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Wilfred Reilly Profile picture
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24 Feb, 4 tweets, 1 min read
The idea that there are words that cannot even be mentioned when condemning them is just Voldemort-level bullshit. Magic isn't real, gang.
(2) In the absence of many real - or, at least, perceivable - problems of racial/regional conflict in the average person's life, we're literally just redefining non-problems as problems to justify everything from individual excuses to political movements.
(3) This doesn't even mean there are no racial issues. Blacks can wonder about mortgage lending, or whites gripe about affirmative action. But, those are issues of slight variance within massive systems. Noone is often racially insulting you...unless you redefine what that means.
(4) Last post-to-thread: I really do not think there are many, if any, young Americans GENUINELY offended by a teacher reading Huck Finn aloud or a Hispanic buddy saying "my nig*a" while rapping. But, within that claim lies power.

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More from @wil_da_beast630

Wilfred Reilly Profile picture
24 Feb
There is no logical/mathematical argument that people should take an anti-viral vaccine that is 95+% effective - per Israeli data - against a virus that itself poses a 1/5,000 risk of death to healthy non-seniors...and then continue wearing 2-3 face masks and socially isolating.
(2) I keep saying this, because the underlying argument here is so dangerous for freedom: "If you have a 1/20 chance...of causing me a 1/5K risk...given (say) 1/100 odds you HAVE The Thing on Day X...stay inside!!!"

This logic could be used to ban literally anything.
(3) For those saying my first post only breaks down the risks to ME...ok: the risk you pose to someone ELSE post vaxx would be (1/20+ (your daily risk of having COVID) x 1/200-5,000 (average risk to them) x 1/20+ (vaccine risk reduction)). That's a 1/80,000 to 1/2,000,000 risk.
Read 5 tweets
Wilfred Reilly Profile picture
20 Feb
A good quick definition of "equity," in the legal sense of what activists want, would be "treating people/groups as differently as is needed to achieve equal outcomes."
(2) The problem, again, is the Sowell-less assumption that all group gaps must be due to current or past bias. This often makes no sense. Hispanic immigrants don't earn less than Black or Appalachian folks because they suffered more here historically. Same for whites v Asians.
(3) For that matter, for both poor Black AND white communities, many of the most serious problems - fatherlessness, hyper-high crime - date to 1960s welfare culture rather than to the deep past, and are unlikely to be solved by offering more unearned money or college slots today.
Read 4 tweets
Wilfred Reilly Profile picture
13 Feb
I make four basic points about racism. 1st, there obviously is mild but REAL racism in the USA...like every human society. Studies find that that 8% of whites wouldn't vote for a qualified Black President (Pew 2016), Blacks are 6-9% less likely to be rented a nice apartment, etc.
(2) But, it can't be ignored that the USA spent an EXTRAORDINARY amount of blood/treasure compensating for racism this century. Brown v. Board dates back to 1954, the Civil Rights Act made discrimination ILLEGAL in '64, and pro-minority affirmative action dates to 1967.
(3) In the context of this actual history, we don't see "oppression" today as much as a complex mix of advantages for whites and POC. A Black or Hispanic student has a 200-300 point SAT advantage (Sander & Taylor 2012) over an equally qualified white kid when applying to college.
Read 6 tweets
Wilfred Reilly Profile picture
11 Feb
Subtle racism DOES exist. When I was in the nightlife business, a life-world ago, clubs paid a promoter friend $5 per head to bring in patrons. NO club - not one: white, Black, Hispanic - would pay for fighting-age males of their non-primary race, and this hit POC the hardest.
(2) The real question is how much impact this sort of thing - which is what probably 90% of good Sociological studies focus on finding - has in the real world, where it is countered by less-often-studied affirmative action, majority non-racism, and MINORITY group preferences.
(3) My take, looking at U.S. group income and education data is: not much. Many/most of the most successful groups in the USA (Indians, E. Asians, Nigerians) are POC, and even W/B gaps largely collapse after basic adjustments for things like age, region, and test scores.
Read 4 tweets
Wilfred Reilly Profile picture
2 Feb
Short thread: my page has a pretty high healthy-banter level, and I often get asked: "Do you write off twitter?"

Yes. I've put out quite a few pieces lately. This is an article for the academically-focused 'Minding the Campus' series, with @NASorg: mindingthecampus.org/2021/01/28/the…
(2) This, for @Quillette, is an empirical analysis of the effect of police pullbacks - and other variables, such as the COVID-19 pandemic itself - on murder/major crime in 2020. quillette.com/2021/01/27/did…
(3) Here, for @amspectator, I "jokingly" compare modern wokeness to traditional religion. Totally original idea, of course! spectator.org/wokeness-relig…
Read 5 tweets
Wilfred Reilly Profile picture
31 Jan
The biggest "conspiracy theory" in the USA today is that there are massively powerful but almost entirely hidden racist forces at work, which explain every single discrepancy in performance between whites and POC, but somehow don't affect Asians or Nigerians at all.
(2) What does explain gaps? Dozens of empiricists (Sowell, O'Neill, Chua, Fryer, etc.) have found that adjusting for cultural/situational variables that differ between groups - mean AGE, region of residence (the South?), basic qualifications like SAT score - closes ~all of them.
(3) This doesn't mean Black or Native (or Appalachian) Americans can't be disadvantaged as re income/schooling by PAST conflict. It DOES mean no "subtle, untrackable" demons will cause a Nigerian Penn Stater with a solid 1300 GRE to have a very different life from a white peer.
Read 5 tweets

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