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There is a not-so-civil war being played out in our media, across YouTube, and throughout the psyche of the developed world these days, concerning how, exactly, we should think about gender and sex.

I’ve realized, in looking at this debate, that many of the battle lines for it have been drawn before.

In 1990, Judith Butler wrote a groundbreaking book called Gender Trouble. Even if you have not heard of it, I can almost guarantee you’ve been affected by it. The book is a fairly difficult read to someone not versed in gender studies, but the basic gist of a major portion of it is that it is a mistake to think of a gender as something that you are assigned at birth because that is what you always were, and that is what others need to make sure you conform to. Rather, gender is constructed externally, and then offered to you, and it can become something you perform to express yourself and encourage desirable effects. Thus, rather than seeing an obligation to press onto others a certain definition of gender, the focus should be on the fact that gender is performed, like a role or a part one plays — not necessarily a fixed, down-to-the-core True Self. This is not, of course, to say that gender is “fake” any more than language is “fake.” Gender is a real performance that can actually do things in the world you live in.

Certain performances of being a man will have certain effects in our overall society. Other performances of being a woman may have different effects in our society. Performances of being nonbinary may have still different effects. And the performance of being a bold man or shy man, a white-collar woman and a blue-collar woman…these also have very different effects. As you can see, this idea of performance doesn’t just apply to gender as a small, limited category. Judith Butler sees everything you do as a performance. You have to take up roles in order to even begin to express yourself in the world, and when you take up these roles you are performing them.

The main task, then, of gender studies is not to get rid of or “beyond” performance. That would be impossible; we have to perform in order to even be in culture, just like we have to speak (or otherwise communicate) to be heard. The task is to understand performances and seek ways to change ill-fitting, strongly policed, and oppressive ones (once we find, through experience, that they are these things).

And one important task in Bulter’s influential scheme is to see the performance as performance. So if one role does not match your inner desire to express yourself in culture, the implication is, you can look at the roles provided by culture and choose one that does; you are not obligated by some God or something to just fulfill the specific performance.

Then there’s Butler’s (in)famous take on sex and gender. Now, if you didn’t already know this, the typical division here between sex and gender is that “sex” refers to chromosomes/genitalia and “gender” refers to your social identity. Judith Butler’s controversial 1990 argument is that the category of a “sex” is not somehow “beyond” social constructions, but that, logically speaking, this category itself is socially constructed. So even the sex/gender distinction was meaningless; there is no arena of language that was “outside” of a social construction (and, she further stated, the concept of “sex” was used as a way to police people — the way I see popular speakers and YouTubers mix the two up really seems to indicate she wasn’t far off). Long story short, it was all socially constructed, so far as she could see. Thus, forcing genders on people — like telling them to “man up” or “be a lady” — is forcing them into a performance, not necessarily helping them to be who they “truly” are.

It’s hard to overstate how influential this thesis became. One of the major things it did is provide people the ability and the language to embrace identities outside of an enforced set of gender identities that were strictly, and sometimes cruelly, policed by cultures and governments. It gave people the ability to be “queer” — that is, reject the often oppressive definitions of gender that had been pressed on them by powerful external forces, and instead express themselves in spite of the policing of identities. This has often made those in power very angry, but it has also profoundly changed culture and taken the teeth out of some clearly oppressive definitions of who you are supposed to be as a man or a woman. Which is what it was meant to do, as Judith Butler cut her teeth on being an activist (and still is, by the way — one of her major focuses on the moment is constructing ways for liberals to defeat figures like Trump).

Hopefully that makes sense. And if there’s a professional reading this — apologies for breaking this down to something this drastically simple. I’m trying to summarize a lot in a small space.

People seem to have taken the theory of Judith Butler and other theorists and created a LOT of gender identities. No longer was gender necessarily something that you felt necessarily obligated to stay true to, no matter how ill-fitting it felt. It’s a performance you choose according to your social context and your autonomous goals. And for many people this was exciting — it was liberating.

When those looking to enforce gender on people complain of these new gender identities, stating they are absurd, then they are reinforcing the concept that they can’t control these genders — which may convince some of those who choose these “new” gender identities to think that they are embracing a liberating space. In other words, if you reject these gender identities you are likely also, in some ways, legitimating them as a way to escape society’s attempt to police gender (and, by extension, the socially constructed category of sex, too). This is a controversial implication of Judith Butler’s theory, but it seems an implication nonetheless.

However, there was a problem.

Many transgender and intersex people objected that gender wasn’t as free-flowing, possibly, as Judith Butler originally seemed to suggest. They insisted very loudly that they were not just “switching roles” from a man to a woman, like someone switches coats. No, they WERE men and women, down to their core, and they wanted those identities reinforced and policed so that they would be taken seriously when they chose them. They were not people “beyond” and “defiant” of gender roles — they WERE the gender they identified as, down to their core. No, this isn’t all trans people, but it was more than enough to give Judith Butler pause. Additionally, many intersex people (people with both XX and XY chromosomes, and/or who were born with both genitalia) have also found a strong need to identify with one side or the other of an enforced gender binary. This is why Judith Butler has indicated some revisions of the views she pioneered in the 90s, as when she said last year:

The strongest criticism of ‘queer’ lately has come from the trans community. And that takes several forms. I accept these criticisms as necessary, and have found myself revising my views in response to some of what has been said. I also found that those who work on ‘intersex’ have found ‘queer’ to be sometimes less than helpful, so it is important to understand why. If ‘queer’ means that we are generally people whose gender and sexuality is ‘unfixed’ then what room is there in a queer movement for those who understand themselves as requiring – and wanting – a clear gender category within a binary frame? Or what room is there for people who require a gender designation that is more or less unequivocal in order to function well and to be relieved of certain forms of social ostracism? Many people with intersexed conditions want to be categorized within a binary system and do not want to be romanticized as existing ‘beyond all categories’.

And this is where we’re at now. We have people for who queer identities have been absolutely essential in taking them “beyond” the enforcement of gender by external power. And we also have people who want that enforcement because they want their identity to be recognized and not trivialized, for very important reasons. And the two have been clashing lately. There’s a bit of a civil war here, and the stakes are extremely high, on both sides.

Judith Butler continues:

Of course, there are different debates on this issue in both trans and intersex communities, but the message to the advocates of ‘queer’ seems quite pertinent: some people very much require a clear name and gender, and struggle for recognition on the basis of that clear name and gender. It is a fundamental issue of how to establish and insist upon those forms of address that make life liveable. At issue as well is a question of autonomy, conceptualized not through individualism, but as an emergent social phenomenon: how do I name myself, how can I establish my status within the law or within medical institutions, and to what extent will my desire to live as a particular gender or within an established gender category be honoured by those who claim to ally with me but who position themselves against my desire to be named and recognized a certain way? This question makes sense to me, which is why it is really important for us to rethink questions of autonomy and embodiment within a social field saturated with power.

It’s hard to overstate how revolutionary this is. Judith Butler, arguably the most influential gender theorist of the last fifty years, is saying that we need to rethink the concept of being queer, of being defiant of established genders like “man” and “woman,” in light of people who do, in fact, need these genders to be firmly established.

Judith Butler’s solution here is not an “individualism” — she would think the idea incoherent, like saying you can’t talk without talking. In Butler’s scheme, even individuality would be a socially constructed performance — you have to “fulfill” the socially constructed role of being individualistic to even be an individual. In addition, the concept of individuality itself is problematic.

Rather, it focuses on being autonomous. “Autonomous” here is best defined the following way:

A person is autonomous when his or her behavior is experienced as willingly enacted and when he or she fully endorses the actions in which he or she is engaged and/or the values expressed by them. People are therefore most autonomous when they act in accord with their authentic interests or integrated values and desires.

So it doesn’t mean you’re alone and separated from culture — far from it. It means that you willingly choose the way you want to present yourself to the world. It’s experiential — an answer to the question of what identity you want to fulfill that, in many ways, has to be lived and can often change. And the frequently strong desire of trans and intersex people to preserve a strongly protected established identity is an ingredient in their often experiential journey.

So. You have people who have found — either through extreme gender dysphoria with both the male and female genders, or out of a more strongly pronounced desire to embrace themselves with less “gender policing” from culture — that the gender binary doesn’t work, and actively strive to deconstruct it because it holds back their “autonomy.” And then you have people who — either through identifying as cis, as an intersex man or woman, or as trans (again, not all, but many) — want the gender binary to be strongly policed and firmly intact, because that preserves THEIR autonomy.

What to do?

Right now, it appears, we’re going through a civil war, and some of it may be necessary. And I think the solution is mostly going to be something that will emerge as we listen to each other (ESPECIALLY to the most sidelined identities — cis people, we aren’t an oppressed minority). But best as I can see — and this is more of a projection than a prescription — the most optimal outcome would be for us to have both very firmly established gender identities AND nonbinary queer identities, all of which are not policed or enforced by external forces but by our autonomous desires and the genuine respect we have for each other’s autonomy as we work together in this political landscape we call society. And maybe getting there would require frequent rebellion against the policing of gender that may come from many angles in society and cripple the embodiment (or “realization”) of our autonomous desires.

Thanks for reading.

PS: I’d like to give a sincere thank you to the 32 patrons who allow me to write things like this. If you would like to become a patron as well, you can sign up here.

 

I am so angry right now.

The story that Diamond Reynolds has been telling regarding the infamous shooting death of her boyfriend Philando Castile is that the police officer, Jeronimo Yanez, asked for Philando Castile’s license and insurance, Philando Castile reached for his license as he told them that he had a firearm, and the officer panicked and shot him.

The officer was charged with second-degree manslaughter for dangerous discharge of a firearm.

He was acquitted.

Up until now, we have had to take Diamond Reynolds’ word that what she said happened, happened. We have not had dash cam footage.

But the police DID have dash cam footage, and they waited until Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted to release it. Here it is:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jemR7hvla3E[/youtube]

In the video, you can see Yanez coming up to the car and saying, “Your break lights are out,” informing Castile that one break light is out, as Diamond Reynolds claimed.

