People who deal with the world solely based on feelings are bound to make things worse.
Throughout the world injustice still exists. Poverty creates vicious cycles. Poor public education handicap kids’ potential in criminal ways.
However, to identify a problem is the easy part. To understand the dynamics that actually keep those problems in place is the real challenge. Now, even if you are clueless to what is the cause of something it is very easy to understand when a false reasoning is being used.
Karl Popper understood this well. He defined a concept called “Falsifiability”. In a very high level, Popper believed that something can only be considered scientific if it could be proved false. Belief in God for instance, is not scientific because it cannot be proven false. Using a real life example: if you believe that the cause of poverty is high unemployment, you would have to accept that your theory is false if you had some society where there is very little unemployment and poverty still exists.
Now, the current theories around racism all fail the falsifiability test. The easiest way to prove this is to ask your friend who believes in these theories: what would have to happen tomorrow to prove to you that racism is not an issue anymore? Would having the same percentage of poor being white be enough? Should we have the same percentage of black and white NBA players? Would having a black man being the most powerful man on Earth be enough?
Same thing applies to the idea of race itself. What would it take for someone to belong to a race? What would it take for me to prove that I am not a member of a certain race? What would it take to call affirmative action as ‘done’ or the need or affirnmative action as not valid anymore?
Chances are that these people would have no answer for these questions… They will tell you that they don’t need to know these answers! For them, the fact that “we have a lot of black men in prison” is proof enough but again, they would never accept having less black in prison as proof of the absence of racism. In other words, the definition of what they call racism itself is not scientific. Therefore, it is scientifically impossible for us to find any kind of true solution for it.
It is not surprise that certain groups of people remain in a vicious cycle of poverty and under achievement. You cannot solve a problem before you understand it.
O problema é que gritar “racsimo” fa parte da identidade da pessoa. É o atributo que ela acredita the conferir o título de “boa pessoa”. No fundo, no fundo ela não se importa com indivíduos negros. Ser contra o racismo é apenas seu slogan pessoal. Como diz a personagem da Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “I’m not racist, I drive a Prius!”
Claudio,
I was actually going to make this point. I think there are 2 groups of people here:
- One that is what I call “old school racists”. People like Sharpton, Jackson, the new black panthers, etc. These people really believe that there is such a thing as ‘black race’ and they think they need to fight thw ‘white race’ in a constant war.
- Second are what I call ‘mainstream’ racists. These are the people who will admit to you that biological race doesn’t exist. Still, they want to apply race in their solutions (affirmative action, reparations, etc) so at the end of the day these 2 groups act in a very similar way.
People on the second group might sound a little less crazy but they are actually the ones that cause most damage. By making their fallacies more convoluted they are able to convince more people into their stupid policy solutions.
The ironic thing is that they don’t understand how racist they really are. I mean, that second group will still tell you with total confidence that a poor black kid deserves more help than a poor white kid, or that a black guy in prison is somehow less guilty than a white guy in prison. They are also the ones who think Obama’s kids are still somehow part of a minority and deserve more help than say, a middle class white kid.
Pure lunacy.
Discutir com certos tipos de “defensores dos negros” é como discutir com um crente daquelas igrejas que pipocam em cada esquina aqui no Brasil. Quando o cara se vê encurralado saca logo o argumento final: voce está sob ação do “inimigo”. Bem, isso é o que falam os crentes; os “Lisa Simpsons” falam “Você é de direita!”
Nada importa: lógica, razão, etc.
Quando eu escrevi para uma colunista de economia, engajada em questões raciais, do Globo dizendo que o Brasil nunca teve nenhuma lei que excluísse qualquer membro de qualquer raça de universidades e/ou empregos públicos e que, por isso, eu, mulato, filho de professora e pequeno comerciante, mesmo estudando em escola pública toda a minha vida, consegui chegar a uma universidade pública esair dela com ótimo rendimento, a resposta dela foi: “Ah, mas nem todos têm a sorte que você teve na vida.”
Bem, depois de ralar o que eu ralei, trabalhando de noite para poder cursar a universidade de dia; trabalhar desde os 18 para poder pagar um curso pre-vestibular, entre outros sacrificios, para depois ouvir que eu tive sorte na vida, você há de convir que é FOD*!
Mas é isso: quem sou eu, mulato abusado, que ouso não depender da ajuda dos benevolentes? Quem sou eu, mulato abusado, que ouso não querer ser passista de escola de samba ou capoeirista? O mulato aqui tinha que ter ficado no seu devido lugar e aceitar a esmola das pessoas maravilhosas.
Claudio,
O meu post sobre meritocracy foi exatamente sobre isso. Para os esquerdinhas, sorte eh um fator fundamental. Sem o fator sorte eles nao conseguem explicar o seu caso, o meu e milhares de outros. Pior ainda, eles querem ignorar casos como seu porque eles acham que ‘excecoes’ como vc passa a ideia errada!
Chegamos num ponto aonde eh totalmente aceitavel (eh ate popular, bonitinho) ter uma pessoa admitindo para outra que ‘meu objetivo político é enfiar a mão no bolso dos outros. os argumentos que justifiquem isso a gente vai inventando no meio do caminho’. Sei que ele queria que fosse piada mas eh simplesmente a verdade…