Two days ago, MTV came out with a video that did an excellent job explaining Black Lives Matter. However, if you look at it, you’ll see that it’s downvoted to hell — although it seems like a decent video, it has 24, 084 views and a 75% “dislike” percentage. Visitors may wonder — why? The video actually looks like it’s a helpful, sensible explanation.
For the culprit, you need look no farther than a popular YouTuber named Sargon of Akkad, who downright lies to discredit the helpful video. His video critique, which just came out yesterday, has about 163,000 views as of the time of this writing, and a 97% “like” percentage.
First, the original MTV video discusses the question: Why isn’t Black Lives Matter concerned about Black-on-Black crime?
To answer the question dead on, Francesca (the person in the MTV video) explains that it’s a matter of focus, and that other organizations like Cease Fire are looking into Black-on-Black Crime. The purpose of Black Lives Matter is to eradicate violence from police officers — regardless of their race. It’s a matter of focus. This does not, however, mean that the black community is not concerned about gun violence in its communities — it is. It’s just that the arm of black communities that is Black Lives Matter has a specific goal. If the black community is concerned about gun violence, the question seems pointless — Black Lives Matter is just focused on a subcategory of concern.
Sargon of Akkad ignores this fact, instead stating that the problem is that Black Lives Matter is not concerned about black-on-black crime (ignoring, apparently, that there are black people in law enforcement). But different organizations have different focuses — this is normal. The objection to this is somewhat confusing.
See, what Francesca is doing is showing that criticizing Black Lives Matter for not doing the work of Cease Fire is ridiculous. These are different organizations with different focuses. Good point. And yet, Sargon of Akkad, completely missing the point, continues for the rest of the video criticize Black Lives Matter for not doing that work.
Francesca then stated that black-on-black crime isn’t a thing — meaning that the primary problem is not the skin tone of the people who are killing each other. Her argument for this is that people tend to kill those closest to them, and that black communities cause black people to be in closer proximity to each other. These communities experience institutionalized racism, which causes them to have higher poverty rates, worse education systems, and a higher likelihood of being targeted by police. As a result, the stress in their communities results in more violence. Now, you can say this is wrong all you want, but causes end in effects.
Sargon of Akkad’s outrage over this is somewhat infuriating, because he urges black people to take responsibility for the consequences of other people’s racism. More exactly, he indicates that the poverty, bad education, and targeting by police is primarily black people’s fault. However, if you look at the chicken-egg of this whole thing, racism undoubtedly came first. As we saw in Ferguson, police have generationally marked some primarily black areas as high-crime areas, which has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, we have seen police in black communities frame black people for crimes — as in Walter Scott and others. We know they lie TODAY. What it must have been like before cell phone cameras and when racism was worse is infuriating. When you see your close family members shot and imprisoned unjustly on a regular basis, that makes you hate the law. That’s not to say that there are NO just arrests, but our cell phone cameras indicate that there are far more unjust shootings than there should be. And that problem should be fixed by fair policing that still is not happening.
When you are trapped in a place where the police are your enemies, where poverty and racism makes it more difficult to get a job (and yes, racism does make it more difficult to get a job, whether you have a father or not, and poverty makes transportation, dressing for an interview, time you can afford to use to get a job, etc. more difficult), where your education system leaves you at the wayside, it’s no wonder that you’re more likely to commit crime. Admitting that these are problems is not a cop-out. It’s admitting that these are problems so we can fix them. It is profoundly unfair to tell someone who experiences racism day in, day out that they should take responsibility for problems of education, poverty, and police violence they don’t really have control over.
I mean, do you really think that if black people committed less crime than white people, the police would be in their neighborhoods less often? If so, let’s use a test case. Who suffers more from the war on drugs? Black people. Even though white people take drugs at about the same rate. If we want crime to go down, we need to deal with the systemic racism that prevents black individuals from living with dignity in their communities.
Sargon is wrong when he says that we’re blaming this inequality on something that happened 100 years ago. We’re blaming it on things that are happening now. Even the stats that Sargon cites in his article — 10% of married black families live in poverty and 46% of single mother households live in poverty — are significantly higher than the general population, where “in 2014, 30.6 percent of households headed by single women were poor, while 15.7 percent of households headed by single men and 6.2 percent of married-couple households lived in poverty.” There is still an enormous discrepancy, and yet Sargon treats his statistics as if they PROVE that poverty is black people’s fault, when they do nothing of the sort.
Then, when she says that Black Lives Matter are not saying that blue lives matter less, Sargon goes to a clip of a crowd shouting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!”
But this is blatantly dishonest or, at the least, ignorant, because that group was not Black Lives Matter. It was a rogue march at this point, a split-off group from the Millions March in NYC, who released this statement:
On behalf of the Millions March NYC, we express our deepest condolences to the families of the officers who were killed on Saturday. Our march last weekend was a peaceful outcry that senseless violence in our society is harmful to trust, community, and security. This tragedy is in no way connected to our march, or ongoing protests against police brutality, discrimination, and profiling – and we condemn, and are disappointed with any entity that would try to imply such connection. As New Yorkers, we will continue to march for a peaceful society, where trust between communities and law enforcement is finally achieved.
But Sargon didn’t discuss this, because it didn’t fit with his narrative. These was not a Black Lives Matter protest. That Sargon did this is even more infuriating considering the fact that he is able to separate Cease Fire from Black Lives Matter, but is not able to separate Black Lives Matter from a rogue march.
Sargon of Akkad also says that being a police officer won’t be a choice if Black Lives Matter get their way, citing this clip of a woman discussing ways that community-based solutions could replace the police system. So wait a second — Sargon of Akkad (earlier in the video) says that the police system is bonkers in the United States, but doesn’t support an overhaul in the way we go about law enforcement? In addition, this is just one person — the official website says nothing about getting rid of police. And yet, Sargon of Akkad treats this woman as if she represents the entire BLM movement.
Sargon of Akkad then states that most police shootings of black people are justified. Really? I’m not so sure. Other countries have managed to avoid shooting their citizens at the rate the United States does.
I mean, Richmond — which is a fairly active city — managed not to kill nearly as many people when the police tried to get involved in their community. As a 2014 article noted:
A spate of high-profile police shootings nationwide, most notably the killing of a black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, has stoked intense scrutiny of deadly force by officers and driven a series of demonstrations across the nation and the Bay Area. But in Richmond, historically one of the most violent cities in the Bay Area, the Police Department has averaged fewer than one officer-involved shooting per year since 2008, and no one has been killed by a cop since 2007.
Many observers and police officials attribute Richmond’s relatively low rate of deadly force to reforms initiated under Chief Chris Magnus, who took over a troubled department in this city of 106,000 in 2006. Magnus implemented a variety of programs to reduce the use of lethal force, including special training courses, improved staffing deployments to crisis situations, thorough reviews of all uses of force and equipping officers with nonlethal weapons such as Tasers and pepper spray.
“Our officers are used to dealing with individuals who are dangerous and, often, armed,” Magnus said. “It’s not an aberration — the scary and challenging is routine — and I think that gives them the familiarity to know what level of force to apply.”
So I’m not at all sure that deadly force is necessary in quite as many cases. We also know that police lie in several cases — the few times we’ve caught them have been when someone happened to have a cell phone camera on. And again…places like Richmond show that it is possible to run a police department in a violent area without killing anyone for seven years.
He also blames criminal pasts for black people unable to get a job, when that’s not remotely the case. In fact, as the end of this article notes, studies have shown that black men without a criminal record were as likely to get a job as white men who had just gotten out of prison.
That’s not their fault. That’s racism.
Then he brings up Black Lives Matter as allegedly saying that they want other people dead — which, again, was not an official BLM statement or an official statement of any black organization, and was a statement that was soon apologized for Millions March in NYC even though they had nothing to do with it.
He also states that it’s not hard to find black people who think white lives don’t matter.
True. It’s also not hard to find white people who think that black lives don’t matter, even though he says he hasn’t heard one person say that black lives do not matter.
Here’s one of hundreds of thousands of videos:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac0BxACky5w[/youtube]
But again, that is not Black Lives Matter’s position. It’s a red herring. It has less to do with the video defending BLM than the Neo-Nazi video above has to do with Sargon of Akkad.
He repeats his points, again, about how black people are shot for legitimate reasons. I already discussed that above — police lie, and places as violent as Richmond, California have found out how to avoid killing people for seven years in a row — and somehow police frequently avoid shooting violent white people all the time.
Racism is alive and well, and when people like Sargon of Akkad try to bend over backwards to prove otherwise, they have to use anecdotes and lies. And people want to believe them so badly that they fail to hear Black Lives Matter’s actual message.
It’s a pity that lying YouTubers are handy to help them bury their heads in the sand. Ah, well.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
Oh, here’s the video, if you want to see it without that awful commentary and maybe give it a thumbs-up.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ_0bqWKO-k[/youtube]
Makes sense, doesn’t it? Image via Johnny Silvercloud under CCL 2.0
It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. However, I would not, by word or deed, attempt to deprive another of the consolation it affords. It is simply not for me. Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels. The springing of the yellow line of morning out of the misty deep of dawn, is glory enough for me.
Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men?
