Posts By Crommunist

0 This isn’t racism (except that it is)

January 6, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · news · race · racism

I’m unpopular with a good segment of the population, I’m sure, for my stance on the definition of racism. I contrast the “classical” understanding of racism – violence and open hatred aimed at the subjugation of one race in favour of another – with the current face of racism – a de facto subjugation of one race through passive social structures and institutions. They both come from the same root, which is the attribution of group characteristics to individuals based on their ethnicity. Most of the time such attribution is based on a faulty understanding of the ethnicity in question, manifesting itself through easily-identifiable and understandable cognitive mechanisms.

The reason why my stance is unpopular is that there are many people who would simply like to be done with racism. By rejecting the modern contextual understanding in favour of the “classical” one, these people are able to throw up their hands and say “I don’t actively hate anyone – racism over!” Racism becomes, as a result, everyone else’s problem – if only others were as enlightened as I, they could become non-racist too. As I’ve pointed out before, being “non-racist” isn’t an option for anyone. Racism is built into our culture, and pretending it doesn’t affect us is like building a car without airbags or seatbelts because you don’t even want to think about the possibility of a crash (actually, it’s more like drawing a free-body physics diagram and not including the normal force because you don’t believe in it, but not everyone would get that reference).

The problem is that clinging to the “classical” definition of racism screws our cognitive blinders on so tight that we end up with situations like this:

[South African Communist Party leader Blade Nzimande] said chicken past its best-before date was being recycled – thawed, washed and injected with flavouring – then sold to shops in black townships. A spokesman for the poultry industry admitted the practice takes place, but said it was both safe and legal. The meat is removed from major chains of supermarkets and is re-distributed to spaza shops – smaller, family-run shops which serve black communities – and independent wholesalers.

The meat being re-packaged is (the industry assures us) completely safe to eat, and poses no health risk above what is acceptable by the health department’s standards. This is not an attempt to poison black people with tainted meat, or anything so sinister. Under the “classical” definition of racism, there’s absolutely nothing racist about this practice. They are simply re-selling meat, and it just so happens that the consumers of this meat are predominantly black people.

The one sentence that is the key to unraveling this whole thing is right here:

But [poultry industry spokesperson Kevin Lovell] also accepted that re-worked chicken did not go on sale in major supermarkets, which served the country’s wealthier suburbs.

There’s nothing unsafe, illegal or in any way racist or wrong with the practice of re-selling the meat, he says. But just to be safe, only the poor black people get it. This is the same kind of logic that fueled the incredibly-racist “literacy tests” for voting back in the days of Jim Crow. You have to be able to read to vote, the logic says. There’s no reason why black people can’t vote, as long as they can demonstrate the requisite reading ability. Please ignore the fact that black schools are underfunded, and that the tests often had nothing to do with literacy, and that they were often only required of black voters… Please ignore that, and also ignore that the end result is that black voters are turned away in droves, thus disenfranchising people based on race. That’s not racism though, at least not under the “classical” view – no laws have been made to target one group, so there’s no problem.

It’s this uncomfortable truth that people who cling to the antiquated view of KKK-style racism are so reluctant to confront, preferring instead to becoming indignant and dismissive whenever it is pointed out. It’s not just liberal propaganda designed to make white people feel guilty though; it is a real thing that has real effects on real people. Whether you are made a second-class citizen by the passage of a blatantly racist law or by the willful ignorance of the ruling class, it is a distinction without a difference. The discrimination is real, the effects are real, and the only thing that is surreal about the whole process is the repeated refusal by the oppressors to see what is happening.

Such people aren’t evil or malicious in their racism. Maybe they’re just chicken…

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12 Canadian Native communities face a new kind of challenge

January 5, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · conservativism · culture · First Nations · good news · politics · race · racism

There was once a time when I called myself a libertarian. After all, I believe that people should be allowed to do what they like, as long as it hurts nobody besides themselves (Scary Fundamentalist is going to poke me for this statement, too). I think that innovation happens when people are allowed to address challenges in whatever creative ways, rather than when they are forced to abide by a strict set of rules. I think that the more free a society is, the better off its citizens are. However, these are principles that have caveats: external regulation is necessary to prevent exploitation and fraud; liberty is not absolute, particularly when one person’s liberty infringes on another’s; it is sometimes justifiable to curtail the actions of a few to benefit the many in the long term. As such, I am not well-described by the term libertarian, and unlike CLS, I am not attached enough to the term to try and reclaim it.

