Way OT: Racism

[Renegade 13]

Ok, this is another one of those subjects that can get out of hand, very quickly. Please keep it civil, and don't turn it into a huge heated debate; a civilized debate will do nicely!

We all know about the various forms of racism. Anti-Semitism (racism against Jewish people), racism against African American people, racism against almost every race and nationality that exists. However, how often do you hear an attack on, for example, a "white" person to be said to be "racially motivated"? It seems to me that whenever there is an assault upons someone who isn't white, about 10% of the time it seems to be said to be "racially motivated" or "a racist attack". Are white people any more racist than any other nationality? I highly doubt it.

That of course is only one narrow form of racism. Think about all the festivals and stuff that go on in cities. You have your Asian Pride parades, parades for all sorts of different nationalities and races. Do you hear of a festival or celebration for "white" or "European" people? Never. Why? Isn't that racist??

At my school, we have "cultural events". Usually they are Native American presentations of some form of Native culture. Do we ever have presentations celebrating "white" culture?? No. Do we* not have any culture? I don't think that's the case. Another case of racism that is never said to be "true" racism.

Why is it offensive to call someone "black", but it is perfectly acceptable to call someone of European descent "white"?

I'm not trying to offend anyone here, just to show that racism goes both ways.

I honestly don't care whether or not someone calls me "white" or whether they call me "European American"; it simply doesn't bother me one way or the other. I think that people as a whole have become way, way too sensitive about issues of labels or some such thing. Tolerance; that's the way to do it. Don't go so far overboard because you're too afraid of offending someone that you end up discriminating against someone else in the process! That's the way it seems to work, isn't it?

Again, I don't want to offend anyone; what I have written is simply my opinion. If you want to correct my views, please feel free to do so. Just keep it civil, ok? Or I'll have to ask a Moderator to delete this thread if things get out of hand. I don't think that will happen, but hey, you never know.

*we. When I say "we", I mean "white" people. That is simply because I am of European descent.

[Starhawk]

I seriously doubt you could offend anyone with what you just posted renegade.

Well to adress your first statement Asians generally are a quiet minority depending on where they are from, for example the Chinese only hold one parade every year in Virginia and that's for Chinese New Year (my own kung fu school takes part in demonstrations and the like to celebrate) so I don't know of any "Asian Pride" parades

I do however find it very amusing that we have "Black Power" parades under the guise of "Black Cultural" stuff, yet if you ever have a white organization that wants to march everyone automatically thinks "White Power" and "Racists" why? How come a black man can be proud of being black but I can't be proud of my ancestry? I am white and jewish by blood (Christian by religion) so what if I am proud of that I must be racist?

That is bull crap, I have many friends of different race, and a girl I care very much about is Chinese for the Lord's sake yet if I ever said I was proud to be white I'd be considered racist?

And let us also consider the N( word, why is it that if a white guy calls that to a black guy he can go to jail, yet when a black guy called me Honky, or Cracker, he doesn't get word one said to him? Are they not equally offensive considering the N word is just a mispronounced form of a word used to describe Negros which is in fact just a word that was used to describe people from a specific area in Africa (though I can't remember the country).

Yet now a days we also have black folks shouting "Hey what up my N(#*er" all over the place like it's some form of compliment, I'm sorry but if they are too dumb to notice a racist slur when they hear it and call each other that why don't they go to jail or get fined like a stupid white guy who is dumb enough to use that word?

Now let us also consider that stupid law where black people taking SATs automatically get 600 points added to their test, so let us say if a white kid honestly scores 1000 and a black kid scores 500 the black kid will beat out the white kid because he gets 1100, even though he doesn't deserve it at all.

Now why don't asians who are the MOST minority (Koreans are the absolute smallest minority in this country) get any points added to their tests? Is it because they are assumed to be just as smart as white kids while black kids are assumed inferior?


And another thing if black people want to be treated as equal they should lose all their advantages and have to fight and scratch their way to the top just like a white person or asian person would have too, and they should definately stop letting the NAACP b1tch and moan whenever ANYTHING comes up where a white/asian/other was hired over a black person, ever think that maybe they just had better qualities? NO IT MUST BE RACISM! bull.


Now to adress the subject of fighting, there was an incident where 5 black girls beat the living crap out of blonde hair blue eyed white girl ON A SCHOOL BUS!, no reason given, one black girl just walked over yanked her by the hair out of her seat and started beating on her, the other four black girls joined in shortly therafter. It was called a fight, even though this girl was obviously singled out and jumped and beaten by superior numbers and not given a chance, and what you ask happened to the 5 black girls, they were WARNED not to do it again, not even suspended!

Now on the flipside there was another situation in a public school where a black kid called a white kid a name, the white kid and his two friends jumped the black boy and beat him up, it was called a racist attack and the 3 white boys were suspended.

