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.

[Fyron]

*quickly shuts can of worms before it causes an implosion*

[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.

[TerranC]

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?

I really don't want to participate in this discussion but, "Black Power" is used to describe Empowerment for people of black skin, as in having more legal representation and general equality (this does not apply to organizations such as the Nation of Islam, which is quite anti-anything black), whereas "White Power" is used to describe an ideal which advocates Eugenics, Genocide, and overall screwing up the Human Race a la WW2.

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?

I don't know where you got that "Korean-Americans are the absolute smallest minority in (America)" rubbish, but they are most certainly not; Korean is the eighth spoken maternal language in the United States, outranking Russian, Polish and Arabic.

And (East) Asians don't get any points added to their SAT scores because they happen to excel at SAT tests even moreso than whites, but because of the wrong reasons; high SAT scores are percieved by the general public as a sign of high intelligence. For any person no matter the race, they can excel in SATs (SAT 1) if they happen to show an affinity towards spatial reasoning; it has been said that East Asian languages, with their logographic writing systems (Korean excluded) and more rigorous education programs, influenced by confucianism, which gives tremendous weight towards good (if not excessive) education. East Asians who were born here (in North America) and had only learned english tend to score the same as whites or blacks, depending on the person.

[Starhawk]

1. I know a few that you can't call black or they go all nasty on you.

2. It is unfair and I was mistaken it's not SAT it's college entrance exams that are modified for race. My point is they should have to prove themselves just as smart as the white folks if they truely want respect.

3. Yup I agree with you there

4. Your right, it is sort of wierd that most black folks can't even name where their ancestors are from, but that's true for a LOT of people of a LOT of races not just black people, I mean I know a white guy that couldn't tell you where in Europe his ancestors could have possibly come from lol.

5. I totally agree with you my point is it is no worse then Honky or Cracker IMHO those kinds of words are wrong no matter who you are or what race.
Your right sadly today the loudest representatives are the Gansta rappers and the old men of the NAACP that are still trying to find folks who's ancestors had slaves and force them to pay these people.


Not urban legends actually they are documented, and yes it goes both ways but whenever it hits the news when it's black kids beating a white kid it's "a fight" vice versa and you have the NAACP trying to sue for "racial attacks", and yes this is a minority of incidents but my point is that these are the kinds of things we see which is wrong, the news should show that justice goes both ways and stop being so damned scared to admit that black people are just as capable of being racist pigs as white people and call it a racial attack when they beat the daylights out of a white kid for no reason yah know?

Uhm sorry but do you think that the 30% of black people going through prison thing might just be because they have the largest criminal population thanks to the punks that wanna be like the gansta rappa's they listen too, yeah I think that's probobly it.

[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!