We’ve Made the Washington Post Notice
The article is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/04/29/the-politics-of-science-fiction/
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Ironically, in the comments section, the lying Left (but I repeat myself) continues to misquote Vox Day calling a woman savaging him a half-savage as ‘racist.’ Contra, see here: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/04/am-i-racist.html
Everyone I know, and I am not exaggerating, has been called racist at one time or another: Left, Right, Center, Christian, Pagan, Atheist, Socialist, and I mean everyone. EVERYONE I KNOW.
I was called racist for saying that Leftwingers react to scientific controversies not by arguing the science but by calling opponents racist. One example of the three or four I used was the scientific controversy of IQ tests score between races, which was an example of an argument easy to win on purely scientific grounds (due to poor sampling, no clear definition of intelligence, the lack of statistical deviance even as great as that which obtains between twin brothers, and so on). No one seemed to note the irony of answering my comment, which, in effect, said ‘it is not just more honest but also easier to silence the Bell Curve controversy on purely scientific grounds than by calling someone racist’ by calling me a racist.
My wife (a Jewess) was called racist for saying that men should be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
My roommate and best friend (who is Black) was called racist for saying Federal taxes were too high.
My godson (who is married to a Japanese lady) was called racist for saying health care distribution is better handled by the free-market than by rationing.
The godfather of my children (who is a Ginger) was called racist because he is an evangelical Christian.
And every Caucasian was called racist, on the grounds that all Whites enjoy the benefits of ‘White Privilege’ (This was from a Spaniard, who, last I checked, are Caucasian; he himself had far more wealth and a higher social position than any Anglosaxon among my circle of friends.)
…and so on and so on and so on up to an including everyone I know and nearly everyone I have ever read of heard about, up to an including the socialist Olaf Stapledon being called racist (because he characterizes the French as having a more Gallic temperament than the Germans) and J.R.R. Tolkien being called racist (because his thinly disguised version of the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks has his thinly disguised version of the Turks as the bad guys) Jonny Quest being called racist (no explanation for that one – the man who said it just thought it was obvious — that guy, a SF magazine editor, was later called racist for being a Second Amendment supporter).
In no case was there a person accused who was anything even remotely like a racist.
A racist, properly so called, is someone who believes that one race is innately superior to all others, so that his race merits special treatment, privileges, powers, and rights up to an including the right to expel, enslave, or exterminate the inferior races. (I suppose, without doing damage to the meaning of the term, someone who believes one race at this particular era of time, due to historical accidents, happens to be superior to all others, might also be called a racist, but this use of the word ignores the Darwin-inspired Eugenics movement that underpins the institutional racism of the last century.)
So, statistically speaking, just based on my fifty years of life on the planet, the chance of being accused of racism approaches 100% and the chance of the accusation being accurate approaches 0%.
I did meet a real racist once in my life, who actually thought the ‘White’ race (by which he meant Prussians) were superior to all others. Perhaps I could count this as an accurate accusation, except for the fact that he was accused of being a racist on the grounds that he was a conservative (he was not) and not because he was a racist (which he was).
Do I think that there are real racists out there somewhere in America? All I can say is that I have met countless witchhunters and only one witch.
(I am kidding. In real life I have met a lot of witches, probably more than I have met Christians. I heard them being accused of racism, too, on account of Hecate and Diana and Bast and other deities they worship being white, not to mention the White Goddess.)