"Social Science" and Racism

A test with the imprimatur of the University of Maryland and UC Santa Barbara, which purports to help you reveal your racism to yourself, is a better example of why these 'social science' field are frauds.

Let us count the ways.

1) Scientific tests should seek to eliminate all but one variable; you control the rest so you can be clear on what has changed. This test, instead, varies its language in ways that muddy what it is measuring, e.g., asking about 'it is offensive' only some of the time, and 'it is okay to...' on other occasions.

2) That ambiguity is made much worse by the fact that 'okay' is an almost endlessly ambiguous word. It can mean anything from "yes" to "I understand" to "enough already!" to "I will do that," and many other things besides. So when you ask people to what degree they agree that 'it is okay to... X' you need to spell out what kind of 'okay' you mean.

For example, is it okay to insult a President? Well, it's legal, unless you are a serving military member; it may be morally permissible even where it isn't legal, in cases where the President may really deserve the words; it may be virtuous even where it isn't legal. Or do you mean that it's 'okay' in the sense of being socially acceptable? It is highly acceptable to insult the current president in some crowds, but completely unacceptable to insult the previous one in similar terms.

3) When they ask about what is offensive, there is no objective fact of the matter about that. People get offended, and people are different. Is the question whether I think a thing is or ought to be offensive, or whether I think that there are people somewhere in my society who would be offended (or that they ought to be, or ought not to be)? If the test cannot avoid these ambiguities, how could it pretend to be offering an apples-to-apples comparison across the responses of different readers? The readers may well have thought they were answering meaningfully different questions.

4) We begin to unravel the real purpose of the exam when we realize that answering "no opinion" counts against you every time. Having no opinion is always treated as evidence of racism. The only answers that won't count against you are the extreme ones -- double thumbs up or double thumbs down -- provided you select the correct one of those options.

5) This is not a test of racism, in other words, but a test of your knowledge of the content of an ideology. You might have no opinion about a question because you haven't thought about it before; that wouldn't be evidence one way or the other about your internal racism. What you are being tested on is having developed the right opinions, and knowing to express them as strongly as possible when asked for them.

6) In that sense the test involves the sort of demand for successful mind-reading one sometimes encounters in bad emotional relationships: if you didn't know this was a problem, that is a proof that you're wrong because you should have picked up on it. If you didn't know what I meant when I said something ambiguous, that is proof that you aren't thinking about this the right way. You should have known what I meant.

7) Finally, a lot of the questions are about fictional cases, where presumably the moral stakes are a lot lower. These cases are run into the same index as cases that affect actual human beings, as if there were an equivalence between real and pretend cases.

Yet in spite of all of this, the test is very proud of itself and its team.

Why Use This Test?
1. Free....

2. Validity and reliability. Empirical testing and factor analysis has shown the validity of the Racism Test. The evidence has been published in scientific journals and has good scientific validity.

3. Based on peer-reviewed research. The present test is based on peer-reviewed research, as published in notable scientific journals and conducted by professional researchers at the University of Maryland and University of California Santa Barbara.

4. Statistical controls. Test scores are logged into an anonymized database. Statistical analysis of the test is conducted to ensure maximum accuracy and validity of the test scores.

5. Made by professionals. The authors of this free online test are certified in the use of numerous psychological tests and have worked professionally with personality and psychological testing.

The fraud is bigger than the test; the real fraud is that these people have been taught to think of what they are doing here as valid, reliable, professional work. They're the real victims; probably they each paid tens of thousands of dollars into this fraudulent scheme. They'll be paying off that debt for decades, and look where it got them.

SlateStar Down

The New York Times brought about the destruction of one of the great blogs.

The second reason is more prosaic: some people want to kill me or ruin my life, and I would prefer not to make it too easy. I’ve received various death threats. I had someone on an anti-psychiatry subreddit put out a bounty for any information that could take me down (the mods deleted the post quickly, which I am grateful for). I’ve had dissatisfied blog readers call my work pretending to be dissatisfied patients in order to get me fired. And I recently learned that someone on SSC got SWATted in a way that they link to using their real name on the blog. I live with ten housemates including a three-year-old and an infant, and I would prefer this not happen to me or to them. Although I realize I accept some risk of this just by writing a blog with imperfect anonymity, getting doxxed on national news would take it to another level.

