Stupidity, conservatism, and racism: more than meets the eye

So this morning I scrutinized a study by Hodson and Busseri that purports to show that the link between low cognitive ability and prejudice is moderated largely by political ideology; namely, that stupidity makes you conservative, and conservativism makes you racist. They conducted two experiments to test their model, and the results of their study supported the hypothesis. Hooray! More science with which to thrash conservatives, right?

Well, as you may have guessed from the title of this piece, the results of this study may be a bit Decepticon deceptive.

Racist Starscream sez: I'm not Racist, I just think Autobots need to be taught to value work instead of energon stamps

Okay, enough of that. Welllll… maybe just one more:

Racist Starscream sez: I'm not racist, I very clearly said that I hate "Auto-blah"

Starscream 2012!

As much fun as it would be to simply say “case closed, conservatives are racist cuz ur dum”, it would be decidedly un-skeptical. There were a number of things that jumped out at me about this paper, and I’m going to try and detail where I think the authors over-step their conclusions. [Read more…]

Trying to tread privilege

One of the most frustrating phenomena in the realm of talking about out-group discrimination, whether that be racial or gender or otherwise, is the common appeal to “some”.

“Why do you say ‘white people’ have privilege? Not every white person has racial issues! Shouldn’t you say some white people?”

“Why do you say that men objectify and abuse women? Not every man does that! Shouldn’t you say some men?”

“Why do you say that atheists have to be more welcoming to women? Some atheists are women! Shouldn’t you say some atheists?”

It is a particularly stubborn and tedious argument to have. A large chunk of it is people’s failure to distinguish between universal and general statements. This is a very superficial explanation, though. After all, we have no problem when someone on the news says “New Hampshire went to the polls today.” There aren’t any pedants who jump up and down screaming “don’t you mean some people in New Hampshire? Not everyone in the state votes!” [Read more…]

Standing on the shoulders of assholes

First of all, I need to apologize for the visual that is now in your head (or will be shortly) of an asshole with shoulders. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of colliding metaphors. Here’s something to cleanse your mental palate:

Many of us (myself included) have had the decidedly unpleasant experience of expressing the unpopular opinion in the room and getting just piled on by dissenters. You think that there may be a position that deserves exploration, that isn’t being discussed or considered. There’s a gaping hole in the logic of the room, and you’re apparently the only person who sees it. This group-think, by circumventing your clear counter-example, is leading people to draw erroneous and potentially harmful conclusions about the topic at hand. It’s up to you to show the room the error of their ways, so you carefully craft a bulletproof refutation of the central tenets of the argument, or provide an insightful counterexample that is sure to immediately change everyone’s minds. Then you sit back and let the accolades for your erudite and clear thinking roll in. [Read more…]

Shuffling feet: a follow-up

Okay, first of all: wow. I have written more than 700 posts on this blog, and I have never seen a response like I had on Monday afternoon. At the time of writing, my post about my objection to anti-black racism being used to deflect the “Shroedinger’s Rapist” argument has elicited 330 comments, and received nearly 20,000 hits. I’ve been quickly outed from my quiet little obscure hideaway at the middle-bottom of the FTB frontpage, and have been placed in front of many fresh pairs of eyes.

So, hi.

Second of all: there is apparently a need for some clarification. I was trying to make two separate points in that piece, and there seem to be a number of people who simply did not pick up on them. The first point is that connecting Shroedinger’s Rapist to anti-black racism fails to address the central question of whether or not we want women to feel more comfortable in freethinking circles; if we do, then we need to make some changes. Men being aware of how their (our) seemingly-benign behaviour may be seen as threatening is one specific change we can make.

The second point is that linking the argument to anti-black racism ignores many of the experiences of black folks who are constantly making similar adjustments to make white folks feel more comfortable. Failing to recognize this fact only highlights the ignorance of the speaker, and it is not particularly pleasant to have my story used in the service of an argument I despise by a person who will never experience it.

There were a number of other comments and misconceptions that I will attempt to clear up in this post. [Read more…]

Shuffling feet: a black man’s view on Schroedinger’s Rapist

This morning I made a reference to the fact that men are often assumed to be potential rapists as an example of how sexism negatively affects men as well as women. The argument, commonly referred to as “Schroedinger’s Rapist”, goes something like this: because you can’t know for sure if the stranger approaching you in a dark alley or other unsafe place is a rapist or not, it is generally a good idea to be on your guard. Men can enhance their interactions with women by being aware of this mindset, and adjusting their own behaviour accordingly.

