BlackLivesMatter doesn't itself matter

I suspect the activists flocking to the banner of "BlackLivesMatter" have a secret contest for who can be the most blood-boilingly obnoxious.

Blocking highway traffic, blocking subways, interrupting live performances, refusing to meet with sympathetic politicians and even disrupting WWII veteran medal ceremonies is pretty obnoxious, but not as obnoxious as what happened at the University of California at Berkley this week.

After professor Steven Segal told his social work class his views that black-on-black violence, not white cops, is the biggest problem facing the black community and backed it up with statistics, students declared he was a racist, the class was an example of institutionalized racism and Segal "oppressed" his students with his opinions.

In my time as a right-wing college with a steady stream of left-wing professors who inserted their political views into class, I can't think of a single time where I would have called it "oppression" or left the classroom crying like these kids just did. The o-word was used a few times in this moronic incident.

The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. Eric Garner's death was a tragedy. The only tragedy related to the death of Michael Brown is how it harmed the life and career of police officer Darren Wilson, yet these activists have made Brown their poster boy.

Last week police in the city I work in shot a suspect three times while he charged at them with a drawn knife. He had just stabbed his boyfriend, who was the one who called police, and is still in critical condition. Sadly, if this guy had been born black instead of white there would be protests and folk songs in his honor.
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Lynch mobs never have due process

Racists are bad so anything we do to them is acceptable, right? Such as posting their personal information online (doxxing) and contacting their employer to demand that they be fired. That's exactly what the website Getting Racists Fired is doing.

But like all vigilante actions, eventually innocent people end up getting splattered. That's because lynch mobs don't necessarily go after guilty people. No, they go after the accused, and one of the first innocent causalities was Brianna Rivers, a normal everyday person with an angry ex-boyfriend.

Scott H. Greenfield doesn't make the lynch mob comparison, perhaps because it's become something of a cliche, but he does compare it to another social ill: revenge porn sites, where people share nude photos, often of ex lovers who they believe wronged them. The site is under both "Getting Racists Fired" and "Racists Getting Fired, and Greenfield uses the other name:

So RGF is, without a doubt, inherently evil. No, it doesn’t matter that you think she deserved it. No, lying about someone being a racist to harm her is still lying, no matter how truly you believe she (or he) deserves to be harmed. 

The point here is that angry people on the internet are nothing if not imaginative in finding methods of accomplishing the goal of causing people we don’t like harm. If it’s not naked images, it’s racist comments. And if it’s not racist comments, it will be something else. Don’t ask me what, as my mind doesn’t go there, but I’m sure others already have nasty ideas brewing. 

The vigilante website has responded by changing the guidelines for submissions. That's still going to end up harming innocent people, as there will always be ways to fool the gatekeepers. Ask yourself, are you really against doxxing in principal, or just against doxxing certain people. If not, you have some soul-searching to do. 

Whatever new form this crowd-sourced revenge approach takes, please do your part for justice and refuse to join in.

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Ferguson reminders

Following the grand jury decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown, and the subsequent riots, I ask people to keep the following things in mind:

The rioters and looters do not speak for all Ferguson protesters, and likewise, criticism of rioters and looters is not criticism of all protesters.

Violence and property damage is not a legitimate response to a judicial decision.

The grand jury was presented with more evidence than you were.

But all that evidence is now available to the public. If you insist on having an opinion on this subject, read in its entirety, or read several summaries of it from neutral and opposing ideological positions.

The riots were not a conspiracy orchestrated by the government.

President Obama and Eric Holder pleaded with people not to riot. Let that sink in.
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Reclaiming social liberalism from the jerks

Freddie deBoer at the Daily Dish has written the most important short essay on the thorny transformation of social liberalism of this year, from the perspective of someone in the trenches.

It's hard not to share the entire thing, but here's the two paragraphs that stab the heart of the matter

I guess what it all comes down to, for me, is that social liberalism was once an alternative that enabled people to pursue whatever types of consensual personal behavior they wanted, and thus was a movement that increased individual freedom and happiness. It was the antidote to Jerry Fallwell telling you that you were going to hell, to Nancy Reagan saying “just say no,” to your conservative parents telling you not to be gay, to Pat Robertson saying don’t have sex, to Tipper Gore telling you that you couldn’t listen to the music you like, to don’t have sex, don’t do drugs, don’t wear those clothes, don’t walk that way, don’t have fun, don’t be yourself. So of course that movement won. It was a positive, joyful, human, freeing alternative to an exhausted, ugly, narrow vision of how human beings should behave.

DeBoer is still a proud supporter of social justice causes and beliefs, but sees the actions of the modern activists as alienating and puritanical.

