Category: critical thinking

13 The scourge of “scientific” racism

November 18, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · critical thinking · race · racism · science · skepticism

As a scientist and a black man, I cannot describe to you how weary I am of having people throw “scientific racism” in my face. I don’t mean that people try to prove to me that black people are scientifically inferior; we’ve pretty much debunked that already. No, the thing I resent is when people say stupid things like “science used to say that black people were inferior – therefore everything that science says is suspect.” It is a wearying argument, because not only is it inaccurate, it is actually self-refuting.

First off, science never said that black people were inferior, at least not science in any way that I have described it in the past. Science is a process involving explanation based on observed data, controlling for alternative explanations. Scientists are people who purport to use that method. However, like all people, scientists are subject to human failings, and have been known to say some bullshit-stupid things. Luckily, we have a process for evaluating bullshit-stupid claims – it’s called science. The reason that we know that racial differences are largely sociologically-constructed (as opposed to genetic) is because of science. We didn’t use meditation or divine revelation or any of these “different ways of knowing” to figure that out – we used science.

As I said, the claim is both inaccurate and self-refuting. Scientists did, at one point, make claims about the inferiority of The Negro. They did not, however, base those claims on science. They made the claims, then looked for evidence to support their conclusions. That is not the scientific method; that is the religious method. The doctrine of white supremacy was not based on evidence, but on a supernatural belief in the manifest will of the Creator, who endowed white people with superior qualities. The doctrine absolutely did co-opt the scientific establishment into supporting its assertions, but when the shine was off the apple and real investigation was done, no differences were found. It didn’t have to be so – we could have found a great deal of genetic differences between different ethnic groups. The evidence, however, does not support any doctrine of supremacy (and yes, I have met actual black supremacists – they’re just as bereft of science as their white counterparts).

However, we cannot simply ignore the history that the scientific establishment played in the legitimization and mainstreaming of racism, as Ghana is teaching us:

The Council For Afrika, a UK-based think-tank has commemorated the third global campaign to combat scientific racism, reiterating its commitment to counter the marginalisation and dehumanisation of Africans. The council used the anniversary, which coincided with the first decade of the 21st Century, to draw attention to the escalation of afrophobia, attributed to the global recession. A statement issued to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, by Dr Koku Adomdza, President of the council, said: “Afrophobia has escalated based on discrimination against name, ascent, physical appearance, ethnicity and African ancestry in all spheres of life in the Global North.”

“Scientific” racism (I feel obligated to use quotations here, because it’s not scientific) is not a spectre of the past that we’ve thankfully moved beyond. The campaign started in response to bizarre comments made by James Watson (yes, that James Watson):

“[I am] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.”

Dr. Watson said he hoped everyone was equal, but added: “People who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

Stay classy, Dr. Watson.

Dr. Watson was making those claims based on “scientific” research that had been done into intelligence among different racial groups. Of course, like the phrenology studies of the early 19th century, this research was based on faulty assumptions and poor methodology. It has since been largely discredited. It becomes problematic when preeminent scientists start making recommendations about policy based on bad science, which is what happened here.

It is for reasons like this that I am a skeptic. Whenever someone tells me “well X and Y are true”, my first thought is “how do you know that?” Most of the time I ask out of genuine interest, particularly when it’s a topic I’m unfamiliar with. However, other times it comes out of a deep suspicion that the claim being presented is bolstered by nothing other than confirmation bias and anecdote. “Scientific” racism definitely falls under this category.

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0 Religious thinking used for good

November 17, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · good news · health · religion

I try to be an honest broker. While I am staunchly anti-religion, I am perfectly willing to recognize when it does something I think is good. This is one of those rare examples where I can’t really spin this as anything other than a positive:

“Today I will start with a three-part sermon on: Jesus was HIV-positive,” South African Pastor Xola Skosana recently said in a Sunday church service. The words initially stunned his congregation in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township into silence, and then set tongues wagging in churches across the country.

