Excellent. I am new here, (In fact, this is my first comment.) and I wonder if it is okay to ask to quote someone elsewhere. I would like to quote this comment on Facebook.

You want scientific facts! here ya go; There is more genetic chemical differences between the 4 blood types than there is between a white man and a black man of the same blood type. The chemical that determines skin color is so insignificant it is difficult to measure. Now, for a real difference between human like entities, hear this; There just may be only two racial human like entities on this planet. The first and one inwhich is likely favored in creation is 'Conscious Human Beings' possessing a conscience, a subconscious, a mind and a powerful connection to the ether (a consequence of creation) The second, we often find in the ruleless class, otherwise known as parasitical humanoids, devoid of conscience, not conscious, no subconscious and no mind. Only a dysfunctional brain and external in nature. Most probably genetically related to the offspring of the 'Fallen idiots' in the book of Enoch whom fell favor to our sons, daughters and quite probably our animal kingdom. They were the most vial creatures in creation. A virtual FAILED experiment!...Oh, and we likely did NOT evolve from monkey. Laughing out loud!

This I think is the opening quote from her article. I first read it in 1979, and the opening sentence sums it up nicely.

Heh. Perhaps I was not clear in my initial reply to your first-tier comment. But please read it again. And please re-read the opening "Note" under the title at the top of this page. I'll also try re-phrasing my point.

This is a thread about Ayn Rand's article, "Racism," in her book, The Virtue Of Selfishness. I think it will be more useful for discussion and keeping on topic if only pertinent Rand quotes are used for first-tier comments. All discussion will be in reply to those quotes or others' comments.

You are correct: it sounds like your comment about racism/collectivism is from The VOS. All of these quotes are. This is a thread about "Racism" in The VOS. In fact, I believe the quote you have in mind is the very first sentence in her chapter, the very first quote that I posted. Now it is at the very bottom of this post, because nobody has up-voted it yet, and non-quote comments will only compound the problem. http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/387a6793/racism-from-the-virtue-of-selfishness-by-ayn-rand~7a27e5d7kbci3h7pp7ubjukfxy

This is not working the way I envisioned. Oh well.

I completely agree. And if discrimination of all kinds were legalized, most people I know would run right out and discriminate -- based on behavior and character, as we should have gotten to do all along.

Oh that I could bring Martin Luther King back from the grave for one day, so he could speak about how his alleged heirs have tarnished his legacy and prevented his dream from happening.

The problem is that you may think you know what you mean by race, but someone else may have a different classification. If you try to find a scientific list of races, it doesn't exist. The concept has no scientific meaning.

Scientists do classify people into ethnic groups but there are a very large number of them. One of them is "Mary's Igloo". Around 1900 there was a village in Alaska named Mary's Igloo because traders went there to see Mary for her 'coffee'. She apparently made great coffee because a village grew up. There was then a tuberculosis epidemic and the village was decimated. Eventually everyone left and no one lives there anymore. But it is a recognized ethnic group which has descendants elsewhere.

I used to believe that there were human races. When I wrote our laboratory information system product I deliberately left out race. However a number of places have wanted me to add it. However each of the countries we have customers in has a different table. To try to come up with some authoritative list I went searching. When I got to Mary's Igloo, I gave up.

Race is a political construct.

I guess that I "over-abbreviated." I was under the impression you wanted to know where my posting that Rand's equating racism with collectivism came from. My answer was that it came from my memory and I suspected that my memory was of "The Virtue of Selfishness."

Again, read what I wrote. Just because the races ARE different doesn't mean that they should be TREATED different.

The problem is that if you actually try to define race and separate out people into it the concept breaks down. There is no consensus on what races there are, each government uses different groups.

And that's before you even consider the fact that we are aggressively intermarrying.

What race is Barack Obama?

Except that's not true at all. Race isn't just a fictional construct of what color your eyes are or what color your skin is. It goes much deeper than that. One group of people that had to develop and evolve living in a desert will be very different than a group of people that had to develop and evolve living in the Arctic. Thinking otherwise is just ignoring reality. A still is A.

While the government, mainly liberals, do have a stake in stoking racial discontent, that does not mean that there is no such thing as race. That is a non-sequitur.

There are no races in our species. "Race" is a social construct based on self identification per the Federal government guidelines since the 90s when our knowledge of genetics advanced to the point where it was clear there are no races in our species.

Genetics and the Federal government that has an interest in maintaining the race discussion disagree. There are more genetic differences within a historical "race" than there there are in the slight differences (appearance) that define the historical "races". The melanin that creates blue eyes and green eyes are no more defining of a "race" than the melanin that defines skin color.

See my comments on this aspect of the problem elsewhere in this topic thread. We too often excuse and therefore validate racism and racists when they retreat behind their property lines. Objectivism is not a philosophy of toleration.

"Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue – and can be fought only by private means, such as economic boycott or social ostracism."

Private racism remains immoral because it is irrational. How do you react to that?

A historian of capitalism, Ernst Samhaber, said "A good merchant does not argue religion with his customer." Other people's idiocies are not your concern as long as you get the goods or services you want at the price you are willing to pay. On the other hand, the fundamental message of Atlas Shrugged is that you do not work for your destroyers.