He then asks for Castile’s license and registration.

Castile gives him a piece of paper that, presumably, are is insurance papers. Castile then, presumably, reaches to get the license the officer had just asked him to get, and then informs the officer, calmly and very politely, that he had a firearm.

The officer says, “Don’t reach for it.”

Castile says, “I’m not reaching for it.”

The officer says, “Don’t pull it out.”

Castile says, “I’m not pulling it out.”

And then the police officer shoots him, point blank, seven times.

*bang*

*bang*

*bang*

*bang*

*bang*

*bang*

*bang*

And after that, he screams, “Don’t pull it out! Don’t move!”

Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend in the passenger seat, states that she isn’t moving. And then she turns on Facebook Live and records this infamous video:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNCbgJ55jQY&t=544s[/youtube]

And last week, the officer was acquitted.

….yeah. Not sure what else to say.

Thanks for reading.

Last night, Laci Green tweeted the following:

https://twitter.com/gogreen18/status/876968746530750466

I totally and completely agree, which is why, before she wrote this tweet, my previous blog post was on the two most commonly misunderstood informal fallacies.

I thought, then, about discussing deductive fallacies, but I didn’t think it was necessary. Honestly, I thought most people learned about them pretty well around 9th grade, if not before.

Apparently, no, as we’ll see. And hardly anything in this blog post is gonna make sense if I don’t explain it, so let me give a lesson (or, if you had a decent education, a quick refresher) on the most basic type of deductive argument.

A quick primer on deductive syllogisms

Here is a basic valid deductive argument:

If it rains, I will bring an umbrella.

It is raining.

Therefore, I will bring an umbrella.

The conclusion (“Therefore, I will bring an umbrella”) follows from premise one, or the “Major Premise” (“If it rains, I will bring an umbrella”) and the conditions of the Minor Premise (“It is raining”).

Another way to state the form of this argument, or deductive “syllogism,” is:

Major Premise: If A (it rains), then B (I will bring an umbrella).

Minor Premise: A (it’s raining).

Conclusion: Therefore, B (I will bring an umbrella).

Or, to reduce it further:

Major Premise: If A, then B.

Minor Premise: A.

Conclusion: Therefore, B.

OK, so that’s logical reasoning. As long as the Major Premise and Minor Premise are true and you’re using that exact basic format, the Conclusion follows.

But we throw a monkey in the wrench when we make the Minor Premise “B” instead of “A.” Like this:

If A, then B.

B.

Therefore A.

Let’s see how it looks when we put the terms back in:

If it’s raining (A), I will bring an umbrella (B).

I will bring an umbrella (B).

Therefore, it’s raining.

There’s something “off” in the reasoning there, right? The fact that if it’s raining, you’ll bring an umbrella doesn’t mean that just because you have an umbrella, it’s raining, right? So that reasoning doesn’t work. It’s “invalid.”

This reasoning is invalid, as well.

If A, then B.

Not A.

Therefore, not B (which carries the implication that if B is true, the Major Premise is invalid).

And you can see this doesn’t work, rather clearly, when we put the terms back in:

If it’s raining, I will bring an umbrella.

It’s not raining.

Therefore, I won’t bring an umbrella (which carries the implication that if you do bring an umbrella, the Major Premise “If it’s raining, I will bring an umbrella” is invalid).

This invalid logic would also be frustrating, right? Like, if you told your friend, “If it’s raining, I will bring an umbrella,” and your friend says, “Oh, so you think that just because you’re bringing an umbrella, it’s gonna rain, eh? That’s really arrogant of you. Who do you think you are, Rainman?” You aren’t saying that if you bring an umbrella it’s gonna rain. You’re saying that if it rains, you’ll bring an umbrella. It’s important to get that straight.

That’s a fundamental building block of deductive logic. It can get more complex from there, but you have to know that to get started.

Now, because we’re going to go over some arguments you might disagree with, I’m going to make another distinction. You can disagree with the truth of an argument and say that it’s unsound, but if it still follows the rules of logic it’s valid. In logic, soundness  refers to the truth of the argument, and validity refers to whether or not it is logically consistent.

I’ll demonstrate this with a couple syllogisms:

Syllogism 1:

Major Premise: If I can see the horizon (A), the world is flat (B).

Minor Premise: I can see the horizon  (A).

Conclusion: Therefore, the world is flat (B).

Syllogism 2:

Major Premise: If I can see the horizon (A), the world is flat (B).

Minor Premise: The world is flat (B).

Conclusion: Therefore, I can see the horizon (A).

Both of these lines of reasoning are factually untrue, obviously. So we would say they both aren’t sound. We wouldn’t, however, say they both aren’t valid, because the logic of syllogism 1 (If A, then B. A. Therefore, B) checks out; all the terms are technically presented correctly and in the right place. Syllogism 2, on the other hand, is not only factually wrong and thus unsound due to its Minor Premise; it is also invalid due to the fact that the Minor Premise refers to “B” as opposed to “A.”

Again, “Soundness” refers to the truth of the statement, “Validity” refers to whether or not the argument is in the right logical form. And if you make the rookie mistake of putting “B” or “Not A” instead of “A” in the Minor Premise category, you’ve shown that you fundamentally don’t understand the Major Premise, and make having a discussion very difficult…like that annoying friend who thinks that what you actually meant is that every time you brought your umbrella, it rained.

If you got this, awesome! If not, just keep reading. It’ll all come together in a bit.

Let’s apply all that stuff to the “real world”

OK, so let’s apply this to something practical. The below YouTube video, made by controversial YouTuber Riley J. Dennis:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7merYoGv5U[/youtube]

I’m going to summarize her Major Premises here:

Major Premise: If you want to call people the n-word but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), you’ll can call them “thugs” instead (B).

Major Premise: If you want to say you hate people of color but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), just say you’re in support of national security instead (B).

Major Premise: If you want to encourage a harassment campaign against someone but can’t do it directly because it’s “politically incorrect” (A), just use a faux disclaimer and then encourage all the harassment you like (B).

Major Premise: If you want to label feminists “feminazis” but can’t because of political correctness (A), just call them “feminist extremists” instead (B).

Major Premise: If you want to express your hate for trans people but can’t say “I hate trans people” due to political correctness (A), just say you wouldn’t date trans people instead (B).

Major Premise: If you think the white race is superior but can’t say so due to political correctness (A), you can just say that racism doesn’t exist while still stating that people of color are ruining our country (B).

Major Premise: If you want to support thee alt-right but can’t do it openly because it’s politically incorrect (A), say you’re a centrist while ignoring or constantly challenging the left and giving a platform to the right that encourages them to express themselves freely without critique (B).

Now, you may or may not agree that all of these premises are sound. But if you’re going to attack them, you have to understand their format, lest you make a blatantly illogical attack.

So, going back to to the umbrella example: when you say, “If it rains (A), I will bring my umbrella (B),” you aren’t saying that every time you bring your umbrella (B), it will rain (A); that vice-versa twist would be a fundamental misunderstanding of your statement.

By the same token, when Riley says, “If you want to call people the n-word but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), you’ll can call them “thugs” instead (B),” she is not arguing that if you use the word “thugs” (B) you secretly want to use the n-word (A); that vice-versa twist would be a fundamental misunderstanding of her argument.

Neither, in going down the list of Major Premises, is Riley saying that everyone who supports national security (B) hates people of color (A), or that all anti-harassment statements (B) are shields for people who want to harass (A), or that everyone who uses the label “feminist extremists” (B) secretly wants to label all feminists feminazis (A), or that all people who say they won’t date trans people (B) are transphobic (A), or that everyone who doesn’t think racism exists (B) thinks the white race is superior (A), or that everyone who is a centrist (B) is secretly a part of the alt-right (A).

Whether Riley thinks any of that or not, and whether you agree with Riley Major Premises or not, that’s simply not what Riley’s saying. They are invalid reversals of her Major Premises that really have nothing to do with her Major Premises at all.

I’m not making, as of yet, a point about so-called “SJWS” vs “anti-SJWS” here. This is not about how sound her arguments are, yet, but about how someone would rebut them in an logically valid way. I’m trying to nail down the minimum understanding that is needed for disagreement to occur and a real conversation to happen.

The worst thing you could possibly do, logically speaking, is mix up the terms. It derails the argument, creating straw men.

Let’s make this even more concrete. Concerning Riley’s first Major Premise, “If you want to call people the n-word but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), you’ll can call them “thugs” instead (B)” — if you say, “I am not a racist, and I refer to criminals as ‘thugs,’ so Riley is wrong,” you’ve made a logically invalid move. Like this:

Riley’s Major Premise: If I want to call people the n-word but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), I’ll can call them “thugs” instead (B).
Major Premise: If it is raining (A), I will bring an umbrella (B).

Minor Premise (misstated): I do not want to call people the n-word (Not A).
Minor Premise (misstated): It is not raining (Not A).

Conclusion (misunderstanding Major Premise): Therefore, if the premise is right, I won’t use the word “thugs.”
Conclusion (misunderstanding Major Premise): Therefore, if the premise is right, I will not be bringing an umbrella.

Bad rejection of argument: “I call people thugs, and would never say the n-word! Therefore, Riley’s Major Premise is wrong!”
Bad rejection of argument: “You are carrying an umbrella, and it is not raining! Therefore, your Major Premise is wrong!”

It’s basic logic.

But a lot of people don’t know basic logic, and are easily taken in by mistatatements of the Minor Premise and, by extension, the Conclusion. People who know logic know this, and they know bad logic can take time to unravel, and so they use this to dishonestly (or ignorantly) deconstruct the argument.

Take a recent video that Blaire White made in response to Riley Dennis. She has the same “If A, then B, not A, therefore not B — and yet B is true, so the Major Premise is false” faulty reasoning I broke down above. It may seem like a slightly complex formula if you haven’t seen it in action before, but it is a pretty simple formula, nonetheless, and you can rinse, lather, and repeat this (as we’ve just seen) with a lot of premises if the audience doesn’t get smart and realize what you’re doing.

