Links - 14th February 2020 (1)

THOMAS SOWELL: Random thoughts spill out - "If you want to see the poor remain poor, generation after generation, just keep the standards low in their schools and make excuses for their academic shortcomings and personal misbehavior. But please don't congratulate yourself on your compassion.
The very same people who say that the government has no right to interfere with sexual activity between consenting adults believe that the government has every right to interfere with economic activity between consenting adults.
What makes movie stars think that they have something worthwhile to say about serious and complex issues, when their only expertise is in faking emotions? Why should the rest of us take them seriously?...
It is bad enough that so many of our public schools offer nothing to challenge smart students. What adds insult to injury is that, when these students become bored and restless, this boredom is given the fancy name "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" and the students are drugged with Ritalin.
One of the biggest advantages of having money is not having to worry about money. But some people with lots of money live so high that they still have to worry about how they are going to pay for it all...
People who want to test their typing often type: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." But you can also get all the letters of the alphabet in a shorter sentence: "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs."...
Loving someone is not enough to maintain a relationship. You have to be able to see them as someone who is more than just the object of your love. You have to see them as someone who deserves consideration for their own needs and desires."

Vida Rz - "Cultural Tidbit
Hajji Firuz, a comical uncle figure is a fictional character who appears in the streets by the beginning of Nowruz. His face is covered in soot and dressed in bright red clothes, he dances through the streets while singing and dancing.
Fascinating enough, the Dutch have a similar Hajji character called Zwart Piet, which has been condemned and removed and Haji Firuz is on his way out too, which I agree with. The tradition may make sense in Iran, but in a multi-ethnic country like America, putting on a black face and singing about pleasing your master is demeaning. In Iran we used to sing along as kids..."
This suggests that diversity means you can't enjoy your own culture anymore

‘This is legit brownface’: Ad by Singapore’s e-payment solutions initiative attracts backlash - "A recent advertisement by E-Pay, an initiative by the government to roll out electronic payment solutions in coffee shops, hawker centers, and industrial canteens across Singapore, is being slammed for featuring Chinese Mediacorp artiste Dennis Chew as characters of other races."
Naturally he didn't get slammed for cross-dressing, despite the culture context of blackface being offensive being imported from abroad. Ahh, cultural imperialism!
So much for unity in diversity and us being all the same (brought home by one person playing 4 different roles - presumably meant to highlight the oneness of NETS's unified payment system)

When liberals no longer can tell what is right or wrong - "The fact is they tried to portray all the four races, which means they were not targeting maliciously at any particular one. Funnily, I haven’t seen many in the Malay community as well as women complaining about it being offensive against their communities. It is just not clever, some say distasteful but it doesn’t cross the line, as our government officials declared.But the rap video. It is offensive, racist and toxic. It leaves no ground for subtlety. To put it crudely, the siblings basically F-ed up the entire Chinese community. Even a kid would know it is wrong. In their coordinated attack, yes, coordinated because they were using same sentences and intros, liberals and those who have left their brains behind came up with three justifications to defend it. First, they didn’t start it. The cause of it is the distasteful ad, they argued. Second, they are only targeting some racist Chinese, not the entire Chinese community. Third, no lah, it is just a joke and why can’t you Chinese take a joke.Wrong on all three counts. First, to say that it is not their fault because they didn’t cause it – it is like saying I went out to commit a serious violent crime against someone because I didn’t like what the person was acting as in a movie. It is his fault, not mine... Ironically, the video actually said two wrongs do not make a right and went on to do exactly that. To make it worse, it is now revealed that long before even this Dennis Chew ad came out, Preeti had released an offensive video where she dressed as a Chinese with two hair buns and mocked Chinese and Chinese New Year... the justification that they are only targeting some racist Chinese, and not all. Yet the lyrics say “Chinese people always out there f*cking it up”. If someone had said “Indian people always out there f*cking it up”, certainly these people will not accept that it only refers to a few racist ones... it is just a joke, according to the likes of our usual liberal idiotic cheerleaders like Kirsten Han. Miss Han says why you Chinese can’t take a joke? I was wondering why she didn’t ask the same question – why can’t the Indians take a joke over the Dennis Chew ad. Clearly, because she knows the Indian community won’t take it as a joke if she goes out in public and question them over why they are unhappy with the “brownface’’ ad. She will get hammered. Or even get threatened. How is the rap video a joke? You use the F word, you show the middle finger against an entire race and you pass it off as a joke? The easiest way to understand this is to reverse the race. If I, as a Chinese, put out there a rap song and sing “F you all Malays, you all always F it up as a race,’’ I can bet to my last dollar that no one in the Malay community will take it as a joke. Or as a Muslim, I put out a video that raps “F you all Hindus, you guys always mess it up and go back to India’’, no one in the Indian community is going to say it is just a joke. Don’t believe me, Miss Han, I challenge you to do that on your blog. Test out with two such ”jokes’’ against the Malays and Indians and make it public... If we do not want Chinese privilege, we certainly do not want Indian privilege as well where they can get away with murder while the others can’t.  A frightening thought- what if the majority decides ‘enough is enough of all these minority protection and privilege, it’s time for the majority to claim back what should be dictated only by the majority’ – just like in other countries? (Look up north). Then things will really get nasty."
I remember the days when liberals knew that offence was taken, never given

Nadim van der Ros - "*Hossan Leong playing multiple Disney princesses*
For this week's assignment on wokeness, this ad shows one person depicting multiple races and at least one minority race that is present in Singapore.
Some evidence of skin colour alteration (perhaps whitened, perhaps slightly bronzed) and potential shaping of the eyes has been done to reflect the racial background of the characters.
Some of these Disney characters are modeled on real-world personalities with a genuine racial background (e.g. Pocahontas) while some are entirely fictional but root themselves in a particular racial context (e.g. Jasmine). Does this also count as casual racism and should it be called out? Discuss.
Bonus Credit: Does racism towards a perceived privileged race count as racism?...
Extra Credit: If the races depicted in this were upset, would a vulgarity ladened rap video by the offended race targeting the actor's race be a) appropriate b) not so appropriate?
Extra Special Credit: The examiner respects and admires Hossan Leong and his work, and found the ad amusing. Does this make him a bad person? Discuss."
Comments: "am offended that gender appropriation is not reflected in the question. The dismissal of female representation is symptomatic of the real-world film industry's unfair salaries for female actresses."

