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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Racism: Let's Talk.
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
So then, Tom, how would you provide educational opportunities to people who have been traditionally blocked?
I don't know. My point was descriptive, not prescriptive. But it is worth considering anyway. There is a serious flaw at the heart of much of the liberal approach to group equality. IME, the intent is to place individuals from the relevant groups in positions of prominence so that they will favor and mentor others of their group. Those in the black community who failed to do this were called "Uncle Toms" or "oreos," and subject to significant group opprobrium. The women's movement has similar expectations, although I am not aware of comparable terms that they may employ for apostates.
The point is that this is precisely the behavior that is being seen as despicable in the majority. Replicating it in the minority may, on a macroscopic level appear to make the society more just, as there are advocates for more different groups -- although each is acting in the same benighted way. It all seems rather Mandevillian to my eye.
As to Porridge's post, it is so challenged in reading comprehension that I have no idea how to respond to it meaningfully.
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Black youth are disadvantaged compared to white ones even when taking their socioeconomic and educational backgrounds into account.
From the rest of your post, I surmise that what you mean is "all other factors being equal, black youths are disadvantaged compared to white ones". And I wouldn't argue.
But I wasn't talking about instances where all other factors are equal. I was talking about a system that can define the President's daughter as disadvantaged, and the impoverished son of a white West Virginia coalminer as privileged. Those definitions can only be based on race, because by any other factor the "privileged/disadvantaged" categorisation would be the other way around.
I've never heard anyone claim that
race is the only disadvantage a person can face. Nonetheless a coal miners son does benefit from white and male privilege. He is much more likely than a black boy of any social class to reach 18 without having been harassed by the police, for a start.
I'm also confused as to why you think the coal miner's son wouldn't get any support. Speaking of presidents, Bill Clinton is from a poor background and got to Georgetown on a scholarship.
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
Well, let`s take a look at what is happening in North Carolina:
Black residents in North Carolina fear losing the ability to vote
So I agree that it really sucks when people automatically dislike you because of the colour of your skin. However, no one is trying to take white people`s votes away. Aren`t continued efforts to stop black people from voting fifty years after the civil rights movement kind of backstabby-racist?
Here is a paragraph from that link that shows the kind of provisions the law has. quote:
Starting in 2016, the law will require not just that voters present a valid photo ID, but also that it exactly match the name on their voter registration card—an even stricter requirement than some past photo ID laws.
People have time before an election to make sure that the name on their voter registration card is correct. If not, they should contact the board that issues the cards.
The reason for these requirements is to prevent voting fraud. I don't know anything specific about North Carolina, but in some places in some states, the number of votes cast exceeded the number of voting-age residents.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Britain and the Netherlands maintained a physical presence in Japan long before WWII.
They were allowed to trade at certain Japanese ports, but I wouldn't call that a physical presence. quote:
The Dutch used Japan as a staging point for their colonial conquests in SE Asia.
What is your source for this? quote:
When Japan decided to open itself up in the 1800s they made a conscious decision to copy behaviour that it saw the European powers using in advancing its political and economic goals.
How do you know about any decisions they made?
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
... The reason for these requirements is to prevent voting fraud. I don't know anything specific about North Carolina, but in some places in some states, the number of votes cast exceeded the number of voting-age residents. ...
Contrary to conservative propaganda, voter impersonation is incredibly rare in the USA. The purpose of voter ID laws is not to identify voters, but to select them.
One element of the NC law which clearly demonstrates its intent is that it eliminates advance registration for 16 and 17-year-olds. It also eliminates same-day registration. So if you happen to turn 18 on election day, YOU CAN'T VOTE. Happy birthday, young citizen. ![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
In Texas, you can use your concealed-carry permit as voter ID, but not your college or university ID.
Some of the voter ID laws even prevent officials from keeping the polls open if there are still voters waiting in line. Others mandate the same number of poll hours and poll workers in a county or polling area regardless of the number of voters in the area, so voters who live in sparsely populated areas can vote more easily than their urban counterparts.
That's the intent of these laws: to make it harder, more complicated, and more inconvenient for certain people to vote. Jim Crow used literacy tests and poll taxes and murderous intimidation, but his successor, James Crow, Esq. is far more subtle.
As a friend of mine used to say, don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining.
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Britain and the Netherlands maintained a physical presence in Japan long before WWII.
They were allowed to trade at certain Japanese ports, but I wouldn't call that a physical presence. quote:
The Dutch used Japan as a staging point for their colonial conquests in SE Asia.
What is your source for this? quote:
When Japan decided to open itself up in the 1800s they made a conscious decision to copy behaviour that it saw the European powers using in advancing its political and economic goals.
How do you know about any decisions they made?
Moo
You don't give a crap about Japan. You just can't accept that European racism is unique in world history.
But since you asked:
quote:
The Japanese knew that they were behind the rest of the world when American Commodore Matthew C. Perry came to Japan to try to issue a treaty that would open up Japanese ports to trade. Perry came to Japan in large warships with armament and technology that far outclassed those of Japan at the time. The leaders of the Meiji Restoration, as this revolution came to be known, acted in the name of restoring imperial rule in order to strengthen Japan against the threat represented by the colonial powers of the day. The word "Meiji" means "enlightened rule" and the goal was to combine "western advances" with the traditional, "eastern" values
and
quote:
Japan dispatched the Iwakura Mission in 1871. The mission traveled the world in order to renegotiate the unequal treaties with the United States and European countries that Japan had been forced into during the Tokugawa shogunate, and to gather information on western social and economic systems, in order to effect the modernization of Japan. Renegotiation of the unequal treaties was universally unsuccessful, but close observation of the American and European systems inspired members on their return to bring about modernization initiatives in Japan.
