it is also a little out of its own context.
More broadly the term crosses over into how Greek philosophy melded and molded Christianity. In that sense Logos speaks to the ultimate order of the universe. By saying that discrimination is part of Logos you are making a decidedly moral argument about the nature of good and our ability to discern what is good – i.e. TRVTH. Something that moral relativist will seek to drive a stake through should they even smell its presence.
Comment by Jeff G on 12/11 @ 12:38 pm #
I think now is a good time to point out that I am still arguing about language here.
Meantime, Mr Frey is off composing a post “proving” that I accuse people who don’t agree with me of anti-semitism in order to shut off debate (as opposed to, say, using it to perform a certain point in the context of an argument over intentionalism).
A fact to which all you, as longtime readers, can surely attest.
So as just as to avoid a re-writing of history…
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 12:40 pm #
BECAUSE OF THE HONOR!!!
Comment by LBascom on 12/11 @ 12:41 pm #
“There’s nothing “unintentional” about that. And yes, it’s racist, and you were racist at the time for agreeing.” (#56)
Now I’m confused. Jeff, wouldn’t that be racialism, not racist? I mean he wasn’t saying the Asian race is superior, only that as a whole, they score better in math.
Is it racist to note that the NBA is dominated by tall black men?
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 12:44 pm #
If he thought they scored better in math because the were Asian, that’s racist.
If he did so because he thought the culture pushed math harder, that’s not racism.
The way he set up the example, the latter was used later as a check on the former. It actually amplifies the racism of the former, in fact, but providing the check on it.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 12:46 pm #
No. It’s descriptive.
Comment by ThomasD on 12/11 @ 12:47 pm #
Arguing that the NBA should not be dominated by tall black men could be racist, but it would still depend on your intent.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 12:48 pm #
Is the NBA “unintentionally racist”?
Comment by ThomasD on 12/11 @ 12:49 pm #
My opinion? No.
It’s intentional.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 12:50 pm #
“In a classical Greek philosophical way?”
Yes. I had no theological intentions in mind.
“…a little out of its own context.”
Not really. And not even in an ordinary Greek’s usage, i.e. it needn’t be restricted to philosophical language as such, it falls under the general definition of the term. The verbal form, logizomai (I might say “reason at work or active”) is to count, reckon, calculate, compute and so on. But this is indeed a digression beside the thrust of the thread.
Comment by ThomasD on 12/11 @ 12:52 pm #
Ok. I know nothing of ordinary Greek, and completely overlooked that possible usage.
Comment by cranky-d on 12/11 @ 12:53 pm #
I’ve been reading since 2002 at the latest, and have lost count of how many people just trying to debate honestly have been accused of anti-semetism before ultimately being banned. Why I remember there was that guy… oh, you know, that guy.
Okay, just because I cannot think of one name, that doesn’t negate the fact that it happens here all the time. Weekly, sometimes. In fact, I think we’re due for another round of arbitrary bans, which means I’ll have to make up a new name and find a new proxy server. Darnit.
How Jeff finds the time to do all that between fund raisers (because you know how much he loves that crazy blog money he’s making hand over fist these days), making death threats against himself, and slapping people with his cock I will never know.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 12:58 pm #
Of course not. It’s mostly black guys.
Comment by Rubber Duck on 12/11 @ 12:58 pm #
I for one would like to know why some people have such a problem with trucks. Well piss on ya, and piss on your law.
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 12:58 pm #
Beldar:
In all intellectual arguments, it’s necessary to define your terms for the purposes of a particular discussion.
The fact that you use the term “racist” to encompass racism, discrimination, and racialism (or that others use it that way) doesn’t have probative value if we’re splitting the hairs in a different way in our discussions, as shown in Pablo’s #29.
Our own dicentra, one of the true geniuses at PW, accepts the premise of forbidden words.
You flatter me, sir, and you also misunderstand that “forbidden” refers to the adolescent mindset of those who would use certain terms to offend the sensibilities of those present.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 1:00 pm #
Wow.
Comment by ThomasD on 12/11 @ 1:03 pm #
The only way i would ever employ the term ‘nigga’ would be to use it in order to point out that by creating a permitted class you are effectively defining the very concepts that allow racism to perpetuate.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 1:05 pm #
My, but things change, don’t they?
Robert being Robert Stacy McCain…
Comment by Andrew the Noisy on 12/11 @ 1:05 pm #
I need a good man to guide me through a minefield like this.
There’s really a very simple way to test for racism:
1. Look at yourself in a mirror.
2. Determine whether you are White. (if yes, go to 3, if no, go to 4)
3. RACIST!!!
4. Determine if you are Asian. (if yes, go to 5, if no, go to 6)
5. Racist!
6. Determine if you are Hispanic or Native American (if yes, go to 7, if no, go to 8))
7. Enh, probably racist. You never can tell.
8. You are black. Check your voter registration card to determine your political affiliation (if D, go to 9, if R, go to 10)
9. Welcome to the cause, friend!
10. G&DDAMUNCLE-TOMSELF-HATINGHOUSE-SLAVEOREOMUTHAF*CKA!!!!!!111111111ONE!
Comment by JHo on 12/11 @ 1:06 pm #
So. Here in post-racial America, what net benefit accrues to society by way of tacitly federalizing policy on race? Or is the left saying racial morality is forever divorced from public policy?
And what of the right to be, oh I don’t know, possessed of a certain mindset known to rankle the majority herd? Squeaking truth to power was once the rage. Is it still? If so, might too be speaking the lie to majority PC? If I were to elect to be racist, would not that be my right or is that sentiment subject to federal scrutiny and corrective action?
List of proggrules somewhere, pounded there with a single nail as on a church door?
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 1:09 pm #
Why is it that every time I post on language, I’m forced to defend my honesty, my motivations for posting, my work status, how I’ve chosen to raise money on this site, etc.?
It gets tiring.
Or maybe that’s the point.
Comment by LBascom on 12/11 @ 1:11 pm #
“My opinion? No.
It’s intentional”(#79)
I gotta disagree.
Tall black men can juuuump!
Incidentally, I’m thinking Patterico should publicly demand everyone involved in the film “White Men Can’t Jump” explain themselves. Just to be sure there aren’t any latent racists in Hollywood.
I mean, I watch movies sometimes, and I might not want to be associated with them if they don’t have a good explanation for such a cringe worthy title.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 1:12 pm #
Help out if you will? The question I have in 63 is intended seriously, that is, I wonder what Beldar means by stereotype and in particular if he means that stereotype necessarily includes error (which leads to harm or injustice, I guess)? Or if no error, then can a stereotype be a “true” model of its intended target, in which instance a stereotyping amounts to saying something true of some thing.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 1:13 pm #
“Why is it that every time I post on language, I’m forced to defend my honesty, my motivations for posting, my work status, how I’ve chosen to raise money on this site, etc.?”
Clouds, dude. It always happens.
Comment by Lost My Cookies on 12/11 @ 1:26 pm #
Because they aren’t looking for an argument they are looking for agreement. Here’s a real-life LMC example:
Mrs Cookies: ” is a bitch! No Christmas card again this year!”
LMC: “Maybe you shouldn’t have stabbed her.”
Mrs Cookies: “Needle dick!”