However, as Pastor Skosana told those gathered in the modest Luhlaza High School hall for his weekly services, in many parts of the Bible Jesus put himself in the position of the destitute, the sick and the marginalised. “Wherever you open the scriptures Jesus puts himself in the shoes of people who experience brokenness. Isaiah 53, for example, clearly paints a picture of Jesus who takes upon himself the infirmities and the brokenness of humanity,” he told the BBC.

He is also quick to emphasise that he is using the metaphor to highlight the danger of the HIV/Aids pandemic, which still carries a stigma in South Africa’s townships.

When I was young, I had a book of Aesop’s fables. For those of you too lazy to click, Aesop was a slave and story-teller from about 2600 years ago. His fables are among the most famous of all time, and still persist in our common lexicon (“sour grapes”, “crying wolf”, “dog in the manger”, “lion’s share”, “tortoise and hare”). The great things about the fables is that they didn’t require verisimilitude to teach a lesson – a talking fox that wants to eat some grapes is a stupid idea, but we can still apply the lesson. Oftentimes complex moral lessons could be drawn from the childish stories. It didn’t matter if Aesop actually wrote them, or if he even existed.

In the same way, Pastor Skosana is using the tale of Jesus of Nazareth to teach a complex moral lesson about compassion and empathy. As a non-religious person, I certainly doubt that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of Yahweh. There is some historical doubt as to whether Aesop actually existed, or whether (like Homer of The Iliad) he was in fact a non-corporeal “author” for a number of stories that were spread by word of mouth. There is equal doubt as to whether Jesus of Nazareth actually existed, or whether his story is an amalgamation of several messianic leaders that was hodge-podged into the story of one person. For the religious, it is vitally important for Jesus to have been a real person who actually lived; who did and said the things attributed to him. For the rest of us, it’s a relatively unimportant detail if Aesop, Homer, or Jesus were real.

There is a device of literary interpretation that is singularly well-used by the religious – that is, the co-opting of certain themes or passages to defend a position held a priori. The bible has been used in (roughly) equal measure to both protest and defend things like slavery, war, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, evangelism… you name a topic, there are passages that both support and decry it. Thereafter, there are bitter fights among the religious to find out which is the real interpretation – for the rest of us, it’s a relatively unimportant detail if the Bible is for or against something. What matters is what the consequences are to people.

Most of the time, this cherry-picking and selective interpretation irritates me – people hold up the bible as some sort of inerrant guide for the world, when it is a largely-incoherent group of stories from either a pre-literate society or the half-remembered recollections of hearsay. However, in this particular case I will tip my cap to Pastor Skosana’s willingness to take a fable and use it to teach a much-needed moral lesson about acceptance. Jesus would have been on the side of those with HIV – they are the lepers of today’s society. If you wish to follow his example, you would have to drop the stigmatization and outright oppression of those who are stricken with the virus.

However, as with any religious debate, there are people who vociferously disagree:

For Pastor Bele, portraying Jesus as HIV-positive means he becomes part of the problem, not the solution. “The pastor needs to explain how it came about for him to bring Christ to our level, when Christ is supreme and is God,” he says. “There is a concern that non-believers would mock Christ and try to generalise Christ as opposed to the powerful force we believe him to be.”

And the facepalming can begin.

So I guess I have to walk back my original statement a bit. I agree with Pastor Skosana’s use of the story to teach a moral lesson about compassion. I disagree with Pastor Bele’s religification of the story – intentionally disregarding the dozens of passages wherein Jesus ministers to the sick and tells others to do the same – in order to advance some kind of untouchable, inhuman deity. I think they’re both wrong to say that one should follow one school of thought or another because YahwAlladdha says so – nothing could be further from the truth. The word of YahwAlladdha says all things and nothing, and should be used only like Aesop’s fables – using simple, childish stories to flavour moral lessons.

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2 Tanzania elects albino to parliament

November 16, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · culture · good news · politics · skepticism

Last week I talked about the dangers of believing superstitions, and confusing superstition with culture. I also illustrated the specific plight of albino people, who are particularly targeted with violence for the supposed magical properties of their limbs. Of course, albinos have no magical properties – albinism is a single-gene mutation affecting pigmentation. But that doesn’t stop people from kidnapping and maiming albinos.

