Showing posts with label NBA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NBA. Show all posts

Friday, May 23, 2014

Should Mark Cuban Get the Donald Sterling Treatment? Notes on Prejudice

Rarely do I disagree with Bill V.  Here is no exception to that rule.  Money quotes:

"The problem is not so much that liberals are stupid, as that they have allowed themselves to be stupefied by that cognitive aberration known as political correctness."
 
"It is the willful self-enstupidation of liberals that unfits them for the appreciation of such commonsensical points  as I have just reiterated."
 

Bill Plaschke of the L. A. Times lays into Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, for statements like these:
“I mean, we’re all prejudiced in one way or another,” he said. “If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face – white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere – I’m walking back to the other side of the street.  And the list goes on of stereotypes we all live up to and are fearful of.”
The word 'prejudice' needs analysis.  At a bare minimum, two senses of the term ought to be distinguished.
 
'Prejudice' could refer to blind prejudice: unreasoning, reflexive (as opposed to reflective) aversion to what is other just because it is other, or an unreasoning pro-attitude toward the familiar just because it is familiar.  We should all condemn blind prejudice, or at least blind prejudice of the aversive sort.  It is execrable to hate a person just because he is of a different color, for example. No doubt, but how many people do that?  How many people who are averse to blacks are averse because of their skin color as opposed to their behavior patterns? Racial prejudice is not, in the main, prejudice based on skin color, but on behavior.
 
'Prejudice' could also mean 'prejudgment.'   Although blind aversive prejudice is bad, prejudgment is generally good.  We cannot begin our cognitive lives anew at every instant.  We rely upon the 'sedimentation' of past experience.  Changing the metaphor, we can think of prejudgments as distillations from experience.  The first time I 'serve' my cats whisky they are curious.  After that, they cannot be tempted to come near a shot glass of Jim Beam. They distill from their unpleasant olfactory experiences a well-grounded prejudice against the products of the distillery.
 
My prejudgments about rattlesnakes are in place and have been for a long time.  I don't need to learn about them afresh at each new encounter with one. I do not treat each new one encountered as a 'unique individual,' whatever that might mean.  Prejudgments are not blind, but experience-based, and they are mostly true. The adult mind is not a tabula rasa.  What experience has written, she retains, and that's all to the good.
 
So there is good prejudice and there is bad prejudice.  The teenager thinks his father prejudiced in the bad sense when he warns the son not to go into certain parts of town after dark.  Later the son learns that the old man was not such a bigot after all: the father's prejudice was not blind but had a fundamentum in re.
 
But if you stay away from certain parts of town are you not 'discriminating' against them?  Well of course, but not all discrimination is bad. Everybody discriminates.  Liberals are especially discriminating.  The typical Scottsdale liberal would not be caught dead supping in some of the Apache Junction dives I have been found in.  Liberals discriminate in all sorts of ways.  That's why Scottsdale is Scottsdale and not Apache Junction.
 
Is the refusal to recognize same-sex 'marriage' as marriage discriminatory?  Of course!  But not all discrimination is bad.  Indeed, some is morally obligatory.  We discriminate against  felons when we disallow their possession of firearms.  Will you argue against that on the ground that it is discriminatory? If not, then you cannot cogently argue against the refusal to recognize same-sex 'marriage' on the ground that it is discriminatory.  You need a better argument.  And what would that be?
'Profiling,' like 'prejudice' and 'discrimination,' has come to acquire a wholly negative connotation.  Unjustly.  What's wrong with profiling?  We all do it, and we are justified in doing it.  Consider criminal profiling.
 
It is obvious that only certain kinds of people commit certain kinds of crimes. Suppose a rape has occurred at the corner of Fifth and Vermouth. Two males are moving away from the crime scene. One, the slower moving of the two, is a Jewish gentleman, 80 years of age, with a chess set under one arm and a copy of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed under the other. The other fellow, a vigorous twenty-year-old, is running from the scene.
 
Who is more likely to have committed the rape? If you can't answer this question, then you lack common sense.  But just to spell it out for you liberals: octogenarians are not known for their sexual prowess: the geezer is lucky if he can get it up for a three-minute romp.  Add chess playing and an interest in Maimonides and you have one harmless dude.
 
Or let's say you are walking down a street in Mesa, Arizona.  On one side of the
street you spy some fresh-faced Mormon youths, dressed in their 1950s attire, looking like little Romneys, exiting a Bible studies class.  On the other side of the street, Hells (no apostrophe!) Angels are coming out of their club house.  Which side of the street would you feel safer on?   On which side will your  concealed semi-auto .45 be more likely to see some use?
 
Do you struggle over this question?
 
The problem is not so much that liberals are stupid, as that they have allowed themselves to be stupefied by that cognitive aberration known as political correctness.
 
Their brains are addled by the equality fetish:  everybody is equal, they think, in every way.  So the vigorous 20-year-old is not more likely than the old man to have committed the rape.  The Mormon and the Hells Angel are equally law-abiding.  And the twenty-something Egyptian Muslim is no more likely to be a terrorist than the Mormon matron from Salt Lake City.
 
Getting back to Mark Cuban, what he is quoted as saying above makes perfect sense.  His prejudices are reasonable prejudgments.
If you walk like a thug, and talk like a thug, and dress like a thug, and are plastered with tattoos and facial hardware like a thug, then don't be surprised if people give you a wide berth.
 