Here is her video rebuttal to Riley’s video:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYyCRFIRyk0[/youtube]

After disarmingly agreeing with Riley on the first point, she then states the following:

Riley, what if people really do believe in national security? I mean, it’s just a crazy thought, but I think that one day, if you step outside of your…bubble, I’m sure that you’ll find there is a legitimate argument for national security that doesn’t involve racism. But I’m sure it’s easier to just call it racism than actually argue against it.
……..
National security does matter. It’s actually one of the few functions of government that I personally believe in. And that doesn’t make me racist.

Do you see the flaw? It’s exactly the one we exposed above. Here, let me show you:

Riley J. Dennis’s Major Premise: If you want to say you hate people of color but can’t because you’re afraid of political correctness (A), just say you’re in support of national security instead (B).
Major Premise: If it is raining (A), I will bring an umbrella (B).

Blaire White’s Minor Premise (misstated): I do not hate people of color (Not A).
Minor Premise (misstated): It is not raining (Not A).

Conclusion (misunderstanding of Major Premise): Therefore, if the Major Premise is correct, I wouldn’t be saying that I support national security (Therefore, Not B).
Conclusion (misunderstanding Major Premise): Therefore, if the Major Premise is correct, I will not be bringing an umbrella (Therefore, Not B).

Bad rejection of argument: “I support national security, and I am not racist! Therefore, Riley’s Major Premise is wrong!”
Bad rejection of argument: “You are carrying an umbrella, and it is not raining! Therefore, your Major Premise is wrong!”

That’s the formula. That’s it.

The honest, logical response, of course, would be to show that the Major Premise is wrong by stating that you can’t (or usually can’t) effectively cover up your racist attitudes with the words “national security.” That’s would be the counterargument. Of course you can advocate for national security and not be racist — that’s not a counterargument, though, because the Major Premise never stated otherwise.

And I’d say Blaire White’s bad logic here was a fluke, but she does it again. In response to Riley’s Major Premise “If you want to encourage a harassment campaign against someone but can’t do it directly because it’s ‘politically incorrect’ (A), just use a faux disclaimer and then encourage all the harassment you like (B)” Blaire White states the following:

So even someone telling their followers not to harass you isn’t good enough? I mean, it must be tough assuming the worst possible intentions from everybody. Believe in national security? You’re racist. Tell people to be nice and not harass me? That’s harassment.

What’s fascinating is that she seems to know her argument is weak. Obviously, you can tell people not to harass someone while encouraging them to harass that person. “Don’t harass her, but Jenny is a stuck up, rude, mean, girl who could use a punch in the face” is a way to do it. And of course telling people not to harass isn’t harassment. Telling people not to harass while bullying them and giving them a ton of irrelevant insults that you know your fans will chase after is using the “don’t harass” encouragement as a cover for harassment. I think people do this, but I’ll not waste time going over the evidence here, as I’ve already given a pretty good example of someone who made a video entitled “Dick nosed female comedian strives for world record in double standards!” and complimented several rather disturbing commenters who called her the c-word…while at the same time putting up a brief anti-harassment post at the beginning of the video. He literally said people shouldn’t harass her at the beginning of his video, and then complimented the fans who did in the video (you can read about this episode in the bottom half of this article).

So, anyways, this argument is weak…but she nails it in by continuing to mischaracterize Riley’s argument with the straw man “believe in national security? You’re racist” which, logically speaking, is simply an invalid characterization of Riley’s Major Premise. And Blaire White then manipulates the audience into hating Riley so much due to the straw man of extremism she created that many of them out-of-hand reject an argument Riley made that actually, in the real world, has real merit.

Then, in answer to Riley’s Major Premise, “If you want to express your hate for trans people but can’t say ‘I hate trans people’ due to political correctness (A), just say you wouldn’t date trans people instead (B)” Blaire White says:

I don’t understand how you can even thing those two things are contradictory.

Why would she say they’re contradictory? Deciding to say you don’t want to date trans people in order to cover up your transphobia is a process, a system, not a contradiction. But Blaire White has already conditioned her audience to illogically break it down like this:

Riley’s Major Premise: If you want to express your hate for trans people but can’t say “I hate trans people” due to political correctness (A), just say you wouldn’t date trans people instead (B).

Blaire White’s Minor Premise (misstated and implied): Many people do not hate trans people (Not A).

Conclusion (misunderstanding of Major Premise, implied): Therefore, if the Major Premise is correct, none of these people would say they don’t date trans people (Therefore, Not B — notice, here is where the contradiction comes in, where a switch of the terms creates the straw man that you cannot be unhateful of trans people and at the same time say you don’t want to date trans people — an argument Riley didn’t make in this video).

Bad rejection of argument: Many of the people who do not hate trans people also say they don’t date trans people. That’s not a contradiction, and Riley’s Major Premise says that it is, so it’s wrong!

It’s a bit stunning, actually. Blaire White has the whole formula down to a sentence. She’s conditioned the audience to accept this mode of reasoning, and now she can just use shorthand for it. And in the process, she’s made Riley even more unlikable, even though she’s completely misrepresenting Riley’s argument to do so through some formulaic logical slight of hand.

The honest way to rebut Riley’s premise, of course, would be to show that you couldn’t effectively express a politically correct hatred of trans people by stating you don’t want to date them.  That’s a more difficult argument, though. Rebutting by saying “just because you say you don’t want to date trans people, doesn’t mean you’re transphobic” is completely missing the point of the Major Premise…in a way stunningly similar to the way Blaire White has done it before. And, perhaps thinking that people may be sympathetic to trans people as a larger marginalized group, Blaire White goes the next step, later in this rebuttal, by indicating that Riley is saying that people who don’t want to date her specifically are transphobic, which makes a more unlikable straw man argument and, at the same time, is even more different from what Riley Dennis was saying — which was, again that you can express a hatred for trans people in a politically correct way by saying you wouldn’t date them, NOT that not wanting to date Riley Dennis (or any trans person, for that matter) is in and of itself proof positive that you are transphobic.

Blaire repeats these mischaracterizations in her video several times. And you can disagree with my pro-social-justice stance all you want, because the above is not really about a stance; it’s about bad logic.

I’d appreciate a good argument. But…make it a good one. Don’t make such obvious mischaracterizations through blatant disregard for basic logic.

4 Places Where Blaire White Is Factually Wrong

OK, so the above was mostly about logic. Now, real quick, now that you’ve watched a video by Blaire White (if you clicked “play” and gave her another view — my apologies, it seemed the best way to demonstrate what I meant), let me attempt some additional detox.

1. Not that it’s relevant, but she indicates people won’t date Riley J. Dennis. For the record, she had a girlfriend fairly recently and, to the best of my knowledge (I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong) still does.

2. She says nobody says that racism doesn’t exist. Wrong. See this, with view count, like ratio, and comments.

3. She indicates that environmental racism is nonsense. No, it’s definitely a thing. Two seconds of research will tell you that it’s when people of color are put in bad environmental conditions because their color makes them a low priority. Flint, Michigan is a good example, according to this case study.  Honestly, the fact that Blaire White thinks that not knowing what the term means is a good enough rebuttal is astonishing to me.

4. She says that we (I guess people labeled “SJWs”) are terrified of having our ideas challenged. Um, no. When I challenged TJ Kirk (The Amazing Atheist) to a debate (I did, not him) on whether his claim that the statement “black culture is a victim cult” is racist, he backed out, not me. And then he tweeted this:

https://t.co/PpzQy6Rjmd Richard Dawkins won't debate creationists either. The debate you want is purely semantic. A waste of time.

— INTO THE FRAY (@amazingatheist) July 11, 2016

Others have had similar experiences with several people on the right; it’s not just me. We engage with the other side, often (not always, true, but they seem to turn us down more than we turn them down, on average. I mean, Google and YouTube a little bit, and you’ll see a TON of debates. And how can Blaire White say that, after debating not only Laci Green, but also after people on the “other side” like Milo Stewart, Laci Green, ContraPoints agreed to debate Laci Green within the past year alone — one anti-SJW YouTuber, and three people agreed to a debate.

So…yeah. False.

Concluding Remarks

As I stated in my previous blog post, the fact that a piece is logically invalid doesn’t mean id doesn’t work. People aren’t completely logical — they have biases and prejudices, and they are surprisingly able to be easily manipulated. Convincing rhetoric isn’t necessarily logically valid or factually accurate — it’s often just theatre repeating words the audience wants to hear. I mean, Blaire White’s video, for some time, was the 6th most trending video on YouTube for some time, and it has a very high like bar. It’s an awful video logically, and yet it’s what a lot of people want to hear and it’s entertaining, so people love it.

I also don’t think Blaire White is changing any time soon. I mean, when she is forced to deal with a serious, well-sourced argument, she often tends to go after rather surface level insults that are irrelevant, like that time she seemed to get a kick out of insulting Zinnia Jones by responding to scientific and scholarly consensus and loads of articles with a dismissal that, at its most substantive point, said that Zinnia Jones was “snaggletoothed” before dismissing her in a matter of seconds:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-9YXIZW6ig[/youtube]

So this is not to change her; she’s hopeless, I think. It’s also not to change most of her fans, who likely would not slog through this nearly 4000-word blog post. But in a way, this blog post is a self-selecting one. If you made it through the nearly 4000 words, I’m willing to bet that, even if you disagree with me, tou’re someone who is interested in real, substantive debate, who appreciates some nuance, and is looking to understand rather than merely mischaracterize in order to increase their popularity or feel good about their position.

If I’m right about that, let’s have a discussion in the comments below.

And thanks for reading.

PS: I would like to say “thank you” to all 32 of the Patrons who make longer posts like these possible. If you want to become a Patron, too, you can do so here.

I’ve heard, time and time again, a couple informal fallacies that are drastically misunderstood and used to try to invalidate perfectly good arguments; the person who shouts them proudly walks away with a pseudo-intellectual air of ignorant superiority. It’s been rather irritating, to put it mildly. So I’m gonna try to fix it.