So, if I needed a wedding cake and if I knew that a shop refused to decorate cakes for gays, I would go somewhere else, the same as I would if they refused to serve Jews or disabled veterans.

“Like every other form of collectivism, racism is a quest for the unearned. It is a quest for automatic knowledge – for an automatic evaluation of men’s characters that by-passes the responsibility of exercising rational or moral judgment – and, above all, a quest for an automatic self-esteem (or pseudo-self-esteem).”

Excellent. The quest for unearned judgement. Pseudo self-esteem.

"But the question must not be whether a group recognizable in color, features or culture has its rights has a group. No, the question is whether any American individual, regardless of color, features or culture, is deprived of his rights as an American. If the individual has all the rights and privileges due him under the laws and the Constitution, we need not worry about groups and masses--those do not, in fact, exist, except as figures of speech." -- New York Times quoted at the conclusion of "Racism" by Ayn Rand.

"... racism has only one psychological root: the racist's sense of his own inferiority. … To ascribe one's virtues to one's racial origin, is to confess that one has no knowledge of the process by which virtues are acquired and, most often, that one has failed to acquire."

And it is shameful that no conservatives spoke out against those laws -- and that Rand's essay on the subject stands as the sole monument to individualist analysis of the social problem of discrimination.

Several fallacies are imbedded in that. We can grant that when Whitney Young said "men" he meant "people" as Rand herself and others of a previous generation did. English grammar forced that; we still have no good solutions. I force "they… their" when I can.

That wider discussion though remains unaddressed: If two people are equally qualified, hire the one whose nominal ancestors suffered the most in the past. That forces people to think only terms of groups at least by ethnicity, religion, and gender … if not by occupation, and shoe size… (Have you ever seen Walt Disney's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" where the chorus sings about Ichabod Crane, "are those shovels or are those feet?")

The question left unasked is how we know that two people are equally qualified for a job -- including the job of cutting your hair, fixing your car, or operating on your heart… (I know that time is running out, but somewhere in this country, there must be a gay Black female cardiologist in a wheelchair.)

The real discriminations that we still suffer regardless of our nominally "equal" qualifications often have to do with whose class ring you wear.

Racism is prejudice with power. In our society today, it is all too easy to find all kinds of people with all kinds of power.

What does this mean? What is "it," and what is "The virtue...", and how does this relate to what my comment you are replying to?

What? There most definitely ARE races that separate man kind. Differences in evolution, lifestyle, diet, and in life dangers clearly separated the races after that first monkey fell out of that first tree. All of these things are verifiable by tracking things like body structure, genetic diseases, illness proclivities, and even intelligence. Only a fool who wants to stay ignorant of reality says otherwise.

Now, even though the races ARE DIFFERENT, doesn't mean that they should be treated different. And that doesn't mean that races aren't disappearing, and will continue to disappear with the modern world involving easy travel, inter-marrying, and the sharing of knowledge. But 30,000 years of separate evolution will not be wiped out by 30 years of pretending it didn't happen. It may take several hundred years for all the different races to get molded into one. And even then, some sort of external factor may, yet again, separate the races into something different. Earth dwellers vs. Mars dwellers, for example. Under the Ocean inhabitants vs. Mountain Inhabitants.

This is where we still open the door to racist conservatives today. The argument that you have right to discriminate on the basis of race (or religion, etc.), is irrelevant to the fundamental issue of racism. Objectivism is a philosophy of reality and reason. Toleration for stupidity is not one of the principal tenets.

By comparison, we generally agree that the so-called "war on drugs" has been a 40- or even 80-year failure. But no one asserts their right to heroin or meth or crack, even as some states are finally legalizing marijuana. And on that point, many Objectivists will assert that smoking pot is at least as harmful as drunkenness. There may be chemicals that enhance creativity, focus, etc., but we are far from finding them - and they are not the subject of the drug law debates. No one is trying to get tons of vasopressin into the country. Massive police sweeps do not imprison college kids for taking Adderall during finals. So, that is not the discussion. The fact remains that no one positively asserts their right to smack, crack, and meth. … but some conservatives still do assert their right to discriminate on the basis of race (gender, etc.). (And, yes, other self-identified persons of whatever advocate "keeping to our own kind.")

Alternately, when we have the interminable debates on religion, the theists do not hunker down behind their political right to believe. Whatever their metaphysical arguments, the claims made (at least here in the Gulch) at least tend to be intellectually defensible. Racism is not. So, the racists must turn to hollow claims about their property rights in order to win tacit approval of their ignorance.

When Objectivists grant that point, we fail to assert the more fundamental truths about the reality and logic of ethical individualism.

I'm going by memory, but I suspect it came from "The virtue..."

I will too. One of the values of the Gulch is that it can serve as a touchstone to 'feel out' the functionally valid borderlands of the Randist philosophical landscape.

Jan

I see the quotas and 1964 Civil Rights Bill, etc., as the wrong ways to do the right thing. Lacking an objective philosophy, people did not and do not have a good understanding of the real problem and therefore its solution.

That said, I agree with the intention of your comment: racism (sexism, etc.) came to an end not because of high-minded leaders bringing it down to us, but from the people of the USA and other civilized places agreeing that it was wrong. That forced the change. (The same applies to 14th Amendment protection for gay marriage.) However, the political solutions bring more problems than they solve.