Comment by cranky-d on 12/11 @ 1:31 pm #
It appears that way. It’s a much more roundabout way of just telling you to shut up.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 1:33 pm #
I’ll cease writing on this topic. Some people don’t get it. But it’s not about them. It’s me. I’m opaque and don’t explain my points clearly.
So I’ll stop until I find an audience for it. Which the rightwing of the blogosphere is decidedly not.
Comment by cranky-d on 12/11 @ 1:38 pm #
Well, I hope you continue writing about it on the new site, because it’s important to a lot of us.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 1:38 pm #
Back to the hidey hole.
I’ll be back when I get the pay model going. I’m tired of wasting my energies on people who care not one whit about what’s being said, but rather are concerned about their reputations in the “blogosphere.”
How fucking sad.
Comment by Lost My Cookies on 12/11 @ 1:41 pm #
Do you have a roadmap yet? Timelines?
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 1:42 pm #
In that case can we talk about burritos? I’ve always been a taco kinda guy and just don’t have a good working knowledge of burritos, which I’m wanting to make, but lacking a proper appreciation, I thought I’d probe the thoughts of burrito aficionados, if there are any such milling about?
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 1:44 pm #
Which the rightwing of the blogosphere is decidedly not.
:blinks:
You’d have better luck on the port side?
I think not.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 1:44 pm #
Meantime, somebody go correct this, because I’ve already taken my leave.
And try not to get hung up by the fact that it “argues” against my points by asking me to make the argument I’ve already made.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 1:44 pm #
Uh, dude? Everyone who’s linked this, and they are several, seems to get it.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 1:45 pm #
No. But I already know that they’re committed to a view of language that inexorably moves them toward progressivism and totalitarianism.
They’re there already.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 1:46 pm #
I can’t see links, Pablo. I don’t see trackbacks.
Comment by Makewi on 12/11 @ 1:46 pm #
The love of burritos by white people is just another example of cultural imperialism, in this case taking the delicious food of our impoverished brothers to the south without offering them a helping hand out of their squalor. Go back to eating burgers imperialist pig!
Comment by JHo on 12/11 @ 1:50 pm #
Jeff, you’re not surprised, are you? The lie being already halfway around the world and like that.
It’s the baseline condition classical liberalism was the counterpoint for. This is always a fight against that baseline condition. Rust never sleeps.
Maybe somebody can explain what the benefit of all that lying is. Actually, it’s “people who care not one whit about what’s being said, but rather are concerned about their reputations in the ‘blogosphere.’”
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 1:52 pm #
No. But I already know that they’re committed to a view of language that inexorably moves them toward progressivism and totalitarianism.
And those on the right who don’t get it are terrified to death of:
a) being called racist
b) being unintentionally racist
c) offending people through careless comments
d) being called racist
e) being racist
f) being associated with people who make racist-sounding comments
g) being called racist
h) being thought racist
i) being thought racist because they weren’t sensitive to recognize racist comments
j) being thought racist
k) being thought racist
l) being thought racist
Poor Beldar has accepted the Left’s definition hook, line, and sinker, and is duly flagellating himself in public thus to ward off the curse of
m) being thought racist
Comment by Joe on 12/11 @ 1:53 pm #
So I’ll stop until I find an audience for it. Which the rightwing of the blogosphere is decidedly not.
Ideologist!
Of course most of the left wing of the blogosphere feels that the right wing is a collection of special need children who are misguided, racist, or both. Their job is to root out this racism and try to “mainstream” us as much as possible so we are properly educated. And language is a tool for doing so.
Comment by DarthRove on 12/11 @ 1:57 pm #
The problem is, Jeff, that you haven’t got a bumper sticker statement.
I mean, come on. How hard is it to distill your undergraduate and graduate education, Ph.D. work, and however-many-it-is years of teaching and few-thousand-or-so pages of writing into a pithy saying that summarizes your thoughts on intentionalism?
Comment by JD on 12/11 @ 1:59 pm #
sdferr – http://www.labambaburritos.com
Burritos as big as your head is their motto.
Comment by BJTex on 12/11 @ 2:08 pm #
tehtruth: Your views fascinate me. Would you burn me your latest newsletter on a white sheet?
Thanks in advance!
Comment by cranky-d on 12/11 @ 2:08 pm #
Wow, that’s a whole lot of concentrated stupidity, ignorance, and baseless assertion. Excellent job, sir!
Comment by BJTex on 12/11 @ 2:10 pm #
Oh and if you could cut two 1 inch holes about six inches apart with pinking shears in the middle I’ll slip you a little extra.
Comment by McGehee on 12/11 @ 2:14 pm #
Whereas for me the word “racist” enters into my fears only at
…which doesn’t seem to happen but once every never.
Comment by agile_dog on 12/11 @ 2:16 pm #
Jeff,
I guess I’ve been (mostly) lurking here for some time, and found myself many times having to read and reread your posts and comments to make sure I understood what you were saying. I believe it finally soaked in, because this post just blazed for me – I don’t think it could have come across any clearer if it glowed like the inscription on the ring in “Lord of the Rings” [which I happen to be currently re-watching during my morning exercise routines, so this is a recent image, nothing more - don't take any more intent than that from the comparison :-) ]. I am a computer engineer by profession; I deal in “simple” things like 1s and 0s (trillions and trillions of them, but still 1s and 0s). Thank you for taking the time to write so often and, now to me, so clearly, on such things as semiotics and classical liberalism.
And you can be one funny guy when you do comedy, too.
Thanks.
Comment by Lost My Cookies on 12/11 @ 2:20 pm #
Wow. Just Wow. I’d totally forgotten that Glenn Beck told me to go kill policemen because FEMA was coming after me. Anyone want to sign my card anyway? I need that patch to make senior Fox News contributor.
Comment by LBascom on 12/11 @ 2:24 pm #
So I’ll stop until I find an audience for it. Which the rightwing of the blogosphere is decidedly not.
Damn Jeff, talk about jumping from the pot into the fire!
Quick, re-read this!
Comment by JD on 12/11 @ 2:25 pm #
That is Willie the racist skin flute player what is scared of Indian people that can spell.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 2:26 pm #
Burgers just aren’t the same when it comes to patting a wad of dough back and forth between the hands Makewi. Yeah, making the burger patty is fun as far as it goes, but all that fat left behind on the palms, feh. Nevermind mashing a pan-full of beans over hot lard and spices.
But, how shall I put it, is a burrito nothing more than a taco with a different wrapper folded in a different way? So whatever goes for taco filling goes for burrito filling? Or are refried beans de rigueur and cheese, say, not (or whatever combinations)?
Ah, screw it. I’m gonna just put stuff in there and call it a burrito. Sardines!
Comment by geoffb on 12/11 @ 2:29 pm #
Precisely. It is also that lashing out in a final flurry before they get placed inside a prison they caused the need for.
Rest, recharge, enjoy the Holidays. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, from the Winter Wonderland.
Comment by agile_dog on 12/11 @ 2:31 pm #
In that case can we talk about burritos?
Burritos or Chimichangas? The distinction appears slight, but is truely critical. Burritos are not deep fried, chimichangas are. Burritos traditionally have an optional meat, cheese, beans ingredient list, rolled up, and a sauce (and cheese) topping. In our house, for flavor and to fake it that we’re eating healthy, we add shredded lettuce, tomatos, cukes, salsa, onions, and hot sauce, which really makes it a taco in a soft rolled up shell, but we still call it a burrito. The optional meats are traditionally beef, pork or chicken – anything else is an imitation.
