Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

[Wildy]

I signed it already.

Congratulations! If you weren't already on a FTB/A+ unperson list you probably are now. Because we all know that people who agree with people from the Slyme Pit are automatically evil people.

 

[Stout]

Seattle Skeptics have been addressing this controversy locally and a member emailed this to me:

http://www.skepticwomen.com/welcome-statement

If you read the petition and agree with it, they ask you sign (forum or real name). You'll see a couple names you recognize.

Excellent Great to see that.

For some strange reason this isn't mentioned over on A+.

Now I know we've all been starved for content wrt A+ over the past week and it was looking like the lulz had dried up however this morning....then chemgeek hits it out of the park on their Michelle Obama thread.

Check out this post.

Bill, it can't not be about skin color when you're dealing with a situation involving someone of a visible minority in a racist society. Just like it can't not be about gender when you're dealing with a person of a disadvantaged gender in a sexist society. That Obama is black matters, and that she's a woman matters. Don't snark at Kassiane for pointing it out.

First thegeek tries to cram the concept of privilege into a conversation about possibly the most powerful woman on the planet then goes on in the gender vein apparently oblivious to the fact that the "heckler" was herself, a woman.

Then thegeek tops it off by doing something the Aplussers regularly admonish "other" posters for doing....tone policing.

Where's that SJW privilege checklist again ? I need to use it it prove to myself that I'm more privileged than Michelle Obama.

 

[RebeccaBradley]

There's been some predictable kicking back about the Skeptic Women manifesto. On Twitter, Ophelia Benson appears to have assumed that some troll signing her name to it was the doing of the Skeptic Women, and all part of her rolling persecution. The astonishing Aratina Cage feels the Skeptic Women were "gaslighting" Benson. So I guess it's all really about Benson....

https://twitter.com/ActivistAtheist/status/342272514925404160

And then there's this, where some blogger "fixes" the letter:

http://sinmantyx.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/fixed-that-for-you-skeptic-women/

"Fixed that for you" = one of my least favourite rhetorical tactics, both patronizing and dishonest.

 

[Humes fork]

PoC pretty much means "not European" since apparently dark olive skinned Mediterranean people are white, but lily pale Asian people aren't.

Seems like a poor choice of word then. Akin to how "African American" from what I understand doesn't include Egyptians, Tunisians and whatnot.

 

[Humes fork]

I sorta want to asking Sean Carroll (physicist and outspoken atheist) what he thinks about this whole aplus thing. I've e-mailed with him before, and he replies most of the time. The thing is, it would be so embarassing that I'd have to make a new e-mail account with a fake name.

I'd also love to know Dawkins' take on it, but Dawkins gets lots of e-mails and I assume the chance of getting a reply is rather low. Especially for such an awkward and esoteric subject.

 

[Lorentz]

Seems like a poor choice of word then. Akin to how "African American" from what I understand doesn't include Egyptians, Tunisians and whatnot.

I propose an alternative term: PoDC (Person of Different Culture).

In my country I have on occasion noticed discrimination, not so much based on skin colour, but on hair, attire and accent. Someone with dark brown skin and a thick Amsterdam accent is just another guy from Amsterdam. A young guy with curly dark hair and light brown skin, speaking with a foreign accent, is someone to be wary of - might be one of those troublesome second generation Moroccan kids.

In Britain, if you see some white young guy looking like a chav late Friday night, you're going to be warier of him than of the dreadlocked black guy smoking what looks like a joint on the other side of the street.

I think it's obvious that all discrimination is ultimately based on in-group / out-group mechanisms. But what triggers the decisions in our brains as to whether to class someone as in-group or out-group? It can be based on skin colour, hairstyle, gender, age, accent, attire, body language, location, or a combination of these factors. It seems to me that mere skin colour, or ethnicity, is becoming less dominant.