Ad Hominem

An ad hominem fallacy occurs when you attack the person instead of the argument. The key words here are “instead of.”

So, say you’re arguing with a Christian who is convinced you’re going to hell. You give him evidence indicating that the Bible is a very unreliable source when it comes to its claims about hell, and then you call him a “cruel, ignorant asshole” because he ignores or disregards this evidence and continues to think you’re going to hell. He responds, “You just committed the ad hominem fallacy and have lost the argument.”

He’s wrong. That’s not an ad hominem attack. It might be rude. But it’s not ad hominem.

An ad hominem attack only can be done when you attack the person instead of the argument. If you attack the person as a consequence of the argument, it’s not an ad hominem attack. It might be a bit insulting, true. But because the insult came AFTER the argument, the argument is not an ad hominem attack. An ad hominem attack would be, “You are a cruel, ignorant asshole, and therefore you are wrong about hell,” not “you are wrong about hell, and therefore you are a cruel, ignorant asshole.”

Additionally, the ad hominem argument itself has to either be false or irrelevant to the overall argument in order to be fallacious. For example, someone who has an MD might be more trusted for medical advice than someone who doesn’t. Calling out the difference when you’re making a decision as to which advice you will choose is not necessarily an ad hominem attack.  So if the background of the person is clearly relevant to the argument, that’s not an ad hominem argument.  The attack on the person has to be either irrelevant to the argument or false for it to be an ad hominem attack.

And if the argument is ABOUT the person you’re debating, then your attack of the person in the context of the argument isn’t an ad hominem attack. So if, in the course of your argument, the person says that they are a kind-hearted, knowledgeable individual as part of their argument and you attack that characterization, you are not necessarily making an ad hominem attack. You may be being rude. But you are not necessarily committing the ad hominem fallacy, because part of the person’s argument has to do with their character; you’re just refuting a claim in the argument.

So let’s review.

You are only committing an ad hominem attack when you attack the person instead of the argument.

You’re not necessarily committing an ad hominem fallacy if you make conclusions on the person’s character that are rationally based on an argument; if you remark about the person’s character in addition to making an argument; if the attack concerns merits (like relevant experience or education) that are clearly relevant to the credibility of the arguer, and does not overstep the credibility that these merits (or the lack thereof) should give or take away to individuals in the conversation; or if your attack on a person is a response to an argument the person made about themselves.

Straw Man

A straw man argument occurs when someone you are talking to makes an argument that is difficult to refute, and you have to mischaracterize the argument in order to make it easier to attack.

Saying someone is committing a straw man is a really easy way out of an argument. If someone paraphrases your position accurately and attacks it effectively, you can always change your original position and say the one they attacked is not what you meant (even if it was). Also, people are generally reluctant to admit, even to themselves, that their original argument was wrong, so when it’s proven wrong they’ll say they never meant it and actually meant something else. By the way, this itself is a fallacy called “moving the goalposts.”

Anyways, unfortunately, the accusation that you’re committing a straw man often is going to devolve into a back-and-forth as to whether you were actually attacking the person’s argument, or mischaracterizing it. For this reason, I usually prefer to have many of these discussions in writing — there’s a clear public record, in that case, as to exactly what the person said, so that they can’t change it as easily later.

But oftentimes it’s easier than that. Say I make an argument about Christianity and say, “Well, one Christian doctrine is that same-sex sex is a sin,” and the Christian responds, “Well, that’s a straw man. Actually [fill in theology here].”

That is not a straw man. Many Christians do, in fact, believe that same-sex sex is a sin; that’s simply an accurate statement. I have not mischaracterized the position of the Christian I am talking to because he has not made it yet. He has to make it before I critique it. If you make an accurate statement about a general position, and someone comes in and presents nuances, you cannot be accused of constructing a straw man argument until after the person has made his more nuanced, more rare position, not before.

You cannot mischaracterize an argument that hasn’t been made yet.

The “straw man” attack is often used by Christian apologists and is extremely frustrating. Because they all have different ways of defending Christianity, Christians often think that if you are not attacking their particular view of Christianity, you’re committing a logical fallacy straight out of the gate. Hogwash. You have not committed a fallacy until after they make their argument, and only if you are mischaracterizing what they say.

Because they would have to explain how you are mischaracterizing what they said, they shouldn’t just say “straw man” by itself — it should nearly always be accompanied with a correction of the misconception that will continue the conversation. Merely repeating “straw man” without further clarifying or correcting the other person’s characterization of the argument looks suspiciously like an attempt to avoid an argument of your own.

Comments on informal fallacies in general:

Keep in mind that a lot of the informal fallacies work, even if you label them. So perhaps the bandwagon fallacy (everyone believes x, therefore you should believe it, too) is an obvious fallacy — but people still want to be with the majority, so the fact that it’s a fallacy doesn’t completely take away its effectiveness, necessarily. Your being a woman may have nothing to do with how good of a scientist you are, but it still may influence the way people look at you as a scientist. So, that’s another reason why dismissing the argument with a label often doesn’t work — frequently, it’s necessary to go into some detail as to why a particular argument is a red herring or inaccurate.

After all,  informal fallacies are INFORMAL — they’re more like informal (though often very helpful) guidelines of sound arguments than hard-and-fast rules that determine truth and falsity. The terms, then, are shorthand for common mistakes in argumentation, and they mostly exist for you identify these mistakes in your own argument and the arguments of others so that you can correct them, not just use them to end the argument. And you would correct them with a substantive explanation that makes rational sense, not just a label. So I would concentrate on understanding informal fallacies and why they are informal fallacies well enough so that you can point out and explain why a specific argument is a fallacy in a convincing manner, without necessarily hiding behind the label. If you get good enough at it, you may find that this is just the way you think and explain errors in arguments, and that you often don’t really even need the labels at all.

Thanks for reading.

PS: I would like to thank my 32 Patrons for making blog posts like these possible. If you want to become a Patron as well, you can do so here.

So, there’s this YouTuber named Roaming Millennial. I’ve ignored her videos for awhile, but it’s time to take down an embarrassing piece of sophomoric scholarship that should be discarded. Plus, it states some oft-repeated untruths that I’ve been wanting to debunk for awhile. So even if you don’t watch Roaming Millenial’s videos (like most the world, I suppose), this should be relevant. It’s not a complete breakdown of all the many ways she’s wrong, but it gives a couple pieces of evidence that should show, for good, that she simply did not know what she was talking about in that video.

For the next few minutes, I’d like you to forget that I often get branded a “Social Justice Warrior.” I never claimed the title, although when I speak about black people I’m often ascribed it. Hell, I used to be on the side of saying that racism was pretty much over. What changed, in addition to life experience, is education.

Anyways, enough about that. Here is her video, for reference.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywDn8ra4YP8&t=355s[/youtube]

First, she says that although there was oppression in the past against black people, there is no oppression now.

None. Zero. Notta. Black people are NOT treated, today, unjustly or cruelly on account of their race, at all.

That’s her claim. Now, a word to the wise. Anti-SJWs, don’t be deceived by her high “like” ratio and go out arguing to your more-informed friends that there is no evidence of unjust treatment to African Americans. Because there is. In every segment of society — no, not according to my personal opinion. According to people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about, regardless of the color of their skin, because they’ve studied this.

You’re far better off saying that the injustice isn’t extreme enough to worry about, or that we live in a cruel world and black people need to just suck it up. I’m trying to help you here. Really, that’s a much easier argument to make — at least, when you’re not preaching to the choir. I kinda wish I was arguing against that argument, to be honest with you, because I kinda enjoy a more challenging debate.

But here…she’s just making it too easy.

And then she seeks to “prove” it next, when she talks about prison rates. She says that people who are concerned about racism point out that black people are much more likely to be incarcerated than white people. But, she points out, black people are more likely to commit crimes than white people. So it’s probably due to their propensity to be criminals, and not due to racism.

She’s wrong. Just flat-out wrong.

Here is a study done in 2013 by Yale (not a random YouTuber; an actual respected university) explaining that once you control for other factors, black people get worse sentences for the same crimes:

After controlling for the arrest offense, criminal history, and other prior characteristics, sentences for black male arrestees diverge substantially from those of white male arrestees (by around 10% on average)…. we find that prosecutors file mandatory minimums twice as often against black men as against comparable white men.

Also in 2013, the US Sentencing Commission, a bipartisan, independent government organization (organized under the judicial branch) formed under Ronald Reagan (probably a better source than Roaming Millennial. Just maybe.) made a report and stated:

Sentences for black males were 19.5 percent longer than those for similarly situated white males between December 2007 and September 2011, the most recent period covered in the report. The commission also found that black males were 25 percent less likely than whites to receive a sentence below the sentencing guidelines.

A separate analysis of the data that excluded sentences of probation showed the same pattern, although the racial disparity was less pronounced. Black men on average were given sentences 14.5 percent longer than whites. [Emphasis added]

Black people who have the same histories as white people tend to be — even in the 2010s — about 10% more likely to get a bad prison sentence.

That’s unjust. That’s oppression.  “For oppression to happen, black people would have to be incarcerated unjustly at a higher rate than other races,” she says.

(Nevermind that she changed the definition midway through her video from “”prolonged cruel OR unjust treatment or control” to ONLY “unjust treatment” — just a bit of a pet peeve there that doesn’t really matter…anyways, moving on.)

In addition, if you look at the number of prisoners actually proven to be innocent who have been freed due to DNA evidence, 62% of them happen to be black, in spite of the fact that black people make up 35% of the prison population. Come on, man. Being convicted when you’re innocent is the dictionary definition of oppression.  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…more cases are being discovered.

Last year, for example, there were 166 exonerations — vastly disproportionately African American. According to the Innocence Project:

We see racial disparities in exonerations for all types of crime, but the disparities are especially stark for drug cases. About half of the people exonerated for non-drug related crimes in 2016 were African-American. In contrast, roughly two-thirds of those exonerated for drug possession or sale in 2016 were African American (41/61), including 71% of the guilty-plea drug exonerations in Harris County, where African Americans are 20% of the population.

