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Reblogged:Segregation Is Back at Cal. State: And This Time It’s Cool!

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California State University has announced that it will provide segregated housing for the university’s black students in an attempt to provide them with a “safe space.”

Black students will have the option to move into a residential complex solely for African-Americans. The decision to provide segregated accommodations comes just nine months after the university’s Black Student Union presented a list of demands to the university’s authorities to challenge what they perceived as endemic racial discrimination.

Their demands included a “$30 million endowment to support black students financially,” an anti-discrimination policy combined with “cultural competency training,” compulsory “ethnic studies courses” for first and year second year students, as well as segregated housing for black students.

We have come full circle. The civil rights movement started out in the 1950s and 1960s as against white-black segregation. And now, half a century later, we’re back to full-fledged white-black segregation at California state schools.

In the old days, segregation was fueled by racism. Today, it’s fueled by supposedly enlightened, “progressive” political correctness. The truth? It’s still racism.

Racism happens when you make race the most important factor. If the civil rights movement had got this right, it would have urged the replacement of racism with individualism. Why didn’t they? Because most of the civil rights leaders were collectivists, not individualists. They tried to use the irrationality of racism as an excuse to impose socialism, social welfare statism, and all the things we see today in the programs of Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, Obamacare and all the rest. They won. These programs are here to stay, even if they drive America off the fiscal cliff into unimaginable bankruptcy.

Individualism would have liberated blacks and everyone from the irrationality and injustice of racism. But the welfare statists instead chose a route of victimization, whereby blacks continue to focus on their racial membership as the most important part of their personalities, souls and character. The victim mindset required membership in the gang or collective. But it’s the opposite of what authentic self-esteem, character and benevolence toward your fellow man require.

The problem with advancing collectivism to replace racism is that you end up with just another version of racism. Collectivism and socialism, to sell themselves, have to make people into victims. The only way to perpetuate victimhood is to tell people that white racists aren’t giving them the free benefits they deserve. Of course, in the process, these new civil rights racists did what the Ku Klux Klan could only have dreamed of doing: They made blacks and other impoverished minorities permanently dependent on the meager income of government.

Inevitably, this had to lead to bitterness. But in the bitterness there could have emerged true growth and enlightenment. How? By admitting their mistakes. The civil rights people could have concluded, “We were wrong. Socialism and collectivism are not the answer. Government is not the answer. The only answer is equal freedom, private property and wealth creation for all. From each according to his ability, and to each according to his ability. Individualism will liberate blacks.”

Meritocracy might have replaced the impoverishment of post-slavery and post-Jim Crow. Instead, generations of blacks now have been given nothing but mediocrity and dependence. No wonder they’re so angry and want to go off and live in their own racially designated dorm rooms. But to those who claim to care about civil rights, doesn’t this make you feel a little sick? And kind of like you failed?

Have the movers and shakers in the civil rights establishment learned anything? No way. They’re more embittered and angry than ever. And in their bitterness, they demand segregated, race-based housing at state-funded college campuses. Their gal in Washington, DC, Hillary Clinton, promises more spending on social programs than ever, ensuring that another generation or two of African Americans will stay on the dole, in one form or another.

In short: They’re exactly where they started. And they have nobody to blame but themselves.

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The post Segregation Is Back at Cal. State: And This Time It’s Cool! appeared first on Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. | Living Resources Center.

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Doctor, again you are not understanding. There is a (failed) project that has been going on for quite some time that stretches from left wing communists, socialists, liberals, and U.N. boosters to supposedly right-wing libertarians and Objectivists. That project says, basically, that there is going to be one universal "system of rights" (if you want to call it that) that is supposedly derived from logic and reason that is going to apply to all individual people on this planet on an individual basis.

Despite how laudable this may sound, outside of a comparatively tiny group of political intellectuals who comprise a truly miniscule percentage of the globe's population, this is never going to fly. Because of human nature, people just don't think in those terms.

People are genetically hardwired to think in terms of groups and group rights, not individuals and individual rights. Right now, blacks are clamoring for what they believe are their group rights. That's the way human beings are, black, white, Asian, or what have you.

