Re: TC May, Taxes and Colored People

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Look, I was not going to waste my time or your time by responding to
Graham Toal's announcement that I am a racist and that he was thus
leaving the list. But I've seen several messages dealing with this,
speculating that perhaps Detweiler spoofed my account, blah blah blah.

So let me make some points:

1. I wrote that message in netcom.general, a group local to Netcom,
for the discussion of Netcom issues (Netcom is an Internet service
provider based in San Jose, California. How Graham Toal, presumably in
the U.K., got it is unknown to me.)

2. I stand by what I said, but the comments Graham cited were taken
out of contect of the discussion thread in Netcom. Basically, some
folks on Netcom were arguing that speech that is "hurtful" to women
and other "people of color" and other aggrieved minorities should be
blocked by Netcom management, and that perhaps the First Amendment
needs to be reinterpreted to limit such expression. Many of us
disagreed strongly with this PC (and paternalistic) ideas, and we
especially disagree with the laws Catherine MacKinnon is trying to get
accepted. (Look to the Homulka case in Canada for one example, to the
bans on porn in Canada for another....in a delicious irony, the
Dworkin-MacKinnon porn bans, aimed at stopping the "exploitation" of
women, are not being used to proscute feminist and Lesbian sex
material outlets...sauce for the gander, to mix some metaphors.)

Here is my comment on "people of color," quoted first by G. Toal, then
by others, and here by "Rodney King":

> gt: >And I appreciate that Netcom has never once warned my for what many of
> gt: >my critics have called seditious postings. It is true that I look
> gt: >forward to seeing the collapse of the U.S. governement and the end to
> gt: >the taxation that steals from me to give to so-called "people of
> gt: >color."

The use of quotes in "people of color" should tell anyone who bothers
to think instead of react that I was commenting on the handing out of
money to any and all groups that call themselves victims of some vague
past injustices. "People of color" thus implies criticism of the name
itself. I make no apologies for disliking the term "people of
color"--it harkens back to my childhood when blacks were called
colored people. (I often provoke liberal airheads by pretending I
can't tell the difference between "people of color" and "colored
people"...I started doing this around 1986, when I moved to Santa
Cruz, and then saw that Gary Trudeau made the same point in a
"Doonsbury" cartoon.)

(Perhaps proving Graham's point in a strange way, the term "people of
color" was the basis of a running series of jokes at yesterday's
grossly overcrowded Cypherpunks meeting yesterday (50 in attendance at
various times, including Bruce Schneier, Matt Blaze, "J.I.," Perry
Metzger, and others in town for Usenix. Matt described his "Black
Pages" key service idea, being implemented at AT&T, and the joke arose
that AT&T's affirmative action department has already nixed the name
"Black Pages" (really) and that henceforth the service will be called
"Pages of Color." Had Graham head this one, would he have denounced us
as Nazis? As people ready for political reeducation camps? I wonder.)

3. I also make no apologies for my radical libertarian views. I
generally avoid arguing political issues here on Cypherpunks, as the
issues have been debated many times. For example, I stayed out of the
debate last week with Hal Finney over his criticisms. I think he's
wrong, but I made my points some time back, well over a year ago, in
fact.

In other forums, where the debate is explicitly political (as with the
"should Netcom allow Neo-Nazis?" debate), I will make my points. Even
if they offend the coloreds. 

(Cf. the earlier point if this joke appears to be "racist" to you.)

4. Personally, I don't care much about skin color, or other
epiphenomenal aspects of a person's behavior. But I reject affirmative
action, hiring quotas, restrictions on firing employees, etc.

And I reject the notion that speech can be limited because it "hurts
the feelings" of another, or because someone considers comments to be
"harassment" or "virtual rape." (And with the crypto technologies
already available, and coming, it all becomes moot anyway. Positive
reputations and filter agents will be the way people cope with
"hurtful" speech.)

5. As to why Graham Toal quit the list, who knows? To take a brief
comment about "people of color" and how I believe strong crypto--the
stuff I've long advertised in my sig block--will nuke the current
welfare state and from this conclude that the _rest of you_ hold this
view as well is.....absurd!

Methinks Graham was looking for an excuse to quit the list and my
comments gave him the chance to self-righteously declare himself to be
disgusted with what he has concluded the list must stand for. 

Good riddance, I say. Anybody seriously interested in the issues of
this list, whether they are libertarian or socialist, anarchist or
monarchist, heterosexual or homosexual, white or red or black or
whatever, is not going to storm off the list in a huff because of
comments taken out of context from a discussion on censorship in a
group devoted to a commercial service located 6,000 miles away!

6. "Rodney King" goes on to say:

> acquaintances also pay taxes.  However, given all of the questionable
> governmental expenditures (clipper, et. al) that are usually talked
> about, singling out "so-called 'people of color'" seems a bit
> peculiar; especially as part of a recruitment drive for a cryptography
> list.  Surely, there are more interesting reasons to join the list. 

Like I said, my comments are being taken out of context. This was not
a "recruitment drive," nor did I say the main reason to support strong
crypto has anything to do with attacking "people of color."

For me, achieving libertarian goals (including an end to taxation, to
government handouts, truly a colorblind legal system, etc.) is the
main reason to support strong crypto. Graham Toal claims my goals are
not his, i.e., personal liberty. Well, this is an old debate. Is
economic liberty part of personal liberty? Is the freedom to
associate, to pick one's friends, customers, employees, suppliers,
etc., as one chooses part of personal liberty? I say "Yes."

(I'm _not_ saying racial discrimination is a desirable thing, or that
it makes good business sense. But what is desirable or what is
business-smart is not the issue here. This is Libertarianism 101, so
I'll stop this tangent here.)

> (a wait that ran around 300 years or more - Patience Tim).  Colored
> people have thought about the U.S. government quite a bit over the
> years.  
> 
> Well...we'll see if strong cryptography is indeed Tim's "underground
> railroad" to the "promised land" of anarcho-capitalism. 
> 
> <Rodney King>

Whether my friend "Rodney" here is really black or not is unknown--and
unimportant. I, too, am hoping that blacks will wake up to the
disastrous effects government handout programs have had on them. It's
created a new kind of serfdom, a new "Massa" who lives in the Really
Big White House (the one in D.C.) instead of just the Massa who lived
in the white house on the plantation.

Fortunately, some black leaders have woken up to this (Thomas Sowell,
Walter Williams, Les Brown, several others), and even Jesse Jackson is
now talking about the problems of dependency on AFDC and welfare. A
hopeful sign.

When I see discussions in the Netcom groups--and elsewhere--about how
government needs to set limits on free speech so as to protect
minorities and "persons of color," I see this as an attack on
everything that this country once stood for. And I will speak out.

If Graham Toal and others need to hunt down politically incorrect
phrasings, and even ignore the quote marks around these phrasings,
then it is best that they storm off this list, because at least some
of us are not going to shy away from commenting on these important
issues.

I hope not to have to say anymore on this subject, so that I can get
on with other things.

--Tim May


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Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
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