Bad Boys II

[Dill]

(07-03-2020, 03:51 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: That’s a very long winded way of saying it’s ok to make generalized (or stereotypical) statements as long as they are backed up by facts. Using the same logic it would be permissible to make a flippant comment about a murder committed by a black person. After all, statistically, they commit more than half of the murders in this country, so using your logic such a comment is backed by facts and is therefore acceptable.

I don’t find that acceptable and I don’t find your comment acceptable for the same reason. Attempt to justify it all you want, it wrong to say and you were wrong for saying it.

Well no, it's not a "long-winded" way of simply saying "it's ok to make generalized (or stereotypical) statements as long as they are backed up by facts," though it certainly assumes "generalized claims" should not overreach factual support. Looks like we BOTH disagree with your paraphrase here.

I argued 1) that one cannot process or discuss social/historical/political events, issues and people without reference to general categories, including "race," and that 2) mere reference to and deployment of those categories does not in itself constitute "blanket statement" or stereotyping.

Then I explicitly argued a distinction between practical social science categories and "blanket" or "stereotypical statements" as you are now calling them. Did you think I was doing that in favor of stereotypes??

Not clear how any of this, including a requirement statements "be backed up by facts," would justify "'a flippant comment about a murder committed by a black person' because 'statistically, they commit more than half the murders in this country.'" If by "flippant comment" you mean a negative, stereotypical value judgment, then in your example someone is simply adding a value judgment to a statement of fact that you, by the way, appear to agree is true.  That just sounds like an overreaching and improper inference. Pretty sure that I have never advocated for overreaching and improper inferences, above or anyone else.

The "short-winded" version--no, I did not say that anyone can make any old negative, stereotypical value judgment as long as it includes a "fact" in there somewhere. All manner of bad arguments may include "facts."  But that doesn't mean advocating respect for facts makes bad arguments "permissible."

When you say "statistically, [blacks] commit more than half of the murders in this country," are you deploying a practical social science category or just making a "blanket statement"?   Would you agree that the statement expresses an accurate statistical finding, and that it would hard or impossible to construct good social policy without such statistics?   Would you agree that that statement, as a statistical fact, is not inherently "racist" or a value judgment about black people, even if some poster over on Stormfront deploys it in a racist argument? Finally, would you agree that a call to respect factual statements such as the above, does not of itself somehow make the Stormfront argument "permissible"? If so, then you agree with me.

And if you agree so far, then what is wrong with recognizing, as a statistical fact, that the majority of black voters in the US vote Dem? Your previous argument implies doing that necessarily constructs those voters as some monolithic "other."  If it does, then I suppose we should no longer use the demographic "black" in assessing polling/voting results? Same for other groups?

And of course we should no longer joke about how few in that demographic vote for Trump. Because that would be a statement on the "right way" to be black, not about Trump's effectiveness as a candidate?

Your Crews connection looks simply free-associated, a thing that could happen simply by virtue of the fact the statistic exists and some African Americans argue about who's not black, all independently of my joke, which doesn't situate me in that debate. If the majority agreed my statement was "unacceptable," it would massively restrict the things it is possible to say about black voters, as opposed to other demographics.