From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Wed May 29 2002 - 18:31:01 MDT
On Wednesday, May 29, 2002, at 05:21 pm, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> I will have to state here that the materials that the MIT extropians
> sent to new students was NOT racist in any way. What happened was that
> campus luddite/left wing groups, in concert with the campus newspaper
> and the Boston Globe, claimed the materials were racist but failed to
> quote anything from them as specifically racist.
That's too bad if they were misrepresented. I believe that other posts
referring to us also misrepresent us if they claim we are racists. You
say that they never quoted any materials that were racist. My fear is
that the archives do contain quotes that are racist. They can be quoted
by people as representing "our" beliefs. The Extrpians@MIT had a
similar online BBS. Maybe some of the misleading claims come from
there. I would hate to think what could be "accurately" quoted about us
in our archives.
> Now, as you can see, what this means is that by the standards of those
> who cried 'racist', anybody who is opposed to Affirmative Action is a
> racist. I was unaware that Extropy Institute supports Affirmative
> Action, and if it does, you can cancel my membership.
Nothing in my note should be miscontrued as support for these racist
claims or for Affirmative Action either. I was merely pointing out
examples of online sources that claim Extropians are racist, supposedly
by our own admissions. I was not taking sides in these issues, except
by assuming that we specifically were being misrepresented and that we
are not racist. It would not surprise me at all that other Extropian
groups are and have been accused of being racists as well. This does
not seem to be a new problem. For some reason, racism is a parallel
movement that claims itself to be part of transhumanism and extropianism.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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