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Editorial

Journal tomhudson's Journal: You might want to read and comment on this 36

Journal by tomhudson
Russ Nelson, (freshly-out-of-the-closet racist?) has been appointed to OSI. For those who don't understand the significance of all this - OSI hosts the Hallowe'en Documents.

Update:Nelson replied to this post. His argument doesn't hold. He also removed the article from his server - the cached copy is still good (update: not any more - good thing I copied it), and I'll repost it below.

---

This was posted Monday on a server owned by Russ Nelson, author (see the whois info at the end), so it's not a slashdot [tt] post.

Cached copy (since taken down)
Modified copy (since taken down)
TMP's entry pointing it out
Journal entry with more background

Partial quote:

The Angry Economist : blacks-are-lazy.html
The economist is here, and boy is he pissed.

Mon, 07 Feb 2005

Blacks are lazy

Black people are lazy in that they work less hard than whites. Not only that, but they are rational to be lazy! After black slaves were freed, they worked less. The value of their leisure time (highly valued after a lifetime of slavery) exceeded the pay from their work. Also, ongoing American racism has caused blacks to be paid less than whites. If everything else is the same, a black person is less likely to want to work as hard as a white person. I think that is what led people into the mistaken idea that blacks are lazy--as a characteristic of being black. They're not; it's an economically-ignorant idea to say that they are. They're just rationally valuing their leisure time at the same rate as whites, getting paid less for the same work, and deciding to work less because of it.

There are a few problems with this so-called "analysis".

If someone is paid less, they have to work more hours to cover the basic necessities of life, so that means they're working more, not less.

And the same argument goes for "white trash", and all the other labels. When you're underpaid, you HAVE to work harder and longer and still you end up with less.

This whole thing is a slap in the face at anyone who's ever known want.

Sure, if someone's pulling down a million a year, they're not going to bother if the extra hours don't result in enough extra incremental income to make it worth it - but that argument doesn't hold for most of the population, who are struggling to put a roof over their heads, food on the table, clothes on their backs, keep their kids in school and out of trouble, and who can't "afford" the luxury of saying "gee, I'm paid less - I'll work less".

Whoever wrote this needs to try working alongside the working poor. Colour doesn't count. Economic hardship and happenstance are colour-blind.

Feel free to copy, link, and/or repost.

Here's contact info from the whois for russnelson.com in case anyone is thinking this is bogus:

Registrant:
Russ Nelson
521 Pleasant Valley Rd.
Potsdam, NY 13676
US

Registrar: DOTSTER
Domain Name: RUSSNELSON.COM
Created on: 26-JUL-99
Expires on: 26-JUL-08
Last Updated on: 08-JUL-03

Administrative Contact:
, nelson@CRYNWR.COM
Russ Nelson
521 Pleasant Valley Rd.
Potsdam, NY 13676
US
+1-315-268-1925

Technical Contact:
, nelson@CRYNWR.COM
Russ Nelson
521 Pleasant Valley Rd.
Potsdam, NY 13676
US
+1-315-268-1925

Domain servers in listed order:
NS.CRYNWR.COM
ANGEL.HEAVEN.NET

Copy of the article:

Mirrored from http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/blacks-are-lazy.html on February 09, 2005 at 10:23 EST

The Angry Economist : blacks-are-lazy.html
The economist is here, and boy is he pissed.

Mon, 07 Feb 2005

Blacks are lazy

Black people are lazy in that they work less hard than whites. Not only that, but they are rational to be lazy! After black slaves were freed, they worked less. The value of their leisure time (highly valued after a lifetime of slavery) exceeded the pay from their work. Also, ongoing American racism has caused blacks to be paid less than whites. If everything else is the same, a black person is less likely to want to work as hard as a white person. I think that is what led people into the mistaken idea that blacks are lazy--as a characteristic of being black. They're not; it's an economically-ignorant idea to say that they are. They're just rationally valuing their leisure time at the same rate as whites, getting paid less for the same work, and deciding to work less because of it.

Actually, come to think about it, we had about 150 years of black slavery, and it hasn't even been 150 years since the Civil War. It wouldn't surprise me to find that blacks are still taught to value their leisure time more highly than whites. When their forebears were slaves, their leisure time was very precious to them. Cultures change slowly.

Disclaimer: Everyone is an individual, and you cannot pre-judge the characteristic of an individual from the characteristics of a culture or race. From that mistake comes prejudice. My brother-in-law is a highly paid lawyer and he works sixty hours a week if he works a day. But that just makes my point: stop (actually) being racist and blacks will stop being (perceived as) lazy.

