What is a gene?

Posted on April 21, 2018 by Michael

I remember one of the first biology-based debates I found myself in was in some random message board devoted to music. I can’t for the life of me remember what the board was, and I doubt it still exists today anyway, but I recall music being central to what brought me there. Of course, there were plenty of other subjects up for discussion at this place and in its various forums, and that led me into some useless debate with a racist metal head. (I’m sure his racism and affinity for metal were quite independent of each other.) He was making some claim about black people and intelligence, and he kept referencing some gene he seemed convinced proved his point. This was probably well over 15 years ago, so I don’t recall many of the specifics, but I do recall not really knowing what a gene was, so it was difficult to counter him effectively. I tried looking it up, but there really weren’t any easy-to-digest answers for someone who didn’t know what to look for in the first place. And, of course, this was a bit before the days of YouTube (and Wikipedia was in its infancy). Fortunately, for better or worse, the Internet is a far different place today. As such, I wanted to post a YouTube video I found in the hope that any person who finds himself in a similar situation to mine from years past would be able to gain a quick understanding of what a gene is. There’s a certain type of person who loves to use science to justify a belief he would hold no matter what, and relatively-educated racists are among them. Here’s the short video:

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Definitions

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Michael

The feminist definition of sexism is ‘discrimination based upon sex + power’. In other words, the more powerful of the sexes is the only one which can be ever be sexist. Just the same, this definition is appropriated for racism: a power asymmetry is key in determining what is and is not racist. This means that in looking at the US as a whole, only white people can be racist. But this opens up some questions about more specific interactions.

Let’s say we’re in the US southwest. Most of the residents are Hispanic. The city council is Hispanic. The mayor is Hispanic. Most businesses are Hispanic-owned. In this area, the local power is undeniably in favor of Hispanic people. Does that mean a white/black/Asian person cannot be racist here? If not, and if they can be racist a few miles away, what happens in the gray areas? That is, if they can’t be racist in neighborhood A because they aren’t part of the powerful group, but they can be racist in neighborhood C where they are part of the powerful group, what happens in the middle in neighborhood B? Do we defer to national socioeconomics?

And what of minority interactions? If, say, Asian people have greater power as a group than, say, black people, can black people not be racist towards Asian people?

This all seems like a major problem to me. An anonymous statement simply written on a piece of paper apparently may or may not be racist. We can’t know until we’ve found out the skin color and power dynamics of where we are. And then that same statement said by someone of a different skin color suddenly becomes non-racist. I guess I don’t entirely get it. There’s certainly context in statements, but saying “This racial group is less intelligent than that racial group” strikes me as racist no matter who says it.

It seems as though it would be easier to just say sexism is discrimination on the basis of sex, racism is discrimination on the basis of race, and mindsets which force us to view people not as people but as segregated groups defined by their outward characteristics are fundamentally toxic and simply a reverse of the problem, not a fix.

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Fun fact of the day

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Michael

Racism and sexism derive from racist and sexist acts, thoughts, behaviors, and statements made on the basis of race and/or sex. They do not derive from social structures and institutions, though they may be prevalent in those areas.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Alabama is generally a racist state

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Michael

In 2000, 41% of Alabama voters said they wanted to keep federally nullified language in their constitution saying blacks and whites could not marry. In 2004, a narrow majority defeated an amendment that would have 1) eliminated references to Jim Crow laws and poll taxes, and 2) declared that there is a constitutional right to education. Now the Alabama legislature is attempting to once again remove that racist language:

The proposed amendment would eliminate language that calls for separate schools for black and white students and poll taxes, the latter generally viewed as instituted to keep black residents from voting.

“Even though federal laws nullify these old wordings, it remains a black eye on the state,” said Cam Ward, another Republican senator.

Some lawmakers have tried for years to rewrite the entire state constitution, which they criticize as outdated and cumbersome.

This is will be an interesting test. In 2000 there was the excuse of taxation issues that came along with declaring public education a right. It isn’t surprising that the deep south has questionable commitments to education, but that won’t be a factor when this issue likely appears on ballots in 2012. Alabama voters are going to have to give a plain up or down vote without making excuses for their deeply embedded racism.

While I suspect a number of voters there did legitimately glom onto the public education issue in 2000, I more strongly suspect that a majority of those voters really just don’t like black people. My guess is that we see another round of absurdly, blatantly, baldly racist people filling up the ballot boxes just like in 2000 – especially if the Tea Party manages to churn up a big turn-out.

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Oh, woe is me! I’m only white!

Posted on March 5, 2011 by Michael

This is fucking ridiculous:

  • A recent Public Religion Research Institute poll found 44% of Americans surveyed identify discrimination against whites as being just as big as bigotry aimed at blacks and other minorities. The poll found 61% of those identifying with the Tea Party held that view, as did 56% of Republicans and 57% of white evangelicals.
  • U.S. Census Bureau projections that whites will become a minority by 2050 are fueling fears that whiteness no longer represents the norm. This fear has been compounded by the recent recession, which hit whites hard.