A discussion of the sauces for the top is another whole chapter in flavor. I like a good, spicey, verdez (sp?) sauce with melted cheese.
Comment by McGehee on 12/11 @ 2:34 pm #
But what intent does the burrito filling signify?
Comment by DarthRove on 12/11 @ 2:40 pm #
The cut-and-paste is strong with this one.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 2:41 pm #
Burritos will do for now agile_dog, and thanks for the tips! So sauce is put over top the finished roll, huh? I didn’t know that, for instance. And cucumber in the filling? Another revelation. What’s the deal with the folded ends? No biggie or positively wanted?
Comment by Lost My Cookies on 12/11 @ 2:42 pm #
Goddammit, he’s found out about the “global plan for a gay-free Uganda”! There goes my summer home. ‘Fess up. Which one a you all blabbed? I’ma go all Idi Amin on your ass.
Comment by DarthRove on 12/11 @ 2:43 pm #
I hate people what are racist against gays of any color.
Comment by cranky-d on 12/11 @ 2:44 pm #
Credible comments are never deleted here. Those consisting of cut-and-pasted assertions sometimes are, though sometimes they are left as an example of whatever talking points “reality-based community” is distributing these days.
Comment by baldilocks on 12/11 @ 2:45 pm #
The problem–or one of them anyway–is that, during attempts to communicate *on any subject*, some people are unable to separate other people’s intent from their own. And their own is so ingrained, they are almost always not actively aware of it. I call this annoyance “turning me into the imaginary creatures in your own head.”
Comment by Kresh on 12/11 @ 2:45 pm #
tehtruth! Nice shitpost!
Go post on huffpo or kos or something. There’s serious discussion going on and your fecal cut n’ paste isn’t doing anything except stinking the place up.
Some of us are trying to learn. So, FOAD already.
Comment by cranky-d on 12/11 @ 2:49 pm #
My understanding is that Chimichangas, while delicious, are not authentic Mexican food. Therefore, you might be racist if you eat them.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 2:50 pm #
Oh, that wouldn’t prove a problem cranky-d, as I’m a racist already before I eat them, just by virtue of being a mouth-breathing conservative type.
Comment by agile_dog on 12/11 @ 2:52 pm #
What’s the deal with the folded ends?
Can’t say what the historical significance is, but I’ve alway thought it was so you could eat it like a sandwich, and not have everything end up in your lap. We consider burritos “finger food” – we pick ‘em up in our hands and eat them without utensils. We also tend to put the sauces inside to make this even less messy.
I also see burritos grilled – you’d want the ingredients to stay in when flipping them, which would make tucking the ends even more sensible.
Comment by mcgruder on 12/11 @ 2:54 pm #
Lotta words dropped on a guy who whose writing seems to pine for some sort of antebellum South that likely never was. Me? I’m glad we beat the South into the dust. Shame it took about 350,000 Northern dead to get it done. Bigger shame we left their primitivist race laws in place though. Seems like per Versailles, Potsdam, Korea (38th parallel) and first Gulf war its nearly impossible to end a war well.
The frigging guy argued that we needed a critical reinterpretation of the murder of Emmitt Till, to run-of-the-mill Southern honor killing from racist slaughter. What’s the “intent” there? I’m of the mind, for the record, that in rural Missisippi in 1955 kidnapping a black fellow, beating him to death, gouging an eye and finishing it off with a shotgun blast to the head and depositing the body in the river because he whistled at your wife’s tits or ass has a white-black power dynamic aspect.
Real idea fellow that one.
I’ll acknowledge Frey’s self-centerdness here–hit generation via the shooting of the marginal political “ally” under the cover of “honest inquiry”–and stipulate that as far as I get it, Jeff’s statements on the misuse of intent are true.
But the more crap heaped on the guy’s views, which is to say exposure, the better. There simply has to be a better victim out there.
Comment by SarahW on 12/11 @ 2:54 pm #
Anybody want to discuss the Kansas-Nebraska act?
Comment by agile_dog on 12/11 @ 2:58 pm #
But what intent does the burrito filling signify?
Missed this early – it signifies that I’m a freaking hungry omnivore.
Comment by baldilocks on 12/11 @ 2:59 pm #
“Bigger shame we left their primitivist race laws in place though.”
Actually, many of the “race laws” came into existence after Plessy v. Ferguson (1876). Another slew of them were passed in the 1920s.
Comment by BumperStickerist on 12/11 @ 3:04 pm #
Comment by DarthRove on 12/11 @ 1:57 pm #
The problem is, Jeff, that you haven’t got a bumper sticker statement.
I mean, come on. How hard is it to distill your undergraduate and graduate education, Ph.D. work, and however-many-it-is years of teaching and few-thousand-or-so pages of writing into a pithy saying that summarizes your thoughts on intentionalism?
Lord knows, I’ve tried, DRove … I’ve tried.
But, Jeff is stubborn, he refuses to tap-out … or lower his standards. I’m not sure which.
Btw, I run into this all the time in a non-academic/non-blog IRL. A word I coined – really! – that describes what Patrick is doing is this: Ascribitionism
In the current case, Patrick et al. are in the business of of ** ascribing ** motive, intent, et cetera. So, pointing that out should be enough.
So, basically, Patrick Frey, you’re an Ascribitionist.
Which makes the point Jeff’s making without the whole communication theory (not, fact) overhead of signifier, signified, et cetera.
Comment by mcgruder on 12/11 @ 3:06 pm #
baldilocks, correction accepted.
I think you get my intent….d’oh.
Comment by LBascom on 12/11 @ 3:14 pm #
The optional meats are traditionally beef, pork or chicken – anything else is an imitation.
Are you insane? Have you never heard of lengua? Cabeza? Sosa(don’t know spanish, much less how to spell it, but this is also some revolting hog body part)?
Oh, OK, those are still beef or pork.
Still…
Comment by JD on 12/11 @ 3:17 pm #
Willie the racist skin flute player is all worked up again today. Careful, William, them Injuns can spell !
Comment by mcgruder on 12/11 @ 3:17 pm #
The truth,
that’s a load of tripe is what all that is. beck has acted like a jack-ass and been misled in some things but youre way over your head in suggesting we have ourselves another Bull Connor here.
Wish i’d done something on ACORN when I was an investigative reporter, but i was too jammed up with breaking news on how rich white people had screwed America’s pooch.
Comment by BumperStickerist on 12/11 @ 3:18 pm #
thetruth –
Per the last line of your re-post, you’re simply an Ascribitionist
The refutation of your points is in the comment threads of each of the links you provided.
Go, and learn.
cheers.
Comment by JD on 12/11 @ 3:21 pm #
Mcgruder – Tripe is good, in Vietnamese food.
Burritos – I prefer mine with a mix of chicken and chorizo, refried beans, lettuce, tomato, onion, sour cream, cheese, a verde sauce inside with freshly sliced jalapenos and a habanero salsa poured over the top. Super-sized.