and
quote:
The Japanese government sent students to Western countries to observe and learn their practices, and also paid "foreign advisors" in a variety of fields to come to Japan to educate the populace.
and
quote:
The most important feature of the Meiji period was Japan's struggle for recognition of its considerable achievement and for equality with Western nations. Japan was highly successful in organizing an industrial, capitalist state on Western models. But when Japan also began to apply the lessons it learned from European imperialism, the West reacted negatively. In a sense Japan's chief handicap was that it entered into the Western dominated world order at a late stage. Colonialism and the racist ideology that accompanied it, were too entrenched in Western countries to allow an "upstart," nonwhite nation to enter the race for natural resources and markets as an equal. Many of the misunderstandings between the West and Japan stemmed from Japan's sense of alienation from the West, which seemed to use a different standard in dealing with European nations than it did with a rising Asian power like Japan.
From Wikipedia and Columbia University
Columbia University - Meiji Restoration
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
The reason for these requirements is to prevent voting fraud. I don't know anything specific about North Carolina, but in some places in some states, the number of votes cast exceeded the number of voting-age residents.
.. and you know that a number of these allegations - especially the ones circulating via email have turned out to be urban legends? There's even a snopes page on it:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/2012fraud.asp
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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Pottage
Shipmate
# 9529
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
It's certainly possible the Japanese treatment of aboriginals was due to foreign influence. The Dutch got to Jaoan in th 1600s if not earlier. I don't know enough about the subject to comment further.
The Dutch and other Europeans reached Japan well before 1600, and before any European countries had the huge empires they later came to control. Europeans were known as nanban, that is to say Southern barbarians, because all non-Japanese were regarded as barbarians (most assuredly not as role models) and were categorised by the direction they came from. Europeans were wholly excluded from Japan on pain of death for over 200 years from the early 1600s until the later part of the nineteenth century. Their influence on Japanese culture, attitudes and prejudices throughout all that time was nil.
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Do you believe that European colonialism and slavery has had a lingering impact on race, both in Europe and in places that Europe conquered? Yes or no.
The question is directed to Moo I know, but for myself the answer to your question is 'yes'. But your posts on this thread don't argue there is a "lingering impact" from this history in Western society (which is clearly true) but rather that you believe the legacy specifically of European colonialism and European-sponsored slavery (as distinct from thousands of years of colonialism and slavery for which others are responsible) is solely and uniquely to blame for the existence of racism. I don't agree with that.
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
All racism is bad, but is not all equivalent. A society that got rich literally off the backs of the black and brown, like Britain or France or Spain, is not the same as one where tribes bicker over resources.
Yes, all racism is bad. That black and brown people in Britain, France and Spain (and elsewhere) suffer from racist prejudice despite well-intentioned laws to remove it is undeniable. It is a tragedy that countless people in those countries struggle against racist prejudice and in consequence disproportionately fail to make the most of their potential and to progress as far as they should in education and career, that they face personal slights and abuse for racist reasons.
But (to take one example rather than clog the thread with scores) is the traditional prejudice of some central African people towards pygmy peoples inconsequential and irrelevant by comparison? That isn't petty squabbling over resources but rather an ingrained attitude that pygmy people are not truly people at all. I've read that the UN has investigated instances of pygmies being hunted as game animals as recently as the 1990s for instance. The history of that prejudice is very long incidentally, predating by far the colonial era.
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Institutionalized racism, that is a result of this history, is what has the greatest oppressive effect on minorities. Not some EDL moron shouting the N-word. That's why I'm focusing on it and trying to emphasize how ingrained racism is into Western society.
Yes, you're right and whilst abuse is bad being treated as a lower class of person, or even not really a person at all is worse still. That was a commonplace expression of colonial power of course, and I wouldn't disagree that the lingering institutional or ingrained customary racism in the West is rooted in those attitudes.
But I wouldn't accept the premise that before White Western Colonialism nobody ever had such attitudes and that but for the vestiges of that White Western Colonial thinking it wouldn't happen anywhere in the world. There are examples all over the world of one people treating another as inferior, and doing that 'institutionally' in ways that are sanctioned by long custom and practice or enshrined in the law of the land.
Posts: 701 | From: middle England | Registered: May 2005
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
I just want to clarify that I have never made any of the following claims:
- only the West is racist
- racism didn't exist before European colonialism
I am not going to respond to things that I have never said and that I do not personally believe.
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
I just want to clarify that I have never made any of the following claims:
- only the West is racist
- racism didn't exist before European colonialism
Then what exactly is your claim that all instances of racism in the wider world are purely a byproduct of white western imperialism supposed to mean?
You've been given the example of Japan, and you persist in claiming that that racism only exists there because it was learned from white westerners. What are you trying to prove by such assertions, if not that racism in non-white populations was learned from white ones?
[ 16. August 2013, 14:16: Message edited by: Marvin the Martian ]
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
I just want to clarify that I have never made any of the following claims:
- only the West is racist
- racism didn't exist before European colonialism
Then what exactly is your claim that all instances of racism in the wider world are purely a byproduct of white western imperialism supposed to mean?
You've been given the example of Japan, and you persist in claiming that that racism only exists there because it was learned from white westerners. What are you trying to prove by such assertions, if not that racism in non-white populations was learned from white ones?
How on Earth is anything I've said here an argument that all racism derives from Europe.
I will say it loud and clear.
Racism against minorities in the West that exists today is a result of systemic, institutionalized racism on a scale never achieved in the history of the world, perpetrated by the European colonial powers.
I have repeatedly limited my claims to Europe, North America, South Africa, and other former European colonies.