I have the impression that in the U.S. as well, cultural identity tags are more often deciding factors in determination of in-group / out-group than mere skin colour. Obama for instance, seems culturally white. His body language, attire, haircut and accent fit within mainstream (therefore white) American norms. He might as well be a law professor somewhere - oh wait. On the other hand, a group of black guys wearing reversed baseball caps, low-slung jeans and dark glasses hanging around in a group, well, watch your step. Likely to be pulled over for "driving while black". Young black guy in trainers and a hoodie walking around in a middle-class suburb? Likely to be up to no good, so follow him and see if you can catch him in the act.

As racial (I loathe that term when signifying humans) integration continues in our cultures, mere skin colour loses much of its significance. Other cultural signifiers become more significant, like accents, wearing of a hijab, reversed baseball cap, turban, business suit, yarmulke and the like.

Therefore, I propose that the term PoC be replaced by PoDC in all future discussions of privilege.

This all sounds pretty basic and I suspect sociological studies - possibly even some sound ones - must have been done, but a quick Google didn't get me any hits.

p.s. It does make me wonder if rednecks are properly PoDC or not.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I like PoDC, Lorentz, hope it takes off. Except some people of color are from the same culture as the person addressing them.

 

[Lorentz]

I'd also love to know Dawkins' take on it, but Dawkins gets lots of e-mails and I assume the chance of getting a reply is rather low. Especially for such an awkward and esoteric subject.

Given his earlier irritation with ms. Watson's obsession with sexism in the skeptic community, her non-boycott boycott of his books, her rape survivor letter campaign against him for saying the Elevator thing was "zero bad", I'd say that if he has any objectivity left on the subject, he must be superhuman indeed.

But even if he has been able to retain his objectivity through all this, I don't think he should speak out on the subject any further, given his high profile and the likelihood of calls for further boycotts.

p.s. The rape survivor letter campaign was the point at which I lost all remaining respect for ms. Watson - and possibly some of my objectivity as well.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

And to show they're getting trolled too, look at the "removed signatures". There are some, um, interesting names there...

I wonder how they managed to confirm the emails? Was that confirmed when requesting the removal or were they emails that the troll used to confirm in a reply?

IOW you post a fake name, give an email registered to you and when you get the confirmation message you confirm the address. I guess a lot of people have email accounts for such things.

 

[Lorentz]

I like PoDC, Lorentz, hope it takes off. Except some people of color are from the same culture as the person addressing them.

But also from the same subculture? Middle-class black housewife addressing middle-class caucasian neighbour housewife? Or are we talking poor inner city POC who dropped out of high school, addressing college educated white person?

 

[Humes fork]

Speaking of it, why are whites called "Caucasians" in the US? People from the Caucasus (Georgians, Armenians, Azeris, Chechens, Ossetes etc) tend to be pretty brownish, almost Middle Eastern in appearance.

 

[Lorentz]

Speaking of it, why are whites called "Caucasians" in the US? People from the Caucasus (Georgians, Armenians, Azeris, Chechens, Ossetes etc) tend to be pretty brownish, almost Middle Eastern in appearance.

I suspect it has a similar reason as Nordic blond light-skinned people being called "Aryan", originally meaning from the eastern part of Persia. That is, language evolves in curious ways.

And on that note, still no evolutionary linguist in the room? Noone?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

But also from the same subculture? Middle-class black housewife addressing middle-class caucasian neighbour housewife? Or are we talking poor inner city POC who dropped out of high school, addressing college educated white person?

There are a few black people in my social circle and they are pretty much part of the same culture. I think two of them are comfortable in the black subculture as well. But around here, you couldn't tell they were 'different'.

 

[qayak]

Speaking of it, why are whites called "Caucasians" in the US? People from the Caucasus (Georgians, Armenians, Azeris, Chechens, Ossetes etc) tend to be pretty brownish, almost Middle Eastern in appearance.

From Wikipedia:

Origin of the term:

According to Leonti Mroveli, the 11th century Georgian chronicler, the word Caucasian is derived from the Vainakh ancestor Kavkas.[4] "The Vainakhs are the ancient natives of the Caucasus.