Comment by LBascom on 12/11 @ 3:21 pm #
Wish i’d done something on ACORN when I was an investigative reporter, but i was too jammed up with breaking news on how rich white republican people had screwed America’s pooch.
Thought I would help you out with some historical accuracy there mcruder.
Comment by SarahW on 12/11 @ 3:25 pm #
I heard Dan Collins was one of those Bard Ruffians.
Comment by agile_dog on 12/11 @ 3:35 pm #
JD, what’s with the sour cream? My wife puts it in her burrito, too. I’ve always thought of sour cream to be a spicey food thinner – you put it in to tone down something. And my line of thought is that it VERY hard to make some things too spicey. (I’ve been known to eat “Buffalo” wings that were so spicey, I said afterwards: “They’re really good, as long as you don’t let them touch your lips.”)
I mean, sour cream has many good uses in food (dip!), but in burritos? Not in mine, thanks.
Comment by Swen Swenson on 12/11 @ 3:36 pm #
Umm, weeeelll, maybe. But remember that it was Governor George Wallace who infamously stood in the schoolhouse door. He’d run for governor short months before on a ’segregation now, segregation forever’ ticket and won. So it’s also possible that he was simply a power-hungry pandering douche who had correctly read the sentiment of the voters of that time.
Heheh. But not B.B. King. You know what the “B.B.” stands for? Blues Boy. It was a nom de guerre he chose in the early radio days. Just like a white guy chose to be called “Boston Blackie”. Go figure.
Comment by Lost My Cookies on 12/11 @ 3:37 pm #
Wait Jeff! Before you go!
Here’s a good one. If we can remove Patterico and RSM from the equation for a bit. Look at this: “The critics went out of their way to be both racist and smug.” The author doesn’t relate how she came to this conclusion, but it seems to me, unless I’m reading it incorrectly that the author thinks that the critics of the teaching of ebonics in schools are racists. That they went out of their way to be racist. It’s a stunning aside in a review of a book that seems to be a popular history of English grammar and usage and the controversy that surrounds it. What I’m saying is, it would seem to me that the intention of the “critics” described in the book would less “real Nazi” than “grammar Nazi”. I could be wrong, but I think this may partially illustrate your point.
Do I get extra credit?
Comment by mcgruder on 12/11 @ 3:40 pm #
LBascom, yes and no.
A lotta Dems were big in the private sector housing boom, a lot.
As a rule, the GSE’s were protected by Dems–first big story I ever wrote earned a personal call from Leland “fired for making up numbers” Brendsel and a threat of a lawsuit from Freddie Mac–but the idiots who ran the mortgage companies and the banks that gave them warehouse lines and turned their institutions into hedge funds were GOP.
Comment by B Moe on 12/11 @ 3:42 pm #
I haven’t read the piece, but I gathered that his point was that white trash, hillbillies and redneck types have killed, and are killing, one another for the same offenses since there have been asses to whistle at, they just don’t make the history books. I think it is safe to say Till’a color was a factor, but violent po’ whites don’t need much of an excuse to fuck somebody up, regardless of color.
Comment by JD on 12/11 @ 3:46 pm #
Agile dog – Note the chorizo, fresh jalapeno, and habanero salsa. If done well, it can peel paint.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 3:46 pm #
Frey didn’t name Wallace. He set his example up so that the unnamed southern bigot in the door way was “racially prejudiced.”
Otherwise he may well have been a pander, a strict segregationist, or perhaps a libertarian.
Comment by JD on 12/11 @ 3:48 pm #
Better Half’s rule o’thumb on cooking is “if JD isn’t sweating like a whore in Church, it is not spicy”
Comment by Kresh on 12/11 @ 3:51 pm #
Is tehtrvth a bot or something?
Comment by JD on 12/11 @ 3:52 pm #
Willie makes a crap-load of assumptions. How many times has he puked out the same wall o’lies?
Comment by Swen Swenson on 12/11 @ 3:55 pm #
Whoops! That turned out well. I’d meant to say “Just like a white guy chose to be called “Boston Blackie” in the fiction of that day. Ol’ Boston bein’ a fictional character I’d blame that one on his author and my mistake on the friggin’ telemarketer who interrupted me mid-denoument. Don’t those guys pay any attention to the “do not call” list?
I’d meant to say something cogent on how the times have changed and become more prickly, but I forgot what it was I meant to say in my flusterment. You can be sure it was profound though..
Comment by Beldar on 12/11 @ 4:08 pm #
dicentra: I don’t know you. You definitely don’t know me. You presume that I care what you think of me. I don’t. I don’t know you; you haven’t earned my respect; what you think I think, I don’t care about.
I respect Jeff G., our mutual host here. I enjoyed my conversation with him today in the comments here, and I’m grateful for the privilege of commenting on his bandwidth, even when we disagree.
Comment by Swen Swenson on 12/11 @ 4:10 pm #
Bad hypothetical then. Those of us old enough to remember the incident will likely never forget which southern bigot “stood in the schoolhouse door”, nor the rest of the story. Might as well make up an hypothetical about some Chinese/Thai/Native American/Black being chased by a nice Scandinavian lady with a golf club and not expect us to think “Arnold Palmer”, hmm?
Comment by ThomasD on 12/11 @ 4:12 pm #
Dang, I leave to go chop up a tree that fell on my roof and look what I missed.
Every day I try to thank God for something good in my life. Today I thank god I am not JD’s plumber.
The best burritos in Gainesville Florida are to be found at Burrito Brothers. They are rather plain, ground beef browned with minced onion, with or without jalapenos, wrapped in a flour tortilla, lightly steamed and served with a red sauce. Heaven.
My own burrito recipe involves carnitas – slow simmered pork butt that is pulled, mixed with sauce then broiled to give it some added texture before rolling in a flour tortilla.
I like Mexican food, Asian food too. Doesn’t matter who makes it though, as long as their intentions are pure.
Comment by JD on 12/11 @ 4:26 pm #
ThomasD – Better half and my little girls are routinely mad at me for eating burritos.
Comment by baldilocks on 12/11 @ 4:47 pm #
mcgruder,
touché
Comment by LBascom on 12/11 @ 4:54 pm #
I haven’t read the piece, but I gathered that his point was that white trash, hillbillies and redneck types have killed, and are killing, one another for the same offenses since there have been asses to whistle at, they just don’t make the history books. I think it is safe to say Till’a color was a factor, but violent po’ whites don’t need much of an excuse to fuck somebody up, regardless of color.
I mean shit, have you SEEN “Deliverance”? Sum ‘o them hillbillies don’t even discriminate betwixed woman nor man when it comes time to purse the lips.
Comment by SBP on 12/11 @ 4:57 pm #
I haven’t read the piece, but I gathered that his point was that white trash, hillbillies and redneck types have killed, and are killing, one another for the same offenses since there have been asses to whistle at
Yes. This Skynyrd classic is on-point here, I think.
Comment by hmmmph on 12/11 @ 5:11 pm #
Grumpydar
Comment by SGT Ted on 12/11 @ 5:24 pm #
” If I see three people walking down the street, and I say nothing to them, and I do nothing to them, and the only thing that happens is my mental process in which I say entirely to myself, “I sure am glad I don’t have to have anything to do with the two of those fellows who are black,” then I’ve engaged in a racist (and racially discriminatory) thought.”
