Sociologist Philip Cohen writes for the Southern Policy Law Center: These are commented excerpts from a Twitter conversation I had with a bunch of Trump-supporting racists on August 15.
It started with my complaining to Jesse Singal about a table he posted, of an analysis of body camera effects on police killings. The content isn't really important.
@steve_hanke @jessesingal You gonna seriously tweet that w/ no link to details? E.g., I missed where the "because" is on that table…
— Philip N Cohen (@familyunequal) August 15, 2016
The response from @JohnRiversToo was a pretty random, and very typical, racist tweet about how Blacks have low IQs and commit more crime.
.@familyunequal @jessesingal
Right. Blacks are more Violent and have lower IQs than Everyone Else.
It's genetic. pic.twitter.com/h5kYvlNopP— John Rivers (@JohnRiversToo) August 15, 2016
It’s typical and racist because it takes two disparate things – which each have their own whole set of issues and debates – and uses them to draw the obvious racist conclusion they started with in the first place: Blacks are dumb and violent. (If you don’t then “refute” these assertions then you can’t handle the truth – and if you try to respond you go down a rabbit hole of racist memes.) There is no point in arguing substance with someone who starts like this.
I didn’t even realize what JRT was responding to – I assumed it was about my latest blog post, which was about civility in cross-racial interactions at Hershey Park:
“This post combines my love of vacations (context), my habit of taking pictures of people in public places (data)*, and my sociological tendency to invent big conclusions from minor events (theory). As with last year’s selfie post , I hope you don’t take from this that I don’t really love vacations.”
Anyway, didn’t matter. He has 10,000 followers, and he summoned them with a couple common memes. One shows high Asian incomes, supposed to show that “white privilege is a lie”:
.@familyunequal
Good point. Asian Success proves White Privilege is a Lie
It’s a Myth, like Bigfoot or Rape Culture pic.twitter.com/MSF9Hpl0tQ— John Rivers (@JohnRiversToo) August 15, 2016
And one claiming “diversity” is about White genocide.
.@familyunequal
I know. Democrats hate White People.
But don't worry. Whites are waking up.
Very exciting times! pic.twitter.com/rbAHXwlnTt— John Rivers (@JohnRiversToo) August 15, 2016
Remember when we criticized AltRight for alleging that Jews aggressively support Islamic migration to the West? pic.twitter.com/56mBm2vGta
— American Hank (@_HankRearden) August 18, 2016