Suppose you’re a young college student inclined towards liberal or left-wing ideas. And suppose, like a lot of such college students, you enjoy Stephen Colbert and find him a political inspiration. Now imagine that, during the #CancelColbert fiasco, you defended Colbert on Twitter. If your defense was noticed by the people who police that forum, the consequences were likely to be brutal. People would not have said “here, let me talk you through this.” It wouldn’t have been a matter of friendly and inviting disagreement. Instead, as we all saw, it would have been immediate and unequivocal attack. That’s how the loudest voices on Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook act. The culture is one of attack, rather than of education. And the claims, typically, are existential: not “this thing you said is problematic from the standpoint of race,” but rather “you’re a racist.” Not “I think there’s some gender issues going here that you should think about,” but “you’re a misogynist.” Always. I know that there are kinder voices out there in socially liberal circles on social media, but unfortunately, when these cyclical storms get going, those voices are constantly drowned out.

Exactly. There is no complexity or room for growth with modern social justice warriors. One is either completely on their side and uses every pre-approved term and label, or they are a racist, misogynist, homophobe etc.

The anecdote to these simplistic black and white thinking was well-articulated by Jay Smooth, a young modern activist himself, who said it's important to make the distinction between saying someone is a racist, or something particular that they said was racist.

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How to be a weasel: Kevin Sorbo edition

Actor Kevin Sorbo wrote a post on Facebook criticizing the rioters in Ferguson, calling them animals.

Nearly everyone is against the riots, including supporters of the protests who make great paints to separate the protesters from the rioters. As it happens, blacks are seen to be the majority of both protesters and rioters.

But of course, Sorbo is a conservative in Hollywood so the weasels have to find a way to be outraged. In this case, they decided to erase that stark line between protesters and rioters and falsely present his criticism against the rioters as criticism against black protestors.

For example, here are some weasel headlines:

Actor Kevin Sorbo: Ferguson unrest let black protesters be the ‘animals’ they ‘truly are’

'Hercules' Actor Kevin Sorbo Calls Ferguson Protestors 'Animals,' 'Losers'

Actor Kevin Sorbo’s Shocking Racist Rant: Ferguson an ‘Excuse’ For Black People to Act as ‘Animals They Truly Are’

As is customary when a famous person says something that caused offense, Sorbo issued an apology and clarification, explaining that he was indeed talking about the rioters and no one else. As is also customary, no one who was criticizing him cared about the apology.

Are all segments of the black population supposed to be immune to any and all criticism even when they are committing crimes against innocent members of the public? In a world where weasels get away with their skulduggery, that seems to be the case.

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Smoking up state's rights

A friend recently posed this question to me:

I am wondering what you think of the inconsistency of Democrats and liberals claiming that marijuana policy "should be left to the states" while simultaneously criticizing arguments for "states' rights" as coded racist/discriminatory" language? This strikes me as a sort of wanting to have the cake and eat it too situation.

That's easy. I never saw that as a sincere criticism of states rights.

Like most accusations of modern racism, it seems to be an emotionally-satisfying way some members of the left can dismiss their opponents without having to have a real debate. I think coded words and dog whistles are largely delusional.

 I very much believe in states rights for the old laboratories of democracy reason and I think everyone should embrace them. For example, Card and Krueger's revolutionary (and still controversial) 1992 paper on small increases in the minimum wage failing to hurt employment was only possible because of the laws being different in different states.

I think liberals who support letting the states decide have figured out it's better to get some smaller victories now instead of waiting for the whole country to come around. For example, here in Massachusetts we've had legal gay marriage for 10 years. While today 19 states recognize gay marriage, 31 don't. If not for states rights we would have zero states without gay marriage today.

I do have one qualm with my friend's premise: Despite being a liberal himself, he is accusing Democrats and progressives of categorical hypocrisy. While I'm sure there's some overlap, I don't know for a fact that there are specific individuals that hold those two opposing views. He is treating a diverse group as if it was homogeneous.

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Here's what you get when you tolerate black racists

I absolutely loathe the way some racists get a pass today because they're black.

Some white liberals, not all but some, are quick to excuse or dismiss black racists, saying they are justified or inconsequential. Some won't even call them racists and tout a phony definition of racism that requires one to have societal power in order to qualify.

For example, Spike Lee gets to glare at interracial couples and complain about white people moving into black neighborhoods, but is held up as someone we can learn from about race.

I had a college professor who said she wasn't welcome at a friend's wedding because her friend's black mother has hated white people ever since KKK members killed someone in her family. In her defense, my professor didn't give that woman a pass, but sadly many will.

It's as logical as saying someone who was mugged by a Korean man is allowed to be prejudice against all Koreans. My professor wasn't even from this country, but was seen as guilty of a murder that took place before she was born. Racism is racism, it's as simple as that.

Well that logic doesn't seem to convince everyone, so adding fuel to the fire is this interview with Tamera Mowry-Housley, former co-star of the sitcom Sister, Sister, about the harassment she is receiving for marrying a white man.