However, the ghosts of my long-dead love affair with Ayn Rand were momentarily stirred when I read this story:

[Brian] Smith had made headlines for leading a grassroots uprising against the elected leaders of the Glooscap First Nation, after learning that his chief and councillors were each collecting more than $200,000 in salary and other payments — for running a community of 87 people. He organized a petition demanding a community meeting, where Glooscap leaders were made to account for their extraordinary pay and promise more transparency in the future.

“You’re changing the way things are done,” said one email to Smith from an Ojibway supporter in Central Canada, whose sentiments were typical of the messages Smith received after the Glooscap details broke. “I’m really, really, really happy you are standing firm on this and giving voice to us First Nations people who want better governance. I’m (also) proud that change is going to come from the community level, and from a First Nation person.”

It is a well-understood fact in sociology circles that if you want to engender lasting and meaningful change in a community, the solutions must come from the community itself. As well-intentioned as outside help might be, it stands the risk of being resented or worse, mischaracterizing the problem and failing to take salient details into account. Friends of mine went on a humanitarian aid trip to Attawapiskat First Nation in Northern Ontario a few years ago, to conduct what is known as a Needs Assessment – determining what problems face a community and what resources are needed to address them through dialogue with members of the community. The community expressed a strong desire to have public health education and resources made available. When the team pointed out that there was a federal building staffed with 2 public health nurses and the resources they had asked for, the community pointed out that it was “the government’s building”. Branded as it was with the federal logo and built without consultation from the community leaders, members of the public distrusted the service and assumed it was for the government’s use.

It has been a common practice to see a problem and swoop in to try and solve it. However, as anyone who has been on the receiving end of such an effort knows, this approach is rarely helpful. What is needed is direction from within the community, which fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility for solving the issues. To make it fully effective, such an effort should be supported by resource allocation (from the government or the NGO or whatever external parter is present), but their use must be determined by those stakeholders who use the service, not by those providing it. It seems perverse and exclusionary, but it is the only way to sufficiently address the problem.

With issues of good governance, it seems that members of First Nations communities are realizing this for themselves:

“I don’t have any desire for the federal government to come in and solve our problems,” says Cherie Francis, another Glooscap member angered by what her chief and councillors were being paid. “We elected these people. At some point, we have to step up in our own community and be responsible for our own actions, and our own leaders.”

…

“I’m glad Indian Affairs is staying out of this,” says Smith, who works as director of operations for the Vancouver-based National Centre for First Nations Governance, an independent group that promotes good leadership in native communities. “In the past, Indian Affairs would have jumped right in. That has changed in recent years. I think the message First Nations people are giving to the federal government is, at the end of the day we want to be more responsible for ourselves. And sometimes you’ve got to learn the hard way what is the right and wrong way of doing things.”

Ronald Reagan lampooned this (perhaps) well-intentioned bungling and over-reaching with his immortal line about the nine scariest words you’ll ever hear: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. Of course, as with most conservative calling cards, this drastically over-simplifies the issue. There is absolutely a way for government to help, and sometimes it is necessary for it to do so. However, when it overasserts its role and tries to solve the problem rather than making available the resources required for an organic solution, problems inevitably arise. The opposite approach, a sort of laissez-faire approach where government sits back, does nothing, and waits for problems to solve themselves, does nothing other than allowing the current conditions to continue unabated. A deft touch is required – one that is sensitive to the contemporary and historical forces at work in the situation and navigates the waters accordingly. This deft touch involves active engagement, and exists somewhere between the authoritarian “we fix it” and the libertarian “you fix it”.

This is fertile ground for a much longer discussion, but suffice it to say that the racial barriers, stigma, and long cultural history of betrayal and oppression facing First Nations people in Canada can be addressed, and self-government goes a long way toward starting that process. There is a role for all Canadians to play in this fight, and a role for government as well; provided it stays its hand and acts according to the will of the people rather than its own ideas of how to “fix” the Native “problem”.

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8 “Alternative Medicine” isn’t

January 4, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · medicine · science · skepticism

I am not Orac (though at times I wish I had his flair and his work ethic). My involvement in medicine can be accurately described as “tangential”, at least insofar as it comes to my career. That being said, I’m interested in the decisions we make when the stakes are high, and they don’t get much higher than the life and death circumstances we find ourselves in when talking about our health. As a result, I am acutely interested in the discussion around “alternative” medicines.

Alternative medicine, of course, is a propaganda phrase used to describe “treatments” that lie outside of the accepted norms for medicine. It is applied with equal gusto to completely sensible and useful things like modifying diet and exercise; things that seem like they might work but are a little out there like acupuncture and chiropractic; and to things that don’t make any sense and are completely batshit insane like homeopathy or energy healing (although, to be sure, there are way crazier things out there). The problem with such a… shall we say… flexibile definition of “alternative”, is that when someone points out that acupuncture doesn’t work, or that “energy healing” is the same fakery that faith healers exploit, people jump on them and say that they’re against anything that is “natural”.