Tanzania has taken one small step toward correcting this practice:

An albino has been elected as an MP in Tanzania for the first time. “This win is a victory not only for me but also for all the albinos in this country,” Salum Khalfani Bar’wani, from the opposition Cuf party, told the BBC. “My joy has no end,” he told the BBC Swahili Service. “The people of Lindi have used their wisdom and have appreciated clearly that albinos are capable. I am so touched that this is the first time in the electoral history of this country for an albino to be elected by the people in a popular contest to be their representative in parliament – and not through sympathy votes or decisions.”

This is a great feed-forward mechanism that could have real positive effects. An albino MP is a recognizable, prominent public figure that challenges the commonly-held narrative around albinos. A greater level of awareness about albinism can start to take hold in the public consciousness. Of course such a shift will take a long time, so strong is the staying power of superstitious beliefs. However, the fact that Mr. Bar’wani was popularly elected suggests to me that such a shift has already began.

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2 Vancouver vultures circling for cash

November 16, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · critical thinking · health · medicine · science

Hello readers, I’m Crommunist. I’m not a witch. I’m not anything you’ve heard. I’m you!

No, actually I’m not you. I’m me. But none of that is important, because I can predict the motherfucking future. You may remember back in April of this year I talked about the so-called “liberation therapy” for Multiple Sclerosis (MS). In that post, I said this:

When you’re sick, you have only one goal: getting better. Millions of years of evolution have hard-wired a strong survival instinct into all living species, and human beings are no exception. People suffering from disease and their families are willing to do just about anything for a chance at recovery, and logic plays nearly no role in the decision-making process. The problem with this is that people suspend their disbelief and are willing to jump at any chance, no matter how remote, unlikely, or unproven.

When the stakes are high, we will abandon logic and chase after whatever seems right – putting rational thought to one side in favour of quick and dirty heuristics. It’s why the Republican party is so adept at getting votes – they stoke the fears of the populace (the Muslims are coming to get us with their socialist Obamacare!) to shut down the critical thinking part of the brain (the part that notices that Republicans are bad on security, bad on the economy, bad on individual freedoms, bad on pretty much any measure you can think of). Once critical thinking has ceased, your lizard brain takes over and you make decisions based not on evidence or critical thinking, but on gut reactions (blame illegal immigrants!)

The sudden popularity of the new treatment has prompted Jeff Donegan of Chilliwack, B.C., to sign up to get the therapy through another company in California. “When [liberation therapy] first came out, I was very skeptical,” said Donegan, 31. But five years of constant nerve pain, blindness in one eye and severe fatigue have been a nightmare, he said. “Every day is different,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m going to wake up to.”

The stakes could not possibly be higher when you have a debilitating, degenerative disease. And like the Republicans, there will always be those who are willing to put ethics and common decency aside for the sake of profit:

A Vancouver-based medical tourism company is cashing in on the reluctance by many provincial governments to fund a controversial therapy to treat multiple sclerosis. Passport Medical has arranged for foreign treatment using so-called liberation therapy for more than 350 MS sufferers from all over North America, said company owner Mark Semple. The company’s two-week trips include surgery and recovery care in Costa Rica for about $13,000.

Semple said the outcome for many of the patients is encouraging. “Some of the things I’ve seen could only be described as miracles,” he said. “Is it a cure? No. Is there a vascular component of the disease? I can only say yes.”

Safety regulations got you down? Is The Man telling you that you can’t have this experimental surgery that has no proven efficacy and will likely as not do nothing to alleviate your illness? Got 13 grand to spare? Fuck it then, give me your money, I’ll send you to a place that has no safety regulations. You’ll come back $13,000 poorer, and no better off than you were before (for all we know). Also note the complete lack of confidence on the part of the owner, who admits it’s not a cure. He likens it to a miracle – not a good thing when you’re talking about a medical procedure. You don’t want miracles in science, you want regularly-occurring phenomena that can be predicted and replicated. If it’s ‘miraculous’, you’re probably looking at the placebo effect.

But yes, I called it in April, and it’s happening now. People are flocking to Costa Rica to get surgery, paying ridiculous sums for it, and Mark Semple is laughing all the way to the bank.