Or, depending on the neighborhood, or the dress and mannerisms, you may have made a threat assessment. Context is key once again.
Comment by Brian Macker on 12/11 @ 5:29 pm #
“Racism is making judgments based on race.”
What like I should put suntan oil on because I’m mostly white? How about the fact that I should refrain from using the N-word because I’m mostly white?
Comment by LBascom on 12/11 @ 5:43 pm #
Comment by mcgruder on 12/11 @ 3:40 pm #
LBascom, yes and no.
My fault entirely, I didn’t frame my point properly. I was trying to say those were the journalists assignments, not a true picture of what was going on.
Can you explain why a Louisiana congress critter commandeering a national guard unit in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina to retrieve the 100k of ill-gains in his freezer, was deemed by the MSM to be less interesting for the public to know about than what a dopey hip-hop artist had to say about Bush hating blacks?
Come on, which story is known by more of the public?
Oops, I may have inadvertently glimpsed the topic here…
Comment by Joe on 12/11 @ 5:46 pm #
Dafydd in response to Patterico.
Comment by McGehee on 12/11 @ 5:48 pm #
But you sure do seem to worry about what race-baiters who throw the ‘R’ word around like Congress with taxpayers’ money, think of you.
Comment by SGT Ted on 12/11 @ 5:59 pm #
Jeff, you have an audience. Guys like Dustin have already made up their mind on the specific charge and are operating on emotion. This will always be the case. whatever you write about.
So, out of your hidey hole, ya damn something or other. :)
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 5:59 pm #
What I noticed most about that post, Joe, is that nothing I’ve said is offered as part of the conversation.
Trackback by South Texian on 12/11 @ 6:02 pm #
Tom Kratman Puts It All in Perspective…
There really isn’t much more I can say that I have not already said in my previous two entries, “The McCain Defamation” and “The McCain Mutiny”. If anything good comes of this, hopefully it will be an end to the “Robert Stacy McCain is racist” m…
Comment by SarahW on 12/11 @ 6:50 pm #
Beldar, if you don’t know much about Dicentra, get to know her. She has one of the most finest minds you are likely to find on the interwebs. DIsciplined and sharp.
Comment by SarahW on 12/11 @ 6:51 pm #
I can not sound like happyfeet no matter how I try.
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 7:05 pm #
dicentra: I don’t know you. You definitely don’t know me. You presume that I care what you think of me. I don’t. I don’t know you; you haven’t earned my respect; what you think I think, I don’t care about.
And your rebuttal to my explanation that your usage of terms is not probative in a discussion where the terms of argument have been defined is what, now?
Because you accused Pablo of “playing word games” when in fact he was defining terms. One of which you’d never encountered before (racialist).
And then you seemed to think that your usage of “racist” could be employed to trump an arugment about what constitutes racism in a discussion where semantics is not even the primary issue but rather the locus of meaning of an utterance.
And then you expressed at length your desire to not be “unconsciously racist,” which sound very much like something Leftist teach at freshmen orientation.
Hence my lamentation that you’d been beguiled by a Leftist meme.
Nice to see that it provoked a reaction.
Now let’s get down to brass tacks and return to the original proposal: that there is no such thing as an objectively “racist statement” that is racist independently of the communicative intent of the speaker.
There are “racist-sounding” statements that may be uttered in the absence of racist intent, but between what one means to say and what one thinks you’re saying, the intent of the speaker trumps what the listener heard in terms of whether the comment was racist.
This is contrary to the formulations in sensitivity training, BTW, and many legal decisions have come down on the side of the hearer and disregarded the intent of the utterer.
We here assert that such a formulation is inherently tyrannical, and that similar linguistic manipulations by the left lead and have led us farther and farther from such good things as, oh, I don’t know, free speech and racial harmony, while imposing speech codes and otherwise harassing people who produce innocent speech that someone else gets to punish you for.
And you have no way to defend yourself against someone who is determined to be “sensitive” enough to shut up your despicable
conservative idealshate speech.Comment by cranky-d on 12/11 @ 7:32 pm #
Well, that’s going to leave a mark.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 7:35 pm #
Enough to make you weep, ain’t it? I mean, many conscientious conservatives will move ever leftward (or at least, adopt left-leaning attitudes toward how to prescribe policy) — all because they’ve internalized an idea about how language works that is logically incoherent on the foundational level, but that inexorably moves them toward certain ideological outcomes.
Comment by ThomasD on 12/11 @ 8:01 pm #
Someone might want to remind Mr. Frey that, while the motivations behind RSM’s words were being deeply explored Chrissy Matthews description of West Point as an ‘enemy camp’ goes largely by the wayside.
Can you say anti American things without being anti American?
Comment by cranky-d on 12/11 @ 8:03 pm #
When humpty-dumpty owns the narrative (a word means what I say it means), societal pressure moves it forward with the help of lawyers and the media, and we continue to have people who prefer to conform to that pressure(whether that is a natural tendency or not, I don’t know), it is difficult to fight this sort of thing because you will spend a lot of time standing alone and taking shots if you do.
That of course is not news around here.
I fought the narrative in a “preparing future faculty course,” and the narrative won. The politically correct multicultural bullshit was palpable. I passed, but I was not particularly popular, and not one person ever sided with me, even privately. I didn’t take the second course, and pretty much realized at that point that I wasn’t going to end up in an academic career.
Comment by Joe on 12/11 @ 8:16 pm #
That could be because Dafydd knows Patterico is vindicitive and he could be the next outed “racist”. Patterico’s “friends” dare not side with you. Guys like Dafydd have to show loyalty to Don Patterico.
Comment by Joe on 12/11 @ 8:18 pm #
dicentra. Good job.
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 8:45 pm #
I can’t seem to log on to Daffyd’s site, so I’ll comment on this post here:
“it’s hard to think of an instance in which one would utter a racist comment without intending to utter a racist comment.”
I’ll help you:
1. You’re learning English. You say to a young black man, “Boy, what time is it?” because in your language it’s acceptable to use the term “muchacho” to refer to a young man.
2. You’re my mother and you refer to the Chinese as “Oriental.” Or you’re my grandmother and you talk about “Negros.”
3. You’re Bill Bennett and you mention the “freakonomic” that increased abortions reduce crime. You state in the same paragraph that it would be abhorrent to use abortion as a method to reduce crime, even supposing the freakonomic were true.
4. You’re arguing with a bunch of morons on usenet on a very narrow subject wherein you’re splitting hairs about this or that. You say something that sounds racist to the casual observer. You’re making an entirely different point.
5. You’re sitting in the break room quietly reading a book about how a university took on and defeated the KKK. A black woman sees the illustration KKK robes on the book’s cover and insists that she’s being racially harassed.
6. You’re watching a raccoon help itself to a neighbor’s garbage can. A black man walks by the can without knowing that the raccoon is there. The movement and the glowing eyes startle him, he shouts and runs away, and that startles the raccoon, who speeds off. You say, “wow, look at that coon go!” You’re referring to the animal. It’s too dark for you to see the skin color of the man.
7. You’re reading Mark Twain aloud to your kids.
That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 8:49 pm #
None of that is racist, dicentra. I think that’s his point. Whereas Beldar and Patterico would say some of those were unintentionally racist and some were not — the point being, they get to decide.
