When you respond to criticism with more questions than statements, its easy to see you're unsure why you really hold the ideals you so enthusiastically support.

Yes, certain groups have been oppressed throughout history, but if oppression and double standards were wrong when white people did it to black people in the past, then how can double standards where black people are given greater advantage than white people be acceptable today? Haven't you heard that two wrongs don't make a right? This is why I disagree with the Million Man March, affirmative action, and BET as enthusiastically as I disagree with David Duke. Call me crazy, but I don't think we should treat one person differently from another based on the color of their skin . . . . at any time . . . . ever. We won't solve the racism of our past by only protesting white race groups and never protesting black race groups. If you form a group that only allows members of one race, or a group that only lobbies congress on the interests of one race, then you are practicing racism, regardless of what that one race is. This is the reasoning I use when I equate the NAACP to the American Renaissance group. By its very definition, its all racism.

I think you're right to protest this conference - these people are bigots. However, I'd like to see you protest all racism, not select which events to protest based on the race of the racists (which makes you a racist by definition yourself). Here's a good test: take any racial issue and flip the races. Would it be okay with you if affimative action gave preference to whites instead of blacks in college admissions and job hiring? Would you protest if the vice president of the US spoke at a fundraiser that would give scholarships only to white students? (hint: the UNCF is headquartered in "multicultural Fairfax County")

You can't tear down racial barriers with one hand while putting up racial barriers with the other - so start thinking for yourself and start tearing them down with both.

Any questions?

Let’s look at this.

When you respond to criticism with more questions than statements, its easy to see you're unsure why you really hold the ideals you so enthusiastically support.

If you really believe that you have discerned the reasons from the manner of my response, you need to study logical inferences.

In any event, the reason I responded with questions was that I was tired of strawman arguments and really wanted someone to prove that they could go beyond that. How you inferred all the psycho-analysis that you did is beyond me and beyond anything that I actually wrote.

Yes, certain groups have been oppressed throughout history, but if oppression and double standards were wrong when white people did it to black people in the past, then how can double standards where black people are given greater advantage than white people be acceptable today?

Here you are going to have to prove to me that black people actually have greater advantage than white people do today, a claim I find preposterous. Have affirmative action policies actually succeeded not only in erasing historical suppression but have made black people as a group in society more powerful than white people? On what scale of power and success do you base such a claim? Political power? Economic power? Ideological power? Even if one is going to argue that some blacks have some advantages over some whites when it comes to some affirmative action policies, it’s hard to imagine that from some one can arrive at a general statement that blacks have a greater advantage than whites.

And, lacking that advantage, there is no reason why people who are oppressed should not band together to assert their relative position in society. Are victims of a mass crime not supposed to band together and work for the advancement of that group? What is wrong about that? Does such a group assert the superiority of that group on the mere basis of skin color, or affirm that people of an oppressed skin color have every reason to band together to fight that oppression?

While it is not wrong-headed to say that race distinctions are absolutely irrelevant to the worth of any human being; it is wrong-headed and racist to keep people who have been historically and are currently being discriminated against on the basis of race to come together to work against it. Racism, like sexism, like any kind of patriarchal, hierarchical ism creates illegitimate class distinctions, and the class of the oppressed or undervalued is the only class capable of destroying those isms. That doesn’t mean that all those classes succeed or use means that don’t ultimately re-create the same or new class problems. Yet, one must admit that to start the process, it’s important for people of the oppressed class to work in solidarity with each other. It’s not their fault they’ve been defined by their class, and it would be foolish of them not to come together in resistance.

So, criticize organizations like the NAACP for not being militant enough, for being hierarchical, for not making enough connections, for being reformist, but to call them racist is ridiculous. In fact, it’s from a racist standpoint that one criticizes the NAACP on the basis of race.

Haven't you heard that two wrongs don't make a right?

We aren’t talking about the means of a social movement (I agree with those who say that means and ends must be consistent), but the definition of a social class and whether a class should self-identify on the basis of race. When you are in the class of privilege, there’s no basis for it; when you are in the class lacking privilege, it’s your only hope to fight back. In fact, many white racists have lived under the delusion that they are being oppressed by other people of color; my point here is that they accept my rationale but suffer from a delusion of the current reality.

This is why I disagree with the Million Man March, affirmative action, and BET as enthusiastically as I disagree with David Duke. Call me crazy, but I don't think we should treat one person differently from another based on the color of their skin . . . . at any time . . . . ever.

We shouldn’t, but we do. We all belong to a society of privilege and under-privileged, and to deny that, and to deny our culpability in that system is a serious problem. And, if we don’t resist it on the grounds that we “aren’t racist” is to be in a coma about the way all our acts exist in the context of a system that is horribly racist. So, if you are for resisting all racism, you will stand with the disadvantaged as they assert an end to powerful hierarchies, whether they be liberal, conservative, or self-fashioned radicals. In other words, the fight against racism in America is the same as the fight against authoritarianism.