I’m you!

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12 Not a racist bone in my body

November 15, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · race · racism · skepticism

Please note: this blog has now moved to Freethought Blogs! Come join the continuing conversation.

There is a groove worn in the palm of my right hand. No, it’s not from that. It is there as a result of consistently smacking my face into my palm every time someone uses the phrase “I’m not racist…” or “I am the least racist person in the world” or “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” A couple Fridays back I pointed out a pair of stories in which people who had done unequivocally racist things immediately retreated to this excuse. It’s like catching a kid in the kitchen, cookie jar broken on the floor, chocolate smeared all over her face, and hearing her say “it was the dog.” It’s a stupid attempt to deflect an accusation that is entirely true, but distasteful.

Part of the reason for this cognitively dissonant response to racism is because there is a fundamental fallacy – a false dichotomy – that is drawn around racism. This false dichotomy is drawn between two extremes: racist and not racist. Those are the options, according to this fallacy. Our social construct of ‘racist’ brings in the whole fire-hoses and dogs idea of mid 20th-century racism (of course I favour a much more accurate definition). Few people, least of all those in public life, wish to be seen as being that kind of racist. In fact, most of them probably don’t have particularly negative ideas about people in a different racial group, or they imagine that the negative attitudes they do have are justified by some cognitive trick (I don’t hate Mexicans, just illegals; I don’t hate Arabs, just terrorists; I don’t hate black people, just thugs). However they arrive at their answer, most people will not self-identify as racist.

And so, because the other option is “not racist”, when confronted on their racist actions, the majority of people will insist that they are in fact “not racist”. Within their specific framework, based upon two fallacies – the false dichotomy and a failure to understand racism – their denial is true. However, in an objective sense it is simply the product of a series of cognitive constructs designed to shield the self-esteem. They are racist, by any objective external measure. The denial only serves to ensure that more racist actions will occur, and each time be repeatedly explained away as being something else. It is this kind of attitude that props up the current racial dynamics – a refusal to accept one’s own racist motivations.

What we have to recognize is the fact that “not racist” is not an option. Unless you are born in and live your life in a place where all people are so similar that lines are drawn around some construct other than race (perhaps religion, or politics, income, geography), and never come into contact with any other cultures, you will inherit the racism that exists worldwide. I’ve said it before, and I will keep saying it – we are all racist. I’m racist. You’re racist. Your parents are, your teachers were, your politicians are, the guy who runs the pulled pork sandwich cart at Broadway and Granville is (but his sandwiches are still delicious). There’s no escaping it.

Our dichotomy needs to be redrawn between racist and anti-racist. Anti-racism is a methodological approach, much like scientific skepticism, in which actions (our own, and those of others) are constantly scrutinized in a racial context. Rather than merely reassuring one’s self that they are not a racist person, the anti-racist approach invites us to look for possible racial overtones, to examine how attitudes and behaviours might have differential consequences for those of different racial groups, and to try and understand what motivates those attitudes/behaviours at the conscious and subconscious level.

Of course intrinsically wedded to the idea of anti-racism is being non-judgmental when it comes to race. Spotting racism doesn’t win you points as an anti-racist – identifying the faults of others doesn’t somehow exonerate your own flaws. Instead, it invites you to appraise how your own attitudes and behaviours might be subconsciously influenced in a similar way. Most people, as I’ve said, are not overtly racist, or if they are they certainly don’t mean it in a hurtful way. However, there are still consequences to racism, most of which are unintended. Representative Weaver certainly didn’t intend for anyone to be upset by her Hallowe’en stunt, but it definitely conjures ghosts for me, and has certainly tarnished the sterling (heh) reputation of the great state of Tennessee. I don’t doubt that she doesn’t think that she’s a racist person – it is entirely immaterial in this case.

It’s important to state that being an anti-racist doesn’t make you the opposite of racist. Anti-racism is a tool. Much like skeptics can compartmentalize and believe in things that are not supported by science, anti-racists can have very racist beliefs that they either don’t know about or don’t wish to confront. I, for example, have a real issue with Chinese immigrants, an issue which began with my time at the University of Waterloo. As an anti-racist, it’s difficult for me to reconcile these feelings that I have about Chinese people to my stance as a crusader against racism. However, what I do have at my disposal is a mindset that allows me to examine and confront my own actions when dealing with my Chinese colleagues and friends – a mindset that I have to take particular care not to let my feelings affect my decision-making.