Does that sound fair? No not at all.

Now Asian kid and white kid beat each other up and it's mutual combatants, and both kids are suspended even if the white kid is calling the Asian kid all sorts of racist slurs while he's beating on him.



Let's face it America has gone tooo far in trying to equalize against racism and has gone the other way where if a black guy so much as says "He called me #*$&^$^" he can sue where I knew a girl that kept calling me "Kyke, honkey, and cracker" in public, yet could I have sued or anything? NO because she would have turned around and said I had done something to her or something.....


Now like I said I have had black friends, and they agreed with me that it's CRAP the way these to quote one of them "gheto trash Ganstah's" get advantages that they do not deserve.

I also have had asian friends who think it's total crap the way they, who are the smallest minority in this country, get treated by the NAACP and the like as if they were "The White man" or something stupid like that.

[Captain Kwok]

*sigh*

Yes, racism is a problem that plagues all people. You cannot dispute that. However, throwing around such loose facts as you have leaves a lot to be desired.

For example:
- SAT scores are not adjusted by race, no such law exists as least that I could find.

- Nigger has nothing to do with the country Nigeria in Africa, but with the latin word niger for black. Yes, it is a very offensive and derogatory term when used in certain contexts. However, just as queer has been adopted by the gay community - nigger is used by the black community. Why? Because it robs the term of its offensiveness.

- Affirmative action type policies are an unfortunate result of U.S. society. Yes, the most qualified candidate should get the opportunity - however, without such policies very often minority candidates with said skills would never even be in a position to get an interview.

- Remember the police officers who beat Rodney King and captured on video tape? Could you remind me of the verdict in that case? Can you tell me how many people of minority have been punished for crimes they did not commit as a percentage of their population - I'm sure it's far, far higher than the average overall rate. You see, it goes both ways.

- And by the way, most of the traditional European holidays are already major national holidays with many large celebrations

The amount of general stereotypes being portrayed in this thread or the UPN thread makes me sad. Until we stop judging people by the colour of their skin or ethnicity, this sort of stuff will never end. Understanding NOT tolerance is the best way to go.

[Atrocities]

People are people. I judge a person by their actions, not the color of their skin or where they come from. I hope that the same is true when people judge me.

[dogscoff]

Very quickly, I'm off to bed:

1- None of the black people I know take offence at being called black.

2- Yeah, positive discrimination is, technically, unfair. But it is an honest attempt to counter negative discrimintaion, which is also unfair, and is still extremely common.

3- I agree completely that, in an ideal world (and probably one that we will one day see made real) there would be no need for positive discrimination and the same rules would apply to everyone, but at the moment these things are necessary. If the rules seem different for blacks than for whites, it's because black people have suffered hundreds of years of slavery and oppression, and still often have to put up with overt and covert racism. Only by actively foiling racist discrimination can enough ethnic minorities get into the position to help themselves and provide the positive role models the next generation will need to get their on their own without a hand up.

4- as to the point about parades and celebrations- I think you'll find that such celebrations go on all the time. How about Christmas? Easter? Independence day? Even on a day that isn't a major holiday, every day in a predominantly white culture is "celebrate white culture day" to someone who doesn't identify that culture but is living in the middle of it. Remember that many ethnic groups have had their own cultural identities systematically stripped away over the centuries. A lot of african americans don't even know what part of africa their ancestors come from, and if they did, knowledge about the culture and way of life of those ancestors is all but dead. IT may not be obvious to everyone exactly why people need to find about a dozens of generations in their history, but those are usually people who have no problems tracing their own roots and have the luxury of taking their own cultural identity for granted.

5- The N word. I hate that word, and I don't use it, and if I ever did I would rightly expect to get smacked in the mouth by any passing black people. There is too much hate tied up in that word for it ever to become acceptable again, imho. The fact that it has been adopted by the black community (in an attempt to 'reclaim it', apparently) doesn't enjoy unanimous support from the black community. Unfortunately, it seems the most loudest voice for black culture at the moment is one of the least representative and certainly less flattering. I'm referring to the gangster rap culture, which portrays black americans as violent, uneducated, masogynistic, vacuously materialistic arseholes. Of course that picture doesn't apply to the whole of black american culture, but very often that is the only picture getting onto the television and radio, and it leads to a lot of misunderstanding.

Finally, the anecdotal stories of [insert ethnic group here] kids beating up a white kid in a racially motivated attack and walking away scot free. At worst these are urban myths, at best an exception to the statistical rule- particularly in the usa where the insanely oversized prison system is literally stuffed with black people, and something crazy like 30% of black americans can expect to go through the prison system at some time in their lives.

That was supposed to be quick. Ah well, goodnight.

