Race Essentialism 101 at MSNBC, Compliments of Joy Ann Reid

It's very simple. If you are born with a certain color of skin, you are obligated to think and vote a certain way. Watch Joy Ann Reid smiling and nodding as she listens as this lesson in race essentialism unfolds for her audience. Those of us who have actually forced ourselves to read how the topic of "race relations" is now taught in many schools, corporations and government offices can easily see direct line causation from these principles to "news" shows of this sort.

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In Deleted Tweet, Ibram Kendi Claims Minority Status Paves the Way for Successful Admissions

Stunning admission:

This is the same man who talks in circles on the concept of "racism," a concept upon which all of his writings depend: At the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2019, when asked to define racism, Kendi earnestly answered: “[It is] a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity, that are substantiated by racist ideas.”

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Men versus Women: Some Comparisons

2020 Report Card on some of the achievements and struggles of men compared to those of women.

Before a woman decides that men have it easier, she might want to consider this list. This is not a comprehensive list. Admittedly, women fare worse than men in many situations.

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The Difference Between Information and Knowledge

I'm reading The Constitution of Knowledge by Jonathan Rauch (2021). It has been a very slow read for me because it is such a impressive and detailed analysis of what is ailing us today. Here is a major distinction that is largely unappreciated. Information is merely "stuff," whereas knowledge must be carefully earned through the use of intricate institutions that coordinate, test and refine human observations and conclusions. This excerpt is from page 125:

What the institutionalization of modern, fact-based journalism did was to create a system of nodes—professional newsrooms which can choose whether to accept information and pass it on. The reality-based community is a network of such nodes: publishers, peer reviewers, universities, agencies, courts, regulators, and many, many more. I like to imagine the system’s institutional nodes as filtering and pumping stations through which propositions flow. Each station acquires and evaluates propositions, compares them with stored knowledge, hunts for error, then filters out some propositions and distributes the survivors to other stations, which do the same.

Importantly, they form a network, not a hierarchy. No single gatekeeper can decide which hypotheses enter the system, and there are infinitely many pathways through it. . .

Suppose some mischievous demon were to hack into the control center one night and reverse the pumps and filters. Instead of straining out error, they pass it along. In fact, instead of slowing the dissemination of false and misleading claims, they accelerate it. Instead of marginalizing ad hominem attacks, they encourage them. Instead of privileging expertise, they favor amateurism. Instead of validating claims, they share claims. Instead of trafficking in communication, they traffic in display. Instead of identifying sources, they disguise them. Instead of rewarding people who persuade others, they reward those who publicize themselves. If that were how the filtering and pumping stations worked, the system would acquire a negative epistemic valence. It would actively disadvantage truth. It would be not an information technology but misinformation technology.

No one saw anything like that coming. We—I certainly include myself—expected digital technology to broaden and deepen the marketplace of ideas. There would be more hypotheses, more checkers, more access to expertise. How could that not be a leap forward for truth? At worst, we assumed, the digital ecosystem would be neutral. It might not necessarily tilt toward reality, but neither would it systematically tilt against reality.

Unfortunately, we forgot that staying in touch with reality depends on rules and institutions. We forgot that overcoming our cognitive and tribal biases depends on privileging those rules and institutions, not flattening them into featureless, formless “platforms.” In other words, we forgot that information technology is very different from knowledge technology. Information can be simply emitted, but knowledge, the product of a rich social interaction, must be achieved. Converting information into knowledge requires getting some important incentives and design choices right. Unfortunately, digital media got them wrong.

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Race Relations: Then and Now

Excerpt from an article at FAIR's Substack by Alice Irby, who helped establish the Job Corps, and in the 1970s joined Rutgers University as the first female Vice-President of a major university. Title of her article: "Then and Now":

Many of us who labored in the civil rights movement were inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. I heard him call on us to respect others, not suppress them; to embrace diversity, not discriminate against each other; to improve our country, not tear it apart. Hope. Dreams. Fairness. Equality. The coming together of diverse people from all walks of life to work toward fulfilling the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as promised by the Declaration of Independence. The Civil Rights movement opposed bigotry by relying on hope, opportunity, and cooperation. We did not succumb to anger, dissension, despair, or intolerance.

Now, as I look around, I am frightened. I see hate, not hope; dissension, not dreams; tribalism, not unity. The Civil Rights movement fought for the principle of equal opportunity, regardless of race. Today, those who call for “equity” actually support discriminating against individuals based on race to bring about equal outcomes between racial groups.

I am a follower of Martin Luther King Jr., not Ibram X. Kendi. I do not believe that present discrimination is the remedy for past discrimination. Our nation was not founded on slavery, but on ideas that paved the way for the abolition of slavery. It is because of these beliefs that I support FAIR, a multiracial, non-partisan organization dedicated to principles of fairness, tolerance, and equality—a community whose advisors and members stand tall in reaffirming our common humanity and who show courage in combating forces of intolerance, racism, and injustice. I stand not only for our founding ideals and aspirations, but also for more eternal verities—compassion, respect for all, kindness toward others, and love of mankind. I choose the optimism of King over the pessimism of the neo-racist “anti-racism” of today.

We are all one race—the human race. We laugh, cry, and bleed the same. America is a beautiful multiracial mosaic, and it grows more diverse with each passing year. In our present moment, it is especially necessary to hold true to the values of fairness, understanding, and humanity that shaped the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. These are the values that can help to heal our societal wounds, restore excellence to our educational institutions, ensure justice and equal rights for all, and garner our many diverse strengths as we seek, as ever, a more perfect union.

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