That’s a distortion of the skeptical position that is so outrageous that it borders on being a lie. Large mainstream science-based organizations like Health Canada and the World Health Organization whole-heartedly endorse the use of diet and exercise modification to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and any number of other chronic and acute conditions. Herbal remedies are refined and turned into powerful pharmaceuticals (Aspirin is a commonly-invoked example of such a refinement). Things like yoga, massage, and other types of relaxation therapy are often recommended to reduce stress which can underly a number of health problems. Skeptics are happy to accept something so long as it works. We don’t care if it’s “alternative” or not.

These “alternative medicines” are not alternative in any way – if they work, then they aren’t alternative, they’re just medicine. The other side of the problem is the ones that are truly “alternative” aren’t medicine! They don’t work any better than voodoo or augury or invoking ancestor’s spirits. This wouldn’t be so problematic, except that they still do cause side-effects:

Giving alternative treatments such as homeopathic remedies instead of conventional medicines to children may have deadly side-effects in rare instances, a new analysis says. Australian researchers monitored reports from pediatricians in Australia from 2001 to 2003 looking for suspected side-effects from alternative medicines like herbal treatments, vitamin supplements or naturopathic pills. They found 39 reports of side-effects including four deaths.

Real medicine is regulated, monitored for safety, and must pass through a strict certification process to reach market. Nobody would claim that the process is perfect – some real stinkers get through – but they get caught. All some quack has to do is slap the label “alternative” on her product, and she gets off scot free. This poses a real threat – herbs and supplements are biochemically active substances that have real effects in the body. The liver doesn’t care if something is “natural” or not – it still breaks it down. The metabolites of any substance that enters the body can exert real effects, particularly if they are used in conjunction with pharmaceuticals.

But what about things like reiki or homeopathy? Surely these things that exert no actual effect on the body (above the often-misunderstood placebo effect) don’t cause the liver to do anything. What possible side-effects could they cause?

The answer is that people will often forego real treatments in favour of these so-called “alternative” approaches:

In 30 cases, the issues were “probably or definitely” related to complementary medicine, and in 17 the patient was regarded as being harmed by a failure to use conventional medicine. The report says that all four deaths resulted from a failure to use conventional medicine.

One death involved an eight-month-old baby admitted to hospital “with malnutrition and septic shock following naturopathic treatment with a rice milk diet from the age of three months for ‘congestion'”. “Another death involved a 10-month-old infant who presented with septic shock following treatment with homeopathic medicines and dietary restriction for chronic eczema,” the authors say.

One child had multiple seizures after complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) were used instead of anti-seizure drugs due to concerns about potential side effects. The fourth death was of a child who needed blood-clotting drugs but was given complementary medicine instead.

These people proceeded in defiance of medical advice to give useless products to children with real health problems. Adults do this to themselves too. It’s not because they didn’t know or weren’t told, it’s because they believed in the lie that is the phrase “alternative medicine”. I can’t put too strong a point on this: “alternative medicine” isn’t alternative, and it isn’t medicine. The stuff that works is just medicine, and the stuff that doesn’t work is nothing other than voodoo.

I have friends who are voodoo practitioners. A woman I did my undergraduate with is training to be a chiropractor (much to the face-palming chagrin of the rest of our class); two of my close companions here in Vancouver use acupuncture as part of their otherwise science-based rehabilitative toolkit; another friend is into “energy work”, whatever that means. This is not an abstract concept to me, nor should it be to you. If you buy into the idea that there is such a thing as “alternative medicine”, you’re helping contribute to the climate that puts completely decent things like healthy lifestyle factors in the same category as crystals and “psychic surgery”.

There is no “alternative medicine” – there’s just medicine and bullshit.

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13 Love the sinner, hate this meme

January 3, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · ethics · hate · religion

I am officially back from vacation, with a full buffer and a great deal of enthusiasm. I enjoyed my time in Ontario, but I am glad to be back and bringing you the good stuff once again. Happy New Year!

