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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: A challenge: how did you benefit from slavery?
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
What I'm hearing is "racism, slavery, colonialism - it's all the same thing".
No, I don't think anyone is saying that. I'm certainly not. What I am saying is that one can't draw a linear diagram with those three things in a line, but on the other hand there are links between these three events.
By "links" do you mean "causal links" ? So that you can say that A was one of the factors causing B ?
Or are you only pointing out a similarity between these three different facets of European history - that Africans were on the sharp end in each case - and saying nothing about causation ?
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
What, then, do you attribute contemporary racism to?
Tribalism. The same old shit that goes back to before we were even human.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
What, then, do you attribute contemporary racism to?
Tribalism. The same old shit that goes back to before we were even human.
Funny how that tribalism works. Africa, which is full of many, many different tribes, was treated as one by slavers. Slavers who, by and large, had no inter-tribal rivalry with the Africans they were enslaving.
Racial theory in the modern times was developed to justify mistreatment of others. Nazi racism was influenced by racist theory generated by those justifying the Atlantic slave trade as was Japanese treatment of other "races" during WWII.
Tribalism exists, tribalism causes problems. Racism has a virulence that far exceeds tribalism and has roots in the Triangle Trade.
I suppose it doesn't help that, in the UK, racism is used interchangeably with tribalism. But they are not the same thing.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
What, then, do you attribute contemporary racism to?
Tribalism. The same old shit that goes back to before we were even human.
Funny how that tribalism works. Africa, which is full of many, many different tribes, was treated as one by slavers. Slavers who, by and large, had no inter-tribal rivalry with the Africans they were enslaving.
Hang on, are you asking about contemporary racism or the slave trade? It's pretty bad form to ask a question about one and respond to the answer as if it was about the other.
But that said, tribalism means "our tribe against the rest". So it's hardly a refutation of the point to say that quite a few of "the rest" were treated the same way.
The interesting thing is how the definitions of "us" and "them" change depending on how much of the world is being considered. Two villages might be bitter rivals on the local stage, but will still combine into one "tribe" at the national or international level. I've long thought that the day aliens arrive on Earth will be the day everyone on the globe suddenly puts aside their differences and come together as one, because then "human" will become a tribe to be defended against the new "other"...
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
[qb]What, then, do you attribute contemporary racism to?
Tribalism. The same old shit that goes back to before we were even human.
Funny how that tribalism works. Africa, which is full of many, many different tribes, was treated as one by slavers. Slavers who, by and large, had no inter-tribal rivalry with the Africans they were enslaving.
Hang on, are you asking about contemporary racism or the slave trade? It's pretty bad form to ask a question about one and respond to the answer as if it was about the other./QB]
As we have seen/explained already on this thread, you cannot discuss the one w/o discussing the other. If we're going to talk about where contemporary racism comes from, unless we think it suddenly sprung up last week, we're going to talk about possible historic causes.
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The interesting thing is how the definitions of "us" and "them" change depending on how much of the world is being considered. Two villages might be bitter rivals on the local stage, but will still combine into one "tribe" at the national or international level. I've long thought that the day aliens arrive on Earth will be the day everyone on the globe suddenly puts aside their differences and come together as one, because then "human" will become a tribe to be defended against the new "other"...
The theme of Independence Day and pretty much every other sci-fi film.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Tribalism exists, tribalism causes problems. Racism has a virulence that far exceeds tribalism and has roots in the Triangle Trade.
I suppose it doesn't help that, in the UK, racism is used interchangeably with tribalism. But they are not the same thing. [/QB]
I think you've got it about right, lilBuddha.
If racism is ideas of innate racial superiority/inferiority, something distinct from tribalism - the discrimination against the foreigners-among-us - then I can agree that racism would be greatly reduced in a history without slavery. Even though tribalism wouldn't.
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I agree with the ideas expressed although not necessarily the labels. There are different versions of racism of varying levels of perniciousness, but certainly there is a form which involves feelings of superiority which was likely reinforced by slavery and persists to date.
Tribalism and regarding other groups as other will always be with us, the expression of it and place it is given in society is strongly dependent on governance and the precedents of history.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
Read that first and thought "Oh good, we agree on something".
