Racism and the Internet

[Xanikk999]

That depends on your definition of racism. If you go by the dictionary definition that i cant see how that is true.

If you go by the definition of having any prejudice on someone based on race than i don't see how that's any different than any other prejudice. Remember prejudice is the act of prejudging someone based on their visual or other first characteristics.

I wont doubt most of the world has some prejudice so if you go by that definition then a large percentage of the world is probably racist (or prejudice based on nationality).

 

[Shaihulud]

People are dicks, it is not surprising at all. The internet allows the opinions of a small group to be coalesce and be heard. I do not think that such ideas are as common as voiced.

 

[Yeekim]

story about two black sisters jailed 20 years for an $11 robbery

...and the problem here is said to be the newspaper story comment section?

 

[Cheetah]

I wouldn't classify being fearful of people who are different than you because you don't have much, if any, experience with them as racism. We probably need a different word for that. Humanophobia?

It's called Xenophobia.

...and the problem here is said to be the newspaper story comment section?

The ridiculousness of the US judiciary system is another discussion.

 

[Holycannoli]

At least black racism is somewhat understandable given how they have been treated for centuries. And in most cases it isn't even racism because most of the ones who are labelled as being racists don't pretend to be superior to whites. They just blame and distrust all whites instead of only the racists.

Racism isn't just thinking one race is superior to another. Racial prejudice, discrimination, intolerance and hatred are also racism.

Your definition of racism is too narrow and it seems it's preventing you from seeing all the racism that's really out there, from all races. You don't have to think you're superior to another race to be a racist, all you gotta do is be prejudiced, discriminatory, intolerant or hateful toward another race.

 

[Cheetah]

What if I'm prejudiced, but not discriminatory, intolerant or hateful?

 

[Miles Teg]

Racism isn't just thinking one race is superior to another. Racial prejudice, discrimination, intolerance and hatred are also racism.

Your definition of racism is too narrow and it seems it's preventing you from seeing all the racism that's really out there, from all races. You don't have to think you're superior to another race to be a racist, all you gotta do is be prejudiced, discriminatory, intolerant or hateful toward another race.

Dictionary says Formaldehyde is right, as much it's pains me to admit that. The solution of course, is to broaden your vocabulary. You can shout "RASISM" all day, or you can be specific about what kind of racial bigotry you think someone is exhibiting. It's fun, and much more fulfilling.

 

[wolfigor]

I'm a free believer in freedom of speech, even for hot topics of race and religion (especially for them I should say).

Like the quoted article reads:

"Even if we do away with anonymity, we clean up the comments online, well, that's just treating the symptoms," he said. "We really haven't solved anything, except on the surface."

I think that applying politically correct "censorship" to discussions will not solve any problem, but instead it will "put all the dirt under the rug".

Having the possibility to openly talk is a way to both confrontation but also understanding: Hiding problems and conflicts, only leads to frustration and misunderstanding that may explode later on a much more dramatic scale.

It's not surprising that a lot of people tends to self-censorship themselves when talking in public, and use Internet anonymity to speak more freely: even the smallest remark that may be interpreted as racist can create a -storm.

What you write today, in 10 years may be considered racist/abusive/whatever and your words will hunt you.
This Internet "memory" together with the extreme easiness to take sentences and comments out of their original context to blow them outside proportions, makes anonymity necessary.





Even a fact statement like "in Norway the greatest majority of crimes are committed by immigrant, with specific crimes

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

I think it's bad thing, not only because racism itself is bad but because there's times when you can't distinguish the real racist from the troll. A lot of times this perceived racism is just for provocation. That's more true for forums like this one or youtube comments than it is for websites purposely made to convey those opinions.

How many times on this forum have people read something racist, but also thought maybe it was just a troll attempt but aren't really sure? How many have fallen for those troll attempts thinking they were genuine?

In my opinion, general public forums and popular public websites are not a good measure of racism on the internet due to trolling which may not be genuine at all, but just some kid trying to upset people.

That's a good point, except I would say on forums like this one, you want to protect the reputation of your handle. I'm not going to troll because I want to continue participating here without being associated with such repugnant views.