It’s funny – even writing that I felt a deep sense of foreboding. Admitting racial biases is incredibly difficult, for a couple of reasons. First, you don’t want to cause offense in others. Second, it has deep personal implications about how you see yourself in the world. I consider myself a good person – having a character trait that is so unequivocally negative casts doubt on my own self-concept. However, being aware of it makes me less susceptible to succumbing to it subconsciously. I will always be checking and re-checking my statements and interactions to make sure I’m not discriminating against the people around me.

This is the advantage to the anti-racist approach – it gives you a cognitive framework in which to work, whereby you can mitigate some racial biases, both conscious and unconscious. Dropping “non racist” from our mental lexicon and adopting “anti-racist” instead gives us a powerful tool for identifying and ameliorating the racism we see around us.

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2 Movie Friday: The Great Debate

November 12, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · critical thinking · movie · religion

My cup runneth over with frustration these days whenever I am drawn into debate with someone who trots out old, pre-debunked arguments, as though I’d never heard them before. It happens when discussing race, it happens when discussing gender, and it definitely happens with religion:

I wish life came with a moderator like this. Let’s stop with the old arguments. Let’s stop letting them clog the pipes. If we’re going to have a discussion, can we please start without me having to punch myself out of energy by carefully taking down each fallacy you’ve parrotted off of some website, particularly if they’ve been shown to be false again and again.

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0 Is this “The African Way”?

November 10, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · cultural tolerance · culture · science · skepticism

The cliché goes “what you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

I went on at great length this morning about why we must intervene when we see superstition hurting people – that our fear of appearing paternalistic has overpowered our reason and paralyzed us into inactivity. Maybe this will illustrate what I mean:

The dismembered body of a young albino boy has been found in a river on the Burundi-Tanzania border, reports say. The boy, aged nine, was taken from Makamba province in Burundi by a gang that crossed the border, the head of Burundi’s albino association said. Albino body parts are prized in parts of Africa, with witch-doctors claiming they have special powers. In Tanzania, the body parts of people living with albinism are used by witch-doctors for potions which they tell clients will help make them rich or healthy. Dozens of albinos have been killed, and the killings have spread to neighbouring Burundi.

Albinism, as anyone who has taken a high school science course knows, is the result of a single-gene mutation. When two recessive alleles are expressed in one individual, the skin does not produce melanin – the substance that gives skin its colour. Albinism among Europeans is rare enough, but not so dramatic when it happens. Among the dark-skinned population of southern Africa, an albino person is a stark contrast.

There is nothing at all in the recessive allele that grants any particular properties to the body parts of albino people. It regulates the expression of a particular protein sequence, that’s it. The same kind of properties that make my hair curly and black, whereas my neighbour’s is wavy and blonde, are the kinds of differences we are talking about. There’s no magic in it at all – certainly not anything that will affect your wealth or physical function.

The only real tangible side-effect of albinism that goes beyond simple difference in colour is that albinos are a target for kidnappers and murderers. This isn’t as a product of their skin, but as a product of a specific set of beliefs about their skin. Here’s a challenge for you readers: read a simple article on Mendelian genetic theory (like this one from the University of Arizona) until you feel like you have a general grasp of the idea. Now talk to a friend or family member who is not particularly “sciency”, and teach them the theory. I’d be surprised if it takes longer than 15 minutes for them to grasp the basics. Then, ask them if albinos are magic.

My point is that it is superficially easy to arm someone with enough basic scientific knowledge to know about single-gene mutations, and that they don’t grant magic powers. Trivially easy. Why are we not doing this in Africa, where what they don’t know is literally killing people?

