A good while ago, me and Eric Beck had a disagreement about "Keynesianism."
> I said that his anti-Keynesian position, if acted on, would have negative
> real-world consequences. Although I didn't mention it, in practice those
> consequences would be much worse for blacks than for whites. By the logic of
> state-of-the-art anti-racism, that would mean Eric's position (in my
> understanding of how the world works) was racist, and I not only could but
> should have accused him of advocating a racist position.
Leaving aside the personalities and policies involved, so what? Should we pretend that racism is some monstrous, otherworldly evil that can only be perpetuated by people very much unlike us, whom we certainly don't know and can't stand if we do? Who on Earth does that benefit?
> Obviously I would never have done that because it would be insane. In so
> many obvious and predictable ways, it would have added nothing to the debate
> while detracting from it enormously.
>
This is the furthest thing from the world from obvious. Rather than keeping the debate civil, you're infantilizing it, and rendering racism a depoliticized stigma, rather than a social reality, in the process.
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."