Further Reflections on the Jason Arday Case

My post on the Jason Arday controversy, “Black Plagiarism Matters,” has gotten more-than-usual traffic for posts at this blog, much of it via Roderick Long’s Facebook page (thanks, Roderick), where there’s an extensive discussion of the post (much of it admittedly point-missing and pointless). One common criticism I’ve gotten there is that my bringing up the Martin Stone case (as a contrast to the Jason Arday case) is an instance of “whataboutism.” Like so much Internet slang, “whataboutism” is a package deal concept.  One part of the package captures something real and significant; the other embodies a confusion.  A criticism involving an uninspected package deal ends up committing a fallacy of equivocation, which is my response to all of these criticisms. All of them commit a fallacy of equivocation.