Tag Archives: White Supremacy

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Science Must Not Be Used to Foster White Supremacy – Scientific American

May 25, 2022 DrWeb

It’s scientists’ responsibility to reveal the inherent biases of studies used to disparage Black people and other groups

By Janet D. Stemwedel, May 24, 2022

A Buffalo resident covers his face with his hands near a memorial for the victims of a mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market at Jefferson Avenue and Riley Street on Thursday, May 19, 2022 in Buffalo, N.Y. The fatal shooting of 10 people at a grocery store in a historically Black neighborhood of Buffalo by a young white gunman is being investigated as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism, according to federal officials. Credit: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The white supremacist who drove 200 miles to a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket and opened fire, killing 10 people, had posted a screed.

Most of the people he killed were Black. The document’s 180 pages cited not only racist conspiracy theories, but also scientific research on behavioral genetics. The research focused on finding heritable differences in IQ and propensity to violence between racial groups.

There’s no reason to believe, on the basis of his screed, that the Buffalo shooter understood, or even read, the scientific papers. It’s more likely that he collected them, like the racist tropes he reproduced in the document, from message boards and social media channels whose users latch on to titles that seem to promise scientific support for white supremacy.

Scientists who research genetic bases for complex behavioral traits using genome-wide association studies have urged care in the conclusions drawn from population means, and especially in how their scientific results are communicated to general audiences.

But there is compelling evidence that research on the evolution of sociobehavioral traits finds an eager audience among white nationalists.

Source: Science Must Not Be Used to Foster White Supremacy – Scientific American

Arts & Humanities, Current Affairs, Memories & History, Politics

The Mantra of White Supremacy – The Atlantic

December 8, 2021 DrWeb

The idea that anti-racist is a code word for “anti-white” is the claim of avowed extremists.

By Ibram X. Kendi, November 30, 2021

About the author: Ibram X. Kendi is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and the director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. He is the author of several books, including the National Book Award–winning Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and How to Be an Antiracist.

Below a Democratic donkey, the Fox News graphic read ANTI-WHITE MANIA. It flanked Tucker Carlson’s face and overtook it in size. It was unmistakable. Which was the point.

The segment aired on June 25—the height of the manic attack on, and redefinition of, critical race theory, which Carlson has repeatedly cast as “anti-white.” It was one of his most incendiary segments of the year. “The question is, and this is the question we should be meditating on, day in and day out, is how do we get out of this vortex, the cycle, before it’s too late?” Carlson asked. “How do we save this country before we become Rwanda?”

Source: The Mantra of White Supremacy – The Atlantic

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Memories & History, Politics, Travel

UNC eyes new names for 3 buildings tied to white supremacy | Charlotte Observer

April 11, 2021 DrWeb

The Associated Press, April 10, 2021 12:43 PM

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.

The University of North Carolina is eying new names for three buildings on its flagship Chapel Hill campus named for people with white supremacist and racist ties.The News & Observer reports that an advisory committee met Thursday to discuss potential names. The committee will select a list of names for the university’s chancellor to consider recommending to the board of trustees.

Source: UNC eyes new names for 3 buildings tied to white supremacy | Charlotte Observer

Arts & Humanities, Film & Movies, Memories & History, Politics

“Exterminate All the Brutes,” Reviewed: A Vast, Agonizing History of White Supremacy | The New Yorker

April 11, 2021 DrWeb

Raoul Peck’s four-hour documentary on HBO Max reveals the racist underpinnings of American national mythology and European society.

Drawing on archival material and the work of historians, the film distills the legacies of colonialism and racism.Photograph courtesy HBO

By Richard Brody, April 9, 2021

The new four-part series by Raoul Peck, “Exterminate All the Brutes,” that’s streaming on HBO Max belongs to an exceptional genre: it is, in effect, an illustrated lecture, or a cinematic podcast.

Which is to say that it’s an essay-film, a film of ideas, that are for the most part expressed by Peck himself, in his own voice-over, which nearly fills the movie’s soundtrack from start to finish.

The four-hour film is in the vein of Peck’s previous essay-film, “I Am Not Your Negro,” which focuses on James Baldwin’s work. “Exterminate All the Brutes” is similarly an intellectual effort.

And, like “I Am Not Your Negro,” it introduces and distills, from Peck’s own perspective, extant writings, this time by three historians who study colonialism and racism. Unlike the earlier film, though, the new one doesn’t offer much in the way of film clips from the writers themselves, and doesn’t (at least, doesn’t claim to) quote directly from their work. It is literally a film in Peck’s voice, and that strength, and that audacity, also gives rise to its artistic peculiarities.

Source: “Exterminate All the Brutes,” Reviewed: A Vast, Agonizing History of White Supremacy | The New Yorker