Black racists are harassing a bi-racial woman for her interracial marriage. How can anyone consider that tolerable? Black racists are not cute or novel, and they target minority members too. They are racists and all racists should be treated the same, no matter what color they are.
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Maggie Anderson is not an economist

I was curious to whatever happened to the Buy Black scheme from a few years ago, officially called the "Ebony Experiment" and later changed to the "Empowerment Experiment. The idea was for black people to only buy from black-owned businesses. Most people got so upset about the upfront racial discrimination that they forgot to ask if it actually helps enrich the black community.

A Google search revealed that Maggie Anderson, the wife in the couple behind the campaign, wrote a book and has a website that introduces her as "Author, activist, speaker, economist..."

While Maggie Anderson may make claims about economic ideas, she is no more an economist than creationist Ken Ham is a biologist. Anderson's classic mistake was to only look at what black merchants stood to make in profits and ignore about the higher costs and other difficulties experienced by black customers. She doesn't understand mainstream economic thinking, in fact, she is oblivious to it and relies on novelty and gimmicks.

She received the highest honor bestowed on a pseudo intellectual-earlier this year - she was invited to present a TEDx talk.

She made one compelling point - that white people can also choose to shop from black merchants (most likely out of guilt). While this fails to help the economy as a whole and will create a net economic loss, the section of the economy she cares about will benefit.

The last time I saw her, Maggie Anderson's group was operating an ignored Facebook fan page. The page was filled with spam posts for get-rich-quick swindles peppered with assigned updates asking followers "Did you EE today?"

Now she has become an evangelist on the stage, making the same tired old promises that if we only agree to buy a few products here and there at an inflated price we would save the community by creating jobs. It's an old claim polished up with an ebony coating, and the core is as hollow as ever.
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Cancel Colbert is the perfect social justice example

Congratulations to Suey Park for creating the most easily disproved social justice crusade in recent years, and reminding us all why online social justice warriors are heavily mocked by non-bigots.

The Comedy Central television network runs a Twitter account for the Stephen Colbert show, while Colbert himself and his writers have their own Twitter account. The network account posted a purposely-racist post this week mocking the owner of the Washington Redskins by using the goofy right wing Colbert character to say:

That drew the attention of professional victim Suey Park, who used the hashtag #CancelColbert to try to squeeze some kind of groveling apology out of Colbert (Who had nothing to do with the offending remark.)

I want to give Park the benefit of the doubt here and say she doesn't actually want Colbert's show canceled. What she said on Josh Zepp's Huffington Post Live broadcast was that her demands were purposely unreasonable to get attention. In particular, she said:

Our demands aren't really met unless we have really serious asks or we generate these larger conversations. Unfortunatly, people usually don't listen to us when we're being reasonable

So Park is saying that she purposely exaggerates what she wants to get cheap attention. That's not a good way to start any conversation, or to assert oneself as a serious person to learn from.

The conversation ended pretty quickly when Park tried to use a cheap privilege shaming tactic to steamroll Zepp, and he didn't let it happen.





As Tim Molloy wrote on this kerfuffle, "I'm so non-racist I even think non-racists are racist." This is like protesting Roots for having racist characters.

Park is trying to make a living off of perpetual victimhood, and while most of the attention this is generating paints her as a fool, she's getting enough positive reinforcement to gain some clout among the people who might book her for speaking engagements or buy her writings.

I really don't know how sincere her beliefs are on this issue. I'll grant her that she cares about racism and social justice, but it's hard not to look at her responses to questions about the nature of satire and think she's playing a role for personal profit.

Thinking Park is completely sincere insults her intelligence. It's much kinder to say she's a faker willing to eat her own allies.


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FBI cans left-wing busy bodies

This is a subtle, but important news story. The FBI stopped linking (and therefor, stopped endorsing) the Southern Poverty Law Center on the FBI hate crime webpage. Along with the Anti-Defamation League,

The FBI had no comment and offered no explanation for its decision to end their website's relationship with the two groups, leaving just four federal links as hate crime “resources.” The SPLC had no comment.

The SPLC does good, important work by identifying hate groups like KKK offshoots, and black nationalists. I give them props for labeling black nationalists as racists, something I've seen too many left wingers decline to do, but their recent opposition to men's rights showed how low a threshold they have for outrage.


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Prediction on George Zimmerman

Having viewed a lot of the George Zimmerman trial at work it's obvious that the prosecution has a weak case.

I predict several big-name left wing commentators will justify the riots following the dismissal of the case or Zimmerman's acquittal.

Perhaps it will be some of the people claiming that when Trayvon Martin called Zimmerman a cracker he meant it as a term of endearment.
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How dare they!

I've heard plenty of people say that if President George W. Bush was doing the things president Barack Obama is doing liberals would be outraged.

Of course, I've responded that plenty of liberals are outraged at the O-man. Now that Edward Snowden has revealed the National Security Agency is accessing private information on who private citizens are calling on the phone and President Obama wants him arrested his approval rating has fall to around 45 percent. It's clear that plenty of liberals are outraged at the president.