When I expressed these fears to the reporter, he said that it was New York Times policy to include real names, and he couldn’t change that. After considering my options, I decided on the one you see now. If there’s no blog, there’s no story.

That is most disappointing. We are in a moment in which great works of art, and here the humanities, are destroyed by mobs (or in this case a reasonable fear of the mob). The Times should be ashamed of its role here, insofar as they are capable of shame.

Do Not Trouble the Ghost of Andrew Jackson

Protesters / insurgents tonight met up with a stronger response than they were expecting. The President is idly mentioning that this targeting of Federal monuments is a serious felony, which you might not have realized from the last few weeks.

I read that the Old Guard hopefully issued bayonets and ammunition when this first started. Andrew Jackson would approve.

REH Was Right Part CXXVIII

Norway’s first Viking Age could have been 3,000 years ago.

Ymar's Post

First post in the summertime, astrologically.

Happy Toxic Masculinity Awareness Day

Via BB, of course.

Hendersonville on a Fathers’ Day

It’s a strange year.

But a man can still get a quiet pint. 

The audience as instrument

Bobby McFerrin riffs on the Tom Hanks floor-piano toy scene, while instructing us on the pentatonic scale.

Tesla in Texas

Some weeks back, Elon Musk threatened to move at least some Tesla manufacturing operations to Texas, having lost patience with the California COVID program.  He's reported to be well advanced in negotiations for a site in Austin that might add 5,000 local jobs.  As usual, there's a bidding war, perhaps pitting Austin against Tulsa, Oklahoma, for tax concessions.

I'm not generally a big fan of buying business with personalized tax breaks, but this article mentioned a concession that might make the usual tawdry bargain worth it:  Musk is devoted to the "direct sale" model, while Texas is still wed to the dealer-protection racket.  Musk would demand an exemption from that law, if not an outright appeal.  Get that camel's nose right under the tent, I say, and start shoving.

Also, it would be fun to watch Austin progressives try to reconcile their conflicting views about Musk--job creator!  Gay!  Hostility to COVID submission! Non-approved social views!  Rich guy!--not to mention their approval of "clean" cars and suspicion of factories.

This should be interesting

Yesterday police tried to answer a call in the Seattle Open-Air Faculty Lounge about a shooting that killed one and put another in the hospital in critical condition, but they're turned back by a mob.

Today, I see flag-waving bikers are headed for our newest experiment in brotherly love and tolerance here in the Amerika.

Cancel Yale

Not quite a petition, but a serious point (more or less).

Flavortown, Ohio

A petition.

Midwest cuisine must have gotten a lot better than I remember if that's even a serious discussion.

Solstice

Grant Falls

I thought it would take longer to get to “Ulysses Grant, slaveowner.”

Fluidity, part two

Formulas

"The image does not reflect our values" is a handy way to justify acts of symbolic extirpation of whatever group happens to be in the crosshairs on a given day, without having to explain any tortured so-called reasoning.  In the beginning of an iconoclastic movement, people make at least a token effort to explain that an image is stereotyped or otherwise insulting.  Now all that's necessary is to mutter "image" and "values," then destroy the thing while giving the stink-eye to whoever is presumed to have been associated with erecting it in the first place, or perhaps to anyone who objects or even acts befuddled about the rationale for its destruction.

It's important to conduct these ritual destructions quite often, according to increasingly bewildering standards, in order to keep everyone off balance and remind them who makes the rules.

The DACA decision makes no sense

I've read it now, and I've read the dissent.  The majority opinion is baffling.  The dissent is written in an English I can understand and seems to be making straightforward points.

Juneteenth

If you happen to be one of the very many Americans who have never even heard of this holiday before, here's a writeup explaining it. It's a pretty obscure holiday until this year; although I've been aware of it since 1992, when I moved to Atlanta for school and encountered it there, I've gone several years at a stretch without hearing or seeing it mentioned.

Still, this year may be the year it becomes mainstream among Americans.

Tattoo

From a Scottish community group.