— Zora Neale Hurston
It’s not that I can’t feel anything from prayer. If I’m going to be dead honest, I do still, sometimes, feel a sense of solidarity when others pray these days, even though I’m an atheist. Prayer can make me feel close to loved ones, and the vague sense of deep meditation can give me a feeling of solidarity with religious people. So I don’t really think this lack of feeling is why I don’t pray for Nice.
I don’t pray for Nice, fundamentally, because of a principle that isn’t very poetic and may sound a bit bullheaded to some. But to me…the person who drove his truck, screaming “Allahu Akbar” was praying. He was screaming out “God is great!” That is where he got his sense of solidarity, his passion, his life from. I think he may have been connected, through those words, to people he loved deeply and a religion that ran, like mine once did, deep in his blood. He was connected to a vision of an afterlife, and of a God who was going to be there with him even though the world was topsy-turvy, mixed up, and all wrong.
He wasn’t connected to the 80 people he killed or the fifty people he injured. He was connected to God. And I understand that, because I was once more connected to God, loving him deeply and warmly above the millions of people that he supposedly would condemn to eternity in hell.
People become atheists for different reasons. I became an atheist, partly, because it enabled me to love people more. Yes, there was evidence and reason behind my change, but the gas in the engine was a desire to love people deeply and genuinely. I wanted to promote understanding and empathy. Belief in a God who had a hell for some people was in the way of that.
So when I left God, I embraced the parts of people Christianity told me I was not supposed to love. And I want to do that here. I understand what deep, passionate religion feels like. I can imagine it through the eyes of a Christian and, by extension, through the eyes of a devout Muslim. I understand it enough to know that deep devotion to God can keep us from seeing each other or regarding each other as much as we could if we erased religious lines.
But when the religious lines are drawn, I notice that God, once again, becomes more important than people. For example, after the last attack in France, Trump came up with his immigration strategy. No Muslims allowed to travel into the United States. Others, like then-candidates Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, said that only Christians should be admitted. It became clear to me then that the focus on praying to a Christian God in response to Muslim attacks had turned the situation into a Christianity vs. Islam battle. I think that would make things worse. I don’t want a replay of the crusades.
So I choose, instead, to seek love for people across the divide. I’m an atheist. I don’t have any allegiance to anyone’s God, so my shoulder is a free space for anyone, regardless of your religious creed, to cry on. And I can seek comfort in the hugs and sharing of tears from people across the religious landscape. I can connect to all people to try to find ways to stop the killing.
It’s a beautiful thing about being an atheist for me, even in the midst of such crippling sorrow. It’s what I left God for. It lets me embrace our humanity and my fellow travellers in this life span without regard for religion or creed.
So that’s why I don’t pray. I gave up love for God so I’d have more room in my heart for people.
There will be time to come up with solutions that will show our love for each other without respect to religious lines and ideological prejudices that cause such violence in the first place. But for now, I’m working on being an ear to listen, a voice to comfort, and a shoulder to cry on. Regardless of who you are, this atheist has left religious lines to stand with you.
Dr. Jill Stein (who got her MD from Harvard Medical School) does not support homeopathy, contrary to some clickbait headlines. The Green Party does. But not Jill Stein herself.
When asked about homeopathy, she hinted that she was against it by stating:
For homeopathy, just because something is untested doesn’t mean it’s safe. By the same token, being “tested” and “reviewed” by agencies tied to big pharma and the chemical industry is also problematic. There’s a lot of snake-oil in this system. We need research and licensing boards that are protected from conflicts of interest. They should not be limited by arbitrary definitions of what is “natural” or not.
She then stated that the problem is that testing is tied to “big pharma” — leading to distrust of the testing process. The solution, in her mind is to separate the profit motive from testing — not just for homeopathy, but for all medicines. This is not an endorsement of homeopathy — it’s an attempt to diagnose why people are prone to trust homeopathy over more effective treatments, and it uses the issue of people using homeopathy to address the larger problem of medicines testing being tied to profit interests. Her statement that “there’s a lot of snake-oil in the system” ties the issue of homeopathy to other problems in big pharma testing that may decrease trust in medicine and can lead to ineffective treatments.
To say, as some are insisting, that this means that she is in favor of homeopathy is simply not true. As I explained, her viewpoint is far more nuanced.
The Green Party, it is true, does support the homeopathy. They stated once:
We support the teaching, funding and practice of holistic health approaches and as appropriate, the use of complementary and alternative therapies such as herbal medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine and other healing approaches.
When asked about this platform, Jill Stein did admit that it was problematic, and then used it to talk about the larger issue of ensuring that testing is not tied to profit interests:
The Green Party platform here takes an admittedly simple position on a complex issue, and should be improved.
I agree that just because something’s untested – as much of the world of alternative medicine is – doesn’t mean it’s safe. But by the same token, being “tested” and “reviewed” by agencies directly tied to big pharma and the chemical industry is problematic as well. There’s no shortage of snake oil being sold there. Ultimately, we need research and licensing establishments that are protected from corrupting conflicts of interest. And their purview should not be limited by arbitrary definitions of what is “natural.”
Hardly in favor of homeopathy. And her push did lead to some revision of that platform. It now reads:
The Green Party supports a wide range of health care services, including conventional medicine, as well as the teaching, funding and practice of complementary, integrative and licensed alternative health care approaches.
Not even a direct mention of homeopathy there.
By the way, although the party platform of the 2016 Democratic party is still being drafted, the 2016 California Democratic Party — which supposedly is somewhat representative of general attitudes of Democrats — states the following:
California Democrats will…support generally accepted holistic healing practices and alternative medicine, particularly those areas licensed by the state such as acupuncture and medical cannabis and utilized to relieve intractable pain without the side effects of conventional controlled drugs.
Also, Hillary Clinton herself embraces “functional medicine” via her relationship with Dr. Mark Hyman, which is widely regarded as a form of pseudoscience. This has been covered by The New York Times here . So, whereas, Jill Stein, who has an MD from Harvard Medical School, has never directly supported the quackery of pseudoscience, Clinton has actually engaged in using it.
Hopefully this set the record straight.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me do what I do.
Although I’ve pissed off a few anti-SJW’s as of late, I have never labeled myself an SJW. I just am a guy who is looking at evidence and seeing if claims make sense. And a bunch of claims some anti-SJW guys made in a recent video simply…don’t.
Here’s the ridiculous video, for reference, and it includes YouTubers like The Amazing Atheist, Cult of Dusty, Sargon of Akkad, Atheism is Unstoppable, Undoomed, Armoured Skeptic, Chris Ray Gun, and others. It’s…yeah.
1. Why do you claim to speak for LGBT people, women, and ethnic minorities but when lgbt people, women, and ethnic minorities disagree with you, you harass them?
That’s the problem with so many of these questions — I need to see examples to figure out what they’re talking about.
But I’ll try anyway to diagnose what they might THINK is a problem. Generally I, like many thinking people who get labeled SJWs, try to represent overall trends, as far as I can, in a given marginalized group. So there are always going to be some people in the group who are outliers, and sometimes I might say, honestly, that they seem to be outliers. Is that what you’re getting at? I’m not sure that would be “harassing” though — the closest I get to “harassing” is a conversation in which I try to figure out why they have different views from so many in their position.
And I generally don’t claim to speak for other minorities. I usually just share what I’ve heard from them when I’m engaged in conversations about important issues that affect them.
To the extent that people ARE harassed for disagreement, I would draw lines. I know, as a black man who often gets labeled an SJW for being honest, I have been called out by at least one zealous white person I can remember who labeled me a hateful “racist” against black people for sharing my honest opinion about an issue; I thought that was strange. But this would be a case-by-case deal.
2. Do you realize that your war on language through political correctness has made you bedfellows with true rape culture?
In other words, Islam, the world’s most misogynistic ideology?
What the hell is a “war on language”? Language changes by the month; it’s not some hallowed gift from God that has built-in, unchanging laws. It’s something we made up so that we could get stuff done, and we keep refining it and adding to it so that we can get the stuff done better in society. In that way, language has always been a tool for society, which means that it’s been intertwined with “politics” ever since we started negotiating and interacting with each other. This characterization seems to me like someone complaining because a cave man is going beyond grunts and using more complex words because he finds it more helpful. These changes have developed language, not demolished it, over the past 20,000 years or so. That’s why labeling these constant changes in language a “war on language” seems like nonsense.
So let’s discuss the UTILITY of how language is changing, because it’s illogical and clearly ignorant to state that the mere fact that language is changing is a catastrophe.
Looking closer at the question, I think the problem the questioner is getting at is the more specific word “Islamophobia.” Which, I’ll agree, is a problematic word — “Islam” isn’t a race, and that term conflates the religion with the race. It gives racists the ability to say, “Actually I’m talking about the religion” and religious apologists to say to critics of Islam, “You’re being racist.” It’s not a good word, but it’s what we have for prejudice against middle eastern cultures, currently, so we use it. I would be in favor of a different word, though, due to the confusion it generates.
But you have to take the problem dead-on instead of talking around it and misdiagnosing it, like this question does.
3. Do you want women to be equal or do you want women to be a protected class?
You can’t have both.
If you expect society to be treat women as equal with men, why don’t women have to take responsibility for their own safety?
This question didn’t make sense to me, at first. The writer doesn’t seem to know what a “protected class” is.
OK. Let’s bring school in session.