So this is what we have: black people, when compared to white people with the same histories, are more likely to have longer sentences, and all the evidence we have suggests that they are more likely to be convicted as guilty when they are innocent. This gets more damning when you dig into the data:

[Innocence Project Policy Director] Stephen Saloom said, including subtle factors that subconsciously affect who we perceive as guilty or innocent and how people conduct investigations. These human factors mean race has an impact in our courts. “When considering stereotypes and the disproportionate minority contact in the system, we have a greater propensity to think people of color may have done something,” he said.

Cross-racial identifications have also played a role in sending a disproportionate number of people of color to prison for crimes they didn’t commit, Saloom said. Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions overturned through DNA evidence, and in more than half of the misidentification cases, the witness and perpetrator were of difference races.

I…know that it might be offensive to you to contradict Roaming Millennial, anti-SJWs but in my humble personal opinion…being imprisoned or being put on death row for a crime you did not commit, at an unfair rate based on your race, is unjust.

Am I trying to get you to feel sorry for black people?

No, not here. All I’m trying to show you is that, when it comes to speaking about race, Roaming Millennial simply does not know what she is talking about. You shouldn’t trust her. She does shoddy research and she’s horrendously inaccurate, and ten minutes of Googling would show you that she’s just full of it. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. She’s an arrogantly, aggressively ignorant naive person who should not be trusted in the slightest with commentary on the state of racism in America, and it pisses me off that so many people are eating her lies up. Because they’re lies. They’re not true. You can think of me what you like; I know a lot on the anti-SJW hate my guts ever since I started calling out their Dear Leaders on their ignorant remarks. Call me what you want. Hate me all you want. But you know what?

I’m still right.

Now, let’s talk about the other thing she says.

She puts up two charts showing that Asian-Americans make more than even white people. And there’s anti-Asian prejudice, right? So obviously African Americans are not oppressed. If the Asian Americans did it, so can African Americans.

*sigh*

This is one we’ve heard before. It started to become popular in the early 1960s as an argument against desegregation. White people were like, “There’s no racism. Maybe in the days of slavery; not now. Asians have been able to get by with segregation laws intact. Obviously black people can, too.”

Maybe you’re gung-ho, like, “Hell ya. Whey were they crying about segregation? It’s obviously about lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps.”

Here’s the deal: Most Asian-Americans are first- or second-generation immigrants who had to come here on very high standards to begin with. Many of them come from (in order of population) China, the Philippines, and India. These countries have very, very poor people in them. I mean, the average income in India is $1, 590 (as of 2015). Per year (in the Philippines it’s $3,550 per year, and in China, it’s $7,900 per year). So they thinking that their culture makes them rich is false.

And yet, Indian-Americans have the highest median income in the United States, at just over $100,000 a year. Why the discrepancy?

Well, 87% of Indian-Americans are born OUTSIDE the United States. Most, presumably, in India.

The reason they are successful is that India, which has a population four times that of the United States, has some people that, like any area that size, are way above the norm. People who earn MUCH more than $1, 590 dollars a year. And they are really the only ones who can come here.

You see, in order to come here as a resident, you have to have a petition that is filed by “a qualified relative or a potential employer at a USCIS office in the United States.” So you have to have a family member here OR you have to already have an employer who is willing to take you in, and THEN you have to go through a horrendously long, expensive, time-consuming immigration process. I mean, it usually takes you 12-18 months to get a green card if you’re coming for employment, and 5-10 years to get a green card if you get it through a close relative. And that employment one is tough:

If you are a recognized researcher or professor, a multinational executive or manager, or someone with extraordinary ability, you are generally in the first preference of employer sponsored immigration. If you have a PhD or Master’s degree and have exceptional skills in business, the arts, or sciences, you may qualify for a green card under the second preference. If you are a skilled worker or professional, you may qualify for immigration under third preference. This category also covers workers who require less than two years of experience, training, or education. Other workers may have to wait five years or even more to get their green card. Religious workers and other specialized workers belong in the fourth preference of immigration while investors are in the fifth preference.

These aren’t average Indians. These are the ones who were already at the top of a society in which the average income is $1,590 — about the price it takes just to get a round-trip plane ticket between India and the US. And this goes for ALL immigrants to the United States.

And that’s not all. Their employer has to pay a lot of money for them to come here:

A study for the National Foundation for American Policy estimated that to hire someone on an H-1B visa, a U.S. employer has to pay about $2,500 in legal fees; a $1,500 training fee; a $1,000 “premium processing” fee; a $500 antifraud fee; a $190 immigration service fee; around $125 in additional incidental costs; and a $100 visa fee. That totals almost $6,000. Complicated immigration cases can cost eligible applicants $10,000 or more in legal fees alone.

So your employer has to be willing to spend about $6,000 on you to for you to come here, minimum. Now, I don’t think it’s too much to assert to even the most hardcore anti-SJW that if an employer is paying $6,000 to hire you, as an Indian immigrant, for a job, you’re probably pretty well off.

Plus there are all the other costs — you have to have a place to stay once you get here, you have to have the means to move from your home country, etc. It’s extraordinarily expensive…especially coming from a country in which the average people make $1,590 a year. But in a country that has four times the population of the United States, some people are going to make it. And the people that DO make it are usually ALREADY in the stratosphere of the upper class…and comparing them to the Asians already here is really, really, really unfair. And again — 87% of Indian Americans are born outside of the United States. And that’s not even including the second generation, which often has many of the benefits of the prior generation (just like Trump’s getting ahead probably had something to do with his “small loan of a million dollars” from his dad, which was actually at least $9 million — but who’s counting, right? Anyways, I digress…).

Now, you may be thinking, “Yeah, but what about those who have been in the United States for generations?” If so, glad you asked. The New Yorker gives a good summary:

There are now, in a sense, two Asian Americas: one formed by five centuries of systemic racism, and another, more genteel version, constituted in the aftermath of the 1965 law. These two Asian Americas float over and under each other like tectonic plates, often clanging discordantly. So, while Chinese-Americans and Indian-Americans are among the most prosperous groups in the country, Korean-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, and Filipino-Americans have lower median personal earnings than the general population.

There it is. Those who immigrated are, as aforementioned, setting off the curve for everyone else who did not. And, furthermore, those who are here due to five centuries of racism, who have ancestors here — which are in the minority — are still struggling. And because of the “model minority” myth….they don’t get the help they so desperately need. Racist or ignorant assholes are so determined to uphold the model minority myth that they run roughshod over the Asian-Americans who have been here for many generations and are struggling with intergenerational poverty, and instead cater to much more recent immigrants. And they do this to tell these Asian Americans and blacks that they are fine.

This is a major error.

The annoying thing is that Roaming Millennial either does not know this or is intentionally ignoring it. These aren’t small mistakes. They’re huge. A bit of research, a bit of thought, would make it completely obvious to her, and it would also uncover the fact that Asian Americans were often considered “white” during Jim Crow, and thus did not have nearly the same socioeconomic disadvantages as blacks in this country (which made the argument that desegregation was unneeded because Asians were doing OK even more bull in the 1960s).

And yet, in spite of this lack of knowledge, she is preaching to her choir in such a patronizingly ignorant tone that…it really grates on my nerves. Ugh.

So, my hope is that some listeners of Roaming Millennial are reading this. I am, frankly, appalled by her shoddy research. When it comes to race issues, stop listening to her. Please. Not just because she’s an anti-SJW, but because she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Thanks for reading.

PS: I want to thank all 31 of my Patrons who make longer pieces like these possible. If you would like to become a Patron as well, click here.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself. — Simone De Beauvoir

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness. — Audre Lorde

In answer to, “Do you really think I should feel guilty for racism in the past that I wasn’t responsible for? Then why do you keep bringing it up? We’re all one America now. Isn’t it time to move on?”

Here’s the thing, white people: When I talk about the history of blacks in America, I do not need your guilt. I do not want your guilt. It’s so often creepy, inappropriate, and even chillingly frightening.

Let me explain.

When a lighter-skinned cop shot a black man in a Facebook Live video once, he felt guilty and kept saying he was sorry. And as the girlfriend tries to calm the cop down, with her shot boyfriend bleeding to death in the front seat, you see the cop’s attitude change. Denial, guilt, panic, anger without even calling the ambulance, while the man he’s shot bleeds to death, with his girlfriend’s daughter in the car seat in the back looking and the girlfriend keeping her calm to convince him to calm a goddamn ambulance. Meanwhile, he’s protesting that the shooting was justified in a panicked attempt to contain himself from crippling guilt. It’s all about him and his guilt.

And then, with guilt-fueled anger, he takes the woman out the car, and jails her overnight without food or drink. Or so she claims, cuz no one believes her when she comes out crying the next day.

No one in that car gave a damn about how guilty that cop was. When white people start asking about how guilty they’re supposed to be, it scares the hell out of a lot of us. Some of us think we can use that guilt to produce change, it’s true. But I’ve seen that, sooner or later, the guilt fuels resentment, which creates anger. It’s like a ticking time bomb. Because I wasn’t there in the history that makes them feel guilty, the damage is done, and the consequences are ongoing. I can’t erase the offense they feel guilty for, because the consequences are still happening in serious ways that force me to keep recognizing and understanding the offense so I can figure out how to break the cycle.

I just want you to acknowledge that it happened, that it’s American history as much as (if not more than) anything else, and that it should be respected. I just want you to honor the black slaves who built this country as much as, if not more than, you honor the founding fathers. I want you to get far away from the lie that somehow the mistreatment of ten percent of this country over hundreds of years is something to be buried and forgotten in favor of the rosy-cheeked, whitewashed, overglorified phony history many in the South are fighting tooth and nail to teach your kids.

The cold, hard truth is that the history of blacks in America is ugly. There are heroes in it, too. But a lot of it is ugly and continues to have ugly consequences. And we got to deal with it, instead of being like that cop wringing his hands worried about how guilty he should feel.

