The thread on racism

[Terxpahseyton]

Inspired by the recent RD-thread on Sharon I really need to get something off my chest.
Which is how I understand racism and why that is how everyone should understand racism and why everyone who doesn't understand racism like that should slap himself in the face until he or she does.

IMO racism is only an adequate term when we have a pre-concieved notion at hands which is about genetics / a trait given by birth and which a group x shares.
If a pre-concieved notion is rather "merely" about cultural traits - than racism is the wrong word.
I.e. (a case which came up on the mentioned RD thread) does someone looking down on poor hungry African children carries the notion of this children being disadvantaged by their biology? Or rather being disadvantaged by the society of their birth? If the former - racism- If the latter - not racism.

One just needs to realize something actual innate about humans - we put people into dehumanized racist cliche boxes and those boxes include some kind of judgment. That is just how the human do. *imagine zefrank true-facts-voice*
We are not able to relate to groups of people we do not personally know any other way.
To explore this unfortunate habit, to socially handle and develop it - for all that the "racism"-club to me seems a woefully bad tool.
It is a weapon crafted by a world of black and white (haha). Of good and bad.
But non-racist prejudice is a world of human mudd and filth were monsters are far between but problematic attitudes universal

 

[Tahuti]

Racism is often a political ploy. One's race or ethnicity can make you easily part of a certain political camp without any choice on your part. If you are Arab, you are supposed to be Anti-Israel (and by extent, anti-semitic, even though Anti-Israel != Anti-semitic) and if you live in Europe, vote Left-Wing. If you are black in the US, you are supposed to align to the Left-Wing as well. The Nazis identified Jews with Communism and Capitalism. The fact that races are often identified as being part of a certain political camp is a major source of actual racism.

 

[caketastydelish]

No one in that RD thread said anything racist.

 

[classical_hero]

The idea of race is an outdated idea. Why should it matter if someone's skins is darker or lighter than you? Why not bother with the colour of a person's eyes? Or hair? It is just something arbitrary and is unfortunately a vestigal of Evolutionary teachings.

If you really want to, you can find absolutely anything about anyone to base your prejudices on. In some parts where sport is considered important, you could get killed for wearing the wrong team colours in the wrong part of town and things could go wrong for you very quickly. We find so many different arbitrary ways of discriminating against others, that the colour of a person's skin is just one of many ways we discriminate others.

 

[attackfighter]

I think most people are stupid and that the obsession with race and racism is the result of globalisation bringing people together into a cooking pot of vulgar, crude narcissists.

I also think that everything is perfect the way it is and that there is no reason to complain about things.

I think people are better suited for living in homogeneous tribal societies where everyone thinks the same way and no one thinks about things very much.

Atheists, feminists, antifas, and other assorted irate leftists have been driven into states of psychotic dementia because they have been bombarded by contrary opinions all their lives.

 

[Domen]

and if you live in Europe, vote Left-Wing.

I hope you didn't confuse Europe with Bolshevia, did you ???

The Nazis identified Jews with Communism and Capitalism.

Yes, the German Nazis identified Jews with both Water and Fire. They were nuts, basically (like all German anti-Semites).

Russians are also nuts when they claim, that Felix Dzerzhinsky (one of great Communists of Bolshevia) was a Russian person.

Below is a true story about Felix Dzerzhinsky. During peace negotiations between Poland and the Soviet Union in Riga (in March 1921), one of Polish diplomats met Felix Dzerzhinsky on the street and they knew each other from the past. The following conversation took place between them:

Felix asked the Polish diplomat: "What do people in Warsaw say about me these days?"

Polish diplomat answered: "They say that you are a bloody thief and murderer."

Felix: "But why? I don't kill any fellow Poles. I kill only Russkies."

Let's also add that Felix Dzerzhinsky 1) never learned to speak Russian and 2) had beaten his Russian language teacher when he was young. He also wanted to become a Catholic priest, but changed his mind and became a Soviet Communist. No other ethnic Polish person than Felix Dzerzhinsky has on his or her hands as much Russian blood as this Russian "national hero" - "Iron Felix" - after whom Russians were naming cities in Russia and in the USSR!