Uh-huh. All that bigotry I face, day in, day out. I just wish brown folk could recognize how bad I’ve really got it. People see me walking down the street and I just know they’re staring! I must stick out like a sore thumb. Especially in Maine. And when I go for a job? Oh, man. Talk about bigotry. I can’t begin to describe how many times I haven’t even been offered a cup of coffee at an interview. And when I go down to the coast in the summer? I swear I got an undersized lobster one time. Bigots.

Augment your reading with Shambling After.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , | 28 Comments »

The conservative refrain

Posted on December 29, 2010 by Michael

The most recent refrain being utilized by conservative pundits is to preface something awful they want to say with something like this:

And I know, I know. Liberals out there are going to be all over me for this because it must be racist, but…

And then the pundit proceeds to say something racist. Just today I heard some conservative host going on and on about Kwanzaa being a fake, awful, evil holiday that shouldn’t be celebrated. Why, heck, if blacks want to celebrate something, they have the WHOLE month of February! The guy even managed to have a real point here and there, but he covered everything he had to say with racism.

I guess I just don’t understand how saying “I’m not racist” makes it okay to then say something racist.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , | 11 Comments »

Still want more institutional racism?

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Michael

I could just cite the statistics of every federal prison. Or I could point to the massive disparity between white and black unemployment. Or the just as dismaying disparity between black and white income. Or I could find all the studies that show employers are significantly less likely to call back applicants with names like “Tyrone” and “Latisha” than they are to call back applications with names like “Adam” or “Steve”, despite the applications being virtually the same. Or I could point to the minimum sentencing periods for drug convictions that, until Obama recently rectified the Reagan-inspired problem, hurt black communities far more than white communities. But instead I’ll use the more convenient example of Tulia, Texas, a place about which everyone needs to know.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

Institutional racism is not hard to find

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Michael

This case speaks for itself.

“California may be about to execute an innocent man.”

That’s the view of five federal judges in a case involving Kevin Cooper, a black man in California who faces lethal injection next year for supposedly murdering a white family. The judges argue compellingly that he was framed by police.

…

Judge Fletcher laid out countless anomalies in the case. Mr. Cooper’s blood showed up on a beige T-shirt apparently left by a murderer near the scene, but that blood turned out to have a preservative in it — the kind of preservative used by police when they keep blood in test tubes.

Then a forensic scientist found that a sample from the test tube of Mr. Cooper’s blood held by police actually contained blood from more than one person. That leads Mr. Cooper’s defense team and Judge Fletcher to believe that someone removed blood and then filled the tube back to the top with someone else’s blood.

The police also ignored other suspects. A woman and her sister told police that a housemate, a convicted murderer who had completed his sentence, had shown up with several other people late on the night of the murders, wearing blood-spattered overalls and driving a station wagon similar to the one stolen from the murdered family.

They said that the man was no longer wearing the beige T-shirt he had on earlier in the evening — the same kind as the one found near the scene. And his hatchet, which resembled the one found near the bodies, was missing from his tool area. The account was supported by a prison confession and by witnesses who said they saw a similar group in blood-spattered clothes in a nearby bar that night. The women gave the bloody overalls to the police for testing, but the police, by now focused on Mr. Cooper, threw the overalls in the trash.

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Racist state to violate U.S. constitution

Posted on June 13, 2010 by Michael

Arizona wants to violate the 14th Amendment.

Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they’re on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona – and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution – to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens. The law largely is the brainchild of state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican whose suburban district, Mesa, is considered the conservative bastion of the Phoenix political scene. He is a leading architect of the Arizona law that sparked outrage throughout the country: Senate Bill 1070, which allows law enforcement officers to ask about someone’s immigration status during a traffic stop, detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists – things like poor English skills, acting nervous or avoiding eye contact during a traffic stop.

The most interesting thing about all this racially motivated legislation is that Arizona businesses get a lot of untaxed labor from many of its illegal immigrants. And isn’t that what Republicans want? They have a group of individuals who have exceedingly low taxes on them – they only pay sales tax and the like. It’s like a more extreme version of the New Hampshire tax code.

But, sure, keep hammering the issue. I’m okay with the Republican party causing more alienation to everyone who isn’t white.

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , | 10 Comments »

The Arizona immigration law

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Michael

Maine doesn’t get a lot of immigrants. Some groups from Mexico come up in the summer to (mostly) pick blueberries, and a lot of people from Quebec find themselves working on the coast around the same time, but there just isn’t a big foreign population in Maine, even when considering migrant workers. That said, it’s obvious even from all the way up here that there are some serious issues with Arizona’s new immigration law.

Under the new Arizona law, immigrants unable to produce documents showing they are allowed to be in the U.S. could be arrested, jailed for up to six months and fined $2,500. That is a significant escalation of the typical federal punishment for being here illegally – deportation.

1) People can just lie and claim to be native. Police can do nothing.
2) If another crime has been committed, however, and the person lies about being an immigrant (even a legal one), that is another charge that can be brought against the person. When natives lie to the police, however, the ramifications are significantly less.
3) Freed black people in the 1860’s had to carry documentation showing that they were no longer slaves.

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

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