It is the willful self-enstupidation of liberals that unfits them for the appreciation of such commonsensical points  as I have just reiterated.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

On the Racist Donald Sterling and the "Courage" of Adam Silver

Let's get this out of the way.  Donald Sterling is a racist.  Racism is morally bad.  I'll have more to say about Sterling's racism in a bit. Now on to what got this blog post started...

I was listening to NPR today and heard the following:
In the same breath, NBA commissioner Adam Silver was mentioned with JFK, and Silver's action of banning Don Sterling for life was compared favorably with the actions of LBJ.  Silver's courage is breathtaking. And so on.

Are we living on the same planet? JFK and LBJ comparisons?  Courageous?  Acting courageously is doing what you know is right or good in the face of great fear or peril.  Last I checked at ESPN, 80% of the voters said that they approved of the decision of Silver to ban Sterling for life.  EIGHTY PERCENT (the other 20% either thought it was too harsh or not harsh enough).  Last I checked, 95% of media pundits were calling for Sterling's head.  Call it what you want, but there is absolutely no evidence that Silver had to summon up an ounce of courage to ban Sterling for life.  We have little evidence that his action was anything more than a shrewd business decision, people.  He gave everybody what they wanted.  Not giving everyone what they want is more risky than facing a lawsuit from an old racist, pariah. But to compare Silver's action with some of the truly courageous actions of  the civil rights era is to make a mockery of courage as well as some of the courageous actions in the civil rights era.

I've also heard Don Sterling mentioned in the same breath with slave owners (and bizarrely on NPR with truck drivers (!?) until the person "of tolerance" realized she was stereotyping truck drivers and sports owners.  Ah, liberals and stereotyping, but I digress...).  There is some validity to the comparison with slave owners (which I'll get to in a moment), but let's catch our collective breaths for a second and think (THINK) about the extent to which the comparison holds.  Under what conditions are we imagining slaves in the U.S. to have suffered? If employing people to play a GAME voluntarily for millions of dollars is akin to being a slave owner, well then SIGN ME UP TO BE A SLAVE!!  

And am I the ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD who finds this statement ironic (from ESPN):
Sterling's $2.5 million fine will be donated to organizations dedicated to anti-discrimination and tolerance efforts that will be jointly selected by the NBA and the players' association, Silver said.
So, ummm, banning someone FOR LIFE isn't, say, a bit intolerant?  Would a church that banned a sinner from coming to church FOR LIFE because of a sin be, say, a bit intolerant?  

Look, I have little sympathy for Don Sterling.  The only sympathy I have is because Sterling is a human being like Magic Johnson and the rest of us and needs redemption.  And I have no problem with the NBA taking whatever business actions it likes towards the guy and condemning racist remarks.  But please don't promote this vague "virtue" of tolerance while at the same time expressing intolerance.  Don't be a sanctimonious hypocrite!  Tolerance is NOT intrinsically good.  Some things shouldn't be tolerated.  Whether expressing racist beliefs in one's house should be tolerated and in what circumstances is an open question.  

Finally, let's get to the heart of the issue with Don Sterling.  I listened to the entire 9 minutes of audio tape that TMZ released as well as the additional 5 minutes or so from Deadspin, and Sterling is definitely not someone I would want for an uncle!  There are the offensive racist remarks which everyone has talked about. And let's not forget that he is dating someone about 1/3 his age and we all know why (of course nobody is talking about that.  Our society condemns racist remarks in the bedroom but you can have whatever sex you want as long as it's consensual).  But from what I've seen no one mentions what he says to his girlfriend here (after some racist remarks in reply to his girlfriend asking him to change): "I don't want to change.  If my girl can't do what I want, I don't want the girl.  I'll find a girl that will do what I want. Believe me."

This is a miserable man who is (a) not averse to USING people as mere means and (b) racist "in his heart" (as his girlfriend correctly says at one point).  That is how he is most like a slave owner. Apparently, if we can take the news stories as true that the NAACP was about to honor this man, then plenty of his overt actions have not been racist actions.  But his willingness to treat people as mere means combined with his deep dislike of associating with black people is evidence of a corrupt soul

(Note to people who love throwing around terms like "hatred" and "racist" at the drop of a hat without defining them even if such labels might destroy another's life:  Racism comes in degrees. How racist is Sterling?  Well, he's racist enough, but how racist?  He said in the tape to his girlfriend that he is not racist.  He says at one point that he doesn't hate minorities.  Apparently he  has hired plenty of black coaches and staff members in comparison with other owners.  He seems really worried about what racist friends/family will think of him.  He thinks black Jews are less valuable than white Jews.  His girlfriend didn't indicate that she thought he hated blacks or minorities.  At one point his girlfriend said that she wasn't saying he is racist.  At other points she indicates she does think he is racist or has a racist heart and that he comes from a racist background.  So it's hard to know the extent of his racism.  It's hard to know the extent to which his racist heart leads him to racist actions.  There's little to no evidence on the tapes that he hates blacks or wants them destroyed.  There is plenty of evidence that he doesn't like to be associated with blacks or other minorities and thinks of them as in some way inferior).

Whether (and the extent to which) we should be tolerant of or punish people for their morally corrupt beliefsdesires, willingnesses, and statements apart from their other actions is something worth thinking about.  My inclination is that we should be much less inclined to punish the former than the latter since the former are less under our voluntary control.  To misquote a saying or two, "Stupid does as stupid is, and it's hard to fix stupid."