Good Treasons

George Washington's statute was destroyed in Portland last night, a logical development of the current effort to purge America of America.  Allahpundit writes:

Some of the skepticism about removing Confederate tributes is due to southern cultural pride but I suspect most of it outside the south springs from the understandable fear that lefties who come after Robert E. Lee today will come after George Washington tomorrow. A statue of Thomas Jefferson was toppled just a few days ago in Oregon, in fact. If the left insists on bundling the Founding Fathers together with the Confederate leadership and making racism, including slaveholding, the disqualifying factor in honoring influential Americans of the past then the public will feel it has no choice but to protect that entire bundle. We’re not giving up Washington and Jefferson, period. But if treason against the United States is the disqualifying factor then the Confederates can be unbundled and discarded.

If these people can’t or won’t distinguish between a monument to someone *despite* their view of slavery and a monument to someone *because of* their view of slavery then the righteous cause of purging the country of tributes to degenerate traitors will derail.

The problem he isn't grappling with is that Washington and Lee weren't just alike in having slaves; or in fighting for a system that preserved slavery; or in being Virginians; or in being generals of armies. They're also alike in being secessionists, i.e., traitors from the perspective of the governments they fought against.

This nation came out of a long tradition of beneficial treason, good treason, treason in the name of the best of the human condition. It was born of the tradition that fought King John at Runnymede and compelled from him the Great Charter of Liberties, Manga Carta Libertatum. It is out of the tradition that produced the Declaration of Arbroath in Scotland, in defiance of yet another tyrannical English king, which stated that "It is not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself." The Scottish national motto was Nemo Me Impune Lacessit, which means, "No One Touches Me With Impunity," or if you like, "No One Messes With Me Without Getting Hurt." That sentiment was also given in Scotland, as later in Alabama, in the words of John 20:17: Noli Me Tangere, usually translated "Touch Me Not," but also:



The values of this new nation are rooted in the principle of rebellion against authority. They are the values of a people who do what they think is right, and will hand you your heads if you try to force them to kneel to your judgment instead of their own. The Founders considered the philosophy of the Greeks. They considered the history of the Romans. They took stock of their reflections on the righteous judgment of God. Then they pledged their fortunes and their lives, and their sacred honor, and did what they had decided was right without fear.

Rooting out treason won't save America, because America as a project began in treason. What is important is to distinguish the good treasons from the bad ones. The good ones are the ones that advance the cause of natural right and human liberty; the bad ones are the ones that seek to violate natural rights, as the Marxists do but as the Confederates also did, or human liberty, as the Marxists think they don't but really do, and as the Confederates certainly did.

Washington and Jefferson were on the right side, almost. Lee's side was wrong. Yet that still isn't the right view of Lee, and it could be that the right view can't be had at this hour. Lee fought for Virginia to keep it from being destroyed. Sheridan's burning of the Shenandoah Valley is a practical example of what Lee feared, which fears caused Lee to take up arms to protect his home. Perhaps Lee was wrong there too; if he had taken command of the Union forces, as offered, he might have been better able to protect Virginia from men like Sheridan and Sherman. He was, as he has often been charged, too Napoleonic in his understanding of war; Sherman and Sheridan fought the way the Russians fought Napoleon, only they got to lay waste to the land of their enemies rather than their own. Lee never thought to do likewise to Pennsylvania or points north, to his moral credit but his strategic loss.

The North won because it was willing to do things that are now formal war crimes, war crimes they repeated against the Lakota and Cheyenne -- indeed, the same men repeated them. They repeated them against the Apache and others. Once Washington is purged for his embrace of slavery, they'll come from Lincoln and Grant. They'll come for Sherman and Sheridan. They'll come for the whole roster of the late 19th century for its brutality against the Native Americans, and also against the labor unions. And then they'll come for the 20th century too.

This whole project is a sort of treason itself, as a matter of fact. It's a levying of war against America by destroying everything that ever was America. There will never be a rock strong enough to hold against this tide, because America is and always was made up of human beings -- and human beings do wrong, all of us do. No one has clean hands.

We have to learn to live with that. The ones who are setting themselves up as judges of their ancestors won't have clean hands either; they too will rule with fire and war, as indeed they have already begun to do where they have managed to gain a foothold. There is no future of natural right and flourishing human liberty on the other side of their victory, should they gain it. There is only the show we have seen so many times before.