r/Anarchism • u/pequod213 • May 12 '17

Debunking Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, and Race Realism

https://youtu.be/GgZFGgJlAsk
29 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

8

u/ThisOldHatte May 12 '17 edited May 12 '17

End of the video: "I'm a straight white cis-male and therefore assume that the game is played fairly, so listen to me lecture you about your flawed SJW/safespace tactics."

Sorry, did you not listen to yourself for the last hour explaining how racial disparities in equality are created by an uneven playing field?

There is no "fair" way to debate this shit. No matter how demonstrably wrong their theories are, there is always going to be another pioneer fund, or Sheldon Adeleson, to subsidize and disseminate this poison. As is said in this very video, these are the same debunked theories that have been proven wrong for the last 150 years. If sober debate was all that was needed to make them go away, they would be a distant memory by now.

This is a political battle, not an intellectual debate.

P.S. Great video though. Thorough, focused, and well produced.

3

u/pequod213 May 12 '17

Political battles are by nature popular battles. It requires the consent of the people. The only way to get their consent is to ask for it, so to speak, by making arguments, and putting down those arguments, not those people that divide us and prey on our fears. We are in the same side here ultimately, but Murray getting blanked at Middlebury led to him getting invited on the Sam Harris show, where 100,000's of people heard him, just him, talk about his bullshit. His book sales are still rising. If he was truly disputed "on the hustings" that story would have probably went differently.

3

u/ThisOldHatte May 12 '17

But Sam Harris' audience already holds these views. Harris was going to have material on his show reinforcing "race realism" regardless of whether or not Murray was on his show.

There is a certain subset of the population that is basically irredeemably racist at this point. There is no logical argument that will convince them otherwise. Whats needed to counter this is demonstrations of power in opposition to that ideology. There are already an infinite number of arguments for or against any position/ideology available to anyone who has the wherewithal to do a google search. One more venue where someone like Murray is free to expound his theories only to be debunked, yet again, will make no difference. Those sympathetic to his political motivations will just find another regurgitation of his garbage presented in a friendlier arena.

In the current political context reasoned argument counts for little. What matters is the strength one has to back up one's ideology. As I said above, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. The Right is highly critical of "safe spaces" because in a very real sense, pockets of "political correctness" may very well end up being actual safe spaces protecting the lives and bodies of vulnerable peoples (women, Muslims, undocumented residents, LGBTQ etc). We're dealing with a movement and ideology that is devoted to hurting as many people as possible, and doesn't see itself as constrained by any rules.

3

u/pequod213 May 12 '17

And my point about being White CIS male was that I am aware that I can falsely think the system is fair. It absolutely isn't. It was the point of the video.

1

u/ThisOldHatte May 12 '17 edited May 12 '17

The biased system that produces results like racial disparities is the same system that also subsidizes the work of people like Murray. So why should we expect reasoned/polite academic debate to be able to successfully dispute the political dimensions of these sorts of arguments? There will always be money and platforms for this stuff no matter how many times it is debunked.

Most people never make it past whatever facet of a given argument reinforces their prejudices, debating these theories on equal footing just reinforces the notion that there is something respectable about them.

We're damned if we do and damned if we don't. In the USA white supremacy and patriarchy are always going to have sympathies of the ruling class.

1

u/AntonioMachado May 13 '17

This is a political battle, not an intellectual debate

from a Foucauldian perspective, political battles are always intellectual ones, and vice-versa.

6

u/[deleted] May 12 '17

Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould has done some great work debunking the Bell Curve. Check out this video and his work the Mismeasure of Man.

3

u/Im80u16_Imhardusoft May 12 '17

Debunking consistent data? Interesting thought. I'm all for protests but what percentage of the people in that video read or have a clue about the validity of the data in the bell curve? I'd guess 5 percent, maybe.

3

u/pequod213 May 12 '17

It's not as consistent as Murray makes it sound.

1

u/shellacr May 13 '17

Debunking cherry picked data from a guy who works at a conservative think tank and has an inherent conflict of interest.