So what I want to know is, why are so many liberals racists now?
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

A dozen years ago I took a public speaking class where the instructor told us not to use "sexist" language in speeches. By this she meant gendered terms like "waitress" and "waiter" or "mailman," not language that trivializes a person based on accidents of birth.

Prejudice is so reviled today that talentless political hacks know they can score cheap points by twisting something an enemy said into a vestigial organ of racism or sexism.

This week we were treated to two beautiful examples. One was MSNBC's Martin Bashir who is claiming that Republicans trying to tie President Barack Obama to the ongoing IRS scandal makes the word "IRS" a secret code for "nigger." The other is a brainless post from a gender studies graduate who is accusing a gay rights advocate of being a racist when she didn't like First Lady Michelle Obama's response when she tried to steal the stage from her.

When interviewed after being escorted out of the fundraiser, Sturtz said of the First Lady, “She came right down in my face. I was taken aback.” 

...Notice the language Sturtz uses to describe the encounter. Rutgers Anthropology Ph.D student Donna Auston emphasizes that Sturtz’s word choice of “taken aback” is one of distinct privilege; Sturtz sees herself as above reproach in this situation. As Auston inquires, why was Sturtz surprised at Obama’s response? “Is it because you did not expect her to exercise agency? Did you not expect her to assert that she is your equal?” Auston asks. Either black women are supposed to tacitly accept maltreatment and disrespect, or when they do exercise their agency, they are branded as the “Angry Black Woman.”

Issues like this are obvious examples of false flags, where racism is invoked for a situation just because one of the participants was black. What I find more troubling is the expanded definition of words like racism and sexism for issues of insensitivity.

For example, it's insensitive to assume that all black people like hot sauce. There is a stereotype that most black people enjoy putting hot sauce on food. There's nothing degrading or unworthy about enjoying food with a little kick to it, but it's still a stereotype.

Say I had a few people over and we were eating French fries and one of them was black. It would be insensitive for me to ask only the black person if he would like some Sriracha sauce. It would also be somewhat insensitive if I only thought  to get the Sriracha bottle out for everyone to use because there's a black person present.

Both of those are examples of acting on stereotype, but there's nothing hostile or malicious about it. While we still need to address those issues, it's deceitful to compare a host who wants to make their guests feel welcome with a KKK member who wants to harm other people and thinks of them as inferior.

This could be part of a vast spectrum, as a host who offers fried chicken to a guest is clearly acting on a stereotype in a way, but there is also a different context here. Taunts about fried chicken and watermelon have been used maliciously for years. That's not true for hot sauce.

By blurring the line between acts of malice and hate and insensitive acts that may even be kind, we are watering down the term "racism" to the point it is useless. This vague use of language allows some progressives to declare that no major advances have been made in terms of race relations over the past 50 years because "racism" is still alive, even though things are clearly better. We no longer tolerate rhetoric and attitudes that were socially acceptable two generations ago.

But notice how quickly the rhetoric snaps back to the original definition when needed. Suddenly, "racism" means the old definition again and anyone guilty of the modern definition of racism  is going to hate rallies and burning crosses on lawns. It's just like how anyone critical of third-wave feminism is painted as opposing the first-wave.

We have two reasonable choices here. Either use new terms such as "racial insensitivity" or declare that racism isn't that bad.
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Is this new "racism" even worth being ashamed of?

By now, most people have heard about Portland, Ore. school principal Verenice Gutierrez's comments about the racially divisive nature of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Here they are in the original newspaper article:

Verenice Gutierrez picks up on the subtle language of racism every day.

Take the peanut butter sandwich, a seemingly innocent example a teacher used in a lesson last school year.

“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” says Gutierrez, principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School, a diverse school of 500 students in Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood.

“Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”

This expanded version of racism is watered-down to the point of being meaningless. Instead of malice and assumptions about a person based on their race, this new "racism" is a virtually-harmless array of minor faux pas based on unfamiliarity with cultural nuances.

I can remember a few years ago racism was being redefined as "power plus privilege," which was a heavy-handed way to excuse non-white racists. It was as if there was no English word for racial hatred from minority members. Now we're seeing more diversity in high-profile racists, such as the actions of Latinos openly called racist.

Victim-mongers are twisting the concept of privilege to say that merely not knowing every minor differences they have with every obscure cultural on earth is "racist."

I'm sure Gutierrez gets a pass on this because of her Mexican heritage, but if you're going to look for nano-racism at that threshold, you don't get to say "Hispanic." The preferred term is "Latino" and her choice of words is a lot closer to being offensive than mentioning a sandwich.

Sandwiches are known all over the world, including in Southern and Central America, and shielding immigrant students from knowledge of basic American culture does them a disservice.

The worst part is that Gutierrez wasn't born this ignorant; she had to train for it. Her school district spent more than $500,000 paying a bogus consulting firm called Pacific Education Group to teach school officials ways to invent problems in the search for racism.