Read it again in more cynical mood, and it seems like you agree that there is a phenomenon that is to a significant degree the result of slavery and a phenomenon that is not. But want to apply the label "racism" to both of them equally ?
But maybe that's too cynical. Perhaps I should just ask what labels you'd use to distinguish these two different phenomena ?
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
Racism has a standard definition which I quoted previously. There's also a UN definition;
quote:
the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.
Do you have a different definition?
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Pottage
Shipmate
# 9529
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Posted
I think that's a good definition, but it includes elements such as descent, nationality and ethnic origin which are much more indicative of age-old and ubiquitous "tribalism" than more modern concepts of "race". It doesn't seem to help if your aim is to differentiate racism and racist discrimination as we commonly understand it now (and which is often claimed to have derived from the Atlantic slave trade) from the general tribalist dislike/distrust of The Other that was/is just as prevalent in ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome or China, medieval Japan or Europe, colonial India or the 21st Century Western democracies.
Posts: 701 | From: middle England | Registered: May 2005
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I don't think race has any place as a modern concept. There is no satisfactory scientific or genetic definition of race.
Race is simply an arbitrarily defined grouping of ethnicities which, at one time, had some pseudo-science applied to it.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Pottage
Shipmate
# 9529
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Posted
Race is one of those words that means something different in different eras. At one time it was a synonym for nationality, but now when a lot of people use it the term has connotations of the (relatively arbitrary) classification of humans into broad types by reference to common physical characteristics. I agree that doesn't really have any proper science behind it.
Posts: 701 | From: middle England | Registered: May 2005
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Race is simply an arbitrarily defined grouping of ethnicities
Any such grouping is, by definition, arbitrary.
If you have two villages, A and B, where which village you are from is considered significant then (almost by definition) they have to be neighbours (if village B was so far away that is was unknown to village A then that wouldn't be important - just that you weren't from village A. And, it's a simple exercise to show that "not from village A" applies for all villages, including those closest to A). Neighbouring villages, even those currently very antagonistic towards each other, would have had a significant exchange of people between them - therefore it won't be necessary to go very far back in time before you find an ancestor for everyone from A who was from B (and, vice versa). The distinction of "from A" or "from B" is based on an arbitrary number of generations you trace ancestry.
The same would be true for tribe A and tribe B, except the number of generations would be larger.
When you come to nations then the same applies, with the added complication that the borders of nations are also fairly arbitrary, and usually fluid over history.
And, of course, the same is true of "race".
So, racism is just another form of the "you're not from around here" prejudice common to many villages. The boundary between "racism" and "tribalism" is thus as arbitrary as the supposed distinctions between tribes and races.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
Exactly. If one divides up organisms into different species then there are biological definitions that can be applied. Strain-structuring exists in some organisms where different grouping can be identified that cluster according to certain characteristics (most useful when this is based on genetic typing).
With human beings there are no neat genetic clusters, just diversity without clear-space in between any clusters. One can arbitrarily throw a hoop around certain clusters, usually prompted by something like a national boundary, a continent or an external characteristic such as skin colour, but these clusters always have other populations just around the edges of the cluster excluded by an accident of where the line is drawn.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Alan and mdjion,
Think about Centrifugal Force. It does not exist as a discrete force, but rather a way of describing the effect of real forces.
Racism, too, serves this function. Yes, one can discus tribalism, economic factors, etc. that have lead to slavery and other gross treatments of peoples, it is simpler, and for most more clear, to discuss racism as a distinct phenomenon.
At least for general discussions. Calling racism tribalism can lead to a dismissal of current problems that need to be solved to remove inequity.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Calling racism tribalism can lead to a dismissal of current problems that need to be solved
So on the one hand there's no such thing as race, and the prejudice and discrimination that we see is all a manifestation of tribalism.
And on the other hand you want us to pretend that there's a Thing called racism which is an urgent and serious problem that we need to solve ?
Good job you're not a doctor - prescription is supposed to follow on from diagnosis.
Within reason, it doesn't matter what labels we use for these phenomena as long the labels are used clearly and consistently. Honest communication should be the aim.