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2 Superstition is not culture

November 10, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · cultural tolerance · culture · ethics · religion · science · secularism · skepticism

I’m not sure where this blog is going. To be honest this started as a way to organize some of my thoughts on some issues that I think are important, and a way to comment on some of the stuff I saw going on around me. It always blows me away whenever a friend or acquaintance says to me “I read your blog” – I never really imagined that anyone would bother to read the random cognitive ejaculations that I put up on the internet on a regular basis, at least not beyond my Facebook friends who creep my profile in the morning. However, a handful of people who are complete strangers to me read this stuff, which is a head trip for me.

Another way you know that you’re making it as a blogger is when people start sending you links to blog about. So I must give a hat tip to Fred Bremmer (who is certainly not a stranger to me) for bringing this article to my attention:

There is a great thudding taboo in any discussion of Africa. Western journalists and aid workers see it everywhere, yet it is nowhere in our coverage back home. We don’t want to talk about it. We don’t know how to. We smother it in silence, even though it is one of the most vivid and vibrant and violent parts of African life. We are afraid—of being misunderstood, or of sounding like our own ugliest ancestors. The suppressed topic? The African belief in spirits and spells and ancestors and black magic.

What follows is a dissection and examination of a serious problem in any culture, but one that is particularly pronounced in the continent of Africa – the role that belief in spirits plays in the quality of life of the people there. Those of us who are aware of European and Western bias and colonial arrogance are often loath to criticize the practices in other countries. After all, who is to say our ways are better than theirs? Isn’t it sheer paternalism on our part to presume to criticize another culture’s practices? Maybe we have something to learn from other ways of doing things!

Unfortunately, this line of thinking has paralyzed into a kind of arch-liberal refusal to even appear to criticize dangerous practices:

Soothsayers demand money for their “powers,” like the one who tells Naipaul that there are curses preventing his daughter from getting married and if he wants them lifted he’ll have to pay. It licenses bigotry. A community can announce that a malaria outbreak is due to the old women of the village waging witchcraft, and slaughter them. It licenses some deranged delusions. During the war in Congo, a soothsayer announced that you could be cured of HIV if you ate a pygmy. I visited a pygmy village where several men had “disappeared” as a result.

If your neighbour is about to feed his kids cyanide to “cleanse” them of “toxins”, is there really a virtue in standing aside and allowing him to do so out of some kind of misguided respect for his beliefs and his right to decide what is best for his kids? Should our oh-so-tolerant sensibilities extend to idly abetting murder? Of course not, and I can’t imagine any rational person suggesting otherwise. The debate is not, or at least should not be, about whether to intervene; it should be about how to intervene. Again from the article, contrast this approach:

Juliana Bernard is an ordinary young African woman who knew, from childhood, that claims of black magic and witchcraft were false and could be debunked. She told me: “If I can understand [germ theory], so can everybody else in this country. They are no different to me.” So she set up a group who traveled from village to village, offering the people a deal: For just one month, take these medicines and these vaccinations, and leave the “witches” alone to do whatever they want without persecution. See what happens. If people stop getting sick, you’ll know my theories about germs are right, and you can forget about the evil spirits.

Just this small dose of rationality—offered by one African to another—had revolutionary effects. Of course the superstitions didn’t vanish, but now they were contested, and the rationalist alternative had acquired passionate defenders in every community. I watched as village after village had vigorous debates, with the soothsayers suddenly having to justify themselves for the first time and facing accusations of being frauds and liars.

And this one:

On a trip to Tanzania, I saw one governmental campaign to stamp out the old beliefs in action when I went to visit a soothsayer deep in the forest. Eager to steer people toward real doctors for proper treatment—a good idea, but there are almost none in the area—the army had turned up that morning and smashed up her temple until it was rubble. She was sobbing and wailing in the wreckage. “My ancestors lived here, but now their spirits have been released into the air! They are homeless! They are lost!” she cried.

Once again, there is a clear right and wrong here – one of these approaches works and the other does not. If we, with the best of intentions, rush in to places and smash superstition to bits, we remove the symptom without addressing the cause. However, when rational discussion is allowed to take place, the dialogue and cultural understanding of these superstitions can change. This is not to say that we shouldn’t vigorously oppose superstition in its various guises or speak out against it whenever possible, but that mandating disbelief is just as dangerous as mandating belief.