When I was in high school I had a string quartet. We were called The Four Quarters and we played gigs in various places around southern Ontario. Our second violinist was raised in a conservative Christian household, was home-schooled, and was about as fond of religious bottled phrases as I am fond of butter tarts (which is to say a lot). She once shared with me her outrage over some guy who was told he wasn’t allowed to discriminate against gay people at his print shop. I expressed my bafflement that this was a problem for her – wouldn’t the Christian thing to do be to love all people? I still remember her response:

Her: As a Christian, I love the sinner but hate the sin
Me: Um… Jesus wasn’t really into hate.
Her: I don’t hate gay people, I just hate the sin
Me: Still, hate… not exactly very Christlike

It was the first time I heard the whole “love the sinner, hate the sin” trope. At the time I was still a believer, albeit a much more liberal one than she was. I had never seen anything wrong with being gay, and hadn’t yet read the lovely passages in Leviticus and the letters of Paul that called gay sex an “abomination”. Even then, I knew it was a stupid phrase, because it’s still hate, and hate is not represented anywhere in Christian scripture. The only story we have that even comes close to touching on the subject is the one about Jesus and the adulteress, from which we get the famous line “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” It’s a nice story, provided you don’t think about it too much, and ignore the fact that it’s not in any of the other gospels, and couldn’t have been from an eyewitness, and probably got snuck in after the gospel of John was written, and probably never actually happened. The relevant point here is that sins should be forgiven. It doesn’t say anything about hating sin.

But back up a second and replay the story from the beginning. Assume Jesus had come to the crowd and instead wrote “Love the sinner, but stone the sin to death”. Who wants to lay odds that that woman would have made it out alive?

The problem lies in the fact that being gay, or doing the things that are a direct result of being gay, are labeled as “sin”. Whereas someone could, conceivably, make the decision not to commit adultery, there is no choice in the matter of being gay. Even if there was, while there is a clear harm from adultery (assuming the spouse isn’t okay with it), there is no clear harm to being gay, or expressing your sexuality as a gay person except insofar as all sexual expression has risks and harms, and the fact that small-minded bigots have made people feel ashamed of being gay.

“But Crommunist,” you say “it’s not me who says that homosexuality is a sin, it’s GOD! The Bible makes it very clear that is it a sin!”

Ah yes, that pesky God. You’d totally have no problem with homosexuality, but it says right there in black and white that homosexuality is an abomination. What can you do? You certainly can’t ignore the stuff it says directly in the Bible, right? I mean, if you could, for the sake of argument, ignore some parts of the Bible that don’t make any sense or are impractical, you would totally do it, right? If the Bible is the only reason that you condemn homosexuality, and you are capable of ignoring certain parts of the Bible that conflict with your personal beliefs, then you’d stop condemning it?

Well, consider it your luck day, because chances are you completely ignore lots of stuff in the Bible. Let’s start with the easy ones: if you have ever had sex for any reason other than procreation, you’re ignoring the story of Onan. Do you own a cross or a crucifix? Maybe a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus or a statue of the Virgin Mary? Whoops, you just ignored the second commandment. Let’s not even get started on what happens if you catch your neighbour working on a Saturday or a Sunday.

“But that’s all Old Testament stuff,” you say. “The New Testament is where all the real rules are.” Okay, fine, but then you’re no longer allowed to talk about the Ten Commandments. Obviously if stuff in the Old Testament that doesn’t make sense can be ignored, then we can stop talking about the “thou shalt nots” as though they have any real meaning. Also we can throw out Genesis, so that takes care of creationism (and Intelligent Design, it’s hilariously-ironically-named cousin). Just so long as we don’t disregard anything that’s in the New Testament we should be okay to call homosexuality a “sin”.

Do you support school prayer, or prayer in public places, or even group prayer in church? How about take an oath of office? Do you think people should be allowed to fight to defend themselves against violent attack? How about the right of people to save and accumulate money? How about… oh I don’t know… identify someone else as a sinner*? Whoops, you’ve chosen to ignore specific instructions from Jesus himself. What about specific instructions from Jesus about whether it’s okay to fuck another dude or make sweet sweet mouth-sex to another lady? Hmm… he’s oddly silent on that one.

So since you’re cool with ignoring some parts of the Bible when they are either out-dated or don’t seem to make sense, you have no reason to condemn homosexuality as sin, right? Well… unless that condemnation is just you trying to find a lame excuse about “loving the sinner but hating the sin” to justify your a priori hatred of gay people. But you wouldn’t do that, would you?

The fact is that identifying a set of behaviours that have no demonstrable harm to anyone as a “sin” is completely arbitrary, just as if I said that it is a “sin” to hold hands in public with your spouse, or encourage your daughter to play sports. By branding such a thing as a “sin”, you’re passing judgment on people who do it, and asserting (without evidence) that there is some sort of shame in their living their lives as they see fit. In so doing, you put the lie to the completely laughable statement that you are simply “hating the sin” whilst all the while “loving the sinner”.

TL/DR: “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is a false statement, since it is based on the premise that acts can be “sins” even if they harm nobody. People pick and choose which parts of the Bible they follow, so the excuse that God condemns it is also false. Calling someone a “sinner” is already condemnation, which is a direct contravention of the idea of loving them.