I find it funny, why Russians consider Georgian murderer - Stalin - and Polish murderer - Dzerzhinsky - as their national heroes!

 

[Farm Boy]

Inspired by the recent RD-thread on Sharon I really need to get something off my chest.
Which is how I understand racism and why that is how everyone should understand racism and why everyone who doesn't understand racism like that should slap himself in the face until he or she does.

IMO racism is only an adequate term when we have a pre-concieved notion at hands which is about genetics / a trait given by birth and which a group x shares.
If a pre-concieved notion is rather "merely" about cultural traits - than racism is the wrong word.
I.e. (a case which came up on the mentioned RD thread) does someone looking down on poor hungry African children carries the notion of this children being disadvantaged by their biology? Or rather being disadvantaged by the society of their birth? If the former - racism- If the latter - not racism.

One just needs to realize something actual innate about humans - we put people into dehumanized racist cliche boxes and those boxes include some kind of judgment. That is just how the human do. *imagine zefrank true-facts-voice*
We are not able to relate to groups of people we do not personally know any other way.
To explore this unfortunate habit, to socially handle and develop it - for all that the "racism"-club to me seems a woefully bad tool.
It is a weapon crafted by a world of black and white (haha). Of good and bad.
But non-racist prejudice is a world of human mudd and filth were monsters are far between but problematic attitudes universal

I assume you would prefer the word "bigoted" then to apply to harmful cultural/everything else stereotypes? It's pretty hard to neatly separate the two though, since it seems like a large amount of social prejudice and ethnic prejudice wind up overlapping. When listening to stereotypical bigotry against American blacks for instance, only some of it revolves around "inferior birth" or something like that, a lot of it is focused on things like "a cultural commitment to crime" or a culture of "absentee fathers" or "lazy, and not willing to work." These are really common bigoted touchpoints, but if one lumps in people of a specific skin tone at first glace to these social tropes, and may or may not toss the N-bombs around, is that person not also being racist? And that the words will inevitably wind up being conflated in common parlance? This might be an American take, I don't know, it might also explain why the Americans I've known that traveled in Europe came back relatively surprised at how racist(their term) much of Europe is when it comes to gypsies(should I say Roma?) and Turks.

 

[Kyriakos]

Inspired by the recent RD-thread on Sharon I really need to get something off my chest.
Which is how I understand racism and why that is how everyone should understand racism and why everyone who doesn't understand racism like that should slap himself in the face until he or she does.

IMO racism is only an adequate term when we have a pre-concieved notion at hands which is about genetics / a trait given by birth and which a group x shares.
If a pre-concieved notion is rather "merely" about cultural traits - than racism is the wrong word.
I.e. (a case which came up on the mentioned RD thread) does someone looking down on poor hungry African children carries the notion of this children being disadvantaged by their biology? Or rather being disadvantaged by the society of their birth? If the former - racism- If the latter - not racism.

One just needs to realize something actual innate about humans - we put people into dehumanized racist cliche boxes and those boxes include some kind of judgment. That is just how the human do. *imagine zefrank true-facts-voice*
We are not able to relate to groups of people we do not personally know any other way.
To explore this unfortunate habit, to socially handle and develop it - for all that the "racism"-club to me seems a woefully bad tool.
It is a weapon crafted by a world of black and white (haha). Of good and bad.
But non-racist prejudice is a world of human mudd and filth were monsters are far between but problematic attitudes universal

+1

Things have gotten to the point where many people deliberately speak of "racism" so as to silence others, many other people delude themselves into identifying a bad result with a theoretical background of "racism" and attributing it to that under tenuous basis, and many many other people seem to fear that if they do not go along with all that it means they are actually "racists".