Origin of the concept:

The concept of a Caucasian race or Varietas Caucasia was developed around 1800 by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a German scientist and classical anthropologist.[8] Blumenbach named it after the Caucasian peoples (from the Southern Caucasus region), whom he considered to be the archetype for the grouping.[9] He based his classification of the Caucasian race primarily on craniology.[10] Blumenbach wrote:

Caucasian variety - I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this, that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones (birth place) of mankind.[11][12]

Relation to Whiteness:

In his earlier racial typology, Meiners maintained that Caucasians had the "whitest, most blooming and most delicate skin".[18] Europeans with darker skin he considered to be "dirty whites", admixed with Mongolian. . .

Alongside the anthropologist Georges Cuvier, Blumenbach classified the Caucasian race by cranial measurements and bone morphology rather than prioritizing skin pigmentation, and thus considered more than just the palest Europeans ("white, cheeks rosy") as archetypes for the Caucasian race.[22]

 

[Humes fork]

Now they prattle about destroying capitalism:

The legacy of patriarchy is deeply embedded in our systems, including our economic systems. Capitalism does a great job of perpetuating existing inequalities of wealth and opportunity. There’s a discussion we could have there.

...

There is evidence that at least a socialist approach reduces religious belief. We could definitely have a chat about how the destruction of capitalism would affect secular and atheist activism.

Okay, let's discuss. What are the options to a capitalistic economic system that they propose? When they tried socialism in various parts of the world it didn't work out very well.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

There is evidence that at least a socialist approach reduces religious belief.

There is certainly evidence that some socialist societies outlawed religions and that the reported numbers of religious people within those societies dropped. I'm not sure why socialist belief itself would lead to a lack of belief in deities.

 

[Humes fork]

I'm not sure why socialist belief itself would lead to a lack of belief in deities.

Indeed, some folks find them perfectly compatible.

 

[Lorentz]

Okay, let's discuss. What are the options to a capitalistic economic system that they propose? When they tried socialism in various parts of the world it didn't work out very well.

A common response is that socialism has actually never been tried yet. There's something to be said for that, as communism was basically state dictatorship, rather than dictatorship of the masses.

Then again, I've also heard someone claim that free markets have never truly been tried as yet, but if they were, they'd solve all problems.

And of course, anarchy has never been truly tried as yet. Pure anarchy would make for a Heinleinian utopia.

Did I mention that installing me as Supreme Ruler has never been tried yet?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

A common response is that socialism has actually never been tried yet. There's something to be said for that, as communism was basically state dictatorship, rather than dictatorship of the masses.

Then again, I've also heard someone claim that free markets have never truly been tried as yet, but if they were, they'd solve all problems.

And of course, anarchy has never been truly tried as yet. Pure anarchy would make for a Heinleinian utopia.

Did I mention that installing me as Supreme Ruler has never been tried yet?

I'm pretty sure we can draw some conclusions about these economic systems without seeing said 'pure' states in practice.

Under hypothetically pure communism you might expect capitalism to seep in and motivation to be problematic.

Under hypothetically pure Lassez Faire capitalism you might expect greed to be a serious issue. People don't take care of the environment, for example, if it's more profitable not to.

Under socialism, we have evidence some things work well: police, fire, medicine, etc because they benefit the public more than the individual and socialism works best in those industries.

But there's less motivation for some innovations and the problems with corruption are significant (comes back to human nature).

The best system would apply different economic structures to different industries, it requires oversight by a well informed public and prevention of injections of money into the power structure.

No country is there yet. All you can do is keep striving for it and when the pendulum swings too far in one direction, work to swing to back the other way.

 

[Lorentz]

No country is there yet. All you can do is keep striving for it and when the pendulum swings too far in one direction, work to swing to back the other way.

Fair summary of the current state of affairs in political experiments. Sadly, as yet we lack the resources to perform the Dosadi experiment. Think of what all those superhumans could achieve.

As for what "works", there's a lot of personal preference involved in that, perhaps more of those than there are objective criteria. When it comes to political systems I prefer Norway to the U.S., but ideally maybe something in between continental Europe and the U.S. ... as long as it's not the UK.