The new content: http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/blacks-are-lazy.html

Mon, 01 Jan 2001

Withdrawn

I used to have a posting here which made the point that ceretis paritus blacks will work less hard than whites because of the lower salaries caused by racism. It was not well written and I have withdrawn it. I apologize to anybody who thought that the posting itself was racist.

No recognition that he starting off his essay by saying "Blacks are lazy. Black people are lazy in that they work less hard than whites"

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

You might want to read and comment on this More

You might want to read and comment on this

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  • Who actually reads slashdot journals?

    I mean, seriously [slashdot.org]!
    • From the troll mods we all got from him last week regarding the teaching of sex, we know pudge does ...
      • I was thinking about that...

        What does he do if his kid (should he not be eaten before June 5th [slashdot.org]) accidentally sees some animals doing the nasty on a nature show on the teevee?

        "Endangering the welfare of a minor" lawsuits for Animal Planet? FCC investigations into Nature?

        It boggles the mind.

        Actually, no it doesn't. He's a fucking idiot.

        (The origin of this thought was my grandmother, who grew up on a tobbaco farm in NC; nobody ever told her about sex, she just watched the farm animals go at it and figur
    • Who actually reads slashdot journals?

      One could surmise that those who comment in them probably read them. Although your comment is sufficiently vague so as to not necessarily indicate that you engage in the reading activity.

      And based upon comments made in my journal that are on topic there's at least half a dozen people that do read them, myself included.

      No insult is intended, and if the comment was meant in jest, please accept my apologies for a defective humor detection system, and a continued waste o
      • I meant: outside the Slashdot community.

        This dude actually linked to squiggleslash's journal...

        Huh!?
        • I meant: outside the Slashdot community.

          Oh. You'd think I'd have learned to keep my fool mouth shut by now, eh?

          You're right, though. One would think people outside of the slashdot community wouldn't read journals here.

          Maybe the guy who linked to it is actually a part of the slashdot community.
          • Post it in your journal, and eventually google will pick it up. If 50 people post journal entries about this, all linking to each other, anyone googling for "russ nelson" is going to get the full story.

            Google gives a decent pageRank score to stuff from slashdot :-)

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • Mmm, interesting point about not indexing the journals directly. Maybe if neither OIS nor he "get it", it'll be time to change our signatures "en bloc" to point out the facts.

                His post on the mailing list ...

                "the simplest way to get rid of a tempest in a teapot is to get rid of the teapot - no teapot, no tempest"

                ... and thinking that, by pulling the article, this will all go away, shows just how much of a reality distortion field this guy has.

                The teapot that needs to be pulled is Russ Nelson, not the ar

        • This guy (Russ Nelson) has a "Top Ten Google First Names" thingie on his web site [russnelson.com], though it shouldn't be there because he no longer appears on the first page when you click it.

          If enougn people cut'n'paste the stuff at the top of this journal entry into their own journals, guess what - people clicking on his little banner will see references to how much of an idiot he really is.

          Never underestimate the power of google+slashdot - do a search on "tomhudson" - 1 word - and I'm always on the first results page

          • Heck... I am the only links provided when searching for my user name (three pages deep so far). You can even lookup my UT2K4 stats! Go nuts stalkers!

            Interesting that google has lots of my /. journals and main page article postings.

            jason
            • Yeah, but my user name is also my real name. How far do you have to look going for your real name? Doing a google for tomhudson [google.com] returns my user page as the 4th entry from the top.
              • My real name is listed in several archived usenet posts and some documents crawled off of my club web sites from the university, but none are first page stuff. Thanksfully.

                jason
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The best thing to do (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Safety Cap ( 253500 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @08:36AM (#11628793) Homepage Journal
    Is to ignore him.

    I fully support his right to be an ass in public. I do not agree with him (being "lazy" and all), but I believe in freedom of speech more.

    Besides, the only one who will change his mind is him; my getting mad will only play into that poor pathetic creature's hands.

    • Unfortunately, OSI is the source for the Halloween Documents. This has already torpedoed the credibility of the next one.

      I believe in freedom of speech, which is why I'm not saying he should be arrested or lynched - that the proper way to handle it is to speak out against it.

      Besides, the only one who will change his mind is him; my getting mad will only play into that poor pathetic creature's hands.

      That's why, in one of my responses, I urged him to really, really think about what he had written.