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*For the record, Matthew 7:1-5 has always been, and probably will always be, one of my absolute favourite Biblical passages. The idea of someone with a beam in their eye always made me chuckle, but it’s a great message to remember about hypocrisy.

5 Crommunist’s FAQ

January 1, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed at The Crommunist Manifesto are solely those of the author named in the title of the post (which is most often Crommunist). Crommunist specifically disavows any association between any content appearing on this site and any other person or group, including (but not limited to) employers, political organizations, academic institutions or non-governmental charity organizations unless specifically stated otherwise. At no time should anything appearing here be construed to reflect the position or opinion of anyone other than the author. The author is not responsible for any remarks taken out of context or misinterpreted.

To avoid having to re-hash a number of topics that I’ve already explored, I am setting this page up as a general destination for some of the questions or comments I get most commonly, grouped by category for your convenience. If I have referred you here, it’s because you asked one of these questions or some permutation thereof. Please take the time to read and understand before re-stating your question.

Why are you called ‘Crommunist’? What is ‘Crommunism’?

When I was 12, my classmates used to refer to each other in diminutive forms of our various last names. In such a fashion, I became “Crommie”. An astute classmate pointed out the similarity between that nickname and “Commie”, and began calling me a “Crommunist”.

Since that time, I have developed a set of political and philosophical principles that borrow from Enlightenment philosophy, methodological skepticism, anti-racist and feminist thought, and various other tidbits borrowed from books, movies, plays, what-have-you. While they bear little or no resemblance to actual communism, it is useful for me to bundle them together as “Crommunism”.

Interestingly, I do define “Crommunism” in contrast to “crapitalism”, which is the exchange of valuable goods and energy for meaningless crap. Under the umbrella of ‘crap’ I place religion, pseudoscience, most of modern conservatism, arch-liberalism, cultural relativism, and a variety of other topics that I take great pleasure in skewering at every available opportunity.

General stuff

We’ve gotten much better about ______. Can’t we just leave it alone already?
What is your position on free speech? On hate speech?
Isn’t everyone entitled to their opinion? Who are you to say I’m wrong?
Criticizing ideas rather than the people who hold them.
Why are you/atheists so angry? (Really, tone trolling of any kind)
A different tack on this argument: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Religion

Why don’t you believe in a god/gods? What is your deconversion story?
(Part 2)
(Part 3)
(Part 4)
You have to believe in science, just like I believe in religion.
Why can’t you just let religious people/alt-med subscribers/other non-rational group believe what they want?
(Part 2)
(Part 3)
Why do you want to take religion away from people?
(Part 2)
You should try not to offend religious people!

Race/Racism/Anti-racism (many of these questions are answered in video form)

What is ‘race’?
(part 2)
(part 3)
What is ‘racism’?
What is ‘white privilege’?
What makes you qualified to talk about race?
You’re not really black.
I don’t notice race/why not just treat everyone equally?
I’m not a racist.
Racism is just what liberals say when a conservative speaks/I can’t be racist – I’m a liberal!
Why should I feel guilty just because I’m white?
I’m not a white supremacist – I’m a racial realist.
How do we get more black people to identify as atheists?
Why do we want more black people in the freethought movement?
(Part 2)
Why do you need to call yourself a ‘black atheist’? Why can’t you just be an atheist?
“The N word” is just a word! By choosing to be offended, you grant it power.

I don’t hold out any great hope that this will be sufficient to forestall these questions being asked again and again, but hopefully it will help stem the tide a little.

2 Movie Friday: What are you doing New Year’s Eve?

December 31, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic

I occasionally make reference to my life and work as a scientist when discussing the various skeptical topics that come up on this blog. I’ve been told that approaching some of these topics with a scientific eye helps make them more easily comprehensible to those of us who are more academically-minded, rather than invoking legal or emotional rhetoric to make my arguments. For me, science is the filter through which I see the world – I try to approach all things analytically and apportion my belief in them to the evidence. It’s not surprising to me that this colours my blogging, although it is certainly not something I make a concerted effort to do.

What I don’t talk about much is the other part of my life. I have a pretty cool Clark Kent/Superman thing going on, wherein I am a fuddy-duddy glasses-wearing nerd by day, and rock star by night. In addition to being a classically-trained viola player, I have been dabbling in guitar since I was in high school, and have been singing since I was old enough to carry a tune. My music is perhaps not as big an influence over my writing and daily life as my scientific background is, but music still plays a big role in my life.

I do have a band here in Vancouver called CROWN, in which I play a number of instruments and sing. It’s a cool thing to be part of a collaboration between a number of great musicians, and we have what I think is a pretty unique sound.