A “protected class” is “a characteristic of a person which cannot be targeted for discrimination.” Like, you can’t refuse to serve me simply because I’m black, because race is a “protected class.” You shouldn’t be able to refuse to serve a woman because she’s a woman, because sex is a “protected class.” Literally, the phrase “protected class” as people in the know usually use it means equal. So at first I did a double-take.
But that’s not what he means. I think he means this: Should we treat women as equal, or should we see it as necessary to protect them? Which is still a ridiculous question. You may still need accommodations to function in society that others do not require. That doesn’t mean that you’re unequal any more than a disabled person is a second-class citizen for needing a ramp.
I would, however, like to argue with one of these white men about whether needing protection makes you less than equal. One stipulation: It has to be under a hot Texas sun at midday — no shade, no sunscreen “protection.” And the first person begging for aloe vera loses. Equality, right?
4. What are you afraid will happen when you leave your “safe space”?
While I am probably more in favor of open discourse than others who get labeled “SJWs,” I think that a “safe space” is sometimes necessary for understanding some marginalized groups. What happens outside of that “safe space”? Those marginalized in culture have to put on masks, pretend that things don’t bother them that do, and try to follow social expectations that silence their honest views and expression of their experiences. I want to know what the reality is beyond those expectations, and that sometimes only happens when people feel they can let go and trust.
I think we all have safe spaces. You don’t tell the same things to your boss and coworkers that you would to your family or to your closest friends. And that’s just part of life. It’s fine.
If this is in reference to “safe spaces” at universities — that’s complicated. I think universities are marketplaces of ideas, so on the one hand I think several ideas and honest exchanges should be encouraged. But I also think they are a battleground of ideas, so I think that ideas — including ones we disagree with — should duke it out. This does not mean all ideas are equal, though, so there has to be a winnowing process. The Nazi party might be able to visit, but it’s probably not a good idea to have a vocal Nazi teaching a class on race relations. Like I said, this is complicated and would have to be discussed on a case-by-case basis.
5. How can you possibly justify the idea that it’s somehow racist to disagree with black lives matter?
And yet it’s not racist when a black person tweets something like, “kill all white people.”
Because “racist” has two different meanings, at least. I know many do not like that and think it’s a cardinal sin to the language. That doesn’t mean that there is one way that academia and most encyclopedias would define “racism” (read this — no, really, before you cry bloody murder, read it) and another way it’s used most of the time in everyday communication (especially in white culture).
It may be racist to disagree with Black Lives Matter insofar as that disagreement perpetuates institutional racism — the setup that ensures black people continue to be treated like second-class citizens based on the color of their skin.
It is racist, in a matter of speaking, when a black person tweets “kill all white people” — but if that tweet is not ensuring that white people continue to be treated like second-class citizens, it is not racist according to the sociological definition.
Yeah, I know people don’t like the distinction of the scholarly, encyclopedia-length definition. But it’s basically the difference between your employee saying “You’re fired” and your employer saying “You’re fired.” Technically, both of them “fired” you. But if you look at the overall effect, only the employer’s “You’re fired” actually ended in you being fired. Technically, both prejudice against blacks and prejudice against whites can be, according to Webster (as opposed to the encyclopedia) “racism.” But if you look at the overall effect, only prejudice against blacks (with few exceptions in the United States) results in them actually being treated, on a mass scale, as second-class citizens.
But that might be too nuanced for this video. Anyways, it’s still the answer to the question.
6. Are you aware the present is not the past?
Are you familiar with the concept of linear time?
Because you seem incredibly comfortable traveling back through time by talking about how bad things were for women, or black people, or whomever. And then by using some form of SJW magic, you then claim or imply that those problems in the past exist today.
Are you aware that this trick that you’re doing is not working? Why do you think that would work?
Again with the vagueness. It’s hard to know how to address this question without more specifics, but I’ll try.
First, I’m going to have to take a closer look at this “SJW magic” concept. What is that?
Could it be that the stats showing racism have revealed trends that go back decades? Basically, the past repeats itself, and by understanding the past, we can understand the present.
If we’re trying to solve a current problem, it helps to know how the problem was made. That’s not a trick. That’s just realizing that those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it.
We don’t just “claim or imply” those problems in the past exist today — we show clear trends, and then discuss the stats that reveal those trends. Most the time.
It’s just that people like this questioner insist on looking at problems without context, like the defendant at the murder trial who says, “She’s dead now, jury. Who cares what happened in the past?” If we’re going to remedy the present, we need to know what memories and experiences have led us as a society and as individuals to perform current behaviors.
7. Why do you think that you can spend your entire life in a state of perpetual emotional immaturity?
Do you actually imagine that you’ll be able to stretch out your adolescence for your entire existence?
You have to wonder if these guys are looking in the mirror, because I thought “emotional immaturity” was living with a diminished sense of empathy, or with a lack of awareness and care about how your actions affected others. Maturity looks out for less advantaged people, in my view. Immaturity shows less nuance and seeks to claim superiority over everyone it can bully, and like a schoolyard bully immature people label others as “weak” instead of seeking to understand or empathize.
What I think this question is referring to, more seriously, is people who have a hard time coping with life. But adults have a hard time coping with life all the time. There’s no God who says that’s not OK (no, the white men in the video aren’t God — who died and made them the king of anything?). Mental health is important, and keeping yourself mentally healthy is a sign of maturity and experience, not of immaturity. And the fact that you struggle with your mental health doesn’t make you immature. It makes you someone who struggles with your mental health. Where are these value judgments coming from?
More exactly and more honestly, I kinda think “immature” is simply a word people use when someone is doing something they don’t like, so this question seems largely meaningless to me. But I tried to make it make some semblance of sense so I could give some semblance of an answer.
8. Did you know there are 13% more women in college right now than men?
So if the whole goal of feminism is “equality,” shouldn’t we have some men-only scholarships in order to equal everything out?
Wait…more women are going to college than men, and women still make less than men, on average? Yes. Yes. Yes. The pay gap is a thing. You don’t think so? Watch this:
That’s bull. Maybe that’s why so many women are in college. Yes, for you doubters, the wage gap is still a thing, even when you take into account different career choices. Get back to me when the playing field is truly equal.
9. If feminism and egalitarianism are both about equal rights, than why does one start with a gendered prefix while the other one is entirely gender neutral?
Semantics. We’re arguing semantics. *sigh*
“Feminism” is called “feminism” because females have historically — at least in the United States — been treated as second-class citizens. So they were the ones originally (and still) fighting for equal rights between the sexes; the men weren’t interested. They got in first, so they got dibs on the name. Like, that’s literally what happened. And although there’s a push towards renaming feminism “gender studies,” it hasn’t caught on. Language is slow like that.
What I’m really, honestly trying to figure out (not being sarcastic at all) is what, exactly, this question is supposed to prove. Really. It just…what is the point of this cheap semantic claptrap?
10. What do you hope to gain by bringing back racial segregation?
Wait…who is trying to bring back racial segregation? What? Oh…wait. You mean the BLM protests? That happens because people want to be heard. They want white individuals to listen instead of taking over the podium. Now, you may not agree with that, but the end goal is not segregation. The end goal is respect.
I think this is somewhat important to underline. If you listen and show you’re listening and empathizing, you’ll see that the major goal is not segregation so much as it is understanding — which is denied when black individuals are gawked at and dismissed because of the misperception that they are just a “victim cult” making up fake grievances.
Again, the point isn’t segregation. The point is to ensure black voices are heard and respected. You may not agree that this is a noteworthy goal for black individuals to pursue, but don’t misconstrue it as an attempt toward racial segregation.
11. When my grand-uncle was dropping bombs on London, did your grandparents get out of their bunkers in the morning to protest with signs that read, “Not all Nazis”?
If this is a reference to Islamic terrorists being “not all Muslims,” it’s not remotely equal. Nazis and Muslims aren’t the same thing. Nazis were racist and had, as a group, hatred of non-Arians — almost all of them were extremists. This does not seem to be the case with Muslims, as only a small number (one in ten in the United States) say that violence in the name of Islam is ever justified. And again — unlike Nazism, Islam does not have race hatred as an essential part of its platform.
12. Why do you think every cis white male is born racist?
Racism is a learned behavior.
Wat? This question doesn’t make any sense.
We don’t think anyone is born racist. And yes, racism IS a learned behavior. In America we have a long and thriving and continuing history of teaching it particularly well. That’s the entire point of fighting it. If it was an essential part of you, why bother? You’d be racist regardless of what we did.
13. How can you possibly say that the phrase “All Lives Matter” is somehow racist?
It sounds like someone the Dalai Lama would say.
When I was marching through Fort Worth with some protestors a few days ago, we (mostly black people) chanted, “All lives matter.” The message was clear and different than shouting “all lives matter” at people yelling “black lives matter.”
If you don’t believe me, try to get BLM to chant “ALL lives matter” during the eulogies of the five police officers killed. The same people who seem to think that “all lives matter” is as innocent as kumbaya will insist that it’s inconsiderate in that context.
Let’s be honest. The real problem is not so much the words, but the context that is saying, “Don’t be sad about those deaths in particular, because they matter as much as every other death.” How would you feel if someone said that at your close relative’s funeral? Forget whether or not that’s “racist.” It’s just rude.
14. Would you rather be right, or popular?
It seems like your primary objective is to score social points and get public validation.
