Which is yet another reason why New Mexico is awesome. I find drivers there, while somewhat batshit crazy, to be at least competent. When they're not drunk.

Good lord.

There are a number of interesting things going on in your post, not least of which is you having a conversation with someone who does not actually appear to be myself. Let's just forget what the other guy said - if he feels like it, he can chime in, but, frankly, if I were him, I'd stay the hell away.

What I think, is that the impact of racism is magnified by the power of the group that is racist. What you're not getting is I'm applying this at the level of society, you're applying it at the level of a small group of people. At the low level, duh, of course the group of people beating on the individual have more power than the individual, whatever their race. But, move up to the level of the society as a whole - one of those two groups is going to have more power, that's the group who's racism will have the greater impact.

Think about it this way. Hypothetically say you have a society that is 10% one race, 90% another (notice that I'm not saying black or white - that makes no freaking difference). Say both races are equally racist towards one another. Say that tha majority group happens to have vastly more political/social power as the minority. What I am saying is that despite both groups being equally racist, there will be more racist acts by the powerful majority towards the less powerful minority than vice versa. And so, while each individual act is equally bad, there's more badness flowing in one direction.

So yes, it is just as bad and not as bad, as you so eloquently put it. You simply need to be able to look at the issue at the level of the individual incident and in the aggregate.

That said, since you concluded your well written argument by apparently using racist as a synonym for "I disagree with you," followed by the interesting claim that I had equated whiteness with racism, I suspect there's the outside chance that you will not quite agree with this argument. I welcome further, well reasoned, points.

Well, if by majority group, he meant simple numeric majority, and not whichever group held the majority of power, than I disagree with him. I don't think that's what he intended though (though I'll let him speak for himself). I think he was probably simply limiting his viewpoint to the US, where the black minority also happens to be the out group with less power. As you mention, the situation is reversed in apartheid-era South Africa where, no, I am most certainly am not claiming that racism by whites had less of an impact than racism against blacks.

What I am arguing is that the impact of racism is dependent upon the relative power of the racist group. If that group has little power to act upon their racism, then the impact of it will be less, as will the overall harm.

I'm missing where you start talking about an entire group of people spread out over a long period of time - all I see is one black guy getting beat up by a bunch of white guys, and one white guy getting beat up by a bunch of black guys. No, that's not an anecdote with specific names, but it certainly isn't a huge dataset.

But sure, each of those two examples is equally bad. My point, and the point of the original guy making the point, is that the case of the black guy getting beat up by a bunch of white guys will, by virtue of the fact that the white guys have the power, happen far more often. Thus the overall harm inflicted by cases resembling the first (white on black) will far exceed those inflicted by cases resembling the second (black on white). And from that we can see that the overall social impact of the first type is greater and more detrimental.

I confess I do not understand what about that statement, exactly, is racist.

There is some intersection between veganism and straight-edge. And yes, there is a small straight edge subset that can be violent. And I vaguely recall reading some article about 10 years back, talking about a violent straight edge scene in Utah. So this isn't like a totally random thing.

That said, the actions actually taken by the school are basically retarded.

He's not talking about individual cases, but about the impact of racism spread out over society. In other words, racism on the part of the group with power tends to have a more detrimental impact on the out group. Conversely, racism on the part of the less powerful out group has less of an impact on the group with power.

In other words, he's talking data; you're talking anecdote.

I read them all. In my defense I was 13 at the time. I also rather quickly realized that they were propaganistic drivel, but was compelled to keep reading to find out what happened (as in Battlefield Earth, there was a semi-compelling story buried in all the crap). Frankly, I wish I hadn't.

I'll agree that ignoring someone who is clearly in need of help makes you a not-decent person. No argument there. That said, I don't think we should have laws mandating that one be a decent person. That starts to get into some gray areas that I don't like at all.

And yes, I know that's not really what you're arguing for - you're simply saying that in the specific instance of witnessing a crime, one should be required to 'do the decent thing' and call the police. I just think that leaves a lot of room for generalization and scope creep. And I don't like that one bit.

Yes, I would rather that I lived in society where no one was a dick to anyone else. But no, I don't want that society if it comes as a result of a law saying 'Don't be a dick.'

Which is why, of course, those forests were lucky that we came along to save them from themselves. Good lord, imagine if humanity hadn't shown up? Why, we might have had a global firestorm reducing all around to barren waste within the next 2 or 3 hundred million years.

No, they're not evil. In the grand scheme of things, a forest, even a mostly monoculture forest, is better than a wasteland. But, I would argue that this monoculture is not even remotely the equivalent of the diverse ecosystem that it replaced. Could it eventually become something a bit more diverse, in time? Sure. So could a corn field, if left alone long enough.

The thing that's happening here is that what's becoming more obvious to the general public is the sort of fuzziness of scientific truth. From the scientific perspective, this isn't exactly a huge revelation. You're always sort of struggling towards this "Truth" which is always going to be unreachable and the process of struggling is messy and politicized. Big deal. Happens in physics just as much as in climatology, just that the latter involves way more money and touches directly on areas of public policy.

But the problem is that the public still has this illusion, on some level or another, of what science is, reifying it as this pure pursuit of a knowledge that is, in the end, both perfectly attainable and absolute. When you acknowledge the fuzziness, they see that as an acknowledgement that the whole lot is fallible and sort of useless. It's the whole multiple definition of "theory" thing all over again. The public is a lot less comfortable with doubt, messy processes and fuzzy goals than are scientists.

Similar experience for me. Used to read them all the time. When they went pay, I stuck with it for a bit, using that kind of confusing advertising funded day pass thing. Then I just sort of stopped. Back around the election I started checking them out again, and was surprised to find them totally open. But, even with the openness, and even knowing that they actually have some fairly good articles, I'd gotten into a routine of only really checking a few key news-type sites. Salon wasn't in that routine, so I have to make an effort to remember to look at it. Says more about my own laziness, I suppose, but I doubt I'm the only one.