Here’s us doing a cover of “Steal My Kisses” by Ben Harper with me on vocals:

Covering Chris Isaac’s “Wicked Game” with Paul on lead vocals and me on viola:

And doing an original tune called “Never Let You Go” with Stuart on vocals:

We play down at a pub called the King’s Head in Kitsilano on Fridays and Sundays, which is a lot of fun. Of course none of this has anything to do with the usual fare of this blog; we just happen to be playing a gig for New Year’s Eve tonight so I thought I’d let you know what I was up to.

What are you doing tonight?

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0 Something cool happens in Poland

December 30, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · good news · politics · race

As you’re reading this, my vacation time is officially over. I’m back in Vancouver, and depending on what time it is right now I’m either having breakfast, sitting at my desk working, or at band practice getting ready for CROWN’s New Year’s Eve gig in Kits.

At the time of writing this, however, I am sitting at the kitchen table in my parents’ condo in Toronto, happily digesting a turkey sandwich and frantically typing out this week’s posts. I am a bad blogger, in that I write in fits and starts rather than putting up fresh stuff every day. I’m a good blogger, I think, in that I haven’t yet missed a post. It’s a trade-off for me between consistency and timeliness – I am satisfied to err on the side of consistency.

The reason for this personal disclaimer is that I’m basically just posting this stuff without what I feel is my usual level of comment. This story probably deserves a fuller discussion than it’s going to get today:

John Abraham Godson, a Polish citizen born and raised in Nigeria, has been sworn in as the first black member of Poland’s parliament…

It is still quite rare to see black people even in the Polish capital Warsaw, Poland’s most cosmopolitan city, the BBC’s Adam Easton reports. Racism is still a problem in Poland, where it is not uncommon for well-educated people to make racist jokes, our correspondent says.

I roll my eyes whenever someone invokes the “we have a black president now, therefore racism is over” argument. It’s almost completely without merit – one high-level appointment does not negate the entire history of a struggle. However, there is some good that can come as a consequence of electing a black public figure, particularly to such a visible position.

Black office-holders help erode stereotypes about black people, by providing a conflicting narrative about the black experience. All of a sudden everyone in Poland, even those who have never met a black person before, has a ready example in their mind of a black person who doesn’t conform to the misconception about what it means to be black – he’s a well-respected member of parliament rather than a gang-banger or an illiterate hood rat, or whatever the stereotype is there.

However, this is a double-edged sword for many black people. If Mr. Godson succeeds, he will be described by some as being “not really black”, or as succeeding despite of his blackness. However, if he fails, he will be described by those same people as failing because of his blackness. His failures will be seen as emblematic of all black people, whereas his success will divorce him from that same group. It’s a common problem facing high-profile black people, one that certainly moves many to try and hide their ethnicity by taking on the characteristics and mannerisms of the majority group.

Of course the real answer is to do the exact opposite – wear your race on the same sleeve as your successes, wedding those two things together to such an extent that they are impossible to separate. Of course, you’d better succeed, otherwise you risk doing much more harm than good.

All that being said, I’m glad to see when things like this happen, even when they’re not in my own country.

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5 And sometimes racism isn’t subtle

December 29, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · critical thinking · race · racism

I have, on occasion, waxed on at great length about how most racism in society today operates behind the scenes. While we’ve pictured it in our minds as flaming crosses and jackbooted police officers beating up black men on the freeway, it usually tends to happen in much more insidious ways, percolating behind the veneer of our arch-liberal “treat everyone equal” mantras. Of course when the more “classic” examples of racism manifest themselves, it shocks everyone except those of us who have been paying attention.

But those of us who are not particularly sensitive to this new definition of racism can rest a bit easier knowing that the old type is still very much alive:

A sign excluding black people from a future Abbotsford, Wisconsin business is enraging some people in the small town. It’s a sign generations of people may have never seen, yet Mark Prior says it’s his right to discriminate. “If I’ve got a problem with you it’s going to be on the front of my store,” says Mark Prior. Prior posted his ‘No Negros Allowed’ sign after he says he had some problems with black people in the past and needed to make a policy against them.

Wait wait wait… did he actually post a sign that says ‘No Negroes Allowed’?

Yep. He did.

There is a particularly odious argument out in the ether that people should be allowed to serve whoever they want, regardless of what kind of systemic prejudices such a policy props up. On the surface of it, the argument appears to have some validity. After all, if you open up your own business, who is anyone to tell you that you must cater to people you don’t like? Your individual rights of autonomy are being violated, dammit!

“I’m going to stick to my guns because I think I have the right as a business owner to reject service to anyone. It’s not all the black people there are just a few bad ones,” Prior says of his problems in the past.

