Race: The Final Frontier

[Friday]

hahahahhaa "fuck black lives, and I have black friends"

just

just how much paint do you drink every night

[Mongrel]

I liked the one lady who decided she was gonna get all fancy call him a Marxist instead of a Commie, to show she'd been edufied!

[Büge]

Olympic champion Caster Semenya loses out in World Athletics court case over testosterone rules (which were written to specifically target her)

[Büge]

[Grath]

[Mongrel]

So, it's already illegal to teach about the new Juneteenth federal holiday in 15 states. I do not for the life of me know how any of those legislators expect that to work out.

"Sir, why do we have a holiday tomorrow?"
"Uhhhhhhh... iunno! *shrugs* maybe ask your parents."
"This is a sex ed thing, isn't it."
"Due to state law, I can neither confirm nor deny that." *sweats profusely*

[JD]

A bunch of people are mad at CRT for teaching that America is institutionally racist, but

yeah

[Friday]

The problem with America is you've got about 40% of the population who believes Racism is only if you actually literally lynch someone and anything short of that is "well maybe a bit prejudiced, but boys will be boys."

They don't even know what "institutionally racist" means. And if you explained that it means, among other things, that non-whites (especially blacks) are denied loans which severely limits their economic mobility and keeps them in perpetual poverty, they would literally not know what half the words in that sentence meant.

[Silversong]

So, it's already illegal to teach about the new Juneteenth federal holiday in 15 states. I do not for the life of me know how any of those legislators expect that to work out.

Can you link to that? I googled that and couldn't find any sources other than tabloids. Unless you mean Juneteenth falls under pre-existing laws on teaching about racism?

[Mongrel]

I always have to do a minor mental double-take at CRT because my brain is always going to initially process that acronym as "Cathode Ray Tube".

Silver: I think it's basically glib way of talking about the fact that states are banning or are in the process of banning CRT, which would include explaining Juneteenth.

Like, it's an oversimplification obviously, a soundbite meant to go viral. But I think that's fair game, considering GOP tactics.

[Brantly B.]

Don't worry, people are upset about the other CRT too.

Maybe I'm idealistic, but I can't look at a picket line like the one in that article and not believe it's going to backfire. Like my experience as a children is that if you really, really want to get a children interested in something, make a political issue out of keeping it away from schools. You schmucks.

[Mongrel]

Don't worry, people are upset about the other CRT too.

Maybe I'm idealistic, but I can't look at a picket line like the one in that article and not believe it's going to backfire. Like my experience as a children is that if you really, really want to get a children interested in something, make a political issue out of keeping it away from schools. You schmucks.

Well, we know Thad spends a lot of time fiddling with his...

[Brantly B.]

...his children?

[Mongrel]

Oh I thought you were making a joke about gamers being obsessive about old CRTs.

Is there a third "CRT" involving kids?

EDIT: Oh you added a bunch of text while I was replying.

[Mongrel]

(actually they are against CRT, but this also applies - those ladies are only 69-73 today!)

[Thad]

So, it's already illegal to teach about the new Juneteenth federal holiday in 15 states. I do not for the life of me know how any of those legislators expect that to work out.

"Sir, why do we have a holiday tomorrow?"

I'ma go out on a limb and suggest that the states whose legislatures are banning CRT probably aren't going to be recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday, either.

Stop me if you've heard this one.

Maybe I'm idealistic, but I can't look at a picket line like the one in that article and not believe it's going to backfire. Like my experience as a children is that if you really, really want to get a children interested in something, make a political issue out of keeping it away from schools. You schmucks.

I gotta tell you, I haven't seen a lot of evidence of schoolchildren being motivated to learn about America's history of racism because the schools aren't allowed to teach it to them.

[Mongrel]

I'ma go out on a limb and suggest that the states whose legislatures are banning CRT probably aren't going to be recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday, either.

Wait, is that a thing states can do with Federal holidays?

Like I get that federal holidays won't be honoured by local/state exclusive orgs if the state refuses to observe a federal holiday (the same thing happens here), but AFAIK any company subject primarily to federal regulation as well as all federal services still gets the paid holiday, right?

i.e. not everyone might get the day off, but some people will, so it's not like states can pretend it doesn't exist - or prevent people from being pissed off that they live in a state that doesn't get the holiday more generally.

[Thad]

Right, postal workers and other federal employees won't work on Juneteenth.

I don't know how much kids will notice that tomorrow's a day off for some people but not for their school, though. I don't remember anybody in the Tempe districts where I went to school complaining that we didn't get Columbus Day, for example.

Granted, Columbus Day sucks. But kids still like days off.

[Mongrel]

You know, I would have guessed this was still pretty bad, but even my cynical ass wouldn't have guessed it was this bad.


Just imagine how bad it gets when you remove student athletes from the math...

[Thad]

Welp, Scott Adams announced a few months back that he was trying to get himself cancelled and this weekend he finally succeeded.

JuliusGoat has a pretty decent summary (Mastodon thread) but the gist is Rasmussen conducted a poll with a shitty loaded question and Adams used it as an opportunity to say Black people are a hate group and white people should stay away from them and several hundred newspapers have subsequently dropped Dilbert.

I was a big Dilbert fan back in the '90s and it's been...something, watching the mask come off over the past 25 years, slowly at first but accelerating as time went on. I think the first time I started getting wise to his game was in one of his books in the '90s; he'd introduced a character named Tina the Brittle Tech Writer, and the joke was that she got offended by everything everybody said for no reason. In the book he had a smug little essay about how people had written in to complain about Tina as a sexist stereotype, but what are they talking about, there's no such stereotype that women are "brittle", and by seeing something offensive where no such offensive thing exists, they're just proving his point that some people get offended by every little thing for no reason.

Over time I came to recognize what he was doing, and it's standard bigoted-troll stuff -- say something racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted and then gaslight and claim there's nothing bigoted about it, throw in some sealioning "can you explain why what I said is bigoted" defense, and if people choose not to engage, then claim victory because they couldn't explain it, and if they do respond, rephrase the question and ask it again; repeat forever.

I'd say it's like talking to Guild, but that's not quite right; it's more like talking to the guy in the Techdirt comments who would repeatedly demand to know what was so racist about calling people "illegals" and then declare victory when people refused to play his game.

And, y'know, I'll give him one thing: Scott Adams is good at that. He's good at trolling. He's good at riling people up and then feigning innocence and acting like he's above it all and everybody else is misunderstanding or overreacting, and making his cultists defend him all the more ardently and goading his critics into continuing to engage with him.

Anyway, he's been trying to find the line that would get his papers to finally fire him for years, and it looks like he's finally found it. I suspect he wanted to retire anyway and was looking for a way to get attention and play the victim while doing it, so it's hard to consider this a victory, exactly. But at least the mainstream press is finally acknowledging him for what he is.