> And one last thing: I am sure no one who reads VDARE has watched any pornography of late, but if anyone would care to, they would find that the only class of women that rivals busty blondes in disproportionate numbers in American pornography is East Asian females. Unlike brunette European females, Asian females don't look particularly impressive when blonded in my opinion, and the fact that few Asian females in these films bleach their hair like their European counterparts seems to confirm that most porn viewers share my impression. In other words, Asian females (whether it be for cultural or biological reasons) are in some cases competitive with blondes. (From personal experience in a region of the country where there are many Eurasians- due to the fact that the area is 95%+ white and the non-white marriage pool somewhat limited - I can attest that many Eurasian men prefer Asian females for the same reasons as some European men do).
It's a bit of a weird look to try to rehabilitate an argument that is literally being made under the VDARE masthead. We don't so much have to dissect the spirit in which that kind of writing is made.
Razib is a bit of an edge lord, but I think he gets an unfair amount of flak for challenging white American notions of race and culture. I haven’t read that website, but I assume @Culi brought forth his best evidence, and there’s just nothing damning in the quoted material. East Asians think white people are thick and age poorly? Men find blondes and Asian women especially attractive? This isn’t even the top half of controversial things my Taiwanese and Chinese friends would say.
Debating the bona fides of someone writing in VDARE (and, apparently, Taki's Mag, too!) is a little like debating the bona fides of someone who gives speeches before a White Citizen's Council. Wait, no, it's exactly like that. There's a level of edgelordery past which you forfeit the presumption of good faith.
I don't doubt your bona fides at all, but this person's good name is a bad hill to die on.
I think we should decline to enter into debates framed by racists, and, weirdly, maybe even more avoidant of debates framed by ironic edgelord racists who may well just be trying to get people to have the dumbest possible debates so they can point and laugh. The rule of goats is dispositive here.
The difference is that Kahn is a brown guy in an interracial marriage, and is presumptively not a “racist.” His main fault seems to be having insufficiently assimilated into white American sensitivities regarding race and culture—treating these discussions as third rails where the appearance of impropriety is as bad as actual impropriety. And that’s all I’ve seen in the aspersions directed at him—guilt by association and the appearance of impropriety. That’s unfortunate because he’s quite an insightful commentator on racial and culture issues in America.
I’m reminded of a comment you made the other day about different Asian groups not being equally advantaged in America, or something like that. That struck me as an extremely American framing—that’s not how the Chinese or Taiwanese immigrants I know would frame the issue of different outcomes between Asian groups!
If a brown guy in an interracial marriage started a company with David Duke and Richard Spencer and then gave "edgelordy" speeches about race, I wouldn't have to think too much about how "American" my framing is before writing them off. What I'm alerting you to is that writing in VDARE and Taki's Mag is approximately (and not hyperbolically) the same thing. People should write this guy off. He made his own decisions, and can now deal with their consequences. Or not. Either way, we're not losing much.
Whatever point you want to make here, I promise better people have made those points, more cogently.
As a total aside to all of this, and leaving out hyperbolic campus-culture and woke-ism stuff, the American framing on these issues is good, superior to the framing of most other cultures. I'm continually disappointed that American conservatives don't do a better job of reclaiming this issue from the left. It's a place where "American exceptionalism" actually holds somewhat true!
> If a brown guy in an interracial marriage started a company with David Duke and Richard Spencer and then gave "edgelordy" speeches about race, I wouldn't have to think too much about how "American" my framing is before writing them off.
Razib didn’t start a company with anyone. As far as I’m aware, he has no relationship with those magazines other than having published some articles. If David Duke’s newsletter publishes an article from someone about how Asians think white people are fat and age poorly, I’m not sure I’d jump to the conclusion that the author is of a piece with David Duke.
> People should write this guy off. He made his own decisions, and can now deal with their consequences. Or not. Either way, we're not losing much.
I disagree. Folks in the left align themselves with actual insurgents like Angela Davis. I’m not going to write them off based on that association.
> the American framing on these issues is good, superior to the framing of most other cultures. I'm continually disappointed that American conservatives don't do a better job of reclaiming this issue from the left. It's a place where "American exceptionalism" actually holds somewhat true!
I’m socialized into the American framing myself, but I can’t condone the white supremacy of universalizing these beliefs. If white people want to say “you brown people have wrong ideas about the nature of social disadvantage and our ideas are superior” let them make that case transparently.
> And one last thing: I am sure no one who reads VDARE has watched any pornography of late, but if anyone would care to, they would find that the only class of women that rivals busty blondes in disproportionate numbers in American pornography is East Asian females. Unlike brunette European females, Asian females don't look particularly impressive when blonded in my opinion, and the fact that few Asian females in these films bleach their hair like their European counterparts seems to confirm that most porn viewers share my impression. In other words, Asian females (whether it be for cultural or biological reasons) are in some cases competitive with blondes. (From personal experience in a region of the country where there are many Eurasians- due to the fact that the area is 95%+ white and the non-white marriage pool somewhat limited - I can attest that many Eurasian men prefer Asian females for the same reasons as some European men do).