In at least one case, that decision is the difference between having something you argued in 1996 publicly scrutinized by the right’s Star Chamber as a “racist statement” that no context can save, or, like, not.
Comment by Joe on 12/11 @ 8:51 pm #
dicentra, you enroll your boy in cub scouts.
Oh wait, that is not racist, that is homophobic.
Comment by Joe on 12/11 @ 8:56 pm #
So will the next explanation be why Patterico is not a mendouchous bastard for dogpiling on RSM and just asking questions of why RSM said allegedly racist things?
Oh wait, Patterico promises to come back and explain how Jeff called him anti Semetic. It is Patterico’s Hannukkah Special!
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 8:57 pm #
Here’s this one again.
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 8:58 pm #
I thought Pat explained it here.
Or at least intended to.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 8:58 pm #
A black man with a dirty socialist agenda is elected President. You, with a deep disrespect for socialist governance and wishing that said agenda not be enacted, respond by saying “I hope he fails.”
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 9:00 pm #
Jeff, it all boils down to making the distinction between racist-sounding comments and actual racist comments.
Phrased like that, maybe people can better digest it.
Or not. I’ve stopped being amazed at people’s inability to wrap their minds around certain concepts.
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 9:03 pm #
And then there’s my favorite:
Some shameless douche who hates your guts invents racist-sounding statements out of whole cloth, publishes them in a book, and then other racist twatwaffles cite the fabrications.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 9:05 pm #
Here you go, folks. Have at it. According to the special mind at Villainous Company, my argument makes very little sense, if you look at it closely.
Which, of course, Cassandra pretends she has.
Comment by Geo W on 12/11 @ 9:18 pm #
Jeff, first let me say thank you for posting on this RSM thing the past few days. I bookmarked him a few months ago because I like his insight on political strategy and his reporting on the tea parties. Altho I’m a Democrat, I want a smaller more libertarian government and think the national Dem party is, has and intends to do great harm to our prosperity and freedom. It’s a shame that what was once the party of the working man is now anti-job, anti-prosperity. And yes, you guessed, I am out of work — but have held these thoughts for many years.
Checking in at RSM’s daily, like I come here daily (altho I check here more than once a day, usually, and have continued to do so even when you haven’t been posting — Darleen is great and I’m always hoping I’d find you back at it) and having bookmarked Patterico some years ago for his beat-downs on the LA Times and local political issues here in So Cal, I was very upset that he started this prosecutorial action against RSM. Well, I’m not sure he started it or picked it up from some concern troll, but whatever. I hated it when you and he go into it, and I thought as I did then, in this case it was unwarranted of him to do this and if he had an issue with something anyone wrote 14 years ago, a call or email could have sufficed. But to air all this out in public was wrong, and not the least because it could cost RSM his livelihood.
Then I saw you were posting on it and I applaud your effort, and the clarity you bring to the controversy. Even without taking sides, altho I think you have in a way, you made it paramount in the discussion that we focus on intent. That is the fairest way to deal with the issue, and the only way to treat anyone accused of what RSM has been accused of.
I’m sorry to see that by poking your head out of your foxhole people are taking shots at you personally, instead of discussing your point. Or heaven forbid, changing their rhetoric to take your point into account. Instead it’s all, yeah well it sounds racist to me so it is, besides that RSM is a neo-confederate and we should have laid salt over the entire south in 1865 anyway. No one seems to want to arrive at clarity. It’s all about them.
Then in this thread, when I clicked on your link above that simply said WOW and went over to the LMA comment thread on this topic, I eventually came across Frey dissing you again, and insulting you again.
So I stopped right there, and went to my manage bookmarks tab, and deleted him from my favorites.
And if I ever get a job or the freelance picks up, I’ll definitely join you thru your paywall when it’s up, and hit RSM’s tipjar and help make sure he can keep reporting on the important changes going on in our country today.
Thank you, sir.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 9:19 pm #
It’s a great post that probably wouldn’t have been written had you not gotten the ball rolling. Dude gets it.
I doesn’t have to be all about you, bro. But you can light the fire. You always could.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 9:56 pm #
Wow. Check out Pat in the comments over at Joy’s place. Didn’t know a little intentionalist argument could get him so hot:
Let me just say this: Saying that Patterico called McCain a racist is not a “lie.” I said that by virtue of calling the statement attributed to McCain racist, he in fact HAD called McCain racist, because that’s how it works linguistically. It was the assertion I used to get to the nut of the linguistic point I was making. Frey may not have wanted to call McCain a racist. But he did — and as I pointed out, he wanted to have it both ways. Which you simply can’t, for reasons that have nothing to do with me personally.
This wasn’t about Frey, or McCain, or me. It was about how language functions, how we use it in a way the left wants us to, and why that needs to stop.
I’ve stayed on point, I believe. For his part, Frey is busily typing up his anti-Jeff Jeremiad.
My Friday night will be spent with Rocky IV and Angel Heart. Pat’s will be spent trying to attack the reputation of yet another person on the “right” — as a way to salvage his “honor” and bone up on his “fairness” street cred with the lefties and moderates.
That is all.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 12/11 @ 10:03 pm #
Cassandra sez:
But then…she doesn’t.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 10:05 pm #
Yep. Read all that over at LMA a while ago and still wonder at Pat’s jealous protectiveness of his “reputation”, as he undertakes to make himself punier by the minute, working himself up into a tizzy and raging over a comment no-one but he thinks of or even remembers without his own incessant prompting. Glass jaw much?
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 10:06 pm #
Precisely, Slart. In fact, she terms it “irrelevant.”
Because language, inasmuch as it construct our very epistemologies, hardly rates.
And we wonder why the “right” is completely out of power, and has lost nearly every classically liberal institution in this country over the last 40 years.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 10:08 pm #
I’m beginning to regret not turning that thing into a series of posts, sdferr.
“Is Patrick Frey an Anti-Semite? Let’s Explore the Question in 6 parts…”
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 10:13 pm #
Is anti-semitism racism? That’s good for at least 4 posts.
Comment by Pablo on 12/11 @ 10:17 pm #
And really, Wolcott as argument? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/11 @ 10:21 pm #
This appears to be the new thesis:
Well, sure. In the context of trying to get him to understand why it’s necessary to appeal to intent — and to show him how easy it is to make a “reasonable” argument using others’ signifiers.
BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY!
Most striking, though, is it’s clear from this little bit he hasn’t understood me again. Is that a failing on my part? I mean, I never said it was inherently impossible to make a claim you don’t believe to be true. Otherwise one could never play devil’s advocate. Or act. Or enter into politics.
We’re really back where we were last time. Frey simply doesn’t get it.
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 10:25 pm #
Seems to me he quit trying to get it a long time ago. Indeed, he replaced any such motivation with a substitute, a kind of insistent refusal thingy. Though what it is that’s so hard about dropping that replacement, even for a moment, to think through the abstracted communicative act divorced from personalities, his own included, I don’t know.
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 10:30 pm #
Frey simply doesn’t get it.
Most lawyers don’t, it seems. And that’s really puzzling, given that they spend their lives splitting hairs this way and that. They just can’t seem to shift gears and think not in terms of what you can prove but in terms of what is.
Cripes, I can get legal distinctions after a decent explanation: why isn’t the reverse true?