Another problem is some of those comments might have been intended as sarcasm. But that's harder to detect on the Internet, unless you're a well established user and you're saying something that everyone knows you don't believe.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It's called Xenophobia.

Of course! I had a mental block there. Humanophobia would be the fear of high health insurance premiums.

The ridiculousness of the US judiciary system is another discussion.

You could certainly argue that the draconian prison sentences which have recently been enacted to counter those damn "liberal judges" were passed largely due to the effort of racists, especially in places like Mississippi.

This is an interesting case. They have been in prison for nearly 20 years now, and various groups are still trying to get their sentences shortened or have them pardoned for many years now. But I wouldn't hold my breath that they will be released anytime soon, because the current governor is one of those "law and order" reactionaries who demanded that these absurd prison sentences be enacted in the first place:

For Jamie Scott, an $11 Robbery in Mississippi May Carry a Death Sentence

On February 25, a small crowd gathered outside the state capitol in Jackson, Mississippi, to push for the release of sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott, who are serving two consecutive life sentences apiece for a 1993 armed robbery in which no one was injured and the take, by most accounts, was about $11. Supporters of the Scott sisters have long tried to draw attention to their case, as an extreme example of the distorted justice and Draconian sentencing policies that have overloaded prisons, crippled state budgets, and torn families apart across the United States. But in recent months, their cause has taken on a new urgency, because for Jamie Scott, an unwarranted life sentence may soon become a death sentence.

Jamie Scott, 38, is suffering from kidney failure. At the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) in Pearl, where Jamie and Gladys are incarcerated, medical services are provided by a private contractor called Wexford, which has been the subject of lawsuits and legislative investigations in several states over inadequate treatment of the inmates in its care. According to Jamie Scott’s family, in the six weeks since her condition became life-threatening, she has endured faulty or missed dialysis sessions, infections, and other complications. She has received no indication that a kidney transplant is being considered as an option, though her sister is a willing donor.

Behind Barbour’s Prison Rhetoric

To hear Gov. Haley Barbour tell it, if he doesn't get his way, the state's fiscal crisis could force thousands of felons out of jail and into communities. Since his Jan. 13 State of the State address, Barbour has repeatedly called for greater authority to cut state agency budgets at his discretion. The threat of convicted criminals on the streets has provided Barbour a rhetorical trump card in budget negotiations.

An 8.1 percent cut (to Corrections) would require 3,400 to 4,000 convicts to be let out of prison: 3,400 to 4,000 convicts, who are not approved for parole, have not gone through pre-release preparation or training and for whom there are very, very few jobs," Barbour said in his State of the State. "I cannot believe anyone watching this speech on TV or hearing it on the radio would vote to turn 3,400 to 4,000 convicts loose onto civil society, onto the public."

Barbour's dire words about releasing felons obscures an important fact, though: Mississippi's prison system has actually led the nation in reforming its sentencing laws specifically to allow earlier release dates for some prisoners.

In 2008 state legislators passed a number of bills that did away with Mississippi's "truth-in-sentencing" provision for nonviolent offenders. Passed in the mid-1990s, the truth-in-sentencing laws required all prisoners to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. As a result, the state's incarceration rate more than doubled between 1994 and 2008. The 2008 reforms made 4,500 nonviolent offenders who had already served 25 percent of their sentences immediately eligible for parole.

At least not everybody in Mississippi is a racist or predjudiced towards blacks who want to keep them in prison for lengthy periods of time, even for non-violent crimes.

 

[bhsup]

Were these cases of decades for $11 actually some sort of 3 strike thing? IF that's the case, then it is quite misleading to say they got 20 years for stealing $11. Note that I don't know if that is the case or not, but I've heard people misrepresent sentencing before to make it look like a brutal sentence when it fact it was just the straw that broke the camel's back as it were.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Why don't you research it and tell us?