You speak publicly in the same way that people write their dating profiles.
Stop trying to demonstrate how awesome you are, and get real.
Ad hominem. This seems like something someone would say when they can’t understand how someone could honestly hold the position they do. Let’s discuss veracity of claims instead of doubting sincerity at the start (but if we are going to discuss sincerity, I’ll let you know — it’s been clear to me from personal conversations I’ve had that some in this video openly admit that a major reason they make the arguments they do is to be popular. I mean, look at the “like” bar on the video).
15. So if a drunk man sleeps with a drunk woman, the woman is incapable of giving consent.
But the man is?
Well, I have not yet been drunk, but my experience in being around drunk people from time to time is that a drunk man is usually stronger and more dangerous than a drunk woman. Also, a man is more likely to rape, in general than a woman, according to the CDC:
In the United States, an estimated 19.3% of women and 1.7% of men have been raped during their lifetimes; an estimated 1.6% of women reported that they were raped in the 12 months preceding the survey. The case count for men reporting rape in the preceding 12 months was too small to produce a statistically reliable prevalence estimate. An estimated 43.9% of women and 23.4% of men experienced other forms of sexual violence during their lifetimes, including being made to penetrate, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and noncontact unwanted sexual experiences. The percentages of women and men who experienced these other forms of sexual violence victimization in the 12 months preceding the survey were an estimated 5.5% and 5.1%, respectively.
An estimated 15.2% of women and 5.7% of men have been a victim of stalking during their lifetimes. An estimated 4.2% of women and 2.1% of men were stalked in the 12 months preceding the survey.
With respect to sexual violence and stalking, female victims reported predominantly male perpetrators, whereas for male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the specific form of violence examined. Male rape victims predominantly had male perpetrators, but other forms of sexual violence experienced by men were either perpetrated predominantly by women (i.e., being made to penetrate and sexual coercion) or split more evenly among male and female perpetrators (i.e., unwanted sexual contact and noncontact unwanted sexual experiences). In addition, male stalking victims also reported a more even mix of males and females who had perpetrated stalking against them.
I think each case should be looked at individually and fairly. And there may be a limited, small number of cases where the woman is the aggressor more than the man; granted. That’s obviously not right, either. But it seems that if someone is crying “rape,” it’s much more likely to be the man’s raping the woman than the other way around. Just the facts, sirs.
16. Is it really easier trying to spend all your life attempting to pacify the world and subdue all around you, instead of accepting that you are the person that has to change?
I’m not interested in pacifying the world. I’m interested in creating environments that don’t condemn people for features they were born with due to attitudes that other people learned. Things about you that come standard and can’t be changed generally should not be marginalized or silenced because of opinions that can.
I can’t change my skin tone, but you can change your racism. So when it comes to this “person who has to change” business, it’s racism that has to change in that case, not my skin.
17. When I sing along with rap music, is it OK if I say the word “nigga”?
My experience is that most people don’t mind in that context. But if you decide not to, it’s going to be seen as an extra step of respect for black culture. It’s like — no, I don’t have to smile and say “thank you, have a nice day!” when the cashier gives me my change. But if I do, that’s an extra sign of respect — and you shouldn’t be surprised if I get treated better than someone who silently takes it.
18. How do you reconcile your opinion that gender doesn’t matter or even exist with your need to invent new genders each day?
I think this displays a high level of ignorance, from what I’ve seen. It’s not like we say gender doesn’t exist. It’s that you have the right to express yourself as the gender in society that most resembles who you feel yourself to be, and still be treated fairly.
Frankly, I really don’t see how that’s a problem outside of individual people’s complexes about forcing people into neat, binary categories.
19. In your version of equality will white men ever have a voice in society or will white men always be too privileged to participate in discussion?
What, white men can’t participate in discussion? How many people have watched this video so far? What does this even mean?
In case you haven’t noticed, white men can participate in discussion now (cf. this video, which has a few hundred thousand views). It’s basically a matter of figuring out — via studies and data — whether they have a voice so loud that they silence other individuals in society, to society’s collective detriment. If data from studies indicate a more level playing field, so should — at least in my mind (although I wouldn’t presume to speak for everyone) — their opportunity to speak.
We’re not saying, so far as I can tell, that white men can’t speak, just that other people should be given the respect to speak, too. And yes, sometimes that means telling white men to shut up. Because everyone can’t speak all the time and listen all the time, equalizing the playing field means that white men may need to spend a bit less time speaking and a bit more time listening. Because being a white man doesn’t give you a monopoly on knowledge, and sometimes loud insistence may be needed to drive that point home.
20. What makes you think that the power of censorship that you are so desperately trying to establish now will at no point be used against you?
I’m not a fan of censorship. I do think that individual companies, individuals, and organizations should have the ability to block, distance themselves from, or decide to block themselves from views they do not wish to endorse (as long as they are acting within the law to do so), and I think this is fair thinking regardless of which views one holds.
21. Why is it that if a woman dresses sexy or even topless in public you support it, but if a female video-game character is dressed sexy, then you want her clothed more modestly?
My understanding is that this is a critique of Anita Sarkeesian. Now, I don’t keep up-to-date with all the drama regarding this person in the anti-SJW community, but my understanding is that Anita Sarkeesian is interested in helping the video game industry work with gaming culture in a way that will prompt more women to participate. Which I don’t think is a bad thing.
Plus, there is an obvious profit motive here, which is why, I understand, Anita gets paid a bunch of money. Women may not be as interested in playing games with male leads that treat women as one-dimensional characters there for men’s amusement alone — they may be more interested in playing video games in which women are multi-dimensional characters and are as important story characters as the men in gaming culture. The whole goal is to make gaming culture as appealing for women as it is for men, as I understand it.
So it’s not as simple as dressing women more modestly. It’s about giving women more agency, respect, and independent personalities in video games — like they, arguably, already have on the beach.
22. What is your favorite song to sing really loud when you’re confronted with a different point of view?
Depends on what the point of view is. If it’s a white-power Nazi screaming that I should die I personally prefer, “Shut up.”
Like…seriously. Not sure what to do with these joke questions.
23. Why are you afraid of dissenting opinions?
Your continued attempts to silence all opposition, either by smearing them publicly, or labeling their content as “hate speech” and having it removed, only serves to insulate your bubble even more and maintain your echo chamber.
It also prevents you from taking on new information and hearing different points of view.
Different points of view that are sometimes superior to yours.
Which tends to happen whenever I talk.
*sigh* I hear few original thoughts from anti-SJWs.
For the most part, it’s not that people are afraid of them so much as that we’re tired of hearing them.
For example, I’m tired of Christians telling me I’m an evil person condemned to burn in hell for the rest of my life. So yeah, I smear that view publicly, and these people generally aren’t my close friends. It’s not that I’m afraid of taking on new information. It’s that the information isn’t new and I’m tired of what it does to my standing as an atheist in society — even if they do think their theories of my hellbound nature are superior to the way I see myself.
And as far as having it removed — private companies like YouTube are not obligated to host people and views on their site that they do not like. Saying they are is a rather strange form of entitlement. You’re not censored if you’re taken off of YouTube. You just have to find another place that’s OK with uploading hate speech. You may not make as much money, but — news flash — nobody’s obligated to give you money, either, especially for content they don’t like.
24. What is reverse racism? Like, what the actual fuck is it?
It’s just racism, right?
“Reverse racism,” usually refers to prejudice towards a race that is treated better by society’s institutions. It’s an overcorrection. So, for example, suppose police find out that studies show they’re pulling over black people more than white people, due to racism. “Reverse racism” would be an overcorrection, where they start disproportionately pulling over white people, instead. You can find an actual example of this kind of thing in action here. No, really, check it out. And while you’re at it, here are over 4,700 other scholarly articles discussing the term. I know you hate it, but the term exists in language.
Is it OK that I gave you an actual answer to your question, or was it just supposed to be rhetorical?
25. Do any of you people actually remember all the pronouns?
You know the list, right? The one with 76 fucking genders.
No, I don’t. But if I have a friend, I call them the pronoun they want to be called. Because they’re my friend. Like…really. Who are you — God? — to determine that there has to be a limited number of pronouns? People are different; so what. My understanding is that few of these are used, anyway, in real life (as opposed to online), so it seems a bit of an exaggeration.
26. Why do you feel entitled to control what artists and entertainers are allowed to express?
Why do you think your sensibilities should be placed above the sensibilities of actual creators?
Because you alone are not the sole creators. You have an audience that has a right to give feedback and judge the value and appropriateness of your creation. You also have a platform that can decide whether it wishes to host your creation or not. Neither is obligated to sign on to endorse your creation.
27. Have you ever considered that using the terms “racism” and “sexism” as haphazardly as you do to describe everything under the sun that makes you feel uncomfortable devalues the word to the point that it actually hurts the people who actually suffer from real racism and real sexism?
Have you ever fucking thought of that?
No.
Because we have this really cool word called “more.” Something can be more sexist or more racist. Or much more sexist or much more racist. Or extremely sexist or extremely racist. Here’s a question: Have you ever thought about how invalidating examples of racism and sexism by pointing out worse cases doesn’t actually solve the problem? Have you realized that a worse wrong doesn’t make a right, and that pointing out worse problems doesn’t solve the original problem? If someone takes a shit in my Pizza, I don’t want them to say I should just take it because it would have been worse if the shit was bloody and filled with diseases. When is that a solution for anything?
If we call out racism and sexism in general, then we can start recognizing and dealing with all forms of it instead of continually setting the bar higher and higher till we’re saying that segregation is no big deal because REAL racism is lynching. Rather, we can say that segregation is wrong, therefore lynching is wrong, not that lynching is worse, and therefore segregation doesn’t matter. I KNOW that’s an example from the past. I’m trying to point out a general principle that shows why this is ridiculous logic.
That’s enough for one day.
Thank you for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
Around the time of the Sandra Bland death, I was at a car repair shop, waiting in the sitting room, watching a show on Netflix on my phone at eye level. Directly in front of me, at the counter, was a police officer. As a black man around law enforcement, I was wary of this officer. Not tremendously — I mean, I didn’t have anything to be afraid of. But slightly on guard. This feeling grew when he began looking my way furtively, somewhat nervously, on guard.
It took me a couple seconds for me to realize that he thought I was recording him with my phone camera. I shifted the camera away, and we looked each other in the eyes. He nodded, understanding, and I nodded back, understanding, as we looked each other dead in the eyes. We never said a word, and it lasted about half a second, but I learned more in that half-second than I have in hundreds of arguments on the Internet and articles I’ve read. Because I saw his life in his eyes, and he seemed to see my life in his.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.
A few days ago, I saw a video taken by Lavish Reynolds of a man shot several times in the chest, bleeding. The man was black, like me. He was 32, like me, and his birthday would have been less than a month before mine. Like me, he was respectful to police and had no felonies on his record.
Unlike him I’m not shot, yet. But seeing the blood soak through his clothes as his body lay there, increasingly limp, as the police pointed the gun inside and Lavish Reynolds begged for the dying man to stay alive…it did something to me.
And still, later that day, when I saw Lavish Reynolds talking about how she had been thrown in jail for no reason, without food and water, and how she broke down in tears saying, “That officer’s going to be able to go home to his family and say, ‘Killed another nigger today. I just shot another nigger today.’”
It was powerful. Y’know…I saw the people around her, comforting her, crying with her, and praying for her. I’m an atheist, and I was touched.
What got to me is that we only knew this because there was a video rolling. If there hadn’t have been, people wouldn’t have believed her. Many would question, “Did that really happen, or are you just making it up?” Except, maybe, for her family and other black individuals in the area who knew the way things went down between themselves and law enforcement there. More anger, as had been stored many times before. More people saying, “Fuck the police” because they had seen loved ones silenced by those who were supposed to protect them. Can you imagine that? Your worst enemy being the ones who are supposed to protect you.
Later, in Downtown Dallas, about an hour from where I live, a lone gunman, an army reservist, opened fire on police, saying he wanted to kill white people. He fatally shot five.
My first thought was that it would send this country into a racial tailspin. And sure enough, those who had been mum abut Philando Castile suddenly began talking about police officers, as if the police officers’ death somehow justified Philando Castile’s shooting.
I’ve been thinking about my response to this incident quite a bit. I identify with Philando Castile, a lot. If I get pulled over for a broken taillight, I will be scared as the officer walks up to my car window. I will say, “yes, sir” and “no, sir” as respectfully and nonthreateningly as I can manage. I will follow all his instructions carefully. And I may still get shot.
And I say I’m afraid knowing that the police is afraid, too. We’re looking at each other, trapped in our worlds of fear, and the slightest tweak on either side could lead to a bomb going off.
The way to break it is to have moments like that half-second, where we look at each other in the eyes and understand each other. We have to have serious, honest conversations about race relations in this country.
Or, at least, that’s how the surgeon who treated the police officers felt.
Like me, he understood “the anger and the frustration and the distrust of law enforcement.” The same as I felt. The same as the man who shot the police officers felt.
And what I liked is that he didn’t think the solution was to stop talking about it. The solution was not to close off discourse. The solution, instead, was to start a conversation.
Because as militant as I often appear to be regarding race-related issues, I know that if I don’t talk to people with other viewpoints I will be trapped in my bubble, and if they don’t talk to people of other viewpoints they will be trapped in theirs. We will grow up to be even more segregated as a society, arenas of every-increasing anger.
If you want us to take American society back, we will need to have a conversation. We will need to build understanding. It will not happen overnight. But gradually, maybe we can build trust.
It’s going to take tough conversations. It will take anger and tears. It will take brutal honesty and vulnerability. It will take love, and sometimes even the honest expression of hate so that it can be understood, exposed, and healed.
And it will also take caution. It will take vigilance in keeping the vulnerable safe. It will take careful consideration. It will take an awareness of heritages and histories. It will take respect — especially regarding people we have been told for hundreds of years we should not respect. For many of us black people, that may be the face we see in the mirror.
Because if we don’t do this work, we will fear each other more, we will hate each other more, and eventually angry words will become fights in the streets. We have to talk about this. But we have to talk about it on an equal playing field. We have to respect views we may not be used to respecting. We have to understand and empathize with communities that have been long neglected and thus shielded from understanding. If we don’t, we’ll tear each other apart.
One thing you have to know, to some extent, is that many of us are scared. As the surgeon stated:
“I want the police officers to see me, a black man, and understand that I support you, I will defend you, and I will care for you. That doesn’t mean that I do not fear you. That doesn’t mean that if you approach me, I will not immediately have a visceral reaction and start worrying for my personal safety. But I’ll control that the best I can, and not let that impact how I deal with law enforcement.”
Friday night, I marched through a Fort Worth street shouting with a crowd of 40 to the surrounding police, “Protect us. Serve us. Don’t shoot us.” That’s still our plea. We want the police to protect us. We don’t want the police to be there to disproportionately protect one skin tone. We want to trust and to be trusted. It’s just not very easy right now, for either side.
And it’s really not fair for police to be the only ones to avoid racism and bridge the divide. It’s going to take a bigger conversation. As the surgeon said, “The problem is the lack of open discussions about the race relations in this country.”
It’s not about police. It’s about our entire generation, every ethnicity and profession. No, we are not our parents’ generation. But our parents’ generation had racial tension because their parents had racial tension that they passed down. And we have racial tension because our parents had racial tension that they passed down. We inherit many of their problems. And until we admit that and talk about it, we won’t heal.
That’s just a fact. Do we have to do it? No more than someone with cancer has to go through chemo. But if we don’t, our nation won’t heal.
I hear anxiously from some who ask about a quick fix. This reminds me of a spouse asking for advice on how to get their partner back after 350 years of being unreliable. Think about it.
We thought that slavery’s end would be the answer, and got segregation. We thought voting would be the answer, and got voting tests. We thought segregation’s end would be the answer, and got the war on drugs as an excuse to throw us in prison. We got education, and got segregation — and then when we got rid of segregation in law the continued inequities gave us de facto segregation. We are still, according to every study we have available, second-class citizens. American society has been courting a relationship with us for hundreds of years, brigning flowers each time, only for us to see repeated abuse and betrayal.
I see a lot of resentment from white people who think all black people want is a big present — like flowers. But the fact is that flowers won’t solve the problem of 350 years of unreliability. What will is patience, understanding, empathy, and a track record that grows into a mutual love across the divide, and eventually becomes trust. As Obama said recently, this may not happen in his lifetime or mine or even our children’s. But we can make things better now, and we can make things better a hundred years from now. Or we can keep things the same, or worse.
The difference is in whether we talk about it, instead of ignoring it. Ignoring it will make the problem worse; it won’t go away. We need to have open, honest discussion. We can start here. What do you think the state of race relations is in the United States?
Thank you for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me do what I do.
I’d like to tell you the story of how The Amazing Atheist (TJ Kirk), who has publicly criticized me repeatedly for my claim that he has made racist statements, backed out of a debate. Not just refused. Backed out, after he said he would debate if I met certain conditions (which I met). He didn’t back out because of logistics. He backed out because he did not want to defend his side of the debate.
To back out because you don’t like the question at the outset is one thing. But this wasn’t the case — he AGREED to the subject of the debate, at first, pending my fulfillment of logistical requirements he set up. Why chicken out when all his conditions were met?
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s start at the beginning.
On June 29th, I wrote a blog post calling The Amazing Atheist racist for saying black culture was “almost a victim cult.” I had seen a video and was upset by it. I honestly wasn’t expecting more than the usual 2000 people or so to read it.
He responded to that blog post with another video doubling down on the claim and saying that black culture wasn’t merely ALMOST a victim cult — it WAS a victim cult. He also criticized my first blog post with a 32 minute video, in which he looked at it line by line.
I answered back with another blog post detailing why I thought his second comment was more racist than the last. I included facts, data, and so on.
He read it. Then, in response, he started a pm conversation on Facebook that went on for five hours (I’ve now talked with The Amazing Atheist about six times more than I’ve ever talked with Steve Shives in my life). This discussion eventually ended with neither of us convincing the other, although we knew each other’s position better.
Still, afterwards, he mentioned me AGAIN in a video in which he discussed his grievances with Steve Shives, despicably stating that I called him racist without discussing any of the context.
During this time, I noticed that people on my blog, on reddit, and elsewhere stated that I should have a debate with The Amazing Atheist. Personally, I appreciate the chance to defend a position that I still hold, especially when it is being criticized by over a million subscribers in an arena where I can do little to talk back.