Comment by Jeff G on 12/11 @ 10:39 pm #
They are trained as formalists. And it’s hard for a New Critic to evolve into anything other than a post-structuralist.
I believe I had some discussions with a dumpling about this very thing a while back.
Most disturbing, though, is his inability to recognize as anything other than a personal attack the most basic of rhetorical ploys used to launch arguments. I mean, when I wrote that Frey called McCain a racist, that set up the payoff: that you can’t call a statement racist and not call its utterer racist.
I wasn’t “lying” about Patrick in order to sully his honor. I was introducing a linguistic argument with a provocative and pointed assertion that I then set out to prove.
Granted, it’s not as interesting as proving that I’m a hypocrite who routinely uses the “anti-semite card” to squelch discussion — the “proof” for which can only be found in a few comments that I myself deleted, and offered in a context that was ripe for the kind of performative I like to use here from time to time.
Comment by B Moe on 12/11 @ 10:41 pm #
You know, it would probably be possible to get off to a worse start on this blog, but I can only think of one person who did.
Comment by B Moe on 12/11 @ 10:43 pm #
Goddamn. Did he really say that out loud?
Comment by bh on 12/11 @ 10:43 pm #
As my travel plans are delayed until tomorrow, I feel like expressing a thought or two.
A few times now, I’ve heard that Jeff is overly opaque, or nonsensical when transparent, tilting at windmills with an esoteric theory, unimportant while needing strong rebuke. Blah fucking blah fucking blah.
Here’s what I know. Jeff taught me that I shouldn’t be too hung up when a work by Brett Easton Ellis lacks a novel-like structure. That it’s then simply a performative and should be considered by stylistic and thematic elements rather than structure.
Jeff taught me that Gravity’s Rainbow can be thought of as being a self contained instruction manual on how to read Gravity’s Rainbow. Hey, sorry to the other bloggers out there, sneering or not. No one ever helped me tackle that text with so little advice.
Jeff taught me that Eco isn’t just a guy with cool theories about Superman and James Bond. Then he recommended books to move me past that.
Jeff taught me that literary interpretation isn’t bullshit. That while Marxist or feminist critiques might be interesting of themselves, they don’t actually interpret. Then he taught me a functional way to go about interpreting.
Along the way, he’s emailed papers he’s written on topics. Recommended proper transitional books for someone lacking any real education in the humanities. Encouraged the little good fiction I’ve written and gave a silent “this sucks” to the rest.
He’s a teacher, one of the best I’ve had, easily the best with literary theory and interpretation.
So, yeah, I’m not a minion when I say I like the guy personally or say he’s a great person to learn from on these topics. Personally, he’s been a mensch. Intellectually, he’s taught me a shit ton.
To me, that’s why it’s simply absurd to dismiss his arguments out of hand, as has been done. Again, to me, that’s why it’s just as absurd to take any of the things he’s written without saying, “Hey, maybe I’m missing something here, maybe I should make sure I’m not just looking at the outer layer.”
Comment by sdferr on 12/11 @ 10:53 pm #
Pat’s incredible shrinking man act appears to only be getting started. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Though it’s usually coming from people with concomitantly small stature, as opposed to grown-ups.
Comment by geoffb on 12/11 @ 11:01 pm #
bh, amen.
Comment by DarthRove on 12/11 @ 11:04 pm #
While going to school, I had a job driving a paratransit van. Decent enough job, flexible hours to the point where I could work full time and still carry a full credit hour load at school. Because of some lawsuits in the news at that time (late 1980s) one of our monthly employee meetings was turned over to a lady who spent the hour haranguing us on the topic of SEXUAL HARASSMENT. The jist of the presentation was that an act of harassment was entirely dependent on the perceptions of the recipient of the so-called harassee, not on the intentions of the so-called harasser. I asked the presenter flat out that if I said something completely innocently with absolutely no sexual intentions of any kind, but the person I said it to felt offended or harassed, it meant that I was guilty of an offense? And the answer was an absolute “yes”. To which I responded with something like, “but what if she’s lying about how she feels?”, to which I got an answer like, “Well, that’s just the way the law is.”
It sounded like codswallop 20 years ago, and it sounds like 20-year-old codswallop when Mr. Frey trots the exact same argument out today.
That’s right, I said “codswallop”. Wanna make something of it?
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 11:16 pm #
Recommended proper transitional books for someone lacking any real education in the humanities.
A real education in the humanities? Where the hell do you get one of those? Certainly not in academia.
The gist of the presentation was that an act of harassment was entirely dependent on the perceptions of the recipient of the so-called harassee, not on the intentions of the so-called harasser.
The only way that this makes any kind of sense is if a woman doesn’t like what you’re saying/doing, even if you don’t mean anything by it, you should just knock it off.
For example, if you’re a touchy-feely kind of guy and you put your hand on a woman’s shoulder while she’s standing next to you, and she doesn’t like it, you need to stop, even if you’re not coming on to her.
But that’s a matter of simple courtesy. I wouldn’t say you were guilty of sexual harassment, but I would say that your actions made her feel sexually harassed.
In which case she should ask you to stop, and you never do it again, and there’s neither harm nor foul.
However, if you continue to put your hand on her shoulder, insisting that you don’t mean anything by it and she needs to lighten up, then she gets to deck you.
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 11:30 pm #
Must One “Intend” To Be Racist to Say Something That Is Racist?
Short answer: no — but the statement does have to be the product of racist thought…
However, for a statement to be racist, it does have to be the product of racist thought. We can all agree that it is unacceptable to judge someone a racist for comments that are not the product of racist thought in any way.
I give up.
They’re all discussing the difference between “being” a racist and having momentary racist intent that is verbalized.
Thinking that Jeff has thereby been refuted or something.
Whatever.
What. EVAR.
Comment by dicentra on 12/11 @ 11:31 pm #
Oops! Linky for my last.
Comment by Joe on 12/11 @ 11:58 pm #
I guess I hit a nerve with this one:
Hey Pat, it was Dafydd, your former blogbuddy who said that quote. He posted it originally at Patterico Pontifications (via a link). I posted it and linked it. You are too stupid to figure that out? Jesus, how many beers did you have before you started posting this evening? You Irishmen can’t hold your liquor.
Comment by Joe on 12/12 @ 12:16 am #
I denounce myself for disparaging the Irish (given I am part Irish).
Comment by Darleen on 12/12 @ 12:35 am #
dicentra
but a “racist thought” is a conscious act! Even if it is fleeting, it was there. Like sinful thoughts.
It doesn’t make one 100% sinful for all time, human imperative is to recognize those thoughts and transcend them.
oh lordy, we are doomed
Comment by dicentra on 12/12 @ 12:55 am #
but a “racist thought” is a conscious act! Even if it is fleeting, it was there. Like sinful thoughts.
Conscious only in the sense that the thought exists in one’s consciousness. Naughty thoughts do enter the mind unbidden from the limbic system, but that’s not the same as inviting them to come on over and have a beer.
Comment by geoffb on 12/12 @ 1:01 am #
Language lessons here. At Iowahawk lessons in how to make your own “hockey stick”.
Lots of learning out on “da tubes” for those willing to learn.
Comment by Darleen on 12/12 @ 1:19 am #
Naughty thoughts do enter the mind unbidden from the limbic system, but that’s not the same as inviting them to come on over and have a beer.