Tushar Ismail - "I read what is possibly one of the most condescending paragraphs written about minorities in Singapore.
“Expecting someone from a minority race who is already systematically disadvantaged to remain objective and cool-headed when talking about race, while educating the majority race on the discrimination they face, is the very manifestation of privilege … and stupidity.”
That gem was written out by a certain Grace Yeoh in her ricemedia article, “If the Preetipls Video Caused Any Damage, It Was Only By Revealing How Stupid Chinese People Are”.  No, Ms Yeoh, expecting less of me because of my race is far more racist, even if motivated by some mix of misplaced guilt and compassion, than what Dennis Chew or Preetipls were guilty of. The phenomenon even has a name - the soft bigotry of low expectations.Born from the liberal West’s apologetic gymnastics regarding Muslim immigrants, since we’re so keen on adopting their culture wars, it seems to have found a foothold here as well. Ayaan Hirsi Ali said of it,“The West tends to respond to the social failures of Muslim immigrants with what can be called the racism of low expectations. This Western attitude is based on the idea that people of color must be exempted from “normal” standards of behavior.”What’s even more appalling is how ready many members of minority races seem to be to accept this lowering of standards. As a member of the minority, I do not wish to see us so mired in a victimhood narrative that we start celebrating when a member of the majority race lowers their standards for us. It will only retard the improvement of our standing.We should listen when Maajid Nawaz says, “The real victim of that double standard are the minority communities themselves because by doing so we limit their horizons; we limit their own ceiling and expectations as to what they aspire to be;”What the past week has proven is that when this sort of transgression occurs, and we let outrage guide our conversation we all lose. There were no winners last week - well, except maybe those who profit off of outrage.Havas and NETS weren’t winners... I can see that someone thought, “Dennis Chew could be the Everyman that represents every Singaporean!” Like communism it sounds great on paper, but is doomed to fail. Especially seeing as how it was so clumsily executed... Saying that brownface and blackface are the same thing because they’re both about darkening skin artificially to pretend to be a minority race is like saying that a cake is the same thing as a cookie because they’re both baked in an oven... The portrayals of the Indian man and Makcik was as inherently offensive as the blue collar Chinese guy, and the stereotypical Ah Lian character. The only offence was that it was a Chinese guy doing the portraying.Neither were Preetipls and Subhas winners.Their response to the ad was half-baked and even less thought out...  Artists aren’t winners either, because any moron can call the police and complain about something that offends their sensibilities. And be taken seriously. I honestly feel like we need to give the police power to say, “huh? You complain about a YouTube video? KNN close the browser lah!”  And, of course, Singaporean’s aren’t winners because it seems we’re still calling that toggle brouhaha a case of brownface - meaning we still don’t know what that really means. And that we don’t have a grasp on satire. People can come up with varying justifications saying that punching up is ok and punching down is not. These are the sorts of people who think that dehumanising and othering is only damaging in one direction. I think that’s stupid... In a time when the dominant currency is outrage, it seems foolish to hope for cooler heads to prevail through reason... but hope I will."
SJWs say to shut up and listen when a racial minority talks about race. But they will slam him as an Uncle Tushar
Naturally, SJWs saw deliberate racism (in the Preetipls/Subhas video slyly condemning all Chinese people under the guise of plausible deniability) as forgiveable, but not accidental "racism" by advertising executives trying to be creative (so much for bemoaning Singaporeans' lack of creativity!)

˗ˏˋ FAT ☭ REBEL ˎˊ˗ on Twitter - "Casual fucking reminder that white race scientists invented fatphobia and the concept of obesity. If you are EVER fatphobic or are on some 'oh well fat is unhealthy uwu' bullshit, I hope you fucking know that someone's white ancestor is smiling in their grave."
What racial minority activists say makes them look far worse than anything a 'white supremacist' could

Women work longer hours than men - "Women are working longer hours while men are putting in less time for their money.And yet the pay gap between the sexes has widened, research revealed yesterday.A nationwide survey of 1,600 employees found that women now work almost 34 hours a week on average - half a day longer than the figure of 30.4 hours five years ago... Over the same five-year period, men's average work hours fell from 45.5 hours per week to 44.8 hours... the average UK worker puts in 43.6 hours a week compared with 38.4 hours a week in Belgium, which boasts Europe's shortest working week."
Amazing logic! Or maths

Casual racism on twitter. : iamatotalpieceofshit - "People have a tendency to forget that racism isn't just a one way street."
"Institutionalized racism is a one way street. Racism as used is sociology, history, economics is institutionalized racism."
"Thats a made up definition peddled by post modernists in a misguided attempt to level the playing field. However it instead deformed a simple and equal definition into one so that only one race can be guilty of it. I see no benefit to equality here at all"
"You're white, right?"
"No, im actually Samoan Tongan living in New Zealand. Shock. Horror.  And the fact you think that you could assume my race because of my opinion confirms who the real racist is here."
Screenshot from before the racist comment got deleted: Steven Clyde - Found in the MurderedByWords subreddit: