If whites are so racist then why do so many non-whites want to live in predominantly white nations? In general, the best places in the world to live are the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

the two sentences have nothing to do with each other. a nice line of argument to confuse the stupid, but totally superficial on even the merest of inspection. the reason sri lankans and filipinos migrate in large numbers to the arabian peninsula has nothing to do with how non-racist arabs are. on the contrary. in fact, my own personal experience is that many colored immigrants have irrational perceptions of just how racist the USA is (unlike most i have lived in very rural overwhelmingly white areas).

the quality of comments on this thread is dropping. probably should have closed it when paul started accusing people of being socialists :=)

What strikes me as different between liberals and conservatives is not their susceptibility to racism, but their understanding of and political response to racism.

“Your a socialist!”
Because demanding a livable wage makes you a pinko commie, anti-american, nazi.

I wouldn’t call myself a socialist, but selfish economic behavior on the part of our leaders is a huge problem. How can you deny that the heart of democracy is power all citizens to determine the nations future. This is shared with socialism right?

Mt first cousin married a farmer in rural North Island NZ – near some volcano or other – and she is a high school teacher, and reports a lot of problem and unruly behavior from Maoris, and says that they are almost always the class troublemakers – so she hates trying to teach them and is even considering quitting her job, due to this.

So Razib, what is and is not racism for you?

I find this question particularly amusing. While I can understand how it would get at one’s tolerance and generational issues (typically parents disapproving of their children’s choices)… I can’t help but feel that it’s written perfectly for the sort of liberal mind that has social utopia and the great mixing of races at the surface, but which readily rationalizes one’s own choices to marry closer to one’s birth culture.

This gets at the issue Liberals are oft accused of: they have no problem spending OTHER people’s money. Well, can it not be said that it’s easier to socially engineer someone else’s choices versus one’s own.

The most obnoxiously liberal person I’ve met, cultured and brilliant, made a big show of dating the rainbow in college, but ultimately married someone who was a virtual twin. Profess outcrossing, practice inbreeding.

This question seems to get at the same issue. True racism? probably not. Racial-posturing? Certainly.

How is the accuracy of these tests tested?

many psychologists are skeptical of iat. as i said, subjective domain….

@ 16, PC Conroy

Look at the explanations given whenever there is a report on educational or other socio-economic disparities amongst ethnic groups. The starting point is that groups should be equal, so something must be amiss. In NZ we’ve just had our Human Rights Commission issue a report noting different group outcomes in imprisonmnent, health and eduction. This is apparently evidence of “structural discrimination”.

Although, in terms of the US the Snyderman & Rothman survey results would suggest that privately a significant number of academics do consider environmental _and_ genetic variation is a factor in such disparities.

“being liberal is ipso facto proof you are not racist, so even if you live in vermont, or an overwhelmingly white building on the upper west side, you’re shielded from such critiques”

There’s the stereotype that leftists that always whine about racism and race relations, e.g. white privilege, mostly come from white suburbs with little interaction with minorities. From what I’ve seen it’s a factual stereotype, somewhat.

The negative stereotyping definitely works against white men as well as black men in this form of pron, so if cuckold porn is in any sense “racist” — as opposed to just exploitative dehumanizing trash like all porn (IMO) — it’s equally racist against white men.

I am reminded of that old feminist saw that porn exploits women. While this is true, it also exploits men, especially gay men who end up just as degraded in these productions as women do in materials produced for a non-gay audience. (See Camile Paglia.)

Leftists generally only see exploitation when it conforms to narrative (women or blacks).

Regarding test scores, in my school district, the middle schools have widely varying overall average test scores, but when separated out by race, the white scores are almost identical, probably to within the error range of the tests. The pattern is not as pronounced at elementary and high schools, but it’s still there – most of the variation in test scores is demographic; within-group scores don’t vary that much between schools.

Also, racists aren’t always known by their actions. My boss is a racist, in that grumpy-old-man (Archie Bunker) sort of way. Yet out of 9 employees, for positions requiring an engineering degree, two are black, which is a very high percentage for our field.

I think it’s unfair to say that socialism is about equality first and foremost – I’ve always considered a focus on equality to be more of a Kensyian to social democrat concern. Socialism is about who has control of the means of production – the capitalist class or the laboring class? There is usually desire for less inequality, but this springs from the desire to expropriate the ill-gotten gains of the capitalist class, not because there is a fundamental belief that the capitalist is in all things, equal to every member of the working class.

