Read the whole thread.
No. Why would it? It is the height of arrogance to think that if the country were a little less āilliterateā that everyone would agree with your politics.
Also the literacy point wasnāt that literacy is a signal of a deeper social issue or something that policy should help with, which negatively affects the poorest and most oppressed, disproportionately people of color, which is why the wealthy and the mildly well off should be taxed at incredibly higher rates and have their weird, anachronistic, parochial, segregated local education system dismantled and replace with a national one.
The point made here in the forum by well off and ignorant mostly white professionals is them saying the quiet part loud. Literacy as a political explanation is an old dogwhistle to justify restricting the franchise and the limiting who gets to participate in the social order. White people especially donāt get to just reclaim words that still fly out of racists like Charles Murrayās mouth and expect to not be told they are wrong. Like maybe in like a 100 to 200 more years we can check in and see if well off professional white people talking about how the illiterate are ruining the country does not immediate set off all the alarm bells amongst POC and the oppressed in the room. Like discussions of literacy werenāt just confined to literacy tests in the jim crow south. American liberalism, especially Northern liberals, continued to pathologize poc and the poor ala things like the Moynihan Report and make things like literacy a victim blaming trope to justify their most monstrous policies about welfare reform and the carceral state. Hell even Obama would pathologize poor black people this way. To pretend like the way things are is simply the fault of the āilliterateā and not the āliterateā that look like the educated mostly white professionals in this forum will never not look like excuse making.
And no, saying that your definition of literacy is a cross race and cross class problem and therefore is fine is a rhetorical trick to excuse your actions and nothing more.
How about this: Fuck you, you know what we are talking about here, so donāt shove words in peopleās mouths. We are talking about how if people were not kept illiterate purposely things would be improved in general, in all aspects of life, including politically, for everyone. No one is blaming POC for being illiterate. Youāre just a shit stirring moron and I encourage you to leave the forum.
Thatās not really what DoubleGomez is saying though. Even if you donāt blame whatever groups for being āilliterateā, the implication that they are less able to make correct political decisions is troubling. Itās step one to pretty much any justification of colonization.
Given the forumās clear opinion on things like voter ID laws, I canāt really imagine anyone here actually arguing to directly impede peopleās right to vote. But if you say that certain groups of people make worse political decisions because theyāre āilliterateā, then it seems to follow that those who are āliterateā make better political decisions, and everyone would have better outcomes if we listen to the āliterateā. Maybe it means that politicians should listen more to the concerns of the āliterateā, maybe it means the āliterateā should be given more attention in public discourse. Agency should be taken away from the āilliterateā and given to the āliterateā who can make better use of it. This is dangerous rhetoric.
As to your earlier comment āāItās racist to say illiteracy is a problem across the board.ā has to be the hottest take Iāve seen in a longass time.ā Do you believe āilliteracyā is proportionately spread among racial groups? Or do certain racial groups have proportionately more āilliterateā people than others?
Really?
All I read is people wanting more people to be more literate. Pointing out that standards arenāt high enough isnāt the same as wanting lots of people to be kept low.
I think thatās a really unfair interpretation of āintelligent voters make more informed votesā
@lukeburrage ditto
Literacy isnāt just being able to read words on a page. It is also being able to interpret them, think about them critically, make inferences, etc. I said as much earlier. Basic words-on-the-page literacy is an issue across the board but I will grant that it moreso affects POC and the poor. However, even among the wealthier ābetterā educated whites, the latter part of literacy is woefully lacking across the board. People have basic reading skills but do not read for entertainment or personal erudition and so do not develop higher level vocabulary and critical thinking that comes with that. The fact that marginalized groups cannot due to intitutionalized racism and classism is a travesty that needs to be remedied. But speaking purely of politics they know what the deal is, they live it every day, they do not need a book to tell them that society and the government are shitting on them. The fact that most of the population who had the opportunity to do so but do not due to cultural devaluing of education is also a travesty and in part is what got us where we are now. It is not the only thing, there are tons of other cultural forces at work but encouraging literacy, both words on the page and reading as a positive worthwhile passtime can only have positive effects from current baseline.