(Everything I ever needed to know about afro-american culture I learned from http://www.boondocks.net/ - finished reading "Right to be hostile" today, thoroughly recommended. )

[Captain Kwok]

Dogscoff, well said.

[David E. Gervais]

I judge people by their avatars,.. (just kidding )

But seriously, I'm a bilingual Canadian living in Quebec. We don't have much racism here based on 'color' but that good old 'language' thing sure is a pain in the ***. I consider myself english because that's my mother tongue and it's the language I speak daily. (I'm fluently bilingual, and when I speak in french I think in french.) So, why is it that in the english community I'm praised for speaking two languages, and in the french community there is 'friction' due to my 'english' herritage. (and to be blunt my 'english' herritage comes from Scottland not England) An example of this is that my english friends are amazed at how fluent I am in both languages. In the french community, they basically say I should be ashamed of how bad I speak french. I never could wrap my head around the femminin/masculin part of the language. It all seems arbitrary to me, how does one remember that a table is female and a can of coke is male? (anyway I digress) One thing I find happening here in Quebec is that the language laws are turning all the english or 'other' language speaking people into 'bilingual' speaking people, and the french are loosing out on that. more and more french are becomming unilingual. So I think the french have shot themselves in the foot. In their attempt to make Quebec 'more french' which is kind of hard because I think the number of non-french-speaking people in Quebec can be counted on one hand. (about 5% of the population is now unilingual-english speaking) So why are they still afread of loosing their language? Why do they feel threatened by such a small number of people?

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that racism is not just based on skin color, language is a big part of it too.

Nuf Said, Cheers!

[Puke]

well, the only people i discriminate against are francophile quebecois. sorry DG, just joking. i know you can handle a little friendly ribbing.

i dont know anyone that finds the word 'black' offensive, and i think its generally peoples (around here) view that it gets to the point rather than trying to be artificially politically-correct with things like african-american. but honestly, i dont call anyone black. i call people by their names, or i say "excuse me sir" or if im friendly with them i just say "hey."

the only time i have EVER had to describe anyone by their color is when i dont know their name and i am trying to describe them to someone who has or will see them, and i need to give them identifying characteristics. "talk to the Mexican guy in the blue shirt at the front desk" or "yeah, that pen belongs to the Black guy that walked through here five minutes ago"

As for anti-white descrimination, people are ugly. all people are ugly, and i dont mean how they look. 99% of people prefer people of a similar culture. its an evolutionary trait that encourages one culture to conquer the poor guys next to them, and its awfully hard to educate out of people.

so if i see restaurant thats full of pepole of one color or nationality, i stay out of it. theyre just going to be offended when i cant pronounce the things on their menu, and they are going to wonder what im doing there. and if i happened to walk in with one of 'their' women, theyre going to be upset about it - even if they keep it to themselves. and there is nothing worse than ordering food from people that dont like you.

likewise i wouldnt want to walk into a restaurant or bar thats filled with nothing but white people, especially if i have a forign girl with me.

i get along with all kinds of people, but im not going to go out of my way to change the world. its only going to work if they get along with me too, and maybe im a coward, but i play it safe by keeping to places that are already integrated.

[Thermodyne]

I won’t touch this one. Other than to say that is in our genes. As a species we are successful in part because of are ability to compete. And part of this is the underlying desires to have our own personal gene pool survive. In the deep dark past, the introduction of a new variation of species was a threat to the existing pool. So we developed an underlying predisposition to eradicate it and protect the existing pool. These days, the underlying spark is still competition, although it is for other things now. But take people today and add some stress, and many will tend to fall back onto the old hard wired genetic traits. Also there are some who are just horsesasses too. The part that really bugs me is the political correctness crap. It often prevents a meaningful dialogue and this hampers society as a whole.


Another thing that really bugs me is the misuse of terms that are often used in these types of discussion. An anti-Semitist would hate Arabs and Jews alike. Both groups of people are part of a larger group know as Semites. But it amazes me to see one Dr. Soandso after another pervert the term to advance a political agenda. These days it is most often applied to the acts of racial cleansing perpetrated by the Nazis, and the problems in the Middle East. The Nazis were anti Semites, but the Palestinians and other Arabs are not, they just hate Israel and anyone that supports Israel. Of note here is the fact that the Palestinians have little or no claim to the area known as Israel today. Its real name is Assyria, and in modern time it was the property of the Ottoman Empire (1280 > 1923) and then past into Egyptian control (Who were under the thumb of the English). I would think that any claims prior to 1280 would be beyond enforcing today. Never in modern time was Palestine a Nation or State. Palestine was not even a province under the Ottomans. Ottoman holdings So what we really have is competition again. I guess people are just born to it.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

AT, in the thread "What is Mega Evil Empire?" you say:

2. Any thing that is not like me is my enemy

You are (I assume) not like Latin American people. Does that make Latin Americans your enemy?