Initially, I realized that I do not want to talk about it on The Amazing Atheist’s channel for free. I know that criticizing me has, all told, probably made him over $1500, total, so far — all of it going towards supporting the very views I am so strongly against (for those who say I’m in this just for the money, please know that, in contrast, I could probably make more, with the time I’ve spent on this, working a minimum wage job). A debate on his channel would have him as my employer and likely make a view I disagree with earn over $1000 more, plus get him more subscribers and make me directly responsible for making his channel even more prominent.
At first, I was open to doing the debate on his channel, still, if he compensated me for my time. But then the idea of being his employee was a sour taste in my mouth, and I realized that this shouldn’t be about the money, and I was also a bit disturbed by the attitude voiced by his statement (however half-joking it was) that “I love to have black men serve me,” so I took the monetary aspect out by proposing a debate on a third-party site (I proposed one, but was open to other suggestions).
At first he turned it down:
Martin Hughes challenged me to a debate (but tried to stipulate I can’t make money off it). I countered with a winner-take-all thumb war.
But in conversations after sending that tweet he seemed to change his mind and said that I could debate him — so long as it was face-to-face, where I could look him in the eye. I said, “no problem.”
That wasn’t quite true.
Not because I was afraid of sitting in front of him face-to-face, but because the closest he was going to be to me in the next month would have been seven hours away at the end of July, and the end of July is, financially and logistically, pretty close to the most inconvenient time of the year for me to travel.
But I felt I had to do it, somehow, or he would say I was too chicken to meet him face to face, giving him an out not to have the debate (not sure this was his intent, though — in any case, why it had to be face to face, I’m not sure).
So I jumped through hoops and figured out travel arrangements.
He also asked me to come up with a debate format. I came up with one that seemed fair, and presented to him. Then I waited for his confirmation before getting the plane ticket…
After waiting for his confirmation for several hours, he called it off.
His reason?
He stated that he would not defend the idea that he wasn’t racist in a debate. To be exact, though, the debate is not about whether HE is racist; it’s about whether the blanket statement “black culture is a victim cult” is racist.Which seems strange to me, as he defended it as not racist on his show without me there. But the moment I proposed answering back…he backed down.
This refusal seems strange to me, as he defended the concept that this statement wasn’t racist several times on his show without me there. The moment I proposed answering back, and jumped through all the hoops he set up…he backed down.
The offer is not closed, I have a standing offer to raise $500 for the charity of The Amazing Atheist’s choice if he agrees to the debate (a donation, based on previous offers to help in travel expenses for my debate with The Amazing Atheist, I should be able to raise in the matter of a couple hours, if not seconds), in an echo of his criticism of Steve Shives in which he said at 16:00 here — “Shives has been ferociously critical of Sargon of Akkad, who once offered to donate $1000 to a feminist charity if Steve would simply agree to a public discussion regarding their differences. Steve of course refused to do this.”
So far The Amazing Atheist has continued to refuse that offer, even with the charity money involved.
Now, you might not agree that the blanket claim that “black culture is a victim cult” is a racist statement. OK. We can discuss that separately. But isn’t it a bit disturbing that someone who talks about the importance of communication across ideological lines would back down from a debate challenge AFTER he seems to consent to it? Someone who repeatedly criticizes “sjw’s” for not debating him…why won’t he follow his own principles?
Maybe he knows that saying the blanket statement, “black culture is a victim cult” might sound racist to several people if he had to talk about it with someone who could talk back.
Or maybe he’s just a coward or hypocrite.
In any case, I’m not running; he is. I’m still here.
My commitment is to breaking barriers of understanding, to bridging divides, and I’ll keep writing to try to do that. I can’t do everything, but I’ll try to help where I can.
Thank you for reading the barrierbreaker blog.
P.S. I know some TAA supporters might be skeptical that this is the way things went down. As evidence it is, he tweeted the article here. And regarding this being unreliable as a creationist, see my evidence for otherwise here, here, here, and here. He has opinions. I have peer-reviewed studies. And he thinks I’M the creationist here? If you believe that, what can I say? You’re really a die-hard fan.
P.P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
I watched The Amazing Atheist video on Steve Shives recently, as he promised me that it had me in it, as I’ve accused him of being racist based on his blanket insistence that black culture is a victim cult.
Most of the video concentrated on Shives’s blocking policy.
Now, someone’s blocking policy is their own deal. However, I do remember that, about a year ago, I was blocked by Greta Christina. If you type “blocked by Greta Christina” into Google, that blog post (from my old Barrierbreaker blog) is the first one that comes up.
Personally, I believe in discourse. I believe in open communication. I have not attempted to encourage anyone to flag TJ Kirk’s video. I am for free discourse. This is why I kept my comment thread open. You are free to comment if I agree or disagree. I responded to several of you and included you in conversation.
This is why I engaged in over five hours of interpersonal discussion with TJ Kirk himself.
This is why I did not ignore his objections and his fans’ objections. I defended my points against them.
I want to make one thing clear. I’m not a blogger who can be convinced by intimidation.
You can threaten to sue me. You can sic a million subscribers on me. You can try to bully me. You can try to take me to task in videos viewed by hundreds of thousands of fans. You can try your best to intimidate me because, as a small-time blogger, I dared to be honest with the way he saw your video.
But this, together, will not change my mind.
I will only be convinced by reason and evidence, not by TJ Kirk’s everyday claim of victimhood due to an attack by an atheist with a fraction of his subscribers. And I’m not convinced. I’ve said repeatedly why (see links at the end).
So I’ll say it again, clearly: TJ Kirk’s stance that black culture is a victim cult is racist.
I just got back from a rally in which we marched through streets screaming out to our fellow residents of Downtown Fort Worth that our concerns will be heard. And that does something to you. It gives you courage. The fear was high — I live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so we were afraid of retaliation. Anyone could come over and shoot into us as we marched through. And yet we marched.
And afterwards, we talked. We talked about taking the fact that we have been treated as second class citizens seriously. We talked about how we cannot afford to stay silent. We talked about how we had to come together and protect the legitimacy of our real experiences. We talked about how to stay alive. We talked about how to vote. We talked, as a group, how to solve the problems facing us. Pastors said that their pulpits would be empty Sunday morning so that they could march. Over they said that they needed to plan because prayer was not enough. They needed to take action. They were doing the hard work of organizing. And this wasn’t the first time – this was a longtime system in place.
And they planned on doing it again the next morning. And again that night — in two events. And again the night after that.
And I saw, firsthand, that dismissing us as a “victim cult” was the racist attitude we were fighting so hard against. And when people are giving their lives because of this lie, it has to be fought.
So if you add it all up, the African-American and Hispanic population who make up only 30 percent of the general population make up more than half of the incarcerated population. Now, these are facts.
And when incidents like this occur, there’s a big chunk of our fellow citizenry that feels as if because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same. And that hurts. And that should trouble all of us.
This is not just a black issue. It’s not just an Hispanic issue. This is an American issue that we should all care about, all fair- minded people should be concerned.
This isn’t a matter of us comparing the value of lives. This is recognizing that there’s a particular burden that is being placed on a group of our fellow citizens and we should care about that. And we can’t dismiss it.
We can’t dismiss it.
So let me just end by saying I actually genuinely, truly believe that the vast majority of American people see this as a problem that we should all care about. And I would just ask those who question the sincerity or the legitimacy of protests and vigils and expressions of outrage, who somehow label those expressions of outrage as quote- unquote, “political correctness,” I just ask folks to step back and think, what if this happened to somebody in your family?
How would you feel? To be concerned about these issues is not political correctness. It’s just being American and wanting to live up to our best and highest ideals.
And it’s to recognize the reality that we’ve got some tough history and we haven’t gotten through all of that history yet. And we don’t expect that in my lifetime, maybe not in my children’s lifetime, that all the vestiges of that past will have been cured, will have been solved, but we can do better.
I wonder what TJ Kirk thinks of Obama’s comments with his, “black culture is a victim culture” rhetoric. Ask him. Tell me what he tells you — if he’s up to the task of answering.
We do not fix the problem by ignoring it or dismissing it. We fix the problem by recognizing it and fighting to fix it.
Unlike TJ Kirk, I’m going to work to do better. Not by blocking. But by engaging in a public conversation. I’m not just walking away, because, as I learned at the march on city hall I just came from, I am depending on it, my city depends on it, my county, state, and country depend on it.
Part of TJs “Victim Cult” I joined in solidarity tonight
So far, he’s attacked Steve Shives. He attacked my original blog post, but he did not attack my follow up posts. He had time — he engaged in five hours of private conversation concerning them. He just…didn’t challenge me to discuss them in a public forum after the original blog post.
In all fairness, I don’t want to make TJ Kirk more money, directly; I don’t want to bring additional business to his channel, directly. Indirectly is fine — if you criticize me or something I wrote to get business for your channel, that’s one thing, but I don’t want to be directly employed as a moneymaker for him and the Drunken Peasants.
But I find it strange he hasn’t challenged me to debate, as I’ve set up terms before in comment sections.
I’d like to discuss this. Not the side issues. Not the red herrings. Not with his cronies. TJ Kirk and me, man-y-mano. On a Podcast. I propose a third party podcast that is not on either of our channels — Andrew Hall’s Naked Diner Podcast seems an alternative, and they have already offered. Let’s get together and discuss this. Straight up. No bullshit.