My point is -better informed- voters make better informed votes. Impediments to both basic and functional literacy makes people less informed.
Well this is newsā¦
āThe author could have received a seven-figure advance for writing this book,ā Latimer said. āBut āA WARNINGā was not written for financial reasons. The author sees this as an act of conscience and of duty, which is why the author refused any advance and is donating a substantial portion of any royalties to charities that protect those seeking the truth around the world.ā
And for the record, FUCK the āAnonymous Author.ā If they really see publishing this book as āan act of conscience and of duty,ā testify before fucking Congress and tell the entire world that Trump is unfit to be President.
Do it openly and in public. Not by hiding behind an anonymous pseudonym and writing a book.
Maybe they did some shit and donāt wanna get Michael Cohenād
The House Republicans under lead-idiot Matt Gaetz stormed a high secure area while carrying their fucking cellphones to disrupt an impeachment hearing. Their stated reason was that Schiff was conducting a secretive sham, of course trying to sweep under the rug that eight republicans were already present at the hearingā¦
These fuckers are desperate morons. They all deserve censure, if not arrests for endangering U.S. national security. Unfortunately I donāt see either forthcoming.
No thanks. I donāt have sex with random people on the internet. I have listened to the podcast and read enough forum posts to notice a clear pattern. Systemic racism and classism is a thing and you arenāt exempted from being called a racist or a classist just because you are a well meaning white person. Well off well meaning white people are some of the most racist people I know. If you canāt understand how the words of forumites and yourself contribute to that then well good luck. There is a reason why we call them dog whistles after all. If every white person can hear that when it is not about them then well they wouldnāt be dog whistles would they?
Fifteen characters 
Oh look a white person acting like the aggrieved victim when someone calls them out on their racism. If I was looking for evidence that this is a cross class phenomenon and not simply the province of alt right trolls and Republicans thank you for providing it. I mean as a POC Iām not surprised but it is always comforting to be reminded.
And youāre just an idiot with a chip on your shoulder looking for a fight. Fuck off. Seriously I donāt even know why youāre here if you think this is a den of racists. You literally only post in political threads to tell everyone theyāre racist over literally anything. Imagine being so addled you think suggesting better education would improve society is racist. Seriously fuck off the forum. Youāre just a troll.
Itās been a while since weāve heard from Mueller, eh?
EDIT: Giuliani just implicated himself lolz
Eh this is a useful forum for recommendations on game and anime and such. Been coming here for years and lurked on the old forum before this current one since I think 2007(goodness I feel old)? Just because I find value on a medium doesnāt mean I think it is exempt from critique and I have enough self respect to call out racism when I see it. If I bounced from every place with racism or other forms of structural prejudice in it I would be hard pressed to find any place on the internet with people on it.
Using language that in other contexts may be an enabler of racism doesnāt make it racism in this context. Yes, itās important to note the history of so-called āilliteracyā being used as an excuse to disenfranchise POC, but if that history stops people from talking about real problems with the U.S. education system then that isnāt doing anyone any good.
There is indeed an important point to be made w.r.t. the enabling effect of certain kinds of language as dog-whistles for certain toxic ideologies, and so itās important to pick oneās words carefully. But I also think that in this forum we can afford a bit of leeway because those ideologies are nowhere near as rampant here as they are elsewhere.
It is also true that there could be discussion about what measures ought to be taken with regard to terrible education systems, but this is the āThe Impeachment of Donald Trumpā thread, not the āThe U.S. education system is brokenā thread.
As far as I can tell, people here donāt really believe that āthe illiterate are ruining the countryā, nor that restricting the franchise to the literate would be any kind of solution to any kind of problem.