I don't like the UN definition for two reasons. One is that it conflates race with nation. So that prejudice against people from Kerry doesn't qualify, unless they declare independence at which point they become a nation and such prejudice becomes racism. The other is that its linked to the idea of rights, so that if two people disagree as to what the Rights of Man might be then they can't have a common understanding of what is and isn't racism.
The idea of tribalism seems to overcome both these issues - if you're prejudiced against people of another tribe then that's true regardless of what status that grouping of people may have and regardless of what rights you think people have or should have.
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Good job you're not a doctor - prescription is supposed to follow on from diagnosis.
Cute. But I shall answer your comment seriously anyway.
Race does not need to exist to have racism as racism is based on the perception of race. And that is why the U.N. definition works.
It does not quite conflate as you indicate.
quote:
any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin
Your Kerry example is ridiculous as they would still be perceived as Irish as indeed are the people of both Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Tribalism is part of the genesis and continuation of contemporary race problems, but it is not the entirety of them. Therefore the word is not comprehensive enough to illustrate the problem.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I don't like the UN definition for two reasons. One is that it conflates race with nation. So that prejudice against people from Kerry doesn't qualify, unless they declare independence at which point they become a nation and such prejudice becomes racism.
That really isn't what the definition says. The UN may have made some mistakes but I think they've thought this one through a bit more than that. Nation is mentioned in a list not as an exclusive criteria. The equivalent would be a doctor focusing on presence or absence of one symptom and refusing to diagnose appendicitis in anyone without a fever.
Race doesn't exist as a scientific concept. It's an arbitrary social construct. People develop prejudices around arbitrary social constructs. That prejudice is called racism.
(If you want to argue that race exists as a scientific concept go ahead and provide some evidence).
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
There are two points pertinent to this discussion that I learned from my years working in India.
First, caste demonstrates that race is not uniquely pernicious as an arbitrary method of categorising human beings.
Secondly, racism is not peculiar to white Westerners; I had personal experience of Indian contempt for Africans.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I don't like the UN definition for two reasons. One is that it conflates race with nation. So that prejudice against people from Kerry doesn't qualify, unless they declare independence at which point they become a nation and such prejudice becomes racism.
The use of the word "descent" in the UN definition seems to be a general catch all. For example, it covers all instances of second or third generation immigrants being told to "go home", regardless of whether "home" is Africa or Kerry.
quote:
The other is that its linked to the idea of rights, so that if two people disagree as to what the Rights of Man might be then they can't have a common understanding of what is and isn't racism.
Sorry, I don't follow. If two people disagree what the Rights of Humans are then they disagree about Rights. I don't see how that reflects on what racism is ![[Confused]](confused.gif) If both people apply their understanding of Rights regardless of descent then they aren't racist, if they apply their understanding of Rights differently depending on descent then they are racist. The particular manifestation of racism (eg: the people discriminated against) will probably vary, but that's obvious anyway - racism is no less racism if it's Scots prejudiced against English, Japanese prejudiced against Gaijin, or white Americans prejudiced against Black Americans.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
First, caste demonstrates that race is not uniquely pernicious as an arbitrary method of categorising human beings.
I'm not sure anyone has claimed that unique status for racism.
Though, under the UN definition, discrimination based on caste would be racism since caste is a status based on descent.
quote:
Secondly, racism is not peculiar to white Westerners; I had personal experience of Indian contempt for Africans.
In other words "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". That others are committing the same sins as we do does not make our sins any less sinful.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
If I said I'd observed "White contempt for Africans" I would need to qualify that by explaining that I'd observed some individual white people who were racist shits. Not implying that I'd observed something about the white race.
Likewise one may make observations about aspects of Indian culture, which include the caste system, or observations about some Indians, but "Indian contempt" is too strongly identifying a characteristic with a race.
And as Alan has said, all have fallen etc. So what?
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
under the UN definition, discrimination based on caste would be racism since caste is a status based on descent.
If descent is the operative factor, then any discrimination aimed against aristocracy and aristocrats constitutes racism.
quote:
That others are committing the same sins as we do does not make our sins any less sinful.
Perhaps not, but in the case of this particular sin, infinitely more subject to comment, analysis and condemnation.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
You think the West has been unfairly criticized for racism and it would be better if we spent more time focusing on the caste system? Is that it?