Someone mentioned Japan - not me - and I responded that Europe had a presence in Japan and in fact there is historical evidence that Japan mimicked what saw Europe doing in order to modernize itself. I did not bring that up myself.
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
An academic article that I have just Googled - so clearly I am not making this claim up in my head.
White myths, black omissions: the historical origins of racism in Britain
Abstract
Racism in Britain is rooted in history. This article considers the ways in which Britishness was constructed around white visions of identity, rooted in imperial attitudes and assumptions. Although the dominant view is that the black presence in Britain was not significant before large-scale immigration after the Second World War, this article sheds light on the rich and varied nature of black people’s
experiences in Britain in the nineteenth century. The central argument is that racism
today can only be fully appreciated if we recognise the racist assumptions that
dominated the period between the mid-nineteenth century and World War II.
Institute of Commonwealth Studies
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Pottage
Shipmate
# 9529
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
I just want to clarify that I have never made any of the following claims:
- only the West is racist
- racism didn't exist before European colonialism
I am not going to respond to things that I have never said and that I do not personally believe.
I have formed the contrary impression and was prompted to post because of posts such as this (emphasis is mine):
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
In Europe and North American the legacy of racist institutions remain and therefore the racism experienced by minorities on those places cannot simply be compared to the type of "don't trust the guy who's not from around here" behaviour that can be found anywhere.
There is a tendency for some to try and explain away the racism in their own societies by suggesting that "everyone does it." No one else has done it like Europe has unfortunately (and by extension Europe's colonies with race issues like the US, South Africa, Brazil, etc). And God willing no one else ever will.
and this:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
The world's most powerful countries institutionalized racism against Africans, Native Americans, and Asians through colonialism and empire, and exported that racism throughout the world. Let's put this into context here.
Europe is largely unmatched in this type of behaviour, whether one wants to accept it or not. Most other racism you find in the world is tribalism or sectarianism, rather than a political, social and economic structure based on subjugating certain people due to their physical appearance. Yes it happened elsewhere, but not on the scale achieved by colonial Europe.
You made those posts in reply to people who were suggesting that racism is and has always been found around the world, that it is a form of the "fear/distrust of The Other" phenomenon. You weren't replying to anyone who had suggested (as nobody has) that that there is no racism in the West, or that there were no racist views held and spread by Western Colonialism.
Posts: 701 | From: middle England | Registered: May 2005
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
Nothing you highlighted says no one else was racist.
It says no one perpetrated racism in the same scale or manner as Europe. And I repeat - God willing, no one else will.
I stand by it and history generally supports me, so feelings aside I'm not going to back down from this position. Sorry.
I don't think anyone here (OK maybe one person here) is on a personal level racist or feels superior to other races. What your ancestors may or may not have done shouldn't be such a touchy subject.
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
It says no one perpetrated racism in the same scale or manner as Europe.
That's only because Europe happened to be the continent whose people were able to colonise the world first. I have no doubt that the result would have been the same (with the colours reversed, of course) had it been Asia, Africa, South America or North America who had been first to develop the technology to do so.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Pottage
Shipmate
# 9529
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Nothing you highlighted says no one else was racist.
It says no one perpetrated racism in the same scale or manner as Europe. And I repeat - God willing, no one else will.
I stand by it and history generally supports me, so feelings aside I'm not going to back down from this position. Sorry.
I don't think anyone here (OK maybe one person here) is on a personal level racist or feels superior to other races. What your ancestors may or may not have done shouldn't be such a touchy subject.
Ok, I'm keen to understand because I think your perspective is different to mine. Am I being true to your views in paraphrasing them as follows?
1. Racist views and attitudes are to be found in any society anywhere or any time. (This is what you seemed not to accept, but which I now understand you do.)
2. White westerners during the colonial era were particularly racist in their attitudes, more so than anyone else ever has been.
3. Because of the disparity of power between white western countries and the rest of the world during the colonial era, those white western countries perpetrated racially motivated abuse of power on a scale no other era has ever seen. That has had an unprecedented impact on the psyche, not only of the former colonial countries of the West but also on their former colonies.
4. Although racist attitudes are common to all humanity, the legacy of white western colonialism is so powerful that in those societies touched by it (whether coloniser or colonised, or perhaps even just as observers of it in the case of places like Japan) racism cannot now be understood in any other context.
I'm a bit of a history geek, and I'd take issue with some of those points, but I want to be clear that I am not misinterpreting you.
Posts: 701 | From: middle England | Registered: May 2005
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
no prophet
I think your main point is that white people can be racist against other white people? That's certainly true. I've read about English and American attitudes towards the Irish in the past. And the Nazis built on the pseudo-science of a previous generation when they divided up different white ethnic groups into categories based on notions of superiority.
Good point of clarification. I may be mincing words, but it seems to be something else if the race as in appearance is the same.
This assumes that racism is simply about appearance. But that's no so. Have you heard of the notion of 'passing for white'? This has always struck me as strange. After all, if a person 'looks white', then surely they are white?? Isn't whiteness is simply an absence of colour? Apparently not. Race is more of a construct (as someone has surely already said) than a physical reality.
And not everyone sees the same thing. What looks like whiteness to one group of people may look like something else to another. Americans from the Deep South and people from the Caribbean are probably much better at spotting the 'blackness' in the features of someone who in the North or in Europe would be assumed to be 'white'. The English Victorians saw the Irish as physically different from themselves, not as 'white' people who happened to come from an backward culture:
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/race/rc5.html
There are books on Amazon about how the Jews, the Irish and certain other immigrant groups gradually 'became white' after arrival in the USA. The processes involved were likely to be social, economic, political and psychological, and had little to do with changes in pigmentation or bone structure!