I figured Brietbart.com was being disingenuous when it said these consultants claim that white privilege in the school system is the primary cause of the black achievement gap, and not poverty, violence, broken families or lousy schools, but it was right there as the motto on the front of the web site.

At Pacific Educational Group we believe Systemic Racism is the most devastating factor contributing to the diminished capacity of all children, especially black children, to achieve at the highest levels, and contributes to the fracturing of the communities that nurture and support them.

They also seem to be a two-trick pony operation, as their seminar page only lists Latinos and Somalis - the two groups from Gutierrez's example - as their area of focus.

Picture this: A grade school teacher gives the class a word problem about how many sandwiches someone will have left over if they start with five and eat two but the conversation quickly turns to what exactly counts as a sandwich and students share their experiences with tortas and pites. Everyone spends the afternoon learning about the evils of cultural assumptions and the math lesson is abandoned in search of curing society's ills.

Maybe that's why Gutierrez's school performs in the bottom 15 percent of the state.
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What privilege could be

I had two immediate reactions in college when another student brought up and explained the essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" By Peggy McIntosh.

The first was that no one could come up with a subtitle that awful without a lot of effort. The second was that it was a complete surprise that the article actually made some really good points.

White privilege is a series of things I don't have to think about but a person of another race does. Privilege examples are always compiled in lists. I don't find some of the examples compelling, but others are undeniable. Here are some of the better ones:

*I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race. 

*I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. 

*If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race. 

*I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race. 

*I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race. 

*If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.

This really opened my eyes to the idea that a black person has no choice but to "be black" all the time, whether they like it or not. There are situations that can be troublesome for other people that I am completely oblivious to. The essay title is still awful, but there is real wisdom here and privilege is an entirely legitimate concept.

Unfortunately, that valid point has nothing to do with the way privilege is typically used in modern discussions.

Claims of white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege or some other variety has become a way of silencing dissent on discussions about identify politics not by refuting arguments, but by attempting to disqualify the speakers based on accidents of birth.

Say I were to criticize a policy supported by some feminists that would give money to mothers who leave their husbands, saying it creates a financial incentive that would break families up. A supporter could respond by defending the policy and attempting to show it will help more families than it hurts. That's the old-fashioned, legitimate way to discuss an issue.

Using the "vulgar privilege" tactic, the supporter would simply say that I have male privilege I am unaware of and declare the discussion over. What's worse, in that person's mind, that's a compelling argument. They would walk away believing that was a perfectly reasonable way to defend their view.

Only a person who can't fathom that their beliefs could be wrong can use this tactic. What's more, they are suggesting that personal experience is more important than logic, reason or research.

The type of privilege being invoked is often completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. Brandon K. Thorpe wrote a great essay about the politicization of the Trayvon Martin shooting within the gay community, calling out writer Akiba Solomon on her wandering criticism of Kevin Naff. Naff said gay groups were jumping on the Trayvon bandwagon and Solomon wrote:

Essentially what Naff has done is cast the struggle for LGBT human rights and equality as window dressing for his own demands for white male privilege... 

I don’t know Kevin Naff so I’m not going to accuse him of pandering to angry white males. But I know this much is true: LGBT organizations belong in the conversation about racial profiling. No amount of his seething white male privilege masquerading as gun control advocacy can change that fact.

Thorpe didn't miss those wild shots about "male privilege" in the Trayvon Martin case. He wrote:

Note the last line, with its telling use of the word “masquerade” and the out-of-nowhere use of the word “male.” Unless Solomon mis-typed, she is accusing Kevin Naff of masquerading as a citizen concerned about firearm proliferation and the stand-your-ground law so that he may surreptitiously go about his real work — venting anger toward black people and women.

Yes, women. Otherwise, the word “male” in Solomon’s paragraph is meaningless. Note that Naff never mentioned sex or gender in his article. The presence of the word “male” in Solomon’s says less about Naff’s opinions than it does about a common pitfall of identity politics: Get too far in, and you start piling cant atop cant until the accumulated weight crushes whatever good point you began with.

I talked to Thorpe shortly after he published this piece and he said that people sometimes get on a roll when they start talking about privileges, which is why you see Solomon swinging so wild.

The legitimate point about the concept of privilege is being unfairly tainted by the simpletons mucking up the word. The unfortunate association between these two different uses harms the reputation of the valid version. Cries of "privilege" has become the thoughtless bleating of sheep, an automated reply for people too lazy or too slow to draft a serious argument.
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Yes, the Nazis were socialists

"The thinking worker comes to Hitler"

Over and over again I find myself clarifying that fascism and Nazism were sister movements to socialism and communism. This runs counter to the cheap political trick where modern capitalist-loving right wing movements are likened to Hitler and his followers. This is married to the false belief that free market economic policies and racism are intertwined, and therefore the Nazis must have loved capitalism because they hated Jews so much.

This is complete nonsense.