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
under the UN definition, discrimination based on caste would be racism since caste is a status based on descent.
If descent is the operative factor, then any discrimination aimed against aristocracy and aristocrats constitutes racism.
That is an incredibly ridiculous statement, well worthy of a certain orange-hued politician.
That would be classism. Context matters if one wishes to be accurate.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Your Kerry example is ridiculous as they would still be perceived as Irish as indeed are the people of both Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Tribalism is part of the genesis and continuation of contemporary race problems, but it is not the entirety of them. Therefore the word is not comprehensive enough to illustrate the problem.
I don't think that's all that different from what Russ is saying.
He's saying that there's this universal human tendency to be prejudiced against other groups, and that can be about all sorts of things - locality/class/nationality - and is calling that "tribalism". That sort of thing isn't a legacy of slavery because its always been with us.
Then there's the modern sort of racism, which (arguably) is a legacy of slavery. It doesn't just say that the other group are my rivals, it says that they are inherently a lesser breed fit only to serve. Bad science used to be deployed in justifying that division of humanity into different races, so that we could see black people as a fundamentally separate category to white people. We don't believe the science any more, but the discredited categories are still part of our discourse. Racism in this deeper sense is more than just tribalism (which is what I think you and Russ are both saying in different ways).
An example of the distinction I remember is the row a few years ago when the former Top Gear presenters took the piss out of the Mexicans. When we discussed it here, there was a conceptual gap between those people (almost all not Americans) to whom "Mexican" is just a nationality, and other people (largely but not entirely American) to whom "Mexican" refers to a race. The first lot either excused or condemned the presenters for being insensitive, laddish, crass, shock-humourists - tribalism, the same sort of thing as taking the piss out of the French or the English - whereas the second lot judged the comments as racist and therefore were more likely to think it completely unacceptable.
There's a difference between seeing people as "not us" and seeing them as an inferior type of being. The second of those I think has been enormously strengthened by the legacy of slavery.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
You think the West has been unfairly criticized for racism and it would be better if we spent more time focusing on the caste system? Is that it?
It would possibly be better if Indians themselves spent more time focussing on the caste system.
There is, and has been, plenty of racism perpetrated by the West, for which it is, and has been, justifiably criticised from both within and without.
However there has always been just as much injustice (such as racism and casteism) in the rest of the world, too, but it receives far less attention, from both within and without.
Mention the term "racism", or just about any other form of discrimination, in just about any context, and the automatic assumption will be that white, Western racism is in mind.
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
under the UN definition, discrimination based on caste would be racism since caste is a status based on descent.
If descent is the operative factor, then any discrimination aimed against aristocracy and aristocrats constitutes racism.
That is an incredibly ridiculous statement, well worthy of a certain orange-hued politician.
That would be classism. Context matters if one wishes to be accurate.
This is an incredibly ridiculous statement, reminiscent not so much of colouring one's hair orange, as of sticking straws in it.
That is because classism has no necessary connection with descent.
You do not irrevocably inherit a fixed working-class, middle-class, or whatever, status - these can change, both up and down, from one generation to the next.
Aristocracy, however, by its very nature, is automatically inherited and bequeathed.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
Race is a social construct. There isn't going to be a water-tight definition of a social construct.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
However there has always been just as much injustice (such as racism and casteism) in the rest of the world, too, but it receives far less attention, from both within and without.
So what is the implication for individuals - that one shouldn't raise questions regarding racism in the West without a proportionate mention of caste and injustice elsewhere in the world? This seems like what-about-ery.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Mention the term "racism", or just about any other form of discrimination, in just about any context, and the automatic assumption will be that white, Western racism is in mind.
Well, given that we live in countries where this is the primary dynamic and that this thread was begun within that framework, it makes perfect sense.
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Aristocracy, however, by its very nature, is automatically inherited and bequeathed.
Kinda sorta. It can be granted to non-nobles. It can be ended.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Classism has no necessary connection with descent.
You do not irrevocably inherit a fixed working-class, middle-class, or whatever, status - these can change, both up and down, from one generation to the next.
