Man, you need to lie down and put a cold compress on your head. Everyone that hates CRT is a racist by definition? No one in their right mind would make hating CRT part of a definition of racism. And anyway, I don't hate it any more; I'm starting to think that the problem I had with it is that it's presented to people or interpreted to people by social theorists, and it's the social theorists I hate, not the underlying intellectual effort of CRT itself. The first Bell article had value; the Freeman and Delgado articles had value; not what I was expecting at all. And I read Crenshaw on intersectionality recently, and reviewed it here, and she's part of CRT, and I loved that. I would have given that one five stars, and probably will since I think it's in the book I'm working on. She ain't no so called white male.

"if white men are not doing something then it doesn't exist" - what? I didn't understand this statement at all. I'm claiming that any ethnic or racial group that does not marry so called black women is white by definition. My new definition, the one that leads to the cure.

Look, people have been calling out so called racists for sixty years, but the marriage rate of so called white guys with so called black women hasn't changed much in that time. What good has calling out racists ever done? Because that guy in California had to sell his basketball team, is the country less racist? Because some guy gets fired for saying something he shouldn't, is the country less racist? I don't think so. We're at 98% of our capacity for racism, in its foundational dimension, and calling out racists hasn't changed that for sixty years. It's not working. If something isn't working, isn't it time, after sixty years, to try something else?

I actually came back to put in a P.S. but you've already responded so we'll go with that. I was going to say, "textbook racism" is the expression of the belief or attitude that one color is better than another. Isn't it? I've never said anything like that. So by what I would assume your definition is, the "textbook definition," I'm not a racist. How could you think I am? I'm mystified.

You claim that interracial marriages are at their all-time high - but you're using the wrong definition of interracial. If you use my definition, the truth pops right out and smacks you in the face. White guys do not marry black women. And that's how you know who's white: you look at who's not marrying black women. Sure, it's a new definition - but it leads to a real solution, instead of more whack-a-mole.

I'm not actually the first guy who ever came up with this idea. Any eight-year-old could have thought of it, and for all I know many eight-year-olds have, and the real problem is, we don't listen to eight-year-olds enough. One of the more eminent professors I contacted, while he wouldn't comment on the plan, did say he'd seen similar schemes before. So I'm really not the first.

But what led me to believe that nobody else has come up with anything interesting - my friend, I didn't enter this struggle without doing some research. I read the most highly recommended books on racism I could find. I emailed Sociology departments all over the country and asked for recommendations. I'm sorry, but there is nothing worth reading there. The sharpest minds in sociology have had nothing valuable to say about racism.

Eek! I just told a lie. Frances Winddance Twine's book on Brazilian racism was eye-opening. Racism is very different, in different countries. Good to know; not terribly helpful here. And Stember's book, Sexual Racism, was equally enlightening. Racism can be viewed - he didn't say this, I took it from the evidence he presented - as nothing more than a move in an ongoing chess match between men and women. Again: interesting, but not terribly helpful. Frederickson, Appiah, Miles and others - well, I haven't yet read "In My Father's House," and I'm told it's good, so I have that yet to do - really added nothing significant to the conversation. If we don't get together and do this, there is nothing worth doing that we can do. Or at least, in sixty years of careful looking, no one has yet come up with anything. Do you think we're making progress? I don't.

Ah, you're a scholar and a gentleman. Empathetic and understanding, and so civilized! Gosh. It's a privilege to be able to read your posts.

Well, help me understand this. I really don't. I'm the only guy I've ever known or known of who actually had a reasonable plan to eliminate racism. To eliminate whiteness. And when I say reasonable, I mean a plan that doesn't involve cutting the country up into pieces, or shipping huge batches of people off to some other country, or death or suffering by anybody whatever. And no one, white or black, has yet been able to poke a real hole in it.

Now, if you don't like the idea anyway, that's your privilege. But first of all, shouldn't I get some credit at least for trying? Secondly, what the heck is so objectionable about coming up with a different definition than anyone else? It's the definition that has been the problem, in my view. Thirdly, it's really time we stopped calling people racists. When you've got a million or more ad hoc tests for if someone has malaria, and all of them could be wrong, and no tests at all for if someone DOESN'T have the disease, then of course you're going to come up with a lot of positive results and no negative ones, and they STILL could all be wrong. Where's your test for who's NOT a racist? That's the test I want to see. I don't think there is one.

you asked the other two, did you, and they agreed?