Yep. But how we react to them and how we act (or not act) upon them is the thing.
A man may see this really hot young woman at the drive thru at Starbucks and “oh, I’d hit that” comes into his mind. He knows the thought is there, he lets it go but then channels the sexual energy towards his wife when he gets home.
Win for the husband and his wife.
Tiger should take notes.
Comment by sdferr on 12/12 @ 1:31 am #
There are hypotheses in cognitive neuroscience of how thoughts are generated that posit a beginning in a swarm of possible associations of terms in thousands or tens, hundreds of thousands of combinations, none of which rise to the level of consciousness. These, it is said, compete for propagation against one another, in a sort of evolutionarily pruning sense, the “winners” regenerating copies of themselves modified along the way in recombinations with one another, further pruning, further recombinatory modification, feedback upon feedback, iteration upon reiteration, all constantly being pruned away as the successful grow in number and signal strength ’til reaching some threshold, whereupon popping finally into consciousness, they get blurted out (or written down or whathaveyou) and the thought meets the world.
Who knows how this actually works though. They’re still working on it.
Comment by Adriane on 12/12 @ 1:33 am #
I guess I am having some difficulty understanding what the difficulty in understanding is …
If I tell you to have some hot chicken soup and get some rest, I am giving medical sounding advice but I am not a doctor/nurse and therefore am not qualified to give medical advice. {In the situation of the common cold, a trained/degree’d medical professional might give you the same advice, but in more complicated medical situations, the value of education and experience, is more easily seen.}
Climategate certainly shows there is a difference between statistical analysis and statistically sounding analysis – or in layman’s terms, statistical analysis done by an expert statistician and statistical analysis done by a scientist trained in a different field such as chemistry or geophysics.
I would think that as a lawyer, the difference between legal advice and legal sounding advice would be obvious given all the tv shows that have actors sounding like lawyers. Hopefully, Patterico would not recommend to friends nor clients that they go to Gregory Peck for legal advice despite Peck’s brilliant performance in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Comment by geoffb on 12/12 @ 1:47 am #
sdferr, do you have any links or readings on that?
Comment by dicentra on 12/12 @ 1:50 am #
There are hypotheses in cognitive neuroscience of how thoughts are generated that posit a beginning in a swarm of possible associations of terms in thousands or tens, hundreds of thousands of combinations, none of which rise to the level of consciousness.
The ones I wonder about are the ones prompted by hormone surges. I mean, wot? Some dang chemical causes you to think “I’d hit that” when you’re 18 but not 8. (Ok, when you’re 8, you’d hit your brother with a stick.)
Or what makes a cat think: Box! I must sit in it!
Comment by geoffb on 12/12 @ 1:51 am #
I put these two on my Amazon wish list to pick up when I can.
Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain and Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)
Comment by sdferr on 12/12 @ 1:58 am #
I’ve got a couple of books by William H. Calvin geoffb. 1)The Cerebral Symphony, 2)How Brains Think, and I think I had Conversations with Neil’s Brain, though I don’t know what’s become of it.
Comment by sdferr on 12/12 @ 2:05 am #
I’d also recommend anything Oliver Sacks has written on neurology, Man who Mistook etc., Awakenings, Anthropologist on Mars off the top of my head. Dennett’s The Intentional Stance and Consciousness Explained are very good too where they touch on the subject, as well as Darwin’s Dangerous Idea in the same respect.
Comment by geoffb on 12/12 @ 2:09 am #
Thank you.
Have a good night.
Comment by sdferr on 12/12 @ 2:13 am #
Hey geoffb, ditto. I’m heading to the sack.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/12 @ 3:45 am #
Holy. Shit.
Patterico just came out and said he was handing me my ass in the Limbaugh debate, and that he didn’t press it because he was afraid I’d get confrontational.
No. Seriously. He posted that. On a blog.
Comment by Danger on 12/12 @ 6:27 am #
Jeff,
Congratulations you have forced Pat to go from a sliding goal-post strategy to changing the playing field entirely.
The original argument of RSM = racist (or sounds like a racist) has been dropped in favor of the Jeff = stoopid assertion.
Comment by McGehee on 12/12 @ 8:16 am #
My best guess is brain damage. Reason #53,945,363 why I’m glad I decided not to seek a law degree.
Comment by Rusty on 12/12 @ 8:49 am #
Jeff taught me that Gravity’s Rainbow can be thought of as being a self contained instruction manual on how to read Gravity’s Rainbow. Hey, sorry to the other bloggers out there, sneering or not. No one ever helped me tackle that text with so little advice.
Then, again, maybe it’s also just a ripping yarn. Vineland. Not so much.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 12/12 @ 9:04 am #
Yes, I can see that. Many’s the occasion when I hand you your ass, but I have to keep all of that inside my head, lest you decide to fly halfway across the country to kick my ass. I mean, we all remember what happened last time someone bested you in an argument. We had to take up a collection for the poor, orphaned children.
Pingback by Meet your site host, 2! on 12/13 @ 11:11 am #
[...] was “racist” (without its utterer being racist, which for reasons I’ve argued is linguistically incoherent), what have we learned from Frey, other than that one can make racist statements while not being [...]
Pingback by Intent, an update on 12/14 @ 12:40 am #
[...] it? You mean, like RIGHT IN THE POST ON INTENT?: As I’ve explained on countless occasions, however, language simply does not exist in the [...]
Comment by Slartibartfast on 12/14 @ 7:45 am #
This is one of those threads that has gone dead before its time, I think.
Comment by Patterico on 12/19 @ 1:43 am #
Pablo suggested I post this again:
Jeff Goldstein’s threat of violence:
Jeff Goldstein’s threat of violence:
Jeff Goldstein’s threat of violence:
Jeff Goldstein’s threat of violence:
Jeff Goldstein’s threat of violence:
Jeff Goldstein’s threat of violence:
From: Jeff Goldstein: Arguing “On Point” — With Threats of Violence.
Thanks to Pablo for the suggestion. It’s a good one. Sorta makes it clear who wrote this post.
Comment by Jeff G. on 12/22 @ 12:04 pm #
Reply to Patterico re: “violence” charges here.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 1/25 @ 2:15 pm #
Oh. I think I mentioned Frey’s propensity for dead-horse-flogging, recently. Speak of the devil.
Pingback by Right Wing Nut House » KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL! on 3/29 @ 8:36 am #
[...] Goldstein has been tracking this phenomenon for years. He always explains it better than I: As I’ve explained on countless occasions, however, language simply does not exist in the absence of intent. Intent — the intent to signify — is what turns signifiers into signs, marks into language (and so, potential communication). In an instance where we don’t know the intent of the author or utterer, it is our job as receivers of a communication to try to decode that intent. And that’s because the intent and the message are irrevocably tied together. Which is why when we aren’t interpreting by way of appeals to authorial intent, we aren’t “interpreting” at all. Rather, what we are doing is treating marks as mere signifiers, and then we are attaching to them our own signifieds — in essence, writing our own text. To then turn around and attribute the text we wrote to that author is not only wrongheaded, it is pernicious: after all, we are still privileging intent. It’s just that we have now privileged our own, while attributing that intent to the writer/utterer. [...]