Truly, truly, truly outrageous

[avram]

Arg, no thanks to John Gruber, I spent some time this afternoon perusing Eric Raymond’s blog. No, he hasn’t gotten any better.

I was amused to see a few election-related posts — all dating from that brief period around the end of August and early September when McCain’s numbers looked good — gloating about how Obama’s campaign is doomed, doomed. Not a single election-related post later than Sep 18th, though.

Not that Raymond is a Republican, he hastens to remind us. But, like most guys in the lowbrow right-wing branch of the libertarian movement, he’s motivated primarily by ressentiment towards liberals, rather than a love of actual liberty.

(No, not all libertarians are like that. Honest, I know some good ones. The bad ones just tend to stick out more in my mind. Maybe that’s my own ressentiment towards right-wingers speaking.)

But far worse was “The Post-Racial Hall of Mirrors”, where he starts off talking about how he had to drive through a Delaware slum, and was revolted by all the black people around him. Not because of their skin color, he assures us, but because they were so fat and sloppy. How he deals with hanging out at SF cons, I dunno. He goes on to explain that he can’t possibly be a racist, because his belief that blacks have lower IQs is based on real science, and besides, he used to bang this hot black chick.

I take Raymond as a warning — that being a smart guy doesn’t keep you from being an idiot. I can easily imagine myself having turned into the same kind of idiot that he is, given different life experiences.

Comments

[redbird]

Also, his argument about having had a black lover might convince someone he hadn't been a racist then (I hope he wasn't, for her sake). Unfortunately for him, having at one time had a black girlfriend merely puts him in the same category as Strom Thurmond.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Nnng. He's got a real point about classism. "Fat and sloppy" SF fans might get a pass because they're *SF fans*; "fat and sloppy" redneck whites in trailers parks might elicit the same reaction of disgusted as the slum blacks, but if he's urban he might not see them as much.

And I note he didn't seem to say blacks had genetically lower IQ, just that they score lower on IQ as a group, which AFAIK is true, with many plausible reasons other than genetics. But if one is an IQ-elitist, what will matter for interaction is someone's intelligence now, not what it might have been with better nutrition and upbringing.

That he might genuinely be a classist (or culturalist) and IQ-elitist, as opposed to a racist qua race, seems perfectly plausible to me.

[redbird]

I don't see the connection between what you're saying and the comment of mine it appears to be a reply to.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

You seemed to be saying he's racist now.

[redbird]

What I was saying is that the argument being quoted didn't show that he wasn't racist. If someone's best defense against an accusation of prejudice is "I can't be bigoted against people in group X, I had sex with one years ago," I am unconvinced. If that argument were sound, no non-virgin heterosexual men would be sexists; plenty of people, of all races, genders, etc. are willing and even eager to have sex with people they don't consider to be their equals.

It's possible--and I hope true--that ESR isn't a racist. But the fact referred to there does not convincve me of the thing it's being offered as evidence of. The mere fact that he had a black lover once doesn't prove he wasn't racist then, nor would his not having been racist 20 years ago prove that he isn't racist now. (Conversely, someone could have been racist 20 years ago and not be so now: people do change, sometimes for the better.)

For that matter, if someone thinks a particular characteristic is acceptable in their friends of their own race, but not in strangers of a different race, it's not the characteristic that's the difference.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Well, it sounded like more than "had sex with". A lover of some duration whom he respected as an equal.

"if someone thinks a particular characteristic is acceptable in their friends of their own race, but not in strangers of a different race, it's not the characteristic that's the difference."

I'm not sure what that's referring to, unless it's giving a pass to "fat and sloppy" SF fans who are largely white. If I'm right, he'd overlook "fat and sloppy" black SF fans, while being disgusted by "white trash". The presented evidence doesn't say, either way, and I don't see why we should assume full blown racism when he openly attests to classism and IQ elitism and those would fit the data.

[avram]

Look at this piece he wrote five years ago:

And the part that, if you are a decent human being and not a racist bigot, you have been dreading: American blacks average a standard deviation lower in IQ than American whites at about 85. And it gets worse: the average IQ of African blacks is lower still, not far above what is considered the threshold of mental retardation in the U.S. And yes, it’s genetic; g seems to be about 85% heritable, and recent studies of effects like regression towards the mean suggest strongly that most of the heritability is DNA rather than nurturance effects.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Ah. Not surprising, since that does seem to be the science, if you read up to a certain point (like just short of the Flynn effect...)