[ 16. August 2013, 15:51: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
It says no one perpetrated racism in the same scale or manner as Europe.
That's only because Europe happened to be the continent whose people were able to colonise the world first. I have no doubt that the result would have been the same (with the colours reversed, of course) had it been Asia, Africa, South America or North America who had been first to develop the technology to do so.
Sure, it could have been space aliens too. Doesn't matter. Every individual has the capacity for racism and every act of racism is wrong, no matter who does it or what skin tone they have.
My overarching point was that racism experienced by minorities in the West goes beyond name-calling and hurt feelings, but is institutionalized and has a measurable effect on economic and educational prospects. It does not require individual acts of racism for British or American society to have the effect of excluding or mistreating minorities, because the structures are already in place.
I think I've made that point and so I will take a break and allow others who I'm sure have interesting positions and their own experiences to get a word in ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Sure, it could have been space aliens too. Doesn't matter.
It emphatically does matter, especially when you're using the fact that Europe happened to colonise the world first to claim that European racism is worse in and of itself than Asian, African or American racism.
Europeans aren't any more or less racist than people from other continents, it's just that they were the ones who actually had the ability to subjugate (most of) the rest of the world.
quote:
Every individual has the capacity for racism and every act of racism is wrong, no matter who does it or what skin tone they have.
My overarching point was that racism experienced by minorities in the West goes beyond name-calling and hurt feelings, but is institutionalized and has a measurable effect on economic and educational prospects.
See, this makes it sound like you think that no other (AKA not western white) culture has ever done anything worse than name calling and hurting feelings as their expression of racism (unless taught to do so by those evil white westerners, of course). But that's just not true.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
In Texas, you can use your concealed-carry permit as voter ID, but not your college or university ID.
Whilst I agree with you that the intent behind most US voter ID laws is to prevent poor people and black people from voting (because they probably vote for the Democratic party), this particular rule could be quite rational - because if you are going to require ID to vote, this only makes a shred of sense if the ID you require is government-issued with a certain degree of certainty attached to the identification, and I wouldn't expect a student ID card to necessarily meet that standard.
Personally, I am not opposed to requiring ID from voters, as long as you also make it easy for people to acquire ID (which means IDs are free, and mobile ID-issuing buses travel around so that poor people without reliable transport don't have to somehow make their way to the single DMV office in the county, and so on. And funnily enough, most of the people in favor of voter ID laws don't want to do any of that stuff.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
So then, Tom, how would you provide educational opportunities to people who have been traditionally blocked?
I don't know. My point was descriptive, not prescriptive. But it is worth considering anyway. There is a serious flaw at the heart of much of the liberal approach to group equality. IME, the intent is to place individuals from the relevant groups in positions of prominence so that they will favor and mentor others of their group.
--Tom Clune
All systems have flaws, yes. But to address the line I bolded, this is exactly the system that was, and still is, in place which prompted disadvantaged groups to start their own programmes. The problem with a programme that allows no distinction is that it creates an environment in which discrimination flourishes.
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
But I wasn't talking about instances where all other factors are equal. I was talking about a system that can define the President's daughter as disadvantaged, and the impoverished son of a white West Virginia coalminer as privileged. Those definitions can only be based on race, because by any other factor the "privileged/disadvantaged" categorisation would be the other way around.
But this is an unreasonable comparison. Malea Obama is no more a typical example of the Black experience than using George Burns to prove the health benefits of smoking.
Cracker was used on a recent thread. If you call a poor, white Southern American "cracker" this will be taken as an insult. However, if you say the same to a New Yorker or Los Angeleno, you will be more likely met with incomprehension than indignation. Call a black person nigger anywhere in the western world and you will be delivering an insult. From Honolulu to London to Gisborne. Savile Row suit to Potato Sack dress, being black carries a disadvantage.
It would be lovely if we could say, ["From this point forward, we will discriminate no longer, full stop", but this does not erase the centuries of disadvantage.
It is akin to a society in which running races is the determining factor for advancement. One group is allowed to train and compete. The other is locked in the cellar with iron shackles and only a small window to view the race. One day, the shackles are cast off and the cellar door open. "You may now compete! The race starts in 5 minutes, good luck".
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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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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
Sure, it could have been space aliens too. Doesn't matter.
It emphatically does matter, especially when you're using the fact that Europe happened to colonise the world first to claim that European racism is worse in and of itself than Asian, African or American racism.
Europeans aren't any more or less racist than people from other continents, it's just that they were the ones who actually had the ability to subjugate (most of) the rest of the world.
quote:
Every individual has the capacity for racism and every act of racism is wrong, no matter who does it or what skin tone they have.
My overarching point was that racism experienced by minorities in the West goes beyond name-calling and hurt feelings, but is institutionalized and has a measurable effect on economic and educational prospects.
See, this makes it sound like you think that no other (AKA not western white) culture has ever done anything worse than name calling and hurting feelings as their expression of racism (unless taught to do so by those evil white westerners, of course). But that's just not true.
Obviously you are committed to believing that's my position, so feel free to do so. It's not interesting for other posters to see a back and forth between the two of us that is not about race but about whether you think I think white people are especially evil - I don't, certainly my white husband would be shocked to hear it anyway!
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Angel Wrestler
Ship's Hipster
# 13673
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Posted
I think the arguments about cultural differences, which happen to often coincide with ethnic or race differences, ring true to me, personally.
I work in a store and live in an area that is very diverse. I'm put-off by the way some men speak to me and how they seem so keen to tell me how attractive I am in what I consider to be a forward, demeaning way. They interrupt me, derail the conversation, and one even told me how good sex feels. It happens that they have a certain accent and a darker skin tone.