 

[bhsup]

Because I am not that concerned about it. They obviously stole anyway, so they deserve to be in prison. And it was surely something to do with past history that got them the long term, so I'll just go with that assumption unless someone shows me differently.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Not only weren't they career criminals, which you insinuated without any evidence, they are apparently completely innocent of any wrongdoing:

http://inheritingthetrade.com/blog/?tag=jamie-and-gladys-scott

On Christmas Eve in 1993 Jamie and Gladys Scott left a mini-mart near their home in Scott County, Mississippi. Their car broke down. They hitched a ride from two young men, one of whom they knew. Later that evening the two men were robbed at gunpoint by three teenagers in another car. The robbers took an estimated $11 from the two young men. No one was hurt. Police accused the Scott sisters of setting the victims up.

The young women denied any involvement. They had no criminal record. A jury found them guilty of armed robbery. On October 13, 1994, a judge ordered them to each serve double-life sentences in the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, where they remain today.

Two co-defendants testified against the Scott sisters and served ten-month sentences. They later recanted their testimony and claimed it was given under police pressure.

Complicating things is that Jamie, who is now 38 years old, is suffering from kidney failure and may die without a transplant. The mother of these two women, Evelyn Rasco, says that Jamie’s sister Gladys, age 34, offered to donate her kidney but the Mississippi Department of Corrections won’t allow the procedure.

Do you suppose this has anything to do with race? Can you imagine two young white women being in this situation?

Even if Jamie and Gladys lied and they were involved in this crime in which no one was hurt and netted $11 and the boys who actually held the gun spent 10 months behind bars, how on earth can anyone say it is “just” for Jamie and Gladys to serve two life terms for this crime?

I learned about Jamie and Gladys on Facebook. You can learn more by joining the FB group THE POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN INC. I encourage my friends to join. I also encourage you to research this situation yourself. Mrs. Rasco maintains an active blog. Here’s the story of the Scott Sisters on The Grio.

Then spread the word. Raising more awareness about injustice will hopefully make a difference. One thing I believe with absolute certainty. This situation has nothing to do with justice

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-papa/the-scott-sisters-two-lif_b_169468.html

In 1998 one of the sentenced men signed an affidavit telling that the Scott sisters were not involved with the crime. The affidavit along with two others that pointed to the sister's innocence were secured by their attorney and submitted for post conviction relief. Then attorney Chokwe Lumumba submitted a request for commutation of sentence and/or pardon to the governor. It was subsequently denied.

 

[Yeekim]

What is this I don't even...
I would say something but I just don't know what to say.

One thing, however, is certain: I will never, ever, ever set my foot on US, so help me God.

 

[bhsup]

Okay, the only sites I am finding are variations of "wronglyconvicted.com" and a crap load of blogs. Is there some neutral site that looks at this case?

 

[useless]

Okay, the only sites I am finding are variations of "wronglyconvicted.com" and a crap load of blogs. Is there some neutral site that looks at this case?

Nobody/Nothing is truely "neutral".

 

[Ajidica]

Okay, the only sites I am finding are variations of "wronglyconvicted.com" and a crap load of blogs. Is there some neutral site that looks at this case?

From what I can tell, here is doesn't really matter if the site is biased if you just look at the factual parts. Nobody was injured in an $11 dollar crime. Even if the two women did actualy commit the crime (rather than set it up as the prosecution alleges) it does not equal long sentences. The people who actualy did the robbing got ten months.

I'll leave it to you to do the interpreting.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's not an $11 crime. It's a robbery at gunpoint. A robbery at gunpoint doesn't change in heinousness based on whether $1 or $100,000 is stolen.

At least black racism is somewhat understandable given how they have been treated for centuries. And in most cases it isn't even racism because most of the ones who are labelled as being racists don't pretend to be superior to whites. They just blame and distrust all whites instead of only the racists.

I'll just point out how "the way we think" is part of the problem, and so why it's so hard to overcome.

There's no black person that's been abused for centuries
This is important, because what happening is that the black person is assuming a kinship with previous black people, and then assuming that current white people are like previous white people.

In other words, it's a rephrase to the term "THEY used to abuse US".
Black racism only makes sense if we allow ourselves, allow, to think in terms of race. It's the source of the problem, to assume kinship along race. And it's wickedly hard to overcome.

 

[spryllino]

You are in control of your own perceptions, El Machinae? Really? Is anyone and can anyone ever be? I think not.