The socialist roots of Nazism doesn't require any digging; it's right there in the groups official title "The National Socialist German Workers Party." Sometimes this is waved off by saying they were "right wing socialists." As Jonah Goldberg wrote in Liberal Fascism, that remark is justified by the warmongering nature of fascism, not by its economic policies.

People make associations between the two by mistakenly projecting the hawkish nature of modern American conservatives into the 1930's. They do the same thing with the modern right wing tendencies of modern white supremacists, but that's also a mistake.

I recently stumbled across an in-depth video on Netflix from Philosophy Professor Stephen RC Hicks entitled "Nietzche and the Nazis" which attempts to explain the intellectual beliefs and philosophy of the Nazi party.

Hicks completely knocks it out of the park. He repeatedly highlights the embrace of socialism and contempt of capitalism that swam through the Third Reich and backs it up with specific quotations and excerpts.

There's been plenty of academic analyses that go into the collectivist nature of Nazi Germany's policies, including Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, but Hicks presents something in a format that's easy to digest by anyone.

He also drew attention to a pamphlet written by Joseph Goebbels, the head propaganda minister. Here are some notable lines:

What does anti-Semitism have to do with socialism? I would put the question this way: What does the Jew have to do with socialism? Socialism has to do with labor. When did one ever see him working instead of plundering, stealing and living from the sweat of others? As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation’s goods.

Combine that with

I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must. Only the annihilation of a system of exploitation carries with it the core of the rebirth of our people.

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I don't know what happened to Trayvon Martin

...and I seem to be the only one. Everyone else seems to think they know exactly what happened.

For me, the case started two weeks ago when a friend posted a ThinkProgress link claiming to tell all the important facts of the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman shooting. The post began with the statement:

On February 26, 2012, a 17-year-old African-American named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida. The shooter was George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old white man.

It included statements like "Martin’s English teacher described him 'as an A and B student who majored in cheerfulness'" and "Martin had no criminal record." There were also claims about Zimmerman having an assault charge on a police officer in the past (which was later dropped), making 46 calls to the police since 2004, "Zimmerman was not a member of a registered Neighborhood Watch group" and "According to neighbors, Zimmerman was 'fixated on crime and focused on young, black males.'”

This painted a clean good-versus-evil story, where an obsessive neighbor attacked and shot an innocent honor student just for being black in his gated community. But as Tyler Cowen warned us about telling good-versus-evil stories, real life is never as simple as black and white.

In this case, it wasn't even black and white, as Zimmerman was quickly revealed to have a Latino mother - and based on his last name, a Jewish father. ThinkProgress amended the list and continues to add to it, with no mention that the racial introduction has been amended. I recall a line originally about Trayvon never getting in trouble at school, but this was found out to be false and I believe, removed with no admission it was ever there.

This was the first great revision in the case. There were many more. It turned out the photo everyone keeps using of Trayvon is from when he was 12. Trayvon was 17 at the time of his death and fully capable of causing bodily injury to someone like Zimmerman, as could be seen in the modern photos of Trayvon that turned up.

Then one of these updated photos turned out to be fake, and was at one time posted on a white power website. Some of them were legitimate, it turns out, and a white power hacker (who knew there was such a thing) said he had hacked Trayvon's social media accounts and posted screenshots of Trayvon setting up a cocaine drug deal, speaking of women in the crudest of terms and a friend praising him for taking a swing at a bus driver.

Of course, screen shots are easy to fake. I could pull it off with MS Paint in a few minutes if I wanted to. Instead of trying to check the authenticity of the screenshots, the Trayvon activists switched gears: How dare anyone carry out these "character assassinations" of a shooting victim?

This one is transparent; they were trying to have it both ways. We were sold a story that Trayvon was a squeaky-clean boy, but it quickly came that was not true. He was previously suspended for having a prying tool and a bag of stolen jewelry and at the time of his death, was suspended for having a marijuana baggie in his backpack. Talking about these facts is being mischaracterized as saying drug possession makes someone free game for target practise. No one said this, of course. Apparently, correcting the activists on their falsehoods was off-limits.

Other stupid things happened. Geraldo Rivera said dressing like a thug makes people perceive you as a menace, which is true, but went on to that wearing a hooded sweatshirt was as much to blame as Zimmerman. That was idiotic, and the Trayvon activists seized this single statement that no one else supported and acted like it was a pivotal defense of Zimmerman.

The race baiters and bigots came out to get Zimmerman as well. People like Spike Lee tweeted what they thought was his home address, then apologized for sending the lynch mob to the wrong house, but not for sending a lynch mob in the first place.

The racist New Black Panther Party put a reward out for Zimmerman's address. CNN's Anderson Cooper called them on it, saying the authorities have not called his arrest and any agency they turned him over to would release him. Their spokesman countered that yes, the white man's law has not found him guilty but he has been found guilty by "street people law."

There is nothing wrong with demanding a more detailed investigation than the one Flordia police initially performed. I hold that position as well. It's another thing entriely to say because the innitial investigation was not conducted transparently and did not reach the conclusion ones limited grasp of the facts implied, that lynch mobs are now justified.