His side? I’d like him to defend his claim, often repeated, that his insisting repeatedly that “black culture is a victim cult” is not a racist statement.
He’s made it. He’s condemned me for saying it’s racist repeatedly. He should be able to defend it. And keep an eye on it. Notice if he tries to tweak it because he remotely thinks that’s indefensible, or tries to tweak it to say something like “some of black culture is a victim cult.” He made the statement and doubled down. He should be able to defend it thoroughly, as he made it and doubled down on it in the first couple videos.
I will defend the opposite — that his insistence that “black culture is a victim cult” is a racist statement, in that it is fundamental unhealthy to helping black individuals acquire the rights in society.
He responded with a five hour conversation, and thousands of his fans responded. I responded to them here with satire. And then again here, with an analogy to atheism. And in regard to Philando Castile’s death, I showed how this attitude was harmful here.
So there’s plenty of material to back up my views. We’ve talked privately for five hours. Now we should talk publicly. Man to man. This has gone far enough. It ends here. I’m not running. I’m right fucking here.
On a third party podcast, like the Naked Diner.
I’m throwing down the gauntlet.
Next Friday or Saturday at 7pm.
I just want some back and forth, equal talking time, and for us to stick to the goddamn topic.
He’s defending his claim that “black culture is a victim cult” is not, in any way, a racist statement (keep an eye on if he adjusts it between now and then by softening it — saying he meant “some” or trying to soften it by talking about “to some degree” — that’s not what he said in his original post. It’s right there.).
I’m defending the claim that it is.
This is really what’s at the heart of this. Not the other drama.
Let’s fucking do this.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
The above video is of the aftermath of Philando Castile’s murder by a police officer who shot him when he was putting his hands up after the police officer told him to stop reaching for his license and registration, right after asking for it and being informed by Castile (as he was supposed to do) that he had a gun.
What is frightening here is that we are only taking this case seriously because Philando Castile’s girlfriend. Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds shot video of a cop who was more interested in arguing with her that his shooting was justified then rushing the shot man to the hospital and seeing if he was OK. He was still aiming his gun at Philando Castile’s dying body in the video, as if trying to defend his action. Like so much of white society, his concern was not to help, but to insist his actions were justified, to insist that he was not racist. And what he failed to realize — and what a lot of white society fails to realize — is that nobody cared, at that moment, how goddamn guilty he felt. We didn’t need him to rub his hands anxiously about his white guilt. We needed him to fix the problem.
And he displaced his guilt onto the girlfriend, as if he had to displace it and blame everything on her. SHE was arrested. HE pulled the gun and held it there, pointed in the car after the shot. And instead of rushing the man to the hospital, his white guilt made him point the gun at HER. The problem was her complaining and protesting. The problem is that she was playing a victim and making him feel bad — not that he had just discriminated against a black man, shooting him in cold blood and needed to rush him to a hospital ASAP. And because SHE was the problem, SHE was the one who was taken to jail, without food and water, separated from her kid, with no news of her boyfriend’s fate until 3am the next morning. And this mentality is what leads to the myth that black culture is the problem, because they’re a “victim cult” that is complaining about nothing — an attitude that also is behind the fact that, upon making it to the hospital, the medical staff would have likely thought that he was experiencing less pain than a white person, according to several studies, including this recent one.
And that’s what Philando Castile’s girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds said as she spoke to the press. It’s the exact same deeply destructive and ignorantly racist attack line I’ve been hearing nonstop:
“They took me to jail,” Reynolds said Thursday. “They didn’t feed us. They didn’t give us water. They took everything from me. They put me in a room and separated me from my child. … They treated me like a prisoner. They treated me like I did this to me, and I didn’t, they did this to us.”
It was their fault. Like the everyday experience of white individuals complaining that the real problem is not racist against blacks, but their precious hurt feelings over black people CLAIMING there is racism against them, the comfort did not go to the dying man. It did not go to Lavish Reynolds, who was arrested and put in a cell without food or water or her child just for speaking up and telling the truth. It went to the white police officer:
According to Castile’s uncle, Castile died of his wounds around 9:30 p.m. at the hospital where he was taken after the shooting. According to Reynolds, “nobody checked his pulse” in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Instead, Reynolds said, she was placed in the back of a police car as other officers “soothed” the officer who fired on Castile. “They pulled him over to the side and they began to calm him down and tell him that it was OK and he would get through this,” Reynolds said.
This is the exact attitude I have been fighting against the last few days. For this, I have faced a lot of pushback (in spite of some support). TJ and his fans have told me repeatedly that what is holding black people back is not the destructive racism they experience (which they deny, in spite of events like the above, is really destructive), but their own sensitivity to racism. That they should stop talking about the very real effects racism has on their lives, and start talking about poverty — something more universal that reassures and “soothes” people without forcing them to think about the cruelty racism does in black individuals’ lives — especially as black culture is some kind of “victim cult.”
I have been arguing, in various ways, against this view. The problem is not that black culture is a “victim cult.” The problem is that society stereotypes black culture as a “victim cult” and thus does not take its concerns seriously. The problem will only be solved when black culture is more insistent, not less. When we actually take the concerns of black culture seriously, instead of dismissing them. As Obama put it:
When people say “black lives matter,” it doesn’t mean “blue lives” don’t matter, it just means all lives matter. But right now, the big concern is the fact that data shows black folks are more vulnerable to these kinds of incidents.
This isn’t a matter of us comparing the value of lives – this is recognizing that there is a particular burden that is being placed on a group of our fellow citizens, and we should care about that. We can’t dismiss it. We can’t dismiss it.
I actually, genuinely, truly believe that the vast majority of American people see this as a problem we should all care about. And I would just ask those who question the sincerity or the legitimacy of protests and vigils and expressions of outrage who somehow label those expressions of outrage as quote-unquote ‘political correctness,’ I just ask folks to step back and think, what would happen if this happened to someone in your family? How would you feel?
To be concerned about these issues is not political correctness – it’s just being an American, and wanting to live up to our best and highest ideals, and to recognize that we have some tough history and we haven’t gotten though all of that history yet. And we don’t expect that in my lifetime maybe not in my children’s lifetimes that all the vestiges of that past will have been cured, will have been solved.
But we can do better. People of goodwill can do better. And doing better involves not just addressing potential bias in the criminal justice system, it’s recognizing that too often we’re asking police to man the barricades in communities that have been forgotten by all of us for way too long. In terms of substandard schools, inadequate jobs and a lack of opportunity.
We’ve gotta tackle those things. We can do better. And I believe we will do better.
Maybe, just maybe, dismissing black culture as a “victim cult” is deeply harmful, dangerous, and is thinking that should be thoroughly shunned. Maybe just focusing on crime rates without looking at the causes Obama and millions of others and dozens of studies uncover is not solving the problem.
Maybe this incident is about empathizing with another person as they’re bleeding, dying in a car because he dared to carry a gun (reminding me of part of the reason I, as a black person, don’t dare carry a gun) and follow the officer’s instructions. White people can carry guns. Black people…apparently, the second amendment, for them, is a gray area. And I guess we aren’t supposed to whine about that, right? Just don’t carry a gun. Are we allowed to cry when we got shot for the cardinal sin of having a license to carry a gun and carrying said gun while driving?
And here’s the thing — when I ask people, “Would Philando Castile be alive today if he were white?” there’s a bit of hesitation. Why?
Because we know that racism is involved. In spite of labeling black culture a “victim cult,” people know. They know that when Philando Castile says that her son got shot because “He was just black in the wrong place” she’s right. They just would like to teach black people that they don’t have a right to defend themselves against the brutality of discrimination they face day in, day out. They just want us to “suck it up.”
That’s wrong. As Malcolm X put it, “It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the victim of brutal attacks.”
This is personal. Philando Castile’s story hits home for me. Like me, he was 32 years old (just a month older than me), doesn’t have a long rap sheet, and has a “respectable” job. Like me, he is respectful at police stops. Like me, he tries to follow all the “advice.” I am personally afraid of getting shot now, when I see these headlines and look in the mirror at the color of my skin. And that pisses me off, because regardless of what white society says, I know it’s not supposed to be that way. Standing up and fighting back is not being a member of a victim cult. It is refusing to be part of one.
And if that video hadn’t been taken, this would just be another black man shot. The complaining girlfriend would have just been a member of a “victim cult,” and her arrest at the scene would have been seen as justified. People would have said that Philando Castile was just something black people should accept. Nothing to see here.
When you realize that this happens, even if you do everything right, it does something to you. It does something to me. Why try so hard to respect the police and do everything “right,” if you’re just going to get shot anyway? It makes you wonder if all the excuses they use to mistreat black people who “acted up” in other cases were just that — excuses. It makes you wonder if you are sitting dead in the water no matter what you do.
If the Lavish Reynolds would have come to an atheist meetup influenced by the likes of TJ Kirk’s “victim cult” characterizations of black culture, people wouldn’t really take her claims seriously, if there had been no video. And yet black people who go through this day in, day out, realize that this story makes sense and would feel her pain instead of dismiss it. That’s why the likes of such characterizations should not be embraced by us.
This incident is further proof that white society needs to listen, not dismiss, the concerns of black individuals in this country. And those who say otherwise don’t know what they’re talking about, are making the problem worse, and should not be listened to.
