Look, Sometimes I Do Write/Draw Things, I Promise

None Pizza with Left Beef is 10 years old today.

115 colonists: okay

governor: ends up spending 3 years in england bc of a naval war with spain or some shit

governor: gets back to the colony to find everyone gone

governer: sees the word “croatoan”, the name of a native american tribe, carved into a post

croatoan tribe: has members and children with blonde hair/blue eyes, pale skin

One problem I have is that some of the opinions are so illogical and so hateful, that I’m stunned into silence and can’t figure out how anyone could come to such a conclusion. This makes me ineffective in the discussion since I’m unable to make a counterpoint in the moment. Being exposed to the views prior to the comments is helpful to avoiding this reaction.

I thought it might be helpful to create a post sharing some of those ideas. Here are some I’ve heard so you can be shocked initially but then figure out a response:

If scientists are so smart, how come they die?

I was told this anti-science view given when discussing why we have to teach scientifically-sound concepts rather than religious concepts in school. The argument here is “Jesus is eternal, scientists are not; therefore Jesus > science”.

My eventual response involved asking if the person expected science to solve every problem, then asking if they know why people value science over religion. They argued that it was due to a love of sin and Satan, and I had to explain that science produces consistent results whereas religion does not, and so for teaching purposes it just makes more sense to teach the thing you can demonstrate as factual.

You have to remind this type of person that they still have their right to believe their religion and no one is taking that away…it’s just that, for general purposes, we can’t teach kids a specific religion’s unsupported ideas as fact. Then, to underscore it, I remind them that they wouldn’t want their child indoctrinated into a different religion at school.

God gave us America, so he won’t let us hurt it.

This is an argument against why we should care about and not damage the environment. Targument here is “We shouldn’t be inconvenienced and over-charged for a lie of the non-believers.”

The angle I took was not to speak on the evidence of climate change but rather to speak about something easier to understand, so I said, “Even if climate change is a liberal conspiracy, don’t you agree that we should have clean air and water that isn’t poisonous to drink?”

I was surprised with one response to this (I’ve unfortunately had this same discussion multiple times), which was: “Yeah, but those Jewish doctors cured asthma! So God always finds a way!” I explained that asthma is not cured and it causes less suffering to just avoid causing the illness rather than causing the illness and waiting on God to give us a cure decades later.

Black people are just genetically less intelligent than whites. After all, look at Africa. If they were intelligent, why does Africa struggle so much?

This unsubstantiated argument is to support segregation and paying less money to Black employees. The first time I heard this was on a college campus.

The way I’ve found to argue this is to ask what they know about humans, how different we are across races, the best genetic outcome for offspring, and the history of Africa and the African disspora. I recommend looking up things like colonization and institutionalized racism. The argument is simply one of lack of access to resources. I explain to them that poor white farmers in rural America are disadvantaged due to location, lack of home ownership, lack of educational access, and they agree. I tell them to remember that this same lack of support was placed on an entire race, and thus it would be wildly unrealistic to expect a person who is severely disadvantaged in terms of social and economic status to perform the same as a person who has no such issue, and to write it off as an intelligence problem is an unsupported claim. I also point out that, when given the same opportunities, Black people perform as well as anyone else, to include contributions to art, science, and more. Many inventions we still use today were created by Black inventors.

Show #1: three instances of “i want a lawyer” being code for This Person is Evil, the hero condescending to a domestic violence survivor about how it’s her fault her abuser isn’t in jail (she comes around after he nearly kills her and the cops have a snide “i told you so” moment), the resident social justice cop says body cams are good and gets scoffed at for being a shrill sjw by everyone else.

Show #2: five white cops have a completely dispassionate conversation over 2 murdered black boys who have not been mentioned again in the episode so far. white female cop spends a scene condescending to and making weird sexual jokes to the ruthless drug dealers (who are all black men). white man cop intimidating his black informant the entire episode in a way very blatantly framed as being cool.

The media you consume was not created in a void, the vast majority of it was wrung through an army of personnel to make it as profitable as possible. Do you know how many stories haven’t, and will never, see the light of day because of this? Having six billion cop shows isn’t a sign that we live in some creative freedom utopia, it’s a sign that an unfathomable amount of money goes into sanitizing and lionizing the police.