A commenter going by the handle ‘Lee’ has been asking some pointed questions about how to respond to claims of discrimination. I tried to give a robust answer, which ended up ballooning into a full-length post. Lee: I’ll respond by bringing the two into one. If someone claims they have been discriminated against, or they …
Category Archive: skepticism
Dec 06 2012
More than time needed to heal some wounds
Earlier this week, fellow FTBorg Ashley Miller told a heart-wrenching story of being disowned by her father: He was with me for Thanksgiving, to meet my mom and stepdad and brother and rest of my family. Except my dad. My mother, who is much wiser than me and deserves full credit for being right, told …
Nov 26 2012
Two views of black masculinity
Circumstances have once again robbed me of the time and energy to dig too deep into blogging. Part of this is a massive paper that I have just finished – it looks at whether or not mandatory childhood vaccination is legally, ethically, and scientifically justified in a Canadian context. Part of it is prepping for …
Nov 21 2012
Priorities: Indigeneity or Secession?
How exactly do I even begin? My language choices throughout this piece are applied conscientiously. Selection of terminology used here is neither made carelessly nor in jest. I am struggling daily with a profound and genuinely increasing sense of dread, and this particular piece of writing is an attempt to account for this as concisely …
Nov 15 2012
States writes
One of the most challenging aspects of anti-racism is the fact that we can only usually measure racism as an absence of a better explanation. We see an inequality and then we try to rule out the other plausible explanations, and then say “it’s got to be explained by racism”. Because there is no objective …
Oct 29 2012
Looking at it sideways
We often use college course abbreviations to describe the various levels of social justice discussion. Someone might refer to a “101-level” conversation when we’re talking about identifying racism as a social construct rather than a biological reality. Trying to access the specific ways in which racial constructs impact the lived experiences of people might qualify …
Oct 22 2012
Episode 3: Where the Sidewalk ends
Xavier and I got together again and recorded another episode of our podcast. This week we talked about sexy sexy teenagers and flat Earthers on the internet. The video is below the fold. Also below the fold is a plea for help with naming this damn thing. We don’t have a clue what to call it, …
Oct 15 2012
The experiment continues, now with 50% more awesome
We recorded a second ‘episode’ of our podcast experiment this past week, and invited journalist and superstar atheist Jamila Bey to join us for a discussion of the results from a recent Pew Forum survey that shows that religious ‘nones’ represent an all-time high of 20% of the American population. The video is below the …
Oct 10 2012
Making it count
One of the most frustrating aspects of being involved in a social justice movement is coming to grips with the sheer scope of the problem. Social inequalities are grounded, more often than not, in centuries of history and the evolutionary detritus of human cognition. We can point to a handful of successes like the American …
Oct 05 2012
A Question of Authenticity
So the other day, I had written a post that was supposed to be about the strange dance away from logic that seems to be common on the fringes of the raw, organic food lifestyle (ROFL). What I ended up with however, was an extended detour into the social fascination with the concept of ‘authenticity’. I’m sure …
About the Author
Recent Comments