What we need to do is actually engage in the listening that will heal the divide and actually start fixing the problem.
And with that, I’m going to pack up and hold my breath as I drive to work.
Wish me luck.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me keep doing what I do.
Counter-Protesters of the Westboro Baptist Church Bring It In For A Group Hug Image via Jeffrey Smith under CCL 2.0
About a week ago, I watched a video that incensed and depressed me.
It was a video made by The Amazing Atheist, and it was basically an answer to twenty questions from black people. Some of his answers revealed a disturbing degree of misunderstanding and racism.
What disturbed me was not that he made the video. What disturbed me is that so many people supported it. There was about 470,000 views and a 90% like rate. YouTube is one of the first places people go to find out about atheists, and The Amazing Atheist is one of (if not THE) first places people will go on YouTube.
It was an uncomfortable truth. Black people alienated from religious families and coming to atheism would be, it seemed, introduced to a culture that saw black culture as little more than “a victim cult.” That wasn’t willing to listen to their lives or understand their experiences, but was very interested in saying that most of their concerns were made up, no matter how well-documented they were.
So I wrote about it in a post. I honestly didn’t expect the post to get many views. Maybe a few thousand, at the most. But it was worth it, because it would show some other black people out there that they weren’t alone.
The Amazing Atheist, incensed, made a response post insisting that calling black culture “a victim cult” wasn’t racist, among other things. I felt like it was me, against hundreds of thousands of fans. It was a bit intimidating, to be honest.
At least, for the first hour. Then it all changed. And I want to write this to let any member of a marginalized group know that even though people like The Amazing Atheist have plenty of bark and a lot of apparent prominence, there’s a large and prominent atheist community that will have the back of even a random side-blogger who speaks up.
For example…
Steve Shives, a man I respected since he criticized The Case For Christ, contacted me, looking to give me an interview. The support I experienced from him was awesome, and I needed it right after that episode.
Niki Massey wrote about the issue on her blog Seriously?!?. Twice. Both times in support, and we’ve actually found each other online because of this and had a couple awesome conversations.
Chris Hall also made it clear he was standing by me, and even sent a couple people to my Patreon account.
Greta Christina, a fairly prominent atheist, also had my back. Which was awesome, as I’ve supported her for some time. She commented on my post in an awesome discussion discussing the definitions of racism and sexism. I was going to do something like that, but she did an awesome job, so I’ll direct you to her post.
My fellow Patheos blogger Matthew Facciani gave me a shout-out in a post discussing the importance of fighting racism, as did the awesome podcaster/blogger Trav Mamone.
My friend Kaveh Mousavi wrote a critical post in support.
Adam Collins of was also outspoken about his support and would like to have a friendly chat on his podcast Adamant Atheism.
Kathleen Duncan over at No God Blog also wrote a post in support.
And many of my fellow Patheos Atheist bloggers have informed me clearly, privately and publicly, that they have my back.
And out of the thousands of comments on my blog posts on this issue — if you go to the “Disqus” bar and sort them by “best,” you’ll see that most people avidly upvoted comments in support of me.
My in-person atheist friends supported me by the dozens.
And so I have a correction to make. One week ago I was feeling depressed about the state of the community and largely hopeless. But I can’t say that now. I have to say, based on the support I’ve gotten over the past week, that if you speak out against racism and other issues in the atheist community, the atheist community has your back. I didn’t plan this. It was all organic, and The Amazing Atheist is currently so bewildered about this he thinks that it’s a conspiracy to take down his channel. That is surprising to me. The atheist community has overwhelmed him so much that he is afraid that we’re all conspiring. No. It’s just that, contrary to what you may seen on YouTube, a whole lot of us aren’t racist assholes, and we’re more than willing to stand up against those who are.
Also, in the past week I posted a Patreon account to Facebook. And today we reached our first goal! In less than a week, we went from $0 to $51. As I write, it really helps t know that a substantial number of people actually have my back — and the back of anyone else who calls out harmful prejudice in the atheist community. So thank you.
Thank you to all of my patrons. I’m looking forward to a longstanding working relationship with you as we continue to break down harmful barriers that prevent understanding and enforce marginalization. Thank you, specifically, to Julia A., Shannon M., Brand G., Paddy M., Max K., Christopher S., Bobby C., “Peanut,” Sam G., Steve Shives, James B., Catherine F., and Donnie S.
Man, that’s a handful of awesome people.
It’s been a beautiful week. You’ve given me far more support than I prophesied or anticipated.
Thanks for proving me wrong.
I’d like to end with an excerpt from Niki Massey’s most recent blog post:
I’m ending this with a direct quote from Martin himself, with his permission of course. I asked him privately how he was handling the sudden attention avalanche. His answer:
“…I can say that I respond to it, insofar as I feel is important. To be honest, I appreciate the way this controversy highlights some points I’ve been making for some time. It’s depressing to find out that some parts of atheism are more ignorantly racist than I anticipated. At the same time, there is a surprising base of support. It’s a bit like stepping away from Christianity — you’re always a bit apprehensive before you know atheists have your back. In calling out The Amazing Atheist, I had the same apprehension at first. But knowing that I have the support I do makes me much more confident. I just want other minorities thinking about becoming atheists to know this, too — a major, influential part of the general atheist “culture” in the United States does have your back.”
Thanks for helping me be able to say that, atheist community. Thanks for showing marginalized groups following this issue that, in spite of ranters online, there’s a large and loving atheist community that really has your back.
“Interviewer: What is it you most dislike?
Christopher Hitchens: Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.”
― Hitch-22: A Memoir
“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thinking that the problem with black culture is that they are a victim culture is like thinking that the problem with atheists is that they hate God.
Atheists don’t hate God. Their problem is that people look at the word “atheist” and assume that we are part of a God-hating culture in order to reassure themselves that the negative effects of religion on atheists don’t have anything to do with the religion itself, but with “sinful” atheist hate of an entity they secretly believe in. That assumption is a major part of what makes us so self-conscious about being atheists. This self-consciousness produces the sounds Christians interpret as a secret hatred of God.
The way to fight the problem is to listen to atheists and find out how, exactly, the CONCEPT that they hate God wreaks havoc on their lives and makes them hate religion.
Black culture’s problem is not that they are a victim culture. Its problem is that people look at our skin and assume that we are part of a victim culture in order to assure themselves that the effects of racism on black people are their own fault. That assumption is what makes us so self-conscious about being black. This self-consciousness produces the sounds white culture presents as evidence that black people wrongly think they ARE inferior, when it’s really a reaction to people THINKING they’re inferior.
The way to fight the problem is to listen to black culture and find out how, exactly, the CONCEPT that they are a victim culture wreaks havoc on their lives and makes them hate their own skin.
In both cases, the solution is to listen.
But Christians won’t listen to atheists. Christians want atheists to listen to them, even as most atheists insist that they know Christian culture because they have to deal with it 24/7. They are affected by it far, far more than Christians are affected by them, and Christians would know this is they saw outside their Christian bubble and looked at things from the atheist’s perspective.
And white culture won’t listen to black culture. White culture wants black culture to listen to them, even as most of black culture insists that it knows white culture because it has to deal with it 24/7. They are affected by it far, far more than white culture is affected by them, and white culture would see this if they looked outside their white culture bubble and saw things from black culture’s perspective.
But that doesn’t happen overnight. For me, listening to atheists and getting past the idea that they were just mad at God took hours, days, months, years of conversation, arguments, tussles, back-and forths. It wasn’t just a “nod, you’re right.” It was deep conversations, trying to figure out why they had emotions I didn’t understand — not to judge, but to figure things out. Because I wanted to save them from hell, and didn’t know how. I even had to fight through strong opposition that what I thought was a compassionate reason to help them — saving them from hell — was the most offensive thing I could do. I even had to get over THAT. It was hard. It took tears. It took study. It took time, It took perseverance. And eventually, I think, I understand somewhat — but I still work on it. I still have disagreements. The path of understanding keeps going.
A lot of my Christian friends didn’t do that work. They didn’t have to, but as a result they still think atheists are just mad at God. They’re stuck.
For much of white culture, listening to black culture and getting past the idea that they are just a victim culture will take hours, days, months, years of conversation, arguments, tussles, back-and forths. It won’t be just a “nod, you’re right.” It will take deep conversations, trying to figure out why it has emotions much of white culture doesn’t understand — not to judge, but to figure things out. Perhaps, in the beginning, because it wants to save them from being victims in society, and doesn’t know how. White culture may even have to fight through strong opposition that what white culture thinks is a compassionate reason to help them — “saving” them on a high horse from being victims — is the most offensive thing it could do. It may even have to get over THAT. It will be hard. It will take tears. It will take study. It will take time, It will take perseverance. And eventually, those of white culture who do this hard work will think they understand somewhat — but they will still have to work on it. They will still have disagreements. The path of understanding keeps going.
A lot of white culture just won’t do that work. They don’t have to, but as a result they will still think black culture is just a victim culture. They’ll be stuck.
And on the other side, us atheists will look at those stuck Christians, and those of us who are born into black culture will look at stuck white culture, and be a little sad, and continue to be angry. with the knowledge that the bridge is just a few listening ears away…
And the band plays on.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me keep doing what I do.