We won't solve the racism of our past by only protesting white race groups and never protesting black race groups.

It’s impossible to see how in America the two can ever be the same until a day when the disadvantage has been destroyed. This is not to say that one necessarily agrees with everything said or done by a group that is working on this issue of inequality, but the grounds have nothing to do with race. They might have to do with strategies, tactics, other internal inconsistencies. Race has been used as a wedge issue in the authoritarian left when the reasoning is irrelevant to the criticism.

If you form a group that only allows members of one race, or a group that only lobbies congress on the interests of one race, then you are practicing racism, regardless of what that one race is. This is the reasoning I use when I equate the NAACP to the American Renaissance group. By its very definition, its all racism.

No, it’s not. See the above for the rationale.

I think you're right to protest this conference - these people are bigots. However, I'd like to see you protest all racism, not select which events to protest based on the race of the racists (which makes you a racist by definition yourself). Here's a good test: take any racial issue and flip the races. Would it be okay with you if affimative action gave preference to whites instead of blacks in college admissions and job hiring? Would you protest if the vice president of the US spoke at a fundraiser that would give scholarships only to white students? (hint: the UNCF is headquartered in "multicultural Fairfax County")

All of those things would add insult to injury. I hope I have explained that I don’t think the two situations are analogous in the American context and that racism always exists as an enforced power relationship.

You can't tear down racial barriers with one hand while putting up racial barriers with the other - so start thinking for yourself and start tearing them down with both.

The way to tear down both is to stand against the hierarchical thinking that gives rise to all kinds of absurd and arbitrary isms. To do that, one must begin by standing in solidarity with those most victimized by those isms and draw all the oppressed into the movement in solidarity with each other…not conformity…not false unity…but solidarity.

Any questions?

How do you plan to move this conversation forward?

Jim Macdonald

To me, your argument seems self-perpetuating: its okay to group people based on race because racism exists in America – because racism was used against these people, we will use racial selection to bring them back on level.

We’ve suffered the same misguided efforts in our educational system. Once, boys performed far better than girls in schools and attended college at a higher rate, so some argued that we should pay special attention to the needs of girls to catch them up. Today, girls outperform boys in school and attend college at a higher rate – I’ve recently begun to here that we must pay special attention to boys in school because they’re falling behind. Wouldn’t a better solution be to pay the same attention to all students, without selecting them for different treatment based on gender?

I’m incredibly encouraged by young children, who today seem to mix effortlessly among their peers of different races and cultures. However, as they age, we teach them that they are different because of the shade of their skin and we must pay special attention to the needs of some over others. All of the items that I mentioned earlier contribute to this (affirmative action, BET, etc.). If the entire American debate of racial inequality occurred within one generation, I might be inclined to agree with your conclusions – we should make the masters the slaves for a while so they know what its like, and then set the scale back to equal and move on into the future with perfect understanding. Unfortunately, the damage of slavery has been done – we can do nothing to punish long dead slaveholders or help long dead slaves. The damage of the Jim Crow era is also passing, as fewer and fewer people remember being forced to use one water fountain or another. However, your efforts to cure these past wrongs by allowing racial selection among those who were its past victims and not among those who were it past perpetrators, plants a fresh seed of racism in a new generation. Do you think that white 18 year olds don’t feel wronged when their black classmates of equal qualification get into better colleges because of affirmative action? The seed in planted, divisions are drawn, and racism is perpetuated. If racism was wrong when their grandparents practiced it, why should we force it one these young people – people who wouldn’t even think black people were different from white people unless we taught them.

Your entire argument is based on the idea that the balance in unlevel, but this relies on the idea that at some point, we will decide that balance has been reached and we can stop dividing people into groups based on the color of their skin. I find that impossible. How will you decide when equality is here? Who will decide? Even if you declared equality at some point in the future, you would still be dealing with an entire population that has lived a life where division based on race was accepted – do you think they’ll just drop what you taught them?

Regardless of the fact that some people were discriminated against in the past, dividing people into groups based on their skin color is absurd. It can be no less absurd to allow a group of black people to band together because of their race than to let a group of white people do it. All of your ideas seem based on a vision of a giant scale of justice with white people on one plate and black people on the other. This is not how society works. Not all black people consider themselves on the same plate as other blacks – the same for whites. Its not about a giant social balance, its about individuals and their behavior towards others. The solution isn’t to level the scale, the solution is throw out the damn scale, changing the minds of the individuals like the bigots in the hyatt as well as the minds of people like you who want to fix a double standard by applying a new double standard.

We can’t fix racial division by perpetuating it. This is as misguided as our efforts to fight terrorism by attacking foreign lands. After which volley of the fight do you decide that the fight should be over and violence should now be ended? Stop using bullets to enforce peace.