I have often heard from people making an anti-feminist argument that Schroedinger’s Rapist is profoundly sexist and unfair. After all, most men do not rape – why should every man be treated like a rapist? Isn’t that discrimination? How can you claim to be opposed to sexism, yet promote a fundamentally sexually prejudicial idea? The next step is often to draw parallels to racism – is it fair to treat all black people as potential criminals simply because, statistically speaking, there are more black criminals than white ones? Isn’t that racist?

As much as I hate it when white people use anti-black racism as a cudgel with which to beat other people, I can understand the conundrum as it is expressed. The problem with it (and the reason why it’s so bothersome to hear white people talk about anti-black racism) is that it fails to address the question in a meaningful way. To demonstrate what I mean, I’d like to share a couple of personal anecdotes from my own life. I’ve never shared these stories with anyone before, and I’m not sure why because there’s nothing particularly embarrassing about them, and they’re extremely useful in this context. [Read more…]

Racism confounds us all

My academic background is in epidemiology and biostatistics. Briefly, epidemiology is the study of the interaction between potentially causal external factors and human health, usually at a population level. So, when someone tells you that BPA causes cancer, or that wind turbines or wi-fi signals don’t cause illness, they are speaking in terms of epidemiology. Because of the diffuse nature of many cause/effect relationships and the difficulty of measuring historical exposure, epidemiology is often looked at as a ‘soft science’, which is perhaps a fair charge – we do not deal in certainties; only probabilities.

One of the fundamental concepts that it is necessary to understand in epidemiology is the concept of ‘confounding’. Most of you are likely familiar with the maxim “correlation does not necessarily imply causation” or some permutation of that phrase. Many relationships that may seem causal are better explained by the involvement of a third variable. The classic example is coffee and lung cancer – there is a statistical relationship between frequency of coffee drinking and incidence of lung cancer. However, it would be wildly inaccurate to say that coffee causes lung cancer; what is actually happening is that many people have a cigarette with their coffee, and it is the smoking that causes the cancer. The presence of the third variable (smoking) explains the seeming relationship between the other two. [Read more…]

Oh-so-phisticated

One of the most common complaints that “moderate” believers have about anti-theists is that we are criticizing a version of god that nobody actually believes in. The kind of sky-dwelling patriarch that visits wrath on his own imperfect creation is a convenient target for derision, but it is a straw deity argument. Theology has developed, through careful examination of the scripture (and, presumably, guidance from the holy spirit), a much more ‘sophisticated’ and nuanced understanding of what YahwAlladdha actually is. Atheists should be criticizing this new and supremely amorphous deity, since that’s what people are praying to for a cancer cure.

There is no shortage of reasons why this argument is completely false. First of all, outside the hallowed halls of theological academies, the average person is not taught, and does not believe in, a quasi-deistic benevolent creator who is an embodiment (but not a corporeal one) of all that is good in the universe. While people are quick to jump on the bandwagon of “I don’t recognize that god” whenever an atheist criticizes belief in the bloodthirsty Canaanite war god (an act that is amusingly similar to the apostle Peter), they are oddly ignorant of the legions of neo-Calvinist churches crowing with triumph every time an earthquake or a tsunami destroys some gay heathen mecca.

The list of reasons why the “sophisticated god” argument is nonsense abounds, but what doesn’t seem to filter into the discussion at all is how self-defeating it is. It is an argument that, if followed through to its logical conclusion, proves itself to be either false or insulting to the deity it is supposedly defending. [Read more…]

De facto racism: poison-tipped bullets

I’m back from vacation, and will resume my regular blogging routine. My thanks to those of you who stuck it through the past couple of weeks. Happy New Year!

I consider myself lucky for a long list of reasons, but certainly chief among them is the truly impressive friends that I have amassed over the years. It’s often difficult (perhaps impossible) to engage in any kind of self-assessment that isn’t wildly coloured by self-serving biases, despite our best attempts to overcome them. I take no small amount of comfort, therefore, in making self-evaluations by proxy through my close friends. I admire and deeply respect these people, and the fact that they seem to actually enjoy my company (or at least do an excellent job of pretending to do so) leads me to suspect that I must be doing things at least halfway right.

