Quote:
Originally Posted by K-dog
First Seattle Schmuck, it isn't my folktale. As previously stated, I don't believe it. Unfortunately for you, it seems you didn't understand the argument I presented. The argument must be taken in vacuum. You must agree with and believe certain things. Once those are believed and agreed to, the argument does make a perverse form of sense and is in fact not racist. The crux of the argument is that the individual is being punished for actions previously committed. Therefore, you must assume a preexistence, you must assume that acts in that existence can effect this existence, you must assume a lot of things. If the individual is being punished for previously done acts, then withholding priesthood as punishment isn't racist because it is based on the previously done acts. To illustrate I will give the following example.
There are 200 people in society, 100 of those people came home late and were to be punished the next day. They were told to wear orange jumpsuits to the town square the next day where they would be punished. They wore their jumpsuits and were punished. The point is, they were not punished for wearing the jumpsuits, the jumpsuits were identification of coming home late.
As I've acknowledged, this argument requires a person to suspend belief and actually understand the mind set of those who make the argument but if you agree with them on everything else, it is understandable why they think it isn't racist. Personally, as stated before, I think refusing to allow black men to hold the priesthood was a racially motivated act. It had nothing to do with the preexistence. In fact, I believe this particular series of arguments were applied to the facts ex post facto in an effort to rationalize away the racial motivations. But my belief doesn't preclude my ability to understand their position and recognize the logic of it. Like you, I just don't agree with the assumptions they based their logic on.
In reference to your legal citation, I think you missed the point of the quote you cited. US jurisprudence is such that all actions that result in a statistically demonstrated racial bias against a disadvantaged group (as defined in said cases) should be subjected to the "most rigid scrutiny." It doesn't mean they are inappropriate, just that they just be viewed with utmost scrutiny to determine if they are inappropriate. I think you are correct in your statement that the arguments previously addressed don't stand up to the scrutiny but that doesn't mean their logic isn't sound. It just means that their arguments, taken in context, don't carry sufficient weight.
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But this is exactly what he was just saying. As long as the justification isn't based in empirical evidence, it is no justification at all. A group of black people could make up a story about white folks only being white because they were naughty in the pre-existence, and use it to justify lynchings, but that wouldn't make them any less racist.
You claim that it isn't racist if you are willing to assume that blacks were wicked in the pre-existence, but I say that the very belief that blacks were wicked in the pre-existence is, in itself, racist, and that any thoughts or actions based on that belief would also be racist.