Of course this is an argument that, like many conservative calling cards, has its basis in the idea of “I got mine, Jack!” So what if the autonomy of others is violated? So what if that pattern of violation fertilizes a de facto second-class citizenship for people based on something completely trivial like skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, or religious belief? As long as I don’t get trampled on, the other stuff doesn’t really matter.

There’s another fun thing that happened in there. Did you catch it? “It’s not all black people, there are just a few bad ones.” Aaaaaand that’s why all of them are banned? It’s one of those cognitive dissonances that reveals the depth of Mr. Prior’s racism – the troublemakers are causing trouble because they’re black. It’s the colour of their skin that’s making them cause trouble, right? Otherwise why specify that it’s “Negroes” that aren’t allowed in? Of course the fact that the guys are causing trouble is not causally related to their ethnicity, but it sure is fun to stereotype.

I’m not a fan of strip clubs. I don’t think anyone should go to them, but people do, so whatever. I’m even less a fan, however, of telling a specific group of people “you’re not allowed in here because of what you are, nothing to do with anything you’ve done”. For nostalgia purposes, it’s nice that folks like Mr. Prior are still around to remind us all that we’re not done dealing with racism, no matter how much we might like to pretend we are.

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12 Awww… adorable!

December 28, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · forces of stupid · hate · racism

From time to time I like to post pictures of otters. There’s no good reason, I just think otters are cute. This is cuter:

Young Andrew Pendergraft is playing in the sprawling grounds of his family’s country home. Like any other active ten-year-old, he loves running through the fields and splashing about in the river. But later he will appear on internet TV and – clearly reading from a script – he will solemnly share his bigoted views on the supremacy of the white race with potentially thousands of other children online. Andrew may be only ten but he is the face of youth within America’s Ku Klux Klan, the most infamous hate organisation in the world.

Aww… look how cute that is! His parents taught him to hate black people and Jews! That’s just so cute I could spit.

Take a moment right now to grab a piece of paper and see how many of the items in the rest of the story you can predict without having to read another word. Just take some guesses as to how this kid’s life might be a little different from yours. While you wait, here is a video of some otters playing with a little girl:

I know, right? Adorable!

Okay, let’s see how you did…

He has been indoctrinated into the ways of the Klan – famed for its burning crosses, lynch mobs and attacks on black people – by his mum Rachel at their home in Harrison, Arkansas, deep in America’s Bible Belt.

If you said “lives in the American south”, then give yourself one point. That one was kind of obvious though: the Klan doesn’t really have much presence anywhere else.

We film White Pride TV on Sunday after church and I have my own spot, The Andrew Show.

If you said “religious upbringing”, give yourself one point.

“I thought the film Avatar showed white people as destroying the rainforest, which we don’t do, and I like to talk about that.”

Give yourself one point if you wrote down that the kid clearly has no grasp of what corporations are doing in the world, as well as a bonus point if you wrote that everything is about white people, even the stuff that isn’t (there were lots of black marines in Avatar, and also the protagonist is a white guy).

Robb’s extremism originated with his own parents. The 64-year-old – Rachel’s father – claims to have “become awakened” to many of his views from the age of 13.

Give yourself a point if you guessed that his parents aren’t exactly bastions of a multi-cultural liberal philosophy.

Although 40-year-old Rachel claims the Klan has changed since its violent heyday, she has home-schooled all three children at the family ranch to prevent them absorbing views from other children.

One point for home schooling (I can hear Scary Fundamentalist tut-tutting in the background).

Daughter Charity says: “What role did black people play in the history of America? I mean no offence, but none. None at all. They were here but they didn’t build the country. They didn’t sign any of the documents of the Declaration of Independence.”

One point for revisionist history.

“There is growing oppression against white people around the world. The greatest endangered species to fight for is the white race, and as a white person I don’t want to see the end of my people.”

One point for “growing oppression of white people” privilege statements. Thanks, Mr. Limbaugh, by the way.

And award yourself bonus points if you picked up the rhetorical tools in the comments (“it’s not technically ‘hate’ per se”, “it’s just one family”, “they should be allowed to teach their children what they want”).

How did you do?

Oh, and in case we forget, this is a ten year-old kid. I don’t have any particular animosity to Andrew, I rather pity him for having been born to such asshole parents. Then again, it’s hard not to laugh when he says shit like this:

Have you seen the new Disney Princess movie? It’s called The Princess And The Frog. The Princess is black, so that is good for all the black kids out there. But the Prince is white. Race-mixing is wrong. If all other people mix up there won’t be any more white kids. So don’t race-mix. There are lots of people against white people and Christians in the movie. The good guy is a voodoo witch doctor. He does spells and has magic potions. Voodoo doctors worship the Devil so it’s a pretty bad movie for kids, especially white kids. Voodoo is the religion that lots of blacks used to have but white people taught them about God. So don’t race-mix. Well, I’ll see you next week.