Aristocracy, however, by its very nature, is automatically inherited and bequeathed.
I don't think you're quite right about class. In the British context it can be hard to escape your ancestors, certainly within a few generations. Class here is partly about certain inherited cultural sensibilities and assumptions, not simply about one's job or financial status.
It's true that class expectations have changed over time, along with changes in the culture and disposable incomes, but there's less social mobility in this country than is often supposed.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Race does not need to exist to have racism as racism is based on the perception of race.
If you want to use the word "racism" to denote the ideology of inferior races - the perception of humankind divided into distinct races some of which have less-than-desirable inherited genetic traits - that's fine by me. So long as you're upfront and consistent about it.
Seems to me that with that sort of definition,
- observing that Irish culture has a problem with drink is not racist
- using red hair as a marker of probable Irishness is not racist (although conceiving of Irish people as a genetically distinct redheaded population might be)
- declining to invite a redheaded candidate to a job interview on the grounds that they probably have a drink problem would be an example of prejudice and discrimination but not racism
Would you agree ?
If the example is changed to talk about African people with dark skin as a marker, would you still agree ?
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Race is a social construct. There isn't going to be a water-tight definition of a social construct.
It is interesting that the word "racism" didn't even exist in English until the 20th century.
Hard to fight an idea when negative language describing it doesn't exist.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
Hard to fight an idea when negative language describing it doesn't exist.
That rings like an important insight to me. I had a colleague who was the victim of attempted date-rape in college 30 years ago. It involved spiking her drink. She didn't report it and (probably rightly) assumed no-one would take any notice if she did. She had been unable to categorize her experience and hence didn't have an action plan for responding to it.
Today it would be categorized as date rape and people in organizations with responsibility would know what was expected as a response.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Kaplan Corday: quote:
Aristocracy, however, by its very nature, is automatically inherited and bequeathed.
Harold Godwinson (Richard II, James II...) would have been fascinated to hear that.
Have you never heard of the Tichborne case?
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
- using red hair as a marker of probable Irishness is not racist (although conceiving of Irish people as a genetically distinct redheaded population might be)
Using red hair as a marker of Irishness is stupid. The majority of Irish people don't have red hair, and most redheads outside Ireland aren't Irish. (They may have some Irish ancestry, but aren't terribly likely to have "Irish culture."
If you want markers for Irishness, I'd suggest that being in Ireland and having an Irish accent should probably top your list.
quote:
- declining to invite a redheaded candidate to a job interview on the grounds that they probably have a drink problem would be an example of prejudice and discrimination but not racism
As you describe it, it's exactly racism. Very inefficient, stupid racism, but exactly racism. You don't want to hire people you perceive as being Irish because you think they're going to be drunks.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
using red hair as a marker of Irishness is stupid. The majority of Irish people don't have red hair, and most redheads outside Ireland aren't Irish.
Absolutely. Never said otherwise.
quote:
If you want markers for Irishness, I'd suggest that being in Ireland and having an Irish accent should probably top your list.
Having a name like O'Shaughnessy at the top of the CV is a bit of a giveaway.
quote:
As you describe it, it's exactly racism. Very inefficient, stupid racism, but exactly racism. You don't want to hire people you perceive as being Irish because you think they're going to be drunks.
I think lilBuddha has it right again. It's racism if it"s based on a perception that Irish is a race.
Rather than a nationality, a culture or an ethnic origin ?
Racism is then like a kind of genetic determinism - a belief that some group of people have negative personality traits because of the paricular cluster of the human gene pool that they come from. And acting on such a belief.
The idea that Irish culture has some sort of problem with binge-drinking is a commonplace that you'd hear on RTE radio quite regularly. That's not the issue.
Seems to me that...
...thinking that an individual necessarily has characteristics of a group that they belong to is prejudice.
...Racism is a particular type of prejudice, thinking that personality traits are inbuilt into an ethnic group.
...acting on prejudice is discrimination.
...and acting on any discomfort one might feel because people from another group are not "one of us" is tribalism.
Unless you can put it better...
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Having a name like O'Shaughnessy at the top of the CV is a bit of a giveaway.
