Wednesday, February 13, 2008

White Guilt

I had a recent post on the subject of bogus racial discrimination lawsuits. Two posters suggested that the way to eliminate bogus discrimination lawsuits would be for employers not to discriminate. Huh? By that way of thinking, bogus discrimination lawsuits only occur after actual discrimination. Or to put it another way, there is no such thing as a bogus discrimination lawsuit. If we proceed logically down this illogical path, we realize that a white person is guilty of whatever accusation is leveled at them by a minority. If you are white, you must be guilty.

White equals guilt is the absurd conclusion one must reach if you think the way to end bogus discrimination lawsuits is to first eliminate discrimination. But I am afraid that what I consider absurd- that white equals guilt- is actually believed by many many people, including large numbers of white people.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This by far, has got to be one of your most mindless anecdotes to date.

Please explain how discrimination claims made by whites play into your "white equals guilt" theory?

Denis Navratil said...

It may appears mindless to you for reasons that I can't control. I will be happy to try to clarify any points that remain unclear to you.

However, I did not make any statement concerning discrimination claims by whites, therefore I will be unable to clarify a statement that I did not make.

Perhaps you are confused because I have attempted to proceed logically from the illogical starting point offered by two posters. Perhaps you are one of them. Anyway, the result in following illogical ideas to there "logical" conclusion is inevitably absurdity. Thus when someone suggests the absurd idea that the way to end bogus discrimination lawsuits is to first stop discrimination, one will inevitably lead to more falsehoods when using similarly flawed logic.

Caledonication said...

Even mindless anecdotes can be prevented simply by being absurd.

Nemo said...

Anon’s foibles with logic could be starting with a false premise, that will always lead to a false conclusion, but he could also be running afoul the laws of logic concerning existential and universal qualifiers. If everyone in a universe discriminates, then every discrimination suit in this universe would have merit and there would not exist one bogus suit. However, if in a universe where there exists at least one person that does not discriminate, there could exist a least one bogus suit. Anon could be starting with the existential premise and concluding the universal deduction. This would be an inconsistent application of logic and lead to a false conclusion. Then again, Anon could just be a Liberal. This would make him usually confused (existential) and always wrong (universial).

Anonymous said...

I wonder why we don't have sales in the big stores for Martin Luther King Day? I guess that would be disrespectful.

Does anyone want a ride next Monday - I'm going to several sales that honor Presidents Washington and Lincoln. Anyone need a new washer/dryer while I'm there?

Off the subject sort of but I'm in the food for thought mood. When does a burial ground go from being untouchable to a really cool archeaological dig? There are cemetaries in New England that date to the 16th century but we don't dig them up (unless they are in the way of a Mayor Daley construction project), yet we have no problem with digging up Indian burial grounds that are less than two centuries old, unless some tribe steps forward with lawsuits to block it. I know King Tut was rich and had beautiful jewelry but didn't he have a right to stay buried instead of making the career of some National Geographic photographer?