Reasonable people have also spoken out against Zimmerman. I have a lot of respect for John McWhorter and he has a record of calling out black activists for making phony cries of racism. In this case, he's taken the position that racism against black boys created the incident.

Zimmerman said he followed a suspicious person, even after the dispatcher told him to stand down. That's very different than if Martin had jumped him for no reason. However, disobeying police orders is not on par with murder. Despite what ThinkProgress implied, Zimmerman was the captain of a neighborhood watch program (which explains all those calls he made to the police). If it's not accredited, should we say it was an "undocumented" group?

What happened next in the narrative is murky. Zimmerman said Martin attacked him and beat his head in a little and he shot him to save his life. People are saying Zimmerman is automatically guilty for shooting someone who was unarmed. Infact, it depends on the situation. If someone does indeed attack you and prevent you from running away, why should you be honor bound to engage in "fair" combat with them when your life is very much in danger?

A few days later a blurry video in the police station didn't show Zimmerman bleeding from the head. Then a few days after that we see in an enhanced screen shot what looks like a wound to the back of his head that was cleaned up by paramedics.

With the public's view of the story changing again and again as new evidence and narratives come forward, MSNBC's Chris Hayes said:

We've all been baited into essentially litaging, trying the case on the facts. and we don't have the facts. Right? So now it's, oh here's the video... and it shows... it contests the family members of Zimmerman's account...

All of this vaccumm is created by the fact that... the way that we establish facts in this country is we have an arrest and a trial. Right? So all of this is flowing into the vaccum that has been created by the absense of the legal process which is the way that we deal with this. Right? He can go before a jury... he can say all these things, but instead it's being tried in the media.

Sorry Hayes, but you don't get it. We don't assume people are guilty until a trial clears their name. Instead, we investigate and if there's enough evidence to prove guilt, we take it to trial and let a judge or jury reach a decision. Hayes thinks the weirdness in the case means Zimmerman should be assumed guilty and locked away until a trial occurs.

Instead, Zimmerman should be free unless the police conclude he should be arrested to stand trial, because that's the proper order of operations. The strength of my position is revealed by how it's remained unchanged even as new information came out. Here's what I wrote on March 20 when my friend posted the ThinkProgress link:

These things have a habit of being distorted, and we should be prepared for that. This is what trial by media looks like. After the Richard Jewell case, we should caution people from conducting their own advocacy trials. It's one thing to press authorities into investigating a case, it's another to reach a conclusion and try to ruin someone's life before a trial happens. This is not a defense of Zimmerman. It is a defense of the presumption of innocence our court system uses.

I'm glad to see there are a few other people out there who are avoiding reaching a premature conclusion, including lawyer Ken from Popehat, journalist Piers Morgan and even President Barack Obama, who deserves credit for trying to stay out of this story as long as he could until forced into making a vague comment.

The good news in all the mess is that all of this attention to the Trayvon Martin case has completely knocked Kony 2012 off the radar.
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Jim Crow and the minimum wage

I was rereading one of Dylan's post on racial issues over at Blindsight 20/20 and I got to thinking about how any legislature that impacts blacks negatively more than other groups - crack-cocaine punishments, welfare reform, public housing cuts, etc. - are presented as racist in nature and motivation.

Under Jim Crow laws, this was absolutely the case. Legislation that said in order to vote, you must ace a difficult voting test unless your grandfather was a voter was designed to target blacks without actually mentioning them.

Jim Crow laws were a horrible blight on our record, which makes it politically convenient for some lefties to invoke them to smear modern laws that would impact blacks more than whites.

So with that template in mind, shouldn't minimum wage laws fall under the 21st century Jim Crow umbrella?

I've added emphasis to the minimum wage entry on the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:

At current U.S. wage levels, estimates of job losses suggest that a 10 percent in crease in the minimum wage would decrease employment of low-skilled workers by 1 or 2 percent. The job losses for black U.S. teenagers have been found to be even greater, presumably because, on average, they have fewer skills. As liberal economist Paul A. Samuelson wrote in 1973, “What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2.00 per hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?”

This has been well-understood for a long time. The white labor unions in South Africa under apartheid pushed for minimum wages to push blacks out of jobs. It doesn't matter that the proponents today are no longer motivated by racism when the results are identical.

If one is in the habit of calling racism on any legislation that makes things difficult for minority members more than anyone else, than they should see the minimum wage as nothing less than a Jim Crow law.
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FBI: Blacks more likely to commit hate crimes than whites

CNN offered a quick summary of a new FBI hate crime report. Of course, CNN was quick to point out that 62.4 percent of the offenders were white, while 18.5 percent were black.

What they forgot to include was a population comparison. Whites make up 74.8 percent of the population, while blacks are only 12.4 percent. That means that an average black person is 78.9 percent more likely to commit a hate crime than a white person. That's not a shame all people of a race should be burdened with, but it should dispel some of the popular views in our culture.