No, being logical is always a positive quality. There is no such thing as a notion so negative that we are better off not discussing it at all. If you leave things to the dark then they may expand to something a lot more frightening that what you thought they were upon throwing them there. (true story; well, actually one of my short stories, but whatever)

 

[Domen]

If you are Arab, you are supposed to be Anti-Israel

Israel made a mistake by not expelling all Arabs from its territory as quickly as possible.

Arabs who identify as "Palestinians" are often children of immigrants from other Arab states.

For example Yasser Arafat was a son of Egyptian parents, but claimed being "native Palestinian".

Poles have the same problem with Germans as Jews have with Palestinians. For example Erica Steinbach - chief of "Bund der Vertriebenen" - claims to be one of the "expelled Germans", but her parents settled in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1940. So she only came back to Germany in 1946, rather than being "expelled".

Her parents were among the many thousands of settlers who came to Nazi-occupied Poland as part of the Generalplan Ost:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost

 

[Terxpahseyton]

@Farm Boy

Bigoted sounds just fine.
Hm I think the main issue of what you raise is that people are people and not machines which carry out my ivory tower theory.
They may not consciously think that blacks are genetically inferior. But in extreme cases they may feel about black people just as they were and treat them accordingly without even bothering to base this on a sound theory.
Yeah I am on board with calling such a thing racism.
And I agree with you that bigotry and racism can overlap and that the line is in practice not clear.
But I have an idea how to roughly find it. Which is that bigotry becomes racism when a person of average intelligence would usually have to realize that a certain form of bigotry is absolutely implausible. Saying bigotries which just require a notion of racism to make any sense - weather this is realized by the bigot or not.

For instance:
"I think American Africans can not be trusted because of their culture" is so implausible that it can not be viewed as mere bigotry.
" I think American Africans are dumber than white people" - is - and that may surprise you - IMO borderline. After all, it is a statistical fact that on average they are. But it is not clear weather this mere tendency was supposed to be conveyed or if it was supposed to be a general statement about the different races and which exists independent of time and place - which would be textbook racism.
"I think German Turks are impolite" is - weather right or wrong - a plausible assumption.
"I think all German Turks are impolite" on the other hand is again completely implausible and racist.

 

[Domen]

"I think German Turks are impolite" is - weather right or wrong - a plausible assumption (and a true one).

Hahaha... Nasty German propaganda again. German Turks are among the 20% of the most polite inhabitants of Germany.

The remaining 80% have no immigrant background.

=================================================

PS:

My cousin lives in Hannover and she says that local Turks are much more polite than local Germans.

I also don't need to add, that they make much better Kebab than Germans with no immigrant background.

BTW - travelling from Poznań (where I live) to Hannover takes less time than travelling from Poznań to Warsaw.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I entirely speak from personal experience. The main reason though is that German Turks belong to lower social stratas. I am not sure how things would look if you controlled for that. Perhaps German-Turks would be politer, I can see that. It is not like Germans are particular known for their politeness as it is.

 

[Domen]

"I think American Africans can not be trusted because of their culture"

In case of Afro-Americans vs. White-Americans I think that racist sentiments are mutual.

In the past it was mainly White racism which was the problem, but today there are also many Black racists.

Things like Black History Month are maybe not racist, but quite stupid.

Think about it - if there is just 1 Black month, it MAY somehow suggest, that the remaining 11 months are White...

 

[Farm Boy]

"I think American Africans can not be trusted because of their culture" is so implausible that it can not be viewed as mere bigotry.

Are you sure about this? It seems significantly more plausible than genetic-based racism, no? Certainly socialization varies amongst different demographics, and it's plausible than some of that variance will occur with some similarity to ethnic lines. If one is black, and lives in a largely black neighborhood except that members of law enforcement tend to be white, if black people are often treated unfairly by law enforcement, is it entirely incorrect for a black inhabitant of that area to think that "whites cannot be trusted because of their culture" with no specific dig at the genetic qualities of the ethnic group?