It's not that white men haven't been known to do the same thing, but as a general rule, the men from this particular area of the world seem to be more likely to do that. Is treating women this way normative for that area, or are they getting a kick out of disarming a white woman.
Another group come across as very direct and rather abrupt and demanding, but perhaps in their area of the world abrupt and demanding is the norm for shoppers. In other words, I find them rude, but maybe they're not rude at all, given the cultural mores they're used to.
I have had African Americans play the games with me (you know, slowing down and blocking your way when you're behind them or trying to cross an intersection, asking a cashier tons of questions just to hold up the line, deliberately giving false information, and servers and host/hostesses in restaurants ignoring the white folks or seating the black folks first), but in general, I don't experience much racism towards me. There was the time when I was new in town and I applied for a job at a fast food restaurant, of the same chain I'd worked for in my previous place - and which gave me excellent reviews - to be told that the way he (the manager) hired was to have you work for a week and then he'd tell you how much he would pay you (yeah; you can see where THAT is going. I'd knock myself out and he'd tell me I would get minimum wage). Given that he wasn't keen on meeting me in the first place, but then found my excellent reference, and my observing that were I working that day, I would have been the only white person, I couldn't help but wonder whether my race was an issue with him. Maybe, maybe not.
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The fact that no one understands you does not make you an artist.
(unknown)
Posts: 2767 | From: half-way up the ladder | Registered: May 2008
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
My overarching point was that racism experienced by minorities in the West... ..is institutionalized and has a measurable effect on economic and educational prospects. It does not require individual acts of racism for British or American society to have the effect of excluding or mistreating minorities, because the structures are already in place.
Do you have any examples of minorities mistreated by "structures" without individual acts of racism ? Because your thesis isn't self-evidently true.
Best wishes,
Russ
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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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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
... Malea Obama is no more a typical example of the Black experience than using George Burns to prove the health benefits of smoking. ...
And if Sasha and Malia Obama happen to NOT be recognized, they will be treated just as any other black woman would be treated.
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Do you have any examples of minorities mistreated by "structures" without individual acts of racism ? Because your thesis isn't self-evidently true.
Best wishes,
Russ
Not trying to answer for others, but just provide some context: the USA is still geographically segregated by race and income. So it isn't necessary for structures to have explicit racial aspects, because geographic discrimination can be used as a proxy.
I think it's really important not to get bogged down with the notion that racism has to always include an individual deliberately making a judgment about another individual based on race, because that just isn't the only way racism happens in the real world. It happens in lots and lots of subtle, indirect ways, and to perpetually argue them away is just a blatant refusal to acknowledge another person's experiences. There seems to be a fear that if racism is acknowledged, then some sort of personal responsibility is automatically incurred. Why? And why not? We're all part of multiple social structures that do things to people, and those structures really do look different from other angles.
"Let's talk" is never going to happen if the first response is always argument or denial. Or, to put it another way, "You're wrong / deluded / lying" is not a good conversation starter. Neither is "Things used to be worse" or "We're no worse than anyone else."
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
I think it's really important not to get bogged down with the notion that racism has to always include an individual deliberately making a judgment about another individual based on race, because that just isn't the only way racism happens in the real world. It happens in lots and lots of subtle, indirect ways, and to perpetually argue them away is just a blatant refusal to acknowledge another person's experiences.
I could not agree more.
Here in The Atlantic is some information about how segregation born of American racism continues to affect black Americans:
quote:
- On average, affluent blacks and Hispanics live in neighborhoods with fewer resources than poor whites do.
- Census data from 2000, for example, showed that the average black household making more than $60,000 lived in a neighborhood with a higher poverty rate than the average white household earning less than $20,000.
- A longitudinal study run from 1968-2005 found that the average black child spent one-quarter of his or her childhood living in a high-poverty neighborhood. For the average white child, that number is 3 percent.
- The black child poverty rate in 1968 was 35 percent; it is the same today.
- Minorities make up 56 percent of the population living in neighborhoods within two miles of the nation's commercial hazardous waste facilities.
- Middle-income blacks (with household incomes between $50,000-$60,000) live in neighborhoods that are on average more polluted than the average neighborhood where white households making less than $10,000 live.
Why are things like this?
quote:
For decades, policies around who is eligible for home loans, where we pave highways, and what kinds of houses can be built in some communities have encouraged middle-class whites to leave the city and move into the suburbs. At the same time, ill-fated government ideas about public housing clustered low-income blacks in high-rise housing projects. Mass incarceration further weakened minority communities.
The problem of racism is much larger than the individual choices we make, as important as those choices might be in our own lives. Racism is built into the structures of American society.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
So it isn't necessary for structures to have explicit racial aspects, because geographic discrimination can be used as a proxy.
For example, schooling. Various cities have bused children across the city in order to mix children from different areas in schools, because the areas themselves have been strongly racially segregated (partly due to things like redlining, partly due to self-selection), and there have been pretty much continuous legal challenges to this.
There are obvious downsides to busing, but the upside is that with pupils randomly assigned to schools, whichever group has political power can't favour "their" schools with more funding etc., because "their" kids are in all the schools.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Beautiful Dreamer
Shipmate
# 10880
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
quote:
Originally posted by Beautiful Dreamer:
Sorry to jut in, but to commisserate-
I had similar experiences to your son's when I worked in a mostly-black part of Durham, NC. ... Some of the black customers didn't seem to want me to wait on them...I thought it was something I said or did wrong until two coworkers (at two different stores and of two different non-white races) flat-out told me that the customer didn't like white people. One (black) friend told me that some of them actively resented and distrusted white people because they thought (and sometimes taught their kids to think) we were all racist backstabbers...in other words, they thought the worst of us the same way they accused us of doing to them. His comparison, not mine. ...
