Speakpigeon
Contributor
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2009
- Messages
- 6,317
- Location
- Paris, France, EU
- Basic Beliefs
- Rationality (i.e. facts + logic), Scepticism (not just about God but also everything beyond my subjective experience)
I've being thinking about the notion of racism recently. I now believe that this a somewhat misguided terminology in the current situaton.
Strictly speaking, racism is the idea that people belong to different biological groups, i.e. groups that can be identified by specific biological characteristics, in particular the colour of the skin, the texture of the hair, morphology traits etc., and that these characteristics are somehow good predictors of behaviour and intellectual capabilities, even possibly of moral qualities.
I'm not sure if there's been any scientific investigation of whether racism exists as such but whether racism exists or not is not my point here. Instead, my view is that social discrimination has been evolving during the last few decades from straightforward racism to discrimination based on cultural distinctions. I think it is really easy to make distinctions such as Muslim v. Christian, European v. African, university educated v. uneducated. That's not so much more difficult than looking at the colour of the skin.
It's also a bit more complicated than that. Given the discrimination based on your personal income and wealth, people find themselves congragated together so that neighbourhoods rather than just people can be associated with particular cultural characteristics. Some of those relate to ethnic origin, religion etc. but there's more to it than that because many people are trapped for several generations in those neighbourhoods so that the neighbourhood develops its own particular culture. Nothing new evidently but my point is that discrimination based on culture in that sense has replaced straightforward racism.
Culture-based discrimination has the same effect as racism but also the same purpose, which is essentially to keep some populations away or else trapped in underprivileged economic and political circumstances, i.e. to deprive them of both money and power. Yet it's not the same thing. The psychological mechanisms seem somewhat more sophisticated, which may explain why this form of discrimination seems to be gaining ground over straightforward racism.
There's also I think an obvious precedent. I think antisemitism has always been essentially a form of culture-based discrimination. Xenophobia too seems to be a form of that. Think also of things like French-bashing at the time that George W. Bush started the war on Iraq. Culture-based discrimination is just the more general form beyond the specifics of particular forms of discrimination. Racism itself can be understood as a particular form of it too. What may be new today would be that this form of discrimination has morphed and is effectively used instead of straightforward racism.
I don't want to speculate further. I guess my point is clear enough and may be contentious enough as it is. What I say seems to fit with recent and not so recent developments in the U.S. and Europe. The problem with the notion of straightforward racism according to this view is that it no longer really fits all the facts on the ground. I think it would be helpful to conceive of the problem as culture-based discrimination rather than straightforward racism. In effect, people who want to discriminate no longer need to resort to straightforward racism, i.e. the colour of the skin and such. Instead, they can pick out any of the characteristics that can be used to suggest that some people are effectively different and that this difference comes with some psychological baggage or attitude problems, moral flaws etc.
Possibly, some people have already theorised this extensively.
EB
Strictly speaking, racism is the idea that people belong to different biological groups, i.e. groups that can be identified by specific biological characteristics, in particular the colour of the skin, the texture of the hair, morphology traits etc., and that these characteristics are somehow good predictors of behaviour and intellectual capabilities, even possibly of moral qualities.
I'm not sure if there's been any scientific investigation of whether racism exists as such but whether racism exists or not is not my point here. Instead, my view is that social discrimination has been evolving during the last few decades from straightforward racism to discrimination based on cultural distinctions. I think it is really easy to make distinctions such as Muslim v. Christian, European v. African, university educated v. uneducated. That's not so much more difficult than looking at the colour of the skin.
It's also a bit more complicated than that. Given the discrimination based on your personal income and wealth, people find themselves congragated together so that neighbourhoods rather than just people can be associated with particular cultural characteristics. Some of those relate to ethnic origin, religion etc. but there's more to it than that because many people are trapped for several generations in those neighbourhoods so that the neighbourhood develops its own particular culture. Nothing new evidently but my point is that discrimination based on culture in that sense has replaced straightforward racism.
Culture-based discrimination has the same effect as racism but also the same purpose, which is essentially to keep some populations away or else trapped in underprivileged economic and political circumstances, i.e. to deprive them of both money and power. Yet it's not the same thing. The psychological mechanisms seem somewhat more sophisticated, which may explain why this form of discrimination seems to be gaining ground over straightforward racism.
There's also I think an obvious precedent. I think antisemitism has always been essentially a form of culture-based discrimination. Xenophobia too seems to be a form of that. Think also of things like French-bashing at the time that George W. Bush started the war on Iraq. Culture-based discrimination is just the more general form beyond the specifics of particular forms of discrimination. Racism itself can be understood as a particular form of it too. What may be new today would be that this form of discrimination has morphed and is effectively used instead of straightforward racism.
I don't want to speculate further. I guess my point is clear enough and may be contentious enough as it is. What I say seems to fit with recent and not so recent developments in the U.S. and Europe. The problem with the notion of straightforward racism according to this view is that it no longer really fits all the facts on the ground. I think it would be helpful to conceive of the problem as culture-based discrimination rather than straightforward racism. In effect, people who want to discriminate no longer need to resort to straightforward racism, i.e. the colour of the skin and such. Instead, they can pick out any of the characteristics that can be used to suggest that some people are effectively different and that this difference comes with some psychological baggage or attitude problems, moral flaws etc.
Possibly, some people have already theorised this extensively.
EB