  • Try to find out what he things about the reason for having an economy. Chances are he's never thought about it- many seem to think an economy just happens, but I find it just as reasonable to be a hermit as engage in trade with others. Basically, there seem to be two attitudes about the issue:

    The economy is something the government tries to encourage to make sure the maximum number of people possible are able to survive and live- providing for the common welfare.

    The economy is something that just happe

    • We'll see if that's possible - since he doesn't want to extend the courtesy of backing up his arguments with facts, I've taken to posting in other threads [slashdot.org] (and gotten modded as a troll again) so I don't know how long before I get a day or two in the penalty box ...

      His comment on the list about "remove the teapot, no more tempest" was trite and disingenuous, to say the least.

      He seems to think that you can divorce economic thought from individual actions and responsibilities, and others have already accus

  • You're obsessed with having him labelled a bigoted racist.

    No matter how reasonable his logic is or how well he proves his point, the attention he's getting for it is unwanted (not that I have any idea how valid a point it is, or even care). He has no interest in making the point anymore and said so. The negative attention has convinced him that it's not a point worth making, no matter how valid. You've proven this to him. Why keep beating a dead horse?

    • Why bother? Because it's the right thing to do.

      He only put a disclaimer on his post after people started questioning whether he was all right in the head ...

      Then, when he continued to get flak for it, he pulled the original article, and left a notice that wan't much better, and which glossed over the problems I and others have with it.

      By not speaking up,. our silence lets people continue to go around making racist statements, claiming it's all based on "sound economic theory", then, only when someone

  • At the risk of defending a possible racist, I have to point out that it's possible you're misinterpreting Russ Nelson's statements. Russ was right about one point though; it was very poorly written.

    You have been consistently quoting the lines, "Blacks are lazy", and, "Black people are lazy in that they work less hard than whites". On the surface, those are racist remarks. However, you're dismissing the rest of his statements out of hand, and I think those statements more clearly illustrate the point he was
    • Man, talk about the blind leading the blind. I really should use the preview button more often.

      Some of my sentences are nonsensical, but I think you'll get the gist of what I was saying. If you don't, I'll edit it and repost.
    • As I pointed out when arguing with Nelson (slashcode appears to have "eaten" a few posts, at least temporarily):

      You made your statements in a very public fashion, and my response will be in the same manner, thank you.

      Since when is economic policy divorced from the reality of individual finances? Last I looked, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" worked through individuals. Also, your argument spoke about individuals and their motivations.

      Here's what you said:

      If everything else is the same, a black person

      • As I pointed out when arguing with Nelson (slashcode appears to have "eaten" a few posts, at least temporarily):

        I found some of these points in your other posts. Altogether, they tend to indicate that you need to think a little harder about what it is you're trying to say. In some posts, you're clearly jonesing for some kind of formal debate on the issue, even as you ignore the ideas behind Russ Nelson's post, in favor of attacking the individual sentences. The relevant cliche here would be, "Can't see t

        • Thanks for taking the time. I'll deal with a few of your points here (even though I've dealt with them elsewhere).

          We'll start with this first:

          And that directly relates to what I think Russ Nelson was trying to say: that a class of people are in a situation where they aren't being equally rewarded for the work they do, and that culturally they place a higher value on free time. If you're going to attack Russ Nelson on the basis of his economics, you must address that point head-on

          I did. I provided counter

    • IAWTP. The article is poorly written and would get a D- in a freshman sociology course. I'm not even sure what the hypothesis is, before I can even check his facts (of which there are few and no citations). That being said, the author is not a racist because a racist would never point to racism itself as being a cause of societal problems. "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

      I would ask for the guy's removal, not because he's racist (which is highly debatable) but because he clearly does not

      • ... but because he clearly does not have the communication skills necessary for the post.

        You won't get an argument from me on that point.

        But it's not just a question of a lack of communications skills or whether he's a racist or not - there are other ethical issues that have arisen as a direct result of this debate.

        He wrote the original post last Monday; he backdated the retraction to January 1st, 2001, more than 4 years ago. This gives the misleading impression that all this is old history that is bein

    • Whether or not Russ Nelson is really a racist (consciously or unconciously), the point, as Tom and others have been making it, is that writing that blog post ought to disqualify him as president of OSI on many other grounds. Namely that the way it was written demonstrates such a degree of stupidity, social cluelessness, lackof tact, crappy PR skills and a basic ignorance of the forms of polite public discourse that you wouldn't want him hired as PR flack for a minor widget manufacturer.

      So unless the post

  • The world doesn't need knee-jerk anti-racists either. The guy was just expressing an idea. He doesn't hate blacks. Stop making something out of nothing.

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