Well, let`s take a look at what is happening in North Carolina:
Black residents in North Carolina fear losing the ability to vote
So I agree that it really sucks when people automatically dislike you because of the colour of your skin. However, no one is trying to take white people`s votes away. Aren`t continued efforts to stop black people from voting fifty years after the civil rights movement kind of backstabby-racist?
I wasn't saying black people aren't or haven't been treated badly by the white majority. They certainly have. What I didn't understand is why individuals (those customers) don't want people to think that everyone in *their* group is bad and then turn around and do the same thing. They want to be seen as individual and not a stereotype, but they aren't willing to do that for others. My friend and I thought it interesting that something so obvious to us wouldn't occur to them. I suppose it's a natural defense mechanism.
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More where that came from
Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!
Posts: 6028 | From: Outside Atlanta, GA | Registered: Jan 2006
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
When I was at an international six form college, I remember a great deal of debate ensuing when a black American student alleged all white people are racist because of the slave trade.
Seekingsister's position is a lot more complex than this - basically describing / asserting institutional racism on an international scale (which I think is valid). However, if you feel defensive about accusations of racism - and frankly I am (not uniquely I think) - then it is easy to hear what she says as the same as that blanket condemnation from when I was 17. So then - everyone is/was racist we just happened to be powerrful is an obvious response.
I remember we used to have regular national evenings, when students would perform skits from their country or region. At the end of the evening they would perform their national anthem and everyone would stand for it. Everyone did this, including Germany with a preface about how the anthem changed after WW2. Then we had the British national evening, the Scots sang Flower of Scotland, the Welsh Sang their anthem partly in Welsh, the northern Irish sang Danny Boy and the English - the English sang if are happy and you know it clap your hands. No-one wanted to identify as British, and people often treat the British Empire as if it was in fact the English empire.
I have non-white friends, but I have no black friends - this is not a conscious choice. I met most of my friends through my professional trainng or through my main hobby - there were/ are no black peers in those cohorts. I live on street where there are no black families. I do live in quite a multicultural area - but that diversity exists largely in the university students (much younger and self-contained peer group) or via immigration from other communities - Asia, Persia, Eastern Europe, Portugal. Where my parents live it was news when they got a black traffic warden in the village - he was the only black person you saw amongst the permenant residents.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Mili
Shipmate
# 3254
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Posted
It's hard to explain institutional racism. Some people now use 'privilege' to try to explain it, but this is often misunderstood. White, rich, straight, able bodied men in particular might get defensive because in this world view they are privileged above everyone else. It doesn't mean they don't have any problems, but I can see how it could be understood this way. We don't get to choose who we are born as, where or when and many people get defensive if their group is said to have more advantages than others.
However it's a very short time since many white people were proud to think of themselves as above and more intelligent than everyone else, and men naturally saw themselves as women's betters and leaders. Some people still think this way and the results continue to be reflected in positions of power in majority white countries.
If individually you are working at treating everyone as your equal I don't think you should feel defensive when issues of racism and sexism come up, however psychologically I guess it makes sense to feel defensive if you feel criticised. I'm sorry again for not being more sensitive to Twilight further up the thread.
I used to feel really grumpy when people trotted out the usual white Australian stereotypes (drunk, no culture, unintelligent, racist, criminal, boorish, promiscuous etc.) Then I accepted that some Australians are like that, but I'm not and neither are many white Australians I know so I don't care what others think. It can't be compared to racism though - white Australians find it easy enough to find work, friends and social acceptance in majority white countries and most other countries too. When I lived in London I had lots of teaching work, mainly of non-white kids and no-one judged me for being white or Australian. And no white British people told me to go back where I came from or accused me of taking British jobs either.
As to England itself, I saw a sea of English flags during the 2006 Football World Cup. Every second person in London seemed to wear an English top at that time. So maybe things are changing - or is it just when it comes to sport?
Posts: 1015 | From: Melbourne, Australia | Registered: Aug 2002
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
I think it's really important not to get bogged down with the notion that racism has to always include an individual deliberately making a judgment about another individual based on race, because that just isn't the only way racism happens in the real world.
Do you see that this makes no sense at all to people who use the word "racism" to mean something like "an individual treating another individual less favourably because they are of a different race" ?
"Let's talk" gets nowhere if different people use the same word for different things.
On planet Russ it makes sense to ask questions like "how much of the relative poverty of immigrants is due to racial prejudice?". If you use language in a way that that question becomes "how much of racism is due to racism" then it's going to be hard to get meaningful answers.
Hope you see what I'm getting at even if I haven't said that quite right.
Best wishes,
Russ
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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
I'm confused, Russ.
Racism is prejudice based upon the notion that characteristics are inherent in "Race". How does the notion that this must be an individual act apply?
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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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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mili:
As to England itself, I saw a sea of English flags during the 2006 Football World Cup. Every second person in London seemed to wear an English top at that time. So maybe things are changing - or is it just when it comes to sport?
It's just sport.
I don't think the lack of English national symbols is solely due to embarrassment. English cultural assertion is usually expressed by treating Englishness - or even London-and-South-East-ness - as the normal state and everything else as a colourful aberration. The English have been the dominant power for long enough that they don't really need any assertive nationalism.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
English cultural assertion is usually expressed by treating Englishness - or even London-and-South-East-ness - as the normal state and everything else as a colourful aberration.
Messrs. Flanders and Swan hit the mark, as usual:
quote:
The English, the English, the English are best
So up with the English and down with the rest.
It's not that they're wicked or natuarally bad
It's knowing they're foreign that makes them so mad!