Objectivism, especially if it claims to have a lock on objective reality, needs to embrace realpolitik when it comes to human ethnic and tribal issues rather than sitting and complaining about what is clearly the objective reality of human nature.

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9 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Despite how laudable this may sound, outside of a comparatively tiny group of political intellectuals who comprise a truly miniscule percentage of the globe's population, this is never going to fly.

That's weird. You would think that if a species is "genetically hardwired" to think a certain way, everyone would think the same way. We're genetically hardwired to walk on two legs, for instance...so we do. I'm yet to see a comparatively tiny group of political intellectuals walk around on all fours and scour the steppes like a zebra.

So what happened to these intellectuals? There must be quite a difference between their genes and everyone else's. Have you identified which genes are different yet, Herr Doktor?

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45 minutes ago, Dustin86 said:

Okay, so what is the Objectivist theory? Because just about everybody else accepts that humans are tribal creatures with a strong ingroup bias. So what is the Objectivist explanation for why this seems to be the case?

Does a gene cause them to accept this or did they observe reality and draw a conclusion?  I'm confused.  By the way, just about everybody else accepts that there is a God but let me guess, there's a gene for that one too.  

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58 minutes ago, Dustin86 said:

Okay, so what is the Objectivist theory? Because just about everybody else accepts that humans are tribal creatures with a strong ingroup bias. So what is the Objectivist explanation for why this seems to be the case?

Short answer: irrational philosophy that "just about everybody accepts"...most of them, because "just about everybody accepts it".

Long answer: pretty much the entirety of Objectivist literature. That's what you need to make yourself familiar with, to fully understand the relationship between bad philosophy and mass murder/totalitarianism.

Leonard Peikoff in particular wrote a lot about the historical/philosophical causes of collectivist ideologies, in books like The Ominous Parallels, or The Cause of Hitler's Germany.

Edited by Nicky
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1 minute ago, Dustin86 said:

I'm confused. So you think that these particular blacks are clamoring for their group rights right now because they learned irrational philosophy?

You are catching on.  They are being collectivist in their own way.  Don't you think they learned that from somewhere?  I mean no one is born thinking "I'm (fill in the blank with a race) therefore we need (fill in the blank with a color) group rights!"  

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There are many logical fallacies, including argumentum ad populum, which covers

38 minutes ago, Dustin86 said:

Because just about everybody else accepts that humans are tribal creatures with a strong ingroup bias.

This fallacy, and many other fallacies were discovered long before Objectivism.

You also asked:

1 hour ago, Dustin86 said:

So what is the Objectivist explanation for why this seems to be the case?

In addition to Nicky's "Long answer:", here's a short excerpt from The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. II, No. 18  June 4, 1973, Selfishness Without A Self that came to my mind:

It is obvious why the morality of altruism is a tribal phenomenon. Prehistorical men were physically unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes. The cause of altruism's perpetuation into civilized eras is not physical, but psycho-epistemological: the men of self-arrested, perceptual mentality are unable to survive without tribal leadership and "protection" against reality.

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6 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

In addition to Nicky's "Long answer:", here's a short excerpt from The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. II, No. 18  June 4, 1973, Selfishness Without A Self that came to my mind:

It is obvious why the morality of altruism is a tribal phenomenon. Prehistorical men were physically unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes. The cause of altruism's perpetuation into civilized eras is not physical, but psycho-epistemological: the men of self-arrested, perceptual mentality are unable to survive without tribal leadership and "protection" against reality.

See, this is where I fundamentally disagree with Objectivism. I believe that the world is fundamentally a very dangerous place, and that we are still "unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes."

One of the fundamental reasons why I am a Conservative is because I believe that Liberalism, and yes also Libertarianism and Objectivism, are dangerously naive in thinking that this fundamental fact has changed.

Edited by Dustin86
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3 minutes ago, Dustin86 said:

I believe that the world is fundamentally a very dangerous place, and that we are still "unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes."