One such friend is a young woman I met while studying at Queen’s. Kelly (not her real name) and I met while I was working at a bar in Kingston. She is a fiercely intelligent person who is very knowledgable about matters philosophical as well as legal (she’s now a law student at Queen’s with an undergrad in philosophy). I was able to meet up with her during my vacation in Toronto to catch up. We got to talking about her experiences working at a legal clinic in Kingston, and defending her first actual client as ‘first chair’ of the legal team. She was understandably excited that she was able to steer her client away from undeserved jail time (a sad story involving drugs, a negligent mother and overzealous police officers).

One of the legal maneuvers she was able to exploit in her client’s defense is a process called ‘diversion‘ – basically it is a way of having ostensibly guilty first-time offenders perform community service and restitution in lieu of jail time. From her description of the way it works, it requires agreement from the prosecutor (which is often not that difficult to obtain) that the defendant is essentially ‘a good guy’ who can make recompense and slide through without going to prison. Now, I have a notoriously bad poker face, so she immediately knew about my knee-jerk misgivings when it came to a program like this. After all, who could object to a program that includes the exercise of judicial restraint and principles of justice? [Read more…]

Skepticism and faith: architecture vs. sculpture

In my younger days I was a voracious reader of fiction. Since then, a combination of school and work have more or less completely robbed me of the inclination to read anything that isn’t grounded in reality (don’t cry for me – I still find lots of ways to have fun), but once upon a time I could truly describe myself as ‘a reader’. One of my favourite series of fantasy novels was the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. In retrospect, it’s a bit overwritten and the last three books were pretty terrible, but I loved it in my heyday.

The sixth book of that series, entitled Faith of the Fallen was my favourite. It’s simultaneously an exploration of the primacy of human dignity and the harsh criticism of the debasing effect that religion has on it. It’s also a not-so-thinly-veiled retelling of objectivism, but I tried not to let that get in the way of my enjoyment. Moral lessons aside, a great deal of it is about sculpting because, y’know… why not?

The book’s protagonist, an uber-wizard named Richard, gets kidnapped and, for reasons that are really not relevant to anything important outside the context of the story itself, is forced to be a sculptor whose job it is to make a statue that shows humanity from the point-of-view of their religion – debased and cowering in the face of the almighty. He, of course, creates a masterpiece glorifying the power of the will and the resilience of humanity. In so doing, he changes everyone’s mind about religion and starts a riot (because, y’know… why not?). You should be thinking “Howard Roark” right about now.

[Read more…]

Politically INcorrect? As though that was a good thing…

Over the past couple of months I have become more active on Twitter. While at first I used it primarily as a secondary RSS feed, with automatic updates for these blog posts, after a while I began to use it as a way of getting politics updates and rapid news on the Arab Spring uprisings. From there, it was a slippery slope down to constant updates from various Occupy sites and recording artists I particularly like.

As I’ve become more active (and after moving from the outer realms of anonymity to FTB), I’ve been steadily picking up followers of my own. Most are atheist/skeptics who I assume follow me because of the consistent reminders I put at the bottom of each of these posts. Others have, I presume, seen my full-throated defenses of Occupy or election reform politicians in the United States, or caught me uttering a particularly clever bon mot and thought I was worth checking out in greater detail.

I was perusing my list of followers one afternoon when I came across one who described hirself as, among other things, “politically incorrect”. This struck me as sort of an unusual thing to brag about. I have, on occasion, been caught describing myself as an “asshole”, because while I am constantly dissecting my language, I very rarely mince words. This is not bragging about my lack of restraint, but is intended as more of a wry observation on our tendency to prioritize tone over substance when evaluating each other.

The phrase ‘political correctness’ was common parlance in my upbringing during the late ’80s and early ’90s. By then, however, it had begun taking on a decidedly negative connotation – something akin to ‘thoughtcrime’. The spin on it was that whiny liberals were hopping up and down on semantics, getting hot under the collar over linguistic non-issues. Plain spoken folks were, as a result, forced to tiptoe across a minefield to make even the simplest of points. Political correctness was a muzzle that prevented the free exchange of ideas, and to buck the trend and declare oneself ‘politically incorrect’ was a bold and courageous move.

Even typing that made me feel ill. [Read more…]