This article is about Africa, but of course my response to it is not really. While I am concerned for my African brothers and sisters, I am not from Africa. I am from Canada, where our own particular brand of superstition rages apace. We can look to the African struggle against superstition as a model for our own (albeit down-scaled) problems here. Destroying the religious infrastructure is not only unethical, it is unproductive. What has to happen is that people are encouraged to think critically about all topics, and that the privilege that religion currently enjoys be removed.

Returning to Africa for a moment, I’m sure there are some bleeding hearts among my readers who are happy to decry my paternalism – who am I to pass judgment on another culture? I encourage you to read the following:

The final time I saw Juliana, she told me, “When I go to a village where an old woman has been hacked to pieces, should I say, ‘This is the African way, forget about it?’ I am an African. The murdered woman was an African. It is not our way. If you ignore this fact, you ignore us, and you ignore our struggle.”

It is equally paternalistic to say “well rationality and science are all well and good for us, but Africans should have to deal with superstition.” We have a moral duty to promote the truth as best we know it, and to instruct others in the use of tools that have been observed to work.

TL/DR: Those who fear being overly paternalistic when it comes to the superstitions present in other individuals and cultures risk being equally paternalistic on the other side when they ignore the consequences of doing nothing.

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1 This is NOT free speech

November 9, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · forces of stupid · free speech · hate · sex

Some people are big fans of invoking ‘the line’ – “free speech is all well and good, but you have to do something when it crosses the line.” So where’s the line? Some of my friends think that the line is here, where free speech can be used to promote racism. Some think it’s here, when it’s used to promote hate. I have consistently said that those are not the line, for reasons that many people don’t agree with. We define racism and hate very poorly, and until someone can show me that criminalizing certain kinds of speech actually decreases hate (instead of just making people feel better), I’m not at all comfortable doing anything more than labeling it and speaking out against it.

There absolutely is a line, however. There is a line when it stops being speech, and starts being violence. There is a difference between criticizing ideas and attacking individuals based on group membership. There is a difference between speaking out against the actions of an individual who is harming someone and encouraging people to harm that individual. Once you are using speech to enact punishment on someone who is different from you, you’ve stepped outside the realm of free speech an into the realm of inciting violence.

Uganda provides us with an excellent illustration of this:

Several people have been attacked in Uganda after a local newspaper published their names and photos, saying they were homosexual, an activist has told the BBC. Frank Mugisha said one woman was almost killed after her neighbours started throwing stones at her house. He said most of those whose names appeared in Uganda’s Rolling Stone paper had been harassed.

Rolling Stone is not criticizing these people for decisions they’ve made. They are not making a political point, or exposing some kind of hypocrisy in elected leaders. They are dangling fresh meat in front of a rabid mob, made ravenous for the blood of gay people by a culture of hatred and persecution.

The excuses that the editor used to attempt to justify the publication are so flimsy as to be offensive:

Giles Muhame, editor of the two-month-old Rolling Stone paper, denied that he had been inciting violence by publishing the names next to a headline which read “Hang them”. He said he was urging the authorities to investigate and prosecute people “recruiting children to homosexuality”, before executing anyone found guilty. He also said he was acting in the public interest, saying Ugandans did not know to what extent homsexuality was “ravaging the moral fabric of our nation”, and he vowed to continue to publish the names and photographs of gay Ugandans.

This is one of the outcomes of the lie that gay people choose to be gay. If the abundance of psychological literature, the narrative of gay people, and simple logic (when did you choose to be straight?) wasn’t enough to put that ridiculous claim to the lie, Uganda is proof that people don’t choose. Why on Earth would anyone choose to be gay in a country where being gay is justification for assault, public exposure, and state-sponsored execution? Anti-gay bigots love to trumpet the “recruitment” canard, trying to make themselves out to be the victims of unjust ideological encroachment (can you say privilege? I knew you could…). Once again, this is confusing the attempt to reduce active hatred and systematic oppression with some kind of “homosexualist agenda” that will make kids gay. This is quite literally a life or death issue for gay people, particularly in Uganda. Nobody is going to be killed or targeted for violence because they don’t like gay people – and I swear right here and right now that if that happens I will be among the first to protest that. The vice, however, is not versa.

