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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29463 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Your previous comment makes it sound like you agree with me that it is a central claim. Your rebuttal here makes no sense in light of that.

Central examples of racism are ones that we're supposed to treat as ultimate evil. Noncentral examples aren't. Claiming that Jefferson is a racist implies a central example, but he's only a noncentral example.

Central examples of racism are ones that we're supposed to treat as ultimate evil.

If I quoted a person from the 17th century who said "white people are literal devils, evil in mind and body", you would 100% tell me that this person was racist. Why is Jefferson a non-central example when his belief is only slightly out of step with modern anti-black racists?

Because Jefferson did enough important other things that saying "Jefferson is ultimate evil, so we should ignore everything else he did" is disingenuous. But you're calling him racist to imply exactly that.

Yeah, but that's not Rufo's initial stance. Rufo is the one alleging that CRT is wrong about everything, here's Robinson giving an example about CRT being correct and having an impact on how the mainstream history is treated. Rufo is obligated to back down on a false claim. If he doesn't want to do it with an interview from the "enemy", then he should have been more careful in the first place.

Yeah, but that's not Rufo's initial stance. Rufo is the one alleging that CRT is wrong about everything

Nobody claims that some political theory is literally wrong about everything, even if they use the words "wrong about everything" or synonyms.

Nobody claims that some political theory is literally wrong about everything, even if they use the words "wrong about everything" or synonyms.

Only in the culture war context would you say something like this. You are so focused on rejecting a particular view of the Founding Fathers and its linked ideas that you aren't willing to accept that one of the people who agrees with you did something bad or stupid.

If an anatomist said "the human body has 400 bones", that would be a gross overstatement and clear evidence they didn't know even the most basic of facts about their own subject of study. It is damning if such a person cannot get this right. Moreso if they double down on their view even when you show them they are wrong. It makes no difference that they correctly told you about the various evolutionary reasons the body developed the way it did.

What's even sillier about with all the disagreement over this point is that Rufo didn't even need to say what he did. There were many other ways in which he could have criticized CRT on his own terms in his book. But no, he insists on not giving an inch because he realized he wasn't careful enough and now he had handed his enemy a weapon.

There is no point to carrying on this conversation. Respond if you wish, I know the last word matters to some. But I'm thoroughly bored of this.

If an anatomist said "the human body has 400 bones", that would be a gross overstatement

If an anatomist said "if you fall from an airplane you'll break every bone in your body", pointing out that someone's thumb might survive unscathed doesn't disprove this. "400" is a number; "every" isn't.

How is Jefferson being racist a CRT claim?

That's what the original CA article claimed. Robinson's entire argument about that was that Rufo was wrong about CRT being totally wrong, and that "Jefferson is a racist" is an important piece of intellectual and academic work that was only brought forward by CRT.

The problem is that every time you push back against claims of X being racist CRTers do the "oh, we're talking about systemic racism" switcharoo. "Jefferson is a racist" is not an important piece of academic work that was only brought forward by CRT, according to CRT.

This isn't to say Rufo didn't misstep in the debate. It sounds like he was going for something like Scott's "non-central fallacy" which is also valid - no one brings up MLK's sexual adventures when discussing the Civil Rights movement - but he could have done it better. Then again such things are easy to point out in hindsight.

"Jefferson is a racist" is not an important piece of academic work that was only brought forward by CRT, according to CRT.

See, this would be a better approach to that debate and Rufo could easily have gone down this route. Talk about whether or not Robinson's recounting of CRT's contributions is accurate.

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