To put a nastier face on it: If one lives around northern Illinois in largely white areas that are pretty safe, but lives in proximity to the neighborhoods of South Chicago which happen to be largely black and relatively unsafe, particularly for somebody not from that area, then lets suppose Chicago bulldozes a large public housing area and moves some of those residents to towns like DeKalb and Cortland, towns that then see significant spikes in violent street crime, gang activity, and drug trafficking: largely associated with those new residents - can you not see how problems of socialization will wind up being problems of race as well?

 

[Formaldehyde]

"I think American Africans can not be trusted because of their culture"...

Such statements are frequently used by those who speak in dog whistles due to the politically correct environment which now we live. But like the Omaha police association depiction of the black infant as a future "thug" due to growing up in a "thug culture", I think isn't too difficult to realize it for what it is.

To me, the key requirement for racism instead of mere bigotry is that there must be an element of feeling superior to the other group while actually hating them. Claiming that African-Americans in general cannot be trusted is an element of it. The KKK has been saying the same thing about any group which aren't white Protestants since its inception. And they don't just feel that way about African-Americans. The same holds true for Jews and even Catholics.

Another element which has recently become a favorite meme of many conservatives is that the so-called anti-racists are really the racists. That it is the only racism which still exists to any large extent. That trying to provide help for disadvantaged groups somehow means that you feel superior to them, instead of forcing them to stop being too lazy to get productive high-paying jobs like they enjoy themselves. But I think it is clearly just a smoke screen to continue to deny that many of the people in their own group are racists.

 

[Senethro]

(sorry for the slurs)

Yah, it sure would be nice if we could talk about subtly different bigotries but unfortunately actual racists have already poisoned that well.

From the infamous Atwater interview on Republican campaigning strategy:

You start in 1954 by saying ‘******, , .’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘******.’ That hurts you. It backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights and all that stuff and you get so abstract. Now you talk about cutting taxes and these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that’s part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded, we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. Obviously sitting around saying we want to cut taxes and we want this, is a lot more abstract than even the busing thing and a hell of a lot more abstract than . So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.

Take the Far Right in Europe. They no longer say Paki Paki Paki, they go on about failed multi-cultural integration, sharia law and islamofascism. Culture, not race.

Just because its not biology based does not mean it isn't coded racism. Derogatory discussion of culture or people on low income is often racism in a nice suit.

 

[Farm Boy]

The thing about dog whistles is that some people actually hear them. There are a lot of garden variety "minor" racists Formy. In keeping with our example, they might be totally fine with their black co-worker(s) that act "white" or whatever. But that same person may be bigoted to a greater or lesser extent when it comes to people that express themselves in a manner more consistent with black American culture through speech, dress, etc.

 

[Domen]

They no longer say Paki Paki Paki, they go on about failed multi-cultural integration, sharia law and islamofascism. Culture, not race.

Just because its not biology based does not mean it isn't coded racism.

Breivikism maybe? http://pl.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Breivikism

 

[Senethro]

Things like Black History Month are maybe not racist, but quite stupid.

Think about it - if there is just 1 Black month, it MAY somehow suggest, that the remaining 11 months are White...

Given that American history is pretty much already White History its not very generous of you to say that a month for other people is a bad policy. Its like the thing about Who Discovered America?: Columbus. What was the name of the nation/people he met there? uhhh... let me check Wikipedia.

American history as taught and generally known is not race-neutral.

 

[attackfighter]

Most people don't really think about things, they just repeat stuff they hear.

Dan Wakefield didn't realise that circumstances could render talented persons poor. He only learned that idea when he went to university in New York. He not only learned it, he reformed his entire mind around it, and became a cartoon character of a leftist, who hung out with communists and sang songs of Irish rebellion.

Most people seem to be as banal as Dan Wakefield. They just throw their lots in with whatever movement is fashionable with their peers.

I think that most people on this website are cartoon characters. Each represents his or her own beliefs, which happen to align, in cartoonishly exaggerated fashion, with some fashionable political groups'.

I think that Buddha had it right, when he said that once you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky. I take that to mean that everything is pointless and that phony concerns like racism don't trouble people who realise it.