Racism

Tyranny, Racism, and Anti-Racism:

An interesting point from Reflecting Light, on the dangers posed by anti-racism when it becomes an overriding concern. Without endorsing the evils of racism, freedom demands a certain amount of just leaving people alone -- even when they are wrong; or even when they're right, but only because they take time to think about it:

Candidates are asked to put images of black and white faces into categories of "good/positive" and "bad/negative" using arrow keys on the keyboard. By getting them to respond to prompts as quickly as possible, the test aims to side-step what is known as "cognitive control" - the brief, but significant time lapse needed to give an "acceptable" answer rather than an instinctive or "honest" one. The programme then automatically calculates a "response-index" that indicates a level of racial bias.

The test is being developed at London Metropolitan University and is aimed at the public sector and multinational companies. Its developers say it is harder to deceive than many of the psychometric tests used to gauge personality type. The test was condemned last night as a potential "Kafkaesque nightmare" where individuals are penalised for thoughts in their deep subconscious.
The blogger notes that the test is designed to be made available to employers. "In other words," he says, "you can be rejected for employment because of ideas you've never expressed, and that you don't even know you have." But isn't it the keenest expression of virtue to do right in spite of having a drive to do wrong?
Robert Conquest, the great historian of the incalculable damage inflicted on humanity by the Communist and Nazi regimes, has pointed out that these disasters arose not primarily from inherent social problems, but from solutions — solutions that hardened into ideologies, then one-party states based on those ideologies, then into tyranny.
This is something that ought to be considered carefully. Someone who has chosen consciously to do the right thing ought not to be punished, for some deep but unacted-upon impulse. This should be true for racism, for alcoholism, or for a drive to spend the rent on gambling. If what you do is right, that ought to be more than enough.

H/t: Roach.

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