How to defend racism - conversations with deniers

There was a post, somewhere on the internet. Actually, if I remember correctly, it was a post by the New York Times. It went something like this:

A study found that European soccer commentators were not only far more likely to praise white players for their intelligence, leadership qualities, and versatility but also more likely to criticize black players for what they regarded as the absence of those attributes.

Someone's reply caught my attention, which I seized on, and soon, others joined in as proponents or opponents. Let's call the initiator Teresa. The ensuing conversation went something like this [grammatical editing is mine and no real names have been used.]

Teresa: Sorry, but football clubs treat ALL their players as stupid. We had a couple open our new office and were basically told that they were to stand there and look pretty and were not to be asked questions! Let's not stoke division where there isn't any.

Me: Here comes the deflection. Your views versus a concerted study. I believe the study.

Shaylin: A study - based on more than 2,000 remarks from commentators, concerning 643 players and spread across 80 games in the top divisions of Italy, Spain, England, and France from the current season - found something
But then Teresa, a woman on the random internet who once did a thing, found something else!!
I think it's clear we need to listen to her.

Peter: Teresa... consider what the commentators have been doing akin to someone judging say your intelligence/skills-based the fact you went to Hallam (ex poly) versus a red brick uni. Then them describing them as such.
In the Hallam instance, they might say use the descriptors like "industrious" or "can handle setbacks" versus the Uni where they may favor "intelligent" "top of their game". That is effectively what commentators have been doing. However, instead of it being which university someone went to it is by skin tone.
This isn't stoking division, it is reporting a statistically significant difference in the way players of various skin tones have their attributes described.

Edward wasn't having any of this.

Edward: Peter, if you truly want to be objective and scientific, you need to first measure if their comment truly reflected what was happening. If not, they were biased. But first, you need to prove that they were saying something different from reality based on racial bias.
As painful and unpleasant it may sound, that's the only way to say this is a factual observation.
Otherwise, it's best to leave the subject for everyone's sake.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A scientist’s take on God

Ever listened to a debate about whether God exists or not? Such debates are, more often than not, heated and quite quickly become emotive contests. I say, you can’t use your thoughts about the negative as proof that something doesn’t exist. A true scientist will never say there’s no God for at least four reasons: 1. No branch of advanced science studies the question “is there a God?” There’s no funding for that. Our “proofs” or “disproofs” are therefore mere speculations, no different from those of primeval man. 2. Science is niche-area oriented, meaning a physicist focuses on a narrow area of physics, a chemist on a narrow area of chemistry, and so on. There’s no time to a serious scientist to study that question during their career, measured in Earth years. 3. Science is largely empirical, meaning that it is driven experimentally, in the context of points 1 and 2 above. How then does one design an experiment to detect “God”? How then can you prove that the entity who typed this...
Read more

The new Animal Farm

The unfolding state of America's politics is very Orwellian. And I do mean "Animal Farm" Orwellian. Now would be a good time to read that book if you've never read it, or to read it again if you have. It is odd how old fiction tends to be prophetic. I suppose different occurrences in future times lead to different interpretations of the same fiction. The reason for this might be that the issues that drive human beings hardly change over the eons. Take for instance the view of Armageddon in the Bible. Through the ages the devout were convinced that it would happen in their lifetime because the “signs are all around us that these are the end times.” What is certain is that the seven deadly sins are today as deadly as they were before the coming of the Messiah. In Animal Farm, that point in the story where one morning the animals wake up and could swear by the soul of the departed Snowball that, while they slept, someone had amended the law scribbled on the wall, comes...
Read more

The Village Timekeeper

There was,  once, a retired sea captain to whom time was everything. In his retirement, he would sail out to sea each daybreak to reminisce about his glory days.  Sail closer to the shore he  would, to better listen for the boom of a distant cannon that went off at noon, and thereat hoist his flag to mark this precious noon. Only at sunset would he lower it again.  Now, the cannon operator was a retired soldier, who kept the local time. Knowing the exacting sea captain, the horizon  he would spy through his telescope, for the captain's vessel and flag which appeared at precisely noon. Once manifested, "boom!" with a resounding resolution he would fire his cannon to announce noon to all of the town.  So, who had the correct time?  That's what is happening here with populism and leaders like Donald Trump. They have no clue about what is right or wrong but peg their actions on the populist and misguided crowd.
Read more