Speaking as a rather heterodox libertarian socialist, if I were to draw up an ideal society from scratch, I wouldn’t care much about a moderate gap between the wealthy and poor, except insofar as it harms social cohesion and disrupts the political system. Instead, I’d focus on replacing the authoritarian core of the employer-employee relationship with something more compatible with the values we hold in esteem in the public sphere.

I realize the porn thing was a huge aside, perhaps I shouldn’t have posted it. My point is only if people think the idea of white women getting impregnated by black men is enough of a moral transgression that it’s a very popular kink, there must be a lot of Americans who still hold somewhat racist views in private.

http://www.examiner.com/article/why-racism-isn-t-evil

Well working in the Labor Movement might explain your somewhat oblique views?!

I passed a local 24 hour grocery/fresh produce store in Brooklyn yesterday, that I frequent almost daily, and there was a loud protest outside of mostly (> 90%) Whites protesting for a greater wages and benefits for mostly (> 99%) Mexican workers. As I was heckled for entering the store by an angry White women, I said, “Sorry, I don’t support this strike – I’m a Capitalist!” She looked surprised, as I live in a fairly SWPL/Liberal area, and said, “I’m a Capitalist too, but think everyone should receive a good wage for whatever work they do”, to which I replied, “No, your a Socialist…” She looked completely flummoxed by that – obvious to me – observation.

Socialists are generally all Equalists, which is another way of saying they are Marxist by another name. To them, any inequality must be “corrected” by government intervention, even if such correction means one group is penalized unfairly for the sake of another group.

BTW, I don’t know what your comments about porn are getting at??

While I’ll admit I’ve spent more of my time socializing with the left than the right (it happens when you work in the labor movement), but I’ve known a number of conservatives as well. I cannot think of a single instance in my life IRL where I’ve heard anyone claim that blacks are less intelligent than whites, even among those who I would consider racist (e.g., people with inordinate fear of all black men, or who didn’t want to live in a neighborhood with any black people. Maybe some people believed it in their heart of hearts, but if so, they certainly did not discuss it openly. In a way, this isn’t surprising, since most people who I have known who have openly said racist things have been lower-middle class to working-class whites – and mostly none too bright as well. If you’re of average to low IQ anyway, it’s not as if intelligence would have much salience to you as something worth crowing about. Instead they focus on issues of crime and “immoral culture.”

The HBD community online, of course, is a different animal. However, it’s developed into an internet-driven subculture like any number of other ones, with its own expressed group norms, which means I don’t think it can be compared with mainstream American society. As I inferred in the first post, I don’t necessarily find HBD conclusions wrong because they are racist (it would be ad hominim to do so), but I think it’s important for that community to realize they have developed the sort of “group assuredness” that Razib talked about the other week, and their own reasons for reaching the conclusions they did may not be any more high-minded than those on the opposite side.

I would say there is certain types of “racist” behavior which is common on the left as well as the right. One common example is avoiding schools where there are more than a few token black children. It’s hard to say how much of this is due to subconscious racism (“if there are so many black kids, something must be wrong with the school!”) and how much of this is due to idiotic blank slatism (comparing aggregate scores at a racially-mixed and a white school will almost always make the white school look better, even if the mixed school has better outcomes for the white students).

More generally -

One of the top things that makes me think that racism is still alive and well in the U.S. (if I can cross a line here) is “interracial porn” – particularly the tremendous number of stories which involve white men watching their wives be cuckolded – and impregnated – by black men. I can only assume it’s because there are still segments of white culture which find interracial sex a “kink” in some way like gender transgression. To me, it might as well have been written for the inhabitants of another planet, because the whole “genre” is both unerotic and frankly repulsive. I would have expected more men would like to read impregnation harem fantasies or something.

Enjoy Razib!

I grew up in rural Ireland and never saw a Black person – or anyone who wasn’t Irish or British – till I was 10 yo and went on vacation to cousins in London.

Today I live in Brooklyn, NY and have friends of all races and ethnicities. However I find I have much more in common with Caribbean Blacks – Jamaicans and Trinis (from Trinidad) – than US Blacks and often US Whites too. Just this morning a friend who had come back from Trinidad, brought me back a homemade bottle of Trinidad Pepper Sauce
http://www.simplytrinicooking.com/2008/09/trini-pepper-sauce.html#axzz247Ef06YG