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3 What would happen if… (evolution vs. creation)

December 27, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · religion · science · skepticism

I sometimes forget that not everyone gets into fights on the internet about stuff. While I’ve been observing the debate over climate change and evolution and the existence of God and alt-med pseudoscience and any other number of skeptical hot topics for a while now, I often make the faulty assumption that other people are a) as interested and b) as skeptical as I am about these things. As a result, I tend to regard people who believe in astrology, or ghosts, or biblical creation, as being curious oddities when they are in fact, more often than not simply people who aren’t particularly experienced in skeptical inquiry.

It is for this reason that this blog has, from time to time, become a dumping ground for my handful of skeptical tools, thought experiments, critical arguments, and whatever other devices I use on a day-to-day basis when I’m trying to navigate the morass of contradictory claims that are at the heart of most of these “controversies”. Today will be another one of those.

Whenever I am confronted with a new idea or a theoretical framework, I like to ask myself the question “What would the world look like if this were true?” It’s a useful thought experiment in which you are invited to re-start the world from scratch and, while keeping all the other variables the same, imagine what the outcome would be if a certain rule were true. It’s the inverse of the usual scientific process wherein we look at the evidence in aggregate and then try to figure out what the rules are; in this thought experiment we assume the rule to be true and then imagine what the world would look like as a result.

Rule #1a: Creationism – the Earth was created by a supernatural force in (more or less) its present form about 10,000 years ago. Current geological and geographical features that appear to be due to the effect of much more than 10,000 years of time are in fact caused by a massive flood.

What would the world look like if Creationism was true?

It is entirely possible that different species were created using the same set of rules, so the existence of a single mechanism underpinning living organisms (DNA/RNA transcription) is neither ruled out or necessitated by this rule. Types of animals (called “kinds” in Creationist jargon) would not show anything but trivial similarities in terms of their underlying physiology, microbiology, genetics, since they have all been created separately and are not designed to interbreed. There would be no need for wasted or vestigial organs, since these organs would only waste energy. A consistent fossil record would exist that shows only superficial changes over time, consistent with the observed rate of change in physiology in the current time (within reasonable error bars). Species would show evidence of physical migration from a single point of of origin (in the Middle East), spreading out to their current locations, and the same types of animals would occupy ecological niches everywhere (birds are the only ones that fly, fish are the ones that swim, etc.) since there is no reason to change a working pattern. Species would not acquire new characteristics over time, since they were created perfect the first time. Floods would exhibit similar effects (albeit to a smaller degree) on geology that can be observed and extrapolated.

Rule #1b: Evolution – all existing life has a common origin, having reached its present form via a process of change due to a combination of genetic mutation and changes in environment that favors certain trait changes over others.

What would the world look like if evolution were true?

Different species would have many genetic commonalities – no species would use a completely unique process of gene replication, and similarity between different types of species would be on a gradient rather than randomly distributed. Similarities would also be seen in embryology, comparative physiology, and microbiology since they all came from a single source rather than being created different. There may (or may not) be gene sequences and organ systems that are completely useless or have trivial utility in one species, but have working analogues in other species – these would be caused when two different species diverge from a common ancestor due to environmental differences. Fossil records would show animals that are similar to a number of different species but are no longer in existence, as well as some that are still in existence (since environmental changes happen with different frequency and magnitude). Species would exist only in certain areas, while there would be no evidence of them in others, as their ancestors might have had common habitat but have left that area, went somewhere else, and adapted to the change in environment. By the same token, ecological niches would be filled by many different kinds of animals – there would be mammals that fly and birds that swim, plants that eat flies and insects that fertilize soil. Species would, if given sufficient time and divergent enough environments, gradually change and become different enough as to be considered two different species.

The last step of this process is to look at the world that exists and decide which rule best resembles our observed reality. If the rule is in conflict, there are two possible explanations: 1) the rule is false, or 2) there are other forces at work underlying reality that are not fully caught by observation, and further observation will expose them. Of course creationists are loath to accept #1, and will rush to find exceptions and “explanations” for why the rule is still valid (Ken Ham’s floating log bridges, for example). This, however, is simply back-filling – throwing up hastily-assembled assertions to prop up a preconceived conclusion rather than following the existing evidence.

I was going to do a few more examples, but I’m on vacation and I’m coming dangerously close to my 1000 word limit, so I’ll do another one of these another time.

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