What can you do? Start by showing some respect to that part of society and what they have done for this country, instead of always stuffing it in a past that for some reason we need to forget. Stop worrying about being guilty and start being understanding.

And don’t expect every black person to be a walking encyclopedia of all things black. We blacks live in a culture, a stereotype, that is largely crafted out of the insecurities and fears of white culture. So identify those. Study yourself — not out of guilt, but to understand the true makeup of America.

I am not interested in taking away your guilt, or helping you do penance for it, or even getting into an argument as to how guilty you should feel, or if you should feel guilty at all. Guilt has nothing to do with it — and it causes so many problems, that I’d prefer you just abandoned it.

All I’m asking is for you to give our place in America — over the last 400 years of sweat, tears, and backbreaking labor — the respect it has earned.

Thank you for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep writing.

I’ve been asked, countless times, why black people can say the n-word and white people can’t. Here’s an answer — from one black person who has thought about this issue, anyway.

When black people say the n-word, it usually means, “White people defined us as ‘n****rs,’ and in spite of that we are still here and defiant.” It’s not used as a word of shame, but as a word of defiance. And a signifier that it’s owned and controlled is that we often take out the hard “r” that originally defined it, and replacing the word with “nigga.”

When white people use it, it is seen — usually by them and black people — as an attempt to restore the marginalizing effects of the stereotype. It brings us back to the dehumanization that enabled slavery, segregation, racist drug enforcement, etc. Which is why it makes so many of us nervous when white people insist upon using it.

So it’s a war. On the black side, to succeed in spite of the stereotype, and on the white side, to keep the stereotype intact.

Here’s why white people shouldn’t use that word:

This is a hard conversation to have.

First, a bit about me. I’ve talked to the other side almost all of my life, which is why the name of my blog is “Barrierbreaker.” You might not know this, but up till about 5 years ago (I was 28 years old) I was a far right conservative Christian and a rabid anti-SJW. I only left because of hours and hours of talking to the other side and reading what they had to say. Countless all-nighters debating online, seeking out debate forums, confronting professors, reading books, reading articles, etc. That hasn’t stopped; it’s in my nature. If you look back in my comments sections, you’ll see me often engage with the other sides of debates. Sometimes I can be quite “strident” in my debates, but they are debates nonetheless, with sides I disagree with.

This translates to my everyday life, too. My day job often requires me to be a fair moderator during discussions on a wide range of controversial issues. Most of my family is conservative Christian, and the people I am with from day-to-day, at least in person, are nearly all either from the far right or libertarians. Up until Trump won (when I kinda unfriended a lot of them for personal reasons) even my personal Facebook page intentionally had a wide range of perspectives associated with it. If I was arguing with someone elsewhere, as I often did, and they seemed to have more knowledge and used more reasoned arguments than the average person on their side, I would often friend them so that I could sharpen and develop my own perspective. So they’d keep me honest.

This practice of talking to the other side is an extension of who I am. I have learned, in talking to people, that this is not who everyone is. And even I have to sometimes take a break from these conversations. We all need a place away from the noise where we can relax, regroup, and think while pondering ideas others have expressed. These days, I do it with relatively small groups of friends online, a few in-person friends I see once in a while, on my blog, on twitter, etc. But offline? Virtually all of my in-person discussion is with people who disagree with me. And I mean REALLY disagree with me. People who want Assad to kill all the Muslims (nevermind that Assad himself was Muslim), that think that it would matter if Michelle Obama was a trans woman and firmly argue that she is, that are nearly dancing in glee every time something negative happens to the Democratic party, that will defend everything Trump says, etc. I constantly argue, argue, argue with the other side, and even online most of my conversation is with people who disagree with me. Part of this is due to the circumstances of my life — where I live and the people who happen to be around me.

But some of it is, admittedly, enjoyment. I like, in doses, long, multi-hour conversations with well-informed people who drastically disagree with my viewpoint. Seeing the commonalities and differences seems like an adventure. For the most part, we both leave with more understanding, even if we strongly disagree with each other. We’re all human, after all. I wasn’t any less human when I was a far-right Christian conservative. I was just wrong.

At the same time, sometimes something happens that makes me remember that this is not just an academic debate; it affects real people. And I really care about real people. So when that reality settles in, the debate often stops being fun. It begins to feel like what it often actually is: a fight for the well-being of people who matter.

And this is a very important fight to engage in. However…it is my choice. Not everyone has to engage.

There are people I deeply care about who cannot afford to talk to the other side about the basic dignity of their place in the world. It gives them trauma. It ruins their emotional health. It makes it hard for them to cope with their lives. I know the other side denies this happens. They’re simply wrong. I’ve seen it too often. If you don’t think this happens, frankly, you need to open your eyes and get out more.

And I don’t think these vulnerable people should have to talk to the other side. I mean, why should they have to justify the color of their skin, their sexual preferences, their gender, their disability — why should they have to fight other people to be treated and respected like human beings? They shouldn’t have to do that. Really. I think that when we are talking about something they ARE, we should accept and love them. Debating perspectives is one thing. Debating someone’s right to exist or their basic value due to something they cannot change is another.

This is part of the reason I was so saddened when Trump won. I realized that, however hard it was…the facts were that if more — not all, but more — of us don’t have conversations with the other side, we will lose much of the human dignity that we want protected, that is so vital to being in the world as a positive force.

It’s important to underline here that these conversations should not be necessary. We should be able to talk about tax policy — we can often do this fine. But you shouldn’t have to defend your right to be treated fairly if you’re gay. You shouldn’t have to argue about your right to not be kicked out of your apartment simply because you’re transgender. You shouldn’t be bullied and told you don’t deserve the space you occupy because you’re overweight. You shouldn’t have to defend your right to be treated with respect and not harassed as a woman. You shouldn’t have to fight for respect if you are disabled. You shouldn’t have to defend your right to be treated equally in spite of the color of your skin.  You’re a human being. We should respect you as a human being.

So these are basic things you shouldn’t have to defend. But Trump becoming President was a rude awakening to me that revealed to me a simple truth.

If we do not talk to the other side even more, we will lose.

You can say that we should not have to do that, and I’ll agree wholeheartedly. I do not think this is fair. I do not think this is right. I do not think it should be necessary. I do not think EVERYONE has to do it.

And if someone less horrifying than Trump was in office, and if we didn’t have a conservative House, Senate, and Supreme Court, then I would say this is less necessary. But I’ve been looking at the way things have been progressing over the past few months, and through tears, hours of watching the media, watching Trump speeches, arguing with Trump supporters in person and online, and reading articles on several sides of the debate…I came to the semi-conclusion that we simply have to talk to the other side if we want to make sure we make an impact.

And when I realized that, I cried, because people should not have to protect their basic humanity. Like a military strategist in the war room trying to draw up plans and continually coming up with one that will result in enormous casualties, but is unavoidable to every person’s basic dignity, I got frustrated and upset. But I could not see another way. If we don’t do it, things will get unimaginably worse. Fast.

BUT…

I think we need to talk to the other side in a way that always has an eye out for protecting the rights and well-being for those conservatives most want to take said rights from. This means embracing, not distancing ourselves from, those who aren’t ready to talk to the other side. We should understand and validate their discomfort. Because, again, we should never forget that these are conversations we shouldn’t have to have.

Engaging more is not a principle of moral virtue; it is a matter of unfortunate necessity, and not everyone has to do it. We still need people to fire up the base. We still need people to nurture those who come back for healing, wounded and hurt by the vicious attacks on the most intimate aspects of their identities. We need people who provide ammunition in the form of arguments and statistics. We need strategists. We need political leaders who can negotiate with others in our interests.

Most importantly, we HAVE to do this with the most vulnerable people in mind. We have to always make it clear that what we are doing, we are doing for them. Even when we talk to and are friendly to the other side, like diplomats. There is no mistake (or shouldn’t be, anyway) that the ambassador from the United States who negotiates with China is squarely on the side of and representing the interests of the United States. There should be no mistake, with our diplomats, which side is being defended. That is, if we are going to protect the dignity of people through a hostile President, party, and cultural landscape.

“But,” you say, “Why this talk of sides? Don’t you have to be open to changing your mind?”

On a personal level — obviously, the answer is yes. As I just said, I have changed my mind countless times. But if you change your mind, and you turn against those who you once protected, they may not trust you. Their basic dignity and rights as human beings are often going to be at stake — if you’re not for them, you are likely taking away support from those who need it most. And so those of us who still care may have to make clear that your support is no longer being provided — which would be unfortunate, but I think, given the circumstances, should be understandable.

If you’re ready to fight…strike up conversations with your friends. Make some videos. Volunteer for a campaign. Create a blog. Post your views on Facebook. Share people who make good points with others. Join marches. Sign petitions. Do what you can to resist and make your voice matter. Join the ones who are making a difference, if you are able, and let’s do what we have to do to fight for basic human dignity and rights, as if a better nation depends on it.

Many are already doing this, but the more join the fight, the more we can increase the difference we can make…which is absolutely crucial going forward.

Thank you for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep writing.

Once, when I was around 21, I thought that homosexuality was a sin. I told a lot of people that those attracted to the same sex should be separated from society and put on an island to die out, as they wouldn’t reproduce. I did not know better. Given my background and the way I was raised, the fact I held those opinions makes a lot of sense. As does the fact that, somewhere out there, there is a video with me talking and joking about my holding of these disturbing views.

That’s just a small taste of the beliefs I had that I am now deeply ashamed of. I’ve made a long list of mistakes. At 28, five years ago, I finally left conservative Christianity. But when I saw how harmful the beliefs I had held for years were, I cried on several occasions. I was deeply sorry. Still am.

I’ll tell you another story. There is someone close to me, a family member, who hurt me deeply over a long period of time when I was younger. When I was older, they apologized. The apology was sincere. But the damage was done, and I was still angry. I went to a therapist about it, and they said something wise (and backed up by science).