In addition, Jews were victims of 71.9 percent of the religiously-motivated hate crimes, while Muslims were 8.4 percent. Between 1.2 and 2.2 percent of the population is Jewish, and between 0.6 and 1.6 percent is Muslim.

Every hate crime is a problem, but it's good there were only 6,600 in the whole country in 2009. The crimes against gays lined up with the popular opinion, but the idea of the white hate monger and the anti-Islamic bully did not. The public underestimates the problem of Antisemitism and minority hate mongers, and how can we stop a problem if we don't understand it?
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"Buy black" campaign makes the same errors as "buy local"

Now that 2009 has come and gone, there's one national story that stands out as something I should have written about.

It's not the Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois corruption crackdown, because a Democrat who hides his greed behind noble fables isn't news.

It's not the far-right push to replace the Federal Reserve with the gold standard. History lesson - we had both during the Great Depression, and the Federal Reserve's big mistake was not following its own rules. This issue attracts more flies than anything else.

It's not the Joe Wilson "you lie" outburst and its aftermath, because I covered that already, although I forgot to mention that if Wilson's point was that emergency rooms will still cover illegal immigrants because the Democrats took out measures to check for immigration status, then he was correct.

No, the story I missed is the birth of a "buy black" campaign out of Chicago (Don't act all surprised - you read this entry's headline). John and Maggie Anderson started "The Empowerment Experiment" to drum up support for black businesses. The idea is they would only purchase from businesses owned by other black people to make the black community richer.

It's unfortunate that this experiment involves such a touchy subject as race, because all of the criticism has been along racial lines. Critics have called this a discriminatory campaign, and it's very difficult to avoid following that lead. John Anderson attempted to defuse that angle when he told CNN:

"We're not advocating that anybody make purchases along racial lines. OK, that's not what we're advocating. What we are advocating, though, is that African-American do have a higher sense of duty to support black businesses that are investing in the community."

Unfortunately, that's not what the campaign has been telling people to do. It really has been advising people to purchase from black-owned stores - regardless of what those businesses do with their profits. I'm aware there are some serious ethical concerns here, but that distracts us from an important question. People have been so hung up on race that they haven't been asking if this plan will actually help the black community.

In a word, no. This is the same fallacy as the "buy local" movement, but instead of limiting purchases to the immediate area, participants are limiting their purchases along racial lines.

Like the "buy local" movement, the "buy black" movement looks at the increase in business the merchants will undoubtedly receive and calls that a success. What they are forgetting is the difficulties the black customers will experience - higher prices, inconveniences and lack of choices - and all in the name of an aesthetic choice.

The gains to the merchants will be smaller than the sacrifices paid by customer, due to lack of economics of scale and higher transaction costs. This campaign will make the overall black community poorer - not richer.

Don't believe me? Look at the first four paragraphs of the Associate Press story that got the whole thing started:

"It's been two months since 2-year-old Cori pulled the gold stud from her left earlobe, and the piercing is threatening to close as her mother, Maggie Anderson, hunts for a replacement.

It's not that the earring was all that rare—but finding the right store has become a quest of Quixotic proportions.

Maggie and John Anderson of Chicago vowed four months ago that for one year, they would try to patronize only black-owned businesses. The "Empowerment Experiment" is the reason John had to suffer for hours with a stomach ache and Maggie no longer gets that brand-name lather when she washes her hair. A grocery trip is a 14-mile odyssey.

'We kind of enjoy the sacrifice because we get to make the point ... but I am going without stuff and I am frustrated on a daily basis,' Maggie Anderson said"

Unlike localalists, the Anderson's report they have to drive 20 minutes to get groceries even though they live in a big city. So in a way, it's worse. Localists at least have the convince of buying from stores in the immediate vicinity. Black-owned businesses can be spread out pretty far. This does, however, give black-only consumers the ability to buy things online and have things mailed in.

Otherwise, the major economic errors are there. Broken window fallacy - check. Mercantilism - check. Protectionism - check. I don't see any of the hyper-nationalism of the buy local movement, but that's because the artificial lines on which stores to buy from are drawn in a different pattern.

I also haven't seen any Luddite tenancies from the "buy black" crowd but there's no reason the philosophy can't embrace them.

Since the year is up, it's reasonable to start expecting the results to pour in from The Empowerment Experiment. However, the web presence of the movement has been spotty. Their official web site hasn't been updated. Their Twitter account dropped off in July and their YouTube channel last put up a video in August. They have a fans page on Facebook, and I've seen Maggie Anderson post on the wall, but its content is limited to links for black businesses.

Just like the "buy local" movement, a campaign that promised to make the entire group wealthier spiraled into a mere advertising scheme for its merchants.

Now that it's 2010, I'm interested to see how the Andersons think their experiment went. However, as we've seen before with the "buy local" movement, it's very easy to call a campaign a success because of its fanfare when its original goals were never met.

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