I can’t think of anything else to write. This newspaper disgusts me. That whole country disgusts me right now.

Here’s a picture of an otter:

She looks a bit disgusted too.

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32 Religious privilege writ large

November 9, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · critical thinking · religion

When the Pope decried the “marginalization” of Christianity in Westminster Hall in England, I commented that this persecution complex that Christians have is simply based on their perspective; not a reflection of reality at all. Relativity teaches us that if you assume your frame of reference is fixed, it can appear as though you are moving toward something when in fact that thing is moving toward you – more specifically since Christianity sits high atop the heap (and has for a long time), the fact that it is moving toward the middle looks, to Christians, like they are being marginalized. It’s a phenomenon known in statistics as regression to the mean.

However, in sociology circles this phenomenon is known as privilege. This should not be confused with having privileges in the sense of freedoms to do stuff like leave your desk at work or the privilege of addressing an audience when giving an amazing speech. Privilege is what happens when you or your group have an undeserved level of power based not on your actual merits, but for historical reasons. There’s a lot of talk in anti-racist circles about white privilege – white people are at the top of the heap internationally because of the technological dominance of Europe in the colonial era, and since then have enjoyed a false assumed superiority over all other groups. In feminist circles, it is male privilege that is discussed – for reasons that I am not educated enough to speak on, men have dominated (and oppressed) women and have enjoyed a false assumed superiority over women.

One of the manifestations of privilege is the fact that the group in question is completely unaware that they enjoy it. Because these groups have built a system for themselves (through the selective interpretation of history, through in-group legislation, through behind-the-scenes social programs) that empowers its members from the moment of their birth. While you were reading that last sentence, you weren’t aware of the feeling of your pants/skirt against your legs; you weren’t aware of the background hum of fluorescent lights; you weren’t aware of the sound of your own breathing – when it’s there all the time, you don’t notice it’s there. Of course now that I’ve reminded you of these things, you may suddenly be aware of them. The other side of privilege is that those who have it are free to deny that it exists, and instead claim that those in the non-privileged groups are trying to rob the privileged of things that they deserve.

As an anti-racist and feminist, it’s no stretch for the anti-theist in me to see the exact same phenomenon happening in religious groups:

In her affidavit, a 24-year-old woman from the fundamentalist Mormon enclave of Bountiful says attending Cranbrook’s College of the Rockies was “going into what I see as a wild and unstable world. Out there people were behaving in ways that are not in accord with my beliefs — fighting, impatient, yelling, dating and breaking up, drinking, using foul language.”

In another affidavit, a woman identified as Witness No. 2 complains that Revenue Canada has cut back child-tax benefits to some plural wives. It says they are living common-law and must claim the father of the child’s income, regardless of whether others are already claiming it. “This has been a real hardship,” she says.

It has all the hallmarks of privilege: other people’s behaviour is not in accordance with my beliefs, therefore I am persecuted; the tax code doesn’t make exemptions for my religion, therefore I am persecuted; I am not free to live outside the laws of the country I live in, therefore I am persecuted. These are people who don’t understand what persecution looks like. Persecution is what happens when you are not given rights that other people have based on your group affiliation. Persecution is what happens when you are repeatedly told that the way you are born makes you somehow deficient or unworthy. Persecution is what happens when you must work twice as hard to achieve half as much as someone else because of superficial qualities that are completely unrelated to your job.

Privilege is what allows you to ignore all of those things and cry ‘victim’ when you are told that you can no longer behave outside the law based on your entirely-voluntary beliefs.

Before someone starts a mindless rebuttal of this point, saying that I’m describing the “homosexualist agenda” or “Islamification” or something else stupid, re-read the paragraph:

Persecution is what happens when you are not given rights that other people have based on your group affiliation. Persecution is what happens when you are repeatedly told that the way you are born makes you somehow deficient or unworthy. Persecution is what happens when you must work twice as hard to achieve half as much as someone else because of superficial qualities that are completely unrelated to your job.

If you still think you have a point, congratulations – you’ve got privilege!

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