I did the math. All the articles except the first two were by people I would call white. Those three articles averaged 2.17 stars. The two by Bell averaged 2.5. So overall I'm giving the so called black authors more stars than the so called white ones, so far.

This article here isn't a CRT article, and so you wouldn't expect to judge it on the same scale. I would give it five stars, but not for the main body of the work; for the hammer blow on the third or fourth page, that, to me, is as persuasive an argument as I've ever seen for any proposal. I compare it to Rehnquist's dissent in Grutter v Bollinger - I know, he was white, too, as were Grutter and Bollinger. Sorry.

you know, it's remarkable to me how when some people hear my famous plan, they think it must be due only to some quirk in my personality, and, to them, whether it makes SENSE or not is completely irrelevant... there are more insanities in humans than we have yet counted, is my conclusion...

I can't imagine why J.D. Salinger is so widely read. Catcher in the Rye is about a young guy who goes to New York City and has absolutely no fun, while he's there. Talk about a social fantasy...

I'm obsessed. It's an illness. Sorry. But.

I know we don't have race riots any more. But because George Floyd died, that is not progress.

I know we don't hang grandma from trees any more. But because George Floyd died, that is not progress.

I know we elected a black president, and integrated the schools very slightly, and so called black people and so called white people all are careful to wear their happy happy faces with one another when in public (and they're never in private). But because George Floyd died, that is not progress.

The process that killed George Floyd renews itself from day to day, from moment to moment. It is a completely modern, completely now process. It has absolutely nothing to do with history. It can be absolutely guaranteed to kill more people in the future, although possibly not today or tomorrow. If we do nothing, we give it permission to continue. What should we do? What can stop this process?

Only the elimination of whiteness as defined in and reflected by that marriage barrier. If we eliminate whiteness as non-so-called-black minorities define it, of course, you'll just set up a new whiteness as the non-so-called-black minorities take over the same marriage barrier the so called whites abandoned. That marriage barrier is the problem.

I'm sorry, I know you mean well, but we need to stop saying things are better now. Every time you say things are better now you encourage people to settle for what they've got, to ignore the substandard education so many kids are getting, the outrageously long prison terms so many people are getting - always after pleading down from the certainty of getting much worse, if they insist on trial! Their reward, for saving the state all that money, is a sentence only four times as serious as what they'd get in a civilized country!

And for what, for this drug war that is funding revolutions in South and Central America. No, I'm not saying we need to make drugs legal. I can't go that far. But let's stop penalizing so called criminals as though they were evil. They're no more evil than the rest of us. Let's stop making war on our own people.

But focusing on the progress we've made makes it completely impossible to make more. It communicates - the "second message" is - that you've settled for what you've got and you're OK with stopping here. So called white people say, "Just leave us our personal racism - we'll try our LEVEL BEST to treat one another equal, honest we will!" - in their hearts this is what they say - and they mean it. And that's how political progress has been made to this point, by making explicit, out loud promises that we weren't going to demand that personal racism end. And so we are at fault too. We were wrong. We do need personal racism to end. Personal racism is the problem.

Because they CAN'T treat so called black people equal. It can't be done. When you think of yourself as white you have, right then and there, accepted the low status and consequent worthlessness of so called blacks. We need to stop people thinking of themselves as white. We need to tell so called white people what the problem is and how to fix it. Because if we don't, why would they? They won't, and we'll be stuck HERE. Please. Let's not get stuck here.

p.s. I will read Brady v US... it looks interesting

"read Brady v US"... yeesh. Read Dred Scott. Read Plessy v Ferguson. Just because a court said something doesn't make it right.

You seem to think anarchy is a synonym for chaos. It's not. What little reading I've done, of anarchistic texts, leads me to believe that anarchists differ as much among themselves as to what it "really" is as socialists do about socialism.