They told me that if someone is truly sorry for what they have done, they’ll realize the damage they caused. An apology that is basically a plea for someone not to hold a wrong against you isn’t a true apology. A true apology is an assent that you recognized that what you did was hurtful and wrong, and that going forward you’ll do differently. As this Atlantic article states (links in the quote are to the actual studies):

Past research has shown that a key part of a successful apology is assuring the victim that the bad behavior won’t happen again. “When we’ve done something wrong, we tend to be self-focused,” explained Cynthia Frantz of Oberlin College, who authored a landmark study on apology timing titled “Better Late Than Early.” “You actually should be more focused on the other person, making sure they really believe that you get what you did wrong.” Without that emphasis on the other person’s emotional state—and the promise of change—an apology sounds insincere.

So, if the person who you said “sorry” to gets angry again at the harm you caused them from what you’ve done and you get defensive and say, “I said sorry!” then you’re showing that you weren’t sorry for what you’ve done; you’re sorry for the way what you’ve done affected the way people view you. If you are sorry for what you’ve done, you will realize the harm in what you’ve done, and realize further that people may still be hurting and angry due to that harm.

“Sorry” isn’t about you. Not a real “sorry.” It’s about acknowledging the pain and hurt you caused someone else.

And that truth deeply helped me.

It helped me realize that my failure to get rid of my anger in the face of a genuine apology from this person who deeply wronged me was not my personal failing. The apology did not obligate me to no longer feel pain, hurt, and anger. And the healing, if there was healing, would come from the other person recognizing that the pain, hurt, and anger was justified, and genuinely regretting giving me pain. If they thought the apology took away my right to feel pain, hurt, and anger, then how could I trust them to look out for my best interests in the future, when the apology was just about them? The only way we could heal is if the other person acknowledges they hurt me and that my pain makes sense.

And this isn’t all about permanent, crippling shame; that’s not healthy, either. It’s about the connection we can create when the person apologizing acknowledges the pain that they cause and apologizes out of love, not just self-preservation. We don’t heal when the apologizer apologizes to get the other person to forget the pain caused; that just creates unresolved tension and anger that often will eventually destroy the relationship. We heal by recognizing that pain, empathizing with it, and changing constantly based on the new and developing understanding.

So, let’s apply that dynamic to something Laci Green said in a recent video:

There was this one time I was at a conference. I’m walking out the parking lot and these three people, feminists, shout me down. They accuse me of contributing to the violent deaths of trans people. What’s their reasoning? Well, when I was 17 I made a fan video for Chris Crocker. He uses the T-word to describe himself, and I did not know that that was offensive, and I apologized afterward.

Let’s pause here. It seems good that Laci Green apologized. I myself have had to apologize for saying much worse. So, good start…maybe. Because, remember, the apology has to be about the pain you cause other people, and your statement that you will seek to remedy and understand that pain. An “apology” that is meant to invalidate the pain and anger of those you hurt is not done for the other person’s benefit; it’s done for your own reputation. You can tell the difference by whether the person apologizing responds to later expressions of anger with resentment or a deeper, more empathetic understanding.

Which kind of apology is Laci Green talking about here?

Let’s press “play” on the video. Next she says:

But, you know, five years later there we were in this parking lot. Not only did they seem to imply that accidentally using an offensive word is the same as literally killing people —

Pause.

Someone hurting you on accident and someone hurting you on purpose is still someone hurting you, right? If you have a traffic accident, the fact that it was an accident doesn’t mean that the people you hurt don’t have a right to be upset and say that you put their lives in danger. If the T-word is one that is used to denigrate the existence of trans people and make their lives a living hell, then accidentally using it in a frame of reference that is hurtful still does damage to the way people view them and treat them, whether you intended for it to or not.

So if your apology is recognizing all of that, wouldn’t it agree with the sentiment that the offensive word was that harmful? The fact that she doesn’t indicates that her apology did not recognize how serious the offense was or, perhaps more unfortunate, that the apology was for the way she was treated when she said the word, not for the offense she caused others.

This is important, because if she apologizes in order to get treated better, then she’ll resent any time someone brings up the offense, because she’ll be frustrated and think they didn’t recognize that the apology absolved her like it was supposed to. And everyone who criticizes her will be pushing her from the goal of the apology — which is not to recognize that what she did was wrong and learn from it going forward, but to invalidate the pain and anger people may feel, in the future, from her remarks.

If she would have been apologizing to remedy the offense she caused others, she would see this anger as an opportunity to understand, to empathize, to deepen her love and consideration for the people she hurt.

These are two fundamentally different orientations. Is she apologizing to campaign for people to shut up about the pain she caused them, or in order to love and care for the people she hurt? In other words,  is it about Laci Green, or about the people Laci Green is trying  to help?

Let’s let her finish her sentence:

But you know five years later there we were in this parking lot. Not only did they seem to imply that accidentally using an offensive word is the same as literally killing people — but then they threatened me. They threatened to kick my “cis ass.”

And yes, the threat (albeit that the threat did not result in violence, and that it seemed to happen AFTER the accusation — “then they” — and, presumably, after being given a chance to respond) was over the top, whether it was a figure of speech in the heat of the moment or not. But in the video, she could have said something like:

And I was terrified by the threat. But I also realized that those words I had said back then hurt. And so I apologized, again, for the pain those words had caused. And in that apology, I understand a depth to the pain that I hadn’t realized before, and that deeper understanding opened up my heart to a deeper love and concern for trans people. Of course, I don’t support violence. But that episode taught me that those words truly hurt people, and that the fact that I apologized for them years ago doesn’t mean that I don’t still have more to learn.

But instead she actually said:

Now I’ve seen this shit online, but that was the first time I ever saw it in person. Wow.

And this is remarkable. She doesn’t acknowledge the pain that word caused. She doesn’t acknowledge she hurt those women. She insists they should get over it. The focus of her apology seems to be on ensuring that she will be treated better, that people will know that her intentions were pure, rather than acknowledging, empathizing with, and seeking to better understand the people she hurt.

Again, the empathetic second apology she could have given is possible. Many of us have done it. I’ve had to do it. It’s not always easy, but it’s healthy in the long run. But not doing it…will wear you out. Because ultimately an apology is not about absolving yourself of guilt. If you do it for that reason, you’ll be muffling the people you’re hurting, and become more distanced from them, and the resentment you’ll feel will increase. The apology is about learning how to love the people you’re apologizing to.

Laci Green’s practice of apologizing in order to make herself look better, instead of doing so to empathize with other people and acknowledge a deepening understanding of their pain, seems to have been going on for awhile, because next she indicates that this same scenario has happened a ton of times when stating:

I have other stories like this, like, it pains me. I’ve seen a spectrum of these types of behaviors.

It’s important to point out here that the exhaustion Laci Green shows here, which carries through the rest of her video and her behavior after creating the video, is a natural reaction to what appears to be her longstanding view of social justice. If you embrace social justice for your own benefit as opposed to the benefit of other people, you’re missing out on the greatest benefit that embracing social justice offers — deepening your understanding, empathy, and care for people who have identities that tend to be placed on the margins of society. But it’s about the journey of showing care; you’re never going to “arrive” — you’re never going to completely understand, and so if you want to be seen as always understanding…eventually the dam is going to break.

And so, if you’re in this for yourself, each person who says you have something more to learn will not be an opportunity to understand. They’ll be someone who is ruining the high and clean reputation you want to have.

Now, this dynamic seems to be played out in the rest of Laci Green’s video,and is consistent with her attitudes towards people who say that she’s publicly associating with people who have said very hurtful things to the people she once appeared to represent — she’s blocking them on social media, expressing anger towards them, etc. And increasingly, she seems resentful towards those fighting for social justice — most recently deciding to go on the rabidly anti-social justice Dave Rubin Show, presumably to air her grievances against them.

And that’s why this isn’t about Laci Green. Frankly, I think that that ship has sailed.

Laci Green’s burnout is a lesson to the rest of us who are representing social justice causes that include marginalized groups we are not part of.

If it’s about you, you will burn out. You will eventually become resentful. Your path will not be a deeply meaningful one of empathy, care, and constantly deepening understanding. Oh, you may learn a lot about social justice issues. You will learn talking points that may get you better liked — because after all, that’s your goal. You may have a large following. But there will be something rotting away in you that comes from your chase of a validation, an end point, that you will increasingly feel is unjustly denied to you the more you do to approach it. Because you will never know everything, and when given the choice to see a proposed adjustment as a learning opportunity or a cruel reminder of how people view your inadequacy, you will see it as people saying that you personally are an inadequate person. Because you will (like every human) always make mistakes that will either be opportunities to empathize and love with more understanding, or opportunities to resent, and you will always choose resentment.  Because you’ll think that the only way to help others is to be the perfect social justice advocate who pleases everyone at all times — and that you aren’t successful until you’ve done that — and fail to see that social justice is most meaningful and valuable in the moments we make mistakes and thus learn from each other, deepen our love for each other, and gain a deeper understanding and sense of empathy when we find that we were wrong.

In short, you will leave social justice causes — or be thoroughly miserable in them — like Laci Green if you forget the most important rule when it comes to ensuring social justice for other members of marginalized groups:

This isn’t about you.

It’s about continuously understanding and empathizing with the people you’re trying to help.

Thanks for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to support this blog.

 

This is inspired by a conversation that is another episode in a long history of misunderstanding Martin Luther King, Jr.

The two actors in this conversation are Chris Ray Gun, a popular anti-SJW YouTuber; and Franchesca Ramsey, popular Youtuber, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore writer and contributor, and host of the MTV show Decoded.

Chris Ray Gun started out with:

Racial tensions in the US are bad, but at least they've given unlimited energy in the form of MLK spinning infinitely in his grave.

— Chris Ray Gun (@ChrisRGun) June 2, 2017

Honestly, it’s somewhat difficult to figure out what Chris Ray Gun means when he talks about “racial tensions” and MLK “spinning infinitely in his grave” at first. One might be willing to nod — yes, there is racial tension, and yes, MLK would probably not be happy about that. But why? Because black people were complaining, or because white people weren’t listening?