You've written about this elsewhere. My sense is that you have not articulated your position clearly to yourself. The first step to doing so is to forget what others (Liberalism, Libertarianism, etc.) get wrong, and just articulate the facts, as you understand them: the facts about reality. You should analyse this by asking how the facts work: you say that people are predisposed to tribalism, but you need to articulate -- to yourself -- what this means. Where does it come from? Is it genetic? Is it something one can or cannot work out of? In other words is it a metaphysical fact of mans's nature, and if so how do you account for those who do not fit the pattern? If it is less than metaphysical -- i.e. people can opt out -- you need to articulate to yourself if there are reasons to do so. In  other words, if it is in the realm of ethical choice -- rather than metaphysics -- you need to figure out what your ethics says about it. Unless you clearly understand and articulate your position to yourself, it will be difficult to convince anyone else.

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1 hour ago, Dustin86 said:

What I want to hear is why Objectivists think that the world has changed from a world where "men were physically unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes", especially after the bloodbath that was the 20th Century.

Look around you. It's not just that we're able to survive without clinging to a tribe, in the free world: we're thriving. You can see it every single time: the more individualistic a country, the more its people are free, the more they prosper. The more collectivist and totalitarian (whether it's tribalism, socialism or nationalism), the more they suffer.

Quote

especially after the bloodbath that was the 20th Century.

Didn't you just finish arguing FOR realpolitik? (and for nationalist totalitarianism too, in another thread...unless I have you mistaken for someone else?) The principal initiator of both world wars, Germany, was dominated by realpolitik and national socialism, leading up to those wars.

The 20th century wasn't a bloodbath for everyone, by the way. Nations that embraced individualism and a principled, limited system of government suffered far less during the 20th century, than the collectivists.

Free countries had to fight two hot wars and a cold one against countries dominated by the ideologies you promote. And sure, there were significant losses, in those wars. The US lost a little under 400,000 soldiers in wars during the 20th century, Britain had 1.5 million war dead. But that was it. Most of the bloodbath took place in nations that rejected individualism, and embraced one of the destructive, collectivist ideologies I listed above.

And even some of those countries (Japan, Germany, South Korea) began to thrive as soon as they adopted American political principles that ended people's dependence on the collective. If the contrast between North and South Korea doesn't prove to you that there's nothing genetic about collectivism, I don't know what will.

Edited by Nicky
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4 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

See, this is where I fundamentally disagree with Objectivism. I believe that the world is fundamentally a very dangerous place, and that we are still "unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes."

One of the fundamental reasons why I am a Conservative is because I believe that Liberalism, and yes also Libertarianism and Objectivism, are dangerously naive in thinking that this fundamental fact has changed.

If you believe that, you're not a Conservative. Obviously. Conservatism is the political ideology that aims to promote the Constitution, and the individualist values of the US founders. Have you ever read Jefferson?

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1 minute ago, Nicky said:

If you believe that, you're not a Conservative. Obviously. Conservatism is the political ideology that aims to promote the Constitution, and the individualist values of the US founders.

Nicky, the ideology existed long before the founding of the United States.

Quote

Have you ever read Jefferson?

Nicky, I've gone over this before. I think he was a very laudable man but extremely naive, especially when approaching questions of human nature.

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2 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

What I want to hear is why Objectivists think that the world has changed from a world where "men were physically unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes", especially after the bloodbath that was the 20th Century.

Some maybe? But Rand didn't. You seem to conflate cooperation with tribalism, and as you've done before, stated that humans are "hard-wired" to be tribalist. That's vague though, as you don't back it up with evidence except your intuition. Even if it were true, you didn't mention reasons to think so. You cited the "bloodbath" of the 20th century, which I'd cite as examples of tribalism taken to its logical end. Fascism, Nazism, and similar nationalist movements are examples of tribalism, at least by what we mean by tribalist. I do not know of any scientists who say -tribalism- is hard-wired. Link some studies, research, books - anything.

Furthermore, while it may be possible to "survive" with tribalism, that tribalism is not the -essential- means of survival. I could argue that, by reason, I conclude that tribalism is a valuable social structure, perhaps as the only way to create a society. Then I could argue against it by saying tribalism is a misapplication of reason.