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
Is racism, on the micro level, fundamentally any different from tribalism? The macro consequences are not the same, but is there a fundamental difference between black vs white and Tutsi vs Hutu* or Montague vs Capulet or Serb vs Croat vs Bonsiak?
(Obviously the ubiquity of racism makes a macro difference - you can, in principle, travel somewhere where nobody knows that you're a Hutu or a Montague, but you can't escape your skin tone.)
*To save seekingsister the need to point it out, I am familiar with the theory that the Tutsi/Hutu division was artificially created and sustained by European colonists as part of a divide-and-rule strategy.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
I think it's really important not to get bogged down with the notion that racism has to always include an individual deliberately making a judgment about another individual based on race, because that just isn't the only way racism happens in the real world.
Do you see that this makes no sense at all to people who use the word "racism" to mean something like "an individual treating another individual less favourably because they are of a different race" ? ...
Well, of course it makes no sense to them. It makes no sense because they're wrong. They have created their own reality, where racism has been ended by defining it out of existence and everything is hugs and puppies and rainbows and all those people complaining about racism are whining about nothing.
It's quite easy to make sense of, however. All it takes is acknowledging that their definition of racism is incomplete. How hard is that? Because right now their contribution to the conversation on racism is "LALALA that's not racism LALALA that's not racism."
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
I think it's really important not to get bogged down with the notion that racism has to always include an individual deliberately making a judgment about another individual based on race, because that just isn't the only way racism happens in the real world.
Do you see that this makes no sense at all to people who use the word "racism" to mean something like "an individual treating another individual less favourably because they are of a different race" ?
Part of the point is that some of that less favourable treatment is subconscious. For example, suppose an employer deliberately favours people like him. On the surface, that's maybe not so bad an idea - he's done well at his job, so it's not unreasonable to think that other people with the same kind of background and experiences will do well too, and of course he has to work closely with this new hire, so if they have the same cultural referents, that will make the wheels of collaboration run a little more smoothly. None of this is necessarily particularly conscious - it's just that he's recognizing the qualities that he has in the applicants that are similar to him.
Now, because of past history, the employer in question is most likely to be a white man, probably from a middle-class or better background. When he, and many other men like him, looks for new employees, he may well subconsciously favour other white middle-class men.
Without a shred of bigoted intent on anyone's part, you still get a result which is racist (and sexist...)
What words would you like to use to describe this?
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
When I was at an international six form college, I remember a great deal of debate ensuing when a black American student alleged all white people are racist because of the slave trade.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade is actually evidence of the universality of racism.
When the Europeans bought into it, it had already existed for centuries, with sub-Saharan Africans enslaving sub-Saharan Africans from other ethnicities/regions/language groups, and Arab slave-traders operating as the entrepreneurial middlemen.
Its extension overseas on the part of Europeans was due to their superior technology, especially marine technology.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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IconiumBound
Shipmate
# 754
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Posted
Pardon my coming to this late but a vacation intervened.
quote:
Originally posted by lilBhudda
Let us start with a definition. Racism is prejudice...
There is the heart of the problem; pre (before) judice (judging). The thought occurs instinctively and sub consciously. It is basically a survival instinct from our primate forebears. It recognizes something about the "other" that hits the f;ight or fight instinct. A lot of million years have somewhat softened the response but it still remains. It can be seen in the tribal inclination to gather in groups "like me"; be they national, occupational or whatever.
This is an inherited trait that can only be modified by living in the shoes of the other; that is, the Golden Rule. Johnathan Haidt, an evolutionary Psychologist, writes in his book, The Righteous Mind, that these built-in reactions cannot be easily changed except by experience and empathy. As for experience Haidt recounts his experience in India and suggests there is a normal human capacity for empathy.
[QUOTE]As empathy kicked in, I liked these people who were hosting me, helping me, and teaching me. If you really want to change someone's mind on a moral or political matter, you'll need to see things from that person's angle as well as your own. And if you do truly see it the other person's way - deeply and intuitively - you might find your own mind opening in response. Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it's very difficult to empathize across a moral divide. [QUOTE]
[ 19. August 2013, 00:40: Message edited by: IconiumBound ]
Posts: 1318 | From: Philadelphia, PA, USA | Registered: Jul 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
KC,
Slavery has existed for millennia and in cultures accross the globe. However, I ask you for examples with the scale and brutality with which Europeans treated Africans.
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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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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
marine technology.
D'oh!
Meant to write maritime technology.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
KC,
Slavery has existed for millennia and in cultures accross the globe. However, I ask you for examples with the scale and brutality with which Europeans treated Africans.
Are you talking absolute numbers, percentage of a population, or as a system integral to a society ? (There was a fair amount of bog standard genocide around in the world too of course.)
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
KC,
Slavery has existed for millennia and in cultures accross the globe. However, I ask you for examples with the scale and brutality with which Europeans treated Africans.
Slavery under the Roman Empire (proto-European if you like, but not what people usually mean when they use the term European in this context) would have come pretty close, and if you add the slavery practiced in Africa and Asia over the millennia, the numbers enslaved by Europe, obscene though they were, are greatly exceeded.
As to racism in general, Han dominance in China, the world’s most populous country, has already been mentioned, and in India, the second most populous, successions of migrations over the centuries from the north exterminated, subjugated or uprooted India’s indigenous peoples, the remnants of whom are known as Scheduled Tribes, or Tribals.
The same thing happened in South Africa shortly before white settlement, when migrations from the north dispossessed the indigenous peoples, the remnants of whom include the Kalahari Bushmen.
Europe’s sorry history of racism is too well known and acknowledged to require exaggerated claims of uniqueness.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The trans-Atlantic slave trade is actually evidence of the universality of racism.