But then, Franchesca seems to clarify CRG’s stance in her response:

i wish folks would read something other than the opening line of "i have a dream" before fixing their mouth to use MLK's name to silence

— Franchesca Ramsey (@chescaleigh) June 2, 2017

And apparently she had the right idea in assuming CRG was saying black people were complaining too loudly:

I guess I totally forgot about the part of the speech where he argues for racial unity and common sense, and then immediately says "lol jk." https://t.co/45wyPrksnU

— Chris Ray Gun (@ChrisRGun) June 2, 2017

Behind this statement that black people should stop complaining and contributing to “racial tensions” and instead embrace “racial unity and common sense” is the thinking that we have equal opportunity, and that we should realize that racism is not a major problem in America for the government to do much about — it’s only a problem because black people talk about it so much, instead of taking responsibility for their own destiny in a relatively “colorblind” world. MLK wanted us to stop seeing race, the thinking goes, and many black people in the United States are doing the exact opposite of this.

The view of MLK as someone who would want black people to stop making such a big deal about racism and be satisfied with the fact that they live in a colorblind society is not new. Chris Ray Gun got his drastically inaccurate picture of MLK from several others, including President Ronald Reagan.

Let me give you an example of how Ronald Reagan rubber-stamped and molded the whitewashed myth of MLK.

Y’know the whole Affirmative Action thing? What do you think MLK would have thought about Affirmative Action? Got your answer?

Chris Ray Gun probably would say that MLK was against it because he wanted to ensure that, as the “I Have A Dream” speech stated, people are judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Obviously, he and his followers would say, that means he would not want his children to be given preferential treatment. The optimal thing would be for them be succeed as individuals based on their merits,  not because an institution was encouraged to meet a quota.  MLK would totally be against black quotas in universities.

And Chris Ray Gun would be in good company. This idea goes all the way back to the very first MLK Day in 1986, before which Ronald Reagan said:

We’re committed to a society in which all men and women have equal opportunities to succeed, and so we oppose the use of quotas. We want a colorblind society, a society that, in the words of Dr. King, judges people “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Chris Ray Gun wouldn’t be saying anything new, then. It’s an argument that’s been made since the whitewashing of MLK began in earnest.

What did MLK actually say about quotas? Here he is in 1964:

Among the many vital jobs to be done, the nation must not only radically readjust its attitude toward the Negro in the compelling present, but must incorporate into its planning some compensatory consideration for the handicaps he has inherited from the past. It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now, in order to balance the equation and equip him to compete on a just and equal basis?

Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.

Yes, MLK was an avid advocate of affirmative action. And if you think about it for two seconds, both of these issues are compatible. You CAN be judged for the content of your character — and still be given greater opportunity to make up for the lack of opportunity through affirmative action.

It was precisely MLK’s stance on issues like affirmative action that Reagan wanted to whitewash MLK in the first place. He did that in a couple steps, long story short. He’d focus on the importance of change in the individual, and diminish the change needed in society. So he used MLK to say, “Look what the individual can accomplish by themselves,” and also to say, “Because people like MLK have shown you that you can accomplish a lot by yourselves, you don’t need the help of the government.” (You can read more about this dynamic here).

That’s the image most people have of MLK. And it’s by design.  Reagan was initially hesitant about creating MLK Day (in spite of tremendous pressure) but eventually he did because people had such an inaccurate view of King. As Reagan stated in a letter he wrote before making his decision to go ahead with MLK Day:

On the national holiday you mentioned, I have the reservations you have but here the perception of too many people is based on an image not reality. Indeed to them the perception is reality.

In other words, Reagan had reservations about MLK Day but went ahead with it because people did not know the REAL MLK. Thus, if he emphasized the whitewashed version of MLK, he could make the recognition of MLK Day less of a threat to his agenda — and maybe even (as we’re about to see) an asset to it.

Because the real MLK had a fundamentally different philosophy than Reagan. Reagan believed that black individuals should not appeal to the government for economic redress for the ways they had been wronged (he was also originally against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed segregation and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but he changed those positions — arguably to ensure he got into office).  MLK, on the other hand, believed that the government should play a significant role in ensuring the rights of blacks were protected.

So Reagan created and emphasized the whitewashed version of MLK Chris Ray Gun and his friends keyed into. And this is important, because MLK was one of the most influential civil rights activists of all time. Whatever he was doing worked.

The whitewashed MLK, as we just saw, was much like Reagan (which would make sense, as Reagan created him) in being against all forms of affirmative action. Rather, for the whitewashed MLK, individual black individuals were supposed to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps instead of pleading for the government to do it for them.

The real MLK, as noted above, said that affirmative action was necessary so that black individuals would make up lost ground, and saw that as completely compatible with — and necessary for — racial equality.

The whitewashed MLK would hate Black Lives Matter for hogging up the streets and disobeying laws in their marches. He was for racial equality, but one that depended on the individual instead of people whining to the government and breaking laws to get their attention. The way for reform, according to whitewashed MLK, was to do everything in a polite, orderly fashion.

The real MLK wrote:

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”

Here’s the kicker: He wrote that while he was in the Birmingham Jail.

What was he in jail for? Not just marching. Marching without a permit.

No, really. Here. Look at the newspaper:

Negro leaders said today that they will not obey an injunction banning racial demonstrations in Birmingham.

The blanket injunction was issued Wednesday night by Circuit Judge W. A. Jenkins Jr….

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and behind-the-scenes director of the current movement, headed the list of names in the injunction….

The eight leaders [which included MLK] laughed as a plain-clothes officer handed them copies of the injunction, which was requested by the City of Birmingham.

So, let’s recap.

A bonafide judge said, “Don’t march in Birmingham — ESPECIALLY you, MLK.”

And he laughed.

He LAUGHED.

And he marched anyway. Totally unlicensed march. No roads were blocked off. No permit was granted. Just what some would call a blatant disregard for the law. He could have marched ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES and he chose to march in Birmingham, Alabama in particular, the one place they were specifically telling him not to.

This is so different from the whitewashed MLK who, on the very blog network I write on, had words put in his mouth against real MLK’s actions as if they were MLK’s own, stating:

King appealed to the local black population to use the courts and not the streets to secure civil rights. He counseled “law and order and common sense,” not demonstrations that “incite to hatred and violence,” as the most prudent means to promote justice.

One problem: Those words were not written by MLK. Those phrases urging “law and order and common sense” and the encouragement to avoid demonstrations that “incite to hatred and violence” are NOT words from MLK; they are words that an angry group of white pastors wrote to MLK when MLK was in jail for marching in Birmingham and getting arrested when he had been specifically told not to. They said:

Just as we formerly pointed out that “hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions,” we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however, technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham….

We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.

They further stated that “we feel that inflammatory and rebellious statements can lead only to violence, discord, confusion, and disgrace for our beloved state.”

Or, in other words, they encouraged MLK to shut up. As people today are encouraged to shut up.

And in response to them, MLK penned, in jail, the quote I included a few lines above: “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

So yeah. You’re dead wrong when you say that MLK was against unauthorized marches. He laughed when he was told specifically not to march, went to jail for it, and basically trashed the people on his side who said he had gone overboard, saying that they were probably worse than the KKK.

That’s not all. Whitewashed MLK was against reparations. He was, in the mold of Reagan, about the dignity of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.

But in a 1965 interview with Playboy done by Alex Haley, there is the following exchange:

Playboy (Alex Haley): Along with the other civil rights leaders, you have often proposed a massive program of economic aid, financed by the Federal Government, to improve the lot of the nation’s 20,000,000 Negroes. … A nationwide program such as you propose would undoubtedly run into the billions.

King: About 50 billion, actually — which is less than 1 year of our present defense spending. It is my belief that with the expenditure of this amount, over a 10-year period, a genuine and dramatic transformation could be achieved in the conditions of Negro life in America. I am positive, moreover, that the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils.

….

Playboy (Alex Haley): Do you feel it’s fair to request a multibillion-dollar program of preferential treatment for the Negro, or for any other minority group?

King: I do indeed. Can any fair-minded citizen deny that the Negro has been deprived? Few people reflect that for 2 centuries the Negro was enslaved, and robbed of any wages – potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America’s wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation. It is an economic fact that a program such as I propose would certainly cost far less than any computation of unpaid wages plus accumulated interest. In any case, I do not intend that his program of economic aid should apply only to the Negro; it should benefit the disadvantaged of all races.

So the real MLK certainly saw nothing wrong with reparations (although he wanted government funds to benefit all races, he clearly thought reparations were justified). And that $50 billion, by the way, is $388 billion in 2017 dollars. It wasn’t chump change. It was an enormous economic program, which MLK thought would improve “the conditions of Negro life in America.” This is so shocking to some of the people reading the above link that one comments the following:

Hmmm…this changes my opinion about Dr. King. Seems that he was a proponent of government handouts, and not so much of a “character” person after all.

Well, he was both, but good that you’re seeing the light.

What about that good ol’ whitewashed MLK’s belief that we should pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps (thanks to Reagan’s molding of MLK’s legacy)?

Well, the real MLK states:

At the very same time that America refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress, our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the mid-West, which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.

But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms. Not only that, today many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm.

And they are the very people telling the black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And this is what we are faced with. Now this is the reality. Now when we come to Washington, in this campaign, we are coming to get our check.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdca4sGm9pw[/youtube]

He died three weeks before he could go on that march — the Poor People’s March. It’s clear here that he didn’t think much of the “lift yourself up by your own bootstraps” solution.

Chris Ray Gun’s whitewashed MLK also was upset about tension, right?

And yet the actual MLK, in his Birmingham jail cell, said:

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, 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. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. 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.

So no, MLK is not spinning in his grave due to the tension. He’d appreciate it.

What he wouldn’t appreciate is white moderates who ruin his legacy in a whitewashed lie of who he is and use it to silence the very tension he thought was of paramount importance.

He thought they were likely even worse than the KKK.

I’m inclined to agree.

Thanks for reading.

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