 

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2 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Nicky, the ideology existed long before the founding of the United States.

Nicky, I've gone over this before. I think he was a very laudable man but extremely naive, especially when approaching questions of human nature.

This whole conversation started with you making a moronic statement about human nature. 20 posts later, you still haven't substantiated it with anything.

Edited by Nicky
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4 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Some maybe? But Rand didn't.

Am I understanding you correctly? Rand didn't? Yes she clearly did. She clearly said:

"Prehistorical men were physically unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes."

She clearly thought that this was a prehistoric phenomenon and not relevant in the modern age. The bloodbath that was the 20th century proves that she was wrong and that "clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes" is still necessary in the modern age.

What we need is realpolitik. Objectivists, if they truly have a commitment to objective reality, should be pushing for this. They should be pushing for an enlightened, technocratic tribe. That is what I mean by realpolitik in this instance.

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2 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

Am I understanding you correctly? Rand didn't? Yes she clearly did. She clearly said:

"Prehistorical men were physically unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes."

Hmm, I found where she said that. It seems strange for her to say. Perhaps she meant a lot of people years ago -found- it to be needed, but made an error. It's wrong to say people -used- to need tribalism, if she means that. Still, it doesn't mean tribalism was good for flourishing.

Seems rather odd to say the cure to tribalist bloodbaths is MORE tribalism. The "bloodbaths" are a lot to do with German nationalism in WW2, and all sorts of European nationalism for WW1. The bloodbaths weren't really stopped by tribalism...

I am for an enlightened and technocratic -culture-, but as a tribe, it doesn't build flourishing. What'd make sense is to argue for a meaningful and strategic military to defend from tribalism/collectivism. How tribalism is supposed to HELP, I have no idea. Would you share?

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18 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Seems rather odd to say the cure to tribalist bloodbaths is MORE tribalism.

The cure to tribalist bloodbaths is an enlightened, technocratic tribe consisting of Western populations, controlling Western territory, and protecting it from savages such as Muslims who carry out attacks such as 9/11, 7/7, the Paris attacks, the Nice attacks, the list goes on and on.

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On 9/11/2016 at 11:29 AM, Dustin86 said:

What I want to hear is why Objectivists think that the world has changed from a world where "men were physically unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes", especially after the bloodbath that was the 20th Century.

I think you are not understanding Rand's quote.  Rand is not saying that the physical World has changed.

On 9/11/2016 at 9:02 AM, dream_weaver said:

It is obvious why the morality of altruism is a tribal phenomenon. Prehistorical men were physically unable to survive without clinging to a tribe for leadership and protection against other tribes. The cause of altruism's perpetuation into civilized eras is not physical, but psycho-epistemological: the men of self-arrested, perceptual mentality are unable to survive without tribal leadership and "protection" against reality.

Rand is stating that, some 40,000-odd-years ago, and long before the advent of modern economics, capitalism, constitutional republics, free trade, individual rights, private property, etc., people, perhaps, had to rely on "tribalism" as a means of securing the limited resources available in a given geographical area.  (However, the "limited resources" in a given geographical area were caused by a lack of yet-to-be-discovered-knowledge, and not because an area was barren of resources.)

The quote above in bold highlights that, long after physical/ontological tribalism was proven to not be necessary, tribalism/altruism was still being advocated psycho-epistemologically in the form of  Nazi Racism and  Marxist's Classism.

The modern roots of altruism can be found in the German Protestant Reformation (of Luther, Kant, Hegel, etc.) which substituted the "Divine Right" of the State for the "Divine Right" of the Church.  One did not live for one's self, but rather for the State.  This was transmuted into one's Race or one's Class in the 20th Century.

 

Edited by New Buddha
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4 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

The cure to tribalist bloodbaths is an enlightened, technocratic tribe [...]

Are you saying that some types of tribalism work? If so, why did the other tribalist ideas not work?

What do -you- mean by an enlightened tribe - what makes it enlightened and why? And more importantly, what makes it tribalist as opposed to a strong nation or coalition? 

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