Although I have a friend who's name is very much like O'Shaughnessy but who is Malaysian. Inter-marriage, adoption, all these things have a way of messing up all these old markers-- and hopefully helping tear down some of these tribal walls.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Having a name like O'Shaughnessy at the top of the CV is a bit of a giveaway.
Although I have a friend who's name is very much like O'Shaughnessy but who is Malaysian. Inter-marriage, adoption, all these things have a way of messing up all these old markers-- and hopefully helping tear down some of these tribal walls.
There's also the way the freed slaves adopted surnames. I've known quite a few African Americans with, say, Irish or Scottish surnames.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Didn't those at least some of those Afro-Caribbean slave families get given those Irish and Scottish surnames from their slave owners? I thought that one of the frustrations of being taken into slavery was that the slaves didn't just lose their freedoms, homes, languages and rights but they also lost their names.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Didn't those at least some of those Afro-Caribbean slave families get given those Irish and Scottish surnames from their slave owners?
And descendants that have surnames of actual Scottish and Irish heritage as well.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I did debate about going into the parentage of some of those freed slaves and their surnames as a result, but was struggling with the phrasing.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
Posted by Russ:
quote:
- observing that Irish culture has a problem with drink is not racist
Ireland certainly does have an issue with binge drinking and alcoholism, but does that mean it is a cultural problem that should only be associated with the Irish? That might seem like I'm nit picking, but the WHO figures don't place Ireland in the top ten places of highest alcohol consumption percentages by capita. The top ten (according to the WHO 2010 report) are Belarus, Rep of Moldova, Luthiana, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Andorra, Hungary, Slovakia and Portugal. I don't recall moments when Belarus is seen on the world stage as a nation of drunkards and alcoholics and it would be a slur to portray all the people of Belarus in this way, but I can recall plenty of times when Ireland is portrayed in this way, alongside being thieves, fighters, backward, inbred and red headed with freckles. Certainly Ireland hasn't often done itself any favours in how it portrays itself, very often playing into the hands of those who would deal in racial stereotypes, but racial stereotypes they remain.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
By contrast, if you go to the Medieval literature aorund the period of the Anglo-Norman expansion into Ireland the Irish are described as sober, it's the Anglo-Normans who are portrayed as drunkards*. Perhaps that particular problem in Irish society is something else that the English can be blamed for.
* I saw it on Time Team, Tony wouldn't lie to us, would he?
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Perhaps that particular problem in Irish society is something else that the English can be blamed for.
Is there a problem in any society that the English have never been blamed for?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Didn't those at least some of those Afro-Caribbean slave families get given those Irish and Scottish surnames from their slave owners?
And descendants that have surnames of actual Scottish and Irish heritage as well.
In some cases ex-slaves also picked their own surnames after emancipation.
Also, it wasn't inevitable that a white ancestor would 'give' his surname to his illegitimate offspring. In France and the French colonies this wasn't the custom.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Ireland certainly does have an issue with binge drinking and alcoholism, but does that mean it is a cultural problem that should only be associated with the Irish? That might seem like I'm nit picking, but the WHO figures don't place Ireland in the top ten places of highest alcohol consumption percentages by capita.
Hmmm, this report by WHO* puts Ireland at #7. Ireland, as a country, drinks more than most. Attributing this to an innate behaviour is racist, attributing as a national trend is not.
*Sort by consumption, scroll down to where the NO DATA meets the highest consumption and count from there.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Is there a problem in any society that the English have never been blamed for?
The breakup of the Macedonian Empire?
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Ireland certainly does have an issue with binge drinking and alcoholism, but does that mean it is a cultural problem that should only be associated with the Irish? That might seem like I'm nit picking, but the WHO figures don't place Ireland in the top ten places of highest alcohol consumption percentages by capita.
Hmmm, this report by WHO* puts Ireland at #7. Ireland, as a country, drinks more than most. Attributing this to an innate behaviour is racist, attributing as a national trend is not.
*Sort by consumption, scroll down to where the NO DATA meets the highest consumption and count from there.
That's "recorded" alcohol consumption, but record keeping practices aren't uniform across countries. If you sort the WHO data for "total" per capita consumption, Ireland is only 21st - somewhere between France (18th) and the UK (25th).
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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