I don't think it is. People have traded slaves for millennia without bothering themselves about race. Racist theories arose in Europe because people were coming to believe that slavery was wrong and still wanted a justification for doing it. Racism grew up as a justification for saying that while slavery in general is wrong, enslaving these people isn't.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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seekingsister
Shipmate
# 17707
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
My overarching point was that racism experienced by minorities in the West... ..is institutionalized and has a measurable effect on economic and educational prospects. It does not require individual acts of racism for British or American society to have the effect of excluding or mistreating minorities, because the structures are already in place.
Do you have any examples of minorities mistreated by "structures" without individual acts of racism ? Because your thesis isn't self-evidently true.
Best wishes,
Russ
Felon disenfranchisement (i.e. not allowing convicted felons ever to vote) is de facto racist. If you tie that into racial profiling and the poor quality of legal advice/public defending that many accused have access to, you get a picture of black people more likely to be arrested, more likely to plead guilty on bad advice, more likely to therefore be barred from voting.
Felon Voting Rights
The Innocence Project is something that should scare any good person. It uses DNA to exonerate people who have been falsely convicted. About 2/3 of the people who have been exonerated with DNA evidence are black. Some of them were in prison for 15-20 years before being released.
Innocence Project
The Innocence Project also points out that 40% of the cases had incorrect eyewitness testimony that was cross-racial. For example, a white witness who misidentified a black suspect. Again that's not racist as in someone hating black people, but because they don't know black people or see us often, they misidentify us or confuse us with others.
Posts: 1371 | From: London | Registered: May 2013
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Pottage
Shipmate
# 9529
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The trans-Atlantic slave trade is actually evidence of the universality of racism.
I don't think it is. People have traded slaves for millennia without bothering themselves about race. Racist theories arose in Europe because people were coming to believe that slavery was wrong and still wanted a justification for doing it. Racism grew up as a justification for saying that while slavery in general is wrong, enslaving these people isn't.
I think that's only partly true. It was perhaps true of the enormous African trade in slaves internally, and it may have been more the norm in the ancient world. Much historical slavery though has been a trade in people who were appreciably 'different' from the slave owners.
Arab slave trading from Africa predated the white western traders by several hundred years and continued unchecked after the west abolished it. In aggregate numbers it was a trade at least comparable to the western slave trade and may well have exceeded it considerably. The mortality rate of slaves taken to Arabia was perhaps even more horrific than that of the notorious middle passage.
Arab and Turk slave traders also dealt extensively in European slaves. Not just the famed Barbary pirates (who are thought to have taken 1.25 million western Europeans into slavery most of whom perished in conditions of brutality), but also at least twice as many people harvested in Eastern Europe by Tatars and sold into the Ottomon empire's slave markets.
quote:
"the Black nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Blacks) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals".
That isn't a quote from an 18th century white western slave captain. It's from the 14th century scholar ibn Kaldun.
I've picked an example that's easy to demonstrate and I could have used others, from Asia perhaps. I don't for a moment mean to defend the trade in African slaves operated by the European colonial countries. It was shameful and abhorrent. But I don't think it's easy to argue that it was so much more evil than any other example that it defines the very issue of discrimination on grounds of race.
Posts: 701 | From: middle England | Registered: May 2005
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Ye Gods, I did not intend to start a debate over who's slavery was worse. It was a reaction to a comment which seemed to be the "everyone has done this" argument often intended to reduce culpability.
I can do a decent argument in the slavery debate, however this is a tangent.
Though I will note that the barbarity with which the Europeans and Americans treated black Africans as well as the rational used by Arabs, Europeans and Americans to enslave black Africans was race-based and germane to the discussion.
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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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Pottage
Shipmate
# 9529
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Ye Gods, I did not intend to start a debate over who's slavery was worse. It was a reaction to a comment which seemed to be the "everyone has done this" argument often intended to reduce culpability.
I can do a decent argument in the slavery debate, however this is a tangent.
Though I will note that the barbarity with which the Europeans and Americans treated black Africans as well as the rational used by Arabs, Europeans and Americans to enslave black Africans was race-based and germane to the discussion.
Agreed. To my mind the slavery debate isn't an especially good way of shedding light on the nature of racism. Not only is it an extreme example (likewise genocide), but the motivations behind slavery are usually mixed - economic as much as racist - which makes it also a poor example.
There does though seem to be a strand of thinking that all forms of racist prejudice originated with White Western Men of the colonial era and is perpetuated now solely by people who are - consciously or not - influenced by them. I don't think that stacks up. In particular, to accept it you must consciously ignore materially equivalent examples of slavery practised by people who are plainly not WWM (the Arab example is the easiest to cite, not the only one).
Adopting the WWM Hypothesis makes it impossible to view racism in the wider context of other types of equally unfair discrimination, for example against people with disabilities. Discriminating against people who are different is ubiquitous. That doesn't mean that it's acceptable, or that anyone should be excused. Theft and violence are also common in all societies.
We should start from the premise that everyone has the capacity to be influenced by prejudice against people who are different, are a minority. That's not so we can shrug and allow ourselves a free pass because "everyone has done it" but because if we don't assume that everyone is capable of prejudice how can we face up to it.
Posts: 701 | From: middle England | Registered: May 2005
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
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Posted
I agree that everyone is capable of prejudice. And that it is often directed towards difference and perceived weakness.
I focused on racism specifically due to issues raised on the Oprah and Zimmerman threads.
Understanding the mechanisms is important. Understanding this is a human failing is important as well. (I have given the "White people are not inherently evil" talk many times.)
Though, currently in the Western world, WWM are the most culpable. That it is by circumstance rather than inherent trait is to be noted, but it is still no excuse.
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Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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