I think any system that operates without proper government, without the balancing of powers and the checks and balances and the legislative government that we associate with our democracy, can fairly be described as anarchic, and perhaps tyrannous. Who knows what principles govern plea bargaining? I don't. I bet you don't either.

You seem to imagine that I thought all this up myself. I didn't. I took an idea from here and an idea from there, from people that are good at thinking and experienced in the law. Read Alschuler's article on Plea Bargaining and Mass Incarceration. Read Jed Rakoff's article, Why Innocent People Plead Guilty. Read Francis Allen's article, Erosion of Legality in American Criminal Justice. These people are not fools.

Well, except that when you focus on Juneteenth, you reinforce the notion that the problem is the government, and it's ancient, and largely handled by now. By focusing on a solved problem, you turn attention away from the current problem. The current problem isn't the government and what happened in 1865; the current problem is the people and what's happening now. George Floyd didn't die back in 1865, and the problem we face didn't start to go away in 1865, and I'm sure no one here expects that Mr. Floyd was the last. There will be more. There probably already have been and we just haven't noticed. That's the problem, and it has nothing - zero - zip - to do with Juneteenth.

The problem hasn't STARTED to go away yet. It has not yet BEGUN to be reduced. And at this rate, it never will.

Nobody but me is saying that, but that's the only way we're ever going to make progress. Oh well, I've said it all before. Never mind.

Well, I hate to admit it, but I've been wrestling with that question myself. It's a good point. But just because the legislature hasn't fixed something, doesn't mean it's what they designed, and it doesn't make it right, and it doesn't mean it's not anarchic.

I notice you don't maintain that thousands of people don't go to prison every year, who if they had trials, would be walking free, or that thousands of people don't walk free every year, who if they had trials, would be in prison. I don't know if you know this, but Germany gives everybody trials. They don't put people in prison without having a trial first. It can be done, and we should be doing it.

I would also point out that this is contrary to the ideal of the rule of law and the right our Constitution - illegitimate though it may be - says everyone has to a speedy trial. Imagine if we were to design a Constitution that said everyone accused of a crime shall have the right, not to a trial, but to bargain the chance that a jury will free them against the certainty of an outrageously long prison term if they're wrong. In other words, imagine that our Constitution actually described our justice system. No sane legislator could vote for something like that. No sane schoolchild could admire it. Our reputation as a country of law and order would be dead. It couldn't be done. If you can't write a Constitution that describes your actual practice, there's something wrong with your actual practice.

One further thought. Dr. Albert Alschuler wrote an article recently, called "Plea Bargaining and Mass Incarceration," published in the NYU Annual Survey of American Law, that pointed out that with 5% of the world's population, America incarcerates 25% of its prisoners. Our incarceration rate is 7 times that of West European democracies. Our reasons for this have little or nothing to do with differing crime rates. Our incarceration rate is higher than that in Russia, Iran, or Saudi Arabia. He goes on to say: Do you imagine that these people are punished less than they deserve? Do you think it's even remotely possible that such long sentences are required to protect the public? Do you think we got here by punishing 95% of all offenders too lightly to accomplish whatever it is that the prison system is supposed to achieve? I hope I don't have to tell you that the burden of this incarceration falls disproportionately on so called black people.

I think he's got some very good points, and I think the anarchy that currently rules our criminal justice system should be scrapped. And the fact that legislatures aren't prepared to do that doesn't mean they'd design a system that works this way, or that they did design it, or that it's not anarchic.

hmm... well, I can't argue with that...

no, it was a long time ago and I've long since got rid of it.

intended by who, you? Part of the legislature's job is to design the criminal court system. They did. This ain't it.

Ah, you caught that...

I should have said, anarchy rules our system of CRIMINAL law. A University of Chicago professor of law named Zimring did a study, back in 1976, of how homicides in Philadelphia were disposed in 1970. 85% of the perpetrators as identified by the police got 2y or less; 15% got 5y or more. We use the plea bargaining system more today than we did then. Every year, thousands go to prison who, if they had trials, would be walking free; every year, thousands walk free who, if they had trials, would be doing long stretches in prison. That's what I mean by anarchy. No legislature designed this system; our system as designed presumes that people get trials when they are accused. In fact, however, they don't.